"Pruning" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Kink lift something from the chaise and lay it on the grass. Then they saw him hacking at the harness with his pruning-knife until the pony was free, when the man led it to another gate-post and tied it there. Then Kink hacked again, and drew the carriage away from the pony that was lying on the ground; and then he and the man lifted the bundle once more and came with it very carefully ...
— The Slowcoach • E. V. Lucas
... of varieties. Acknowledgments are due to F. Z. Hartzell for reading the chapter on Grape Pests and their Control and for furnishing most of the photographs used in making illustrations of insects and fungi; to F. E. Gladwin for similar help in preparing the two chapters on pruning and training the grape in eastern America; to Frederic T. Bioletti for permission to republish from a bulletin written by him from the Agricultural Experiment Station of California almost the whole chapter on Grape Pruning on the Pacific Slope; and to O. M. Taylor ...
— Manual of American Grape-Growing • U. P. Hedrick
... sure that some men, even among those who have chosen the task of pruning their fellow-creatures, grow more and more thoughtful and truly compassionate in the midst of their cruel experience. They become less nervous, but more sympathetic. They have a truer sensibility for others' pain, the more they ...
— The Professor at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes (Sr.)
... best is the passion-fruit. Neither vegetables nor fruit, as sold in the markets and shops, are as good as those you buy in England. The inferior quality is due to the grow-as-you-please manner in which the fruit is cultivated, pruning and even the most ordinary care being neglected; but you can get as fine-flavoured fruit here as anywhere, and to taste grapes in perfection you must certainly ...
— Town Life in Australia - 1883 • R. E. N. (Richard) Twopeny
... as he paused for them to get out of his way, a figure crawled from a bed of honeyed musk brilliant with balls of golden blossoms. Ben-Hur was startled. Had he, indeed, been permitted to see a satyr at home? The creature looked up at him, and showed in its teeth a hooked pruning-knife; he smiled at his own scare, and, lo! the charm was evolved! Peace without fear—peace ...
— Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ • Lew Wallace
... the great German war lord had escaped—it was learned, afterward, by hiding in the huge safe where were stored the secret archives of his empire. And when he emerged he was a very penitent war lord, and like the Mikado of Japan he was set to work beating his sword-blades into ploughshares and pruning-hooks. ...
— Revolution and Other Essays • Jack London
... there is none that produces fruit so full of spirit, from which spirit can be so abundantly distilled, as the vine. And of all fruitbearing plants there is none that is so ready to run into wild wood, and for which pruning and cleansing are so indispensable. The one great work that a vinedresser has to do for the branch every year is to prune it. Other plants can for a time dispense with it, and yet bear fruit: the vine must have it. And so the one thing the branch that desires to abide in Christ ...
— The Ministry of Intercession - A Plea for More Prayer • Andrew Murray
... learned. To spend too much time in studies, is sloth; to use them too much for ornament, is affectation; to make judgment wholly by their rules, is the humor of a scholar: they perfect nature, and are perfected by experience; for natural abilities are like natural plants, that need pruning by study; and studies themselves do give forth directions too much at large except they be bounded in ...
— Elementary Guide to Literary Criticism • F. V. N. Painter
... the cutting out of dead wood and the shortening and shaping of last year's growth. With hardy roses the flowers come from fresh twigs on old growth. I never prune in the autumn, because winter always kills a bit of the top and cutting opens the tubular stem to the weather and induces decay. Pruning is a science in itself, to be learned by experience. This is the formula that I once wrote on a slate and kept in my attic desk with my first Boke of ...
— The Garden, You, and I • Mabel Osgood Wright
... we come to the mistress of "Gladswood." While she is carefully pruning some choice specimens of ferns growing on the shady side of the doorway, we take advantage of the situation, and hence the result: Mrs. Montgomery is a matronly-looking woman, of about forty-five years of age, perhaps less; for the abundant ...
— Marguerite Verne • Agatha Armour
... his prime, Ere the pruning-knife of Time Cut him down, Not a better man was found By the Crier on his round ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 20, July, 1891 • Various
... command, we have a worthy incentive in the doctrine of Restoration. If we can only realize that by faithful missionary effort the heathen will require a pruning and development when they pass out of this life, will not that be an effective and worthy incentive to the best efforts of which we ...
— Love's Final Victory • Horatio
... spade, Sickle, and pruning-hook he made, Eschewing martial labours. Thus bees will rather honey bring, Than hurtfully employ their sting In warfare ...
— The True Legend of St. Dunstan and the Devil • Edward G. Flight
... that before marriage could be talked of I must at least have gained my diplomas, so that the more work I did during the week the better. The result of this was a goodly sowing of resolutions and very little harvest. In the evenings, Tom and I would sit together—he tirelessly polishing and pruning the tragedy, and I for the most part smoking and giving advice which I am bound to say in duty to the author ("Francesca" having gained some considerable fame since ...
— Dead Man's Rock • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... little pruning in the proper season, these unshapely bushes might become things of beauty, and not only look better, but will do better, if given a severe trimming in the spring. Hedges of Privet, Purple Barberry, and Japan Quince, ...
— Your Plants - Plain and Practical Directions for the Treatment of Tender - and Hardy Plants in the House and in the Garden • James Sheehan
... temporal blessings. It refers to God: (1) As a nourisher, strength-giver, satisfier and a strong one who gives; (2) As the giver of fruitfulness which comes through nourishment. He was to make Abraham fruitful, Gen. 17:1-8; (3) As Giver of chastening. This he does in the way of pruning that there ...
— The Bible Book by Book - A Manual for the Outline Study of the Bible by Books • Josiah Blake Tidwell
... scissors; the two short blades are quite deeply curved, something like the blade of a pruning-knife, making the cutting-power greater. This enables the person using them to cut through quite large bones in tough joints which would otherwise be quite difficult ...
— Carving and Serving • Mrs. D. A. Lincoln
... of the interruption to get to his room and change clothes, then went up to the hangar and got out an air-cavalry mount. About fifty men were working on High Garden Terrace, pruning and trimming and leveling the lawns. There was a big vitrifier on the Mall—even at five hundred feet he could feel the heat from it—chuffing and clanking and pouring lavalike molten rock for a new pavement. ...
— The Cosmic Computer • Henry Beam Piper
... Nibelungen investigation fell here into over-positive refinements of literary criticism. Separate shorter poems there doubtless existed narrating separate episodes of the story, but these are no longer to be arrived at by a process of critical disintegration and pruning of the epic as we have it. An examination of the twenty lieder according to Lachmann's division convinces us that they are not separate units in the sense he conceived them to be. Though these twenty ...
— The Nibelungenlied - Translated into Rhymed English Verse in the Metre of the Original • trans. by George Henry Needler
... wall. To many, therefore, of the Bee and Wasp tribe, whether honey-gatherers or hunters, one of these dry stalks is a valuable discovery when its diameter matches the size of its would-be inhabitants; and it is also an interesting subject of study to the entomologist who, in the winter, pruning-shears in hand, can gather in the hedgerows a faggot rich in small industrial wonders. Visiting the bramble-bushes has long been one of my favourite pastimes during the enforced leisure of the wintertime; and it is seldom but some new discovery, some unexpected fact, makes up to me for ...
— Bramble-bees and Others • J. Henri Fabre
... was standing looking at me as I was pruning a rose-bush, she made a remark which startled me. I perfectly remember her words. 'It seems to me,' she said, 'that one who is so constantly engaged in observing and encouraging the growth and development of plants should himself grow ...
— The Vizier of the Two-Horned Alexander • Frank R. Stockton
... accepted the kind invitation, And much bustle it caused in the plumed creation; Such ruffling of feathers, such pruning of coats, Such chirping, such whistling, such clearing of throats, Such polishing bills, and such oiling of pinions, Had never been known in the biped dominions. ...
— The Daisy Chain, or Aspirations • Charlotte Yonge
... of character is systematic; and old customs and national habits in a nation virtually spirituelle must not be trifled with. The tree torn up by the roots dies for want of nourishment; but, on the contrary, when lopped carefully only of its branches the pruning makes it more valuable to the cultivator and more pleasing to the beholder. So it is with national prejudices, which are often but the excrescences of national virtues. Root them out and you root out virtue and all. They ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... theory is a speculation invented by cowards to excuse knaves. My belief is, that so far as this old English stock is concerned it has in it as much sap and vitality and power as it had two centuries ago; and that, with due pruning of rotten branches, and due hoeing up of weeds, which will grow about the roots, the like products will be yielded again. The "weeds" to which I refer are mainly three: the first of them is dishonesty, the second is sentimentality, and the third is ...
— William Harvey And The Discovery Of The Circulation Of The Blood • Thomas H. Huxley
... dog; bind up the jessamines in yonder arbour, and handle your pruning-knife with dexterity: tightly I say, go tightly to your business; you have cost me much, and must earn it in your work. Here's plentiful provision for you, rascal; salading in the garden, and water in the tank, and on ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Vol. 7 (of 18) - The Duke of Guise; Albion and Albanius; Don Sebastian • John Dryden
... He even parcelled out his hours among the necessary cares of the world, the pleasures of domestic bliss, and the enjoyments of a country life; and spent the night in ideal parties with his charming bride, sometimes walking by the sedgy bank of some transparent stream, sometimes pruning the luxuriant vine, and sometimes sitting in social converse with her in a shady grove of his ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett
... dealing with your little "olive plants," "let patience have her perfect work," and of a truth you shall "be perfect and entire wanting nothing." Much of redeeming grace is needed to enable the parent to be calm and kind under the many trying circumstances connected with the pruning and training of the "fruit of the womb." It is a source of great joy, however, to know that God's grace ...
— The Gospel Day • Charles Ebert Orr
... her—to coax her—in vain; her cheek was on fire, and her eyes like basilisks'. It was a picture to see the pretty little fury stand so erect and threatening, great David so humble and deprecating, yet so dogged. At last he took out his knife; it was not one of your stabbing-knives, but the sort of pruning-knife that no sailor went without in those days. "Now," said he, sadly, "take and cut my head off—cut me to pieces, if you will—I won't wince or complain; and then you will get your way; but while I do live I shall love her, and I can't afford to lose ...
— Love Me Little, Love Me Long • Charles Reade
... the shell and husk, which, in the last and germinating stage of the nut, are so hard that a knife will scarcely make any impression, spontaneously burst by some force within; and, henceforth, the hardy young plant thrives apace; and needing no culture, pruning, or attention of any sort, rapidly advances to maturity. In four or five years it bears; in twice as many more, it begins to lift its head among the groves, where, waxing strong, it flourishes ...
— Omoo: Adventures in the South Seas • Herman Melville
... decree justice. By thee, rid of their native rudeness, their minds and tongues being polished, the thorns of vice being torn up by the roots, those men attain high places of honour, and become fathers of their country, and companions of princes, who without thee would have melted their spears into pruning-hooks and ploughshares, or would perhaps be feeding ...
— The Philobiblon of Richard de Bury • Richard de Bury
... defencelessness, have an irresistible claim on every better feeling. I know nobody who inspires so deep and tender a pity; he improves all around him. He is useful, too, to the extent of his little power; will do anything, but loves gardening best, and still piques himself on his old arts of pruning fruit-trees, and raising cucumbers. He is the happiest of men just now, for he has the management of a melon bed—a melon bed!—fie! What a grand pompous name was that for three melon plants under a hand-light! ...
— Our Village • Mary Russell Mitford
... "The Christian is enabled," you say, "to hope for existence with God in an eternal state, and this is as much as our present welfare requires." Most excellent! To this proposition I cherfully assent. Yea, I would consent even to pruning it a little, which no doubt would spoil it in your view. Instead of 'this is as much as,' read, 'even this is more than,' and your proposition would stand exactly right. ...
— A Series of Letters In Defence of Divine Revelation • Hosea Ballou
... covered by a grape-vine that yielded, I remember, small green grapes for pies in the spring, and imperfectly ripe black grapes in favourable autumns for the purposes of dessert. The grape-vine played an important part in my life, for my father broke his neck while he was pruning it, when ...
— The New Machiavelli • Herbert George Wells
... which had taken the place of the old fernery, he could see Irene snipping and pruning, with a little basket on her arm. She was never idle, it seemed to him, and he envied her now that he himself was idle nearly all his time. He went down to her. She held up a stained glove and smiled. A piece of lace tied under her chin concealed ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... brought him several times to Arrowhead; and then of Squat, our youngest cowboy, from whose fair brow the intrepid veterinary, on his last previous visit, had removed a sizable and embarrassing wen with what looked to me like a pair of pruning shears. ...
— Somewhere in Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson
... of a retired student, devoting himself to the ancient authors, to poetry, botany, architecture, and heraldry. He was fastidious as to his own productions, which were very few, and which he kept by him, pruning, altering, and polishing, for a long time before he would let them see the light. His lines entitled A Distant Prospect of Eton College appeared in 1742, and ...
— English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History - Designed as a Manual of Instruction • Henry Coppee
... verandah, and Farmer Hosking pocketed the pruning-knife which he had been using on ...
— Old Fires and Profitable Ghosts • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... five lawyers, and to them he gave the task of reforming legal procedure and of pruning down the existing laws, both State and National, cutting out the obsolete and useless ones and rewriting those recommended to be retained, in plain and direct language free from useless legal verbiage and understandable to the ordinary ...
— Philip Dru: Administrator • Edward Mandell House
... in social position. May the divergent rays be blended in a bow of beauty, of peace and promise to the ark of truth! No personal bitterness shall find place among us, no immoral lessons sully our record. There may be often want of pruning, but even the undue luxuriance shall tell of the rich soil of genius, ever germing and ...
— The Continental Monthly, Volume V. Issue I • Various
... benighted corps, taken as the subject of pruning and cultivating effort, would have occupied, I believed, the faithful labors of a lifetime. Considered as a gloriously rampant mass, the aspect of ...
— Cape Cod Folks • Sarah P. McLean Greene
... for pruning Hybrid Perpetual Roses is in January or early February. Select the strong, well-matured, young shoots at sufficient distance apart to allow a free circulation of air and cut back to one and one-half to two feet, leaving from four to ...
— The Mayflower, January, 1905 • Various
... will, he hopes, be tasted by his children and grandchildren. Accordingly, in a French colony there is a tropical beauty in the cultivated trees and flowers which is seldom seen in our possessions. The fruits are brought to perfection, as there is the same care taken in pruning and grafting the finest kinds as in ...
— Eight Years' Wandering in Ceylon • Samuel White Baker
... established in the top of the mountains (even as here Ezekiel did see this temple upon a very high mountain, chap. lx. 2), and shall be exalted above the hills; and all nations shall flow unto it," &c.; ver. 4, "And they shall beat their swords into plow-shares, and their spears into pruning-hooks: nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more." Here is the building of such a temple as shall bring peaceable and quiet times to the church, of which that evangelical prophet speaketh in other places ...
— The Works of Mr. George Gillespie (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Gillespie
... finishing my second cup of coffee when I heard the jingle of bells, and, looking up, saw Jim Wheaton and the Deacon's sleek horse at my door. So, bidding Harry, who was to go too, "be quick," an exhortation that needed no repeating, we were very soon in the pung, armed I with a hatchet, Harry with a pruning knife. ...
