"Picker" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Picker), we offer to thee an ox that has two horns and four cloven hoofs; we would pray thee for our ploughing and sowing, that our straw be copper-red, our grain golden-yellow. Push elsewhere all the thick black clouds, over great fens, ...
— India: What can it teach us? - A Course of Lectures Delivered before the University Of Cambridge • F. Max Mueller
... biggish leafing area. Every eight or twelve days the shoots and young leaves are plucked—when treated these become the tea of commerce. Tea-plants are alike, speaking generally, grades being effected by the discrimination of picker and sorter. Fresh buds and tender young leaves make the pekoes, older ones the souchongs. Tea gathered exclusively from buds and tips is called "flowery;" if the first young leaf be included, it is "orange pekoe." In order ...
— East of Suez - Ceylon, India, China and Japan • Frederic Courtland Penfield
... If a rag-picker had offered to do a diplomatic service for the Emperor of Russia, the monarch could not have been more astounded than the mate was. He even stopped swearing. He stood and stared down at me. It ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... will do you no good to have me tell you, because I do not believe a person can learn to dry-pick chickens by following printed instructions. At any rate, I could not. I never learned until I hired a professional picker to come out from town ...
— How To Write Special Feature Articles • Willard Grosvenor Bleyer
... Burnt out with the fire of drink, and broken, The paramour of a woman I took in self-contempt, But to hide a wounded pride as well. To be judged and loathed by a village of little minds — I, gifted with tongues and wisdom, Sunk here to the dust of the justice court, A picker of rags in the rubbage of spites and wrongs, — I, whom fortune smiled on! I in a village, Spouting to gaping yokels pages of verse, Out of the lore of golden years, Or raising a laugh with a flash of filthy wit When they brought the drinks to kindle my dying mind. To be judged by you, The soul ...
— The Second Book of Modern Verse • Jessie B. Rittenhouse
... the Address fully deserved the customary compliments. Col. Sir RHYS WILLIAMS' quiet and effective style explained his success as a picker-up of recruits; while Lt.-Commander DEAN, V.C., though he faced the House with much more trepidation than he did the batteries of Zeebrugge, got well home ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, Feb. 19, 1919 • Various
... communion of ideas. The town is a chance agglomeration of people who do not know one another, who have no common interest, save that of enriching themselves at the expense of one another. The fatherland does not exist.... What fatherland can the international banker and the rag-picker have in common? Only when cities, territories, nations, or groups of nations, will have renewed their harmonious life, will art be able to draw its inspiration from ideals held in common. Then will the architect ...
— The Conquest of Bread • Peter Kropotkin
... leaves, paler below than above. But thousands of fruit sellers and housekeepers depend on the sweet blueberries (with a pleasant acid flavor) as a market staple. In July and August, even in early September, the berries arrive in the cities. One picker in New Jersey claims to have filled an entire crate with the ...
— Wild Flowers, An Aid to Knowledge of Our Wild Flowers and - Their Insect Visitors - - Title: Nature's Garden • Neltje Blanchan
... a cant word for a woman who picks up rags about the street; and it may seem to later generations that the epithet fitted far more nicely the bunter muse of that "facile retailer of ana and incorrigible society-gossip," that rag-picker of ...
— Henry Fielding: A Memoir • G. M. Godden
... France chatting and laughing with a man who had picked up over a million pounds by following the great principle that a commodity is worth what it will fetch when people want it very badly and there is a shortage of it. Mr. Prohack too had often chatted and laughed with this same picker-up of a million, who happened to be a quite jolly and generous fellow. Mr. Prohack would have chatted and laughed with Barabbas, convinced as he was that iniquity is the result of circumstances rather than of deliberate naughtiness. He seldom condemned. He had ...
— Mr. Prohack • E. Arnold Bennett
... one at present, but we'll get the other two out during the night. You can take that bar out and work with it, while I use my own picker at the other. You see, the stone is soft, and by grinding it you soon make a groove along which you can slip the bar. It will be mighty queer if we can't clear a ...
— The Refugees • Arthur Conan Doyle
... about it was that Jack Williamson was one of the most versatile science fiction authors ever to sit down at the typewriter. When the vogue for science-fantasy altered to super science, he created the memorable super lock-picker Giles Habilula as the major attraction in a rousing trio of space operas, The Legion of Space, The Cometeers and One Against the Legion. When grim realism was the order of the day, he produced Crucible of Power and when they ...
— The Cosmic Express • John Stewart Williamson
... spot cash money he got for selling everything, pigs, pastures, pepper pickers, pitchforks, Gimme the Ax put in a ragbag and slung on his back like a rag picker going home. ...
— Rootabaga Stories • Carl Sandburg
... captured at last, after all these years? Well, they say: 'the longer you wait, the harder the blow!' But I'll have to hand it to you, you're a good picker. That little woman is an angel if there ever was one in Reno, and you will be a lucky boy if you ...
— Reno - A Book of Short Stories and Information • Lilyan Stratton
... lightly as the youngest. Occasionally you might see, mother and daughter, even a granddaughter of tender years, wheeling and balancing in the same set. And so the fiddles played, the stars shone, the waters babbled, until the lanterns flared and sputtered out, and the banjo-picker held up fingers raw and bleeding. Then with a last final swing and flourish, everybody scattered for homeward ways, glad of the day's pleasure—and tired enough to be glad also ...
— Dishes & Beverages of the Old South • Martha McCulloch Williams
... great city's one hour of purity, of dignity. The very rag- picker, groping with her filthy hands among the ashes, instead of an object of contempt, moves from door to door an accusing Figure, her thin soiled garments, her bent body, her scarred face, hideous with the wounds of poverty, an eloquent ...
— Idle Ideas in 1905 • Jerome K. Jerome
... still puzzled her mother—energy and an ever-present determination to get ahead. Sometimes she caught enough fish to sell a few. Sometimes she carried rabbits into the town for sale. In blackberry season she was an indefatigable picker. She went in for chickens and had steady customers in Louisville for her guaranteed eggs. School was looked upon as part of the business of getting ahead. Nothing in the way of weather daunted her. She went through the high school with ...
