"Picket" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... as the baby still slept, set open the blind doors which made that pleasant green shade, and sat down on the threshold to be quiet, and enjoy the view. The water was within a few rods of her window; nothing but a narrow strip of grass and a little picket fence intervening between the house and the sandy bit of beach. The waves were rolling in from the Narrows, which here were but a short distance to the eastward; and across the broad belt of waters she could see the low shore of Long Island on the other side. Diana ...
— Diana • Susan Warner
... been riding on the surface near the Fleet Flagship's quarter, rose like a flying gull, circled in wide spirals over the Fleet and sped seawards. Across the lanes of water, armed picket-boats, with preternaturally grave-faced Midshipmen at their wheels, picked their way amongst the traffic of drifters, cutters under sail, hooting store carriers and puffers from ...
— The Long Trick • Lewis Anselm da Costa Ritchie
... compressed grimly, parted in a gleaming smile. He made an exclamation of pleasure which sounded rather like a boy running along a picket fence with a stick. ...
— Uller Uprising • Henry Beam Piper, John D. Clark and John F. Carr
... own nobilities—might well be charming if left simply on its merits, as other books are, but this, 'You must,' 'It is your duty,' in connection with it, repels. 'T is like the introduction of martial law into Concord. If you should dot our farms with picket lines, and I could not go or come across lots without a pass, I should resist, or else emigrate. If Concord were as beautiful as Paradise, it would ...
— The Last Harvest • John Burroughs
... me that in the first place? How was I to know unless you told me? But oh, Denny, I want to go home!" She laid her cheek against his hand. "I want a garden with a picket fence round it and all the simple flowers. I never want another adventure in ...
— The Pagan Madonna • Harold MacGrath
... the school yard, down to the end where an old- fashioned picket fence shut off the playground from a vacant lot that later would be divided off into the school gardens, a plot for ...
— Four Little Blossoms on Apple Tree Island • Mabel C. Hawley
... Murano's, which doesn't count, is the Burrage Ranch. In the white mansions among the fruit trees the Burrage Ranch doesn't count much either. It is old and small, fifty acres, a postage stamp of a ranch. There is no avenue to the house, which is close to the road behind a picket fence, and instead of encircling balconies and striped awnings, it has one small porch with a sagging top, over which climbs a rose that stretches long festoons to the gable. In its yard grow two majestic live oaks, hoary giants with silvered ...
— Treasure and Trouble Therewith - A Tale of California • Geraldine Bonner
... came upon two horses standing asleep, tethered by long ropes to picket-pins. One of these he released and led back to his own. Then he remounted and rode on. Again he circled wide of his destination, and this time struck into the woods that lined the river. His way now lay down the black aisles of tree trunks which he pursued until ...
— The Watchers of the Plains - A Tale of the Western Prairies • Ridgewell Cullum
... toe of the rider, according to Arab fashion in these parts. The bits were dreadfully severe; but perhaps not unnecessarily, as the sword allows only one bridle-hand to a pulling horse. Each horse was furnished with a leathern nose-bag, and a long leathern thong as a picket strap. All these horses and saddlery I had purchased for forty-seven dollars, or 9l. 1Os. Fortunately, both my wife and I were well provided with the best English saddles, bridles, &c. or the 'big toe' stirrup would have been ...
— The Nile Tributaries of Abyssinia • Samuel W. Baker
... misunderstood. So often has a consideration of it been left to the novelist's pen that romantic glamour has obscured the permanent contribution made by many a lonely post to the development of the surrounding region. The western fort was more than a block-house or a picket. Being the home of a handful of soldiers did not give it its real importance: it was an institution and should be studied as such. Old Fort Snelling is a type of the many remote military stations which were scattered throughout the West upon the upper waters of the rivers or ...
— Old Fort Snelling - 1819-1858 • Marcus L. Hansen
... together together; embody, reembody^; roll into one. attach, fix, affix, saddle on, fasten, bind, secure, clinch, twist, make fast &c adj.; tie, pinion, string, strap, sew, lace, tat, stitch, tack, knit, button, buckle, hitch, lash, truss, bandage, braid, splice, swathe, gird, tether, moor, picket, harness, chain; fetter &c (restrain) 751; lock, latch, belay, brace, hook, grapple, leash, couple, accouple^, link, yoke, bracket; marry &c (wed) 903; bridge over, span. braze; pin, nail, bolt, hasp, clasp, clamp, crimp, screw, rivet; impact, solder, set; weld together, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... on yore picket-pin, Gurley," observed Roberts. "What I say goes. There's goin' to be no hangin' ...
— Oh, You Tex! • William Macleod Raine
... was Lieutenant Crofton, Captain O'Connor with the first boatload having gone a longer route. A reef near the beach threw the men out, and they stumbled through the water up to their breasts. When they reached dry land they immediately went into the bush to form a picket-line. Two horses had been forced to swim ashore, when suddenly a rifle-shot, followed by continuous sharp firing, warned the men that the enemy ...
— The Boys of '98 • James Otis
... They've a claim on us! A claim of the highest order! They can't starve, it's sure! But would you have them have to hold mass meetin's and set up picket lines and the like, to get justice ...
— Attention Saint Patrick • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... that the investigation infers that the attack was only made with the purpose of freeing the sons of chiefs, for the picket has been slain but all the others are unhurt ...
— Witch-Doctors • Charles Beadle
... with the men, etc.; sometimes at night among the groups around the fires, in their shebang enclosures of bushes. I soon get acquainted anywhere in camp, with officers or men, and am always well used. Sometimes I go down on picket with ...
— Whitman - A Study • John Burroughs
... arrived at Trenton about the same time, having marched so silently that the enemy was unaware of their approach till they were but a short distance from the picket guards on ...
