"Sifting" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the evenings, between eight and nine o'clock, Anton is always sifting in front of the door, resting his head against the wall. This is his recreation, his one blessed hour of out-door air and rest. He stands with his cap in his hand while I pass, and his face shines as if all the concentrated enjoyment ...
— Bits About Home Matters • Helen Hunt Jackson
... who have received the love of the truth, will be shielded from the powerful delusion that takes the world captive. By the Bible testimony these will detect the deceiver in his disguise. To all, the testing time will come. By the sifting of temptation, the genuine Christian will be revealed. Are the people of God now so firmly established upon His word that they would not yield to the evidence of their senses? Would they, in such a crisis, cling ...
— The Great Controversy Between Christ and Satan • Ellen G. White
... be a constant problem for all the valuable nucleus formed by the Park. Experts and the offscourings of the earth drifted to the great government camp and Jim and all his assistants exercised a constant and rigid sifting process. He did not talk much to his new help. His eyes were keen to catch the first glimpse of the river. The men caught his strain and none of them spoke again. Cottontails quivered out of sight as the automobile rushed on. An occasional ...
— Still Jim • Honore Willsie Morrow
... so flaming a narrative of Theodore's merits that the old Lady grew curious to see him. Accordingly, the Porteress was commissioned to convey him to the Parlour grate. In the interim, the supposed Beggar was sifting the Lay-Sister with respect to the fate of Agnes: Her evidence only corroborated the Domina's assertions. She said that Agnes had been taken ill on returning from confession, had never quitted her bed from that moment, and that ...
— The Monk; a romance • M. G. Lewis
... Homer once will be nothing but a gentleman now." And at this point, having decided that Mr. Raleigh was fully worth unlimited love, she added to her resolves a desire for content with whatever amount of friendly affection he chose to bestow upon her. And all this, while sifting the sugar over her raspberries. Nevertheless, she felt, in the midst of her heroic content, a strange jealousy at hearing the two thus discuss days in which she had no share, and she watched them furtively, with a sharp, hateful suspicion dawning in her mind. Now, as ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 39, January, 1861 • Various
... that chroniclers who wrote before the invention of printing generally copied one predecessor at a time, and knew little about sifting or combining authorities. The suggestion became luminous in Ranke's hands, and with his light and dexterous touch he scrutinised and dissected the principal historians, from Machiavelli to the Memoires ...
— Lectures on Modern history • Baron John Emerich Edward Dalberg Acton
... the gaze Like a tangle of bright sunshine, Dipping a million glittering rays In a baptism divine: And a maiden, sheened in this gauze attire— Sifting a glance of her eye— Dazzled men's souls with a fierce desire To kiss and caress ...
— The Complete Works • James Whitcomb Riley
... but when there is anything to be done, then there is a sifting! But now we have you, with all our own Lily's spirit, I shall be happy about Jane ...
— Beechcroft at Rockstone • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Sheridan's it is almost impossible to do justice in so narrow a space as I have here. He is one of those men who, not to be made out a whit better or worse than they are, demand a careful investigation of all their actions, or reported actions—a careful sifting of all the evidence for or against them, and a careful weeding of all the anecdotes told of them. This requires a separate biography. To give a general idea of the man, we must be content to give that which he inspired in a general acquaintance. Many of ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 2 • Grace & Philip Wharton
... scientists, and foretold eclipses: in every sphere of intellectual activity great men were sifting out truth from the debris of superstition. It seemed as if Babylon and Assyria were about to cross the threshold of a new age, when their doom was sounded and their power was shattered for ever. Nineveh perished with dramatic suddenness: Babylon ...
— Myths of Babylonia and Assyria • Donald A. Mackenzie
... make me different. I shall go on being what I have always been—sifting and sorting, as she calls it. Do you want my punishment ...
— The Early Short Fiction of Edith Wharton, Part 1 (of 10) • Edith Wharton
... inform'd of my affairs; and that some one had been in pursuit of me; upon which I ask't my Gito whether any body was to enquire for me. "Not this day," said he, "but yesterday there came a very pretty woman, who, when she had tir'd me with a long sifting discourse; at last told me you deserv'd to be punisht, and shou'd as a slave, if you ...
— The Satyricon • Petronius Arbiter
... something more than a prophet. And I felt, of course, that I had done more harm than good by questioning; inasmuch as every soul in the place would run straightway and inform him that the King's man from the other side of the forest had been sifting out ...
— Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor • R. D. Blackmore
... surprised that to the shores of our little island have drifted all kinds of miscellaneous rubbish, and that the Manxmen, from their very simplicity and ignorance of other literatures, have had no means of sifting the flotsam and assigning value to the constituents. Besides this, they are so irresponsible, have no literary conscience, and accordingly have appropriated anything and everything. This is true of some Manx ballads, and perhaps also of ...
— The Little Manx Nation - 1891 • Hall Caine
... eyes to debasing forms of worship, to subterranean caverns of gross superstition, and lurking demons of cruelty and despair. While Nevil was imbibing impressions of Indian Art, Lilamani was secretly weighing and probing the Indian spirit that inspired it; sifting the grain from the chaff—a process closely linked with her personal life; because, for India, ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver
... the Church of Christ. He has gladdened more hearts than he knows by the noble promise of his early days. Many admiring and loving eyes have been turned on him as he took so hopefully the upward way. But a sifting-time soon comes. A time of temptation comes. A time comes when sides must be taken in some moral, religious, ecclesiastical controversy. This young man is at that moment a candidate for a post that will bring distinction, wealth, and social influence to him who holds it. And ...
— Bunyan Characters (Second Series) • Alexander Whyte
... was spent," says Mr. Gibbs, "in sifting the conduct of the secretary. [8] The investigation served one purpose of the opposition—it prevented any question being taken on the report. It seems somewhat anomalous, that a party which had charged the administration with a wish to perpetuate the debt, ...
— Life And Times Of Washington, Volume 2 • John Frederick Schroeder and Benson John Lossing
... emerged from the Bargain Basement almost the first of its frantic exodus, taking the place of her weekly appointment in the entrance of the Popular Drug Store adjoining, her gaze, something even frantic in it, sifting the passing crowd. ...
— Americans All - Stories of American Life of To-Day • Various
... came about that Abel was for ever sifting bits of flour through his finger and thumb, to obtain the required flatness and delicacy which marks the latter in a miller born; and playing lovingly with little Jan on the floor of the round-house, he would pass some through the baby's fingers ...
— Jan of the Windmill • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... the house almost ever since I came from home sifting the scheme of Universal Salvation to the bottom. What occasioned this was an occurrence on the evening of Sunday before last. I heard the bell ring for lecture and concluded it was at Mr. Putnam's; I accordingly ...
