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More "Flail" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... silently, holding a naked dagger in his left hand and thrashing the laboring sides of his chestnut horse with his whip as if it were a flail. ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... Then Kullervo made a flail and set to work. And he threshed so hard that all the grain was beaten to powder and the straw was broken up into useless pieces. But when Untamo saw this, he grew very angry, and cried out that ...
— Finnish Legends for English Children • R. Eivind
... which had precipitated the storm. It was quite a severe thunder-shower. The rain had held off for a fierce prelude, then it came in solid cataracts. Then it was that Charlotte Carroll rushed into the store. She was dripping, beaten like a flower, by the force of the liquid flail of the storm. She had pulled off the rose-wreathed hat which was dear to her heart, and she had it under her dress skirt, which she held up over her lace-trimmed petticoat modestly, with as little revelation as might be. Her dark head ...
— The Debtor - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... so handicapped, she could never reach them, and with shaking, fumbling fingers she set herself to unfasten the straps that bound the skis. It took her a long, long time—all the longer for her fevered haste. And still that awful, flail-like sound went on and on, though all sound of voices had ...
— The Knave of Diamonds • Ethel May Dell
... go upstairs, and there was a man up there threshing, and he knocked me down with his flail." That ...
— English Fairy Tales • Joseph Jacobs (coll. & ed.)
... while he severed a stout rope, and he could not see the expression of sheer bewilderment which again mastered the usually impassive features of Abdullah. The Arab had yielded to unwonted surprise when he saw Royson use a man as flail, but the removal of the gag, and the consequent revelation of Irene's ...
— The Wheel O' Fortune • Louis Tracy
... he cried, as his breath came and went in gusts,—"there I sat, a poor barrow-back't creature, and heard that old savvorless loon spit his spite at my lass. I'm none of a brave man, Ralph: no, I must be a coward, but I went nigh to snatching up yon flail of his and striking him—aye, killing him!—but no, it must be that ...
— The Shadow of a Crime - A Cumbrian Romance • Hall Caine
... her arm she brak, A compound fracture as could be; Nae leech the cure wad undertak, Whate'er was the gratuity. It 's cured! she handles 't like a flail, It does as weel in bits as hale; But I 'm a broken man mysel' ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... especial consideration given it because of its contribution to the welfare of mankind. We are as useful as any other hard-working people, no more and no less. We claim no higher appreciation for muscular effort exerted in swinging the flail than for that applied to the wielding of ...
— Village Improvements and Farm Villages • George E. Waring
... drudging goblin sweat To earn his cream-bowl duly set, When in one night, ere glimpse of morn, His shadowy flail hath threshed the corn That ten day-laborers could not end. Then lies him down the lubbar fiend, And stretcht out all the chimney's length Basks at ...
— The Book of Hallowe'en • Ruth Edna Kelley
... hasty and untoward gestures of Julian, should foretel he would one day become an apostate;—or that St. Ambrose should turn his Amanuensis out of doors, because of an indecent motion of his head, which went backwards and forwards like a flail;—or that Democritus should conceive Protagoras to be a scholar, from seeing him bind up a faggot, and thrusting, as he did it, the small twigs inwards.—There are a thousand unnoticed openings, continued ...
— The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman • Laurence Sterne
... the parapet of the open cloister, Desiderius might have dropped a pebble sheer down to the plain below. A single path wound up the rock to the gate, so narrow and steep that one sturdy lay-brother might have held the way with a thresher's flail against a ...
— A Child's Book of Saints • William Canton
... farming implements in use showed little of that mechanical ingenuity which is now characteristic of the American people. The plough was still a clumsy affair with heavy beam and handles, and wooden mould-board. The scythe, the sickle, and the flail were the same as their forbears ...
— Union and Democracy • Allen Johnson
... his cutlass and made an arc of blue flame. The weapon became in his hands a flail, terrible to look upon, making lightnings and whistling in the air, but in reality not so deadly as it seemed. The fury of his onslaught would have beaten down the guard of any mere swordsman, but that I was not. A man, knowing ...
— Modern Prose And Poetry; For Secondary Schools - Edited With Notes, Study Helps, And Reading Lists • Various
... fell flail-like, with absolute precision and regularity. It spared no part of him. His coat was nearly torn off. In one place, on the shoulder, the white shirt was exposed, and this also was ...
— The Swindler and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... There came a time when Harrigan's enveloping arms found him less readily; came a change when Harrigan had to stand up and fight. And then, with deadly, insensate purpose which made the other's madness a wild and futile thing, Stephen O'Mara set himself to chop his face to pieces. Flail-like blows he side-stepped, and whipped to the other's eyes. That open guard he feinted wider and laid flesh open raw. Harrigan could no longer curse, for his lips were puffy things pulped between his own teeth and those merciless knuckles. He could only sob, great groaning gasps for breath—and ...
— Then I'll Come Back to You • Larry Evans
... But the adventures of Arthegal mainly preserve the memory of Lord Grey's terrible exploits against wrong and rebellion in Ireland. These exploits are represented in the doings of the iron man Talus, his squire, with his destroying flail, swift, irresistible, inexorable; a figure, borrowed and altered, after Spenser's wont, from a Greek legend. His overthrow of insolent giants, his annihilation of swarming "rascal routs," idealize and glorify that unrelenting policy, of which, though condemned ...
— Spenser - (English Men of Letters Series) • R. W. Church
... is the hammermill—a grinding chamber containing a rotating spindle with steel tines or hammers attached that repeatedly beats and tears materials into smaller and smaller pieces until they fall out through a bottom screen. Hammermills will flail almost anything to pieces without becoming dulled. Soft, green materials are beaten to shreds; hard, dry, brittle stuff is rapidly fractured into tiny chips. Changing the size of the discharge screen adjusts the size of the final product. By using very coarse ...
— Organic Gardener's Composting • Steve Solomon
... much as I could do. I am sure strength must have been granted me for the task. For a long while, or what seemed to me a long while, nobody heard. Seth was making a great noise with his flail, and if my shout reached his ears he only thought it child's play; but when it kept on and on, so shrill and so full of distress, he dropped his flail ...
— Aunt Madge's Story • Sophie May
... of the dead should not be removed far from her body. A beautiful microscopic hawk, which would have made a lovely watch-charm, was attached by a thread to a necklace of small plates of blue glass, to which was hung also a sort of amulet in the shape of a flail, made of turquoise-blue enamel. Some of the plates had become semi-opaque, no doubt owing to the heat of the boiling bitumen which had been poured over them, ...
— The Works of Theophile Gautier, Volume 5 - The Romance of a Mummy and Egypt • Theophile Gautier
... toss, conveys nothing at all. It was the sort of fall you dream of—almost too good to be true. And my uniform-case, of which he never let go, described a very beautiful parabola, and then came down upon the weigh-bridge, as the swiple of an uplifted flail comes down ...
— Jonah and Co. • Dornford Yates
... straw," said the Lad, "lie still and don't grin, like a good bairn." But the little Imp of out of bed, and said, "Go east, Donald, and when ye come to the big brae (or brow of the hill), rap three times, and when they come, say ye are seeking Johnnie's flail." Donald did so, and out came a little fairy man, and gave him a flail. Then Johnnie took the flail, thrashed away at the straw, finished it, sent the flail back, and went to bed again. When the parents came back, Donald told them all about it; and so they took the Imp out ...
— Fairy Tales; Their Origin and Meaning • John Thackray Bunce
... she ever rode, she said. He was a quiet little old roan, with a bright eye and legs like gate-posts, but he never fell down with us boys, for all that. If we fell off he stopped still and began to feed, so that he suited us all to pieces. We soon got sharp enough to flail him along with a quince stick, and we used to bring up the milkers, I expect, a good deal faster than was good for them. After a bit we could milk, leg-rope, and bail up for ourselves, and help dad brand the calves, which began to come pretty thick. ...
— Robbery Under Arms • Thomas Alexander Browne, AKA Rolf Boldrewood
... was my intent; I haunted meetings, Used zealous greetings, Crept full of devotion; Smectymnuus won me first, then holy Nye prevail, (111) Then Captain Kiffin (112) slops me with John of Leyden's tail, Then Fox and Naylor bangs me with Jacob Beamond's flail. (113) Alas! poor ...
— Cavalier Songs and Ballads of England from 1642 to 1684 • Charles Mackay
... his cream-bowl daily set, When in one night, ere glimpse of morn, His shadowy flail hath thresh'd the corn, That ten day lab'rers could not end; Then lies him down, the lubber[56] fiend, And stretch'd out all the chimney's length, Basks at the fire his hairy strength, And cropful out of doors he flings, Ere the first cock his ...
— Spare Hours • John Brown
... Ireland. Joseph refreshed with corn the Egyptians oppressed by famine; Patrick, in process of time, fed with the salutary food of the Christian faith the Irish perishing under idolatry. To each was affliction sent for the profit of his soul, as is the flail to the grain, the furnace to the gold, the file to the iron, the wine-press to the grape, and the oil-press to the olive. Therefore it was that Patrick, at the command of the forementioned prince, was appointed to the care of the swine, and under his care the herd became fruitful and exceedingly ...
— The Most Ancient Lives of Saint Patrick - Including the Life by Jocelin, Hitherto Unpublished in America, and His Extant Writings • Various
... According to him, God, in punishment for sin delivers over people to shameful affections, to a reprobate sense; he suffers them to be a hell unto themselves. And nature seldom fails to avenge herself for the outrages suffered. She uses the flail of disease and remorse, of misery and disgust, and she scourges the culprit to the verge of the grave, often to ...
— Explanation of Catholic Morals - A Concise, Reasoned, and Popular Exposition of Catholic Morals • John H. Stapleton
... his little band into a knot in the center of the inclosure. Then the brazen sun looked down upon a Homeric struggle. Bulger, brawny warrior of the iron hook, swung his musket like a flail, every now and again shooting forth his more sinister weapon with terrible effect. Desmond, slim and athletic, dashed in upon the enemy with his half pike as they recoiled before Bulger's whirling musket. The rest, now a bare dozen, Bengalis ...
— In Clive's Command - A Story of the Fight for India • Herbert Strang
... that was strewn over the whole platform. Where the battlements had once frowned, now stood sheaves of smiling corn, golden and nodding in the wind and the sun. Suddenly the lad who had led me hither seized the flail and began to beat the corn and stalks strewn over the floor, while the old man, quavering a little, sang a long-drawn-out gay melody, and the little girl beat her tiny hands in time to the work and the ...
— Florence and Northern Tuscany with Genoa • Edward Hutton
... him, seized him by the shirt collar, and pulled him bodily from the bunk. Then, smothering his protesting voice by a grip on his throat, slatted him from side to side as a farmer uses a flail, and threw him headlong against the after bulkhead and half-way into an empty bunk. Sampson had uttered no word, and Forsythe only muttered as he crawled back to his own bunk. But he found courage ...
— The Wreck of the Titan - or, Futility • Morgan Robertson
... wife, be blithe To bid the New Year hail And welcome—plough, drill, scythe, And jolly flail. ...
— Wandering Heath • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... white hickory shavings, are whittling out with keen Barlow jack-knives implements for home use: ox-bows and bow-pins, axe-helves, rakestales, forkstales, handles for spades and billhooks, wooden shovels, flail staff and swingle, swingling knives, or pokes and hog yokes for unruly cattle and swine. The more ingenious, perhaps, are fashioning buckets or powdering tubs, or weaving skeps, baskets or snowshoes. ...
— The Old Coast Road - From Boston to Plymouth • Agnes Rothery
... the sky through the chimney top, enjoying the quiet and serene life that may be had in a warm corner by the chimney side, or feeling our pulse by listening to the low of cattle in the street, or the sound of the flail in distant barns all the long afternoon. No doubt a skilful physician could determine our health by observing how these simple and natural sounds affected us. We enjoy now, not an oriental, but a boreal leisure, around warm ...
— Excursions • Henry D. Thoreau
... Chronicle, writing on women farmers, quotes the tribute of HUTTON, the historian, to a Derbyshire lady who died at Matlock in 1854: "She undertakes any kind of manual labour, as holding the plough, driving the team, thatching the barn, using the flail; but her chief avocation is breaking horses at a guinea per week. She is fond of Pope and Shakespeare, is a self-taught and capable instrumentalist, and supports the bass ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, May 16, 1917. • Various
... outdone the activity of all other hands in clearing and cultivating those very fields where her feet loved to run; how, in its pride of strength, it had handled the scythe, and the sickle, and the flail, with a grace and efficiency that no other could attain; and how, in happy manhood, that strong hand had fondled, and sheltered, and led, the little children that now had grown up and were gone! Strength and activity, ay, and the fruits of them, were passed away; his children were ...
— Queechy, Volume I • Elizabeth Wetherell
... barns, he had only a little wheat, which he had contrived to conceal from the Arab invaders; and, instead of its being trodden out by plump oxen, he was glad to beat it with a stick, not possessing even the poor man's flail, and hiding in a winepress, where no one would ...
— Little Folks - A Magazine for the Young (Date of issue unknown) • Various
... liar!" cried Spurlock, striking at the arm. But the free arm of the stranger hit him a flail-like blow on the chest and sent him sprawling into the yielding sand. Berserker, Spurlock ...
— The Ragged Edge • Harold MacGrath
... come forth to play On a sulphurous holiday, Tell how the darkling goblin sweat (His feast of cinders duly set), And, belching night, where breathed the morn, His shadowy flail hath threshed the corn That ten ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... bloom red where she buds pale, thy sister rose? Wilt thou not fail When noonday flashes like a flail? Leave, nightingale, the Caravan! ...
— Georgian Poetry 1913-15 • Edited by E. M. (Sir Edward Howard Marsh)
... which the road climbed, and with them were three men, their drovers, and they drew nigh him as he was amidst of the sheep, so that he could scarce see the way. Each of these three had a weapon; one a pole-axe, another a long spear, and the third a flail jointed and bound with iron, and an anlace hanging at his girdle. So they stood in the way and hailed him when the sheep were gone past; and the man with the spear asked him whither away. "I am turned toward Higham-on-the-Way," quoth he; "and ...
— The Well at the World's End • William Morris
... work to do should not have sported with Amaryllis, or played with the tangles of Neaera's hair,—should not have worn well-anointed love-locks and snowy linen,—should, on the other hand, have bared his brawny arm, and sent the hissing flail down swiftly upon the waled and blistered back of Sham! How much better would it have been, if he had written a history, in twelve elephantine volumes, of the rise, culmination, and decay of the Empire of Barataria, which ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 21, July, 1859 • Various
... seeds, harvesting should begin when three fourths of the leaves have fallen and most of the pods are ripe. Do not wait, however, until the pods are so dry that they have begun to split and drop their seeds. A slight amount of dampness on the plants aids the cutting. The threshing may be done with a flail, with pea-hullers, or with ...
— Agriculture for Beginners - Revised Edition • Charles William Burkett
... suburban muse affords, And Panton[146] waging harmless war with words. Here Flecknoe, as a place to fame well known, Ambitiously design'd his Shadwell's throne. For ancient Decker[147] prophesied long since, That in this pile should reign a mighty prince, Born for a scourge of wit, and flail of sense: To whom true dulness should some Psyches owe, 90 But worlds of Misers[148] from his pen should flow; Humourists and hypocrites it should produce, Whole Raymond families, and tribes ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol I - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden
... halves of a flail, depend on it: wan no use wi'out t'other. Then theer's the singing of the auld song: who's gwaine to say that's ...
— Children of the Mist • Eden Phillpotts
... eye Savitri watched her dear and fated lord, Flail of grief was in her bosom but her ...
— Maha-bharata - The Epic of Ancient India Condensed into English Verse • Anonymous
... out for show seemed neither resentful nor distressed, ready enough most times to exhibit his merits, anxious only for the chance of a good master and the momentary avoidance of the lictor's flail. At the praefect's bidding he cracked his knuckles or showed his teeth, strained the muscles of his arm to make them stand up like cords, turned a somersault, jumped, danced or stood on his head if ordered ...
— "Unto Caesar" • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... with its plaintive whistle, And pecks by the witch-hazel, whilst aloud From cottage roofs the warbling blue-bird sings; And merrily, with oft-repeated stroke, Sounds from the threshing-floor the busy flail. ...
— The Grateful Indian - And other Stories • W.H.G. Kingston
... myself into the fray, however, turned the tide of battle in our favor. Joe had caught up the chair to which he had been bound, and wielded it like a flail, with every swing of it breaking a head or snapping an arm. And my musket took a heavy toll. The room rang with the din of battle—the shouts of the men, the whoops of the negroes, the clashing of our weapons. For half a minute it was perfect ...
