Literary notes about picket (AI summary)
The term "picket" is used in literature in a number of intriguing ways. In many historical and military narratives, it designates a post or line of sentinels tasked with guarding or delimiting an area, as exemplified by its frequent appearance in scenes of picket duty and defensive lines ([1], [2], [3]). At times, "picket" also conjures images of humble domesticity and pastoral boundary markers—as when a picket fence symbolizes home and order ([4], [5], [6]). Moreover, its use occasionally extends to more abstract settings, where the physicality of a stake or post becomes a metaphor for division or protection, uniting diverse genres from war chronicles to reflective, lyrical prose ([7], [8], [9]).
- There was a picket station of the enemy on the opposite side, of about twenty men, in full view, and we were within easy range.
— from Personal Memoirs of U. S. Grant, Complete by Ulysses S. Grant - General Ord will leave behind the minimum number of cavalry necessary for picket duty, in the absence of the main army.
— from Personal Memoirs of U. S. Grant, Complete by Ulysses S. Grant - ASSUMING THE COMMAND AT CHATTANOOGA—OPENING A LINE OF SUPPLIES—BATTLE OF WAUHATCHIE—ON THE PICKET LINE.
— from Personal Memoirs of U. S. Grant, Complete by Ulysses S. Grant - When joy spreads its wings in my vitals, I sound like a boy with a stick running past a picket-fence.
— from Pardners by Rex Beach - There was a large lawn before the house down to a picket fence.
— from A Man's World by Albert Edwards - The small boy's delight in drawing a stick along a picket fence should be curbed in the nursery!
— from Etiquette by Emily Post - estaca , f. , stake, picket, post. estación , f. , season; railway depot; one of the stations in the Via Crucis ( R. C. Ch. ).
— from Heath's Modern Language Series: The Spanish American Reader by Ernesto Nelson - Containes houses in a kind of Picket work.
— from The Journals of Lewis and Clark, 1804-1806 by William Clark and Meriwether Lewis - There ain't a picket in Umballa wouldn't 'ead you back quicker than you started out.'
— from Kim by Rudyard Kipling
