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Sheaf   Listen
verb
Sheaf  v. t.  To gather and bind into a sheaf; to make into sheaves; as, to sheaf wheat.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Sheaf" Quotes from Famous Books



... act of living,—if he can no more traverse his way from the cradle to the grave, without letting fall, as he passes, the germs of strength, fertility, and beauty, than can a reckless wind or a vagrant bird, which, where it passes, leaves behind it the oak, the corn-sheaf, or the flower,—ah, if that be so, how tenfold the good must be, if the man find the gentler and purer duplicate of his own being in that mysterious, undefinable union which Shakspeares and day-labourers equally agree to call love; which Newton never recognizes, and ...
— Kenelm Chillingly, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... monumental rake-off for a non-profesh? Heaven knows I'm but an amateur in this line—normally an honest man, with but slightly way-ward tendencies. Whooping O'Shaughnessy! Just look! Six one-thousand-dollar bills, fifty one-hundreds—that's eleven thousand! A sheaf of fifties and twenties, swelling the total to something like twelve thousand! Hoo-ray! Again I ask, am I dreaming? Pinch me, I'll stop snoring, 'deed I will. I'll turn over, dearie, and go to sleep again! ...
— The Statesmen Snowbound • Robert Fitzgerald

... the Spaniard's bow guns, and the shot went wide. Then another and another, while the men fidgeted about, looking at the priming of their muskets, and loosened their arrows in the sheaf. ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley

... voice replied, 'The stream flows onward to the Source Supreme, Where things that ARE replace the things that SEEM, And where the deeds of all past lives abide. Once at thy door Love languished and was spurned. Who sorrow plants, must garner sorrow's sheaf. No prayers can change the seedling in the sod. By thine own heart Love's anguish must be learned. Pass on, and know, as one made wise by grief, That in thyself dwells heaven ...
— The Englishman and Other Poems • Ella Wheeler Wilcox

... fortunes in it. "And it will work?" she asked. "If we can get the capital," he answered with a confident air. "I shall try to interest all my friends in it," he went on. "You can help me there." May looked doubtful, and Quisante grew more eloquent. At last he held up a sheaf of papers, ...
— Quisante • Anthony Hope

... news of the divine—safe so far, and many miles away. Certainly, had he possessed his soul in patience a fortnight or so longer, he would have been forwarded to his desired destination securely and at the expense of the enemy. Before he reaches it now, he will have paid away a sheaf of greenbacks, and run the gauntlet of a frontier blockade, closing in more tightly every hour. North of the Potomac there is no rest for the sole of his foot. So, many would say, that the escapade had far ...
— Border and Bastille • George A. Lawrence

... then its thick hard leaves look as if nothing could exhaust their vigour. The flower stalk pushes up from a fresh sheaf of them—up and up twelve or fourteen feet—and expands into a candelabra of golden blossom, and not a droop comes in the plant below. But as the seed forms, we see that life is working death, slowly ...
— Parables of the Christ-life • I. Lilias Trotter

... thou weepest, weep thou sorely; 360 If thou weepest not yet freely, Thou shalt weep when thou returnest, When to mother's house thou comest, And thou find'st thy aged mother Suffocated in the cowshed, In her dying lap a straw-sheaf. ...
— Kalevala, Volume I (of 2) - The Land of the Heroes • Anonymous

... left him and his eyes fastened themselves upon a sheaf of proofs.... Watch out for libel ... look for hunches ... scribble suggestion for changes ... peer for items of information that might be expanded humorously or pathetically into Human Interest yarns.... These were functions he discharged mechanically. A perfect affinity toward his work characterized ...
— Erik Dorn • Ben Hecht

... the hostility, for he hastened to take from a pocket a sheaf of papers and place them on the table. The next moment the boys all saw that they had not gained a correct estimate of ...
— Boy Scouts in a Submarine • G. Harvey Ralphson

... per month to do the work!" His mischievously extravagant description of Mark Twain at this time is eminently worthy of record "He was arrayed in a seedy suit which hung upon his lean frame in bunches, with no style worth mentioning. A sheaf of scraggly, black hair leaked out of a battered, old, slouch hat, like stuffing from an ancient Colonial sofa, and an evil-smelling cigar butt, very much frazzled, protruded from the corner of his mouth. He had a very sinister appearance. He was a man I had known around the Nevada ...
— Mark Twain • Archibald Henderson

... and the high excellence of these models so pervaded him that he had therein a living basis on which he could proceed further? Again, why is he great, but from this, that his own songs at once found susceptible ears amongst his compatriots; that, sung by reapers and sheaf-binders, they at once greeted him in the field; and that his boon-companions sang them to welcome him at the ale-house? Something was certainly to ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. II • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke

... fructifying influence is thus brought to bear upon the corn in particular. Hence in Swabia the Harvest-May is fastened amongst the last stalks of corn left standing on the field; in other places it is planted on the corn-field and the last sheaf cut is attached ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer

... reports clattered in from Cairo and Woomera. In the Port Commander's private briefing room a young woman brought a sheaf of papers to the Commander. He began to read aloud. The audience leaned forward ...
— If at First You Don't... • John Brudy

... Sea-captains now, sea-kings would the English be, gathering tribute from the waters and the winds, bringing gifts to England—frankincense of wealth, myrrh of knowledge, spikenard of power!—till, robed and crowned, she rose above the peoples, Joseph's sheaf, Joseph's star! ...
— Sir Mortimer • Mary Johnston

... earthly existence, from the ceiling, there was not an object but had its own special history. In one corner was an Afghan matchlock, and a bundle of spears from the southern seas; in another a carved Indian paddle, a Kaffir assegai, and an American blowpipe, with its little sheaf of poisoned arrows. Here was a hookah, richly mounted, and with all due accessories, just as it was presented to the major twenty years before by a Mahommedan chieftain, and there was a high Mexican saddle on which he had ridden through the land of the Aztecs. There was not a square foot of ...
— The Firm of Girdlestone • Arthur Conan Doyle

... walked through the garden paths, Betty had at intervals bent and gathered a flower, until she held in one hand a loose, fair sheaf. At this moment she stooped to break off a spire of pale blue campanula. And she was—as with a shock—struck with a consciousness that she bent because she must—because to do so was a refuge—a concealment of something she must hide. It had come upon her without ...
— The Shuttle • Frances Hodgson Burnett

... the ceremonial of the Passover was the presentation in the Temple of a barley sheaf, the first of the harvest, waved before the Lord in dedication to Him, and in sign of thankful confidence that all the fields would be reaped and their blessing gathered. There may be some allusion to that ceremony, which coincided ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: Romans Corinthians (To II Corinthians, Chap. V) • Alexander Maclaren

... reconciled?"—"When they surrendered themselves, and all the eleven were prostrate at his feet, like the eleven sheaves which bowed to Joseph's sheaf in the harvest field; then he made himself known to them, and forgave them. It is not when a soul is under condemnation, nor yet when it is happy, that it is saved; but when it is actually, once for all, surrendered to Christ for salvation, then it is He makes himself known to them, even as Joseph ...
— From Death into Life - or, twenty years of my ministry • William Haslam

... pigeons, with malignant eyes, Beheld these inmates, and their nurseries; Though hard their fare, at evening, and at morn, (A cruise of water, and an ear of corn,) Yet still they grudged that modicum, and thought A sheaf in every single grain was brought. Fain would they filch that little food away, While unrestrained those happy gluttons prey; And much they grieved to see so nigh their hall, The bird that warned St. Peter of ...
— Lectures on the English Poets - Delivered at the Surrey Institution • William Hazlitt

... not the thoughts of the Lord, neither understand they His counsel; for He gathereth them as the sheaf ...
— Christology of the Old Testament: And a Commentary on the Messianic Predictions, v. 1 • Ernst Wilhelm Hengstenberg

... Rochefoucauld prepared, with infinite patience and with the conscientiousness of a great literary artist, his sheaf of Maxim-arrows, ready to shoot them, one by one, into the gross heart of amour-propre. What, then, were the reflexions which, now settled in Paris, and secure from the rough world in the recesses of Mme de Sable's salon, the Duke began to fashion and to polish? A maxim is a formula, ...
— Three French Moralists and The Gallantry of France • Edmund Gosse

... sheaf of young folk's stories were written during the latter part of that battle for recognition, and my gathering of them inside book covers is pursuant of his own intention at the time of his ...
— Dutch Courage and Other Stories • Jack London

... eyes had followed the sheaf of signed correspondence, and the well-filled pad of more recent dictation which the sleek little stenographer had carried away ...
— Roast Beef, Medium • Edna Ferber

... Nobody knows,—barring the captain, and he like enough has forgot,—and nobody's going to know. What's written on these eight bits of paper everybody may know," and he pulled out of a large case or purse, which he carried in his breast coat-pocket, a fat sheaf of bills. "There are five thou' written on each of them, and for five thou' on each of them I means to stand out. 'It or miss.' If any shentleman chooses to talk to me about ready money I'll take two thou' off. I like ready money as well ...
— Mr. Scarborough's Family • Anthony Trollope

... the comfortable hotel apartment, all in a pretty disorder now, with Magsie's various possessions scattered about. There were pictures of actors on the mantel, heavily autographed, and flowers thrust carelessly into vases. There was a great sheaf of Killarney roses; the envelope that had held a card still dangled from their stems. Carol would have given a great deal to know whose card had been torn from it, and whose name was ringing just now in Magsie's brain. She even cared enough to tentatively interrogate ...
— The Heart of Rachael • Kathleen Norris

... immediately pressing that I cannot have the pleasure of attending you. Besides, I am not upon the best of terms with King Pluto. To tell you the truth, his three-headed mastiff would never let me pass the gateway; for I should be compelled to take a sheaf of sunbeams along with me, and those, you know, are forbidden ...
— The Children's Hour, Volume 3 (of 10) • Various

... and Hadden turned to upon occasion with a will. Tommy's department was the trade and traderoom; he would work down in the hold or over the shelves of the cabin, till the Sydney dandy was unrecognisable; come up at last, draw a bucket of sea-water, bathe, change, and lie down on deck over a big sheaf of Sydney Heralds and Dead Birds, or perhaps with a volume of Buckle's "History of Civilisation," the standard work selected for that cruise. In the latter case a smile went round the ship, for Buckle ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 13 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... swiftly through the air, closed on something. It was a sheaf of hair, bristly and thick. ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1920 • Various

... Launfal, the maiden knight, In his gilded mail, that flamed so bright It seemed the dark castle had gathered all Those shafts the fierce sun had shot over its wall In his siege of three hundred summers long, And binding them all in one blazing sheaf, Had cast them forth; so, young and strong, And lightsome as a locust leaf, Sir Launfal flashed forth in his maiden mail, To seek in all climes for the ...
— The World's Best Poetry Volume IV. • Bliss Carman

... he showered on the rich and comfortable. The assembly, expecting surprises, had them in abundance. The Chancellor drew sheaf after sheaf of notes from the red despatch-box on the table in front of him and explained with an air of intensive reasonableness the huge sums he proposed to draw from the property-owners in the country. New inroads ...
— Lloyd George - The Man and His Story • Frank Dilnot

... shake. Then suddenly it boiled up, hissing as if a thousand steam-pipes had burst, something unspeakable seemed preparing, yet nothing happened. Some lava lumps were thrown out, to fall back or stick to the rocks, where they slowly died out. All at once a sheaf of fire shot up, tall and glowing, an explosion of incredible fury followed; the sheaf dispersed and fell down in marvellous fireworks and thousands of sparks. Slowly, in a fiery stream the lava flowed back to the bottom. Then another explosion and another, the thumping increased, one of the ...
— Two Years with the Natives in the Western Pacific • Felix Speiser

... out, and, while Colonel Barrington sat down before a sheaf of accounts, sprang into a waiting sleigh. "It's no use, we've got to go through," he said to the lad who shook the reins. "Graham made a very sensible suggestion, but our respected leader came down on him, as he did on me. You see, one simply can't talk to the Colonel, and it's unfortunate ...
— Winston of the Prairie • Harold Bindloss

... surprise you all," remarked the satisfied hostess; for she knew the pig was done to a turn; "and anything you don't expect tastes twice as good. I knew ma' liked pig better'n anything; and I think myself it's about the top sheaf. I suppose nothin' can be ...
— Nobody • Susan Warner

... She only described the scene when the last waggon came in with its load, the horses decked with flowers and ribbons, and the farmer's youngest girl enthroned on the top of the shocks, upholding the harvest doll. This was a little sheaf, curiously constructed and bound with straw plaits and ribbons. The farmer, on the arrival in the yard, stood on the horse-block, and held it high over the heads of all the harvesters, ...
— Love and Life • Charlotte M. Yonge

... lighted and hanging on the pole. Clay is probably finishing a letter to his "mother." Bannister is doubtless already abed, but ready from his cot to add a sleepy jest to the quiet talk that is slowly going on. Reardon is putting the last stamps on the sheaf of post-cards that he daily sends, for he, you must understand, has more correspondents at home than any of the rest of us. Rather big and burly, the quietest of men, with a very active eye but very intensely committed to the minding of his own business, ...
— At Plattsburg • Allen French

... lab'rers, Fainting in the sultry ray, Cry against thee to the Master As thou dream'st the hours away Waken! patient angels bearing Home Earth's harvest, grieving see One by one the bright hours waning, And no sheaf secured by thee! ...
— Poems of the Heart and Home • Mrs. J.C. Yule (Pamela S. Vining)

... pursuits, the one which ought to lead their minds most to God, and the one in which (if they be thoughtful men) they have the deep satisfaction of feeling that they are not working for themselves only, but for their fellow-men; that every sheaf of corn they grow is a blessing, not merely to themselves, but to ...
— The Water of Life and Other Sermons • Charles Kingsley

... Indian, who stood like a bronze statue, resting upon the sheaf of spears he held, and watching us all curiously, as if noting our manner, and ...
— To The West • George Manville Fenn

... now." He thrust his hand into his pocket and drew out a sheaf of papers, tossing them in front of the coroner, who, after a glance at their contents, seemed to be satisfied that they ...
— The Riddle of the Frozen Flame • Mary E. Hanshew

... unaccountably. They had, of course, been stolen from his person with the obvious intention of impeding the inquiry into the murder. Next, in another inner pocket was Quadling's own wallet, with his own visiting-cards, several letters addressed to him by name; above all, a thick sheaf of bank-notes of all nationalities—English, French, Italian, and amounting in total value to ...
— The Rome Express • Arthur Griffiths

... and help you. So it was that when he emerged from his room at sharp eight o'clock, he was wide-awake and happy and hungry, and whistled and double-shuffled with his feet, out of excessive energy, and carried in his hands a whole sheaf of ...
— Adventures and Letters • Richard Harding Davis

... notebook, stood at one end of the top shelf. Writing materials were always on the desk. In the desk lay a manuscript translation of Hauptmann's Michael Kramer, the stage directions of which were written in purple ink, and a little sheaf of papers held together by a brass pin. In these sheets a sentence was inscribed from time to time and, in an ironical moment, the headline of an advertisement for Bile Beans had been pasted on to the first sheet. On lifting the lid of the desk a faint fragrance escaped—the fragrance of new ...
— Dubliners • James Joyce

... pronounced Continental type, with a short brown beard, a straight, rather well-shaped nose and gold-rimmed spectacles. His hair was cut en brosse, and he was rather full about the throat and neck. Without a word, Desmond stretched out his hand and gathered up a sheaf of other photos, police photos of Mr. Basil Bellward, front face and profile seen from right and left, all these poses shown on the same picture, some snapshots and various camera studies. Desmond shook his head ...
— Okewood of the Secret Service • Valentine Williams

... Chris?" he demanded presently. I came out into the main part of the room. "Oh, there you are! You'll look after a few little matters for me, won't you?" He indicated a sheaf of papers. ...
— From a Bench in Our Square • Samuel Hopkins Adams

... the shock had been terrific, describing just where the bullet was lodged and its effect upon the sensory nerves. Andover was somewhat surprised to find that this queer person knew considerable about gun-shot wounds and was even more surprised when The Spider drew a flat sheaf of bills from his pocket and asked what an operation would ...
— The Ridin' Kid from Powder River • Henry Herbert Knibbs

... Sabbatical year, which is proceeding toward the close of the Sabbatical year. Rabbi Ishmael said, "as the earing-time (mentioned Exod. xxxiv. 21) is voluntary, so the harvest is voluntary, except the harvest of the (omer) sheaf."(41) ...
— Hebrew Literature

... cried suddenly, seizing a sheaf of letters. "File these letters. You will be able to do that, I guess! File's in the ...
— Corporal Cameron • Ralph Connor

... teller at the bank just pinged with electronic shock when he presented one of the bills and flashed a panel that directed him to see Vice President Wain. Wain was a smooth customer who bugged his eyes and lost some of his tan when he saw the sheaf of bills. ...
— Deathworld • Harry Harrison

... the heads of padi one by one, bringing the stalk to the blade with their two middle fingers, and passing them, when cut, from the right hand to the left. As soon as the left hand is full the contents are placed in regular layers in the basket (sometimes tied up in a little sheaf), and from thence removed to larger baskets, in which the harvest is to be conveyed to the dusun or village, there to be lodged in the tangkian or barns, which are buildings detached from the dwelling-houses, raised like them from the ground, widening from the floor towards the roof, and well ...
— The History of Sumatra - Containing An Account Of The Government, Laws, Customs And - Manners Of The Native Inhabitants • William Marsden

... no formation of mucilage occurring in the dividing walls. Such filaments may not give rise to mucilage on the lateral surface either, in which case they are said to be free; when mucilage does occur on the lateral wall, it appears as the sheath surrounding either the single filament, or a sheaf of filaments of common origin. The mucilage may also form an embedding substance similar to that of Chroococcaceae, in which the filaments lie parallel or radiate from a common centre (Rivulariaceae). The cells ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia

... read it thrice, his lips quivering; then he slowly drew from a separate pocket a little sheaf of papers, frayed at the corners, and soiled with much and loving handling. He selected from these a slip; it was one of those which Mr. Thomasson had surprised on the table in the room at the Castle Inn. It was a copy of the attestation of birth 'of Julia, daughter of Anthony Soane, of Estcombe, ...
— The Castle Inn • Stanley John Weyman

... letters from my literary friends, of the many family records, of the innumerable notes, pictures, keepsakes, souvenirs and mementoes which had been assembling there for a quarter of a century, I became confused, indecisive. It was so hard to choose. At last I caught up a sheaf of unpublished stories which filled one drawer, and beating off the screen of the north window threw the manuscripts out upon ...
— A Daughter of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland

... ten minutes' walk down Cheapside, for the nobles' houses in the City swarm with such retainers—sturdy, brown-faced country fellows, quick of quarrel, and not disposed to bear gibes. He wears a coat and hood of Lincoln green, and has a sword, dagger, horn, and buckler by his side. The sheaf of arrows at his girdle have peacock-feathers. Ten to one but that fellow let fly many a shaft at Cressy and Poictiers, for he is fond of saying, over his ale-bowl, that he carries "ten Frenchmen's lives ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury

... a Conqueror lies, And yet the monument proclaims it not, Nor round the sleeper's name hath chisel wrought The emblems of a fame that never dies,— Ivy and amaranth, in a graceful sheaf, Twined with the laurel's fair, imperial leaf. A simple name alone, To the great world unknown, Is graven here, and wild-flowers rising round, Meek meadow-sweet and violets of the ground, Lean lovingly against the ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various

... cure was frequently to be met with, and not sorry to talk with a person better informed than most of his parishioners: it was for Gilbert another field to glean from, and on such occasions he generally managed to bring home a sheaf with him. It was most remarkable to see how well he got on with the Roman Catholic clergy, although his religious opinions were never hidden from them, and his attitude by no means conducive to hopes of conversion; but on the other hand, he was ...
— Philip Gilbert Hamerton • Philip Gilbert Hamerton et al

... wrongs, and heal our wounds; And all our nations, knit by me and ranged In headship with our Saganash allies, Will turn the mortal issue 'gainst our foes, And wall our threatened frontiers with their slain. But till that ripened moment, not a sheaf Of arrows should be wasted, not a brave Should perish aimlessly, nor discord reign Amongst our tribes, nor jealousy distrain The large effects of valour. We must now Pack all our energies. Our eyes and ears No more must ...
— Tecumseh: A Drama • Charles Mair

... I have received a sheaf of correspondence arising out of the article in the February number, cataloguing the Old Guard who were in the House of Commons twenty years ago and stand there to-day. One or two demand acknowledgment as adding ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 29, May 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various

... a Conqueror lies, And yet the monument proclaims it not, Nor round the sleeper's name hath chisel wrought The emblems of a fame that never dies, Ivy and amaranth in a graceful sheaf, Twined with the laurel's fair, imperial leaf. A simple name alone, To the great world unknown, Is graven here, and wild flowers, rising round, Meek meadow-sweet and violets of the ground, Lean ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 3 - Sorrow and Consolation • Various

... the portrait of a lady of quality on fatigue duty—very much at her ease in a lavender-silk morning gown and stretched out in a chaise longue, a tray with fruit, coffee and rolls on her left dividing attention with a sheaf of morning notes on the other side and the portable writing-case on ...
— Nobody • Louis Joseph Vance

... structure of the barn, and in its interior accommodation, much will depend upon the branches of agriculture to which the farm is devoted. A farm cultivated in grain chiefly, requires but little room for stabling purposes. Storage for grain in the sheaf, and granaries, will require its room; while a stock farm requires a barn with extensive hay storage, and stables for its cattle, horses, and sheep, in all climates not admitting such stock to live through the winter in the field, like the great grazing states west of the Alleghanies. Again, ...
— Rural Architecture - Being a Complete Description of Farm Houses, Cottages, and Out Buildings • Lewis Falley Allen

... represented by Dora, dressed as a Puritan maiden, carrying a basket of apples and a sheaf of wheat. She made a pleasant ...
— The Story of the Big Front Door • Mary Finley Leonard

... thrilling to the excitement of his glance; she was hardly conscious of what she was doing or saying. Under her father's direction she tied ropes, presently was placed with her arms clasped tightly about a great sheaf of vines, ready for the united tug. Martin came close to ...
— Sisters • Kathleen Norris

... the common subject, or the hour, has for him. And so dear Sachs, while Eva and Walther rejoice on their side, and David and Lene—to whom the apprentice's promotion opens vistas of mastership and marriage,—rejoice on theirs, Sachs, adding a less glad but more serene voice to the glorious sheaf of song, reveals his heart,—with no one to listen, for all are singing. "Full fain"—he sighs, "Full fain had I been to sing before the winsome child, but need was that I should place restraint upon the sweet disorderly ...
— The Wagnerian Romances • Gertrude Hall

... something flat that fell rustling to the floor and spread into a sheaf of paper bound between home-made covers of cloth, but when the girl opened the improvised book, with the presentiment that here was the message out of the past that would explain the rest, she knitted her brows and sat ...
— The Roof Tree • Charles Neville Buck

... on, still laughing pleasantly, and quickening my steps, I went to the corner of Broad Street, where I found a florist's shop still lighted and filled with customers. There were no violets left, and while I waited for a sheaf of pink roses, with my eyes on the elaborate funeral designs covering the counter, I heard a voice speaking in a low tone beyond a mass of flowering azalea ...
— The Romance of a Plain Man • Ellen Glasgow

... carefully preserve these chains of domestic union. Do not let us unbind the human sheaf, and scatter its ears to all the caprices of chance and of the winds; but let us rather enlarge this holy law; let us carry the principles and the habits of home beyond set bounds; and, if it may be, let us realize the prayer of the Apostle of the Gentiles when he exclaimed to the newborn ...
— An "Attic" Philosopher, Complete • Emile Souvestre

... Switzerland and Holland (as I have learnt of my Lords Alpester and Glaucus), being bound up (like the sheaf of arrows which the latter gives) by leagues, lie like those in their quivers; but arrows, when they come to be drawn, fly from this way and from that; and I am contented that ...
— The Commonwealth of Oceana • James Harrington

... everything—shelves, floors, hollow-ware, milk pans, piggins, cedar water buckets—it made their brass hoops shine like gold. While she scoured she told us tales of the pewter era—when she had gone, a barefoot child, with her mother, to the Rush Branch, to come home with a sheaf of rushes, whereby the pewter was made to shine. It hurts even yet, recalling the last end of that pewter. As glass and crockery grew plenty, the boys—my uncles, there were five of them—melted it down for rifle bullets, when by chance they ran out of lead. Yet—who ...
— Dishes & Beverages of the Old South • Martha McCulloch Williams

... their own first natural position. Then doing the like also with his jaws and tongue, he did cast a squinting look upon Goatsnose, diddering and shivering his chaps, as apes use to do nowadays, and rabbits, whilst, almost starved with hunger, they are eating oats in the sheaf. ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais

... squire returned he called to Julius and his daughters, "What idle-backs you are! Come, and bind a sheaf with me." And they rose with a merry laugh, and followed him down the field, working a little, and resting a little; and towards the close of the afternoon, listening to the singing of an old man who had brought his fiddle to the field in order to be ready to play at the squire's ...
— The Squire of Sandal-Side - A Pastoral Romance • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr

... place in the barn, where Turkey happened to be thrashing alone that morning. In turning the sheaf, or in laying a fresh one, there was always a moment's pause in the din, and then only we talked, so that our conversation was a good deal broken. I had buried myself in the straw, as in days of old, to keep myself warm, ...
— Ranald Bannerman's Boyhood • George MacDonald

... cells, Drinking a long lank watching candle's smoke, Spending the marrow of their flow'ring age In fruitless poring on some worm-eat leaf: When their deserts shall seem of due to claim A cheerful crop of fruitful swelling sheaf; Cockle their harvest is, and weeds their grain, Contempt their portion, their possession, pain. Scholars must frame to live at ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. IX • Various

... just read through some of the vivacious correspondence of Bronson Howard—a sheaf of letters sent by him to Brander Matthews during a long intercourse. The time thus spent brings sharply to mind the salient qualities of the man—his nobility of character, his soundness of mind, his graciousness of manner, and his thorough understanding of the dramatic ...
— Shenandoah - Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1856-1911 • Bronson Howard

... peaceable word. It happed on a time that Joseph dreamed, and saw a sweven [dream], and told it to his brethren, which caused them to hate him yet more. Joseph said to his brethren: Hear ye my dream that I had; methought that we bound sheaves in the field, and my sheaf stood up and yours standing round about and worshipped my sheaf. His brethren answered: Shalt thou be our king and shall we be subject and obey thy commandment? Therefore this cause of dreams and of ...
— Bible Stories and Religious Classics • Philip P. Wells

... alone. There are many instances of it to be found elsewhere in the sacred volume, and in many cases it is explained by inspiration itself, thus giving us a reliable key to the whole. Joseph's dream of the eleven sheaves that made obeisance to his sheaf was of this description (Gen. 37:7, 8), and his eleven brethren were angered, because its meaning was apparent—that they should be humbled before him. Also, his dream of the sun, the moon, and the eleven stars (verses 9, 10) was understood to signify the subjection of the ...
— The Revelation Explained • F. Smith

... after the meeting of the two women in the drawing-room, the master of the house entered hurriedly, bearing in his hand a sheaf of papers. Charles Hamilton was a large, dark man, remarkably good-looking in a boyish, clean-shaven, typically American, businesslike fashion. Still short of the thirties, he had nevertheless formed those ...
— Making People Happy • Thompson Buchanan

... news. He had been so dear to her, his visits had been such a joy, and although behind his tenderness vaguely she had sensed some change, some new excitement in his mind, in her own absorption in their boy she had attributed it to that. But early one evening he came in with a sheaf of roses in his arms, and when she had exclaimed at them and breathed deep of their dewy fragrance, Joe bent over and kissed her, ...
— His Second Wife • Ernest Poole

... sheaf of piano pieces, the "Twelve Virtuoso Studies" of op. 46 (of which the "Novelette" and "Improvisation" are most noteworthy), we come to a stage of MacDowell's development in which, for the first time, he presents himself as an assured and confident master of musical ...
— Edward MacDowell • Lawrence Gilman

... in and out of Castleisland, but though I had a sheaf of threatening letters, I never met with any insults or received a threat to ...
— The Reminiscences of an Irish Land Agent • S.M. Hussey

... lie.... I shall give up everything for life to my creditors, and throw myself as a beggar on Asiatic charity, and wander far without one parra in my pocket, with the mare from the stable of Solomon in one hand, and a sheaf of the corn of Beni-Israel in the other. I shall meet death, or that which I believe to be written, which no mortal can efface. On September 7, Dr. Meryon and his family embarked at Leghorn for Cyprus, ...
— Little Memoirs of the Nineteenth Century • George Paston

... Greeks. So he went all day until the evening, till he saw the Thriasian plain, and the sacred city of Eleusis, where the Earth-mother's temple stands. For there she met Triptolemus, when all the land lay waste, Demeter the kind Earth- mother, and in her hands a sheaf of corn. And she taught him to plough the fallows, and to yoke the lazy kine; and she taught him to sow the seed-fields, and to reap the golden grain; and sent him forth to teach all nations, and give corn to labouring men. ...
— The Heroes • Charles Kingsley

... they affect rather to be called fathers, and, by being really so, they well deserve the name; and the people pay them all the marks of honour the more freely because none are exacted from them. The Prince himself has no distinction, either of garments or of a crown; but is only distinguished by a sheaf of corn carried before him; as the High Priest is also known by his being preceded by a person carrying a ...
— Utopia • Thomas More

... life with which Mr. Seebohm has made us familiar. But, in close and intimate connection with these selfsame agricultural economical proceedings, it is the same body of manorial tenants who perform irrational and rude customs, who carry the last sheaf of corn represented in human or animal form, who sacrifice animals to their earth deities, who carry fire round fields and crops, who, in a scarcely disguised ritual, still worship deities which there ...
— Folklore as an Historical Science • George Laurence Gomme

... had preceded the battery into the town, galloped up to the captain upon our entry and presented him with a sheaf of yellow paper slips, which bore the addresses of houses and barns and the complements of men and horses to be quartered in each. This was the billeting schedule provided by the French major of the town. The guns were parked, the horses picketed and ...
— "And they thought we wouldn't fight" • Floyd Gibbons

... colour of the room is seen from the very entrance of the house, the broad main hall making a carpeted highway to the wide opening of the room, where a sheaf of tinted sunset light seems to spread itself like a many-doubled fan against the shadows ...
— Principles of Home Decoration - With Practical Examples • Candace Wheeler

... comprised in the programme of amusements that the proprietor of Hotel Badrutt undertook to procure for his guests. Returning from an excursion to Lake Silvaplana, she found in her chamber a basket containing a veritable sheaf of Alpine flowers, freshly gathered, and among them not only Edelweiss in profusion, but several very rare plants, and the rarest of all a certain bell-flower creeper, which smells like the apricot, and which, except in some districts of the Engadine, is only found ...
— Samuel Brohl & Company • Victor Cherbuliez

... her wedding when one day Nelly suddenly came upon Mrs. Rooke in one of the narrow, fashionable streets south of Oxford Street. Mrs. Rooke was coming out of a florist's shop, and she was carrying a sheaf of lilies in her hand. For one second she looked as though she would have turned aside and avoided Nelly. Then she came straight on with a little unfriendly uplifting ...
— Mary Gray • Katharine Tynan

... by roses and ribbons, an oblique cross of roses lying on a bed of ivy, a basket made of ivy and autumn leaves, holding a sheaf of grain and a sickle of violets, an ivy pillow with a cross of flowers on one side, a bunch of pansies held by a knot of ribbon at one corner, a cross made of ivy alone, a "harvest-field" made of ears of wheat, are some of the many new funereal designs which ...
— Manners and Social Usages • Mrs. John M. E. W. Sherwood

... the messenger came back carrying a sheaf of arrows. Grinning, he held up the fingers of ...
— The Magnificent Adventure - Being the Story of the World's Greatest Exploration and - the Romance of a Very Gallant Gentleman • Emerson Hough

... "Your face I know; your voice, your thoughts, and your heart. I have heard the rumble of your chariot wheels on the great Highway, and I knew that you were on the King's business. Here in my hand is a sheaf of messages from every quarter of my kingdom. They were delivered by weary and footsore travelers, who said that they could never have reached the gate in safety had it not been for your help and inspiration. ...
— Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm • Kate Douglas Wiggin

... Joseph dreamed a dream, and he told it his brethren: and they hated him yet the more. And he said unto them, Hear, I pray you, this dream which I have dreamed: For, behold, we were binding sheaves in the field, and, lo, my sheaf arose, and also stood upright; and, behold, your sheaves stood round about, and made obeisance to my sheaf. And his brethren said to him, Shalt thou indeed reign over us? or shalt thou Indeed have ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus and Numbers • Alexander Maclaren

... up. She saw that Mr. Manisty, carrying a sheaf of papers in his hand, had thrown himself into a chair behind Mrs. Burgoyne. His look was strenuous and absorbed, his tumbling black hair had fallen forward as though in a stress of composition; he spoke in a low, imperative voice, like one accustomed ...
— Eleanor • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... viciously as he passed through the office lobby and barely escaped collision with Mr. Boner as he turned the corner of the partition en route to his desk. Mr. Boner merely grunted. He bore in his hand a sheaf of orders for the mailing desk. He believed in ...
— Stubble • George Looms

... inadvisable, tickled my tongue, so I said nothing, contenting myself with holding on with my left hand while I nursed my stinging right hand under my arm-pit. Beyond her, across the floor of the main cabin, I saw the steward in pursuit of Captain West's Bible and a sheaf of Miss West's music. And as she gurgled and laughed at me, beholding her in this intimacy of storm, the thought ...
— The Mutiny of the Elsinore • Jack London

... and with skilful handling and vigorous efforts the mountain of wealth is made to pass, without mishap, beneath the rustic triumphal arch. Especially with the last load, called the gerbaude, are these precautions required; for that is made the occasion of a rustic festival, and the last sheaf gathered from the last furrow is placed on top of the load, decorated with ribbons and flowers, as are the heads of the oxen and the driver's goad. Thus the triumphal, laborious entry of the cabbage into ...
— The Devil's Pool • George Sand

... hardly laid himself down, with his head on a sheaf of oats, when he saw a youth enter the barn, and, deliberately taking a cord from his pocket, proceed to affix it to one of the hind legs of his much-prized pig, which resented the ...
— Adrift in the Ice-Fields • Charles W. Hall

... and brought her eyes to the level of his. Then she would have looked away, but his gaze held her, and she made a sudden movement of alarm—a swift tremor to escape. She held the sheaf of goldenrod to her bosom and above it her eyes shone; her breath came quickly between her parted lips. All her changeful ...
— The Voice of the People • Ellen Glasgow

... Northwest, the earth their floor and narrow wooden bunks in a low dark loft their beds. Of course the stubborn forest gave way slowly, and grudgingly opened sunny hillsides to the vine and wheat-sheaf. The name of the settlement was changed to Clairvaux, but for many years the poor monks' only food was barley bread, with broth made from boiled beech leaves. Here Tescelin came in his old age to live under the ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 4 • Charles Dudley Warner

... still and don't like to own it. Women are generally so," the dentist commented, when he was left alone. He picked up a sheaf of stock certificates and eyed them critically. "They're nicer than the Placer Mining ones. They just look fit ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick

... of February was Sunday, but on Monday morning the postman brought a sheaf of letters which ...
— Patty at Home • Carolyn Wells

... hardened points ready for Rob to fix into the cleft he split in the end of each reed and then binding them tightly in, making a notch for the bow-string at the other end, and laying them down one by one finished for the sheaf he had set himself ...
— Rob Harlow's Adventures - A Story of the Grand Chaco • George Manville Fenn

... at the writing-table and took from a pigeonhole a sheaf of tradesmen's bills. These she checked and docketed conscientiously, after entering their totals in a book marked "Household." From all these acts she seemed to draw some secret enjoyment ...
— The Creators - A Comedy • May Sinclair

... bright with bloom or dense with leaf Far-shadowing, deep as depth of dawn or night: And all were parcel of the garnered sheaf His strenuous spirit bound ...
— Astrophel and Other Poems - Taken from The Collected Poetical Works of Algernon Charles - Swinburne, Vol. VI • Algernon Charles Swinburne

... detective. And he pulled a sheaf of telegram forms out of his pocket, and leisurely began to write a message which before he signed his name to it had run ...
— The Chestermarke Instinct • J. S. Fletcher

... gentleman got himself out of his chair, walked across to one of a series of drawers in his bookcases, opened it, and took out a sheaf of papers and a quart bottle. He brought the papers and the bottle back to the table, made room for them, put the papers in a neat pile, and set the bottle at a certain distance ...
— Birthright - A Novel • T.S. Stribling

... story had unloosed a secret fear in his mind, which he had often banished, but which had been returning with great force. As a band holds together the sheaf of corn, so he alone kept King James's army. Apart from him there was no cohesion, and apart from him there was no commander. With his death, not only would the forces disperse, but the cause of ...
— Graham of Claverhouse • Ian Maclaren

... that evening in her husband's study with a sheaf of visiting cards in her hand. She thought it possible that she might obtain further illumination by confronting him ...
— The Helpmate • May Sinclair

... increasing muster-roll of lambs. We did not make much progress in farming matters. Chesterton was the most enterprising, and succeeded in ploughing a furrow in that kind of line which heralds call wavy, and would, as he declared, have made a very fair hand of thrashing, if he could but have hit the sheaf oftener, and his own head not quite so often. The most important events that took place during this time at the Grange, were the installation of a successor to the barrel in the corner, and the catching of an enormous rat, who had escaped poison and traps ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 350, December 1844 • Various

... the sheaf of papers she handed him. "Can't make very good condensers out of this," he objected. "Too brittle—and look how the properties vary with temperature. A practical dielectric has to be stable in every way, ...
— Security • Poul William Anderson

... preacher of many sermons, it is natural that Christmas should have engaged a large part of my attention. Out of the abundance of material which I have accumulated in the course of a long ministry and a longer life I have gathered here a sheaf of things I have written about Christmas; personal adventures, stories suggested by the old yet ever-new theme; meditations, words of advice which I am old enough to be entitled to give; and last but not least good wishes and good will. I might even call this little volume ...
— A Little Book for Christmas • Cyrus Townsend Brady

... sockets. His ribs seemed to crumple within him—fortunately they were elastic, as ribs no thicker than a stout hair must be. Then the pressure relaxed. The automatic binding was complete, and one more sheaf fell with a thud to earth. In that sheaf was the harvest mouse, bruised but alive, a prisoner in the dark. The stalks pressed tight against his body; but for the pitchfork he could never ...
— "Wee Tim'rous Beasties" - Studies of Animal life and Character • Douglas English

... he excused himself from the office for a while and presented himself at his new bank with a sheaf of new checks which she had raised, all certified, and totaling ...
— Constance Dunlap • Arthur B. Reeve

... ice cream soda party was ready to set out. Dwight threw her a casual "Better come, too, Mother Bett," but she shook her head. She wished to go, wished it with violence, but she contrived to give to her arbitrary refusal a quality of contempt. When Jenny arrived with Bobby, she had brought a sheaf of gladioli for Mrs. Bett, and took them to her in the kitchen, and as she laid the flowers beside her, the young girl stopped and kissed her. "You little darling!" cried Mrs. Bett, and clung to her, her lifted eyes lit by something intense and living. But when ...
— Miss Lulu Bett • Zona Gale

... said the good alderman, "away with such foolish talk. Let's see a match struck up. I myself will give a new long-bow and a sheaf of arrows to the best jumper of you all. What say you? The highest leap and the broadest? Ho, there!" added he, calling a servant to him; "bid them clear a space for a match 'twixt the gallant 'prentices of the Bridge and the gallant 'prentices without Temple Bar. Come, boys; were I ...
— Sir Ludar - A Story of the Days of the Great Queen Bess • Talbot Baines Reed

... harvest is being sown, that the welfare of the world is being sown, that the food of millions is being put into the earth. And thereafter will come summer, the season of reaping, endless reaping; for suddenly the crops will have ripened, and rye-sheaf will be lying heaped upon rye-sheaf, with, elsewhere, stocks of barley, and of oats, and of wheat. And everything will be teeming with life, and not a moment will there need to be lost, seeing that, had you even twenty eyes, you would have need for them all. And after the harvest festivities there ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol

... merely, but glaziers, and that sort of workmen, and, best of all, chair-menders,—who bear a mended chair upon their shoulders for a sign, with pieces of white wood for further mending, a drawing-knife, a hammer, and a sheaf of rushes, and who sit down at your door, and plait the rush bottoms of your kitchen-chairs anew, and make heaps of fragrant whittlings with their knives, ...
— Venetian Life • W. D. Howells

... in the county of Dorset, after carrying a field of corn, to leave behind a sheaf, to intimate to the rest of the parish that the families of those who reaped the field are to have the first lease. After these gleaners have finished, the sheaf is removed, and other parties are admitted, called "barissers." I have been told that ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 53. Saturday, November 2, 1850 • Various

... real and profound causes of division were those which life bore within its bosom. For life is tendency, and the essence of a tendency is to develop in the form of a sheaf, creating, by its very growth, divergent directions among which its impetus is divided. This we observe in ourselves, in the evolution of that special tendency which we call our character. Each of us, glancing back over his history, will find that his child-personality, ...
— Creative Evolution • Henri Bergson

... through her tangled sheaf of golden-brown curls, took a hasty and discontented survey ...
— North, South and Over the Sea • M.E. Francis (Mrs. Francis Blundell)

... his hand opens and empties itself, fills itself and empties itself again and again; the sombre plain is stirred, the deeps of nature open, the unknown abyss of creation begins its work; the waiting dews fall, the spear of wild grain quivers and reflects that the sheaf of wheat will succeed it; the sun, hidden behind the horizon, loves what that workman is doing, and knows that his rays will not be wasted. ...
— Napoleon the Little • Victor Hugo

... drifted heap, But sheaf-like, neatly bound Thy tresses seem, in braids, or stream ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume II. - The Songs of Scotland of the past half century • Various

... utterance of his trouble, and his courage a little restored by food and rest, the Bishop came back to him with a cheerful countenance from his prayers, the King took heart again. Kennedy produced to him the old image of the sheaf of arrows which, bound together, were not to be broken, but one by one could easily be snapt asunder, and advised him to make proclamation of a free pardon to all who would throw down their arms and make submission, and to march at once against ...
— Royal Edinburgh - Her Saints, Kings, Prophets and Poets • Margaret Oliphant

... to hear of the night's entertainment. So you shall, an you give me pen, ink, a sheaf of paper, and a ...
— Tales of the Jazz Age • F. Scott Fitzgerald

... of the ancients, is merely to retrogress from the path of progress. On the contrary, our duty should be to identify ourselves with all that is good and beautiful and true in the past, and so gleaning it together, bind it into a sheaf of corn that, when ground in the mills of common-sense and practical experience, may feed the millions of every denomination who for the most part are starving on the unsatisfying husks of crude dogmatism. There is no need for a new revelation, in whatever sense the word is understood, ...
— Simon Magus • George Robert Stow Mead

... two knees before the throne, when Ippolita, with deprecating hands and downcast eyes rose timidly to crown him, the silver trumpets pealed as shatteringly as ever over a blood-fray, and the company cried aloud to the witnessing sky, "Evviva Ippolita bella!" They could have done no more for a sheaf of broken necks. ...
— Little Novels of Italy • Maurice Henry Hewlett

... he had occupied, but Rhetta knew of one in reserve behind the display of wheat and oats in sheaf on the table. This she brought, seating herself near the door, making a triangle from which Morgan had no escape ...
— Trail's End • George W. Ogden

