"Weeding" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... not yet hers. But, Child, I've no advice to give! Rules only make it hard to live. And where's the good of having been Well taught from seven to seventeen, If, married, you may not leave off, And say, at last, 'I'm good enough!' Weeding out folly, still leave some. It gives both lightness and aplomb. We know, however wise by rule, Woman is still by nature fool; And men have sense to like her all The more when she is natural. 'Tis true, that ...
— The Victories of Love - and Other Poems • Coventry Patmore
... tools are the erem (little axe for felling), the matchet (a rude cutlass for clearing), the hoe, and a succedaneum for the dibble. After the bush has been burned as manure, and the seed has been sown, no one will take the trouble of weeding, and half ...
— Two Trips to Gorilla Land and the Cataracts of the Congo Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... its endless course, environment is sure to crystallize the American nation. Its varying elements will become unified and the weeding out process will probably leave the finest human product ever known. The color, the perfume, the size and form that are placed in the plants will have their analogies in the composite, the American of ...
— The California Birthday Book • Various
... was mostly weeding up in the potato patch on the hill. I'd have my breakfast, take a bit of lunch with me, and then not come home until 'most dark. That's why you didn't see me. But I never took notice of any electrical trains or ...
— Bunny Brown and His Sister Sue in the Big Woods • Laura Lee Hope
... But here she comes from Grannie Burt's, so we must stop talking about her. She is coming by the lane just as we did, running at first, then a little slower, till at last she stops, for her sister Mary is weeding one of the pretty borders ...
— Nanny Merry - or, What Made the Difference • Anonymous
... John Marque—as he now called himself—had become exquisitely simple; eating, sleeping, driving a lawn mower—these three manly sports so entirely occupied the twenty-four hours that he had scarcely time to do much weeding—and no time at all to sympathise with himself because he was too busy by day ...
— The Gay Rebellion • Robert W. Chambers
... bad seeds in their hearts, and it is our duty by constant and careful weeding to root them out, and to impress also on the child from its earliest days the necessity of endeavouring to do so likewise. The child is not excused as it gains strength and knowledge if it does not perform its own part in the work," observed ...
— Norman Vallery - How to Overcome Evil with Good • W.H.G. Kingston
... Islamabad about one P.M., after a very hot tramp of ten kos, through groves of sycamore and walnuts, and hundreds and hundreds of acres of rice-fields, immersed in water, and tenanted by whole armies of croaking frogs. The people were principally employed in weeding their rice-crops, standing up to their knees in mud and water, and grubbing about, with their heads in a position admirably adapted to give anybody but a native, apoplexy ...
— Diary of a Pedestrian in Cashmere and Thibet • by William Henry Knight
... LAND The draining of the land Trenching and subsoiling Preparation of the surface The saving of moisture Hand tools for weeding and subsequent tillage and other hand work The hoe Scarifiers Hand-weeders Trowels and their kind Rollers ...
— Manual of Gardening (Second Edition) • L. H. Bailey
... it—and in which it seems as if the soul had never possessed any virtue at all. This is the season of heavy trials; for our Lord will have the poor gardener suppose all the trouble he took in maintaining and watering the garden to have been taken to no purpose. Then is the time really for weeding and rooting out every plant, however small it may be, that is worthless, in the knowledge that no efforts of ours are sufficient, if God withholds from us the waters of His grace; and in despising ourselves as being nothing, and even less than nothing. In this way we gain great ...
— The Life of St. Teresa of Jesus • Teresa of Avila
... of the most destructive kind was permitted to run at large through the fields, and yet the people were not allowed to shoot a hare or a deer upon their own grounds. Numerous edicts prohibited hoeing and weeding, lest young partridges should be destroyed. The people were bound to repair the roads without compensation, to grind their corn at the landlord's mill, bake their bread in his ovens, and carry their grapes to his wine-press. They had not the benefit ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VIII • John Lord
... a sugar-plantation, on the contrary, is said to be exceedingly laborious, particularly that portion of it which relates to weeding the ground and cutting the cane. I have never yet witnessed a sugar-harvest, but, perhaps, may do so in the course ...
— A Woman's Journey Round the World • Ida Pfeiffer
... soile (because the generall curse is so) till your Trees grow great, will be noysome, and deforme your allies, walkes, beds, and squares, your vnder Gardners must labour to keepe all cleanly & handsome from them and all other filth with a Spade, weeding kniues, rake with iron teeth: a ...
— A New Orchard And Garden • William Lawson
... Malines—Mons—Mezieres—Soissons—Verdun—Belfort, I immediately made off due South-West for a reason I may not give. I managed with the utmost difficulty to find someone to carry my kit, but at length persuaded an old peasant whom I found weeding (probably the last weeds he would ever dig) to act as my courier, and even then I had to resort to the vulgar strategy of ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, September 30, 1914 • Various
... in all parts of Africa the approved cultivation methods of other leading countries are carefully followed; especial care being given to weeding and pruning, because of the rank growth of the tropics. On the whole, however, little attention ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... man, who was weeding with his hands a bed of dwarf roses and marguerites, was indignant at seeing a horse thus traversing his sanded and nicely-raked walks. He even ventured a vigorous "Humph!" which made the cavalier turn round. Then there was ...
— Ten Years Later - Chapters 1-104 • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... work. He had Sister and Old Lem Camp out in the garden, hand-weeding and thinning the carrots, onions, and other tender plants. That Saturday he went through the entire garden—that part already planted—with either the horse ...
— Hiram The Young Farmer • Burbank L. Todd
... left her; had that instant been rejected by her for his sake; had been summoned to aid her, in weeding out error from his mind. She shewed me it was a noble task, and communicated to me her own divine ardour. Yes, Oliver; I came from her, with a warmed and animated heart; participating all her zeal. The most ...
— Anna St. Ives • Thomas Holcroft
... conquered; but that the Boers destroyed their enemies, and made slaves of their friends." The tribes who still retain the semblance of independence are forced to perform all the labour of the fields, such as manuring the land, weeding, reaping, building, making dams and canals, and at the same time to support themselves. I have myself been an eye-witness of Boers coming to a village, and according to their usual custom, demanding twenty or thirty women to weed their gardens, and have seen ...
— Native Races and the War • Josephine Elizabeth Butler
... Egyptians could see clearly at night, a further twenty-five per cent. were stone-blind after sunset, and of the remainder, the most that could be said was that they could just see in the dark and that was all! When the weeding-out process was completed the British personnel returned as lead-drivers; Indians were added to make up the numbers, and this curious ...
— With Our Army in Palestine • Antony Bluett
... self-denial, bad habits, like weeds, spring up, unaided and untrained, to choke the plants of virtue and as with Canada thistles, allowed to go to seed in a fair meadow, we may have "one day's seeding, ten years' weeding." ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
... which is favourable to the sugar-cane: first the beans are gathered in, when the ground is weeded, and cleared, and loosened around the roots of the canes; then the maize is pulled, when a second weeding and clearing takes place; after which the sugar is tall enough to shade the ground, and prevent the growth of weeds. The first canes are ripe about May. The Cayenne cane yields best, and thrives in ...
— Journal of a Voyage to Brazil - And Residence There During Part of the Years 1821, 1822, 1823 • Maria Graham
... the business of the school environment to eliminate, so far as possible, the unworthy features of the existing environment from influence upon mental habitudes. It establishes a purified medium of action. Selection aims not only at simplifying but at weeding out what is undesirable. Every society gets encumbered with what is trivial, with dead wood from the past, and with what is positively perverse. The school has the duty of omitting such things from the environment which it supplies, and thereby doing what it can to counteract ...
— Democracy and Education • John Dewey
... fact that along the line of the sea coast were a number of Phoenician colonies who were natural allies of the Carthaginians, and aided them in every way in their power. Before advancing through the passes of the Pyrenees Hannibal still further reduced the strength of his force by weeding out all those who had in the conflict among the mountains shown themselves wanting in personal strength or in military qualities. Giving these leave to return home he advanced at the head of fifty thousand picked ...
— The Young Carthaginian - A Story of The Times of Hannibal • G.A. Henty
... a respectable man—has been begging— BEGGING! in a public room. His excuse is that his mother is starving. Will you kindly take him to the Hall, and put him in charge of the gardener, with my strict orders that he is to do a good afternoon's work at weeding in the shrubbery. And that the gardener is to see that he comes every day at nine o'clock in the morning, and works there till four in the afternoon, till the day you reopen school, meal-times and Sundays excepted. I will pay ...
— Jan of the Windmill • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... from which his descendants derive pretty solid advantages, and the title is not at all a disagreeable one. At last I said to him, 'It is your grandfather, it is not mine; do what you please with him,' and I confined myself to weeding the expressions." ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume VI. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... amongst the least intelligent, least efficient and the mentally deficient will be unaffected. It must be apparent that after a very few generations of such weeding out of the best, with the continuous multiplication of the worst type of citizen, the general standard of efficiency, enterprise and executive skill of the nation would be seriously impaired. Such, briefly stated, is the problem before the public at ...
— Conception Control and Its Effects on the Individual and the Nation • Florence E. Barrett
... was compelled to vacate the office, much to his disgust. He accepted that of Minister to Venezuela, an unimportant foreign mission, and William A. Simmons was appointed in his place. The process of weeding out the Custom House then went on with great rapidity. Colonel Moulton, one of the bravest soldiers of the Civil War, who had been under rebel fire in a Charleston dungeon, and Colonel A. A. Sherman, a man with a marvellous military record, were removed to make way for men for ...
— Autobiography of Seventy Years, Vol. 1-2 • George Hoar
... value. The young officer who was studying when his friends were at polo or tennis, was under no illusions as to the havoc which an over-accentuation of the sporting and social side of life was playing with the officers' work. Nowadays, like Kitchener, he is bent on producing the professional and weeding out the "drawing-room" soldier. No wonder that his favourite authors are those acutest critics of English social life and English foibles, Dickens and Thackeray. The former's "Bleak House" and the latter's ...
— Sir John French - An Authentic Biography • Cecil Chisholm
... Culture. Weeding and occasionally stirring the soil, and sticking such as require support, is all the cultivation necessary for annuals. If it be desired to save seed, some of the earliest and most perfect blossoms should be preserved for this purpose, so as to secure the best possible seed for the ...
— Flowers and Flower-Gardens • David Lester Richardson
... figure pacing backward and forward, with eyes fixed on a breviary. Once or twice a soeur jardiniere with a big, flat straw hat over her coiffe and veil tending the flowers (there were not many) or weeding the lawn, sometimes convalescents or old ladies seated in armchairs under the trees, but there was never any sound of voices or of life. It was very reposeful (when one felt one could get away for a little while), but I think the absolute calm and monotony would pall upon one, and the "Call of the ...
— My First Years As A Frenchwoman, 1876-1879 • Mary King Waddington
... girls proved good helps at the raising; and in the course of a few weeks they had the comfort of seeing a more commodious dwelling than the former one put up. The finishing of this, with weeding the Indian corn, renewing the fence, and fishing, and trapping, and shooting partridges and ducks and pigeons, fully occupied their time this summer. The fruit season was less abundant this year than the previous one. The fire had done this mischief, and they had to go far a-field to collect ...
— Lost in the Backwoods • Catharine Parr Traill
... be too hysty, does it, miss?" she asked me as we were weeding the onion bed. "I was to give the postman his answer on the Monday night, and it was on the Monday morning that Mr. Gladwish made his first trip here as carrier. I may say I never wyvered from that moment, and no more did he. When I think how near I came to promising the postman it gives ...
— The Diary of a Goose Girl • Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin
... the nationality of Saint Pat-rick, you are still only upon the threshold of your inquiries; for you next find before you for examination a vast variety of miracles, accredited to him, which you must examine, weeding out such as are puerile and are manifestly not well established, and retaining such as are proved to your satisfaction. You will be struck at once with the novel and interesting character of some of them. Prince Caradoc was changed into a wolf. An Irish magician who opposed ...
— Saint Patrick - 1887 • Heman White Chaplin
... it picking berries and weeding old Mrs. Jackman's garden. It's in my bank, and the bank won't open till there's five ...
— Good Cheer Stories Every Child Should Know • Various
... with altered conditions, the warrant was in effect obsolete save as an instrument authorising one man to deprive another of his liberty in the king's name. Even the standard of "able bodies and capable" had deteriorated to such an extent that the officers of the fleet were kept nearly as busy weeding out and rejecting men as were the officers of the ...
— The Press-Gang Afloat and Ashore • John R. Hutchinson
... acres within six days with great ease, having had an hour, more or less, every evening to spare, and the like experiment was repeated with the like success. More experiments with such premiums on weeding and deep hoeing were made by task-work per acre, and all succeeded in like manner, their premiums being all punctually paid them in proportion to their performance. But afterwards some of the same people being put without premium to weed on a loose cultivated soil in the common ...
— Thoughts On The Necessity Of Improving The Condition Of The Slaves • Thomas Clarkson
... not be scattered amidst the stones of ignorance, or the tares of undisciplined indolence and wantonness. On the contrary, the soil must have been carefully prepared, and the Professor should find that the operations of clod-crushing, draining, and weeding, and even a good deal of planting, have been done by ...
— Science & Education • Thomas H. Huxley
... farming operations can be carried on through winter, in preparing the ground and putting in wheat and other crops early to supply the markets, when prices are high. Oats, barley, potatoes, flax, turnips claim attention in turn, and then come the weeding and thinning, the turf-making, the hay-making, and all the harvest operations. It is by the ceaseless activity of small farmers in watching over their pigs, poultry, lambs, &c., that the markets are kept so regularly supplied, ...
— The Land-War In Ireland (1870) - A History For The Times • James Godkin
... come in large numbers to work on these estates. Each family is given a certain number of trees to look after; sometimes a single family will take care of several thousand trees. They have to do a lot of hoeing and weeding. The soil is almost red and these workmen take on largely the color of the soil as their faces and clothes are stained with red dust and water. Families are furnished houses to live in and they live their own lives as if they ...
— Birdseye Views of Far Lands • James T. Nichols
... signification of this circles of symbols had reference to all the active part of her interior life. One example will help to explain our meaning. When Anne Catherine, while yet a child, was employed in weeding, she besought God to root up the cockle from the field of the Church. If her hands were stung by the nettles, or if she was obliged to do afresh the work of idlers, she offered to God her pain and her ...
— The Dolorous Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ • Anna Catherine Emmerich
... reached home she was afraid that May might be disappointed, not only of her ribbon, but of her flowers and garland as well, for she found Mrs. Stevens, the Squire's wife, had called and asked Mrs. Risdon to send Alice to the Lodge to help with some weeding. ...
— Chatterbox, 1905. • Various
... of my farm, that snug domain Which makes its master feel himself again, Which, though you sniff at it, could once support Five hearths, and send five statesmen to the court, Let's have a match in husbandry; we'll try Which can do weeding better, you or I, And see if Horace more repays the hand That clears him of his thistles, or his land. Though here I'm kept administering relief To my poor Lamia's broken-hearted grief For his lost brother, ne'ertheless my thought Flies to ...
— The Satires, Epistles, and Art of Poetry • Horace
... all, that had been selected by various naval "sharps" from all over the widely distributed portions of the country for the weeding out of the best type—were quartered in a broad meadow not far from the town of Hampton. The locality had been chosen as removed from the reach of the ordinary run of curiosity seekers, who had flocked from all parts of the country to be present ...
— The Girl Aviators' Sky Cruise • Margaret Burnham
... or with a gradual retrogression. Suppose, for example, a return of the glacial epoch and a spread of polar climatal conditions over the whole globe. The operation of natural selection under these circumstances would tend, on the whole, to the weeding out of the higher organisms and the cherishing of the lower forms of life. Cryptogamic vegetation would have the advantage over Phanerogamic; Hydrozoa over Corals; Crustacea over Insecta, and Amphipoda and Isopoda over the higher Crustacea; ...
— Darwiniana • Thomas Henry Huxley
... "general language." He sends Prince Charles the Advancement in its new Latin dress. "It is a book," he says, "that will live, and be a citizen of the world, as English books are not." And he fitted it for continental reading by carefully weeding it of all passages that might give offence to the censors at Rome or Paris. "I have been," he writes to the King, "mine own Index Expurgatorius, that it may be read in all places. For since my end ...
— Bacon - English Men Of Letters, Edited By John Morley • Richard William Church
... in some places thin and open, told of times when they had been hurriedly put up; moss on the rail fences said the rails had been long doing duty; within them no fields failed of their crops, and no crops wanted hoeing or weeding. No straw lay scattered about the ricks; no barrack roofs were tumbling down; no gate-posts stood sideways; no barnyards shewed rickety outhouses or desolate mangers. No cattle were poor, and seemingly, no people. It was a pretty ride the party had, in the little wagon, behind an ...
— Say and Seal, Volume I • Susan Warner
... preached from this text with infinite variety and vigour. It is the chief subject of the second volume of the Review. The elections, powerfully influenced by Marlborough's successes as well as by the eloquent championship of Defoe, resulted in the entire defeat of the High Tories, and a further weeding of them out of high places in the Administration. Defoe was able to close this volume of the Review with expressions of delight at the attainment of the peace for which he had laboured, and, the victory, being gained and the battle over, to promise ...
— Daniel Defoe • William Minto
... a journey to town together, and came back laden with sundry parcels; and notwithstanding all this business, Henry found time to be very industrious in weeding the flower-beds, for which my father paid him so much an hour—and I noticed that he was uncommonly punctual in presenting his bills. Without being very penetrating, we discovered that the scheme, whatever it might be, ...
— A Grandmother's Recollections • Ella Rodman
... chocolate tree, the Theobroma cacao; and it grows in abundance in the forests of the upper river. The cultivated crop appears to be a precarious one; little or no care, however, is bestowed on the trees, and even weeding is done very inefficiently. The plantations are generally old, and have been made on the low ground near the river, which renders them liable to inundation when this rises a few inches more than the average. There is plenty of higher land ...
— The Naturalist on the River Amazons • Henry Walter Bates
... set ourselves was threefold. First, the weeding out from our circles of the secret agents of the Oligarchy. Second, the organizing of the Fighting Groups, and outside of them, of the general secret organization of the Revolution. And third, the introduction ...
— The Iron Heel • Jack London
... I can assure you, to listen to tales of adventure while one is engaged at the somewhat prosaic task of trimming a lilac bush or of weeding the pansy bed. Whenever he discovers me at this kind of toil neighbor Robbins comes over and leans up against a tree and beguiles the tedium of labor with a bit of personal experience. I can't begin to tell you ...
— The House - An Episode in the Lives of Reuben Baker, Astronomer, and of His Wife, Alice • Eugene Field
... various circumstances have already been suggested that cooeperated, already prior to the days of Hammurabi, in weeding out the superfluity of deities, at least so far as recognition of them in the official inscriptions of the rulers were concerned. Deities, attached to places of small and ever-diminishing importance would, after being at first adopted into the pantheon by some ruler ...
— The Religion of Babylonia and Assyria • Morris Jastrow
... this end we must have not company or regimental garrisons, but brigade and division garrisons. Promotion by mere seniority can never result in a thoroughly efficient corps of officers in the higher ranks unless there accompanies it a vigorous weeding-out process. Such a weeding-out process—that is, such a process of selection—is a chief feature of the four years' course of the young officer at West Point. There is no good reason why it should stop immediately upon his graduation. ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... What is he? A poor creature who has spent his life in "weeding" hundreds of brains, or, in plain terms, destroying whatever in them was original and natural, all the living germs which it is the first duty of an educator to nourish and protect. To think how the lot of us were hoed, ...
— The Immortal - Or, One Of The "Forty." (L'immortel) - 1877 • Alphonse Daudet
... Shake off the dew and soar. So take Joy home, And make a place in thy great heart for her, And give her time to grow, and cherish her; Then will she come, and oft will sing to thee, When thou art working in the furrows; ay, Or weeding in the sacred hour of dawn. It is a comely fashion to be glad,— Joy is the grace we say to God. Art tired? There is a rest remaining. Hast thou sinned? There is a Sacrifice. Lift up thy head, The lovely world, and the over-world alike, Ring ...
— Poems by Jean Ingelow, In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Jean Ingelow
... strangling enemy, and which we combat with axes and dollars. I went crazy over outdoor work, and had at last to confine myself to the house, or literature must have gone by the board. Nothing is so interesting as weeding, clearing, and path-making; the oversight of labourers becomes a disease; it is quite an effort not to drop into the farmer; and it does make you feel so well. To come down covered with mud and drenched with sweat and rain after some hours in the bush, change, rub down, and take a ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 25 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the Bug, some to the Borer, and to leaf disease, while others blamed the heaviness of the tropical rains, which washed away the valuable surface soil, the flight of which towards the western sea was much expedited by weeding with the mamoty (a digging hoe), which loosened the soil, and so prepared the way for its more rapid disappearance. And these causes no doubt hastened the end, but they were mainly results arising from one great ...
— Gold, Sport, And Coffee Planting In Mysore • Robert H. Elliot
... not heard the saying of the Chinese sage Dee Ning, that a good garden needs weeding? But it is not necessary for us to interfere. We are naturally rather particular as to the conditions on which we consent to live. One does not mind the accidental loss of an arm or a leg or an eye: after ...
— Back to Methuselah • George Bernard Shaw
... deal about Munich in the new book, and some of the discarded chapters might have been retained with advantage. They were ruled out in the final weeding as being too serious, along with the French chapters. Only a few Italian memories were left ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... Farmer Smith called at Mrs. Garfield's house, to ask James to help him in weeding the peppermint, adding at the same time, that he had engaged twenty boys for this especial purpose. Mrs. Garfield said that her son was at that time very busy, and she thought that the farmer would have enough ...
— The Story of Garfield - Farm-boy, Soldier, and President • William G. Rutherford
... the planters employ Chinese to cultivate the plants, who are very careful in hoeing and weeding the tobacco, living an apparently jolly life in shanties near the fields. A witty California correspondent of the Tobacco Leaf writes concerning the early cultivation of ...
— Tobacco; Its History, Varieties, Culture, Manufacture and Commerce • E. R. Billings
... he was sitting quietly on the mouse, with his arms folded, and the weeding wasn't getting on a bit. So I was ...
— St. Nicholas, Vol. 5, No. 2, December, 1877 • Various
... two or three weeding-outs, and it got along toward the middle of October, and Bi was still with us. We were shy on plunging halfs that fall and so I got my chance at last. I had to fight hard, though, for I was up against Murray, last year's first ...
— The New Boy at Hilltop • Ralph Henry Barbour
... who managed to struggle along fairly well. Lastly, there was a minority to whom it was little more than discomfort. They were the seasoned veterans of the trail to whom its trials were all in the day's work. It was as if the Great White Land was putting us to the test, was weeding out the fit from the unfit, was proving itself a land of the Strong, a land ...
— The Trail of '98 - A Northland Romance • Robert W. Service
... that one with another each ploughing is worth six pence, and harrowing a penny, and on the acre it is necessary to sow at least two bushels. Now two bushels at Michaelmas are worth at least twelve pence, and weeding a half penny and reaping five pence, and carrying in August a penny: the straw will pay for the threshing. At three times your sowing you ought to have six bushels, worth three shillings; and the cost amounts to three shillings and three half pence, and the ground ...
— Roman Farm Management - The Treatises Of Cato And Varro • Marcus Porcius Cato
... the spelling classes. The first was open to all children under fourteen. At the invitation, boys and girls walked bravely to the front and joined the line till it reached from one side of the room to the opposite. A teacher from a neighboring town gave out the words. The weeding-out process soon began. Some fell down on simple words, others handled difficult ones with ease and spelled glibly through some which many of the older people present had forgotten existed. Soon the class narrowed down to two. Back and forth, back and forth the words rolled until ...
— Amanda - A Daughter of the Mennonites • Anna Balmer Myers
... Connor was already weeding in the garden when he went out; and the dull surprise in the Irishman's sunburnt visage sent a swift and painful colour into his ...
— Athalie • Robert W. Chambers
... stay here to-day, at least," said Mrs. Lester. "We will keep John at work in the front door-yard, in case we should want him. And I will set Mrs. Anderson's boy to weeding in the border; we can call him, if we should ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 4, February, 1858 • Various
... those of doubtful value to be eliminated, the result being that those machines which are now in use represent the survival of the fittest. Experience has furthermore emphasised the necessity of reducing the number of types to the absolute minimum. This weeding-out process is being continued and there is no doubt that by the time the war is concluded the number of approved types of aeroplanes of military value will have been reduced to a score or less. The inconveniences ...
— Aeroplanes and Dirigibles of War • Frederick A. Talbot
... as well as any other. According to his directions, then, two pairs of stout buckskin gloves were prepared. We chanced to have one pair already, and Mary soon stitched up a second, of the kind generally used for weeding thistles—that is, having only a thumb, and a place for all the fingers together. One pair of the gloves Cudjo intended to use himself—the other was for me. Of course, the rest were to take no part in the robbery, but only to stand at ...
— The Desert Home - The Adventures of a Lost Family in the Wilderness • Mayne Reid
... done to make it lie snugly to the rail, he should at once check such imperfect work and put the man who does it at other work. The foreman in charge of gang of spikers should be experienced in this branch of the work, and by weeding out imperfect workers, can soon get together a first-rate gang of spikers. But no trouble will be experienced from carelessly driven spikes, if the tie has the spike holes bored into it, before laying. This is considered good ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 794, March 21, 1891 • Various
... the farther edge of the rose garden now where a boy knelt, weeding; and Selwyn saw her speak to him and give him her basket and shears; and saw the boy start away toward the house, leaving her leaning idly above the sun-dial, elbows on the weather-beaten stone, studying the carved figures of the dial. And every line ...
— The Younger Set • Robert W. Chambers
... and the weeding began that afternoon. When Marty was going to do anything she always wanted to get at it right away. Besides Almira advised them ...
— A Missionary Twig • Emma L. Burnett
... used to keep us awake groaning at nights. He had been a good-looking young fellow, my old granny used to say. I never saw him good-looking. In the winter we always had poor relief. We should have starved if we hadn't. My father got up at four and came home after dark. My mother used to go weeding and gleaning. I went to scare crows when I was five years old. All the same, we were a family of paupers. Proud to be an Englishman, Geisner! Be an English ...
— The Workingman's Paradise - An Australian Labour Novel • John Miller
... two Bud was a pest. Twenty times he asked different men mysteriously what o'clock it was. When he was sent to the store for pickles he brought back canned tomatoes. Set to weeding onions, he pulled up weeds and vegetables impartially. A hundred times he cast a longing glance at the ...
— A Man Four-Square • William MacLeod Raine
... Potomac is so infected with McClellanism, that is to say, by presumption, intriguing, envy and misconception of what is true generalship,—that the army must undergo the process of strong purification, fumigation, pruning and weeding, (and especially among the higher branches,) before it can ever again be made truly useful ...
— Diary from November 12, 1862, to October 18, 1863 • Adam Gurowski
... for her often before she came in; in the house, her old housewifery concerns, her share in Barby's cares or difficulties, her sweet countenancing and cheering of her aunt, her dinner, her work; then when evening came, budding her roses, or tying her carnations, or weeding, or raking the ground between them (where Philetus could do nothing), or training her multiflora and sweet-brier branches; and then often, after all, walking up to the mill to give Hugh a little earlier a home smile, and make his way down pleasant. No wonder if the energies ...
— Queechy, Volume II • Elizabeth Wetherell
... guards it jealously! And we! we might as well have been hatched in an Egyptian oven! No wonder we are hard, isolated, like civil strangers. I have a heart! Yes, I have, but it is there by mistake, while no one cares for it—all throw it from them. Oh! if I was but a village child, a weeding woman, that very baby, so that I might only have the affection that comes like the air to the weakest, the meanest. That precious baby! he smiled at me; he looked as if he would know me. Oh! he ...
— Heartsease - or Brother's Wife • Charlotte M. Yonge
... has put a stopper on all talk of mutiny by one bold stroke. A bloody weeding-out, and in those two boats are the poor wretches who were taken alive. Alas, one of 'em may be Joe Hawkridge unless he be dead already. He talked too much of Stede Bonnet aboard the ship. And there were sneaking dogs ...
— Blackbeard: Buccaneer • Ralph D. Paine
... records behind them, one strange and the other cruel, in the parish annals. One was a remarkable person named Mary Tofts, wife of a clothworker, who in 1726 professed to have had a lamentable misadventure. She asserted that while she was weeding in a field she was startled by a rabbit jumping up near her, and that subsequently, she presented her husband, instead of a fine boy, with quantities of rabbits. The effect of the announcement was prodigious. More than one well-known physician believed her implicitly; ...
— Highways and Byways in Surrey • Eric Parker
... Here copper-coloured natives are at work. Men are ploughing the wet soil of the sawahs with buffaloes; women—often with their babies slung on their backs with their long scarfs—are hoeing, or weeding, or reaping. As the average monthly temperature does not vary more than two degrees all the year round in Java, the process of preparing the ground, sowing, and reaping go on simultaneously in the ricefields. Every now and then we come across a queer little Noah's-ark cottage ...
— A Visit to Java - With an Account of the Founding of Singapore • W. Basil Worsfold
... a guilty remembrance of Lady Isabel's enquiries, had established her weeding apparatus at a bed near the yew-hedge. She heard the voices raised in discussion, and, catching words here and there, felt that if these were the topics that occupied her charges, Isabel need not have inflicted upon her the abominable ...
— Mount Music • E. Oe. Somerville and Martin Ross
... venturing to hint at her services, she arose, and they all took their leave;—Belfield hastening, as they went, to return to the garden, where, looking over the hedge as they passed, they saw him employed again in weeding, with the eagerness of a man who pursues ...
— Cecilia vol. 3 - Memoirs of an Heiress • Frances (Fanny) Burney (Madame d'Arblay)
... and Sophy have been weeding the garden, which has been rather neglected lately. We have planted some trees in it grown from Eucalyptus seed collected on Table Mountain. I planted it here in pots which I kept in the dark, and it came up well. About a hundred and sixty sturdy little trees are the result. ...
— Three Years in Tristan da Cunha • K. M. Barrow
... have been arranged more distinctly with a view to the edification of the public than those of any other museum which I know. But they still contain too large a number of specimens, and still require an immense amount of work in weeding, selection and labelling, and in deliberately making the specimens exhibited tell a tale which is worth remembering, and can be remembered. Except in the case of the larger specimens, and especially ...
— More Science From an Easy Chair • Sir E. Ray (Edwin Ray) Lankester
... walked on along a narrow road, which was bordered by queer, picturesque-looking huts and cottages on either hand, with gardens by the sides of them, in which women and girls were hoeing or weeding. They met two or three parties of ladies and gentlemen returning from the Staubach; and presently they came to a place where, close to the side of the road, was a small shop, before which a party of ladies and gentlemen had stopped, apparently to ...
— Rollo in Switzerland • Jacob Abbott
... mother, speaks, acts, and moves with a charming gracefulness. Except at night, and when friends drop in to afternoon tea, as they often do, she is always either at domestic avocations, such as cleaning, sewing, or cooking, or planting vegetables, or weeding them. All Japanese girls learn to sew and to make their own clothes, but there are none of the mysteries and difficulties which make the sewing lesson a thing of dread with us. The kimono, haori, and girdle, and even the long hanging sleeves, have only parallel seams, and these are only tacked ...
— Unbeaten Tracks in Japan • Isabella L. Bird
... Korea, but its beauty and prosperity required seeing to be believed. It afforded an amazing contrast to the dirt and apathy of Seoul. Here every one worked. In the fields the young women were toiling in groups, weeding or harvesting. The young men were cutting bushes on the hillsides, the father of the family preparing new ground for the fresh crop, and the very children frightening off the birds. At home the housewife was busy with her children ...
— Korea's Fight for Freedom • F.A. McKenzie
... of deferred claims, for one item,—he had the same easy opportunity for distinction which a steward has who takes charge of an estate just out of chancery, and under a new proprietor who has plenty of money. The sweeping up of the dead leaves, the gathering of the fallen branches, and the weeding out of the paths, changes the aspect of the place, and gives the passer-by a prodigious idea of the efficiency of the new broom. The country was alive, too, to the necessity of coast and frontier defences, and there ...
— Famous Americans of Recent Times • James Parton
... that warmed our fruit and flowers brought up from the earth, like sulky gnomes, a vast array of purple-leaved weeds, that almost in a night seemed to cover the whole surface of the garden beds. Our gardeners both being gone, the weeding was expected to be done by me—one of the anticipated relaxations of ...
— The May Flower, and Miscellaneous Writings • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... though all cultivated lands are remarkably free from weeds. The rice sementeras are carefully weeded, "suckers" are pulled out, and the beds are thinned generally, so that each plant will have all needful chance to develop fruit. This weeding and thinning is the work of women and half-grown children. Every day for nearly two months, or until the fruit heads appear, the cultivators are diligently at work in the sementeras. No tools or agricultural implements other than bare hands are ...
— The Bontoc Igorot • Albert Ernest Jenks
... could improve its quality. Then one day I said to myself, 'Why isn't it just as possible to collect beautiful and interesting thoughts as to collect stamps, or china teapots, or anything else?' So I set about weeding out the good from the unprofitable and found the scheme worked perfectly. If you don't believe it, try ...
— Christopher and the Clockmakers • Sara Ware Bassett
... get some life and snap into the business. We have strong competition. A big syndicate is taking over the other steamship properties, and we must hustle to keep up with the procession. I'm laying off freighters that are not showing a proper profit—I'm weeding out the moss-covered captains who are not up with the times. That's why I'm putting you on the Montana ...
— Blow The Man Down - A Romance Of The Coast - 1916 • Holman Day
... perfection is brought about in all things by changes in the direction of simplicity. To economize is to simplify. To simplify means to suppress unnecessary machinery; removals naturally follow. His system, therefore, depended on the weeding out of officials and the establishment of a new order of administrative offices. No doubt the hatred which all reformers incur takes its rise here. Removals required by this perfecting process, always ill-understood, threaten the well-being of those on whom a change in their ...
— Bureaucracy • Honore de Balzac
... notice it, because I changed the subject right away to something else. Anyway it loosened up Rowena from where she was stuck and got her out of the way, and that was the main thing. It seemed a prompt good way of weeding out people that had got stalled, and a plenty good enough way for those others; so I hunted up the two boys and said, "They went out back one night to stone the cat and fell down the well and got drowned." Next I searched around ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... us strange indeed to see women cleaning the streets; huge broom in hand they marched about and swept the paths, while a whole gang of female labourers were weeding the roadways. ...
— Through Finland in Carts • Ethel Brilliana Alec-Tweedie
... Thatcher's half-witted grandson. You know how painfully we were both struck by the poor fellow's listless hopeless manner when we were at the cottage on the moor. I thought of it a great deal afterwards, and it occurred to me that our head-gardener might find work for him in the way of weeding, and rolling the gravel paths, and such humble matters. Brook is a good kind old man, and always ready to do anything to please me; so I asked him the question one day in August, and he promised that when he next wanted extra hands Peter Thatcher should be employed, "Though I don't suppose ...
— Milly Darrell and Other Tales • M. E. Braddon
... and said he will not vote against Lord Derby in support of Lord John's supposed motion. The government Gladstone thinks desirable is a fusion of Palmerston and his followers with Lord Derby, which implies, of course, weeding out half at least of the present cabinet. Gladstone will have to vote with government and speak against the cabinet, and violently he ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley
... was weeding my bit of garden just under the kitchen window yesterday, and granny was sitting at the window, yet never saw me. She was reading some old letters, peering at them ever so hard through her spectacles, ...
— Little Folks (July 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... write orthographically than to indulge in chaotic spelling, just as in every field it is no harder to show good manners than to behave rudely. If the sciences of digging and chopping, of reaping and raking, of weeding and mowing, of spraying and feeding, are all postulates of the future, each can transform the chance methods into exact ones, and that means into truly efficient ones, only when every element has been brought under the scrutiny of the psychological ...
— Psychology and Social Sanity • Hugo Muensterberg
... numerous community, resolved to make a stand for their dignity, and number one among the nations of Mardi. And even as before they had been weeded out of the surrounding countries; so now, they went to weeding out themselves; banishing all objectionable persons ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. I (of 2) • Herman Melville
... naked children running and playing in the village street. There were women grinding dried plantain in crude stone mortars, while others were fashioning cakes from the powdered flour. Out in the fields he could see still other women hoeing, weeding, or gathering. ...
— Tarzan of the Apes • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... field she had been weeding, she walked on before him with the vigorous springiness of a hard-working woman, her head unshielded from the sun, her neck all sunburnt, her hair black and coarse like a horse's mane. Her green-stained hands exhaled the odour ...
— Abbe Mouret's Transgression - La Faute De L'abbe Mouret • Emile Zola
... glad to cook for the men when the busy days of planting and weeding and harvesting came, and the colony grew and grew. Two or three other men came down with their families, and helped the carpenter to build them little houses, with a bit of garden back, and a bed of flowers in front. ...
— Lo, Michael! • Grace Livingston Hill
... to business, weeding out from the silver by his plate with such a reassuring air of knowing that he did the right thing, a small article shaped like a tiny pitchfork, that ...
— The Heart of Arethusa • Francis Barton Fox
... captures—those in the Colosseum, and in the Baths of Caracalla; moreover a less conspicuous running to earth takes place on the Appian Way, in some miles of the solitude of the Campagna, where men are employed in weeding the roadside. They slowly uproot the grass and lay it on the ancient stones—rows of little corpses—for sweeping up, as at Upper Tooting; one wonders why. The governors of the city will not succeed in making the Via Appia look busy, or ...
— Essays • Alice Meynell
... Averruncate: Another of the same kind, which, though it appear ever so learned and profound, means nothing else but the weeding of corn. ...
— Hudibras • Samuel Butler
... nor pretence of good. The other is the wrong-headedly conscientious and religious: probably, after all, there is greater rancor and malice about these last than about any other. These act upon a system of unnatural repression, and systematized weeding out of all enjoyment from life. These are the people whose very crowning act of hatred and malice towards any one is to pray for him, or to threaten to pray for him. These are the people who, if their children complain of their bare and joyless life, say that such ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IX., March, 1862., No. LIII. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics, • Various
... here is everywhere so fertile that it requires no more than turning over and weeding, in order to yield the most abundant harvests; yet the Papuans are so lazy and understand so little of the art of agriculture, that the growth of food plants is often allowed to be choked with weeds. The inhabitants ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part III. The Great Explorers of the Nineteenth Century • Jules Verne
... several years, until at last I found his brain quite turned with their discourses. The first symptoms which he discovered of his being a virtuoso, as you call him, poor man! was about fifteen years ago; when he gave me positive orders to turn off an old weeding woman, that had been employed in the family for some years. He told me, at the same time, that there was no such thing in nature as a weed, and that it was his design to let his garden produce what it pleased; so that, you may be sure, it makes a very ...
— Heads and Tales • Various
... neutral watching for the event of the war. Still we laboured on, dividing the armies into regiments after the fashion of Europe, and stationing each in its own quarter drilling them to the better use of arms, provisioning the city for a siege, and weeding out as many useless mouths as we might; and there was but one man in Tenoctitlan who toiled at these tasks more heavily than I, and that was Guatemoc the emperor, who did not rest day or night. I tried even to make powder with sulphur which was brought from the throat ...
— Montezuma's Daughter • H. Rider Haggard
... exerting himself to the uttermost in a work which was so obviously a matter of life and death. It was, however, scarcely necessary to urge these men, for they were almost all willing. But not all; in nearly every flock there is a black sheep or so, that requires weeding out. There were two such sheep among the builders of the Eddystone. Being good at everything, Smeaton was a good weeder. He soon had them up by the roots and cast out. A foreman proved to be disorderly, and tried to make the men promise, "that ...
— The Story of the Rock • R.M. Ballantyne
... make a big hole for his cavalry, my brother says; and weeding his infantry for the Imperial Guard he postponed ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... her fishpole up on to the roof of the wood shed and went around to the front of the house. There she found Mrs. Apgarth weeding in what had been Ruth's ...
— The Shepherd of the North • Richard Aumerle Maher
... I was thus employed, a face appeared at the window with which I had once been familiar. It was the pretty daughter of the elder Day-kau-ray. She had formerly visited us often, watching with great interest our employments—our sewing, our weeding and cultivating the garden, or our reading. Of the latter, I had many times endeavored to give her some idea, showing her the plates in the Family Bible, and doing my best to explain them to her, but of late I had quite lost sight of her. Now, how changed, how ...
— Wau-bun - The Early Day in the Northwest • Juliette Augusta Magill Kinzie
... in his new friend's face, for Will felt guilty of a subterfuge. He was really alarmed as to the result of his invitation, and its effect upon his aunt, so he hoped by going round by the back to find his old uncle in the garden, according to his custom, planting, weeding, and fumigating his plants, whether ...
— Menhardoc • George Manville Fenn
... Boots happen to know all this? Why, through being under-gardener. Of course he couldn't be under-gardener, and be always about, in the summer-time, near the windows on the lawn, a mowing, and sweeping, and weeding, and pruning, and this and that, without getting acquainted with the ways of the family. Even supposing Master Harry hadn't come to him one morning early, and said, "Cobbs, how should you spell Norah, if you was asked?" and then began cutting it in ...
— The Holly-Tree • Charles Dickens
... great attention to keep my plantation clear of all weeds, observing in weeding it with the hoe not to touch the stalks, about which I caused to lay new earth, as well to secure them against gusts of wind, as to enable them to draw from the earth a more abundant nourishment. When ...
— History of Louisisana • Le Page Du Pratz
... the most destructive kind, such as wild boars and herds of deer, were permitted to go at large through spacious districts, in order that the nobles might hunt as in a savage wilderness." Numerous edicts prohibited weeding, lest young partridges should be disturbed, and mowing of hay even, lest their eggs should be destroyed. Complaints for the infraction of these edicts were carried before courts where every species of oppression and fraud prevailed. Fines were imposed at every ...
— A Modern History, From the Time of Luther to the Fall of Napoleon - For the Use of Schools and Colleges • John Lord
... cent still unknown. By weeding out the hoaxes, the reports that were too nebulous to evaluate, and reports that could well be misidentified airplanes, Project Grudge disposed of another 33 per cent of the reports. This left 23 per cent that fell ...
— The Report on Unidentified Flying Objects • Edward Ruppelt
... lines. She had always suspected that she had a gift for business, and here was an opportunity to prove it. The first customer was a child, sent for three penn'orth of potatoes. As children are naturally careless, Mrs Partridge saw here an excellent opportunity for weeding out the stock, and went to a lot of trouble in picking out the small and damaged tubers, reserving the best for customers who came to choose for themselves. Five minutes later she was exchanging them for the largest in the sack under the direction ...
— Jonah • Louis Stone
... ruin. Your Father's copy is of great value, for it is excellent, nay wonderful, and will in fifty years be what the great picture now is, for much of the expression of the countenance is caused by the softness which time has given to the tone of the picture. The Gallery wants weeding and repairing, the pictures are going faster than they ought, and the effect of the Gallery is injured by a quantity of inferior pictures and copies. It now contains 2000 pictures, if it was reduced to 1500 it would ...
— Charles Philip Yorke, Fourth Earl of Hardwicke, Vice-Admiral R.N. - A Memoir • Lady Biddulph of Ledbury
... old males to drive the young ones out of the herd, destroy them, but that might come in time; as surely as the old males on Earth by tacit agreement on both sides, were always able to work up a war for the purpose of weeding out and destroying lusty young ...
— Eight Keys to Eden • Mark Irvin Clifton
... tree had fallen off—had dwindled, and pined, and become stunted; and the profits of olive cultivation had faded with it.' Olive-gathering, it will be felt, is a slow affair. The getting in this harvest is 'as business-like and unexciting as weeding onions, or digging potatoes. A set of ragged peasants—the country people hereabouts are poorly dressed—were clambering barefoot in the trees, each man with a basket tied before him, and lazily plucking the dull oily fruit. Occasionally, the olive-gatherers had spread ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 434 - Volume 17, New Series, April 24, 1852 • Various
... the place of the hand tools for getting among and around the plants. The work that weeding entails is tiresome, but must be done if success is to crown ones efforts. While the plants are little some of the weeders may be used. Those with a blade or a series of blades are adapted for cutting weeds off close to the surface; those with prongs ...
— Culinary Herbs: Their Cultivation Harvesting Curing and Uses • M. G. Kains
... coach weeding out the weak brothers was already beginning to bear fruit. Anyone who knew football could easily see that there was a distinct gain in the general work. It is just as happens in a convoy of vessels trying to slip past waiting ...
— Jack Winters' Gridiron Chums • Mark Overton
... two months that followed. He hurried through his Aunt Jane's chores in an impatient way, doing as little as possible in order to get back to his own work. She wondered why he was so absorbed in his garden. When he was not weeding or watering or planting, he was counting the number of pea-pods on every vine, or the ears of corn as they tasselled out on each stalk. He had put brains as well as muscle into his summer's work, asking questions and advice of every gardener in Bardstown, and carefully reading the agricultural ...
— The Quilt that Jack Built; How He Won the Bicycle • Annie Fellows Johnston
... condition, than that on which they had previously travelled, and it lay almost entirely through plantations of yams, calavances and pumpkins, and three or four different varieties of corn, which a number of labourers were employed in weeding, &c. The hoe is the only implement of husbandry in use, and indeed they can well dispense with every other, because the soil, during the rainy months, is so soft and light, that but very little manual ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish
... have had some little trouble with a number of malcontent employees. I am gradually weeding out the more noxious of them—eh, Jason?" Mr. Bolt palpably winced. "In fact, Mr. Krech, there have been developments in connection with that fire, and certain other occurrences, that put it in my mind to ask ...
— The Monk of Hambleton • Armstrong Livingston
... and pathetic. The Kentucky Cardinal (1894) and Aftermath (1895) are poetic idyls, whose scenes are practically confined within one small Kentucky garden, where the strawberries grow, the cardinal sings, and the maiden watches across the fence her lover at his weeding. The compass of the garden is not too small to embody the very spirit of out-of-doors, which is continuously present ...
— History of American Literature • Reuben Post Halleck
... weeding," said Steve when they reached the garden, and Nannie walked directly to these beds and went to work, while Steve occupied himself at ...
— The Gentle Art of Cooking Wives • Elizabeth Strong Worthington
... the Cat, 'didn't you know? The moles you used to let out of the traps do the digging, and the birds you used to feed bring the seeds in their little beaks, and the mice you used to save from the palace mouse-traps do the weeding and raking with their sharp little teeth, and ...
— Oswald Bastable and Others • Edith Nesbit
... since they had him up in court. Ask for the old grandmother. You remember she never learned any English. And now they've told her it's dangerous to talk German, she don't talk at all and hides away from everybody. If I go by early in the morning, when she's out weeding the garden, she runs and squats down in the gooseberry bushes till I'm ...
— One of Ours • Willa Cather
... the same which the poorer sort of people used in that country, water, except sometimes whey, or a little milk. At her work she continually conversed in her heart with God; insomuch that in company she seemed deaf to their discourses, mirth, and music. When she was weeding, reaping, or at any other labor in the fields, she strove to work at a distance from her companions, to entertain herself the more freely with her heavenly spouse. The rest admired her love of solitude, and on coming to her, always found her countenance cheerful, yet often bathed in tears, which ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler
... over the lee-quarter, and fitted gyves to keep it steady, and boomed it out; so in three days we made the island of Tools, that is altogether uninhabited. We saw there a great number of trees which bore mattocks, pickaxes, crows, weeding-hooks, scythes, sickles, spades, trowels, hatchets, hedging-bills, saws, adzes, bills, axes, shears, pincers, bolts, piercers, augers, ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... coat.] — Well, there's the coat of a Christian man. Oh, there's sainted glory this day in the lonesome west; and by the will of God I've got you a decent man, Pegeen, you'll have no call to be spying after if you've a score of young girls, maybe, weeding ...
— The Playboy of the Western World • J. M. Synge
... having atoned to her conscience for the destruction of the green and yellow bowl by faithfully weeding the garden, a task which she hated above all else, was singing a hymn among the sweet peas, and her red braids were over her shoulders. This ought to have warned Miss Corona, but Miss Corona was thinking of other things, and kept on calling patiently, while Charlotta ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1902 to 1903 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... and then Christie went to tasks that she liked better. Much out-of-door life was good for her, and in garden and green-house there was plenty of light labor she could do. So she grubbed contentedly in the wholesome earth, weeding and potting, learning to prune and bud, and finding Mrs. Wilkins was quite right in her opinion of ...
— Work: A Story of Experience • Louisa May Alcott
... Rachel who came to take the budget done up in a stout hempen cloth, and lifted out the little girl, then holding the horse while Madam descended, and fastening it to the hitching post. The old lady sat under the same tree, but the little girl was weeding in the garden and stood up to look, covered with ...
— A Little Girl in Old Philadelphia • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... year when very little came in from the small garden that lay back of the house, and which they took care of in common, Dick doing all the hard work and his mother some of the weeding; later on they expected that the proceeds from this patch would provide many a good meal, should the weather ...
— Dick the Bank Boy - Or, A Missing Fortune • Frank V. Webster
... boon companion had disappeared, after two years of digging, sowing, weeding, and hoeing, all was ready; the frame was completed and the work could be commenced. It was then that Marius became the master's appointed collaborator, and it is he who now constructs his apparatus, his ...
— Fabre, Poet of Science • Dr. G.V. (C.V.) Legros
... smooth gravel, by courtesy called such—but—they are so overhung by roses and lilies, and such gay encroachers—so over-run by convolvolus, and heart's-ease, and mignonette, and other sweet stragglers, that, except to edge through them occasionally, for the purpose of planting, or weeding, or watering, there might as well be no paths at all. Nobody thinks of walking in my garden. Even May glides along with a delicate and trackless step, like a swan through the wafer; and we, its two-footed denizens, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Issue 265, July 21, 1827 • Various
... itself, which renders it almost inconceivable that female preference could have been effective in the way suggested; while the same argument strongly supports the view here set forth. Natural selection, as we have seen in our earlier chapters, acts perpetually and on an enormous scale in weeding out the "unfit" at every stage of existence, and preserving only those which are in all respects the very best. Each year, only a small percentage of young birds survive to take the place of the old birds which die; and the survivors will be those which are ...
— Darwinism (1889) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... speak to him, but as she sat by the grave she kept weeding out the little white blades of faded autumn grass and yellow pine-spikes, peering into the soil as if to see what it was all made of, and everything that was growing there; and in truth, whether by Septimius's care or no, there seemed to be ...
— Septimius Felton - or, The Elixir of Life • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... produce fully bears out O'Gaygun's opinion, as to this being essentially a fruit country. Of course our spade industry gives us all the vegetables we require, when we lay ourselves out for it. The worst of growing anything except roots is the immense amount of weeding required; the weeds spring in no time; and they are of such a savage sort in ...
— Brighter Britain! (Volume 1 of 2) - or Settler and Maori in Northern New Zealand • William Delisle Hay
... smart young woman (wife of the head of an important firm, who spoke English perfectly, played bridge and the violin). She and Sophy had an interesting musical talk, and arranged about duets and practisings; it was she who helped with regard to weeding out the staff, finding substitutes, and engaging a dirzee to mend and make. Augusta Muller was a born administrator, and the head of the neighbouring community. Another visitor was Frau Wendel, a dowdy middle-aged woman, who wore a hideous check cotton gown (much too short), green ...
— The Road to Mandalay - A Tale of Burma • B. M. Croker
... immediate vicinity of the village the land was laid out in little gardens and fields, and in these the people—men, women, and children,— were busily engaged in hoeing the ground, weeding, planting, or gathering the ...
— Black Ivory • R.M. Ballantyne
... them what is good, as in keping them from that, that is ill. Therefore, if wise fathers, be not as well waare in weeding Ignoratio // from their Children ill thinges, and ill companie, mali. // as they were before, in graftinge in them learninge, and prouiding for them good schole- masters, what frute, they shall reape of all their coste & care, common ...
— The Schoolmaster • Roger Ascham
... weeding our cotton, some of the hands who were threatened with a whipping for not finishing their tasks, ran away. The overseer and myself went out after them, taking with us five bloodhounds, which were kept on the Estate for the sole purpose of catching runaways. There were no other ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... serfdom on the land by depriving them of all but the most rudimentary literary education, as a very considerable element in the new Nature Study Movement certainly intends, is altogether antagonistic to New Republican ideas, and there must be no weeding out of capable and high-minded teachers by filtering them through grotesque and dishonouring religious tests—dishonouring because compulsory, whatever the real faith of the teacher may be. And at the end of the Schooling period there must begin a process of sorting in the mass of ...
— Mankind in the Making • H. G. Wells
... the afternoon she glanced often from the open window of the room where she had gone to sew, but the peaceful neighborhood continued to be peaceful, and no sound of the harassed footsteps of William echoed from the pavement. However, she saw Genesis arrive (in his weekday costume) to do some weeding, and Jane immediately skip forth for mingled purposes ...
— Seventeen - A Tale Of Youth And Summer Time And The Baxter Family Especially William • Booth Tarkington
... or two after the gentlemen had been down to see us, we found it necessary to resume the task of weeding between the rows. The drought at the beginning of the season had been succeeded by copious rains, with warm southerly winds, under which the weeds were making an alarming growth, notwithstanding the trampling which ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 96, October 1865 • Various
... Mr. Gray, and I told him so. I did not see the girls in question until the big scene we put on this morning. Then the company before the camera was too large; the scene was crowded. I began weeding out the awkward ones, as ...
— Nan Sherwood's Winter Holidays • Annie Roe Carr |
