"Plough" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... after that time Louis entered the train at Warborne, and was speedily crossing a country of ragged woodland, which, though intruded on by the plough at places, remained largely intact from prehistoric times, and still abounded with yews of gigantic growth and oaks tufted with mistletoe. It was the ...
— Two on a Tower • Thomas Hardy
... laid out with a beautiful regularity, the streets large, strait, and crossing each other at right angles, had the disgrace of suffering those streets to remain long unpav'd, and in wet weather the wheels of heavy carriages plough'd them into a quagmire, so that it was difficult to cross them; and in dry weather the dust was offensive. I had liv'd near what was call'd the Jersey Market, and saw with pain the inhabitants wading in mud while purchasing their provisions. A strip of ground down the middle of ...
— The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin • Benjamin Franklin
... held to one thought at a time, and he had always possessed a fixedness of purpose of a kind well calculated to carry through any plan which that mind conceived. Combined, these characteristics made a form of egotism, not one which caused him to overrate himself, but to plough ahead regardless of the strength of the possible opposition. When he returned to America he would marry Marion Treville immediately. No other idea had seriously entered his mind since they had plighted their troth; ...
— 'Smiles' - A Rose of the Cumberlands • Eliot H. Robinson
... my father with it, who was very willing to be rid of me, for I could not work, drive the plough, or endure any country labour; my father oft would say, ...
— William Lilly's History of His Life and Times - From the Year 1602 to 1681 • William Lilly
... of the country papers with a wild surmise that there, amid reports of Boards of Guardians and Rural Councils, some poetic young kinsman may be taking council with the stars, watching more closely the Plough in the furrows of the heavens than the county instructor at his task of making farmers drive the plough straight in the fields. I found many years ago in a country paper a local poet making genuine music. I remember ...
— Imaginations and Reveries • (A.E.) George William Russell
... 'The horrid plough has razed the green, Where once my children play'd; The axe has fell'd the hawthorn screen, The ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... appearance of study, were supposed to have gained knowledge unattainable by the busy part of mankind; but in these enlightened days, every man is qualified to instruct every other man: and he that beats the anvil, or guides the plough, not content with supplying corporal necessities, amuses himself in the hours of leisure with providing intellectual pleasures ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume IV: The Adventurer; The Idler • Samuel Johnson
... theatre of existence on the plains. There, likewise, flourishes the pastoral man. But cattle herding, confined to the plains, gives way before the westward creep of agriculture. Each year beholds more western acres broken by the plough; each year witnesses a diminution of the cattle ranges and cattle herding. This need ring no bell of alarm concerning a future barren of a beef supply. More cattle are the product of the farm-regions than of the ranges. That ground, ...
— Wolfville Nights • Alfred Lewis
... did not themselves possess at the commencement of their career, but only acquired by degrees as their life proceeded.[8] They are compared to such efforts of the poet as the Vision of Robert Burns, in which he tells how the muse of Caledonia appeared to him at the plough, and, casting her mantle round him and claiming him as her own, consecrated him the poet of his native land; or the Zueignung of Goethe, in which he feigns a similar experience which befell him on the moonlight ...
— The Preacher and His Models - The Yale Lectures on Preaching 1891 • James Stalker
... eight feet apart, and yield, one year with another, about two pounds of caper each, worth on the spot sixpence sterling per pound. They require little culture, and this may be performed either with the plough or hoe. The principal work is the gathering of the fruit as it forms. Every plant must be picked every other day, from the last of June till the middle of October. But this is the work of women and children. This plant does well in any kind of soil which is dry, ...
— The Writings of Thomas Jefferson - Library Edition - Vol. 6 (of 20) • Thomas Jefferson
... the change a disgrace to them. But they made the best of it and uttered no protest, except keeping as wide a space as possible between themselves and their new mates. But the gray and white, old yoke fellows at the plough, who knew nothing of the dignity of carriage drawing, and cared less, who had rubbed noses and shared feed-boxes ever since they were colts, both lifted up their voices in mournful whinneys and refused ...
— Old Caravan Days • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... said sullenly in English: "You take them ox to-morrow and try the sod plough. Then you not be ...
— My Antonia • Willa Sibert Cather
... a song for the good old Flail, And the brawny arms that wield it, Hearty and hale, in our yeoman mail, Like intrepid knights we'll shield it. We are old nature's peers, Right royal cavaliers! Knights of the Plough! for no Golden Fleece we sail, We're Princes in our own right—our ...
— Hesperus - and Other Poems and Lyrics • Charles Sangster
... A voice is calling fieldward—'T is time to start the ploughs! To set the furrows rolling, while all the old crows nod; And deep as life, the kernel, to cut the golden sod. The pen—let nations have it;—we'll plough ...
— The Last Harvest • John Burroughs
... after cytisus, the wolf pursues the goat, the crane follows the plough, but I am wild for love ...
— Theocritus, Bion and Moschus rendered into English Prose • Andrew Lang
... his waist en strike John 75 times. De blood run down off him just like you see a stream run in dat woods. Dat sho been so cause all we chillun stand bout dere en look on it. I suppose I was bout big enough to plough den. When dey let John loose from dere, he go in de woods en never come back no more till freedom come here. I tellin you when he come back, he come back ...
— Slave Narratives Vol. XIV. South Carolina, Part 2 • Works Projects Administration
... ever occupy themselves in husbandry, which they abandon to the women, who plough the flinty fields and gather in the scanty harvests. Their husbands and sons are far differently employed: for they are a nation of arrieros or carriers, and almost esteem it a disgrace to follow any other ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... word with Pictet and others, we shall find that the name of the plough comes from the Sanscrit krt, krnt, kart, to cleave or divide. Hence krntatra, a plough or dividing instrument. The root krt subsequently became kut or kutt, to which we must refer kuta, kutaka, the body of the plough. This root ...
— Myth and Science - An Essay • Tito Vignoli
... Plough and Sword Dance;" the principal actors being a number of grotesque figures armed with swords, some of whom were yoked to a plough, on which sat a piper, playing lustily while dragged along. The plough was guided by a man clothed in a bear-skin, with a ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... understood the importance of rotating his crops and of fertilizing his fields. The farming implements in use showed little of that mechanical ingenuity which is now characteristic of the American people. The plough was still a clumsy affair with heavy beam and handles, and wooden mould-board. The scythe, the sickle, and the flail were the same as their forbears had used ...
— Union and Democracy • Allen Johnson
... work and partly play." Herrick, the recorder of many social customs, tells us that the ploughmen used to set on fire the flax which the maids used for spinning, and received pails of water on their heads for their mischief. The following Monday was called Plough Monday, when the labourers used to draw a plough decked with ribbons round the parish, and receive presents of money, favouring the spectators with sword-dancing and mumming. The rude procession of men, clad in clean smock-frocks, headed by the renowned "Bessy," who sang and rattled ...
— Old English Sports • Peter Hampson Ditchfield
... The women and the girls cultivate as well as the men in all respects." [That is a true tale, Sahib. We know—but my brother knows nothing except the road to market.] "They plough with two and four horses as great as hills. The women of Franceville also keep the accounts and the bills. They make one price for everything. No second price is to be obtained by any talking. They cannot be cheated over the value of one grain. Yet of their own will they are generous beyond ...
— The Eyes of Asia • Rudyard Kipling
... or coat into which pieces of iron or horn were quilted; some had also steel or steel-and-leather arm or thigh pieces. There were a few mounted men among them, their horses being big-boned hammer-headed beasts, that looked as if they had been taken from plough or waggon, but their riders were well armed with steel armour on their heads, legs, and arms. Amongst the horsemen I noted the man that had ridden past me when I first awoke; but he seemed to be a prisoner, as he had a woollen hood ...
— A Dream of John Ball, A King's Lesson • William Morris
... with Ferguson the shepherd's boy, walking the streets with Crabbe, a poor barber here in Lancashire with Arkwright, a tallow-chandler's son with Franklin, shoemaking with Bloomfield in his garret, following the plough with Burns, and, high above the noise of loom and hammer, whispering courage in the ears of workers I could this day name in Sheffield ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... dig the ditch, To lop or fell the tree, To lay the swarth on the sultry field, Or plough the stubborn lea; The harvest stack to bind, The wheaten rick to thatch, And never fear in my pouch to find The tinder ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood
... nor of tiling their houses, from any apprehension that their taxes will be raised the year following. The annual income of the estates of a great many commoners in England amounts to two hundred thousand livres, and yet these do not think it beneath them to plough the lands which enrich them, and on which they enjoy ...
— Letters on England • Voltaire
... me, for he remembered that I was my mother's best beloved, and feared also lest we should meet no more. So much did it soften indeed, that at the last hour he changed his mind and wished to hold me back from going. But having put my hand to the plough and suffered all the bitterness of farewell, I would not return to be mocked by my brother and my neighbours. 'You speak too late, father,' I said. 'You desired me to go to work this vengeance and stirred me to it with many bitter words, ...
— Montezuma's Daughter • H. Rider Haggard
... of cattle [20] in the open air, obviously demands roofed homesteads. But if these same human beings are to have anything to bring in under cover, some one to carry out these labours of the field under high heaven [21] must be found them, since such operations as the breaking up of fallow with the plough, the sowing of seed, the planting of trees, the pasturing and herding of flocks, are one and all open-air employments on which the supply of products necessary ...
— The Economist • Xenophon
... guards the yet unripened growth. On the fair richness of a maiden's bloom Each passer looks, o'ercome with strong desire, With eyes that waft the wistful dart of love. Then be not such our hap, whose livelong toil Did make our pinnace plough the mighty main: Nor bring we shame upon ourselves, and joy Unto my foes. Behold, a twofold home— One of the king's and one the people's gift— Unbought, 'tis yours to hold,—a gracious boon. Go—but remember ye your sire's ...
— Suppliant Maidens and Other Plays • AEschylus
... sufficient experience of his fellow creatures to be aware how wonderfully temptations will affect even those who appear to be least subject to them. The town horse, used to gaudy trappings, no doubt despises the work of his country brother; but yet, now and again, there comes upon him a sudden desire to plough. The desire for ploughing had come upon the Duchess, but the Duke could not ...
— The Prime Minister • Anthony Trollope
... immediately before midsummer. But when the plant is brought into the house, the branches may not touch the ground, lest they should lose their marvellous qualities.[48] In the olden days, before a Lithuanian or Prussian farmer went forth to plough for the first time in spring, he called in a wizard to perform a certain ceremony for the good of the crops. The sage seized a mug of beer with his teeth, quaffed the liquor, and then tossed the mug over his head. This signified that the corn in that year should grow taller than a man. But the mug ...
— Balder The Beautiful, Vol. I. • Sir James George Frazer
... were aggravated by an opinion universally prevalent, that, even in the season immediately following that dreadful famine which swept off one third of the inhabitants of Bengal, several of the poorer farmers were compelled to plough up the fields they had sown with grain in order to plant them with poppies for the benefit of the engrossers of opium. This opinion grew into a strong presumption, when it was seen that in the next year the produce of opium (contrary to what might be naturally expected ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VIII. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... miles from Rye, and about midway between the villages of Brodnyx and Pedlinge. It was a sea farm. There were no hop-gardens, as on the farms inland, no white-cowled oasts, and scarcely more than twelve acres under the plough. Three hundred acres of pasture spread round Ansdore, dappled over with the big Kent sheep—the road from Pedlinge to Brodnyx went through them, curling and looping and doubling to the demands of the dykes. Just beyond Pedlinge it turned ...
— Joanna Godden • Sheila Kaye-Smith
... I remembered with sorrow how many years I had refused to acknowledge the Prince of life as my King, while he waited with open arms to receive me; and how often, after putting my hand to the plough, I had looked back. My backsliding, my evil example, my neglect of souls, all rose before me like a dark cloud, and I was in agony. But soon a voice said, 'Thy sins are forgiven!' and all was light. I said, 'Lord, I must praise thee for this forever; but I cannot ...
— Woman And Her Saviour In Persia • A Returned Missionary
... music. Watch farmers' horses loose in a field when hounds are in the vicinity, and you will see them careering madly up and down, as if they too would like to join in hunting the fox, although their avocation in life dooms them to the placid work of drawing a plough or heavy cart. As in horses so in men, and those who possess the sporting instinct will run many miles in the hope of catching a glimpse of a hunt, even though they may never be able to follow hounds on ...
— The Horsewoman - A Practical Guide to Side-Saddle Riding, 2nd. Ed. • Alice M. Hayes
... by educated natives. He began with labored respect to explain how he was a poor man with no concern in such matters, which were all under the control of God, but presently broke out of Urdu into familiar Punjabi, the mere sound of which had a rustic smack of village smoke-reek and plough-tail, as he denounced the wearers of white coats, the jugglers with words who filched his field from him, the men whose backs were never bowed in honest work; and poured ironical scorn on the Bengali. He and one of his brothers had seen Calcutta, and being at work there had Bengali ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... else. Jim did not know anything else. He did not mind anything much—except chills. He even got used to them; would just lie down and shake for an hour and then go to ploughing again as soon as the ague was over, with the fever on him. He had to plough; for corn was necessary. He had this compensation: he was worshipped by two people—his mother and Kitty. If other people thought him ugly, they thought him beautiful. If others thought him dull, they thought him wonderfully clever; if others ...
— "Run To Seed" - 1891 • Thomas Nelson Page
... convoy, and go down to the wharves and pay a hundred pounds of sweet-scented for a thing you would buy in the Candleriggs for twenty shillings. How, in God's name, is a farmer to live if he has to pay usury for every plough and spade and ...
— Salute to Adventurers • John Buchan
... historical costume, but it was understood that Slorkey, with his cowhide boots and rusty plated spurs, his long, swallow-tailed blue coat, and threadbare chapeau with a cock's tail feather in it, mounted on his seventy-five dollar piebald mare, promoted from the plough and "dump cart," was the representative of General Washington. Major Israel Ryely, his second in command, a native of the rival village of Hardscrabble, was to figure as Lord Cornwallis; and the selection was the more appropriate, since ...
— The Three Brides, Love in a Cottage, and Other Tales • Francis A. Durivage
... goodly folk whose name I bear, Men of the plough, the priesthood, and the mill, Whose whispered wisdom follows where I fare, With ghostly promptings that must haunt me still,— What place was there for you, whose different fame Delighted, once, the Don Juans of the ...
— Ships in Harbour • David Morton
... day of his differences with his bishops. "What can you expect, Monsignor?" laughingly said a lady well disposed to the Jansenists; "God is just; it is the stones of Port-Royal tumbling upon your head." The tombs were destroyed; some coffins were carried to a distance, others left and profaned; the plough passed over the ruins; the hatred of the enemies of Port-Royal was satiated. A few of the faithful, preserving in their hearts the ardent faith of M. de St. Cyran, narrowed, however, and absorbed by obstinate resistance, a few theologians dying in exile, ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume V. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... wipes his brow,— Marks the rapid sun's descending— Marks his shadow far-extending— Deems it time to quit the plough. Weary man and weary steed Welcome food and respite need 'Tis the hour when bird and bee Seek repose, and why not he? Nature loves the twilight blest, Let ...
— Poems of the Heart and Home • Mrs. J.C. Yule (Pamela S. Vining)
... foot of which flowed a small stream that farther down joined the river in which Jumbo had been so nearly drowned. On the other side of the stream lay a long slip of land which Mr. Danvers always spoke of as a waste piece of ground, and over which he sometimes threatened to send the plough. But partly because the ground was really too poor to be of much good, and partly because the children begged him to leave it alone, it had never yet been disturbed, and the Wilderness, as they had named it, remained theirs to all ...
— A Tale of the Summer Holidays • G. Mockler
... outward windings of one life, but as a sign of what is going on in multitudes, and as a foretoken of the changes that are to come, that the highest interest attaches to such scenes as that of Chickka breaking the serpent-gods, turning the sword-gods into plough-shares, refusing to bow to the idol, or speaking lightly of the great god of the vicinity when his car was burned. Even the procession, which in all forms of idolatry, from that of India to that of Rome, ...
— Old Daniel • Thomas Hodson
... battles with confederated powers? When winds and seas conspir'd to overthrow you, And brought the fleets of Spain to your own harbours; When you, great duke, shrunk trembling in your palace, And saw your wife, the Adriatic, plough'd, Like a lewd whore, by bolder prows than yours, Stepp'd not I forth, and taught your loose Venetians The task of honour, and the way to greatness? Rais'd you from your capitulating fears To stipulate the terms of sued-for peace? And this my recompense! ...
— Venice Preserved - A Tragedy • Thomas Otway
... The method of elevating or adjusting the plough of an excavator by the rotary motion of the forward axle, derived from the forward wheels by means of the clutches, a' a', substantially as and for ...
— Scientific American, Vol. 17, No. 26 December 28, 1867 • Various
... him of it. It is only October now—so that he can do without the overcoat—and a poor fellow who has come with his wife and baby to live in that deserted cabin near the court-house, is in sore need of a horse for his fall ploughing. Father Orin had suggested Toby's drawing the plough, thinking that some of his own work might be attended to on foot. But Toby, it seems, drew the line at that. It was a treat to hear Father Orin laugh when he told how Toby made it plain that he thought there were more ...
— Round Anvil Rock - A Romance • Nancy Huston Banks
... as the world asketh, Some put them to the plough and played them full seldom, In eareing and sowing ...
— English Literature For Boys And Girls • H.E. Marshall
... can make out, a Celt will rather fish than plough, and be a gamekeeper than a workman; but if he be free to follow his own way, a genuine Highlander would rather be a soldier than ...
— Kate Carnegie and Those Ministers • Ian Maclaren
... thee! 'Twere good you 'd show your slaves or men condemn'd, Your new-plough'd forehead. Defiance! and I 'll meet thee, Even in a thicket ...
— The White Devil • John Webster
... encouraging the desolate, collecting the scattered, and founding churches, schools, and monasteries as they went along; so amid the deep pagan woods of Germany, and round about, the English Benedictine plied his axe, and drove his plough, planted his rude dwelling, and raised his rustic altar upon the ruins of idolatry; and then, settling down as a colonist upon the soil, began to sing his chants and to copy his old volumes, and thus to lay the slow ...
— Legends of the Saxon Saints • Aubrey de Vere
... to the rough ground behind my house, over which he was fond of strolling. It had been ploughed up and then allowed to go back, and the interest was to watch how the numerous species of weeds of cultivation which followed the plough gradually gave way in the struggle for existence to the well-known and much less varied flora of an ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin Volume II - Volume II (of II) • Charles Darwin
... one county superintendent in consternation. "Comparison! There is no comparison. The old one-room school, like the one-horse plough, has seen its day. The farmers in this country, after figuring it out, have reached the conclusion that the one-room school is in the same class with a lot of other old-fashioned machinery—good in its day, but not good enough for them. That is why over eighty per cent of our schools have been consolidated. ...
— The New Education - A Review of Progressive Educational Movements of the Day (1915) • Scott Nearing
... odd remembrances as he crossed the Place St. Sulpice: his plain old father at the old border home, close and hard-handed, who went afield with his own negroes, and made his sons take the plough-handles, and marched them all before him every Sunday to the plank church, and led the singing himself with an ancient tuning-fork, and took up the collection in a black velvet bag fastened to ...
— Bohemian Days - Three American Tales • Geo. Alfred Townsend
... discovered a carpenter sawing a block of wood. It struck them that this laborious man was making a better use of his teeth (viz., teeth of his saw) than the mere feeder and they judged that this ought to be the place where the town should be built. They therefore proceeded to trace with a plough the circumference of the town. On asking the carpenter what he was about to make with the block he was sawing, he said " A threshold for a door," which is called Prah or Praha in the Bohemian language and Libussa gave to the city the name of ...
— After Waterloo: Reminiscences of European Travel 1815-1819 • Major W. E Frye
... 157, was the son of a farmer, and was himself bred to the plough. He joined the army at an early age, and soon attracted notice for his punctual performance of all duties, and his strictness in discipline. He was present at the siege of Numantia, and his courage caused Scipio to predict for him a brilliant career. He soon rose to be Military ...
— History of Rome from the Earliest times down to 476 AD • Robert F. Pennell
... I, who ne'er was bless'd by Fortune's hand, Nor brighten'd plough-shares in paternal land. Long in the noisy town have been immured, Respired its smoke, and all its cares endured. Where news and politics divide mankind, And schemes of ...
— Life And Letters Of John Gay (1685-1732) • Lewis Melville
... outrage, or by any vision of too perpetual foreign life. For the tourists each year are but an episode in Upper Egypt. Still the shadoof-man sings his ancient song, violent and pathetic, bold as the burning sun-rays. Still the fellaheen plough with the camel yoked with the ox. Still the women are covered with protective amulets and hold their black draperies in their mouths. The intimate life of the Nile remains the same. And that life obelisk and king have known for how ...
— The Spell of Egypt • Robert Hichens
... still almost self-sufficing, and is in itself an economic unit. The village agriculturist grows all the food necessary for the inhabitants of the village. The smith makes the plough-shares for the cultivator, and the few iron utensils required for the household. He supplies these to the people, but does not get money in return. He is recompensed by mutual services from his fellow villagers. The potter ...
— The Case For India • Annie Besant
... proceed to Peru, and for their voyage back to France. All this were quite inconsiderable for so fine a country, were it better peopled; since the land is so extraordinarily fertile, were it well cultivated, that they only scratch it for the most part, by means of a plough made of a crooked stick, and drawn by two oxen; and, though the seed be scarcely covered, it produces seldom less than an hundred fold. Neither are they at any more pains in procuring their vines, in order to make good wine. Besides which, as they have not ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 11 • Robert Kerr
... river. Its tall, black chimneys could he seen looming up against the starlit sky. There was no slope now to accelerate their speed. They had to peg away for dear life, pushing themselves forward with their skee-staves, laboring like plough-horses, panting, snorting, perspiring. Ralph turned his head once more. The poacher was gaining upon them; there could be no doubt of it. He was within the range of Ralph's rifle; and a sturdy fellow he was, who seemed good for a couple of miles ...
— Boyhood in Norway • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... one or two other suggestions with regard to the rearrangement of the pictures, and then, having put her hand to the plough, proceeded to refurnish the room. And for her own private purposes she affected to think that Mr. Truefitt's taste ...
— Salthaven • W. W. Jacobs
... his hopes to such mad heights?' he cried. 'How doth he presume to send such a missive to one of my quality? Is it because he hath seen the backs of a parcel of rascally militiamen, and because he hath drawn a few hundred chawbacons from the plough's tail to his standard, that he ventures to hold such language to the President of Wales? But ye will be my witnesses as to the spirit in which ...
— Micah Clarke - His Statement as made to his three Grandchildren Joseph, - Gervas and Reuben During the Hard Winter of 1734 • Arthur Conan Doyle
... long head and a divinely-warmed heart, searching vainly for help to thousands in the packed alleys of his English Home, sends his quick glance across seas to rich lands that daily cry to heaven for strong arms that wield the plough and spade. "Ho!" he shouts, "Labor to Land—starvation to production—death unto life!" and he calls upon every statesman and patriot to help the good work, and give their energies to frame an Emigration Scheme. Then the Repair party foams: ...
— Ginx's Baby • Edward Jenkins
... all manner of temptations and dangers, at the very time when the youth should be mastering his trade or his profession, war seems the capitalization of all the possible follies and wastes. The peasants of Europe plough, each carrying a soldier upon his back. The brick-mason builds, but staggers up the ladder with a heavier load than bricks,—the soldier upon his back. The symbols of nations are still the lion, the eagle and the wolf. Some political leaders even yet talk about the necessity of an occasional ...
— The Battle of Principles - A Study of the Heroism and Eloquence of the Anti-Slavery Conflict • Newell Dwight Hillis
... I have occasionally beheld a ploughman, bricklayer, gardener, weaver, or blacksmith, begin his work in the morning, I have envied him the readiness and willingness with which he took to it. The plough-man, after he has got his horses harnessed to the plough, does not delay a minute: into the turf the shining share enters, and away go horses, plough and man. It costs the ploughman no effort to make ...
— The Recreations of A Country Parson • A. K. H. Boyd
... Swaffham, lying between Tillham, Soham, Reepham, and Grindham. It's down in all the maps. It's as flat as a pancake; it has a church with a magnificent square tower, and a new chancel; there is a resident parson, and there are four or five farmers in it; it is under the plough throughout, and is famous for its turnips; half the parish belongs to a big lord, who lives in the county, and who does preserve foxes, but not with all his heart; two other farms are owned by the yeomen who farm them,—men who have been brought up to shoot, ...
— Ralph the Heir • Anthony Trollope
... where Fancy, leads the way? Yes, thus the Muses sing of happy swains, Because the Muses never knew their pains: They boast their peasant's pipes; but peasants now Resign their pipes and plod behind the plough; And few, amid the rural tribe, have time To number syllables and play with rhyme; Save honest DUCK, what son of verse could share The poet's rapture and the peasant's care? Or the great labours of the field degrade, With the new peril of a poorer trade? ...
— The Village and The Newspaper • George Crabbe
... moist hot climate weeds grow apace, and the fields, being closely surrounded by virgin forest, are liable to the attacks of pests of many kinds. Hence the processes by which the annual crop of PADI is obtained demand the best efforts and care of all the people of each village. The plough is unknown save to the Dusuns, a branch of the Murut people in North Borneo, who have learnt its use from Chinese immigrants. The Kalabits and some of the coastwise Klemantans who live in alluvial areas have learnt, probably through intercourse with the Philippine Islanders or the ...
— The Pagan Tribes of Borneo • Charles Hose and William McDougall
... in their attempts at colonisation because they proceed on military lines. With them it is the soldier first and the civilian where he can. England succeeds because she proceeds on industrial lines. With her it is the plough where it may be and the sword ...
— Successful Recitations • Various
... older Jennings thinking had always been harder than physical toil. Brought up right after the Civil War in a section left poverty-stricken, he could just read and write—that was all; for when he was twelve his service between the plough handles had begun, and there he had ...
— Frank of Freedom Hill • Samuel A. Derieux
... irritation, getting down to the natural man in himself for once, and the natural man in himself, in spite of Oxford and the junior Reviewers' Club, was a Palaeolithic creature of simple tastes and violent methods. "I'll be level with you yet," ran like a plough through ...
— The Wheels of Chance - A Bicycling Idyll • H. G. Wells
... are very different. In manners, conversation, and general tone there is a great change. It is, indeed, the people who have altered more than the surface of the country. Hard as the farmer may work, and plough and sow with engine and drill, the surface of the land does not much vary; but the farmer himself and the farmer's man are quite another race to what they were. Perhaps it was from this fact that the impression grew up that modern agriculture has polished ...
— The Life of the Fields • Richard Jefferies
... this, that I kissed my childish hands too fervently in your idol worship, walks and windings of BLAKESMOOR! for this, or what sin of mine, has the plough passed over your pleasant places? I sometimes think that as men, when they die, do not die all, so of their extinguished habitations there may be a hope—a ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb
... emphatic curse of the prophet—"And behold whatsoever he doth, it shall not prosper!" I rarely hit where I aim, and if I want anything, I am almost sure never to find it where I seek it. For instance, if my penknife is needed, I pull out twenty things—a plough-wedge, a horse nail, an old letter, or a tattered rhyme, in short, everything but my penknife; and that, at last, after a painful, fruitless search, will be found in the unsuspected corner of an unsuspected pocket, as if ...
— The Letters of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... the dead bury their dead: but go thou and preach the kingdom of God." Another said to him, "Lord, I will follow thee; but let me first go bid them farewell, which are at home at my house." Jesus replied, "No man, having put his hand to the plough, and looking back, is fit for the kingdom of God."[4] An extraordinary confidence, and at times accents of singular sweetness, reversing all our ideas of him, caused these exaggerations to be easily received. "Come unto me," cried he, "all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will ...
— The Life of Jesus • Ernest Renan
... the beginning, laid the consideration of the cross before you, it is because you should not be surprised and overtaken by it unawares, and because you should know that to draw back from Me after you have laid your hand to My plough, will make you unfit for the kingdom of ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... flakes, All curl'd and crisp'd, like crawling Snakes; The Breath of whose perfumed Locks Might choke the Devil with a Pox; Whose dainty twinings did entice The whole monopoly of Lice; Her Forehead next is to be found, Resembling much the new-plough'd ground, Furrow'd like stairs, whose windings led Unto the chimney of her head; The next thing that my Muse descries, Is the two Mill-pits of her Eyes, Mill-pits whose depth no plum can sound, For there the God of Love was drown'd, On either side there hangs a Souse, And Ear I ...
— The Lives of the Most Famous English Poets (1687) • William Winstanley
... Holmes, as graceful as Curtis; he is as calm as Seward, as keen as Phillips, as stalwart as Beecher; be is Garibaldi, he is Kit Carson, he is Blondin; he is as complete as the steamboat Metropolis, as Steers's yacht, as Singer's sewing-machine, as Colt's revolver, as the steam-plough, as Civilization." You wish to be so ranked among the people and things that lead the age;—consider the qualities you must have, and while you consider, keep your eye on Richard Wade, for he has ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 09, No. 51, January, 1862 • Various
... left for us to kill, Galazi," said Umslopogaas, laughing aloud. "Ah, that was a cunning fight! Ho! you sons of the Unconquered, who run so fast, stay your feet. I give you peace; you shall live to sweep my huts and to plough my fields with the other women of my kraal. Now, councillors, the fighting is done, so let us to the chief's hut, where Masilo waits us," and he turned and went with Galazi, and after him followed all the people, wondering and ...
— Nada the Lily • H. Rider Haggard
... he met other lads more diligent than himself, who followed the plough in summer-time to pay their college fees in winter; and this inequality struck him with some force. He was at that age of a conversible temper, and insatiably curious in the aspects of life; and he spent much of his time scraping acquaintance with all classes of man- and woman-kind. ...
— Lay Morals • Robert Louis Stevenson
... and money-losing,' and the previously unambitious character of the yeoman and his sons has undergone a tolerably complete change since education has opened out the widest avenues to personal advancement, even from the plough. They no longer live by bread alone, and therefore their artificial wants have been increasing at a greater ratio than their means of satisfying them out of the produce of the land. Without entering here upon the important effect of the corn supplies from ...
— The Quarterly Review, Volume 162, No. 324, April, 1886 • Various
... of the tired horses at the plough, or, on a stony-hearted spot of ground, a back-broken man trying to raise himself upright for a ...
— Main-Travelled Roads • Hamlin Garland
... man had evolved for this purpose, and had used on previous similar occasions, was a simple triangular snow-plough several feet in width, with guiding handles behind. Comparatively narrow as was the ribbon path cleared by this appliance, its length was only limited by the endurance of the horses and the driver, and in the course of the day many an acre could be uncovered. Half an hour after ...
— Ben Blair - The Story of a Plainsman • Will Lillibridge
... "And always, at all times life here is quiet, unhasting," he thought; "whoever comes within its circle must submit; here there is nothing to agitate, nothing to harass; one can only get on here by making one's way slowly, as the ploughman cuts the furrow with his plough. And what vigour, what health abound in this inactive place! Here under the window the sturdy burdock creeps out of the thick grass; above it the lovage trails its juicy stalks and the Virgin's tears fling still higher their pink tendrils; and yonder further in the fields is the ...
— A House of Gentlefolk • Ivan Turgenev
... the classic story of Pyramus and Thisbe, reference is made to the beautiful emerald green which the leaves of the leek exhibit. "His eyes were as green as leeks." Among the Welsh farmers, it is a neighbourly custom to attend on a certain day and plough the land of a poor proprietor whose means are limited—each bringing with him one or more leeks for making the ...
— Herbal Simples Approved for Modern Uses of Cure • William Thomas Fernie
... knew nothing of it; you did not take it. But since no one accused you or even suspected you, why could you not have been less aggressive and more sympathetic in your assertions? But we will plough no longer in that field. The ploughshare has struck against a rock and grits, denting its edge in vain. My veil is gone,—my ample, historic, heroic veil. There is a woman in Fontdale who breathes air filtered through—I will not say stolen tissue, but certainly through ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 11, Issue 67, May, 1863 • Various
... Robin Oig, one of the sons of the notorious Rob Roy. He was sought upon all sides on a charge of carrying a young woman from Balfron and marrying her (as was alleged) by force; yet he stepped about Balquhidder like a gentleman in his own walled policy. It was he who had shot James Maclaren at the plough stilts, a quarrel never satisfied; yet he walked into the house of his blood enemies as a rider* might into a public inn.* ...
— Kidnapped • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the meed of one melodious tear? Thy Burns, and nature's own beloved Bard, Who to 'the illustrious of his native land,'[35] So properly did look for patronage. Ghost of Maecenas! hide thy blushing face! They took him from the sickle and the plough— To guage ale firkins! O, for shame return! On a bleak rock, midway the Aonian Mount, There stands a lone and melancholy tree, Whose aged branches to the midnight blast Make solemn music, pluck its darkest bough, Ere yet th' unwholesome night dew be exhaled, ...
— Reminiscences of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey • Joseph Cottle
... when a's said a's done, that feeds us and sustains us; clothes us and keeps us. It's the countryman, wi' his plough, to whom the city liver owes his food. We in Britain had a sair lesson in the war. Were the Germans no near bein' able to starve us oot and win the war wi' their submarines, And shouldna Britain ha' been able, as she was once, to feed hersel' ...
— Between You and Me • Sir Harry Lauder
... zactly right when he die. Dey say he bury some o' he money down dere on he place jes 'fore he die. Coase I dunno nuthin 'bout it, but dats wha' dey tell me. Dey say dey never is find dat money a'ter he been dead. Reckon it dere yet, I dunno. Peoples use'er aw de time be plough up kegs en box full o' money en va'uables wha' de well-to-do ...
— Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves • Works Projects Administration
... nor fence, nor moat, nor mound; Nor drum was heard, nor trumpet's angry sound; Nor swords were forged; but, void of care and crime, The soft creation slept away their time. The teeming earth, yet guiltless of the plough, And unprovoked, did fruitful stores allow; The flowers, unsown, in fields and meadows reigned, And western winds ...
— Mosaics of Grecian History • Marcius Willson and Robert Pierpont Willson
... and thou wilt not be able to compel him." "It will be easy for me to compass this." "Though thou get this, there is yet that which thou wilt not get; the two dun oxen of Gwlwlyd, {87} both yoked together, to plough the wild land yonder stoutly. He will not give them of his own free will, and thou wilt not be able to compel him." "It will be easy for me to compass this." "Though thou get this, there is yet that which ...
— The Mabinogion Vol. 2 (of 3) • Owen M. Edwards
... 840; parterre, shrubbery, plantation, avenue, arboretum, pinery^, pinetum^, orchard; vineyard, vinery; orangery^; farm &c (abode) 189. V. cultivate; till the soil; farm, garden; sow, plant; reap, mow, cut; manure, dress the ground, dig, delve, dibble, hoe, plough, plow, harrow, rake, weed, lop and top; backset [U.S.]. Adj. agricultural, agrarian, agrestic^. arable, predial^, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... of angels blown By the sun's breath before him, and a low Sweet gale shook all the foam-flowers of thin snow As into rainfall of sea-roses, shed Leaf by wild leaf in the green garden bed That tempests still and sea-winds turn and plough; For rosy and fiery round the running prow Fluttered the flakes and feathers of the spray And bloomed like blossoms cast by God away To waste on the ardent water; the wan moon Withered to westward as ...
— Side Lights • James Runciman
... had just left, possessing a manliness of address and demeanour unknown to the serfs of Bulgaria; and, instead of the woolly caps and frieze clothes of the latter, the peasants wore the red fez, and were generally dressed in blue cloth. The plough cultivation of Bulgaria was now exchanged for the innumerable herds of swine, which form the staple commodity of Servia, fed in the immense oak woods which cover the country. "They form" (as Mr Paget informs us in his ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 364, February 1846 • Various
... where to shear, for she had played In childhood under them, and 'twas her pride To keep them in their beauty. Plague I say On their new-fangled whimsies! we shall have A modern shrubbery here stuck full of firs And your pert poplar trees;—I could as soon Have plough'd my father's grave ...
— Poems, 1799 • Robert Southey
... nor was anything known of the processes by which Herschel had achieved his astonishing results. Moreover, Lord Oxmantown had no skilled workmen to assist him. His implements, both animate and inanimate, had to be formed by himself. Peasants taken from the plough were educated by him into efficient mechanics and engineers. The delicate and complex machinery needed in operations of such hairbreadth nicety as his enterprise involved, the steam-engine which was to set it in motion, at times the very crucibles in which his ...
— A Popular History of Astronomy During the Nineteenth Century - Fourth Edition • Agnes M. (Agnes Mary) Clerke
... many evil spirits above the green foliage. The garden implements used were of the most primitive description; a crooked stick served for hoe, and long, heavy, sharpened iron-wood clubs were used instead of the steel plough ...
— Through Five Republics on Horseback • G. Whitfield Ray
... new thing for those who would build railways to write in high-flown style about the regions they would penetrate, and, indeed, to speak of "millions of acres waiting for the plough" is not necessarily a misrepresentation; they are waiting. Nor is it altogether unnatural that professional agricultural experimenters at the stations established by the government should make the most of their experiments. When Dean Stanley spoke disdainfully of dogma, Lord Beaconsfield ...
— Ten Thousand Miles with a Dog Sled - A Narrative of Winter Travel in Interior Alaska • Hudson Stuck
... was the founder of the city of Rome," Rafael told her. "He was a son of Mars, the god of war, and he founded the city 753 years before the birth of Christ. There are some parts of his wall still standing. He lifted his plough over the places where the ...
— Rafael in Italy - A Geographical Reader • Etta Blaisdell McDonald
... which are perhaps greater than the rest. Just as on a clear night, when we look up into the starlit sky, it would bewilder us to try and remember all the stars, so we learn first to know those that are most easily recognised—the Plough, or the Great Bear, as they shine with a clear steady light against the background of a thousand ...
— Knights of Art - Stories of the Italian Painters • Amy Steedman
... above which it is considered by the bearers inexpedient to travel, we nestled ourselves into our respective palankeens, and proceeded on the journey through what seemed to us a very respectable forest, growing on lands which had once been under the plough, but apparently very long ago. To our inexperienced eyes and European associations, it seemed as if a century at least must have elapsed from the time such a matting of wood first supplanted the ...
— The Lieutenant and Commander - Being Autobigraphical Sketches of His Own Career, from - Fragments of Voyages and Travels • Basil Hall
... rustic mode of life, and boldly launched himself upon the turbid sea of Roman politics, although the days of Curius, Fabricius and Atilius were long past, and Rome was not accustomed to find her magistrates and party leaders in labouring men fresh from the plough or the workshop, but in men of noble birth and great wealth, who canvassed extensively, and bribed heavily; while the populace, insolent with the consciousness of power, were growing ripe for a revolt against ...
— Plutarch's Lives, Volume II • Aubrey Stewart & George Long
... he will appoint them unto him for captains of thousands, and captains of fifties; and he will set some to plough his ground, and to reap his harvest, and to make his instruments of war, and the ...
— The People of the Abyss • Jack London
... attributed it to the fact of his being a foreigner. The more cultivated folk realized that a man of the world who bore every mark of good birth and breeding was indeed out of place in the gray jeans of the North Carolina farmer, guiding the plough with his ...
— A Tar-Heel Baron • Mabell Shippie Clarke Pelton
... high, the ocean not so vast, the cities not so immense, no good so good as anticipated. My heart hungered for the impossible before it had attained the possible; for the fruitage of things before the plough and the hardened hand; in fine, before reckoning with those forces which determine the happiness and miseries of life. But there is compensation for every disappointment and mistaken dream of childhood ...
— Confessions of Boyhood • John Albee
... pleases," said Paddy, without turning his eyes from his conquest, "'tis a little help I would be wishing here. She would be as strong in the shoulder as a good plough-horse and I am not for staying ...
— The O'Ruddy - A Romance • Stephen Crane
... their business, that he would be handy to have around the place. But they couldn't see it. We argued with about fifty horny-handed plow-pushers, showin' 'em how Rajah could pull more'n a string of oxen a block long, and could be let out for stump-digging in summer, or as a snow-plough in winter. We tried liverymen, storekeepers, summer cottagers; but the nearest we came to making a sale was to a brewer who'd just built a new house with red and yellow fancy woodwork all over the front of it. He thought ...
— Shorty McCabe • Sewell Ford
... Valadeva, stalwart chief who bore the plough, Rose and spake, the blood of Vrishnis mantled ...
— Maha-bharata - The Epic of Ancient India Condensed into English Verse • Anonymous
... looked on him as a ninny, and they persuaded him to prove to them that his whip was a real whip by letting Tom Bryan do the whipping for him. Tom Bryan was a rough fellow, who ought to have been driving a plough; a ploughman's life was too peaceful an occupation for him—a drover's life would have suited him best, prodding his cattle along the road with a goad; it was said that was how he maintained his ...
— The Lake • George Moore
... animal life of all descriptions, man and mosquitoes alone excepted, is a standing wonder to the traveller; the sportsman must toil many a weary mile to get a shot at boar, or deer, or pheasant; and the plough of the farmer and the trap of the poacher, who works in and out of season, threaten to exterminate all wild creatures; unless, indeed, the Government should, as they threatened in the spring of 1869, put in force some adaptation of European game-laws. But they are ...
— Tales of Old Japan • Algernon Bertram Freeman-Mitford
... hover in the air, and still more seldom I heard the kindly greeting of a passing inhabitant. Heaps of lava, swamps, and turf-bogs surrounded me on all sides; in all the vast expanse not a spot was to be seen through which a plough ...
— Visit to Iceland - and the Scandinavian North • Ida Pfeiffer
... away with another man, he had tried to wipe out every sign of his life with her. It was in the early spring of the year when it happened, and the first thing he did, after he came back from the field and found her letter, was to drive the oxen into the home-plot and plough up the garden she had loved. The next day he had harrowed it and sown it down to grass, and then had taken to his bed, where the neighbors found him, and, one and another, nursed him through his fever. When he got up again, he was not entirely the same, ...
— Country Neighbors • Alice Brown
... and interesting address, which showed me in the most favorable view the relation between the noble and the lower class in England, a relation which must depend much on the personal character of the lord of the manor. . . . First came prizes to ploughmen, then the plough boys, then the shepherds, then to such peasants as had reared many children without aid, then to women who had been many years in the same farmer's service, etc., etc. A clock was awarded to a poor man and his wife who had reared six children and buried seven ...
— Letters from England 1846-1849 • Elizabeth Davis Bancroft (Mrs. George Bancroft)
... these innocent advances of thine; let us scotch these ever-rolling wheels! Others attacked the system of agriculture, the use of animal manures in farming; and the tyranny of man over brute nature; these abuses polluted his food. The ox must be taken from the plough, and the horse from the cart, the hundred acres of the farm must be spaded, and the man must walk wherever boats and locomotives will not carry him. Even the insect world was to be defended,—that ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... fools! Ain't the alleys muddy enough to be like the gumbo you'll have to plough through?" he teased. But I wouldn't allow him to take a fraudulent picture. He had to come with me, through the mud, grumbling, to ...
— Tramping on Life - An Autobiographical Narrative • Harry Kemp
... enormous crop could not have come from the hands of sullen and discontented labor. It comes from peaceful fields, in which laughter and gossip rise above the hum of industry, and contentment runs with the singing plough. It is claimed that this ignorant labor is defrauded of its just hire, I present the tax books of Georgia, which show that the negro twenty-five years ago a slave, has in Georgia alone $10,000,000 of assessed property, worth twice ...
— The Art of Public Speaking • Dale Carnagey (AKA Dale Carnegie) and J. Berg Esenwein |