— The Comings of Cousin Ann • Emma Speed Sampson
... breaker, in which Paul Evert now worked as a slate-picker, was in general appearance very much like the old one, but its interior arrangement was different, and of such a nature as to make life much easier for those who worked in it. The greatest improvement was the introduction of a set of machines called "jigs." ...
— Derrick Sterling - A Story of the Mines • Kirk Munroe
... "I have had the warden of the Minorites and the provincial of the Dominicans here this morning," he said, "about that accursed business of the rag-picker's wife. It is another example of what I told you just now, that these people attribute what they cannot understand to persons they can only dream about. They put down the whole of your miracles to a special reward for their zeal in hounding down the Carmelite ...
— Little Novels of Italy • Maurice Henry Hewlett
... police of the little kingdom; the place near the pales where I had fought my first battle; the old beech-stump on which I sat to read letters from home! With my knife, rich in six blades (besides a cork-screw, a pen-picker, and a button-hook), I carved my name in large capitals over my desk. Then night came, and the bell rang, and we went to our rooms. And I opened the window and looked out. I saw all the stars, and wondered which was mine,—which should light to fame and fortune the manhood about to ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... their Shipp up? Ed. Ashfeild. Yes, they did, and went to prayers upon it." Nor less the picture, in the evidence of either this or an adjoining trial, of the pirate captain "with a gold chain around his neck, and a gold Tooth-picker hanging ...
— Privateering and Piracy in the Colonial Period - Illustrative Documents • Various
... information. We are only to infer that he deals with the gospels arbitrarily; accepting them, or rejecting them, as they accord or disagree with his preconceptions. Indeed, this is what "essential Christianity" must always be. What each picker and chooser likes is "essential." What he does not like is unessential, if not a ...
— Flowers of Freethought - (Second Series) • George W. Foote
... sides shook with laughter at the mere recollection of the funny story that he had promised to his friends, and throwing himself back in the great arm-chair, which he completely filled, that picker up of bits of pinchbeck, as they called him at the ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume III (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... the lever, g, arranged to operate as set forth, the incline, n, or its equivalent, for relieving the picker from the action of the spring, i, to permit free movement of the shuttle boxes, ...
— Scientific American, Vol. 17, No. 26 December 28, 1867 • Various
... slot, or perforation through the plate, also extended through the side of the shuttle-race near the bottom, admits the passage of the needle; and when this is pushed in the shuttle can still pass freely over it. The shuttle is pushed one way and then the other through its race or trough by picker staves. The thread for the needle is supplied by a bobbin, the movement of which is checked by a friction band, this securing the proper tension, and the slack of the thread is duly taken up by a suitable contrivance for the purpose. Thus, all the essential features ...
— Great Fortunes, and How They Were Made • James D. McCabe, Jr.
... from a picker-up of old words, brother? Bah! I dislike a picker-up of old words worse than a picker-up ...
— The Romany Rye • George Borrow
... voice of the lock-picker—pitched to a cautious key, was heard in protest as though objecting to some intentions evident in the new arrival. Whispered expostulations continued for a while, then the voices became quarrelsome and louder; and somebody suddenly rapped ...
— The Dark Star • Robert W. Chambers
... it 'Spades,'" said the digger, bearded to the eyes; his tangled thatch of black hair hiding his forehead, and his clothes such as would have hardly tempted a rag-picker. ...
— The Tale of Timber Town • Alfred Grace
... clean only about a pound of cotton a day. The cotton-gin cleaned as much in a day as had taken the hand-picker a year to accomplish. Cotton was at once planted in vast amounts; but it certainly was not plentiful till then. Whitney had never seen cotton nor cotton seed when he began to plan his invention; nor did he, even in Savannah, find ...
— Home Life in Colonial Days • Alice Morse Earle
... William H. Davies was born in a public-house called Church House at Newport, in the County of Monmouthshire, April 20, 1870, of Welsh parents. He was, until Bernard Shaw "discovered" him, a cattleman, a berry-picker, a panhandler—in short, a vagabond. In a preface to Davies' second book, The Autobiography of a Super-Tramp (1906), Shaw describes how the manuscript ...
— Modern British Poetry • Various
... I had seen my Doppelganger," said Searle. "He reminds me of myself. What am I but a mere figure in the landscape, a wandering minstrel or picker of daisies?" ...
— A Passionate Pilgrim • Henry James
... 'I've done had sixteen picaninnies, Mars' Cap'n, but I nebber seed none o' dem after dey was 'bout six weeks old. Dey was in de nussery, an' I was a rale smart cotton-picker, and couldn't be ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, August, 1878 • Various
... Farmer Green stood there they all picked as busily as squirrels. But after he left them the boys found so much to talk about that they made little progress. It was a temptation, too, to flick a currant into the face of another picker ...
— The Tale of Pony Twinkleheels • Arthur Scott Bailey
... falling when he drew near this place of refuge; and the first thing that met his eyes was the figure of a man upon the step, alternately plucking at the bell-handle and pounding on the panels. The man had no hat, his clothes were hideous with filth, he had the air of a hop-picker. Yet Morris ...
— The Wrong Box • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... possessed one as a matter of course. It was by no means a matter of course, however, but a subject of intense gratification to at least three of the party, that Muggins had two pipes and an unusually large supply of tobacco. Larry also had a short black pipe and a picker, besides a crooked sixpence, which he always kept about him "for luck," a long piece of stout twine, and a lump of cheese. The sum total was not great, but was extremely ...
— Lost in the Forest - Wandering Will's Adventures in South America • R.M. Ballantyne
... gives you the most view of the mysterious world around the great Ha-ta Street, which the Boxers have conquered, indeed you find everything practically deserted, the people having learned that it is best to stay indoors until this crisis is solved in some manner. Occasionally a rag-picker, or some humble person so little separated from the life hereafter that to push a trifle closer does not spell much peril, can be seen hooking up rags and whatnots from the piles of Peking offal. If you speak to him he gives an unintelligent pu chih tao—"I do not know"—and ...
