"Picket" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... from Cincinnati to the mouth of the Big Miami, opposite which we were to settle. Here was some cleared land, and one or two log cabins, but they had been deserted on account of the Indians. My father rebuilt the cabins, and inclosed them with a strong picket. It was early in the spring when we arrived at the mouth of the Big Miami, and we were soon engaged in preparing a field to plant corn. I think it was not more than ten days after our arrival, when my father told us in the morning, that, from the actions of the horses, he ...
— The Junior Classics • Various
... me there. Sergeant, post your picket outside, and see that these scoundrels do not communicate with any one. No letter writing, you dogs, or you'll be flogged for it. Now for the venison. (To PETER bowing before him.) Get out of the way, you fool! Who is that girl? ...
— Vera - or, The Nihilists • Oscar Wilde
... the heads of illustrious Romans and such—mayhap to reduce the swelling. We carved its roots into fingerrings and pipes. We gathered spruce-gum and sent it to our sweethearts in letters. We ascended every hill within our picket-lines and called ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce • Ambrose Bierce
... his watches to keep at sea and his picket boat to run in harbour, while his spare time was fully employed in mastering the subtleties of gunnery, torpedo work, and electricity, and in rubbing up his rapidly dwindling knowledge of engineering and x and y. It was well that he did so, ...
— Stand By! - Naval Sketches and Stories • Henry Taprell Dorling
... edifices, did we say? Their origin, their progress, their decay, nay, their demolition by the modern iconoclast—have they no teachings? How many phases in the art of the builder and engineer, from the high-peaked Norman cottage to the ponderous, drowsy Mansard roof—from Champlain's picket fort to the modern citadel of Quebec—from our primitive legislative meeting-house to our stately Parliament Buildings ...
— Picturesque Quebec • James MacPherson Le Moine
... he proceeded till he arrived at the picket fence that marked the commencement of Uncle Lot's ground. Here he stopped to consider. Just then four or five sheep walked up, and began also to consider a loose picket, which was hanging just ready to drop off; and James began to look at the ...
— The May Flower, and Miscellaneous Writings • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... States. In response to a request for guidance from the European commander, the Joint Chiefs of Staff informed all overseas commanders that as guests of Allied nations, U.S. servicemen had no right to picket, demonstrate, or otherwise participate in any act designed to "alter the policies, practices, or activities of the local inhabitants who are operating within the ...
— Integration of the Armed Forces, 1940-1965 • Morris J. MacGregor Jr.
... posted at various street corners made Falls Church appear like a town under martial law. Under all the circumstances the conduct of the troops was admirable. The homes of the citizens were thrown open to the soldiers doing picket duty in the village, and the ladies of the place vied with each other in contributing to the comfort of ...
— A Virginia Village • Charles A. Stewart
... with an almost imperceptible motion. Ellen looked like a beautiful child, her light hair tossed around her rosy face, her eyes full of the daring of perfect confidence. She in reality did not feel one throb of fear. She passed the picket-line, and turned instinctively and marched backward with her blue eyes upon them all. Abby Atkins sprang forward to Ellen's side, with Sargent and Joy and Willy Jones and Andrew. Andrew kept calling to Ellen to come back, but ...
— The Portion of Labor • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... as, on the morning of the 11th December, 1792, Louis XVI. was driven slowly from the Temple to the Convention, escorted by cavalry, infantry, and artillery. Paris looked like an armed camp: all the posts were doubled; the muster-roll of the National Guard was called over every hour; a picket of two hundred men watched in the court of each of the right sections; a reserve with cannon was stationed at the Tuileries, and strong detachments patroled the streets and cleared the road of all loiterers. The trees that lined the boulevards, the doors and windows of the houses, were alive with ...
— Memoirs Of The Court Of Marie Antoinette, Queen Of France, Complete • Madame Campan
... out. Goldin', you picket the hill by yourself, throwin' out a skirmishin'-line in ample time to let me know when Number One's comin' ...
— Traffics and Discoveries • Rudyard Kipling
... loading the guns. The natives rushed onward in so dense a crowd, that almost every bullet and buckshot of the defenders hit its man. The besieged had but six muskets, one hundred cartridges, and a few charges of powder. Their external fortifications consisted only of a slight picket-fence, which might have been thrown down in an instant. But, fortunately, when there were but three charges of powder left in the house, a shot killed Gotorap, the chief of the assailants, at whose fall the whole army fled in dismay. One of the trophies of their defeat was the kettle which they ...
— Journal of an African Cruiser • Horatio Bridge
... inconsiderable in numbers, should be well officered and well disciplined in its meager and limited proportions. The result was that, through the captain's arrangements, the king, on arriving at Melun, saw himself at the head of both the musketeers and Swiss guards, as well as a picket of the French guards. It might almost have been called a small army. M. Colbert looked at the troops with great delight: he even wished they had been ...
— The Man in the Iron Mask • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... to music," said the old chief, "when you came up. Some of our young men have gone up, indeed, to the picket yonder, to hear the harper sing, whose voice you catch sometimes, ...
— The Man Without a Country and Other Tales • Edward E. Hale
... the Rockies the troops had to guard them constantly. The engineers reconnoitered, surveyed, located, and built inside the picket lines. The men marched to work to the tap of the drum, stacked arms on the dump, and were ready at a moment's notice to fall in and fight. Many of the graders were old soldiers, and a little fight only rested them. Indeed ...
— The Last Spike - And Other Railroad Stories • Cy Warman
... too," Dias said. "You had better begin; Jose and I will picket the mules and hobble the llamas. If they were to make off, we should have a lot ...
— The Treasure of the Incas • G. A. Henty
... fifty soldiers were sent out from Fort Ridgely in 1862 to bury those in the country around who had been massacred by the Indians. I was acting as picket out of Fort Ridgely and was first to hear the firing sixteen miles distant at Birch Coolie. It was the Indians attacking the burial party. I notified those at the fort and a party was sent out for relief. As they neared Birch Coolie they found ...
— Old Rail Fence Corners - The A. B. C's. of Minnesota History • Various
... out, 'A rather pretty duel, sir. Don't ride over the bridge.' A picket shot from the left singing over my head rather emphasized his warning. 'It would not be fair—you would ride right into my pickets.' It was an ...
— Westways • S. Weir Mitchell
... E-15 runs ashore in the Dardanelles, the crew being captured by Turks; two British picket boats, under a heavy fire, then torpedo and destroy the stranded vessel to prevent her being used by ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 3, June, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... had obviously determined that when she retired from the world of men she would make a thorough job of it and expose herself to no temptation to return—eight miles from the nearest railroad. Just beyond the elms they slowed up alongside a white picket fence enclosing an old-fashioned garden whence came to Mr. Tutt the busy murmur of bees. Then they came to a gate that opened upon a red-tiled, box-bordered, moss-grown walk, leading to a small white house with blue and white ...
— By Advice of Counsel • Arthur Train
... manner of our march: A mile or so ahead of us went a picket of eight or ten men mounted on the swiftest beasts, doubtless to give warning of any danger. Next, three or four hundred yards away, followed a body of about fifty Kendah, travelling in a double line, and behind these the baggage men, mounted like everyone else, and leading behind ...
— The Ivory Child • H. Rider Haggard
... starting from Richmond, Va., northward, forming a broad advancing picket or skirmish line between the Blue Ridge and the ...
— The Life, Crime and Capture of John Wilkes Booth • George Alfred Townsend
... "All de picket-men had dogs. Lots of de soldiers had niggers wid dem. At night in de camp when de Yankees would come spying around, de dogs would bark. De niggers would holler. One Confederate officer had a speckledy dog that could smell dem Yankees far off. When de Yankees got dare, everything was ready. ...
— Slave Narratives Vol. XIV. South Carolina, Part 2 • Works Projects Administration
... of something I had read not long before. It was about an aged lion that had broken loose from his cage at Coney Island. He had not offered to hurt any one; but after wandering about a little, rather aimlessly, he had come to a picket-fence, and a moment later began pacing up and down in front of it, just the length of his cage. They had come and led him back to his prison without trouble, and he had rushed eagerly into it. I noticed that Jean was listening anxiously, and when ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... of this exercise that one which I watched amused himself half an hour at a time in a pile of brush; starting from the ground, slipping easily through up to the top, standing there a moment, then flying back and repeating the performance. Should the goal of his journey be a fence picket, he alights on the beam which supports it, and hops gracefully to ...
— In Nesting Time • Olive Thorne Miller
... stuff. We can't go ahead with a microscope and a chemical laboratory to analyze every blade of grass along the route for Paris green. The best we can do is to take our chances and keep going north. But I think we'd better establish outside picket lines which will stay well in advance, and off to the flanks. If it can be done, this system will succeed in at least frightening them off for a while. Everybody prepare to stand extra ...
— Ted Strong in Montana - With Lariat and Spur • Edward C. Taylor
... sergeant of Rodney's company came to make out his report, he found that there were six men missing out of seventy-three. One out of twelve was not a severe loss for an hour's fight (when Picket's five thousand made their useless charge at Gettysburg they lost seven men out of every nine), but it was enough to show Rodney that there was a dread reality in war. He told Dick Graham that as long as he lived he would never forget the expression that came upon the face of the ...
— Rodney The Partisan • Harry Castlemon
... and by his bright-red necktie, gallantly redressing the wrongs of his maltreated blue serge suit, like a battle standard still waving above a lost cause. I found him profitable; and so may you. When you do look for him, look among the light-horse troop of Bedouins that besiege the picket-line of the travelling potentate's guards and secretaries—among the wild-eyed genii of Arabian Afternoons that gather to make astounding and egregrious demands ...
— Heart of the West • O. Henry
... A picket is a group consisting of two or more squads, ordinarily not exceeding half a company, posted in the line of outposts to cover a given sector. It furnishes patrols and one or more sentinels, sentry squads, or cossack posts for observation. Pickets are placed at the more ...
— Manual for Noncommissioned Officers and Privates of Infantry • War Department
... our own and much of the Continental soldiery. While I was at Washington, there were three squadrons of regular cavalry encamped in the centre of the city. These troops were especially on home-service—guard-mounting, orderly duty, &c.—with no field or picket work whatever. There was no more excuse for slovenliness than might have been allowed to a regiment in huts at Aldershott or Shorncliffe. I wish that the critical eye of the present Cavalry Inspector-General could inspect that encampment; if he preserved his wonted courteous calmness, it would ...
— Border and Bastille • George A. Lawrence
... in the dark with the wind in one's face at a kind of funeral goose step it is very easy to fall asleep. The odds were that we should blunder into some Turkish picket or patrol. Looking back it was hard to realize that the inky masses behind, like a column of following smoke, was an army on the march. The stillness was so profound one heard nothing save the howl of the jackal, the cry of fighting geese, and the ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume V (of 8) • Francis J. (Francis Joseph) Reynolds, Allen L. (Allen Leon)
... of the sound, and rise to their feet and stand trembling, with extended nostrils snuffing the unknown danger, pawing the ground, and occasionally making desperate efforts to break loose from their picket ropes. ...
— The Young Carthaginian - A Story of The Times of Hannibal • G.A. Henty
... were accordingly sent with him in the direction where he stated the English to be; but when they stopped for refreshment at a village on the way they were suddenly pounced upon by a picket of English dragoons, who had been sent there for the purpose. After a time the spy pretended to the two officers that he had made the guard drunk and that they could now make their escape, and leading them ...
— The Bravest of the Brave - or, with Peterborough in Spain • G. A. Henty
... white cottage, with green blinds and a tiny front porch, stood beside the road, its back to the lake. There were five acres or so of ground around the house, set off by a white picket fence. At the gate a pine tree stood. There were oaks and lilac bushes in the front yard. Through the leaves, Lydia saw the blue of ...
— Lydia of the Pines • Honore Willsie Morrow
... in the dark front room of the house, peering out from under cupped palms that hid her eyes, Dryad could almost pick out each separate picket of the straggling old fence that bounded the garden of the little drab cottage across from her. In that searching light she could even make out great patches where the rotting sheathing of the house had been torn away, leaving the framework beneath ...
— Once to Every Man • Larry Evans
... months he had no battles to face—only skirmishing and picket duty. When Christmas came it brought him two boxes of good things to gladden his heart. One was from his dear old mother, and one was from Liddy, and tucked away in that, between four pairs of blue socks knit by her fair hands, was a loving letter ...
— Pocket Island - A Story of Country Life in New England • Charles Clark Munn
... micht hae committed a waur sin than thrashin' the dominie. He's a dour crater, that Murdoch Malison, wi' his fair face and his picket words. I doot the bairns hae the warst o' 't in general. And for Alec I hae great houpes. He comes o' a guid stock. His father, honest man, was ane o' the Lord's ain, although he didna mak' sic a stan' ...
— Alec Forbes of Howglen • George MacDonald
... would I were the ice man for a space, Then might I cool this red-hot cocoanut, Corral the jim-jam bugs that madly race Around the eaves that from my forehead jut— Or will a carpenter please come instead And build a picket fence ...
— The Love Sonnets of a Hoodlum • Wallace Irwin
... of Aberdeen and adjoining towns were filled with strikers. Picket lines were broken up and the pickets arrested. When the wives of the strikers with babies in their arms, took the places of their imprisoned husbands, the fire hose was turned on them with great force, in many instances ...
— The Centralia Conspiracy • Ralph Chaplin
... painted frame house, back from the street, fronted by a precise bit of lawn, with a willow bush at one corner. A white picket fence effectually separated it from a broad, shaded, not unpleasing street. An osage hedge and a board fence respectively ...
— The Blazed Trail • Stewart Edward White
... this change, that Mr. Hopewell had kinder inoculated me with other guess views on these matters, so he began to throw up bankments and to picket in the ground, all round ...
— The Attache - or, Sam Slick in England, Complete • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... foundation of the present colony; for, although the military picket was withdrawn in the following year, a corporal of artillery with his wife and two brother soldiers, who expressed a desire to remain on the island, stayed behind. Since then, Tristan has always been inhabited—the ...
— Fritz and Eric - The Brother Crusoes • John Conroy Hutcheson
... along pretty easily, seeming just in their glory, all this being new work to them. After some little firing from the cannon the enemy retreated into the town, which was well fortified. We placed an outlying picket of some three hundred men to watch the enemy's manoeuvres, while the body of our army encamped in the rear in a line stretching from sea to sea, so that the town standing upon a projecting piece of land, all communication from the ...
— The Autobiography of Sergeant William Lawrence - A Hero of the Peninsular and Waterloo Campaigns • William Lawrence
... and prevented it would have been a very great calamity to our country. It might have turned the scale against us. I have some personal reason to feel indignant at the traitor, besides what arises from the love of country; for my father was on picket guard at West Point, the night in which it was to have been delivered up, and would have been the first man killed. If Arnold had been caught, he would have closed his career on the gallows; but, as it was, he escaped, and a more worthy man ...
— Anecdotes for Boys • Harvey Newcomb
... we sent off. They were all picked men, and felt a just pride in wearing the blue. As fast as we obtained enough recruits they were formed into regiments, officered and sent to the front. When men became scarce in the city we made trips into the country, often going beyond the Union picket line, and generally reaping a harvest of slaves. These expeditions brought an element of danger into our lives, for our forage parties were fired into by the enemy more than once, but we always succeeded in bringing back our men with us. The black ...
— Cambridge Sketches • Frank Preston Stearns
... if we had more carefully considered them, might, perhaps, have abated somewhat this pleasant conviction of security. The enemy had lately grown wonderfully bold and venturesome—skirmishing with picket outposts, bullying reconnoitring parties, and picking quarrels upon unconscionably slight provocation almost daily. He had even challenged our gunboats, disputing the passage up the river in an artillery duello at the Bluffs, not far above the Landing, whose hoarse, sullen rumbling had reached ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 4, October, 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... service at looking out for skulking enemies when on picket-duty, might have made him more watchful and suspicious than he would have been under other circumstances. "Egbert, eh? Well, all I can say is that I don't like ...
— Shoulder-Straps - A Novel of New York and the Army, 1862 • Henry Morford
... chance to send a force out of the Palace Gate near the Hotel Dieu, by which the assailants had passed, and to attack them in the rear. For this duty Colonel Caldwell was told off and he took with him Nairne and his picket of about thirty men. The force plodded through the deep snow in the tracks of the enemy who, about daybreak, were astonished to find themselves shut in by British forces at each end of the Sault au ...
— A Canadian Manor and Its Seigneurs - The Story of a Hundred Years, 1761-1861 • George M. Wrong
... shrivelled by an autumn wind. By mid-afternoon the Belgians and Germans were in places barely a hundred yards apart, and the rattle of musketry sounded like a boy drawing a stick along the palings of a picket-fence. During the height of the battle a Zeppelin slowly circled over the field like a great vulture awaiting a feast. So heavy was the fighting that the embankment of a branch railway from which I viewed the afternoon's battle was literally carpeted with the corpses of Germans who ...
— Fighting in Flanders • E. Alexander Powell
... at the long line of iron picket fence surrounding Grimsby Hill, he saw Mrs. Carter's motor enter the gate. It seemed to be a good omen. He hurried to the gate, peered in, then passed on. He couldn't go and swagger past that exclusive-looking gate-house and intrude on that sweep of rhododendron-lined ...
— The Innocents - A Story for Lovers • Sinclair Lewis
... up the Arkansas river to the mouth of the Purgatoire— pronounced in that country Picket Wire—which was about thirty miles from Bent's Fort. Seeing a small band of buffalo some distance away, we took the pack-saddles off of the mules and turned them out to graze, mounted our saddle-horses and were off for the herd; but the ...
— Thirty-One Years on the Plains and In the Mountains • William F. Drannan
... eye to profit, had already built a picket fence around his starry visitor and was charging admission. He also flatly refused to permit the chipping off of specimens or even the touching of the object. His attitude was severely criticized, ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, May, 1930 • Various
... an' set ye a cheer," he invited, and the horseman vaulted to the ground as lightly as though he carried no weight, flinging his bridle rein over a picket ...
— The Roof Tree • Charles Neville Buck
... thousand times, and more, and went on saying it until Mary Anne's cousin deserted into our coal-hole and was brought out, to our great amazement, by a picket of his companions in arms, who took him away handcuffed in a procession that covered ...
— Standard Selections • Various
... a picket, were hastening to the sentry's support, their progress marked by a lantern held by a ...
— The Submarine Hunters - A Story of the Naval Patrol Work in the Great War • Percy F. Westerman
... Joseph Graham, with his mounted force, had just before captured a picket of twenty-five men a mile and a half away from Hillsboro. General Polk's militia were also in the same vicinity, and soon General Greene, having received reinforcements, recrossed the Dan and assumed a position on the Reedy Fork, a confluent of ...
— School History of North Carolina • John W. Moore
... the worst; they were insatiable. They ate the head-ropes that fastened them to the horse-lines, and the incensed picket spent half the night chasing them and tying them up again with what was left of the rope. Fortunately we obtained chains at railhead, and as these were uneatable they turned their attention to the horse-blankets and ate ...
— With Our Army in Palestine • Antony Bluett
... laffed, and Ma cried, and Pa swore, and I groaned, and got sick again, and then they let me go to sleep again, and this morning I had the offulest headache, and Pa's face looks like he had fell on a picket fence. When I got out I went to my chum's house to see if they had got him pumped out, and his Ma drove me out with a broom, and she says I will ruin every boy in the neighborhood. Pa says I was drunk and ...
— Peck's Bad Boy and His Pa - 1883 • George W. Peck
... rally, but to follow them with vigour, though without incurring fresh hazards. The General ordered Montchoisy, who commanded a reserve at the Place de la Resolution, to form a column with two twelve-pounders, to march by the Boulevard in order to turn the Place Vendome, to form a junction with the picket stationed at headquarters, and to return in ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... which it left the air being found of minor importance, compared with its capacity of receiving the force of the powder. The point of the cone was found objectionable in practice, and was gradually brought to the curve of the now universally used sugar-loaf missile or flat-ended picket shown ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various
... nest belong? I hoped to the kingbird, who at that moment sat demurely upon the picket fence below, apparently interested only in passing insects; and while I looked the question was answered by Madame Tyrannis herself, who came with the confidence of ownership, carrying a beakful of building material, and arranging it with great pains inside the structure. This was satisfactory, ...
— Little Brothers of the Air • Olive Thorne Miller
... immediately in front of it were held by the "Department Battalion," composed of the clerks in the various government offices in Richmond, who had been ordered out to meet an emergency. Just before sundown the detail for picket duty was formed, and about to march out to the picket line, the clerks presenting quite a soldierly appearance. Suddenly bang! went a gun in the fort, and a shell came tearing over. Bang! again, and bang! bang! and more shells exploding. Pow! pow! what ...
— Detailed Minutiae of Soldier life in the Army of Northern Virginia, 1861-1865 • Carlton McCarthy
... greatest abhorrence, and on which he never failed to animadvert. The man afterwards appeared much ashamed and concerned for what he had done. But the colonel ordered him to be brought early the next morning to his own quarters, where he had prepared a picket, on which he appointed him a private sort of penance; and while he was put upon it, he discoursed with him seriously and tenderly upon the evils and aggravations of his fault, admonished him of the divine displeasure which he had incurred, ...
— The Life of Col. James Gardiner - Who Was Slain at the Battle of Prestonpans, September 21, 1745 • P. Doddridge
... we rode along, Down the dark of the mountain gap, To visit the picket-guard at the ford, Little dreaming of any mishap, He was humming the words of some old song: "Two red roses he had on his cap, And another he bore at the point of ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... from the beautiful work of nature and intended to go on, but again he halted. He found himself at the picket fence, which divided the garden from the street, and in the movement of the street he saw something ...
— The Argonauts • Eliza Orzeszko (AKA Orzeszkowa)
... was close on one side of the castle garden, and separated from it only by a high wall. A very pretty little toll-house with a red-tiled roof stood near, with a gay little flower-garden inclosed by a picket-fence behind it. A breach in the wall connected this garden with the most secluded and shady part of the castle garden itself. The toll-gate keeper who occupied the cottage died suddenly, and early ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries: - Masterpieces of German Literature Translated into English, Volume 5. • Various
... law, told me that it would probably answer, though it was not according to the agreement made by Mr. Brooks, and Esq. Clute and himself, for me. I then executed to Micah Brooks and Jellis Clute, a deed of all my land lying east of the picket line on the Gardow reservation, containing about ...
— A Narrative of the Life of Mrs. Mary Jemison • James E. Seaver
... Immediately beyond is that river over which we passed in our scamper with Lady Jersey; it was all solitary. Three hundred yards beyond is a second ford; and there - I came face to face with war. Under the trees on the further bank sat a picket of seven men with Winchesters; their faces bright, their eyes ardent. As we came up, they did not speak or move; only their eyes followed us. The horses drank, and we passed the ford. 'Talofa!' I said, and the commandant of the picket said 'Talofa'; and then, when we were almost by, remembered himself ...
— Vailima Letters • Robert Louis Stevenson
... which the football was traveling impaled the hat on a picket at the side of the stand. Then, as if satisfied with fits work, the football struck and bounded back, landing at the ...
— The High School Left End - Dick & Co. Grilling on the Football Gridiron • H. Irving Hancock
... midnight spread behind closed doors, or to join a band that, risking the sudden creak of a treacherous step, went down the stairs and out to wend their way with other sweltering bands across the moonlit ways, through negro settlements, where frantic dogs bayed at the sticks they rattled over the picket fences, to the banks of the canal for a cooling frolic in the none too ...
— The Varmint • Owen Johnson
... to increase his income he had laid out a small vegetable garden in the rear of his father's house, and here on a Saturday morning, while down on his knees weeding carrots, he chanced to look up and discovered a young lady gazing at him through the picket fence. She was a few years his junior, and a stranger in Sequoia. Ensued the following conversation: ...
— The Valley of the Giants • Peter B. Kyne
... of something that watches us softly, as the shadows glide down in the yard; That shall go with my soldier to battle, and stand with my picket on guard. Spirits of loving and lost ones—watch softly with Harry to-night, For to-morrow he goes forth to battle—to arm ...
— The Universal Reciter - 81 Choice Pieces of Rare Poetical Gems • Various
... borne by the current a little below the intrenched path, clambered up the steep hill, staying themselves by the roots and boughs of the maple and spruce and ash trees that covered the precipitous declivity, and, after a little firing, dispersed the picket which guarded the height; the rest ascended safely by the pathway. A battery of four guns on the left was abandoned to Colonel Howe. When Townshend's division disembarked, the English had already gained one of the roads to Quebec; and, advancing in front of the forest, ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 4 • Charles Dudley Warner
... column reached Fort Erie about 8 o'clock, and shortly after Col. Peacockes force swept in from the west, bringing with them the spoils of victory in the shape of about sixty prisoners, being part of the picket line which Gen. O'Neil had abandoned during ...
— Troublous Times in Canada - A History of the Fenian Raids of 1866 and 1870 • John A. Macdonald
... friends on the back and asked them if the stumps were coming away easily; he talked nonsense concerning labor and the inalienable rights of elephants to a long 'nooning'; and, wandering to and fro, he thoroughly demoralized the garden till sundown, when he returned to his picket for food. ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... staid of lat eva ma tot and so on. I shall now commence with the feminine and the musculin gender (but I must mind as I don't put my foot in it) as you know a hundred times more than I do about these last words—the same time the maight be a little picket up by them. Well, hear goes to make a start. ...
— Gipsy Life - being an account of our Gipsies and their children • George Smith
... Another rod and he found himself in front of a gate, on the high post of which was perched a diminutive, bare-legged girl in a soiled, damp frock, superintending the drying of three pair of mud-covered shoes arranged in a row on the picket fence, while she issued orders to the two sisters sitting in the middle of the ...
— At the Little Brown House • Ruth Alberta Brown
... of canvas or webbing provided with a ring at one end and a big bolted wooden hook at the other. The latter should be half-inch lines of good quality. Thirty-three feet is enough for packing only; but we usually bought them forty feet long, so they could be used also as picket-ropes. Do not fail to include several extra. They are always fraying out, getting broken, being cut to free a fallen horse, ...
— The Mountains • Stewart Edward White
... pinto from old man Beasley. 'They's two bad things about him,' says the old man. 'I'll tell you one now and the other after we swap.' 'All right,' says Ed. 'Well, first, he's hard to catch,' says Beasley. 'That ain't anything,' says Ed,—'just picket him or hobble him with a good side-line.' So then they traded. 'And the other thing,' says the old man, dragging up his cinches on Ed's pinto,—'he ain't any good after you get him caught.' So that's like me. I've been hard to teach all summer, and now I'm not any ...
— The Lions of the Lord - A Tale of the Old West • Harry Leon Wilson
... Cape Colony in a state of military security. As one detail he had to ensure that, in the event of war, the frontier settlers should not be massacred. A line of men was drawn across country, so as to make a buttress against any advance by the crazy Kaffirs. Each picket had charge of a stretch of ground, and in the morning soldiers would ride sharply to right and left, covering it. They could tell, by footmarks on the dewy grass, whether any Kaffirs had been about in the night. The chief military officer was for falling ...
— The Romance of a Pro-Consul - Being The Personal Life And Memoirs Of The Right Hon. Sir - George Grey, K.C.B. • James Milne
... out from the woods into the road and firing his musket at them turned and ran. Thinking to capture him the gentlemen spurred their horses forward at a gallop. Other shots were fired around them, indicating clearly that they had come upon the picket line of the enemy. But their blood was up and they rode on pell-mell after the fugitive sentry. There was a turn in the road a short distance ahead. As they dashed around it, now close behind the flying man, they found themselves in the clearing ...
— The Duke of Stockbridge • Edward Bellamy
... moment a large, comfortable white house, that had been heretofore hidden by great trees, came into view. Timothy drew nearer to the spotless picket fence, and gazed upon the beauties of the side yard and the front garden,—gazed and gazed, and fell desperately in ...
— Timothy's Quest - A Story for Anybody, Young or Old, Who Cares to Read It • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... town. The thrifty merchants of this Scottish trading center built well, and their dwellings abound in architectural interest, but really great houses are rare. On the 700 block of Prince Street, behind a picket fence, guarded by a tall magnolia and several gnarled box trees stands what is called in England a "Georgian cottage," which in Alexandria is ...
— Seaport in Virginia - George Washington's Alexandria • Gay Montague Moore
... good lookout upon Leesburg, to see if this movement has the effect to drive them away. Perhaps a slight demonstration on your part would have the effect to move them.' McClellan desired Stone to make demonstrations from his picket line along the Potomac, but did not intend that he should cross the river, in force, for the purpose of fighting. Late in the day Stone reported that he had made a feint of crossing, and at the same time had started a reconnoissance from Harrison's Island toward Leesburg, ...
— History and Comprehensive Description of Loudoun County, Virginia • James W. Head
... hand suddenly smites EDWIN in the back, almost snapping his head off, and there stands spectrally between them Mr. BUMSTEAD, who has but recently found his way out of the back-yard in Gospeler's Gulch, by removing at least two yards of picket fence from the wrong place, and wears upon his head a gingham sun-bonnet, which, in his hurried departure through the hall of the Gospeler's house, he has mistaken for his own hat. Sustaining himself against the fierce evening ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 14, July 2, 1870 • Various
... news arrived at Murfreesboro that the rebel general, Forest, was about to make an attack on the place, which news was verified by General Forest capturing the picket guard and dashing into the town soon after the news arrived, with a mounted force of 1,500 men. A part of this force charged upon the camp of the Seventh Pennsylvania, then reformed, and charged upon the Ninth Michigan Infantry, which made a gallant defense and repulsed the enemy's repeated charges, ...
— The History of Minnesota and Tales of the Frontier • Charles E. Flandrau
... clouds and the air was damp before Ruth missed the bright warmth on the piazza, and began to walk back and forth by way of keeping warm. A gravelled path led to the gate and on either side was a row of lilac bushes, the bare stalks tipped with green. A white picket fence surrounded the yard, except at the back, where the edge of the precipice made it useless. The place was small and well kept, but there were no flower beds except at the front of the house, and there were only two or ...
— Lavender and Old Lace • Myrtle Reed
... alleys of the Prado with hasty steps, looking every man in the face, but without discovering his rival. At the same hour, Andres, seated in an orchateria de chufas (orgeat-shop) nearly opposite Militona's house, quietly consumed a glass of iced lemonade. He had placed himself on picket there, with Perico for his vedette. Juancho would have passed him by without recognising him, or thinking of seeking his enemy under the round jacket and felt hat of a manolo, but Militona, concealed in the corner of her window, had not been deceived for an ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, No. 382, October 1847 • Various
... things about my picket, And whether I'm in touch with whom; I want to lie in yonder thicket, I only wish to touch the bloom; And when men agitate about their flanks And say their left is sadly in the air, I hear the missel-thrush and murmur, "Thanks, I wish that I ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, May 10, 1916 • Various
... on a bit farther, using extreme care lest they run into a Northern picket. Fortunately the fringe of wood, in which they found shelter, continued to a point near the river, and as they went forward quietly they saw many lights. They heard also a great tumult, a mixture of many noises, the rumbling of cannon and wagon wheels, the cracking of drivers' ...
— The Star of Gettysburg - A Story of Southern High Tide • Joseph A. Altsheler
... dark, moist, and most unpleasant dawn. Captain Blaikie stands leaning against a traverse in the fire-trench, superintending the return of a party from picket duty. They file in, sleepy and dishevelled, through an archway in the parapet, on their way to dug-outs and repose. The last man in the procession is Bobby Little, who has ...
— The First Hundred Thousand • Ian Hay
... watchman, sentinel, patrol, sentry, picket; convoy, escort, body-guard; defense, protection, shield, safeguard, bulwark, armor; attention, heed, watch, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... spoke fell thrue in my life aftherwards, an' I cud ha' stud ut all—stud ut all,—excipt when my little Shadd was born. That was on the line av march three months afther the regiment was taken with cholera. We were betune Umballa an' Kalka thin, an' I was on picket. Whin I came off duty the women showed me the child, an' ut turned on uts side an' died as I looked. We buried him by the road, an' Father Victor was a day's march behind wid the heavy baggage, so the comp'ny captain read ...
— Soldier Stories • Rudyard Kipling
... round the windows, one would have been loth to believe the old house had all been of a deep red. The high road lay between the house and the long stretch of meadow-land which separated it from the river. The picket fence in front of the dwelling was in rather a dilapidated condition, and the gate, being minus a hinge, hung awry. Many tall sunflowers stood in the narrow strip of ground between the front fence and the house, and they were about all ...
— Walter Harland - Or, Memories of the Past • Harriet S. Caswell
... an ass, sir, too," said Jack Mount under his breath. "And I think it must be so, for there be five score of Colonel Sheldon's dragoons in yonder barns, drawing at jack-straws or conning their thumbs—and not a vidette out—not so much as a militia picket, save for the minute men which Colonel Thomas and Major Lockwood have sent ...
— The Hidden Children • Robert W. Chambers
... Blackleg! Have you any pluck? Backing up the Masters when the Men have struck! You're for the Master, we're for the Man! "Picket" you, and "Boycott" ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99, September 6, 1890 • Various
... deserted. Half an hour's run, for they knew that every minute was of importance, and they heard the welcome challenge, "Who comes there?" "Two British officers," they answered, and in a few minutes they were taken to the officer in charge of the picket, and having once convinced him of their identity, ...
— The Young Buglers • G.A. Henty
... refreshing was her aspect, as she spun, or scoured pans, in a linsey-woolsey petticoat and white short gown, wearing her pretty curls in a crop? George Tucker knew it all without telling; and so did half a dozen of the Westbury boys, who haunted the picket fence round 'Zekiel's garden every moonlight night in summer, or scraped their feet by the half hour together on his door-step in winter evenings. Sally was a belle; she knew it and liked it, as every honest girl does;—and ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various
... above its level roof in the silence of that October morning, as I checked my gait to loiter along the picket fence; but suddenly the house showed a light of its own. The spurt of a match took my eye to one of the upper windows, then a steadier glow of orange told me that a lamp was lighted. The window was opened, and a man looked out and ...
— Beasley's Christmas Party • Booth Tarkington
... preternaturally sharpened, as they generally are during one's first hours in the wilderness, Helen listened. She heard Talpers stirring about among the horses. It was evident that he was alarmed about something, as he was pulling the picket-pins and bringing the animals closer to the center of the glade. McFann had been looking down the valley from the sentinel rock. She did not hear him come into camp, as the half-breed always moved silently through underbrush that would betray the presence of ...
— Mystery Ranch • Arthur Chapman
... two prisoners, with their three captors, came in sight of the Canadian volunteers, they beheld a scene which was much more military than the Fenian camp. They were promptly halted and questioned by a picket before coming to the main body; the sentry knew enough not to shoot until he had asked for the countersign. Passing the picket, they came in full view of the Canadian force, the men of which looked very spick and span in uniforms ...
— In the Midst of Alarms • Robert Barr
... A militia picket is astride the road. None—at least by the main highway—may pass into the confines of the town without permission. The stolid country lout of a sentry views all new-comers with suspicion. But the deadlock is saved by the arrival of a dapper, ...
— On the Heels of De Wet • The Intelligence Officer
... O'Connor with the first boatload having gone a longer route. A reef near the beach threw the men out, and they stumbled through the water up to their breasts. When they reached dry land they immediately went into the bush to form a picket-line. Two horses had been forced to swim ashore, when suddenly a rifle-shot, followed by continuous sharp firing, warned the men that the enemy had been ...
— The Boys of '98 • James Otis
... of the Army must, if "detailed," go upon the supreme bench of the State with the same prompt obedience as if he were detailed to go upon a court-martial. The soldier, if detailed to act as a justice of the peace, must obey as quickly as if he were detailed for picket duty. ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 2 (of 2) of Volume 6: Andrew Johnson • James D. Richardson |
