"Husking" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... parties, and much skating and coasting, horse racing, bull baiting, bowling on the greens, and in New York city balls, concerts, and private theatricals. In Pennsylvania vendues (auctions), fairs, and cider pressing (besides husking bees and house raisings) were occasions for social gatherings and dances. South of the Potomac horse racing, fox hunting, cock fighting, and cudgeling were common sports. At the fairs there were sack and hogshead races, bull baiting, barbecues, and dancing. There was a ...
— A Brief History of the United States • John Bach McMaster
... They all drew pictures of the fun it was to work on a farm where you could get your work done and take your fish-pole and go off and catch fish, or a gun, and go out and kill game, and how you could ride; horses, and pitch hay, and smell the sweet perfume, and go to husking bees, and dances, and everything, and they got me all worked up so I wanted to go to work on a farm. Then an old deacon that belongs to our church, who runs a farm about eight miles out of town, he came on the ...
— The Grocery Man And Peck's Bad Boy - Peck's Bad Boy and His Pa, No. 2 - 1883 • George W. Peck
... can weave. In many houses there are looms where the girls weave their dresses and those of their parents; and many girls have stalls in the bazaar. Of this I will speak later. Other duties are the husking of rice and the making of cheroots. Of course, in richer households there will be servants to do all this; but even in them the daughter will frequently weave either for herself or her parents. Almost every girl will do something, if only to ...
— The Soul of a People • H. Fielding
... and nearly all used tobacco and liquor freely. Finest ladies snuffed, sometimes smoked. Little coffee was drunk, and no tea till about 1700. Urban life was social and gay. In the country the games of fox and geese, three and twelve men morris, husking bees and quilting bees were the chief sports. Tableware was mostly of wood, though many had pewter, and the rich much silver. The people's ordinary dress was of homemade cloth, but not a few country people still wore deerskin. The clothing of the rich ...
— History of the United States, Vol. I (of VI) • E. Benjamin Andrews
... debauching effects of a holiday festival. They had solemnly sat in unwarmed churches; they had been present at elections; had seen men standing in the pillory or women whipped through the streets; they had diverted themselves at weddings or the husking-bee, or by walking in the woods, or by drinking in a tavern. But no frivolous and superstitious world of Anti-Christ compassed them about to point the moral of the harsh Puritan tale. Their Puritanism was induced by precept and example rather than by the ...
— Beginnings of the American People • Carl Lotus Becker
... longing to go, and the longing seemed to teach him more than going. He knew his letters, and could read simple things, but it was I who taught him what books really meant when I was eleven and he thirteen. We studied while he was husking corn or cutting potatoes for seed, or shelling beans in the Squire's barn. His beloved Emma Jane didn't teach him; her father wold not have let her be friends with a chore-boy! It was I who found him after milking-time, ...
— New Chronicles of Rebecca • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... together, trudging through woods and swamps, and up hill and down dale, to shoot a few squirrels or wild pigeons. He would never refuse to assist a neighbour, even in the roughest toil, and was a foremost man at all country frolics for husking Indian corn, or building stone-fences; the women of the village, too, used to employ him to run their errands, and to do such little odd jobs as their less obliging husband^ would not do for them. In a word, Rip was ready to attend to anybody's business but his own; but ...
— Legends That Every Child Should Know • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... made to carry wood from the forest, that the old woman might boil her pot. He also worked in the corn-fields, hoeing and husking; and he fed the pigs and milked the four-horned cow that was ...
— The Marvelous Land of Oz • L. Frank Baum
... young people of each parish were the corvees recreatives, or "bees" as we call them nowadays in our rural communities. There were the epuchlette or corn-husking, the brayage or flax-beating, and others of the same sort. The harvest-home or grosse-gerbe, celebrated when the last load had been brought in from the fields, and the Ignolee or welcoming of the New ...