— Samuel F. B. Morse, His Letters and Journals - In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Samuel F. B. Morse
... (l. lxix. p. 1249) affirms the whole to have been a fiction, on the authority of his father, who, being governor of the province where Trajan died, had very good opportunities of sifting this mysterious transaction. Yet Dodwell (Praelect. Camden. xvii.) has maintained that Hadrian was called to the certain hope of the empire, ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 • Edward Gibbon
... movement, so far as it regards man, in this machinery for sifting and winnowing the merits of races, there is a system of marvellous means, which by its very simplicity masks and hides from us the wise profundity of its purpose. Often-times, in wandering amongst the inanimate world, the philosopher is disposed to say—this plant, this mineral, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 337, November, 1843 • Various
... hearing that their scenes are laid in that vicinity; but each merely speaks, in easy omniscience, of the "distant chain of blue mountains," or of the "far-off snow-peaks outlined against the horizon," and the fiction proves hardly worth sifting for so little fact. Plainly the Pyrenees lack the voluminous literature of the Alps. Plainly we shall have, in part, to grope our way. The grooves of Anglo-Saxon travel are many and deep, lined increasingly with English speech and customs; but they have not yet ...
— A Midsummer Drive Through The Pyrenees • Edwin Asa Dix
... Socrates himself is the cross-examination. Under this process, high-sounding generalities,—put in the mouths of speakers in the dialogues, the whole word-play set forth with exquisite grace and charm,—are shown by a rigid sifting to resolve themselves into nebulous and baseless figments,—the mere simulacra of ...
— The Chief End of Man • George S. Merriam
... a tart once," observed Dot seriously, "and instead of sifting powdered sugar on it she got hold of her sand-shaker, and when she gave Margaret Pease and me each a piece it gritted our teeth so we couldn't eat it. So then," concluded Dot, "she found out what she ...
— The Corner House Girls Growing Up - What Happened First, What Came Next. And How It Ended • Grace Brooks Hill
... professors of history, successful writers in other fields, statesmen, university and college presidents, and prominent business men. From this widely gathered consensus of opinions, after much comparison and sifting of ideas, was evolved the following practical, and it would seem incontrovertible, series of plain facts. And these all ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1 • Various
... case where a truly scientific and most impartial writer like Credner gives his opinion, to make use of it instead of my own. I have the satisfaction to think that whatever may be the value of the other sections of this enquiry, this at least is thoroughly sound, and based upon a really exhaustive sifting of ...
— The Gospels in the Second Century - An Examination of the Critical Part of a Work - Entitled 'Supernatural Religion' • William Sanday
... to wall, and in the partial light the long, dusky masses looked wonderfully like other hanging things. The great casks beneath had the appearance of shadowy scaffolds, and the men, sitting or standing against them, looked larger than life. All was dusk, subdued, save where a stray sunbeam, sifting through a crack in the opposite wall, lit the ghastly face and ...
— Prisoners of Hope - A Tale of Colonial Virginia • Mary Johnston
... dismal and ghastly, as though in truth some such ogre as the monster I had dreamt of lay suffocating there. I welcomed the cold colouring of the east as if it had been a ship, and watched the stars dying and the frozen shore darkening to the dim and sifting dawn behind it, against which the outline of the cliffs ran in a broken streak of ink. The rising of the sun gave me fresh life. The ice flashed out of its slatish hue into a radiant white, the ocean changed into a rich blue that ...
— The Frozen Pirate • W. Clark Russell
... plagues cease? Vanish, thou and it!—"Avec ton Etre Supreme," said Billaud, "tu commences m'embeter: With thy Etre Supreme thou beginnest to be a bore to me." (See Vilate, Causes Secretes. Vilate's Narrative is very curious; but is not to be taken as true, without sifting; being, at bottom, in spite of its title, not a ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... that point won't stand much sifting, I fear," replied Charley: "according to your own showing, you would fall into the Chipewyan's way of glorifying themselves on account of their bravery, if you chanced to be dwelling among them, and yet you say they are not brave. That would ...
— The Young Fur Traders • R.M. Ballantyne
... among the armed forces of the greater powers; the planning and conduct of war have acquired a precision, a swiftness, and a thoroughness before unknown. The study and analysis of past campaigns, the sifting of technical details from fundamental truths, and the shrewd combination of the theoretical and the practical form the basis of ...
— Sound Military Decision • U.s. Naval War College
... placed so high: 170 Let not thy brain (as brains less potent might) Dizzy, confounded, giddy with the height, Turn round, and lose distinction, lose her skill And wonted powers of knowing good from ill, Of sifting truth from falsehood, friends from foes; Let Glo'ster well remember how he rose, Nor turn his back on men who made him great; Let him not, gorged with power, and drunk with state, Forget what once he was, though now so high, How low, ...
— Poetical Works • Charles Churchill
... listened a while longer to the babel of voices aroused by what he had said, then gradually sank back into his reflections, and gazed ahead of him seriously. He saw the sunbeams sifting through the thick foliage and glittering on the crosses and stars that covered the left half of his chest in three close rows. It was a magnificent and complete collection of every decoration that the rulers of four great empires had to bestow upon a man for heroism, contempt ...
— Men in War • Andreas Latzko
... necessity in great struggles for freedom, before and since the time of Erskine, no better scheme can be devised to do its great and indispensable work. The very things which seem to an uninformed man like rejection or confusion of truth are a part of the sifting by which it is to be reached. The admission or rejection of evidence under sound rules of law, the presenting of the whole case of each party and of the best argument which can be made upon it by his counsel, the charge of the judge and the verdict of the jury,—all are necessary parts ...
— Atlantic Monthly Vol. 6, No. 33, July, 1860 • Various
... riflemen stood craning their sunburnt necks; and my Indians, terribly excited, fairly quivered where they crouched beside us. But all we could see was the rifle smoke sifting through the trees, and early sunshine slanting on the ...
— The Hidden Children • Robert W. Chambers
... good and bad influences and results. I am so much alone that I find this pouring out of my thoughts and feelings a certain satisfaction; but unfortunately one's book is only a recipient, and not a commentary, and I miss the sifting, examining, scrutinizing, discussing intercourse that compels one to the analysis of one's own ideas and sentiments, and makes the society of any one with whom one communicates unreservedly so much more ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... tell you? A diseased governor? Now, it's too late for me to begin shovelling and sifting at alphabeds and grammar-books. I'm getting to be a old bird, and I want to take it easy. But I want some reading—some fine bold reading, some splendid book in a gorging Lord-Mayor's-Show of wollumes' (probably meaning gorgeous, but misled by association ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... After going for about six miles we halted for the night, in a piece of woods. It was bitter cold when we left camp, but soon began to moderate, then to rain, then to sleet; so that by the time we halted, everything was covered with ice, with snow two inches deep on the ground, and still sifting down through the pines. It was the work of an hour to get fires going,—but at last they began to take hold, and fuel was piled on as though it did not cost anything. Clouds of steam rolled out of ...
— The County Regiment • Dudley Landon Vaill
... of explanation was hastily removed from the little kitchen to Mrs. Wilson's own matted room,—the very same which she had occupied as housekeeper, and which she continued to retain. "It was," she said, "better secured against sifting winds than the hall, which she had found dangerous to her rheumatisms, and it was more fitting for her use than the late Milnwood's apartment, honest man, which gave her sad thoughts;" and as for the ...
— Old Mortality, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... breakfast—we had found an ample supply of dish ware in the fort—and others demolished a part of the stockade and brought the timbers in for fuel. Captain Rudstone and I busied ourselves by making the crevices of the door and windows secure against wind and sifting snow. For once we dispensed with sentry duty, ...
— The Cryptogram - A Story of Northwest Canada • William Murray Graydon
... pages are designed to serve the purpose of stepping-stone or forecast, has been compiled for the purpose of placing before the public the experiences of thirty-five full years of my life as a biologist and physiological chemist, devoted to the sifting and solution of vital problems of health and eugenics and in the practice of the resultant knowledge of the laws of life discovered in ...
— Valere Aude - Dare to Be Healthy, Or, The Light of Physical Regeneration • Louis Dechmann
... the writer has seen being manufactured at Rambrai, in the south-western portion of the hills. Paddy is husked in a wooden mortar by means of a heavy wooden pestle. These are to be seen all over the hills. The work of husking paddy is performed by the women. A bamboo sieve is sometimes used for sifting the husked rise, a winnowing fan being applied to separate the husk. The cleaned rice is exposed to the sun in a bamboo tray. Paddy is stored in a separate store-house in large circular bamboo receptacles. These hold sometimes ...
— The Khasis • P. R. T. Gurdon
... more persons, united by kindred tastes and the same general situation in life. Among them were one or two men who were influenced by the gossip and prejudices of their servants; five or six old maids who spent their time in sifting the words and scrutinizing the actions of their neighbours and others in the class below them; besides these, there were several old women who busied themselves in retailing scandal, keeping an exact account of each person's fortune, striving to control or influence ...
— The Celibates - Includes: Pierrette, The Vicar of Tours, and The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac
... weeks afterwards ere Tom Collins succeeded in sifting this interesting point to the bottom; but perhaps the reader may not object to have the result of his inquiries noted at ...
— The Golden Dream - Adventures in the Far West • R.M. Ballantyne
... by this time, melted to a mere faint grayness sifting like mist through the many oblong panes of several large windows. Nevertheless I could discern that it was a spacious room, and from the color of it and certain shadowy lines upon the walls, I judged that it was paneled to the ceiling in white-painted wood. I am under the ...
— American Adventures - A Second Trip 'Abroad at home' • Julian Street
... sifting through the loose strands of her gleaming hair as she sat there bareheaded at his side, and the strength of his life reached out to her, and the deep yearning of his lonely soul. He knew that he wanted that woman out of all the world full of women whom he had seen and known—and passed. ...
— Claim Number One • George W. (George Washington) Ogden
... toward her paupers who are cared for in the two institutions at Long Island and Rainsford Island. I have made repeated visits to these islands, and approach this discussion only after many weeks of reflection, and a careful sifting of the information received. I have hesitated about treating the subject at all, because a criticism of a public institution is supposed by so many people to mean a personal accusation or attack upon the parties in charge of it. I wish to say, in the beginning, that so far as ...
— White Slaves • Louis A Banks
... ago has had a different fate; and a fresh lease of popularity seems to have been secured by another Life, published by Mr. Stuart Reid in 1883. This was partly abridged from the first, and partly supplied with fresh matter by a new sifting of the documents which Lady Holland had used. Nor do the authors of these works, however great must be our gratitude to them, take to themselves any such share of the credit as is due to Boswell in the case of Johnson, to Lockhart in the case of Scott, to Carlyle in the case of Sterling. Neither ...
— Essays in English Literature, 1780-1860 • George Saintsbury
... are sifted from a great many suggested by the pupils. In the sifting process, a very useful discussion is had as to what constitutes real "news," and what is mere "gossip"; that is, what is of value as news to the world at large, and what is of purely ...
— Ontario Teachers' Manuals: History • Ontario Ministry of Education
... one or two principal harbours, can be met by transferring the business, of the former to the railroads, of the {p.101} latter to other ports not blockaded. This is not so, because the local conveniences and methods, which have developed under the sifting tests of experience and actual use, cannot be transferred at short notice; and until such transfer has been made, distribution cannot proceed. The body economic and commercial will be in the state of the body physical whose liver is congested, whose ...
— Story of the War in South Africa - 1899-1900 • Alfred T. Mahan
... that experimental philosopher explored the wounds of the Being who to them was divine with his inquisitive forefinger? In our time that finger has multiplied itself into ten thousand thousand implements of research, challenging all mysteries, weighing the world as in a balance, and sifting through its prisms and spectroscopes the light that comes from ...
— The Poet at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... red sand, which occurred in a layer varying in thickness from 6 ft. to at least 15 ft. It may have been much deeper above the tunnel. It is the quicksand usually encountered in all deep foundations in New York City. The following is the result of the sifting test ...
— Transactions of the American Society of Civil Engineers, vol. LXVIII, Sept. 1910 • James H. Brace, Francis Mason and S. H. Woodard
... "The services were most impressive in their simplicity, in their sense of intimacy, in the sentiment that filled the hour and the place of personal loss and of pride of possession of a priceless memory." The bearers took the coffin through the grove, with its bare trees and light sifting of snow, to the grave; and as it was committed, there were many sobs and tears of old and young. Rough Riders, who had fought by his side, cabinet ministers who had served with him, companions of his work and of his playtime, were all mourners now, and some of those men of affairs, ...
— Theodore Roosevelt; An Intimate Biography, • William Roscoe Thayer
... on their mere personal opinion, and from which they derive themselves additional personal advancement in power, position, possibly emolument, etc., etc., and lastly, which would give the people of India security that the Government only acts after impartial judicial investigation and the sifting of evidence. ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Volume III (of 3), 1854-1861 • Queen of Great Britain Victoria
... account, both in officials and immigrants, and human nature is imperfect; much of it at Ellis Island is exceedingly difficult to deal patiently with. Hence, from the very nature of things and men, the situation is one to develop pathos, humor, comedy, and tragedy, as the great "human sifting machine" works away at separating the wheat from the chaff. The tragedy comes in the case of the excluded, since the blow falls sometimes between parents and children, husband and wife, lover and sweetheart, and the decree of exclusion is as bitter ...
— Aliens or Americans? • Howard B. Grose
... Land was content to chop these trunks into pieces, as if he were making firewood; later he would extract the flour by sifting it through cloth to separate it from its fibrous ligaments, let it dry out in the sun, and leave it to harden ...
— 20000 Leagues Under the Seas • Jules Verne
... at work preparing soil—mixing, sifting. As the wind tries the door he goes anxiously to the thermometer, nods as if reassured and returns to his work. The buzzer sounds. He starts to answer the telephone, remembers something, halts and listens sharply. It does not buzz once long and three short. Then he ...
— Plays • Susan Glaspell
... the author of the memorable forgery by which the Landgrave Philip of Hesse had been entrapped into his long imprisonment. His course in and towards the Netherlands has been sufficiently examined. Not a single charge has been made lightly, but only after careful sifting of evidence. Moreover they are all sustained mainly from the criminal's own lips. Yet when the secrecy of the Spanish cabinet and the Macchiavellian scheme of policy by which the age was characterized ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... same adherence to the rules prescribed by the inductive philosophy, which has crowned the other sciences with success, must be rigidly observed. There must be the same disregard of mere antiquity; there must be the same scrupulous sifting of evidence, and strict adherence to facts; there must be a discarding of all hypotheses, and a simple dependence upon ascertained truths alone. Adherence to these rules is as necessary in cultivating ...
— A Practical Enquiry into the Philosophy of Education • James Gall
... had attended together, and the different theories concerning the escaped bride. Quite casually he asked if she knew whether the bride had property of her own, if so who were her guardians. His cousin thought she knew a lot, but, sifting it down, he discovered that it was nearly all ...
— Exit Betty • Grace Livingston Hill
... sieve) is made of raw silk, and is used for sifting flour. It has also a singular use in necromancy. When one desires to know the name of the doer of an act—a theft for instance—the sieve is made to revolve, but woe to him whose name is spoken ...
— Jasmin: Barber, Poet, Philanthropist • Samuel Smiles
... what you will," said my Master putting on his hat. "At present however I am mystified by your lighting on me in the dustbin of Paris. You must have done much sifting." ...
— The Beloved Vagabond • William J. Locke
... completely alone. "What she said to him there is none who knows," wrote Alan Chartier, a short time after [in July, 1429], "but it is quite certain that he was all radiant with joy thereat as at a revelation from the Holy Spirit." M. Wallop, after a scrupulous sifting of evidence, has given the following exposition of this mysterious interview. "Sire de Boisy," he says, "who was in his youth one of the gentlemen of the bed-chamber on the most familiar terms with Charles VII., told Peter Sala, giving the king himself ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume III. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... bristling and growling, drew in closer to the firelight. There was a monotonous crunch-crunch of webbed shoes, and between each crunch the dragging forward of the heel of the shoe like the sound of sifting sugar. Sigmund broke off from his song to hurl oaths and firewood at the animals. Then the light was parted by a fur-clad figure, and an Indian girl slipped out of the webs, threw back the hood of her squirrel-skin parka, and stood in their midst. Sigmund and the men on the bearskin ...
— The God of His Fathers • Jack London
... up the steep the temple bell above them sounded six slow, deliberate strokes. First came the sonorous impact of the swinging beam against curved metal, then the "boom," the echo,—the echoes of that echo to endless repetition, sifting in layers through the thinner air upon them, sweeping like vapor low along the hillside with a presence and reality so intense that it should have had color, or, at least, perfume; settling in a fine dew of sound on quivering ferns and grasses, permeating, it would ...
— The Dragon Painter • Mary McNeil Fenollosa
... as a separate and distinct thing does not exist. Neither can it be reached by any sorting or sifting or clarifying process. It is an experience of the mind, and must be preceded by certain conditions, just as light is an experience of the eye, and sound ...
— Birds and Poets • John Burroughs
... automatic. He had the face of a playful but dangerous mastiff. He was hunkered down in a shallow pit, scanning the ground with a watch-sized device probably intended for locating objects hidden just beneath the surface, electronically. Beside him was a screen-bottomed container, no doubt meant for sifting dust. ...
— The Planet Strappers • Raymond Zinke Gallun
... followed the banks of the little stream that had given them fresh water, Anders leading, Thorolf just behind him. Wind stirred softly in the leaves overhead, unseen birds fluttered and chirped, sunshine sifting through the maple undergrowth turned it to emerald and gold and jasper. Once there was a discordant screech from the evergreens, but it was only a brilliant blue jay with crest erect, scolding at them. A striped squirrel flashed up the trunk of a tree to his hole. Then sudden as lightning, ...
— Days of the Discoverers • L. Lamprey
... recognized this possibility. The lawyers, as already observed, took pains to test each witness and either rejected, or appended a note of distrust to, the testimony of those who failed to impress them favorably. We have carried the sifting still further by also omitting from the depositions those in which we found something that seemed too exceptional to be accepted on the faith of one witness only, or too little supported by other evidence ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 3, June, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... delighted to hear you say so," said Carey earnestly. "And if I can help you in any way my services are yours. First of all, how do you propose starting on the sifting process?" ...
— Afterwards • Kathlyn Rhodes
... suspicion fastened upon one of his slave-debtors named Talib. The man was innocent of the theft, but his protestations were not believed, and he was forthwith consigned to the Pen-jara or local gaol. The tedious formality of a trial was dispensed with, and nothing in the nature of the sifting of evidence was considered necessary. The stolen kris was the property of a Prince. That was enough; and Talib went to gaol forthwith, the Raja issuing an order—a sort of lettre de cachet—for his admittance. To European ears this ...
— In Court and Kampong - Being Tales and Sketches of Native Life in the Malay Peninsula • Hugh Clifford
... (Sagas, literally "Says") as, for quantity and quality, is unexampled among rude nations. Snorro Sturleson's History of the Norse Kings is built out of these old Sagas; and has in it a great deal of poetic fire, not a little faithful sagacity applied in sifting and adjusting these old Sagas; and, in a word, deserves, were it once well edited, furnished with accurate maps, chronological summaries, &c., to be reckoned among the great history-books of the world. It ...
— Early Kings of Norway • Thomas Carlyle
... admirers, it is believed that her reputation continued unsullied. Her poverty, largely caused by a worthless husband, obliged her to perform the most menial labors. She rejoiced on one occasion that the approach of warmer weather released her from the duty of making fires, scouring the grate, sifting the cinders, and of going up and down three pair of long stairs with water or dirt. All this Mrs. Inchbald thought that she could cheerfully bear, but the labor of being a fine lady the remainder of the day was ...
— A History of English Prose Fiction • Bayard Tuckerman
... one of the great changes, recently inaugurated, is the election of national senators by popular vote. Our forefathers planned that the national upper house should represent a double sifting of popular opinion. We elected state legislatures; they, in turn, chose the national senators: thus these were twice removed from the popular will. It proved easy to corrupt state legislatures; the national senate came to represent too much the moneyed interests; and ...
— The Soul of Democracy - The Philosophy Of The World War In Relation To Human Liberty • Edward Howard Griggs
... nation with brains instead of hands. Of course you can't get along without the brain-workers. How, then, are they selected from those who are to serve as farmers and mechanics? That must require a very delicate sort of sifting ...
— Looking Backward - 2000-1887 • Edward Bellamy
... not to be denied that in many instances all through the ceaseless operation of these fundamental factors there is going on a process of sifting or of selection of forms best adapted to their surroundings, and best fitted to survive, but this factor, though important, is quite subordinate to the initial causes of variation, and of ...
— Lamarck, the Founder of Evolution - His Life and Work • Alpheus Spring Packard
... bells from that old tower o'erhead, They sent their message sifting through the boughs Of cedars; when they ceased his lady said, "Pray you forgive me," and her lovely brows She lifted, standing in her moonlit place, And one short moment ...
— Poems by Jean Ingelow, In Two Volumes, Volume II. • Jean Ingelow
... never be a basis of either religion or ethics. The one who is moved by fear makes his chief concern the avoidance of detection on the one hand, or the escape of punishment on the other. Men of large calibre have an unusual sagacity in sifting the unessential from the essential as also the false from the true. Lincoln, when replying to the question as to why he did not unite himself with some church organisation, said: "When any church will ...
— The Higher Powers of Mind and Spirit • Ralph Waldo Trine
... note, addressed to his publishers, disclaiming any intention of "assailing the memory of the dead,"—a disclaimer which was not needed to suggest the reason why his book, loaded with typographical blunders, was hurried through the press,[A]—he "insists on the lawyer's privilege of sifting the evidence—a labor which Mr. Prescott was incapable of performing, from a physical infirmity"; and he undertakes to prove that Mr. Prescott's "books and manuscripts were not reliable authorities." Now even "the lawyer's privilege" ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 19, May, 1859 • Various
... Creoles north of New Orleans; and will raise their hands in horror at the idea of being confused with the "Cajans," the descendants of those Nova Scotians whom Longfellow immortalized in Evangeline. Sifting down the mass of conflicting definitions, it appears that to a Caucasian, a Creole is a native of the lower parishes of Louisiana, in whose veins some traces of Spanish, West Indian or French blood ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Vol. I. Jan. 1916 • Various
... conversation I felt that he had some purpose in his talk. It seemed as though he were sifting me and seeking to read my thoughts, and ...
— Roger Trewinion • Joseph Hocking
... dry the fir-cones in the sun, until the nuts which they contain fall out. The empty husks are sold for firewood, and the kernels in their stony shells reserved for exportation. You may see the peasants, men, women, and boys, sorting them by millions, drying and sifting them upon the open spaces of the wood, and packing them in sacks to send abroad through Italy. The pinocchi or kernels of the stone-pine are largely used in cookery, and those of Ravenna are prized for their good quality and aromatic flavour. When ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... idle to refuse to believe that many unjust and cruel acts were not committed at this time, as we know they were committed subsequently, merely because they cannot be succinctly proved. It is unlikely that Claverhouse himself wasted over-much time on sifting every case that was brought in to him by his spies; and where he was not himself present—and it must be remembered that he was not the only officer engaged in this service, and also that his own soldiers were often employed under his lieutenants on duties he was personally unable to attend ...
— Claverhouse • Mowbray Morris
... very well, but it doesn't mend matters much, so you needn't laugh, Celia," began Thorny, recovering himself, and stubbornly bent on sifting the case to the bottom, now ...
— Under the Lilacs • Louisa May Alcott
... Locke to her eager inquiry. "Whenever Paul leaves Brent Rock he goes directly to a miserable cafe and there I see him with a number of people of the underworld. He seems to have a great deal of influence over them. I'm sifting all the clues, and as soon as I unmask him I will send ...
— The Master Mystery • Arthur B. Reeve and John W. Grey
... of winter, I will not deny, that the schoolboy might have shouted: "It's snowin'! Hooee!" when he saw the first snow flakes sifting down, and realized that the Old Woman was picking her geese. A change is always exciting, and winter brings many joyous sports and pastimes, skating, and snowballing, and sliding down hill, and—er—er—I said skating didn't ...
— Back Home • Eugene Wood
... an instructive lesson to young readers, if we now show them, by a short sifting of these confident dogmatists, how easy it is for a careless or a half-read man to circulate the most absolute falsehoods under the semblance of truth; falsehoods which impose upon himself as much as they do upon others. We believe that not one ...
— Biographical Essays • Thomas de Quincey
... on their relation. SECOND THING: A cautious exact old gentleman, of diplomatic habits (understood to be "Count Von Schulenburg-Klosterrode of Dresden"), has, since that event, unweariedly gone into the whole matter; and has brayed it everywhere, and pounded it small; sifting, with sublime patience, not only those Swedish Autographs, but the whole mass of lying books, pamphlets, hints and notices, old and recent; and bringing out (truly in an intricate and thrice-wearisome, but for the first time in an authentic way) what real evidence there is. ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. I. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—Birth And Parentage.—1712. • Thomas Carlyle
... same in all countries, fantastic enough to us in the nineteenth century, in all conscience, and most probably exaggerated out of all correct resemblance to facts by the excited imagination of the legend-tellers, but still it is not all imagination, and after sifting out even ninety-nine per cent of rubbish, the residue that remains is such vast evidence to the main facts that it is fairly overwhelming, and deserves the investigation of every ...
— Simon Magus • George Robert Stow Mead
... as an exclamation, partly as an interrogation, utter the monosyllable "So!"? He would not be so much occupied in trying to parry the blunder gracefully as in thinking of its cause, with that love of sifting which involuntarily exhibits itself even in little things, or with that tendency to take even jokes gravely which originated the fable of Pope Joan, and led a learned commentator, in his annotations on Thucydides, to cite, with all the ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Volume 15, No. 89, May, 1875 • Various
... if he was once a friend), "You must either be wrong now, or have been wrong then, because you have changed your opinion. I have not changed; I was right then, and I am right now." Such an argument not only dispenses with the necessity of sifting the facts, but it fosters the satisfaction of the person who employs it. Consistency is the pet virtue of the self-righteous, and the man who values himself on his consistency can seldom be induced to see that to shut one's eyes to the facts which time develops, to ...
— Handbook of Home Rule (1887) • W. E. Gladstone et al.
... Like the mediaeval populace, I took legend for fact; and like the modern populace, doubted of the whole together, instead of sifting. There is my confession, Honor dear. I know you are happier for hearing it in full; but remember, my errors are not chargeable upon you. If I had ever been true towards myself or you, and acted out what I thought I felt, I should have had the personal experience that would have ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... could get, because of the snow which fell and fell, and yet seemed never to find an abiding-place, but danced and swirled giddily in the wind as the cold froze it dry. There would be no more damp, clinging masses that night; it was sifting down like flour from a giant sieve; and of the supply there seemed ...
— Rowdy of the Cross L • B.M. Sinclair, AKA B.M. Bower
... of the other riders. The long train of squaws and warriors wound on down the trail by the river-side. In a little while Wishram and Tumwater passed from sight. The wind began to blow; the ever drifting sand of the Columbia came sifting in their faces. They passed the Dalles of the Columbia; and the river that, as seen from the heights the evening before, wound like a silver thread among the rocks, was found to be a compressed torrent that rushed foaming along the narrow passage,—literally, as it has been ...
