"Flail" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... in 1505, when—Queen Isabella being dead—King Ferdinand discovered that Gonzalo de Cordoba was playing him false in Naples. The Spanish king conceived a plan—according to the chronicles of Zurita—to employ Cesare as a flail for the punishment of the Great Captain. He proposed to liberate the duke, set him at the head of an army, and loose him upon Naples, trusting to the formidable alliance of Cesare's military talents with his hatred of Gonzalo—who had betrayed him—to work the will of his ...
— The Life of Cesare Borgia • Raphael Sabatini
... idle and lurk, For this nobleman saw him go daily to work, With his flail and his bag, and his bottle of beer, As cheerful as those ...
— Ancient Poems, Ballads and Songs of England • Robert Bell
... cows and geese, the boy was in due course promoted to the rank of team-leader, and was also set to assist his father in the threshing barn. "John," his father used to say, "was weak but willing," and the good man made his son a flail proportioned to his strength. Exposure in the ill-drained fields round Helpstone brought on an attack of tertiary ague, from which the boy had scarcely rallied when he was again sent into the fields. Favourable weather having set in, he recovered his health, and ...
— Life and Remains of John Clare - "The Northamptonshire Peasant Poet" • J. L. Cherry
... the laying of the foundation stone I had the pleasure of witnessing a rough-and-tumble fight between two of the most powerful men in Coolgardie. The excitement was intense as one seized his antagonist, and, using him as a flail, proceeded to clear the room with him; he retaliated by overpowering the other man, and finally breaking his leg as they fell heavily together out through the door on to the hard street beyond. How much ill-feeling this little incident ...
— Spinifex and Sand - Five Years' Pioneering and Exploration in Western Australia • David W Carnegie
... sinuous, flexile gliding, resembled somewhat a serpent's crawl. And now he neither roared nor growled. The lolling tongue dragged the sand; the beating of the tail was like pounding with a flail; the mane all erect trebly enlarged the head; and the eyes were like live coals in a burning bush. The people hushed. Nilo stood firm; thunder could as easily have diverted a statue; and behind him, not less steadfast and watchful, ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 2 • Lew. Wallace
... militia threw away their arms, and fled panic-struck in all directions, at the first sight of their terrible foe. Two Spaniards lost their lives and two thousand Netherlanders. It was natural that these consummate warriors should despise such easily slaughtered victims. A single stroke of the iron flail, and the chaff was scattered to the four winds; a single sweep of the disciplined scythe, and countless acres were in an instant mown. Nevertheless, although beaten constantly, the Netherlanders were not conquered. Holland and Zealand had read the foe a lesson which ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... toss, conveys nothing at all. It was the sort of fall you dream of—almost too good to be true. And my uniform-case, of which he never let go, described a very beautiful parabola, and then came down upon the weigh-bridge, as the swiple of an uplifted flail comes down upon grain.... ...
— Jonah and Co. • Dornford Yates
... banner of her sway; And Monagas, with fearful clasp, Plucks down the chief that stops the way; The reckless Urdaneta rides, Where rives the earth the iron hail; Nor long the Spanish foeman bides, The stroke of old Zaraza's flail. ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 2 August 1848 • Various
... lunge at me with his fist. But the sword of Gideon missed its aim, and skinned its knuckles on the stone wall. I saw now to my great comfort that the man was beside himself with fury, and was swinging his arms wildly like a flail. Three or four times I avoided his rushes, noting with satisfaction that one of the countrymen had got hold of the shrieking Isobel. Then my chance came, for as he lunged I struck from the side with all my force on his jaw. I am left-handed, and the blow was unlocked for. He staggered ...
— Salute to Adventurers • John Buchan
... puzzle-headedness. The young man's farmer life qualified him to be highly popular at the Holt. He was curious about English husbandry, talked to the labourers, and tried their tools with no unpractised hand, even the flail which Honor's hatred of steam still kept as the winter's employment in the barn; he appreciated the bullocks, criticized the sheep, and admired the pigs, till the farming men agreed 'there had not been such an one about the place ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... the farm the historical Jock Howison asked and got from our gay James the Fifth, "the gudeman o' Ballengiech," as a reward for the services of his flail, when the King had the worst of it at Cramond Brig with the gypsies. The farm is unchanged in size from that time, and still in the unbroken line of the ready and victorious thrasher. Braehead is ...
— Stories of Childhood • Various
... little old roan, with a bright eye and legs like gate-posts, but he never fell down with us boys, for all that. If we fell off he stopped still and began to feed, so that he suited us all to pieces. We soon got sharp enough to flail him along with a quince stick, and we used to bring up the milkers, I expect, a good deal faster than was good for them. After a bit we could milk, leg-rope, and bail up for ourselves, and help dad brand the calves, which began to come pretty thick. There ...
— Robbery Under Arms • Thomas Alexander Browne, AKA Rolf Boldrewood
... his distressed fellow-creatures, including noblemen, squires, yeomanry, farmers, and all yearly subscribers in the New Proprietary Agricultural Anti-Innovating-Shire Weekly Gazette. At the head of his newspaper Uncle Jack caused to be engraved a crown, supported by a flail and a crook, with the motto, "Pro rege et grege." And that was the way in which Uncle Jack printed his pats ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... the eerie side of an auld thorn, in the dreary glen through which the herd-callan maun bicker in his gloamin route frae the fauld!—Be thou a brownie, set, at dead of night, to thy task by the blazing ingle, or in the solitary barn, where the repercussions of thy iron flail half affright thyself, as thou performest the work of twenty of the sons of men, ere the cock-crowing summon thee to thy ample cog of substantial brose. Be thou a kelpie, haunting the ford or ferry, in the starless night, mixing thy laughing yell with the howling of the storm and the roaring of ...
— The Letters of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... brief work; to them one would apply the besom, try to sweep them, with some rapidity into the dust-bin, and well out of one's road, I should rather say. Fill your thrashing-floor with docks, ragweeds, mugworths, and ply your flail upon them,—that is not the method to obtain sacks of wheat. Away, you; begone swiftly, ye regiments of the line: in the name of God and of His poor struggling servants, sore put to it to live in these bad days, I mean to rid myself of you with some degree of brevity. ...
— Latter-Day Pamphlets • Thomas Carlyle
... would get control of those about her if she moved. Sometimes there is a development of this symptom from others which seem to be ideational in their origin. For instance, Charles O. began making flail-like movements. These passed over into slow circular motions which finally subsided into the maintenance of ...
— Benign Stupors - A Study of a New Manic-Depressive Reaction Type • August Hoch
... after me!" cried Andrew, darting through the doorway, for he felt that without more space to fight he would be easily overpowered. The dragoons, recovering, darted after him. The farmer caught up a huge flail with which he was wont to thresh out his oats. It fell on the headpiece of the first trooper, causing it to ring like an anvil, and stretching its owner on the ground. The second trooper fared no better, but the head of the flail broke into splinters on his iron cap, and left ...