— Crusaders of New France - A Chronicle of the Fleur-de-Lis in the Wilderness - Chronicles of America, Volume 4 • William Bennett Munro
... The corn-gang, with two ox-teams, was gathering corn at the rate of a hundred bushels daily, and the fence-gang was patting the fences in order. The shelling-gang (composed of the oldest men and women) was husking and shelling corn, and putting it in sacks for market. The gardener, the stock-tenders, the dairy-maids, nurserymaids, hog-minders, and stable-keepers were all in their places, and we began to forget our recent troubles in the apparent prospect ...
— Camp-Fire and Cotton-Field • Thomas W. Knox
... as water-grass (Hydropyrum latifolium) is grown in Kiangsu province where the land is too wet for rice. The plant has a tender succulent crown of leaves and the peeling of the outer coarser ones away suggests the husking of an ear of green corn. The portion eaten is the central tender new growth, and when cooked forms a delicate savory dish. The farmers' selling price is three to four dollars, Mexican, per hundred catty, or $.97 to $1.29 ...
— Farmers of Forty Centuries - or, Permanent Agriculture in China, Korea and Japan • F. H. King
... Squire Price had any one bump of phrenology developed more than another, it was CORVICIDE, or, KILL-CROWATIVENESS. From corn-planting to husking-time, from dewy morn until evening more than due, he might be seen dodging behind fences, crawling around barns, stalking along in the high grass, with a long single-barreled old gun, trying to get a shot at the black thieves ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. II. July, 1862. No. 1. • Various
... The poverty of the frontier is indeed no poverty. It is but the beginning of wealth, and has the boundless possibilities of the future always opening before it. No man ever grew up in the agricultural regions of the West, where a house-raising, or even a corn-husking, is matter of common interest and helpfulness, with any other feeling than that of broad-minded, generous independence. This honorable independence marked the youth of Garfield, as it marks the youth of millions of the best blood and brain now training for the future citizenship and ...
— Hidden Treasures - Why Some Succeed While Others Fail • Harry A. Lewis
... couldn't go," said Peter, his clear voice suddenly husking, "without telling you ...
— The Honorable Peter Stirling and What People Thought of Him • Paul Leicester Ford
... hand, and it was while thus employed that she received a wound, which nearly proved fatal, from the effects of which she still suffers. In the fall of the year, the slaves there work in the evening, cleaning up wheat, husking corn, etc. On this occasion, one of the slaves of a farmer named Barrett, left his work, and went to the village store in the evening. The overseer followed him, and so did Harriet. When the slave was found, the overseer swore he ...
— Harriet, The Moses of Her People • Sarah H. Bradford
... their own comfort and support as well as of their husbands. The tilling of the ground at home, getting of firewood, and pounding of corn in mortars, is frequently done by female parties, much in the manner of those husking, quilting, and other frolics (as they are called) in some parts of the United States.... [When accompanying her husband on the hunt the woman] takes pains to dry as much meat as she can, that none may be lost; she carefully puts the tallow up, assists in drying ...
— Sex and Society • William I. Thomas
... At husking time the tassel fades To brown above the yellow blades, Whose rustling sheath enswathes the corn That bursts its chrysalis in scorn Longer to ...
— Flint and Feather • E. Pauline Johnson
... of a machine but is more likely to be effected in the immemorial way, by one person pouring the roughly threshed ears from a basket or skep while another worker vigorously fans the grain. The result is what is known as paddy rice. The process which follows winnowing is husking. This is done in the simplest possible form of hand mill. Before husking the rice grain is in appearance not unlike barley and it is no easy matter to get its husk off. The husking mill is often made of hardened ...
— The Foundations of Japan • J.W. Robertson Scott
... some from the University and the Institute, some from distant and unknown sources. The new Secretary was very busy with the work of examining these papers. After a forenoon so employed, the carpet of her room looked like a barn floor after a husking-match. A glance at the manuscripts strewed about, or lying in heaps, would have frightened any young writer away from the thought of authorship as a business. If the candidate for that fearful calling had seen the process of selection and elimination, he would have felt ...
— A Mortal Antipathy • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... it a husking-bee," suggested Donald Ferry. He had become in these few weeks as much a member of this circle of friends as if he had always belonged to it. "Then you'll need only coffee and doughnuts and apples and that sort of thing. There'll be corn enough in my patch to trim your rooms, and plenty ...
— Strawberry Acres • Grace S. Richmond
... expect to be annihilated by the big brother if I attempted any but the 'sincerest' admiration and respect. Have no fears on that score, but tell us what is to follow this superb dinner. An apple bee, spinning match, husking party, or primitive pastime of some ...
— Kitty's Class Day And Other Stories • Louisa M. Alcott
... irregular, to be had only at long intervals. Primitive athletic games and commonplace talk, enlivened by frontier jests and stories, formed the sum of social intercourse when half a dozen or a score of settlers of various ages came together at a house-raising or corn-husking, or when mere chance brought them at the same time to the post-office or the country store. On these occasions, however, Abraham was, according to his age, always able to contribute his full share or more. Most ...
— A Short Life of Abraham Lincoln - Condensed from Nicolay & Hay's Abraham Lincoln: A History • John G. Nicolay
... Bopolûchî, 'my mother made it grow by pounding my head in the big mortar for husking rice. At every stroke of the pestle my hair grew longer and longer. I assure you it is a ...
— Tales Of The Punjab • Flora Annie Steel
... Ned Green, and Jonas were busy husking corn in the calm stillness of the fall, when the stacks were all about them, like Indian wigwams, and the stubble only of the golden pumpkins was left in the field, and the beautiful river wound itself away in the distance, bearing all kinds of ...
— Harper's Young People, January 13, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... annoy him. "I don't believe our grandfathers and grandmothers were always such models of decorum as they tried, when they had grown old, to make us think. And the simple primitive joys ... I believe an old-fashioned husking bee, if they had plenty of hard cider to go with it, was just as bad as this—coarser if not so vulgar. After all, most of these people will go virtuously home to bed pretty soon and you'd find ...
— Mary Wollaston • Henry Kitchell Webster
... farmer was asked by his employer if he ever saw a snail. The boy answered that he had. "You must have met it, for you surely did not overtake it," said the farmer. I know an old man who seems to take pride in saying he never worked. The first time I saw this man was in my youth. While his father was husking corn in a field, he was seated by a fire reading a novel. Often after that, when I would go to the postoffice in the winter, he would be there by the fire. He moved to the city thirty years ago, where he spends his winters sitting ...
— Wit, Humor, Reason, Rhetoric, Prose, Poetry and Story Woven into Eight Popular Lectures • George W. Bain
... sister were they that it had kept them from forming other associations, and when Albert had been asked why he did not escort some other young lady to the husking-bees, barn dances, or church sociables, his usual reply was: "Alice is good enough for me, and when she prefers another beau I may, but not ...
— Uncle Terry - A Story of the Maine Coast • Charles Clark Munn
... a rude simplicity and a rough plenty prevailed. The fare was simple; the labor was hard; simple fare and stern labor between them reared a stalwart, God-fearing race. Its positive pleasures were few and primitive. Husking-bees, quiltings, a rare dance, filled up the measure of its diversions. But the summer smiled upon those steadfast, earnest, rigorous citizens, and in the wild and bitter winters each household would gather about the cheerful fire in the great chimney ...
— A History of the Four Georges and of William IV, Volume III (of 4) • Justin McCarthy and Justin Huntly McCarthy
... go over to Chamberlain's to help with a small stack of hay he put up in the field and wants to move, now that he's got the time. I told him he'd better let me help him before the new hired man comes to begin the husking; I'm going to need the team every ...
— The Wind Before the Dawn • Dell H. Munger
... in proper condition; otherwise, they will not be suitable for cooking. No special care need be given to green corn, provided it is not husked. However, when it has been husked, it should be cooked at once. In the husking of corn, all corn silk that is found inside of the husks should be carefully removed, for this is very annoying in the cooked vegetable and ...
