"Picked" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... mate stooped, picked up the tow-line from its turn round the logger-head, and threw it forward from him. He must have unconsciously given a twist to his hand, for the line fell in a kink round Abner's neck just as the whale ...
— The Cruise of the Cachalot - Round the World After Sperm Whales • Frank T. Bullen
... Percival William Williams, but he picked up the other name in a nursery-book, and that was the end of the christened titles. His mother's ayah called him Willie-Baba, but as he never paid the faintest attention to anything that the ayah said, her wisdom ...
— The Short-story • William Patterson Atkinson
... This idea of her simplifying, and of their combined struggle, dim as yet but steadily growing, toward the perception of her adopting it from them, clung to her while she hovered on the terrace, where the summer night was so soft that she scarce needed the light shawl she had picked up. Several of the long windows of the occupied rooms stood open to it, and the light came out in vague shafts and fell upon the old smooth stones. The hour was moonless and starless and the air heavy and still—which was why, in her evening dress, she ...
— The Golden Bowl • Henry James
... in the Scriptures was but small. She knew only what she had been taught, and a little that she had picked up: but she remembered that the former Bishop of Tronyem himself had hung up an axe in the forest, on Midsummer Eve, for the wood-demon's ...
— Feats on the Fiord - The third book in "The Playfellow" • Harriet Martineau
... she said. "But if it comes to that, it would be much better for him to marry me than that good-looking peasant girl he has picked up." ...
— Whosoever Shall Offend • F. Marion Crawford
... to consult with Hamilton on some pressing Indian affairs. When they reached Roussillon place they met Beverley coming out; but he did not look at them. He was scarcely aware of them. A little way outside the gate, on going in, he had picked up Alice's locket and broken chain, which he mechanically put into his pocket. It was all like a dream to him, and yet he had a clear purpose. He was going away from Vincennes, or at least he would try, and woe be ...
— Alice of Old Vincennes • Maurice Thompson
... sensed the awkwardness of the situation at once. Here you had gone to school and as ill luck would have it you had picked from out the entire bunch of boys the son of his worst enemy for a chum. Neither your father nor mine realized the truth until you innocently carted me home with you for a holiday visit. When your father found out the fact he was ...
— The Story of Sugar • Sara Ware Bassett
... plain. As he looked, it grew larger: it was coming across the grass with the speed of the wind. It came nearer and nearer. It looked long and low, but that might be because it was running at a great stretch. He set Nycteris down under a tree, in the black shadow of its bole, strung his bow, and picked out his heaviest, longest, sharpest arrow. Just as he set the notch on the string, he saw that the creature was a tremendous wolf, rushing straight at him. He loosened his knife in its sheath, drew another arrow half-way from the quiver, lest the first should fail, and took his aim—at ...
— Stephen Archer and Other Tales • George MacDonald
... a consciousness of the eerie possessed me. It was with an uncomfortable feeling that my phantom foe might be aiming a second knife at my back that I turned away and hastened towards Smith. My fearful expectations were not realized, and I picked up the little weapon which had so narrowly missed me, and with it in my hand ...
— The Insidious Dr. Fu-Manchu • Sax Rohmer
... "So you have—; picked him up, as you're always a doing with young men. Only you never know how to keep 'em when ...
— Marion Fay • Anthony Trollope
... very drunk, and I in particular was in the condition best described as howling, crazy drunk. We stopped at a house to light our cigars—for of course we both smoked and chewed tobacco—and as my friend did not feel like getting out, I reeled into the kitchen and picked up a shovelful of coals, which I lifted so near my mouth that I scorched my hair and burnt my face, and, worse than all, singed the faint suggestion of a mustache that was visible by the aid of a microscope, on my upper lip. While I was engaged in lighting my ...
— Fifteen Years in Hell • Luther Benson
... India picked up the hat and turned it round slowly. "It's worn and a bit disreputable, but he wouldn't ...
— The Highgrader • William MacLeod Raine
... something had occurred which we will indeed relate, but at the same time, to those who wish to question it we must accord full liberty to do so. The Chamberlain had made the most colossal blunder, and in the aged old-clothes woman, whom he had picked up in the streets of Berlin to impersonate the gipsy, he had hit upon the very same mysterious gipsy-woman whom he wished to have impersonated. At least, while leaning on her crutches and stroking the cheeks of the children who, intimidated by her singular appearance, were pressing close ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IV • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... Being lame, Foster did not have any ambition to meet the big bear, but contented himself with shooting birds for the pot and helping the camp cook. One morning, after all the mighty hunters had gone out on their quest, Foster picked up his shot-gun, jocularly remarked that he guessed he would fetch in a bear, and limped away toward a brushy ridge. Presently the cook heard a shot, followed by yells of alarm, and peering from the tent he saw Foster coming down the slope on a gallop, ...
— Bears I Have Met—and Others • Allen Kelly
... the fault of the able writer who unmasked Sir Philip), there happened to be the strongest argument that ever picked a Bramah-lock against the unknown writer of 'Junius'; apply this, and if it fits the wards, oh, Gemini! my dear friend, but you are right—righter—rightest; you have ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. 1 (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... breath of wind caught it and whirled it about the ice. It was a hat. He raised his ax to slice a step and a gust of wind, stronger than the others, lifted the hat, sent it rolling and skipping down the glacier, lifted it again and gently dropped it at his feet. He stooped down and picked it up. It was a soft broad-brimmed hat of dark gray felt. In the crown there was the name of an English maker. There was something more ...
— Running Water • A. E. W. Mason
... his voice, the variations of his walk, the very language of his cane as it touched the pavement. Nothing escaped her. She knew the degree of drunkenness he had reached, she trembled as she heard him stumble on the stairs; one night she picked up some pieces of gold at the spot where he had fallen. When he had drunk and won, his voice was gruff and his cane dragged; but when he had lost, his step had something sharp, short and angry about it; ...
— The Celibates - Includes: Pierrette, The Vicar of Tours, and The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac
... importance in a country, where each man, God knows why, thinks his foggy island superior to any other part of the world: and though his door is never free from some dun or other coming for a tax, and if he steps out of it he is sure to be knocked down or to have his pocket picked, yet he has the insolence to think every foreigner a miserable slave, and his country the seat of everything wretched. They may talk of liberty as they please, but Spain or Turkey for my money: barring the bowstring and the inquisition, they are the most comfortable countries under heaven, ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume I (of II) • Augustus De Morgan
... treasure-ship; and, in the event of my being successful, to then cruise to the eastward on the lookout for the Dido, on falling in with which I was to communicate to Captain Venn such intelligence as I might have picked up, and thereafter act under his instructions. If I failed to meet with the Dido I was to do my best to capture the Spaniard unaided, or, if he appeared too heavy for me to tackle single-handed, to follow him and keep him in sight until I ...
— The Rover's Secret - A Tale of the Pirate Cays and Lagoons of Cuba • Harry Collingwood
... railroad yards hundreds of miles inland. A certain part of this congestion was due to short-haul shipments of freight within cities and originating in near-by points, 10, 20, or 50 miles from the cities. Much of this short-haul freight can be carried on the highways by motor trucks. It can be picked up at the door of the shipper and delivered at the door of the consignee, entailing only two handlings. It can be delivered the same day it is shipped, whereas the same shipment by rail would require several ...
— Highway Transport Commitee Council of National Defence, Bulletin 1 - Return-Loads Bureaus To Save Waste In Transportation • US Government
... sufficient flavor of humanity in the soil out of which we grow. At Cantabridge, near the sea, I have once or twice picked up an Indian arrowhead in a fresh furrow. At Canoe Meadow, in the Berkshire Mountains, I have found Indian arrowheads. So everywhere Indian arrowheads. Whether a hundred or a thousand years old, who knows? who cares? There is no history to the red race,—there is hardly an individual ...
— The Professor at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes (Sr.)
... believe our benefactor, whoever he is, picked out the hardest test in Scouting," remarked Ruth, as Captain Phillips ...
— The Girl Scouts' Good Turn • Edith Lavell
... noble, whose whole life had been devoted to the cause of country. The insurgents awaited Garibaldi with a feverish desire for success against the Neapolitan army, which numbered 150,000 men. They knew that the leader brought only few soldiers but that they were picked men. Strange stories had been told of Garibaldi's success in warfare, being due to supernatural intervention. The prayers of his beautiful old peasant-mother were said to have prevailed till her death, when her spirit came to hold converse with ...
— Heroes of Modern Europe • Alice Birkhead
... and, when the Princess came out, Betsinda was never tired of waiting on her; and made her dresses better than the best milliner, and was useful in a hundred ways. Whilst the Princess was having her masters, Betsinda would sit and watch them; and in this way she picked up a great deal of learning; for she was always awake, though her mistress was not, and listened to the wise professors when Angelica was yawning or thinking of the next ball. And when the dancing-master ...
— The Christmas Books • William Makepeace Thackeray
... was like some thronged wilderness and she had no clews. Life spoke to her almost exclusively through her senses, not through her mind, which was totally untrained. She was profoundly ignorant of all history, art, and politics; so the "monuments" meant nothing but their picturesqueness. She picked up the language with extraordinary avidity, and soon became her husband's interpreter, when the necessity reached beyond a ...
— One Woman's Life • Robert Herrick
... or breast of veal into small pieces, and, with a little salt pork cut fine, stew gently for ten or fifteen minutes; season with pepper and salt, and a small piece of celery chopped coarsely, also of the yellow top, picked (not chopped) up; stir in a paste made of a tablespoonful of flour, the yolk of one egg, and milk to form a thin batter; let all come to a boil, and it is ready for the patties. Make the patties of a light, flaky crust, as ...
— The Whitehouse Cookbook (1887) - The Whole Comprising A Comprehensive Cyclopedia Of Information For - The Home • Mrs. F.L. Gillette
... programs, and the fallout from the Asian financial crisis. In 2000, major civil disturbances held down growth to 2.5%. Bolivia's GDP failed to grow in 2001 due to the global slowdown and laggard domestic activity. Growth picked up slightly in 2002, but the first quarter of 2003 saw extensive civil riots and looting and loss of confidence in the government. Bolivia will remain highly dependent on foreign aid unless and until it can ...
— The 2004 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... Indiaman, with her foreign flag as well as that of her country. She had come in about midnight and at early dawn preliminaries had begun. Captain Corwin had been ashore a time or two, looking up and down amid the motley throng, and now he touched his hat and nodded to Chilian Leverett, who picked ...
— A Little Girl in Old Salem • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... that when the quarrel began the victims were regaling themselves with the familiar mixture of water, wine, and sugar, known round about the barrieres as vin a la Frangaise. After the salad-bowl, the two men picked up five of the weighty glasses ordinarily used in wine-shops, and which, while looking as though they would contain half a bottle, are in point of fact so thick at the bottom that they hold next to nothing. Three of these glasses were broken, two were whole. ...
— Monsieur Lecoq • Emile Gaboriau
... though a herd of giants, things of enormous height, came out from lairs in the earth and began to play with the hills. It is as though they picked up the tops of the hills in their hands and then let them drop rather slowly. It is exactly like hills falling. You see the flashes all along the sky, and then that lumping thump as though the top of the hill had been let drop, not all in one piece, but ...
— Tales of War • Lord Dunsany
... housewifely letters about her imaginary married life, and ending with her appeal for aid at the social center, Hazel was indulging in veritable orgies of lying. When away from home she several times picked up men on the street and stayed ...
— Pathology of Lying, Etc. • William and Mary Healy
... and remarkable gathering, convened surely by the trickery of a fantastic and vagabond providence,—"not a great many, but well picked," as Mac-gregor the Mottled said of his band of thieves. There were men and women to the number of a score, two or three travelling merchants (as they called themselves, but I think in my mind they were the kind of merchants ...
— John Splendid - The Tale of a Poor Gentleman, and the Little Wars of Lorn • Neil Munro
... man quickly picked up the word. "Useless! I don't like the suggestion of that word. It hints of death, and old age, and hateful things. It has no place ...
— A Breath of Prairie and other stories • Will Lillibridge
... was a cordial to every bosom, and seemed even to serve in the stead of food and refreshment. It was, indeed, much more brilliant than they durst have ventured to anticipate; for, with no great loss on their part, they had totally routed a regiment of picked men, commanded by the first officer in Scotland, and one whose very name had long been a terror to them. Their success seemed even to have upon their spirits the effect of a sudden and violent surprise, so much had ...
— Old Mortality, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... 'They fell upon it like a pair of kites. You'll find the last ghost of a bone of your loan in a bill, and well picked. They've been doing their ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... it? Eh, wasn't it you who picked up my cap the other day? I am in your debt; here you are.' He handed Jendrek a twenty-kopek piece. 'Is that your father? Citizen, if you want to be friends with me, do not bow so low, and cover your head. It is time that these survivals ...
— Selected Polish Tales • Various
... tisket, a tasket A green and yellow basket, I wrote a letter to my love, But on my way, I dropped it; A little child picked it up And put ...
— Games For All Occasions • Mary E. Blain
... my Roland—my boy who, for fourteen years, I have carefully shielded from sin—rushed in last night to where Mrs. Pringle and I were enjoying our evening game of Bezique, bearing in his hand a copy of your magazine which, I presume, he had picked up at some so-called friend's house. "Papa, look," said my boy to me, pointing to the cover of the ...
— Perfect Behavior - A Guide for Ladies and Gentlemen in all Social Crises • Donald Ogden Stewart
... great trouble has been that in merely speculative things theologians have been such furious logicians, have picked up their premises, and rushed with them with race-horse speed to such remote conclusions, that in the region of ideas our logical minds have become accustomed to draw results as remote as the very eternities ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... and four or five other members. At noon precisely, Mr. Rabling (our gasman and an earnest Methodist) came in. His eye, as it wandered round in search of an unoccupied newspaper, was arrested by the scarlet and green binding of Whitaker. He picked the book up, opened ...
— Wandering Heath • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... who might have it in mind to investigate the latest defect in his car, decided it would be wise to disappear until Viscount Medenham was well quit of Bristol. By arrangement with Dale, therefore, he picked up the latter soon after the Mercury was turned over to Medenham's hands; in effect, the one chauffeur took the other on a 'bus-driver's holiday. Dale was free until two o'clock. At that hour he would ...
— Cynthia's Chauffeur • Louis Tracy
... picked up her flowers again out of the despised punt, and now stands before him with her hands filled with the June blossoms, blue, and white, and red. They show bravely against the pallor of her gown, and seem, indeed, to harmonize altogether ...
— Rossmoyne • Unknown
... forty-eight hours. For three days we remained in the midst of the ocean, exposed to the burning rays of the sun, in a boat without water or provisions. On the fourth day, just as we had resolved to draw lots to determine who should die for the sustenance of the others, we were picked up by an opium clipper returning to Canton. The captain, an American, was most kind to us, and on our arrival at Canton, a subscription was got up for us by the British merchants of that city, and a free passage to England obtained ...
— For the Term of His Natural Life • Marcus Clarke
... Or, "the pretty exordium... now in course of composition. He must at all hazards avoid the suspicion of having picked up any crumb of learning from anybody; how can he help therefore beginning ...
— The Memorabilia - Recollections of Socrates • Xenophon
... his theme. He knew very well how to make a luncheon pass agreeably, without being dull or intimate. He had formed the opinion, so he told Rachel, that wonderful treasures lay hid in the depths of the land; the things Rachel had seen were merely trifles picked up in the course of one short journey. He thought there might be giant gods hewn out of stone in the mountain-side; and colossal figures standing by themselves in the middle of vast green pasture lands, where none but natives had ever trod. Before the dawn of European ...
— The Voyage Out • Virginia Woolf
... hanging fire in the House two hundred years. It seemed very English to me then; but when we afterward came to tackle our rear tenements, and in the first batch there was a row which I knew to have been picked out by the sanitary inspector twenty-five years before as fit only to be destroyed, I recognized that we ...
— The Battle with the Slum • Jacob A. Riis
... I picked him up very gently by one leg, and dropped him out of the window. I wouldn't hurt one of them for the world. They always ...
— Daddy-Long-Legs • Jean Webster
... voluntarily loaning their vessels to the colony, or having them peremptorily seized. In this way a fleet of thirty-two vessels had been collected; the largest of which was a ship called the "Six Friends," built for the West India trade, and carrying forty-four guns. This armada was manned by seamen picked up by a press so vigorous, that Gloucester, the chief seafaring town of the colony, was robbed of two-thirds of its men. Hardly had Capt. Phipps, flushed with victory, returned from his Port Royal expedition, when he was given command of the armada destined for ...
— The Naval History of the United States - Volume 1 (of 2) • Willis J. Abbot
... have been chosen!" mourned Evelyn Richards. "I don't mind confessing that I've had a disappointment. I thought I could swim quite as well as Freda, and it's grizzly hard luck that she was picked out and I wasn't. Rank favoritism, ...
— The Luckiest Girl in the School • Angela Brazil
... most part, with scarcely a sizeable man amongst them. They were all clothed in "push" evening dress—black bell-bottomed pants, no waistcoat, very short black paget coat, white shirt with no collar, and a gaudy neckerchief round the bare throat. Their boots were marvels, very high in the heel and picked out with all sorts of colours down the sides. They looked "varminty" enough for anything; but the shifty eyes, low foreheads, and evil faces gave our two heroes a sense of disgust. The Englishman thought that all the stories he had heard of the Australian larrikin must be exaggerated, and ...
— An Outback Marriage • Andrew Barton Paterson
... invasion of Kuwait in August, the subsequent spurt in oil prices, and a general decline in business and consumer confidence. In 1991 output fell by 1%, unemployment grew, and signs of recovery proved premature. Growth picked up to 2.1% in 1992. Unemployment, however, remained at nine million, the increase in GDP being mainly attributable to gains in output per worker. Ongoing problems for the 1990s include inadequate investment in economic infrastructure, ...
— The 1993 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... explained that he was trying to fashion a light metal plate that could be easily placed between a horse's shoe and the hoof, to protect the frog of the foot from nails picked up on the road. With all soldiers wearing hobnailed boots, the roads were full of those sharp bits of metal which had caused serious losses of horseflesh through ...
— "And they thought we wouldn't fight" • Floyd Gibbons
... pleased with his escape From what he feared an awkward scrape, Was dreaming of his happy choice, Our Kitty, by her father's voice Awakened, from her hand let go The cause of all her joy and woe, And round her naked beauties wound The sheet picked up from off the ground: Meanwhile the notary appears To put an end to all their fears. They wrote, they signed, the sealed—and thus The wedding ended free from fuss. They left the happy couple there. His satisfaction to declare, Thus spoke their father to the pair: "Take courage, children, ...
— The Tales and Novels, Complete • Jean de La Fontaine
... a cross-roads where charges met and wrestled back and forth in and out of the ditches. Fragments of shells appeared as steps scuffed away the thin coating of snow. I picked up an old French cap, with a slash in the top that told how its owner came to his end, and near by a German helmet. For there are souvenirs in plenty lying in the young wheat which was sown after the battle was over. Millions ...
— My Year of the War • Frederick Palmer
... &c. (healthful) 656. favorable; propitious &c. (hope-giving) 858; fair. good, good as gold; excellent; better; superior &c. 33; above par; nice, fine; genuine &c. (true) 494. best, choice, select, picked, elect, recherche, rare, priceless; unparagoned[obs3], unparalleled &c. (supreme) 33; superlatively &c. 33; good; bully* , crackajack*[obs3], giltedged; superfine, superexcellent[obs3]; of the first water; first-rate, first-class; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... I am going to fetch some flowers which I picked for you this morning: some autumn roses, beautiful, sorrowful ...
— Uncle Vanya • Anton Checkov
... hers alone. It was a sad task picking up that disordered chamber bearing so many traces of Katy, and Helen's heart ached terribly as she hung away the little pink calico dressing gown in which Katy had looked so pretty, and picked up from the floor the pile of skirts lying just where they had been left the previous night; but when it came to the little half-worn slippers which had been thrown one here and another there as Katy ...
— Family Pride - Or, Purified by Suffering • Mary J. Holmes
... looked at his nephew. "Ah, Bog," said he, shaking his head at him, "what changes Time does make! It seems only a few days ago that you was a little scrub of a chap, runnin' 'round town and pickin' up your livin'. And a very good and honest livin' you picked up, too. Now, here you are, a nicely dressed, tall, handsome young man, with a snug little fortun' all of your own earnin', not to mention your bein' the adopted son of that splendid old gentleman, Myndert Van Quintem. And, last and best, you are goin' to be married ...
— Round the Block • John Bell Bouton
... had already decided on going home on foot. The other girls wanted to accompany her, and, as May and Nuttie both had overshoes, they were permitted to do so, and desired to go to bed, and wait to be picked up by the waggonette, which must return to Bridgefield by the Lescombe road. Blanche, having a delicate throat, was sentenced to go with her stepmother. Mark undertook to ride the horse through the river, and escort the three girls, and Gerard Godfrey also joined ...
— Nuttie's Father • Charlotte M. Yonge
... are a picked lot, 'first scholars,' and the like, but their business is as unsympathetic as Jack Ketch's. There is nothing humanizing in their relations with their fellow creatures. They go for the side that retains them. They defend the man they know to be a rogue, and not very rarely throw suspicion ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. X (of X) - America - II, Index • Various
... paces farther on a pocket-handkerchief also stained with blood. He picked them up. The linen was fine, and the postman, in alarm, made his way over to the dike, where he fancied he saw a ...
— A Comedy of Marriage & Other Tales • Guy De Maupassant
... saw before him the shaft of glimmering whiteness shed by the skylight, for since the Zeppelin raid of the month before, the staircase was always left in darkness—and the figure of his unknown guest rolled over, picked itself up, and stood revealed, a woman, not a child, as he had at first thought. And then a feeling of sick, shrinking fear came over Sherston, for there fell on his ears the once horribly familiar accents—plaintive, wheedling, falsely ...
— Defenders of Democracy • Militia of Mercy
... in long periods, from the prayers and meditations of every saint and sacred writer, all over the world. Grotius makes the like remark in respect to the Lord's Prayer, that the single clauses of which it is composed were already in use, in the time of Christ, in the rabbinical forms. He picked out the grains of gold. The nervous language of the Common Law, the impressive forms of our courts, and the precision and substantial truth of the legal distinctions, are the contribution of all the sharp-sighted, strong-minded men who have ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various
... the envelope, and glanced at it with faint interest, so Beaumont-Greene thought. Then he picked up a magnifying glass and played with it. It was a trick of his to pick up objects on his desk, and turn them in his thin, nervous fingers. Beaumont-Greene was not seriously alarmed. He had great faith in a weapon which had served him faithfully, ...
— The Hill - A Romance of Friendship • Horace Annesley Vachell
... at break of day, and scattering on the shore, endeavoured to collect some relics of their country. Some filled little bags with ashes withdrawn from the funeral pile; others took handfuls of earth, while the women and children picked up pebbles which they hid in their clothing and pressed to their bosoms, as if fearing to be deprived of them. Meanwhile, the ships intended to transport them arrived, and armed English soldiers superintended the embarkation, ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... begged him if he knew anything to tell it at once; and Herbert reluctantly repeated what he had already told his mother of the conversation in the woods; and as he concluded, Lora drew a note from her pocket, which she handed to her father, saying that she had picked it up in the school-room, from a pile of rubbish which Arthur had carelessly thrown out of ...
— Holidays at Roselands • Martha Finley
... took singular delight; and about one o'clock a court was held, for the trial of two delinquents, who had transgressed the laws of honesty and good order. The first who appeared at the bar was an attorney, accused of having picked a gentleman's pocket of his handkerchief. And the fact being proved by incontestable evidence, he received sentence. In consequence of which, he was immediately carried to the public pump, and subjected to a severe cascade of cold water. This cause being discussed, ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett
... extraordinarily well on this occasion. I had not to talk myself, but to listen to a man telling me stories better than I could have told them. We did not refer to Art, about which, excluding literature from the definition, he knew only what could be picked up by reading about it. He was in a tweed suit and low hat like myself, and had been detected and had detected me in the act of clandestinely spending a happy day at Rosherville Gardens instead of pontificating in his frock ...
— Oscar Wilde, Volume 2 (of 2) - His Life and Confessions • Frank Harris
... only security, but also honour; and, after praising the maiden, he promised to give her, as a present, half the hostages, allowing her to choose whom she pleased. When they had all been led forth, she is said to have picked out those below the age of puberty, a choice which both reflected honour upon her maiden delicacy, and was one likely to be approved of by consent of the hostages themselves—that those who were of such an age as was most exposed to injury should above all others be delivered ...
— Roman History, Books I-III • Titus Livius
... clues can be picked up by the expert who applies the principles on which the graphologist works is indisputable, nor is it necessary to accept all the theories claimed as reliable by those who practice this interesting branch of ...
— The Detection of Forgery • Douglas Blackburn
... always taught to think of himself as a poor boy, who was winning his own way through the world. But when his benefactor proposed to educate him for the ministry, with a view to his final use in missionary work, he revolted. He apprenticed himself to the printer of his village, and rapidly picked up a knowledge of the business, so that at nineteen he had laid by some money, and was able to think of going to college. There was a fund in aid of indigent students in the institution to which he turned, and the faculty favored him. He finished his course with great credit to himself ...
— A Modern Instance • William Dean Howells
... near to him as possible, taking every precaution not to alarm him again; and the result proved as I had hoped: for he walked deliberately among the trees, and stooped down to the water. I alighted, dragged old Hendrick through the mud, and with a feeling of infinite satisfaction picked up the slimy trail-rope and twisted it three times round my hand. "Now let me see you get away again!" I thought, as I remounted. But Pontiac was exceedingly reluctant to turn back; Hendrick, too, who had evidently flattered himself with vain hopes, ...
— The Oregon Trail • Francis Parkman, Jr.
... with a very white primitive granular limestone of the island of Thasos, which emits, when scraped, a smell of sulphuretted hydrogen. This marble is coarser grained than Carrara (Marmor lunense). It was frequently employed by the Grecian sculptors, and I often picked up fragments of it at the Villa Adriani, near Rome.) Its property of absorbing oxygen gas is known to all the miners of Thuringia. It is the same as the action of the carburetted clay of the gypseous grottoes, ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America • Alexander von Humboldt
... separation, he completely overbalanced himself, and swinging round with me in his arms, we both came to the ground together. "Oh, Mr. Abbot!" was all I could ejaculate; he, poor man, literally pale green with dismay, picked me up in profound silence, and the audience kindly covered our confusion, and comforted us by vehement applause, not, indeed, unmixed with laughter. But my friends and admirers were none the more his ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... boulder-strewn shores—the lower slopes growing steeper, the walls above towering higher—clear to the end of the rapid. Looking upstream we could pick out the submerged rocks hidden in the muddy water, and looking like an innocent wave from above. Twice we had picked out channels in sharp drops, after carefully observing their actions and deciding they were free from obstructions, when suddenly the waves would part for an instant and disclose a hidden rock—in one case as sharp as a hound's tooth—sure disaster ...
— Through the Grand Canyon from Wyoming to Mexico • E. L. Kolb
... condition of Bruges would melt the hardest heart; other cities were no better; Antwerp was utterly ruined; its inhabitants were all starving. The famine throughout the obedient Netherlands was such as had not been known for a century. The whole country had been picked bare by the troops, and the plough was not put into the ground. Deputations were constantly with him from Bruges, Dendermonde, Bois-le-Duc, Brussels, Antwerp, Nymegen, proving to him by the most palpable evidence that the whole population of those cities had almost literally nothing to eat. ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... beauty of its inner import was overlaid with much that was common and garish. A rude bench had been knocked together by some picnicker of the past, and on this Bates was fain to sit down to regain his breath. Sissy stood near him, plucking at some coloured leaves she had picked up in her restlessness. ...
— What Necessity Knows • Lily Dougall
... Harry Oswald felt, as the spare grey thinker took his hand in his, and grasped it firmly with a kindly pressure, but less friendly than that with which he had greeted his known admirer, Ernest Le Breton. As for Herbert, he merely bowed to him politely from a little distance; and Herbert, who had picked up at once with a Polish exile in a corner, returned the bow frigidly without coming up to the host himself at all ...
— Philistia • Grant Allen
... my time gratuitously to directing the activities of a body of picked men who shall rid the county of the lawless element. God knows, sir, I desire the repose of a private career, yet I am willing to sacrifice myself. Is it your opinion, Mr. Saul, that I ...
— The Prodigal Judge • Vaughan Kester
... beached, Sssuri picked up his spear and, without a word or backward glance, waded out into the sea, disappearing into the depths, while his companion set about his share of camp tasks. It was still early in the summer—too early to expect to find ...
— Star Born • Andre Norton
... Naab's "Getup," now, and the horses quickened with it. Their iron-shod hoofs struck fire from the rosy road. "Easy, easy—soho!" cried Naab to his steeds. In the pitchy blackness under the shelving cliff they picked their way cautiously, and turned a corner. Lights twinkled in Hare's sight, a fresh breeze, coming from water, dampened his cheek, and a hollow rumble, a long roll as of distant thunder, ...
— The Heritage of the Desert • Zane Grey
... Two English walnuts were picked and found to be as ripe as they would get. These as well as the black walnuts showed distinct signs of lacking summer heat needed for their proper development. The last two nuts on hazilbert No. 2 and the only nut on hazilbert No. 4 were picked ...
— Growing Nuts in the North • Carl Weschcke
... arrived, his home was ready for him. I was then a little girl, and went one day to see the Prince of India, his residence being opposite Uel's on the other side of the street. He was studying some big books, but quit them, and picked me up, and asked me who I was? I told him Uel was my father. What was my name? Lael, I said. How old was I? And when I answered that also, he kissed me, and cried, and, to my wonder, declared how he had once a child named Lael; ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 2 • Lew. Wallace
... hit at his ears, and he looked up to see Sheila Corey only two places in front of him. "Mrs. Mary Edelstein," she was saying. The Wayne man nodded, and there was no protest. She picked up a Wayne ballot, and dropped it ...
— Police Your Planet • Lester del Rey
... greater felicity, that very few people had ever read Wordsworth. My own experience in that matter is that the amiable persons who call themselves "Wordsworthian" have read—usually a long time ago—"Lucy Gray," "The April Mornings," a picked sonnet or two, and the "Ode on the Intimations," which last they seem generally to be under the impression that nobody else has ever met with: and my further experience of these sentimental students is, that they are seldom inclined to put in practice a single syllable of the advice tendered ...
— On the Old Road, Vol. 2 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... position with a stick under the chin to support them erect. When crows come in swarms to pick away at the body, if the right eye is plucked out first by a plundering bird, it is said to be a sure sign that the ex-soul of the body will go to heaven. If the left eye is picked at first, then a warmer climate is in store for the soul ...
— Across Coveted Lands - or a Journey from Flushing (Holland) to Calcutta Overland • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... and his daughter. A room had been made ready for him—in fact, although he did not know it, Miss Morrison had given him hers, and had herself gone to a less attractive one—and in due time he prepared to turn in for the night. As they parted Miss Morrison rison, in a bantering spirit, picked up the belt and handed it to him, remarking that he had better keep it, as, after marriage, he might some time be glad to creep into the house unseen; and, in the same bantering spirit, he had replied that he had better ...
— Cleek: the Man of the Forty Faces • Thomas W. Hanshew
... happened during the Russian war. Mr. Whiteside, in the debate of the 27th of July, stated that the late General Sir C.J. Napier "said of Delhi, that to guard against surprise, considering its position, its treasures, and its magazines, it should always be defended by twelve thousand picked men." From all that appears, there were not twelve hundred men, or anything like that number, of any kind, in Delhi, last May, to protect either the inhabitants or the stores there deposited. Such another instance ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various
... village shop. The duke's large diamond which he wore round his neck, and which had once upon a time glittered in the crown of the Great Mogul, was found on the road, inside a little box set with fine pearls. The man who picked it up kept the box and threw away the diamond as a mere bit of glass. Afterwards he thought better of it; went to look for the stone, found it under a wagon, and sold it for a crown to a clergyman of the neighborhood. "There was nothing saved but ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume III. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... nodded and the phone rang again. His hand was still resting on it so he picked it up by reflex. He listened for a second and you would have thought someone was pumping blood out of his heel from the way his ...
— Arm of the Law • Harry Harrison
... from his blurred eyes. He hastily stooped, picked up a large brick forgotten there, and raised it with both hands as if it were ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... up to obloquy as the arch-charlatan of history. We have taken a cheap estimate of him from Fuller and Bacon, and from a host of scurrilous scribblers who debased or perverted his writings. Fuller(4) picked him out as exemplifying the drunken quack, whose body was a sea wherein the tide of drunkenness was ever ebbing and flowing—"He boasted that shortly he would order Luther and the Pope, as well as he had done Galen and Hippocrates. He was never seen to pray, and seldome ...
— The Evolution of Modern Medicine • William Osler
... gay, but it was a crawl, and Elliott knew it and knew that Laura knew it, and she felt ashamed. Wasn't Stannard's frank shirking better than her camouflaged variety? But hadn't she picked berries all the morning in a stuffy sunbonnet under a broiling sun, until she felt as red as a berry and ...
— The Camerons of Highboro • Beth B. Gilchrist
... shelf and took down a volume. He blew off the dust and smoothed its sides. "Listen to this!" he said. "Picked up the volume at Schulte's, on the twenty-five cent table. 'A love of the country is taken,'" he read, "'I know not why, to indicate the presence of all the cardinal virtues.... We assert a taste for sweet and innocent pleasures and an indifference to the feverish ...
— Chimney-Pot Papers • Charles S. Brooks
... the recruiting officers picked up in New York; in the guard-house most of the time; driver for Major McDonald when he ...
— Molly McDonald - A Tale of the Old Frontier • Randall Parrish
... another catastrophe named Minnehaha Jones, who picked up a couple of soprano songs and ...
— You Can Search Me • Hugh McHugh
... point the vision of what was contained within the fatal door became so appalling to him that he picked up his skirts and fled, looking over his shoulder all the while to make sure that the Red Axe was not after him ...
— Red Axe • Samuel Rutherford Crockett
... back to him now—things he had picked up from the minimal liberal-arts and general-humanities courses he had taken and then forgotten in his absorption with the ...
— Graveyard of Dreams • Henry Beam Piper
... north and south. In this valley, and even on the hills, to the height of six or seven hundred feet above the sea, there was scarcely any snow, but the mountains at the back were completely covered with it. Some pieces of birch-bark having been picked up in the bed of this stream in 1818, which gave reason to suppose that wood might be found growing in the interior, I directed Mr. Fisher to walk up it, accompanied by a small party, and to occupy ...
— Three Voyages for the Discovery of a Northwest Passage from the • Sir William Edward Parry
... action, but of seventeen generals only two besides himself were in favour of hazarding either a general or partial engagement. In a council held on the 24th of June, however, a proposal was carried to strengthen the detachment which had got on the left flank of the British, and 1500 picked men were thrown in the direction specified. At the same time, Washington secretly determined to bring on a more general engagement, in spite of the majority of the council-of-war, if possible. He ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... occupation for the rural population. Rapidly increasing integration with Western Europe - Finland was one of the 12 countries joining the European Economic and Monetary Union (EMU) - will dominate the economic picture over the next several years. Growth in 2003 was held back by the global slowdown but picked up in 2004. High unemployment ...
— The 2005 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... Elsie obligingly picked up her son and departed, but Sally, watching her go, was infuriated to notice that a mild request from George's nurse, who met them in the hall, apparently drove all thoughts of Sally's predicament from the little ...
— Poor, Dear Margaret Kirby and Other Stories • Kathleen Norris
... rifle and started off with my dog down the river, to look up a little deer or bar meat, then very plenty along the river. The blasted red-skins were lurking about and hovering around the settlement, and every once in a while picked off some of our neighbors or stole our cattle or horses. I hated the red demons, and made no bones of peppering the blasted sarpents whenever I got a sight of them. In fact, the red rascals had a dread of ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume IV. (of X.) • Various
... readings from his stories and had somewhere picked up the measles. He suddenly came down with the complaint during his visit to Clemens, and his case was a violent one. It required the constant attendance of a trained nurse and one or two members of the household to pull ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... to the robber, tipped him up, seized his loaded stick, and when the rascal got up to struggle with him, he gutted him with a blow well planted in the middle of his stomach. Then he picked up the viaticum again, saying bravely to it: "Ah! If I had relied upon thy providence, we should have been lost." Now to utter these impious words on the road to Sacche was mere waste of breath, seeing that he addressed them not to ...
— Droll Stories, Complete - Collected From The Abbeys Of Touraine • Honore de Balzac
... words he brought to light a German silver case which Tom had picked up in a curiosity shop in New York. The case had his name engraved on it, and contained pencils, crayons, ...
— The Rover Boys at College • Edward Stratemeyer
... hay-wagon drove up to the door with the party from The Beeches already stowed away in it, sitting flat on the hay in the bottom. Mrs. Walton was with them, and Miss Allison and Katie Mallard and her father, and several others they had picked up ...
— The Little Colonel: Maid of Honor • Annie Fellows Johnston
... course, there weren't others more important; Bewsher's family was old and rich as such families go, but he was very much a younger son, and his people lived mostly in the country; yet even then there was something about him—a manner, an adeptness in sports, an unsought popularity, that picked him out; the beginnings of that Norman nose that Mr. Burnaby has mentioned. And here"—Sir John paused and puffed thoughtfully at his cigarette—"is ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... know; he quietly picked up nearly all of it for a song; then he bought about twice as much more, deliverable upon call; and he was about to ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... succeed at all: and William, who had as much professional feeling as Schomberg, concurred in this opinion. Commissions therefore for raising new regiments were very sparingly given; and none but picked recruits ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 2 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... life of a lying scoundrel, he was, he says (p. 192), 'happily restrained by Divine Grace,' so that 'all sense of remorse was not extinguished,' and there was no fall into 'downright infidelity.' At length he picked up Law's Serious Call, which moved him, as later on it moved better men (ante, i. 68). Step by step he got into a way of steady work, and lived henceforth a laborious and honest life. It was in the year 1728, thirty-five ...
— The Life Of Johnson, Volume 3 of 6 • Boswell
... working-jacket of striped linen, purple and white. He would complain that I had not been to see him for a long time; that he was being neglected; he would offer me a marchpane or a tangerine, and we would cross a room in which no one ever sat, whose fire was never lighted, whose walls were picked out with gilded mouldings, its ceiling painted blue in imitation of the sky, and its furniture upholstered in satin, as at my grandparents', only yellow; then we would enter what he called his 'study,' a room whose walls were hung with prints ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust
... in the evening he arrived with word that "the great McNeill" had been sent off under escort towards Salamanca. Of the strength of that escort he could tell me nothing, and had very wisely not stayed to inquire; he had picked up the news from camp gossip and brought it at once, rightly judging that time was more valuable to me just now than ...
— The Laird's Luck • Arthur Quiller-Couch
... much confusion as a legal proposition. It would be somewhat difficult to persuade a judge or a jury that picking a pocket is not a crime. It is far easier to demonstrate that the pocket was not picked at all. This is generally only a question of money. Witnesses can easily be secured to swear either that the lady had no reticule, or that if she had a reticule it contained no purse, or that some person other than the defendant took the ...
— The Confessions of Artemas Quibble • Arthur Train
... the dust. In that first moment of surprise he hadn't made out the men, and anyway who'd have expected it—on the open road in the full of the afternoon? You couldn't put any blame on him, sprawled on his knees, the whole thing coming so quick. When he picked himself up he looked into the muzzle of a revolver and saw behind it a head, only the eyes showing between the hat brim and a gunny sack tied round the ...
— Treasure and Trouble Therewith - A Tale of California • Geraldine Bonner
... and picked up the object. Dimly in the firelight they could see it,—two warm human scalps, the one of brown hair knotted to the other of black. Menard ...
— The Road to Frontenac • Samuel Merwin
... By the time that he had picked a good-sized handful, Susie started to meet him. For the moment she was out of ...
— The High School Boys in Summer Camp • H. Irving Hancock
... not been gone two minutes, when Psmith, who had leaned back in his chair, wrapped in thought, heaved himself up again. He stood for a moment straightening his tie at the looking-glass; then he picked up his hat and moved slowly out of the door and down the passage. Thence, at the same dignified rate of progress, out of the house and in at Downing's ...
— Mike • P. G. Wodehouse
... skin, light hair, and her nose a turn-up. Her gray gown was flounced to the waist, her small cap of lace, its pink strings flying, was lodged on the back of her head. It was Mademoiselle Benoite, Mrs. Verner's French maid, one she had picked up in Paris. Whatever other qualities the damsel might lack, she had enough of confidence. Not many hours yet in the house, and she was assuming more authority in it ...
— Verner's Pride • Mrs. Henry Wood
... it round with a piece of twine to prevent breaking. Cook in boiling salted water until tender, remove the string, turn into a hot dish with the top up, cover with cream sauce or drawn butter sauce. (When cold, it may be picked to pieces ...
— Public School Domestic Science • Mrs. J. Hoodless
... asleep while giving his lessons, and on one occasion was asked whether he thought he was paid twenty roubles for allowing himself to be played to sleep; or, how, when his walking-stick had slipped out of his hand, he waited till some one came and picked it up; or, how, on finding his dress-boots rather tight, he put on slippers, and thus appeared in one of the first salons of Paris and was led by the mistress of the house, the Duchess Decazes, to the piano—but I have said enough of ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... and Charley, and the steward, laid on the deck the weapons with which they had hastily armed themselves when below as soon as the noise of the outbreak reached them, when they were instantly picked up by one of the Greeks, who stepped forward for the purpose by his ...
— Picked up at Sea - The Gold Miners of Minturne Creek • J.C. Hutcheson
... catching a glimpse of the sex of his visiters through a port "Heaven help us both, Parson! That young hair brained fellow has sent us a brace of petticoats aboard; and these the profane reprobate calls his divinities! One may easily guess where he has picked up such quality; but cheer up, Doctor; one may honestly forget the cloth in five fathom water, ...
— The Red Rover • James Fenimore Cooper
... have been settled? Had the joy of being a servant of Jesus so soon brought trouble with it? Daisy had put the trunk of a large tree between her and June; but the mulatto woman, where she sat, heard the stifled sobs of the child. June's items of intelligence, picked up by eye and ear, had given her by this time an almost reverent feeling towards Daisy; she regarded her as hardly earthly; nevertheless, this sort of distress must not be suffered to go on, and she was appointed to ...
— Melbourne House • Elizabeth Wetherell
... the larger and darker species were also seen, and numerous land shells (Helix) similar to those on Cape Upstart; found near the roots of trees, buried in the decayed vegetation. Two old coconuts and large quantities of pumicestone were picked up on the south-east side of the island. The prevailing character of the rocks was granitic, out of which some beautiful specimens of hornblende were procured. The entire island was fringed ...
— Discoveries in Australia, Volume 1. • J Lort Stokes |
