"Swath" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the sun shone out again. But what a change met their gaze as they came out from under their quickly improvised tent and wandered about! The beautiful forests seemed about ruined. In one direction, like as though a great reaper had gone through a splendid meadow, and cut clean to the ground a great swath of grass, so had this cyclone gone through the forest. In the centre of its path, not a tree had been left standing. Every one had gone down before this irresistible force. Fortunately it had swerved a little to the right ...
— Three Boys in the Wild North Land • Egerton Ryerson Young
... is now but one way open. Lord Winter answers for his regiment, or at least very nearly so—we will not split straws about words—let him place himself at the head of his men, we will place ourselves at the side of your majesty, and we will mow a swath through Cromwell's army ...
— Twenty Years After • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... said Mrs. Perkins, whose anger had somewhat cooled, "They do say that Miss Grundy is mowing a wide swath over there, and really expects to have Mr. Parker, if ...
— The English Orphans • Mary Jane Holmes
... cried the brother. "'Twas that urged me on. For one of my company, just a minute before, had been singing Donacha Ban's song of 'Ben Dorain,' and no prospect in the world seemed so alluring to me then as a swath of ...
— Gilian The Dreamer - His Fancy, His Love and Adventure • Neil Munro
... Kondal—a remnant that sought safety in flight. But even in flight, they still fought with all their weapons, and the streams of bombs dropped from their keel-batteries upon the country beneath marked the path of their retreat with a wide swath of destruction. Half inclined to let the few remaining vessels escape, Seaton's mind changed instantly as he saw the bombs spreading devastation upon the countryside, and not until the last of the Mardonalian vessels had been destroyed did he drop the Skylark into the area ...
— The Skylark of Space • Edward Elmer Smith and Lee Hawkins Garby
... as heavy as we, or as strong? Ho! but we trample the shambas down! Saw ye a swath where the trash lay long And tall trees flat like a harvest mown? That was the path we shore in haste (Judge, is it easy to find, and wide!) Ripping the branch and bough to waste Like rocks shot loose from a mountain side! Therefore ...
— The Ivory Trail • Talbot Mundy
... twice the cab stopped altogether, and Gallegher could hear the driver swearing to himself, or at the horse, or the roads. At last they drew up before the station at Torresdale. It was quite deserted, and only a single light cut a swath in the darkness and showed a portion of the platform, the ties, and the rails glistening in the rain. They walked twice past the light before a figure stepped out of the shadow and ...
— Short Stories for English Courses • Various (Rosa M. R. Mikels ed.)
... condescendingly, "but you're just the sons of commoners, while my father is a wealthy man, a banker and a leader in society. So I guess you can quickly understand that I'm going to cut a good deal wider swath here than you two fellows ...
— Dick Prescott's First Year at West Point • H. Irving Hancock
... that, Jack. 'Twould be a dog-in-the-manger trick in me to blame you for loving her. And since you speak of debts, I do protest I owe you somewhat, too. With so fair a chance to cut a clean swath in that fair-weather month at Appleby Hundred, another man would have left me scant gleanings in the field, ...
— The Master of Appleby • Francis Lynde
... nest, and to make a great clamour. When the men began to mow, they flew round and round, stooping so low, when near the men, as almost to touch their bodies, making a great chattering at the same time; but, before the men had got round with the second swath, they flew to the nest, and away they went, young ones and all, across the river, at the foot of the ground, and settled in the long grass in ...
— The Bed-Book of Happiness • Harold Begbie
... abroad may find Thee sitting careless on a granary floor, Thy hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind; Or on a half-reap'd furrow sound asleep, Drows'd with the fume of poppies, while thy hook Spares the next swath and all its twined flowers: And sometimes like a gleaner thou dost keep Steady thy laden head across a brook; Or by a cyder-press, with patient look, Thou watchest the last ...
— The Hundred Best English Poems • Various
... on the farm seemed a visible verification of the old saying, "To him that hath shall be given." A special Providence seemed to hover over their acres of tobacco. Storms and destructive hail appeared to roam in a swath just outside their farm. The Jonas Miller tobacco fields were reputed to be the finest in the whole Garden Spot county, and the Jonas Miller bank account grew correspondingly fast. But the bank account, however quickly it increased, failed ...
— Amanda - A Daughter of the Mennonites • Anna Balmer Myers
... What I came to see about is whether you want me to follow him out of town. He's been cutting a pretty wide swath since he got out on bail, and he's been ...
— The Diamond Cross Mystery - Being a Somewhat Different Detective Story • Chester K. Steele
... half-past four or five in the morning, and mow an hour or two before breakfast. A good mower is proud of his skill. He does not "lop in," and his "pointing out" is perfect, and you can hardly see the ribs of his swath. He stands up to his grass and strikes level and sure. He will turn a double down through the stoutest grass, and when the hay is raked away you will not find a spear left standing. The Americans are—or were—the best mowers. A foreigner ...
— In the Catskills • John Burroughs
... lost the way, because our crawling column had left a swath behind it of trampled grass and trodden crossing-places where the track wound and rewound in a game of hide-and-seek with tinkling streams. But we began to wonder, nevertheless, why we caught up ...
— The Eye of Zeitoon • Talbot Mundy
... were we'd have to stay under the stream of life's perplexities. Jim was so smooth in appearance (alas! but not in tongue) he might slip out of a corner as easily as his fine manners enabled him to progress in society. But I was no man for style. I could cut no swath with women. The few times I had tried it, the scythe had turned upon me, took me for an extra tough bunch of wet grass and stung me badly. I could see that my chances there were poor. If Jim got out of this murder business, ...
— Cupid's Middleman • Edward B. Lent
... shown, swaying as they walked along, each one cutting his "swath," or path, through the standing grain. Mr. Sneed was one of these. Then the view changed, so as to show Miss Pennington, dressed as a country lass, coming along with a jug on her shoulder, and a letter ...
— The Moving Picture Girls at Oak Farm - or, Queer Happenings While Taking Rural Plays • Laura Lee Hope
... bottom of the tub, the shadows of the air-bubbles clinging to the hairs were reproduced as strange jungle mosses. He patted the water, and the reflected light capsized and leaped and volleyed. He was content and childish. He played. He shaved a swath down the calf of one ...
— Babbitt • Sinclair Lewis
... very unusual colored photo of a "split cloud." The photographer had seen a huge ball of fire streak down through the sky and pass through a high layer of stratus clouds. As the fireball passed through the cloud it cut out a perfect swath. The conclusion was that the fireball was a meteor, but the case is still one of the most interesting in the file because ...
— The Report on Unidentified Flying Objects • Edward Ruppelt
... flash of light cut a swath across the road, dazzling them. Around the curve ahead, a car careened wide over the white line. His mother reached for him, his father fought the wheel to avoid the crash. Jimmy Holden both heard and felt the sharp Bang! as the right front ...
— The Fourth R • George Oliver Smith
... prairie and the night would return to its wonted silence, lighted now only by the moon and stars. He was weary, but he had an immense feeling of satisfaction and he sat a while, looking at the fire, which soon sank out of sight behind the horizon, although its pathway, the broad swath that it had cut, still glowed ...
— The Eyes of the Woods - A story of the Ancient Wilderness • Joseph A. Altsheler
... the swath shall flourish and back come Baldr; With him Hoder shall dwell in Hropter's palace, Shrines of gods the great and holy, There the just shall joy forever, And ...
— Oriental Religions and Christianity • Frank F. Ellinwood
... volleys; the actual steel was not heard until it neared like a rain torrent; indeed it found their immediate lines before they heard the murderous cutting of the air. The Austrian gunners were placed for enfilading, so that a fraction of point gave them impaling force and a wide swath in the ranks. ...
— Red Fleece • Will Levington Comfort
... than lots of white men in the county. He's got a good house, and a terbacker-barn, and a church, and a nigger school-house, and stock, and one of the finest crops of terbacker in the county. Oh, I tell you, he's cutting a wide swath, he is." "You don't tell me," said the chairman with interest. "I am glad to hear it. There appears to be good stuff in the fellow. He seems to have his ...
— Bricks Without Straw • Albion W. Tourgee
... not a working-man within the sound of my voice but has known this divine delight, and would gladly know it always if he only had the time. Well, now we had the time, the Evolution had given us the time, and in all Altruria there was not a furrow driven or a swath mown, not a hammer struck on house or on ship, not a stitch sewn or a stone laid, not a line written or a sheet printed, not a temple raised or an engine built, but it was done with an eye to beauty as ...
— A Traveler from Altruria: Romance • W. D. Howells
... discolors the vines and makes them unattractive in appearance, the hay remains more palatable and nutritious than good timothy, if the leaves are not lost in curing. When the first pods turn yellow, the crop should be harvested. The vines can be left in the swath until the top leaves begin to burn and then be put into windrows with a sulky hay-rake. The windrows should be small, the rake merely serving to invert half the vines upon the other half, bringing new surface to the ...
— Crops and Methods for Soil Improvement • Alva Agee
... that young Philip Cross was cutting a great swath, socially, in the Valley, and that he was building a grand mansion, fully as large as Johnson Hall, nearly at the summit of the eminence which crowned his patent. Major Fonda was, indeed, contracting to furnish the bricks ...
— In the Valley • Harold Frederic
... Glace must be seen; so, at seven William, Georgy, H., and I, set off. When about half way or more up the mountain we crossed the track of the avalanches, a strip or trail, which looks from beneath like a mower's swath through a field of tall grass. It is a clean path, about fifty rods wide, without trees, with few rocks, smooth and steep, and with a bottom of ice ...
— Sunny Memories of Foreign Lands V2 • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... rapt attention and naught else in his pose and on his face the while the Rev. Wickliffe, swinging his scythe of righteousness, mowed for a solid hour in Satan's weedy back yard, so that the penitents fell in a broad swath. ...
— Sundry Accounts • Irvin S. Cobb
... him and he answers them not, they wonder. But those who have seen "Calvaire" in France do not wonder, for from that room there is a clean swath of trees cut, and a quarter of a mile away looms, on a hill, a real Calvary, with the tree crosses silhouetted against the sky, and Jesus is seeing down the pathway the hill of ...
— Soldier Silhouettes on our Front • William L. Stidger
... Nothing showed preparation for departure. The riddle was uncanny. At the third Jacqueline stated that she would go no farther. She hated to tramp down a man's field when the man himself was not about to express an opinion, and the ruthless swath made by her escort through the cane gave her shame. Besides, it was too much like wading, the way her skirts brushed the long leaves and knocked off glistening ...
— The Missourian • Eugene P. (Eugene Percy) Lyle
... away which in the swath clouts is cast aside, and lyttle care can the mother have which can suffer such crueltie: and can it be tearmed with any other title then cruelty, the infant yet looking redde of the mother, the mother yet breathing ...
— The English Novel in the Time of Shakespeare • J. J. Jusserand
... Eve the Night-Hag will ride, And all her nine-fold sweeping on by her side, Whether the wind sing lowly or loud, Sailing through moonshine or swath'd in the cloud. ...
— Waverley, Or 'Tis Sixty Years Hence, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... shadows of noon. Indoors nothing was to be heard save the droning of blue-bottle flies; out-of-doors the whetting of scythes and the hiss of tressy oat-ears rubbing together as their perpendicular stalks of amber-yellow fell heavily to each swath. Every drop of moisture not in the men's bottles and flagons in the form of cider was raining as perspiration from their foreheads and ...
— Far from the Madding Crowd • Thomas Hardy
... Disruption in the Churches of Scotland in ten volumes; such also as that Catherine Dumfarthing was wearing a green and gold winter suit with Russian furs and a Balkan hat and a Circassian feather, which cut a wide swath of destruction among the young men on Plutoria Avenue every afternoon as she passed. Moreover by the strangest of coincidences she scarcely ever seemed to come along the snow-covered avenue without meeting the Reverend Edward—a fact which elicited new exclamations of surprise from them both ...
— Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich • Stephen Leacock
... enough of is any form of sensationalism. It clearly loves scandals about the rich, or anything about the rich, because we all want and expect to be rich, to out-shine our neighbors, to cut a wide swath in society. Give us anything about the rich, the Public says; we will take the mud from their shoes; if we can't get that, give us the parings ...
— The Last Harvest • John Burroughs
... edge to the cutter is by no means essential. The toughest weeds, an occasional corn stalk, or a stick of the thickness of a man's little finger, have been frequently cut without at all affecting its operation; it can be sharpened, however, in a few minutes with a file. The width of the swath may be increased by having the cutter made longer, and the same machine will cut a ...
— Obed Hussey - Who, of All Inventors, Made Bread Cheap • Various
... around it, and realizing that it had found trouble, it sank among the grasses and went threshing toward its den in the deep willow-fringed low ground. The swale appeared as if a reaper were cutting a wide swath. The mass of enraged bees darted angrily around, searching for it, and striking the scrub-thorn, began a temporary settling there to discover whether it were a suitable place. Completely exhausted, Mrs. Duncan staggered on a few steps farther, fell facing the path, where Freckles ...
— Freckles • Gene Stratton-Porter
... will name, as he not only took a big swath in the evening's entertainment, but he was a man more generally known than our worthy President, James K. Polk. That man was the famous Captain Riley, whose "Narrative" of suffering and adventures is pretty generally ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume IV. (of X.) • Various
... had gained any inkling of the wide swath of woe and consequent spiritual doubtings that he was cutting among the closest of his personal friends, he would have fallen to plucking out his hair in mingled rage and shamed amusement. Mercifully, however, ...
— The Brentons • Anna Chapin Ray
... followed. Before the lines could form again the whole nine wheeled—as a wind-eddy spins on its own axis—and burst through back again, the horses racing neck and neck, and the sabres cutting down a swath to screech and swear and gurgle in among ...
— Rung Ho! • Talbot Mundy
... Boys, for Liberty! Forward, and follow me! Remember Kentucky!" Into the hell they broke— Into the fire and smoke— Dealing swift saber-stroke— The gallant Kentuckians. Horses plunge, Riders lunge Heavily forward; Over the fallen they ride Down to Zagonyi's side, Mowing a swath of death Either side,—right and left Piling ...
— The Feast of the Virgins and Other Poems • H. L. Gordon
... the talk of the neighborhood for years that the alley would have to go in the Elm Street widening which was to cut a swath through the block, right over the site upon which it stood; and at last notice was given about Christmas time that the wreckers were coming. The alley was sold,—thirty dollars was all it brought,—and the old tenants moved away, and were scattered to the four winds. Barney ...
— The Battle with the Slum • Jacob A. Riis
... melancholy, and monotonous as a rainy day, all the sadder since its sound soaked into the mist without an echo; the sickles clinked in the grain, and the meadow resounded. A line of mowers cutting the rowen whistled ceaselessly a jingling tune; at the end of each swath they stopped, sharpened their scythes, and rhythmically hammered them. The people could not be seen in the mist; only the sickles, the scythes, and the songs hummed together like the notes ...
— Pan Tadeusz • Adam Mickiewicz
... mower went around the field, it cut a wide swath of clover and left it lying flat on ...
— Bobby of Cloverfield Farm • Helen Fuller Orton
... swath Of torn-up water, on the main, Falls heavily away with long-drawn roar On either side the black deep-furrow'd path Cut by an onward-labouring vessel's prore, And never ...
— Poetical Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold
... touched suffered. Church steeples fell, crushing beneath their weight the buildings over which they had stood guard. Wrenching warehouses to fragments the tornado passed to the river front, leaving a broad swath of wreckage and dead bodies. The belt of destruction extended from the west side of Seventh Street as far as Ninth and Main Streets, and an equal width across to the point where the city was first touched. Along this path were demolished homes and wrecked business houses—the ...
— The True Story of Our National Calamity of Flood, Fire and Tornado • Logan Marshall
... themselves about his great legs. His huge body, slippery and reeking, was galvanized into energy incarnate. Sparks seemed to flash from his eyes. His breath turned to livid flame. Behind him, following in the swath which he cut, his supporters crowded, fought and yelled. Don Mario's forces gave way. They cursed, broke, and fled. Then Don Jorge, a man whose mortal strength was more than common, threw himself upon the steaming, frenzied Rosendo ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... disinterested lovers of the hard-handed democracy, whose fingers have never touched anything rougher than the dollars of our common country, would hesitate to compare palms with him. It would do your heart good, respected Sir, to see that young man mow. He cuts a cleaner and wider swath than ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... journey they passed through the very forest in which Ned had made his singular rescue of Obed and the Ring Tailed Panther. They saw the camp and they saw the swath made by the fire, a narrow belt, five or six miles in length, ending as the Ring Tailed Panther had predicted at a curve of the creek. The Mexicans, as they now knew definitely, were gone days ...
— The Texan Star - The Story of a Great Fight for Liberty • Joseph A. Altsheler
... the pinnacle as the sun rose, he easily traced a blackened swath cut from the fifth hill up to the eastward wall of the imperial grounds; and, in proof of the fury of the gale, the terraces of the garden were covered inches deep with ashes and scoriac-looking flakes of what ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 2 • Lew. Wallace
... hesitate a moment on account of the inequality of numbers, but instantly formed his men and ordered a charge. The mob, instead of recoiling, closed desperately on the police, and a fierce hand-to-hand encounter took place. The clubs, however, mowed a clean swath along the street, and the compact little force pushed like a wedge into the throng, and cleared a bloody space for itself. The orders were to recapture all the arms; for this was of more vital importance than the capture of men. Wherever, therefore, a musket was seen, a man would dash for it, and, ...
— The Great Riots of New York 1712 to 1873 • J.T. Headley
... 20,000,000 to her population—one-half the present population of France—during a period in which the French population has actually diminished. Of all the nations in Europe, she has cut the biggest swath in the development of world trade, industry, and influence. Despite the fact that she has not "expanded" in the sense of mere political dominion, a proportion of her population, equivalent to the white population of the whole ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 21 - The Recent Days (1910-1914) • Charles F. Horne, Editor
... gum, we'll see If the public's time she dares devote To the educatin' of any dam goat!" "You do not entirely comprehend— Hernani's a play," said his learned friend, "By Victor Hugo—immoral and bad. What's worse, it's French!" "Well, well, my lad," Said Smith, "if he cuts a swath so wide I'll have him took re'glar up and tried!" And he smiled so sweetly the other chap Thought that himself was a Finn or Lapp Caught in a storm of his native snows, With a purple ear and an azure nose. The Smith continued: "I never ...
— Black Beetles in Amber • Ambrose Bierce
... desire to know things. The stream was as pure and bright as ever, hastening down its gravel-path of fine granite just as usual, except that it had more volume and a stronger sense of freshness. Only the bent of the grasses and the swath of the pendulous twigs down stream remained to show that there must have ...
— Erema - My Father's Sin • R. D. Blackmore
... She cuts a wide swath, don't she?" exclaimed Uncle Ethan, profoundly impressed with ...
— Main-Travelled Roads • Hamlin Garland
... ridges for alfalfa, sending a full head of water down to the end of the field between each ridge. Should I calculate the lands to be mowed one at a time in even swaths? The mower being 5-foot cut, would you count on cutting a 4 1/2 or 5-foot swath? This soil is sandy, water percolating rapidly. The fall is 8 feet to the mile. How wide, then, would you advise making the ridges to suit the mower, and to flood economically, using from 2 to 4 cubic feet per second? ...
— One Thousand Questions in California Agriculture Answered • E.J. Wickson
... now under the spears of the crowd—when the hut door opened; and Korelin, the Russian, dashed out flourishing a yard-long bear knife under protection of the other guard's musket fire from the window, slashed to death two of the nearest Indians, cut a swath that sent the others scattering, seized the two wounded men, dragged them inside the hut, and slammed the door to the enraged yells ...
— Vikings of the Pacific - The Adventures of the Explorers who Came from the West, Eastward • Agnes C. Laut
... here, dad," I cut in, getting a bit hot under the collar myself, "by all the laws of nature, there must have been a time when you were twenty-five years old and cut a little swath of your own. And, seeing you're as big as your offspring—six-foot-one, and you can't deny it—and fairly husky for a man of your age, I'll bet all you dare that said swath was not of the narrow-gage variety. ...
— The Range Dwellers • B. M. Bower
... to the masses of trees sometimes thrown down by a hurricane, often over a swath not more than two hundred yards wide. Where men did not exist to clear them away they were numerous in Kentucky, accumulating for uncounted years. But it was more than an hour before they came upon one of these heaps of tree trunks ...
— The Keepers of the Trail - A Story of the Great Woods • Joseph A. Altsheler
... I had never been habited in a corset in my life on account of a prejudice entertained to that garment by my Nannette, but I bethought me to remove that shirt and also the silk one underneath and swath about me one of the heavy towels of the bath. Immediately I did so and fastened it in place with a needle and thread from the gentleman's traveling case that I found in the pocket of my bag. Over it I then drew the silk undershirt ...
— The Daredevil • Maria Thompson Daviess
... that several of his pets were mere straw men, and dashed violently and madly into and through Punk's interference, and downed him on the 15-yard line; how the spectators looked on in silent amazement at this unexpected beginning; how promptly Tug's men were lined up, a broad swath completely opened with one quick gash in Clayton's line, and the ball shoved through and within five yards of the goal-posts, almost before Clayton knew it was in play; how Clayton called his men to one ...
— The Dozen from Lakerim • Rupert Hughes
... did his tapping after his own fashion. He took his wife's red flannel petticoat and tied it to a sapling on the top of the mound that the old hunter used to climb, and then with bill-hook and axe he cut a straight swath through the woods. He even cut down through the roots and took ...
— Jersey Street and Jersey Lane - Urban and Suburban Sketches • H. C. Bunner
... business himself. I know 'm. He was the most energetic man I ever saw, think quick as a wink, as cool as an icicle an' as wild as a Comanche. Why, he'd a-cut a swath through the free an' easy big business gamblers an' pirates of them days; just as he cut a swath through the hearts of the ladies when he went gallopin' past on that big horse of his, sword clatterin', spurs jinglin', his long hair flyin', straight as an Indian, clean-built an' graceful as ...
— The Valley of the Moon • Jack London
... musketoon caught them full abreast and a Seneca chief fell dead. The Iroquois then broke up Dollard's canoes and tried to set fire to the logs; but again the musketoon's scattering bullets mowed a swath of death in the advancing ranks, and for a second time the red warriors sought shelter behind the logs. Probably to obtain truce till they could send word to the other warriors on the Richelieu, the Iroquois then hung out ...
— Canada: the Empire of the North - Being the Romantic Story of the New Dominion's Growth from Colony to Kingdom • Agnes C. Laut
... mowing with the scythe; and Bert, accompanying Uncle Alec to the field, was filled with admiration for the stalwart "Rorys" and "Donalds" and "Sandys" as they strode along through the thick grass, cutting a wide swath before them. There was something in the work that appealed to the boy's bump of destructiveness, and filled him with eagerness to ...
— Bert Lloyd's Boyhood - A Story from Nova Scotia • J. McDonald Oxley
... a column of thick smoke straight upward, vibrating to the top of the stack, hissed, clanked, and lurched forward. Instantly, motion sprang to life in all its component parts; the header knives, cutting a thirty-six foot swath, gnashed like teeth; beltings slid and moved like smooth flowing streams; the separator whirred, the agitator jarred and crashed; cylinders, augers, fans, seeders and elevators, drapers and chaff-carriers ...
— The Octopus • Frank Norris
... this direction, and by noon on Thursday the whole section was a raging furnace, the denizens escaping with what they could carry of their simple possessions. On the farther western side the flames cut a wide swath to Van Ness Avenue, a wide thoroughfare, at which it was hoped the march of the fire in this direction might be checked, especially as the water mains here ...
— The San Francisco Calamity • Various
... long, twelve feet wide and twelve feet high; topped by a four-foot-high bubble canopy over her cab. All the way across her nose was a three-foot-wide luminescent strip. This was the variable beam headlight that could cut a day-bright swath of light through night, fog, rain or snow and could be varied in intensity, width and elevation. Immediately above the headlight strip were two red-black plastic panels which when lighted, sent out a flashing ...
— Code Three • Rick Raphael
... that proud wooer, 'Lord Eurymachus, if there might be a trial of labour between us two, I know which of us would come out the better man. I would that we two stood together, a scythe in the hands of each, and a good swath of meadow to be mown—then would I match with thee, fasting from dawn until evening's dark. Or would that we were set ploughing together. Then thou shouldst see who would plough the longest and the best furrow! Or ...
— The Adventures of Odysseus and The Tales of Troy • Padriac Colum
... a preponderance of the sex in Norway and Sweden. As many women as men are seen engaged in mowing, reaping, loading heavy carts, and getting in the harvest generally. What would our American farmers think to see a woman swing a scythe all day in the hayfields, cutting as broad and even a swath as a man can do, and apparently with as little fatigue? Labor is very poorly paid. Forty cents per day is considered to be liberal wages for a man, except in the cities, where a small increase ...
— Foot-prints of Travel - or, Journeyings in Many Lands • Maturin M. Ballou
... held up, with a flat side toward Dan. There was no sound, but a flash of green light came from it, cutting a wide swath into the jungle, and littering its path ...
— Astounding Stories, July, 1931 • Various
... I did not wish to live what was not life, living is so dear; nor did I wish to practise resignation, unless it was quite necessary. I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life, to cut a broad swath and shave close, to drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms, and, if it proved to be mean, why then to get the whole and genuine meanness of it, and publish its meanness to the world; or if it were sublime, to know it by experience, and ...
— Walden, and On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience • Henry David Thoreau
... lightning, in a sudden spleen Unfolded, dashes from the blinding eyes The visive spirits dazzled and bedimm'd; So, round about me, fulminating streams Of living radiance play'd, and left me swath'd And veil'd in dense impenetrable blaze. Such weal is in the love, that stills this heav'n; For its own flame the torch ...
— The Divine Comedy, Complete - The Vision of Paradise, Purgatory and Hell • Dante Alighieri
... caution akin to awe she approached the windfall where a cyclone years before had levelled a wide swath through the heavy growth. Giant trunks and branches, resisting decay, littered the floor of the lane and formed a barrier impenetrable to those inhabitants of the jungle confined to a life on the ground. Second ...
— The Black Phantom • Leo Edward Miller
... rifle barrel flashed and glittered as he whirled it. Like a reaper, laying a clean swath behind him, the engineer mowed down a dozen of ...
— Darkness and Dawn • George Allan England
... it pay; and no prize would be recognized except in a Southern port. Raiders did better and for a much longer time. The Shenandoah was burning Northern whalers in Bering Sea at the end of the war. The Sumter and the Florida cut a wide swath under instructions which "left much to discretion and more to the torch." The famous Alabama only succumbed to the U.S.S. Kearsarge after sinking the Hatteras man-of-war and raiding seventy other vessels. Yet still the South, in spite ...
— Captains of the Civil War - A Chronicle of the Blue and the Gray, Volume 31, The - Chronicles Of America Series • William Wood
... alternated between soft languors and isolated scenes of squalor, which followed a mechanist's reconnaissance of the imagery of Uranus, the legend of whose incognito related to a poniard wound in the abdomen received while cutting a swath in the interests of telegraphy and posthumous photography. Meantime an unctuous orthoepist applied a homeopathic restorative to the retina of an objurgatory spaniel (named Daniel) and tried to perfect the construction ...
— 1001 Questions and Answers on Orthography and Reading • B. A. Hathaway
... Elder, who had joined us a few moments before, "the Doctor takes a wide range, or, as the farmers say, carries a wide swath, and has some notions of things which in my view have as little foundation in true philosophy as they have warrant in Scripture; but, if he sometimes speculates falsely, he lives truly, which is by far the most ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... sweetness of the influx from the spirits of Jupiter. They said that when any slight disagreement arises among them, there appears as it were a thin dazzling white ray of light, like that of ordinary lightning or like the little swath which encompasses glittering and wandering stars; but the disagreement among them is soon adjusted. Glittering stars, which are at the same time wandering signify what is false; but glittering and fixed stars signify what is true; thus ...
— Earths In Our Solar System Which Are Called Planets, and Earths In The Starry Heaven Their Inhabitants, And The Spirits And Angels There • Emanuel Swedenborg
... pricked up their ears and tried to break into a gallop, the noise of the machine behind them startling them as usual at first, but they soon settled down to a steady pace, and the steel arm bearing the shears swept a broad swath through the meadow, where the grass stood shining after ...
— The Great Hunger • Johan Bojer
... teeth into the milky kernels. Ringtail dearly loved sweet corn and he ate until his round, furry sides were distended and he could hold no more. Then he ran up and down through the rustling field, bearing down great quantities, merely sampling their sweetness and leaving behind a wide swath of ruin. ...
— Followers of the Trail • Zoe Meyer
... fast as the automatic rifles would fire. The Bannings swept the line of charging figures. As the beams paused for a moment, the charge would take effect and a ball of fire would mushroom skyward, leaving a dozen seared cat bodies on the ground. Terrence swept his machine gun along in a swath behind the Bannings, picking off what they left. Some dozen catmen made it to within ten yards of their front but sprawled still or lay kicking briefly until a Greenback ...
— Narakan Rifles, About Face! • Jan Smith
... I called out my whole family to help at saving an after-growth of hay, and, our guest offering his assistance, he was accepted among the number. Our labours went on lightly, we turned the swath to the wind, I went foremost, and the rest followed in due succession. I could not avoid, however, observing the assiduity of Mr Burchell in assisting my daughter Sophia in her part of the task. ...
— The Vicar of Wakefield • Oliver Goldsmith
... fence, looking after Morgan, long after the dust of his wheels had settled again to the road. At last he went back to the place where he had dropped his scythe, and cut a swath straight through to the tree where Ollie's bonnet had hung. And there he mowed the trampled clover, and obliterated her ...
— The Bondboy • George W. (George Washington) Ogden
... midmorning Joe Pollard came to him and grunted at the swath Terry had driven into the heart of ...
— Black Jack • Max Brand
... elastic step this long, swaying line of Irishmen moved to the assault with as much indifference apparently to their fate as "sheep going to the shambles." Not a shot was fired from this advancing column, while the shells from our batteries cut swath after swath through their ranks, only to be closed again as if by some mechanical means; colors fall, but rise and float again, men bounding forward and eagerly grasping the fallen staff, indifferent of the fate that awaited them. Officers are ...
— History of Kershaw's Brigade • D. Augustus Dickert
... and spring as well, and then came summer, and just before the scythe cut the green swath, for the hay harvest, Mehetabel ...
— The Broom-Squire • S. (Sabine) Baring-Gould
... the house, and Uncle Lyman and his wife never knew an idle day. This fixed upon him a serious and preoccupied air. He began the day early and left off late. The sun was his fellow traveller and laborer to and fro in the furrow, the corn rows and the swath. But it was hard for him to leave his work at sundown; darkness alone sometimes compelled him to quit the field. After supper, which was at five o'clock, the year round, is half and the better half of the day in summer, he used to say. Our ...
— Confessions of Boyhood • John Albee
... job, and plowed her out, leaving exposed the wet, marshy surface of the creek-bottom, on which at night a thin crust formed. Across the marsh the old tramped road held up the horses, and the plow swept clear a little wider swath. ...
— The Blazed Trail • Stewart Edward White
... who knew her husband as Mr. James Rand, an energetic young insurance broker who would certainly carve a wider swath for himself in his chosen profession now that he had ...
— The Calm Man • Frank Belknap Long
... been made in the advancing column, which had been thrown into the utmost confusion, those men in the immediate vicinity of the gap, on either side of it, having halted in dismay, while the right and left wings had continued to advance; and in the midst of the gap could be seen a long swath of prostrate men, the most of whom were lying horribly and unnaturally still. It was pitiable to see those men, many of them scarcely out of their boyhood, led forth to die in support of grinding, unendurable tyranny and misgovernment: yet that was ...
— The Cruise of the Thetis - A Tale of the Cuban Insurrection • Harry Collingwood
... harvest is completed. At the most, he can earn an average of twenty-five cents a day, for his food has been poor, his body is weak, his hands tremble, his scythe is antiquated and blunders at its work. Yet swath after swath marks the sweep of his arms, and his poor dull mind is filled with the thought of the day of liberation that is drawing nigh. Still, he has not earned by a good deal the sum that will save him from ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Volume 15, No. 89, May, 1875 • Various
... Before coming West, their father had owned a mowing machine, but primitive methods prevailed on the frontier, and he had been compelled to use a scythe in his haying operations. Joel swung the blade like a veteran, scattering his swath to cure in the sun, and with whetstone on steel, beat a frequent tattoo. The raking into windrows and shocking at evening was an easy task for the brothers, no day passing but the cured store was added to, until sufficient ...
— Wells Brothers • Andy Adams
... the ground began to fall in short pitches; sometimes it broke in steps over granite spurs where the exposed roots of fir and hemlock twined; then I came to a place where an immense boulder, big as a house, moving down the mountain, had left a swath through the timber, and I heard the thunder of the Duckabush. I turned into this cut, intending to cross the river and work down the canyon on the farther side, and as I went I saw the torrent storming below me, a winding sheet of spray. The boulder had stopped ...
— The Rim of the Desert • Ada Woodruff Anderson
... on Tuesday, and the buckwheat on Thursday, if the weather continued good. Asa Doane was coming to assist us. The oats were to be turned on Wednesday and drawn in on Friday. The buckwheat would need to lie in the swath till the next week and be turned once or twice, in order to ...
— When Life Was Young - At the Old Farm in Maine • C. A. Stephens
... as those of every city and town in Europe, were hung with war maps, of course. In Rome the prevailing map was that highly colored, imaginative rearrangement of southern Europe to fit the national aspirations. The new frontier ran along the summits of the Alps and took a wide swath down the Adriatic coast. It was a most flattering prospect and lured many loiterers to the shop windows. At the office of the "Giornale d'Italia" in the Corso there was displayed beside an irredentist ...
— The World Decision • Robert Herrick
... whole distance to the Valley was fifty miles. For twelve of these we pursued a road in some degree practicable to carts, and leading to one of those inevitable steam saw-mills with which a Yankee always cuts his first swath into the tall grass of Barbarism. Passing the saw-mill in the very act of astonishing the wilderness with a dinner-whistle, we struck a trail and fell into single file. Thenceforward our way was almost a continuous alternation ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 80, June, 1864 • Various
... bonitas, numbering many thousands, stayed with us day and night for more than three weeks. Aided by the Snark, it was great hunting; for they cut a swath of destruction through the ocean half a mile wide and fifteen hundred miles in length. They ranged along abreast of the Snark on either side, pouncing upon the flying- fish her forefoot scared up. Since they were continually pursuing ...
— The Cruise of the Snark • Jack London
... try to cut with too wide a swath. This last rule is the most important of all. Many promising young men have fallen into ruin from the neglect of this simple principle. It is so easy for premature ambition to launch men out into daring ...
— Success (Second Edition) • Max Aitken Beaverbrook
... brisk little man pushed heartily and the mechanism revolved with a barely audible clicking. It did not balk, complain or hesitate. Cleanly severed ends of grass whirled into the air and floated down on the neat smooth swath left behind. Everyone smiled relievedly at the jimdandy's triumph and my sigh was loudest and most heartfelt. I edged away ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore
... see, the suggestion was entirely irrelevant to the gathering, for what could it matter to the mower what sort of hands the woman had who gathered his swath. But then Miss Elspeth had, if not very pretty, at least very small hands, and smallness was the only merit she knew of ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald
... rice harvest, beginning early in September, as soon as a field was drained the negroes would be turned in with sickles, each laborer cutting a swath of three or four rows, leaving the stubble about a foot high to sustain the cut stalks carefully laid upon it in handfuls for a day's drying. Next day the crop would be bound in sheaves and stacked for a brief curing. When the reaping ...
— American Negro Slavery - A Survey of the Supply, Employment and Control of Negro Labor as Determined by the Plantation Regime • Ulrich Bonnell Phillips
... from a friend of theirs, who was also a friend of ours, and we could not very well hold back. So, in the cool of the early evening, when I had quite finished rasping my lawn with the new mower, I left it at the end of the swath, which had brought me near the fence, and ...
— The Whole Family - A Novel by Twelve Authors • William Dean Howells, Mary E. Wilkins Freeman, Mary Heaton Vorse, Mary Stewart Cutting, Elizabeth Jo
... dispensed the same virtue to those around her. Towards none did she show it more sweetly than to that disreputable fraud and alleged man of genius, Richard Savage. In his own feverish day Dick Savage cut a literary swath more wide than enviable, but when he is viewed from the unsympathetic light of the present he seems merely a clever vagabond. Yet Dr. Johnson, who could be so stern towards some of his contemporaries, condescended to love the aforesaid vagabond, in a ponderous, ...
— The Palmy Days of Nance Oldfield • Edward Robins
... through the human harvest, Cutting a bloody swath, Woe to you, soldier of Briton! Death is abroad in his path. Flee from the scythe of the reaper, Flee while the moment is thine, None may with safety withstand ...
— The Complete Poems of Paul Laurence Dunbar • Paul Laurence Dunbar
... the lawn-mower exactly where it was, in the middle of a swath. With an answering wave he crossed to the west room window and, with an ease which surprised his audience, drew his long slimness up the pillar of the porch and clambered over the railing ...
— The Window-Gazer • Isabel Ecclestone Mackay
... our rear, had passed the TORNADO—uprooting trees, prostrating dwellings, and sending many a soul to its last account, but sparing us for another day! For thirty miles through the forest it had mowed a swath of two hundred feet, then moved on to stir the ocean to its ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. II. July, 1862. No. 1. • Various
... out a handsome swath; but it had ought to be all down now. Well, good day! Hurry up, now, ...
— Diana • Susan Warner
... trunk in the glaring spiral of a fresh scar two hand-breadths wide went the swath along which the bolt had ...
— The Roof Tree • Charles Neville Buck
... the course of the bear was marked by a swath of broken brush. It dashed headlong through the forest regardless of obstruction. Small trees in his way meant nothing to him; he ran over them, or if old and brittle, smashed them down. Into the densest portion of the woods he made his way. Not more than three hundred yards from ...
— Hunting with the Bow and Arrow • Saxton Pope
... long vacation, too. I think, on the very day after I wrote my last letter to you, as I was whetting my scythe for the last swath of the season, my hat half fell off, and suddenly raising my hand to catch it, I thrust it against the scythe and cut my thumb just upon the joint. It has healed, but I shall never find it quite as agile ...
— Early Letters of George Wm. Curtis • G. W. Curtis, ed. George Willis Cooke
... swath pau'per gra va'men a men' halve ha'rem to ma'to gua'no jean pa sha' sa'li ent na'ive catch fac'et pa'ri ah har'ass balm fal'chion far ra'go sat'ire groat laugh'ter tap'es try jal'ap trance tar'iff de ca'dence e clat' ...
— McGuffey's Eclectic Spelling Book • W. H. McGuffey
... you had better take the boat down in good time this afternoon so as to be sure and be there — I can't be spared a moment from the bend meadow. The grass there is just ready to be laid. It's a very heavy swath. I guess there's all of ...
— Hills of the Shatemuc • Susan Warner
... an individual. She hasn't her like anywhere I've gone. She cuts a wide swath up here. Being an only child she's both son and daughter to McFarlane. She knows more about forestry than her father. In fact, half the time he depends on ...
— The Forester's Daughter - A Romance of the Bear-Tooth Range • Hamlin Garland
... it sufficient if once in a month we enjoy a glimpse of thy majesty; and then, to increase our griefs, thou dost decrease thy gleams; coming out of thy royal robes, wherewith thou dazzlest our eyes, down into thy swath clouts, beguiling our eyes; ...
— A History of English Literature - Elizabethan Literature • George Saintsbury
... then merely a fort and huddle of houses. He made the most careful preparations for the expedition, and early in the spring, he commenced his march northward into the Indian country. The savages gathered to repulse him at a spot on the Maumee where, years before, a tornado had cut a wide swath through the forest, rendering it all but impenetrable. Here, on the twentieth of August, 1794, he advanced against the enemy, and, throwing his troops into the "Fallen Timbers," in which the Indians were ambushed, routed them out, ...
— American Men of Action • Burton E. Stevenson
... reason pine thickets had grown up on it, The wagon kept right at our heels, and many times had to wait. We cut a way through thickets, tore rotten logs to pieces, threw stumps aside, and moved windfalls. Brawny Nielsen seemed ten men in one! What a swath he hacked with his big axe! When I rested, which circumstance grew oftener and oftener, I had to watch Nielsen with his magnificent swing of the axe, or with his mighty heave on a log. Time and again he lifted tree trunks out of the ...
— Tales of lonely trails • Zane Grey
... A swath showed where the bullet had mowed a furrow of hair so close that in one place it had slightly torn ...
— A Texas Ranger • William MacLeod Raine
... not the point," said Blount dryly. "Here is the question I wanted to ask: There are only five days intervening before the election. How wide a swath could you cut if the evidence of wholesale corruption could be placed in your hands ...
— The Honorable Senator Sage-Brush • Francis Lynde
... instant attention. His father, my grandfather, allowed him a larger income than was good for him—seeing that the per diem then paid Congressmen was altogether insufficient—and during the earlier days of his sojourn in the national capital he cut a wide swath; his principal yokemate in the pleasures and dissipations of those times being Franklin Pierce, at first a representative and then a senator from New Hampshire. Fortunately for both of them, they were whisked out of Washington by their families in 1843; my father into ...
— Marse Henry, Complete - An Autobiography • Henry Watterson
... I came on deck I found a new world indeed. The wind was fair; the sun mounted into a cloudless heaven; through great dark blue seas the ship cut a swath of curded foam. The horizon was dotted all day with companionable sails, and the sun shone pleasantly on ...
— Essays of Travel • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Iskander, the pride and boast Of that mighty Othman host, With his routed Turks, takes flight From the battle fought and lost On the day of Pentecost; Leaving behind him dead The army of Amurath, The vanguard as it led, The rearguard as it fled, Mown down in the bloody swath Of ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... swift passing of her garments. All that was not in straight parallels of accord with the universal yielding of nature to the simplest law of growth was in her soul. She passed on her own errand, cutting, as it were, a swath of spirit through the soft influence of the spring. Abigail Merritt's mouth was tightly shut, her eyes were narrow gleams of resolution, there were red spots on her cheeks. She had left Lucina weeping on the bed in her little chamber; she had said nothing to her, ...
— Jerome, A Poor Man - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... This he touched to Brian's right shoulder, so that the stench of scorched flesh sizzled up in a thin stream, and followed the iron down across the white breast and thigh, until it stopped at the knee, and there was a swath of red and blackened flesh down Brian's body. Yet he had ...
— Nuala O'Malley • H. Bedford-Jones
... sees the cloud and the flashes that leap From the scythe-shaped swords inside it that sweep Down with back-stroke the disordered swath: Thither he speeds, a bolt of wrath! Straight as an arrow she sees him go, Abu Midjan, the singer, upon the foe! Like an eagle he vanishes in the cloud, And the thunder of battle bursts more loud, Mingled of crashes and blows and falls, Of the whish that severs ...
— Poetical Works of George MacDonald, Vol. 2 • George MacDonald
... hesitated; it seemed about to return. Crashed down upon us an abrupt crescendo of the distant drumming; peremptory, commanding. The shape darted forward; raced away crushing to straw the trees beneath it in a full quarter-mile-wide swath. ...
— The Metal Monster • A. Merritt
... mistresse, and discry In every line the quicknesse of her eye: Her smoothnesse in each syllable, her grace To marshall ev'ry word in the right place. It is the excellence and soule of wit, When ev'ry thing is free as well as fit: For metaphors packt up and crowded close Swath minds sweetnes, and display the throws, And, like those chickens hatcht in furnaces, Produce or one limbe more, or one limbe lesse Then nature bids. Survey such when they write, No clause but's justl'd with an epithite. So powerfully you draw when ...
— Lucasta • Richard Lovelace
... of curing clover, the following, among others, is adopted by many successful farmers: What is mown in the morning is left in the swath, to be turned over early in the afternoon. At about four o'clock, or while it is still warm, it is put into small cocks with a fork, and, if the weather is favorable, it may be housed on the fourth or ...
— Cattle and Their Diseases • Robert Jennings
... come up from Orleans, whah he been cutten' a wide swath, if all folks told true, an' fust thing his eyes caught was that gal Retta, an' he up an' tole Mahs Tom what a fool he was not to sell her down in Orleans whah she'd fetch mo' money than would buy six nuss gals ...
— The Bondwoman • Marah Ellis Ryan
... summons came! If only five minutes of her clarion voice could ring out in that meeting—McGregor on his native heath—"'twere worth a thousand men." I pray you, dear friend, whose voice will reach and be heard, try to point out to the younger and later workers of the grand, old State the broad stubble swath of the scythe and the deep blazing of the sturdy axe of this glorious pioneer of theirs—the grandest of them all—whose sleeping dust is ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume IV • Various
... rest, a flashing, vivid personality, full of resource and high courage, and always meeting hard knocks and buffets with equanimity. Lola Montez had lived every moment of her life. In the course of their career, few women could have cut a wider swath, or one more colourful and glamorous. She had beauty and intelligence much above the average. All the world had been her stage; and she had played many parts on it. Some of them she had played better than others; but all ...
— The Magnificent Montez - From Courtesan to Convert • Horace Wyndham
... one summer, and went out with about thirty others. Twenty-five of them quit at the end of the first week. That was about the usual proportion—but the rest of us stuck. I devastated a swath of territory fifty miles wide and a hundred miles long. I talked, argued, persuaded, plead, threatened and mesmerized. I sold books to men on twine binders, to women with their hands in the bread dough, and once, after a farmer had come grudgingly out to rescue me from ...
— At Good Old Siwash • George Fitch
... on Sunday morning when he awoke. A broad swath of sunlight cut the room in half: the white muslin curtain at the window rippled outward like a flag. Aubrey exclaimed when he saw his watch. He had a sudden feeling of having been false to his trust. What had ...
— The Haunted Bookshop • Christopher Morley
... rapidly and continues blooming till frosts set in, so that at harvest, which is usually set to occur just before this period, the grain is in various stages of ripeness. It is cut by hand or with the self-delivery reaper, and allowed to lie in the swath for a few days and then set up in shocks. The stalks are not tied into bundles as in the case of other grain crops, the tops of the shocks being bound round and held together by twisting stems round them. The threshing is done on the field in ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 3 - "Brescia" to "Bulgaria" • Various
... said in admiring tones as the young man swayed to and fro in all the rhythmic grace of the mower's stride, swinging easily now backward the curving blade and then forward in a cutting sweep, clean and swift, laying the even swath. Alas! the clattering machine-knives have driven off from our hay-fields the mower's art ...
— The Doctor - A Tale Of The Rockies • Ralph Connor
... the army of invasion and destruction moved through the fertile land, cutting a swath of desolation forty miles wide, and crippling the Confederacy by dissipating its most cherished resources. For fully a month the army was practically lost, so far as communication with the North was concerned. Then it struck the sea at Savannah, captured that beautiful city, ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 2 of 8 • Various
... cut a swath through one of our suburbs, I rushed half-a-dozen photographs to Leslie's, feeling again some of the same thrilling sort of confidence that had accompanied the first Irresistible Wedge. Back came three dollars for a single print. Rather a proud day, that! Never before had one of my prints sold ...
— If You Don't Write Fiction • Charles Phelps Cushing |
