"Winnowing" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... thing grew plainer as they drew near, and when hard by it, they saw that it was an Ifrit, with a head like a huge dome and tusks like grapnels and jaws like a lane and nostrils like ewers and ears like leathern targes and mouth like a cave and teeth like pillars of stone and hands like winnowing forks and legs like masts: his head was in the cloud and his feet in the bowels of the earth had plowed. Whenas Hasan gazed upon him he bowed himself and kissed the ground before him, saying, "O Hasan, have no fear of me; for I am the chief of the dwellers in this land, which is the first ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 8 • Richard F. Burton
... amused by a Londoner's brave, yet uncertain, use of simplest rural metaphors, for he had wholly forgotten the winnowing: "surely if I bushel up, even when you tell me, I must ...
— Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor • R. D. Blackmore
... primary and secondary Assemblies, and Cahiers of Grievances; with motions, congregations of all kinds; with much thunder of froth-eloquence, and at last with thunder of platoon-musquetry,—does agitated France accomplish its Elections. With confused winnowing and sifting, in this rather tumultuous manner, it has now (all except some remnants of Paris) sifted out the true wheat-grains of National Deputies, Twelve Hundred and Fourteen in number; and will forthwith open ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... ever-living, ever present; a compulsion not to be controlled because it was not his own; and never to be quenched because it burned within. If he had been a weakling, the seal would have been a seal to self; but because an elemental war for right was winnowing the self out of him, he knew it was ...
— The Freebooters of the Wilderness • Agnes C. Laut
... a decision in these cases, it seemed on the whole preferable to take the risk of including too much rather than the opposite, and to leave the task of further winnowing to the hands ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... continued to sparkle and make its own kind of music; the trout, having become accustomed to the queer thing on the bank and the baited hook among the pebbles, gathered in the ripples stemming the current with winnowing fins. ...
— The Gay Rebellion • Robert W. Chambers
... sake. A light Jersey wagon, a Yankee ox-cart, and two or three sets of American Farming Implements, would have been exactly in play here. Our Scythes, Cradles, Hoes, Rakes, Axes, Sowing, Reaping, Threshing and Winnowing machines, &c., &c., are a long distance ahead of the British—so the best judges say; and where their machines are good they cost too much ever to come into general use. There is a pretty good set of Yankee Ploughs here, and they are likely to do good. I believe Connecticut Clocks and ...
— Glances at Europe - In a Series of Letters from Great Britain, France, Italy, - Switzerland, &c. During the Summer of 1851. • Horace Greeley
... become yet more generously fruitful without losing its soft mellow brightness. Everything seems to settle into conscious repose. The winds breathe gently or are wholly at rest. The few clouds visible are downy and luminous and combed out fine on the edges. Gulls here and there, winnowing the air on easy wing, are brought into striking relief; and every stroke of the paddles of Indian hunters in their canoes is told by a quick, glancing flash. Bird choirs in the grove are scarce heard as they sweeten the brooding stillness; and the sky, land, and water meet and blend ...
— Travels in Alaska • John Muir
... nearing our first halting-place, where it was arranged that we should change horses. This was a farm-house known by the name of Nijnege Pegersky Hootor, twenty-five versts distant from Sizeran. Some men were engaged in winnowing corn in a yard hard by the dwelling; and the system they employed to separate the husks from the grain probably dates from before the flood, for, throwing the corn high up into the air with a shovel, they let the wind blow away the ...
— Russia - As Seen and Described by Famous Writers • Various
... yon whistling shroud, I see yon quivering mast; The black throat of the hunted cloud Is panting forth the blast! An hour, and, whirled like winnowing chaff, The giant surge shall fling His tresses o'er yon pennon staff, White as the ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... is how the misfortune occurred: Seeing herself all withered, the woman took the fan with which her companion had been winnowing maize for the manufacture of beer and shut herself into her hut, carefully closing the door. There she began to tear off her old skin, throwing it on the fan. The skin came off easily, a new one appearing in its place. The operation was ...
— An African Adventure • Isaac F. Marcosson
... prevailed within. Stretched before its hall-door was a small lawn, bounded on the left by a wall that separated it from the farm-yard into which the kitchen door opened. Here were stacks of hay, oats, and wheat, all upon an immense scale, both as to size and number; together with threshing and winnowing machines, improved ploughs, carts, cars, and all the other modern implements of an extensive farm. Very cheering, indeed, was the din of industry that arose from the clank of machinery, the grunting of hogs, the cackling of geese, the quacking of ducks, and all the various other sounds ...
— Fardorougha, The Miser - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... thee oft amid thy store? Sometimes whoever seeks abroad may find Thee sitting careless on a granary floor, Thy hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind; Or on a half-reap'd furrow sound asleep, Drows'd with the fume of poppies, while thy hook Spares the next swath and all its twined flowers: And sometimes like a gleaner thou dost keep Steady thy laden head across ...
— Keats: Poems Published in 1820 • John Keats
... his patients: his eyes are acquainted with horror, and his hands with loathsomeness; another's sickness is his pain. To say nothing of the work that the Winds have to get through, what with sowing and winnowing and getting the ships along; or of Sleep, always on the wing, with Dream at his side all night giving a helping hand. Men have to thank us for all this: every one of us contributes his share to their well-being. And the others have an easy time ...
— Works, V3 • Lucian of Samosata
... came a call, the swinging, twilight-eerie notes of a whip-poor-will; while, from afar off, somewhere in the black woods, hooted an owl. Softly, but with a restless spirit, the night-wind began to stir; and a murmur, like the winnowing of many wings, passed tremulously through the branches which swept the schoolhouse roof. But now ...
— Sunlight Patch • Credo Fitch Harris
... late, A system to bear through the frost-spangled air the warm, crimson waves of his hate. I only could peer and shudder and fear—'twas ever so ghastly and still; But I knew over there in his lonely despair he was plotting me terrible ill. I knew that he nursed a malice accurst, like the blast of a winnowing flame; I pleaded aloud for a shield, for a shroud—Oh, God! ...
— Ballads of a Cheechako • Robert W. Service
... will just make up my last dozen, and to-morrow we'll start fresh. Here, you chalk your accounts up near mine, and then we'll be all straight," said Tommy, showing a row of mysterious figures on the side of an old winnowing machine. ...
— Little Men - Life at Plumfield With Jo's Boys • Louisa May Alcott
... instruction in Latin from the village priest and from a neighboring curate, but he made good use of what he learned. He worked on the farm with his father and his men, ploughing, harrowing, sowing, reaping, mowing, winnowing—in a word, sharing actively and contentedly in all the work that belongs to the farmer's life. And in the long winter evenings or in the few hours of rest that the day afforded, he would hungrily devour the books that were at hand—the "Lives of the Saints," ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 8 (of 8) • Various
... roar of a bevey of grouse drowned her voice; poor Sagamore, pointing madly in the blackberry thicket all unperceived, cast a dismayed glance aloft where the sunlit air quivered under the winnowing rush of heavy wings. Siward flung up his gun, heading a big quartering bird; steadily the glittering barrels swept in the arc of fire, hesitated, wavered; then the possibility passed; the young fellow lowered the gun, slowly, gravely; stood a moment motionless with bent head until the rising colour ...
— The Fighting Chance • Robert W. Chambers
... tried now is winnowing three measures of imaginary corn, as one stands in the barn alone with both doors open to let the spirits that come in go out again freely. As one finishes the motions, the apparition of the future husband will come in at one door and pass out at ...
— The Book of Hallowe'en • Ruth Edna Kelley
... which they camped, and waters that they remained at for some time, subsisting on a sort of vetch seed that the natives principally use here for food, and obtained in large quantities on many of the flooded flats by sweeping it into heaps, then winnowing it, then grinding or pounding it between two stones, then mixing it with water into the consistency of damper, and finally making a cake and putting it into the ashes the same way as damper—when cooked and fit for use it tastes rather ...
