"Shuck" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... not spare himself in the least. He toiled at whatever task appeared for him to do. As he required for his own wants fifty bushels of corn for a year, he planted enough to shuck a hundred bushels. Once, in the fervour of the hope that he was called upon to raise corn for humanity, he raised five hundred bushels, only to give it all away to poor white trash who had not ...
— The River Prophet • Raymond S. Spears
... just get down and raise a holler and shuck that corn. Man, they had fun! They sure liked to go to those corn shuckings. They danced and went on. They'd give 'em whiskey too. That's all I know ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States - Volume II. Arkansas Narratives. Part I • Work Projects Administration
... mournful, long-drawn hymn. Shivering and damp from our walk up the yard, we opened the door, to see Minerva, with kilted skirts, standing in an expanse of frozen slush and singing at the top of her voice, while she sluiced fresh deluges of water from her shuck brush. I was too disgusted for words, but resolved that this should not occur again. As soon as I could communicate with the outside world I had the hall floors covered with oilcloth (then the fashionable covering). ...
— Plantation Sketches • Margaret Devereux
... there alone in the shuck-bottomed chair, the corners of the room wavered in huge shadows, and the smoke-blackened cavern of the fireplace, glaring like a volcano pit, threw her face into relief. She made a very lovely and pathetic picture. Her ...
— The Call of the Cumberlands • Charles Neville Buck
... roll" in a cotton sack so loosely tied behind, And his canteen from his saddle-horn was swung. He said that he had to leave his home, his pa had married twice; And his new ma whipped him every day or two; So he saddled up old Chaw one night and lit a shuck this way, And he's now trying to paddle ...
— Cowboy Songs - and Other Frontier Ballads • Various
... of it, Squire. He just stayed, and shuck hands with everybody, pleasant as a basket of chips; and he went home with David Gillespie. He was just as polite to the poorest person there, but it was the big bugs that ...
— The Leatherwood God • William Dean Howells
... the Negro. "De rails is done gone twist wid de shakes. Dey lays like er heap ob corn-shuck in de win' up yander. Dat ar train don' know hit, an' she'll go to Day ob Jedgment, an' ebery soul aboard ob her! I'se run like de nation fer ...
— A Lost Hero • Elizabeth Stuart Phelps Ward and Herbert D. Ward
... boards,' you're gittin' kind o' fresh, but I'd bet a greenback to a last year's corn-shuck you don't quit ther' an' come grazin' around Carney's pastures, long as my missis does ...
— The Night Riders - A Romance of Early Montana • Ridgwell Cullum
... bein raised in de house and cause dey was why dey think is Quality. Some of dese nigger gals was raised in de house but most of dem was made work ebery whar on de plantation. My Massa has his nigger gals to lay fence worms, mak fences, shuck corn, hoe corn en terbacco, wash, iron, and de missus try to teach de nigger gals to sew and knit. But shucks niggers aint got no sense nuf ter do fancy things. Sometimes I ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States - From Interviews with Former Slaves - Kentucky Narratives • Works Projects Administration
... of himself. With what strength of argument would a man plead the necessariness of his members to him, and the unnaturalness of his adversary in seeking the destruction of his members, and the deformity of his body! Yea, a man would shuck and cringe, and weep, and entreat, and make demurs, and halts, and delays, to a thousand years, if possible, before he would lose his members, ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... the ladder, and sent a boy up a cocoanut tree for some fresh nuts. In a moment half a dozen of the great, oval, green nuts came pounding down into the sand. Another little fellow snatched them up, and with a sharp parang, or hatchet-like knife, cut away the soft shuck until the cocoanut took the form of a pyramid, at the apex of which he bored a hole, and a stream of delicious, cool milk gurgled out. We needed no second invitation to apply our lips to the hole. The meat inside ...
— Tales of the Malayan Coast - From Penang to the Philippines • Rounsevelle Wildman
... such quickening to the conscience, such ripening of character; and that through its experiences, its trials, and its griefs, come such graces to the souls of those that leave it, that when they pass they leave their worse self behind them, even as the germ leaves the shuck out of which it sprouted,—leaves the dull, clamp ground forever while it groweth up into the sunlight in ...
— How Deacon Tubman and Parson Whitney Kept New Year's - And Other Stories • W. H. H. Murray
... whedder he fall in, er slip in, er ef he was pushed in, but dar he wuz! He come mighty nigh not gittin' out; but he scramble an' he scuffle twel he git back ter de bank whar he kin clim' out, an' he stood dar, he did, an' kinder shuck hisse'f, kaze he mighty glad fer ter fin' dat he's in de worl' once mo'. He know'd dat a lettel mo' an' he'd 'a' been gone fer good, kaze when he drapped in, er jumped in, er fell in, he wuz over his head an' years, an' he hatter do a sight er kickin' an' scufflin' an' swallerin' ...
