"Handful" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... hail of balls, the order to quit his position and try to rejoin his corps, he pointed out to me that the enemy's artillery had been firing on the 14th for an hour, and had caused it such loss that the handful of soldiers which remained would inevitably be exterminated as they went down into the plain, and that, moreover, there would not be time to prepare to execute such a movement, since a Russian column was marching on ...
— The Red True Story Book • Various
... rich presents which Alexander bestowed on them with a liberal hand. But this was not the prime impulse in the business. They were astonished at the daring with which Alexander with a comparative handful of men set out from Greece, having meditated the overthrow of the great Persian empire. They were astonished with his perpetual success, and his victorious progress from the Hellespont to mount Taurus, from mount Taurus to ...
— Lives of the Necromancers • William Godwin
... kept. There stands the apparatus, with the figures plainly marked, over against the porter's eye; and as the sum mounts nearly up to forty bushels he closes the door till the grains run thinly through, hardly a handful at a time, so that the balance is exactly struck. Then the teller standing by marks down his figure, and the record is made. The exact porter touches the string of another door, and the forty bushels of corn run out at the bottom of the measure, disappear ...
— Volume 1 • Anthony Trollope
... slammed the door of the car to give Peggy a little protection, then scooped up a handful of snow from the gutter to pound into a ball and toss like a grenade at the back of Major Dampfer's neck. The Major's boots flew out from under him, and he landed belly-down in the snow, burying his pistol's muzzle. ...
— The Great Potlatch Riots • Allen Kim Lang
... before he is again making himself heard, by an exclamation, telling of some discovery—a joyful one, as evinced by the tone of his voice. The two youths hasten to his side, and find him bending over a small heath-like bush, from which he has torn a handful of branches. ...
— The Land of Fire - A Tale of Adventure • Mayne Reid
... be several gold medals won in his amateur days at boxing tournaments. Once up town and in the pawnshop, Uncle Sam seemed thoroughly versed in the value of the medals, and Billy jingled a handful of silver in his pocket ...
— The Valley of the Moon • Jack London
... them when they found what Eden really was—a handful of rotting log cabins set in a swamp. The wharves and public buildings existed only on the agent's map with which he had so cruelly cheated them. There were only a few wan men alive there—the rest had succumbed to the sickly hot vapor that rose ...
— Tales from Dickens • Charles Dickens and Hallie Erminie Rives
... possession. We visited one of the poorest villages hereabouts, of not quite a hundred souls, but of course, provided with church, school and Mairie. Many a group of potato diggers we saw in the exquisite twilight, suggestive of Millet, many a landscape recalling other masters. This handful of woodlanders—for the village is surrounded by forests—is perhaps as poor as any rural population to be found throughout France. Yet here surprises await us. Some of the better off hire a little ...
— East of Paris - Sketches in the Gatinais, Bourbonnais, and Champagne • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... held up a handful of surface bulletins, crumpling them savagely. "This is a fake. Come on!" ...
— The Defenders • Philip K. Dick
... to say, that such a thickheaded villian in religious matters as Bob Beatty I never met. God knows I had a sore handful of him. So, now remember my caution, and good bye to you; I think you'll know me ...
— Valentine M'Clutchy, The Irish Agent - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... the priest whispered warningly. He shook up a handful of straw and made it as firm as he could under the man's head. "It is not prudent to speak so loud. Remember you cannot see who ...
— Captain Jim • Mary Grant Bruce
... very fast, and were soon fit to appear on the public stage, and display their skill, dressed in purple robes, with masks on their faces. The spectators were much pleased with them for a considerable time, when a wag who was present, having brought with him a quantity of nuts, threw a handful amongst them. The dance was immediately forgotten, and the performers from pyrrhic dancers, relapsed into apes, who went chattering and snapping at one another, and fighting for nuts; so that in a few moments the masks were crumpled, the clothes torn to rags, and the ape dance, ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 1 (of 2) - With an Introduction upon Ancient Humour • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange
... doesn't think about anything else. You're in pretty much the same fix as an Esquimo that can't be happy without flowers. Grand opera doesn't come as often as the circus, and some years the circus doesn't come. Listen!" He put one hand into his trousers' pockets, and noisily rattled a handful of coins. "That music is understood everywhere. Even in this God-forsaken place, they know how to dance ...
— Destiny • Charles Neville Buck
... a thousand miles from Shanghai, I met the West, modern comforts, bad manners, and all. Situated at the eastern end of the gorges, this town of thirty thousand Chinese inhabitants and a handful of Europeans is just where all the merchandise going upstream must be shifted from the light-draft steamers of the lower Yangtse to the native junks of forty to a hundred tons which are still the only freight boats that venture regularly through the rapids and whirlpools ...
— A Wayfarer in China - Impressions of a trip across West China and Mongolia • Elizabeth Kendall
... one among their officers was Colonel John Hardin, who (like his fellow Kentuckian, Colonel Scott), was a veteran of the Revolutionary War, and a man of experience in the innumerable deadly Indian skirmishes of the time. He had no special qualifications for the command of more than a handful of troops, but he was a brave and honorable man, who had done well in leading small parties of rangers against their red foes. Nevertheless, the militia threatened mutiny unless they were allowed to choose their own leader, and they chose a mere incompetent, a Colonel Trotter. Harmar yielded, ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume Three - The Founding of the Trans-Alleghany Commonwealths, 1784-1790 • Theodore Roosevelt
... were determined to repay the girl's confidence with the blackest treason. But when they were getting the apparatus ready and preparing to execute their malicious design, Consuela made a sign to her friend, who immediately came forward with a handful of pins and fastened her skirts together in such a way that even when the swing moved the point of her foot ...
— The Grandee • Armando Palacio Valds
... to the ground, keeping his left hand on the wound, which pained him. Suddenly he seized a handful of dust and threw it ...
— A Second Book of Operas • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... cause, and know now that we may count upon all our countrymen. They are waiting for the signal, and we must give it to them. Here, take this package; it contains a large number of those little paper balls upon which are written the words ''Tis time!' Each of you can take a handful of them and give them to your wives and children, that they may carry them to the neighbors and distribute them everywhere. Speckbacher and Wallner, too, have packages of such paper balls, and so soon as our faithful messengers bring them our 'open order,' they ...
— Andreas Hofer • Lousia Muhlbach
... crowd. An officer of the guards spied the man, and called him out. "Take a handful of that fellow's honey," he ordered one of his men, "and lightly smear that foul Jew's back and shoulders, his face and ears too. Don't put it on thickly, but as light as you can, that the insects may find his flesh ...
— The Mark of the Beast • Sidney Watson
... me to be a thief. Once she and some ruffians robbed a store and forced me to help them. I ought to have died before that. She demanded that I should steal something every day, and if I didn't she beat me. I got up early one morning and robbed her. I took a handful of money out of her drawer and ran away. But in the street a horror seized me, and I threw the money in the gutter and fled from it. Don't you see that I was born a thief? But I have striven so hard since then ...
— The Colossus - A Novel • Opie Read
... him over upon his back, and getting out his handkerchief, wiped the blood away from his face. As he did so, the first awful thought of death gave way to a feeling of hope. White and still as Johnston lay, his face was warm, and he was surely breathing a little. Seizing a handful of snow, Frank pressed it to the foreman's forehead, and cried to him as ...
— The Young Woodsman - Life in the Forests of Canada • J. McDonald Oxley
... of the sea was a crime to be expiated only by the most agonizing penance. Hence these peoples of Asia, the most numerous in the world, exercised no influence on the development of civilization compared with a mere handful of people in Crete or the island city of Tyre. And for the same reason China and India ceased to progress and became for centuries mere backwaters ...
— A History of Sea Power • William Oliver Stevens and Allan Westcott
... were sent out and saw many deer but the flatness of the country defeated their attempts to approach them; they brought however a few unfledged geese. As there was no appearance of increasing our stock of provision the allowance was limited to a handful of pemmican and a small portion of portable soup to each man per day. The thermometer this afternoon stood to 41 degrees. The following observations were obtained: latitude 68 degrees 18 minutes 50 seconds North, longitude 110 degrees 5 minutes 15 seconds West, but ...
— The Journey to the Polar Sea • John Franklin
... of a great feudal lady is gradually taught dissimulation, lying, intrigue; is initiated by the woman who looms above him like a saint into all the foulness of adultery. Adultery; a very ugly word, which must strike almost like a handful of mud in the face whosoever has approached this subject of mediaeval love in admiration of its strange delicacy and enthusiasm. Yet it is a word which must be spoken, for in it is the explanation ...
— Euphorion - Being Studies of the Antique and the Mediaeval in the - Renaissance - Vol. II • Vernon Lee
... Neither of my windows opened on the sea. I had no other resource but, with toil and great fatigue, to drag it to a huge chest which stood in a closet in my room; where I placed it all, with the exception of a handful or two. Then I threw myself, exhausted, into an arm-chair, till the people of the house should be up and stirring. As soon as possible I sent for some refreshment, and desired ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors: German (V.2) • Various
... dark and show her to me; and if she be gone away before me, do tell me which way I shall go after her to meet her, and, upon my shoul, I will make you the richest poor woman in the nation." He then pulled out a handful of guineas, a sight which would have bribed persons of much greater consequence than this poor ...
— The History of Tom Jones, a foundling • Henry Fielding
... soon as Marius heard of this, he resolved, with all expedition, to put to sea again, and taking with him from Africa some Mauritanian horse, and a few of the refugees out of Italy, all together not above one thousand, he, with this handful, began his voyage. Arriving at Telamon, in Etruria, and coming ashore, he proclaimed freedom for the slaves; and many of the countrymen, also, and shepherds thereabouts, who were already freemen, at the ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... retreat are colonised a few clear-starchers, a sprinkling of journeymen bookbinders, one or two prison agents for the Insolvent Court, several small housekeepers who are employed in the Docks, a handful of mantua-makers, and a seasoning of jobbing tailors. The majority of the inhabitants either direct their energies to the letting of furnished apartments, or devote themselves to the healthful and ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens
... storybooks and fairytales. Wasn't it just a storybook over which I had fallen adoze and adream? No; it was a big, ugly, antique, but convenient house, embodying a few features of a building still older, half-replaced and half-utilized, in which I had the fancy of our being almost as lost as a handful of passengers in a great drifting ship. Well, I was, ...
— The Turn of the Screw • Henry James
... was to me that the idea occurred—amid my ceaseless meditations on the common welfare, on the aggrandizement of the Gods and the promotion of order and beauty in the universe—of setting all to rights with a handful of clay; of creating living things, and moulding them after our own likeness. I saw what was lacking to our godhead: some counterpart, some foil wherein to set off its blessedness. And that counterpart ...
— Works, V1 • Lucian of Samosata
... with flowers around their fingers. Memory was not even troubled by the decay of the dead, for there remained of them only a handful of ashes. The soul, mingled with the boundless ...
— The Temptation of St. Antony - or A Revelation of the Soul • Gustave Flaubert
... will send us salt, for this child is destined to become holy and wonderful [in his works]." Thereupon Declan took up a fistful of earth and, making prayer in his heart to God, he signed the clay with the sign of the cross of redemption. It (the handful of earth) became white, dry salt, and all, on seeing it, gave thanks and honour to God and Declan. The infant was baptised there and the name of Ciaran given him. Declan said: "Bring up my spiritual son carefully and send him, at a fitting age, for education to a holy man ...
— Lives of SS. Declan and Mochuda • Anonymous
... crossed the courtyard and sat down on the kerb; his head swam and he felt along his legs with shaking hands. A belated fruit seller went by, and he bought a handful of dates, stuck on a small rod and looking like immense beetles, and as he ate his confidence in life gradually returned. The Joss was at a safe distance in his house and there was the street to give courage to his heart; the street where men walked safe and secure, and where a ...
— The Pointing Man - A Burmese Mystery • Marjorie Douie
... out from the shelter of Fort Caroline and seek a conflict at sea with the enemy. A storm destroyed the French fleet, but the crews succeeded in escaping to land. Menendez marched overland with his troops to the unprotected fort and easily captured it with its handful of defenders. The Spaniards cruelly murdered almost the entire colony of two hundred men, women and children, some of them being hung to trees with the inscription: "Not as Frenchmen, ...
— The Land We Live In - The Story of Our Country • Henry Mann
... and the contrivances of their hands within the limits of his kingdom. With the sound of a faint explosion it vanished into the thick weather bodily, leaving behind of its stout substance not so much as one solitary strip big enough to be picked into a handful of lint for, say, a wounded elephant. Torn out of its bolt-ropes, it faded like a whiff of smoke in the smoky drift of clouds shattered and torn by the shift of wind. For the shift of wind had come. The unveiled, low sun glared angrily from a chaotic sky upon a confused and tremendous sea dashing ...
— The Mirror of the Sea • Joseph Conrad
... great central plateau which extends for fifteen hundred miles from the edge of the Karoo to the Valley of the Zambesi. Then came the additional Huguenot emigrants—the best blood of France three hundred of them, a handful of the choicest seed thrown in to give a touch of grace and soul to the solid Teutonic strain. Again and again in the course of history, with the Normans, the Huguenots, the Emigres, one can see the great hand dipping into that storehouse and sprinkling ...
— The Great Boer War • Arthur Conan Doyle
... England, and assumed the government into their own hands, had set an example to the Irish, who had so much greater oppressions to complain of: that the English planters, who had expelled them their possessions, suppressed their religion, and bereaved them of their liberties were but a handful in comparison of the natives: that they lived in the most supine security, interspersed with their numerous enemies, trusting to the protection of a small army, which was itself scattered in inconsiderable divisions through out the whole kingdom: that a great ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part E. - From Charles I. to Cromwell • David Hume
... brains. Love! its tremulous hand- clasp,—its rapturous kiss,—the speechless eloquence it gives to gentle eyes!—the grace it bestows on even the smallest gift from lover to beloved, were such gift but a handful of meadow blossoms tied with some silken threads ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... live!" said Aubrey firmly, "Not while I can hold back but a handful from such a disaster, and that handful shall hold back yet another handful! The hand of Roman priestcraft shall never weigh on England while there are any honest men left in it! The conversion of England! The retrogression of England! Do you ...
— The Master-Christian • Marie Corelli
... boy could find words to go on with what he was saying, or could check the choking sensation which rose in his throat, a clerk, the counterpart of his master, in respect of dinginess and snuffiness, entered with a handful of papers which required signing, and a huge folio under his arm. As, in the eyes of the old gentleman, his business was of far more consequence than any matter which could be connected with that pale-faced, gentle boy in the threadbare suit, he turned round to the desk, and applied ...
— Owen Hartley; or, Ups and Downs - A Tale of Land and Sea • William H. G. Kingston
... horses with a tape in order to be able to distinguish the black one from the white. Until I came along, nobody had ever reached the core of the matter. You don't kill a flourishing plant—in this case an Upas Tree—by lopping off a handful of leaves. You strike at the roots. That's what I meant to do—and did—for your benefit. Oh, I admit there were a few dollars in it for me, but so what? The ox that treads the wheat is not muzzled. When a man ...
— Revenge • Arthur Porges
... by the disturbance, came up, they saw the young American on his feet in the midst of a group of native officers, who were clustered about him, angrily demanding something. From a handful of gold which the young soldier of fortune clutched, it was evident that he had been a winner, but that some dispute had arisen over ...
— The Border Boys Across the Frontier • Fremont B. Deering
... is to arrive in a few hours. He has sent a letter before him from which Colombe will learn her fate; and the handful of courtiers who have stayed to see the drama out are disputing as to who shall deliver it. Valence, an advocate of Cleves, arrives at this juncture, with a petition from his townspeople who are starving; and is allowed to place it in the Duchess's hands, ...
— A Handbook to the Works of Browning (6th ed.) • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... to put their little black paws in the sugar. But the cup-bearers knew Miss Penelope quite as well as she knew them, and when they came back with the fatty gourd they waited, as a matter of course, till she gave each one of them a generous handful of the sugar, before handing the ...
— Round Anvil Rock - A Romance • Nancy Huston Banks
... an extensive empire with a numerous and warlike population, by a mere handful of Spaniards, is one of the romances of history. Indeed, a writer of fiction would scarcely have dared to invent so improbable a story. Even the bravery of the Spaniards, and the advantage of superior ...
— By Right of Conquest - Or, With Cortez in Mexico • G. A. Henty
... we have taken up a pretty large handful for present examination. Our collection will be acknowledged, we think, to be no bad sample of the whole. At all events we have shaken from our sheaf two or three unprofitable cars, and one in particular so empty, and so rotten withal, that to hang over it for close examination was impossible. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 385. November, 1847. • Various
... badly cared for and badly treated husband, and I looked over the other eight or ten women and catalogued them at once as Mrs. Laney's type, and suddenly I decided to give myself a treat. I reached calmly over and selected a handful of sandwiches and cakes and gave them to the youngsters and sent them up to the nursery, and then, my dears, with what solid satisfaction you cannot possibly guess, I told my mistress exactly what I thought of her. She was aghast and scared; she thought I was a maniac, ...
— Jane Journeys On • Ruth Comfort Mitchell
... as though in relief; then, coming closer to the bed, plunged his hand into his coat pocket, and tossed handful of jewelry ...
— The White Moll • Frank L. Packard
... with this custom, when on no other terms whatsoever would he permit himself to do a stroke of work. When so engaged, he will labour as no other man will do. I have had Pahang Malays working continuously for sixty hours at a stretch, and all on a handful of boiled rice; but they will only do this for one they know, whom they regard as their Chief, and in whose sight they would be ashamed to murmur at the severity of the work, or to give in when all are sharing ...
— In Court and Kampong - Being Tales and Sketches of Native Life in the Malay Peninsula • Hugh Clifford
... foe,' Miss Wilder," cried Mr. Joe, as he came up from a solitary cruise and dropped anchor at her side. "Here, bring along the hat, Evan; I'm going to crown the victor with appropriate what-d'ye-call-'ems," he continued, pulling a handful of sea-weed that looked ...
— A Modern Cinderella - or The Little Old Show and Other Stories • Louisa May Alcott
... sir," the old man said in trembling tones. "It is a sight that I never expected to see again. A bit wild he was—aye, a rare handful at times, though we were all precious fond of him. And to see him ...
— The Mystery of the Four Fingers • Fred M. White
... flowers, a few roses and jessamines, are cultivated, with the noble date-palm overshadowing all. Every garden has its well, or wells. Sweet water is scarce. The spring crops are six weeks in advance of those in Tripoli. The Bashaw, on my taking leave of His Highness, presented me with a handful of ripe barley to bring to Tripoli, as a rarity. One bushel or measure of seed-corn produces from twenty-four to twenty-eight bushels. A greater quantity of corn could be easily produced in all the oases. A man ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson
... Gathering flowers was an occupation of which she never tired. Never, since her days on the hill-slope above Naples, had she been able to indulge her passionate love for flowers; and to the girl who had been wont to regard sixpence spent on a branch of golden mimosa, or a handful of the big pink carnations which seem indigenous to the London streets, as something of an extravagance, the delight of filling bowls and vases with unlimited supplies of the loveliest, freshest flowers could not ...
— The Making of a Soul • Kathlyn Rhodes
... a handful of houses, mostly mud-built, the funereal heat-green of palm and banana, a flood of tropical sunshine lighting the little wharf, crammed ...
— The Pools of Silence • H. de Vere Stacpoole
... Rupert, smashing away at a handful of bees which seemed to be settling down on him ...
— Frank Merriwell's Reward • Burt L. Standish
... enough if you treat it right. I'll show you," and working carefully Tom soon had one of the boxes open. Reaching into the depths he held up a handful of something that looked like sticks of macaroni. ...
— Tom Swift and his Giant Cannon - or, The Longest Shots on Record • Victor Appleton
... Hysop, of Figs, Raisins, Dates, of each an ounce, of Collipint half an handful, French Barley one ounce, boil therein three pints of fair water to a quart, strain it and clarifie it with two whites of Eggs, then put in two pound of fine sugar, and boil ...
— A Queens Delight • Anonymous
... funeral procession seemed to worry her considerably. But she always returned to her prayer-book. In this way the procession arrived at the cemetery. The grave was open. The children threw down the first handful of earth, being followed by their father, who remained standing while their mother knelt, holding her book close to her eyes. The grave-diggers completed their business, and the procession, half disbanded, returned. ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VI. • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... minister. All the indications are that he is the right man. Nine-tenths of the congregation are united in his favor. The matter is put to vote. The vast majority say "Ay!" the handful of opponents ...
— Around The Tea-Table • T. De Witt Talmage
... Blake—obviously leading it—and with him was Richard Westmacott. Amongst them went a man in grey clothes, whom Mr. Trenchard rightly conjectured to be the messenger riding for Whitehall. He thought with a smile of what a handful he and Wilding would have had had they waited to rob that messenger of the incriminating letter that he bore. Then he checked his smile to consider again how Sir Rowland Blake came to head that party. He ...
— Mistress Wilding • Rafael Sabatini
... club-man, gentleman of athletic leisure, and inheritor of the Ormsby millions, was pacing back and forth before the handful of fire in the drawing-room grate ...
— The Grafters • Francis Lynde
... the race of men. That will I never; but oh, I begin to loathe and dread them. Nay, here will I lie till sunset: then darkling creep into this rich man's barn, and take by stealth a draught of milk or a handful o' grain, to keep body and soul together. God, who hath seen the rich rob me, will peradventure forgive me. They say 'tis ill sleeping on the snow. Death steals on such sleepers with muffled feet and honey breath. But what can I? I am a-weary, a-weary. Shall this be the wood ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... Soon after a very strong attack developed against that village and the section of the line east of it. Under the pressure of these fresh masses our troops were compelled to fall back, contesting every inch of ground and making repeated counter-attacks; but until late at night a gallant handful, some 200 to 300 strong, held out in St. Julien. During the night the line was re-established north of the hamlet of Fortuin, about 700 yards further to the rear. All this time the fighting along the canal continued, the enemy forcing their way across near Boesinghe, ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 3, June, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... as well as upon the method by which it is ground. It is not possible to judge with regard to all these particulars by the appearance of the flour, but in general, good flour will be sweet, dry, and free from any sour or musty smell or taste. Take up a handful, and if it falls from the hand light and elastic, it is pretty sure to be good. If it will retain the imprint of the fingers and falls and a compact mass or a damp, clammy, or sticky to the touch, it is by no means the best. When and knead a little of it between the fingers; ...
— Science in the Kitchen. • Mrs. E. E. Kellogg
... prayer by Oaks, that seldom varied in a single sentence, and heard Auntie Leach thank the Lord for his "many mercies," though what they were in her case it would be hard to tell, unless being permitted to live alone and work hard to live at all was a mercy. The scattered islanders and the handful whose dwellings comprised the Cape worked hard, lived frugally, and were unconscious that all around them was a rocky shore whose cliffs and inlets and beaches were so many poems of ...
— Uncle Terry - A Story of the Maine Coast • Charles Clark Munn
... was to form a kind of little monastery outside the city, where he and a handful of other young men lived, and tried to do good and to live in a way specially pleasing to God, and more perfect than they could do in the busy rush of the ordinary world. But after a while the Arians got ...
— Stories of the Saints by Candle-Light • Vera C. Barclay
... at the moss on the ground beside him, threw away a handful or two, and said slowly, "You may be right, but it's all ...
— The Red House Mystery • A. A. Milne
... with serpentines until they were hung with many-colored ribbons like a Christmas-tree. Even Richard Hartley was so far moved out of the self-consciousness with which his race is cursed as to buy a handful of the common missiles, and the lady in the blue hat returned his attention ...
— Jason • Justus Miles Forman
... it is usually advisable to fill the hole in which the tree is to be set with top soil, packing it firmly around the roots as the hole is being filled. Usually no fertilizer is used at the time of planting, although mixing about a handful of bone meal with the soil around the roots has given a higher percentage of living trees and has increased growth the first year. A shallow basin around the tree to facilitate watering when necessary during the first growing ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Incorporated 39th Annual Report - at Norris, Tenn. September 13-15 1948 • Various
... handful," said Ashe, rather absently. Then the memory of Kitty's entry recurred to them both, ...
— The Marriage of William Ashe • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... with a bouquet for his wife or a little present for Desiree, a nothing, a mere trifle. What would you have? Those are the customs of the stage. It is such a simple matter in a melodrama to toss a handful of louis ...
— Fromont and Risler, Complete • Alphonse Daudet
... the loose iron, the hammers, the pincers, the smoked walls. I should not be surprised to learn that Mr. Stanhope Forbes had had a forge built up in his studio, and had copied it all as it stood. A handful of dry facts instead of a passionate impression of life in its envelope ...
— Modern Painting • George Moore
... Zumalacarregui in the Lower Amezcoa, evacuated that valley, he proceeded to distribute a portion of his army amongst various garrisons; and then, with the remainder, marched to Biscay in pursuit of Don Carlos, who, having as yet no place of security from his enemies, was wandering about attended by a handful of followers. Amongst the troops left in Navarre by the Christino general, was the cavalry regiment to which Herrera and Torres belonged, and this was ordered to the plains of the Ebro. The day after its arrival at ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 364, February 1846 • Various
... to the utmost; when they do with it as the prophet did with that meal's meat that he ate under the juniper-tree, "go in the strength of it forty days and forty nights, even to the mount of God." Or when they do as the widow did—spend upon their handful of flour in the barrel, and upon that little oil in the cruse, till God ...
— The Riches of Bunyan • Jeremiah Rev. Chaplin
... two forces the murids were but a handful in comparison. But their leader determined to make a stand, and to hold Tiletli, of which he had got possession, to the last. The Russians having the advantage not only of superior numbers but also of artillery, of which ...
— Life of Schamyl - And Narrative of the Circassian War of Independence Against Russia • John Milton Mackie
... in August, in which England consented to take part. Before it met, however, Van der Heim had died (August 15). He was succeeded by Jacob Gilles. The congress was destined to make little progress, for several of the provinces resented the way in which a small handful of men had secretly been committing the Republic to the acceptance of disadvantageous and humiliating terms of peace, without obtaining the consent of the States-General to their proposals. The congress did not actually assemble till October, ...
— History of Holland • George Edmundson
... great earnestness and zeal. He had no idea of contenting himself with preaching to a handful of feeble folk twice upon a Sunday; he counted every day lost if he had not in it brought some of his people face to face with the requirements of God. In cottages, at street corners, or in the church, he held a service just as often as ...
— Fletcher of Madeley • Brigadier Margaret Allen
... a child dies, an angel from heaven comes down to earth and takes the dead child in his arms, spreads out his great white wings, and flies away over all the places the child has loved and picks quite a handful of flowers, which he carries up to the Almighty, that they may bloom in heaven more brightly than on earth. And the Father presses all the flowers to His heart; but He kisses the flower that pleases Him best, and the flower is then endowed ...
— The Child and Childhood in Folk-Thought • Alexander F. Chamberlain
... far wrong if he means the planning of war might be prevented if the people asserted the right to know everything about the foreign policies of their countries. But the President seems blind to the fact that a handful of men have made it their secret and uncontrolled business to direct the fate of the European democracies. With the press at one's command one can easily drive a poor people to a mania of enthusiasm, when they will carry ...
— Germany, The Next Republic? • Carl W. Ackerman
... set out, his revolver in his belt; down the road Napoleon's carriage, "evidently a hired one," said Bismarck afterwards, recounting the scene, "came into view; the Emperor was escorted by a handful of officers; Napoleon had on his military uniform, wore white kid gloves, ...
— Blood and Iron - Origin of German Empire As Revealed by Character of Its - Founder, Bismarck • John Hubert Greusel
... delicate and delicious fragrance. The same is true of a species of loosestrife growing along streams and on other wet places, with tall bushy stalks, dark green leaves, and pale axillary yellow flowers (probably European). A handful of these flowers will sometimes exhale a sweet fragrance; at other times, or from another locality, they are scentless. Our evening primrose is thought to be uniformly sweet-scented, but the past season I examined many specimens, ...
— The Writings of John Burroughs • John Burroughs
... if she was going to give them a quarter apiece, she must take all, or most of the flowers, instead of half. After much talk it was finally arranged that the little girls were each to keep what Miss Fanny called "a good double-handful," and the rest was handed over ...
— A Missionary Twig • Emma L. Burnett
... the maple walk to the brow of the hill from which he had first looked over the valley toward the west. There in the distance the village he had noted sparkled like a handful of white dice thrown carelessly down against the earth. He fixed upon this point as the terminus of his ride, and began to coast down the long slope, leaving a trail of grey dust to mark his flight. There was a peculiar exhilaration in the dry heat ...
— The Mayor of Warwick • Herbert M. Hopkins
... weep o'er a handful of dust, When the souls of the brave are approaching? Oh, look to the fires that are lit for the just, And the mighty who sleep in Arrochin!" But she turned from the glare of the flame-smitten sea, And a cry, like a whirlwind, ...
— The Poems of Henry Kendall • Henry Kendall
... fists, and looked very fierce, but stalked away without striking a blow. I got Blount out of several scrapes; once he had been letting off fireworks in a part of the garden not seen from the house, and being disturbed by the report that one of the ushers was coming, he thrust a handful of touchpaper, part of which was ignited, into his pocket. I luckily met him as he was passing the washing-room, and turning him as he was smoking away, I tore out his burning pockets, and plunged ...
— Mark Seaworth • William H.G. Kingston
... in ran the two boys, hot, dusty, and excited,—Arthur with a handful of "fractional currency," and Jack waving a ...
— Nine Little Goslings • Susan Coolidge
... English, under Admiral Nelson, attempted to take possession of the Colony. It was there, said he, that a numerous fleet, commanded by one of the bravest Admirals of the English navy, failed before a handful of French, who covered themselves with glory and saved Teneriffe; the Admiral was obliged to take flight, after having lost an arm in the contest, ...
— Narrative of a Voyage to Senegal in 1816 • J. B. Henry Savigny and Alexander Correard
... soldiers, forcing their way into the little town of Anagni, to which the Pope had withdrawn, laid violent hands upon his holiness. If measured by numbers, the whole affair was trifling. So few were the French soldiers that in a few days the handful of towns-folk in Anagni were able to rise against them, expel them from the place and rescue the aged Pope. He had been struck—beaten, say not wholly reliable authorities—and so insulted that rage and shame drove him mad, ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... by a handful of fisherfolk here on an islet of the Atlantic—the real congruity (if indeed the Church be, as the Bidding Prayer defines it, "the whole body of Christian people dispersed throughout the world")—was probably less ...
— Major Vigoureux • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... slim, cocksure youngster, who had proved more than a handful for his family before he was half through college, which educational finishing process had come to an abrupt stop before it was complete. He had been a problem that her father and mother had discussed in guarded tones. Sending ...
— Big Timber - A Story of the Northwest • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... for the moment even this gentle speech failed to placate him. He turned in dudgeon amid the grinning crowd and was in the act of remounting, but missed the stirrup as his charger reared and backed before the noise of yet another diversion. No one knows who dipped into the cask and flung the first handful over unhappy Mr. Smellie. No one knows who led the charge down upon the boats, or gave the cry to stave in the barrels on board. But in a trice the preventive men were driven overboard and, as they leapt into the shallow water, were caught and held and drenched in the noisome mess; while the ...
— The Mayor of Troy • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... the stays of the airship," was Tom's reply, and he recalled the day he was at that work, when the odd man had exhibited the handful of what he said were diamonds. Tom wondered if they really were, and he speculated as to what might be the secret of Phantom Mountain, to which Mr. ...
— Tom Swift and his Wireless Message • Victor Appleton
... Spanish, a tongue that she showed signs of understanding by pricking forward her shapely ears. After a little Ridge led the animal to a watering-trough, where she drank greedily, and then into camp, where he begged a handful of sugar ...
— "Forward, March" - A Tale of the Spanish-American War • Kirk Munroe
... awakened by their voices, and the woman brought me a handful of parched Indian corn; not quite so good a breakfast as I had been accustomed to; but I was hungry, and I contrived to eat it. As soon as the day broke we set off again, and toward evening arrived at a lake. A canoe was brought out from some bushes; we all got ...
— The Settlers in Canada • Frederick Marryat
... True, many of them were thieves and drunkards, but think of what they had suffered and the excuse there was for them in the universal demoralization! The glorious veterans of Solferino and Sebastopol were but a handful, incorporated in the ranks of the newly raised troops, too few in number to make their example felt. The four corps that had been got together and equipped so hurriedly, devoid of every element of cohesion, were the forlorn hope, the expiatory band that their rulers were ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola
... and texture of the coming warfare—if there is still warfare to come—are not yet to be seen in their completeness upon the modern battlefield. One swallow does not make a summer, nor a handful of aeroplanes, a "Tank" or so, a few acres of shell craters, and a village here and there, pounded out of recognition, do more than foreshadow the spectacle of modernised war on land. War by these developments has become the monopoly of the five great ...
— War and the Future • H. G. Wells
... Hope,—I have no news as yet to communicate to you, except that some few are taking up ye matter of ye V. C. in rt earnest, and so I suppose it will be a pitched battle, and we shall win at last, even if but a handful ...
— Memoirs of James Robert Hope-Scott, Volume 2 • Robert Ornsby
... plague of boils, was produced by Moses and Aaron together in a miraculous way. Each took a handful of ashes of the furnace, then Moses held the contents of the two heaps in the hollow of one of his hands, and sprinkled the ashes tip toward the heaven, and it flew so high that it reached the Divine throne. Returning earthward, it scattered over the ...
— The Legends of the Jews Volume 1 • Louis Ginzberg
... smoke thirty-two of those, and carry three or four away with him in his pockets. I'd lose even more that way. It's a singular thing about friends. They have some conscience about Invincible cigars, but they'll take others by the handful." ...
— The Booming of Acre Hill - And Other Reminiscences of Urban and Suburban Life • John Kendrick Bangs
... opened by a footman struggling into his coat, with a handful of faggots in his arms. He ushered us through several bare, stiff, cold rooms (proportions handsome enough) to a smaller salon, which the family usually occupied. Then he lighted a fire (which consisted principally of smoke) and went to summon ...
— Chateau and Country Life in France • Mary King Waddington
... allow me to tell you that your warlike apparatus is not very encouraging. With the dozen or two that you can collect, you will hardly keep off an invasion of rascals. You can not even defend the premises with that handful, to say nothing of covering the ladies' escape. Have you no prospect of ...
— Debit and Credit - Translated from the German of Gustav Freytag • Gustav Freytag
... then his success just then was entirely platonic. He was still very poor and lived in the Faubourg St.-Jacques. Massif ought to pay him in a few days five hundred francs for the second edition of his book; but what is a handful of napoleons? ...
— A Romance of Youth, Complete • Francois Coppee
... wonderful, extravagant sort of monuments for both his parents, which Ian designed himself. But he hadn't been two months in New York when he won a still bigger prize, which came just as he was on the point of starving! A handful of oatmeal and an apple a day I should call starvation, but he says it was grand for his health. In six years, at twenty-four, he was not only the greatest portrait-painter in America, but one of the most successful architects, an extraordinary ...
— The Heather-Moon • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... book on cooking is of no use at all in the rougher kinds of travel, for all its recipes consist of phrases such as "Take a pound of so-and-so, half a pound of something else, a pinch of this, and a handful of that." Now in the bush a man has probably none of these things—he certainly has not all of them—and, therefore, ...
— The Art of Travel - Shifts and Contrivances Available in Wild Countries • Francis Galton
... The men in the trenches had no peaches, no squabs, no mushrooms, no avacados—for them bully beef and soup cubes, a handful of dates, or by good ...
— The Tin Soldier • Temple Bailey
... making every effort to terrify the unknown object containing the food—gallant bulls, quite two inches long, sidling up and snapping at my fingers- -they come and feed right in the palm, so that I could have caught them by the handful had I wished. There are also a lot of those weird, semi-transparent, yellow, spotted little sandfish with cup- shaped pectoral fins, which I see they use to enable them to make their astoundingly long leaps. These fish ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... whole length over the boat, I ran to his side, and perhaps our motion impelled it, or perhaps some unseen hand; for he caught at an end of rope, drew it in a second, let go and clutched at a handful of the sail, and then I saw how it had twisted round and swept poor little Faith over, and she had swung there in it like a dead butterfly in a chrysalis. The lightnings were slipping down into the water like ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 55, May, 1862 • Various
... land which has been for generations and generations the topic of poetry now stood before the Serbian warriors as a reality. The Serbian brothers from Austria-Hungary came to Macedonia, kissed the sacred soil, and each one took a handful of the sacred dust from the tombs of our kings and heroes of old. Two months after the outbreak of war King Peter returned to Topola and prayed gratefully in his white church to God and to Saint George. This democratic king, who has been elected by the Serbian ...
— Serbia in Light and Darkness - With Preface by the Archbishop of Canterbury, (1916) • Nikolaj Velimirovic
... day or so of disregard, talking to me of history perhaps or social organisation, or summarising some book he had read. He talked to me of anything that interested him, regardless of my limitations. Then he would begin to note the growth of the weeds. "This won't do," he would say and pull up a handful. ...
— The New Machiavelli • Herbert George Wells
... think that Jim and I dared to snap at him. He caught up a handful of stones, and with some bad words threw them at us. Just then, away in front of us, was a queer whistle, and then another one like it behind us. Jenkins made a strange noise in his throat, and started to run down a ...
— Beautiful Joe • Marshall Saunders
... intelligence. His report confirmed the suspicion already entertained by himself, and at that moment he fancied he heard the same subdued sounds but multiplied in several distinct points. A vague sense of danger came over the mind of the officer, and although his crew consisted of a mere handful of men, he at once resolved to defend himself to the last, against whatever force might be led to the attack. While Sambo hastened to arouse the men, he girded his cutlass and pistols around his loins, and ...
— The Canadian Brothers - or The Prophecy Fulfilled • John Richardson
... large for the modern penury. I found these men eating in a great corridor, in a hall, as they might do in a palace. I found high, painted ceilings and many things of marble, a vast kitchen, and all the apparatus of the great houses—at the service of a handful of contented, unknown men. So in England, when we have worked out our full fate, happier but poorer men will sit in the faded country-houses (a community, or an inn, or impoverished squires), and rough food will be eaten under mouldering great pictures, and there will ...
— The Path to Rome • Hilaire Belloc
... exactly concern him. We fear that there is some such flaw in the character of Ned Hinkley, though, otherwise, a good, hardy fellow—with a rough and tumble sort of good nature, which, having bloodied your nose, would put a knife-handle down your back, and apply a handful of cobwebs to the nasal extremity in order to arrest the haemorrhage. We are sorry that there is such a defect in his character; but we did not put it there. We should prefer that he should be perfect—the reader will believe us—but there are grave lamentations enough over the failures of humanity ...
— Charlemont • W. Gilmore Simms
... accomplished in the stamping ground of storm, at the end of the world, by a handful of wretched weaklings, under the drive of two strong mates, with behind them the ...
— The Mutiny of the Elsinore • Jack London |
