"Shearing" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... so sorry," grieved Mary, as if Redford had failed in its sacred duty of hospitality. "I will tell him about it. The men have all been so busy with the shearing." ...
— Sisters • Ada Cambridge
... "I was shearing in them sheds in '52 when old Shenty owned the run. He was a rum old miser, he was, would skin two devils for one hide; believe he has gone to hell; hope so, at any rate. He couldn't read nor write much, but he could make money better'n any man I ever ...
— The Book of the Bush • George Dunderdale
... sit, and Red-breast by, For meat, shall give thee melody. I'll give thee chains and carcanets Of primroses and violets. A bag and bottle thou shalt have, That richly wrought, and this as brave; So that as either shall express The wearer's no mean shepherdess. At shearing-times, and yearly wakes, When Themilis his pastime makes, There thou shalt be; and be the wit, Nay more, the feast, and grace of it. On holydays, when virgins meet To dance the heys with nimble feet, Thou shalt come forth, and then appear The Queen of Roses for ...
— Six Centuries of English Poetry - Tennyson to Chaucer • James Baldwin
... was the lagoon by starshine that the head of the swimmer could be distinguished away out in the midst of circles of light; also, as the head neared the reef, a dark triangle that came shearing through water past the palm tree at the pier. It was the night patrol of the lagoon, who had heard in some mysterious manner that a drunken sailor-man was making trouble in ...
— The Blue Lagoon - A Romance • H. de Vere Stacpoole
... room. He complains his new shoes are too tight. I think it's nervousness. Perhaps he'll let you shave him; I'm sure he'll cut himself. And I wish the barber hadn't cut his hair so short, Ralph. I hate this new fashion of shearing men behind the ears. The back of his neck is the ugliest part of a man." She spoke with such resentment that Ralph broke into ...
— One of Ours • Willa Cather
... him a letter which I had, for want of better Knowledge, sent to where I met him down the Lachlan, years ago, He was shearing when I knew him, so I sent the letter to him, Just "on spec", addressed as follows, ...
— An Anthology of Australian Verse • Bertram Stevens
... possible weave in it; Your goddess of freedom, a tight, buxom girl, With lips like a cherry and teeth like a pearl, With eyes bold as Here's, and hair floating free, And full of the sun as the spray of the sea, 1100 Who can sing at a husking or romp at a shearing, Who can trip through the forests alone without fearing, Who can drive home the cows with a song through the grass, Keeps glancing aside into Europe's cracked glass. Hides her red hands in gloves, pinches up her lithe waist, ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... permitted to linger for a while in the border land, he must soon receive command to march over the boundary, and enter the eternal world. Just as a shock of corn remains in the field to dry and ripen after the shearing, so our old friend remained in his place here for a short time, ripening for the ...
— Little Abe - Or, The Bishop of Berry Brow • F. Jewell
... sold when there is any demand for it; but except at Charpiot's, in Denver, I never saw mutton on any table, public or private, and wool is the great source of profit, the old ewes being allowed to die off. The best flocks yield an average of seven pounds. The shearing season, which begins in early June, lasts about six weeks. Shearers get six and a half cents a head for inferior sheep, and seven and a half cents for the better quality, and a good hand shears from sixty to eighty in ...
— A Lady's Life in the Rocky Mountains • Isabella L. Bird
... into the water and make good clean Baptists of them! But sheep are no fighters, they struggle for a moment and then passively submit to the baptism. My older brothers usually did the washing and I the herding. When the shearing was done, a few days later the poor creatures were put through another ordeal, to which after a brief struggle they quickly resigned themselves. Father did the shearing, while I at times held the animal's legs. Father was not an adept hand with the shears and the poor beast ...
— My Boyhood • John Burroughs
... take your answer! Have you no stomach for my message? 'Fore God, is there no black ram to lead his sheep to the shearing? ...
— Wappin' Wharf - A Frightful Comedy of Pirates • Charles S. Brooks
... painful ploughman plies his toil With shear and coulter shearing through the soil, That costs him dear and ditches it about, Or crops his hedge to make it undersprout, And never stays to ward it from the weed, But most respects to sow therein good seed; To th' end when summer decks the meadows plain, He may have recompense of costs ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 19, No. 528, Saturday, January 7, 1832 • Various
... rags and dirt, in search of that phantom carpet-bag which never gets found? Did you ever "realise" to yourself the sieve of the Danaides, the stone of Sisyphus, the wheel of Ixion; the pleasure of shearing that domestic animal who (according to the experience of a very ancient observer of nature) produces more cry than wool; the perambulation of that Irishman's model bog, where you slip two steps backward ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume I • Charles Kingsley
... only stringy-bark or low bushes. A river passed in front at the distance of less than a quarter of a mile, full and flowing in winter, but after the heats of summer consisting of a succession of water-holes connected by a trickling rill. During the shearing season the river was a scene of the greatest animation, as all the flocks from far and near were driven up to it, that the sheep might be washed before being deprived of their fleeces. After a sudden downfall of ...
— The Gilpins and their Fortunes - A Story of Early Days in Australia • William H. G. Kingston
... Last night two were brought into the station. Of course every accommodation is provided for the care and treatment of sheep in the various stages of their existence, including the means of washing and shearing them. An orchard and fruit-garden close by yield tons of fruit every year for the merest scratching of the soil. To obtain labour is the difficulty. The birds, especially parrots, are terrible enemies ...
— The Last Voyage - to India and Australia, in the 'Sunbeam' • Lady (Annie Allnutt) Brassey
... protruding arm, with extreme quickness; barely avoiding a deep slash from the collie's shearing eye-teeth. And Lad, continued to ...
— Further Adventures of Lad • Albert Payson Terhune
... been gained at the shipbuilding docks in Barrow-in-Furness, where the Brush system has been applied to illuminate several large sheds covering the punching and shearing machinery, bending blocks, furnaces, and other branches of this gigantic business. In one shed, which was formerly lighted by large blast-lamps, in which torch oil was burnt, costing about 5d. per gallon, ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 288 - July 9, 1881 • Various
... demonstrative; disliking change, and new ways, and new people; sensible and shrewd; each household self-contained, and its members having little curiosity as to their neighbours, with whom they rarely met for any social intercourse, save at the stated times of sheep-shearing and Christmas; having a certain kind of sober pleasure in amassing money, which occasionally made them miserable (as they call miserly people up in the north) in their old age; reading no light or ephemeral literature, but the grave, solid books brought ...
— Half a Life-Time Ago • Elizabeth Gaskell
... between three and four dollars). Of every animal slain the shoulder, two joints, and the stomach went to the priests. Of the vintage and oil and grain they received about one-fiftieth. In addition a tithe was turned over to the Levites. Part of the wool in every sheep-shearing, as well as a part of the bread which they baked, found its way to the temple. In addition a large income came through the vows made by the people or the conscience money which was paid either in currency ...
— The Makers and Teachers of Judaism • Charles Foster Kent
... to a section of land and snaked in the whole 640 acres at one drag. At the landing the trees were cut off just like shearing a sheep and the denuded section hauled back to its original place. This simplified matters and made the work a lot easier. Six trips a day, six days a week just cleaned up a township for section 37 was never hauled back to the woods on Saturday night but ...
— The Marvelous Exploits of Paul Bunyan • W.B. Laughead
... age that had been crowding upon him of late fall away like the wool of a sheep at shearing. Here, at last, was hope—real hope. After almost two and a half centuries of non-communication, the men of the infant planet had returned to the aid of the aging planet. For, once they saw the condition of Earth, and ...
— It's All Yours • Sam Merwin
... himself that the bush had none of this, it would have been different. But he could not. The stench of the stifling shearing-sheds and of the crowded sleeping huts where men are packed in rows like trucked sheep came to him with the sickening smell of the slums. On the faces of men in the bush he had seen again and again that hopeless look as of goaded oxen straining through a mud-hole, that utter degradation, that humble ...
— The Workingman's Paradise - An Australian Labour Novel • John Miller
... David shakes a fist at him for using such big scissors. Another startling moment is when the man turns back the grimy wool from the sheeps' shoulders and they look suddenly like ladies in the stalls of a theatre. The sheep are so frightened by the shearing that it makes them quite white and thin, and as soon as they are set free they begin to nibble the grass at once, quite anxiously, as if they feared that they would never be worth eating. David wonders whether ...
— The Little White Bird - or Adventures In Kensington Gardens • J. M. Barrie
... their visit. Mr. Dawson informed them that those pleasing reunions, had become quite numerous in that part of the country; where the degree of familiar and friendly intercourse established among the neighbouring families was such, that, after the bustle and occupation of shearing time was over, such a party, as he then had in his house, was formed alternately at each of the surrounding stations; and their leisure existence became a prolonged life of reciprocal good-feeling and friendship; which, by the means of this happy ...
— Fern Vale (Volume 1) - or the Queensland Squatter • Colin Munro
... the furrows of a tiny field, Demeter lover of wheat, Sosicles the tiller dedicates to thee, having reaped now an abundant harvest; but again likewise may he carry back his sickle blunted from shearing ...
— Select Epigrams from the Greek Anthology • J. W. Mackail
... two or three hundred feet from the boiler.* [footnote... In the case of rambling premises, such as iron shipbuilding yards, the conveyance of steam by well-protected pipes put underground for the purpose of driving engines to work punching and plate-shearing machines (which have to be near at hand when the work is required), has very great ...
— James Nasmyth's Autobiography • James Nasmyth
... as a supernatural being. No man, the soldiers said, could have fought as he fought or, at the end of a day of such toil and bloodshed, could have slain Twala, who, in addition to being the king, was supposed to be the strongest warrior in the country, in single combat, shearing through his bull-neck at a stroke. Indeed, that stroke became proverbial in Kukuanaland, and any extraordinary blow or feat of strength was henceforth ...
— King Solomon's Mines • H. Rider Haggard
... the flax, came the big hard-tack baking, the sheep shearing, and the servants' moving time. In November there were busy slaughter days, with salting of meats, sausage making, baking of blood pudding, and candle steeping. The seamstress who used to make up their ...
— The Wonderful Adventures of Nils • Selma Lagerlof
... ploughing. I haven't ploughed my orchard for ten years, and don't expect to plough it for ten years more. Then your Aunt Hattie's hens are so obliging that they keep me from the worry of finding ticks at shearing time. All the year round, I let them run among the sheep, and they nab ...
— Beautiful Joe • Marshall Saunders
... fire on which is a cauldron, whilst a woman fills his cup from a skin over her shoulder, behind hang sausages. Above is a pig which a man is about to kill. The other side is similar. Above are shepherds shearing sheep in a wood; then comes a figure holding a scroll upon which there is no inscription; below is a warrior with sword, baton, and shield, below him a nude man with flying hair, both among twining branches. Upon the other face are spirals of leaf ornament with heads of men and beasts, resembling ...
— The Shores of the Adriatic - The Austrian Side, The Kuestenlande, Istria, and Dalmatia • F. Hamilton Jackson
... conciliate a man who had once been, and might perhaps again be, a terrible enemy, allowed their prisoner to go freely about the town, [391] His uneven legs and his hideous face, made more hideous by the shearing which his ears had undergone, were now again seen every day in Westminster Hall and the Court of Requests, [392] He fastened himself on his old patrons, and, in that drawl which he affected as a mark of gentility, gave them the history of his wrongs ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 3 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... wild gentlemen, and we particularly request that no measures may be adopted to check us in that full range of tyranny and oppression in which we consider the value of such a gift to consist. You might as well give us sheep, and prevent us from shearing the wool, or roasting the meat." This reasoning prevailed, and the Irish were kept to their barbarism, and the barons preserved ...
— Peter Plymley's Letters and Selected Essays • Sydney Smith
... a dry curd, not creamed. An old English favorite for fruited cheese cakes with perfumed plums, lemons, almonds and macaroons. In Ireland it was used in connection with the sheep-shearing ceremonies, although itself a common cow curd. ...
— The Complete Book of Cheese • Robert Carlton Brown
... of the earth is becoming more and more stable seems a natural conclusion, but that all folding and shearing and disruption of the strata are at an end, is a conclusion we cannot reach in the face of the theory that the earth ...
— Time and Change • John Burroughs
... eastward, whence they return daily with great loads of hay—of a coarse kind, but serviceable. As for the flocks, they are now pasturing for the summer upon the slopes of the Zagros mountains. There were six thousand head of sheep and two thousand head of goats at the shearing in the spring, and the wool is already sold for eight talents. As for the slaves, I have provided for them after a new fashion. There were many young men from the captives that came after the war two years ago. For these I have purchased wives of the dealers from Scythia. These ...
— Marzio's Crucifix and Zoroaster • F. Marion Crawford
... possessions were in Carmel"—the park grass upland with timber trees—not the northern Carmel where Elijah slew the prophets of Baal, but the southern one on the edge of the desert. "And the man was very great, and he had three thousand sheep, and a thousand goats: and he was shearing his sheep in Carmel. Now the name of the man was Nabal; and the name of his wife Abigail: and she was a woman of good understanding, and of a beautiful countenance: but the man was churlish and evil in his doings; and he was of the house of Caleb." Caleb was Joshua's ...
— True Words for Brave Men • Charles Kingsley
... on Shagpat, and the hunger that was in him passed, and became a ravenous vulture that flew from him and singled forth Shagpat as prey; and there was no help for it but in he must go and state his case to Shagpat, and essay shearing him. ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... of both, but it is doubtful how much of it is really interpreted by him; the village shop with its inexhaustible stores probably means much more in the way of origins, and he may never go behind its contents in his speculations. It is true he sees milking, harvesting, sheep-shearing, and many other operations, but he often misses the stage between the actual beginning and the finished product—between the wool on the sheep's back and his Sunday clothes, between the wheat in the field and his loaf of bread. The town child has many links if he can use them: the goods train, ...
— The Child Under Eight • E.R. Murray and Henrietta Brown Smith
... and best of the bean straw grown on the farm was selected and scattered on the floor of the sitting-rooms as warm and dry to the feet, and that was all the carpet in the house. Just before sheep-shearing time, too, Jonathan used to have the nettles cut that flourished round the back of the sheds, and strewn on the floor of the barn. The nettles shrivelled up dry, and the wool did not stick to them, but could be ...
— Round About a Great Estate • Richard Jefferies
... feast days, of course: Christmas to Epiphany was one long feast; then Plow Monday, Shrovetide, Sheep-shearing, Wake-Day, Harvest Home, Seed-Cake—these as the times came round. But there was a weekly regale too, which was known as Twice-a-Week-Roast. On Sundays and Thursdays a hot joint was the custom at supper. Tusser is clear about the value ...
— In a Green Shade - A Country Commentary • Maurice Hewlett
... was the antediluvian occupation of rearing and shearing sheep, and to that end the village included a shearing-shed and a large wool-house. Besides these there were three cottages and several other buildings, among which one called the "ranch-house" was the focus of the activity of the place, and, being also a survival from a comparatively early ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, October 1885 • Various
... which supplied the family with all their milk and butter, nearly all their meat, and most of their clothes. He also rented two or three acres of land, upon which he raised various crops. In sheep-shearing time, he turned out and helped his neighbors shear their sheep, a kind of work in which he had eminent skill. As compensation, each farmer thus assisted gave him a fleece. In haying time, too, he and his boys were in the fields ...
— Captains of Industry - or, Men of Business Who Did Something Besides Making Money • James Parton
... over the barren fields, and a shade of uncertainty crept into her passionate eyes. "The improvements don't make much of a show yet; I've had to be off so much in the mountains, foraging with the herd. But I was able to hire a boy half a day with the shearing this spring, and from now on they're going to pay. There are twenty-eight in the bunch, counting the kids, and I started with one old billy ...
— The Rim of the Desert • Ada Woodruff Anderson
... yellow complexion, features characterized by a sort of low cunning, a shaved head with a pigtail, clad in a loose cloth blouse, half shirt and half jacket, continuations not exactly pants nor yet a petticoat, and shoes thick-soled and shearing upwards like a Madras surf-boat, and you have John Chinaman as he appears at home. The portrait is universal. One Chinaman is as like another as two peas,—a uniformity often leading to ludicrous mistakes. John eats principally rice. It is in fact the basis of all his ...
— Due West - or Round the World in Ten Months • Maturin Murray Ballou
... until he had thoroughly mastered it, and afterwards became a brewer, pursuing this trade for two years, at the end of which time he apprenticed himself to a coachmaker. Upon completing his term at this trade, he engaged with his brother in the cloth-shearing business, and continued in it until the general introduction of foreign cloths, after the War of 1812, made it unprofitable. He then became a cabinet maker, but soon after opened a small grocery store on the present site ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe
... fold of the spreading skirts of the range, and some distance from the road, lay a pool, made by damming a burn, and used, in the shearing season, for washing sheep. Surrounded by brushy woods, and very damp and dark, at other seasons it was deserted. Bobby found this secluded place with his nose, curled up under a hazel thicket and fell sound asleep. And while he slept, a nipping ...
— Greyfriars Bobby • Eleanor Atkinson
... tempting qualities of "cherry pie, and currant wine." A rob of black Currant jam is taken in Scotland with whiskey toddy. Shakespeare in the Winter's Tale makes Antolycus, the shrewd "picker-up of unconsidered [141] trifles" talk of buying for the sheep-shearing feast "three pounds of sugar, five pounds of currants, and rice." In France a cordial called Liqueur de cassis is made from black Currants; and a refreshing drink, Eau de ...
— Herbal Simples Approved for Modern Uses of Cure • William Thomas Fernie
... cage after cage—and then out upon the street through the plate front. Half-past five finally freed him; and taking his place in a packed herring-box on wheels, he was rolled back to Dolly—and the shearing. ...
— The Trimming of Goosie • James Hopper
... what charms did once adorn My garden, stored with pease, and mint, and thyme, And rose and lilly for the sabbath morn? The sabbath bells, and their delightful chime; The gambols and wild freaks at shearing time; My hen's rich nest through long grass scarce espied; The cowslip-gathering at May's dewy prime; The swans, that, when I sought the water-side, From far to meet me came, spreading ...
— Lyrical Ballads, With Other Poems, 1800, Vol. I. • William Wordsworth
... corrupt Portuguese. At Melbourne, in a long verandah giving on a grass plot, where laughing-jackasses laugh very horribly, sit wool-kings, premiers, and breeders of horses after their kind. The older men talk of the days of the Eureka Stockade and the younger of 'shearing wars' in North Queensland, while the traveller moves timidly among them wondering what under the world every third word means. At Wellington, overlooking the harbour (all right-minded clubs should command the sea), another, and yet a like, sort of men speak of ...
— Letters of Travel (1892-1913) • Rudyard Kipling
... wear away enough to prevent the blades from being ripped out. This protection, however, is such that to rip them out a whole half ring of blades must be sheared off at the roots. The strength of the blading, therefore, depends not upon the strength of an individual blade, but upon the combined shearing strength of an ...
— Steam Turbines - A Book of Instruction for the Adjustment and Operation of - the Principal Types of this Class of Prime Movers • Hubert E. Collins
... though uncorking a bottle — like him—him— Corkscrew! cried Ahab, aye, Queequeg, the harpoons lie all twisted and wrenched in him; aye, Daggoo, his spout is a big one, like a whole shock of wheat, and white as a pile of our Nantucket wool after the great annual sheep-shearing; aye, Tashtego, and he fan-tails like a split jib in a squall. Death and devils! men, it is Moby Dick ye have seen —Moby Dick— Moby Dick! Captain Ahab, said Starbuck, who, with Stubb and Flask, had thus far been eyeing his superior with increasing surprise, but at last seemed struck ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville
... passions of a few "captains of industry," raged in Wall Street and filled the nation with the clamor of ruined or triumphant gamblers, ten-score thousand toilers in the two great enterprises directly involved toiled tranquilly on—herding sheep and shearing them, weaving cloths and dyeing them, driving engines, handling freight, conducting trains, usefully busy, adding to the sum of human happiness, subtracting from the ...
— The Cost • David Graham Phillips
... great storehouse of wine, containing now little but empty casks,—a dusky, interesting place, with pomegranates and dried bunches of grapes and oranges and pieces of jerked meat hanging from the rafters. Near by is a cornhouse and a small distillery, and the corrals for sheep shearing are not far off. The ranches for cattle and sheep are on the other side ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... clock ticks, one after one. The clock nicks off the edges of her life. She is chipped like an old bit of china; she is frayed like a garment of last year's wearing. She is soft, crinkled, like a fading rose. And each minute flows by brushing against her, shearing off another and another petal. The Empress crushes her breasts with her hands and weeps. And the tall clouds sail over Malmaison like a procession of stately ships bound for ...
— Men, Women and Ghosts • Amy Lowell
... is to be printed for calicoes, before bleaching it is singed by passing through gas flames or over a red hot plate and then sheared in a shearing machine constructed somewhat on the principle of the lawn mower, the cloth being run close to the rapidly ...
— Textiles and Clothing • Kate Heintz Watson
... free donation or by sale, and which tax, aggravated by the timbre,[3235] is enormous[3236] since, in most cases, it takes 5, 7, 9, and up to 10 1/2 % on the capital transmitted, that is to say, in the case of real-estate, 2, 3 and even 4 years' income from it. Thus, in the first shearing of the sheep the exchequer cuts deep, as deep as possible; but it has sheared only the sheep whose fleece is more or less ample; its scissors have scarcely touched the others, much more numerous, whose wool, short, thin and scant, is maintained only by day-wages, ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 5 (of 6) - The Modern Regime, Volume 1 (of 2)(Napoleon I.) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... of Tilly. It's only that his life is so unsettled. He's been a barman at Euroa since then; and the last we heard of him, he was shearing somewhere on the Goulburn. He doesn't seem able to ...
— Australia Felix • Henry Handel Richardson
... disguise, arrived at the old shepherd's dwelling while they were celebrating the feast of sheep-shearing; and though they were strangers, yet at the sheep-shearing every guest being made welcome, they were invited to walk in, and ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles and Mary Lamb
... example. Whilst, therefore, the powder was drying, I began with a large pair of scissors to execute my new office upon the eldest of four or five chins presented to me; and as great nicety was not required, the shearing of a dozen of them did not occupy me long. Some of the more timid were alarmed at a formidable instrument coming so near to their noses, and would scarcely be persuaded by their shaven friends to allow the operation to be finished. ...
— A Source Book Of Australian History • Compiled by Gwendolen H. Swinburne
... of his prerogative of dominion over a few beasts of the field, should assert his right to shear a wolf, because it had wool upon its back, without considering whether he had the power of using the shears, or whether the animal would submit to the operation of shearing. He remarked:—"Are we yet to be told of the rights for which we went to war? Oh, excellent rights! Oh, valuable rights! Valuable you should be, for we have paid dear at parting with you. Oh, valuable rights! that have cost Britain thirteen provinces, four islands, 100,000 ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... fustians, and then take a light candle, and set it on the fustian burning, which singeth and burneth away the cotton of the same fustian from the one end to the other down to the hard threads, instead of shearing; and after that put them in colour, and so subtlely dress them, that their false work cannot be espied, without it be workmen shearers of such fustian, or the wearers ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 443 - Volume 17, New Series, June 26, 1852 • Various
... desperate purpose of her foe. Then, seeing that soon the carack's prow must crash into her frail side, she shifted her helm and came round several points, so that in the end the Margaret ran, not into her, but alongside of her, grinding against her planking, and shearing away a great length of her bulwark. For a few seconds they hung together thus, and, before the seas bore them apart, grapnels were thrown from the Margaret whereof one forward got hold and brought them bow to bow. Thus the end of the bowsprit of the Margaret projected over the ...
— Fair Margaret • H. Rider Haggard
... crevice, seen in their most impressive presentment as alternating vistas of stark, moonlighted crags and gulches and depths of blackest shadow, had encouraged it. The hiss and whistle of the air-brakes, the harsh, sustained note of the shrieking wheel-flanges shearing the inner edges of the railheads on the curves, and the stuttering roar of the 266's safety-valve were continuous; a deafening medley of sounds multiplied a hundred-fold by the demoniac laughter of ...
— The Taming of Red Butte Western • Francis Lynde
... of Tranquillity Magpie over the Hill Sheep-shearing Evolution Riding in the Mist The Procession A Christian Wind in the Rocks My Distant ...
— Quotations from the Works of John Galsworthy • David Widger
... can contrive to work up into cotton, and the stalks into cordage: and, with the profit I shall make of these thistles, and of my decoy, and of my goose-quills and feathers, and of my silver sprig rabbits, I will buy jackets for my sheep, for my sheep shall all have jackets after shearing. Why should not Lincolnshire sheep, if they have jackets, become as valuable as the Leicestershire breed? You'll see my sheep will be the finest in the whole county; and, with the profit I shall make of them, I will set up a fishery in Fen-lake; and with the profits of the fishery—now ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. 2 • Maria Edgeworth
... literature. The women in the country made the garments, carded the wool, sheared the sheep, washed the things, beat the flax, ground the corn, sat at the spinning-wheel, and prepared the food. In the towns they had no shearing to do, but all the rest of their duty fell to their province. The English women excelled in embroidery. "English" work meant the best kind of work. They worked church vestments with gold and pearls and precious stones. "Orfrey," or embroidery in gold, was a special art. Of course they are ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 4 • Charles Dudley Warner
... ever I hear that you have betrayed the first symptom of age, that your back is bent a twentieth of an inch from the perpendicular, I shall hasten to believe you are shearing your prodigal overgrowths, and are calling in your troops to the citadel, and I may come in the first steamer to drop in of evenings and ...
— The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1834-1872, Vol II. • Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson
... harst, at the shearing, nae youths now are jeering, Bandsters are lyart,[14] and runkled, and gray; At fair or at preaching, nae wooing, nae fleeching [15]— The Flowers of the Forest ...
— Northumberland Yesterday and To-day • Jean F. Terry
... underbrush until he reached Richmond Braley's land. A long upturning sweep ended at the house, directly against the base of the mountain; and without decreasing his gait he passed over the faintly traced way, by the triangular sheep washing and shearing ...
— The Happy End • Joseph Hergesheimer
... counter-signature of the field-cornet; its possessor was then allowed to go home instead of to the hospital. Further, a percentage of the farmers were allowed from time to time to go home and attend to pressing matters of their farms, such as harvesting, shearing sheep, etc. Men were chosen by the farmers to go and attend to matters not only for themselves but for other farmers in their districts as well. The net result of all this was that when everybody who could on ...
— My Reminiscences of the Anglo-Boer War • Ben Viljoen
... came to Cass Grimshaw one night in the hang-out where the six sat smoking. Purdy casually mentioned that it was getting along towards shearing time and that the Wolf River bank ought to be heavily stocked with cash. The leader blew a double plume of smoke from his nostrils and ...
— Prairie Flowers • James B. Hendryx
... a prolonged residence. He obtained work at $1.50 a day (then regarded as high wages) in a factory making machines for shearing cloth, and after nearly three years had saved enough money to purchase the right for the State of New York to a patented machine for that purpose. He used to tell, in his old age, of his elation when he effected his first sale of a county-right, ...
— Peter Cooper - The Riverside Biographical Series, Number 4 • Rossiter W. Raymond
... In lamb-shearing season, or after docking or castration, the mortality is higher among these animals because of wounds inflicted at such times. The application of antiseptics to wounds thus made will reduce the percentage of deaths to ...
— Special Report on Diseases of Cattle • U.S. Department of Agriculture
... it is speckled. The Indians make blankets and ponchos of the alpaco wool. It is also frequently exported to Europe, and it sells at a good price in England. The alpacos are kept in large flocks, and throughout the whole of the year they graze on the level heights. At shearing time only they are driven to the huts. They are in consequence very shy, and they run away at the approach of a stranger. The obstinacy of the alpaco is remarkable. When one of these animals is separated from the flock, he throws himself on the ground, and neither force ...
— Travels in Peru, on the Coast, in the Sierra, Across the Cordilleras and the Andes, into the Primeval Forests • J. J. von Tschudi
... aid of an attorney's skill; They take a part in every man's affairs, And in all business some concern is theirs; Because mankind in ways prescribed are found Like flocks that follow on a beaten ground. Each abject nature in the way proceeds, That now to shearing, now to slaughter leads. Should you offend, though meaning no offence, You have no safety in your innocence; The statute broken then is placed in view, And men must pay for crimes they never knew; Who would by law regain his plunder'd store, Would pick up fallen merc'ry ...
— Tales • George Crabbe
... was the liveliest portion of the herder's life, which was generally very lonely. First came the shearing crew with their captain; next arrived the venders of hot coffee, tamales, tortillas, and other Mexican dainties; brush booths were erected and a brisk trade began. The herds were driven up and into a corral where several shearers could work at a time. Snip, snip, snip, went the shears ...
— History of California • Helen Elliott Bandini
... The combination of the side pieces, D D, constructed as described, containing the bearings for the cutting mechanism, the shearing bar, B, with square faces, and the spirally bladed knife, ...
— Scientific American, Vol. 17, No. 26 December 28, 1867 • Various
... falling into a chalk pit and breaking his neck, but he was always too anxious about his sheep when overtaken by a fog to think of his own danger. Then the wages were good, and the same all the year round, with the chance of making some extra money in the shearing season, and so much a head on each lamb that he reared; and to all intents and purposes he was his own master, for the farmer to whom the sheep belonged entrusted the management of the ...
— The Girl's Own Paper, Vol. VIII, No. 355, October 16, 1886 • Various
... are all telling to-night," said Flood, "remind me of what Lige Link said to the book agent when he was shearing sheep. 'I reckon,' said Lige, 'that book of yours has a heap sight more poetry in it than there is in shearing sheep.' I wish I had gone on guard to-night, so I could ...
— The Log of a Cowboy - A Narrative of the Old Trail Days • Andy Adams
... bride-room, till I did the work right out With ashlar stone close-fitting; and I roofed it overhead, And thereto joined doors I made me, well-fitting in their stead. Then I lopped away the boughs of the long-leafed olive-tree, And shearing the bole from the root up full well and cunningly, I planed it about with the brass, and set the rule thereto, And shaping thereof a bed-post, with the wimble I bored it through. So beginning, I wrought out the bedstead, and finished it utterly, And with gold enwrought it ...
— Reviews • Oscar Wilde
... that he dared yet to think of a love confessed and reciprocated. The prince in disguise is all very well in a fairy tale; in England of the twentieth century he is an anachronism; and Medenham would as soon think of shearing a limb as of profiting by the chance that threw Cynthia in his way. Of course, a less scrupulous wooer might have devised a hundred plausible methods of revealing his identity—was not Mrs. Devar, marriage-broker ...
— Cynthia's Chauffeur • Louis Tracy
... and over again until he was tired, then sat still, smiling and stroking the fox skin. He had learned the song when he was a child from his mother, who had sung it all day long one spring while she was shearing the sheep. And he could not think of any other for the moment. It wasn't, in fact, a bad song. There were many good rhymesters in Iceland. He began singing again, rocking his body back and forth vehemently, and stroking the fox skin the while. ...
— Seven Icelandic Short Stories • Various
... open reel; not only to gather the grain, but his cutters or shears, were attached to, and revolved with the reel;—very much, if not exactly on the principle of shearing cloth. ...
— Obed Hussey - Who, of All Inventors, Made Bread Cheap • Various
... each organised Class has secret hopes of its own in that matter; and also secret misgivings of its own,—for, behold, this monstrous twenty-million Class, hitherto the dumb sheep which these others had to agree about the manner of shearing, is now also arising with hopes! It has ceased or is ceasing to be dumb; it speaks through Pamphlets, or at least brays and growls behind them, in unison,—increasing ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... you there's rosemary and rue; these keep Seeming and savour all the winter long; Grace and remembrance be to you both, And welcome to our shearing.' ...
— Storyology - Essays in Folk-Lore, Sea-Lore, and Plant-Lore • Benjamin Taylor
... the rock-dwellings among the cactus served the gipsies for winter quarters only, and when the spring came they set off, scouring the country for something to earn or steal; but that is long ago. For two generations they have remained in these hovels—year in, year out—employed in shoeing horses, shearing, and the like menial occupations which the Spaniard thinks beneath his dignity. The women tell fortunes, or dance for the foreigner, or worse. It is a mere struggle for daily bread. I wondered whether in the spring-time the young men loved the maidens, or if they ...
— The Land of The Blessed Virgin; Sketches and Impressions in Andalusia • William Somerset Maugham
... garden that our acquaintance with our landlord deepened into something like friendship. Monsieur Fouchet was always to be found there, tying up the rose-trees, or mending the paths, or shearing the bit of turf. ...
— In and Out of Three Normady Inns • Anna Bowman Dodd
... capable of relishing the rugged, strong enough to digest the mental pabulum furnished by a really masculine writer. Carlyle ranges like an archangel through the universe of intellect, overturning mountains to see how they are made— now cleaving the empyrean with strong and steady wing, now shearing clear down to the profoundest depths of Ymir's Well at the foundations of the world. That his followers continue to increase argues well for the age, for he is a man whom weaklings should avoid if they ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... Pontus, and saw a mountain which rose steep and towering, while below along the extremities of the mountain flowed the river Iris. Orestes, therefore, supposing at that time that this was the place indicated to him by the oracle, built there a great city and the temple of Artemis, and, shearing off his hair, named after it the city which even up to the present time has been called Comana. The story goes on that after Orestes had done these things, the disease continued to be as violent as before, if not even more so. Then ...
— History of the Wars, Books I and II (of 8) - The Persian War • Procopius
... Fundamental considerations and definitions Tensile strength Compressive or crushing strength Shearing strength Transverse or bending strength: ...
— The Mechanical Properties of Wood • Samuel J. Record
... iv. scene 3, Perdita, dressed with unwonted gaiety at the festival of the sheep-shearing, is astonished at finding herself talking in full strains of poetic verse. She ...
— A Dish Of Orts • George MacDonald
... forth into a close, bordered with sheds; for though the Ana keep no stock for food, there are some animals which they rear for milking and others for shearing. The former have no resemblance to our cows, nor the latter to our sheep, nor do I believe such species exist amongst them. They use the milk of three varieties of animal: one resembles the antelope, but is much larger, ...
— The Coming Race • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... wear the green sweater and overalls of civilization and set upon their black hair the hat made famous by John B. Stetson. You may meet them in town and think them tamed to stupidity. You may travel out upon their reservations and find them shearing sheep or hoeing corn or plodding along the furrow, plowing their fields; or you may watch them dancing grotesquely in their festivals, and still think that civilization is fast erasing the savage instincts from their natures. You will be partly right—but ...
— The Heritage of the Sioux • B.M. Bower
... she faced the roughness and discomforts of bush life. On her arrival at the station the old two-roomed hut was plastered and whitewashed, additional rooms were built, and quite a neat little home was the result. Seasons were good, and the young squatter might have gone on shearing sheep and selling fat stock till the end of his life but for the advent ...
— An Outback Marriage • Andrew Barton Paterson
... the men irritated me worse than the boss-over-the-board had done. It must have been on account of the heat, as Mitchell says. I was sick of the shed and the life. It was within a couple of days of cut-out, so I told Mitchell—who was shearing—that I'd camp up the Billabong and wait for him; got my cheque, rolled up my swag, got three days' tucker from the cook, said so-long to him, and tramped while the men ...
— Over the Sliprails • Henry Lawson
... Vice-Presidents, Thomas McD. Richards, Woodstock, and Daniel Kelley, Wheaton; Secretary and Treasurer, W. C. Vandercook, Cherry Valley. It was decided to hold the association's annual public sheep-shearing at Richmond, McHenry county, April 29 and 30, and C. R. Lawson, L. H. Smith, and A. S. Peck were designated a committee to represent the association at the annual ...
— Prairie Farmer, Vol. 56: No. 3, January 19, 1884. - A Weekly Journal for the Farm, Orchard and Fireside • Various
... characteristic of the seasons, in mountainous scenery especially, I shall regard them as apples of gold. I am very anxious to learn whether any particular customs or festivities are kept up in the sheep-districts of Scotland at sheep-shearing time, as were wont of old all over England; and where is there a man who could solve such a problem like thyself? I am sensible of the great boldness of my request; but as my object is to promote the love of nature, ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... but at last a Turkish shield appeared over the ghastly rampart, glimmering as the moon glimmers through thick vapor. Thrusts in scores were made at it, yet it arose; then a Janissary sprang up on the heap, singing like a muezzin, and shearing off the heads of pikes as reapers shear green rye. He was a giant in stature and strength. Both Genoese and Greeks were disposed to give him way. The Emperor rallied them. Still the Turk held his footing, and other Turks were climbing ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 2 • Lew. Wallace
... Nothing material. We meant to have sown a little barley to-day, but the ground is too dry; and the sheep-shearing is ...
— The Stranger - A Drama, in Five Acts • August von Kotzebue
... and bowers, like unto that of a good yeoman in peaceful lands, save that the main building was longer, though it were low. But amidst the said greensward was a goodly flock of sheep that had been but of late washed for the shearing, and along with the sheep four folk, two carles and two queans, all of them in their first youth, not one by seeming of over a score and two of summers. These folk were clad but simply, man and woman, in ...
— The Water of the Wondrous Isles • William Morris
... the devil and the Lord in his soul. Next came Claud Dufair, a handsome remittance man with an eye-glass and a drawl. This fellow had personality. He insisted on wearing a white collar and using kid gloves when doing anything, from dung lifting to sheep shearing. Paddy Doolan was the third member. He was an Irishman by birth, but Australian by adoption. He had been in the Bush since he was a kid. A kind soul was Paddy, with the usual weakness—the craving for the "cratur." Fourth, and by no means least, was ...
— The Kangaroo Marines • R. W. Campbell
... to join in haymaking and in washing and shearing the lord's sheep, to pay pannage for their pigs, to take their turn of service as reeve and tithingman, and to carry the lord's victuals and baggage on his departure from Witney as the natives were ...
— The Enclosures in England - An Economic Reconstruction • Harriett Bradley
... habit of doing. Well, I'm told they up and makes Simpson an offer to get rid of the sheep. Jim has over five thousand, an' it's just before lambing, and them pore ewes, all heavy, is being druv' down to Watson's shearing-pens, that Jim always shears at. Jim an' two herders and a couple of dawgs—least, this is the way I heard it—is drivin' 'em easy, 'cause, as I said before, it's just before lambing. It does now seem awful cruel to me to shear just before lambing, ...
— Judith Of The Plains • Marie Manning
... disregard the moorings, a straight bridge would tend to curve downstream and open out under a shearing strain. As we get nearer the arch form it naturally gets stiffer, because the strain becomes compressive. After making the bridge strong enough for traffic, the problem is to resist ...
— Brandon of the Engineers • Harold Bindloss
... me contriving in my little gardens, Christy Mahon, you'll swear the Lord God formed me to be living lone, and that there isn't my match in Mayo for thatching, or mowing, or shearing ...
— The Playboy of the Western World • J. M. Synge
... widow had one solitary Sheep. At shearing time, wishing to take his fleece and to avoid expense, she sheared him herself, but used the shears so unskillfully that with the fleece she sheared the flesh. The Sheep, writhing with pain, said, "Why do you hurt me so, Mistress? What weight can my blood add ...
— Aesop's Fables • Aesop |