— McKinlay's Journal of Exploration in the Interior of Australia • John McKinlay
... additional sum, to facilitate the housing of his crops. Even in the vicinity of Athens, the operations of the wheat and barley harvest generally occupy the exclusive attention of the agricultural population for three months. The grain is trodden out by cattle; and a Greek who bought a winnowing machine at Athens, was not allowed to make use of it, as the farmers of the revenue contended that the introduction of ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 55, No. 344, June, 1844 • Various
... vainglorious, "woolly-horse," "mule-eating," "free-love," "nigger-embracing" black Republican; an extravagant, insubordinate, reckless adventurer; a financial spendthrift and political mountebank. As the reading public is not always skillful in winnowing truth from libel when artfully mixed in print, even the grossest calumnies were not without their effect in contributing to his defeat. But to the sanguine zeal of the new Republican party, the "Pathfinder" was a heroic and ideal leader; for, upon the vital point at issue, his anti-slavery ...
— Abraham Lincoln, A History, Volume 2 • John George Nicolay and John Hay
... the events have such an air of fable and poetry that it is impossible to separate the fact from the legend. As we have done in previous instances, we give the stories in their essential entirety, leaving to scholars hereafter the task of winnowing the grains of fact out of the chaff which the imagination of the race has left ...
— Japan • David Murray
... shalt thou see true Ministers indeed. Lo how all human means he sets at naught! So that nor oar he needs, nor other sail Except his wings, between such distant shores. Lo how straight up to heaven he holds them rear'd, Winnowing the air with those eternal plumes, That not like mortal hairs fall off or change!" As more and more toward us came, more bright Appear'd the bird of God, nor could the eye Endure his splendor near: I mine bent down. He drove ashore ...
— The Divine Comedy • Dante
... invented killing and conquest and mastery and the winnowing out of the weak by the strong. And now the strong have slain one another; and the weak live for ever; and their deeds do nothing for the doer more than for another. What do you make ...
— Back to Methuselah • George Bernard Shaw
... upper parts bore down too heavily on the lower ones, the sorting, at least, which goes on in every civilized State, constantly separating the wheat from the chaff, went on tolerably well; except at the center and at the Court, where the winnowing machine had worked haphazard and, frequently, in an opposite sense for a century, the separation proceeded regularly, undoubtedly slower, but, perhaps, more equitably than in our contemporary democracy. ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 4 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 3 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... practices of the Papists has called up men's souls, and awakened their eyes to the dangers of their state.—He himself—for he will give up brother and wife to save himself—is not averse to a change of measures; and though we cannot at first see the Court purged as with a winnowing fan, yet there will be enough of the good to control the bad—enough of the sober party to compel the grant of that universal toleration, for which we have sighed so long, as a maiden for her beloved. Time and opportunity will lead the way to more thorough reformation; ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott
... the salsify of our gardens grew rank and wild. At length we dipped into the evening shadow of Durdun Dagh, and reached the village of Koord Keui, on his lower slope. As there was no place for our tent on the rank grass of the plain or the steep side of the hill, we took forcible possession of the winnowing-floor, a flat terrace built up under two sycamores, and still covered with the chaff of the last threshing. The Koords took the whole thing as a matter of course, and even brought us a felt carpet to rest upon. They came and seated themselves around us, chatting ...
— The Lands of the Saracen - Pictures of Palestine, Asia Minor, Sicily, and Spain • Bayard Taylor
... be tempted to think that, if Jesus were indeed the Bridegroom, he might have spared a thought for the friend of the Bridegroom languishing in Machaerus. Above all, the kind of works that Jesus was doing did not fill the role of the Messiah as he had conceived it. Where were the winnowing fan, the axe laid to the roots of the trees, the consuming fire? This gentle friend of publicans and sinners was not what he had expected the One mightier than himself ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... that one only thing I hold to use or waste, to keep or give; My sole possession every day I live, And still mine own despite Time's winnowing. Ever mine own, while moons and seasons bring From crudeness ripeness mellow and sanative; Ever mine own, till Death shall ply his sieve; And still mine own, when saints break grave and sing. And this myself as king unto my King I give, ...
— Poems • Christina G. Rossetti
... How the Priest of Carrelles, in Maine, when surprised with the wife of an old husbandman, gets out of the difficulty by pretending to return him a winnowing fan ...
— The Tales Of The Heptameron, Vol. III. (of V.) • Margaret, Queen Of Navarre
... mechanical operation and the digestive apparatus, may be considered as a winnowing mill, the effect of which is, to extract all that is nutritious and to get ...
— The Physiology of Taste • Brillat Savarin
... was. The shadoof, or water-hoist, is patiently worked as it has been for thousands of years; while the cylindrical hoist employed in Lower Egypt was invented and introduced in Ptolemaic times. Threshing and winnowing proceed in the manner represented on the monuments, and the methods of sowing and reaping have not changed. Along the embanked roads, men, cattle, and donkeys file past against the sky-line, recalling the straight rows of such ...
— The Treasury of Ancient Egypt - Miscellaneous Chapters on Ancient Egyptian History and Archaeology • Arthur E. P. B. Weigall
... completely blanched; it is then once more dried by the fire or in the sun, passed under a large wooden roller, and through a hair sieve. When it has become white and fine, it is placed in a kind of linen winnowing-fan, which is kept damp in a peculiar manner. The workman takes a mouthful of water, and "spirts it out like fine rain over the fan;" the meal being alternately shaken and moistened until it assumes the character of small globules. These are stirred ...
— The Story of Ida Pfeiffer - and Her Travels in Many Lands • Anonymous
... sun some twenty or thirty girls, in colored skirts, laced bodices, and big straw-hats, were threshing the maize on the big red brick threshing-floor, while others were winnowing the grain in great sieves. Young Alvise III. (the old one was Alvise II.: every one is Alvise, that is to say, Lewis, in that family; the name is on the house, the carts, the barrows, the very pails) ...
— Hauntings • Vernon Lee
... milk on the ground from a golden vessel in the shape of a woman's breast. The hand was that of justice: and the milk alluded to the Galaxy or Milky Way, along which souls descended and remounted. Two others followed, one bearing a winnowing fan, and the other a water-vase; symbols of the purification of souls by air and water; and the third purification, by earth, was represented by an image of the animal that cultivates it, the cow or ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... was a triumph. Had there been a thrashing-machine, could its pleasures have been comparable to that of lying in the straw and watching the grain dance from the sheaves under the skilful flails of the two strong men who belaboured them? There was a winnowing-machine, but quite a tame one, for its wheel I could drive myself—the handle now high as my head, now low as my knee—and watch at the same time the storm of chaff driven like drifting snowflakes from its wide mouth. Meantime the oat-grain was flowing in a silent slow stream from the shelving ...
— Ranald Bannerman's Boyhood • George MacDonald
... agriculture. The name of Des Rameures frequently occurred in the conversation as confirmation of their own theories, or experiments. M. des Rameures gave preference to this manure, to this machine for winnowing; this breed of animals was introduced by him. M. des Rameures did this, M. des Rameures did that, and the farmers did like him, and found it to their advantage. Camors found the General had not exaggerated the local importance of this personage, and that it was most essential to conciliate ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... a bear, and jump at you as you go by," said Poppy, when they were tired of playing steam-engine with the old winnowing machine. So she got up on a beam; and Nelly, with a peck measure on her head for a hat, and a stick for a gun, went bear-hunting, and banged away at the swallows, the barrels, and the hencoops, till the bear was ready to eat her. Presently, with a loud roar, the bear leaped; but Nelly wasn't ...
— Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag VI - An Old-Fashioned Thanksgiving, Etc. • Louisa M. Alcott
... the measured falling of the fans, with a child's pleasure on coming across the incident for the first time, in one of those great barns of Du Bellay's own country, La Beauce, the granary of France. A sudden light transfigures a trivial thing, a weather-vane, a windmill, a winnowing flail, the dust in the barn door: a moment—and the thing has vanished, because it was pure effect; but it leaves a relish behind it, a longing that the accident ...
— The Renaissance - Studies in Art and Poetry • Walter Pater
... fifteenth of August, was as little like a religious fete day as one can imagine. At an early hour the winnowing machine rumbled up the road to the square beside the chateau. Under the circumstances each one must take his turn at getting in his wheat and oats, and there was no choice of day or hour. Besides, the village had already ...
— My Home In The Field of Honor • Frances Wilson Huard
... glimpses of supple, exquisite shapes tossing, curling, flowing through the naked woodland. A delicate finger caught at a dead leaf here; there frail arms clutched at a bending, wind-tossed bough; grey sky and ghostly forest were obsessed, bewitched by the winnowing, driving torrent of airy, ...
— The Dark Star • Robert W. Chambers
... eight thousand pounds' worth of machinery—winnowing, plowing, reaping machines; I loaded a ship with them. Next steamer I came out—wife, children, all. Got to the Cape. Where is the ship with the things? Lost—gone to the bottom! And the box ...
— The Story of an African Farm • (AKA Ralph Iron) Olive Schreiner
... greyhounds and yeomanry uniforms—"horse to ride and weapon to wear"—through the hard years which had followed. These were bad masters every way, unthrifty, profligate, needy, and narrow-minded. The younger men who were supplanting them were introducing machinery, threshing machines and winnowing machines, to take the little bread which a poor man was still able to earn out of the mouths of his wife and children—so at least the poor thought and muttered to one another; and the mutterings broke out every now and then in the long ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes
... and cattle-stealing propensities quite beyond the range of English influence and law. The Basuto under Moshesh are equally fond of cultivating the soil. The chief labor of hoeing, driving away birds, reaping, and winnowing, falls to the willing arms of the hard-working women; but as the men, as well as their wives, as already stated, always work, many have followed the advice of the missionaries, and now use plows and oxen instead ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone
... gloriously audacious faith of youth which has just discovered a true apostle. "Pater puts you on to the inner meaning of everything—in art, I mean. He doesn't wander about in the air like Ruskin, though, of course, if you get your mental winnowing machine in proper working order you can get the good grain out of Ruskin. 'The Stones of Venice' and 'The Seven Lamps' have taught me a lot. But you always have to be saying to yourself, 'Is this gorgeous nonsense or isn't it?' whereas in Pater there's no nonsense at all. You're ...
— The Fortunate Youth • William J. Locke
... of the clover plants until after they have produced seed, and subsequently they will grow more assertively and produce pasture as the clover fails. Moreover, should they mature any seed at the same time that the clover seeds mature, they may usually be separated in the winnowing process, owing to a difference in the size of the seeds. But timothy should not be sown with alsike clover that is being grown for seed, since the seeds of these are so nearly alike in size ...
— Clovers and How to Grow Them • Thomas Shaw
... steadfast, as in the days of old. It is a fact worthy of special notice, that persecution not only fails to conquer those who love Jesus, but it fails also to hinder others from embracing his religion. It has first a winnowing power. It separates from the body of the faithful those who are Christians only in name. Then the manifestation of Christian faith and patience by those who remain steadfast, draws men from the world without to Christ. ...
— Companion to the Bible • E. P. Barrows
... an invaluable service in collecting these various experiences, winnowing the sound from the unsound, and disseminating safe deductions and reliable principles to the rapidly increasing band of nut culturists throughout the region of its activities. Our second session has been an unqualified success. May this meeting be surpassed in respect to enthusiasm ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Second Annual Meeting - Ithaca, New York, December 14 and 15, 1911 • Northern Nut Growers Association
... Our Merchant Marine is five times its prewar size. The War Department has billions of dollars worth of equipment and supplies. Considerable maintenance and repair expense is necessary for the equipment which we desire to retain in active status or in war reserve. Expenses will be incurred for winnowing the stocks of surpluses, for preparing lay-up facilities for the reserve fleets, and for storage of reserve ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... November, the people will not look at the moon. The reason assigned for this, is as follows. Once, when the elephant-faced god Pulliar was dancing before the gods, the moon happening to see him, laughed at him, and told him that he had a large stomach, an ear like a winnowing-fan, etc. This so enraged him, that he cursed her. This curse was inflicted on the ...
— Dr. Scudder's Tales for Little Readers, About the Heathen. • Dr. John Scudder
... of that very portion which, from its reference to the secret pursuits and feelings of the writer, would the most livelily pique and gratify the curiosity of the reader. Enough, however, will, I trust, still remain, even after all this necessary winnowing, to enlarge still further the view we have here opened into the interior of the poet's life and habits, and to indulge harmlessly that taste, as general as it is natural, which leads us to contemplate with pleasure a great mind ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. II - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... the darker lake Reflects it: now it wanes: it gleams again As the waves fade, and as the burning threads Of woven cloud unravel in the pale air: 'Tis lost! and through yon peaks of cloud-like snow The roseate sunlight quivers: hear I not The AEolian music of her sea-green plumes Winnowing the crimson ...
— A Prisoner in Fairyland • Algernon Blackwood
... century, such a linen-weaver, named Silas Marner, worked at his vocation in a stone cottage that stood among the nutty hedgerows near the village of Raveloe, and not far from the edge of a deserted stone-pit. The questionable sound of Silas's loom, so unlike the natural cheerful trotting of the winnowing-machine, or the simpler rhythm of the flail, had a half-fearful fascination for the Raveloe boys, who would often leave off their nutting or birds'-nesting to peep in at the window of the stone cottage, counterbalancing a certain awe at the mysterious action of the loom, by a ...
— Silas Marner - The Weaver of Raveloe • George Eliot
... Chia Lakelet. On their way they met men and women eagerly reaping the corn in haste, to convey it to the stockades, while so much was found scattered along the paths by the Mazitu and the fugitives that some women were winnowing it from the sand. Dead bodies and burned villages showed that they were close upon the heels of the invaders. Among the reeds on the banks of the lake was seen a continuous village of temporary huts in which the people had taken ...
— Great African Travellers - From Mungo Park to Livingstone and Stanley • W.H.G. Kingston
... quite free of moss and always dry. Thither the airy folk came flying every evening as surely as doves to the dovecote. They easily found room, grown tiny now and light as the chaff that scuds before the winnowing-fan. For my own part, sallying out from my quiet death-chamber, I would sit down sometimes in the midst of them under shelter of the marble edge-tiles, and in a feeble, whistling voice sing them songs of the days of Saturn and Jupiter; then they would remember the happy ...
— The Well of Saint Clare • Anatole France
... are forty, less one—sowing, ploughing, reaping, binding sheaves, threshing, winnowing, sifting, grinding, riddling, kneading, baking, shearing wool, whitening, carding, dyeing, spinning, warping, making two spools, weaving two threads, taking out two threads, twisting, loosing, sewing two stitches, tearing ...
— Hebrew Literature
... In fact, the Dionysiac 'thiasoi', or some of them, had many features, good as well as bad, in common with the Salvation Army. The cry 'Euoe, Saboe' is of Thracian origin; 'Hyes Attes' is Phrygian. The serpents, the ivy, and the winnowing-fan figured in more than one variety of Dionysiac service. It is not certain that for 'ivy-bearer' ([Greek: kittophorhos]) we should not read 'chest-bearer' ([Greek: kistophoros]) used with reference to the receptacle containing sacred objects, of which ...
— The Public Orations of Demosthenes, volume 2 • Demosthenes
... in stagnant pools. Sometimes it is only buried in the ground. In any of these situations it swells, and in the course of a week or ten days bursts its tegument, from which it is afterwards carefully separated by drying in the sun, rubbing between the hands, and winnowing. It has been much disputed, and is still undetermined, to which sort the preference ought to be given. The white pepper has this obvious recommendation, that it can be made of no other than the best and soundest grains, taken at their most perfect stage of maturity: but on the other hand ...
— The History of Sumatra - Containing An Account Of The Government, Laws, Customs And - Manners Of The Native Inhabitants • William Marsden
... think of what that little, long, crippled female genet did then, in that well-like blackness and that smelly heat, with the chance of retreat open to her, and no one to say her nay. Without hesitation, she dropped to the ground beside the scuffle, and flung herself into it—into the winnowing, slapping radius of big pinions, that beat and beat and beat, smothering all with feathers and dust. One wing caught her squarely, and she fetched up against the wall, winded and dazed; but she was back again in a flash, dancing on her toes, ...
— The Way of the Wild • F. St. Mars
... the winnowing-fan and the Seasons whose feet are in the furrows Heronax lays here from the poverty of a small tilth their share of ears from the threshing-floor, and these mixed seeds of pulse on a slabbed table, the least of a little; for no great ...
— Select Epigrams from the Greek Anthology • J. W. Mackail
... basic rock, and many of them were exceedingly well made and finely shaped; results requiring much patience and no small artistic skill. Oftentimes these mortars were made in the solid granite rocks or boulders, found near the harvesting and winnowing places, and I have photographed many such ...
— The Old Franciscan Missions Of California • George Wharton James
... Chou Jui's wife sat face to face, on the edges of the couch. The waiting-maids brought the tea. After they had partaken of it, old goody Liu could hear nothing but a "lo tang, lo tang" noise, resembling very much the sound of a bolting frame winnowing flour, and she could not resist looking now to the East, and now to the West. Suddenly in the great Hall, she espied, suspended on a pillar, a box at the bottom of which hung something like the weight of a balance, which ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... perfume. One seems to hear the measured motion of the fans, with a child's pleasure on coming across the incident for the first time, in one of those great barns of Du Bellay's own country, La Beauce, the granary of France. A sudden light transfigures some trivial thing, a weather-vane, a wind-mill, a winnowing fan, the dust in the barn door. A moment—and the thing has vanished, because it was pure effect; but it leaves a relish behind it, a longing that the accident ...
— The Renaissance: Studies in Art and Poetry • Walter Horatio Pater
... woodman thinning the trees of the forest; the carpenter, with saw and axe, turning to his own uses the sycamore and the cedar; the builder among his bricks and stones; and the farmer, on the exposed height of the threshing-floor, winnowing his corn with the shovel and the fan. As is usual in the Bible, the shepherd is portrayed with special honour, whether he calls out his neighbours to frighten away the lion from his flock or is seen gathering the lambs in his arms and carrying them in his ...
— The Preacher and His Models - The Yale Lectures on Preaching 1891 • James Stalker
... quantity of water was put into the pot. This process lasted two hours. They were then taken out, and allowed to dry; and after that shaken about in a pan, until all the legs and wings were broken off from the bodies. A winnowing process—Swartboy's thick lips acting as a fan—was next gone through; and the legs and wings were thus got rid of. The locusts were ...
— The Bush Boys - History and Adventures of a Cape Farmer and his Family • Captain Mayne Reid
... they found that they were in an open space which, apparently, had been used for thrashing and winnowing maize, and that the cart was standing under a clump of ...
— Mr. Midshipman Easy • Captain Frederick Marryat
... sabers grew louder to the listeners' ears, through the rumble of pounding hoofs; a bugle's note came winnowing across the fields, and Virgie leaned forward with a confidential whisper to ...
— The Littlest Rebel • Edward Peple
... The women of the establishment worked as they would have done in the town, for the greater comfort of their husbands or their masters. Their occupations included preparing rice with heavy blows of the pestle in wooden mortars, to perfect decortication; cleansing and winnowing maize, and all the manipulations necessary to draw from it a granulous substance which serves to compose that potage called "mtyelle" in the country; the harvesting of the sorgho, a kind of large millet, the ripening of which had just ...
— Dick Sand - A Captain at Fifteen • Jules Verne
... this wall, and empty the ashes on the other side. This problem was given to all the children and grown up persons in the family. One of the children invented the shelf, which, they said, should be like part of the vane of a winnowing machine which they had lately seen; the manner of placing this vane, another of the children suggested: both these ideas joined together, produced the contrivance ...
— Practical Education, Volume II • Maria Edgeworth
... barns there was the sound of a winnowing machine, the door was open, and clouds of dust were coming from it. In the doorway was standing Alehin himself, a man of forty, tall and stout, with long hair, more like a professor or an artist than a landowner. He had on a white shirt that badly needed ...
— The Wife and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... make a bid for it!" shouted the auctioneer, when the farm implements came to be sold. A wave of laughter went through the crowd; it was an old harrow which was put up. The winnowing-machine he called a coffee-grinder. He had something funny to say about everything. At times the jokes were such that the laughter turned on Lars Peter, and this was quickly followed up. But Lars Peter shook himself, and ...
— Ditte: Girl Alive! • Martin Andersen Nexo
... Rupini. After each hoeing, the women and children break the clods with a wooden mallet fixed to a long shaft, which does not require them to stoop. Almost the only other implement of agriculture these people have is the Khuripi, or weeding iron, and some fans for winnowing the corn. In Nepal, however, they have in some measure made a further progress than in India, as they have numerous water-mills for grinding corn. The stones are little larger than those of hand-mills, and the upper one is turned round by being fixed ...
— An Account of The Kingdom of Nepal • Fancis Buchanan Hamilton
... Gracious Lord! I pray Thou wilt look on all I love, Tenderly to-day! Weed their hearts of weariness; Scatter every care Down a wake of angel-wings, Winnowing ...
— Eighth Reader • James Baldwin
... washing is a method of winnowing gold from dirt. In many parts of the mining districts of California, water cannot be obtained during the summer for mining purposes. The miner therefore manages to wash his dirt without water. He takes only ...
— Hittel on Gold Mines and Mining • John S. Hittell
... winnowing through the smells of many distant fields. The doves cooed tireless in the shade, and a bee strayed in my room humming the news ...
— The Gardener • Rabindranath Tagore
... of Turkey.—The entry of Turkey into the great war marks a further stage in the winnowing process from which we hope that a regenerated Europe will emerge. Two of the main causes of the war are the Turk and the Magyar, whose effete and tyrannous systems have each in its own manner and degree long kept South-Eastern Europe ...
— The War and Democracy • R.W. Seton-Watson, J. Dover Wilson, Alfred E. Zimmern,
... which is paved with little cobblestones. More oxen and a patient mule are being driven over it—around and around—until every kernel is trodden out by their hoofs. Later will come the tossing and the winnowing; and, when the grain has been thoroughly cleaned, it will be stored in great earthen jars for the purpose of sale or ...
— A Day In Old Athens • William Stearns Davis
... likewise be performed, unperceived, and alone. You go to the barn, and open both doors, taking them off the hinges, if possible; for there is danger that the being about to appear may shut the doors and do you some mischief. Then take that instrument used in winnowing the corn, which, in our country dialect, we call a wecht; and go through all the attitudes of letting down corn against the wind. Repeat it three times; and the third time, an apparition will pass through the barn, in at the windy door, and out at the other, ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... the stream that ran through the lower ground over the entire property, and even to the topmost storey of his house. He laid a light tramway across the widest part of his estate, and sent the labourers to and fro their work in trucks. The chaff-cutters, root-pulpers, the winnowing-machine—everything was driven by steam. Teams of horses and waggons seemed to be always going to the canal wharf for coal, which he ordered ...
