"Shearing" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Ralph on the stairs. "He's up in his room. He complains his new shoes are too tight. I think it's nervousness. Perhaps he'll let you shave him; I'm sure he'll cut himself. And I wish the barber hadn't cut his hair so short, Ralph. I hate this new fashion of shearing men behind the ears. The back of his neck is the ugliest part of a man." She spoke with such resentment that Ralph ...
— One of Ours • Willa Cather
... corrupt Portuguese. At Melbourne, in a long verandah giving on a grass plot, where laughing-jackasses laugh very horribly, sit wool-kings, premiers, and breeders of horses after their kind. The older men talk of the days of the Eureka Stockade and the younger of 'shearing wars' in North Queensland, while the traveller moves timidly among them wondering what under the world every third word means. At Wellington, overlooking the harbour (all right-minded clubs should command the sea), another, and yet a like, sort of men speak of ...
— Letters of Travel (1892-1913) • Rudyard Kipling
... heart of them, and suddenly before me I saw the face of de Garcia. With a shout I rushed at him. He heard my voice and knew me. With an oath he struck at my head. The heavy sword came down upon my helmet of painted wood, shearing away one side of it and felling me, but ere I fell I smote him on the breast with the club I carried, tumbling him to the earth. Now half stunned and blinded I crept towards him through the press. All that I could see was a gleam of armour in the mud. I threw myself ...
— Montezuma's Daughter • H. Rider Haggard
... voltage in or about working places.] At each mine equipped with electric power after the passage and approval of this act, the current used to operate gathering locomotives, mining machines, shearing machines, drills and other machinery, used in or about the working places of the mine, shall not exceed in pressure or potential, three hundred and twenty-five volts, direct current, as shown at the nearest switchboard, ...
— Mining Laws of Ohio, 1921 • Anonymous
... meant little more than that, dissatisfied with his treatment of a theme, he tried again. He never built as, for instance, Bach and Beethoven built, carefully working out this detail, lengthening this portion, shearing away that, evolving part from part so that in the end the whole composition became a complete organism. There is none of the logic in his work that we find in the works of the tip-top men, none of the perfect finish; but, on the contrary, a very considerable degree of looseness, if not ...
— Old Scores and New Readings • John F. Runciman
... bottle — like him—him— Corkscrew! cried Ahab, aye, Queequeg, the harpoons lie all twisted and wrenched in him; aye, Daggoo, his spout is a big one, like a whole shock of wheat, and white as a pile of our Nantucket wool after the great annual sheep-shearing; aye, Tashtego, and he fan-tails like a split jib in a squall. Death and devils! men, it is Moby Dick ye have seen —Moby Dick— Moby Dick! Captain Ahab, said Starbuck, who, with Stubb and Flask, had thus far been eyeing his superior with increasing surprise, but at last seemed ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville
... persuades him to tell the truth. He says: "If you should take a razor or shears and cut off this long hair, I should be powerless and in the hands of my enemies." Samson sleeps, and that she may not wake him up during the process of shearing, help is called in. You know that the barbers of the East have such a skillful way of manipulating the head to this very day that, instead of waking up a sleeping man, they will put a man wide awake sound asleep. I hear the blades of the shears grinding against each other, ...
— New Tabernacle Sermons • Thomas De Witt Talmage
... understanding these subjects, very puzzling. The two main exports are wool and whale-oil, and to both of these productions there is a limit. The country is totally unfit for canals, therefore there is a not very distant point, beyond which the land-carriage of wool will not repay the expense of shearing and tending sheep. Pasture everywhere is so thin that settlers have already pushed far into the interior: moreover, the country further inland becomes extremely poor. Agriculture, on account of the droughts, can never succeed ...
— The Voyage of the Beagle • Charles Darwin
... undisturbed have the benefit of the wool as well as the younglings of the sheep. She was, however, mistaken. When the firstling of the sheep was born, Aaron appeared and demanded it, for the firstborn belongs to the priest. She had a similar experience with the wool. At shearing time Aaron reappeared and demanded 'the first of the fleece of the sheep,' which, according to Moses' law, was his. But not content with this, he reappeared later and demanded one sheep out of every ten as a tithe, to which again, according ...
— THE LEGENDS OF THE JEWS VOLUME III BIBLE TIMES AND CHARACTERS - FROM THE EXODUS TO THE DEATH OF MOSES • BY LOUIS GINZBERG
... the dust is laid, the arroyos turn to rivers and the rivers to broad floods, drifting with trees and wreckage. But the cattlemen and sheepmen who happened to be in Bender, either to take on hands for the spring round-up or to ship supplies to their shearing camps out on the desert, were not worrying about the railroad. Whether the bridges went out or held, the grass and browse would shoot up like beanstalks in to-morrow's magic sunshine; and even if the Rio Salagua blocked their passage, ...
— Hidden Water • Dane Coolidge
... slumber; And then weave a cloak for Orestes the thief, lest he strip men of theirs if it freezes. And again thereafter the kite reappearing announces a change in the breezes. And that here is the season for shearing your sheep of their spring wool. Then does the swallow Give you notice to sell your great-coat, and provide something light for the heat that's to follow. Thus are we as Ammon or Delphi unto you. Dodona, nay, Phoebus Apollo. ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner
... age of Saturn— Shall greet you here; for we have been Wrought quaintly, on the Arcadian pattern. Your poet's lips will break in song For joy, to see at last appearing The bulls and bears, a peaceful throng, While a lamb leads them—to the shearing! ...
— In Divers Tones • Charles G. D. Roberts
... of heat is greatest where the shearing of the material is strongest. This shearing is therefore the mechanical cause which produces ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 415, December 15, 1883 • Various
... which the production of ironwork of many kinds was greatly facilitated. This improvement originated in the contract which he held for some years for supplying the Royal Navy with iron plates for ships' tanks. The operations of shearing and punching had before been very imperfectly done by hand, with great expenditure of labour. To improve the style of the work and lessen the labour, Maudslay invented the machine now in general use, by which the ...
— Industrial Biography - Iron Workers and Tool Makers • Samuel Smiles
... instant, she caught sight of Brett's head and shoulders in the distance, and she waved and beckoned to him frenziedly. With a choking gasp of relief, she caught his answering gesture before he turned and headed straight for the shore, shearing through the water with a powerful over-hand stroke that brought ...
