"Picket" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... The General ordered Montchoisy, who commanded a reserve at the Place de la Resolution, to form a column with two twelve-pounders, to march by the Boulevard in order to turn the Place Vendome, to form a junction with the picket stationed at headquarters, and to return in the same order ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... safety, whilst the other two grounded and burnt out without causing further inconvenience. Captain Knox describes the scene as a display of "the grandest fireworks that can possibly be conceived." The only result was to cause the retirement of a picket at the western end of the Ile d'Orleans, and the officer in command, who thought he was about to be attacked in force, was to have been tried by court-martial, but being advised to throw himself on ...
— The Life of Captain James Cook • Arthur Kitson
... come. The Chinese, having successfully sapped right under one of the remaining fortified houses, had blown it up with a huge charge of black gunpowder. D——, the French commander, R——, the Austrian Charge d'Affaires, the same indomitable volunteer D——, and a picket of four French sailors were in the house, and were buried in the ruins. Hardly had the echoes of the first explosion died away, when a second one blew up another house, and out of the ruins were lifted, as if the powers of darkness had taken pity on them all, the ...
— Indiscreet Letters From Peking • B. L. Putman Weale
... from his stupefaction, his own horse was galloping in circles, his picket rope dragging, and the boss herder was swearing with a belated malignity which was ludicrous. He swept together into one steady outpour all the native and alien oaths he had ever heard in a long and eventful career among profane persons. When Mose recovered ...
— The Eagle's Heart • Hamlin Garland
... the hill to the Ford. On the ridge, just where the road crosses it, the guns of the "First Richmond Howitzers" were in position, commanding the Ford; and the Howitzer Camp was to the right of the road, in the pine wood just back of the ridge. Here, we had been on picket all the winter, helping the infantry pickets to watch the enemy and guard ...
— From the Rapidan to Richmond and the Spottsylvania Campaign - A Sketch in Personal Narration of the Scenes a Soldier Saw • William Meade Dame
... A picket enclosure, mounted with cannon, protected the humble buildings erected for the use of the first settlers on what is now the Custom-house Square. The little stream—not much more than a rivulet except in spring—which for many years rippled between green, ...
— Canada • J. G. Bourinot
... ranks, of all kinds, from shrewd to ridiculous, I very early learned it was sheer bother of one's brains attempting to discover anything, and ceased to ask questions or form theories—getting up when I heard 'Company I, fall in,' without seeking to know whether it was for march, drill, picket duty, or what not. Company officers seldom know more about the matter than their men, and I speedily came to content myself with trying to extract from past work and present position some general notion of the 'strategy' of our movements. Nor is this ignorance wholly unblissful, ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. IV. October, 1863, No. IV. - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... is not so easy to stand as to march or to fight. I have been told that the most difficult service of the soldier is picket duty; and yet never until we learn to stand shall we be able to fight. In the fourteenth chapter of Exodus, the thirteenth and fourteenth verses, we read, "And Moses said unto the people. Fear ye ...
— And Judas Iscariot - Together with other evangelistic addresses • J. Wilbur Chapman
... similar picket fence topped with helmets in the "Las de la Mule sanz frain", v. 433 (ed. ...
— Four Arthurian Romances - "Erec et Enide", "Cliges", "Yvain", and "Lancelot" • Chretien de Troyes
... to the officers of the Union fleet that the enemy had a ram up the river, it does not appear that any preparation for defence had been made, or plan of action adopted. Even the commonplace precaution of sending out a picket-boat had not been taken. The attack, therefore, was a surprise, not only in the ordinary sense of the word, but, so far as appears, in finding the officer in command without any formed ideas as to what he would do if she came ...
— The Gulf and Inland Waters - The Navy in the Civil War. Volume 3. • A. T. Mahan
... of the dock. And there I saw a weird ominous scene. Up the empty harbor, under a dark and cloudy sky, came four barges, black with negro laborers, and ahead and around and behind them came police boats throwing their searchlights upon an angry swarm of union picket dories, from which as they drew nearer I heard furious voices shouting, "Scab!" One of the barges docked where I stood and the negroes quickly slunk inside. I drew back from them as they passed, ...
— The Harbor • Ernest Poole
... second barrier, Carleton was not idle. There was an excellent chance to send a force out of the Palace Gate near the Hotel Dieu, by which the assailants had passed, and to attack them in the rear. For this duty Colonel Caldwell was told off and he took with him Nairne and his picket of about thirty men. The force plodded through the deep snow in the tracks of the enemy who, about daybreak, were astonished to find themselves shut in by British forces at each end of the Sault au Matelot. A hand to hand fight followed. The Americans took ...
— A Canadian Manor and Its Seigneurs - The Story of a Hundred Years, 1761-1861 • George M. Wrong
... June Toombs' brigade was posted upon the east of Garnett's House, on Golding's farm, just in front of the enemy. Both sides threw up breastworks so near that neither could advance its picket line. "Just before dark," says Dr. Steiner, "Mr. Toombs received orders to charge the enemy, firing having been heard on the left. The position was a dangerous one. A charge at that time of the evening was perilous. Just in front lay ...
— Robert Toombs - Statesman, Speaker, Soldier, Sage • Pleasant A. Stovall
... disciplined in its meager and limited proportions. The result was that, through the captain's arrangements, the king, on arriving at Melun, saw himself at the head of both the musketeers and Swiss guards, as well as a picket of the French guards. It might almost have been called a small army. M. Colbert looked at the troops with great delight: he even wished they had been ...
— The Man in the Iron Mask • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... instance of the folly and foolhardiness of youth, and the recklessness to which a long course of exposure to danger produces. When Bayonne was invested, I was one night on duty on the outer picket. The ground inside the breastwork which had been thrown up for our protection by Burgoyne was in a most disagreeable state for any one who wished to repose after the fatigues of the day, being knee-deep in mud of a remarkably plastic ...
— Reminiscences of Captain Gronow • Rees Howell Gronow
... confounded stuff. We can't go ahead with a microscope and a chemical laboratory to analyze every blade of grass along the route for Paris green. The best we can do is to take our chances and keep going north. But I think we'd better establish outside picket lines which will stay well in advance, and off to the flanks. If it can be done, this system will succeed in at least frightening them off for a while. Everybody prepare to stand ...
— Ted Strong in Montana - With Lariat and Spur • Edward C. Taylor
... not be over careful with them," he said. "Throw a picket rope round their necks, and make them trot beside you. They came out for a little excitement, let them have enough ...
— Saint Bartholomew's Eve - A Tale of the Huguenot WarS • G. A. Henty
... she glanced again to see if the neighbors were looking. There were interested faces at several windows. Mrs. Toomey had a sudden feeling of irritation, not with the sentinels doing picket duty but with Kate for tying her horse in front so conspicuously. Mrs. Toomey shrank from the staring eyes as though she had found herself walking down the middle of the road in ...
— The Fighting Shepherdess • Caroline Lockhart
... Eaton remarked: "A number of our new colored soldiers were put on picket guard last night on trial, and not one sleepy head was found among them. Since we accept these men as soldiers I am confident it will do away the necessity of drafting men, as some ...
— A Woman's Life-Work - Labors and Experiences • Laura S. Haviland
... continent, and which hide in their bosoms deep, broad lakes. Yet the soil of the lowlands is of extraordinary fertility, and the climate, though humid, deals kindly with the Anglo-Saxon constitution. Nor is this all; for, advanced from it north and south, like picket-stations, are Norfolk isle and the Auckland group, which, if they have no other attractions, certainly have this great one, good harbors. And it requires no prophet's eye to see, that, when England needs posts farther eastward, she will find them among the innumerable green coral ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. July, 1863, No. LXIX. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... a few days' visit to some friends living on the Milne Plantation, then the head-quarters of the First South-Carolina, which was on picket-duty at Port-Royal Ferry, we had an opportunity of seeing something of Port-Royal Island. We had pleasant rides through the pine barrens. Indeed, riding on horseback was our chief recreation at the South, and we enjoyed it thoroughly. The "Secesh" horses, though small, poor, and mean-looking, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 80, June, 1864 • Various
... doubt; but fallen entirely silent, and not wending hitherward at all. Poor Loudon, alas, must have got beaten!" Upon which Daun really did try, at least upon Ziethen; but could do nothing. Poured cavalry across the Stone-bridge at the Topferberg: who drove in Ziethen's picket there; but were torn to pieces by Ziethen's cannon. Ziethen across the Schwartzwasser is alert enough. How form in order of battle here, with Ziethen's batteries shearing your columns longitudinally, as they march up? Daun recognizes ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XX. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... was kept in continual alarm. Officers and soldiers were constantly dressed and ready for action. One night, twenty young farmers residing near the camp, resolved to capture the enemy's advance picket-guard. Armed with fowling-pieces, they marched silently through the woods until they were within a few yards of the picket. They then rushed out from the bushes, the captain blowing an old horse-trumpet and the men yelling. There was no time for the sentinel's hail. "Ground your ...
— A Brief History of the United States • Barnes & Co.
... undoubtedly, the foundation of the present colony; for, although the military picket was withdrawn in the following year, a corporal of artillery with his wife and two brother soldiers, who expressed a desire to remain on the island, stayed behind. Since then, Tristan has always been inhabited—the original little colony of four souls having formed the nucleus of the present ...
— Fritz and Eric - The Brother Crusoes • John Conroy Hutcheson
... Maid and the Bearer has seen me very often is very certain; but I desire to know, being engaged at Picket, what your Letter means by 'tis in vain to deny it. I shall stay here all ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... is sharp, thin, pendent, and exceedingly ample in its proportions, and it comes inquiringly out from his face as if employed by the rest of his features as a sort of picket sentinel. ...
— Tin-Types Taken in the Streets of New York • Lemuel Ely Quigg
... were the ice man for a space, Then might I cool this red-hot cocoanut, Corral the jim-jam bugs that madly race Around the eaves that from my forehead jut— Or will a carpenter please come instead And build a picket ...
— The Love Sonnets of a Hoodlum • Wallace Irwin
... there among the bushes were small inclosures containing graves, sometimes no more than one. They were recognized as graves by the discolored stones or rotting boards at head and foot, leaning at all angles, some prostrate; by the ruined picket fences surrounding them; or, infrequently, by the mound itself showing its gravel through the fallen leaves. In many instances nothing marked the spot where lay the vestiges of some poor mortal—who, leaving "a large circle of sorrowing friends," ...
— Can Such Things Be? • Ambrose Bierce
... ships steamed slowly to the north. Mac landed horse-picket, and for four hours he paced a length of the boat-deck up and down past fifty horses' heads, while the wind howled mournfully in the rigging and the ship swayed easily to the swell. Morning broke, with a dull sky, a dull sea ...
— The Tale of a Trooper • Clutha N. Mackenzie
... A picket is a group consisting of two or more squads, ordinarily not exceeding half a company, posted in the line of outposts to cover a given sector. It furnishes patrols and one or more sentinels, sentry squads, or cossack ...
— Manual for Noncommissioned Officers and Privates of Infantry • War Department
... Clark, which may be found on some of the present-day maps. The huts were built of logs, and were arranged in two rows, four rooms in each hut, the whole number being placed in the form of an angle, with a stockade, or picket, across the two outer ends of the angle, in which was a gate, kept locked at night. The roofs of the huts slanted upward from the inner side of the rows, making the outer side of each hut eighteen feet high; and the lofts of ...
— First Across the Continent • Noah Brooks
... that she was close to the river, for the sound of a passing craft caught her attention. Of course! She understood now. The iron plant, for shipping facilities, was undoubtedly on the bank of the river itself, and—yes, this was it, wasn't it?—this picket fence that began to parallel the right-hand side of the street, and enclose, seemingly, a very large area. She halted and stared at it—and suddenly her heart sank with a miserable sense of impotence and dismay. Yes, this was the place beyond question. ...
— The White Moll • Frank L. Packard
... hour's run, for they knew that every minute was of importance, and they heard the welcome challenge, "Who comes there?" "Two British officers," they answered, and in a few minutes they were taken to the officer in charge of the picket, and having once convinced him of their identity, ...
— The Young Buglers • G.A. Henty
... rasped out a German oath. He had had his journey for nothing, then. The man's answers were only too likely to be true. It was what he might have expected. But at least he would search the house and make sure. Leaving a picket at the front door and another at the back, the sergeant and he drove the trembling butler in front of them— his shaking candle sending strange, flickering shadows over the old tapestries and the low, ...
— The Green Flag • Arthur Conan Doyle
... little hill beyond the cemetery, quite far out of hearing or ken of anybody; and there prayed, and sang too, and "praised God and shouted," as my informant told me; not neglecting all the while to keep a picket watch about their meeting-place, to give the alarm in case anybody should come. So under the soft moonlight skies and at depth of night, the meetings which I had supposed broken up, took new life, and grew, and lived; and prayers did not fail; and the ...
— Daisy • Elizabeth Wetherell
... serious outflanking movement on part of the Blues. Sorry, but that's the worst of being picket. The natural intuition which characterizes all BSS will enable you to ...
— The Brother of Daphne • Dornford Yates
... to the great delight of all of us who joined up with that regiment, became Adjutant. During that campaign he was always to the fore in every crisis and showed particular skill in rooting out men who were inciting the Indians to revolt. One morning of dense fog away beyond Fort Pitt our outside picket was fired on when I had charge of the guard. Calling out the guard and getting them under arms I went over to notify the officer commanding in the camp, but met Constantine with his forty-five ready for action. He had scented the alarm and did not wait for notice before getting out to ...
— Policing the Plains - Being the Real-Life Record of the Famous North-West Mounted Police • R.G. MacBeth
... I ride to the Chief for the sign," Said little Dan O'Shea, "Though never I come from the picket's line, But a faded suit of grey: Yet over my death will the road be safe, And ...
— Ballads of Peace in War • Michael Earls
... what was to happen; and so absorbed were we in our occupation—he in his happiness, I in the contemplation thereof—that neither of us noticed the rapid approach of a third party until a whinny of astonishment sounded close beside us, and Van, trailing his lariat and picket-pin after him, came trotting up, took in the situation at a glance, and, unhesitatingly ranging alongside his comrade of coarser mould and thrusting his velvet muzzle into my lap, looked wistfully into my face with his great soft brown eyes and plead for his share. Another minute, and, despite ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, November 1885 • Various
... air was damp before Ruth missed the bright warmth on the piazza, and began to walk back and forth by way of keeping warm. A gravelled path led to the gate and on either side was a row of lilac bushes, the bare stalks tipped with green. A white picket fence surrounded the yard, except at the back, where the edge of the precipice made it useless. The place was small and well kept, but there were no flower beds except at the front of the house, and there were only two or ...
— Lavender and Old Lace • Myrtle Reed
... then all the trees would be alike, and would cease to be attractive and picturesque. We keep all perfect things out of pictures, because they are formal and tasteless. A bran new cottage, with a picket fence around it, and every thing cleaned up about it, is too perfect to be picturesque. An old, tumble-down mill, with rude and rotten timbers, and a wheel outside, is decidedly picturesque, because its imperfections make it informal. The most unattractive of all houses ...
— Lessons in Life - A Series of Familiar Essays • Timothy Titcomb
... the rush bundles. At boke or him, or flaying the fox. At the short staff. At the branching it. At the whirling gig. At trill madam, or grapple my lady. At hide and seek, or are you all At the cat selling. hid? At blow the coal. At the picket. At the re-wedding. At the blank. At the quick and dead judge. At the pilferers. At unoven the iron. At the caveson. At the false clown. At prison bars. At the flints, or at the nine stones.At have at ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... it puts me in mind of the Saints' day at home," said Terence, as he stood leaning against a picket fence that bordered the street, "savin' the presence of the naygurs and thim red divils wid blankets an' scowls as wud turrn the milk ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... me, an' I shot questions at him, an' I felt as if a brother had riz from the dead. An' as we can't shake hands we reaches out the muzzles of our guns and shakes them towards each other in the most friendly way. Then another picket comes up, fellow by name of Henderson, from Mississippi. Bill introduces him to his good old pal, an' we three have a friendly talk. Guess they're down there yet, if you want to see 'em. I liked that fellow, Henderson, too, though he was a ...
— The Sword of Antietam • Joseph A. Altsheler
... over the picket fence near the barn and dodged around past the bushes until we got up to a window where we kind of scrouched down and looked through lace curtains. There we saw everybody—all dressed up and talkin' and laughin'; and there was my pa and ma. Ma was holdin' her fan and talkin' ...
— Mitch Miller • Edgar Lee Masters
... agree here, as those did at Trent, Dan's forehead has got a most damnable dent, Besides a large hole in his Michaelmas rent. But your fancy on rhyming so cursedly bent, With your bloody ouns in one stanza pent; Does Jack's utter ruin at picket prevent, For an answer in specie to yours must be sent; So this moment at crambo (not shuffling) is spent, And I lose by this crotchet quaterze, point, and quint, Which you know to a gamester is great ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift
... absence. When I'm on the spot I prefer to play picket-duty myself. I may be eccentric. But that's one of my notions, and I've an idea ...
— Mrs. Red Pepper • Grace S. Richmond
... corn. It looked like Crump's, but before he could fire the man rolled like a ball down the bushy bank to the river. An instant later some object went swiftly past a side street-somebody on horseback-and a picket fired an alarm. The horse kept on, and Rome threw his rifle on a patch of moonlight, but when the object flashed through, his finger was numbed at the trigger. In the moonlight the horse looked gray, and the rider was seated sidewise. A bullet from the court-house clipped his hat-brim ...
— A Cumberland Vendetta • John Fox, Jr.
... abundant grounds about it, where they can graze—hens eat grass—and scratch, and enjoy themselves to their heart's content, in all seasons, when the ground is open and they can scratch into, or range over its surface. Some people—indeed, a good many people—picket in their gardens, to keep hens out; but we prefer an enclosure to keep the hens in, at all seasons when they are troublesome, which, after all, is only during short seasons of the year, when seeds are planted, or ...
— Rural Architecture - Being a Complete Description of Farm Houses, Cottages, and Out Buildings • Lewis Falley Allen
... Murray, convoyed by Captain Thomas Everard, with the sloops Chubb and Finch (late Growler and Eagle) and three gunboats, landed at Plattsburg and destroyed all the barracks and stores both there and at Saranac. For some reason Colonel Murray left so precipitately that he overlooked a picket of 20 of his men, who were captured; then he made descents on two or three other places, and returned to the head of the lake by Aug. 3d. Three days afterward, on Aug. 6th, Macdonough completed his three sloops, the President, Montgomery, and Preble, of 7 guns each, and also six gunboats; ...
— The Naval War of 1812 • Theodore Roosevelt
... pass on, and bear the reader South of the Potomac, beyond the Federal lines and within rifle-shot of an advanced picket of the Confederate army, under General Beauregard. It was a dismal night—the 16th of July. The rain fell heavily and the wind moaned and shrieked through the lone forests like unhappy spirits wailing in the darkness. A solitary horseman was cautiously wending his ...
— Fort Lafayette or, Love and Secession • Benjamin Wood
... The American picket lines had been posted a quarter of a mile beyond the church, near which no other guards had been placed. Not long after midnight a surgeon, one of the two men left on duty in the church, happened to look out through a broken window towards ...
— Anting-Anting Stories - And other Strange Tales of the Filipinos • Sargent Kayme
... accordance with our philosophy, founded on Christian principles and the dictates of healthy humanity, for pickets are not active belligerents, and can oppose no force to the stealthy attacks made on them by unseen enemies. To kill a picket is like fighting an unarmed man, a child or a woman. It is eminently right according to the selfish and silly philosophy of writers on national law, but inhuman, and therefore wrong, according to our philosophy, which is founded on ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2 No 4, October, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... his rifle free and stood off his man for a moment, shouting all the time to his leader that the Indians were trying to get the horses. Lewis saw the thieves tugging at the picket-ropes, and hastened into the fray, cursing himself for his own credulity. A giant Blackfoot engaged him, bull-hide shield advanced, battle-ax whirling; but wresting himself free, Lewis fired point-blank into his body, and another ...
— The Magnificent Adventure - Being the Story of the World's Greatest Exploration and - the Romance of a Very Gallant Gentleman • Emerson Hough
... we were within the lines of these Mountaineers we found the difference between them and the rest of the Abati. The other regiments we had passed unchallenged, but here we were instantly stopped by a picket. Japhet whispered something into the ear of its officer that caused him to stare hard at us. Then this officer saluted the veiled figure of the Child of Kings and led us to where the commander of the band and his subordinates were ...
— Queen Sheba's Ring • H. Rider Haggard
... preternatural powers. She hurried back to the house, and searched every room in a bewildered sort of fashion, finding nothing. As she came out again, her eye caught sight of a kitchen chair in the corner of the yard. They had climbed the picket fence, then. Yes; Atlantic, while availing himself of its unassuming aid, had left a clue in a fragment of his trousers. She opened the gate, and ran breathlessly along the streets to that Garden of Eden where joy had always ...
— Marm Lisa • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... after the advance the next day he made a minute inspection of the ground he was to occupy, its approaches and connections with the outlying country, and the rebel lines; increased the stringency of picket and sentry regulations, and exercised a rigid surveillance of non-combatants and civilians within the lines, even to the lowest canteener or camp follower. Then he turned his attention to the house he was ...
— Clarence • Bret Harte
... you had better help Larry picket your horses. Put them by the side of mine. See how the troopers fasten theirs, and do yours the same. When that is done, send Larry to get hold of some wood, and light a fire. It will be cold when the sun goes down. As for food, we have brought enough ...
— Orange and Green - A Tale of the Boyne and Limerick • G. A. Henty
... Erie about 8 o'clock, and shortly after Col. Peacockes force swept in from the west, bringing with them the spoils of victory in the shape of about sixty prisoners, being part of the picket line which Gen. O'Neil had abandoned during ...
— Troublous Times in Canada - A History of the Fenian Raids of 1866 and 1870 • John A. Macdonald
... beneath the bright adornment of tints, the lovely face—it was a very proud face—had become icy cold; the violet eyes were hard as shining crystal. To Mr. Heatherbloom that slender figure, tensely poised, seemed at once overwhelmingly near and inexpressibly remote. He started to lean on an iron picket but changed his mind and stood rather too stiffly, without support. Before his eyes the flowers in her hat waved and waved; he tried to ...
— A Man and His Money • Frederic Stewart Isham
... wheels and was away again in the shortest possible time. True a little over a quarter of an hour was lost, but the locking ring had rusted in its thread, as sometimes happens, and it was heavy work for a girl to shift it unaided. She had forbidden Barraclough to help and had made him picket a hundred yards down the road in case the pursuers should ...
— Men of Affairs • Roland Pertwee
... picket his night horse near the wagon, usually choosing the quietest animal in his string for that purpose, because to saddle and mount a "mean" horse at night is not pleasant. When utterly tired, it was hard to have to get up for one's trick at night herd. Nevertheless, on ordinary ...
— Theodore Roosevelt - An Autobiography by Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... the fort. I guess we may as well make our camp outside. If you go in you have got to picket your horse here and put your baggage there and come in at gun-fire, and all sorts of things that troubles a man who is accustomed to act ...
— In The Heart Of The Rockies • G. A. Henty
... she has never failed for one moment, never reproached you by word or look.—But may be she has no feeling.—No feeling! you can have none, if you say so: no penetration, if you think so. Would not you think me a tyrant if I put a poor fellow on the picket, and told you, when he bore it without a groan, that it was because he could not feel? You do worse, you torture the soul of the woman who loves you; she endures, she is calm, she smiles upon you even in agony; and you ...
— Tales And Novels, Vol. 8 • Maria Edgeworth
... starting from Richmond, Va., northward, forming a broad advancing picket or skirmish line between the Blue Ridge ...
— The Life, Crime and Capture of John Wilkes Booth • George Alfred Townsend
... of something that watches us softly, as the shadows glide down in the yard; That shall go with my soldier to battle, and stand with my picket on guard. Spirits of loving and lost ones—watch softly with Harry to-night, For to-morrow he goes forth to battle—to arm him for ...
— The Universal Reciter - 81 Choice Pieces of Rare Poetical Gems • Various
... A militia picket is astride the road. None—at least by the main highway—may pass into the confines of the town without permission. The stolid country lout of a sentry views all new-comers with suspicion. But the deadlock is saved by the arrival of a dapper, ...
— On the Heels of De Wet • The Intelligence Officer
... with an adventure here. While I was busy making a careful drawing of the BATANES, Cayley's pony was as much alarmed by the rushing waters as had been Sancho Panza. In his endeavours to picket the animal, my friend dropped a pistol which I had lent him to practise with, although he carried a revolver of his own. Not till he had tied up the pony at some little distance did he discover the loss. In vain he searched the spot where he knew the pistol must have escaped from ...
— Tracks of a Rolling Stone • Henry J. Coke
... also—a composite photograph—I shall never forget. It is the same man—sometimes blonde, sometimes dark, but always the same smallish man—as, on picket duty, he stops you to examine your papers. He does not understand the papers in the least. The British passport begins with the words, "We, Sir Edward Grey, a Baronet of the United Kingdom...." Sternly he wrinkles ...
— Current History, A Monthly Magazine - The European War, March 1915 • New York Times
... his body. It was for this he had so carefully wrapped his fuses. A man passed over him so close above that he might have touched him. The sentry paused a few paces beyond and accosted another, then retraced his steps over the bridge. Evidently this was the picket-line, so Roy wormed his way forward till he saw the blacker blackness of the mine buildings, then drew himself dripping out from the bank. He had run ...
— The Spoilers • Rex Beach
... fence was broken in one place; Mellen wrenched off the picket and forced a passage. He passed through, and Elizabeth mechanically kept in his footsteps. At the lower end of the yard was a single grave, with the earth still fresh around it; not a tuft of grass had sprung on the torn soil, but dead leaves ...
— A Noble Woman • Ann S. Stephens
... Stuart, in matter-of-fact tones, as he turned again to the house. "Good idea. Tell him to fire lower next time. And, I say," he went on, as he bowed curtly to the assembled company on the veranda, "since you have got a picket out, you had better double it. And, Clay, see that no one leaves here without permission—no one. That's more important, even, ...
— Soldiers of Fortune • Richard Harding Davis
... Beneath the darkening skies of early evening, the Sergeant and the Osage guide rode forth into the peril and mystery of the shrouded desert. Beyond the outmost picket, moving as silently as two spectres, they found at last a coulee leading upward from the valley to the plains above. To their left the Indian fires swept in half circle, and between were the dark outlines of savage foes. From rock to rock echoed guttural ...
— Molly McDonald - A Tale of the Old Frontier • Randall Parrish
... fell thrue in my life aftherwards, an' I cud ha' stud ut all—stud ut all— excipt when my little Shadd was born. That was on the line av march three months afther the regiment was taken with cholera. We were betune Umballa an' Kalka thin, an' I was on picket. Whin I came off duty the women showed me the child, an' ut turned on uts side an' died as I looked. We buried him by the road, an' Father Victor was a day's march behind wid the heavy baggage, so the comp'ny ...
— Life's Handicap • Rudyard Kipling
... himself flat upon the ground, and crawled through the grass towards the animal selected, using his elbows as the propelling power. This was done so slowly as not to alarm the herd in the least. Upon reaching the picket-pin, he loosed it so that it could be easily withdrawn; all the time taking good care that his head should not appear above the ...
— The Young Trail Hunters • Samuel Woodworth Cozzens
... a picket fence, And every picket went straight up and down, And all at even intervals were placed, All painted green, all pointed at the top, And every one inextricably nailed Unto two several cross-beams, which did go, Not as the pickets, ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various
... that bein' housed up like to 'a' drove her crazy at first, an' they was so tarnation fussy that she felt like a hobbled pony in a stampede. They wouldn't even let her picket her ponies out in what they call the campus, which she said was just drippin' fat with rich grass, an' nary a hoof to graze it. Why, they even had fool notions about havin' certain hours about goin' to bed, an' even when you had ...
— Happy Hawkins • Robert Alexander Wason
... he proceeded till he arrived at the picket fence that marked the commencement of Uncle Lot's ground. Here he stopped to consider. Just then four or five sheep walked up, and began also to consider a loose picket, which was hanging just ready to drop off; and James began to look at the sheep. ...
— The May Flower, and Miscellaneous Writings • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... explanation the uncle sprang lightly to the ground and after tying the horse grasped Edwin's shoulders and roughly placed him upon the ground. Again the boy's decision to endeavor to please was strengthened, and when the uncle started toward the pretty brown house just inside the picket fence and repeated the words he had used at the poorhouse, ...
— The Poorhouse Waif and His Divine Teacher • Isabel C. Byrum
... gearings and spoil the best of all your stock of shirts, yet through it all maintain that sweet composure, that gentle calm befitting such events; if you can sound a bugle-note of triumph when steering straight against a picket-fence; if you can keep your temper, tongue, and balance when on your back beneath your car you pose, and, struggling there to fix a balky cog-wheel, you drop a monkey-wrench across your nose; if you can smile as gasoline goes ...
— More Toasts • Marion Dix Mosher
... 13th, Lord Gough was before the village of Bussool, and finding a very strong picket of the enemy on a mound close to that place, his lordship, after some fighting, dislodged it. Ascending the mound, the general and his staff beheld the Khalsa army ranged along the furrowed hills in all the ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... a little painted frame house, back from the street, fronted by a precise bit of lawn, with a willow bush at one corner. A white picket fence effectually separated it from a broad, shaded, not unpleasing street. An osage hedge and a board fence respectively bounded the ...
— The Blazed Trail • Stewart Edward White
... on the right. Bud saw that they were passing a picket fence. The barking of this dog started another farther ahead and to the left. Houses so close together could only mean that he was approaching Crater. Bud began to pull Sunfish down to a more conventional pace. He did not particularly want to see heads thrust from windows, ...
— Cow-Country • B. M. Bower
... shafts, and two broad low tombs side by side and a little apart from the others. A tangle of rose-briers covered the sunken graves, a rank growth of grass choked the narrow paths, the little gate interlaced and overhung with honeysuckle sagged away from its posts, the fence itself had lost a picket here and there, and weeds flaunted boldly in the gaps. The girl looked wan and ...
— Shapes that Haunt the Dusk • Various
... careful of Snoop and Downy," cautioned Freddie, as Dinah took up her picket duty. "Look out the boys don't get 'em," with a wise look at the youngsters, who were spoiling for more ...
— The Bobbsey Twins at the Seashore • Laura Lee Hope
... out for firewood; but this can only be expected from troops on the march. On the other hand, the women could not say enough in praise of the soldiers, and their behaviour towards their sex. Whenever a camp was established close to the homestead, the officers have always had a picket placed round the house for the object of preventing all pilfering, and the women, rich or poor, have everywhere been ...
— The War in South Africa - Its Cause and Conduct • Arthur Conan Doyle
... of wealth in the world. Some of the best-known people in the country were openly taking the ground that the poor man was not getting a "square deal." To sympathize with organized labor was no longer "bad form," some society women even doing picket duty for Jewish factory-girls out ...
— The Rise of David Levinsky • Abraham Cahan
... a corporal, and fourteen men of the Twelfth Regiment of the Line had been sent out to occupy a house on the main highway. They would be at least a half of a mile in advance of any other picket of their own people. Sergeant Morton was deeply angry at being sent on this duty. He said that he was over-worked. There were at least two sergeants, he claimed furiously, whose turn it should have been to go on this arduous mission. ...
— Men, Women, and Boats • Stephen Crane
... engaged in harrying the country, and this enabled the Neri to talk of the king's forces engaged in legitimate warfare against those of Victor Emmanuel. Riding over the vast plains of the Capitanata, we would discern against the sky-outline the figure of a solitary horseman. This we knew to be a picket. Then there was no time to be lost, and away we would go for him helter-skelter across the plain; he would instantly gallop in on the main body, probably occupying a masseria. If they thought they ...
— Fashionable Philosophy - and Other Sketches • Laurence Oliphant
... voice, and looked up to behold the Colonel's head and shoulders above the picket fence. The old gentleman's face was grave and his well-known Stetson had been pulled lower to ...
— Where the Souls of Men are Calling • Credo Harris
... over the day's adventures, walked back and forth in twos and threes almost under the feet of the travellers; and shufflings and scufflings in the branches showed that the bats were ready to go out on the night-picket. Swiftly the light gathered itself together, painted for an instant the faces and the cartwheels and the bullocks' horns as red as blood. Then the night fell, changing the touch of the air, drawing a low, even haze, like a gossamer veil of blue, across ...
— Kim • Rudyard Kipling
... picket pins, your thoughts go back thru years To Outside, Home, and Sweetheart, and this last thought sort of cheers; You recollect the days you spent beneath a Southern sky And with regret you now remember they ...
— Rhymes of a Roughneck • Pat O'Cotter
... commodious bays and safe havens for the mariner. The soil, too, is of extraordinary fertility; and the climate, though humid, deals kindly with the Englishman's constitution. Nor is this all; for, advanced from it, north and south, like picket stations, are Norfolk Island, and the Auckland group, both of which have good harbours. And it requires no prophet's eye to see that, when England needs posts farther eastward, she will find them among the green coral islets ...
— The Ontario Readers: Fourth Book • Various
... little of the ending of this speech at the time, but had good cause to remember it before midnight. On they pushed past the picket guard and on to a side road which it was said would bring them around to the north side of Maasin. Both were in fairly good humor by this time, and the major told many an anecdote of army life which made Ben laugh outright. The major saw that ...
— The Campaign of the Jungle - or, Under Lawton through Luzon • Edward Stratemeyer
... they are marching on In a wider field than ours; Those bright battalions still fulfil The scheme of the heavenly powers; And high brave thoughts float down to us, The echoes of that far fight, Like the flash of a distant picket's gun Through the shades ...
— Pike County Ballads and Other Poems • John Hay
... ill religion, and their neighbourhood had long been avoided by the prudent before the fall of day; but of late, on the up-springing of new requirements, these lonely stones on the moor had again become a place of assembly. A watchful picket on the Hill-end commanded all the northern and eastern approaches; and such was the disposition of the ground, that by certain cunningly posted sentries the west also could be made secure against surprise: there was no place in the country where a conventicle could meet with more quiet of mind ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume XXI • Robert Louis Stevenson
... to inform you that all our pickets have been driven into the city. The peasants have assembled in large masses on the neighboring mountains and opened thence a most murderous fire upon our pickets. Only a few men of each picket have returned; the others lie dead outside ...
— Andreas Hofer • Lousia Muhlbach
... might be, was at times most gratifying. Once he had resented its manifestations with bitterness, imagining that they were likely to bring him into contempt and undermine his authority; and when she interfered in his memorable fight with Bill Cole and fiercely attacked his opponent with a picket, cutting his head and incapacitating him for fighting for the rest of the day, he felt that he could never forgive her. She had violated the rule of battle and outraged the noble principle of fair play; and, worse and worse, had disgraced him in the eyes of the world ...
— The Gold-Stealers - A Story of Waddy • Edward Dyson
... I go to sleep, I'll picket the horses close beside me; and if you steal away on foot during the night, I'll ride you down a few hours after daybreak. I think you understand me. There's nothing more ...
— The Intriguers • Harold Bindloss
... commanded it, retired disgracefully, leaving a wounded man on the ground. Captain Biddle, of the artillery, who was near the scene, impelled by feelings highly honourable to him as a soldier and officer, promptly assumed the command of this picket, led it back to the wounded man and brought him off the field. I ordered Captain Treat, on the post, to retire from the army, as I am anxious that no officer (p. 206) shall remain under my command who can be suspected of cowardice. I advise that Captain Treat[96] be struck from ...
— The Medallic History of the United States of America 1776-1876 • J. F. Loubat
... Montreal dates back to October, 1535, when Jacques Cartier first landed on the island. An Indian village, called Hochelaga, existed here at this time. Its outline was circular; and it was encompassed by three rows of palisades, or rather picket fences, one within the other, well secured and put together. A single entrance was left in this rude fortification, but guarded with pikes and stakes, and every precaution taken against siege or attack. Cartier named the place Mount Royal, from the elevation that rose in rear of the ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 11 • Various
... "obstacles" in field fortifications, especially in what are known as "high wire entanglements." Pointed stakes or "pickets," 4 ft. high, are planted in rows and secured by ordinary wire to holdfasts or pegs in the ground. Each picket is connected to all around it, top and bottom, ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 3 - "Banks" to "Bassoon" • Various
... George Murray appeared before Blair Castle, and planted his men so as to prevent the garrison from sallying out, or from getting in provisions.[181] The castle was soon so completely invested by the advanced guard of the Jacobites, that they fired from behind the nearest walls and enclosures at the picket guard of the besieged. Some horses were hurriedly taken into the Castle with a small quantity of provender; and in such haste, that one of these animals was put into the lower part of Cumming's Tower without ...
— Memoirs of the Jacobites of 1715 and 1745 - Volume III. • Mrs. Thomson
... on the gate post—they had a picket fence. I seen some folks coming to our house. I run in the house and says, 'Miss Mai Liza, the Yankees coming here!' She told her husband to get in the bed. He says, 'Oh God, what she know bout Yankees?' Miss Mai Liza say, 'I don't know; she's one of em, I speck she knows em.' One of the ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States - Volume II. Arkansas Narratives. Part I • Work Projects Administration
... clasped hers as it lay on the gate. His right arm stole over the low picket fence and went around the shoulder that leaned against the gate-post. The road was quite empty, the night already dark. He could feel her warm breath on his ...
— The Ruling Passion • Henry van Dyke
... Sydney coal-mines: we expected to find the miner's finger-marks everywhere; but instead of the smoky, sulphurous atmosphere, and the black road, and the sulky, grimy, brick tenements, we were surprised with clean, white, picket-fences; and green lawns, and clever, little cottages, nestled in shrubbery and clover. The mines are over the bay, five miles from South Sydney. Slowly we dragged on, until we came to a sleepy little one-story inn, with supernatural dormer windows rising ...
— Acadia - or, A Month with the Blue Noses • Frederic S. Cozzens
... plunging into the waters of the shimmering little bay. The coast was semicircular in shape, rising high and black to his left, running low and green to his right. Not one hundred feet to the left were the first signs of the rocky promontory, small, jagged boulders standing like a picket line before the grout mass beyond. Along the rocky side of the wall, sonic distance away, he saw an overhanging shelf of dark gray stone, protruding over the natural floor beneath. An inky darkness back of the projection impressed ...
— Nedra • George Barr McCutcheon
... the house somewhat moodily, but afternoon sunshine enlivened her; and, opening the picket gate, she stepped forth with a fair renewal of her chosen manner toward the public, though just at that moment no public was in sight. Miss Atwater's underlip resumed the position for which her mother had predicted that regal Spanish fixity, and ...
— Gentle Julia • Booth Tarkington
... iv me takin' ye fur a drummer, now!" he exclaimed in self-reproach. "Sure, I've often heard of yez. I live over beyant, in the shack wid the picket fince on wan side iv ut. The other sides blowed down in a dust storm a year gone, and I will erect them some day when I have time. But ye can't miss me place, more be token half the front iv the house was ...
— Desert Conquest - or, Precious Waters • A. M. Chisholm
... covered by the undergrowth of shrubbery, and perchance hers might be one of them. Accepting the possibility I found the one I sought, which could not fail to be recognized, for strange to say, time had dealt so gently that the slender picket fence was undecayed by his "effacing; lingers," and the name painted upon the little wooden head-board was distinctly visible. Grouped in quadrangular growth were four little trees, gracefully arching ...
— The World As I Have Found It - Sequel to Incidents in the Life of a Blind Girl • Mary L. Day Arms
... bearings. Not knowing where he was and too tired and miserable to give much thought to a matter of such slight importance, he glanced around for a place to finish his sleep. A tree some distance ahead of him looked inviting and towards it he rode. Habit made him picket the horse before he lay down and as he fell asleep he had vague recollections of handling a strange picket rope some time recently. The horse slowly turned and stared at the already snoring figure, glanced over the landscape, back the to queerest man it had ever ...
— Bar-20 Days • Clarence E. Mulford
... street and the traffic of Wisconsin Avenue. The longer wing, toward the back, had a back door that opened onto Water Street. The space between the house and Wisconsin Avenue had been made into a neat oblong flower garden, fenced off from the sidewalk by box shrubs and a white picket fence. Behind it, along the other side of the long wing, lay a meticulously arranged vegetable garden and ...
— Mr. Wicker's Window • Carley Dawson
... He had some time since decided upon his course, and as soon as he was a short distance away from the clump of trees, he set out at a brisk walk, and made no effort at concealment. He did not care, now, if he were halted by a British picket ...
— The Dare Boys of 1776 • Stephen Angus Cox
... silently the flower of McDowell's army, eighteen thousand picked men, moved under the cover of the night to their chosen crossing at Sudley's Ford, two miles beyond the farthest gray picket of Beauregard's left. ...
— The Victim - A romance of the Real Jefferson Davis • Thomas Dixon
... pick up the wounded, and bear them within the walls for surgical help. They were so near he could see their faces, could hear them speak; yet he durst not make any sign to them when he lay within range of the French picket's fire. ...
— Sylvia's Lovers, Vol. III • Elizabeth Gaskell
... they haven't made contact with it yet, and don't even know whether it's arrived. If it hadn't and we went that way, we could nip into the first train and get clean away. But when this picket sees us driving straight on to Ecclesthorpe, they'll sit down at the Dip to wait till we never come. I shall spring the Dip at such a pace that these flannelled fools'll yell like a school-treat, and the ...
— Ambrotox and Limping Dick • Oliver Fleming
... had fetched out his stable-boys and farm-hands, and, lantern in hand, was helping the sergeant to picket the horses and stow the men about on clean straw in the outhouses. They were turning back to the house, and the old man was turning over in his mind that the sergeant hadn't yet said a word about where he was to sleep, when by the door they found Madam Noy waiting, in her wedding gown, and ...
— I Saw Three Ships and Other Winter Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... near Lat. 39 deg. 30' N., and Long. 97 deg. 20' W. We are now in the primest part of the buffalo-pasture. As we wind along the base of the steep Republican Bluffs, and the edges of those green amphitheatres made by their alternate approach and retrocession, our whistle scares a picket-line of giant bulls, guarding a divide across the stream, and with tails in air, heads at the down charge, they scour away at a lumbering cow-gallop, to tell the main herd of a progress more resistless than their own. Or, perhaps, our experience of the buffaloes is a more inconvenient one. We ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 85, November, 1864 • Various
... Democrats Attempt to Counteract Womans Party Campaign Inez Milholland Boissevain Scene of Memorial Service-Statuary Hall, the Capitol Scenes on the Picket Line Monster Picket-March 4, 1917 Officer Arrests Pickets Women Put into Police Patrol Suffragists in Prison Costume Fellow Prisoners Sewing Room at Occoquan Workhouse Riotous Scenes on Picket Line Dudley Field Malone Lucy Burns ...
— Jailed for Freedom • Doris Stevens
... emerged upon that part of the street where the mart gave way to the home. The comfortable houses stood pleasantly back from the street, with plenty of lawn and shrubbery about them; and often, along the picket-fences, the laden branches of small cedars, bending low with their burden, showered the young man's swinging shoulders glitteringly ...
— The Conquest of Canaan • Booth Tarkington
... the middle distance was a track and cradle similar to the one shown in the first picture. The machine in the cabinet buzzed, and clicked, and made a noise like that of a small boy rattling a stick along a picket fence. A draught from some open window blowing against the linen screen caused the flat, deserted plain to undulate like the waves of the sea. The horizon bobbed up and down, showing first a great expanse of sky, and then the foreground ran up to infinity. The cradle was seen first at the right, ...
— L. P. M. - The End of the Great War • J. Stewart Barney
... took the direction. Wal, one day he hitched up his old one-hoss shay, and kind o' brushed up, and started off a-courtin'. Wal, the parson come to the house, and he war tickled to pieces with the looks o' things outside, 'cause the house is all well shingled and painted, and there ain't a picket loose nor a nail ...
— The Wit of Women - Fourth Edition • Kate Sanborn
... reconnoitre, but dug my hunting-knife into the stockade, hoisted myself up the wooden wall, got a grip of the top and threw myself over, escaping with no greater loss than boots pulled off before climbing the palisade, and the Highland cap which stuck fast to a picket as I alighted below. At dawn, bootless and hatless, I came in sight of Fort Gibraltar and Father Holland, who was scanning the prairie for my return, ...
— Lords of the North • A. C. Laut
... immense as, on the morning of the 11th December, 1792, Louis XVI. was driven slowly from the Temple to the Convention, escorted by cavalry, infantry, and artillery. Paris looked like an armed camp: all the posts were doubled; the muster-roll of the National Guard was called over every hour; a picket of two hundred men watched in the court of each of the right sections; a reserve with cannon was stationed at the Tuileries, and strong detachments patroled the streets and cleared the road of all loiterers. The trees that lined the boulevards, the doors and windows of ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... took himself very quickly away, much to Marcia's relief. But the trouble did not go out of her eyes as she saw him turn the corner. Instead she went in and stood at the dining room window a long time looking out on the Heaths' hollyhocks beaming in the sun behind the picket fence, and wondered what he could have meant, and why he smiled in that hateful way. She decided she did not like him, and she hoped he would never come. She did not think she would care to hear him play. There was something about him that ...
— Marcia Schuyler • Grace Livingston Hill Lutz
... a painter by trade, met us one day with brushes and a great bucket of white paint, and, while he and Mary sat upon the doorstep talking in low tones or directing in high, Ellen and I made shift to paint the little picket-fence until it was white as new snow. At odd times Braddish himself painted the little house (it was all of old-fashioned, long shingles) inside and out, and a friend of his got up on the roof with mortar and a trowel, and pointed-up the brick chimney; and my father and Mr. Sturtevant ...
— The Spread Eagle and Other Stories • Gouverneur Morris
... which the kindly housewife plucked a nosegay for us. Her white columbines she calls 'granny's mutches'; and indeed they are not unlike those fresh white caps. Dear Robbie Burns, ten inches high in plaster, stands in the sunny window in a tiny box of blossoming plants surrounded by a miniature green picket fence. Outside, looming white among the gillyflowers, is Sir Walter, and near him is still another and a larger bust on a cracked pedestal a foot high, perhaps. We did not recognise the head at once, and asked the little woman ...
— Penelope's Experiences in Scotland • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... looked ahead; the way was clear. A glance back showed me the road full of men. I heard shouts, orders, shot after shot. I was soon far beyond danger, and going at racing speed through the night; but I had scared up a pleasant hornets' nest. The last picket was a quarter of a mile ahead, perhaps. I pulled up, and with difficulty made the mare walk. There were fires on both sides, and a lot of alert soldiers out in the road. I turned off into the fields ...
— Hugh Wynne, Free Quaker • S. Weir Mitchell
... down in my memlandums(4) just now. And DD shall be repaid her t'other book; but patience, all in good time: you are so hasty, a dog would, etc. So Ppt has neither won nor lost. Why, mun, I play sometimes too at picket, that is picquet, I mean; but very seldom.—Out late? why, 'tis only at Lady Masham's, and that is in our town; but I never come late here from London, except once in rain, when I could not get a coach. We have ...
— The Journal to Stella • Jonathan Swift
... raised his hands to heaven and exclaimed: "God bless and prosper you, sir! The picket is in that house, and the sentry ...
— Revolutionary Heroes, And Other Historical Papers • James Parton
... been through the Peninsular campaign and the disastrous retreat under Pope, was frightfully reduced in numbers: only three hundred and seventy were around the standards out of the eleven hundred who first took the field. Many had fallen on picket or been cut off singly, more by disease, but alike doing their duty, unmentioned and unnoticed. A larger number were yet suffering from overwork and sickness; and the regiment would in time recruit to seven hundred, from ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 3 No 2, February 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... been in vain, so Bob left a picket of five men under Old Dick to keep the narrow path, bidding them fell a tree or two so that their branches might lie towards and hinder an attack from the enemy, before hurrying back with fourteen men ...
— Middy and Ensign • G. Manville Fenn
... a private detective. He was at first disappointed in the work. It seemed, at first, little better than his old job as watchman and checker. But the agency, after giving him a three-week try out at picket work, submitted him to the further test of a "shadowing" case. That first assignment of "tailing" kept him thirty-six hours without sleep, but he stuck to his trail, stuck to it with the blind pertinacity of a bloodhound, and at the ...
— Never-Fail Blake • Arthur Stringer
... four principal avenues of the city. These movements of cavalry, infantry, and carriages, ceased not a moment even during the night It was very rarely that a troop of cavalry, sent out upon patrol or picket duty, returned without having lost several men and horses, who were invariably, according to their report, kidnapped by the Cossacks. Upon the whole, all the troops with whom the French had any rencounters were called by them Cossacks—a name which I have heard them repeat millions of times, ...
— Frederic Shoberl Narrative of the Most Remarkable Events Which Occurred In and Near Leipzig • Frederic Shoberl (1775-1853)
... As captain of a company, my most arduous duty, when not on special duty or detached service, was as field officer of the day. This necessitated the visiting occasionally during the day and night, our videttes and picket posts which were stationed on the roads into the country, and at intersecting points in the fields; and also crossing in a skiff the Mississippi river, to visit the troops stationed to guard a telegraph station on the other side. This ...
— Reminiscences of two years with the colored troops • Joshua M. Addeman
... the manner of our march: A mile or so ahead of us went a picket of eight or ten men mounted on the swiftest beasts, doubtless to give warning of any danger. Next, three or four hundred yards away, followed a body of about fifty Kendah, travelling in a double line, and behind these the baggage men, mounted like everyone else, and leading behind ...
— The Ivory Child • H. Rider Haggard
... even for water. A black gave me the direction of the Navy Yard, and I shaped my course for it, feeling more like lying down to die, than anything else. When about half-way across the bit of vacant land between the Capitol and the Yard, I sat down under a high picket-fence, and the devil put it into my head, that it would be well to terminate sufferings that seemed too hard to be borne, by hanging myself on that very fence. I took the handkerchief from my neck, made a running bow-line, and got so far as to be at work at a standing bow-line, to hitch over ...
— Ned Myers • James Fenimore Cooper
... were all in uniform, well clothed and equipped—in short, Hampton commanded, if not the most numerous, certainly the most effective, regular army which the United States were able to send into the field during the War. Crossing the border on the 20th of September, 1813, he surprised a small picket of British at Odelltown, a Loyalist settlement afterwards celebrated for a battle in the Rebellion of 1837. He soon found himself met with what seemed to him great difficulties, for the army was plunged into an extensive swampy wood, the only road ...
— An Account Of The Battle Of Chateauguay - Being A Lecture Delivered At Ormstown, March 8th, 1889 • William D. Lighthall
... side street that ran at right angles to the main thoroughfare, just below Rafferty's, was Duncannon's. A picket fence at the side let into the vegetable gardens of the three, and the quiet little Mrs. Duncannon with the rippley brown hair and soft brown eyes often slipped through and made a morning call under cover of the ...
— The City of Fire • Grace Livingston Hill
... so far as answering questions is concerned. This afternoon is passed the first homestead, as distinguished from a ranch-consisting of a small tent pitched near a few acres of newly upturned prairie - in the picket-line of the great agricultural empire that is gradually creeping westward over the plains, crowding the autocratic cattle-kings and their herds farther west,. even as the Indians and their still greater herds - buffaloes - have been crowded out ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... the Socialist Party is to seize the powers of government and thus prevent them from being used by the capitalists against the workers. With Socialists in political offices the workers can strike and not be shot. They can picket shops and not be arrested and imprisoned.... To win the demands made on the industrial field it is absolutely necessary to control the government, as experience shows strikes to have been lost through the interference ...
— Socialism As It Is - A Survey of The World-Wide Revolutionary Movement • William English Walling
... County now and in a few minutes we shall be in Hicks Center, the county seat," were the first words that broke in on my self-communion as we began to speed past rough board and log cabins, each surrounded by a picket fence which in no way seemed to fend the doorsteps from razor-back pigs, chickens and a few young mules and calves. "It must be court day, for I don't see a single inhabitant sitting chewing under his own vine and ...
— The Heart's Kingdom • Maria Thompson Daviess
... cottage is a servant house at the rear of a white family's residence. A gate through an old-fashioned picket fence led into a spacious yard where dense shade from tall pecan trees was particularly inviting after a long ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves - Georgia Narratives, Part 3 • Works Projects Administration
... beneath the eaves and round the windows, one would have been loth to believe the old house had all been of a deep red. The high road lay between the house and the long stretch of meadow-land which separated it from the river. The picket fence in front of the dwelling was in rather a dilapidated condition, and the gate, being minus a hinge, hung awry. Many tall sunflowers stood in the narrow strip of ground between the front fence and the house, and they were about all I could see in the way of ornament. ...
— Walter Harland - Or, Memories of the Past • Harriet S. Caswell
... depended on to end up the war in time, because no Government could stand the expense of the shoe-leather we should cost it trying to follow us around. 'Marion Rangers! good name, b'gosh!' said he. And wanted to know why we hadn't had a picket-guard at the place where the road entered the prairie, and why we hadn't sent out a scouting party to spy out the enemy and bring us an account of his strength, and so on, before jumping up and stampeding out of a strong position upon a mere vague ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... protecting me in his old age, followed us, wagging his tail in evident delight at the prospect of bearing me company. A soft breeze fanned over the beach, the dew-dripping rose bushes, that lined the green-topped picket fence, waved their tops to and fro, the sparrows whistled and sung, and wooed, as if Providence had made them for that alone; and all nature seemed putting on her gayest attire to inspire ...
— The Life and Adventures of Maj. Roger Sherman Potter • "Pheleg Van Trusedale"
... Wes Wood, and his wife Aunt Lizzie Wood, found them in their own comfortable little home in Duncantown, a nice urban section of the town, where most of the inhabitants are of the better class of colored people. A small yard with a picket fence and gate surround the yard, which had tall hollyhocks, rearing their ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States - From Interviews with Former Slaves - Kentucky Narratives • Works Projects Administration
... added risk of violence on the part of the mob of the city, fired to a safe and flaming enthusiasm by the reports continually coming in of new victories on the frontier, each little skirmish with a picket being invariably followed by the withdrawal of the Turks to a position well within their own territory, according to the general order to accept no combat under actual conditions, so that the least skirmish was magnified at Athens to a new victory. The summons to demobilize was met by a ...
— The Autobiography of a Journalist, Volume II • William James Stillman
... the Arkansas river to the mouth of the Purgatoire— pronounced in that country Picket Wire—which was about thirty miles from Bent's Fort. Seeing a small band of buffalo some distance away, we took the pack-saddles off of the mules and turned them out to graze, mounted our saddle-horses and were off for the ...
— Thirty-One Years on the Plains and In the Mountains • William F. Drannan
... that had been riding on the surface near the Fleet Flagship's quarter, rose like a flying gull, circled in wide spirals over the Fleet and sped seawards. Across the lanes of water, armed picket-boats, with preternaturally grave-faced Midshipmen at their wheels, picked their way amongst the traffic of drifters, cutters under sail, hooting store carriers and ...
— The Long Trick • Lewis Anselm da Costa Ritchie
... were purchasing horses. Judging from what I saw I do not think that we got heavy enough animals, and of those purchased certainly a half were nearly unbroken. It was no easy matter to handle them on the picket-lines, and to provide for feeding and watering; and the efforts to shoe and ride them were at first productive of much vigorous excitement. Of course, those that were wild from the range had to be thrown and tied down before they ...
— Rough Riders • Theodore Roosevelt
... for Slavery? It is for this we are willing to incur the moral and financial hazards of a great struggle,—to furnish an Anti-Republican party of reconstructionists with a bridge for Slavery to reach a Northern platform, to frown at us again from the chair of State. The Federal picket who perchance fell last night upon some obscure outpost of our great line of Freedom has gone up to Heaven protesting against such cruel expectations, wherever they exist; and they exist wherever apathy exists, and old hatred lingers, and wherever ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 56, June, 1862 • Various
... man of resource, he set about swiftly supplying this need. In the dull days of inaction, when the armies lay supine and only occasionally the monotony was broken by the engagement of distant skirmishers or a picket line was driven in on the main body, he had learned to play a game at cards much in vogue at that period, though for no greater hazards than grains of corn or Confederate money, almost as worthless. In the realization now that the same ...
— The Lost Guidon - 1911 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... stood on the bridge, holding Fran's hand in a warm and sympathetic pressure, he was not unlike one on picket-service who slips over the trenches to hold friendly parley with the enemy. Abbott did not know there was any danger in this brotherly handclasp; but that was because he could not see a fleshy and elderly lady slowly ...
— Fran • John Breckenridge Ellis
... convoy got started on the road. The convoy consisted of 96 mounted men leading 237 mules, the rolling kitchen drawn by four mules, in charge of George Musial, who had the assistance of Cook Burns and two K. P.'s in preparing meals enroute. Five auto trucks, carrying the forage and picket-line equipment, formed the ...
— The Delta of the Triple Elevens - The History of Battery D, 311th Field Artillery US Army, - American Expeditionary Forces • William Elmer Bachman
... hundred men in all, who were stationed at Belmont, across the river, were attacked, about seven o'clock, A.M., by General McClernand, with a little over seven thousand men, according to Union authorities. It was a complete surprise to us. At first we thought it was a picket skirmish with the cavalry; but soon Frank Cheatham, our brigadier, came galloping through the camp, bare-headed, in shirt and pantaloons, ordering us to "fall in," saying that the "enemy were murdering the sick men in their tents across the river." The report ...
— Thirteen Months in the Rebel Army • William G. Stevenson
... an early breakfast, the horses were led up from the stables, each one having on a strong halter, and a coiled picket rope with an iron pin fastened to the saddle. These were carried so that if it should be found necessary to secure the horses on the plains, they could be picketed out. The bachelors' set of quarters is next to ours, so we all got ready together, and I must say that the deliberate ...
— Army Letters from an Officer's Wife, 1871-1888 • Frances M.A. Roe
... tribal desire for a stronghold waxed too strong to be denied. Three of the walls were formed of odd planks scavenged from neighboring woodpiles and fences, eked out, here and there, with a few pantry shelves taken from vacant houses. The fourth was nothing but the picket fence, but as Silvey expressed it when viewing their handiwork, "It doesn't rain much from the north, anyway." Door for the low entrance there was not, and the roof, whose shingles were purchased by an arduously earned half-dollar, became a veritable sieve ...
— A Son of the City - A Story of Boy Life • Herman Gastrell Seely |
