"Swath" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... While rain discolors the vines and makes them unattractive in appearance, the hay remains more palatable and nutritious than good timothy, if the leaves are not lost in curing. When the first pods turn yellow, the crop should be harvested. The vines can be left in the swath until the top leaves begin to burn and then be put into windrows with a sulky hay-rake. The windrows should be small, the rake merely serving to invert half the vines upon the other half, bringing new surface to the sun. After another day of curing, the windrows should ...
— Crops and Methods for Soil Improvement • Alva Agee
... envy and the dart of love, Avarice' talons, and the fire of hate, Would poison, wound, distract, and soon consume The heart, the liver, life, and mind of man. The sturdy mower, that with brawny arms Wieldeth the crooked scythe, in many a swath Cutting the flowery pride on velvet plain, Lies down at night, and in the weird[316] folds Of his wife's arms forgets his labour past. The painful mariner and careful smith, The toiling ploughman, all artificers, Most humbly yield to my dominion: Without due ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. IX • Various
... breath, that is more miserable. Thou art a Slaue, whom Fortunes tender arme With fauour neuer claspt: but bred a Dogge. Had'st thou like vs from our first swath proceeded, The sweet degrees that this breefe world affords, To such as may the passiue drugges of it Freely command'st: thou would'st haue plung'd thy self In generall Riot, melted downe thy youth In different beds of Lust, and neuer learn'd ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... any flowers. They nodded, wiped their mouths, and proceeded to take themselves off by the side of the bungalow. They smote the poppy field beneath my windows, spread out fan-shaped six wide, picking with both hands, and ripped a swath of destruction through the very heart of the field. No cyclone travelled faster or destroyed more completely. I shouted after them, but they sped on the wings of the wind, great regal poppies, broken-stalked and mangled, trailing after them or cluttering their wake—the most high-handed act ...
— Revolution and Other Essays • Jack London
... been thrown into the utmost confusion, those men in the immediate vicinity of the gap, on either side of it, having halted in dismay, while the right and left wings had continued to advance; and in the midst of the gap could be seen a long swath of prostrate men, the most of whom were lying horribly and unnaturally still. It was pitiable to see those men, many of them scarcely out of their boyhood, led forth to die in support of grinding, ...
— The Cruise of the Thetis - A Tale of the Cuban Insurrection • Harry Collingwood
... I will name, as he not only took a big swath in the evening's entertainment, but he was a man more generally known than our worthy President, James K. Polk. That man was the famous Captain Riley, whose "Narrative" of suffering and adventures is pretty generally known all over the civilized ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume IV. (of X.) • Various
... line of charging figures. As the beams paused for a moment, the charge would take effect and a ball of fire would mushroom skyward, leaving a dozen seared cat bodies on the ground. Terrence swept his machine gun along in a swath behind the Bannings, picking off what they left. Some dozen catmen made it to within ten yards of their front but sprawled still or lay kicking briefly until a Greenback put ...
— Narakan Rifles, About Face! • Jan Smith
... not long out of sight of land and water, but long enough to make one wish to fly over the channel again, the next time at ten thousand feet, when it was a gleaming swath hidden at times by ...
— My Second Year of the War • Frederick Palmer
... is lost!" I said to myself in despair. Then a thought came to me. I had never been habited in a corset in my life on account of a prejudice entertained to that garment by my Nannette, but I bethought me to remove that shirt and also the silk one underneath and swath about me one of the heavy towels of the bath. Immediately I did so and fastened it in place with a needle and thread from the gentleman's traveling case that I found in the pocket of my bag. Over it I then drew the silk undershirt and then that of fine linen, before again putting myself ...
— The Daredevil • Maria Thompson Daviess
... seeks abroad may find Thee sitting careless on a granary floor, Thy hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind; Or on a half-reap'd furrow sound asleep, Drows'd with the fume of poppies, while thy hook Spares the next swath and all its twined flowers: And sometimes like a gleaner thou dost keep Steady thy laden head across a brook; Or by a cyder-press, with patient look, Thou watchest the last oozings hours ...
— The Hundred Best English Poems • Various
... softly down the path. Her soul was listless; even the morning breeze Fluttering the trees and strewing a light swath Of fallen petals on the grass, could please Her not at all. She brushed a hair aside With a swift move, and a half-angry frown. She stopped to pull a daffodil or two, And held them to her gown To test the colours; put them at her side, Then at her breast, ...
— Men, Women and Ghosts • Amy Lowell
... a long vacation, too. I think, on the very day after I wrote my last letter to you, as I was whetting my scythe for the last swath of the season, my hat half fell off, and suddenly raising my hand to catch it, I thrust it against the scythe and cut my thumb just upon the joint. It has healed, but I shall never find it quite as agile as formerly. I could not use the hand—my right ...
— Early Letters of George Wm. Curtis • G. W. Curtis, ed. George Willis Cooke
... of the neighborhood for years that the alley would have to go in the Elm Street widening which was to cut a swath through the block, right over the site upon which it stood; and at last notice was given about Christmas time that the wreckers were coming. The alley was sold,—thirty dollars was all it brought,—and the old tenants moved away, and were scattered to the four winds. Barney alone stayed. ...
— The Battle with the Slum • Jacob A. Riis
... host, With his routed Turks, takes flight From the battle fought and lost On the day of Pentecost; Leaving behind him dead The army of Amurath, The vanguard as it led, The rearguard as it fled, Mown down in the bloody swath ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... ball-turret and swung the twin 15-mm.'s around, cutting loose. Quong brought the car in fast, at about shoulder-height on the mob. Between them, they left a swath of mangled, killed, wounded, and stunned natives. Then, spinning the car around, Quong set it down hard on a clump of rioters as close as possible to the struggling group around the two Terrans. Von Schlichten threw back the canopy and jumped out of the car, ...
— Ullr Uprising • Henry Beam Piper
... voice that made her heart stand still, as she crossed the road, walking sadly homewards. At the same time two hands stretched out of the dense shadow into the lane of moonlight that shone down an alley way she was passing and that cut a dazzling swath in the blackness made still blacker by the surrounding brilliancy. "I've been wondering if you ever would finish ...
— The Workingman's Paradise - An Australian Labour Novel • John Miller
... away which in the swath clouts is cast aside, and lyttle care can the mother have which can suffer such crueltie: and can it be tearmed with any other title then cruelty, the infant yet looking redde of the mother, the mother yet breathing through the torments of hir travaile, ...
— The English Novel in the Time of Shakespeare • J. J. Jusserand
... holds its moisture down so that every inch of it is forever green; and somehow men thrive as the lawns do—the most excellent of all races for progenitors. You and I[33] can never be thankful enough that our ancestors came of this stock. Even those that have stayed have cut a wide swath, and they wield good scythes yet. But I have moods when I pity them—for their dependence, for instance, on a navy (2 keels to 1) for their very bread and meat. They frantically resent conveniences. They build their great law court building (the architecture ecclesiastical) so as to ...
— The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page, Volume I • Burton J. Hendrick
... at Fonda's that young Philip Cross was cutting a great swath, socially, in the Valley, and that he was building a grand mansion, fully as large as Johnson Hall, nearly at the summit of the eminence which crowned his patent. Major Fonda was, indeed, contracting to furnish the bricks for what he called the "shimlies," and the house was, by ...
— In the Valley • Harold Frederic
... of trees sometimes thrown down by a hurricane, often over a swath not more than two hundred yards wide. Where men did not exist to clear them away they were numerous in Kentucky, accumulating for uncounted years. But it was more than an hour before they came upon one of these heaps of tree trunks thrown ...
— The Keepers of the Trail - A Story of the Great Woods • Joseph A. Altsheler
... the tub, the shadows of the air-bubbles clinging to the hairs were reproduced as strange jungle mosses. He patted the water, and the reflected light capsized and leaped and volleyed. He was content and childish. He played. He shaved a swath down the calf ...
— Babbitt • Sinclair Lewis
... the job, and plowed her out, leaving exposed the wet, marshy surface of the creek-bottom, on which at night a thin crust formed. Across the marsh the old tramped road held up the horses, and the plow swept clear a little wider swath. ...
— The Blazed Trail • Stewart Edward White
... crop of clover was cut down on the 25th of June, 1866, and carried on June 30th. The weather was very warm, from the time of cutting until the clover was carted, the thermometer standing at 80 Fahr. every day. The clover was turned in the swath, on the second day after it was cut; on the fourth day, it was turned over and put into small heaps of about 10 lbs. each; and on the fifth day, these were collected into ...
— Talks on Manures • Joseph Harris
... who had joined us a few moments before, "the Doctor takes a wide range, or, as the farmers say, carries a wide swath, and has some notions of things which in my view have as little foundation in true philosophy as they have warrant in Scripture; but, if he sometimes speculates falsely, he lives truly, which is by far the most important matter. The mere dead letter of a creed, however carefully preserved ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... for Oldfield, when she dispensed the same virtue to those around her. Towards none did she show it more sweetly than to that disreputable fraud and alleged man of genius, Richard Savage. In his own feverish day Dick Savage cut a literary swath more wide than enviable, but when he is viewed from the unsympathetic light of the present he seems merely a clever vagabond. Yet Dr. Johnson, who could be so stern towards some of his contemporaries, condescended to love ...
— The Palmy Days of Nance Oldfield • Edward Robins
... I can see, the suggestion was entirely irrelevant to the gathering, for what could it matter to the mower what sort of hands the woman had who gathered his swath. But then Miss Elspeth had, if not very pretty, at least very small hands, and smallness was the only merit she knew of in ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald
... not a source of pleasure to the son, and does not concern us; the cheque made five pounds payable to the order of Richard Beaumont Carteret, known to many men in San Lorenzo county, and some women, as Dick. Time was when Mr. Carteret cut what is called a wide swath, when indeed he was kowtowed to as Lord Carteret, who drove tandem, shot pigeons, and played all the games, including poker and faro. But the ten thousand pounds he inherited from his mother lasted only five years, and when the last penny was spent Dick wrote to his father ...
— Bunch Grass - A Chronicle of Life on a Cattle Ranch • Horace Annesley Vachell
... As soon as she saw the food the delighted Sarah kicked up her heels and, flourishing her head in such a manner that it seemed to comprehend everything in its wide swath, ran into the cow-yard, where Nannie skillfully lassoed her and tied her to the fence just as she plunged ...
— The Gentle Art of Cooking Wives • Elizabeth Strong Worthington
... there lacks work; anon he's there afoot, And there they fly or die, like scaled sculls Before the belching whale; then is he yonder, And there the strawy Greeks, ripe for his edge, Fall down before him like the mower's swath. Here, there, and everywhere, he leaves and takes; Dexterity so obeying appetite That what he will he does, and does so much ...
— The History of Troilus and Cressida • William Shakespeare [Craig edition]
... parallel columns the army of invasion and destruction moved through the fertile land, cutting a swath of desolation forty miles wide, and crippling the Confederacy by dissipating its most cherished resources. For fully a month the army was practically lost, so far as communication with the North ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 2 of 8 • Various
... as the sun rose, he easily traced a blackened swath cut from the fifth hill up to the eastward wall of the imperial grounds; and, in proof of the fury of the gale, the terraces of the garden were covered inches deep with ashes and scoriac-looking flakes of what at sunset had been happy ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 2 • Lew. Wallace
... to awe she approached the windfall where a cyclone years before had levelled a wide swath through the heavy growth. Giant trunks and branches, resisting decay, littered the floor of the lane and formed a barrier impenetrable to those inhabitants of the jungle confined to a life on the ground. Second growth sprouts had pushed their way through the tangled, twisted debris and ...
— The Black Phantom • Leo Edward Miller
... the Persian front advanced, And Sohrab arm'd in Haman's tent, and came. And as afield the reapers cut a swath Down through the middle of a rich man's corn, And on each side are squares of standing corn, 295 And in the midst a stubble, short and bare— So on each side were squares of men, with spears Bristling, and in the midst, the open sand. And Rustum came upon the sand, and cast ...
— Matthew Arnold's Sohrab and Rustum and Other Poems • Matthew Arnold
... swath shall flourish and back come Baldr; With him Hoder shall dwell in Hropter's palace, Shrines of gods the great and holy, There the just shall joy forever, And ...
— Oriental Religions and Christianity • Frank F. Ellinwood
... Da, there's people that call him good-lookin' with that heavy jowl of his and the hair on him growin' the wrong way on his head, and them black eyes of his the color of the dirt in the road. They do say he's just got a bunch of money from the old country, and he's cuttin' a wide swath with it. If I'd kept me mouth shut he'd have gone on to Brandon and never knowed a word about there being a purty young thing near. But I watched him hitchin' up, and didn't he drive right over there; and I tell you, Da, he ...
— The Black Creek Stopping-House • Nellie McClung
... emanated Correy suddenly, his enthusiasm making the vibrations from the menore fairly hammer into my brain. "I'll cut a long, narrow swath with one of the portable disintegrator rays; long enough to take him far away from the Kabit, and just wide enough to pass a man. I'll run along this deep groove, just below the reach of the monster. I can ...
— The Terror from the Depths • Sewell Peaslee Wright
... modes of curing clover, the following, among others, is adopted by many successful farmers: What is mown in the morning is left in the swath, to be turned over early in the afternoon. At about four o'clock, or while it is still warm, it is put into small cocks with a fork, and, if the weather is favorable, it may be housed on the fourth or fifth day, the cocks being turned over on the morning of the day in which it is to be ...
— Cattle and Their Diseases • Robert Jennings
... volleys; the actual steel was not heard until it neared like a rain torrent; indeed it found their immediate lines before they heard the murderous cutting of the air. The Austrian gunners were placed for enfilading, so that a fraction of point gave them impaling force and a wide swath in the ranks. ...
— Red Fleece • Will Levington Comfort
... a flashing, vivid personality, full of resource and high courage, and always meeting hard knocks and buffets with equanimity. Lola Montez had lived every moment of her life. In the course of their career, few women could have cut a wider swath, or one more colourful and glamorous. She had beauty and intelligence much above the average. All the world had been her stage; and she had played many parts on it. Some of them she had played better than others; but all of them she had played ...
— The Magnificent Montez - From Courtesan to Convert • Horace Wyndham
... several of his pets were mere straw men, and dashed violently and madly into and through Punk's interference, and downed him on the 15-yard line; how the spectators looked on in silent amazement at this unexpected beginning; how promptly Tug's men were lined up, a broad swath completely opened with one quick gash in Clayton's line, and the ball shoved through and within five yards of the goal-posts, almost before Clayton knew it was in play; how Clayton called his men to one side, and rebuked them, and told them just what to do, ...
— The Dozen from Lakerim • Rupert Hughes
... were shown, swaying as they walked along, each one cutting his "swath," or path, through the standing grain. Mr. Sneed was one of these. Then the view changed, so as to show Miss Pennington, dressed as a country lass, coming along with a jug on her shoulder, and a ...
— The Moving Picture Girls at Oak Farm - or, Queer Happenings While Taking Rural Plays • Laura Lee Hope
... "Wealthy Citizens of New York," edited in 1845 by Moses Y. Beach, an early owner in part of The New York Sun, the Hoffman family is thus described: "Few families, for so few a number of persons as compose it, have cut 'a larger swath' or 'bigger figure' in the way of posts and preferment. Talent, and also public service rendered, martial gallantry, poetry, judicial acumen, oratory, all have their lustre mingled with this name." I regard this ...
— As I Remember - Recollections of American Society during the Nineteenth Century • Marian Gouverneur
... to see his place down at Red Wing. Damned if he ain't better fixed up than lots of white men in the county. He's got a good house, and a terbacker-barn, and a church, and a nigger school-house, and stock, and one of the finest crops of terbacker in the county. Oh, I tell you, he's cutting a wide swath, he is." "You don't tell me," said the chairman with interest. "I am glad to hear it. There appears to be good stuff in the fellow. He seems to have his own ...
— Bricks Without Straw • Albion W. Tourgee
... to its wonted silence, lighted now only by the moon and stars. He was weary, but he had an immense feeling of satisfaction and he sat a while, looking at the fire, which soon sank out of sight behind the horizon, although its pathway, the broad swath that it had cut, still ...
— The Eyes of the Woods - A story of the Ancient Wilderness • Joseph A. Altsheler
... he was occasionally intrusted with the task of driving the reaper or the mower—and generally forgot to oil the bearings. His absent-mindedness was a source of laughter among his sons and sons-in-law. I've heard Frank say: "Dad would stop in the midst of a swath to announce the end of the world." He seldom remembered to put on a hat even in the blazing sun of July and his daughters had to keep an eye on him to be sure he had ...
— A Son of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... the course of the bear was marked by a swath of broken brush. It dashed headlong through the forest regardless of obstruction. Small trees in his way meant nothing to him; he ran over them, or if old and brittle, smashed them down. Into the densest portion of the woods he made his way. Not more ...
— Hunting with the Bow and Arrow • Saxton Pope
... 'Twould be a dog-in-the-manger trick in me to blame you for loving her. And since you speak of debts, I do protest I owe you somewhat, too. With so fair a chance to cut a clean swath in that fair-weather month at Appleby Hundred, another man would have left me scant gleanings in the ...
— The Master of Appleby • Francis Lynde
... his name as author. There was rapt attention and naught else in his pose and on his face the while the Rev. Wickliffe, swinging his scythe of righteousness, mowed for a solid hour in Satan's weedy back yard, so that the penitents fell in a broad swath. ...
— Sundry Accounts • Irvin S. Cobb
... wide and twelve feet high; topped by a four-foot-high bubble canopy over her cab. All the way across her nose was a three-foot-wide luminescent strip. This was the variable beam headlight that could cut a day-bright swath of light through night, fog, rain or snow and could be varied in intensity, width and elevation. Immediately above the headlight strip were two red-black plastic panels which when lighted, sent out a flashing red emergency signal that could be seen ...
— Code Three • Rick Raphael
... the steady voice of Miss Cramp. She bowled over one pupil with "microcosm," another the next minute with "metonymy "; "nymphean" and "naphtha" sent two more to their seats; while the silent "m" in "mnemonics" cut a most fearful swath in the remainder, so that after the smoke of that bomb was dissipated only Julia, Ruth, and two others stood ...
— Ruth Fielding of the Red Mill • Alice B. Emerson
... was busy in front of his homestead putting together a new binder which had just arrived from the settlement. It was the latest type of harvesting implement and designed to cut an unusually broad swath. While he was engaged, the trooper he had met when accompanying Jernyngham rode up with a corporal following. He stopped his horse and glanced at ...
— Prescott of Saskatchewan • Harold Bindloss
... they passed through the very forest in which Ned had made his singular rescue of Obed and the Ring Tailed Panther. They saw the camp and they saw the swath made by the fire, a narrow belt, five or six miles in length, ending as the Ring Tailed Panther had predicted at a curve of the creek. The Mexicans, as they now knew definitely, were gone ...
— The Texan Star - The Story of a Great Fight for Liberty • Joseph A. Altsheler
... story takes some time, but the moments in which the horrible scene was enacted were few. Then came the tornado of water, leaping and rushing with tremendous force. The waves had angry crests of white and their roar was something deafening. In one terrible swath they caught the four trains and lifted three of them right off the track, as if they were only a cork. There they floated in the river. Think of it, three large locomotives and finely varnished Pullmans floating around, and above all the hundreds of poor unfortunates ...
— The Johnstown Horror • James Herbert Walker
... proceeding from the good spirits of our Earth, and the gentleness and sweetness of the influx from the spirits of Jupiter. They said that when any slight disagreement arises among them, there appears as it were a thin dazzling white ray of light, like that of ordinary lightning or like the little swath which encompasses glittering and wandering stars; but the disagreement among them is soon adjusted. Glittering stars, which are at the same time wandering signify what is false; but glittering and fixed stars signify what is true; thus ...
— Earths In Our Solar System Which Are Called Planets, and Earths In The Starry Heaven Their Inhabitants, And The Spirits And Angels There • Emanuel Swedenborg
... loved sweet corn and he ate until his round, furry sides were distended and he could hold no more. Then he ran up and down through the rustling field, bearing down great quantities, merely sampling their sweetness and leaving behind a wide swath of ruin. ...
— Followers of the Trail • Zoe Meyer
... himself. I know 'm. He was the most energetic man I ever saw, think quick as a wink, as cool as an icicle an' as wild as a Comanche. Why, he'd a-cut a swath through the free an' easy big business gamblers an' pirates of them days; just as he cut a swath through the hearts of the ladies when he went gallopin' past on that big horse of his, sword clatterin', spurs jinglin', his long ...
— The Valley of the Moon • Jack London
... believe so implicitly in our own preaching. Why, Al, this work we've begun here has got to go on! It must go on! There mustn't be any collapse or failure. When the hard times come, we must be prepared to go right on through, cutting a little narrower swath, but cutting all the same. Stand by the guns with me, and, in spite of all, we'll win, and save ...
— Aladdin & Co. - A Romance of Yankee Magic • Herbert Quick
... Church steeples fell, crushing beneath their weight the buildings over which they had stood guard. Wrenching warehouses to fragments the tornado passed to the river front, leaving a broad swath of wreckage and dead bodies. The belt of destruction extended from the west side of Seventh Street as far as Ninth and Main Streets, and an equal width across to the point where the city was first touched. Along this path were demolished homes and wrecked business houses—the annihilated work ...
— The True Story of Our National Calamity of Flood, Fire and Tornado • Logan Marshall
... bonitas, numbering many thousands, stayed with us day and night for more than three weeks. Aided by the Snark, it was great hunting; for they cut a swath of destruction through the ocean half a mile wide and fifteen hundred miles in length. They ranged along abreast of the Snark on either side, pouncing upon the flying- fish her forefoot scared up. Since they were continually pursuing astern the flying-fish that survived ...
— The Cruise of the Snark • Jack London
... congratulate you on your splendid success, and shall very soon expect to hear of the crowning work of your campaign—the capture of Savannah. Your march will stand out prominently as the great one of this great war. When Savannah falls, then for another wide swath through the centre of the Confederacy. But I will not anticipate. General Grant is expected here this morning, and will probably write you his ...
— The Memoirs of General W. T. Sherman, Complete • William T. Sherman
... proboscis unfolds again, the makes another sweep, and again the whole is withdrawn; and this proceeds with great regularity. I can compare the action to nothing so well as to the manner in which the tongue of an ox licks up the grass of the field, or to the action of the mower cutting swath ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 47, September, 1861 • Various
... Eve the Night-Hag will ride, And all her nine-fold sweeping on by her side, Whether the wind sing lowly or loud, Sailing through moonshine or swath'd in the cloud. ...
— Waverley, Or 'Tis Sixty Years Hence, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... early in September, as soon as a field was drained the negroes would be turned in with sickles, each laborer cutting a swath of three or four rows, leaving the stubble about a foot high to sustain the cut stalks carefully laid upon it in handfuls for a day's drying. Next day the crop would be bound in sheaves and stacked for a brief curing. When ...
— American Negro Slavery - A Survey of the Supply, Employment and Control of Negro Labor as Determined by the Plantation Regime • Ulrich Bonnell Phillips
... Chip spread his men to the right and left of the trail, so that in moving forward a wide swath of country ...
— Jim Cummings • Frank Pinkerton
... your old man is planted, and that you might have some natural delicacy and wish to refrain from giving him a jar. But come down for an hour and let me talk to you, anyway. The new statesman from Leith is cutting a wide swath. Not a day passes but his voice is heard roaring in the Forum; he has visited all the State institutions, dined and wined the governor and his staff and all the ex-governors he can lay his hands on, and he has that hard-headed ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... alternated between soft languors and isolated scenes of squalor, which followed a mechanist's reconnaissance of the imagery of Uranus, the legend of whose incognito related to a poniard wound in the abdomen received while cutting a swath in the interests of telegraphy and posthumous photography. Meantime an unctuous orthoepist applied a homeopathic restorative to the retina of an objurgatory spaniel (named Daniel) and tried to perfect the construction ...
— 1001 Questions and Answers on Orthography and Reading • B. A. Hathaway
... that Paul had Big Ole make the "Down-Cutter." This was a rig like a mowing machine. They drove around eight townships and cut a swath 500 ...
— The Marvelous Exploits of Paul Bunyan • W.B. Laughead
... graceful inquisitiveness over the blades, but the brisk little man pushed heartily and the mechanism revolved with a barely audible clicking. It did not balk, complain or hesitate. Cleanly severed ends of grass whirled into the air and floated down on the neat smooth swath left behind. Everyone smiled relievedly at the jimdandy's triumph and my sigh was loudest and most heartfelt. I edged away as ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore
... choral of praise to Him, unto whom "all seemed good"; but in the moral and spiritual realm evolved by humanity, what hideous pandemonium of discords drowns the heavenly harmony? What grim havoc marks the swath, when the dripping scythe of human sin and crime swings madly, where the lilies of eternal "Peace on earth, good will to man," should lift their silver chalices to meet ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... messenger his pace; He showed the sign, he named the place, And, pressing forward like the wind, Left clamor and surprise behind. The fisherman forsook the strand, The swarthy smith took dirk and brand; With changed cheer, the mower blithe Left in the half-cut swath his scythe; The herds without a keeper strayed, The plough was in mid-furrow staved, The falconer tossed his hawk away, The hunter left the stag at hay; Prompt at the signal of alarms, Each son of Alpine rushed to arms; So swept the tumult and affray Along the margin of Achray. Alas, thou ...
— The Lady of the Lake • Sir Walter Scott
... as it were, a swath mown in the deep pine forest—the labor of a poor ignorant being, who, like the parrot, can talk and palaver with simple unmeaningness, but ignorant of the world beyond a radius of ten miles. The ...
— History of the Eighty-sixth Regiment, Illinois Volunteer Infantry, during its term of service • John R. Kinnear
... Glace must be seen; so, at seven William, Georgy, H., and I, set off. When about half way or more up the mountain we crossed the track of the avalanches, a strip or trail, which looks from beneath like a mower's swath through a field of tall grass. It is a clean path, about fifty rods wide, without trees, with few rocks, smooth and steep, and with a bottom of ice covered ...
— Sunny Memories of Foreign Lands V2 • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... thickets had grown up on it, The wagon kept right at our heels, and many times had to wait. We cut a way through thickets, tore rotten logs to pieces, threw stumps aside, and moved windfalls. Brawny Nielsen seemed ten men in one! What a swath he hacked with his big axe! When I rested, which circumstance grew oftener and oftener, I had to watch Nielsen with his magnificent swing of the axe, or with his mighty heave on a log. Time and again ...
— Tales of lonely trails • Zane Grey
... her buried they The Amazons, even all that followed her To battle, and by Argive spears were slain. For Atreus' sons begrudged not these the boon Of tear-besprinkled graves, but let their friends, The warrior Trojans, draw their corpses forth, Yea, and their own slain also, from amidst The swath of darts o'er that grim harvest-field. Wrath strikes not at the dead: pitied are foes When life has fled, and left ...
— The Fall of Troy • Smyrnaeus Quintus
... usury" and "money marriages." To live beyond one's means leads to indebtedness. And there we have the simple genesis of the army usurer, so-called. He exists and thrives in every garrison in the empire, and the broad swath he mows within the ranks of the army testifies to his diligence and to his successful methods. It would be going too far to expatiate on this matter. Suffice it to say that the system by which the usurer brings hundreds, nay thousands, ...
— A Little Garrison - A Realistic Novel of German Army Life of To-day • Fritz von der Kyrburg
... the foaming swath Of torn-up water, on the main, Falls heavily away with long-drawn roar On either side the black deep-furrow'd path Cut by an onward-labouring vessel's prore, And never touches the ...
— Poetical Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold
... few months in Louisiana and southern Alabama, cutting a swath from New Orleans to Mobile, decided us to send eight hundred dollars of this reserve to the secretary of the Red Cross Society of New Orleans, which sum was forwarded by our vice-president, Mr. A. S. Solomons. This left a sum of two hundred dollars and some cents in the ...
— A Story of the Red Cross - Glimpses of Field Work • Clara Barton
... their ears and tried to break into a gallop, the noise of the machine behind them startling them as usual at first, but they soon settled down to a steady pace, and the steel arm bearing the shears swept a broad swath through the meadow, where the grass ...
— The Great Hunger • Johan Bojer
... yards in our rear, had passed the TORNADO—uprooting trees, prostrating dwellings, and sending many a soul to its last account, but sparing us for another day! For thirty miles through the forest it had mowed a swath of two hundred feet, then moved on to stir the ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. II. July, 1862. No. 1. • Various
... the book game one summer, and went out with about thirty others. Twenty-five of them quit at the end of the first week. That was about the usual proportion—but the rest of us stuck. I devastated a swath of territory fifty miles wide and a hundred miles long. I talked, argued, persuaded, plead, threatened and mesmerized. I sold books to men on twine binders, to women with their hands in the bread dough, and once, ...
— At Good Old Siwash • George Fitch
... mistresse, and discry In every line the quicknesse of her eye: Her smoothnesse in each syllable, her grace To marshall ev'ry word in the right place. It is the excellence and soule of wit, When ev'ry thing is free as well as fit: For metaphors packt up and crowded close Swath minds sweetnes, and display the throws, And, like those chickens hatcht in furnaces, Produce or one limbe more, or one limbe lesse Then nature bids. Survey such when they write, No clause but's justl'd with an epithite. So powerfully you draw when you perswade, ...
— Lucasta • Richard Lovelace
... forward bent to look, And grasp'd a flinty mass, or else had fall'n, Though push'd not from the height. The guide, who mark d How I did gaze attentive, thus began: "Within these ardours are the spirits, each Swath'd in confining fire."—"Master, thy word," I answer'd, "hath assur'd me; yet I deem'd Already of the truth, already wish'd To ask thee, who is in yon fire, that comes So parted at the summit, as it seem'd Ascending from that funeral pile, ...
— The Divine Comedy • Dante
... their gaze as they came out from under their quickly improvised tent and wandered about! The beautiful forests seemed about ruined. In one direction, like as though a great reaper had gone through a splendid meadow, and cut clean to the ground a great swath of grass, so had this cyclone gone through the forest. In the centre of its path, not a tree had been left standing. Every one had gone down before this irresistible force. Fortunately it had swerved a little to the right as it passed ...
— Three Boys in the Wild North Land • Egerton Ryerson Young
... o' that. Sic like a thing, to be lyin' wi' the common herd. Mind ye, ye're no' an or'nary man's coo—ye're a cooncillor's coo." Then he retraced his labyrinthian steps in a corresponding swath. ...
— St. Cuthbert's • Robert E. Knowles
... perhaps, of natural desire to know things. The stream was as pure and bright as ever, hastening down its gravel-path of fine granite just as usual, except that it had more volume and a stronger sense of freshness. Only the bent of the grasses and the swath of the pendulous twigs down stream remained to show that there must have been some ...
— Erema - My Father's Sin • R. D. Blackmore
... the midmorning Joe Pollard came to him and grunted at the swath Terry had driven into the heart ...
— Black Jack • Max Brand
... native heath—"'twere worth a thousand men." I pray you, dear friend, whose voice will reach and be heard, try to point out to the younger and later workers of the grand, old State the broad stubble swath of the scythe and the deep blazing of the sturdy axe of this glorious pioneer of theirs—the grandest of them all—whose sleeping dust is ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume IV • Various
... confined its fury to exceedingly narrow limits. All its prodigious force was spent in and directly along the stream. Twenty yards away, the forest was undisturbed, so that the elemental scythe had made a clean swath as it sped along. ...
— The Hunters of the Ozark • Edward S. Ellis
... o'clock on Sunday morning when he awoke. A broad swath of sunlight cut the room in half: the white muslin curtain at the window rippled outward like a flag. Aubrey exclaimed when he saw his watch. He had a sudden feeling of having been false to his trust. What had been happening across ...
— The Haunted Bookshop • Christopher Morley
... as we, or as strong? Ho! but we trample the shambas down! Saw ye a swath where the trash lay long And tall trees flat like a harvest mown? That was the path we shore in haste (Judge, is it easy to find, and wide!) Ripping the branch and bough to waste Like rocks shot loose from a mountain side! Therefore ...
— The Ivory Trail • Talbot Mundy
... their father had owned a mowing machine, but primitive methods prevailed on the frontier, and he had been compelled to use a scythe in his haying operations. Joel swung the blade like a veteran, scattering his swath to cure in the sun, and with whetstone on steel, beat a frequent tattoo. The raking into windrows and shocking at evening was an easy task for the brothers, no day passing but the cured store was added to, until sufficient ...
— Wells Brothers • Andy Adams
... born in him. To be sure he had been prepared to dislike sheep, and that was why he was unreasonable. But on the other hand this band of sheep had left a broad bare swath, weedless, grassless, flowerless, in their wake. Where sheep grazed they destroyed. That was what Jean ...
— To the Last Man • Zane Grey
... leaving the lawn-mower exactly where it was, in the middle of a swath. With an answering wave he crossed to the west room window and, with an ease which surprised his audience, drew his long slimness up the pillar of the porch and clambered over the railing into the ...
— The Window-Gazer • Isabel Ecclestone Mackay
... flash of light cut a swath across the road, dazzling them. Around the curve ahead, a car careened wide over the white line. His mother reached for him, his father fought the wheel to avoid the crash. Jimmy Holden both heard and felt the sharp Bang! as the right front tire went. The steering wheel ...
— The Fourth R • George Oliver Smith
... not necessary to have the lantern lit, for a broad band of sunshine shone down the steep ladder and cut a golden swath through the dingy gloom and fell athwart the chest and illuminated the group: the tall and swaggering Cales, the rugged, grizzled Pete, and the other sailormen; a typical group and not to be matched ...
— Frontier Boys on the Coast - or in the Pirate's Power • Capt. Wyn Roosevelt
... human harvest, Cutting a bloody swath, Woe to you, soldier of Briton! Death is abroad in his path. Flee from the scythe of the reaper, Flee while the moment is thine, None may with safety withstand him, Black ...
— The Complete Poems of Paul Laurence Dunbar • Paul Laurence Dunbar
... cannon ball. Dozens hung upon his arms, his shoulders, or flung themselves about his great legs. His huge body, slippery and reeking, was galvanized into energy incarnate. Sparks seemed to flash from his eyes. His breath turned to livid flame. Behind him, following in the swath which he cut, his supporters crowded, fought and yelled. Don Mario's forces gave way. They cursed, broke, and fled. Then Don Jorge, a man whose mortal strength was more than common, threw himself upon the steaming, frenzied Rosendo ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... broad, claret-bespotted swath in the snow, the party started trailing back. Yorke and George rode ahead. The latter glanced around to make sure of being out of earshot ...
— The Luck of the Mounted - A Tale of the Royal Northwest Mounted Police • Ralph S. Kendall
... gentlemen," he added, bridling with an air of mock gallantry and laying a hand on his heart, "if anythin' fu'thah is required in the way of a puffect encomium, we all know that there isn't anothah man among us who cuts as wide a swath among the ladies. The'foh, if you have any appreciation of virtue, any magnanimity of heaht; if you set a propah valuation upon the descendants of Virginia, that mothah of Presidents; if you believe in ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... uses two of them. With the one in his left hand he gathers in a good sweep of grain, bends it downward, and with the other strikes it close to the ground, as we cut Indian corn. With the left-hand hook and arm, he carries on the grain from the inside to the outside of the swath or "work," making three or four strokes with the cutting knife; then, at the end, gathers it all up and lays it down in a heap for binding. This operation is called "bagging." It does not do the work so neatly as the sickle, and is apt to pull up many stalks ...
— A Walk from London to John O'Groat's • Elihu Burritt
... doors were open. Nothing showed preparation for departure. The riddle was uncanny. At the third Jacqueline stated that she would go no farther. She hated to tramp down a man's field when the man himself was not about to express an opinion, and the ruthless swath made by her escort through the cane gave her shame. Besides, it was too much like wading, the way her skirts brushed the long leaves and knocked off glistening ...
— The Missourian • Eugene P. (Eugene Percy) Lyle
... Union colors, held aloft in front of the regiments, snapped defiantly in the wind. And those western riflemen, from their cover, never ceased to pour showers of bullets upon the Southern lines. They had already cut a swath of dead, and many wounded were dragging themselves ...
— The Scouts of Stonewall • Joseph A. Altsheler
... is now but one way open. Lord Winter answers for his regiment, or at least very nearly so—we will not split straws about words—let him place himself at the head of his men, we will place ourselves at the side of your majesty, and we will mow a swath through ...
— Twenty Years After • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... live what was not life, living is so dear; nor did I wish to practice resignation, unless it was quite necessary. I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life, to cut a broad swath and shave close, to drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms, and, if it proved to be mean, why then to get the whole and genuine meanness of it, and publish its meanness to the world; or if it were sublime, to know it by experience, and be able ...
— The American Mind - The E. T. Earl Lectures • Bliss Perry
... I called out my whole family to help at saving an after-growth of hay, and, our guest offering his assistance, he was accepted among the number. Our labours went on lightly, we turned the swath to the wind, I went foremost, and the rest followed in due succession. I could not avoid, however, observing the assiduity of Mr Burchell in assisting my daughter Sophia in her part of the task. When he had finished his own, he would join in her's, and enter into a close conversation: but ...
— The Vicar of Wakefield • Oliver Goldsmith
... going, however, the wind freshened into a gale, and the fires which had been eating leisurely way through the forest were blown into sudden fury. That same evening a hurricane of flame swept down upon the lonely cabin and the little wild meadow, cutting a mile-wide swath through the woods, jumping the Quah-Davic, and roaring on to the north. It was days before the woodsman could get back along the smoking, smouldering trail, through black, fallen trunks and dead roots which still held the persistent fire in their hearts. Of cabin and barn, of course, there ...
— The Watchers of the Trails - A Book of Animal Life • Charles G. D. Roberts
... word was exchanged for the next hour. At a long, steady gallop they swept along. There was no difficulty in following the track, for the long grass was trampled in a wide swath. Several times, too, exclamations of rage burst from the boys as they came across a dead sheep, evidently speared by the savages because he could not keep up with the others. After passing several of them, Mr. Hardy called to the boys to halt, while he leaped off his horse by the side of one ...
— On the Pampas • G. A. Henty
... here, bred six And a million years, Sure and strong, mate for mate, such Love as culture fears; I gave you clear the oil and wine; You saved me your hob and hearth— See how even life may be ere the Sickle comes and leaves a swath. ...
— The Book of American Negro Poetry • Edited by James Weldon Johnson
... continued to witness the good, old-fashioned way of mowing with the scythe; and Bert, accompanying Uncle Alec to the field, was filled with admiration for the stalwart "Rorys" and "Donalds" and "Sandys" as they strode along through the thick grass, cutting a wide swath before them. There was something in the work that appealed to the boy's bump of destructiveness, and filled him with ...
— Bert Lloyd's Boyhood - A Story from Nova Scotia • J. McDonald Oxley
... had invaded Kondal—a remnant that sought safety in flight. But even in flight, they still fought with all their weapons, and the streams of bombs dropped from their keel-batteries upon the country beneath marked the path of their retreat with a wide swath of destruction. Half inclined to let the few remaining vessels escape, Seaton's mind changed instantly as he saw the bombs spreading devastation upon the countryside, and not until the last of the Mardonalian vessels had been destroyed did he drop the Skylark into the area of ruins which had once ...
— The Skylark of Space • Edward Elmer Smith and Lee Hawkins Garby
... in the glaring spiral of a fresh scar two hand-breadths wide went the swath along which the bolt ...
— The Roof Tree • Charles Neville Buck
... openly a derider of spiritual things. For this attitude his early love passage had been chiefly accountable. That strife between duty and passion which had driven the woman he loved to religion had driven him in the other direction and left a broad swath of desolation in his soul. He had seen little of his brother since that evil time, and nothing whatever of his brother's son. Then John had written, "I am soon to be bound by the awful tie of the priesthood," and he had thought it necessary to do something for him. When John was announced ...
— The Christian - A Story • Hall Caine
... flutter over the nest, and to make a great clamour. When the men began to mow, they flew round and round, stooping so low, when near the men, as almost to touch their bodies, making a great chattering at the same time; but, before the men had got round with the second swath, they flew to the nest, and away they went, young ones and all, across the river, at the foot of the ground, and settled in the long grass in ...
— The Bed-Book of Happiness • Harold Begbie
... up from Orleans, whah he been cutten' a wide swath, if all folks told true, an' fust thing his eyes caught was that gal Retta, an' he up an' tole Mahs Tom what a fool he was not to sell her down in Orleans whah she'd fetch mo' money than would buy six nuss ...
— The Bondwoman • Marah Ellis Ryan
... dark glens and hollows so characteristic of other pine woods. Tens of thousands of acres occur in one continuous belt. Indeed, viewed comprehensively, the entire State seems to be pretty evenly divided into mountain ranges covered with nut pines and plains covered with sage—now a swath of pines stretching from north to south, now a swath of sage; the one black, the other gray; one severely level, the other sweeping on complacently over ridge and ...
— Steep Trails • John Muir
... "THE bloody swath of Swedes and Geats and the storm of their strife, were seen afar, how folk against folk the fight had wakened. The ancient king with his atheling band sought his citadel, sorrowing much: Ongentheow earl went up to his burg. He had tested Hygelac's hardihood, the proud one's ...
— Beowulf • Anonymous
... me when being clothed by Annette and Aunt Mary. True, Aunt Mary paused to sniff into her handkerchief every few minutes or to listen to Annette's French raptures as she laid upon me each foolish garment up unto the long swath of heathenish tulle she was beginning to arrange when an interruption occurred in the shape of Rufus, who put his head in the door and mysteriously summoned Polly, who had come in to exhibit her silk muslin frills, in which she was the incarnation of young ...
— The Golden Bird • Maria Thompson Daviess
... need and greed. There is not a working-man within the sound of my voice but has known this divine delight, and would gladly know it always if he only had the time. Well, now we had the time, the Evolution had given us the time, and in all Altruria there was not a furrow driven or a swath mown, not a hammer struck on house or on ship, not a stitch sewn or a stone laid, not a line written or a sheet printed, not a temple raised or an engine built, but it was done with an eye to beauty as well ...
— A Traveler from Altruria: Romance • W. D. Howells
... the spikes of the collar tore it, and with each drop, so did the tameness seem to ooze out from it also. With wild squeals and trumpetings it turned and charged viciously down the way it had come, scattering like straws the spearmen who tried to stop it, and mowing a great swath through the crowd with its monstrous progress. Many must have been trodden under foot, many killed by its murderous trunk, but only their cries came to us. The golden castle, with its canopy of royal snakes, was swayed and tossed, so that we two occupants ...
— The Lost Continent • C. J. Cutcliffe Hyne
... then merely a fort and huddle of houses. He made the most careful preparations for the expedition, and early in the spring, he commenced his march northward into the Indian country. The savages gathered to repulse him at a spot on the Maumee where, years before, a tornado had cut a wide swath through the forest, rendering it all but impenetrable. Here, on the twentieth of August, 1794, he advanced against the enemy, and, throwing his troops into the "Fallen Timbers," in which the Indians were ambushed, routed them out, cut them down, and administered a defeat so crushing ...
— American Men of Action • Burton E. Stevenson
... hour before. With exultant yells, their left comes sweeping on, wheeling to envelop our right. But now there bursts from the underbrush a blast as if from the pit, crashing, tearing, grinding, enfilading their lines, leaving in its track a swath of dead and dying. This is decisive, and the ...
— In The Ranks - From the Wilderness to Appomattox Court House • R. E. McBride
... unusual reports. In early UFO history someone had taken a very unusual colored photo of a "split cloud." The photographer had seen a huge ball of fire streak down through the sky and pass through a high layer of stratus clouds. As the fireball passed through the cloud it cut out a perfect swath. The conclusion was that the fireball was a meteor, but the case is still one of the most interesting in the file because of ...
— The Report on Unidentified Flying Objects • Edward Ruppelt
... rapidly and continues blooming till frosts set in, so that at harvest, which is usually set to occur just before this period, the grain is in various stages of ripeness. It is cut by hand or with the self-delivery reaper, and allowed to lie in the swath for a few days and then set up in shocks. The stalks are not tied into bundles as in the case of other grain crops, the tops of the shocks being bound round and held together by twisting stems round them. The threshing is done on the field in ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 3 - "Brescia" to "Bulgaria" • Various
... working for my father five years before I was born. He was not a strong man and had never been able to carry the wide swath of the other help in the fields, but we all loved him for his kindness and his knack of story-telling. He was a bachelor who came over the mountain from Pleasant Valley, a little bundle of clothes on his shoulder, and bringing a name that ...
— Eben Holden - A Tale of the North Country • Irving Bacheller |
