"Chaff" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... men within my kingdom, and if thou art not able to enforce them thou art no sheriff for me. So look well to thyself, I say, or ill may befall thee as well as all the thieving knaves in Nottinghamshire. When the flood cometh it sweepeth away grain as well as chaff." ...
— The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood • Howard Pyle
... known it, Kingozi was getting what he required. Information came to him a word now, a word then; promises came to him in single phrases lost in empty gossip. He collected what he wanted grain by grain from bushels of chaff. The whole sum of his new knowledge could have been expressed in a paragraph, took him a week to get, but was just what he wanted. If he had asked categorical questions, he would have received lies. If he had attempted to hurry matters, he would ...
— The Leopard Woman • Stewart Edward White et al
... could not sleep for that there randy go they was making." Pook, a haycock. All of a pummy, all of a moulter, because it was so very brow, describing the condition of a tree, which shattered as it fell because it was brow, i.e. brittle. Leer, empty, generally said of hunger.—See German. Hulls, chaff. The chaff of oats; used to be in favour for stuffing mattresses. Heft, Weight. To huck, to push or pull out. Scotch (howk). Stook, the foundation of a bee hive. Pe-art, bright, lively, the original word bearht for both bright ...
— John Keble's Parishes • Charlotte M Yonge
... shrubbery upon the opposite side of the creek; there was the simultaneous report of as many rifles, and five messengers of death went tearing among the Shawnees, mangling, killing and scattering them like chaff in ...
— The Riflemen of the Miami • Edward S. Ellis
... the other side of the yard, and into this I fell. The cool water revived me, and I had just enough wits left to think of escape. I squirmed up the lade among the slippery green slime till I reached the mill-wheel. Then I wriggled through the axle hole into the old mill and tumbled on to a bed of chaff. A nail caught the seat of my trousers, and I left a wisp of heather-mixture ...
— The Thirty-nine Steps • John Buchan
... Giant, "prithee what heavy news can come to me? I am a Giant with three heads; and besides, though knowest I can fight five hundred men in armour, and make them fly like chaff ...
— The Story of Jack and the Giants • Anonymous
... doctrines of the cross are really irrational and absurd, and that you are doing right in opposing and deriding them? Recollect, I pray you, with whose word you are contending;—whose wisdom you are despising! Let the chaff contend with the tempest, and the stubble with the devouring flame; let the glow-worm despise all the lamps of heaven;—but Oh, let not a worm contend with Omnipotence; let not dim reason reject all the splendours of the Sun of righteousness. The redemption of the ...
— The National Preacher, Vol. 2 No. 7 Dec. 1827 • Aaron W. Leland and Elihu W. Baldwin
... princely estates as Eumaeus managed in the Ionian seas. Flaxman has certainly not given him the look of a large proprietor in his outlines: his toilet is severely scant, and the old gentleman appears to have lost two of his fingers in a chaff-cutter. As for Perses, who is represented as listening to the sage,[A] his dress is in the extreme of classic scantiness,—being, in fact, a mere night-shirt, and a tight ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., April, 1863, No. LXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics. • Various
... long breath. "Well, Leonard, you fooled me. I believed all this chaff you've been giving me about not caring who chewed ...
— One of Ours • Willa Cather
... the king himself commands to do so, and his servants are not bought for money,—of these attendants then they strangle fifty and also fifty of the finest horses; and when they have taken out their bowels and cleansed the belly, they fill it with chaff and sew it together again. Then they set the half of a wheel upon two stakes with the hollow side upwards, and the other half of the wheel upon other two stakes, and in this manner they fix a number of these; and after this they run thick stakes ...
— The History Of Herodotus - Volume 1(of 2) • Herodotus
... reason for offence—offended often because everyone did not recognise him as a member of an old Cornish family and the son of an ex-lord mayor of London. Often he felt obliged, in order to satisfy his own self-respect, to make the fact known; and the chaff, or indifference, or incredulity, with which his claims were received made him change his opinions regarding the "jolly company of actors." In fact, he was undoubtedly at this period of Denasia's career her very worst enemy; for whatever ...
— A Singer from the Sea • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... a piece of amber on his sleeve and to find that it thereupon attracted fragments of chaff had certainly no vision of the electric marvels of our days. He was amusing himself in a childlike manner. Repeated, tested, and probed in every imaginable way, the child's experiment has become one of the forces of ...
— Social Life in the Insect World • J. H. Fabre
... anything against cheiromancy here, Lady Windermere; it is the only subject that Arthur does not like people to chaff about. I assure you he is quite ...
— Lord Arthur Savile's Crime and Other Stories • Oscar Wilde
... experience of this grim, smileless Californian chaff was not calculated to restore his confidence. He drew away from the cabin, and repeated doggedly, "I asked you if this was ...
— A Waif of the Plains • Bret Harte
... to rub the ripe ears in her hands to work the grain out of the husk, and then to winnow away the chaff by letting the corn slowly drop in a stream from one palm to the other, blowing gently with her mouth the while. The grain remained on account of its weight, the chaff floating away, and the wheat, ...
— Round About a Great Estate • Richard Jefferies
... city held by the enemy. This gossip and information, Which the young sentinel picked up bit by bit, he pieced together to make a picture of an invincible, veteran British army, waiting to fall upon the huddled mob of "rebels" at Valley Forge, and sweep them away like chaff. He heard it over and over again, that the Hessians, with their tall and gleaming brass hats and fierce mustaches, "were dreadful to look upon," that the British Grenadiers, who tramped the Philadelphia streets in legions, "were like moving ranks ...
— The Junior Classics • Various
... hurt. We shall then destroy their bastilles, so that they will have no place of shelter to fly back to; and then we shall fall upon them hip and thigh on the south side, and drive them before us as chaff before the wind. They must needs then disperse themselves altogether, having no more cover to hide themselves in; so will the enemies of the Lord be dispersed, and the siege of ...
— A Heroine of France • Evelyn Everett-Green
... 24 Therefore, as the fire devoureth the stubble, and the flame consumeth the chaff, their root shall be rottenness, and their blossoms shall go up as dust; because they have cast away the law of the Lord of Hosts, and despised the word of the Holy One ...
— The Book Of Mormon - An Account Written By The Hand Of Mormon Upon Plates Taken - From The Plates Of Nephi • Anonymous
... would do so if they saw something that they knew to be a sure winner. Then there are others who will bet on many things, but they pride themselves on being too smart to bet on any man's trick; and the more they see others doing so, the more sanguine they are that no one could ever catch them with chaff. I have met many of the latter class, and always tried to down them. They, of course, would not bit at the monte bait, for it was too stale for them; so I would study sometimes for hours how to take the conceit ...
— Forty Years a Gambler on the Mississippi • George H. Devol
... to have befallen our pastor; for, though many faces turned toward him, full of the dumb hunger that often comes to men when suffering or danger brings then nearer to the heart of things, they were offered the chaff of divinity, and its wheat was left for less needy gleaners, who knew where to look. Even the fine old Bible stories, which may be made as lifelike as any history of our day, by a vivid fancy and pictorial diction, ...
— Hospital Sketches • Louisa May Alcott
... the vaults of the Palatium. It is thought by some, that Nero was driven to a voluntary death by the executioner's shewing him some halters and hooks, as if he had been sent to him by order of the senate. Drusus, it is said, was so rabid with hunger, that he attempted to eat the chaff with which his mattress was stuffed. The relics of both were so scattered, that it was with difficulty they ...
— The Lives Of The Twelve Caesars, Complete - To Which Are Added, His Lives Of The Grammarians, Rhetoricians, And Poets • C. Suetonius Tranquillus
... the legs rubbed by hand until quite dry. We used the best old white potato oats, weighing usually 45 lbs. per bushel, but so few beans that a quarter lasted us a season. The oats were bruised, and a little sweet hay chaff mixed with them. We also gave our horses a few carrots the day after hunting, to cool their bodies, or a bran mash or two. They were never coddled up in hoods or half a dozen rugs at night, but a single blanket sufficed, which was never so tight but that you might thrust your hand ...
— A New Illustrated Edition of J. S. Rarey's Art of Taming Horses • J. S. Rarey
... in blue and orange, got off easier, though the freshness of their uniforms was tremendously resented; but McDunn's 10th Flying Battery, in brand new uniforms, ran the full fierce fire of chaff; the indignant cannoneers were begged to disclose the name of the stage line which had supplied their battery horses; and Arthur Wye, driving the showy swing team of No. 6, Left Section, shouted back in ...
— Ailsa Paige • Robert W. Chambers
... Augustus. Cato thought that a proper man ought to study oratory, medicine, husbandry, war, and law, and was at liberty to look into Greek literature a little, that he might cull from the mass of chaff and rubbish, as he affected to deem it, some serviceable maxims of practical experience, but he might not study it thoroughly. Varro extended the limit of allowed and fitting studies to grammar, logic, rhetoric, geometry, arithmetic, ...
— The Story of Rome From the Earliest Times to the End of the Republic • Arthur Gilman
... running fire of chaff for some time, to which Fisher, as was his wont, showed himself to be perfectly indifferent. Lunch over, Molly disappeared. Charlie saw her go and ...
— The Tidal Wave and Other Stories • Ethel May Dell
... eager blood hot within him, by men as hot-blooded as himself. But once when the old doctor's eye caught the up-turned, straining gaze of the father Darley, seeking with all his soul to find a grain of holy comfort in the chaff of words, his conscience smote him. Had he nothing to say that should calm anger and revenge with spiritual power? no breath of the comforter to soothe repining into resignation? But again the discord between the laws of man and ...
— Sylvia's Lovers, Vol. I • Elizabeth Gaskell
... Then the great chest, or ark as Patience called it, where all the Sunday clothes were kept, had been crushed in and the upper things singed, but all below was safe. The beds and bedding were gone; but then the best bed had been only a box in the wall with an open side, and the others only chaff or straw ...
— Under the Storm - Steadfast's Charge • Charlotte M. Yonge
... these with moist soil from the field or garden, packing it till it is as hard as the unplowed or unspaded soil. Leave one of them in this condition; from two of them remove an inch or two of soil and replace it in the case of one with clean, dry, coarse sand, and in the case of the other with chaff or straw cut into half-inch lengths. Stir the soil in the fourth one to a depth of one inch, leaving it light and crumbly. Now weigh the jars and set them aside. Weigh each day for several days. The four jars ...
— The First Book of Farming • Charles L. Goodrich
... strife, to help her to her feet should she fall, to burnish her armor if the rust come to dim its brightness or spoil the keenness of her weapon's edge, knowing that she, as with the sword of the cherubim, will scatter, at the last, the evil legions and their dark array, as the whirlwind scatters the chaff. ...
— Continental Monthly, Volume 5, Issue 4 • Various
... Israel, and who brings forward the apocryphal book of Enoch, has been among my people in my absence, and many have been led after him. How humbling is this to them and to me! Lord, what is man! This may be blessed, 1st, to discover chaff which we thought to be wheat; 2nd, to lead some to greater distrust of themselves, when their eyes are opened: 3rd, to teach me the need of solidly instructing those who seem to ...
— The Biography of Robert Murray M'Cheyne • Andrew A. Bonar
... storm rose. At five o'clock I went forth to face it in a two-mile walk. It was exhilarating in the extreme. The snow was lighter than chaff. It had been dried in the Arctic ovens to the last degree. The foot sped through it without hindrance. I fancied the grouse and the quail quietly sitting down in the open places, and letting it drift over them. With ...
— A Year in the Fields • John Burroughs
... elements of the Russian Nation. It has brought out in a striking manner the fundamental tendency of Russian political life and the essence of Russian culture, which so many people have been unable to perceive on account of the chaff on the surface. Russia has been going through a painful crisis. In the words of the Manifesto of Oct. 17, (30,) 1905, the outward casing of her administration had become too narrow and oppressive for the development of society with its growing needs, its altered perceptions ...
— The New York Times Current History: the European War, February, 1915 • Various
... a path for them through the depths of the sea, reining back its foaming waves as a rider his white-maned steed; giving to the thirsty—water from the rock, to the hungry—bread from the skies, and scattering the foes of Israel before them, as chaff is driven by the wind. I have heard of the sun's fiery chariot arrested in its course by the voice of a man, speaking with authority given to him by an inspiring Deity. Tell me what is the name of the ...
— Hebrew Heroes - A Tale Founded on Jewish History • AKA A.L.O.E. A.L.O.E., Charlotte Maria Tucker
... and by a complete system of drainage, mere marshy rush-growing meadows have been made capable of carrying capital root and wheat crops, while the waste water has been carried to a head, and then by a large overshot water wheel, working below the surface of the ground, made useful for thrashing, chaff and root cutting, and other ...
— Rides on Railways • Samuel Sidney
... we have followed her adventures up a little way in the back numbers of Punch. But, if we may be permitted the slang, the type itself is anything but "a back number." Du Maurier's work bids fair to live in the enjoyment of many generations, from the fact that its chaff, for the most part, is directed against vanities that recur in human nature. Mr. James tells us that the lady of whom we write "hesitates at nothing; she is very modern. If she doesn't take the aesthetic line more than is necessary, she finds it necessary to take it a ...
— George Du Maurier, the Satirist of the Victorians • T. Martin Wood
... for me," he added, struggling with the emotion that surged in his voice, "in the sight of Him that searcheth all hearts I have acquittal. I have sought it long and with tears of Him before whom we are all as chaff." ...
— The Shadow of a Crime - A Cumbrian Romance • Hall Caine
... thy glory is past, Vanished and fled for ever. Homeless and scattered, thy race is cast Like chaff in the breath of the sweeping blast, To rally or rise ...
— Poems • Frances Anne Butler
... to which woman may not rightfully aspire? What is there, for instance, in theology, which she should not strive to learn? Give me only that in religion which woman may and should become acquainted with, and the rest may go like chaff before the wind. ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... two verses have passed into immortality as a proverb. Perhaps a few other grains of corn might be picked out of these hundred and seventy pages of chaff. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 88, February, 1865 • Various
... about ghostesses afore you went aft an' turned in, an' that's what's the matter," he repeated, giving me a nudge in the ribs, while he added more earnestly: "And, if I was you, my boy, I wouldn't mention a word of it to another soul, or the hands 'll chaff the life out of you, an' you'll wish you were ...
— The Island Treasure • John Conroy Hutcheson
... be the fire of God, and therefore, like all that is in God and of God, good and not evil, a blessing and not a curse. We believe that that fire is for ever burning, though men are for ever trying to quench it all day long; and that it has been and will be in every age burning up all the chaff and stubble of man's inventions; the folly, the falsehood, the ignorance, the vice of this sinful world; and we praise God for it; and give thanks to Him for His great glory, that He is the everlasting and triumphant foe of evil and misery, of whom it is written, that our God is a consuming fire." ...
— Westminster Sermons - with a Preface • Charles Kingsley
... right of the Indian village. Why were they kept lying there in idleness? Why were they not pushed forward to do their part? They looked into each other's faces. God! They were three hundred now; they could sweep aside like chaff that fringe of red skirmishers if only they got the word! With hearts throbbing, every nerve tense, they waited, each trooper crouched for the spring. Officer after officer, unable to restrain his impatience, strode back across the bluff summit, amid whistling bullets, and ...
— Bob Hampton of Placer • Randall Parrish
... visitors at the south are not thus easily gulled. Many of them, as the preceding pages show, have too much sense to be caught with chaff. ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... occasions when, the traffic being interrupted, the oratorical powers were useful to fill up the time, she shone with singular brilliance. The West End is too often in debt to the City, but, in the matter of chaff, it was not so this day; for whenever she took a peck she returned a bushel; and so she rattled to the door of Solomon Oldfield, solicitor, ...
— A Terrible Temptation - A Story of To-Day • Charles Reade
... the shadow of a big black-looking vessel which loomed large through the fog, and to and from which men were coming and going as usual. With several of these the old woman interchanged some good-humoured chaff as she settled herself in her place, and ...
— We and the World, Part II. (of II.) - A Book for Boys • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... is pleasant and gay, For frolic by nature design'd; He heedlessly rattles away When the company is to his mind. "This maxim," he says, "you may see, We never can have corn without chaff;" So not a bent sixpence cares he, Whether with him or at ...
— James Boswell - Famous Scots Series • William Keith Leask
... promising everything, feels with pride and delight the sense of powerful and responsible existence. Endymion had glanced at all the leading articles, had sorted in the correspondence the grain from the chaff, and had settled in his mind those who must be answered and those who must be seen. The strange incident of last night was of course not forgotten, but removed, as it were, from his consciousness in the bustle and pressure of ...
— Endymion • Benjamin Disraeli
... in company, laughed and mocked and tripped it to the flute when she saw good; nay, she would mount her anapaests, as likely as not, and pelt the friends of Dialogue with nicknames— doctrinaires, airy metaphysicians, and the like. The thing she loved of all else was to chaff them and drench them in holiday impertinence, exhibit them treading on air and arguing with the clouds, or measuring the jump of a flea, as a type of their ethereal refinements. But Dialogue continued his deep speculations ...
— Works, V1 • Lucian of Samosata
... patting his head and laughing her low, sweet silvery laugh, "you betray your Scotch accent, my fine follow; and I'm too old a chaff to be caught with ...
— Elsie's Motherhood • Martha Finley
... superfluous questions. You might as fitly paint Dame Venus freckled, As fancy Punch will stoop to being "heckled." I have no "Programmes," I. My wit's too wide To a wire-puller's "platform" to be tied. I know what's right, I mean to see it done, And for the rest good-tempered chaff and fun Are my pet "principles"—till fools grow rash From toleration, then they feel the lash. I am a sage, and not a prig or pump, Therefore I never canvas, spout or stump, I'm Liberal—as the sunlight—of all Good, Which to Conserve I strive—that's understood, But Tory nincompoop, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 103, July 9, 1892 • Various
... of 1,200 Kentucky militia advanced to his relief and tried to cut its way into the fort while the garrison made a sortie. The sortie was fairly successful, but the Kentuckians were scattered like chaff by the British regulars in the open, and when broken were cut to pieces by the Indians in the woods. Nearly two thirds of the relieving troops were killed or captured; about 400 got into the fort. Soon afterward ...
— The Naval War of 1812 • Theodore Roosevelt
... there lie many Courts and scenes, which it might behoove us to look into; Courts needing to be encouraged to stand for the Kaiser's rights, against those English, French and intrusive Foreigners of the Seville Treaty. We may hope at least to ease our own heavy mind, and have the chaff somewhat blown out of it, by this rushing through the open atmosphere.—Such, so far as I can gather, were Friedrich Wilhelm's objects in this Journey; which turned out to be a more celebrated one than he expected. The authentic records of it are slight, the rumors about ...
— History of Friedrich II of Prussia V 7 • Thomas Carlyle
... About the fourth day after her sister had left, I got my hands on her thigh. On Sunday when all were at church: to blind my mother I had gone out, but went home directly, and into the kitchen to resume my baudy chaff, I forgot all about her sister, got to kissing and trying to feel her. I was long in the kitchen with my prick out, sometimes hanging, sometimes standing stiff, trying to induce her to let me, but it was of no use. ...
— My Secret Life, Volumes I. to III. - 1888 Edition • Anonymous
... conditions. "Not a sound on board! And see, not a light! No sign of the crew!"—"Halloo, sea-folk!" the maidens shout, "Halloo! Do you need lights? Where are you? We cannot see...."—"Don't wake them," chaff the Norwegians, "they are still asleep!" The girls go close to the ship and shout again. "Halloo, sea-folk! Halloo, answer!" There is along silence. The sailor-lads have the laugh now on the girls. "Ha, ha! In very truth, they are dead. They are in no need of food and drink." But the girls ...
— The Wagnerian Romances • Gertrude Hall
... about Alexia Rhys," the "Salisbury girls" had always said, "she can take any amount of chaff, and not stick her finger in ...
— Five Little Peppers at School • Margaret Sidney
... 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; and ...
— The Life and Adventures of Robinson Crusoe (1808) • Daniel Defoe
... pease-pudding and chaff-biscuits,' said the manager, taking a whiff at his pipe to keep it alight, and returning ...
— The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby • Charles Dickens
... unsuitable, uncalled for, and insufficient. However, sir, I accept your remarks in the same friendly spirit as, I am sure, you have offered them. Permit me, at the same time, as one many years your senior, to say that, in considering your proposals, I shall separate the chaff—of which there is a good deal—from the wheat—of which there is some little; the latter I shall gather into my mind's garner, and I trust it will fall on good soil." I took the old gentleman's hand and shook it warmly, and, as he retired, I made up my ...
— Lands of the Slave and the Free - Cuba, The United States, and Canada • Henry A. Murray
... practically all of these lands are washed away and as farm lands they are abandoned. Not only are the hillside lands unprotected from the beating rains and flowing streams, but the bottom or lowlands are not properly drained, and the sand washed down from the hill, the chaff and raft from previous rains soon fill the ditches and creeks and almost any ordinary rain will cause an overflow ...
— The Upward Path - A Reader For Colored Children • Various
... to ten feet. Being thus laid, it is to be planed and polished diligently with some hard stone; but, above all, regard is to be had that the boarded floor be made of oak. As for such as do start or warp any way, they be thought naught. Moreover, it were better to lay a course of flint or chaff between it and the lime, to the end that the lime may not have so much force to hurt the board underneath it. It were also well to put at the bottom a bed of ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy
... hospital. This was his first morning out. He had grown soft, and was light-headed, his knees all of a shake. By means of voluminous threats Preiston got him up. But he sat his horse all of a huddle, as limp as a half-empty sack of chaff. Richard looked on feeling, not pity, but only irritation, finally amounting to anger. The child's whole aspect and the sniveling sounds he made were so hatefully ugly. It ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... with them. Our food was abominably bad; the sheep we purchased were little better than London cats; and as no flour-mill is to be found in Abyssinia, far less any bakers, we were obliged to purchase the grain, beat it to remove the chaff, and grind it between two stones—not the flat grinding-stones of Egypt or India, but on a small curved piece of rock, where the grain is reduced to flour by means of a large hard kind of pebble held in the hand. It was brown bread with a vengeance. On the mountain we might ...
— A Narrative of Captivity in Abyssinia - With Some Account of the Late Emperor Theodore, - His Country and People • Henry Blanc
... his eyes from the boat. He was watching the strength with which Le Maitre was turning her and starting her for Cloud Island. He was watching O'Shea, who, still giving back chaff and sarcasm to the men on the schooner, was forced to turn and pick up the smaller pole which Caius had relinquished; he seemed to be interested only in his talk, and to begin to help in the management of the boat mechanically. The skipper was swearing at his men and ...
— The Mermaid - A Love Tale • Lily Dougall
... new partnership going, by this time," she asked, after the manner of one who re-winnows the chaff of the commonplaces in the hope of finding grain enough for the ...
— The Price • Francis Lynde
... the pike will fly Dace and roach and such small fry; As the leaf before the gale, As the chaff beneath the flail; As before the wolf the flocks, As before the hounds the fox; As before the cat the mouse, As the rat from falling house; As the fiend before the spell Of holy water, book, and bell; As the ghost from dawning day,— ...
— Gryll Grange • Thomas Love Peacock
... the subject of a good deal of chaff that night at mess. The Rajah was being entertained, and he was the only man who paid the young officer any compliments on the matter of his achievement on the racecourse. Everyone else openly declared that the horse, and not its rider, was ...
— Rosa Mundi and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... under the character of Harry Benson, and am, in consequence, a handsome young man, who can do a little of every thing instead of——but never mind what; your actor has not yet sufficient standing to come down before the footlights, and have his little bit of private chaff with the audience. Only this will I say, so help me N. P. Willis, I mean to go on with these sketches till they are finished, provided always that Fraser will take them so long and that you continue to read them, or fall into a sweet ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various
... seemed rather disposed to chaff his slender traveling companion, "if you like the Black Hills; you ...
— Struggling Upward - or Luke Larkin's Luck • Horatio Alger
... O'Reagans of Castle Reagan, or the D'Arcy de Montmorenci, or the Montescudi di Bajocchi. Among this set there was much merry-making when the news from the Dolph household sifted down to them from the gossip-sieve of the best society. They could not very well chaff young Dolph openly, for he was muscular and high-tempered, and, under the most agreeable conditions, needed a fight of some sort every six months or so, and liked a bit of trouble in between fights. But a good deal of low and ...
— The Story of a New York House • Henry Cuyler Bunner
... of course, we had one especial individual who was commonly regarded as the butt of the room—a good-natured, heavy man, with a dull face and a duller comprehension; but, he seemed proud and pleased always when singled out as a mark for our chaff:—he took it as an honour, I think, ascribing our ...
— She and I, Volume 2 - A Love Story. A Life History. • John Conroy Hutcheson
... might, had he been so disposed, have pleaded that before God. But he would not, he could not, for his conscience was under convictions, the awakenings of God were upon him; wherefore his privileges melt away like grease, and fly from him like the chaff of the summer threshing-floor, which the wind taketh up and scattereth as the dust; he therefore lets all privileges fall, and pleads only that ...
— The Pharisee And The Publican • John Bunyan
... Without allowing themselves to be involved in purely domestic disputes among Catholic theologians or to be guided by the advice of those who sought to secure peace by means of dishonourable compromises, the Fathers of Trent set themselves calmly but resolutely to sift the chaff from the wheat, to examine the theories of Luther in the light of the teaching of the Scriptures and the tradition of the Church as contained in the writings of the Fathers, and to give to the world a clear-cut exposition of the dogmas that had been attacked by the heretics. ...
— History of the Catholic Church from the Renaissance to the French • Rev. James MacCaffrey
... with which we deal, preach to us. What is a farm but a mute gospel? The chaff and the wheat, weeds and plants, blight, rain, insects, sun,—it is a sacred emblem from the first furrow of spring to the last stack which the snow of winter ...
— History of American Literature • Reuben Post Halleck
... has long been cast down has escaped all dangers, and is near at hand, and I hope ere long to see him and to return with him in triumph to the fort. The cowardly rebels will not dare to face us. When we attack them in the open ground, they will fly like chaff before the wind. Though Burnett does not tell us the amount of the force with him, I trust that it will be sufficient to enable us to follow up our victory and prevent ...
— The Young Rajah • W.H.G. Kingston
... Willis received the pills and proceeded to lay them out after a plan of his own. He cut several tallow candles into pieces about an inch long, and embedded a pill in each. When he had prepared twenty or more of those pieces of poisoned tallow, he put them in what he called a fox bed, of oat chaff, behind that old barn. The bed was about as large as the floor of a small room. At that time of year farmers were killing poultry, and Willis collected a basketful of chickens' and turkeys' heads to put into ...
— A Busy Year at the Old Squire's • Charles Asbury Stephens
... old women, because they look so lonely about the boots." The exposition was so subtle and logical that it admitted no reply. The old women and the blind men shuffled away with their pennies, and we began to chaff the ...
— Castilian Days • John Hay
... behind him, and showed him tripping lightly over a bullock's broad back. Then he was up on the manger-edge, had paused to make sure, and was down in the manger, picking up crumbs and dust of linseed-cake and chaff. Three mice were doing the same thing, but fled at his approach; but he did not trouble about that, for the cattle had not left even him and his wife a full meal, having blown what was left of the chaff away, and licked up practically all of the cake-crumbs and dust. However, ...
— The Way of the Wild • F. St. Mars
... butterflies danced and fluttered over the flowers, which lifted their heads as though to drink in the rays of the sun. In every tree in the garden a thrush woke up and began to sing; sparrows chirped, jays screamed, blue-tits chattered, and the chiff-chaff uttered his strange note. In the woods a cuckoo called and blackbird fluted to blackbird in the hedge. In the stables the horses awoke and champed at their stalls; the cat jumped down and ran after a mouse which ...
— The Sleeping Beauty • C. S. Evans
... to dyscerne I purpose not to dele Soo large by my wyll it longeth not to me were hit dreme or vysyon for your owne wele All that shall hit rede here rad or se Take thereof the best & let the worst be Try out the corne clene from the chaff And then may ye say ...
— The Assemble of Goddes • Anonymous
... from his spirit flew death, And bale, and ban, Like the corn-chaff under the breath Of ...
— Late Lyrics and Earlier • Thomas Hardy
... much supersede and usurp the place of books, and lead to a superficial knowledge of things. Gleaning the papers in search of that which is really useful, candid, and fair seems too much like hunting for grains of wheat in a chaos of chaff. ...
— Personal Memoirs Of A Residence Of Thirty Years With The Indian Tribes On The American Frontiers • Henry Rowe Schoolcraft
... was gone. Her cheeks were pale and puffy, even though emaciated. Her limbs looked thin through her disordered and torn clothes. She wore a dark-colored hood over her snarled hair, in which there was chaff mixed with the tangles as if she had been sleeping in straw. She was black with smoke and ashes. Her skirts were draggled as if with repeated soaking with dew and rain. Her shoes were worn through at the toes, and ...
— Vandemark's Folly • Herbert Quick
... in France, Colonel," replied La Corne de St. Luc, scornfully, "that 'King's chaff is better than other people's corn, and that fish in the market is cheaper than fish in the sea!' I believe it, and can prove it to any gentleman who maintains ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... mean ones. She bored Alice Ronder, but Ronder found her useful. She told him a great deal that he wanted to know, and although she was never accurate in her information, he could separate the wheat from the chaff. She was a walking mischief-maker, but meant no harm to a living soul. She prided herself on her honesty, on saying exactly what she thought to every one. She was kindness itself to her servants, who adored her, as did railway-porters, cabmen and newspaper men. ...
— The Cathedral • Hugh Walpole
... the men drifted in two by two at dusk, I said nothing of my real adventures, and answered their chaff in kind. ...
— The Killer • Stewart Edward White
... &c (intelligence) 498; acuteness, penetration; nuances. dope [Slang], past performances. V. discriminate, distinguish, severalize^; recognize, match, identify; separate; draw the line, sift; separate the chaff from the wheat, winnow the chaff from the wheat; separate the men from the boys; split hairs, draw a fine line, nitpick, quibble. estimate &c (measure) 466; know which is which, know what is what, know 'a hawk from a handsaw' [Hamlet]. take into account, take into consideration; give due ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... sister, being led to it by the certain prospect of one of the dear labourers in the Orphan-Houses going to leave; "Well, my soul is at peace. The Lord's time is not yet come, but, when it is come, He will blow away all these obstacles, as chaff is blown away before the wind." It was only ONE QUARTER OF AN HOUR after, when the following paper was put into my hands, whereby I obtained power ...
— A Narrative of some of the Lord's Dealings with George Mueller - Written by Himself, Third Part • George Mueller
... his shins had in consequence been barked against a sharp piece of rock. All the sympathy that ought to have been devoted to the wounded man he diverted to himself by the tremendous fuss he made about his injured shins, and this, and the chaff he had to sustain in consequence, quite rounded off the affair, and we all went home in high good humour, and the wounded man for years afterwards used to show his ear-to-ear scar with considerable satisfaction. Some people might have objected to the escape of the bear, but I confess ...
— Gold, Sport, And Coffee Planting In Mysore • Robert H. Elliot
... hope 'twon't disappoint you! There's a good deal of rubbish here, but a scattering of grain among the chaff. ...
— Max • Katherine Cecil Thurston
... chaff, she understood, and she began to wonder if that other, that young Signor Elder, had been but joking. It might be the American way. . . . And yet this was all flattering chaff and so perhaps she could trust the flattery of ...
— The Innocent Adventuress • Mary Hastings Bradley
... He's got his work cut out to keep that barge afloat. Lord help 'em all, I say, all on 'em in those open boats. There they are afloat among reefs and breakers in a storm like this. For aught we know, sir, they're all capsized and washing about like so much chaff by now." ...
— King o' the Beach - A Tropic Tale • George Manville Fenn
... incident added the last touch of high spirits to the company and extorted all their latent humor. Samuel excelled himself in vivacious repartee, and responded comically to the toast of his health as drunk in coffee. Suddenly, amid the hubbub of chaff and laughter and the clatter of cutlery, a still small voice made itself heard. It same from old Hyams, who had been sitting quietly with brow corrugated under ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... termini, and within an hour's journey of Melbourne. Throughout the voyage nothing occurred worth chronicling, if I except the curious behaviour of Lord Beckenham, who, for the first week or so, seemed sunk in a deep lethargy, from which neither chaff nor sympathy could rouse him. From morning till night he mooned aimlessly about the decks, had visibly to pull himself together to answer such questions as might be addressed to him, and never by any chance sustained a conversation beyond a few odd sentences. ...
— A Bid for Fortune - or Dr. Nikola's Vendetta • Guy Boothby
... tower over grown with ivy, and was half surrounded by a wall, whose tottering, ornamental pinnacles told a story of comparative grandeur that had come to grief in this remote spot. The farmer had been winnowing his corn outside, and the narrow lane was ankle-deep with chaff. The only human being that I could find here was a wild-looking girl, with a bush of hair on her head, who made me understand, half in French, half in patois, that I should never reach Vayrac by the way I was ...
— Two Summers in Guyenne • Edward Harrison Barker
... said Richard, "if he loves not wine, that lightener of the human heart, his conversion is not to be hoped for, and the prediction of the mad priest of Engaddi goes like chaff down the wind." ...
— The Talisman • Sir Walter Scott
... drum awoke, Onward the bondmen broke; Bayonet and sabre-stroke Vainly opposed their rush. Through the wild battle's crush, With but one thought aflush, Driving their lords like chaff, In the guns' mouths they laugh; Or at the slippery brands Leaping with open hands, Down they tear man and horse, Down in their awful course; Trampling with bloody heel Over the crashing steel, All their eyes forward bent, Rushed the ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 5 • Various
... the score had been a tie, and how he with Ad Kelly and Johnny Baird went through the Yale team in that '96 game and ran the score up to 24, representing five touchdowns. Never before had a Yale team been driven like chaff before the wind, as that ...
— Football Days - Memories of the Game and of the Men behind the Ball • William H. Edwards
... an easy gait, without apparent fatigue, for he had really great powers of endurance and was not sufficiently intoxicated to enfeeble them. The three men in the wagon kept a short distance in the rear, giving him occasional friendly "chaff" or encouragement, as the spirit moved them. Suddenly—in the very middle of the roadway, not a dozen yards from them, and with their eyes full upon him—the man seemed to stumble, pitched headlong forward, uttered a terrible cry and vanished! He did not fall to the earth—he vanished ...
— Present at a Hanging and Other Ghost Stories • Ambrose Bierce
... the words were spoken half-mockingly; but his face said more than his lips. It said that even in chaff this was no vain boast that he was uttering. Even before he had set foot on African soil he had been asked to keep so many secrets of a commercial nature. So many had begun by imparting half a secret, to pass on in due course to the statement ...
— With Edged Tools • Henry Seton Merriman
... a certain amount of practice an officer with a head on his shoulders learns how to sift the reports gathered from spies, deserters, prisoners, and peasants, and to get a few grains of valuable fact out of bushels of chaff. So the chief interpreter went to work, and translated much useless and some ...
— For Fortune and Glory - A Story of the Soudan War • Lewis Hough
... defray the whole expense of his cultivation, and that his sugar should be all clear profit. If this be true, for I pretend not to affirm it, it is as if a corn farmer expected to defray the expense of his cultivation with the chaff and the straw, and that the grain should be all clear profit. We see frequently societies of merchants in London, and other trading towns, purchase waste lands in our sugar colonies, which they expect to improve and cultivate with profit, by means of factors and agents, ...
— An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations • Adam Smith
... some countries the leaves of the beech tree are collected in autumn, before they have been injured by the frost, and are used instead of feathers for beds; and mattresses formed of them are said to be preferable to those either of straw or chaff. ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. XIX. No. 540, Saturday, March 31, 1832 • Various
... conquers Heaven for us! If the poor and humble toil that we have Food, must not the high and glorious toil for him in return, that he have Light, have Guidance, Freedom, Immortality?—These two, in all their degrees, I honour: all else is chaff and dust, which let the wind blow whither ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle
... than a mere part relating to one section or to one crop, or to one industry, or to an individual private occupation. That is a tremendous gain for the principles of democracy. The overwhelming majority of people in this country know how to sift the wheat from the chaff in what they hear and what they read. They know that the process of the constructive rebuilding of America cannot be done in a day or a year, but that it is being done in spite of the few who seek to confuse them and to profit by their confusion. Americans as a whole are feeling ...
— The Fireside Chats of Franklin Delano Roosevelt • Franklin Delano Roosevelt
... reproachfully. I was about to say that "Blackman's Warbler" was the local name for the Chiff-chaff in our part of Flint, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, May 7, 1919. • Various
... Gargantua would now find the people of Chauny as entertaining as Rabelais tells us they were in his time. Then he 'amused himself much with the boatmen, and above all with those of Chauny in Picardy—wonderful chatterboxes, and great at bandying chaff on the subject of green monkeys.' There is no lack of boatmen now at Chauny, though the railway has taken away much of their living; but the glory of the green monkeys, I fear, has departed. In the days of Gargantua, the Chaunois were as famous as the Savoyards now are, for wandering over France ...
— France and the Republic - A Record of Things Seen and Learned in the French Provinces - During the 'Centennial' Year 1889 • William Henry Hurlbert
... strong light and shade. 'That's a quare un!' she thought, but she found him handsome all the same, and, retreating behind the beer-taps, she eyed him surreptitiously. She was a raw country lass, not yet stript of all her natural shyness, or she would have begun to 'chaff' him. ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... muchacha was seated at the metate (hand-mill), which is one of the most important articles of the Californian culinary apparatus. While the muchacha ground, or rather crushed, the wheat between the stones, the ranchera, with a platter-shaped basket, cleansed it of dust, chaff, and all impure particles, by tossing the grain in the basket. The flour being manufactured and sifted through a cedazo, or coarse sieve, the labour of kneading the dough was performed by the muchacha. An ...
— What I Saw in California • Edwin Bryant
... to win the rich master of Ellsworth made her sweep aside like chaff every obstacle she found in her way, and on leaving Richmond, a cold and cruel letter went to Vernon Ashley, breaking their engagement, with the lying excuse that she had been mistaken in her feelings, and found she did not ...
— Dainty's Cruel Rivals - The Fatal Birthday • Mrs. Alex McVeigh Miller
... of them stood up to plead for the life of Socrates now? Why, the first breath of adversity had blown them away as though they were but mist; and, with these false friends scattered like the coward chaff they were, grim old Socrates ...
— Second Book of Tales • Eugene Field
... figurations in the accompaniment, now above, now below, give the effect of whispered questions and answers during the dance. The questions—put by the man—are pressing and ardent, the answers—from the girl—playful and parrying. Sometimes they even ripple with chaff. Yet, toward the end of the dainty little composition, they become tinged with sentiment, as if she were afraid she might have gone a little too far and might "spoil things" and thought it just as well to let him know in time that, after all, she was not turning ...
— The Pianolist - A Guide for Pianola Players • Gustav Kobb
... poor fellow, not in the contents, but in the evil reputation of the room. Its bad name dated back far beyond the occupation of my family. Captain May laughed at my mistrust, and, as you know, he came here, contrary to my express wishes, in order that he might chaff me next morning over my superstition. He wanted 'to clear its ...
— The Grey Room • Eden Phillpotts
... wuz good to us kids—when we pulled at his fur Or twisted his tail he would never demur; He seemed to enjoy all our play an' our chaff, For his tongue 'u'd hang out an' he'd laff an' he'd laff; An' once, when the Hobart boy fell through the ice, He wuz drug clean ashore by that ...
— Love-Songs of Childhood • Eugene Field |