— Hunted and Harried • R.M. Ballantyne
... ground, and enclosing it in boards 14 inches wide, set on edge. Into this bed the partially dried peat is thrown, and, as it cracks on the surface by drying, it is compressed by blows with a heavy mallet or flail, or by treading it with flat boards, attached to the feet, somewhat like snow shoes. By this treatment the mass is reduced to a continuous sheet of less than one-half its first thickness, and becomes so firm, that a man's step gives ...
— Peat and its Uses as Fertilizer and Fuel • Samuel William Johnson
... saw his oaken flail Take bud, and bloom before his eyes; From frozen pools he saw the pale, Sweet ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... not go alone, for his men leapt after him like hounds. But he fought his way in the lead with a clubbed rifle, and stood over Kagig's body working the weapon like a flail. That was all I saw of that encounter, for Mahmoud decided to attempt escape by the upper way again, and it was I who captured him. I landed on him through the darkness with my clenched fist under the low hung angle of his jaw and, seizing his leg, ...
— The Eye of Zeitoon • Talbot Mundy
... with a boyish smile to Fannie, who was rising to move to a lounge, "it's a mighty old——" He was going to say "debt," but before Ravenel could more than catch his breath or John start half a step forward she had struck the lounge like a flail. ...
— John March, Southerner • George W. Cable
... yo'd be mad as soin as yo heard, Abaat that oud kaa at belonged to Blue Beard, For I like as I saw yo just hod of its tail, And braying it rump wi th' end o' yor flail; For I wisht monny a time at yo'd been here, For swallowing th' plan yo'd a geen ...
— Th' History o' Haworth Railway - fra' th' beginnin' to th' end, wi' an ackaant o' th' oppnin' serrimony • Bill o'th' Hoylus End
... banners, and on went Sigmund before, And his sword was the flail of the tiller on the wheat of the wheat-thrashing floor, And his shield was rent from his arm, and his helm was sheared from his head: But who may draw nigh him to smite for the heap and the rampart of dead? White went his hair on the wind like the ragged drift of the cloud, And his ...
— The Story of Sigurd the Volsung and the Fall of the Niblungs • William Morris
... not be removed far from her body. A beautiful microscopic hawk, which would have made a lovely watch-charm, was attached by a thread to a necklace of small plates of blue glass, to which was hung also a sort of amulet in the shape of a flail, made of turquoise-blue enamel. Some of the plates had become semi-opaque, no doubt owing to the heat of the boiling bitumen which had been poured over them, and then had ...
— The Works of Theophile Gautier, Volume 5 - The Romance of a Mummy and Egypt • Theophile Gautier
... peer through the leaves of Plug Street Wood at No Man's Land between the lines, where every creature had been killed by the sweeping flail of machine-guns and shrapnel. Along the harvest-fields there were many barren territories like that, and up by Hooge, along the edge of the fatal crater, and behind the stripped trees of Zouave Wood there was no other gleaning ...
— Now It Can Be Told • Philip Gibbs
... the parish, when bread was dear and the loaf was really life itself, then that stern inscription had meaning enough. The granaries were full, the people half starved. The wheat was threshed by the flail in full view of the wretched, who could gaze through the broad doors at the golden grain; the sparrows helped themselves, men dare not. At night men tried to steal the corn, and had to be prevented by steel traps, like rats. To-day wheat is so cheap, ...
— Field and Hedgerow • Richard Jefferies
... nearly half-past twelve. He had just come back from church, hoarse and weary with preaching. He preached with fury, with passion, an iron man beating with a flail upon the souls of his congregation. But the souls of the faithful at Crome were made of india-rubber, solid rubber; the flail rebounded. They were used to Mr. Bodiham at Crome. The flail thumped on india-rubber, and as often as not ...
— Crome Yellow • Aldous Huxley
... not in love with easy dreams might have known it would be driven back—here and then here and then here. It has been fighting night and day. It has made the most splendid fight—and the most ineffectual fight.... You see the vast swing of the German flail through Belgium. And meanwhile we have been standing about talking of the use we would make of ...
— Mr. Britling Sees It Through • H. G. Wells
... into a knot in the center of the inclosure. Then the brazen sun looked down upon a Homeric struggle. Bulger, brawny warrior of the iron hook, swung his musket like a flail, every now and again shooting forth his more sinister weapon with terrible effect. Desmond, slim and athletic, dashed in upon the enemy with his half pike as they recoiled before Bulger's whirling musket. The rest, now a bare dozen, Bengalis though they were, presented still ...
— In Clive's Command - A Story of the Fight for India • Herbert Strang
... him. He had expected to see the furious Fogg join the mob and aid them in finishing up their dastardly work. Instead, like some madman, Fogg had waded into the ranks of the group, swinging his formidable weapon like a flail. It rose, it fell, it swayed from side to side, and ...
— Ralph on the Overland Express - The Trials and Triumphs of a Young Engineer • Allen Chapman
... said Mr. Grewgious. 'Let's talk. Mr. Bazzard's father, being a Norfolk farmer, would have furiously laid about him with a flail, a pitch-fork, and every agricultural implement available for assaulting purposes, on the slightest hint of his son's having written a play. So the son, bringing to me the father's rent (which I receive), imparted his secret, and ...
— The Mystery of Edwin Drood • Charles Dickens
... whoppingest Whale, Brave boys! As ever whisked a ta-a-a-il; In the trough o' the sea It was Labouring free. And a lashin' the waves like a flail, Brave boys! A lashin' the waves like ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100. March 7, 1891. • Various
... customers appeared to have discovered urgent engagements elsewhere. There was little for the Mongol to collide with except empty tables and chairs. But he did manage to swipe one of the lumpy-faced men on the side of the head with one flail of his arms. The lumpy-faced man said "Yoop!" and went staggering away into Petkoff, who spun him around and threw him away in the general direction of the bandstand. The diversion provided Malone with just enough time ...
— Supermind • Gordon Randall Garrett
... did not know what a flail was!" said Guido. "I hit old John with the flail, and Ma gave him a shilling ...
— The Open Air • Richard Jefferies
... Pickering, were dragged to death on the testimony of the vilest of the vile, without a voice being raised in their behalf; or how it could be considered a patriotic act on the part of an English Protestant to carry a flail loaded with lead beneath his cloak as a menace against his harmless neighbours who differed from him on points of doctrine. It was a long madness which has now happily passed off, or at least shows itself in a ...
— Micah Clarke - His Statement as made to his three Grandchildren Joseph, - Gervas and Reuben During the Hard Winter of 1734 • Arthur Conan Doyle
... them above the influence of danger and of corruption. It sometimes might lead them to pursue unwise ends, but never to choose unwise means. They went through the world, like Sir Artegal's iron man Talus with his flail, crushing and trampling down oppressors, mingling with human beings, but having neither part nor lot in human infirmities, insensible to fatigue, to pleasure, and to pain, not to be pierced by any weapon, not to be withstood ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... chasm, with ceaseless turmoil seething, As if this earth in fast thick pants were breathing, A mighty fountain momently was forced: Amid whose swift half-intermitted burst Huge fragments vaulted like rebounding hail, Or chaffy grain beneath the thresher's flail: And 'mid these dancing rocks at once and ever It flung up momently the sacred river. Five miles meandering with a mazy motion Through wood and dale the sacred river ran, Then reached the caverns measureless to man, And sank in tumult to a lifeless ocean: And 'mid this ...
— Lyra Heroica - A Book of Verse for Boys • Various
... times, the crops of wheat and oats, rye and barley, were gathered with a sickle; the grain was thrashed with a flail; the grass in the meadows was cut with a scythe. But, now, all this is changed; on the great prairies of the West, the wheat, rye and oats are cut by the reaper, and with a steady hum the thrashing-machine does its ...
— Reading Made Easy for Foreigners - Third Reader • John L. Huelshof
... no wish to be roasted. Once more using his knife to cut down a sheaf of stems, he made a flail of these, and beat out the fire to windward. And as he worked on the one side of the little clearing the fire grew on the other side, and then raced along, leaving behind in the blackened area many separate fires, where masses ...
— In Search of the Okapi - A Story of Adventure in Central Africa • Ernest Glanville
... the men in the early morning was rather unique. A man with a stick—a heavy stick that reminded me of an Irish flail—thumped the bare floor, and, to my astonishment, there was a rush of this savage-looking, naked crowd to the door. As I knew no reason for the excitement, I ...
— From the Bottom Up - The Life Story of Alexander Irvine • Alexander Irvine
... damsel, what strange chance has brought you to this island in so flail a ship? Who are you, and whence? Surely you are some king's daughter; and this boy has somewhat more ...
— The Heroes • Charles Kingsley
... had often heard them making butter, and had seen the butter smeared all over the gate by a little green man with a queer cap who had been seen slipping under a culvert? Canon Atkinson told us of this lady who knew all these strange things, and of the Hart Hall "Hob" who worked so hard with his flail, and of many other curious folk who frequented the Yorkshire moors in olden days. The last witch had just died before he went to Danby, but he found the whole atmosphere of the folklore firmament so surcharged with the being and work of the witch, that he seemed able to trace her presence ...
— English Villages • P. H. Ditchfield
... that no spur can drive forward towards the pursuit of any worthy designs. One of the most unprofitable of God's creatures, being as he is a thing put clean beside the right use; made fit for the cart and the flail, and by mischance entangled amongst books and papers. A man cannot tell possibly what he is now good for, save to move up and down and fill room, or to serve as animatum instrumentum, for others to work withal in base employments, or to be foil for better wits, or to serve (as they say ...
— Character Writings of the 17th Century • Various
... Boy," said Genvil; "nor shake your sword my way. I tell thee, Amelot, were my weapon to cross with yours, never flail sent abroad more chaff than I would make splinters of your hatched and gilded toasting-iron. Look you, there are gray- bearded men here that care not to be led about on any boy's humour. For me, I stand little upon that; and I care not whether one boy or another commands me. But I am the ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott
... rigorous Quartermaster: the very Ostlers have stable-forks and flails. The rigorous Quartermaster, half-saddled, cuts out his way with the sword's edge, amid levelled bayonets, amid Patriot vociferations, adjurations, flail-strokes; and rides frantic; (Declaration de La Gache in Choiseul, p. 134.)—few or even none following him; the rest, so sweetly constrained consenting ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... rather ridiculously, theatrical lodgings, provincial theatres, the arcades at Birmingham. And a blue straw hat that he had bought for her long ago; and at last her name. Kitty Messenger, and her mother, a golden-haired actress with a tongue like a flail in one temper, like the honey-seeking proboscis of a bee ...
— Mummery - A Tale of Three Idealists • Gilbert Cannan
... are right glad to meet you here, Christmas comes but once a year, But when it comes it brings good cheer, And when it's gone it's no longer near. May luck attend the milking-pail, Yule logs and cakes in plenty be, May each blow of the thrashing-flail Produce good frumenty. And let the Wassail Cup abound, Whene'er the ...
— The Peace Egg and Other tales • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... fell as thick as harvests beneath hail, Grass before scythes, or corn below the sickle, Proving that trite old truth, that life 's as frail As any other boon for which men stickle. The Turkish batteries thrash'd them like a flail, Or a good boxer, into a sad pickle Putting the very bravest, who were knock'd Upon the head, ...
— Don Juan • Lord Byron
... this board Burke's, Goldsmith's knees Were often thrust—so runs the tale— 'Twas here the Doctor took his ease And wielded speech that like a flail Threshed out the golden truth. All hail, Great souls! that met on nights like these Till morning made the candles pale, And revellers left the ...
— Inns and Taverns of Old London • Henry C. Shelley
... my heart is with you. But what can be done? Can a poor village, a poor commune, struggle with any chance of success against a rich company and a government? Can a stalk of wheat resist the sickle? Can an ear of wheat resist the threshing-flail? I have told you the story of Don Quixote della Mancha. Would you fight the empty ...
— The Waters of Edera • Louise de la Rame, a.k.a. Ouida
... steep and the elephant's speed never slackened on the slope. Its right shoulder struck a sapling and the sapling splintered. It was crashing forward in full charge. Again it trumpeted, trunk extended like a flail of doom. ...
— This Crowded Earth • Robert Bloch
... pointed to a bed in the corner of a large apartment, whose beautiful painted ceiling and cornice, and fine chimney-piece with caryatides of white marble, ill accorded with the heaps of oats and corn, the thrashing cloth and flail, which lay ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. IX - [Contents: Harrington; Thoughts on Bores; Ormond] • Maria Edgeworth
... in a tank of steaming vapour. The oppression of the atmosphere was like a physical weight. And ever the rain beat down, rattling, incessant, upon the tin roof above her head. She thought of Nemesis again, Nemesis wielding an iron flail that never missed its mark. There was something terrible to her in this perpetual beating of rain. She had never ...
— The Lamp in the Desert • Ethel M. Dell
... furious wings, Each one upon each shoulder; With a sting in his tail as long as a flail, Which made him bolder and bolder. He had long claws, and in his jaws Four and forty teeth of iron; With a hide as tough as any buff, ...
— The Children's Garland from the Best Poets • Various
... plan of campaign may be crudely stated as follows: Regard that extended line as a flail ready to fall, hinged near Verdun, moved in a circle until the northern tip, under command of Von Kluck, should fall with all the energy Germany could put into the blow on Paris. In the meantime, the other armies would ...
— Kelly Miller's History of the World War for Human Rights • Kelly Miller
... cheese. Yet when the [12] meal Was ended, Luke (for so the Son was named) And his old Father both betook themselves To such convenient work as might employ 105 Their hands by the fire-side; perhaps to card Wool for the Housewife's spindle, or repair Some injury done to sickle, flail, or scythe, Or other ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. II. • William Wordsworth
... are harvested with a sickle, and you may wake up some morning to see the field opposite your house invaded by some twenty to thirty reapers, men and women, boys and girls, patiently sawing their way through the wheat or barley, or whatever it is. The corn is threshed out with the flail, or trodden out by the oxen—all operations fair to look upon. Forms of cultivation interesting to watch are the very primitive ploughing, the hoeing of the maize, and all those connected with the culture of the vines and the orange and other fruit trees, and especially the irrigation, ...
— Spanish Life in Town and Country • L. Higgin and Eugene E. Street
... MacLure came out from Annie's room and laid hold of Tammas, a heap of speechless misery by the kitchen fire, and carried him off to the barn, and spread some corn on the threshing floor and thrust a flail into his hands. ...
— Beside the Bonnie Brier Bush • Ian Maclaren
... like Carlyle. While the genius of that great writer is indisputable, I submit that one Carlyle in a generation is enough; another is impossible. That rugged Titan did his appointed work with fidelity. But is every author to lay about him with an iron flail? Is there no place for playful satirists of manners, for essayists who dissolve philosophy and science, who teach truth, manliness, and courtesy by epigram, and who make life beautiful with the glow of poetry? The magnolia cannot be the oak, although ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 7 of 8 • Charles F. (Charles Francis) Horne
... And sprung like mushrooms in a day! They think it mean, to condescend To know a brother or a friend; They blush to hear their mother's name, And by their pride expose their shame. As cross his yard, at early day, A careful farmer took his way, 10 He stopped, and leaning on his fork, Observed the flail's incessant work. In thought he measured all his store, His geese, his hogs, he numbered o'er; In fancy weighed the fleeces shorn, And multiplied the next year's corn. A Barley-mow, which stood beside, Thus to its musing master cried: 'Say, good sir, is it fit or right To treat me with ...
— The Poetical Works of Addison; Gay's Fables; and Somerville's Chase • Joseph Addison, John Gay, William Sommerville
... in a shroud of mist, come the measured sounds of the thresher's flail, now in sudden volleys, now slowly and with a dragging cadence, now in sharp, crackling bursts, and now again with a dull and hollow beat. Sometimes there is the noise of one flail only, but presently others have joined in on all sides. The children ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VIII • Various
... next upon a Glow-worm light (You must suppose it now was night), Which, for her hinder part was bright, He took to be a devil, And furiously doth her assail For carrying fire in her tail; He thrasht her rough coat with his flail; The mad King feared ...
— The Sources and Analogues of 'A Midsummer-night's Dream' • Compiled by Frank Sidgwick
... made a flail and set to work. And he threshed so hard that all the grain was beaten to powder and the straw was broken up into useless pieces. But when Untamo saw this, he grew very angry, and cried out that Kullervo was a wretched workman who spoiled whatever ...
— Finnish Legends for English Children • R. Eivind
... the Scotchman's room, And eats his meat and drinks his ale, And beats the maid with her unused broom, And the lazy lout with his idle flail; But he sweeps the floor and threshes the corn, And hies him away ere ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... intent; I haunted meetings, Used zealous greetings, Crept full of devotion; Smectymnuus won me first, then holy Nye prevail, (111) Then Captain Kiffin (112) slops me with John of Leyden's tail, Then Fox and Naylor bangs me with Jacob Beamond's flail. (113) Alas! poor ...
— Cavalier Songs and Ballads of England from 1642 to 1684 • Charles Mackay
... temperatures tell. The missing yak herd. Mystery of the turning water wheel. The mill and workshop. Their home. "Baby" learning civilized ways. The noise in the night. The return of the yaks. The need for keeping correct time. Shoe leather necessary. Threshing out barley. The flail. The grindstone. Making flour. Baking bread. How the bread was raised. What yeast does in bread. Temperature required. The "Baby" and the honey pot. The bread with large holes in it. George's trip to the cliffs. A peculiar sounding noise and spray from ...
— The Wonder Island Boys: Exploring the Island • Roger Thompson Finlay
... somewhat in its appliances, but the philosophy of it was pretty much the same as it is now. Oxen were occasionally used for team labour and were shod like horses; wheat was universally reaped with a sickle, and as universally threshed with a flail, the bent figure of the wheat-barn tasker being a familiar object in the "big old barn with its gloomy bays and the moss upon the thatch." An honest pride he took in his work and has found a fit memorial in the delightful Sketches of Rural Life by Mr. Francis Lucas, of Hitchin, who says of the ...
— Fragments of Two Centuries - Glimpses of Country Life when George III. was King • Alfred Kingston
... him a little child lay among the broken corn that was strewn over the whole platform. Where the battlements had once frowned, now stood sheaves of smiling corn, golden and nodding in the wind and the sun. Suddenly the lad who had led me hither seized the flail and began to beat the corn and stalks strewn over the floor, while the old man, quavering a little, sang a long-drawn-out gay melody, and the little girl beat her tiny hands in time to the work and the music. ...
— Florence and Northern Tuscany with Genoa • Edward Hutton
... ceaseless turmoil seething, As if this earth in fast thick pants were breathing, A mighty fountain momently was forced, Amid whose swift half-intermitted burst Huge fragments vaulted like rebounding hail, Or chaffy grain beneath the thresher's flail; And 'mid these dancing rocks at once and ever It flung up momently the sacred river. Five miles meandering with a mazy motion Through wood and dale the sacred river ran, Then reached the caverns measureless to man, And sank in tumult ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 12 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... far end, with my hand on the dribbling stern-gland, there came a sudden thump and a grinding shock. The turning shaft shook and chattered before my eyes, the propeller outside caught in something, shuddered, broke clear and beat like a flail. Then the ship lifted bodily and fell, bump, bump, bump. I stood there transfixed. What could it be? I looked along the dark tunnel to where the lights of the engine-room showed in a pale glint and I could have sworn I saw the whole ...
— Aliens • William McFee
... The whip fell flail-like, with absolute precision and regularity. It spared no part of him. His coat was nearly torn off. In one place, on the shoulder, the white shirt was exposed, and this also ...
— The Swindler and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... the discovery of the plank, made the first rush up and was immediately knocked from his perch by Tod, whose pole swung around his head like a flail. Then Scootsy tried it, crawling up, protecting his head by ducking it under his elbows, holding meanwhile by his hand. Tod's blows fell about his back, but the boy struggled on until Archie reached over the gunwale, and with a twist of his wrist, using all his strength, dropped ...
— The Tides of Barnegat • F. Hopkinson Smith
... on which were three hundred ships so as to leave nothing but a dry strand. He was broad-chested). Rhacymwri, the attendant of Arthur (whatever barn he was shown, were there the produce of thirty ploughs within it, he would strike it with an iron flail until the rafters, the beams, and the boards were no better than the small oats in the mow upon the floor of the barn). Dygyflwng and Anoeth Veidawg. And Hir Eiddyl, and Hir Amreu (they were two attendants of Arthur). And Gwevyl the son of Gwestad (on the day ...
— The Mabinogion • Lady Charlotte Guest
... sheltering a temporary house and the thatch will last as long as the shack. While the real pioneer uses whatever material he finds at hand, it does no harm for him to know that to make a really good thatch one should use only straw which is fully ripe and has been thrashed clean with an old-fashioned flail. The straw must be clear of all seed or grain and kept straight, not mussed up, crumpled, and broken. If any grain is left in the straw it will attract field-mice, birds, domestic mice and rats, domestic turkeys and chickens, and these creatures ...
