"Swath" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... touched suffered. Church steeples fell, crushing beneath their weight the buildings over which they had stood guard. Wrenching warehouses to fragments the tornado passed to the river front, leaving a broad swath of wreckage and dead bodies. The belt of destruction extended from the west side of Seventh Street as far as Ninth and Main Streets, and an equal width across to the point where the city was first touched. Along this path were demolished homes and wrecked business ...
— The True Story of Our National Calamity of Flood, Fire and Tornado • Logan Marshall
... neared like a rain torrent; indeed it found their immediate lines before they heard the murderous cutting of the air. The Austrian gunners were placed for enfilading, so that a fraction of point gave them impaling force and a wide swath in ...
— Red Fleece • Will Levington Comfort
... swath through one of our suburbs, I rushed half-a-dozen photographs to Leslie's, feeling again some of the same thrilling sort of confidence that had accompanied the first Irresistible Wedge. Back came three dollars for a single print. Rather a proud day, ...
— If You Don't Write Fiction • Charles Phelps Cushing
... cab stopped altogether, and Gallegher could hear the driver swearing to himself, or at the horse, or the roads. At last they drew up before the station at Torresdale. It was quite deserted, and only a single light cut a swath in the darkness and showed a portion of the platform, the ties, and the rails glistening in the rain. They walked twice past the light before a figure stepped out of the shadow ...
— Short Stories for English Courses • Various (Rosa M. R. Mikels ed.)
... forward: "Come on, Boys, for Liberty! Forward, and follow me! Remember Kentucky!" Into the hell they broke— Into the fire and smoke— Dealing swift saber-stroke— The gallant Kentuckians. Horses plunge, Riders lunge Heavily forward; Over the fallen they ride Down to Zagonyi's side, Mowing a swath of death Either side,—right and ...
— The Feast of the Virgins and Other Poems • H. L. Gordon
... they were besought not to pick any flowers. They nodded, wiped their mouths, and proceeded to take themselves off by the side of the bungalow. They smote the poppy field beneath my windows, spread out fan-shaped six wide, picking with both hands, and ripped a swath of destruction through the very heart of the field. No cyclone travelled faster or destroyed more completely. I shouted after them, but they sped on the wings of the wind, great regal poppies, broken-stalked and mangled, trailing after them or cluttering their wake—the ...
— Revolution and Other Essays • Jack London
... by a higher hill in front and the heavy woods which served as a screen for the artillery. I noticed many holes where the French shells had burst, and the valley to the north looked as if some one had been experimenting with a well digger. One 21-centimeter shell had cut a swath about 100 yards long out of the woods on the hill where we dismounted. The trees were twisted from their stumps as if a small cyclone had passed, and one could realize the damage the shells could do merely by the ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 2, May, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... of the bear was marked by a swath of broken brush. It dashed headlong through the forest regardless of obstruction. Small trees in his way meant nothing to him; he ran over them, or if old and brittle, smashed them down. Into the densest portion of the woods he made his way. Not more than three ...
— Hunting with the Bow and Arrow • Saxton Pope
... I will name, as he not only took a big swath in the evening's entertainment, but he was a man more generally known than our worthy President, James K. Polk. That man was the famous Captain Riley, whose "Narrative" of suffering and adventures is pretty ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume IV. (of X.) • Various
... of the air-bubbles clinging to the hairs were reproduced as strange jungle mosses. He patted the water, and the reflected light capsized and leaped and volleyed. He was content and childish. He played. He shaved a swath down the calf ...
— Babbitt • Sinclair Lewis
... "Wealthy Citizens of New York," edited in 1845 by Moses Y. Beach, an early owner in part of The New York Sun, the Hoffman family is thus described: "Few families, for so few a number of persons as compose it, have cut 'a larger swath' or 'bigger figure' in the way of posts and preferment. Talent, and also public service rendered, martial gallantry, poetry, judicial acumen, oratory, all have their lustre mingled with this name." I regard this ...
— As I Remember - Recollections of American Society during the Nineteenth Century • Marian Gouverneur
... Opdyke had gained any inkling of the wide swath of woe and consequent spiritual doubtings that he was cutting among the closest of his personal friends, he would have fallen to plucking out his hair in mingled rage and shamed amusement. Mercifully, however, that humiliating knowledge was denied him. As ...
— The Brentons • Anna Chapin Ray
... who drove the boys out of his orchard with his cane. Consider the triumphs of the mortal man, and what poor trophies it would have to show, to wit:—He cobbled shoes without glasses at a hundred, and cut a handsome swath at a hundred and five! Lovewell's house is said to have been the first which Mrs. Dustan reached on her escape from the Indians. Here probably the hero of Pequawket was born and bred. Close by may be seen the cellar and the gravestone ...
— A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers • Henry David Thoreau
... father had owned a mowing machine, but primitive methods prevailed on the frontier, and he had been compelled to use a scythe in his haying operations. Joel swung the blade like a veteran, scattering his swath to cure in the sun, and with whetstone on steel, beat a frequent tattoo. The raking into windrows and shocking at evening was an easy task for the brothers, no day passing but the cured store was added to, until sufficient was accumulated to build a stack. That was a task which ...
— Wells Brothers • Andy Adams
... a sceptic, if not openly a derider of spiritual things. For this attitude his early love passage had been chiefly accountable. That strife between duty and passion which had driven the woman he loved to religion had driven him in the other direction and left a broad swath of desolation in his soul. He had seen little of his brother since that evil time, and nothing whatever of his brother's son. Then John had written, "I am soon to be bound by the awful tie of the priesthood," and he had thought it necessary to do something for him. ...
— The Christian - A Story • Hall Caine
... I can see, the suggestion was entirely irrelevant to the gathering, for what could it matter to the mower what sort of hands the woman had who gathered his swath. But then Miss Elspeth had, if not very pretty, at least very small hands, and smallness was the only merit she ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald
... and spilled a crimson swath on the hills to the East, and the Six Flying Stars faded from sight like a necklace of glowing jewels dipped into an ...
— Rastignac the Devil • Philip Jose Farmer
... on. You see, Time won't stop to argue with us, or dicker; and our settin' down, and coaxin' him to stop a minute, and whet his scythe, and give us a chance to get round the swath he cuts, won't ammount to nothin' only wastin' our breath. His scythe is one that don't need any grindstun, and his swath is one ...
— Sweet Cicely - Or Josiah Allen as a Politician • Josiah Allen's Wife (Marietta Holley)
... was occasionally intrusted with the task of driving the reaper or the mower—and generally forgot to oil the bearings. His absent-mindedness was a source of laughter among his sons and sons-in-law. I've heard Frank say: "Dad would stop in the midst of a swath to announce the end of the world." He seldom remembered to put on a hat even in the blazing sun of July and his daughters had to keep an eye on him to be sure he had his vest on ...
— A Son of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... painfulness. The sting of envy and the dart of love, Avarice' talons, and the fire of hate, Would poison, wound, distract, and soon consume The heart, the liver, life, and mind of man. The sturdy mower, that with brawny arms Wieldeth the crooked scythe, in many a swath Cutting the flowery pride on velvet plain, Lies down at night, and in the weird[316] folds Of his wife's arms forgets his labour past. The painful mariner and careful smith, The toiling ploughman, all artificers, ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. IX • Various
... world! Look, the arquebus and culverin Vanish in new sciences that presage T. N. T! Lo, a dark, discolored swath Where they drive new tools of wrath! Do they justify invention? Will they scrap the ...
— Guns of the Gods • Talbot Mundy
... which the troops had to cope while in Russia. The Americans only laughed at Bolshevik propaganda which they clearly saw through. To the statement that the Reds would bring a million rifles against Archangel they only replied, "Let 'em come, the thicker grass the heavier the swath." ...
— The History of the American Expedition Fighting the Bolsheviki - Campaigning in North Russia 1918-1919 • Joel R. Moore
... early in September, as soon as a field was drained the negroes would be turned in with sickles, each laborer cutting a swath of three or four rows, leaving the stubble about a foot high to sustain the cut stalks carefully laid upon it in handfuls for a day's drying. Next day the crop would be bound in sheaves and stacked for a brief curing. When the reaping was done the threshing began, and then followed the tedious ...
— American Negro Slavery - A Survey of the Supply, Employment and Control of Negro Labor as Determined by the Plantation Regime • Ulrich Bonnell Phillips
... Jack. 'Twould be a dog-in-the-manger trick in me to blame you for loving her. And since you speak of debts, I do protest I owe you somewhat, too. With so fair a chance to cut a clean swath in that fair-weather month at Appleby Hundred, another man would have left me scant gleanings in the field, I'll ...
— The Master of Appleby • Francis Lynde
... out that this thing of our Lord's return cuts a wider swath than we are apt to think, if we don't stop to think. That is because of Who it is that is coming. An event takes on the size of the chief person concerned. This Lord Jesus is the One through whom our world was made in the early time, when there were no calendars. ...
— Quiet Talks on the Crowned Christ of Revelation • S. D. Gordon
... And that devastating column belongs not to another, but to that engine that hath journeyed far. Thus the evil man does lives after him. The condemnation of life is that a man hath carried friction and stirred up malign elements and sowed fiery discords, so that the gods track him by the swath of destruction he hath cut through life. The praise of life is that a man hath exhaled bounty and stimulus and joy and gladness wherever he journeys. To-day noble examples and ten thousand precepts unite in urging every one to become a great heart. Every individual must bring together his little ...
— The Investment of Influence - A Study of Social Sympathy and Service • Newell Dwight Hillis
... by half-past four or five in the morning, and mow an hour or two before breakfast. A good mower is proud of his skill. He does not "lop in," and his "pointing out" is perfect, and you can hardly see the ribs of his swath. He stands up to his grass and strikes level and sure. He will turn a double down through the stoutest grass, and when the hay is raked away you will not find a spear left standing. The Americans are—or were—the best ...
— In the Catskills • John Burroughs
... whoever seeks abroad may find Thee sitting careless on a granary floor, Thy hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind; Or on a half-reaped furrow sound asleep, Drowsed with the fume of poppies, while thy hook Spares the next swath and all its twined flowers; And sometimes like a gleaner thou dost keep Steady thy laden head across a brook; Or by a cider-press, with patient look, Thou watchest the last oozings, ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 3 (of 4) • Various
... was not necessary to have the lantern lit, for a broad band of sunshine shone down the steep ladder and cut a golden swath through the dingy gloom and fell athwart the chest and illuminated the group: the tall and swaggering Cales, the rugged, grizzled Pete, and the other sailormen; a typical group and not to be matched for picturesqueness anywhere; with their faces intent upon the center of the old black sea ...
— Frontier Boys on the Coast - or in the Pirate's Power • Capt. Wyn Roosevelt
... As soon as she saw the food the delighted Sarah kicked up her heels and, flourishing her head in such a manner that it seemed to comprehend everything in its wide swath, ran into the cow-yard, where Nannie skillfully lassoed her and tied her to the fence just as she plunged her nose ...
— The Gentle Art of Cooking Wives • Elizabeth Strong Worthington
... point that he tapped Reub Levi's foot-path to the town. But he did his tapping after his own fashion. He took his wife's red flannel petticoat and tied it to a sapling on the top of the mound that the old hunter used to climb, and then with bill-hook and axe he cut a straight swath through the woods. He even cut down through the roots and took ...
— Jersey Street and Jersey Lane - Urban and Suburban Sketches • H. C. Bunner
... what was not life, living is so dear; nor did I wish to practice resignation, unless it was quite necessary. I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life, to cut a broad swath and shave close, to drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms, and, if it proved to be mean, why then to get the whole and genuine meanness of it, and publish its meanness to the world; or if it were sublime, ...
— The American Mind - The E. T. Earl Lectures • Bliss Perry
... this proceeds with great regularity. I can compare the action to nothing so well as to the manner in which the tongue of an ox licks up the grass of the field, or to the action of the mower cutting swath after swath." ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 47, September, 1861 • Various
... an even web. All the red of the spring landscape was in the swift passing of her garments. All that was not in straight parallels of accord with the universal yielding of nature to the simplest law of growth was in her soul. She passed on her own errand, cutting, as it were, a swath of spirit through the soft influence of the spring. Abigail Merritt's mouth was tightly shut, her eyes were narrow gleams of resolution, there were red spots on her cheeks. She had left Lucina weeping ...
— Jerome, A Poor Man - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... we talked, we advanced in our slashing swath up the field, and all the time that chorus of wild laughter and shrieks of disloyalty kept time with the swash of the knives, and all the time rose Captain Jaynes' storm of fruitless curses and commands, and now and then the stinging lash of his riding whip, and ...
— The Heart's Highway - A Romance of Virginia in the Seventeeth Century • Mary E. Wilkins
... an' he is as proud as Tecumseh of his good name an' charactah. An', gentlemen," he added, bridling with an air of mock gallantry and laying a hand on his heart, "if anythin' fu'thah is required in the way of a puffect encomium, we all know that there isn't anothah man among us who cuts as wide a swath among the ladies. The'foh, if you have any appreciation of virtue, any magnanimity of heaht; if you set a propah valuation upon the descendants of Virginia, that mothah of Presidents; if you believe in the pure laws of Kentucky as the pioneer bride of the Union; if you ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... map, her expansion has been the wonder of the world. She has added 20,000,000 to her population—one-half the present population of France—during a period in which the French population has actually diminished. Of all the nations in Europe, she has cut the biggest swath in the development of world trade, industry, and influence. Despite the fact that she has not "expanded" in the sense of mere political dominion, a proportion of her population, equivalent to the white population of the whole colonial British Empire, make their living, ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 21 - The Recent Days (1910-1914) • Charles F. Horne, Editor
... made of a number of buoyant earthenware jars fixed in a bamboo frame. A splendid bridge spans the swollen torrent of the more formidable Markunda, and the well-metalled highway now cuts a wide straight swath through inundated jungle. A big wild monkey, the first of his species thus far encountered on the road, utters a shrill squeak of apprehension at seeing the bicycle come bowling down the road, and in his fright he leaps from the branches of a road-side tree into the shallow water and escapes ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens
... theory, by coming to believe so implicitly in our own preaching. Why, Al, this work we've begun here has got to go on! It must go on! There mustn't be any collapse or failure. When the hard times come, we must be prepared to go right on through, cutting a little narrower swath, but cutting all the same. Stand by the guns with me, and, in spite of all, we'll win, and save Lattimore—and ...
— Aladdin & Co. - A Romance of Yankee Magic • Herbert Quick
... and around it, and realizing that it had found trouble, it sank among the grasses and went threshing toward its den in the deep willow-fringed low ground. The swale appeared as if a reaper were cutting a wide swath. The mass of enraged bees darted angrily around, searching for it, and striking the scrub-thorn, began a temporary settling there to discover whether it were a suitable place. Completely exhausted, Mrs. Duncan staggered on a few steps farther, fell facing the path, where Freckles ...
— Freckles • Gene Stratton-Porter
... busy in front of his homestead putting together a new binder which had just arrived from the settlement. It was the latest type of harvesting implement and designed to cut an unusually broad swath. While he was engaged, the trooper he had met when accompanying Jernyngham rode up with a corporal following. He stopped his horse and glanced at the ...
— Prescott of Saskatchewan • Harold Bindloss
... their quickly improvised tent and wandered about! The beautiful forests seemed about ruined. In one direction, like as though a great reaper had gone through a splendid meadow, and cut clean to the ground a great swath of grass, so had this cyclone gone through the forest. In the centre of its path, not a tree had been left standing. Every one had gone down before this irresistible force. Fortunately it had swerved a little to the right as it passed by our friends, or they would not have escaped so well. ...
— Three Boys in the Wild North Land • Egerton Ryerson Young
... mowing with the scythe; and Bert, accompanying Uncle Alec to the field, was filled with admiration for the stalwart "Rorys" and "Donalds" and "Sandys" as they strode along through the thick grass, cutting a wide swath before them. There was something in the work that appealed to the boy's bump of destructiveness, and filled him with ...
— Bert Lloyd's Boyhood - A Story from Nova Scotia • J. McDonald Oxley
... of trees sometimes thrown down by a hurricane, often over a swath not more than two hundred yards wide. Where men did not exist to clear them away they were numerous in Kentucky, accumulating for uncounted years. But it was more than an hour before they came upon one of these heaps of tree ...
— The Keepers of the Trail - A Story of the Great Woods • Joseph A. Altsheler
... several of his pets were mere straw men, and dashed violently and madly into and through Punk's interference, and downed him on the 15-yard line; how the spectators looked on in silent amazement at this unexpected beginning; how promptly Tug's men were lined up, a broad swath completely opened with one quick gash in Clayton's line, and the ball shoved through and within five yards of the goal-posts, almost before Clayton knew it was in play; how Clayton called his men to one side, and rebuked them, and told ...
— The Dozen from Lakerim • Rupert Hughes
... pinnacle as the sun rose, he easily traced a blackened swath cut from the fifth hill up to the eastward wall of the imperial grounds; and, in proof of the fury of the gale, the terraces of the garden were covered inches deep with ashes and scoriac-looking flakes of what at sunset ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 2 • Lew. Wallace
... numbering many thousands, stayed with us day and night for more than three weeks. Aided by the Snark, it was great hunting; for they cut a swath of destruction through the ocean half a mile wide and fifteen hundred miles in length. They ranged along abreast of the Snark on either side, pouncing upon the flying- fish her forefoot scared up. Since they were continually pursuing ...
— The Cruise of the Snark • Jack London
... whetstone in my hip-pocket, bent forward and cut the first short sharp swath in the clover. I swept the mass of tangled green stems into the open space just outside the gate. Three or four more strokes and Dick stopped whistling suddenly, spat on his hands and with a lively "Here she goes!" came swinging in behind me. The ...
— Adventures In Friendship • David Grayson
... return journey they passed through the very forest in which Ned had made his singular rescue of Obed and the Ring Tailed Panther. They saw the camp and they saw the swath made by the fire, a narrow belt, five or six miles in length, ending as the Ring Tailed Panther had predicted at a curve of the creek. The Mexicans, as they now knew definitely, were gone ...
— The Texan Star - The Story of a Great Fight for Liberty • Joseph A. Altsheler
... sermon that day, but it was no more impressive than the besweated lesson of the pasture-field, which taught us that no more depends upon the thing you do than upon the way you do it. The difference between the clean swath of that harvester in front of our house and the ragged work of his neighbor is in the way he swings the scythe, and not in the scythe itself. There are ten men with one talent apiece who do more good than the one man with ten talents. A basin properly lifted may accomplish ...
— Around The Tea-Table • T. De Witt Talmage
... it cast away which in the swath clouts is cast aside, and lyttle care can the mother have which can suffer such crueltie: and can it be tearmed with any other title then cruelty, the infant yet looking redde of the mother, the mother yet breathing through the torments of hir travaile, the child crying ...
— The English Novel in the Time of Shakespeare • J. J. Jusserand
... returned with a long white-hot iron which had lain among the embers. This he touched to Brian's right shoulder, so that the stench of scorched flesh sizzled up in a thin stream, and followed the iron down across the white breast and thigh, until it stopped at the knee, and there was a swath of red and blackened flesh down Brian's body. Yet he had ...
— Nuala O'Malley • H. Bedford-Jones
... lies heaped over his brethren of the sword. Back to Atlanta he travels, with the returning fragments of the men who are now homeward bound. All is silent now. From wood and hill no rattling fire wakes the stillness of these days. The blackened ruins and the wide swath cut by Sherman tell him how true was the prediction that the men of the Northwest would "hew their way to the Gulf with their swords." He finds the grave of Valois, when dismantled and crippled Atlanta receives him again. Standing there, alone, ...
— The Little Lady of Lagunitas • Richard Henry Savage
... of pleasure to the son, and does not concern us; the cheque made five pounds payable to the order of Richard Beaumont Carteret, known to many men in San Lorenzo county, and some women, as Dick. Time was when Mr. Carteret cut what is called a wide swath, when indeed he was kowtowed to as Lord Carteret, who drove tandem, shot pigeons, and played all the games, including poker and faro. But the ten thousand pounds he inherited from his mother lasted only five years, and when the last penny was spent Dick wrote to his father ...
— Bunch Grass - A Chronicle of Life on a Cattle Ranch • Horace Annesley Vachell
... would return to its wonted silence, lighted now only by the moon and stars. He was weary, but he had an immense feeling of satisfaction and he sat a while, looking at the fire, which soon sank out of sight behind the horizon, although its pathway, the broad swath that it had cut, still glowed with coals ...
— The Eyes of the Woods - A story of the Ancient Wilderness • Joseph A. Altsheler
... pricked up their ears and tried to break into a gallop, the noise of the machine behind them startling them as usual at first, but they soon settled down to a steady pace, and the steel arm bearing the shears swept a broad swath through the meadow, where the grass ...
— The Great Hunger • Johan Bojer
... hung with war maps, of course. In Rome the prevailing map was that highly colored, imaginative rearrangement of southern Europe to fit the national aspirations. The new frontier ran along the summits of the Alps and took a wide swath down the Adriatic coast. It was a most flattering prospect and lured many loiterers to the shop windows. At the office of the "Giornale d'Italia" in the Corso there was displayed beside an irredentist map an approximate sketch of what Austria was willing to give, under German persuasion. ...
— The World Decision • Robert Herrick
... tapped softly down the path. Her soul was listless; even the morning breeze Fluttering the trees and strewing a light swath Of fallen petals on the grass, could please Her not at all. She brushed a hair aside With a swift move, and a half-angry frown. She stopped to pull a daffodil or two, And held them to her gown To test the colours; put them at her side, Then at her ...
— Men, Women and Ghosts • Amy Lowell
... a flashing, vivid personality, full of resource and high courage, and always meeting hard knocks and buffets with equanimity. Lola Montez had lived every moment of her life. In the course of their career, few women could have cut a wider swath, or one more colourful and glamorous. She had beauty and intelligence much above the average. All the world had been her stage; and she had played many parts on it. Some of them she had played better than others; but all of them ...
— The Magnificent Montez - From Courtesan to Convert • Horace Wyndham
... the swath shall flourish and back come Baldr; With him Hoder shall dwell in Hropter's palace, Shrines of gods the great and holy, There the just shall joy forever, And in pleasure ...
— Oriental Religions and Christianity • Frank F. Ellinwood
... a Winner. One Thing the Lady Clubbers were Dead Set On. They were going to have Harmony with an Upper Case H. They were out to cut a seven-foot Swath through English Literature from Beowulf to Bangs, inclusive, and no petty Jealousies or Bickerings would stand ...
— More Fables • George Ade
... strong, had invaded Kondal—a remnant that sought safety in flight. But even in flight, they still fought with all their weapons, and the streams of bombs dropped from their keel-batteries upon the country beneath marked the path of their retreat with a wide swath of destruction. Half inclined to let the few remaining vessels escape, Seaton's mind changed instantly as he saw the bombs spreading devastation upon the countryside, and not until the last of the Mardonalian vessels had been destroyed did he drop ...
— The Skylark of Space • Edward Elmer Smith and Lee Hawkins Garby
... epitomized by the two words "army usury" and "money marriages." To live beyond one's means leads to indebtedness. And there we have the simple genesis of the army usurer, so-called. He exists and thrives in every garrison in the empire, and the broad swath he mows within the ranks of the army testifies to his diligence and to his successful methods. It would be going too far to expatiate on this matter. Suffice it to say that the system by which the usurer brings hundreds, nay thousands, ...
— A Little Garrison - A Realistic Novel of German Army Life of To-day • Fritz von der Kyrburg
... instantly, leaving the lawn-mower exactly where it was, in the middle of a swath. With an answering wave he crossed to the west room window and, with an ease which surprised his audience, drew his long slimness up the pillar of the porch and clambered over the railing ...
— The Window-Gazer • Isabel Ecclestone Mackay
... cut in, getting a bit hot under the collar myself, "by all the laws of nature, there must have been a time when you were twenty-five years old and cut a little swath of your own. And, seeing you're as big as your offspring—six-foot-one, and you can't deny it—and fairly husky for a man of your age, I'll bet all you dare that said swath was not of the narrow-gage variety. I've never heard ...
— The Range Dwellers • B. M. Bower
... was cut down on the 25th of June, 1866, and carried on June 30th. The weather was very warm, from the time of cutting until the clover was carted, the thermometer standing at 80 Fahr. every day. The clover was turned in the swath, on the second day after it was cut; on the fourth day, it was turned over and put into small heaps of about 10 lbs. each; and on the fifth day, these were collected into larger cocks, and ...
— Talks on Manures • Joseph Harris
... yards in our rear, had passed the TORNADO—uprooting trees, prostrating dwellings, and sending many a soul to its last account, but sparing us for another day! For thirty miles through the forest it had mowed a swath of two hundred feet, then moved on to stir the ocean to its ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. II. July, 1862. No. 1. • Various
... after this that Paul had Big Ole make the "Down-Cutter." This was a rig like a mowing machine. They drove around eight townships and cut a swath 500 feet wide. ...
— The Marvelous Exploits of Paul Bunyan • W.B. Laughead
... the lightning, in a sudden spleen Unfolded, dashes from the blinding eyes The visive spirits dazzled and bedimm'd; So, round about me, fulminating streams Of living radiance play'd, and left me swath'd And veil'd in dense impenetrable blaze. Such weal is in the love, that stills this heav'n; For its own flame the torch ...
— The Divine Comedy, Complete - The Vision of Paradise, Purgatory and Hell • Dante Alighieri
... cave here, bred six And a million years, Sure and strong, mate for mate, such Love as culture fears; I gave you clear the oil and wine; You saved me your hob and hearth— See how even life may be ere the Sickle comes and leaves a swath. ...
— The Book of American Negro Poetry • Edited by James Weldon Johnson
... those disinterested lovers of the hard-handed democracy, whose fingers have never touched anything rougher than the dollars of our common country, would hesitate to compare palms with him. It would do your heart good, respected Sir, to see that young man mow. He cuts a cleaner and wider swath than any ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... of the neighborhood for years that the alley would have to go in the Elm Street widening which was to cut a swath through the block, right over the site upon which it stood; and at last notice was given about Christmas time that the wreckers were coming. The alley was sold,—thirty dollars was all it brought,—and the old tenants moved away, and were scattered ...
— The Battle with the Slum • Jacob A. Riis
... their way unchecked in this direction, and by noon on Thursday the whole section was a raging furnace, the denizens escaping with what they could carry of their simple possessions. On the farther western side the flames cut a wide swath to Van Ness Avenue, a wide thoroughfare, at which it was hoped the march of the fire in this direction might be checked, especially as the water mains here furnished ...
— The San Francisco Calamity • Various
... charity for Oldfield, when she dispensed the same virtue to those around her. Towards none did she show it more sweetly than to that disreputable fraud and alleged man of genius, Richard Savage. In his own feverish day Dick Savage cut a literary swath more wide than enviable, but when he is viewed from the unsympathetic light of the present he seems merely a clever vagabond. Yet Dr. Johnson, who could be so stern towards some of his contemporaries, condescended to love the ...
— The Palmy Days of Nance Oldfield • Edward Robins
... swaying as they walked along, each one cutting his "swath," or path, through the standing grain. Mr. Sneed was one of these. Then the view changed, so as to show Miss Pennington, dressed as a country lass, coming along with a jug on her shoulder, and ...
— The Moving Picture Girls at Oak Farm - or, Queer Happenings While Taking Rural Plays • Laura Lee Hope
... there's people that call him good-lookin' with that heavy jowl of his and the hair on him growin' the wrong way on his head, and them black eyes of his the color of the dirt in the road. They do say he's just got a bunch of money from the old country, and he's cuttin' a wide swath with it. If I'd kept me mouth shut he'd have gone on to Brandon and never knowed a word about there being a purty young thing near. But I watched him hitchin' up, and didn't he drive right over there; and I tell you, Da, he ...
— The Black Creek Stopping-House • Nellie McClung
... of light cut a swath across the road, dazzling them. Around the curve ahead, a car careened wide over the white line. His mother reached for him, his father fought the wheel to avoid the crash. Jimmy Holden both heard ...
— The Fourth R • George Oliver Smith
... a sweep," she said in admiring tones as the young man swayed to and fro in all the rhythmic grace of the mower's stride, swinging easily now backward the curving blade and then forward in a cutting sweep, clean and swift, laying the even swath. Alas! the clattering machine-knives have driven off from our hay-fields the mower's art with all its ...
— The Doctor - A Tale Of The Rockies • Ralph Connor
... were slain. For Atreus' sons begrudged not these the boon Of tear-besprinkled graves, but let their friends, The warrior Trojans, draw their corpses forth, Yea, and their own slain also, from amidst The swath of darts o'er that grim harvest-field. Wrath strikes not at the dead: pitied are foes When life has fled, and left them foes ...
— The Fall of Troy • Smyrnaeus Quintus
... pecks to the acre. The crop matures rapidly and continues blooming till frosts set in, so that at harvest, which is usually set to occur just before this period, the grain is in various stages of ripeness. It is cut by hand or with the self-delivery reaper, and allowed to lie in the swath for a few days and then set up in shocks. The stalks are not tied into bundles as in the case of other grain crops, the tops of the shocks being bound round and held together by twisting stems round them. The threshing is done on the field ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 3 - "Brescia" to "Bulgaria" • Various
... condescendingly, "but you're just the sons of commoners, while my father is a wealthy man, a banker and a leader in society. So I guess you can quickly understand that I'm going to cut a good deal wider swath here than you ...
— Dick Prescott's First Year at West Point • H. Irving Hancock
... meeting—McGregor on his native heath—"'twere worth a thousand men." I pray you, dear friend, whose voice will reach and be heard, try to point out to the younger and later workers of the grand, old State the broad stubble swath of the scythe and the deep blazing of the sturdy axe of this glorious pioneer of theirs—the grandest of them all—whose sleeping dust is an honor ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume IV • Various
... had joined us a few moments before, "the Doctor takes a wide range, or, as the farmers say, carries a wide swath, and has some notions of things which in my view have as little foundation in true philosophy as they have warrant in Scripture; but, if he sometimes speculates falsely, he lives truly, which is by far the most important matter. ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... shooting a column of thick smoke straight upward, vibrating to the top of the stack, hissed, clanked, and lurched forward. Instantly, motion sprang to life in all its component parts; the header knives, cutting a thirty-six foot swath, gnashed like teeth; beltings slid and moved like smooth flowing streams; the separator whirred, the agitator jarred and crashed; cylinders, augers, fans, seeders and elevators, drapers and chaff-carriers clattered, rumbled, buzzed, and clanged. The ...
— The Octopus • Frank Norris
... leaped. The rifle barrel flashed and glittered as he whirled it. Like a reaper, laying a clean swath behind him, the engineer mowed down a dozen of ...
— Darkness and Dawn • George Allan England
... antipathy seemed born in him. To be sure he had been prepared to dislike sheep, and that was why he was unreasonable. But on the other hand this band of sheep had left a broad bare swath, weedless, grassless, flowerless, in their wake. Where sheep grazed they destroyed. That was what ...
— To the Last Man • Zane Grey
... come up from Orleans, whah he been cutten' a wide swath, if all folks told true, an' fust thing his eyes caught was that gal Retta, an' he up an' tole Mahs Tom what a fool he was not to sell her down in Orleans whah she'd fetch mo' money than would buy ...
— The Bondwoman • Marah Ellis Ryan
... four pounced on him, gathered him, and followed. Before the lines could form again the whole nine wheeled—as a wind-eddy spins on its own axis—and burst through back again, the horses racing neck and neck, and the sabres cutting down a swath to screech and swear and gurgle in ...
— Rung Ho! • Talbot Mundy
... Pepper!" D'ri exclaimed, with a pause after each word. "It's cut a swath wider 'n this river. Don't b'lieve a mouse could 'a' lived where the ...
— D'Ri and I • Irving Bacheller
... guidance of Dr. Dumfarthing, the History of the Progress of Disruption in the Churches of Scotland in ten volumes; such also as that Catherine Dumfarthing was wearing a green and gold winter suit with Russian furs and a Balkan hat and a Circassian feather, which cut a wide swath of destruction among the young men on Plutoria Avenue every afternoon as she passed. Moreover by the strangest of coincidences she scarcely ever seemed to come along the snow-covered avenue without meeting the Reverend Edward—a fact which elicited new exclamations of surprise ...
— Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich • Stephen Leacock
... accusers question him and he answers them not, they wonder. But those who have seen "Calvaire" in France do not wonder, for from that room there is a clean swath of trees cut, and a quarter of a mile away looms, on a hill, a real Calvary, with the tree crosses silhouetted against the sky, and Jesus is seeing down the pathway the hill of ...
— Soldier Silhouettes on our Front • William L. Stidger
... it were, a swath mown in the deep pine forest—the labor of a poor ignorant being, who, like the parrot, can talk and palaver with simple unmeaningness, but ignorant of the world beyond a radius of ten miles. The people, for the most part, break up their ground with one horse or ox, ...
— History of the Eighty-sixth Regiment, Illinois Volunteer Infantry, during its term of service • John R. Kinnear
... compositions bearing his name as author. There was rapt attention and naught else in his pose and on his face the while the Rev. Wickliffe, swinging his scythe of righteousness, mowed for a solid hour in Satan's weedy back yard, so that the penitents fell in a broad swath. ...
— Sundry Accounts • Irvin S. Cobb
... of sight of land and water, but long enough to make one wish to fly over the channel again, the next time at ten thousand feet, when it was a gleaming swath hidden at times by patches ...
— My Second Year of the War • Frederick Palmer
... lyric poet of Scotland, was born January 25, 1759, near the sea coast town of Ayr. His father, William Burness, had all he could do to support a family of children, of whom Robert was the eldest. The boy soon became a stalwart toiler and could turn a furrow and reap a swath with the best of his comrades; but his mind meanwhile grasped strongly and passionately all the literature to which it could get access. This was limited in extent; the books in his father's humble cottage were very few. He devoured, besides, ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 7 of 8 • Charles F. (Charles Francis) Horne
... this art, as well as several others. My fingers are not the only part of me that has suffer'd with sores within this fortnight, for I have had an ugly great boil upon my right hip & about a dozen small ones—I am at present swath'd hip & thigh, as Samson smote the Philistines, but my soreness is near over. My aunt thought it highly proper to give me some cooling physick, so last tuesday I took 1-2 oz Globe Salt (a disagreeable potion) & kept chamber. Since which, ...
— Diary of Anna Green Winslow - A Boston School Girl of 1771 • Anna Green Winslow
... wall directly beneath where we sat, and then accident carried him, in one of his mighty springs, completely over the barrier into the midst of the slaves and Sagoths just in front of us. Swinging his bloody horns from side to side the beast cut a wide swath before him straight upward toward our seats. Before him slaves and gorilla-men fought in mad stampede to escape the menace of the creature's death agonies, for such only could that ...
— At the Earth's Core • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... on Hallow-Mass Eve the Night-Hag will ride, And all her nine-fold sweeping on by her side, Whether the wind sing lowly or loud, Sailing through moonshine or swath'd in ...
— Waverley, Or 'Tis Sixty Years Hence, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... like a thing, to be lyin' wi' the common herd. Mind ye, ye're no' an or'nary man's coo—ye're a cooncillor's coo." Then he retraced his labyrinthian steps in a corresponding swath. ...
— St. Cuthbert's • Robert E. Knowles
... pasture, pasturage; sward, sod, greensward, lawn, esplanade. Associated Words: agrostology, agrostologist, agrostography, gramineous, graze, palea, graminology, gramineal, swath, rowen, aftermath, turf, tussock, hassock, aftergrass, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... There is not a working-man within the sound of my voice but has known this divine delight, and would gladly know it always if he only had the time. Well, now we had the time, the Evolution had given us the time, and in all Altruria there was not a furrow driven or a swath mown, not a hammer struck on house or on ship, not a stitch sewn or a stone laid, not a line written or a sheet printed, not a temple raised or an engine built, but it was done with an eye to beauty as ...
— A Traveler from Altruria: Romance • W. D. Howells
... just received. I congratulate you on your splendid success, and shall very soon expect to hear of the crowning work of your campaign—the capture of Savannah. Your march will stand out prominently as the great one of this great war. When Savannah falls, then for another wide swath through the centre of the Confederacy. But I will not anticipate. General Grant is expected here this morning, and will probably write ...
— The Memoirs of General W. T. Sherman, Complete • William T. Sherman
... its moisture down so that every inch of it is forever green; and somehow men thrive as the lawns do—the most excellent of all races for progenitors. You and I[33] can never be thankful enough that our ancestors came of this stock. Even those that have stayed have cut a wide swath, and they wield good scythes yet. But I have moods when I pity them—for their dependence, for instance, on a navy (2 keels to 1) for their very bread and meat. They frantically resent conveniences. They build their great ...
— The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page, Volume I • Burton J. Hendrick
... when the "morning stars sing together" in the choral of praise to Him, unto whom "all seemed good"; but in the moral and spiritual realm evolved by humanity, what hideous pandemonium of discords drowns the heavenly harmony? What grim havoc marks the swath, when the dripping scythe of human sin and crime swings madly, where the lilies of eternal "Peace on earth, good will to man," should lift their silver chalices to ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... mighty Othman host, With his routed Turks, takes flight From the battle fought and lost On the day of Pentecost; Leaving behind him dead The army of Amurath, The vanguard as it led, The rearguard as it fled, Mown down in the bloody swath ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... hesitated; it seemed about to return. Crashed down upon us an abrupt crescendo of the distant drumming; peremptory, commanding. The shape darted forward; raced away crushing to straw the trees beneath it in a full quarter-mile-wide swath. ...
— The Metal Monster • A. Merritt
... and the flashes that leap From the scythe-shaped swords inside it that sweep Down with back-stroke the disordered swath: Thither he speeds, a bolt of wrath! Straight as an arrow she sees him go, Abu Midjan, the singer, upon the foe! Like an eagle he vanishes in the cloud, And the thunder of battle bursts more loud, Mingled of crashes ...
— Poetical Works of George MacDonald, Vol. 2 • George MacDonald
... a handsome swath; but it had ought to be all down now. Well, good day! Hurry up, now, ...
— Diana • Susan Warner
... catching the light, make a sea of liquid, mirror-like rivulets hovering in the air, with the bushy branches of pine rising like green isles in the shimmering tide. The men are filling their cartridge-boxes; new regiments are gliding into the gaps where death has cut the widest swath. From the woods, cries, groans, commands, clashing steel as the men hustle against each other in the rush into line, prelude the Vulcan clamor soon to begin. Men, bent, sometimes crawling, with stretchers on their ...
— The Iron Game - A Tale of the War • Henry Francis Keenan
... automatic rifles would fire. The Bannings swept the line of charging figures. As the beams paused for a moment, the charge would take effect and a ball of fire would mushroom skyward, leaving a dozen seared cat bodies on the ground. Terrence swept his machine gun along in a swath behind the Bannings, picking off what they left. Some dozen catmen made it to within ten yards of their front but sprawled still or lay kicking briefly until a Greenback put another bullet ...
— Narakan Rifles, About Face! • Jan Smith
... made all but the last swath, and there were only a few more rucks of the early hay to be made in the field, Cubbin, the rural constable, came in from the highroad with Andrew, the smith. The hot and sweated mowers did not stop the swing of their scythes, but they talked loudly amongst themselves in imprecations ...
— Fifty-Two Stories For Girls • Various
... Chip spread his men to the right and left of the trail, so that in moving forward a wide swath of country ...
— Jim Cummings • Frank Pinkerton
... taught to work as soon as large enough. I remember they furnished me with a little wooden fork to spread the heavy swath of grass my father cut with easy swings of the scythe, and when it was dry and being loaded on the great ox-cart I followed closely with a rake gathering every scattering spear. The barn was built so that every animal was housed comfortably in winter, and the house was such as all settlers built, ...
— Death Valley in '49 • William Lewis Manly
... waves, at night, Having made up his tale[183-15] of precious pearls, Rejoins her in their hut upon the sands— So dear to the pale Persians Rustum came. And Rustum to the Persian front advanced, And Sohrab arm'd in Haman's tent, and came. And as afield the reapers cut a swath Down through the middle of a rich man's corn, And on each side are squares of standing corn, And in the midst a stubble, short and bare— So on each side were squares of men, with spears Bristling, and in the midst, the open sand. And Rustum ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 6 • Charles H. Sylvester
... team—was a standard NorCon Patrol vehicle. She was sixty feet long, twelve feet wide and twelve feet high; topped by a four-foot-high bubble canopy over her cab. All the way across her nose was a three-foot-wide luminescent strip. This was the variable beam headlight that could cut a day-bright swath of light through night, fog, rain or snow and could be varied in intensity, width and elevation. Immediately above the headlight strip were two red-black plastic panels which when lighted, sent out a flashing red emergency signal that could be seen for miles. Similar ...
— Code Three • Rick Raphael
... Correy suddenly, his enthusiasm making the vibrations from the menore fairly hammer into my brain. "I'll cut a long, narrow swath with one of the portable disintegrator rays; long enough to take him far away from the Kabit, and just wide enough to pass a man. I'll run along this deep groove, just below the reach of the monster. I can make good time; the serpent'll have to slash and wriggle his ...
— The Terror from the Depths • Sewell Peaslee Wright
... as we, or as strong? Ho! but we trample the shambas down! Saw ye a swath where the trash lay long And tall trees flat like a harvest mown? That was the path we shore in haste (Judge, is it easy to find, and wide!) Ripping the branch and bough to waste Like rocks shot loose from a ...
— The Ivory Trail • Talbot Mundy |
