"Picket" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... 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
... command, to the enemy. If the plot had not been discovered and prevented it would have been a very great calamity to our country. It might have turned the scale against us. I have some personal reason to feel indignant at the traitor, besides what arises from the love of country; for my father was on picket guard at West Point, the night in which it was to have been delivered up, and would have been the first man killed. If Arnold had been caught, he would have closed his career on the gallows; but, as it was, he escaped, and a more worthy man suffered. He received, as the reward ...
— Anecdotes for Boys • Harvey Newcomb
... his first active service in the numerous outpost and picket encounters, which marked the autumn and winter of 1861, while the army under General McClellan was organizing on the banks of the Potomac. There he distinguished himself by his firmness and vigilance, as well ...
— The Secrets Of The Great City • Edward Winslow Martin
... were spent in teaching the horses to stand steady as soon as the reins were thrown over their heads, this being a training to which all horses in the Cape are subjected. Then they rode back to the town and arranged with a farmer near it to picket their horses in one of his meadows, and for their feed while they remained there. The rest of the day was spent in laying in their supplies. The rifles and ammunition were paid for, pack saddles bought ...
— With Buller in Natal - A Born Leader • G. A. Henty
... night when my turn came to go to the river on picket duty, and the earth was covered with snow several inches deep. When my watch was off and the opportunity to sleep was afforded the question was, where to lie down. I spread on the snow some boughs that I had cut from a cedar tree ...
— Reminiscences of a Rebel • Wayland Fuller Dunaway
... unarmed. Immediately beyond is that river over which we passed in our scamper with Lady Jersey; it was all solitary. Three hundred yards beyond is a second ford; and there—I came face to face with war. Under the trees on the further bank sat a picket of seven men with Winchesters; their faces bright, their eyes ardent. As we came up, they did not speak or move; only their eyes followed us. The horses drank, and we passed the ford. "Talofa!" I said, and the commandant of the ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 25 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... result of the whole was that he found himself enrolled in a company where he knew he was disliked, and under a captain whom he thoroughly detested, for the fraud practiced upon himself. In this condition he was sent to the Potomac, and while on duty as a picket, grew to be on the most friendly terms with more than one of the enemy, planning at last to desert, and effecting his escape one stormy night, when the watch were off their guard. Owing to some mistake, the aid promised by his Rebel friends had not been extended, and as best he could he ...
— Bad Hugh • Mary Jane Holmes
... hospitable, in the appearance of its smooth, broad avenues and pretty little parks, with the bronze statues which all looked noble—in the moonlight; it was such a combination and piquant contrast of shabby ease and stately elegance —negro cabins and stone mansions, picket-fences and sheds, and flower-banked terraces before rows of residences which bespoke wealth and refinement. The very aspect of the street population was novel; compared to New York, the city was as silent as a country village, and the passers, who have the ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... 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 was cooled by it until it could ...
— The Young Fur Traders • R.M. Ballantyne
... tramped the ties, with Corporal at his heels. As dusk came on the clouds that had been doing picket duty, joined the regiment on the horizon which slowly wheeled and charged across the sky. Phelan scanned the heavens with an experienced weather eye, then began to look for a possible shelter from the coming shower. On either ...
— Miss Mink's Soldier and Other Stories • Alice Hegan Rice
... and feeling extremely glum, had been amazed to see the line of guards, who usually sat on a bench, with a sentry or picket, or whatever they called him, parading up and down before them—Nikky was amazed to see them one by one leaping into the air, in the most undignified manner. Nikky watched the performance. Then he stalked over. They subsided sheepishly. In the air was the cause of the excitement, ...
— Long Live the King • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... which bore an American flag worn out by exposure, and near by was the usual hewn post inscribed with Indian characters representing his war-like exploits, etc. Enclosing all was a strong circular picket fence twelve feet high. His body remained here until July, 1839, when it was carried off by a certain Dr. Turner, then living at Lexington, Van Buren county, Iowa. Captain Horn says the bones were carried to Alton, ...
— Autobiography of Ma-ka-tai-me-she-kia-kiak, or Black Hawk • Black Hawk
... complicated even for their preternatural powers. She hurried back to the house, and searched every room in a bewildered sort of fashion, finding nothing. As she came out again, her eye caught sight of a kitchen chair in the corner of the yard. They had climbed the picket fence, then. Yes; Atlantic, while availing himself of its unassuming aid, had left a clue in a fragment of his trousers. She opened the gate, and ran breathlessly along the streets to that Garden of Eden where joy had always hitherto awaited her. Some instinct of fear or secrecy led her to ...
— Marm Lisa • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... face—it was a very proud face—had become icy cold; the violet eyes were hard as shining crystal. To Mr. Heatherbloom that slender figure, tensely poised, seemed at once overwhelmingly near and inexpressibly remote. He started to lean on an iron picket but changed his mind and stood rather too stiffly, without support. Before his eyes the flowers in her hat waved and waved; he tried to keep his eyes ...
— A Man and His Money • Frederic Stewart Isham
... in a pretty, fluffy morning dress of pale green, which set off her blonde beauty to perfection, laid down her racket, and, leaving the tennis-court, joined her brother Roy at the picket fence. The lad, bronzed and toughened by his trip to the Nevada desert, was leaning upon the paling, gazing down the ...
— The Girl Aviators' Sky Cruise • Margaret Burnham
... or scoured pans, in a linsey-woolsey petticoat and white short gown, wearing her pretty curls in a crop? George Tucker knew it all without telling; and so did half a dozen of the Westbury boys, who haunted the picket fence round 'Zekiel's garden every moonlight night in summer, or scraped their feet by the half hour together on his door-step in winter evenings. Sally was a belle; she knew it and liked it, as every honest girl does;—and she would have been a belle without ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various
... did the nest belong? I hoped to the kingbird, who at that moment sat demurely upon the picket fence below, apparently interested only in passing insects; and while I looked the question was answered by Madame Tyrannis herself, who came with the confidence of ownership, carrying a beakful of building material, and arranging ...
— Little Brothers of the Air • Olive Thorne Miller
... so dense a crowd, that almost every bullet and buckshot of the defenders hit its man. The besieged had but six muskets, one hundred cartridges, and a few charges of powder. Their external fortifications consisted only of a slight picket-fence, which might have been thrown down in an instant. But, fortunately, when there were but three charges of powder left in the house, a shot killed Gotorap, the chief of the assailants, at whose fall the ...
— Journal of an African Cruiser • Horatio Bridge
... on its political or military history. The German governess told Lanner more about Schiller than he had ever heard in his life about any one person; it was perhaps his own fault for having told her that he was not interested in Goethe. When the governess went off picket duty the hostess was again on hand with a not- to-be-gainsaid invitation to visit the cottage of an old woman who remembered Charles James Fox; the woman had been dead for two or three years, but the cottage was still there. Lanner was called ...
— Beasts and Super-Beasts • Saki
... of the insurgents. At the same time, and for the same purpose, Juan Alfonso Palamino had landed with fifty men, yet keeping his boats always in readiness to reimbark, in case of the return of Gonzalo. Aldana likewise placed an advanced picket of twelve horsemen, of those who had deserted from the insurgents, on the road towards Arequipa, to bring him timely notice of any thing that might occur in that quarter, with orders to return with all speed in case of the enemy making a countermarch, or of any important event. Aldana ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 5 • Robert Kerr
... I 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 ...
— The Attache - or, Sam Slick in England, Complete • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... submarine E-15 runs ashore in the Dardanelles, the crew being captured by Turks; two British picket boats, under a heavy fire, then torpedo and destroy the stranded vessel to prevent her being used by ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 3, June, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... for picket guard, that night. Brigade guard mount took place in the woods at sunset. Our regimental Band, led by the veteran Joe Greene, played his familiar piece, "The Mocking Bird." Our company was marched in the ...
— History of Company F, 1st Regiment, R.I. Volunteers, during the Spring and Summer of 1861 • Charles H. Clarke
... windows of the parlor, where he paused to stare out, he could look for some distance up the street. He noticed dully the double row of maples from which yellowed leaves were already beginning to fall and the ugly fronts of houses, behind their shabby picket fences. A wagon was creaking slowly through a shallow sea of mud which had been dust the day before: beyond the hunched figure of the teamster not a human being was in sight. Somewhere, a dog barked fitfully ...
— An Alabaster Box • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman and Florence Morse Kingsley
... as to what was to happen; and so absorbed were we in our occupation—he in his happiness, I in the contemplation thereof—that neither of us noticed the rapid approach of a third party until a whinny of astonishment sounded close beside us, and Van, trailing his lariat and picket-pin after him, came trotting up, took in the situation at a glance, and, unhesitatingly ranging alongside his comrade of coarser mould and thrusting his velvet muzzle into my lap, looked wistfully ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, November 1885 • Various
... 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
... front now in khaki uniform; the Governor must have called out a company of the National Guard. Stern noticed some state police, too. The house was well guarded on the three sides surrounded by a neat, white picket fence. In the back, the severe drop into the ravine made ...
— Martians Never Die • Lucius Daniel
... French village of X, and here a funny phenomenon was witnessed. From all sides the shrewd inhabitants of the village came running, scores of them, with bottles of wine. The laughing German soldiers got out and, negotiating over a picket fence, returned with the refreshments while the inhabitants made off with German coin. I saw bottles of champagne change hands here for the sum of 25 cents. In spite of the cheapness of wine, however, the German soldier is well disciplined and does not "go the limit"; ...
— The New York Times Current History: the European War, February, 1915 • Various
... a weird ominous scene. Up the empty harbor, under a dark and cloudy sky, came four barges, black with negro laborers, and ahead and around and behind them came police boats throwing their searchlights upon an angry swarm of union picket dories, from which as they drew nearer I heard furious voices shouting, "Scab!" One of the barges docked where I stood and the negroes quickly slunk inside. I drew back from them as they passed, for to me too they were "scabs" that night. Afraid ...
— The Harbor • Ernest Poole
... but as he was about to remount, and had one foot in the stirrup, the horse became frightened at some pigs and sprang suddenly to one side. The superintendent fell across the fence and a very sharp picket pierced his stomach, when Michael ...
— The Kreutzer Sonata and Other Stories • Leo Tolstoy
... of something that watches us softly, as the shadows glide down in the yard; That shall go with my soldier to battle, and stand with my picket on guard. Spirits of loving and lost ones—watch softly with Harry to-night, For to-morrow he goes forth to battle—to arm ...
— The Universal Reciter - 81 Choice Pieces of Rare Poetical Gems • Various
... not very many years ago that I used to play at picket; there was a gentleman of your robe, a dignitory of Lincoln, very well known and remembered in the ordinaries, but being not long since dead, I will save his name. Now I used to play pieces, and this gentleman would always go half-a-crown with me; and so all the while he sate on my hand he very ...
— Andrew Marvell • Augustine Birrell
... tired from his long ride, he stretched himself for a short rest. He dozed. Something touched his foot. It was the riata with which he had picketed the pony. He meant to travel again that night. He would sleep a little while. The horse, circling the picket, would be sure to ...
— Overland Red - A Romance of the Moonstone Canon Trail • Henry Herbert Knibbs
... from their pits and from the sugar-house of the plantation, and now took good care to keep out of sight. Picket-guards were thrown out by the officers of the army, and those who had been in the fight took a much-needed rest, and looked after the dead and wounded. There was certainly a touching scene at the temporary hospital, where one soldier started ...
— American Boy's Life of Theodore Roosevelt • Edward Stratemeyer
... Finot should enter on a political career, his uncle would be his secretary, and receive all the contributions levied in his department on big affairs. Anybody would take Giroudeau for a fool at first sight, but he has just enough shrewdness to be an inscrutable old file. He is on picket duty; he sees that we are not pestered with hubbub, beginners wanting a job, or advertisements. No other paper has his equal, ...
— A Distinguished Provincial at Paris • Honore de Balzac
... had been inspecting the mules and the horses on picket-line, and silently forming his conclusion. He now returned to Captain Glynn and shared ...
— Red Men and White • Owen Wister
... beef-cattle driven along for the use of the men. These animals subsisted entirely by grazing. To secure them from straying off at night, they were driven into corrals formed of the wagons, or tethered to an iron picket-pin driven into the ground about fifteen inches. At the outset of the expedition many laughable scenes took place. Our horses were generally wild, fiery, and unused to military trappings and equipments. Amidst the fluttering of banners, the sounding of bugles, the rattling of ...
— The Old Santa Fe Trail - The Story of a Great Highway • Henry Inman
... a picket of archers stood, taking what shelter they could find in the hollow of the arched doorways, and all powdered with the snow; and it was not until Dick's conductors had exchanged a word with these, that they were suffered to pass forth and enter the ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 8 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Some of the monoliths appear like broken, knotty tree-trunks. Others stand straight and suggest the Egyptian obelisks. They hold rude natural hieroglyphics in relief. One mountain, which is known as Turret-Top, is crowned with what from a distance seems to be a gigantic picket-fence. This fence is formed by ...
— Wild Life on the Rockies • Enos A. Mills
... "but we can't turn the horses loose. We'll have to picket 'em with the lariats. I saw some loco-weed back here a piece, and if they get to eating that, they'll sure go plum crazy. The burro won't eat it, but I wouldn't trust ...
— McTeague • Frank Norris
... 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 ...
— Barlasch of the Guard • H. S. Merriman
... Yes—in my absence. When I'm on the spot I prefer to play picket-duty myself. I may be eccentric. But that's one of my notions, and I've an idea it's one of ...
— Mrs. Red Pepper • Grace S. Richmond
... so pull yourself together. I am here with twenty others of the 7th I.Y. on outlying picket, and although the affair began rather joylessly, we are getting on very well now. By way of parenthesis, it is more than passing strange that whenever I try to write a letter somebody always starts singing. At ...
— A Yeoman's Letters - Third Edition • P. T. Ross
... for the sailors, being very level and mostly green pasture, so that they kept along pretty easily, seeming just in their glory, all this being new work to them. After some little firing from the cannon the enemy retreated into the town, which was well fortified. We placed an outlying picket of some three hundred men to watch the enemy's manoeuvres, while the body of our army encamped in the rear in a line stretching from sea to sea, so that the town standing upon a projecting piece ...
— The Autobiography of Sergeant William Lawrence - A Hero of the Peninsular and Waterloo Campaigns • William Lawrence
... sound. The stricken horse upon which the lion leaped shrieked out its terror and its agony. Several about it broke their tethers and plunged madly about the camp. Men leaped from their blankets and with guns ready ran toward the picket line, and then from the jungle beyond the boma a dozen lions, emboldened by the example of their fellow charged fearlessly ...
— Tarzan and the Jewels of Opar • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... Street, twisted a fresh copy of the Morning Herald into a fiendishly clever knot, and hurled it in the general direction of a front porch that flashed past on his right. Never slowing, Gary threw the next paper entirely across the street. He chuckled as it cleared a picket fence. "Bang, bang!" he blurted. His red shirt, with a picture of a mounted cowboy on the back, ballooned in the early ...
— Stopover Planet • Robert E. Gilbert
... enjoyingly. It was lonely and monotonous work, riding back and forth through the darkness, keeping a sharp lookout for wolves or Indians, driving straggling cattle back to the herd, in brief, doing the picket duty ...
— Lahoma • John Breckenridge Ellis
... cried the old man, "I ought to have twice as much. There's Abe Tucker gets fifteen dollars because he caught cold on picket duty, and ...
— Captain Jinks, Hero • Ernest Crosby
... horse. The former are of canvas or webbing provided with a ring at one end and a big bolted wooden hook at the other. The latter should be half-inch lines of good quality. Thirty-three feet is enough for packing only; but we usually bought them forty feet long, so they could be used also as picket-ropes. Do not fail to include several extra. They are always fraying out, getting broken, being cut to free a fallen horse, or ...
— The Mountains • Stewart Edward White
... command of the Choctaws when you leave? Will they be sufficient to picket and scout on the other side of the river far enough to give notice of any advance of the enemy down the river? I do not wish it to be generally known that Cabell's forces are under my command, but prefer the enemy should think them a separate command; ...
— The American Indian as Participant in the Civil War • Annie Heloise Abel
... road from the village of Champaubert, Karl Biedenkopf, a native of Hesse-Nassau and a private of artillery, was doing picket duty. The moonlight turned the broad highroad toward Epernay into a gleaming white boulevard down which he could see, it seemed to him, for miles. The air was soft and balmy, and filled with the odour of hay which the ...
— The Man Who Rocked the Earth • Arthur Train
... to 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
... second will go, but they'll save the others easily enough, now that you have pointed out that the lines may be utilized otherwise than as adjuncts of performances on the high trapeze!" They were standing by a picket-fence, and he leaned against it, overcome by mirth in which she did not join. Her gravity reacted upon him at once, and his laughter was stopped short. "Will you not accept me as an escort to your home?" he said formally. "I do not know," she ...
— The Two Vanrevels • Booth Tarkington
... has not yet mounted to the murder-pitch. There will Bouille stand, certain at least of one man's purpose; in grim calmness, awaiting the issue. What the intrepidest of men and generals can do is done. Bouille, though there is a barricading picket at each end of the street, and death under his eyes, contrives to send for a Dragoon Regiment with orders to charge: the dragoon officers mount; the dragoon men will not: hope is none there for him. The street, as we say, ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... is considered a good miller," said Helen, again; "and he does not neglect his property. He is not miserly in that way. There isn't a picket off the fence, or a hinge loose anywhere. He isn't at all what you consider a miser must be and look like; yet he is always hoarding money and never spends any. But indeed I do not tell you this to trouble you, Ruthie. ...
— Ruth Fielding of the Red Mill • Alice B. Emerson
... the fields, crossing a road now and then, and keeping clear of all living things that he found. Presently he came to a high picket-fence, surrounding a great inclosure, in which sat a large house in a grove of eucalyptus-trees. Romulus was thirsty, and the playing of a fountain among the trees tempted him sorely. He might have found courage to venture within had he not at that moment discovered a human being, not ten feet ...
— The Ape, the Idiot & Other People • W. C. Morrow
... saddle-horses back to the willows and picket them. The rest to the stables and bring out the working beasts. The plows are by the corral, and the first team that comes up is to be harnessed to each in turn. Then start in, and turn over a full-depth furrow ...
— Winston of the Prairie • Harold Bindloss
... we passed, and leaving them baying behind us, until we came to where the Potosi road forked off to the right; thenceforward, fearing an ambush, we rode slowly and with great caution, stopping often to dismount and reconnoitre moon-lit fields beyond the roadside hedges. At length, after passing a picket of our riflemen, we came to a large adobe house directly on the roadside, where we found the main body of the detachment encamped and sleeping. The house stood something under half a mile from Obraja, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 27, January, 1860 • Various
... failed to animadvert. The man afterwards appeared much ashamed and concerned for what he had done. But the colonel ordered him to be brought early the next morning to his own quarters, where he had prepared a picket, on which he appointed him a private sort of penance; and while he was put upon it, he discoursed with him seriously and tenderly upon the evils and aggravations of his fault, admonished him of the divine displeasure which he had incurred, and urged him to argue, from the pain which he then felt, ...
— The Life of Col. James Gardiner - Who Was Slain at the Battle of Prestonpans, September 21, 1745 • P. Doddridge
... light 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 heard ...
— Rio Grande's Last Race and Other Verses • Andrew Barton 'Banjo' Paterson
... respect an unmixed motive when I see it," she replied, shortly. "But I've been in practice too long to take sudden fancies. There is no profession like ours, Doctor, for putting the sympathies under double picket guard." ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 8 • Various
... in the shed more than an hour. A dozen ambulances drew up before the door, and the peasants of the country round, in their velvet jackets, and large black slouched hats, their whips on their shoulders, held the horses by the reins. A picket of hussars arrived soon after, and their officer dismounting, entered ...
— The Conscript - A Story of the French war of 1813 • Emile Erckmann
... 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 to kill; and on reaching the spot the signal was ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume IV of IV - Kumhar-Yemkala • R.V. Russell
... interest me, and I crossed a narrow space of grass to where a broken picket fence was visible amid a fringe of weeds. No description can fitly picture the gloomy desolation surrounding that ramshackle place. It got upon the nerves, the decay, the neglect apparent on every side. The very silence seemed depressing. Evidently this fence, now a mere ...
— Gordon Craig - Soldier of Fortune • Randall Parrish
... any price and bought six, ate them one after the other without the pretense of a halt and moodily shied the last skin at a sparrow, realizing then with a shock that the negro had already untied the mule from the picket fence. The precipitancy of it all made him slightly uncomfortable. Either the negro was too lazy to bargain or the offer was out of all proportion to the mule's ...
— Kenny • Leona Dalrymple
... ears in the direction of the sound, and rise to their feet and stand trembling, with extended nostrils snuffing the unknown danger, pawing the ground, and occasionally making desperate efforts to break loose from their picket ropes. ...
— The Young Carthaginian - A Story of The Times of Hannibal • G.A. Henty
... stopped, and Olive slipped out, and, before Mrs. Easterfield had any idea of what she was going to do, the girl climbed the rail fence which separated the road from the captain's pasture field. Between this field and the garden was a picket fence, not very high; and, toward a point about midway between the little tollhouse and the dwelling, Olive now ran swiftly. When she had nearly reached the fence she gave a great bound; put one foot on the upper rail to which the pickets were nailed; and then went over. What ...
— The Captain's Toll-Gate • Frank R. Stockton
... moment's silence, then Judson continued: "Funny thing happened afterward, though. Jacket had to do his turn at picket duty that night, and he got scared of the dark. We heard him squalling ...
— Rainbow's End • Rex Beach
... a good way to the westward, and, as we fancied, clear of the enemy, when, on doubling a high rock, round which the path led, we came suddenly upon a picket. Owing to the precautions we had taken, however, they did not hear or see us until almost within a dozen paces. To leap on our horses and dig our spurs into their flanks, was the work of a moment; and before the Spanish soldiers could spring forward and seize our reins, ...
— In New Granada - Heroes and Patriots • W.H.G. Kingston
... Mechanical plodders and the indifferent routinists Most pathetic image in the world to many women - own tears Not handicapped with any burdensome ideals Nothing so humble that taste cannot be shown in it Patronized, which is not a pleasant feeling Picket-guard at the extreme outpost Saint may be a sinner that never got down to "hard pan" Talk without words is half their conversation Truth is only safe when diluted Turning bread and milk into the substance ...
— Widger's Quotations from the Works of Oliver W. Holmes, Sr. • David Widger
... such an agony through flies, that he committed suicide. You know animals will do that. I've read of horses and dogs drowning themselves. This horse had been clipped and his tail was docked, and he was turned out to graze. The flies stung him till he was nearly crazy. He ran up to a picket fence, and sprang up on the sharp spikes. There he hung, making no effort to get down. Some men saw him, and they said it was a clear ...
— Beautiful Joe • Marshall Saunders
... 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
... born a Belgian, and gave his story in broken French, broken in words as well as grammar, for he had been imbibing something stronger than water. It appeared that his valiant self and two others equally brave—one a Frenchman, the other a Prussian—had been selected to serve as a picket, or avante garde, as he termed it, some distance from the fort, at a place called the "Barrier." When at midnight they heard the approach of the enemy. "Je mette mon fusil a mon bras," he said; "et a le Francais je di, Prenez—garde! ...
— Kathay: A Cruise in the China Seas • W. Hastings Macaulay
... one of the greatest industries of the world to-day, amounting to millions of dollars annually. The usefulness of India rubber is thus described in the North American Review: "Some of our readers have been out on the picket-line during the war. They know what it is to stand motionless in a wet and miry rifle-pit in the chilly rain of a southern winter's night. Protected by India rubber boots, blanket and cap, the picket-man is in comparative comfort; a duty which, without that protection, would make him a cowering ...
— Hidden Treasures - Why Some Succeed While Others Fail • Harry A. Lewis
... eye to profit, had already built a picket fence around his starry visitor and was charging admission. He also flatly refused to permit the chipping off of specimens or even the touching of the object. His attitude was severely criticized, but he stubbornly clung ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, May, 1930 • Various
... abide The joys ye know no more! The salt sea spray shall kiss our lips— Kiss clean from the fumes that were, And gulls shall herald waking days With news of far-seen water-ways All warm, and passing fair. They've cast the shore-lines loose at last And coiled the wet hemp down— Cut picket-ropes of Kedar's tents, Of time-clock task and square-foot rents! Good luck to you, old town! Oh, Africa is calling back Alluringly and low And few they be who hear the voice, But they obey—Lot's wife's the choice, And we must surely go! So fare ye, fare ye well, ...
— The Ivory Trail • Talbot Mundy
... close against the wall. Then some fire-arms, saddles, and artillery trappings were hidden away in dark corners, and a lay figure, clothed in fatigue cap and blue overcoat, and which had done duty as "a picket" during the day, was wheeled around with its face to the wall, where it stood guard over Fred's famous picture ofb"The Last Gun at Appomattox." His final touches were bestowed on the grate-fire and the coal-scuttle, both of which were replenished ...
— The Fortunes of Oliver Horn • F. Hopkinson Smith
... fence was broken in one place; Mellen wrenched off the picket and forced a passage. He passed through, and Elizabeth mechanically kept in his footsteps. At the lower end of the yard was a single grave, with the earth still fresh around it; not a tuft of grass had sprung ...
— A Noble Woman • Ann S. Stephens
... whipped 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 ...
— The Magnificent Ambersons • Booth Tarkington
... on the bridge, holding Fran's hand in a warm and sympathetic pressure, he was not unlike one on picket-service who slips over the trenches to hold friendly parley with the enemy. Abbott did not know there was any danger in this brotherly handclasp; but that was because he could not see a fleshy and elderly lady slowly coming down ...
— Fran • John Breckenridge Ellis
... were faces—clean-shaven, bewhiskered, old, young, ageless, and now, here and there, a woman. The mass was rapidly spreading to the opposite curb, and, as St. Anthony's around the corner let out its box-holders, it overflowed to the sidewalk and crushed up against the iron picket-fence of a millionaire across the street. The motors speeding along the avenue were compelled to stop, and in a jiffy were piled three, five, and six deep at the edge of the crowd; auto-busses, top-heavy turtles of traffic, ...
— Tales of the Jazz Age • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... been well over the barracks and learned the worst, Brace sharing my surprise that so little plundering had been going on; and whilst we were standing once more in the court with the men drawn up, a picket at the gate, and one of the horses laden with provisions and ammunition, Haynes turned ...
— Gil the Gunner - The Youngest Officer in the East • George Manville Fenn
... and sieges, of picket and skirmishing, of camp life and marching, are wrought out with thrilling detail, making the story truly fascinating; while, in connection with this, useful and practical information respecting men and places is conveyed, and a proper spirit of morality and patriotism inculcated."—Notices ...
— The Angel Children - or, Stories from Cloud-Land • Charlotte M. Higgins
... and the manchet go round, healths are drunk to successes past and glories future, to "Queen Mary's eyes," and to "Prince Rupert's dog." A few hours bring darkness; they move on eastward through the lanes, avoiding, when possible, the Roman highways; they are sometimes fired upon by a picket, but make no return, for they are hurrying past the main quarters of the enemy. In the silence of the summer night, they stealthily ride miles and miles through a hostile country, the renegade Urry guiding them. At early dawn, they see, through the misty air, the low hamlet of Postcombe, where the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 20, June, 1859 • Various
... of our march: A mile or so ahead of us went a picket of eight or ten men mounted on the swiftest beasts, doubtless to give warning of any danger. Next, three or four hundred yards away, followed a body of about fifty Kendah, travelling in a double line, and behind these the baggage men, mounted like everyone else, and leading behind ...
— The Ivory Child • H. Rider Haggard
... and Slocum's corps (the Twelfth), the whole being under the command of General Slocum, left camp for Kelly's Ford, each accompanied by three batteries. A detachment was thrown over, in boats, on the evening of the 28th, which dispersed the picket guard; and by the next morning the entire force was across the river and on their way to the Rapidan, the Fifth Corps taking the direction of Elley's Ford and the Eleventh and Twelfth Corps that of Germania Ford. Stoneman's cavalry crossed at the same time with the others, and moved to Culpeper, ...
— Chancellorsville and Gettysburg - Campaigns of the Civil War - VI • Abner Doubleday
... later, the United States built a military post known as Fort Clark, which may be found on some of the present-day maps. The huts were built of logs, and were arranged in two rows, four rooms in each hut, the whole number being placed in the form of an angle, with a stockade, or picket, across the two outer ends of the angle, in which was a gate, kept locked at night. The roofs of the huts slanted upward from the inner side of the rows, making the outer side of each hut eighteen feet high; and the lofts of these were made warm and comfortable ...
— First Across the Continent • Noah Brooks
... captain permit me to take my horse and those of three or four more men outside the corral? Sergeant Clancy says he has no authority to allow it. We have found a patch of excellent grass, sir, and there is hardly any left inside. I will sleep by my picket-pin, and one of us will keep awake all the time, if ...
— The Deserter • Charles King
... than ordinary 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 ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... dining-room, when the door was open, and was once observed to step up, gracefully, and take bread from the table. It perambulated the garden walks. It would, when the back-gate was shut, jump over a six feet picket fence, with the ease and lightness ...
— Personal Memoirs Of A Residence Of Thirty Years With The Indian Tribes On The American Frontiers • Henry Rowe Schoolcraft
... measures to this end failed, he resolved to attack them. Therefore, at three o'clock in the morning of the twelfth of November, three hundred colony troops, Canadians and Indians, under an officer named Beletre, wakened the unhappy peasants by a burst of yells, and attacked the small picket forts which they had built as places of refuge. These were taken one by one and set on fire. The sixty dwellings of the settlement, with their barns and outhouses, were all burned, forty or fifty of the inhabitants were killed, and about three times that number, chiefly women and children, ...
— Montcalm and Wolfe • Francis Parkman
... early and I rehearsed mentally the stage business for the drama about to be enacted when Bunch crept through the picket lines. ...
— Back to the Woods • Hugh McHugh
... a fence in an American village where I once lived, that an enterprising fruit-grower had put around his orchard,—a structure of upright pickets, and each picket armed with a nail in the top. One night four individuals bent on stealing apples, were confronted by the owner and a bull-dog and forced to surrender or leap the fence. Three of them were "treed" by the dog; the fourth sprang over the fence, but left the seat of ...
— Overland through Asia; Pictures of Siberian, Chinese, and Tartar - Life • Thomas Wallace Knox
... to 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, ...
— The Second William Penn - A true account of incidents that happened along the - old Santa Fe Trail • William H. Ryus
... go out until the day, until the morning break, Out to the winds' untainted kiss, the waters' clean caress. I will forget my ankle-ring and snap my picket-stake. I will revisit my lost loves, ...
— Songs from Books • Rudyard Kipling
... 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
... shuffled forward, the other seven houses of the row 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
... fizika. Physician fizikisto, kuracisto. Physics naturscienco, fiziko. Physiognomy fizionomio. Physiology fiziologio. Piano fortepiano. Piaster piastro. Pick (choose) elekti. Pick (implement) pikfosilo. Pickaxe pikfosilo. Picket (military) pikedo. Pickle (to salt) pekli. Pickle (liquid) peklakvo. Pickpocket fripono. Picnic kampfesteno. Picquet (cards) pikedo. Pictorial ilustrita. Picture pentrajxo. Picturesque pentrinda. Pie pastecxo. Piebald multkolora. Piece (to patch) fliki. Piece ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... 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 ...
— The Watchers of the Plains - A Tale of the Western Prairies • Ridgewell Cullum
... 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 ...
— Some Principles of Maritime Strategy • Julian Stafford Corbett
... marched rapidly and surely. As we approached Germantown, we found an evidence that the enemy were aware of our vicinity, and Wayne determined to attack at once. Just at dawn of day, a party of Sullivan's troops attacked the picket at the end of the village, and our whole division rushed on as the picket was driven in. The surprise was complete. The enemy could not make a stand. They were broken and routed, and their tents and marquees burnt. We pushed on, took ...
— The Old Bell Of Independence; Or, Philadelphia In 1776 • Henry C. Watson
... mule; "leastwise, not a-straddle o' these hyar conspikerous critters. Whether the sogers hev goed down inter the valley or no, they're sartin to hev left some o' the party ahind, by way o' keepin' century. Let's picket the animals out hyar, an' creep forrad afut. That'll gie us a chance o' seeing in, ...
— The Lone Ranche • Captain Mayne Reid
... your glad rags, and start off for church, then have to wade around in 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 ...
— More Toasts • Marion Dix Mosher
... Jonas did try the experiment. He got two narrow boards, which were once pickets belonging to a picket fence, one end of each was sharp, so that it could be driven down into the ground. Then he selected a certain part of the yard, in a corner, where the dial would be out of the way, and yet the path to the barn led along pretty ...
— Rollo's Experiments • Jacob Abbott
... forty or fifty feet back from the roadway, on the north side, overlooking the waters of the bay. The lot was divided from the street by a low picket fence, and admission to the enclosure was gained by means of a small gate. In those remote times there were few buildings intervening between Duchess street and the water front, and those few were not very pretentious; ...
— The Gerrard Street Mystery and Other Weird Tales • John Charles Dent
... 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 an unusual ...
— Westways • S. Weir Mitchell
... at the San Juan picket with the American troops has been adjusted without prejudice. Our preparations ought to continue. Awaiting ...
— The Philippines: Past and Present (vol. 1 of 2) • Dean C. Worcester
... of the ravelin, to pick up the wounded, and bear them within the walls for surgical help. They were so near he could see their faces, could hear them speak; yet he durst not make any sign to them when he lay within range of the French picket's fire. ...
— Sylvia's Lovers, Vol. III • Elizabeth Gaskell
... submit to, with the added risk of violence on the part of the mob of the city, fired to a safe and flaming enthusiasm by the reports continually coming in of new victories on the frontier, each little skirmish with a picket being invariably followed by the withdrawal of the Turks to a position well within their own territory, according to the general order to accept no combat under actual conditions, so that the least skirmish ...
— The Autobiography of a Journalist, Volume II • William James Stillman
... Roussillon are of a distinct stamp. Take him as he was. Born in France, on 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 waifs. These were Alice, now called Alice Roussillon, and the hunchback, Jean. ...
— Alice of Old Vincennes • Maurice Thompson
... bivouacked under boughs hung with weird gonfalons of gray moss, slit here and there by the edge of a star. Many a time we crawled stealthily through tangled vines and shrubs to the skirt of a wood, and across a fallen log sighted the Yankee picket whose bayonet point glimmered now and then far off in the moonlight. We spent a great many hours around the camp-fire counting ...
— The Queen of Sheba & My Cousin the Colonel • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... a third, "it is a picket of the Prince's;" and so it was, but the very fact of his having advanced his outposts so far, showed how he trembled ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... hung kindly 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
... saddle. There; you can support yourself with that arm a moment. Did you ever see horses stand so quiet. I've got hold of yours, and now I'll fasten them together. I say, Whitefoot, you don't kick, do you?" And then he contrived to picket the horses to two branches, and having got out his case of sherry, poured a small modicum into the silver mug which was attached to the apparatus and again supported Graham while he drank. "You'll be as right as a trivet by-and-by; ...
— Orley Farm • Anthony Trollope
... 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
... of the picket fence which bounded Maitland Camp on the west, Paddy the cook communed with himself, and Weldon ...
— On the Firing Line • Anna Chapin Ray and Hamilton Brock Fuller
... 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 limbs reaching ...
— Treasure and Trouble Therewith - A Tale of California • Geraldine Bonner
... herbalist were upon the best of terms. The good man may have counted upon the unfavorable effect of certain potions which he should find his opportunity in counteracting; at any rate, he now and then stopped and exchanged greetings with Mrs. Todd over the picket fence. The conversation became at once professional after the briefest preliminaries, and he would stand twirling a sweet-scented sprig in his fingers, and make suggestive jokes, perhaps about her faith in a too persistent course of thoroughwort elixir, in which ...
— The Country of the Pointed Firs • Sarah Orne Jewett
... time she had; but if I had known that there was a confounded, long-legged, sniffy young idiot all that while trying to steal my daughter away from me!" In an access of wrath at the idea Armorer wrenched off the picket that he clutched, at which he laughed and stuck his ...
— Stories of a Western Town • Octave Thanet
... you by word or look.—But may be she has no feeling.—No feeling! you can have none, if you say so: no penetration, if you think so. Would not you think me a tyrant if I put a poor fellow on the picket, and told you, when he bore it without a groan, that it was because he could not feel? You do worse, you torture the soul of the woman who loves you; she endures, she is calm, she smiles upon you even in agony; and you tell me ...
— Tales And Novels, Vol. 8 • Maria Edgeworth
... quivered like a child's; he turned from her, but she had looked once into his face as the Law Giver must have looked at the land of Canaan outspread at his feet. She watched him go down the long path and through the picket gate, she watched the big yellowish dog that had waited for him lumber up on to its feet—stretch—then follow him. She was conscious of but two things, the vengeful lie in her soul, and a little space on her arm that his wet ...
— The Moccasin Maker • E. Pauline Johnson
... He had some time since decided upon his course, and as soon as he was a short distance away from the clump of trees, he set out at a brisk walk, and made no effort at concealment. He did not care, now, if he were halted by a British picket or sentinel. ...
— The Dare Boys of 1776 • Stephen Angus Cox
... was struggling to come up over the mountains in the east, the whole camp was startled by Sutoto, who, with a number of the Berees during the night, had acted as a picket, to observe the ...
— The Wonder Island Boys: Conquest of the Savages • Roger Thompson Finlay
... the boys crossin' the old ford," he said quietly. "Goin' to picket the other bank, I reckon. There's likely to be some more comin' down the opposite way from the bridge. That's Lacy's ...
— The Strange Case of Cavendish • Randall Parrish
... from the splendid baronet and coach, down to wagons and carts, filled with women and children, some in finery and some in rags, for it was the People's president." The great square which now separates the Capitol and the Library of Congress was in Jackson's day shut in by a picket fence. This enclosure was filled with people—"a vast agitated sea"—while in all directions the slopes of Capitol Hill were thickly occupied. At noon watchers on the west portico, looking down Pennsylvania Avenue, saw a group of gentlemen issue from the Indian Queen ...
— The Reign of Andrew Jackson • Frederic Austin Ogg
... 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 details to, ...
— The Campaign of Chancellorsville • Theodore A. Dodge
... clouds and the air was damp before Ruth missed the bright warmth on the piazza, and began to walk back and forth by way of keeping warm. A gravelled path led to the gate and on either side was a row of lilac bushes, the bare stalks tipped with green. A white picket fence surrounded the yard, except at the back, where the edge of the precipice made it useless. The place was small and well kept, but there were no flower beds except at the front of the house, and there were only two or ...
— Lavender and Old Lace • Myrtle Reed
... thrown out his reserve force in the shape of a picket line, located some distance out from the herd and covering a circle something more than a mile in diameter. This was done so that in case of an attack they would have an opportunity to drive off their enemy without great danger to the herd. The battle, more than likely, would be ...
— The Pony Rider Boys in Montana • Frank Gee Patchin
... was open to us. Their troops guarded us, and we reconnoitred, surveyed, located, and built inside of their picket-line. We marched to work by the tap of the drum with our men armed. They stacked their arms on the dump, and were ready at a moment's warning to fall in and fight ...
— The Great Salt Lake Trail • Colonel Henry Inman
... is a strong fascine about ten inches in diameter and two feet in length, with a picket inserted through the middle. It is used in the double sap in ...
— Elements of Military Art and Science • Henry Wager Halleck
... evidence, barbers, joiners, plumbers, grocers, fruit-sellers, bakers and venders of small wares, and there was the largest and most splendidly recruited army of do-nothings that the sun ever shone upon. These forever-out-of-workers, leaning against every lamp post, fence picket, corner house, and barber pole in the vicinity, were all male, but they were mostly mated to women fully worthy of them, their wives doing nothing with equal assiduity in the back streets hard by.—Stay, they did one thing, they added copiously to the world's ...
— The Girl and the Kingdom - Learning to Teach • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... was the capital means by which the Augustan poet avoided precision and attained nobility of style. It enabled him to speak of a woman as a "nymph," or a "fair"; of sheep as "the fleecy care"; of fishes as "the scaly tribe"; and of a picket fence as a "spiculated paling." Lowell says of Pope's followers: "As the master had made it an axiom to avoid what was mean or low, so the disciples endeavored to escape from what was common. This they contrived by the ready expedient of the periphrasis. ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century • Henry A. Beers |