— Indiscreet Letters From Peking • B. L. Putman Weale
... a vendible article a fine scandal is! It sells fast, like goods at a Dutch auction. Penny a line? More nearly six pence! If I could only bring myself to deal in such merchandise! If I were only a good rag picker, instead of a bad poet!" And Straws walked away, forgetting the questions he had asked in his ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham
... take the children long to discover what beautiful things he had, and how superior he was to the other costumers, and they begun to flock to his shop immediately, from the Mayor's daughter to the poor rag-picker's. The children were to select their own costumes; the Mayor had stipulated that. It was to be a children's ball in ...
— The Pot of Gold - And Other Stories • Mary E. Wilkins
... "quarters" and have the slaves search their heads. They would stretch full length upon the cabin floors and rest their heads upon a pillow. Usually they offered a gift of some sort if many of the tiny parasites were destroyed, so the clever picker who found a barren head simply reached into his own and produced a goodly number. There existed on this plantation an antagonistic feeling toward children (born of slave parents) with a beautiful suit of hair, and this type of hair was kept ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves: Volume IV, Georgia Narratives, Part 1 • Works Projects Administration
... discipline did its work and checked him. Should he leave his post, what would become of the Queen? Des Huttes during the moment of this quick reflection, was brained from behind by a man in a red cap, and fell, pierced with countless pike-wounds. His eyes still moved when the rag-picker Gougeon ran in, and, placing his foot on the chest, chopped the head from the body with blows of an axe. In an instant it was stuck on the point of a ...
— The False Chevalier - or, The Lifeguard of Marie Antoinette • William Douw Lighthall
... slightest errand now to the Antipodes that you can devise to send me on. I will fetch you a tooth-picker now from the farthest inch of Asia; bring you the length of Prester John's foot; fetch you a hair of the great Kam's beard; do you any embassage to the Pygmies rather than hold three words ...
— A Dictionary of Austral English • Edward Morris
... is no great necessity for you to know the actual identity of Marie Bracq. So long as you are able to remove the stigma from the lady in question, who is to be your wife, and to whom you are undoubtedly devoted, what matters whether the dead girl was the daughter of a prince or of a rag-picker? We will assist you in every degree in our power," he went on. "M'sieur Fremy will question the postal clerk, watch will be kept at the Poste Restante, at each of the railway stations, and in various ...
— The Sign of Silence • William Le Queux
... for a bundle of rags; but taking pity on the half-frozen lad, he placed him in his basket and carried him to his miserable home. And so the future artist commenced his professional career as a Parisian rag-picker. ...
— Delsarte System of Oratory • Various
... the same, for in the rich bottom-lands it grows to a commanding size, while in the more barren regions it is an humble shrub. In the rich alluvium of the Mississippi the cotton will tower beyond the reach of the tallest "picker," and a single plant will contain hundreds of perfect "bolls;" in the neighboring "piney-woods" it lifts its humble head scarcely above the knee, and is proportionably meager in its ...
— Camp-Fire and Cotton-Field • Thomas W. Knox
... arrive. Musquetoes excessively troublesome insomuch that without the protection of my musquetoe bier I should have found it impossible to wright a moment. the buffaloe are leaving us fast and passing on to the S. East. killed a buffaloe picker a ...
— The Journals of Lewis and Clark • Meriwether Lewis et al
... mind or body presently after meales: rather sit a while and discourse of some pleasant matters: when you haue ended your confabulations, wash your face and mouth with cold waters, then go to your chamber, and make cleane your teeth with your tooth-picker, which should be either of iuorie, silver, or gold. Watch not too long after supper, but depart within two hours to bed. But if necessitie compell you to watch longer then ordinary, then be sure to augment your sleepe the next morning; that you may ...
— Early English Meals and Manners • Various
... character similar by contrast. Cleon is a type of the Western and sceptical, Karshish of the Eastern and believing, attitude of mind; the one repellent, the other absorbent, of new things offered for belief. Karshish, "the picker up of learning's crumbs," writes from Syria to his master at home, "Abib, all sagacious in our art," concerning a man whose singular case has fascinated him, one Lazarus of Bethany. There are few more lifelike and subtly natural narratives in Browning's poetry; few more absolutely interpenetrated ...
— An Introduction to the Study of Browning • Arthur Symons
... salt as a picker," he cried. As he said this he came on to the bed, and, bending down, seemed to sweep a hand round the strawberry plant, gathering its leaves aside, and leaving the berries free to be snipped off by the right finger and thumb. He kept on bidding me pick away, but he sheared off three ...
— Brownsmith's Boy - A Romance in a Garden • George Manville Fenn
... contemptuously styled the Dwarf-nation, and always despised as a mere imitator and brain-picker of Chinese wisdom, now swims definitively into the ken of the Manchu court. The Formosan imbroglio had been forgotten as soon as it was over, and the recent rapid progress of Japan on Western lines towards national strength had been ignored by all Manchu statesmen, each of whom lived ...
— China and the Manchus • Herbert A. Giles
... famous picker of pickled peppers. Also held accounts against many people. Caused considerable worry ...
— Who Was Who: 5000 B. C. to Date - Biographical Dictionary of the Famous and Those Who Wanted to Be • Anonymous
... and about her hair....I'm beginning to remember. She wears a cap, and her hair's cut off like an oakum-picker's. That's more gossip ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... these may be mentioned the ancient church and burial ground of St. Fiacre, or, as he is often styled, St. Fittack, at Nigg, Kincardineshire, on the opposite bank of the Dee from Aberdeen. The bay in the vicinity is known as St. Picker's Bay, and St. Fittack's Well, a clear spring near the roofless ruins of the old church, still recalls his memory. Its existence is a strong proof of the saint's residence in the neighbourhood at some time in his life. The fame of this ...
— A Calendar of Scottish Saints • Michael Barrett
... each wearing a loose gown resembling a Japanese kimona without sleeves. As fast as they are picked the leaves are piled on squares of white cloth. When the cloth contains enough to make a bundle of good size the picker carries it on her head to the factory, where the leaves are first wilted, rolled into compact form and then dried on great stone floors that are shielded from the sun. The hundreds of pickers with their brightly colored gowns and white bundles, form ...