— Laicus - The experiences of a Layman in a Country Parish • Lyman Abbott
... from any fundamental change in the institutions of a country are apt to be much more serious than the evils which the change is intended to remove. Political government is like a plant; a little watering and pruning do very well for it, but the less its roots are fooled with, the better. In the American system of government the independence of the executive department, with reference to the legislative, is fundamental; and on ...
— Civil Government in the United States Considered with - Some Reference to Its Origins • John Fiske
... to know something of pruning trees. To cut or prune gooseberry and currant-trees is very simple. Gooseberry-trees should be cut differently from currant-trees. In gooseberry-trees, much of the fruit grows on wood of the last year's growth, but on currant-trees, the fruit is, for the most part, found ...
— The Book of Sports: - Containing Out-door Sports, Amusements and Recreations, - Including Gymnastics, Gardening & Carpentering • William Martin
... gentlemen, and let me go back to my old freedom; let me go look for my past life, and raise myself up from this present death. I was not born to be a governor or protect islands or cities from the enemies that choose to attack them. Ploughing and digging, vinedressing and pruning, are more in my way than defending provinces or kingdoms. 'Saint Peter is very well at Rome; I mean each of us is best following the trade he was born to. A reaping-hook fits my hand better than a governor's sceptre; ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... pestiferous variety of caterpillar has infested the tops of my cherry-trees this summer, and during the general's encampment near Mrs. Cobb I happened several times to be mounted on my step-ladder, busy with my pruning-shears, when he was decoying her around her garden—just over the fence—buckled in to suffocation, and with his long epaulettes golden in the sun like tassels of the corn. I was engaged in exterminating ...
— Aftermath • James Lane Allen
... garden and walked along the tiny path, bordered by oyster shells, to the red currant bushes beyond, he laid his pruning-knife on the ground, and sat down on an old bench beside a little green table, on which a sparrow was hopping about. On his seventy-fifth birthday he had resigned his profession to take to gardening, and I had heard from no less an authority than the General that "that ...
— The Romance of a Plain Man • Ellen Glasgow
... something like what we call pleasure in ourselves? Does the water-lily, rocking in her triple bath of water, air, and light, relish in no wise her own beauty? When the plant in our room turns to the light, closes her blossoms in the dark, responds to our watering or pruning by increase of size or change of shape and bloom, who has the right to say she does not feel, or that she plays a purely passive part? Truly plants can foresee nothing, neither the scythe of the mower, nor the hand extended to pluck their flowers. They can neither ...
— A Pluralistic Universe - Hibbert Lectures at Manchester College on the - Present Situation in Philosophy • William James
... said, 'let us pray for the blessed time when the nations shall beat their swords into ploughshares and their spears into pruning-hooks, and learn war ...
— Penshurst Castle - In the Days of Sir Philip Sidney • Emma Marshall
... people were pruning their wings for a long flight to the warm Southland, and the four-footed folk were gathering nuts ...
— Little Jack Rabbit and the Squirrel Brothers • David Cory
... her face wrinkling all up with fun; "but I have enough for that. I have learned so much. And pruning is very pretty work. This is not just the time ...
— The End of a Coil • Susan Warner
... nor will it be by patience of others' suffering, but by the offering of your own, that you ever will draw nearer to the time when the great change shall pass upon the iron of the earth;—when men shall beat their swords into ploughshares, and their spears into pruning-hooks; neither shall they ...
— The Two Paths • John Ruskin
... in elaborate methods—trellising, pruning, or training—with dry-gardened tomato vines. Their root systems must be allowed to control all the space they can without competition, so allow the vines to sprawl as well. And pruning the leaf area of indeterminates ...
— Gardening Without Irrigation: or without much, anyway • Steve Solomon
... fasten on this sleeue of thine: Thou art an Elme my husband, I a Vine: Whose weaknesse married to thy stranger state, Makes me with thy strength to communicate: If ought possesse thee from me, it is drosse, Vsurping Iuie, Brier, or idle Mosse, Who all for want of pruning, with intrusion, Infect thy sap, ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... tints. Thus, my friends, you perceive that I am neither for building a wall, nor for contriving windows so as to exclude light, air, and earth. As much as any of you, I am for every man's sitting under his own vine, and for his training, pruning, and eating its fruit how he pleases. Let the artist paint, write, or carve, what and how he wills, teach the world through sense or through thought,—I will not dissent; I have no patent to entitle me to do so; nay, I will be thoroughly satisfied with whatsoever ...
— The Germ - Thoughts towards Nature in Poetry, Literature and Art • Various
... you could not get within several feet of it. Its stalks were enormous in size, and cast out long, prickly arms in all directions; but the bushes were pretty much all dead. I have walked into them a good deal with a pruning-knife; but it is very much like fighting original sin. The variety is one that I can recommend. I think it is called Brinckley's Orange. It is exceedingly prolific, and has enormous stalks. The ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... are never better than after harvest, when they are heavy-laden with their pale green hedgehog-like fruit and alive with people swarming among their branches, pruning them while the leaves are still good winter food for cattle. Why, I wonder, is there such an especial charm about the pruning of trees? Who does not feel it? No matter what the tree is, the poplar of France, or the brookside willow or oak coppice of England, or the ...
— Alps and Sanctuaries of Piedmont and the Canton Ticino • Samuel Butler
... that real power lies more in exact accuracy than in luxuriance of diction. Years after, no less an authority than Spedding, in a letter upon the influence of Bacon on his own style in the matter of exactitude, the pruning of fine epithets and sweeping statements, the reduction of numberless superlatives to positives, asserted that, if as a young man he had fallen in with Huxley's writings before Bacon's, they would have produced ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 1 • Leonard Huxley
... The editor of a horticultural journal at one time set out to get opinions about the best time for pruning peaches. There were opinions from all points as to whether peach trees should be trimmed in winter, spring, summer or autumn, and summing up all of the replies, the editor said, "We have come to the conclusion that the right time to prune peach trees is when your knife ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Sixth Annual Meeting. Rochester, New York, September 1 and 2, 1915 • Various
... get that back on the roof!" Alix looked up to assure him discouragingly. "I told you, when you were pruning it," she added vivaciously, "that you were cutting too deep. No—you knew it all! Now the first wind brings it down all over the place, and you ...
— Sisters • Kathleen Norris
... little chalet; he seemed to hover about it constantly of late. He was aware of the return of his young master,—he had bowed to him as he was descending from the carriage. When Bertha and her cousin approached the venerable domestic, his trepidation was too obvious to escape their notice. He was pruning the luxuriant growth of some of the vines Madeleine had planted, and the hand which held his knife shook and committed unintentional havoc among ...
— Fairy Fingers - A Novel • Anna Cora Mowatt Ritchie
... the Negro, striving to be the best in the community, the white men, striving to reduce to practice the Golden Rule, may it not come to pass that "They shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks," and that the country of Lincoln shall thus become the "land of the free and the home of the brave," where all men of all races shall be treated in all departments of life according ...
— Twentieth Century Negro Literature - Or, A Cyclopedia of Thought on the Vital Topics Relating - to the American Negro • Various
... interesting for you to note—maybe some of you can top it—we were interested when this orchard was planted, in what would happen if the trees were planted and allowed to grow as a forest stand. So they were planted in six-by-six spacing. Of course, we got a lot of self-pruning and a lot of competition, as we would in forests by the trees growing up and competing with each other and reaching for height and light. Some of them died and some were so badly suppressed that they failed to make any growth at all. But there is one tree that we still have in that ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Incorporated 39th Annual Report - at Norris, Tenn. September 13-15 1948 • Various
... the first day of our beginning to take up plants: we had much pleasure in collecting them for the natives offered their assistance and perfectly understood the method of taking them up and pruning them. ...
— A Voyage to the South Sea • William Bligh
... the Characters of Species and Varieties; Modes of Propagating, Planting, Pruning, Training, and Preparing for Exhibition; and the Management of Roses in ...
— Country Walks of a Naturalist with His Children • W. Houghton
... listened, caught up his hat and began to descend his thirteen steps cautiously, noiselessly, like a cat. He had still the most important thing to do—to steal the axe from the kitchen. That the deed must be done with an axe he had decided long ago. He had also a pocket pruning-knife, but he could not rely on the knife and still less on his own strength, and so resolved finally on the axe. We may note in passing, one peculiarity in regard to all the final resolutions taken ...
— Crime and Punishment • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... in Gafsa, in regard to the profits that would be gained were the oasis to be given over to Sicilian cultivators. Apart from the fact that the wealthy Kaid of Gafsa, who is the chief owner of it, would have something to say on the subject, these advantages would be limited to pruning the trees and grafting some of them; introducing, possibly, a few more vegetables, and having the ground more parsimoniously tended than at present. The magnesia in the water is hostile to the majority of delicate European growths. Something, no doubt, could be ...
— Fountains In The Sand - Rambles Among The Oases Of Tunisia • Norman Douglas
... the soil of a district, going carefully over it, picking samples and testing them on return to the school. In fruit-packing season, the students visit the packing houses, or else, in the case of some of the boys, they take a week of employment with a good fruit packer. In season they practice tree pruning, grafting, budding, transplanting and spraying. Whenever possible, the applied work of the school is done in connection with the real applied work ...
— The New Education - A Review of Progressive Educational Movements of the Day (1915) • Scott Nearing
... will come when these warlike tribes shall beat their spears into pruning-hooks, and their assagais into ploughshares, and shall learn war no more! The skill and cunning of their artificers shall be consecrated to the higher and nobler ends of civilization, and the noise of battle shall die amid the ...
— History of the Negro Race in America From 1619 to 1880. Vol 1 - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George W. Williams
... gardens, they may chiefly be described as triumphs of Nature over Art,—our New England horticulture being, on the contrary, the triumph of Art over Nature, after a hard-fought battle. Here, the avenues of palm and cocoa are magnificent, and the flowers new to us, and very brilliant. But pruning and weeding out are hard tasks for Creole natures, with only negroes to help them. There is for the most part a great overgrowth and overrunning of the least desirable elements, a general air of slovenliness and unthrift; in all artificial arrangements decay ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 20, June, 1859 • Various
... and a soft faraway jingle was heard. Then an old man came slowly around the corner of the house. His bare head was quite bald. He wore a short canvas apron and carried pruning-shears in one hand. Without a word of greeting to his mistress or scarce a glance at her half recumbent form, he mounted the steps of the piazza and assisted Phibbs to lift the chair to ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces • Edith Van Dyne
... gave it some hemp-seed and corn and watched it pruning its feathers as it glanced warily at its new home and its new mistress. On the following morning, just as day was breaking, the Patin woman distinctly heard a loud, deep, roaring voice calling: "Are you going ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... reasons for hope and longing that the sermon might bring some spiritual help. Instinctively, I avoided every expression which could in the least complicate my English and thus obscure the message to my foreign friends. And so thankful was I for the pruning of periods that resulted, that I am much disposed, in all future preaching, to put mentally before ...
— To My Younger Brethren - Chapters on Pastoral Life and Work • Handley C. G. Moule
... as he always was in the morning, fondling his roses, clipping, pruning, tying up, and setting out. In the afternoons he was never visible. Margaret had heard his voice occasionally in Mrs. Cheriton's rooms, but had never seen him there; he had evidently other work, or other haunts of his own, which kept him out ...
— Three Margarets • Laura E. Richards
... uprising of the North,"—Joel iii., v. 9: "Proclaim ye this among the Gentiles: Prepare war, wake up the mighty men, let all men of war draw near; let them come up. Beat your ploughshares into swords, and your pruning-hooks into spears; let the weak say, I am strong." I was not in the country myself at that time, and my attention was first drawn to this in 1865 by a clergyman, who told me of his startled astonishment upon opening the Book. In the then ...
— From Sail to Steam, Recollections of Naval Life • Captain A. T. Mahan
... incomparable fertility of invention, but his fertility is always checked by that just sense, which made him reject every superfluous thing which his vast imagination could offer, and to retain only what was necessary and useful. Judgment guided the hand of this admirable gardener, and was the pruning hook he employed to lop ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753),Vol. V. • Theophilus Cibber
... in time of drought and avoidance of any condition that might weaken the tree. All dead twigs and all twigs showing fruiting bodies of the fungus should be pruned off some distance below the apparent infection as soon as discovered and the pruning wounds painted. Dr. Graves thinks it possible that butternuts grafted on black walnut stocks may have their vigor increased sufficiently to help in warding off the disease. Mr. Weschcke says that, although the Melanconis disease is prevalent in his locality, there has never been ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Thirty-Fourth Annual Report 1943 • Various
... spacious times of great Elizabeth. Instead of Spenser's amazing luxuriance of matter and metre, we have a neat uniformity and trim array of couplets, which suggest the constant supervision of the pruning craftsman. Compared with the Elizabethans, Pope's time has less wealth but more careful mintage, less power but more husbanding of strength, fewer flights of imagination but finer flutterings of fancy, little humour but abundance of clear ...
— Literary Tours in The Highlands and Islands of Scotland • Daniel Turner Holmes
... the first to send out a whaler from Havre, and had secured almost a monopoly of the oil-trade. Some years afterwards I made a passage with his brother, and learned from him the history of this Yankee enterprise, which had filled two capacious purses, and substituted the harpoon for the pruning-knife, the whale-ship for the olive-orchard, in the very stronghold of the emblem of peace; and now the collier with his pickaxe has driven them both from the field. But the Petit Hotel Montmorenci did ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 50, December, 1861 • Various
... his prime, Ere the pruning-knife of time Cut him down, Not a better man was found By the Crier on his ...
— Initial Studies in American Letters • Henry A. Beers
... had blamed Tsz-ch'an for doing with the law: he popularized it. He also attempted with persistent study to master the Changes, to which incomprehensible work he added features of his own—very little more understandable than the original texts. As to the Odes, 3000 in number, he used the pruning knife much more vigorously, and nine-tenths of them were rejected as unsuitable for the purposes of good didactic lessons or conservative precedents. If we substitute, as we are entitled to do, the vague word ...
— Ancient China Simplified • Edward Harper Parker
... circle, approaching the house again at an angle which would give him a view of Miss Lou's window, and watching till it darkened. From the garden he had carried a small, light ladder which he had used when pruning fruit-trees. He stole near the extension warily, the shrubbery growing in that vicinity favoring his effort, and the heavy pall of clouds obscuring almost entirely the mild radiance ...
— Miss Lou • E. P. Roe
... prepared to plant them; that substantial prizes should be awarded to encourage the rapid growth thereof, and that annual prizes should be awarded to the man who would undertake their cultivation and pruning, not from the fruit-yielding point of view, but for facilitating the movement of troops beneath ...
— Aeroplanes and Dirigibles of War • Frederick A. Talbot
... in the spring, "the grace of the green vine makes all the land lovely, and the shoots begin to wind and wave in the blue air," the husbandman comes in with pruning-hook and shears, and strips it bare of all its innocent pride. Nor is this all. Even in the vintage it is not allowed to glory in the results of the year, "the branches are torn down and trodden in the wine-press, while the vine ...
— Love to the Uttermost - Expositions of John XIII.-XXI. • F. B. Meyer
... happy picture, I behold the native Indian exulting in the works of peace and civilization; his bloody hatchet he buries deep under ground, and his murderous knife he turns into a pruning fork, to lop the tender vine and teach the luxuriant shoot to grow. No more does he form to himself a heaven after death (according to the poet), in company with his faithful dog, behind the cloud-topped hill, to enjoy ...
— Christopher Columbus and His Monument Columbia • Various
... at the clearsighted intelligence, the sureness, the mastery with which Rashi conveys the gist of a discussion as well as the value of the details, easily taking up each link in the chain of question and answer, pruning away superfluities, but not recoiling before necessary supplementary developments. In addition, rather than resort to forced explanations, he did not hesitate to avow that certain passages puzzled him, or that his knowledge ...
— Rashi • Maurice Liber
... his vices which seem to have "cropped out" by his ancestral connection in the female line with the reprobate Charles II., whom he was thought to resemble in features. Fox, afterwards, with a green apron tied round his waist, pruning and nailing up his fruit trees at St Ann's Hill, or amusing himself innocently with a few friends, is a pleasing object to remember, even whilst his early career occurs forcibly to ...
— The Gaming Table: Its Votaries and Victims - Volume I (of II) • Andrew Steinmetz
... is in the sitting-room of his country cottage, staring through the open windows at his pretty garden. He is a very old man, and is sometimes bewildered nowadays. He calls to Dering, the gardener, who is on a ladder, pruning. Dering, who comes to him, is a rough, capable young fellow with fingers that are already becoming stumpy because he so often uses his hands instead of a spade. This is a sign that Dering will never get on in the world. His mind is in the same condition as his fingers, working back to ...
— Echoes of the War • J. M. Barrie
... pruning, however, is not done solely for the satisfaction of exerting control. These millions of pollarded willows which one sees from the line have a deeper significance than might ever be guessed at: it is they that are keeping out Holland's ancient enemy, the sea. In other words, ...
— A Wanderer in Holland • E. V. Lucas
... get a 'spate of style' and burnish it - fine mixed metaphor. I am now so sick that I intend, when the Letters are done and some more written that will be wanted, simply to make a book of it by the pruning-knife. ...
— Vailima Letters • Robert Louis Stevenson
... could not avert the heat. A thin dress of embroidered muslin with short sleeves displayed her arms, and a blue sash surrounded her thin and delicate form. She gathered a few flowers, and cut away a few bad branches of the rose-trees with an elegant English pruning-knife. Then after having passed two or three times up and down the alley in front of the portal, she put her hand to her brow as if to make a visor to shield her eyes from the burning rays of the sun. Just in front ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various
... irritation, and even now I think a little of it was genuine anger. It came over me that perhaps I was overcrowding it and treating the whole copper enterprise too much as if it were my personal property; for here was something I had had nothing to do with, the setting out, pruning, and gathering the fruit from, this particular plum-tree, and so I answered ...
— Frenzied Finance - Vol. 1: The Crime of Amalgamated • Thomas W. Lawson
... stem common to all trees; not merely the exhilarating and seemingly inspiring properties of the grape, which made the very heathen look upon it as the sacred and miraculous fruit, the special gift of God; not merely the pruning out of the unfruitful branches, to be burned as firewood—not merely these, but the seeming death of the Vine, shorn of all its beauty, its fruitfulness, of every branch and twig which it had borne the year before, and left unsightly and seemingly ...
— Daily Thoughts - selected from the writings of Charles Kingsley by his wife • Charles Kingsley
... pass remind one somewhat of old Indian villages on the fringe of the desert in California and Arizona—the same walls of sun-baked adobe; the roofs of any refuse from tree pruning; the goats and chickens on terms of intimacy with the single living-room. But the people are not of the Western world. Dressed in voluminous black or blue cotton robes, which are pulled up over their heads to protect them from the keen wind of winter, ...
— The Critic in the Orient • George Hamlin Fitch
... there has yet been growth. Success necessitates development. Good schools will enlarge. One church creates another. One foothold secured in a missionary region opens districts to many who swell the cry of need to the heart of Christian compassion "come over and help us," so that with all our pruning the work has grown beyond the slight increase of funds from ...
— American Missionary, Vol. XLII., May, 1888., No. 5 • Various
... humdrum happiness, and married her to a rich man at Auteuil, gentle and amiable, perhaps indeed a trifle old for her, possessed of but one passion,—perfectly inoffensive and unexciting—that of horticulture. This excellent man spent his days pruning, scissors in hand, tending and trimming a magnificent collection of rose trees, heating a greenhouse, watering flower beds; and really it must be admitted that, for a poor little heart hungering after an ideal, this was hardly sufficient food. Nevertheless for ten years ...
— Artists' Wives • Alphonse Daudet
... could stop himself, and then when he looked up again, he saw that the heron had risen so high that there was no chance of catching him again; so off he flew, and perched in the cedar-tree at Greenlawn, where he sat cleaning and pruning his feathers, and sharpening his ugly hooked beak till it had such a point that it would have been a sad day for the poor bird who came in his clutches; while his master, who had lost sight of him, was wandering away far enough off, whistling ...
— Featherland - How the Birds lived at Greenlawn • George Manville Fenn
... athwart the shade, like the memory of happy days in the grey vista of a life; away in the cliffs yonder, the rock-doves were preparing to nest by hundreds, and waking the silence with their cooing and the flutter of their wings. Even the grim old eagle perched on the pinnacle of the peak was pruning himself, contentedly happy in the knowledge that his mate had laid an egg in that dark corner of the cliff. All things rejoiced and cried aloud that summer was at hand and that it was time to bloom and love ...
— Jess • H. Rider Haggard
... rapid and luxurious growers, and it is necessary to pay them constant attention in pruning or nipping the extremities of the shoots, or they will soon become ill-formed and straggling. This is particularly requisite during the rains, when heat and moisture combine to increase their growth to excess; allowing them to ...
— Flowers and Flower-Gardens • David Lester Richardson
... who had promised to help him cut his crop, had not yet appeared, owing probably to the excitement of Fletcher's runaway. The man's absence annoyed him at first; and then, as the day broke clear and cold, he succumbed to his ever present fear of frost and, taking his pruning-knife from the kitchen mantelpiece, went out alone to begin work ...
— The Deliverance; A Romance of the Virginia Tobacco Fields • Ellen Glasgow
... Father Dominic used to do; that he treated her mistakes as mistakes only, and not as sins; that generally his ideas of sin had to do rather with the root of evil in the heart than with the diligent pruning of particular branches; that he said a great deal about Christ, and not much about the saints. So Maude's change of opinion came, over her so gradually and noiselessly that she never realised herself to have undergone any change at all until ...
— The White Rose of Langley - A Story of the Olden Time • Emily Sarah Holt
... shall beat their swords into ploughshares, and their spears into pruning-hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they ...
— Familiar Quotations • John Bartlett
... same time, a timber growth. If pruned you get a good log at the base. The small, ten-foot logs from these trees pay as much as you would get for an 18 foot log of a taller tree. For forestry purposes, pruning ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Fourteenth Annual Meeting • Various
... have always differed with the preachers in politics and war, except the Southern preachers who are now in arms against the invader. I think war is one of the providences of God, and certainly no book chronicles so much fighting as the Bible. It may be to the human race what pruning is to vegetation, a necessary process for ...
— A Rebel War Clerk's Diary at the Confederate States Capital • John Beauchamp Jones
... caused all our trouble, and the world cannot be saved by physical means, but only by the spiritual forces which change the mental attitude. When the sword shall be beaten into the ploughshare and the spear into the pruning-hook, that will be the outward sign of the change of thought from destructive, competitive methods to constructive and cooeperative regeneration of the world! It is interesting to note that the sword and spear are not going to be thrown ...
— The Next of Kin - Those who Wait and Wonder • Nellie L. McClung
... irony. But she did condescend. Lady Camper came to his gate unexpectedly, rang the bell, and was let in like an ordinary visitor. It happened that the General was gardening—not the pretty occupation of pruning—he was digging—and of necessity his coat was off, and he was hot, dusty, unpresentable. From adoring earth as the mother of roses, you may pass into a lady's presence without purification; you cannot (or so the General thought) ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... flung away the pruning-knife and branch that he was cutting, and gazed at Claudet with a stupefied air. At the same time, his jovial face became shadowed, and his mouth assumed an expression ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... alter the easy-going and often colloquial phraseology in which they were uttered from the platform, in the hope that they would seem the more fresh and spontaneous because of their very lack of pruning and recasting. They have been suffered to run their unpremeditated course even at the cost of such repetition and redundancy as the extemporaneous speaker ...
— The New Freedom - A Call For the Emancipation of the Generous Energies of a People • Woodrow Wilson
... Loire. Everywhere around the vintage is going on. The vines are planted rather more than a yard apart, and those yielding black grapes are trained, as a rule, up tall stakes, although some few are trained espalier fashion. Women dexterously detach the bunches with pruning-knives and throw them into the seilles—small squat buckets with wooden handles—the contents of which are emptied from time to time into baskets—the counterpart of the chiffonnier's hotte, and coated with pitch inside so as to close all the crevices ...
— Facts About Champagne and Other Sparkling Wines • Henry Vizetelly
... the breasts of kings, the world may expect ever and anon to hear the voice of Joel sounding out this trumpet call, "Prepare ye war; wake up the mighty men; let all the men of war draw near—beat your ploughshares into swords and your pruning-hooks into spears—put ye in the sickle, for the ...
— The Angels' Song • Thomas Guthrie
... night, but in the morning found him lying as if asleep, with the peace of expiation on his pale face, his pruning-knife in his, heart, and the red current of his life tinging the turf with crimson around the roots of the ...
— Not Pretty, But Precious • John Hay, et al.
... of "thinning and pruning" in plantations planters—like doctors—differ. An amusing story was sent to Mr. Loudon by the Duke of Bedford, in reference to his grandfather, who was an advocate for vigorous ...
— Miscellanea • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... gone on imitating the people about me. They are industriously tilling their fields. I continue cutting my lawn, planting my dahlias, pruning my roses, tying up my flowering peas, and watching my California poppies grow like the weeds in ...
— On the Edge of the War Zone - From the Battle of the Marne to the Entrance of the Stars and Stripes • Mildred Aldrich
... he should start pruning when the tree is young. A tree is just like a child: you have to start to train them while they ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the 44th Annual Meeting • Various |