— Types of Children's Literature • Edited by Walter Barnes
... Crawford told young Abraham Lincoln that he had fallen heir to a fortune the boy could hardly have felt more elated. Shuck corn only three days, and earn the book that told all about his ...
— Good Stories For Great Holidays - Arranged for Story-Telling and Reading Aloud and for the - Children's Own Reading • Frances Jenkins Olcott
... shuckings one Negro would sit on the fence and lead the singing, the others shuck on each side. The master would pour out a tin cup full of whiskey from a big jug for each corn shucker, and Mrs. Williams would give each a ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States - Volume II. Arkansas Narratives. Part I • Work Projects Administration
... "howdyed" round, and shuck Hands with the neighbors, must 'a' tuck A half-hour longer: ever' one A-sayin' "Christmas-gift!" afore David er me—so we got none. But David warmed up, more and more, And got so jokey-like, and had His sperits up, and 'peared ...
— In The Yule-Log Glow—Book 3 - Christmas Poems from 'round the World • Various
... the house, an' I turned for home; but I hadn't gone ten steps afore I come agin somebody stan'in' in the middle o' the road. 'Hullo!' says I. The next thing he had a holt o' my coat-collar an' shuck me like a tarrier-dog shakes a rat. I knowed who it was afore he spoke; an' I couldn't 'a' been more skeered, if the life had all gone out o' me. He'd been down to the tavern to see a drover, an' comin' home ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 45, July, 1861 • Various
... clim' the fence, and slid down that sapling in the yard, there she laid on the porch on her shuck-bed a-shaking with the ager. And, Carats, she was a-looking right straight at me—yes, she was; ...
— Shadows of Shasta • Joaquin Miller
... dinner, old blue-eyes," he suggested. "Let me shuck some corn or shell some peas or string some beans—any job where I can sit and look at you and ...
— Kindred of the Dust • Peter B. Kyne
... regiment all through the war, and had kept in perfection the grand and uncritical appetite and splendid physical vigor which those four years of tough fare and activity had furnished him. Sage went supperless to bed, and tossed and writhed all night upon a shuck mattress that was full of attentive and interested corn-cobs. In the morning Harris was ravenous again, and devoured the odious breakfast as contentedly and as delightedly as he had devoured its twin the night before. Sage sat ...
— Chapters from My Autobiography • Mark Twain
... taunted her. "Oh, no, you don't. You just think you think it. Now, I'm goin' to light a shuck. I'll be sayin' good-bye, Miss Beatrice, until you ...
— The Big-Town Round-Up • William MacLeod Raine
... let Adam tell us the same things he's been saying for these many months, and then we'll let him shuck his fine clothes and come on home in my ...
— The Golden Bird • Maria Thompson Daviess
... beer-slinger," she cried, "how about that 'party' call you'd fixed up for us? Ain't ther' nuthin' doin' since that mutt with the thin yeller thatch got busy shootin'? Say, he got you all scared to a pea shuck." ...
— The Golden Woman - A Story of the Montana Hills • Ridgwell Cullum
... Hampton Roads. After a little conversation, he asked me if I had seen that overcoat of Stephens's. I replied that I had. "Well," said he, "did you see him take it off?" I said yes. "Well," said he, "didn't you think it was the biggest shuck and the littlest ear that ever you did see?" Long afterwards I told this story to the Confederate General J. B. Gordon, at the time a member of the Senate. He repeated it to Stephens, and, as I heard ...
— Personal Memoirs of U. S. Grant, Complete • Ulysses S. Grant
... muttered something about the security of the United States mail, wherein he had had the forethought to deposit his Christmas gift, and forthwith he flung himself into the shuck-pen, where he fell asleep, and was not found till half-frozen, his whereabouts being at last disclosed to the storekeeper by the persistent presence of his faithful steed standing hard by. Tank was humanely cared for by this functionary, ...
— Who Crosses Storm Mountain? - 1911 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... can tell you, then, that he's a bad lot. He was driven out of Arkansas after a suspected murder. It was a killing from ambush. They couldn't quite hang it on him, but he lit a shuck to save his skin from lynchers. At that time he was a boy. Couldn't have been ...
— Brand Blotters • William MacLeod Raine
... shuck his head. 'No,' sezee, 'I's much erbleedzd, but I doan raise niggers; I raises hosses, en I doan wanter be both'rin' wid no nigger babies. Nemmine de baby. I'll keep dat 'oman so busy she 'll fergit de ...
— The Conjure Woman • Charles W. Chesnutt
... en shuck de stift'nes out'n my bones, en I look 'way 'cross de river ter de top er de hill whar de road lead. I look en I ...
— Mingo - And Other Sketches in Black and White • Joel Chandler Harris
... during geologic ages so that the shrinkage should accumulate within, until finally collapse came, giving an era of uplift, it is obvious that we could account for such cycles. There is very clear evidence that the outermost layer of the earth's crust is but a thin shell like the outer shuck or exocarp of a butternut, so thin that it is not at all possible that it can sustain itself for more than a hundred miles or so, or for more than a very few years at the outside. Hayford's[1] investigations are the latest that show that the continents project because, on the ...
— Popular Science Monthly Volume 86
... rind, cortex, husk, shell, coat; eggshell, glume^. capsule; sheath, sheathing; pod, cod; casing, case, theca^; elytron^; elytrum^; involucrum [Lat.]; wrapping, wrapper; envelope, vesicle; corn husk, corn shuck [U.S.]; dermatology, conchology; testaceology^. inunction^; incrustation, superimposition, superposition, obduction^; scale &c (layer) 204. [specific coverings] veneer, facing; overlay; plate, silver plate, gold plate, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... a log house with dirt floors, warm in winter but sho' hot in summer, no screens or nothin', jus' homemade doors. We had homemade beds out of planks they picked up around. Mattresses nothin', we had shuck beds. But, anyway, you takes it, we was better ...
— Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves. - Texas Narratives, Part 2 • Works Projects Administration
... it's this way," explained the foreman with a grin. "Y'u're right pleasant and friendly, but the boys have got a savvy way down deep that y'u'd shuck that friendliness awful sudden if any of them dropped around with 'Object, Matrimony' in their manner. Consequence is, they're loaded down to the ground with admiration of their boss, but they ain't ...
— Wyoming, a Story of the Outdoor West • William MacLeod Raine
... across th' ma'shes. Then all of a suddint we saw somefin' come a-wamblin' outer the shadder o' the wood, and run along by th' edge of ut. We couldn't make out a' furst what it moight be, thow for sure we got a rare fright. For my part, I thowt it might a' been ole Black Shuck, thow th' night didn't seem windy enough ...
— The Shrieking Pit • Arthur J. Rees
... "We always shuck corn and shell it at night, on moon-light nights we pick cotton. On Saturday afternoons we had frolics, sometimes frolics 'till Sunday daylight, then ...
— Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves • Works Projects Administration
... prettiest, slimmest, black-eyed one marked down for me. I wanted her right off, but she said she couldn't consider it, and cried a little; so I cuddled her up and ca'med her down and said I'd do the considerin'. That's a great place—you fellers have seen enough rough house, why don't you shuck down ...
— Red Saunders' Pets and Other Critters • Henry Wallace Phillips
... making in all three hours away from their individual trades each week. Theory is combined with practise, and many a fanciful thought is woven in with the reed and raffia of the Indian baskets, African purses, belts, and pine-needle work-baskets. The shuck hats and foot-mats are so foreign in design that one often wonders how it were possible to utilize the same material in so widely different purposes. But our girl is progressive, and not a few instances have occurred when one has been informed ...
— Tuskegee & Its People: Their Ideals and Achievements • Various
... heavum NOW. Hallelujah, praise my Lawd!' An' he slide down little, an' holler: 'Devil's got a hol' o' my coat-tails; devil tryin' to drag me down! Sinnuhs, take wawnun! Devil got a hol' o' my coat-tails; I'm a-goin' to hell, oh Lawd!' Nex', he clim up little mo', an' yell an' holler: 'Done shuck ole devil loose; goin' straight to heavum agin! Goin' to heavum, goin' to heavum, my Lawd!' Nex', he slide down some mo' an' holler, 'Leggo my coat-tails, ole devil! Goin' to hell agin, sinnuhs! Goin' straight to hell, ...
— Penrod • Booth Tarkington
... him. Well, your honour, my father was asy enough until the sperit kem past him; so close, God be marciful to us all, that the smell iv the sulphur tuck the breath clane out iv him; an' with that he tuck such a fit iv coughin', that it al-a-most shuck him out iv the chair he was ...
— J. S. Le Fanu's Ghostly Tales, Volume 4 • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... person," she replied. "I have come to see Mr. Noyes," and she displayed once more the large square envelope, her legacy from the lodger, the knife with which she proposed to shuck from its rough shell that ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1921 • Various |