— The Vision of Desire • Margaret Pedler
... canines are large; the molars never show flattened, curved crests after the ruminant pattern, but are more or less tubercular, and one tooth in the hinder part of each jaw becomes blade-like, for shearing off lumps of flesh. This tooth is called the ...
— American Big Game in Its Haunts • Various
... flat on their cutting edge, as shown in Fig. 12. There are also punches made spiral on their cutting edge, as shown in Fig. 13. This punch, instead of being flat, as in Fig. 12, is of a helical form, as shown in Fig. 13, so as to have a gradual shearing action commencing at the center and traveling round to the circumference. Its form may be explained by imagining the upper cutter of a shearing machine being rolled upon itself so as to form a cylinder of which its long edge is the axis. The die being quite ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 810, July 11, 1891 • Various
... join in haymaking and in washing and shearing the lord's sheep, to pay pannage for their pigs, to take their turn of service as reeve and tithingman, and to carry the lord's victuals and baggage on his departure from Witney as the natives were ...
— The Enclosures in England - An Economic Reconstruction • Harriett Bradley
... ought to admire him, because his enjoyments are so simple, and his dispositions so kindly; or laugh at him, because he draws his life so exquisitely mild. Well, well, we can't be all roaring lions in this world; there must be SOME lambs, and harmless, kindly, gregarious creatures for eating and shearing. See! even good-natured Mrs. Perkins is leading up the trembling Larkins to ...
— The Christmas Books • William Makepeace Thackeray
... however, has to be fulfilled, apart from the fineness of the cotton-wool. The plant, to be worth shearing, must be dead and dry. I have never seen the harvesting done on fresh plants. In this way, the Bee avoids mildew, which would make its appearance in a mass of hairs still ...
— Bramble-bees and Others • J. Henri Fabre
... upon a single point, and on this they were very obstinate. Many of the negroes in Missouri, as in other parts of the South, wear their hair, or wool, in little knots or braids. They refused to submit to a close shearing, and threatened to return to their masters rather than comply with the regulation. Some actually left the camp and went home. The officers finally carried their point by inducing some free negroes in Leavenworth, whose heads were ...
— Camp-Fire and Cotton-Field • Thomas W. Knox
... Living also, his shepherds, for whom he received only insignificant hints from Greene. In "Pandosto" we hear of "a meeting of all the farmers daughters in Sycilia," without anything more, and from this Shakespeare drew the idea of his sheep-shearing feast, where he delights in contrasting with the rough ways of his peasants the inborn elegance of Perdita: "O Proserpina," says she, in ...
— The English Novel in the Time of Shakespeare • J. J. Jusserand
... New York twinkled with thousands of electric lights, like great Christmas-trees. At one wharf a steamer of the Red D line, just in from La Guayra, was making fast, and I guiltily crept on board. Without, she was coated in a shearing of ice, but within she reeked of Spanish-America—of coffee, rubber, and raw sugar. Pineapples were still swinging in a net from the awning-rail, a two-necked water- bottle hung at the hot mouth of the engine-room. I found her captain and told ...
— Captain Macklin • Richard Harding Davis
... the community. On leaving the business of carriage-making Peter Cooper went to Hempstead, L. I., where he found work in a woollen factory. Here he invented and patented an improvement on the machine in use for shearing the nap of cloth; and as during the war of 1812 all commerce with England ceased, cloth-making in America flourished, and from the sale of his machines, which he could hardly make fast enough to supply ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 6 of 8 • Various
... keep under shelter, while around the tents was a semicircle of sheep wagons. There was a substantial horse corral, and across the creek the sheep-pens had tripled in size, with a row of well-built shearing-pens beside them. Under a long shed with a corrugated-iron roofing there were sacks of wool piled to a height which gave Kate a feeling of deep satisfaction each time ...
— The Fighting Shepherdess • Caroline Lockhart
... W. to some of the big farms to see the sheep-shearing and the dairies, and cheese made. The farmer's wife in France is a very capable, hard-working woman—up early, seeing to everything herself, and ruling all her carters and ploughboys with a heavy hand. Once a week, on market day, she takes her cheeses ...
— Chateau and Country Life in France • Mary King Waddington
... heads, but they grow again as before.[83] Half buried in the ground by the monster's strength, Ivan hurls his other glove at the hut, piercing its roof this time. But still his brothers slumber on. At last, after fruitlessly shearing off nine of the Chudo-Yudo's heads, and finding himself embedded in the ground up to his armpits, Ivan flings his cap at the hut. The hut reels under the blow and its beams fall asunder; his brothers awake, and hasten to his aid, and the Chudo-Yudo is destroyed. The "Chudo-Yudo wives" as the widows ...
— Russian Fairy Tales - A Choice Collection of Muscovite Folk-lore • W. R. S. Ralston
... Mrs. Egg, shearing the whisper. "Only Dammy ain't got any sense about cards. I tried to teach him pinochle, but he never could remember none of it, and the hired men always clean him out shakin' dice. He can't even beat his papa at checkers. And ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1921 • Various
... sirs, For you there's rosemary and rue; these keep Seeming and savour all the winter long; Grace and remembrance be to you both, And welcome to our shearing.' ...
— Storyology - Essays in Folk-Lore, Sea-Lore, and Plant-Lore • Benjamin Taylor
... part of this yard was also a machine shop, in which were fitted lathes, punching and shearing machines, and a bolt and nut machine, also a band saw and a circular saw table. To drive this machinery a 12 h.p. engine was used, and this was placed under the charge of a convict who had been employed ...
— Prisoners Their Own Warders - A Record of the Convict Prison at Singapore in the Straits - Settlements Established 1825 • J. F. A. McNair
... decided evolutionist as regards circumcision being evolved from prior forms of physical mutilation, as will be more fully explained in the next chapter; the shaving of the head of a conquered people by the Hindoos, or the shearing the royal locks of the ancient Frankish kings; the blinding of one eye of their slaves by the old Scythians, or crippling one foot by the division of a tendon in a captive by the Goths, he considers as on the same line with the idea ...
