"Thresher" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the upright shafts of whose tall elms We may discern the thresher at his task, Thump after thump resounds the constant flail That seems to swing uncertain, and yet falls Full on the destined ear. Wide flies the chaff, The rustling straw sends up a fragrant mist Of atoms, sparkling ...
— Cowper • Goldwin Smith
... wheat ready to cut anywhere about here. He bought a new header, you know, because all the wheat's so short this year. I hope he can rent it to the neighbors, it cost so much. He and his cousins bought a steam thresher on shares. You ought to go out and see that header work. I watched it an hour this morning, busy as I am with all the men to feed. He has a lot of hands, but he's the only one that knows how to drive the header or how to run the engine, so he has to be everywhere at once. He's ...
— O Pioneers! • Willa Cather
... always count on mesquite beans, and camotes if the fields failed. There was seed to buy each year instead of raising it. There was money invested in farming machinery, and a bolt taken at will from a thresher to mend a plow or a buggy as temporarily required. The flocks of sheep on the Arizona hills were low grade. The cattle and horse outfits were south in La Partida, and the leakage was beyond reason, even in a danger zone of ...
— The Treasure Trail - A Romance of the Land of Gold and Sunshine • Marah Ellis Ryan
... lie like sheaves upon our fields; the ruins of your castles fly like chaff beneath the flail of the thresher! ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 6, No 5, November 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... must of force be censur'd by their slaves! Not only blam'd for doing things are ill, But for not doing all that all men will: One were better be a thresher. Ud's death! I would fain ...
— The White Devil • John Webster
... County, Tenn., consulted us by letter. He was suffering from great nervous prostration; could not walk without tottering; was troubled greatly with inability to sleep; poor appetite; did not relish food; suffered much pain and stiffness in the joints; was overcome with neat working on a thresher, followed by persistent nausea, confusion of ideas, his memory being ...
— The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English • R. V. Pierce
... dropped on the hardwood floor, the rush of water in the bathroom, the murmur of nocturnal confidences, the fretful cry of a child in the night, all startled and distressed him whose ear had found music in the roar of the thresher and had been soothed by the rattle of the tractor and the hoarse hoot of the steamboat whistle at the landing. His farm's edge had been marked by the Mississippi ...
— One Basket • Edna Ferber
... shall tackle this Dragon bold? Lo! a champion appears. He seems but small, and he looks not old— A youth of scarce three years. But "he hath put on his coat of mail, Thick set with razors all," And a blade as big as a thresher's nail, On that Dragon's crest ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 99, November 15, 1890 • Various
... Billy's song, known and loved in many a thresher's caboose, but heard no more for many a long day, for little Billy gave up the struggle the next spring when the snow was leaving the fields and the trickle of water was heard in the air. But he and his songs are still lovingly remembered by the ...
— Sowing Seeds in Danny • Nellie L. McClung
... evident admiration). Man, that's a saving woman. She can count the pounds. (Suddenly). Daniel, away out and show Andy and Mr. Mackenzie the thresher, and get used to the company, and then you can come in and explain the thing to them. I want Sarah to stay here and help me to make the tea. That fool of a Mary ...
— The Drone - A Play in Three Acts • Rutherford Mayne
... 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 ...
— The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides with Samuel Johnson, LL.D. • James Boswell
... to be the thresher's leader glanced around at the vigilantes, their number, their rifles, and their Colt guns. He unloosed ...
— Injun and Whitey to the Rescue • William S. Hart
... without cuts, and many of them only reasonably effective even in the mellow soil repeatedly stirred and occasionally flooded with water. The seed-drill for planting one row, with a share on each side to turn soil on to the grain, is an anticipation of some later inventions nearer home. The thresher is a square frame drawn over the grain—which is spread upon the bare ground—and is furnished on its under side with steel blades which not only shell the grain out of the ear, but also reduce the straw into chaff, which is desirable, as storing for feed more conveniently. Southern ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December 1878 • Various
... Lynette, 'Ay, truly of a truth, And in a sort, being Arthur's kitchen-knave!— But deem not I accept thee aught the more, Scullion, for running sharply with thy spit Down on a rout of craven foresters. A thresher with his flail had scattered them. Nay—for thou smellest of the kitchen still. But an this lord will yield us ...
— Idylls of the King • Alfred, Lord Tennyson
... you must be expecting an answer to your letter by now, so I will try to answer as many of your questions as I remember. Your letter has been mislaid. We have been very much rushed all this week. We had the thresher crew two days. I was busy cooking for them two days before they came, and have been busy ever since cleaning up after them. Clyde has taken the thresher on up the valley to thresh for the neighbors, and all the men have gone along, so the ...
— Letters of a Woman Homesteader • Elinore Pruitt Stewart
... the false sentiment of solitude. He describes the walk to the park at Weston Underwood, the prospect from the hilltop, touches upon his privilege in having a key of the gate, describes the avenues of trees, the wilderness, the grove, and the sound of the thresher's flail then suggests to him that all live by energy, best ease is after toil. He compares the luxury of art with wholesomeness of Nature free to all, that brings health to the sick, joy to the returned seafarer. Spleen vexes ...
— The Task and Other Poems • William Cowper
... The thresher Duck[1] could o'er the queen prevail, The proverb says, "no fence against a flail." From threshing corn he turns to thresh his brains; For which her majesty allows him grains: Though 'tis confest, that those, who ever saw His poems, think them all not worth ...
— The Poems of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Volume I (of 2) • Jonathan Swift
... chair, which he was holding in his strong sailor's grip, he swung it down before him with an exasperated fury. A cry burst from the bed, an agonizing, piercing cry. Then he began to thrash around like a thresher in a barn. And soon nothing more moved. The chair was broken to pieces, but he still held one leg and beat away ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... swung me on high to the swing of the sledge, as a thresher bends back to the rise of his flail, and with all my power descending delivered the ponderous onset. Crashing and crushed the great stone fell over, and threads of sparkling gold appeared in the jagged ...
— Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor • R. D. Blackmore
... engine. When the houses are full and the hulm in a fit state for threshing, the engine is started and the work begun. One man, relieved by others from time to time, (for the labor requires activity, and consequently is exhausting,) feeds the thresher, which, with its armed teeth, moves with such velocity as to appear like a solid cylinder. Here there is no stopping for horses to take breath and rest their weary limbs,—puff, puff, onward the work,—steam ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., April, 1863, No. LXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics. • Various
... this old farmhouse had a constant resemblance to a wall-flower; and it had the same moist earthy smell, except in the kitchen, where John and Martha Thresher lived, apart from their furniture. All the fresh eggs, and the butter stamped, with three bees, and the pots of honey, the fowls, and the hare lifted out of the hamper by his hind legs, and the country loaves smelling heavenly, which used ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... 'Dear good friend Thresher, give me corn, the corn I'll give to the Sow, the Sow'll give me bristles, the bristles I'll give to the Shoemaker, the Shoemaker'll give me shoes, the shoes I'll give to the Virgin Mary, the Virgin Mary'll give me a red ribbon, the red ribbon I'll give to the Linden, the Linden'll give me ...
— Popular Tales from the Norse • Sir George Webbe Dasent
... four-fifths of the men (whom the writer, to whom I am indebted for many of these facts about the farmer, calls "harvester kings")—along with the plough kings and wagon kings of whom democracy has been dreaming-were farmers' sons. The plough, the self-binder, the thresher were all invented on ...
— The French in the Heart of America • John Finley
... steam engine, steamer, railway, telegraph, telephone, phonograph, cylinder printing press and folder, electric light and motor, gasoline and kerosene engines, cotton gin, spinning jenny, sewing machine, mower, reaper, steam thresher and separator, mammoth corn sheller, tractor, gang plow, typewriter, automobile, bicycle, aeroplane, vaccine, ...
— The Choctaw Freedmen - and The Story of Oak Hill Industrial Academy • Robert Elliott Flickinger
... say: 'I got no plow, no binder, no thresher.' Gaviller say: 'I bring them in for you.' Gaviller say: 'I pay you two-fifty bushel for wheat. I can do it up here. You pay me for the ...
— The Fur Bringers - A Story of the Canadian Northwest • Hulbert Footner
... genuine improvidence of savages, they destroy that fodder for want of which their cattle may perish. From this practice they have two petty conveniences. They dry the grain so that it is easily reduced to meal, and they escape the theft of the thresher. The taste contracted from the fire by the oats, as by every other scorched substance, use must long ago have made grateful. The oats that are not parched must ...
— A Journey to the Western Isles of Scotland • Samuel Johnson
... really antedated that of the motor car. Out on the farm my first experiments were with tractors, and it will be remembered that I was employed for some time by a manufacturer of steam tractors—the big heavy road and thresher engines. But I did not see any future for the large tractors. They were too expensive for the small farm, required too much skill to operate, and were much too heavy as compared with the pull they exerted. And anyway, the public was more interested in being carried than in being pulled; ...
— My Life and Work • Henry Ford
... station I saw eighteen kinds of small threshing machines at from 13 to 18 yen. There were husking machines of three sorts. A rice thresher was equal to dealing with the crop of one tan, estimated at 2 koku 4 to, ...
— The Foundations of Japan • J.W. Robertson Scott |
