"Handful" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... in all their conditions as the Athens of the Thirty Tyrants was unlike Athens after Thrasybulus had driven the Tyrants out. He assumes that the men, the policy, the maxims of the French Government are the men, the policy, and the maxims of the handful of obscure miscreants who had hacked priests and nobles to pieces at the doors of the prisons four years before. Carnot is to him merely "that sanguinary tyrant," and the heroic Hoche becomes "that old practised assassin," while the Prince of Wales, by the way, and the ...
— Burke • John Morley
... Enchanter found him in an instant, and seeing his pitiable condition, ran hither and thither without a word, until he had collected a handful of magic herbs, with which, and a few incantations, he speedily made the King whole and ...
— The Green Fairy Book • Various
... horrible, lay the observer's trust, the wealth of his employer, his own hope of regeneration, worse now than worthless carrion. And the cause of it all, the sole excuse for this delinquency, lay back there upon a greasy table in the shanty—a short scrawling tale scribbled upon a handful of scrap paper! ...
— A Breath of Prairie and other stories • Will Lillibridge
... was not executed. This was a blunder on the part of the Oligarchy, and a costly one. But the Oligarchy was too confident in those days. It was drunk with success, and little did it dream that that small handful of heroes had within them the power to rock it to its foundations. To-morrow, when the Great Revolt breaks out and all the world resounds with the tramp, tramp of the millions, the Oligarchy, will realize, and too late, how mightily that band ...
— The Iron Heel • Jack London
... clothes, but a piece of the rind of a tree tied like a girdle about their waists, and a handful of long grass, or three or four small green boughs full of leaves, thrust under their girdle, ...
— Narrative of a Survey of the Intertropical and Western Coasts of Australia] [Volume 2 of 2] • Phillip Parker King
... escort—the First United States Cavalry, about two hundred strong—I reached Jettersville some little time before the Fifth Corps, and having nothing else at hand I at once deployed this handful of men to cover the crossroads till the arrival of the corps. Just as the troopers were deploying, a man on a mule, heading for Burkeville, rode into my pickets. He was arrested, of course, and being searched there was found in his boots this telegram in duplicate, ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... new front to the enemy, was overwhelmed at once by the retreating French and their furious pursuers. The day was lost, retreat hardly possible, yet, by a daring and desperate effort, the Duke, accompanied by a handful of followers, cut his way through the enemy and effected his escape. The cavalry had been broken at the first onset and nearly destroyed. A portion of the infantry still held firm, and attempted to continue their ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... the street." The boy halted at the counter, producing a handful of square envelopes. "Note for you from the Lockwoods, Betty," he panted. "Josie ast me to ...
— The Fortune Hunter • Louis Joseph Vance
... tragic death Hiram Bodley was buried. Although he was fairly well known in the lake region only a handful of people came to his funeral. Joe was the chief mourner, and it can honestly be said that he was much downcast when he followed the hermit ...
— Joe The Hotel Boy • Horatio Alger Jr.
... terrible Hunger Moon, the lean gray wolf can hardly bay," quoted Hinpoha, as she threw out a handful of crumbs for the birds. The ground was covered with ice and snow, and the wintry winds whistled through the bare trees in the yard, ruffling up the feathers of the poor little sparrows huddling on ...
— The Camp Fire Girls at School • Hildegard G. Frey
... that country, which, reverencing as a mother, they had blindly believed invincible—an army led by a chief who had been selected from a crowd of trained warriors, for his rare military endowments, disgracefully routed by a handful of French and Indians, and only saved from annihilation by the coolness and spirit of a Virginian boy, whose riper fame has since diffused itself, with the steady influence of moral truth, to the uttermost confines of Christendom.* A wide ...
— The Last of the Mohicans • James Fenimore Cooper
... said that this was the field where Burns ran his ploughshare over the daisy. If so, the soil seems to have been consecrated to daisies by the song which he bestowed on that first immortal one. I alighted, and plucked a whole handful of these "wee, modest, crimson-tipped flowers," which will be precious to many friends in our own country as coming from Burns's farm, and being of the same race and lineage as that daisy which he turned into an amaranthine flower while ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. VI.,October, 1860.—No. XXXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... process; and although I have fully seen the difficulties which attach to what is commonly known as minority representation, it surely is an extraordinary criticism upon our existing system that, while a small handful of interested people can turn an election one way or the other on their own personal issue, huge minorities, like the minority of the Unionists in Scotland, are utterly and grossly unrepresented. We give every privilege to the little knot of people in the individual constituencies; ...
— Proportional Representation - A Study in Methods of Election • John H. Humphreys
... a week if we're not bored to death. It's a desolate spot—just a handful of houses and a haystack and a few things like that, but if you like the country we ought to have a good time. I ...
— The Phantom Lover • Ruby M. Ayres
... and was soon able to make out another figure lying on the rocky floor of the place. This he had no doubt must be his chum, Smithy. Yes, once, as the limping man threw a handful of fresh fuel on the fire, causing the flames to leap up, and for the moment illuminate the place, Thad's eager eyes discovered the well-known khaki color of the Boy Scout uniform worn so jauntily by ...
— The Boy Scouts' First Camp Fire - or, Scouting with the Silver Fox Patrol • Herbert Carter
... beautiful, and crowned by a lovely life. She had kept her youth, and he had come early to a man's responsibilities. For years now they had walked together, caring for the farm, which was not large, for the handful of servants, for the two younger children, Will and Miriam. The eighteen years between them was cancelled by their common interests, his maturity of thought, her quality of the summer time. She broke the silence. ...
— The Long Roll • Mary Johnston
... no tree to be seen—a desert. And Shahpesh cried, 'This is indeed of admirable design, O Khipil! Feelest thou not the coolness of the fountains?—their refreshingness? Truly I am grateful to thee! And these flowers, pluck me now a handful, and tell ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... are a handful?" suggested Mrs. Hollister. "I thought as soon as you said she was coming, that a woman without any children of her own would find it hard trying to look after ...