— Humphrey Bold - A Story of the Times of Benbow • Herbert Strang
... were already busy at it. There were twelve threshing-floors, and the twelve men were at work on six of them—two on each. Hans must thresh by himself all that was lying upon the other six floors. He went out to the barn and got hold of a flail. Then he looked to see how the others did it and did the same, but at hte first stroke he smashed the flail in pieces. There were several flails hanging there, and Hans took the one after the other, but they all went the same way, ...
— The Pink Fairy Book • Various
... quaint device, And sees, above the city's din, Afar its silent Alpine kin: I track thee over carpets deep To wealth's and beauty's inmost keep; Across the sand of bar-room floors Mid the stale reek of boosing boors; Where browse the hay-field's fragrant heats, Or the flail-heart of Autumn beats; 80 I dog thee through the market's throngs To where the sea with myriad tongues Laps the green edges of the pier, And the tall ships that eastward steer, Curtsy their farewells to the town, O'er the ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... leaders of the church were called up by the Japanese, who stepped down and ran his fingers along the floor. "Look at this dust," he said. Ordering the two men to sit down on the floor, he beat them with a flail, over the shoulders. ...
— Korea's Fight for Freedom • F.A. McKenzie
... A "make-believe" blow would have implied a "make- believe" hammer and a "make-believe" curtain. No!—hammer away, like Charles Martel; "fillip me with a three-man beetle;" be to me a malleus hreticorum; come like Spenser's Talus—an iron man with an iron flail, and thresh out the straw of my logic; rack me; put me to the question; get me down; jump upon me; kick me; throttle me; put an end to me in any way ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... speaks my pensive self, "that he Whose passion 'tis to sing of men who fail,— (Belabored, broken by The Unseen Flail) Small wonder that ...
— ANTHOLOGY OF MASSACHUSETTS POETS • WILLIAM STANLEY BRAITHWAITE
... to a bed in the corner of a large apartment, whose beautiful painted ceiling and cornice, and fine chimney-piece with caryatides of white marble, ill accorded with the heaps of oats and corn, the thrashing cloth and flail, which lay ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. IX - [Contents: Harrington; Thoughts on Bores; Ormond] • Maria Edgeworth
... and told the children to keep their hands off him. One was a girl, and Harry never could bear to strike a girl; and the other was a boy, whom he could easily have beat, but he always cried out, when Mrs. Pastoureau came sailing to the rescue with arms like a flail. She only washed Harry's face the day he went away; nor ever so much as once boxed his ears. She whimpered rather when the gentleman in black came for the boy; and old Mr. Pastoureau, as he gave the child his blessing, scowled over his shoulder at the strange gentleman, ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... at this intelligence, and, under pretence of serving another company in the next room, went out to the barn, where, arming himself with a flail, he repaired to a lane through which the curate was under a necessity of passing in his way home. There he lay in ambush with fell intent; and when the supposed author of his shame arrived, greeted him in the dark with ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett
... sparrows, has carried my thoughts to the rich crops which are now falling beneath the sickle; it has recalled to me the beautiful walks I took as a child through my native province, when the threshing-floors at the farmhouses resounded from every part with the sound of a flail, and when the carts, loaded with golden sheaves, came in by all the roads. I still remember the songs of the maidens, the cheerfulness of the old men, the open-hearted merriment of the laborers. There was, at that time, something ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... immeasurable torrent of abuse that greeted his expressed opinion did not in any least degree avail to make him one of the pro-slavery faction. The concession of 1850 was one which he would not have made, and it must be the last. Welcome to him the iron flail of war, whose tribulation saved the immortal wheat of justice and purged away the chaff of wrong to perish ...
— Autobiography and Letters of Orville Dewey, D.D. - Edited by his Daughter • Orville Dewey
... laid bare; He shook the seed that he carried O'er that brown and bladeless place. He shook it, as God shakes hail Over a doomed land. When lightnings interlace The sky and the earth, and his wand Of love is a thunder-flail. Thus did that Sower sow; His seed was human blood, And tears of women and men. And I, who near him stood, Said: When the crop comes, then There will be sobbing and sighing, Weeping and wailing and crying, Flame, and ...
— Poems with Power to Strengthen the Soul • Various
... the rocks when they, like ourselves, heard the sound of thrashing in a barn, which started an argument between them on their relative abilities in the handling of the flail. As they could not settle the matter by words, they resolved to do so by blows; so they made their way to the farm and requested the farmer to allow them to try their hand at thrashing corn, and to judge which of them shaped the better. The farmer readily consented, and accompanied ...
— From John O'Groats to Land's End • Robert Naylor and John Naylor
... tossing his nose with pain and bellowing: Uxmoor dragged by the tail and compelled to follow in preposterous, giant strides, barely touching the ground with the point of his toe, pounded the creature's ribs with such blows as Zoe had never dreamed possible. They sounded like flail on wooden floor, and each blow was accompanied with a loud jubilant shout. Presently, being a five's player, and ambidexter, he shifted his hand, and the tremendous whacks resounded on the bull's left side. The bull, ...
— The Woman-Hater • Charles Reade
... the farm the historical Jock Howison asked and got from our gay James the Fifth, "the gudeman o' Ballengiech," as a reward for the services of his flail, when the King had the worst of it at Cramond Brig with the gypsies. The farm is unchanged in size from that time, and still in the unbroken line of the ready and victorious thrasher. Braehead is held on the condition of the possessor being ready to present the King with ...
— Stories of Childhood • Various
... morrow, friends and neighbours dear, We are right glad to meet you here, Christmas comes but once a year, But when it comes it brings good cheer, And when it's gone it's no longer near. May luck attend the milking-pail, Yule logs and cakes in plenty be, May each blow of the thrashing-flail Produce good frumenty. And let the Wassail Cup abound, Whene'er ...
— The Peace Egg and Other tales • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... Underneath that tranquil spell lay fond Joe and Bob (with their cash to spend), Widow Precious (with her beer laid in), and Widow Carroway, with a dole at last extorted from the government; while Anerley Farm was content to hearken the creak of wagon and the ring of flail, and the rector of Flamborough once more rejoiced in the bloodless war ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... Labor is scrutinised and economised, and measured closely up to the value of a farthing's-worth of capacity. A shilling's difference per acre in the cost of ploughing by horse-flesh or steam brings the latter into the field. The sound of the flail is dying out of the land, and soon will be heard no more. Even threshing machines worked by horses are being discarded, as too slow and old-fashioned. Locomotive steam-engines, on broad-rimmed wheels, may be ...
— A Walk from London to John O'Groat's • Elihu Burritt
... heat of the day were settling down now: the first wild, cool youth of the morning was past, and the Englishman felt the heat of the desert rise from the ground and strike his face, like the blow of a flail, as he stepped on land. He expected the Soudanese boys to follow, as they generally did on similar excursions—one to secure the boat and sit and wait beside it, and the other to accompany himself, carry his tripod and camera, and act as guide and general escort. To-day ...
— Six Women • Victoria Cross
... and all was dark. So he turned away on his heel and was so frightened, his mother said, he could hardly get home from fear, and he had three whole miles to go. Next day he was thrashing corn in the barn and something upset him and pitched him head foremost across the flail. He rose, and three times he was pitched like that across the flail, so he gave up and went home. His mother asked him: 'Johnny, what is the matter with you? You do look very bad!' So he up and told her what had happened to him in the barn, and what he saw the night before. And he took suddenly ...
— Adopting An Abandoned Farm • Kate Sanborn
... homes; with coal deposits that are the envy of the world, its shivering women in stoveless hovels attempt to defend themselves about their domestic toil with coarse homespun shawls and slat-bonnets. In an age that has harnessed mechanism, beast, and steam to the plow, scythe, sickle and flail, these owners of mountains of iron and mines of power still indolently vex a grudging soil with tools of such barbaric simplicity that their intrusion is scarcely more ...
— American Missionary, Volume 43, No. 12, December, 1889 • Various
... O'Rahilly. Edited, with translation, by the Rev. P.S. Dinneen, M.A., for the Irish Texts Society, p. 11. O'Rahilly's charge against Cromwell is that he "gave plenty to the man with the flail," but beggared the great ...
— Ireland In The New Century • Horace Plunkett
... beside the fire; in February, as is most right, fishing in the Serchio; in March, wisely pruning his trees; in April, sowing his seed; in May, plucking the spring flowers; in June, cutting the corn; in July, beating it out with the flail—the flail that is used to-day in every country place in Tuscany; in August, plucking the fruits; in September, treading the wine-press; in October, storing the wine; in November, ploughing; and in December, ...
— Florence and Northern Tuscany with Genoa • Edward Hutton
... his feet with that throat grip. He whirled him like a flail, and smashed him down upon the deck, and let him go. And there Yankee Swope lay, sprawled, and still, his head bent back at a fatal angle. A broken neck, as a glance at the lolling head would inform; and, as we discovered later, a broken back as well. ...
— The Blood Ship • Norman Springer
... impoverish and beggar a man. The Drunkard, says Solomon, shall come to poverty. {49b} Many that have begun the world with Plenty, have gone out of it in Rags; through drunkenness. Yea, many Children that have been born to good Estates, have yet been brought to a Flail & a Rake, through this ...
— The Life and Death of Mr. Badman • John Bunyan
... near the house. In a few minutes he did something displeasing to the bull, which started him to running at a fearful speed. He dashed away towards the house, the plow flying and flapping about like the arms of a flail; tore through the flower-beds, ripping them to pieces; tore down all the choice young trees about the house; frightened the ladies and children nearly to death, and demoralized the whole farm. He was at last captured and affectionately cared ...
— Detailed Minutiae of Soldier life in the Army of Northern Virginia, 1861-1865 • Carlton McCarthy
... impossible for him to restrain his groans. When the ambulance started, it went anywhere but in a good road, and as it bumped over logs and boulders, my broken leg would thresh about like the mauler of a flail. I found it necessary to keep it in place by putting the other one over it. At last we stopped and were unloaded. It was still dark, but in due time light broke in the East, and a little later I could roll my head and take in some of the surroundings. Most of the wounded of the regiment ...
— Personal Recollections of the War of 1861 • Charles Augustus Fuller
... when the chores were done, I went alone to the grain barn in the back lot of the Senator's farm with flail and measure and broom and fork and shovel and sacks and my luncheon, in a push cart, with all of which ...
— The Light in the Clearing • Irving Bacheller
... from his own death-doing weapons, of rapier, poniard, and pistols, which were placed nevertheless, at no great distance from his chair. One offensive implement, indeed, he thought it prudent to keep on the table beside his huge Coke upon Lyttleton. This was a sort of pocket flail, consisting of a piece of strong ash, about eighteen inches long, to which was attached a swinging club of lignum-vitae, nearly twice as long as the handle, but jointed so as to be easily folded up. This instrument, which bore at that time the singular name of the Protestant flail, might ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott
... which we were separated! This fair inheritance had fallen to one who, perhaps, would only abuse it to the purposes of luxury, while I, with intentions worthy of the friend of mankind, was doomed to wield the flail and ...
— Arthur Mervyn - Or, Memoirs of the Year 1793 • Charles Brockden Brown
... caused the recipient to recoil, yet he instantly returned, so that Carson was kept busy pounding the noses as if he was an old fashioned farmer threshing wheat with a flail. ...
— The Life of Kit Carson • Edward S. Ellis
... happened in a flash. Like lightning his right wing came round with a terrific flail-stroke, and hit Pig Head in the face at the precise instant that the surgical instrument he carried as his beak sank deep into one of Pig Head's calves. The Chieftain was upside-down at the moment, and his legs were tied ...
— The Way of the Wild • F. St. Mars
... pull up the male plants, leaving only the females to mature. Cut the seed-plants after the first hard frost, and carry in wet, so as to avoid loss by shelling. Seed is easily separated by a common flail. After the seeds are thrashed out, they should be spread thin, and thoroughly dried, or their vegetative power will be destroyed by heat or decay. They should be spread to be kept for the next spring's planting, ...
— Soil Culture • J. H. Walden
... differed somewhat in its appliances, but the philosophy of it was pretty much the same as it is now. Oxen were occasionally used for team labour and were shod like horses; wheat was universally reaped with a sickle, and as universally threshed with a flail, the bent figure of the wheat-barn tasker being a familiar object in the "big old barn with its gloomy bays and the moss upon the thatch." An honest pride he took in his work and has found a fit memorial in the ...
— Fragments of Two Centuries - Glimpses of Country Life when George III. was King • Alfred Kingston
... is treated in this way in South America. The Sulphur Tyrant-bird picks up a young snake by the tail, and, flying to a branch or stone, uses it like a flail until ...
— The Industries of Animals • Frederic Houssay
... Duck, could o'er the Queen prevail; The proverb says, No fence against a flail; >From threshing corn, he turns to thresh his brains, For which her Majesty allow him grains; Though 'tis confest, that those who ever saw His poems, think them all not worth a straw. Thrice happy Duck! employ'd in ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole
... phase of farm telephony. The cost of an efficient farm system is now so little—not more than two dollars a month, that the present trashy lines are certain sooner or later to go to the junk-heap with the sickle and the flail and all the ...
— The History of the Telephone • Herbert N. Casson
... the leaves of Plug Street Wood at No Man's Land between the lines, where every creature had been killed by the sweeping flail of machine-guns and shrapnel. Along the harvest-fields there were many barren territories like that, and up by Hooge, along the edge of the fatal crater, and behind the stripped trees of Zouave Wood there was no other gleaning to be had but that of broken shells and shrapnel ...
— Now It Can Be Told • Philip Gibbs
... can turn on his back, which he is obliged to do ere he can use his mouth. This wily and experienced shark, not daring to turn and expose his more vulnerable parts to the formidable sword of his enemy, lashed at him with his heavy tail, as a man uses a flail, working the water into a syllabub. Meanwhile, in honour, I suppose, or in the love of fair play, his seven compatriot sharks stood aloof, lying to with their fins, in no degree interfering in the fray. Frequently I could observe, by ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 19. No. 538 - 17 Mar 1832 • Various
... by that feeling which is in the heart of every man of mighty muscle, abandoned his revolver, and, clubbing his rifle, reverted to the methods of the old savage. He swung it around his head like a flail, and crashed it amongst those directly in front of him. And his action became an example for the rest. Every rifle was clubbed, and by sheer might, and desperate exertion, the defenders cleared a space before them. The great Rube advanced, his rugged ...
— The Watchers of the Plains - A Tale of the Western Prairies • Ridgewell Cullum
... into a heavy sleep and did not hear his entry, though there was nothing furtive about it; rather was it the unashamed clatter of the master. She awoke to deadness of all feeling except the thought of the revival that was to sweep like a flail over the land, and in her tired but avid mind that winnowing began to assume the proportions of the chief thing for which to live. She saw herself in it, and with her, by a flash of inspiration, not the fair eldest-born who had failed her, but the youngest—he whom she could flaunt in the ...
— Secret Bread • F. Tennyson Jesse
... pulls up what he had so sedulously planted, and, in different ways, breaks and bruises the grain. Is he inconsistent because he ploughs in winter and reaps in harvest? Does his carrying the seed-basket at one time make it impossible that he shall come with flail and threshing-oxen at another? Are not all the various operations co-operant to one end? Does not the end need them all? Is not one purpose going steadily forward through ploughing, sowing, reaping, threshing? Is not that like the work of the great Husbandman, ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Isaiah and Jeremiah • Alexander Maclaren
... fell as thick as harvests beneath hail, Grass before scythes, or corn below the sickle, Proving that trite old truth, that life 's as frail As any other boon for which men stickle. The Turkish batteries thrash'd them like a flail, Or a good boxer, into a sad pickle Putting the very bravest, who were knock'd Upon the head, before ...
— Don Juan • Lord Byron
... plan of campaign may be crudely stated as follows: Regard that extended line as a flail ready to fall, hinged near Verdun, moved in a circle until the northern tip, under command of Von Kluck, should fall with all the energy Germany could put into the blow on Paris. In the meantime, the other armies would crush back, outflank, defeat, and capture the small ...
— Kelly Miller's History of the World War for Human Rights • Kelly Miller
... comment upon the false sentiment of solitude. He describes the walk to the park at Weston Underwood, the prospect from the hilltop, touches upon his privilege in having a key of the gate, describes the avenues of trees, the wilderness, the grove, and the sound of the thresher's flail then suggests to him that all live by energy, best ease is after toil. He compares the luxury of art with wholesomeness of Nature free to all, that brings health to the sick, joy to the returned seafarer. Spleen vexes votaries of artificial life. True gaiety is for the ...
— The Task and Other Poems • William Cowper
... inexorably towards them. The angle of the bank was not steep and the elephant's speed never slackened on the slope. Its right shoulder struck a sapling and the sapling splintered. It was crashing forward in full charge. Again it trumpeted, trunk extended like a flail of doom. ...
— This Crowded Earth • Robert Bloch
... the laying of the foundation stone I had the pleasure of witnessing a rough-and-tumble fight between two of the most powerful men in Coolgardie. The excitement was intense as one seized his antagonist, and, using him as a flail, proceeded to clear the room with him; he retaliated by overpowering the other man, and finally breaking his leg as they fell heavily together out through the door on to the hard street beyond. How much ill-feeling this little incident engendered ...
— Spinifex and Sand - Five Years' Pioneering and Exploration in Western Australia • David W Carnegie
... length of days, and to all the common dust: But as the snake throws off its skin, the soul throws off its clay, And soars, till purpled are its wings with everlasting day; God, having winnow'd with his flail the chaff from out the wheat, When those, who seem'd alike when ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 54, No. 335, September 1843 • Various
... front! How close! They're sewn together with steel cross-stitches, halbert over sword, Spear across lance and death the purfled seam! I never saw so fierce, so lock'd a fight. That tireless brand that like a pliant flail Threshes the lives from sheaves of Englishmen— Know you who wields it? Douglas, who but he! A noble meets him now. Clifford it is! No bitterer foes seek out each other there. Parried! That told! And that! Clifford, good night! And Douglas shouts to Randolf; ...
— Adventures in Criticism • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... flexile gliding, resembled somewhat a serpent's crawl. And now he neither roared nor growled. The lolling tongue dragged the sand; the beating of the tail was like pounding with a flail; the mane all erect trebly enlarged the head; and the eyes were like live coals in a burning bush. The people hushed. Nilo stood firm; thunder could as easily have diverted a statue; and behind him, not less steadfast and watchful, Count Corti kept guard. Thirty feet away— twenty-five—twenty—then ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 2 • Lew. Wallace
... of the period 1820-40, therefore, is the invention and introduction of such machinery. Boards were now planed, and bricks pressed, by machine. It was during this period that the farmers began to give up the flail for the thrashing machine; that paper was extensively made from straw; that Fairbanks invented the platform scales; that Colt invented the revolver; that steel pens were made by machine; and that a rude form of ...
— A Brief History of the United States • John Bach McMaster
... Collie's reply was a flail-like blow between Tenlow's eyes. The deputy staggered, gritted his teeth, and flung himself at the younger man. The fight was unequal from the beginning. Apache snorted and circled as the bushes ...
— Overland Red - A Romance of the Moonstone Canon Trail • Henry Herbert Knibbs
... the spicy nut-brown ale, With stories told of many a feat, How faery Mab the junkets eat; She was pinch'd, and pull'd, she said; And he, by friar's lantern led. Tells how the drudging goblin sweat To earn his cream-bowl duly set, When in one night, ere glimpse of morn, His shadowy flail hath thresh'd the corn, That ten day-labourers could not end; Then lies him down the lubber fiend, And, stretch'd out all the chimney's length, Basks at the fire his hairy strength; And crop-full out of door he flings, Ere the first ...
— MacMillan's Reading Books - Book V • Anonymous
... somewhat in its appliances, but the philosophy of it was pretty much the same as it is now. Oxen were occasionally used for team labour and were shod like horses; wheat was universally reaped with a sickle, and as universally threshed with a flail, the bent figure of the wheat-barn tasker being a familiar object in the "big old barn with its gloomy bays and the moss upon the thatch." An honest pride he took in his work and has found a fit memorial in the delightful Sketches of Rural Life by Mr. Francis Lucas, of Hitchin, ...
— Fragments of Two Centuries - Glimpses of Country Life when George III. was King • Alfred Kingston
... shrine through whose open doors he might be seen wearing a red necklace over his close-fitting case of white bandaging, his green face surmounted by the tall white diadem flanked by two plumes, his slender hands grasping flail and crook, the ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 1 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... middle of the nineteenth century or later. While Summer appeared clad all in green, decked with fluttering ribbons, and carrying a branch in blossom or a little tree hung with apples and pears, Winter was muffled up in cap and mantle of fur and bore in his hand a snow-shovel or a flail. Accompanied by their respective retinues dressed in corresponding attire, they went through all the streets of the village, halting before the houses and singing staves of old songs, for which they received ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... who knows it; but all in the way of honesty, master soldier. I am, as it were, her spiritual lover; and were she a damsel errant, I would be her ghostly esquire, her friar militant. I would buckle me in armour of proof, and the devil might thresh me black with an iron flail, before I would knock under in her cause. Though they be not yet one canonically, thanks to your soldiership, the earl is her liege lord, and she is his liege lady. I am her father confessor and ghostly director: I have taken on me to show her the way to the next world; and how ...
— Maid Marian • Thomas Love Peacock
... peaceful fields, just as if nothing whatever had happened. Each day was filled to the brim with hard work. With the help of the Twins, Mother Van Hove kept the garden free of weeds and took care of the stock. She even threshed the wheat herself with her husband's flail, and stored the grain away in sacks ready for the mill. Each evening, when the work was done, the three went down the village street together. One evening, just at dusk, they found nearly the whole village gathered ...
— The Belgian Twins • Lucy Fitch Perkins
... The third night out the mischief happened. I had left the bridge soon after four bells and was just turning in for my beauty-sleep when I heard an unholy racket below in the engine-room, and felt the ship slow down of a sudden. One of the rods had kicked loose from its gib and started to flail around death and destruction. Thanks to Crosbie, our first engineer, she was brought up before kicking our insides out, and we hove to; but the repairs cost us close on eighteen hours. By daybreak the weather was thickening worse than ...
— Major Vigoureux • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... celebrated night of the laying of the foundation stone I had the pleasure of witnessing a rough-and-tumble fight between two of the most powerful men in Coolgardie. The excitement was intense as one seized his antagonist, and, using him as a flail, proceeded to clear the room with him; he retaliated by overpowering the other man, and finally breaking his leg as they fell heavily together out through the door on to the hard street beyond. How much ill-feeling this little incident engendered ...
— Spinifex and Sand - Five Years' Pioneering and Exploration in Western Australia • David W Carnegie
... in the Scotchman's room, And eats his meat and drinks his ale, And beats the maid with her unused broom, And the lazy lout with his idle flail; But he sweeps the floor and threshes the corn, And hies him away ere ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... round. The public safety, I foresee, Henceforth depends alone on me; And while this vital breath I blow, Or from above or from below, I'll sputter, swagger, curse, and rail, The Tories' terror, scourge, and flail. M. Tim, you mistake the matter quite; The Tories! you are their delight; And should you act a different part, Be grave and wise, 'twould break their heart. Why, Tim, you have a taste you know, And often see a puppet-show: Observe the audience is in pain, While Punch is hid behind the ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift
... unnoticed in the heat of the combat. His eyes were "seeing red," as the Westerners say. He had no nerves to feel with; only muscles to fight with. And all the time the impromptu club was in action—sometimes swinging like a flail, at other times being gripped for a no less effective thrust ...
— The Fiery Totem - A Tale of Adventure in the Canadian North-West • Argyll Saxby
... then stopped suddenly, poised on his fore feet, with devilish intent to discharge Mose over his head. With the spurs set deep into the quivering painted hide of his mount Mose began plying the quirt like a flail. The boys cheered and yelled with delight. It was one of their chief recreations, this battle with ...
— The Eagle's Heart • Hamlin Garland
... dragged by the tail and compelled to follow in preposterous, giant strides, barely touching the ground with the point of his toe, pounded the creature's ribs with such blows as Zoe had never dreamed possible. They sounded like flail on wooden floor, and each blow was accompanied with a loud jubilant shout. Presently, being a five's player, and ambidexter, he shifted his hand, and the tremendous whacks resounded on the bull's left ...
— The Woman-Hater • Charles Reade
... by a man, woman, girl or youth taking as many stems as can be easily grasped in both hands and drawing the ears, first one way and then another, through a horizontal row of steel teeth. The flail is not used for threshing rice but is employed for barley. Another common way of knocking out grain is by beating the straw over a table or a barrel. There are all sorts of cheap hand-worked threshing machines. After the threshing of the rice comes the ...
— The Foundations of Japan • J.W. Robertson Scott
... glad to meet you here, Christmas comes but once a year, But when it comes it brings good cheer, And when it's gone it's no longer near. May luck attend the milking-pail, Yule logs and cakes in plenty be, May each blow of the thrashing-flail Produce good frumenty. And let the Wassail Cup abound, Whene'er the ...
— The Peace Egg and Other tales • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... wall, we found the usual village sights and life. We moved along a narrow, crooked lane which had been paved in the Middle Ages. A strapping, ruddy girl was beating flax or some such stuff in a little bit of a good-box of a barn, and she swung her flail with a will—if it was a flail; I was not farmer enough to know what she was at; a frowsy, barelegged girl was herding half a dozen geese with a stick—driving them along the lane and keeping them out of the dwellings; a cooper was at work in ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... judge or recorder, His house was as big and as strong as a jail; With a cruel four-pounder, he kept in great order, He'd murder the country, would Larry M'Hale. He'd a blunderbuss too, of horse-pistols a pair; But his favorite weapon was always a flail. I wish you could see how he'd empty a fair, For he handled it neatly, ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 2 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... merchandise;—the storm-tossed ship, with Death snapping the mast;—a Count, dressed in the extreme of courtly splendor, who recognizes Death in the disguise of a peasant who has flung down his flail to seize his lordship's emblazoned shield and dash it to pieces;—a Duchess, whom one skeleton drags rudely from her canopied bed, while another scrapes upon a violin;—a Peddler;—a Ploughman, of whose four-horse team Death is the driver;—Gamblers, Drunkards, and Robbers, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 17, March, 1859 • Various
... turmoil seething, As if this earth in fast thick pants were breathing, A mighty fountain momently was forced; Amid whose swift half-intermitted burst Huge fragments vaulted like rebounding hail, Or chaffy grain beneath the thresher's flail: And 'mid these dancing rocks at once and ever It flung up momently the sacred river. Five miles meandering with a mazy motion Through wood and dale the sacred river ran, Then reach'd the caverns measureless to man, And sank in tumult to a lifeless ocean: And 'mid this tumult Kubla ...
— Book of English Verse • Bulchevy
... it's niver no good a threshin' other folks' corn; ye allays gits the flail agin' ...
— The Wit of Women - Fourth Edition • Kate Sanborn
... a short-handled flail, which is about 2-1/2 ft. long with a dark handle of wood, studded with brass or steel nails. A steel band is placed around the handle near the top. The imitation of the steel band is made by gluing a piece of tinfoil on a strip of cardboard and tacking ...
— The Boy Mechanic: Volume 1 - 700 Things For Boys To Do • Popular Mechanics
... viscerae of the dead should not be removed far from her body. A beautiful microscopic hawk, which would have made a lovely watch-charm, was attached by a thread to a necklace of small plates of blue glass, to which was hung also a sort of amulet in the shape of a flail, made of turquoise-blue enamel. Some of the plates had become semi-opaque, no doubt owing to the heat of the boiling bitumen which had been poured over them, ...
— The Works of Theophile Gautier, Volume 5 - The Romance of a Mummy and Egypt • Theophile Gautier
... taunting him with being a Christian outcast who had tried to set himself above his betters by winning the favor of a Turkish lady. The Englishman flew at him like a wildcat, dragged him off his horse and broke his skull with the club which was used instead of a flail for threshing. Then he dressed himself in the Turk's garments, hid the body under a heap of grain, filled a bag with wheat for all his provision, mounted the horse of his late master, and rode away northward. He knew that Muscovy was in this general direction, and coming to a road marked by a cross, ...
— Days of the Discoverers • L. Lamprey
... These two tombs are of capital interest to those who are students of Belgian history, for Charles the Bold was the last male of the House of Burgundy, and it was by the marriage of his daughter that the Netherlands passed to the House of Hapsburg, and thus ultimately fell under the flail of religious persecution during the rule of her grandson, Spanish Philip. Close to Notre Dame, in the Rue St. Catherine, is the famous old Hospital of St. Jean, the red-brick walls of which rise sleepily ...
— Beautiful Europe - Belgium • Joseph E. Morris
... as his breath came and went in gusts,—"there I sat, a poor barrow-back't creature, and heard that old savvorless loon spit his spite at my lass. I'm none of a brave man, Ralph: no, I must be a coward, but I went nigh to snatching up yon flail of his and striking him—aye, killing him!—but no, it must ...
— The Shadow of a Crime - A Cumbrian Romance • Hall Caine
... isle, o'er its billows of green, To the billows of foam-crested blue, Yon bark, that afar in the distance is seen, Half dreaming, my eyes will pursue: Now dark in the shadow, she scatters the spray As the chaff in the stroke of the flail; Now white as the sea-gull, she flies on her way, The sun gleaming ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... whip. He crouched and crept along the wall, out through the gate and to the entrance of the alley. The boys were so intent upon their game that they never noticed his approach until he was close upon them. Then they sprang up with wild yells, but the lash descended on them like a well-aimed flail; they rolled over and over in a writhing heap. After the heap had broken up and its shrieking units scattered, the irate priest calmly pocketed the marbles and, whip in hand, ...
— Reminiscences of a South African Pioneer • W. C. Scully
... She's at it yet, Her knee-joints flail-like go: Unthinking man! it is to let Her ...
— A Hidden Life and Other Poems • George MacDonald
... Punjabi Jat found a hide-bound flail; Chimbu Singh from Bikaneer oiled his Tonk jezail; Yar Mahommed Yusufzai spat and grinned with glee As he ground ...
— Departmental Ditties and Barrack Room Ballads • Rudyard Kipling
... Constitution seem to me more ingenious than convincing. But, constitutional or not, the compromise is reasonable; and though people in the South still feel, as one of them put it to me, that the Republican party "may yet wield the flail of the negro over them," the flail has been laid aside long enough to permit the South, in the main, to recover its peace of mind and its self-respect. The negro problem is still difficult enough, as many tragic evidences prove; but there is no reason to despair ...
— America To-day, Observations and Reflections • William Archer
... I stood in the dark gloom at the far end, with my hand on the dribbling stern-gland, there came a sudden thump and a grinding shock. The turning shaft shook and chattered before my eyes, the propeller outside caught in something, shuddered, broke clear and beat like a flail. Then the ship lifted bodily and fell, bump, bump, bump. I stood there transfixed. What could it be? I looked along the dark tunnel to where the lights of the engine-room showed in a pale glint and I could have sworn I saw the whole bag of tricks ...
— Aliens • William McFee
... enthral him. Perhaps some such story as this may account in part for Mrs. Frere's sad looks. Why do I speculate on such things? I seem to do violence to myself and to insult her by writing such suspicions. If I was a Flagellant now, I would don hairshirt and up flail. "For this sort cometh not out but ...
— For the Term of His Natural Life • Marcus Clarke
... strain of combat hand to hand—the knowledge that it is all over, except to die. I had no sense of fear; no thought but to kill and be killed. I felt within me strength—desperate, insane strength. The rifle butt splintered in my hands, but the bent and shapeless barrel rose and fell like a flail. I saw it crush against skulls; I jabbed it straight into red faces; I brought it down with all my force on clutching arms. For an instant Tim was beside me. He had lost his gun and was fighting with a knife. It was only a glimpse I had of him through red mist—the next instant he was ...
— The Devil's Own - A Romance of the Black Hawk War • Randall Parrish
... Moorish boat—longer, narrower, more favoured by currents and winds, flying like a falcon towards its prey. It was a fearful race. Arthur's head began to swim, his breath to labour, his arms to move stiffly as a thresher's flail; but, just as power was failing him, an English cheer came over the waters, and restored strength for a few more ...
— A Modern Telemachus • Charlotte M. Yonge
... third larger than his menagerie relative—looking as big as a zebra against the moonlight. His eyes glowed steadily as he contemplated this interloper in his domain. After a moment he sank prone, extending his head. The next move, Kingozi knew, would be the flail-like thrash of the long tail, followed ...
— The Leopard Woman • Stewart Edward White et al
... come and Yule's gane, And we have feasted weel; Sae Jock mun to his flail again. And Jenny to ...
— In The Yule-Log Glow, Vol. IV (of IV) • Harrison S. Morris
... was a flail-like blow between Tenlow's eyes. The deputy staggered, gritted his teeth, and flung himself at the younger man. The fight was unequal from the beginning. Apache snorted and circled as the bushes ...
— Overland Red - A Romance of the Moonstone Canon Trail • Henry Herbert Knibbs
... have sported with Amaryllis, or played with the tangles of Neaera's hair,—should not have worn well-anointed love-locks and snowy linen,—should, on the other hand, have bared his brawny arm, and sent the hissing flail down swiftly upon the waled and blistered back of Sham! How much better would it have been, if he had written a history, in twelve elephantine volumes, of the rise, culmination, and decay of the Empire of Barataria, which we would have gone to prison, the rack, and the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 21, July, 1859 • Various
... involved.—These must be noticed separately, but one thing is absolutely certain, that a much higher standard of usefulness, both in equality of length, amount of anchylosis, and position, is needed in the lower than in the upper limb. For a leg hanging like a flail, or shortened by some inches, is not so good for purposes of locomotion as a wooden leg is, while an arm, even though powerless at the elbow, and perhaps much shortened, can be so strengthened and supported by slings ...
— A Manual of the Operations of Surgery - For the Use of Senior Students, House Surgeons, and Junior Practitioners • Joseph Bell
... parts, as nether garments made of that treacherous stuff often are. His shapeless tops, made regardless of the refinements of 'right and left,' dangled at his horse's sides like a couple of stable-buckets; and he carried his heavy iron hammer-headed whip over his shoulder like a flail. But we are drawing his portrait instead of saying why he hunted. Well, then, having married Mrs. Springwheat's sister, who was always boasting to Mrs. Crowdey what a loving, doting husband Springey was after hunting, Mrs. Crowdey had induced Crowdey to try his hand, and though soon satisfied ...
— Mr. Sponge's Sporting Tour • R. S. Surtees
... the big man. He heard the movement, sensed the danger, and flung his right hand toward his pistol butt. There was a silent struggle; a shot, one of the young man's arms swung out—flail like—the clenched hand landing with a crash. The big man went down like a falling tree—prone to the ground, his revolver flying ten feet distant, a little blue-white smoke curling lazily upward out of its muzzle. The big man was raised again—bodily—and hurled down again. He lay face ...
— The Coming of the Law • Charles Alden Seltzer
... dost spend with friend and foe, At home che hold the plough by th' tail: Che dig, che delve, che zet, che zow, Che mow, che reap, che ply my flail. A pair of dice is thy delight, Thou liv'st for most part by the spoil: I truly labour day and night To get my living by my toil. Chill therefore sure this issue make: The ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VIII (4th edition) • Various
... a shroud of mist, come the measured sounds of the thresher's flail, now in sudden volleys, now slowly and with a dragging cadence, now in sharp, crackling bursts, and now again with a dull and hollow beat. Sometimes there is the noise of one flail only, but presently others ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VIII • Various
... Talus with his modern flail He threatens ruin with his ponderous tail. ... Their fixed jav'lins in his side he wears, And on his back a grove of pikes appears." —WALLER'S BATTLE ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... toe-points, they had rendered what had been merely difficult impracticable. I remarked that the huge kitchen chimney of the building,—a deep hollow recess which stretches across the entire gable, and in which, it is said, two thrashers once plied the flail for a whole winter,—bore less of the stain of recent smoke than it used to exhibit twenty years before; and inferred that there would be fewer wraith-lights seen from the castle at nights than in those days of evil spirits and illicit stills, when the cottars in the neighborhood ...
— The Cruise of the Betsey • Hugh Miller
... little old roan, with a bright eye and legs like gate-posts, but he never fell down with us boys, for all that. If we fell off he stopped still and began to feed, so that he suited us all to pieces. We soon got sharp enough to flail him along with a quince stick, and we used to bring up the milkers, I expect, a good deal faster than was good for them. After a bit we could milk, leg-rope, and bail up for ourselves, and help dad brand the calves, which ...
— Robbery Under Arms • Thomas Alexander Browne, AKA Rolf Boldrewood
... the most literal sense, on the parish, when bread was dear and the loaf was really life itself, then that stern inscription had meaning enough. The granaries were full, the people half starved. The wheat was threshed by the flail in full view of the wretched, who could gaze through the broad doors at the golden grain; the sparrows helped themselves, men dare not. At night men tried to steal the corn, and had to be prevented ...
— Field and Hedgerow • Richard Jefferies
... ropes! She's goin' to tip over!" squalled Murray, the big blacksmith. Between the two options—to take the wheel and bring the clumsy hooker into the wind, or to rush forward and flail his bunglers away from the rigging—Cap'n Sproul shuttled insanely, rushing to and fro and bellowing furious language. The language had no effect. With axes and knives the willing crew hacked away every rope ...
— The Skipper and the Skipped - Being the Shore Log of Cap'n Aaron Sproul • Holman Day
... the discovery of the plank, made the first rush up and was immediately knocked from his perch by Tod, whose pole swung around his head like a flail. Then Scootsy tried it, crawling up, protecting his head by ducking it under his elbows, holding meanwhile by his hand. Tod's blows fell about his back, but the boy struggled on until Archie reached over the gunwale, and with a twist of his ...
— The Tides of Barnegat • F. Hopkinson Smith
... hammermill—a grinding chamber containing a rotating spindle with steel tines or hammers attached that repeatedly beats and tears materials into smaller and smaller pieces until they fall out through a bottom screen. Hammermills will flail almost anything to pieces without becoming dulled. Soft, green materials are beaten to shreds; hard, dry, brittle stuff is rapidly fractured into tiny chips. Changing the size of the discharge screen adjusts the size of the final product. By using very coarse screens, even soft, wet, ...
— Organic Gardener's Composting • Steve Solomon
... his distressed fellow-creatures, including noblemen, squires, yeomanry, farmers, and all yearly subscribers in the New Proprietary Agricultural Anti-Innovating-Shire Weekly Gazette. At the head of his newspaper Uncle Jack caused to be engraved a crown, supported by a flail and a crook, with the motto, "Pro rege et grege." And that was the way in which Uncle Jack printed his pats ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... Solomon, 'shall come to poverty' (Prov 23:21). Many that have begun the world with plenty, have gone out of it in rags, through drunkenness. Yea, many children that have been born to good estates, have yet been brought to a flail and a rake, through this beastly sin of their parents. 2. This sin of drunkenness it bringeth upon the body many, great, and incurable diseases, by which men do, in little time, come to their end, and none can help them. So, because they are overmuch wicked, ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... Empress of Morocco." This piece is written in the same tone of boisterous and vulgar raillery with which Clifford and Leigh had assailed Dryden himself; and little resembles our poet's general style of controversy. He seems to have exchanged his satirical scourge for the clumsy flail of Shadwell, when he stooped to use such raillery as the following description of Settle: "In short, he is an animal of a most deplored understanding, without reading and conversation: his being is in a twilight of sense, and some glimmering of thought, which he can never fashion either ...
— The Dramatic Works of John Dryden Vol. I. - With a Life of the Author • Sir Walter Scott
... month of his stay I learned to know the charm of his manner and the delight of his conversation. If I had been even more prejudiced than I was, I could not have withstood that easy grace, that winning cordiality. Every one knew where he had stood during the war, and how he had wielded the flail of his "lashing hail" against the South and the Southern cause and "Southern sympathizers." But that warfare was over for him, and out of kindly regard for my feelings he made no allusion to the great quarrel, with two exceptions. Once, just before he left Baltimore, he was talking as no other ...
— The Creed of the Old South 1865-1915 • Basil L. Gildersleeve
... marshes, clearing up land, chopping cord-wood, threshing, &c. I have known the women go into the barn as soon as they could see in the morning, and work as late as they could see at night, threshing rice with the flail, (they now have a threshing machine,) and when they could see to thresh no longer, they had to gather up the rice, carry it up stairs, and deposit it in ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... beggar a man. The Drunkard, says Solomon, shall come to poverty. {49b} Many that have begun the world with Plenty, have gone out of it in Rags; through drunkenness. Yea, many Children that have been born to good Estates, have yet been brought to a Flail & a Rake, through this beastly ...
— The Life and Death of Mr. Badman • John Bunyan
... lodgings, provincial theatres, the arcades at Birmingham. And a blue straw hat that he had bought for her long ago; and at last her name. Kitty Messenger, and her mother, a golden-haired actress with a tongue like a flail in one temper, like the honey-seeking proboscis ...
— Mummery - A Tale of Three Idealists • Gilbert Cannan
... corn that was strewn over the whole platform. Where the battlements had once frowned, now stood sheaves of smiling corn, golden and nodding in the wind and the sun. Suddenly the lad who had led me hither seized the flail and began to beat the corn and stalks strewn over the floor, while the old man, quavering a little, sang a long-drawn-out gay melody, and the little girl beat her tiny hands in time to the work and the music. Then, unheard, into this miracle came a young woman,—ah, was it not Persephone,—slim as ...
— Florence and Northern Tuscany with Genoa • Edward Hutton
... chance has brought you to this island in so flail a ship? Who are you, and whence? Surely you are some king's daughter; and this boy has somewhat ...
— The Heroes • Charles Kingsley
... Then to the spicy nut-brown ale, With stories told of many a feat, How Faery Mab the junkets eat. She was pinched and pulled, she said; And he, by Friar's lantern led, Tells how the drudging goblin sweat To earn his cream-bowl duly set, When in one night, ere glimpse of morn, His shadowy flail hath threshed the corn That ten day-labourers could not end; Then lies him down, the lubber fiend, And, stretched out all the chimney's length, Basks at the fire his hairy strength, And crop-full out of doors he flings, Ere the first ...
— L'Allegro, Il Penseroso, Comus, and Lycidas • John Milton
... angle of the bank was not steep and the elephant's speed never slackened on the slope. Its right shoulder struck a sapling and the sapling splintered. It was crashing forward in full charge. Again it trumpeted, trunk extended like a flail of doom. ...
— This Crowded Earth • Robert Bloch
... Court—Gentlemen of the Jury—You sit in that box as the great reservoir of Roman liberty, Spartan fame, and Grecian polytheism. You are to swing the great flail of justice and electricity over this immense community, in hydraulic majesty, and conjugal superfluity. You are the great triumphal arch on which evaporates the even scales of justice and numerical computation. You are to ascend the deep arcana of nature, ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... he had smashed it. Now when he charged, Gharib met him like a hungry lion, and the brigand aimed a blow at his head with his mace; but he evaded it and it smote the earth and sank therein half a cubit deep. Then Gharib took his battle flail and smiting Jamrkan on the wrist, crushed his fingers and the mace dropped from his grasp; whereupon Gharib bent down from his seat in selle and snatching it up, swiftlier than the blinding leven, smote him therewith full on the flat of the ribs, and he fell to the earth like a long-stemmed ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 7 • Richard F. Burton
... transported with rage. "If I am only a porter, while you pretend to be a major, I will let you see I am the better man of the two." And taking the goose by the neck, he swung it round his head like a flail, and began to batter Pillichody ...
— Old Saint Paul's - A Tale of the Plague and the Fire • William Harrison Ainsworth
... himself bravely with his sword. A peasant who was thrashing in a neighboring barn came out upon the noise, and, whether moved by compassion or by natural gallantry, took the weaker side, and laid about with his flail so effectually as to disperse the assailants, well thrashed, even according to the letter. He then conducted the King into his barn, where his guest requested a basin and a towel, to remove the stains of the broil. This ...
— The Lady of the Lake • Sir Walter Scott
... evasive tactics. He was wary as a cat. He went cautiously. Yet again he assumed the aggressive, gradually working the Jam-wagon into a corner. A collision was inevitable; there was no means of escape for my friend; that huge bulk, with its swinging, flail-like arms, ...
— The Trail of '98 - A Northland Romance • Robert W. Service
... flail-like, with absolute precision and regularity. It spared no part of him. His coat was nearly torn off. In one place, on the shoulder, the white shirt was exposed, and this also was streaked ...
— The Swindler and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... Tam; it's niver no good a threshin' other folk's corn; ye allays gits the flail agin i' yer ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida
... a slow sweeping from side to side, after the manner of the domestic cat. This lion's tail was whirling perpendicularly from right to left, and from left to right with the speed and energy of a flail actuated by a particularly instantaneous kind of machinery. I could see only the outline of the head and this vigorous tail; but I took instant aim and let drive. The whole affair sank ...
— The Land of Footprints • Stewart Edward White
... blood, Announces an army rolls along as a flood, Which I follow, to harry the clamorous ranks, Sharp-goading the laggards and pressing the flanks, Till, a thresher 'mid ripest of corn, up I stand With an oak for a flail in ...
— Poems • Victor Hugo
... hasten to disclaim for it any especial consideration given it because of its contribution to the welfare of mankind. We are as useful as any other hard-working people, no more and no less. We claim no higher appreciation for muscular effort exerted in swinging the flail than for that applied to the wielding of ...
— Village Improvements and Farm Villages • George E. Waring
... bent which the road climbed, and with them were three men, their drovers, and they drew nigh him as he was amidst of the sheep, so that he could scarce see the way. Each of these three had a weapon; one a pole-axe, another a long spear, and the third a flail jointed and bound with iron, and an anlace hanging at his girdle. So they stood in the way and hailed him when the sheep were gone past; and the man with the spear asked him whither away. "I am turned toward Higham-on-the-Way," quoth he; "and how many ...
— The Well at the World's End • William Morris
... son of Sugnedydd (who would suck up the sea on which were three hundred ships so as to leave nothing but a dry strand. He was broad-chested). Rhacymwri, the attendant of Arthur (whatever barn he was shown, were there the produce of thirty ploughs within it, he would strike it with an iron flail until the rafters, the beams, and the boards were no better than the small oats in the mow upon the floor of the barn). Dygyflwng and Anoeth Veidawg. And Hir Eiddyl, and Hir Amreu (they were two attendants of Arthur). And Gwevyl the son of Gwestad (on the day ...
— The Mabinogion • Lady Charlotte Guest
... spitted through the lung, and, carried on by the rush, he twirled me round like a windmill. In an instant I was pass'd; the giant stepping before me and clearing a space about him, using his pike as if 'twere a flail. With a wrench I tugg'd my sword out and followed. I saw Sir Bevill, a little to the left, beaten to his knee, and carried toward me. Stretching out a hand I pull'd him on his feet again, catching, as I did ...
— The Splendid Spur • Arthur T. Quiller Couch
... bonnie feathers o' mine, The feathers o' my tail: And gie to the lads o' Hamilton To be a barn-flail. ...
— Children's Rhymes, Children's Games, Children's Songs, Children's Stories - A Book for Bairns and Big Folk • Robert Ford
... water had devoured the antelope; something beneath the water had dragged the leopard to its doom, and swish! a huge flail tore the speargrass to ribbons and sent Adams flying backward with the wind ...
— The Pools of Silence • H. de Vere Stacpoole
... racquet sports, the racquet should do the work. The ball willingly goes where the racquet head directs it. Do not flail or attempt to push your shots. Hit them crisply with the snap of your cocked wrist, and at all times ...
— Squash Tennis • Richard C. Squires
... cherry and red cedar feeds, A winter bird, comes with its plaintive whistle, And pecks by the witch-hazel, whilst aloud From cottage roofs the warbling blue-bird sings; And merrily, with oft-repeated stroke, Sounds from the threshing-floor the busy flail. ...
— The Grateful Indian - And other Stories • W.H.G. Kingston
... Glow-worm light (You must suppose it now was night), Which, for her hinder part was bright, He took to be a devil, And furiously doth her assail For carrying fire in her tail; He thrasht her rough coat with his flail; The mad King ...
— The Sources and Analogues of 'A Midsummer-night's Dream' • Compiled by Frank Sidgwick
... of Gideon," Gib made a great lunge at me with his fist. But the sword of Gideon missed its aim, and skinned its knuckles on the stone wall. I saw now to my great comfort that the man was beside himself with fury, and was swinging his arms wildly like a flail. Three or four times I avoided his rushes, noting with satisfaction that one of the countrymen had got hold of the shrieking Isobel. Then my chance came, for as he lunged I struck from the side with all my force on his jaw. I am left-handed, and the blow was unlocked for. He staggered back a step, ...
— Salute to Adventurers • John Buchan
... besides, Sir, You are not like the thresher that doth stand With a huge flail, watching a heap of corn, And, hungry, dares not taste the smallest grain, But feeds on mallows, and such bitter herbs; Nor like the merchant, who hath filled his vaults With Romagnia, and rich Candian wines, Yet drinks the lees of Lombard's vinegar: You will lie not in straw, whilst moths and ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 215, December 10, 1853 • Various
... Her little voice had no chance of being heard; she stood still and waited. Presently Johnny, who was opposite, caught a sight of her, and without stopping his work said to his leader, "Somebody there for you, Mr. Van Brunt." That gentleman's flail ceased its motion, then he threw it down and went to the door to help ...
— The Wide, Wide World • Susan Warner
... whoppingest Whale, Brave boys! As ever whisked a ta-a-a-il; In the trough o' the sea It was Labouring free. And a lashin' the waves like a flail, Brave boys! A lashin' ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100. March 7, 1891. • Various
... brandy hain't no friend to my kind. Dey killed my p[o]' daddy, an' dey troubled my mind. Sometime he drunk whisky, sometime he drunk ale; Sometime he kotch de rawhide, an' sometime de flail. ...
— Negro Folk Rhymes - Wise and Otherwise: With a Study • Thomas W. Talley
... the Son was named) And his old Father both betook themselves To such convenient work as might employ 105 Their hands by the fireside; perhaps to card Wool for the Housewife's spindle, or repair Some injury done to sickle, flail, or scythe, Or other implement of house ...
— Selections from Wordsworth and Tennyson • William Wordsworth and Alfred Lord Tennyson
... so numerous as to alternate with every half-dozen houses along the way. Here lived burgesses who daily walked the fallow; shepherds in an intra-mural squeeze. A street of farmers' homesteads—a street ruled by a mayor and corporation, yet echoing with the thump of the flail, the flutter of the winnowing-fan, and the purr of the milk into the pails—a street which had nothing urban in it whatever—this was the Durnover end ...
— The Mayor of Casterbridge • Thomas Hardy
... conversation another way. On the picture of an English lady being shewn to him, he commended it highly, saying, at the same time, "Doochoo innago whooco oorung" (Loo-choo women are not handsome.) This old gentleman is a better teacher than scholar; he calls the letter L "airoo;" veal, "bairoo;" flail, "frayroo;" in which instances of mispronunciation, we may recognize a difficulty ...
— Account of a Voyage of Discovery - to the West Coast of Corea, and the Great Loo-Choo Island • Captain Basil Hall
... Egan O'Rahilly. Edited, with translation, by the Rev. P.S. Dinneen, M.A., for the Irish Texts Society, p. 11. O'Rahilly's charge against Cromwell is that he "gave plenty to the man with the flail," but beggared the great lords, ...
— Ireland In The New Century • Horace Plunkett
... showers for the thirsting flowers, From the seas and the streams; I bear light shade for the leaves when laid In their noonday dreams. From my wings are shaken the dews that waken The sweet buds every one, When rocked to rest on their mother's breast, As she dances about the sun. I wield the flail of the lashing hail, And whiten the green plains under; And then again I dissolve it in rain, And laugh ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 7 • Charles H. Sylvester
... country gentlewoman, who kept five men-servants "to use the spade and flail," and five women-servants "to carry the milken-pail." The five men loved the five maids. Their ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.
... Croche used only to stay there during the summer time, to plant their corn, potatoes, and other vegetables. As soon as their crops were put away in the ground, [Footnote: The mode of securing their corn was first to dry the ears by fire. When perfectly dry, they would then beat them with a flail and pick all the cobs out. The grain was then winnowed and put into sacks. These were put in the ground in a large cylinder made out of elm bark, set in deep in the ground and made very dry, filling this cylinder full and then covering it to stay there for winter ...
— History of the Ottawa and Chippewa Indians of Michigan • Andrew J. Blackbird
... some of this corn with a flail. I heard of it with astonishment. "A flail?" "Yes," he said; "my old dad put me to it when I was seventeen, so I had to learn." He seemed to think little of it. But to me threshing by hand was so obsolete and antiquated a thing as to be a novelty; ...
— Change in the Village • (AKA George Bourne) George Sturt
... before the pike will fly Dace and roach and such small fry; As the leaf before the gale, As the chaff beneath the flail; As before the wolf the flocks, As before the hounds the fox; As before the cat the mouse, As the rat from falling house; As the fiend before the spell Of holy water, book, and bell; As the ghost from dawning day,— So has fled, in gaunt dismay, This septemvirate of quacks From ...
— Gryll Grange • Thomas Love Peacock
... awkward muse, With censures praise, with flatteries abuse. To lash, and not be felt, in thee's an art; Thou ne'er mad'st any but thy schoolboys smart. Then be advis'd, and scribble not agen; Thou'rt fashioned for a flail, and not a pen. If B——l's immortal wit thou wouldst descry, Pretend 'tis he that writ thy poetry. Thy feeble satire ne'er can do him wrong; Thy poems and thy patients ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... of violence are seen. The convulsions may consist only of a rapid trembling, or the limb or limbs may be flung about like a flail. ...
— Epilepsy, Hysteria, and Neurasthenia • Isaac G. Briggs
... knitting, and holding by the chair, he stood trembling and quivering with gladness, while, summoned by the dog's bark, Patience, pail in hand, appeared on one side, and Ben, tall and slight, with his flail, ...
— Under the Storm - Steadfast's Charge • Charlotte M. Yonge
... band into a knot in the center of the inclosure. Then the brazen sun looked down upon a Homeric struggle. Bulger, brawny warrior of the iron hook, swung his musket like a flail, every now and again shooting forth his more sinister weapon with terrible effect. Desmond, slim and athletic, dashed in upon the enemy with his half pike as they recoiled before Bulger's whirling musket. The rest, now a bare dozen, ...
— In Clive's Command - A Story of the Fight for India • Herbert Strang
... the morning, and then build a raft, or perchance a sail might heave in sight and rescue them. Few, however, were able to labour efficiently. It seemed a wonder to Stephen that his own strength had been kept up, when he saw stout fellows, accustomed to wield the scythe and flail, reduced to mere skeletons. The morning came, the Surge still floated, but to build a raft seemed beyond the power of those on board. They wanted both strength and skill. Stephen urged them to try, however. Collecting all the spars and planks ...
— Roger Willoughby - A Story of the Times of Benbow • William H. G. Kingston
... look of such pitiful melancholy that one might almost fancy tears rolling out. Then he would be roused by an exasperated driver, who jerked cruelly on the lines and used his whip as if it had been a flail. ...
— Horses Nine - Stories of Harness and Saddle • Sewell Ford
... to him that we had almost despaired of his acquiring, including nearly all the divine attributes except that sense of humour. The beautiful SYBIL has always possessed but little of it also, and what she had has been struck from her by Cupid's flail. Naked of the saving grace, they face each other ...
— What Every Woman Knows • James M. Barrie
... than common fear of Clifford's rigour, Who thunders to his captives blood and death, I cannot judge; but, to conclude with truth, Their weapons like to lightning came and went, Our soldiers',—like the night-owl's lazy flight, Or like an idle thrasher with a flail— Fell gently down, as if they struck their friends. I cheer'd them up with justice of our cause, With promise of high pay and great rewards, But all in vain; they had no heart to fight, And we in ...
— King Henry VI, Third Part • William Shakespeare [Rolfe edition]
... The mill and workshop. Their home. "Baby" learning civilized ways. The noise in the night. The return of the yaks. The need for keeping correct time. Shoe leather necessary. Threshing out barley. The flail. The grindstone. Making flour. Baking bread. How the bread was raised. What yeast does in bread. Temperature required. The "Baby" and the honey pot. The bread with large holes in it. George's trip to the cliffs. A peculiar sounding noise and spray from the cliffs. ...
— The Wonder Island Boys: Exploring the Island • Roger Thompson Finlay
... directions, at the first sight of their terrible foe. Two Spaniards lost their lives and two thousand Netherlanders. It was natural that these consummate warriors should despise such easily slaughtered victims. A single stroke of the iron flail, and the chaff was scattered to the four winds; a single sweep of the disciplined scythe, and countless acres were in an instant mown. Nevertheless, although beaten constantly, the Netherlanders were not conquered. Holland and Zealand had read the foe a lesson which he had not forgotten, and although ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... hearts, but it was the memories of the old pioneer home in the wilderness; the rail-splitting, road-building days; the ancient rites of "raisings" and other neighborly ceremonies; when the farmer cut rye with a cradle, and threshed it out with his flail; when "butter and eggs were pin money" and ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham
... fell as thick as harvests beneath hail, Grass before scythes, or corn below the sickle, Proving that trite old truth, that Life's as frail As any other boon for which men stickle. The Turkish batteries thrashed them like a flail, Or a good boxer, into a sad pickle Putting the very bravest, who were knocked Upon the head before ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... serving on the staff of the Times and the Morning Chronicle became editor of the Examiner, which he conducted successfully from 1830 to 1847; Carlyle was introduced to him on his visit to London in 1831, and describes him as "a tall, loose, lank-haired, wrinkly, wintry, vehement-looking flail of a man," but "the best of the Fourth Estate" then extant; "I rather like the man," he adds, "has the air ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... that Mary Hesketh could administer to her repentant Job was that of the tongue. In her early matrimonial life she had wielded this like a flail, and Job had winced before the blows which she delivered. But in course of time she had come to realise that her husband's passion for the chase was incurable, and, like a wise woman, she accepted it as part of her destiny. "Thou's bin laikin' agean, thou gert good-for-nowt," ...
— Tales of the Ridings • F. W. Moorman
... the field of Mars, which Tarquin had owned, was devoted to the service of that god; it happening to be harvest season, and the sheaves yet being on the ground, they thought it not proper to commit them to the flail, or unsanctify them with any use; and, therefore, carrying them to the river side, and trees withal that were cut down, they cast all into the water, dedicating the soil, free from all occupation, to the deity. Now, ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... expressed my meaning quite plainly, (reads) "Farmer Flail, I'm instructed by lord Austencourt, your landlord, to inform you, by word of letter, that if you can't afford to pay the additional rent for your farm, you must turn out." I think that's clear enough. "As to your putting in the plea of a large family, we cannot allow that as ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Vol I, No. 2, February 1810 • Samuel James Arnold
... drive that there cow over to Sam's, and if you dare bring her back agin, I'll hide yer with the flail ...
— The Moccasin Maker • E. Pauline Johnson
... do herons and storks, killing them with a blow of their javelin beaks, and swallowing them entire. The sulphur tyrant-bird picks up the young snake by the tail, and, flying to a branch or stone, uses it like a flail till its life is battered out. The bird is highly commended in consequence, reminding one of very ancient words: "Happy shall he be that taketh thy little ones and dasheth them against the stones." In arraying such a variety of enemies against the snake, nature has ...
— The Naturalist in La Plata • W. H. Hudson
... the bystanders. It was like the spring of an animal—of a leopard or a bull-dog—combining the lightning swiftness of the one with the grim, fell ferocity of purpose of the other. The powerful rowdy was lying upon his back in the red dust, swinging flail-like blows into empty air, and upon him, in leopard-like crouch, pressing him to the earth, the man whom he had so wantonly attacked. And his throat was compressed in those brown, lean, muscular fingers, as in a ...
— The Sign of the Spider • Bertram Mitford
... from the effect of the cacotrophic dourra and maize food we had been subjected to in the wilderness. I conscientiously believed that a diet on potted ham, crackers, and jellies would make me as invincible as Talus, and that I only required a stout flail to be able to drive the mighty Wagogo into the regions of annihiliation, should they dare even to wink in a manner ...
— How I Found Livingstone • Sir Henry M. Stanley
... board Burke's, Goldsmith's knees Were often thrust—so runs the tale— 'Twas here the Doctor took his ease And wielded speech that like a flail Threshed out the golden truth. All hail, Great souls! that met on nights like these Till morning made the candles pale, And revellers ...
— Inns and Taverns of Old London • Henry C. Shelley
... influence of danger and of corruption. It sometimes might lead them to pursue unwise ends, but never to choose unwise means. They went through the world, like Sir Artegal's iron man Talus with his flail, crushing and trampling down oppressors, mingling with human beings, but having neither part nor lot in human infirmities, insensible to fatigue, to pleasure, and to pain, not to be pierced by any weapon, nor to ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Vol. V (of X) - Great Britain and Ireland III • Various
... nearly half-past twelve. He had just come back from church, hoarse and weary with preaching. He preached with fury, with passion, an iron man beating with a flail upon the souls of his congregation. But the souls of the faithful at Crome were made of india-rubber, solid rubber; the flail rebounded. They were used to Mr. Bodiham at Crome. The flail thumped on india-rubber, and as often as not ...
— Crome Yellow • Aldous Huxley
... likewise by Topl, Sandau, Treunitz (that is, into Eger from two sides).] Resting-places in this grim wilderness of his: poor snow-clad Hamlets,—with their little hood of human smoke rising through the snow; silent all of them, except for the sound of here and there a flail, or crowing cock;—but have been awakened from their torpor by this transit of Belleisle. Happily the bogs themselves are iron; deepest ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XIV. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... religion, while offering abundant pictures of an after world of punishment, "the flagstone of pain," "the cauldron that is boiling for ever," the fire the least flame of which is "bigger than fifteen hundred of turf," so that Oisin listening to St. Patrick demands a familiar weapon, an iron flail, to beat down such familiar terrors, has left Heaven itself far off, mysterious, intangible, without earthly similes or foreshadowings. I think it is perhaps because of this that the country poets of to-day and yesterday have put their dream, their vision of the Delectable ...
— The Kiltartan Poetry Book • Lady Gregory
... belated and vain? Put up the old weapon, O despot, slack hand from the scourge and the chain; For the days of the PHARAOHS are done, and the laureates of tyranny mute, And the whistle of falchion and flail are not set to the chords of the lute. True, the Hebrew, who bowed to the lash of the Pyramid-builders, bows still, For a time, to the knout of the TSAR, to the Muscovite's merciless will; But four millions ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 99, August 9, 1890. • Various
... thy deliverer: that is thy flail of the monks,' he croaked at his son. The printer gazed moodily at ...
— The Fifth Queen • Ford Madox Ford
... butternut-colored woolen homespun, surrounded by piles of white hickory shavings, are whittling out with keen Barlow jack-knives implements for home use: ox-bows and bow-pins, axe-helves, rakestales, forkstales, handles for spades and billhooks, wooden shovels, flail staff and swingle, swingling knives, or pokes and hog yokes for unruly cattle and swine. The more ingenious, perhaps, are fashioning buckets or powdering tubs, or weaving skeps, baskets or snowshoes. Some, it may be, ...
— The Old Coast Road - From Boston to Plymouth • Agnes Rothery
... like Langhorne and Pickering, were dragged to death on the testimony of the vilest of the vile, without a voice being raised in their behalf; or how it could be considered a patriotic act on the part of an English Protestant to carry a flail loaded with lead beneath his cloak as a menace against his harmless neighbours who differed from him on points of doctrine. It was a long madness which has now happily passed off, or at least shows itself in a milder and ...
— Micah Clarke - His Statement as made to his three Grandchildren Joseph, - Gervas and Reuben During the Hard Winter of 1734 • Arthur Conan Doyle
... such a thing as self-indulgence;—this daughter of the Puritans had her seed within her. Aerial in her delicacy, as the blue-eyed flax-flower with which they sowed their fields, she had yet its strong fibre, which no stroke of the flail could break; bruising and hackling only made it fitter for uses of homely utility. Mary, therefore, opened the kitchen-door at dawn, and, after standing one moment to breathe the freshness, began spreading the cloth for an early breakfast. Mrs. Scudder, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... it would be to compare the best baker in London with Robinson Crusoe, who, before he could bake a single loaf, had to make his plough and his harrow, his fences and his scarecrows, his sickle and his flail, his mill and ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... sacred Muse, Disdains all mercenary views, 920 And he, who Virtue's throne would rear Laughs at the phantoms raised by Fear. Though Folly, robed in purple, shines, Though Vice exhausts Peruvian mines, Yet shall they tremble, and turn pale, When Satire wields her mighty flail; Or should they, of rebuke afraid, With Melcombe[239] seek hell's deepest shade, Satire, still mindful of her aim, Shall bring the cowards back to shame. 930 Hated by many, loved by few, Above each ...
— Poetical Works • Charles Churchill
... plants (the female plants do not blossom) has generally fallen, pull up the male plants, leaving only the females to mature. Cut the seed-plants after the first hard frost, and carry in wet, so as to avoid loss by shelling. Seed is easily separated by a common flail. After the seeds are thrashed out, they should be spread thin, and thoroughly dried, or their vegetative power will be destroyed by heat or decay. They should be spread to be kept for the next spring's planting, and not be kept in large ...
— Soil Culture • J. H. Walden
... the two men held their breath. All at once at some little distance they heard a continuous, rapid sound, as if something was beating the earth with a flail. The nauseating and penetrating odor which exhales from these large serpents became stronger and stronger. "The serpent is furious; it is his tail which is beating the earth thus," said John in a feeble voice. "Colonel, let us ...
— A Romance of the West Indies • Eugene Sue
... removed, one formidable difficulty still remained in the way of the rice planters, and that was the threshing of the crop by flail. The labor requisite to accomplish this was so great, that we once heard a distinguished planter say, while having one large crop threshed out by flail, that he would regard another large crop as a calamity. Previous to 1830 threshing mills ...
— The Commercial Products of the Vegetable Kingdom • P. L. Simmonds
... banners, and on went Sigmund before, And his sword was the flail of the tiller on the wheat of the wheat-thrashing floor, And his shield was rent from his arm, and his helm was sheared from his head: But who may draw nigh him to smite for the heap and the rampart of dead? White went his hair on the wind like the ragged drift of ...
— The Story of Sigurd the Volsung • William Morris
... see me. She first took me to the farmyard, and I peeped into the barn. There I saw a man thrashing, and as he beat the corn with his flail he made a great noise. Then I went to the pond where the ducks were swimming, and I saw the little wooden houses where the hens slept at night. The hens were feeding all over the yard, and the prettiest little chickens were feeding there too. Some little yellow ducklings had a hen for ...
— Tell Me Another Story - The Book of Story Programs • Carolyn Sherwin Bailey
... sword and shield to shake: We speak not of the powers divine, ne yet of furious sprites; We do not seek high hills to climb, nor talk of love's delights. We do not here present to you the thresher with his flail, Ne do we here present to you the milkmaid with her pail: We show not you of country toil, as hedger with his bill; We do not bring the husbandman to lop and top with skill: We play not here the gardener's part, to plant, to set and sow: You marvel, then, what stuff[139] we have to ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VI • Robert Dodsley
... Sea, rose up, and all the armies rose up along with him. "Stop here, Men of the World," he said, "for it is not you but myself that has to go and ask satisfaction for the bodies of my brothers." So he went on shore; and it is the way he was, with a strong iron flail in his hand having seven balls of pure iron on it, and fifty iron chains, and fifty apples on every chain, and fifty deadly thorns on every apple. And he made a rush through the Fianna to break them up entirely ...
— Gods and Fighting Men • Lady I. A. Gregory
... legs would be wrenched from his body. He did not venture to move or to relax his hold. He clung with all his strength, and nerved himself for the return journey. He had watched carefully, and knew something of the vagaries of the giant flail. When it was flung to port the wind helped to hold it there until the resistless surge of the schooner sent it flying wild once more. He knew that no mere flesh and blood could endure many of those collisions with the stays. He ...
— Blow The Man Down - A Romance Of The Coast - 1916 • Holman Day
... of form, with slouched hat upon his head, and blue-grey cloak about his shoulders, was seen making his way through the press to where Sigmund towered above the host of those who came against him. Soon he confronted Sigmund, and his flashing weapon whirled like a flail ere it descended. The Volsung king lifted his magic sword to ward off the blow, but it fell with terrific force upon the blade and broke it in two pieces. From that moment the fortune of the battle ...
— Told by the Northmen: - Stories from the Eddas and Sagas • E. M. [Ethel Mary] Wilmot-Buxton
... for modern things with me cannot avail; my father reaped his grain by hand and thrashed it with a flail; then who am I to strike new paths and buy machinery? The methods good enough for dad are good enough for me! I want no hydrant by my house—such doodads I won't keep! My father drew the water from a well three furlongs deep, and skinned his hands and broke his back a-pulling ...
— Rippling Rhymes • Walt Mason
... a brave man—an extraordinarily brave man. You English, you are brave. But he was no soldier. He rode at me alone, handling that sabre of his like a flail. We'd hardly crossed blades before he knew his fate. 'You've got me, sir,' said he, splashing about with his sword. I said nothing. 'Maybe I hadn't ought to ha stuck her,' he gasped. He wasn't whining. He wasn't that sort. He knew he had to have it. 'It was tit for tat: your blood-mare—my ...
— The Gentleman - A Romance of the Sea • Alfred Ollivant
... him, but passed him by. This chance occurred in 1505, when—Queen Isabella being dead—King Ferdinand discovered that Gonzalo de Cordoba was playing him false in Naples. The Spanish king conceived a plan—according to the chronicles of Zurita—to employ Cesare as a flail for the punishment of the Great Captain. He proposed to liberate the duke, set him at the head of an army, and loose him upon Naples, trusting to the formidable alliance of Cesare's military talents with his ...
— The Life of Cesare Borgia • Raphael Sabatini
... an auld thorn, in the dreary glen through which the herd-callan maun bicker in his gloamin route frae the fauld!—Be thou a brownie, set, at dead of night, to thy task by the blazing ingle, or in the solitary barn, where the repercussions of thy iron flail half affright thyself, as thou performest the work of twenty of the sons of men, ere the cock-crowing summon thee to thy ample cog of substantial brose. Be thou a kelpie, haunting the ford or ferry, in the starless night, mixing thy laughing yell with the howling of the storm and ...
— The Letters of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... rocks when they, like ourselves, heard the sound of thrashing in a barn, which started an argument between them on their relative abilities in the handling of the flail. As they could not settle the matter by words, they resolved to do so by blows; so they made their way to the farm and requested the farmer to allow them to try their hand at thrashing corn, and to judge which of them shaped the better. The farmer readily consented, and accompanied ...
— From John O'Groats to Land's End • Robert Naylor and John Naylor
... morning and night. The great barn filled with grain had to be threshed, for the cattle needed the straw, and the grain had to be got out for the market. So day after day he and his men hammered away with the flail, or spread the sheaves on the barn floor to be trampled out by horses. Threshing machines were unknown then, as were all the labour-saving machines now so extensively used by the farmer. His muscular arm ...
— Life in Canada Fifty Years Ago • Canniff Haight
... intense. She felt as if she were sitting in a tank of steaming vapour. The oppression of the atmosphere was like a physical weight. And ever the rain beat down, rattling, incessant, upon the tin roof above her head. She thought of Nemesis again, Nemesis wielding an iron flail that never missed its mark. There was something terrible to her in this perpetual beating of rain. She had never imagined anything ...
— The Lamp in the Desert • Ethel M. Dell
... excellently devout and worthy woman!—for scarcely were we out of the village, when so fearful a storm of thunder, lightning, wind, and hail burst over our heads, that the corn all around us was beaten down as with a flail, and the horses before the coach were quite maddened; however, it did not last long. But my poor child had to bear all the blame again, [Footnote: Such sudden storms were attributed to witches.] inasmuch as Dom. Consul thought that it was not old Lizzie, which, nevertheless, was as ...
— Sidonia The Sorceress V2 • William Mienhold
... furious wings, Each one upon each shoulder; With a sting in his tail as long as a flail, Which made him bolder and bolder. He had long claws, and in his jaws Four and forty teeth of iron; With a hide as tough as any buff, Which ...
— The Children's Garland from the Best Poets • Various
... farm the historical Jock Howison asked and got from our gay James the Fifth, "the gudeman o' Ballengiech," as a reward for the services of his flail, when the King had the worst of it at Cramond Brig with the gypsies. The farm is unchanged in size from that time, and still in the unbroken line of the ready and victorious thrasher. Braehead is ...
— Stories of Childhood • Various
... thatch will last as long as the shack. While the real pioneer uses whatever material he finds at hand, it does no harm for him to know that to make a really good thatch one should use only straw which is fully ripe and has been thrashed clean with an old-fashioned flail. The straw must be clear of all seed or grain and kept straight, not mussed up, crumpled, and broken. If any grain is left in the straw it will attract field-mice, birds, domestic mice and rats, domestic ...
— Shelters, Shacks and Shanties • D.C. Beard
... important hereto have clearly before the mind, as it is very apt to be overlooked. At the time of St. Columba's ministry, England, which during the lifetime of St. Patrick had been Roman and Christian, had now under the iron flail of its Saxon conquerors lapsed back into Paganism. Ireland, therefore, which for a while had made a part of Christendom, had been broken short off by the heathen conquest of Britain. It was now a small, isolated fragment of Christendom, with a great mass of heathenism ...
— The Story Of Ireland • Emily Lawless
... retreated to rest. After a time they drifted back to help make the defense good against the plunging fire devil. Sanders alone refused to retire. His parched eyebrows were half gone. His clothes hung about him in shredded rags. He was so exhausted that he could hardly wield a flail. His legs dragged and his arms hung heavy. But he would not give up even for an hour. Through the confused, shifting darkness of the night he led his band, silhouetted on the ridge like gnomes of the nether world, to attack after attack on the tireless, creeping, plunging ...
— Gunsight Pass - How Oil Came to the Cattle Country and Brought a New West • William MacLeod Raine
... through the body. He was in an agony of pain, and it was impossible for him to restrain his groans. When the ambulance started, it went anywhere but in a good road, and as it bumped over logs and boulders, my broken leg would thresh about like the mauler of a flail. I found it necessary to keep it in place by putting the other one over it. At last we stopped and were unloaded. It was still dark, but in due time light broke in the East, and a little later I could roll my head and take in some of the surroundings. Most of the wounded of the regiment had ...
— Personal Recollections of the War of 1861 • Charles Augustus Fuller
... ecclesiastics like Archbishop Plunkett, and commoners like Langhorne and Pickering, were dragged to death on the testimony of the vilest of the vile, without a voice being raised in their behalf; or how it could be considered a patriotic act on the part of an English Protestant to carry a flail loaded with lead beneath his cloak as a menace against his harmless neighbours who differed from him on points of doctrine. It was a long madness which has now happily passed off, or at least shows itself in ...
— Micah Clarke - His Statement as made to his three Grandchildren Joseph, - Gervas and Reuben During the Hard Winter of 1734 • Arthur Conan Doyle
... things with his iron flail, Things great, things small. With steady strokes that never fail, With slow, sure strokes of his iron ...
— Bees in Amber - A Little Book Of Thoughtful Verse • John Oxenham
... a little field of buckwheat that had been cut some days and had fully ripened. A woman was threshing out the grain with a flail upon a spread canvas, surrounded by a circle of purple-tinted cones, the sheaves leaning together. Now the wide level moor returned, but Nature was not quite the same here as she had been before. The vast expanse was dotted over with dark little juniper bushes. ...
— Two Summers in Guyenne • Edward Harrison Barker
... you infernal liar!" cried Spurlock, striking at the arm. But the free arm of the stranger hit him a flail-like blow on the chest and sent him sprawling into the yielding sand. Berserker, Spurlock ...
— The Ragged Edge • Harold MacGrath
... to please some curious taste, While yet alive, in boiling water cast, Vex'd with unwonted heat he flings about The scorching brass, and hurls the liquor out; So with the barbed jav'lin stung, he raves, And scourges with his tail the suffering waves. 140 Like Spenser's Talus with his iron flail, He threatens ruin with his pond'rous tail; Dissolving at one stroke the batter'd boat, And down the men fall drenched in the moat; With every fierce encounter they are forced To quit their boats, ...
— Poetical Works of Edmund Waller and Sir John Denham • Edmund Waller; John Denham
... the mountains which surrounded the place of his birth. Though a mere boy, the natural objects, eternally unchangeable, which daily met his eyes—the profound silence of the scene, broken only by the bleating of a solitary sheep, or the crowing of a distant cock, or the thrasher beating out with his flail the scanty grain of the black oats spread upon a skin in the open air, or the streamlets leaping from the rocky clefts, or the distant church-bell sounding up the valley on Sundays—all bred in his mind a profound melancholy and feeling of loneliness, and he used to think to himself, "What ...
— Industrial Biography - Iron Workers and Tool Makers • Samuel Smiles
... bed is prepared by smoothing, and, if needful, stamping a sufficient space of ground, and enclosing it in boards 14 inches wide, set on edge. Into this bed the partially dried peat is thrown, and, as it cracks on the surface by drying, it is compressed by blows with a heavy mallet or flail, or by treading it with flat boards, attached to the feet, somewhat like snow shoes. By this treatment the mass is reduced to a continuous sheet of less than one-half its first thickness, and becomes so firm, that a man's step ...
— Peat and its Uses as Fertilizer and Fuel • Samuel William Johnson
... spoke he swung his cutlass and made an arc of blue flame. The weapon became in his hands a flail, terrible to look upon, making lightnings and whistling in the air, but in reality not so deadly as it seemed. The fury of his onslaught would have beaten down the guard of any mere swordsman, but that I was not. A man, knowing his ...
— Modern Prose And Poetry; For Secondary Schools - Edited With Notes, Study Helps, And Reading Lists • Various
... the heart and the viscerae of the dead should not be removed far from her body. A beautiful microscopic hawk, which would have made a lovely watch-charm, was attached by a thread to a necklace of small plates of blue glass, to which was hung also a sort of amulet in the shape of a flail, made of turquoise-blue enamel. Some of the plates had become semi-opaque, no doubt owing to the heat of the boiling bitumen which had been poured over them, and then had ...
— The Works of Theophile Gautier, Volume 5 - The Romance of a Mummy and Egypt • Theophile Gautier
... heart, that you were kept chained like a dog, and never suffered to be at liberty, for you do more harm in an hour, than a body can set right again in a month!' Will then took up hats full of the corn and chaff, and threw it in the two men's faces; afterwards taking up a flail, he gave Simon a blow across his back, saying, at the same time, 'I will show you the way to thresh, and separate the flesh from the bones.' 'O! will you so, young squire?' said John; 'I will show you the way to make naughty boys good.' He then left the barn, ...
— The Life and Perambulations of a Mouse • Dorothy Kilner
... piles of white hickory shavings, are whittling out with keen Barlow jack-knives, implements for home use,—ox-bows and bow-pins, axe-helves, rakestales, forkstales, handles for spades and billhooks, wooden shovels, flail-staff and swingle, swingling knives, pokes and hog-yokes for unruly cattle and swine. The more ingenious, perhaps, are fashioning buckets, or powdering tubs, or weaving skepes, baskets, or snow-shoes. Some, it may be, sit astride the wooden shovel, shelling ...
— The New England Magazine Volume 1, No. 3, March, 1886 - Bay State Monthly Volume 4, No. 3, March, 1886 • Various
... wintry sun was pale On hill and hedge; The wind smote with its flail The seeded sedge; High up above the world, New taught to fly, The withered leaves were hurled About the sky; And there, through death and dearth, It went and came,— The Glory of the earth ...
— Songs, Merry and Sad • John Charles McNeill
... displayed to me in Chicago—a peculiar establishment which sells merely everything (except patent-medicines)—on condition that you order it by post. Go into that house with money in your palm, and ask for a fan or a flail or a fur-coat or a fountain-pen or a fiddle, and you will be requested to return home and write a letter about the proposed purchase, and stamp the letter and drop it into a mail-box, and then to wait till the article arrives at your door. That house is one of ...
— Your United States - Impressions of a first visit • Arnold Bennett
... is shown a short-handled flail, which is about 2-1/2 ft. long with a dark handle of wood, studded with brass or steel nails. A steel band is placed around the handle near the top. The imitation of the steel band is made by gluing ...
— The Boy Mechanic: Volume 1 - 700 Things For Boys To Do • Popular Mechanics
... meddle, Tam; it's niver no good a threshin' other folks' corn; ye allays gits the flail agin' ...
— The Wit of Women - Fourth Edition • Kate Sanborn
... celebrated European ministers to him seems to us as unjust as it would be to compare the best baker in London with Robinson Crusoe, who, before he could bake a single loaf, had to make his plough and his harrow, his fences and his scarecrows, his sickle and his flail, his mill ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... and most of the pods are ripe. Do not wait, however, until the pods are so dry that they have begun to split and drop their seeds. A slight amount of dampness on the plants aids the cutting. The threshing may be done with a flail, with pea-hullers, ...
— Agriculture for Beginners - Revised Edition • Charles William Burkett
... hypnotist, and like John L. Sullivan he had his adversary—the audience—conquered before he struck a blow. His glance was terrific, his "nerve" enormous. What he did afterward didn't much matter. He usually accomplished a hard day's threshing with those flail-like arms of his, and, heavens, how the poor piano objected to being taken ...
— Old Fogy - His Musical Opinions and Grotesques • James Huneker
... goblin sweat To earn his cream-bowl duly get, When in one night, ere glimpse of morn, His shadowy flail had thresh'd the corn That ten day-labourers could not end; Then lays him down the lubber-fiend, And, stretch'd out all the chimney's length, Basks at the fire his hairy strength, And crop-full, out of door he flings Ere the ...
— Bracebridge Hall, or The Humorists • Washington Irving
... here, Christmas comes but once a year, But when it comes it brings good cheer, And when it's gone it's no longer near. May luck attend the milking-pail, Yule logs and cakes in plenty be, May each blow of the thrashing-flail Produce good frumenty. And let the Wassail Cup abound, Whene'er ...
— The Peace Egg and Other tales • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... ale, With stories told of many a feat, How faery Mab the junkets eat; She was pinched and pulled, she said; And he, by Friar's lantern led, Tells how the drudging goblin sweat, To earn his cream-bowl duly set, When in one night, ere glimpse of morn, His shadowy flail hath threshed the corn That ten day-labourers could not end; Then lies him down, the lubber-fiend, And, stretched out all the chimney's length, Basks at the fire his hairy strength, And crop-full out of ...
— The Hundred Best English Poems • Various
... on rows, like the conical huts of a savage town, there are but a few, sometimes none. So many are built in the fields and threshed there "to rights," as the bailiff would say. It is not needful to have them near home or keep them, now the threshing-machine has stayed the flail and emptied the barns. Perhaps these are the only two losses to those who look at things and mete them with the eye—the corn-ricks and the barns. The corn-ricks were very characteristic, but even now you may see plenty if you look directly after harvest. The barns ...
— The Life of the Fields • Richard Jefferies
... forward at once, but a flail drove them right and left, and the unknown knight had mounted the parapet amid a shower of execrations. "If you are the real Shovel," the lady said to him, "you can tell me how this proceeds, 'I love my dear father and ...
— Sentimental Tommy - The Story of His Boyhood • J. M. Barrie
... folks tell on, Which nothing but monkeys can dwell on; Her heart's like a lemon—so nice She carves for each lover a slice; In truth she's to me, Like the wind, like the sea, Whose raging will hearken to no man; Like a mill, like a pill, Like a flail, like a whale, Like an ass, like a glass Whose image is constant to no man; Like a shower, like a flower, Like a fly, like a pie, Like a pea, like a flea, Like a thief, like—in brief, She's like nothing ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various
... Adam, "I 'll fight Beelzebub if he be aught I can hit; but these same boggarts, they say, a blow falls on 'em like rain-drops on a mist, or like beating the wind with a corn-flail. I cannot fight with naught, as ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... night of the laying of the foundation stone I had the pleasure of witnessing a rough-and-tumble fight between two of the most powerful men in Coolgardie. The excitement was intense as one seized his antagonist, and, using him as a flail, proceeded to clear the room with him; he retaliated by overpowering the other man, and finally breaking his leg as they fell heavily together out through the door on to the hard street beyond. ...
— Spinifex and Sand - Five Years' Pioneering and Exploration in Western Australia • David W Carnegie
... the boy was in due course promoted to the rank of team-leader, and was also set to assist his father in the threshing barn. "John," his father used to say, "was weak but willing," and the good man made his son a flail proportioned to his strength. Exposure in the ill-drained fields round Helpstone brought on an attack of tertiary ague, from which the boy had scarcely rallied when he was again sent into the fields. Favourable weather having ...
— Life and Remains of John Clare - "The Northamptonshire Peasant Poet" • J. L. Cherry
... their terrible foe. Two Spaniards lost their lives and two thousand Netherlanders. It was natural that these consummate warriors should despise such easily slaughtered victims. A single stroke of the iron flail, and the chaff was scattered to the four winds; a single sweep of the disciplined scythe, and countless acres were in an instant mown. Nevertheless, although beaten constantly, the Netherlanders were not conquered. Holland and ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... survivors, who was to plow a field near the house. In a few minutes he did something displeasing to the bull, which started him to running at a fearful speed. He dashed away towards the house, the plow flying and flapping about like the arms of a flail; tore through the flower-beds, ripping them to pieces; tore down all the choice young trees about the house; frightened the ladies and children nearly to death, and demoralized the whole farm. He was at last captured and affectionately cared for by the farmer, ...
— Detailed Minutiae of Soldier life in the Army of Northern Virginia, 1861-1865 • Carlton McCarthy
... strokes are necessary to complete the sketch. This strong young ploughman, who feared no competitor with the flail, suffered like a fine lady from sleeplessness and vapours; he would fall into the blackest melancholies, and be filled with remorse for the past and terror for the future. He was still not perhaps devoted to religion, but haunted by it; and at a touch of sickness prostrated himself ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 3 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... thirsting flowers, From the seas and the streams; I bear light shade for the leaves when laid In their noonday dreams. From my wings are shaken the dews that waken The sweet buds every one, When rocked to rest on their mother's breast, As she dances about the sun. I wield the flail of the lashing hail, And whiten the green plains under; And then again I dissolve it in rain, And laugh as I pass ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 7 • Charles H. Sylvester
... I swung my new weapon round my head and brought it down with a crash upon the two or three Frenchmen nearest me. The force of the blow made my arm tingle to the elbow, but it swept the Frenchmen down as though it had been a scythe, and caused those behind to recoil in terror. Another flail-like sweep proved equally effective, the cutlasses raised to guard the blows being as useless as so many wands, and when I followed it up with a third it proved too much for the Frenchmen, who, seeing their comrades go down before me like ninepins, gave ...
— The Log of a Privateersman • Harry Collingwood
... fell, her arm she brak, A compound fracture as could be; Nae leech the cure wad undertak, Whate'er was the gratuity. It 's cured! she handles 't like a flail, It does as weel in bits as hale; But I 'm a broken man mysel' Wi' her and ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume VI - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... her husband, the horse in a treadmill furnishing the power. When I passed in the misty morning of the next day she was still feeding the yellow sheaves into the thresher; and I thought how much better that was than the flail. ...
— The French in the Heart of America • John Finley
... so the Son was named) And his old Father both betook themselves To such convenient work as might employ 105 Their hands by the fire-side; perhaps to card Wool for the Housewife's spindle, or repair Some injury done to sickle, flail, or scythe, Or other implement ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. II. • William Wordsworth
... the neighboring sparrows, has carried my thoughts to the rich crops which are now falling beneath the sickle; it has recalled to me the beautiful walks I took as a child through my native province, when the threshing-floors at the farmhouses resounded from every part with the sound of a flail, and when the carts, loaded with golden sheaves, came in by all the roads. I still remember the songs of the maidens, the cheerfulness of the old men, the open-hearted merriment of the laborers. There was, at that time, something in their looks both of pride and feeling. ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... and surely and inexorably towards them. The angle of the bank was not steep and the elephant's speed never slackened on the slope. Its right shoulder struck a sapling and the sapling splintered. It was crashing forward in full charge. Again it trumpeted, trunk extended like a flail of doom. ...
— This Crowded Earth • Robert Bloch
... to visita, with covered face, beating himself with a cord, into the end of which is braided a bunch of sticks about the size of lead pencils. He prostrates himself in the dust and is beaten on the back and soles of his feet with a flail. At every stream he plunges into it, and grovels before every visita. From all the houses as he passes comes the chant of the Passion. (Lieut. Charles Norton Barney, who was an eye-witness of the ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898: Volume XVII, 1609-1616 • Various
... quiet little old roan, with a bright eye and legs like gate-posts, but he never fell down with us boys, for all that. If we fell off he stopped still and began to feed, so that he suited us all to pieces. We soon got sharp enough to flail him along with a quince stick, and we used to bring up the milkers, I expect, a good deal faster than was good for them. After a bit we could milk, leg-rope, and bail up for ourselves, and help dad brand the calves, which began to come pretty thick. There ...
— Robbery Under Arms • Thomas Alexander Browne, AKA Rolf Boldrewood
... Fairy Mab the junkets eat; She was pinch'd and pull'd she said. And he by Frier's lapthorp led; Tells how the drudging goblin sweat To earn his cream-bowl duly set, When in one night ere glimpse of morn His shadowy flail had thresh'd the corn Which ten day-labourers could not end. Then lies ...
— Johnson's Notes to Shakespeare Vol. I Comedies • Samuel Johnson
... hands off him. One was a girl, and Harry never could bear to strike a girl; and the other was a boy, whom he could easily have beat, but he always cried out, when Mrs. Pastoureau came sailing to the rescue with arms like a flail. She only washed Harry's face the day he went away; nor ever so much as once boxed his ears. She whimpered rather when the gentleman in black came for the boy; and old Mr. Pastoureau, as he gave the child his blessing, scowled over his ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... me, Sir Boy," said Genvil; "nor shake your sword my way. I tell thee, Amelot, were my weapon to cross with yours, never flail sent abroad more chaff than I would make splinters of your hatched and gilded toasting-iron. Look you, there are gray- bearded men here that care not to be led about on any boy's humour. For me, I stand little upon that; and I care not whether ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott
... making butter, and had seen the butter smeared all over the gate by a little green man with a queer cap who had been seen slipping under a culvert? Canon Atkinson told us of this lady who knew all these strange things, and of the Hart Hall "Hob" who worked so hard with his flail, and of many other curious folk who frequented the Yorkshire moors in olden days. The last witch had just died before he went to Danby, but he found the whole atmosphere of the folklore firmament so surcharged with the being and work of the witch, that he seemed ...
— English Villages • P. H. Ditchfield
... thae bonnie feathers o' mine, The feathers o' my tail: And gie to the lads o' Hamilton To be a barn-flail. ...
— Children's Rhymes, Children's Games, Children's Songs, Children's Stories - A Book for Bairns and Big Folk • Robert Ford
... the judge or recorder, His house was as big and as strong as a jail; With a cruel four-pounder, he kept in great order, He'd murder the country, would Larry M'Hale. He'd a blunderbuss too, of horse-pistols a pair; But his favorite weapon was always a flail. I wish you could see how he'd empty a fair, For he handled it neatly, did ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 2 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... fighting it out," said Titus, whisking the poker round his head like a flail in action. "My blood's up. Come on, Jack Palmer, I'm ...
— Rookwood • William Harrison Ainsworth
... had finished his porridge, he was to go into the barn to thrash. He took one of the rafters from the roof and made a flail out of it, and when the roof was about to fall in, he took a big pine tree with branches and all and put it up instead of the rafter. So he went on thrashing the grain and the straw and the hay all together. This was doing more damage than good, ...
— Folk Tales Every Child Should Know • Various
... was himself the herald of his own return. His humble equipage attracted no attention. His first care being to lodge his family, he sought the house of Dame Humphreys. The streets of the village were silent and deserted. Neither the loom, the flail, nor the anvil were heard; not a child was to be seen at play; every thing looked as if this was a portion of that city where progressive action is suspended, and the sun hangs level over the ocean without power of sinking. Dr. Beaumont, however, found Dame ...
— The Loyalists, Vol. 1-3 - An Historical Novel • Jane West
... form, mummified; wears head-dress of Amen Ra; his right hand uplifted, holding a flail. The god of productiveness and generation. Chief deity ...
— TITLE • AUTHOR
... are seen. The convulsions may consist only of a rapid trembling, or the limb or limbs may be flung about like a flail. ...
— Epilepsy, Hysteria, and Neurasthenia • Isaac G. Briggs
... upright shafts of whose tall elms We may discern the thresher at his task, Thump after thump resounds the constant flail That seems to swing uncertain, and yet falls Full on the destined ear. Wide flies the chaff, The rustling straw sends up a fragrant mist Of atoms, sparkling in the ...
— Cowper • Goldwin Smith
... from her lips. For a moment it was a physical impossibility for her to speak. She could only shrink, mute and quivering, beneath the flail of ...
— The Lamp of Fate • Margaret Pedler
... MacLure came out from Annie's room and laid hold of Tammas, a heap of speechless misery by the kitchen fire, and carried him off to the barn, and spread some corn on the threshing-floor, and thrust a flail ...
— Stories by English Authors: Scotland • Various
... nothing whatever had happened. Each day was filled to the brim with hard work. With the help of the Twins, Mother Van Hove kept the garden free of weeds and took care of the stock. She even threshed the wheat herself with her husband's flail, and stored the grain away in sacks ready for the mill. Each evening, when the work was done, the three went down the village street together. One evening, just at dusk, they found nearly the whole ...
— The Belgian Twins • Lucy Fitch Perkins
... were all oiled, and while I stood in the dark gloom at the far end, with my hand on the dribbling stern-gland, there came a sudden thump and a grinding shock. The turning shaft shook and chattered before my eyes, the propeller outside caught in something, shuddered, broke clear and beat like a flail. Then the ship lifted bodily and fell, bump, bump, bump. I stood there transfixed. What could it be? I looked along the dark tunnel to where the lights of the engine-room showed in a pale glint and I could have sworn I ...
— Aliens • William McFee
... I've expressed my meaning quite plainly, (reads) "Farmer Flail, I'm instructed by lord Austencourt, your landlord, to inform you, by word of letter, that if you can't afford to pay the additional rent for your farm, you must turn out." I think that's clear enough. "As to your putting in the plea of a large family, we cannot allow that ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Vol I, No. 2, February 1810 • Samuel James Arnold
... harried By iron, and to heaven laid bare; He shook the seed that he carried O'er that brown and bladeless place. He shook it, as God shakes hail Over a doomed land. When lightnings interlace The sky and the earth, and his wand Of love is a thunder-flail. Thus did that Sower sow; His seed was human blood, And tears of women and men. And I, who near him stood, Said: When the crop comes, then There will be sobbing and sighing, Weeping and wailing and crying, ...
— Poems with Power to Strengthen the Soul • Various
... for rest prepare, Still the flail echoes through the frosty air, Nor stops till deepest shades of darkness come, Sending at length the weary laborer home. From him, with bed and nightly food supplied, Throughout the yard, hous'd round on every side, Deep-plunging Cows their rustling feast ...
— The Farmer's Boy - A Rural Poem • Robert Bloomfield
... after world of punishment, "the flagstone of pain," "the cauldron that is boiling for ever," the fire the least flame of which is "bigger than fifteen hundred of turf," so that Oisin listening to St. Patrick demands a familiar weapon, an iron flail, to beat down such familiar terrors, has left Heaven itself far off, mysterious, intangible, without earthly similes or foreshadowings. I think it is perhaps because of this that the country poets of to-day and yesterday ...
— The Kiltartan Poetry Book • Lady Gregory
... "make-believe" blow would have implied a "make- believe" hammer and a "make-believe" curtain. No!—hammer away, like Charles Martel; "fillip me with a three-man beetle;" be to me a malleus hreticorum; come like Spenser's Talus—an iron man with an iron flail, and thresh out the straw of my logic; rack me; put me to the question; get me down; jump upon me; kick me; throttle me; put an end to me ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... herd. Mystery of the turning water wheel. The mill and workshop. Their home. "Baby" learning civilized ways. The noise in the night. The return of the yaks. The need for keeping correct time. Shoe leather necessary. Threshing out barley. The flail. The grindstone. Making flour. Baking bread. How the bread was raised. What yeast does in bread. Temperature required. The "Baby" and the honey pot. The bread with large holes in it. George's trip to the cliffs. A peculiar sounding noise and spray from the cliffs. ...
— The Wonder Island Boys: Exploring the Island • Roger Thompson Finlay
... galleon brought the bar,—so runs the ancient tale; 'T was hammered by an Antwerp smith, whose arm was like a flail; And now and then between the strokes, for fear his strength should fail, He wiped his brow and quaffed a cup of good old ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... would not. He realized it would have been a very different tale, and the sequent questions that would not down, were, "Will this bread cast on the waters return after many days?" "Is there a God of justice and retribution?" "On whom will the flail of vengeance fall ...
— Rolf In The Woods • Ernest Thompson Seton
... on the farm, we used to thrash our grain with the hand-flail. Our custom was to thrash a flooring of sheaves on one side, then turn the sheaves over and thrash them on the other, then unbind them and thrash the loosened straw again, and then finish by turning the whole over and thrashing it once more. I suspect my reader ...
— Ways of Nature • John Burroughs
... The solid forest gives fluid utterances, They tumble forth, they rise and form, Hut, tent, landing, survey, Flail, plough, pick, crowbar, spade, Shingle, rail, prop, wainscot, lamb, lath, panel, gable, Citadel, ceiling, saloon, academy, organ, exhibition-house, library, Cornice, trellis, pilaster, balcony, window, ...
— Leaves of Grass • Walt Whitman
... of the faculties of his soul lie fallow, or are like the restive jades that no spur can drive forward towards the pursuit of any worthy designs. One of the most unprofitable of God's creatures, being as he is a thing put clean beside the right use; made fit for the cart and the flail, and by mischance entangled amongst books and papers. A man cannot tell possibly what he is now good for, save to move up and down and fill room, or to serve as animatum instrumentum, for others to work withal ...
— Character Writings of the 17th Century • Various
... turned with a lithe movement, surprisingly graceful for a body so big, and made ready as though to once more swing his two flail-like fists. ...
— A Soldier of the Legion • C. N. Williamson
... appetites so revolt! Mary never thought of such a thing as self-indulgence;—this daughter of the Puritans had her seed within her. Aerial in her delicacy, as the blue-eyed flax-flower with which they sowed their fields, she had yet its strong fibre, which no stroke of the flail could break; bruising and hackling only made it fitter for uses of homely utility. Mary, therefore, opened the kitchen-door at dawn, and, after standing one moment to breathe the freshness, began spreading the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... die. I had no sense of fear; no thought but to kill and be killed. I felt within me strength—desperate, insane strength. The rifle butt splintered in my hands, but the bent and shapeless barrel rose and fell like a flail. I saw it crush against skulls; I jabbed it straight into red faces; I brought it down with all my force on clutching arms. For an instant Tim was beside me. He had lost his gun and was fighting with a knife. It ...
— The Devil's Own - A Romance of the Black Hawk War • Randall Parrish
... ran, tossing his nose with pain and bellowing: Uxmoor dragged by the tail and compelled to follow in preposterous, giant strides, barely touching the ground with the point of his toe, pounded the creature's ribs with such blows as Zoe had never dreamed possible. They sounded like flail on wooden floor, and each blow was accompanied with a loud jubilant shout. Presently, being a five's player, and ambidexter, he shifted his hand, and the tremendous whacks resounded on the bull's left side. The bull, thus belabored, and resounding like the big drum, ...
— The Woman-Hater • Charles Reade
... the church were called up by the Japanese, who stepped down and ran his fingers along the floor. "Look at this dust," he said. Ordering the two men to sit down on the floor, he beat them with a flail, over the shoulders. ...
— Korea's Fight for Freedom • F.A. McKenzie
... soap, A long cart-rope, A frying pan and kettle, An ashes[74] pail, A threshing-flail, ...
— A Collection of College Words and Customs • Benjamin Homer Hall
... among the nutty hedgerows near the village of Raveloe, and not far from the edge of a deserted stone-pit. The questionable sound of Silas's loom, so unlike the natural cheerful trotting of the winnowing-machine, or the simpler rhythm of the flail, had a half-fearful fascination for the Raveloe boys, who would often leave off their nutting or birds'-nesting to peep in at the window of the stone cottage, counterbalancing a certain awe at the mysterious action of the ...
— Silas Marner - The Weaver of Raveloe • George Eliot
... Solomon, shall come to poverty. {49b} Many that have begun the world with Plenty, have gone out of it in Rags; through drunkenness. Yea, many Children that have been born to good Estates, have yet been brought to a Flail & a Rake, through this beastly ...
— The Life and Death of Mr. Badman • John Bunyan
... catalogue! How odd, indeed, that a man with such work to do should not have sported with Amaryllis, or played with the tangles of Neaera's hair,—should not have worn well-anointed love-locks and snowy linen,—should, on the other hand, have bared his brawny arm, and sent the hissing flail down swiftly upon the waled and blistered back of Sham! How much better would it have been, if he had written a history, in twelve elephantine volumes, of the rise, culmination, and decay of the Empire of Barataria, which we would have gone to prison, the rack, and the drop, with rapture rather ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 21, July, 1859 • Various
... the creature to enthral him. Perhaps some such story as this may account in part for Mrs. Frere's sad looks. Why do I speculate on such things? I seem to do violence to myself and to insult her by writing such suspicions. If I was a Flagellant now, I would don hairshirt and up flail. "For this sort cometh not out but ...
— For the Term of His Natural Life • Marcus Clarke
... practice—the bayonet will no longer avail you—club your muskets, and hit the horses over the noses, and they'll smell danger.' They took my advice; of course we first delivered a withering volley, and then to it we went in flail-fashion, thrashing away with the butt-ends of our muskets; and sure enough the French were astonished and driven back in amazement. So tremendous, sir, was the hitting on our side, that in many instances the butt-ends of ...
— Handy Andy, Vol. 2 - A Tale of Irish Life • Samuel Lover
... through the high shadowy spaces. How much his life had been in that barn! How he had stifled and scrambled mowing hay in those lofts! On the floor he had hulled heaps of corn, thrashed oats with a flail—a noble occupation—and many a rainy day had played there with girls and boys who could not now exactly describe the games or well recall what exciting fun they were. There were the racks where ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... the crops of wheat and oats, rye and barley, were gathered with a sickle; the grain was thrashed with a flail; the grass in the meadows was cut with a scythe. But, now, all this is changed; on the great prairies of the West, the wheat, rye and oats are cut by the reaper, and with a steady hum the thrashing-machine does its work ...
— Reading Made Easy for Foreigners - Third Reader • John L. Huelshof
... love is held the master-passion, Its loss must be the pain supreme— And grinning Fate has wrecked my dream. But pardon, dear departed Guest, I will not rant, I will not rail; For good the grain must feel the flail; There are whom love ...
— The Complete Poems of Paul Laurence Dunbar • Paul Laurence Dunbar
... cold and his anger merry. However they were, they could scarcely have faced the hard glitter of his blue eyes, the smile of his fixed lips. He could have carved with a dagger, with a bludgeon, a flail, or a whip. As it was, to a long arm was added a long sword, which whistled through the air, but through flesh went quiet. There had been blows at first from behind and at the side of him. The long mowing arms stayed them. It became ...
— The Forest Lovers • Maurice Hewlett
... great day with absurd allegorical paintings of gigantic size. There was Saint George with his foot on the neck of Titus Cares, and Hercules with his club crushing College, the Protestant joiner, who in vain attempted to defend himself with his flail. After this public appearance Castelmaine invited all the persons of note then assembled at Rome to a banquet in that gay and splendid gallery which is adorned with paintings of subjects from the Aeneid by Peter of Cortona. The whole city crowded to the show; and it was with difficulty ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 2 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... and rescue them. Few, however, were able to labour efficiently. It seemed a wonder to Stephen that his own strength had been kept up, when he saw stout fellows, accustomed to wield the scythe and flail, reduced to mere skeletons. The morning came, the Surge still floated, but to build a raft seemed beyond the power of those on board. They wanted both strength and skill. Stephen urged them to try, ...
— Roger Willoughby - A Story of the Times of Benbow • William H. G. Kingston
... trees that are cut in the full of the moon carpenters refuse, as being soft, and, by reason of their moistness, subject to corruption; and in its wane farmers usually thresh their wheat, that being dry it may better endure the flail; for the corn in the full of the moon is moist, and commonly bruised in threshing. Besides, they say dough will be leavened sooner in the full, for then, though the leaven is scarce proportioned to the meal, yet it rarefies and leavens the whole lump. Now when flesh putrefies, the combining ...
— Essays and Miscellanies - The Complete Works Volume 3 • Plutarch
... Swope from his feet with that throat grip. He whirled him like a flail, and smashed him down upon the deck, and let him go. And there Yankee Swope lay, sprawled, and still, his head bent back at a fatal angle. A broken neck, as a glance at the lolling head would inform; and, as we discovered later, a broken back as ...
— The Blood Ship • Norman Springer
... the man went sheer raving mad from the emotions of his forefathers and from his own. He came to close quarters. He gripped the stick with his two hands and made it speed like a flail. The snake, tumbling in the anguish of final despair, fought, bit, flung itself upon this stick which was taking ...
— Men, Women, and Boats • Stephen Crane
... homespun, surrounded by piles of white hickory shavings, are whittling out with keen Barlow jack-knives implements for home use: ox-bows and bow-pins, axe-helves, rakestales, forkstales, handles for spades and billhooks, wooden shovels, flail staff and swingle, swingling knives, or pokes and hog yokes for unruly cattle and swine. The more ingenious, perhaps, are fashioning buckets or powdering tubs, or weaving skeps, baskets or snowshoes. Some, it ...
— The Old Coast Road - From Boston to Plymouth • Agnes Rothery
... his command with pick-handles and now set a brilliant example in the use of this, his favorite weapon. For once the apathetic Slater was fully roused; he was tremendous, irresistible. In his capable grasp the oaken cudgel became both armor and flail; in defense it was as active as a fencing-master's foil, in offense as deadly as the kick of a mule. Beneath his formless bulk were the muscles of a gladiator; his eye had all the quickness of a prize-fighter. There ...
— The Iron Trail • Rex Beach
... plays to flail the follies of his time, he makes his chief characters, in spite of his realistic purpose, extreme and distorted 'humors,' each, in spite of individual traits, the embodiment of some one abstract vice—cowardice, sensualism, hypocrisy, or what not. Too often, also, the unreality ...
— A History of English Literature • Robert Huntington Fletcher
... speak the truth. Wait till you see me thump the Devil's tattoo with my old flail on your thrashin'-floor! But you look as cheery as an Easter-mornin' sun; you've not much for to complain of, these ...
— The Story Of Kennett • Bayard Taylor
... Common-sense, that imp o' hell, Cam in wi' Maggie Lauder;^1 But Oliphant^2 aft made her yell, An' Russell^3 sair misca'd her: This day Mackinlay^4 taks the flail, An' he's the boy will blaud her! He'll clap a shangan on her tail, An' set the bairns to daud her Wi' dirt ...
— Poems And Songs Of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... that, so handicapped, she could never reach them, and with shaking, fumbling fingers she set herself to unfasten the straps that bound the skis. It took her a long, long time—all the longer for her fevered haste. And still that awful, flail-like sound went on and on, though all sound of voices ...
— The Knave of Diamonds • Ethel May Dell
... at the village of Eton Constantine, in 1615. He received from officiating curates of the little church such literary instruction as could be given by men who had left the farmer's flail, the tailor's thimble, and the service of strolling stage-players, to perform church drudgery under the parish incumbent, who was old and well-nigh blind. At the age of sixteen, he was sent to a school at Wroxeter, where he spent three ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... had no time to fire, no time even to speak. The revolver flew out of his hand at one blow from the flail-like arms of the concierge. Behind him somewhere was coming, Nikky knew, a detachment of cavalry. But he had outdistanced them, riding frenziedly, had leaped hedges and ditches across the Park. He must hold this ...
— Long Live the King • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... chance of being heard; she stood still and waited. Presently Johnny, who was opposite, caught a sight of her, and without stopping his work said to his leader, "Somebody there for you, Mr. Van Brunt." That gentleman's flail ceased its motion, then he threw it down and went to the door to help ...
— The Wide, Wide World • Susan Warner
... a creature can be found To prance with me his statue round. The public safety, I foresee, Henceforth depends alone on me; And while this vital breath I blow, Or from above or from below, I'll sputter, swagger, curse, and rail, The Tories' terror, scourge, and flail. M. Tim, you mistake the matter quite; The Tories! you are their delight; And should you act a different part, Be grave and wise, 'twould break their heart. Why, Tim, you have a taste you know, And often see ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift
... devil would get control of those about her if she moved. Sometimes there is a development of this symptom from others which seem to be ideational in their origin. For instance, Charles O. began making flail-like movements. These passed over into slow circular motions which finally subsided into the maintenance ...
— Benign Stupors - A Study of a New Manic-Depressive Reaction Type • August Hoch
... manured, the seed should be sown in July, in furrows eight or ten inches asunder. The plants are transplanted about October. When ripe the stalks are reaped with a sickle, and the seeds threshed out with a flail. The cake, after the oil is expressed, is an excellent ...
— The Commercial Products of the Vegetable Kingdom • P. L. Simmonds
... escape and get away over the fence. Then they all set upon Tom, but by G—— it was glorious to see the way in which he held his own. Out came that cross of his, four foot and a half long, with a thong as heavy as a flail. He soon had the road clear around him, and the big black horse you remember, stood as steady as a statue till he was bidden to move on. Then when he had the hounds, and Barney Smith and the whips to himself,—and ...
— The Landleaguers • Anthony Trollope
... fury!" cried Blaize, transported with rage. "If I am only a porter, while you pretend to be a major, I will let you see I am the better man of the two." And taking the goose by the neck, he swung it round his head like a flail, and began to batter Pillichody ...
— Old Saint Paul's - A Tale of the Plague and the Fire • William Harrison Ainsworth
... toward him, seized him by the shirt collar, and pulled him bodily from the bunk. Then, smothering his protesting voice by a grip on his throat, slatted him from side to side as a farmer uses a flail, and threw him headlong against the after bulkhead and half-way into an empty bunk. Sampson had uttered no word, and Forsythe only muttered as he crawled back to his own bunk. But he ...
— The Wreck of the Titan - or, Futility • Morgan Robertson
... to the window and raised big hands toward the spear-points of the aloof stars. "Master of us all!" he cried; "O Father of us all! the Hammer of the Scots am I! the Scourge of France, the conqueror of Llewellyn and of Leicester, and the flail of the accursed race that slew Thine only Son! the King of England am I, who have made of England an imperial nation, and have given to Thy Englishmen new laws! And to-night I crave my hire. Never, O my Father, have I had of any person aught save reverence or hatred! never in my life ...
— Chivalry • James Branch Cabell
... for his throat was met with the flail of the net. Rynch stabbed twice at the creature he had so swept off balance. A water-cat, this year's cub. Dying, its claws, over-long in proportion to its paws, drew inch deep furrows in the earth and gravel. Its eyes, almost the same shade as its long, burr-entangled body fur, glared ...
— Star Hunter • Andre Alice Norton
... be realized, the king adopted, in addition to the simple costume of the old chiefs, the long or short petticoat, the jackal's tail, the turned-up sandals, and the insignia of the supreme gods,—the ankh, the crook, the flail, and the sceptre tipped with the head of a jerboa or a hare, which we misname the cucupha-headed sceptre.* He put on the many-coloured diadems of the gods, the head-dresses covered with feathers, the white and the red crowns either separately or combined so as to form the pshent. The ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 2 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... found the usual village sights and life. We moved along a narrow, crooked lane which had been paved in the Middle Ages. A strapping, ruddy girl was beating flax or some such stuff in a little bit of a good-box of a barn, and she swung her flail with a will—if it was a flail; I was not farmer enough to know what she was at; a frowsy, barelegged girl was herding half a dozen geese with a stick—driving them along the lane and keeping them out of the dwellings; a cooper was at work in a shop which I know he did not make so large a ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... the tall man by the heels and whirled him round like a flail and tore into that gang of snarling hellhounds with cyclonic fury.... I literally mowed them down.... But finally a dull thud sounded in my ears.... A wave of light blinded both my eyes.... I knew nothing more until this morning when I awoke in a tent. Beside me was a loaf of bread and a canteen ...
— Rescuing the Czar - Two authentic Diaries arranged and translated • James P. Smythe
... brightness of which so dazzled them that they could see nothing else in the wide universe. Here were men whose faith had embodied itself in the form of a potato; and others whose long beards had a deep spiritual significance. Here was the abolitionist, brandishing his one idea like an iron flail. In a word, there were a thousand shapes of good and evil, faith and infidelity, wisdom and nonsense, ...
— The Hall of Fantasy (From "Mosses From An Old Manse") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... and old come forth to play On a sulphurous holiday, Tell how the darkling goblin sweat (His feast of cinders duly set), And, belching night, where breathed the morn, His shadowy flail hath threshed the corn That ten ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... night the hoof-beats Went sounding like a flail; And Goody Cole at cockcrow Came forth from ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 93, July, 1865 • Various
... among the lesser lights there was a great display of energy, much of it misplaced. The worst offender was Bray. To watch him play was to witness a gladiatorial display of frightfulness. His fists flew about like a flail, his legs were everywhere. On the whole he did more damage to his own side than to his opponents. And the amount of energy he wasted every game in hacking the bodies of any who got in his way must have been exhausting. Gordon had to speak to ...
— The Loom of Youth • Alec Waugh
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