— Woman's Institute Library of Cookery, Vol. 2 - Volume 2: Milk, Butter and Cheese; Eggs; Vegetables • Woman's Institute of Domestic Arts and Sciences
... asked Cynthia if she had seen Sally Hawkes since the husking at their house, when Sally found so many red ears; and didn't she think she was a ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... parasol is shut up and put away! I see the market-man driving into the village, and disappearing under its canopy of Elm-tops, with his crop, as into a great granary or barnyard. I am tempted to go thither as to a husking of thoughts, now dry and ripe, and ready to be separated from their integuments; but, alas! I foresee that it will be chiefly husks and little thought, blasted pig-corn, fit only for cob-meal,—for, as you sow, so ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 60, October 1862 • Various
... drawn on them, endorsed by toil were never protested. Bathed in vernal dews was his glistening plough-share, Birds, newly-returned, the merry nest-builders, bade him good morrow, Keenly wrought his scythe in summer, where fell the odorous clover, Clear was his song at autumn-husking, amid piles of golden corn. Winter saw him battling the drifted snows, with his oxen, Bearing to the neighboring town, fuel that gladden'd the hearth-stone. Deep in undisturbed beds then slept the dark-featured anthracite, Steam not having armed itself ...
— Man of Uz, and Other Poems • Lydia Howard Sigourney
... sorted, as for the rice of Piedmont; but the second and third qualities, obtained by sorting, are sold much cheaper. The objection to the Carolina rice then, being, that it crumbles in certain forms of preparation, and this supposed to be the effect of a less perfect machine for husking, I flattered myself I should be able to learn what might be the machine of Piedmont, when I should arrive at Marseilles, to which place I was to go in the course of a tour through the seaport towns of this country. At Marseilles, however, ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... firmly between the thumb and fingers of the left hand—unless you are left-handed—with the top upward. Then with the thumb nail and first finger of the right hand take tight hold of the point of the shell, and pull to the right, as if husking an ear of corn. This will usually strip off a piece of the covering, leaving a part of the kernel bare. Now take a sharp-pointed, thin-bladed knife and insert the point under the edge of the broken shell, being very careful not to cut ...
— The Gladiolus - A Practical Treatise on the Culture of the Gladiolus (2nd Edition) • Matthew Crawford
... but we shall have to wait until Spring comes again. The earth is soon going to sleep for the Winter, when nothing will grow in it. But it is time to get in your corn and beans, children. You must cut your yellow corn, Hal, and the other kind, too, and let the ears get dry, ready for husking." ...
— Daddy Takes Us to the Garden - The Daddy Series for Little Folks • Howard R. Garis
... as much so as yesterday. Notwithstanding it was a holiday, I'd been husking corn all day steady, from dark until dark. There was snow on the ground, and I came in wet through, chattering cold, hungry, and dog-tired—to find the entire family had left to celebrate the evening with a neighbor. They did that often of a holiday, but usually they left ...
— The Dominant Dollar • Will Lillibridge
... house. For food Si Kira offered to him a mess of soft white grains, and told him to eat. 'What, eat those little maggots?' said Si Jura. 'They are not maggots, that is boiled rice,' replied Si Kira, and he forthwith instructed him in the art of planting, weeding, reaping, husking, and boiling rice. ...
— Folk-lore in Borneo - A Sketch • William Henry Furness
... nuts off, but was only free of the windfalls. A little later they were all gathered, and on a certain night the girls and the young men of the village have the custom to meet and make a frolic of cracking them, as they used in husking corn with us. Then the oil is pressed out, and the commune apportions each family its share, according to the amount of nuts contributed. This nut oil imparts a sentiment to salad which the olive cannot give, and mushrooms pickled in it become ...
— A Little Swiss Sojourn • W. D. Howells
... himself, would meantime take a course calculated to placate the insurgents and disarm their resentment. Being rather anxiously inquired of by the storekeeper as to what he could consistently do, Perez finally suggested that Israel Goodrich was going to have a husking in his barn the following night, if the warm weather held; and if Desire Edwards should attend, it would not only please the people generally, but possibly gain over Israel, a member of the committee. Edwards made no reply, and Perez left him ...
— The Duke of Stockbridge • Edward Bellamy
... "indignation meetings" set on foot in the time of William the Testy, where men met together to rail at public abuses, groan over the evils of the times, and make each other miserable, there were joyous gatherings of the two sexes to dance and make merry. Now were instituted "quilting bees," and "husking bees," and other rural assemblages, where, under the inspiring influence of the fiddle, toil was enlivened by gayety and followed up by the dance. "Raising bees" also were frequent, where houses sprang up at the wagging of the fiddle-stick, ...
— Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete • Washington Irving
... began the active cultivation of coffee, William Panter was granted the first English patent on a "mill for husking coffee." This was in 1775. James Henckel followed with an English patent, granted in 1806, on a coffee drier, "an invention communicated to him by a certain foreigner." The first American to enter the lists was Nathan Reed of Belfast, Me., who in 1822 was granted ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... a stranger to all the present conditions of my existence, wholly ill at ease and out of place amid the familiar surroundings of my study. I became, in short, the gangling farmer-boy my aunt had known, scourged with chilblains and bashfulness, my hands cracked and sore from the corn husking. I sat again before her parlour organ, fumbling the scales with my stiff, red fingers, while she, beside me, made canvas mittens ...
— Youth and the Bright Medusa • Willa Cather
... chinch bug, corn-root worm (Diabrotica longicornis), bill bug, wire worm, boll-worm or ear-worm, cut-worm, army worm, stalk worm, grasshopper, and plant lice, in all a total of about fifty important species! Several of these pests work secretly. At husking time the wretched ear-worm that ruins the terminal quarter or fifth of an immense number of ears, is painfully in evidence. The root-worms work insidiously, and the moles and shrews are supposed to attack them and destroy them. The corn-root worm is charged ...
— Our Vanishing Wild Life - Its Extermination and Preservation • William T. Hornaday
... Popocatapetl, a little below its snow-covered summit. It was such weather as we have at "harvest home," and it was truly a "harvest home" throughout the whole Vega. Men were working in gangs in the different fields, gathering stalks, or husking corn, or cutting grain, or plowing with a dozen plows in company, or harrowing, or putting in seed. It was harvest-time and seed-time together. The full green blade and the ripened grain stood in adjoining fields in this region ...
— Mexico and its Religion • Robert A. Wilson
... more than sixty year back— Used to be somewhat older than him Fought him one night to a husking bee; Licked him in manner uncommon complete; Every one said 'twas a beautiful fight; Joe he wa'n't satisfied with it that way, Kept dinging along, and when he got through The worst looking critter that you ever ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume VIII (of X) • Various
... Corn-song' (before 1872), a poem of praise and thanksgiving at the end of 'The Huskers', which tells of the gathering of the corn and of the "corn-husking", known in the South ...
— Select Poems of Sidney Lanier • Sidney Lanier
... of different sizes, the largest and best that the writer has seen being manufactured at Rambrai, in the south-western portion of the hills. Paddy is husked in a wooden mortar by means of a heavy wooden pestle. These are to be seen all over the hills. The work of husking paddy is performed by the women. A bamboo sieve is sometimes used for sifting the husked rise, a winnowing fan being applied to separate the husk. The cleaned rice is exposed to the sun in a bamboo tray. Paddy is stored in a separate store-house in large ...
— The Khasis • P. R. T. Gurdon
... later than this we have huskings in the barns, seated around a heap of corn. Husking over, we eat pudding, baked beans, mince, apple, and pumpkin pie, and top off with pop-corn, apples, and cider. After supper the girls clear away the dishes; then we push the table into one corner of the kitchen, Julius Caesar mounts it with his fiddle, and ...