— Rosemary • Josephine Lawrence
... Thumb and Fore-finger from the Muzzle, your Thumb on the Top of the Scowrer reserving a handful in your Hand. ...
— The School of Recreation (1696 edition) • Robert Howlett
... through thirty-one horses and nineteen people. When we got out, our horses had had nothing to eat, not a blade of grass or a handful of grain, for thirty-six hours, and they had had very little for ...
— Tenting To-night - A Chronicle of Sport and Adventure in Glacier Park and the - Cascade Mountains • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... infatuated and cast aside when another took his drunken but ever ironic fancy. Only a week since the cyprian at present engaged in washing his dishes had been nearly demolished by the damsel she had superseded. She still wore a livid mark on her cheek and a plaster on her head whence a handful of hair had been removed by the roots. He had stood aloof during the fracas in the dirty garish dance house under the sidewalk, laughing consumedly; and had awakened the next night to find the victor mending her tattered finery. She ...
— Sleeping Fires • Gertrude Atherton
... saw no signs of their coming back to life, I feared that mortification had set in, and that I had lost the use of my feet for good. It was two or three hours before the blood began to circulate in my right foot, and the pain when it did so was intense. Had a handful of knives been passed slowly down the inside of my leg the agony could not have been more excruciating. My arms were not quite so bad: they also were numbed, but the circulation ...
— In the Forbidden Land • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... board; but the boy told him that if he would let him have half the money to use as he liked, he would board himself. James was glad to do this. Benjamin then gave up eating meat, and, while the others went out to dinner, he would stay in the printing-office and eat a boiled potato, or perhaps a handful of raisins. In this way, he saved up a number of coppers every week; and when he got enough laid by, he would ...
— The Beginner's American History • D. H. Montgomery
... a history of Indians since he began to know the "Six Nations" in Western New York, about forty years ago. Since then, these have dwindled down to a handful, and do not now exist in their separate tribal relations, but mixed in with others, far away from the beautiful ...
— Three Years on the Plains - Observations of Indians, 1867-1870 • Edmund B. Tuttle
... brothers and sisters kill the farmer's fruit-trees and vines. The gopher digs long tunnels under ground, making storerooms here and there in these passages, which he fills with grass, roots, and seeds. In each cheek he has a pouch, or pocket, large enough to hold nearly a handful of grain, so the little rascal carries his stores very easily. The traps and poison by which the farmer is always trying to make way with him, he is sly enough to let alone. His greatest foe is the cat, which watches patiently at the hole where the destructive ...
— Stories of California • Ella M. Sexton
... half hour before she could decide upon a fourth guest. A woman she must have, and few women whom she wished to ask would come to her house even to call. When she now and then gathered at an afternoon tea a handful of people whose names she was proud to have reported in the society papers, she did it by securing a lion of literary or of theatrical fame, whose unwary feet she entangled in her cunningly laid snares before he knew anything about social conditions in Boston. ...
— The Philistines • Arlo Bates
... luxuries in that region and time. But he read everything he could lay his hands upon, and he was certainly fortunate in the few books of which he became the possessor. It would hardly be possible to select a better handful of classics for a youth in his circumstances than the few volumes he turned with a nightly and daily hand—the Bible, "Aesop's Fables," "Robinson Crusoe," "The Pilgrim's Progress," a history of the United States, ...
— Abraham Lincoln: A History V1 • John G. Nicolay and John Hay
... of the people had been opposed to the war, and that there was not one sensible man who had not clearly foreseen the dangers threatening the country. I have now seen at my entry that you were right; the good people of this city are not to blame for this war, and only a handful of old women and young officers brought about this mischief. The visit of the Emperor Alexander is the cause of the events which have proved so disastrous to Prussia; and next, the change which that visit produced in the feelings of the queen, who, from a timid and modest lady, was quickly ...
— Napoleon and the Queen of Prussia • L. Muhlbach
... far. Also," he looked about him—"we have given to Phutka and the Shades our dead; there is nothing for us here now but hate and sorrow. In one day we have been broken from a clan of pride and ships to a handful of ...
— Key Out of Time • Andre Alice Norton
... showering kindnesses on his "Princess of Princesses." On her eighteenth birthday he asked if she desired anything he could give. "A handful of gold for the Berlin poor," ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 6 of 8 • Various
... exclaimed Grandpapa, at the sight. Letters were scattered here and there in the thickest of piles all along the surface, while the Chinese vase had a whole handful poking up their faces as if to say, "Here we are, all ...
— Five Little Peppers and their Friends • Margaret Sidney
... would have scoffed at any one who said that a handful of Chinese could tear aside our cloak of civilized security as though it were a spider's web," was the serious reply. "But I have interrupted my own story. I began to think that I would be taken to some awful den in the East End, and held there till some huge sum of money was ...
— Number Seventeen • Louis Tracy
... window and knelt down. She brought a handful of violets, fresh-gathered, to place in the glass which she kept there for her flowers. The window was cut in the thick wall, and formed a niche, where she always had a tumbler ready—a common glass tumbler, she could not ...
— Amaryllis at the Fair • Richard Jefferies
... at the same time protracted the feeble rule of Clement, was that neither the Florentines nor the Medici had any army. Face to face with a potentate so considerable as the Pope, a free State could not be established without military force. On the other hand, the Medici, supported by a mere handful of mercenaries, had no power to resist a popular rising if any external event should inspire the middle classes with ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Second Series • John Addington Symonds
... deviation from the norm, as more race-conscious tribes might be. For they lived by trade, leaving to Ross's own time the mark of their far-flung "empire" in the beakers found in graves scattered in clusters of a handful or so from the Rhineland to Spain, and from the Balkans ...
