"Handful" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... for no more, but ran out of the greenhouse to David's great surprise, and presently came hurrying back with a handful ...
— Work: A Story of Experience • Louisa May Alcott
... himself reared (Polyporus avellanus), is procured by singeing, over a handful of straw, a block of the cob-nut tree, which is then watered and put by. In about a month the fungi make their appearance, and are quite white, of from two to three inches in diameter, and excellent to eat, while their ...
— Fungi: Their Nature and Uses • Mordecai Cubitt Cooke
... that same anxious look suddenly revived in his face, went below into the kitchen, mounted a chair, took down an old broken tea-cup from the top shelf, and poured out into his wrinkled palm a handful of small silver coin—his entire collection of tips, and all the money he had. This he carried to the colonel, with a lie in his mouth that the recording angel blotted out the moment it ...
— Colonel Carter of Cartersville • F. Hopkinson Smith
... the opalescent whites of his eyes forming rings around his irides. Then, grasping the fact that it was done as a joke, he burst into a loud guffaw, slapped his thighs and cried, "Bunyip— bunyip!" bounding away the next moment, for Bostock sent a handful of water ...
— King o' the Beach - A Tropic Tale • George Manville Fenn
... In the 'fifties it fell to a native of Ningpo, where I then lived. His good luck was announced to his wife by the magistrate in person, who conducted her to the six gates, at each of which she scattered a handful of rice, as an omen of good fortune. In the 'sixties, when I had removed to Peking, this honor was for the first time conferred on a Manchu, a son of the General Saishanga. His daughter was deemed a fit consort for the heir to the throne, ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIV • John Lord
... doubt that the Caesar's life was in grave danger, seeing that only a handful of men stood between him and the fury of an excited populace; and these men were without a leader, for the praetorian praefect had been cut off from them, even as he tried to push his way through the ...
— "Unto Caesar" • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... obstacles as a handkerchief, an end of wax candle, a flushed apple, an orange, a lucky penny, a cramp bone, a padlock, a pair of scissors in a sheath more expressively describable as promising young shears, a handful or so of loose beads, several balls of cotton, a needle-case, a cabinet collection of curl-papers, and a biscuit, all of which articles she entrusted individually and separately to Britain to hold, - is ...
— The Battle of Life • Charles Dickens
... and unsolid pledges, my lord," said the Queen; "add at least a handful of thistle-down to give them ...
— The Abbot • Sir Walter Scott
... door, and fell on their father's neck. The man had not had a quiet hour since he left his children in the wood; but the wife was dead. And when Grethel opened her apron the pearls and precious stones were scattered all over the room, and Hansel took one handful after another out of his pocket. Then was all care at an end, and they lived in great ...
— Household Stories by the Brothers Grimm • Jacob Grimm and Wilhelm Grimm
... must be slow and wearing, was quite as certain. It is dreary to look back upon its commencement now, and upon the earlier decades of its progress; and we cannot wonder that those who had it to look forward to half shrank from it. Among them there may have been a handful who could scan the unshaped wilderness as the sculptor does his block, and body forth in imagination the glory hidden within. That which these may have faintly imagined stands before us palpable if not yet perfected, the amorphous veil of the shapely figure hewn away, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - February, 1876, Vol. XVII, No. 98. • Various
... They give to the poor out of a Principle of Charity, which they extend to forraigners, as well as to their own Country-men. But of every measure of rice they boyl in their houses for their families they will take out an handful, as much as they can gripe, and put into a bag, and keep it by it self, which they call Mitta-haul. And this they give and distribute to such poor as they please, or ...
— An Historical Relation Of The Island Ceylon In The East Indies • Robert Knox
... been over childish disappointments, and her mother had dried them. Small and homely and insignificant she stood there in her tragic detachment the symbol of all the woe of France, and of the depraved brutality of a handful of ambitious men who had broken the heart ...
— The Living Present • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... tapped Joel's knee. "We'll work up that way," he said quietly. "When we come to the island, you and I go ashore, and get them where they're hid beneath the rock; and we come back aboard with no one any wiser.... Rich. A double handful of them, Joel...." ...
— All the Brothers Were Valiant • Ben Ames Williams
... with flowers around their fingers. Memory was not even troubled by the decay of the dead, for there remained of them only a handful of ashes. The soul, mingled with the boundless ...
— The Temptation of St. Antony - or A Revelation of the Soul • Gustave Flaubert
... passed the flower bed she gathered a handful and held them to her face with evident relish as they walked through the garden and found seats on the bench ...
— Chit-Chat; Nirvana; The Searchlight • Mathew Joseph Holt
... a handful from another show case, and gave them to Bunny, who held them up so the monkey ...
— Bunny Brown and his Sister Sue • Laura Lee Hope
... One that has been salted and dried requires to be soaked several hours in cold water, and scraped clean. Then take a handful of beech, half as much parsley, a few sprigs of thyme, and a little sage, finely chopped together. Make some holes in the chine with the point of a knife, fill them with the herbs, skewer the meat up in a cloth, and boil it slowly about three hours. A dried pig's face ...
— The Cook and Housekeeper's Complete and Universal Dictionary; Including a System of Modern Cookery, in all Its Various Branches, • Mary Eaton
... produced by (No. 1) taking a pound of Brazil wood, with some rain water, a handful of unslaked lime, and two handsful of ashes; soak all for half an hour in water, "cook" it, and pour it out into another pot, in which is a measure of gum arabic. The wood to be coloured must be cooked in alum water, and then brushed over with the warm colour; the result is a splendid ...
— Intarsia and Marquetry • F. Hamilton Jackson
... with great coolness and precision. When the division on the hours clause was over the main struggle on the Bill, as he had all along maintained, would be also at an end. If the Government carried the clause—and the probability still was that they would carry it by a handful of votes—the two great novelties of the Bill would have been affirmed by the House. The homework in the scheduled trades would have been driven by law into inspected workshops, and the male workers in these same trades would have been brought under the time-restrictions ...
— Sir George Tressady, Vol. II • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... into the hollow of his hand, and turn him about there for critical inspection and definite adjustment to the race, with absolutely no more reverence nor reticence than a buyer of grain shows to a handful of wheat, as he pours it dexterously from hand to hand, and blows the chaff in the seller's face.[G] But both writers alike are left behind us in the library, and are not subsequently brought to mind by anything we encounter in the fields or ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 105, July 1866 • Various
... and go, Picking up grain about the stackyard. Alas for the distressed and the solitary, Deemed fit inmates for the prisons! With a handful of grain I go out and divine[2], How I may be able ...
— The Shih King • James Legge
... these,' replied Fionn; 'the payment I ask is but the head of a warrior, or a handful of berries from the magic ...
— The Book of Romance • Various
... began to march forward in a skirmishing line through the trees towards the deeper recesses of the wood. As far as the listeners could gather, the particular form of black-art to be practised on this occasion was one connected with the sowing of hemp-seed, a handful of which was carried by each girl. At the moment of their advance they looked back, and discerned the figure of Miss Melbury, who, alone of all the observers, stood in the full face of the moonlight, deeply engrossed in the proceedings. By contrast with her life of ...
— The Woodlanders • Thomas Hardy
... tobacco-box or smoking-bag, however, seeing that such things had more to do with it, if possible, than fire. Having struck a spark, which he took captive by means of a piece of tinder, he placed in the centre of a very dry handful of soft grass, and whirled it rapidly round his head, thereby producing a current of air, which blew the spark into a flame; which when applied, lighted the grass and twigs; and so, in a few minutes, a blazing fire roared up among the trees—spouted ...
— The Young Fur Traders • R.M. Ballantyne
... places, superstition hath blinded the hearts of men; in all ages what a small portion hath the true church ever been! Divisum imperium cum Jove Daemon habet. [6354]The patriarchs and their families, the Israelites a handful in respect, Christ and his apostles, and not all of them, neither. Into what straits hath it been compinged, a little flock! how hath superstition on the other side dilated herself, error, ignorance, barbarism, folly, madness, deceived, ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... the American that adores the Almighty Dollar, it is the human race. The human race has always adored the hatful of shells, or the bale of calico, or the half-bushel of brass rings, or the handful of steel fish-hooks, or the houseful of black wives, or the zareba full of cattle, or the two-score camels and asses, or the factory, or the farm, or the block of buildings, or the railroad bonds, or the bank stock, or the hoarded ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... "You'll never get shut of me. I'll foller you till I drop dead. I'll never forget you. Change your mind now, and we'll say nothing has happened. But if you keep on, you're done for as sure as my name is Kern. Take you by yourself, and you'd be a handful to catch. But two is easier than one, and, when one of them two is a deadweight like Gaspar, they ...
— The Rangeland Avenger • Max Brand
... will do to seize a handful of dry earth and crowd it down into the bleeding wound, with a firm pressure. Strips of an old handkerchief, underclothing, or cotton wadding may also be used as a compress, provided ...
— A Practical Physiology • Albert F. Blaisdell
... burgher militiamen already granted by the magistrates, he made no difficulty granting the request. It was as if there had been a threatened assault of the city, rather than the attempted elopement of a young lady escorted by a handful of cavaliers. ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... noticed that the smartest clothes proclaim the plainest women; no folly could be more misguided. If a young girl has good taste and a contempt for fashion, give her a few yards of ribbon, muslin, and gauze, and a handful of flowers, without any diamonds, fringes, or lace, and she will make herself a dress a hundredfold more becoming than all the smart ...
— Emile • Jean-Jacques Rousseau
... Mr. Joe, as he came up from a solitary cruise and dropped anchor at her side. "Here, bring along the hat, Evan; I'm going to crown the victor with appropriate what-d'-ye-call-'ems," he continued, pulling a handful of sea-weed that ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, August, 1863, No. 70 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... just such dealing as this which forced Black Hawk to fight with a handful of warriors for his inheritance. The Government simply made a treaty with the Sacs under Keokuk, and took the land of the Foxes at the same time. There were some chiefs who, after they had feasted well and drunk deep and ...
