"Picker" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... side. Yes, people are good enough to say I've broken quite new ground in making the hop-fields the scene of a novel; the critics say my word-pictures of the hop-poles are 'absolutely luscious'; and they pronounce Ozias, the hop-picker, 'a giant of artistic creation.' Yes, my novel is one of the twenty which in the last six months have been called 'epoch-making' and have been said to 'stand quite alone in modern fiction.' No doubt the hop-field will now be exploited by other writers, until in time it will become ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, March 25, 1914 • Various
... we make two rings!" So once again they moved round the tree, singing Christmas carols. Every time there was a pause somebody struck up a new carol, that had to be sung through. The doors opposite were open too, the old rag-picker sat at the head of his table singing on his own account. He had a loaf of black bread and a plate of bacon in front of him, and after every carol he took a mouthful. In the other doorway sat three coal-porters playing "sixty-six" for ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... for Doctor Bicknell, and the afternoon was well along when he lighted a cigar preparatory to leaving the table upon which it seemed the sufferers almost clamoured to be laid. But the last one, an old rag-picker with a broken shoulder-blade, had been disposed of, and the first fragrant smoke wreaths had begun to curl about his head, when the gong of a hurrying ambulance came through the open window from the street, followed by the inevitable entry ...
— When God Laughs and Other Stories • Jack London
... government; he has the ear of the king. To have the eye of the king is to draw and shut, at one's whim, the bolt of the royal conscience, and to throw into that conscience whatever one wishes. The mind of the king is his cupboard; if he be a rag-picker, it is his basket. The ears of kings belong not to kings, and therefore it is that, on the whole, the poor devils are not altogether responsible for their actions. He who does not possess his own ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... If a rag-picker had offered to do a diplomatic service for the Emperor of Russia, the monarch could not have been more astounded than the mate was. He even stopped swearing. He stood and stared down at me. It took him ten seconds to scrape his disjointed remains together again. Then he said ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... cider-heap, after he had amused himself by putting about a bushel down the various holes old Bun had left behind him. Jack was risking his neck climbing in the most dangerous places, while Frank, with a long-handled apple-picker, nipped off the finest fruit with care, both enjoying the pleasant task and feeling proud of the handsome red and yellow piles all about the little orchard. Merry and Molly caught up baskets and fell to work with all their might, leaving Jill to sit upon ...
— Jack and Jill • Louisa May Alcott
... the conversation. "I have had the warden of the Minorites and the provincial of the Dominicans here this morning," he said, "about that accursed business of the rag-picker's wife. It is another example of what I told you just now, that these people attribute what they cannot understand to persons they can only dream about. They put down the whole of your miracles to a special reward for their zeal in hounding down the Carmelite and his ...
— Little Novels of Italy • Maurice Henry Hewlett
... dressing, I unlocked the door of the stuffy little cabin and called the old rag-picker. He came shuffling along with his head bent, but raising his eyes as he approached me, he threw up his hands ...
— Vendetta - A Story of One Forgotten • Marie Corelli
... boy, the great ambition of his life was to be released from the hoeing and spudding, and set to work at his father's colliery. Great was Geordie's joy, therefore, when at last he was taken on there in the capacity of a coal-picker, to clear the loads from stones and rubbish. It wasn't a very dignified position, to be sure, but it was the first step that led the way to the construction of the Liverpool and Manchester Railway. Geordie was now ...
— Biographies of Working Men • Grant Allen
... styled the Dwarf-nation, and always despised as a mere imitator and brain-picker of Chinese wisdom, now swims definitively into the ken of the Manchu court. The Formosan imbroglio had been forgotten as soon as it was over, and the recent rapid progress of Japan on Western lines towards national strength had been ignored by all Manchu statesmen, each of whom lived in ...
— China and the Manchus • Herbert A. Giles
... "A picker up of unconsidered trifles!" the scotched, not killed minx in me couldn't resist quoting, at the suggestion that I was welcome to Di's leavings if I could bag them. But neither Father nor Di ...
— Secret History Revealed By Lady Peggy O'Malley • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... calls, the Baroness and Carp, also a rag picker who came into the field at that moment and a man with a push-cart who sold red and yellow and blue ...
— Nobody's Girl - (En Famille) • Hector Malot
... a pocket-knife full of all kinds of tools, he had best order a very light one of 2 3/4 inches long, in a tortoise-shell handle, without the usual turnscrew at the end. It should have a light "picker" to shut over its back; this will act as a strike-light, and a file also, if its under surface be properly roughened. Underneath the picker, there should be a small triangular borer, for making holes in leather, and a gimlet. The front of the knife should ...
— The Art of Travel - Shifts and Contrivances Available in Wild Countries • Francis Galton
... is not everywhere the same, for in the rich bottom-lands it grows to a commanding size, while in the more barren regions it is an humble shrub. In the rich alluvium of the Mississippi the cotton will tower beyond the reach of the tallest "picker," and a single plant will contain hundreds of perfect "bolls;" in the neighboring "piney-woods" it lifts its humble head scarcely above the knee, and is proportionably meager in its produce ...
— Camp-Fire and Cotton-Field • Thomas W. Knox
... be a quill blower. Brother Jim would cut fishin' canes and plat 'em together—they called 'em a pack—five in a row, just like my fingers. Anybody that knowed how could sure make music on 'em. Tom Rollins, that was my baby uncle, he was a banjo picker. ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States - Volume II. Arkansas Narratives. Part I • Work Projects Administration
... o'clock in the morning. Caillette did not dare to find Jacques, and tell him she had been faithless to her trust. No, she must find Francoise herself. She asked questions of all she met, and at last she had a ray of light. An old rag picker told her that he had seen a woman answering to the description given by Caillette. She at once started in the direction he pointed out; it was the road to Germany she took. She sold a small gold locket, which held a bit of ribbon from a sash Fanfar had ...
— The Son of Monte Cristo • Jules Lermina
... "Dear Thunder (woda Picker), we offer to thee an ox that has two horns and four cloven hoofs; we would pray thee for our ploughing and sowing, that our straw be copper-red, our grain golden-yellow. Push elsewhere all the thick black clouds, over great fens, high forests, and wildernesses. But unto us, ploughers and sowers, ...
— India: What can it teach us? - A Course of Lectures Delivered before the University Of Cambridge • F. Max Mueller
... not failed to put forth every effort to attain, but somehow each high endeavour had turned out like the race for the quarter dollar in the berry patch; she was always just about to grasp the prize, when some unfortunate picker fell across her path with a ...
— In Orchard Glen • Marian Keith
... tenements. Why, his company gave me almost a hundred dollars, you know! I was lucky, for when Lizzie Sidel's man lost his hand in the cog wheels he went to law to sue the company, and three years afterward the case was thrown out of court and he had to pay the costs himself. But he was a picker-boss, and got nine dollars ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... dress was tied about the waist, apron-like. This was to receive immediately the pickings from the hand. When filled it was emptied in a pick-basket, holding with a little packing fifty or sixty pounds. This small basket was kept in the picker's vicinity, being moved forward whenever the sack was taken back for emptying. Besides this go-between pick-basket, there was at that end of the row nearest the ginhouse an immense basket, nearly as tall ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, October, 1877, Vol. XX. No. 118 • Various
... not know a letter. I do not remember that I had ever seen the inside of a book of any kind. It was in 1867 that I learnt the alphabet upon the plantation by the light of pine knots. During the years 1868 and 1869 I was a rag-picker in the streets of Mobile. God has led me on, and now I am a student in Talladega College, and expect soon to have finished a course of study which will enable me to go forth to lead men to Christ and to teach them better methods of living. I speak of this contrast not boastfully, but humbly ...
— The American Missionary—Volume 39, No. 07, July, 1885 • Various
... all stay. Den us select us homes and move to it. Us folks move to Sam Littlejohn's, north of Thickettty Creek, where us stay two year. Den us move back to Billy Lipscomb, de young massa, and stay dere two more year. I's right smart good banjo picker in dem day. I kin 'member one dem songs jes' as good today as when ...
— Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves. - Texas Narratives, Part 2 • Works Projects Administration
... lot o' trades. Fisherman, fruit picker, fightin' range fires, vineyards, car washer. Anything. You name it. Been out of work for a long time now, though. Goin' on five months. These here are hard times, no matter what ...
— The Perfectionists • Arnold Castle
... laughter at the mere recollection of the funny story that he had promised to his friends, and throwing himself back in the great arm-chair, which he completely filled, that picker up of bits of pinchbeck, as they called him at ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume III (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... be sure that this severe treatment did not increase my mother's affection for Don Vicente, and, in spite of his dreadful threat to employ his slave as a common coffee-picker—which, for a mulatto, accustomed to the luxuries of town life, is worse than sending her to the galleys—my ...
— The Pearl of the Antilles, or An Artist in Cuba • Walter Goodman
... the great city's one hour of purity, of dignity. The very rag- picker, groping with her filthy hands among the ashes, instead of an object of contempt, moves from door to door an accusing Figure, her thin soiled garments, her bent body, her scarred face, hideous with the wounds of poverty, an eloquent indictment ...
— Idle Ideas in 1905 • Jerome K. Jerome
... by hand-picking, clean only about a pound of cotton a day. The cotton-gin cleaned as much in a day as had taken the hand-picker a year to accomplish. Cotton was at once planted in vast amounts; but it certainly was not plentiful till then. Whitney had never seen cotton nor cotton seed when he began to plan his invention; nor did he, even in Savannah, find cotton ...
— Home Life in Colonial Days • Alice Morse Earle
... should I expect from a picker-up of old words, brother? Bah! I dislike a picker-up of old words worse than ...
— The Romany Rye • George Borrow
... if I had seen my Doppelganger," said Searle. "He reminds me of myself. What am I but a mere figure in the landscape, a wandering minstrel or picker of daisies?" ...
— A Passionate Pilgrim • Henry James
... cave we had dug one winter, and maintained, six of us, against all the police of the little kingdom; the place near the pales where I had fought my first battle; the old beech-stump on which I sat to read letters from home! With my knife, rich in six blades (besides a cork-screw, a pen-picker, and a button-hook), I carved my name in large capitals over my desk. Then night came, and the bell rang, and we went to our rooms. And I opened the window and looked out. I saw all the stars, and wondered which was mine,—which should light to fame and ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... dry-pick you will not need to be told anything by me; if you do not know it will do you no good to have me tell you, because I do not believe a person can learn to dry-pick chickens by following printed instructions. At any rate, I could not. I never learned until I hired a professional picker to come out from ...
— How To Write Special Feature Articles • Willard Grosvenor Bleyer
... I make it 'Spades,'" said the digger, bearded to the eyes; his tangled thatch of black hair hiding his forehead, and his clothes such as would have hardly tempted a rag-picker. ...
— The Tale of Timber Town • Alfred Grace
... bitterly: "The King chooses his tools well, a foul tool for a foul use, and neither you nor I can come out of it with clean hands. His name? The gallows-cheat has a dozen names and changes them as you would your coat. He is like a Paris rag-picker, and his basket of life is full of the garbage he has ...
— The Justice of the King • Hamilton Drummond
... cheese-fancier, like a melon-picker, can tell if a Cheddar is rich, ripe and ready for the Rabbit. When you hear your dealer say, "It's six months ...
— The Complete Book of Cheese • Robert Carlton Brown
... of erecting it entirely for her and the baby. He spoke of closets for her frocks, and "a comfy sewing-room." But when he drew on a leaf from an old account-book (he was a paper-saver and a string-picker) the plans for the garage, he gave much more attention to a cement floor and a work-bench and a gasoline-tank than he ...
— Main Street • Sinclair Lewis
... dry, it is essential to provide for a circulation of air, which can be done very feasibly in a textile mill by laying drain pipe through the upper part of the underpinning, forming a number of holes leading into this space, and then making a flue from this space to the picker room or any other place requiring a large amount of air. The fans of the picker room, drawing their supply from underneath the building, produce a circulation of air which keeps the ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 647, May 26, 1888 • Various
... "Ay, and about her hair....I'm beginning to remember. She wears a cap, and her hair's cut off like an oakum-picker's. That's more ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... These had to be picked by hand, wrapped in soft paper, packed in barrels, and shipped to Fort Wayne. Where they couldn't reach by hand, they stood on barrels or ladders, and used a long handled picker, so as not to bruise the fruit. Laddie helped with everything through the day, worked at his books at night, and whenever he stepped outside he looked in the direction of Pryors'. He climbed to the topmost limbs of the trees with a big ...
— Laddie • Gene Stratton Porter
... picker of pickled peppers. Also held accounts against many people. Caused considerable worry to ...
— Who Was Who: 5000 B. C. to Date - Biographical Dictionary of the Famous and Those Who Wanted to Be • Anonymous |
