"Picker" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... acknowledge the truthfulness of the sketch, we do not desire to have any familiarity or contact with the individuals represented. Furthermore, Gavarni is more limited than Doyle, by making the "Sweep," the "Rag-Picker," the "Grisette," tell his or her own story; and what each one says is necessary to the comprehension of the person before you. But very different is Toepffer. He possesses, with the funny conception ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 97, November, 1865 • Various
... one hour of purity, of dignity. The very rag- picker, groping with her filthy hands among the ashes, instead of an object of contempt, moves from door to door an accusing Figure, her thin soiled garments, her bent body, her scarred face, hideous ...
— Idle Ideas in 1905 • Jerome K. Jerome
... minutes the air was kept alive by shouting and laughter of the men, and the protestations of the dog. When the shearer touched skin, he yelled "Tar!" and when he finished he shouted "Wool away!" at the top of his voice, and his mates echoed him with a will. A picker-up gathered the fleece with a great show of labour and care, and tabled it, to the well-ventilated disgust of old Scotty, the wool-roller. When they let the dog go he struck for home—a clean-shaven poodle, except for a ferocious ...
— While the Billy Boils • Henry Lawson
... his in the next barrel, and so on, so that each succeeding picker deposits his apples in the next succeeding barrel. In that way I personally have the opportunity to inspect every half bushel of apples, or, I might say, every apple, as a half bushel of apples in a barrel is shallow, making inspection a very simple ...
— Trees, Fruits and Flowers of Minnesota, 1916 • Various
... immediately; but, for my part, I think otherwise. What an unreasonable creature! Does he suppose me so lost to all due sense of humility as to take out of his hands a cause which he is pleading so well? If the plantation slaves had such a good friend as the Times, and if every over-worked female cotton picker could write as clever letters as this dressmaker's apprentice, and get them published in as influential papers, and excite as general a sensation by them as this seems to have done, I think I should feel that ...
— Sunny Memories of Foreign Lands V2 • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... three feet, thus becoming a squat bush possessing a biggish leafing area. Every eight or twelve days the shoots and young leaves are plucked—when treated these become the tea of commerce. Tea-plants are alike, speaking generally, grades being effected by the discrimination of picker and sorter. Fresh buds and tender young leaves make the pekoes, older ones the souchongs. Tea gathered exclusively from buds and tips is called "flowery;" if the first young leaf be included, it is "orange pekoe." In order of quality the Ceylon ...
— East of Suez - Ceylon, India, China and Japan • Frederic Courtland Penfield
... may be briefly described as follows: The nuts are run through a revolving screen which separates and cleans them from all adhering husk and grades them into three sizes. They then pass through the cracker and thence, by conveyor belt, to the picker. This ingenious device holds the broken nuts with soft rubber rolls while a set of fingers literally pick the kernels from the shells. Careful sifting is the last step as the kernels leave the machine, after which they are hand-picked to remove any remaining ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Twenty-Fourth Annual Meeting • Northern Nut Growers Association
... I had seen my Doppelganger," said Searle. "He reminds me of myself. What am I but a mere figure in the landscape, a wandering minstrel or picker of daisies?" ...
— A Passionate Pilgrim • Henry James
... trees under whose shade we lie. Beautiful the grassy bank—but lo! a small heap of dirty clothes on the greensward! We turn away with disgust and laughter. Insignia of glory!—a shilling's worth to the rag-picker. What a contrast they present to the loveliness of the common ...
— Our campaign around Gettysburg • John Lockwood
... one sold. My father still held a wild animal instinct up in Virginia; they couldn't keep him out of the woods. He would spend two or three days back in there. Then the Patty Rollers would run him out and back home. He was a quill blower and a banjo picker. They had two corn piles and for prizes they give them whiskey. They had dances and regular figure callers. This has been told to me at night time around the hearth understand. I can recollect when round dancing come in. It was in 1880. Here's a song they sung back in ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States from Interviews with Former Slaves, Arkansas Narratives, Part 4 • Works Projects Administration
... blade of a knife, the strongly marked jawbone, the hollow cheeks, and the oblong tendency of all these lines, together with his unnaturally long and flat chin, contributed to give a peculiar expression to his countenance,—something between that of a retired professor of rhetoric and a rag-picker. ...
— Parisians in the Country - The Illustrious Gaudissart, and The Muse of the Department • Honore de Balzac
... and gathered walnuts, and chinquapins and wild grapes. When harvest time came, they worked in the fields side by side,—plucked the corn, pulled the fodder, and gathered the dried peas from the yellow pea-vines. Cicely was a phenomenal cotton-picker, and John accompanied her to the fields and stayed by her hours at a time, though occasionally he would complain of his head, and sit under a tree and rest part of the day while Cicely worked, the two keeping one ...
— The Wife of his Youth and Other Stories of the Color Line, and - Selected Essays • Charles Waddell Chesnutt
... vocation as a picker-up of every unconsidered trifle, is an adept at charcoal-burning, on the sly. The business of legitimate charcoal-manufacture is also largely practised in the Pines, although the growing value of wood interferes sadly with the coalers. Here and there, however, a few acres are marked out every year ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 19, May, 1859 • Various
... in a constant state of horror in the places where a reddish fuzz endures, would not be picked up by a rag picker, if the little old man let it fall and left it ...
— A Street Of Paris And Its Inhabitant • Honore De Balzac
... of course. One has no business really to get interested. It's a weakness of mine. His was of another kind. My weakness consists in not having a discriminating eye for the incidental—for the externals—no eye for the hod of the rag-picker or the fine linen of the next man. Next man—that's it. I have met so many men,' he pursued, with momentary sadness—'met them too with a certain—certain—impact, let us say; like this fellow, for instance—and in each case all I could see was merely the human being. A confounded democratic quality ...
— Lord Jim • Joseph Conrad
... farmer, "has coats to their backs, and takes their regular meals." One British gentlemen we had with us during the siege of Plevna was a perpetual source of joy to me. He was a sort of human jackdaw, the picker-up of unconsidered trifles; and especially in the way of provender and of medical comforts he took care to be well provided whatever might befall the rest of us. It happened one day during the siege that some member of our party discovered in some huckster's shop in ...
— Recollections • David Christie Murray
... unwashed and very uncomfortable, to picnic with him, during the collection of the boats. The breakfast, eaten in the open court, consisted of sundry baskets of roast-beef and plantain-squash, folded in plantain-leaves. He sometimes ate with a copper knife and picker, not forked—but more usually like a dog, with both hands. The bits too tough for his mastication he would take from his mouth and give as a treat to the pages, who n'yanzigged, and swallowed them with much seeming relish. Whatever remained over was then ...
— The Discovery of the Source of the Nile • John Hanning Speke
... the good ol' summer time," said the boy, nodding his head toward the horse and addressing the rag picker who was pulling a burlap ...
— The Enchanted Canyon • Honore Willsie Morrow
... from a picker-up of old words, brother? Bah! I dislike a picker-up of old words worse than a picker-up ...
— Isopel Berners - The History of certain doings in a Staffordshire Dingle, July, 1825 • George Borrow
... matter, old boy; captured at last, after all these years? Well, they say: 'the longer you wait, the harder the blow!' But I'll have to hand it to you, you're a good picker. That little woman is an angel if there ever was one in Reno, and you will be a lucky boy if you can ...
— Reno - A Book of Short Stories and Information • Lilyan Stratton
... like material with her dress was tied about the waist, apron-like. This was to receive immediately the pickings from the hand. When filled it was emptied in a pick-basket, holding with a little packing fifty or sixty pounds. This small basket was kept in the picker's vicinity, being moved forward whenever the sack was taken back for emptying. Besides this go-between pick-basket, there was at that end of the row nearest the ginhouse an immense basket, nearly as tall as a barrel, and of greater circumference, with ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, October, 1877, Vol. XX. No. 118 • Various
... I didn't say she would miss fire, from having her breech unkivered last night," shouted the man who held the match, and who was no other than Tom Fluke. "Quick, here, give us a picker." ...
— The Canadian Brothers - or The Prophecy Fulfilled • John Richardson
... Ashfeild. Yes, they did, and went to prayers upon it." Nor less the picture, in the evidence of either this or an adjoining trial, of the pirate captain "with a gold chain around his neck, and a gold Tooth-picker hanging ...
— Privateering and Piracy in the Colonial Period - Illustrative Documents • Various
... a famous berry-picker when a boy. It was near enough to hunting and fishing to enlist me. Mother would always send me in preference to any of the rest of the boys. I got the biggest berries and the most of them. There was something ...
— Locusts and Wild Honey • John Burroughs
... opened a gate in the same way to permit her calf to go free with her. So skilled is she in the manipulation of doors and latches that we are tempted to believe in some previous state of existence she was a professional lock-picker! ...
— The Human Side of Animals • Royal Dixon
... said no more about the berry-pickers. Dave handed him a paper on which the time of each berry-picker and the amount of his or her wage was marked opposite. The Squire took it and adjusted his glasses with a certain grimness—he was honest to the core, but few things came harder to ...
— 'Way Down East - A Romance of New England Life • Joseph R. Grismer
... the country to alleviate the lot of the hop-pickers, who flock into Worcestershire in September by the thousand. One of the mission workers, who had gone down to the hopyards, met a dilapidated individual in a country lane, who said he was "a picker." Pressed for further ...
— Grain and Chaff from an English Manor • Arthur H. Savory
... sunshine,—or perhaps simply for the reason that this house is the one where the Wolfes lived. There were the father and son,—both hands, as I said, in one of Kirby & John's mills for making railroad-iron,—and Deborah, their cousin, a picker in some of the cotton-mills. The house was rented then to half a dozen families. The Wolfes had two of the cellar-rooms. The old man, like many of the puddlers and feeders of the mills, was Welsh,—had spent half of his life ...
— Life in the Iron-Mills • Rebecca Harding Davis
... little, but I'm 'most fasting," said the Cat; "it was only a bowl of porridge, and a trough of fat, and the goodman, and the goody, and Daisy the cow—and, now I think of it, I'll take you, too." So she took the leaf-picker and ...
— Boys and Girls Bookshelf (Vol 2 of 17) - Folk-Lore, Fables, And Fairy Tales • Various
... talk, yo're nothin' but a cheap cotton picker. Guess this game's too stiff fer yuh," ...
— Kid Wolf of Texas - A Western Story • Ward M. Stevens
... splendid variety for this section, as it stands up so well under shipment. The Howard 17 is nearly as good a shipper, but considered a better quality berry and does nicely on our Cape soils. The picking season is from three to four weeks. Pickers are usually paid 2 cents a quart, and a good picker will make from $3 to $4 a day. Five thousand quarts is considered a fair yield per ...
— Cape Cod and All the Pilgrim Land, June 1922, Volume 6, Number 4 • Various
... could, by hand-picking, clean only about a pound of cotton a day. The cotton-gin cleaned as much in a day as had taken the hand-picker a year to accomplish. Cotton was at once planted in vast amounts; but it certainly was not plentiful till then. Whitney had never seen cotton nor cotton seed when he began to plan his invention; nor did he, even ...
— Home Life in Colonial Days • Alice Morse Earle
... We went in a coach of our own, by ourselves, and found the town of Windsor like a cried fair. We were then directed to the Castle gate, where a terrible crowd was gathered together; and we had not been long in that crowd, till a pocket-picker, as I thought, cutted off the tail of my coat, with my pocket-book in my pocket, which I never missed at the time. But it seems the coat tail was found, and a policeman got it, and held it up on the end of his stick, and cried, whose pocket is ...
— The Ayrshire Legatees • John Galt
... erecting it entirely for her and the baby. He spoke of closets for her frocks, and "a comfy sewing-room." But when he drew on a leaf from an old account-book (he was a paper-saver and a string-picker) the plans for the garage, he gave much more attention to a cement floor and a work-bench and a gasoline-tank than ...
— Main Street • Sinclair Lewis
... of paper. And the Comic Muse is even less indulgent. When Aristophanes would mock the creations of Euripides, which are meant to move the public by their declining fortunes, he at once turns the tragedian into a rag-picker. ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VII. • Various
... he sets out at night to see the curiosities of Paris. One, two, three, four; the queen of spades! It is a woman who manufactures ermine fur out of cat-skin. One, two, three, four; the knave of spades! It is a rag-picker. One, two, three, four; the king of spades! It is a restaurant-keeper. The falling together of these three persons alarms me. One, two, three, four,—clubs! One, two, three, four,—clubs again! One, two, three, four,—always clubs. Your cat would bring money to these three ...
— The Story of a Cat • mile Gigault de La Bdollire
... boy, the great ambition of his life was to be released from the hoeing and spudding, and set to work at his father's colliery. Great was Geordie's joy, therefore, when at last he was taken on there in the capacity of a coal-picker, to clear the loads from stones and rubbish. It wasn't a very dignified position, to be sure, but it was the first step that led the way to the construction of the Liverpool and Manchester Railway. Geordie was now fairly free from the uncongenial drudgery of farm life, and able to follow ...
— Biographies of Working Men • Grant Allen
... "go and get measured for his hoof-picker" Dam had not resented, though he had considered it something of an insult to his intelligence that Hawker should expect to "have" him so easily as that. He had taken in good part the arrangement of his bed in such a way that it collapsed ...
— Snake and Sword - A Novel • Percival Christopher Wren
... the notes of a retired egg-picker; they record the brief experience of one who was interested in the last campaign, which, as it terminated the career of the egg-pirates, is not without historical interest. I will at once introduce the historian, and let ...
— In the Footprints of the Padres • Charles Warren Stoddard
... cares only for the birth and social position of the woman to whom he gives his name and affection; to another yellow gold stands higher than blue blood, and "my wife's father" may have been a rag-picker, so long as rag-picking had been a sufficiently rich alembic with a residuum admitting of no kind of doubt. Venus herself without a dowry would be only a pretty sea-side girl with a Newtown pippin in her hand; but Miss Kilmansegg would ...
— Modern Women and What is Said of Them - A Reprint of A Series of Articles in the Saturday Review (1868) • Anonymous
... in combination with the lever, g, arranged to operate as set forth, the incline, n, or its equivalent, for relieving the picker from the action of the spring, i, to permit free movement of the shuttle boxes, substantially ...
— Scientific American, Vol. 17, No. 26 December 28, 1867 • Various
... read a word and did not know a letter. I do not remember that I had ever seen the inside of a book of any kind. It was in 1867 that I learnt the alphabet upon the plantation by the light of pine knots. During the years 1868 and 1869 I was a rag-picker in the streets of Mobile. God has led me on, and now I am a student in Talladega College, and expect soon to have finished a course of study which will enable me to go forth to lead men to Christ and to teach them better methods of living. I speak of this contrast not boastfully, ...
— The American Missionary—Volume 39, No. 07, July, 1885 • Various
... own property as the breeches upon his backside;—which said exsudations, &c. being dropp'd upon the said apple by the labour of finding it, and picking it up; and being moreover indissolubly wasted, and as indissolubly annex'd, by the picker up, to the thing pick'd up, carried home, roasted, peel'd, eaten, digested, and so on;—'tis evident that the gatherer of the apple, in so doing, has mix'd up something which was his own, with the apple which ...
— The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman • Laurence Sterne
... Drewyer he did not arrive. Musquetoes excessively troublesome insomuch that without the protection of my musquetoe bier I should have found it impossible to wright a moment. the buffaloe are leaving us fast and passing on to the S. East. killed a buffaloe picker a beatifull bird. ...
— The Journals of Lewis and Clark • Meriwether Lewis et al
... left without a master or a guide the Dutch ambassador, under a becoming show of profound respect, might really have governed the country so far as regarded at least the all important relations which bound the two nations together. But Langerac was a mere picker-up of trifles, a newsmonger who wrote a despatch to-day with information which a despatch was written on the morrow to contradict, while in itself conveying additional intelligence absolutely certain to be falsified soon afterwards. The Emperor of Germany had gone mad; ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... king. To have the eye of the king is to draw and shut, at one's whim, the bolt of the royal conscience, and to throw into that conscience whatever one wishes. The mind of the king is his cupboard; if he be a rag-picker, it is his basket. The ears of kings belong not to kings, and therefore it is that, on the whole, the poor devils are not altogether responsible for their actions. He who does not possess his own thought does not possess his own deed. A king obeys—what? Any evil spirit buzzing from outside in his ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... chiffonnier (or rag picker) died in Paris in a state apparently of the most abject poverty. His only relation was a niece, who lived as servant with a greengrocer. This girl always assisted her uncle as far as her slender means would permit. When she heard of his death, which took place suddenly, she was upon the point ...
— The Book of Three Hundred Anecdotes - Historical, Literary, and Humorous—A New Selection • Various
... from the trees to fall and be bruised on the ground had better listen to the careful directions for placing the ladder on the trees where it will do no damage, as to the use of the gathering hook so that the branches can be brought within easy reach of the picker on his ladder, the wearing of a gathering apron, and the emptying of it gently into the baskets. Green fern has the same effect on pears packed for carriage as nettles on stone fruit; while apples should be packed in wheat, or better still ...
— A Short History of English Agriculture • W. H. R. Curtler
... Rumbill downe, tumbill downe, hey go, now now, He fumblyth in his fyngering an ugly rude noise, It seemyth the sobbyng of an old sow: He wolde be made moch of, and he wyst how; Well sped in spindels and tuning of travellys A bungler, a brawler, a picker of quarrels. ...
— Shakespeare and Music - With Illustrations from the Music of the 16th and 17th centuries • Edward W. Naylor
... similar by contrast. Cleon is a type of the Western and sceptical, Karshish of the Eastern and believing, attitude of mind; the one repellent, the other absorbent, of new things offered for belief. Karshish, "the picker up of learning's crumbs," writes from Syria to his master at home, "Abib, all sagacious in our art," concerning a man whose singular case has fascinated him, one Lazarus of Bethany. There are few more ...
— An Introduction to the Study of Browning • Arthur Symons
... If a rag-picker had offered to do a diplomatic service for the Emperor of Russia, the monarch could not have been more astounded than the mate was. He even stopped swearing. He stood and stared down at me. It took him ten seconds to scrape his disjointed ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... Precinct. Rochester The Cyclists Sunshine through a Cobwebbed Window A London Thoroughfare. 2 A.M. Astigmatism The Coal Picker Storm-Racked Convalescence Patience Apology A Petition A Blockhead Stupidity Irony Happiness The Last Quarter of the Moon A Tale of Starvation The Foreigner Absence A Gift The Bungler Fool's Money Bags Miscast I Miscast II Anticipation Vintage ...
— Sword Blades and Poppy Seed • Amy Lowell
... three dozen hard-shell crabs for twenty-five minutes. Let them cool, then remove the top shell and tail; quarter the remainder, and pick out the meat carefully with a nut-picker or kitchen fork. The large claws should not be forgotten, for they contain a dainty morsel; the fat that adheres to the top shell should not be overlooked. Cut up an amount of celery equal in bulk to the crab meat; mix both together ...
— Fifty Salads • Thomas Jefferson Murrey
... word for a woman who picks up rags about the street; and it may seem to later generations that the epithet fitted far more nicely the bunter muse of that "facile retailer of ana and incorrigible society-gossip," that rag-picker of anecdotes, Mr. Horace ...
— Henry Fielding: A Memoir • G. M. Godden
... Green stood there they all picked as busily as squirrels. But after he left them the boys found so much to talk about that they made little progress. It was a temptation, too, to flick a currant into the face of another picker ...
— The Tale of Pony Twinkleheels • Arthur Scott Bailey
... of the internal combustion tractor, first used in 1892. Inventors and manufacturers gradually but constantly improved tractors along with the various devices attached to them. Most notable were the corn picker, in 1909, and the cotton picker, in 1942. (Dates are for commercial production in each instance.) Farmers found both machines impracticable until a power source independent of the ground wheel had been ...
— Agricultural Implements and Machines in the Collection of the National Museum of History and Technology • John T. Schlebecker
... lucky, for when Lizzie Sidel's man lost his hand in the cog wheels he went to law to sue the company, and three years afterward the case was thrown out of court and he had to pay the costs himself. But he was a picker-boss, and ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... rings!" So once again they moved round the tree, singing Christmas carols. Every time there was a pause somebody struck up a new carol, that had to be sung through. The doors opposite were open too, the old rag-picker sat at the head of his table singing on his own account. He had a loaf of black bread and a plate of bacon in front of him, and after every carol he took a mouthful. In the other doorway sat three coal-porters ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... and daughter, even a granddaughter of tender years, wheeling and balancing in the same set. And so the fiddles played, the stars shone, the waters babbled, until the lanterns flared and sputtered out, and the banjo-picker held up fingers raw and bleeding. Then with a last final swing and flourish, everybody scattered for homeward ways, glad of the day's pleasure—and tired enough to be glad ...
— Dishes & Beverages of the Old South • Martha McCulloch Williams
... and down the kitchen) Woman! woman! woman! You are all alike! Every damn one of you, from the Queen to the cockle picker. ...
— Duty, and other Irish Comedies • Seumas O'Brien
... there is no need for you to shout here about my calling,' replied the banker, displeased. 'Every Jewish rag-picker will know that banker Rosenberg was here to see you. As for the permit to open the gates, I myself, as a trustee, authorize you to do it. I will wait here until he has completed his prayer. The company in your house must not know what ...
— The History of a Lie - 'The Protocols of the Wise Men of Zion' • Herman Bernstein
... this weapon. Of course it was already loaded, but, lest the night-dew might have damped the priming, he threw up the pan-cover, with his thumb-nail scraped out the powder, and then poured in a fresh supply from his horn. This he adjusted with his picker, taking care that a portion of it should pass into the touch-hole, and communicate with the charge inside. The steel was then returned to its place, and the flint duly looked to. Its state of firmness was felt, its edge examined. Both appeared ...
— The White Chief - A Legend of Northern Mexico • Mayne Reid
... youngsters who had glided into poverty, and taken a place to which they had no right to stoop. Treachery,—that was the name for it. And now he must be expected,—the Doctor quite forgot that nobody had asked him to do it,—he must be expected to come fishing them out of their hole, like a rag-picker ...
— Dr. Sevier • George W. Cable
... which Paul Evert now worked as a slate-picker, was in general appearance very much like the old one, but its interior arrangement was different, and of such a nature as to make life much easier for those who worked in it. The greatest improvement was the introduction of a set of machines called "jigs." The coal from the mine, after ...
— Derrick Sterling - A Story of the Mines • Kirk Munroe
... me, 'I've done had sixteen picaninnies, Mars' Cap'n, but I nebber seed none o' dem after dey was 'bout six weeks old. Dey was in de nussery, an' I was a rale smart cotton-picker, and couldn't be spar'd to nuss ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, August, 1878 • Various
... presently after meales: rather sit a while and discourse of some pleasant matters: when you haue ended your confabulations, wash your face and mouth with cold waters, then go to your chamber, and make cleane your teeth with your tooth-picker, which should be either of iuorie, silver, or gold. Watch not too long after supper, but depart within two hours to bed. But if necessitie compell you to watch longer then ordinary, then be sure to augment your sleepe ...
— Early English Meals and Manners • Various
... I 'most stumbled on yer," he began apologetically. "I come fer the apple-picker. Thar's a handful of russets in the orchard yit, that's calc'latin' ter spend Christmas up close ter heaven; but—Say, Blossy," he added more loudly, since she did not raise her head, "yew seen anythin' ...
— Old Lady Number 31 • Louise Forsslund
... foh 'is rags!" cried a young law student, with a Blackstone under his arm, to the town rag picker opposite, who was unconsciously ogling the ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... among the 'best sellers' on this side. Yes, people are good enough to say I've broken quite new ground in making the hop-fields the scene of a novel; the critics say my word-pictures of the hop-poles are 'absolutely luscious'; and they pronounce Ozias, the hop-picker, 'a giant of artistic creation.' Yes, my novel is one of the twenty which in the last six months have been called 'epoch-making' and have been said to 'stand quite alone in modern fiction.' No doubt the hop-field will now be exploited by other writers, until in time it will become as hackneyed ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, March 25, 1914 • Various
... de Thorigny busied themselves only with their own concerns. Three of them were portresses, and the fourth was a rag-picker with her basket on ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... with the oblong, entire leaves, paler below than above. But thousands of fruit sellers and housekeepers depend on the sweet blueberries (with a pleasant acid flavor) as a market staple. In July and August, even in early September, the berries arrive in the cities. One picker in New Jersey claims to have filled an entire crate with the ...
— Wild Flowers, An Aid to Knowledge of Our Wild Flowers and - Their Insect Visitors - - Title: Nature's Garden • Neltje Blanchan
... some outdoor games, and a good one to play is "Daisy in the Dell." For this the children form in a circle, joining hands, and one is chosen to be daisy-picker. The daisy-picker runs around the outside of ...
— Entertaining Made Easy • Emily Rose Burt
... are found in the rag-picker's sweepings," growled a General of Division, who was the most terrible martinet in the whole of the French service, but who loved "my children of hell," as he was wont to term his men, with a great love, and who ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]
... I make it 'Spades,'" said the digger, bearded to the eyes; his tangled thatch of black hair hiding his forehead, and his clothes such as would have hardly tempted a rag-picker. ...
— The Tale of Timber Town • Alfred Grace
... and the doctors tried everything, and charged her over two hundred dollars, and never did her any good, and one day an Indian doctor came along and picked some burdock leaves and fixed a poultice for her, and in a week she went to a hop-picker's dance, and was as kitteny as anybody, and the Indian doctor only charged her a quarter. Jim was for going out for burdock leaves at once, for me, but the horse doctor told him I didn't have no milk sickness. He said all the milk soldiers got was condensed milk, and mighty ...
— How Private George W. Peck Put Down The Rebellion - or, The Funny Experiences of a Raw Recruit - 1887 • George W. Peck
... but we'll get the other two out during the night. You can take that bar out and work with it, while I use my own picker at the other. You see, the stone is soft, and by grinding it you soon make a groove along which you can slip the bar. It will be mighty queer if we can't clear a road ...
— The Refugees • Arthur Conan Doyle
... wants a pocket-knife full of all kinds of tools, he had best order a very light one of 2 3/4 inches long, in a tortoise-shell handle, without the usual turnscrew at the end. It should have a light "picker" to shut over its back; this will act as a strike-light, and a file also, if its under surface be properly roughened. Underneath the picker, there should be a small triangular borer, for making holes in leather, and a gimlet. The front of the knife should contain a long, narrow ...
— The Art of Travel - Shifts and Contrivances Available in Wild Countries • Francis Galton
... o' trades. Fisherman, fruit picker, fightin' range fires, vineyards, car washer. Anything. You name it. Been out of work for a long time now, though. Goin' on five months. These here are hard times, no matter what ...
— The Perfectionists • Arnold Castle
... a quill blower. Brother Jim would cut fishin' canes and plat 'em together—they called 'em a pack—five in a row, just like my fingers. Anybody that knowed how could sure make music on 'em. Tom Rollins, that was my baby uncle, he was a banjo picker. ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States - Volume II. Arkansas Narratives. Part I • Work Projects Administration
... to the crown of his ugly head, With an extra curse on the moke he rode and the cur at his heels that ran, Till the Jackaroo from his horse got down and he went for the drover-man; With the station-hand for his picker-up, though the sheep ran loose the while, They battled it out on the saltbush plain in ...
— The Man from Snowy River • Andrew Barton 'Banjo' Paterson
... thumping, a cheese-fancier, like a melon-picker, can tell if a Cheddar is rich, ripe and ready for the Rabbit. When you hear your dealer say, "It's six months old or ...
— The Complete Book of Cheese • Robert Carlton Brown
... their father was a stone-picker, and while he lived, they did very well, and went to school; but since he died, their mother had been ill, and had bled at the lungs, and was not ...
— The Nest in the Honeysuckles, and other Stories • Various
... I unlocked the door of the stuffy little cabin and called the old rag-picker. He came shuffling along with his head bent, but raising his eyes as he approached me, he threw up his hands ...
— Vendetta - A Story of One Forgotten • Marie Corelli
... China and the East Indies a common custom prevails of planting tea bushes about four feet apart, each way, and they are pruned down to a height varying from three to six feet, to bring the topmost leaves within reach of the picker. In both named countries, a first crop of tea leaves may be gathered from the plant at three years from the seed, but a full crop is not expected until the plant is about six years old. "A Chinese plantation ...
— Tea Leaves • Francis Leggett & Co.
... and enormous red whiskers. Notwithstanding his terrible surname his features expressed rather brutal hardihood and unconquerable boldness, than ferocity. In his childhood he had strolled about with an old rag and bone picker, who almost knocked the life out of him. He had never known his parents. His first employment was to help knockers cut horses' throats at Montfaucon till cutting and slashing became a rage with him and he was turned out ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VIII • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... players, especially with boys, is that called "holders" or "hand holders." When a group of boys decides to play a game, one suddenly shouts, "Picker up!" picks up a pebble and hands it to another boy. The one who picks it up is called the stone picker, and is "out" to start with; that is, he does not have to take part in the guessing of hands ...
— Games for the Playground, Home, School and Gymnasium • Jessie H. Bancroft
... Melodious music makes many melancholy mice merry. Ha! ha! That's nearly as good as the jingle Robert Giant used to sing about 'Picker ...
— Grand-Daddy Whiskers, M.D. • Nellie M. Leonard
... centuries contemptuously styled the Dwarf-nation, and always despised as a mere imitator and brain-picker of Chinese wisdom, now swims definitively into the ken of the Manchu court. The Formosan imbroglio had been forgotten as soon as it was over, and the recent rapid progress of Japan on Western lines towards ...
— China and the Manchus • Herbert A. Giles
... extremely fine quality, comes into the picker building in great bales from our Southern sea-coast and from Egypt. It is fed into the first of a series of cleaners, from the last of which it issues in a long, flat sheet, to go through the processes of carding, combing, drawing, and making into roving. The carding product consists of a very delicate ...
— Making Both Ends Meet • Sue Ainslie Clark and Edith Wyatt
... the moment of leaving he turned round and let fall a few more words. We will not gather them up. History has no rag-picker's basket. ...
— The History of a Crime - The Testimony of an Eye-Witness • Victor Hugo
... activities of our new Divisional Commander, Major-General W. Thwaites, R.A., who made it a practice of frequently visiting transport lines at early morning stables. Torrance with his ready wit at once dubbed him "The Mushroom Picker," an epithet which we were told gave him much pleasure when it reached his ears, but did not have the least effect upon his early ...
— The Sherwood Foresters in the Great War 1914 - 1919 - History of the 1/8th Battalion • W.C.C. Weetman
... transparent as glass. Mother had more of the stuff of poetry in her soul, and a deeper, if more obscure, background to her nature. That which makes a man a hunter or a fisherman simply sent her forth in quest of wild berries. What a berry-picker she was! How she would work to get the churning out of the way so she could go out to the berry lot! It seemed to heal and refresh her to go forth in the hill meadows for strawberries, or in the old bushy bark-peelings for raspberries. The last work she did in the world was to gather a pail ...
— Our Friend John Burroughs • Clara Barrus
... her mother—energy and an ever-present determination to get ahead. Sometimes she caught enough fish to sell a few. Sometimes she carried rabbits into the town for sale. In blackberry season she was an indefatigable picker. She went in for chickens and had steady customers in Louisville for her guaranteed eggs. School was looked upon as part of the business of getting ahead. Nothing in the way of weather daunted her. She went through the high school ...
— The Comings of Cousin Ann • Emma Speed Sampson |