... his waistcoat, and, ripping away the lining, brought out a sheaf of notes. "A man," said he, "who never knows one minute whether he may not be arrested and have his pockets cleared the next, should never be without these. Senor Briton, use your big strength and tear away all that seems you good. I will satisfy ...
— The Recipe for Diamonds • Charles John Cutcliffe Wright Hyne

... of the rose is brief; From the first blade blown to the sheaf, From the thin green leaf to the gold, It has time to be sweet and grow old, To triumph and leave not a leaf For witness in winter's sight How lovers once in the light Would mix their breath with its breath, And its ...
— Poems & Ballads (Second Series) - Swinburne's Poems Volume III • Algernon Charles Swinburne

... only her bruised pride, her bleeding heart, her relentless incorruptible conscience; and over the conclusion, she shed no tears, made no moan, allowed no margin for pity. Early on that Spring morning, she had received a glowing sheaf of La France and Duchess de Brabant roses, accompanied by a brief note announcing Mr. Dunbar's return, and requesting an interview at noon. The tone of her reply was markedly cordial, and after offering congratulations upon his birthday, she begged his acceptance ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson

... into the camp, and endured hunger and cold for the sake of her country. The whole country has been vitalized by this war. What if woman did not carry the bayonet on the battle-field? She carried that which gave more strength and energy. Traveling through Illinois, I saw the women bind the sheaf, bring in the harvest and plow the fields, that men might fight the battles. When such women come up now and ask for the right of suffrage, who will deny their request? In the winter of 1860, the law was passed ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage

... centre of the ring, accompanied by a busy steward with a sheaf of notes in his hand, stood the Judge of Irish Wolfhounds; a man grown grey, white-haired indeed, in the study of dog-folk, and one of whom it might be said that, by his own single-hearted efforts, he had saved the breed of Irish Wolfhounds from becoming extinct in the middle of ...
— Finn The Wolfhound • A. J. Dawson

... patted his hand, and then was gone in a flash of gold and honey. Dr. Joachim looked at the door that had closed behind her, then he looked down at the envelope in his hands. He opened it gently and took out the sheaf of bills. Fifteen ...
— Fifty Per Cent Prophet • Gordon Randall Garrett

... Eastcliff, wearing a carnation button-hole, was by his side, and his aunt, Lady Margaret, carrying a sheaf of beautiful white flowers, ...
— The Woman Thou Gavest Me - Being the Story of Mary O'Neill • Hall Caine

... death-chamber, her long light slanting, I thought, across the fallen, but still ripening sheaves of the harvest of the great husbandman.—But no; that harvest was gone! Gathered in, or swept away by chaotic storm, not a sacred sheaf was there! My dead were gone! I was alone!—In desolation dread lay depths yet deeper than I had hitherto known!—Had there never been any ripening dead? Had I but dreamed them and their loveliness? Why then these walls? why the ...
— Lilith • George MacDonald

... all," said Mr. Temple, holding up the thick sheaf of papers, "this is Mr. Hampton's own original list of the leases secured by the group of independent oil operators to which I belong and which he represents here ...
— The Radio Boys on the Mexican Border • Gerald Breckenridge

... that door we halted with a jerk. Ward was lounging in a big chair with a pillow behind his shoulder, and over by the open window where the sun danced along the casement was Cynthia Carper setting a sheaf of roses ...
— Dwellers in the Hills • Melville Davisson Post

... said Santa Klaus as he dusted the remains of soot and plaster off his brown cloak. "I should have remembered my experience with your great-aunt, but I knew how much you wanted that paint-box," and he slipped into Marianne's stocking a japanned box with a whole sheaf of ...
— Soap-Bubble Stories - For Children • Fanny Barry

... Present of them to Apollo, who received them very graciously, and resolved to make the Author a suitable Return for the Trouble he had been at in collecting them. In order to this, he set before him a Sack of Wheat, as it had been just threshed out of the Sheaf. He then bid him pick out the Chaff from among the Corn, and lay it aside by it self. The Critick applied himself to the Task with great Industry and Pleasure, and after having made the due Separation, was presented by Apollo with the Chaff for his ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele

... See, they know you"; and, indeed, many a man in that gallant array waved his hand to me merrily, as they filed past under their banners—the Douglas's bloody heart, the Crescent moon of Harden, the Napier's sheaf of spears, the blazons of Lindsays and Leslies, Homes, and Hepburns, and Stuarts. It was a sight to put life into the dying breast of a Scot in a strange country, and all were strong men and young, ruddy and brown ...
— A Monk of Fife • Andrew Lang

... about the footways. The dawn had risen in the white sheaf of light at the end of the Rue Rambuteau; and the sun, now level with the house-tops, was diffusing rosy rays which already fell in warm patches on the pavements. Claude was conscious of a gay awakening in the ...
— The Fat and the Thin • Emile Zola

... voice hailed me, in unmistakable German, from a distance of about fifty yards: "Was machen sie da?" ("What are you doing there?"). Any doubts as to which country I was in were rudely dispelled. For a moment I was completely at a loss for an answer, then, bending down, I seized the loose sheaf (which was to have acted as a door to my palace) and placed it against the others, and, turning round, replied in low German, "I am only replacing these, which have ...
— 'Brother Bosch', an Airman's Escape from Germany • Gerald Featherstone Knight

... of good seed that finds his harvest sheaf so quickly as you have done. Perhaps the Great Husbandman has given my Jessie hers to encourage her to sow, and sow, and sow again—but Jessie, I have found ...
— Jessie Carlton - The Story of a Girl who Fought with Little Impulse, the - Wizard, and Conquered Him • Francis Forrester

... a sheaf of correspondence in which I am asked to give my opinion as to our prospects of victory in the near future. I have one formula for reply. I refer my correspondents to a recurrent paragraph in The Times under the heading "News in Brief." It runs as follows: "At the close of play yesterday ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Dec. 5, 1917 • Various

... gossamer veils of blue and red. Yet he did know quite distinctly which were men and which were women, and he knew that it was a marriage scene. The bride wore a wreath of flowers; the bridegroom carried a sheaf or garland of fruit or grain, which seemed to be a part of the ceremony. Caius thought he was about to offer ...
— The Mermaid - A Love Tale • Lily Dougall

... often showed their inability. They collected under arms; but the moment their foe appeared, they fled within the castle walls, or buried themselves in deep obscurities amongst the surrounding hills. Not a sheaf in the fields of Northumberland did the Scots leave, to knead into bread for its earl; not a head of cattle to smoke upon his board. The country was sacked from sea to sea. But far different was its appearance from that of the trampled valleys of Scotland. There, fire had burned ...
— The Scottish Chiefs • Miss Jane Porter

... even, it seemed, a pause for breath. And she could see the Adventurer, quite unmoved, quite debonair, a curiously patient smile on his face, standing there, much nearer to her, his right hand in the side pocket of his coat, a somewhat significant habit of his, his left hand holding a sheaf of folded, ...
— The White Moll • Frank L. Packard

... where it collects in a pile. A man is placed on the part of the platform directly behind the horses, and with a rake of peculiar construction pushes off the grain in separate bunches, each bunch making a sheaf. It may appear to some that the grain will accumulate too rapidly for this man to perform his duty. But, upon considering the difference between the space occupied by the grain when standing, and when lying in a pile ...
— Obed Hussey - Who, of All Inventors, Made Bread Cheap • Various

... ready to do everything that he was told, and so he and the Farmer agreed well until the harvest came. But on a certain day when the reaping was over the Farmer said to him that he thought the corn was dry enough for putting in. The Ploughman tried a sheaf or two, and answered that it was not dry yet. But shortly after that day he said that it was now ready. "If it is," said the Farmer, "we'd ...
— Tales of Wonder Every Child Should Know • Various

... this task, the grain fell back upon a platform, and a farm hand, walking alongside, raked this off upon the ground. A number of human harvesters followed, picked up the bundles, and tied a few strips of grain around them, making the sheaf. The work was exceedingly wearying and particularly hard upon the women who were frequently impressed into service as farm-hands. About 1858 two farmers named Marsh, who lived near De Kalb, Illinois, solved this problem. They attached to their McCormick reaper a moving platform upon which the cut ...
— The Age of Big Business - Volume 39 in The Chronicles of America Series • Burton J. Hendrick

... loved flowers almost as though they were children. She writes: "I bore on this June day a sheaf of the white columbine,—one single sheaf, one single root; but it was almost more than I could carry. In the open spaces, I carried it on my shoulder; in the thickets, I bore it carefully in my arms, like a baby.... ...
— Lives of Girls Who Became Famous • Sarah Knowles Bolton

... of all the social virtues and courtesies of which the nation, or indeed the universe, could boast, was like the flash of an expiring candle to Lyon. He had little to do with first families North or South; his mission was to the people. His practical mind gathered in, sheaf after sheaf, a whole harvest of political facts. He saw that the government of the United States, originally intended to be administered by the people, had been for years in the power of the minority. Against this perversion of the purpose of the founders of the republic, ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I., No. IV., April, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various

... learning that Ellen was to become the adopted child of the house. For a while her words of displeasure were poured forth in a torrent; Mr. Van Brunt meantime saying very little, and standing by like a steadfast rock that the waves dash past, not upon. She declared this was "the cap-sheaf of Miss Humphreys' doings; she might have been wise enough to have expected as much; she wouldn't have been such a fool if she had! This was what she had let Ellen go there for! a pretty return!" But she went on. "She wondered ...
— The Wide, Wide World • Elizabeth Wetherell

... merely mounted on thin horse pads, and it is very hard to grip the horse with the knees tightly enough to keep from being upset ignominiously while wielding the spear. The best use for the cavalry perhaps is for the riders to take a sheaf of javelins, ride up and discharge them at the foe as skirmishers, then fall back behind the hoplites; though after the battle the horsemen will have plenty to do in ...
— A Day In Old Athens • William Stearns Davis

... subject to interruption, and there they gathered as the hour waxed late. The cards were duly dealt, the draw was on, when suddenly the door opened and old Mr. Whitmel, his favorite meerschaum in his hand and a sheaf of newly arrived journals, entered with the evident intention of a prolonged stay. A "standpatter" seemed hardly so assured as before he encountered the dim, surprised gaze, but the old clergyman was esteemed a good sort, and he ventured on ...
— The Lost Guidon - 1911 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)

... disorganized, beyond remedy, the events of a whole year. Judging from such fragments as reach us, it must have been a momentous epoch in our history. From the beginning, a handsome, stalwart, blue-eyed man, with a great beard like a sheaf of straw, shoulders upon the scene, and thenceforth becomes inextricably mixed up with dark-eyed Helen. We recognize in him an old acquaintance; he was on the lateen-sailed boat that went up the Nile; it was he who swung himself from the ...
— Idolatry - A Romance • Julian Hawthorne

... the bootmaker came, saw and measured, while Jack sat in the background, with a sheaf of plates of men's clothing in his lap, and gave directions. Jerry must have felt a great deal like a fool during the operation for I'm sure he looked one. But Ballard had his way and not until night did he leave us to ...
— Paradise Garden - The Satirical Narrative of a Great Experiment • George Gibbs

... into an adjoining room, and soon returned with a sheaf of rusty notes, clearing his throat awhile with the sound of a trumpeter calling to ...
— St. Cuthbert's • Robert E. Knowles

... himself incapable of even the most petty routine work. He sat to his desk at eight o'clock and began the perusal of a sheaf of letters, comprising a certain correspondence, which Collins brought him. The first three he read carefully; the following two rather hurriedly; of the next one he seized only the salient and essential points; the seventh and eighth he skimmed; the remainder of the bundle he thrust ...
— The Blazed Trail • Stewart Edward White

... talk with his family every evening, when he is away from home. Instead of the solitary telephone of Cleveland-Harrison days, the White House has now a branch exchange of its own—Main 6—with a sheaf of wires that branch out into every room as well as to the ...
— The History of the Telephone • Herbert N. Casson

... her hand into the top of Minnie Peter's package. She drew out a heavy folded document and followed it with others. "There! that's the abstract; and here are the leases, and here is the insurance." She threw out a sheaf of policies; the one on top was for ten thousand dollars. "I didn't know just what you would need; I brought everything connected with the whole building—here's the receipt for last year's taxes. Now, I want you to put a mortgage on it right away. ...
— With the Procession • Henry B. Fuller

... one of the Spaniard's bow guns, and the shot went wide. Then another and another, while the men fidgeted about, looking at the priming of their muskets, and loosened arrows in the sheaf. ...
— The Junior Classics • Various

... his knee, rested his hands lightly on the two short, upraised handholds. Satisfied at length with his preparations, he finally drew the scythe back with a sweeping motion of both arms and curved it forward close to the ground. It embraced a sudden island lovingly and a sheaf of grass swooned into a heap. I was reminded of old woodcuts in a history ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore

... labourers, their womenfolk and children, had gathered together, and Annie, with a select party of friends, took her place in the forefront of the crowd. A very old labourer who bore the splendid name of Melchisedec Baragwaneth, went from sheaf to sheaf, picking out a handful of the most heavily-bearded ears, which, though they are apt to grind the worst, still make the bravest show. He was stiff with his great age and the cruel rheumatism that is the doom of the field-worker; and ...
— Secret Bread • F. Tennyson Jesse

... those two animals and of the growing Corn for the good of mankind runs parallel with the drama of the sky, as it affects not only the said constellations but also Virgo (the Earth-mother who bears the sheaf of corn in ...
— Pagan & Christian Creeds - Their Origin and Meaning • Edward Carpenter

... master's hand requires, Shakes off the dust, and makes these rocks resound; For fortune placed me in unfertile ground, Far from the joys that with my soul agree, From wit, from learning—far, oh far from thee! 80 Here moss-grown trees expand the smallest leaf, Here half an acre's corn is half a sheaf; Here hills with naked heads the tempest meet, Rocks at their side, and torrents at their feet, Or lazy lakes, unconscious of a flood, Whose dull brown Naiads ever ...
— Poetical Works of Johnson, Parnell, Gray, and Smollett - With Memoirs, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Samuel Johnson, Thomas Parnell, Thomas Gray, and Tobias Smollett

... and not only getting tit for tat; but every young man promising his sweetheart a gold chain, and his mother at least a shilling. And here was our own mow-yard, better filled than we could remember, and perhaps every sheaf in it destined to be burned or stolen, before we had finished the ...
— Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor • R. D. Blackmore

... ambushes upon either side, and it was certain that it would soon dissolve again into open war. Money must be raised, and it was no light matter to raise it, now that the Commons had once already voted the tenth lamb and the tenth sheaf. Besides, the Black Death had ruined the country, the arable land was all turned to pasture, the laborer, laughing at statutes, would not work under fourpence a day, and all society was chaos. In addition, the Scotch were growling over ...
— Sir Nigel • Arthur Conan Doyle



Words linked to "Sheaf" :   bundle, fagot, swag, bale, parcel, package



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