— History of Circumcision from the Earliest Times to the Present - Moral and Physical Reasons for its Performance • Peter Charles Remondino
... spaed me true, for did she not fore-tell I'd break a ring with Ronald Grey beside the Hidden Well? It came to pass at shearing-time, before he went to sea (We're nighbours' bairns) how could she know that Ronald cared ...
— Old Spookses' Pass • Isabella Valancy Crawford
... of trouble; knowing that there was no fear of my sending them to the magistrate (fifty miles off) during such a busy time. However, all evils must come to an end some time or another, and so did shearing, though it was nearly Christmas before our wool was pressed and ready for ...
— The Recollections of Geoffrey Hamlyn • Henry Kingsley
... the furrows of a tiny field, Demeter lover of wheat, Sosicles the tiller dedicates to thee, having reaped now an abundant harvest; but again likewise may he carry back his sickle blunted from shearing of ...
— Select Epigrams from the Greek Anthology • J. W. Mackail
... presume, have already observed, that however tenderly our friend Solomon felt for the shearing habit of the poor, he was somehow rather reluctant in offering a word in season to any one else. What his motive could be for this we are really at a loss to know, unless it proceeded from a charitable consciousness, that ...
— Valentine M'Clutchy, The Irish Agent - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... pump in the yard, and the chickens, to the horses and wagons, the lofts with their smell of hay, the sweet-smelling wood-ricks, the cool dairy, the 'pound' where the cider was made. Then there were sheep-shearing, rat-hunting and countless other joys. But before very long the desire to wander further in search of adventure grew strong in Paul's breast. The children were left wonderfully free in those days, for, owing to their straitened means, Mrs. Anketell had determined to do without a nurse, ...
— Paul the Courageous • Mabel Quiller-Couch
... competitors up in business. Whenever a Japanese arrives in Panama, the Barbers' Association opens a shop for him, buys the chairs-provides him with everything necessary to compete with them for the scarce trade in the shaving and shearing industry! ...
— Secret Armies - The New Technique of Nazi Warfare • John L. Spivak
... had been raised against the country which my master's flock was now overrunning. I could not keep these thoughts out of my head as I would rest myself upon the mountain side; they haunted me as I went my daily rounds, and grew upon me from hour to hour, till I resolved that after shearing I would remain in doubt no longer, but saddle my horse, take as much provision with me as I could, and go and ...
— Erewhon • Samuel Butler
... is to be printed for calicoes, before bleaching it is singed by passing through gas flames or over a red hot plate and then sheared in a shearing machine constructed somewhat on the principle of the lawn mower, the cloth being run close to ...
— Textiles and Clothing • Kate Heintz Watson
... very place! Nothing material. We meant to have sown a little barley to-day, but the ground is too dry; and the sheep-shearing is ...
— The Stranger - A Drama, in Five Acts • August von Kotzebue
... combination of the side pieces, D D, constructed as described, containing the bearings for the cutting mechanism, the shearing bar, B, with square faces, and the spirally bladed knife, ...
— Scientific American, Vol. 17, No. 26 December 28, 1867 • Various
... like this could not hold the newcomers, therefore Wichita Falls became their headquarters. Here there were at least a few hotels and some sort of office quarters—sheds beneath which the shearing could take place—and there the ...
— Flowing Gold • Rex Beach
... their unworldly crews as any one would wish to hear in a winter evening. It was told me by young Benjie Macharg, one summer night, sitting on Arbigland-bank: the lad intended a sort of love meeting; but all that he could talk of was about smearing sheep and shearing sheep, and of the wife which the Norway elves of the Haunted Ships made for his uncle Sandie Macharg. And I shall tell ye the tale as the honest lad told it ...
— Folk-Lore and Legends - Scotland • Anonymous
... the mountains near by, having a right of pasturage, he kept two cows and some sheep, which supplied the family with all their milk and butter, nearly all their meat, and most of their clothes. He also rented two or three acres of land, upon which he raised various crops. In sheep-shearing time, he turned out and helped his neighbors shear their sheep, a kind of work in which he had eminent skill. As compensation, each farmer thus assisted gave him a fleece. In haying time, too, he and his boys were ...
— Captains of Industry - or, Men of Business Who Did Something Besides Making Money • James Parton
... neighbourhood, was laying his miseries before the man of business of his employer. "What are we to do?" he said. "Half the gang of slaves is dead, and the other half is so feeble, that I can't get through the work of the month. We ought to be sheep-shearing; you have no chance of wool. We ought to be swarming the bees, pressing the honey, boiling and purifying the wax. We ought to be plucking the white leaves of the camomile, and steeping the golden flowers in oil. We ought to be gathering the wild grapes, sifting off the flowers, and preserving the ...
— Callista • John Henry Cardinal Newman
... thick cloud, staining the clear, green water so deeply that Little Sword could not see through it at all. Instead of the soft flesh he had expected it to pierce, his sword met nothing but a mass of sticky anemones, shearing them from their base. ...
— Children of the Wild • Charles G. D. Roberts
... winter blanket, if there was enough of it! wool! and wool, too, that came from the thigh of old Straight-Horns; else have I forgotten a leg, that gives the longest and coarsest hair at the shearing." ...
— The Wept of Wish-Ton-Wish • James Fenimore Cooper
... not done thoroughly, resulting in broken and irregular lines. When more care is given, the hedge is nearly spoiled by being pruned too wide at the top, the heavy shade above causing meagre growth and openings below. It should be pruned in wedge shape, but shearing is objectionable as causing a thick and short growth of leaves at the exterior, excluding light from the inside and causing bare branches there. Cutting back more irregularly with a knife allows the growth of interior foliage, and gives more breadth to the hedge. The sheared ...
— The Prairie Farmer, Vol. 56, No. 2, January 12, 1884 - A Weekly Journal for the Farm, Orchard and Fireside • Various
... spring and the shearing season summer, which corresponds to our winter in England. The usual increase of lambs, if the ewes be healthy and strong, is 75 to 95 per cent. in about equal proportions of ...
— Five Years in New Zealand - 1859 to 1864 • Robert B. Booth
... of great interest to the children, and the little lambs they very justly regarded as types of purity and innocence. When the season of sheep washing and shearing came, they went over to the farmer's, and witnessed these amusing operations ...