— Daughters of the Revolution and Their Times - 1769 - 1776 A Historical Romance • Charles Carleton Coffin
... usually to be seen boiling water or sewing with a baby tucked into the back of her dress. A lucifer factory has recently been put up, and in many house fronts men are cutting up wood into lengths for matches. In others they are husking rice, a very laborious process, in which the grain is pounded in a mortar sunk in the floor by a flat-ended wooden pestle attached to a long horizontal lever, which is worked by the feet of a man, invariably naked, who stands at ...
— Unbeaten Tracks in Japan • Isabella L. Bird
... too, but when they went to them or to anything else, they had to have a pass. When they went to a party the most they did was to play the fiddle and dance. They had corn huskings every Friday night, and they ground the meal every Saturday. The corn husking was the same as fun. They didn't serve anything on the place where I was. I never knew them to serve anything at the corn shuckings or at the parties. Sometimes they would give a picnic, and they would kill ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States from Interviews with Former Slaves, Arkansas Narratives, Part 4 • Works Projects Administration
... by that Jacob was a steady, faithful hand in the harvest-field at husking-time, or whenever any extra labor was required, and Jacob's father made no objection to his earning a penny in this way; and so he fell into the habit of spending his Saturday evenings at the Pardon farm-house, at first to talk over matters of work, and finally because it had become a welcome relief ...
— Beauty and The Beast, and Tales From Home • Bayard Taylor
... of husking pied ears of corn, denotes you will enjoy varied success and pleasure. To see others gathering corn, foretells you will rejoice in the prosperity ...
— 10,000 Dreams Interpreted • Gustavus Hindman Miller
... got the kind of looks that might do well enough at a tavern dance, or a husking, but they're entirely unsuited to the Sabbath day or the meetin'-house," so Aunt Abby remarked to Mrs. Day in the way of backseat confidence. "It's unfortunate that a deacon's daughter should be afflicted with that bold style of beauty! Her hair's all but red; in fact, you might as ...
— The Story Of Waitstill Baxter • By Kate Douglas Wiggin
... we haven't. You know we're always behindhand. It's been fine, open weather for husking, too. But at least we've got rid of that miserable Jerry; so there's something to be thankful for. He had one of his fits of temper in town one day, when he was hitching up to come home, and Leonard Dawson saw him beat one of our horses with the neck-yoke. Leonard told your ...
— One of Ours • Willa Cather
... the fall work and the last day of husking found Bradley desolately undecided. They had been working desperately all the week to finish the field on Saturday. It was a bitter cold morning. As they leaped into the frost-rimmed wagon-box and ...
— A Spoil of Office - A Story of the Modern West • Hamlin Garland
... adapted for the purpose of saving fodder in good condition for cattle. Intelligent farmers regard the fodder of much more value than the decrease in the weight of the grain. Corn thus cut up, and fed without husking, is the best possible way for winter-fattening cattle on a large scale, and where corn is abundant. To save the whole, swine should follow the cattle, ...
— Soil Culture • J. H. Walden
... seemed heavenly safe and warm in those days—like a tight little boat in a winter sea. The men were out in the fields all day, husking corn, and when they came in at noon, with long caps pulled down over their ears and their feet in red-lined overshoes, I used to think they were like Arctic explorers. In the afternoons, when grandmother sat upstairs darning, or making husking-gloves, I read 'The Swiss Family Robinson' ...
— My Antonia • Willa Cather
... look at the sky without. It will rain till the dawn. Listen! The boulders are talking to-night in the bed of the river. Hear them! They would be husking your bones, Sahib, had you tried to cross. See, I will shut the door and no rain can enter. Wahi! Ahi! Ugh! Thirty years on the banks of the ford! An old man am I and—where is the oil for ...
— Indian Tales • Rudyard Kipling
... Tomkins, "I'll borrow a harrow from Farmer Barly. And next spring I'll plant corn here on the hill. Table corn, that is. Then we'll have a corn-husking, Jeminy; you and I, and the rest of the young ones." And he burst out laughing, ...
— Autumn • Robert Nathan |
