"Chaff" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... my illness I am spending glorious days here with Wagner, and am satiating myself with his Nibelungen world, of which our business musicians and chaff-threshing critics have as yet no suspicion. It is to be hoped that this tremendous work may succeed in being performed in the year 1859, and I, on my side, will not neglect anything to forward this performance as soon as possible—a performance ...
— Letters of Franz Liszt, Volume 1, "From Paris to Rome: - Years of Travel as a Virtuoso" • Franz Liszt; Letters assembled by La Mara and translated
... I think I have got matters pretty straight. The question is, whether the Baron will accept my last message as chaff, or resent it. Let me see, how does it read—"It is suggested, for the President's consideration, that rumours uncorrected or unexplained acquire almost the force of admitted truth." Quite so—so they do. Let me ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, November 28, 1891 • Various
... be preached. "Be instant, in season, out of season, reprove, rebuke, exhort with all long-suffering and doctrine," 2 Tim. iv. 2. "That he may be able by sound doctrine both to exhort and convince gainsayers," Tit. i. 9. "He that hath my word, let him speak my word faithfully: what is the chaff to the wheat, saith the Lord?" ...
— The Divine Right of Church Government • Sundry Ministers Of Christ Within The City Of London
... unless some scientifically trained scholar (perhaps a Buddhist) will take the trouble to sift the grain from the chaff. As Mr. Johnston tells us, [Footnote: Buddhist China, p. 12.] the opening of every new school synchronizes with the closing of a Taoist temple, and the priests of the cult are not only despised by others, but are ...
— The Reconciliation of Races and Religions • Thomas Kelly Cheyne
... two score of the Court had been bidden, and these were clustered before the royal pavilion when De Lacy and the Countess rode up. A volley of chaff greeted them as he lifted her from the saddle. One suggested that they had lost their way . . . another that it was a shame to bring in horses so utterly exhausted . . . another that they must have stumbled on the Court by accident . . . another ...
— Beatrix of Clare • John Reed Scott
... want, the wheat was beaten from the straw. Of this older view much still survives, and much that is ennobling. Nor is there any need to say goodby to it. Even if poverty were gone, the flail could still beat hard enough upon the grain and chaff of humanity. ...
— The Unsolved Riddle of Social Justice • Stephen Leacock
... so enamoured of that idea of accomplishing those threescore years and ten which the young parson, fresh from Cambridge, is describing as such a lucky number in life's lottery. The attempt to paint it so is well-meaning, no doubt, 'the vacant chaff well meant for grain;' and it is touching to see how men generally (knowing that they themselves have to go through with it) are wont to portray ...
— Some Private Views • James Payn
... solemn religious chaff; the Shaykh had doubtless often dipped his hand abroad in such dishes; but like a good Moslem, he contented himself at home with wheaten scones and olives, a kind of sacramental food like bread and wine in southern Europe. But his retort would be acceptable to the True Believer who, ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... separating the grain from its tightly adhering husk. In colonial times the work was mostly done by hand, first the flail for threshing, then the heavy fat-pine pestle and mortar for breaking off the husk. Finally the rice was winnowed of its chaff, screened of the "rice flour" and broken grain, and ...
— American Negro Slavery - A Survey of the Supply, Employment and Control of Negro Labor as Determined by the Plantation Regime • Ulrich Bonnell Phillips
... (op. cit., p. 100), "who, having attended two thousand Scripture lessons, says to himself when he leaves school: 'If this is religion I will have no more of it,' is acting in obedience to a healthy instinct. He is to be honoured rather than blamed for having realized at last that the chaff on which he has so long been fed is not the life-giving grain which, unknown to himself, ...
— The Task of Social Hygiene • Havelock Ellis
... thee all and each By ignorant folk who part not truth from fiction. But I, whom even thyself didst stoop to teach, May poise the scales, weigh this with that confliction, Yea, sift the hid grain motive from the dense, Dusty, eye-blinding chaff of consequence. ...
— The Poems of Emma Lazarus - Vol. II. (of II.), Jewish Poems: Translations • Emma Lazarus
... promised speedily to pay his humble homage at his august master's throne, of which he begged leave to be counted the most loyal and constant defender. Such a WARY old BIRD as King Padella was not to be caught by Master Hogginarmo's CHAFF and we shall hear presently how the tyrant treated his upstart vassal. No, no; depend on's, two such rogues do not ...
— The Rose and the Ring • William Makepeace Thackeray
... a raw wind blowing. Gulls dipped and screamed over the wake of the ferryboat that carried the Pages to Oakland, and after the warm cabin and the heated train, they all shivered miserably as they got out at the appointed corner. Oakland looked bleak and dreary, the wind was blowing chaff and papers against ...
— The Story Of Julia Page - Works of Kathleen Norris, Volume V. • Kathleen Norris
... hanging by a string at the woman's side? A slate? Yes. What the deuce did she want with a slate at her side? He was in search of something to divert his mind—and here it was found. "Any thing will do for me," he thought. "Suppose I 'chaff' her a ...
— Man and Wife • Wilkie Collins
... because the soul was made for religious employments and pleasures; and hence, that no temporal blessings, however exalted or refined, can satisfy it. As well might we attempt to sustain the body on chaff, as to feed and nourish the immortal soul with the pleasures and ...
— Parochial and Plain Sermons, Vol. VII (of 8) • John Henry Newman
... this his cunning and shrewdness against the Egyptians;—and he commanded him that was the chief taskmaster over the Hebrews, to give them no relaxation from their labors, but to compel them to submit to greater oppressions than before; and though he allowed them chaff before for making their bricks, he would allow it them no longer, but he made them to work hard at brick-making in the day-time, and to gather chaff in the night. Now when their labor was thus doubled upon them, ...
— The Antiquities of the Jews • Flavius Josephus
... 4, '88. DEAR WILL,—I received your letter yesterday evening, just as I was starting out of town to attend a wedding, and so my mind was privately busy, all the evening, in the midst of the maelstrom of chat and chaff and laughter, with the sort of reflections which create themselves, examine themselves, and continue themselves, unaffected by surroundings —unaffected, that is understood, by the surroundings, but not uninfluenced by them. Here was the near presence of the two ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... nightingale, no art Of yours my heart can quicken! Morfydd, not thy haunting kiss Or voice of bliss can save me From the spear of age whose chill Has quenched the thrill love gave me. My ripe grain of heart and brain The sod sadly streweth; Its empty chaff with mocking laugh The wind of death pursueth! Dig my grave! O, dig it deep To hide my sleeping body, So but Christ my spirit keep, Amen! ...
— A Celtic Psaltery • Alfred Perceval Graves
... fear—or some kind of primitive honor? No fear can stand up to hunger, no patience can wear it out, disgust simply does not exist where hunger is; and as to superstition, beliefs, and what you may call principles, they are less than chaff in a breeze. Don't you know the devilry of lingering starvation, its exasperating torment, its black thoughts, its somber and brooding ferocity? Well, I do. It takes a man all his inborn strength to fight hunger properly. It's really easier to face bereavement, dishonor, and the perdition ...
— Heart of Darkness • Joseph Conrad
... commander. Captain Hemming bore a good character, as did Lieutenants Cherry and Rogers, among those who had ever sailed with them. No persons are more thoroughly discussed than are naval officers by seamen; the wheat is completely sifted from the chaff, the gold from the alloy; and many who pass for very fine fellows on shore are looked upon as arrant pretenders afloat. Jack was making his way towards the shop of Mr Woodward the bookseller, when two seamen in a happy state of indifferentism to all sublunary affairs came rolling out of ...
— The Three Lieutenants • W.H.G. Kingston
... in the jeering of a jest, Or distil it from the folly of a fool. I can teach you with a quip, if I've a mind; I can trick you into learning with a laugh; Oh, winnow all my folly, and you'll find A grain or two of truth among the chaff! ...
— Songs of a Savoyard • W. S. Gilbert
... laitered a beaker to drain, Then reeled to the linhay for more, When the candle-snoff kindled some chaff from his grain - Flames spread, and red vlankers, wi' might and wi' main, And round beams, thatch, ...
— Wessex Poems and Other Verses • Thomas Hardy
... by hand with flails, or, if the family had a cow or two (and the tax lists indicate that they did), the grain was separated by driving the livestock around and around over the unbundled straw. Finally, the chaff was removed by throwing the grain into the air while the breeze was flowing. The grain was then collected and ...
— The Fair Play Settlers of the West Branch Valley, 1769-1784 - A Study of Frontier Ethnography • George D. Wolf
... to go and make all sorts of apologies to get his sergeant-major off. The other people agreed, provided the officer ransomed him with half a dozen pit-props and ten sheets of corrugated iron. For a long time afterwards we used to chaff the captain, and tell him that he valued his sergeant-major at six pit-props and ...
— Pushed and the Return Push • George Herbert Fosdike Nichols, (AKA Quex)
... spoken of how the test of war winnows the wheat from the chaff. This was so in those days as in these, and, as an amusing proof of it, one has only to glance over the names of the generals appointed by the Congress at the same time as Putnam. Artemas Ward, Seth Pomeroy, William Heath, Joseph Spencer, David Wooster, John Thomas, John Sullivan—what ...
— American Men of Action • Burton E. Stevenson
... and as this was said more than half a century ago, it could not have had any reference to Hahnemann. But although not the slightest sign of discrimination is visible in his quotations,—although for him a handful of chaff from Schenck is all the same thing as a measure of wheat from Morgagni,—there is a formidable display of authorities, and an abundant proof of ingenious researches to be found in each of the great works of Hahnemann with which I am familiar. [Some painful surmises might ...
— Medical Essays • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... still "a thing of hope and change;" and would eagerly avail himself of every means afforded him to regain the position he had lost; the other, true to his "order," will "die game." For the separation of the wheat from the chaff, a process by no means difficult, the colony of New South Wales was formerly well adapted. The ticket of leave granted to the deserving convict was one of the most perfect of reformatory indulgences; each individual being known to the authorities, and liable, on the least ...
— Journal of an Expedition into the Interior of Tropical Australia • Thomas Mitchell
... never looked half so respectable in all your life before. Now, good-bye, Toad, and good luck. Go straight down the way you came up; and if any one says anything to you, as they probably will, being but men, you can chaff back a bit, of course, but remember you're a widow woman, quite alone in the world, ...
— The Wind in the Willows • Kenneth Grahame
... doubtless performed for him this last service, but none so much as the delightful sound of his voice, the voice, as it were, of another man, a nature reclaimed, supercivilised, adjusted to the perpetual "chaff" which kept him smiling in a way that would have been a mistake and indeed an impossibility if he had really been witty. His bright familiarity was that of a young prince whose confidence had never had to falter, and the only thing that at all qualified the resemblance was the equal ...
— The Awkward Age • Henry James
... find much cause to laugh, Like us, you would not care for chaff Were you such draggers; Your shoes would soon be off, or worn, You'd get, what we don't often, corn, And end ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 104, May 27, 1893 • Various
... sun that stood in Heaven, Until his beams grew red with two days' blood Of slaughtered Canaan, shall see them flee like chaff ...
— Cromwell • Alfred B. Richards
... life. The Trinity, truly received, would harmonize science, faith, and vital piety. The Trinity, as it now stands in the belief of Christendom, at once confuses the mind, and leaves it empty. It feeds us with chaff, with empty phrases and forms, with no real inflowing convictions. It seems to lie like a vessel on the shore, of no use where it is, yet difficult to remove and get afloat; but when the tide rises, and the vessel floats, it will be able to bear to ...
— Orthodoxy: Its Truths And Errors • James Freeman Clarke
... were of straw, mountain grass, or green and dried rushes. Among the nine thousand people there were but two feather-beds, and but eight beds stuffed with chaff. There were but two stables and six cow-houses in the whole district. None of the women owned more than one shift, nor was there a single bonnet among them all, nor a looking-glass ...
— Ireland Under Coercion (2nd ed.) (1 of 2) (1888) • William Henry Hurlbert
... Rather to Ann's surprise he consented, and, in spite of his assertion, earlier on, that he "preferred his own company," he seemed thoroughly to enjoy the little home-like diner a trois. There was something about the cosy room and the gay, good-humoured chaff and laughter of brother and sister which conveyed a sense of welcome—partaking of that truest kind of hospitality which creates no special atmosphere of ceremony for a guest but encompasses him with a ...
— The Vision of Desire • Margaret Pedler
... those subtle scents that old mother earth releases only when the rain falls. Oh, happy rainy days in harvest time when, undisturbed by conscience, the weary toilers stretch and slumber and wake to lark and chaff in careless ease the ...
— Corporal Cameron • Ralph Connor
... consist of many small enclosures, each about twenty feet by forty or fifty, made of bamboo, which are placed on the bank of the river, and partly covered with water. In one corner of the enclosure is a small house, where the eggs are hatched by artificial heat, produced by rice-chaff in a state of of fermentation. It is not uncommon to see six or eight hundred ducklings all of the same age. There are several hundreds of these enclosures, and the number of ducks of all ages may be computed at millions. The manner in which they ...
— The Former Philippines thru Foreign Eyes • Fedor Jagor; Tomas de Comyn; Chas. Wilkes; Rudolf Virchow.
... whose account your heart has long been cast down has escaped all dangers, and is near at hand, and I hope ere long to see him and to return with him in triumph to the fort. The cowardly rebels will not dare to face us. When we attack them in the open ground, they will fly like chaff before the wind. Though Burnett does not tell us the amount of the force with him, I trust that it will be sufficient to enable us to follow up our victory and prevent the enemy ...
— The Young Rajah • W.H.G. Kingston
... years in the penitentiary, it's easy to say but hard to do. So much time, seemingly, has to be wasted in profitless study to find a few kernels amid much chaff. Napoleon said at one point that the trouble with books is that one must read so many bad ones to find something really good. True enough but, even so, there are perfectly practical ways to advance rapidly without undue waste motion. Consider this: Among one's superiors there are always discriminating ...
— The Armed Forces Officer - Department of the Army Pamphlet 600-2 • U. S. Department of Defense
... discernment &c. (intelligence) 498; acuteness, penetration; nuances. dope*, past performances. V. discriminate, distinguish, severalize[obs3]; recognize, match, identify; separate; draw the line, sift; separate the chaff from the wheat, winnow the chaff from the wheat; separate the men from the boys; split hairs, draw a fine line, nitpick, quibble. estimate &c. (measure) 466; know which is which, know what is what, know "a hawk from a handsaw" [Hamlet]. ...
— Roget's Thesaurus • Peter Mark Roget
... well. All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. All your geese are swans. Always taking out of the meal tub, and never putting in, soon comes to the bottom. An inch on a man's nose is much. An old bird is not caught with chaff. An old dog will learn no new tricks. As bare as the back of ...
— Verse and Prose for Beginners in Reading - Selected from English and American Literature • Horace Elisha Scudder, editor
... while the weather grew milder, and the clouds lifted somewhat. The troop ceased to shiver, and their spirits began to improve. They grew more and more cheerful, and finally began to chaff each other and insult passengers along the highway. This showed that they were awaking to an appreciation of life and its joys once more. The dread in which their sort was held was apparent in the fact that everybody gave them the road, and took their ribald insolences meekly, without ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... gang," said Thomas, "it's muckle the same. The word itsel' oot o' his mou' fa's as deid as chaff upo' clay. Honest Jeames there'll rise ance mair; but never a word that man says, wi' the croon o' 's heid i' the how o' 's neck, 'll rise to beir witness o' ...
— Alec Forbes of Howglen • George MacDonald
... which produces the effect of shears. Threshing consists in beating the ears with thick sticks to loosen the husks, after which the padi is carried in baskets to platforms ten feet above the ground, and is allowed to fall on mats, when the chaff is driven away by the wind. It is husked by a pestle, and it requires some skill to avoid crushing the grain. All these operations are performed ...
— The Golden Chersonese and the Way Thither • Isabella L. Bird (Mrs. Bishop)
... the fear of death clutching them in the vitals. And Sir Tristram chased them out of that place and into the courtyard of the castle, and some he smote down and others escaped; but all who could do so scattered away before him like chaff before the wind. ...
— The Story of the Champions of the Round Table • Howard Pyle
... Indeed, I have reason to know that, after the guests had departed, poor SOPHY had to endure from her sister a dreadful scene, the harsh details of which have not yet faded from her memory. And then I remembered, too, how it was a matter of family chaff against HERMIONE that once, not very long after she had entered upon her teens, she had sobbed convulsively through a whole night, because she had discovered that her juvenile arms were thin and mottled, and she imagined that she would never be able ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, November 14th, 1891 • Various
... promises. Flynn's good-nature was as unfaltering as his self-esteem, perhaps because of his self-esteem. He only smiled with fatuous superiority when from time to time, after the elections, his patrons would chaff him about his failure to secure the mayoralty. They did so with more effect since there were always among the horse-players on such occasions a few who would cast votes for the barber, esteeming it as ...
— The Debtor - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... cell and listen; I'll wish that I couldn't hear The laugh and the chaff of the fellows swigging the canteen beer; The nasal tone of the gramophone playing ...
— Ballads of a Cheechako • Robert W. Service
... your little Arab, if you can. I say, if you can; for he is too old to be caught by chaff, and you shall need as much guile as any fowler ever did. Then with patient hands bestow on his body its first baptism of clean water, a task often unspeakably shocking; reduce to fit size and shape a cast-off suit humbly begged ...
— God's Answers - A Record Of Miss Annie Macpherson's Work at the - Home of Industry, Spitalfields, London, and in Canada • Clara M. S. Lowe
... there, between the distorted stalks, the muddy earth of the rice-swamp was visible; there were even little pools of water, produced by bits of the transparent lacquer on which tiny particles of gold seemed to float about like chaff in a thick liquid; two or three insects, which required a microscope to be well seen, were clinging in a terrified manner to the rushes, and the whole picture was no ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... stretch lame hands of faith, and grope And gather dust and chaff, and call To what I feel is Lord of all, And faintly trust ...
— Parish Papers • Norman Macleod
... a part of the year on furze, or "fuzz," as we call it here. Two acres of furze he had, which he cut close in alternate years, the second year's growth making a fine juicy fodder when chopped small into a sort of chaff. An old hand-apparatus for that purpose—a kind of chaff-cutting box—was described to me. The same man had a horse, which also did well on furze diet mixed with a little malt from ...
— Change in the Village • (AKA George Bourne) George Sturt
... word is spoken in jest. Many hands make light work. Marry in haste, repent at leisure. Never look a gift horse in the mouth. Necessity is the mother of invention. Old birds are not to be caught with chaff. Old friends and old wine are best. One swallow makes not a spring, nor one woodcock a winter. People who live in glass houses should never throw stones. Possession is nine points of the law. Procrastination is the thief of time. Short reckonings make long friends. Safe bind, safe find. Strike ...
— My Book of Indoor Games • Clarence Squareman
... inducement will be great enough to bring him within yards of it. It must be set well back in the woods, near one of his regular hunting grounds. Before that, however, you must bait the fox with choice bits scattered over a pile of dry leaves or chaff, sometimes for a week, sometimes for a month, till he comes regularly. Then smoke your trap, or scent it; handle it only with gloves; set it in the chaff; scatter bait as usual; and you have one chance of getting him, while he has still a dozen of getting away. In ...
— Ways of Wood Folk • William J. Long
... the Negroes from whom any assistance could reasonably be expected, behaved like so many Heroes of Antiquity; risking their lives and limbs for us and our property, while their own poor houses were flying like chaff before the hurricane. There are few White people here who can say as much for their Black dependents; and the force and value of the relation between Master and Slave has been tried by the late calamity ...
— The Life of John Sterling • Thomas Carlyle
... be called, rather than rake or harrow it. When it was growing and grown, I have observed already how many things I wanted to fence it, secure it, mow or reap it, cure and carry it home, thrash, part it from the chaff, and save it: then I wanted a mill to grind it, sieves to dress it, yeast and salt to make it into bread, and an oven to bake it; and yet all these things I did without, as shall be observed; and the corn ...
— The Life and Adventures of Robinson Crusoe Of York, Mariner, Vol. 1 • Daniel Defoe
... half surrounded by a wall, whose tottering, ornamental pinnacles told a story of comparative grandeur that had come to grief in this remote spot. The farmer had been winnowing his corn outside, and the narrow lane was ankle-deep with chaff. The only human being that I could find here was a wild-looking girl, with a bush of hair on her head, who made me understand, half in French, half in patois, that I should never reach Vayrac by the way I was going. She sent ...
— Two Summers in Guyenne • Edward Harrison Barker
... best refined." The starch, like the soap, must be made at home. "On this day," writes our diarist, "had a bushel of wheat put in soak for starch;" and in another place we find the details of the starch-making process. The wheat was put into a tub and covered with water. As the chaff rose to the top it was skimmed off. Each day the water was carefully turned off, without disturbing the wheat, and fresh water was added, until after several days there was nothing left but a hard and perfectly white mass in the bottom of the tub. This mass was spread ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, April 1875, Vol. XV., No. 88 • Various
... amendment in lodging. In their youth they lay upon hard straw pallets covered only with a sheet, and mayhap a dogswain coverlet over them, and a good round log for pillow. If in seven years after marriage a man could buy a mattress and a sack of chaff to rest his head on, he thought himself as well lodged as a lord. Pillows were thought meet only for sick women. As for servants, they were lucky if they had a sheet over them, for there was nothing under them to keep the ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... of mules and horses are driven on a trot round a centre, a woman holding the reins, and another, or a girl or two, with whips drive; the men supply and clear the floor; other parties are dressing, by throwing the corn into the air for the wind to blow away the chaff. Every soul is employed, and with such an air of cheerfulness, that the people seem as well pleased with their labor, as the farmer himself with his great heaps of wheat. The scene is uncommonly animated and joyous. I stopped and alighted often to ...
— The Eve of the French Revolution • Edward J. Lowell
... of others is easily perceived, but that of oneself is difficult to perceive; a man winnows his neighbour's faults like chaff, but his own fault he hides, as a cheat hides the bad ...
— The Dhammapada • Unknown
... condescending under chaff. "But we're quite.... Skipper, he's called. You don't call him captain. He's just like me. ...
— Coquette • Frank Swinnerton
... my dear boy. There is a little girl who feels obliged to insist on formalities, not too many. She'll think your acting as the parson the best joke in the world, but it would not do to chaff ...
— 'Way Down East - A Romance of New England Life • Joseph R. Grismer
... destroys all that constitutes the character of Hamlet and of the legend. During the whole of the drama, Hamlet is doing, not what he would really wish to do, but what is necessary for the author's plan. One moment he is awe-struck at his father's ghost, another moment he begins to chaff it, calling it "old mole"; one moment he loves Ophelia, another moment he teases her, and so forth. There is no possibility of finding any explanation whatever of Hamlet's actions or words, and therefore no possibility of attributing any ...
— Tolstoy on Shakespeare - A Critical Essay on Shakespeare • Leo Tolstoy
... did those red varmints spare us?" Gummidge cried hoarsely. "They melted away like chaff. What ...
— The Cryptogram - A Story of Northwest Canada • William Murray Graydon
... remarked Hseh P'an vehemently, "the primary idea I had in view was to ask you to come out a moment sooner and I forgot to respectfully shun the expression. But by and bye, when you wish to chaff me, just you likewise allude to my father, and we'll ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... it," said Wildrake, who now sat triumphant and glorious in his easy-chair; "and here is to all the brave hearts, sir, that fought and fell in that same storm of Brentford. We drove all before us like chaff, till the shops, where they sold strong waters, and other temptations, brought us up. Gad, sir, we, the babe-eaters, had too many acquaintances in Brentford, and our stout Prince Rupert was ever better at making way than drawing off. Gad, sir, for ...
— Woodstock; or, The Cavalier • Sir Walter Scott
... Principal, N.H. Training School, Manchester, N.H. You have "Out-Heroded Herod." It is the best of any educational paper I have ever read. I cannot see how you get so much together, and not a grain of chaff. ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 6 • Various
... sheds erected in each ugly open space they disperse good cheer augmented by coffee and cigarettes (and such small comforts as we Americans send them) after the regulation army rations are served by the commissary. They hear the men's stores, comfort the unhappy ones, chaff the gloomy ones, and when they have a moment's breathing space write letters to such of those as have asked for ...
— Defenders of Democracy • The Militia of Mercy
... that the Boers did not want to fight. So they also became unfaithful to the cause, and to those along with whom they began the war. And the name of 'hands-upper' was earned by those burghers who of their own free will surrendered to the enemy. The chaff was divided from the grain; cowards and traitors remained behind, and the willing ones went to the veld, even though it were in a retreating direction. We were still very hopeful. There were still the good positions in the Lydenberg district, and ...
— On Commando • Dietlof Van Warmelo
... about her, merely pick up their idea of her character from the rabble. We once entertained the same rabble idea of her; but having read her works—for we really have read them—we now regard her with great respect. However, there is a great abundance of chaff and straw to her grain; but the grain is good, and as we do not eat either the chaff or straw if we can avoid it, nor even the raw grain, but thrash it and winnow it, and grind it and bake it, we find it, after undergoing this process, not only very palatable, but a special dainty ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume II (of II) • Augustus de Morgan
... heaven-made Implement conquers Heaven for us! If the poor and humble toil that we have Food, must not the high and glorious toil for him in return, that he have Light, have Guidance, Freedom, Immortality?—These two, in all their degrees, I honour: all else is chaff and dust, which let the wind ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle
... breeze, Chaeremon floated through the clear air, far lighter than chaff, and probably would have gone spinning off through ether, but that he caught his feet in a spider's web, and dangled there on his back; there he hung five nights and days, and on the sixth came down by a ...
— Select Epigrams from the Greek Anthology • J. W. Mackail
... only chaff, in never so sublime a manner, with the whole Earth and the long-eared populations looking on, and chorally singing approval, rendering night hideous,—it will avail him nothing. And that, to a lamentable extent, ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XII. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... huzzah, and a charge. But our men had by this time reloaded their pieces, and were only too eager awaiting the command "fire." But when it did come the result was telling—men falling on top of men, rear rank pushing forward the first rank, only to be swept away like chaff. Our batteries on the hills in rear and those mounted on our infantry line were raking the field, the former with shell and solid shot, the latter with grape and canister. Smoke settling on the ground, soon rendered ...
— History of Kershaw's Brigade • D. Augustus Dickert
... people of Chauny as entertaining as Rabelais tells us they were in his time. Then he 'amused himself much with the boatmen, and above all with those of Chauny in Picardy—wonderful chatterboxes, and great at bandying chaff on the subject of green monkeys.' There is no lack of boatmen now at Chauny, though the railway has taken away much of their living; but the glory of the green monkeys, I fear, has departed. In the days of Gargantua, the Chaunois were as ...
— France and the Republic - A Record of Things Seen and Learned in the French Provinces - During the 'Centennial' Year 1889 • William Henry Hurlbert
... doctrines of the cross are really irrational and absurd, and that you are doing right in opposing and deriding them? Recollect, I pray you, with whose word you are contending;—whose wisdom you are despising! Let the chaff contend with the tempest, and the stubble with the devouring flame; let the glow-worm despise all the lamps of heaven;—but Oh, let not a worm contend with Omnipotence; let not dim reason reject all the splendours ...
— The National Preacher, Vol. 2 No. 7 Dec. 1827 • Aaron W. Leland and Elihu W. Baldwin
... to another with drunken impressiveness, "Remember, our motto is, 'Patriotism and laziness.'" Of course, this went round the ship, greatly delighting on both counts our marine officers, and became embodied in the chaff that passed to and fro between the two corps; of which one saying, "The two most useless things in a ship were the captain of marines and the mizzen-royal," deserves for its drollery to be committed to writing, now that mizzen-royals ...
— From Sail to Steam, Recollections of Naval Life • Captain A. T. Mahan
... gone, I lay down on my bag of straw, which, never having been renewed, was now only full of worn chaff, and, gathering myself in my cloak, was soon in ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... representative at the State capital, then located at Vandalia. One day he went with a friend to call on an older acquaintance, named Smoot, who was almost as dry a joker as himself, but Smoot had more of this world's goods than the young legislator-elect. Lincoln began at once to chaff his friend. ...
— The Story of Young Abraham Lincoln • Wayne Whipple
... SWAN'S' CONCERT.—Miss Greenfield made her debut in this city on Saturday evening, before a large and brilliant audience, in the lecture-room of the Young Men's Association. The concert was a complete triumph for her; won, too, from a discriminating auditory not likely to be caught with chaff, and none too willing to suffer admiration to get the better of prejudice. Her singing more than met the expectations of her hearers, and elicited the heartiest applause and frequent encores. She possesses a truly wonderful voice; and, considering ...
— Music and Some Highly Musical People • James M. Trotter
... "there was a bit o' chaff back and forrit between us, and next thing he did was to slap me across the face wi' his hand. Do ye think," he appealed to his audience, "it would brak' his jaw if I gave him ...
— Action Front • Boyd Cable (Ernest Andrew Ewart)
... began the dreadful contest, Lives like chaff were thrown away, Rome with all her pride and power ...
— Poems • Frances E. W. Harper
... here and satisfied, and you've had no cause to find fault with me. It's no use you trying to sack me, because I won't take it. I've been there before, and you might as well try to catch an old bird with chaff.' ...
— While the Billy Boils • Henry Lawson
... dimly suspected, that the mud-larks' victims are the three odd individuals who lately stopped in front of him. But it is not they who are most angry; instead, they are giving the "rats" change in kind, returning their "chaff," and even getting the better of them, so much so that some of their would-be tormentors have quite lost their tempers. One is already furious—a big hulking fellow, their leader and instigator, ...
— The Land of Fire - A Tale of Adventure • Mayne Reid
... more than this, however. It was the dull newspaper season, and the case had turned out to be a thoroughly "journalistic" one. So they questioned and interviewed every one concerned, and after cleverly winnowing the chaff, which in this case meant the dull, from the gleanings, most of them gave several columns the next morning to the story. Peter's speech was printed in full, and proved to read almost as well as it had sounded. The reporters were told, ...
— The Honorable Peter Stirling and What People Thought of Him • Paul Leicester Ford
... of rubbish and chaff, the Rabbis have a grain of wheat in their legend which tells us that Messias is to come as a leper, and to be found sitting amongst the lepers at the city's gate; which is a picturesque and symbolical way of declaring ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Minor Prophets. St Matthew Chapters I to VIII • Alexander Maclaren
... impossible blue swallow-tail with brass buttons,—the sort of thing, indeed, that Webster had worn a few years before, only Hughson was not fitted for it. She suspected he had hired it for the evening, in the hope of pleasing her, for she saw that he had to bear some chaff about it from his friends. One of the colonels of the staff, with plumed hat and a sword, came and was introduced to her. In a sense she made a conquest of him, for he tried clumsily to pay his court to her, but not seriously. Nothing that yet had happened in her little life had enraged Miss ...
— Pirate Gold • Frederic Jesup Stimson
... with hatred of the human race. A religion of faith and love consorts with a religion of rules and limitations. If the faith of Israel was to fulfil its mission to the world it was necessary that some one should come who could purge this threshing-floor, burning the chaff and gathering up the wheat to be the seed ...
— History of Religion - A Sketch of Primitive Religious Beliefs and Practices, and of the Origin and Character of the Great Systems • Allan Menzies
... had kept the peace, but if he could only feel that the people were with him he would drive the sixty plotting conspirators before him like chaff before the whirlwind. ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 7 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Orators • Elbert Hubbard
... whole rather than a mere part relating to one section or to one crop, or to one industry, or to an individual private occupation. That is a tremendous gain for the principles of democracy. The overwhelming majority of people in this country know how to sift the wheat from the chaff in what they hear and what they read. They know that the process of the constructive rebuilding of America cannot be done in a day or a year, but that it is being done in spite of the few who seek to confuse them and to profit by their confusion. Americans as a whole are feeling a lot better—a ...
— The Fireside Chats of Franklin Delano Roosevelt • Franklin Delano Roosevelt
... anxiety. We dared not speak of our feelings, for fear of frightening our young companion, who pressed close up to me. Amidst the universal destruction going on, it only needed a branch driven by the squall to dislodge our shelter, for us to be swept away like chaff before the wind. I had witnessed many a hurricane, but ...
— Adventures of a Young Naturalist • Lucien Biart
... he drew up at a stand he had never been on before: it was time to give Diamond his bag of chopped beans and oats. The men got about him, and began to chaff him. He took it all good-humouredly, until one of them, who was an ill-conditioned fellow, began to tease old Diamond by poking him roughly in the ribs, and making general game of him. That he could not bear, and the tears came ...
— At the Back of the North Wind • George MacDonald
... identity of meaning is only disguised by different modes of expression, and when the term has been closely sifted, to their mutual astonishment both parties discover the same thing lying under the bran and chaff after this heated operation. Plato and Aristotle probably agreed much better than the opposite parties they raised up imagined; their difference was in the manner of expression, rather than in the points discussed. The Nominalists and ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... must think of Neolithic man noticing the big seeds of this Hermon grass, gathering some of the heads, breaking the brittle spikelet-bearing axis in his fingers, knocking off the rough awns or bruising the spikelets in his hand till the glumes or chaff separated off and could be blown away, chewing a mouthful of the seeds—and resolving ...
— The Outline of Science, Vol. 1 (of 4) - A Plain Story Simply Told • J. Arthur Thomson
... nerved and trimmed to stand the test. The man who practices self-denial in unnecessary things will stand like a tower when everything rocks around him and when his softer fellow mortals are winnowed like chaff ...
— Parent and Child Vol. III., Child Study and Training • Mosiah Hall
... that was decidedly unpleasant. Overhead were thick rafters. I think every one of us noticed these before he noticed anything else, for the instant the roar of that lion sounded up through the boards under our feet the reporters scattered like chaff before the wind, and scuttled up into those rafters with a speed, and dust, and clatter I have never seen equalled. It was like sparrows flying from the ...
— Adventures in Many Lands • Various
... blind and wanting wit to choose, Who house the chaff and burn the grain; Who hug the wealth ye cannot use, And lack the riches all ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
... how fragile she was. He had never noticed before that she was so sensitive to trifles, though it was notorious that nobody could safely discuss Cyril with her in terms of chaff. He was really astounded at that youth's carelessness, shameful carelessness. That Cyril's attitude to his mother was marked by a certain benevolent negligence—this Matthew knew; but not to have written to her with the ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett
... best wishes, as a legacy to any intrepid redacteur who may wish to follow in our footsteps. For ourselves, we shall rigidly adhere to the rule with which we set out, and separate the wheat from the chaff, according to the best of ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 57, No. 352, February 1845 • Various
... appearance. On Friedrich's order, or on his own, I do not know; but sure it is, Seidlitz, with sixty-one squadrons, arriving from some distance, breaks in like a DEUS EX MACHINA, swift as the storm-wind, upon this Russian Horse-torrent; drives it again before him like a mere torrent of chaff, back, ever back, to the shore of Acheron and the Stygian quagmires (of the Mutzel, namely); so that it did not return again; and the Prussian infantry had free field for their platoon exercise. Their rage against ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XVIII. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—Seven-Years War Rises to a Height.—1757-1759. • Thomas Carlyle
... impossible to take offence at even this, so pure and friendly was the chaff. It may be said to Jim's credit that he did not even ...
— Daisy's Aunt • E. F. (Edward Frederic) Benson
... Christ.' We need only recall John's earlier testimony to understand how these works would not seem to him to fill up the role which he had anticipated for Messiah. Where is the axe that was to be laid at the root of the trees, or the fan that was to winnow out the chaff? Where is the fiery spirit which he had foretold? This gentle Healer is not the theocratic judge of his warning prophecies. He is tending and nurturing, rather than felling, the barren trees. A nimbus of merciful deeds, not of flashing 'wrath to come,' surrounds ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Matthew Chaps. IX to XXVIII • Alexander Maclaren
... of those who have been emptying our churches by reason of their attempts to give stones for bread, husks and chaff for the life-giving grain, let their places be taken even for but a few times by those who are open and alive to these higher inspirations, and then let us again question those who feel that religion is dying out. "It is the live coal that kindles others, not ...
— In Tune with the Infinite - or, Fullness of Peace, Power, and Plenty • Ralph Waldo Trine
... conversation. What a marvelous memory! He knew something of every country from the inside. He had been brought at various times during his long diplomatic career into contact with most of the interesting people in the world. He knew well how to separate the grain from the chaff according to the tastes of his listener. The pathos of his present position appealed to her irresistibly. The possibilities of his life had been so great, fortune had treated him always so strangely. The greatest of his schemes had ...
— The Yellow Crayon • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... live in a house which had a door opening to the cloisters. The boys retorted. The worst they gave Mr. Ketch was "chaff;" but his temper could bear anything better than that, especially if it was administered by the ...
— The Channings • Mrs. Henry Wood
... snow, opened out, whereupon some twisting current bore it aloft again, and it swooped down the hill like a great bat, followed by a wail of despair from the owner. Other loose articles on the top of the load were picked up like chaff—coffee pot, frying pan, and dishes—then hurtled away like charges of canister, rolling, leaping, skipping down into the swale ahead, then up over the next ridge and out of sight. But the men were too fiercely beset by the confusion to ...
— The Silver Horde • Rex Beach
... the outpost of the British Army? No British soldier has been here before"! But "all's well that ends well"; in due course, after minor adventures, Mr. Arden's party reached the Squadron at EL JUDEIDE where, although he had to run the gamut of chaff and banter, he was ...
— Through Palestine with the 20th Machine Gun Squadron • Unknown
... enough to escape and subsequently to be placed under the protection of Augustus. Cato thought that a proper man ought to study oratory, medicine, husbandry, war, and law, and was at liberty to look into Greek literature a little, that he might cull from the mass of chaff and rubbish, as he affected to deem it, some serviceable maxims of practical experience, but he might not study it thoroughly. Varro extended the limit of allowed and fitting studies to grammar, logic, rhetoric, geometry, arithmetic, astronomy, ...
— The Story of Rome From the Earliest Times to the End of the Republic • Arthur Gilman
... I saw what was coming, sprang on top of the cabin, and from there into the mainsail itself. Ah Choon and one of the Americans tried to follow me, but I was one jump ahead of them. The American was swept away and over the stern like a piece of chaff. Ah Choon caught a spoke of the wheel, and swung in behind it. But a strapping Raratonga vahine (woman)—she must have weighed two hundred and fifty—brought up against him, and got an arm around his neck. He clutched the kanaka steersman with his other hand; and just at that moment ...
— Brown Wolf and Other Jack London Stories - Chosen and Edited By Franklin K. Mathiews • Jack London
... When a newspaper writer commented that a "consensus of opinion among biologists" would probably rate Dr. Loeb as a man of lively imagination rather than an inerrant investigator of natural phenomena, he felt called to chaff the consensus idea. ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... lego, Gr. [Greek: lego]) to powers of intelligent choice. As previously remarked, a bank of sea-weed on the sea-shore may be said to have been selected by the waves from all the surrounding sand and stones. Similarly, we may say that grain is selected from chaff by the wind in the process of winnowing corn. Or, if it be thought that there is any ambiguity involved in such a use of the term in the case of "Natural Selection," there is no objection to employing the phrase which has been coined by Mr. Spencer as its equivalent—namely, ...
— Darwin, and After Darwin (Vol. 1 and 3, of 3) • George John Romanes
... amazement," a critic writes in a private letter, "that one afternoon after a protest that nothing he said was to be published, I heard him discuss the prospects and the works of our ultra-modern painters. Even in fields beyond his sympathy he picked out the chaff from the wheat, and was judicially accurate in his verdicts of the difference between 'tweedle-dum' and 'tweedle-dee,' both one would have said, ...
— Frederic Lord Leighton - An Illustrated Record of His Life and Work • Ernest Rhys
... said Harry, twisting a little, "I knew I ought not; but they said I was afraid of a gun, and that I had no money. Now I see that was chaff, but I didn't ...
— The Daisy Chain, or Aspirations • Charlotte Yonge
... learned associates that not one of them stood up to plead for the life of Socrates now? Why, the first breath of adversity had blown them away as though they were but mist; and, with these false friends scattered like the coward chaff they were, grim old Socrates turned to ...
— Second Book of Tales • Eugene Field
... Fairfax. What a queer compound he was, she thought, glancing over to where the youth stood. He was blushing as Sally helped him to remove the cobwebs from his clothing, and seemed unable to answer the chaff with which she and Robert were plying him. Yet but a short time since he had made that little joke concerning the fur rug and her housekeeping. Had ...
— Peggy Owen and Liberty • Lucy Foster Madison
... go to St. Mark's Tower, and see that the bell was tolled. Arrived there, he found the tower occupied by a large force of Arsenal troops, who, on his attempting to approach, charged upon him with their halberds. His own band, seized with a sudden panic, scattered like chaff; and he himself slipped away in the darkness of the night. But he heard the footsteps of a man following close at his heels; he felt him lay hands upon him, and he was just on the point of cutting his pursuer down when by means of a sudden flash of light he recognised Pietro. ...
— Weird Tales, Vol. II. • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... pounding the rice, the woman poured it into a rice winnower and tossed it many times into the air. As soon as the chaff was removed she emptied the rice into her basket and covered it with the winnower. Then she took the jar upon her head, and started for the spring to ...
— Philippine Folk Tales • Mabel Cook Cole
... greatest sufferers from it, name one of the conditions of progress—is as necessary, aye, more so, than what you call good, to your and our elevation to higher spheres. It is not to be hated, but welcomed. It is the winnowing of the grain from the chaff. Children of truth, don't worry over what to you seems evil; soon you will be of us and will understand, and be rejoiced that what you call evil persists and works as leaven in the great ...
— Modern Spiritualism • Uriah Smith
... 'Light-as-Chaff', was the nickname of Epicrates, Aeschines' brother-in-law (not the Epicrates of Sec. 277). as a reveller, no doubt in some Dionysiac revel, in which it was not considered decent to take part without a mask. (The original ...
— The Public Orations of Demosthenes, volume 2 • Demosthenes
... suggested to the optician the only effectual means of attaining that purpose," than would the fact, say, of the winnowing of corn having suggested the fanning-machine prove that air currents were designed for the purpose of eliminating chaff from grain. In short, the real substance of the argument from Design must eventually merge into that which Paley, in the above-quoted passage, expressly passes over—viz., "the origin of the laws themselves;" for so long as there is any reason to ...
— A Candid Examination of Theism • George John Romanes
... from before him, a convenient distance betwixt him and them, as betwixt the Judge and the Prisoners at the bar. I heard it also proclaimed to them that attended on the Man that sat on the Cloud, Gather together the Tares, the Chaff, and Stubble, and cast them into the burning Lake. And with that, the bottomless pit opened, just whereabout I stood; out of the mouth of which there came in an abundant manner, smoke and coals ...
— The Junior Classics, V5 • Edited by William Patten
... are not afraid, nay, but when God's anger shall join with iniquity, and the voice of his rod and displeasure roar, this shall make the mountains to tremble, the rocks to move, and how much more shall it drive away a leaf? You seem now mountains, but when God shall plead, you shall be like the chaff driven to and fro. O how easy a matter shall it be to God to blow a man out of his dwelling place! Sin hath prepared you for it, he needeth no more but blow by his Spirit, or look upon you, and you will not be. You who are now lofty and proud, and maintain yourselves against ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning
... thanklessness of the human race. I was obliged to make a clean breast of it to my sister, who of course did not keep the secret long; and for some time afterward I had to submit to a good deal of mild chaff upon the subject from my friends. But it is an old story now, and two of the actors in it are dead, and of the remaining three I dare say I am the only one who cares to recall it. Even to me it is a somewhat ...
— Stories By English Authors: Italy • Various
... Human progress none may stay; All who make the vain endeavor Shall, like chaff, be ...
— Reading Made Easy for Foreigners - Third Reader • John L. Huelshof
... to make me confess to all sorts of absurdities. Because I am improving my mind, of course, by seeing all these steam-ploughs, and threshing-machines, and chaff-cutters, and cows, ...
— Jude the Obscure • Thomas Hardy
... preventive and curative. The first object must be to remove the cause. Irritating gases resulting from stable filth should be remedied by correcting the unsanitary conditions in the stable. Conditions favoring injury to the eye from foreign bodies, such as chaff and a careless attendant, should be corrected. Animals suffering from the infectious or purulent form of inflammation should be separated from the other animals. Foreign bodies should be removed promptly before they have had an opportunity to set up a serious inflammation. It ...
— Common Diseases of Farm Animals • R. A. Craig, D. V. M.
... Harriet Twistleton? An uncommon fine girl, you know. But I wasn't going to be caught like that. I'm very fond of Harriet,—in my way, you know; but they don't catch an old bird like me with chaff." ...
— The Small House at Allington • Anthony Trollope
... she said passionately.—And in the hours it took to reassure her, his primly reasoned conclusions were blown like chaff ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson
... frown! As you walk down the way Where the world scatters chaff, Light your labors with play And your griefs with a laugh! And when it's all o'er And you reach heaven's stile, You will get through the door If you carry a ...
— Oklahoma Sunshine • Freeman E. (Freeman Edwin) Miller
... the Harrisons advanced to break in the door. A threatening shout from the ambuscaded partisans caused them to hurriedly fall back towards the rear of the barn. There was a pause, and then began the usual Homeric chaff,—with this Western difference that it was cunningly intended ...
— Cressy • Bret Harte
... reasons: ask. It pleased me well enough,' 'Nay, nay,' said Hall, 'Why take the style of those heroic times? 35 For nature brings not back the Mastodon, Nor we those times; and why should any man Remodel models? these twelve books of mine Were faint Homeric echoes, nothing-worth, Mere chaff and draff, much better burnt.' 'But I,' 40 Said Francis, 'pick'd the eleventh from this hearth' And have it: keep a thing, its use will come. I hoard it as a sugar-plum for Holmes.' He laugh'd, and ...
— Selections from Wordsworth and Tennyson • William Wordsworth and Alfred Lord Tennyson
... Whitechapel: you are not obliged to read all the rigmarole they paint on the outside. Finally, consider an omnibus as a carriage, a bed, a public-house, a place of amusement, or a boxing-ring, where you may ride, sleep, smoke, chaff, or quarrel, as it ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, December 4, 1841 • Various
... Who spoke in parables, I dare not say; But sure he knew it was a pleasing way, Sound sense, by plain example, to convey. And in a heathen author we may find, That pleasure with instruction should be join'd; 820 So take the corn, and leave the chaff behind. ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol II - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden
... am biased in my doubt concerning the usefulness of his persistence in re-writing, by my regret that he destroyed so many of his romances, as not worthy of him. "King's chaff is better than other folk's corn" says our proverb. In his day, I bored him by pressing him to write more, and more rapidly; he never could have been commonplace, he never could have been less than excellent. But his conscience ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 1 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... basket. In packing them for the market we carefully reject small, poor bunches. The bunches selected are freed from all bruised berries. The stems of the bunches are then dipped in melted wax. After this treatment they are packed in layers of finely cut, soft chaff, made from clean, bright, fragrant oat straw. The chaff serves to keep the berries and clusters well apart, and also to keep out the air, which otherwise would soon wilt the fruit. Packed in this way the grapes reach ...
— Solaris Farm - A Story of the Twentieth Century • Milan C. Edson
... law courts, the King's Bench and the Court of Common Pleas, are of less direct historical value than those of the Chancery and the Exchequer. Extraordinarily bulky, they require a good deal of sifting to sort the wheat from the chaff. As yet a very small proportion of them has been printed, and few have even been calendared. A brief index of them has been compiled in the useful List of Plea Rolls (1894, P.R.O. Lists and Indexes, No. iv.). Of the various ...
— The History of England - From the Accession of Henry III. to the Death of Edward III. (1216-1377) • T.F. Tout
... The word (comperisse) used by Cicero in regard to the Catilinarian conspiracy; it had apparently become a subject of rather malignant chaff.] ...
— The Letters of Cicero, Volume 1 - The Whole Extant Correspodence in Chronological Order • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... the south are not thus easily gulled. Many of them, as the preceding pages show, have too much sense to be caught with chaff. ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... through the lower ground over the entire property, and even to the topmost storey of his house. He laid a light tramway across the widest part of his estate, and sent the labourers to and fro their work in trucks. The chaff-cutters, root-pulpers, the winnowing-machine—everything was driven by steam. Teams of horses and waggons seemed to be always going to the canal wharf for coal, which he ordered from the ...
— Hodge and His Masters • Richard Jefferies
... to do anything but hold the rescued horse on the Barrier, but the other four of us pulled might and main till we got the old horse out and lying on his side. The brash ice was so thin that, had a 'Killer' come up then he would have scattered it, and the lot of us into the water like chaff. I was sick with disappointment when I found that my horse could not rise. Titus said: 'He's done; we shall never get him up alive.' The cold water and shock on top of all his recent troubles, had been too much for the ...
— The Worst Journey in the World, Volumes 1 and 2 - Antarctic 1910-1913 • Apsley Cherry-Garrard
... all her cockaloft marlocks(3) 'Fore th' Almighty's mercy-seat. When I looked for her tears o' repentance, I jaloused(4) that I saw her laugh; An' she said that t' Powers o' Justice Would scatter my words like chaff. ...
— Songs of the Ridings • F. W. Moorman
... pint on the smallest provocation has not shed a tear these six weeks. The very learned gentleman who has cooled the natural heat of his gingery complexion in pools and fountains of law until he has become great in knotty arguments for term-time, when he poses the drowsy bench with legal "chaff," inexplicable to the uninitiated and to most of the initiated too, is roaming, with a characteristic delight in aridity and dust, about Constantinople. Other dispersed fragments of the same great palladium are to be found on the canals of Venice, at ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... water put on. This precaution is essentially necessary, in order to make clean bright malt, and should never be omitted. It is further right, at each watering, to skim off the surface of the water the light grain, chaff, and seed weeds, that are found floating on it; all this kind of trash, when suffered to remain in the steep, is a real injury to the malt, and considerably depreciates its value when offered for sale, and not less so when brewed. The depth of water over the barley in the steep ...
— The American Practical Brewer and Tanner • Joseph Coppinger
... against them, it was He who inflicted the punishment, 2 Sam. xxiv. 1, 15, 16. As He encampeth round about them who fear the Lord, so He is, in regard to the ungodly, like the wind which carries away the chaff, Ps. xxxiv. 8, xxxv. 5, 6.—In opposition to the objection raised by Baur,—"That, with the exception of the passage in Is. vi., nowhere, in the books composed before the Chaldee period, do angels appear to act as mediators in the execution of the divine commands,"—it is sufficient ...
— Christology of the Old Testament: And a Commentary on the Messianic Predictions, v. 1 • Ernst Wilhelm Hengstenberg
... life was at this time he no longer knew. She never spoke of it to him; never nowadays complained of loneliness. When he saw her she appeared to be cheerful. But this very cheerfulness made him uneasy, and at times, through the murk of the chaff of wheat, through the bellow of the Pit, and the crash of collapsing fortunes there reached him a suspicion that all was not ...
— The Pit • Frank Norris
... best known to herself Miss Hastings put off from day to day this final expedition until Blair began to chaff ...
— Their Mariposa Legend • Charlotte Herr
... when five spouts of flame burst from the thick shrubbery upon the opposite side of the creek; there was the simultaneous report of as many rifles, and five messengers of death went tearing among the Shawnees, mangling, killing and scattering them like chaff in ...
— The Riflemen of the Miami • Edward S. Ellis
... of Bali on fire, only a short distance outside the walls of Koolfu. When this was extinguished a new scene began, if possible, worse than the first. The wind had increased to a hurricane. Houses were blown down; Roofs of houses going along with the wind like chaff, the shady trees in the town bending and breaking; and in the intervals between the roaring of the thunder, nothing was heard but the war cry of the men and the screams of women and children, as no one knew ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish
... explanation by Herodotus of the position of the sun in winter: It moves to the south because of the cold which drives it into the warm parts of the heavens over Libya. Or listen to Saint Augustine's speculations: "Who gave to chaff such power to freeze that it preserves snow buried under it, and such power to warm that it ripens green fruit? Who can explain the strange properties of fire itself, which blackens all that it burns, though itself bright, and which, though of the most beautiful colors, ...
— The Varieties of Religious Experience • William James
... That to dyscerne I purpose not to dele Soo large by my wyll it longeth not to me were hit dreme or vysyon for your owne wele All that shall hit rede here rad or se Take thereof the best & let the worst be Try out the corne clene from the chaff And then may ye say ye ...
— The Assemble of Goddes • Anonymous
... uproar in a town, Before them everything went down; Some tore a ruff, and some a gown, 'Gainst one another justling; They flew about like chaff i' th' wind; For haste some left their masks behind; Some could not stay their gloves to find; ...
— The Sources and Analogues of 'A Midsummer-night's Dream' • Compiled by Frank Sidgwick
... once there rose so wild a yell Within that dark and narrow dell, As all the fiends from heaven that fell Had peal'd the banner-cry of Hell! Forth from the pass, in tumult driven, Like chaff before the wind of heaven, The archery appear; For life! for life! their plight they ply, And shriek, and shout, and battle-cry, And plaids and bonnets waving high, And broadswords flashing to the sky, Are maddening in the rear. Onward ...
— Sir Walter Scott - (English Men of Letters Series) • Richard H. Hutton
... had been in trouble. He had a red cotton handkerchief tied under his chin, and the genial humor that usually makes his aged face its dwelling-place had given way to an expression of grim melancholy. The young men about the office were inclined to chaff him, but his look ...
— Uncle Remus • Joel Chandler Harris
... abominably bad; the sheep we purchased were little better than London cats; and as no flour-mill is to be found in Abyssinia, far less any bakers, we were obliged to purchase the grain, beat it to remove the chaff, and grind it between two stones—not the flat grinding-stones of Egypt or India, but on a small curved piece of rock, where the grain is reduced to flour by means of a large hard kind of pebble held in the hand. It was brown bread with a vengeance. On the mountain ...
— A Narrative of Captivity in Abyssinia - With Some Account of the Late Emperor Theodore, - His Country and People • Henry Blanc
... in short, hundreds of pages of such "chanting" with its grain of wheat hid in a bushel of chaff. We refer to it here not because it is worth reading but to record the curious fact that many European critics hail it as typical American poetry, even while we wonder why anybody should regard it as either American ...
— Outlines of English and American Literature • William J. Long
... man or single woman go to the barn three times to winnow corn, an apparition resembling the future spouse will appear before the chaff is separated from the third sieveful of grain. The like result may be expected if one go unperceived to the peat-stack and sow a handful of hempseed, or travel three times round it. Another way of revealing one's husband or wife, is this:—Go to a ford through ...
— The Mysteries of All Nations • James Grant
... was getting tired, and bored with the whole business, and stifled with the close atmosphere—laden with every graveolent horror; besides, I had not escaped from London "chaff" and Parisian persiflage, to be mocked by a wild Virginian. So ...
— Border and Bastille • George A. Lawrence
... palm, brought hither from Ethiopia, has thriven satisfactorily. Repeated attempts have been made to cultivate wheat, but always unsuccessfully, though tried at different seasons of the year; as the ear would never fill, but always ran up to straw and chaff only. ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. II • Robert Kerr
... The only way in which the English now ever rise in revolution is under the symbol and leadership of Trabb's boy. What pikes and shillelahs were to the Irish populace, what guns and barricades were to the French populace, that chaff is to the English populace. It is their weapon, the use of which they really understand. It is the one way in which they can make a rich man feel uncomfortable, and they use it very justifiably for all it is worth. If they do not cut ...
— Appreciations and Criticisms of the Works of Charles Dickens • G. K. Chesterton
... Audrey, Sara, and Garth had joined the main party now, and Garth was shaking eager, outstretched hands and laughingly tossing back the shower of chaff which ...
— The Hermit of Far End • Margaret Pedler
... grinds away eight or nine hours a day, and turns out about the usual proportion of wheat and chaff. The time was when we thought it would be impossible to obtain good officers for colored regiments. Now we feel assured that they will have as good, if not better, officers than the white regiments. From sergeants applying for commissions we are able to select splendid ...
— The Citizen-Soldier - or, Memoirs of a Volunteer • John Beatty
... up with looks that were by no means pleasant. "There's enough of this chaff I have been called names, and blackguarded quite sufficiently for one sitting. I shall act as I please. I choose to take my own way, and if any gentleman stops me he has full warning." And he fell to tugging his mustachios, which were of ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray
... Was not some chaff going on one day about the heiresses boxed up in the west wing? Some one set you all down at a monstrous figure—a hundred thousand apiece. I wonder if he were green enough to believe it! Hastings! No, it can't ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... devil entered into him, and ruled his hand with a whirlwind power which he could no more withstand than the chaff can withstand the ...
— A Siren • Thomas Adolphus Trollope
... fortunes be, This or that man's fall I fear not; Him I love that loveth me, For the rest a pin I care not. You are sad when others chaff, And grow merry as they laugh; I that hate it, and am free, Laugh and weep ...
— Pastoral Poems by Nicholas Breton, - Selected Poetry by George Wither, and - Pastoral Poetry by William Browne (of Tavistock) • Nicholas Breton, George Wither, William Browne (of Tavistock)
... you must do," said Larry, "otherwise I'll not stand it. Give the colleen a chaff bed, blankets an' all other parts complate, along wid that slip of a pig. If you don't do this, Paddy Donovan, why we'll finish the whiskey an' ...
— Phelim O'toole's Courtship and Other Stories • William Carleton
... Harry, taking a reluctant leave, for he wished to thresh out the matter into absolute chaff, 'you know best, so I ...
— The Bishop's Secret • Fergus Hume
... a wager. The threshing crew were all from distant parts of the country, and no one knew who it was that had so recklessly matched his strength and staying power against John Gardner, the acknowledged champion for miles around. Bets were freely laid; rough, but good natured chaff flew from mouth to mouth; and now and then a hearty yell echoed over the field, but the two men in the contest were silent; ...
— The Calling Of Dan Matthews • Harold Bell Wright |