— Frank and Fanny • Mrs. Clara Moreton
... George E. Peck, Geneva; Vice-Presidents, Thomas McD. Richards, Woodstock, and Daniel Kelley, Wheaton; Secretary and Treasurer, W. C. Vandercook, Cherry Valley. It was decided to hold the association's annual public sheep-shearing at Richmond, McHenry county, April 29 and 30, and C. R. Lawson, L. H. Smith, and A. S. Peck were designated a committee to represent the association at the annual sheep-shearing ...
— Prairie Farmer, Vol. 56: No. 3, January 19, 1884. - A Weekly Journal for the Farm, Orchard and Fireside • Various
... of using various dips, as Lime and Sulphur, which is recommended by the United States Bureau of Animal Industry. This is very effective and inexpensive. Scabby sheep should be dipped a week or ten days after shearing; two dippings are necessary at the interval of ten days. After dipping, move to non-infected range ...
— The Veterinarian • Chas. J. Korinek
... and the seventh—on which Leto bare Apollo with the blade of gold—each is a holy day. The eighth and the ninth, two days at least of the waxing month [1341], are specially good for the works of man. Also the eleventh and twelfth are both excellent, alike for shearing sheep and for reaping the kindly fruits; but the twelfth is much better than the eleventh, for on it the airy-swinging spider spins its web in full day, and then the Wise One [1342], gathers her pile. On that day woman should set up her loom and get ...
— Hesiod, The Homeric Hymns, and Homerica • Homer and Hesiod
... persuading them to follow their example. Whilst, therefore, the powder was drying, I began with a large pair of scissors to execute my new office upon the eldest of four or five chins presented to me; and as great nicety was not required, the shearing of a dozen of them did not occupy me long. Some of the more timid were alarmed at a formidable instrument coming so near to their noses, and would scarcely be persuaded by their shaven friends to allow the operation ...
— A Source Book Of Australian History • Compiled by Gwendolen H. Swinburne
... their fleece is not worth the shearing!" exclaimed Bigot angrily, at the mention of the Golden Dog, which, as he glanced upwards, seemed to glare ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... twelve years last shearing-time," said the shepherd, whose dates were few and simple, sheep-washing, shearing, lambing, and next and last sheepfair being ...
— The Girl's Own Paper, Vol. VIII. No. 358, November 6, 1886. • Various
... Trenton with him, I'd not sit at the board with the fellow.—But ye'll ride over, Wilfred, and take care the minx Agnes knows what she's lost. Ay, and if you knew of a safe hand, Sir, when the shearing is over I'd send the lad a purse of nobles to keep up his knighthood in the ...
— The Caged Lion • Charlotte M. Yonge
... night two were brought into the station. Of course every accommodation is provided for the care and treatment of sheep in the various stages of their existence, including the means of washing and shearing them. An orchard and fruit-garden close by yield tons of fruit every year for the merest scratching of the soil. To obtain labour is the difficulty. The birds, especially parrots, are terrible enemies to the fruit-crops. In the early morning one may see a ...
— The Last Voyage - to India and Australia, in the 'Sunbeam' • Lady (Annie Allnutt) Brassey
... the Pastoralists' Association . . . reports that the following stations have started shearing with ...
— A Dictionary of Austral English • Edward Morris
... Virgil, and while yet young in his teens began to follow his father out into the fields, and thenceforward, as became the eldest boy in a large family, worked hard at grafting and plowing, sowing and reaping, scything and shearing and planting, and all the many duties of husbandmen. Meanwhile, he had taken to drawing ... copied everything he saw, and produced not only studies but compositions also; until at last his father was moved to take him away from farming, and have him ...
— On the Old Road, Vol. 2 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... what charms did once adorn My garden, stored with pease, and mint, and thyme, And rose and lilly for the sabbath morn? The sabbath bells, and their delightful chime; The gambols and wild freaks at shearing time; My hen's rich nest through long grass scarce espied; The cowslip-gathering at May's dewy prime; The swans, that, when I sought the water-side, From far to meet me ...
— Lyrical Ballads 1798 • Wordsworth and Coleridge
... Tranquillity Magpie over the Hill Sheep-shearing Evolution Riding in the Mist The Procession A Christian Wind in the Rocks My ...
— Quotations from the Works of John Galsworthy • David Widger
... doubtful. As in a dream, I watched the giant Jodd cut down a gorgeous captain, the axe shearing through his golden armour as though it were but silk. I watched a comrade of my own fall beneath a spear-thrust. I gazed at the face of Heliodore, who stared wide-eyed at the red scene, and at the white-lipped Irene, who was clinging to my arm. ...
— The Wanderer's Necklace • H. Rider Haggard
... shearing in them sheds in '52 when old Shenty owned the run. He was a rum old miser, he was, would skin two devils for one hide; believe he has gone to hell; hope so, at any rate. He couldn't read nor write much, but he could make money better'n any man I ever heard ...
— The Book of the Bush • George Dunderdale
... has been gained at the shipbuilding docks in Barrow-in-Furness, where the Brush system has been applied to illuminate several large sheds covering the punching and shearing machinery, bending blocks, furnaces, and other branches of this gigantic business. In one shed, which was formerly lighted by large blast-lamps, in which torch oil was burnt, costing about 5d. per gallon, and involving an expenditure of 8 9s. per week, the electric light has been adopted at ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 288 - July 9, 1881 • Various
... Syr was standing in his corn-field when the messengers came to him and brought him the news, and also told him all that Asta was doing at home in the house. He had many people on his farm. Some were then shearing corn, some bound it together, some drove it to the building, some unloaded it and put it in stack or barn; but the king, and two men with him, went sometimes into the field, sometimes to the place where the corn ...
— Heimskringla - The Chronicle of the Kings of Norway • Snorri Sturluson
... was gone, and through the light veil of the encroaching mists she could see him shearing his way ...
— The Hermit of Far End • Margaret Pedler
... with a tame bat, which would take flies out of a person's hand. If you gave it anything to eat, it brought its wings round before the mouth, hovering and hiding its head in the manner of birds of prey when they feed. The adroitness it showed in shearing off the wings of the flies, which were always rejected, was worthy of observation, and pleased me much. Insects seemed to be most acceptable, though it did not refuse raw flesh when offered; so that the notion, that bats go down chimneys and gnaw men's bacon, seems no improbable story. ...
— The Natural History of Selborne, Vol. 1 • Gilbert White
... was the liveliest portion of the herder's life, which was generally very lonely. First came the shearing crew with their captain; next arrived the venders of hot coffee, tamales, tortillas, and other Mexican dainties; brush booths were erected and a brisk trade began. The herds were driven up and into a corral where several shearers could work at a time. Snip, snip, snip, ...
— History of California • Helen Elliott Bandini
... that always hung at her side, and began to cut in a merciless manner. She expected some remonstrance or some opposition, and had a torrent of words ready to flow forth at the least sign of rebellion; but Ruth was still and silent, with meekly-bowed head, under the strange hands that were shearing her beautiful hair into the clipped shortness of a boy's. Long before she had finished, Sally had some slight misgivings as to the fancied necessity of her task; but it was too late, for half the curls were gone, and the rest must now come off. ...
— Ruth • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... thistles; their down I can contrive to work up into cotton, and the stalks into cordage: and, with the profit I shall make of these thistles, and of my decoy, and of my goose-quills and feathers, and of my silver sprig rabbits, I will buy jackets for my sheep, for my sheep shall all have jackets after shearing. Why should not Lincolnshire sheep, if they have jackets, become as valuable as the Leicestershire breed? You'll see my sheep will be the finest in the whole county; and, with the profit I shall make of them, I will set up a fishery in Fen-lake; and with the profits of ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. 2 • Maria Edgeworth
... dominated society, but who was shorn of power and displaced by the rising bourgeoisie. Ay, the thing was done, he holds. And it shall be done again, but this time it is the proletariat who does the shearing. Sociology has taught him that m-i-g-h-t spells "right." Every society has been ruled by classes, and the classes have ruled by sheer strength, and have been overthrown by sheer strength. The bourgeoisie, because it was the stronger, dragged down the nobility of the sword; and the proletariat, ...
— War of the Classes • Jack London
... startled at hearing one gentleman ask another whether he meant to wash this year, and receive the answer "No." I soon discovered that a person's sheep are himself. If his sheep are clean, he is clean. He does not wash his sheep before shearing, but he washes; and, most marvellous of all, it is not his sheep which lamb, but he ...
— A First Year in Canterbury Settlement • Samuel Butler
... we urged on our animals. We had as yet seen no one to tell us in what direction our friends had gone. There was a stream to the left, used in the shearing season for washing the sheep, and Bracewell hoped that they might have made their way ...
— Adventures in Australia • W.H.G. Kingston
... great storehouse of wine, containing now little but empty casks,—a dusky, interesting place, with pomegranates and dried bunches of grapes and oranges and pieces of jerked meat hanging from the rafters. Near by is a cornhouse and a small distillery, and the corrals for sheep shearing are not far off. The ranches for cattle and sheep are on the other side ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... husbandry upon a small scale, renting two or three acres in addition to his own, less than one acre of glebe; and the humblest drudgery which the cultivation of these fields required was performed by himself. He also assisted his neighbours in haymaking and shearing their flocks, and in the performance of this latter service he was eminently dexterous. They, in their turn, complimented him with the present of a haycock, or a fleece; less as a recompense for this particular service than as a general acknowledgment. The Sabbath ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. XVII. No. 473., Saturday, January 29, 1831 • Various
... he's fond of Tilly. It's only that his life is so unsettled. He's been a barman at Euroa since then; and the last we heard of him, he was shearing somewhere on the Goulburn. He doesn't seem ...
— Australia Felix • Henry Handel Richardson
... sang a song of wild, hilarious sea music, fittingly accompanied by the deep, intermittent thunder of the bow wave as it leapt and roared, glassy smooth, in a curling snow-crowned breaker from the sharp, shearing stem at every wild plunge of it into the heart of an on-rushing wave. I ran up the poop ladder, and stood to windward, a fathom back from the break of the poop, where I could obtain the best possible view of the ship; and I thought ...
— The Castaways • Harry Collingwood
... strawberries, sweet, watery grapes, green almonds, and stupendous pears. At rare intervals a steamboat, bright and neat as a new toy, trailed a long feather of smoke from the foot of the Rigi, shed a small and dusty crowd into the sleepy town, and then bustled back, shearing the silken flood and strangely distorting ...
— A Comedy of Masks - A Novel • Ernest Dowson and Arthur Moore
... to a northern slope of the Cotswolds, by a road that took them past High Farm; and there they found John Hurst superintending his sheep-shearing. Aggie, regardless of his feelings, insisted on getting out of the trap and looking on. John talked all the time to the shepherd, while Arthur talked to Aggie, and Aggie, cruel little Aggie, made remarks ...
— The Judgment of Eve • May Sinclair
... essentially competitive life of modern Australia. Brentwood is 'excessively attached to mathematics, and has leisure to gratify his hobby'; Harding, 'an Oxford man,' is 'an inveterate writer of songs,' a pastime which only the annual business of shearing is permitted to interrupt; Buckley is intent on the education of his son, in which he is careful to provide for a knowledge of the Latin Grammar; while Doctor Mulhaus finds the new country an even better field than the old one for his ...
— Australian Writers • Desmond Byrne
... shearing sheep. It is almost done," said the boy. "There is only one thing that is not right yet; but it will be soon. When you think, and think, and think, all night and all day, it comes ...
— The Story of an African Farm • (AKA Ralph Iron) Olive Schreiner
... April, the oak on the 28th. Up there the blue-bells lie in sheets of mauve, and the cuckoo is busy. I rarely see him; but his three notes fill the hot noon and evening. When he spits (says the gamekeeper again) it is time to be sheep-shearing. My talk with the gamekeeper is usually held at six in the morning, when he comes down the lane and I am stepping across to test the water ...
— The Delectable Duchy • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... had been finally fixed that a boat should put in to the Abbey steps to receive the fleeces of the sheep-shearing of the home grange, and that, rolled in one of these fleeces, the wounded knight should be brought on board the Vrow Gudule, where Groot and the women would await him, their freight being already embarked, and all ready ...
— Grisly Grisell • Charlotte M. Yonge
... where the last Noun is governed in the Genitive by coimhead, which is therefore put in the Nominative. So also fear-coimhid, Psal. cxxi. 3, but fear-coimhead Israeil, Psal. cxxi. 4. Edin. 1799. Tigh-bearraidh nam buachaillean, the shearing-house belonging to the shepherds, 2 King, x. 12, but tigh-bearradh nan caorach, the house for shearing the sheep. Luchd-brathaidh an Righ the King's spies; but luchd-brathadh an Righ, the ...
— Elements of Gaelic Grammar • Alexander Stewart
... and overalls of civilization and set upon their black hair the hat made famous by John B. Stetson. You may meet them in town and think them tamed to stupidity. You may travel out upon their reservations and find them shearing sheep or hoeing corn or plodding along the furrow, plowing their fields; or you may watch them dancing grotesquely in their festivals, and still think that civilization is fast erasing the savage instincts from their natures. You will be partly ...
— The Heritage of the Sioux • B.M. Bower
... no wonder, therefore, that we all looked forward to our first great shearing as a very busy time indeed. Our great wool harvest was, indeed, one of the principal events of the year. Moncrieff said he always felt young again at the ...
— Our Home in the Silver West - A Story of Struggle and Adventure • Gordon Stables
... life-like way that I was afraid to touch it until Lloyd put a sofa pillow over its head and sat down on it. Then I began to shear off a little near the tail, where I thought it wouldn't show much; but the mattress didn't fill up very fast. So I kept on shearing, a little farther and a little farther, here a patch and there a patch, until I had taken a great streak out of the middle of the back, ...
— The Little Colonel's House Party • Annie Fellows Johnston
... went out into the world, I did not fear any shearing he might encounter in America. I don't mind my own countrymen. I like them, but I am not afraid of them. Two elements go to make up a book: matter and manner. The former, of course, is its author's ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 75, January, 1864 • Various
... prizes, too! Out in the flock there was a white sheep which she called hers, since she had brought it up as a lamb when its mother would not own it, as is sometimes the way with sheep— silly things! It was shearing-time now and she wanted ...
— The Iron Star - And what It saw on Its Journey through the Ages • John Preston True
... deep fold of the spreading skirts of the range, and some distance from the road, lay a pool, made by damming a burn, and used, in the shearing season, for washing sheep. Surrounded by brushy woods, and very damp and dark, at other seasons it was deserted. Bobby found this secluded place with his nose, curled up under a hazel thicket and fell sound asleep. And while ...
— Greyfriars Bobby • Eleanor Atkinson
... was. You've never had her hand At farls and bannocks; and her singing-hinnies Fair melted in the mouth—not sad and soggy As yours are like to be. She'd no habnab And hitty-missy ways; and she'd turn to, At shearing-time, and clip with any man. She ...
— Krindlesyke • Wilfrid Wilson Gibson
... connection with improvements in engines, cars, wheels, axles, tires, brakes, and rails. Fifteen patents for improvements in sugar manufacture, patents for motors and hydraulic apparatus, for the manufacture of iron and steel, the shaping, embossing, shearing, and cutting of metals, for marine artillery, ordnance, projectiles, ammunition, armor plates, screw propellers, anchors, silvering glass, casting of type, patents for bronze powder, gold paint, oils, varnishes, asphalt pavements, waterproof ...
— The Harris-Ingram Experiment • Charles E. Bolton
... she milked cows and fed lambs all day long all last year. This year she has forty head of nice sheep worth four dollars each, and she doesn't have to feed them the year round as she would chickens, and the wolves are no worse to kill sheep than they are to kill chickens. When shearing-time came she went to a sheep-man and told him she would help cook for his men one week if he would have her sheep sheared with his. She said her work was worth three dollars, that is what one man would get a day shearing, ...
— Letters of a Woman Homesteader • Elinore Pruitt Stewart
... that in 1713, there was but one clothier in the colony. The most that he could do was to full the cloth which was made in the homes. A great proportion of it was worn without shearing or pressing. He lived at Woodbury, and thither the early inhabitants of this town resorted to have their cloth fulled. People, to a very large extent, wore clothing made from the skins of animals. They also wore wooden shoes and moccasins, or went barefoot, ...
— The Two Hundredth Anniversary of the Settlement of the Town of New Milford, Conn. June 17th, 1907 • Daniel Davenport
... or low bushes. A river passed in front at the distance of less than a quarter of a mile, full and flowing in winter, but after the heats of summer consisting of a succession of water-holes connected by a trickling rill. During the shearing season the river was a scene of the greatest animation, as all the flocks from far and near were driven up to it, that the sheep might be washed before being deprived of their fleeces. After a sudden downfall of rain, the quiet stream became a roaring, boiling torrent, sweeping onward with terrific ...
— The Gilpins and their Fortunes - A Story of Early Days in Australia • William H. G. Kingston
... families may eat them in the holy city; but that the owners of those first-born which are not appointed for sacrifices in the laws of our country, should bring a shekel and a half in their stead: but for the first-born of a man, five shekels: that they should also have the first-fruits out of the shearing of the sheep; and that when any baked bread corn, and made loaves of it, they should give somewhat of what they had baked to them. Moreover, when any have made a sacred vow, I mean those that are called Nazarites, that suffer their hair to grow long, and ...
— The Antiquities of the Jews • Flavius Josephus
... not understand that jargon, and therefore thought in that country by that bursting they meant some merry meeting or other, as we do in ours by betrothing, wedding, groaning, christening, churching (of women), shearing (of sheep), reaping (of corn, or harvest-home), and many other junketting bouts that end in -ing. But we soon heard that there was ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... incandescence, like the reflected glare of an enormous furnace; while the short, choppy waves of the forenoon had given place to a long, oily, sluggish swell, without a single ripple to disturb its surface, through which the Chih' Yuen's stem clove its way like a knife shearing through butter. The ship was rolling heavily; and in the queer, eerie stillness that fell with the disappearance of the sun, the usual ship-board sounds, the clank of machinery far below, and even the voices of the men, assumed so weird and unnatural a character that Frobisher felt ...
— A Chinese Command - A Story of Adventure in Eastern Seas • Harry Collingwood
... When you see me contriving in my little gardens, Christy Mahon, you'll swear the Lord God formed me to be living lone, and that there isn't my match in Mayo for thatching, or mowing, or shearing a sheep. ...
— The Playboy of the Western World • J. M. Synge
... Chester, had already familiarized himself with the methods of the exorcists. In the previous year he had attacked the Catholics of Lancashire for an exorcism which they claimed to have accomplished within his parish.[11] Pleased with his new role, he found in Thomas Jollie a sheep ready for the shearing.[12] He hastened to publish The Surey Impostor,[13] in which, with a very good will, he made an assault upon the reality of Dugdale's fits, charged that he had been pre-instructed by the Catholics, ...
— A History of Witchcraft in England from 1558 to 1718 • Wallace Notestein
... myself. The intelligence is required for a sister of his whom I have lately met in this country—a showy "citizeness" of Zurich, embonpoint and matronly, married to one of the portly burghers of the city, and exemplary in all the arts of sheep-shearing, wool-spinning, and cheese-making; a mother, surrounded a la Francaise with a host of Orlandos, Hyacintes, Aristomenes, and Apollos—pretty children, with the Frenchman developing in all its gaudiness; the Switzer remaining behind, until it shall ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 349, November, 1844 • Various
... and domestic affairs which stood out prominently in the lives of her humbler neighbours. The passages from her journal in this and in subsequent years are full of graphic, appreciative descriptions of the stirring incidents of "sheep-juicing," "sheep-shearing," the torchlight procession on "Hallowe'en," a "house-warming;" of the grave solemnity of a Scotch communion, and the kindliness and pathos of more than one cottage "kirstenin," death-bed, and funeral, ...
— Life of Her Most Gracious Majesty the Queen, (Victoria) Vol II • Sarah Tytler
... the spring Birds' nests. " June Bee-swarming and hay-making. " July Sheep-washing and shearing. " August Early windfalls and harvest. " September Blackberries, ...
— What Shall We Do Now?: Five Hundred Games and Pastimes • Dorothy Canfield Fisher
... this age of steamboats, and, for the matter of that, perhaps in any other age, might be termed a terrific sea. She was making good weather of it—that is to say, she kept her decks dry, but she was diving and rolling most hideously, with such swift headlong shearing of her spars through the gale that the noises up in the blackness aloft were as though the spirits of the inmates of a thousand lunatic asylums had been suddenly enlarged from their bodies and sent yelling into limbo. The wind blew with an ...
— The Honour of the Flag • W. Clark Russell
... besides many other services to be performed at different though regular and stated times; as tanning leather for brogans, making heather ropes for thatch, digging and drying peats for fuel; one pannier of peat charcoal to be carried to the smith; so many days for gathering and shearing sheep and lambs: for ferrying cattle from island to island, and other distant places, and several days for going on distant errands: so many pounds of wool to be spun into yarn. And over and above all this, they must lend their aid upon any unforeseen ...
— An Historical Account of the Settlements of Scotch Highlanders in America • J. P. MacLean
... make good clean Baptists of them! But sheep are no fighters, they struggle for a moment and then passively submit to the baptism. My older brothers usually did the washing and I the herding. When the shearing was done, a few days later the poor creatures were put through another ordeal, to which after a brief struggle they quickly resigned themselves. Father did the shearing, while I at times held the animal's legs. Father ...
— My Boyhood • John Burroughs
... almost ready. When he tried to introduce ideas of his own, changing the mores, he failed. He tried many times to put a stop to the usages of mourning which were violent and excessive,—loud outcries, destruction of clothes and furniture, blackening the walls of the house and one's face, and shearing the beard. He did not succeed. These were ancient and popular customs and they were maintained.[1575] It is improper for any Moslem, male or female, to uncover the head.[1576] They uncover the feet to show respect. This was Semitic ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner
... that you have betrayed the first symptom of age, that your back is bent a twentieth of an inch from the perpendicular, I shall hasten to believe you are shearing your prodigal overgrowths, and are calling in your troops to the citadel, and I may come in the first steamer to drop in of evenings and hear ...
— The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1834-1872, Vol II. • Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson
... overawing grandeurs of the stupendous crevice, seen in their most impressive presentment as alternating vistas of stark, moonlighted crags and gulches and depths of blackest shadow, had encouraged it. The hiss and whistle of the air-brakes, the harsh, sustained note of the shrieking wheel-flanges shearing the inner edges of the railheads on the curves, and the stuttering roar of the 266's safety-valve were continuous; a deafening medley of sounds multiplied a hundred-fold by the ...
— The Taming of Red Butte Western • Francis Lynde
... average of 410 pounds of wool, making a total of 415,740 pounds, which he sold at 27 cents a pound, bringing him in $112,349.80, or a clear profit of over $80,000. This is said to be a low yield, so it is evident that sheep raising there, when taking into consideration that shearing takes place twice a year, and that a profit is made off the sale of mutton, etc., is very profitable. The island is divided into four quarters by fences running clear across at right angles, and the sheep do not have to be herded like those ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 417 • Various
... came sheep-washing. The sheep were driven to the bay shore and secured in a pen. One by one they were taken out, and the fleeces carefully washed. Within a day or two, shearing followed in the barn. The wool was sorted; some was reserved to be carded by hand; the remainder was sent to the mills to be turned into rolls. Then, day after day, for weeks, the noise of the spinning-wheel was heard, accompanied by the steady beat of the girls' feet, as they walked ...
— The Ontario Readers: Fourth Book • Various
... "He was shearing sheep, and could give no time to company; and when, late in the day, I drew rein at Janet's, and she said she was going to have a dance and could not look after sick folk, the pallid lips failed to return my despairing embrace; and in the terror ...
— The House in the Mist • Anna Katharine Green
... inmate of the house, it is with difficulty dislodged again, however much people may wish to dislodge it. Wherefore we ought to keep it out of doors, and not let it approach the garrison by wearing mourning or shearing the hair, or by any similar outward sign of sorrow. For these things occurring daily and being importunate make the mind little, and narrow, and unsocial, and harsh, and timid, so that, being besieged and taken in hand by grief, ...
— Plutarch's Morals • Plutarch
... thou hast them indeed very ready at hand; I admonish thee for thine own good without any self-interest. Cut thy hair off, shear thyself, shave thyself, good Maria, and to allay the bitterness of the shearing, I will give fifty maravedis, always on condition that thou dost ...
— First Love (Little Blue Book #1195) - And Other Fascinating Stories of Spanish Life • Various
... outgrown the domestic taint as to be able to maintain its own existence when left entirely to itself. During the first half of this century, when cattle-breeding began to be profitable, and wool was not worth the trouble of shearing, and the gaucho workman would not eat mutton when beef was to be had, some of the estancieros on the southern pampas determined to get rid of their sheep, which were of no value to them; and many flocks were driven ...
— The Naturalist in La Plata • W. H. Hudson
... answer. They had not, however, gone far before the well-known skill of Katla, in optical delusion occurred to them, and they resolved on a second and stricter search. Upon their return they found Katla in the outer apartment, who seemed to be shearing the hair of a tame kid, but was in reality cutting the locks of her son Oddo. Entering the inner room, they found the large distaff flung carelessly upon a bench. They returned yet a third time, and a third delusion was prepared for them; for Katla had given ...
— Folk-Lore and Legends; Scandinavian • Various
... blanks are hot-forged from straight bars. They are usually forged in multiples of four under a spring hammer and then separated by a suitable punching or shearing die in a press adjoining the ...
— The Working of Steel - Annealing, Heat Treating and Hardening of Carbon and Alloy Steel • Fred H. Colvin
... and breaking his neck, but he was always too anxious about his sheep when overtaken by a fog to think of his own danger. Then the wages were good, and the same all the year round, with the chance of making some extra money in the shearing season, and so much a head on each lamb that he reared; and to all intents and purposes he was his own master, for the farmer to whom the sheep belonged entrusted the management of ...
— The Girl's Own Paper, Vol. VIII, No. 355, October 16, 1886 • Various
... whence they return daily with great loads of hay—of a coarse kind, but serviceable. As for the flocks, they are now pasturing for the summer upon the slopes of the Zagros mountains. There were six thousand head of sheep and two thousand head of goats at the shearing in the spring, and the wool is already sold for eight talents. As for the slaves, I have provided for them after a new fashion. There were many young men from the captives that came after the war two years ago. For these I have purchased wives of the dealers from Scythia. These Scythians sell ...
— Marzio's Crucifix and Zoroaster • F. Marion Crawford
... enough to take my place in the Sheepguard, The Beast gnawed all our country like a bone between his teeth. He came in behind the flocks at watering-time, and watched them round the Dew-ponds; he leaped into the folds between our knees at the shearing; he walked out alongside the grazing flocks, and chose his meat on the hoof while our boys threw flints at him; he crept by night 'into the huts, and licked the babe from between the mother's hands; he called his companions and pulled down men in broad ...
— Rewards and Fairies • Rudyard Kipling
... man grips them between his legs David shakes a fist at him for using such big scissors. Another startling moment is when the man turns back the grimy wool from the sheeps' shoulders and they look suddenly like ladies in the stalls of a theatre. The sheep are so frightened by the shearing that it makes them quite white and thin, and as soon as they are set free they begin to nibble the grass at once, quite anxiously, as if they feared that they would never be worth eating. David wonders whether they know each other, now that they are so different, and if it makes them fight with ...
— The Little White Bird - or Adventures In Kensington Gardens • J. M. Barrie
... to attend to the shearing of his sheep, one of those wholly unnecessary operations which the less skilful pastoralists make it a virtue to thrust upon our attention. The scene between Nerina, Daphnis, and Dorinda, a sort of three-cornered love-suit, may possibly have suggested to Cowley ...
— Pastoral Poetry and Pastoral Drama - A Literary Inquiry, with Special Reference to the Pre-Restoration - Stage in England • Walter W. Greg
... island, drove the lagoon hither and thither, catching up the white pond-lilies by their long stems, twisting off the dense thickets of mangroves by the roots, burrowing holes in the sandy beds of the cactus, and shearing off their flat, thorny leaves and needle points by the acre together; then a rushing whirl around the cocoa-nuts, bowing their tufted tops at first till they nearly touched the earth, when, the stout trunks snapping like glass, ...
— Captain Brand of the "Centipede" • H. A. (Henry Augustus) Wise
... moment all was bustle; the watch below tumbled up to lend a hand without waiting to be called; and in five minutes the noble ship was clothed with canvas from her trucks down, and shearing through the deep blue water with her ...
— A Middy of the Slave Squadron - A West African Story • Harry Collingwood
... shearing, nae youths now are jeering, Bandsters are lyart, and runkled and gray; At fair or at preaching, nae wooing, nae fleeching— The Flowers of the ...
— The Golden Treasury - Of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language • Various
... age that had been crowding upon him of late fall away like the wool of a sheep at shearing. Here, at last, was hope—real hope. After almost two and a half centuries of non-communication, the men of the infant planet had returned to the aid of the aging planet. For, once they saw the condition of Earth, and understood it, there could ...
— It's All Yours • Sam Merwin
... cactus served the gipsies for winter quarters only, and when the spring came they set off, scouring the country for something to earn or steal; but that is long ago. For two generations they have remained in these hovels—year in, year out—employed in shoeing horses, shearing, and the like menial occupations which the Spaniard thinks beneath his dignity. The women tell fortunes, or dance for the foreigner, or worse. It is a mere struggle for daily bread. I wondered whether in the spring-time the young men loved the maidens, or if they only coupled ...
— The Land of The Blessed Virgin; Sketches and Impressions in Andalusia • William Somerset Maugham
... to my mother's brother—James Hepburn, thy great-uncle as was; she were a poor, friendless wench, a parish 'prentice, but honest and gaum-like, till a lad, as nobody knowed, come o'er the hills one sheep-shearing fra' Whitehaven; he had summat to do wi' th' sea, though not rightly to be called a sailor: and he made a deal on Nancy Hartley, just to beguile the time like; and he went away and ne'er sent a thought after her more. It's the ...
— Sylvia's Lovers, Vol. II • Elizabeth Gaskell |
