"Plucked" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... The young Apache plucked out his knife and sprang at the girl. A stroke slashed through the thongs that bound her wrists. Her ankles had already been freed. Cochise made a sharp upward gesture. Carmena shook her head ...
— Bloom of Cactus • Robert Ames Bennet
... sister, nay! a single healing leaf Plucked from the bough of yon twelve-fruited tree, Would soothe such anguish,—deeper stabbing grief Has pierced ...
— The Poet at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... the Ricksdag were met, my Chancellor thus excusing himself, there was nobody appointed by me to declare to them the cause of their meeting; but rather than the Assembly should be put off, and nothing done, I plucked up my spirits the best I could, and spake to them on the sudden as you heard, although much to ...
— A Journal of the Swedish Embassy in the Years 1653 and 1654, Vol II. • Bulstrode Whitelocke
... leave her there, and Prudence vented her chagrin not alone upon me, but upon my little brother. I became a thorn in her side, and one day, after an especially unpleasant episode in which Harry also figured, she plucked me out, as it were, and cast me for ever from her. From that time I studied at home, where I was a much more valuable economic factor than I ...
— The Story of a Pioneer - With The Collaboration Of Elizabeth Jordan • Anna Howard Shaw
... ground his knuckles into the corners of his eyes, emitting that snore final and querulous of a middle-aged man awakened rudely. With a gesture brusque but flaccid he plucked aside the net and peered around. The bales of cotton cloth, the beads, the brass wire, the bottles of rum, had not been spirited away in the night. So far so good. The faithful servant of his employers was now at liberty to ...
— A Christmas Garland • Max Beerbohm
... frankincense, sorrel, neroli from Japan, jonquil, verbena, spikenard, thyme, hyssop, and decaying orchids. This quintessential medley was as the sonorous blasts of Berlioz, repugnant and exquisite; it swayed the soul of Baldur as the wind sways the flame. There were odours like winged dreams; odours as the plucked sounds of celestial harps; odours mystic and evil, corrupt and opulent; odours recalling the sweet, dense smell of chloroform; odours evil, angelic, and anonymous. They painted—painted by Satan!—upon his cerebellum more than music—music that merged into picture; and he was again in the glade ...
— Visionaries • James Huneker
... one who could comfort Booty for the loss of that loved presence; but even with her, Booty was still a most unhappy dog. He plucked up a little spirit, however, at the sight of her hat, and jumped off the bed. His master was clearly not in the house; perhaps the road his temporary mistress meant to take would lead to him—even ...
— Lover or Friend • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... answered Robinson; then plucked up heart and began his persuasions—in the tribe's own dialect, which surprised and pleased the chief. Presently there was an ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... lady finished off with a loud shriek; for Frank, seeing how matters stood, and knowing there was not a moment to lose, plucked a blanket from the bed, overwhelmed her in it, and exclaiming, "Forgive me, ma'am," lifted her gently in his arms, bore her through the smoke, down the escape, to the street; carried her into a neighbouring house (the door of which was opportunely open), and laid her like a bundle on one of the ...
— Fighting the Flames • R.M. Ballantyne
... were changed as often almost as there was a change in the moon. She ruled the house and her brother despotically; and all poor Mr. Witherington's comfort was gone until the time arrived when Master Edward was to be sent to school. Mr. Witherington then plucked up courage, and after a few stormy months drove his sister back to Bath, and once ...
— The Pirate and The Three Cutters • Frederick Marryat
... him already, and he's worth his weight in any man's company. Here's Slim Dugan, that could scent a big coin shipment a thousand miles away. Phil Marvin ain't any slouch at stalling a gent with a fat wallet and leading him up to be plucked. Marty Cardiff ain't half so tame as he looks, and he's the best trailer that ever squinted at a buzzard in the sky; he knows this whole country like a book. And Oregon Charlie is the best all-around man you ...
— Black Jack • Max Brand
... himself to it, drove out the reptiles with his feet, and remained prostrate on the stone floor for eighteen hours, at the end of which time he went to the spring, and drank out of his hand. Then he plucked some dates and some stalks of lotus, the seeds of which he ate. Thinking this kind of life was good, he made it the rule of his existence. From morning to night he never lifted ...
— Thais • Anatole France
... is well that memory should hold Some few pale rose-leaves plucked in bygone days, That still are sweet, despite those pains untold Which throng the marges of life's winding ways. Yea, these will stay when nearer things are gone; I shall keep mine. Will you ...
— Eyes of Youth - A Book of Verse by Padraic Colum, Shane Leslie, A.O. • Various
... the princess's house is thatched, are the precious yellow feathers used for the manufacture of cloaks for chiefs of rank. The mamo (Drepanis pacifica) yields feathers of a richer color, but so distributed that they can not be plucked from the living bird. This bird is therefore almost extinct in Hawaiian forests, while the oo is fast recovering itself under the present strict hunting laws. Among all the royal capes preserved in the Bishop Museum, only one is made of ...
— The Hawaiian Romance Of Laieikawai • Anonymous
... his own bat, wasn't he? I don't see I owe him anything," the mine owner sulkily answered. "Truth is, I'm about fed up with him. He's a bad lot. That's the long and short of him. I don't deny he's a well-plucked daredevil. What of it? This town is full of them. There was no question of his going to prison. I intended only to get back some of the ore he and his friends have ...
— The Highgrader • William MacLeod Raine
... serving maid, as when she once enters the palace she has little if any hope of ever leaving it. She is neither mistress nor servant, wife nor slave, she is but one of a hundred buds in a garden of roses which have little if any prospect of ever blooming or being plucked for the court bouquet. When, therefore, the gates of the Forbidden City close behind the young girls who are taken in as concubines of an emperor they shut out an attractive, busy, beautiful world, filled with men and women, boys and ...
— Court Life in China • Isaac Taylor Headland
... from Carlyle's journal: "The poor people seem to think a style can be put off or on, not like a skin but like a coat. Is not a skin verily a product and close kinsfellow of all that lies under it, exact type of the nature of the beast, not to be plucked off without flaying and death? The Public is an old woman. Let her ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIII • John Lord
... they saw some things which excited their eager attention. Little David, who was the guide, and assumed to himself much importance as the protector of his sisters, exclaimed, "See here!" and springing forward, plucked a fine crimson cluster of the mountain bramble. His sisters, on seeing this, rushed on with like eagerness. They soon forsook the little winding and craggy footpath, and hurried through sinking masses of moss and dry grass, from bush to bush, and place to place. They were soon far up above the valley, ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 2, July, 1850. • Various
... have been several minutes before such a tingling of the nerves as announces that the blood is once more returning to a cramped member warned me that I was about to be released. Warily I awaited my moment; then I plucked my hand to myself again with a suddenness that caused a little blot of ink to spurt from my fountain-pen on to the surface of the paper. I drew a deep breath. I was free again. And with the freedom came a resolve—that whatever portion of myself had been responsible for this prank should ...
— Widdershins • Oliver Onions
... Adelheid plucked the petals of her flower as they walked on slowly, then said in a low tone, as she looked with intense interest into ...
— The Northern Light • E. Werner
... seized the crops of that people and used them for provisions; and if they found no crops, then they took the grass which was growing up from the earth, and stripped off the bark from the trees and plucked down the leaves and devoured them, alike of the cultivated trees and of those growing wild; and they left nothing behind them: thus they did by reason of famine. Then plague too seized upon the army and dysentery, which destroyed them by the way, and some ...
— The History Of Herodotus - Volume 2 (of 2) • Herodotus
... feathers. She swept into the quiet village life of Beulah like a salt sea breeze. She infused a new spirit into the bleak church "sociables" and made them positively agreeable functions. The choir ceased from wrangling, the Sunday School plucked up courage and flourished like a green bay tree. She managed the deacons, she braced up the missionary societies, she captivated the parish, she cheered the depressed and depressing old ladies and cracked ...
— The Romance of a Christmas Card • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... But she plucked up courage and flashed her lamp into it. The white ray played about the floor of the hollow. The other Llewellen children dared not come here, for Margaret punished them if they disturbed anything belonging ...
— Nan Sherwood at Pine Camp - or, The Old Lumberman's Secret • Annie Roe Carr
... depredations of the toucans, trogons, tanagers and hosts of other birds that swarmed through the dripping branches were enough to strip even the most prolific of the fruit-bearers. Most destructive of all were the flocks of parrots; they wasted more than they ate. They plucked the choicest morsels, took one bite and dropped them or, snipping the stems with their shear-like mandibles permitted the nuts or berries to rattle down to the ground. Later, when there were no more to eat, let alone destroy, they complained with raucous screams as they ...
— The Black Phantom • Leo Edward Miller
... seed was sown by Petrarch in the fourteenth century and whose fruit was plucked by Erasmus in the sixteenth, still lives in higher education throughout Europe and America. The historical "humanities"—Latin, Greek, and history—are still taught in college and in high school. They constitute the contribution of the dominant ...
— A Political and Social History of Modern Europe V.1. • Carlton J. H. Hayes
... It is astonishing to me that any reasonable beings, the inhabitants of a town, could thus destroy its chief ornament; but in the madness of the revolutionary fanatics, the sun itself would have been plucked from Heaven, if they could have reached it. I was sincerely happy to learn that religion had returned, and that there was a general inclination to subscribe for the repair, or ...
— Travels through the South of France and the Interior of Provinces of Provence and Languedoc in the Years 1807 and 1808 • Lt-Col. Pinkney
... violently ambitious man, he had become softened, gracious, kindly,—showing the greatest tenderness and forethought for others, even in small, every-day trifles; while for himself he took no care. He wore his fame as lightly as a child might wear a flower, just plucked and soon to fade,—his intelligence seemed to expand itself into a broad, loving, sympathetic comprehension of the wants and afflictions of human-kind; and he was writing a new poem, of which Villiers had seen some lines that had fairly amazed him by their grandeur ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... When the new-plucked leaf is brought home it is spread out to wither in suitably-built sheds. (Here begins the tea-maker's responsibility.) Then it must be rolled, by hand or by machinery; fermented, and fired or dried over charcoal ovens; separated in its different classes, the younger the leaf bud the more valuable ...
— Ranching, Sport and Travel • Thomas Carson
... his daughter by her grace and modest self-possession. Whatever Maude Kirton might do, she could never, for very shame, again attempt to disparage them. Surely there was no just reason for the hatred which took possession of Maude's heart; a hatred that could never be plucked ...
— Elster's Folly • Mrs. Henry Wood
... classed some of the Apocrypha as "hagiographa extra canonem," he called these supplements to Daniel, with the Prayer of Manasses, and others as "plane apocryphos." He also represents Luther as prettily styling these pieces corn-flowers plucked up, because not in the Hebrew, yet placed in a separate garden or bed, because much that is good is found in them. They are thus detached in his version, as in ours, from Daniel, and placed among the apocryphal books. ...
— The Three Additions to Daniel, A Study • William Heaford Daubney
... always revived. Valerie French was well-plucked. If it was ordained that she should fight with Black Magic, with Black Magic she would fight. It was her own fault.... It was typical of the girl that the fact that she had already paid very heavily never once occurred to her. She had called the tune without asking how much it would cost. ...
— Anthony Lyveden • Dornford Yates
... OF GOOD QUALITY.—A chicken older than a broiler that has been plucked should not be scrawny nor drawn looking like that shown in Fig. 1, nor should the flesh have a blue tinge that shows through the skin. Rather, it should be plump and well rounded like the one shown in Fig. 2. There should be a sufficient amount of fat to give a rich, yellow ...
— Woman's Institute Library of Cookery, Vol. 3 - Volume 3: Soup; Meat; Poultry and Game; Fish and Shell Fish • Woman's Institute of Domestic Arts and Sciences
... mixed with any of Mr. Ziegfeld's stars, nor she ain't any broker's bride plucked from the switch-board. She's the real thing in the lady line, though how I knew it's hard to tell. Also she's a home-grown siren that works without the aid of a lip-stick, permanent wave, or an eyebrow pencil. Anyway, here ...
— Torchy and Vee • Sewell Ford
... nimble. Each fruited stalk is grasped shortly below the fruit head, and the upper section or joint of the stalk, together with the fruit head and topmost leaf, is pulled off. As most Bontoc Igorot are right-handed, the plucked grain is laid in the left hand, the fruit heads projecting beyond between the thumb and forefinger while the leaf attached to each fruit head lies outside and below the thumb. When the proper amount of grain is in hand (a bunch of ...
— The Bontoc Igorot • Albert Ernest Jenks
... 'though he speaks but little, I like the old fellow in whiskers as well as any of them.' Captain SENTRY seeing two or three wags, who sat near us, lean with an attentive ear towards Sir ROGER, and fearing lest they should smoke the Knight, plucked him by the elbow, and whispered something in his ear, that lasted till the opening of the fifth act. The Knight was wonderfully attentive to the account which Orestes gives of Pyrrhus his death, and at the conclusion of it, told me it was such a bloody piece of work, that ...
— The Coverley Papers • Various
... the world, who beguiled men and women, and offered them up to their devils, whom they called gods: but all this ran off him soon, when he bethought him how little wisdom there was in running to meet the evil, which might be on the way, and that way a rough and perilous one. So he plucked up heart, and spake freely and gaily with David and one or two ...
— The Well at the World's End • William Morris
... of his hatred of it, and had involved himself in war with it by such a crime, deprived the poor man of his three hundred talents, and shortly afterwards looked calmly on while he and his family were plucked out of their kingdom, like birds out of a nest, by Lucius Anicius, who was sent with an army against him. Aemilius, when he came to contend with such a rival as this, despised him as a man, but was surprised at the force which he had at his disposal. ...
— Plutarch's Lives, Volume I (of 4) • Plutarch
... told by Josephus is as follows: "They dig a trench round it till the hidden part of the root is very small, then they tie a dog to it, and when the dog tries hard to follow him that tied him, this root is easily plucked up, but the dog dies immediately, as it were, instead of the man that would take the plant away."[280] Thus the dog takes the place of the dog-fish when the mandrake becomes the pearl's surrogate. The only discrepancy between the ...
— The Evolution of the Dragon • G. Elliot Smith
... Ye winds, how blissful must ye be, Since ye have borne to heaven her harmony! The winds that music bore, And wafted it to God on high, That Paradise might have the joy thereof. Flowers here she plucked, and wore Wild roses from the thorn hard by: This air she lightened with her look of love: This running stream above, She bent her face!—Ah me! Where am I? What sweet makes me swoon? What calm is in the kiss of noon? Who brought me here? ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... March, we were admitted to the kings presence, and he made vs the like courteous answere for our traffike: the next day we went againe to the Court, where the foresaid Veadore shewed vs one basket of greene pepper, and another of dry in the stalkes: wee desired to haue it plucked from the stalks and made cleane, who answered, that it would aske time, but yet it should be done: and that against another yeere it should be in better readines, and the reason why we found it so vnprepared was, because in this kings ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries of - The English Nation, Vol. 11 • Richard Hakluyt
... contrary to the original purpose of creation, and in fact, more dishonorable to the usurper than to the degraded sufferer. In Mahometan and Pagan countries the rights of women have been sacrificed to the caprices of men; and, having plucked this fair flower of creation from its original and highly elevated situation, its beauty has faded, its glory been lost in the sacrilegious hands of its barbarian possessor. Abject slavery or base flattery have existed ...
— Female Scripture Biographies, Vol. I • Francis Augustus Cox
... set one's teeth on edge; the violin itself seemed to squeal with pain. And while he fiddled, and the young man hammered at his zither, the old woman and girl slowly revolved in a waltz. It may sound comic to hear about, but if you could have seen! ... It fairly plucked at one's heart. I do not think that I have ever in my life witnessed anything quite so sad. The little crowd outside, negroes, mind you, laughing at the troupe, passing from one to the other any sort of low jest at their expense, and inside the four white people—the old woman, clumsy, heavy-footed, ...
— The Four Feathers • A. E. W. Mason
... schism, and profaneness, and whatsoever shall be found contrary to sound doctrine, and the power of godliness. And therefore popery is not to be suffered in the royal family, nor within his dominions; prelacy once plucked up by the root, is not to be permitted to take root again; all heresy and error whatsoever must be opposed by him, to the uttermost of his power; and by the covenant, the king must be far from toleration of any false religion ...
— The Covenants And The Covenanters - Covenants, Sermons, and Documents of the Covenanted Reformation • Various
... Scottish hills. Some of them were driven out by Irish famine. Some of them, in early life, drilled in the German army. Some of them were accustomed at Lyons or Marseilles or Paris to see on the street Victor Hugo and Gambetta. Some chased the chamois among the Alpine precipices. Some plucked the ripe clusters from Italian vineyard. Some lifted their faces under the midnight sun of Norway. It is no dishonor to our land that they remember the place of their nativity. Miscreants would they be if, while they have some of their windows open to ...
— New Tabernacle Sermons • Thomas De Witt Talmage
... indeed, a brand plucked from the burning. He had been pretty well off, and was a good tailor. When a child, Mr. Lue had been apprenticed to Chang by his parents. Chang was fond of the quiet, conscientious boy, and treated him well, and the two grew fond of each other. But soon their ways parted, and ...
— Everlasting Pearl - One of China's Women • Anna Magdalena Johannsen
... up the blaster. He trotted over to Calhoun. He plucked at the man's trouser-leg again. He held the blaster in the only way his tiny paw could manage it. A dark, sharp-nailed finger rested on ...
— The Hate Disease • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... to a people not reformed, hear what the Prophet saith: Jer. vi. 28-30, "They are brass and iron; they are all corrupters. The bellows are burnt, the lead is consumed of the fire, the founder melteth in vain; for the wicked are not plucked away. Reprobate silver shall men call them, because the Lord hath rejected them." The Chaldee Paraphrase expoundeth it of the prophets who laboured in vain, and spent their strength for nought, speaking to the people in the name of the Lord, to turn to the law and to the testimony; but ...
— The Works of Mr. George Gillespie (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Gillespie
... Quincy, "is the remark of this historian! How forcible and full of noble example is the picture exhibited by these records? The poor emigrant, struggling for subsistence, almost houseless, in a manner defenceless, is seen selecting from the few remnants of his former prosperity, plucked by him out of the flames of persecution, and rescued from the perils of the Atlantic, the valued pride of his table, or the precious delight of his domestic hearth;—'his heart stirred and his spirit willing' to give according ...
— Bay State Monthly, Vol. I, No. 3, March, 1884 - A Massachusetts Magazine • Various
... day's business the Order of "Reports of Committees" was finally reached and when the weary crowds heard that glad announcement issue from the Speaker's lips they ceased to fret at the dragging delay, and plucked up spirit. The Chairman of the Committee on Benevolent Appropriations rose and made his report, and just then a blue-uniformed brass-mounted little page put a ...
— The Gilded Age, Part 5. • Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) and Charles Dudley Warner
... chapters torn from the pages of Belgium history will enable us to understand her present-day heroism, just as one golden bough plucked from the forest will explain the richness of the autumn. You remember that Venice was once the financial center of the world. Then when the bankers lost confidence in the navy of Venice they put their jewels and gold into saddle ...
— The Art of Public Speaking • Dale Carnagey (AKA Dale Carnegie) and J. Berg Esenwein
... no attack on the camp. In the morning one of our carriers, who ventured less than fifty yards beyond the barrier, received a spear through his left arm and another through his side, and though I am almost afraid to relate it for fear of being thought guilty of exaggeration, the man plucked the spear out of his side in a moment, and, hurling it back, killed his opponent. I ventured outside and proved the truth of the man's story, by finding the Dobodura man transfixed with his own spear. Both our man's wounds were bad ones, but he did not seem to mind them at all, and ...
— Wanderings Among South Sea Savages And in Borneo and the Philippines • H. Wilfrid Walker
... moaned with hunger. Going into the forest to dig roots he found honey hived by the bees and nuts stored up by squirrels against the winter. Straightway hope suggested to him a larger granary, whence hath come all man's bins and storehouses. Man plucked a large plum and found it sour, and another plum small, but sweet. Hope suggested that he unite the two and strike through the abundant acid juices of the one with the sugar of the other. Thence came all vineyards and orchards. Digging in the soil tired him, but ...
— The Investment of Influence - A Study of Social Sympathy and Service • Newell Dwight Hillis
... typhoid that of the blood, and Berard says that it attracts flies even before death. Typhus has a mouse-like odor, and the following diseases have at different times been described as having peculiar odors,—measles, the smell of freshly plucked feathers; scarlatina, of bread hot from the oven; eczema and impetigo, the smell of mold; and rupia, a decidedly ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... Rustem is wounded almost unto death, and I am so helpless that I can do him no good." He then brought forward Rakush, pierced by numerous arrows; upon which the wonderful Bird said to him, "Be under no alarm on that account, for I will soon cure him;" and she immediately plucked out the rankling weapons with her beak, and the wounds, on passing a feather over them, were ...
— Persian Literature, Volume 1,Comprising The Shah Nameh, The - Rubaiyat, The Divan, and The Gulistan • Anonymous
... news came to the young men on the hill top, that the valley men were all off on a hunting expedition. At once, without waiting a moment, the poor lonely bachelors plucked up courage. Then, armed with ropes and straps, they marched in a body to the village in the valley below. There, they seized each man a girl, not waiting for any maid to comb her hair, or put on a new frock, or pack up ...
— Welsh Fairy Tales • William Elliot Griffis
... the eyes of the beautiful young women between whom he was seated. The pedant, very much amused at the boyish eagerness and enjoyment of his youthful host, quietly heaped choice bits upon his plate, and watched their rapid disappearance with beaming satisfaction. Beelzebub had at last plucked up courage and crept softly under the table to his master, making his presence known by a quick tapping with his fore-paws upon the baron's knees; his claims were at once recognised, and he feasted to his heart's content on the savoury ...
— Captain Fracasse • Theophile Gautier
... grandmother," shot back the insolent retort, whereat the lordly house detective plucked the ...
— Officer 666 • Barton W. Currie
... eagerly; "because she was not angry with Babet, when she did what was enough to put any body in a passion. Sister Frances, you know this cherry-tree which you grafted for Victoire last year, and that was yesterday so full of blossoms—now you see, there is not a blossom left!—Babet plucked them all this morning to make ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. 6 • Maria Edgeworth
... character. But I must begin with her uses. The goose is to be found in almost every country, and its flesh is very good eating; but it is principally for its feathers and quills that it is valued here. The quills, from which our pens, and in part our paint brushes, are made, are plucked from the pinions of the goose, and the best featherbeds and pillows are stuffed with her feathers. Geese love water and marshy places, and Lincolnshire, which is a fenny place, is famous for breeding them. People there make it their business to keep perhaps as many as a thousand geese, ...
— Mamma's Stories about Birds • Anonymous (AKA the author of "Chickseed without Chickweed")
... make immortality a fact. Obeying this spiritual life-force, the human monad is but an attribute, a reflection, of the Divine Ego, and if it fails to awake to a consciousness of this union, it withers and dies like a flower plucked from ...
— The Light of Egypt, Volume II • Henry O. Wagner/Belle M. Wagner/Thomas H. Burgoyne
... of the besieged greatly disconcerted the besiegers. Nevertheless they plucked up courage, and, after a while, ventured to return to the charge. This time two bulls rushed out, and as the police dispersed and got away with all the agility of fear, the wild animals, seeing no human foes, turned their wrath against each other, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, No. 382, October 1847 • Various
... resemblance in her to the lily—the same whiteness, the same rich gold, and, more striking than either, a strange, rare quality of beauty, of life, intangible as something fleeting, the spirit that had swiftly faded from the plucked flower. Where had the girl been born—what had her life been? Shefford was intensely curious about her. She seemed as different from any other women he had known as this rare canyon lily was different from the tame ...
— The Rainbow Trail • Zane Grey
... plucked at his sleeve, and nudged him with her elbow, and otherwise tried to interrupt him all the time he had been speaking—"don't mind him, he'll come to; 'twas only last night he was an-axing me, and an-axing me, and all the more because ...
— Cranford • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... heels of the cavalry. Scarcely were the Indians safe in the stockade and the troopers once more in barracks, when some first flakes, like down plucked by the wind from the breasts of the southward-hastening wild-fowl, came floating out of the sky. Soon the long sumach leaves on the coulee edge were drooping under a crystalline weight, the black plowed strip was blending with the unplowed prairie, and the shock head ...
— The Plow-Woman • Eleanor Gates
... shrieking iron devils would be most trying to anyone. But apparently you can get accustomed to anything. The regiment where the officer had been killed a few minutes before was less cheerful and callous. The little group of officers crouching in the scanty shelter had seen one of their number plucked out of their midst and slain—uselessly as it seemed. They advised us to take cover, which we would gladly have done had there been any worth speaking of; for at this moment the Boers discharged their Vickers-Maxim gun—the 'pom-pom'—and I have never ...
— London to Ladysmith via Pretoria • Winston Spencer Churchill
... himself which he may maintain against every comer, as he might withdraw his own arm from the hand of another man who would fain retain it in spite of him." One day Emilius comes to his beloved garden, watering-pot in hand, and finds to his anguish and despair that all the beans have been plucked up, that the ground has been turned over, and that the spot is hardly recognisable. The gardener comes up, and explains with much warmth that he had sown the seed of a precious Maltese melon in that particular spot long before Emilius had come with his trumpery beans, ...
— Rousseau - Volumes I. and II. • John Morley
... the cottage and kissed the hand of Maud as if it were the hand of a princess; after which, with much embarrassment, he plucked a rose from her garden, while a pang pierced his heart till it ached again, and a thorn probed his finger till a drop of blood fell upon a myrtle leaf; which leaf Maud coveted, and keeps to this day—hugged to her ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII, No. 29. August, 1873. • Various
... beside the body. He had not any strength for anger now, and hardly for grief, Agatha had been his charge; and the fact that he had never plucked up courage to allude to her practises was now an enormity in which he could not quite believe. His cowardice and its fruitage confronted him, and frightened him into a panic ...
— The Rivet in Grandfather's Neck - A Comedy of Limitations • James Branch Cabell
... disposed but violently gaited steed homeward in that reposeful state of bliss known only to accepted lovers. He had plucked his flower at last; he was no longer one of the many; he was ecstatically content. Uncertainty had no charm for him, and he was by no means the first discoverer of the subtle fineness her admirers found so difficult to describe in Miss ...
— Lodusky • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... a sign from the head priest, his ministers laid hold of me and plucked what were left of my fine clothes from me as cruel boys pluck a living bird, till I stood naked except for the paint upon my body and a cloth about my loins. Now I knew that my hour had come, and strange to tell, ...
— Montezuma's Daughter • H. Rider Haggard
... birds are always heavy for their size; the flesh of the breast is firm and plump and the skin clear; and if a few feathers be plucked from the inside of the leg and around the vent, the flesh of freshly-killed birds will be fat and fresh-colored; if it is dark and discolored, the game has been hung a long time. The wings of good ducks, geese, pheasants and woodcock are ...
— The Whitehouse Cookbook (1887) - The Whole Comprising A Comprehensive Cyclopedia Of Information For - The Home • Mrs. F.L. Gillette
... seemed to fill all my good city of Paris with glory so that I could see every street and alley, every tower and pinnacle, more clearly than in a summer's noon. And then memought that the pearl weighed so heavy upon my forehead that I plucked it from its place and cast it to the ground, and would have trodden it under foot when a star shot swiftly from Heaven and ...
— If I Were King • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... lounged away their day in cool marble halls, or leaned half drunken from the cushioned seats of the amphitheatre, while the sands of the arena were reddened with human blood to give them a holiday. Look at them there. They passed their unsatisfying hours in idle jest, wreathed themselves with freshly plucked, but swiftly fading flowers, drowned their senses from moment to moment, still deeper in the spiced and maddening wines, gave unbridled freedom to their lust; and then, at close of day, in the splendor of the sinking sun, went forth ...
— Christ, Christianity and the Bible • I. M. Haldeman
... where he looked, and whom should I see coming toward us on the shady side of the bridge than this very lad we were talking of, and with him Messer Brunetto, the great scholar. So I went on with a new anger in my voice, "It is he, indeed, in Messer Brunetto's escort," and then I plucked Guido by the arm and pulled him round about, so that we were out of ken of the coming pair. "Let us stand off one side till ...
— The God of Love • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... cause, the great humidity of the ground and the atmosphere. [59] The earth yields gold and silver [60] and other metals, the rewards of victory. The ocean produces pearls, [61] but of a cloudy and livid hue; which some impute to unskilfulness in the gatherers; for in the Red Sea the fish are plucked from the rocks alive and vigorous, but in Britain they are collected as the sea throws them up. For my own part, I can more readily conceive that the defect is in the nature of the ...
— The Germany and the Agricola of Tacitus • Tacitus
... as pulling his beard: "A noble of that nation dying (his name Cid Lai Dios), a Jew, who hated him much in his lifetime, stole privately into the room where his body was laid out, and, thinking to do what he never durst while living, stooped down and plucked his beard; at which the body started up, and drawing out half way his sword, which lay beside him, put the Jew in such a fright that he ran out of the room as if a thousand devils had been behind him. This done, the body lay down ...
— Flowers from a Persian Garden and Other Papers • W. A. Clouston
... three weeks after Capitaine Lemaitre had called on Madame Delphine, the priest started to make a pastoral call and had hardly left the gate of his cottage, when a person, overtaking him, plucked his gown: ...
— Madame Delphine • George W. Cable
... spoken her first line before fear fled to the winds. Her own personality fell from her like a mantle. She was Oonah, the bewitching little Irish maiden, on her way from Dublin to make her home with her grandmother in the country. In her hand she held the "twig of thorn," which, having been plucked on the first day of spring, had thrown her under the spell of the fairies. Around her shoulders she wore the peasant's cape with its quaint, becoming hood, and as she threw it off there was a smothered ...
— Blue Bonnet in Boston - or, Boarding-School Days at Miss North's • Caroline E. Jacobs
... attended to his garden, if it show a crop of weeds, he is a bad gardener, and will be sure to get laughed at. Weeds may either be pulled up by the hand or cut up by the hoe. In both cases, the roots must be eradicated. They must not be plucked from the stem, or cut from the level ground by the edge of the hoe, but hoed or plucked up, root and all; and after they are got up, they are not be left about in the ridges to take root and grow again, but must be cleared ...
— The Book of Sports: - Containing Out-door Sports, Amusements and Recreations, - Including Gymnastics, Gardening & Carpentering • William Martin
... word? She left the shop, and from that time it seemed as if poor Volckert was bewitched, indeed, for his cakes were stolen; his bread was so light that it went up the chimney, when it was not so heavy that it fell through the oven; invisible hands plucked bricks from that same oven and pelted him until he was blue; his wife became deaf, his children went unkempt, and his trade went elsewhere. Thrice the old woman reappeared, and each time was sent anew to the devil; but at last, in despair, the baker called on Saint Nicolaus to come and ...
— Myths And Legends Of Our Own Land, Complete • Charles M. Skinner
... let them lie! Plucked flowers—dead to-morrow; Lift the lid up quietly, As you'd lift the mystery Of a ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 445 - Volume 18, New Series, July 10, 1852 • Various
... tongue. First he will bark. His hands and feet Will turn to paws, and he will seem a dog. Seven drops will make the change complete. The poison has no antidote save one, And he a prince again can never be, Unless seven silver plums he eats, Plucked ...
— The Little Colonel's Hero • Annie Fellows Johnston
... Helga sat in the fire-hall, and leaned her head upon her husband's knees, and had the cloak Gunnlaug's gift sent for; and when the cloak came to her she sat up and plucked at it, and gazed thereon awhile, and then sank back upon her husband's bosom, and was dead. ...
— The Story Of Gunnlaug The Worm-Tongue And Raven The Skald - 1875 • Anonymous
... lain, therefore, all that time, cheek by jowl with Blackbeard himself, with only a thin shell of tinder wood to keep him from me, and now had thrust my hand into his coffin and plucked away his beard. So that if ever wicked men have power to show themselves after death, and still to work evil, one would guess that he would show himself now and fall upon me. Thus a sick dread got hold of me, and had I been a woman ...
— Moonfleet • J. Meade Falkner
... still the brutish chains, And ever slipping backward to the brute. Shall he not break the galling, brazen bonds That bind him writhing on the wheel of fate? Long ages groveling with his brother brutes, He plucked the tree of knowledge and uprose And walked erect—a god; but died the death: For knowledge brings but sadness and unrest Forever, insatiate longing and regret. Behold the brute's unerring instinct guides True ...
— The Feast of the Virgins and Other Poems • H. L. Gordon
... barley. Another with the bellows blew on the cinders, and the third, taking eggs from a basket, fried them on the brasero. Besides, they gave me coarse brown bread and red wine, which was coarser still; for dessert the hostess went to the door and from a neighbouring tree plucked oranges. ...
— The Land of The Blessed Virgin; Sketches and Impressions in Andalusia • William Somerset Maugham
... church, and then returned to Rome. Nazzareno carried to the station the little hand-bag full of despatches with which he had occupied the hour spent in the train. They passed by the tree which had been planted on the first of Roma's Roman birthdays. It was covered with white roses. The Baron plucked one of them, and wore it in his ...
— The Eternal City • Hall Caine
... fall, when the prairie grass turned brown, the leaves of this plant turned brown also. Then the fruit was plucked, and put away. After the winter was over, the kernels were divided. There ...
— Myths and Legends of the Great Plains • Unknown
... his life to do with one or the other? Could he have effected the change without the necessity of explaining it, he would gladly have put those drawings out of sight. Whenever, as now, he consciously regarded them, they plucked painfully at his heart-strings, and threatened to make ...
— The Nether World • George Gissing
... to succour him; but, oh! too late; For he had plucked the remnant strings away. What then remains, but that I find Tiresias, Who, with his wisdom, may allay those furies, That haunt his gloomy ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Vol. 6 (of 18) - Limberham; Oedipus; Troilus and Cressida; The Spanish Friar • John Dryden
... Stephenson's earnestness and mother wit, however, Parliament refused to pass the bill (in 1825), and for the moment the engineer's vexation was bitter to behold. He and his friends plucked up heart, however; they were fighting the winning battle against prejudice and obstruction, and they were sure to conquer in the long run. The line was resurveyed by other engineers; the lands of the hostile owners were avoided; the causes of offence were dexterously smoothed down; and after ...
— Biographies of Working Men • Grant Allen
... last word he plucked the blue glasses off the botanist's nose and flung them into ...
— Twice Bought • R.M. Ballantyne
... dilate with pride. She walked up and down the salon with unconscious restlessness while she talked, went to a stand of flowers, and, leaning her burning face over the fragrant blossoms, drew in sharp, rapid breaths of their odors. She plucked off a white tea-rose, and pressed its yellow core against her cheeks, as if she fancied the fresh white color of the flower would cool them. Every look, every movement, every expression that shot rapidly over her varying face, as quickly as the ripples ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various
... widespread distress. Readers of Sir Gavan Duffy's 'Four Years of Irish History' will recall his vivid description of the manner in which some of the landowners, however, saw their cruel opportunity, and accordingly 'closed on the people with ejectments, turned them on the road, and plucked down their roof-trees,' and also that still more painful passage which describes how women with dead children in their arms were seen begging for a coffin to bury them. Relief committees were, of course, started; the Friends, in particular, busied themselves in practical efforts to ...
— Lord John Russell • Stuart J. Reid
... Monitor dracaena, Linn. Among the barbarous nostrums of the uneducated natives both Singhalese and Tamil, is the tongue of the iguana, which they regard as a specific for consumption, if plucked from the ...
— Ceylon; an Account of the Island Physical, Historical, and • James Emerson Tennent
... who was near his unwary client, plucked at the Curate's coat, and brought him to a momentary half-angry pause. "Softly, softly," said Dr Marjoribanks; "common-sense has nothing to do with facts; we're inquiring into facts at this moment; and, besides, it's a very foolish and unjustifiable confidence to trust to any man's ...
— The Perpetual Curate • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant
... B alone, in a retired spot, where there is no policeman, and, to use his own expression, "takes out the change" upon B. In this case, which receives the greatest shock—A's "grinder," at hearing his pupil was plucked, or ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, August 14, 1841 • Various
... and loveliness; she has equal power to bless and sweeten life in the autumn of her pilgrimage. But here is an apologue: The peach, from blossom to maturity, is the most attractive of fruits. Yet the demands of the market, competition, and fashion often cause it to be plucked and shipped while green. It never matures, though it may take a deceptive richness of color; it decays without ripening. And the last end of that peach is worse ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... mother; and we merely had her word for the existence of a husband, who dealt in poultry. Without seeing Giovanna's husband, I nevertheless knew him to be a man of downy exterior, wearing a canvas apron, thickly crusted with the gore of fowls, who sat at the door of his shop and plucked chickens forever, as with the tireless hand of Fate. I divined that he lived in an atmosphere of scalded pullet; that three earthen cups of clotted chickens' blood, placed upon his window-shelf, formed his idea of an attractive display, and that he shadowed forth his conceptions ...
— Venetian Life • W. D. Howells
... him and followed his directions, while the man, calling another, related the question that had been addressed to him, and both laughed, shrugging their shoulders. Could any one be so stupid as these Parisians! Another one who was going to be plucked, and who came from Paris expressly for that! Was he not funny, with his big legs ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... sufficient data this was my own belief; but the mistake was soon exposed. I plucked an acorn just as the mother withdrew, after having for a moment applied the tip of the abdomen to the orifice of the passage just opened by her rostrum. The egg, so it seemed, must be there, at the entrance of the passage.... But no, it was not! It was at the other extremity ...
— Social Life in the Insect World • J. H. Fabre
... of contrition and repentance for capital crimes perpetrated but on paper, and perpetrated thereon so paltrily, that so far from being worthy of hell-fire, such delinquents, it is felt, would be more suitably punished by being singed like plucked fowls with their own unsaleable sheets. They are frequently so singed; yet singeing has not the effect upon them for which singeing is designed; and like chickens in a shower that have got the pip, they keep still gasping and shooting out their tongues, and walking on tip-toe ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson
... He plucked at the steward's sleeve, and stroked his hand eagerly, "old man—" he began again, beseechingly, "you'll not let me die until she comes, will you? What? No, I know I won't die. Nothing made by man can ...
— The Exiles and Other Stories • Richard Harding Davis
... the oaf's conceit, and standing closely over him, we got a path made round the corner of the dump to our door, so that we could come and go with decent ease; and he even enjoyed the work, for in that there were boulders to be plucked up bodily, bushes to be uprooted, and other occasions for athletic display: but cutting wood was a different matter. Anybody could cut wood; and, besides, my wife was tired of supervising him, and had other things to attend to. And, in short, days went by, and Irvine came daily, and talked ...
— The Silverado Squatters • Robert Louis Stevenson
... himself, a second time: in muttering which, he plucked his pillow a little further from my mother's,—and turning about again, there was an end of the debate for three minutes and ...
— The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman • Laurence Sterne
... of flowers, among which here and there we find a bright rose plucked but yesterday and worn for a day; and on this an old hag is always to be seen crouching—first cousin to Usury, the skinflint bargainer, bald and toothless, and ever ready to sell the contents, so well is she ...
— Scenes from a Courtesan's Life • Honore de Balzac
... unyielding material—their contests were bloody and destructive in the extreme. But the younger nation, inspirited by a sense of wrongs endured, and of the justness of its cause, bore away the palm, and plucked from the brow of its more aged competitor many a laurel yet green from the ensanguined fields of Europe. In scores of hotly-contested battles, the British lion, unused as it was to cower before a foe, was compelled to "lick the ...
— Life and Public Services of John Quincy Adams - Sixth President of the Unied States • William H. Seward
... was so outraged by his familiar attitude toward her mother that she plucked up courage to remonstrate with him; but Madam, instead of appreciating the interference on her behalf, promptly turned upon ...
— Quin • Alice Hegan Rice
... trampled parts where not a leaf or blade would grow. For a long time, no village girl would dress her hair or bosom with the sweetest flower from that field of death: and after many a year had come and gone, the berries growing there, were still believed to leave too deep a stain upon the hand that plucked them. ...
— The Battle of Life • Charles Dickens
... wood I obtained, and learned that it grew on the hills in the centre of the island. I have always regretted that I did not bring away other specimens of the products of the island, having afterwards lost all that I had with me—the piece of sandal wood, and a small flower which I plucked and brought on board in the crown of my tarpaulin, and carefully pressed between the ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana
... according to his lights and his country, not so the other. Tamerlane was a heathen, and acted according to his lights; he was a robber where all around were robbers, but he became the avenger of God—God's scourge on unjust kings, on the cruel Bajazet, who had plucked out his own brothers' eyes; he became to a certain extent the purifier of the East, its regenerator; his equal never was before, nor has it since been seen. Here the wild heart was profitably employed, the wild strength, the teeming brain. Onward, ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... the corn," are found amongst the many shibboleths of the youngsters playing in the fields prior to harvest-time. That they dread the wavy movement of the grain-laden stalks is certain, and the red poppy, the blue cornflower, the yellow dandelion, and the marguerite daisy, although plucked by tiny hands on the fringe of the fields, it is not often tiny feet trample down the golden stalks. At nightfall, in Germany, an old peasant, observing the gentle undulating motion of the ripe crop while seated before ...
— A History of Nursery Rhymes • Percy B. Green
... we know he that has promised is faithful. The promise is sure, and the reward is certain. It is because of this that we have taken the spoiling of our goods. Our cheeks have been given to the smiters, and our heads to those who have plucked off the hair. We have not only, when smitten on one cheek, turned the other, but we have done it again and again, until we are weary of being smitten, and tired of being trampled upon. We have proved the world with kindness; we have suffered their abuse, without cause, with patience, ...
— The Story of the Mormons: • William Alexander Linn
... for half a generation. To be praised by him was disaster, and Cliffe's flush showed at once that the letter had caused him acute annoyance. He and Ashe fell upon the writer, vying with each other in anecdotes that left him presently close-plucked ...
— The Marriage of William Ashe • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... died on her lips, and lowly she bent her head; And oh, there came in the deep, dark eyes a look that was heaven to see And the moments went, and I waited there, and never a word was said, And she plucked from her bosom a rose of red, and shyly ...
— Songs of a Sourdough • Robert W. Service
... something in the temper of its inhabitants that made it especially susceptible to the wave of Puritanism that was sweeping over England. Lollardy had flourished among them so far back as the reign of Richard II; when the mayor, as folks told one another with pride, had plucked a mass-priest by the vestment on the way to the altar in All Saints' Church, and had made him give over his mummery till the preacher ...
— By What Authority? • Robert Hugh Benson
... because of your behavior to Clemency. My dear fellow, are you in any trouble—any danger? I have been away only a week, yet I come back to find the town humming with stories of your desperate play. I hear that D'Argenson plucked you for close on a thousand ...
— The Amateur Gentleman • Jeffery Farnol et al
... evanescent. Leland talks beautifully of 'the perfumed depths of the lotus-word, joyousness;' but in this world we only breathe the perfume. Could we eat the lotus!... The fabled lotus-eater wished never to leave the isle whence he had plucked it. Wrapped in dreamy selfishness, unnerved for the toil of reaching the far-off shore, he grew indifferent to country and friends.... So earth would be to us an enchanted isle. The stern toil by which ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2, No 3, September, 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... Hunger spurred us on. The hunters had counted on consuming the proceeds of their hunting, and they had miscalculated. Luckily, and much to his surprise, Conseil pulled off a right-and-left shot and insured our breakfast. He brought down a white pigeon and a ringdove, which were briskly plucked, hung from a spit, and roasted over a blazing fire of deadwood. While these fascinating animals were cooking, Ned prepared some bread from the artocarpus. Then the pigeon and ringdove were devoured to the bones and declared excellent. Nutmeg, on which these birds ...
— 20000 Leagues Under the Seas • Jules Verne
... concealed at the time, the two knights found means to come to her. She was much ashamed and vexed to see them, as she well knew she would hear nothing pleasant from them, but she plucked up her courage, and put on the best ...
— One Hundred Merrie And Delightsome Stories - Les Cent Nouvelles Nouvelles • Various
... Diana plucked several sprigs of jasmine and of clematis, and two beautiful roses which bordered the whole of one side of the pedestal of the statue behind ...
— The Forty-Five Guardsmen • Alexandre Dumas
... deliciously drowsy and comfortable. But with returning consciousness some corner of discomfort obtruded itself into her mind. It grew more definite and uncomfortable. With her eyes still closed Cecily wriggled faintly and plucked at ...
— The Long Trick • Lewis Anselm da Costa Ritchie |