— Shelters, Shacks and Shanties • D.C. Beard
... look from the isle, o'er its billows of green, To the billows of foam-crested blue, Yon bark, that afar in the distance is seen, Half dreaming, my eyes will pursue: Now dark in the shadow, she scatters the spray As the chaff in the stroke of the flail; Now white as the sea-gull, she flies on her way, The sun ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... chained like a dog, and never suffered to be at liberty, for you do more harm in an hour, than a body can set right again in a month!' Will then took up hats full of the corn and chaff, and threw it in the two men's faces; afterwards taking up a flail, he gave Simon a blow across his back, saying, at the same time, 'I will show you the way to thresh, and separate the flesh from the bones.' 'O! will you so, young squire?' said John; 'I will show you the way to make naughty boys ...
— The Life and Perambulations of a Mouse • Dorothy Kilner
... are seen. The convulsions may consist only of a rapid trembling, or the limb or limbs may be flung about like a flail. ...
— Epilepsy, Hysteria, and Neurasthenia • Isaac G. Briggs
... knew that, so handicapped, she could never reach them, and with shaking, fumbling fingers she set herself to unfasten the straps that bound the skis. It took her a long, long time—all the longer for her fevered haste. And still that awful, flail-like sound went on and on, though all sound of ...
— The Knave of Diamonds • Ethel May Dell
... hoarded gold; and the Merchant, whom the same inexorable hand tears away from his ships and his merchandise;—the storm-tossed ship, with Death snapping the mast;—a Count, dressed in the extreme of courtly splendor, who recognizes Death in the disguise of a peasant who has flung down his flail to seize his lordship's emblazoned shield and dash it to pieces;—a Duchess, whom one skeleton drags rudely from her canopied bed, while another scrapes upon a violin;—a Peddler;—a Ploughman, of whose four-horse team Death is the driver;—Gamblers, Drunkards, and Robbers, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 17, March, 1859 • Various
... skipper hauled at the heavy sail: "God be our help!" he only cried, As the roaring gale, like the stroke of a flail, Smote the boat on its starboard side. The Shoalsmen looked, but saw alone Dark films of rain-cloud slantwise blown, Wild rocks lit up by the lightning's glare, The strife and torment of sea ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 78, April, 1864 • Various
... with an iron-heeled one. Others proposed the "anguille," another kind of recreation, in which a handkerchief is filled with sand, pebbles, and two-sous pieces, when they have them, which the wretches beat like a flail over the head and shoulders of the unhappy sufferer. "Let us horsewhip the fine gentleman!" ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... window and raised big hands toward the spear-points of the aloof stars. "Master of us all!" he cried; "O Father of us all! the Hammer of the Scots am I! the Scourge of France, the conqueror of Llewellyn and of Leicester, and the flail of the accursed race that slew Thine only Son! the King of England am I, who have made of England an imperial nation, and have given to Thy Englishmen new laws! And to-night I crave my hire. Never, O my Father, have I had of any person aught ...
— Chivalry • James Branch Cabell
... hoe! A pickaxe or a bill! A hook to reap, or a scythe to mow, A flail, or what ye will— And here's a ready hand To ply the needful tool, And skill'd enough, by lessons rough, In Labour's rugged ...
— North and South • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... this corn, Colonel Crawford saw the Newars [Picture: Flail] using a kind of flail, an implement which I have never observed in India. Three pieces of Bamboo, about eighteen inches long, were fastened together in a parallel manner, at about a finger’s breadth asunder, and then fixed to ...
— An Account of The Kingdom of Nepal • Fancis Buchanan Hamilton
... readily guess the struggle of feeling to which this honest young fellow fell a prey when we read the letter that he now indited, in which every stroke of the flail which scourged his conscience will be found to ...
— Modeste Mignon • Honore de Balzac
... inside, like the beating of a flail, continued. Amy craned her head around the door ...
— The Campfire Girls of Roselawn - A Strange Message from the Air • Margaret Penrose
... crowns and orbs and sceptres starred his breast. All gleamed compact and green with scale on scale, But special burnishment adorned his mail And special terror weighed upon his frown; 20 His punier brethren quaked before his tail, Broad as a rafter, potent as a flail. So he grew lord and master of his kin: But who shall tell the tale of all their woes? An execrable appetite arose, He battened on them, crunched, and sucked them in. He knew no law, he feared no binding law, But ground them with inexorable ...
— Goblin Market, The Prince's Progress, and Other Poems • Christina Rossetti
... thus singled out for show seemed neither resentful nor distressed, ready enough most times to exhibit his merits, anxious only for the chance of a good master and the momentary avoidance of the lictor's flail. At the praefect's bidding he cracked his knuckles or showed his teeth, strained the muscles of his arm to make them stand up like cords, turned a somersault, jumped, danced or stood on his head if ordered ...
— "Unto Caesar" • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... wall, out through the gate and to the entrance of the alley. The boys were so intent upon their game that they never noticed his approach until he was close upon them. Then they sprang up with wild yells, but the lash descended on them like a well-aimed flail; they rolled over and over in a writhing heap. After the heap had broken up and its shrieking units scattered, the irate priest calmly pocketed the marbles and, whip in hand, stalked ...
— Reminiscences of a South African Pioneer • W. C. Scully
... men of the Revolution; how its activity had outdone the activity of all other hands in clearing and cultivating those very fields where her feet loved to run; how, in its pride of strength, it had handled the scythe, and the sickle, and the flail, with a grace and efficiency that no other could attain; and how, in happy manhood, that strong hand had fondled, and sheltered, and led, the little children that now had grown up and were gone! Strength and activity, ay, and the fruits of them, were passed away; his children ...
— Queechy, Volume I • Elizabeth Wetherell
... 'll fight Beelzebub if he be aught I can hit; but these same boggarts, they say, a blow falls on 'em like rain-drops on a mist, or like beating the wind with a corn-flail. I cannot fight with naught, ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... is one shower, to evil and to just, And health, and strength, and length of days, and to all the common dust: But as the snake throws off its skin, the soul throws off its clay, And soars, till purpled are its wings with everlasting day; God, having winnow'd with his flail the chaff from out the wheat, When those, who seem'd alike when here, approach'd ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 54, No. 335, September 1843 • Various
... seeds, harvesting should begin when three fourths of the leaves have fallen and most of the pods are ripe. Do not wait, however, until the pods are so dry that they have begun to split and drop their seeds. A slight amount of dampness on the plants aids the cutting. The threshing may be done with a flail, with pea-hullers, or with a ...
— Agriculture for Beginners - Revised Edition • Charles William Burkett
... how the drudging Goblin sweat To earn his cream-bowl duly set, When in one night, ere glimpse of morn, His shadowy flail hath threshed the corn That ten day ...
— The Naples Riviera • Herbert M. Vaughan
... for a time threw him with the supporters of Mary. But the adventures of Arthegal mainly preserve the memory of Lord Grey's terrible exploits against wrong and rebellion in Ireland. These exploits are represented in the doings of the iron man Talus, his squire, with his destroying flail, swift, irresistible, inexorable; a figure, borrowed and altered, after Spenser's wont, from a Greek legend. His overthrow of insolent giants, his annihilation of swarming "rascal routs," idealize and glorify that unrelenting policy, of which, though condemned in England, Spenser continued ...
— Spenser - (English Men of Letters Series) • R. W. Church
... Her head's like the island folks tell on, Which nothing but monkeys can dwell on; Her heart's like a lemon—so nice She carves for each lover a slice; In truth she's to me, Like the wind, like the sea, Whose raging will hearken to no man; Like a mill, like a pill, Like a flail, like a whale, Like an ass, like a glass Whose image is constant to no man; Like a shower, like a flower, Like a fly, like a pie, Like a pea, like a flea, Like a thief, like—in brief, She's like nothing on ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various
... how the drudging goblin sweat To earn his cream-bowl duly get, When in one night, ere glimpse of morn, His shadowy flail had thresh'd the corn That ten day-labourers could not end; Then lays him down the lubber-fiend, And, stretch'd out all the chimney's length, Basks at the fire his hairy strength, And crop-full, out of door he flings Ere the ...
— Bracebridge Hall, or The Humorists • Washington Irving
... shown a short-handled flail, which is about 2-1/2 ft. long with a dark handle of wood, studded with brass or steel nails. A steel band is placed around the handle near the top. The imitation of the steel band is made by gluing a piece of tinfoil on a strip of ...
— The Boy Mechanic: Volume 1 - 700 Things For Boys To Do • Popular Mechanics
... the halves of a flail, depend on it: wan no use wi'out t'other. Then theer's the singing of the auld song: who's gwaine to say that's the least part ...
— Children of the Mist • Eden Phillpotts
... was evidently at its last gasp when we left the schooner. It soon rolled over on its side. The mysterious flail stopped beating the huge body and the water seemed churned excitedly at the nose of ...
— Swept Out to Sea - Clint Webb Among the Whalers • W. Bertram Foster
... compare the most celebrated European ministers to him seems to us as unjust as it would be to compare the best baker in London with Robinson Crusoe, who, before he could bake a single loaf, had to make his plough and his harrow, his fences and his scarecrows, his sickle and his flail, his mill ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... and instead of dismounting, as she expected him to do, he lifted his arm and brought his crop hard down on the mare's quarters, so that she leaped forward, and the next moment he was sending her along as fast as she could gallop, while his arm rose and fell like a flail, thrashing her unmercifully. They fled past Ann at racing speed, and she watched, dumb with amazement, while Brett steered a huge semicircular course on the downs, keeping the animal he rode at full stretch the whole time. ...
— The Vision of Desire • Margaret Pedler
... had his adversary—the audience—conquered before he struck a blow. His glance was terrific, his "nerve" enormous. What he did afterward didn't much matter. He usually accomplished a hard day's threshing with those flail-like arms of his, and, heavens, how the poor piano objected to being taken for ...
— Old Fogy - His Musical Opinions and Grotesques • James Huneker
... accompany us from London. On Tuesday he must leave Town for Hampshire, but time-tables were consulted, and it was discovered that he could travel across country on Christmas Eve, and, by changing from one station to the other at the market town of Flail, arrive at Red ...
— Berry And Co. • Dornford Yates
... leaders of the church were called up by the Japanese, who stepped down and ran his fingers along the floor. "Look at this dust," he said. Ordering the two men to sit down on the floor, he beat them with a flail, ...
— Korea's Fight for Freedom • F.A. McKenzie
... marshes, clearing up land, chopping cord-wood, threshing, &c. I have known the women go into the barn as soon as they could see in the morning, and work as late as they could see at night, threshing rice with the flail, (they now have a threshing machine,) and when they could see to thresh no longer, they had to gather up the rice, carry it up stairs, and deposit it in ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... Stanley could have believed him guilty of such mean, despicable trickery—there was the sting. Stanley had felt the blows of Wyndham on his face, but that was as nothing to the torture endured at that moment by Paul. It was as a flail cutting deep down ...
— The Hero of Garside School • J. Harwood Panting
... condition of farm-hands has been markedly improved of late years. They have now a shorter day, higher wages, better food, and superior house accommodation. Mechanical appliances have made farm-work lighter and more agreeable. The drudgery of the threshing flail is now unknown; the hook and the scythe have given way to the reaping-machine: in every way hand labour has been lightened. But it is precisely this machinery that lessens the need for large numbers of agricultural labourers. It is also notorious that shoemakers, tailors, and blacksmiths, are ...
— Literary Tours in The Highlands and Islands of Scotland • Daniel Turner Holmes
... upstairs, but there was a man up there threshing, and goody! how he knocked me down with his flail!" ...
— English Fairy Tales • Flora Annie Steel
... been up to Colina tracking round after a woman." Her verbal strokes were swift and hard as a flail. And again Flick started in surprise. His cheeks ...
— The Black Pearl • Mrs. Wilson Woodrow
... shield to shake: We speak not of the powers divine, ne yet of furious sprites; We do not seek high hills to climb, nor talk of love's delights. We do not here present to you the thresher with his flail, Ne do we here present to you the milkmaid with her pail: We show not you of country toil, as hedger with his bill; We do not bring the husbandman to lop and top with skill: We play not here the gardener's part, ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VI • Robert Dodsley
... judge or recorder, His house was as big and as strong as a jail; With a cruel four-pounder, he kept in great order, He'd murder the country, would Larry M'Hale. He'd a blunderbuss too, of horse-pistols a pair; But his favorite weapon was always a flail. I wish you could see how he'd empty a fair, For he handled it neatly, ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 2 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... saw his one chance and took it. He did not give back. And he did not offer the poor defense of one arm against the flail of blows. Instead he stooped low, very low, jerking his body double, dropping suddenly under Brayley's threshing arms, and hurled himself bodily to meet the attack, his left shoulder thrust forward, striking Brayley with the full impact ...
— Under Handicap - A Novel • Jackson Gregory
... the creature to enthral him. Perhaps some such story as this may account in part for Mrs. Frere's sad looks. Why do I speculate on such things? I seem to do violence to myself and to insult her by writing such suspicions. If I was a Flagellant now, I would don hairshirt and up flail. "For this sort cometh not out but ...
— For the Term of His Natural Life • Marcus Clarke
... dozen young men in gay sylvan costumes are standing in a circle, armed with flails, and vigorously threshing the ground. Jolly, hearty young fellows they are, and a merry chant they raise. One eager thresher in his zeal breaks his flail at the bend, and a shout from ...
— A Tramp's Wallet - stored by an English goldsmith during his wanderings in Germany and France • William Duthie
... brave man—an extraordinarily brave man. You English, you are brave. But he was no soldier. He rode at me alone, handling that sabre of his like a flail. We'd hardly crossed blades before he knew his fate. 'You've got me, sir,' said he, splashing about with his sword. I said nothing. 'Maybe I hadn't ought to ha stuck her,' he gasped. He wasn't whining. He wasn't that sort. He knew he had to have it. 'It was tit for tat: ...
— The Gentleman - A Romance of the Sea • Alfred Ollivant
... consideration given it because of its contribution to the welfare of mankind. We are as useful as any other hard-working people, no more and no less. We claim no higher appreciation for muscular effort exerted in swinging the flail than for that applied to the ...
— Village Improvements and Farm Villages • George E. Waring
... phase of farm telephony. The cost of an efficient farm system is now so little—not more than two dollars a month, that the present trashy lines are certain sooner or later to go to the junk-heap with the sickle and the flail and all the ...
— The History of the Telephone • Herbert N. Casson
... flail of the monks,' he said abstractedly. 'They would have burned me and thousands ...
— The Fifth Queen • Ford Madox Ford
... and holding by the chair, he stood trembling and quivering with gladness, while, summoned by the dog's bark, Patience, pail in hand, appeared on one side, and Ben, tall and slight, with his flail, on the other. ...
— Under the Storm - Steadfast's Charge • Charlotte M. Yonge
... red light from the fire on her face, and on her hair, and on her bare arms, I was minded o' th' angel that walked i' the fiery furnace with th' men in holy writ. And when a pounded away at a shoe, and her young arm going like a flail—chink, chank—chink, chank—and th' white spatters o' hot iron flying this way and that from th' anvil, meseemed 'twas as though Dame Venus (for thou knowest how in th' masque twelve year gone this Yuletide 'twas shown as how ...
— A Brother To Dragons and Other Old-time Tales • Amelie Rives
... the two men held their breath. All at once at some little distance they heard a continuous, rapid sound, as if something was beating the earth with a flail. The nauseating and penetrating odor which exhales from these large serpents became stronger and stronger. "The serpent is furious; it is his tail which is beating the earth thus," said John in a feeble voice. "Colonel, let us ...
— A Romance of the West Indies • Eugene Sue
... the district even to his very porch with heavy stones and opprobrious epithets. Once when he thought he had left her far behind did he alight to draw breath and take a pinch of snuff, and she was upon him like a flail. With a terror-stricken cry he leapt once more upon his horse and fled, but not without leaving his snuff-box in the hands of the derisive enemy. Meggy has long gone to the kirkyard, but the snuff-mull ...
— Auld Licht Idylls • J. M. Barrie
... with friend and foe, At home che hold the plough by th' tail: Che dig, che delve, che zet, che zow, Che mow, che reap, che ply my flail. A pair of dice is thy delight, Thou liv'st for most part by the spoil: I truly labour day and night To get my living by my toil. Chill therefore sure this issue make: The best deserver draw ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VIII (4th edition) • Various
... plough, he seemed alone, unaided by his poor horse, to cleave the yielding bosom of the earth, or when, about St. Peter's Day, he plied his scythe with a. furious energy that might have mown a young birch copse up by the roots, or swiftly and untiringly wielded a flail over two yards long; while the hard oblong muscles of his shoulders rose and fell like a lever. His perpetual silence lent a solemn dignity to his unwearying labour. He was a splendid peasant, and, except for his affliction, any girl would have been glad to marry him.... But ...
— The Torrents of Spring • Ivan Turgenev
... "make-believe" blow would have implied a "make- believe" hammer and a "make-believe" curtain. No!—hammer away, like Charles Martel; "fillip me with a three-man beetle;" be to me a malleus hreticorum; come like Spenser's Talus—an iron man with an iron flail, and thresh out the straw of my logic; rack me; put me to the question; get me down; jump upon me; kick me; throttle me; put an end to me in any ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... this. According to him, God, in punishment for sin delivers over people to shameful affections, to a reprobate sense; he suffers them to be a hell unto themselves. And nature seldom fails to avenge herself for the outrages suffered. She uses the flail of disease and remorse, of misery and disgust, and she scourges the culprit to the verge of the grave, often to the yawning pit ...
— Explanation of Catholic Morals - A Concise, Reasoned, and Popular Exposition of Catholic Morals • John H. Stapleton
... farm of Jesse Wingate on the Yamhill the wheat was in stack and ready for the flail, his deer-skin sacks made ready to carry it to market after the threshing. His grim and weather-beaten wagon stood, now unused, at the ...
— The Covered Wagon • Emerson Hough
... moan broke from her lips. For a moment it was a physical impossibility for her to speak. She could only shrink, mute and quivering, beneath the flail of his scorn. ...
— The Lamp of Fate • Margaret Pedler
... covetous eyes ranged from the treasure in his hand to the threatening east. A puff of wind caught the sail and sent the boom athwartships, like a mighty flail. Both men ducked instinctively, to escape ...
— The Black Bag • Louis Joseph Vance
... meddle, Tam; it's niver no good a threshin' other folk's corn; ye allays gits the flail agin ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida
... ferret. The bull ran, tossing his nose with pain and bellowing: Uxmoor dragged by the tail and compelled to follow in preposterous, giant strides, barely touching the ground with the point of his toe, pounded the creature's ribs with such blows as Zoe had never dreamed possible. They sounded like flail on wooden floor, and each blow was accompanied with a loud jubilant shout. Presently, being a five's player, and ambidexter, he shifted his hand, and the tremendous whacks resounded on the bull's left side. The bull, thus belabored, and resounding ...
— The Woman-Hater • Charles Reade
... Harrigan's enveloping arms found him less readily; came a change when Harrigan had to stand up and fight. And then, with deadly, insensate purpose which made the other's madness a wild and futile thing, Stephen O'Mara set himself to chop his face to pieces. Flail-like blows he side-stepped, and whipped to the other's eyes. That open guard he feinted wider and laid flesh open raw. Harrigan could no longer curse, for his lips were puffy things pulped between his own teeth and ...
— Then I'll Come Back to You • Larry Evans
... when the Indians came. My father says Sheepscott is a very old place, and the Pilgrims came here for corn. Close by our field is an old barn where the Indians came when some men were threshing, and fired on them, and killed two and took their scalps off, and one man hit back at them with his flail, and broke an Indian's arm, and they carried him prisoner to Canada. It says so on his old grave-stone, and I have seen it. My grandfather shot bears, but there are none here now. The people here build little houses on the ice, and catch lots of smelts through a hole in ...
— Harper's Young People, February 3, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... When other weapons fail, With club to thrash invaders rash, Like barley with a flail? Hath Seville any Perez still, To lay his clusters low, And ride with seven turbans green ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood
... envelope, or a piece of mineral coal. From the farmer we should have to take the reaper, the drill, the mowing machine, and every kind of improved rake and plow, and give him back the scythe, the cradle, and the flail. From our houses would go the sewing machine, the daily newspaper, gas, running water; and from our tables, the tomato, the cauliflower, the eggplant, and many varieties of summer fruits. We should have to destroy every railroad, every steamboat, every ...
— A School History of the United States • John Bach McMaster
... been built in shelter of the bamboos, only a little place, a cluster of fifteen or twenty huts. But every house lay in ruins as if the place had been knocked about the villagers' ears with a huge flail. Near at hand a man lay dead, his body horribly crushed and battered. No sign of life was to be observed ...
— Jack Haydon's Quest • John Finnemore
... sense of fear; no thought but to kill and be killed. I felt within me strength—desperate, insane strength. The rifle butt splintered in my hands, but the bent and shapeless barrel rose and fell like a flail. I saw it crush against skulls; I jabbed it straight into red faces; I brought it down with all my force on clutching arms. For an instant Tim was beside me. He had lost his gun and was fighting with a knife. It was only a glimpse I ...
— The Devil's Own - A Romance of the Black Hawk War • Randall Parrish
... fond Joe and Bob (with their cash to spend), Widow Precious (with her beer laid in), and Widow Carroway, with a dole at last extorted from the government; while Anerley Farm was content to hearken the creak of wagon and the ring of flail, and the rector of Flamborough once more rejoiced in the bloodless war ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... scores of armed men. No sword could reach him, and no bullet appeared to strike him, though dozens of the rebels discharged muskets and even revolvers at him, at close range, when it began to be apparent on which side he was fighting. Up went that mighty flail, and down it came again on the heads of the human tares of rebeldom who so needed threshing out in the very garner of wrath. More than one of the Union men in the vicinity of the strange spectacle, who happened to have been classic readers in other ...
— Shoulder-Straps - A Novel of New York and the Army, 1862 • Henry Morford
... a flash, not all of steel, Where the rolling caissons wheel, Brought a rumble and a roar Rolling down that velvet floor, And like blows of autumn flail Sharply threshed ...
— Complete Poetical Works of Bret Harte • Bret Harte
... powerless and dead they denied Him and fell back to their natural instinct of self-defence, and the first Church died with the death of Christ. It was like the green corn in the field smitten by a flail to the very root. The owner of the corn walks in the field and looks with despair on his perished corn. But it happens often that after a few days the field begins under the sunshine to flourish anew, and the corn grows beautifully and brings forth ...
— The Agony of the Church (1917) • Nikolaj Velimirovic
... should fail in such a trivial matter? But it happened so long ago while I was courting your mother, to be exact. My father-in-law, rest his soul, was an atrocity at table. The viands, my son, scattered from his knife over the board, like chaff before the flail. Yet, will you believe it? Any time he chose to speak his mouth was always full. I watched him, watched him with wonder—or was it horror?—I cannot remember which. And I resolved to go, to go anywhere, but never to do likewise. The result ...
— The Unspeakable Gentleman • John P. Marquand
... his feet with that throat grip. He whirled him like a flail, and smashed him down upon the deck, and let him go. And there Yankee Swope lay, sprawled, and still, his head bent back at a fatal angle. A broken neck, as a glance at the lolling head would inform; and, as we discovered later, a broken back as well. It was death that Newman's bare ...
— The Blood Ship • Norman Springer
... country gentlewoman, who kept five men-servants "to use the spade and flail," and five women-servants "to carry the milken-pail." The five men loved the ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.
... administer it. Such was Father Roche, as the pastor of a large but poor flock, who had few sympathies to expect, save those which this venerable man was able to afford them. Very different from him, on the other hand, was his curate, the Rev. Patrick M'Cabe, or M'Flail, as he was nicknamed by the Orangemen of the parish, in consequence of a very unsacerdotal tendency to use the horsewhip, as a last resource, especially in cases where reason and the influence of argument failed. He was a powerful young ...
— Valentine M'Clutchy, The Irish Agent - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... thing as self-indulgence;—this daughter of the Puritans had her seed within her. Aerial in her delicacy, as the blue-eyed flax-flower with which they sowed their fields, she had yet its strong fibre, which no stroke of the flail could break; bruising and hackling only made it fitter for uses of homely utility. Mary, therefore, opened the kitchen-door at dawn, and, after standing one moment to breathe the freshness, began spreading the cloth for ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... in silence for a time. Cadillac scowled and beat his palm upon his knee as a flail beats grain, and I knew he needed no words of mine. I thought that he was going over his defenses in his mind, and I began to calculate how many rounds of shot I had in my canoes, and to hope that my men would not prove cravens. I knew, without argument with myself, that the beaver ...
— Montlivet • Alice Prescott Smith
... but I saw him escape and get away over the fence. Then they all set upon Tom, but by G—— it was glorious to see the way in which he held his own. Out came that cross of his, four foot and a half long, with a thong as heavy as a flail. He soon had the road clear around him, and the big black horse you remember, stood as steady as a statue till he was bidden to move on. Then when he had the hounds, and Barney Smith and the whips to ...
— The Landleaguers • Anthony Trollope
... "There's the flail I told Mr. Blake I'd bring him," said the farmer to Aunt Lolly, who had come to the door when he rang ...
— Daddy Takes Us to the Garden - The Daddy Series for Little Folks • Howard R. Garis
... rigour, Who thunders to his captives blood and death, I cannot judge; but, to conclude with truth, Their weapons like to lightning came and went, Our soldiers',—like the night-owl's lazy flight, Or like an idle thrasher with a flail— Fell gently down, as if they struck their friends. I cheer'd them up with justice of our cause, With promise of high pay and great rewards, But all in vain; they had no heart to fight, And we in them no hope to win the day; So that we fled: the king unto ...
— King Henry VI, Third Part • William Shakespeare [Rolfe edition]
... fell, her arm she brak, A compound fracture as could be; Nae leech the cure wad undertak, Whate'er was the gratuity. It 's cured! she handles 't like a flail, It does as weel in bits as hale; But I 'm a broken man mysel' Wi' her and ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... masse, he seized a chair, and swung it flail-like about his head. For a few moments, there was a crashing of glass and china, and a clatter of furniture and a chaos of struggle. At its center, he stood wielding his impromptu weapon, and, when two of his assailants had fallen under its sweeping ...
— The Call of the Cumberlands • Charles Neville Buck
... rocks when they, like ourselves, heard the sound of thrashing in a barn, which started an argument between them on their relative abilities in the handling of the flail. As they could not settle the matter by words, they resolved to do so by blows; so they made their way to the farm and requested the farmer to allow them to try their hand at thrashing corn, and to judge which of them shaped the better. The farmer readily consented, and accompanied ...
— From John O'Groats to Land's End • Robert Naylor and John Naylor
... with them were three men, their drovers, and they drew nigh him as he was amidst of the sheep, so that he could scarce see the way. Each of these three had a weapon; one a pole-axe, another a long spear, and the third a flail jointed and bound with iron, and an anlace hanging at his girdle. So they stood in the way and hailed him when the sheep were gone past; and the man with the spear asked him whither away. "I am turned toward Higham-on-the-Way," quoth ...
— The Well at the World's End • William Morris
... a flash. Like lightning his right wing came round with a terrific flail-stroke, and hit Pig Head in the face at the precise instant that the surgical instrument he carried as his beak sank deep into one of Pig Head's calves. The Chieftain was upside-down at the moment, and his legs were ...
— The Way of the Wild • F. St. Mars
... field of Mars, which Tarquin had owned, was devoted to the service of that god; it happening to be harvest season, and the sheaves yet being on the ground, they thought it not proper to commit them to the flail, or unsanctify them with any use; and, therefore, carrying them to the river side, and trees withal that were cut down, they cast all into the water, dedicating the soil, free from all occupation, to the deity. Now, these thrown in, one upon another, and closing together, the stream ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough |
