"Cross-legged" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... pitch our tents a few feet back from the shore; and stood watching him while he did so, one eye reverting occasionally to Evelyn Grey and Kemper. They both were seated cross-legged beside the branch, and they seemed to be talking a great deal and rather earnestly. I couldn't quite understand what they found to talk about so earnestly and volubly all of a sudden, inasmuch as they had heretofore exchanged very few observations ...
— Police!!! • Robert W. Chambers
... choir is a much-dilapidated monument of a cross-legged knight (a crusader, of course) in armor, very rudely executed; and, against the wall, lie two or three more bruised and battered warriors, with square helmets on their heads and visors down. Nothing can be uglier than these figures; the sculpture of those days seems to have ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... catch him," said Beetle, cross-legged on the floor, dropping a stump from time to time across Sefton's instep. ...
— Stalky & Co. • Rudyard Kipling
... the present inmates, which two women were preparing, consisted of meat and vegetables, soup and sweet things; excellent meat, and well-dressed frijoles. A poor little boy, imbecile, deaf and dumb, was seated there cross-legged, in a sort of wooden box; a pretty child, with a fine colour, but who has been in this state from his infancy. The women seemed very kind to him, and he had a placid, contented expression of face; but took no notice of ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon de la Barca
... have to guard you up and down the city, hears the notice which is given him from the steeples, he will turn about, stand still, and beckon with his hand, to tell his charge he must have patience for awhile; when, taking out his handkerchief, he spreads it on the ground, sits cross-legged thereupon, and says his prayers, though in the open market, which, having ended he leaps briskly up, salutes the person whom he undertook to convey, and renews his journey with the mild expression of Ghell yelinnum ghell, or Come, ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... made out, that such who have easy nativities have commonly hard deaths, and contrarily; his departure was so easy, that we might justly suspect his birth was of another nature, and that some Juno sat cross-legged at his nativity. ...
— Religio Medici, Hydriotaphia, and the Letter to a Friend • Sir Thomas Browne
... school for two hours every day to a fat old Arab penager, or teacher, whose schoolroom was an open stall, and whose only furniture a bench, on which he sat cross-legged, and flourished a whip in one hand and a chapter of the Koran in ...
— Tales of the Malayan Coast - From Penang to the Philippines • Rounsevelle Wildman
... and seated himself cross-legged upon it! It continued to descend, and he found himself ...
— Fire-Tongue • Sax Rohmer
... departed, armed and menacing, and left all—for her! She had ravished his heart! From my stockade I saw him put out to sea in a big boat. Matara and I watched him from the fighting platform behind the pointed stakes. He sat cross-legged, with his gun in his hands, on the roof at the stern of his prau. The barrel of his rifle glinted aslant before his big red face. The broad river was stretched under him—level, smooth, shining, like a plain of silver; ...
— Tales of Unrest • Joseph Conrad
... cross-legged on the ground in the shade of the little red depot; and them she passed by hastily, her eyes upon them watchfully until she was well upon the platform and was being greeted joyfully by Miss Georgie Howard, then in one of her daily periods ...
— Good Indian • B. M. Bower
... doors of the cabinets as he passed, and finally paused in front of the safe. A brief examination of the nickeled dial and handle and of the enameled edges of the heavy door satisfied him that no force had been employed—the safe had merely been unlocked. Whereupon he sat himself down, cross-legged on the floor, ...
— Elusive Isabel • Jacques Futrelle
... of the front room, on white Samarang mats, were seated the elders of the village, priests, various friends, relations, and acquaintances, all squatted cross-legged. Cups of tea, a la Chinoise—that is, without milk or sugar—were placed on handsome trays before each guest, as well as betel nuts, cakes, a quantity of rokos, and other native delicacies.... Followed by several of the guests, we entered another ...
— A Visit to Java - With an Account of the Founding of Singapore • W. Basil Worsfold
... perfectly limpid water, with a strong flavour of cocoanut. It is a delicious beverage. The meat was so thin and soft that it could have been spooned out like the white of an egg if we had had any spoons. We all sat cross-legged round our meal, and all Laupahoehoe crowded into the room and verandah with the most persistent, unwinking, gimleting stare I ever saw. It was really unpleasant, not only to hear a Babel of talking, of which, judging from the constant repetition of the words wahine haole, I was the subject, but ...
— The Hawaiian Archipelago • Isabella L. Bird
... mere coops, mere boxes, bath-rooms, closets—any thing you please to call them—on the first floor. The Turks sit cross-legged in them, and work and trade and smoke long pipes, and smell like—like Turks. That covers the ground. Crowding the narrow streets in front of them are beggars, who beg forever, yet never collect any thing; and wonderful cripples, ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... Seated cross-legged on the rug in the center of the room, and looking like an impossible combination of the last Henry Tudor and Gautama Buddha, Thomas Boyd did nothing either. He was staring downward, his hands folded on his ample lap, wearing an expression ...
— Occasion for Disaster • Gordon Randall Garrett
... it; and the second or third day after Dr. Riccabocca's return to the Casino, Lenny Fairfield presented himself on the terrace with a little bundle in his hand. "Please, sir," said he to the doctor, who was sitting cross-legged on the balustrade, with his red silk umbrella over his head,—"please, sir, if you'll be good enough to take me now, and give me any hole to sleep in, I'll work for your honour night and day; and as for wages, Mother says, 'just ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... fell down the side, over which I climbed, with my heart in my mouth, and jumped into a little pew, with a sofa running round it, and some light cross-legged ...
— Phemie Frost's Experiences • Ann S. Stephens
... those men who, seated cross-legged like miniature Chinese idols in the cages of their own hearts, are ever smiling at themselves a doubting smile. Not that this smile, so intimate and eternal, interfered with his actions, which, like his chin ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... and powerful, and Sandy thought of the coming winter, and of the high prices that dogs would bring at Red Gold City. He went to the canoe and returned with a roll of stout moose-hide babiche. Then he sat down cross-legged in front of Kazan and began making a muzzle. He did this by plaiting babiche thongs in the same manner that one does in making the web of a snow-shoe. In ten minutes he had the muzzle over Kazan's nose and fastened securely about ...
— Kazan • James Oliver Curwood
... him, a woman brought Niabong a shell of sweet toddy. The chief sat cross-legged and watched Probyn opening the tierce of tobacco. Niabong locked the box again and ...
— By Reef and Palm • Louis Becke
... the complements in the perfect character; and in the middle ages, as in all ages of genuine earnestness, interfused and penetrated each other. There were warrior saints and saintly warriors; and those grand old figures which sleep cross-legged in the cathedral aisles were something higher than only one more form of the beast of prey. Monasticism represented something more positive than a protest against the world. We believe it to have been ...
— Froude's Essays in Literature and History - With Introduction by Hilaire Belloc • James Froude
... hammocks in place of beds. Instead he looked on a double row of bunks heaped with swarthy quilts, and the boatswain with a silent gesture indicated that one of these belonged to Harrigan. He went to it without a word and sat down cross-legged to survey his new quarters. It was more like the bunkhouse of a western ranch than anything else he had been in, but all reduced to a miniature, cramped ...
— Harrigan • Max Brand
... Saleh and his people found Abas sitting cross-legged in the outer apartment preparing a quid of betel-nut with elaborate care. The visitors squatted on the mats, and the usual customary salutations ...
— In Court and Kampong - Being Tales and Sketches of Native Life in the Malay Peninsula • Hugh Clifford
... women that I could see anywhere. Half of these were making a great ring with joined hands round the fire, and some piled more fuel on it—turf and branches of dwarf oak trees—and others sat round, watching the dozen or so that minded Harek. One sat cross-legged near me, with a great pot covered tightly with skin held ...
— King Alfred's Viking - A Story of the First English Fleet • Charles W. Whistler
... go," said Nan recklessly. "But we'll take Tira. And we'll build her a temple in a jungle and put her up on a pedestal and feed her with tropical fruits and sit cross-legged before her so many hours a day and meditate on ...
— Old Crow • Alice Brown
... of the river there are many fair houses, in all or most of which they have ill favoured images made of stone or wood; some like lions, leopards, or monkeys; some like men and women; others like peacocks; and others like the devil, having four arms and four hands. These all sit cross-legged, some with one thing in their hands, and others with other things; and by break of day or before, numbers of men and women come out of the town to these places, and wash in the Ganges. On mounds ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume VII • Robert Kerr
... admirable substitute in the bois de vache, which burns exactly like peat, producing no unpleasant effects. The wagons one morning had left the camp; Shaw and I were already on horseback, but Henry Chatillon still sat cross-legged by the dead embers of the fire, playing pensively with the lock of his rifle, while his sturdy Wyandotte pony stood quietly behind him, looking over his head. At last he got up, patted the neck of the ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 7 • Charles H. Sylvester
... from his stores and, sitting cross-legged on the ground, began to play. He played "Annie Laurie," and a woman's voice, her head a black outline against the west, sang the words. Then there was a clamor of applause, sounding thin and futile in the evening's suave quietness, ...
— The Emigrant Trail • Geraldine Bonner
... It has a sense of movement that must be delightful, and then I love going fast. Do you remember the days when 'Caesar' used to take the bit in his teeth and bolt with me! Lo, there was little me, cross-legged on his bare back, with nothing to trust to but Providence and a pair of rope reins; but, oh my! I couldn't breathe for excitement and delight! Dear old maddest of created 'Caesars,' I feel as if I were ...
— The Christian - A Story • Hall Caine
... delighted and so was Mary. Fired by recollections of fakirs and devotees in illustrations Colin suggested that they should all sit cross-legged under the tree which ...
— The Secret Garden • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... Pancho who remembered best about the leprechaun—how they found him sitting cross-legged under the blackthorn-bush with a leather apron spread over his knees, and how he had called out—just as Bridget ...
— The Primrose Ring • Ruth Sawyer
... an empty skin but a full budget. I will offer you, dear L., a specimen of the "palaver" [6] which is supposed to prove the aphorism that all barbarians are orators. Demosthenes leisurely dismounts, advances, stands for a moment cross-legged—the favourite posture in this region—supporting each hand with a spear planted in the ground: thence he slips to squat, looks around, ejects saliva, shifts his quid to behind his ear, places his weapons before him, takes up a bit of stick, and ...
— First footsteps in East Africa • Richard F. Burton
... dubious immortality of a portrait gallery, from which they stared with stony and equal resignation; it had preserved their useless armor and accoutrements; it had set up their marble effigies in churches or laid them in cross-legged attitudes to trip up the unwary, until in death, as in life, they got between the congregation and the Truth that was taught there. It had allowed an Oldenhurst crusader, with a broken nose like a pugilist, on the strength of his having been twice to the Holy Land, to hide the beautifully ...
— A Phyllis of the Sierras • Bret Harte
... the marriage of the trapper in the open air in the far west, the bride was a red girl, Her father and his friends sat near cross-legged and dumbly smoking, they had moccasins to their feet and large thick blankets hanging from their shoulders, On a bank lounged the trapper, he was drest mostly in skins, his luxuriant beard and curls protected his neck, he held his bride by the ...
— Leaves of Grass • Walt Whitman
... sought any material or worldly good from the writing of his Book. Why, then, should he resort to deception? Still, we doubted. And one evening we were detained by the sandomancer, or sand-diviner, who was sitting cross-legged on the sidewalk in front of the mosque. "I know your mind," said he, before we had made up our mind to consult him. And mumbling his "abracadabra" over the sand spread on a cloth before him, he took up ...
— The Book of Khalid • Ameen Rihani
... hand upon her husband's shoulder, just to mark his identity; the fat gentleman had removed his hat and hurriedly put it on again, and the photographer had gone under his curtain for the third time, when Mr. Hinkson of Iowa, who sat in a conspicuous cross-legged position in the foreground, drew from his pocket a handkerchief and spread it carefully out over one knee. It was not an ordinary handkerchief, it was a pocket edition of the Stars and Stripes, all red, and blue, and ...
— A Voyage of Consolation - (being in the nature of a sequel to the experiences of 'An - American girl in London') • Sara Jeannette Duncan
... softly and peer through a screen of bushes, or into a treetop, and watch the housekeeping of some shy brother beast or bird. Once he flung himself flat on the ground, and lay for a long time eagerly watching the antics of a beetle. A little later, with Brutus patiently beside him, he sat cross-legged for ten minutes, waiting to see how a certain big yellow spider would spin her web between two branches ...
— John of the Woods • Abbie Farwell Brown
... scale the shaft of the shovel; while some, forming in magic ring, dance festively on the yet glowing hearth. Tiny troops promenade the writing-table. One perches himself quaintly on the top of the inkstand, and holds colloquy with another who sits cross-legged on a paper-weight, while a companion looks down on them from the top of the sand-box. It was an ingenious little device, and gave me the idea which I often expressed to my wife, that much of the peculiar feeling of security, composure, and enjoyment which seems to be the atmosphere of some ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 75, January, 1864 • Various
... company all seated themselves cross-legged, in Turkish fashion, to the banquet, which passed off with great hilarity. After which various games of strength and agility by both white men and ...
— The Adventures of Captain Bonneville - Digested From His Journal • Washington Irving
... or prahu, is built of timber at the lower part, the upper is of bamboo, rattan, and kedgang (the dried leaf of the Nepa palm). Outside the bends, about a foot from the water line, runs a strong gallery, in which the rowers sit cross-legged. At the after-part of the boat is a cabin for the chief who commands, and the whole of the vessel is surmounted by a strong flat roof, upon which they fight, their principal weapons being the kris and spear, both of which, to be ...
— Borneo and the Indian Archipelago - with drawings of costume and scenery • Frank S. Marryat
... to reach the place where he had left the constrictor. It was gone, of course. How far, he could not know. He took the one telepathic stone from his pocket. He found a spot where he could sit in the open, cross-legged, with his eyes fixed on the stone. From the corner of his eye he saw a brown detached eye on a stalk pop up from the surface of the water, but he paid no attention. ...
— The Wealth of Echindul • Noel Miller Loomis
... to this, and soon their party were seated cross-legged, with their tin plates, around the stove which the contractor's cook had set up on the shore. The delay was not very long, for now, after finishing the second portage of the boats, the men fell to and slid the last of the scows ...
— Young Alaskans in the Far North • Emerson Hough
... like a man with the ague under that warm, soft air. And he never for a minute suspected it. His mind was scarred with drink as if a worm had bored its slow way in and out of it. I can see him now, cross-legged, beyond the flames, big, unshaven, heavy-jowled, dirty, what he thought dripping from his mouth like the bacon drippings he was too lazy to wipe away. I won't tell you what he talked about; you know, the old thing; ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1915 - And the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... south side of the nave by a four-centred arch, and has a rich flat ceiling. In the chancel is a piscina of Early English date, together with a sedilia of the same period. On the north side of the chancel, resting on the floor, is a cross-legged effigy, in chain mail, surcoat, etc., and bearing on his left arm a shield, but all much mutilated. There is a local tradition that it represents Sir ——, but there is no evidence by which he can be identified. Features of the church are the many highly carved bench ...
