"Shearing" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Vice-Presidents, Thomas McD. Richards, Woodstock, and Daniel Kelley, Wheaton; Secretary and Treasurer, W. C. Vandercook, Cherry Valley. It was decided to hold the association's annual public sheep-shearing at Richmond, McHenry county, April 29 and 30, and C. R. Lawson, L. H. Smith, and A. S. Peck were designated a committee to represent the association at the annual ...
— Prairie Farmer, Vol. 56: No. 3, January 19, 1884. - A Weekly Journal for the Farm, Orchard and Fireside • Various
... Braley's land. A long upturning sweep ended at the house, directly against the base of the mountain; and without decreasing his gait he passed over the faintly traced way, by the triangular sheep washing and shearing pen, to ...
— The Happy End • Joseph Hergesheimer
... Tranquillity Magpie over the Hill Sheep-shearing Evolution Riding in the Mist The Procession A Christian Wind in the Rocks My Distant ...
— Quotations from the Works of John Galsworthy • David Widger
... ever I hear that you have betrayed the first symptom of age, that your back is bent a twentieth of an inch from the perpendicular, I shall hasten to believe you are shearing your prodigal overgrowths, and are calling in your troops to the citadel, and I may come in the first steamer to drop in of evenings and ...
— The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1834-1872, Vol II. • Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson
... tendency to divide time by natural phenomena and natural events, it may be noticed that even by our own peasantry the definite divisions of months and years are but little used; and that they habitually refer to occurrences as "before sheep-shearing," or "after harvest," or "about the time when the squire died." It is manifest, therefore, that the more or less equal periods perceived in Nature gave the first units of measure for time; as did Nature's more ...
— Essays on Education and Kindred Subjects - Everyman's Library • Herbert Spencer
... ready. When he tried to introduce ideas of his own, changing the mores, he failed. He tried many times to put a stop to the usages of mourning which were violent and excessive,—loud outcries, destruction of clothes and furniture, blackening the walls of the house and one's face, and shearing the beard. He did not succeed. These were ancient and popular customs and they were maintained.[1575] It is improper for any Moslem, male or female, to uncover the head.[1576] They uncover the feet to show respect. ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner
... A few sheep lay about, which, as they ruminated, looked quietly into the bedroom windows. The situation of the house, prejudicial to humanity, was a stimulus to vegetation, on which account an endless shearing of the heavy-armed ivy was necessary, and a continual lopping of trees and shrubs. It was an edifice built in times when human constitutions were damp-proof, when shelter from the boisterous was all that men thought of in choosing a dwelling-place, the insidious being beneath their notice; ...
— The Woodlanders • Thomas Hardy
... the shearing, nae youths now are jeering, The bandsters are lyart, and runkled and gray; At fair or at preaching, nae wooing, nae fleeching— The Flowers of the ...
— English Poets of the Eighteenth Century • Selected and Edited with an Introduction by Ernest Bernbaum
... seasons, in mountainous scenery especially, I shall regard them as apples of gold. I am very anxious to learn whether any particular customs or festivities are kept up in the sheep-districts of Scotland at sheep-shearing time, as were wont of old all over England; and where is there a man who could solve such a problem like thyself? I am sensible of the great boldness of my request; but as my object is to promote the love of nature, I am willing to believe ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... of a good yeoman in peaceful lands, save that the main building was longer, though it were low. But amidst the said greensward was a goodly flock of sheep that had been but of late washed for the shearing, and along with the sheep four folk, two carles and two queans, all of them in their first youth, not one by seeming of over a score and two of summers. These folk were clad but simply, man and ...
— The Water of the Wondrous Isles • William Morris
... Warwicke, The great long Dutchman, and roaring Marget a Barwicke, The mummied Princes, and Caesar's wine yet i' Dover, Saint James his ginney-hens, the Cassawarway[2] moreover, The Beaver i' the Parke (strange Beast as e'er any man saw), Downe-shearing Willowes with teeth as sharpe as a hand-saw, The lance of John a Gaunt, and Brandon's still i' the Tower, The fall of Ninive, with Norwich built in an hower. King Henries slip-shoes, the sword of valiant Edward, The Coventry Boares-shield, and fire-workes seen but to bedward, ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 215, December 10, 1853 • Various
... short, choppy waves of the forenoon had given place to a long, oily, sluggish swell, without a single ripple to disturb its surface, through which the Chih' Yuen's stem clove its way like a knife shearing through butter. The ship was rolling heavily; and in the queer, eerie stillness that fell with the disappearance of the sun, the usual ship-board sounds, the clank of machinery far below, and even the voices of the men, assumed so weird and unnatural a character ...
— A Chinese Command - A Story of Adventure in Eastern Seas • Harry Collingwood
... bond, with sureties, that all the wool he might buy should be sold by him to no persons within fifteen miles of the sea, and all growers of wool within ten miles of the sea in those counties were obliged within three days of shearing to account for the number of fleeces, and ...
— King's Cutters and Smugglers 1700-1855 • E. Keble Chatterton
... Egg, shearing the whisper. "Only Dammy ain't got any sense about cards. I tried to teach him pinochle, but he never could remember none of it, and the hired men always clean him out shakin' dice. He can't ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1921 • Various
... sirs, For you there's rosemary and rue; these keep Seeming and savour all the winter long; Grace and remembrance be to you both, And welcome to our shearing.' ...
— Storyology - Essays in Folk-Lore, Sea-Lore, and Plant-Lore • Benjamin Taylor
... in the garden; a visit to the shearing shed; the news of colonial affairs in general; fat pullets cooked a la gastronome and some good wine; had each in its ...
— Three Expeditions into the Interior of Eastern Australia, Vol 2 (of 2) • Thomas Mitchell
... portion of the herder's life, which was generally very lonely. First came the shearing crew with their captain; next arrived the venders of hot coffee, tamales, tortillas, and other Mexican dainties; brush booths were erected and a brisk trade began. The herds were driven up and into a corral where several shearers could work at a time. Snip, snip, snip, went the shears hour after ...
— History of California • Helen Elliott Bandini
... dreams of prizes, too! Out in the flock there was a white sheep which she called hers, since she had brought it up as a lamb when its mother would not own it, as is sometimes the way with sheep— silly things! It was shearing-time now and she ...
— The Iron Star - And what It saw on Its Journey through the Ages • John Preston True
... sense of the word; he extemporised on paper. Even when he re-wrote a song, it meant little more than that, dissatisfied with his treatment of a theme, he tried again. He never built as, for instance, Bach and Beethoven built, carefully working out this detail, lengthening this portion, shearing away that, evolving part from part so that in the end the whole composition became a complete organism. There is none of the logic in his work that we find in the works of the tip-top men, none of the perfect finish; but, on the contrary, a very considerable degree ...
— Old Scores and New Readings • John F. Runciman
... engines, cars, wheels, axles, tires, brakes, and rails. Fifteen patents for improvements in sugar manufacture, patents for motors and hydraulic apparatus, for the manufacture of iron and steel, the shaping, embossing, shearing, and cutting of metals, for marine artillery, ordnance, projectiles, ammunition, armor plates, screw propellers, anchors, silvering glass, casting of type, patents for bronze powder, gold paint, oils, varnishes, ...
— The Harris-Ingram Experiment • Charles E. Bolton
... together beside the water, while the whole circle of sentinels rose one after the other and sailed off into the sky. It was a wonderful sight to see at least a hundred creatures of such enormous size and hideous appearance all swooping like swallows with swift, shearing wing-strokes above us; but soon we realized that it was not one on which we could afford to linger. At first the great brutes flew round in a huge ring, as if to make sure what the exact extent of the danger might be. Then, the flight ...
— The Lost World • Arthur Conan Doyle
... in his room. He complains his new shoes are too tight. I think it's nervousness. Perhaps he'll let you shave him; I'm sure he'll cut himself. And I wish the barber hadn't cut his hair so short, Ralph. I hate this new fashion of shearing men behind the ears. The back of his neck is the ugliest part of a man." She spoke with such resentment that Ralph ...
— One of Ours • Willa Cather
... given above. Its habit is very compact, and one of great symmetry. If the plants are set about a foot apart, and in two rows,—these rows a foot apart,—you will have a low hedge that will be as smooth as one of Arbor Vitae after the gardener has given it its annual shearing. When the bush takes on its autumnal coloring it is as showy as a plant can well be, and is always sure of attracting attention, ...
— Amateur Gardencraft - A Book for the Home-Maker and Garden Lover • Eben E. Rexford
... in a dream, I watched the giant Jodd cut down a gorgeous captain, the axe shearing through his golden armour as though it were but silk. I watched a comrade of my own fall beneath a spear-thrust. I gazed at the face of Heliodore, who stared wide-eyed at the red scene, and at the white-lipped Irene, who was clinging to my arm. Now we were being pressed back again, we ...
— The Wanderer's Necklace • H. Rider Haggard
... moving, so abrupt her swoop to the right, that she leaned far over and showed them the red of her huge bilge. Her high speed enabled her to make an especially quick turn. As they gaped, her two stacks swung almost into line. Her shearing bow menaced the Nequasset. ...
— Blow The Man Down - A Romance Of The Coast - 1916 • Holman Day
... other side. If the well-to-do, who would have to pay the Levy or subscribe to the Compulsory Loan, would prefer that system to a high income tax, there is no more to be said. A tax that is popular with the payer, as compared with other modes of shearing his fleece, needs no further recommendation. But, in view of the probability of the experiment, once tried, being shortly and frequently repeated, I Very much doubt whether this is so; as far as I have been able by personal inquiry to test opinion on the point I have ...
— War-Time Financial Problems • Hartley Withers
... is speckled. The Indians make blankets and ponchos of the alpaco wool. It is also frequently exported to Europe, and it sells at a good price in England. The alpacos are kept in large flocks, and throughout the whole of the year they graze on the level heights. At shearing time only they are driven to the huts. They are in consequence very shy, and they run away at the approach of a stranger. The obstinacy of the alpaco is remarkable. When one of these animals is separated from the flock, he throws himself on the ground, and ...
— Travels in Peru, on the Coast, in the Sierra, Across the Cordilleras and the Andes, into the Primeval Forests • J. J. von Tschudi
... about working places.] At each mine equipped with electric power after the passage and approval of this act, the current used to operate gathering locomotives, mining machines, shearing machines, drills and other machinery, used in or about the working places of the mine, shall not exceed in pressure or potential, three hundred and twenty-five volts, direct current, as shown at the nearest switchboard, and the wires conducting the ...
— Mining Laws of Ohio, 1921 • Anonymous
... and remain at the ranch or on the range until this thing has blown over. We had better begin grazing north at once. I want to get them up where the grass is better, as soon as possible. Then you can let them take their time until after shearing. We're late with that as it is. See that the men are well armed, but make no plans until I have been out ...
— The Pony Rider Boys in Montana • Frank Gee Patchin
... crevice, seen in their most impressive presentment as alternating vistas of stark, moonlighted crags and gulches and depths of blackest shadow, had encouraged it. The hiss and whistle of the air-brakes, the harsh, sustained note of the shrieking wheel-flanges shearing the inner edges of the railheads on the curves, and the stuttering roar of the 266's safety-valve were continuous; a deafening medley of sounds multiplied a hundred-fold by the ...
— The Taming of Red Butte Western • Francis Lynde
... if it is I'll stand by it, and now I'll swear it (here she knelt down), as Almighty God shall help me at the last day, if you and Jim will promise me to start straight off up the country and take bush-work till shearing comes on, and never to have any truck with cross chaps and their ways, I'll turn Protestant. I'll go to church with you, and keep to ...
— Robbery Under Arms • Thomas Alexander Browne, AKA Rolf Boldrewood
... failing as he approached the house. By the shearing away of trees and creeper, at least from all its central and eastern parts, Threlfall had now lost much of its savage picturesqueness; the formal garden within the forecourt had been to some extent restored; and the front ...
— The Mating of Lydia • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... sheds where the sheep are sheared, and also the surrounding sheds and yards where the animals are driven up at shearing time. We were sorry that it was not the time of the annual shearing, so that we could witness the process. Our host told us that the shearers travel about the country, and take contracts for shearing the flocks at so much a head. In addition to their wages, they were supplied ...
— The Land of the Kangaroo - Adventures of Two Youths in a Journey through the Great Island Continent • Thomas Wallace Knox
... loneliest part of the country between the Nueces and the Frio. The ranch house—a two-room box structure—was on the rise of a gently swelling hill in the midst of a wilderness of high chaparral. In front of it was a small clearing where stood the sheep pens, shearing shed, and wool house. Only a few feet back of ...
— Waifs and Strays - Part 1 • O. Henry
... little children and animals. I remember how glad he was to stop and lean on a wall in Gorumna and watch a woman in afield shearing a sheep. It was an old sheep and must have often been sheared before by the same hand, for the woman hardly held it; she just knelt beside it and snipped away. I remember the sheep raised its lean old head to look at the stranger, and the woman just put her hand on its cheek ...
— Synge And The Ireland Of His Time • William Butler Yeats
... nightly conversations; and how such visit being expected, as his head lay on the side of the bedstead, it was there immovably fixed, by the application of a half-pound of warm cobbler's wax, and release could only be obtained by the Jason-like operation of shearing the fleecy locks. We must rapidly pass on. I was eager to get away from this school, and my desire was accomplished in the following very ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard
... ballad over and over again until he was tired, then sat still, smiling and stroking the fox skin. He had learned the song when he was a child from his mother, who had sung it all day long one spring while she was shearing the sheep. And he could not think of any other for the moment. It wasn't, in fact, a bad song. There were many good rhymesters in Iceland. He began singing again, rocking his body back and forth vehemently, ...
— Seven Icelandic Short Stories • Various
... uncertainty crept into her passionate eyes. "The improvements don't make much of a show yet; I've had to be off so much in the mountains, foraging with the herd. But I was able to hire a boy half a day with the shearing this spring, and from now on they're going to pay. There are twenty-eight in the bunch, counting the kids, and I started with one ...
— The Rim of the Desert • Ada Woodruff Anderson
... held on until she divined the desperate purpose of her foe. Then, seeing that soon the carack's prow must crash into her frail side, she shifted her helm and came round several points, so that in the end the Margaret ran, not into her, but alongside of her, grinding against her planking, and shearing away a great length of her bulwark. For a few seconds they hung together thus, and, before the seas bore them apart, grapnels were thrown from the Margaret whereof one forward got hold and brought them bow to bow. Thus the end of the bowsprit of the Margaret projected ...
— Fair Margaret • H. Rider Haggard
... roar. In the same instant, she caught sight of Brett's head and shoulders in the distance, and she waved and beckoned to him frenziedly. With a choking gasp of relief, she caught his answering gesture before he turned and headed straight for the shore, shearing through the water with a powerful over-hand stroke that brought him ...
— The Vision of Desire • Margaret Pedler
... boy," cried Tommy. "Stop a-shaking of me, Mell Davis. We was playing they was sheep. I was a-shearing ...
— Nine Little Goslings • Susan Coolidge
... my heuk will whang The thistles, if in prickles strang Your bonnie milk-white hands they wrang, When we gang to the shearing. ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume IV. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... will be of great benefit to our inhabitants the graziers; when time and labour will be too much taken up in manuring their ground, feeding their cattle, shearing their sheep, and sending over their oxen fit for slaughter; to which employments they are turned by nature, as descended from the Scythians, whose diet they are still so fond of. So Virgil ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Vol. VII - Historical and Political Tracts—Irish • Jonathan Swift
... days toward Midsummer, when the wheat was getting past the blossoming, and the grass in the mown fields was growing deep green again after the shearing of the scythe; when the leaves were most and biggest; when the roses were beginning to fall; when the apples were reddening, and the skins of the grape-berries gathering bloom. High aloft floated the light clouds over the Dale; deep blue showed the distant fells below the ice-mountains; the ...
— The Roots of the Mountains • William Morris
... heat is greatest where the shearing of the material is strongest. This shearing is therefore the mechanical cause which ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 415, December 15, 1883 • Various
... Syr was standing in his corn-field when the messengers came to him and brought him the news, and also told him all that Asta was doing at home in the house. He had many people on his farm. Some were then shearing corn, some bound it together, some drove it to the building, some unloaded it and put it in stack or barn; but the king, and two men with him, went sometimes into the field, sometimes to the place where the corn was put into the barn. His dress, it is told, was ...
— Heimskringla - The Chronicle of the Kings of Norway • Snorri Sturluson
... that he dared yet to think of a love confessed and reciprocated. The prince in disguise is all very well in a fairy tale; in England of the twentieth century he is an anachronism; and Medenham would as soon think of shearing a limb as of profiting by the chance that threw Cynthia in his way. Of course, a less scrupulous wooer might have devised a hundred plausible methods of revealing his identity—was not Mrs. Devar, marriage-broker and adroit sycophant, ready ...
— Cynthia's Chauffeur • Louis Tracy
... formed great designs, which he imparted to a Byzantine chronicler of the strolling competitive order, a man of still worse character than himself, called, I believe, Cocconas. The pair went about living on occult pretensions, shearing 'fat-heads,' as they describe ordinary people in the native Magian lingo. Among these they got hold of a rich Macedonian woman; her youth was past, but not her desire for admiration; they got sufficient ...
— Works, V2 • Lucian of Samosata
... sea-birds, curiosity seemed to have overcome fear, for they came circling and wheeling overhead in clouds so dense that they almost darkened the sky—many of them swooping close past the Eskimos and then shearing off and ...
— The Giant of the North - Pokings Round the Pole • R.M. Ballantyne
... that I can recall where a very strong man acting as chief ruler renounced a part of his power to the people, of his own accord. Kings usually have to be trimmed, and it is revolution that does the shearing. It is the rule that men do not relinquish power of their own accord—they have to be disannexed ...
— Little Journeys To The Homes Of Great Teachers • Elbert Hubbard
... for punching boiler-plates, by which the production of ironwork of many kinds was greatly facilitated. This improvement originated in the contract which he held for some years for supplying the Royal Navy with iron plates for ships' tanks. The operations of shearing and punching had before been very imperfectly done by hand, with great expenditure of labour. To improve the style of the work and lessen the labour, Maudslay invented the machine now in general use, by which the holes punched in the iron plate are exactly equidistant, and the subsequent ...
— Industrial Biography - Iron Workers and Tool Makers • Samuel Smiles
... went to the garden, where Bob was shearing the spring grass from the paths. 'What is John's direction?' she said, holding the sealed ...
— The Trumpet-Major • Thomas Hardy
... advancing, thereby causing considerable delay for their removal—sometimes by ambushing and firing a volley of blank cartridges at the party in question, so as to frighten the horses, by which means more or less were frequently injured, by being thrown to the ground—and sometimes by shearing the manes and tails of the horses themselves, while their owners were being occupied with the feast, and the dance, and the gay carousal of ...
— Ella Barnwell - A Historical Romance of Border Life • Emerson Bennett
... the bean straw grown on the farm was selected and scattered on the floor of the sitting-rooms as warm and dry to the feet, and that was all the carpet in the house. Just before sheep-shearing time, too, Jonathan used to have the nettles cut that flourished round the back of the sheds, and strewn on the floor of the barn. The nettles shrivelled up dry, and the wool did not stick to them, but ...
— Round About a Great Estate • Richard Jefferies
... shone in my face, and something seemed to say, "This is your trial, do something quick." I threw myself prone on the ground, my head near the rails, and held the broken pin between the end of the siding rail and the main line. The switch rails could not be forced over without shearing off the pin. The corner of the pilot of the flying demon caught my right sleeve and tore it off, and the cloth threw the cylinder cocks open with a hiss, the wind and dust blinded and shook me, and the rails hammered and bruised and pinched my hand, but I held on. Twenty seconds later ...
— Danger Signals • John A. Hill and Jasper Ewing Brady
... rug is durable, harmonious in color and design, and is distinctly a home product. The wool of which it is made is sheared from the flocks of sheep in the vicinity. The shearing takes place annually in June; the wool is then carded, spun, and dyed. The threads of hand-spun wool are worked through a hand-woven webbing, and securely knotted or tied with a specially devised knot. The designs thus far are mainly ...
— Rugs: Oriental and Occidental, Antique & Modern - A Handbook for Ready Reference • Rosa Belle Holt
... life-like way that I was afraid to touch it until Lloyd put a sofa pillow over its head and sat down on it. Then I began to shear off a little near the tail, where I thought it wouldn't show much; but the mattress didn't fill up very fast. So I kept on shearing, a little farther and a little farther, here a patch and there a patch, until I had taken a great streak out of the middle of the back, and the ...
— The Little Colonel's House Party • Annie Fellows Johnston
... snarled the noble marquis; "he's pastorally occupied too: he's shearing a Southdown. What an innocent mutton, hey? Damme, what a ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... noted. The questions to be decided were numerous and involved. How much carrying capacity was required? How much rolling stock? How many engines? What spare parts? How much oil? How many lathes? How many cutters? How many punching and shearing machines? What arrangements of signals would be necessary? How many lamps? How many points? How many trolleys? What amount of coal should be ordered? How much water would be wanted? How should it be carried? To what extent would its ...
— The River War • Winston S. Churchill
... Lestocq, with decision. "You see that man bound upon the wheel—that is myself! Now look at the second. This young woman who is wringing her hands, and whose head one of these nuns is shearing, while the other is endeavoring, in spite of her struggling resistance, to envelope her in that black veil;—that is you, princess. For you the cloister, for me the wheel! That will be our future, Princess Elizabeth, if you now hesitate ...
— The Daughter of an Empress • Louise Muhlbach
... thousand sheep had cost him L250, and his cattle as much more. The lambing season had come and gone, and the flock of sheep had doubled in number. The cattle, too, had greatly increased, and the sheep were nearly ready for shearing. Altogether the value of the stock was over L1000. The loss would not be absolute ruin, as he had still L600 of his original capital in the bank at Buenos Ayres; but it would be ...
— Out on the Pampas - The Young Settlers • G. A. Henty
... the quietude, to call it by no harsher name. The shearing is finished all over the country, and the "squatters" (as owners of sheep-stations are called) have returned to their stations to vegetate, or work, as their tastes and circumstances may dictate. Very few people live in the ...
— Station Life in New Zealand • Lady Barker
... of Sargol had apparently intoxicated him, shearing away his solid dignity and middle-aged dependability. Now Sinbad flashed out of the Queen at the opening of her port in the early morning and was brought back, protesting with both voice and claws, at the end of the day by that member of the juvenile ...
— Plague Ship • Andre Norton
... without counters.—Let me see; what am I to buy for our sheep-shearing feast? 'Three pound of sugar; five pound of currants; rice'—what will this sister of mine do with rice? But my father hath made her mistress of the feast, and she lays it on. She hath made me four and twenty nosegays for the shearers,—three-man ...
— The Winter's Tale - [Collins Edition] • William Shakespeare
... sufficient to cement the fibres in position by means of ordinary yellow shellac, but where very great accuracy is aimed at, the shellac (being itself imperfectly elastic and exposed to shearing stress) imposes its imperfections on the whole system. This source of error can be got over by soldering the threads in position. Attempts were made by the writer in this direction, with fair success, in 1889, but as Mr. Boys has carried the art ...
— On Laboratory Arts • Richard Threlfall
... pass one feels thankful for even small favors, and I plod along, now riding, now walking, occasionally passing little clusters of mud huts and meeting with pack animals en route to Ismidt with the season's shearing of mohair. "Alia Franga!" is the greeting I am now favored with, instead of the "Ah, I'Anglais." of Europe, as I pass people on the road; and the bicycle is referred to as an araba, the name the natives give their rude carts, and a name which they seem to think is quite appropriate for ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... business in land, buildings, or merchandise. A considerable number of labourers will find employment about the towns, at the stores, on the wharfs, &c. at about 24s. weekly. Country work on the sheep-stations—as shepherds, drivers of bullock-drays, sheep-washing and shearing, cooking for the men, &c.—is remunerated by about L.25 and food. These live far off in the solitary plains, almost apart from men, and come to town once, twice, or thrice a year, as their distance and employment may determine. The Sabbath has little of the religious character ...
— Chambers' Edinburgh Journal, No. 421, New Series, Jan. 24, 1852 • Various
... yellow complexion, features characterized by a sort of low cunning, a shaved head with a pigtail, clad in a loose cloth blouse, half shirt and half jacket, continuations not exactly pants nor yet a petticoat, and shoes thick-soled and shearing upwards like a Madras surf-boat, and you have John Chinaman as he appears at home. The portrait is universal. One Chinaman is as like another as two peas,—a uniformity often leading to ludicrous mistakes. John eats principally rice. ...
— Due West - or Round the World in Ten Months • Maturin Murray Ballou
... exports are wool and whale-oil, and to both of these productions there is a limit. The country is totally unfit for canals, therefore there is a not very distant point beyond which the land-carriage of wool will not repay the expense of shearing and tending sheep. Pasture everywhere is so thin that settlers have already pushed far into the interior; moreover, the country farther inland becomes extremely poor. Agriculture, on account of the droughts, can never ...
— A Naturalist's Voyage Round the World - The Voyage Of The Beagle • Charles Darwin
... W. to some of the big farms to see the sheep-shearing and the dairies, and cheese made. The farmer's wife in France is a very capable, hard-working woman—up early, seeing to everything herself, and ruling all her carters and ploughboys with a heavy hand. Once a week, on market day, she takes her cheeses to the ...
— Chateau and Country Life in France • Mary King Waddington
... away, but the remembrance of you put alwayes the thought out of my minde, and so I came homeward very sorrowful: but because I would not seeme to come to my mistresse sight with empty hands, I saw a man shearing of blowne goat skinnes, and the hayre which he had shorne off was yellow, and much resembled the haire of the Boetian, and I tooke a good deale thereof, and colouring of the matter, I brought it to my mistresse. And so ...
— The Golden Asse • Lucius Apuleius
... he saw before him must be his old companions. But they were so changed, by shearing, that he couldn't tell who ...
— The Tale of Snowball Lamb • Arthur Bailey
... corn from the furrows of a tiny field, Demeter lover of wheat, Sosicles the tiller dedicates to thee, having reaped now an abundant harvest; but again likewise may he carry back his sickle blunted from shearing ...
— Select Epigrams from the Greek Anthology • J. W. Mackail
... sheep were objects of great interest to the children, and the little lambs they very justly regarded as types of purity and innocence. When the season of sheep washing and shearing came, they went over to the farmer's, and witnessed these ...
— Frank and Fanny • Mrs. Clara Moreton
... off the edges of her life. She is chipped like an old bit of china; she is frayed like a garment of last year's wearing. She is soft, crinkled, like a fading rose. And each minute flows by brushing against her, shearing off another and another petal. The Empress crushes her breasts with her hands and weeps. And the tall clouds sail over Malmaison like a procession of stately ships bound for ...
— Men, Women and Ghosts • Amy Lowell
... a great storehouse of wine, containing now little but empty casks,—a dusky, interesting place, with pomegranates and dried bunches of grapes and oranges and pieces of jerked meat hanging from the rafters. Near by is a cornhouse and a small distillery, and the corrals for sheep shearing are not far off. The ranches for cattle and sheep are on the other side ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... said Warner. "I don't like the way twigs and leaves are raining down on me. It shows that if they were to depress their fire they would be shearing limbs off of us instead of boughs off ...
— The Rock of Chickamauga • Joseph A. Altsheler
... spring Birds' nests. " June Bee-swarming and hay-making. " July Sheep-washing and shearing. " August Early windfalls and harvest. " September Blackberries, nuts, hops, mushrooms, ...
— What Shall We Do Now?: Five Hundred Games and Pastimes • Dorothy Canfield Fisher
... little country town like this could not hold the newcomers, therefore Wichita Falls became their headquarters. Here there were at least a few hotels and some sort of office quarters—sheds beneath which the shearing could take place—and ...
— Flowing Gold • Rex Beach
... was the antediluvian occupation of rearing and shearing sheep, and to that end the village included a shearing-shed and a large wool-house. Besides these there were three cottages and several other buildings, among which one called the "ranch-house" was the focus of the activity of the place, and, being also a survival from ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, October 1885 • Various
... the lagoon by starshine that the head of the swimmer could be distinguished away out in the midst of circles of light; also, as the head neared the reef, a dark triangle that came shearing through water past the palm tree at the pier. It was the night patrol of the lagoon, who had heard in some mysterious manner that a drunken sailor-man was making trouble ...
— The Blue Lagoon - A Romance • H. de Vere Stacpoole
... shalt sit, and Red-breast by, For meat, shall give thee melody. I'll give thee chains and carcanets Of primroses and violets. A bag and bottle thou shalt have, That richly wrought, and this as brave; So that as either shall express The wearer's no mean shepherdess. At shearing-times, and yearly wakes, When Themilis his pastime makes, There thou shalt be; and be the wit, Nay more, the feast, and grace of it. On holydays, when virgins meet To dance the heys with nimble feet, Thou shalt come forth, and then appear The Queen of Roses for that year. And having danced ('bove ...
— Six Centuries of English Poetry - Tennyson to Chaucer • James Baldwin
... for her. She had come all the way from Nuremberg to this spot, thinking it possible that in this spot alone she might receive succour; and now she stood there, fearing to raise the knocker on the door. She was a lamb indeed, whose fleece had been shorn very close; and the shearing had been done all in the sacred name of religion! It had been thought necessary that the vile desires of her human heart should be crushed within her bosom, and the crushing had brought her to this. She looked up in her desolation at the front of the house. It was a white, large house, ...
— Linda Tressel • Anthony Trollope
... vividly that its moors, barrows, and villages are as much a part of the stories as the people dwelling there. In fact, Egdon Heath has been called the principal character in the novel, The Return of the Native (1878). The upland with its shepherd's hut, the sheep-shearing barn, the harvest storm, the hollow of ferns, and the churchyard with its dripping water spout are part of the wonderful landscape in Far From the Madding Crowd (1874) This is the finest artistic product of Hardy's genius. ...
— Halleck's New English Literature • Reuben P. Halleck
... shell. But even as I did so, I caught sight of Mashune's stalwart form advancing with his 'bangwan,' or broad stabbing assegai, raised above his head. In another quarter of a second I had fallen from the horn, and heard the blow of the spear, followed by the indescribable sound of steel shearing its way through flesh. I had fallen on my back, and, looking up, I saw that the gallant Mashune had driven the assegai a foot or more into the carcass of the buffalo, and was ...
— Hunter Quatermain's Story • H. Rider Haggard
... age that had been crowding upon him of late fall away like the wool of a sheep at shearing. Here, at last, was hope—real hope. After almost two and a half centuries of non-communication, the men of the infant planet had returned to the aid of the aging planet. For, once they saw the condition of Earth, and understood it, there ...
— It's All Yours • Sam Merwin
... could not be taken. At about a quarter before ten A.M. a light breeze came on and we left our anchorage, the breeze increased a little, before eleven; saw what appeared to be an island at first; on nearing, found it to be a canoe, about fifteen feet long, with seven or eight natives in it, shearing about, sometimes in one direction, sometimes in another. After a little we heard them calling out, "paoud," "whappee," "chauca," some of them standing up. I named to the Captain that I thought they must be from Cape York, from their words, and that it would be ...
— Voyage Of H.M.S. Rattlesnake, Vol. 2 (of 2) • John MacGillivray
... medical efforts he never regained consciousness and died in forty-five minutes. Postmortem examination revealed everything normal, and death must have been caused by syncope following violent pain. Watkins cites an instance occurring in South Africa. A native shearing sheep for a farmer provoked his master's ire by calling him by some nickname. While the man was in a squatting posture the farmer struck him in the epigastrium. He followed this up by a kick in the side and a blow on the head, neither of which, however, was as ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... effectually without extra wages, and thus gave a deal of trouble; knowing that there was no fear of my sending them to the magistrate (fifty miles off) during such a busy time. However, all evils must come to an end some time or another, and so did shearing, though it was nearly Christmas before our wool was pressed and ...
— The Recollections of Geoffrey Hamlyn • Henry Kingsley
... containing an average of 410 pounds of wool, making a total of 415,740 pounds, which he sold at 27 cents a pound, bringing him in $112,349.80, or a clear profit of over $80,000. This is said to be a low yield, so it is evident that sheep raising there, when taking into consideration that shearing takes place twice a year, and that a profit is made off the sale of mutton, etc., is very profitable. The island is divided into four quarters by fences running clear across at right angles, and the sheep do not have to be herded like those ranging ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 417 • Various
... twelve years last shearing-time," said the shepherd, whose dates were few and simple, sheep-washing, shearing, lambing, and next and last sheepfair being ...
— The Girl's Own Paper, Vol. VIII. No. 358, November 6, 1886. • Various
... upon a single point, and on this they were very obstinate. Many of the negroes in Missouri, as in other parts of the South, wear their hair, or wool, in little knots or braids. They refused to submit to a close shearing, and threatened to return to their masters rather than comply with the regulation. Some actually left the camp and went home. The officers finally carried their point by inducing some free negroes in Leavenworth, whose heads were adorned with the "fighting ...
— Camp-Fire and Cotton-Field • Thomas W. Knox
... farmers to act with much consideration, study and wisdom; and purely as a matter of self-defense, to adopt some concert of action among themselves for the protection of their own interests. When the price is low and the market dull at the time of shearing, there should not be too much haste in making sales. In 1861, I think it was, the farmers were over anxious to sell, for no other reason than because at that time the price of wool was very low and the market dull. They then overlooked ...
— Address delivered by Hon. Henry H. Crapo, Governor of Michigan, before the Central Michigan Agricultural Society, at their Sheep-shearing Exhibition held at the Agricultural College Farm, on Thursday, • Henry Howland Crapo
... left home in the spring of 1789," he wrote to Arthur Young, "I had improved that species of my stock so much as to get 5-1/4 lbs of Wool as the average of the fleeces of my whole flock,—and at the last shearing they did not yield me 2-1/2 lbs.—By procuring (if I am able) good rams and giving the necessary attention, I hope to get them up again for they are with me, as you have declared them to be with you, that part of my stock in which I ...
— George Washington: Farmer • Paul Leland Haworth
... distressed, for I already perceive the tears gathering in thine eyes, for thou hast them indeed very ready at hand; I admonish thee for thine own good without any self-interest. Cut thy hair off, shear thyself, shave thyself, good Maria, and to allay the bitterness of the shearing, I will give fifty maravedis, always on condition that thou dost hand me ...
— First Love (Little Blue Book #1195) - And Other Fascinating Stories of Spanish Life • Various
... number, And calls to the pilot to hang up his rudder again for the season and slumber; And then weave a cloak for Orestes the thief, lest he strip men of theirs if it freezes. And again thereafter the kite reappearing announces a change in the breezes. And that here is the season for shearing your sheep of their spring wool. Then does the swallow Give you notice to sell your great-coat, and provide something light for the heat that's to follow. Thus are we as Ammon or Delphi unto you. ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner
... an unusual adjunct of a Virginia plantation, and of his flock Washington wrote, "From the beginning of the year 1784 when I returned from the army, until shearing time of 1788, I improved the breed of my sheep so much by buying and selecting the best formed and most promising Rams, and putting them to my best ewes, by keeping them always well culled and clean, and by other attentions, that they averaged me ... ...
— The True George Washington [10th Ed.] • Paul Leicester Ford
... supernatural being. No man, the soldiers said, could have fought as he fought or, at the end of a day of such toil and bloodshed, could have slain Twala, who, in addition to being the king, was supposed to be the strongest warrior in the country, in single combat, shearing through his bull-neck at a stroke. Indeed, that stroke became proverbial in Kukuanaland, and any extraordinary blow or feat of strength was henceforth known ...
— King Solomon's Mines • H. Rider Haggard
... stringy-bark or low bushes. A river passed in front at the distance of less than a quarter of a mile, full and flowing in winter, but after the heats of summer consisting of a succession of water-holes connected by a trickling rill. During the shearing season the river was a scene of the greatest animation, as all the flocks from far and near were driven up to it, that the sheep might be washed before being deprived of their fleeces. After a sudden downfall ...
— The Gilpins and their Fortunes - A Story of Early Days in Australia • William H. G. Kingston
... resumed Alister, "that I had my shearing to do, and hadn't the time to go with him. 'Is this your season for sheep-shearing?' said he.'We call cutting the corn shearing,' I answered, 'because in these parts we use the reaping hook.' 'That is a great waste of labour!' he returned. I did not tell him that some ...
— What's Mine's Mine • George MacDonald
... entertained last summer with a tame bat, which would take flies out of a person's hand. If you gave it anything to eat, it brought its wings round before the mouth, hovering and hiding its head in the manner of birds of prey when they feed. The adroitness it showed in shearing off the wings of the flies, which were always rejected, was worthy of observation, and pleased me much. Insects seemed to be most acceptable, though it did not refuse raw flesh when offered; so that the notion, that bats ...
— The Natural History of Selborne, Vol. 1 • Gilbert White
... Nothing material. We meant to have sown a little barley to-day, but the ground is too dry; and the sheep-shearing is not to be ...
— The Stranger - A Drama, in Five Acts • August von Kotzebue
... which the young men and maids meet To exercise their dancing feet, Tripping the comely country-round, With daffodils and daisies crowned. Thy wakes, thy quintals, here thou hast, Thy May-poles, too, with garlands graced, Thy morris-dance, thy Whitsun-ale, Thy shearing-feast, which never fail, Thy harvest home, thy wassail-bowl, That's tossed up after fox-i'-th'-hole, Thy mummeries, thy Twelfthtide kings And queens, thy Christmas revellings, Thy nut-brown mirth, thy russet wit, And no man pays too ...
— In The Yule-Log Glow—Book 3 - Christmas Poems from 'round the World • Various
... fixed that a boat should put in to the Abbey steps to receive the fleeces of the sheep-shearing of the home grange, and that, rolled in one of these fleeces, the wounded knight should be brought on board the Vrow Gudule, where Groot and the women would await him, their freight being already embarked, and all ready to ...
— Grisly Grisell • Charlotte M. Yonge
... "I was shearing in them sheds in '52 when old Shenty owned the run. He was a rum old miser, he was, would skin two devils for one hide; believe he has gone to hell; hope so, at any rate. He couldn't read nor write much, but he could make money better'n any man I ever heard of. Bought ...
— The Book of the Bush • George Dunderdale
... gold, silver, and other metals, and all that wood-cutting and shearing of every sort provides for the art of carpentry and plaiting; and there is the process of barking and stripping the cuticle of plants, and the currier's art, which strips off the skins of animals, and other similar arts which manufacture corks and ...
— Statesman • Plato
... Camillo, who had preserved his life from the fury of Leontes, and desired that he would accompany him to the house of the shepherd, the supposed father of Perdita. Polixenes and Camillo, both in disguise, arrived at the old shepherd's dwelling while they were celebrating the feast of sheep-shearing; and though they were strangers, yet at the sheep-shearing, every guest being made welcome, they were invited to walk in and join in the ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles and Mary Lamb
... your answer! Have you no stomach for my message? 'Fore God, is there no black ram to lead his sheep to the shearing? ...
— Wappin' Wharf - A Frightful Comedy of Pirates • Charles S. Brooks
... in the month of June, all the sheep were driven into a large enclosure near a pond, in which they were washed until their wool was white and clean. This was the preparation for shearing, or taking off their heavy ...
— The Nursery, February 1877, Vol. XXI. No. 2 - A Monthly Magazine for Youngest Readers • Various
... used to fine French ways, he'll think nothing good enow for him. And if he brought Will Trenton with him, I'd not sit at the board with the fellow.—But ye'll ride over, Wilfred, and take care the minx Agnes knows what she's lost. Ay, and if you knew of a safe hand, Sir, when the shearing is over I'd send the lad a purse of nobles to keep up his ...
— The Caged Lion • Charlotte M. Yonge
... of the present publication is to gather together all the old bush songs that are worth remembering. Apart from other considerations, there are many Australians who will be reminded by these songs of the life of the shearing sheds, the roar of the diggings townships, and the campfires of the overlanders. The diggings are all deep sinking now, the shearing is done by contract, and the cattle are sent by rail to market, while newspapers ...
— The Old Bush Songs • A. B. Paterson
... sympathy and affection. The arrival of Paco, who established himself behind the esquilador, in a gap of the circle, was insufficient to distract their attention from the important and all-absorbing interest of the dog-shearing. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 363, January, 1846 • Various
... of dominion over a few beasts of the field, should assert his right to shear a wolf, because it had wool upon its back, without considering whether he had the power of using the shears, or whether the animal would submit to the operation of shearing. He remarked:—"Are we yet to be told of the rights for which we went to war? Oh, excellent rights! Oh, valuable rights! Valuable you should be, for we have paid dear at parting with you. Oh, valuable rights! that have cost Britain thirteen provinces, four islands, 100,000 men, and more ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... us sing with a right good ring (Sing hey for lifting lay, sing hey!) Of any old, sunny old, silly old thing. (Sing ho for the ballad of a backblock day!) The sun shone brightly overhead, And the shearers stood by the shearing shed; But "The run wants rain," the stockman said (Sing di-dum, wattle-gum, Narrabori Ned. For a lifting lay ...
— A Book for Kids • C. J. (Clarence Michael James) Dennis
... David shakes a fist at him for using such big scissors. Another startling moment is when the man turns back the grimy wool from the sheeps' shoulders and they look suddenly like ladies in the stalls of a theatre. The sheep are so frightened by the shearing that it makes them quite white and thin, and as soon as they are set free they begin to nibble the grass at once, quite anxiously, as if they feared that they would never be worth eating. David wonders whether they know each other, now that they are so different, and ...
— The Little White Bird - or Adventures In Kensington Gardens • J. M. Barrie
... sea otter have six small incisor teeth in each jaw; the canines are large; the molars never show flattened, curved crests after the ruminant pattern, but are more or less tubercular, and one tooth in the hinder part of each jaw becomes blade-like, for shearing off lumps of flesh. This tooth is called ...
— American Big Game in Its Haunts • Various
... work with the flax, came the big hard-tack baking, the sheep shearing, and the servants' moving time. In November there were busy slaughter days, with salting of meats, sausage making, baking of blood pudding, and candle steeping. The seamstress who used to make up their homespun dresses had to come at this time, ...
— The Wonderful Adventures of Nils • Selma Lagerlof
... Upon the mountains near by, having a right of pasturage, he kept two cows and some sheep, which supplied the family with all their milk and butter, nearly all their meat, and most of their clothes. He also rented two or three acres of land, upon which he raised various crops. In sheep-shearing time, he turned out and helped his neighbors shear their sheep, a kind of work in which he had eminent skill. As compensation, each farmer thus assisted gave him a fleece. In haying time, too, he and his boys were in the ...
— Captains of Industry - or, Men of Business Who Did Something Besides Making Money • James Parton
... stated times; as tanning leather for brogans, making heather ropes for thatch, digging and drying peats for fuel; one pannier of peat charcoal to be carried to the smith; so many days for gathering and shearing sheep and lambs: for ferrying cattle from island to island, and other distant places, and several days for going on distant errands: so many pounds of wool to be spun into yarn. And over and above all this, they must lend their aid upon any unforeseen occurrence whenever ...
— An Historical Account of the Settlements of Scotch Highlanders in America • J. P. MacLean
... so dreary, With eyes and forehead hot and bleary, Sat a mother sad and weary, With her darling on her knee; Their humble fare at best was sparing For the father he was shearing, With his three brave sons of Erin, All down in the ...
— Revised Edition of Poems • William Wright
... weather-shrouds were strained as taut as harp-strings; but Dick only smiled grimly as he heard the wind singing and piping through his rigging; he would scarcely have shortened sail for a hurricane just then. The queer-looking structure tore at racing speed across the smooth surface of the lagoon, shearing through it with a vicious hiss along her bends and a roaring wave under her lee bow, and so out to sea. Leslie was compelled to haul his wind for a short distance after shooting through the channel, in order to clear the northern extremity of the reef; ...
— Dick Leslie's Luck - A Story of Shipwreck and Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... not discover a fence post on the ranch, nor a piece of salt for the horses and cattle, nor a wagon, nor any sign of a sheep-shearing outfit. She had never seen any sheep sheared. Ellen could never keep track of the many and different horses running loose and hobbled round the ranch. There were droves of horses in the woods, and some of them wild as deer. According to her long-established ...
— To the Last Man • Zane Grey
... perennial vitality in front of the worn-out stocks, may, so far as I can say, be entirely unknown to the rising generation of schoolboys there. The practice of divination by Bible and key, the regarding of valentines as things of serious import, the shearing-supper, and the harvest-home, have, too, nearly disappeared in the wake of the old houses; and with them have gone, it is said, much of that love of fuddling to which the village at one time was notoriously prone. The change at the root of this has been the recent supplanting ...
— Far from the Madding Crowd • Thomas Hardy
... fold of the spreading skirts of the range, and some distance from the road, lay a pool, made by damming a burn, and used, in the shearing season, for washing sheep. Surrounded by brushy woods, and very damp and dark, at other seasons it was deserted. Bobby found this secluded place with his nose, curled up under a hazel thicket and fell sound asleep. And while he slept, a nipping wind from the far, northern Highlands swooped ...
— Greyfriars Bobby • Eleanor Atkinson
... 'Tis, as a farmer paying a dear, unconscionable rent, a cursed life! As to a laird farming his own property; sowing his own corn in hope; and reaping it, in spite of brittle weather, in gladness; knowing that none can say unto him, "What dost thou?"—fattening his herds; shearing his flocks; rejoicing at Christmas; and begetting sons and daughters, until he be the venerated, grey-haired leader of a little tribe—'tis a heavenly life! but devil take the life of reaping the fruits that ...
— The Letters of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... Anglo-Saxon literature. The women in the country made the garments, carded the wool, sheared the sheep, washed the things, beat the flax, ground the corn, sat at the spinning-wheel, and prepared the food. In the towns they had no shearing to do, but all the rest of their duty fell to their province. The English women excelled in embroidery. "English" work meant the best kind of work. They worked church vestments with gold and pearls and precious stones. "Orfrey," or embroidery ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 4 • Charles Dudley Warner
... cultivating so long! Lose them at one fell swoop? Were the vile barbers of the gun-deck to reap our long, nodding harvests, and expose our innocent chins to the chill air of the Yankee coast! And our viny locks! were they also to be shorn? Was a grand sheep-shearing, such as they annually have at Nantucket, to take place; and our ignoble barbers ...
— White Jacket - or, the World on a Man-of-War • Herman Melville
... was at the very door;—Dan came home with a pocket full of money and swag full of greasy clothes. How Dad shook him by the hand and welcomed him back! And how Dan talked of "tallies", "belly-wool", and "ringers" and implored Dad, over and over again, to go shearing, or rolling up, or branding—ANYTHING rather than work ...
— On Our Selection • Steele Rudd
... that we all looked forward to our first great shearing as a very busy time indeed. Our great wool harvest was, indeed, one of the principal events of the year. Moncrieff said he always felt young again ...
— Our Home in the Silver West - A Story of Struggle and Adventure • Gordon Stables
... the age that millions of people throughout this great country of ours come of their own free will to the shearing pens of the "System" each year, voluntarily chloroform themselves, so that the "System" may go through their pockets, and then depart peacefully home to dig and delve for more money that they may have the debasing operation repeated on them twelve ...
— Frenzied Finance - Vol. 1: The Crime of Amalgamated • Thomas W. Lawson
... Sadum and his wife came forward and greeted us very cordially, and then we were told to sit down on the chairs. I looked about for the bride, and saw a crowd of women in one corner, and a boy holding a gilt umbrella over the young lady, who was being shaved. A woman with a razor was shearing her eyebrows into a delicate line, and all round her forehead trimming disorderly hairs. Four women, seated on their heels in front of her, were fidgeting over her face; she, impassive as a log in ...
— Sketches of Our Life at Sarawak • Harriette McDougall
... one by one into the water and make good clean Baptists of them! But sheep are no fighters, they struggle for a moment and then passively submit to the baptism. My older brothers usually did the washing and I the herding. When the shearing was done, a few days later the poor creatures were put through another ordeal, to which after a brief struggle they quickly resigned themselves. Father did the shearing, while I at times held the animal's legs. Father was not an adept hand with the shears and ...
— My Boyhood • John Burroughs
... pleasant a tale about the Haunted Ships and their unworldly crews, as any one would wish to hear in a winter evening. It was told me by young Benjie Macharg, one summer night, sitting on Arbiglandbank: the lad intended a sort of love meeting; but all that he could talk of was about smearing sheep and shearing sheep, and of the wife which the Norway elves of the Haunted Ships made for his uncle Sandie Macharg. And I shall tell ye the tale as the honest lad told it ...
— Little Classics, Volume 8 (of 18) - Mystery • Various
... widow had one solitary Sheep. At shearing time, wishing to take his fleece and to avoid expense, she sheared him herself, but used the shears so unskillfully that with the fleece she sheared the flesh. The Sheep, writhing with pain, said, "Why do you hurt me so, Mistress? What weight can my blood add to the ...
— Aesop's Fables • Aesop
... Southerly wind, force 2.) The comfort is that we are rising. On one slope we got a good view of the land and the pressure ridges to the S.E. They seem to be disposed 'en echelon' and gave me the idea of shearing cracks. They seemed to lessen as we ascend. It is rather trying having to march so far to the west, but if we keep rising we must come to the end of the obstacles ...
— Scott's Last Expedition Volume I • Captain R. F. Scott
... Whenever sheep-shearing was over, Campbell used to set out for Edinburgh to attend to his lawsuit. At the inns he paid double for all his meals and his night's lodgings, telling the landlords to keep it in mind until his return, so that he might come back that way at free cost; for he knew, ...
— Abbotsford and Newstead Abbey • Washington Irving
... experience has been gained at the shipbuilding docks in Barrow-in-Furness, where the Brush system has been applied to illuminate several large sheds covering the punching and shearing machinery, bending blocks, furnaces, and other branches of this gigantic business. In one shed, which was formerly lighted by large blast-lamps, in which torch oil was burnt, costing about 5d. per gallon, and involving an expenditure of 8 9s. per week, ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 288 - July 9, 1881 • Various
... began stripping the Limberlost, cutting the ferns, shearing the vines from the trees, mowing the succulent green things of the swale, and setting the leaves swirling down, he watched the departing troops of his friends with dismay. He began to realize that he would be left alone. He made especial efforts toward ...
— Freckles • Gene Stratton-Porter
... lurid sympathy of the men irritated me worse than the boss-over-the-board had done. It must have been on account of the heat, as Mitchell says. I was sick of the shed and the life. It was within a couple of days of cut-out, so I told Mitchell—who was shearing—that I'd camp up the Billabong and wait for him; got my cheque, rolled up my swag, got three days' tucker from the cook, said so-long to him, and tramped while the ...
— Over the Sliprails • Henry Lawson
... at an angle for the purpose of giving them a shearing cut, which is the case when the file moves across the work on a ...
— Practical Mechanics for Boys • J. S. Zerbe
... and came away with him to the sheeplands, and Swan's hand was as tender of her as a summer wind. It was shearing time when they reached home; Swan was with her every day for a little while, gathering his flocks from the range into the shearing sheds. He was master of more than fifteen ...
— The Flockmaster of Poison Creek • George W. Ogden
... about twenty-five thousand sheep up in the hills. I've just bought a ranch with a comfortable ranch-house on it for a kind of central point. My winter feeding will all be done from it as a chief place of distribution. Same with the shearing and shipping. I want a good man to put in charge of my sheep as head manager, and I would be willing to pay a proper salary. There ain't any reason why this shouldn't work into a partnership if he makes good. With ...
— Ridgway of Montana - (Story of To-Day, in Which the Hero Is Also the Villain) • William MacLeod Raine
... in the woods for love of them half of each day, he is in danger of being regarded as a loafer; but if he spends his whole day as a speculator, shearing off those woods and making earth bald before her time, he is esteemed an industrious and enterprising citizen. As if a town had no interest in its forests but ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 72, October, 1863 • Various
... sheep were driven to the bay shore and secured in a pen. One by one they were taken out, and the fleeces carefully washed. Within a day or two, shearing followed in the barn. The wool was sorted; some was reserved to be carded by hand; the remainder was sent to the mills to be turned into rolls. Then, day after day, for weeks, the noise of the spinning-wheel was heard, accompanied by ...
— The Ontario Readers: Fourth Book • Various
... police. The Free Trader held that the natural, God-given right of the capitalist to shear the people anywhere he found them was superior to considerations of race, nationality, or boundary lines. The Protectionist, on the contrary, maintained the patriotic right of the capitalist to the exclusive shearing of his own fellow-countrymen without interference of foreign capitalists. As to the mass of the people, the nation at large, it was, as Paul has just said, a matter of indifference whether they were fleeced by the capitalists of their own country under protection ...
— Equality • Edward Bellamy
... in sylvan scenes appear! Descending gods have found Elysium here. 60 In woods bright Venus with Adonis stray'd, And chaste Diana haunts the forest shade. Come, lovely nymph, and bless the silent hours, When swains from shearing seek their nightly bowers, When weary reapers quit the sultry field, And crown'd with corn their thanks to Ceres yield; This harmless grove no lurking viper hides, But in my breast the serpent love abides. Here bees ...
— The Poetical Works Of Alexander Pope, Vol. 1 • Alexander Pope et al
... shearing sheep, and could give no time to company; and when, late in the day, I drew rein at Janet's, and she said she was going to have a dance and could not look after sick folk, the pallid lips failed to return my despairing embrace; and in the terror which this brought me I went down, in ...
— The House in the Mist • Anna Katharine Green
... the painful ploughman plies his toil With shear and coulter shearing through the soil, That costs him dear and ditches it about, Or crops his hedge to make it undersprout, And never stays to ward it from the weed, But most respects to sow therein good seed; To th' end when summer decks the meadows plain, He ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 19, No. 528, Saturday, January 7, 1832 • Various
... domestic taint as to be able to maintain its own existence when left entirely to itself. During the first half of this century, when cattle-breeding began to be profitable, and wool was not worth the trouble of shearing, and the gaucho workman would not eat mutton when beef was to be had, some of the estancieros on the southern pampas determined to get rid of their sheep, which were of no value to them; and many flocks were driven ...
— The Naturalist in La Plata • W. H. Hudson
... that our acquaintance with our landlord deepened into something like friendship. Monsieur Fouchet was always to be found there, tying up the rose-trees, or mending the paths, or shearing the bit ...
— In and Out of Three Normady Inns • Anna Bowman Dodd
... he's fond of Tilly. It's only that his life is so unsettled. He's been a barman at Euroa since then; and the last we heard of him, he was shearing somewhere on the Goulburn. He doesn't seem able ...
— Australia Felix • Henry Handel Richardson
... There are also punches made spiral on their cutting edge, as shown in Fig. 13. This punch, instead of being flat, as in Fig. 12, is of a helical form, as shown in Fig. 13, so as to have a gradual shearing action commencing at the center and traveling round to the circumference. Its form may be explained by imagining the upper cutter of a shearing machine being rolled upon itself so as to form a cylinder of which its long edge is ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 810, July 11, 1891 • Various
... thought this he continued to keep eye on Shagpat, and the hunger that was in him passed, and became a ravenous vulture that flew from him and singled forth Shagpat as prey; and there was no help for it but in he must go and state his case to Shagpat, and essay shearing him. ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... black ram. "And Farmer Green paid me the honor of shearing me himself, the first ...
— The Tale of Snowball Lamb • Arthur Bailey
... associates, not only in those earlier days, but to the end, was that famous Ettrick Shepherd, James Hogg, who was always quarrelling with his brother poet, as far as Scott permitted it, and making it up again when his better feelings returned. In a shepherd's dress, and with hands fresh from sheep-shearing, he came to dine for the first time with Scott in Castle Street, and finding Mrs. Scott lying on the sofa, immediately stretched himself at full length on another sofa; for, as he explained afterwards, "I thought I could not do better ...
— Sir Walter Scott - (English Men of Letters Series) • Richard H. Hutton
... the wild minutes past and his hand scarcely relaxed its grip on the gunwale. As a runaway horse, still galloping, drops back to control, so the canoe seemed to find her senses and leapt at the waves with a cunning change of motion, no longer shearing through their crests, but riding them with a long and easy swoop. Still Father Launoy did not speak. He sat as one for whom a door has been held half-open, and closed again, ...
— Fort Amity • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... querentes quam admirantes id Romae factum, the book ends. The next treats of stock (de re pecuaria), and one or two new personages are introduced, as Mennas, Murius, and Vaccius (the last, of course, taking on himself to speak of kine), and ends with an account of the dairy and sheep-shearing. The third is devoted to an account of the preserves (de villicis pastionibus) which includes aviaries, whether for pleasure or profit, fish-tanks, deer- forests, rabbit-warrens, and all such luxuries of a country house as are independent of tillage or pasturage—and a most brilliant catalogue ...
— A History of Roman Literature - From the Earliest Period to the Death of Marcus Aurelius • Charles Thomas Cruttwell
... they were showing themselves to the others, and persuading them to follow their example. Whilst, therefore, the powder was drying, I began with a large pair of scissors to execute my new office upon the eldest of four or five chins presented to me; and as great nicety was not required, the shearing of a dozen of them did not occupy me long. Some of the more timid were alarmed at a formidable instrument coming so near to their noses, and would scarcely be persuaded by their shaven friends, to allow the operation to be finished. ...
— A Voyage to Terra Australis • Matthew Flinders
... Alpine upheaval. Schmidt of Basel has estimated that from 15 to 20 kilometres of rock covered the materials of the Simplon as now exposed, at the time when the orogenic forces were actively at work folding and shearing the beds, and injecting into their folds the plastic gneisses coming from beneath.[1] The lateral compression of the area of deposition of the Laramide, already referred to, resulted in a great thickening of the ...
— The Birth-Time of the World and Other Scientific Essays • J. (John) Joly
... insisted on preliminary proofs. He wanted no steel in a ship's hull or in any part of her that had not behaved well in the shop tests, in the various machines that put the metal under bending stress, cross-breaking, hammering, drifting, shearing, elongation, contraction, compression, deflection, tension, and torsion stresses. The best of the steels had their elastic limits; there was none that ...
— The Cup of Fury - A Novel of Cities and Shipyards • Rupert Hughes
... Mrs. Egg, shearing the whisper. "Only Dammy ain't got any sense about cards. I tried to teach him pinochle, but he never could remember none of it, and the hired men always clean him out shakin' dice. He can't even beat his papa at checkers. ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1921 • Various
... often of considerable service both to himself and the community. On leaving the business of carriage-making Peter Cooper went to Hempstead, L. I., where he found work in a woollen factory. Here he invented and patented an improvement on the machine in use for shearing the nap of cloth; and as during the war of 1812 all commerce with England ceased, cloth-making in America flourished, and from the sale of his machines, which he could hardly make fast enough to supply the demand, young Cooper reaped a considerable profit. One of his first customers was the late ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 6 of 8 • Various
... to throw his weight on the careening gunwale, the helmswoman had pounced upon the tiller and was standing knee-deep in the water pouring over the submerged lee rail to pay out and steer and miss the island headland by a shearing hand's-breadth. ...
— The Price • Francis Lynde
... fulling and dyeing were made a business of elsewhere, then with the introduction of machinery the hand-loom disappeared from our cottages to special centres; next the spinning disappeared; then the combing, and last of all the wool-sorting went too, leaving nothing but sheep shearing of what was a complete local industry, with as many centres as there were formerly houses to work in and ...
— Fragments of Two Centuries - Glimpses of Country Life when George III. was King • Alfred Kingston
... dollars). Of every animal slain the shoulder, two joints, and the stomach went to the priests. Of the vintage and oil and grain they received about one-fiftieth. In addition a tithe was turned over to the Levites. Part of the wool in every sheep-shearing, as well as a part of the bread which they baked, found its way to the temple. In addition a large income came through the vows made by the people or the conscience money which was paid either in currency ...
— The Makers and Teachers of Judaism • Charles Foster Kent
... he had thoroughly mastered it, and afterwards became a brewer, pursuing this trade for two years, at the end of which time he apprenticed himself to a coachmaker. Upon completing his term at this trade, he engaged with his brother in the cloth-shearing business, and continued in it until the general introduction of foreign cloths, after the War of 1812, made it unprofitable. He then became a cabinet maker, but soon after opened a small grocery store on the present site of the ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe
... thoroughly, resulting in broken and irregular lines. When more care is given, the hedge is nearly spoiled by being pruned too wide at the top, the heavy shade above causing meagre growth and openings below. It should be pruned in wedge shape, but shearing is objectionable as causing a thick and short growth of leaves at the exterior, excluding light from the inside and causing bare branches there. Cutting back more irregularly with a knife allows the growth of interior foliage, and gives more breadth ...
— The Prairie Farmer, Vol. 56, No. 2, January 12, 1884 - A Weekly Journal for the Farm, Orchard and Fireside • Various
... and Ithuel felt the security conferred by the rocks in their front, and each endeavored to give one effective discharge. Ithuel succeeded the best He repaid McBean in his own coin, sending a grist of bullets into the bows of his launch, which admonished that prudent officer of the necessity of shearing toward the islet of the ruins. Pintard's assailant was brought up by the barrier in front, and turned aside also. Then, in the midst of a cloud of smoke, shouts, curses, cries, shrieks, orders, and the roar of guns, all the English precipitated themselves in a body ...
— The Wing-and-Wing - Le Feu-Follet • J. Fenimore Cooper
... says the little lad: "the weapons I bore against the catch were the shield to ward, and the spear to thrust, and the knife for the shearing of the heads: and I tell thee that when men go to battle they use to wend in their ...
— The Sundering Flood • William Morris
... had said, the croppers of the West Riding were a rough set. Their occupation consisted in shearing or cropping the wool on the face of cloths. They used a large pair of shears, which were so set that one blade went under the cloth while the other worked on its upper face, mowing the fibers and ends of the wool to a smooth, even surface. The work was hard and required ...
— Through the Fray - A Tale of the Luddite Riots • G. A. Henty
... which reveals the past, and through which we divine the future—is not seized and set triumphantly as it is in "Silas Marner." The descriptions do not flow out of and form part of the narrative, but are wedged in, and often awkwardly. We are invited to assist at a sheep-shearing scene, or at a harvest supper, because these scenes are not to be found in the works of George Eliot, because the reader is supposed to be interested in such things, because Mr. Hardy is anxious to show how ...
— Confessions of a Young Man • George Moore |