— Wealth of the World's Waste Places and Oceania • Jewett Castello Gilson
... admire and acknowledge the truthfulness of the sketch, we do not desire to have any familiarity or contact with the individuals represented. Furthermore, Gavarni is more limited than Doyle, by making the "Sweep," the "Rag-Picker," the "Grisette," tell his or her own story; and what each one says is necessary to the comprehension of the person before you. But very different is Toepffer. He possesses, with the funny conception of Leech and Doyle, a freer pictorial conception than either, and holds a ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 97, November, 1865 • Various
... there is no need for you to shout here about my calling,' replied the banker, displeased. 'Every Jewish rag-picker will know that banker Rosenberg was here to see you. As for the permit to open the gates, I myself, as a trustee, authorize you to do it. I will wait here until he has completed his prayer. The company in your house must not know what we are doing here. Arrange it so that the ...
— The History of a Lie - 'The Protocols of the Wise Men of Zion' • Herman Bernstein
... a famous berry-picker when a boy. It was near enough to hunting and fishing to enlist me. Mother would always send me in preference to any of the rest of the boys. I got the biggest berries and the most of them. There was something of the excitement of the chase in the occupation, and something of the charm and ...
— Locusts and Wild Honey • John Burroughs
... picker puts his in the next barrel, and so on, so that each succeeding picker deposits his apples in the next succeeding barrel. In that way I personally have the opportunity to inspect every half bushel of apples, or, I ...
— Trees, Fruits and Flowers of Minnesota, 1916 • Various
... one-half of an old, dirty, moth-eaten woollen tippet, and handing it to Kolmagorof, he resumed his search for the missing piece. This also he presently found, in a worse state of preservation, if possible, than the other. They looked as if they had been discovered in the bag of some poor rag-picker who had fished them up out of a gutter in the Five Points. Kolmagorof tied the two pieces together, wrapped them up carefully in an old newspaper, thanked Viushin for his trouble, and, with an air of great relief, bowed again to me and went out. Wondering what use he could make of such a worn, ...
— Tent Life in Siberia • George Kennan
... broken-down horse you turned him out on the highway to die. When I say 'you,' I mean the superintendent and the officials that you and the other stockholders pay to manage the mills for you. It was an accident. It was caused by his trying to save the company a few dollars. The toothed drum of the picker caught his arm. He might have let the small flint that he saw in the teeth go through. It would have smashed out a double row of spikes. But he reached for the flint, and his arm was picked and clawed to shreds from the finger tips to the shoulder. It was at night. The mills were working overtime. ...
— The Iron Heel • Jack London
... summer time," said the boy, nodding his head toward the horse and addressing the rag picker who was pulling a burlap ...
— The Enchanted Canyon • Honore Willsie Morrow
... look for a home. The young man chose a beautiful open spot overlooking much country, but his wife, whose name was Berry-Picker, laughed at ...
— Wigwam Evenings - Sioux Folk Tales Retold • Charles Alexander Eastman and Elaine Goodale Eastman
... Society with "a figure of a Chinese, representing one of that nation using an ear-picker, and expressing great satisfaction therein."—"Whatever pleasure," said that learned physician, "the Chinese may take in thus picking their ears, I am certain most people in these parts, who have had their hearing impaired, have had such misfortune first come to them by picking ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli
... picking up the windfalls for the cider-heap, after he had amused himself by putting about a bushel down the various holes old Bun had left behind him. Jack was risking his neck climbing in the most dangerous places, while Frank, with a long-handled apple-picker, nipped off the finest fruit with care, both enjoying the pleasant task and feeling proud of the handsome red and yellow piles all about the little orchard. Merry and Molly caught up baskets and fell to work with all their might, leaving Jill to sit upon a stool and sort the early apples ...
— Jack and Jill • Louisa May Alcott
... may be briefly described as follows: The nuts are run through a revolving screen which separates and cleans them from all adhering husk and grades them into three sizes. They then pass through the cracker and thence, by conveyor belt, to the picker. This ingenious device holds the broken nuts with soft rubber rolls while a set of fingers literally pick the kernels from the shells. Careful sifting is the last step as the kernels leave the machine, after which they are hand-picked to remove any remaining ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Twenty-Fourth Annual Meeting • Northern Nut Growers Association
... chooses his tools well, a foul tool for a foul use, and neither you nor I can come out of it with clean hands. His name? The gallows-cheat has a dozen names and changes them as you would your coat. He is like a Paris rag-picker, and his basket of life is full of the garbage he has ...
— The Justice of the King • Hamilton Drummond
... coach of our own, by ourselves, and found the town of Windsor like a cried fair. We were then directed to the Castle gate, where a terrible crowd was gathered together; and we had not been long in that crowd, till a pocket-picker, as I thought, cutted off the tail of my coat, with my pocket-book in my pocket, which I never missed at the time. But it seems the coat tail was found, and a policeman got it, and held it up on the end of his stick, and cried, whose pocket is this? showing the book that was therein in his hand. ...
— The Ayrshire Legatees • John Galt
... and for five or ten minutes the air was kept alive by shouting and laughter of the men, and the protestations of the dog. When the shearer touched skin, he yelled "Tar!" and when he finished he shouted "Wool away!" at the top of his voice, and his mates echoed him with a will. A picker-up gathered the fleece with a great show of labour and care, and tabled it, to the well-ventilated disgust of old Scotty, the wool-roller. When they let the dog go he struck for home—a clean-shaven poodle, except for a ferocious moustache and ...
— While the Billy Boils • Henry Lawson
... a busy day for Doctor Bicknell, and the afternoon was well along when he lighted a cigar preparatory to leaving the table upon which it seemed the sufferers almost clamoured to be laid. But the last one, an old rag-picker with a broken shoulder-blade, had been disposed of, and the first fragrant smoke wreaths had begun to curl about his head, when the gong of a hurrying ambulance came through the open window from the street, followed by the ...
— When God Laughs and Other Stories • Jack London
... wandered in the woods together and gathered walnuts, and chinquapins and wild grapes. When harvest time came, they worked in the fields side by side,—plucked the corn, pulled the fodder, and gathered the dried peas from the yellow pea-vines. Cicely was a phenomenal cotton-picker, and John accompanied her to the fields and stayed by her hours at a time, though occasionally he would complain of his head, and sit under a tree and rest part of the day while Cicely worked, the two keeping one another ...
— The Wife of his Youth and Other Stories of the Color Line, and - Selected Essays • Charles Waddell Chesnutt
... his in the next barrel, and so on, so that each succeeding picker deposits his apples in the next succeeding barrel. In that way I personally have the opportunity to inspect every half bushel of apples, or, I might say, every apple, as a half bushel of apples in a barrel is shallow, making inspection ...
— Trees, Fruits and Flowers of Minnesota, 1916 • Various
... is of extremely fine quality, comes into the picker building in great bales from our Southern sea-coast and from Egypt. It is fed into the first of a series of cleaners, from the last of which it issues in a long, flat sheet, to go through the processes of carding, combing, drawing, and making into roving. The carding product consists of a very ...
— Making Both Ends Meet • Sue Ainslie Clark and Edith Wyatt
... ambassador, under a becoming show of profound respect, might really have governed the country so far as regarded at least the all important relations which bound the two nations together. But Langerac was a mere picker-up of trifles, a newsmonger who wrote a despatch to-day with information which a despatch was written on the morrow to contradict, while in itself conveying additional intelligence absolutely certain to be falsified soon afterwards. The Emperor of Germany ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... good, Dominie," he said. "You know, my old friend, Death, is a shrewd picker. He's got an eye for men." He mused, rubbing his tousled, brickish locks with a nervous hand. "I was getting to kind of like that young pup," ...
— From a Bench in Our Square • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... occupation in the country in the time of haymaking, of the vintage, or of olive-picking. Even the city unemployed could gather a bunch of grapes or pick an olive, just as they can with us, or just as the London hop-picker can take a holiday and earn a little money in Kent. In the vineyards, where the vines commonly trailed upon low elms and other trees, various vegetables grew between the rows, as they still do about ...
— Life in the Roman World of Nero and St. Paul • T. G. Tucker
... according to the amount of money advanced, one part being given to the creditor, and the other to the debtor. The same plan is used in the present day by the hop-pickers in Kent, the overseer having one stick, while the picker keeps the other, and notches it each time a basket is emptied. Beneath this Toll House is the ancient Gaol or House of Correction. Up to the present century this gaol was as defective as that of prisons generally. ...
— A Yacht Voyage Round England • W.H.G. Kingston
... get measured for his hoof-picker" Dam had not resented, though he had considered it something of an insult to his intelligence that Hawker should expect to "have" him so easily as that. He had taken in good part the arrangement of his bed in such a way that ...
— Snake and Sword - A Novel • Percival Christopher Wren
... sunshine, whose steps ran down a very steep hillside under the lee of an almost vertically plunging parapet. To the left of that parapet the whole hillside was one gruel of smashed trees, split stones, and powdered soil. It might have been a rag-picker's dump-heap on a ...
— France At War - On the Frontier of Civilization • Rudyard Kipling
... our day. Let us drink deep of love, not waiting until the spring run dry. Catherine, death comes to all, and yonder in the church-yard the poor dead lie together, huggermugger, and a man may not tell an archbishop from a rag-picker. Yet they have exulted in their youth, and have laughed in the sun with some lass or another lass. ...
— The Line of Love - Dizain des Mariages • James Branch Cabell
... was a "hewer of wood and a drawer of water." She was a common field-hand. She had to keep her place in the gang from morn till eve, under the burden of a heavy task, or under the stimulus or the fear of a cruel lash. She was a picker of cotton. She labored at the sugar-mill and in the tobacco-factory. When, through weariness or sickness, she has fallen behind her allotted task, there came, as punishment, the fearful stripes ...
— Masterpieces of Negro Eloquence - The Best Speeches Delivered by the Negro from the days of - Slavery to the Present Time • Various
... be some outdoor games, and a good one to play is "Daisy in the Dell." For this the children form in a circle, joining hands, and one is chosen to be daisy-picker. The daisy-picker runs around the ...
— Entertaining Made Easy • Emily Rose Burt
... erecting it entirely for her and the baby. He spoke of closets for her frocks, and "a comfy sewing-room." But when he drew on a leaf from an old account-book (he was a paper-saver and a string-picker) the plans for the garage, he gave much more attention to a cement floor and a work-bench and a gasoline-tank than he had ...
— Main Street • Sinclair Lewis
... was in her element: her ebony hair was slicked straight back on her head; her eyes were artificially darkened; she reeked of insistent perfume. She was got up to the best of her ability as a siren, more popularly a "vamp"—a picker up and thrower away of men, an unscrupulous and fundamentally unmoved toyer with affections. Something in the exhaustiveness of her attempt fascinated Maury at first sight—a woman with wide hips affecting a panther-like litheness! As ...
— The Beautiful and Damned • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... ruin may follow, an act of Congress may be passed to-morrow changing the whole thing by demonetizing one or remonetizing the other; and the government finally opens a junk-shop, and is engaged actively in the "second-hand" trade, or is in sharp competition with the rag-picker. And our great political educators fall to wrangling about a proposition, that could be paralleled only by some phenomenal crank beating up recruits for a new party upon a platform that all yard-sticks must be made of hickory wood, and he shall be deemed a counterfeiter ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 23, October, 1891 • Various
... handsome negroes and continued our walk on Water Street an Italian passed us. He was indeed very dirty and dilapidated; his clothes were of the poorest, and he carried a rag-picker's bag over his shoulder; but his face, as he turned it towards ...
— The Gypsies • Charles G. Leland
... first day of the carnival. Everybody was dressed up, and everybody was full-fed, and many were already intoxicated. In the court- yard, close to the house, stood an old man, a rag-picker, in a tattered smock and bast shoes, sorting over the booty in his basket, tossing out leather, iron, and other stuff in piles, and breaking into a merry song, with a fine, powerful voice. I entered into conversation with him. He was seventy years old, he was alone in the world, and supported ...
— What To Do? - thoughts evoked by the census of Moscow • Count Lyof N. Tolstoi
... uncomfortable, to picnic with him, during the collection of the boats. The breakfast, eaten in the open court, consisted of sundry baskets of roast-beef and plantain-squash, folded in plantain-leaves. He sometimes ate with a copper knife and picker, not forked—but more usually like a dog, with both hands. The bits too tough for his mastication he would take from his mouth and give as a treat to the pages, who n'yanzigged, and swallowed them with much seeming relish. Whatever remained over was then divided by ...
— The Discovery of the Source of the Nile • John Hanning Speke
... were made to swear by the moon that they would never commit theft at night, and on this account they are known as Chandravedi or 'Those who observe the moon.' In Bombay and Central India this name is more commonly used than Sanaurhia. Another name for them is Uthaigira or 'A picker-up of that which has fallen,' corresponding to the nickname of Uchla or 'Lifter' applied to the Bhamtas. Mr. Seagrim described them as going about in small gangs of ten to twenty persons without women, under a leader who has the title of ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume IV of IV - Kumhar-Yemkala • R.V. Russell
... the East Indies a common custom prevails of planting tea bushes about four feet apart, each way, and they are pruned down to a height varying from three to six feet, to bring the topmost leaves within reach of the picker. In both named countries, a first crop of tea leaves may be gathered from the plant at three years from the seed, but a full crop is not expected until the plant is about six years old. "A Chinese plantation of tea, seen from a distance," ...
— Tea Leaves • Francis Leggett & Co.
... Hittite Empire is published and available to anybody. Hittitology's like Egyptology; it's stopped being research and archaeology and become scholarship and history. And I'm not a scholar or a historian; I'm a pick-and-shovel field archaeologist—a highly skilled and specialized grave-robber and junk-picker—and there's more pick-and-shovel work on this planet than I could do in a hundred lifetimes. This is something new; I was a fool to think I could turn my back on it and go back to scribbling ...
— Omnilingual • H. Beam Piper
... boy, the great ambition of his life was to be released from the hoeing and spudding, and set to work at his father's colliery. Great was Geordie's joy, therefore, when at last he was taken on there in the capacity of a coal-picker, to clear the loads from stones and rubbish. It wasn't a very dignified position, to be sure, but it was the first step that led the way to the construction of the Liverpool and Manchester Railway. Geordie was now fairly free from the uncongenial drudgery ...
— Biographies of Working Men • Grant Allen
... the notes of a retired egg-picker; they record the brief experience of one who was interested in the last campaign, which, as it terminated the career of the egg-pirates, is not without historical interest. I will at once introduce the historian, and let him ...
— In the Footprints of the Padres • Charles Warren Stoddard
... as heterogeneous as the contents of a rag-picker's auction. Yet they associated with little friction, herding uniformly kind with kind, only rarely lending themselves to transient ructions. They played little jokes on each other; a fat and serious captive was sitting of an evening at his cell ...
— The Subterranean Brotherhood • Julian Hawthorne
... Well, after all, one man must take the responsibility, and I am that man. I will sign the protest by myself. I will sweep a crossing—I will turn cress-gatherer, rag-picker; I will starve piecemeal, and see my wife starve with me; but do the wrong thing I will not! The Cause wants martyrs. If I ...
— Alton Locke, Tailor And Poet • Rev. Charles Kingsley et al
... simply for the reason that this house is the one where the Wolfes lived. There were the father and son,—both hands, as I said, in one of Kirby & John's mills for making railroad-iron,—and Deborah, their cousin, a picker in some of the cotton-mills. The house was rented then to half a dozen families. The Wolfes had two of the cellar-rooms. The old man, like many of the puddlers and feeders of the mills, was Welsh,—had ...
— Life in the Iron-Mills • Rebecca Harding Davis
... 'fessed religion. Evenings we would spin on the old spinning wheel, quilt make clothes, talk, tell jokes, and a few had learned to weave a little bit from Missus. We would have candy pulls, from cooked molasses, and sing in the moonlight by the tune of an old banjo picker. Chillen was mostly seen, not heard, different from youngens of today talking backward and foward cross their mammies and pappies. Chillen dat did dat den would git de breath slapped out on 'em. Your mammies didn't ...
— Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States, From Interviews with Former Slaves - Virginia Narratives • Works Projects Administration
... dressing, I unlocked the door of the stuffy little cabin and called the old rag-picker. He came shuffling along with his head bent, but raising his eyes as he approached me, he threw up ...
— Vendetta - A Story of One Forgotten • Marie Corelli
... fifteen, and, as we were told, a prostitute,) sewing on shirts, for the making of which they were paid four cents apiece, and even at that price, out of which they had to support two small children, they could not get a supply of work—of another of about the same size occupied by a street rag-picker and his family, the income of whose industry was eight dollars a month—of another, scarcely larger, into which we were drawn by the terrific screams of a drunken man beating his wife, containing no article of furniture whatever—another warmed only by a tin pail of lighted charcoal placed in the ...
— The trade, domestic and foreign • Henry Charles Carey
... method of choosing players, especially with boys, is that called "holders" or "hand holders." When a group of boys decides to play a game, one suddenly shouts, "Picker up!" picks up a pebble and hands it to another boy. The one who picks it up is called the stone picker, and is "out" to start with; that is, he does not have to take part in the guessing of ...
— Games for the Playground, Home, School and Gymnasium • Jessie H. Bancroft
... tenements. Why, his company gave me almost a hundred dollars, you know! I was lucky, for when Lizzie Sidel's man lost his hand in the cog wheels he went to law to sue the company, and three years afterward the case was thrown out of court and he had to pay the costs himself. But he was a picker-boss, and got ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... the moment of leaving he turned round and let fall a few more words. We will not gather them up. History has no rag-picker's basket. ...
— The History of a Crime - The Testimony of an Eye-Witness • Victor Hugo
... could not read a word and did not know a letter. I do not remember that I had ever seen the inside of a book of any kind. It was in 1867 that I learnt the alphabet upon the plantation by the light of pine knots. During the years 1868 and 1869 I was a rag-picker in the streets of Mobile. God has led me on, and now I am a student in Talladega College, and expect soon to have finished a course of study which will enable me to go forth to lead men to Christ and to teach them better methods of living. I speak of this ...
— The American Missionary—Volume 39, No. 07, July, 1885 • Various
... thumping, a cheese-fancier, like a melon-picker, can tell if a Cheddar is rich, ripe and ready for the Rabbit. When you hear your dealer say, "It's six months old or more," ...
— The Complete Book of Cheese • Robert Carlton Brown
... the contents of each boll; from sixty to eighty bolls were required to yield a pound in the seed; and three or four pounds of seed cotton furnished one pound of lint. When a boll was wide open a deft picker could empty all of its compartments by one snatch of the fingers; and a specially skilled one could keep both hands flying independently, and still exercise the small degree of care necessary to keep the lint fairly free from the trash of the brittle dead calyxes. As to the day's ...
— American Negro Slavery - A Survey of the Supply, Employment and Control of Negro Labor as Determined by the Plantation Regime • Ulrich Bonnell Phillips
... still held a wild animal instinct up in Virginia; they couldn't keep him out of the woods. He would spend two or three days back in there. Then the Patty Rollers would run him out and back home. He was a quill blower and a banjo picker. They had two corn piles and for prizes they give them whiskey. They had dances and regular figure callers. This has been told to me at night time around the hearth understand. I can recollect when round dancing come in. It was in 1880. Here's a song they ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States from Interviews with Former Slaves, Arkansas Narratives, Part 4 • Works Projects Administration
... and child, snapped at each other whenever they came in contact,—which, as the man was an habitue of the place, and occasional assistant of Monsieur Podvin in his business of scouring the wood of Vincennes for booty, was pretty nearly every day. For in addition to her labors as a rag-picker Fouchette was compelled to wait upon customers in the wine-shop and run errands and perform pretty much all the work of housekeeping for the Podvins. Her foraging expeditions merely filled in the time when customers were ...
— Mlle. Fouchette - A Novel of French Life • Charles Theodore Murray
... boarders, who for the most part were the sons of the county gentry. Of course, such a proud boy as George Borrow would resent this, and it seems to have rankled with him all through his life.... To talk of Borrow as a 'scholar' is absurd. 'A picker-up of learning's crumbs' he was, but he was absolutely without any of the training or the instincts of a scholar. He had had little education till he came to Norwich, and was at the Grammar School little ...
— George Borrow and His Circle - Wherein May Be Found Many Hitherto Unpublished Letters Of - Borrow And His Friends • Clement King Shorter
... remember Biddy O'Dolan, the little rag-picker and ash girl who found Lily De Koven's broken doll in the ash-can that cold winter's morning? I have not forgotten my promise to tell you ...
— Harper's Young People, February 24, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... in a constant state of horror in the places where a reddish fuzz endures, would not be picked up by a rag picker, if the little old man let it fall and left it at ...
— A Street Of Paris And Its Inhabitant • Honore De Balzac
... Admiral would, however, harm no one, signify high-toned candor and a certain breezy simplicity in the treatment of momentous matters. Evidently here was a man not posing, a hero because his character was heroic, a genuine personage—not artificial, proclamatory, a picker of phrases, but a doer of deeds that explain themselves; a man with imagination, not fantastic but realistic, who must have had a vision during the night after the May-day battle of what might be the great hereafter; ...
— The Story of the Philippines and Our New Possessions, • Murat Halstead
... o'clock in the morning. Caillette did not dare to find Jacques, and tell him she had been faithless to her trust. No, she must find Francoise herself. She asked questions of all she met, and at last she had a ray of light. An old rag picker told her that he had seen a woman answering to the description given by Caillette. She at once started in the direction he pointed out; it was the road to Germany she took. She sold a small gold locket, which held ...
— The Son of Monte Cristo • Jules Lermina
... Karshish, the picker up of learning's crumbs iv. 186 Kentish Sir Byng stood for his King vi. 3 King Charles, and who'll do him right now? vi. 5 "Knowledged deposed, then!"—groaned whom that most grieved ...
— A Handbook to the Works of Browning (6th ed.) • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... The fruit-picker stretched out her hand—there was a large shining silver coin—and when it was given to her, when she held it in her hand she drew a deep breath; her brown fingers closed ...
— The Son of His Mother • Clara Viebig
... of all these lines, together with his unnaturally long and flat chin, contributed to give a peculiar expression to his countenance,—something between that of a retired professor of rhetoric and a rag-picker. ...
— The Illustrious Gaudissart • Honore de Balzac
... I have had time to reflect on the problem of the three basic machines needed. These are the huller, cracker and kernel picker. Fortunately for me I learned the machinist trade and had a machine shop at my disposal. I tried every way to hull the black walnut and finally accepted the commercial potato peeler as the best principle. I built several crackers and at last accepted the Wiley cracker as the best commercial ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the 43rd Annual Meeting - Rockport, Indiana, August 25, 26 and 27, 1952 • Various
... rapidly fill. An ant, ever so small, is the first arrival. I thought I should keep this intruder off by hanging my apparatus high above the ground: she laughs at my precautions. A few hours after the deposit of the morsel, fresh still and possessing no appreciable smell, up comes the eager picker-up of trifles, scales the stems of the tripod in processions and starts the work of dissection. If the joint suits her, she even goes to live in the sand of the pan and digs herself temporary platforms in order to work the rich find more at ...
— The Life of the Fly - With Which are Interspersed Some Chapters of Autobiography • J. Henri Fabre
... always fluffs of cotton in the air like great white bees drifting down out of the picker chimney. They lodged in the cramped and dingy elms and horse-chestnuts which a former agent had planted along the streets, and the English sparrows squabbled over them in eaves-corners and made warm, untidy great ...
— A Country Doctor and Selected Stories and Sketches • Sarah Orne Jewett
... confusion was more apparent than real, and that each picker was given a row over which he—or, more often, she—bent with busy fingers until it was finished. At central points crates were piled up, and men known as "buyers" received the round quart baskets from the trays of the pickers, while wide platform ...
— Success With Small Fruits • E. P. Roe
... operating or assisting in operating any of the following machines (a) circular or band saws; (b) wood shapers; (c) wood jointers; (d) planers; (e) sandpaper or woodpolishing machinery; (f) woodturning or boring machinery; (g) picker machines or machines used in picking wool, cotton, hair or any other material; (h) carding machines; (i) paper-lace machines; (j) leather-burnishing machines; (k) job or cylinder printing presses operated by power other ...
— Mining Laws of Ohio, 1921 • Anonymous
... who, in the phrase of Tennyson's northern farmer, "has coats to their backs, and takes their regular meals." One British gentlemen we had with us during the siege of Plevna was a perpetual source of joy to me. He was a sort of human jackdaw, the picker-up of unconsidered trifles; and especially in the way of provender and of medical comforts he took care to be well provided whatever might befall the rest of us. It happened one day during the siege that some member of our party discovered in some huckster's shop ...
— Recollections • David Christie Murray
... to join Drake with a grin at her conception of him as fit company for a gentleman disappointed in his love-affairs. He nevertheless obeyed it, and travelling to Grindelwald found Drake waiting him on the platform with the hands of an oakum-picker, and a face toned uniformly to the colour of a ripe pippin. 'You have been climbing mountains, ...
— The Philanderers • A.E.W. Mason
... it, but with starting eyes. There was, then, something new under the sun? A picker of grapes, recommended by a princess! He turned the letter inside out, ...
— The Goose Girl • Harold MacGrath
... no more about the berry-pickers. Dave handed him a paper on which the time of each berry-picker and the amount of his or her wage was marked opposite. The Squire took it and adjusted his glasses with a certain grimness—he was honest to the core, but few things came harder to him ...
— 'Way Down East - A Romance of New England Life • Joseph R. Grismer
... Holmes, a picker up of shells on the shores of the great unknown ocean. I presume that it is Mr. Sherlock Holmes whom I am addressing and ...
— Hound of the Baskervilles • Authur Conan Doyle
... commenced this necessary study early in the morning in his room, which was in a boarding-house situated in this metropolis. The early carts were taking their way down town through a blue haze, which in the country prefigured a golden day. The milkman, the walk-sweeper, and the rag-picker, were the only creatures moving in Osgood's neighborhood. The time was propitious for meditation and resolve, but Osgood's head was not ready. The still Champagne that he had drank the night before buzzed in his brain. With a glass of it in his hand, under a side gas-light, in the ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 8 • Various
... incorporated it into the chronicle which he left behind him. Roger of Wendover did good work, and laboriously epitomized, supplemented and improved, but he was a mere literary monk after all; a student, a bookworm, simple, conscientious, and truthful; a trustworthy reporter, 'a picker-up of learning's crumbs,' a monkish historiographer, in short; but by no means a historian of large views and of original mind. Roger of Wendover died in 1236, and Matthew Paris succeeded to his office ...
— The Quarterly Review, Volume 162, No. 324, April, 1886 • Various
... man's brains, are as much a man's own property as the breeches upon his backside;—which said exsudations, &c. being dropp'd upon the said apple by the labour of finding it, and picking it up; and being moreover indissolubly wasted, and as indissolubly annex'd, by the picker up, to the thing pick'd up, carried home, roasted, peel'd, eaten, digested, and so on;—'tis evident that the gatherer of the apple, in so doing, has mix'd up something which was his own, with the apple which was not his own, by which means he has acquired ...
— The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman • Laurence Sterne
... is a wise precept, but incomplete unless we add, "Nor cease from recording whatsoever thing thou hast gathered therefrom,"—so ready is Oblivion with her fatal shears. The somewhat greasy heap of a literary rag-and-bone-picker, like Athenaeus, is turned to gold by time. Even the Virgilium vide tantum of Dryden about Milton, and of Pope again about Dryden, is worth having, and gives a pleasant fillip to the fancy. There is much of this quality in Mr. Edmund Quincy's book, enough to make us wish there were ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 121, November, 1867 • Various
... it ain't the gamblin' Cotton-picker!" he ejaculated. "I didn't know I was goin' to have such luck as this! Keep yore mitts up, the three of ...
— Kid Wolf of Texas - A Western Story • Ward M. Stevens
... Karshish, the picker-up of learning's crumbs, The not-incurious in God's handiwork (This man's-flesh he hath admirably made, Blown like a bubble, kneaded like a paste, To coop up and keep down on earth a space That puff of vapor from his mouth, man's ...
— Men and Women • Robert Browning
... police-constable to a man in a sitting position on the dung heap, and said she was afraid he was dead. Her fears proved to be true. The wretched creature appeared to have been dead several hours. He had perished of cold and wet, and the rain had been beating down on him all night. The deceased was a bone-picker. He was in the lowest stage of poverty, poorly clad, and half-starved. The police had frequently driven him away from the stone yard, between sunset and sunrise, and told him to go home. He selected a most desolate spot for his wretched death. A penny ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... the lot of the hop-pickers, who flock into Worcestershire in September by the thousand. One of the mission workers, who had gone down to the hopyards, met a dilapidated individual in a country lane, who said he was "a picker." Pressed for further particulars, the ...
— Grain and Chaff from an English Manor • Arthur H. Savory
... trees to fall and be bruised on the ground had better listen to the careful directions for placing the ladder on the trees where it will do no damage, as to the use of the gathering hook so that the branches can be brought within easy reach of the picker on his ladder, the wearing of a gathering apron, and the emptying of it gently into the baskets. Green fern has the same effect on pears packed for carriage as nettles on stone fruit; while apples should be packed ...
— A Short History of English Agriculture • W. H. R. Curtler
... banjo, the sound of patting and the thud of feet keeping time to the music drew them irresistibly. Aunt Nancy was there, in the circle about the embers, as was also her old-time foe, Aunt 'Phrony, and the banjo was in the hands of Tim, a plow-boy, celebrated as being the best picker for miles around. Lastly, there were Aunt 'Liza and her latest conquest, Sam, whose hopes she could not have entirely quenched or he would not have beamed so complacently ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume VII. (of X.) • Various |
