"Mowing" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... through the evergreens, and there among the flower-beds in the sunshine he saw—first, John Gardener driving a mowing-machine over the velvety grass under Master Arthur's very nose, so there was no getting a private interview with him. Secondly, Master Arthur himself, sitting on the ground with his terrier in his lap, directing the proceedings ...
— Frances Kane's Fortune • L. T. Meade
... back to the drawing-room, and I followed. I glanced at the French clock on the mantelpiece, where a gold Cupid in a robe of blue enamel was mowing down an array of hearts with a scythe, and saw that we had been away a little over an hour. Could that be all? How strange it seemed! People were chattering, and flirting fans, and playing cards, as if nothing ...
— Out in the Forty-Five - Duncan Keith's Vow • Emily Sarah Holt
... of the indignities offered to their good old chief, they secretly determined to go upon the war path, and soon after four young Foxes started to cross the river and avenge the insult. On going up Henderson creek they espied Mr. William Martin while in the act of mowing, at a point near Little York, whom they shot and killed, and for fear of detection, immediately took to the brush. It being late when they got through the woods, they made a fire and camped just at the edge ...
— Autobiography of Ma-ka-tai-me-she-kia-kiak, or Black Hawk • Black Hawk
... horse to odds on and thought they knew his running habits were surprised to see him steadily moving up on the back stretch. It was customary for Elisha to begin to run at the half-mile pole—usually from a tail-end position—but to-day he was mowing down the outsiders even before he reached that point, and on the upper turn he went thundering into second place—with the Ghost only five lengths away. The imported jockey on Parker's horse cast one glance behind him, and at the head of the stretch he sat down ...
— Old Man Curry - Race Track Stories • Charles E. (Charles Emmett) Van Loan
... any immediate topic. On horseback, therefore, he was perpetually swinging himself backwards and forwards, now on the horse's ears, then anon on the very rump of the animal,—now hanging both his legs on one side, and now sitting with his face to the tail, moping, mowing, and making a thousand apish gestures, until his palfrey took his freaks so much to heart, as fairly to lay him at his length on the green grass—an incident which greatly amused the Knight, but compelled his companion to ...
— Ivanhoe - A Romance • Walter Scott
... correct grammar than to speak slang, and it is no more difficult to write orthographically than to indulge in chaotic spelling, just as in every field it is no harder to show good manners than to behave rudely. If the sciences of digging and chopping, of reaping and raking, of weeding and mowing, of spraying and feeding, are all postulates of the future, each can transform the chance methods into exact ones, and that means into truly efficient ones, only when every element has been brought under the scrutiny of the psychological laboratory. We must measure the time in hundredths ...
— Psychology and Social Sanity • Hugo Muensterberg
... and made to prevent Martin's dog-days. Imprinted by John-a-noke and John-a-stile for the baylive [sic] of Withernam, cum privilegio perennitatis; and are to be sold at the sign of the crab-tree-cudgel in Thwackcoat Lane. A sentence. Martin hangs fit for my mowing. ...
— A History of English Literature - Elizabethan Literature • George Saintsbury
... looked around her to see if he were waking, and thereupon he woke. Then he arose, and said unto her, "Take the horses and ride on, and keep straight on as thou didst yesterday." And they left the wood, and they came to an open country, with meadows on one hand, and mowers mowing the meadows. And there was a river before them, and the horses bent down and drank of the water. And they went up out of the river by a lofty steep; and there they met a slender stripling with a satchel about his neck, and they saw that there was ...
— Bulfinch's Mythology • Thomas Bulfinch
... three respectful and somewhat tender glances than she fell in love with him to distraction. The King would have him come into the coach and take part in the airing. The Cat, overjoyed to see his plan begin to succeed, marched on before, and, meeting with some countrymen, who were mowing a meadow, he ...
— The Tales of Mother Goose - As First Collected by Charles Perrault in 1696 • Charles Perrault
... hill, by death-dealing volleys. The rabble had held their rude works against the King's choice troops. Never had as many officers been killed or wounded in a single charge. There had not been such mowing down at Fontenoy or Montmorenci. These unmilitary Yankees actually aimed when they fired, each at some particular mark! Harry had heard them cheering, and had thought they were about to pursue the King's troops; they had evidently ...
— The Continental Dragoon - A Love Story of Philipse Manor-House in 1778 • Robert Neilson Stephens
... at it in my place,' she said softly. 'Their cattle have eaten up my whole meadow, and they are tearing up everything in my kitchen-garden. I was looking this morning; not a cucumber left. To-morrow they will begin mowing the oats; the officer gave me an advance in money, and the rest he paid with note of hand. Is it true that they are ...
— Selected Polish Tales • Various
... can take my meaning almost afore I start to speak. An' that's a great comfort to a man o' my age. It'll be terrible hard, when I wants to talk, to begin at the beginning every time. There's that old yarn o' mine about Hambly's cow an' the lawn-mowing machine—I doubt that anybody 'll enjoy it so much as you always do; an' I've so got out o' the way o' telling the beginning—which bain't extra funny, though needful to a stranger's understanding the whole joke—that I 'most forgets ...
— The Delectable Duchy • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... warfare. Although this class is potentially one of the most interesting, it is at the same time one of the most abused. Ray Cummings can write classics in this field, but the efforts of most the others are atrocities. I'll wager that their favorite childhood sport was mowing down whole regiments of lead soldiers with oxy-acetylene torches. It shows in their writings. Why can't they think of something original? Why can't they make their stories logical? The merits of a story are not dependent on the number of people wiped out by one ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, December 1930 • Various
... the morning sunlight. "To look up from my sewing and see—la! and 'twas the first time I ever sat down to that rag-rug since I had to drop it and run over and take care of Simon, when they brought me word he was 'most cut to pieces in the mowing machine. My senses! I'm ...
— Five Little Peppers Grown Up • Margaret Sidney
... steel fastened to a long handle, forming an instrument not unlike a cleek or other golf-stick. This he slowly swung round his head, and each time it touched the ground cleared about three inches of grass. The thing looked too absurd. We all wanted to get out and ask him how long he expected to be mowing that strip of grass ...
— A Visit to Java - With an Account of the Founding of Singapore • W. Basil Worsfold
... damp and heavy, swallows frequently hawk for insects about cattle and moving herds in the field. My farmer describes how they attended him one foggy day, as he was mowing in the meadow with a mowing-machine. It had been foggy for two days, and the swallows were very hungry and the insects stupid and inert. When the sound of his machine was heard, the swallows appeared and attended him like a brood of hungry chickens. He says there was a continual ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 7 • Various
... first sight of countrie people, wafting with a flagge.] And thus marching towards our botes, we espied certaine countrey people on the top of Mount Warwick with a flag wafting vs backe againe and making great noise with cries like the mowing of Buls seeming greatly desirous of conference with vs: whereupon the Generall being therewith better acquainted, answered them againe with the like cries, whereat and with the noise of our trumpets they seemed greatly to reioice, skipping, laughing, ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries of The English Nation, Vol. XII., America, Part I. • Richard Hakluyt
... and easily burned up, give it a sprinkling of soot, or guano, or wood ashes (or all three mixed) before rain. "Slops" are as welcome to parched grass as to half-starved flowers. If the weather is hot and the soil light, it is well occasionally to leave the short clippings of one mowing upon the lawn to ...
— Last Words - A Final Collection of Stories • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... farther side of the room, the maitre d'hotel paused bowing and mowing beside a large table already in the possession of a ...
— The False Faces • Vance, Louis Joseph
... but that will be different. It will be mere machine-cutting, lawn-mowing, steam-reaping, if you understand me; there'll be no pleasure in it, no artistic ...
— Prose Fancies (Second Series) • Richard Le Gallienne
... most poetical moment of the year. Here we have a big house, a big garden, a lot of servants, and a lot going on, so that you don't see the haymaking; here it all passes unnoticed. There, at the farm, I have a meadow of forty-five acres as flat as my hand. You can see the men mowing from any window you stand at. They are mowing in the meadow, they are mowing in the garden. There are no visitors, no fuss nor hurry either, so that you can't help seeing, feeling, hearing nothing but the haymaking. There ...
— The Party and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... They received the charge with firmness; but their young adversary, perceiving that extraordinary means were necessary to make the desired effect, calling on his men to follow him, put spurs to his horse and rushed into the thickest of the battle. His soldiers did not shrink; they pressed on, mowing down the foremost ranks, whilst he, by a lucky stroke of his sabre, disabled the sword-arm of the Russian standard-bearer and seized the colors. His own troops seeing the standard in his hand, with one accord, in loud and repeated cries, shouted ...
— Thaddeus of Warsaw • Jane Porter
... distance betweene Orfordnesse and Ageland 250 leagues. Then we sailed from thence 12 leagues Northwest, and found many other Islandes, and there came to anker the 19 day, and manned our Pinnesse, and went on shore to the Islands, and found people mowing and making of hay, which came to the shore and welcomed vs. In which place were an innumerable sort of Islands, which were called the Isles of Rost, being vnder the dominion of the king of Denmarke: which place was in latitude 66 degrees, and 30 minutes. The winde being ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, • Richard Hakluyt
... with a bludgeon, a flail, or a whip. As it was, to a long arm was added a long sword, which whistled through the air, but through flesh went quiet. There had been blows at first from behind and at the side of him. The long mowing arms stayed them. It became a butchery of sheep before he was midway of the hall, thence the rest of his passage to the door was between two huddled heaps, with ...
— The Forest Lovers • Maurice Hewlett
... love with him to distraction. The king would needs have him come into his coach and take part of the airing. The cat, quite overjoyed to see his project begin to succeed, marched on before, and meeting with some countrymen who were mowing a meadow, he said to them, "Good people, you who are mowing, if you do not tell the king, who will soon pass this way, that the meadow you mow belongs to my lord Marquis of Carabas, you shall be chopped as small as herbs ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... begins with the death of our hero. The manner of it was decapitation, the instrument a mowing machine. A young son of the deceased, dumb with horror, seized the paternal head and ran ...
— The Fiend's Delight • Dod Grile
... his breast, and sunk back into his dreams. The office was very still, except for two bluebottle flies butting against the ceiling and buzzing up and down the window-panes. A hot wind wandered in and flapped a mowing-machine poster on the wall; then dropped, and the room was still again, except that leaf shadows moved across the square of sunshine on the bare boards by the open door. When Lizzie got up to go, he did not hear her kind good-by until she repeated it, touching his shoulder ...
— Life at High Tide - Harper's Novelettes • Various
... intoxicated, but only fashionably drunk; and luxurious indolence—are the instruments by which this unreal life pushes its disciples into valetudinarianism and the grave. Along the walks of high life Death goes a mowing—and such harvests as are reaped! Materia medica has been exhausted to find curatives for these physiological devastations. Dropsies, cancers, consumptions, gout, and almost every infirmity in all the realm of pathology, have been the penalty paid. To counteract the damage, pharmacy has gone ...
— The Abominations of Modern Society • Rev. T. De Witt Talmage
... what a loathsome agony Is that when selfishness mocks love's delight, Foul as in dreams' most fearful imagery To dally with the mowing dead;—that night All torture, fear, or horror made seem light Which the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., February, 1863, No. LXIV. • Various
... pretty flowers, love," said he, in imitation of Thomasina's patronising tone, and forthwith beginning at the end, he went steadily to the top of the right-hand border, mowing the rose-coloured tulips as ...
— Tales from Many Sources - Vol. V • Various
... has established a chain of relief warehouses, fully equipped with motor-lorries and cars. These warehouses furnish everything that an agricultural people starting life afresh can require—food, clothes, blankets, beds, mattresses, stoves, kitchen utensils, reapers, binders, mowing-machines, threshing-machines, garden-tools, soap, tooth brushes, etc. If you can conceive of yourself as having been a prosperous farmer and waking up one morning broken in heart and dirty in person, with your barns, ...
— Out To Win - The Story of America in France • Coningsby Dawson
... answered, but, as the boat rose and fell on the short sea raised by the first of the breeze, the face kept mopping and mowing at us over ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... ween that the Heaven is a god, are in error. For we see it turning and mowing by law, and consisting of many parts, whence also it is called Cosmos! Now a 'Cosmos' is the handiwork of some artificer; and that which is wrought by handiwork hath beginning and end. And the firmament is moved by law together ...
— Barlaam and Ioasaph • St. John of Damascus
... idleness; while we wait the result of one part of our labors, we have other works to accomplish. Spring-time and harvest follow each other rapidly; we have to prepare our barns and granaries. Our mowing season is always one of our busiest. We have our anxieties, too;—we watch the clouds as they pass over us, and our spirits depend much on sunshine and rain; for an unexpected shower may destroy all our labors. When the grass ...
— Rich Enough - a tale of the times • Hannah Farnham Sawyer Lee
... irritable people, ignorant, and improvident, who could think of nothing but the grey earth and black bread; a people who were crafty, but were stupid about it, like the birds, who, when they want to hide themselves, only hide their heads. They would not do the mowing for you for twenty rubles, but they would do it for six liters of brandy, notwithstanding the fact that with twenty rubles they can buy eight times as much. What vice and foolishness! Nevertheless, one feels that the life of the peasant has a great deal of ...
— Contemporary Russian Novelists • Serge Persky
... by his companion the Wolf, and awaited their attack; and when the army of the beautiful Tsarevna was near, Lyubim, taking the right wing, ordered the Wolf to attack the left, and they made ready for the charge. Then on a sudden they fell upon the warriors of the Tsarevna with a fierce onset, mowing them down like grass, until only two persons remained on the field, the Wolf and Lyubim Tsarevich. And after this dreadful fight was ended the brave Wolf said to Lyubim: "See, yonder comes the beautiful Tsarevna herself, and she will ask you to take her to ...
— The Russian Garland - being Russian Falk Tales • Various
... windfalls all over my face, that I had to cover with the overhang of whiskers. I tried the old-style razor, but my shaving ran into big money for court plaster, so I got some safety razors, several brands of them, determined to keep a decent-looking lawn. These devices are like mowing machines in that they have teeth to grip the crop and make it stand straight for the attack of the knife, but the knife doesn't move in a shuttle like that of the mowing machine—it is stationary, so that you have an arrangement that is a combination of mowing machine and road scraper. ...
— Cupid's Middleman • Edward B. Lent
... Accommodate! God forbid that I should ever be accommodated. No, no. Look you, as I told that cousin-german of yours, the herb-doctor, I'm now on the road to get me made some sort of machine to do my work. Machines for me. My cider-mill—does that ever steal my cider? My mowing-machine—does that ever lay a-bed mornings? My corn-husker—does that ever give me insolence? No: cider-mill, mowing-machine, corn-husker—all faithfully attend to their business. Disinterested, too; no board, no wages; yet doing good all their lives long; shining examples that virtue is its ...
— The Confidence-Man • Herman Melville
... Braddock, leaving 400 men in the rear under Sir Peter Halket, to guard the baggage, advanced with the main body to support Gage; but, just as he came up, the soldiers, appalled by the fire which was mowing them down in scores, abandoned their cannon and fell back in confusion. This threw the advancing force into disorder, and the two regiments became mixed together, massed in several dense bodies within a small space of ground, facing some one way and some another, all alike exposed, without ...
— With Wolfe in Canada - The Winning of a Continent • G. A. Henty
... that could be dispersed by a squadron of cavalry. A fierce charge was made on his left wing, which was cut to pieces by the daring warriors of Caupolican. The right wing was also vigorously attacked. But the artillery and musketry of the Spaniards were mowing down the ranks of the Araucanians, whose rude war-clubs and spears were ill-fitted to cope with those death-dealing weapons. Driven back, and hundreds of them falling, they returned with heroic courage three times to the assault. But at length the slaughter became too ...
— Historical Tales - The Romance of Reality - Volume III • Charles Morris
... Russia are growing closer together every day," said Tolstoy. "Every year we use more of your American machinery; your plows, and threshers, and mowing-machines, and all agricultural implements are coming into use here. Every year some Americans settle in Russia from business interests, and we are rapidly becoming dependent on you for our coal. If you had a larger merchant marine, it would benefit our mutual interests wonderfully. ...
— Abroad with the Jimmies • Lilian Bell
... exaggeration when he said that annihilation was the only alternative to evacuation on his terms. The grey legions of the League seemed innumerable. Their long lines lapped round the broken squadrons of the League, mowing them down with incessant hailstorms of magazine fire, and overhead the air-ships and aerostats were hurling shells on them which made great dark gaps in their formations wherever they attempted anything like order. Every position of importance was either ...
— The Angel of the Revolution - A Tale of the Coming Terror • George Griffith
... farmhouse, such as might well go with two or three hundred acres of tolerably good land, tolerably well farmed by an active old-fashioned tenant, who, though he did not use mowing-machines nor steam-ploughs nor dabble in chemical experiments, still brought an adequate capital to his land and made the capital yield a very fair return of interest. The supper was laid out in ...
— Kenelm Chillingly, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... guns of the First battery dislodged them before they could get into position. For hours the rebels vainly endeavored to break the lines of the Union forces, but in every instance they were repulsed with frightful loss, the canister mowing them down at close range. About 5 o'clock the rebels succeeded in flanking Gen. Prentiss and took part of his force prisoners. The battery was immediately withdrawn to an elevation near the Tennessee river, and it was not long before firing again commenced and kept up for half ...
— Reminiscences of Pioneer Days in St. Paul • Frank Moore
... be to have the crop put up in heaps, usually called "cocks," but sometimes called "coils," before the second night arrives after the mowing of the clover; and in order to accomplish this, it may be necessary to work on until the shades of evening ...
— Clovers and How to Grow Them • Thomas Shaw
... was making the run between Syracuse and Rochester. He was fourteen minutes behind time, and the throttle was wide open. In consequence, when he swung around the curve at the flower-bed, a wheel of his cart destroyed a peony. Number 36 slowed down at once and looked guiltily at his father, who was mowing the lawn. The doctor had his back to this accident, and he continued to pace slowly to and ...
— The Monster and Other Stories - The Monster; The Blue Hotel; His New Mittens • Stephen Crane
... thought before, how like her Cousin Rita this fair lady was. "Only Rita has a great, great deal more heart!" she said to herself. "Rita only laughs at people when she is in one of her bad moods. Dear Rita! I wonder where she is to-day. And Peggy is driving the mowing machine, she writes; mowing hundreds of acres, and riding bareback, and having ...
— Margaret Montfort • Laura E. Richards
... gloom of the wood they past, And issuing under open heavens beheld A little town with towers, upon a rock, And close beneath, a meadow gemlike chased In the brown wild, and mowers mowing in it: And down a rocky pathway from the place There came a fair-hair'd youth, that in his hand Bare victual for the mowers: and Geraint Had ruth again on Enid looking pale: Then, moving downward to the meadow ground, He, when the fair-hair'd youth came by him, ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 5 • Charles Sylvester
... sells out to a joint-stock company. But the great procession gravewards goes on, the "thin black lines" creeping along all day long, and there is no falling off in the consumption of sherry and biscuits. The scythe of the Black Angel shines—opus fervet—and it is always the mowing season. Sometimes he stands at the foot of the bed, and then there is triumph for the pharmacopoeia; sometimes he stands at the head, and then the bed becomes a grave and he a tombstone. Alas! his marriage is but a pleasant myth, and his infallible son a dream. Azrael is still a ...
— Without Prejudice • Israel Zangwill
... steadily up to the mouth of a hundred cannon pouring out fire and smoke, shot and shell, mowing down the advancing hosts like grass; men, horses, and colors going down in confusion, disappearing in clouds of smoke; the only sound, the screaming of shells, the crackling of musketry, the thunder of artillery, through all this women were ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... them and I back in our valley ruling the heavens and not bending scythes over unseen hassocks which do sometimes bend the words of our mouths into shapes resembling oaths! those most crooked of all speech, but therefore best and fittest for the occasional crooks of life, particularly mowing. Yet I mow and sweat and get tired very heartily, for I want to drink this cup of farming to the bottom and taste not only the morning froth but the afternoon and evening strength of dregs and bitterness, if ...
— Early Letters of George Wm. Curtis • G. W. Curtis, ed. George Willis Cooke
... rotation of crops; and, although every year one-third of the land was left "fallow" (uncultivated) in order to restore its fertility, the yield per acre was hardly a fourth as large as now. Farm implements were of the crudest kind; scythes and sickles did the work of mowing machines; plows were made of wood, occasionally shod with iron; and threshing was done with flails. After the grain had been harvested, cattle were turned out indiscriminately on the stubble, on the supposition that the fields were common property. It was useless to attempt to breed fine ...
— A Political and Social History of Modern Europe V.1. • Carlton J. H. Hayes
... to ask, "How do you feel now?" Her mother wandered in and out as if she could rest in nothing but in looking at her, and her father had given her one of his glad kisses before he went away to the mowing field. Several village people having heard of the accident through Hollis and the doctor had stopped at the door to inquire with a sympathetic modulation of voice if she were any better. But the safe feeling was the most blessed of all. Towards noon she lay still with her white kitten cuddled up ...
— Miss Prudence - A Story of Two Girls' Lives. • Jennie Maria (Drinkwater) Conklin
... "of course that was a white owl; but it was just as I told you. Old Joe does make a snoring sort of noise when he has been walking fast or mowing, and he was prowling round before he went back to the cottage, and looking to see if Bella had shut all the windows. He's rather fond of catching her out in forgetting them, and then he comes and tells tales, and they quarrel. Joe has got pretty sharp eyes, and you must have sat ...
— The New Forest Spy • George Manville Fenn
... driven quite into the marriage, I tell you there will be some awful tragedy like that of the Bride of Lammermoor! Anglesea will be found in the morning with his wizen slit—I mean with his throat cut—and Odalite will be sitting in the ashes gibbering and mopping and mowing like an idiot!" ...
— Her Mother's Secret • Emma D. E. N. Southworth
... passed it; Swadel Rack (Swath Reach), a short strait between high hills, where in sailing through they encounter whirlwinds and squalls, and meet sometimes with accidents, which they usually call swadelen (swaths or mowing sweeps); Danskamer (Dancing Chamber),[364] a spot where a party of men and women arrived in a yacht in early times, and being stopped by the tide went ashore. Gay, and perhaps intoxicated, they began to jump ...
— Journal of Jasper Danckaerts, 1679-1680 • Jasper Danckaerts
... a bat almost as straight as "Plum" Warner's, and she knew most of the old Somersetshire songs—"Mowing the Barley," and "Lord Rendal," and "Seventeen come Sunday"—by heart, and sang them beautifully. Gregory, who used to revel in Sankey's hymns as sung by Eliza Pollard, the parlourmaid, now thought that the Somerset music was the only real kind. Mary Rotheram ...
— The Slowcoach • E. V. Lucas
... his tail. Of course he'll snap and bark, but he tries to sweep people over with his tail, just as if he were mowing you off the ground. Hullo! he's moving now. Ready? Give the rope a jerk, and ...
— The Rajah of Dah • George Manville Fenn
... to have done our full share in the way of industrial inventions since we have become a nation. The four elements have all accepted the American as their master. The great harvests of the earth are gathered by his mowing and reaping machines. The flame that is creeping from its lair to spring at the roofs of the crowded city is betrayed to its watchful guardians by the American telegraphic fire-alarm, and the conflagration that reddens the firmament is subdued by the inundation that flows upon ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 78, April, 1864 • Various
... as we did at any time in the forenoon. But we said less—if that were possible—and made every ounce of energy count. I shall not here attempt to chronicle all the events of the afternoon, how we finished the mowing of the field and how we went over it swiftly and raked the long windrows into cocks, or how, as the evening began to fall, we turned at last wearily toward the house. The day's work ...
— Adventures In Friendship • David Grayson
... Boots happen to know all this? Why, through being under- gardener. Of course he couldn't be under-gardener, and be always about, in the summer time, near the windows on the lawn, a mowing, and sweeping, and weeding, and pruning, and this and that, without getting acquainted with the ways of the family. Even supposing Master Harry hadn't come to him one morning early, and said, "Cobbs, how should you spell Norah, if you was asked?" and then begun cutting it in print ...
— Half-Hours with Great Story-Tellers • Various
... at all with such odds against him, may be a question; but there can be none, whether he would have fixed himself where he could not manoeuvre. The Frenchman attacked us on flanks and centre, just when and where he pleased; there stood we, mowing down his masses from our fourteen redoubts, and waiting to be attacked again. To do him justice, he fought stoutly; and to do us justice, we fought sturdily. But still we were losing men; the affair looked unpromising from the first half hour; and I pronounced that, if Dumourier ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXLV. July, 1844. Vol. LVI. • Various
... the day Geraint and Enid left the wood, and they came to an open country, with meadows on one hand and mowers mowing the meadows. And there was a river before them, and the horses bent down and drank the water. And they went up out of the river by a steep bank, and there they met a slender stripling with a satchel about his neck; and he had a small blue pitcher ...
— Selections from the Prose Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold
... in the mowing Season, when he came home, after a fifteen hours' spell of hard work, in worse humor than usual, and was swearing, cursing and execrating all women and their laziness, because his soup was not yet ready for ...
— Continental Monthly - Volume 1 - Issue 3 • Various
... their most succulent state in the month of June, and there is scarcely a hedge border but might be rendered useful by mowing them at this season, but which afterwards would become a nuisance. After the weeds have lain a few hours to wither, hungry cattle will eat them with great freedom, and it would display the appearance of good management to embrace the ...
— The Cook and Housekeeper's Complete and Universal Dictionary; Including a System of Modern Cookery, in all Its Various Branches, • Mary Eaton
... said, as Jim came up, 'I thought you was running. Whoa!' The last remark was addressed to a bored-looking horse attached to the mowing-machine. From the expression on its face, the animal evidently voted the whole process pure foolishness. He pulled up without hesitation, and Biffen turned to ...
— The Pothunters • P. G. Wodehouse
... of battle round them, Swiftly flew the iron hail, Forward dashed a thousand bayonets, That lone battery to assail. From the foeman's foremost columns Swept a furious fusillade, Mowing down the massed battalions In ...
— Poems of American Patriotism • Brander Matthews (Editor)
... these Larks had built their nest in a meadow. When the time came for mowing the grass, the little ones were not large enough to leave the nest. The mother bird laid herself flat on the ground, with her wings spread out. The father bird took one of the little ones from the nest and placed it on the mother's back. She flew away, ...
— Birds Illustrated by Color Photography [August, 1897] - A Monthly Serial designed to Promote Knowledge of Bird-Life • Various
... frequently supplied with liquid manure. Rose-trees will require looking after: give them plenty of rich food, and, when the "perpetual" flowering section has done blooming, cut back each shoot to about two or three buds from its base. Small pieces of grass will periodically need mowing, and this ought to be done with a proper mowing-machine, as a pair of shears invariably causes an irregular and jagged after-growth. All unsightly vegetation, such as dead leaves or flowers, dried up stems, &c., must be promptly removed; ...
— Little Folks (July 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... smooth edge of the under lip,—and, sometimes, agreeably too,—"an infinite deal of nothing,"—ye who clip and anoint the hair of Old England's curled darlings! Eight chins a penny; and three months' credit! A bodle a piece for mowing chins overgrown with hair like pin-wire, and thick with dust; how would you like that? How would you get through it all, with a family of four, and only one razor? The next place we called at was what my friend described, in words that sounded to me, somehow, like melancholy irony,—as ...
— Home-Life of the Lancashire Factory Folk during the Cotton Famine • Edwin Waugh
... staring at a shop-window in Oxford Street—studying, indeed, the print of a patent mowing-machine, but thinking, I fear, more of past scenes in certain well-lit rooms, on slippery floors, than of the velvet lawns at home—when a barouche drew up to the kerb-stone with such trampling of hoofs, such pulling about of horses' mouths, such a jerk and ...
— M. or N. "Similia similibus curantur." • G.J. Whyte-Melville
... tramped all over the mountain back of the town after wild strawberries, followed the peasants to the mowing, and gone to many a fete in the village. We are fortunate to ...
— The Little Colonel's Hero • Annie Fellows Johnston
... own. For the peasant-child there is comfort in prospect. His father's grave is respected in the churchyard; the neighbours are kind; there is the consolation of work for those who survive, and the free air, and the spring flowers, and the mowing, and the harvest, and all the pleasures which cannot be withheld from those who live at liberty in the country. For the princely child there were none of these comforts. As far as he could see, his father and mother had no friends; ...
— The Peasant and the Prince • Harriet Martineau
... AMERICAN INVENTIONS, especially to one class of mechanical contrivances, which, at the present time, assumes a vast importance and interests great multitudes. The limbs of our friends and countrymen are a part of the melancholy harvest which War is sweeping down with Dahlgren's mowing-machine and the patent reapers of Springfield and Hartford. The admirable contrivances of an American inventor, prized as they were in ordinary times, have risen into the character of great national blessings since the necessity for them has become so widely felt. While ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 11, Issue 67, May, 1863 • Various
... How angry I am with myself! I'm in love like a student, I've been on my knees.... [Rudely] I love you! What do I want to fall in love with you for? To-morrow I've got to pay the interest, and begin mowing, and here you.... [Puts his arms around her] I shall never ...
— Plays by Chekhov, Second Series • Anton Chekhov
... or directly care for the home lawns, flower beds; attend to the watering, the mowing of the grass, keeping yards free from waste paper and rubbish, to the clipping of shrubbery ...
— How Girls Can Help Their Country • Juliette Low
... suit at the other end, and Dave swept his pole sidewise as if he were mowing weeds below ...
— Dick o' the Fens - A Tale of the Great East Swamp • George Manville Fenn
... not know what to do with our money. We were laughed at. The peasants grazed their cattle in our pasture and even in our garden, drove our cows and horses into the village and then came and asked for compensation. The whole village used to come into our yard and declare loudly that in mowing we had cut the border of common land which did not belong to us; and as we did not know our boundaries exactly we used to take their word for it and pay a fine. But afterward it appeared that we had been in the right. They used to bark the young ...
— The House with the Mezzanine and Other Stories • Anton Tchekoff
... and its neighbourhood is, I believe, the most fashionable part of the town; the square is beautiful, excellently well planted with a great variety of trees, and only wanting our frequent and careful mowing to make it equal to any square in London. The iron railing which surrounds this enclosure is as high and as handsome as that of the Tuilleries, and it will give some idea of the care bestowed on its decoration, to know that the gravel for the walks was conveyed by barges from Boston, ...
— Domestic Manners of the Americans • Fanny Trollope
... between a ditch, and the ploughed land of a field. 3d. per chain was paid for cleaning out a ditch and mowing ...
— Records of Woodhall Spa and Neighbourhood - Historical, Anecdotal, Physiographical, and Archaeological, with Other Matter • J. Conway Walter
... of odds and ends: trowels, seedsmen's catalogues, a pot of paint, a bundle of wooden labels, the rose of a watering-can, and a dozen other small objects. On the floor were piled boxes and empty cases; flowerpots stood beside a bag which bore the name of a patent fertilizer; a small hand mowing-machine blocked the entrance; and a plank, too long to lie flat on the ground, had been propped slantwise between the floor and the roof. Bunches of bass hung from nails above the shelf; and on the wall opposite, a coloured advertisement, representing phloxes ...
— The Ashiel mystery - A Detective Story • Mrs. Charles Bryce
... hedge from the meadows, the lane seems to wind through a continuous wood. The oaks and chestnuts, though too young to form a complete arch, cross their green branches, and cast a delicious shadow. For it is in the shadow that we enjoy the summer, looking forth from the gateway upon the mowing grass where the glowing sun pours down ...
— Nature Near London • Richard Jefferies
... against the fading sky, I watch three mowers mowing, as I lie: With brawny arms they sweep ...
— Poems of To-Day: an Anthology • Various
... I did, and we passed beyond the clump of tall birches, along the edge of my mowing meadow, and through the gate which closes my woodland path—to me the loveliest of all wood-trails, so gentle and so silent is it always, and so fringed, seasonably, with ferns and flowers. Thus, presently, we saw the blue smoke rising above my lodge, betokening to me that my Japanese factotum, ...
— The Lady and the Pirate - Being the Plain Tale of a Diligent Pirate and a Fair Captive • Emerson Hough
... would not be taken, and replied To all the propositions of surrender By mowing Christians down on every side, As obstinate as Swedish Charles at Bender. His five brave boys no less the foe defied; Whereon the Russian pathos grew less tender, As being a virtue, like terrestrial patience, Apt to ...
— Don Juan • Lord Byron
... longer seriously tax the land. The wisdom of the work done on the fence rows is now apparent. The ploughing and seeding made it easy to keep the brush and weeds down; hay gathered close to the fences more than pays us for the mowing; and we have no tall weed heads to load the wind with seeds. This is a matter which is not sufficiently considered by the majority of farmers, for weeds are allowed to tax the land almost as much as crops do, and yet they ...
— The Fat of the Land - The Story of an American Farm • John Williams Streeter
... it—or he, or she. Its spookship would travel far to find a more delightful place for spooking in, and—providing, of course, she were a perfectly respectable hant—what a charming addition to our family he would make. When it was weary of moping and mowing and sobbing and wailing and gibbering, she could curl up at the foot of your bed and sleep; as Czar, here, curls up and sleeps at the foot of mine. A good ghost, you know—if he becomes really attached to you—is as constant and faithful ...
— The Eyes of the World • Harold Bell Wright
... the mowing off of the old foliage after the fruit has been gathered. I doubt the wisdom of this practice. The crowns of the plants and the surface of the bed are laid open to the midsummer sun. The foliage is needed ...
— Success With Small Fruits • E. P. Roe
... was no shouting; no war-cry. We rode into the Germans as I have seen wind cut into a forest in the hills—downward into them, for once we had leapt the trench the ground sloped their way. And they went down before us as we never had the chance of mowing them again. ...
— Hira Singh - When India came to fight in Flanders • Talbot Mundy
... farther west. Keep right down the middle, but miss all the sand you can; you'll be layin' out a road you'll have to travel a heap. Only, of course, you can straighten it out and better it after you learn the country. It might be a pious idea for you to ship up a mowing machine and a hayrake from Yuma, like you was fixin' to cut wild hay. It's a good plan always to leave something to satisfy curiosity. Or, play you was aimin' to dry-farm. You shape up your rig to suit yourself—but play ...
— Copper Streak Trail • Eugene Manlove Rhodes
... quarters, after dark, having fished the river for a few hours, I began to think I might as well have stopped in London. The fish would not rise that afternoon, and there was but a beggarly brace in the basket. Some wretch above had been mowing his lawn and casting the contents of the machine into the stream at regular intervals. He got rid of his grass, certainly; but this was no gain to me, whose hooks perseveringly caught the fragments floating by. At last the grass pest ceased. The mowing man ...
— Lines in Pleasant Places - Being the Aftermath of an Old Angler • William Senior
... the veins of the summer were hot and swollen, and the juices of all the poison-plants and the blood of all the creatures that feed upon them had grown thick and strong,—about the time when the second mowing was in hand, and the brown, wet-faced men were following up the scythes as they chased the falling waves of grass, (falling as the waves fall on sickle-curved beaches; the foam-flowers dropping as the grass-flowers drop,—with sharp semivowel consonantal sounds,—frsh,—for ...
— Elsie Venner • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... had a good laborer,—one of the best known, and eagerly sought by every farmer in the county; a man who had never yet been beaten in a mowing-match or a reaping. By his help the haying had been done in not much more than two thirds the usual time; but when John Weitbreck, like a sensible fellow, said, "Now, we would better keep Alf on till harvest; there is plenty of odds-and-ends work about the farm he can help at, and we won't get ...
— Between Whiles • Helen Hunt Jackson
... announced Peggy Morrison, "we must begin. You had better all get in a line behind me and do just as I do. You can't see me very well, but you can scatter the hempseed and say what I say. And it must be done soberly, or Satan may come mowing at our heels." ...
— Old Kaskaskia • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... appearance of the ground behind the hillock, believed it might be as the boy said, and accordingly determined to strike up a peace with so light-footed and ready-witted an enemy. "Come down," he said, "thou mischievous brat! Leave thy mopping and mowing, and, come hither. I will do thee no harm, as I am ...
— Kenilworth • Sir Walter Scott
... mowing on alone, listening as in a dream to that subtle something in the swish of the scythe that makes one seek to know the song it is singing to ...
— The Village Watch-Tower • (AKA Kate Douglas Riggs) Kate Douglas Wiggin
... is ninety-eight I think she will begin to be almost fond of me. Here we are. Do notice Lawson. He is new, and such a nice man. He sings so well, and plays the concertina a little, and teaches in the Sunday-school, and speaks really quite excellently at temperance meetings. He is extremely fond of mowing the lawns, and my maid tells me he is studying French with her. The only thing he seems really incapable of being, is an efficient butler; which is so unfortunate, as I like him far too well ever to ...
— The Rosary • Florence L. Barclay
... Day-star's blazing ball their sight Sears with excess of light; Or through dun sand-clouds the blue scimitar's edge Slopes down like fire from heaven, Mowing them as ...
— The Visions of England - Lyrics on leading men and events in English History • Francis T. Palgrave
... as had this common interest. It was happiness to each of them. From the time the boy tumbled out of bed in the early morning until he tumbled in again at dusk his whistle could be heard shrill above the click of mowing-machines, and ...
— The Story of Wool • Sara Ware Bassett
... a trench, or in a barn, or out in the open fields where the battalion lies bivouacked under rows of waterproof sheets strung up as inadequate tents, the sing-song is sure of success, and a man with a voice like a mowing machine will receive as good a reception as would Caruso or Melba at Covent Garden. There is a French Territorial regiment which has a notice up at the entrance of its "music hall"—"Entree pour Messieurs les Poilus. ...
— Mud and Khaki - Sketches from Flanders and France • Vernon Bartlett
... any agriculturist. It gives the modes of preparation, and the effects of all kinds of manures; the origin, texture, divisions, and description of every variety of soil; the economy of sowing, reaping, and mowing, irrigation, and draining; cultivation of the grasses, clovers, grains, and roots; Southern and miscellaneous products, as cotton, hemp, flax, the sugar cane, rice, tobacco, hops, madder, woad, &c.; the rearing of fruit—apples, pears, peaches, plums, grapes, ...
— Mysteries of Bee-keeping Explained • M. Quinby
... "that you who speak this and myself were to be tried at any taskwork: that I had a good crooked scythe put in my hand, that was sharp and strong, and you such another, where the grass grew longest, to be up by daybreak, mowing the meadows till the sun went down, not tasting of food till we had finished; or that we were set to plough four acres in one day of good glebe land, to see whose furrows were evenest and cleanest; or that we might have one wrestling-bout together; or that ...
— THE ADVENTURES OF ULYSSES • CHARLES LAMB
... instructions of their officers. This was bound to be of advantage to them, since the fire of the enemy could not cut them down as ripe grain falls before the scythe of the reaper or the revolving knives of the modern mowing machine. ...
— The Big Five Motorcycle Boys on the Battle Line - Or, With the Allies in France • Ralph Marlow
... clothing. A rag carpet was found that answered very well to cut up into rugs to lay on the floor. The carpenter made a ladder by which to climb to the upper deck. Then there was rope and an anchor, the latter a piece of an old mowing machine; a rowboat, which Jane rented, and heavy green shades at the windows so that they should have greater seclusion; also a cask to hold ...
— The Meadow-Brook Girls Afloat • Janet Aldridge
... designs—so like a stitchwork pattern—had lost their mosaic of colour, leaving merely a careful drawing of brown upon green. The banks of flowering exotics, which his mother had loved to have in her drawing-rooms, had been removed to the greenhouses and conservatories. The sight of the gardeners mowing, for the last time in the season, the hundred-year-old turf of the lawn conveyed a suggestion of regret with it; the old pony harnessed to the mowing machine stepped sedately and quietly in his boots on the close, fine ...
— Peter and Jane - or The Missing Heir • S. (Sarah) Macnaughtan
... doubt that the lonely Kvalholm was haunted. Whenever her husband was away, Karen heard all manner of uncanny shrieks and noises, which could mean no good. One day, when she was up on the hillside, mowing grass to serve as winter fodder for their couple of sheep, she heard, quite plainly, a chattering on the strand beneath the hill, but look over she ...
— Weird Tales from Northern Seas • Jonas Lie
... cans were returning home, herds of black and white Holstein-Friesian cattle, famous for their yield of milk, were cropping sweet grasses in the pastures. Farmers were guiding their cultivators and mowing machines, while wives and daughters were shelling June peas, hulling strawberries, and preparing for dinner. The large white houses, with roomy barns in the shade of big elms, were the happy homes of freemen. Gertrude wanted the horses to walk more, ...
— The Harris-Ingram Experiment • Charles E. Bolton
... They bothered not to seek a ford or to turn a flank but made straight for the American center. It was here that Winder's artillery and his steadiest regiments were placed and they offered a stiff resistance, ripping up the British vanguard with grapeshot and mowing men down right and left. But these hardened British campaigners had seen many worse days than this on the bloody fields of Spain, and they pushed forward, closing the gaps in their ranks, until they had crossed the bridge and could find a brief respite under ...
— The Fight for a Free Sea: A Chronicle of the War of 1812 - The Chronicles of America Series, Volume 17 • Ralph D. Paine
... went Sinfiotli through the earth, mowing the war swathe and wasting the land, and passing but little time in song and laughter in his father's hall. So went his days in warfare and valour, and yet his end was not glorious, for he drank of the poisoned cup given him by the sister of a ...
— The Story of Sigurd the Volsung • William Morris
... them would stop and thump the ground with his hind feet. This seemed to be a signal; for when one thumped, another would come hopping toward him. The two would touch noses and then turn to on the sweet, young clover, that had grown up since the July mowing. ...
— The Magic Speech Flower - or Little Luke and His Animal Friends • Melvin Hix
... behind a part of the wall which I had not visited, and hastening thither, I found a miserable object in rags, seated upon a stone. It was a maniac— a man about thirty years of age, and I believe deaf and dumb; there he sat, gibbering and mowing, and distorting his wild features into various dreadful appearances. There wanted nothing but this object to render the scene complete; banditti amongst such melancholy desolation would have been ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... he lies on the grass after dinner waiting for the sun to strike the west side of the farmhouse chimneys, which, standing square north and south, serve for sun-dials. And in haymaking, when he is "mowing away" far above the "purline beam" in the barn as fast as a man in the hayrack can toss the hay up to him, and the air is heated like a furnace by the hot haymaking sun on the shingles close above his head, and his shirt is full of ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, September, 1878 • Various
... wide in her rambles that afternoon. When she had filled her jug she still roamed about with delicious aimlessness. Once she found herself in a wood lane skirting a field wherein a man was mowing hay. The man was Peter Wright. Nancy walked faster when she discovered this, with never a roving glance, and presently the green, ferny depths of the ...
— Chronicles of Avonlea • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... aside an ill-fitting glove, she threw aside her pouts, looking up at him with a flash of dainty mimicry. "Hear the fiery Thor! Take notice that I shall bear all down before me like a man mowing ripe corn. You cannot guess how much warlikeness I have caught from my Valkyria." She glanced back where the girl in the short tunic stood drawing on her gloves, a picture ...
— The Ward of King Canute • Ottilie A. Liljencrantz
... and both are different from that of a chalk or of a fen soil. In like manner draining a meadow or manuring it alters its flora: some of the plants disappear and new ones come in. Even an operation like mowing a lawn, if carried on sufficiently regularly, causes a change. In all these cases the plants favoured by the new conditions are enabled to grow rather better than those that are less favoured; thus in the regularly ...
— Lessons on Soil • E. J. Russell
... can stay on and fight it out with a clear mind. When Zeke marched away last summer, I thought it was all up with me; and I can tell you that any fighting that's to do about Boston will be fun compared with the fighting I did while hoeing corn and mowing grass. But I don't believe that Susie Rolliffe is promised to Zeke Watkins, or any one else yet, and I'm going to give her a chance to refuse ...
— Taken Alive • E. P. Roe
... conserving, resisting energy, the anger at being waked or changed? Altogether independent of the intellectual force in each, is the pride of opinion, the security that we are right. Not the feeblest grandame, not a mowing idiot, but uses what spark of perception and faculty is left, to chuckle and triumph in his or her opinion over the absurdities of all the rest. Difference from me is the measure of absurdity. Not one has a misgiving of being ...
— Representative Men • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... I was on the road to Cadouin. The air was keen and a little frosty, for the hour was early. Men were mowing the last crop of grass, which was powdered with rime. After the meadows came the woods, for the road went south, and was therefore carried over the hills which rise above the valley of the Dordogne. The woods were mainly of chestnut, ...
— Two Summers in Guyenne • Edward Harrison Barker
... cheese, or cattle. The country is very poor, and there is very little money about Cumberland. The money is not like our English money. An English guinea is L 1 3s. 4d. In Nova Scotia money a dollar is equal to 5 shillings, and a pistereen is a shilling. In haying time men have 3 shillings a day for mowing. The mosquitos will bite them very often so that they will throw down their scythes and run home, almost bitten to death, and there is a black fly worse than all the rest. One is tormented all ...
— The Chignecto Isthmus And Its First Settlers • Howard Trueman
... he came in sight of a castle where he saw a crowd of men coming, going and laboring at every kind of work. Some were mowing, some raking, some currying horses, some sweeping, some ...
— Old French Fairy Tales • Comtesse de Segur
... the public were kind enough to welcome the fanciful plan, and willingly joined me in the anachronism of imagining a Wessex population living under Queen Victoria;—a modern Wessex of railways, the penny post, mowing and reaping machines, union workhouses, lucifer matches, labourers who could read and write, and National school children. But I believe I am correct in stating that, until the existence of this contemporaneous Wessex was announced in the present story, ...
— Far from the Madding Crowd • Thomas Hardy
... thinking that the lecherousness of her soul ought to be cooled by outrage to her face. When he had done this, he said he left her choice free in the matter she had asked about. Then he went quickly back to the town and plunged into the densest of the fray, mowing down the opposing ranks as he gave blow for blow. Passing the sleeping-room of Bjarke, who was still slumbering, he bade him wake up, addressing ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")
... struggling through his illness; but she could not remember who the sleeper was, and she shrunk from seeing some phantom-face on the pillow, such as now began to haunt the dark corners of the room, and look at her, jibbering and mowing as they looked. So she covered her face again, and sank into a whirling stupor of sense and feeling. By-and-by she heard her fellow-watcher stirring, and a dull wonder stole over her as to what he was doing; but the heavy languor pressed her down, and kept her still. At last she heard the words, ...
— Ruth • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell |
