"Pick" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... made an examination of the canon. The rapids below it, particularly the last rapid of the series (called the White Horse by the miners), I found would not be safe to run. I sent two men through the canon in one of the canoes to await the arrival of the boat, and to be ready in case of an accident to pick us up. Every man in the party was supplied with a life-preserver, so that should a casualty occur we would all have floated. Those in the canoe got through all right; but they would not have liked to repeat ...
— Klondyke Nuggets - A Brief Description of the Great Gold Regions in the Northwest • Joseph Ladue
... opened her eyes with a tragic gasp. She slipped from the chair, and fell exhausted to the floor. Bleak ran to pick her up. Quimbleton screamed ...
— In the Sweet Dry and Dry • Christopher Morley
... notwithstanding the darkness, the guns were soon captured. The chase was then taken up by Devin's brigade as soon as it could be passed to the front, and continued till after daylight the next morning, but the delays incident to a night pursuit made it impossible for Devin to do more than pick up stragglers. ...
— The Memoirs of General P. H. Sheridan, Complete • General Philip Henry Sheridan
... playful and venturesome 'coon that prowled around in the vicinity of the camp, hoping to pick up some titbits from the supper of the strange bipeds who periodically occupied this favorite site; then again it might be a mink come up from the river to investigate what all this illumination ...
— Canoe Mates in Canada - Three Boys Afloat on the Saskatchewan • St. George Rathborne
... This, however, did not seem to disturb his good humour, or to make him unhappy, and his answer was to call 'Bill,' who was acting as porter, and to tell him to give the gentleman the key of the 'book room,' and to bring down any of the books he might pick out, and he 'would sell 'em.' I followed 'Bill,' and soon found myself in a charming nook of a library, full of books, mostly old divinity, but with a large number of the best miscellaneous literature of the sixteenth century, English and foreign. A very short look over the shelves ...
— Enemies of Books • William Blades
... strike—do you mind it? Shakespeare George put us on, so me and the kid got in ahead of the stampede. We located one and two above discovery, and by Christmas we had a streak uncovered that was all gold. She was coarse, and we averaged six ounces a day in pick-ups. Man, that was ground! I've flashed my candle along the drift face, where it looked like gold had been shot in with ...
— Pardners • Rex Beach
... meadow. As you come near, they spring up, fly a little distance, and light again. The robins, that long ago left the gardens, feed in flocks upon the red berries of the sumac, and the soft-eyed pigeons are with them to claim their share. The lazy blackbirds follow the cows and pick up ...
— Reading Made Easy for Foreigners - Third Reader • John L. Huelshof
... ought not to pick Nature's pocket. Let him borrow, and so borrow as to repay by the very act of borrowing. Examine nature accurately, but write from recollection, and trust more to the ...
— Pearls of Thought • Maturin M. Ballou
... Whereupon the Emperor passionately replied: "You do not know what goes on in the mind of a soldier; a man such as I does not take much heed of the lives of a million of men,"—and he threw aside his hat. Metternich did not pick it up. ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... dog, and his name was Blue Bell, I gave him some work, and he did it very well; I sent him up stairs to pick up a pin, He stepped into the coal-scuttle up to the chin; I sent him to the garden to pick some sage, He tumbled down and fell in a rage; I sent him to the cellar to draw a pot of beer, He came up again and said there was ...
— Cole's Funny Picture Book No. 1 • Edward William Cole
... made in one day and lost the next at poker or loo. To-day the lucky miner who had struck a good "lead" was drinking champagne out of pails and treating the town; to-morrow he was "busted," and shouldered the pick for a new onslaught upon his luck. This strange, reckless life, was not without fascination, and highly picturesque and dramatic elements were present in it. It was, as Bret Harte says, "an era replete with a certain ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... finished the gruesome task of getting the bodies into the morgue sacks and laid beside the dispensary ramp for the ambulance to pick up with the surviving victim. Car 119's MSO had joined Kelly in Beulah's dispensary to give what help she might. The four patrol troopers began the grim task of probing the scattered wreckage for other possible victims, personal possessions ...
— Code Three • Rick Raphael
... were my diversion,—and better na human follies ever afforded; ha, ha, ha! sic an a mixture—and sic oddities, ha, ha, ha!—a perfect Gallimaufry.—Lady Kunegunda M'Kenzie and I used to gang about till every part of this human chaos, on purpose to reconnoitre the monsters and pick up their frivolities; ha, ...
— The Man Of The World (1792) • Charles Macklin
... being given to the flying host. News of this perilous reverse roused Li to vigorous action. Knowing nothing of the approach of a Tartar army, he imagined that he had only Wou with whom to deal, and marched against him in person with sixty thousand men, the pick of his ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 12 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... in the doorway, always knew that when he reached the corner, just where Schroeder's house threatened to hide him from view, he would stop, drop the sample case, wave his hand just once, pick up the sample case and go on, proceeding backward for a step or two, until Schroeder's house made good its threat. It was a comic scene in the eyes of the onlooker, perhaps because a chubby Romeo offends ...
— Cheerful—By Request • Edna Ferber
... on, you get your second wind. I'll stick to my work and wait for my second wind. If it never comes—all the same, I'll stick to my work. Two ledgers are done, and I am well on in the third. The rascal has covered his tracks well, but I pick them up for ...
— The Last Galley Impressions and Tales - Impressions and Tales • Arthur Conan Doyle
... waiting?" She rose, at the same time letting her handkerchief fall. She stooped to pick it up, with her face away from Norbert and towards the palms, whispering tremulously, but with passionate urgency, ...
— The Conquest of Canaan • Booth Tarkington
... some semblance of deity down there. Various fishermen had brought the anchors of their ships and the oars of their boats to show forth their thankfulness for safety at sea. In the murkiness I was just able to pick out the outlines of a bronze horse which stands at the shrine, "as a sort of scape-goat," my companion explained. "It is probably Buddhist," he said; "but you can never be sure; these priests embellish the history ...
— The Foundations of Japan • J.W. Robertson Scott
... everything that's simple and real! And as for her heart—" His voice was low and very tender: "Why, her heart is the biggest I've ever known. It's just overflowing with sweetness and kindness. I've seen her pick up a baby that had fallen in the street, and mother it in a way that—well, no one could do it as she did it, ...
— Within the Law - From the Play of Bayard Veiller • Marvin Dana
... brings hot-cross-buns with the well-known rhyme. Skipping on that day at Brighton is, I expect, now extinct. Sussex boys play marbles, Guildford folk climb St. Martha's Hill, and poor widows pick up six-pences from a tomb in the churchyard of St. Bartholomew the Great, London, ...
— Vanishing England • P. H. Ditchfield
... reckoning—a very rough one—the Parrott was then somewhere off Dieppe: it ought to pick up England, in such case, not far from Brighton. ...
— The Lone Wolf - A Melodrama • Louis Joseph Vance
... favourable, and the habits of the people simple, a few hours of work suffice; and like many barbarians, they have been accustomed to much idle time, which they employ in sport; moreover, by the connivance or good of the superior caste, they have been accustomed to pick or steal largely the leaves of an intoxicating grass, and the masters to whom the whole produce of their labour belongs, have large superfluity after paying their wages; hereby the lordlings easily feed domestic servants and exhibit themselves in ...
— Memoir and Letters of Francis W. Newman • Giberne Sieveking
... sunset you will wait for me at the foot of the aqueduct between the ninth and tenth arcades. Bring with you an iron pick, a ...
— Salammbo • Gustave Flaubert
... walking among the pine trees surrounding the hotel; and meanwhile Kate Gardiner had driven into the bright little town of Mentone, with its background of mountains, its foreground of blue-green sea. In the neighbourhood of the shops, she sent away her victoria, which was to pick her up at Rumpelmayer's at five o'clock. She was charmingly dressed, and had secured ten pounds with which to buy an exquisite antique Italian watch which had taken her fancy a day or two before; never had there been so ...
— The Castle Of The Shadows • Alice Muriel Williamson
... suppressing a smile at the Hottentot's vainglorious boast; "you, being so exceedingly brave and reliable shall go with Mr Grosvenor; but you must pick me out a good man to come with me. Just see about it, will you, and bring the whole party to the wagon, where we are now going to ...
— The Adventures of Dick Maitland - A Tale of Unknown Africa • Harry Collingwood
... and benign countenance of Mayor Bryant, his person clad in a rigorously accurate full dress costume, was not less noticeable. But the ladies! Oh, there began the tempest of the soul of any man who tried to pick out any one who was more pre-eminently attractive than the other. The eye could travel on forever through the boxes from east to west, from Mission street to Market, from the main floor to the roof, and every prospect was pleasing and man was utterly ...
— Sixty Years of California Song • Margaret Blake-Alverson
... perfect knowledge which I shall acquire of men and manners, of the intimacies which I shall have the honour to form with the learned and ingenious in every science, and of the many amusing literary anecdotes which I shall pick up,' etc. Boswell, in his Hebrides (Aug. 18, 1773), says of himself:—'His inclination was to be a soldier; but his father, a respectable Judge, had pressed him into ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... golden meads Tall ships' masts would stand as thick As the pretty tufted reeds That the Wapping children pick. ...
— Georgian Poetry 1920-22 • Various
... couldn't go for me. I want to get one of the new catalogues at the library and pick out a book, and there is no sense in dragging father out. He has a cold, too. Why, there is nothing in the world to be ...
— The Portion of Labor • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... said he. 'Maybe you can. I can only pick out a word here and there. I put 'em there for you to look at; and tell me what ...
— Wives and Daughters • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... cow-yard, lean, active, shrewd, investigating everything, as their nature is. When I throw an apple among them, they scramble with one another for the prize, and the successful one scampers away to eat it at leisure. They thrust their snouts into the mud, and pick a grain of corn out of the rubbish. Nothing within their sphere do they leave unexamined, grunting all the time with infinite variety of expression. Their language is the most copious of that of any quadruped, and, indeed, there is something deeply and indefinably interesting ...
— Passages From The American Notebooks, Volume 2. • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... "you can't walk all over these miles and miles of farm and pick off every one of them beetles. ...
— The Helpful Robots • Robert J. Shea
... from New Zealand and is for the moment a little behind the times. But he can pick up the threads as ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, August 25th, 1920 • Various
... "Me pick berries by the roadside, while I'm on such a mission!" exclaimed Harry indignantly, rousing himself up until his eyes flashed, which was just what Happy wished. "I didn't see any berries! Besides I didn't start on a horse. ...
— The Shades of the Wilderness • Joseph A. Altsheler
... somewhat better, he told me that he had a mind to hire the young man I had left him with, for he believed he was honest and fit for our service. "My dear," says I, "I did not mind him. I would desire you to be cautious who we pick up on the road; but as I have the satisfaction of hiring my maids, I shall never trouble myself with the men-servants, that is wholly your province. However," added I (for I was very certain he was my son, and was resolved to have him in ...
— The Fortunate Mistress (Parts 1 and 2) • Daniel Defoe
... spirit of a lion, when it comes to such a chance as that. When I see how readily the sensibilities of the passing stranger can be worked in New York, I think of taking up the role of that desperate man on Third Avenue who went along looking for garbage in the gutter to eat. I think I could pick up at least twenty or thirty cents a day by that little game, and maintain my family in the ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... the papers and opened it, although the tears which swam in her eyes would scarcely suffer her to see the print. Thus things went on for ten minutes or more, as she idly turned the pages of two or three issues of the weekly "Times," trying to collect her thoughts and pick up the thread ...
— The People Of The Mist • H. Rider Haggard
... ground. Imagining that a thunderbolt must have struck the beasts, and the earth swallowed them up, he poured forth a most dismal lamentation over his lot, roaring aloud until the woods echoed to the sound. When he was tired of this, he bethought him of running home to find a pick and a spade to dig his unlucky oxen out of the earth as soon ...
— Folk-lore and Legends: German • Anonymous
... a sissage," said Carl wrathfully. "I ain't feeling mooch as having fun mit you now. I bring all dese dings mit der saddle on, und I lose two or three every dime der pony makes his jumpings, und get down kvick to pick dem up ...
— Ted Strong in Montana - With Lariat and Spur • Edward C. Taylor
... pick the letter swiftly up and read it through a second time. So wild was the desire to go that she began to whimper, kissing the letter again and again, holding it softly to her cold cheek. Keith! What did it matter? What did ...
— Nocturne • Frank Swinnerton
... village you'd be too proud to look on your grandmother's grave; but you're not, I see. Well, that's good—that's good. We had a funeral last week, and the vault of the old earl was broken in. The stupid sexton stuck his pick in amongst the old bricks, and so the great man's skull came tumbling out, and rolled beside the skull of Job Martin, the old cobbler; and the sexton laid them both on the edge of the grave, the earl's skull and ...
— Turns of Fortune - And Other Tales • Mrs. S. C. Hall
... else in the country. Not that our people have a fondness for money, but they have come here to better their condition—and I hope in God they will. They not only better their own condition, but the condition of all around them, and I can pick out from all over this community, and from this little dinner party, men who came from Ohio poor, but with an honest endeavor to do what was best for themselves and their families, and here they are, ...
— Recollections of Forty Years in the House, Senate and Cabinet - An Autobiography. • John Sherman
... lips to be kist; and I to kiss her very loving, for she was so dear. And she then to say, very ordinary like, that I should do wisely now if that I went back for her foot-gear, which truly I had lacked thought to notice, when that I did pick up the Maid. ...
— The Night Land • William Hope Hodgson
... salmon head; the second like a kamas root, and the third, to his great joy, was the carven image of an elk's head. This was his own tamanous, and right joyous was he at the omen, so taking his elk-horn pick he began to dig right sturdily at the foot of the monument. At the sound of the very first blow he made, thirteen gigantic otters came out of the black lake and, sitting in a circle, watched him. And at every thirteenth blow they tapped ...
— Oregon, Washington and Alaska; Sights and Scenes for the Tourist • E. L. Lomax
... animal he killed, in addition to his former burden; but after walking two miles, finding his charge too heavy for his strength, he spread the skin on the rock, and deposited the meat under some stones, intending to pick them up on ...
— Narrative of a Journey to the Shores of the Polar Sea, in the Years 1819-20-21-22, Volume 1 • John Franklin
... and, as shown in Fig. 2, cover them completely with the chocolate and place them on waxed paper or white oilcloth to harden. As they harden, it will be found that they will gradually grow dull. No attempt whatever should be made to pick up these candies until they are entirely cold. This process is sometimes considered objectionable because of the use of the bare hands, but chocolate coating cannot be so successfully done in any other way as with the fingers. Therefore, any aversion ...
— Woman's Institute Library of Cookery, Vol. 5 • Woman's Institute of Domestic Arts and Sciences
... not over-clean, Urged the passers to "spot the Queen." They flicked three cards that the world might choose, They cried "All prizes. You cannot lose. Come, pick the lady. Only a shilling." One of their friends cried out, "I'm willing." He "picked the lady" and took his pay, And he cried, ...
— Right Royal • John Masefield
... be persuaded, and Caron had again good cause to congratulate himself that he had remained behind to influence him. He opined that the men, failing to pick up the trail at Charleroi, would probably go on as far as Dinant before abandoning the chase; then they would return to Boisvert to announce their failure, and by that time it would be too late to reorganise the pursuit. On the other hand, had Tardivet accompanied ...
— The Trampling of the Lilies • Rafael Sabatini
... understand? There was an end of generals and even of the sergeants; hunger and misery took the command instead, and all of us were absolutely equal under their reign. All we thought of was how to get back to France; no one stooped to pick up his gun or his money; every one walked straight before him, and armed himself as he thought fit, and no one cared ...
— The Napoleon of the People • Honore de Balzac
... pleasant child's play that they neglect, but true pleasure, delightful enjoyment, the scraps of that happiness which is greatly calumniated and accused of not existing because we expect it to fall from heaven in a solid mass when it lies at our feet in fine powder. Let us pick up the fragments, and not grumble too much; every day brings us with its ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... to see it wid me," returned the negro significantly, "but not so glad if you go dere wid chains on you legs an' pick or shovel on you ...
— The Middy and the Moors - An Algerine Story • R.M. Ballantyne
... to pick berries, but the price fell rapidly until it touched six cents, and it was not so easy to sell the berries at all, for many others engaged in picking them, and the ...
— Five Hundred Dollars - or, Jacob Marlowe's Secret • Horatio Alger
... would not allow. "I doubt you'd be careful enough," he said, mildly; "Sister Lydia was the only female I ever knew who could pick herbs." ...
— The Way to Peace • Margaret Deland
... so I reckon, and I expect to be in them agin shortly—as soon as my stock of food's out. I've only a thigh bone to pick after this, and then I'm off. But why don't you take your seat at the fire. There's nothin' so out of the way in the sight of a naked arm, is there? I reckon if you're a soger, you must have seen many a one ...
— The Canadian Brothers - or The Prophecy Fulfilled • John Richardson
... He dared not step forward, for fear of falling, but he put out his hand—She saw him. Yes, she saw him! Wasn't she going to make a sign? Not one? And suddenly he saw her tear at her dress, pluck something out, and throw it. It fell close to his feet. He did not pick it up—he wanted to see her face till she was gone. It looked wonderful—very proud, and pale. She put her hand up to her lips. Then everything went blurred again and when he could see once more, the train had vanished. But at his feet was what she had thrown. He picked ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... came she to pick out you Mr. Schrimpe, for an attorney in this matter? Forgive the ...
— Janice Day, The Young Homemaker • Helen Beecher Long
... dark night, there was sufficient moon-light to enable him to pick his steps, but he had not advanced more than two miles when he came upon the track of a party that had preceded him. This rendered the walking more easy, and as he plodded along he reflected that the wolves would soon find Perrin's body, and, by tearing ...
— The Buffalo Runners - A Tale of the Red River Plains • R.M. Ballantyne
... the deer go by unharmed by them; then, as the wolves followed, for each to pick out one and fire. Then, if attacked by the rest of the pack, they were to close in together and fight them with their axes and their knives. If, however, they were not attacked after they had fired, they were to again load their ...
— Three Boys in the Wild North Land • Egerton Ryerson Young
... grass, the cup of an acorn, or a little moss. Indeed, so strangely was it garnished that, when asleep on the grass under the trees, a robin was once seen to hover over him undecided as to whether she would build her nest in it, or pick out materials ...
— Le Morvan, [A District of France,] Its Wild Sports, Vineyards and Forests; with Legends, Antiquities, Rural and Local Sketches • Henri de Crignelle
... the right place. If you're on horseback, your horse is so mortally scared at sight of the brute that he won't let you get a steady aim. There's nothing on earth that a mustang fears so much as a bear. And, if you're on foot, he moves so swiftly and dodges so cleverly, that it's hard to pick out the right spot to plunk him. And all the time, you know that, if you miss, it's probably all up with you. Even if you get him in the heart, his strength and vitality are such that he may get to you in time enough to take you along with him over the great divide. And it isn't a pleasant way ...
— Bert Wilson in the Rockies • J. W. Duffield
... get at that right away. Mrs. Shafto, please show Lieutenant Wingate how to pick a backlog and let him get spruce boughs for two lean-tos and wood for the ...
— Grace Harlowe's Overland Riders in the Great North Woods • Jessie Graham Flower
... sir!" cried the marchioness, drawing back. "If one woman has had the spirit to say to you, 'There is your coronet and your gold; pick them up. I need them no longer, for I am going to marry a man, who shall be my lord and king,'—why, you may find that another woman ...
— Manasseh - A Romance of Transylvania • Maurus Jokai
... Joyce, Aubrey's once saying that we are told mainly what they do not there? Out of that, I take it, we may pick what they do. There shall be no night—then there must be eternal light; no curse—then must there be everlasting blessedness; no tears—then is there everlasting peace; no toil—then is there perpetual ...
— It Might Have Been - The Story of the Gunpowder Plot • Emily Sarah Holt
... ravines and he is taught to find a fallen body, and to bark loudly. If the soldier is in some place too remote for his voice to bring aid, the dog seizes a cap, a handkerchief, or a belt,—any article of the man's clothing which he can pick up,—and dashes back to ...
— The Story of the Red Cross as told to The Little Colonel • Annie Fellows-Johnston
... now moved to pick up the papers in connection with Stener's case, satisfied that he had given the financiers no chance to say he had not given due heed to their plea in Cowperwood's behalf and yet certain that the ...
— The Financier • Theodore Dreiser
... love. It entails a willed tension and choice, a noble power of refusal, which are not entirely covered by being "in tune with the Infinite." As our life comes to maturity we discover to our confusion that human ears can pick up from the Infinite many incompatible tunes, but cannot hear the whole symphony. And the melody confided to our care, the one which we alone perhaps can contribute and which taxes our powers to the full, has in it not only the notes of triumph but the notes of pain. ...
— The Life of the Spirit and the Life of To-day • Evelyn Underhill
... interrupted it a good deal; and play with the other boys carried him away often; but, after all, there was nothing that he liked much better than to sit in the little cabin on a winter evening and pick out a simple tune after his teacher. He must have had some talent for it, too; for Jacques was very proud of his pupil, and ...
— The Ruling Passion • Henry van Dyke
... where they lived there was a wood, and in the long June evenings the Boy liked to go there after tea to play. He took the Velveteen Rabbit with him, and before he wandered off to pick flowers, or play at brigands among the trees, he always made the Rabbit a little nest somewhere among the bracken, where he would be quite cosy, for he was a kind-hearted little boy and he liked Bunny to be comfortable. One evening, ...
— The Velveteen Rabbit • Margery Williams
... the custom of poor persons in Ireland to pick up such knowledge of the Latin tongue as, under the general discouragements, and occasional pursuits of magistracy, they were able to acquire; and receiving orders at home, were sent abroad to obtain ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. IV. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... nothing. The negative types of women where Turgenev is slightly caricaturing (Kukshina) or jesting (the descriptions of balls) are wonderfully drawn, and so successful, that, as the saying is, you can't pick a hole ...
— Letters of Anton Chekhov • Anton Chekhov
... pleasures. I am not. I have already explained how strenuously I worked out a program that enables me to enjoy them now and then; but the fact that I have quit drinking makes them incidental to the general scheme instead of the whole scheme. It gives me an opportunity to pick and choose a bit. It relieves me of the necessity of being at the same places at the same time every afternoon or evening. Whereas I used to be the boss and John Barleycorn the foreman, I have now discharged John and am both boss and ...
— The Old Game - A Retrospect after Three and a Half Years on the Water-wagon • Samuel G. Blythe
... signs and indications. Sometimes the white wolf appears near the yurta of a poor shepherd or a lamb with two heads is born or a meteor falls from the sky. Some Lamas take fish from the sacred lake Tangri Nor and read on the scales thereof the name of the new Bogdo Khan; others pick out stones whose cracks indicate to them where they must search and whom they must find; while others secrete themselves in narrow mountain ravines to listen to the voices of the spirits of the mountains, pronouncing the name of the new choice of the ...
— Beasts, Men and Gods • Ferdinand Ossendowski
... wandering savages carried a pointed stick to dig up the roots and tubers used for food. The first agriculturists used sticks for stirring the soil, which finally became flattened in the form of a paddle or rude spade. The hoe was evolved from the stone pick or hatchet. It is said that the women of the North American tribes used a hoe made of an elk's shoulder-blade and a handle of wood. In Sweden the earliest records of tillage represent a huge hoe made from a stout ...
— History of Human Society • Frank W. Blackmar
... acquire than French; most of us can name worthy persons who have been assiduously struggling with it from childhood to mature age, and who do not know it now: yet it is treated as something any one can pick up offhand.... French staggers under the fearful burden of apparent easiness." I do not think these words overstate the case. All the more reason, then, to bear in mind that the burden of this accomplishment should ...
— College Teaching - Studies in Methods of Teaching in the College • Paul Klapper
... old Mac, for the present. He made one or two more trips, but always by daylight, taking care to pick up a swagman or a tramp when he had no passenger; but his "conveections" had had too much of a shaking, so he sold his turnout (privately and at a distance, for it was beginning to be called "the haunted van") and returned to his teams—always ...
— The Rising of the Court • Henry Lawson
... ;" a more favourite comparison is with a tooth pick. Both are used by Nizami and Al-Hariri, the most "elegant" ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton
... of five thousand five hundred feet above the sea, and has several square miles of comparatively level surface, where bunchgrass grows and the snow does not lie deep, thus allowing the hardy sheep to pick up a living through the winter months when deep snows have driven them down from the ...
— Steep Trails • John Muir
... Another slight emphasis on the last word. "As for yours, take your pick. They're all exactly alike. We must go ...
— Our Pilots in the Air • Captain William B. Perry
... liberally, and they consumed large quantities of it at tea-time. To help to meet this demand, blackberrying expeditions were organized during the last weeks of September, and the whole school turned out in relays to pick fruit. A dozen girls and a mistress generally composed a party, which was not confined to any particular form, but might include any whose arrangements for practising or special lessons allowed ...
— For the Sake of the School • Angela Brazil
... with a cheerful laugh. "Bless you, chile, it wuz de teef I wanted, not de man! An', honey, you jes' sen' word to dat shif'less old nigger, ef you know whar he's gone, to come back home and git his crap in de groun'; an', as fur as I'm consarned, yer jes' let him know dat I wouldn't pick him up wid a ten-foot pole, not ef he wuz to beg me on his knees till de millennial day."—From "Dialect Tales," published ...
— The Wit of Women - Fourth Edition • Kate Sanborn
... it on the very last minute, and it baked so hard I couldn't pick it off. We can give Belinda that piece, so it's just as well," observed Betty, taking the lead, as her child was ...
— St. Nicholas, Vol. 5, No. 2, December, 1877 • Various
... four hours, takes us through a succession of grandiose and charming prospects, and lonely little villages, at which we pick up letters, and drop numbers of Le Petit Journal, probably all the literature they get. Gorge, crag, lake and ravine, valley, river, and cascade, pine forests crowning sombre ridges, broad hill-sides alive with the tinkling of cattle ...
— Holidays in Eastern France • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... telephone table and brought the instrument to him. "You will call your secretary," he said, "and tell her you have been detained at lunch. You are sending Mr. Chase to pick ...
— The Observers • G. L. Vandenburg
... and worried him a good deal, and ever and again he came back to that discussion. "It's all very easy for your learned men to sit and pick holes," he said, "while the children suffer and die. They don't pick holes up ...
— The New Machiavelli • Herbert George Wells
... their faces hidden, beneath the trees, and Winter was to bring the poacher towards them, after asking him to pick out the man who most resembled the person he had seen standing in the ...
— The Stowmarket Mystery - Or, A Legacy of Hate • Louis Tracy
... angrily up and down the floor. It was a very solid floor. As far as he was concerned it might be regarded as an invincible floor. If he had a pick, perhaps—Pachuca's eyes brightened, and a roguish look came into them. He had been thinking as he often did in English, being practically bi-lingual, and the word suggested something to him. Why not pick the ...
— Across the Mesa • Jarvis Hall
... cappello! till these uncover. Between acts, they indulge in excesses of water flavored with anise, and even go to the extent of candied nuts and fruits, which are hawked about the theatre, and sold for two soldi the stick,—with the tooth-pick on which they are spitted thrown ...
— Venetian Life • W. D. Howells
... but, failing that, we tried to find our way as best we could in the mist. We loved that never-attainable Will-o'-the-Wisp, "Truth," for its own dear Bohemian sake; so, guided by Fancy and Fantasy, we made frequent inroads into the boundless land where unknown forces pick up our poor dear little conception of the Impossible, and use it as ...
— In Bohemia with Du Maurier - The First Of A Series Of Reminiscences • Felix Moscheles
... do twice as much as he ought, and I eat half, for only in this way can we compass the defeat of our common enemies." The young lady's answer, which sounded like "Bosh!" was lost in Mr. Lavender's admiration of her magnificent proportions as she bent to pick up her yellow book. ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... morning. "Even the avil is worth doin', if so be 'twas not mint, an' the good is in yer heart in the ind, an' ye do be turnip' to the Almoighty, repentin' an' glad to be aloive: provin' to Him 'twas worth while makin' the world an' you, to want, an' worry, an' work, an' play, an' pick the flowers, an' bleed o' the thorns, an' dhrink the sun, an' ate the dust, an' be lovin' all the way! Ah, that's it, darlin'," persisted Mrs. Flynn, "'tis lovin' all the way makes it aisier. There's manny kinds o' love. There's lad an' lass, there's maid an' man. An' that last is ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... as a sword. "Joomp into t'mizzen-chains, and pick off yon chap at the helm, as he cooms under ...
— The Gentleman - A Romance of the Sea • Alfred Ollivant
... it might possibly be a good thing to hire negroes that year to pick sumac for him. He was not certain that he could make it pay, but it was on his mind to such a degree that he took a great interest in the sumac-bushes, and hunted about the edges of the woods, where the bushes were generally found, to see what ...
— What Might Have Been Expected • Frank R. Stockton
... walk through Concord with the long step of an Indian, looking straight before him, but at the same time observing everything. Occasionally he would stop, make an incision in the bark of a tree with his knife, or pick up a stone and examine it. It was not often that he was met with in anybody's house, or seen ...
— Sketches from Concord and Appledore • Frank Preston Stearns
... your various belongings; do not expect mother or sisters to pick up your necktie, your gloves, your schoolbooks, your hat, from as many different places as there are articles, and put them properly away. It is quite as necessary for boys or men to have some neatness in their habits ...
— Social Life - or, The Manners and Customs of Polite Society • Maud C. Cooke
... first prizes and chances in all government jobs and patronages. We cannot make all your dear children Peers—that would make Peerage common and crowd the House of Lords uncomfortably—but the young ones shall have everything a Government can give: they shall get the pick of all the places: they shall be Captains and Lieutenant-Colonels at nineteen, when hoary-headed old lieutenants are spending thirty years at drill: they shall command ships at one-and-twenty, and veterans who ...
— The Book of Snobs • William Makepeace Thackeray
... resignation is never bad. But I can't begin till Hertha has taken some gooseberries; she keeps her eyes glued on them. Please take as many as you like, we can pick some more afterward. But be sure to throw the hulls far enough away, or, better still, lay them here on this newspaper supplement, then we can wrap them up in a bundle and dispose of everything at once. ...
— The German Classics Of The Nineteenth And Twentieth Centuries, Volume 12 • Various
... actor may improve and mend his part: "Give me a horse," bawls Richard, like a drone, We'll find a man would help himself to one. Grant us your favor, put us to the test, To gain your smiles we'll do our very best; And, without dread of future Turnkey Lockits, Thus, in an honest way, still pick your pockets.[100] ...
— The History of Tasmania , Volume II (of 2) • John West
... not corroded by acid, though no one has tested it all. However, every giraffe does not have one ear brown and the other gray because the first one seen happened to be so marked; neither is all gold in the shape of ten-dollar gold pieces. Only common sense will serve to pick out essential qualities; but if essential and invariable qualities be selected, the argument from the example of an individual to all members of ...
— English: Composition and Literature • W. F. (William Franklin) Webster
... she decided. "Somehow or other I feel that if ever I do let you, you'll choose just the sort of ring I shall love, without my interfering. Where did we say we'd pick father up?" ...
— An Amiable Charlatan • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... looked up from his packing. "That's a sort of image I broke. Come along; we haven't time to pick up the pieces." ...
— The Mayor of Troy • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... example. It was the one satisfactory vehicle for time traveling. You had to get up in the air to clear whatever upheavals and subsidences there had been through geologic ages. The helicopter took you up and kept you clear and gave you a chance to pick a proper landing place. Travel without it and, granting you were lucky with land surfaces, you still might materialize in the heart of some great tree or end up in a swamp or the middle of a herd of startled, savage beasts. A plane would ...
— Project Mastodon • Clifford Donald Simak
... busy trying to pick out our next President. There was great agitation over the Republican candidates: Grant, Blaine, Cameron, Conkling, Sherman. Greatness in a man is sometimes a hindrance to the Presidency. Such was the case with Daniel ...
— T. De Witt Talmage - As I Knew Him • T. De Witt Talmage
... girls, running out from the hot house carrying in their skirts plums they had plucked from the trees there, came upon Prince Andrew. On seeing the young master, the elder one with frightened look clutched her younger companion by the hand and hid with her behind a birch tree, not stopping to pick up some green plums they ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... could I foresee any trouble?... They were listening to an air I was playing from Bellini ... A servant entered and asked this simple question: "Does madame expect the Prince de Monbert by the twelve o'clock train?"..... At this name I quickly fled, without stopping to pick up the piano stool that I overturned in my hurried retreat. I ran to my room, took my hat and an umbrella to hide my face should I meet any one, and walked to Pont de l'Arche. Soon after I heard ...
— The Cross of Berny • Emile de Girardin
... a cry of surprise—the name signed to the article was Grafton, whom she had seen at the recruiting camp. And then she read the last paragraph that the mother had not read aloud, and she turned sharply away and stooped to a pink-bed, as though she would pick one, and the mother saw her shoulders shaking with silent sobs, and she took ...
— Crittenden - A Kentucky Story of Love and War • John Fox, Jr.
... raise the question of how far the Ohio Valley has had a part of its own in the making of the nation. I have not the temerity to attempt a history of the Valley in the brief compass of this address. Nor am I confident of my ability even to pick out the more important features of its history in our common national life. But I venture to put the problem, to state some familiar facts from the special point of view, with the hope of arousing interest in the theme among the many students ...
— The Frontier in American History • Frederick Jackson Turner
... labour and pastures new, squalid hungry-looking men and women, the implements of whose craft consist of a coarse bag or basket slung over the shoulder and a little rake with which they turn over and probe and examine in the minutest manner the dustbins. They pick up and deposit in their baskets, by aid of their rakes, whatever they may find, with the same facility as a Chinaman ...
— Dracula's Guest • Bram Stoker
... easily fixed. No one seemed out of place in the crazy, zigzag streets, no sound seemed foreign to this new, conglomerate atmosphere. The fluent profanity of the mule-driver, the shrill laugh of the dance-hall; the prolonged rattle and final roar of the ore-chute, the steady pick of the laborer at the prospect-hole;—each played its part to burden and stain the pure, high air that had seemed so like the air of ...
— Peak and Prairie - From a Colorado Sketch-book • Anna Fuller
... respiration. This, and a certain drawn look about his upper lip, seemed to indicate, in spite of his strength and color, some pulmonary weakness. He, however, rose after a moment's rest with undiminished energy and cheerfulness, readjusted his knapsack, and began to lightly pick his way across the fallen timber. A few paces on, the muffled whir of machinery became more audible, with the lazy, monotonous command of "Gee thar," from some unseen ox-driver. Presently, the slow, deliberately-swaying heads of a team of oxen emerged from the bushes, ...
— A Phyllis of the Sierras • Bret Harte
... of the Western mining-towns, the liverymen keep "return horses,"—horses that will return to the barn when set at liberty, whether near the barn or twenty miles away. These horses are the pick of their kind. They have brains enough to take training readily, and also to make plans of their own and get on despite the unexpected hindrances that sometimes occur. When a return horse is ridden to ...
— Wild Life on the Rockies • Enos A. Mills
... difficulty in understanding that this news room and the dining hall were not great central places, that such establishments were repeated almost beyond counting all over the city. But ever and again during the night's expedition his ears would pick out from the tumult of the ways the peculiar hooting of the organ of Boss Ostrog, "Galloop, Galloop!" or the shrill "Yahaha, Yaha Yap!—Hear a live paper yelp!" of its ...
— The Sleeper Awakes - A Revised Edition of When the Sleeper Wakes • H.G. Wells
... a thing which we cast to the ground, When others pick it up becomes a gem! We grasp at all the wealth it is to them; And by reflected light its worth is found. Yet for us still 'tis nothing! and that zeal Of false appreciation quickly fades. This truth is little known to human shades, How rare from their own instinct 'tis to feel! They waste the ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 2 (of 4) • Various
... side she examined Jethro critically, "but I like his looks, and I am sure he could do all sorts of things; for instance, he could walk with me when I want to go out, he could tow me round the lake in the boat, he could pick up my ball for me, and could feed ...
— The Cat of Bubastes - A Tale of Ancient Egypt • G. A. Henty
... remonstrated Horace, not relishing this responsibility, "I'm afraid I'm as likely as not to pick up some of the rubbish. I've no ...
— The Brass Bottle • F. Anstey
... and I'll hunt for laurel in the meantime. We can take a basket of lunch with us and make a day of it in the woods." Then, as a possible contingency presented itself to her, she added, "Why not let me invite my friend, Abby Miles, to go for company? She and I can pick laurel, and when you have caught all the harmless little trout you want, we can meet where we leave the wagon and ...
— Uncle Terry - A Story of the Maine Coast • Charles Clark Munn
... flock of men-hawks circling above the herd till they see a nice fat little lamb of a man, then one fell swoop and all is over but the screams of the victim dying out horribly. They bear him off to their nest in a blasted pine and pick the meat from his bones at leisure. Of course that ain't the way ladies was spoken of in the Aunt Patty Little Helper Series I got out of the Presbyterian Sabbath-school library back in Fredonia, New York, when I was thirteen—and yet—and ...
— Somewhere in Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson
... cannot say that I expected much from the message, seeing that it simply amounted to a very thin introduction to a general officer to whom we were strangers even by name, from a gentleman to whom we had brought a note from another gentleman whose acquaintance we had chanced to pick up on the road. We manifestly had no right to expect much; but to us, expecting very little, very much was given. General Johnson was the officer to whose care we were confided, he being a brigadier under General McCook, who commanded the advance. We were met ...
— Volume 2 • Anthony Trollope
... the Hostess has it in a Play too, I take it, Ends which you pick up behind the Scenes, when you go to be laught at even by ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. III • Aphra Behn
... look upon his boot and sing; mend the ruff and sing; ask questions and sing; pick his teeth and sing. I know a man that had this trick of melancholy sold a goodly manor ...
— All's Well That Ends Well • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]
... particularly the case if there is a flickering sunlight coming though the branches of the jungle trees. In one case of this kind, though I could see the tiger when it half raised itself up—it had been wounded in the back—I failed to pick it up the moment it sank back into the leaves; and my shikari told mo of another similar case he had seen when there was a similar flickering light. But even without that source of confusion to the sight a tiger is extremely difficult to see, as difficult as a hare in ...
— Gold, Sport, And Coffee Planting In Mysore • Robert H. Elliot
... building having already been carefully traced out with the pick-axe, the artificers this day commenced the excavation of the rock for the foundation or first course of the lighthouse. Four men only were employed at this work, while twelve continued at the site of the beacon-house, at ...
— Records of a Family of Engineers • Robert Louis Stevenson
... after all, his employing his powers of reasoning and eloquence upon a subject which he had studied on the moment, is not more strange than what we often observe in lawyers, who, as Quicquid agunt homines[1051] is the matter of law-suits, are sometimes obliged to pick up a temporary knowledge of an art or science, of which they understood nothing till their brief was delivered, and appear to be much masters of it. In like manner, members of the legislature frequently introduce and expatiate upon subjects of which they have informed themselves ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell
... said she. "We go down now into the Court of the Gentiles. Do thou and little Martha walk on ahead. Pick thy way carefully, for this ...
— Christmas Light • Ethel Calvert Phillips
... about this being a bad atmosphere for me. I'm horribly comfortable here, my own sister couldn't be kinder than Julia is. No, no, wait a few months longer till you get settled a little more securely in business; I may pick up a volt or two more of electricity by that time." Then as she saw his face darken and a tremor run over his flesh, she lost her self-control and broke forth with sudden, bitter intensity: "Why don't you throw me over and marry ...
— Money Magic - A Novel • Hamlin Garland
... wander about unmolested and pick up the language, in which, however, Ulysse made far more rapid progress, and could be heard chattering away as fast, if not as correctly, as if it were French or English. The delicious climate and the open-air life ...
— A Modern Telemachus • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Before he could pick himself up the Dinosaur had swung about and buried all three horns, to the sockets, in his throat and chest. His life went out in one ear-splitting squeal of rage and anguish. The red blood streaming from horns and ruff, the monster wrenched himself free, and then moved irresistibly ...
— In the Morning of Time • Charles G. D. Roberts
... thin in the vamp," he said, freely, seeing that the eyes of the shepherd's wife fell upon his boots, "and I am not well fitted, either. I have had some rough times lately, and have been forced to pick up what I can get in the way of wearing; but I must find a suit better fit for working-days ...
— Stories by English Authors: England • Various
... language (Norman-French). In England Norman-French naturally was used by the upper and ruling classes—by the court, the nobility, and the clergy. The English held fast to their own homely language, but could not fail to pick up many French expressions, as they mingled with their conquerors in churches, markets, and other places of public resort. It took about three hundred years for French words and phrases to soak thoroughly into their speech. ...
— EARLY EUROPEAN HISTORY • HUTTON WEBSTER
... quite as proficient in the dialect of Seven Dials as was Harry, or even Harriet, and when she consented to stand on a chair and recite a few nursery rhymes, there was not an unnoticed "h" that she did not, sooner or later, pick up and attach to some other word to which it was not related, as she ...
— Paste Jewels • John Kendrick Bangs
... offended horse-thief, "you cut the tug, and you cut the halter; and so, though you did it only on hard axing, I'd take as many hard words of you as you can pick out of a dictionary,—I will, 'tarnal death to me. But as for madam thar, the anngel, she saved my life, and I go my death in her sarvice; and now's the time to show sarvice, for thar's danger ...
— Nick of the Woods • Robert M. Bird
... Mannering is exceedingly unpopular; the people think him a selfish idler; but if he chose he could whistle them back with a hundredth part of the trouble it would take me! And if Aubrey wanted to go into Parliament, he'd probably have his pick of the county divisions. Curious fellow, Aubrey! I wonder exactly what Beryl ...
— Elizabeth's Campaign • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... was not a very cheerful laugh, I am bound to say, as I motioned him to keep it. "A key is nothing," I said, "there are many duplicates, and anyhow it is not difficult to pick a lock ...
— Dracula • Bram Stoker |