— The Time Traders • Andre Norton
... should be administered in the feed when necessary. The following formula is useful as a digestive tonic: Sodium bicarbonate and sodium sulfate, one pound of each, powdered gentian one-half pound, and oil meal five pounds. A small handful of this mixture may be given with the feed ...
— Common Diseases of Farm Animals • R. A. Craig, D. V. M.
... remarkable in themselves, and so continuously momentous in their sequential issues, that whaling may well be regarded as that Egyptian mother, who bore offspring themselves pregnant from her womb. It would be a hopeless, endless task to catalogue all these things. Let a handful suffice. For many .. years past the whale-ship has been the pioneer in ferreting out the remotest and least known parts of the earth. She has explored seas and archipelagoes which had no chart, where no Cook ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville
... concentration of force developed itself at Harper's Ferry, forty-nine miles northwest of Washington. When, on April 20, a Union detachment had burned and abandoned the armory at that point, it was at once occupied by a handful of rebel militia; and immediately thereafter Jefferson Davis had hurried his regiments thither to "sustain" or overawe Baltimore; and when that prospect failed, it became a rebel camp of instruction. ...
— A Short Life of Abraham Lincoln - Condensed from Nicolay & Hay's Abraham Lincoln: A History • John G. Nicolay
... the cottage, and pressed them several times in different places on the ladder. "Not a bad scheme," he said, chuckling. He then went again to the well, and washed his hands thoroughly, afterward taking a handful of earth, and rubbing them till they were as dirty ...
— The Bread-winners - A Social Study • John Hay
... this league by its first effects: the Duke of Urbino, who was adored by his subjects, had come with a handful of soldiers to the fortress of San Leone, and it had yielded at once. In less than a week towns and fortresses followed this example, and all the duchy was once more in the hands of ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... generous bowl of dextrinized grains with a good portion of diluted cream, a glass of rich milk, a baked potato, and fruit. For lunch at twelve o'clock he should be given a glass of malted milk with egg, or eggnog, six or eight dates or three or four figs, a handful of pecan kernels, and perhaps a lettuce sandwich. For dinner at half past five, another nourishing meal of baked potatoes, a protein dish of either cheese and macaroni or eggs or meat, a generous fruit salad, a glass of rich milk, and bread and butter, should ...
— The Mother and Her Child • William S. Sadler
... next day Aunt Esther laid a train of corn from the roots of the trees to the bow-window, and then from the bow-window to her work-basket, which stood on the floor beside her; and then she put quite a handful of corn in the work-basket, and sat down by it, and seemed intent on her sewing. Very soon, creep, creep, creep, came Tit-bit and Frisky to the window, and then into the room, just as sly and as still as could be, and Aunt ...
— Queer Little Folks • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... bank the way she had come. For a moment she stopped by the lake and skimmed a handful of white pebbles across its mirrored surface. She watched the ripples she had made spread and spread until they lost themselves in the lake itself, leaving behind no mark where they ...
— Seven Miles to Arden • Ruth Sawyer
... soldiers were seen coming. There were so many of them that no man could count them. How could a handful of men hope to stand against so ...
— Fifty Famous Stories Retold • James Baldwin
... for the timely discovery of this Rebel order, General Pope's army, only a handful to the multitudes which were gathering against him from the defences of Richmond, would have been flanked and probably annihilated. Assured, however, that reenforcements from McClellan's army could certainly reach him before long, General Pope held his ...
— Three Years in the Federal Cavalry • Willard Glazier
... not true," said Sancho, "for I am more cleanly than greedy, and my master Don Quixote here knows well that we two are used to live for a week on a handful of acorns or nuts. To be sure, if it so happens that they offer me a heifer, I run with a halter; I mean, I eat what I'm given, and make use of opportunities as I find them; but whoever says that I'm an out-of-the-way ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... could never reach political office unless he pushed himself, and paid agents to buy votes, because no man could expect an office to be handed to him on a gold plate—the spirit which, to my knowledge, displayed a handful of bank-notes in the anteroom of a legislature, and exclaimed, "That's what makes the laws!"—this was a spirit which, like other honorable men ...
— Literary and Social Essays • George William Curtis
... not that they will fight," Simon said; "but many other nations, to whom we are but as a handful, have fought bravely, but have succumbed to the might of Rome. It is said that Josephus, and many of the wisest in Jerusalem, were heartily opposed to the tumults against the Romans, and that they only went with the people because they were ...
— For the Temple - A Tale of the Fall of Jerusalem • G. A. Henty
... leading up to the objective is dead. The guns of the Fleet can clear the crest of the cliffs and the strip of sand at their foot should then be as healthy as Brighton. If the Turks down at Helles are nervous, even a handful landing behind their first line (stretching from the old Castle Northwards to the coast) should make them begin to look ...
— Gallipoli Diary, Volume I • Ian Hamilton
... Fort Moultrie, the blazing of the Kentucky wilderness, the expedition of Clark and his handful of followers in Illinois, the beginning of civilization along the Ohio and Mississippi, and the treasonable schemes ...
— From the Valley of the Missing • Grace Miller White
... angel-child flew past me on its blue and white wings. Without any sign of fear it flew direct to St. Peter, who looked formidable enough with his long beard and great keys, and, pointing with its little forefinger to the hard-hearted woman, cried: 'She once gave me a handful of nuts.' ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... knew when speech was good, was silent now, and blew on the smouldering end of the log he carried and gathered a handful of twigs and shook the rain off them; and soon had a small fire again, warming the bacon. He had nothing to say which bacon could not say better. And when Rodriguez had finished up the bacon he carefully ...
