"Handful" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... pill, was not in a condition to travel; his sister and her husband, the most anglicised of Milanesi, his maternal uncle, the most shelved of diplomatists, and his Roman cousin, Don Ottavio, the most disponible of ex-deputies and of relatives—a scant handful of the consanguineous who, in spite of Maggie's plea for hymeneal reserve, were to accompany him to the altar. It was no great array, yet it was apparently to be a more numerous muster than any possible to the bride ...
— The Golden Bowl • Henry James
... desultory war against wild Indians, and who was, not only without any previous training to his new profession, but also without the first rudiments of a liberal education, for he did not even know the orthography of his own native language. Such was the man who, with a handful of raw militia, was to stand in the way of the veteran troops of England, whose boast it was to have triumphed over one of the greatest captains known in history. But those who entertained such distrust had hardly come in contact with ...
— Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader - Being Selections from the Chief American Writers • Benj. N. Martin
... cashier was a little bully and was afraid of his daughter. She, he realized, knew the story of his brutal treatment of the girl's mother and hated him for it. One day she went home at noon and carried a handful of soft mud, taken from the road, into the house. With the mud she smeared the face of the boards used for the pressing of trousers and then went back to her work feeling ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1919 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... scarcely noticed him, telling him I had nothing, when he did something that attracted my attention, and the next minute my flesh began to creep, my backbone began to shake, and I thought I should have spasms. I gave him a handful of change and off he went. Since then, as I told you, he has been coming here every month or so. I'm going to move next May into a building where I can have ...
— Tin-Types Taken in the Streets of New York • Lemuel Ely Quigg
... Francis with great vehemence took up a handful of ashes and spread it over his bead; and moving his hand about his head in a circle as though washing it, said: "I, breviary! I, breviary!" and so kept on, repeatedly moving his hand about his head; and stupefied and ashamed ...
— Mont-Saint-Michel and Chartres • Henry Adams
... a big handkerchief from his pocket and dipped it in the water. Then he searched along the shore for a dozen paces, until he found an Indian willow. With his knife he scraped off a handful of bark, soaked it in water, crushed it between his hands, and returned to her. Jeanne's little foot lay naked in ...
— Flower of the North • James Oliver Curwood
... possession. We visited one of the poorest villages hereabouts, of not quite a hundred souls, but of course, provided with church, school and Mairie. Many a group of potato diggers we saw in the exquisite twilight, suggestive of Millet, many a landscape recalling other masters. This handful of woodlanders—for the village is surrounded by forests—is perhaps as poor as any rural population to be found throughout France. Yet here surprises await us. Some of the better off hire a little land, keep cows, rear poultry, most likely in time to become owners of a plot. They are paid ...
— East of Paris - Sketches in the Gatinais, Bourbonnais, and Champagne • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... On the present occasion the females were intent upon their occupation; and after looking up and talking gayly to me for a few moments, they resumed their employment. I regarded them for awhile in silence, and then carelessly picking up a handful of the material that lay around, proceeded unconsciously to pick it apart. While thus engaged, I was suddenly startled by a scream, like that of a whole boarding-school of young ladies just on the point of going into ...
— Short Stories and Selections for Use in the Secondary Schools • Emilie Kip Baker
... thought the painter, "that Rose has suffered her affections to repose on that conceited, purse-proud, elderly Englishman? O, woman! woman! how readily you barter the wealth of your heart for a handful of gold!" ...
— The Three Brides, Love in a Cottage, and Other Tales • Francis A. Durivage
... frightful excesses perpetrated by the Jacquerie. That dreadful insurrection had been crushed out by the armour-clad knights of France; but who was to undertake the task should such a flame again burst out? The nobles no longer wore armour, they had no armed retainers; they would be a mere handful among a multitude. The army had already shown its sympathy with the popular movement, and could not be relied upon. That the marquis himself should face out any danger which might come seemed to Harry right and natural; but he thought ...
— In the Reign of Terror - The Adventures of a Westminster Boy • G. A. Henty
... lottery-adventure, will be disfurnished of its figures and figments. People will cease to harp upon the one lucky number suggested in a dream, and which forms the exception, while they are scrupulously silent upon the ten thousand falsified dreams which constitute the rule. Morpheus will stifle Cocker with a handful of poppies, and our pillows will be no longer haunted ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 84, October, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... full of microscopic life or of its relics. The soil on which the city of Berlin stands, contains, at the depth of ten or fifteen feet below the surface, living elaborators of silex; [Footnote: Wittwer, Physikalische Geographie, p. 142.] and a microscopic examination of a handful of earth connected with the material evidences of guilt has enabled the naturalist to point out the very spot where a crime was committed. It has been computed that one-sixth part of the solid matter let fall by great rivers at ...
— The Earth as Modified by Human Action • George P. Marsh
... From the handful of small change, she selected some pennies which she slipped inside of her glove, and dropping the remainder into her pocket, left the building, and walked on toward Union Square. Absorbed in grave reflections, and oppressed by some vague foreboding of impending ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... are Tommy and Nellie. They are after flowers too, for they each have a handful. But I must call to them. They should not wander ...
— The Moving Picture Girls Under the Palms - Or Lost in the Wilds of Florida • Laura Lee Hope
... and there, but the empty joy remained that dwells in the dreams of the night. Aye! and a sorrow she left that was greater than this. For the heroes went forth from the land of Greece, valiant and wise and true; and lo! all that Ares, the changer, but not of money, sendeth back is a handful of ashes shut in an urn of brass! Therefore there is wrath in the city against the sons of Atreus, the leaders of the host; nor does the vengeance of the Gods forget ...
— Stories from the Greek Tragedians • Alfred Church
... English tried to cross over on the log; but, being compelled to go in single file, they were shot down by the Indians, until six captains and a number of men had been slain. Captain Moseley and a mere handful of men finally rushed over the log and burst into the fort, where they were assailed by fearful odds. This bold act so attracted the attention of the Indians that others rushed in. Captain Church, that indomitable Indian fighter, burst into the fort, dashed through it, and reached the swamp ...
— The Real America in Romance, Volume 6; A Century Too Soon (A Story - of Bacon's Rebellion) • John R. Musick
... us how great and numerous a people will then be in the church; the church may be a woman, a temple, a spouse, when she is but few, a handful, but two or three; but to be a city, and that in her glory, it bespeaks great store of members, inhabitants, and citizens; especially when she goeth under the name of a great city, as here she does. He ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... web of a single leaf, or by the examination of a dusty seed, and they can set up the scheme of life of a shadowy mammoth out of a fragment of its skeleton, or tell the story of hill and valley from the contemplation of a handful of earth or of a broken pebble. Often they are right, sometimes they are driven deeper and deeper into error by the complicated imperfections of their own science. But he who loves greatly possesses in his intuition the capacities of all instruments ...
— The Witch of Prague • F. Marion Crawford
... been in one of these December days that a handful of knights came through the Bruneswold, mud and blood bespattered, urging on tired horses, as men desperate and foredone. And the foremost of them all, when he saw Hereward at the gate of Bourne, ...
— Hereward, The Last of the English • Charles Kingsley
... I had often heard stories about the forester Biryuk, whom all the peasants of the surrounding districts feared as they feared fire. According to them there had never been such a master of his business in the world before. 'He won't let you carry off a handful of brushwood; he'll drop upon you like a fall of snow, whatever time it may be, even in the middle of the night, and you needn't think of resisting him— he's strong, and cunning as the devil.... And there's no ...
— A Sportsman's Sketches - Works of Ivan Turgenev, Vol. I • Ivan Turgenev
... trust, the wealth of his employer, his own hope of regeneration, worse now than worthless carrion. And the cause of it all, the sole excuse for this delinquency, lay back there upon a greasy table in the shanty—a short scrawling tale scribbled upon a handful of scrap paper! ...
— A Breath of Prairie and other stories • Will Lillibridge
... left soulless. What would matter all our speculations on a Deity who would cease to exist for us when we are in the grave? Why mete out, like Archytas, the earth and the sea, and number the sands on the shore that divides them, if the end of this wisdom be a handful of dust ...
— A Strange Story, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... Kafir diviner detects criminals by the fall of small objects used as dice. The Ashanti discover future events by the figures formed when palm wine is thrown on the ground, and from the nature of the numbers, whether even or odd, when one lets fall a handful of nuts. In a dispute the Yoruban priest holds in his hand a number of grass stalks, one of which is bent, and the person who draws the bent stalk is adjudged to be in fault.[1629] The Hebrews had the official use of objects called "urim and thummim" (terms whose meaning is unknown to ...
— Introduction to the History of Religions - Handbooks on the History of Religions, Volume IV • Crawford Howell Toy
... Miscellanies, were enough to give their author a lasting name. When one of these papers appeared in the Edinburgh, or other review, it shone, amid the contributions of the Jeffreys and Broughams, like a guinea in a handful of shillings. ...
— Essays AEsthetical • George Calvert
... two limp bills and a handful of small change. I took it gravely and put it in my purse. This was really not bad—more than ten dollars in less ...
— Parnassus on Wheels • Christopher Morley
... this handful of men had to defend was in no way capable of offering a prolonged resistance. Its walls were more than a mile in circumference, and were in a very bad state of repair. The rampart was narrow and the parapet low, and the ditch, in many ...
— With Clive in India - Or, The Beginnings of an Empire • G. A. Henty
... immovable, save for their swaying arms and heads; and those whom the square could not contain had climbed to porticoes, balconies and cornices, and massed themselves in the neck of the adjoining streets. The handful of light-horse who had escorted the Duke's carriage formed a single line at the foot of the steps, so that the approach to the porch was still clear; but it was plain that the crowd, with its next movement, would break through this slender barrier ...
— The Valley of Decision • Edith Wharton
... immensely popular but extremely unsound history of the Consulate and the Empire. In 1840 the remains of Napoleon were transferred from St. Helena to Paris, and were processionally drawn to the Invalides surrounded by the striking figures and uniforms of a handful of surviving veterans, acclaimed by the ringing rhetoric of Victor Hugo, who in prose and in verse vividly formulated the Napoleonic legend. And just before and just after this event, so made to strike the imagination and to prepare changes of opinion, came ...
— The French Revolution - A Short History • R. M. Johnston
... for he shook his fist in my face, and used words which were appalling to hear. That was the last I ever saw of Lord Rantremly, my husband, the clergyman, or the butler. I was at once sent off to London with my belongings, the butler himself buying my ticket, and flinging a handful of sovereigns into my lap ...
— The Triumphs of Eugene Valmont • Robert Barr
... be, I bought a couple, paying for them with such an extravagant quantity of tobacco that the seller saw I was a green customer. He could not, however, conceal his delight, but as he smelt the fragrant weed, and exhibited the large handful to his companions, he grinned and twisted and gave silent chuckles in a most expressive pantomime. I had often before made the same mistake in paying a Malay for some trifle. In no case, however, was his pleasure visible on his countenance—a dull and stupid ...
— The Malay Archipelago - Volume II. (of II.) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... knees, scooped up a handful of sand, and let it dribble slowly through my fingers. Harry looked straight at me and his eyes widened in alarm. It must have been the look on my face. He arose and crossed to where I was sitting, ...
— The Man the Martians Made • Frank Belknap Long
... a Briton," said Miss Pross, "I am desperate. I don't care an English Twopence for myself. I know that the longer I keep you here, the greater hope there is for my Ladybird. I'll not leave a handful of that dark hair upon your head, if you lay a finger ...
— A Tale of Two Cities - A Story of the French Revolution • Charles Dickens
... were now climbing juts far out into the sea, and forms a pass towards the territory of Beyrout which a handful of men might easily hold against an army. Such a pass may that of Thermopylae have been; and had these mountaineers but a Leonidas, they would certainly not be far ...
— A Visit to the Holy Land • Ida Pfeiffer
... way, were a handful of keen, unscrupulous men who derived their whole income from politics, and who had always been identified with movements that the better people of ...
— The Young Engineers in Colorado • H. Irving Hancock
... Barbadoes, Santa Cruz, and Martinique, the slaves, when liberated, have respected the rights of the masters, and recognized their title to the land, and have submitted to toil for moderate wages, where a handful of whites monopolized the soil, and demanded for it prices far beyond the value of the slave and land together, may we not well anticipate that the slave population, barely equal in number to the white ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 60, October 1862 • Various
... emptying the bottom of the press, after having burned, handful by handful, the papers with which it had been filled, Felicite uttered a stifled ...
— Doctor Pascal • Emile Zola
... out gaily for the garage, to have the motor repaired, and on the way he met a green-goods grocer who displayed a handful of beautiful red, white, and blue beans. Jack stopped to look at what he supposed was a new kind of poker chip, and the man persuaded the silly youth to exchange the automobile for ...
— The So-called Human Race • Bert Leston Taylor
... went on Jack. "I'm nearly starved, and I have only half a sandwich left. I want to eat it, yet, if I do, I don't know where I'm going to get more. And as for water, I'd give a handful of diamonds, if I had them, for half a glass of ...
— Lost on the Moon - or In Quest Of The Field of Diamonds • Roy Rockwood
... more abject of his miserable calling. The class had, intact, some privileges. A lodging, such as it was, was readily granted to them in some of the out-houses, and the usual awmous (alms) of a handful of meal (called a gowpen) was scarce denied by the poorest cottager. The mendicant disposed these, according to their different quality, in various bags around his person, and thus carried about with him the principal part of his sustenance, which he literally ...
— The Antiquary, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... an handful broad, to lengthen them withal; Yet for all that below the knee by no means they could fall: He, seeing that, desired the party to buy as much to make another pair: The party did: yet, for all that, he ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VI • Robert Dodsley
... the drier, vegetables should be rather brittle and fruits rather leathery and pliable. One method of determining whether fruit is dry enough is to squeeze a handful; if the fruit separates when the hand is opened, it is dry enough. Another way is to press a single piece; if no moisture comes to the surface the piece is sufficiently dry. Berries are dry enough if they stick to the hand but do not ...
— School and Home Cooking • Carlotta C. Greer
... However, the game is with the English still.... If only Ladysmith is held, the Colony is safe. This shocking flight of women and children from town after town is too awful to witness. Shame on the British Government to make our Colony the scene of this bloody struggle, and leave the handful of soldiers sent out all unsupported, unprepared—unprepared as usual—all smug and self-confident in the little overcrowded, over-comfortable island, and forgetful of the horrors to which unfortunate colonists are exposed across ...
— South Africa and the Transvaal War, Vol. 2 (of 6) - From the Commencement of the War to the Battle of Colenso, - 15th Dec. 1899 • Louis Creswicke
... to have remarked that if the Powers could not force Colonel Vassos and his handful of soldiers to obey them in Crete, it is not likely that they will be able to coerce the victorious ...
— The Great Round World and What Is Going On In It, Vol. 1, No. 38, July 29, 1897 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various
... what he would be at as I. Who but I would have known how so soon to win the love of a lady like that? Lucky indeed might they deem themselves, if they did it, those young gallants that go about, day and night, up and down, a strumming on the one-stringed viol, and would not know how to gather a handful of nuts once in a millennium. Mayst thou be by to see when I bring her the rebeck! thou wilt see fine sport. List well what I say: I am not so old as I look; and she knows it right well: ay, and anyhow I will soon let her know it, when I come to grapple ...
— The Decameron, Vol. II. • Giovanni Boccaccio
... hero who failed; a hero is a martyr who succeeded; both gain the veneration of a people, and die or live secure of self-respect. Mr. Nixon should have uplifted the standards of a new crusade against that handful of great robbers who, making Tammany their stronghold, issued forth to a rapine of the town. Nor, had he done so, would he have fallen in the battle. As I have already said, nineteen of every Tammany twenty would have come round him for that fight. He would have conquered ...
— The Onlooker, Volume 1, Part 2 • Various
... white, his mantle brown, as clear as they could be, And his songs were fairly bubbling o'er with melody and glee. But an envious Neighbour splashed with mud our Brownie's coat and vest, And then a final handful threw that stuck upon his breast. The Brook-bird's mother did her best to wash the stains away; But there they stuck, and, as it seems, are very like to stay. And so he wears the splashes and the mud blotch, as you see; ...
— Woodland Tales • Ernest Seton-Thompson
... handful," said Ashe, rather absently. Then the memory of Kitty's entry recurred to them both, ...
— The Marriage of William Ashe • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... match and groped under the tree close by him. Yes, there was the fallen branch. But what had broken it? He lit match after match, holding the light with his left hand while he turned over the dry ground with his knife. Presently he brought up a handful of stones and earth, and laid them on a bit of ruined wall close by. Stooping over them with his dim, sputtering lights, he presently discovered some terra-cotta fragments. His eye, practised in such things, detected them at ...
— Eleanor • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... sounded from the verandah. It went into a greeting of Monck who came up unexpectedly at the moment and sat down on a wicker-chair to examine a handful of papers. Stella, working within the room, looked up swiftly at his coming, but if he had so much as glanced in her direction he was fully engrossed with the matter in hand ere she had time to observe it. He had been out since early morning and she had not seen ...
— The Lamp in the Desert • Ethel M. Dell
... my movements, ten thousand times greater has been that of Corruption's Press for the coming of a PLOT, and ten thousand times more ludicrous its movements in order to hasten the accomplish ment of its wishes! You remember how my wife laughed at me, when, in the evening, some boys having thrown a handful or two of sand over the wall, that made a sort of dropping on the leaves of the laurels, I took it for the beginning of a shower, and pulled off my hat and held up my hand to see whether more was not coming, though ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 3 • Henry Hunt
... safe enough if you treat it right. I'll show you," and working carefully Tom soon had one of the boxes open. Reaching into the depths he held up a handful of something that looked like sticks of macaroni. ...
— Tom Swift and his Giant Cannon - or, The Longest Shots on Record • Victor Appleton
... Ticinum.[250] After this success the river and its steep banks were no barrier to the Vitellian troops: indeed the Batavians and other Germans found the Po a positive temptation. Crossing suddenly opposite Placentia, they captured a handful of scouts and created such a panic that the others in terror spread the false report that Caecina's whole ...
— Tacitus: The Histories, Volumes I and II • Caius Cornelius Tacitus
... taken to the Regent's Park; and next we were wanted in a side street where a timid, anxious old lady was waiting to be taken to the bank; there we had to stop to take her back again, and just as we had set her down a red-faced gentleman, with a handful of papers, came running up out of breath, and before Jerry could get down he had opened the door, popped himself in, and called out, "Bow Street Police Station, quick!" so off we went with him, and when after another turn or two we came back, there was no other cab on the stand. Jerry ...
— Black Beauty • Anna Sewell
... admit light and air for some dormitory, and to enable its occupant to peep out at the sky. Even to the very ridge of the roof may be seen here and there one of these air-holes, with a stove pipe beside it, to carry off the smoke from the handful of fuel with which its weazen-faced tenant simmers his demi-tasse ...
— The Crayon Papers • Washington Irving
... miles from Dalby a special surprised the kangaroo, who was inside the fences. The animal ran for some distance in front, but getting exhausted he suddenly turned to face his opponent, and jumped savagely at the stoker on the engine, who, not being able to run, gamely faced the "old man" with a handful of coal. The kangaroo, however, only reached the side of the tender, when, the step striking him, he was "knocked clean out of it" in the one round. No harm happened beyond a bit of a scare to ...
— Railway Adventures and Anecdotes - extending over more than fifty years • Various
... a handful of the elect, amateurs, the only ones who do not despise the Hebrew poet, but understand him ...
— The Renascence of Hebrew Literature (1743-1885) • Nahum Slouschz
... approaching Seascale as the time of his appointment drew near—would he call at her lodgings? The address she had not given him, but doubtless he had obtained it from his cousin. Perhaps he would prefer to meet her unexpectedly—not a difficult thing in this little place, with its handful of residents and visitors. Certain it was she desired his arrival. Her heart leapt with joy in the thought that this very evening might bring him. She wished to study him under new conditions, and—possibly—to talk with him even ...
— The Odd Women • George Gissing
... the sound of rifle shots. And looking down, he saw a feverish activity surrounding the rocket. Myriads of the pigmies were swarming upon it, while a handful of Cossacks ...
— Astounding Stories, July, 1931 • Various
... into the little town of Anagni, to which the Pope had withdrawn, laid violent hands upon his holiness. If measured by numbers, the whole affair was trifling. So few were the French soldiers that in a few days the handful of towns-folk in Anagni were able to rise against them, expel them from the place and rescue the aged Pope. He had been struck—beaten, say not wholly reliable authorities—and so insulted that rage and shame drove him mad, and ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... the United States. A century ago it was a wilderness, broken only by a few French settlements and the straggling American hamlets along the Ohio and its tributaries, while, on the shore of Lake Erie, Moses Cleaveland had just led a handful of men to the Connecticut Reserve. To-day it is the keystone of the American Commonwealth. Since 1860 the center of population of the United States has rested within its limits, and the center of manufacturing in the nation lies eight miles from President McKinley's ...
— The Frontier in American History • Frederick Jackson Turner
... said, "do not wish to do you any injury. They hope that you will overlook this accident. They do not ask this through fear. The warriors of the Utah are but a handful, when compared with those of their Great Father. But they wish to live with you as brothers. The country ...
— Christopher Carson • John S. C. Abbott
... the Roman invader. "Alas! my brother," replied Gelimer, "Heaven has declared against our unhappy nation. While you have subdued Sardinia, we have lost Africa. No sooner did Belisarius appear with a handful of soldiers, than courage and prosperity deserted the cause of the Vandals. Your nephew Gibamund, your brother Ammatas, have been betrayed to death by the cowardice of their followers. Our horses, our ships, Carthage itself, and all Africa, are in the power of the enemy. ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 4 • Edward Gibbon
... between twenty and thirty, standing in a hollow, having finished their morning meal, and flapping their great ears. It was a splendid sight, for they were only about two hundred yards from us. Taking a handful of dry grass, I threw it into the air to see how the wind was; for if once they winded us I knew they would be off before we could get a shot. Finding that, if anything, it blew from the elephants ...
— King Solomon's Mines • H. Rider Haggard
... divert it from her feet, which were shabby; two small errand boys in white aprons, standing right in the middle of the whirling, swirling traffic, in imminent peril of their lives, while one lighted his cigarette butt from the cigarette butt of his friend; a handful of roistering soldiers, singing as they swept six abreast along the wide, rutty sidewalk; the kiosks for advertising, all thickly plastered over with posters, half of which should have been in an art gallery and the other half in a garbage barrel; a well-dressed ...
— Europe Revised • Irvin S. Cobb
... is in the bag," says the Tzar. Ivan the Ninny took a handful from the bag and showed it to ...
— Old Peter's Russian Tales • Arthur Ransome
... is the odds I will stand, A hundred to one is the odds you command; Here's a handful of goldfinches ready to fly! May I venture a foot in my stirrup to try?" As he carelessly spoke, Dick directed a glance At his courser, and motioned her slyly askance:— You might tell by the singular toss of her head, And the prick ...
— Rookwood • William Harrison Ainsworth
... what we owe it to. But there's no excuse for those blockheads of statesmen, as they call themselves, who are paid to see things as they are. They have to go to an American to learn their A B C, and it's only when kicked and punched by civilian agitators, a mere handful of men who get sneered at for their pains, that they wake up, do some work, point proudly to it, and go to sleep again, till they get another kick. By Jove! we want a man like this Kaiser, who doesn't ...
— Riddle of the Sands • Erskine Childers
... her: "If you will go to yonder hay-stack, and fetch me a handful of hay, I'll give you the milk." So away went the old woman to the hay-stack; and she brought the hay to ...
— Boys and Girls Bookshelf; a Practical Plan of Character Building, Volume I (of 17) - Fun and Thought for Little Folk • Various
... and lucre—were the governing sentiments which led those bold Dutch and English rovers to circumnavigate the world in cockle-shells, and to beard the most potent monarch on the earth, both at home and abroad, with a handful of volunteers. ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... call 'Progress' is steadily crowding off the face of the land, are always deeply interesting to me; I love them. What a day! What a picture! What a sky! As blue as what Dollops calls the 'Merry Geranium Sea.' I'd give a Jew's eye for a handful of those ...
— Cleek: the Man of the Forty Faces • Thomas W. Hanshew
... light to the world, and it was so. They say that the moon was created brighter than the sun, which made the sun jealous at the time when they rose into the sky. So the sun threw over the moon's face a handful of ashes, which gave it the shaded colour it now presents. This frontier lake of Chucuito, in the territory of the Collao, is 57 leagues to the south of Cuzco. Viracocha gave various orders to his servants, but Taguapaca disobeyed the commands of Viracocha. So Viracocha ...
— History of the Incas • Pedro Sarmiento de Gamboa
... broad sides of the packing houses, the lofty chimneys surrounded by thin grayish clouds, the great warehouses of this slaughter yard of the world, drew nearer. All at once a roar burst on their ears, and they came out from behind a line of cars upon a stretch of track where a handful of soldiers were engaged in pressing back a rabble of boys, women, and men. The rabble were teasing the soldiers, as a mob of boys might tease a cat. Suddenly, as the officers and deputies appeared, some one hurled a stone. In a moment the air was thick with missiles, revolver ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... for ever keeps God's true princes of the Empire from the world's hustings; and leaves the highest honours that this air can give, to those men who become famous more through their infinite inferiority to the choice hidden handful of the Divine Inert, than through their undoubted superiority over the dead level of the mass. Such large virtue lurks in these small things when extreme political superstitions invest them, that in some royal instances even to idiot imbecility they have ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... system in its titles, privileges, and useful rights, the re-establishment of tramontane principles, the abolition of the liberties of the Gallican church, the annihilation of the Concordat, the re-establishment of tithes, the reviving intolerance of an exclusive form of worship; the domination of a handful of nobles over a people accustomed to equality: are what the ministers of the Bourbons have done, or wished to do, for the ...
— Memoirs of the Private Life, Return, and Reign of Napoleon in 1815, Vol. I • Pierre Antoine Edouard Fleury de Chaboulon
... lids? And now he stood in dim light, in the vapour from damp garments, in dinginess and ugliness, with a sense of spiritual squalor and destitution in his very soul. He had tried to pray his own prayer while the deacon prayed his; but there had come to him no reviving—no message for this handful of dull souls—there were nine of them in all —and his own soul crouched hard and dull within his bosom. How to give them one deeper breath? How to make them know they were alive? Whence was his aid ...
— The Marquis of Lossie • George MacDonald
... a few hours when both Great Britain—outside the handful of men who knew—and her friends throughout the world, hung on the answer. Meanwhile the German lie, which converted a defeat for Germany into a "victory," got at least twenty-four hours' start, ...
— The War on All Fronts: England's Effort - Letters to an American Friend • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... be wanting," said the saloon-keeper, holding out a handful. Judd Jason lighted one, and began ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... holding her securely, he bent down, and taking a handful of snow he rubbed his feet with it, to prevent their being frost-bitten. At other times, his throat feeling as if it were on fire, he put a little snow in his mouth and sucked it; this for a moment ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... de la Salle left in charge at St. Louis; an Italian they tell me, and loyal to his master. 'Tis like he may resist my orders, and De Baugis hath but a handful with which to uphold authority. I am not sure I approve of your selecting this lad De Artigny as a guide; ...
— Beyond the Frontier • Randall Parrish
... then sauntered towards the end of the porch, conversing loudly and cheerfully upon general topics, and thus excited no suspicion of their intentions. The hungry prisoners gathered around the ration-board, when Glazier covertly signaled his companion, and each suddenly clutched a good handful of the corn-bread. Under cover of the increasing darkness, and screened from observation by the men who stood between them and the guard, they quietly but rapidly, in a stooping position, stole away, making for the edge of a neighboring wood. Not a word was spoken, and in ...
— Sword and Pen - Ventures and Adventures of Willard Glazier • John Algernon Owens
... this very inadequate force, it was the opinion of the highest authorities that the country could not be maintained. Major-General Brock was well aware that, in carrying on the war along so extensive a frontier, uncovered by a single fortress of strength, and with such a handful of regular troops, he could only expect success in the aid and zealous co-operation of the people. But the province had long been torn by intestine disputes, and the prevailing factionwhich had been originally established by one of the judges, and which after his departure ...
— The Life and Correspondence of Sir Isaac Brock • Ferdinand Brock Tupper
... your opportunity. Make it,—make it as the shepherd-boy Ferguson made his when he calculated the distances of the stars with a handful of glass beads on a string. Make it as George Stephenson made his when he mastered the rules of mathematics with a bit of chalk on the grimy sides of the coal wagons in the mines. Make it, as Napoleon made his in a hundred "impossible" ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
... ecstasy that was deepening into a prayer. Mistress Clarke cried out—Bridget arose slowly, her gaze fixed on the creature beyond: drawing her breath with a hissing sound, never moving her terrible eyes, that were steady as stone, she made a dart at the phantom, and caught, as I had done, a mere handful of empty air. We saw no more of the creature—it vanished as suddenly as it came, but Bridget looked slowly on, as if watching some receding form. Lucy sat still, white, trembling, drooping—I think she would have ...
— Curious, if True - Strange Tales • Elizabeth Gaskell
... triumphs over matter and have not some of you with only a few months' preparation stood fearless at your post in Mesopotamia and won recognition by your calm collectedness and true heroism? They may say that you are but a small handful, what of the vast illiterate millions? Illiterate in what sense? Have not the ballads of these illiterates rendered into English by our Poet touched profoundly the hearts of the very elect of the West? Have not the ...
— Sir Jagadis Chunder Bose - His Life and Speeches • Sir Jagadis Chunder Bose
... whitened with flour, walked abreast of Geordie and tickled the gills of the fowl with a straw. Job Sheepshanks, the letter-cutter, carried a pot of pitch and a brush, and little Tom o' Dint hobbled along with a handful of iron files. Behind these came the landlord of the Flying Horse, with a basket over one arm, from which peeped the corks of many bottles, and Natt, the stableman at the Ghyll, carried a wicker cage, in which sat a red bantam-cock with spurs that ...
— A Son of Hagar - A Romance of Our Time • Sir Hall Caine
... which he would have done gently, Norman nervously threw the meat towards him, Trusty caught it, and putting up his nose and wagging his tail drew nearer; Norman instead of giving a piece at a time as Fanny had told him to do, fancying that the dog was going to snatch it from him, threw the whole handful on the ground and retreated several paces. Trusty began quickly ...
— Norman Vallery - How to Overcome Evil with Good • W.H.G. Kingston
... the black but comely disk of aunt Milly's countenance bending over the washtub; the elegant brogue of Mrs. Braboy would deliquesce into the soft dialect of North Carolina; and he would only be aroused from this blissful reverie by a wet shirt or a handful of suds thrown into his face, with which gentle reminder his wife would recall his attention to ...
— The Wife of his Youth and Other Stories of the Color Line, and - Selected Essays • Charles Waddell Chesnutt
... still half savages; but even a barbarian must eat. Half-way up the hill, the rattle of the loose-jointed vehicle came to a dead stop. With great gravity the guard descended from his seat; this latter he lifted to take from the entrails of the old vehicle a handful of hand-bills. He, the horse, the omnibus, and we, all waited for, what do you suppose? To besprinkle the walking Englishmen as they came within range with a shower of circulars announcing that at "midi, chez Nigaud, il y aura un ...
— In and Out of Three Normady Inns • Anna Bowman Dodd
... the world. Long before the news came, indeed, she carried out a plan she had conceived, so Padre Abella told us, even while Rezanov was yet here. There were no convents in California in those days—you may know what a stranded handful we were—but she joined the Tertiary or Third Order of Franciscans, and wore always the grey habit, the girdle, and the cross. She went among the Indians christianizing them, remaining a long while at Soledad, a bleak and cheerless place, where she was also a great solace ...
— The Spinner's Book of Fiction • Various
... then on the other, and sweeping every crawling horror out of life, into odorous ash. The backlash of that blast must have caught the majority of the lights also. For when Rynch and Hume cautiously sat up, they saw only a handful of widely scattered and ...
— Star Hunter • Andre Alice Norton
... came a young gull with a monstrous head and no feathers, squeaking and chirping in a most indefatigable manner! "So much for our dinner!" thought I, as he threw the bird into the lake, and took out a handful of eggs, which all proved to be much in the same condition. The warmth of the water put life into the little birds, which, however, was speedily destroyed when it began to boil. We did not despair, nevertheless, of ...
— Hudson Bay • R.M. Ballantyne
... a handful of boughs, string them on a stick which you have previously prepared (Fig. 4). This stick should be of strong, green hardwood, four or five feet long with a fork about six inches long left on it at the butt end to keep the boughs from sliding off, and sharpened ...
— Shelters, Shacks and Shanties • D.C. Beard
... what would gentlemen Brady and Tait have said then if the matter had been brought to their notice? Would they have dismissed Mr. Smith? I trow not. They would in all likelihood have attributed the complaint to what they would mentally designate as a handful of cranks, and paid no attention to it. But when the liquor element complains, what then? Their complaint is attended to at once. Why? Because they are the most law-abiding and influential section of the community? ...
— The Story of a Dark Plot - or Tyranny on the Frontier • A.L.O. C. and W.W. Smith
... consisting not only of the usual number of servants allowed to a military chaplain, but of a host of pundits, moonshees, schoolmasters, and poor nominal Christians, who hung about him because there was no one else to give them a handful of rice for ...
— Pioneers and Founders - or, Recent Workers in the Mission field • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... are those who suspect that the benevolence rests upon self-seeking motives, and feel themselves quite freed from any sense of gratitude; others go further and glory in the fact that they can thus "soak the alderman." An example of this is the young man who fills his pockets with a handful of cigars, giving a sly wink at the others. But this freedom from any sense of obligation is often the first step downward to the position where he is willing to sell his vote to both parties, and then scratch his ticket ...
— Democracy and Social Ethics • Jane Addams
... trenches the regiment consisted of eight companies, averaging about forty men each. Of the officers and men who remained on duty the forty days spent in Siboney, only twenty-four escaped without serious illness, and of this handful not a few succumbed to fevers on the voyage home and ...
— The Colored Regulars in the United States Army • T. G. Steward
... thrown about the boy, a peaked cap thrust on his head, after which a handful of powder was slapped on his face and rubbed down with the flat of the clown's hand. The fine dust got into the lad's nostrils and throat, causing him to sneeze until the tears rolled down his cheeks, streaking his makeup like a ...
— The Circus Boys on the Flying Rings • Edgar B. P. Darlington
... turtle belonged to them, and they considered the strangers had annexed their property.) soon after this they all went ashore, Mr. Banks, myself, and 5 or 6 of our people being their at same time. Immediately upon their Landing one of them took a Handful of dry grass and lighted it at a fire we had ashore, and before we well know'd what he was going about he made a larger Circuit round about us, and set fire to the grass in his way, and in an instant the whole ...
— Captain Cook's Journal During the First Voyage Round the World • James Cook
... Melanchthon; but Erasmus Eckhart liked to talk with her, for as a schoolmate and intimate friend of Wolf he had paid innumerable visits to the house, and received in winter an apple, in summer a handful ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... lives of men of letters had not yet arisen. The art of biography could hardly be said to be even in its infancy, for the most notable early examples, such as the lives of Wolsey by Cavendish and of Sir Thomas More by his son-in-law in the sixteenth century, and Walton's handful in the seventeenth, are far from what the present age regards as scientific biography. The preservation of official records makes it possible for the modern scholar to reconstruct with considerable fullness the careers of public men; ...
— The Facts About Shakespeare • William Allan Nielson
... Ziethen and others, all in their places behind him—quietly crushes Daun's people out of Burkersdorf Village; and furthermore, so soon as Night has fallen, bursts up, for his own uses, Burkersdorf old Castle, and its obstinate handful of defenders, which was a noisier process. Which done, he diligently sets to trenching, building batteries in that part; will have forty formidable guns, howitzers a good few of them, ready before ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XX. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... mile, two miles, three miles to the hamlet of Laurel Forge, indistinguishable in the darkness, which gave refuge to all that remained of what was twelve hours before a proud regiment, filling the mountains with the echoes of its fervid patriotic song, now a forlorn, exhausted handful of men clutching greedily the shelter and the hope of rest which the grimy forge offered. From this category must be excepted one company which, occupying the right of the column, had forced the passage of the flood at Hunter's Run when we first reached it on our march, ...
— Our campaign around Gettysburg • John Lockwood
... woke up with a snort and Aunt Abigail fed him a handful of pop- corn. Little Eleanor stirred in her sleep, stretched, yawned, and nestled down into a ball again on the little girl's lap. Betsy could feel in her own body the rhythmic vibration of ...
— Understood Betsy • Dorothy Canfield
... the snow still whirling dismally, Winton and Adams were cowering over a handful of hissing embers, drinking their commissary coffee and munching the camp cook's poor excuse for ...
— A Fool For Love • Francis Lynde
... For God's sake, sink the lawyer when you're out of court! It will be high time to brush up for a speech when you are in the dock, and pleading with the halter dangling in your eyes. Oh, don't glare upon me! He who flings about his arrows by the handful mustn't be angry if some of them ...
— Guy Rivers: A Tale of Georgia • William Gilmore Simms
... great warrior? Because he dispersed a handful of Libyan robbers ready to flee at the mere sight of Egyptians. But see what our neighbors are doing. Israel delays in paying tribute and pays less and less of it. The cunning Phoenician steals a number of ships from our fleet every year. On the east we are forced to keep up a great army against ...
— The Pharaoh and the Priest - An Historical Novel of Ancient Egypt • Boleslaw Prus
... off with the handful of pennies and Dalton drew the vacated chair into a quiet nook, where the light fell softly and the ...
— Joyce's Investments - A Story for Girls • Fannie E. Newberry
... splendid work done by the society as a whole, in which every member has had some share. To express fully my thought in this I will refer briefly to the organization of the society, just half a century ago, when a handful of earnest men united their efforts under the name of the Minnesota State Horticultural Society in an endeavor to solve the difficult problems connected with fruit growing in this region. None of the men who ...
— Trees, Fruits and Flowers of Minnesota, 1916 • Various
... said no more, but drew from his coat pocket a snuff-box of enormous dimensions. From it he grasped between his thumb and finger a moderate handful of stable-smelling dust. His nose and India handkerchief partook of it in equal shares, and then he rang his bell with presidential dignity, and ordered up his customary lunch of chops and porter. A few hours afterwards ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXVIII. February, 1843. Vol. LIII. • Various
... gold,—got slyly and at a distance, and contemplated with what rapture; so that at last the total lay manageable and light in its radiant compass. And what a total! what a surprise to Grabman! Had it been but a sixpence, he would have taken it; but to grasp sovereigns by the handful, it was too much for him; and as he rose, he positively laughed, from a sense ...
— Lucretia, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... shouldn't, there ain't nicer or bonnier or straighter children in the whole Forest; no, nor better-looking either, with cleaner souls inside of them; but for all that, anybody else"—and here nurse gave a little sort of wink that set Pauline screaming—"anybody else would say that you were a handful. You are a handful, too, to most people. But what I say now is this. You needn't take any notice of me; you can keep your own counsel and say nothing; but if you want her to go—the lady that has no call to be here—the lady that's forced herself ...
— Girls of the Forest • L. T. Meade
... up to to-night," he said curtly, holding out a handful of crumpled bills and silver. "Miss Thorne's decided she don't want yuh on the outfit ...
— Shoe-Bar Stratton • Joseph Bushnell Ames
... will you give me a handful of hard peas after breakfast, Aunt Janet? I want to put them ...
— The Story Girl • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... shore, now seeing their last hope of support or escape cut off, continued fighting desperately until all their ammunition was gone. Then the handful of survivors surrendered. By this time it was already dark. The only one to escape across the river was the regimental surgeon who, carrying the regimental flag between his teeth, swam across the river and reached the main ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume II (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various
... It's not difficult to carry a few thousand percussion-caps an' a bullet-mould about wi' you wherever you go. As to powder, why, you'll come across that 'most everywhere, an' lead too; and, for the matter o' that, if your life depended on it you could shove a handful of gravel or a pen-knife or tooth-pick into your gun an' blaze away, but with a breech-loader, if you run out o' cartridges, where ...
— Blown to Bits - or, The Lonely Man of Rakata • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... said Charlie, picking up a handful and sifting it slowly through his fingers, "and it'll fetch seventy-four cents. But you can't raise any worse on this old farm of ours if you try," he added, a little proudly. "Nor anywhere else in the Jim River Valley, for ...
— The Children's Book of Christmas Stories • Various
... 6: In another letter, he says, "We have been beaten, shamefully beaten—shamefully beaten by a handful of men, who only intended to molest and disturb our march! Victory was their smallest expectation! But see the wondrous works of Providence, the uncertainty of human things! We, but a few moments ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 2 (of 5) • John Marshall
... burst out the Widow, thrusting him rudely aside and seizing a fresh handful of the rock. "I just can't hardly believe it." She gazed at the glossy fragments and then at the muckers, industriously loading the trucks; and then she cocked her head on ...
— Shadow Mountain • Dane Coolidge
... King must stand up tall, If he would be head over all; Mainmast of Battle! when the plain Is miry-red with bloody rain! And grip his weapon for the fight, Until his knuckles grin tooth-white, The banner-staff he bears is best If double handful for the rest: When "follow me" ...
— The Influence of Old Norse Literature on English Literature • Conrad Hjalmar Nordby
... the three, brought back into the pale of State and Church, were, Coleridge, a Pittite journalist, Wordsworth, a distributor of stamps, and Southey, poet-laureate; all converted zealots, decided Anglicans, and intolerant conservatives." The "handful of silver" for which the patriot in the poem is supposed to have left the cause included besides the post of "distributor of stamps," given to him by Lord Lonsdale in 1813, a pension of three hundred pounds a year in 1842, and the poet-laureateship ...
— Browning's England - A Study in English Influences in Browning • Helen Archibald Clarke
... now managed to stand up. The colored man took up a handful of snow and gave it to the stranger, who held it to the cut on his head. The cold snow seemed to make him feel better, and when he had wiped away the blood he put on his hat, shook the snow from his overcoat, and looked at the banana which he ...
— The Bobbsey Twins in the Great West • Laura Lee Hope
... Masques, &c., but he had never;—that France had always yielded precedence to the archduke's predecessors, when they were but Dukes of Burgundy, of which he was ready to produce "ancient proofs;" and that Venice was a mean republic, a sort of burghers, and a handful of territory, compared to his monarchical sovereign:—and to all this he added, that the Venetian bragged of the frequent ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli
... pack, he undid it, and took out a double handful of yellow nuggets and a number of canvas bags. These he deposited in the pot-hole, and, prying up the flat stone of the fireplace, laid it over them, and ...
— The Round-up - A Romance of Arizona novelized from Edmund Day's melodrama • John Murray and Marion Mills Miller
... sense anythin'—she was keepin' a sharp lookout as to how we took it out of the corner of one eye. I see her. You could never cheat me about Luella Miller. Finally I got real mad and I run home and I got a bottle of valerian I had, and I poured some boilin' hot water on a handful of catnip, and I mixed up that catnip tea with most half a wineglass of valerian, and I went with it over to Luella's. I marched right up to Luella, a-holdin' out of that cup, all smokin'. 'Now,' says I, 'Luella ...
— The Wind in the Rose-bush and Other Stories of the Supernatural • Mary Eleanor Wilkins Freeman
... of the London Gazette;—when, in a word, we are guilty of some notorious fault, or blunder, or misfortune. Who does not know that face of pity? Whose dear relations have not so deplored him, not dead, but living? Not yours? Then, sir, if you have never been in scrapes; if you have never sowed a handful of wild oats or two; if you have always been fortunate, and good, and careful, and butter has never melted in your mouth, and an imprudent word has never come out of it; if you have never sinned and repented, ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray
... were the buildings and kraals of Stinkfontein, and there on the opposite bank of the river stood Paardeberg. To the left and to the right of it were khaki-coloured groups dotted everywhere about—General Cronje was hemmed in on all sides, he and his burghers—a mere handful ...
— Three Years' War • Christiaan Rudolf de Wet
... Gaucin, Jose had said to me: "Look you, Senor, I am very fond of English beer, and if I get you to Gibraltar to day you must give me a glass of it." When, therefore, he came in the evening, his eyes sparkled at the sight of a bottle of Alsop's Ale, and a handful of good Gibraltar cigars. "Ah, Senor," said he, after our books were squared, and he had pocketed his gratification, "I am sorry we are going to part; for we are good friends, are we not, Senor?" "Yes, Jose," said I; "if I ever come to Granada again, I shall take no other guide ...
— The Lands of the Saracen - Pictures of Palestine, Asia Minor, Sicily, and Spain • Bayard Taylor
... I, "Get water wherewithal we may wash," and pulled out from my pocket about a score of dirhems, thinking to give them to her; but she said, "I seek refuge with God!" and brought out of her pocket a handful of silver, saying, "But for destiny and that God hath caused the love of thee fall into my heart, there had not happened that which hath happened." Quoth I, "Take this in requital of that which thou hast spent;" and she said, "O my lord, by and by, whenas companionship ...
— Tales from the Arabic Volumes 1-3 • John Payne
... another. She tore a handful of the blossoms from a syringa tree and commenced crushing them in her fingers. The sound of footsteps scarcely disturbed her. The butler appeared, followed by Lady Anne. The former excused ...
— The Mischief Maker • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... important factor in the case is to be found in the circumstances of his Berwick ministry. Had his lot been cast in a quiet country place, with only a handful of people to look after, the great book might yet have been written. But he had to attend to a congregation whose membership was at first nearly six hundred, and afterwards rose to seven hundred and eighty and, with his standard of pastoral efficiency, this left ...
— Principal Cairns • John Cairns
... was smiling with thin lips, head thrown back against the twisted trunk of the olive tree. Then all at once he got to his feet, and after rummaging a moment in the little knapsack that hung over his shoulder, produced absent-mindedly a handful of small white candies the shape of millstones which he stared at in a ...
— Rosinante to the Road Again • John Dos Passos
... my powers of description. The little handful of men that was left of my company were almost beyond control. Each soldier was acting under the savage impulse to follow and kill some rebel before him. I shared the feeling, yet remained sane enough ...
— An Original Belle • E. P. Roe
... be not overcrowded with fishes, we have only to throw in a goodly handful of some water-weed,—such as the Callitriche, for instance,—and a new set of chemical operations commences at once, and it becomes unnecessary to change the water. The reason of this is easily explained. Plants absorb oxygen ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 47, September, 1861 • Various
... L'Ollonois, Morgan, Davis, and the rest, is an exciting though painful one, inasmuch as all sense of right and mercy seems to have been crushed in the breasts of these men by their brutal business. For a handful of dollars they were ready to wreck a city, reduce even its ruins to ashes, slaughter women and babes, and cut the throats of the aged. They were as harsh and treacherous toward one another as they were toward peaceable men, and for acts of rebellion ...
— Myths & Legends of our New Possessions & Protectorate • Charles M. Skinner
... emperor was a prisoner amongst the hideous rocks of St. Helena; and many a Frenchman who had fought and bled for France was now amongst them begging for a little support to prolong a life which would be forfeited on the parent soil. To add another handful to the cypress and wormwood already scattered amongst these polite colonists, they had just received orders from the Court of Janeiro to put on deep mourning for six months, and half-mourning for as many more, on account of the death of ...
— Wanderings In South America • Charles Waterton
... and giving vent to the fulness of his spirits in shouts, as "He hows," "the Cadger Lad," "A roving life for me," &c.; and, catching hold of his wench again, thrust his hand into his bosom—pulled out a handful of silver; swore, bravadoed,—squirted tobacco juice in the grate, and boasted of always being able to earn his ten shillings a day, and thought nothing of picking up a guinea in the same time at a ...
— Sinks of London Laid Open • Unknown
... warriors many times, swept up the broad slope of the long and winding valley to the cavern's mouth. The summits of the rocky walls on either side were filled with people, many of them women, who were waiting for the signal from Pelayo and his brave handful of followers. When the foreguard of the Moors was near the entrance to the cave, the king and his men, mounted, led the attack in front, and all along the line the carnage began. Now let ...
— Women of the Romance Countries • John R. Effinger
... he show what he had in his possession. He reluctantly produced a handful of jewelry from his pocket, among which was a gold watch, which was no sooner shown than a gentleman who was standing nearby claimed it as his own, saying that the house where they were standing was the residence of his family. He then proceeded to identify clearly the property. ...
— The Johnstown Horror • James Herbert Walker
... noise as of rushing water in his ears, Joel reached, caught a handful of cloth, and struggled, half drowned himself, to the surface. And then some one caught him by the chin—and he knew no more until he awoke as from a bad dream to find himself lying in the sun on the narrow beach, while several faces looked down ...
— The Half-Back • Ralph Henry Barbour
... of the peninsula, and the adjoining territory of South America, were at that time quite densely populated. The inhabitants seem to have been a happy people, not fond of war, and yet by no means deficient in bravery. The Spanish colonists were but a handful among them. But the war horse, bloodhounds, steel coats of mail and gunpowder, gave them ...
— Ferdinand De Soto, The Discoverer of the Mississippi - American Pioneers and Patriots • John S. C. Abbott
... mother, a father, sisters, brothers; where her tears had been over childish disappointments, and her mother had dried them. Small and homely and insignificant she stood there in her tragic detachment the symbol of all the woe of France, and of the depraved brutality of a handful of ambitious men who had broken the heart ...
— The Living Present • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... ground,—two women, one young, the other old, and a little child, evidently belonging to the young woman. They were clothed in a few rags; their cheeks were hollow with famine, their eyes burning with fever. The old woman was stirring a handful of meal into a pot of water; the others looked on with painful eagerness. Rita recoiled with a low cry of terror. She had heard of this; these were some of the unhappy peasants who had been driven from their farms. She had never seen anything like it before. This—this was not the play ...
— Rita • Laura E. Richards
... evident hallucination that the writer was to become the recipient of an enormous secret subscription. Indeed, the earnest desire NOT to be given gold was a recurrent characteristic of the poetic temperament. The repugnance to accept even a handful of gold was generally accompanied by a desire for a draught of pure water or ...
— Literary Lapses • Stephen Leacock
... been trailed this way by wolves before, but I've gone through a whole lot worse an' kept my health. Takes more'n a handful of them pesky critters to do for yours ...
— White Fang • Jack London
... slightly to her nest-egg—for she did hope and believe that some day people would cease to want to read of wickedness, and then Frederick would need supporting—on helping the poor. The parish flourished because, to take a handful at random, of the ill-behavior of the ladies Du Barri, Montespan, Pompadour, Ninon de l'Enclos, and even of learned Maintenon. The poor were the filter through which the money was passed, to come out, Mrs. Arbuthnot hoped, purified. ...
— The Enchanted April • Elizabeth von Arnim
... observations on the habits of the orang are of interest. This animal usually walks on all fours on the branches in a semi-erect crouching attitude, but our naturalist saw one moving by the use of its arms alone. In passing from tree to tree the arms come actively into play. The animal seizes a handful of the overlapping boughs of the two trees and swings easily across the intervening space. While seeming to move very deliberately, its actual speed was found to be about six ...
— Man And His Ancestor - A Study In Evolution • Charles Morris
... of a certain value, large or small, which each man possesses in himself. Life fractional is that same whole seized upon and invaded by other people, and subdivided amongst them. They who get a large slice of it say, 'A very valuable life this!' Those who get but a small handful say, 'So, so; nothing very great!' Those who get none of it in the scramble exclaim, ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... poured round all, Old ocean's gray and melancholy waste,— Are but the solemn decorations all Of the great tomb of man! The golden sun, The planets, all the infinite host of heaven, Are shining on the sad abodes of death, Through the still lapse of ages. All that tread The globe are but a handful to the tribes That slumber in its bosom. Take the wings Of morning, pierce the Barcan wilderness, Or lose thyself in the continuous woods Where rolls the Oregon, and hears no sound Save his own dashings,—yet the dead ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 3 - Sorrow and Consolation • Various
... eyes, must be as big as Manninglea Chase. And beyond his half circle of vision, behind him, on either hand, the forest of houses stretched away almost to infinity. The thought of it was as crushing as that of interstellar distances, of the pathless void into which God threw a handful of dust and then quietly ordained that each speck should be a sun and the pivot of ...
— The Devil's Garden • W. B. Maxwell
... and down the ward and the Cyclopians gathered around the table. There was a grand grab right and left. Everybody tried to get a handful. There was some difficulty reassorting the grabs. Of course, it happened, that fellows that really needed blue or grey ones, managed to get hold of black ones or brown ones, and some confusion existed ...
— "And they thought we wouldn't fight" • Floyd Gibbons
... descriptions. It may be produced. If the two parts Catholic be driven into a close confederacy with half the third part of Protestants, with a view to a change in the Constitution in Church or State or both, and you rest the whole of their security on a handful of gentlemen, clergy, and their dependents,—compute the strength you have in Ireland, to oppose to grounded discontent, to capricious innovation, to blind popular fury, and to ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. IV. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... too, was to be depended upon, the Duke decided quickly, though for no special reason but that he had taken some vague fancy to the Englishman's bronzed face and swinging stride. Yet Simon was powerful and unscrupulous; how could this handful of men oppose him? ...
— A Modern Mercenary • Kate Prichard and Hesketh Vernon Hesketh-Prichard
... is right," he declared. "Three times a week for many months I have been drumming the fact into the handful of wooden-headed Englishmen who have deigned to come to our meetings. I have made myself a nuisance to the House of Lords and the Press. It is a terrible thing to realise how hard it is to make an Englishman reflect, ...
— The Great Impersonation • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... there were about four hundred thousand slave-holders, and nine and a half million people. But of these four hundred thousand slave-holders, only about eight thousand owned more than fifty slaves each, and it was this mere handful who lived in splendid homes, surrounded with luxury, beauty, and refinement. Travellers who have thrown the veil of romance and enchantment about the Southern home, with a great house embowered ...
— The Battle of Principles - A Study of the Heroism and Eloquence of the Anti-Slavery Conflict • Newell Dwight Hillis
... Sue," said Mr. Winkler, and he brought out a handful from his pocket. "Here, Wango, come and get these!" the old ...
— Bunny Brown and His Sister Sue at Aunt Lu's City Home • Laura Lee Hope
... fighting them had fled. Everybody had fled. The city was utterly deserted, sad and silent as a grave-yard. There was nothing there to eat. The Russians had destroyed everything. There was not a handful of oats, not a loaf of bread. The French victory had gained for them only an empty city and an empty land. It was now the end of August, and Moscow was a ...
— The Boy with the U. S. Weather Men • Francis William Rolt-Wheeler
... did, then. How should I know you wanted them, or that there was going to be a piece of work about a handful of violets?" ...
— A Sheaf of Corn • Mary E. Mann
... the flock," answered Uncle Peter, with what seemed, under the circumstances, a heartless chuckle. "They each one have little dabs of property, about as big as a handful of chicken feed, and as they have each one given it all to James to manage, they expect an income in return—and get it—all they ask for. A lot of useless old live stock—all but Sallie, and she's ...
— The Tinder-Box • Maria Thompson Daviess
... "What do you suppose it is?" He opened the window and listened. "Do you hear it?" he asked Harry, who admitted that he could also hear a rattling, scraping noise as though drums were being beaten far away or as though a handful of peas had been thrown against ...
— Banzai! • Ferdinand Heinrich Grautoff
... is very careful, it is easy to lose an ear, the nose, a cheek, or a lip by frost bites. One day as I was walking out on a bitterly cold day, a Russian noticed that one of my ears was frozen. He ran up to me and rubbed the affected part with a handful of snow till the circulation was restored. I asked him how he had noticed my state, and he said he had remarked the livid whiteness of my ear, and this, he said, was always a sign that the frost had taken it. What surprised me most of all is that sometimes the part grows again after it ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... latter circumstance, where the Emperor recognises his murderer as a personage in his vision, seems to be borrowed from the story of one of the caliphs, who, before his death, dreamed, that a sable hand and arm shook over his head a handful of red earth, and denounced, that such was the colour of the earth on which he should die. When taken ill on an expedition, he desired to know the colour of the earth on which his tent was pitched. A negro slave presented ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Vol. 7 (of 18) - The Duke of Guise; Albion and Albanius; Don Sebastian • John Dryden
... Upon receiving the intelligence of the death of the emperor at St. Helena, Pozzo di Borgo said: "I did not kill him, but I threw the last handful of earth on his coffin, in order that he might never ...
— Queen Hortense - A Life Picture of the Napoleonic Era • L. Muhlbach |