— Hodge and His Masters • Richard Jefferies
... frequent mention is made of the husbandman and his work. Ploughing the land, sowing the seed, reaping the harvest, and winnowing the grain are often referred to. Our picture shows an Eastern husbandman ploughing. How different it is to ploughing in our own land! There is no coulter; and instead of the broad steel plough-share we see a pointed piece of wood. And the long handles with which our labourers guide ...
— Mother Stories from the Old Testament • Anonymous
... first person out of bed in the morning, and the last in it at night. On most farms, he sows the seed in spring, superintends the field-workers in summer, tends the harvest-field and builds the stacks in autumn, and thrashes the corn with the mill, and cleans it with the winnowing-machine in winter. He keeps an account of the workpeople's time, and of the quantity of grain thrashed, consumed on the farm, and delivered to purchasers."—Vol. i. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - April 1843 • Various
... of dregs and filth? What need is there for mentioning anything else? The making corn into bread is a continual cleansing; and yet what a great ado there is before it is effected! There is not only threshing, winnowing, sifting, and separating the bran, but there must be kneading the dough to soften all parts alike, and a continual cleansing and working of the mass till all the parts become edible alike. What absurdity is it then by straining to separate the lees, as it were ...
— Essays and Miscellanies - The Complete Works Volume 3 • Plutarch
... they are gathered, as they lose pungency if they are allowed to ripen. They are placed on mats, and are either trodden with the feet or rubbed by the hands to separate them from the spike, after which they are cleaned by winnowing. Black pepper consists of such berries wrinkled and blackened in the process of drying, and white pepper of similar berries freed from the skin and the fleshy part of the fruit by being soaked in water and ...
— The Golden Chersonese and the Way Thither • Isabella L. Bird (Mrs. Bishop)
... could be kinder. Ah! how brightly, how vividly deeds of kindness stand out on the dark background of sickness and sorrow! I never, never can forget that era of my existence, when the destroying angel seemed winnowing the valley with his terrible wings,—when human life was blown away as chaff before a strong wind. Strange! the sky was as blue and benignant, the air as soft and serene, as if health and joy were revelling in the green-wood shade. The gentle ...
— Ernest Linwood - or, The Inner Life of the Author • Caroline Lee Hentz
... then remains as pure glass when the shadow has left it. He lives destitute of passions and affections. He lives sinless; for as water wets not the leaf of the lotus, so sin touches not him who knows God." He stands in no further need of virtue, for "of what use can be a winnowing fan when the sweet southern wind is blowing." His meditations are of this sort: "I am Brahm, I am life. I am everlasting, ...
— Ten Great Religions - An Essay in Comparative Theology • James Freeman Clarke
... Boaz was to have a winnowing of barley, Naomi told Ruth to make herself ready, putting on her best clothing, and to go to the winnowing and the feast and to ask ...
— Wee Ones' Bible Stories • Anonymous
... Libraries a. Internet Use Policies in Public Libraries b. Methods for Regulating Internet Use E. Internet Filtering Technology 1. What Is Filtering Software, Who Makes It, and What Does It Do? 2. The Methods that Filtering Companies Use to Compile Category Lists a. The "Harvesting" Phase b. The "Winnowing" or Categorization Phase c. The Process for "Re-Reviewing" Web Pages After Their Initial Categorization 3. The Inherent Tradeoff Between Overblocking and Underblocking 4. Attempts to Quantify Filtering Programs' Rates of Over- and Underblocking 5. Methods of Obtaining Examples ...
— Children's Internet Protection Act (CIPA) Ruling • United States District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania
... inclined to quarrel with the fact that Leam went daily to Steel's Corner to inquire after Alick Corfield, yet, as he got the grain and Alick only the husk, he submitted to the process by which the best was winnowed to his side. As the gain of that winnowing process became more evident he grew philosophically convinced that nothing is so charming in a woman as faithful friendship for a sick man, and that sitting daily for half an hour, always at exactly the same time, with an afflicted mother is the most delightful act ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. XVII, No. 99, March, 1876 • Various
... house and kin, would be evaded for ages of having treacherously forsaken the commonwealth in agony. And the preference for a fighting station would be too eager instead of too backward. It would become often requisite to do what it is evident the Jews in reality did—to make successive sifting and winnowing from the service troops, at every stage throwing out upon severer principles of examination those who seemed least able to face a trying crisis, whilst honourable posts of no great dependency would be assigned to those rejected, ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. 1 (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... immune type—which introduces the paradox that the healthiest diseases from which a race may suffer are those that are most deadly. Where a disease does not kill there is no development against it. It is the winnowing fan of death that makes for the development of animal life. And the correct picture of nature—if we must picture an intelligence behind it—would be that of an intelligence aiming at killing all, and only failing in its purpose ...
— Theism or Atheism - The Great Alternative • Chapman Cohen
... common jack snipe seemed not a whit less mysterious than partridge drumming. It was usually heard on cloudy evenings, a strange, unearthly, winnowing, spiritlike sound, yet easily heard at a distance of a third of a mile. Our sharp eyes soon detected the bird while making it, as it circled high in the air over the meadow with wonderfully strong and rapid wing-beats, suddenly descending and rising, again and again, in deep, wide loops; the ...
— The Story of My Boyhood and Youth • John Muir
... later, furnishes in one day from fifty to one hundred volunteers, the young men cut off their thumbs to escape the draft.[5406] To this scum of society is added the sweepings of the depots and of the jails. Among the vagabonds that fill these, after winnowing out those able to make their families known or to obtain sponsors, "there are none left," says an intendant, "but those who are entirely unknown or dangerous, out of which those regarded as the least vicious are selected and efforts are made to place these in the army."[5407]—The ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 1 (of 6) - The Ancient Regime • Hippolyte A. Taine
... floated on, it looked the place described. We yawned, and yawned, as crews of vessels may; as in warm Indian seas, their winnowing sails all swoon, when by them glides some ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. I (of 2) • Herman Melville
... no better ground for its dislike of a man than that his purity and beauty of character make the lives of others seem base indeed. Bats feel the light to be light, though they flap against it, and the winnowing of their leathery wings and their blundering flight are witnesses to that against which they strike. Jesus had to say, 'The world hateth Me because I testify of it that the deeds thereof are evil.' That witness was the result of His being 'the Light of the world'; and if His followers ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: Romans Corinthians (To II Corinthians, Chap. V) • Alexander Maclaren
... kidney beans, cucumbers, rhubarb, apples, pears, figs, peaches, apricots, grapes, olives, gooseberries, currants, hops, gorse for fences, and English oaks; also many kinds of flowers. Around the farm-yard there were stables, a thrashing-barn with its winnowing machine, a blacksmith's forge, and on the ground ploughshares and other tools: in the middle was that happy mixture of pigs and poultry, lying comfortably together, as in every English farm-yard. At the distance of a few hundred yards, ...
— The Voyage of the Beagle • Charles Darwin
... the rail of a stone bridge together; the clear stream below wound through thickets of mangrove, bamboo, and flowering vines all a-flutter with butterflies; a school of fish stemmed the current with winnowing fins; myriads of brown and gold ...
— The Firing Line • Robert W. Chambers
... on the brow of morn. Nearer the lovely vision rose, and more Aerial clear each moment to his eyes, Who stood in ecstacy of glad surprise, And looks of joyous welcome, while the air was stirred With the swift winnowing ...
— The Coming of the Princess and Other Poems • Kate Seymour Maclean
... other sort of improvements, those which diminish labor, but without increasing the capacity of the land to produce, are such as the improved construction of tools; the introduction of new instruments which spare manual labor, as the winnowing and thrashing machines. These improvements do not add to the productiveness of the land, but they are equally calculated with the former to counteract the tendency in the cost of production of agricultural produce, to rise with the ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • John Stuart Mill
... wall of the gallery stand the large wooden mortars used by the women in husking the PADI. Above these hang the winnowing trays and mats, and on this wall hang also various implements of common use — hats, paddles, ...
— The Pagan Tribes of Borneo • Charles Hose and William McDougall
... overtook and collided with the smaller (and lighter), which were thereby forced upwards. This caused various lateral and contrary movements, resulting in a whirling movement ([Greek: din]) resembling the rotation of Anaxagoras, whereby similar atoms were brought together (as in the winnowing of grain) and united to form larger bodies and worlds. Atoms and void being infinite in number and extent, and motion having always existed, there must always have been an infinite number of worlds, all consisting of similar atoms, in various stages ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 8, Slice 2 - "Demijohn" to "Destructor" • Various
... to the enemy. Such a defection might well have produced a general panic in a better army than that which was encamped under Dundalk. It was necessary to be severe. Six of the conspirators were hanged. Two hundred of their accomplices were sent in irons to England. Even after this winnowing, the refugees were long regarded by the rest of the army with unjust but not unnatural suspicion. During some days indeed there was great reason to fear that the enemy would be entertained with a bloody ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 3 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... they compared it also to a granary, whose store is never diminished, but is continually recruited according to its consumption; whereas they compared the external principle, separate from the internal, to wheat in a winnowing machine, when it is put in motion about its axis; in which case the chaff only remains, which is dispersed by the wind; so it is with the conjugial principle, unless the adulterous principle ...
— The Delights of Wisdom Pertaining to Conjugial Love • Emanuel Swedenborg
... young Favonius shroud, Bending his flagging wing with heavy rains, Yet oft he chases every showery cloud, Winnowing, with pinion light, th' aerial plains; Ah! thus from thee let each dark vapor roll, That rash Ambition gathers on the soul; The jocund Pleasures in her absence rise, Glow in the breast, ...
— Original sonnets on various subjects; and odes paraphrased from Horace • Anna Seward
... case and for the captain or inspector who has directed their efforts, takes all the papers and tabulates all their information. His practiced eye shows him at once that a large part is valueless, much is contradictory, and all needs careful elaboration. A winnowing process occurs then and there; and the officers probably receive a "special detail" from headquarters and thereafter take their orders from the prosecutor himself. The detective bureau is called in and arrangements made for the running down of particular clues. ...
— Courts and Criminals • Arthur Train
... and tide went down, not outraging the calm days by unworthy bustle or impatience. The woods on the neighboring shore were alive with pigeons, which were moving south, looking for mast, but now, like ourselves, spending their noon in the shade. We could hear the slight, wiry, winnowing sound of their wings as they changed their roosts from time to time, and their gentle and tremulous cooing. They sojourned with us during the noontide, greater travellers far than we. You may frequently discover a single pair sitting upon the lower branches of the white-pine ...
— A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers • Henry David Thoreau
... be more winnowing than that to which the Constitution was subjected during more than eighteen months before its adoption. In each State, in each section, its friends and enemies discussed it at meetings and in private gatherings. In New York, ...
— George Washington • William Roscoe Thayer
... were looking in, and the news going out like a winnowing woman with no one to shut the door after her; our passage was crowding with people that should have had a tar-brush in their faces. And of course a good score of them ran away to tell that the Captain had murdered his ...
— Erema - My Father's Sin • R. D. Blackmore
... achromatism was solved by "the mind of a sagacious optician inquiring how this matter was managed in the eye," no more proves that "this could not be in the eye without purpose, which suggested to the optician the only effectual means of attaining that purpose," than would the fact, say, of the winnowing of corn having suggested the fanning-machine prove that air currents were designed for the purpose of eliminating chaff from grain. In short, the real substance of the argument from Design must eventually merge into that which Paley, in the above-quoted passage, expressly passes over—viz., "the ...
— A Candid Examination of Theism • George John Romanes
... decks, they received whole tons of water. The difficulties were increased by a fresh breeze which began to blow, whistling among the shrowds, dashing the sails this way and that, and rending them with horrid split, and such whir as may have visited the dreams of Milton, when he imagined the winnowing of the arch-fiend's van-like wings, which encreased the uproar of wild chaos. These sounds were mingled with the roaring of the sea, the splash of the chafed billows round the vessel's sides, and ...
— The Last Man • Mary Shelley
... quire, 70 And tunes to softer notes her laughing lyre; Bids her gay hours on purple pinions move, And arms her Zephyrs with the shafts of Love, Pleased GNOMES, ascending from their earthy beds, Play round her graceful footsteps, as she treads; 75 Gay SYLPHS attendant beat the fragrant air On winnowing wings, and waft her golden hair; Blue NYMPHS emerging leave their sparkling streams, And FIERY FORMS alight from orient beams; Musk'd in the rose's lap fresh dews they shed, 80 Or breathe celestial ...
— The Botanic Garden - A Poem in Two Parts. Part 1: The Economy of Vegetation • Erasmus Darwin
... breeze sprang up, a strange thing took place. The face of the wave-like heights and hollows began to move. The tiny grains of sand were everywhere in motion, and actually gave out a peculiar singing sound, somewhat resembling the noise of grain when it falls from the spout of a winnowing machine into a sack. It was as if the sand were on the boil. There was no stopping now unless they wanted to be swallowed up in the quicksand. Dorothy noticed that the squaws, and even the braves, ...
— The Rising of the Red Man - A Romance of the Louis Riel Rebellion • John Mackie
... to powers of intelligent choice. As previously remarked, a bank of sea-weed on the sea-shore may be said to have been selected by the waves from all the surrounding sand and stones. Similarly, we may say that grain is selected from chaff by the wind in the process of winnowing corn. Or, if it be thought that there is any ambiguity involved in such a use of the term in the case of "Natural Selection," there is no objection to employing the phrase which has been coined by Mr. Spencer as its equivalent—namely, "Survival of the Fittest." The point of ...
— Darwin, and After Darwin (Vol. 1 and 3, of 3) • George John Romanes
... talking; is it not rather a common mind, Fowler, that has played about between us? You and I and all of us have added thought to thought, but the thread is neither you nor me. What is true we all have; when the individual has altogether brought himself to the test and winnowing of expression, then the individual is done. I feel as though I had already been emptied out of that little vessel, that Marcus Karenin, which in my youth held me so tightly and completely. Your beauty, dear Edith, and your broad brow, dear Rachel, ...
— The World Set Free • Herbert George Wells
... Now at this season they swing in the long strong wind, thro' the lonesome Golden afternoon, shunned by the foraging gulls. Near about sunset the crane will journey homeward above them; Round them, under the moon, all the calm night long, Winnowing soft gray wings of marsh-owls wander and wander, Now to the broad, lit marsh, now to the dusk of the dike. Soon, thro' their dew-wet frames, in the live keen freshness of morning, Out of the teeth of the dawn blows back ...
— In Divers Tones • Charles G. D. Roberts
... later saw us back at home winnowing the town for subscribers and advertising. We divided it into districts, each taking a specified territory. The way we boys hustled was a sight to see. But the way the community warmed to us was another. When the familiar headline, The Republican ...
— Marse Henry, Complete - An Autobiography • Henry Watterson
... way of a proof that growth is none the thicker for being cut back. In other matters, however, neither Sofron nor Arkady Pavlitch objected to innovations. On our return to the village, the agent took us to look at a winnowing machine he had recently ordered from Moscow. The winnowing machine did certainly work beautifully, but if Sofron had known what a disagreeable incident was in store for him and his master on this last excursion, he would doubtless have stopped ...
— A Sportsman's Sketches - Works of Ivan Turgenev, Vol. I • Ivan Turgenev
... and a great winnowing of wings, a flight of cranes and egrets arose from the bank some little distance farther down. Dark forms were moving among the reeds. All the instincts of a constant familiarity with peril alert within him, Laurence had in a moment replaced the case and its contents. His Express was grasped ...
— The Sign of the Spider • Bertram Mitford
... believe me, neighbour, but this little scene in front of us makes me feel less anxious about pushing on wi' that threshing and winnowing next week, that I was speaking about. Why should we not stand still, says I to myself, and fling a quiet eye upon the Whys and the Wherefores, before the end o' it all, and we go down into the ...
— Desperate Remedies • Thomas Hardy
... &c., it will be found to consist of two parts,—the husk, or exterior covering, which is generally of a dark colour, and the inner, or albuminous part, which is more or less white. In grinding, these two portions are separated, and the husk being blown away in the process of winnowing, the flour remains in the form of a light brown powder, consisting principally of starch and gluten. In order to render it white, it undergoes a process called "bolting." It is passed through a series of fine sieves, which separate the coarser parts, leaving ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton
... and to measure simply the degree of success he had in doing what he set out to achieve. But I must confess that it has been difficult to eliminate personal admiration completely in the further winnowing which has resulted in this selection of sixty-three stories. Below are set forth the particular qualities which have seemed to me to justify in each case the inclusion of a story in ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... wish I had used it more in these plains. The valley of S. Cruz appears to me a very curious one; at first it quite baffled me. I believe I can show good reasons for supposing it to have been once a northern straits like to that of Magellan. When I return to England you will have some hard work in winnowing my Geology; what little I know I have learnt in such a curious fashion that I often feel very doubtful about the number of grains [of value?]. Whatever number they may turn out, I have enjoyed extreme pleasure in collecting them. In T. del Fuego I collected and examined some corallines; ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin - Volume I (of II) • Charles Darwin
... bishops, the boy you call me now. Yes, you are right, mistress, though I would it had been another who told me so! Boy indeed I am—or have been—without a thought in my head but of her. The sound of my father's voice has been but as the wind of the winnowing fan. In me it has found but chaff. If you will have me take a side, though, you will find me so far worthy of you that I shall take the side that seems to me the right one, were all the fair Dorothies ...
— St. George and St. Michael • George MacDonald
... existed before weaving made it supply one of nature's imperfections. Wood existed before carpentering took possession of it, and transformed it each day to supply new wants and made us see all the advantages derived from it, giving the oar to the sailor, the winnowing-fan to the laborer, ...
— The World's Great Sermons, Volume I - Basil to Calvin • Various
... the superintendent. "There were a good many bad fellows, but I flatter myself that there are very few now in proportion to the number of men on the line. We are constantly winnowing them out, purifying the ore, as it were, so that we are gradually getting rid of all the dross, and leaving nothing but sterling metal on the line. Why, Mr Tipps, you surely don't expect that railways are to be exempted from black sheep any more than other large companies. Just look at the ...
— The Iron Horse • R.M. Ballantyne
... foreseen, came an experience which taught us seasonably that these redundant materials, crude and miscellaneous, required a winnowing and sifting, which very soon we had; and the result was, an incomparable militia. Chester shone conspicuously in this noble competition. But here, as elsewhere, at first there was no cavalry. Upon that arose ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... it without, and I can feel it within. We also have our spring when the little arterioles dilate, the lymph flows in a brisker stream, the glands work harder, winnowing and straining. Every year nature readjusts the whole machine. I can feel the ferment in my blood at this very moment, and as the cool sunshine pours through my window I could dance about in it like a gnat. So I should, only that Charles ...
— The Parasite • Arthur Conan Doyle
... should love possess his fill? After the fulness of all rapture, still,— As at the end of some deep avenue A tender glamour of day,—there comes to view Far in your eyes a yet more hungering thrill,— Such fire as Love's soul-winnowing hands distil Even from his inmost arc of ...
— The House of Life • Dante Gabriel Rossetti
... indescribable caress in it! Perhaps some such breeze, blowing from Indian waters, might have inspired that prophecy of Islam concerning the Wind of the Last Day,—that "Yellow Wind, softer than silk, balmier than musk,"—which is to sweep the spirits of the just to God in the great Winnowing of Souls.... ...
— Two Years in the French West Indies • Lafcadio Hearn
... men only!" [3] Even improved agricultural tools and machines have had the same opposition to encounter; and in our own time bands of rural labourers have gone from farm to farm breaking drill-ploughs, winnowing, threshing, and other machines, down even to the common drills,—not perceiving that if their policy had proved successful, and tools could have been effectually destroyed, the human race would at once have been reduced to their teeth and nails, ...
— Industrial Biography - Iron Workers and Tool Makers • Samuel Smiles
... separate the chaff from the wheat, pickle by pickle. In this way a score of women may do in a week what a farmer in our country could do easily in a couple of hours. An effort was made to persuade the predecessor of the present Pontiff, Gregory XVI., to sanction the admission into Rome of a winnowing-machine. Its mode of working and uses were explained to the Pontiff. Gregory shook his head; for Infallibility indicates its doubts at times, just as mortals do, by a shake of the head. It was a dangerous thing to introduce into Rome, said the infallible Gregory. Perhaps it was; for ...
— Pilgrimage from the Alps to the Tiber - Or The Influence of Romanism on Trade, Justice, and Knowledge • James Aitken Wylie
... divine being as well as the criminal; the sick, outcasts, and foreigners; animals as well as men; women especially, the married woman as well as the sacred virgin; food, clothes, vessels, property, house, bed, canoes, the threshing floor, the winnowing fan, a name, a word, a day; all are or may be taboo because dangerous. This short list does not contain one-hundredth part of the things which are supposed to be dangerous; but even if it were filled out and made tolerably complete, it ...
— Taboo and Genetics • Melvin Moses Knight, Iva Lowther Peters, and Phyllis Mary Blanchard
... and in framing a judicial system convinces me that the present method of hearing causes is correct. The enthusiastic advocacy of counsel when they are properly restrained as above suggested, and the rules of evidence adapted to winnowing out the false from the true, are admirably adapted ...
— Ethics in Service • William Howard Taft
... second ode of the preceding decade. They formed a society, whose members helped one another in their field work, so that their harvest might be said to be carried home at the same time. Then would come the threshing or treading, and winnowing, after which the groin would be ...
— The Shih King • James Legge
... result is doubtless viewed with much complacency by the parties engaged to bring it about. The lower classes generally leave the saving of the sun or the moon, when eclipsed, to their mandarins, as it is a part of their official business. Some of the people occasionally beat in their houses a winnowing instrument, made of bamboo splints, on the occasion of an eclipse. This gives out a loud noise. Some venture to assert that the din of this instrument penetrates the clouds as high as the very temple of Heaven itself! The sailors connected with junks at this place, on the recurrence ...
— Moon Lore • Timothy Harley
... see after the ducks and chickens, and watch all the threshing and winnowing," said ...
— John Halifax, Gentleman • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
... Lord! kind Lord! Gracious Lord! I pray Thou wilt look on all I love, Tenderly to-day! Weed their hearts of weariness; 5 Scatter every care Down a wake of angel wings Winnowing the air. ...
— Story Hour Readings: Seventh Year • E.C. Hartwell
... night, owing to irregularities caused by war, by wind, by weather, in the packet service, which as yet does not benefit at all by steam. For an extra hour, it seems, the post-office has been engaged in threshing out the pure wheaten correspondence of Glasgow, and winnowing it from the chaff of all baser intermediate towns. But at last all is finished. Sound your horn, guard! Manchester, good-bye! we've lost an hour by your criminal conduct at the post-office: which, however, though I do not mean to part with a serviceable ground of complaint, ...
— The English Mail-Coach and Joan of Arc • Thomas de Quincey
... woman he recognized as his sister's superior—supremacy due to the influence of single-minded integrity and modest dignity. What Mabel said, he believed without gainsaying; while Clara's clever dicta required winnowing to separate the probably spurious from the possibly true. If his tone, in addressing his wife, was seldom affectionate, it was never careless, as that which replied to his ...
— At Last • Marion Harland
... brook which was nearly dried up, and in which there were only a few rivulets left running, they had fastened a hurdle of bamboo, and thrown up a shallow dam behind it. The water which collected was thrown over the dam with a long-handled winnowing shovel. The shovel was tied to a bamboo frame work ten feet high, the elasticity of which made the work much easier. As soon as the pool was emptied, the fisherman was easily able to pick out of the mud a quantity of small fish (Ophiocephalus vagus). ...
— The Former Philippines thru Foreign Eyes • Fedor Jagor; Tomas de Comyn; Chas. Wilkes; Rudolf Virchow.
... universal face, deep hid, and chill, Is one wide dazzling waste, that buries wide The works of man. Drooping, the lab'rer-ox Stands cover'd o'er with snow, and then demands The fruit of all his toil. The fowls of heav'n, Tam'd by the cruel season, crowd around The winnowing store, and claim the little boon Which Providence assigns them. One alone, The red-breast, sacred to the household Gods, Wisely regardful of the embroiling sky, In joyless fields and thorny thickets leaves ...
— Lectures on the English Poets - Delivered at the Surrey Institution • William Hazlitt
... section with the original of our fanning-mill or winnowing-machine for grain. Though China has had the same machines for centuries, we have not knowingly copied many of them. The fanning-mill, porcelain and the cheng may be fairly credited to her. The last is the original ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December 1878 • Various
... me up through the swimming air and laid me in the shadow of the cave—her cave. It was empty as she had left it, and my back pressed the very bed of fern on which she had lain. The fern was dry now, after long winnowing by the wind that found its way into every crevice ...
— Sir John Constantine • Prosper Paleologus Constantine
... animals. What physiognomist is as quick to discern character as a dog is to discover from a stranger's face whether this is a friend or no? Those by-words—"atoms," "affinities"—are facts surviving in modern languages for the confusion of philosophic wiseacres who amuse themselves by winnowing the chaff of language to find its grammatical roots. We feel that we are loved. Our sentiments make themselves felt in everything, even at a great distance. A letter is a living soul, and so faithful an echo of the voice that speaks in it, that finer natures look upon a letter ...
— Father Goriot • Honore de Balzac
... straggler, but chiefly concerned with the gradually opening and brightening sky. Then far away they heard a slight tapping on the trees; and almost at the same moment another sound caused the hearts of the two novices to jump. It was a quick cuck-cuck, accompanied by a rapid and silken winnowing of the air. Then an object, which seemed like a cannon-ball with a long tail attached, came whizzing along. Major Stuart fired—a bad miss. Then he wheeled round, took good aim, and down came a mass of feathers, whirling, until it ...
— Macleod of Dare • William Black
... and the presence of Patty Batch among the soiled women of Swamp's End in the same tale and of the tawdry Millie Slade face to face with the curate in The Mother is again reminiscent of Harte's technique. Like Dickens and like Bret Harte, Duncan was a frank moralist. His chief concern was in winnowing the souls of men and women bare of the chaff of petty circumstances which covered them. His stories all contain at least a minor chord of sentiment, but are usually free from the sentimentality which mars ...
— Harbor Tales Down North - With an Appreciation by Wilfred T. Grenfell, M.D. • Norman Duncan
... free. When He placed the human race upon the surface of this planet He dowered them with freedom, giving to each man self-determining force, by the exercise of which he was to become better than a man or worse than a beast. Good and evil, like wheat and cockle, grow together, in the same field. The winnowing is at harvest-time, not before. Meanwhile, we ourselves have lived to see the fairest portions of this fair creation of God changed from a garden into a desert—pillaged, ravaged, and brought to utter ruin by shot and shell, ...
— Raemaekers' Cartoons - With Accompanying Notes by Well-known English Writers • Louis Raemaekers
... the "witch," made of old clothes and stuffed with gunpowder. At night the whole is set on fire and boys and girls dance round it, swinging torches and singing rhymes in which the words "corn in the winnowing-basket, the plough in the earth" may be distinguished.[291] In Swabia on the first Sunday in Lent a figure called the "witch" or the "old wife" or "winter's grandmother" is made up of clothes and fastened to a pole. This is stuck in the middle of a pile of wood, to which ...
— Balder The Beautiful, Vol. I. • Sir James George Frazer
... use to turn them off and hire another set, for, like the fox in the fable, he knew he should only fare the worse. If the estate was large enough to stand the strain for two or three years, and the manager was a man of self-control enough to keep his temper, and firmness enough to persevere in a winnowing of the whole region round about, treating them meanwhile with decency, and paying them honestly and promptly, he would at last be able to get a set of trusty hands, and give all the negroes of the neighborhood ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 1, July, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... 137) gives a Sinhalese story, with three variants, which is definitely connected with our tales, and confirms my belief that the "False-Proofs" cycle is native to southern India. In Parker's main story the false proofs are five,—ass (voice), two winnowing-trays (ears), two bundles of creepers (testicles?), a tom-tom (eye), and two elephant tusks (teeth). In variant b the false proofs are drum (roar), deer-hide rope (hair), pair of ...
— Filipino Popular Tales • Dean S. Fansler
... He did not quite measure up to John's expectations. The Messiah was to purge the people of evil elements, winnowing the chaff from the wheat and burning it. His symbol was the axe. Jesus was manifesting no such spirit. Was ...
— The Social Principles of Jesus • Walter Rauschenbusch
... plaiting the sheath of the parang; for making bottle-shaped receptacles for rice; for securing the axe to the handle, etc. Women were doing the same work with bamboo, first drying the stalks by standing them upright before a fire. These fine bamboo strings are later used in making winnowing trays and for various kinds of beautifully plaited work. When employed in this way, or on other occasions, the women smoke big cigarettes as ...
— Through Central Borneo: - An Account of Two Years' Travel in the Land of Head-Hunters - Between the Years 1913 and 1917 • Carl Lumholtz
... the large scale is cheaper than on the small; this is as true of agriculture as of other industries. The large farmer has one fixed and one movable steam-engine of his own; he has his own drills, threshing and winnowing machines, reaping and mowing machines. The petty proprietor may hire these, but at a dear rate, and few of them can work to any advantage on his small patches of corn. The large farmer has large fields; he saves area as against the petty proprietors; he has fewer headlands ...
— Speculations from Political Economy • C. B. Clarke
... of the sea and do not even mix salt with their food, nor do they know anything about ships, and oars that are as the wings of a ship. I will give you this certain token which cannot escape your notice. A wayfarer will meet you and will say it must be a winnowing shovel that you have got upon your shoulder; on this you must fix the oar in the ground and sacrifice a ram, a bull, and a boar to Neptune. {90} Then go home and offer hecatombs to all the gods in heaven one after the other. As for yourself, death shall ...
— The Odyssey • Homer
... and large camps were built by private enterprise to be taken in time by the Government. Of course mistakes were made. Of course there were some dishonest contractors and some incompetent officials. But the breath, the winnowing blast of the national need was behind it all. By the end of the first year of war, the "problem of quartering the troops in the chief training centres had ...
— Towards The Goal • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... often get a good thing among the blanks that they seem disposed to continue indefinitely this mild form of speculation. In the final result merit asserts itself, and there is a survival of the fittest. The process of winnowing the wheat from the chaff is a costly one to many, however, I have paid hundreds of dollars for varieties that I now regard as little better than weeds. From thorough knowledge of the best kinds already in cultivation, the propagator should ...
— Success With Small Fruits • E. P. Roe
... threshing rice but is employed for barley. Another common way of knocking out grain is by beating the straw over a table or a barrel. There are all sorts of cheap hand-worked threshing machines. After the threshing of the rice comes the winnowing, which may be done by the aid of a machine but is more likely to be effected in the immemorial way, by one person pouring the roughly threshed ears from a basket or skep while another worker vigorously fans the grain. The result is ...
— The Foundations of Japan • J.W. Robertson Scott |
