United States or Belize ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
The children help both in haymaking and reaping. In spring and autumn they hoe and do other piece-work. On pasture farms they beat clots or pick up stones out of the way of the mowers' scythes. Occasionally, but rarely now, they milk. In winter they wear gaiters, which give the ankles a most ungainly appearance.
And with them everywhere were the Russian prisoners, swinging scythes, binding grain, sometimes coming down the road, without even a guard, sprawled in the sun on a load of straw. It would be hard to find a place where war seemed more a vast theatricalism than in some of these Hungarian and Galician neighborhoods. There seemed to be no enmity whatever between captors and prisoners.
At the other side of the hall were several long wooden drinking-troughs, which were used for the storing of pikes and scythes. Special messengers and tithing-men had been sent out to scour the country for arms, who, as they returned, placed their prizes here under the care of the armourer-general.
Sharp stabs of flame vomited out of the slopes of Vimy. There was the high, long-drawn scream of shells in flight to Notre Dame de Lorette. Batteries of soixante-quinzes were firing rapidly, and their shells cut through the air above us like scythes. The caldron in this pit of war was being stirred up. Another wounded poilu was carried past us, covered by a bloody blanket like the other one.
The grass was as high as my head in places and very heavy. It was what we call "blue-joint," mixed with a large coarse grass that grew three square at the butt. I got to the scythes where they had been mowing, told father I could mow that grass, took his scythe, cut a few clips and bent the blade very badly.
The men had cleared a path some five feet wide all round the field with their scythes, and now the clattering thing, crimson painted, blatant, was going on with the work, and the great square of oats and barley stood up compact and close; while round and round it, diminishing it every time, went the machine, drawn by three glossy horses harnessed unicorn fashion.
Many fire-ships were sent down from time to time, but Alexander had organized a systematic patrol of a few sentry-boats, armed with scythes and hooks, which rowed up and down in front of the rafts, and protected them against invasion. Some little effect was occasionally produced, but there was on the whole more anxiety excited than damage actually inflicted.
The BARON, a gray-headed man, eighty-five years old, tall, and of a commanding mien, clad in a furred pelisse, and leaning on a staff tipped with chamois horn. KUONI and six hinds standing round him, with rakes and scythes. ULRICH OF RUDENZ enters in the costume of a knight. RUDENZ. Uncle, I'm here! Your will?
He had now got the ring on his finger, and must needs try if it would open the other slits also. And out he drew drawer after drawer full of gold bracelets and silver bracelets, glass pearls, brooches and rings, bracelets and laced caps, yarn, night-caps and woollen drawers, coffee, sugar, groats, tobacco pipes, buttons, hooks and eyes, knives, axes, and scythes.
Every now and then, too, they would make the wood-side re-echo with the musical ringing sound of the scythes, as the gritty rubbers glided over the keen edges of the bright tools.
Word Of The Day