"Knee-deep" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the ground which he was traversing, his glance roved with admiration over a wide and diversified extent of country; over a prospect richly wooded and teeming with vegetation; over orchards laden with fruit and knee-deep in grass; over fields of barley bristling with golden ripeness; over distant mills, churning the water into foam, and driving gusts of meal out through the open doorway; over meadows where the sheep cropped the cool ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 62, No. 384, October 1847 • Various
... grew, the birds stirred and twittered, and the marble slipped away from the children like a skin that shrivels in fire, and they were statues no more, but flesh and blood children as they used to be, standing knee-deep in brambles and long coarse grass. There was no smooth lawn, no marble steps, no seven-mooned fish-pond. The dew lay thick on the grass and the brambles, and ...
— The Enchanted Castle • E. Nesbit
... for a minute or two," pleaded the smith, who, with his assistant, was by this time standing nearly knee-deep in water. ...
— The Lighthouse • Robert Ballantyne
... shepherd in Gilead, the wild jasmine and other flowers of whose pastures (the "lilies" of the Song) still excite the admiration of travellers. Laurence Oliphant is lost in delight over the "anemones, cyclamens, asphodels, iris," which burst on his view as he rode "knee-deep through the long, rich, sweet grass, abundantly studded with noble oak and terebinth trees," and all this in Gilead. When, then, the Hebrew poet placed his shepherd and his flocks among the lilies, he was not trying ...
— The Book of Delight and Other Papers • Israel Abrahams
... cooking for the last four days, as no fuel of any sort was to be obtained, and they lived upon the dried meat and a drink of flour and water. The banks of the stream were well wooded, and the animals, as soon as their thirst was quenched, fell to work upon the grass that grew knee-deep ...
— The Golden Canyon - Contents: The Golden Canyon; The Stone Chest • G. A. Henty
... wheels and prancing of horses, and a red pillar of dust hanging over it that partook of both the fiery and cloudy attributes of the Israelitish sign, Aristides exchanged epithets with the driver, and, although standing knee-deep in red dust, felt a thrill of joy in the recognition which no future honor or dignity might ...
— The Luck of Roaring Camp and Other Tales • Bret Harte
... near as possible, I set out for Portici, where I arrived at eight in the evening; from thence to the summit of the mountain the road is long and difficult; having procured a guide about the middle of the distance, we had to climb a mountain of cinders, every step nearly knee-deep; this made it near midnight when we reached the crater, which we approached as near as the heat would permit. The fire of the mountain served us for a beacon, and we set light to our sticks in the lava, which slowly ran ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Issue 266, July 28, 1827 • Various
... stone five hundred feet high. Other crags rose behind these. From under a mossy cliff, huge and green and cool, bubbled a full, clear spring. Wild flowers fringed its banks. Out in the meadow the horses were knee-deep in grass that waved in the ...
— The Light of Western Stars • Zane Grey
... Blake's fireplace," he remarked with a friendly smile, as he glanced back at Lila standing knee-deep amid ...
— The Deliverance; A Romance of the Virginia Tobacco Fields • Ellen Glasgow
... infrequently awake, and, seeing their opportunity, pipe the flakes a lively dance. I am speaking now of the typical, full-born midwinter storm that comes to us from the North or N. N. E., and that piles the landscape knee-deep with snow. Such a storm once came to us the last day of January,—the master-storm of the winter. Previous to that date, we had had but light snow. The spruces had been able to catch it all upon their arms, and keep a circle of bare ground ...
— A Year in the Fields • John Burroughs
... to her own room early that Sunday night. It was a large room, sheer and white, with its wall space broken here and there by cool, calm etchings, cows knee-deep in clover, sunsets on small rivers, old windmills, wheat fields in harvest, hills where the snow lay thick. When she had lit her lamp a rosy light suffused the room through the tinted globe. The pictures on the walls looked so tonefully tender, intimate, in the soft glow, that the girl, noticing ...
— Sally of Missouri • R. E. Young
... the black mass of the regiment, bristling with its bayonets like some huge, porcupine-like creature, crawled steadily onward, filling the air with the shuffling of innumerable feet. The men kept stumbling over each other, and swore viciously in half tones; they slipped in the mud and sank knee-deep into the wheel-tracks filled with cold water. ...
— The Shield • Various
... the State (then a territory) in 1800 say the average depth of snow was never, previous to 1830, more than knee-deep to an ordinary man, while it was breast-high all that winter. It became crusted over, so as, in some cases, to bear teams. Cattle and horses perished, the winter wheat was killed, the meager stock of provisions ran out, and during the three ...
— Lincoln's Yarns and Stories • Alexander K. McClure
... now a climbing fern; now some huge tree-trunk, whose name was only to be guessed at; now a fresh armadillo-burrow; now a parasol-ants' warren, which had to be avoided lest horse and man should sink in it knee-deep, and come out sorely bitten; now some glimpse of sea and forest far below; now we cut a water-vine, and had a long cool drink; now a great moth had to be hunted, if not caught; or a toucan or some other strange bird listened to; or an eagle ...
— At Last • Charles Kingsley
... particle o' luck. But a dry spell, no matter how long, is always broke some time or other by a rain, an' when my luck does come, it's goin' to bust all over my face. Gold will just rain on me. I'll stand in it knee-deep an' then shoulder deep, an' then right up to ...
— The Great Sioux Trail - A Story of Mountain and Plain • Joseph Altsheler
... paths that cut the garden squarely, but thrust across the beds and through the wet, tall, scented herbs, through the night stock and the nicotine and the clusters of phantom white mallow flowers and through the thickets of southern-wood and lavender, and knee-deep across a wide space of mignonette. He came to the great hedge and he thrust his way through it, and though the thorns of the brambles scored him deeply and tore threads from his wonderful suit, and though burs and goosegrass and havers caught and clung to him, ...
— The Door in the Wall And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... crashed down upon her decks and roared off over the rails, the men at the wheel were never less than knee-deep. The sheets strained, the timbers creaked, and the sails roared, and back of all were the wind and the North Atlantic in ...
— The Harbor of Doubt • Frank Williams
... ditches, like long graves dug for the living, where the weary, listless men stood knee-deep in mud, hoping for wounds that would relieve them from the ghastly monotony of their existence; the holes of muddy water where the dead things lay, to which they crept out in the night to wash a little ...
— All Roads Lead to Calvary • Jerome K. Jerome
... wholesome custom in places of difficulty to put the possibility of an accident clearly before the mind, and to decide beforehand what ought to be done should the accident occur. Thus wound up in the present instance, I entered the water. Even where it was not more than knee-deep, its power was manifest. As it rose around me, I sought to split the torrent by presenting a side to it; but the insecurity of the footing enabled it to grasp my loins, twist me fairly round, and bring ...
— Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall
... one of the most reckless and noisy debating-club spouters of the day. In speaking of the Reform Bill at a meeting at a tavern in London, he said, that, if the bill did not pass, he for one should like to "wade the streets of the capital knee-deep in blood." It was consoling to reflect, even at the time, that the atrocious aspiration was mitigated by the reflection that it would not require a deluge of gore to reach the knees of such a Zacchaeus as Roebuck. "Pretty ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. September, 1863, No. LXXI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... ideal of manhood is the altruist or the egoist, the Christ-type or "the great blond beast" of modern philosophic thought, the man supremely indifferent to all but self, glorying in triumph though it be knee-deep in blood. Nor must we moderns pass too hypocritical judgment on the hero of the Drake type. Drake had invested capital in his venture. He had the blessing of Church and State on what he was about to do, and what he did was to take what he had strength and dexterity ...
— Vikings of the Pacific - The Adventures of the Explorers who Came from the West, Eastward • Agnes C. Laut
... bloom of manhood. His casque and armour, gorgeously inlaid with gold, were hewn and battered by a hundred blows; his shield was cloven through and through; his sword broken in the stiffened hand which grasped it still. Cut off from his troop, he had made his last stand beneath the tree, knee-deep in the gay summer flowers, and there he lay, bestrewn, as if by some mockery—or pity—of mother nature, with faded roses, and golden fruit, shaken from off the boughs in that last deadly struggle. Raphael stood and watched ...
— Hypatia - or, New Foes with an Old Face • Charles Kingsley
... wild, and had seen much that was raw and primitive. "You must take into consideration that Vadnie isn't used to such things. Why, great grief! I don't suppose the child ever SAW a dead man before in her life—unless he was laid out in church with flower-anchors piled knee-deep all over him. And to see one shot right before her very eyes—and by the man she expects—or did expect to marry—why, you can't wonder at her looking at it the way she does. It isn't Vadnie's fault. It's the ...
— Good Indian • B. M. Bower
... his hat and went away knee-deep through the windy hill-grasses; white butterflies whirled around him as he strode, head on his breast; the swift hill swallows soared and skimmed along the edges of the smoke as though inviting him. From her rocky height she saw the priest enter ...
— Special Messenger • Robert W. Chambers
... in taking short cuts across the fields when the trenches were knee-deep with mud, was scandalous in the eyes of our neighbors of the Imperial army, as the troops from the British Isles are known. Quite frequently we were subjected to the most scathing tongue-lashing from officers of the old school, but we won the astonished admiration ...
— The Emma Gees • Herbert Wes McBride
... week I did not go to the Dolyhikovs'. I sold my serge suit. I had no work and I was once more half-starved, earning ten or twenty copecks a day, when possible, by disagreeable work. Floundering knee-deep in the mire, putting out all my strength, I tried to drown my memories and to punish myself for all the cheeses and pickles to which I had been treated at the engineer's. Still, no sooner did I go to bed, wet and hungry, than my untamed imagination set to work to evolve wonderful, alluring ...
— The House with the Mezzanine and Other Stories • Anton Tchekoff
... native of a rich pastoral country; very beautiful in running brooks, smooth meadows, and majestic parks; where the fat sleek cattle so celebrated in the London markets, graze knee-deep in luxuriant pastures, and the fallow deer browse and gambol beneath the shadow of majestic oaks through the long bright summer days. She had never seen a mountain before her visit to the North, in her life; had never ...
— Flora Lyndsay - or, Passages in an Eventful Life • Susan Moodie
... the spikes of the plant are as tenacious as fish-hooks. The fibres of the aloe are unusually strong; they make better cordage than hemp, but will not bear the wet so well"—a sight caught my eyes which caused me to stare. A tall young fellow, with his trousers tucked up, was wading knee-deep in the bottoms beside the road. He wore a suit of ...
— Romantic Spain - A Record of Personal Experiences (Vol. II) • John Augustus O'Shea
... dear!" And a low sob came faintly on the ear, Mock'd by the sobbing gust. Down, quick as thought, Into the stream leapt Ambrose, where he caught Fast hold of something—a dark huddled heap— Half in the water, where 'twas scarce knee-deep, For a tall man; and half above it, propp'd By some old ragged side-piles, that had stopt Endways the broken plank, when it gave way With the two little ones that luckless day! "My babes!—my lambkins!" was the father's cry. One little voice made answer—"Here am I!" 'Twas Lizzy's. There she ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXVIII. February, 1843. Vol. LIII. • Various
... Miss Gifford to take pity on my loneliness for part of August. She is not knee-deep in engagements, as you are, my dear, and that precious son of mine; so we are going to amuse each other, and see how much entertainment we can squeeze out ...
— The Independence of Claire • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... little stream, too indolent to pass, Loiters below the cloudy willow boughs, That build amid the glare a shadowy house, And with a Paradisal freshness brims Amid cool-rooted reeds with glossy blade; The antic water-fly above it skims, And cows stand shadow-like in the green shade, Or knee-deep in the ...
— A Jongleur Strayed - Verses on Love and Other Matters Sacred and Profane • Richard Le Gallienne
... distant hills with the dazzling gold and emerald of the wide meadow-tracts they inclose is a striking feature in the landscape. Droves of silver-haired oxen, with their great, dreamy, dark eyes and polished black horns, were tranquilly feeding knee-deep in the lush, juicy grass, and herds of buffaloes, uncouth, but harmless, might be seen pasturing or reposing in the distance. On either side of the way were waving tracts of yellow fleur-de-lis, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IX., March, 1862., No. LIII. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics, • Various
... it would clear up. I had arranged to go for a spin on the bike with some fellows out by Malahide. But the roads must be knee-deep. ...
— A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man • James Joyce
... exchanged in low but excited voices between a young man of about one and twenty, and a lad who was apparently five years his junior, while they waded knee-deep in water among the long, rank grasses and circular pads of water-lilies which border the banks of Squaw Pond, a small lake in the forest region of ...
— Camp and Trail - A Story of the Maine Woods • Isabel Hornibrook
... trotted up behind them Moses and Amandy Hatch, with their farm team, and all the little Hatches,—Eben and George and Judy and Liza. As they jogged along they drank in the fragrance of the dew-washed meadows and the pines, and a great blue heron stood knee-deep on the far side of Deacon Lysander's old mill-pond, watching them ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... the Lesungwe a fine stream near its source, and about forty feet wide and knee-deep, when joined by the Lekudzi, which comes ...
— A Popular Account of Dr. Livingstone's Expedition to the Zambesi and Its Tributaries • David Livingstone
... done. My only wonder was that he had not carried them out. We then proceeded to Bridgeport, where we stopped for the night. From here we took horses and made our way by Jasper and over Waldron's Ridge to Chattanooga. There had been much rain, and the roads were almost impassable from mud, knee-deep in places, and from wash-outs on the mountain sides. I had been on crutches since the time of my fall in New Orleans, and had to be carried over places where it was not safe to cross on horseback. The roads ...
— Personal Memoirs of U. S. Grant, Complete • Ulysses S. Grant
... the despatch should have dashed up at a gallop, clicked his spurs, saluted and begun with "The commanding General's compliments, sir," et cetera. Instead, he dragged a very tired horse up the trail, knee-deep in mud, brought to, standing with a gasp of relief, and said, as he pushed his hat back ...
— The Surrender of Santiago - An Account of the Historic Surrender of Santiago to General - Shafter, July 17, 1898 • Frank Norris
... Bernauer stood a few minutes later on the banks of the Grand Canal and entered, one of the many gondolas waiting there. The moon glanced back from the surface of the water broken into ripples under the oars of the gondoliers; it shone with a magic charm on the old palaces that stood knee-deep in the lagoons, and threw heavy shadows over the narrow water-roads on which the little dark boats glided silently forward. In most of the gondolas coming from the station excited voices and exclamations of delight broke the calm of the moonlit evening as the tourists rejoiced ...
— The Lamp That Went Out • Augusta Groner
... which in many places were blown away by shell-fire, and bending low to save our heads from the snipers' bullets, we gained the communication trenches. Again wading knee-deep in mud and water, we eventually reached ...
— How I Filmed the War - A Record of the Extraordinary Experiences of the Man Who - Filmed the Great Somme Battles, etc. • Lieut. Geoffrey H. Malins
... purpose of increased force, intensity or suggestion are but useless lumber to a mind that has not throbbed in sympathy, scarce knowing why. It is just here that almost all teaching in both literature and its expression fails; there is not enough browsing—knee-deep, waist- deep,—for the pure ...
— The Evolution of Expression Vol. I • Charles Wesley Emerson
... morning dawned a calm, mild day. The snow was knee-deep on the ground and covered the housetops with a thick soft mantle. On how many utterly different scenes the stray sunbeams rested that winter morning. Nearly all the heroines of Miss Teazle's ball were sunk in heavy, tired slumber, in rooms strewn with laces and flowers and ...
— Honor Edgeworth • Vera
... pest of horse-sickness and fly and the calamity of rain. For after twelve hours' rain in that black cotton soil never a wheel could move until a hot sun had dried the surface of the roads again. Roads, too, were mere bush tracks in the forest, knee-deep either in dust or in greasy ...
— Sketches of the East Africa Campaign • Robert Valentine Dolbey
... writing-paper; looking-glasses, saucepans, and coloured prints—all appealed together to the scantily filled purses of the crowds who thronged the pavement. One lusty vagabond stood up in a rickety donkey-cart, knee-deep in apples, selling a great wooden measure full for a penny, and yelling louder than all the rest. "Never was such apples sold in the public streets before! Sweet as flowers, and sound as a bell. Who says the poor ...
— The Fallen Leaves • Wilkie Collins
... we were by now no more than knee-deep in the water, I knew we must be well up towards the headwaters and it came over me that we had not turned off anywhere as sharply as we should had we turned up either the ...
— Andivius Hedulio • Edward Lucas White
... you tiresome child?" Mrs. Caldwell exclaimed, shaking Beth by the arm. Beth only sobbed the more. "Look," said her mother, pointing to a small lake left by the sea on the shore when the tide went out, where the children used to wade knee-deep, or bathe when it was too rough for them to go into the sea; "look, there's the pond, that bright round thing over there. And look below, near the Castle—that great green mound is the giant's grave. ...
— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand
... the river with their arms in their hands. It appears that the enemy had come down in great force to attack the boats from that side; and as the river was there very shallow, and the bottom hard, they could, by wading not more than knee-deep, have approached to within five or six yards of them; but in the first attack they had lost a great many men, and it is supposed that their repeated advances throughout the night were, more to recover their dead and wounded than to make any fresh attack on our compact little force, ...
— The Expedition to Borneo of H.M.S. Dido - For the Suppression of Piracy • Henry Keppel
... coldest morning that I think I ever was abroad in; a chill that pierced into the marrow. The sky was bright and cloudless overhead, and the tops of the trees shone rosily in the sun. But where Silver stood with his lieutenant all was still in shadow, and they waded knee-deep in a low, white vapor that had crawled during the night out of the morass. The chill and the vapor taken together told a poor tale of the island. It was plainly a damp, ...
— Treasure Island • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Robert, a soldier, no speech would pretend, But he ne'er turn'd his back on his foe—or his friend, Said, toss down the whistle, the prize of the field, And, knee-deep in claret, he'd ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... a soldier, no speech would pretend, But he ne'er turn'd his back on his foe, or his friend; Said, "Toss down the Whistle, the prize of the field," And, knee-deep in claret, ...
— Poems And Songs Of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... shore. Men, women, and children ran knee-deep into the water to meet them, and a hundred eager hands were ready to seize their prows and drag them high and dry upon the ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... flowers, and into the others flowers that were beginning to seed, dead flowers, and seed-pods. The garden was quivering in heat and light; rain in the morning had brought out all the snails and all the sweetness, and we were very happy, as we always are, I when I am knee-deep in flowers, and the babies when they can find new sorts of snails to add to their collections. These collections are carried about in cardboard boxes all day, and at night each baby has hers on the chair beside her bed. Sometimes the snails get out and crawl over the beds, but the babies do not ...
— The Solitary Summer • Elizabeth von Arnim
... through avenues of reeds and water-plants, from reach to reach, from pool to pool. Here we had a glimpse of the wide-watered valley rich in grass, here of silent woods, up-piled in the distance, over which quivered the hot summer air. Here a herd of cattle stood knee-deep in the shallow water, lazily twitching their tails and snuffing at the stream. The birds were silent now in the glowing noon; only the reeds shivered and bowed. There, beside a lock with its big, battered timbers, the water poured green ...
— At Large • Arthur Christopher Benson
... their horses caparisoned in Indian style. The Shoshonie beauties also flaunted about in all the colors of the rainbow. Every freak of prodigality was indulged to its fullest extent, and in a little while most of the trappers, having squandered away all their wages, and perhaps run knee-deep in debt, were ready for another hard campaign ...
— The Adventures of Captain Bonneville - Digested From His Journal • Washington Irving
... with a long halter or tethering-rope: thus I ordered the syce and another man to jump into the river and secure the crocodile by a rope fastened round the body behind the fore-legs. This was quickly accomplished, and the men remained knee-deep hauling upon the rope to prevent the stream from carrying away the body. In the mean time Monsoor had mounted my horse and galloped off for assistance to the ...
— Ismailia • Samuel W. Baker
... procure pepper. The port is called Cacchegate. All the country is set with bamboos or canes made sharp at both ends, and driven into the earth, and they can let in the water and drown the country above knee-deep, so that neither men nor horses can pass; and in case of any wars, they poison all the waters. The people are all Gentiles, who kill nothing, having their ears marvellously great and a span long, which they draw out by various devices when young. They have much silk ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume VII • Robert Kerr
... apart. The captives now found, much to their sorrow, that they were to be separated. Father Hennepin was adopted by the chief Aquipaguetin, and was conducted nearly three miles, often through marshes knee-deep with mud and water, till they came to a considerable stream, probably one of the upper tributaries of the St. Francis River. Here five wives of the chief, with their canoes, were obsequiously waiting the approach of their lord and master. A young son of the chief was also with them. The ...
— The Adventures of the Chevalier De La Salle and His Companions, in Their Explorations of the Prairies, Forests, Lakes, and Rivers, of the New World, and Their Interviews with the Savage Tribes, Two Hu • John S. C. Abbott
... arrangements suited his designs; and, presently, though not before their tramp had brought them almost to the Grand Boulevards, found one to his taste, a cheerful and well-lighted establishment occupying a corner, with entrances from both streets. A hedge of forlorn fir-trees knee-deep in wooden tubs guarded its terrasse of round metal tables and spindle-shanked chairs; of which few were occupied. Inside, visible through the wide plate-glass windows, perhaps a dozen patrons sat round half as many tables—no more—idling over ...
— The Lone Wolf - A Melodrama • Louis Joseph Vance
... as I could, and turning at once shoreward. I tried to hurry, but I could not go fast, for the water sucked me back, while Dalfin waded close behind me. Then I heard Bertric shout, and I knew what was coming. The knee-deep water gathered again as the next roller stayed its ebb, swirled and deepened round me, and then with a sudden rush and thunder the wave came in, broke, and for a moment I was buried in the head of it, and driven ...
— A Sea Queen's Sailing • Charles Whistler
... the slope and struck the rank grass of the bottoms,—mountain hay in which the horses stood knee-deep. They made camp at the mouth of a branching canyon, just within the timber. The ranger threw the horses up this side gulch while Harris felled a dead pine and kindled a fire. When the ranger returned he picketed one horse in the heavy grass while Slade pitched Billie's teepee under ...
— The Settling of the Sage • Hal G. Evarts
... until they could no longer drag the buggies through the mud, at which point of discomfiture three saddled ponies and two chairs were waiting to take us through the jungle to the river. We rode along an infamous track, much of it knee-deep in mud, through a green and silent twilight, till we emerged upon something like English park and fox-cover scenery, varied by Malay kampongs under groves of palms. In the full blaze of noon we reached the Linggi police ...
— The Golden Chersonese and the Way Thither • Isabella L. Bird (Mrs. Bishop)
... Through the bush, and brake, and forest, Ran the cunning Pau-Puk-Keewis; 40 Like an antelope he bounded, Till he came unto a streamlet In the middle of the forest, To a streamlet still and tranquil, That had overflowed its margin, 45 To a dam made by the beavers, To a pond of quiet water, Where knee-deep the trees were standing, Where the water-lilies floated, Where the rushes waved and whispered. 50 On the dam stood Pau-Puk-Keewis, On the dam of trunks and branches, Through whose chinks the water spouted, ...
— The Song of Hiawatha - An Epic Poem • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... drifted wickedly down Suffolk Street Christmas morning, pinching noses and ears and cheeks already pinched by hunger and want. It set around the corner into the Pig Market, where the hucksters plodded knee-deep in the drifts, burying the horse-radish man and his machine and coating the bare, plucked breasts of the geese that swung from countless hooks at the corner stand with softer and whiter down than ever grew there. It drove the suspender-man into ...
— Children of the Tenements • Jacob A. Riis
... this that Bud, Nort and Dick were enabled to maintain a footing, though they were knee-deep in water in an instant, and the one remaining lantern had to be held up to prevent it from being engulfed and extinguished ...
— The Boy Ranchers in Camp - or The Water Fight at Diamond X • Willard F. Baker
... with a determination that did not spring altogether from love of the sport. The water of the British Columbian river in which he stood knee-deep was icy cold; his rubber boots were badly ripped and leaky, and he was wet with the drizzle that drove down the lonely valley. It was difficult to reach the slack behind a boulder some distance outshore, and the arm he strained ...
— The Long Portage • Harold Bindloss
... skirted by the dark-flowing Mullet, running to the sea between its tortuous banks: for neighbourhood, Pacton Park is one great attraction—the pretty market-town of Eyemouth another—the everlasting, never-tiring sea a third; and, at high-summer, when the Devonshire lanes are not knee-deep in mire, the nevertheless immeasurably filthy, though picturesque, mud-built village ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... voice grew fainter; but so did the roars of the Firedrake. Presently they sounded more like groans; and at last the Remora slipped up his legs above the knees, and fastened on his very heart of fire. Then the Firedrake stood groaning like a black bull, knee-deep in snow; and still ...
— Prince Prigio - From "His Own Fairy Book" • Andrew Lang
... recommendation the article has, they are obliged to give up the argument in despair—to intrench themselves in the old fortress of such reasoners, and to defend what is, merely because it is. They would stand on the old ways, were they knee-deep in slush; and they would wear the old hat, were it not only of the shape, but of the material and the color ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various
... somewhere in Intentions, are as limited in extent and duration as the forces of physical energy. The little cup that is made to hold so much can hold so much and no more, though all the purple vats of Burgundy be filled with wine to the brim, and the treaders stand knee-deep in the gathered grapes of the stony vineyards of Spain. There is no error more common than that of thinking that those who are the causes or occasions of great tragedies share in the feelings suitable to the tragic mood: no error more fatal than expecting ...
— De Profundis • Oscar Wilde
... thousands of people are passing and repassing up and down, or sitting on every scrap of available building. They flow out over the steps and down into the water itself. They are standing there knee-deep, waist-deep, shoulder-deep, with hardly any clothes on their glistening brown and yellow bodies, diligently throwing the water over themselves, washing their long, straight, black hair in it, or ...
— Round the Wonderful World • G. E. Mitton
... extreme solitude of the region, and scrambling and sliding down a most precipitous pali, hearing a roar like cataract upon cataract, and coming suddenly down upon a sublime and picturesque scene, with only standing room, and that knee-deep in water, between a savage torrent and the cliff. This gulch, called the Scotchman's gulch, I am told, because a Scotchman was drowned there, must be at its crossing three-quarters of a mile inland, and three hundred feet above the sea. ...
— The Hawaiian Archipelago • Isabella L. Bird
... simultaneously to their boats, and among their numbers I descried Montreuil. I set my teeth with a calm and prophetic wrath. But three strokes did my good blade make through that throng before I was by his side; he had at that instant his hold upon the boat's edge, and he stood knee-deep in the dashing waters. I laid my grasp upon his shoulder, and my cheek touched his own as I hissed in his ear, "I am with thee yet!" He turned fiercely; he strove in vain to shake off my grasp. The boat pushed away, and his last hope of escape was over. At this moment the moon broke away from ...
— Devereux, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... the ribs. The spectators saw that the horn penetrated, and the loud scream that came from the elephant, with the quick motions of his trunk and tail, told plainly that he had received a severe wound. Instead of standing any longer in the gorge he rushed forward, and did not stop until he was knee-deep in the lake. Drawing the water up into his trunk, he raised it on high, and pointing it backwards, he discharged large volumes over his body, and upon the spot where he had received the ...
— The Bush Boys - History and Adventures of a Cape Farmer and his Family • Captain Mayne Reid
... only meant the lower cave in which the canoe had formerly been kept. She was soon relieved as to this point, however, but, when a landing was effected, difficulties that seemed to her almost insurmountable presented themselves, for the ground was covered knee-deep with pumice-dust, and the road to the upper cave was blocked by rugged masses of lava and ashes, all ...
— Blown to Bits - The Lonely Man of Rakata, the Malay Archipelago • R.M. Ballantyne
... "It must be knee-deep round the bend," said Chris. "Yes, I'll forgive you, Bertie. I daresay it wasn't altogether your fault, and I expect your head aches, doesn't it? I hope it isn't very bad. Is there a very ...
— The Rocks of Valpre • Ethel May Dell
... Knee-deep, through clover, to the poplar grove, I waded, where my pets were wont to rove: And there I found the foolish mother hen Brooding her chickens underneath a tree, An easy prey for foxes. "Chick-a-dee," Quoth I, while reaching for the downy things That, chirping, peeped ...
— Maurine and Other Poems • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... be seen, and the whole air was filled with myriads of sparks. The fire bore down upon them with resistless fury, and soon the atmosphere was so oppressive that they could scarcely breathe; the cattle galloped down to the lake, their tails in the air, and lowing with fear. There they remained, knee-deep in the water, and ...
— The Settlers in Canada • Frederick Marryat
... passed and, as there was no sign of the ravine, he began to wonder whether he had deviated much from his chosen line. In another few minutes he was getting anxious; and then suddenly he plunged knee-deep into yielding snow. It got deeper at the next step and he knew that he had reached the shallow depression, which had been almost filled up by the drifts. He must cross it, and the effort this entailed left him gasping when he stopped again on the ...
— Ranching for Sylvia • Harold Bindloss
... The bridge was knee-deep in unbroken snow, for no vehicle had crossed since the late storm, and there had been no service at Poussette's church. Crabbe walked on, not without some difficulty, lifting his feet higher and higher as he neared the centre of the structure. Underneath roared and tumbled the savage fall, ...
— Ringfield - A Novel • Susie Frances Harrison
... expensive mode of walking, entering a strange world. Sauntering along the Bowery she turns down Bayard street. Bayard street she finds lined with filthy looking houses, swarming with sickly, ragged, and besotted poor; the street is knee-deep with corrupting mire; carts are tilted here and there at intervals; the very air seems hurling its pestilence into your blood. Ghastly-eyed and squallid children, like ants in quest of food, creep and swarm over the ...
— Justice in the By-Ways - A Tale of Life • F. Colburn Adams
... were the outlines of rounded objects that could not be ocean waves. They were too white for these. They could only be the sand-hills, which they had seen before the going down of the sun. As they were now but knee-deep in the water, and the night was still misty and dark, these objects could be at no great distance, and deep water need no ...
— The Boy Slaves • Mayne Reid
... the year deepened towards winter, the rains came, torrential rains such as we thought we had never known the like of before. We heard that the trenches were flooded, and that our soldiers were eating, sleeping, and fighting ankle-deep (sometimes knee-deep) in water. At night, on going to our white beds at home, we had remorseful visions of those slimy red ruts in Flanders where our boys were lying out in the drenching rain under the heavy darkness of the sky. It was hard to believe that human strength could sustain itself against ...
— The Drama Of Three Hundred & Sixty-Five Days - Scenes In The Great War - 1915 • Hall Caine
... was hurt. He attempted to struggle, but he might as well have hoped to free himself from the hug of a brown bear as to escape from the vice-like grip of his big friend. In another moment Bax was whelmed in spray and knee-deep in rushing water. ...
— The Lifeboat • R.M. Ballantyne
... the deep green of the Canadian forests, denser, darker than a tropic jungle, for this was the land of "plenty waters." The hillsides were carpeted knee-deep with moss, wet to saturation. Out of every gulch came a brawling stream whipped to milk-white frenzy; snow lay heavy upon the higher levels, while now and then from farther inland peered a glacier, like ...
— The Iron Trail • Rex Beach
... six the next morning, we had three hours of the same kind of walking, during which we crossed the river at least thirty or forty times, the water being generally knee-deep. This brought us to a place where the road left the stream, and here we stopped to breakfast. We then had a long walk over the mountain, by a tolerable path, which reached an elevation of about fifteen hundred feet above the sea. Here I noticed one of the smallest ...
— The Malay Archipelago - Volume II. (of II.) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... stream began to rise and the pools to fill up. The frogs sat knee-deep in water, and the fishes swam ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. V, August, 1878, No 10. - Scribner's Illustrated • Various
... the failures of 1825- 26. So the two return to day-labour at fourteenpence a-day. John, in a struggle to do task-work honestly, over-exerts himself, and ruins his digestion for life. Next year he is set in November to clean out a watercourse knee-deep in water; then to take marl from a pit; and then to drain standing water off a swamp during an intense December frost; and finds himself laid down with a three months' cough, and all but sleepless illness, laying the foundation ...
— Literary and General Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley
... lamps into the lower branches of the feathery elms. "Haying" would begin next morning, and he would be wakened by the sharpening of scythes and the click of mowing machines. He would like to work in the Hamilton fields, he thought, knee-deep in daisies,—fields on whose grass he had not stepped since he was a boy just big enough to go behind the cart and "rake after." What an evening it had been! None of them had known it, but as a matter of fact ...
— Mother Carey's Chickens • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... he made any, was lost in a heavy splash as his feet slipped on the slimy rungs, delivering him precipitately into a knee-deep stream of foul water which moved sluggishly through the trench like the current of a half-choked sewer—a circumstance which neither suprised him nor added to his physical discomfort, who could be no more wet or defiled ...
— The False Faces • Vance, Louis Joseph
... chorused defiance, and as many furry forms precipitated themselves upon the dogs which drew the first sled. The door was flung open, and a man, clad in the scarlet tunic of the Northwest Police, waded knee-deep among the furious brutes, calmly and impartially dispensing soothing justice with the butt end of a dog whip. After that the men shook hands; and in this wise was Malemute Kid welcomed to his own ...
— The Son of the Wolf • Jack London
... fog. On such an afternoon some score of members of the High Court of Chancery bar ought to be—as here they are—mistily engaged in one of the ten thousand stages of an endless cause, tripping one another up on slippery precedents, groping knee-deep in technicalities, running their goat-hair and horsehair warded heads against walls of words and making a pretence of equity with serious faces, as players might. On such an afternoon the various solicitors in the cause, some two or ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... windfalls that had to be avoided, and not a rod was there without a fallen tree. The horses, laboring slowly, sometimes sank knee-deep into the brown duff. Gray moss festooned the tree-trunks and an amber-green moss grew thick ...
— The Man of the Forest • Zane Grey
... on the reed-grown mud the doctor's deep-voiced "Thank God!" met with no response. The wild-looking figure scrambled off the boat, and plunged nearly knee-deep into the mud. Those on the bank seemed to concern him not at all, for he turned, as was perhaps his long habit, to ...
— The Heart of Unaga • Ridgwell Cullum
... mountains, which barred our road and extended itself into the sea as Point Longos. The horses climbed it with difficulty, and we found the stream on the other side already risen so high that we rode knee-deep in the water. After sunset we crossed singly, with great loss of time, in a miserable ferry-boat, over the broad mouth of the Pulundaga, where a pleasant road through a forest led us, in fifteen minutes, over the ...
— The Former Philippines thru Foreign Eyes • Fedor Jagor; Tomas de Comyn; Chas. Wilkes; Rudolf Virchow.
... of the fir-wood walling high our red roof Through the long noon coo, crooning through the coo. Loose droop the leaves, and down the sleepy road-way Sometimes pipes a chaffinch; loose droops the blue. Cows flap a slow tail knee-deep in the river, Breathless, given up to sun and gnat and fly. Nowhere is she seen; and if I see her nowhere, Lightning may come, ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... lovely landscapes. The farmhouses were my delight, with thatched roofs, ivy up to the eaves, latticed windows, and stout women with rosy children at the doors. The very cattle looked more tranquil than ours, as they stood knee-deep in clover, and the hens had a contented cluck, as if they never got nervous like Yankee biddies. Such perfect color I never saw, the grass so green, sky so blue, grain so yellow, woods so dark, ...
— Little Women • Louisa May Alcott
... sunset, suggested rather than defined itself. A landscape developed such as Turner in a quiet mood might have evolved, and with it a feeling of fantasy, of remoteness, of pure, true classicism. A note of pipes was in the air, sheep bleated, and Daphne, knee-deep in the grass, surging an answer to the pipes, went ...
— The Spinner's Book of Fiction • Various
... coloured lithographs that had appeared in Christmas numbers of London weekly journals, encased in poverty-stricken frames, hanging from nails ruthlessly driven in above them. The floor was covered with a litter of papers, in some places knee-deep, and in the corner farthest from the forge still stood the bed on which the ...
— The Triumphs of Eugene Valmont • Robert Barr
... an emigrant party on their way to Texas. Their mules had sunk in the mud, ... the wagons were already embedded as far as the axles. The women of the party, lightly clad in cotton, had walked for miles, knee-deep in water, through the brake, exposed to the pitiless pelting of the storm, and were now crouching forlorn and woebegone under the shelter of a tree.... The men were making feeble attempts to light a fire.... 'Colonel,' said one of ...
— American Negro Slavery - A Survey of the Supply, Employment and Control of Negro Labor as Determined by the Plantation Regime • Ulrich Bonnell Phillips
... Wakayoo stood knee-deep in a pool that had formed behind a sand bar, and he was having tremendously good luck. Even as Baree shrank back, his eyes popping at sight of this monster he had seen but once before, in the gloom of night, ...
— Baree, Son of Kazan • James Oliver Curwood
... archers—who wore no armour, and even took off their leathern coats to be more active—cut them to pieces, root and branch. Only three French horsemen got within the stakes, and those were instantly despatched. All this time the dense French army, being in armour, were sinking knee-deep into the mire; while the light English archers, half-naked, were as fresh and active as if they were ...
— A Child's History of England • Charles Dickens
... line by making a little sheltered nook and filling it to the brim with sweetness and roundness and softness. Here all things rested. Even the narrow stream ceased its turbulent down-rush long enough to form a quiet pool. Knee-deep in the water, with drooping head and half-shut eyes, drowsed a ...
— Moon-Face and Other Stories • Jack London
... worked, and greater and greater grew the confusion of the continually appearing boxes and bundles, and, knee-deep, Mother McNeil surveyed them, hands on her hips, and once or twice ...
— How It Happened • Kate Langley Bosher
... hours, slowly and silently, over a plain knee-deep in snow. About half-way across a tinkle of bells is heard, clear and musical, in the distance. Presently a large caravan looms out of the dusk—fifty or sixty camels and half a dozen men. The latter exchange a cheery "Good night" ...
— A Ride to India across Persia and Baluchistan • Harry De Windt
... along the narrow fir-lined path of the forests, which were covered with a heavy layer of snowflakes. Some one struck a red light in the dark, and the pleasant aroma of a good cigarette was wafted toward him. Osip, the sleigh-tender, ran from sleigh to sleigh, knee-deep in snow, telling of the elks that were roaming in the deep snow, nibbling the bark of aspen trees, and of the bears emitting their warm breath through the airholes of their ...
— The Awakening - The Resurrection • Leo Nikoleyevich Tolstoy
... in many places, were already knee-deep; and in some places immense fragments of rock, hurled upon the house-roofs, bore down along the streets masses of confused ruin, which yet more and more, with every hour, obstructed the way; and, as the day advanced, the motion of the earth ...
— The Universal Reciter - 81 Choice Pieces of Rare Poetical Gems • Various
... wished to cut them off completely. There are no pleasant places along its course, no breezy forelands where a man might build a house with a fair outlook over flowing water, no rich and tranquil coves where the cattle would love to graze, or stand knee-deep in the quiet stream. There is no sense of leisure, of refreshment, of kind companionship and friendly music about the Jordan. It is in a hurry and a secret rage. Yet there is something powerful, self-reliant, ...
— Out-of-Doors in the Holy Land - Impressions of Travel in Body and Spirit • Henry Van Dyke
... been thrown over the night before as pickets having been fired on by a detachment of the 'Berkeley Border Guard,' and returning the fire promptly. But this served only to stimulate the already keen energies of the Federal forces, who waded knee-deep through the clear Potomac, and trudged along over the 'sacred soil' with a willingness unchecked by the cold nor'wester that raged on that July morning. That portion of Berkeley County, Virginia, which lies ...
— Continental Monthly - Volume 1 - Issue 3 • Various
... were cloistered openings; sunny little meadows inclining to a spring, where the wild pea-vine, plant beloved of horses, and infallible sign of a rich soil, grew knee-deep. Such an opening they learned, however small, was quaintly dignified by the natives ...
— Two on the Trail - A Story of the Far Northwest • Hulbert Footner
... relief from a background of mossy tree-trunks and rocks. After an hour's walking, made laborious by the spongy character of the ground,—a mixture of loose soil and decaying vegetation, in which one sank knee-deep,—the gleam of the ice began to shimmer through the trees; and issuing from the wood, the party found themselves in front of a glacier wall, stretching across the whole valley and broken into deep rifts, caves, and crevasses of dark blue ice. The glacier was actually about a mile wide; ...
— Louis Agassiz: His Life and Correspondence • Louis Agassiz
... moment, and before he had got fifty yards away was floundering knee-deep in a peat-bog. So much for reckless haste, thought he, as he got out of the bog and ran forward with much more caution. Soon those waiting below heard his clear voice far up the heights. A few minutes ...
— Freaks on the Fells - Three Months' Rustication • R.M. Ballantyne
... the water and saw the animal standing knee-deep, nibbling grass and mud off the bank ...
— Margot Asquith, An Autobiography: Volumes I & II • Margot Asquith
... in the gulches. On the benches, in the snow, holes appeared, as though red-hot stones had been thrown upon the surface. The little settlement by the mouth of the Minook sat insecurely on the boggy hillside, and its inhabitants waded knee-deep in soaking tundra moss ...
— The Magnetic North • Elizabeth Robins (C. E. Raimond)
... opposite side of the burn, which was generally crossed by the aid of stepping-stones, but on the day in question the tops of the stones were barely visible. On crossing the burn the foot of the bride slipped, and the bridegroom, in his eagerness to assist her, slipped also—knee-deep in the water. The raven voice was again heard—it was ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume 2 - Historical, Traditional, and Imaginative • Alexander Leighton
... more peaceful pastimes as well—several days' fishing, enchanting beyond the power of language to describe. The clear trout-stream meandering through the rich water-meadows; the herds of cattle standing knee-deep in the grass, lazily chewing the cud and switching their tails at the cloud of flies; the birds and wild creatures haunting the streamside; the long dreamy hours of gentle sport, had opened up to Dickie a whole new world of romance. His donkey-chair had been left at the yellow-washed mill beneath ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... in depth from a few inches to three of four feet. Cold winds blew, sometimes with spits of snow and dashes of sleet, while thin ice formed on the ponds and sluggish streams. By day progress meant wading ankle-deep, knee-deep, breast-deep, with an occasional spurt of swimming. By night the brave fellows had to sleep, if sleep they could, on the cold ground in soaked clothing under water-heavy blankets. They flung the leagues behind them, however, cheerfully ...
— Alice of Old Vincennes • Maurice Thompson
... himself in a strange country. The little stream down which he had been traveling had become a river. There were houses here and there on the shores, cultivated fields and pasture-lands, and in some places cattle browsed on the banks, or stood knee-deep in ...
— How Sammy Went to Coral-Land • Emily Paret Atwater
... Rebecca, in which, after nineteen days of sea-sickness and miserable tossing in the strait, he succeeded in entering Port Phillip on the 29th of May, 1835. Next morning he landed near Geelong and walked to the top of the Barrabool Hills, wading most of the way through grass knee-deep. On the following day he went in search of the aboriginals, and met a party of about twenty women, together with a number of children. With these he soon contrived to be on friendly terms; and after he had distributed among them ...
— History of Australia and New Zealand - From 1606 to 1890 • Alexander Sutherland
... great is the interest which men, even upright and honorable men, take in the aims they follow, that they believe it possible to wade knee-deep through mud, and then ascend to the temple of fame without dragging the mud with them, and befouling ...
— An American Politician • F. Marion Crawford
... a sea of shallow mist was rolling; and the trees in the valley, like browsing cattle, stood knee-deep in whiteness, with all the air above them wan from an innumerable rain as of moondust, falling into that white sea. Then the moon passed behind the lime-tree, so that a great lighted Chinese lantern seemed to hang blue-black ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... miniature cliffs overhanging some portions of the brook's-course. Gray lichens and green mosses grew on these rocks, and belts of wild flag and sedges surrounded their base. The cows, in a warm day, used to stand knee-deep there, ...
— Between Whiles • Helen Hunt Jackson
... waded through the water knee-deep to shore. The wreckage lay a hundred yards further up, on ground quite twenty feet higher than that on which they were standing. The bales were all marked with the ship's name. There were no signs of casks or boxes, these had doubtless been smashed into splinters. Among the wreckage ...
— With Cochrane the Dauntless • George Alfred Henty
... above six miles: but it takes them all that night and all next day. Such a march as might fill the heart with pity. Oh, ye Rutowskis, Bruhls, though never so decorated by twelve tailors, what a sight ye are at the head of men! Dark night, wild raging weather, labyrinthic roads worn knee-deep. It is broad daylight, Wednesday, 13th, and only the vanguard is yet got across, trailing a couple of cannons; and splashes about, endeavoring to take rank there, in spite of wet and hunger; rain still ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XVII. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—The Seven-Years War: First Campaign—1756-1757. • Thomas Carlyle
... still there—I have bought it for myself now,—it is a little stone hut of three rooms,—and another one about a mile off where he took my mother to live, and where I came into the world!—I have bought that too. Yes—I felt a great thrill of happiness when I stood there knee-deep among the heather, my father clasping my hand, and looking, with me, on those early scenes of his boyhood when he had scarcely a penny to call his own! Yet HE was sad!—very sad! and told me then that he would give all his riches ...
— The Secret Power • Marie Corelli
... was no more afraid of the weather than he was of anything else. Day after day he went out with his gun and his dog, to fight his way for miles through the drifts, up and down hill, over the open moor where the snow was not knee-deep, under the giant trees from which great lumps of it fell now and then upon his fur cap and grizzled hair, down into the dells and gorges where it was nearly up to his neck, and where his sturdy dog struggled wildly through the passage his ...
— Greifenstein • F. Marion Crawford
... weeds), seem to flourish best away from home; others die under the most careful transplanting. Some are lovers of the open, and cannot be too much in the sun; others lurk in deep woods, under the triple shadow of tree and bush and fern. Some take to sandy hill-tops; others must stand knee-deep in water. One insists upon the richest of meadow loam; another is content with the face of a rock. We may say of them as truly as of ourselves, De gustibus non est disputandum. Otherwise, how would the earth ever be ...
— The Foot-path Way • Bradford Torrey
... greens. The plant grows about two feet high, and has an arrow-shaped leaf larger than one's hand. Like rice, it grows in shallow pools of water, and a patch of it looks like an inundated garden. As we passed along we saw half-clad natives standing knee-deep in mud and water pulling the full-grown plants or putting in young ones. Reaching higher ground, we cantered along a hard, smooth road bordered with short green grass. On either side were dwellings of wood surrounded by broad-leafed banana trees, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 26, October, 1880 • Various
... Baltimore, I found the place knee-deep in mud and slush and half-melted snow. It was then raining hard,—raining dirt, not water, as it sometimes does. Worse weather for soldiers out in tents could not be imagined—nor for men who were not soldiers, but who, nevertheless, were compelled to leave ...
— Volume 2 • Anthony Trollope
... saw me, he cried out, "Are you, sir, the young Frenchman who is expected at Fanchette's, and to whom I have been ordered to give these papers?" So saying, he jumped out of the boat, and, wading knee-deep through the water, handed me a thick letter. I felt by its weight that it was an enclosure containing many others. I hastily tore open the first cover, and read indistinctly in the dim moonlight a note from my friend L—-, dated that same morning from Chambery. ...
— Raphael - Pages Of The Book Of Life At Twenty • Alphonse de Lamartine
... for family reading, whereas 'Rasselas' might be a textbook for young ladies studying English in a convent. 'Candide' is a marvel of clearness and vivacity; whereas to read 'Rasselas' is about as exhilarating as to wade knee-deep through a sandy desert. Voltaire and Johnson, however, the great sceptic and the last of the true old Tories, coincide pretty well in their view of the world, and in the remedy which they suggest. The world is, they ...
— Hours in a Library - New Edition, with Additions. Vol. II (of 3) • Leslie Stephen
... the skin, knee-deep in water, the men stood herded together like sheep in a pen. Their blankets were awash and floated about, tangling their legs in the miniature lake that could not find rapid enough exit through the doorway. They could ...
— The Golden Woman - A Story of the Montana Hills • Ridgwell Cullum
... itself between banks of splintered rock and over broad slabs of marble, bubbling here and there about the roots of large-leaved water-flowers, and catching the mirrored moon of Aklis in whirls, breaking it in lances. Then they waded into the water knee-deep, and the two Genii seized hold of a great slab of marble in the middle of the water, and under was a hollow brimmed with the brook, that the brook partly filled and flowed over. Then the Genii said to Abarak, 'Plunge!' and they said the same to ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... billets and Transport were at Vieille Chapelle. The field where the latter had their lines was nothing but a mass of mud, in most places knee-deep. The Transport at this time shewed remarkable activity, limbers going backwards and forwards all day to Lacouture on some mysterious duty, which was by no means unconnected with the excitement which arose in "A" Branch of Divisional Headquarters towards the end of our stay, ...
— The Sherwood Foresters in the Great War 1914 - 1919 - History of the 1/8th Battalion • W.C.C. Weetman
... the wide-spreading oaks of your chateaux in Touraine and Beauce, or from the safe haven of a Normandy fishing village; while we, accompanied it is true by your most fervent prayers, took our turn at mounting guard, on the fortifications during the bitter cold nights, or knee-deep in the mud of the trenches. However, I do not blame those who sought safety in flight; each person is free to do as he pleases; what I object to is your coming back and saying, "During seven or eight months you have ...
— Paris under the Commune • John Leighton
... left. Now, if you have ever been in a beech wood, you must remember that winter and summer the ground is covered with the old dead brown leaves that have fallen from the trees. So thick they lie, that in some places you can stand knee-deep in them, especially if there are any hollows into which they have been drifted by the wind; this particular wood was full of such hollows, some of them wide and long enough for a tall man to lie down in, and Frank knew exactly where to find ...
— Our Frank - and other stories • Amy Walton
... the stretch of marsh between the peninsula and the cove, alternately walking on soft springy ground above a bed of coralline limestone and wading knee-deep along the watercourse, they emerged upon the left bank of the cove. The two smaller cabins were not more than twenty paces distant, and between them was a plank bridge rudely built in the form of a trestle. Dave and Billy ...
— The Boy Scouts on Picket Duty • Robert Shaler
... ice and snow. During the progress of the journey, a warm current came sweeping up from the south, melted the ice, flooded the marshes, and for four days the overburdened and weary travellers struggled on, knee-deep in mud and water and slush. Without experience, a lively imagination alone can picture the toil, suffering, and exposure of a journey through the tangled forests and half-submerged bogs and marshes of Canada, in the most ...
— Voyages of Samuel de Champlain, Vol. 1 • Samuel de Champlain
... the dogs. The inns are such hobgoblin places, that they are infinitely more attractive and amusing than the best hotels in Paris. Here is one near Valmontone (that is Valmontone the round, walled town on the mount opposite), which is approached by a quagmire almost knee-deep. There is a wild colonnade below, and a dark yard full of empty stables and lofts, and a great long kitchen with a great long bench and a great long form, where a party of travellers, with two priests among them, are crowding round the fire while their supper is cooking. Above ...
— Pictures from Italy • Charles Dickens
... students of the Military College formed a large part of the scanty audience, and fired with the beauty and talent of the young actress, they sallied forth between the acts and bought up all the bouquets in the quarter. The final act of "Evadne" was played almost knee-deep in flowers, and that night Mary Anderson was compelled to hire a wagon to carry home to her hotel the floral offerings of her martial admirers. General and Mrs. Tom Thumb occupied the stage box on one of the early nights of the engagement, and the fame of the beautiful young ...
— Mary Anderson • J. M. Farrar
... a gentle slope led down to a dark break in the desert, the rout became a stampede. Left and right flanks swung round, the line lengthened, and round the struggling horses, knee-deep in woolly backs, split the streams to flow together beyond in one resistless river of sheep. Mescal forced Bolly out of danger; Dave escaped the right flank, August and Hare swept on with the flood, till the horses, sighting the dark canyon, ...
— The Heritage of the Desert • Zane Grey
... was sent back to Division Head-quarters at Q— with information the Colonel did not care to commit to paper. He set off at ten o'clock, with Sergeant Hicks for escort. There had been two days of rain, and the communication trenches were almost knee-deep in water. About half a mile back of the front line, the two men crawled out of the ditch and went on above ground. There was very little shelling along the front that night. When a flare went up, they dropped and lay on their ...
— One of Ours • Willa Cather
... gods whom I had worshipped sat, not in statue, but in substance, along its radiating tables, or trod its noiseless floors. Half the literature of our language flows from thence. One may see at a glance grave naturalists knee-deep in ichthyological tomes, or buzzing over entomology; pale zealots copying Arabic characters, with the end to rebuild Bethlehem or the ruins of Mecca; biographers gloating over some rare original letter; periodical ...
— Campaigns of a Non-Combatant, - and His Romaunt Abroad During the War • George Alfred Townsend
... here across this particular meadow of Flanders. 'How far?' I ask. '180 yards,' says my guide. 'Pop!' remarks a third person just in front. 'A sniper,' says my guide; 'take a look through the periscope.' I do so. There is some rusty wire before me, then a field sloping slightly upwards with knee-deep grass, then rusty wire again, and a red line of broken earth. There is not a sign of movement, but sharp eyes are always watching us, even as these crouching soldiers around me are watching them. There are dead Germans in the grass before us. You need ...
— A Visit to Three Fronts • Arthur Conan Doyle
... second, from one way of looking at it, and a very long time from another; and all the time I was standing there, knee-deep in the water, with Virginia's arms about my neck, her cheek almost against mine, one of my arms about her waist and the other under the hollows of her knees—and I had made no ...
— Vandemark's Folly • Herbert Quick
... being pleasant in consequence of a refreshing shower. Visited the governor's house, a miserable-looking old building, such as is found in the suburbs of towns. Crossed the great Okaw or Kaskaskia river. The water not knee-deep and about 100 yards wide. Visited the lieutenant-governor's house, which is situated across this stream, opposite and in sight of Kaskaskia. This is the best-looking house in the place. It is painted white, but stands alone, without garden, ...
— Narrative of Richard Lee Mason in the Pioneer West, 1819 • Richard Lee Mason
... lay down to it, until at every lee-roll the muzzles of the quarter-deck guns were buried in the boiling yeast that foamed and swirled giddily past to leeward, and sometimes surged in through the ports, filling the lee-scuppers knee-deep with water. And whereas we had before ridden buoyantly over the head seas, with nothing worse than an occasional shower of spray flying in over the weather cathead, the frigate now plunged her bows savagely right into the very heart of them, quivering to her keel with the violence of the shock, raising ...
— A Middy of the King - A Romance of the Old British Navy • Harry Collingwood
... knew the woods by heart. The mysterious line beyond which scarcely an artu tree was to be found. The long strip of mammee apple—a regular sheet of it a hundred yards broad, and reaching from the middle of the island right down to the lagoon. The clearings, some almost circular where the ferns grew knee-deep. Then he ...
— The Blue Lagoon - A Romance • H. de Vere Stacpoole
... Mrs. Bute thought it was her duty to inform the physician, and the apothecary, and the dame-de-compagnie, and the domestics, that Miss Crawley was in a most critical state, and that they were to act accordingly. She had the street laid knee-deep with straw; and the knocker put by with Mr. Bowls's plate. She insisted that the Doctor should call twice a day; and deluged her patient with draughts every two hours. When anybody entered the room, she uttered a shshshsh so sibilant and ominous, ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... each gun. Three of these were sixty-eight-pounder shell guns and three thirty-two-pounder solid-shot guns. Each of these guns weighed about three tons. Now each of these had to be dragged through the loose sand, almost knee-deep, for something like three miles before it could be put in the position the engineers had assigned to it. This battery, by the way, was protected by bags of sand piled on each other, and this was the first time that this device had been used. When the battery was in position the officers and ...
— The Naval History of the United States - Volume 2 (of 2) • Willis J. Abbot
... contradicting it was that a literal-minded fellow here and there shot the creditor who asked for payment of the coat, or the pig, or the meal. For all this delusion Patrick was sorry. He was sorry to hear Protestant shopmen wishing for the day when Dublin streets would be knee-deep in Catholic blood, and to hear Catholic shopmen reciprocating the wish in regard to Protestant blood. He was anxious to make me understand that he had no such notions, and that he even thought O'Connell mistaken in appearing to countenance such mistakes. But still he, Patrick, was a Repealer; ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 47, September, 1861 • Various
... more practical schemes for their guidance and their good, and fewer prayer-meetings and sing-songs from the hymnals. For, to my mind, the very basis of all real religion is a practical basis. It is useless to live with, as it were, your head in Heaven if you stand knee-deep in filth. Of what good is your own personal salvation if you have not done your best to make the world better and happier for others? To worry about their salvation is less than useless—if that be possible. Providing they have something to live for, something to make life worth ...
— Over the Fireside with Silent Friends • Richard King
... older woman rocking in her small splint chair by the rose-draped window, her thoughts dwelling on long dark green grass, the shade of elms, and cows knee-deep in river-shallows; this was California—hot, arid, tedious in endless sunlight—a place ...
— The Forerunner, Volume 1 (1909-1910) • Charlotte Perkins Gilman
... of quiet tilth and cote, Of little woods and streams, Of gentle skies and clouds afloat, And swift sun-gleams! A land where knee-deep cattle keep, Chewing as they stand; Of hillsides murmurous with sheep— That is my ...
— The Village Wife's Lament • Maurice Hewlett
... sure that there were faint hearts among them when they felt the cold water and knew that there were miles of it to cross, here ankle- or knee-deep, there waist-deep. But they had known this when they started, and they were not the men to turn back. At Colonel Clark's cheery word of command they plunged in and began ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 2 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... edges. To be beautiful is not amiss, But to be loved is more than this; And who more sought than I, By all that run or swim or crawl or fly? Sober shell-fish and frivolous gnats, Tawny-eyed water-rats; The poet with rippling rhymes so fluent, Boys with boats playing truant, Cattle wading knee-deep for water; And the flower-plucking parson's daughter. Down in my depths dwell creeping things Who rise from my bosom on rainbow wings, For—too swift for a school-boy's prize— Hither and thither above me dart the prismatic-hued ...
— Verses for Children - and Songs for Music • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... Sauntering between plantations of young eucalyptus, they came to the arched stone bridge. They leaned on the parapet, looking down at the marshy stream beneath and at the three irises Kerr had remarked, knee-deep in swamp ground. ...
— The Coast of Chance • Esther Chamberlain
... bent over to form a dome, thatched with reeds and grass. About the hut lie baskets and blankets, a stone metate, other household articles, all of the best quality; in front is a clear space overflowing with knee-deep many-colored bloom of the California spring. A little bank that runs from the wickiup to the toyon bushes is covered with white forget-me-nots. The hearth-fire between two stones is quite out, but the deerskin that screens the opening of the hut ...
— The Arrow-Maker - A Drama in Three Acts • Mary Austin
... and a mansion, and a park, and a title, how you could play the exclusive, maintain the rights of your class, train your tenantry in habits of respect to the peerage, oppose at every step the advancing power of the people, support your rotten order, and be ready for its sake to wade knee-deep in churls' blood; as it is, you've no power; you can do nothing; you're wrecked and stranded on the shores of commerce; forced into collision with practical men, with whom you cannot cope, for ...
— The Professor • (AKA Charlotte Bronte) Currer Bell
... of the 27th of September a heavy snow-storm set in, and the next morning the snow was knee-deep on the level ice. The storm continued until during the night of the 29th. The snow was very deep, but the winter winds soon blew it around and packed it down so as to be almost solid. By the 14th of October the sledging ...
— Schwatka's Search • William H. Gilder
... eye was the logs of which the huts were constructed. Nevertheless the scene was to a certain extent enlivened by the spectacle of two peasant women who, with clothes picturesquely tucked up, were wading knee-deep in the pond and dragging behind them, with wooden handles, a ragged fishing-net, in the meshes of which two crawfish and a roach with glistening scales were entangled. The women appeared to have cause of dispute between themselves—to be rating one another ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... again, handing the goblet back to his corps of three carriers, and bowed and grinned at his worshippers behind him, surging forward, and at some others standing under the bridge, ankle-deep, shin-deep, even knee-deep in the rushing water, craning their necks upward to get a really good view of their God as he passed over. There were over a hundred of ...
— Pagan Passions • Gordon Randall Garrett
... from the river, and following the course of a small stream again climbed heavily up the slope. Our horses were now so weak we could only climb a few rods at a time without rest. But at last, just as night began to fall, we came upon a splendid patch of bluejoint, knee-deep and rich. It was high on the mountain side, on a slope so steep that the horses could not lie down, so steep that it was almost impossible to set our tent. We could not persuade ourselves to pass it, however, and so made ...
— The Trail of the Goldseekers - A Record of Travel in Prose and Verse • Hamlin Garland
... to her feet. A bundle, which, during the excitement, lay on her lap, broke open; and my mother-in-law, like Cleopatra in her roses, stood knee-deep in baby-clothes. In a moment the truth burst upon me. I was unmanned, limp, and disjointed. The shock was too much! A ...
— Trifles for the Christmas Holidays • H. S. Armstrong |