— Elsie's Vacation and After Events • Martha Finley
... purchasing horses. Judging from what I saw I do not think that we got heavy enough animals, and of those purchased certainly a half were nearly unbroken. It was no easy matter to handle them on the picket-lines, and to provide for feeding and watering; and the efforts to shoe and ride them were at first productive of much vigorous excitement. Of course, those that were wild from the range had to be thrown ...
— Rough Riders • Theodore Roosevelt
... occupied the fort, and the lines immediately in front of it were held by the "Department Battalion," composed of the clerks in the various government offices in Richmond, who had been ordered out to meet an emergency. Just before sundown the detail for picket duty was formed, and about to march out to the picket line, the clerks presenting quite a soldierly appearance. Suddenly bang! went a gun in the fort, and a shell came tearing over. Bang! again, and bang! bang! and more shells exploding. Pow! pow! what ...
— Detailed Minutiae of Soldier life in the Army of Northern Virginia, 1861-1865 • Carlton McCarthy
... out for firewood; but this can only be expected from troops on the march. On the other hand, the women could not say enough in praise of the soldiers, and their behaviour towards their sex. Whenever a camp was established close to the homestead, the officers have always had a picket placed round the house for the object of preventing all pilfering, and the women, rich or poor, have everywhere ...
— The War in South Africa - Its Cause and Conduct • Arthur Conan Doyle
... pulled up one of his picket pins, he took a heavy piece of firewood and dashed it upon his tender toe-nails, while he shouted all the abuse that elephants know only accompanies severe punishment. Now Maharaj, who would take punishment quietly from Buldeo, the old mahout, would not stand it from any other; besides, ...
— Adventures in Many Lands • Various
... each with its row of fluted columns supporting the classical roof of a piazza across its whole front, each vying with the others in the whiteness of those wooden walls enveloping its bright green blinds. One had to look over picket fences to see these houses, and in doing so caught the notion that they thus railed themselves off in pride at being able to remember before the railroad came to the village, or ...
— The Damnation of Theron Ware • Harold Frederic
... had just reached the school-ground. His horse was fastened by the bridle to a picket in a fence behind him. A few boys had been out before the schoolhouse, and it was the sudden cessation of their clamor that had drawn Bonaventure's attention. Some of them were still visible, silently slipping through the gaps in the ...
— Bonaventure - A Prose Pastoral of Acadian Louisiana • George Washington Cable
... to be no false prophet. His secret store escaped the vigilance of the picket, whom he himself conducted to the cellars in the Frauengasse. Although he was sparing enough, he could always provide Desiree with anything for which she expressed a wish, and even forestalled those which she left unspoken. In return he looked for absolute obedience, and after their frugal breakfast ...
— Barlasch of the Guard • H. S. Merriman
... the dark front room of the house, peering out from under cupped palms that hid her eyes, Dryad could almost pick out each separate picket of the straggling old fence that bounded the garden of the little drab cottage across from her. In that searching light she could even make out great patches where the rotting sheathing of the house had ...
— Once to Every Man • Larry Evans
... A picket is a group consisting of two or more squads, ordinarily not exceeding half a company, posted in the line of outposts to cover a given sector. It furnishes patrols and one or more sentinels, sentry squads, ...
— Manual for Noncommissioned Officers and Privates of Infantry • War Department
... the ground, and crawled through the grass towards the animal selected, using his elbows as the propelling power. This was done so slowly as not to alarm the herd in the least. Upon reaching the picket-pin, he loosed it so that it could be easily withdrawn; all the time taking good care that his head should not appear above ...
— The Young Trail Hunters • Samuel Woodworth Cozzens
... Sergent Joseph Mathers had a new shirt put on of 70 stripes[43] I washed and at night was caled upon the picket guard Barny went down to the halfway brook[44] and back ...
— The Military Journals of Two Private Soldiers, 1758-1775 - With Numerous Illustrative Notes • Abraham Tomlinson
... quickly, confident that nature had not intended me for a lady's-maid. Awhile later we heard the call of a picket far afield, but saw no camp. A horseman—I thought him a cavalry officer—passed us, flashing in our faces the light of a dark lantern, but said nothing. It must have been near midnight when, as we were going slowly through ...
— D'Ri and I • Irving Bacheller
... been indefinitely postponed. In no other way could the settlers have combined for defence, while yet retaining their individual ownership of the land. The Watauga forts or palisaded villages were of the usual kind, the cabins and blockhouses connected by a heavy loop-holed picket. They were admirably adapted for defence with the rifle. As there was no moat, there was a certain danger from an attack with fire unless water was stored within; and it was of course necessary to guard carefully against surprise. ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume One - From the Alleghanies to the Mississippi, 1769-1776 • Theodore Roosevelt
... this all mean?" wondered Jacob Farnum, unable, despite his curiosity, to regard this expedition without a feeling of considerable disgust with himself. "Confound it, it's unmanly, this spying on someone else! It makes me feel like a rubber-soled detective, a thug or a labor picket trying to 'warn' a workman with a lead-stuffed club! Yet Emerson is a gentleman, or I've been fooled. It must be all right, ...
— The Submarine Boys' Trial Trip - "Making Good" as Young Experts • Victor G. Durham
... was apprehended, but afterward suffered to escape. This man told me that he had rather whip a negro than sit down to the best dinner. This man had, near his house, a contrivance like that which is used in armies where soldiers are punished with the picket; by this the slave was drawn up from the earth, by a cord passing round his wrists, so that his feet could just touch the ground. It somewhat resembled a New England well sweep, and was used ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... of which his was the eighth, cloaked in utter darkness, took shadowy form against the sky. The handy-man stumbled into his unkempt front yard, its metes and bounds but indifferently defined by the remnants of what had been a picket fence; he made his way to the side door, which he threw open without ceremony. As he had surmised, his old woman was up. She was seated by the table in the corner, engaged in mending the ragged trousers ...
— The Just and the Unjust • Vaughan Kester
... smiling, "I was with Doniphan also. We learned a good many things. For instance, I'd rather see each horse on a thirty-foot picket rope, anchored safe each night, than to trust to any hobbles. A homesick horse can travel miles, hobbled, in a night. Horses are ...
— The Covered Wagon • Emerson Hough
... constructed his miles of picket fences there was nothing to keep the animals from wandering up into the highlands where the colonists did not dare to venture. In spite of the handicaps all classes of domestic animals increased in numbers when not slaughtered for food. This ...
— Agriculture in Virginia, 1607-1699 • Lyman Carrier
... his mounted force, had just before captured a picket of twenty-five men a mile and a half away from Hillsboro. General Polk's militia were also in the same vicinity, and soon General Greene, having received reinforcements, recrossed the Dan and assumed a position on the Reedy Fork, ...
— School History of North Carolina • John W. Moore
... very much; but when we were sent out on picket soon after, she enjoyed it still more. When a regiment is on picket, the main camp is usually much smaller, because most of the companies are scattered about at outposts, and but few are left at head-quarters. Our head-quarters were at a deserted plantation ...
— Our Young Folks—Vol. I, No. II, February 1865 - An Illustrated Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various
... at the house from which the voice seemed to come. It was near at hand, a shabby little cottage with a thin slice of yard closed in by a dilapidated picket fence. He perceived no observers in the alley, and he stepped into the yard. The front windows were open, for the evening was warm, but no lights were ...
— The Landloper - The Romance Of A Man On Foot • Holman Day
... after this feat, and to complete his glories of Long Island and Breed's Hill, at Philadelphia! A friend, to be sure, crossed in the night to say the enemy's army was being ferried over, but he fell upon a picket of Germans: they could not understand him: their commander was boozing or asleep. In the morning, when the spy was brought to some one who could comprehend the American language, the whole Continental force had crossed the East River, and the empire ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray
... of battle. Behind them stood the rear-guard of soldiers and patriots, picked men, commanded by Lieutenant Lebrun. Hulot cast his eyes over this arrangement of his forces and looked again at the picket of men posted in advance upon the road. Satisfied with what he saw he was about to give the order to march, when the tricolor cockades of the two soldiers he had sent to beat the woods to the left caught his eye; he waited ...
— The Chouans • Honore de Balzac
... have heard from a veteran in the Indian trade. When a party of trappers is on a journey with a convoy of goods or peltries, every man has three pack-horses under his care; each horse laden with three packs. Every man is provided with a picket with an iron head, a mallet, and hobbles, or leathern fetters for the horses. The trappers proceed across the prairie in a long line; or sometimes three parallel lines, sufficiently distant from each other to prevent the packs from interfering. At an alarm, when there is no covert ...
— The Adventures of Captain Bonneville - Digested From His Journal • Washington Irving
... dwelling house, and seemingly were unaccompanied by any others. Sam happened fortunately to be standing in shadow, and they passed without seeing him. But what was he now to do? He was at the back of the house, and a high picket fence around the place made it impossible for him to escape by the front-way, towards which the savages had gone. Looking through the door-way, he saw that the pair had passed through the room nearest him and into ...
— The Big Brother - A Story of Indian War • George Cary Eggleston
... didn't like this change, that Mr. Hopewell had kinder inoculated me with other guess views on these matters, so he began to throw up bankments and to picket in the ground, all round ...
— The Attache - or, Sam Slick in England, Complete • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... bullets were coming I thought every one of us would be killed, but no one was shot except the one just mentioned. Out-posts were always stationed two hundred yards or more from camp every night, or in front of our trenches, to prevent a night attack. If the enemy started through our picket lines they were fired on by the pickets, who would then rapidly fall back to our lines of trenches. This out-post duty is very important and very dangerous, especially when the sneaking Filipinos were in ...
— A Soldier in the Philippines • Needom N. Freeman
... early breakfast, the horses were led up from the stables, each one having on a strong halter, and a coiled picket rope with an iron pin fastened to the saddle. These were carried so that if it should be found necessary to secure the horses on the plains, they could be picketed out. The bachelors' set of quarters is next to ours, so we all ...
— Army Letters from an Officer's Wife, 1871-1888 • Frances M.A. Roe
... different parts of this island, and we are of the grooms of King Mihrjan[FN10] and under our hand are all his horses. Every month, about new-moon tide we bring hither our best mares which have never been covered, and picket them on the sea-shore and hide ourselves in this place under the ground, so that none may espy us. Presently, the stallions of the sea scent the mares and come up out of the water and seeing no one, leap the mares and do their will ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton
... fairgrounds in the time that Lanier describes as "the gay days of mandolin and guitar and moonlight sails on the James River." Life there seems not to have been "all beer and skittles," or the poetic substitutes therefor, for he goes on to say that their principal duties were to picket the beach, their "pleasures and sweet rewards of toil consisting in ague which played dice with our bones, and blue mass pills that played the ...
— Literary Hearthstones of Dixie • La Salle Corbell Pickett
... picket fence he inhaled their freshness, gazing up into the sunny foliage of the ancient trees, elms, maples, and one oak so aged and so magnificent that, awed, his eyes turned uneasily again toward the house to reassure himself that it ...
— The Gay Rebellion • Robert W. Chambers
... by this revelry, being allowed by custom, after a night in saddle, to spend the next as we chose, provided that we kept to quarters. For me, though I had done better in bed, snatching a little sleep, the time was past for seeking it. A picket of ours had been flung out to westward of the town, on the Alton Road, and at twelve o'clock I was due to relieve it. So I pushed the drink around, and felt their grudge against me ...
— Corporal Sam and Other Stories • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... colonel, "we don't want the enemy swooping down on us again. Don't you think it would be a good plan to throw out a picket to keep guard?" ...
— The Boy Scouts Patrol • Ralph Victor
... to serious outflanking movement on part of the Blues. Sorry, but that's the worst of being picket. The natural intuition which characterizes all BSS will enable you to ...
— The Brother of Daphne • Dornford Yates
... deepest patches of shadow, bore down upon the nearest pickets with a fierce, soundless rush,—the most disconcerting form of attack to sleepy sentries in the small hours, when life and courage are at their lowest ebb. But the picket sentries happened to be Sikhs; and they are ill men to tackle at close quarters ...
— Captain Desmond, V.C. • Maud Diver
... morning of the 19th, the officer on picket duty at Winchester came to my room, I being yet in bed, and reported artillery firing from the direction of Cedar Creek. I asked him if the firing was continuous or only desultory, to which he replied that it was not a sustained ...
— The Memoirs of General Philip H. Sheridan, Vol. II., Part 4 • P. H. Sheridan
... a German oath. He had had his journey for nothing, then. The man's answers were only too likely to be true. It was what he might have expected. But at least he would search the house and make sure. Leaving a picket at the front door and another at the back, the sergeant and he drove the trembling butler in front of them— his shaking candle sending strange, flickering shadows over the old tapestries and the low, ...
— The Green Flag • Arthur Conan Doyle
... troops, and again called upon the city to yield. This citation being defied, the bombardment commenced the next day. The fleet anchored in front of a powder-magazine, took possession of the churches of Malate, Ermita, San Juan de Bagumbayan, and Santiago. Two picket-guards made an unsuccessful sortie against them. The whole force in Manila, at the time, was the King's regiment, which mustered about 600 men and 80 pieces of artillery. The British forces consisted of 1,500 European troops (one regiment of infantry and two companies of artillery), 3,000 ...
— The Philippine Islands • John Foreman
... greasy gearings and spoil the best of all your stock of shirts, yet through it all maintain that sweet composure, that gentle calm befitting such events; if you can sound a bugle-note of triumph when steering straight against a picket-fence; if you can keep your temper, tongue, and balance when on your back beneath your car you pose, and, struggling there to fix a balky cog-wheel, you drop a monkey-wrench across your nose; if you can smile as gasoline goes higher, and sing a song because your motor faints—your place is ...
— More Toasts • Marion Dix Mosher
... this small-talk Crook had been inspecting the mules and the horses on picket-line, and silently forming his conclusion. He now returned to Captain Glynn and ...
— Red Men and White • Owen Wister
... particularly lush, green spot, she dismounted, led the horse off from the road and quickly traced the green area back to a tiny bubbling spring. Unharnessing the horse deftly, she fastened him to a pointed iron picket she took from the cart and drove firmly into the ground, lifted out a little portable tin oven which she propped between two rocks, kindled a fire from some dried fagots tied below the axle-tree, and taking a slice of fresh beef from a stone crock on the seat, cut it slowly into small pieces ...
— The Strange Cases of Dr. Stanchon • Josephine Daskam Bacon
... St. Lawrence, by the way of Aunce de Mere, under Cape Diamond. The first barrier on this side, at the Pot Ash, was defended by a battery, in which a few pieces of artillery were mounted; about two hundred paces in front of which was a block-house and picket. The guard placed at the block-house being chiefly Canadians, after giving a random and harmless fire, threw away their arms, and fled in confusion to the barrier. Their terrors were communicated to those who defended this important pass; ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 2 (of 5) • John Marshall
... the fort. I guess we may as well make our camp outside. If you go in you have got to picket your horse here and put your baggage there and come in at gun-fire, and all sorts of things that troubles a man who is accustomed to act ...
— In The Heart Of The Rockies • G. A. Henty
... was kept in continual alarm. Officers and soldiers were constantly dressed and ready for action. One night, twenty young farmers residing near the camp, resolved to capture the enemy's advance picket-guard. Armed with fowling-pieces, they marched silently through the woods until they were within a few yards of the picket. They then rushed out from the bushes, the captain blowing an old horse-trumpet and the men yelling. There was no time for the sentinel's hail. "Ground your arms, or you are ...
— A Brief History of the United States • Barnes & Co.
... from his enterprise against Jackson, and 75,000 south of it. What could the 65,000 Confederates do, except hold fast to their lines? TO RICHMOND 4-1/2 MILES: so read the sign-post at the Mechanicsville bridge, and there stood the nearest Federal picket. Johnston and Lee knew, however, that McClellan's alarmist detectives swore to a Confederate army three times its actual strength at this time; and there was reason to hope that the consequent moral ascendancy would help the shock ...
— Captains of the Civil War - A Chronicle of the Blue and the Gray, Volume 31, The - Chronicles Of America Series • William Wood
... the garden gate of the pretty, vine-covered cottage near the bridge, and the Monroe girls, Sarah and Martha, in a desperate hurry now, flying up the twilight quiet of North Main Street to the long picket fence, the dark, tree-shaded garden, and the shabby side-doorway of the ...
— Martie the Unconquered • Kathleen Norris
... himself, that pup set off at full speed, and every time he struck the ground he let off a war-whoop. Away went the Coyote and it looked like a good race to us, and to the Picket-pin Ground-squirrels that sat up high on their mounds to rejoice in the spectacle of these, their enemies, ...
— Wild Animals at Home • Ernest Thompson Seton
... the undergrowth of shrubbery, and perchance hers might be one of them. Accepting the possibility I found the one I sought, which could not fail to be recognized, for strange to say, time had dealt so gently that the slender picket fence was undecayed by his "effacing; lingers," and the name painted upon the little wooden head-board was distinctly visible. Grouped in quadrangular growth were four little trees, gracefully arching in a bowery drapery over the grave, as if nature in strange sympathy ...
— The World As I Have Found It - Sequel to Incidents in the Life of a Blind Girl • Mary L. Day Arms
... your service." He smiled with what evidently was intended to be warmth, again showing those rows of teeth like picket fences. "I suppose we're all here on the same mission: to find a solution for the mystery of the world's paralysis." The apparition lit a long and bloated cigarette and through the acrid smoke surveyed ...
— The End of Time • Wallace West
... whilst the other two grounded and burnt out without causing further inconvenience. Captain Knox describes the scene as a display of "the grandest fireworks that can possibly be conceived." The only result was to cause the retirement of a picket at the western end of the Ile d'Orleans, and the officer in command, who thought he was about to be attacked in force, was to have been tried by court-martial, but being advised to throw himself on Wolfe's mercy, was pardoned for his error of judgment. ...
— The Life of Captain James Cook • Arthur Kitson
... of Snoop and Downy," cautioned Freddie, as Dinah took up her picket duty. "Look out the boys don't get 'em," with a wise look at the youngsters, who were spoiling for more sport of ...
— The Bobbsey Twins at the Seashore • Laura Lee Hope
... go out to the herd and bring my mule in. The old Irishman had camped near us and had picketed his mule out but did not know I had a mule so near like his. Johnnie saw the Irishman's mule picketed out about half way between our camp and our herd, and he pulled up the picket and started on to the camp with the mule. Pretty soon the angry old Irishman came up behind Johnnie and knocked him down for trying to steal his mule. Johnnie ran into camp and got my carbine and started for the Irishman, I ran after ...
— The Second William Penn - A true account of incidents that happened along the - old Santa Fe Trail • William H. Ryus
... green blinds, is set back from the maple-and-elm-shaded street, guarded by a white picket fence. Between the house and gate a green lawn was crossed by a gravelled walk, with borders of phlox; beyond the borders, on either side, were flowering shrubs, and at equal distances from the walk, circular beds of scarlet tulips and yellow daffodils. Detached from the Penniman house, but ...
— The Wrong Twin • Harry Leon Wilson
... arbitrary coerciveness, nothing in the armory of the union is so effective as the boycott. A flourishing business finds its trade gone overnight. Leading customers withdraw their patronage at the union's threat. The alert picket is the harbinger of ruin, and the union black list is as fraught with threat as ...
— The Armies of Labor - Volume 40 in The Chronicles Of America Series • Samuel P. Orth
... them; in that front yard he had been successfully teased into temporary insanity by a. Sunday-school class of pinky little girls. On that sagging porch a laughing woman had fed him and other boys with doughnuts and gingerbread; yonder he saw the staggered relics of the iron picket fence he had made his white pony jump, on a dare, and in the shabby, stone-faced house behind the fence he had gone to children's parties, and, when he was a little older he had danced there often, and fallen in ...
— The Magnificent Ambersons • Booth Tarkington
... and I following, and upon getting clear of the crowd we saw a man leaning against the picket fence which separated the track from the carriage drive, watching the horses through a small field-glass. As we came up, Simms, for it was he, glanced suspiciously at us, but as we paid no attention to him and talked earnestly together, apparently arguing as to the relative merits of the horses, ...
— Montezuma's Castle and Other Weird Tales • Charles B. Cory
... the well-known spot and the little picket gate, and the Knight lifts me from the charger's back. 'Here are house and lands, and all are yours, sweet lady, if you have a younger brother. There is treasure hidden in the ground behind the castle, and no one ever finds such things ...
— Mother Carey's Chickens • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... into the dark, picking out the best way to retreat, plodding miserably back to camp when the alarm was over. Once they fired a volley at a row of mullen stalks, waving on the brow of a hill, and once a picket shot at his own horse that had got loose and had wandered toward ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... cottage, with green blinds and a tiny front porch, stood beside the road, its back to the lake. There were five acres or so of ground around the house, set off by a white picket fence. At the gate a pine tree stood. There were oaks and lilac bushes in the front yard. Through the leaves, Lydia saw ...
— Lydia of the Pines • Honore Willsie Morrow
... time they had tried to enter the castle in their pilgrim's garb, and the outer picket courteously received them. But when they were come to the inner curtain, one Robin Romulart, the officer of the guard, a stout fellow, suddenly called to his men to bind and gag them—in which enterprise, but for the great strength of Malise, they might have succeeded. For the outer ...
— The Black Douglas • S. R. Crockett
... were the ice man for a space, Then might I cool this red-hot cocoanut, Corral the jim-jam bugs that madly race Around the eaves that from my forehead jut— Or will a carpenter please come instead And build a picket ...
— The Love Sonnets of a Hoodlum • Wallace Irwin
... (Chhuri?), and here scouts were sent on to select a proper place for the murder. This was chosen in a long stretch of forest, and two men were despatched to the village of Sutranja, farther on the road, to see that no one was coming in the opposite direction, while another picket remained behind to prevent interruption from the rear. By the time they reached the appointed place, the Bhurtots (stranglers) and Shamsias (holders) had all on some pretext or other got close to the side of the persons whom they were appointed ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume IV of IV - Kumhar-Yemkala • R.V. Russell
... time," and he took himself very quickly away, much to Marcia's relief. But the trouble did not go out of her eyes as she saw him turn the corner. Instead she went in and stood at the dining room window a long time looking out on the Heaths' hollyhocks beaming in the sun behind the picket fence, and wondered what he could have meant, and why he smiled in that hateful way. She decided she did not like him, and she hoped he would never come. She did not think she would care to hear ...
— Marcia Schuyler • Grace Livingston Hill Lutz
... sheriff halted to look down on them. The ranchhouse was a structure of logs from which the bark had been stripped, and which had weathered white as bones. It was long and low, suggesting spaciousness and comfort, and enclosed about by a white picket fence. ...
— The Duke Of Chimney Butte • G. W. Ogden
... blew his nose violently, snapped his gold snuff-box, and waddled to the window, where, below, in the early dusk, torches and rush-lights burned, illuminating the cavalry horses tethered along their picket-rope, and the trooper on guard, pacing his beat, musket shining in ...
— The Maid-At-Arms • Robert W. Chambers
... in front of the gate, stood a weathered-gray cabin, of rough boards, with a central doorway and windows without sashes. At one end was an outside chimney of field-stone, laid, it seemed, with clay. Surrounding this cabin was a rough picket fence, again of untrimmed boards, with a gate opening on the brook and stepping stones across to the path. In the little compound thus enclosed, and almost overtopping the cabin, were half a dozen peach and plum trees, veritable geyser jets of pink and white bloom. Behind, in ...
— Penguin Persons & Peppermints • Walter Prichard Eaton
... and I could not get near because of the crowd, and we only saw the carriages and the hussars file past. A picket near our house cut off all communication. That same evening he received the corps of officers and condescended to accept a dinner offered to him by the Sixth, but he only invited Colonel Zaepfel. After the dinner, from which they did not rise till ten o'clock, ...
— Waterloo - A sequel to The Conscript of 1813 • Emile Erckmann
... purpose of the Socialist Party is to seize the powers of government and thus prevent them from being used by the capitalists against the workers. With Socialists in political offices the workers can strike and not be shot. They can picket shops and not be arrested and imprisoned.... To win the demands made on the industrial field it is absolutely necessary to control the government, as experience shows strikes to have been lost through the interference ...
— Socialism As It Is - A Survey of The World-Wide Revolutionary Movement • William English Walling
... could expect nothing but more cruel treatment than I had yet experienced. Besides, although I did not know it at the time, the valley had but two entrances, and these were constantly guarded by a watchful picket. But at the time I thought of none of these things—"drowning men will catch at straws," says the old adage—and my hastily formed plan seemed to me to promise success. Having formed my resolution I was necessitated to put it in ...
— Seven and Nine years Among the Camanches and Apaches - An Autobiography • Edwin Eastman
... attack on him as he rode up the avenue, and which was so sudden that it brought out the entire household. It was getting dark, but sufficiently light to see one approaching on horse back. The dogs were called off, and he heard a voice exclaim ride up. A very handsome picket fence surrounded the house, and upon arriving at the gate he was met by a fine looking old English gentleman, who invited him to dismount and have his horse stabled. Thanking him for his kindness, he ...
— The Dismal Swamp and Lake Drummond, Early recollections - Vivid portrayal of Amusing Scenes • Robert Arnold
... something that watches us softly, as the shadows glide down in the yard; That shall go with my soldier to battle, and stand with my picket on guard. Spirits of loving and lost ones—watch softly with Harry to-night, For to-morrow he goes forth to battle—to arm him for ...
— The Universal Reciter - 81 Choice Pieces of Rare Poetical Gems • Various
... some very fine folks—the family of Joseph Doty, for instance. The Dotys lived in a two-story house and had a picket fence. James had dug a ditch for Mr. Doty, and split out shingles for a roof for the Doty barn. At such times he got his dinner at Doty's, for it was the rule then that you always had to feed your help, no matter who they were, just as you feed ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 11 (of 14) - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Businessmen • Elbert Hubbard
... conditions, to the township. But as the township had never fulfilled any of the conditions, and had done nothing toward the improvement of the spot, further than to make it a grazing-place for local cows and goats, the owner had withdrawn his gift, shut out the cows and goats by a picket fence, and, having locked the gate, had hung up the key in his barn. When our club was formed, the green, as it was still called, was offered to us for our meetings, and, with proper gratitude, we elected its ...
— The Magic Egg and Other Stories • Frank Stockton
... secrecy on the part of Brant. The latter, however, did not relax his vigilance, and after the advance the next day he made a minute inspection of the ground he was to occupy, its approaches and connections with the outlying country, and the rebel lines; increased the stringency of picket and sentry regulations, and exercised a rigid surveillance of non-combatants and civilians within the lines, even to the lowest canteener or camp follower. Then he turned his attention to the house he was ...
— Clarence • Bret Harte
... dust cloud—and reappeared in turn, but not until it had advanced to within a scant hundred yards of him could he make out the figure which raised it. And then, after one sharp glance, with a quick intake of breath, he rose and went a trifle hastily out across his own lawn toward the iron picket fence that bordered the roadside. He went almost hurriedly to intercept the boy who came marching over the brow of the last ...
— Then I'll Come Back to You • Larry Evans
... captain of his company. Hale's diary is still preserved, and after all these years it is full of interest. It seems that he took charge of his men's clothing, rations, and money. Much of his time he was on picket duty, and took part in many lively skirmishes with the redcoats. Besides studying military tactics, he found time to make up wrestling matches, to play football and checkers, and, on Sundays, to ...
— Hero Stories from American History - For Elementary Schools • Albert F. Blaisdell
... wash away no stain Upon your wasted lea; I raise no banners, save the ones The forest wave to me: Upon the mountain side, where Spring Her farthest picket sets, My reveille awakes ...
— East and West - Poems • Bret Harte
... Arkansas river to the mouth of the Purgatoire— pronounced in that country Picket Wire—which was about thirty miles from Bent's Fort. Seeing a small band of buffalo some distance away, we took the pack-saddles off of the mules and turned them out to graze, mounted our saddle-horses and were ...
— Thirty-One Years on the Plains and In the Mountains • William F. Drannan
... long five miles from Matelgar's place to the town, and we could only travel at a foot's pace. But still we met no force. Indeed, until we were just a half mile thence, we saw no one. Then we met a picket, who, seeing we were fugitives, let us go ...
— A Thane of Wessex • Charles W. Whistler
... way he proceeded till he arrived at the picket fence that marked the commencement of Uncle Lot's ground. Here he stopped to consider. Just then four or five sheep walked up, and began also to consider a loose picket, which was hanging just ready ...
— The May Flower, and Miscellaneous Writings • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... picket, and other fancy fences for front yards, &c., it is more the province of the architect or the mechanic to treat. Styles vary and are constantly increasing in number. The great point to be secured in all such, to render them most durable, is to have the smallest possible points of contact. ...
— Soil Culture • J. H. Walden
... rights which has become the citadel of capitalism in all its most offensive aspects, and of labour in its most insolent assumptions. The "rights" of property, the "right" to strike, the "right" to collective bargaining, the "right" to shut down an essential industry or to "walk out" and then picket the place so that it may not be reopened, the "right" to vote and hold office and do any fool thing you please so long as it is within the law, these are applications of what I mean when I speak of a gross fallacy that has come into being and has stultified our intelligence while bringing ...
— Towards the Great Peace • Ralph Adams Cram
... destruction of the Spanish-Dutch fleet at Palermo by Duquesne. But as the "nimbleness" of great-ships increased with the ripening of seamanship and naval architecture, the fireship as a battle weapon became almost negligible, while a fleet at anchor was found to be thoroughly defensible by its own picket-boats. Towards the middle of the eighteenth century indeed the occasions on which the fireship could be used for its special purpose was regarded as highly exceptional, and though the type was retained till the end of the century, its normal functions differed not at all from those of the rest ...
— Some Principles of Maritime Strategy • Julian Stafford Corbett
... his fire and unpacked his horses. He confined his riding horse with a picket rope; the others he turned loose. Then he cooked a simple meal for himself and the gaunt servant ...
— The Sky Line of Spruce • Edison Marshall
... law, told me that it would probably answer, though it was not according to the agreement made by Mr. Brooks, and Esq. Clute and himself, for me. I then executed to Micah Brooks and Jellis Clute, a deed of all my land lying east of the picket line on the Gardow reservation, ...
— A Narrative of the Life of Mrs. Mary Jemison • James E. Seaver
... picket lines had been posted a quarter of a mile beyond the church, near which no other guards had been placed. Not long after midnight a surgeon, one of the two men left on duty in the church, happened to look out through a broken window towards the shed, and in the ...
— Anting-Anting Stories - And other Strange Tales of the Filipinos • Sargent Kayme
... precaution to bring with me my picket-pin—one of the essentials of the prairie traveller. It was the work of a moment to delve it into the bank. I needed not to drive it with violence: my well-trained steed never broke fastening, however slight. With him the stake ...
— The War Trail - The Hunt of the Wild Horse • Mayne Reid
... for the rank and file in drill and outpost duty sufficient to prevent idle habits. The commissariat was closely watched, and fresh rations more frequently issued, which much improved the health of the army. The system of picket-duty was more thoroughly developed, and so vigilantly carried out as to impress its importance upon, as well as teach its ...
— The Campaign of Chancellorsville • Theodore A. Dodge
... which we were to settle. Here was some cleared land, and one or two log cabins, but they had been deserted on account of the Indians. My father rebuilt the cabins, and inclosed them with a strong picket. It was early in the spring when we arrived at the mouth of the Big Miami, and we were soon engaged in preparing a field to plant corn. I think it was not more than ten days after our arrival, when my father told ...
— The Junior Classics • Various
... the middle distance was a track and cradle similar to the one shown in the first picture. The machine in the cabinet buzzed, and clicked, and made a noise like that of a small boy rattling a stick along a picket fence. A draught from some open window blowing against the linen screen caused the flat, deserted plain to undulate like the waves of the sea. The horizon bobbed up and down, showing first a great expanse of sky, and then the foreground ran up to infinity. The cradle was seen first ...
— L. P. M. - The End of the Great War • J. Stewart Barney
... peril he crossed the river on a couple of logs, lashed together, some distance above the spot where the picket had seen Mademoiselle. It was a moonlight night, and he might easily have been picked off by a bullet, if a wary sentry had been alert and malicious. But the truth was that many of these pickets on both sides were in no wise unfriendly to each other, and more ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... hollow with my knife, I swathed myself in my blanket with a saddle for pillow. I watched the stars for a while, as they drifted slowly over me. The horses stamped, shaking their picket-ropes. The sentries walked their rounds, or came to the camp-fires to call their reliefs. The night was full of strange noises. The presence of so many sleeping men was strange. It was very beautiful, very solemn. It gave one a kind of awe to think that thus so many famous armies had slept ...
— Martin Hyde, The Duke's Messenger • John Masefield
... meantime the strikers have to see to it that the employer does not find someone else with whom he can cooperate in order to eliminate his dependence upon them. Hence they picket the plant, in an attempt to persuade others not to work there. If persuasion is not effective, they may resort to mass picketing, which amounts to a threat of violence against the persons who would attempt to take over their jobs. On occasion the threat to their jobs becomes ...
— Introduction to Non-Violence • Theodore Paullin
... his peculiar characteristics, and idiosyncrasies. For illustration of this idea, as we were approaching Atlanta, my division had the advance of the Army of the Ohio the morning we came in sight of the city. My advance guard captured a rebel picket post, and one of the men captured, had a morning paper from Atlanta, in which was Johnston's farewell order to his troops, and Hood's order assuming command. I had been three years at West Point with ...
— Personal recollections and experiences concerning the Battle of Stone River • Milo S. Hascall
... me admit it frankly) we were to a great degree selfish. As you are aware, the essence of humor is surprise: we found a delicious humor in our campaign of surprising woebegone humanity in moments of crisis. For instance, we used to picket the railway terminals to console commuters who had just missed their trains. We found it uproariously funny to approach a perspiring suburbanite, who had missed the train (let us say) to Mandrake Park, and to press upon him, ...
— In the Sweet Dry and Dry • Christopher Morley
... live in, I tell you we had a tough affair, a picket concern, you might say no house a-tall. The beds was one of your own make; if you knowed how to make one, you had one, but of course the chillen slept on the floor, patched ...
— Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves. - Texas Narratives, Part 2 • Works Projects Administration
... the banks of the Rhone near Avignon, he came as a youth to Canada, whence he drifted on the tide of adventure this way and that, until at last he found himself, with a wife, at Post Vincennes, that lonely picket of religion and trade, which was to become the center of civilizing energy for the great Northwestern Territory. M. Roussillon had no children of his own; so his kind heart opened freely to two fatherless and motherless ...
— Alice of Old Vincennes • Maurice Thompson
... sea-beach, and the sea itself, as far as the eye could reach, seemed like a pure white carpet. Snow lined the upper edge of every paling, filled up the key-hole of every door, embanked about half of every window, stuck in little knobs on the top of every picket, and clung in masses on every drooping branch of the pine trees in the forest. Frost—sharp, biting frost—solidified, surrounded, and pervaded everything. Mercury was congealed by it; vapour was condensed by it; iron ...
— The Young Fur Traders • R.M. Ballantyne
... is a disguised cabbage. It is the same thing as puttin powder on your face instead of washin it. You deceive Germans with it. For instance you paint a horse black and white stripes an a German comes along. He thinks its a picket fence an goes right by. Or you paint yourself like a tree an the Germans come an drink beer round you an ...
— Dere Mable - Love Letters Of A Rookie • Edward Streeter
... blasts of lead which shrivelled the grey columns as leaves are shrivelled by an autumn wind. By mid-afternoon the Belgians and Germans were in places barely a hundred yards apart, and the rattle of musketry sounded like a boy drawing a stick along the palings of a picket-fence. During the height of the battle a Zeppelin slowly circled over the field like a great vulture awaiting a feast. So heavy was the fighting that the embankment of a branch railway from which I viewed the afternoon's battle was literally carpeted with the corpses of Germans who had been killed ...
— Fighting in Flanders • E. Alexander Powell
... glowed red, And a picket came to the track. 'Enemy holding the line ahead, Three of our mates we have left for dead, Only we two got back.' And far to the north through the still night air, They ...
— Rio Grande's Last Race and Other Verses • Andrew Barton 'Banjo' Paterson
... others. A tangle of rose-briers covered the sunken graves, a rank growth of grass choked the narrow paths, the little gate interlaced and overhung with honeysuckle sagged away from its posts, the fence itself had lost a picket here and there, and weeds flaunted boldly in the gaps. The girl looked wan and ghostly ...
— Shapes that Haunt the Dusk • Various
... are marching on In a wider field than ours; Those bright battalions still fulfil The scheme of the heavenly powers; And high brave thoughts float down to us, The echoes of that far fight, Like the flash of a distant picket's gun Through the ...
— Pike County Ballads and Other Poems • John Hay
... closed doors, or to join a band that, risking the sudden creak of a treacherous step, went down the stairs and out to wend their way with other sweltering bands across the moonlit ways, through negro settlements, where frantic dogs bayed at the sticks they rattled over the picket fences, to the banks of the canal for a cooling frolic in the none ...
— The Varmint • Owen Johnson
... field, a cloud of fog lay along the ground—its ominous grey just visible in the deepening twilight—and it was plainly creeping up to envelop us in its chilly arms. The night bade fair to be a foul one—to use a hibernicism—and none of us coveted the post of the picket in those black woods in front of us. But some one had to perform that trying duty; and it fell to the lot of Company "B" of the Twenty-Third to be detailed with others to the service, the command of the detachment being ...
— Our campaign around Gettysburg • John Lockwood
... above its level roof in the silence of that October morning, as I checked my gait to loiter along the picket fence; but suddenly the house showed a light of its own. The spurt of a match took my eye to one of the upper windows, then a steadier glow of orange told me that a lamp was lighted. The window was opened, and a man ...
— Beasley's Christmas Party • Booth Tarkington
... in connexion with "obstacles" in field fortifications, especially in what are known as "high wire entanglements." Pointed stakes or "pickets," 4 ft. high, are planted in rows and secured by ordinary wire to holdfasts or pegs in the ground. Each picket is connected to all around it, top and bottom, by lengths of ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 3 - "Banks" to "Bassoon" • Various
... was a small, weather-beaten cottage set in the shoulder of a hill, with the forest all around it. About the house itself was a clearing of a few acres, with a little orchard on the slope behind the house. The home itself was enclosed by an unpainted picket fence. Lovely old trees shaded it. Vines clambered riotously over its soft, gray clapboards. Well arranged shrubs and bushes had been planted here and there. There were flowers about the base of the house and along the borders. The ...
— The Young Wireless Operator—As a Fire Patrol - The Story of a Young Wireless Amateur Who Made Good as a Fire Patrol • Lewis E. Theiss
... of two good swimmers will be on duty while bathing is going on, and ready to help any girl in distress. This picket will be in the boat with bathing costume and overcoat on. They may bathe only when the general bathing is over and the last of the bathers has left the water. If bathing in the surf, a stake should be driven into the sand ...
— How Girls Can Help Their Country • Juliette Low
... o'clock in the morning they came across a picket of Sepoys, and, thinking it safer not to try and avoid them, went up and asked the way. Having answered the inquiries put to them without exciting suspicion, ...
— Beneath the Banner • F. J. Cross
... out, 'A rather pretty duel, sir. Don't ride over the bridge.' A picket shot from the left singing over my head rather emphasized his warning. 'It would not be fair—you would ride right into my pickets.' It was ...
— Westways • S. Weir Mitchell
... stature but very thickset, with their wide smooth faces, loose clothing of sheepskin with the wool outside, with their long coarse hair flying in the wind, and their uncouth shouts in a barbarous tongue, are much like savages. They sing wild chants as they picket their sheep in long double lines at night, and with their savage mastiffs sleep unsheltered under the frosty skies under the lee of their piled-up saddlebags. On three nights I camped beside their caravans, and walked round ...
— Among the Tibetans • Isabella L. Bird (Mrs Bishop)
... poor beggars are probably well-nigh starving, having been away from their regular rations so long. Well, it might be worse, I suppose. They will hardly come back to-night, and I guess we can get a little rest when I picket these animals out again. We got off pretty lucky, I take it, for there was sure ...
— The Moving Picture Boys on the Coast • Victor Appleton |
