"Picker" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... breaker, in which Paul Evert now worked as a slate-picker, was in general appearance very much like the old one, but its interior arrangement was different, and of such a nature as to make life much easier for those who worked in it. The greatest improvement was the introduction ...
— Derrick Sterling - A Story of the Mines • Kirk Munroe
... money advanced, one part being given to the creditor, and the other to the debtor. The same plan is used in the present day by the hop-pickers in Kent, the overseer having one stick, while the picker keeps the other, and notches it each time a basket is emptied. Beneath this Toll House is the ancient Gaol or House of Correction. Up to the present century this gaol was as defective as that of prisons generally. ...
— A Yacht Voyage Round England • W.H.G. Kingston
... "I have had the warden of the Minorites and the provincial of the Dominicans here this morning," he said, "about that accursed business of the rag-picker's wife. It is another example of what I told you just now, that these people attribute what they cannot understand to persons they can only dream about. They put down the whole of your miracles ...
— Little Novels of Italy • Maurice Henry Hewlett
... styled the Dwarf-nation, and always despised as a mere imitator and brain-picker of Chinese wisdom, now swims definitively into the ken of the Manchu court. The Formosan imbroglio had been forgotten as soon as it was over, and the recent rapid progress of Japan on Western lines towards national strength had been ignored by all Manchu statesmen, each of whom lived ...
— China and the Manchus • Herbert A. Giles
... been drinking a glass of milk and asking questions about hops," she said, giving him her hand bare of glove. "Until this year I have never seen a hop garden or a hop picker." ...
— The Shuttle • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... it entirely for her and the baby. He spoke of closets for her frocks, and "a comfy sewing-room." But when he drew on a leaf from an old account-book (he was a paper-saver and a string-picker) the plans for the garage, he gave much more attention to a cement floor and a work-bench and a gasoline-tank than he ...
— Main Street • Sinclair Lewis
... pounds by following the great principle that a commodity is worth what it will fetch when people want it very badly and there is a shortage of it. Mr. Prohack too had often chatted and laughed with this same picker-up of a million, who happened to be a quite jolly and generous fellow. Mr. Prohack would have chatted and laughed with Barabbas, convinced as he was that iniquity is the result of circumstances rather than of deliberate naughtiness. He seldom condemned. ...
— Mr. Prohack • E. Arnold Bennett
... If a rag-picker had offered to do a diplomatic service for the Emperor of Russia, the monarch could not have been more astounded than the mate was. He even stopped swearing. He stood and stared down at me. It took him ten seconds to scrape his disjointed remains together ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... do you no good to have me tell you, because I do not believe a person can learn to dry-pick chickens by following printed instructions. At any rate, I could not. I never learned until I hired a professional picker to come out ...
— How To Write Special Feature Articles • Willard Grosvenor Bleyer
... will, provided you don't starve to death too soon. You know, I had a hunch you would turn me down, and I'm glad you did. If you were going crooked some time I thought I'd like to have you with me. When it comes to men, I'm a pretty good picker. That's the reason I have kept out of jail so long. I either pick a square one or I ...
— The Efficiency Expert • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... and Seconder of the Address fully deserved the customary compliments. Col. Sir RHYS WILLIAMS' quiet and effective style explained his success as a picker-up of recruits; while Lt.-Commander DEAN, V.C., though he faced the House with much more trepidation than he did the batteries of Zeebrugge, got well home at ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, Feb. 19, 1919 • Various
... Farmer Green stood there they all picked as busily as squirrels. But after he left them the boys found so much to talk about that they made little progress. It was a temptation, too, to flick a currant into the face of another picker and see him jump. ...
— The Tale of Pony Twinkleheels • Arthur Scott Bailey
... are in to get your enough! Look at the grease on your frock yet with the dint of the dabs you put in your pocket! Doing cures and foretellings, is it? You starved pot picker, you! ...
— The Unicorn from the Stars and Other Plays • William B. Yeats
... a boy, the great ambition of his life was to be released from the hoeing and spudding, and set to work at his father's colliery. Great was Geordie's joy, therefore, when at last he was taken on there in the capacity of a coal-picker, to clear the loads from stones and rubbish. It wasn't a very dignified position, to be sure, but it was the first step that led the way to the construction of the Liverpool and Manchester Railway. Geordie was now fairly free from the uncongenial ...
— Biographies of Working Men • Grant Allen
... seven o'clock in the morning. Caillette did not dare to find Jacques, and tell him she had been faithless to her trust. No, she must find Francoise herself. She asked questions of all she met, and at last she had a ray of light. An old rag picker told her that he had seen a woman answering to the description given by Caillette. She at once started in the direction he pointed out; it was the road to Germany she took. She sold a small gold locket, which held a bit of ...
— The Son of Monte Cristo • Jules Lermina
... an infinite charm resides in the water about us! Beautiful the great trees under whose shade we lie. Beautiful the grassy bank—but lo! a small heap of dirty clothes on the greensward! We turn away with disgust and laughter. Insignia of glory!—a shilling's worth to the rag-picker. What a contrast they present to the loveliness of the ...
— Our campaign around Gettysburg • John Lockwood
... expect from a picker-up of old words, brother? Bah! I dislike a picker-up of old words worse than a picker-up of ...
— The Romany Rye • George Borrow
... this weapon. Of course it was already loaded, but, lest the night-dew might have damped the priming, he threw up the pan-cover, with his thumb-nail scraped out the powder, and then poured in a fresh supply from his horn. This he adjusted with his picker, taking care that a portion of it should pass into the touch-hole, and communicate with the charge inside. The steel was then returned to its place, and the flint duly looked to. Its state of firmness was felt, its edge examined. Both appeared ...
— The White Chief - A Legend of Northern Mexico • Mayne Reid
... shrouded in them, the very special merit of being dearer in proportion as they are old, threadbare, and unserviceable. We write this in case any pious reader need such sacred relics—or any cunning rag-picker of Europe wish to make a fortune by taking to the Philippines a consignment of patched and grimy garments, since they are valued at sixteen pesos or more, according to their ...
— The Social Cancer - A Complete English Version of Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal
... over to the anthropological service; they had never seen anything like him. However, they easily traced his past history. He was known at Courbevois, at Asnieres and at Levallois. He lived on alms and slept in one of those rag-picker's huts near the barrier de Ternes. He had disappeared from ...
— The Extraordinary Adventures of Arsene Lupin, Gentleman-Burglar • Maurice Leblanc
... before me the notes of a retired egg-picker; they record the brief experience of one who was interested in the last campaign, which, as it terminated the career of the egg-pirates, is not without historical interest. I will at once introduce the historian, and let him tell ...
— In the Footprints of the Padres • Charles Warren Stoddard
... wouldn't say as to that. In fact, I don't believe the gypsies are anywhere around here. The children have that notion in their heads, but I don't believe in it. Perhaps it was a blueberry picker ...
— The Bobbsey Twins on Blueberry Island • Laura Lee Hope
... be a quill blower. Brother Jim would cut fishin' canes and plat 'em together—they called 'em a pack—five in a row, just like my fingers. Anybody that knowed how could sure make music on 'em. Tom Rollins, that was my baby uncle, he was a banjo picker. ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States - Volume II. Arkansas Narratives. Part I • Work Projects Administration
... Several Scottish churches bore his name. Among these may be mentioned the ancient church and burial ground of St. Fiacre, or, as he is often styled, St. Fittack, at Nigg, Kincardineshire, on the opposite bank of the Dee from Aberdeen. The bay in the vicinity is known as St. Picker's Bay, and St. Fittack's Well, a clear spring near the roofless ruins of the old church, still recalls his memory. Its existence is a strong proof of the saint's residence in the neighbourhood at some time in his life. The fame of this well {125} for healing ...
— A Calendar of Scottish Saints • Michael Barrett
... don't you, of the old man who described himself in the census as a picker?" said Miss Barton. "When he was asked to explain, he said: 'Well, in June I picks strawberries, and then I picks beans, and then I picks hops, then when them's over I picks pockets, and then I gets copped and sent to quod, and ...
— The Madcap of the School • Angela Brazil
... the government; he has the ear of the king. To have the eye of the king is to draw and shut, at one's whim, the bolt of the royal conscience, and to throw into that conscience whatever one wishes. The mind of the king is his cupboard; if he be a rag-picker, it is his basket. The ears of kings belong not to kings, and therefore it is that, on the whole, the poor devils are not altogether responsible for their actions. He who does not possess his own thought does not possess his ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... city's one hour of purity, of dignity. The very rag- picker, groping with her filthy hands among the ashes, instead of an object of contempt, moves from door to door an accusing Figure, her thin soiled garments, her bent body, her scarred face, hideous with the wounds of poverty, an eloquent indictment ...
— Idle Ideas in 1905 • Jerome K. Jerome
... out on the highway to die. When I say 'you,' I mean the superintendent and the officials that you and the other stockholders pay to manage the mills for you. It was an accident. It was caused by his trying to save the company a few dollars. The toothed drum of the picker caught his arm. He might have let the small flint that he saw in the teeth go through. It would have smashed out a double row of spikes. But he reached for the flint, and his arm was picked and clawed to ...
— The Iron Heel • Jack London
... remarkably dry, it is essential to provide for a circulation of air, which can be done very feasibly in a textile mill by laying drain pipe through the upper part of the underpinning, forming a number of holes leading into this space, and then making a flue from this space to the picker room or any other place requiring a large amount of air. The fans of the picker room, drawing their supply from underneath the building, produce a circulation of air which keeps the timber ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 647, May 26, 1888 • Various
... for a woman who picks up rags about the street; and it may seem to later generations that the epithet fitted far more nicely the bunter muse of that "facile retailer of ana and incorrigible society-gossip," that rag-picker of ...
— Henry Fielding: A Memoir • G. M. Godden
... know that I'd call him misguided," said Mr. Mortimer, as one desiring to be fair, "I think he's a right smart picker! She's such a corking girl, you know. We were children together, and I've loved her for years. Ten years at least. But you know how it is—somehow one never seems to get in line for a proposal. I thought I saw an opening in the summer of nineteen-twelve, but it blew over. ...
— Three Men and a Maid • P. G. Wodehouse
... head—"what a vendible article a fine scandal is! It sells fast, like goods at a Dutch auction. Penny a line? More nearly six pence! If I could only bring myself to deal in such merchandise! If I were only a good rag picker, instead of a bad poet!" And Straws walked away, forgetting the questions he had asked in his own ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham
... in science, Mr. Holmes, a picker up of shells on the shores of the great unknown ocean. I presume that it is Mr. Sherlock Holmes whom I am addressing ...
— Hound of the Baskervilles • Authur Conan Doyle
... with laughter at the mere recollection of the funny story that he had promised to his friends, and throwing himself back in the great arm-chair, which he completely filled, that picker up of bits of pinchbeck, as they called him at the ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume III (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... Should he leave his post, what would become of the Queen? Des Huttes during the moment of this quick reflection, was brained from behind by a man in a red cap, and fell, pierced with countless pike-wounds. His eyes still moved when the rag-picker Gougeon ran in, and, placing his foot on the chest, chopped the head from the body with blows of an axe. In an instant it was stuck on the point of a pike and ...
— The False Chevalier - or, The Lifeguard of Marie Antoinette • William Douw Lighthall
... and about her hair....I'm beginning to remember. She wears a cap, and her hair's cut off like an oakum-picker's. That's ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... cotton in the air like great white bees drifting down out of the picker chimney. They lodged in the cramped and dingy elms and horse-chestnuts which a former agent had planted along the streets, and the English sparrows squabbled over them in eaves-corners and made warm, untidy great nests that would have contented an Arctic explorer. Somehow the Corporation ...
— A Country Doctor and Selected Stories and Sketches • Sarah Orne Jewett
... Karshish, the picker up of learning's crumbs iv. 186 Kentish Sir Byng stood for his King vi. 3 King Charles, and who'll do him right now? vi. 5 "Knowledged deposed, then!"—groaned whom that ...
— A Handbook to the Works of Browning (6th ed.) • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... holes drilled by these beetles that the Aye-Aye searches with his long fingers, one of which, on the fore-hand, is specially thin, slender, and skeleton-like. It looks like the tool of some lock-picker. Our large-eyed little friend, like the burglar, comes out at night and finds these holes on the trees where he slept during the day. His sensitive thin ears, made to hear every scratch, can detect the ...
— Heads and Tales • Various
... with the lever, g, arranged to operate as set forth, the incline, n, or its equivalent, for relieving the picker from the action of the spring, i, to permit free movement of the shuttle ...
— Scientific American, Vol. 17, No. 26 December 28, 1867 • Various
... machine may be briefly described as follows: The nuts are run through a revolving screen which separates and cleans them from all adhering husk and grades them into three sizes. They then pass through the cracker and thence, by conveyor belt, to the picker. This ingenious device holds the broken nuts with soft rubber rolls while a set of fingers literally pick the kernels from the shells. Careful sifting is the last step as the kernels leave the machine, after which they are hand-picked ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Twenty-Fourth Annual Meeting • Northern Nut Growers Association
... shaving-things, combs, and a knife, fork, and spoon; a German pipe and tobacco-bag, flint, and steel; pipe-clay and {p.243} oil, with brush for laying it on; a shoe-brush; a pair of shoes or hussar-boots; a horse-picker, and other loose articles. ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Volume I (of 10) • John Gibson Lockhart
... hand-picking, clean only about a pound of cotton a day. The cotton-gin cleaned as much in a day as had taken the hand-picker a year to accomplish. Cotton was at once planted in vast amounts; but it certainly was not plentiful till then. Whitney had never seen cotton nor cotton seed when he began to plan his invention; nor did he, ...
— Home Life in Colonial Days • Alice Morse Earle
... The fruit-picker stretched out her hand—there was a large shining silver coin—and when it was given to her, when she held it in her hand she drew a deep breath; her brown fingers ...
— The Son of His Mother • Clara Viebig
... variety for this section, as it stands up so well under shipment. The Howard 17 is nearly as good a shipper, but considered a better quality berry and does nicely on our Cape soils. The picking season is from three to four weeks. Pickers are usually paid 2 cents a quart, and a good picker will make from $3 to $4 a day. Five thousand quarts is considered a fair yield per acre for ...
— Cape Cod and All the Pilgrim Land, June 1922, Volume 6, Number 4 • Various
... the nose of the bear as he lay on the stone-boat, and Jessie Mack and Betsy went and stood behind the pails, where they were safe, but Dot wasn't a bit afraid of that bear now. She toddled close up to her father, as he stood at the head of the stone-boat, and looked down on the great furry berry picker. ...
— Harper's Young People, July 20, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... the most wine, at Constantinople the most coffee, at Paris the most absinthe; there are all the useful notions. Paris carries the day, in short. In Paris, even the rag-pickers are sybarites; Diogenes would have loved to be a rag-picker of the Place Maubert better than to be a philosopher at the Piraeus. Learn this in addition; the wineshops of the ragpickers are called bibines; the most celebrated are the Saucepan and The Slaughter-House. ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... Biddy O'Dolan, the little rag-picker and ash girl who found Lily De Koven's broken doll in the ash-can that cold winter's morning? I have not forgotten my promise to tell you the rest ...
— Harper's Young People, February 24, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... used for the sides of barns only, they's many a famous actor whose father figured Shakespeare was the name of a puddin', they's many a big league author come from families which confined their readin' matter to the city directory, and so it goes all along the line—Columbus's old man was a cotton picker. You don't inherit success, you take it by force, usin' your ambition, nerve and ...
— Alex the Great • H. C. Witwer
... your Grace command mee any seruice to the worlds end? I will goe on the slightest arrand now to the Antypodes that you can deuise to send me on: I will fetch you a tooth-picker now from the furthest inch of Asia: bring you the length of Prester Iohns foot: fetch you a hayre off the great Chams beard: doe you any embassage to the Pigmies, rather then hould three words conference, with this Harpy: you haue no employment for me? Pedro. ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... The paramour of a woman I took in self-contempt, But to hide a wounded pride as well. To be judged and loathed by a village of little minds — I, gifted with tongues and wisdom, Sunk here to the dust of the justice court, A picker of rags in the rubbage of spites and wrongs, — I, whom fortune smiled on! I in a village, Spouting to gaping yokels pages of verse, Out of the lore of golden years, Or raising a laugh with a flash of filthy wit When they brought the drinks to kindle ...
— The Second Book of Modern Verse • Jessie B. Rittenhouse
... continually looked over his shoulder without seeming to see anything. His mouth was fixed in the lines of a sly smile, which had nothing to do with the expression of his eyes. This was furtive and anxious. His little grey eyes searched in all the corners of the pavement like a rag-picker's eyes. To Evan there was something familiar about the face, but ...
— The Deaves Affair • Hulbert Footner
... our new Divisional Commander, Major-General W. Thwaites, R.A., who made it a practice of frequently visiting transport lines at early morning stables. Torrance with his ready wit at once dubbed him "The Mushroom Picker," an epithet which we were told gave him much pleasure when it reached his ears, but did not have the least effect upon ...
— The Sherwood Foresters in the Great War 1914 - 1919 - History of the 1/8th Battalion • W.C.C. Weetman
... and get measured for his hoof-picker" Dam had not resented, though he had considered it something of an insult to his intelligence that Hawker should expect to "have" him so easily as that. He had taken in good part the arrangement of his bed in such a way that it collapsed and ...
— Snake and Sword - A Novel • Percival Christopher Wren
... sitting position on the dung heap, and said she was afraid he was dead. Her fears proved to be true. The wretched creature appeared to have been dead several hours. He had perished of cold and wet, and the rain had been beating down on him all night. The deceased was a bone-picker. He was in the lowest stage of poverty, poorly clad, and half-starved. The police had frequently driven him away from the stone yard, between sunset and sunrise, and told him to go home. He selected ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... granddaughter of tender years, wheeling and balancing in the same set. And so the fiddles played, the stars shone, the waters babbled, until the lanterns flared and sputtered out, and the banjo-picker held up fingers raw and bleeding. Then with a last final swing and flourish, everybody scattered for homeward ways, glad of the day's pleasure—and tired enough to be glad also ...
— Dishes & Beverages of the Old South • Martha McCulloch Williams
... me, 'I've done had sixteen picaninnies, Mars' Cap'n, but I nebber seed none o' dem after dey was 'bout six weeks old. Dey was in de nussery, an' I was a rale smart cotton-picker, and couldn't be spar'd ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, August, 1878 • Various
... craning their necks. "Come inside," cried the boys. "There's room enough if we make two rings!" So once again they moved round the tree, singing Christmas carols. Every time there was a pause somebody struck up a new carol, that had to be sung through. The doors opposite were open too, the old rag-picker sat at the head of his table singing on his own account. He had a loaf of black bread and a plate of bacon in front of him, and after every carol he took a mouthful. In the other doorway sat three coal-porters playing "sixty-six" for beer and brandy. They sat facing ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... chinquapins and wild grapes. When harvest time came, they worked in the fields side by side,—plucked the corn, pulled the fodder, and gathered the dried peas from the yellow pea-vines. Cicely was a phenomenal cotton-picker, and John accompanied her to the fields and stayed by her hours at a time, though occasionally he would complain of his head, and sit under a tree and rest part of the day while Cicely worked, the two keeping one another ...
— The Wife of his Youth and Other Stories of the Color Line, and - Selected Essays • Charles Waddell Chesnutt
... of work for the strongest; dust of emery powder, that has been known to destroy in a month; dust of pottery and sand and flint, so penetrating that the medical returns give cases of "stone" for new-born babes; dust of rags foul with dirt and breeding fever in the picker; dust of wools from diseased animals, striking down the sorter. Wood, coal, flour, each has its own, penetrating where it can never be dislodged; and a less tangible enemy lurks in poisonous paints for flowers or wall-paper, and ...
— Women Wage-Earners - Their Past, Their Present, and Their Future • Helen Campbell
... with the pillow-case, Mrs. Haggerty came into the kitchen, giving me a key, and telling me to go over to the drying-room; that is a room separate from the bedrooms; there was a chest there full of linen, table linen and bed linen, and silver right down in the bottom; she told me to get a nut-picker and bring it over, as Mr. Haggerty wanted one; I took all the clothes out of the trunk, and got the nut-picker and brought it back to her, and before I got into the kitchen I said to Mrs. Haggerty, 'What is the matter? The kitchen's all black ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe
... one at present, but we'll get the other two out during the night. You can take that bar out and work with it, while I use my own picker at the other. You see, the stone is soft, and by grinding it you soon make a groove along which you can slip the bar. It will be mighty queer if we can't clear a road ...
— The Refugees • Arthur Conan Doyle
... our day. Let us drink deep of love, not waiting until the spring run dry. Catherine, death comes to all, and yonder in the church-yard the poor dead lie together, huggermugger, and a man may not tell an archbishop from a rag-picker. Yet they have exulted in their youth, and have laughed in the sun with some lass or another lass. We ...
— The Line of Love - Dizain des Mariages • James Branch Cabell
... self-moved and performing their operations without external agency. To use a faint comparison, we see a factory in motion without water, wind or steam, its cotton placing itself within the reach of the picker, the cards, the spinning-frame and the loom, and turning out in rolls or cloth. Such virtually, nay, far more wonderful, is the universe. Not a thousandth part so unreasonable would it be to believe a real factory of this description, were one to ...
— The Christian Foundation, April, 1880
... company with the switches. But Zephyrin's pockets were always full to overflowing. He would pull curiosities from them, transparent pebbles found on the banks of the Seine, pieces of old iron, dried berries, and all sorts of strange rubbish, which not even a rag-picker would have cared for. His chief love, however, was for pictures; as he sauntered along he would seize on all the stray papers that had served as wrappers for chocolate or cakes of soap, and on which were black men, palm-trees, dancing-girls, or clusters of roses. The tops of ...
— A Love Episode • Emile Zola
... sight that could satisfy any godly mind on such an occasion. We went in a coach of our own, by ourselves, and found the town of Windsor like a cried fair. We were then directed to the Castle gate, where a terrible crowd was gathered together; and we had not been long in that crowd, till a pocket-picker, as I thought, cutted off the tail of my coat, with my pocket-book in my pocket, which I never missed at the time. But it seems the coat tail was found, and a policeman got it, and held it up on the end of his stick, and cried, whose pocket is this? showing ...
— The Ayrshire Legatees • John Galt
... trades. Fisherman, fruit picker, fightin' range fires, vineyards, car washer. Anything. You name it. Been out of work for a long time now, though. Goin' on five months. These here are hard times, no matter ...
— The Perfectionists • Arnold Castle
... with starting eyes. There was, then, something new under the sun? A picker of grapes, recommended by a princess! He turned the letter inside ...
— The Goose Girl • Harold MacGrath
... chiffonnier (or rag picker) died in Paris in a state apparently of the most abject poverty. His only relation was a niece, who lived as servant with a greengrocer. This girl always assisted her uncle as far as her slender means would permit. When ...
— The Book of Three Hundred Anecdotes - Historical, Literary, and Humorous—A New Selection • Various |
