"Handful" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... I got one that was almost as large as a common hickory-nut, and six more of the size of the cherry-sized pearls. In addition to these, I got in all, one hundred and eighty-seven of the size of peas, besides a large handful of the seed pearl. I afterwards ascertained, that the pearls I had thus obtained were worth in the market about eighteen hundred dollars; as they were far more remarkable for their ...
— Afloat And Ashore • James Fenimore Cooper
... aboard the prize just cocked its nose up, as the ship lurched, and let fly a round 'un and a grist of grape, right into our faces. I see'd it coming and sung out 'scaldings;' and 'twas well I did. We all ducked in time, and the round 'un cleared every thing, but a handful of the marbles are planted in the head of the mast, making the spar look like a plum-pudding, or a fellow ...
— The Two Admirals • J. Fenimore Cooper
... manufactures and population! Surely, the one set of Hebraisers have [248] to learn that their psalm-verse was composed at the resettlement of Jerusalem after the Captivity, when the Jews of Jerusalem were a handful, an undermanned garrison, and every child was a blessing; and that the word of God, or the voice of the divine order of things, declares the possession of a great many children to be a blessing only when it really is so! And the other set of Hebraisers, have they not ...
— Culture and Anarchy • Matthew Arnold
... polished brass one with a smooth, turned handle, like those you see in Colonial museums, but a common iron pan, fastened to a hickory sapling; and she went as fast as she could, without running—for girls never ran "before folks" in those days—over to the nearest neighbor, to "borrow a handful of fire." ...
— Hillsboro People • Dorothy Canfield
... space. They were thickest around a little grilled window, behind which stood a boy who seemed to know them all. Some he dismissed with a "Come in tomorrow." Others he talked with at length, and took their cards. When he had a handful ...
— Writing for Vaudeville • Brett Page
... every variety of tulip and hyacinth, through air made sweet and heavy by these flowers. Just outside Haarlem the road passes the tiniest deer park that ever I saw—with a great house, great trees, a lawn and a handful of deer all packed as close as they can be. Now and then one sees a stork's nest high on ...
— A Wanderer in Holland • E. V. Lucas
... And will you give me a handful of hard peas after breakfast, Aunt Janet? I want to put ...
— The Story Girl • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... two inches," he muttered, stooping down and groping with his fingers in the wet muck. The blades of last year's grass had been burned away, but he managed to gather up and tear away a handful of the roots. ...
— A Daughter of the Snows • Jack London
... at this," proceeded Jimmy, grasping a handful of superfluous tissue around the boy's ribs. "All that ought to come off. I'll tell you what I'll do. I'll buy a pair of flannel trousers and a sweater and some sneakers, and I'll take him for a run up Riverside ...
— Piccadilly Jim • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... Hopalong dug up a handful and threw one on the counter, lighting another: "Yu light a Cortez panatella with me," he said, pocketing the remainder. "That's five simoleons she ...
— Hopalong Cassidy's Rustler Round-Up - Bar-20 • Clarence Edward Mulford
... all the weight of constituted authority, reaching, if need be, to the Federal Government at Washington. Opposed to them was lawlessness. Lawlessness had occasionally become dignified revolution, to be sure, but only when a race took its stand on a great issue; never when a handful espoused a local quarrel. Civil war it might be; but civil war, the wise politicians argued, must spread to become effective; and how could a civil war based on the shooting of an obscure editor in a three-year-old frontier town spread anywhere? Especially such an editor as James ...
— The Gray Dawn • Stewart Edward White
... slowly. We were on the southeastern slope of the mountain, and the sun was still staring at us from a cloudless sky. Suddenly we were in the shadow as we worked around a spur of rock. Muir looked up, startled. Then he jammed home his last handful of plants, and hastened up to where ...
— Alaska Days with John Muir • Samual Hall Young
... from the garden a handful of flowers and, tapping gently at the sick man's door, handed them to the nurse, who, giving him a more hopeful word concerning the patient, would send him with light heart downstairs to his mother to report the good news. One morning the ...
— The Mystery of Monastery Farm • H. R. Naylor
... cultivate from the moment our minds begin to coordinate. It's like building a dam across our hidden river of tendency; and a hit or miss sort of structure it is, too. In one man the current of this tendency may be like a trickling stream, and a handful of materials are enough to keep it in check. In another, it may be a raging torrent, and he may slave night and day, gathering stone and sand, and sealing them with his very blood. But suppose in the end the torrent gets away from ...
— Sunlight Patch • Credo Fitch Harris
... chance for faro- bank. Dan plays but little; usual, he merely picks up his kyards, cusses a lot, an' passes out. Now an' then, when it's his ante, or Cherokee stays out for the looks of the thing, Dan goes to the front an' sweetens Ellis for a handful of chips. ...
— Wolfville Days • Alfred Henry Lewis
... out. [He snatches the goblet and kicks the Sergeant out, not maliciously but from habit, indeed not noticing that he does it.] Darling, have some diamonds. Have a fistful. [He takes up a handful and lets them slip back through his fingers into the goblet, which he ...
— Great Catherine • George Bernard Shaw
... men often act very conscientiously. One day, an Indian solicited a little tobacco of a white man, to fill his pipe. Having some loose in his pocket, the white man gave him a handful. The next day the Indian returned in search of the man who had given ...
— History, Manners, and Customs of the North American Indians • George Mogridge
... past, a handful of photons deep in the interior of Sol began their random journey to the photosphere. They had been born as ultrahard gamma radiation, and they were positively bursting with energy, attempting to push their ...
— Out Like a Light • Gordon Randall Garrett
... attended to on behalf of his firm. He was aware, too, that he had felt a certain amount of contempt for its poverty, its quixotic devotion to lost causes and vanished ideals, and a certain disgusted impatience with a people who persistently lagged behind in the march of progress, and permitted a handful of upstart, blatant, self-seeking demagogues to misrepresent them, in Congress and before the country, by intemperate language and persistent hostility to a humble but large and important part of their own constituency. But he ...
— The Colonel's Dream • Charles W. Chesnutt
... they do not carp at our imperfections—and occasionally they get hit by the Pharisees just as we do, being rather whiter than we and therefore offering a more tempting mark for a jagged stone or a handful of pious mud. You may know the Pharisee by his intimate knowledge of the sins he ...
— Adam Johnstone's Son • F. Marion Crawford
... chartered libertines of the place, with an unlimited stock of good jokes and stories, but seldom of any practical use. On one occasion, however, when everything possible and impossible under the sun was being carbonized for lamp filaments, he allowed a handful of his bushy red beard to be taken for the purpose; and his laugh was the loudest when the Edison-Mackenzie hair lamps were brought up to incandescence—their richness in red rays being slyly attributed to the nature of the filamentary material! Oddly enough, a few years later, ...
— Edison, His Life and Inventions • Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin
... hearers, of which I myself was an instance.' He happened to be present at a sermon which, he perceived, was to finish with a collection for an object which had not his approbation. 'I silently resolved he should get nothing from me. I had in my pocket a handful of copper money, three or four silver dollars, and five pistoles in gold. As he proceeded I began to soften, and concluded to give the copper. Another stroke of his oratory made me ashamed of that, and determined me to give the silver; and he finished ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell
... the man demanded his pay and, without waiting to count out the exact amount, the woman thrust a handful of bank-notes into his outstretched hand. A single glance at them convinced the fellow that he had been more than well paid. Then he assisted her up the ladder, holding his skiff close to the ship's side against the chance that this profitable passenger might ...
— The Beasts of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... precipice below our feet appear the solemn, roofless remains of one of the first Cistercian monasteries established in this country. There is nothing to disturb the peace that broods here, for the village consists of a mere handful of old and picturesque cottages, and we might stay on the terrace for hours, and, beyond the distant shouts of a few children at play and the crowing of some cocks, hear nothing but the hum of insects and the singing of birds. We take a steep path through the wood which leads ...
— Yorkshire—Coast & Moorland Scenes • Gordon Home
... the advancing enemy. Then discussion took place as to the advisability of making a sortie against the foe. It was suggested that five hundred men would be sufficient, but at the mention of this number King Hendrick, the Indian leader, interposed. What, indeed, could such a paltry handful do in the face ...
— The War Chief of the Six Nations - A Chronicle of Joseph Brant - Volume 16 (of 32) in the series Chronicles of Canada • Louis Aubrey Wood
... decay," he said, raising his voice. "When a race begins to brood on the beautiful—so-called—it is a sign of rot, of getting ready to fall from the tree. Take the Jews—those marvellous old fellows—who were never more than a handful, yet have imposed the rule of their ideas and their gods upon us for fifteen hundred years. Why? They were forbidden by their most fundamental law to make sculptures or pictures. That was at a time when the Egyptians, when the Assyrians, and other Semites, were running ...
— The Damnation of Theron Ware • Harold Frederic
... cuca, as called by the natives. This is a shrub which grows to the height of a man. The leaves when gathered are dried in the sun, and, being mixed with a little lime, form a preparation for chewing, much like the betel-leaf of the East.31 With a small supply of this cuca in his pouch, and a handful of roasted maize, the Peruvian Indian of our time performs his wearisome journeys, day ,after day, without fatigue, or, at least, without complaint. Even food the most invigorating is less grateful to him than his loved narcotic. Under the Incas, it is said to have been ...
— History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William Hickling Prescott
... packs, and undoing one of them, I extracted a handful of beads. 'Now,' I said, 'a gift for a ...
— Maiwa's Revenge - The War of the Little Hand • H. Rider Haggard
... Who is it?" cried the rag-picker from within, in his hoarse voice, that was half whisper, starting nervously, and sweeping a handful of ...
— McTeague • Frank Norris
... his assistant, "so Tray was on the spot. Humph!" Bart, having brushed himself, moved behind the counter and took up what Hokar had left. "Why, it's brown sugar!" he exclaimed, touching it with his tongue, "coarse brown sugar—a handful." He stretched out his palm heaped with the sugar to his master. "What do that furrein pusson mean ...
— The Opal Serpent • Fergus Hume
... quart of milk or cream. The yoke only, of sixteen eggs. Six ounces of powdered white sugar. A large handful of peach-leaves or half an ounce of peach kernels or bitter almonds, broken in pieces. A ...
— Seventy-Five Receipts for Pastry Cakes, and Sweetmeats • Miss Leslie
... that you was not fetched to town on last Tuesday, which was as hot as if Phaeton had once more gotten into his papa's curricle and driven it along the lower road; but the old king has resumed the reins again, and does not allow us a handful more of beams than come to our northern share. I am glad, too, that I was not summoned also to the Fitzroyal arrangement: it was better to be singed here, than exposed between two such fiery furnaces as Lady Southampton and my niece Keppel. ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole
... the pins in tighter! The back is too wide— take a great handful out of the middle seam. Why does it stick out like that at the waist, just where it ought to go in? Oh, the fulness, of course, I forgot that. Leave that alone then, and go on to the neck. Put pins in all round where the band ought ...
— More About Peggy • Mrs G. de Horne Vaizey
... A handful of brain holds me: I consume So much that all the books the world contains, Cannot allay my furious famine-pains:— What feasts were mine! Yet hunger is my doom. With one world Aristarchus fed my greed; This finished, others ...
— Sonnets • Michael Angelo Buonarroti & Tommaso Campanella
... maintain the authority of the United States over the Red Indians of America, as the formation of roads through the wilderness. The rulers of Great Britain entertain the opinion that when they have once seized upon a distant country, and thrown into it a handful of troops and a few of their importunate friends, with the title of government officers, they have done all that is required of them. They wait with resignation for any account that may be brought of the ...
— The Bushman - Life in a New Country • Edward Wilson Landor
... spirit of reform both in and out of parliament advanced. Penryn and East Retford were rotten boroughs, with only a handful of constituents. The reformers demanded the transfer of the representation from two such insignificant and corrupt places to Manchester and Birmingham. The duke would not consent to the enfranchisement of the two great centres of manufactures; he held fast ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... what should be the first duty, and stepping toward the fire he threw a handful of small trash on the coals. Immediately a flame sprang up, and the camp was ...
— Chums of the Camp Fire • Lawrence J. Leslie
... first, suddenly stooped down and took up a handful of sand, which was so hot, fine, and dry that it began to trickle between his fingers like that in the kitchen egg-boiler at home, as he trotted softly to the edge of the wharf and looked over, to find exactly what he expected: the boat made fast to one of the cross timbers, with a big ...
— Steve Young • George Manville Fenn
... the expression more justified—removed and sifted two cubic yards at least of sandy soil with our fingers, we find ourselves in possession of two larvae. If I had not wanted any, I should have turned them up by the handful. But my poor and costly harvest is sufficient for the moment. To-morrow I will send more vigorous arms to ...
— More Hunting Wasps • J. Henri Fabre
... when the king passed through their country, to bring him gifts according to their means. This burthen may have been felt sensibly by the rich, but it pressed very lightly on the poor, who, if they could not afford an ox or a sheep, might bring a little milk or cheese, a few dates, or a handful of wild fruit. On the other hand, the king was bound, whenever he visited Pasargadae, to present to each Persian woman who appeared before him a sum equal to twenty Attic drachmas, or about sixteen shillings of our money. This custom commemorated the service rendered ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 5. (of 7): Persia • George Rawlinson
... threw an arm past the table's single central support and grasped a handful of silk chiffon and ...
— New Faces • Myra Kelly
... Clarty, dirty. Clash, an idle tale; gossip. Clash, to tattle. Clatter, noise, tattle, talk, disputation, babble. Clatter, to make a noise by striking; to babble; to prattle. Claught, clutched, seized. Claughtin, clutching, grasping. Claut, a clutch, a handful. Claut, to scrape. Claver, clover. Clavers, gossip, nonsense. Claw, a scratch, a blow. Claw, to scratch, to strike. Clay-cauld, clay-cold. Claymore, a two-handed Highland sword. Cleckin, a brood. Cleed, to clothe. Cleek, to snatch. Cleekit, ...
— Poems And Songs Of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... midnight, I calculated, when I felt that I must stop to rest and take some food. I sat down on what I took to be a mound of earth covered with snow. I ate a handful of rice and a little biscuit, and chewed a piece of wolf's flesh, and felt somewhat revived. I should have liked to have gone to sleep, but I dared not, even for a moment. It would have been, had I given way to the feeling, the sleep of death. I scarcely ...
— Dick Onslow - Among the Redskins • W.H.G. Kingston
... coffee, a handful of salt, and a lemon. There's nothing better for bringing a drunken ...
— The Count's Millions - Volume 1 (of 2) • Emile Gaboriau
... belongs, are traced through their varying phases, as one by one the dire plague assails them, and Verney, the only man who recovers from the disease, becomes the leader of the remnant of the English nation. This small handful of humanity leaves England, and wanders through France on its way to the favoured southern countries where human aid, now so scarce, was less needed. On this journey Mrs. Shelley avails herself of reminiscences of her ...
— Mrs. Shelley • Lucy M. Rossetti
... French sail, in show so stout Bore down on the Arethusa. The famed Belle Poule straight ahead did lie, The Arethusa seemed to fly, Not a sheet, or a tack, Or a brace, did she slack; Though the Frenchman laughed and thought it stuff, But they knew not the handful of men, how tough, On ...
— Lyra Heroica - A Book of Verse for Boys • Various
... farmhouse lived a young married couple; they loved each other dearly, were industrious and active, and everything in their home looked very nice. On Sundays the young wife came down early, plucked a handful of the most beautiful roses, and put them into a glass of water, which ...
— Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen
... made it too strong for me. In all this night I have only torn away a handful of planks. The walls stand! The towers stand! They have chained my flood, and my river is not free any more. Heavenly Ones, take this yoke away! Give me clear water between bank and bank! It is I, Mother Gunga, that speak. The Justice of the Gods! Deal ...
— Kipling Stories and Poems Every Child Should Know, Book II • Rudyard Kipling
... As he advocated ten-grain doses of calomel by way of preliminary cathartic, the American missionaries stationed on the River have adopted a treatment still more "severe"—quinine till deafness ensues, and half a handful of mercury, often continued till a passage opens through the palate, placing mouth and nose in directer communication. Dr. Ford also recommends during the invasion or period of chills external friction of mustard or of fresh red pepper either in tincture or in powder, a good alleviator always ...
— Two Trips to Gorilla Land and the Cataracts of the Congo Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... of clothing, save a chaplet of leaves, which they twist from the vines near at hand; then crouching at the edge of the water, they toss some personal ornament, such as a brass ear-ring or a bright bead, far out into mid-stream, and at the same instant scoop up a handful of the water; gazing earnestly into the few drops which they hold in their palm, they invoke the spirits of the river to protect them, and implore permission to enter the new territory. Not until this rite is completed would they dare to bathe in ...
— Folk-lore in Borneo - A Sketch • William Henry Furness
... next day Aunt Esther laid a train of corn from the roots of the trees to the bow-window, and then from the bow-window to her work-basket, which stood on the floor beside her; and then she put quite a handful of corn in the work-basket, and sat down by it, and seemed intent on her sewing. Very soon, creep, creep, creep, came Tit-bit and Frisky to the window, and then into the room, just as sly and as still as could be, and ...
— Queer Little Folks • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... as she herself best knew, with occasional well-begrudged assistance from the parish. Her chief resource was no doubt begging from house to house for the handful of oatmeal which was the recognized, and, in the court of custom-taught conscience, the legalized dole upon which every beggar had a claim; and if she picked up at the same time a chicken, or a boy's rabbit, or any other stray luxury, she was only following the general rule of society, ...
— Robert Falconer • George MacDonald
... mood except that of the sky and of its winds. It is the cloud that, holding the sun's rays in a sheaf as a giant holds a handful of spears, strikes the horizon, touches the extreme edge with a delicate revelation of light, or suddenly puts it out and makes the ...
— Essays • Alice Meynell
... which each had made for his refreshment was simple, but the meal of the Saracen was abstemious. A handful of dates and a morsel of coarse barley-bread sufficed to relieve the hunger of the latter, whose education had habituated them to the fare of the desert, although, since their Syrian conquests, the Arabian simplicity of life frequently gave place to the most unbounded ...
— The Talisman • Sir Walter Scott
... his heart, these lonely, isolated people of another age, living amid the past in their ancient houses high up on the cliffs; a little handful of lonely, primitive children, existing afar; knowing nothing of God and little of man; with their strange, simple ways, and their weird appearance. They had come to him in visions as he prayed, and always with a weight upon his soul as of ...
— The Man of the Desert • Grace Livingston Hill
... enough problems in reconciling my own conscience to conserving the interests of my clients, as I must, in honor, do? No; no! Don't expect me to judge, in any matter of greater responsibilities. I'm answerable to a small handful of people. You—your Patriot is answerable to a million. Everything you print, everything you withhold, may have incalculable influence on the minds of men. You can corrupt or enlighten them with a word. Think of it! Under ...
— Success - A Novel • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... d'Acloque, an officer of the National Guard, brought military experience to aid their valor, and made such arrangements as the time and character of the building rendered practicable to keep the rioters at bay. But the utmost bravery of such a handful of men, for they were no more, and even the more solid resistance of iron gates and barriers, were unavailing against the thousands that assailed them. Exasperated at finding the gates closed against them, the rioters began to beat upon them with sledge-hammers. Presently they were ...
— The Life of Marie Antoinette, Queen of France • Charles Duke Yonge
... we throw about it is simply repairing the mechanical waste and renewing the chemical energy that will enable us to go on a little while and a little way farther); take out the time spent in sleep—in practical nonentity—and the remainder is a pitiful handful of years, so few, that to number them seems like a ...
— Christ, Christianity and the Bible • I. M. Haldeman
... which had failed through the depredations of the rats? At about three Simile and I went down to put in some pumpkin seeds among the corn, and, to my disgust, I saw why the first lot of corn had failed. Ben's idea of planting was to scrape a couple of inches off the ground, drop in a handful of corn, and then kick a few leaves over the grains. It is really wonderful that any at all ...
— The Life of Mrs. Robert Louis Stevenson • Nellie Van de Grift Sanchez
... same way at Jena. Their lines tried fire at command against our skirmishers. You might as well fire on a handful ...
— Battle Studies • Colonel Charles-Jean-Jacques-Joseph Ardant du Picq
... I was thinking of the old school days—of the handful of days in the midst of thousands that had left a gleam; of the tens of thousands of young women now teaching in America without the gleam; beginning to teach at the most distracted period of their lives, when all Nature is drawing them toward ...
— Child and Country - A Book of the Younger Generation • Will Levington Comfort
... its greeting to the Intercollegiate Menorah Association as one of the very earliest Menorah Societies. It was really originated in 1903, when a handful of students in the University found it desirable to satisfy certain longings by taking up the study of Jewish history and literature. Some of us had found that it was of little avail to cry over the ashes of the past, ...
— The Menorah Journal, Volume 1, 1915 • Various
... a given stage of its development even to conceive the possibility of such communities as may come into existence under widely different conditions. The simple, communistic savage, limited in his outlook, thinks in terms of small numbers. A handful of individuals enjoy membership in his group; he recognizes certain relations, more or less loose, to other groups, with which his group comes into contact; beyond is the stranger, the natural enemy, upon whom he has no claim and to whom ...
— A Handbook of Ethical Theory • George Stuart Fullerton
... few know," said Laloi despairingly. "A handful of seeing minds, tens of millions of ignorant ones. Not ...
— Reluctant Genius • Henry Slesar
... the making of history became a habit, a habit so inveterate that not even death itself could break him of it. He only lived to be thirty-two; but he made vast quantities of history in that meager handful of years. 'His,' says Sir James Stephen, 'is the one heroic name which adorns the annals of the English church from the days of Elizabeth to our own.' And Dr. George Smith, his biographer, boasts that Martyn's life constitutes itself the priceless and perpetual heritage of all English-speaking ...
— A Handful of Stars - Texts That Have Moved Great Minds • Frank W. Boreham
... runabout, the girl drove across a kind of natural meadow to a hillside not far distant, gathered a double handful of wild flowers, and turned homeward again. The stage was still there when she came in sight of the group ...
— Brand Blotters • William MacLeod Raine
... knightly courtesy and honour, the young man in the service of a great feudal lady is gradually taught dissimulation, lying, intrigue; is initiated by the woman who looms above him like a saint into all the foulness of adultery. Adultery; a very ugly word, which must strike almost like a handful of mud in the face whosoever has approached this subject of mediaeval love in admiration of its strange delicacy and enthusiasm. Yet it is a word which must be spoken, for in it is the explanation of the whole origin and character of this passion which burst into song in the early Middle ...
— Euphorion - Being Studies of the Antique and the Mediaeval in the - Renaissance - Vol. II • Vernon Lee
... American force was to advance through the country bordering on Lake Champlain so that the two armies might unite before Montreal. From the first the American plans went ill. The more easterly force met with ignominious defeat by a handful of French Canadians at Chateauguay. Wilkinson did little better. British troops, among them Nairne's regiment, were hurried down the river under Colonel Morrison to harass, if possible, Wilkinson's rear and to fire upon his 300 boats from the points of vantage on the shore. ...
— A Canadian Manor and Its Seigneurs - The Story of a Hundred Years, 1761-1861 • George M. Wrong
... change of course decided them, and they made tracks for the glen, bearing with them many rich gifts. An empty meat tin and a few nails does not sound a very great reward for their enforced services, and yet they would have been far less pleased with a handful of sovereigns; they could put these to no use whatever, whereas the tins will make small "coolimans," and the nails, set in spinifex-gum on the end of a waddy, will find their way into ...
— Spinifex and Sand - Five Years' Pioneering and Exploration in Western Australia • David W Carnegie
... at all, but Tim does, and Tim wants him," said Cameron, beginning to push his way through the crowd towards the vociferating Haley, who appeared to be on the point of backing up some of his statements with money, for he was flourishing a handful of bills in the face of the young man Sam, who apparently was quite willing to accommodate ...
— Corporal Cameron • Ralph Connor
... father, 'I'm glad you were there, what am I in your debt?' 'Nothing, Mr. Chapman. I am as pleased as you are, and you are quite welcome to what I have done,' was my reply. He then said, 'Come in here and have something to drink,' when we went to the Minerva Hotel. Mr. Chapman pulled a handful of sovereigns from his purse and said, 'Now do take something for saving my boy,' but I again refused, though I believe to this day he would gladly have given me L10 if I would have taken that sum; but I never did take anything from anyone whom I have rescued, though often urged ...
— The Hero of the Humber - or the History of the Late Mr. John Ellerthorpe • Henry Woodcock
... occupation of which she never tired. Never, since her days on the hill-slope above Naples, had she been able to indulge her passionate love for flowers; and to the girl who had been wont to regard sixpence spent on a branch of golden mimosa, or a handful of the big pink carnations which seem indigenous to the London streets, as something of an extravagance, the delight of filling bowls and vases with unlimited supplies of the loveliest, freshest flowers could ...
— The Making of a Soul • Kathlyn Rhodes
... Akakiyevich, trying to collect his small handful of wits, and conscious at the same time that he was perspiring terribly, "I, your excellency, presumed to trouble you because secretaries—are ...
— Best Russian Short Stories • Various
... urging. A moment later he had kissed his mother good-bye, helped himself to a handful of sugar cookies from her blue crockery jar, and was whistling down the dusty road, feeling strangely anxious for some adventures; adventures as heroic as his father often related before the fire on winter evenings. His mother might have thrown up her hands in despair had she seen the ...
— The New Land - Stories of Jews Who Had a Part in the Making of Our Country • Elma Ehrlich Levinger
... 2 Poor querulous handful! was't for this I taught thee all that is? Unbowelled nature, showed thee her recruits, And change of suits, And how of death we make A mere mistake; For no thing can-to nothing fall, but still Incorporates ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... the full as well preserved. This truth is speedily understood even by the least desirable brand of foreign immigrant. The fugitive from justice reckons his chances considerably better in any other place than the territory of the Riders of the Plains. And all this because of a handful of mounted men ...
— Jan - A Dog and a Romance • A. J. Dawson
... in a part, all the vessels leading to it dilate, and their channels are crowded by swarms of the red and white hurrying to the scene. The major part of the activity of the red cells can be accounted for by the mechanism of the heart and blood-vessels. They are simply thrown there by the handful and the shovelful, as it were, like so many pebbles ...
— Preventable Diseases • Woods Hutchinson
... Any handful of young men in the smallest country-village, with a very few dollars and a little mechanical skill, can put up in any old shed or shoe-shop a few simple articles of machinery, which will, through many a ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 7, Issue 41, March, 1861 • Various
... delighted staccato. "It's just made for what we want. Look—a fireplace!" To be sure, it was nothing more than a gap in the wall. "And these darling windows. We can put a seat way across, all comfy." She promptly saw, in her mind, Susy curled upon it with a beautiful picture book and a handful of cookies. "Oh, let's see the rest. Look, a cunning kitchen. The children can play cooking. And this room—what can we ...
— Red-Robin • Jane Abbott
... mind in emergencies is proverbial among those who know me. I tore open the cupboard in which he kept his linen—seized a handful of his handkerchiefs—gagged him with one of them, and secured his hands with the others. There was now no danger of his alarming the servants. After tying the last knot, ...
— The Lock And Key Library - Classic Mystery And Detective Stories, Modern English • Various
... up the crowd ahead of him as he carried in his grist, and decided that if he waited his turn the country would grow up without him. The miller happened to be tinkering his water-wheel, so the boy got his bags into a dark corner unobserved, and with a handful of mill dust gave his work the finishing touch of ripe old age. I dare say you think he took the man in, but he didn't. 'Bub,' said the miller, 'I used to do ...
— The Henchman • Mark Lee Luther
... will fight," Simon said; "but many other nations, to whom we are but as a handful, have fought bravely, but have succumbed to the might of Rome. It is said that Josephus, and many of the wisest in Jerusalem, were heartily opposed to the tumults against the Romans, and that they only went with the people because they were ...
— For the Temple - A Tale of the Fall of Jerusalem • G. A. Henty
... elecampane root, spikenard root, ginseng root, black cohosh, and skunk cabbage root, of each a good-sized handful. Bruise and cover with spirits or whisky, and let stand ten days; then put all in a suitable vessel, add about four quarts of water and simmer slowly over a fire (but don't boil) for twelve hours, or till reduced to about three pints, ...
— The Ladies Book of Useful Information - Compiled from many sources • Anonymous
... steps went the street musicians, and the whole flock came running down to give a handful of silver, and ask all sorts of questions. Tessa felt so grateful that, without waiting for Tommo, she sang her sweetest little song all alone. It was about a lost lamb, and her heart was in the song; therefore she sang it well, so well that a pretty young lady came down to ...
— Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag • Louisa M. Alcott
... Caesar. 'It is the most brutal and the most pathetic scene that profane history has to record; it was, as Goethe has said, the most senseless deed that ever was done. It was wholly useless, for it did not and could not save Rome from monarchy. The deed was done by a handful of men, who, pursuing a phantom liberty and following the lead of a personal hatred, slew the one man who saw ...
— Helps to Latin Translation at Sight • Edmund Luce
... Letters." In the 'fifties it fell to a native of Ningpo, where I then lived. His good luck was announced to his wife by the magistrate in person, who conducted her to the six gates, at each of which she scattered a handful of rice, as an omen of good fortune. In the 'sixties, when I had removed to Peking, this honor was for the first time conferred on a Manchu, a son of the General Saishanga. His daughter was deemed a fit consort for the ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIV • John Lord
... 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 more frankly than ever yet, for ...
— The Odd Women • George Gissing
... built the overland telegraph line, an enduring monument to his indomitable perseverance. His was but a small party when he started to reach the spot so ardently longed for by his former leader Sturt. Less than a handful of men, three in all, with thirteen horses, left on this eventful trip, a strange company to contrast with the princely cavalcade that a few months later was to leave Melbourne ...
— The History of Australian Exploration from 1788 to 1888 • Ernest Favenc
... the garden-wall, which being opened, proved to be a private entrance into a three-stalled stable; in one of which was a horse, that whinnied on their entrance. 'Hush, hush!' cried the old man, and presently seconded his exhortations to silence by throwing a handful of corn into the manger, and the horse soon converted his acknowledgement of their presence into the usual sound of munching ...
— Redgauntlet • Sir Walter Scott
... centuries there was now nothing to be seen but a few handfuls of smoking white powder. The acid had utterly destroyed the body, and even in places eaten into the stone. Ayesha stooped down, and, taking a handful of this powder in her grasp, threw it into the air, saying at the same time, in ...
— She • H. Rider Haggard
... your friendship." After many other compliments, the Chancellor asked me, with much familiarity, when my presentation was to take place, and why it had not yet occurred. I replied, that the delay arose from the intrigues of Choiseul, and the king shrunk from the discontent of a handful of courtiers. "I am sorry for it," said M. de Maupeou; "in the first place, madame, because of the interest I take in you, and also because for his majesty, it would be a means of striking terror into the opposing party. You know, ...
— "Written by Herself" • Baron Etienne Leon Lamothe-Langon
... round to seek his cavalry. From the head of every street eager columns of infantry were pouring, and, deploying without waiting orders, were pushing hastily across the fields. But not a squadron was in sight. Ashby, with the handful of men that still remained with him, had ridden to Berryville, expecting that the enemy would attempt to escape by Snicker's Gap. Steuart, with the two regiments that had done such service at Front Royal, was with Ewell and Trimble; ...
— Stonewall Jackson And The American Civil War • G. F. R. Henderson
... she was speedily pursued by the Catalan militia, embodied under the command of their ancient leader Roger, count of Pallas, and eager to regain the prize which they had so inadvertently lost. The city was quickly entered, but the queen, with her handful of followers, had retreated to a tower belonging to the principal church in the place, which, as was very frequent in Spain, in those wild times, was so strongly fortified as to be capable of maintaining a formidable resistance. To oppose this, a wooden ...
— History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella V1 • William H. Prescott
... discourse in the Greek tongue:—"What man reposes buried under this stone? What hollow voice issues from this tomb? What is this sepulchre, from whence will spring the happiness of Greece? But what am I saying? Is it not the tomb of Marco Botzaris, who has been dead some months, and who, with a handful of brave men, precipitated himself upon the numerous ranks of the most formidable enemies of Greece? How dare I approach the sacred place where he reposes—I, who neither possess his heroism nor his virtues? However, in touching this tomb, I hope that its emanations will always ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 12, No. 336 Saturday, October 18, 1828 • Various
... fellow, hardly yet on the wrong side of thirty, dressed in loose-fitting tweed coat and corduroys. A row of bee-hives stood along his side of the party wall, and he had taken the farthest one, which was empty, off its stand, and was rubbing it on the inside with a handful of elder-flower buds, by way of preparation for a new swarm. Even from my bed-room window I remarked, as he turned his head occasionally, that he was singularly handsome. His movements were those of a lazy man in a hurry, though there seemed no reason for hurry in his task. But ...
— Noughts and Crosses • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... greatly staggered at this opposition, as he imagined that he had surmounted all difficulties. He, however, did his endeavours to force the pass, but being able to bring up only twelve men in front at a time, and the protestants being secured by a breastwork, he found he should be baffled by the handful of men ...
— Fox's Book of Martyrs - Or A History of the Lives, Sufferings, and Triumphant - Deaths of the Primitive Protestant Martyrs • John Fox
... he was no longer a handful. He was a lapful, and then some. Somewhere near twenty-five pounds, as near as we could judge by holding him on the bathroom scales for the fraction of a second. And much too lively for any lap. Being cuddled wasn't his strong point. Hardly. He'd ...
— Torchy As A Pa • Sewell Ford
... said Tom, who had picked up a handful of moss, and was rubbing one hand. "I—it's warm and sticky, ...
— Dick o' the Fens - A Tale of the Great East Swamp • George Manville Fenn
... restlessly on his chair, poked the logs to a brighter blaze, and threw on a handful of pine chips from a basket by his side before he ...
— Dawn • H. Rider Haggard
... officinalis. HEDGE-HYSSOP. Herb. E. D.—The leaves have a very bitter disagreeable taste: an infusion of a handful of them when fresh, or a dram when dried, is said to operate strongly as a cathartic. Kramer reports that he has found the root of this plant a medicine similar ...
— The Botanist's Companion, Vol. II • William Salisbury
... time alone can bring this about. He would have the royalists unfurl their banner, go into the elections with a plain declaration of their political creed, and await the progress of events. He cited, as a proof of the wisdom of this policy, the steady advance made by the Republicans after a mere handful of them came into the imperial legislature. They grew from five to thirty, simply because they stood firmly on their own principles, while the majority were disturbed and uncertain. The principle of the hereditary constitutional monarchy, he thought, should be plainly affirmed and presented to ...
— France and the Republic - A Record of Things Seen and Learned in the French Provinces - During the 'Centennial' Year 1889 • William Henry Hurlbert
... haste to the king. He came the same morning from Poitiers; he kneeled down to the king and held up his hands and desired him for God's sake a little to abstain setting forward till he had spoken with him: then he said: 'Sir, ye have here all the flower of your realm against a handful of Englishmen as to regard your company,[2] and, sir, if ye may have them accorded to you without battle, it shall be more profitable and honourable to have them by that manner rather than to adventure ...
— Chronicle and Romance (The Harvard Classics Series) • Jean Froissart, Thomas Malory, Raphael Holinshed
... that, let but a hoof or horn break upon the silence of the night, and an aching throb would be driven to the heart. The husband would look to his weapon and the mother would shudder and weep upon her cradle. Was it the fear of Nat Turner and his deluded drunken handful of followers, which produced such effects? Was it this that induced distant counties where the very name of Southampton was strange to arm and equip for a struggle? No sir, it was the suspicion eternally ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 5, 1920 • Various
... the spoilers are a handful, while the spoiled are the vast majority. Why should it be impossible to convince the ...
— Elder Conklin and Other Stories • Frank Harris
... of their browning stole out to the front door the old man left his bench and came in to get a handful of the hot cakes. Then, just as Belle said he would, he told Georgina all that had happened the night of ...
— Georgina of the Rainbows • Annie Fellows Johnston
... from the handful who were left, and they turned determinedly to face their foes. They did not waste their fire. As the Germans came again into view, the British rifles cracked. Their marksmanship was superb, and rather than face this deadly fire the ...
— The Boy Allies On the Firing Line - Or, Twelve Days Battle Along the Marne • Clair W. Hayes
... she was ready also; her armies were prepared, cannon fodder in uncountable store of shells and cartridges was prepared, and in endless battalions of men, waiting to be discharged in one bull-like rush, to overrun France, and holding the French armies, shattered and dispersed, with a mere handful of her troops, to ...
— Michael • E. F. Benson
... Hunger Moon, the lean gray wolf can hardly bay," quoted Hinpoha, as she threw out a handful of crumbs for the birds. The ground was covered with ice and snow, and the wintry winds whistled through the bare trees in the yard, ruffling up the feathers of the poor little ...
— The Camp Fire Girls at School • Hildegard G. Frey
... a little village. Through this particular county the road was unpaved and muddy, and the car was a sight to behold. The only clean spot was on the windshield, where Bud had reached around once or twice with a handful of waste and cleaned a place to see through. It was raining soddenly, steadily, as though it always had ...
— Cabin Fever • B. M. Bower
... to stay with me forever and ever ... here on the earth," she replied passionately, seizing his hand and drawing him further up the hill. Then she stopped suddenly and gathered a handful of dead leaves, moss, twigs and earth. The exquisite familiar perfume as she held it to his face pierced through him with a singular ...
— The Human Chord • Algernon Blackwood |