— The Indian Today - The Past and Future of the First American • Charles A. Eastman
... Lord Harry, Green is the grass that grows on the ground. And, says Mr Dixon, if ever he got scent of a cattleraider in Roscommon or the wilds of Connemara or a husbandman in Sligo that was sowing as much as a handful of mustard or a bag of rapeseed out he'd run amok over half the countryside rooting up with his horns whatever was planted and all by lord Harry's orders. There was bad blood between them at first, says Mr Vincent, and the lord Harry called farmer Nicholas ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... loosely into his trousers pocket and brought out a handful of small diamonds. He spilled them out in a blazing stream on the greasy table. Jim ...
— When God Laughs and Other Stories • Jack London
... but extremely unsound history of the Consulate and the Empire. In 1840 the remains of Napoleon were transferred from St. Helena to Paris, and were processionally drawn to the Invalides surrounded by the striking figures and uniforms of a handful of surviving veterans, acclaimed by the ringing rhetoric of Victor Hugo, who in prose and in verse vividly formulated the Napoleonic legend. And just before and just after this event, so made to strike the imagination and to prepare changes of opinion, ...
— The French Revolution - A Short History • R. M. Johnston
... the Shah would need the buttress afforded by English troops, and that a couple of regiments only would suffice to afford this prestige. But Sir Harry Fane, the Commander-in-Chief, judiciously interposed his veto on the despatch of a handful of British soldiers on so distant and hazardous an expedition. Finally, the Governor-General, committed already to a mistaken line of policy, and urged forward by those about him, took the unfortunate resolution to gather together an Anglo-Indian army, and to send ...
— The Afghan Wars 1839-42 and 1878-80 • Archibald Forbes
... of mid-afternoon, when she said, "Needs must I wash before I go." Quoth I, "Get water wherewithal we may wash," and pulled out from my pocket about a score of dirhems, thinking to give them to her; but she said, "I seek refuge with God!" and brought out of her pocket a handful of silver, saying, "But for destiny and that God hath caused the love of thee fall into my heart, there had not happened that which hath happened." Quoth I, "Take this in requital of that which thou hast spent;" and ...
— Tales from the Arabic Volumes 1-3 • John Payne
... thirty thousand in all of his best warriors, under the command of Musa, the son of Helu. At Abu Klea a terrible battle took place in which God awarded the victory to the unbelievers.—Yes, it is so. Musa, the son of Helu, fell, and of his soldiers only a handful returned to the Mahdi. The souls of the others are in Paradise, while their bodies lie upon the sands, awaiting the day of resurrection. News of this spread rapidly over the Nile. Then we thought that the ...
— In Desert and Wilderness • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... eat fish, roast and fried, on the same plate, swallowing six inches of knife blade at every bolt. Then they draw the nearest pie to them, cut a great segment in it, make three huge arcs therein with as many snaps of their teeth; seize a handful of nuts and raisins and rush away, with jaws still working like a flouring-mill. Ten minutes is their limit for dinner." My friend only smiled. The ...
— Four Years in Rebel Capitals - An Inside View of Life in the Southern Confederacy from Birth to Death • T. C. DeLeon
... proverbial, "The rich are getting richer, the poor poorer, the middle class is being crushed out," and the time, he continued, was in sight already—it would arrive, according to him, before the end of the nineteenth century—when nothing would be left but a handful of idle and preposterous millionaires on the one hand, and a mass of miserable ragamuffins who provided all the millions on the other, having for themselves only enough food and clothing to enable them to move their muscles and protect their nakedness from the frost. ...
— A Critical Examination of Socialism • William Hurrell Mallock
... into your fancy that the Latter-Day Saints resemble your canting hypocrites of other creeds, who think they please God by their miserable penances. Quite the reverse, I can assure you. We mean to live as God intended men should live—eat, drink, and be merry. Look there!" The speaker exhibited a handful of shining gold pieces. "That's the way our church provides for its apostles. Your daughter will be a thousand times better off there, than in this wretched hovel. Perhaps she will not mind the change so much as ...
— The Wild Huntress - Love in the Wilderness • Mayne Reid
... put her hand in her pocket, and taking thence the three cents placed them with a feeling of relief in the beggar's hand. She thought she was doing a good act, and would atone for her wicked conduct. The old woman was profuse of thanks, and taking from her dirty apron a double handful of sour and unripe fruit, placed it in ...
— Mrs Whittelsey's Magazine for Mothers and Daughters - Volume 3 • Various
... than thirty miles, and will require three or four hours' rest, at the least, before they are fit to travel again. One hour will do for our horses. Rinse their mouths out with a little water, and let them graze if they are disposed: in half an hour we will give them each a double handful of Indian corn." ...
— On the Pampas • G. A. Henty
... of these rejoicings over the new reign, and of speculative dreams of universal freedom, there was wafted across the Atlantic news of a handful of patriots arrayed against the tyranny of the British Crown. Here were the theories of the new philosophy translated into the reality of actual experience. "No taxation without representation," "No privileged class," "No government without the consent of the governed." Was this not ...
— A Short History of France • Mary Platt Parmele
... a handful of Dalmatian Italians—I believe six from Zadar and two from Split—went to serve in the Italian army. Five others, four of them from Zadar, were interned at Graz; with these exceptions the Italians ...
— The Birth of Yugoslavia, Volume 2 • Henry Baerlein
... the little town of Anagni, to which the Pope had withdrawn, laid violent hands upon his holiness. If measured by numbers, the whole affair was trifling. So few were the French soldiers that in a few days the handful of towns-folk in Anagni were able to rise against them, expel them from the place and rescue the aged Pope. He had been struck—beaten, say not wholly reliable authorities—and so insulted that rage and shame drove him ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... at this time, wore an air of deep dejection; yet he bore his woes in silence, doubtless avoiding any concession that should suggest the need of another clarification of his system. Once, when nobody was looking, he cautiously withdrew a handful of scraped birch bark from his pocket and gave it to me, remarking that he thought it was "a little more bracin' than ...
— Cape Cod Folks • Sarah P. McLean Greene
... I could fall down and worship you because you have shown it to me. But I will show it to you, that and the significance of what you will be when you are no longer smothered and starved. In all this scrawling ant-heap of humanity, there are only a handful of human beings who ever really live. And we will be among them. All the rest are nothing, less than nothing, to be stamped down if they impede you. They have no other destiny. But we have! Everything comes down to that in the end. That is the only truth. That . . ...
— The Brimming Cup • Dorothy Canfield Fisher
... of the Revolution. He will print fifteen hundred for the English market, in a somewhat closer style, and sell them here at twenty- four shillings a copy. His first edition is all gone but some handful; and the man is in haste, and has taken into a mood of hope,—for he is weak and aguish, alternating from hot to cold; otherwise, I find, a very accurate creature, and deals in his unjust trade as justly as any other will. He has settled with me; his half-profits ...
— The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, - 1834-1872, Vol. I • Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson
... the matchlock will supersede the assegai, and then the harmless spearman in his strong mountains will become, like the Arab, a formidable foe. Travelling among the Bedouins, I found them kind and hospitable. A pinch of snuff or a handful of tobacco sufficed to win every heart, and a few yards of coarse cotton cloth supplied all our wants, I was petted like a child, forced to drink milk and to eat mutton; girls were offered to me in marriage; the people begged me to settle ...
— First footsteps in East Africa • Richard F. Burton
... all, is to each fighting man an affair of small numbers, an affair of the men to his right and his left, of the A.M.S.C. in the rear and of a handful of men across. On his days of rest the horizon is somewhat expanded. It becomes then a thing of crowded and muddy village streets, of food and drink and tobacco ...
— Love Stories • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... enthusiastic, and pointing out the castle to our ignorant friend, exclaimed, alluding to the desperate struggle made by the Spaniards to defend this their last stronghold at the end of the war, "We, although but a handful of men, defended ourselves for years like soldiers, and now these Frenchmen took it in three days!" and, walking about in a transport of patriotic despair, he seemed to forget his actual duty in the tide of ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon de la Barca
... out a twenty-franc piece and threw it down to the old man. He, however, did not take any notice of it, but continued looking at her ecstatically, and was only roused from his state of bliss by receiving a handful of gravel which she threw at him, ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume III (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... transport and 11 2 in. howitzers. Brialmont had not foreseen the explosive force of modern shells, and two days' bombardment on the 13th-15th reduced the remaining forts, in spite of their construction underground, to a mass of shell-holes with a handful of wounded or unconscious survivors. The last to be reduced was Fort Loncin, whose gallant commander, General Leman, was found poisoned and half-dead from suffocation. He had succeeded in delaying the German advance for a ...
— A Short History of the Great War • A.F. Pollard
... as much alacrity as was possible, with him, toward the quartz mine, while Redburn likewise made haste to visit the shaft and collect together his handful ...
— Deadwood Dick, The Prince of the Road - or, The Black Rider of the Black Hills • Edward L. Wheeler
... preparation, in the room used to talk 30 minutes to a handful of children, the librarian could far better address a group of teachers on the use of books in libraries and schoolrooms. Librarians have long contended that teachers are deficient in bookishness; and it is quite possible that they are. Their preparation in normal schools compels them to give more ...
— Library Work with Children • Alice I. Hazeltine
... see the field crickets in their galleries in the ground in a dormant state, all their machinery of life brought to a standstill by the cold. He would see the ants in their hills and in their tunnels in decaying trees and logs, as inert as the soil or the wood they inhabit. I have chopped many a handful of the big black ants out of a log upon my woodpile in winter, stiff, but not dead, with the frost, and brought them in by the fire to see their vital forces set going again by the heat. I have brought in the grubs of borers and ...
— The Wit of a Duck and Other Papers • John Burroughs
... be feared that this handful of men might also become a prey to discouragement, and might surrender their chief to an enemy who had received all fugitives with kindness. The Greek insurgents dreaded such an event, which would have turned ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - ALI PACHA • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... a century and a half elapsed before the sturdy colonists, who did not claim freedom but determined to keep it, formally revolted and fought their way to absolute independence—not, by the by, a feat whereof to be overproud when a whole country rose unanimously against a handful of troops. The movement, however, reacted powerfully upon the politics of Europe, which stood agape for change, and undoubtedly precipitated the great French Revolution. As soon as the States became an empire, their democratic and republican institutions at once attracted hosts of ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton
... Grand' Place, and which the sleepy custode showed me with reluctance, until I offered him a franc. It is curious that famous Nieuport, for which so much blood was shed in those early days, should again have been a famous battle ground between the handful of valiant soldiers of the heroic King Albert and ...
— Vanished towers and chimes of Flanders • George Wharton Edwards
... was quickly plunged into Hayward's handful of shavings, which blazed up as he thrust it into Slag's nest; and Slag, holding the nest with the tender care of a loving sick-nurse, and the cool indifference of a salamander, till it was a flaming ball, crammed it into the heart of the pile of sticks. ...
— The Coxswain's Bride - also, Jack Frost and Sons; and, A Double Rescue • R.M. Ballantyne
... The ears are then rubbed between the hands. In this region the wheat was winnowed altogether by hand, and after the wind had driven the chaff away, the grain was laid out on mats to dry. Sickles are not used, but the reaper takes a handful of stalks and cuts them off close to the ground with a short, straight knife, fixed at a right angle with the handle. The wheat is sown in rows with wide spaces between them, which are utilised for beans and other crops, and no sooner is it removed than daikon (Raphanus sativus), cucumbers, ...
— Unbeaten Tracks in Japan • Isabella L. Bird
... shortly. "And remember, Sergeant, there are to be no men going over the parapet this night without orders. The last battalion in here lost a big handful of men trying to get hold of that General, but the Germans were watching too close, and they've got a machine-gun trained to cover him. See to ...
— Action Front • Boyd Cable (Ernest Andrew Ewart)
... good. I told them of a handful of people who had a dream. A handful of people who wanted their home back. A few lost souls who would rather die trying to live the way they wanted to live than go on living in a world they did not want. And I told them of the great United Galaxies, that had been created ...
— Dead World • Jack Douglas
... it was drawn up they sailed off against the enemy; and so they fought and subdued the islands lying between Denmark and the East; and as they advanced thence, met some ships of the Ruthenian fleet. Frode thought it shameful to attack such a handful, but Erik said: "We must seek food from the gaunt and lean. He who falls shall seldom fatten, nor has that man the power to bite whom the huge sack has devoured." By this warning he cured the king of all shame about making an assault, ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")
... are moving the world, and you, whipping out your infinitesimal measuring-rod, dismiss them as inferior cattle who know nothing of text-book science. Here is a real and living world, and you roll through it like a billiard-ball. And all because you make the fatal error of mistaking a sorry handful ...
— Queed • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... service again, one of the men throwing on earth at the usual place. When they came to cover up the grave, the men constantly changed hoes with those who had not handled them before, that each might aid, women and old men stooping to throw in a handful. Abel made another prayer, they ...
— Letters from Port Royal - Written at the Time of the Civil War (1862-1868) • Various
... go and get a handful. He'd give it me if he was at home, and he wouldn't mind my ...
— Devon Boys - A Tale of the North Shore • George Manville Fenn
... hours are wanted for each hundredweight. [In casting each one keep the furnace and its fire well stopped up.] [Let the inside of all the moulds be wetted with linseed oil or oil of turpentine, and then take a handful of powdered borax and Greek pitch with aqua vitae, and pitch the mould over outside so that being under ground the damp may not ...
— The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci, Complete • Leonardo Da Vinci
... violent death of Caligula, which was still fresh in the minds of the people, added to this wide-spread feeling of insecurity and alarm. As Caligula, notwithstanding the pontifical sacredness of his person, had been slain, to the apparent satisfaction of everybody, in his palace by a handful of his supposed friends and supporters, it seemed possible that the tragedy might easily be repeated in the case of Claudius. Could not the whole Claudian government be overturned,—in a single night, perhaps, as that of Caligula had been overturned? ...
— The Women of the Caesars • Guglielmo Ferrero
... 1861. Seldom, if ever, has a young college professor been thrown into a more embarrassing and discouraging position. He knew just enough of military science, as he expressed it himself, to measure the extent of his ignorance, and with a handful of men he was marching, in rough winter weather, into a strange country, among a hostile population, to confront a largely superior force under the command of a distinguished graduate of West Point, who had seen active and important service in ...
— Hidden Treasures - Why Some Succeed While Others Fail • Harry A. Lewis
... beautiful Eastern voice, and the girl's low laughter rang out like bells on the night air, as the man explained that the animal was inordinately jealous of all and sundry who, in her sin-laden brain, she feared might do her out of a handful of sugar or ...
— Desert Love • Joan Conquest
... was not great, and as they had cast over the wall a handful of flowers from the garden to mark the precise spot, it was ...
— Varney the Vampire - Or the Feast of Blood • Thomas Preskett Prest
... escort, Corporal Gamarra, had gone back to Arequipa with Dr. Bowman. Our two excellent arrieros, the Tejada brothers, declared they preferred to travel without any "brass buttons," so we had not asked the sub-prefect of Cotahuasi to send one of his small handful of gendarmes along with us. Probably this was a mistake. Unless one is traveling in Peru on some easily understood matter, such as prospecting for mines or representing one of the great importing and commission houses, or actually ...
— Inca Land - Explorations in the Highlands of Peru • Hiram Bingham
... he said, raising his voice. "When a race begins to brood on the beautiful—so-called—it is a sign of rot, of getting ready to fall from the tree. Take the Jews—those marvellous old fellows—who were never more than a handful, yet have imposed the rule of their ideas and their gods upon us for fifteen hundred years. Why? They were forbidden by their most fundamental law to make sculptures or pictures. That was at a time when the Egyptians, when the ...
— The Damnation of Theron Ware • Harold Frederic
... dishevelled hair and bare bosom, gave the queen a handful of rods, bearing the inscription, "For Marie Antoinette!" Another showed her a guillotine, a third a gallows, with the inscription, "Tremble, tyrant! thy hour has come!" Another held up before her, on the point of a pike, a human heart dripping with blood, and cried: "Thus shall they ...
— Marie Antoinette And Her Son • Louise Muhlbach
... first to lay the foundations of the city and to colonize its neighbourhood. It is in this city that, notwithstanding the sufferings and persecution of Mussulmans after the Arab invasion of Persia, the successors of a handful of brave people have to this day remained faithful to ...
— Across Coveted Lands - or a Journey from Flushing (Holland) to Calcutta Overland • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... back from Marketstoke," replied Mr. Pawle, "I looked up the Cave-Gray family and their peerage. That locket bears their device and motto. The device is a closed fist, grasping a handful of blades of wheat; the motto is Have and Hold. Viner, as sure as fate, that girl's father was the missing Lord Marketstoke, and Ashton knew the secret! I'm convinced of it—I'm positive of it. And now see the extraordinary ...
— The Middle of Things • J. S. Fletcher
... plunge into the Adriatic, or a stroll along smooth sands, or a breath of genuine sea-breeze, or a handful of horned poppies from the dunes, or a lazy half-hour's contemplation of a limitless horizon flecked with russet sails, then we seek Sant' Elisabetta. Our boat is left at the landing-place. We saunter across the island and back again. Antonio and Francesco wait and order wine, which we drink ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... Splash! A handful of water from his strenuous oar struck her full in the face. "Hope you don't mind it, miss," he apologized. "I'm doin' the best I ...
— A Daughter of the Snows • Jack London
... extinguishes every resentment. From its peaceful bosom spring none but fond regrets and tender recollections. Who can look down upon the grave even of an enemy, and not feel a compunctious throb that he should ever have warred with the poor handful of earth that lies moldering before him? But the grave of those we loved,—what a place for meditation! There it is we call up, in long review, the whole history of virtue and gentleness, and the thousand endearments lavished upon ...
— Elementary Guide to Literary Criticism • F. V. N. Painter
... and it really bestowed a standing. That of the Sciences signified nothing in public opinion, any more than that of Inscriptions. . . The languages is considered a science for fools. D'Alembert was ashamed of belonging to the Academy of Sciences. Only a handful of people listen to a mathematician, a chemist, etc. but the man of letters, the lecturer, has the world at his feet."[3208]—Under such a strong pressure the mind necessarily follows a literary and verbal route in ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 1 (of 6) - The Ancient Regime • Hippolyte A. Taine
... Rabbit had a happy thought. He grabbed up a handful of green peas and tossed them ...
— The Tale of Jimmy Rabbit - Sleepy-TimeTales • Arthur Scott Bailey
... mean the bigoted enemies to liberty, may, perhaps, in their politics, make no account of the good or ill affection of the Catholics of England, who are but an handful of people, (enough to torment, but not enough to fear,) perhaps not so many, of both sexes and of all ages, as fifty thousand. But, Gentlemen, it is possible you may not know that the people of that persuasion in Ireland amount at least to sixteen or seventeen hundred thousand souls. ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. II. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... to the overwhelming invasion. Yet because of some change which the disease brought about in the parts thus affected, these few germs are able to produce much more dangerous changes than the armies which preceded them. In some way the body has become sensitive to them, and a handful of them in course of time are able to do damage which billions could not earlier in the disease. The man in whom the few remaining germs are confined largely to the skin is fortunate. The unfortunates are those who, with the ...
— The Third Great Plague - A Discussion of Syphilis for Everyday People • John H. Stokes
... Easy paid there bill and rose to depart, but the padrone informed them that he should like to see the colour of their money before they went on board. Jack, very indignant at the insinuation that he had not sufficient cash, pulled out a handful of doubloons, and tossing two to the padrone, and asked him if he ...
— Mr. Midshipman Easy • Frederick Marryat
... seen no more deceptive-looking church than that we are now at. Viewed externally, you would say that scarcely a good handful of people could be accommodated in it; it seems so narrow, so entirely made up of and filled in with stone, that one infers at first sight it will hardly hold the parson and the sacrament-loving "old woman" who invariably exists as a permanent arrangement at all our places of ...
— Our Churches and Chapels • Atticus
... the kindred virtues, which flourish in a frozen soil. Not that we grieve, when, after some seven months of storm and bitter frost, Spring, in the guise of a flower-crowned virgin, is seen driving away the hoary despot, pelting him with violets by the handful, and strewing green grass on the path behind him. Often, ere he will give up his empire, old Winter rushes fiercely back, and hurls a snow-drift at the shrinking form of Spring; yet, step by step, he is compelled to retreat northward, and ...
— Snow Flakes (From "Twice Told Tales") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... child dead! his poor little flower withered, and her death robbed him of L20,000, and indeed of ten times that sum, for he had now bought experience in trade and speculation, and had learned to make money out of money, a heap out of a handful. Stung by this vulgar torment in its turn, he started suddenly up, and dashed his wife's will down upon the floor in a fury, and paced the room excitedly. Hope still stood aghast, and hesitated ...
— A Perilous Secret • Charles Reade
... you know," he said, taking up a handful of sand and tossing it up in the air. "He defeated my father and killed him, and then ...
— The Angel of Terror • Edgar Wallace
... the Scriptures we all believe to be the right one. We have had a series of most delightful conferences. Now let us go back to our homes determined to take the seminal truths which have been presented to us here, and scatter them wherever we are called to labor. The seed may seem to be but a handful, and the soil may seem unpromising as the rocky mountain tops—but be sure the result will be a harvest that will shake like the cedars of Lebanon. And though it may seem a little incongruous to quote from the Scottish poet—would that everything he ...
— American Missionary, Volume 43, No. 12, December, 1889 • Various
... percussion-caps an' a bullet-mould about wi' you wherever you go. As to powder, why, you'll come across that 'most everywhere, an' lead too; and, for the matter o' that, if your life depended on it you could shove a handful of gravel or a pen-knife or tooth-pick into your gun an' blaze away, but with a breech-loader, if you run out o' cartridges, ...
— Blown to Bits - The Lonely Man of Rakata, the Malay Archipelago • R.M. Ballantyne
... whole time this morning telling me how charming and fascinating Ydo was and what a fillip she gave to life. I told her frankly that I had been very thoroughly acquainted with Miss Ydo Carrothers from her youth up, and that she would be a handful for any one. I'd as lief undertake to chaperone a cyclone. She only chuckled in that disagreeable way of hers and spoke of Wilfred's admiration for that Gipsy. When, Robert—you see I was able to say ...
— The Silver Butterfly • Mrs. Wilson Woodrow
... was played to a packed house at Richmond, and the company was able to get out of Kentucky. Gustave now had visions of big business in Ohio, and especially at Wilmington, which was Sam Lucas's home town. But the result was the usual experience with home patronage of home talent, and only a handful of people came to see the play. Sallie Cohen, despairing of getting her salary, had quit the company, and on this night Polly Stoddart, who was a tall, well-developed woman, had to play Little Eva. When she sat on the lap of Wesley Sisson, ...
— Charles Frohman: Manager and Man • Isaac Frederick Marcosson and Daniel Frohman
... began to creep into the Baptizer's mind. Could God have chosen this man to deliver His people? John could not understand why the deliverance did not come. Jesus was training only a handful of disciples to preach. It would take more than that to bring God's great day. At last the Prophet sent ...
— Men Called Him Master • Elwyn Allen Smith
... earth with pointed sticks. We then asked for the rifle, the cartridges and the murderer, and were informed that two men had done the killing. After some deliberation a number of men walked off, one of them a venerable old man, armed after the old fashion with a bow and a handful of poisoned arrows, which he handled with deliberate care; he also carried a club in a sling over his shoulder. Of all those strong men, this old one seemed to me the most dangerous but also the most beautiful and the most genuine. After ...
— Two Years with the Natives in the Western Pacific • Felix Speiser
... quite sure that of the thousands who read that phrase all but a handful read it in the spirit in which one hears the oracle of a god. Some read it with regret, some with pleasure, but ...
— First and Last • H. Belloc
... for a frequent absence of mind. Having missed money at different times, without being able to discover who took it, he determined to put the honesty of his servant to a trial, and left a handful of gold on the table. "Of course you counted it?" said one of his friends. "Count it!" said Leasing, rather ...
— The Book of Three Hundred Anecdotes - Historical, Literary, and Humorous—A New Selection • Various
... time, the old shepherd and his wife died. Their village neighbors accompanied them in silence to the humble churchyard. A little man, whose hair was now white as snow, followed the dead with his head uncovered. When the priest had cast on their coffins that handful of dust which sounds so ...
— The Children's Portion • Various
... lock, buries it in a bog, and allows the Orange bloodhound to ransack his cottage at pleasure. Be just and kind to the Irish, and you will indeed disarm them; rescue them from the degraded servitude in which they are held by an handful of their own countrymen; and you will add four millions of brave and ...
— Sydney Smith • George W. E. Russell
... "light" into the "soul" of democracy than all the national so-called education which has ever been devised and made compulsory. Confiscation of property and all those other tom-fool cries are but the screams of a handful of silly Bolsheviks. There is no echo in the heart of the real labouring men and women. If they applaud it, it is only that these cranks, at least, seem to be fighting for that human right to an equal share of the common good things of this life which ought to be the possession ...
— Over the Fireside with Silent Friends • Richard King
... melancholy event which had occupied them during the day. It was, in fact, a kind of supper, and the one great meal of the day: the only other meals being a breakfast, and at noon a crust of brown bread, a handful of dried fruit, and ...
— A Crystal Age • W. H. Hudson
... crept and twined along the white walls, drooping over doors and windows, and trailing down the muslin curtains as if they grew there. The flowers were not made into stiff bouquets, but here and there was a handful of roses or sweet-scented violets. The old fireplace lost itself in callas, ferns, and ivies, while the mantel blossomed out into tube-roses and mosses. One of the recesses formed by the large chimney was turned ...
— Divers Women • Pansy and Mrs. C.M. Livingston
... rooms. She chose them because of the rose garden, for she had a sensuous and passionate love of nature. She used to lie for hours on the grass there, with her arms flung over her head, gazing dreamily on the fluttering leaves above her. The pearls—which she always wore—some coral ornaments, and a handful of amber beads were her only dower, but her caprices were the insolent and extravagant caprices of a queen. Felix, who adored her, gratified them at whatever expense; and I think at first she had a careless sort of regard for him. But she hated ...
— Shapes that Haunt the Dusk • Various
... they began to run, and rushing into the house, they fell upon their father's neck. He had not had one happy hour since he had left the children in the forest; and his wife was dead. Grethel shook her apron, and the pearls and precious stones rolled out upon the floor, and Hansel threw down one handful after the other out of his pocket. Then all their sorrows were ended, and they lived together ...
— My Book of Favorite Fairy Tales • Edric Vredenburg
... of regeneration, worse now than worthless carrion. And the cause of it all, the sole excuse for this delinquency, lay back there upon a greasy table in the shanty—a short scrawling tale scribbled upon a handful of ...
— A Breath of Prairie and other stories • Will Lillibridge
... such steep and rugged mountains as could not be passed without extreme difficulty, more like a wall than natural rocks. The only entrance was exceedingly narrow and intricate, so that it could easily be defended by a handful of men against an army; but the interior of this post was wide and convenient, and sufficient for accommodating the rebel army with all the cattle provisions and attendants with the utmost ease. The rebels had abundance of provisions and ammunition, having the whole ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 5 • Robert Kerr
... again, never again," cried her husband; "you shall see, my poor wife!" He went to his inner room and returned with a handful of louis, which he scattered on the bed. "Here, Eugenie! see, wife! all these are for you," he said, fingering the coins. "Come, be happy, wife! feel better, get well; you sha'n't want for anything, nor Eugenie either. Here's a hundred louis d'or ...
— Eugenie Grandet • Honore de Balzac
... the whole group of glimpses which Shakespeare amused himself by scattering as might a man who had a great oak chest full of jewels and who now and then, out of kindly fun, poured out a handful and gave them to his guests. I quote from memory, but I think certain of the lines run ...
— On Nothing & Kindred Subjects • Hilaire Belloc
... spoke he threw a big handful of the roots that I have mentioned on to each of the fires, whereon tall flames leapt up from them, very unholy-looking flames which were followed by columns of dense, white smoke that emitted a most powerful and choking ...
— Child of Storm • H. Rider Haggard
... by his wife, Vasumati, who has seen a propitious dream, to repair to Krishna, to see if his opulent friend will restore his broken fortunes. He takes with him a handful of rice, dried and cleaned after boiling, as a present. He arrives at the palace of Krishna, where he is received with great respect by the host and his two principal wives, Rukmini and Satyabhama; the former washes his feet, the latter wipes them, and Krishna sprinkles ...
— Tales from the Hindu Dramatists • R. N. Dutta
... no answer. The handful of men that remained of the doomed band looked meaningly at each other, but no one spoke. Strict disciplinarian as he was, seldom passing a day without punishing some one, the old Colonel had nevertheless won his men's hearts completely by his reckless ...
— Harper's Young People, April 27, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... never fear—as much as your heart can desire! Here is a handful of gold: you shall have as much again if you will do my bidding.' The old crone nodded ...
— The Olive Fairy Book • Various
... places the crown upon that combination that has the longest purse and the strongest grip. The syndicates, Trusts and rings carry the point still further. Whole branches of industry are monopolized; the individual capitalist becomes but a pliant link in a chain, held by a capitalist committee. A handful of monopolists set themselves up as lords of the world and dictate to it the price of goods, to the workingmen their ...
— Woman under socialism • August Bebel
... belonging to time at all, does the Colorado approach and enter its culminating marvel. Then, for 283 miles it inhabits a nether world of its own. The few that have ventured through these places and lived are a handful to those who went in and were never seen again. The white bones of some have been found on the shores; but most were drowned; and in this water no bodies ever rise, because the thick sand that its torrent churns along ...
— Through the Grand Canyon from Wyoming to Mexico • E. L. Kolb |
