"Gait" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... intricate second thought and reasoning caused by their relations with other men, which may be called systematic soldiering. There is no question that the tendency of the average man (in all walks of life) is toward working at a slow, easy gait, and that it is only after a good deal of thought and observation on his part or as a result of example, conscience, or external pressure that he takes a ...
— Shop Management • Frederick Winslow Taylor
... for the convalescents; but the heat of the sun was so overpowering, that it was not until late in the afternoon that they could breathe the purer atmosphere. Long confinement below had left them pale and wan, and their unsteady gait proved how much they had suffered in their constitution, and how narrowly they had escaped the grave. To some this escape had been beneficial, as their constant perusal of the Bible established; others, ...
— Borneo and the Indian Archipelago - with drawings of costume and scenery • Frank S. Marryat
... sharp lines The shapes of things that even years have buried Shine out upon the rapid memory, Moving and warm like life. I can see now The form of that tall peddler, whose strange wares, Outlandish dialect and impudent gait Awoke Euktemon's laughter. In mine ear Is echoing still the cracking string of gibes, They flung at one another. I remember too The grey-haired merchant with his bold black eyes And brace of slaves, the old ship captain tanned ...
— Among the Millet and Other Poems • Archibald Lampman
... Mission steamer, but no human agency is perfect, and even the Julia Sheriden had her faults. Her gait on this fall voyage was suggestive of inebriety, and at times gave rise to the anxious sensations one experiences when one sees a poor victim of the saloon returning home along ...
— A Labrador Doctor - The Autobiography of Wilfred Thomason Grenfell • Wilfred Thomason Grenfell
... these heavy sleepers stops swinging," said Patsy, "and just seems to stand still and shiver, she's going; and when she begins to slam her flanges up against the rail, first one side and then the other, she has passed a sixty-mile gait, and that's what this ...
— Snow on the Headlight - A Story of the Great Burlington Strike • Cy Warman
... itself, guided their wagon from the trail into a little depression along the creek as if to make camp for the night. The driver, a tall, thin man, wearing a slouch hat, got down from the front of the wagon and walked with a shambling gait to the head of his horses and loosened their bridles. While the horses were drinking, a second man, carrying a rifle, climbed down from the rear of the wagon. He was of a shorter and stockier build, and on one side the brim of his soft hat had been torn away so that it hung loosely ...
— The Mountain Divide • Frank H. Spearman
... large roses covered his shoes; his ruff was a "treble-quadruple-dedalion;" his gloves richly embroidered; a large crimson satin purse hung from his girdle; and he was scented with powders and pulvilios. This withered coxcomb affected the mincing gait of a young man; and though rather an object of derision than admiration with the fair sex, persuaded himself they were all captivated by him. The vast sums he so unjustly acquired did not long remain in his possession, but were dispersed in ministering to his ...
— The Star-Chamber, Volume 1 - An Historical Romance • W. Harrison Ainsworth
... stranger as remarkable. A big youth, so disproportionately built as to appear almost deformed, till you noticed that his shoulders were unusually broad and his feet and hands unusually large. Whether from indolence or infirmity it was hard to say, his gait was shambling and awkward, and the strength that lurked in his big limbs and chest seemed to unsteady him as he floundered top- heavily across the play-ground. But his face was the most remarkable part about him. The forehead, which overhung ...
— A Dog with a Bad Name • Talbot Baines Reed
... not as uneasy as the gait of a camel, though I can feel every step of the bearers. But I should prefer a shigram, if it only had a better name," ...
— Across India - Or, Live Boys in the Far East • Oliver Optic
... called him "Khoshi-ke-Nna", which means "I am the Chief". A firm but just Englishman, with a striking military gait, he would have been an ideal leader of the native contingents had the offer of native help been accepted by ...
— Native Life in South Africa, Before and Since • Solomon Tshekisho Plaatje
... or so of the pavement, that it would have been impossible for a passer-by to have decided whether it was that of a man or a woman; but the manner in which it bent, added to a shuffling uncertainty of gait—a sort of "feeling the way" movement of the feet—as Mr. Narkom guided it across the pavement to the door, suggested either great age or a state of total blindness: an affliction, by the way, of such recent date that the sufferer had not ...
— Cleek, the Master Detective • Thomas W. Hanshew
... Fenzileh which so long he had consumed in silence and dissembled under fawning smiles and profound salaams included also her servants. There was none in all the world of whom he entertained a greater contempt than her sleek and greasy eunuch Ayoub-el-Samin of the majestic, rolling gait and ...
— The Sea-Hawk • Raphael Sabatini
... three-act opera, embracing the whole debility of the company. There is the villain, who always looks so wretched as to impress on the mind that, if honesty is not the best policy, rascality is certainly the worst. Then there is the lover, whose woe-begone countenance and unhappy gait, render it really surprising that the heroine, in dirty white sarsnet, should have displayed so much constancy. The low comedy is generally done by a gentleman who, while fully impressed with the importance of the "low," seems wholly to overlook ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, September 18, 1841 • Various
... in New Hampshire has written a Vaudeville playlet and sent it on for my approval. If he could have kept up the gait he struck on the first page ...
— Continuous Vaudeville • Will M. Cressy
... come bowling up the slope with his familiar gait, evidently unconscious of my presence, and wearing that sturdy and almost hostile demeanour with which a true Briton marches into a strange city through the army of officious importunates who never fail to welcome the true Briton's arrival. As ...
— Tracks of a Rolling Stone • Henry J. Coke
... they brought their fruits to sell, and where they tarried for a few hours at most, leaving the streets still silent, the houses still asleep. It gave him pleasure to watch them as they went by. Rude as they were, with their heavy, hob-nailed shoes, and their awkward gait, they brought a little of a ready with them. He felt that they had lived with Nature, and that she had taught them peace. He envied them all ...
— Selected Prose of Oscar Wilde - with a Preface by Robert Ross • Oscar Wilde
... reached a quarter where the throng of people compelled him to slacken his gait, then halt and dismount. It was but a few doors from the Princess'. One house—a frame, two stories—appeared the ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 2 • Lew. Wallace
... to the zenith of his career. He was now War Minister and had surrounded himself with officers who would follow him whithersoever he might lead them. A low-sized, wiry man, seemingly of no account, Enver is pale of complexion, shuffling in gait. His eyes are piercing, and his gaze furtive. A soul-monger who should buy him at his specific value and sell him at his own estimate would earn untold millions. For, to use a picturesque Russian phrase, the ocean is only up to ...
— England and Germany • Emile Joseph Dillon
... Unconsciously his gait expressed his detachment. He sauntered idly, looking with fresh curiosity at the big, smoke-darkened houses on the boulevard. At Twenty-Second Street, a cable train clanged its way harshly across his path. As he looked up, he caught sight of the lake at the ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... been described as "about six feet high," straight and rather slender, and of "a firm, elastic gait," even in his last years. He had "a keen, penetrating eye," a "high, broad and prominent" forehead, and "rather thin ...
— McClure's Magazine, January, 1896, Vol. VI. No. 2 • Various
... said the Puritan, with a severe eye, as the two lads approached him, with their several charges, from different directions, and nearly at the same instant; "how now, sirrah! dost worry the cattle in this gait, when the eyes of the prudent are turned from thee? Do as thou wouldst be done by, is a just and healthful admonition, that the learned, and the simple, the weak and the strong of mind, should alike recall to their thoughts ...
— The Wept of Wish-Ton-Wish • James Fenimore Cooper
... the blazing circumference would roll in vast billows of fire, upon the uttermost shores. Not all the dripping clouds of the deluge could extinguish it. Not all the tears of saints and angels could for an instant check its progress. On and onward it would sweep, with the steady gait of destiny, until the continents would melt with fervent heat, the atmosphere glare with the ominous conflagration, and all living creatures, in land and sea and air, perish in one ...
— The Case of Summerfield • William Henry Rhodes
... Button was sober Mrs. Button chastised little Paul. She would have done so when Mr. Button was drunk, but she had not the time. The periods, therefore, of his mother's martyrdom were those of Paul's enfranchisement. If he saw his stepfather come down the street with steady gait, he fled in terror; if he saw him reeling homeward he lingered about with light and ...
— The Fortunate Youth • William J. Locke
... done, and there remained only the comparatively easy task of guiding the movement of the little drama, suggesting side issues and polishing the details, always keeping a careful eye on the Beetle, that he might "gang his ain gait" and preserve to the full ...
— The Art of the Story-Teller • Marie L. Shedlock
... Halleck was rather below the medium height and well built: in walking he had a rather slow and shuffling gait, as if something afflicted his feet; a florid, bland and pleasant countenance; a bright gray eye; was remarkably pleasant and courteous in conversation, and, as a natural consequence, much beloved by all who had the pleasure of his acquaintance. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 26, August, 1880 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various
... feet higher when my foot set a boulder rolling, and down it went with a crash. There were shouts below, but I did not stop to listen to what they said, but put up the bed of the torrent at a two-forty gait. A shot rang out, and another and another, but I was getting now above the light of their torches. A hundred feet higher I came to a stand-still, for the rock rose right up in front of me, and the water had here come down from above in a fall. This made it a tight place, you bet. There war no ...
— In The Heart Of The Rockies • G. A. Henty
... we began to see in the dark shadows of the gallery some tiny lights which gradually became larger. The miners, with lamp in hand, were coming up into the day, their work finished. They came on slowly, with heavy gait, as though they suffered in the knees. I understood how this was later, when I myself had gone over the staircases and ladders which led to the last level. Their faces were as black as chimney sweeps; their clothes ...
— Nobody's Boy - Sans Famille • Hector Malot
... the momentum of habit there was the official pledge to the people—Mayor Monroe's and Commanding-General Lovell's—that if they would but keep up this tread-mill gait, the moment the city was really in danger the wires of the new fire-alarm should strike the tidings from all her steeples. So the school teachers read Scripture and prayers and the children sang the "Bonnie Blue Flag," while outside the omnibuses trundled, ...
— Kincaid's Battery • George W. Cable
... hardly lit at intervals by oil-lamps, a group could be seen advancing; in front Alice Puttenham and Mary, and behind, the Fox-Wilton party, Hester's golden head and challenging gait drawing all eyes ...
— The Case of Richard Meynell • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... away. Neither could urge aught to restrain her. With a swift strength of gait that seemed amazing to those who had witnessed her feeble dragging about the house for weeks past, Lillian flashed through the door, and suddenly there was the keen tinkle of a bell in the darkening, chill spaces of the unused hall. The other two, ...
— The Ordeal - A Mountain Romance of Tennessee • Charles Egbert Craddock
... enigmatic rogue, so clever that to most she seemed of unplumbed stupidity. Those blank green eyes of hers, that waxen face, that scarlet impenetrable mouth, her even gait and look of ruminating, look of a dolt—who knew Bianca Maria? Not Maximilian the mild-mannered King; not Duke Ludovic (that creased traitor) who schemed her marriage; not altogether Lionardo, who painted half her portrait and taught her much of his wisdom; certainly not poor Molly of Nona. All ...
— Little Novels of Italy • Maurice Henry Hewlett
... that for a signal—or perhaps he made another that we did not see—the six undoubted gipsies got up and left the room, shambling out in single file with the awkward gait they share in common ...
— The Eye of Zeitoon • Talbot Mundy
... plump shoulders. But Captain Sam Hunniwell had once said, and Orham public opinion agreed with him, that Gabe Bearse was never happy unless he was talking. Now here was Gabriel, not talking, but walking briskly along the Orham main road, and yet so distinctly happy that the happiness showed in his gait, his manner and in the excited glitter of his watery eye. Truly an astonishing condition of things and tending, one would say, to prove that Captain Sam's didactic remark, so long locally accepted and quoted as gospel truth, had a flaw in ...
— Shavings • Joseph C. Lincoln
... a musket and the one who had spoken turned inland. The horse of the American followed, the gait of all being the ordinary walk. The Senorita was only a few steps behind her, while the second soldier silently stalked at the rear. The American noticed that they were following a clearly marked path or trail, which soon began descending, then climbed upward, and ...
— Up the Forked River - Or, Adventures in South America • Edward Sylvester Ellis
... has so succeeded in imitating him as to remind us of him by even so much as the gait of a single verse?[127] Those magnificent crystallizations of feeling and phrase, basaltic masses, molten and interfused by the primal fires of passion, are not to be reproduced by the slow experiments of the laboratory striving to parody creation with artifice. Mr. Matthew ...
— Among My Books - First Series • James Russell Lowell
... a pompous, fantastical Spaniard, a military braggart in a state of peace, as Parolles (3 syl.) was in war. Boastful but poor; a coiner of words, but very ignorant; solemnly grave, but ridiculously awkward; majestical in gait, but of very low propensities.—Shakespeare, Love's ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.
... out of range of the boy's eyes, however, his careless air vanished, and he sped through the underwood with the quietness and something of the gait of a panther—stooping low and avoiding to tread on dead twigs. Making a wide circle, he came round behind the spot where the watcher was hid. But, trained though he had been in the art of savage warfare, the boy was equal ...
— The Hot Swamp • R.M. Ballantyne
... help, visited the phonograph place, and a few days later reported results. He wrote: "I talked your letter into a fonograf in my usual tone at my usual gait of speech. Then the fonograf man talked his answer in at his wonted swing and swell. Then we took the cylinder to a type-writer in the next room, and she put the hooks into her ears and wrote the whole out. I send you the result. There is a mistake of one word. I think that if you have ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... absurd figure of his guide, whose legs stuck out like a pair of compasses beneath his tattered gown, his shaking head threatening dislodgment to hat and wig, while his elbows churned at every jolt, making play with the shuffling gait of ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... show us that you could not be old, but immortally young? and having kept us all murmuring at your satires and sharp homilies, will now melt us with this manly and heart-warming embrace? Nobody could predict and none could better it. And you shall even go your own gait henceforward with a blessing from us all, and a trust exceptional and unique. I do not longer hesitate to talk to such good men as I see of this gift, and it has in every ear a gladdening effect. People like to see character in ...
— The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1834-1872, Vol II. • Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson
... neurasthenia; fondness for the poetry of Whitman and Browning (see Nordau); tendency to dabble in irregular systems of medical practice; pronounced nervous and emotional irritability during adolescence; aversion to young women in society; stubborn clinging to celibacy. In posture, gait and general movements, the following may be noted: vivacious in conversation; possessed of great mobility of facial expression; anteroposterior sway marked and occasionally anterosinistral, and greatly augmented so as to approach Romberg symptom on closure of eyes, but no ataxic evidences in locomotion. ...
— Double Trouble - Or, Every Hero His Own Villain • Herbert Quick
... following day. The morning was clear, and the temperature was 34 below. The dogs, with a great howling and jumping, had hardly settled down to the slow trot which with only fair travelling is their habitual gait, when we observed that the sky was clouding, and in an incredibly short time the first snowflakes of the gathering storm began to fall. Soon the snow was so thick that it shut us in as with a curtain, and eventually even old Aillik, our leader, ...
— The Lure of the Labrador Wild • Dillon Wallace
... voulez," replied Duncan, with a shrug. "Gang your own gait; I'll have nothing more to do with trying to stop you since you ...
— Eric, or Little by Little • Frederic W. Farrar
... entirely; you must adopt his name, his gait, his behavior, his virtues, and even his failings. You must forget all that you have either said or done. You must always think that you are in reality the person you represent yourself to be, for this is the only way in which you can lead others into a similar ...
— Caught In The Net • Emile Gaboriau
... continued until Alice stepped forward and made a funny little speech, in which she introduced the animals, who skipped, waddled or shuffled forward according to each one's conception of what its own peculiar gait should be. ...
— Grace Harlowe's Fourth Year at Overton College • Jessie Graham Flower
... at me out of the most innocent eyes in the world, "my sister Grace married Brian Beck because he had such a lot of money. But you know he is dissipated, and at first Grace almost went distracted. Then she made up her mind to let him go his own gait, and she has as good a time as she can on his money. His Irish name Brian is her thorn in the flesh, and he teases her nearly out of her wits about it. We have great fun on the yacht every summer. Brian is awfully good to me, and invites nice men to take with us; still, much as I like ...
— The Love Affairs of an Old Maid • Lilian Bell
... of the spirits and disposition of a man by his ordinary gait and mien in walking. He who habitually pursues abstract thought looks down on the ground. He who is accustomed to sudden impulses, or is trying to seize upon some necessary recollection, looks up with a kind of jerk. He who is a steady, ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... the neck of the horse. "Come, old fellow," he said, quite as if he were speaking to a person, and started off. And Surry, his neck arched, his ears perked knowingly, stepped out after him with that peculiar, springy gait that speaks eloquently of perfect muscles and a body fairly vibrating with energy; the riata trailed after him, every little tendency towards a kink taken ...
— The Gringos • B. M. Bower
... easy gait, soon left Sorden far behind, and the strange events of the night, and his wonder what to do next, kept Levin's brain whirling till he saw the form of a few houses rise among the trees, and a line of arborage indicate ...
— The Entailed Hat - Or, Patty Cannon's Times • George Alfred Townsend
... dark shawl (lapis), closely drawn around the figure, that the rich variegated folds of the saya burst out beneath it like the blossoms of a pomegranate. This swathing only allows the young girls to take very short steps, and this timidity of gait, in unison with their downcast eyes, gives them a very modest appearance. On their naked feet they wear embroidered slippers of such a small size that their little toes protrude for want of room, and grasp the outside of the ...
— The Former Philippines thru Foreign Eyes • Fedor Jagor; Tomas de Comyn; Chas. Wilkes; Rudolf Virchow.
... a suit that will make me look like a price. Goods of the best quality, and tailoring that has never been equaled! The gold, the silver, and the diamonds must be found." And he went on at a brisk gait as if he had been on ...
— Pinocchio in Africa • Cherubini
... the centre of the street to confront the armed band. He wore the old Puritan dress—a dark cloak and a steeple-crowned hat in the fashion of at least fifty years before, with a heavy sword upon his thigh, but a staff in his hand to assist the tremulous gait of age. ...
— Twice Told Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... of the second wife of Cymbeline by a former husband. He is noted for "his unmeaning frown, his shuffling gait, his burst of voice, his bustling insignificance, his fever-and-ague fits of valor, his froward tetchiness, his unprincipled malice, and occasional gleams of good sense." Cloten is the rejected lover of Imogen (the daughter of his father-in-law ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.
... a simper, which every separate feature in it belies. She spoils, perhaps, a blooming complexion with a profusion of artificial coloring, she distorts the most exquisite shape by loads or volumes of useless drapery. She has her head, her arms, her feet, and her gait, equally touched by art and affectation, into what is called the taste, ...
— Sketches of the Fair Sex, in All Parts of the World • Anonymous
... angel on good one"—but hisht, hisht! the evening-star is rising, and we are to be repaid, they say, for all we have gone through! Signor * * * is going to play. The maestro advances with perfect consciousness of his own powers; his gait is lounging, he does not mean to hurry himself, not he—his power of abstraction (from the company) is perfect; he is going to play in solitude before fifty people, and only for his own amusement. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 361, November, 1845. • Various
... offends not in word, the same is a perfect man.[588] But yet in Malachy, who, though he observed with unusual care, ever detected, I will not say an idle word,[589] but an idle nod? Who ever knew his hand or his foot to move without purpose? Yea, what was there that was not edifying in his gait, his mien, his bearing, his countenance? In fine, neither did sadness darken nor laughter turn to levity the joyousness of his countenance.[590] Everything in him was under discipline, everything a mark of virtue, ...
— St. Bernard of Clairvaux's Life of St. Malachy of Armagh • H. J. Lawlor
... deigning on the boy a glance to cast Swept careless by the gorgeous Queen of Gain; More scornful still, the Queen of Fashion passed, With mincing gait ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 3. (of 4) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... the strange nature of her enterprise. She had made up her mind to it; there was no use in deceiving herself. What she had undertaken to do was much more unconventional than being first at a meeting. It was foolish and weak to delay. The last thought braced her up; and it was with a hurried gait, which alone would have betrayed her to an intelligent observer, ...
— The Man • Bram Stoker
... an opening, both playing well. The beggar, for all his limp and one eye, had a pretty notion of the sport, but he had the queerest gait upon him; and as he hobbled round and round the stage under Nat's blows ...
— Robin Hood • Paul Creswick
... her two dimpled cheeks. She was beautiful, but her whole frame was the prey of a hereditary disease. The tears in her eyes glistened like small specks. Her balmy breath was so gentle. She was as demure as a lovely flower reflected in the water. Her gait resembled a frail willow, agitated by the wind. Her heart, compared with that of Pi Kan, had one more aperture of intelligence; while her ailment exceeded (in intensity) by three degrees the ailment ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... would have hastened his steps to meet her, but his honest soul always demanded a certain amount of service from himself for the dollar paid him for each trip of this kind. So he went on at his customary gait, stopping at the usual intervals to ring his bell and call ...
— Georgina of the Rainbows • Annie Fellows Johnston
... blue taper in the west gallery. The miner stared for some minutes, and answered, "No; he that walks in the gallery is clear another guess sort of a person; in a white jacket, a leather apron, and ragged cap, like what Jervas used to wear in his lifetime; and, moreover, he limps in his gait, as Lame Jervas always did, I remember well." The gentleman walked on, and the miners observed, what had before escaped their notice, that he limped a little; and, when he came again to the light, the guide, after considering him very attentively, said, "If I was not afraid of affronting ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. 2 • Maria Edgeworth
... which the party we have described were assembled slowly opened, and there entered a figure which startled, almost appalled, the phlegmatic Dutchmen, and nearly made Rose scream with terror. It was the form, and arrayed in the garb of Minheer Vanderhausen; the air, the gait, the height were the same, but the features had never been seen by any of the party before. The stranger stopped at the door of the room, and displayed his form and face completely. He wore a dark-coloured ...
— J. S. Le Fanu's Ghostly Tales, Volume 1 • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... place; and everything looked dark and dismal, under the moonlight, as it streamed between stormy black clouds. In that light Dot could see the blacks hurrying forward. Already one of the dogs had far outrun the others, and with wolfish gait and savage sounds, was pressing towards their ...
— Dot and the Kangaroo • Ethel C. Pedley
... the lead. Up on the mesa we struck into a trot. A lope is easier to ride, but the trot is the natural gait of a horse, and he can keep up a trot longer than he can a lope. ...
— Pluck on the Long Trail - Boy Scouts in the Rockies • Edwin L. Sabin
... early youth, in spite of all the fetters of her ignorance, her wonderful long bones and her wonderful strength asserted themselves. And she never hurried. At first this apparent sluggishness infuriated Maud. "Get a gait on ye, Joan Carver!" she would scream above the din of the rough meals, but soon she found that Joan's slow movements accomplished a tremendous amount of work in an amazingly short time. There was no pause in the girl's activity. She poured out her strength as a python pours his, ...
— The Branding Iron • Katharine Newlin Burt
... voice his long crooked nose his white hair falling over the shoulders of his faded blue coat his shuffling shambling gait as he hobbled up to Carletons Grocery with his basket all this I shall remember ...
— The Century Handbook of Writing • Garland Greever
... ground, and very often when thus loaded babies, puppies, and many other things, will be put on top of the pack. They will trudge fifteen or twenty miles a day with this burden, bending forward, and staggering under its weight. The result is to spoil the figure and gait, and deprive them of every semblance of beauty. The awkward walk produced by this hard labor we used to call "The Dakota shamble." Under this treatment they soon look old, and become wrinkled, and are called ...
— The History of Minnesota and Tales of the Frontier • Charles E. Flandrau
... this mock grimace? Go, silly thing, and hide that simp'ring face. Thy lisping prattle, and thy mincing gait, All thy false mimic fooleries I hate; For thou art Folly's counterfeit, and she Who is right foolish hath the better plea; Nature's true ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. V - Tales of a Fashionable Life • Maria Edgeworth
... house. I think no white man, even the most surly of our drivers, would have asked us to do that,—in perfect blackness, the trees wet and dripping,—but would have managed to bring us to some inhabited place. They started off at a rapid gait, and we followed. We could not see their forms; but one carried something white in his hand, which we faintly discerned in the darkness, which served as our guide. They sang and shouted, and sounded their horn, all the way. I supposed it was to keep off bad spirits, ...
— Life at Puget Sound: With Sketches of Travel in Washington Territory, British Columbia, Oregon and California • Caroline C. Leighton
... any prospect of his questions being answered, at least until he got to the ranch, and could talk to his father, so he continued on, urging his pony to a faster gait. ...
— The Boy from the Ranch - Or Roy Bradner's City Experiences • Frank V. Webster
... lazy head and heeds The clattering hoofs of swift advancing steeds. Off to the herd with cumb'rous gait she runs And leaves the bulls to face the threatening guns. No more for them the free life of the plains, Its mating pleasures and its warring pains. Their quivering flesh shall feed unnumbered foes, Their tufted tails adorn the ...
— Custer, and Other Poems. • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... European costume that we were strangers, they offered us places in front of the stage; and after a few minutes' delay a man entered, and was handed up to the platform and chair amidst a buzz of universal applause. In his hand he carried a small stick, and in gait, physiognomy, and manner bore a singular resemblance to our English Matthews. He was dressed in a frock coat, now so generally worn in Constantinople, and wore, on one of his fingers, a most superb brilliant ring, which, it is said, was presented ...
— Journal of a Visit to Constantinople and Some of the Greek Islands in the Spring and Summer of 1833 • John Auldjo
... receive him, almost as if at a word of command. And Buckskin Bill, with his head high and his blue eyes flaming, went straight into them with the gait of ...
— The Odds - And Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... broken off. A woman was moving down the trail ahead of them. She was a good distance away, but he had recognized the easy gait and trim figure of Kate Seton. After a moment's pause he withdrew ...
— The Law-Breakers • Ridgwell Cullum
... meeting-place, and as Miss Burton appeared just as the clock was striking two, the expedition started with no delay. "It's a perfect day for Bear Hill," said Dorothy enthusiastically, as she led the way with Miss Burton, and unconsciously tried to imitate her swinging gait. Since Miss Burton had taken charge of the gymnasium, Dorothy, who was always to the fore in out-of-door life, had been more than ever devoted to ...
— Glenloch Girls • Grace M. Remick
... fear. What could the pedler have to communicate, on paper, which might not have been left over for their interview? His mind was troubled, and, pushing the crowd away from immediately about him, he tore open the envelope and began the perusal—proceeding with a measured gait, the result as well of the "damned cramp hand" as of the still foggy intellect and unsettled vision of the reader. But as the characters and their signification became more clear and obvious to his gaze, his ...
— Guy Rivers: A Tale of Georgia • William Gilmore Simms
... was plainly dressed, looked the picture of health, and bore no evidence of anxiety about him. His plain hat and clothes were in marked contrast with a somewhat gaily dressed and equipped staff. He saluted and spoke pleasantly, but did not check his horse from a rather rapid gait. ...
— Slavery and Four Years of War, Vol. 1-2 • Joseph Warren Keifer
... and polished until it approached in glistening amiability the ivory head on a walking-stick; but there was an uncertainty in its ripples of merriment impressive of the belief that if once a genuine ha! ha! was ventured, the galvanized look of joy would instantly vanish. It was at a very uncertain gait he sidled into my office. He did not seem at all sure I would know him, or, in fact, very intimately acquainted with himself. The mingled gruffness and cordiality of his greeting suggested a dancing-master suffering ...
— Trifles for the Christmas Holidays • H. S. Armstrong
... complete, they paint the nails of their feet and hands with a reddish colour. A Moorish woman, who wishes to be considered as a beauty, must have long teeth shooting out of her mouth; the flesh from the shoulder to the elbow loose and flabby; their limbs, thighs and body, prodigiously thick; their gait slow and cramped. They have bracelets like the collar of great Danish dogs upon their arms and legs. In a word, they labour from their infancy to efface any beauties for which they are indebted to nature, and to substitute in their room ridiculous and disagreeable whims. They have no other ...
— Perils and Captivity • Charlotte-Adelaide [nee Picard] Dard
... though not actually deformed. Low of stature, he came to be known as "Shorty," the only name we ever had for him. As he stood, his abnormally long arms enabled him to take his hat from the ground without stooping. His legs were not mates in length, causing him as he moved, with a quick, rocking gait, to create the impression that he might topple backward; but somehow the longer leg always got underneath at the critical instant, and restored the balance. His head was large, and perfectly round; hair porcupinesque, each bristle standing nearly perpendicular to the ...
— Crossing the Plains, Days of '57 - A Narrative of Early Emigrant Tavel to California by the Ox-team Method • William Audley Maxwell
... long, tireless, strides. The girl continued to puzzle him. Even her manner of walking expressed personality. There was none of the flat-footed Indian shuffle about her gait. She moved lightly, springily, as one does who finds in it the joy of ...
— Man Size • William MacLeod Raine
... Allah, thou art handsomer than the damsel.[FN17] Now, walk with thy left shoulder forwards and thy right well behind, and sway thy hips from side to side."[FN18] So he walked before her, as she bade him; and, when she saw he had caught the trick of woman's gait, she said to him, "Expect me tomorrow night, and Allah willing, I will take and carry thee to the palace. But when thou seest the Chamberlains and the Eunuchs be bold, and bow thy head and speak not with any, for I will ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 4 • Richard F. Burton
... don' know," said Captain Pharo, with the same affected indifference to his charms, but there was—yes, there was—something jaunty in his gait now as he walked toward the barn; "they're rather skeerce in this kentry, I expect; some d—d arniky blossom or ...
— Vesty of the Basins • Sarah P. McLean Greene
... the first reformed platoon of an army after fleeing from disaster. The leader of the platoon was a small boy. His hat was pulled down over his eyes and he looked as if he were sorely afraid. After him came half a dozen men with shambling gait. One was an Irishman, two were English, one was a German and one a colored man. Two of them carried pickaxes in their hands, which they had been using to clear away the wreckage ...
— The Johnstown Horror • James Herbert Walker
... and its banks, and decided that the flow of water came from the right. He reflected awhile, rubbing his nose and cheeks, then skirted to the left, stepping gingerly and testing the footing for each step. Once clear of the danger, he took a fresh chew of tobacco and swung along at his four-mile gait. ...
— Lost Face • Jack London
... jogging along before the square-topped chaise, upon some highway that leads into the town, with the parson seated within, with slackened rein, and in thoughtful mood, from which he rouses himself from time to time with a testy twitch and noisy chirrup that urge the poor beast into a faster gait. All the while the little wife sits beside him, as if a twittering sparrow had nestled itself upon the same perch with some grave owl, and sat with him side by side, watching for the big eyes to turn upon her, and chirping some pretty response ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 89, March, 1865 • Various
... read it, read it over and over again, and could hardly think of anything else. As Moore says rather too floridly, but with truth,—"In vain did Burke's genius put forth its superb plumage, glittering all over with the hundred eyes of fancy—the gait of the bird was heavy and awkward, and its voice seemed rather to scare than attract." Burke's gestures were clumsy; he had sonorous but harsh tones; he never lost a strong Irish accent; and his utterance was often hurried ...
— Burke • John Morley
... glance—and, turning anew, I saw Zarmi approaching with her sinuous gait, carrying two glasses and jug upon the ornate tray. These she set down upon the table; then stood spinning the salver cleverly upon the point of her index finger and watching us through ...
— The Hand Of Fu-Manchu - Being a New Phase in the Activities of Fu-Manchu, the Devil Doctor • Sax Rohmer
... is flitting past us! Your own beauty, my fair townswomen, would have beamed upon you, out of my scene. Not a gentleman that walks the street but should have beheld his own face and figure, his gait, the peculiar swing of his arm, and the coat that he put on yesterday. Then, too,—and it is what I chiefly regret,—I had expended a vast deal of light and brilliancy on a representation of the street in its ...
— Main Street - (From: "The Snow Image and Other Twice-Told Tales") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... in his new purchase another stranger arrived, and took up his abode in the best apartments of the house. The new-comer, a man of about fifty years of age, and evidently, from his dress and gait, a sea-faring person, was as reserved and unsocial as his landlord. His name, or at least that which he chose to be known by, was Wilson. He had one child, a daughter, about thirteen years of age, whom he placed at a boarding-school ...
— The Experiences of a Barrister, and Confessions of an Attorney • Samuel Warren
... While thus I write, vast shoals of critics come, And on my verse pronounce their saucy doom; The Muse like some bright country virgin shows Fallen by mishap among a knot of beaux; They, in their lewd and fashionable prate, Rally her dress, her language, and her gait; Spend their base coin before the bashful maid, Current like copper, and as often paid: She, who on shady banks has joy'd to sleep Near better animals, her father's sheep, Shamed and amazed, beholds the chattering ...
— The Poems of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Volume I (of 2) • Jonathan Swift
... darns. The buttons had evidently just been renewed. The coat, buttoned to the chin, showed no linen; and the cravat, of a rusty black, hid the greater part of a false collar. These clothes, worn for many years, smelt of poverty. And yet the lofty air of this mysterious old man, his gait, the thought that dwelt on his brow and was manifest in his eyes, excluded the idea of pauperism. An observer would have hesitated ...
— The Brotherhood of Consolation • Honore de Balzac
... his powers, he is not apt to fill his glass too often. Society, indeed, would hardly tolerate habitual imprudences of that kind, though, in my opinion, the Englishmen now upon the stage could carry off their three bottles, at need, with as steady a gait as any of their forefathers. It is not so very long since the three-bottle heroes sank finally under the table. It may be (at least, I should be glad if it were true) that there was an occult sympathy between our temperance-reform, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, August, 1863, No. 70 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... guessed what he was like; and by means of the verses with which he deluges us, I saw what the poet must be. So well had I pictured to myself all his features and gait that one day, meeting a man in the galleries of the Palace of Justice [footnote: the resort of the best company in those days.], I laid a wager that it must be Trissotin—and ...
— The Learned Women • Moliere (Poquelin)
... the raven hair, Spreading is the parting straight, Mottled the complexion fair, Halting is the youthful gait, Hollow is the laughter free, Spectacled the limpid eye, Little will be left of me In the coming bye and bye! Little will be left of me In the ...
— The Complete Plays of Gilbert and Sullivan - The 14 Gilbert And Sullivan Plays • William Schwenk Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan
... "those cute little steps" it may result in bow legs, and then—pity on him when he grows up. Sometimes flat foot is the result of early urging the child to rest the weight of the body upon the undeveloped arch. A defect in the gait or a pigeon toe is hard to bear later on in life. A certain amount of pigeon-toeing is natural and normal. If the baby is heavy he will not attempt to walk at twelve months. He will very likely wait until fourteen or fifteen months. The lighter-weight children sometimes walk as early as eleven ...
— The Mother and Her Child • William S. Sadler
... came running down among the black-boled trees, a strange, squat, gnomelike man whose gait was as uncouth as his dwarfish figure. He held something in his two hands as he ran, and when he came near he threw this thing with a swift movement up before him, but he did not pause ...
— Jason • Justus Miles Forman
... your will determines, don't you? On the contrary, they swing just as any other pendulums swing, at a fixed rate, determined by their length. You can alter this by muscular power, as you can take hold of the pendulum of a clock and make it move faster or slower; but your ordinary gait is timed by the same mechanism as the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 4, February, 1858 • Various
... the world is full of horses who won't work except with the whip, but that's no reason for using it on those who will. When I get a critter that hogs my good oats and then won't show them in his gait, I get rid of him. He may be all right for a fellow who's doing a peddling business, but I need a little more speed ...
— Old Gorgon Graham - More Letters from a Self-Made Merchant to His Son • George Horace Lorimer
... the less a noble song, and so appropriate is it to the nature of the work it accompanies, to the gait of the oxen, to the peace of the fields, and to the simplicity of the men who sing it, that no genius unfamiliar with the tillage of the earth, and no man except an accomplished laborer of our part of the country, could ...
— The Devil's Pool • George Sand
... these locks in silvery slips, This drooping gait, this altered size: But Spring-tide blossoms on thy lips, And tears take sunshine from thine eyes! Life is but thought: so think I will That Youth ...
— Poems of Coleridge • Coleridge, ed Arthur Symons
... whose gait had become more steady, and in whose rigid eye a thoughtful expression had taken the place of its former vacant gaze. In short, something had manifestly restored to him a more complete command of his mental powers, although he might not have been absolutely sobered. The rest of the party continued ...
— The Pilot • J. Fenimore Cooper
... emergency supply of chocolate sweetmeats; children may sometimes be time-servers, but they do not encourage long accounts. As they approached nearer to the princely dais Lady Barbara stood discreetly aside, and the stolid-faced infant walked forward alone, with staggering but steadfast gait, encouraged by a murmur of elderly approval. Lester, standing in the front row of the onlookers, turned to scan the crowd for the beaming faces of the happy parents. In a side-road which led to the railway station he saw a cab; entering the cab with every appearance of furtive haste ...
— The Chronicles of Clovis • Saki
... they were passing at a lively gait through the picturesquely shaded main street of a small country town and were almost abreast of the only tavern of the place, which wore the appearance of having been recently remodelled and repainted to meet the ...
— The Law-Breakers and Other Stories • Robert Grant
... garment neither was of silk nor say, But painted plumes in goodly order dight, Like as the sun-burnt Indians do array Their tawny bodies in their proudest plight; As those same plumes so seem'd he vain and light, That by his gait might easily appear; For still he far'd as dancing in delight. And in his hand a windy fan did bear That in the idle air he ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... schoolmaster the merriest comrade that ever sat with them over a glass. He had a crack for each of them, a song, a joke, a lively touch that cut and meant no harm. They called him "the little limber Frenchman," in allusion to a peculiarity of gait which in the minds of the heavy-limbed mountaineers was somehow associated with the idea of a ...
— The Shadow of a Crime - A Cumbrian Romance • Hall Caine
... had attracted my attention. He was a tall, pale man, in the decline of life, dressed in a sort of half-uniform; he walked with a stooping gait, and seemed to me (perhaps it was a mere fancy) as much weighed down by care as years. Several times I had seen him going in or coming out of the court that opened two doors above the abbe's. He was unlike most inhabitants of the neighborhood ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848 • Various
... successive movements executed in double time the leading or base unit marches in quick time when not otherwise prescribed; the other units march in double time to their places in the formation ordered and then conform to the gait of the leading or base unit. If marching in double time, the command double time is omitted. The leading or base unit marches in quick time; the other units continue at double time to their places in the ...
— Infantry Drill Regulations, United States Army, 1911 - Corrected to April 15, 1917 (Changes Nos. 1 to 19) • United States War Department
... soon as possible. A fountain visited by newly married couples and their friends, with a restaurant near by, where the bridal party drink the health of the newly married pair, was an object of curiosity. An unsteadiness of gait was obvious in some of the feasters. At one point in the middle of the road a maenad was flinging her arms about and shrieking as if she were just escaped from a madhouse. But the drive in the Bois was what made ...
— Our Hundred Days in Europe • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... like a very big, wicked, black sheep with a pointed nose, making his way down the shore. He shambled along lazily and unconcernedly, as if his bones were loosely tied together in a bag of fur. It was the most indifferent and disconnected gait that I ever saw. Nearer and nearer he sauntered, while we sat as still as if we had been paralyzed. And the gun was in ...
— The Ruling Passion • Henry van Dyke
... blooming, and comely to see. The leddies are a' ga'en wud for the wooer, And yet, ilka e'ening, he leaves them for me. Oh, saft in the gloaming, his love he discloses! And saftly, yestreen, as I milked my cow, He swore that my breath it was sweeter than roses, And a' the gait hame he did naething ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... inquire into these, having no reason to doubt the statement, but I accompanied her on board the Golden Rose, bade her a fond farewell, and bequeathed to her my street apparel and a trifling sum of old Verage's money. In exchange, I donned her bonnet and veil, and adopted her rather awkward gait, and so had the satisfaction of seeing, on my return to terra firma, old Verage gazing enraptured after my Paris bonnet and floating veil as it disappeared with ...
— Madeline Payne, the Detective's Daughter • Lawrence L. Lynch
... peering in from the darkness without, at the light and warmth of the cheerful room. The great, wild, haggard eyes glanced curiously and searchingly around, till they reached the woman's hiding place, and rested upon a form strangely familiar; then, with a slow, shuffling, uncertain gait, Richie Penrose strayed into the room, regardless of those who watched her, and went directly up to the rigid figure, that bore on its white, set features ...
— Clemence - The Schoolmistress of Waveland • Retta Babcock
... waddling gait On a common once was bred, And brainless was his addle pate As the stubble on which he fed; Ambition-fired once on a day He took himself to flight, And in a castle all decay He nestled out of sight. "O why," said he, "should mind like mine "Midst gosling-flock ...
— The Death of Saul and other Eisteddfod Prize Poems and Miscellaneous Verses • J. C. Manning
... imperial necks she walks, a loveling bright, For bride-chambers of kings and emperors bedight. The blossom of her cheek is red as dragon's blood, And all her face is flowered with roses red and white. Slender and sleepy-eyed and languorous of gait, All manner loveliness is in her sweetest sight. The locks upon her brow are like a troubled night, From out of which there shines ...
— The Book Of The Thousand Nights And One Night, Volume I • Anonymous
... you this was my game of pretense?" Gray said, gayly. "Do you really think that an adorable creature whose head is full of girlish notions and youthful ideals could care for the worldly, wicked old Duke of Dallas? I am old, Ma, and I've gone the gait." ...
— Flowing Gold • Rex Beach
... darkness: silent, ghostlike shapes that moved as noiselessly as shadows themselves, vanishing over the open main hatchway,—two score even as he watched. And vague as it all was, he knew that they were no sailors, nor even Mission natives; their headdress and crouching gait betrayed them ...
— Gold Out of Celebes • Aylward Edward Dingle
... must, in your allowance, o'erweigh a whole theatre of others. Oh, there be players that I have seen play—and heard others praise, and that highly—not to speak it profanely, that neither having the accent of Christians, nor the gait of Christian, Pagan, or man, have so strutted, and bellowed, that I have thought some of nature's journeymen had made men, and not made them well, ...
— The Canadian Elocutionist • Anna Kelsey Howard
... that trick of grunting so between his words and at the end of sentences. It was a fine, effective grunt that went well with his menacing utterance, with his heavy, bull-necked frame, his jerky, rolling gait; with his big, seamed face, his steady eyes, and sardonic mouth. But its effect had been long ago discounted by the men. They liked him; Belfast—who was a favourite, and knew it—mimicked him, not quite behind his back. Charley—but with greater caution—imitated ...
— The Nigger Of The "Narcissus" - A Tale Of The Forecastle • Joseph Conrad
... up, and in a gallop, for they are so fresh and clear he has no need to ride slowly. On in the same gait for a stretch of ten miles, which brings him to the tributary stream at the crossing-place. He rides down to the water's edge, there to be sorely puzzled at what he sees—some scores of other horse-tracks ...
— Gaspar the Gaucho - A Story of the Gran Chaco • Mayne Reid |
