"Pitchfork" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... and what could she do? Can she defend slavery? There'll be no kid-gloved justice meted out to Kingsley by the Khedive, if he starts a campaign against him. He will have to take it on the devil's pitchfork. You must be ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... successful voyages under Zeke's command, and was home again and discharging beside the Town Quay, when, one summer's day, as John Penaluna leaned on his pitchfork beside a heap of weeds arranged for burning he glanced up and saw Captain Tangye hobbling painfully towards him across the slope. The old man had on his best blue cut-away coat, and paused now and then to wipe ...
— The Laird's Luck • Arthur Quiller-Couch
... matter; his strength forsook him, and flinging the handkerchief and meat over the hedge, he ran away with all his speed. The handkerchief fell within reach of the dog, who instantly snapped at it; luckily it did not come untied. Hardy saw a pitchfork on a dunghill close beside him, and, seizing upon it, stuck it into the handkerchief. The dog pulled, tore, growled, grappled, yelled; it was impossible to get the handkerchief from between his teeth; but the knot was loosed, the meat, unperceived ...
— The Parent's Assistant • Maria Edgeworth
... accessories. Sometimes he posed it, gallantly cleft asunder, on the corner of the bran-bin, with its umber and chrome standing out boldly against a background of murky bitumen; and sometimes he placed it on the threshold of the barn door, with a rake or a pitchfork alongside, and other squashes (none too certain in their perspective) looming up from ...
— Under the Skylights • Henry Blake Fuller
... she never at mornings had missed her broom or pitchfork?—R. Once the broom was gone, but she had found it again behind the stove, and may be left it ...
— Sidonia The Sorceress V2 • William Mienhold
... gate on that queer-lookin' creatur' o' his. I watched him, 'n' he rid, very slow, all raoun' by the Institoot, 'n' acted as ef he was spyin' abaout. He looks to me like a man that's calc'latin' to do some kind of ill-turn to somebody. I shouldn't like to have him raoun' me, 'f there wa'n't a pitchfork or an eel-spear or some sech weep'n within reach. He may be all right; but I don't like his looks, 'n' I don't see what he's lurkin' raoun' the Institoot ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, No. 38, December, 1860 • Various
... voice, and over the fence corner sprang Peter Apgar, a pitchfork in his hand. He had been gathering up the loose hay left along the edge of the field after the hayloader had gathered ...
— Four Little Blossoms at Brookside Farm • Mabel C. Hawley
... was aroused after about an hour by the pressure of something sharp and painful against his side, near the region of the heart, and on looking up, he discovered Bartle Flanagan standing over him with pitchfork in his hand, one end of which was pressed against his breast, as if he had been in the act of driving it forward into his body. His face was pale, his dark brows frightfully contracted, and his teeth apparently set together, as if working over some fearful determination. When Connor ...
— Fardorougha, The Miser - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... next morning to call upon St. Leonard. Near to the house I encountered young Hopkins on a horse. He was waving a pitchfork over his head and reciting "The Charge of the Light Brigade." The horse looked amused. He told me I should find "the gov'nor" up by the stables. St. Leonard is not an "old man." Dick must have seen him in a bad ...
— They and I • Jerome K. Jerome
... long time which was excusable as she was somewhat confused. First she seized a cord, then a pitchfork, then a chair. For an instant she thought of lowering the cow to the bottom of the well so that poor Ourson might have a drink of fresh warm milk. At last she found the ladder before her eyes, almost in her hands, but ...
— Old French Fairy Tales • Comtesse de Segur
... became general, and they began to bang one another right and left with anything that came to hand. Blood was flowing freely and the dragoman was in despair. He rushed into a stable and came out with a wooden pitchfork with which he drove them back, and restored order ...
— A Fantasy of Mediterranean Travel • S. G. Bayne
... a sergeant of another company, one Allien, a cooper by trade, taunted one of the men with having carried a pitchfork the day before, in disobedience to orders. He replied that the mayor had permitted him to carry it; Allien not believing this, proposed to some of the men to go with him to the mayor's and ask if it were true. When they saw M. Marguerite, he said that he ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... step. I got the pitchfork and punched him in the leg with the handle. He immediately raised up both hind legs at once, and that fork flew out of my hands, and went rattling up against the timbers above, and came down again in an instant, the end of the handle rapping me with ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume III. (of X.) • Various
... and conjurers that make storms. 'Member once when we was crossin' the line, about twelve o'clock at night, there was an old man with a long white beard that shone like silver, came and stood at the masthead, and he had a pitchfork in one hand, and a lantern in the other, and there was great balls of fire as big as my fist came out all round in the rigging. And I'll tell you if we didn't get a blow that ar night! I thought to my soul we should ...
— The Pearl of Orr's Island - A Story of the Coast of Maine • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... her position came up into clear consciousness: the lights, the laughter, the very smell of the smoke endeared by a thousand triumphs. How dared he speak of Nelly O'Neill as though she couldn't be touched with a pitchfork! Yes, and Bob Maper, too—her anger ricocheted to him—with his priggish notions of saving her from black bogs! And who was it that now stood over her like a fuddled accusing angel? She pulled out ...
— The Grey Wig: Stories and Novelettes • Israel Zangwill
... which I could easily jump over. He told me that one afternoon he was watering his horses, when he perceived a shoal of salmon swimming up the creek. He had no spear at home, having lent it to a neighbour. He, however, succeeded with a pitchfork ...
— Twenty-Seven Years in Canada West - The Experience of an Early Settler (Volume I) • Samuel Strickland
... percenter's glare, Flashed his pitchfork in air Sounding fresh keys to bear Out the Old Hundred. Swiftly he turned his back, Reached he his hat from rack, Then from the screaming pack, Himself he sundered. Tenors to right of him, Tenors to left of him, Discords behind him, Bellowed and thundered. ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various
... the artillery of vulgar destruction, are brought against its devoted head. Unless my memory serves me wrong, one of these creatures caught in a trap not long since was hammered to death with a shovel or a pitchfork. ...
— Nature Near London • Richard Jefferies
... myself on my knees and peered about me this way and that. Immediately an irrepressible tremor ran through my system. Directly behind me, armed with a dangerous pitchfork and maintaining an attitude combining at once defence and attack, was a large, elderly, whiskered man, roughly dressed and of a most ...
— Fibble, D. D. • Irvin Shrewsbury Cobb
... the "wool hats" against the "silk hats" and the "kid gloves"—Governor of the state and later member of the federal Senate. Although a Democrat, he was thoroughly at odds with Cleveland, and publicly declared it was his ambition to stick his pitchfork into the President's sides.[3] Richard P. Bland, of Missouri, had the disadvantage of having been one of the earliest of the silver supporters, since he had initiated the bill which resulted in the Bland-Allison act, ...
— The United States Since The Civil War • Charles Ramsdell Lingley
... for centuries to come. As the Indians disliked work much, and church services more, they were encouraged in both matters by rather forcible means, as the Irishman "enticed" the pig into his pen with a pitchfork. We "tourists" who, dismounting from our carriages, view with sentimental reverence the picturesque ruins, the crumbling arches, the heavy bells now silent but mutely telling a wondrous story of the past, and tiptoe quietly through the damp interiors, ...
— A Truthful Woman in Southern California • Kate Sanborn
... cup wid brimstone—fill it steamin' ter de top; But de rich man say he swear off, dat he never tech a drop! But Satan grab his pitchfork whilst de rich man give a squall, En in 'bout a half a second he had swallered ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume II. (of X.) • Various
... in his own travail Hilary sighted little foci of struggle, Earthmen with ax and pitchfork and spade battling valiantly in a sea of Mercutians. A swirl, an eddy, and all too often a sudden surge and flowing of gray warty faces, and smooth rippleless heads where an Earthman had gone ...
— Slaves of Mercury • Nat Schachner
... library I dug up a book on the Hawaiian Islands, written by some missionary. In it I found a story of how the natives speared fish off the edges of reefs. Straightway I procured a pitchfork. ...
— Tramping on Life - An Autobiographical Narrative • Harry Kemp
... of research in positive science they are magnificently laborious and accurate. But most of them have no notion of style, and seem to compose their books with a pitchfork. ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 3 • Leonard Huxley
... did it, however, and brought his odd little boat into still water, between the dunghill and the cow. After looking about him for a while, he threw out the boiler and the pitcher upon the dunghill, seized a pitchfork which was stuck upright in it, and, his craft being thus lightened, made for the ruins of ...
— The Settlers at Home • Harriet Martineau
... "What is the matter with this thing, anyhow? I believe I've gone and put a sleeve in the neck. Everybody knows I could never sew. Mr. Tate knew it when I married him, for I told him I'd rather handle a pitchfork than a needle. I might hold a pitchfork, but a needle I can't. What 'd I ...
— Miss Gibbie Gault • Kate Langley Bosher
... ginger has been drunk by some of England's proudest heroes,' Mrs. Chuff would exclaim. 'Admiral Lord Exmouth tasted and praised it, sir, on board Captain Chuff's ship, the "Nebuchadnezzar," 74, at Algiers; and he had three dozen with turn in the "Pitchfork" frigate, a part of which was served out to the men before he went into his immortal action with the "Furibonde," Captain Choufleur, in the Gulf ...
— The Book of Snobs • William Makepeace Thackeray
... to my chair, and arranged the pitchfork and the dark lantern ready to my hand; after which I suggested that everyone should keep an absolute silence throughout the watch. I asked, also, that no lantern should be turned on, until I ...
— Carnacki, The Ghost Finder • William Hope Hodgson
... sentinuls air sot; you aint agoin' to eat us; Caleb haint no monopoly to court the seenoreetas; My folks to hum air full ez good ez hisn be, by golly!" An' so ez I wuz goin' by, not thinkin' wut would folly, The everlastin' cus he stuck his one-pronged pitchfork in me An' made a hole right thru my close ez ef I wuz an in'my. Wal, it beats all how big I felt hoorawin' in ole Funnel Wen Mister Bolles he gin the sword to our Leftenant Cunnle (It 's Mister Secondary Bolles,[8] thet writ the prize peace essay; ...
— The Biglow Papers • James Russell Lowell
... the piece of cake. "That's only his way of coming down. Whatcher frightened about? Oh, I see; it's that snake;" and catching up one of the spears which he had leaned up against the big door, he used it pitchfork fashion to the writhing reptile, and sent it flying upward on to the roof, for it to begin scuffling away amidst the ...
— Trapped by Malays - A Tale of Bayonet and Kris • George Manville Fenn
... Mattie, laughing. "Look at the size of us! I defy any man in the village, with an arm only the length of mine, to do more than I! Of course I can't measure myself with the neighbours. To handle Farmer Fairweather's pitchfork would break my back, and to hook a great perch, like Miller Mealy, in the mill-race, might be the capsizing of me. Still, what does that matter? I can catch little sprats for my little wife's dinner; I can dig in our patch of garden, and mend our tiny ...
— Fifty-Two Stories For Girls • Various
... stark figure of a woman, poorly clad and gaunt and gray. She stood motionless watching him with a look of sullen bitterness. She was the last of "the Elkinses," a mountain family run to seed. As he rode away he saw in the field a boy with a pitchfork in his hands, a meager ragged little chap. He was staring into the valley at a wriggling, blue smoke serpent made by the night express to New York. And something leaped in Roger, for he had once felt just like that! But the woman's harsh ...
— His Family • Ernest Poole
... market bare; the gale had blown for nearly a week. Fish-houses bid spiritedly against one another, and when at last a trade was made and the schooner's crew began to pitchfork the fish into the winch buckets, and the buckets rose creaking out over the rail, the two captains went into the office of the fish-house to figure ...
— Blow The Man Down - A Romance Of The Coast - 1916 • Holman Day
... a devil must cotch a feller afore he can run his pitchfork intew him," and Ham chuckled; "an' we ain't cotched yit. As for that thar stream," and he chuckled again, "th' devil once took a drink out of it, an' it's smelt of his ...
— The Cave of Gold - A Tale of California in '49 • Everett McNeil
... had been in the field since sunrise, but not all of the long bright day had been given to labor. Early in the morning their father's pitchfork had uncovered a nest of field mice, and the Twins had made another nest, as much like the first as possible, to put the homeless field babies in, hoping that their mother would find them again and resume her ...
— The Belgian Twins • Lucy Fitch Perkins
... Littlejohn," he continued, warming, "that you behold in me a young man in the prime of health actually on the point of wasting visibly away to a shadow of my former hardy self? It's a fact: I am. For the past two days I've had nothing to eat except railway sandwiches and coffee and the kind of fodder they pitchfork you at the Bigelow House. And I came here with a mind coloured with rosy anticipations of real old-fashioned country ...
— The Fortune Hunter • Louis Joseph Vance
... effect anything by violence, since peasants understand no jesting if their beloved acres are touched, and, at the first sign of any intention on his part to disturb their possessions, would quickly have set fire to his house and, moreover, tattooed on his body, with the tines of a pitchfork, a protest to which a counter-plea would scarcely have been possible. Only he could never carry self-control and composure so far that, after nearly twenty years' habitude, he did not become furiously excited at the sight ...
— How Women Love - (Soul Analysis) • Max Simon Nordau
... but don't its horns flare out like a pitchfork? Do you s'pose he knows how easy he could toss folks right up ...
— Little Prudy's Dotty Dimple • Sophie May
... back at this friendly piece of information. A prick from some two-pronged instrument, evidently a pitchfork, gently checked my retreat. I was then conducted to the brink of several other precipices, and ordered to step over many dangerous chasms, where the result would have been instant death if I had committed the least mistake. I have neglected to say that my movements were accompanied by ...
— The Story of a Bad Boy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... and literary," I said to him; "you ought to be getting at the peasant with a pitchfork and a hammer—not admiring ...
— The Secret City • Hugh Walpole
... but the dull saber not doing its work, he takes a small black-handled knife from his pocket, and, "as in his capacity of cook he knows how to cut meat," he finishes the operation successfully. Then, placing the head on the end of a three-pronged pitchfork, and accompanied by over two hundred armed men, "not counting the mob," he marches along, and, in the Rue Saint-Honore, he has two inscriptions attached to the head, to indicate without mistake whose head it is.—They grow merry over it: after filing alongside of the Palais-Royal, the procession ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 2 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 1 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... direction and called a sluice, was on one side, and into this a quantity of wash was put, and a tap at the top turned on, which caused the water to wash the dirt down the sluice. Another man at the foot, with a pitchfork, kept shifting up the stones which were mixed up with the gravel, and by degrees all the surplus dirt was washed away, leaving only these stones and a kind of fine black sand, in which the gold being heavy, ...
— Madame Midas • Fergus Hume
... hard labour of tilling the ground. Crooked-backed already, his hands hardened, his face coarse and heavy, he blinked his eyes in a stupid manner, with the stubborn, distrustful expression of an animal subject to the lash. He had set out armed with a pitchfork, because his fellow villagers had done so; but he could not have explained what had thus set him adrift on the high roads. Since he had been made a prisoner he understood it still less. He had some vague idea that he was being conveyed home. His ...
— The Fortune of the Rougons • Emile Zola
... him to come again; and many others, seeing the hopeless circuit the mongrel followed, did likewise, armed with bricks and clubs. Among them was the pimply clerk, who had been inspired to commandeer a pitchfork from ...
— The Conquest of Canaan • Booth Tarkington
... bolder than the rest stabbed it with a pitchfork' 61 'One pig went squealing down the ...
— Chatterbox, 1905. • Various
... the evening on which Burns appeared at his father's farm:—"All the farmers in the parish had read the poet's then published works, and were anxious to see him. They were all asked to meet him at a late dinner, and the signal of his arrival was to be a white sheet attached to a pitchfork, and put on the top of a corn-stack in the barn-yard. The parish is a beautiful amphitheatre, with the Clyde winding through it—Wellbrae Hill to the west, Tinto Hill and the Culter Fells to the south, and the pretty, green, conical hill, Quothquan ...
— Robert Burns • Principal Shairp
... 'The Pig,' and he deserved his title. There was no meanness and no denial of military etiquette of which he would not be guilty to get a man into trouble. One badgered private assaulted him violently with a pitchfork, and suffered two years' imprisonment for that misdemeanour. 'The Pig' was quite uncured by this experience; and one night, prowling round the barrack-rooms after 'lights out' to see if he could find an after-dark smoker, he was assailed with a tremendous ...
— The Making Of A Novelist - An Experiment In Autobiography • David Christie Murray
... themselves for all the sacrifices, for the sake of the country. Every day I disseminated stories and caricatures, which represented the French as dwarfs in rags, poorly armed, not heavier than a gerbe which one could lift with a pitchfork." ...
— Napoleon's Campaign in Russia Anno 1812 • Achilles Rose
... then and there. I appeal for assistance to my father, an old man of ninety, still straight as a capital I. Under a sun hot enough to broil an egg, we set off, shouldering a navvy's shovel and a three-pronged luchet. (The local pitchfork of southern France.—Translator's Note.) Employing our feeble energies in turns, we dig a trench in the sand where I hope to find the Anoxia. My hopes are not disappointed. After having by the sweat of our brow—never was the expression ...
— More Hunting Wasps • J. Henri Fabre
... twelve-year-old famishing child will do. One night he came to his aunt Donoghue, who lodged with Casey. The latter told the aunt and uncle not to allow him into the house, as the agent's drivers had given orders about him. The aunt beat him away with a pitchfork, the uncle tied his hands with cord behind his back. The poor child crawls to the door of a neighbour, and tries to get in. The uncle is called to take him away, and he does so. He yet returns with hands still ...
— The Land-War In Ireland (1870) - A History For The Times • James Godkin
... by way of condolence, "the man what's stabbed by a pitchfork hain't much better off 'n the man that walks bar'footed ...
— Mingo - And Other Sketches in Black and White • Joel Chandler Harris
... chapter: the human figure is within its rights whenever it is as free from self-consciousness as was the life-radiating Annette in the heavenly clear waters of Bermuda. On the other hand, Neptune and his pasteboard diadem and wooden-pointed pitchfork, should have put on his dressing-gown and retired. As a toe dancer in an alleged court scene, on land, Annette was a mere simperer. Possibly Pavlowa as a swimmer in Bermuda waters would have been as much of a mistake. Each queen ...
— The Art Of The Moving Picture • Vachel Lindsay
... filled with a wild sense of exhilaration such as any lover of the wild life would feel at the knowledge that he is being chased, that some one is after him, that some one is perhaps just a few feet behind him, waiting to stick a pitchfork into him as he runs. There is no ecstasy ...
— Frenzied Fiction • Stephen Leacock
... spent a couple of hours with his father in the fields. The peanuts were being harvested. Amos Burr, with a peanut "share" attached to the plough, was separating the yellowed plants from the ripe nuts underground, and Nicholas, lifting the roots upon a pitchfork, shook them free from earth and threw them over the pointed staves which were the final supports of the "shocks." A negro hand went before him, driving the sticks into ...
— The Voice of the People • Ellen Glasgow
... with a great deal of joy; and we were on the point of being reduced to a very uncomfortable meal, when Joey, understanding the whole affair, entered the kitchen with a pitchfork in his hand, and swore he would be the death of any man who should pretend to seize the victuals prepared for the waggon. The menace had like to have produced fatal consequences; the three strangers drawing their ...
— The Adventures of Roderick Random • Tobias Smollett
... determined to make his hay while the sun shone, and had collected hands from all parts of the neighbourhood. Lilac knew most of them, and passed along exchanging greetings, to where her uncle sat on his grey cob at the end of the field. He was talking to Peter, who stood by him with a wooden pitchfork ...
— White Lilac; or the Queen of the May • Amy Walton
... line were reminded, by frequent tidings from homeward, that their enemy was strong enough to deal death to the aged and the innocent. Four blacks, who crossed the line, and hung upon its rear, inflicted terrible vengeance. One attacked a settler, who returned a mortal wound with a pitchfork. The survivors hovered about the place to avenge his death: they at length found a victim in an amiable young lady, Miss Peters; who was speared in the breast. She felt, from the first, that the wound was mortal, and calmly resigned herself to her destiny. Others, ...
— The History of Tasmania , Volume II (of 2) • John West
... in munching and holding a crust of bread. At the feet of the woman are sundry articles, amongst which a bundle of rags, an iron pot, and a tin saucepan, are the most conspicuous. The man to whom she is talking is a tall, gaunt specimen of Irish poverty and famine. He holds a rake and pitchfork in his hand, and leans upon them for support. Gazing into his face is a rough, surly-looking youth, who seems cordially to agree with all that ...
— Gladys, the Reaper • Anne Beale
... felt myself in a measure responsible for their conduct; I had helped to excite them, and dare not, in honour, desert them; and trembling, I went on, prepared to see the worst; following, as a flag of distress, a mouldy crust, brandished on the point of a pitchfork. ...
— Alton Locke, Tailor And Poet • Rev. Charles Kingsley et al
... Kester's face pressed against the glass, and, reassured, she softly opened the door. There he stood in the dusk outer air, distinct against the gray darkness beyond, and in his hand something which she presently perceived was a pitchfork. ...
— Sylvia's Lovers, Vol. II • Elizabeth Gaskell
... swarthy creature in the widow's cap, who looked as though her clothes had been stuck on her back with a pitchfork!" The signora never allowed ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... feverish investigation that day, and found no one who cared to quibble with him. From the captain, never jealous of his dignity, to the roly-poly sutler, there was a very outrush of facts. As they came, he received them with pitchfork sharpness, examined them and tossed them aside, which led a wag to remark that the storekeeper was kin to Simon. Yet, when "retreat" sounded, he admitted himself hedged in by indisputable testimony. Lancaster's death was beyond easy solving. ...
— The Plow-Woman • Eleanor Gates
... the summer heat To share her grateful screening, With forehead bared, the farmer stood, Upon his pitchfork leaning. ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... Stavanger again. The great sea suddenly lifts under his one good leg. And Tobias with his Bibles and his prayer books struggles in the dark of his Grand Avenue bedroom. The devil comes and sits on his window sill, a devil with long locks and bronze wings beside his ears and a three-pronged pitchfork ...
— A Thousand and One Afternoons in Chicago • Ben Hecht
... shews, if they'd a' kep away from the whelps. My gals is all in titters about it; and Beck Teezle, says she, 'I wonder, says she, if Des and Luce Faddle, says she, will feel above us now?' They couldn't git me to dew their dirty Work, with all their ile and palaver. I bought a pitchfork on 'em, once in hayin', and got a platter there when Josephyne was married, and I paid 'em tew in mink skins; and that's all I had to dew with 'em. You lost a good 'eal by 'em, ...
— Summerfield - or, Life on a Farm • Day Kellogg Lee
... was mysterious too. He was one-eyed, and the loss endeared him to the children, relating him also, once or twice removed, to Come- Back Stumper; it touched their imaginations. Being an artist, too, he never told them how he lost it, a pitchfork and a sigh were all he vouchsafed upon the exciting subject. He understood the value of restraint, and left their minds to supply what details they liked best. But this wink of pregnant suggestion, while leaving them ...
— The Extra Day • Algernon Blackwood
... them bills," says Squar' Alexanders, an' he p'ints to where one is hangin' on the barroom wall. It gives a picture of the foul fiend, with pitchfork, spear-head tail an' all. "Whatever do ...
— Wolfville Nights • Alfred Lewis
... old gentleman, who looked as if he would be all the better for his bath when the time came, who carried a big sledge-hammer in his hand; and another fishy sort of person, who flourished about with a three-pronged pitchfork. A very cross-looking lady sat next to the gentleman at the head of the table. By the way she kept her eye upon him, contradicting every word he said, and snubbing him at every opportunity, she was evidently his wife. Another good-looking lady was playing with ...
— Boycotted - And Other Stories • Talbot Baines Reed
... roused the other scouts, and they very quietly crept over to the side where they could get a grip on the joists to help themselves up. Each scout had armed himself in some way. One had an old pitchfork with but one prong. Another had a rake handle, one found the curved handle of a feed-grinder, and ...
— Girl Scouts in the Adirondacks • Lillian Elizabeth Roy
... that he would go to Ayrshire if he went by himself, and with nothing but a pitchfork in his hand. Argyle, after long resistance, consented, against his better judgment, to divide his little army. He remained with Rumbold in the Highlands. Cochrane and Hume were at the head of the force which ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 1 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... ill-mannered mixture of clown and prig; who is angry with his mistress Valentine (Madame de Lansac) for "not knowing how to prefer him to her honour," though one would have said she had given ample proofs of this preference; and who finally appeases the reader by tumbling on the points of a pitchfork placed in his way by an (as it happens) unduly jealous husband, is a more offensive creature than any one in the earlier book.[179] One is, on the other hand, a little sorry for Valentine, while one is sorry for nobody in Indiana except perhaps for the husband, who ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury
... stop it? You might just as well try to stop the Irrawaddy with a pitchfork. And it's growing worse; there are some big people in it—the Hidden Hand Company—who keep out of sight, pay the money, employ the tools and collar the swag. They have agents all over this province, as well as ...
— The Road to Mandalay - A Tale of Burma • B. M. Croker
... light was inscrutable. "I'll obey to-night, Lydia," he said, "but the time's coming, when I won't," and he picked up the pitchfork he ...
— Lydia of the Pines • Honore Willsie Morrow
... like a fresh revelation from the Father. The lowing of the cattle recalled him to himself, and he turned homeward, passed up the lane into the barn, and was soon throwing hay into the mangers below. Suddenly he stopped, thrust his pitchfork deep into the hay, and said: "My mother shall have a better room than that if it costs five hundred dollars! Now that's so! Hurrah!" Good once more had triumphed over evil, as the experience of the morning ...
— Choice Readings for the Home Circle • Anonymous
... having shaped it a little, drew herself from under his head, substituting the hay. Then rising without a word she walked from the yard. Stopchase lay for a while, gradually coming to himself, then scrambled all at once to his feet, and staggered to his pitchfork, which lay where it had fallen. 'It is of the mercy of the Lord that I fell not upon the prongs of the pitchfork,' he said, as he slowly stooped and lifted it. He had no notion that he had lain more than ...
— St. George and St. Michael • George MacDonald
... for somebody to give me one," said Ralph, taking up a pitchfork and preparing to throw some hay into ...
— The Girl at Cobhurst • Frank Richard Stockton
... simple expedient of jumping from one bank to the other and scrambled through the willow trees, emerging, flushed and anxious-eyed, to confront a boy about fourteen years old in a torn straw hat and faded overalls and a tall, lean middle-aged man with a pitchfork in his hands. ...
— Betty Gordon in Washington • Alice B. Emerson
... in the intense strain of that waiting. It must be full ten minutes before Tom's master could get to the house after that first blast, and if he did not hear that, must be too late; but Tom kept his place and my husband rushed by me, carrying the pitchfork with which he had been at work, and I saw no more until Tom was in his cage. Watch had dragged himself to his master's feet to die, and I went into the house and finished getting dinner, more than ever afraid of Tom and more than ever at a loss ...
— Half a Century • Jane Grey Cannon Swisshelm
... the road, with a pitchfork in one hand and a rope in the other. He ran up to the bull and slipped the rope over the animal's neck. Then he tied the creature ...
— The Rover Boys in Camp - or, The Rivals of Pine Island • Edward Stratemeyer
... could ask particulars, a strong, large-boned, hard-featured woman, about forty, dressed as if her clothes had been flung on with a pitchfork, her cheeks flushed with a scarlet red where they were not smutted with soot and lamp-black, jostled through the crowd, and, brandishing high a child of two years old, which she danced in her arms, without regard to its screams of terror, sang ...
— Waverley • Sir Walter Scott
... Ancient precedent! more majorum! And how was that? eagerly demanded the emperor. He was answered—that the state criminal in such cases was first stripped naked, then impaled as it were between the prongs of a pitchfork, and in that condition scourged to death. Horror-struck with this account, he drew forth two poniards, or short swords, tried their edges, and then, in utter imbecility of purpose, returned them to their scabbards, ...
— The Caesars • Thomas de Quincey
... him what Dinky-Dunk had once told me, about Olga killing a bull. The bull was a vicious brute that had attacked her father and knocked him down. He was striking at the fallen man with his fore-paws when Olga heard his cries. She promptly came for that bull with a pitchfork. And speaking of Homer, it must have been a pretty epical battle, for she killed the bull and left the fork-tines eight inches in his body while she picked up her father and carried him back to the house. And I won't even kill my own hens, but have always ...
— The Prairie Wife • Arthur Stringer
... can be an impossible, sweat-drenching, back-wrenching chore, or it can be relatively quick and easy. It is very difficult to drive even a very sharp shovel into a compost pile. One needs a hay fork, something most people call a "pitchfork." The best type for this task has a very long, delicate handle and four, foot long, sharp, thin tines. Forks with more than four times grab too much material. If the heap has not rotted very thoroughly and still contains ...
— Organic Gardener's Composting • Steve Solomon
... boy became aware of a man approaching across the stump-dotted field. He was a short, thickset man, with a broad face almost entirely covered with a beard, a thick nose, and little, inflamed snapping eyes. He was clad in faded and dingy overalls, and carried a pitchfork. ...
— The Adventures of Bobby Orde • Stewart Edward White
... on the heaving deck in the moonlight; and the pile of fish by the stern shone like a dump of fluid silver. In the hold there were tramplings and rumblings where Disko Troop and Tom Platt moved among the salt-bins. Dan passed Harvey a pitchfork, and led him to the inboard end of the rough table, where Uncle Salters was drumming impatiently with a knife-haft. A tub of salt water lay ...
— "Captains Courageous" • Rudyard Kipling
... Rainbow Valley, valiantly grasping a pitchfork which she found leaning against the back fence where the doctor had been working in his little hay-field. A pitchfork might not be of much use against "ha'nts," but it was a comforting sort of weapon. There was nothing to be seen in Rainbow Valley when Susan reached it. No white visitants ...
— Rainbow Valley • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... Pistil (botany) pistilo. Pistol pafileto. Piston pisxto. Pit (well, etc.) puto, fosajxo, kavo. Pit (theatre) partero. Pitch (to smear with) kalfatri. Pitch pecxo. Pitch (of ships) subakvigxi. Pitcher krucxo. Pitchfork forkego. Piteous kompatinda. Pitfall enfalujo. Pith suko. Pitiable kompatinda. Pitiful kompatinda. Pitiless senkompata. Pity kompati, bedauxri. Pity, it is a estas domagxo. Pivot akso. Placable kvietebla, kvietema. Placard afisxo, ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... reminded the Prince that the Giant would soon be home. So the youth went out to clean the stable. First, he tried to do the work as any other boy would do it; but when he found that in a very short time he would not have room to stand, he quickly turned the pitchfork around and used the handle. In a few moments the stable was as clean as a stable could be. Then he went back to his room and wandered about it with his hands in his pockets, looking quite as innocent as if he had not raised the latch of a ...
— Boys and Girls Bookshelf (Vol 2 of 17) - Folk-Lore, Fables, And Fairy Tales • Various
... irate farmer was coming, pitchfork in hand, with his two sturdy sons and a couple of farm hands, who grinned as if they neither knew nor cared what would happen, but were glad of a ...
— The Boy Scout Fire Fighters - or Jack Danby's Bravest Deed • Robert Maitland
... the top, you won't be able to reach,' interposed Toby. 'Stand upon one of the hall chairs. There are three there, Bill, with a jolly large blue unicorn and gold pitchfork on 'em: which is ...
— Oliver Twist • Charles Dickens
... there, and take away some hay in payment of his debt,' said the liar. And proceeding to the hay-loft, he began to toss about the hay with a pitchfork, prodding it into the trusses of hay, till, in terror of his life, the thief crept out and promised his partner to pay him the three florins on the ...
— The Grey Fairy Book • Various
... however, one general rule—that all the myriad forms of dancing originally express only love and war, in African parlance 'woman-palaver' and 'land-palaver.' However much the 'quiet grace of high refinement' may disguise original significance, Nature will sometimes return despite the pitchfork; witness a bal de l'Opera in the palmy days of the ...
— To The Gold Coast for Gold, Vol. II - A Personal Narrative • Richard Francis Burton and Verney Lovett Cameron
... every morning to her work. She was tall and very powerfully built, her features were coarse and swollen, and there was something repelling and yet fascinating to Biddy in her cunning, shifty glance. The way in which she strode along the road, too, swinging a rake, or hoe, or pitchfork in her hand, gave an impression of reckless strength which made the little nurse-girl shudder, and yet she felt unable to remove her gaze as long as ...
— A Pair of Clogs • Amy Walton
... the individual in question having retired, every night at ten o'clock, to his bed over the coach-house, with no other company than a pitchfork and a pail of water. That the pail of water would have been over me, and the pitchfork through me, if I had put myself without announcement in Bottles's way after that minute, I had deposited in my own mind as a fact worth ...
— The Signal-Man #33 • Charles Dickens
... even consider it," Boyd said. "It haunts me. It gets into my dreams. Now, look, Ken, I can't even see a pitchfork any more without thinking of ...
— Supermind • Gordon Randall Garrett
... me,' says Parson Kendall. So he goes up and raps hard on the front door with his whip-handle. Wal, you see, Miss Sphyxy she war jest goin' out to help get in her hay. She had on a pair o' clompin' cowhide boots, and a pitchfork in her hand, jest goin' out, when she heard the rap. So she come jest as she was to the front door. Now, you know Parson Kendall's a little midget of a man, but he stood there on the step kind o' smilin' and genteel, lickin' his lips ...
— The Wit of Women - Fourth Edition • Kate Sanborn
... was Yollande. Yollande as Barnum, Yollande as trainer, Yollande holding in one hairy wing a stout whip, in the other the pitchfork as a protection against claws ...
— The Curly-Haired Hen • Auguste Vimar
... dejectedly on a stone bench near a fountain whose jet tossed and caught a ball with languid iteration. I had identified him as an old Tyringham bell-hop, known familiarly as Dutch, before he heard my step and sprang to his feet, grabbing a pitchfork whose ...
— Lady Larkspur • Meredith Nicholson
... quickly into the field with my pitchfork on my shoulder to help Bill with the hay, I was startled to see, hanging upon a peach tree at the corner of the orchard, a complete suit of black clothes. Near it, with the arms waving gently in the breeze, was a white shirt and a black tie, and at the foot of the tree a respectable ...
— Great Possessions • David Grayson
... "Margaret Mayfield" has formed a melodrama, which in every other respect is founded, like a chancellor's decree, upon precedent; it being a good old-fashioned, cut-throat piece, of the leather-breeches-and-gaiter, plough-and-pitchfork school. A country-inn parlour of course commences the story, where certain characters assemble, who reveal enough of themselves and of the characters assumed by their fellows (at that time amusing themselves ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, October 23, 1841 • Various
... plain. I am going to fasten a small mirror on a light pitchfork, inclining it downwards. This pitchfork I shall fasten firmly to pole; then some one will climb, dear papa, without any danger, as far as the strong branches reach; from thence he can draw up the pole and its mirror, with a long string, and by raising the mirror above the nest, he will enable ...
— Fanny, the Flower-Girl • Selina Bunbury
... let my Boy Constructor loose! & ef he gits amung you, you'll think old Solferino has cum again and no mistake!" You ought to hev seen them scamper, Mr. Fair. They run ort as tho Satun hisself was arter them with a red hot ten pronged pitchfork. In five ...
— The Complete Works of Artemus Ward, Part 1 • Charles Farrar Browne
... take them from the Blues," several of them said confidently. "It does not matter a bit. They will only have time to fire one volley, in these lanes of ours, and then we shall be among them; and a pike or pitchfork are just as good, at ...
— No Surrender! - A Tale of the Rising in La Vendee • G. A. Henty
... room for influential Dutchmen, and in certain cases useless posts, such as "Inspector of white labour", and inspector of goodness-knows-what (all of them carrying high emoluments), were created for political favourites, General Beyers's appointment caused no surprise, as the "pitchfork" had already become part of our Government machinery. But how such a man as Manie Maritz became a Colonel in the Colonial Defence Force is one of those things which, as Lord Dundreary would say, "no fellah ...
— Native Life in South Africa, Before and Since • Solomon Tshekisho Plaatje
... you be able to do that?" she asked again. "If you clean it out as other people do, ten pitchforksful will come in for every one you throw out. But I will teach you how to do it; you must turn your pitchfork upside down, and work with the handle, and then all will fly ...
— The Blue Fairy Book • Various
... hers Fly was to go with the message. Mick raked down a handful of soot from the chimney, and rubbed her face and hands till they were black, then dressed her in a pair of old bathing-drawers and a black fur cape. Patsy got the pitchfork from the stable for her to carry in ...
— The Weans at Rowallan • Kathleen Fitzpatrick
... silently to the wagon and climbed aboard. Douglas dropped his pitchfork and walked deliberately toward the fence. As he climbed it, he said, "Judith, you aren't going. You keep your date with Maud." He dropped from the fence to ...
— Judith of the Godless Valley • Honore Willsie
... more than one who tried to save you. First, your father ran in between you and the bull; but he dashed over him. Then I saw Mr. Emerson rushing up with a pitchfork, and he got before the mad animal and pointed the sharp prongs at his eyes; but the bull tore down on him and tossed him away up into the air. I awoke as I saw him falling on the sharp-pointed horns that were ...
— After the Storm • T. S. Arthur
... again into the storm they had left so eagerly. Billy Louise showed him where was the pitchfork and the hay, and then did the milking while he piled full the mangers. After that they went together and turned the shivering work horses into the stable from the corral where they huddled, rumps to the storm; and the man lifted great forkfuls of hay and carried ...
— The Ranch at the Wolverine • B. M. Bower
... ordure of Rabelais were to the taste of his time; his severer censures of Church and State were disguised by his buffoonery; flinging out his good sense and wise counsels with a liberal hand, he also wields vigorously the dunghill pitchfork. If he is gross beyond what can be described, he is not, apart from the evil of such grossness, a corrupter of morals, unless morals be corrupted by a belief in the goodness of the natural man. The graver wrongs of his age—wars of ambition, the abuse ...
— A History of French Literature - Short Histories of the Literatures of the World: II. • Edward Dowden
... chlorine gas, which destroys all the color in the pulp. In half an hour it comes out, a mass of smoking fibers as white as a snow heap. The drainers into which it goes are large pens with perforated tile floors. The pulp remains in the drainers till it so dry it is handled with a pitchfork. ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 363, December 16, 1882 • Various
... Hammond. He was answered that there were no such men in the house. Kline, followed by Mr. Gorsuch, attempted to go up stairs. They were prevented from ascending by what appears to have been an ordinary fish gig. Some of the witnesses described it as "like a pitchfork with blunt prongs," and others were at a loss what to call this, the first weapon used in the contest. An axe was next thrown down, but ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 101, March, 1866 • Various
... ruptured and lacerated to such an extent that treatment of any kind is hopeless. This has been known to occur when the handle of a pitchfork or buggy whip has been pushed down a cow's throat to remove an obstruction. When such treatment has been applied it is best to slaughter the animal without delay, as the flesh may be utilized so long as ...
— Special Report on Diseases of Cattle • U.S. Department of Agriculture
... pity we's not got a gun!" whispered Ebony. "If we's only had a spear or a pitchfork, ...
— The Madman and the Pirate • R.M. Ballantyne
... good friend the sun was looking down at me from near his zenith, and my first happy thought was that I was just in time for dinner. Then I discovered that I had been prodded out of my rest by the pitchfork of a hostler. ...
— Helmet of Navarre • Bertha Runkle
... feathers of these wings were the membranous, twisted and almost living branches of a huge seaweed which bore more resemblance to a polypus than to a plume. From the middle of the plume rose a buckled strap, which reached to the angle of a rough wooden pitchfork, the handle of which was stuck in the ground, and from there descended to ...
— The Memoirs of Victor Hugo • Victor Hugo
... he thought of them they seemed remote, prattling youngsters whom Minnie was forever worrying over and who seemed to have been always under the heels of his horse, or under the wheels of his wagon, or playing with the pitchfork, or wandering off into the sage while he and their distracted mother searched for them. For a long while—how many years Brit could not remember—they had been living in Los Angeles. Prospering, too, Brit understood. ...
— The Quirt • B.M. Bower
... wooden bowl on the chimney, filled with two-sous pieces. While I was there two men appeared at the big gates, which were always open in the day. They were strong young fellows carrying their bundles, and a sort of pitchfork slung over their shoulders. They looked weary and footsore, their shoes worn in holes. They asked for something to drink and some tobacco, didn't care very much for the water, which was all that Mme. Antoine ...
— Chateau and Country Life in France • Mary King Waddington
... hurting the child so that it died. They then set fire to the hay and went on to continue their devilish work elsewhere. She crawled out of the hay more dead than alive and made her way to the fort. Besides the pitchfork holes which were in her legs and back, her hair and eyebrows were gone ...
— Old Rail Fence Corners - The A. B. C's. of Minnesota History • Various
... be handsome, sir. With the women, the cassock gives charms to the ugliest. I have known a sweet and lovely creature become mad after one of these rogues who had a head like a pitchfork. He did with her what he wished. He made her devout, shrewish, and the worst of whores. Yes, yes, they say that the red breeches get over the women, but the black gown bewitches them. Explain that if you can. They want to know what is underneath that wicked cassock. Something strange, ...
— The Grip of Desire • Hector France
... wife is never twice the same red! And that old wooden shoe, spurting straw, what a sight, what a beautiful sight! And the wooden comb hanging among the farmer's smocks, with the green hair of the sward caught in its teeth! The pitchfork, stood in the corner, like a misbehaving child, dozing as he stands and dreaming of the hay-fields! And the bowl and skittles there,—the trim-waisted skittles, shapely maids, whose orderly quadrilles Patou in his gambols clumsily upsets! ...
— Chantecler - Play in Four Acts • Edmond Rostand
... the Black Mountain thirty stout peasants had gathered to celebrate the ancient feast of the good St John. Among them was Kado the Striver, who stood there gravely leaning on his iron pitchfork. For a while he looked upon his comrades; then ...
— Legends & Romances of Brittany • Lewis Spence |
