"Sprawl" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... of a suppressed altercation. Her knock was followed by a silence, and after a minute or two the door was opened by a handsome young man whose ruffled hair and general air of creased disorder led her to conclude that he had just risen from a long-limbed sprawl on a sofa strewn with tumbled cushions. This sofa, and a grand piano bearing a basket of faded roses, a biscuit-tin and a devastated breakfast tray, almost filled the narrow sitting-room, in the remaining corner ...
— The Reef • Edith Wharton
... the rim of a brandreth, oor which a seety rattencreak hung dangling fra a black randletree. The walls were plaister'd with dirt, and a stee, with hardly a rung, was rear'd into a loft. Araund the woman her lile ans sprawl'd on the hearth, some whiting speals, some snottering and crying, and ya ruddy-cheek'd lad threw on a bullen to make a loww, for its mother to find her loup. By this sweal I ...
— English Dialects From the Eighth Century to the Present Day • Walter W. Skeat
... the chapel's silver bell you hear, That summons you to all the pride of prayer: Light quirks of music, broken and uneven, Make the soul dance upon a jig to heaven. On painted ceilings you devoutly stare, Where sprawl the saints of Verrio or Laguerre,[51] On gilded clouds in fair expansion lie, And bring all Paradise before your eye. To rest, the cushion and soft dean invite, Who never mentions hell[51] to ...
— Poetical Works of Pope, Vol. II • Alexander Pope
... let him be put on his feet early; but allow him to crawl, and sprawl, and kick about the floor, until his body ...
— Advice to a Mother on the Management of her Children • Pye Henry Chavasse
... fire escapes Or sprawl over the stoops... Upturned faces glimmer pallidly— Herring-yellow faces, spotted as with a mold, And moist faces of girls Like dank white lilies, And infants' faces with open parched mouths that suck at the air ...
— The Ghetto and Other Poems • Lola Ridge
... The man in St. Giles's steeple was playing his one o'clock tune on the bells, heedless in that elevation of our career—in less than no time John Knox, preaching from a house half-way down the Canongate, gave us the go-by—and down through one long wide sprawl of men, women, and children we wheeled past the Gothic front, and round the south angle of Holyrood, and across the King's-park, where wan and withered sporting debtors held up their hands and cried, Hurra—hurra—hurra—without stop or stay, up the rocky way ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, - Issue 286, December 8, 1827 • Various
... moment the doctor's own hand went swiftly to his head. There was a tug at the reins, and it fetched old Dapple up with a sprawl. ...
— Corporal Sam and Other Stories • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... duly placed on the south side of the church, and the chief buildings occupy their usual positions round it. But the cloister garth, as at Chichester, is not rectangular, and all the surrounding buildings are thus made to sprawl in a very awkward fashion. The church follows the plan adopted by the Austin canons in their northern abbeys, and has only one aisle to the nave—that to the north; while the choir is long, narrow and aisleless. Each transept ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... imagination— full of the most striking and indeed astonishing epithets, and inspired by a certain grim Titanic force. His sentences are often clumsily built. He himself said of them: "Perhaps not more than nine-tenths stand straight on their legs; the remainder are in quite angular attitudes; a few even sprawl out helplessly on all sides, quite broken-backed and dismembered." There is no modern writer who possesses so large a profusion of figurative language. His works are also full of the pithiest and most memorable sayings, ...
— A Brief History of the English Language and Literature, Vol. 2 (of 2) • John Miller Dow Meiklejohn
... resident. The street is narrow and dirty, lined by old brick houses; here and there is a carved doorway with brackets, showing that, like most streets in the vicinity, it was better built than now inhabited, and it is probable that where sickly children now sprawl on doorsteps stately ladies in hoops and silken skirts once stepped forth. St. George's National Schools are here, and a public-house with the odd name of Hole in the Wall, a name adopted by Mr. Morrison in his recent ...
— Holborn and Bloomsbury - The Fascination of London • Sir Walter Besant
... frequent, Shall make them skip like Does about the Dale, And with the Lady prioress of the house To play at leap-frog, naked in their smocks, Until the merry wenches at their mass Cry teehee weehee; And tickling these mad lasses in their flanks, They'll sprawl, and squeak, and pinch their fellow Nuns. Be lively, boys, before the wench we lose, I'll make the Abbas wear ...
— The Merry Devil • William Shakespeare
... motionless horse. But if perchance he had to dismount, then, after a while, from the door of that hovel or of that pulperia, with a ferocious scuffle and stifled imprecations, a cargador would fly out head first and hands abroad, to sprawl under the forelegs of the silver-grey mare, who only pricked forward her sharp little ears. She was used to that work; and the man, picking himself up, would walk away hastily from Nostromo's revolver, reeling a little ...
— Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard • Joseph Conrad
... finishing his tea went on deck with the cook, and gave himself up to all the delights of a quiet sprawl. Fatigued with their exertions, neither of them moved until nine o'clock, and then, with a farewell glance in the direction in which Dick might be expected to come, ...
— The Skipper's Wooing, and The Brown Man's Servant • W. W. Jacobs
... of Green Chartreuse and a liqueur-glass on the table, drop one drip of the liquid into the glass, burn a stinking pastille of incense, place a Birmingham "god" or an opening lily before him, ruffle his hair, and sprawl on the sofa with a wicked French novel he could not read—hoping for ...
— Driftwood Spars - The Stories of a Man, a Boy, a Woman, and Certain Other People Who - Strangely Met Upon the Sea of Life • Percival Christopher Wren
... Broom-Squire; "but I'll not go for half-an-hour, becos I don't want to overtake that lanky, black-jawed chap as they call Lonegon. He ain't got much love for me, and might try to repay that blow on his wrist, and sprawl on the ...
— The Broom-Squire • S. (Sabine) Baring-Gould
... watched furtively. When, at last, Hodges stirred from his indolent sprawl, knocked the dottle from his pipe, and looked up at her, she shrank visibly. The blood rushed back to her heart in a flood, leaving her pallid, and she was trembling. Even in the feeble light from the guttering candle, Hodges could perceive her disturbance. It gratified him, ...
— Heart of the Blue Ridge • Waldron Baily
... not a pretty sight. His muscular arms and legs were all a-sprawl and his head hung back at a strange angle to his body, so that his fiery red beard pointed upwards, exposing all the thick sinewy throat beneath it. His eyes were half open and looked bleared and unhealthy, while ...
— The Firm of Girdlestone • Arthur Conan Doyle
... put a spoke in his wheel; and a foot thrust suddenly out from behind the gate-post accomplished his purpose with more success than he had dared anticipate. Stumbling, the mate plunged headlong, arms and legs a-sprawl; and the momentum of his pace, though checked, carried him along the sidewalk, face downwards, a full yard ere he ...
— The Black Bag • Louis Joseph Vance
... trying the cushions with his foot until he found some firm enough to allow him to retain his dignity. Cavalry dress-trousers are not built to sprawl on cushions in; a man should sit ...
— Winds of the World • Talbot Mundy
... in the outfit," I went on, "that have got any sprawl to them; and they are old Tom their ...
— Vandemark's Folly • Herbert Quick
... head lifted away from the rock, and then turned to one side as its body, somehow vaguely obscene in its resemblance to the human form, fell away, to sprawl limply down-slope. ...
— Voodoo Planet • Andrew North
... swarms before us, full of famine, shame, and death; monks and the servants of great lords hold high wassail upon cakes and pastry; the poor man licks his lips before the baker's window; people with patched eyes sprawl all night under the stalls; chuckling Tabary transcribes an improper romance; bare-bosomed lasses and ruffling students swagger in the streets; the drunkard goes stumbling homeward; the graveyard ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 3 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Liverpool town! Give me some time to blow the man down. 'Twas aboard a Black-Bailer I first served my time, And in that Black-Bailer I wasted my prime. 'Tis larboard and starboard on deck you will sprawl, For blowers and strikers command the Black Ball. So, it's blow ...
— Blow The Man Down - A Romance Of The Coast - 1916 • Holman Day
... me. Can't I believe my eyes? Look! It's the dead, my comrades, stark on the dreadful plain, All in their dark-blue blouses, staring up at the skies. Comrades of canteen laughter, dumb in the yellow wheat. See how they sprawl and huddle! See how their brows are white! Goaded on to the shambles, there in death and defeat. . . . Father of Pity, hide them! Hasten, O God, ...
— Rhymes of a Red Cross Man • Robert W. Service
... time Had marr'd the work of artisan and mason, And efts and croaking frogs, begot of slime, Sprawl'd ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood
... Derby and to pick a winner, he had made Monte Carlo recognise that he had come,—although he did not go into detail as to the manner of his departure,—and he had brought home a present for everybody. The skin he had taken from a lion somewhere in some remote jungle to sprawl, rug fashion in Wanda's room, where it created no little havoc in the furniture arrangement and finally caused the dressing table to be shifted to a corner to make place for the enormous, gaping head with the fierce eyes; an Indian shawl ...
— The Short Cut • Jackson Gregory
... is it not, by faithfully copying the various muscular contractions of the body in obedience to the play of gesture and poise, the wrinklings of flesh and the sprawl of limbs, the tensions and the relaxations, that you succeed in making your statues like real beings—make them "breathe" ...
— The Memorabilia - Recollections of Socrates • Xenophon
... "sitting room" where the ancient, wispy landlady sat among her antimacassared chairs and the ridiculous tiny seashell ashtrays that overflowed after two butts. He wanted desperately to get in and sprawl in the huge bat-winged chair by the fire and stroke the enormous old gray cat that would leap up and trample and paw his stomach before settling down to grumble to itself ...
— Far from Home • J.A. Taylor
... people say. And the only society where they're ever happy, is that of a lot of other people with shady, shabby things that they're on the defensive about. And they all get together and call it Bohemia. And they sprawl around in studios and talk about sex and try to feel superior and emancipated. Well, maybe they are. All I say is they don't belong with us. Oh, you know it's true! You hate that ...
— The Real Adventure • Henry Kitchell Webster
... And in the pool's clear idleness, Moving like dreams through happiness, Shoals of small bright fishes were; In and out weed-thickets bent Perch and carp, and sauntering went With mounching jaws and eyes a-stare; Or on a lotus leaf would crawl A brindled loach to bask and sprawl, Tasting the warm sun ere it dipped Into the water; but quick as fear Back his shining brown head slipped To crouch on the gravel of his lair, Where the cooled sunbeams, broke in wrack, Spilt shattered ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 2 (of 4) • Various
... Jew's oration was interrupted by the hostile impact of a fist upon the point of his bearded chin and he toppled backward to a sprawl on the pavement. ...
— Tales of the Jazz Age • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... asks he, 'I often think it does one a great deal of good to be cross. I wish Mrs Grundy didn't come between us and the carpet, it would be so delightful to sprawl full length on it and roar; I remember I used to derive a great deal of comfort in it in the days ...
— Lippa • Beatrice Egerton
... thinks of her sailor son As clutched in the arms of war, But mother should listen, as I have done, To this same little, innocent sailor son Sprawl in ...
— Biltmore Oswald - The Diary of a Hapless Recruit • J. Thorne Smith, Jr.
... nearer she splashed him and he barked joyfully. He made for her, to paw and sprawl upon ...
— Boy Woodburn - A Story of the Sussex Downs • Alfred Ollivant
... therefore can never be taught perfectly to children; to say nothing of distracting their attention with two difficult things at the same time. But that boys should stand motionless, while they are pronouncing the most impassioned language, is extremely absurd and unnatural; and that they should sprawl into an aukward, ungain, and desultory action, is still more offensive and disgusting. What then remains, but that such a general style of action be adopted, as shall be easily conceived and easily executed, which, though not ...
— The Young Gentleman and Lady's Monitor, and English Teacher's Assistant • John Hamilton Moore
... portion of the year. The comparatively light weight of the dogs enables them to walk without sinking much; and even when the snow is so soft as to be incapable of supporting them, they are still able to sprawl along more easily than any other species of quadruped could do. Four are usually attached to a sledge, which they haul with great vigour; being followed by a driver on snow-shoes, whose severe lash is brought to bear so powerfully on the backs ...
— Hudson Bay • R.M. Ballantyne
... Corliss making his final sprawl, and the entire committee of investigation ready with any quantity of newly hatched theories, probable and improbable. Cutting short their eloquence, however, Mr. Lamotte recommended them to talk as little as possible among the townspeople, and to pursue the investigation quietly, ...
— The Diamond Coterie • Lawrence L. Lynch
... a reconnoitering expedition to the end of the passage, and reported that the jump-off there was higher than himself but he could get down. I now crawled through the hole and found the passage to be a "crawl" or rather a "sprawl," from fifteen to eighteen inches high, but having an ample width varying from three to six feet. The smooth, straight floor has a steep downward inclination and is thickly covered ...
— Cave Regions of the Ozarks and Black Hills • Luella Agnes Owen
... with platitudes. Whenever we disguise ourself in the seemly toggery of the godly, and enter meekly into the tabernacle, hoping to pass unobserved, the parson is sure to detect us and explode a bombful of bosh upon our devoted head. No sooner do we pick up a religious weekly than we stumble and sprawl through a bewildering succession of inanities, manufactured expressly to ensnare our simple feet. If we take up a tract we are laid out cold by an apostolic knock straight from the clerical shoulder. We cannot walk out of a pleasant Sunday ...
— The Fiend's Delight • Dod Grile
... Worthing he put his luggage into the local train, and set out across the Downs for Wansdon, trying to walk off his aching irresolution. So long as he went full bat, he could enjoy the beauty of those green slopes, stopping now and again to sprawl on the grass, admire the perfection of a wild rose or listen to a lark's song. But the war of motives within him was but postponed—the longing for Fleur, and the hatred of deception. He came to the old chalk-pit above Wansdon ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... late. At top speed the auto struck the wayfarer, and before the boys' horrified eyes he was thrown high in the air, to fall, a confused sprawl of legs and ...
— The Boy Inventors' Radio Telephone • Richard Bonner
... that he fall With a wide geographical sprawl, They signified assent by sounds Heard (faintly) at ...
— Shapes of Clay • Ambrose Bierce
... perfume. The Abbey stands in a rocky valley looking south. The grounds are laid out in a succession of terraces, and from every nook and crevice rare specimens of cacti, sedums, and mesembryanthemums with their orange and purple bloom sprawl over the rocks and run riot among the borders. In the gardens South American aloes throw up their flowering stalks heavy with aromatic fragrance, 20 feet high, and giant dracaenas wave their feathery heads in the balmy breeze. Exotic palms, the bamboo, the sugar-cane, and the ...
— The Cornwall Coast • Arthur L. Salmon
... found, first of all, to be scrupulously neat. It stood on a knoll, as do most gulch cabins, in order that occasional freshets might pass below, and the knoll looked as though it had been clipped with a pair of scissors. Not a crooked little juniper bush was allowed to intrude its plebeian sprawl among the dignified pines and the gracefully infrequent bushes. In front of the cabin itself was a "rockery" of pink quartz, on which were piled elk antlers. The building was L-shaped, of two low stories, had a veranda with a railing, and possessed various ornamental wood edgings, ...
— The Claim Jumpers • Stewart Edward White
... I mustn't sprawl with my elbows on the table. It is only common, vulgar people behave ...
— The Second Thoughts of An Idle Fellow • Jerome K. Jerome
... baseless sky, Sullen vapours crawl Climbing to masses, tumbled heavily Grim in giant sprawl, That smother up domed heaven's scud-fleckered height And form like mortal ...
— My Beautiful Lady. Nelly Dale • Thomas Woolner
... to-day I cannot do so any longer. That is what I most miss,—the ability to lie a-sprawl in the spring grass and dream out an uncharted world,—a dream so vivid that, beside it, reality grew tenuous, and the actual world became one of ...
— Gallantry - Dizain des Fetes Galantes • James Branch Cabell
... regret; Sighs for the joys we ne'er attain, Prayers we have lifted all in vain; Tears for the faces seen no more, Once as the roses at the door! Take the enchanted book—And lo, On grassy swards of long ago, Sprawl out again, beneath the shade The breezy old-home orchard made, The veriest barefoot boy indeed— And I will listen as ...
— Songs of Friendship • James Whitcomb Riley
... house and shop, and the shops themselves are a joy to the eye. They are entirely open to the street in front, but in the far dim recesses of every one there is a species of carved reredos, over which dragons, lacquered black, or lacquered red, gilded or silvered, sprawl artistically. In front of this screen there is always a red-covered joss table, where red lights burn, and incense-sticks smoulder, all of which, as shall be explained later, are precautions to thwart the machinations of the peculiarly malevolent ...
— Here, There And Everywhere • Lord Frederic Hamilton
... for breakfast sprawl, Here godless boys God's glories squall, Here Scotchmen's heads do guard the wall, But Corby's walks atone ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Volume V (of 10) • John Gibson Lockhart
... best, Mr. Sprawl, to make you feel at home here," smiled the hotel clerk, who had acquired the idea that it pays to be good ...
— More Toasts • Marion Dix Mosher
... shoon on foot, He bent his knees to slithe and sprawl, Till, fagged and flausted by disdoot, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, January 14, 1920 • Various
... degree, because he lacked power to study and because he preferred midnight beer to midnight oil. George Washington, in student days, could never grasp the simplest rules of spelling. The young Lincoln loved to sprawl in the shade with fish-pole or tattered book, when he should have ...
— Bruce • Albert Payson Terhune
... are right, child," returned the giant placidly; and then Verity put down Babs on the grass to sprawl among the daisies. ...
— Herb of Grace • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... sprawl between my native land and this New France, as it was termed until the other month. A man's heart can be in many places, a woman's only in one, and my affections, I confess, have mostly been a divided allegiance. They have gone out and come home again, and now, thanks to my prosperity here, ...
— The Black Colonel • James Milne
... very mournful and sweet, anon breaking into a merry lilt full of rippling trills and soft, bubbling notes most pleasant to be heard. Wherefore he went aside and thus, led by the music, beheld a jester in his motley lying a-sprawl beneath a tree. A long-legged knave was he, pinched and something doleful of visage yet with quick bright eyes that laughed 'neath sombre brows, and a wide, up-curving mouth; upon his escalloped cape and flaunting ...
— Beltane The Smith • Jeffery Farnol
... calves were not many ... merely to walk along the sides of the five cars in my keeping, and see that the calves kept on their legs and did not sprawl over each other ... sometimes one of them would get crushed against the side of the car, and his leg would protrude through the slats. And I would push his leg back, to keep it from being broken ... I made my rounds every time the ...
— Tramping on Life - An Autobiographical Narrative • Harry Kemp
... Tiger loud may roar, High may the hovering Vulture soar; Alas! regardless of them all, Soon shall the empurpled glutton sprawl - Soon, in the desert's hushed repose, Shall trumpet tidings through his nose! Alack, unwise! that nasal song Shall ...
— Moral Emblems • Robert Louis Stevenson
... with a volcano of mud, dirt, smoke, and shrieking splinters, and, either from the shock of the explosion or in an attempt to escape it, throwing the man off his balance on the ledge of the firing-step to sprawl full length in the mud. In the swirl of noise and smoke and flying earth Rawbon just glimpsed the plunging fall of a man's body, and felt a curious sickly feeling at the pit of his stomach. He was relieved beyond words to see the figure rise to his knees and stagger to his ...
— Action Front • Boyd Cable (Ernest Andrew Ewart)
... hundred varieties of cowpeas. These varieties differ in form, in the size of seed and of pod, in the color of seed and of pod, and in the time of ripening. They differ, too, in the manner of growth. Some grow erect; others sprawl on the ground. In selecting varieties it is well to choose those that grow straight up, those that are hardy, those that fruit early and abundantly, and those that hold their leaves. The variety selected for seed should also suit the ...
— Agriculture for Beginners - Revised Edition • Charles William Burkett
... splendid swimmer, there was no doubt about that, but his ordeal in the water had told on him severely. He grabbed Clancy's outstretched hand desparingly, and was assisted to climb over the bulwarks. Once aboard, he fell in a sprawl on the ...
— Owen Clancy's Happy Trail - or, The Motor Wizard in California • Burt L. Standish
... we let them loose on the sand. Once, when it looked as if Nelson were getting the worst of it, French Frank and John Barleycorn sprang unfairly into the fight. Scotty protested and reached for French Frank, who whirled upon him and fell on top of him in a pummelling clinch after a sprawl of twenty feet across the sand. In the course of separating these two, half a dozen fights started amongst the rest of us. These fights were finished, one way or the other, or we separated them with drinks, while all the time Nelson and Soup Kennedy ...
— John Barleycorn • Jack London
... was—why, what d'ye expect a king does, anyhow? You don't suppose I worked, do you? Because I didn't. I ate and drank and slept and went in swimmin' with the court officers and did a little fishin' an' fightin'; and on moonlight nights I used to sprawl in the grass out on the edge of Hakatuea with my head in my queen's lap, rubberin' up at the Southern Cross and watchin' the rollers breakin' white over the reef. And everything'd be as still as death ...
— Captain Scraggs - or, The Green-Pea Pirates • Peter B. Kyne
... was never finished, for with a sprawl, the "Parson" stumbled over the blade of grass and came down on the other side with ...
— The Cheerful Cricket and Others • Jeannette Marks
... habit of fowls to have no home, no nest, no coop, preferring to fly into the trees and roost away from the places where they belong. The word has also come to mean people who are too indolent and lazy to stand up or sit up, but sprawl out anywhere. "The Jukes" are a family that did not make good homes, did not provide themselves with comforts, did not work steadily. They are like hens that fly into the ...
— Jukes-Edwards - A Study in Education and Heredity • A. E. Winship
... for a livelihood; a strapping, merry, chocolate-coloured dame supports them in sheer idleness; and, dressed like natives, but still retaining some foreign element of gait or attitude, still perhaps with some relic (such as a single eye-glass) of the officer and gentleman, they sprawl in palm-leaf verandahs and entertain an island audience with memoirs of the music-hall. And there are still others, less pliable, less capable, less fortunate, perhaps less base, who continue, even in these isles of ...
— The Ebb-Tide - A Trio And Quartette • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... ['Will sprawl, now that the heat of day is best, Flat on his belly in the pit's much mire, With elbows wide, fists clenched to prop his chin, And, while he kicks both feet in the cool slush, And feels about his spine small eft-things course, Run in and out each arm, and make him laugh: And while above his ...
— Browning's Shorter Poems • Robert Browning
... course, of great length. Here was clustered the rocking-chairs, and sofas, and work-tables, and very often the cradle of the family. Here stood Mrs. Heathcote's sewing-machine, and here the master would sprawl at his length, while his wife, or his wife's sister, read to him. It was here, in fact, that they lived, having a parlor simply for their meals. Behind the main edifice there stood, each apart, various buildings, forming an irregular ...
— Harry Heathcote of Gangoil • Anthony Trollope
... his own son do, if he could have kept him by his side and fashioned his life. But that boy was gone; long years ago he had left him, and none had come after him to stand in his place. His little, worn books, which he used to sprawl upon the floor and read, were treasured there on their sacred shelf behind the bookcase glass. The light had failed out of the eyes which had found wonders in them, more ...
— The Bondboy • George W. (George Washington) Ogden
... a somersault for every extra, while the baby, trying to follow his example, bunched over in a sidewise sprawl and cut his foot on the axe with which his mother had prized up the box-lid. That sobered them, they carried the books indoors. Mrs. Duncan had a top shelf in her closet cleared for them, far above the reach of ...
— Freckles • Gene Stratton-Porter
... tentacle wrapped itself about him; he was hurled to the floor, to sprawl grotesquely ...
— The Pygmy Planet • John Stewart Williamson
... which men have lived, where the work of their hand is evident, with all the sentiment of the presence of man, with smoke arising from numberless homes, is foreign to Mr. Hone. The monsters of the primeval world might sprawl on the rocks, for all the evidence of lapse of time since their day, in many of his pictures. He, too, has refined away his world until only fragments of the earth remain to him where he can dream in; and these are waste ...
— Imaginations and Reveries • (A.E.) George William Russell
... Nothing to be seen outside, but darkness made visible; nothing inside but every variety of bunch into which the human form can be twisted, rolled, or "massed," as Miss Prescott says of her jewels. Every man's legs sprawl drowsily, every woman's head (but mine,) nods, till it finally settles on somebody's shoulder, a new proof of the truth of the everlasting oak and vine simile; children fret; lovers whisper; old folks snore, and somebody privately imbibes brandy, when the lamps go out. ...
— Hospital Sketches • Louisa May Alcott
... canary; you wear imported hosiery; you've made a soft, warm wallow for yourself at this club, and here you bask your life away, waddling downtown to nail contracts and cut coupons, and uptown to dinners and theaters, only to return and sprawl here in luxury without one single thought for posterity. Your ...
— The Tracer of Lost Persons • Robert W. Chambers
... a beast!" she said passionately. "Such a beast! Don't take your cap off to me. Put it on. For heaven's sake, put it on! And sit down. Sprawl about. Light a cigarette. Shake me. Kiss me, if you like. Anything to show you're my own class and not a servant." She stopped and passed a hand over her eyes. Then she spoke hopelessly. "And all the time it's no good. You've got to take us out for a drive, and ...
— The Brother of Daphne • Dornford Yates
... after, shouting for help. Then Keston stumbled and went down in a sprawl on the rough gray ice. The bear was almost on him and there was ...
— Astounding Stories, July, 1931 • Various
... of the hysterical tendency which ever accompanies them, and which, just as soon as the stress and strain of life reaches a certain degree of intensity, unfailingly produces its characteristic breakdown; the patient is seized with confusion, is overcome by feeling, indulges in an emotional sprawl, is flooded with terrible apprehensions and distracting sensations, may even go into a convulsive fit, and, in extreme cases, even become unconscious ...
— The Mother and Her Child • William S. Sadler
... even to Boaz; even to the cat. Listening became more than a labour. He began to have to fight against a growing impulse to shout out loud, to leap, sprawl forward without aim in that unstirred darkness—do something. Sweat rolled down from behind his ears, into his shirt-collar. He gripped the chair-arms. To keep quiet he sank his teeth into his lower lip. He would not! He ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1920 • Various
... am," and he spoke a name in the Swede's ear—a name that more effectually subdued the scoundrel than many beatings—then he gave him a push that carried him bodily through the tent doorway to sprawl upon the ...
— The Son of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... scarcely uttered the words when the giant carcass of Philip tottered and fell, dragging Kate along with it, who never for a moment lost or loosened her hold. Her opponent now began to sprawl and kick out his feet from a sense of suffocation, and in attempting to call for assistance, nothing but low, deep gurgling noises could issue from his lips, now livid with the pressure on his throat ...
— The Emigrants Of Ahadarra - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... stays in the precious word of life;" but presently he would find some gracious assurance—he knew not how—sustaining him. At one time he would appear to himself like a child fallen into a mill-pond, "who thought it could make some shift to sprawl and scramble in the water," yet, as it could find nothing to which to cling, must sink at last; but by and by he would perceive that an unseen power was buoying him up, and encouraging him to cry from the depths. At another time he would be so discouraged ...
— Life of Bunyan • Rev. James Hamilton
... where I'd ruther be— Needn't fence it in fer me! Jes' the whole sky overhead, And the whole airth underneath— Sorto' so's a man kin breathe Like he ort, and kind o' has Elbow-room to keerlessly Sprawl out len'thways on the grass Where the shadders thick and soft As the kivvers on the bed Mother fixes in the ...
— Standard Selections • Various
... fire blaze An' the youngsters shout An' the dog on the rug Sprawl full length out, An' Mother an' I Sort o' settle down— An' it's little we care ...
— When Day is Done • Edgar A. Guest
... child was dismissed to play or lessons—generally lessons, even from the first, for play had never been considered of importance in Hillard House. It was nobler, in the estimation of Grandma, and perhaps of father, to learn how to spell "the fat cat sat on the black rug," rather than to sprawl personally on the black rug, sporting in company with ...
— The Heather-Moon • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... the crayfish, the ash-tree in which he found his first goldfinch's nest, and "the flat stone on which he heard, for the first time, the mellow ringing of the bellringer frog." (1/4.) Later, when writing to his brother, he was to recall the good days of still careless life, when "he would sprawl, the sun on his belly, on the mosses of the wood of Vezins, eating his black bread and cream" or "ring the bells of Saint-Lons" and "pull the tails of ...
— Fabre, Poet of Science • Dr. G.V. (C.V.) Legros
... extremely merry, and never were four hard-worked old ladies who deserved it better. All a woman can do in war-time they do daily and cheerfully. Just as their men-folk are doing it at the Front; and now, with the mops and pails laid aside, they sprawl gracefully at ease. There is no intention on their part to consider peace terms until a decisive victory has been gained in the field (Sarah Ann Dowey), until the Kaiser is put to the right-about (Emma Mickleham), and ...
— Echoes of the War • J. M. Barrie
... be said that other countries produce the freckle-backed salmon and the dark broad-shouldered turbot; though trout frequent many a stream besides those of England, and lobsters sprawl on other sands than ours; yet, let it be remembered, that our native country possesses these altogether, while other lands only know them separately; that, above all, whitebait is peculiarly our country's—our city's own! Blessings and eternal praises be on it, and, of course, on brown bread ...
— The Fitz-Boodle Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... During the first part of the night, Stumps, either overcome by weariness or subdued by his friends' discourses on the stellar world, behaved pretty well. Only once did he fling out and bestow an unmerited blow on the pork-barrel. But, about daybreak, he began to sprawl, gradually working his way to the extreme edge of the raft, where a piece of wood, nailed there on purpose, prevented him from rolling off altogether. It did not, however, prevent his tossing one of his long legs over the edge, which he accordingly ...
— The Battery and the Boiler - Adventures in Laying of Submarine Electric Cables • R.M. Ballantyne
... to rope their sleds to any vehicle whatever, but the fleetest no more than just touched the flying cutter, though a hundred soggy mittens grasped for it, then reeled and whirled till sometimes the wearers of those daring mittens plunged flat in the snow and lay a-sprawl, reflecting. For this was the holiday time, and all the boys and girls in town were out, most of ...
— The Magnificent Ambersons • Booth Tarkington
... shapely brig with a lively curiosity, as if here was something really interesting. Presently a boat splashed into the water and was tied alongside the vessel while a dozen of the crew tumbled in to sprawl upon the thwarts and shove the oars into the thole-pins. An erect, graceful man in a red coat and a great beaver hat roared a command from the stern-sheets and the pinnace pulled in the direction of ...
— Blackbeard: Buccaneer • Ralph D. Paine
... attempts to suit the action to the word; the boat heels over—and the Pirate's crouch becomes a sprawl. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 103, August 13, 1892 • Various
... usually not much in evidence during the winter; the several divisions of a troop intermingle and form a sort of club in which an odd member is quite at home. But with the coming of spring the patrol spirit becomes aroused. It is a case of "united we stand, divided we sprawl," as Roy Blakeley was fond of saying. Each patrol goes separately about its preparations for camping and hiking, does its shopping, repairs its tents, denounces and ridicules its associate patrols, and troop unity gives way ...
— Pee-Wee Harris Adrift • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... the end of time without his dying of it. He was—fond of her, I will admit. But he had a life of his own that she knows nothing about. He was too proud to tell her about it, and she hadn't wit enough to see it for herself. That's the truth, and this emotional sprawl she's indulging in now doesn't change it.—Meanwhile, she is adding to her ...
— Mary Wollaston • Henry Kitchell Webster
... souls, that there was no chance for them, and that they must get out of these fatal rocks and into the desert again. They galloped down the pass, and it is a frightful thing to see a camel galloping over broken ground. The beast's own terror, his ungainly bounds, the sprawl of his four legs all in the air together, his hideous cries, and the yells of his rider who is bucked high from his saddle with every spring, make a picture which is not to be forgotten. The women screamed as this mad torrent of frenzied creatures came pouring past them, but ...
— The Tragedy of The Korosko • Arthur Conan Doyle
... leather, and such other truck as accumulates where horses are kept standing around. When we left Bolivar we were in considerable of a hurry, with no time to primp or comb our hair, and neither did we bring our tents along, so we are just living out of doors now, and "boarding at Sprawl's." There is plenty of wood, though, to make fires, and we have jayhawked enough planks and boards to lie on to keep us out of the mud, so we just curl up at night in our blankets with all our clothes on, and manage to get along fairly well. Our worst trouble now is the lack ...
— The Story of a Common Soldier of Army Life in the Civil War, 1861-1865 • Leander Stillwell
... of many lights, which, when thus suddenly disclosed, blinded him at first. Then Raimbaut perceived Guillaume lying a-sprawl across an oaken chest. The Prince had fallen backward and lay in this posture, glaring at the intruders with horrible eyes which did not move and would not ever move again. His breast was crimson, for some one had stabbed him. A woman stood above the corpse and lighted ...
— The Certain Hour • James Branch Cabell
... the first day, and at night she would creep under my coat to sleep. At first I was afraid that during unconsciousness I should roll on her. But she was too wary for that. If I showed a tendency to sprawl or turn over, she would wake and pierce my ears with a sharp 'Take your ...
— The Spread Eagle and Other Stories • Gouverneur Morris
... it off. The brown mare swerved, but she was so near the back of the wagon that her wheel to the right did not carry her beyond the trunk, itself bounding to the right. The unexpected sheer did not unhorse her rider, but the mare went down in a helpless sprawl over the great obstacle in her path, and the girlish figure in ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 6, July 1905 • Various
... character and his unassuming and natural demeanour made a very favourable impression. But a year or two after his return, he was joined by a Labour representative who displayed the characteristics of altogether a different sort. For one thing, he was a vulgarly overdressed man, and he used to sprawl about the benches with outstretched arms, making his cry of condescending patronage heard in answer to any utterance of which he might approve from such inconsiderable persons as Gladstone or Harcourt or Forster. His "Hear, hear, hear," was the very essence of a self-satisfied ...
— Recollections • David Christie Murray
... effaced by an arrow, Cupid's arrow, in favour of "Snooks." Degrading confession of feminine weakness! She imagined the terrible rejoicings of certain girl friends, of certain grocer cousins from whom her growing refinement had long since estranged her. How they would make it sprawl across the envelope that would bring their sarcastic congratulations. Would even his pleasant company compensate her for that? "It is impossible," she muttered; ...
— Twelve Stories and a Dream • H. G. Wells
... the Cuban retreated to his stone and sat down. He did not sprawl loosely in dejection, as had the negro, but he sat with one foot beside the stone and his body leaning half-forward, his muscles tense, like a forest cat awaiting ...
— Plotting in Pirate Seas • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... There is a friend of mine—Billy Boynton, up there this evening. He is not feeling very fit, and phoned to ask if he could go up and sprawl before my fire, so, of course, ...
— Outside Inn • Ethel M. Kelley
... it is repair day, rips are sewed up, buttons sewed on clothing, and for the initiated, the darning of socks. In camps with permanent buildings a big log fire roars in the fireplace, the boys sprawl on the floor with their faces toward the fire, and while the rain plays a tattoo[1] upon the roof some one reads aloud an interesting story, such as "Treasure Island," "The Shadowless Man," "The Bishop's Shadow," or the chapters on "The Beneficent Rain" and "When the Dew Falls," from Jean M. Thompson's ...
— Camping For Boys • H.W. Gibson
... and dock grew there, And a bush, in the corner, of may, On the orchard wall I used to sprawl In the blazing heat of the day; Half asleep and half awake, While the birds went twittering by, And nobody there my lone to ...
— Peacock Pie, A Book of Rhymes • Walter de la Mare
... Not long after he had learned to sprawl, Jerry had learned that. One took his chances. As long as Mister Haggin, or Derby, or Bob, was about, the niggers took their chasing. But there were times when the white lords were not about. Then it was "'Ware niggers!" ...
— Jerry of the Islands • Jack London
... this portrait you have a specimen of the violinist as a piano teacher. Of course he understood nothing of piano-playing, and took no interest in Wieck's rubbish about beauty of tone; he cared only for Beethoven. He now and then tried to sprawl out a few examples of fingering, in a spider-like fashion; but they were seldom successful. His pupils also possessed the peculiar advantage of playing "in time," when they did not stick fast in the difficult places. At such times he always became very cross and severe, and talked about "precision;" ...
— Piano and Song - How to Teach, How to Learn, and How to Form a Judgment of - Musical Performances • Friedrich Wieck
... white cravats, Contemptuous of sharps and flats, Sat up and sang dogsologies. Meanwhile the cats set up a squall, And, safe upon the garden-wall, All night kept cat-a-walling, As if the feline race were all. In one wild cataleptic sprawl, ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... the couple with such amazing velocity it was invisible; but, ere the crouching convict could press the trigger of his rifle, he was seen to sprawl forward, his gun flying from his grasp. The terrible javelin had gone entirely through his body as though it were tissue paper, and pinned him like an impaled ...
— The Land of Mystery • Edward S. Ellis
... the shadows. I ask, where am I? Go way, then, Mallare. Leave me. I persist without Mallare. I remain. Let me dissolve into this. Let me sprawl before the door of enchantments. It is illusion. Let it be. She will come out. Rita, my vanished one, come back to me. It is I who ask. Not the Cold One, not the Indifferent One, not Mallare. ...
— Fantazius Mallare - A Mysterious Oath • Ben Hecht
... matter. Like the chance crowd on which you may look down in the square of a great city, they range from the infant to the worn and sinking aged. There is this difference, however, that the embryos of worlds sprawl, gigantic and luminous, across the expanse; that the dark and mighty bodies of the dead rush, like the rest, at twenty or fifty miles a second; and that at intervals some appalling blaze, that dims even the fearful furnaces of ...
— The Story of Evolution • Joseph McCabe
... also by keeping the cars at such an amazing heat that the victims promptly fade into a swoon. Nowhere will you see a more complete abandonment to the wild postures of fatigue and despair than in the pathetic sprawl of these human forms upon the simmering plush settees. A hot eddy of some varnish-tinctured vapour—certainly not air—rises from under the seats and wraps the traveller in a nightmarish trance. Occasionally he starts wildly from his dream and glares frightfully ...
— Pipefuls • Christopher Morley
... nowhere and seized it by the rein. But the horse did more than halt. In obedience to a powerful jerk administered by the man in chaps the horse pivoted on its forelegs and slid its rider out of the saddle and deposited him a-sprawl and face ...
— The Heart of the Range • William Patterson White
... sprawl as a town, was transformed by sun, flags and people into a place of great attraction when the Prince arrived. And if there was not any high pomp about the visit, there was certainly prettiness. The pretty girls of Hull had ...
— Westward with the Prince of Wales • W. Douglas Newton
... could not run away from him." When both combatants were in the saw-pit, Bird said: "Now, Compton, thou shalt not escape me," and brandished his sword above his head. While he was doing this, Compton "in a moment run him through the Body; so that his Pride fell to the ground, and there did sprawl out its ...
— The Curious Case of Lady Purbeck - A Scandal of the XVIIth Century • Thomas Longueville
... clams as in the old days When the Tamals lived upon it. Gone are now the limpid shallows; Gone the oysters and the mussels, And no more are grassy meadows Dappled with the spreading oak trees; For great factories, grim and sordid, Sprawl in squalid blocks around it, And the smoke of forge and furnace Rise from ...
— The Legends of San Francisco • George W. Caldwell
... ownership Whatever may lie out of its due place. Books in the living room I rearrange, Then in the dining room my pewter mugs, And put her little brown nasturtium bowl Where she can see it when she telephones. Up in my den the papers are a-sprawl And litter up my desk: these too I sort Thinking, to-morrow I will rise betimes And do my work neglected.... Tiptoe then I pass into the Shrine. She is asleep, Dark hair across the moon-blanched pillow slip. Her eyes are sealed with peace, but as I touch The girlish cheek, her lips ...
— Songs for a Little House • Christopher Morley
... cud gyard he had his gloved fist home on my cheek an' down I went full-sprawl. "Will that content you?" sez he, blowin' on his knuckles for all the world like a Scots Greys orf'cer. "Content!" sez I. "For your own sake, man, take off your spurs, peel your jackut, an' onglove. 'Tis the beginnin' av ...
— Life's Handicap • Rudyard Kipling
... in some beggar's haffet squattle; There ye may creep, and sprawl, and sprattle Wi' ither kindred, jumping cattle, In shoals and nations; Whare horn nor bane ne'er daur unsettle ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... age-bent and blind, and others sprawl, And stagger in the Long-Knife's villages; And some are dead, and some have fled away, And some are lurking in the forest here, Sneaking, like dogs, until ...
— Tecumseh: A Drama • Charles Mair
... with a patent or two and a set of ideas; most of whatever artist there is in me has been given to turbine machines and boat building and the problem of flying, and do what I will I fail to see how I can be other than a lax, undisciplined story-teller. I must sprawl and flounder, comment and theorise, if I am to get the thing out I have in mind. And it isn't a constructed tale I have to tell, but unmanageable realities. My love-story—and if only I can keep up the ...
— Tono Bungay • H. G. Wells
... cut me soon, farmer, I shall sprawl on the ground," said the Rye, and she bowed her heavy ear quite down ...
— The Junior Classics Volume 8 - Animal and Nature Stories • Selected and arranged by William Patten
... millinery. At each corner is a dismal sailors' bar, smelling of absinthe. Then we come to an empty, decayed square, where a crippled, noseless "Gallia" stands on a fountain; some half-drunk coachmen lounge dreaming on antediluvian cabs, and a few old convicts sprawl ...
— Two Years with the Natives in the Western Pacific • Felix Speiser
... His old head, which seventy-four years have bleached, is bare; they have tied an emblematic bundle of grass on his back; a garland of nettles and thistles is round his neck: in this manner; led with ropes; goaded on with curses and menaces, must he, with his old limbs, sprawl forward; the pitiablest, most unpitied ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... innocent fun as much as he ought, but, as I have shown, there are few or none in which the element of humor is altogether wanting. The two of whom I am just now speaking, shook with laughter, as they saw Lone Bear sprawl over Deerfoot, his heels flying in air, and their mirth became so great when the young Shawanoe used his crown as a stepping stone, ...
— Footprints in the Forest • Edward Sylvester Ellis
... see what's doing," and Seaton started to walk toward one of the windows with his free, swinging stride. Instantly he was a-sprawl, the effort necessary to carry his weight upon the Earth's surface lifting him into the air in a succession of ludicrous hops, but he soon recovered ...
— The Skylark of Space • Edward Elmer Smith and Lee Hawkins Garby
... the instrument panel were two very comfortable-looking strange low seats. They seemed to be facing backwards until I realized they were meant to be knelt into. The occupant, I could see, would sort of sprawl forward, his hands free for button-pushing and such. There were ...
— The Night of the Long Knives • Fritz Reuter Leiber
... certain nervous disorder afflicting the young and inexperienced. A passion that goeth before a sprawl. ...
— The Devil's Dictionary • Ambrose Bierce
... detest That waiting; though it seems so safe to fight Behind high walls, and hurl down foes into Deep fosses, or behold them sprawl on spikes Strewed to receive them, still I like it not— 560 My soul seems lukewarm; but when I set on them, Though they were piled on mountains, I would have A pluck at them, or perish in hot ...
— The Works of Lord Byron - Poetry, Volume V. • Lord Byron
... with their laborious multitudes engaged on minute contributions to the finished article; overgrown cities sprawl over the neighboring green fields and pastures; long freight trains of steel cars thunder across continents; monstrous masses of wealth pile up, are reinvested, and applied to making the whole system more and more inconceivably intricate and interdependent; and incidentally ...
— The Mind in the Making - The Relation of Intelligence to Social Reform • James Harvey Robinson
... dispensed with. It isn't reckoned with. To sit perfectly mute 'in company,' or to chatter on at the top of one's voice; to shriek with laughter; to fling oneself into a room and dash oneself out of it; to collapse on chairs or sofas; to sprawl across tables; to slam doors; to write, without punctuation, notes that only an expert in handwriting could read, and only an expert in mis-spelling could understand; to hustle, to bounce, to go straight ahead—to be, let us say, perfectly natural in the midst of an artificial civilisation, ...
— Yet Again • Max Beerbohm
... entrance stands the civic museum, entrusted, just now, to the care of a quite remarkably ignorant and slatternly woman. It contains two rooms, whose exhibits are smothered in dust and cobwebs; as neglected, in short, as her own brats that sprawl about its floor. I enquired whether she possessed no catalogue to show where the objects, bearing no labels, had been found. A catalogue was unnecessary, she said; ...
— Old Calabria • Norman Douglas |