— Our Homeland Churches and How to Study Them • Sidney Heath
... which, however slight in European estimation, is here of an aggravated nature—they entered the presence with their kempilans in their hands, and their sarongs clear of the kris-handle; and instead of seating themselves cross-legged, they only squatted on their hams, ready for self-defense. From that hour their doom was resolved on: the crime of disrespect was deemed worthy of death, though their previous crime of abduction and violence might have obtained pardon. It was no easy matter, however, among an abject and timid population, ...
— The Expedition to Borneo of H.M.S. Dido - For the Suppression of Piracy • Henry Keppel
... hate you!" Here she took a silver comb from her pocket and fell to smoothing her hair; and as she sat thus cross-legged upon the grass, I saw that the snowy linen at throat and bosom was spotted ...
— Martin Conisby's Vengeance • Jeffery Farnol
... the fire, with her hands linked round her knees in her habitually graceful and oddly characteristic attitude; Torps and Jess, those gentle philosophers, occupied the chintz-covered settee; the A.P. sat on the hearth-rug, cross-legged like a tailor, so that he could toast and consume the maximum number of muffins with the minimum amount of exertion; the Junior Watchkeeper, who by his own admission "went all the bundle on his tea," and the Indiarubber Man, who ...
— A Tall Ship - On Other Naval Occasions • Sir Lewis Anselm da Costa Ritchie
... from the floor, where she was sitting cross-legged, after the Moorish fashion. I have seen exalted ladies in this position at Madrid, and it is very common in the antechambers of the Court and the palace of the Princess of the Asturias. The Spanish women sit in church in the same way, and the rapidity with ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... exclaimed Harry, who had been sitting cross-legged by his hero and looking up in his face with sparkling eyes. 'I mean,' he added, somewhat confusedly, as he saw the faces of the others, 'I'm sorry you have to go; it would have been such fun ...
— The Adventure League • Hilda T. Skae
... quite erect in a great cane-runged chair, cross-legged, and clad in rough gray clothes, with slippers on his feet, and a shirt of pure white linen, with a great wide collar edged with white lace, the shirt buttoned about midway down his breast, the big lapels of the collar thrown open, the points ...
— Whitman - A Study • John Burroughs
... host and his guests. True, the obnoxious word was never mentioned, but his propositions seldom found favor. When Anton went round dispensing a bundle of Turkish pipes, which he had bought while abroad for his colleagues, Specht proposed that they should all sit cross-legged on the sofas and on the floors, in true Turkish fashion. This proposal fell through. Also, when he next asserted that, as our commerce with the East increased, the Circassian maidens sold by their ...
— Debit and Credit - Translated from the German of Gustav Freytag • Gustav Freytag
... covered with grey clay had very much the resemblance of a grey species of kangaroo which we had often seen on the Bogan. I then went forward with him, and was received with the most demure inattention; that is to say, by the natives sitting cross-legged, with their eyes fixed on the ground, which it appeared was their formal mode of expressing respect or consideration for ...
— Three Expeditions into the Interior of Eastern Australia, Vol 1 (of 2) • Thomas Mitchell
... fashion of his people, sat on the ground cross-legged, and when it came his turn to help himself from the common dish he plunged his fingers into the hot contents, and fishing out a long piece introduced it into his mouth. When his mouth was full as it would hold he took his knife-blade, and after ...
— The Young Alaskans • Emerson Hough
... large bowl, or spacious plate, is introduced on a round table, supported by one pillar, like the Monopodia of the ancients, rather larger than the bowl or dish, and about six inches high. Half a dozen Moors sit round this repast, on cushions or on the ground, cross-legged; a position which they remain in with perfect ease and pliability from custom and the loose dress they wear. When the company have seated themselves, a slave or a servant comes round to the guests, to perform the ceremony of (togreda) ...
— An Account of Timbuctoo and Housa Territories in the Interior of Africa • Abd Salam Shabeeny
... While some of the men mended harness others repaired the frames and ironwork of the wagons. Them was much heating and hammering of iron and tightening of bolts and nuts. And I remember coming upon Laban, sitting cross-legged in the shade of a wagon and sewing away till nightfall on a new pair of moccasins. He was the only man in our train who wore moccasins and buckskin, and I have an impression that he had not belonged to our company when it left Arkansas. Also, he had neither wife, nor ...
— The Jacket (The Star-Rover) • Jack London
... legs en slung 'im right in de middle er de brier-patch. Dar wuz a considerbul flutter whar Brer Rabbit struck de bushes, en Brer Fox sorter hang 'roun' fer ter see w'at wuz gwineter happen. Bimeby he hear somebody call 'im, en way up de hill he see Brer Rabbit settin' cross-legged on a chinkapin log koamin' de pitch outen his har wid a chip. Den Brer Fox know dat he bin swop off mighty bad. Brer Rabbit was bleedzed fer ter fling back some er his sass, en he ...
— Reveries of a Schoolmaster • Francis B. Pearson
... the savage that it does to its owner, but he is so far from perceiving it in the same way that he packs it away and continues to go naked. The Orientals, who disdain the use of chairs and prefer to sit cross-legged on the floor, can never perceive a chair just as we do who use chairs daily, and to whom chairs are so saturated ...
— The Mind and Its Education • George Herbert Betts
... barrow, that I learned the pleasures of smoking. It was in the East, with all its pretended romance, and real humbug, that I acquired what you consider an unfeminine accomplishment. I saw fat, turbaned men sitting cross-legged in every bazaar, dozing over their huge pipes, in a sort of dreamy helplessness; and I determined to fathom the mystery of their enjoyment, and find out the ...
— Flora Lyndsay - or, Passages in an Eventful Life • Susan Moodie
... much delighted as the scholar, and it was not till the curfew was beginning to sound that Ambrose could tear himself away. It was still daylight, and the door of the next dwelling was open. There, sitting on the ground cross-legged, in an attitude such as Ambrose had never seen, was a magnificent old man, with a huge long white beard, wearing, indeed, the usual dress of a Londoner of the lower class, but the gown flowed round him ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... least, sitting cross-legged upon a low couch, was old Huang Chow, smoking a great curved pipe, and peering half blindly across the place through large horn-rimmed spectacles. This couch was set immediately beside a wide ascending staircase, richly carpeted, and on the other side of the staircase, in a corresponding ...
— Tales of Chinatown • Sax Rohmer
... Missis," whom I saw peeping out of one of the windows. The rest of this motley crowd, with which we were destined to march for the next three weeks, was made up of Nepaul gentlemen in various capacities, who cantered past on spirited little horses, or squatted cross-legged in the clumsy, oddly constructed "Ecce," a sort of native gig; besides these, there were merchants and peddlers, who followed the camp as a matter of speculation. Amidst an indiscriminate horde, our elephant jogged lazily along, generally surrounded ...
— A Journey to Katmandu • Laurence Oliphant
... the previous permission of his master, Baroni, having arranged the pipe, seated himself cross-legged on the floor. ...
— Tancred - Or, The New Crusade • Benjamin Disraeli
... Navajo sheep was soon kindled by the warmth of her body, and was impenetrable to dampness. Her hair, where it hung below the rubber hat, gathered the moisture like a sponge. Fred put on the slicker, tied the sweater about his neck, and settled himself cross-legged beside her. The chamber was so dark that, although he could see the outline of her head and shoulders, he could not see her face. He struck a wax match to light his pipe. As he sheltered it between his hands, ...
— Song of the Lark • Willa Cather
... in India taught by a native teacher. The school is often held in an open shed, and no pains whatever is taken to keep it clean. Often the rafters are festooned with cobwebs and dirt. Of furniture, save the teacher's low desk, there is none. The teacher uses a grass mat, while the boys sit cross-legged on the earthen floor. The teacher, in a singsong voice, reads a sentence which the boys shout after him. Then another sentence is read, which the pupils likewise shout in a singsong voice, while their bodies sway to and fro. This goes on until sentence after sentence is memorized. ...
— History of Education • Levi Seeley
... Crowd. The church Mr. Hardy describes in his novel can be seen, but Warren's malt-house was destroyed more than twenty years ago. St. Peter's Church, Dorchester, of the Perpendicular period, has a Norman porch and contains two cross-legged recumbent effigies. ...
— What to See in England • Gordon Home
... escaped from the dangers incurred for his sake. He sat with his back to a cedar and watched the kindling of fires, the deft manipulating of biscuit dough in a basin, and the steaming of pots. The generous meal was spread on a canvas cloth, around which men and women sat cross-legged, after the fashion of Indians. Hare found it hard to adapt his long legs to the posture, and he wondered how these men, whose legs were longer than his, could sit so easily. It was the crown of a cheerful dinner ...
— The Heritage of the Desert • Zane Grey
... Ashton-Kirk sat cross-legged upon a sofa, the amber bit of his Coblentz pipe between his teeth, and the wreaths of smoke curling above his head. About him were scattered bound volumes of police papers; and upon his knees rested a huge book, canvas covered and seeming full of carefully spaced entries ...
— Ashton-Kirk, Criminologist • John T. McIntyre
... belittled. People were standing about in groups, some women were sitting in the shade of the walnut tree, with cups of tea in their hands, a waiter in evening dress was hurrying round, some girls were simpering with parasols, some young men, who had just come in from rowing, were sitting cross-legged on the grass, coatless, their shirt-sleeves rolled up in manly fashion, their hands resting on their white flannel trousers, their gaudy ties floating about, as they laughed and tried to be ...
— Women in Love • D. H. Lawrence
... pass off in the marae. The marae is the forum or place of public assembly—an open circular space, surrounded by bread-fruit trees, under the shade of which the people sit. Here the bridegroom and his friends and the whole village assembled, together with the friends of the bride. All were seated cross-legged around the marae, glistening from head to foot with scented oil, and decked off with beads, garlands of sweet-smelling flowers, and whatever else their varying fancy might suggest for the joyous occasion. In a house close by the bride was seated. ...
— Samoa, A Hundred Years Ago And Long Before • George Turner
... Abram Atwater, who had sat all the time cross-legged, a silent, gravely-smiling spectator of the scene, "you shan't fool him any more. He has got pluck; he has shown it. And ...
— The Drummer Boy • John Trowbridge
... make the Bazaar so wonderful a sight. The buyers and sellers are at least as picturesque as what they sell and buy. The floor of each shop is raised two or three feet from the ground, and on a gay rug the turbaned Turk who keeps it sits cross-legged and smokes his pipe and makes his bargains, whilst down the narrow street (which in many instances is arched overhead with stone) there struggle, and swarm, and scream, and fight, black slaves, obstinate camels, primitive-looking chariots full of Turkish ladies, ...
— Miscellanea • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... walls these black barbarians disposed themselves, a full hundred or more, saying nothing, seeming to see nothing, mere human automata. Bohannan, seated cross-legged between Captain Alden and the Master, swore ...
— The Flying Legion • George Allan England
... from the little butte, leaving the taciturn ever-watchful Gutierrez sitting cross-legged on the ledge near me, with his projector across ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, November, 1930 • Various
... Cross-legged our Father Adam sat and fastened them one by one, Till, leaf by leaf, with loving care he got his apron done; The first new suit the world had seen, and mightily pleased with it, Till the Devil chuckled behind the Tree, 'It's pretty, but will ...
— The Perfect Gentleman • Ralph Bergengren
... where so few stay. This was in 1852, the year which was represented in the Commemorative Exhibition at Burlington House by A Persian Pedlar, a small full-length figure of a man in Oriental costume, seated cross-legged on a divan, with a long pipe in his hand. To 1853 belongs a Portrait of Miss Laing (Lady Nias), which was shown again at ...
— Frederic Lord Leighton - An Illustrated Record of His Life and Work • Ernest Rhys
... bacon-chewers to listen to every word we had to say to each other. If you must know, it was only last night that the ghost of Jezebel and I danced a fandango together in the graveyard up yonder, while the Devil himself sat cross-legged on old Daniel Root's tombstone and blew on a dry, dusty shank-bone by way of a flute. And now" (here he swore a terrific oath) "you know the worst that is to be known, with only this to say: if ever a man sets foot upon Pig and Sow Point again after nightfall to interfere with the Devil's sport and ...
— Stolen Treasure • Howard Pyle
... cabinets; the curtains were of fabric that could only have come out of some Eastern bazaar; there was a faint, curious scent of sandal-wood and of dried rose-leaves. And on the mantelpiece, where, in English households, a marble clock generally stands, reposed a peculiarly ugly Hindu god, cross-legged, hideous of form, whose baleful eyes seemed ...
— Ravensdene Court • J. S. (Joseph Smith) Fletcher
... behind the tea-tray, and Miss Isabella was reclining on a sofa up stairs, as if she was too lazy to come down when the rest of the family did. As the front door was only large enough for the dolls, the whole back of the house came away. Lina and her visitors delightedly sat down cross-legged on the floor behind it, and the play began, the children talking for ...
— Funny Little Socks - Being the Fourth Book • Sarah. L. Barrow
... settlements: groups of houses inside brush enclosures, with low wooden gateways beneath which we had to stoop to enter. Within were groups of beehive houses with small naked children and perhaps an old woman or old man seated cross-legged under a sort of veranda. From them we obtained ...
— The Land of Footprints • Stewart Edward White
... parchment, and has often, as in this special instrument, a jewelled ornament inserted in one corner. The Saw Tai has three strings of silk cord, which, passing over a bridge on the sounding-board, run up to the neck, being bound tightly to it below the pegs. The player sitting cross-legged on the ground holds the fiddle in a sloping posture, and touches the strings with ...
— Chatterbox, 1906 • Various
... pursuit—studying for any profession, or endeavouring in any way to earn his own bread honestly—he would have been as angered and felt as insulted by such a proposition, as though any one had asked him to turn cobbler, and sit cross-legged at the window of one of ...
— The Macdermots of Ballycloran • Anthony Trollope
... was now led before the governor himself, a stern and grave-looking man, sitting cross-legged on a divan surrounded by officers and attendants. He heard in silence the account given him by the escort, bowed his head at the commands of Suleiman, and, without addressing a word to Cuthbert, indicated to two attendants ...
— The Boy Knight • G.A. Henty
... Mr. Gaul describes the tortures employed by this fellow as equal to any practised in the Inquisition. "Having taken the suspected witch, she is placed in the middle of a room, upon a stool or table, cross-legged, or in some other uneasy posture, to which, if she submits not, she is then bound with cords; there she is watched and kept without meat or sleep for four-and-twenty hours, for, they say, they shall within that time see her imp come and suck. ...
— Letters On Demonology And Witchcraft • Sir Walter Scott
... at my ease, cross-legged on the deck; after the bitter exertion at the windlass; under a blue tranquil sky; the ship under indolent sail, and gliding so serenely along; as I bathed my hands among those soft, gentle globules of infiltrated ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... unkempt—he wore no hat, and he looked like a brownie, grotesque, though somewhat sad. But even more did he resemble an ape—or say the missing link—and only his eyes seemed human. These were large, dark and brilliant, sparkling like jewels under his elf-locks. He sat cross-legged on the sward and hugged a fiddle, as though he were nursing a baby. And, no doubt, he was as attached to his instrument as any mother could be to her child. It was not difficult for Miss Greeby to guess that this weird, hairy dwarf was the Servian gypsy Kara, of whom Lambert had spoken. ...
— Red Money • Fergus Hume
... rock which jutted out from the wooded tangle into the margin of Lake Forsaken, with lesser sentinel rocks about it, she sat cross-legged until she glanced up at last to see that the west was kindling, and that she must start back to the duller realities of home. She had been interrupted by no break in the silence except the little forest twitter of birds and now and then ...
— Destiny • Charles Neville Buck
... very faintly, but he said nothing. He was sitting cross-legged with his back against one of the poles which supported the open hut, with his eyes fixed upon the cloud of mist hanging over a distant swamp. A great yellow moon had stolen over the low range of stony hills—the mist was curling away ...
— A Millionaire of Yesterday • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... eminent person immediately escaped, and retired to his own apartment. I was informed from the same authority, that Clarke, after exhausting his intellectual faculties by long and intense study, would not unfrequently quit his seat, leap upon the table, and place himself cross-legged like a tailor, being prompted, by these antagonist sallies, to relieve himself from the effect of the too severe strain he had previously put ...
— Thoughts on Man - His Nature, Productions and Discoveries, Interspersed with - Some Particulars Respecting the Author • William Godwin
... scarcely can enter into our stories. The main part of Ficulnus's life, for instance, is spent in selling sugar, spices and cheese; of Causidicus's in poring over musty volumes of black-letter law; of Sartorius's in sitting, cross-legged, on a board after measuring gentlemen for coats and breeches. What can a story-teller say about the professional existence of these men? Would a real rustical history of hobnails and eighteenpence a day be endurable? In ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray
... around the room in search of an answer. I could recognise the furniture: the cross-legged Campeachy chairs, a rebozo, the palm-leaf petate. ...
— The Scalp Hunters • Mayne Reid
... engagement ceremony of Her Majesty's nephew, Ter Ju. The engagement ceremony, according to the Manchu custom, is performed by two of the Princesses of the Royal family going to the house of the prospective bride, who sits on her bed cross-legged, her eyes closed and awaits their coming. When they arrive at the house, they go to her bedroom and place a symbol called Ru Yee, made of pure jade about one and a half feet long, in her lap and suspend two small bags made of silk and beautifully embroidered, each containing a gold ...
— Two Years in the Forbidden City • The Princess Der Ling
... in coming, and Chris, who had been sitting cross-legged under the little crooked pines, looked across with great concern to where Amos lay on ...
— Mr. Wicker's Window • Carley Dawson
... wonderful types of men and beasts which exist in far-off regions beyond the pale of China and civilisation. There was the long-legged nation, the people of which have legs three chang (thirty feet) long to support bodies of no more than ordinary size, followed by a short account of a cross-legged race, a term which explains itself. We are next told of a country where all the inhabitants have a large round hole right through the middle of their bodies, the officials and wealthy citizens being easily and comfortably carried a la sedan chair by means ...
— Chinese Sketches • Herbert A. Giles
... illiterate, were brought, like criminals to be tried, the profoundest mysteries and most perplexing questions of theology, and in proportion to the ignorance of the judge, was the presumption with which sentence was pronounced. A general love of dogma prevailed. The cross-legged tailor plying his needle on his raised platform; the cobbler in the pauses of beating the leather on his lap-stone; and the field-laborer as he rested on his spade; discussed with serene and satisfied assurance problems, ...
— The Knight of the Golden Melice - A Historical Romance • John Turvill Adams
... Priscilla occupied the hammock, and Ruth was ensconced in a willow rocking-chair, with a hassock at her feet. Peggy had made herself comfortable on the top step, with sofa cushions tucked skilfully at the small of her back, and behind her head. Amy herself sat cross-legged like a Turk on the porch floor and fanned vigorously to supplement the efforts of the ...
— Peggy Raymond's Vacation - or Friendly Terrace Transplanted • Harriet L. (Harriet Lummis) Smith
... God, but to cover sin. Other men's pride is the best patron, and their negligence a main passage to his profit. He is a thing of more than ordinary judgment: for by virtue of that he buyeth land, buildeth houses, and raiseth the set roof of his cross-legged fortune. His actions are strong encounters, and for their notoriousness always upon record. It is neither Amadis de Gaul, nor the Knight of the Sun, that is able to resist them. A ten-groat fee setteth them on foot, and a brace of ...
— Character Writings of the 17th Century • Various
... through his open window, where he sat cross-legged on his table, the shoemaker on his stool, which, this lovely summer morning, he had brought to the door of his cottage, and the smith in his nimbus of sparks, through the half-door of his smithy, and receiving from each a kindly response, ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald
... sat in silence with her old friend, who lit his after-luncheon pipe and sat cross-legged, blinking and ruminant. She stared into the shop, and still it seemed that the remarkable figure was standing there fingering the books, pondering, deciding. Her emotions thrilled through her, uplifted her, and she had a sensation of being deliciously intimate with all things animate and ...
— Mummery - A Tale of Three Idealists • Gilbert Cannan
... ask you to walk. I'm going to sit on it cross-legged, like a tailor, and shuffle myself over. It's broad enough for ...
— For the Sake of the School • Angela Brazil
... monstrous. He blinked at Prosper, but said nothing. The third was a woman, infinitely old as it seemed, crouched over the fired peats with her back to the room. She never looked up at all, but muttered and sighed vainly to herself and warmed her hands. Lastly, in a round-backed chair, cross-legged, twirling his thumbs, twinkling with comfortable repletion, sat Prosper's friend of the road, Brother ...
— The Forest Lovers • Maurice Hewlett
... differing from each other. One of the most remarkable altars stands on four globes cut out of the same stone. It is six feet square and four feet high, its top covered with hieroglyphics, while each side represents four individuals. The figure is sitting cross-legged, in the Oriental fashion, and the head-dresses are remarkable for their curious and complicated forms. All have breastplates, and each holds ...
— The Western World - Picturesque Sketches of Nature and Natural History in North - and South America • W.H.G. Kingston
... He sat cross-legged among the roses and ate what had been given him. Daisy observed critically that his habit of eating was not at all nice. He discarded the fork she had brought, using only the knife and his fingers. The meat he tore apart and devoured ravenously, cramming it wolfishly into ...
— Steve Yeager • William MacLeod Raine
... from the sea, and pouring out at the scuppers; and this poor soul kept following it on his knees, with his hands clasped at it, and the water playing with it. And there was the Jew palsied, but not by fear. He was no longer capable of so petty a passion. He sat cross-legged, bemoaning his bag, and whenever the spray lashed him, shook his fist at where it came from, and cursed the Nazarenes, and their gods, and their devils, and their ships, and their ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... open space in one of the streets of Whitechapel, where there was an area of flags, lying off the pavement. Several traders held possession of this square, sitting on low stools, or cross-legged on the ground, with their stock in trade around them. One dealer bought and sold all kinds of old and rusty pieces of iron; another, a woman, ill clad and with red eyes, displayed before her a dingy assortment of ragged clothes, which were cheapened by other spare and red-eyed ...
— Alone In London • Hesba Stretton
... himself sitting cross-legged on a floor so deeply imbedded in soft, yielding skins that he sank half out of sight beneath them. Before him, also reposing in this sea of softness, was a Mongol of unusual size, whose face was long and solemn. He puffed incessantly ...
— Panther Eye • Roy J. Snell
... style takes on itself an almost bizarre freedom, which reminds us strongly of the similar characteristic in Mycenaean art. There is a strange little relief in the Berlin Museum of the king standing cross-legged, leaning on a staff, and languidly smelling a flower, while the queen stands by with her garments blown about by the wind. The artistic monarch's graceful attitude is probably a faithful ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, And Assyria In The Light Of Recent Discovery • L.W. King and H.R. Hall
... which seem to belong to a very ancient date, generally represent a man seated cross-legged on the back of a turtle. The head is shaved, except the top, where the hair is left to grow, and is plaited Chinese fashion. Not unfrequently the arms are extended, the hands rest upon pillars inscribed ...
— The Mayas, the Sources of Their History / Dr. Le Plongeon in Yucatan, His Account of Discoveries • Stephen Salisbury, Jr.
... oldest ally, weapon, tool, leaped high before the naked stone of the mountain side. Men sat cross-legged about it, fifteen of them. And behind, guarded by the flames and that somber circle, were the women. There was a uniformity in this gathering. The members were plainly all of the same racial stock, of medium height, stocky ...
— The Defiant Agents • Andre Alice Norton
... appeared to be level. Roy led down into a shallow ravine, where a tiny stream meandered, and he followed this around to the left, coming at length to a point where cedars and dwarf pines formed a little grove. Here, as the others rode up, he sat cross-legged in ...
— The Man of the Forest • Zane Grey
... So cross-legged we squatted opposite each other on the table rock, and, feeling like another Sindbad the Sailor, I watched my new friend fumble in his bag and lay out at his side all sorts of odds and ends of string, fish-hooks, chewing-gum, material for making a fire, and so on, until at last ...
— Gulliver of Mars • Edwin L. Arnold
... this place to the northeast there was a cavern in the rocks, into which the Bodhisattva entered, and sat cross-legged with his face to the west. As he did so, he said to himself, "If I am to attain to perfect wisdom and become Buddha, let there be a supernatural attestation of it." On the wall of the rock there appeared immediately ...
— Chinese Literature • Anonymous
... . In the afternoon to the Prado. Beautiful day. At the moment of ringing at the door a strong emotion of an anxious kind. Why? Down the length of the dining-room in the rotunda part full of afternoon light Dona R., sitting cross-legged on the divan in the attitude of a very old idol or a very young child and surrounded by many cushions, waves her hand from afar pleasantly surprised, exclaiming: "What! Back already!" I give her all the ...
— The Arrow of Gold - a story between two notes • Joseph Conrad
... wrapped in thoughts of the past; pleasant memories of the happier occasions of his lost jungle life. He recalled the countless boyhood hours that he had spent cross-legged upon the table in his dead father's cabin, his little brown body bent over one of the fascinating picture books from which, unaided, he had gleaned the secret of the printed language long before the sounds of human speech fell upon his ears. ...
— The Return of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... cross-legged upon a great pile of dark-red cushions, his slippers by his side, and a huge hookah before him. He wore a plain white pugree with a large jewel set on one side, and his body was swathed and wrapped in dark thick ...
— Mr. Isaacs • F. Marion Crawford
... the fires were clustered four or five of the leading men of the archers, cleaning the rust from their weapons, and glancing impatiently from time to time at a great pot which smoked over the blaze. There was Aylward squatting cross-legged in his shirt, while he scrubbed away at his chain-mail brigandine, whistling loudly the while. On one side of him sat old Johnston, who was busy in trimming the feathers of some arrows to his liking; and on the other Hordle John, who lay with his great limbs all asprawl, ...
— The White Company • Arthur Conan Doyle
... accordingly to a place from which I had a clear view upon the house. It was surrounded with a wide verandah; a lamp, very well trimmed, stood upon the floor of it, and on either side of the lamp there sat a man, cross-legged, after the Oriental manner. Both, besides, were bundled up in muslin like two natives; and yet one of them was not only a white man, but a man very well known to me and the reader, being indeed that very Master of Ballantrae of whose gallantry and genius I have had to speak so often. ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition, Vol. XII (of 25) - The Master of Ballantrae • Robert Louis Stevenson
... I pivoted round cross-legged on the back seat, like a Circassian beauty beneath her veil, and saw Penfentenyou, his coat-collar over his ears, dancing before a shut door and holding up handfuls of currency to a silver-haired woman at an upper window, who only mouthed and ...
— A Diversity of Creatures • Rudyard Kipling
... for the first time she smiled at him. He brought bacon and bread and coffee and other things from his pack and placed them on a folded blanket between them. He sat opposite her, cross-legged. For the first time he noticed that her eyes were blue and that there was a flush in her cheeks. The flush deepened as he looked at her, and she smiled ...
— Isobel • James Oliver Curwood
... was still and sultry. At one of the many camp-fires on the edge of the road I saw the Arkansas colonel sitting cross-legged on the ground, in trousers, socks ...
— The Cavalier • George Washington Cable
... was given up to the Aissaoui. These were 12 hollow-checked men, some old and some young, who sat cross-legged in an irregular semicircle on the floor. Six of them had immense flat drums or tambours, which they presently began to beat noisily. In front of them a charcoal fire burned in a brazier, and into it one of them ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... Sitting cross-legged on a cushion placed on a common native charpoy, or bed, in the verandah of a courtyard, was the last representative of the Great Mogul dynasty. There was nothing imposing in his appearance, save a long white beard which reached to his girdle. About middle ...
— A Narrative Of The Siege Of Delhi - With An Account Of The Mutiny At Ferozepore In 1857 • Charles John Griffiths
... asserted Lo Ong, in the voice and manner of one incessantly pursued by favor-seekers. Lo Ong's draped arm, as if it were detached from his body and governed by some extraneous mechanism, indicated a mat. Moore slipped down in the familiar cross-legged attitude, lighted a cigarette and blew the smoke at the belly on ...
— Peter the Brazen - A Mystery Story of Modern China • George F. Worts
... he'd bought in Turkey, on his travels. He made me act that I was his page—and bring the coffee, and sit cross-legged on the ground." ...
— The Devil's Garden • W. B. Maxwell
... then serve your country with heart and soul." The youth was instructed to cherish an ambition for statesmanship, and he and his father read history and the speeches of British orators to some purpose; for one day Sir Austin found him leaning cross-legged, and with his hand to his chin, against a pedestal supporting the bust of Chatham, contemplating the hero of our Parliament, his ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... He doesn't say much, either. That's the funny part of it. I do all the talking, seems, when I'm with him. But I find myself saying things I didn't know I knew. He makes you think about things you're afraid to face by yourself. Big things. Things inside of you." She fell silent a moment, sitting cross-legged before the bag. Then she got up, snapped the bag shut, and bore it across the room to a corner. "You know he's gone, ...
— Fanny Herself • Edna Ferber
... down cross-legged by Ovid, and administering the stimulant without hurrying himself. "Some girls would not have been able to speak, after such a run as you have had. I didn't think much of you or your lungs when you ...
— Heart and Science - A Story of the Present Time • Wilkie Collins
... everything was neat and orderly as no Indian camp ever was. The bed was laid on fresh spruce boughs. There were furs galore, and on top of all was a robe of swanskins—white swan-skins—I have never seen anything like that robe. And on top of it, sitting cross-legged, was Lucy. She was nut-brown. I have called her a girl. But she was not. She was a woman, a nut-brown woman, an Amazon, a full-blooded, full-bodied woman, and royal ripe. And ...
— The Night-Born • Jack London
... said Conny, with business-like directness. She brought out the pack of cards, plumped herself cross-legged on the floor, and dealt them out in a wide circle. Patty seized the gentleman's hand in her two coffee-stained little paws, and turned it palm up for inspection. He made an embarrassed effort to draw away, but she clung with the ...
— Just Patty • Jean Webster
... visited, was a fine-looking man, who, with his brother, sat cross-legged on the ground, with huge pipes of black clay by their sides, while behind them, "squatting quiet as mice," were the king's sons, six or seven lads, with little dream-charms under their chins! The king shook hands in true English ...
— A Book of Discovery - The History of the World's Exploration, From the Earliest - Times to the Finding of the South Pole • Margaret Bertha (M. B.) Synge
... the dust in which of course he has been rolling—that is equivalent to a clean pinafore. You would want to buy little Said I know, he is so pretty and so jolly. He dances and sings and jabbers baby Arabic and then sits like a quaint little idol cross-legged quite still ...
— Letters from Egypt • Lucie Duff Gordon
... place. It was a two- hours' job to go through it even as we did, and then Verna said we had skipped a whole raft of things she would let me see some other time. There was a private theatre, a chapel with effigies of cross-legged Crusaders, an armoury with a thousand stand of flint- locks, a library, magnificent state apartments with wonderful tapestries, a suite of rooms where they had confined a mad ffrench in the fifteenth century, with the actual bloodstains on the floor where ...
— Love, The Fiddler • Lloyd Osbourne
... "Well, as you will quickly see, all I want to do is talk." I nodded as I spoke, and sat down cross-legged ...
— Houlihan's Equation • Walt Sheldon
... sort of known liquid, but coffee takes precedence of all others. In picturesqueness of costume the Turk leads the world. His graceful turban and flowing robes are worthy of the classic antique, while the rich contrast of colors which he wears adds to the striking effect. As he sits cross-legged before his open bazaar, or shop, smoking a long pipe, he looks very wise, very learned, though in point of fact there is no doubt more intelligence under the straw hat of a Yankee peddler than under three average turbans. The dark, narrow lanes and endless zigzag alleys have an indescribable ...
— Foot-prints of Travel - or, Journeyings in Many Lands • Maturin M. Ballou
... Weary, sitting cross-legged in the shade of a wagon-wheel looked up at Pink, fumbling shyly among the knives and forks, and with ...
— The Lonesome Trail and Other Stories • B. M. Bower
... follow and interpret every little movement. But if you can—well! the unexpurgated version of the Arabian Nights will be as milk-and-water compared to the heady brew offered for your consumption. And the old Harrovian sitting cross-legged, upon a heap of cushions, with the smoke of the nargileh, drifting from between his lips, smiled as he picked up the thread of the same old story which had been spun for him when, an arrogant youth of twelve summers, he had ruled his house with no ...
— The Hawk of Egypt • Joan Conquest
... floor, with head and shoulders bent, he placed the mat (his offering) at my feet, and then withdrew to the other side of the room, and, seating himself cross-legged, he inquired after my health, etc., and paid me ...
— The Strange Adventure Of James Shervinton - 1902 • Louis Becke
... Messenger locked the door after their departure and got into pyjamas. For a long time he sat cross-legged on his bunk, nursing his maimed limb and staring into vacancy as the express roared on through the night. Finally, as if he had arrived at some conclusion, he shook his head rather sadly, turned in, and ...
— The Long Trick • Lewis Anselm da Costa Ritchie
... the safe rest of a barrack-room table whereon he was smoking cross-legged, Learoyd fast asleep on ...
— Life's Handicap • Rudyard Kipling
... shame," said Ginevra. She was sitting on the table in the middle of the room with Elspeth beside her. The two little ones were cross-legged on the floor, very disconsolately nursing the battered remains of two very hideous old dolls, who in their best days could never have been anything but coarse and common, and Helen and Agatha sat ...
— A Christmas Posy • Mary Louisa Stewart Molesworth
... Taylors out of work, who cut off the waistcoat pockets of their brethren, when cross-legged on their board, thereby grabbling their ...
— 1811 Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue • Captain Grose et al.
... men who were seated in easy attitudes upon the grass, and so busily engaged as to be at first unconscious of intruders. It was not difficult to divine that they were of a class of itinerant showmen—exhibitors of the freaks of Punch—for, perched cross-legged upon a tombstone behind them, was a figure of that hero himself, his nose and chin as hooked and his face as beaming as usual. Perhaps his imperturbable character was never more strikingly developed, for he preserved his usual equable ...
— The Old Curiosity Shop • Charles Dickens
... of the smallest of these rooms, I first saw Tom; sitting, with a white cotton cap upon his head, cross-legged on the floor, stitching away by the dim light of a tallow candle. A line stretched across the room, on which hung some coarse pea-jackets and trousers which he had finished, while at his side stood a rough table, with the remains of some supper, ...
— Little Ferns For Fanny's Little Friends • Fanny Fern
... set about his share of camp tasks. It was still early in the summer—too early to expect to find ripe fruit. But Dalgard rummaged in his voyager's bag and brought out a half-dozen crystal beads. He laid these out on a flat-topped stone by the stream, seating himself cross-legged beside it. ...
— Star Born • Andre Norton
... stool, and Hiram sat cross-legged on the floor of the freight rack. Ahead the many silvery bells, hung on steel bows over the hames of each of Jo's white beauties, jingled merrily as the wagon rolled ...
— The She Boss - A Western Story • Arthur Preston Hankins
... in the church was a stone cross-legged effigy of a warrior in armour, dating from about the year 1300; while the plainest was the image of a female corpse in a shroud, on a gravestone, who was named ... ...
— From John O'Groats to Land's End • Robert Naylor and John Naylor
... hands with us all round, and then, at Lester's invitation, followed us inside, and sat down cross-legged on the mats and courteously awaited us to talk to him. The American surgeon offered him a cigar, which he politely declined, and produced from the folds of his lava lava a bundle of banana-leaf cigarettes, filled with strong tobacco. ...
— The Ebbing Of The Tide - South Sea Stories - 1896 • Louis Becke
... his presence as Moorish guests come to visit him. He was seated cross-legged on a cushion at one end of a room, with a large pipe by his side. The apartment was not very finely furnished, seeing that it had little else in it besides a few other cushions like the one he sat on. Certainly he looked exactly like an old Moor, and I could not persuade ...
— Old Jack • W.H.G. Kingston
... squatted himself cross-legged on the turf at the foot of the boulder, would have appreciated that superb view also, but that his eager eyes had detected a pair of brown rabbits peering out at him inquiringly from the fringes of a thicket ...
— Children of the Wild • Charles G. D. Roberts
... Looks after Small Things had caused the visitor that day to receive two weeks' delayed mails in one from a casual postman, and the whole heavy bundle of newspapers, tied with a strap, he dangled as bait. At the edge of the beach, cross-legged, undressed to his sky-blue army shirt, sat a lean, ginger-haired man, on guard over a dozen heaps of clothing. His eyes followed ...
— Traffics and Discoveries • Rudyard Kipling
... and of the sheikh (governor). Some of the streets are so narrow that two persons can scarcely walk together. The bazaar, according to the Turkish custom, consists of covered passages, under which the merchants sit cross-legged before their miserable stalls. ...
— A Woman's Journey Round the World • Ida Pfeiffer
... were thronged by an ill-favoured mob of all hues, from jet black to a sickly parchmentlike yellow. There were shops in the dirty-looking town, filled with all sorts of goods from Birmingham and Sheffield. Their owners were chiefly Banians, who were seen sitting cross-legged among their wares, the men dressed in turbans of many folds, reaching to a point, with long robes and collars of gold or silver round their necks; the women profusely decorated with ornaments, with rings on their fingers and toes, and golden nose-ornaments ...
— The Three Commanders • W.H.G. Kingston
... turned round, David, whose lessons had been perfectly repeated an hour ago, was sitting cross-legged in the window, with his slate and pencil, and a basket of bricks, his great delight, which he ...
— The Stokesley Secret • Charlotte M. Yonge
... indeed, his only recreation. He began reading at the little pine table. He continued curled up in the big armchair—retrieved from the attic of the shell-battered Chateau d'Enghien. He concluded the great work sitting cross-legged on his bed, and the very restlessness which the story provoked was a sure ...
— Tam O' The Scoots • Edgar Wallace
... little drunk, very faithful, and very simple- minded, told her that he thought Jacob the greatest man he had ever known. And down they sat cross-legged upon cushions and talked about Jacob, and Helen's voice trembled, for they both seemed heroes to her, and the friendship between them so much more beautiful than women's friendships. Anthony Pollett now asked her to dance, and as she danced she looked at ...
— Jacob's Room • Virginia Woolf
... first operation ended, Pinocchio the First was made to sit cross-legged to have his hair combed. His attendants covered his hair with a purple cream and then sprinkled over ...
— Pinocchio in Africa • Cherubini
... and reasonable way. You talk to them wimmen, elder, about bein' fair and reasonable themselves, and then lead 'em back here, and you'll find me ready to pull with 'em for the good of this place, without tryin' to run cross-legged or turn a ...
— The Skipper and the Skipped - Being the Shore Log of Cap'n Aaron Sproul • Holman Day
... of headmen and older warriors, seated cross-legged in their tents, ceremoniously smoked the daghapipe, a kind of hookah, made of bullock's horn, its downward point filled with water, and a reed stem let into the side, surmounted by a rough bowl of stone, which is filled with the dagha, a species of hemp, very nearly, if not the same, as the ...
— Tobacco; Its History, Varieties, Culture, Manufacture and Commerce • E. R. Billings
... day, as I sat writing up my journal, the cabin was filled from end to end with Marquesans: three brown-skinned generations, squatted cross-legged upon the floor, and regarding me in silence with embarrassing eyes. The eyes of all Polynesians are large, luminous, and melting; they are like the eyes of animals and some Italians. A kind of despair came ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 18 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... of the years of my prenticeship having glided cannily over on the working-board of my respected maister, James Hosey, where I sat sewing cross-legged like a busy bee, in the true spirit of industrious contentment, I found myself, at the end of the seven year, so well instructed in the tailoring trade, to which I had paid a near-sighted attention, that, without more ado, I girt myself round about with a proud determination ...
— The Life of Mansie Wauch - Tailor in Dalkeith, written by himself • David Macbeth Moir
... Reuben and Burke And Nathan and Jotham and Solomon, lurk Around the corner to see him work— Sitting cross-legged, like a Turk, Drawing the waxed end through with a jerk, And boring the holes with a comical quirk Of his wise old head, and a knowing smirk. But vainly they mounted each other's backs, And poked through knot-holes ...
— The Elson Readers, Book 5 • William H. Elson and Christine M. Keck
... that we sometimes forget she is old. We just talk things over with her as we would with our young friends. Not only we girls, but young married women, just love spending part of the Sabbath afternoons with her. The room is often so full that we have to sit cross-legged, like the Turks, on the marble floor, which in summer time ...
— Pictures of Jewish Home-Life Fifty Years Ago • Hannah Trager
... motive, if you must know it, that prompted the silk stockings. Julia Pendleton comes into my room to do geometry, and she sits cross-legged on the couch and wears silk stockings every night. But just wait—as soon as she gets back from vacation I shall go in and sit on her couch in my silk stockings. You see, Daddy, the miserable creature that I am but at least I'm honest; and you knew already, from my asylum ...
— Daddy-Long-Legs • Jean Webster
... him to do, always when the light was good and never at night, for he maintained that the coloring required the best of light. Before this odd, homely, wooden machine, a combination of unpainted rods and cords, he would sit, cross-legged or on a bench at times, and pound and pick and tie and unravel—a most wearisome-looking ...
— Twelve Men • Theodore Dreiser
... flames of dry greasewood burning, with a pungent odor in my nostrils when the wind blew the smoke my way. The far-off hooting of an owl, perched somewhere on a juniper branch watching for mice; and Casey Ryan sitting cross-legged in the sand, squinting humorously at me across the fire ...
— The Trail of the White Mule • B. M. Bower
... when the Sultan went to pray in the new mosque, a Dervish who was sitting cross-legged at the entrance spoke to him in a droning sing-song voice ...
— The Laughing Prince - Jugoslav Folk and Fairy Tales • Parker Fillmore
... his country's cause, Goliba arose, and crossing the courtyard, now lit only by the bright stars twinkling in the dark blue vault above, disappeared through a door with a fine horse-shoe arch in Moorish style. Left together, we sat cross-legged on the mat, a silent, thoughtful trio. Omar had decided to act on the sage's advice, and none of us knew what the result might be. That fierce fighting and terrible bloodshed must occur ere the struggle ended, we felt assured, but with our mere handful of Dagombas we were certainly no match for ...
— The Great White Queen - A Tale of Treasure and Treason • William Le Queux
... directed to the earth; in about ten minutes the nearest blood relation of any individual who has died since the stranger has visited his friends advances to him with a measured pace, and without speaking seats himself cross-legged on his thighs, under which he places his hands, at the same time pressing his breast to the stranger's; thus seated they mournfully avert their faces from one another and preserve a perfect silence; no ...
— Journals Of Two Expeditions Of Discovery In North-West And Western Australia, Vol. 2 (of 2) • George Grey
... came slowly forward again, hesitated, seemed to hover for a moment at her throat, then went swiftly down to her bosom between bodice and flesh, and came up again tugging after it what looked to me a piece of coarse thread. She tossed it into my lap as I still sat there cross-legged, and with that sprang up and raced away from me, down to the verandah. There was no chance of catching her, and I was (to tell the truth) a bit too much taken aback to try. I picked up the string. On it was threaded a silk purse no bigger than a shilling; and ...
— The White Wolf and Other Fireside Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch |
