"Chaff" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... first task: "In my barn are three hundred ricks of corn; by the morning light thou shalt have threshed and sifted them so that stalk lies by stalk, chaff by chaff, and ...
— Cossack Fairy Tales and Folk Tales • Anonymous
... did those red varmints spare us?" Gummidge cried hoarsely. "They melted away like chaff. What does ...
— The Cryptogram - A Story of Northwest Canada • William Murray Graydon
... you've missed, and that I've missed too. It's best to be philosophical over it, and clear out quietly and not gossip. Personally, I can do all the necessary ridicule myself. I'm not over-ambitious about spreading the tale, and getting indiscriminate chaff thrown in from all four quarters of ...
— The Recipe for Diamonds • Charles John Cutcliffe Wright Hyne
... proceedings in the metropolis. But the two townsmen don't seem to have seen much of each other in the big city. Their meetings were rare, and, so far as I can make out, for the most part accidental. But, as I said before, my oldest inhabitant is somewhat hazy, and excruciatingly prolix; his chaff is in the proportion of some fifty to one of his wheat. I've given a good deal of time to this case already, you see, Mr. Hawkehurst; and you'll find your work very smooth sailing compared to what ...
— Birds of Prey • M. E. Braddon
... a version of a moral sentence. The moral law lies at the centre of Nature and radiates to the circumference. What is a farm but a mute gospel? The chaff and the wheat, weeds and plants, blight, rain, insects, sun—it is a sacred emblem from the first furrow of spring to the last stack which the snow of winter overtakes in the fields. Who can guess how much firmness the sea-beaten rock ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books, Volume XIII. - Religion and Philosophy • Various
... summer's beauties thicken; Cuckoo, 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, ...
— A Celtic Psaltery • Alfred Perceval Graves
... breakfasted and dined with two old maids, their scrawny niece, and a muscular young stenographer who shouted militant suffrage and was not above throwing a brickbat whenever the occasion arrived. There was a barmaid or two at the pub where he lunched at noon; but chaff was the alpha and omega of this acquaintance. Thus, Thomas knew little or ...
— The Voice in the Fog • Harold MacGrath
... replied La Corne de St. Luc, scornfully, "that 'King's chaff is better than other people's corn, and that fish in the market is cheaper than fish in the sea!' I believe it, and can prove it to any ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... accomplished it. Captain D- rode, and had the best of it. On the road we passed three or four farms, at all which horses were GALLOPING OUT the grain, or men were winnowing it by tossing it up with wooden shovels to let the wind blow away the chaff. We did the twenty-four miles up and down the mountain roads in two hours and a half, with our valiant little pair of horses; it is incredible how they go. We stopped at a nice cottage on the hillside belonging to a ci-devant slave, ...
— Letters from the Cape • Lady Duff Gordon
... so wild a yell Within that dark and narrow dell, As all the fiends, from heaven that fell, Had pealed the banner-cry of hell! 430 Forth from the pass in tumult driven, Like chaff before the wind of heaven, The archery appear; For life! for life! their flight they ply— And shriek, and shout, and battle-cry, 435 And plaids and bonnets waving high, And broadswords flashing to the sky, Are maddening in the rear. Onward they drive, ...
— Lady of the Lake • Sir Walter Scott
... and he got them; but, as it says in the narrative, 'the king came unto him, and distressed him, but strengthened him not.' He helped Ahaz at first. He scattered the armies of which the king of Judah was afraid like chaff, with his fierce and disciplined onset. And then, having driven them off the bleeding prey, he put his own paw upon it, and growled 'Mine!' And where he struck his claws there was little more hope of life for ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... you—while you are still in a position to listen? But if you care to take my advice, next time you will see that the shutter of that hagioscope, or whatever they call it, is locked, as such elevated delights 'a deux' are apt to be misinterpreted by the vulgar. And now, there's enough of this chaff and nonsense. I want to speak to you about the executorship and matters connected with ...
— Stella Fregelius • H. Rider Haggard
... soil, thus maintaining its supply of soluble silicates, and increasing its amount of organic matter. After taking the seed heads from the standing straw and grasses, it thrashes them, blows out the chaff, separates the different kinds of seeds, and discharges them into bags ready for market. It consists of a car containing the machinery; to this may be attached any required number of horses. The inventor affirms that it has harvested ...
— The Elements of Agriculture - A Book for Young Farmers, with Questions Prepared for the Use of Schools • George E. Waring
... wuz good to us kids—when we pulled at his fur Or twisted his tail he would never demur; He seemed to enjoy all our play an' our chaff, For his tongue 'u'd hang out an' he'd laff an' he'd laff; An' once, when the Hobart boy fell through the ice, He wuz drug clean ashore ...
— Love-Songs of Childhood • Eugene Field
... and the rumble of heavy gun-carriages fell upon his drowsy ear, and in a moment he was wide awake, the cards were dropped, he sprang to his feet, then rushed away to his quarters and mounted his horse with all speed; but at that time his soldiers were being driven by the Americans as chaff before ...
— Elsie's Vacation and After Events • Martha Finley
... save us both. Listen, child; God is going to make a short work on earth. We shall both see the end of this reign of sin. It is well if you take wheat to the mill, but what if you fetch the miller chaff instead?" ...
— The Lions of the Lord - A Tale of the Old West • Harry Leon Wilson
... that he could not have come to a better place to get all that he wanted out of everybody. He put away his saddle, and the saddlebags and sword, in a rough old sea-chest with a padlock to it, and having a sprinkle of chaff at the bottom. Then he calmly took the key, as if the place were his, gave his horse a rackful of long-cut grass, and presented himself, with a lordly aspect, at the front door of the silent inn. Here he made ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... on the grown plants is that of topping; this is the planter's hay harvest; the tops serve for chaff, for dry food instead of hay, for fodder. They are cut off above the ears, collected by a cart going along the intervals or roads, and stacked for winter use. Mr. Cobbett's harvest of tops was not so successful as it might have been: this arose ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 14, No. 384, Saturday, August 8, 1829. • Various
... since spent the fifteen pounds. The twenty-five shillings he had paid for Finn loomed larger in his recollection now than the fifteen pounds he had received; particularly after a dose of the boss's chaff. ...
— Finn The Wolfhound • A. J. Dawson
... Hence the dearness of necessaries for life, because the tenants cannot afford to pay such extravagant rates for land (which they must take, or go a-begging) without raising the price of cattle, and of corn, although they should live upon chaff. Hence our increase of buildings in this City, because workmen have nothing to do but employ one another, and one half of them are infallibly undone. Hence the daily increase of bankers, who may be a necessary evil in a trading country, but so ruinous in ours, who for their private advantage ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Vol. VII - Historical and Political Tracts—Irish • Jonathan Swift
... activity in attempting to remove the figure. He knew that the selectmen would be obliged to clear the street of the obstruction, but a display of loyalty to the king might possibly inure to his benefit. Boys on their way to school began to chaff the informer. ...
— Daughters of the Revolution and Their Times - 1769 - 1776 A Historical Romance • Charles Carleton Coffin
... calm and unworried, was not nearly so tired as Louis who made himself hot and dissipated much energy in wondering when they would get there—wherever "there" might be. He had started the day whistling and gay; by ten o'clock he was in the depths of despair and took Marcella's attempts to chaff him as insults and injuries. As soon as they reached a patch of stunted bushes she decreed a halt and a rest. They filled the billy from their water-bottles and, making a fire with the scorched scrub, had it ...
— Captivity • M. Leonora Eyles
... cannot undo it. What we have to do now is to fight for our lives. Even if these poor devils have right on their side, it is not a matter to stop and discuss, now. So keep your breath for fighting. I doubt not that we shall soon scatter them like chaff." ...
— By Right of Conquest - Or, With Cortez in Mexico • G. A. Henty
... we were left galloping, Joris and I, Past Loos and past Tongres, no cloud in the sky; The broad sun above laughed a pitiless laugh, 'Neath our foot broke the brittle bright stubble like chaff; Till over by Dalhem a dome-tower sprang white, And 'Gallop,' cried Joris, 'for Aix ...
— The Children's Garland from the Best Poets • Various
... me to a good deal of chaff from my cousin and Captain Raggerton; but I often wished that the mirror had not been placed there, for it happened over and over again that, going to the cupboard hurriedly, and not thinking of the mirror, I got quite ...
— John Thorndyke's Cases • R. Austin Freeman
... enveloped the little nation, and when the snake was on the point of seizing it, a hurricane arose from the four corners of the world, covering the snake as clothes cover a man, and blew it to bits. The fragments scattered hither and thither like chaff before the wind, until not a speck of the monster was to be found anywhere. Then the cloud and the darkness vanished from above the little nation, the splendor of the sun again ...
— THE LEGENDS OF THE JEWS VOLUME IV BIBLE TIMES AND CHARACTERS - FROM THE EXODUS TO THE DEATH OF MOSES • BY LOUIS GINZBERG
... the logic-chaff is all laid long since, the question is substantial, not formal. If the Teutsch Ritterdom was actually at this time DEAD, actually stumbling about as a mere galvanized Lie beginning to be putrid,—then, sure enough, it behooved that somebody should bury it, to avoid pestilential ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. III. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—The Hohenzollerns In Brandenburg—1412-1718 • Thomas Carlyle
... look of earnest simplicity. "I shook and trembled pretty well, but the more I tried to grow pale, the more I grew red in the face, and when I thought of the six broad-shouldered, raw-boned lads in the camp, and how easy they would have made these jumping villains fly like chaff if they only knew the fix I was in, I gave a frown that had well-nigh showed I was shamming. Hows'ever, what with shakin' a little more and givin' one or two most awful groans, I managed to deceive them. Then I said I was hunter to a party of white men that were travellin' from ...
— The Young Fur Traders • R.M. Ballantyne
... another note from Agatha, about sugar-cards this time, but with a postscript which said, "It isn't like you to chaff me, James. I don't see that there is anything particularly funny about George having got the Vacuum Cleaner which he promised me ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Dec. 19, 1917 • Various
... of the law concerning baptism, gave himself no further trouble. He had for a long time known—for, by the power of the life in him, he had gathered from the Scriptures the finest of the wheat, where so many of every sect, great church and little church, gather only the husks and chaff—that the only baptism of any avail is the washing of the fresh birth, and the making new by that breath of God, which, breathed into man's nostrils, first made of him a living soul. When a man knows this, potentially ...
— Mary Marston • George MacDonald
... her head, twisting a cane and bargaining with an Isvostchick—this last because, only the evening before, he had told them with great pride of his cleverness in that especial direction. The fun was good-natured enough, but it was, as Russian chaff generally is, quite regardless of sensitive feelings. Nina chaffed everybody and nobody minded, but Bohun did not know this, and minded very much indeed. He showed during dinner that evening that he was hurt, and sat over his cabbage soup very ...
— The Secret City • Hugh Walpole
... flame which issued out and came from before him, a convenient distance betwixt him and them, as betwixt the judge and the prisoners at the bar (Mal. 3:2, 3; Dan. 7:9, 10). 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" (Matt. 3:12; 13:30; Mal. 4:1). And with that, the bottomless pit opened, just whereabouts I stood; out of the mouth of which there came, in an abundant manner, smoke and coals of fire, with hideous noises. It ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... grandsires old, To whom this simple tale I told, It seemed to them such perfect chaff That its bare memory ...
— Roumanian Fairy Tales • Various
... he relented so far as to continue his visits as before; but he made it clear that he only came to see the Master and hear of Owd Bob's doings. On these occasions he loved best to sit on the window-sill outside the kitchen, and talk and chaff with Tammas and the men in the yard, feigning an uneasy bashfulness when reference made to Bessie Bolstock. And after sitting thus for some time, he would half turn, look over his shoulder, and remark in indifferent tones to the girl within: "Oh, good-evenin'! I forgot ...
— Bob, Son of Battle • Alfred Ollivant
... f., straw; — lgre, chaff. paisible, peaceful. paix, f., peace. palais, m., palace. ple, pale. pleur, f., pallor, whiteness. plir, to turn pale. par, by. paratre, to appear. pareil, similar, like; — , like unto. parer, to adorn, deck. parfait, perfect. parler, to speak. parmi, ...
— Esther • Jean Racine
... food was abominably bad; the sheep we purchased were little better than London cats; and as no flour-mill is to be found in Abyssinia, far less any bakers, we were obliged to purchase the grain, beat it to remove the chaff, and grind it between two stones—not the flat grinding-stones of Egypt or India, but on a small curved piece of rock, where the grain is reduced to flour by means of a large hard kind of pebble held in the hand. It was brown ...
— A Narrative of Captivity in Abyssinia - With Some Account of the Late Emperor Theodore, - His Country and People • Henry Blanc
... occurred: a man who pretends to be a missionary for Israel, and who brings forward the apocryphal book of Enoch, has been among my people in my absence, and many have been led after him. How humbling is this to them and to me! Lord, what is man! This may be blessed, 1st, to discover chaff which we thought to be wheat; 2nd, to lead some to greater distrust of themselves, when their eyes are opened: 3rd, to teach me the need of solidly instructing those who seem to have grace in ...
— The Biography of Robert Murray M'Cheyne • Andrew A. Bonar
... that word describes a condition to which hardly any series of misfortunes could have reduced the Duchess of Omnium,—but inclined to quiescence by feelings of penitence. She was less disposed than heretofore to attack him with what the world of yesterday calls "chaff," or with what the world of to-day calls "cheek." She would not admit to herself that she was cowed;—but the greatness of the game and the high interest attached to her husband's position did in some degree dismay her. Nevertheless ...
— The Prime Minister • Anthony Trollope
... 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 see—"That any ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, November 28, 1891 • Various
... easily perceived, but that of one's self is difficult to perceive; a man winnows his neighbor's faults like chaff, but his own fault he hides, as a cheat hides the bad ...
— Sacred Books of the East • Various
... it amusing to chaff me about us introducing the girl as Miss Smith," said Fyne, going surly in a moment. "He said that perhaps if he had heard her real name from the first it might have restrained him. As it was, he made the discovery too late. Asked me to tell Zoe this ...
— Chance • Joseph Conrad
... each had found out about himself he wondered how it had gone with his chums, I halloo'd to Johnny Randall, and he halloo'd back that he was dead, but that Trotter was living. That's the way of it. A good deal of chaff, of course. By that time the veil was there, and getting thicker, and we lined up on our right sides. Then I could only see the living ones in shadow and hear their voices from a distance. They sang out to us for a while; but just at first, father, ...
— Echoes of the War • J. M. Barrie
... dispute, by which time he was a good deal exhausted by violence and vociferation, he used to blow out his breath like a Whale. This I supposed was a relief to his lungs; and seemed in him to be a contemptuous mode of expression, as if he had made the arguments of his opponent fly like chaff before the wind. ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell
... which sustained your soul through many generations contains grain, but also chaff. In your treasure hoards there ...
— An Obscure Apostle - A Dramatic Story • Eliza Orzeszko
... tiresomely fussy and maddeningly disingenuous. In half an hour Lois had learned all she cared to know of the family history. She merely dipped into the bin, brought up a handful of wheat, blew away the chaff, eyed the remaining kernels with a sophisticated eye, and ...
— Otherwise Phyllis • Meredith Nicholson
... bit more chaff, and the end of it was that I promised to buy one, though, between you and me, I never meant to. However, when market-day come round, she would go with me, and never a bit of peace did she give me till she'd driven ...
— Mad Shepherds - and Other Human Studies • L. P. Jacks
... a pleasing appearance the seed heads must be gathered before they become the least bit weather-beaten. This is as essential as to have the seed ripe. Next, the seed must be perfectly clean, free from chaff, bits of broken stems and other debris. Much depends upon the manner of handling as well as upon harvesting. Care must be taken in threshing to avoid bruising the seeds, particularly the oily ones, by pounding too hard or by tramping upon them. Threshing should never be done in ...
— Culinary Herbs: Their Cultivation Harvesting Curing and Uses • M. G. Kains
... of my book to the last. I am not aware of a single argument put forward which is not a bona fide argument, although, perhaps, sometimes admitting of a humorous side. If a grain of corn looks like a piece of chaff, I confess I prefer it occasionally to something which looks like a grain, but which turns out to be a piece of chaff only. There is no lack of matter of this description going about in some very decorous volumes; I have, therefore, endeavoured, for a third time, to furnish ...
— Life and Habit • Samuel Butler
... taking shape when young Strangeways, who was willing to exchange chaff with Gussie Moy, but was gentleman enough to feel the indecorum of the whole thing, moved across to his sister, and muttered, "I say, Con, they are getting up that stupid trick of election of a queen of beauty. ...
— The Three Brides • Charlotte M. Yonge
... 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 have a ...
— The Assemble of Goddes • Anonymous
... inclined for the walk from Rye. The little train was nearly empty, and Joanna had a carriage to herself. She settled herself comfortably in a corner—it was good to be coming home, even as things were. The day was very sunny and still. The blue sky was slightly misted—a yellow haze which smelt of chaff and corn smudged together the sky and the marsh and the distant sea. The farms with their red and yellow roofs were like ripe apples lying ...
— Joanna Godden • Sheila Kaye-Smith
... this chaff the one grain of truth was that Counsellor, released by Unziar on the authority of a telegram from Rallywood, had arrived by the first train in the morning and had at once proceeded to the British ...
— A Modern Mercenary • Kate Prichard and Hesketh Vernon Hesketh-Prichard
... us where we stood! Full many a trembling hand that set a flint Fell lifeless ere it clicked: yet silent all— Save groans of wounded—till our rods struck home; Then, flashing fire for fire, forward we rushed And scattered them like chaff before the wind. The King's Own turned their left; the Forty-ninth, At point of bay'net, pushed the charge, and took Their guns, they fighting valiantly, but wild, Having no rallying point, their leaders both Lying the while all snug at Jemmy ...
— Laura Secord, the heroine of 1812. - A Drama. And Other Poems. • Sarah Anne Curzon
... camp-fires of pine-knots in the forests, but their arms were in order, and they stepped out with the sturdy swing that marked all our Western troops. Our men were in new uniforms we had lately drawn from the quartermaster, and the tatterdemalions who had made the march to the sea were disposed to chaff us as if we were new recruits or pampered garrison troops. "Well, sonnies!" a regimental wag cried out, "do they issue butter to you regularly now?" "Oh, yes! to be sure!" was the instant retort; "but we ...
— Military Reminiscences of the Civil War V2 • Jacob Dolson Cox
... were humorously called, were taken up with an enthusiasm which burned so fiercely that it soon expended itself, and its last flickering embers were soon extinguished by the ironic chaff and banter to which ...
— From John O'Groats to Land's End • Robert Naylor and John Naylor
... keep things lively in this vale of human tears; An' may I live a thousan', too,—a thousan' less a day, For I shouldn't like to be on earth to hear you'd passed away. And when it comes your time to go you'll need no Latin chaff Nor biographic data put in your epitaph; But one straight line of English and of truth will let folks know The homage 'nd the gratitude 'nd reverence they owe; You'll need no epitaph but this: "Here sleeps the man who run That ...
— A Little Book of Western Verse • Eugene Field
... blind 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 undefeated old sportsman. ...
— The Worst Journey in the World, Volumes 1 and 2 - Antarctic 1910-1913 • Apsley Cherry-Garrard
... the ingenuity of angry men can devise, because he is exercising that ingenuity the possession of which on his part is the foundation of fox-hunting. There you will remain, nursing your horse, listening to chaff, and hoping. But even when the fox does go, your ...
— Hunting Sketches • Anthony Trollope
... pale-faces as the natural friends and benefactors of his species. Until within the last few years, no pen has ventured to write impartially of the Indian character, and no one has attempted to separate the wheat from the chaff in the generally received accounts which have come down to us from our forefathers. The fact is that the Indian is very much what his white brother has made him. The red man was the original possessor of this continent, the settlement, ...
— Canadian Notabilities, Volume 1 • John Charles Dent
... good a fellow not to put up with a little mild chaff of that sort. He looked at the horizon, where the faint streaks of another dawn were beginning ...
— The Strange Case of Mortimer Fenley • Louis Tracy
... lashing heels of the grey horse. The poor brute was stung by degrees into a frenzy. With a wild leap, in which his four legs seemed to meet under his belly, he pitched his master clean over the crupper and, as a wind through chaff, swept through the people at a gallop and off along the ...
— The Blue Pavilions • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... soften, or to dissimulate, or to deny every fact which is or which appears unfavourable to their cause. He does it in order that it may be understood that where the powerlessness of men to effect a cure becomes manifest, God interposes in order to sift on His threshing-floor the chaff from the wheat, and to consume it with the fire of the catastrophes which are only His judgments and remedies. Secondly, I could not, as a historian, present the effects without going back to their causes; and it was therefore my duty, as it is ...
— The History of Freedom • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton
... men of sin prevail! Once more the prince of this world lifts his horn: Judah is scattered, as the chaff is borne ...
— International Miscellany of Literature, Art and Science, Vol. 1, - No. 3, Oct. 1, 1850 • Various
... bad authorities; but certainly such when they delivered very improbable events;" 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 ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... do it? Voila!' and, rising suddenly to an unexpected height, Matilda waved the umbrella like a baton, cried 'Allez!' in a stern voice, and the children fled like chaff before ...
— Shawl-Straps - A Second Series of Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag • Louisa M. Alcott
... an infinite deal of nothing, more than any man in all Venice. His reasons are as two grains of wheat hid in, two bushels of chaff: you shall seek all day ere you find them, and when you have them they are ...
— The Merchant of Venice • William Shakespeare [Craig, Oxford edition]
... (edible grains); granule, pellet. Associated Words: granary, sheaf, shock, farina, graniferous, chaff, glume, grits, groats, grist, Ceres, flail, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... appeals to alleged utterances of the Lord of which he had been informed by Papias (V. 33. 3, 4). The wheat will be so fat that lions lying peacefully beside the cattle will be able to feed themselves even on the chaff (V. 33. 3, 4). Such and similar promises are everywhere to be understood in a literal sense. Irenaeus here expressly argues against any figurative interpretation (ibid, and V. 35). He therefore adopted the whole Jewish eschatology, ...
— History of Dogma, Volume 2 (of 7) • Adolph Harnack
... apparent fatigue, for he had really great powers of endurance and was not sufficiently intoxicated to enfeeble them. The three men in the wagon kept a short distance in the rear, giving him occasional friendly "chaff" or encouragement, as the spirit moved them. Suddenly—in the very middle of the roadway, not a dozen yards from them, and with their eyes full upon him—the man seemed to stumble, pitched headlong forward, uttered a terrible ...
— Present at a Hanging and Other Ghost Stories • Ambrose Bierce
... recognized as the product of a long line of erroneous theory and zigzag development, but the wheat has largely been sifted and the chaff thrown to the winds of antiquity. Its therapeutic and psychological value is duly ...
— Three Thousand Years of Mental Healing • George Barton Cutten
... explanation of that theft, or I'm a sinner!' cried Dave, jumping up and beginning to pace the floor nervously. 'Carl, old man, I'll never chaff your "bump of imagination," after to-day. I'm ready to begin work on ...
— Against Odds - A Detective Story • Lawrence L. Lynch
... but themselves and the Abyssinians, more than they do the Muslims, and dislike them more; the procession of the Holy Ghost question divides us with the Gulf of Jehannum. The gardener of this house is a Copt, such a nice fellow, and he and Omar chaff one another about religion with the utmost good humour; indeed they are seldom touchy with the Moslems. There is a pretty little man called Michail, a Copt, vakeel to M. Mounier. I wish I could draw him to show a perfect specimen of the ancient Egyptian ...
— Letters from Egypt • Lucie Duff Gordon
... right— night brands and chokes, as if destruction broke over furze and stone and crop of myrtle-shoot and field-wort, destroyed with flakes of iron, the bracken-stone, where tender roots were sown blight, chaff, and wash of ...
— The Last Harvest • John Burroughs
... her eyes to debasing forms of worship, to subterranean caverns of gross superstition, and lurking demons of cruelty and despair. While Nevil was imbibing impressions of Indian Art, Lilamani was secretly weighing and probing the Indian spirit that inspired it; sifting the grain from the chaff—a process closely linked with her personal life; because, for India, religion and life ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver
... man's fault-finding was more of the nature of genial chaff, as when we affectionately laugh at those we love. There was nearly always a certain good humour about his diatribes, which now is lacking. In its stead can be noted a bitterness, a distinct animus. Men apparently take with an ill-grace women's rebellion ...
— Modern marriage and how to bear it • Maud Churton Braby
... about this time that I noticed the beginning of the monarch's serious attachment for me. Till then it had been only playful badinage, good-humoured teasing, a sort of society play, in which the King was rehearsing his part as a lover. I was at length bound to admit that chaff of this sort might end in something serious, and his Majesty begged me to let him have La Valliere for ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... and begging for a petite salete de vingt sous, in the cant of the Paris gutters. Or, from an analysis of the character of some conspicuous personage he had known, he would break into an indecent song, or pass to an interchange of mildewed chaff with Gigolette. ...
— Grey Roses • Henry Harland
... but it will bear to be said again, not once but many times: every defeat in such a fight is a step toward victory, taken in the right spirit. In the end you will come out ahead. The power of the biggest boss is like chaff in your hands. You can see his finish. And he knows it. Hence, even he will treat you with respect. However he try to bluff you, he is the one who is afraid. The ink was not dry upon Bishop Potter's arraignment of Tammany bestiality before Richard Croker ...
— The Making of an American • Jacob A. Riis
... northern visitors at the south are not thus easily gulled. Many of them, as the preceding pages show, have too much sense to be caught with chaff. ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... most important articles of the Californian culinary apparatus. While the muchacha ground, or rather crushed, the wheat between the stones, the ranchera, with a platter-shaped basket, cleansed it of dust, chaff, and all impure particles, by tossing the grain in the basket. The flour being manufactured and sifted through a cedazo, or coarse sieve, the labour of kneading the dough was performed by the muchacha. An iron plate was then placed over a rudely-constructed ...
— What I Saw in California • Edwin Bryant
... precious, I cannot afford to lose it. We accept men's flattery and expect their compliments, because it is a traditional homage that survives the chivalry that inspired it; but we don't mistake chaff for wheat, and the purest, sweetest, noblest and holiest friendship in life is that of a true, good woman. The perfume is as different as the stale odor of a cigar, from the breath of the honeysuckle that bleached all night under crystal dew, floats in at your window like a message from heaven, ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... received them very graciously, and resolved to make the Author a suitable Return for the Trouble he had been at in collecting them. In order to this, he set before him a Sack of Wheat, as it had been just threshed out of the Sheaf. He then bid him pick out the Chaff from among the Corn, and lay it aside by it self. The Critick applied himself to the Task with great Industry and Pleasure, and after having made the due Separation, was presented by Apollo with the Chaff ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... in front. She was not shopping, save in sweet imagination. This was her theater, and she was fain to make the show last as long as possible. Her absorbent gaze saw everything. Yet it was selective too, for it passed swiftly over the chaff of the shabby and fixed itself on the wheat of the properly gowned. Sometimes she wove romances about her swiftly-disappearing actors, romances not of heart and soul but of garments, of splendors and of money; ...
— Jewel Weed • Alice Ames Winter
... subject; they are storehouses of material, not digested treatises. True it is, that their great size sometimes defeats its object—the valuable portion of the material is sometimes buried under the comparatively worthless heap that surrounds it—the golden grains lost amid the chaff. But in a case of this kind, the error of redundancy is one on the safe side; let a subject in all its bearings be thoroughly and fully brought up, and it is the fault or failing of him who sets about the study of it, if he is appalled at the amount of information ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 446 - Volume 18, New Series, July 17, 1852 • Various
... to keep his hand in that he adopted a tone of serious chaff to Mr. Norbury, such as some people think a well-chosen one towards children, to their great embarrassment. He replied to that most responsible of butlers with some pomposity of manner. "The question before the house," said he—and paused to enjoy a perversion of speech—"the ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... wretched questions as, 'Will it pay to follow the Master?' or such thoughts as, 'If I give myself fully to God, perhaps I shall have to suffer the loss of many things I hold dear; people will be down upon me, and chaff me, and, perhaps, persecute me; and, besides, I really do want to make a little money for myself and my family, and I must not be righteous over-much'; when, I say, men or women have cast aside all such thoughts, ...
— Standards of Life and Service • T. H. Howard
... characteristics. The clatter of tongues is incessant. A fire of jokes and jeers, of saucy questions and more saucy retorts—of what, in fact, in the humble and unpoetic, but expressive vernacular, is called "chaff"—is kept up with a vigour which seldom flags, except now and then, when the but-end of a song, or the twanging close of a chorus, strikes the general fancy, and procures for the morceau a lusty encore. Meantime, the master wine-grower moves observingly from rank ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 434 - Volume 17, New Series, April 24, 1852 • Various
... the most necessary as well as beneficial practices a man can have is to take fifteen minutes to an hour each day and devote the time to sizing up things, to planning the day's work for the morrow, to threshing the wheat from the chaff, to reviewing the accomplishments ...
— Dollars and Sense • Col. Wm. C. Hunter
... Ned! You give me the shivers. My heart yearns toward that beautiful young creature, and I believe she is as innocent as my baby. It is a burning shame to send her here, unless there is no doubt of her guilt. Judge Dent is too shrewd an old fox to be baited with chaff, and I am satisfied from what he told you, that he believes her statement. There is nothing I would not do to comfort her, but I would rather have my ears boxed than witness her suffering. The day I carried to her a change of clothes, until her own could be washed, ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... ascend to Him whose wisdom is absolute, whose decrees are fixed and immutable, whom none can withstand, imploring that he will make your enemies eat the dust, that they may vanish as the morning dew, and flee away as chaff before the wind; that your throne may endure for ever, and that all who live under your sceptre may have peace, sitting under their own vine and their own fig-tree, none daring or wishing to ...
— Diaries of Sir Moses and Lady Montefiore, Volume I • Sir Moses Montefiore
... 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 which a funeral ...
— The Mysteries of All Nations • James Grant
... other difficulties to conquer. She found the studio insupportable with its permanent atmosphere of tobacco smoke, an impenetrable cloud for her, in which the discussions on art, the analysis of ideas, were lost and which infallibly gave her a headache. "Chaff," above all, frightened her. As a foreigner, as at one time a divinity of the green-room, brought up on out-of-date compliments, on gallantries a la Dorat, she did not understand it, and would feel terrified in the presence of the wild exaggerations, the paradoxes of these Parisians ...
— The Nabob • Alphonse Daudet
... shade fell on the good-humoured countenance of Mr. Gunnill, but it was chased away almost immediately by Sims reminding him of the chaff of ...
— Odd Craft, Complete • W.W. Jacobs
... and kettles, to say nothing of the whisky-keg, and general debris of a finished feast, and at the same time heard the steady, drenching rain descending round us, he might have wondered at the laughter, fun, and chaff in which ...
— A Trip to Manitoba • Mary FitzGibbon
... 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 ...
— The Young Rajah • W.H.G. Kingston
... "Don't chaff, Bob. Tell me, there's a good chap. You came on then in search of us as soon as you knew that you couldn't ...
— The Black Bar • George Manville Fenn
... time for a late dinner, full of chaff and laughter, and apparently still enchanted with each other's society. Nelson Vanderlyn beamed on his wife, sent his daughter off to bed with a kiss, and leaning back in his armchair before the fruit-and-flower-laden table, declared that he'd never spent a jollier ...
— The Glimpses of the Moon • Edith Wharton
... poet at Oxford, Sholto: you mix your metaphors most dreadfully. Dont be angry with me: I understand what you mean; and I am very sorry. I say flippant things because I must. How can one meet seriousness in modern society except by chaff?" ...
— The Irrational Knot - Being the Second Novel of His Nonage • George Bernard Shaw
... the leaves of the beech tree are collected in autumn, before they have been injured by the frost, and are used instead of feathers for beds; and mattresses formed of them are said to be preferable to those either of straw or chaff. ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. XIX. No. 540, Saturday, March 31, 1832 • Various
... preparations for the future were seriously begun; and now the drama proceeded apace, with Barnes, the moving spirit. Despite his assertion that he was no scholar, the manager's mind was the storehouse of a hundred plays, and in that depository were many bags of gold and many bags of chaff. From this accumulation he drew freely, frankly, in the light-fingered fashion of master playwrights ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham
... with her. Sometimes she would look at him wonderingly, and once she said: "Alford, it is hard for me to believe that you have passed through all that you have. Day after day passes, and you seem perfectly content with my quiet, monotonous life. You read to me my old favorite authors. You chaff me and Aunt Sheba about our little domestic economies. Beyond a hasty run through the morning paper you scarcely look at the daily journals. You are content with one vigorous walk each day. Indeed you seem to have settled down and adapted yourself to my old woman's life for ...
— His Sombre Rivals • E. P. Roe
... profoundly, weigh the matter well in your minds, and you will perceive, that your love of the sex is a love extra-conjugial, and quite different from conjugial love; the latter being as distinct from the former, as wheat is from chaff, or rather as the human principle is from the bestial. If you should ask the females in heaven, 'What is love extra-conjugial?' I take upon me to say, their reply will be, 'What do you mean? What do you ...
— The Delights of Wisdom Pertaining to Conjugial Love • Emanuel Swedenborg
... fairly caught. When this happens, the trap, which must be of the finest make, is never touched with the bare hand, but, after being thoroughly smoked and greased, is set in a bed of dry ashes or chaff in a remote field, where the fox has been emboldened to dig for several successive nights ...
— Winter Sunshine • John Burroughs
... said to himself, If the laborers have not straw wherewith to attemper the clay, but only stubble and chaff gathered from the fields, will not the bricks be ill-made and lack strength and symmetry of form, so that the wall made thereof will not be true and strong, or fitly joined together? For the lack of a little straw it may be that the palace of the great king will fall upon him ...
— Bricks Without Straw • Albion W. Tourgee
... in good humor; stretching himself out on my sofa he began to chaff me about my appearance, which indicated, he said, that I had not slept well. As I was little disposed to indulge in pleasantry I begged ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... "I," cried out several of the seamen, laughing and passing all sorts of chaff about the expedition; and soon there were more than enough offers to man the jolly-boat twice over if all had ...
— The Wreck of the Nancy Bell - Cast Away on Kerguelen Land • J. C. Hutcheson
... the bowling, and hit wildly, with amazing luck in having catches missed. At last, however, he snicked a ball into cover-point's hands, and retired, amid great applause, having made forty-three. The remaining Cunjee wickets went as chaff before the wind, and ...
— Mates at Billabong • Mary Grant Bruce
... kissed the young man, aside, was, or looked to be, rather lover-like than maternal. Afterward, on several similar occasions, I was much struck by the genre picture they made; the youth had the great black eyes and black curling hair of his mother. The drivers used to chaff the fellow unceasingly about Young Moll and the care she took of him, all of which he bore silently, with a troubled, resentful eye; though, otherwise, a great, noble-hearted boy, generous, and inclined ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 10 • Various
... by one, gathered away from the face of sin, and "no man layeth it to heart," as is spoken in Isaiah 57, 1. But when God, in this way, has shaken out the wheat and gathered the grain in its place, what, think you, shall be the future of the chaff? Nothing else but to be burned with inextinguishable fire, Mt 13, 42. This shall be the lot of ...
— Commentary on Genesis, Vol. II - Luther on Sin and the Flood • Martin Luther
... but in the evil reputation of the room. Its bad name dated back far beyond the occupation of my family. Captain May laughed at my mistrust, and, as you know, he came here, contrary to my express wishes, in order that he might chaff me next morning over my superstition. He wanted 'to clear its ...
— The Grey Room • Eden Phillpotts
... a terrible squall; here and 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
... a fiddlestick's end! I am too old a bird to be caught with such chaff as that. No, I must have it down in black and white. See, here is a paper that I want you to fill up and sign before I'll open my mouth on the subject." So Mrs. Peck drew out of her black bag a paper containing ...
— Mr. Hogarth's Will • Catherine Helen Spence
... be helped! What a blessing is wealth when rightly used! True society looks inwardly and not outwardly, and all that does not belong to it falls away as does wheat fanned by a sheet; the trash and chaff ...
— See America First • Orville O. Hiestand
... blame North and Shelburne for not acting the part of Good Samaritans. He, at least, may throw the first stone who has always taken the trouble to sift the grain from the chaff amidst all the begging letters which he has received, and who has never lamented that his benevolence outran his discretion. But there was one man in England at the time who had the rare union of qualities necessary for Crabbe's ...
— Hours in a Library - New Edition, with Additions. Vol. II (of 3) • Leslie Stephen
... 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 little about ...
— Man and Wife • Wilkie Collins
... were indeed proof against all manner of friction. The continual pain I felt made me fretful, and my peevishness was increased by the mortification of my pride in seeing those miserable wretches, whom a hard gale of wind would have scattered through the air like chaff, bear those toils with alacrity under which I was ready ...
— The Adventures of Roderick Random • Tobias Smollett
... shafts of whose tall elms We may discern the thresher at his task, Thump after thump resounds the constant flail That seems to swing uncertain, and yet falls Full on the destined ear. Wide flies the chaff, The rustling straw sends up a fragrant mist Of atoms, sparkling in ...
— Cowper • Goldwin Smith
... extraordinary a "natural wit"; that Shakespeare betrayed very early signs of poetic genius; that he paid annual visits to his native place when his career was at its height; that he loved at tavern meetings in the town to chaff John Combe, the richest of his fellow-townsmen, who was accused of usurious practices; and finally, that he died possessed ...
— Shakespeare and the Modern Stage - with Other Essays • Sir Sidney Lee
... and Lesbia gave herself up to the amusement of the hour, and talked and chaffed as she had learned to talk and chaff in one brief season, holding her own ...
— Phantom Fortune, A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... moves on; let none essay To block it in its onward course, Lest they like chaff be swept away As by a supernatural force; For laggards progress does not wait— Keep pace with ...
— Gleams of Sunshine - Optimistic Poems • Joseph Horatio Chant
... mean chaff," retorted Duncan. "But I say, Williams," he continued, laughing, "you did look so funny ...
— Eric, or Little by Little • Frederic W. Farrar
... The "drum ecclesiastic" of the seventeenth century would sound a mere lullaby to us. Here and there a priest or a belated dissenting minister may amuse himself by threshing out once more the old chaff of dead and buried dogmas. There are people who can argue gravely about baptismal regeneration or apostolical succession. Such doctrines were once alive, no doubt, because they represented the form in which certain still ...
— Social Rights and Duties, Volume I (of 2) - Addresses to Ethical Societies • Sir Leslie Stephen
... ditty the while, though one hears by the strained voice that she is nearly out of breath. When the husks are pretty well loosened, the grain is put into a large plate-shaped basket and tossed so as to bring the chaff to one side, the vessel is then heaved downwards and a little horizontal motion given to it which throws the refuse out; the partially cleared grain is now returned to the mortar, again pounded and cleared of husks, and a semicircular toss ...
— The Last Journals of David Livingstone, in Central Africa, from 1865 to His Death, Volume II (of 2), 1869-1873 • David Livingstone
... we know how it ended, without any intention of mine, I swear. I'd have cut off my hand rather than do you any harm, upon my honour. Circumstances! Then I saw it was all up between us. Brayder came and began to chaff about you. I dealt the animal a stroke on the face with my riding-whip—I shut him up pretty quick. Do you think I would let a man speak about you?—I was going to swear. You see I remember Dick's lessons. O my God! I do feel unhappy.—Brayder offered me money. ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... chaff," she said, with a few ornamental epithets, which, in moments when she was deeply stirred, were apt to decorate ...
— The Mark Of Cain • Andrew Lang
... 466; nicety, refinement; taste &c 850; critique, judgment; tact; discernment &c (intelligence) 498; acuteness, penetration; nuances. dope [Slang], past performances. V. discriminate, distinguish, severalize^; recognize, match, identify; separate; draw the line, sift; separate the chaff from the wheat, winnow the chaff from the wheat; separate the men from the boys; split hairs, draw a fine line, nitpick, quibble. estimate &c (measure) 466; know which is which, know what is what, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... closely together to form one or more spikelets. The spikelets themselves may be either solitary or clustered. The individual flowers are covered by glumes and are arranged spirally on the axis. As the fruit matures, the glumes of the flowers become the "chaff" ...
— Philippine Mats - Philippine Craftsman Reprint Series No. 1 • Hugo H. Miller
... by the two last biographies that have appeared of Keats himself. It cannot be said that either Mr. Colvin or Mr. William Rossetti makes us love Keats more or understand him better. In both these books there is much that is like 'chaff in the mouth,' and in Mr. Rossetti's there is not a little that is like 'brass on the palate.' To a certain degree this is, no doubt, inevitable nowadays. Everybody pays a penalty for peeping through keyholes, and the ...
— Reviews • Oscar Wilde
... on through the crowd that continued to chaff us good-naturedly—"joshing" they called it. Then we managed to struggle into a sort of backwater at the side of the dais upon which an alleged string band was trying to make good, as the ...
— The Gates of Chance • Van Tassel Sutphen
... of them perched on the Norwegian and belabored him with broomsticks and balesticks until they roused the sleeping Berserk in him. As I was coming to his relief, I saw the human heap heave and rock. From under it arose the enraged giant, tossed his tormentors aside as if they were so much chaff, battered down the door of the house in which they took refuge, and threw them all, Mrs. Pfeiffer included, through the window. They were not hurt, and within two hours they were drinking more beer together and ...
— Stories of Achievement, Volume IV (of 6) - Authors and Journalists • Various
... laughter that arose among the party as each one mounted his gallant steed, and turned to look upon his companion. Jeers, and jokes, and light chaff arose, and the boys found no end of fun in this new adventure. But Uncle Moses wasn't able to see any fun in it at all. He sat with an expression on his face that would have done honor to a martyr at the stake, and the boys respected him too much to include ...
— Among the Brigands • James de Mille
... as a feeler and a friendly one. She stammered something in reply, and then sat silent while guardian and ward plunged into a war of chaff in which first the ward, but ultimately the guardian, got the better. Lord Buntingford had more resource and could hold out longer, so that at last ...
— Helena • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... Corpse he devours. It is not concerned with the physical ecstasies of Sex. It has no interest in such human matters. But deprive it of the fact of Sex-difference, and it drifts away whimpering like a dead leaf, an empty husk, a wisp of chaff, a skeleton gossamer. The poor, actual, warm lips, "so sweetly forsworn," may have had small interest for this "spiritual" lover, but now that she is dead and buried, and a ghost, they must remain a woman's lips forever! Nor have Edgar Allen's "faithful ...
— Visions and Revisions - A Book of Literary Devotions • John Cowper Powys
... attention to him," said Jacqueline, as if taking her under her protection. "He is nothing but a tease; what he says is only chaff. But I might as well talk Greek to her," she added, shrugging her shoulders. "In the convent they don't know what to make of a joke. Only spare her at least, if ...
— Jacqueline, Complete • (Mme. Blanc) Th. Bentzon
... of Revolution spent themselves and Metternich drove the rebels before him, as the hurricane blows chaff. Order was re-established in Vienna and in the ...
— Blood and Iron - Origin of German Empire As Revealed by Character of Its - Founder, Bismarck • John Hubert Greusel
... for a woman to go on so," returned the spinster, shaking her head in vehement agitation; "you may just tell her it's no use, my pa isn't likely to be caught with chaff like that." ...
— A Noble Woman • Ann S. Stephens
... getting at them, and they mocked him. Sertorius kept his soldiers thus employed till nightfall, when he led them away. At daybreak a gentle breeze at first began to blow, which stirred up the lightest part of the earth that had been heaped together, and scattered it about like chaff; but when the caecias began to blow strong, as the sun got higher, and the hills were all covered with dust, the soldiers got on the heap of earth and stirred it up to the bottom, and broke the ...
— Plutarch's Lives Volume III. • Plutarch |
