"Chaff" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... through Waste-paper-land, where all the stupid books lie in heaps, up hill and down dale, like leaves in a winter wood; and there he saw people digging and grubbing among them, to make worse books out of bad ones, and thrashing chaff to save the dust of it; and a very good trade they ...
— The Water-Babies - A Fairy Tale for a Land-Baby • Charles Kingsley
... Assembly against the length and labour of the curriculum. Was there ever a class that was as full and attentive at the end of the session as it was at the beginning? Never since our poor human nature was so stricken with laziness and shallowness and self-sufficiency. But what is the chaff to the wheat? It is the wheat that deserves and repays the husbandman's love and labour. When Plato looked up from his desk in the Academy, after reading and expounding one of his greatest Dialogues, he found only one student left ...
— Bunyan Characters - First Series • Alexander Whyte
... shout, a huzzah, and a charge. But our men had by this time reloaded their pieces, and were only too eager awaiting the command "fire." But when it did come the result was telling—men falling on top of men, rear rank pushing forward the first rank, only to be swept away like chaff. Our batteries on the hills in rear and those mounted on our infantry line were raking the field, the former with shell and solid shot, the latter with grape and canister. Smoke settling on the ground, soon rendered objects in front scarcely visible, but the steady flashing of the ...
— History of Kershaw's Brigade • D. Augustus Dickert
... sorrel, white, and piebald, not understanding why they were made to run round in one place and to crush the wheat straw, ran unwillingly as though with effort, swinging their tails with an offended air. The wind raised up perfect clouds of golden chaff from under their hoofs and carried it away far beyond the hurdle. Near the tall fresh stacks peasant women were swarming with rakes, and carts were moving, and beyond the stacks in another yard another dozen similar horses were running round ...
— The Schoolmistress and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... serve him whom the king himself commands to do so, and his servants are not bought for money,—of these attendants then they strangle fifty and also fifty of the finest horses; and when they have taken out their bowels and cleansed the belly, they fill it with chaff and sew it together again. Then they set the half of a wheel upon two stakes with the hollow side upwards, and the other half of the wheel upon other two stakes, and in this manner they fix a number ...
— The History Of Herodotus - Volume 1(of 2) • Herodotus
... kindly eyes. But in the city, with a few lame words, And a few wretched coins, sore-coveted, To mediate 'twixt my cannot and my would, My best attempts would never strike a root; My scattered corn would turn to wind-blown chaff; I should grow weak, might weary of my kind, Misunderstood the most where almost known, Baffled and beaten by their unbelief: Years could not place me where I stand this day High on the vantage-ground of confidence: I might for years toil on, and reach no man. Besides, to leave the thing ...
— The Poetical Works of George MacDonald in Two Volumes, Volume I • George MacDonald
... 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. In vain I ...
— The Worst Journey in the World, Volumes 1 and 2 - Antarctic 1910-1913 • Apsley Cherry-Garrard
... those who have been emptying our churches by reason of their attempts to give stones for bread, husks and chaff for the life-giving grain, let their places be taken even for but a few times by those who are open and alive to these higher inspirations, and then let us again question those who feel that religion is dying out. "It is the live coal ...
— In Tune with the Infinite - or, Fullness of Peace, Power, and Plenty • Ralph Waldo Trine
... to herself Miss Hastings put off from day to day this final expedition until Blair began to chaff at the delay. ...
— Their Mariposa Legend • Charlotte Herr
... sure that our own age will make a favourable impression upon that excellent judge, posterity. Therefore, beware of disparaging the present in your own mind. While temporarily ignoring it, dwell upon the idea that its chaff contains about as much wheat as any similar quantity of chaff has ...
— LITERARY TASTE • ARNOLD BENNETT
... the village on market days and Sundays, with a loose, shambling gait, making altogether an appearance so homely and peculiar that the smart village chaps riding along in their jaunty turn-outs used to chaff the good deacon on the character of his steed, and satirically challenge him to a brush. The deacon always took their badinage in good part, although he inwardly said more than once, "If I ever get a good chance, ...
— The Busted Ex-Texan and Other Stories • W. H. H. Murray
... aware. "Catharine, thou art a superstitious fool, like most women; nevertheless thou hast some mind, and I speak to thee as one of more understanding than the buffaloes which are herding about us. These haughty barons who overstride the world, what are they in the day of adversity? Chaff before the wind. Let their sledge hammer hands or their column resembling legs have injury, and bah! the men at arms are gone. Heart and courage is nothing to them, lith and limb everything: give them animal strength, what are they better than furious bulls; take that away, and ...
— The Fair Maid of Perth • Sir Walter Scott
... improve the time. In youth our steps are light, and our minds are ductile, and knowledge is easily laid up; but if we neglect our spring, our summers will be useless and contemptible, our harvest will be chaff, and the winter of our old age ...
— Character • Samuel Smiles
... I do to get a graff Of this unspotted tree? —For all the rest are plain but chaff, Which ...
— Book of English Verse • Bulchevy
... Caprice" has just one motive,—to reach the maximum of technical trickiness and difficulty. There is such a thing as hiding one's light under a bushel, and there is such a thing as emptying a bushel of chaff upon it. ...
— Contemporary American Composers • Rupert Hughes
... Hundred idea as a logical system was broken by the quality of some of its members. Compared to the society I have previously mentioned it was as chaff. There was a total lack of intellectuality. Degeneracy marked some of their acts; divorce blackened their records, and shameless affairs marked them. In this "set," and particularly its imitators throughout ...
— As A Chinaman Saw Us - Passages from his Letters to a Friend at Home • Anonymous
... gladder!" said Lord James, gripping the bony hand of Griffith. "Don't let Tom chaff you. My ...
— Out of the Primitive • Robert Ames Bennet
... Willoughby, his father's partner in the old "banking-and-broking" house of Toogood & Masterman, enjoyed the same sort of chaff. "Looking pale, Thor. ...
— The Side Of The Angels - A Novel • Basil King
... makes her man's. A second man I honor, and still more highly: him who is seen toiling for the spiritually indispensable; not daily bread, but the bread of life. These two in all their degrees I honor; all else is chaff and dust, which let the wind blow whither it listeth. We must all toil, or steal (howsoever we name our stealing), which ...
— Practical Ethics • William DeWitt Hyde
... capital, then located at Vandalia. One day he went with a friend to call on an older acquaintance, named Smoot, who was almost as dry a joker as himself, but Smoot had more of this world's goods than the young legislator-elect. Lincoln began at once to chaff his friend. ...
— The Story of Young Abraham Lincoln • Wayne Whipple
... alway leaves behind him at his last place of sojourn, as a mark for those of his tribe who may come upon his track. 'Patteran,' it may be remarked, is an almost pure Sanscrit word cognate with our own 'path;' and the least philological raking among the chaff of the Gipsy dialect will show their secret argot to be, as Mr. Leland calls it, 'a curious old tongue, not merely allied to Sanscrit, but perhaps in point of age an elder though vagabond sister or cousin of that ancient language.' No Sanscrit ...
— Gipsy Life - being an account of our Gipsies and their children • George Smith
... such an extent that I seriously contemplated suicide. I am convinced that this period left an indelible mark, and that not an improving one, on my character. Where sensitive children are concerned, chaff may be useful in hardening them, but it should not be ...
— Reminiscences of a South African Pioneer • W. C. Scully
... might have served as models for goddesses stood, pitch-fork in hand, removing the chaff. The breeze blowing through it would catch the wisps and send them dancing in the air, while the great generous streams of golden grain flowing from the machine seemed ...
— With Those Who Wait • Frances Wilson Huard
... he made it, that it was not a very able retort, but he was feeling too limp for satisfactory repartee. Criticisms in the Bureau, dealing with his alleged solidity of skull, he did not resent. He attributed them to man's natural desire to chaff his fellow-man. But to be unmasked by the general public in this way was another matter. It struck at the root ...
— The Man with Two Left Feet - and Other Stories • P. G. Wodehouse
... blew away the chaff from her handful of beans. The spring breeze blew the chaff back again, and sifted it over her face and shoulders. She rubbed it out of her eyes impatiently, and happened to notice old Peggy holding her own handful high, as if it were an oblation, and turning her ...
— A Country Doctor and Selected Stories and Sketches • Sarah Orne Jewett
... composed of Audrey, Sara, and Garth had joined the main party now, and Garth was shaking eager, outstretched hands and laughingly tossing back the shower of chaff ...
— The Hermit of Far End • Margaret Pedler
... who tempt The sea of life, by summer gales impell'd, Have ye this anchor? Sure a time will come For storms to try you, and strong blasts to rend Your painted sails, and shred your gold like chaff O'er the wild wave. And what a wreck is man, If sorrow find him ...
— Memories of Bethany • John Ross Macduff
... legs rubbed by hand until quite dry. We used the best old white potato oats, weighing usually 45 lbs. per bushel, but so few beans that a quarter lasted us a season. The oats were bruised, and a little sweet hay chaff mixed with them. We also gave our horses a few carrots the day after hunting, to cool their bodies, or a bran mash or two. They were never coddled up in hoods or half a dozen rugs at night, but a single ...
— A New Illustrated Edition of J. S. Rarey's Art of Taming Horses • J. S. Rarey
... but chaff, she understood, and she began to wonder if that other, that young Signor Elder, had been but joking. It might be the American way. . . . And yet this was all flattering chaff and so perhaps she could trust the flattery ...
— The Innocent Adventuress • Mary Hastings Bradley
... very satisfactory reason for his 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
... it, a something began to move in his heart— a something half of jealousy for God, half of pity for poor souls buffeted by such winds as had that morning been roaring, chaff laden, about the church, while the grain fell all to the bottom of the pulpit. Something burned in him: was it the word that was as a fire in his bones, or was it a mere lust of talk? He thought for ...
— The Marquis of Lossie • George MacDonald
... d'ye see, that my mot, Yellow a-bit about the swag that I'd got, Thinking that I should jeer and laugh, Although I never tips no chaff [13] Tries her hand at the downy trick, And prigs in a shop, but precious quick "Stop thief!" was the cry, and she vas taken I cuts and runs and ...
— Musa Pedestris - Three Centuries of Canting Songs - and Slang Rhymes [1536 - 1896] • John S. Farmer
... tea, and Dad thought to buy more with the money Anderson owed him for some fencing he had done; but when he asked for it, Anderson was very sorry he had n't got it just then, but promised to let him have it as soon as he could sell his chaff. When Mother heard Anderson could n't pay, she DID cry, and said there was n't a bit of sugar in the house, nor enough cotton to mend the children's ...
— On Our Selection • Steele Rudd
... breeze's bugle sound, Various and vague the dry leaves dance their round; Or, from the garner-door, on ether borne, The chaff flies devious from the winnow'd corn; So vague, so devious, at the breath of heaven, From their fix'd ...
— Bride of Lammermoor • Sir Walter Scott
... 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 to show in ...
— The Strange Case of Mortimer Fenley • Louis Tracy
... A.D. 220, revolted from Artabanus, it was no doubt with a conviction that the Parthians were no longer the terrible warriors who under Mithridates I. had driven all the armies of the East before them like chaff, or who under Orodes and Phraates IV. had gained signal victories over the Romans. It is true that Artabanus had contended not unsuccessfully with Macrinus. But the prestige of Parthia was far from being re-established by the result of his three days' battle. Rome retained ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 6. (of 7): Parthia • George Rawlinson
... littered with retorts, bottles, and test-glasses. Before leaving school he invented a flying machine (heavier than air), and an unsuccessful attempt to start it on the high road caused him to be the victim of much chaff and ridicule. ...
— Orpheus in Mayfair and Other Stories and Sketches • Maurice Baring
... "Chaff, as you call it. Courtesy is out of fashion, and gallantry has come to signify quite a different kind of thing from ...
— The Last Chronicle of Barset • Anthony Trollope
... did. It is the result of her engagement. If our naughty soldier had not carried her off, she might have made an ideal schoolmaster's wife. I often chaff him about it, for he a little despises the intellectual professions. Natural, perfectly natural. How can a man who faces death feel as we ...
— The Longest Journey • E. M. Forster
... discharge made by the enemy in that campaign! The fall of its leader, so immediately in its presence, seemed to rouse the column into a sense of the necessity of doing something effective, and it assaulted the party in its front with the rage of so many tigers, dispersing the enemy like chaff; making a considerable number of prisoners, besides killing and wounding not ...
— Satanstoe • James Fenimore Cooper
... nothing to send love scuttling away with his quiver between his legs like a note of interrogation of that sort. The only touch of the morbid in Paul was his resentment at owing anything to his mere personal appearance. He could not escape the easy chaff of his fellows on his "fatal beauty." He dreaded the horrible and hackneyed phrase which every fresh intimacy either with man or woman would inevitably evoke, and he hated it beyond reason. There was a tour during which he longed for small-pox or a ...
— The Fortunate Youth • William J. Locke
... that we had fallen into the hands of pirates ourselves, but that I would have justice done as soon as we arrived at James Town, without he intended to murder us all before we arrived. His answer was, that he was too old a bird to be caught with such chaff, and that he would secure us and deliver us up to the authorities as soon as he arrived. I replied, in great anger, that he would then be convinced of his error, if it was an error, on his part; that his conduct was infamous, and he looked like a scoundrel, and ...
— The Privateer's-Man - One hundred Years Ago • Frederick Marryat
... doctor came again, fetching with him one of the cabin stewards to rig the storm-board at the side of my berth and some extra pillows with which to wedge me fast. But though he gave me a lot more of his pleasant chaff to cheer me I could see that his look was anxious, and it seemed to me that the steward was badly scared. Between them they managed to stow me pretty tight in my berth and to make me as comfortable as was possible while everything was in such commotion—with ...
— In the Sargasso Sea - A Novel • Thomas A. Janvier
... so weary and disheartened that his pride was failing him, and he was ready to plead for the chance of a little rest. Therefore he opened the door, and invited the landlady to enter in the most conciliating manner. But no such poor chaff would be of any avail with one of Mrs. Gruppins' experience, and looking straight before her, as if addressing no one ...
— A Knight Of The Nineteenth Century • E. P. Roe
... Maroons had been busily occupied all night, men, women, and children, in preparing and filling great hampers of the finest rice, yams, and cassava, from the adjacent provision-grounds, to be used for subsistence during their escape, leaving only chaff and refuse for the hungry soldiers. "This was certainly such a masterly trait of generalship in a savage people, whom we affected to despise, as would have done honor ...
— Black Rebellion - Five Slave Revolts • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... twelve long, broad, and blunt knives or hatchets. This was drawn by two horses or oxen over the bundles of corn laid on the ground, until the whole of the corn was separated from the straw. It was then thrown up into the air by means of shovels, so that the chaff might be separated from the grain by ...
— A Woman's Journey Round the World • Ida Pfeiffer
... must have had a kind heart. He took me by the hand and made me carry his broom and brushes. Nobody took much notice of us, the dawn was only just breaking, and the passages were very dark and deserted; only once some soldiers began to chaff him about me: 'C'est ma fille—quoi?' he said roughly. I very nearly laughed then, only I had the good sense to restrain myself, for I knew that my freedom, and perhaps my life, depended on my not betraying ...
— El Dorado • Baroness Orczy
... the yellow lampshade. She had not yet given up all her dreams of going forth and conquering the world with her music—and he sat there rolling out eternity itself before her, while he and she herself, her parents, all, all became as chaff blown before the wind ...
— The Great Hunger • Johan Bojer
... devil entered into him, and ruled his hand with a whirlwind power which he could no more withstand than the chaff ...
— A Siren • Thomas Adolphus Trollope
... a tale before," Masters answered, with a sneer. "Job Masters is too old a bird to be caught by such chaff. I'll take my risks, gentlemen. I'll take ...
— Peter Ruff and the Double Four • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... a small joke sets men laughing when they sit a-staring at one another with a pipe i' their mouths," said Mrs. Poyser. "Give Bartle Massey his way and he'd have all the sharpness to himself. If the chaff-cutter had the making of us, we should all be straw, I reckon. Totty, my chicken, go upstairs to cousin Dinah, and see what she's doing, and give her a ...
— Adam Bede • George Eliot
... lighter traction engine which does not plough, but travels from farm to farm with a threshing machine. In autumn it is in full work threshing, and in winter drives chaff-cutters for the larger farmers. Occasionally it draws a load of coal in waggons or trucks built for the purpose. Hodge's forefathers knew no rival at plough time; after the harvest they threshed the corn all the winter ...
— Hodge and His Masters • Richard Jefferies
... reproachfully. I was about to say that "Blackman's Warbler" was the local name for the Chiff-chaff in our part of Flint, when ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, May 7, 1919. • Various
... 'Speaker,'—the one on the right: 'Mr. Mayor,' my young one, how are you to-night? That's our 'Member of Congress,' we say when we chaff; There's the 'Reverend' What's his ...
— Public Speaking • Irvah Lester Winter
... princely estates as Eumaeus managed in the Ionian seas. Flaxman has certainly not given him the look of a large proprietor in his outlines: his toilet is severely scant, and the old gentleman appears to have lost two of his fingers in a chaff-cutter. As for Perses, who is represented as listening to the sage,[A] his dress is in the extreme of classic scantiness,—being, in fact, a mere night-shirt, and ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., April, 1863, No. LXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics. • Various
... in you & for you & be amended by you. Bere [the] wordes of saynt Ierom in your mynde that sayth thus. Truste me verely [that] theris no thynge more peryllous to a man. than is a woman / & to a woman no thynge more contagyous than is a man / for eyther of them is chaff & eyther is fyre. And note this for a truth / [that] preuy talkyng lacketh no suspycyon. That thynge is not lefull to be seen / [that] is not lefull to be desyred. More than ony man can suppose or wryte / [the] deuyll reioyseth whan memorye of o man is fixed ...
— A Ryght Profytable Treatyse Compendiously Drawen Out Of Many and Dyvers Wrytynges Of Holy Men • Thomas Betson
... stronghold. Their fighting men, in the middle of the forests, like wild beasts, I smote. Their carcasses filled the Tigris, and the tops of the mountains. At this time the troops of the Akhe,[4] who came to the deliverance and assistance of Comukha, together with the troops of Comukha, like chaff I scattered. The carcasses of their fighting men I piled up like heaps on the tops of the mountains. The bodies of their warriors, the roaring[5] waters carried down to the Tigris. Kili Teru son of Kali Teru, son of Zarupin Zihusun, their King,[6] in the course ...
— Babylonian and Assyrian Literature • Anonymous
... passing some ten minutes in talk and in good-humored chaff. But at last Dick broke away and drew out from the canoe talk as he saw Laura, Belle, Susie and the other girls awaiting them at a point farther up in ...
— The High School Boys' Canoe Club • H. Irving Hancock
... However, chaff and nonsense aside, I think I honor and appreciate your Pilgrim stock as much as you do yourselves, perhaps; and I endorse and adopt a sentiment uttered by a grandfather of mine once—a man of sturdy opinions, of sincere make of mind, and ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... intention of yielding; her mind and her feet were braced against any divergence from the straight road now; but the man Janet Payne had called Gregory Jessup said something that scattered her resolutions like so much chaff. ...
— Seven Miles to Arden • Ruth Sawyer
... feels inclined for, let the quantity usually allotted for a meal be mixed, consisting, for the first week, of three parts of milk and one part of hay-tea. The only nourishing infusion of hay is that which is made from the best and sweetest hay, cut by a chaff-cutter into pieces about two inches long, and put into an earthen vessel; over this, boiling water should be poured, and the whole allowed to stand for two hours, during which time it ought to be ...
— Cattle and Their Diseases • Robert Jennings
... said that, Sir! Your prestige is exactly opposite to the German Emperor's prestige, but equally important to your country and to peace. It may have been a fool who said it, but it was probably chaff." ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke, Vol. 2 • Stephen Gwynn
... conquers heaven for us! If the poor and humble toil that we have food, must not the high and glorious toil for him in return, that he have light, have guidance, freedom, immortality? These two, in all their degrees, I honour; all else is chaff and dust, which let the wind ...
— The Glory of English Prose - Letters to My Grandson • Stephen Coleridge
... it. However, the general factor thought 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. ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... alongside just then, and the men passed down their "dunnage" into her amid a brisk fire of good-humoured chaff from their shipmates, and such enquiries as: "Hello, Jim, haven't you got so much as a monkey or a parrot to cheer us up with?" and so on. Then they followed their belongings down the side, and stowed themselves ...
— A Middy in Command - A Tale of the Slave Squadron • Harry Collingwood
... 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
... hostess to attempt to arrange a tete-a-tete after dinner under the eye of an important social leader like Lady Maulevrier, whom she had only just succeeded in enticing to stay in her country house. So, with the usual semi-political chaff, the evening passed, and good-nights and good-bys were said, and early next day ...
— Halcyone • Elinor Glyn
... the style of those heroic times? 35 For nature brings not back the Mastodon, Nor we those times; and why should any man Remodel models? these twelve books of mine Were faint Homeric echoes, nothing-worth, Mere chaff and draff, much better burnt.' 'But I,' 40 Said Francis, 'pick'd the eleventh from this hearth' And have it: keep a thing, its use will come. I hoard it as a sugar-plum for Holmes.' He laugh'd, and I, tho' sleepy, like ...
— Selections from Wordsworth and Tennyson • William Wordsworth and Alfred Lord Tennyson
... fragments, like leaves of gold, silver, paper, etc." "Thus this globe," he says, "when brought rather near drops of water causes them to swell and puff up. It likewise attracts air, smoke, etc."(9) Before the time of Guericke's demonstrations, Cabaeus had noted that chaff leaped back from an "electric," but he did not interpret the phenomenon as electrical repulsion. Von Guericke, however, recognized it as such, and refers to it as what he calls "expulsive virtue." "Even expulsive ...
— A History of Science, Volume 2(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... gather up the sunbeams Lying all along our path; Let us keep the wheat and roses Casting out the thorns and chaff. ...
— The Story of the Hymns and Tunes • Theron Brown and Hezekiah Butterworth
... The peasants chaff Slimak for living in exile like a Sibiriak.[1] It is true, they say, that he lives nearer to the church, but on the other hand he has no one ...
— Selected Polish Tales • Various
... to make me so, but Heaven willed it otherwise. Ever since he has known of the conversion of the property into an entail, he has persecuted me with deadly hatred. He envies me this property, which in his hands would only be scattered like chaff. He is the wildest spendthrift I ever heard of. His load of debt exceeds by a long way the half of the unentailed property in Courland that fell to him, and now, pursued by his creditors, who fail not to worry him for payment, he hurries here to me to beg for money." "And ...
— Weird Tales. Vol. I • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... anemones spread out their laces; Each celandine has donned a silken gown; The violets are lifting shy sweet faces. (And there's a chiff-chaff, ...
— The Verse-Book Of A Homely Woman • Elizabeth Rebecca Ward, AKA Fay Inchfawn
... of terror in Europe, that terrible period of mingled war and revolution, during which thrones were hurled down and dynasties swept away like chaff in a gale. The face of Europe was changed. Whole provinces were blackened and devastated by fire and sword. During the three years in which the terror was at its height it is calculated that at least four millions of men bearing arms, the flower of each land, ...
— The Dominion in 1983 • Ralph Centennius
... and chaff from the noisy inmates of the many Bakele villages, and worried by mangrove-flies, we held our way up the muddy and rapidly narrowing stream, whose avenues of rhizophoras and palms acted as wind-sails; when the breeze failed the sensation was stifling. ...
— Two Trips to Gorilla Land and the Cataracts of the Congo Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... more racing chatter to be heard at the great hairdressers' than almost anywhere else outside a race-course. Some of it is worth hearing, most of it is valueless. The difficulty, as elsewhere, is to sift the wheat from the chaff. ...
— Anthony Lyveden • Dornford Yates
... gathering Wessex men, As grain out of the chaff The few that were alive to die, Laughing, as littered skulls that lie After lost battles turn to ...
— The Ballad of the White Horse • G.K. Chesterton
... at Ochiltree, on the 22nd day of the month. The following is recounted by this personage with malicious glee, and certainly, if authentic, it is a sad proof of how chaff is mixed with wheat, and how ignorant, almost impious, persons were engaged in this movement; nevertheless we give it, for we wish to present with impartiality all the alleged facts to ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XXII (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... He didn't chaff me about my country, and make fun of our government, or hint that American men were the only men living who knew how to treat women, as he seemed to delight in doing when his sister and cousin were with us. He began by offering to teach me some of his best slang; but as the lesson ...
— Lady Betty Across the Water • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... field; a wreck in which their boasts and hopes of the last few years met the fate which wise men had always anticipated. Oxford repudiated them. Their theories, their controversial successes, their learned arguments, their appeals to the imagination, all seemed to go down, and to be swept away like chaff, before the breath of straightforward common sense and honesty. Henceforth there was a badge affixed to them and all who belonged to them, a badge of suspicion and discredit, and even shame, which bade men beware of them, an overthrow under which it seemed wonderful that they ...
— The Oxford Movement - Twelve Years, 1833-1845 • R.W. Church
... FAIR, who meet with ills like these, And nothing can their wounded minds appease: I many know howe'er, who would but laugh, And treat such accidents as light as chaff. But I have done: no more of that or this; May ev'ry belle receive her ...
— The Tales and Novels, Complete • Jean de La Fontaine
... and cultivate, those inbred sentiments which are the faithful guardians, the active monitors of our duty, the true supporters of all liberal and manly morals. We have not been drawn and trussed, in order that we may be filled, like stuffed birds in a museum, with chaff and rags and paltry blurred shreds of paper about the rights of man. We preserve the whole of our feelings still native and entire, unsophisticated by pedantry and infidelity. We have real hearts of flesh and blood beating in our bosoms. We fear God; we look ...
— Selections from the Speeches and Writings of Edmund Burke. • Edmund Burke
... must do or be swept off his feet, and when it had passed there was not one scrap of that dry alfalfa hay where I'd thrown it. I found my hat a mile distant. My nostrils and ears and eyes and mouth were literally loaded with dirt and fine hay chaff. And my hair! Heavens!" She put her hands to it. "I usually wear it in braids, you know, but to-day I thought I'd be smart and perk up a bit. Now I'll have to 'go to the cleaners,' ...
— The She Boss - A Western Story • Arthur Preston Hankins
... than I cometh, the latchet of whose shoes I am not worthy to unloose: He shall baptize you with the Holy Ghost, and with fire: 17. Whose fan is in His hand, and He will thoroughly purge His floor, and will gather the wheat into His garner; but the chaff He will burn with fire unquenchable. 18. And many other things, in his exhortation, preached he unto the people. 19. But Herod the tetrarch, being reproved by him for Herodias his brother Philip's wife, and for all the evils which Herod had done, 20. ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... been give and take 'twixt him and Toomey ever since the discovery that each had served in the cavalry. Beaten thus far in the battle of chaff, the conductor tried another as he studied Geordie with ...
— To The Front - A Sequel to Cadet Days • Charles King
... not Captain Dacres who had anticipated that pleasure, for while responding with the best grace he could command to the chaff and banter which began to be darted at him, he was consigning Miss Fisher, and more especially the effusive Doady, to every depth between this world and the ...
— Tales from Many Sources - Vol. V • Various
... laughter and applause, for local feeling was very strong in Stokebridge, and a storm of jeers and rough chaff were poured upon the bagmen for having been brought in prisoners ...
— Facing Death - The Hero of the Vaughan Pit. A Tale of the Coal Mines • G. A. Henty
... speaks 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 not worth ...
— Public Speaking • Clarence Stratton
... of purification? May I ask where you are going to find it and what it is going to consist of? Oh, don't look so melodramatic! If you can put up with what you got from Riis's girl yesterday and her mother to-day, surely you can put up with a little angry talk or a little chaff from your father. I have had to put up with the whole affair—the betrothal and the breaking it off as well! And then to be sprinkled with essence of morality into the bargain! Good Lord! I hope at least I shall not smell of it still ...
— Three Comedies • Bjornstjerne M. Bjornson
... haps alway, Will faintly take to fleeing, A lion's heart have I to-day For Kaiser Henry's seeing. The wheat springs forth, the chaff's behind;[12] Strike harder, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 57, July, 1862 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... present us with a racing stud," lisps the gunner, "but, by G——, they'll shy chaff enough at us to keep all the bloomin' horses between 'ere and 'ell, and the girls will send us a kid's feedin' bottle, as a mark of feelin' and esteem, every Valentine's Day for ten years to come, because of the glorious name we made for Australia on the bloody ...
— Campaign Pictures of the War in South Africa (1899-1900) - Letters from the Front • A. G. Hales
... like the ship and the commander. Captain Hemming bore a good character, as did Lieutenants Cherry and Rogers, among those who had ever sailed with them. No persons are more thoroughly discussed than are naval officers by seamen; the wheat is completely sifted from the chaff, the gold from the alloy; and many who pass for very fine fellows on shore are looked upon as arrant pretenders afloat. Jack was making his way towards the shop of Mr Woodward the bookseller, when two seamen in a happy state of indifferentism to all sublunary ...
— The Three Lieutenants • W.H.G. Kingston
... 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
... they tramped slowly forward. The darkness grew more intense, and the chaff and laughter—for the soldiers, elated by success, had hitherto shown no sign of fatigue—died gradually away. Nothing was to be heard but the clang of accoutrements, the long rumble of the guns, and the shuffle of weary feet. Men ...
— Stonewall Jackson And The American Civil War • G. F. R. Henderson
... and ready for harvest, the Indians cut the wheat, and scattering the bundles over a spot of hard ground, drove oxen round and round on the sheaves till the wheat was threshed out from the straw. Then Indian women winnowed out the chaff and dirt by tossing the grain up in the wind, or from basket to basket, till in this slow way the yellow kernels were made ...
— Stories of California • Ella M. Sexton
... be taken in by chaff like that, he said. And indeed he fully believed, as I hoped he would, that I was making ...
— Kilgorman - A Story of Ireland in 1798 • Talbot Baines Reed
... learning, progress, and common sense, we had such an inadequate idea of the responsibilities of government that we elected men to office who were incapable, simply because they had carried a gun or tripped over a sword! No, no. The shrewd Yankee and the calculating Hoosier are not caught with such chaff. They selected these officers as servants of the nation because the war had served to show what sort of ...
— Russell H. Conwell • Agnes Rush Burr
... is rotten, all our rites defiled, Our temples sullied, and, methinks, this man, With his new ordinance, so wise and mild, Is come, even as He says, the chaff to fan And sever from the wheat; but will his faith Survive the ...
— Poems • (AKA Charlotte, Emily and Anne Bronte) Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell
... tyrant, like his vile body, shall moulder in the dust. Put your trust in the Lord of hosts, he is your strong tower, he is your helper and defense, he will guide and strengthen the arm of flesh, and scatter your enemies like chaff. ...
— The Fall of British Tyranny - American Liberty Triumphant • John Leacock
... Who else like you Could sift the seed corn from our chaff, And make us, with the pen we knew, Deathless at ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 20, July, 1891 • Various
... character of small coal is, of course, owing to the fact that no ordinary furnace can burn it. But picture to yourself a blast of hot air into which powdered coal is sifted from above like ground coffee, or like chaff in a thrashing mill, and see how rapidly and completely it might burn. Fine dust in a flour mill is so combustible as to be explosive and dangerous, and Mr. Galloway has shown that many colliery explosions are due not to the presence of gas so much as the presence ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 586, March 26, 1887 • Various
... and cheese, or, for certain reasons, prefer to employ the little they make use of in its original state. Horses are rarely kept for luxury or for labour; and the few animals employed in agriculture, which are mostly asses, mules, or buffalos, subsist in the winter season on chaff and straw; and their chief support in the summer is derived from the strong grasses that grow in the ditches and the common reed, with which, in this part of the country, large tracts of swampy ground ...
— Travels in China, Containing Descriptions, Observations, and Comparisons, Made and Collected in the Course of a Short Residence at the Imperial Palace of Yuen-Min-Yuen, and on a Subsequent Journey thr • John Barrow
... thunder; and were it not for the restraining hand of God it would immediately burst forth upon you. The sovereign pleasure of God, for the present, stays his rough wind; otherwise it would come with fury, and your destruction would come like a whirlwind, and you would be like the chaff of the summer threshing-floor. The wrath of God is like great waters that are dammed for the present; they increase more and more, and rise higher and higher, till an outlet is given; and the longer the stream is stopped, the more rapid and mighty is its course when once it is let ...
— Initial Studies in American Letters • Henry A. Beers
... gondoliers urging their frail craft along with tremendous strokes in unison were a magnificent spectacle. The excitement was intense towards the end, but there was no close finish. Between the races the exchange of chaff among the ...
— A Wanderer in Venice • E.V. Lucas
... consequently, unreliable judgment. These deficiencies are worse than handicaps to an editor. They are absolute disqualifications. An editor's first duty is to discriminate, to sift, to winnow the few grains of wheat out of the bushels of chaff that come to his mill. Editors must have a very keen sense of the fitness of things. It is true that the discriminating reader of newspapers and magazines may be tempted to feel at times that this sense of the fitness of things is very rare in editors. Unquestionably, it could be improved in ...
— Analyzing Character • Katherine M. H. Blackford and Arthur Newcomb
... of an editor, much more than to illustrate the original writer. Notes have been chiefly introduced for the purpose of guarding our readers against some political sophisms, or to correct some hasty error. But happily, in the writings to which we have devoted our time and attention, the chaff and dross lie so open to view, and are so easily separated from purer matter, that a hint is sufficient to protect the most incautious from harm. Accordingly, in our notes and prefaces we have confined ourselves to simple and succinct histories ...
— Dr. Johnson's Works: Life, Poems, and Tales, Volume 1 - The Works Of Samuel Johnson, Ll.D., In Nine Volumes • Samuel Johnson
... tired, and bored with the whole business, and stifled with the close atmosphere—laden with every graveolent horror; besides, I had not escaped from London "chaff" and Parisian persiflage, to be mocked by a wild Virginian. So I said, ...
— Border and Bastille • George A. Lawrence
... the tribute to genius, to industry, to birth, to fortune. At first he yields reluctantly to novitiate and culture; he yearns for action. His masters tell him that the world is coy, must be approached cautiously, and with something substantial in the hand. The old bird will not be caught with chaff. He does not yet understand the process of accumulation and transmutation. The fate of the Danaides is his, and he draws long with a bottomless bucket. But at last his incompetency can no further be concealed. Then he either submits ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 11, September, 1858 • Various
... character as a dog is to discover from a stranger's face whether this is a friend or no? Those by-words—"atoms," "affinities"—are facts surviving in modern languages for the confusion of philosophic wiseacres who amuse themselves by winnowing the chaff of language to find its grammatical roots. We feel that we are loved. Our sentiments make themselves felt in everything, even at a great distance. A letter is a living soul, and so faithful an echo of the ...
— Father Goriot • Honore de Balzac
... When the chaff-piles cease their burning and the frost is closing over All the barren leagues of stubble that my lonely feet have passed, I shall spike the door and journey towards the Channel lights of Dover— That England may receive my dreams and ...
— England over Seas • Lloyd Roberts
... that a gentleman wished to see him, "and a real swell, too," added the boy. Andre was a good deal put out at being disturbed, but when he reached the street and saw that it was M. de Breulh-Faverlay who was waiting for him, his ill-humor disappeared like chaff before the wind. ...
— Caught In The Net • Emile Gaboriau
... were of straw, mountain grass, or green and dried rushes. Among the nine thousand people there were but two feather-beds, and but eight beds stuffed with chaff. There were but two stables and six cow-houses in the whole district. None of the women owned more than one shift, nor was there a single bonnet among them all, nor a looking-glass costing ...
— Ireland Under Coercion (2nd ed.) (1 of 2) (1888) • William Henry Hurlbert
... the review of Childe Harold, February, 1812 (xix., 476), the editor inserted a ponderous retort to this harmless and good-natured "chaff:" "To those strictures of the noble author we feel no inclination to trouble our readers with any reply ... we shall merely observe that if we viewed with astonishment the immeasurable fury with which the minor poet received the innocent pleasantry ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 2 • George Gordon Byron
... I think it probable that a certain proportion of chaff—of straw cut very fine, or even saw dust, might be employed with great advantage. I wish those who have leisure would turn their thoughts to this subject, for I am persuaded that very important improvements would result from a ...
— ESSAYS, Political, Economical and Philosophical. Volume 1. • Benjamin Rumford
... It gives a spirited description of the prudent retreat of General Huysmans, the unconditional surrender of Commandant Eybel, and winds up with a pen-and-ink sketch of Brounckers' bright boy breaking the chaff-bread of captivity in the quarters of that ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... life was spotless, yet as the judgments of God are unsearchable, as there is such a quantity of dross mixed with our purest gold, such chaff with our purest grain, our purest virtues tarnished with so many imperfections, that on appearing in the presence of God, into whose Kingdom the slightest stain is not admitted, who can say, "My soul is pure; I have nothing to answer for?" as in ...
— Purgatory • Mary Anne Madden Sadlier
... of the sixteenth century. It is not an easy task to find the few grains of historical truth referring to him, among the chaff of popular fiction that several centuries have accumulated around his name. A halo so mysterious and miraculous surrounds his person, that not only have various other famous individuals, who lived long before or after him, been completely amalgamated with him, but even ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 12, October, 1858 • Various
... would have done any good. Allan was very sorry for Tom, and took more than a fair share of the blame, saying he ought to have been more careful; but he was rather distressed when he found that he had a black eye, and that it could not be well before the cricket match, when the boys would be sure to chaff him. ...
— Golden Moments - Bright Stories for Young Folks • Anonymous
... was seated at the metate (hand-mill), which is one of the 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 furnace, and the ...
— What I Saw in California • Edwin Bryant
... war and storm scatter them as the chaff! My liege, my royal master," continued the earl, in a deep, low, faltering voice, "why knew I not thy holy and princely heart before? Why stood so many between Warwick's devotion and a king so worthy to command it? How poor, beside thy great-hearted fortitude and thy Christian ...
— The Last Of The Barons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... novels, not very good I was told, but still, emanating from the pen of a lady, they were well paid. She was very eccentric, and rather amusing. When a woman says everything that comes into her head, out of a great deal of chaff there will drop some few grains of wheat; and so sometimes, more by accident than otherwise, she said what is called a good thing. Now, a good thing is repeated, while all the nonsense is forgotten; and Lady R—was considered a wit as well as an authoress. She was a tall ...
— Valerie • Frederick Marryat
... about that," interposed Benjamin, with a knowing smile. "Who will ever know the difference if a quarter part of the total weight is chaff and clay? It will all grind up into excellent flour, and when the soldier eats his barley bread or his rye loaf it will taste all the better to him. There is nearly half a million florins' clear profit in the ...
— Manasseh - A Romance of Transylvania • Maurus Jokai
... secret; I felt under no obligation to keep it. He deserved no mercy, and I exposed him at breakfast that very morning. But I could not help being a little sorry for him when he came in. He bent his head under the shower of reproach, chaff, and gibing; he did not try to excuse himself; he simply opened his book at the old place, and we all shouted the old ode, substituting "Betsa" for "Pyrrha" wherever we could. Still, in spite of our jocularity, we all felt an under-current ...
— Frivolous Cupid • Anthony Hope
... least disturbed nor daunted that they had failed in their former promises. Flynn's good-nature was as unfaltering as his self-esteem, perhaps because of his self-esteem. He only smiled with fatuous superiority when from time to time, after the elections, his patrons would chaff him about his failure to secure the mayoralty. They did so with more effect since there were always among the horse-players on such occasions a few who would cast votes for the barber, esteeming it as a choice and perennial joke, and his reading his ...
— The Debtor - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... day to take any living interest, for example, in the ancient controversies. 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
... driven by the pangs of hunger to consume weeds and the bark of trees, fallen leaves, insects of the lowest orders and the bones of wild animals which had died in the forest. To carry a little rice openly was a rash challenge to those who still valued life, and a loaf of chaff and black mould was guarded as a precious jewel. No wife or daughter could weigh in the balance against a measure of corn, and men sold themselves into captivity to secure the coarse nourishment which the rich allotted to their slaves. Those who remained in the villages followed in Ten-teh's ...
— Kai Lung's Golden Hours • Ernest Bramah
... private letter, "that one afternoon after a protest that nothing he said was to be published, I heard him discuss the prospects and the works of our ultra-modern painters. Even in fields beyond his sympathy he picked out the chaff from the wheat, and was judicially accurate in his verdicts of the difference between 'tweedle-dum' and 'tweedle-dee,' both one would have ...
— Frederic Lord Leighton - An Illustrated Record of His Life and Work • Ernest Rhys
... in their saddles, and were ordered out to query the delay. They broke up into skirmishing parties and shook their fists at the foe. But it was all to no purpose; the foe declined to be caught with chaff, and decided "to ...
— The Siege of Kimberley • T. Phelan
... they was making." Pook, a haycock. All of a pummy, all of a moulter, because it was so very brow, describing the condition of a tree, which shattered as it fell because it was brow, i.e. brittle. Leer, empty, generally said of hunger.—See German. Hulls, chaff. The chaff of oats; used to be in favour for stuffing mattresses. Heft, Weight. To huck, to push or pull out. Scotch (howk). Stook, the foundation of a bee hive. Pe-art, bright, lively, the original word bearht for both bright and pert. Loo (or lee), sheltered. Steady, slow. "She ...
— John Keble's Parishes • Charlotte M Yonge
... crash, there was the report of a gun from the steamer, followed almost instantly by the bursting of a shell in the very thick of the trees where the Malays had gathered, with the result that there was quite an opening rent in that part of the jungle, and the threatening party was scattered like chaff. ...
— Middy and Ensign • G. Manville Fenn
... the guards' vans. Sometimes six of them would be installed on the ledge behind the funnel of the engine, with their russet faces to the wind. In the argot of Paris slums, or in the dialects of seaport towns, they hurled chaff at comrades waiting on the platforms with stacked arms, and made outrageous love to girls who ran by the side of their trains with laughing eyes and saucy tongues and a last farewell of "Bonne chance, mes petits! Bonne chance et toujours la victoire!" At every wayside halt artists ...
— The Soul of the War • Philip Gibbs
... who knows as little of Sanscrit as of Erse Scottis or gaelic; calls England an island! and wishes to teach everyone "The ode to a Skylark," "Silas Marner,"[19] and "Tom Browne's Schooldays." (My own dear countrymen you will not be taken in by this chaff for ever, will you?) Why not study Campbells tales in gaelic, or Sir David Lindsay, or the Psalms by Waddell or ...
— From Edinburgh to India & Burmah • William G. Burn Murdoch
... cousin," remarked Hseh P'an vehemently, "the primary idea I had in view was to ask you to come out a moment sooner and I forgot to respectfully shun the expression. But by and bye, when you wish to chaff me, just you likewise allude to my father, ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... managed to take up an enfilading position as the Harrisons advanced to break in the door. A threatening shout from the ambuscaded partisans caused them to hurriedly fall back towards the rear of the barn. There was a pause, and then began the usual Homeric chaff,—with this Western difference that it was cunningly intended ...
— Cressy • Bret Harte
... than I, the latchet of whose shoes I am not worthy to unloose: he shall baptize you in the Holy Spirit and in fire: 17 whose fan is in his hand, thoroughly to cleanse his threshing-floor, and to gather the wheat into his garner; but the chaff he will ...
— The Gospel of Luke, An Exposition • Charles R. Erdman
... chaff. "Fellows, stop guying Ward; cut it out, I tell you. He's only a kid freshman, but he's liable to hand you a punch, and if he does you'll remember it. Besides, he's right.... Look here, Ward, you stick to that promise. It's a good promise to stick to, and if you're going in for athletics ...
— The Young Pitcher • Zane Grey
... he saw himself riding in the line of horsemen, going at full speed for a body of bloodthirsty Indians, and driving them helter-skelter like chaff before a storm. ...
— The Silver Canyon - A Tale of the Western Plains • George Manville Fenn
... Out of much you cannot understand,—wherever the blame for that may lie,—out of much slag and much dross, I am mistaken if you will not lay up some of your finest gold; and out of much straw and chaff some of the finest of the wheat. The Divine Nature, human nature, time, space, matter, life, love, sin, death, holiness, heaven, hell,—Behmen's reader must have lived and moved all his days among such things as these: he must be at home, as far as the mind of man can be at home, among ...
— Jacob Behmen - an appreciation • Alexander Whyte
... 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 want of confidence between the governed and the Government must be hurtful"—well, ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, November 28, 1891 • Various
... He reserved his chaff for a future occasion, and only permitted himself one allusion to the state of affairs by taking Nell's hand and murmuring: "Beg pardon, Nell! Thought ...
— Nell, of Shorne Mills - or, One Heart's Burden • Charles Garvice
... comfortably filling his pipe, "the daughter, Miss Kirkby, was awfully good fun; so fresh, so perfectly natural and innocent, don't you know, and yet so extraordinarily sharp and clever. She had some awfully good chaff over that Scotch scenery before those Scotch tourists, do you remember? And it was all so beastly true, too. Perhaps she's ...
— A Protegee of Jack Hamlin's and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... independent soul—flown like a bird from the cage, he thought, and was going a way that he felt would be a way of pain, and probably sorrow, yet he could not stop her. All the experience of his life was worthless to her. All that he knew of men, all that he feared of her lover, were as chaff ...
— In the Heart of a Fool • William Allen White
... 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 ...
— Bob, Son of Battle • Alfred Ollivant
... blarney me. I'm too old a bird to be caught with chaff. It's a dirty shame, of course, about this man Henderson, but I'm not running the criminal ...
— Bucky O'Connor • William MacLeod Raine
... haunted the theatre, frolicked in company, laughed and mocked and tripped it to the flute when she saw good; nay, she would mount her anapaests, as likely as not, and pelt the friends of Dialogue with nicknames— doctrinaires, airy metaphysicians, and the like. The thing she loved of all else was to chaff them and drench them in holiday impertinence, exhibit them treading on air and arguing with the clouds, or measuring the jump of a flea, as a type of their ethereal refinements. But Dialogue continued his deep speculations ...
— Works, V1 • Lucian of Samosata
... the rest of the fleet had passed out of sight to the eastward, scattered like chaff before the angry breath of the hurricane, and the Princess Royal was left to fight out her battle alone. By dint of almost superhuman exertions, the shattered spars had been secured, the main-sail cut away from the yard, and such other dispositions made as would ...
— The Voyage of the Aurora • Harry Collingwood |
