"Thresh" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the plants may have plenty of moisture to fill the pods, then let them dry and die. Gather the dry plants before the pods open much, and let them dry on a clean, smooth piece of ground or on the barn floor. When they are well dried, thresh with a flail, rake off the straw, sweep up the beans and clean by winnowing in the wind or with a ...
— One Thousand Questions in California Agriculture Answered • E.J. Wickson
... beating. I'll trim his jacket; I'll thresh him. To be trimmed; to be shaved; I'll ...
— 1811 Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue • Captain Grose et al.
... Agnostic, knowing too well the influence of prejudice and idiosyncrasy, even on those who desire most earnestly to be impartial, can wish for nothing more urgently than that the scientific theologian should not only be at perfect liberty to thresh out the matter in his own fashion; but that he should, if he can, find flaws in the Agnostic position; and, even if demonstration is not to be had, that he should put, in their full force, the grounds of the conclusions he thinks probable. The scientific theologian admits ...
— Lectures and Essays • Thomas Henry Huxley
... ago, on our farm in the south of England, two men with flails used to begin threshing wheat in the long barn about 1st November, and used to thresh till 1st April. They got eight shillings a week with us, but in adjoining counties seven shillings (and even six) were winter wages. Now the steam threshing- machine will empty that long barn in two short days' work. It takes half a dozen men to do the work, and they get about fifteen ...
— Speculations from Political Economy • C. B. Clarke
... He would thresh, and thereto dike and delve, For Christe's sake, for every poore wight, Withouten hire, if it lay in ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various
... petitions a one-o'clock dinner was promised, and Aunt Annie was to accompany them on a nutting expedition with Jeff as pioneer to thresh and club ...
— Opening a Chestnut Burr • Edward Payson Roe
... the girl letting her father thresh the matter out in his slow, thorough way. Finally her young impatience conquered her restraint. "Well—what do you think, ...
— The Conflict • David Graham Phillips
... said the scuppers. They had been doing nothing else all night, but this steady thresh of rain above them seemed to be ...
— McClure's Magazine, March, 1896, Vol. VI., No. 4. • Various
... every source in Coralio from which a glass of rum, a meal or a piece of silver could be wheedled. Marshalling each such source in his mind, he considered it with all the thoroughness and penetration that hunger and thirst lent him for the task. All his optimism failed to thresh a grain of hope from the chaff of his postulations. He had played out the game. That one night in the open had shaken his nerves. Until then there had been left to him at least a few grounds upon which he could base his unblushing demands upon his neighbours' stores. Now he ...
— Cabbages and Kings • O. Henry
... keep in his house more than four months' supplies.... Every citizen with more than this will deposit the surplus in the granary 'd'abondance' provided for the purpose... . Immediately on receipt of the present order, the municipality will summon all citizens that can thresh and proceed immediately, without delay, to the threshing-ground, under penalty of being prosecuted as refractory to the law.... The revolutionary army is specially charged with the execution of the articles of this order, and the revolutionary tribunals, following this ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 4 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 3 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... the country in this fashion we passed a spot on the highroad where a man was getting ready to thresh his wheat. He had prepared the place by spreading over it a layer of cow-dung, and levelling it with his bare feet until it was quite smooth and hard. It is in this way that the threshing-floors ...
— Two Summers in Guyenne • Edward Harrison Barker
... Battle rises from the Old Land You shall see the Tyrant down! You shall see her lifted crown Wears another peerless jewel won with bold hand; She shall thresh her foes like corn, They shall eat the bread of scorn; We will sing her song of ...
— Successful Recitations • Various
... officers, is incompetent to perform the functions for which it was created, and ought to be destroyed. The owners of the land must be rendered the real masters of their property. They must be allowed to reap their crops when they are ripe, and to thresh their grain when and where they please. Until this is the case, we can assure the Three Protecting Powers, they count without the people if they suppose that they have established a permanent monarchy in Greece. We do not hesitate to say that the royal ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 55, No. 344, June, 1844 • Various
... Then they couldn't thresh by sixes any more, said Joggeli, if he took a man from the threshing, and when they all cut wood together they could do a lot ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VIII • Various
... a field that I've been trying to get into for some little time, Mac," the superintendent began, after the half-hour had elapsed and the trainmaster had returned to the private office. "Sit down and we'll thresh it out. Here are some figures showing loss and expense in the general maintenance account. Look them over and tell me ...
— The Taming of Red Butte Western • Francis Lynde
... who gives the last stroke at threshing is said to have killed the Corn-man, the Oats-man, or the Wheat-man, according to the crop. In the Canton of Tillot, in Lorraine, at threshing the last corn the men keep time with their flails, calling out as they thresh, "We are killing the Old Woman! We are killing the Old Woman!" If there is an old woman in the house she is warned to save herself, or she will be struck dead. Near Ragnit, in Lithuania, the last handful of ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... a vexing sight to see a man, Out of his way, stalke proud as hee were in; Out of his way, to be officious, Observant, wary, serious, and grave, Fearefull, and passionate, insulting, raging, 120 Labour with iron flailes to thresh ...
— Bussy D'Ambois and The Revenge of Bussy D'Ambois • George Chapman
... me and the huts, a strange lame figure, leaning on a stick, with a few rags of clothing bound about him. His head, with its matted thick hair, was bare to the thresh of the sun; he was thick-set, shortish, slow-moving, a sorrowful and laborious figure. I saw the shine of his bare skin, and even the droop and sorrow of his heavy face. I stood and watched him for perhaps a minute in the shadow under those great masts of palms; I saw him as clearly as I ...
— Those Who Smiled - And Eleven Other Stories • Perceval Gibbon
... he. "So you wanted that affidavit, did you? Now we have the place to ourselves; and we'll thresh this ...
— The Riverman • Stewart Edward White
... brothers in the lumber woods of Wisconsin down among the yellow pines of the Arizona Desert. All that was back in the decrepit and languid and hopesick nineties. It was then you could see the skies of Southern Manitoba luridly aflame at night with wheat stacks it didn't pay to thresh. ...
— The Canadian Commonwealth • Agnes C. Laut
... weaponless, and yet you venture to make such a commotion." Said Sun Wu Kung: "I am not too small for you; and I can make myself large at will. You scorn me because I am without a weapon, but my two fists can thresh to the very skies." With that he stooped, clenched his fists and began to give the devil a beating. The devil was large and clumsy, but Sun Wu Kung leaped about nimbly. He struck him between the ribs and between the wind and his blows fell ever more fast and furious. In ...
— The Chinese Fairy Book • Various
... the vertebrae of the neck, sickness, fearful pains, and so on. She was brought to me. She was moaning and groaning and praying for death, and yet she looked at the man who brought her and muttered: "Let the lentils go, Kirila, you can thresh them later, but thresh the oats now." I told her that she could talk about oats afterwards, that there was something more serious to talk about, but she said to me: "His oats are ever so good!" A managing, vigilant woman. Death comes ...
— Letters of Anton Chekhov • Anton Chekhov
... thing was clear to me. I would not live on my wife's money. I would not eat and drink what her money bought. No, I would not live on my wife. Her brother, a good enough, impulsive lad, with a tongue of his own and too small to thresh, came to me in London the night of the race. He said his sister had been in the country-down at Epsom—and that she bitterly resented my having broken my promise and lost all I had. He said he had never seen her so angry, and he ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... egotism; it is unfathomable ignorance. The youth knows neither himself, the world nor his adversaries. He is unafraid because he does not know the strength of the forces he would conquer. But society learns from the threshings about of its individuals. And it is the young who thresh about. Mailed in their own ignorance, and propelled by their own marvelous energy, the young go forth to conquer. And so ...
— Women As Sex Vendors - or, Why Women Are Conservative (Being a View of the Economic - Status of Woman) • R. B. Tobias
... to thresh their corn, and I was interested in observing all the details of their process. They had scattered yesterday evening the full ripe grain in its dry stalks over the ground, in the form of a large circle, ...
— Narrative of a Mission to Central Africa Performed in the Years 1850-51, Volume 1 • James Richardson
... Old Man of the Barn, Yon Little Old Man— Will thresh with no light in the mouth of the night, The Little Old Man ...
— Elves and Heroes • Donald A. MacKenzie
... of the magazine, the remarkable respect which its readers had for it, and the confidence with which parents placed the periodical on their home tables—all this was, after all, Bok thought, the more reason why he should take up the matter and thresh it out. He consulted with friends, who advised against it; his editors were all opposed to the introduction of the unsavory subject ...
— The Americanization of Edward Bok - The Autobiography of a Dutch Boy Fifty Years After • Edward William Bok
... then, with the power necessary for threshing,—a 4 horse power engine, with cylinder 6 inches diameter, pressure of steam 45 lbs., per square inch, and making 140 revolutions per minute, will thresh out 40 quarters of wheat in 10 hours with a consumption of 3 ...
— A Catechism of the Steam Engine • John Bourne
... slow heave over it goes, and, descending, twists upon the base. The vast limbs plough into the sward; the twigs are crushed; the boughs, after striking the earth, rebound and swish upwards. See that you stand clear, for the least branch will thresh you down. The flat surface of the exposed butt is blue with stains from ...
— The Amateur Poacher • Richard Jefferies
... sow wheat, to wait till it grows up, to reap it and thresh it, to grind it to flour, to make five pies of it, to eat those pies, and then to start in pursuit—and even then to be in time.' Koshchei galloped off ...
— The Red Fairy Book • Various
... waters passeth by; The deep uttereth his voice, And lifteth up his hands on high; The sun and moon stand still in their habitation At the light of thine arrows as they go, At the shining of thy glittering spear. Thou dost march through the land in indignation, Thou dost thresh ...
— Select Masterpieces of Biblical Literature • Various
... learn something about our young human rose at a farmhouse a mile or so farther on. While a motherly housewife prepared us some lunch, all a-bustle with expectancy of an imminent inroad of harvesters due to thresh the corn, and liable to eat all before them, a sprightly young daughter, who attended the same school, and whom we had told about our call at the schoolhouse, entertained us with girlish gossip of the neighbourhood. So we learned that our fancies had not been ...
— October Vagabonds • Richard Le Gallienne
... Spicy Nut-brown Ale, 100 With stories told of many a feat, How Faery Mab the junkets eat, She was pincht, and pull'd she sed, And he by Friars Lanthorn led Tells how the drudging Goblin swet, To ern his Cream-bowle duly set, When in one night, ere glimps of morn, His shadowy Flale hath thresh'd the Corn That ten day-labourers could not end, Then lies him down the Lubbar Fend. 110 And stretch'd out all the Chimney's length, Basks at the fire his hairy strength; And Crop-full out of dores he flings, Ere the first Cock his Mattin rings. Thus don the ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton
... thirty-two years, and eight years after her death, at the age of one hundred and twenty, he married again. Until his one hundred and thirtieth year he performed his ordinary duties, and at this age was even accustomed to thresh. He was visited by Thomas, Earl of Arundel and Surrey, and was persuaded to visit the King in London. His intelligence and venerable demeanor impressed every one, and crowds thronged to see him and pay him homage. The journey to London, together with the excitement and change of mode of ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... bringing forth any great encrease. Now if it be so that you haue a crop of Wheate of your owne, so that you haue no need of the market, you shall then picke out of your choisest sheafes, and vpon a cleane floare gently bat them with a flaile, and not thresh them cleane, for that Corne which is greatest, fullest, and ripest, will first flie out of the eare, and when you haue so batted a competent quantitie you shall then winnow it and dresse it cleane, both by the helpe ...
— The English Husbandman • Gervase Markham
... "You can thresh that out in your own courts later, if you like," said Dunwody. "Meantime, we'll see if I can't find a ...
— The Purchase Price • Emerson Hough
... because our army needs bread. But your corn and buckwheat and pumpkins and apples can be left for a week or two until we see how this thing is going to end. Be sensible; stack what you can, but don't wait to thresh or grind. Bury your apples; let the cider go; harness up; gather your cattle and sheep; pack up the clock and feather bed, and move to Johnstown with your families. In a week or two you will know whether this country is to be given ...
— The Reckoning • Robert W. Chambers
... would be blown away. If all other means failed, two stout arms at either end of a blanket or a sheet would move the sheet as a fan to clean the wheat. Now we see the great combination harvester garner thirty acres a day, and thresh it as well and sack it ready for the mill or warehouse. There is no shocking, no stacking or housing: all in one operation, the grain is made ...
— Ox-Team Days on the Oregon Trail • Ezra Meeker
... best, general; don't be alarmed." At this moment the landlord appeared upon the thresh-hold of ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas, pere
... dogs, and thresh them sicker! The mair they squeel aye chap the thicker; And still 'mang hands a hearty bicker O' something stout; It gars an owthor's pulse beat quicker, ...
— Poems And Songs Of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... Chet out of his store. Mrs. Wimble Horn is hurrying down the street with an umbrella in one hand and Wimble in the other. From the post-office comes Postmaster Flint emitting loud wails. It is against the law to leave the post-office unoccupied, but he can thresh that out with his wife at home after he has voted. Attorney Briggs was going to Chicago this afternoon, but I notice he is coming back from the depot. Mrs. Briggs is bringing him. If I know anything about rage, Attorney ...
— Homeburg Memories • George Helgesen Fitch
... to re-thresh the straw left by Talfourd, Fitzgerald, Canon Ainger, and others, in the hope of discovering something new about Charles Lamb. In this quarter, at least, the wind shall be tempered to the reader,—shorn as he is by these pages of a charming letter or two. So far ...
— The Best Letters of Charles Lamb • Charles Lamb
... played hockey upon the ice; while their fathers lay quietly on the stove, issuing forth at intervals with lighted pipes in their lips, to growl, in regular fashion, at the orthodox frost, or to take the air, and thresh the grain spread out in the barn. At last the snow began to melt, and the ice slipped away: but Peter remained the same; and, the more time went on, the more morose he grew. He sat in the cottage ...
— Taras Bulba and Other Tales • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... small consort sweep undestroyed over the dead-line, the Brooklyn follow with hers, the Mobile gunboats rake the four with a fire they could not return, and behind them Fort Morgan and the other ships rend and shatter each other, shroud the air with smoke and thresh the waters white with shot and shell, shrapnel, canister and grape. And then they saw their own Tennessee ignore the monitors and charge the Hartford. But they beheld, too, the Hartford's better speed avoid the fearful blow and press on up the channel and the ...
— Kincaid's Battery • George W. Cable
... tail, and snapped so fiercely with its tremendous jaws, that we had to keep a sharp look-out lest it should catch hold of a leg. At last its tail was cut off, the body cut open, and all the entrails' taken out, yet even after this it continued to flap and thresh about the deck for some time, and the heart continued to contract for twenty minutes after it was taken out ...
— Fighting the Whales • R. M. Ballantyne
... considerate, and forbearing? A "make-believe" blow would have implied a "make- believe" hammer and a "make-believe" curtain. No!—hammer away, like Charles Martel; "fillip me with a three-man beetle;" be to me a malleus hreticorum; come like Spenser's Talus—an iron man with an iron flail, and thresh out the straw of my logic; rack me; put me to the question; get me down; jump upon me; kick me; throttle me; put an end to me ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... Aristocrats, plotting of d'Orleans; were it Brigands, preternatural terror, and the clang of Phoebus Apollo's silver bow,—enough, the markets are scarce of grain, plentiful only in tumult. Farmers seem lazy to thresh;—being either 'bribed;' or needing no bribe, with prices ever rising, with perhaps rent itself no longer so pressing. Neither, what is singular, do municipal enactments, 'That along with so many measures of wheat you shall sell so many of rye,' ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... "In 1657, Clement Thresh, of Rappahannock, in his will declared that all his estate should be responsible for the outlay made necessary in providing, during three years, instruction for his step-daughter, who, being then thirteen years of age, had, no doubt, already ...
— Woman's Life in Colonial Days • Carl Holliday
... to thresh enough wheat to repay their debt of six hundred bushels and keep an additional three hundred of seed for the following year. The remaining seven hundred and fifty they sold at twenty-five cents a bushel by hauling them to Fort Scott—thirty miles distant. Each trip meant ten dollars, but to ...
— Dust • Mr. and Mrs. Haldeman-Julius
... visited by Dr. Johnson and others. What a pity that with only five miles separating them Cowper and Johnson should never have met! Would Cowper have reconsidered the wish made when he read Johnson's biography of Milton in the Lives of the Poets: "Oh! I could thresh his old jacket till I made his pension jingle ...
— Immortal Memories • Clement Shorter
... obliging the farmer to carry on two trades instead of one, it forced him to divide his capital into two parts, of which one only could be employed in cultivation. But if he had been at liberty to sell his whole crop to a corn merchant as fast as he could thresh it out, his whole capital might have returned immediately to the land, and have been employed in buying more cattle, and hiring more servants, in order to improve and cultivate it better. But by being obliged to sell his ...
— An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations • Adam Smith
... attended, happier made At each new minist'ring. Then silence brake, Amid th' accordant sons of Deity, That luminary, in which the wondrous life Of the meek man of God was told to me; And thus it spake: "One ear o' th' harvest thresh'd, And its grain safely stor'd, sweet charity Invites me with the other to ...
— The Divine Comedy, Complete - The Vision of Paradise, Purgatory and Hell • Dante Alighieri
... who rule with a rod pickled in their apparent helplessness, which is stronger than a whip of steel, and who are quite closely related to the barnacle and mollusc to which the tide regularly brings tit-bits out of the ocean, whilst the more mercurial eel has to go out and thresh about in the mud for what it requires to keep it going in its fight ...
— The Hawk of Egypt • Joan Conquest
... the latter followed her with an expression of perplexed, questioning sorrow that, had Marjorie noted and interpreted as such, might have caused her to doubt what seemed plain, thresh the matter out frankly with Constance, and thus save them both many weeks of misunderstanding ...
— Marjorie Dean High School Freshman • Pauline Lester
... that he was good-humouredly ready to "thresh out," for her sentimental satisfaction, a question which, for his own, Time had so conclusively dealt with; and the sense of ...
— The Reef • Edith Wharton
... the human race. Here and there in the mass you will see examples of a second type. These are individuals who are restive and resentful under the sense of helplessness and impotence. They struggle now gently, now furiously. They thrust backward or forward or to one side. They thresh about. But nothing comes of their efforts beyond a brief agitation, soon dying away in ripples. The inertia of the mass and their own lack of purpose conquer them. Occasionally one of these grows so angry and so violent that the surrounding inertia ...
— Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise • David Graham Phillips
... any ideas we'll thresh them out. Emperor will be willing. He'll say yes to anything ...
— The Circus Boys on the Flying Rings • Edgar B. P. Darlington
... belligerence. Marjorie looked as though she was on the point of bursting into tears, while Mrs. Dean was unusually grave. A delicate task lay before her and she was wondering as she poured the coffee how she had best begin. Still she had determined to thresh the matter out speedily, and as soon as Delia had served the breakfast and retired to the kitchen, she glanced from one to the other of the two principals and said, "Now, girls, I am waiting ...
— Marjorie Dean - High School Sophomore • Pauline Lester
... a threshing crew, working among labourers and eating with them in the fields or about the crowded tables of farmhouses where they stopped to thresh. Each day Sam and the men with him worked in a new place and had as helpers the farmer for whom they threshed and several of his neighbours. The farmers worked at a killing pace and the men of the threshing crew ...
— Windy McPherson's Son • Sherwood Anderson
... Madam, my Preaching disgrace; Shall Laymen enjoy the just Rights of my Place? Then all may lament my Condition for hard, To thresh in the Pulpit without a Reward. Then pray condescend Such Disorders to end, And from their ripe Vineyards such Labourers send; Or build up the Seats, that the Beauties may see The Face of no brawny Pretender ...
— Quaint Gleanings from Ancient Poetry • Edmund Goldsmid
... prefer to thresh it out.... What people say matters nothing to me. In any case, nobody knows that Mr Riviere ...
— Swirling Waters • Max Rittenberg
... capable of any villany. We must thresh this matter out to-morrow, Ned. Had I known you were coming I would have had no guests here to-night. We could have had a quiet evening together, and I could have shown you over my new establishment. All this must wait, however, ...
— Calvert of Strathore • Carter Goodloe
... discuss the matter with Horace; he might be quite justified in his fears. He was sorry he had let them lead to words with his eldest son. There were aspects of the case, as it presented itself to his mind, which he could hardly thresh out with Lettice, and her mother must not know of his anxiety on any account. Horace, however, had gone off earlier ...
— The Camera Fiend • E.W. Hornung
... drudging goblin swet, To earn the cream-bowl, duly set; When, in one night, ere glimpse of morn, His shadowy flail had thresh'd the corn, That ten day-lab'rers could not end; Then lies him down the lubbar fiend, And, stretch'd out all the chimney's length, Basks at the fire his hairy strength; And, crop-full, out of doors he flings, E'er the first cock his ...
— Minstrelsy of the Scottish border (3rd ed) (1 of 3) • Walter Scott
... don't want your help," answered Jack shortly. "We'll thresh all this out in court ...
— The Ocean Wireless Boys And The Naval Code • John Henry Goldfrap, AKA Captain Wilbur Lawton
... the tale. The Theologian said: "Indeed, To praise you there is little need; One almost hears the farmers flail Thresh out your wheat, nor does there fail A certain freshness, as you said, And sweetness as of home-made bread. But not less sweet and not less fresh Are many legends that I know, Writ by the monks of long-ago, Who loved to mortify the flesh, So that the ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... steady, repeating itself in the soft syllables, in musical tones of the never-ending discourses of those men of the forests and the sea, who can talk most of the day and all the night; who never exhaust a subject, never seem able to thresh a matter out; to whom that talk is poetry and painting and music, all art, all history; their only accomplishment, their only superiority, their only amusement. The talk of camp fires, which speaks of bravery ...
— An Outcast of the Islands • Joseph Conrad
... may labor in that which is separated from the ground in Syria, but not in that which is attached to the ground. They may thresh, and shovel, and tread out, and make sheaves, but they must not reap the grain nor glean the grapes, nor beat the olives. This is the rule; said Rabbi Akiba, "all things similar to that which is allowed in the land of Israel, men may ...
— Hebrew Literature
... it together. In those days in the West threshing-time was an era of prosperity, and twenty-five or thirty men would band together and buy a threshing-machine. They owned plenty of horses, and they would go from ranch to ranch with this machine, and thresh the grain. Now, this threshing-time being of short duration, it drew into it men whose occupations were entirely different at other times of the year. Hence, the bartenders, hold-up men, cowpunchers—whom it ...
— Injun and Whitey to the Rescue • William S. Hart
... was growing or grown, I have observed already how many things I wanted, to fence it, secure it, mow or reap it, cure or carry it home, thresh, part it from the chaff, and save it. Then I wanted a mill to grind it, sieves to dress it, yeast and salt to make it into bread, and an oven to bake it in; and all these things I did without, as shall be observed; ...
— The Life and Adventures of Robinson Crusoe (1808) • Daniel Defoe
... Mary came back from the asylum, I heard a young Dane, who was helping us to thresh, tell Jake and Otto that Chris Lingard's oldest girl had put Ole Benson out of his head, until he had no more sense than his crazy wife. When Ole was cultivating his corn that summer, he used to get discouraged in the field, tie up ...
— My Antonia • Willa Cather
... the door, then followed a tremendous punching with a log, the door gave way, and with a fiendish yell an Indian was about to spring in, when the unerring rifle fired by the old lady stretched his lifeless body across the thresh-hold of the door. The remaining, or more properly the surviving Indian fired at random and ran, doing no injury. "Now" said the old heroine to her undaunted daughter "we must leave." Accordingly with the rifle and the axe, they ...
— Heroes and Hunters of the West • Anonymous
... lain in the power, or the lack of it, of guiding their colleagues and being guided in turn. If we tried to be exact in saying Lincoln, or Lincoln's Cabinet, or the North did this or that, it would be necessary to thresh out many bushels of tittle-tattle. The broad impression, however, remains that in the many things in which Lincoln did not directly rule he ruled through a group of capable men of whom he made the best use, and whom no other chief could ...
— Abraham Lincoln • Lord Charnwood
... middle of the day they had managed to get some winks of sleep, but now the farmer's men began to thresh in a barn close by, making noise enough to wake the dead, so there was small chance of well-organized fowls being able to sleep through ...
— Brothers of Pity and Other Tales of Beasts and Men • Juliana Horatia Gatty Ewing
... willingly do the man a good turn if I could. If, now, he had some land, I could plough, and sow, and reap, and carry, and thresh by the week together for him. I should like to pay him attention in such a way that he might know there was at least one who cared for him. But his profession is one in which I can't be of any use ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors: German (V.2) • Various
... But that Red Eagle, wise old chief that he is, will up an' say: 'They haven't got through. They couldn't without bein' seen by our scouts an' watchers. An' since they haven't passed, it follers that they're somewhar inside the ring. So, we'll jest thresh out ev'ry inch o' ground in thar, ef it takes ten years to ...
— The Eyes of the Woods - A story of the Ancient Wilderness • Joseph A. Altsheler
... riding overland to Adelaide about 1848, was amazed to see from Willunga onward fenced and cultivated farms, with decent homesteads and machinery up to date. The Ridley stripper enabled our people to reap and thresh the corn when hands were all too few for the sickle. He said he felt as if the garden of Paradise must have been in King William street and that the earliest difference in the world—that between Cain and Abel—was about the advantages ...
— An Autobiography • Catherine Helen Spence
... answered; "at least I have a trade at my finger-ends. I can drive a plough. I can thresh a mow. At a pinch I can even shoe a horse. But you—you ...
— The Dew of Their Youth • S. R. Crockett
... for a few minutes, raging around his fire, cursing the name and the soul of Foxey Jack Quinn, calling upon the saints for justice, confounding his luck and his enemies. He stopped it suddenly, for he had a way of regaining command of his threshing passions all at once. He did not have to let them thresh themselves out, as is the case with weaker men; but he gripped them, full-blooded, to quiet, by sheer will power and a turn of thought. The force of mastery was strong in Black Dennis Nolan's wild nature. When he wished it he could master himself as well as others. Now ...
— The Harbor Master • Theodore Goodridge Roberts
... but afterwards he was not surprised when Dave Black's folks did not appear to expect them. They kept on, and did as the blacksmith told them, and soon enough they got to a two-story log-cabin, with a man in front of it working at a wheat-fan, for it was nearly time to thresh the wheat. The man said he was Dave Black's father; he did not act as if he was very glad to see them, but he told them to put their horses in the barn, and he said that Dave was out in the ...
— The Flight of Pony Baker - A Boy's Town Story • W. D. Howells
... days after he left you and found them in the height of a quarrel. You know that Adele is a wretch. She is my sister, to be sure, but she is a wretch all the same. As to Lantier—well, you know him, so I need not describe him. But for a yes or a no he would not hesitate to thresh any woman that lives. Oh, they had a beautiful time! Their quarrels were heard all over the neighborhood. One day the police were sent for, they ...
— L'Assommoir • Emile Zola
... turned to hasten from the spot he caught a glimpse of something white across the gully at the thresh-hold of the girl's cabin. For a second this was terrifying, but he quickly regained poise. The bridge was gone. She could not reach the side of the endangered man to save him, she could not reach the mainland to pursue him and discover his identity. ...
— In Old Kentucky • Edward Marshall and Charles T. Dazey
... the wet December when it rained six inches to the month, and the women went abroad as little as might be. Wynn's flying chariot visited them several times, and for two mornings (he had warned her by postcard) Mary heard the thresh of his propellers at dawn. The second time she ran to the window, and stared at the whitening sky. A little blur passed overhead. She lifted ...
— A Diversity of Creatures • Rudyard Kipling
... known the women go into the barn as soon as they could see in the morning, and work as late as they could see at night, threshing rice with the flail, (they now have a threshing machine,) and when they could see to thresh no longer, they had to gather up the rice, carry it up stairs, and deposit it ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... more violently than ever did that powerful tail thresh the water, until the foam seemed like soap bubbles. Bellow after bellow made the air tremble, or at least pulsate. And amid all this racket the shrill screams of delight on the part of the excited and pleased swamp lad could be heard pealing forth like ...
— Chums in Dixie - or The Strange Cruise of a Motorboat • St. George Rathborne
... found growing in Essex, which sells the best in the Markets. But from whatever Place we have it, regard should be chiefly had to its being free from Mustiness, which happens from the gathering the Seed wet, or in the Dew, and laying it close together before it is thresh'd. When this Seed is dry and sweet, grind it in a Mill, such as a Coffee-Mill; but the Mill must be fresh, and free from any Flavour or Taint: it should not indeed be used with any other thing. When you have ground ...
— The Country Housewife and Lady's Director - In the Management of a House, and the Delights and Profits of a Farm • Richard Bradley
... himself nettled. Kedzie's silence about the existence of a husband had enmeshed him. He would not attempt to justify himself. It would do no good to thresh about. The big gladiator sat still waiting for the retiarius to finish him. But Connery's voice grew merciful. It was a luxury beyond price to extend an alms ...
— We Can't Have Everything • Rupert Hughes
... her grown up; the time is come for working bravely: she must cut the corn, thresh the wheat, carry the bundles of flowering clover or branches of withered leaves to the farm. If her toil is hard, hope shines like a sun over everything and it wipes the drops of sweat away. The growing girl already sees that life is a task, but ...
— An "Attic" Philosopher, Complete • Emile Souvestre
... children, have in their turn come into the field, to eat of the fruit they sowed, to sow in turn a seed of which they themselves shall not see the harvest, whose sheaves others shall bind, whose ears others shall thresh, and of whose corn others shall make bread after them. With our eyes we may yet see the graves of two hundred generations of men, whose tombs serve but to mark that boundary more clearly, whose fierce warfare, when they fought ...
— The Witch of Prague • F. Marion Crawford
... oysters around here, fellows," was the first remark Nick made, as he scrambled ashore, and started to thresh his arms about, in the endeavor to get up a circulation—Jack had advised this as a preventative against ...
— Motor Boat Boys Down the Coast - or Through Storm and Stress to Florida • Louis Arundel
... blew off the water from the north. Half a dozen huge pine trees stood on the only level ground near at hand. "Nielsen, fire—pronto!" I yelled. "Aye, sir," he shouted, in his deep voice. Then what with hurry and bustle to get my bedding and packs, and to thresh my tingling fingers, and press my frozen ears, I was selfishly busy a few minutes before I thought ...
— Tales of lonely trails • Zane Grey
... with her here. She looked exactly as she used to in the old days, and I don't doubt felt like it, too. No wonder she resented being forced back into the role of Madame Zattiany, or Graefin—countess—as he calls her. You must let her thresh it ...
— Black Oxen • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... hardly likely to come from Raoul's party. Peleton's attempt to murder me was merely the outcome of personal spite, and had nothing to do with this fresh adventure. Yet, on one point, the message was clear. Some peril threatened me, and my best chance of safety lay in flight. But why? I sat down to thresh the matter out. ...
— My Sword's My Fortune - A Story of Old France • Herbert Hayens
... and over the corn Pale shadows flee from us as if from their foes. Like a snake we thresh on the long, forlorn Land, as onward ...
— Bay - A Book of Poems • D. H. Lawrence
... showed any subtlety about was this convenience of my friendship. He doubtless told me his simple story, but the matter comes back to me in a kind of sense of my being rather the mouthpiece, of my having had to thresh it out for him. He took it from me without a groan, and I gave it to him, as we used to say, pretty hot; he took it again and again, spending his odd half-hours with me as if for the very purpose of learning ...
— Embarrassments • Henry James
... either way," said he, squaring his shoulders doggedly. "Father will thresh me if I run away, and Master Brunswood will thresh me if I don't. I'll not be birched four times a week for merely tripping on a word, and have nothing to show for it but stripes. If I must take a threshing, I'll have my good ...
— Master Skylark • John Bennett
... Mab the junkets eat; She was pinch'd and pull'd, she said; And he, by friar's lantern led, Tells how the drudging Goblin sweat To earn his cream-bowl duly set, When in one night, ere glimpse of morn, His shadowy flail hath thresh'd the corn That ten day-labourers could not end; Then lies him down the lubber fiend, And, stretch'd out all the chimney's length, Basks at the fire his hairy strength; And crop-full out of doors he flings, Ere the first cock his matin rings. Thus done ...
— The Golden Treasury - Of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language • Various
... were once walking together and talking. One said, "My father raised such an enormous turnip once that he used the top of it to thresh wheat upon, and when it was ripe had to dig it out of the ground."—"My father," said the other, "ordered such an enormous kettle made once that the forty workmen who made it all had room to sit on the inside and work at the same time; and they were a year ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. October, 1878. • Various
... rice through a row of steel teeth, the simple form of threshing implement which is seen in slightly different patterns all over Japan. (It is the successor of a contrivance of bamboo stakes.) The women told me that one person could thresh fourteen bushels a day. The implement cost 2-1/2 yen from travelling vendors but only 1-1/2 yen from the co-operative society. While we talked the farmer appeared. I apologised to him for unwittingly stepping on the threshold of the barn—that is, the grooved timber in which the ...
— The Foundations of Japan • J.W. Robertson Scott
... natures free, Although it break to recombine again The atoms of each state. Send down thy pulsing tongues of burning truth; Fire our souls with love of human kind; Let hate consume itself; let war thresh out The brutal part of man, and fit us for The last long ...
— The Scarlet Stigma - A Drama in Four Acts • James Edgar Smith
... rode through the stir and thresh of the night, the two women and the man. For guidance along the woods trail they must trust to the finer sense of their horses whose heads they could not see in the closed-in murk. A desultory spray fell upon them ...
— Success - A Novel • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... are some men in this world too mean to bother the law about. He says he knows one he would like to thresh only he is sure the sneak would not hit him back, but would have him arrested. Physical punishment is the kind for such, father declares. And that's just the way I feel about Lady Sarah. I would not tell teacher on her, for that would ...
— Dorothy Dale • Margaret Penrose
... what was meant by the thresh. I knew that I had been "thrashed" a great many times, and inferred from that fact that I must have had the disease at some time or other in my youth, ...
— The Twin Hells • John N. Reynolds
... whisper down the field where the year has shot her yield, And the ricks stand gray to the sun, Singing: — "Over then, come over, for the bee has quit the clover, And your English summer's done." You have heard the beat of the off-shore wind, And the thresh of the deep-sea rain; You have heard the song — how long! how long? Pull out ...
— Verses 1889-1896 • Rudyard Kipling
... straw about a foot long besides the Ears, and from the Ear Lime the straw Six inches; the warmer it is, the less discernable it will be: Then to the Field adjacent, carrying a bag of Chaff, and thresh'd Ears, scatter them twenty Yards wide, and stick the lim'd Ears (declining downwards) here, and there; Then traverse the Fields, disturb their Haunts, they will repair to your Snare, and pecking at the Ears, finding they stick ...
— The School of Recreation (1684 edition) • Robert Howlett
... surely far unworthy of Ramsay, or your book. My song, "Rigs of Barley", to the same tune, does not altogether please me; but if I can mend it, and thresh a few loose sentiments out of it, I will submit it to your consideration. The "Lass o' Patie's Mill" is one of Ramsay's best songs; but there is one loose sentiment in it, which my much-valued friend, Mr. Erskine, will take into his critical consideration. In Sir J. Sinclair's statistical ...
— The Letters of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... moment came; the lens was completed. I stood trembling on the thresh? old of new worlds. I had the realization of Alexander's famous wish before me. The lens lay on the table, ready to be placed upon its platform. My hand fairly shook as I enveloped a drop of water with a thin coating of oil of turpentine, preparatory to its examination, a process necessary in ...
— The Diamond Lens • Fitz-James O'brien
... talk about your conscience, sir, you restrict the conversation to matters I do not understand, and so cannot discuss. But I dare say we will find occasion to thresh out this, and all other matters, by and by: and you and I will make the best of this place, for now I ...
— Jurgen - A Comedy of Justice • James Branch Cabell
... of her. But the women are going; and she rises with a groan, and drags herself after them. And this will go on in July also, when the peasants, without obtaining sufficient sleep, reap the oats by night, lest it should fall, and the women rise gloomily to thresh out the straw for the bands to tie the sheaves; when this old woman, already utterly cramped by the labor of mowing, and the woman with child, and the young children, injure themselves overworking and over-drinking; and when neither hands, nor horses, nor carts will suffice ...
— The Moscow Census - From "What to do?" • Lyof N. Tolstoi
... drama was visible to Cardington it would be impossible to say, but apparently he was lost to his surroundings, for he allowed the others to thresh out the Emmet incident without the assistance of his own able flail. Not until the conversation turned to Bermuda did he arouse himself from his reverie and take the lead. The topic suggested to his mind the influence of climate upon architecture and the arts, and presently he was exploring distant ...
— The Mayor of Warwick • Herbert M. Hopkins
... profession, had come out to a colony in the hope of acquiring landed estates, and of founding in this part of the world a family of their own. In the meantime they had to drive their teams, shear their sheep, thresh their corn, and exhibit their skill in husbandry; whilst their houses were as ill arranged and uncomfortable as could be expected from the superintendence of bachelors who thought more of their stables than of the appearance of their rooms. They care more about good horses than good cooks, and in ...
— The Bushman - Life in a New Country • Edward Wilson Landor
... fundamentally improved, and in consequence took the only reasonable attitude, resignation. When famines came, God sent them; they were punishment for sin; his will be done! When wars came, they were the flails of God to thresh his people; his will be done! Men were resigned to slavery on the ground that God had made men to be masters and slaves. They were resigned to feudalism and absolute monarchy on the ground that God had made ...
— Christianity and Progress • Harry Emerson Fosdick
... this far-stretching field there is a harvest of experiment, a harvest of observation, which only needs laborers to cut and carry, to thresh and winnow it. The reality, the extent, the importance of the phenomena which lie around us, unnoted and unexplained, are more fully recognized as each year's work adds at once to our knowledge and to our corresponding ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 22, September, 1891 • Various
... don't want to, either," John declared. "It is hard enough work to sow and reap and thresh wheat in hot weather like this without sweatin' over fifteen able-bodied men that are jowerin' about ...
— The Desired Woman • Will N. Harben
... of threshing and thatching. He said, it was very difficult to determine how to agree with a thresher. 'If you pay him by the day's wages, he will thresh no more than he pleases; though, to be sure, the negligence of a thresher is more easily detected than that of most labourers, because he must always make a sound while he works. If you pay him by the piece, by the ...
— The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides with Samuel Johnson, LL.D. • James Boswell |