— The Bridge of the Gods - A Romance of Indian Oregon. 19th Edition. • Frederic Homer Balch
... Testament show the authors' acquaintance with the apocryphal books. They have expressions and ideas derived from them. Stier collected one hundred and two passages which bear some resemblance to others in the Apocrypha;(90) but they needed sifting, and were cut down to a much smaller number by Bleek. They are James i. 19, from Sirach v. 11 and iv. 29; 1 Peter i. 6, 7, from Wisdom iii. 3-7; Hebrews xi. 34, 35, from 2 Maccabees vi. 18-vii. 42; Hebrews i. 3, from Wisdom vii. ...
— The Canon of the Bible • Samuel Davidson
... with the sound of the hammer, the chiseling of stones, hewing of beams and the shouting of voices. A gang of workmen is making an excavation which will be wide and deep; others are busy piling up quarry stone, unloading carts, sifting sand, putting a capstan in place and ...
— Friars and Filipinos - An Abridged Translation of Dr. Jose Rizal's Tagalog Novel, - 'Noli Me Tangere.' • Jose Rizal
... of me when I am old, In pretty worship of my withered hands Forgetting who I am, and how the sands Of such a life as mine run red and gold Even to the ultimate sifting dust, "Behold, Here walketh passionless age!"—for there expands A curious superstition in these lands, And by its leave some weightless ...
— Second April • Edna St. Vincent Millay
... of those to be met with in all ages, which, while it clings to faith, and is even strong in the assertion of faith’s claims, is yet in certain moments utterly distracted by doubt. Constantly searching the foundations of human knowledge,—sifting them as with lighted glance,—they seemed to him at times to crumble away before him. Nothing remained fixed to his piercing look. As few minds have experienced, he felt the awful darkness which encloses all mortal aspiration, and the keenest audacities of human speculation. The incapacities ...
— Pascal • John Tulloch
... different things she wanted for her work, to Ellen's great amusement. A white moulding-board was placed upon a table as white; and round it soon grouped the pail of flour, the plate of nice yellow butter, the bowl of cream, the sieve, tray, and sundry etceteras. And then, first sifting some flour into the tray, Alice began to throw in the other things one after another, and toss the whole about with a carelessness that looked as if all would go wrong, but with a confidence that seemed to say all was going right. Ellen gazed ...
— The Wide, Wide World • Susan Warner
... and virtues, the citizen of Geneva, instead of properly sifting the subject, threw away the wheat with the chaff, without waiting to inquire whether the evils, which his ardent soul turned from indignantly, were the consequence of civilization, or the vestiges of barbarism. He saw vice ...
— A Vindication of the Rights of Woman - Title: Vindication of the Rights of Women • Mary Wollstonecraft [Godwin]
... the trumpet that shall never call retreat; He is sifting out the hearts of men before His judgment seat; Oh! be swift, my soul, to answer Him! be jubilant, my feet; Our ...
— The Good Old Songs We Used to Sing, '61 to '65 • Osbourne H. Oldroyd
... seized by the creating spirit, and woven by Athena herself into films and threads of plume; with wave on wave following and fading along breast, and throat, and opened wings, infinite as the dividing of the foam and the sifting of the sea-sand; even the white down of the cloud seeming to flutter up between the stronger plumes,—seen, but ...
— The Queen of the Air • John Ruskin
... training in the years of his early manhood. It certainly does not appear that the Administration was really neglectful of professional merit; it hungered to find it; but many appointments must at first have been made in a haphazard fashion, for there was no machinery for sifting claims. A zealous but unknown West-Pointer put under an outsider would be apt to write as Sherman did in early days: "Mr. Lincoln meant to insult me and the Army"; and a considerable jealousy evidently arose between West-Pointers and amateurs. It ...
— Abraham Lincoln • Lord Charnwood
... Meantime, after much sifting of evidence and much correspondence with naturalists in many parts of the world, Professor Riley had decided that the white scale was a native of Australia, and had been first brought over to California accidentally upon Australian ...
— Little Masterpieces of Science: - The Naturalist as Interpreter and Seer • Various
... wind blew in from the desert, rustling the sage, sifting the sand, fanning the dull coals to burning opals. Twilight failed and night fell; one by one great stars shone out, cold and bright. From the zone of blackness surrounding the camp burst the short bark, the hungry whine, the long-drawn-out wail ...
— The Heritage of the Desert • Zane Grey
... of the year began sifting down, and the ground was covered with a white mantle; but such a little thing as that could not quench the ardor of those happy fellows. And so for hours the town resounded with cheers and songs, while in several places great bonfires along the banks ...
— The Boys of Columbia High on the Gridiron • Graham B. Forbes
... and bathed in the early sunlight that came sifting through the trees to greet her, stood a child, dressed in a white robe, her sunny hair crowned with flowers, her little hand holding sceptre-wise a long stalk with snow-white bells drooping from its under edge. Her arms were bare to the shoulder, and her slender feet gleamed white from the bed ...
— Outpost • J.G. Austin
... always the sky, the clouds, the clear sunshine, the crisp-etched shadows; and in the afternoon there was always the wondrous opalescent haze of August, filling every distance. There was always his garden—there were the great trees, with the light sifting through high spaces of feathery green; there were the flowers, the birds, the bees, the butterflies, with their colour, and their fragrance, and their music; there was his tinkling fountain, in its nimbus of prismatic spray; there was the swift, symbolic Aco. And then, ...
— The Cardinal's Snuff-Box • Henry Harland
... would be evaded for ages of having treacherously forsaken the commonwealth in agony. And the preference for a fighting station would be too eager instead of too backward. It would become often requisite to do what it is evident the Jews in reality did—to make successive sifting and winnowing from the service troops, at every stage throwing out upon severer principles of examination those who seemed least able to face a trying crisis, whilst honourable posts of no great dependency would be assigned to those rejected, as modes of soothing ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. 1 (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... manifested many of those strong moral characteristics which are the attributes of all his heroes. An indomitable courage and persistency meet us everywhere in his pages,—persistency, and also careful painstaking, and patience in sifting facts and gathering results. He disciplined himself to this end in early youth, and never allowed any study or work to conquer him. Speaking to us once in private upon the necessity of persevering effort in order to any kind of success in life, he said, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 1, Issue 2, December, 1857 • Various
... overseas uniforms that they had worn in their ride over the Old Apache Trail. In addition, a red bandana handkerchief was twisted about the neck of each Overland Rider, in true western style, to keep the alkali dust from sifting down their necks. ...
— Grace Harlowe's Overland Riders on the Great American Desert • Jessie Graham Flower
... day before the seed is sown, and cover the bed up with a single mat at night, taking care to shut it down until the morning, that the heat may be properly drawn up. Take some forty-eight size pots, and mix a quantity of leaf mould with a sixth proportion of road sand, not sifted fine. The sifting mould to a fine degree is an error too prevalent in horticulture, and ought particularly to be avoided, from its ...
— The art of promoting the growth of the cucumber and melon • Thomas Watkins
... asleep the snow came flying, In large white flakes falling on the city brown, Stealthily and perpetually settling and loosely lying, Hushing the latest traffic of the drowsy town; Deadening, muffling, stifling its murmurs failing; Lazily and incessantly floating down and down: Silently sifting and veiling ...
— Poems of To-Day: an Anthology • Various
... at women in books for not being able to reason, and I'm going to learn, if there's any help in mathematics," she continued. "I found something the other day—where is it now?" She was down on her knees in a moment, emptying the contents of her pocket on to the floor, and sifting them. There were two pocket-handkerchiefs of fine texture, and exceedingly dirty, as if they had been there for months (the one she used she carried in the bosom of her dress or up her sleeve), a ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... the back porch in the after luncheon hour to get with the freshness of October what sunshine the westerning sun was sifting through the red and gold of the maples beyond the garden walls. He was in the undress uniform of the artillery, and still wore the trefoil of the Second Corps. An effort by Ann to remove his soiled ...
— Westways • S. Weir Mitchell
... which we have heard so much since Darwin's time is mainly a natural sifting and distributing process, such as that going on all about us by the winds and the waters. The seeds carried by the winds do not thrive unless they chance to fall on suitable ground. All may be "fit" to survive and yet fail unless they are also lucky. ...
— Under the Maples • John Burroughs
... it from the bren: Examine the matter thoroughly; a metaphor taken from the sifting of meal, to divide the fine ...
— The Canterbury Tales and Other Poems • Geoffrey Chaucer
... Acacius largely led to this result. His attack was the prelude to the sifting of the Pope's prerogative during thirty-five years: its sifting by a rival at Constantinople, by the eastern bishops, by the eastern emperor, who had now also become the sole Roman emperor; and the sifting was followed by a full acknowledgment. ...
— The Formation of Christendom, Volume VI - The Holy See and the Wandering of the Nations, from St. Leo I to St. Gregory I • Thomas W. (Thomas William) Allies
... workmen begin by sifting away the earth and stones and the like; there remain in a confused mass the valuable elements akin to gold, which can only be separated by fire,—copper, silver, and other precious metal; these are at last ...
— Statesman • Plato
... gaunt pines imprison her sad gaze, All still the sky and darkling drearily; She feels the chilly breath of dear, dead days Come sifting ...
— Songs of a Sourdough • Robert W. Service
... questions press and seem to call for new legislation, it frequently happens that the collection and sifting of evidence preliminary to legislation is a task for which the methods and routine of Parliament are unsuitable. The Queen, acting through her responsible advisers, appoints a Royal Commission, consisting of a small body of men, to which is entrusted ...
— Thomas Henry Huxley; A Sketch Of His Life And Work • P. Chalmers Mitchell
... consented, and the carriage which came around for him at dark returned to Linwood, with the message that the doctor would pass the night at Deacon Barlow's. A misty, rainy night, who does not enjoy it when sitting by a cheerful fire, they listen dreamily to the falling rain sifting softly through the leafless trees, and answering to the faint sighing of the autumn wind. Morris enjoyed it very much, and but for the green glasses he still wore would have looked and appeared like his former self as he sat ...
— Family Pride - Or, Purified by Suffering • Mary J. Holmes
... positively denied on the previous evening that he knew anything of Allan's movements, or that he had any interest in Allan's return to England. Having detected Mr. Bashwood in one lie told to himself. Midwinter instantly suspected him of telling another to Allan. He seized the opportunity of sifting the statement about Miss Milroy on ...
— Armadale • Wilkie Collins
... be taken by whoever should win in the contest now on. Warner received forty-four, Ridgway twenty-six, eight went to Pascom, a former governor whom the cattlemen were supporting, and the remaining three were scattered. Each day one ballot was taken, and for a week there was a slight sifting down of the complimentary votes until at the end of it the ...
— Ridgway of Montana - (Story of To-Day, in Which the Hero Is Also the Villain) • William MacLeod Raine
... now bent upon sifting this matter to the bottom, had written to require the Scottish regent to inform her of the share which he had taken in the intrigue, and whatever else he knew respecting it. Murray had become fully aware how much more important it was to his interests to preserve the favor and friendship ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin
... would say—he claimed he never had no time to git out the Dalmanuthy—'in just a leetle while you 'll be a-trotting around the Blue Grass here worse 'n a race-hoss; but you got to git your training gradual.' Then he 'd thin the bandages more and more, till a sort of gray twilight come a-sifting through. 'And don't think,' he would say, 'that I am aiming to let you lope back to them mountains till I git you plumb made over. Fust thing is a new set of teeth,—you done gummed yourself into dyspepsy and gineral cantankerousness,—and then I 'm sot on taking you to my ...
— Sight to the Blind • Lucy Furman
... Holy Scripture." The battle was fought and won by quotations, not from tradition, but from the Old and New Testaments. The overruling sentiment was that even ancient opinions were not to be received without sifting and inquiry. The chief combatant and champion of the faith was not the bishop of Antioch or of Rome, nor the pope of Alexandria, but the deacon Athanasius. The eager discussions of Nicaea present the first grand precedent for the duty of private judgment, and the free, ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 03 • Various
... is marked by sensationalism. The trouble with Sam is that he mistakes himself for me—thinks he has been called to judge the world. I was pained to hear him consign about fifteen different classes of people to Perdition without sifting them to see if, perchance, there might not be one in the lot worthy of salvation. I presented him with a copy of my Sermon on the Mount. He took a fresh chew of tobacco and remarked that he was inclined to ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... steadily and silently, sifting into each nook and corner and searching out every dark spot, until when the day came it dawned upon a city mantled in spotless white, all the dirt and the squalor and the ugliness gone out of it, and all the harsh sounds of mean streets hushed. The storekeeper opened his door ...
— Children of the Tenements • Jacob A. Riis
... another vivid picture to the thoughts already dealt with. But the question arises as to the whole of the representation of judgment here: Does it look beyond the present world? I see no reason for supposing that John was speaking about anything but the sifting and destroying which would attend the coming of the looked-for kingdom on earth. The principles which he laid down are, no doubt, true for both worlds; but the application of them which his prophetic mission embraced, lies on this ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Minor Prophets. St Matthew Chapters I to VIII • Alexander Maclaren
... their shoulders, jacket and cap and hair all of the same dark-greenish sea-grey. But there is some life in the scene, more than is usual in Venice: the women are sitting at their doors knitting busily, and various workmen of the glass-houses sifting glass dust upon the pavement, and strange cries coming from one side of the canal to the other, and ringing far along the crowded water, from venders of figs and grapes, and gourds and shell-fish; cries partly descriptive of the eatables in question, ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume II (of 3) • John Ruskin
... sifting meal in the trough; but, looking up: "Ay," quoth he, "it's a sign of plenty when ye're running about, and nobody to look after ye. But I like a bannock and cheese. Come your way hither, and I'll give ye a night's quarters." ...
— More English Fairy Tales • Various
... gathers his facts, from the best sources at his command, with the closest sifting he can give them, so as to exclude errors of observation or intentional bias. From the facts he aims to discover on the above lines what are or were the regular characteristics of the people or peoples he is studying. The ethnic differences so revealed ...
— An Ethnologist's View of History • Daniel G. Brinton
... such babads as this of Mangku Nagara would seem to point to the conclusion that a consecutive and reliable account of the Hindu period could be produced by careful sifting and comparison of the various babads dealing with this epoch. For this purpose they require to be examined by the methods of scientific history, and the results thus obtained must be checked by the faithful ...
— A Visit to Java - With an Account of the Founding of Singapore • W. Basil Worsfold
... half-dreamed and half realized that she found herself neatly tucked between white silk sheets and lying on a floor mattress of a Japanese sleeping-porch. A gentle breeze fanned her face through the lattice work and low slanting sunbeams sifting in between the shutters fell in rounded blotches upon the opposite straw matting wall. For a time she lay musing and ...
— In the Clutch of the War-God • Milo Hastings
... the everlasting snow-drifts, In the kingdom of Wabasso, In the land of the White Rabbit. He it was whose hand in Autumn Painted all the trees with scarlet, Stained the leaves with red and yellow; He it was who sent the snow-flake, Sifting, hissing through the forest, Froze the ponds, the lakes, the rivers, Drove the loon and sea-gull southward, Drove the cormorant and curlew To their nests of sedge and sea-tang In ...
— The Song Of Hiawatha • Henry W. Longfellow
... is therefore imperative today, if we are to succeed in unearthing and sifting, in our perception of nature, under the veinstone of practical symbolism, ...
— A New Philosophy: Henri Bergson • Edouard le Roy
... that he had rediscovered in those mines the ancient treasures which, it is stated in the Old Testament, King Solomon of Jerusalem had found in the Persian Gulf. Whether this be true or false is not for me to decide. These mines cover an area of six miles. The miners, in sifting some dry earth gathered at different places, declared that they had found such a great quantity of gold hidden in that earth that a miner could easily collect three drachmas in a day's work. After they had explored that region, the Adelantado and the miners wrote to Columbus ...
— De Orbe Novo, Volume 1 (of 2) - The Eight Decades of Peter Martyr D'Anghera • Trans. by Francis Augustus MacNutt
... literary and artistic, of that city. He traveled widely in the Greek world and in the East, as a preparation for his great task of writing an account of the rise of the Oriental nations and the struggle between Greece and Persia. Herodotus was not a critical historian, diligently sifting truth from fable. Where he can he gives us facts. Where facts are lacking, he tells interesting stories in a most winning style. A much more scientific writer was Thucydides, an Athenian who lived during the epoch of the Peloponnesian War and became the historian of that contest. An Athenian ...
— EARLY EUROPEAN HISTORY • HUTTON WEBSTER
... was irresistible, but there was a look in the deepest depth of the brown eyes that was sifting Mr. Arthur Jastrow to the innermost sand-heap ...
— A Fool For Love • Francis Lynde
... Commons itself, the falsehood of all that had been alleged on oath against the queen was assumed as an undeniable axiom; the witnesses were loaded with the most opprobrious epithets, while those who had been concerned in collecting or sifting evidence were represented as conspirators or suborners. We shall see, when we come to speak of the caricatures of Robert Cruikshank, the light in which these unhappy witnesses were regarded by the graphic satirists on the popular side.[41] ...
— English Caricaturists and Graphic Humourists of the Nineteenth Century. - How they Illustrated and Interpreted their Times. • Graham Everitt
... with wide open eyes, while the golden morning broke over him, and the light came sifting down, through the leaves, checkering all the ground with gold. The wood now glowed with colour, russet and green and brown, wine-like red of the tree-trunks where the sun struck aslant on them, soft yellow greens where the young ferns uncurled their downy heads. The air was sweet, sweet, with the ...
— Marie • Laura E. Richards
... great extent, a modification of astonishment, and is by the Coreans expressed more by utterance than by any very marked expression of the face. Still, the eyes are opened more than usual, and the eyebrows are raised, and the lips slightly parted, sifting the breath, though not quite so loudly as ...
— Corea or Cho-sen • A (Arnold) Henry Savage-Landor
... Beatitudes. I should like to see congregations stand up, face to the East, do anything, I mean, that marks this profession out as something essential and personal, and so recite the Beatitudes. There might be a great sifting, but it would bring home the reality of the Christian demand to the heart and conscience of the world. After all, that's our ideal, isn't it?—the City of God. If we all concentrated on this ideal, realising that the morality ...
— Painted Windows - Studies in Religious Personality • Harold Begbie
... day they had been racing over baked deserts, a cloud of dust sifting into the car and making life miserable for the more tender passengers, though the hardy Pony Riders gave no heed to such trivial discomforts as heat and dust. They were used to that sort of thing. Furthermore, they expected, ere many more days had ...
— The Pony Rider Boys in the Grand Canyon - The Mystery of Bright Angel Gulch • Frank Gee Patchin
... why my hands get so dirty," said Zaidee, suddenly, looking at her small, grimy palms with close attention. "I guess it sifts right through my skin. Course I can't keep clean when it keeps sifting through all the time, and 'Liza says she don't see how I get myself so dirty," with a funny imitation of Eliza's tones. "I'm going to tell her I can't help it. If she keeps scrubbing me as fast as it comes out, it may get all used up inside of me sometime," ...
— Cricket at the Seashore • Elizabeth Westyn Timlow
... the streams about here are full of the dust they and our men of Jamestown value more than life itself. It is more to them than thy precious pocone, and as thou seest, they desert their ship and spend their days sifting sand. If they are not soon gone there will be nothing left for the mouths of ...
— The Princess Pocahontas • Virginia Watson
... anatomy, in geology; a student of geographical distribution, not on maps and in museums only, but by long voyages and laborious collection; having largely advanced each of these branches of science, and having spent many years in gathering and sifting materials for his present work, the store of accurately registered facts upon which the author of the "Origin of Species" is able to draw at ...
— Darwiniana • Thomas Henry Huxley
... sifting the evidence of the coroner's inquest, he had come to the conclusion that Henry Dunbar was innocent of Joseph Wilmot's death. He had carefully weighed every scrap of evidence against the Anglo-Indian; and had deliberately arrived at ...
— Henry Dunbar - A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... Americans are not such gudgeons as to be caught with so foolish a bait." Lord North had by this time recovered his fortitude and he defended himself with great spirit from the attacks which had been made upon him, and justified his motion, on the ground that it would have the effect of sifting the reasonable from the unreasonable—of distinguishing those who acted upon principle, from those who wished to profit by the general confusion and ruin—of dividing the good from the bad, and of giving aid and support to the friends of peace and good government. Burke next ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan |
