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Windfall   Listen
noun
Windfall  n.  
1.
Anything blown down or off by the wind, as fruit from a tree, or the tree itself, or a portion of a forest prostrated by a violent wind, etc. "They became a windfall upon the sudden."
2.
An unexpected legacy, or other gain. "He had a mighty windfall out of doubt."






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Windfall" Quotes from Famous Books



... darkness. He grumbled at my shillings: he did not know how few I had. Our poverty wore a pretty decent face. My relatives never thought of relieving it, nor I of complaining before them. I don't know how Sampson got a windfall of guineas; but, I remember, he brought me six once; and they were more welcome than any money I ever had in my life. He had been looking into Mr. Miles's crib, as the child lay asleep; and, when the parson went away, I found the money in the baby's little rosy ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray

... Crosset with a request to double the loan when his common sense asserted itself. Poverty was odious, but not shameful, he reflected; ostentation, on the other hand, was vulgar. Would it not be in bad taste to squander this happy windfall upon jewelry ...
— The Auction Block • Rex Beach

... could restore that more effectually than the single-handed capture of so notorious a desperado as Stingaree. The dashing officer was not unnaturally actuated by the sum of three hundred pounds now set upon the outlaw's person, alive or dead. That would be a little windfall for one man, but not much to divide among five or six; on the other hand, and with all his faults, Sub-Inspector Kilbride had courage enough to furnish forth a squadron. He was a black-bearded, high-cheeked ...
— Stingaree • E. W. (Ernest William) Hornung

... is bound to admit, that can come to him, from the reader, as a result on the latter's part of any act of reflexion or discrimination. He may ENJOY this finer tribute—that is another affair, but on condition only of taking it as a gratuity "thrown in," a mere miraculous windfall, the fruit of a tree he may not pretend to have shaken. Against reflexion, against discrimination, in his interest, all earth and air conspire; wherefore it is that, as I say, he must in many a case have ...
— The Portrait of a Lady - Volume 1 (of 2) • Henry James

... Brewster was in the depths of despair that his financial affairs had a windfall. One of the banks in which his money was deposited failed and his balance of over $100,000 was wiped out. Mismanagement was the cause and the collapse came on Friday, the thirteenth day of the month. Needless to say, it destroyed every vestige of the superstition he ...
— Brewster's Millions • George Barr McCutcheon

... at the fresh meat, evidently in high glee, and not caring to consider whence such a windfall had come, so long as they were getting the benefit of it. They occasionally uttered loud snorts—as if to express their gratification—and at intervals the old male one growled as the cub interfered with his eating. The female, on the contrary, as she ...
— The Boy Hunters • Captain Mayne Reid

... browned by the sun from being so much in the open air, his skin would look white enough under the canopy of a bed. The glance, keen as a needle, which the lady threw him, appeared to him more animated than that with which she would have honoured her prayer-book. Upon it he built the hope of a windfall of love, and resolved to push the adventure to the very edge of the petticoat, risking to go still further, not only his lips, which he held of little count, but his two ears and something else besides. He followed into the town the lady, who returned by the Rue des Trois-Pucelles, ...
— Droll Stories, Volume 2 • Honore de Balzac

... been able to render Coleridge a minor service, while at the same moment gratifying a long cherished wish of his own. Mrs. Coleridge was about to return with her children to Keswick, but her husband, not yet master of this L300 windfall, and undoubtedly at his wits' end for money, was arranging for a course of lectures to be delivered at the Royal Institution early in the ensuing year, and could not accompany them. De Quincey offered accordingly to be their escort, and duly conducted them to Wordsworth's ...
— English Men of Letters: Coleridge • H. D. Traill

... frolic and pathos, and inculcates so pure a moral, that we must pronounce him a very fortunate little fellow, who catches these "Tales of Magic," as a windfall from "The ...
— Cat and Dog - Memoirs of Puss and the Captain • Julia Charlotte Maitland

... than local interest. Sammy Craddock had been the man with twenty shillings income. He had worked hard in his youth and had been too shrewd and far-sighted to spend hard. His wife had helped him, and a lucky windfall upon the decease of a parsimonious relative had done the rest. The weekly deposit in the old stocking hidden under the mattress had become a bank deposit, and by the time he was incapacitated from active labor, a decent little income was ready. When the Illsbery Bank stopped payment, not only ...
— That Lass O' Lowrie's - 1877 • Frances Hodgson Burnett

... as might be necessary—just enough to march up rapidly to Fuga, to have a little shooting in some favourable jungles near there, and return again as soon as possible. There was no difficulty, as the jemadar foresaw. The Beluches receive so little pay from their sultan that any windfall like this was naturally welcome; and out of the little garrison five men were readily enlisted; besides these, they supplied four slave-servants, and ...
— What Led To The Discovery of the Source Of The Nile • John Hanning Speke

... that of other black bears, the tracks showed that all stopped to play, romping much as children romp and showing a sociable disposition. It was usually late in November before the black bear denned up for the winter, commonly adapting the shelter beneath some windfall to make a winter home by enlarging and improving it and perhaps by raking in some dead ...
— A Mountain Boyhood • Joe Mills

... the way the men figgered it out," he went on, "though I reckon they're under the mark more'n over it, you'll have forty thousan' dollars. That's quite a windfall, though nothin' to Miss Peggy, here, or me, for that matter. I s'pose you ...
— A Man to His Mate • J. Allan Dunn

... running his eye over the card which a student presented to him. "Disease, slow fever—nervous. Plague on it!" cried the doctor, with an expression of profound satisfaction; "if the attending physician is not mistaken in his diagnostic, it is a most excellent windfall; I have desired a slow nervous fever for a long time, as this is not a malady of the poor. These affections are caused in almost every case by serious perturbations in the social position of the subject; and it cannot be denied that the more the position is elevated, the more profound ...
— Mysteries of Paris, V3 • Eugene Sue

... won't forget it in the town for a long time. Such things happen only once a year or more around dull old Stanhope. To-night we meet to see how many have the money earned for the suits; and I'm glad to say I can cover my needs. You're doubly supplied now, with this windfall." ...
— The Banner Boy Scouts - Or, The Struggle for Leadership • George A. Warren

... exile mounted the fallen tree, dug his claws deep into the bark, stretched himself again and again, yawned prodigiously, and ended the exercise with a big, rasping miaow. At the sound there was a sudden rustling in the bushes behind the windfall. Instantly the catamount sprang, taking the risk of catching a porcupine or a skunk. But whatever it was that made the noise, it had vanished in time; and the rash hunter returned to his perch with ...
— The Watchers of the Trails - A Book of Animal Life • Charles G. D. Roberts

... new, now, and Tom's low condition was a windfall to her. She had him out at daylight every morning, stood him up in the woodshed and drowned him with a deluge of cold water; then she scrubbed him down with a towel like a file, and so brought him to; then she rolled him up in a wet sheet and put him away under blankets till ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... Then, however, we made the astounding discovery, that there was nothing after us, and we both paused to take breath, and, so far as I was concerned, to ascertain, if possible, what had occasioned the race. I learned that my friend, after I left him, had gone into the windfall, and was standing upon the long trunk of a fallen tree, picking berries, when he saw, a few rods from him towards the other end of the log on which he was standing, a great black hand reach up and bend down ...
— Wild Northern Scenes - Sporting Adventures with the Rifle and the Rod • S. H. Hammond

... must not only be frequent and plentiful, but very good. It is a gratifying proof of the rapid influence of civilisation that the daughter of a farm-labourer, accustomed at home to consider bacon a treat and beef a windfall, will, after a month's experience of her London place, decline to eat cold meat of any kind, reject salt butter as 'not fit for a Christian,' and become quite a connoisseur as to the strength of bitter ale. Indeed, two of ...
— Some Private Views • James Payn

... Manucci set out for Naples, after giving a hundred louis to Medini's mistress, who used to sup with him; but this windfall did not save Medini from being imprisoned for debt, his liabilities amounting to more ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt

... events was a wonderful windfall for the Irish Nationalists, beyond what the most sanguine of them can ever have hoped for. The rejection of a money Bill by the House of Lords raised a democratic blizzard, the full force of which was directed against the constitutional power of veto ...
— Ulster's Stand For Union • Ronald McNeill

... could not distribute much money, as she had none. It was heart-breaking to her to realise her powerlessness, when he could so easily empty his purse. She was, of course, happy that such a windfall had come to the poor, but she felt as if she were greatly diminished in her former self-estimation. She no longer had the same happiness in giving, but was disturbed and sad that she had so little to distribute, while he had ...
— The Dream • Emile Zola

... The latter told me that Carroll of Carrolton was dead; that he had been dead a year, and that he had written letters of condolence on the occasion. I assured him that the old gentleman was alive on the 4th July last, for I had seen one of his letters in the public journals. Here was a capital windfall for a regular diplomate, who now, clearly, had nothing to do but to hurry home and ...
— A Residence in France - With An Excursion Up The Rhine, And A Second Visit To Switzerland • J. Fenimore Cooper

... grew 5.5%, the highest five-year average in 25 years. The poverty rate declined but remained high at 38% in 2006. In 2006 the government of Alfredo PALACIO (2005-07) seized the assets of Occidental Petroleum for alleged contract violations and imposed a windfall revenue tax on foreign oil companies, leading to the suspension of free trade negotiations with the US. These measures, combined with chronic underinvestment in the state oil company, Petroecuador, led to a drop in petroleum ...
— The 2008 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.

... the prospects of the claim and their responsibilities in the matter of Lovin Child's windfall. They would quietly investigate the history of old Nelson, who had died a pauper in the eyes of the community, with all his gleanings of gold hidden away. They agreed that Lovin Child should not start off with one grain of gold that rightfully belonged to some ...
— Cabin Fever • B. M. Bower

... gold, with a little label attached to it, on which is marked 2 pounds 15s. "Now, sir," he continues, "I said we were fortunate, because as we were close to each other, I consider you as much entitled to gain by this windfall as myself. I'll tell you how it shall be: the price of the ring, which was probably dropped by some goldsmith's man, is, as you see, two pound fifteen; however, as I am in a hurry, you shall only give me a quid, a ...
— Romano Lavo-Lil - Title: Romany Dictionary - Title: Gypsy Dictionary • George Borrow

... man's job in the old days when it was a mere matter of patrolling; but it's worse and more of it to-day. A ranger must be ready and willing to build bridges, fight fire, scale logs, chop a hole through a windfall, use a pick in a ditch, build his own house, cook, launder, and do any other old trick that comes along. But you'll know more about all this at the end of ten days than I can tell ...
— The Forester's Daughter - A Romance of the Bear-Tooth Range • Hamlin Garland

... the mess to which their efforts at personal cleanliness had reduced the shop, pleased once more with what they saw now in the mirror. They had divided the shirts, and while the fit was not perfect, they were satisfied with the windfall. Before he left the shop Kirby swept a half dozen cakes of soap into ...
— Ride Proud, Rebel! • Andre Alice Norton

... however, were still curious, surmising that in all this there was probably no fabulous treasure of the legends, but some fine windfall of a more serious and palpable sort than the devil's bank-bills, and that the road-mender had half discovered the secret. The most "puzzled" were the school-master and Thenardier, the proprietor of the tavern, who ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo

... clearly inherits father's medical instinct of preserving life, and the very thought of suffering on the part of man or beast arouses him to action. When he was only a little over three years old, I found him carefully mending some windfall robins' eggs, cracked by their tumble, with bits of rubber sticking-plaster, then putting them hopefully back into the nest, with an admonition to the anxious parents to "sit very still and don't stwatch." While last summer he unfortunately ...
— People of the Whirlpool • Mabel Osgood Wright

... one of his comrades, a self-styled poet, and a great enemy of the Abbe Chiari, whom I did not like, as he had written a biting satire against me, and I had never succeeded in avenging myself on him. I asked them to come and sup with me—a windfall which these people are not given to refusing. The pretended poet was a Genoese, and called himself Giacomo Passano. He informed me that he had written three hundred sonnets against the abbe, who ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt

... argument when I suggested that a "lion would starve where a donkey grew fat." I must confess that this state of existence did not improve my temper, which, I fear, became nearly as bitter as the porridge. My people had a windfall of luck, as Saat's ox, that had lingered for a long time, lay down to die, and stretching himself out, commenced kicking his last kick; the men immediately assisted him by cutting his throat, and this supply of beef was a luxury which, even in my hungry state, ...
— The Albert N'Yanza, Great Basin of the Nile • Sir Samuel White Baker

... twenty-four-hour fast was in some measure atoned for, the burden of the table-talk fell upon Bainbridge, who lifted and carried it generously on the strength of his windfall. But no topic can be immortal; and when the vacation under pay had been threshed out in all its anticipatory details it occurred to the host that his guest was less than usually responsive; a fault not to be lightly condoned under the joyous circumstances. ...
— The Price • Francis Lynde

... sure of one else," interpolated Stephen. "It would be a perfect windfall to Anania, for she'd get talk out of it for nine times nine days. But would it ...
— One Snowy Night - Long ago at Oxford • Emily Sarah Holt

... still young, as every man of forty-three will agree, but he was getting older. A few years ago a windfall of three hundred and forty-one pounds would not have been followed by morbid self-analysis; it would have been followed by unreasoning, instinctive elation, which elation would have endured at least ...
— The Regent • E. Arnold Bennett

... coming to assistance of friend in dire straits, himself fell into the bog. It appeared that of 1056 divisions taken in two Sessions he had been absent from 602. Here was another unexpected little windfall for ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, July 29, 1914 • Various

... King George; and patriot, and tory, too, had trod the paths of the garden and plucked its flowers and its fruit in the times that tried men's souls. By the back gate grew a strawberry apple tree, and every morning the dewy grass held a night's windfall of the tiny red apples that were the reward of the child who rose earliest. A wonderful grafted tree that bore two kinds of fruit gave the place a touch of fairyland's magic, and no explanation of the process of grafting ever diminished ...
— Aunt Jane of Kentucky • Eliza Calvert Hall

... D'Artagnan; who said afterwards to himself, "I'faith, I greatly deceive myself, or I have been the means of a good windfall to that rascal Moliere, and we shall assuredly see the scene hit off to the life in some comedy or ...
— The Man in the Iron Mask • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... other in mutual congratulation, he rejoicing in the unexpected windfall, she exulting in the part her boys had played in ...
— The Rushton Boys at Treasure Cove - Or, The Missing Chest of Gold • Spencer Davenport

... "He told me then that after fifteen years up here he was inclined to try civilization again. Mostly to give Sophie a chance to see what the world was like, I imagine. I gathered from his talk that some sort of windfall was coming his way. But I daresay you know more about ...
— Burned Bridges • Bertrand W. Sinclair

... had done the civil thing with the English Admiral and the fleet, and then, leaving for a long cruise up the Indian Ocean, Phillips had borrowed a lot of English books from an officer, which, in those days, as indeed in these, was quite a windfall. Among them, as the Devil would order, was the "Lay of the Last Minstrel," which they had all of them heard of, but which most of them had never seen. I think it could not have been published long. Well, nobody thought there could be any ...
— If, Yes and Perhaps - Four Possibilities and Six Exaggerations with Some Bits of Fact • Edward Everett Hale

... I had made my friend a wedding present, as was right and proper—a present such as nothing less than a glorious windfall could have enabled me to buy. For while engaged, some three years back, upon a grand historical painting of "Cour de Lion and Saladin," now to be seen—but let that pass; posterity will always know where to find it—I was harassed in mind perpetually ...
— George Bowring - A Tale Of Cader Idris - From "Slain By The Doones" By R. D. Blackmore • R. D. Blackmore

... canning of apples should be done when there is a large supply of summer apples that cannot be stored for winter use or used at once. Canning is also a good means of utilizing windfall apples. This fruit may be canned in quarters for sauce, in slices for pie, or in any other desirable shape ...
— Woman's Institute Library of Cookery, Vol. 5 • Woman's Institute of Domestic Arts and Sciences

... sir," said Vanringham, "and I warn you, you will find me a daring antagonist. I had to-day an extraordinary—the usual prejudice, my dear Herle, is, I believe, somewhat inclined to that pronunciation of the word,—the most extraordinary windfall. I am rich, and I protest King Croesus himself sha'n't intimidate me to-night. Come!" he cried, and he drew from his pocket a plump purse and emptied its contents upon the table; "come, ...
— Gallantry - Dizain des Fetes Galantes • James Branch Cabell

... Royal, and was appointed organist to Westminster Abbey when only two-and-twenty, a place he very nearly lost by refusing to give up to the Dean and Chapter the proceeds of letting the seats in the organ-loft to view the coronation of James II., a windfall he considered as a perquisite. He is buried beneath the great organ, which had so often throbbed out his emotions in the sounds in which he had clothed them. On leaving Tufton Street he went to Marsham Street, ...
— Westminster - The Fascination of London • Sir Walter Besant

... happy windfall, life for the next few years proved an arduous affair. The horrors of reconstruction which followed the war were more agonizing than the war itself. Page's keenest enthusiasm in after life was democracy, in ...
— The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page, Volume I • Burton J. Hendrick

... is a telling set-off to the case of an American wife, who one day received a windfall in the form of a check for a tidy amount. She immediately proposed a trip abroad to her husband, but found that he preferred to remain at home in the society of his horses and dogs. So our fair compatriot starts off (with his full consent), has her outing, spends her ...
— Worldly Ways and Byways • Eliot Gregory

... been stolen from him at the Golden Rule Hotel, and the loss of which had started all of his misfortunes. He paid for the ticket and then in a secluded spot he counted the contents of the purse, which proved to be a windfall to the penniless lad, as it ...
— The Trail of the Tramp • A-No. 1 (AKA Leon Ray Livingston)

... could do it, Rose," said Hester. "It would not take much time, and if your work satisfied the great tradesman who has given such an impetus to this kind of art, it might be a perfect windfall to art students wishing to keep themselves. You need not despise it in the light of house-painting. If you read your Ruskin, you will find him as good as calling Titian and Veronese house-painters, though to be sure frescoes are rather ...
— A Houseful of Girls • Sarah Tytler

... come into some, he seemed bent upon trying how fast he could get through it. In this laudable endeavour he was ably assisted by Lady Scattercash, late the lovely and elegant Miss Spangles, of the 'Theatre Royal, Sadler's Wells.' Sir Harry had married her before his windfall made him a baronet, having, at the time, some intention of trying his luck on the stage, but he always declared that he never regretted his choice; on the contrary, he said, if he had gone among the 'duchesses,' he could not have suited himself better. Lady Scattercash ...
— Mr. Sponge's Sporting Tour • R. S. Surtees

... It was a windfall pure and simple. The years of petty pickering suddenly seemed more horrid to her in retrospect than she had ever realized they were in the living. It was hateful to have reckoned in car fares and to so often have appeared to do the niggardly thing before the unspoken reproach ...
— Star-Dust • Fannie Hurst

... much of his lost money seemed to Herbert quite a lucky windfall. He went at once to a trunk store, and, for five dollars, purchased a good, durable trunk, which he ordered sent home to his lodgings. Fifteen dollars more he invested in necessary underclothing, and this left him one-half of the money for future use. Besides this he ...
— Try and Trust • Horatio Alger

... obtaining passages home. These lads were pleased with the Crisis and the voyage, and, instead of returning to their own country, sailor-like, they took service to go nearly round the world. These were first-rate men—Delaware-river seamen—and proved a great accession to our force. We owed the windfall to the reputation the ship had obtained by her affairs with the letter-of-marque; an account of which, copied from the log-book and a little embellished by some one on shore, he consignee had taken ...
— Afloat And Ashore • James Fenimore Cooper

... fierte, Mais il faut etre souple avec la pauvrete.' It is not for us, the defeated, to argue with you the victors. But pray, (continued Vincent, with a sneer which pleased me not), pray, among this windfall of the Hesperian fruit, what nice little apple will fall to ...
— Pelham, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... was the Banquo's ghost at the Rodney board, Mrs. Rodney hearkening back to it in and out of season. If the family made merry over a chance windfall of game or fresh vegetables, a prospect of possible employment for one of the boys, a donation of money from Judith, Mrs. Rodney remembered the unbuilt bird-house and indulged herself to the full of melancholy. ...
— Judith Of The Plains • Marie Manning

... the way to a point where the scant timber had in times past suffered a windfall. Through the opening thus made they looked abroad over the countryside. They could see the snake-fences about the farms, and the white dusty road like a ribbon and the stumps like black dots, and the waving green tops of the "wood ...
— The Adventures of Bobby Orde • Stewart Edward White

... pressing, now that his wedded happiness was drawing so near. The Gethin Castle was not, however, very full of guests. It had been wet for a few days, and rain spoils the harvest of the inn-keeper even more than that of the farmer. One night, when it was pouring heavily, and such a windfall as a new tourist was not to have been expected by the most sanguine Boniface, a lady arrived, alone, and took up her quarters in the very room that Richard had vacated. Trevethick himself was at the door when she had driven up and asked ...
— Bred in the Bone • James Payn

... old man's castle in the air; his clever, selfish son soon demolished it. 'This sum of money,' he said, 'is only a lucky windfall. If you indeed wish it to become the foundation of my fortune, give me one hundred florins besides, and let me return to Amsterdam: there I must work and ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 420, New Series, Jan. 17, 1852 • Various

... renounce the hope of getting back anything of all I have put in here. No, it is not possible. There is urgent need on the contrary that I should remain, that I should be on the watch, always at hand, ready to profit by any windfall, if one should come. Oh, for example, I swear it upon my ribbon, upon my thirty years of academical service, if ever an affair like this of the Nabob allow me to recover my disbursements, I shall not wait another single minute. ...
— The Nabob • Alphonse Daudet

... Peru as they have been out of Chili. Your admiral will have gone home. There will be no one to claim the treasure; the Spanish government has lost it, the Chilian has never gained it, and it will be a sort of windfall that we can with a clear conscience ...
— With Cochrane the Dauntless • George Alfred Henty

... might possibly result in the Grotto being closed later on. But it was by the Grotto that they all lived. If the old city screeched with rage at only picking up the crumbs, it was well pleased to secure even that windfall; and the freethinkers themselves, who coined money with the pilgrims, like everyone else, held their tongues, ill at ease, and even frightened, when they found people too much of their opinion with regard to the objectionable features of new Lourdes. It was necessary ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola

... so," replied the old lady. "In each barrel are two thimblefuls of powder, and half-a-box of Windfall's Teaberry Tonic Pills, each one of them as big and as hard as a buckshot. They were brought here by a travelling agent, who sold some of them to my people; and I tell you, sir, that those pills made them so sick ...
— The Late Mrs. Null • Frank Richard Stockton

... weather was beautiful—the beautiful sunny winter weather that has more charm than in the summer-time, because it is unexpected, and crisp, and you know it won't, it can't, last long. It's like a windfall, like a godsend, like an ...
— Youth • Joseph Conrad

... who since her father's death had given up rent-receiving, now resumed it; undertook the management of her brother Lovell's affairs, which she conducted with consummate skill and perseverance, and weathered the storm that swamped so many in this financial crisis.' We also hear of an opportune windfall in the shape of some valuable diamonds, which an old lady, a distant relation, left in her will to Miss Edgeworth, who sold them and built a market-house for Edgeworthtown ...
— A Book of Sibyls - Miss Barbauld, Miss Edgeworth, Mrs Opie, Miss Austen • Anne Thackeray (Mrs. Richmond Ritchie)

... flakes of snow that began to fall about them now in a mantle so thick that it covered their shoulders in the space of two hundred yards. When the timber thinned out Kaskisoon picked his way with the caution of a lynx. At the edge of the clearing they crouched side by side behind a low windfall, and peered ...
— God's Country—And the Woman • James Oliver Curwood

... "I'm not so sure of that. You see, Eliphalet Duncan was half Scotch and half Yankee, and he had two eyes to the main chance. He held his tongue about his windfall of luck until he could find out whether the Scotch estates were enough to keep up the Scotch title. He soon discovered that they were not, and that the late Lord Duncan, having married money, kept up such state as he could out of the revenues of the dowry ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery In Four Volumes - Mystic-Humorous Stories • Various

... first book ever printed in England, from a stall in Holland for about two groschen, or two-pence of our money. He sold it to Osborne for twenty pounds, and as many books as came to twenty pounds more. Osborne re-sold this inimitable windfall to Dr. Askew for sixty guineas. At Dr. Askew's sale," continued the old gentleman, kindling as he spoke, "this inestimable treasure blazed forth in its full value and was purchased by Royalty itself for one hundred and seventy pounds! Could a copy now occur, ...
— Game and Playe of the Chesse - A Verbatim Reprint Of The First Edition, 1474 • Caxton

... considerable part of their incomes: a part, too, that is easily and regularly earned, since it is independent of disease, and brings every person born into the nation, healthy or not, to the doctors. To boot, there is the occasional windfall of an epidemic, with its panic and rush for revaccination. Under such circumstances, vaccination would be defended desperately were it twice as dirty, dangerous, and unscientific in method as it actually is. The note of ...
— The Doctor's Dilemma: Preface on Doctors • George Bernard Shaw

... earnest consideration of the right of his own career and his family to the full profit of this windfall, he looked up a reporter and through him a group of reporters and promised them a peep at ...
— We Can't Have Everything • Rupert Hughes

... they sought for a place to rest, and something to satisfy their hunger. They soon found a cool shady spring, and after quenching their thirst, saw with pleasure, a little way beyond, where there had been a windfall, and as berries generally grow profusely in such places, they hastened to it and found, as they had anticipated, an abundant supply, as it was now the season for their ripening. After eating as many as they desired, the chief took some ...
— The American Family Robinson - or, The Adventures of a Family lost in the Great Desert of the West • D. W. Belisle

... that superiority in arts of comparatively little worth could only be attained by aid of qualified teachers, but that the leadership of the state, the most important concern of all, was destined to drop into the lap of anybody, no matter whom, like an accidental windfall. (7) ...
— The Memorabilia - Recollections of Socrates • Xenophon

... the edge of a great windfall. A low wind was beginning to move in the tops of the spruce and cedar, and soft splashes of snow fell on their heads and shoulders, as if unseen and playful hands were pelting them from above. Again and again David ...
— The Courage of Marge O'Doone • James Oliver Curwood

... stronger inducements for summer-vacation days, and there is no building which fits so naturally in a wild landscape as a good, old-fashioned log cabin. It looks as if it really belonged there and not like a windfall from ...
— Shelters, Shacks and Shanties • D.C. Beard

... shoulder—the chest wide enough to give the largest lungs free play in their labor—the flat, square quarters, the muscular fullness of the upper limbs, so perfectly "let down," the clear, sinewy legs, without a curb-mark or windfall to tell tales of fearfully fast work and hard training—and you will wonder less how the championship was won. They say that the Queen was never fitter than now; yet since her zenith she has seldom rested, and is now long past the equine climacteric, ...
— Border and Bastille • George A. Lawrence

... cat sold a picture? — or more likely had a windfall? Or for God's sake, what's broke loose? Have you a bee-hive in your head? A little more of this from you will not be easy hearing. Do you know that? Understand it, if you do; for if you won't. . . . What the devil are ...
— The Three Taverns • Edwin Arlington Robinson

... come to sketch in words the rare and weird effects, the storm, the sunsets that seem not of earth, the cascade, or the ravage of the "windfall," it is wise not to be lured into fanciful word-painting, and the temptation is large. Yet the simplest expression of facts is then and for such rare occasions the best, and often by far ...
— Doctor and Patient • S. Weir Mitchell

... ate them, rather for an occupation than from hunger. Still it was not ten o'clock, and the night was long before us, when one of the party produced an old pack of Spanish cards from his monkey-jacket pocket, which we hailed as a great windfall; and, keeping a dim, flickering light by our fagots, we played game after game, till one or two o'clock, when, becoming really tired, we went to our logs again, one sitting up at a time, in turn, to keep watch over the fire. Toward morning the rain ceased, and the air ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana

... privately regarded this incident as a fine windfall of chance—in all likelihood the one thing which would serve to scare the Lieutenant away. Outwardly, however, he demanded effrontery, assumption; and Mrs. Carter was somewhat cheered, but when she was alone she cried. Berenice, ...
— The Titan • Theodore Dreiser

... Dilks and his cronies may have been abroad on the preceding night, hovering around in hopes of a windfall; and Jim was eager to learn whether ...
— Darry the Life Saver - The Heroes of the Coast • Frank V. Webster

... met my company at the theatre, a very neat one; and, what with those already mustered, together with a windfall just landed from Waterford, in the shape of a pretty woman and her husband, in search of an engagement, I fancy my friend B——y and I may manage to get up one night's fun for Montreal, though, for my own part, I would rather ...
— Impressions of America - During The Years 1833, 1834, and 1835. In Two Volumes, Volume II. • Tyrone Power

... the calm permitted approach to the shore again, forests appeared through the haze—that soft, velvet, caressing haze of the dreamy, lazily swelling Pacific—forests of fir and spruce and pine and cypress, in all the riot of dank spring growth, a dense tangle of windfall and underbrush and great vines below, festooned with the light green stringy mosses of cloud line overhead and almost impervious to sunlight. Myriad wild fowl covered the sea. The coast became beetling precipice, that rolled inland forest-clad to ...
— Vikings of the Pacific - The Adventures of the Explorers who Came from the West, Eastward • Agnes C. Laut

... was sensibly aware that this windfall meant a short cut to things which she had only looked to attain by plodding over economic hills. She could say good-by to singing in photoplay houses, to vaudeville engagements, to concert work in provincial towns. She could hitch her wagon to ...
— Big Timber - A Story of the Northwest • Bertrand W. Sinclair

... woods muffle all sound but the scream of the wild cat or the uncanny hoot of the screech owl. Aubry wanders desperately on and on in the dark, his cassock torn to tatters by the brushwood, his way blocked by the undisturbed windfall of countless ages, . . . on and on, . . . till gray dawn steals through the forest and midday wears ...
— Canada: the Empire of the North - Being the Romantic Story of the New Dominion's Growth from Colony to Kingdom • Agnes C. Laut

... Something inside is green and untrained. It shied before real man-talk.... Bedient came into a fortune recently, the result of saving a captain during a long-ago typhoon. His property is down in Equatoria, where he has been for some months. So he has had a windfall that would be unmanning to most, yet he comes up here, just as unspoiled ...
— Fate Knocks at the Door - A Novel • Will Levington Comfort

... lucky as regards legacies and money. I've always been fortunate about money, but there is a saying that money goes where money is, and that if you get one legacy you will get three. I really could have done without the last windfall. I have enough of this world's goods for a lone woman—if I had some babies ...
— There was a King in Egypt • Norma Lorimer

... a groan of helpless gratitude, appealing piteously from so strange a windfall. "It's like the angel of the Lord who bids people in the Bible to ...
— A Passionate Pilgrim • Henry James

... other he had promoted me, may be he thought I was luckier than he.) We started out into the woods south of our house, I went ahead. There was snow on the ground, it was cold and the wind blew very hard. We crossed the windfall. This was a strip of land about eighty rods wide. It must have been a revolving whirlwind that past there, for it had taken down pretty much all the timber and laid it every way. Nothing was left standing except some large trees that ...
— The Bark Covered House • William Nowlin

... talents as a novelist without marked success some twenty years ago. Her niece, a miss of twenty or so, who had a fancy for an editorial career and who had vainly been seeking a situation of this character for some time, found a windfall in the instant need for a substitute first reader. It was with some petulance, it struck me, that she yanked the door open one day. She was, apparently, showing some one about her office. "All that," she said, waving her ...
— Walking-Stick Papers • Robert Cortes Holliday

... spoke of many things, of Gertrude's departure for school—she was leaving on the three o'clock train—of the engagement, of course, and of the three thousand dollar windfall from Aunt Lavinia. The captain had told that bit of news when they sat down ...
— Cap'n Dan's Daughter • Joseph C. Lincoln

... but when she did it was Eunice Plympton, the daughter of the drunken fiddler who earned his livelihood by playing for the dances the young people of Olney sometimes got up. He was anticipating quite a windfall from the infair it was confidently expected would be given by Mrs. Markham in honor of her son's marriage; and Eunice herself had washed and starched and ironed the white waist she intended to wear ...
— Ethelyn's Mistake • Mary Jane Holmes

... "This luck was a windfall for the Lobore natives who had accompanied us; and a man immediately started off for assistance, as many men were required to transport the flesh and hides of such ...
— Ismailia • Samuel W. Baker

... twice our monotony was broken up by short halts before country inns. At one an excitement was going on. "Had a casualty here this afternoon," remarked a fresh passenger, as soon as he was fairly seated. A casualty is a windfall to a country village. It is really worth while to have a head broken occasionally, for the wholesome stirring-up it gives to the heads that are not broken. On the whole, I question whether collisions and collusions do not cause ...
— Gala-days • Gail Hamilton

... for nearly fourteen years the soul-deadening ugliness of the Middle West, and that Boyne had ground on doggedly at his engineering till, with a suddenness that still made her blink, the prodigious windfall of the Blue Star Mine had put them at a stroke in possession of life and the leisure to taste it. They had never for a moment meant their new state to be one of idleness; but they meant to give themselves only to harmonious activities. She had her vision of painting and gardening (against a background ...
— Tales Of Men And Ghosts • Edith Wharton

... This discovery proves a windfall to the parliamentary party. Pym hies to the citizens and apprises them, in one breath, at once of their danger and their signal deliverance. The Commons draw up a vow and covenant, expressing their detestation of all such conspiracies, and appoint a day of thanksgiving for the escape ...
— Poetical Works of Edmund Waller and Sir John Denham • Edmund Waller; John Denham

... a windfall, and both mother and son retired to rest in a cheerful frame of mind, in spite of Luke's failure ...
— Struggling Upward - or Luke Larkin's Luck • Horatio Alger

... doubt," the skipper returned, "that they're thankin' God for the windfall of a tradin' schooner at family worship in Jolly Harbour ...
— Billy Topsail & Company - A Story for Boys • Norman Duncan

... one-and-fivepence. It was in the early days of his novitiate, before he had ceased to question the workings of Providence. So he made inquiries, and after prolonged investigation discovered the source of the windfall. On field service an officer is entitled to a certain sum per day as "field allowance." In barracks, however, possessing a bedroom and other indoor comforts, he receives no such gratuity. Now Bobby had once been compelled ...
— The First Hundred Thousand • Ian Hay

... lengthen, I shouldered my rifle and plunged into the woods. At first my route lay along a mountain side; then for half a mile over a windfall, the dead timber piled about in crazy confusion. After that I went up the bottom of a valley by a little brook, the ground being carpeted with a sponge of soaked moss. At the head of this brook was a pond covered with water-lilies; and a scramble through a rocky ...
— Hunting the Grisly and Other Sketches • Theodore Roosevelt

... before leaving London, and for the first time in her life there, she had sat down with paper and pencil and made up a statement—rough, of course—of all she owed, and added it up.... Appalling! Thousands and thousands of pounds! Why, great Heavens! if she used her recent windfall to pay her debts, she would have nothing left worth mentioning. And Bullard was going to give her a hundred thousand—if—if ... Oh, but he must not fail! It was her final chance, her final hope, of averting downfall ...
— Till the Clock Stops • John Joy Bell

... glorious excitation in the swift, smooth flight and a grim assurance of soon seeing the old lion. But I hoped we would not rout him too soon from under a windfall, or a thicket where he had dragged a deer, because the race was too splendid a thing to cut short. Through my mind whirled with inconceivable rapidity the great lion chases on which we had ridden the year before. ...
— Tales of lonely trails • Zane Grey

... decidedly, on second thoughts, separation didn't imply for him the intention of silence. We know a little about his second thoughts, as much as is essential, and especially how the occasion of their springing up had been the windfall of an editor's encouragement. The importance of that encouragement, to Basil's imagination, was doubtless much augmented by his desire for an excuse to take up again a line of behaviour which he had forsworn (small as had, as yet, ...
— The Bostonians, Vol. II (of II) • Henry James

... came to consider matters, was he not in perfect health, more sound and fit than many a man but half his age? And were not his fortunes just now at a specially happy turn, his sister, Mrs. Dreydel, having lately been blessed with a windfall, in the shape of yearly income, which—did he so choose—relieved him of much expenditure on her account. Her eldest son had received his commission. The three younger boys had done well as to scholarships thereby ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet

... awe she approached the windfall where a cyclone years before had levelled a wide swath through the heavy growth. Giant trunks and branches, resisting decay, littered the floor of the lane and formed a barrier impenetrable to those inhabitants of the jungle confined ...
— The Black Phantom • Leo Edward Miller

... out. He bought a boat and a shanty down at my shore and went into a sort of mackerel partnership with Snuffy Curtis—Snuffy supplying the experience and this young fellow the cash, I reckon. Snuffy's as poor as Job's turkey; it was a windfall for him. And ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1896 to 1901 • Lucy Maud Montgomery

... a windfall for Jap—had been the means of adding many comforts to the cellar and several prisoners to the cages. It was now of the utmost importance to recapture her majesty. Stale meat-offal and other infallible lures were put ...
— Animal Heroes • Ernest Thompson Seton

... his mind? In winter he went to school, and profited there so much, that at fifteen (not a very early period, after all, for a Scotch student beginning his curriculum—in our day twelve was not an uncommon age) he was judged fit for going to college. And just in time a windfall came across the path of our poet, the mention of which may make many of our readers smile. This was a legacy which was left his father by a relative, amounting to 200 merks, or L11, 2s.6d. With this munificent sum in his pocket, Bruce was sent to study at Edinburgh College. Here he became distinguished ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan

... obstacle, a sound at a considerable distance struck his ear. It was—oh, joy!—the blows of an axe. Instantly he went in the direction. When near enough to be heard, he shouted. An answering hail came from the other side of the windfall; but presently he saw that an attempt had been made to log up the fallen timber in heaps, and, making his way through the blackened stumps of extinct fires, he reached the spot where two rough-looking men were at work with ...
— Cedar Creek - From the Shanty to the Settlement • Elizabeth Hely Walshe

... forth strength and tenderness in man, trouble yourself not unduly about those oysters nor the underdone mutton, little woman. Good plain cooks at twenty pounds a year will see to these things for us; and, now and then, when a windfall comes our way, we will dine together at a moderate-priced restaurant where these things are managed even better. Your work, Dear, is to teach us gentleness and kindliness. Lay your curls here, child. It is from such as you that we ...
— The Second Thoughts of An Idle Fellow • Jerome K. Jerome

... for the payment of the eleven pounds from the burial-club; he had drunk a pint or two extra, daily, for the last week, the innkeeper being willing to trust him, in consideration of the expected windfall. The excitement of this handling of sudden wealth, and the dying of his wife, and the extra drink combined, completely upset his mental equilibrium. In the first moments of his widower-hood he was ...
— A Sheaf of Corn • Mary E. Mann

... post-Soviet democratic ambitions in favor of a centralized semi-authoritarian state whose legitimacy is buttressed, in part, by carefully managed national elections, former President PUTIN's genuine popularity, and the prudent management of Russia's windfall energy wealth. Russia has severely disabled a Chechen rebel movement, although violence still ...
— The 2008 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.

... the average case I should say: Confine your formal programme (super-programme, I mean) to six days a week. If you find yourself wishing to extend it, extend it, but only in proportion to your wish; and count the time extra as a windfall, not as regular income, so that you can return to a six-day programme without the sensation of being ...
— How to Live on 24 Hours a Day • Arnold Bennett

... fair sex that they are bimetallists in the strictest sense. The argument of the savings-bank has probably never been brought to their attention, for when one of them has a little money ahead she purchases a silver ornament for her person; and if a windfall come to her by legacy or otherwise, she buys something of gold, most likely a necklace of barbaric design. When one of these women goes to the market-place or the public well, she wears everything of value she possesses, and for the best of reasons ...
— East of Suez - Ceylon, India, China and Japan • Frederic Courtland Penfield

... not a moment after the decision was made; he even blamed himself for having waited so long. From the "higher regions" there had come a windfall in the shape of two railroad-passes; and a couple of days later they stepped out upon the depot-platform of a little town upon ...
— Love's Pilgrimage • Upton Sinclair

... from passengers and crew alike as the bicycle was lowered to the waves, the string tightened, and the bicycle started, Billy in the saddle and Harold on the step. The event was a perfect windfall to the passengers. It gave them something to talk of all the way to Suez; some of them are talking about ...
— Oswald Bastable and Others • Edith Nesbit

... good bit of property," remarked Mr. Mainwaring at length, running his eye with cold scrutiny over the mansion and grounds; "taking into consideration the stocks and bonds and various business interests that will go with it, it will make a fine windfall for ...
— That Mainwaring Affair • Maynard Barbour

... Little boys come slyly to pilfer oranges, and are pelted away with other oranges; for a single orange has here no more appreciable value than a single apple in our farmers' orchards; and, indeed, windfall oranges are left to decay, like windfall apples. During this season one sees oranges everywhere, even displayed as a sort of thank-offering on the humble altars of country-churches; the children's lips and ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 37, November, 1860 • Various

... journalistic prospects. Whether there was any special reason for hopefulness, Piers could not discover; it seemed probable that here also the windfall of fifty pounds had changed the aspect of the world. To hear him, one might have supposed that the struggling casual contributor had suddenly been offered some brilliant appointment on a great journal; but he ...
— The Crown of Life • George Gissing

... had to deliver a consignment of dog-fish at one of the hospital schools, where they were needed for dissection. In his absence Mrs. Cave's mind reverted to the topic of the crystal, and the methods of expenditure suitable to a windfall of five pounds. She had already devised some very agreeable expedients, among others a dress of green silk for herself and a trip to Richmond, when a jangling of the front door bell summoned her into the shop. The customer was an examination coach ...
— The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories • H. G. Wells

... wish he would. The hoard would be a jolly windfall to me if I could manage to light upon it. But I'm not the kind who goes about seeing ghosts. I'm too plain and matter-of-fact by half, and, though I often hear mysterious taps on the panels of my bedroom, I prosaically set it down to rats and mice. Now, you're a psychic sort of ...
— The Jolliest School of All • Angela Brazil

... usually found not far from a brook, pond or river. He has a favorite drinking place and goes to drink early in the morning and just at dusk. During the day he usually sleeps hidden away in a thicket or under a windfall, coming out late in the afternoon. He feeds mostly in the early evening. He eats grass and other plants, beechnuts and acorns, leaves and twigs of certain trees, lily pads in summer and, I am sorry to say, delights to get into Farmer Brown's garden, ...
— The Burgess Animal Book for Children • Thornton W. Burgess

... and carry a musket, he should have soldier's play, and leave to plunder a little—now the devil a thing have I laid my hands on to-night, except this firelock and my cutlash—unless you can call this bit of a table-cloth something of a windfall." ...
— The Pilot • J. Fenimore Cooper

... "Death takes us off without asking us about it. The young often go before the old. It is a lucky thing for us women that we are not liable to fight duels, but we have other complaints that men don't suffer from. We bear children, and it takes a long time to get over it. What a windfall for Victorine! Her father will have to acknowledge ...
— Father Goriot • Honore de Balzac

... time, he had sent them all to the hospital; but, now his father is dead, he would himself take care of his future productions. This, however, was no better than a gasconade. Yesterday the house was in a hot alarm, on account of a new windfall of this kind: the sisters were in tears; the brother was visited by the cure of the parish; the lady in the straw (a sempstress) sent him the bantling in a basket, and he transmitted it by the carriers to the Enfans ...
— Travels Through France and Italy • Tobias Smollett

... not quit the estate and title of the wittol who had wedded her. Ay, and if in my madness I had started into rebellion, or if the angry Queen had taken my head, as she this morning threatened, the wealthy dower which law would have assigned to the Countess Dowager of Leicester had been no bad windfall to the beggarly Tressilian. Well might she goad me on to danger, which could not end otherwise than profitably to her,—Speak not for her, Varney! I will ...
— Kenilworth • Sir Walter Scott

... rivers—Moose or Abitibi—leading to Hudson Bay. Radisson had sprained his ankle; and the long portages by the banks of the ice-laden, rain-swollen rivers were terrible. The rocks were slippery as glass with ice and moss. The forests of this region are full of dank heavy windfall that obstructs the streams and causes an endless succession of swamps. In these the paddlers had to wade to mid-waist, 'tracking' their canoes through perilous passage-way, where the rip of an upturned branch might tear the birch from the bottom of the canoe. ...
— The "Adventurers of England" on Hudson Bay - A Chronicle of the Fur Trade in the North (Volume 18 of the Chronicles of Canada) • Agnes C. (Agnes Christina) Laut

... when I had watched the fawns many times, how important is this latter suggestion. One who follows a frightened deer and sees or hears him go bounding off at breakneck pace over loose rocks and broken trees and tangled underbrush; rising swift on one side of a windfall without knowing what lies on the other side till he is already falling; driving like an arrow over ground where you must follow like a snail, lest you wrench a foot or break an ankle,— finds himself asking with unanswered wonder ...
— Types of Children's Literature • Edited by Walter Barnes

... blare of guns and shouts, the young braves on their maiden venture passed successively through the lodges of Oneidas, Onondagas, Senecas, and Cayugas, where they were feasted almost to death by the Iroquois Confederacy.[11] Then they marched to the vast wilderness of snow-padded forests and heaped windfall between Lake Ontario ...
— Pathfinders of the West • A. C. Laut

... rather, failed to find him, hidden under a tangled mass that was part windfall, part brush-wood, and part snow. The place had belonged to a fox the night before, and that red worthy returned soon after dawn. He thrust an inquiring sharp muzzle inside, took one sniff, and, with ...
— The Way of the Wild • F. St. Mars

... matched his own. This prey was no awkwardly galloping steer but a nimble beast that swept ahead in twenty-foot bounds, and after fifty yards Breed was still ten feet behind. Then a yellow streak darted over a windfall jam and Peg flashed at the buck. The deer turned almost at right angles in his fright, and as he turned Breed's teeth slashed his leg, but not deep enough to cripple, and the chase was on again. Another fifty yards and Cripp leaped from behind a spruce trunk and struck gamely for ...
— The Yellow Horde • Hal G. Evarts

... round a troika from the posting-house. It did not arrive. Probably it was asleep, like most other things on that warm day. It was too far off to invite investigation, and sallying forth after breakfast to hire an izvostchik, I became a blessed windfall to a couple of bored policemen, who waked up a cabman for me and took a kindly interest in the inevitable bargaining which ensued. While this was in progress, up came two dusty and tattered "pilgrims,"—"religious tramps" will designate ...
— Russian Rambles • Isabel F. Hapgood

... output has more than doubled since 1978. On the darker side, the leadership has often experienced in its hybrid system the worst results of socialism (bureaucracy, lassitude, corruption) and of capitalism (windfall gains and stepped-up inflation). Beijing thus has periodically backtracked, retightening central controls at intervals and thereby lessening the credibility of the reform process. In 1991 output rose substantially, particularly in the favored coastal ...
— The 1992 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.

... you," replied Jerry. "There's a windfall under the roots of that dead pine tree. It's only half-a-dozen yards ...
— The Camp in the Snow - Besiedged by Danger • William Murray Graydon

... Weber's death he seemed to have hoped that he would take his place entirely, and it was due less to the fact that his talent was still unknown, than to his repellent manner, that he was disappointed in his expectations. His wife, however, suddenly came into some money, and this windfall enabled him to devote all his energies to his work as composer of operas, without being obliged ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner

... short distance from us, commences one of the thickest windfall jungles in these parts, and extends up nearly to the chiefs outermost cornfield, about half a mile off. I have been threatening to come here some time; and if, as I will propose, we go into the tangle, ...
— Gaut Gurley • D. P. Thompson

... an hotel-keeper in the neighbouring town of Hanbridge. Six months after the wedding—in other words, at the most dangerous period of the connubial career—Mrs. Malpas's father died, and Mrs. Malpas became the absolute mistress of eight thousand pounds. Lemuel[1] had carefully foreseen this windfall, and wished to use the money in enterprises of the earthenware trade. Mrs. Malpas, pretty and vivacious, with a self-conceit hardened by the adulation of saloon-bars, very decidedly thought otherwise. Her motto was, 'What's yours is mine, but what's mine's ...
— Tales of the Five Towns • Arnold Bennett

... an hour I had passed the place where I first found the blaze, but soon after came to a windfall,* where I found it impossible to follow the line through. I was, therefore, compelled to leave the blaze—my only sure guide—which, however, I still hoped to re-find, by keeping round the edge of the windfall, till I again ...
— Twenty-Seven Years in Canada West - The Experience of an Early Settler (Volume I) • Samuel Strickland

... and Gavan Blake turned his horses' heads in a direction he had never taken before—along the road to Kuryong. As he drove along, his thoughts were anything but pleasant. Behind him always stalked the grim spectre of detection and arrest; and, even should a lucky windfall help to pay his debts, he could not save the money either to buy a practice in Sydney or to maintain himself while he was building one up. He thought of the pitiful smallness of his chances at Tarrong, and then of Ellen Harriott. What should he do about her? Well, sufficient unto ...
— An Outback Marriage • Andrew Barton Paterson

... solemnly. Then they walked on together, and the sisters behind, with Amabel clinging to her mother's hand. "Jim's goin' to work if he has had a little windfall," said Eva, proudly. "Oh, Fanny, only ...
— The Portion of Labor • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman

... of himself. To be "sech a duffer" as to return that money, when by means of a little strategy he might have kept it, made him feel both humiliated and indignant. A hundred and forty dollars; When would he have a chance to get such a windfall again? Pah! he was a fool—to copy his identical thoughts: "a gol ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces at Millville • Edith Van Dyne

... furniture for her benefit. The collection included objects of great rarity, among them a genuine spinet and a beautifully inlaid bureau. At the present boom for antiques they would realize a very substantial sum, quite a windfall, indeed, ...
— A harum-scarum schoolgirl • Angela Brazil

... One of my servants was at the camp to-day and found the gypsies greatly excited over the old cat's windfall." ...
— Red Money • Fergus Hume

... windfall for which the youth had been waiting to enable him to gratify his first love. In his childhood, his father and one M. Foucher, head of a War Office Department, had jokingly betrothed a son of the one ...
— Poems • Victor Hugo

... a real windfall. The shelves were relatively untouched and he had a wide choice of tinned goods. He found an empty cardboard box and hastily began to transfer the cans from the ...
— Small World • William F. Nolan

... laying the document and the gold on the table before the young man; "there is your first brief and your first fee! Let me tell you it is a very unusual windfall for ...
— Ishmael - In the Depths • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth

... always thoroughly satisfied. Sometimes we could get bananas from Mexico, cocoanuts and oranges, but not very often. Christmas eve came at last and such a busy place, no idle hands these days. Brother George and Mr. Lux brought with them two large sacks of the finest English walnuts. They were a windfall to us. We never had seen so many before. We were used to black walnuts, filberts and other nuts at home. This was the beginning of all that came to us this Christmas. It seemed that each one tried to get something we had not ...
— Sixty Years of California Song • Margaret Blake-Alverson

... confess, won my heart less by her own individual merits than a present she once made me, which actually appeared to me like a windfall from the skies. I was always inordinately fond of reading, and my predelictions for fairy tales amounted to an actual passion. When Mammy and Jane's ingenuity had been exhausted in framing instances of the marvellous for my special gratification, I would often fold my hands before my face, ...
— A Grandmother's Recollections • Ella Rodman

... A mature fir forest of the Pacific coast may have no small fruiting trees at all, and if left such are likely to be knocked down in logging. To leave 20 per cent of the large trees standing would sometimes tie up 20,000 feet to the acre, worth $40 or $50. Age and windfall may cause loss equal to stumpage increase; moreover, they can never be utilized without the same expense for roads and machinery that is necessary in the original logging. The second crop will not be allowed to reach a size requiring such equipment. In considering possible windfall loss, not ...
— Practical Forestry in the Pacific Northwest • Edward Tyson Allen

... antagonist. When he, therefore, saw her approach, his heart throbbed with joyful expectations; but, when she snatched up the purse, and thrust it in her bosom, with all the eagerness and confusion of one determined to appropriate the windfall to her own use, his transports were altogether unspeakable. He traced her to her own apartment, whither she immediately retreated with great trepidation, and then communicated the discovery to Teresa, together with instructions how to behave ...
— The Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom, Complete • Tobias Smollett

... although loquacity is shared by the whole city. The right to the back answer is one which the Venetian cherishes as jealously, I should say, as any; so much so that the gondolier whom your generosity struck dumb would be an unhappy man in spite of his windfall. ...
— A Wanderer in Venice • E.V. Lucas

... before he felt the good firm ground under his feet and laid the still unconscious Molly on the grass behind a gray and barkless windfall that had once been a ...
— The Heart of the Range • William Patterson White

... notion had never entered her head, since she had, with perfect simplicity, drunk the blessed memory of the deceased Marechal. She was not the woman to have done this if she had had the faintest suspicion. Now he doubted no longer; his involuntary displeasure at his brother's windfall of fortune and his religious affection for his mother had magnified his scruples—very pious and respectable scruples, but exaggerated. As he put this conclusion into words in his own mind he felt happy, as at ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume VIII. • Guy de Maupassant

... persevering. What was not to be found last year has become almost common this summer. Without leaving my narrow enclosure, I obtain as many Grasshoppers as I could wish. I hear them rustling at night in the green thickets. Let us make the most of the windfall, which perhaps will not ...
— The Wonders of Instinct • J. H. Fabre

... I should say I did,—the outrageous piece! You see, before Jean succeeded to the estate and before I had my windfall from Aunt Sarah Carmichael, we lived in a very small way and our principal society was in Bohemia. At that time Lizzie Peck was the beauty of the Latin Quarter. She was supposed to be studying art, and indeed she was quite clever. But she was such a belle and ...
— Molly Brown's Orchard Home • Nell Speed

... taken place in the life and family of William Gerhardt, a glass-blower by trade. Having suffered the reverses so common in the lower walks of life, this man was forced to see his wife, his six children, and himself dependent for the necessaries of life upon whatever windfall of fortune the morning of each recurring day might bring. He himself was sick in bed. His oldest boy, Sebastian, or "Bass," as his associates transformed it, worked as an apprentice to a local freight-car builder, but received only four dollars a week. Genevieve, the oldest of the girls, was ...
— Jennie Gerhardt - A Novel • Theodore Dreiser

... and the address prevented Monsieur de Maulincour from following the beggar and returning it; for there are few passions that will not fail in rectitude in the long run. The baron had a presentiment of the opportunity afforded by this windfall. He determined to keep the letter, which would give him the right to enter the mysterious house to return it to the strange man, not doubting that he lived there. Suspicions, vague as the first faint gleams of daylight, ...
— Ferragus • Honore de Balzac

... his aunt, Lady Randolph, had not been so good to him it was uncertain whether he could have existed at all, and when the heiress, whom an eccentric will had consigned to her charge, fell in his way, all her friends concluded as a matter of certainty that Sir Tom would jump at this extraordinary windfall, this gift of a too kind Providence, which sometimes will care for a prodigal in a way which he is quite unworthy of, while leaving the righteous man to struggle on unaided. But for some time it appeared as if society for once was out in its reckoning. Sir Tom did not pounce upon the heiress. ...
— Sir Tom • Mrs. Oliphant

... then just when I was trying to comfort myself with thinking how glad I should be that Joey was well, and that we all had our health even if we did lack a turkey and the fixings, along comes this windfall. Why, it is as if the heavens opened and dropped it straight down at our door. It does you good to know there are kind hearts in ...
— Carl and the Cotton Gin • Sara Ware Bassett

... morning after Kid Wolf's arrival in the town, the old padre was astonished to find a package of money inside his door. It was addressed simply: "For the poor." It was a windfall and a much-needed addition to the mission's ...
— Kid Wolf of Texas - A Western Story • Ward M. Stevens

... the billet, was not a little surprised to find a bank-note for fifty pounds, enclosed in a blank sheet of paper; and, having exercised his memory and penetration on the subject of this unexpected windfall, had just concluded, that it could come from no other hand than the lady who had so kindly visited him a few days before, when his ears were suddenly invaded by the well-known sound of that whistle which always hung about the neck of Pipes, as ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett

... 1886, I found myself at last in Paris, I naturally determined to throw myself on the charity of an old chum of mine, Eugene Marie d'Ardeche, who had forsaken Boston a year or more ago on receiving word of the death of an aunt who had left him such property as she possessed. I fancy this windfall surprised him not a little, for the relations between the aunt and nephew had never been cordial, judging from Eugene's remarks touching the lady, who was, it seems, a more or less wicked and witch-like old person, with a penchant for black magic, at ...
— Black Spirits and White - A Book of Ghost Stories • Ralph Adams Cram

... to build a democratic political system and market economy to replace the social, political, and economic controls of the Communist period. While some progress has been made on the economic front, and Russia's management of its windfall oil wealth has improved its financial standing, recent years have seen a recentralization of power under Vladimir PUTIN and democratic institutions remain weak. Russia has severely disabled the Chechen rebel movement, ...
— The 2007 CIA World Factbook • United States

... was not that she wished to keep the godsend to herself,—one saw on the instant that le bon Dieu was paying for Madame Choucrou,—it was an instantaneous dread of the "Princess's" quixotic code of honour. La Valiere was capable of flying in the face of Providence, of taking the windfall to a bureau de police. As if the inspector wouldn't stick to it himself! A purse—yes. But a five-franc piece, one of a flock ...
— The Grey Wig: Stories and Novelettes • Israel Zangwill

... by every Bradstreet child, stood at the east of the old house, and held its own till well into the present century, and little John may have been on his way for a windfall, when the capon flew toward him. To stealing was added offences much more malicious, several discreet Puritan lads, sons of the foremost land holders having been induced by sudden temptation, to join him in running Mr. Bradstreet's ...
— Anne Bradstreet and Her Time • Helen Campbell

... covered with numerous shoots or suckers which deprive the crowns of their necessary food and cause them to "die back." Where the trees are tall and slim or on short and steep hillsides, it is also important to be conservative in marking in order that the stand may not be exposed to the dangers of windfall. No hard-and-fast rule can be laid down as to what would constitute a conservative percentage of trees to cut down. This depends entirely on the local conditions and on the exposure of the woodlot. But in general it is not well to remove more than twenty per cent ...
— Studies of Trees • Jacob Joshua Levison

... a small fire, by which we cooked our muscles, and eat them, rather for an occupation than from hunger. Still, it was not ten o'clock, and the night was long before us, when one of the party produced an old pack of Spanish cards from his monkey-jacket pocket, which we hailed as a great windfall; and keeping a dim, flickering light by our fagots, we played game after game, till one or two o'clock, when, becoming really tired, we went to our logs again, one sitting up at a time, in turn, to keep watch over the fire. Toward ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana



Words linked to "Windfall" :   happening, occurrence, occurrent, gold rush, bonanza, manna from heaven, gravy, natural event, godsend, bunce, edible fruit



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