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More "Picket" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... with short, sharp rushes down the winding road; the houses lost the toy-like aspect of distance; cowbells clashed faintly; a dog's bark quivered, suspended in hushed space. The stage passed the first, scattered houses, and was speedily in the village: each dwelling had, behind a white picket fence, a strip of sod and a tangle of simple, gay flowers—scarlet, white, purple and yellow, now coated with a fine, chalky, summer dust. The dwellings were, for the most part, frame, with a rare structure of brick under mansard slates green with moss. The back yards were fenced from ...
— Mountain Blood - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer
... on a brush-dotted level, his horse, Dexter, slowly circled his picket and nibbled at the scant bunch-grass. The western sun trailed long shadows across the canon; shadows that drifted imperceptibly farther and farther, spreading, commingling, softening the broken outlines of ledge and brush until the walled solitude was brimmed with dusk, save where ...
— Jim Waring of Sonora-Town - Tang of Life • Knibbs, Henry Herbert
... would walk into the hall and dining-room, when the door was open, and was once observed to step up, gracefully, and take bread from the table. It perambulated the garden walks. It would, when the back-gate was shut, jump over a six feet picket fence, with the ease ...
— Personal Memoirs Of A Residence Of Thirty Years With The Indian Tribes On The American Frontiers • Henry Rowe Schoolcraft
... Lord Gough was before the village of Bussool, and finding a very strong picket of the enemy on a mound close to that place, his lordship, after some fighting, dislodged it. Ascending the mound, the general and his staff beheld the Khalsa army ranged along the furrowed hills in all the majestic array of war. The British ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... horse, rolled up her picket rope, and stood waiting with disturbed face. As the rider drew near she ...
— The Prospector - A Tale of the Crow's Nest Pass • Ralph Connor
... borders of Cape Colony in a state of military security. As one detail he had to ensure that, in the event of war, the frontier settlers should not be massacred. A line of men was drawn across country, so as to make a buttress against any advance by the crazy Kaffirs. Each picket had charge of a stretch of ground, and in the morning soldiers would ride sharply to right and left, covering it. They could tell, by footmarks on the dewy grass, whether any Kaffirs had been about ...
— The Romance of a Pro-Consul - Being The Personal Life And Memoirs Of The Right Hon. Sir - George Grey, K.C.B. • James Milne
... in the Smithsonian Institution at Washington. Its spacious rooms in the first and second stories, together with the attics, are all filled with the families of negro refugees. From this point, looking across the water, we could see a cavalry-picket of the Rebels. The superintendent who had charge of the plantation, and accompanied me, was Charles Follen, an inherited name, linked with the struggles for freedom in ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. September, 1863, No. LXXI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... way to the westward, and, as we fancied, clear of the enemy, when, on doubling a high rock, round which the path led, we came suddenly upon a picket. Owing to the precautions we had taken, however, they did not hear or see us until almost within a dozen paces. To leap on our horses and dig our spurs into their flanks, was the work of a moment; and before ...
— In New Granada - Heroes and Patriots • W.H.G. Kingston
... offensive aspects, and of labour in its most insolent assumptions. The "rights" of property, the "right" to strike, the "right" to collective bargaining, the "right" to shut down an essential industry or to "walk out" and then picket the place so that it may not be reopened, the "right" to vote and hold office and do any fool thing you please so long as it is within the law, these are applications of what I mean when I speak of a gross fallacy that has come into being ...
— Towards the Great Peace • Ralph Adams Cram
... when he entered the lines chanced to be on duty, and of him Will asked an unimportant question concerning the outer-flung lines. Yet as he rode along he could not forbear throwing an apprehensive glance behind. No pursuit was making, and the farthest picket-line was passed by a good fifty yards. Ahead was a stretch of timber. Suddenly a dull tattoo of horses' hoofs caught his ear, and he turned to see a small cavalcade bearing down upon him at a gallop. He sank the spurs into his horse's side and plunged into the timber. ...
— Last of the Great Scouts - The Life Story of William F. Cody ["Buffalo Bill"] • Helen Cody Wetmore
... his fire and unpacked his horses. He confined his riding horse with a picket rope; the others he turned loose. Then he cooked a simple meal for himself and the gaunt ...
— The Sky Line of Spruce • Edison Marshall
... was kept in continual alarm. Officers and soldiers were constantly dressed and ready for action. One night, twenty young farmers residing near the camp, resolved to capture the enemy's advance picket-guard. Armed with fowling-pieces, they marched silently through the woods until they were within a few yards of the picket. They then rushed out from the bushes, the captain blowing an old horse-trumpet and the men yelling. There was ...
— A Brief History of the United States • Barnes & Co.
... himself flat upon the ground, and crawled through the grass towards the animal selected, using his elbows as the propelling power. This was done so slowly as not to alarm the herd in the least. Upon reaching the picket-pin, he loosed it so that it could be easily withdrawn; all the time taking good care that his head should not appear above the top ...
— The Young Trail Hunters • Samuel Woodworth Cozzens
... serious outflanking movement on part of the Blues. Sorry, but that's the worst of being picket. The natural intuition which characterizes all BSS will enable you to discern our ...
— The Brother of Daphne • Dornford Yates
... had been riding on the surface near the Fleet Flagship's quarter, rose like a flying gull, circled in wide spirals over the Fleet and sped seawards. Across the lanes of water, armed picket-boats, with preternaturally grave-faced Midshipmen at their wheels, picked their way amongst the traffic of drifters, cutters under sail, hooting store carriers and puffers ...
— The Long Trick • Lewis Anselm da Costa Ritchie
... distance, women fell back and men rolled their quids and looked eagerly up the track. It came on with screaming whistle and noisy brakes and roaring wheels. Children began to cry with fear and men to yell with excitement. Dogs were barking wildly, and two horses ran away, dragging with them part of a picket-fence. A brown shoat came bounding over the ties and broke through the wall of people, carrying many off their feet and creating panic and profanity. The train stopped, its engine hissing. A brakeman of flashy attire, with fine leather showing to the knees, strolled off and up the platform on high ...
— Darrel of the Blessed Isles • Irving Bacheller
... escape. This man told me that he had rather whip a negro than sit down to the best dinner. This man had, near his house, a contrivance like that which is used in armies where soldiers are punished with the picket; by this the slave was drawn up from the earth, by a cord passing round his wrists, so that his feet could just touch the ground. It somewhat resembled a New England well sweep, and was used when the slaves ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... to a stake pin. He's the best cow hoss I ever slung a leg over. The puncher who broke him an' reached him all he knows was my pard, long ago. An' he's daid. Kid, he'd roll over in his grave if he knowed ol' Cal was tied to a picket pin." ...
— Valley of Wild Horses • Zane Grey
... survey of the roads leading out of the village, placed sentry groups at various places of advantage, and established the picket in the centre of the village in a large barn. This done, he sent the cyclist orderly to try and get into touch with the village on the right, which, he had been told, was to be occupied by a platoon from another regiment. The cyclist ...
— "Contemptible" • "Casualty"
... and Seaforth, who first washed the breakfast-cans, proceeded to make a circuit of the camp. He found the spot where the horses had been tethered with but little difficulty, and also the hole out of which one of them had drawn the picket-peg. The redwoods which towered above him were vast of girth, and it would have needed a long halter to encompass them, while there was no branch for sixty feet or so. Still, though he searched diligently, he did not find any print which might have been left by the paw of a panther, ...
— Alton of Somasco • Harold Bindloss
... when one stands above the clouds. The landscape seems to lie before one like a great lake, from which islands stand forth.—In the summer, cascades everywhere in the mountains.—Chamois graze in flocks, the picket (Vorgeis) piping in case of danger.—Weather signs: Swallows fly low, aquatic birds dive, sheep graze eagerly, dogs paw up the earth, fish leap from the water. 'The gray governor of the valley (Thalvogt) is coming'; when this or ...
— The Life and Works of Friedrich Schiller • Calvin Thomas
... is just heard on the picket post, three-quarters of a mile away, and the shot is being repeated by our line of sentinels. * * * The whole camp has been in an uproar. Many men, half asleep, rushed from their tents and fired off their guns in their company grounds. Others, supposing ...
— The Citizen-Soldier - or, Memoirs of a Volunteer • John Beatty
... marching on In a wider field than ours; Those bright battalions still fulfil The scheme of the heavenly powers; And high brave thoughts float down to us, The echoes of that far fight, Like the flash of a distant picket's gun Through the shades ...
— Pike County Ballads and Other Poems • John Hay
... Rockies the troops had to guard them constantly. The engineers reconnoitered, surveyed, located, and built inside the picket lines. The men marched to work to the tap of the drum, stacked arms on the dump, and were ready at a moment's notice to fall in and fight. Many of the graders were old soldiers, and a little fight only rested them. ...
— The Last Spike - And Other Railroad Stories • Cy Warman
... one at any price and bought six, ate them one after the other without the pretense of a halt and moodily shied the last skin at a sparrow, realizing then with a shock that the negro had already untied the mule from the picket fence. The precipitancy of it all made him slightly uncomfortable. Either the negro was too lazy to bargain or the offer was out of all proportion to the mule's ...
— Kenny • Leona Dalrymple
... a little copse at his right hand, when suddenly a dark figure stepped from behind a tree into the road before him. Thinking this was a soldier on picket duty, he recollected the word of the night, and reined in to give it upon demand. But the man, having viewed him as well as the darkness allowed, seemed to realise having made a mistake, and, as suddenly as he had appeared, ...
— Philip Winwood • Robert Neilson Stephens
... plodders and the indifferent routinists Most pathetic image in the world to many women - own tears Not handicapped with any burdensome ideals Nothing so humble that taste cannot be shown in it Patronized, which is not a pleasant feeling Picket-guard at the extreme outpost Saint may be a sinner that never got down to "hard pan" Talk without words is half their conversation Truth is only safe when diluted Turning bread and milk into the substance of little sinners ...
— Widger's Quotations from the Works of Oliver W. Holmes, Sr. • David Widger
... we cooked breakfast, a strong picket of wolves watched all around the camp, feasting their greedy eyes from a distance on my elk-meat. When we started from camp, a hundred or more of them followed us, often coming quite close to the back pony, and biting and quarrelling about the elk that was never to be their meat. When we halted, ...
— The Great Salt Lake Trail • Colonel Henry Inman
... came upon a picket fence, And every picket went straight up and down, And all at even intervals were placed, All painted green, all pointed at the top, And every one inextricably nailed Unto two several cross-beams, which did go, Not as the pickets, but quite otherwise, And they two crossed, ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various
... ordinary four wheeled platform wagon with ladder, and wire drum with tightening gear and clamps or grips for anchoring the trolley to the line. The wire is led over a sheave on top of the ladder and fixed to the picket post at the beginning of the line. When erecting the wire the trolley is pushed beyond the first carrier arch, clamped on to the rails, and the wire is then tightened by means of the tightening gear. It is then firmly fixed to the insulator on the carrier arch The tension in the copper wire ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 1157, March 5, 1898 • Various
... in his yellow face, Mr. Wilkins nodded to the stranger over the picket fence of his collar, lighted his pipe, and clumped away to enjoy his afternoon promenade without compromising ...
— Work: A Story of Experience • Louisa May Alcott
... the rifle-pits that encircled the city of Louisville, for the Confederate army under General Bragg was near at hand menacing it. There was great excitement about this time, as we were unaccustomed to the work, and it went odd. While remaining at Louisville, the Eighty-sixth went on picket for the first time. Its acts and thoughts on this occasion were certainly novel, and furnished a fund of great amusement in its after career. The regiment was just beginning to experience many of the ...
— History of the Eighty-sixth Regiment, Illinois Volunteer Infantry, during its term of service • John R. Kinnear
... or periphrasis was the capital means by which the Augustan poet avoided precision and attained nobility of style. It enabled him to speak of a woman as a "nymph," or a "fair"; of sheep as "the fleecy care"; of fishes as "the scaly tribe"; and of a picket fence as a "spiculated paling." Lowell says of Pope's followers: "As the master had made it an axiom to avoid what was mean or low, so the disciples endeavored to escape from what was common. This they contrived by the ready expedient of the periphrasis. They ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... who found themselves borne by the current a little below the intrenched path, clambered up the steep hill, staying themselves by the roots and boughs of the maple and spruce and ash trees that covered the precipitous declivity, and, after a little firing, dispersed the picket which guarded the height; the rest ascended safely by the pathway. A battery of four guns on the left was abandoned to Colonel Howe. When Townshend's division disembarked, the English had already gained one of the roads to Quebec; and, advancing in front of the forest, Wolfe stood at ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 4 • Charles Dudley Warner
... dim and misty shade of the hazel thicket, Three soldiers, brave Harry, and Tom with the dauntless eyes, And light-hearted Charlie, are standing together on picket, Keeping a faithful watch ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No. V, May, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... the school yard, down to the end where an old- fashioned picket fence shut off the playground from a vacant lot that later would be divided off into the school gardens, a plot for ...
— Four Little Blossoms on Apple Tree Island • Mabel C. Hawley
... up two carriages and a large automobile, and out of the automobile climbed a well-dressed woman who took a bundle of the pamphlets from the girl picket and began passing them about among the people. Two policemen who stood in front of the crowd took off their helmets and accompanied her. The crowd cheered. Frank came hurrying across the street to where Sam stood in front of the barber shop and ...
— Windy McPherson's Son • Sherwood Anderson
... the football was traveling impaled the hat on a picket at the side of the stand. Then, as if satisfied with fits work, the football struck and bounded back, landing ...
— The High School Left End - Dick & Co. Grilling on the Football Gridiron • H. Irving Hancock
... distance was a track and cradle similar to the one shown in the first picture. The machine in the cabinet buzzed, and clicked, and made a noise like that of a small boy rattling a stick along a picket fence. A draught from some open window blowing against the linen screen caused the flat, deserted plain to undulate like the waves of the sea. The horizon bobbed up and down, showing first a great expanse of sky, and then the foreground ...
— L. P. M. - The End of the Great War • J. Stewart Barney
... struggle to be free, or by huge gifts to education, to philanthropy, to religion. In labor we see men rising in brute fury against both employer and society. They deny the basic necessities of life to their fellow citizens; they bring the bludgeon of the picket down upon the head of the scab; by means of the closed shop they refuse the right to work to their brother craftsmen; they level the incapable men up and the capable men down by insisting upon uniformity of production and wage. Thus they replace the artificial ...
— Preaching and Paganism • Albert Parker Fitch
... resolute advance became a forced reconnaissance, greatly to the chagrin of the younger and more ardent spirits. We found out exactly where the enemy was, and declined to have anything further to do with him for the time being. But in finding him we had to clear the ground and drive in the pickets. One picket had been posted at the end of a loop in a chain of valleys. The road we followed skirted the base of one range of hills. The house which served as the headquarters of the picket was on the other side. A meadow as level as a board stretched between. I remember ...
— The Creed of the Old South 1865-1915 • Basil L. Gildersleeve
... wing, toward the back, had a back door that opened onto Water Street. The space between the house and Wisconsin Avenue had been made into a neat oblong flower garden, fenced off from the sidewalk by box shrubs and a white picket fence. Behind it, along the other side of the long wing, lay a meticulously arranged vegetable garden and ...
— Mr. Wicker's Window • Carley Dawson
... half-wild range horse he had roped and it sagged to one side, having no pack saddle to keep it from slipping, and he spoke in no gentle terms of an outfit that would pull out without troubling to throw his pack saddle from the wagon or taking pains to picket an extra horse. His fretfulness passed, however, as he smelled the hot coffee and he repaired to the wagon, ...
— The Settling of the Sage • Hal G. Evarts
... to bed early and I rehearsed mentally the stage business for the drama about to be enacted when Bunch crept through the picket lines. ...
— Back to the Woods • Hugh McHugh
... began the construction of a house. He was a man of tremendous energy, but also of many activities. The days were not long enough for him. In him was the true ferment of constructive civilization. Instinctively he reached out to modify his surroundings. A house, then a picket fence, split from the living trees; an irrigation ditch; a garden spot; fruit trees; vines over the porch; better stables; more fences; the gradual shaping from the wilderness of a home—these absorbed his surplus. As a matter of business he worked with pick and shovel until he had proved the Honey-bug ...
— The Killer • Stewart Edward White
... would I were the ice man for a space, Then might I cool this red-hot cocoanut, Corral the jim-jam bugs that madly race Around the eaves that from my forehead jut— Or will a carpenter please come instead And build a picket fence around ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume II. (of X.) • Various
... a little painted frame house, back from the street, fronted by a precise bit of lawn, with a willow bush at one corner. A white picket fence effectually separated it from a broad, shaded, not unpleasing street. An osage hedge and a board fence respectively ...
— The Blazed Trail • Stewart Edward White
... guardsman, watch, watchman, sentinel, patrol, sentry, picket; convoy, escort, body-guard; defense, protection, shield, safeguard, bulwark, armor; attention, heed, watch, circumspection. ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... refreshing was her aspect, as she spun, or scoured pans, in a linsey-woolsey petticoat and white short gown, wearing her pretty curls in a crop? George Tucker knew it all without telling; and so did half a dozen of the Westbury boys, who haunted the picket fence round 'Zekiel's garden every moonlight night in summer, or scraped their feet by the half hour together on his door-step in winter evenings. Sally was a belle; she knew it and liked it, as every honest girl does;—and she would have been a belle without the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various
... True a little over a quarter of an hour was lost, but the locking ring had rusted in its thread, as sometimes happens, and it was heavy work for a girl to shift it unaided. She had forbidden Barraclough to help and had made him picket a hundred yards down the road in case the pursuers should ...
— Men of Affairs • Roland Pertwee
... picket of scouts had been out on the mountains watching for enemy spies. They had captured this one in the very act of spying upon them. He had been making signals, sending messages and answering messages by sounds made with his lips. ...
— Kiddie the Scout • Robert Leighton
... examined the law, told me that it would probably answer, though it was not according to the agreement made by Mr. Brooks, and Esq. Clute and himself, for me. I then executed to Micah Brooks and Jellis Clute, a deed of all my land lying east of the picket line on the Gardow reservation, containing about ...
— A Narrative of the Life of Mrs. Mary Jemison • James E. Seaver
... you tell me that in the first place? How was I to know unless you told me? But oh, Denny, I want to go home!" She laid her cheek against his hand. "I want a garden with a picket fence round it and all the simple flowers. I never want another ...
— The Pagan Madonna • Harold MacGrath
... were others who would have had fun with the tombs of the Egyptian kings, and who could wring smiles from a graven image. Mr. Daly forfeited at last so recklessly, that either the brakes had to be put upon our fun or some one would have to do picket duty. The restless element had a wait of an entire long act in one play, and among those who waited was a tiny little bit of an old, old man. He wore rags in his "part," and on the seat of his trousers was an enormous red patch. ...
— Stage Confidences • Clara Morris
... a detachment of 'em now!" exclaimed Rodney, the following morning. He and Zeb were doing picket duty. The latter gave the call, and several Rangers ran up. A half mile down the road the Hessians came marching on in close order till they arrived at some farm buildings when they were seen to ...
— Rodney, the Ranger - With Daniel Morgan on Trail and Battlefield • John V. Lane
... a walnut; unless it be broken it cannot be eaten." Then he took a cup of water and conjuring over it, sprinkled Ali with somewhat thereof, saying, "Take thou shape of bear;" whereupon he instantly became a bear and the Jew put a collar about his neck, muzzled him and chained him to a picket of iron. Then he sat down and ate and drank, now and then throwing him a morsel of his orts and emptying the dregs of the cup over him, till the morning, when he rose and laid by the tray and the dress and conjured over the bear, ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 7 • Richard F. Burton
... boys crossin' the old ford," he said quietly. "Goin' to picket the other bank, I reckon. There's likely to be some more comin' down the opposite way from the bridge. That's Lacy's idea—to starve ...
— The Strange Case of Cavendish • Randall Parrish
... problem on hand to be solved. The Anglo-Saxon race is divided into two hostile camps—labor and capital. These two forces are gradually drawing together for a tremendous conflict, a momentous battle. The riots at Homestead, at Chicago, at Lattimer are but skirmishes between the picket lines, informing us that a general conflict is imminent. Let us thank God that we are not in the struggle. Let us thank Him that our labor problem is no worse than ...
— Imperium in Imperio: A Study Of The Negro Race Problem - A Novel • Sutton E. Griggs
... escorting General Bedeau to Belgium was one of those who, on the 2d of December, had arrested General Cavaignac. He told General Bedeau that they had had a moment of uneasiness when arresting General Cavaignae: the picket of fifty men, which had been told off to assist the police having ...
— The History of a Crime - The Testimony of an Eye-Witness • Victor Hugo
... near the Union lines just as the sun was going down. Captain Hatch, who had accompanied us, waved his flag as we halted near a grove of trees, and a young officer rode over to us from the nearest picket-station. We despatched him to General Foster for a pair of horses, and in half an hour entered the General's tent. He pressed us to remain to dinner, proposing to kill the fatted calf,—"for these my sons were dead and are alive again, were ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 86, December, 1864 • Various
... of entering the old dwelling house, and seemingly were unaccompanied by any others. Sam happened fortunately to be standing in shadow, and they passed without seeing him. But what was he now to do? He was at the back of the house, and a high picket fence around the place made it impossible for him to escape by the front-way, towards which the savages had gone. Looking through the door-way, he saw that the pair had passed through the room nearest ...
— The Big Brother - A Story of Indian War • George Cary Eggleston
... island, and we are of the grooms of King Mihrjan[FN10] and under our hand are all his horses. Every month, about new-moon tide we bring hither our best mares which have never been covered, and picket them on the sea-shore and hide ourselves in this place under the ground, so that none may espy us. Presently, the stallions of the sea scent the mares and come up out of the water and seeing no one, leap the mares and do their will of them. When they ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton
... City, hurried between the Staff and the Winter Palace, evidently without any plan. Kerensky gave an order to open the bridges; three hours passed without any action, and then an officer and five men went out on their own initiative, and putting to flight a picket of Red Guards, opened the Nicolai Bridge. Immediately after they left, however, some ...
— Ten Days That Shook the World • John Reed
... wings, each with its row of fluted columns supporting the classical roof of a piazza across its whole front, each vying with the others in the whiteness of those wooden walls enveloping its bright green blinds. One had to look over picket fences to see these houses, and in doing so caught the notion that they thus railed themselves off in pride at being able to remember before the railroad came to the village, or the wagon-works were ...
— The Damnation of Theron Ware • Harold Frederic
... to the position of an officer at no distant date; but I had never been habituated to discipline. I was sent to a small fortress on the frontiers; Rolf was my lieutenant, and he did not spare me either hard work or picket duty. To cut it short, I had enlisted for five years, and I did not stay five months. One fine morning I walked off altogether. I was caught, and I wounded an under-officer in self-defence; the charge against ...
— Major Frank • A. L. G. Bosboom-Toussaint
... it?" said Stuart, in matter-of-fact tones, as he turned again to the house. "Good idea. Tell him to fire lower next time. And, I say," he went on, as he bowed curtly to the assembled company on the veranda, "since you have got a picket out, you had better double it. And, Clay, see that no one leaves here without permission—no one. That's more important, even, than ...
— Soldiers of Fortune • Richard Harding Davis
... shout, and the firing of musketry on the skirts of the wood, awoke me to a sense of the real danger of my situation. I forced my way through the thickets, and saw a skirmish between a large mass of armed men, and a picket of troops in a village on the borders of the wood. There was now no time to be lost. I returned to the spot where the body lay, placed my hand on its forehead, to ascertain whether any remnant of life lingered there; found all cold; ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 57, No. 351, January 1845 • Various
... Murray appeared before Blair Castle, and planted his men so as to prevent the garrison from sallying out, or from getting in provisions.[181] The castle was soon so completely invested by the advanced guard of the Jacobites, that they fired from behind the nearest walls and enclosures at the picket guard of the besieged. Some horses were hurriedly taken into the Castle with a small quantity of provender; and in such haste, that one of these animals was put into the lower part of Cumming's Tower without ...
— Memoirs of the Jacobites of 1715 and 1745 - Volume III. • Mrs. Thomson
... Just then the picket gave a low, earnest whistle, and they were aware of a policeman standing statue-like under the lamp on the opposite corner, and apparently unaware of their existence. He was looking, sphinx-like, past them towards ...
— While the Billy Boils • Henry Lawson
... the forces halted a picket had been sent out; and Terence, when the men finished their supper, established a cordon of advanced pickets, with strong supports, at a distance of a mile from his front and flanks; so as to ensure himself against ...
— Under Wellington's Command - A Tale of the Peninsular War • G. A. Henty
... Here, a last look was taken of splits and seams in the birch keels. With invocations of St. Anne in one breath, and invocations of a personage not mentioned in the cure's "petee cat-ee-cheesm" in the next breath, and imprecations that their "souls might be smashed on the end of a picket fence,"—the voyageur's common oath even to this day,—the boatmen stored goods fore, aft, and athwart till each long canoe sank to the gunwale as it was gently pushed out on the water. A last sign of the cross, and the lithe figures leap light as a mountain cat to their place ...
— Pathfinders of the West • A. C. Laut
... A picket enclosure, mounted with cannon, protected the humble buildings erected for the use of the first settlers on what is now the Custom-house Square. The little stream—not much more than a rivulet except in spring—which for many years rippled between green, mossy banks, now struggles ...
— Canada • J. G. Bourinot
... says, suddenly pulling up his mule; "leastwise, not a-straddle o' these hyar conspikerous critters. Whether the sogers hev goed down inter the valley or no, they're sartin to hev left some o' the party ahind, by way o' keepin' century. Let's picket the animals out hyar, an' creep forrad afut. That'll gie us a chance o' seeing in, 'ithout ...
— The Lone Ranche • Captain Mayne Reid
... postponed. In no other way could the settlers have combined for defence, while yet retaining their individual ownership of the land. The Watauga forts or palisaded villages were of the usual kind, the cabins and blockhouses connected by a heavy loop-holed picket. They were admirably adapted for defence with the rifle. As there was no moat, there was a certain danger from an attack with fire unless water was stored within; and it was of course necessary to ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume One - From the Alleghanies to the Mississippi, 1769-1776 • Theodore Roosevelt
... amused himself half an hour at a time in a pile of brush; starting from the ground, slipping easily through up to the top, standing there a moment, then flying back and repeating the performance. Should the goal of his journey be a fence picket, he alights on the beam which supports it, and hops gracefully ...
— In Nesting Time • Olive Thorne Miller
... this was a cottage of the earliest New England type. It was low and rambling, covering a good deal of ground and yet without any porch and very little yard, because as the village closed about it and Elm Street became a fashionable quarter the land had been gradually sold until now its white picket fence was only a dozen feet from the front door and passers-by could easily have looked inside its parlor windows save for the tall bushes that served as a shield. By immemorial custom the cottage had always been painted white and green, but for a good many years it had not been troubled ...
— The Camp Fire Girls at Sunrise Hill • Margaret Vandercook
... venta having neglected all precautions, and possessing no effective means of defence, soon fell into the power of the Carlists; but at Urdaniz, which was held by infantry, and against which the expedition was more particularly directed, a hard-contested fight took place. The first picket which the Carlists encountered was cut to pieces to a man; the fire of a second outpost spread the alarm; but, nevertheless, the attacking party penetrated into the ground-floor of most of the houses, and a desperate contest ensued upon the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 358, August 1845 • Various
... clump of hedge, cold and dreary in the mist, that awoke pictures of a prison I used to dread the sight of when I was—I don't know how old. Once I partly thought I must be dreaming; so I put out my hand and touched the wet, sodden picket of an old fence. I looked suspiciously behind me. But there was only an old man behind, fully two hundred yards away. Then the idea came to me that it would be a relief to talk to somebody; I hadn't ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1915 - And the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... watch-dog, Tray, who had gamboled with me in my boyhood, and held himself worthy of protecting me in his old age, followed us, wagging his tail in evident delight at the prospect of bearing me company. A soft breeze fanned over the beach, the dew-dripping rose bushes, that lined the green-topped picket fence, waved their tops to and fro, the sparrows whistled and sung, and wooed, as if Providence had made them for that alone; and all nature seemed putting on her gayest attire to ...
— The Life and Adventures of Maj. Roger Sherman Potter • "Pheleg Van Trusedale"
... only two that didn't volunteer for a listening picket one night, and I felt so ashamed of them that ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, May 30, 1917 • Various
... all of us who joined up with that regiment, became Adjutant. During that campaign he was always to the fore in every crisis and showed particular skill in rooting out men who were inciting the Indians to revolt. One morning of dense fog away beyond Fort Pitt our outside picket was fired on when I had charge of the guard. Calling out the guard and getting them under arms I went over to notify the officer commanding in the camp, but met Constantine with his forty-five ready for action. He had scented the alarm and did not wait for notice before getting out to see ...
— Policing the Plains - Being the Real-Life Record of the Famous North-West Mounted Police • R.G. MacBeth
... two divisions is there. He has Cedar Creek in front of him, and on his own left the north fork of the Shenandoah. He's considerably in front of the main Union force, and they haven't posted much of a picket line." ...
— The Tree of Appomattox • Joseph A. Altsheler
... went on the colonel, "we don't want the enemy swooping down on us again. Don't you think it would be a good plan to throw out a picket ...
— The Boy Scouts Patrol • Ralph Victor
... they kept along pretty easily, seeming just in their glory, all this being new work to them. After some little firing from the cannon the enemy retreated into the town, which was well fortified. We placed an outlying picket of some three hundred men to watch the enemy's manoeuvres, while the body of our army encamped in the rear in a line stretching from sea to sea, so that the town standing upon a projecting piece of land, ...
— The Autobiography of Sergeant William Lawrence - A Hero of the Peninsular and Waterloo Campaigns • William Lawrence
... kindly housewife plucked a nosegay for us. Her white columbines she calls "granny's mutches;" and indeed they are not unlike those fresh white caps. Dear Robbie Burns, ten inches high in plaster, stands in the sunny window in a tiny box of blossoming plants surrounded by a miniature green picket fence. Outside, looming white among the gillyflowers, is Sir Walter, and near him is still another and a larger bust on a cracked pedestal a foot high, perhaps. We did not recognize the head at once, and asked the little woman who ...
— Penelope's Progress - Being Such Extracts from the Commonplace Book of Penelope Hamilton As Relate to Her Experiences in Scotland • Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin
... colonel must needs get himself into a scrape, by choosing that moment to take leave of a Polish lady who lived outside the town, a quarter of a mile away; the Cossack advanced guard just caught him nicely, him and his picket. There was scarcely time to spring into our saddles and draw up before the town so as to engage in a cavalry skirmish. We must check the Russian advance if we meant to draw off during the night. Again and again we charged, and for three hours did wonders. Under cover of the fighting the baggage ...
— The Country Doctor • Honore de Balzac
... greatly in need of a new coat of white paint. The elms dwindled away and an occasional maple dotted the common with shade. The driver guided the patient gray to the left and, near the centre of the common, drew up in front of a little white house, which, like the picket fence in front of it, the flagstaff on the common, and so many other things in Eden Village, seemed to be patiently ...
— The Lilac Girl • Ralph Henry Barbour
... perfect, according to any recognized standard, then all the trees would be alike, and would cease to be attractive and picturesque. We keep all perfect things out of pictures, because they are formal and tasteless. A bran new cottage, with a picket fence around it, and every thing cleaned up about it, is too perfect to be picturesque. An old, tumble-down mill, with rude and rotten timbers, and a wheel outside, is decidedly picturesque, because its imperfections make it informal. The most unattractive ...
— Lessons in Life - A Series of Familiar Essays • Timothy Titcomb
... There were the four girls on the same spot; but now four backs were turned to us, very upright and conscious. Corporal Modesty had given the word of command, and the well-disciplined picket had gone right-about-face like a single person. They maintained this formation all the while we were in sight; but we heard them tittering among themselves, and the girl whom we had not met laughed with open mouth, and even looked ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 1 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... it takes to chew it. You got to be fast if you want any seconds. Some of these fellos must store up there food like squirrels cause there finished an back in the line before its moved ten places. Theres always some smart alex that washes up his mess kit an pretends hes just come up from the picket line. We got a mess sargent tho that makes Shylock Homes look like a night watchman. He could tell yesterdays greece from todays if you scoured ...
— "Same old Bill, eh Mable!" • Edward Streeter
... breakfast, most of us with excellent appetites, although I am bound to admit that the ladies did not eat much. When the meal was over, without any news from our pickets, I went out through an opening that we had purposely left in the front door barricade, and took a good look round. Passing from picket to picket, I questioned each man closely as to whether he had seen any signs of the enemy; but they all replied in the negative. Indeed, although I carefully scanned every open space I could see, even examining it with the telescope, ...
— A Middy of the King - A Romance of the Old British Navy • Harry Collingwood
... careful of Snoop and Downy," cautioned Freddie, as Dinah took up her picket duty. "Look out the boys don't get 'em," with a wise look at the youngsters, who were spoiling for more sport ...
— The Bobbsey Twins at the Seashore • Laura Lee Hope
... who were ordered back from Johnstown, are very indignant at Adjutant General Hastings, who gave the order. They claim that General Hastings not only acted without a particle of judgment, but when they offered to act as picket, do police duty or anything else that might be required of them, they state that they were treated ...
— The Johnstown Horror • James Herbert Walker
... and hack out a place fer a bed-ground and you can hunt up some firewood and take a bucket out of the pack and go to the crick and locate some water while I'm finding a place to picket these horses." ...
— The Dude Wrangler • Caroline Lockhart
... the lower part. From where they lay they could see not only the places of interest, but something also of that motley population which made the town so different to all others save only its younger sister, Montreal. Passing and repassing along the steep path with the picket fence which connected the two quarters, they saw the whole panorama of Canadian life moving before their eyes, the soldiers with their slouched hats, their plumes, and their bandoleers, habitants from the river cotes in their rude peasant dresses, little ...
— The Refugees • Arthur Conan Doyle
... moment's silence, then Judson continued: "Funny thing happened afterward, though. Jacket had to do his turn at picket duty that night, and he got scared of the dark. We ...
— Rainbow's End • Rex Beach
... man picket his horse with those of the staff," he said, "and see that it has forage at once. Take the man to the orderly's quarters, and see that ...
— With Lee in Virginia - A Story of the American Civil War • G. A. Henty
... fell thrue in my life aftherward, an' I cud ha' stud ut all—stud ut all—excipt when my little Shadd was born. That was on the line av march three months afther the regiment was taken with cholera. We were betune Umballa an' Kalka thin, an' I was on picket. Whin I came off duty the women showed me the child, an' ut turned on uts side an' died as I looked. We buried him by the road, an' Father Victor was a day's march behind wid the heavy baggage, so the comp'ny captain read a prayer. An' since then ...
— Indian Tales • Rudyard Kipling
... the poor mother should go tied always thus. Could you not make a picket fence, Martin? And she should have some refuge against the storms," to the which I agreed. Thus as we went back we fell to making plans, one project begetting another, and we very blithe ...
— Black Bartlemy's Treasure • Jeffrey Farnol
... the site of a camp was marked out, roads were formed by clearing away the stones, and paths made up to the forts and picket stations. The outpost duty was very severe, two officers and sixty-five men being always on duty, as it was possible that at any time, night or day, ...
— The Dash for Khartoum - A Tale of Nile Expedition • George Alfred Henty
... been seen of the Peruvian squadron, and as Bolivia had, as stated above, no navy worthy of the name, and the fleet was, moreover, still in Chilian waters, Admiral Williams did not consider it necessary to establish a patrol of picket-boats on watch round the ships, as he certainly would have done had he been lying before a hostile port. It was this oversight, coupled with the fact that Williams regarded the Bolivian sea strength as ...
— Under the Chilian Flag - A Tale of War between Chili and Peru • Harry Collingwood
... committed suicide. You know animals will do that. I've read of horses and dogs drowning themselves. This horse had been clipped, and his tail was docked, and he was turned out to graze. The flies stung him till he was nearly crazy. He ran up to a picket fence, and sprang up on the sharp spikes. There he hung, making no effort to get down. Some men saw him, and they said it was a clear ...
— Beautiful Joe - An Autobiography of a Dog • by Marshall Saunders
... no stain Upon your wasted lea; I raise no banners, save the ones The forest wave to me: Upon the mountain side, where Spring Her farthest picket sets, My reveille awakes a ...
— East and West - Poems • Bret Harte
... accused of treachery. Out of the fire light and back to the grazing ground he must get the horse at once—but what then? Noiselessly turning, he led Gregg, wondering, back to the glade in which the other horses were tethered, and quickly drove his picket pin and put him on the half lariat. But how was he to conceal the severed side line? Off it came, both nervous hands working rapidly, and then when he had about determined to cut off the lines of one of Jim's mules and ...
— Sunset Pass - or Running the Gauntlet Through Apache Land • Charles King
... called, the Home ranch, of the great Los Muertos Rancho. The road was better here, the dust laid after the passage of Hooven's watering-cart, and, in a few minutes, he had come to the ranch house itself, with its white picket fence, its few flower beds, and grove of eucalyptus trees. On the lawn at the side of the house, he saw Harran in the act of setting out the automatic sprinkler. In the shade of the house, by the porch, were two or three of the greyhounds, part of the pack that were used to hunt down ...
— The Octopus • Frank Norris
... is done of the courier who rode horseback with orders in his belt and was winged in mid-flight; and the day of the secret messenger who tried to creep through the hostile picket lines with cipher dispatches in his shoe, and was captured and ordered shot at sunrise, is gone, too, except in Civil War melodramas. Modern military science has wiped them out along with most of the other picturesque fol-de-rols of the old game of war. ...
— Paths of Glory - Impressions of War Written At and Near the Front • Irvin S. Cobb
... in her meditations Mrs. Black became aware of an insistent voice hailing her from the other side of the picket fence. ...
— An Alabaster Box • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman and Florence Morse Kingsley
... like this change, that Mr. Hopewell had kinder inoculated me with other guess views on these matters, so he began to throw up bankments and to picket in the ground, all ...
— The Attache - or, Sam Slick in England, Complete • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... the theater, and when Montgomery sprang a joke or Stone did a fall Miss Dunlap showed her appreciation after the fashion of a laughing hyena. Between times she barked enthusiastically, giving vent to sounds like those caused when a boy runs past a picket fence with a stick in his hand. She gushed, but so does Old Faithful. Anyhow, the audience enjoyed ...
— Laughing Bill Hyde and Other Stories • Rex Beach
... the gate, and over the rest of the enclosure, which was covered with the usual clinker-like fragments of smashed coral, not only coco-palms and mikis but also fig-trees flourished, all of a delicious greenness. Of course there was no blade of grass. In front a picket fence divided us from the white road, the palm- fringed margin of the lagoon, and the lagoon itself, reflecting clouds by day and stars by night. At the back, a bulwark of uncemented coral enclosed us from the narrow belt of bush and the nigh ...
— In the South Seas • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Fifth), Howard's corps (the Eleventh), and Slocum's corps (the Twelfth), the whole being under the command of General Slocum, left camp for Kelly's Ford, each accompanied by three batteries. A detachment was thrown over, in boats, on the evening of the 28th, which dispersed the picket guard; and by the next morning the entire force was across the river and on their way to the Rapidan, the Fifth Corps taking the direction of Elley's Ford and the Eleventh and Twelfth Corps that of Germania Ford. Stoneman's cavalry crossed at the same time ...
— Chancellorsville and Gettysburg - Campaigns of the Civil War - VI • Abner Doubleday
... handful of tea was thrown into the kettle, which was already boiling, pipes were lighted, and a general feeling of comfort experienced. The horses had been picketed close at hand, each man having cut or pulled a heap of grass and placed it before his beast; beside which, the picket ropes allowed each horse to crop the grass growing in a small circle, of which he was ...
— Out on the Pampas - The Young Settlers • G. A. Henty
... a little girl ten years old. I live in Arizona, where the great silver mines are, and where the cactus grows forty feet high. There were only three white families in this place when we came, three years ago. The place was called Picket Post then, because soldiers were stationed here. I have several pets. Nuisance is my pet deer. She is almost two years old, and is as tame as my cat. She wears a red collar, so hunters will not kill her. ...
— Harper's Young People, April 6, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... the watch was told off, the lariats were shortened, the picket-pins driven home, and my comrades, rolling themselves up in their blankets, rested their heads in the hollow of their saddles, and ...
— The Scalp Hunters • Mayne Reid
... a claim on us! A claim of the highest order! They can't starve, it's sure! But would you have them have to hold mass meetin's and set up picket lines and the like, to get ...
— Attention Saint Patrick • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... not reply, but glanced at the house where she lived. It was an unpainted, three room cabin, more dilapidated than the average, with bare dirt and cinders about it, and what had once been a picket-fence, now falling apart and being used for stove-wood. The windows were cracked and broken, and upon the roof were signs of leaks that ...
— King Coal - A Novel • Upton Sinclair
... and 75,000 south of it. What could the 65,000 Confederates do, except hold fast to their lines? TO RICHMOND 4-1/2 MILES: so read the sign-post at the Mechanicsville bridge, and there stood the nearest Federal picket. Johnston and Lee knew, however, that McClellan's alarmist detectives swore to a Confederate army three times its actual strength at this time; and there was reason to hope that the consequent moral ascendancy would help the shock of an attack suddenly made on one of McClellan's ...
— Captains of the Civil War - A Chronicle of the Blue and the Gray, Volume 31, The - Chronicles Of America Series • William Wood
... hobble or tie or picket Sleepy at night; he sticks close to old Fox. That's my horse, the red one. You'd think Fox was going to die, too, but he isn't. He used to be a cow horse; and a mean one, too, they say; but all at once he reformed and since then he's led a ...
— The Young Alaskans on the Missouri • Emerson Hough
... submarine E-15 runs ashore in the Dardanelles, the crew being captured by Turks; two British picket boats, under a heavy fire, then torpedo and destroy the stranded vessel to prevent her being used ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 3, June, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... protecting me in his old age, followed us, wagging his tail in evident delight at the prospect of bearing me company. A soft breeze fanned over the beach, the dew-dripping rose bushes, that lined the green-topped picket fence, waved their tops to and fro, the sparrows whistled and sung, and wooed, as if Providence had made them for that alone; and all nature seemed putting on her gayest attire to ...
— The Life and Adventures of Maj. Roger Sherman Potter • "Pheleg Van Trusedale"
... against the wall. Then some fire-arms, saddles, and artillery trappings were hidden away in dark corners, and a lay figure, clothed in fatigue cap and blue overcoat, and which had done duty as "a picket" during the day, was wheeled around with its face to the wall, where it stood guard over Fred's famous picture ofb"The Last Gun at Appomattox." His final touches were bestowed on the grate-fire and the coal-scuttle, both of which ...
— The Fortunes of Oliver Horn • F. Hopkinson Smith
... and the lawyer the other. The post office had been cleared out of its complete stock of powder and shot by Carruthers, early in the morning, to the no little disgust of the Grinstun man when he went for his mail. "Volunteehs foh the foht, foh mounted patyol, foh plantation picket—three!" called out the colonel. Perrowne volunteered for the first, as likely to have most influence with the Richards. "Blank cartridge," said the Squire, as he rode away amid much waving of handkerchiefs. "Oi'm yer picket, cornel," ...
— Two Knapsacks - A Novel of Canadian Summer Life • John Campbell
... standing guard, and found pleasure in chaffing the lobsters on picket, telling them what he had for dinner. A thought came to him,—to write a letter and hire a redcoat to take it to his father. He wrote about the battle; how he saw the family on the roof of the house, from the redoubt, just before it began; how ...
— Daughters of the Revolution and Their Times - 1769 - 1776 A Historical Romance • Charles Carleton Coffin
... him there by force and if he will not go up the steps, we will cut his head off!' The hall leading to the courtroom and the stairways were filled with barefooted vagabonds."—Letter of Cabrol, commander of the national guard, and of the municipal officers to the commissioners, May 21. That picket-guard of fifty men on the great square, is it not rather the cause of a riot than the means of preventing one? A requisition to send four national guards inside the prison, to remain there day and night, is it not insulting citizen soldiers, whose function it is to see ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 3 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 2 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... at Washington, there were three squadrons of regular cavalry encamped in the centre of the city. These troops were especially on home-service—guard-mounting, orderly duty, &c.—with no field or picket work whatever. There was no more excuse for slovenliness than might have been allowed to a regiment in huts at Aldershott or Shorncliffe. I wish that the critical eye of the present Cavalry Inspector-General could inspect that encampment; if he preserved his wonted courteous ...
— Border and Bastille • George A. Lawrence
... initials "U. S." Ropes were then put about the neck, with a slipnoose which would tighten around the throat if pulled. With a man on each side holding these ropes, the mule was released from his other bindings and allowed to rise. With more or less difficulty he would be conducted to a picket rope outside and fastened there. The delivery of that mule was then complete. This process was gone through with every mule and wild horse with the ...
— Personal Memoirs of U. S. Grant, Complete • Ulysses S. Grant
... below him, on a brush-dotted level, his horse, Dexter, slowly circled his picket and nibbled at the scant bunch-grass. The western sun trailed long shadows across the canon; shadows that drifted imperceptibly farther and farther, spreading, commingling, softening the broken outlines of ledge and brush until the walled ...
— Jim Waring of Sonora-Town - Tang of Life • Knibbs, Henry Herbert
... this wigwam on stilts looked most inviting just then, and we yielded to the seduction. We got off, and throwing ourselves at full length on the grass, allowed our horses to graze close to us, without taking the trouble to picket them. ...
— Round About the Carpathians • Andrew F. Crosse
... order, shouted down the rocky flanks of the ravine. There is instant response in the neigh of excited horses, the clatter of iron-shod hoofs. Through the dim light the men go rushing, saddles and bridles in hand, each to where he has driven his own picket pin. Promptly the steeds are girthed and bitted. Promptly the men come running back to the bivouac, seizing and slinging carbines, then leading into line. A brief word of command, another of caution, and then the whole troop is mounted ...
— Starlight Ranch - and Other Stories of Army Life on the Frontier • Charles King
... his watches to keep at sea and his picket boat to run in harbour, while his spare time was fully employed in mastering the subtleties of gunnery, torpedo work, and electricity, and in rubbing up his rapidly dwindling knowledge of engineering and x and y. It was well that he did so, for at some distant period ...
— Stand By! - Naval Sketches and Stories • Henry Taprell Dorling
... of the road running north and south there had once been an open field of some thirty or forty acres, where the wagoners were wont to camp and the drovers to picket their stock in the halcyon days of the old hostelry. It had been the muster-ground of the militia too, and there were men yet alive, at the time of which we write, whose fathers had mustered with the county forces on that ground. When it was "turned out," however, and the Ordinary ceased to be a ...
— Bricks Without Straw • Albion W. Tourgee
... with the steamboat-hands, and I resolved to let them go ashore as little as possible. Most articles of furniture were already, however, before our visit, gone from the plantation-house, which was now used only as a picket-station. The only valuable article was a piano-forte, for which a regular packing-box lay invitingly ready outside. I had made up my mind to burn all picket-stations, and all villages from which I should be covertly attacked, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 90, April, 1865 • Various
... Erie about 8 o'clock, and shortly after Col. Peacockes force swept in from the west, bringing with them the spoils of victory in the shape of about sixty prisoners, being part of the picket line which Gen. O'Neil ...
— Troublous Times in Canada - A History of the Fenian Raids of 1866 and 1870 • John A. Macdonald
... career, his uncle would be his secretary, and receive all the contributions levied in his department on big affairs. Anybody would take Giroudeau for a fool at first sight, but he has just enough shrewdness to be an inscrutable old file. He is on picket duty; he sees that we are not pestered with hubbub, beginners wanting a job, or advertisements. No other paper has his equal, ...
— A Distinguished Provincial at Paris • Honore de Balzac
... windows of which overlook the Potomac, and have recalled to mind the fearful pressure of anxiety that must have weighed upon the President during those long days; as looking across the river, he could trace by the smoke the picket lines of the Virginia troops. He must have thought of the possibility that he was to be the last President of the United States, that the torch handed over to him by the faltering hands of his predecessor was to expire while he was responsible ...
— Abraham Lincoln • George Haven Putnam
... Negro appeared with a shovel in his hand, a white soldier took his gun and returned to the ranks. There were 200,000 Negroes in the camps and employ of the Union armies, as servants, teamsters, cooks, and laborers. What a mighty host! Suppose the sentiment that early met the Negro on the picket lines and turned him back to the enemy had continued, 50,000 white soldiers would have been required in the Engineer's and Quartermaster's Department; while 25,000 white men would have been required for various other purposes, outside of the ...
— History of the Negro Race in America from 1619 to 1880. Vol. 2 (of 2) - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George Washington Williams
... not a man missing, though they were armed with wretched old muskets, and perfectly understood what that must lead to for them. On making his rounds very early in the morning, he found, in an advanced post, at a point of great danger, a picket, a sentinelle perdue, who proved to be one of the most respectable men in Amiens, the first president of the Upper Court of the city, nearly sixty years of age, doing his duty as a private soldier. 'In a hospital here,' ...
— France and the Republic - A Record of Things Seen and Learned in the French Provinces - During the 'Centennial' Year 1889 • William Henry Hurlbert
... and crooked worm fences around the buildings were then removed and replaced with good board and wire fences. The extent of good and substantial fences, erected during this period, aggregate about 100 rods of board and picket fences around the campus, garden and stock yards; 12 large farm gates, all hung between tall posts with overhead tie; and 780 rods of web and barb wire fence; all set with good Bodark or Locust posts, top down ...
— The Choctaw Freedmen - and The Story of Oak Hill Industrial Academy • Robert Elliott Flickinger
... broidered over all the common objects familiar in homely lives. The pump, in yards where that had supplanted the old-fashioned curb, wore a heavy mob-cap. The vane on the barn was delicately sifted over, and the top of every picket in the high front-yard fence had a fluffy peak. But it was chiefly in the woods that the rapture and flavor of the time ran riot in making beauty. There every fir branch swayed under a tuft of white, and the brown refuse of the year ...
— Tiverton Tales • Alice Brown
... glad rags, and start off for church, then have to wade around in greasy gearings and spoil the best of all your stock of shirts, yet through it all maintain that sweet composure, that gentle calm befitting such events; if you can sound a bugle-note of triumph when steering straight against a picket-fence; if you can keep your temper, tongue, and balance when on your back beneath your car you pose, and, struggling there to fix a balky cog-wheel, you drop a monkey-wrench across your nose; if you can smile as gasoline goes higher, and sing a song because your motor faints—your place is not ...
— More Toasts • Marion Dix Mosher
... with a party of Danes after them; and but for our arrow flights from the earthworks, they would have had to fight, and lose what they brought. After that Hubba knew what we needed, and sent a strong picket to keep us from ...
— King Alfred's Viking - A Story of the First English Fleet • Charles W. Whistler
... characters consisting of the blacksmith himself, standing with his right foot on the anvil block, and his big hammer in his hands, listening eagerly, with his little girl, to a soldier who sits close by on his haunches, narrating 'how the fort was taken,' We have also another group of three, 'The Picket Guard,' spiritedly sketched, as in eager, close, and nervous search for the enemy; the 'Sharpshooters,' another group of three, or rather of two men and a scarecrow, illustrating a curious practice in our army of deceiving the enemy; the 'Town Pump,' a scene in which a soldier, uniformed ...
— Great Fortunes, and How They Were Made • James D. McCabe, Jr.
... August sunshine slanted in my face as I galloped away up the vineyard road and out on to the long plateau where, on every hillock, a hussar picket sat his wiry horse, carbine poised, gazing steadily ...
— The Maids of Paradise • Robert W. (Robert William) Chambers
... armament and equipment were concerned. Each greatcoat, precisely rolled, was strapped with its encircling poncho at the pommel. Each blanket, as snugly packed, with the sidelines festooned upon the top, was strapped at the cantle. Lariat and picket pin, coiled and secured, hung from the near side of the pommel. The canteen, suspended from its snap hook, hung at the off side. Saddle-bags, with extra horse shoes, nails, socks, underwear, brushes and comb, extra packages of ...
— A Daughter of the Sioux - A Tale of the Indian frontier • Charles King
... periphrasis was the capital means by which the Augustan poet avoided precision and attained nobility of style. It enabled him to speak of a woman as a "nymph," or a "fair"; of sheep as "the fleecy care"; of fishes as "the scaly tribe"; and of a picket fence as a "spiculated paling." Lowell says of Pope's followers: "As the master had made it an axiom to avoid what was mean or low, so the disciples endeavored to escape from what was common. This they contrived by the ready expedient of the periphrasis. They called ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... closed doors, or to join a band that, risking the sudden creak of a treacherous step, went down the stairs and out to wend their way with other sweltering bands across the moonlit ways, through negro settlements, where frantic dogs bayed at the sticks they rattled over the picket fences, to the banks of the canal for a cooling frolic in the ...
— The Varmint • Owen Johnson
... Their origin, their progress, their decay, nay, their demolition by the modern iconoclast—have they no teachings? How many phases in the art of the builder and engineer, from the high-peaked Norman cottage to the ponderous, drowsy Mansard roof—from Champlain's picket fort to the modern citadel of Quebec—from our primitive legislative meeting-house to our stately Parliament Buildings on the ...
— Picturesque Quebec • James MacPherson Le Moine
... be well officered and well disciplined in its meager and limited proportions. The result was that, through the captain's arrangements, the king, on arriving at Melun, saw himself at the head of both the musketeers and Swiss guards, as well as a picket of the French guards. It might almost have been called a small army. M. Colbert looked at the troops with great delight: he even wished they had been ...
— The Man in the Iron Mask • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... party for Union cavalry, fired on them killing a captain and a sergeant. The Confederate commander immediately turned his horse and sought safety at another point, but he had not progressed far before he drew the fire of another picket ...
— On the Trail of Grant and Lee • Frederick Trevor Hill
... There; you can support yourself with that arm a moment. Did you ever see horses stand so quiet. I've got hold of yours, and now I'll fasten them together. I say, Whitefoot, you don't kick, do you?" And then he contrived to picket the horses to two branches, and having got out his case of sherry, poured a small modicum into the silver mug which was attached to the apparatus and again supported Graham while he drank. "You'll be as right as a trivet by-and-by; only you'll have to make Noningsby your headquarters for the next ...
— Orley Farm • Anthony Trollope
... bristled in fancy foot-high palisades of wood. Chimneys were provided with lightning-rods. Occasionally an older structure, on square lines, recorded the era of a more dignified architecture. Everywhere ran broad sidewalks and picket fences. Beyond the better residence districts were the board shanties of the ...
— The Riverman • Stewart Edward White
... an instance of the folly and foolhardiness of youth, and the recklessness to which a long course of exposure to danger produces. When Bayonne was invested, I was one night on duty on the outer picket. The ground inside the breastwork which had been thrown up for our protection by Burgoyne was in a most disagreeable state for any one who wished to repose after the fatigues of the day, being knee-deep in mud of a ...
— Reminiscences of Captain Gronow • Rees Howell Gronow
... to the officers of the Union fleet that the enemy had a ram up the river, it does not appear that any preparation for defence had been made, or plan of action adopted. Even the commonplace precaution of sending out a picket-boat had not been taken. The attack, therefore, was a surprise, not only in the ordinary sense of the word, but, so far as appears, in finding the officer in command without any formed ideas as to what ...
— The Gulf and Inland Waters - The Navy in the Civil War. Volume 3. • A. T. Mahan
... great discontent. Our parsons agree here, as those did at Trent, Dan's forehead has got a most damnable dent, Besides a large hole in his Michaelmas rent. But your fancy on rhyming so cursedly bent, With your bloody ouns in one stanza pent; Does Jack's utter ruin at picket prevent, For an answer in specie to yours must be sent; So this moment at crambo (not shuffling) is spent, And I lose by this crotchet quaterze, point, and quint, Which you know to a gamester is great bitterment; But whisk shall revenge me on you, Batt, ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift
... very proud face—had become icy cold; the violet eyes were hard as shining crystal. To Mr. Heatherbloom that slender figure, tensely poised, seemed at once overwhelmingly near and inexpressibly remote. He started to lean on an iron picket but changed his mind and stood rather too stiffly, without support. Before his eyes the flowers in her hat waved and waved; he tried to keep his ...
— A Man and His Money • Frederic Stewart Isham
... court was in consternation; the flight of the king was suggested, and carriages prepared; a picket of the national guard saw them at the gate of the Orangery, and, after closing the gate, compelled them to go back; moreover, the king, either ignorant of the designs of the court, or conceiving them impracticable, refused to escape. ...
— History of the French Revolution from 1789 to 1814 • F. A. M. Mignet
... yore picket-pin and travel to a new range?" he asked. "They're no kind of people for you to be knowin'. Get out to God's country where men are white and poor ...
— The Big-Town Round-Up • William MacLeod Raine
... Cross for his gallantry on several occasions. A number of the best marksmen in each regiment had been selected to act as sharpshooters. With a party of these he set forth, on a night in November 1854, towards a fort at the bottom of the Windmill ravine, where a picket of the enemy were stationed. Approaching with all the caution of Indian warriors along a difficult and dangerous path, they suddenly sprang on the astonished Russians, who took to flight, leaving their rifles and knapsacks behind. A short time before this, ...
— Our Soldiers - Gallant Deeds of the British Army during Victoria's Reign • W.H.G. Kingston
... parts of this island, and we are of the grooms of King Mihrjan[FN10] and under our hand are all his horses. Every month, about new-moon tide we bring hither our best mares which have never been covered, and picket them on the sea-shore and hide ourselves in this place under the ground, so that none may espy us. Presently, the stallions of the sea scent the mares and come up out of the water and seeing no one, leap the mares and do their will of them. When they have covered them, they try ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton
... Will Scales, was the first husband of Bertha who had to nurse him through the terrible spells he would have from liquor debauchery. Will was the servant of the Nat Picket family and once Mrs. Pickett herself went down to their home and nursed Will through one of his terrible "cramping spells." After Will Scales' death, Bertha married Cleve Booker, plumber, ex-World War veteran and of surpassing ...
— Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves, North Carolina Narratives, Part 2 • Works Projects Administration
... farther west on Dumbarton Avenue on the north side of the street, above its stone wall topped with a white picket fence, is the old McKenney house. This is the house that Henry Foxall gave to his only daughter, Mary Ann, when she became the bride of Samuel McKenney in 1800. Until a few years ago, there lived here her granddaughter, Mrs. McCartney and her children and grandchildren, the fifth ...
— A Portrait of Old George Town • Grace Dunlop Ecker
... courtyard with you!' screamed the castellan, 'Sick him, Caesar! Sick him, Hunter!' and, 'Sick him, Spitz!' he called, and a pack of more than twelve dogs rushed at me. Then I tore something from the fence, possibly a picket, and stretched out three dogs dead beside me! But when I had to give way because I was suffering from fearful wounds and bites, I heard a shrill whistle; the dogs scurried into the yard, the gates were swung shut and the bolt ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IV • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... days of mandolin and guitar and moonlight sails on the James River." Life there seems not to have been "all beer and skittles," or the poetic substitutes therefor, for he goes on to say that their principal duties were to picket the beach, their "pleasures and sweet rewards of toil consisting in ague which played dice with our bones, and blue mass pills that played the ...
— Literary Hearthstones of Dixie • La Salle Corbell Pickett
... rubber trade is one of the greatest industries of the world to-day, amounting to millions of dollars annually. The usefulness of India rubber is thus described in the North American Review: "Some of our readers have been out on the picket-line during the war. They know what it is to stand motionless in a wet and miry rifle-pit in the chilly rain of a southern winter's night. Protected by India rubber boots, blanket and cap, the picket-man is in comparative comfort; a duty which, without that protection, would make ...
— Hidden Treasures - Why Some Succeed While Others Fail • Harry A. Lewis
... said the Chicago convention. I well remember how that evening our pickets shouted the good news to the pickets of the enemy. What good news? News that a convention representing nearly one-half of the people of the North had concluded that the war was a failure? No such news was shouted from our-picket line. The good news that they shouted was ...
— The Life, Public Services and Select Speeches of Rutherford B. Hayes • James Quay Howard
... M. on the starboard beam. The Hogue and Cressy closed, and took up a position, the Hogue ahead of the Aboukir, and the Cressy about four hundred yards on her port beam. As soon as it was seen that the Aboukir was in danger of sinking, all the boats were sent away from the Cressy, and a picket boat was hoisted out without steam up. When cutters full of the Aboukir's men were returning to the Cressy, the Hogue was struck, apparently under the aft 9.2 magazine, as a very heavy explosion took place immediately. ...
— History of the World War - An Authentic Narrative of the World's Greatest War • Francis A. March and Richard J. Beamish
... coming out fitfully from, behind the clouds, shone on his great tawny body, touching the white curls of his ruff with a line of silver. Then he would be lost in darkness again. But he swung on unerringly, until he was almost in sight of the camp. A little farther on a sentry paced up and down the picket-line that ran along the edge of the woods. Hero travelled on toward him, the dry dead leaves rustling under his paws, and now and then a twig ...
— The Little Colonel's Hero • Annie Fellows Johnston
... of English marines advance, under shelter of the ravelin, to pick up the wounded, and bear them within the walls for surgical help. They were so near he could see their faces, could hear them speak; yet he durst not make any sign to them when he lay within range of the French picket's fire. ...
— Sylvia's Lovers, Vol. III • Elizabeth Gaskell
... pass unwritten. Beneath the darkening skies of early evening, the Sergeant and the Osage guide rode forth into the peril and mystery of the shrouded desert. Beyond the outmost picket, moving as silently as two spectres, they found at last a coulee leading upward from the valley to the plains above. To their left the Indian fires swept in half circle, and between were the dark outlines of savage foes. From rock to rock echoed guttural voices, but, foot by foot, unnoted ...
— Molly McDonald - A Tale of the Old Frontier • Randall Parrish
... department the actual number of negroes enlisted was never known, from the fact that a practice prevailed of putting a live negro in a dead one's place. For instance, if a company on picket or scouting lost ten men, the officer would immediately put ten new men in their places and have them answer to the dead men's names. I learn from very reliable sources that this was done in Virginia, also in Missouri and Tennessee. If the exact number of men could ...
— The Black Phalanx - African American soldiers in the War of Independence, the - War of 1812, and the Civil War • Joseph T. Wilson
... cottage is a servant house at the rear of a white family's residence. A gate through an old-fashioned picket fence led into a spacious yard where dense shade from tall pecan trees was particularly inviting after a long ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves - Georgia Narratives, Part 3 • Works Projects Administration
... With invocations of St. Anne in one breath, and invocations of a personage not mentioned in the cure's "petee cat-ee-cheesm" in the next breath, and imprecations that their "souls might be smashed on the end of a picket fence,"—the voyageur's common oath even to this day,—the boatmen stored goods fore, aft, and athwart till each long canoe sank to the gunwale as it was gently pushed out on the water. A last sign of the cross, and the lithe figures leap light as a mountain cat to their place in the ...
— Pathfinders of the West • A. C. Laut
... only had the brigands, to break through the line of watch-fires which might have betrayed them, resolved to kill the sentinels. Against one picket, Djemboulat proceeded himself, and he ordered another Bek to creep up the bank, pass round to the rear of the picket, count a hundred, and then to strike fire with a flint and steel several times. It was ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - April 1843 • Various
... for the patches of dull red still visible beneath the eaves and round the windows, one would have been loth to believe the old house had all been of a deep red. The high road lay between the house and the long stretch of meadow-land which separated it from the river. The picket fence in front of the dwelling was in rather a dilapidated condition, and the gate, being minus a hinge, hung awry. Many tall sunflowers stood in the narrow strip of ground between the front fence and the house, and they were ...
— Walter Harland - Or, Memories of the Past • Harriet S. Caswell
... not even for the first one. It was curious that when he reminded her of it now she felt it more keenly than ever; but not with anger, only with sad pain. She did not say so; she did not need to. Fritz Nettenmair was like a man in a magnetic sleep; from the leaf of a tree, from a picket in the fence, from a white wall he read, with closed eyes, what ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IX - Friedrich Hebbel and Otto Ludwig • Various
... of course mine was by no means complete, and the Admiral was most anxious to know exactly how matters stood, for great things hinged upon the measure of our success; I therefore offered to take in a picket boat and attempt to obtain all the information required, and my offer was accepted. I steamed in under cover of the fog, which was so thick that it was impossible for us to see more than a few yards in any direction; so thick, indeed, that we actually found ourselves among the masts ...
— Under the Ensign of the Rising Sun - A Story of the Russo-Japanese War • Harry Collingwood
... thus far been seen of the Peruvian squadron, and as Bolivia had, as stated above, no navy worthy of the name, and the fleet was, moreover, still in Chilian waters, Admiral Williams did not consider it necessary to establish a patrol of picket-boats on watch round the ships, as he certainly would have done had he been lying before a hostile port. It was this oversight, coupled with the fact that Williams regarded the Bolivian sea strength as beneath his notice, that very ...
— Under the Chilian Flag - A Tale of War between Chili and Peru • Harry Collingwood
... are but experiments. All things in this new land are moving farther on: the wine-vats and the miner's blasting tools but picket for a night, like Bedouin pavilions; and to-morrow, to fresh woods! This stir of change and these perpetual echoes of the moving footfall, haunt the land. Men move eternally, still chasing Fortune; and, fortune found, still wander. As we ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 2 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... withdrawal he would not submit to, with the added risk of violence on the part of the mob of the city, fired to a safe and flaming enthusiasm by the reports continually coming in of new victories on the frontier, each little skirmish with a picket being invariably followed by the withdrawal of the Turks to a position well within their own territory, according to the general order to accept no combat under actual conditions, so that the least skirmish was magnified at Athens to a new victory. The summons to ...
— The Autobiography of a Journalist, Volume II • William James Stillman
... "Let this man picket his horse with those of the staff," he said, "and see that it has forage at once. Take the man to the orderlies' quarters, and see that he is well ...
— With Lee in Virginia - A Story of the American Civil War • G. A. Henty
... clouds, clouds in the horizon, death watch. watchtower, beacon, signal post; lighthouse &c. (indication of locality) 550. sentinel, sentry,; watch, watchman; watch and ward; watchdog, bandog[obs3], housedog[obs3]; patrol, patrolman, vedette[obs3], picket, bivouac, scout, spy, spial|; undercover agent, mole, plainclothesman; advanced guard, rear guard; lookout. cautiousness &c. 864. monitor, guard camera, radar, AWACS, spy satellite, spy-in-the-sky, U2 plane, spy plane. V. warn, caution; forewarn, prewarn[obs3]; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... a cluster, the stout seaman in the centre fighting like a madman, and nearly overturning three soldiers who were passing. Two of them were named Murphy and one O'Sullivan, and the riot that ensued took three policemen and a picket to subdue. Sam, glad of a chance to get away, only saw the beginning of it, and consumed by violent indignation, did not pause until he had placed half a dozen streets between himself and the scene ...
— The Skipper's Wooing, and The Brown Man's Servant • W. W. Jacobs
... letter, so pull yourself together. I am here with twenty others of the 7th I.Y. on outlying picket, and although the affair began rather joylessly, we are getting on very well now. By way of parenthesis, it is more than passing strange that whenever I try to write a letter somebody always starts singing. At present, a man of the Dorsets is lifting his voice in anguish and ...
— A Yeoman's Letters - Third Edition • P. T. Ross
... his long ride, he stretched himself for a short rest. He dozed. Something touched his foot. It was the riata with which he had picketed the pony. He meant to travel again that night. He would sleep a little while. The horse, circling the picket, would be ...
— Overland Red - A Romance of the Moonstone Canon Trail • Henry Herbert Knibbs
... So fond is he of this exercise that one which I watched amused himself half an hour at a time in a pile of brush; starting from the ground, slipping easily through up to the top, standing there a moment, then flying back and repeating the performance. Should the goal of his journey be a fence picket, he alights on the beam which supports it, and hops gracefully to ...
— In Nesting Time • Olive Thorne Miller
... Blake became a private detective. He was at first disappointed in the work. It seemed, at first, little better than his old job as watchman and checker. But the agency, after giving him a three-week try out at picket work, submitted him to the further test of a "shadowing" case. That first assignment of "tailing" kept him thirty-six hours without sleep, but he stuck to his trail, stuck to it with the blind pertinacity of a bloodhound, and at the end transcended mere animalism by buying ...
— Never-Fail Blake • Arthur Stringer
... little scrollwork around the diminutive front porch. The color was indescribable, blending well into the surroundings either day or night. It had a cheerful, decent look, but very tiny. There was a small yard about it with a picket fence, and a leafless lilac bush. A cheerful barberry bush flanked the gate on either side. The front door was open into a tiny hall and beyond the light streamed forth from a glass lamp set on a pleasant dining-room table covered with a red cloth. Betty stepped inside the gate ...
— Exit Betty • Grace Livingston Hill
... neighborly gossip each from his own doorstep. These houses were made of a rude framework of corner posts, studs, and crossties, and were plastered, outside and in, with "cat and clay"—a kind of mortar, made of mud and 15 mixed with straw and moss. Around each house was a picket fence, and the forms of the dooryards and gardens were regulated by ...
— Story Hour Readings: Seventh Year • E.C. Hartwell
... riding on the surface near the Fleet Flagship's quarter, rose like a flying gull, circled in wide spirals over the Fleet and sped seawards. Across the lanes of water, armed picket-boats, with preternaturally grave-faced Midshipmen at their wheels, picked their way amongst the traffic of drifters, cutters under sail, hooting store carriers and ...
— The Long Trick • Lewis Anselm da Costa Ritchie
... far as the eye could reach, seemed like a pure white carpet. Snow lined the upper edge of every paling, filled up the key-hole of every door, embanked about half of every window, stuck in little knobs on the top of every picket, and clung in masses on every drooping branch of the pine trees in the forest. Frost—sharp, biting frost—solidified, surrounded, and pervaded everything. Mercury was congealed by it; vapour was condensed by it; iron was cooled by it until it could scarcely be touched ...
— The Young Fur Traders • R.M. Ballantyne
... I feel like a cow tethered to a picket, so that I can't reach the bit of grass sward. ...
— Cormorant Crag - A Tale of the Smuggling Days • George Manville Fenn
... younger growth of branches; and wild flowers wasted their sweetness among the dead leaves and uncut herbage at their roots. The wanton grapevine swung carelessly from the topmost boughs of the oak and the sycamore; and blackberry and raspberry bushes, like a picket guard, presented a bold front in all possible avenues of approach. The entire surface of the island was bold and granitic, and in profile resembled the ...
— Opening Ceremonies of the New York and Brooklyn Bridge, May 24, 1883 • William C. Kingsley
... along the whole line, for two or three days, when again the vindictive fire of picket and mortar was re-inaugurated, and the spiteful whiz of the minnie kept all cramped within the ...
— Lee's Last Campaign • John C. Gorman
... heroic qualities—enterprise, resolution, valour, self-control, exercise of judgment amid dangers, endurance and fidelity in disaster—were plentifully developed throughout both parties of the then divided American people. The lonely picket-duty, the toilsome march, the endless duties of the soldier, were a constant drain upon enduring faithfulness, harder to bear, often, than the crashing excitement of the battle, while the deadly suffering of camp and hospital were at times ...
— The Battle of Principles - A Study of the Heroism and Eloquence of the Anti-Slavery Conflict • Newell Dwight Hillis
... so; but there are people who say that it was wrong to treat a Daimio thus, as if he had been an ordinary Samurai. But it is said that in old times it was the custom that the ceremony should take place upon a leather carpet spread in the garden; and further, that the proper place is inside a picket fence tied together in the garden: so it is wrong for persons who are only acquainted with one form of the ceremony to accuse Tamura of having acted improperly. If, however, the object was to save the house from the pollution of blood, then the accusation of ...
— Tales of Old Japan • Algernon Bertram Freeman-Mitford
... of the house somewhat moodily, but afternoon sunshine enlivened her; and, opening the picket gate, she stepped forth with a fair renewal of her chosen manner toward the public, though just at that moment no public was in sight. Miss Atwater's underlip resumed the position for which her mother had predicted ...
— Gentle Julia • Booth Tarkington
... listening to music," said the old chief, "when you came up. Some of our young men have gone up, indeed, to the picket yonder, to hear the harper sing, whose voice you catch sometimes, ...
— The Man Without a Country and Other Tales • Edward E. Hale
... had failed to accomplish. All working details had been called in, tools put aside, the heating furnaces fired, shells and red-hot solid shot piled in close proximity to the cannon and mortars. All the troops were under arms during the night, and a double picket line stretched along the beach, and while all seemed to be life and animation, a death-like stillness pervaded the air. There was some apprehension lest the fleet might come in during the night, land an army ...
— History of Kershaw's Brigade • D. Augustus Dickert
... I following, and upon getting clear of the crowd we saw a man leaning against the picket fence which separated the track from the carriage drive, watching the horses through a small field-glass. As we came up, Simms, for it was he, glanced suspiciously at us, but as we paid no attention to him and talked earnestly together, apparently arguing as to the relative merits ...
— Montezuma's Castle and Other Weird Tales • Charles B. Cory
... home is right on our way to school, a big old-fashioned house that stands on a corner of the street, surrounded by a high picket fence. We often see the anti-footballist's three year old son hanging to the fence and peeking out as though he'd like to investigate ...
— Interference and Other Football Stories • Harold M. Sherman
... habitation which was perched upon it. A narrow space, however, was reserved in front of the dwelling, upon the summit of this pile of stones (called by the natives a 'pi-pi'), which being enclosed by a little picket of canes, gave it somewhat the appearance of a verandah. The frame of the house was constructed of large bamboos planted uprightly, and secured together at intervals by transverse stalks of the light wood ...
— Typee - A Romance of the South Sea • Herman Melville
... General entered the Fort, he volunteered as an aid to Gen. Bragg and passed the picket line and seeing a box of crackers on the side of the hill resigned the honorary position on the Staff and began foraging. Just as he had filled his haversack, he was halted by a sentinel and told that it was against Gen. Bragg's orders, whereupon he desisted, ...
— A History of Lumsden's Battery, C.S.A. • George Little
... evident enough he felt no suspicion that anything more serious than the usual Indian picket would be encountered. He turned and spoke to the soldiers, waiting while they shouldered their rifles, and tramped forth to join him. His back was toward the fringe of wood. The arm of the white renegade ...
— Beyond the Frontier • Randall Parrish
... suppose he could be made to take a hand with you, sir—two-handed picket or ekkarty, you being seedy and keeping indoors—just to pass the time. For all we know, he may be one of them hot ...
— Victory • Joseph Conrad
... circumstances should he take her arm, or grasp her by or above the elbow, and shove her here and there, unless, of course, to save her from being run over! He should not walk along hitting things with his stick. The small boy's delight in drawing a stick along a picket fence should be curbed in the nursery! And it is scarcely necessary to add that no gentleman walks along the street chewing gum or, if he is walking with a lady, puffing ...
— Etiquette • Emily Post
... the shed more than an hour. A dozen ambulances drew up before the door, and the peasants of the country round, in their velvet jackets, and large black slouched hats, their whips on their shoulders, held the horses by the reins. A picket of hussars arrived soon after, and their officer dismounting, entered ...
— The Conscript - A Story of the French war of 1813 • Emile Erckmann
... stopped, and Olive slipped out, and, before Mrs. Easterfield had any idea of what she was going to do, the girl climbed the rail fence which separated the road from the captain's pasture field. Between this field and the garden was a picket fence, not very high; and, toward a point about midway between the little tollhouse and the dwelling, Olive now ran swiftly. When she had nearly reached the fence she gave a great bound; put one foot on the upper rail to which the pickets were nailed; and then went over. What would have happened ...
— The Captain's Toll-Gate • Frank R. Stockton
... the side street that ran at right angles to the main thoroughfare, just below Rafferty's, was Duncannon's. A picket fence at the side let into the vegetable gardens of the three, and the quiet little Mrs. Duncannon with the rippley brown hair and soft brown eyes often slipped through and made a morning call under cover of the kindly pole beans that hid her ...
— The City of Fire • Grace Livingston Hill
... thanks, he scampered down the path again and squeezed through the gap in the fence made by a missing picket. Alec carried the dish round the house to the kitchen, where Philippa was putting the finishing touches to the supper, ...
— Flip's "Islands of Providence" • Annie Fellows Johnston
... tell us that bein' housed up like to 'a' drove her crazy at first, an' they was so tarnation fussy that she felt like a hobbled pony in a stampede. They wouldn't even let her picket her ponies out in what they call the campus, which she said was just drippin' fat with rich grass, an' nary a hoof to graze it. Why, they even had fool notions about havin' certain hours about goin' to bed, an' even when you had to ...
— Happy Hawkins • Robert Alexander Wason
... birds, if I decline to walk in file with the conformist, I am something of a hero, perhaps, and certainly preserve my own self-respect better than if I yielded to either a harmful or a cruel custom. When etiquette rules that I go through the world armed with a haughty reserve, like a picket soldier with a shotgun, if I conform to that rule, I act upon the warm impulses of natural living as the refrigerator acts upon meat; I may preserve the proprieties, but I ...
— A String of Amber Beads • Martha Everts Holden
... leafless thicket Close beside my garden gate, Where, so light, from post to picket Hops the sparrow, blithe, sedate; Who, with meekly folded wing, Comes to sun himself ...
— Dreams and Days: Poems • George Parsons Lathrop
... seen in three years, and naturally humour broke out all over me. When joy spreads its wings in my vitals, I sound like a boy with a stick running past a picket-fence. Not so Morrow. He slopped over the sides of his seat, like he'd been spilled ...
— Pardners • Rex Beach
... miles from Matelgar's place to the town, and we could only travel at a foot's pace. But still we met no force. Indeed, until we were just a half mile thence, we saw no one. Then we met a picket, who, seeing we were fugitives, let ...
— A Thane of Wessex • Charles W. Whistler
... rolled up her picket rope, and stood waiting with disturbed face. As the rider drew near ...
— The Prospector - A Tale of the Crow's Nest Pass • Ralph Connor
... insurgents. At the same time, and for the same purpose, Juan Alfonso Palamino had landed with fifty men, yet keeping his boats always in readiness to reimbark, in case of the return of Gonzalo. Aldana likewise placed an advanced picket of twelve horsemen, of those who had deserted from the insurgents, on the road towards Arequipa, to bring him timely notice of any thing that might occur in that quarter, with orders to return with all speed in case ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 5 • Robert Kerr
... horses, even jolted them off the trail. Just above the timberline my horse pricked his ears toward a sheltered cove and gave a little whinny. We hurried forward hoping to find Miss Broughm. But only her horse was there, dragging its picket rope. We ...
— A Mountain Boyhood • Joe Mills
... tea in peace?"—it wasn't Stewart,—and there was a general scramble for swords and belts. A company of the Pioneers was soon doubling off, while the rest of us strolled up the road to see what the row was. We met the baggage coming in, and heard that the 14th Sikh picket had heard some people moving in the river bed, and had let drive a volley at them—result unknown. As soon as the last of the baggage had passed, we followed it, and the picket was withdrawn. Later that night we sent back a messenger with an account of the day's fighting and ...
— With Kelly to Chitral • William George Laurence Beynon
... out, 'A rather pretty duel, sir. Don't ride over the bridge.' A picket shot from the left singing over my head rather emphasized his warning. 'It would not be fair—you would ride right into my pickets.' It was an ...
— Westways • S. Weir Mitchell
... violent man. He had just struck his own child an unlawful blow. She lay on the ground as the dead lie. Then it was that this elephant moved before any man could move. We heard his picket stakes come up, but we did not see them come ...
— Son of Power • Will Levington Comfort and Zamin Ki Dost
... Cincinnati to the mouth of the Big Miami, opposite which we were to settle. Here was some cleared land, and one or two log cabins, but they had been deserted on account of the Indians. My father rebuilt the cabins, and inclosed them with a strong picket. It was early in the spring when we arrived at the mouth of the Big Miami, and we were soon engaged in preparing a field to plant corn. I think it was not more than ten days after our arrival, when my father told us in the morning, that, from the ...
— The Junior Classics • Various
... are at the fort. I guess we may as well make our camp outside. If you go in you have got to picket your horse here and put your baggage there and come in at gun-fire, and all sorts of things that troubles a man who is accustomed ...
— In The Heart Of The Rockies • G. A. Henty
... bothy in the village which had been set apart as a prison for me, and here, a picket of soldiers with loaded muskets surrounding the hut, they left me to myself. I had asked for paper and ink, but my request had ...
— A Daughter of Raasay - A Tale of the '45 • William MacLeod Raine
... that the investigation infers that the attack was only made with the purpose of freeing the sons of chiefs, for the picket has been slain but all the others are unhurt ...
— Witch-Doctors • Charles Beadle
... at all. Poor Loudon, alas, must have got beaten!" Upon which Daun really did try, at least upon Ziethen; but could do nothing. Poured cavalry across the Stone-bridge at the Topferberg: who drove in Ziethen's picket there; but were torn to pieces by Ziethen's cannon. Ziethen across the Schwartzwasser is alert enough. How form in order of battle here, with Ziethen's batteries shearing your columns longitudinally, as they march up? Daun ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XX. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... away for ever from the lips that quivered like a child's; he turned from her, but she had looked once into his face as the Law Giver must have looked at the land of Canaan outspread at his feet. She watched him go down the long path and through the picket gate, she watched the big yellowish dog that had waited for him lumber up on to its feet—stretch—then follow him. She was conscious of but two things, the vengeful lie in her soul, and a little space on her arm that his ...
— The Moccasin Maker • E. Pauline Johnson
... plainly too complicated even for their preternatural powers. She hurried back to the house, and searched every room in a bewildered sort of fashion, finding nothing. As she came out again, her eye caught sight of a kitchen chair in the corner of the yard. They had climbed the picket fence, then. Yes; Atlantic, while availing himself of its unassuming aid, had left a clue in a fragment of his trousers. She opened the gate, and ran breathlessly along the streets to that Garden of Eden where joy ...
— Marm Lisa • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... and allowed to go. I forgot to say that we had a gendarme in front of us to shoo the vulgar herd out of our way. Then we marched slowly in behind the priest, on stones brought from the seaside, through a picket fence to designated spots near the next fence, I being allowed nearer to the gate than our Japanese guide; and we worshiped, that is bowed. I got my bow over disgracefully quick, but I think our Japanese conductor stood at least ...
— Letters from China and Japan • John Dewey
... full of men, but all seemingly unarmed. Immediately beyond is that river over which we passed in our scamper with Lady Jersey; it was all solitary. Three hundred yards beyond is a second ford; and there - I came face to face with war. Under the trees on the further bank sat a picket of seven men with Winchesters; their faces bright, their eyes ardent. As we came up, they did not speak or move; only their eyes followed us. The horses drank, and we passed the ford. 'Talofa!' I said, ...
— Vailima Letters • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the burial-parties labored. The soil was comparatively soft in the neighboring ravine,—much more so than higher up the slopes where the two crack shots had fallen earlier in the afternoon,—and here, with picket-pins and a spade or two which happened to be with the pack-train, a trench was scooped out, into which the poor remains were lowered and then covered with stones, dragged from the depths of the neighboring coulee. It took some hours to finish ...
— Under Fire • Charles King
... of Animals. Water. Different methods of finding and purifying it. Journadas. Methods of crossing them. Advance and Rear Guards. Selection of Camp. Sanitary Considerations. Dr. Jackson's Report. Picket Guards. Stampedes. How to prevent them. Corraling ...
— The Prairie Traveler - A Hand-book for Overland Expeditions • Randolph Marcy
... apple blossoms. Miss Burch had obviously determined that when she retired from the world of men she would make a thorough job of it and expose herself to no temptation to return—eight miles from the nearest railroad. Just beyond the elms they slowed up alongside a white picket fence enclosing an old-fashioned garden whence came to Mr. Tutt the busy murmur of bees. Then they came to a gate that opened upon a red-tiled, box-bordered, moss-grown walk, leading to a small white ...
— By Advice of Counsel • Arthur Train
... through the middle. But it stood in the commercial section of a village, its door steps flush with the sidewalk, and was hemmed in on one side by a gas station. There was a neat little story-and-a-half stone house with picket fence, old-fashioned rose bushes, and beautiful shade trees. It had once been the parsonage of the neighboring church. Unhappily the old ...
— If You're Going to Live in the Country • Thomas H. Ormsbee and Richmond Huntley
... Marcia's relief. But the trouble did not go out of her eyes as she saw him turn the corner. Instead she went in and stood at the dining room window a long time looking out on the Heaths' hollyhocks beaming in the sun behind the picket fence, and wondered what he could have meant, and why he smiled in that hateful way. She decided she did not like him, and she hoped he would never come. She did not think she would care to hear him play. There was something about him that reminded her of Captain Leavenworth, and now ...
— Marcia Schuyler • Grace Livingston Hill Lutz
... with screaming whistle and noisy brakes and roaring wheels. Children began to cry with fear and men to yell with excitement. Dogs were barking wildly, and two horses ran away, dragging with them part of a picket-fence. A brown shoat came bounding over the ties and broke through the wall of people, carrying many off their feet and creating panic and profanity. The train stopped, its engine hissing. A brakeman of flashy ...
— Darrel of the Blessed Isles • Irving Bacheller
... clothing here before next pay-day, so the people may buy it in preference to the trash they see in the shops at Beaufort, etc. Nothing is heard of our money yet. Some say that General Saxton will probably bring it. I only wish he would come; his picket-guard at St. Helena amuses itself hunting cattle on the Fripp Point Plantation. As I have no positive proof against them I can't do anything but watch the cattle to prevent a repetition ...
— Letters from Port Royal - Written at the Time of the Civil War (1862-1868) • Various
... An old-fashioned garden, so common at one time in the South—with a picket fence, a little gate, orderly paths—a blaze of flowers to the right, and to the left a riot of vegetables—fat tomatoes weighing the vines to the ground, cucumbers hiding under their sheltering leaves, cabbages burgeoning in blue-green, and giving the promise of unlimited ...
— The Trumpeter Swan • Temple Bailey
... increase his income he had laid out a small vegetable garden in the rear of his father's house, and here on a Saturday morning, while down on his knees weeding carrots, he chanced to look up and discovered a young lady gazing at him through the picket fence. She was a few years his junior, and a stranger in Sequoia. Ensued the following conversation: "Hello, ...
— The Valley of the Giants • Peter B. Kyne
... officers in the brigade. He was always cool and never carried away with excitement under any circumstances. It is perhaps doubtful whether he could have maintained his customary imperturbability, if he had realized, at the moment, just what that lone picket portended. ...
— Personal Recollections of a Cavalryman - With Custer's Michigan Cavalry Brigade in the Civil War • J. H. (James Harvey) Kidd
... XVI. was driven slowly from the Temple to the Convention, escorted by cavalry, infantry, and artillery. Paris looked like an armed camp: all the posts were doubled; the muster-roll of the National Guard was called over every hour; a picket of two hundred men watched in the court of each of the right sections; a reserve with cannon was stationed at the Tuileries, and strong detachments patroled the streets and cleared the road of all loiterers. The trees that lined the boulevards, the doors and windows of the houses, were alive with ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... permitted to join this command. I want you to understand, though, that every man admitted to it is chosen solely for personal merit, and not through friendship or any influence, political or otherwise, that he may possess. Now you may take that horse to the picket-line, see that it is properly cared for, and report at my quarters in ...
— "Forward, March" - A Tale of the Spanish-American War • Kirk Munroe
... casualty. They either lost videttes, or their patrol was surprised, or their baggage plundered—in short, they began to be the talk of the army. The regiment had been always one of the most distinguished in the service, and all those misfortunes were wholly unaccountable. At length a stronger picket than usual was ordered for the night—not a man of them was to be found in the morning. As no firing had been heard, the natural conjecture was, that they must all have deserted. As this was a still more disgraceful result than actual defeat, the colonel called his officers ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXII. - June, 1843.,Vol. LIII. • Various
... Sing Sing prison presents the appearance of a huge, square pen, covering many acres of land, and enclosed by a high, brick wall on the three land sides, and a tall, iron picket fence on the ...
— Born Again • Alfred Lawson
... not very many years ago that I used to play at picket; there was a gentleman of your robe, a dignitory of Lincoln, very well known and remembered in the ordinaries, but being not long since dead, I will save his name. Now I used to play pieces, and this gentleman would always ...
— Andrew Marvell • Augustine Birrell
... commenced. We threw out an outlying picket with supports and reserve, and the whole camp was placed in a state of defence against a supposed enemy in ...
— A Soldier's Life - Being the Personal Reminiscences of Edwin G. Rundle • Edwin G. Rundle
... when my turn came to go to the river on picket duty, and the earth was covered with snow several inches deep. When my watch was off and the opportunity to sleep was afforded the question was, where to lie down. I spread on the snow some boughs that I had cut from a cedar tree and laid a gum cloth upon them. Upon this ...
— Reminiscences of a Rebel • Wayland Fuller Dunaway
... gallons at least. The watered mules had to do just so much kicking, so much braying at the young moon; had to be assured just so often, through their queer communications, that the bell-mare was still in the land of picket-line—before nose-bags were fastened. Then, with all the pack rigging in neat piles before the picket-line, and the untouched stores covered and piled, the packers came in with ...
— Fate Knocks at the Door - A Novel • Will Levington Comfort
... but with a party of Danes after them; and but for our arrow flights from the earthworks, they would have had to fight, and lose what they brought. After that Hubba knew what we needed, and sent a strong picket to keep us ...
— King Alfred's Viking - A Story of the First English Fleet • Charles W. Whistler
... run, for they knew that every minute was of importance, and they heard the welcome challenge, "Who comes there?" "Two British officers," they answered, and in a few minutes they were taken to the officer in charge of the picket, and having once convinced him of their identity, were ...
— The Young Buglers • G.A. Henty
... were spent in teaching the horses to stand steady as soon as the reins were thrown over their heads, this being a training to which all horses in the Cape are subjected. Then they rode back to the town and arranged with a farmer near it to picket their horses in one of his meadows, and for their feed while they remained there. The rest of the day was spent in laying in their supplies. The rifles and ammunition were paid for, pack saddles bought for ...
— With Buller in Natal - A Born Leader • G. A. Henty
... assumed the duty of loading the guns. The natives rushed onward in so dense a crowd, that almost every bullet and buckshot of the defenders hit its man. The besieged had but six muskets, one hundred cartridges, and a few charges of powder. Their external fortifications consisted only of a slight picket-fence, which might have been thrown down in an instant. But, fortunately, when there were but three charges of powder left in the house, a shot killed Gotorap, the chief of the assailants, at whose fall the whole army fled in dismay. One of the trophies of their defeat was the kettle which they ...
— Journal of an African Cruiser • Horatio Bridge
... luck, I suppose he could be made to take a hand with you, sir—two-handed picket or ekkarty, you being seedy and keeping indoors—just to pass the time. For all we know, he may be one of them ...
— Victory • Joseph Conrad
... through the school yard, down to the end where an old- fashioned picket fence shut off the playground from a vacant lot that later would be divided off into the school gardens, a ...
— Four Little Blossoms on Apple Tree Island • Mabel C. Hawley
... fell back and men rolled their quids and looked eagerly up the track. It came on with screaming whistle and noisy brakes and roaring wheels. Children began to cry with fear and men to yell with excitement. Dogs were barking wildly, and two horses ran away, dragging with them part of a picket-fence. A brown shoat came bounding over the ties and broke through the wall of people, carrying many off their feet and creating panic and profanity. The train stopped, its engine hissing. A brakeman of flashy attire, with fine leather ...
— Darrel of the Blessed Isles • Irving Bacheller
... with the usual clinker-like fragments of smashed coral, not only coco-palms and mikis but also fig-trees flourished, all of a delicious greenness. Of course there was no blade of grass. In front a picket fence divided us from the white road, the palm- fringed margin of the lagoon, and the lagoon itself, reflecting clouds by day and stars by night. At the back, a bulwark of uncemented coral enclosed us from the narrow belt of bush and the nigh ocean beach ...
— In the South Seas • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Voltaire, "when he wrote a book on the Bible prophecies, the men of science got even with him." Sir Isaac Newton defended the literal inspiration of the Scriptures and was a consistent member of the Church of England. Doctor Johnson was unhappy all day if he didn't touch every tenth picket of the fence with his cane ...
— Little Journeys To The Homes Of Great Teachers • Elbert Hubbard
... be made in this country," he continued, warming up to his argument, "and I know how to make it. Inside of five years I'll be able to put up a house with a cupola on it, and a picket fence in front, and grass in the yard, for the woman that ...
— Claim Number One • George W. (George Washington) Ogden
... my old home. Just inside the pickets were bunches of bear grass. Then, there was the purple flag, that bordered the walks; the thyme, coriander, calamus and sweet Mary; the jasmine climbing over the picket fence; the syringa and bridal wreath; roses black, red, yellow and pink; and many other kinds of roses and shrubs. There, too, were strawberries, raspberries, gooseberries and currants; damson and greengages, and apricots, that grew on vines. ...
— The Use and Need of the Life of Carry A. Nation • Carry A. Nation
... graphic pictures of the war is that of attack in the night related by a sergeant of the Worcester Regiment, who was wounded in the fierce battle of the Aisne. He was on picket duty when the attack opened. "It was a little after midnight," he said "when the men ahead suddenly fell back to report strange sounds and movements along the front. The report had just been made when we heard a rustling in the bushes near us. ...
— Tommy Atkins at War - As Told in His Own Letters • James Alexander Kilpatrick
... the best of all your stock of shirts, yet through it all maintain that sweet composure, that gentle calm befitting such events; if you can sound a bugle-note of triumph when steering straight against a picket-fence; if you can keep your temper, tongue, and balance when on your back beneath your car you pose, and, struggling there to fix a balky cog-wheel, you drop a monkey-wrench across your nose; if you can smile as gasoline goes higher, and sing a song because your motor faints—your ...
— More Toasts • Marion Dix Mosher
... O brave, heroic soul! Hid in the dim mist of the things that be, We call thee up to fill the highest place! Whether to till thy corn and give the tithe, Whether to grope a picket in the dark, Or, having nobly served, to be cast down, And, unregarded, passed by meaner feet, Or, happier thou, to snatch the fadeless crown, And walk in youth and beauty to God's rest,— The purpose makes the hero, meet ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 84, October, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... body. It was for this he had so carefully wrapped his fuses. A man passed over him so close above that he might have touched him. The sentry paused a few paces beyond and accosted another, then retraced his steps over the bridge. Evidently this was the picket-line, so Roy wormed his way forward till he saw the blacker blackness of the mine buildings, then drew himself dripping out from the bank. He ...
— The Spoilers • Rex Beach
... glanced at the house where she lived. It was an unpainted, three room cabin, more dilapidated than the average, with bare dirt and cinders about it, and what had once been a picket-fence, now falling apart and being used for stove-wood. The windows were cracked and broken, and upon the roof were signs of leaks that ...
— King Coal - A Novel • Upton Sinclair
... from Dranesville, concluding: 'You will keep a good lookout upon Leesburg, to see if this movement has the effect to drive them away. Perhaps a slight demonstration on your part would have the effect to move them.' McClellan desired Stone to make demonstrations from his picket line along the Potomac, but did not intend that he should cross the river, in force, for the purpose of fighting. Late in the day Stone reported that he had made a feint of crossing, and at the same ...
— History and Comprehensive Description of Loudoun County, Virginia • James W. Head
... and finally arrived in front of Tom Osby's adobe. The tired horses stood in the sun still hitched to the wagon, and Curly, out of pity, made it his first business to hunt under the wagon seat for the picket ropes and halters. He then began to search for the oats bag, but while so engaged his attention was attracted by something whose nature we, at a distance, could not determine. With a swift glance into the back of the wagon, and another at the door of the cabin, Curly dropped his Good Samaritan work ...
— Heart's Desire • Emerson Hough
... up a projecting shadow thus, he had come at last almost to the very side of the dumb slave just as a gaudy winged parrot lit upon the eve of the summer house on a large piece of the picket work that had been used as an ornament for its top, but which having been broken from its position, had slid down to the very eaves and now hung but half suspended upon the roof. Even the lighting of the parrot upon its edge was sufficient to balance it ...
— The Circassian Slave; or, The Sultan's Favorite - A Story of Constantinople and the Caucasus • Lieutenant Maturin Murray
... fence in an American village where I once lived, that an enterprising fruit-grower had put around his orchard,—a structure of upright pickets, and each picket armed with a nail in the top. One night four individuals bent on stealing apples, were confronted by the owner and a bull-dog and forced to surrender or leap the fence. Three of them were "treed" by the dog; the fourth sprang over the fence, but left the seat of his trousers and the ...
— Overland through Asia; Pictures of Siberian, Chinese, and Tartar - Life • Thomas Wallace Knox
... murmured into the receiver of the telephone which communicated with the watchful picket of the Marston & Waller offices. "Who? Oh, she may ...
— Blow The Man Down - A Romance Of The Coast - 1916 • Holman Day
... hideous sound. The stricken horse upon which the lion leaped shrieked out its terror and its agony. Several about it broke their tethers and plunged madly about the camp. Men leaped from their blankets and with guns ready ran toward the picket line, and then from the jungle beyond the boma a dozen lions, emboldened by the example of their fellow charged fearlessly upon ...
— Tarzan and the Jewels of Opar • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... "Men for picket!" cried a sergeant, and Kavanagh, who had been warned for the duty, stepped forward and fell in with the others, and presently they were marched off and posted on one of the hills commanding ...
— For Fortune and Glory - A Story of the Soudan War • Lewis Hough
... went, but not desiring to retrace his steps over half a mile or so of carpet, he went out into the open air and along the picket ...
— The Firing Line • Robert W. Chambers
... years ago that I used to play at picket; there was a gentleman of your robe, a dignitory of Lincoln, very well known and remembered in the ordinaries, but being not long since dead, I will save his name. Now I used to play pieces, and this gentleman would always go half-a-crown with me; and so all the ...
— Andrew Marvell • Augustine Birrell
... deep in meadow grass and surrounded by a low picket fence over which the ball was often batted, both by members of the home team and ...
— A Ball Player's Career - Being the Personal Experiences and Reminiscensces of Adrian C. Anson • Adrian C. Anson
... revolution that ever burst forth. Troop after troop of cavalry galloped in; every soldier, indeed, of whatever arm stationed within an available distance of Carlsruhe, was brought within its walls. By eight o'clock in the evening the military preparations were completed: a picket of infantry was stationed at every street corner; and, from that hour to the break of day, parties of dragoons swept the main thoroughfares, clashing and clattering over the paved road with a din that kept me awake ...
— A Tramp's Wallet - stored by an English goldsmith during his wanderings in Germany and France • William Duthie
... departure. He had some time since decided upon his course, and as soon as he was a short distance away from the clump of trees, he set out at a brisk walk, and made no effort at concealment. He did not care, now, if he were halted by a British picket or sentinel. ...
— The Dare Boys of 1776 • Stephen Angus Cox
... well remember how that evening our pickets shouted the good news to the pickets of the enemy. What good news? News that a convention representing nearly one-half of the people of the North had concluded that the war was a failure? No such news was shouted from our-picket line. The good news that they shouted was ...
— The Life, Public Services and Select Speeches of Rutherford B. Hayes • James Quay Howard
... us with excellent appetites, although I am bound to admit that the ladies did not eat much. When the meal was over, without any news from our pickets, I went out through an opening that we had purposely left in the front door barricade, and took a good look round. Passing from picket to picket, I questioned each man closely as to whether he had seen any signs of the enemy; but they all replied in the negative. Indeed, although I carefully scanned every open space I could see, even examining it with the telescope, not the faintest indication ...
— A Middy of the King - A Romance of the Old British Navy • Harry Collingwood
... commanded it, retired disgracefully, leaving a wounded man on the ground. Captain Biddle, of the artillery, who was near the scene, impelled by feelings highly honourable to him as a soldier and officer, promptly assumed the command of this picket, led it back to the wounded man and brought him off the field. I ordered Captain Treat, on the post, to retire from the army, as I am anxious that no officer (p. 206) shall remain under my command who can be suspected of cowardice. I advise that Captain ...
— The Medallic History of the United States of America 1776-1876 • J. F. Loubat
... love. With the same simplicity, in turn tender and jesting, they went verse by verse through that immortal ode in which Horace and Lydia extol with such grace the charms of their new loves, and end by adding a postscript to their old ones. As they reached the corner of the street a rather strong picket of soldiers ...
— Bohemians of the Latin Quarter • Henry Murger
... Montreal dates back to October, 1535, when Jacques Cartier first landed on the island. An Indian village, called Hochelaga, existed here at this time. Its outline was circular; and it was encompassed by three rows of palisades, or rather picket fences, one within the other, well secured and put together. A single entrance was left in this rude fortification, but guarded with pikes and stakes, and every precaution taken against siege or attack. ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 11 • Various
... the Chief for the sign," Said little Dan O'Shea, "Though never I come from the picket's line, But a faded suit of grey: Yet over my death will the road be safe, And the ...
— Ballads of Peace in War • Michael Earls
... number of graves covered by the undergrowth of shrubbery, and perchance hers might be one of them. Accepting the possibility I found the one I sought, which could not fail to be recognized, for strange to say, time had dealt so gently that the slender picket fence was undecayed by his "effacing; lingers," and the name painted upon the little wooden head-board was distinctly visible. Grouped in quadrangular growth were four little trees, gracefully arching in a bowery drapery over the grave, as if nature in strange sympathy with the mourners left ...
— The World As I Have Found It - Sequel to Incidents in the Life of a Blind Girl • Mary L. Day Arms
... Manassas, the Harris Light Cavalry was so reduced in numbers that it was ordered into camp at Hall's Hill, near Washington, with a view of recruiting its wasted strength and equipment. They remained at that point until November, when they were again moved forward to form the principal picket line along the front, prior to ...
— Sword and Pen - Ventures and Adventures of Willard Glazier • John Algernon Owens
... about a mile west of Dundee which lay between it and Talana and Lennox Hills, which commanded the town from the east. Some hours before sunrise on October 20 a British picket on Talana was attacked. The incident was reported to Head Quarters, where it was not deemed to be of much importance and the routine duties of the morning were not interrupted. The artillery horses ...
— A Handbook of the Boer War • Gale and Polden, Limited
... of the channels, upon what seemed a little shrub, the outlying picket, I trusted, of an army behind it, I knelt to look at it closer. It bore a small fruit, which, as I did not recognise it, I feared to gather and eat. Little I thought that I was watched from behind the rocks ...
— Lilith • George MacDonald
... could see not only the places of interest, but something also of that motley population which made the town so different to all others save only its younger sister, Montreal. Passing and repassing along the steep path with the picket fence which connected the two quarters, they saw the whole panorama of Canadian life moving before their eyes, the soldiers with their slouched hats, their plumes, and their bandoleers, habitants from the river cotes in their rude peasant dresses, ...
— The Refugees • Arthur Conan Doyle
... did not do it, and it may be it is well we did not. From about the 1st of April we were conscious that the rebel cavalry in our front was getting bolder and more saucy; and on Friday, the 4th of April, it dashed down and carried off one of our picket-guards, composed of an officer and seven men, posted a couple of miles out on the Corinth road. Colonel Buckland sent a company to its relief, then followed himself with a regiment, and, fearing lest he might be worsted, I called out his whole brigade ...
— The Memoirs of General W. T. Sherman, Complete • William T. Sherman
... occasions. A number of the best marksmen in each regiment had been selected to act as sharpshooters. With a party of these he set forth, on a night in November 1854, towards a fort at the bottom of the Windmill ravine, where a picket of the enemy were stationed. Approaching with all the caution of Indian warriors along a difficult and dangerous path, they suddenly sprang on the astonished Russians, who took to flight, leaving their rifles and knapsacks behind. A short time before ...
— Our Soldiers - Gallant Deeds of the British Army during Victoria's Reign • W.H.G. Kingston
... in shape with the habitation which was perched upon it. A narrow space, however, was reserved in front of the dwelling, upon the summit of this pile of stones (called by the natives a 'pi-pi'), which being enclosed by a little picket of canes, gave it somewhat the appearance of a verandah. The frame of the house was constructed of large bamboos planted uprightly, and secured together at intervals by transverse stalks of the light wood of the habiscus, ...
— Typee - A Romance of the South Sea • Herman Melville
... but Alec micht hae committed a waur sin than thrashin' the dominie. He's a dour crater, that Murdoch Malison, wi' his fair face and his picket words. I doot the bairns hae the warst o' 't in general. And for Alec I hae great houpes. He comes o' a guid stock. His father, honest man, was ane o' the Lord's ain, although he didna mak' sic a stan' as, maybe, he ought to hae dune; ...
— Alec Forbes of Howglen • George MacDonald
... ringing on the air, and after that first volley the little band of Australians wheeled and galloped for the open country. To have remained there would have meant certain death to every one of the half-dozen who comprised the picket, so they did their duty—they fired and rode for the veldt. In a few seconds Boers were dashing out of the kopjes on all sides, trying to cut the small band of Australians off or shoot them down. But the Australians knew their game; they opened ...
— Campaign Pictures of the War in South Africa (1899-1900) - Letters from the Front • A. G. Hales
... a hen; but she went off mad when I came in. You'd better go back and pose on Listening Hill again; you looked rather well there—a lone picket on an ...
— Otherwise Phyllis • Meredith Nicholson
... the law, told me that it would probably answer, though it was not according to the agreement made by Mr. Brooks, and Esq. Clute and himself, for me. I then executed to Micah Brooks and Jellis Clute, a deed of all my land lying east of the picket line on the Gardow reservation, containing ...
— A Narrative of the Life of Mrs. Mary Jemison • James E. Seaver
... in the camp a picket came in, whose officer reported having had a skirmish with the enemy, in which the Northerners had been whipped. The way the cavalry outposts engaged with each other was curious enough. The ground they met on did not admit of cavalry ...
— Sketches From My Life - By The Late Admiral Hobart Pasha • Hobart Pasha
... composite photograph—I shall never forget. It is the same man—sometimes blonde, sometimes dark, but always the same smallish man—as, on picket duty, he stops you to examine your papers. He does not understand the papers in the least. The British passport begins with the words, "We, Sir Edward Grey, a Baronet of the United Kingdom...." ...
— Current History, A Monthly Magazine - The European War, March 1915 • New York Times
... now in the primest part of the buffalo-pasture. As we wind along the base of the steep Republican Bluffs, and the edges of those green amphitheatres made by their alternate approach and retrocession, our whistle scares a picket-line of giant bulls, guarding a divide across the stream, and with tails in air, heads at the down charge, they scour away at a lumbering cow-gallop, to tell the main herd of a progress more resistless than their own. Or, perhaps, our experience of the buffaloes is a more inconvenient one. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 85, November, 1864 • Various
... 'A rather pretty duel, sir. Don't ride over the bridge.' A picket shot from the left singing over my head rather emphasized his warning. 'It would not be fair—you would ride right into my pickets.' It was an unusual bit ...
— Westways • S. Weir Mitchell
... over the yard, but they didn't see the homely brick-edged flowerbeds nor the red lawn-swing nor the well-worn hammock nor the white picket fence in her direct line of vision. They were contemplating a slight girlish figure who was addressing a large audience, somewhere, speaking with swift, telling phrases that called forth continuous ripples of applause. It was all ...
— Missy • Dana Gatlin
... to life. Sometimes the log rolled one way, sometimes the other, sometimes it jerked from side to side like a crazy thing, but always with the rapidity of light, always in a smother of spray and foam. The decided spat, spat, spat of the reversing blows from the caulked boots sounded like picket firing. I could not make out the different leads, feints, parries, and counters of this strange method of boxing, nor could I distinguish to whose initiative the various evolutions of that log could be described. But I retain still a vivid mental picture ...
— Blazed Trail Stories - and Stories of the Wild Life • Stewart Edward White
... gone before she could reply—across the ice-bridge spanning one of the pools, and up the rough, frozen embankment of the new line. There were armed guards here, too, as well as at the front, and one of them halted him at the picket line. But Adams saw and recognized him, and presently the two were crossing to where Virginia stood waiting ...
— A Fool For Love • Francis Lynde
... must bring desolation to thousands of happy households, and inflict never-healing wounds upon thousands of happy hearts. For every man who falls in battle some one mourns. For every man who dies in hospital-wards, and of whom no note is made, some one mourns. For the humblest soldier shot on picket, and of whose humble exit from the stage of life little is thought, some one mourns. Nor this alone. For every soldier disabled; for every one who loses an arm or a leg, or who is wounded or languishes in protracted suffering; for every one ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. II. July, 1862. No. 1. • Various
... words, Neville waved his hand in encouragement, and putting spurs to his horse was out of sigh in a moment. In a few minutes he galloped up to the post held by the British picket, and flung himself off his reeking steed—incurring imminent risk of being bayoneted by the sentry, because he took no notice of his peremptory challenge. Bursting into the guard-room, he called for the officer of the day, Lieutenant Fitzgibbon. ...
— Neville Trueman the Pioneer Preacher • William Henry Withrow
... Sunday an advance party of 1500 Boers, with artillery, pushed south of Ingagane, but the greater portion of this commando retired later in the day on Newcastle. A Boer force which had been concentrating at De Jager's Drift captured six Natal policemen. A picket of the King's Royal Rifles Mounted Infantry has exchanged a few shots with the enemy. This has hitherto been ...
— South Africa and the Transvaal War, Vol. 2 (of 6) - From the Commencement of the War to the Battle of Colenso, - 15th Dec. 1899 • Louis Creswicke
... do it, Bill," cried the Trapper; "I can't do it. I am doin' picket duty on the top of this box, with a big hole under me and another ...
— Holiday Tales - Christmas in the Adirondacks • W. H. H. Murray
... old picket gate, Little dog Tray will patiently wait Watching: No matter if early or late Slow is ...
— Ohio Arbor Day 1913: Arbor and Bird Day Manual - Issued for the Benefit of the Schools of our State • Various
... but was coming back by this time. She climbed upon the picket gate and hung over it, as she called out: "My ma's kneadin' bread an' can't get out, this minit. She says if you want somethun, fer you to ...
— Polly's Business Venture • Lillian Elizabeth Roy
... be, was at times most gratifying. Once he had resented its manifestations with bitterness, imagining that they were likely to bring him into contempt and undermine his authority; and when she interfered in his memorable fight with Bill Cole and fiercely attacked his opponent with a picket, cutting his head and incapacitating him for fighting for the rest of the day, he felt that he could never forgive her. She had violated the rule of battle and outraged the noble principle of fair play; and, worse and worse, had disgraced him in the eyes of the world by making ...
— The Gold-Stealers - A Story of Waddy • Edward Dyson
... dear, it puts me in mind of the Saints' day at home," said Terence, as he stood leaning against a picket fence that bordered the street, "savin' the presence of the naygurs and thim red divils wid blankets an' scowls as wud turrn the milk sour in ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... sudden bend of the St. Charles. Here lay a canoe or skiff; and, paddling across the narrow stream, Le Jeune saw on the meadow, two hundred yards from the bank, a square inclosure formed of palisades, like a modern picket fort of the Indian frontier. [ 1 ] Within this inclosure were two buildings, one of which had been half burned by the English, and was not yet repaired. It served as storehouse, stable, workshop, and bakery. Opposite stood ...
— The Jesuits in North America in the Seventeenth Century • Francis Parkman
... all but the dead and dying, with now and then a passing picket or fatigue-party. As the night advanced, and the cold became piercing, even these seemed to have finally retired from the ghastly scene. Towards morning the moon rose high, and, piercing the clouds, at times lit up the whole battle-field. Ah! there was ...
— In the Track of the Troops • R.M. Ballantyne
... slipnoose which would tighten around the throat if pulled. With a man on each side holding these ropes, the mule was released from his other bindings and allowed to rise. With more or less difficulty he would be conducted to a picket rope outside and fastened there. The delivery of that mule was then complete. This process was gone through with every mule and wild horse with ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... reach, and plainly too complicated even for their preternatural powers. She hurried back to the house, and searched every room in a bewildered sort of fashion, finding nothing. As she came out again, her eye caught sight of a kitchen chair in the corner of the yard. They had climbed the picket fence, then. Yes; Atlantic, while availing himself of its unassuming aid, had left a clue in a fragment of his trousers. She opened the gate, and ran breathlessly along the streets to that Garden of Eden where joy had always hitherto ...
— Marm Lisa • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... eva ma tot and so on. I shall now commence with the feminine and the musculin gender (but I must mind as I don't put my foot in it) as you know a hundred times more than I do about these last words—the same time the maight be a little picket up by them. Well, hear goes to make a start. (You ...
— Gipsy Life - being an account of our Gipsies and their children • George Smith
... crossin' the old ford," he said quietly. "Goin' to picket the other bank, I reckon. There's likely to be some more comin' down the opposite way from the bridge. That's ...
— The Strange Case of Cavendish • Randall Parrish
... Forty-ninth Regiments N. C. Troops. For more than a year the Fifty-sixth operated on the line from Petersburg, Va., to Wilmington, N. C., in protecting that railroad and coast country. In the spring of 1863, the Fifty-sixth was deployed on picket duty in Gum Swamp, below Kinston; the Federals cut it off and attempted its capture. After some resistance by several companies, they all took to the swamp and escaped, losing a few captured, and field officers ...
— The Southern Soldier Boy - A Thousand Shots for the Confederacy • James Carson Elliott
... pals in the ranks. When we met that night I asked him why he had given up the machine gun work, and I sure did laugh at what he told me. He said: "Aw, I liked the work well enough, and it was fun to see how mad our Sergeant got when he came after us for picket or guard duties; we thought we had a snap sitting down listening to the machine gun officer's lectures, but what do you think he told us yesterday? Why, that in the event of a retirement machine guns were left behind to cover the ...
— Into the Jaws of Death • Jack O'Brien
... the grass was uncut in the yard, and the lack of a veranda, and the tight-closed doors and windows, made the house seem lifeless and lacking the savor of human presence. There was a white-painted picket fence around the yard; and a rambler rose draped these pickets. The buds on the rose were bursting into ...
— All the Brothers Were Valiant • Ben Ames Williams
... have been a very great calamity to our country. It might have turned the scale against us. I have some personal reason to feel indignant at the traitor, besides what arises from the love of country; for my father was on picket guard at West Point, the night in which it was to have been delivered up, and would have been the first man killed. If Arnold had been caught, he would have closed his career on the gallows; but, as it was, he escaped, and a more worthy ...
— Anecdotes for Boys • Harvey Newcomb
... spot and the little picket gate, and the Knight lifts me from the charger's back. 'Here are house and lands, and all are yours, sweet lady, if you have a younger brother. There is treasure hidden in the ground behind the castle, and no one ever finds ...
— Mother Carey's Chickens • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... easy. Whenever you-all hears a dog mournin' an' howlin' like them hound-pups does last night, that's because he smells somethin' he can't locate; an' nacherally he's agitated tharby. Now yereafter, never let your imagination pull its picket-pin that a- way, an' go to cavortin' 'round permiscus—don't go romancin' off on any of them ghost round-ups you're addicted to. Thar's the whole groosome myst'ry laid b'ar; them pups merely smells things they can't locate, ...
— Wolfville Days • Alfred Henry Lewis
... ascend the Ottawa. Here, a last look was taken of splits and seams in the birch keels. With invocations of St. Anne in one breath, and invocations of a personage not mentioned in the cure's "petee cat-ee-cheesm" in the next breath, and imprecations that their "souls might be smashed on the end of a picket fence,"—the voyageur's common oath even to this day,—the boatmen stored goods fore, aft, and athwart till each long canoe sank to the gunwale as it was gently pushed out on the water. A last sign of the cross, and the lithe ...
— Pathfinders of the West • A. C. Laut
... wood to chop or to saw, and no hills to climb, as at home, prevented me from joining the party till the third day. Then Captain Chittenden drove me eight miles in a buggy. About two miles from camp we came to a picket of two or three soldiers, where my big bay was in waiting for me. I mounted him confidently, and, guided by an orderly, took the narrow, winding trail toward camp. Except for an hour's riding the day before with Captain Chittenden, I had not been on a horse's back for nearly fifty years, ...
— Camping with President Roosevelt • John Burroughs
... rustic chairs invite one to rest in the shade; while on the left, the yard is filled with old-fashioned flowers, and a row of flowering shrubs and bushes extends the full width of the lot along the picket fence which parallels the board walk of the tree-bordered street. The fence, like ...
— Helen of the Old House • Harold Bell Wright
... It was lonely and monotonous work, riding back and forth through the darkness, keeping a sharp lookout for wolves or Indians, driving straggling cattle back to the herd, in brief, doing the picket duty of the plains. ...
— Lahoma • John Breckenridge Ellis
... which it left the air being found of minor importance, compared with its capacity of receiving the force of the powder. The point of the cone was found objectionable in practice, and was gradually brought to the curve of the now universally used sugar-loaf missile or flat-ended picket shown in ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various
... that didn't volunteer for a listening picket one night, and I felt so ashamed of them that I decided to ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, May 30, 1917 • Various
... had been inspecting the mules and the horses on picket-line, and silently forming his conclusion. He now returned to Captain ...
— Red Men and White • Owen Wister
... in vain for rows of tents, for the horses at the picket line, for the flags that marked the head-quarters, the commissariat, the field telegraph, the field post-office, the A. S. C., the R. M. A. C., the C. O., and all the other combinations of ...
— Notes of a War Correspondent • Richard Harding Davis
... no objection, Senor Americano, I will let my horse picket awhile, and rest myself; for I have ridden many miles since sunrise, and not a blessed ...
— Inez - A Tale of the Alamo • Augusta J. Evans
... limited number of officers. Work was found for the rank and file in drill and outpost duty sufficient to prevent idle habits. The commissariat was closely watched, and fresh rations more frequently issued, which much improved the health of the army. The system of picket-duty was more thoroughly developed, and so vigilantly carried out as to impress its importance upon, as well as teach its details ...
— The Campaign of Chancellorsville • Theodore A. Dodge
... gratitude. Ahniny looked round to see if anybody was near; she saw nobody, so of course it would do no good to "holler." She saw nobody; but a stout young fellow, leading a yellow dog, muzzled, saw her through a crack in a picket fence, not a great way off the road. Many a year he had been "hangin' 'raoun'" Alminy, and never did he see any encouraging look, or hear any "Behave, naow!" or "Come, naow, a'n't ye 'shamed?" or other forbidding phrase of acquiescence, such as ...
— Elsie Venner • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... they all found themselves at the railroad track about a mile beyond the clubhouse, just at the head of Stender's grade. There they was voting to picket the track for a mile each way when along come the four-thirty-two way freight. It had slowed up some making the grade, and while they watched it what should dart out from a bunch of scrub oak but the active figure of Wilfred Lennox. ...
— Somewhere in Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson
... my wurrd for ut, you Orth'ris there an' Learoyd, an' kape out av the Married Quarters—as I did not. No good iver comes av ut, an' there's always the chance av your bein' found wid your face in the dirt, a long picket in the back av your head, an' your hands playing the fifes on the tread av another man's doorstep. 'Twas so we found O'Hara, he that Rafferty killed six years gone, when he wint to his death wid his hair oiled, whistlin' Larry ...
— Soldiers Three • Rudyard Kipling
... alarm. About eleven o'clock, when the camp was fairly asleep, some one tried to pass a picket half a mile west of us. The guard fired at the intruder, and in an instant the regimental drums sounded the long roll. We started from our beds, with frantic haste buckled on swords, spurs, and pistols, hurried servants ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 09, No. 51, January, 1862 • Various
... said one, "we are out of range; besides, it is a telescope that he has. By——, it is a Rebel, reconnoitring our camp!" There was a manifest sensation here, and one man wondered how he had passed the picket. Another suggested that he might be accompanied by a troop, and a third convulsed the circle by declaring that there were six other Rebels visible in a woods to the left. Mr. Fogg had meantime come up and proffered me a field-glass, through which I certainly made out a person ...
— Campaigns of a Non-Combatant, - and His Romaunt Abroad During the War • George Alfred Townsend
... on a road, like so many roads of France, apparently interminable and straight. On either hand endless ranks of poplars rattled like loose palings of some tremendous picket fence. And yet, long before the road turned, Lanyard, staring astern as he knelt on the rear seat with arms crossed on the folded top, saw the two white eyes of the grey car swing into view and start in pursuit. Quick ...
— Alias The Lone Wolf • Louis Joseph Vance
... magnolia, lilac and apple blossoms. Miss Burch had obviously determined that when she retired from the world of men she would make a thorough job of it and expose herself to no temptation to return—eight miles from the nearest railroad. Just beyond the elms they slowed up alongside a white picket fence enclosing an old-fashioned garden whence came to Mr. Tutt the busy murmur of bees. Then they came to a gate that opened upon a red-tiled, box-bordered, moss-grown walk, leading to a small white house with blue and white striped ...
— By Advice of Counsel • Arthur Train
... Chelford; and she led him again into action, and acquired during the next ten minutes a great deal of curious lore about Spanish muleteers and French prisoners, together with some particulars about the nature of picket duty, and 'that ...
— Wylder's Hand • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... a German oath. He had had his journey for nothing, then. The man's answers were only too likely to be true. It was what he might have expected. But at least he would search the house and make sure. Leaving a picket at the front door and another at the back, the sergeant and he drove the trembling butler in front of them— his shaking candle sending strange, flickering shadows over the old tapestries and the low, ...
— The Green Flag • Arthur Conan Doyle
... no man save an unmitigated tenderfoot would picket a horse on loco, which looks very much like wild peavine and is known the West over as the deadliest weed that grows. A little of it mixed with a diet of grass will drive horses and cattle insane, and there is no authentic case of recovery, that I ...
— Casey Ryan • B. M. Bower
... filed over the side and took their places in the boats waiting alongside, and as they sheered off from the ship in tow of the launch and followed in the wake of the distant picket-boat, the closely packed men suddenly broke ...
— The Long Trick • Lewis Anselm da Costa Ritchie
... me word that mischief would be afoot at the darkening. I put each man to his station, and I had the sense to picket them a little distance from the house. The Englishmen were clumsy conspirators. We watched them arrive, let them pass, and followed silently on their heels. Their business was wreckage, and they fixed a charge of powder ...
— Salute to Adventurers • John Buchan
... plentiful supply of pine logs on the fire, and its cheerful blaze streaming far up into the sky, illuminating the valley far and near, and exhibiting the animals, with well filled bellies, standing contentedly over their picket-pins, I would sit enjoying the genial warmth, building castles in the air. Scarcely ever did I wish to exchange such hours of freedom for all the luxuries of civilized life. Such are the fascinations of the life of the ...
— Christopher Carson • John S. C. Abbott
... so absorbed were we in our occupation—he in his happiness, I in the contemplation thereof—that neither of us noticed the rapid approach of a third party until a whinny of astonishment sounded close beside us, and Van, trailing his lariat and picket-pin after him, came trotting up, took in the situation at a glance, and, unhesitatingly ranging alongside his comrade of coarser mould and thrusting his velvet muzzle into my lap, looked wistfully into my face with his great soft brown eyes ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, November 1885 • Various
... I said, 'I doubt if you will do; I need stout men for picket-line and march— Men that have bone and muscle—men inured To toil and hardships—men, in short, my boy, To march and fight and march and fight again.' A queer expression lit his earnest ...
— The Feast of the Virgins and Other Poems • H. L. Gordon
... descent into a valley, a crossing of a creek, an ascent of a steep hill, and they were at the third gate—between pasture and barnyard. Now they came into view of the house, set upon a slope where a spring bubbled out. The house was white and a white picket fence cut off its lawn from the barnyard. A dog with a deep voice began to bark. They drove up to the front gate and stopped. The dog barked in a frenzy of rage, and they heard his straining and jerking at ...
— Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise • David Graham Phillips
... between the Olsen and the Isham houses, came a shower of stones. Most of these fell short, though one struck a scab on the head. The man was no more than twenty feet away from Saxon. He reeled toward her front picket fence, drawing a revolver. With one hand he brushed the blood from his eyes and with the other he discharged the revolver into the Isham house. A Pinkerton seized his arm to prevent a second shot, and dragged ...
— The Valley of the Moon • Jack London
... he came upon two horses standing asleep, tethered by long ropes to picket-pins. One of these he released and led back to his own. Then he remounted and rode on. Again he circled wide of his destination, and this time struck into the woods that lined the river. His way now lay down the black aisles of tree trunks which he pursued until he came to a spot he was evidently ...
— The Watchers of the Plains - A Tale of the Western Prairies • Ridgewell Cullum
... him! The small blonde head and the delirious little fluffy hat above it shimmered a nod to him. Then his mouth fell unconsciously open, and his eyes grew glassy with the intensity of meaning he put into the silent response he sent across the picket fence and through the interstices of the intervening group. Pressing with his elbow upon the package of cigarettes in his pocket, he murmured, inaudibly, "My Little Sweetheart, always for you!"—a repetition of his vow that, come what might, he would forever remain a loyal smoker ...
— Seventeen - A Tale Of Youth And Summer Time And The Baxter Family Especially William • Booth Tarkington
... light glowed red, And a picket came to the track. 'Enemy holding the line ahead, Three of our mates we have left for dead, Only we two got back.' And far to the north through the still night air, They heard the ...
— Rio Grande's Last Race and Other Verses • Andrew Barton 'Banjo' Paterson
... suggestion, I drove to town by the upper road, passing the Williams place. The old lady has a passion for hollyhocks. A ragged row of them borders the dilapidated picket fence behind which, crowding up to the sociable road, stands the house. As I drive that way it always seems to look out at me like some half-earnest worker, inviting a chat about the weather or the county fair; hence, probably, its good-natured dilapidation. ...
— Adventures In Friendship • David Grayson
... morning of the 11th December, 1792, Louis XVI. was driven slowly from the Temple to the Convention, escorted by cavalry, infantry, and artillery. Paris looked like an armed camp: all the posts were doubled; the muster-roll of the National Guard was called over every hour; a picket of two hundred men watched in the court of each of the right sections; a reserve with cannon was stationed at the Tuileries, and strong detachments patroled the streets and cleared the road of all loiterers. The trees that lined the boulevards, the doors and windows of the ...
— Memoirs Of The Court Of Marie Antoinette, Queen Of France, Complete • Madame Campan
... beleaguered capital. Perhaps Father Abraham might come out and smile benignantly at them for a brave deed well done. Faces flushed and eyes sparkled in the delightful anticipation: and some of the ardent spirits, more eager than the others, loaded their muskets to be ready! But, beyond the Federal picket-post at the stations, no sign of war was soon, nor much sign of hostilities, such as the vivid fancies of the ...
— The Iron Game - A Tale of the War • Henry Francis Keenan
... unable to continue his concentration; he slumped down upon the small of his back, and his brow relaxed to its more comfortable placidity, while his eyes wandered with a new butterfly fluttering over the irises that bordered the iron picket fence at the south side of the yard. "Oh, nothin' much," ...
— Ramsey Milholland • Booth Tarkington
... V.A. sent his picket boat for me and Freddie and I went on board the Triad. At 10 p.m. she started ...
— Gallipoli Diary, Volume 2 • Ian Hamilton
... stars. The shadowy cove was gained; Wolfe's foot has touched the shore; as the armed figures follow and gather at the foot of the ascent, no words are spoken, but what an eloquence in those faces! Upward they climb, afire with zeal; Howe has won a battery; upward! the picket on the height, too late aroused from sleep by the stern miracle, is overpowered. With panting lungs man after man tops the ascent and sees the darkling plain and forms in line with his comrades, while still the stream winds up endlessly from the ...
— The History of the United States from 1492 to 1910, Volume 1 • Julian Hawthorne
... saw an old red brick house with a great white porch across the front and a green lawn all about it. A white picket fence went all around the lawn, and as Grandpa stopped the horses before the gate, three people came out. There was a tall, thin young man who went to the horses' heads, a little girl with flaming red hair who looked about fourteen years old, and a tall, thin old lady with hair as white ...
— Sunny Boy in the Country • Ramy Allison White
... odious to me. I know that much may be said in its favor—that drainage and gas- pipes come easier to such a shape, and that ground can be better economized. Nevertheless, I prefer a street that is forced to twist itself about. I enjoy the narrowness of Temple Bar and the misshapen curvature of Picket Street. The disreputable dinginess of Hollowell Street is dear to me, and I love to thread my way up the Olympic into Covent Garden. Fifth Avenue in New York is as grand as paint and glass can make it; but I would not ...
— Volume 1 • Anthony Trollope
... captain of the musketeers, and placed himself behind his colleague in the ante-chamber. The king could be heard distinctly, speaking aloud to Colbert in the same cabinet where Colbert might have heard, a few days before, the king speaking aloud with M. d'Artagnan. The guards remained as a mounted picket before the principal gate; and the report was quickly spread throughout the city that monsieur le capitaine of the musketeers had been arrested by order of the king. Then these men were seen to be in motion, and as in the good old times of Louis XIII. and M. de Treville, groups were formed, and ...
— The Man in the Iron Mask • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... the evening of the 20th of July, the garrison discovered the boats of the British army ascending the river. On the following morning general Clay, now in command of this post, despatched a picket guard of ten men to a point three hundred yards below the fort, where it was surprised by the Indians, and seven of the party either killed or captured. The combined army of British and Indians, were soon afterwards encamped on the north side of the ...
— Life of Tecumseh, and of His Brother the Prophet - With a Historical Sketch of the Shawanoe Indians • Benjamin Drake
... silence, then Judson continued: "Funny thing happened afterward, though. Jacket had to do his turn at picket duty that night, and he got scared of the dark. We heard ...
— Rainbow's End • Rex Beach
... a third, "it is a picket of the Prince's;" and so it was, but the very fact of his having advanced his outposts so far, showed how he trembled ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... neat white picket gate behind me, and walked slowly toward the porch, a blaze of yellow on the south side of the red brick house drew my attention. It was the Forsythia, the great bush of "yellow bells," of which Horace Bradford had spoken as blooming in advance of any in the neighbourhood, ...
— People of the Whirlpool • Mabel Osgood Wright
... are of a distinct stamp. Take him as he was. Born in France, on the banks of the Rhone near Avignon, he came as a youth to Canada, whence he drifted on the tide of adventure this way and that, until at last he found himself, with a wife, at Post Vincennes, that lonely picket of religion and trade, which was to become the center of civilizing energy for the great Northwestern Territory. M. Roussillon had no children of his own; so his kind heart opened freely to two fatherless and ...
— Alice of Old Vincennes • Maurice Thompson
... the ground and after tying the horse grasped Edwin's shoulders and roughly placed him upon the ground. Again the boy's decision to endeavor to please was strengthened, and when the uncle started toward the pretty brown house just inside the picket fence and repeated the words he had used at the poorhouse, ...
— The Poorhouse Waif and His Divine Teacher • Isabel C. Byrum
... Lower Road. He was now on Derrick's land, division No. I, or, as it was called, the Home ranch, of the great Los Muertos Rancho. The road was better here, the dust laid after the passage of Hooven's watering-cart, and, in a few minutes, he had come to the ranch house itself, with its white picket fence, its few flower beds, and grove of eucalyptus trees. On the lawn at the side of the house, he saw Harran in the act of setting out the automatic sprinkler. In the shade of the house, by the porch, were two or three of the greyhounds, part ...
— The Octopus • Frank Norris
... us would be killed, but no one was shot except the one just mentioned. Out-posts were always stationed two hundred yards or more from camp every night, or in front of our trenches, to prevent a night attack. If the enemy started through our picket lines they were fired on by the pickets, who would then rapidly fall back to our lines of trenches. This out-post duty is very important and very dangerous, especially when the sneaking ...
— A Soldier in the Philippines • Needom N. Freeman
... not sick; but we have ten pans of soda biscuit. They are in the pantry, down cellar, in the woodshed, on the parlor table. For mercy's sake take eight pans out to the chickens or stick 'em on the picket fence. I just loathe soda biscuit; and if any more come I shall throw 'em at the head of the ...
— Hepsey Burke • Frank Noyes Westcott
... ordinary peril he crossed the river on a couple of logs, lashed together, some distance above the spot where the picket had seen Mademoiselle. It was a moonlight night, and he might easily have been picked off by a bullet, if a wary sentry had been alert and malicious. But the truth was that many of these pickets on both sides were in no wise unfriendly to each other, and more than once exchanged ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... Ppt shall have a great Bible. I have put it down in my memlandums(4) just now. And DD shall be repaid her t'other book; but patience, all in good time: you are so hasty, a dog would, etc. So Ppt has neither won nor lost. Why, mun, I play sometimes too at picket, that is picquet, I mean; but very seldom.—Out late? why, 'tis only at Lady Masham's, and that is in our town; but I never come late here from London, except once in rain, when I could not get a coach. We have had very little thunder here; none these two months. Why, pray, madam philosopher, ...
— The Journal to Stella • Jonathan Swift
... understand, though, that every man admitted to it is chosen solely for personal merit, and not through friendship or any influence, political or otherwise, that he may possess. Now you may take that horse to the picket-line, see that it is properly cared for, and report at my ...
— "Forward, March" - A Tale of the Spanish-American War • Kirk Munroe
... ever tie that hoss to a stake pin. He's the best cow hoss I ever slung a leg over. The puncher who broke him an' reached him all he knows was my pard, long ago. An' he's daid. Kid, he'd roll over in his grave if he knowed ol' Cal was tied to a picket pin." ...
— Valley of Wild Horses • Zane Grey
... in the middle distance was a track and cradle similar to the one shown in the first picture. The machine in the cabinet buzzed, and clicked, and made a noise like that of a small boy rattling a stick along a picket fence. A draught from some open window blowing against the linen screen caused the flat, deserted plain to undulate like the waves of the sea. The horizon bobbed up and down, showing first a great expanse of sky, and then the foreground ran up to infinity. The cradle was seen first at the right, ...
— L. P. M. - The End of the Great War • J. Stewart Barney
... and Glen swore, and the men had pulled up the picket stakes, cinched their girths tight and started off in Indian file toward the ...
— The Emigrant Trail • Geraldine Bonner
... for another letter, so pull yourself together. I am here with twenty others of the 7th I.Y. on outlying picket, and although the affair began rather joylessly, we are getting on very well now. By way of parenthesis, it is more than passing strange that whenever I try to write a letter somebody always starts singing. ...
— A Yeoman's Letters - Third Edition • P. T. Ross
... the Quai Voltaire, not a man was visible, except a picket on the Pont Royal. Not knowing but some follower of the House of Orleans, more loyal than usual, might choose to detain me, because I came from America, I passed down one of the first streets, entering the Rue du Bac, at some distance from the bridge. ...
— A Residence in France - With An Excursion Up The Rhine, And A Second Visit To Switzerland • J. Fenimore Cooper
... United States. In response to a request for guidance from the European commander, the Joint Chiefs of Staff informed all overseas commanders that as guests of Allied nations, U.S. servicemen had no right to picket, demonstrate, or otherwise participate in any act designed to "alter the policies, practices, or activities of the local inhabitants who are operating within the framework of their ...
— Integration of the Armed Forces, 1940-1965 • Morris J. MacGregor Jr.
... with contemptuous satisfaction, he saw Burlingame climb the picket-fence at the side ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... relieved that it was no worse, "in that case perhaps we'd better be moving along. Now, it may be that the Slavin crowd have a picket out so as to watch the gym, and see if any of us come around. We must be careful how we crawl up to the door. ...
— The Banner Boy Scouts on a Tour - The Mystery of Rattlesnake Mountain • George A. Warren
... the Bosphorous. Smyrna was again attacked on April 6, 1915. The operations of allied submarines were the next phases of the attack on the Dardanelles to be reported. The E-5 grounded near Kephez Point on April 17, 1915, but before she could be captured by the Turks picket boats from the allied fleet rescued her crew and then destroyed her. It was just two months now since the naval operations had begun at the Dardanelles; it was seen then that all attempts to take them by naval operations alone must fail as ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume III (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various
... set ye a cheer," he invited, and the horseman vaulted to the ground as lightly as though he carried no weight, flinging his bridle rein over a picket of ...
— The Roof Tree • Charles Neville Buck
... sudden life, her hat leaped from her head, flying off to fall about four yards further on. A corporal with a revolver in his right hand came forward from the shooting picket:—"the death-blow." He checked his step before the puddle of blood that was forming around the victim, pressing his lips together and averting his eyes. He then bent over her, raising with the end ...
— Mare Nostrum (Our Sea) - A Novel • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... he could see the patch of garden in the summer sunshine and the white hollyhocks nodding above the picket fence! ...
— The Ragged Edge • Harold MacGrath
... that this district is under martial law, and I have been entrusted, within limits, with jurisdiction. If you and Mr. Clavering have any offences to urge against Grant, I shall be pleased to hear you. In that case you can tell your men to picket their horses, and follow me ...
— The Cattle-Baron's Daughter • Harold Bindloss
... stronghold waxed too strong to be denied. Three of the walls were formed of odd planks scavenged from neighboring woodpiles and fences, eked out, here and there, with a few pantry shelves taken from vacant houses. The fourth was nothing but the picket fence, but as Silvey expressed it when viewing their handiwork, "It doesn't rain much from the north, anyway." Door for the low entrance there was not, and the roof, whose shingles were purchased by an arduously earned half-dollar, became a veritable sieve when the raindrops were ...
— A Son of the City - A Story of Boy Life • Herman Gastrell Seely
... king. The news spread to the camp of the League that the Bearnese was the leader of the skirmishers. Mayenne believed it, and urged the instant advance of the flying squadron and of the whole vanguard. Farnese refused. It was impossible that the king should be there, he said, doing picket duty at the head of a company. It was a clumsy ambush to bring on a general engagement in the open field, and he was not to be drawn out of his trenches into a trap by such a shallow device. A French captain, who by command of Henry had purposely allowed himself to be taken, informed ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... him, Miss Betsy?" he asked, touching his mink-skin cap, as Miss Lavender crawled through the nearest panel of the lofty picket fence. ...
— The Story Of Kennett • Bayard Taylor
... along the Potomac to-night!" Except here and there a stray picket Is shot, as he walks on his beat, to and fro, By a ...
— War Poetry of the South • Various
... preternatural powers. She hurried back to the house, and searched every room in a bewildered sort of fashion, finding nothing. As she came out again, her eye caught sight of a kitchen chair in the corner of the yard. They had climbed the picket fence, then. Yes; Atlantic, while availing himself of its unassuming aid, had left a clue in a fragment of his trousers. She opened the gate, and ran breathlessly along the streets to that Garden of Eden where joy had always hitherto awaited her. Some instinct of fear ...
— Marm Lisa • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... his gallantry on several occasions. A number of the best marksmen in each regiment had been selected to act as sharpshooters. With a party of these he set forth, on a night in November 1854, towards a fort at the bottom of the Windmill ravine, where a picket of the enemy were stationed. Approaching with all the caution of Indian warriors along a difficult and dangerous path, they suddenly sprang on the astonished Russians, who took to flight, leaving their rifles and knapsacks behind. A short time before this, on the 28th of ...
— Our Soldiers - Gallant Deeds of the British Army during Victoria's Reign • W.H.G. Kingston
... for church, then have to wade around in greasy gearings and spoil the best of all your stock of shirts, yet through it all maintain that sweet composure, that gentle calm befitting such events; if you can sound a bugle-note of triumph when steering straight against a picket-fence; if you can keep your temper, tongue, and balance when on your back beneath your car you pose, and, struggling there to fix a balky cog-wheel, you drop a monkey-wrench across your nose; if you can smile as gasoline goes higher, and sing a song because your motor faints—your ...
— More Toasts • Marion Dix Mosher
... most offensive aspects, and of labour in its most insolent assumptions. The "rights" of property, the "right" to strike, the "right" to collective bargaining, the "right" to shut down an essential industry or to "walk out" and then picket the place so that it may not be reopened, the "right" to vote and hold office and do any fool thing you please so long as it is within the law, these are applications of what I mean when I speak of a gross fallacy that has come into being and has stultified our intelligence while ...
— Towards the Great Peace • Ralph Adams Cram
... soon tear up some cloth, and twist a rope not much thicker than string, but strong enough to hold the rope. Then the string can be twisted round the body without fear of detection, and when the time comes lowered, with a stone at the end. We shall be below with a strong rope ladder, made with the picket-ropes and bamboo staves; and once fixed, we shall be up in no time. I leave it to you to decide who are the best linguists. They must of course be asked if they are willing to undertake it. I will speak to the guides. What do you think of ...
— In Times of Peril • G. A. Henty
... Spanish-Dutch fleet at Palermo by Duquesne. But as the "nimbleness" of great-ships increased with the ripening of seamanship and naval architecture, the fireship as a battle weapon became almost negligible, while a fleet at anchor was found to be thoroughly defensible by its own picket-boats. Towards the middle of the eighteenth century indeed the occasions on which the fireship could be used for its special purpose was regarded as highly exceptional, and though the type was retained till the end ...
— Some Principles of Maritime Strategy • Julian Stafford Corbett
... to the platform of a rude wooden station building, there came a sight at which the eyes of both girls danced in eager interest—a row of "A" tents on the open prairie, a long line of horses tethered to the picket ropes, groups of stalwart, sunburned men in rough blue garb, a silken guidon flapping by the tents of the officers. It was one of half a dozen such camps of detached troops they had been passing ever since breakfast ...
— Warrior Gap - A Story of the Sioux Outbreak of '68. • Charles King
... to Miss Mary Picket, of Devonshire, England, whose father and grandfather were both Episcopal clergymen. Three children were born of this marriage; a son, who is now book-keeper for the ...
— Cleveland Past and Present - Its Representative Men, etc. • Maurice Joblin
... deserted. It was a shabby old clapboard house; the architecture of the prosperous farmer of seventy-five years ago. The grounds were spacious but the space was filled with scrub weeds. A picket fence surrounded the weeds with uncertain security. The windows—those that could be seen, that is—were dirty enough to prevent seeing inside with clarity, and what transparency there was left was covered by curtains. The walk ...
— The Fourth R • George Oliver Smith
... marines advance, under shelter of the ravelin, to pick up the wounded, and bear them within the walls for surgical help. They were so near he could see their faces, could hear them speak; yet he durst not make any sign to them when he lay within range of the French picket's fire. ...
— Sylvia's Lovers, Vol. III • Elizabeth Gaskell
... at Harriet's suggestion, I drove to town by the upper road, passing the Williams place. The old lady has a passion for hollyhocks. A ragged row of them borders the dilapidated picket fence behind which, crowding up to the sociable road, stands the house. As I drive that way it always seems to look out at me like some half-earnest worker, inviting a chat about the weather or the county fair; hence, probably, its good-natured ...
— Adventures In Friendship • David Grayson
... known to the officers of the Union fleet that the enemy had a ram up the river, it does not appear that any preparation for defence had been made, or plan of action adopted. Even the commonplace precaution of sending out a picket-boat had not been taken. The attack, therefore, was a surprise, not only in the ordinary sense of the word, but, so far as appears, in finding the officer in command without any formed ideas as to what he would do if she came down. "The whole affair came upon me so suddenly ...
— The Gulf and Inland Waters - The Navy in the Civil War. Volume 3. • A. T. Mahan
... kept in continual alarm. Officers and soldiers were constantly dressed and ready for action. One night, twenty young farmers residing near the camp, resolved to capture the enemy's advance picket-guard. Armed with fowling-pieces, they marched silently through the woods until they were within a few yards of the picket. They then rushed out from the bushes, the captain blowing an old horse-trumpet ...
— A Brief History of the United States • Barnes & Co.
... down hard. If my horse had cut up abominably before he now began to cover himself with a glory of abominableness. I had to jam him through the thickets. He was an uncomfortable horse to ride under the best circumstances; here he was as bad as riding a picket-fence. When he got his head, which was often, he carried me into thickets of manzanita that we could not penetrate, and had to turn back. I found that I was working high up the slope, and bad luck as I was having with my horse, I still appeared ...
— Tales of lonely trails • Zane Grey
... disciplined in its meager and limited proportions. The result was that, through the captain's arrangements, the king, on arriving at Melun, saw himself at the head of both the musketeers and Swiss guards, as well as a picket of the French guards. It might almost have been called a small army. M. Colbert looked at the troops with great delight: he even wished they had been a third more ...
— The Man in the Iron Mask • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... a joke at the expense of some high military or civil dignitary. He was intensely amused by a story told by Secretary Stanton, of a trip made by him and General Foster up the Broad river in North Carolina, in a tug-boat, when, reaching our outposts on the river bank, a Federal picket yelled out, "Who have you got on board that tug?" The severe and dignified answer was, "The Secretary of War and Major-General Foster." Instantly the picket roared back: "We've got Major-Generals enough up here—why don't you bring us up ...
— The Every-day Life of Abraham Lincoln • Francis Fisher Browne
... stream. If the track of a beaver is seen in the mud, he follows the track until he finds a good place to set his steel trap in the run of the animal, hiding it under water and carefully attaching it by a chain to a bush or tree, or to some picket driven into the bank. A float strip is also made fast to the trap, so that should the beaver chance to break away with the trap, this float upon the surface, at the end of a cord a few feet long, would point out the position of ...
— Daniel Boone - The Pioneer of Kentucky • John S. C. Abbott
... the Ottawa. Here, a last look was taken of splits and seams in the birch keels. With invocations of St. Anne in one breath, and invocations of a personage not mentioned in the cure's "petee cat-ee-cheesm" in the next breath, and imprecations that their "souls might be smashed on the end of a picket fence,"—the voyageur's common oath even to this day,—the boatmen stored goods fore, aft, and athwart till each long canoe sank to the gunwale as it was gently pushed out on the water. A last sign of the cross, and the lithe figures leap light as a mountain cat to their ...
— Pathfinders of the West • A. C. Laut
... village of X, and here a funny phenomenon was witnessed. From all sides the shrewd inhabitants of the village came running, scores of them, with bottles of wine. The laughing German soldiers got out and, negotiating over a picket fence, returned with the refreshments while the inhabitants made off with German coin. I saw bottles of champagne change hands here for the sum of 25 cents. In spite of the cheapness of wine, however, the German soldier is well disciplined and does not "go the limit"; I have never ...
— The New York Times Current History: the European War, February, 1915 • Various
... file in drill and outpost duty sufficient to prevent idle habits. The commissariat was closely watched, and fresh rations more frequently issued, which much improved the health of the army. The system of picket-duty was more thoroughly developed, and so vigilantly carried out as to impress its importance upon, as well as teach ...
— The Campaign of Chancellorsville • Theodore A. Dodge
... our long ride home, for the afternoon was wearing away and picket lines are dangerous at dusk. The military situation is without doubt at this moment most grave and critical. We have been at war three weeks. The army that was to have defended Natal, and was indeed expected to repulse the invaders ...
— London to Ladysmith via Pretoria • Winston Spencer Churchill
... grey-backed Seven Sisters, talking over the day's adventures, walked back and forth in twos and threes almost under the feet of the travellers; and shufflings and scufflings in the branches showed that the bats were ready to go out on the night-picket. Swiftly the light gathered itself together, painted for an instant the faces and the cartwheels and the bullocks' horns as red as blood. Then the night fell, changing the touch of the air, drawing a low, even haze, like a gossamer veil of blue, across the face of the country, and bringing ...
— Kim • Rudyard Kipling
... and receive all the contributions levied in his department on big affairs. Anybody would take Giroudeau for a fool at first sight, but he has just enough shrewdness to be an inscrutable old file. He is on picket duty; he sees that we are not pestered with hubbub, beginners wanting a job, or advertisements. No other paper ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac
... got him down, and were beating the life out of him when this little Jap, Hanada, had appeared on the scene. Being also a first year student, he had come in with his ju'jut'su and between them they had won the battle, but not until the Jap had been hung over a picket fence with a jagged wound in his shoulder. It was the scar of that wound Johnny had seen and it was that scar which had told him ...
— Triple Spies • Roy J. Snell
... the sea." Answered he, "Know, that I am one of the several who are stationed in different parts of this island, and we are of the grooms of King Mihrjan[FN10] and under our hand are all his horses. Every month, about new-moon tide we bring hither our best mares which have never been covered, and picket them on the sea-shore and hide ourselves in this place under the ground, so that none may espy us. Presently, the stallions of the sea scent the mares and come up out of the water and seeing no one, ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton
... come to boil under his hands—three gallons at least. The watered mules had to do just so much kicking, so much braying at the young moon; had to be assured just so often, through their queer communications, that the bell-mare was still in the land of picket-line—before nose-bags were fastened. Then, with all the pack rigging in neat piles before the picket-line, and the untouched stores covered and piled, the packers came in with ...
— Fate Knocks at the Door - A Novel • Will Levington Comfort
... Your bounty is so much; your pay will be so much.' The recruit takes the pen in his hand, but stops suddenly in the act of writing his name, and says: 'How far shall I be required to march daily? What kind of a tent shall I have? Must I do picket duty beyond regular hours? To what kind of a climate am I to be sent?' How long do you suppose the officer would keep patience with such a man? How many of these questions would he pretend to answer, even if ...
— Amusement: A Force in Christian Training • Rev. Marvin R. Vincent.
... body, who, crossing at a private ford and surprising the sleepy picket, had raided into the thicket, to retire promptly ...
— Mohun, or, The Last Days of Lee • John Esten Cooke
... glow of the fires gleaming out between the trees, and the numerous dark figures of men, engaged in various tasks, or lying idly about, waiting a call from the cooks to supper. My judgment told me that I must already be safely within the picket lines, able to walk forward unmolested, and mingle with these groups fearlessly. I was yet standing there, uncertain as to which group I should choose to companion with, when the dim figure of a man, unquestionably drunk, came weaving his uncertain way along a ...
— The Devil's Own - A Romance of the Black Hawk War • Randall Parrish
... barricades were erected. Pickets being posted, the remainder of the regiment rested for the night in barns, sheds, or whatever offered shelter. Lively sensations must have coursed through the breasts of those who were now for the first time called to perform the duties of the night picket—a duty always trying, and particularly so now, in that we supposed we were in the near presence of a watchful and enterprising foe, who was advancing ...
— Our campaign around Gettysburg • John Lockwood
... troops, had been stationed here during the winter. They were full regiments, never thinned by exhausting labors, hard campaigns or the trying ordeal of battle. They now bade farewell to their comfortable quarters and picket duty, and joined the Grand Army on a real campaign. Although we had already made a long march, at four o'clock we were again on the road, and before dark we reached Fairfax Station, six miles from Wolf Run Shoals. This was a more cheerful ...
— Three Years in the Sixth Corps • George T. Stevens
... which was in trouble ahead of the Vindictive, describe Captain Carpenter as handling her like a picket boat. The Vindictive was fitted along her port side with a high false deck, from which ran eighteen brows or gangways by which the storming and ...
— Winning a Cause - World War Stories • John Gilbert Thompson and Inez Bigwood
... distinct stamp. Take him as he was. Born in France, on the banks of the Rhone near Avignon, he came as a youth to Canada, whence he drifted on the tide of adventure this way and that, until at last he found himself, with a wife, at Post Vincennes, that lonely picket of religion and trade, which was to become the center of civilizing energy for the great Northwestern Territory. M. Roussillon had no children of his own; so his kind heart opened freely to two fatherless and motherless waifs. These were Alice, now called ...
— Alice of Old Vincennes • Maurice Thompson
... horses to stand steady as soon as the reins were thrown over their heads, this being a training to which all horses in the Cape are subjected. Then they rode back to the town and arranged with a farmer near it to picket their horses in one of his meadows, and for their feed while they remained there. The rest of the day was spent in laying in their supplies. The rifles and ammunition were paid for, pack saddles bought for the four spare horses, a brace of revolvers purchased for each member, haversacks ordered ...
— With Buller in Natal - A Born Leader • G. A. Henty
... the ending of this speech at the time, but had good cause to remember it before midnight. On they pushed past the picket guard and on to a side road which it was said would bring them around to the north side of Maasin. Both were in fairly good humor by this time, and the major told many an anecdote of army life which made Ben laugh outright. The ...
— The Campaign of the Jungle - or, Under Lawton through Luzon • Edward Stratemeyer
... which the colonel had the greatest abhorrence, and on which he never failed to animadvert. The man afterwards appeared much ashamed and concerned for what he had done. But the colonel ordered him to be brought early the next morning to his own quarters, where he had prepared a picket, on which he appointed him a private sort of penance; and while he was put upon it, he discoursed with him seriously and tenderly upon the evils and aggravations of his fault, admonished him of the divine displeasure which he had incurred, and urged him to argue, from ...
— The Life of Col. James Gardiner - Who Was Slain at the Battle of Prestonpans, September 21, 1745 • P. Doddridge
... of Mr. Hand's absurd appearance, he understood what had happened. He saw the whole thing, as he thought, and he relished the joke hugely. Shaking and cackling with laughter, he came over and leaned against the picket fence. His ridicule exasperated Mr. Hand, who suddenly resolved that he did not want Mr. Baizley's assistance. He scowled menacingly at the young ruffian, and then replied to ...
— The Raid From Beausejour; And How The Carter Boys Lifted The Mortgage • Charles G. D. Roberts
... wide smooth faces, loose clothing of sheepskin with the wool outside, with their long coarse hair flying in the wind, and their uncouth shouts in a barbarous tongue, are much like savages. They sing wild chants as they picket their sheep in long double lines at night, and with their savage mastiffs sleep unsheltered under the frosty skies under the lee of their piled-up saddlebags. On three nights I camped beside their caravans, and walked round their orderly lines of sheep and their neat walls of saddlebags; ...
— Among the Tibetans • Isabella L. Bird (Mrs Bishop)
... in the dark with the wind in one's face at a kind of funeral goose step it is very easy to fall asleep. The odds were that we should blunder into some Turkish picket or patrol. Looking back it was hard to realize that the inky masses behind, like a column of following smoke, was an army on the march. The stillness was so profound one heard nothing save the howl of the jackal, the cry of fighting geese, and the ungreased wheel of an ammunition ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume V (of 8) • Francis J. (Francis Joseph) Reynolds, Allen L. (Allen Leon)
... ye fur a drummer, now!" he exclaimed in self-reproach. "Sure, I've often heard of yez. I live over beyant, in the shack wid the picket fince on wan side iv ut. The other sides blowed down in a dust storm a year gone, and I will erect them some day when I have time. But ye can't miss me place, more be token half the front iv the house was painted wanst. They say the paint was stole, but no ...
— Desert Conquest - or, Precious Waters • A. M. Chisholm
... unarmed. Immediately beyond is that river over which we passed in our scamper with Lady Jersey; it was all solitary. Three hundred yards beyond is a second ford; and there - I came face to face with war. Under the trees on the further bank sat a picket of seven men with Winchesters; their faces bright, their eyes ardent. As we came up, they did not speak or move; only their eyes followed us. The horses drank, and we passed the ford. 'Talofa!' I said, and the commandant of the picket said 'Talofa'; and then, ...
— Vailima Letters • Robert Louis Stevenson
... mostly green pasture, so that they kept along pretty easily, seeming just in their glory, all this being new work to them. After some little firing from the cannon the enemy retreated into the town, which was well fortified. We placed an outlying picket of some three hundred men to watch the enemy's manoeuvres, while the body of our army encamped in the rear in a line stretching from sea to sea, so that the town standing upon a projecting piece of land, all communication from the mainland was cut off. The country around meanwhile ...
— The Autobiography of Sergeant William Lawrence - A Hero of the Peninsular and Waterloo Campaigns • William Lawrence
... soldiers were sent out from Fort Ridgely in 1862 to bury those in the country around who had been massacred by the Indians. I was acting as picket out of Fort Ridgely and was first to hear the firing sixteen miles distant at Birch Coolie. It was the Indians attacking the burial party. I notified those at the fort and a party was sent out for relief. As they neared Birch Coolie they found they were outnumbered by the savages and Lieut. ...
— Old Rail Fence Corners - The A. B. C's. of Minnesota History • Various
... it was the widest, featheriest lid I ever saw in captivity, and it's balanced on more hair puffs than you could put in a barrel. But what added the swell, artistic touch was the collar. It's a chin supporter and ear embracer. I thought I'd seen high ones, but this twelve-inch picket fence around Maizie's neck was the loftiest choker I ever saw anyone survive. To watch her wear it gave you the same sensations as bein' a witness at a hanging. How she could do it and keep on breathin', I couldn't make out; but it don't seem ...
— Odd Numbers - Being Further Chronicles of Shorty McCabe • Sewell Ford
... solid mahogany railing, had not noses sensitive to this peculiar, very common blending of odors. Judith, in fact, was entirely unconscious even of the more obvious of the two. She was as insensitive to all about her as to the too-abundant pictures of the morning. She might have been leaning over a picket fence. "I wouldn't give in to Her!" she said to Arnold, staring squarely ...
— The Bent Twig • Dorothy Canfield
... bah! Blackleg! Have you any pluck? Backing up the Masters when the Men have struck! You're for the Master, we're for the Man! "Picket" you, and "Boycott" you; that is ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99, September 6, 1890 • Various
... troops on the march. On the other hand, the women could not say enough in praise of the soldiers, and their behaviour towards their sex. Whenever a camp was established close to the homestead, the officers have always had a picket placed round the house for the object of preventing all pilfering, and the women, rich or poor, have everywhere ...
— The War in South Africa - Its Cause and Conduct • Arthur Conan Doyle
... idle. There was an excellent chance to send a force out of the Palace Gate near the Hotel Dieu, by which the assailants had passed, and to attack them in the rear. For this duty Colonel Caldwell was told off and he took with him Nairne and his picket of about thirty men. The force plodded through the deep snow in the tracks of the enemy who, about daybreak, were astonished to find themselves shut in by British forces at each end of the Sault au Matelot. A hand ...
— A Canadian Manor and Its Seigneurs - The Story of a Hundred Years, 1761-1861 • George M. Wrong
... compressed grimly, parted in a gleaming smile. He made an exclamation of pleasure which sounded rather like a boy running along a picket fence with a stick. ...
— Ullr Uprising • Henry Beam Piper
... house somewhat moodily, but afternoon sunshine enlivened her; and, opening the picket gate, she stepped forth with a fair renewal of her chosen manner toward the public, though just at that moment no public was in sight. Miss Atwater's underlip resumed the position for which her mother had predicted that ...
— Gentle Julia • Booth Tarkington
... citation being defied, the bombardment commenced the next day. The fleet anchored in front of a powder-magazine, took possession of the churches of Malate, Ermita, San Juan de Bagumbayan, and Santiago. Two picket-guards made an unsuccessful sortie against them. The whole force in Manila, at the time, was the King's regiment, which mustered about 600 men and 80 pieces of artillery. The British forces consisted of 1,500 European troops (one regiment of infantry and two companies of artillery), ...
— The Philippine Islands • John Foreman
... gate post—they had a picket fence. I seen some folks coming to our house. I run in the house and says, 'Miss Mai Liza, the Yankees coming here!' She told her husband to get in the bed. He says, 'Oh God, what she know bout Yankees?' Miss Mai Liza say, 'I don't know; she's one of em, I ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States - Volume II. Arkansas Narratives. Part I • Work Projects Administration
... the undergrowth of shrubbery, and perchance hers might be one of them. Accepting the possibility I found the one I sought, which could not fail to be recognized, for strange to say, time had dealt so gently that the slender picket fence was undecayed by his "effacing; lingers," and the name painted upon the little wooden head-board was distinctly visible. Grouped in quadrangular growth were four little trees, gracefully arching in a bowery drapery over the grave, as if nature ...
— The World As I Have Found It - Sequel to Incidents in the Life of a Blind Girl • Mary L. Day Arms
... drove up two carriages and a large automobile, and out of the automobile climbed a well-dressed woman who took a bundle of the pamphlets from the girl picket and began passing them about among the people. Two policemen who stood in front of the crowd took off their helmets and accompanied her. The crowd cheered. Frank came hurrying across the street to where Sam stood in ...
— Windy McPherson's Son • Sherwood Anderson
... those four strenuous years, heroic qualities—enterprise, resolution, valour, self-control, exercise of judgment amid dangers, endurance and fidelity in disaster—were plentifully developed throughout both parties of the then divided American people. The lonely picket-duty, the toilsome march, the endless duties of the soldier, were a constant drain upon enduring faithfulness, harder to bear, often, than the crashing excitement of the battle, while the deadly suffering of camp and hospital were at times easily ...
— The Battle of Principles - A Study of the Heroism and Eloquence of the Anti-Slavery Conflict • Newell Dwight Hillis
... a corporal, and fourteen men of the Twelfth Regiment of the Line had been sent out to occupy a house on the main highway. They would be at least a half of a mile in advance of any other picket of their own people. Sergeant Morton was deeply angry at being sent on this duty. He said that he was over-worked. There were at least two sergeants, he claimed furiously, whose turn it should have been to go on this arduous mission. He was treated unfairly; ...
— Men, Women, and Boats • Stephen Crane
... us that bein' housed up like to 'a' drove her crazy at first, an' they was so tarnation fussy that she felt like a hobbled pony in a stampede. They wouldn't even let her picket her ponies out in what they call the campus, which she said was just drippin' fat with rich grass, an' nary a hoof to graze it. Why, they even had fool notions about havin' certain hours about goin' to bed, an' even when you had to put your ...
— Happy Hawkins • Robert Alexander Wason
... a heavy hand suddenly smites EDWIN in the back, almost snapping his head off, and there stands spectrally between them Mr. BUMSTEAD, who has but recently found his way out of the back-yard in Gospeler's Gulch, by removing at least two yards of picket fence from the wrong place, and wears upon his head a gingham sun-bonnet, which, in his hurried departure through the hall of the Gospeler's house, he has mistaken for his own hat. Sustaining himself against the fierce evening breeze by holding firmly to both shoulders ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 14, July 2, 1870 • Various
... ass, sir, too," said Jack Mount under his breath. "And I think it must be so, for there be five score of Colonel Sheldon's dragoons in yonder barns, drawing at jack-straws or conning their thumbs—and not a vidette out—not so much as a militia picket, save for the minute men which Colonel Thomas and Major Lockwood have sent ...
— The Hidden Children • Robert W. Chambers
... a meditative cigar alone, while pacing the old Cantonal high road before the Faucon. "I think I will remain on picket here," he mused. "This fiddler fellow, Wieniawski, must not meet her. She must be led on to leave here at once. Constitution, nerve, aplomb; she has them all. She should have been born a man. What a soldier! One of nature's mistakes—man's mental organization, ...
— A Fascinating Traitor • Richard Henry Savage
... jesting, they went verse by verse through that immortal ode in which Horace and Lydia extol with such grace the charms of their new loves, and end by adding a postscript to their old ones. As they reached the corner of the street a rather strong picket of soldiers suddenly issued ...
— Bohemians of the Latin Quarter • Henry Murger
... A picket frozen on duty— A mother starved for her brood— Socrates drinking the hemlock, And Jesus on the rood. And millions who, humble and nameless, The straight hard pathway trod— Some call it Consecration, And others call it God. ...
— A Master's Degree • Margaret Hill McCarter
... the Fort, he volunteered as an aid to Gen. Bragg and passed the picket line and seeing a box of crackers on the side of the hill resigned the honorary position on the Staff and began foraging. Just as he had filled his haversack, he was halted by a sentinel and told that it was against Gen. Bragg's orders, whereupon he desisted, but ...
— A History of Lumsden's Battery, C.S.A. • George Little
... He had never been so tired that he would not go to the spring up on the side of "Old Round Top" for a pail of water, rather than drink from this well. Back of the house, but within the enclosure formed by the picket fence, was the wood and tool shed—while just beyond stood the old- fashioned bank barn and other farm buildings. There was a short steep hill just beyond the barn, down which the lane wound to a mill pond below. An old sawmill with an undershot water-wheel ...
— Hidden Treasure • John Thomas Simpson
... grounds about it, where they can graze—hens eat grass—and scratch, and enjoy themselves to their heart's content, in all seasons, when the ground is open and they can scratch into, or range over its surface. Some people—indeed, a good many people—picket in their gardens, to keep hens out; but we prefer an enclosure to keep the hens in, at all seasons when they are troublesome, which, after all, is only during short seasons of the year, when seeds are planted, or sown, and grain and vegetables are ripening. Otherwise, ...
— Rural Architecture - Being a Complete Description of Farm Houses, Cottages, and Out Buildings • Lewis Falley Allen
... corner where Nickerson's Lane enters the main road, he saw something which caused him to pause, alter his battle-mad walk to a slower one, then to a saunter, and finally to a halt altogether. This something was a toy windmill fastened to a white picket fence and clattering cheerfully as its arms spun in the brisk, pleasant ...
— Shavings • Joseph C. Lincoln
... all the animals, having been well fed on the abundant grass, were driven within the enclosure for the night and picketed. A small steel-shod picket was driven firmly into the ground, to which the animal was fastened by a rope about twenty feet long. The carts were regularly arranged for defending the camp. A guard was mounted at eight o'clock, ...
— Christopher Carson • John S. C. Abbott
... arrived at Trenton about the same time, having marched so silently that the enemy was unaware of their approach till they were but a short distance from the picket guards on ...
— Elsie's Vacation and After Events • Martha Finley
... E-15 runs ashore in the Dardanelles, the crew being captured by Turks; two British picket boats, under a heavy fire, then torpedo and destroy the stranded vessel to prevent her being used ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 3, June, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... he cried eagerly, raising his hands to heaven. "There! The picket is in that house yonder, and the sentry ...
— For Love of Country - A Story of Land and Sea in the Days of the Revolution • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... that pup set off at full speed, and every time he struck the ground he let off a war-whoop. Away went the Coyote and it looked like a good race to us, and to the Picket-pin Ground-squirrels that sat up high on their mounds to rejoice in the spectacle of these, their enemies, ...
— Wild Animals at Home • Ernest Thompson Seton
... attacked on April 6, 1915. The operations of allied submarines were the next phases of the attack on the Dardanelles to be reported. The E-5 grounded near Kephez Point on April 17, 1915, but before she could be captured by the Turks picket boats from the allied fleet rescued her crew and then destroyed her. It was just two months now since the naval operations had begun at the Dardanelles; it was seen then that all attempts to take them by naval operations alone must fail as did the ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume V (of 12) - Neuve Chapelle, Battle of Ypres, Przemysl, Mazurian Lakes • Francis J. Reynolds, Allen L. Churchill, and Francis Trevelyan
... not yet in the Confederate service, he at once commenced the active and daring work which laid the foundation of his celebrity and brought him at once into general notice. The cavalry which had been stationed there previously to his coming, had confined themselves to doing picket duty, and had never sought or been required to do other service. This monotonous work, altogether devoid of excitement, did not accord with his nature, which demanded the stimulus of adventure; he, moreover, intuitively understood ...
— History of Morgan's Cavalry • Basil W. Duke
... one side to pause at a cabin nestling among fruit trees, bowered beneath vines, bright with the most vivid of the commoner flowers. They were crazily picturesque with their rough stone chimneys, their roofs of shakes, their broad low verandahs, and their split-picket fences. On these verandahs sat patriarchal-looking men with sweeping white beards, who smoked pipes and gazed across with dim eyes toward the distant blue mountains. When Welton, casually and by the way, mentioned topographical names, Bob realized to what placid ...
— The Rules of the Game • Stewart Edward White
... miles of picket fences there was nothing to keep the animals from wandering up into the highlands where the colonists did not dare to venture. In spite of the handicaps all classes of domestic animals increased in numbers when not slaughtered for food. This ...
— Agriculture in Virginia, 1607-1699 • Lyman Carrier
... forest area called "the Wilderness." Jackson rode round him, cutting his communications and so forcing him to fight, and Lee beat him soundly at Chancellorsville. The battle was, however, won at a heavy cost to the Confederacy, for towards the end of the day the mistake of a picket caused the death by a Southern bullet of the most brilliant, if not the greatest, of Southern captains. As to what that loss meant we have the testimony of his chief and comrade-in-arms. "If I had had Jackson with me," said Lee after Gettysburg, "I should have won a complete ...
— A History of the United States • Cecil Chesterton
... I've read of horses and dogs drowning themselves. This horse had been clipped, and his tail was docked, and he was turned out to graze. The flies stung him till he was nearly crazy. He ran up to a picket fence, and sprang up on the sharp spikes. There he hung, making no effort to get down. Some men saw him, and they said it was ...
— Beautiful Joe - An Autobiography of a Dog • by Marshall Saunders
... Sigel's division to aid a regiment of cavalry and a flying battery that had been quickly sent to retard the enemy's centre and give Carr's division time to deploy. Osterhaus met the cavalry returning, and threw his detachment against the advancing line. The picket posted at Elkhorn tavern, where Carr was to deploy, was attacked and driven back, and Carr's division had to go into line under fire. Osterhaus found himself opposed to the corps of McCulloch and McIntosh, and was about being overwhelmed when ...
— From Fort Henry to Corinth • Manning Ferguson Force
... a good miller," said Helen, again; "and he does not neglect his property. He is not miserly in that way. There isn't a picket off the fence, or a hinge loose anywhere. He isn't at all what you consider a miser must be and look like; yet he is always hoarding money and never spends any. But indeed I do not tell you this to trouble you, Ruthie. I want you to ...
— Ruth Fielding of the Red Mill • Alice B. Emerson
... toward the roan's picket rope. As his fingers closed on that he thought fast. Just as the Mattocks and the Forbeses were Union, the Barretts were, or had been, Southern in sympathy. Most of Kentucky was divided that way now. But what might have been true two years ago ...
— Ride Proud, Rebel! • Andre Alice Norton
... me I would picket him out somewhere in a hostile Indian country, and then try to nerve myself up ...
— Remarks • Bill Nye
... with green blinds and a tiny front porch, stood beside the road, its back to the lake. There were five acres or so of ground around the house, set off by a white picket fence. At the gate a pine tree stood. There were oaks and lilac bushes in the front yard. Through the leaves, Lydia saw the blue ...
— Lydia of the Pines • Honore Willsie Morrow
... dot upon the map, and a housefly's filmy wing— They said 'twas Dearborn's picket-flag, when Wilderness ...
— When Wilderness Was King - A Tale of the Illinois Country • Randall Parrish
... pile into a closet, and, with a sudden wrench of his arms, whirled the instrument itself close against the wall. Then some fire-arms, saddles, and artillery trappings were hidden away in dark corners, and a lay figure, clothed in fatigue cap and blue overcoat, and which had done duty as "a picket" during the day, was wheeled around with its face to the wall, where it stood guard over Fred's famous picture ofb"The Last Gun at Appomattox." His final touches were bestowed on the grate-fire and the coal-scuttle, both of which were replenished ...
— The Fortunes of Oliver Horn • F. Hopkinson Smith
... moment's time. Arrest all his friends and associates. Look for a man in a rubber coat. I saw him fire. There's a boy, too," he added, after a moment's pause, "about fourteen years old. He was hiding at the corner. I think he must have been their picket; at ...
— The Net • Rex Beach
... his rifle free and stood off his man for a moment, shouting all the time to his leader that the Indians were trying to get the horses. Lewis saw the thieves tugging at the picket-ropes, and hastened into the fray, cursing himself for his own credulity. A giant Blackfoot engaged him, bull-hide shield advanced, battle-ax whirling; but wresting himself free, Lewis fired point-blank into his body, and another Indian ...
— The Magnificent Adventure - Being the Story of the World's Greatest Exploration and - the Romance of a Very Gallant Gentleman • Emerson Hough
... went slopping through the mud and brush into the dark, picking out the best way to retreat, plodding miserably back to camp when the alarm was over. Once they fired a volley at a row of mullen stalks, waving on the brow of a hill, and once a picket shot at his own horse that had got loose and had wandered toward him ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... fairgrounds in the time that Lanier describes as "the gay days of mandolin and guitar and moonlight sails on the James River." Life there seems not to have been "all beer and skittles," or the poetic substitutes therefor, for he goes on to say that their principal duties were to picket the beach, their "pleasures and sweet rewards of toil consisting in ague which played dice with our bones, and blue mass pills that played the deuce with ...
— Literary Hearthstones of Dixie • La Salle Corbell Pickett
... musket at them turned and ran. Thinking to capture him the gentlemen spurred their horses forward at a gallop. Other shots were fired around them, indicating clearly that they had come upon the picket line of the enemy. But their blood was up and they rode on pell-mell after the fugitive sentry. There was a turn in the road a short distance ahead. As they dashed around it, now close behind the flying man, they found themselves in the ...
— The Duke of Stockbridge • Edward Bellamy
... As regards the firing into the guerilla ball-room, it took place near Murfreesboro', on the night of Feb. 10 or 11, 1865; and on the next day, Mr. Leland was at a house where one of the wounded lay. On the same night a Federal picket was shot dead near Lavergne; and the next night a detachment of cavalry was sent off from General Van Cleve's quarters, the officer in command coming in while the author was talking with the general, for final orders. They rode twenty miles that night, attacked a body ...
— The Breitmann Ballads • Charles G. Leland
... interest me, and I crossed a narrow space of grass to where a broken picket fence was visible amid a fringe of weeds. No description can fitly picture the gloomy desolation surrounding that ramshackle place. It got upon the nerves, the decay, the neglect apparent on every side. The very silence seemed depressing. Evidently this fence, now a mere ...
— Gordon Craig - Soldier of Fortune • Randall Parrish
... two that didn't volunteer for a listening picket one night, and I felt so ashamed of them that I decided ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, May 30, 1917 • Various
... the camp, Chris found all the troops under arms. They had been roused before the Boer fire began, as a picket to the east of Dundee had been attacked and driven in. It was not, however, supposed that the Boers were in force until their guns opened fire. All lights were out in the camp, and the enemy's shot had gone wide. It was by no means clear why the Boers ...
— With Buller in Natal - A Born Leader • G. A. Henty
... dimples crept away for ever from the lips that quivered like a child's; he turned from her, but she had looked once into his face as the Law Giver must have looked at the land of Canaan outspread at his feet. She watched him go down the long path and through the picket gate, she watched the big yellowish dog that had waited for him lumber up on to its feet—stretch—then follow him. She was conscious of but two things, the vengeful lie in her soul, and a little space on her arm that his ...
— The Moccasin Maker • E. Pauline Johnson
... Blangy was that of a picket sentinel. He watched Les Aigues, and watched it well. The police have no spies comparable to those that ...
— Sons of the Soil • Honore de Balzac
... doesn't count, is the Burrage Ranch. In the white mansions among the fruit trees the Burrage Ranch doesn't count much either. It is old and small, fifty acres, a postage stamp of a ranch. There is no avenue to the house, which is close to the road behind a picket fence, and instead of encircling balconies and striped awnings, it has one small porch with a sagging top, over which climbs a rose that stretches long festoons to the gable. In its yard grow two majestic live oaks, hoary giants with silvered limbs reaching out in ...
— Treasure and Trouble Therewith - A Tale of California • Geraldine Bonner
... at your service." He smiled with what evidently was intended to be warmth, again showing those rows of teeth like picket fences. "I suppose we're all here on the same mission: to find a solution for the mystery of the world's paralysis." The apparition lit a long and bloated cigarette and through the acrid smoke surveyed ...
— The End of Time • Wallace West
... I didn't like this change, that Mr. Hopewell had kinder inoculated me with other guess views on these matters, so he began to throw up bankments and to picket in the ground, all round ...
— The Attache - or, Sam Slick in England, Complete • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... they are marching on In a wider field than ours; Those bright battalions still fulfil The scheme of the heavenly powers; And high brave thoughts float down to us, The echoes of that far fight, Like the flash of a distant picket's gun Through the ...
— Pike County Ballads and Other Poems • John Hay
... hill, Sing Sing prison presents the appearance of a huge, square pen, covering many acres of land, and enclosed by a high, brick wall on the three land sides, and a tall, iron picket fence on the side adjoining ...
— Born Again • Alfred Lawson
... and safe havens for the mariner. The soil, too, is of extraordinary fertility; and the climate, though humid, deals kindly with the Englishman's constitution. Nor is this all; for, advanced from it, north and south, like picket stations, are Norfolk Island, and the Auckland group, both of which have good harbours. And it requires no prophet's eye to see that, when England needs posts farther eastward, she will find them among the green coral islets ...
— The Ontario Readers: Fourth Book • Various
... conceive how they contrived to hold so many thousand servants against their wills, unless the patriarch and his wife took turns in performing the Hibernian exploit of surrounding them! The neighboring tribes, instead of constituting a picket guard to hem in his servants, would have been far more likely to sweep them and him into captivity, as they did Lot and his household. Besides, Abraham had neither "Constitution," nor "compact," nor ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... flash of a picket's gun on the shore of the river and the quick answer from the other side brought his dreaming to a sudden stop before the sterner fact of ...
— The Southerner - A Romance of the Real Lincoln • Thomas Dixon
... without the loss of a single man; and General Howe was suffered to remain in command after this feat, and to complete his glories of Long Island and Breed's Hill, at Philadelphia! A friend, to be sure, crossed in the night to say the enemy's army was being ferried over, but he fell upon a picket of Germans: they could not understand him: their commander was boozing or asleep. In the morning, when the spy was brought to some one who could comprehend the American language, the whole Continental force had crossed the East River, and the empire over thirteen colonies ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray
... of a brother's blood had now Brought their innumerous legions to the strife, And formed them in magnificent array: The picket guards were almost thrown together, When Tur sprung forward, and with sharp reproach, And haughty gesture, thus addressed Kabad: "Ask this new king, this Minuchihr, since Heaven To Irij gave a daughter, who on him Bestowed the mail, the battle-axe, ...
— Persian Literature, Volume 1,Comprising The Shah Nameh, The - Rubaiyat, The Divan, and The Gulistan • Anonymous
... Twenty-fifth, Thirty-fifth and Forty-ninth Regiments N. C. Troops. For more than a year the Fifty-sixth operated on the line from Petersburg, Va., to Wilmington, N. C., in protecting that railroad and coast country. In the spring of 1863, the Fifty-sixth was deployed on picket duty in Gum Swamp, below Kinston; the Federals cut it off and attempted its capture. After some resistance by several companies, they all took to the swamp and escaped, losing a few captured, and field officers losing their horses. Company F was detached, ...
— The Southern Soldier Boy - A Thousand Shots for the Confederacy • James Carson Elliott
... housewife plucked a nosegay for us. Her white columbines she calls 'granny's mutches'; and indeed they are not unlike those fresh white caps. Dear Robbie Burns, ten inches high in plaster, stands in the sunny window in a tiny box of blossoming plants surrounded by a miniature green picket fence. Outside, looming white among the gillyflowers, is Sir Walter, and near him is still another and a larger bust on a cracked pedestal a foot high, perhaps. We did not recognise the head at once, and asked the little woman ...
— Penelope's Experiences in Scotland • Kate Douglas Wiggin
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