— Don Rodriguez - Chronicles of Shadow Valley • Edward John Moreton Drax Plunkett, Baron, Dunsany
... homeward, I followed. I did not mind their calling me lazy, nor that my father gave me only one tarnished copper cent, while Lida received two or three bright ones. I had had what I wanted most. I would rather sit under the apple-trees and hear the birds sing than have a whole handful of bright copper pennies. It was well for my father and his garden that his other ...
— A New England Girlhood • Lucy Larcom
... emigrants from the old colonies and their {5} descendants built up the maritime county of Yarmouth. Two men of that stock first discovered the value of Locke's Island, the commercial centre of East Shelburne. A few hundreds of sturdy Germans peopled the beautiful county of Lunenburg. A handful of emigrants from Yorkshire gave animation to the county of Cumberland. The vale of Colchester has been made to blossom as the rose by the industry of a few adventurers from the north of Ireland. Half a century ago a ...
— The Tribune of Nova Scotia - A Chronicle of Joseph Howe • W. L. (William Lawson) Grant
... knees with one clasped handful of rubble. Slowly and thoughtfully she climbed the hill again. On the terrace, where she arrived hot and tired, the widow Andrei met her. The woman had been to the village on an errand, and had returned during ...
— The Isle of Unrest • Henry Seton Merriman
... shirt flashed through the bushes like a sudden fire, seeing me looking at the flowers, gathered a handful of lilies, which he offered to me, saying, "Prekrasnie" (Beautiful). Without waiting for thanks, he climbed a second flight of steps and suddenly disappeared from view. I followed, and found myself in front of a narrow aperture in a rude wall, which ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 79, May, 1864 • Various
... all in the crowd been what he termed them, the rabble and sweepings of the streets, it would have been. But in the heart of it, and felt rather than seen, were a handful of another kidney; Sorbonne students and fierce-eyed priests, with three or four mounted archers, the nucleus that, moving through the streets, had drawn together this concourse. And these with threats and curse and gleaming eyes ...
— Count Hannibal - A Romance of the Court of France • Stanley J. Weyman
... people, and the people of County Antrim and County Down generally, were enthusiastically in favour of Home Rule. The fact that they elected Unionist members of Parliament and held Unionist demonstrations was accounted for by the existence of a handful of rack-renting landlords, a few sweating capitalists and some clergymen whose churches were empty because the people were tired of ...
— The Red Hand of Ulster • George A. Birmingham
... their neighbours, and bore themselves accordingly. Cyrus Frost and Graham Parker had come to California as young men, in the seventies; had cast in their lot with little Monroe, and had grown rich with the town. It was a credit to the state now; they had found it a mere handful of settlers' cabins, with one stately, absurd mansion standing out among them, in a plantation of young pepper and willow and locust ...
— Martie the Unconquered • Kathleen Norris
... "A whole handful!" he said, in yet greater wonder, when the clerk handed them out. "Who could have known I ...
— Crowded Out o' Crofield - or, The Boy who made his Way • William O. Stoddard
... be paid, never fear—as much as your heart can desire! Here is a handful of gold: you shall have as much again if you will do my bidding.' The old crone ...
— The Olive Fairy Book • Various
... restrict that view. This war has let more "light" into the "soul" of democracy than all the national so-called education which has ever been devised and made compulsory. Confiscation of property and all those other tom-fool cries are but the screams of a handful of silly Bolsheviks. There is no echo in the heart of the real labouring men and women. If they applaud it, it is only that these cranks, at least, seem to be fighting for that human right to an equal share of the common good things of this life which ought to be the possession of all labour, however ...
— Over the Fireside with Silent Friends • Richard King
... 1730. Some miners in searching for gold found some curious pebbles, which they carried home to their masters as curiosities. Not being considered of any value, they were given to the children to play with. An officer who had spent some years in the East Indies saw these pebbles, and sent a handful to a friend in Lisbon to be examined. They proved to be diamonds. A few were collected and sent to Holland, and were pronounced to be equal to those of Golconda. The news soon reached Brazil, and those who possessed any of the "pebbles" soon realized ...
— Harper's Young People, March 30, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... a good plan to put new earthen ware into cold water, and let it heat gradually, until it boils,—then cool again. Brown earthen ware, in particular, may be toughened in this way. A handful of rye, or wheat, bran, thrown in while it is boiling, will preserve the glazing, so that it will not be destroyed by ...
— The American Frugal Housewife • Lydia M. Child
... and set out, accompanied by her cat. Before morning she had made the entire circuit of the lake, muttering fearful words as she crossed every stream, and casting into it some of the water out of her bottle. When she had finished the circuit she muttered yet again, and flung a handful of water towards the moon. Thereupon every spring in the country ceased to throb and bubble, dying away like the pulse of a dying man. The next day there was no sound of falling water to be heard along the borders ...
— The Light Princess and Other Fairy Stories • George MacDonald
... be whipped and I suppose I will have to do it." With this he seized the insolent fellow and made short work of him. Throwing the man on the ground, Lincoln sat on him, and, with his long arms, gathered a handful of "smartweed" which grew around them. He then rubbed it into the bully's eyes until he roared with pain. An observer of this ...
— The Story of Young Abraham Lincoln • Wayne Whipple
... the girls' bedroom, and made a noise about the neglect. One girl got up and went to put the water in its usual place, but the other said she would not stir out of bed to please all the fairies in Devonshire. The girl who filled the water-bucket found a handful of silver pennies in it next morning, and she heard the Pixies debating what to do with the other girl. At last they said they would give her a lame leg for seven years, and that then they would cure her by striking ...
— Fairy Tales; Their Origin and Meaning • John Thackray Bunce
... Northumbria! At first but two hundred thegns; strong in our course, we swelled into the might of a people. Our wrongs found sympathy beyond our province, for liberty spreads over human hearts as fire over a heath. Wherever we march, friends gather round us. Thou warrest not on a handful of rebels,—half England is ...
— Harold, Complete - The Last Of The Saxon Kings • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... trotted to it with ears pricked forward and nostrils a-twitch and drank long and thirstily. Thereafter, though they came to other spots where there should be water, they found none until after sunset. Howard drew off the saddle, gave his horse a handful of barley and staked it out close to the spring. Then he made his own dinner, had his smoke and threw himself down for a couple of hours' rest and dozing. It was his intention to travel on in the night to the next spring, which was ...
— The Desert Valley • Jackson Gregory
... it before 'twas too late." He read from the service again, one of the men throwing on earth at the usual place. When they came to cover up the grave, the men constantly changed hoes with those who had not handled them before, that each might aid, women and old men stooping to throw in a handful. Abel made another prayer, they ...
— Letters from Port Royal - Written at the Time of the Civil War (1862-1868) • Various
... "Get a handful of sand," replied the ring, "and mix with it an equal quantity of red pepper. Take the mixture with you into the arena, and when the tiger comes near you, fling ...
— Filipino Popular Tales • Dean S. Fansler
... was heard. For there fell from them as it were films; and now, when he looked out, he saw a glorious sight. All the mountain was full; and they were a wonderful company which filled it. The dark hosts of the Syrians, and their glancing swords and clashing chariots, now looked but as a mere handful; for the whole mountain round them was full of that heavenly army. Chariots of fire and horsemen of fire thronged it in every part. High up into the viewless air mounted their wheeling bands: rank beyond rank, and army ...
— The Rocky Island - and Other Similitudes • Samuel Wilberforce
... They were accompanied by a number of other persons. It seemed to Chilo that he recognized among them the Great Apostle; next to him walked another old man, considerably lower in stature, two women who were not young, and a boy, who lighted the way with a lantern. After that handful followed a crowd, about two hundred in number; Vinicius, Chilo, and ...
— Quo Vadis - A Narrative of the Time of Nero • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... by saying, "Iss, I thought whether it wudn't surprise 'ee to hear 'bout it bein' Adam Pascal. They'm none of 'em overmuch took with it, I reckon, for they allays counted on 'im havin' Joan Hocken: her's another cousin, and another nice handful, by all ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 26, August, 1880 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various
... artillery, and within a short space of time lost half of our numbers. We had to dig ourselves in with entrenching tools, but after having got fairly decent cover, had to move on again over to the left. We got right forward into the front line, and found it held by a mere handful of the Canadians, who received us with enthusiasm and were so heartened by our reinforcements that they were more determined than ever to hang ...
— One Young Man • Sir John Ernest Hodder-Williams
... hills. They were armed with Winchester rifles, with old-time squirrel rifles, with muzzle loaders having long octagonal barrels and fired by cups. Some carried shot guns and cartridges stuffed with buckshot and some poured in buckshot by the handful. They had no artillery ...
— The Conquest of America - A Romance of Disaster and Victory • Cleveland Moffett
... sceptically. "The great populations will sweep on, as little affected by the Jews as this crowd by you and me. The world will not go back on itself—rather will Christianity transform itself and take the credit. We are such a handful of outsiders. Judaism—old or new—is a ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... anemone, larkspur, and columbine, with a few grasses and ferns. Of these cassiope is at once the commonest and the most beautiful and influential. In some places its delicate stems make mattresses more than a foot thick over several acres, while the bloom is so abundant that a single handful plucked at random contains hundreds of its pale pink bells. The very thought of this Alaska garden is a joyful exhilaration. Though the storm-beaten ground it is growing on is nearly half a mile high, the glacier centuries ...
— Travels in Alaska • John Muir
... perfectly tame, and I feed them with crumbs in my hand. After 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 are of a more nervous and distrustful disposition, and hover round ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... London Gazette;—when, in a word, we are guilty of some notorious fault, or blunder, or misfortune. Who does not know that face of pity? Whose dear relations have not so deplored him, not dead, but living? Not yours? Then, sir, if you have never been in scrapes; if you have never sowed a handful of wild oats or two; if you have always been fortunate, and good, and careful, and butter has never melted in your mouth, and an imprudent word has never come out of it; if you have never sinned and repented, and ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray
... Martin were alike incompetent, and Smith assumed the guidance of affairs. Finding their provisions again nearly exhausted, he went with a party down the river to Kecoughtan to obtain supplies from the natives. Savage irony was all they received; a handful of corn and a piece of bread were offered in exchange for swords and muskets. The Indians came against them in numbers, frightfully dressed, and bearing their okee in the form of a monstrous idol, stuffed with moss, and hung with chains and copper. But they were received ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1-20 • Various
... country as the harboring-place of the disaffected, was a little over a mile from the bridge over the river, at the south, and about half that distance from the residence of Major Ormsbee, at the north, where our handful of spirited friends were now rallying; while from the road, about half way between the two, diverged the path, which wound round south-westerly to Asa Rose's, and from which the tories were expected to emerge on their way out of ...
— The Rangers - [Subtitle: The Tory's Daughter] • D. P. Thompson
... buying of books; but I had another advantage in it. My brother and the rest going from the printing house to their meals, I remained there alone, and, despatching presently my light repast (which was often no more than a biscuit, or a slice of bread, a handful of raisins, or a tart from the pastry cook's, and a glass of water), had the rest of the time, till their return, for study; in which I made the greater progress from that greater clearness of head, and quicker apprehension, which generally attend temperance in eating and drinking. ...
— From Boyhood to Manhood • William M. Thayer
... again. The whistle blew like a steam siren, and once more the other two answered it. They were all behind him now. Surely a man of the public schools in flannels and gymnasium shoes, and trained to the last ounce for just such a sprint as this, could beat a handful of keepers in their leggings and heavy boots. Barrett raced on. Close behind him a crashing in the undergrowth and the sound of heavy breathing told him that keeper number one was doing his best. To left and right similar sounds were to be heard. But Barrett ...
— The Pothunters • P. G. Wodehouse
... ablaze. And for the rest, the sea has its hours of dulness and monotony, even when it is not wholly calm. Whereas in the grate even a quite little fire never ceases to be amusing and inspiring until you let it out. As much fire as would correspond with a handful of earth or a tumblerful of water is yet a joy to the eyes, and a lively suggestion of grandeur. The other elements, even as presented in huge samples, impress us as less august than fire. Fire alone, according ...
— Yet Again • Max Beerbohm
... the ground, keeping his left hand on the wound, which pained him. Suddenly he seized a handful of dust and threw it into ...
— A Second Book of Operas • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... O my beauty! And the splendor of the Pashas there: What's their pomp and riches? Why, I would not Take them for a handful of thy hair! ...
— Four Famous American Writers: Washington Irving, Edgar Allan Poe, • Sherwin Cody
... to the professional side of his profession, just as most professional men do. He would have resented a suggestion or a new idea as an attack upon the Jennings Method. The overwhelming majority of the human race—indeed, all but a small handful—have this passion for stagnation, this ferocity against change. It is in large part due to laziness; for a new idea means work in learning it and in unlearning the old ideas that have been true until the unwelcome advent of the new. In part also ...
— The Price She Paid • David Graham Phillips
... soldiers' wagons and got two big armfuls of bread, about sixty pounds of bacon and a large bucket of coffee. I took them down to our camp, spread a newspaper upon the ground, laid the bacon, bread and coffee on the spread, placed a handful of matches near the bread, then went to our own mess and took several cans of coffee and bread from it, left them one of our buckets and an extra coffee pot that I carried with me, and got a large camp kettle from the soldiers and left ...
— The Second William Penn - A true account of incidents that happened along the - old Santa Fe Trail • William H. Ryus
... the elders kept their long debate, Coroebus stole unheeded to his band, And led a handful by a postern gate Across the plain, across the barren land Where once the happy vines were wont to stand, And 'mid the clusters once did maidens sing,— But now the plain was waste on every hand, Though here and there a flower ...
— Helen of Troy • Andrew Lang
... staringly to a pitiable sense of their condition. But, if we cannot have this experience through ourselves, we can through others; and that will show us that Pagan art has once—nay twice—already brought over Christian art a "darkness which might be felt;" from a little handful cloud out of the studio of Squarcione, it gathered density and volume through his scholar Mantegna—made itself a nucleus in the Academy of the Medici, and thence it issued in such a flood of "heathenesse" that Italy finally became covered with one vast ...
— The Germ - Thoughts towards Nature in Poetry, Literature and Art • Various
... partridges take a small handful of salt, and of pepper, mace, and cloves, a quarter of an ounce each. With these, when well mixed, rub the birds thoroughly, inside and outside. Take a large piece of butter, season it well, put it into them, and lay them in pots, with the breasts downward. ...
— The Lady's Own Cookery Book, and New Dinner-Table Directory; • Charlotte Campbell Bury
... corner he opened it and I beheld such a glory of flashing gems as nigh dazzled me with their splendour. "Look at 'em, Martin, look at 'em!" he whispered. "Here's love and hate, life and death, every good and all the sins—look at 'em!" And catching up a handful he let them fall, glittering, through his fingers. "Lord love me, Martin," he whispered, "'tis enough to turn a man's brain! Have ye ...
— Black Bartlemy's Treasure • Jeffrey Farnol
... Katie Craigin, shaking her fist at the long green tendrils that swept across the window nearest her machine. "Oh, you! You'll burn to a crisp at the roots! You'll wither up an' die. You'll be dead an' brown an' ugly! An' I'm glad! Glad! For I hate you. I hate you! Do you hear?" And she grasped a handful of leaves that edged the window-sill, spat upon them, and stamped them under her foot, then ...
— The Witness • Grace Livingston Hill Lutz
... about them; but for an instant they crossed the illuminated track and there they blazed. How strange Pharisees, officials, and bookmen of all sorts would have felt if anybody had said to them: 'Do you see that handful of travel-stained Galileans there, those poor women you have just passed by the way? Well, do you know that these three women's names will never perish as long as the world lasts?' So we may learn the eternity of work done for Him. Ah, a great deal of it may be ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... and a double handful of black walnut kernels. The drinks from the spring are on you," he answered as he led me down through a thicket of slim trees that were sending out a queer fragrance to a huge old stone spring-house from which gushed a stream of ...
— The Golden Bird • Maria Thompson Daviess
... Socialist party to give to its members an equally powerful daily interest in that work. On the other hand, it must be said in all fairness that the lack of active participation by the rank and file is very common in the labor unions also, a handful of men often governing and directing, sometimes even at ...
— Socialism As It Is - A Survey of The World-Wide Revolutionary Movement • William English Walling
... carefree wanderer's song as it flowed. It was a glorious, balmy day in late June, dazzlingly blue and white, sparklingly golden. It was the Carribou's big day of the year, that last day of June. On all other days she made her run demurely from Lower Falls Station to Upper Falls, carrying freight and a handful of passengers on each trip; but every year on that last day of June freight and ordinary passengers stood aside, for the Carribou was chartered to carry the girls of Camp Keewaydin ...
— The Campfire Girls at Camp Keewaydin • Hildegard G. Frey
... be thanked, Mr. Wood cannot touch a hair of your heads. You have all the laws of God and man on your side. When he or his accomplices offer you his dross, it is but saying No, and you are safe. If a madman should come to my shop with a handful of dirt raked out of the kennel, and offer it in payment for ten yards of stuff, I would pity or laugh at him, or, if his behaviour deserved it, kick him out of my doors. And if Mr. Wood comes to demand any gold or silver, or commodities for which I have paid my ...
— Political Pamphlets • George Saintsbury
... arrow-heads, very workmanly made. Their chains are many hollow pieces cemented together, each piece of the bigness of one of our reeds, a finger in length, ten or twelve of them together on a string, which they wear about their necks: their collars they wear about their bodies like bandeliers a handful broad, all hollow pieces like the other, but somewhat shorter, four hundred pieces in a collar, very fine and evenly set together." He adds: "I am persuaded they have great store (of flax) growing upon the main, as also mines and many other rich commodities, which we, wanting ...
— Ancient America, in Notes on American Archaeology • John D. Baldwin
... danger which we were all facing all of the time, helped her make her decision. But decide she did and so one day early in September 1918 we went to Tsarskoe Selo, an hour by train from Petrograd where an old aunt of mine lived. We were married in a church there with just a handful of friends in attendance. Nelka wore a white sister's uniform for her wedding dress. My old aunt who was very fond of Nelka took off a gold bracelet she wore and put it on Nelka's arm. Nelka never took it ...
— Nelka - Mrs. Helen de Smirnoff Moukhanoff, 1878-1963, a Biographical Sketch • Michael Moukhanoff
... horses were attached, to Dumanyfalva, and there, with all the ceremony belonging to the occasion, I was inducted into my legal rights as landlord. I was conducted into the mansion, the keys were put into my hands, then they took me out into the field and gave me a handful of soil of each individual plot, or meadow, or pasture. After that they split the reeds and pipe-stems, and ten bills of one thousand florins apiece, two hundred bills of one hundred florins, and sixty-four fifty-florin bills were found, flattened out, made into a package, upon which each of ...
— Dr. Dumany's Wife • Mr Jkai
... the coin from his pocket, and had been busy while he spoke rubbing it in a handful of sand, so that it was bright as new when he now ...
— Malcolm • George MacDonald
... by the French Revolution and Napoleon. Borne across the ocean, the doctrines of "Liberty, Fraternity, Equality" stirred the ardent-minded to thoughts of action, though the Spanish and Portuguese Americans who schemed and plotted were the merest handful. The seed they planted was slow to germinate among peoples who had been taught to regard things foreign as outlandish and heretical. Many years therefore elapsed before the ideas of the few became the convictions of the masses, for the conservatism ...
— The Hispanic Nations of the New World - Volume 50 in The Chronicles Of America Series • William R. Shepherd
... again a handful of these, seemingly dropped to earth, heralded a changing station, and a halt for fresh ponies. Here would be brief and blessed respite; a moment to stretch cramped limbs: moving lights that revealed shadowy shapes of men and horses: much apostrophising of the Prophet, ...
— The Great Amulet • Maud Diver
... "Not by a handful," said her father. "Mr Walter Winter will represent South Fox in the next session of Parliament, if you ...
— The Imperialist • (a.k.a. Mrs. Everard Cotes) Sara Jeannette Duncan
... pretended to swoon. Mbonga and the others were much impressed. Rabba Kega grew nervous. He saw his reputation waning. There was some fire left in the vessel which Momaya had brought. He seized the vessel, dropped a handful of dry leaves into it while no one was watching and then uttered a frightful scream which drew the attention of Bukawai's audience to him. It also brought Bukawai quite miraculously out of his swoon, but when the old witch-doctor saw ...
— Jungle Tales of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... yesterday, suh," Simmons murmured, hobbling up with a handful of chickweed which he arranged on the top of one of the cages, its faint faded smell mingling with the heavy fragrance of the ...
— The Awakening of Helena Richie • Margaret Deland
... went the street musicians, and the whole flock came running down to give a handful of silver, and ask all sorts of questions. Tessa felt so grateful that, without waiting for Tommo, she sang her sweetest little song all alone. It was about a lost lamb, and her heart was in the song; therefore she sang ...
— Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag • Louisa M. Alcott
... this fight here in Greeley County, I'm quietly lining up a few county delegates, and picking out a few trusty friends who will show up at the caucuses, and Grant has a handful of crazy Ikes that I am going to use in my business, and if we win it will be a practical proposition—my head ...
— In the Heart of a Fool • William Allen White
... he had caught, dressed and washed them at the stream, and laying them on the live coals until one side was done, turned them on the other by the aid of a long stick he had sharpened for the purpose, and when done he took them up on its point, and laid them steaming on a handful of leaves he had collected, and presented ...
— The American Family Robinson - or, The Adventures of a Family lost in the Great Desert of the West • D. W. Belisle
... the Indian mutiny in 1857 with a little handful of troops, that had to confront thousands upon thousands of insurgent Hindoos before a single reinforcement could arrive from England:—we never triumphed so loudly about what we did on that occasion; and yet, our campaign against the Sepoys was fought over a far more extended ...
— She and I, Volume 2 - A Love Story. A Life History. • John Conroy Hutcheson
... suddenly from my walk as if with a view to bend my way homewards, but contrived, while talking with Alexander and looking another way, to slant my steps close to where he sat surrounded by his mute adherents, and to drop a handful of small coin nearly under the elbow upon which, wearily, lie was reclining. We proceeded with alertness, and talking together aloud; but Alexander perceived this apparent chief evidently moved by what I had done, though forbearing to touch the little offering, ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 3 • Madame D'Arblay
... nail was driven in, and it lay across a bench, in the midst of the litter of the workshop, and a curious stillness seemed to emanate from the senseless boards. I went back to the house and gathered a handful of scarlet geranium, and returned with it through the rain. The brilliant blossoms were sprinkled with glittering drops. I laid them in the little coffin, while the wind wailed so sorrowfully outside, ...
— Authors and Friends • Annie Fields
... happened to observe the photograph of a very handsome woman near him on the table. She told him she had had a parcel of photographs of friends of hers just sent over from Vienna: some of them very pretty. She went to another table, and brought over a handful. He glanced at them only a second ...
— Sunrise • William Black
... afford it, can't we? Aha! Look here. [He takes out a handful of sovereigns and makes them chink]. Gold, ...
— Mrs. Warren's Profession • George Bernard Shaw
... Delirious boys prophesied that eight years' defeats would be wiped off the slate by the school's dismissing the Masters for a handful of runs, scoring a great score, and then dismissing them again, so as to win an innings victory. But stay! Who is this coming in first-wicket-down? Not Radley? Yes, by heaven, it is! He has come ...
— Tell England - A Study in a Generation • Ernest Raymond
... hundreds of thousands of men murdered, and practically every human being in the occidental hemisphere made to suffer, not for the amelioration of a race, but in order to satisfy the idiotic ambitions of a handful. Let not this fact be forgotten. Democracy will not forget it. And foreign policy in the future will not be left in the hands of any autocracy, by whatever specious name the autocracy may call itself. Ruling classes have always ...
— The Healing of Nations and the Hidden Sources of Their Strife • Edward Carpenter
... may be in the eastern seaports, where I did not spend much time, inland there seems to be the best of feeling between the different elements of the European community, official, missionary, and merchant. Perhaps because they are a mere handful in an alien people they are forced to see each other's good points, and realize that neither side is hopelessly bad nor ...
— A Wayfarer in China - Impressions of a trip across West China and Mongolia • Elizabeth Kendall
... city of Rheims with instant attack. Louis hastened to put himself in position; he went and took solemnly, at the altar of St. Denis, the banner of that patron of the kingdom, and flew with a mere handful of men to confront the enemy, and parry the first blow, calling on the whole of France to follow him. France summoned the flower of her chivalry; and when the army had assembled from every quarter of ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume II. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... may bloom upon a dog's allowance. Nature has been kind to it, and sunshine and leisure and conversation and beautiful views form the greater part of its sustenance. It takes a great deal to make a successful American, but to make a happy Venetian takes only a handful of quick sensibility. The Italian people have at once the good and the evil fortune to be conscious of few wants; so that if the civilisation of a society is measured by the number of its needs, as seems to be the ...
— Italian Hours • Henry James
... profited by, would put both of us in possession of unheard-of wealth—millions and millions of dollars in fact.' I frankly own, when I heard this, that I thought something had touched Marshall's brain, when suddenly all my misgivings were put an end to by his flinging on the table a handful of scales of pure virgin gold. I was fairly thunderstruck, and asked him to explain what all this meant, when he went on to say, that, according to my instructions, he had thrown, the mill-wheel out of gear, to let the whole body of the water in the dam find a passage through the tail-race, ...
— California • J. Tyrwhitt Brooks
... the sleepy custode showed me with reluctance, until I offered him a franc. It is curious that famous Nieuport, for which so much blood was shed in those early days, should again have been a famous battle ground between the handful of valiant soldiers of the heroic King Albert and a mighty ...
— Vanished towers and chimes of Flanders • George Wharton Edwards
... from the finger that he had trailed along the desk and entered the small office that was his sanctum. Seated at his ancient roll-top, he opened and read a handful of letters that had come in the afternoon mail—and his ready frown was active again as he noted the tone of some of them. The clerk, Stevens, when he told Maxon that several orders were shortly due to be filled, had in nowise exaggerated the case. Two or three were already ...
— The Monk of Hambleton • Armstrong Livingston
... lamb-like world this nation was awakened, three years ago, by a cannon shot across Charleston harbor. The fools who fired it knew not what they did, perhaps. They thought to open fire on a poor old fort and its handful of a garrison. They did open fire on civilization, on order, on law, on the world's progress, on the hopes of man. There, at last, we were brought face to face with hard facts. Talk, in Congress, ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 4, October, 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... as the most significant commentary on his state of mind. He regarded the book with intense disfavour, tore it in two, and used a handful of its fine deckle-edged leaves to get the fire going. They burned well, and presently the rest followed. Well for Dickson's peace of soul that he was not a witness of ...
— Huntingtower • John Buchan
... suppose the handful of Israelites standing dryshod on the Asiatic side of the Red Sea was more powerful than the host of the Egyptians drawn up on the African side? Were they more numerous? Were they better appointed? Were they more mighty, in a word—eh? Don't speak, or you'll ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte
... indignantly; "he King of Naples! Nay, dream that the town is shaken to its very foundations, that the people rise as one man, that our church bells sound a new Sicilian vespers, before the people of Naples will endure the rule of a handful of wild Hungarian drunkards, a deformed canting monk, a prince detested by them even as you ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... all, Old ocean's gray and melancholy waste,— Are but the solemn decorations all Of the great tomb of man. The golden sun, The planets, all the infinite host of heaven, Are shining on the sad abodes of death, Through the still lapse of ages. All that tread The globe are but a handful to the tribes That slumber in its bosom. Take the wings Of morning, pierce the Barcan wilderness, Or lose thyself in the continuous woods Where rolls the Oregon, and hears no sound, Save his own dashings—yet, the dead are there; And millions in ...
— Poems Teachers Ask For • Various
... handful as she spoke, and, very tenderly she wiped away the blood. Then from her own head she took the fine linen lanza that she wore, and made a bandage—a bandage sweet with the faint fragrance of marsh-mallow—and bound it about my battered skull. When that was done she turned her attention ...
— The Shame of Motley • Raphael Sabatini
... still holding her securely, he bent down, and taking a handful of snow he rubbed his feet with it, to prevent their being frost-bitten. At other times, his throat feeling as if it were on fire, he put a little snow in his mouth and sucked it; this for a moment assuaged ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo |
