"Shearing" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... undisturbed have the benefit of the wool as well as the younglings of the sheep. She was, however, mistaken. When the firstling of the sheep was born, Aaron appeared and demanded it, for the firstborn belongs to the priest. She had a similar experience with the wool. At shearing time Aaron reappeared and demanded 'the first of the fleece of the sheep,' which, according to Moses' law, was his. But not content with this, he reappeared later and demanded one sheep out of every ten as a tithe, to which again, according to the law, he had a claim. This, however, was ...
— THE LEGENDS OF THE JEWS VOLUME III BIBLE TIMES AND CHARACTERS - FROM THE EXODUS TO THE DEATH OF MOSES • BY LOUIS GINZBERG
... upheaval. Schmidt of Basel has estimated that from 15 to 20 kilometres of rock covered the materials of the Simplon as now exposed, at the time when the orogenic forces were actively at work folding and shearing the beds, and injecting into their folds the plastic gneisses coming from beneath.[1] The lateral compression of the area of deposition of the Laramide, already referred to, resulted in a great thickening of the ...
— The Birth-Time of the World and Other Scientific Essays • J. (John) Joly
... juicy and jostling shock Of bluebells sheaved in May Or wind-long fleeces on the flock A day off shearing day. ...
— Poems of Gerard Manley Hopkins - Now First Published • Gerard Manley Hopkins
... that the danger was really at hand without an anxious feeling. His thousand sheep had cost him L250, and his cattle as much more. The lambing season had come and gone, and the flock of sheep had doubled in number. The cattle, too, had greatly increased, and the sheep were nearly ready for shearing. Altogether the value of the stock was over L1000. The loss would not be absolute ruin, as he had still L600 of his original capital in the bank at Buenos Ayres; but it would be ...
— Out on the Pampas - The Young Settlers • G. A. Henty
... Egg, shearing the whisper. "Only Dammy ain't got any sense about cards. I tried to teach him pinochle, but he never could remember none of it, and the hired men always clean him out shakin' dice. He can't even beat his papa at checkers. And that's an awful thing to say ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1921 • Various
... number of labourers will find employment about the towns, at the stores, on the wharfs, &c. at about 24s. weekly. Country work on the sheep-stations—as shepherds, drivers of bullock-drays, sheep-washing and shearing, cooking for the men, &c.—is remunerated by about L.25 and food. These live far off in the solitary plains, almost apart from men, and come to town once, twice, or thrice a year, as their distance and employment may determine. The Sabbath has little of the religious character ...
— Chambers' Edinburgh Journal, No. 421, New Series, Jan. 24, 1852 • Various
... improve, the best qualities of both parents in the lambs." In Saxony, "when the lambs are weaned, each in his turn is placed upon a table that his wool and form may be minutely observed. {197} The finest are selected for breeding and receive a first mark. When they are one year old, and prior to shearing them, another close examination of those previously marked takes place: those in which no defect can be found receive a second mark, and the rest are condemned. A few months afterwards a third and last ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication, Volume II (of 2) • Charles Darwin
... heaping coil upon coil: and here, notably, in that now so extremely sordid murk of wiggeries, inane diplomacies and solemn deliriums, dark now and obsolete to all creatures, steps forth one little Human Figure, with something of sanity in it: like a star, like a gleam of steel,—shearing asunder your big balloons, and letting out their diplomatic hydrogen;—salutes with his hat, "Gentlemen, Gentlemen, it is of no use!" and vanishes into the interior of his tent. It is to Excellency Robinson, among all the sons of Adam then extant, that we owe ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XIII. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... of his own, changing the mores, he failed. He tried many times to put a stop to the usages of mourning which were violent and excessive,—loud outcries, destruction of clothes and furniture, blackening the walls of the house and one's face, and shearing the beard. He did not succeed. These were ancient and popular customs and they were maintained.[1575] It is improper for any Moslem, male or female, to uncover the head.[1576] They uncover the feet to show respect. This ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner
... Living also, his shepherds, for whom he received only insignificant hints from Greene. In "Pandosto" we hear of "a meeting of all the farmers daughters in Sycilia," without anything more, and from this Shakespeare drew the idea of his sheep-shearing feast, where he delights in contrasting with the rough ways of his peasants the inborn elegance of Perdita: "O Proserpina," says she, in ...
— The English Novel in the Time of Shakespeare • J. J. Jusserand
... no bounds. The more young Joe submitted, the more absolute old John became. The ell soon faded into nothing. Yards, furlongs, miles arose; and on went old John in the pleasantest manner possible, trimming off an exuberance in this place, shearing away some liberty of speech or action in that, and conducting himself in his small way with as much high mightiness and majesty, as the most glorious tyrant that ever had his statue reared in the public ways, of ancient ...
— Barnaby Rudge • Charles Dickens
... dreary, With eyes and forehead hot and bleary, Sat a mother sad and weary, With her darling on her knee; Their humble fare at best was sparing For the father he was shearing, With his three brave sons of Erin, All down in ...
— Revised Edition of Poems • William Wright
... uneasy," said Warner. "I don't like the way twigs and leaves are raining down on me. It shows that if they were to depress their fire they would be shearing limbs off of us instead of boughs off ...
— The Rock of Chickamauga • Joseph A. Altsheler
... it; And as much of the Old as is possible weave in it; Your goddess of freedom, a tight, buxom girl, With lips like a cherry and teeth like a pearl, With eyes bold as Here's, and hair floating free, And full of the sun as the spray of the sea, 1100 Who can sing at a husking or romp at a shearing, Who can trip through the forests alone without fearing, Who can drive home the cows with a song through the grass, Keeps glancing aside into Europe's cracked glass. Hides her red hands in gloves, pinches up her lithe waist, And makes herself wretched with transmarine ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... not that he dared yet to think of a love confessed and reciprocated. The prince in disguise is all very well in a fairy tale; in England of the twentieth century he is an anachronism; and Medenham would as soon think of shearing a limb as of profiting by the chance that threw Cynthia in his way. Of course, a less scrupulous wooer might have devised a hundred plausible methods of revealing his identity—was not Mrs. Devar, marriage-broker and adroit sycophant, ready to hand ...
— Cynthia's Chauffeur • Louis Tracy
... houses and bowers, like unto that of a good yeoman in peaceful lands, save that the main building was longer, though it were low. But amidst the said greensward was a goodly flock of sheep that had been but of late washed for the shearing, and along with the sheep four folk, two carles and two queans, all of them in their first youth, not one by seeming of over a score and two of summers. These folk were clad but simply, man and woman, in short coats of white woollen (but the women's coats a little longer ...
— The Water of the Wondrous Isles • William Morris
... is doubtful how much of it is really interpreted by him; the village shop with its inexhaustible stores probably means much more in the way of origins, and he may never go behind its contents in his speculations. It is true he sees milking, harvesting, sheep-shearing, and many other operations, but he often misses the stage between the actual beginning and the finished product—between the wool on the sheep's back and his Sunday clothes, between the wheat in the field and his loaf of bread. The town child has many links if he can use them: ...
— The Child Under Eight • E.R. Murray and Henrietta Brown Smith
... gem-stones much worthy, all over the waves' cup. The King the full mighty cring'd under the shield; Into grasp of the Franks the King's life was gotten 1210 With the gear of the breast and the ring altogether; It was worser war-wolves then reft gear from the slain After the war-shearing; there the Geats' war-folk Held the house of the dead men. The Hall took the voices; Spake out then Wealhtheow; before the host said she: Brook thou this roundel, lief Beowulf, henceforth, Dear youth, with all ...
— The Tale of Beowulf - Sometime King of the Folk of the Weder Geats • Anonymous
... this ballad over and over again until he was tired, then sat still, smiling and stroking the fox skin. He had learned the song when he was a child from his mother, who had sung it all day long one spring while she was shearing the sheep. And he could not think of any other for the moment. It wasn't, in fact, a bad song. There were many good rhymesters in Iceland. He began singing again, rocking his body back and forth vehemently, ...
— Seven Icelandic Short Stories • Various
... at a distance of two or three hundred feet from the boiler.* [footnote... In the case of rambling premises, such as iron shipbuilding yards, the conveyance of steam by well-protected pipes put underground for the purpose of driving engines to work punching and plate-shearing machines (which have to be near at hand when the work is required), has very ...
— James Nasmyth's Autobiography • James Nasmyth
... labours of husbandry upon a small scale, renting two or three acres in addition to his own, less than one acre of glebe; and the humblest drudgery which the cultivation of these fields required was performed by himself. He also assisted his neighbours in haymaking and shearing their flocks, and in the performance of this latter service he was eminently dexterous. They, in their turn, complimented him with the present of a haycock, or a fleece; less as a recompense for this ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. XVII. No. 473., Saturday, January 29, 1831 • Various
... of little children and animals. I remember how glad he was to stop and lean on a wall in Gorumna and watch a woman in afield shearing a sheep. It was an old sheep and must have often been sheared before by the same hand, for the woman hardly held it; she just knelt beside it and snipped away. I remember the sheep raised its lean old head to look at the stranger, ...
— Synge And The Ireland Of His Time • William Butler Yeats
... still The dubious aid of an attorney's skill; They take a part in every man's affairs, And in all business some concern is theirs; Because mankind in ways prescribed are found Like flocks that follow on a beaten ground. Each abject nature in the way proceeds, That now to shearing, now to slaughter leads. Should you offend, though meaning no offence, You have no safety in your innocence; The statute broken then is placed in view, And men must pay for crimes they never knew; Who would by law regain ...
— Tales • George Crabbe
... "'He was shearing sheep, and could give no time to company; and when late in the day I drew rein at Janet's, and she said she was going to have a dance, and could not look after sick folk, the pallid lips failed to return my despairing embrace; and in the terror which this brought me ...
— Room Number 3 - and Other Detective Stories • Anna Katharine Green
... the same from day to day: Now weeding, now hay, now roots, now hedging; now corn, with sowing, reaping, threshing, stacking, thatching; the care of beasts, and their companionship; sheep-dipping, shearing, wood-gathering, apple-picking, cider-making; fashioning and tarring gates; whitewashing walls; carting; trenching—never, never two days quite the same! Monotony! The poor devils in factories, in shops, in mines; poor devils driving 'busses, punching tickets, ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... of discord came to Cass Grimshaw one night in the hang-out where the six sat smoking. Purdy casually mentioned that it was getting along towards shearing time and that the Wolf River bank ought to be heavily stocked with cash. The leader blew a double plume of smoke from his ...
— Prairie Flowers • James B. Hendryx
... enjoyed and admired everything there was to admire—the pretty jackets or "short gowns" of the rustic maidens; the "burns," clear as glass; the mossy stones; the peeps between the trees; the depth of the shadows; the corn-cutting or "shearing," when a patch of yellow oats broke the purple shadow of the moor; Ben-y-Ghlo standing like a mighty sentinel commanding the course of the Garry, as when many a lad "with his bonnet and white cockade," sped with fleet foot by the flashing waters, "leaving his mountains to follow Prince Charlie;" ...
— Life of Her Most Gracious Majesty the Queen V.1. • Sarah Tytler
... our little ones may walk on the Chalk, As far as we can see them and beyond. We shall not be anxious for our sheep when we keep Tally at the shearing-pond. We can eat with both our elbows on our knees, if we please, We can sleep after meals in the sun; For Shepherd of the Twilight is dismayed at the Blade, Feet-in-the-Night have run! Dog-without-a-Master goes away (Hai, Tyr, aie!), ...
— Songs from Books • Rudyard Kipling
... from one end of the big room, in fact, to the other, crashingly, through cage after cage—and then out upon the street through the plate front. Half-past five finally freed him; and taking his place in a packed herring-box on wheels, he was rolled back to Dolly—and the shearing. ...
— The Trimming of Goosie • James Hopper
... breeze came on and we left our anchorage, the breeze increased a little, before eleven; saw what appeared to be an island at first; on nearing, found it to be a canoe, about fifteen feet long, with seven or eight natives in it, shearing about, sometimes in one direction, sometimes in another. After a little we heard them calling out, "paoud," "whappee," "chauca," some of them standing up. I named to the Captain that I thought they must be from Cape York, from their ...
— Voyage Of H.M.S. Rattlesnake, Vol. 2 (of 2) • John MacGillivray
... to take my place in the Sheepguard, The Beast gnawed all our country like a bone between his teeth. He came in behind the flocks at watering-time, and watched them round the Dew-ponds; he leaped into the folds between our knees at the shearing; he walked out alongside the grazing flocks, and chose his meat on the hoof while our boys threw flints at him; he crept by night 'into the huts, and licked the babe from between the mother's hands; he called his companions and pulled ...
— Rewards and Fairies • Rudyard Kipling
... died in forty-five minutes. Postmortem examination revealed everything normal, and death must have been caused by syncope following violent pain. Watkins cites an instance occurring in South Africa. A native shearing sheep for a farmer provoked his master's ire by calling him by some nickname. While the man was in a squatting posture the farmer struck him in the epigastrium. He followed this up by a kick in the side and a blow on the head, neither of which, however, was ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... waited upon all failure there. That he liked it is by no means said; he much disliked it, and his disgusts were many. An airy young creature:—and it was in this time to give one instance, that that shearing of his locks occurred: which was spoken of above, where the Court-Chirurgus proved so merciful. To clog the winged Psyche in ever-returning parade-routine and military pipe-clay,—it seems very cruel. ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Volume V. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... process of time settled, and become an inmate of the house, it is with difficulty dislodged again, however much people may wish to dislodge it. Wherefore we ought to keep it out of doors, and not let it approach the garrison by wearing mourning or shearing the hair, or by any similar outward sign of sorrow. For these things occurring daily and being importunate make the mind little, and narrow, and unsocial, and harsh, and timid, so that, being besieged and taken in ...
— Plutarch's Morals • Plutarch
... see me contriving in my little gardens, Christy Mahon, you'll swear the Lord God formed me to be living lone, and that there isn't my match in Mayo for thatching, or mowing, or shearing a sheep. ...
— The Playboy of the Western World • J. M. Synge
... ever I hear that you have betrayed the first symptom of age, that your back is bent a twentieth of an inch from the perpendicular, I shall hasten to believe you are shearing your prodigal overgrowths, and are calling in your troops to the citadel, and I may come in the first steamer to drop in of evenings ...
— The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1834-1872, Vol II. • Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson
... age that had been crowding upon him of late fall away like the wool of a sheep at shearing. Here, at last, was hope—real hope. After almost two and a half centuries of non-communication, the men of the infant planet had returned to the aid of the aging planet. For, once they saw the condition ...
— It's All Yours • Sam Merwin
... the blows that followed, and of his last that wounded Lozelle, shearing through his mail and felling him as an ox is felled by the butcher: How also, when he sprang forward to kill him, this mighty and brutal man had prayed for mercy, prayed it in the name of Christ and of their own mother, whom as a child he knew in Essex: How he could not slaughter him, being helpless, ...
— The Brethren • H. Rider Haggard
... association in any case; but there is a sort of satisfaction after all in imagining that one is a free and independent being, and going to destruction in his own way, unguided, while he gets a little amusement out of his own shearing. ...
— Russian Rambles • Isabel F. Hapgood
... then we were told to sit down on the chairs. I looked about for the bride, and saw a crowd of women in one corner, and a boy holding a gilt umbrella over the young lady, who was being shaved. A woman with a razor was shearing her eyebrows into a delicate line, and all round her forehead trimming disorderly hairs. Four women, seated on their heels in front of her, were fidgeting over her face; she, impassive as a log in their hands. A vast deal of singing and drumming ...
— Sketches of Our Life at Sarawak • Harriette McDougall
... him a letter which I had, for want of better Knowledge, sent to where I met him down the Lachlan, years ago, He was shearing when I knew him, so I sent the letter to him, Just "on spec", addressed as follows, "Clancy, ...
— An Anthology of Australian Verse • Bertram Stevens
... goes off to attend to the shearing of his sheep, one of those wholly unnecessary operations which the less skilful pastoralists make it a virtue to thrust upon our attention. The scene between Nerina, Daphnis, and Dorinda, a sort of three-cornered love-suit, may possibly have suggested to Cowley the best ...
— Pastoral Poetry and Pastoral Drama - A Literary Inquiry, with Special Reference to the Pre-Restoration - Stage in England • Walter W. Greg
... fine morning, soon after the holidays commenced, I was very busily employed at the work of helping in our sheep shearing—not that I myself ventured to handle the shears; my part in the business was simply to carry the wool into the loft, and to assist in bringing out the sheep from the pens as the shearers required them. My mother, who had ...
— The Pilots of Pomona • Robert Leighton
... pruning rose trees, and digging, dressing, settling the ground, growing tulips in pots. They would awaken at the singing of the lark to follow the plough; they would go with baskets to gather apples, would look on at butter-making, the thrashing of corn, sheep-shearing, bee-culture, and would feel delight in the lowing of cows and in the scent of new-mown hay. No more writing! No more heads of departments! No more even quarters' rent to pay! For they had a dwelling-house of their own! And they would eat the hens of their own poultry-yard, the vegetables ...
— Bouvard and Pecuchet - A Tragi-comic Novel of Bourgeois Life • Gustave Flaubert
... in a dream, I watched the giant Jodd cut down a gorgeous captain, the axe shearing through his golden armour as though it were but silk. I watched a comrade of my own fall beneath a spear-thrust. I gazed at the face of Heliodore, who stared wide-eyed at the red scene, and at the white-lipped ...
— The Wanderer's Necklace • H. Rider Haggard
... But be present, for I will have the corse borne forth, and while ye stay, chant a hymn to the God below that accepteth not libations. And all the Thessalians, over whom I reign, I enjoin to share in the grief for this lady, by shearing their locks with steel, and by arraying themselves in sable garb. And harness[24] your teams of horses to your chariots, and cut from your single steeds the manes that fall upon their necks. And let there be no noise of pipes, nor of the lyre throughout the city for twelve completed ...
— The Tragedies of Euripides, Volume I. • Euripides
... divine the future—is not seized and set triumphantly as it is in "Silas Marner." The descriptions do not flow out of and form part of the narrative, but are wedged in, and often awkwardly. We are invited to assist at a sheep-shearing scene, or at a harvest supper, because these scenes are not to be found in the works of George Eliot, because the reader is supposed to be interested in such things, because Mr. Hardy is anxious to show how jolly ...
— Confessions of a Young Man • George Moore
... treats of stock (de re pecuaria), and one or two new personages are introduced, as Mennas, Murius, and Vaccius (the last, of course, taking on himself to speak of kine), and ends with an account of the dairy and sheep-shearing. The third is devoted to an account of the preserves (de villicis pastionibus) which includes aviaries, whether for pleasure or profit, fish-tanks, deer- forests, rabbit-warrens, and all such luxuries of a country house as are independent of tillage or pasturage—and ...
— A History of Roman Literature - From the Earliest Period to the Death of Marcus Aurelius • Charles Thomas Cruttwell
... crevice, seen in their most impressive presentment as alternating vistas of stark, moonlighted crags and gulches and depths of blackest shadow, had encouraged it. The hiss and whistle of the air-brakes, the harsh, sustained note of the shrieking wheel-flanges shearing the inner edges of the railheads on the curves, and the stuttering roar of the 266's safety-valve were continuous; a deafening medley of sounds multiplied a hundred-fold by the demoniac laughter of ...
— The Taming of Red Butte Western • Francis Lynde
... and best of the bean straw grown on the farm was selected and scattered on the floor of the sitting-rooms as warm and dry to the feet, and that was all the carpet in the house. Just before sheep-shearing time, too, Jonathan used to have the nettles cut that flourished round the back of the sheds, and strewn on the floor of the barn. The nettles shrivelled up dry, and the wool did not stick to them, but could be ...
— Round About a Great Estate • Richard Jefferies
... I'll give thee chains and carcanets Of primroses and violets. A bag and bottle thou shalt have, That richly wrought, and this as brave; So that as either shall express The wearer's no mean shepherdess. At shearing-times, and yearly wakes, When Themilis his pastime makes, There thou shalt be; and be the wit, Nay more, the feast, and grace of it. On holydays, when virgins meet To dance the heys with nimble feet, Thou shalt come forth, and then appear The Queen of Roses ...
— Six Centuries of English Poetry - Tennyson to Chaucer • James Baldwin
... liveliest portion of the herder's life, which was generally very lonely. First came the shearing crew with their captain; next arrived the venders of hot coffee, tamales, tortillas, and other Mexican dainties; brush booths were erected and a brisk trade began. The herds were driven up and into a corral where several shearers could work at a time. Snip, snip, snip, went the ...
— History of California • Helen Elliott Bandini
... sheep he saw before him must be his old companions. But they were so changed, by shearing, that he couldn't ...
— The Tale of Snowball Lamb • Arthur Bailey
... he saw—a sinister black triangle swiftly shearing the water. They ran, yelling, down to the water's edge and stood there trying to shout a warning over the noise of ...
— Angel Island • Inez Haynes Gillmore
... went to the garden, where Bob was shearing the spring grass from the paths. 'What is John's direction?' she said, holding the sealed ...
— The Trumpet-Major • Thomas Hardy
... poor little ewe-lamb went out into the world, I did not fear any shearing he might encounter in America. I don't mind my own countrymen. I like them, but I am not afraid of them. Two elements go to make up a book: matter and manner. The former, of course, is its author's own. He maintains it against all comers. Opposition does not terrify him, for it is a mere difference ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 75, January, 1864 • Various
... a revolving reel, built up of spirally-arranged knives, the edges of which pass very close to a sharp plate projecting from the frame of the mower. Each blade, as it turns, works along the plate, giving a shearing cut to any grass that may be caught between the two cutting edges. The action is that of a pair of scissors (Fig. 227), one blade representing the fixed, the other the moving knife. If you place a cylinder of wood in the scissors it will be driven forward by the closing of the blades, and ...
— How it Works • Archibald Williams
... in Southern California, but sheep-shearing was late at the Senora Moreno's. The Fates had seemed to combine to put it off. In the first place, Felipe Moreno had been ill. He was the Senora's eldest son, and since his father's death had been at the head of his mother's house. Without him, nothing could ...
— Ramona • Helen Hunt Jackson
... ponchos of the alpaco wool. It is also frequently exported to Europe, and it sells at a good price in England. The alpacos are kept in large flocks, and throughout the whole of the year they graze on the level heights. At shearing time only they are driven to the huts. They are in consequence very shy, and they run away at the approach of a stranger. The obstinacy of the alpaco is remarkable. When one of these animals is separated from the flock, he throws himself on the ...
— Travels in Peru, on the Coast, in the Sierra, Across the Cordilleras and the Andes, into the Primeval Forests • J. J. von Tschudi
... seen— Things proper to the age of Saturn— Shall greet you here; for we have been Wrought quaintly, on the Arcadian pattern. Your poet's lips will break in song For joy, to see at last appearing The bulls and bears, a peaceful throng, While a lamb leads them—to the shearing! ...
— In Divers Tones • Charles G. D. Roberts
... at the very door;—Dan came home with a pocket full of money and swag full of greasy clothes. How Dad shook him by the hand and welcomed him back! And how Dan talked of "tallies", "belly-wool", and "ringers" and implored Dad, over and over again, to go shearing, or rolling up, or branding—ANYTHING rather than work ...
— On Our Selection • Steele Rudd
... choked and half-blinded, to windward to throw his weight on the careening gunwale, the helmswoman had pounced upon the tiller and was standing knee-deep in the water pouring over the submerged lee rail to pay out and steer and miss the island headland by a shearing hand's-breadth. ...
— The Price • Francis Lynde
... will be of great benefit to our inhabitants the graziers; when time and labour will be too much taken up in manuring their ground, feeding their cattle, shearing their sheep, and sending over their oxen fit for slaughter; to which employments they are turned by nature, as descended from the Scythians, whose diet they are still so fond of. ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Vol. VII - Historical and Political Tracts—Irish • Jonathan Swift
... the trains because they were so fatal to passengers. I informed him that all the profs at Siwash went armed, and that the course of study consisted of mining, draw poker, shooting from the hip, broncho-busting, sheep-shearing, History of Art, bread-making ...
— At Good Old Siwash • George Fitch
... no wonder, therefore, that we all looked forward to our first great shearing as a very busy time indeed. Our great wool harvest was, indeed, one of the principal events of the year. Moncrieff said he always felt young again at ...
— Our Home in the Silver West - A Story of Struggle and Adventure • Gordon Stables
... all to join in haymaking and in washing and shearing the lord's sheep, to pay pannage for their pigs, to take their turn of service as reeve and tithingman, and to carry the lord's victuals and baggage on his departure from Witney as the natives were formerly wont ...
— The Enclosures in England - An Economic Reconstruction • Harriett Bradley
... woman, she was. You've never had her hand At farls and bannocks; and her singing-hinnies Fair melted in the mouth—not sad and soggy As yours are like to be. She'd no habnab And hitty-missy ways; and she'd turn to, At shearing-time, and clip with any man. She never ...
— Krindlesyke • Wilfrid Wilson Gibson
... is durable, harmonious in color and design, and is distinctly a home product. The wool of which it is made is sheared from the flocks of sheep in the vicinity. The shearing takes place annually in June; the wool is then carded, spun, and dyed. The threads of hand-spun wool are worked through a hand-woven webbing, and securely knotted or tied with a specially devised knot. The designs thus far are mainly adaptations from the native American Indian motives, which ...
— Rugs: Oriental and Occidental, Antique & Modern - A Handbook for Ready Reference • Rosa Belle Holt
... was the lagoon by starshine that the head of the swimmer could be distinguished away out in the midst of circles of light; also, as the head neared the reef, a dark triangle that came shearing through water past the palm tree at the pier. It was the night patrol of the lagoon, who had heard in some mysterious manner that a drunken sailor-man was ...
— The Blue Lagoon - A Romance • H. de Vere Stacpoole
... cannot do't without counters.—Let me see; what am I to buy for our sheep-shearing feast? 'Three pound of sugar; five pound of currants; rice'—what will this sister of mine do with rice? But my father hath made her mistress of the feast, and she lays it on. She hath made me four and twenty nosegays for the shearers,—three-man song-men all, and very good ...
— The Winter's Tale - [Collins Edition] • William Shakespeare
... young men and maids meet To exercise their dancing feet, Tripping the comely country-round, With daffodils and daisies crowned. Thy wakes, thy quintals, here thou hast, Thy May-poles, too, with garlands graced, Thy morris-dance, thy Whitsun-ale, Thy shearing-feast, which never fail, Thy harvest home, thy wassail-bowl, That's tossed up after fox-i'-th'-hole, Thy mummeries, thy Twelfthtide kings And queens, thy Christmas revellings, Thy nut-brown mirth, thy russet wit, And no man ...
— In The Yule-Log Glow—Book 3 - Christmas Poems from 'round the World • Various
... arm, with extreme quickness; barely avoiding a deep slash from the collie's shearing eye-teeth. And Lad, continued ...
— Further Adventures of Lad • Albert Payson Terhune
... sweeping towards us in long undulations, later to be broken here and there by the dark lines that indicated open water. As each swell lifted around our rapidly dissolving berg it drove floe-ice on to the ice- foot, shearing off more of the top snow-covering and reducing the size of our camp. When the floes retreated to attack again the water swirled over the ice-foot, which was rapidly increasing in width. The launching of the boats under such conditions ...
— South! • Sir Ernest Shackleton
... door might be opened for her. She had come all the way from Nuremberg to this spot, thinking it possible that in this spot alone she might receive succour; and now she stood there, fearing to raise the knocker on the door. She was a lamb indeed, whose fleece had been shorn very close; and the shearing had been done all in the sacred name of religion! It had been thought necessary that the vile desires of her human heart should be crushed within her bosom, and the crushing had brought her to this. She looked up in her desolation ...
— Linda Tressel • Anthony Trollope
... hasten to say that I have not the slightest objection to the shearing of trees. The only trouble is in calling the practice art and in putting the trees where people must see them (unless they are part of a recognized formal-garden design). If the operator simply calls the business shearing, and puts the ...
— Manual of Gardening (Second Edition) • L. H. Bailey
... of the old Boers went directly from their farms to the battlefields, and they wore the same clothing in the laagers as they used when shearing their sheep or herding their cattle. When they started for the frontier the Boer farmers arranged matters so that they might be comfortable while the campaign continued. Many, it is true, dashed away from home at the first call ...
— With the Boer Forces • Howard C. Hillegas
... it is sufficient to cement the fibres in position by means of ordinary yellow shellac, but where very great accuracy is aimed at, the shellac (being itself imperfectly elastic and exposed to shearing stress) imposes its imperfections on the whole system. This source of error can be got over by soldering the threads in position. Attempts were made by the writer in this direction, with fair success, in 1889, but as Mr. Boys has carried the art to a high degree of perfection, ...
— On Laboratory Arts • Richard Threlfall
... "He was shearing sheep, and could give no time to company; and when, late in the day, I drew rein at Janet's, and she said she was going to have a dance and could not look after sick folk, the pallid lips failed to return my despairing embrace; and in the terror which this brought me I went down, ...
— The House in the Mist • Anna Katharine Green
... open. It kept Sergeant Crisp busy enough running out the "tin-horn" gamblers and whisky-peddlers, keeping guard over the fresh and innocent lambs that strayed in from the East and across from the old land ready for shearing, and preserving law and order in this hustling frontier town. Money was still easy in the town, and had Sergeant Crisp been minded for the mere closing of his eyes or turning of his back upon occasion he might have retired early from the Force with a competency. Unhappily for Sergeant ...
— The Patrol of the Sun Dance Trail • Ralph Connor
... "I was shearing in them sheds in '52 when old Shenty owned the run. He was a rum old miser, he was, would skin two devils for one hide; believe he has gone to hell; hope so, at any rate. He couldn't read nor write much, but he could make money better'n any man I ever heard of. Bought ...
— The Book of the Bush • George Dunderdale
... knight and got used to fine French ways, he'll think nothing good enow for him. And if he brought Will Trenton with him, I'd not sit at the board with the fellow.—But ye'll ride over, Wilfred, and take care the minx Agnes knows what she's lost. Ay, and if you knew of a safe hand, Sir, when the shearing is over I'd send the lad a purse of nobles to keep up his ...
— The Caged Lion • Charlotte M. Yonge
... be cut back evenly, and in accordance with the shape the hedge is to take. The pyramidal form appears to me to be the one most in harmony with Nature. In October, the hedge should receive its final shearing for the year; and if there is an apparent deficiency of vigor, the ground on both sides should receive another top-dressing, after removing the summer mulch. As the hedge grows older and stronger, ...
— The Home Acre • E. P. Roe
... As soon therefore, as his means would allow, he bought a small stock of the necessary articles and began afresh,—his amateur master showing him how to paint; and the pupil succeeded so well that he excelled the master's copy. His first picture was a copy from an engraving called "Sheep-shearing," and was afterwards sold by him for half-a-crown. Aided by a shilling Guide to Oil-painting, he went on working at his leisure hours, and gradually acquired a better knowledge of his materials. He made his own easel and palette, palette-knife, and paint-chest; he bought ...
— Self Help • Samuel Smiles
... Then we pay the Temple tax to feed the priests. They get the first-born of all the sheep too. When a man's first son is born, he must make a big gift to the synagogue. Farmers have to give part of the wool at sheep-shearing; part of the wood at woodcutting; and the best of the fruit at harvest." He looked around and spat on the ground. "On top of that we pay for the schools and synagogues! Is it any wonder we have hardly enough ...
— Men Called Him Master • Elwyn Allen Smith
... showed patents in connection with improvements in engines, cars, wheels, axles, tires, brakes, and rails. Fifteen patents for improvements in sugar manufacture, patents for motors and hydraulic apparatus, for the manufacture of iron and steel, the shaping, embossing, shearing, and cutting of metals, for marine artillery, ordnance, projectiles, ammunition, armor plates, screw propellers, anchors, silvering glass, casting of type, patents for bronze powder, gold paint, oils, varnishes, asphalt pavements, ...
— The Harris-Ingram Experiment • Charles E. Bolton
... "There was four feasts in the year for us folk. First of all there was the sower's feast,—that would be about the end of April; then came the sheep-shearer's feast,—there'd be about fifteen of us as would sit down after sheep-shearing, and we'd be singing best part of the night, and plenty to eat and drink; next came the feast for the reapers, when the corn was cut about August; and, last of all, the harvest home in September. Ah! those were good times fifty years ago. My father and I have rented this cottage eighty-six ...
— A Cotswold Village • J. Arthur Gibbs
... stupendous pears. At rare intervals a steamboat, bright and neat as a new toy, trailed a long feather of smoke from the foot of the Rigi, shed a small and dusty crowd into the sleepy town, and then bustled back, shearing the silken flood and ...
— A Comedy of Masks - A Novel • Ernest Dowson and Arthur Moore
... beyond. Here there were no clearings in the rocky underbrush until he reached Richmond Braley's land. A long upturning sweep ended at the house, directly against the base of the mountain; and without decreasing his gait he passed over the faintly traced way, by the triangular sheep washing and shearing pen, to ...
— The Happy End • Joseph Hergesheimer
... of using various dips, as Lime and Sulphur, which is recommended by the United States Bureau of Animal Industry. This is very effective and inexpensive. Scabby sheep should be dipped a week or ten days after shearing; two dippings are necessary at the interval of ten days. After dipping, move to ...
— The Veterinarian • Chas. J. Korinek
... Judah to his Sheep-shearing, and placed a Whore (Tamar) in his Way, in the Posture of Temptation, so made him commit Incest and ...
— The History of the Devil - As Well Ancient as Modern: In Two Parts • Daniel Defoe
... imparted to a Byzantine chronicler of the strolling competitive order, a man of still worse character than himself, called, I believe, Cocconas. The pair went about living on occult pretensions, shearing 'fat-heads,' as they describe ordinary people in the native Magian lingo. Among these they got hold of a rich Macedonian woman; her youth was past, but not her desire for admiration; they got sufficient supplies out of her, and accompanied her ...
— Works, V2 • Lucian of Samosata
... she, "and a fiddlestick's end, goodman! You may know well about fishing and be good at shearing sheep for what I know; but you are little of a judge of damask sheets. And the best word I can say is just this," she says, laying hold of one end of the goods, "that if ye are made up to burn the plenishing, you must burn your wife along ...
— The Waif Woman • Robert Louis Stevenson
... seventy species of grasses. The genus stripa has several varieties, of which the seeds are injurious to sheep, penetrating into the wool, and sometimes into the carcase and causing death. By adopting the precaution of shearing before the seeds are ripe, this mischief is however obviated. Another description is distinguished as elegantissima, from its beautiful appearance, and is used as a decoration, and for ...
— The Bushman - Life in a New Country • Edward Wilson Landor
... neibor, I'll no say that ye mayna be right," answered the submissive Judith. "I am sure ye are right about the sawing and the mawing, the shearing and the leading, and what for suld ye no be right about kirkwark, too?—But concerning my oe, ...
— The Heart of Mid-Lothian, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... slight sketch or two of anything characteristic of the seasons, in mountainous scenery especially, I shall regard them as apples of gold. I am very anxious to learn whether any particular customs or festivities are kept up in the sheep-districts of Scotland at sheep-shearing time, as were wont of old all over England; and where is there a man who could solve such a problem like thyself? I am sensible of the great boldness of my request; but as my object is to promote the love of nature, I am willing to believe that ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume II. - The Songs of Scotland of the past half century • Various
... was fast failing as he approached the house. By the shearing away of trees and creeper, at least from all its central and eastern parts, Threlfall had now lost much of its savage picturesqueness; the formal garden within the forecourt had been to some extent restored; and the front door had received a coat or two of paint. But the whole of the west wing ...
— The Mating of Lydia • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... conversation was English in point of expression. I was rather startled at hearing one gentleman ask another whether he meant to wash this year, and receive the answer "No." I soon discovered that a person's sheep are himself. If his sheep are clean, he is clean. He does not wash his sheep before shearing, but he washes; and, most marvellous of all, it is not his sheep which lamb, but ...
— A First Year in Canterbury Settlement • Samuel Butler
... must crash into her frail side, she shifted her helm and came round several points, so that in the end the Margaret ran, not into her, but alongside of her, grinding against her planking, and shearing away a great length of her bulwark. For a few seconds they hung together thus, and, before the seas bore them apart, grapnels were thrown from the Margaret whereof one forward got hold and brought them bow to bow. Thus the end of the bowsprit ...
— Fair Margaret • H. Rider Haggard
... Pythagoreans had never dreamed of a donkey becoming a man, they had often known a man to become a donkey. If they were not able to skin a flint, they knew well what was meant by "skinning a flayed dog," and "shearing an ass." These and similar sayings, being of a simple character, may have been due to the same thought occurring to different minds, and this may be the case even where there is more point; thus, "an ass laden with gold will get into the strongest fortress," has been attributed ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange
... in or about working places.] At each mine equipped with electric power after the passage and approval of this act, the current used to operate gathering locomotives, mining machines, shearing machines, drills and other machinery, used in or about the working places of the mine, shall not exceed in pressure or potential, three hundred and twenty-five volts, direct current, as shown at the nearest switchboard, and the wires conducting the ...
— Mining Laws of Ohio, 1921 • Anonymous
... which tax, aggravated by the timbre,[3235] is enormous[3236] since, in most cases, it takes 5, 7, 9, and up to 10 1/2 % on the capital transmitted, that is to say, in the case of real-estate, 2, 3 and even 4 years' income from it. Thus, in the first shearing of the sheep the exchequer cuts deep, as deep as possible; but it has sheared only the sheep whose fleece is more or less ample; its scissors have scarcely touched the others, much more numerous, whose wool, short, thin and scant, is maintained only by day-wages, the petty gains of manual labor.—Compensation ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 5 (of 6) - The Modern Regime, Volume 1 (of 2)(Napoleon I.) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... Hottentot, for having rooted out an ancient garden belonging to a Romish ruin; and he wrote of Macdowal, of Caverton-mill, that by his skill in rearing sheep, he sold his flocks, ewe and lamb, for a couple of guineas each: that he washed his sheep before shearing—and by his turnips improved sheep-husbandry; he added, that lands were generally let at sixteen shillings the Scottish acre; the farmers rich, and, compared to Ayrshire, their houses magnificent. On his way ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... in 1713, there was but one clothier in the colony. The most that he could do was to full the cloth which was made in the homes. A great proportion of it was worn without shearing or pressing. He lived at Woodbury, and thither the early inhabitants of this town resorted to have their cloth fulled. People, to a very large extent, wore clothing made from the skins of animals. They also wore wooden shoes and moccasins, or went barefoot, although leather boots and ...
— The Two Hundredth Anniversary of the Settlement of the Town of New Milford, Conn. June 17th, 1907 • Daniel Davenport
... returned to his books, but returned to his Highlands after.... There in the bright October, the gorgeous bright October, When the brackens are changed, and heather blooms are faded, And, amid russet of heather and fern, green trees are bonnie, There, when shearing had ended, and barley-stooks were garnered, David gave Philip to wife his daughter, his darling Elspie; Elspie, the quiet, the brave, was wedded to Philip, the poet..... So won Philip his bride. They are married, and gone to New Zealand. Five hundred pounds in pocket, with books and two ...
— The Germ - Thoughts towards Nature in Poetry, Literature and Art • Various
... had apparently intoxicated him, shearing away his solid dignity and middle-aged dependability. Now Sinbad flashed out of the Queen at the opening of her port in the early morning and was brought back, protesting with both voice and claws, at the end of the day by ...
— Plague Ship • Andre Norton
... beating the yucca-stalks, and putting them to soak in water; the oldest women were sitting on the ground, weaving baskets. There were not many men in the village now; two large bands were away at work,—one at the autumn sheep-shearing, and one working on a large ...
— Ramona • Helen Hunt Jackson
... counting the boundary riders and stockmen at different parts of the place; and double that number at shearing or drafting times, not to mention daily sundowners—it's like feeding an army, my dears," she said; "and then, you see, I had to make preparations for all of ...
— Seven Little Australians • Ethel Sybil Turner
... forward to the sturdy stroke, for several of those behind me were masters of the paddle, and as I plied my blade I felt with a thrill that it was good to fight the might of the river in such a company. Snowy wreaths boiled high about the shearing prow, I could hear the others catch their breath with a hiss, and once more after a heavy thud the cedar floor seemed to raise itself beneath me and leap to the impulse, while, with a hardening of every muscle, I swept the leaf-shaped blade ...
— Lorimer of the Northwest • Harold Bindloss
... the custom is given by a careful and well-informed enquirer, the Rev. J. G. Campbell, minister of the remote Hebridean island of Tiree: "The Harvest Old Wife (a Cailleach).—In harvest, there was a struggle to escape from being the last done with the shearing, and when tillage in common existed, instances were known of a ridge being left unshorn (no person would claim it) because of it being behind the rest. The fear entertained was that of having the 'famine of the farm' (gort a ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... an open reel; not only to gather the grain, but his cutters or shears, were attached to, and revolved with the reel;—very much, if not exactly on the principle of shearing cloth. ...
— Obed Hussey - Who, of All Inventors, Made Bread Cheap • Various
... April day, when the great news came, it came like a sword that, with one stroke, slashed the State in twain, shearing through the strongest bonds that link one man to another, whether of blood, business, politics or religion, as though they were no more than threads of wool. Nowhere in the Union was the National drama so played ...
— The Little Shepherd of Kingdom Come • John Fox
... crushing against some fixed point, such as obtains where a brace abuts against a chord, or where a bridge rests on a bolster; and the shearing of pins, bolts and rivets, also ...
— Instructions on Modern American Bridge Building • G. B. N. Tower
... of corn in its progress with a regularity and evenness that was surprising. No straggling stalks of corn were left, none of the slovenly irregular work too often seen where manual labor is employed was to be discovered; on the contrary, the field after shearing, looked nearly as smooth and even as a kitchen floor or turnpike road. The farmer has now no longer occasion to be behind the reapers, dinning in their ears, 'shear low"—'now do shear low;' for this machine, with a very simple ...
— Obed Hussey - Who, of All Inventors, Made Bread Cheap • Various
... like that, Mr. Medlicot, will burn for weeks sometimes. I'll tell you fairly what I'm afraid of. There's a man with you whom I turned out of the shed last shearing, and I think he might put ...
— Harry Heathcote of Gangoil • Anthony Trollope
... digest the mental pabulum furnished by a really masculine writer. Carlyle ranges like an archangel through the universe of intellect, overturning mountains to see how they are made— now cleaving the empyrean with strong and steady wing, now shearing clear down to the profoundest depths of Ymir's Well at the foundations of the world. That his followers continue to increase argues well for the age, for he is a man whom weaklings should avoid if they would not be sawed in twain by mountain chains, forever lost in pathless limboes or drowned in ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... their visit. Mr. Dawson informed them that those pleasing reunions, had become quite numerous in that part of the country; where the degree of familiar and friendly intercourse established among the neighbouring families was such, that, after the bustle and occupation of shearing time was over, such a party, as he then had in his house, was formed alternately at each of the surrounding stations; and their leisure existence became a prolonged life of reciprocal good-feeling ...
— Fern Vale (Volume 1) - or the Queensland Squatter • Colin Munro
... his dog beg for a morsel of the food; music is provided behind by a self-sacrificing person with the bagpipes, and a fourth shepherd stands in the distance with some sheep, like a martyr to his duty. The window beneath this is decorated with a sheep-shearing scene, which I have reproduced from the outline drawing by E.H. Langlois, published by Delaqueriere in his "Description Historique des Maisons de Rouen" (Paris: Firmin Didot. 1821). The presiding shepherdess carries on her work with the usual embarrassing distractions. By her side ...
— The Story of Rouen • Sir Theodore Andrea Cook
... old woman, shall we go a shearing?" "Speak a little louder, sir, I am very thick of hearing." "Old woman, old woman, shall I love you dearly?" "Thank you, kind sir, I hear ...
— The Nursery Rhyme Book • Unknown
... President, George E. Peck, Geneva; Vice-Presidents, Thomas McD. Richards, Woodstock, and Daniel Kelley, Wheaton; Secretary and Treasurer, W. C. Vandercook, Cherry Valley. It was decided to hold the association's annual public sheep-shearing at Richmond, McHenry county, April 29 and 30, and C. R. Lawson, L. H. Smith, and A. S. Peck were designated a committee to represent the association at the annual sheep-shearing of ...
— Prairie Farmer, Vol. 56: No. 3, January 19, 1884. - A Weekly Journal for the Farm, Orchard and Fireside • Various
... fond of Tilly. It's only that his life is so unsettled. He's been a barman at Euroa since then; and the last we heard of him, he was shearing somewhere on the Goulburn. He doesn't seem ...
— Australia Felix • Henry Handel Richardson
... over the Hill Sheep-shearing Evolution Riding in the Mist The Procession A Christian Wind in the Rocks My Distant Relative The ...
— Quotations from the Works of John Galsworthy • David Widger
... in a long verandah giving on a grass plot, where laughing-jackasses laugh very horribly, sit wool-kings, premiers, and breeders of horses after their kind. The older men talk of the days of the Eureka Stockade and the younger of 'shearing wars' in North Queensland, while the traveller moves timidly among them wondering what under the world every third word means. At Wellington, overlooking the harbour (all right-minded clubs should command the sea), another, and yet a ...
— Letters of Travel (1892-1913) • Rudyard Kipling
... capable of any venture in the getting of money. He would say in his cynical, loud way that the end justifies the means, and with him the end is Angelique des Meloises. She is probably going to be the Delilah of New France, the woman who is shearing it of its upholding strength, but ...
— The Black Colonel • James Milne
... and came to Samaria. And as he was at the shearing house in the way, Jehu met with the brethren of Ahaziah king ...
— The Emancipation of Massachusetts • Brooks Adams
... preparation. When the landlord of his inn entered to try and induce him to go, he found him with his wig on his knee, his shaving apparatus by his side, and the quondam beau deeply interested in lathering the peruke as a preliminary to shearing it. He resisted every proposal to move, and was carried down stairs, kicking and shrieking. Once lodged in the Hospice, he was treated by the soeurs de charite with the greatest kindness and consideration. ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 2 • Grace & Philip Wharton
... who had an estate in the neighbourhood, was laying his miseries before the man of business of his employer. "What are we to do?" he said. "Half the gang of slaves is dead, and the other half is so feeble, that I can't get through the work of the month. We ought to be sheep-shearing; you have no chance of wool. We ought to be swarming the bees, pressing the honey, boiling and purifying the wax. We ought to be plucking the white leaves of the camomile, and steeping the golden flowers in oil. We ought to be gathering the wild grapes, sifting off the flowers, ...
— Callista • John Henry Cardinal Newman
... The shearing-season was over in that district, but I got a job of house-painting, which was my trade, at the Great Western Hotel (a two-story brick place), and I stayed in Bourke for ...
— Children of the Bush • Henry Lawson
... heat is greatest where the shearing of the material is strongest. This shearing is therefore the mechanical cause which produces ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 415, December 15, 1883 • Various
... prizes, too! Out in the flock there was a white sheep which she called hers, since she had brought it up as a lamb when its mother would not own it, as is sometimes the way with sheep— silly things! It was shearing-time now ...
— The Iron Star - And what It saw on Its Journey through the Ages • John Preston True
... was bustle; the watch below tumbled up to lend a hand without waiting to be called; and in five minutes the noble ship was clothed with canvas from her trucks down, and shearing through the deep blue water ...
— A Middy of the Slave Squadron - A West African Story • Harry Collingwood
... of keel is adhered to, but its functions in No. 23 are somewhat different. In No. 9 it was intended to be sufficiently strong to support all the main vertical bending moments and shearing forces, but in No. 23 it was primarily intended to support the distributed weights of water ballast, petrol tanks, etc., between the main transverse frames. Unlike No. 9, the keel is attached to the main transverse frames ...
— British Airships, Past, Present, and Future • George Whale
... showing themselves to the others, and persuading them to follow their example. Whilst, therefore, the powder was drying, I began with a large pair of scissors to execute my new office upon the eldest of four or five chins presented to me; and as great nicety was not required, the shearing of a dozen of them did not occupy me long. Some of the more timid were alarmed at a formidable instrument coming so near to their noses, and would scarcely be persuaded by their shaven friends to allow the operation ...
— A Source Book Of Australian History • Compiled by Gwendolen H. Swinburne
... entered into a bond, with sureties, that all the wool he might buy should be sold by him to no persons within fifteen miles of the sea, and all growers of wool within ten miles of the sea in those counties were obliged within three days of shearing to account for the number of fleeces, and where they ...
— King's Cutters and Smugglers 1700-1855 • E. Keble Chatterton
... of all the turmoil, hissing bullets and roaring mobs, he sits with folded hands and closed eyes as calm as a Joss, while a strolling barber manipulates a pair of foreign shears. For him blessed freedom lies not in the change of Monarchy to Republic, but in the shearing close to the scalp the ...
— The Lady and Sada San - A Sequel to The Lady of the Decoration • Frances Little
... off the edges of her life. She is chipped like an old bit of china; she is frayed like a garment of last year's wearing. She is soft, crinkled, like a fading rose. And each minute flows by brushing against her, shearing off another and another petal. The Empress crushes her breasts with her hands and weeps. And the tall clouds sail over Malmaison like a procession of stately ships bound ...
— Men, Women and Ghosts • Amy Lowell
... machine for shearing sheep. It is almost done," said the boy. "There is only one thing that is not right yet; but it will be soon. When you think, and think, and think, all night and all day, it comes ...
— The Story of an African Farm • (AKA Ralph Iron) Olive Schreiner
... meikle nose thinks ilka ane speaks o't. He that teaches himsell has a fule for his maister. It's an ill cause that the lawyer thinks shame o'. Lippen[156] to me, but look to yoursell. Mair whistle than woo, as the souter said when shearing the soo. Ye gae far about seeking the nearest. Ye'll no sell your hen on a rainy day. Ye'll mend when ye grow better. Ye're nae chicken ...
— Reminiscences of Scottish Life and Character • Edward Bannerman Ramsay
... think Heaven's allus hard? No, I tell 'e, not to the young—not to the young. The wind's mostly tempered to the shorn lamb, though the auld ewe do oftentimes sting for it, an' get the seeds o' death arter shearing. Wait, and be strong, till you feel Clem's baaby in your arms. That'll be reward enough, an' you won't care no more for the world then. His son, mind; who be you to take life, an' break the buds of Clem's plantin'? Worse than to go in another's ...
— Children of the Mist • Eden Phillpotts
... lake is a dike [1] having a total width of eight feet, consisting of a central band of segregated quartz, six feet wide, cut by numerous thin sheets of biotite, which probably mark the planes of shearing. The quartz is bordered on either side by a band of orthoclase,' one foot in width. Between these bands of orthoclase and the neighboring amphibolite are narrow bands ...
— The Long Labrador Trail • Dillon Wallace
... sirs, For you there's rosemary and rue; these keep Seeming and savour all the winter long; Grace and remembrance be to you both, And welcome to our shearing.' ...
— Storyology - Essays in Folk-Lore, Sea-Lore, and Plant-Lore • Benjamin Taylor
... contrive to work up into cotton, and the stalks into cordage: and, with the profit I shall make of these thistles, and of my decoy, and of my goose-quills and feathers, and of my silver sprig rabbits, I will buy jackets for my sheep, for my sheep shall all have jackets after shearing. Why should not Lincolnshire sheep, if they have jackets, become as valuable as the Leicestershire breed? You'll see my sheep will be the finest in the whole county; and, with the profit I shall ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. 2 • Maria Edgeworth
... places the trees were fine and lofty, in others only stringy-bark or low bushes. A river passed in front at the distance of less than a quarter of a mile, full and flowing in winter, but after the heats of summer consisting of a succession of water-holes connected by a trickling rill. During the shearing season the river was a scene of the greatest animation, as all the flocks from far and near were driven up to it, that the sheep might be washed before being deprived of their fleeces. After a sudden downfall of ...
— The Gilpins and their Fortunes - A Story of Early Days in Australia • William H. G. Kingston
... sir. If we disregard the moorings, a straight bridge would tend to curve downstream and open out under a shearing strain. As we get nearer the arch form it naturally gets stiffer, because the strain becomes compressive. After making the bridge strong enough for traffic, the problem is to resist the pressure of ...
— Brandon of the Engineers • Harold Bindloss
... always too anxious about his sheep when overtaken by a fog to think of his own danger. Then the wages were good, and the same all the year round, with the chance of making some extra money in the shearing season, and so much a head on each lamb that he reared; and to all intents and purposes he was his own master, for the farmer to whom the sheep belonged entrusted the management of the flock entirely ...
— The Girl's Own Paper, Vol. VIII, No. 355, October 16, 1886 • Various
... in disguise, arrived at the old shepherd's dwelling while they were celebrating the feast of sheep-shearing; and though they were strangers, yet at the sheep-shearing every guest being made welcome, they were invited to walk in, and join in the ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles and Mary Lamb
... the spring of 1789," he wrote to Arthur Young, "I had improved that species of my stock so much as to get 5-1/4 lbs of Wool as the average of the fleeces of my whole flock,—and at the last shearing they did not yield me 2-1/2 lbs.—By procuring (if I am able) good rams and giving the necessary attention, I hope to get them up again for they are with me, as you have declared them to be with you, that part of my stock in ...
— George Washington: Farmer • Paul Leland Haworth
... onct and first. My mate, Joey Clynes, him that's on your ship, we was both born up beyond Bendigo. When we cut loose from the paternal leash, so to speak, we had a bit of boundary-riding, rabbit-killing, shearing and sun-downing—all no good, year by year. Then we had a bit o' luck and found a mob of warrigals—horses run wild, you know. We stalked 'em for days in the droughttime to a water-course, and got 'em, and coaxed 'em along till the floods come; then we sold 'em, and with the hard tin shipped ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... and fed him and cut his hair with a pair of sheep shears. It was a more or less rough job, because shearing sheep does not make a man a good human barber by any means. But Shelley looked at his head in the glass and said it was the most beautiful haircut in the world. Fussy people might criticize it here ...
— Ma Pettengill • Harry Leon Wilson
... at the shearing, nae youths now are jeering, Bandsters are lyart,[14] and runkled, and gray; At fair or at preaching, nae wooing, nae fleeching [15]— The Flowers of the Forest ...
— Northumberland Yesterday and To-day • Jean F. Terry
... develop further faults and folds, with the result that the convolutions of a coal bed may be very complex. The beds of a coal-bearing series are usually of differing thickness and competency, and as a consequence they do not take the same forms under folding. Shearing between the beds may result in an intricate outline for one bed, while the beds above and below may have much more simple outlines. In short, the following of a coal seam requires at almost every stage the application of principles of structural ...
— The Economic Aspect of Geology • C. K. Leith
... the painful ploughman plies his toil With shear and coulter shearing through the soil, That costs him dear and ditches it about, Or crops his hedge to make it undersprout, And never stays to ward it from the weed, But most respects to sow therein good seed; To th' end when summer decks the meadows plain, He may have recompense of costs and pain. ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 19, No. 528, Saturday, January 7, 1832 • Various
... so sorry," grieved Mary, as if Redford had failed in its sacred duty of hospitality. "I will tell him about it. The men have all been so busy with the shearing." ...
— Sisters • Ada Cambridge
... of the Pastoralists' Association . . . reports that the following stations have started shearing with full boards." ...
— A Dictionary of Austral English • Edward Morris
... carried to Polixenes, he called upon his faithful servant Camillo to go with him to the shepherd's house; and they arrived there in disguise just at the feast of sheep-shearing, when there was a welcome ...
— The Children's Portion • Various
... teeth in it but Breed did not flinch. The three-legged coyote crouched beside him and turned his head sidewise, the right side of his jaws flat on the trap, his teeth sliding along the cold steel and shearing away the frozen flesh. The leg was dulled to all sensations and Breed felt no pain. Shady viewed this amputation closely and whined with anxiety as it proceeded. Peg sliced the meat from the two toes, set his teeth firmly across the bones ...
— The Yellow Horde • Hal G. Evarts
... of course: Christmas to Epiphany was one long feast; then Plow Monday, Shrovetide, Sheep-shearing, Wake-Day, Harvest Home, Seed-Cake—these as the times came round. But there was a weekly regale too, which was known as Twice-a-Week-Roast. On Sundays and Thursdays a hot joint was the custom at supper. Tusser is clear about the value and ...
— In a Green Shade - A Country Commentary • Maurice Hewlett
... his soul. Next came Claud Dufair, a handsome remittance man with an eye-glass and a drawl. This fellow had personality. He insisted on wearing a white collar and using kid gloves when doing anything, from dung lifting to sheep shearing. Paddy Doolan was the third member. He was an Irishman by birth, but Australian by adoption. He had been in the Bush since he was a kid. A kind soul was Paddy, with the usual weakness—the craving for the "cratur." Fourth, and by no means least, was Sandy Brown, a Glasgow ...
— The Kangaroo Marines • R. W. Campbell
... person's hand. If you gave it anything to eat, it brought its wings round before the mouth, hovering and hiding its head in the manner of birds of prey when they feed. The adroitness it showed in shearing off the wings of the flies, which were always rejected, was worthy of observation, and pleased me much. Insects seemed to be most acceptable, though it did not refuse raw flesh when offered; so that the notion, that bats go down ...
— The Natural History of Selborne, Vol. 1 • Gilbert White |
