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Outskirts   /ˈaʊtskˌərts/   Listen
Outskirts

noun
1.
Outlying areas (as of a city or town).  "They mingled in the outskirts of the crowd"






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Outskirts" Quotes from Famous Books



... the hut had arrived. The question of a lot upon which to place it was most important. The billeting officers stated that none could be had within the town and insisted that the hut would have to be placed in an inaccessible spot on the outskirts of the town, but Colonel Barker asked the General if he would mind his looking about himself and he readily assented. The indomitable Barker, true to the "never-say-die" slogan of the Salvation Army, went out and found a splendid lot on the main street in the heart of the ...
— The War Romance of the Salvation Army • Evangeline Booth and Grace Livingston Hill

... walking to and fro. It was dull work, this monotonous tramp. Donald looked up at the canopy of stars and thought he had never seen so many. He yawned, and yawned a second time. Still he kept up his even jog along the outskirts of ...
— The Story of Wool • Sara Ware Bassett

... had a good rest, and he was fighting for his head before they were clear of the outskirts of Pendleton. When the road emerged once more into the deep woods the boy gave him the rein. It was well past midnight now, and he wished to reach the army ...
— The Sword of Antietam • Joseph A. Altsheler

... pp. 712, 726. For this he had Halleck's authority, in view of the danger of cavalry raids into the city. Id., p. 722.] General McClellan had established his headquarters on Seminary Ridge beyond the northern outskirts of Alexandria, and after putting my command in motion I rode there to get fuller instructions from him as to the duty assigned me. His tents were pitched in a high airy situation looking toward the Potomac on the east; indeed he had found them a little too airy in the thunder-squall of the previous ...
— Military Reminiscences of the Civil War V1 • Jacob Dolson Cox

... of the platform, Mrs. Jenkins, in clear, forceful tones which penetrated to the very outskirts of the crowd, delivered without manuscript or notes an address which in logic and eloquence has rarely if ever been equaled by any woman in the land.... At its conclusion she received an ovation and was presented with a ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume IV • Various

... from the tramcar at Hampton, and look about on the outskirts of the village for 'a small old-fashioned brick house, abutting on the road, but looking from its front windows on to a lawn and garden, which stretched down to the river'. Surbiton Cottage it is called. Let us peep in at that merry, happy family party; and laugh at Captain ...
— The Three Clerks • Anthony Trollope

... feathery leaves on short stalks, that covered the ground in the morass like a carpet. Rosa was going to wind it round a rope; she had made many wreaths like that for the Holy Virgin's altar at Starawie['s] and for the Bo[^z]a m[,e]ka, which stood on the outskirts of her father's field, and they used to look lovely when she stuck a few flowers among the moss. True, she had no more flowers, for the few that she once had in the little garden behind the palings had lived only a very short time; they had soon been choked ...
— Absolution • Clara Viebig

... from which they cut their fuel, was at some distance from the castle, on the outskirts of the hill-farm. It was the nearest moss to the glen, and the old chief, when he parted with so much of the land, took care to except it, knowing well that his remaining people could not without it live through a winter. But as, of course, his brother, ...
— What's Mine's Mine • George MacDonald

... afraid beneath that overpowering serenity, watched him turn his head slowly from side to side with a "majestical countenance," as his enemies confessed, as if he were on the point of speaking. Silence seemed to radiate out from him, spreading like a ripple, outwards, until the furthest outskirts of that huge crowd was motionless and quiet; and then without apparent effort, his voice began ...
— By What Authority? • Robert Hugh Benson

... Yorkshire and a spirit, I suppose, characteristic of Suburbia, and on the outskirts of certain large manufacturing towns there must exist a formidable blending of these two. To express the double flavour of this essence requires, I should say, a subtler and more elaborate method than Mr. W. RILEY has attempted ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, August 25th, 1920 • Various

... a few houses, a sawmill, and great spaces covered with snow. To one of these houses, on the outskirts of the village, Cousin Abijah drove. The house was a two-storied old farmhouse, innocent of paint or blind. There was not a fence round, or a tree near it. On one side was a wooden well-top, with a long arm holding ...
— Miss Ashton's New Pupil - A School Girl's Story • Mrs. S. S. Robbins

... a man of impulse, a poet. He got off the train at the next station, bought a piece of meat at a butcher shop, and captured the vagrant on the outskirts of the town. The return trip was made in the baggage car, and so Wolf came a second time to the mountain cottage. Here he was tied up for a week and made love to by the man and woman. But it was very circumspect love-making. Remote ...
— Brown Wolf and Other Jack London Stories - Chosen and Edited By Franklin K. Mathiews • Jack London

... the outskirts of the town. It was a fine old plantation house, built in colonial times, with a stately colonnade, wide verandas, and long windows with Venetian blinds. It was painted white, and stood back several rods from the street, in a charming ...
— The House Behind the Cedars • Charles W. Chesnutt

... who told me the story, Christopher Swetman's house, on the outskirts of King's-Hintock village, was in those days larger and better kept than when, many years later, it was sold to the lord of the manor adjoining; after having been in the Swetman family, as one may ...
— A Changed Man and Other Tales • Thomas Hardy

... saw that upon the outskirts of the crowd these persons always lingered, waiting patiently till the coarse and strong were served. Outstretched upon the benches near the walls, and resting upon their bundles, were eight or ten sick men, with the fever upon them, waiting for the van which was to ...
— The Old Homestead • Ann S. Stephens

... behaviour of M. Swann the elder upon the death of his wife, by whose bedside he had watched day and night. My grandfather, who had not seen him for a long time, hastened to join him at the Swanns' family property on the outskirts of Combray, and managed to entice him for a moment, weeping profusely, out of the death-chamber, so that he should not be present when the body was laid in its coffin. They took a turn or two in the park, where there was a little sunshine. Suddenly M. Swann seized my grandfather by the arm and ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust

... see the gypsy camp below them, in an open glade by the roadside. It was as the Wilbur twin had said: there were gayly-painted wagons—houses on wheels—and a campfire and tethered horses and the lolling gypsies themselves. About the outskirts loafed a dozen or so of the less socially eligible of Newbern. Above a fire at the camp centre a kettle simmered on its pothook, being stirred at this moment by a brown and aged crone in frivolous-patterned calico, who wore gold hoops in her ears and bangles at her neck and bracelets of silver on ...
— The Wrong Twin • Harry Leon Wilson

... the scene of this poem is laid, is situated amid beautiful scenery on the outskirts of the Schwarzwald (Black Forest), on the right bank of the Rhine, and on the road from Basel to Constance, about 30 miles above the former place. The town owes its origin to the settlement of St. Fridolinus (as related in the Third Part of the poem), who came here from Ireland ...
— The Trumpeter of Saekkingen - A Song from the Upper Rhine. • Joseph Victor von Scheffel

... often ridden there in his youth on secret visits to a soldier's wife; but now he would not go to her; no, not for anything in the world! The village lay pressed to the earth and was ornamented with numerous stacks which smelt of straw and dung. On its outskirts the Prince was met by a pack of baying dogs, who flitted over the ground like dark, ghostly shadows as they leapt ...
— Tales of the Wilderness • Boris Pilniak

... reached the village of Sutthun (King's Sutton), where they perceived a great multitude of people collected around a well at the outskirts ...
— Edwy the Fair or the First Chronicle of Aescendune • A. D. Crake

... talented agent of the German Secret Service. Months before the outbreak of war, he had been ordered to report upon the defences of Devonport, and in order to do this he had bought a practice on the outskirts of Plymouth. Upon the commencement of hostilities, he was detailed to keep under observation the military preparations of the Duchy of Cornwall, and also to take necessary steps for communicating with German submarines that, under von Tirpitz's prearranged ...
— The Submarine Hunters - A Story of the Naval Patrol Work in the Great War • Percy F. Westerman

... a lad when we went to live in that odd little house. You remember it stood in the outskirts of Rakos, near the new cemetery. It stood on a deep lot, and was roughly boarded on the side which looked on the highway. You remember that on the first floor, next the street, were the room of our father, the dining room, ...
— The Continental Classics, Volume XVIII., Mystery Tales • Various

... of spirit," replied Nomerfide, "such, too, as have long been ill, and in their extreme bodily or spiritual pain have come to think lightly of death and find its approach too slow, such, I say, as these have passed through the outskirts of death and will tell you of the hostels where they knew more lamentation than rest. The lady of the story could not help losing her husband through death, but her brother's wrath preserved her from seeing him a long time sick or distressed in mind. And turning the gladness that she had had ...
— The Tales Of The Heptameron, Vol. IV. (of V.) • Margaret, Queen Of Navarre

... unexpected;—which made the name of Elbingerode famous for eight months to come. Of which let us hastily give the bare facts, Fancy making of them what she can. Was Monseigneur aware that this Elbingerode, with a patch of territory round it, is Hanoverian ground; one of those distracted patches or ragged outskirts frequent in the German map? Prussia is not yet, and Hessen-Cassel has ceased to be. Undoubtedly Hanoverian! Apparently the Landgraf and Monseigneur had not thought of that. But Munchhausen of Hanover, spies informing him, had. The Bailiff (Vogt, AdVOCATus) has gathered twenty JAGER ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XV. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle

... lived in Holborn, and had there a large botanic garden. Holborn was then in the outskirts of the town on that side. Richard the Third asked the Bishop of Ely to send for some of the good strawberries which he heard the bishop had in his garden ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 17, - Issue 479, March 5, 1831 • Various

... book that the sweep ascended the pulpit steps. He was present, however, in the clerical habiliments of his order . . . I may also add that among the many who were present at those sad Sunday orgies the majority were non-residents, and came from those moorland fastnesses on the outskirts of the parish locally designated as 'ovver th' steyres,' one stage more remote than Haworth ...
— The Life of Charlotte Bronte - Volume 1 • Elizabeth Gaskell

... not asked to the party I should hope you'd have the good taste to keep out of the way of it. Hang round outside! You ought to be ashamed even to suggest such a thing," said Mrs. McGregor with scorn. "No, you'll do no lingering on the outskirts of Mr. John's reception, you can make up your mind to that. You'll stay politely at home as the rest of us plan to do and keep under cover so folks won't be asking you why you're not up at Coulters. I've some regard for the family dignity if you haven't. And since you'll ...
— Carl and the Cotton Gin • Sara Ware Bassett

... further split up into two or three different sects, but the main sect was that of the Independents. They, in fact, dominated every other. There was a small Baptist community, and the Wesleyans had a new red-brick chapel in the outskirts; but for some reason or other the Independents were really the Dissenters, and until the "cause" had dwindled, as before observed, all the Dissenters of any note were to be found on Sunday in their meeting-house in ...
— The Autobiography of Mark Rutherford • Mark Rutherford

... concentrated upon the burning tower above. The crowd, rushing up there, left the plaza momentarily deserted. Georg and Maida crossed it at a run, scurried like frightened rabbits through a tunnel arcade, down a lower cross-street, and came at last unmolested to the outskirts of the city. ...
— Tarrano the Conqueror • Raymond King Cummings

... for not wishing to attract attention, I jostled against as few passengers as possible, and did my utmost to keep clear of inquisitive dogs or arrogant horses, so that I met with few obstacles, and before mid-day arrived safely at the outskirts of London. Then my way became much plainer; a country road, with hedges and fields on each side, was easily tracked; and I could hold up my head in comfort as I ran along at a good pace, instead of keeping my nose close to the ground for ...
— Cat and Dog - Memoirs of Puss and the Captain • Julia Charlotte Maitland

... on the Nen, 66 m. NW. of London; has two fine old Norman churches, is the centre of the boot and shoe manufacture, and is actively engaged in brewing, lace-making, &c.; in the outskirts is a popular racecourse; was the scene of Henry VI.'s defeat by the Yorkists on July ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood

... the world, that she seems to have gone back with undimmed ardor to her childish notions. In spite of her father's opposition, Teresa, in her eighteenth year, left home one morning and went to install herself at the Carmelite convent of the Incarnation, which was situated in the outskirts of her native city. The lax discipline and somewhat worldly tone of the place proved a great surprise to her, as she had imagined that the odor of sanctity must be all-pervasive in a religious house; but she evidently accommodated herself to the conditions as she found them, ...
— Women of the Romance Countries • John R. Effinger

... white, terror-stricken faces what sort of news they had to bring. Their report was as dismal as their looks. When they left the coast they struck into a level road cut through the forest, and presently came to a spring on the outskirts of a town. Here they met a maiden, drawing water at the well, who told them that she was the daughter of Antiphates, king of that country, and offered to conduct them to her father's house. They went with her, and when ...
— Stories from the Odyssey • H. L. Havell

... find no trace of the fellow until he got to the outskirts of Cheslow, the nearest town. Here he found a man who had seen a long-haired fellow in a shabby frock coat and black hat riding toward the railroad station beside one of the farmers who lived beyond the Red Mill. This was following the tempest which ...
— Ruth Fielding Down East - Or, The Hermit of Beach Plum Point • Alice B. Emerson

... left Moreton Bay in December last, and has not since been heard of. One really cannot but admire such a spirit of enterprise and self-devotion, or be too earnest in our wishes for his prosperity. Dr. Leichhardt intends keeping on the outskirts of the Desert all the way round to Swan River, and the difficulties he may have to encounter as well as the distance he may have to travel, will greatly depend on its extent. We can hardly hope for ...
— Expedition into Central Australia • Charles Sturt

... pressed between her thighs which she would rub together.[216] Thigh-friction in some of its forms is so comparatively decorous a form of masturbation that it may even be performed in public places; thus, a few years ago, while waiting for a train at a station on the outskirts of a provincial town, I became aware of the presence of a young woman, sitting alone on a seat at a little distance, whom I could observe unnoticed. She was leaning back with legs crossed, swinging the ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 1 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis

... little bodies nestle close to the white crystals, and they seek cheerfully for the seeds which nature has provided for them. Then a thaw comes, and they disappear as silently and mysteriously as if they had melted with the flakes; but doubtless they are far to the northward, hanging on the outskirts of the Arctic storms, and giving way only when every particle of food is frozen tight, the ground covered deep with snow, and the panicled seed clusters locked in crystal ...
— The Log of the Sun - A Chronicle of Nature's Year • William Beebe

... was a handsome little cottage, embowered in trees, on the far western outskirts of the town. Here the poet lived in bachelor freedom, and with a degree of comfort which might have induced any other man to be satisfied with his condition. We know, from his own assertion, that Roundjacket was not;—he had an excellent little house, a beautiful ...
— The Last of the Foresters • John Esten Cooke

... of the rebel's post. After halting his party for a short time, to enable the officers and sipahees to throw off all superfluous clothing and utensils, Captain Hollings moved on to the attack. When the advanced guard reached the outskirts of the robber's position about midnight, they were first challenged and then fired upon by the sentries. The subadar in command of this advance guard fell dead, and a non-commissioned officer and ...
— A Journey through the Kingdom of Oude, Volumes I & II • William Sleeman

... engaging Courthon, on Garnache's right hand, and Garnache himself falling on guard to receive the attack of Sanguinetti. The jeers and murmurs that had been rising from the ever-growing crowd that swarmed about the outskirts of the place fell silent as the clatter of meeting swords rang out at last. And then, scarce were they engaged when a voice arose, ...
— St. Martin's Summer • Rafael Sabatini

... great mass of colored professors of religion were Methodists, whose piety and zeal seemed to carry all before them. There were, at that time, some ten or eleven colored Methodist churches, one Episcopalian, one Presbyterian; and one little Baptist church, located upon the outskirts of the city. The most of the Methodist churches were large and influential; and the Presbyterian church had one of the best Sabbath schools for colored children in ...
— A Narrative of The Life of Rev. Noah Davis, A Colored Man. - Written by Himself, At The Age of Fifty-Four • Noah Davis

... outskirts of the village, he dismounted from the waggon, and, with downcast eyes and much stammering, informed Mrs. Meyer that he had a little job to see to; he had to say a few words to a Jew—he meant a Greek. Would she go on to the house? He would ...
— A Hungarian Nabob • Maurus Jokai

... where there was the cuckoo, there is the railway car; where there was a tender-boat, there is now the steamboat; people speak of Fecamp nowadays as they spoke of Saint-Cloud in those days. The Paris of 1862 is a city which has France for its outskirts. ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo

... lunch was served to the ladies. It was served, that is, to those who could get it, to those who were near enough and old enough to put in a claim by right of appearance. Dolly and one or two more who were undeniably little girls stood a bad chance, hanging about on the outskirts of the crowd, for the cabin would not take them all in; and hearing a distant sound of clinking glass and silver and words of refreshment. It was all they seemed likely to get; and when a kindly elderly officer had taken pity on the child and given Dolly ...
— The End of a Coil • Susan Warner

... hundred and fifty, taking in their Towers just spoken of. The fourth or Lakeward side, however, which is one of the longer pair, consists mainly of "Colonnade;" spacious Colonnade "with vases and statues;" catching up the outskirts of said Towers, ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. X. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—At Reinsberg—1736-1740 • Thomas Carlyle

... feet, they managed to tug the heavy old man through without taking down the palings. This was so long ago that now there was nobody left who remembered Billy Jacobs distinctly, except his widow, who lived in a poor little house on the outskirts of the town, her only income being that derived from the renting of the large house, in which she had once lived in comfort with her husband and son. The house was a double house; and for a few years Billy Jacobs's twin brother, a sea captain, ...
— Mercy Philbrick's Choice • Helen Hunt Jackson

... the afternoon we entered the state of Michoacan, by a road (destined to be a highway) traced through great pine-forests, after stopping once more to rest at Las Millas, a few huts, or rather wooden cages, at the outskirts of the wood. Nothing can be more beautiful or romantic than this road, ascending through these noble forests, whose lofty oaks and gigantic pines clothe the mountains to their highest summits; sometimes so high, that, as we look upwards, the trees seem diminished to ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon De La Barca

... engagement for ever, but that same day Dora's father dropped dead of heart-disease. Instead of being rich he was found to have left no money at all, and Dora was taken to live with two aunts on the outskirts of London. David did not know what was best to do now, so he went to Dover ...
— Tales from Dickens • Charles Dickens and Hallie Erminie Rives

... passed the factory; and, unfortunately, that was twice a day on every day except Sunday. Our situation in respect to the enemy was as follows: Greenhay, a country house newly built by my father, at that time was a clear mile from the outskirts of Manchester; but in after years Manchester, throwing out the tentacula of its vast expansions, absolutely enveloped Greenhay; and, for any thing I know, the grounds and gardens which then insulated the house may have long disappeared. Being a modest mansion, ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey

... her way. She chose instinctively her path, through the kitchen garden at the back of the village, down the hill by the village street, over the little bridge that crossed the rocky stream of the Dreot, and up the steep hill that led on to the outskirts of Rothin Moor. The day, although she had no eyes for it, was one of those sudden impulses of misty warmth that surprise the Glebeshire frosts. The long stretch of the moor was enwrapped by a thin silver network of haze; the warmth of the sun, seen so dimly ...
— The Captives • Hugh Walpole

... the toilet soap and perfumery je ne sais quoi which are used in this state? Of course, our sewers are not to be compared to yours, mon Dieu, but we have recently completed a pumping station on the outskirts of the city which I think might almost be denominated an ...
— Perfect Behavior - A Guide for Ladies and Gentlemen in all Social Crises • Donald Ogden Stewart

... the King's realm, but one of them lived in a lonely place on the outskirts of the kingdom. There, for the last fifty years, she had shut herself up in a ruined tower with only a black cat to keep her company, and as she kept herself to herself, everybody had forgotten her very existence. The result was that ...
— The Sleeping Beauty • C. S. Evans

... J——- yesterday morning, and reached the outskirts of the city, whence we could see the bold and picturesque heights that surround Marseilles as with a semicircular wall. They rise into peaks, and the town, being on their lower slope, descends from ...
— Passages From the French and Italian Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... was no other light. The inn was closed to customers, it being past eleven o'clock. On a bare table I perceived a candle, and ventured to put a match to it. I then saw almost exactly such a room as one would expect to find at the rear of the bar-parlour of an inn on the outskirts of an industrial town. It appeared to serve the double purpose of a living-room and of a retreat for favoured customers. The table was evidently one at which men drank. On a shelf was a row of bottles, more or less empty, bearing names famous in newspaper advertisements and ...
— The Matador of the Five Towns and Other Stories • Arnold Bennett

... swift and low in his ear, and with dagger at his throat. And, in a while, Beltane rose and Sir Pertolepe also, and side by side they stepped forth of the leaves out into the road, where, on the outskirts of the village, pikemen and men-at-arms, archer and knight, were halted in a surging throng, while above the jostling confusion rose the hoarse babel of their voices. But of a sudden the clamour died to silence, ...
— Beltane The Smith • Jeffery Farnol

... set out on this quest in one of the motors at Whiteladies we had considerable success. The car had taken the direct road to London. We heard of it at an inn on the outskirts of Beading. It had stopped there, and a man had had his flask filled with brandy. A lady who was with him was not very well, he said. Chance helped us farther. The car had stopped by a roadside cottage. A man had come to the door full of apologies, but ...
— The Master Detective - Being Some Further Investigations of Christopher Quarles • Percy James Brebner

... thrill as we bound over the lea, out across the wold, anon skimming the outskirts of the moor and going home with a stellated fracture of the dura mater through which the ...
— Nye and Riley's Wit and Humor (Poems and Yarns) • Bill Nye

... the evening of June 17, and went into camp in the outskirts of the town, in a beautiful grove of tall young oaks. The site was neither too shady nor too sunny, and, all things considered, I think it was about the nicest camping ground the regiment had during its entire service. We settled down here to a daily round of battalion ...
— The Story of a Common Soldier of Army Life in the Civil War, 1861-1865 • Leander Stillwell

... nearly at the dawn of a summer morning, there was a yelling below the castle, and a flashing of torches, and tidings rang through it that a boor on the outskirts of the mountain had had his ricks fired and his cattle driven by the robbers, and his young daughters carried off. Old Sir Eberhard hobbled down to the hall in time to see weapons flashing as they were dealt ...
— The Dove in the Eagle's Nest • Charlotte M. Yonge

... family circle from which the loved ones have not altogether departed? These places of worship thus have a harmonious sense, and the life of these people is influenced by it from the baptismal font to the grave. It is not the same with us, because we have relegated eternity to the outskirts of the city, have banished our dead to the faubourgs and laid them to rest in the carpenter's quarter, near the soda ...
— Over Strand and Field • Gustave Flaubert

... a little while after the contest in the outskirts of the crowd that flocked up to congratulate Avery. She came out to the carriage on her father's arm, with a fleecy evening cloak wrapped round her, and he saw the prize. She held it out a moment in her bare, ...
— Flip's "Islands of Providence" • Annie Fellows Johnston

... she was come to the outskirts of the throng, and there she happened on a babe of some two winters, which was crawling about on its hands and knees, with scarce a rag upon its little body. She watched it, and looked whereto it was going, and saw a woman sitting on a stone, with none anigh her, her face bowed over her knees ...
— The Water of the Wondrous Isles • William Morris

... upstream himself. Now that he was here, he could see no traces of the invaders. Since they could not have landed their sky ships in the thickly built-up section about the river, it must follow that their camp lay on the outskirts ...
— Star Born • Andre Norton

... ponies dashed through the slab settlement, past the blacksmith and wheelwright shop and the ugly red building Tom told Nan was the school, and reached a large, sprawling, unpainted dwelling on the outskirts of the village. ...
— Nan Sherwood at Pine Camp - or, The Old Lumberman's Secret • Annie Roe Carr

... while Madame remained charmingly satirical, refusing to treat the matter otherwise than as a joke, laughing at Geoffrey's rhapsodies, and assuring him that he was suffering from an attack of sun, from which recovery would be swift and certain. Rupert Guest and Cornelia hurried to and fro on the outskirts of the fray, in the character of aides-de-camp carrying messages, and administering encouragement and consolation. Every morning Cornelia sat in conclave with her friend in the prosaic Victorian drawing-room which took the place of the ...
— Flaming June • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey

... Sam?" said Frank, after they had progressed about a mile, during which the outskirts of the city had given place to garden, cultivated field, trees dotted here and there, and then hedges which looked weird, ghastly, and strange in the moonlight, being composed of those fleshy, nightmare-looking plants of cactus growth, the prickly pears, with ...
— In the Mahdi's Grasp • George Manville Fenn

... points illuminating the outskirts of the wood, left the interior in deep shadow, or else, attenuated in the foreground by a sort of twilight, it exhibited in the background violet vapours, a white radiance. The midday sun, falling directly on wide tracts of greenery, made splashes of light ...
— Sentimental Education, Volume II - The History of a Young Man • Gustave Flaubert

... these executions, Caesar*, still incorrigible, took up again his former practice of subsisting in the woods by plundering the farms and huts at the outskirts of the towns. He was soon taken; but on his being punished, and that with some severity, he declared with exultation and contempt, that 'all that would not make ...
— An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales, Vol. 1 • David Collins

... to run at the top of their speed. When they reached the outskirts of the forest, they, at first glance, saw the balloon in its place and the ...
— Five Weeks in a Balloon • Jules Verne

... clinging to her mother's skirts and incessantly babbling in her mother's ear; so the child with her nurse was sent into the interior of the plantation, in search of the lovely primroses said to flourish there, while the two elders wandered with slow steps and down-bent eyes upon the outskirts of the coppice. ...
— A Sheaf of Corn • Mary E. Mann

... filbert, which might stock my islands with waving greenery of oaks and hazel bushes. But I gradually discovered, in the course of a few centuries, that these heavy nuts never floated securely so far as the outskirts of my little archipelago; and that consequently no chestnuts, apple trees, beeches, alders, larches, or pines ever came to diversify my island valleys. The seeds that did really reach us from time to time belonged rather to one or other of four special classes. ...
— Science in Arcady • Grant Allen

... who stood on the outskirts of the ring, saw thus far but he could bear it no longer, and rushed down the hill. Just as he reached the level ground, a culverin was fired from the gateway, and the next moment a loud wailing cry bursting from the mob told that the abbot ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth

... sweep, and dash, and sailed along far more grandly than ordinary provincial organs for the promoting or seconding of public opinion, that are as little to be compared with the mighty metropolitan as are the fife and bugle boys practising on their instruments round melancholy outskirts of garrison towns with the regimental marching full band under the presidency of its drum-major. No signature to the article was needed for Bevisham to know who had returned to the town to pen it. Those long-stretching sentences, comparable to the very ship ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... Napoleon arrived with his army. While Marmont fought in the outer suburbs, masses of the people were drawn up on Montmartre, expecting the Emperor's appearance, and the spectacle of a great and decisive battle. But the firing in the outskirts stopped soon after noon: it was announced that Marmont had capitulated. The report struck the people with stupor and fury. They had vainly been demanding arms since early morning; and even after the capitulation unsigned papers were handed ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe

... good a set as ever existed in his country; and, it is also beyond all cavil, that many respectable English persons, of both sexes, were occasionally found in it; but, it had this great defect:—every Englishman who wore a good coat, and had any of the slang of society, made his way into the outskirts, at least, of this set; and Rupert, whose own position was not yet thoroughly confirmed, had fallen a great deal into the association of these accidental comers and goers. They talked large, drank deep, and had a lofty disdain for everything in the country, though ...
— Afloat And Ashore • James Fenimore Cooper

... vast open spaces around the Lateran were thronged with men and women and children; against the witches' dreaded influence they carried each an onion, torn up by the roots with stalk and flower; all about, on the outskirts of the place, were kitchen booths, set up with boughs and bits of awnings, yellow with the glare of earthen and iron oil lamps, where snails—great counter-charms against spells—were fried and baked in oil, and sold with bread ...
— Ave Roma Immortalis, Vol. 1 - Studies from the Chronicles of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford

... Neuilly-sur-Seine, on the outskirts of Paris, on the 14th of August, 1818. Immediately after my birth, and as soon as the Chancellor of France, M. Dambray, had declared me to be a boy, I was made over to the care of a wet nurse and another attendant. ...
— Memoirs • Prince De Joinville

... the churches, sugar houses, and other places used as prisons in New York in the early years of the Revolution, can now be discovered. We know that they were, for the most part, dumped into ditches dug on the outskirts of the little city, the New York of 1776. These ditches were dug by American soldiers, as part of the entrenchments, during Washington's occupation of Manhattan in the spring of 1776. Little did these young men think that they were, in some cases, literally digging ...
— American Prisoners of the Revolution • Danske Dandridge

... the outskirts of the town; the way is long, the night dark, the wind boisterous, and the way lonely. It ...
— The Diamond Coterie • Lawrence L. Lynch

... angels lean nearer While I lie and long? I see their soft plumage And catch their windy song, Like the rise of a high tide Sweeping full and strong; I mark the outskirts Of their ...
— Poems • Christina G. Rossetti

... already entered Brussels, their scouts were reported on the outskirts of Ghent; a little farther now, over behind the horizon wind-mills, and we might at ...
— Antwerp to Gallipoli - A Year of the War on Many Fronts—and Behind Them • Arthur Ruhl

... two frigates and three sloops of our class were stationed on the outskirts of the fleet, whipping them in as it were. We made Madeira in fourteen days, looked in, but did not anchor; superb island—magnificent mountains—white town,—and all very fine, but nothing particular happened for three weeks. One fine evening, (we had by this time ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott

... set out for Howlett's. He had made careful inquiries in regard to the road, and after a ride somewhat tiresome to a man not used to such protracted horseback exercise, arrived at his destination about sundown. When he reached the scattered houses which formed, as he supposed, the outskirts of the village, for such he had been told it was, he rode on, but soon found that he had left Howlett's behind him, and that those supposed outskirts were the place itself. Hewlett's was nothing, in fact, but a collection of eight or ten houses quite ...
— The Late Mrs. Null • Frank Richard Stockton

... mad as a hen agin, and he told the man, "We've been imposed upon ever since we entered this house. You knew we lived on the outskirts of Jonesville, and you've took liberties with us that you wouldn't if we had come from the heart of the village. But I'll let you know we're knowed and respected, and Jonesville will resent it to think you've put us in with trees, tryin' to make out ...
— Samantha at the St. Louis Exposition • Marietta Holley

... given us by these warriors could not be excelled. They took us to Fleurbaix, where their batteries were located on the outskirts of the town, in cellars in the back part of a building destroyed by German fire. There they had skillfully transformed the cellar into a gun pit, with a loophole four feet in diameter overlooking an orchard at the rear. Each time the gun spoke it would first be shoved into the hole and the ...
— S.O.S. Stand to! • Reginald Grant

... proceeded but a short distance after reaching this beautiful prairie, before we came upon the outskirts of the commonwealth. A few scattered dogs were seen scampering in, and, by their short and sharp yelps, giving a general ...
— Monsieur Violet • Frederick Marryat

... two waited in the outskirts of the wood near the cleared place about the castle. Then said De Skirlaw, "I go forward boldly to the bridge and summon the warder ...
— A Boy's Ride • Gulielma Zollinger

... desire, to study this people, who are so jealous of their women that they wont allow you to approach within a mile of their dwellings. On one occasion I remember I sought, for the purposes of this present narrative, to set aside this prohibition, and feigning ignorance of it I penetrated to the outskirts of a village, when half-a-dozen big fellows rushing up to me, and gesticulating, I thought it advisable to "boom off." However, I saw what I had ventured thus far to see, notwithstanding—one of their ...
— In Eastern Seas - The Commission of H.M.S. 'Iron Duke,' flag-ship in China, 1878-83 • J. J. Smith

... of church with the rest of the congregation, and walked down the road toward the roofs of the little village, on the outskirts of which he could not help stopping to admire a small garden full of pinks in front of two thatched cottages that had evidently been made into one house. While he was standing there looking over the trim quickset hedge, an old lady with silvery hair came slowly down the road, paused a moment ...
— The Altar Steps • Compton MacKenzie

... cheek, portly of figure and genial in manner, was over-anxious to please his guests. It was not often that gentlemen of such distinguished appearance called at the "Auberge du Grand Dauphin," seeing that Notre Dame de Vaulx lies perdu on the outskirts of the forests of Pelvoux, that the bridle path having reached the village leads nowhere save into the mountains and that La Motte is close by with its medicinal springs and its ...
— The Bronze Eagle - A Story of the Hundred Days • Emmuska Orczy, Baroness Orczy

... that we have derived the bulk of our information on this very remarkable aspect of commonage. First, as to the name. "Venville" is a provincial corruption of fines villarum, each vill paying a larger or smaller sum for the right of pasturage; and certain parishes or manors on the outskirts of the forest were said to be "in venville." "The perambulation [of 1224]," says Mr. Birkett, "establishes three important facts: viz., that the moor was originally part of a royal forest; that the Commons of Devon, and surrounding parishes were once part of the forest; and that ...
— The Customs of Old England • F. J. Snell

... childhood, had been carried to Colchis on the back of the golden-fleeced ram. Since that time, Phrixus had married the king's daughter; and the two young princes had been born and brought up at Colchis, and had spent their play-days in the outskirts of the grove, in the center of which the Golden Fleece was hanging upon a tree. They were now on their way to Greece, in hopes of getting back a kingdom that had been wrongfully taken from ...
— Tanglewood Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... or department-store service. Both need steady employment out of doors, and he who devises a method by which boys and girls can be taught such an occupation as gardening on vacant lots or in the city outskirts, and at the same time can be given a love for work and for the growing things of the country, will help to solve the problem of child labor and, incidentally, may contribute to the solution of poverty, incipient crime, ...
— Society - Its Origin and Development • Henry Kalloch Rowe

... of powerful muscles and built on the same strong lines as his father, he found rest and recreation from study in violent exercise, in long bicycle-rides into the country or through the woods on the outskirts of Paris. The boys at the school, who held him in a sort of veneration, told stories of his exploits and his ...
— The Frontier • Maurice LeBlanc

... of the last century, there lived in one of the villages on the outskirts of the moor on which the Cheese-Wring stands, a stonecutter named Daniel Gumb. This man was noted among his companions for his taciturn eccentric character, and for his attachment to mathematical studies. Such leisure time as he had ...
— Rambles Beyond Railways; - or, Notes in Cornwall taken A-foot • Wilkie Collins

... and had been taken on in the place of their faithful old Schultz, who had fallen heir to a large sum of money in Germany, and gone home to spend his days in a cottage on the outskirts of Berlin. ...
— The Boy Aviators' Treasure Quest • Captain Wilbur Lawton

... glimpse any cavalrymen around, do you, Rob?" Merritt questioned, as they hovered on the outskirts of the place, ready to melt away in the darkness ...
— The Boy Scouts on Belgian Battlefields • Lieut. Howard Payson

... slow gait and long halts. At the church the disburdened horses were tied during the long services to palings and to trees near the meeting-house (except the favored animals that found shelter in the noon-houses) and the scene must have resembled the outskirts of a gypsy camp or an English horse-fair. Such obedience did the Puritans pay to the letter of the law that when the Newbury people were forbidden, in tying their horses outside the church paling, to leave them near enough ...
— Sabbath in Puritan New England • Alice Morse Earle

... brilliancy lies in devising original methods of getting rid of my surplus in all sorts of odd and delightful ways, left untried, for the most part, by other people. I 've been buying up splendid old trees in the outskirts of certain New England country towns,—trees that were in danger of being cut down for wood. Twenty-five to forty dollars buys a glorious tree, and it is safe for ever and ever to give shade to the tired traveler and beauty to the landscape. Each of my boys has his pet odd scheme ...
— Polly Oliver's Problem • Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin

... route and the drive through the thronged streets to the Viceregal Lodge. Not long after her arrival, the Queen, as energetic as ever, was seen walking in the Phoenix Park, and in the evening she took a drive in the outskirts of the city. At night Dublin was illuminated. The next day the Queen and the Prince, with their two elder sons, paid a State visit to the exhibition, full to overflowing with eager gazers. The royal party were conducted to a dais, where the Queen, seated on the throne prepared for her, ...
— Life of Her Most Gracious Majesty the Queen, (Victoria) Vol II • Sarah Tytler

... moving away, but for a while I had not met them, except at the services, and so did not know how they were prospering. When the cold winter set in, I arranged with my good Brother Semmens that we would take our dog-trains and go and make pastoral visits among all the Indian families on the outskirts, and find out how they were prospering, temporally and spiritually. It was ever a great joy to them when we visited them, and by our inquiries about their fishing and hunting, and other simple affairs, showed we were interested in these things, ...
— By Canoe and Dog-Train • Egerton Ryerson Young

... people, Epraim's uncle Jackrael Israel, a white-haired old man, his wife Hester, a Jew from Cutch, one Hyem Benjamin, and Ephraim, Priest and Butcher, made up the list of the Jews in Shushan. They lived in one house, on the outskirts of the great city, amid heaps of saltpetre, rotten bricks, herds of kine, and a fixed pillar of dust caused by the incessant passing of the beasts to the river to drink. In the evening the children of the ...
— Life's Handicap • Rudyard Kipling

... the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries by collectors from simple men and women living apart from the main currents of life, to whose hearts and lips they were still dear. Indeed even now the ballads and ballad-making are not altogether dead, but may still be found nourishing in such outskirts of civilization as the cowboy plains of Texas, Rocky Mountain mining camps, or the nooks and corners ...
— A History of English Literature • Robert Huntington Fletcher

... farm—a tall, solid man, still unbent, with grey side-whiskers and a steep, dignified profile. Grave, weighty in his manner, splendidly respectable, Rowley had the air of a great English statesman of the mid-nineteenth century. He halted on the outskirts of the group, and for a moment they all looked at the pigs in a silence that was only broken by the sound of grunting or the squelch of a sharp hoof in the mire. Rowley turned at last, slowly and ponderously and nobly, as he did everything, and addressed ...
— Crome Yellow • Aldous Huxley

... as it could easily be taken by escalade. The rest of the town consisted of a great straggling bazaar, just the same as is to be seen everywhere in India; and it did not appear a bit better than that at Belgaum. There were some fine elephants belonging to the Ameers, and some pretty ruins on the outskirts of the town. The Beloochees had all left, and were nowhere ...
— Campaign of the Indus • T.W.E. Holdsworth

... mistaken for Miss Parnell, and felt highly flattered. Omagh was quiet enough; no more stir than would be likely for a fair or market day. No sign or sight of a counter Orange demonstration. The meeting was held in a field on the outskirts of the town, on the property of a gentleman, whose name I forget, but who was described as a very good, kind ...
— The Letters of "Norah" on her Tour Through Ireland • Margaret Dixon McDougall

... pacing behind me. I heard a rustle at the edge of the forest, a stir and whisper beyond the trees, and turned to speak to him, then saw him slipping away toward the outskirts of the clearing. ...
— The Door Through Space • Marion Zimmer Bradley

... not entirely passed before we had traveled at least a hundred miles. It was like an immense city of prairie dogs without mounds. The cavern that we had discovered on our arrival was evidently situated on the outskirts of the group, and now we were passing through the center of it. Occasionally we saw a huge white form disappear in one of the holes as we swiftly approached, but that was all we beheld of the inhabitants. ...
— A Columbus of Space • Garrett P. Serviss

... of such a man: first Abas doth he slay, Who faces him, the very knot and holdfast of the play. Then fall Arcadia's sons to field; felled is Etruria's host, And ye, O Teucrian bodies, erst by Grecian death unlost. 430 Then meet the hosts with lords well-matched and equal battle-might; The outskirts of the battle close, nor 'mid the press of fight May hand or spear move: busy now is Pallas on this side, Lausus on that; nor is the space between their ages wide, Those noble bodies: and both they were clean forbid of Fate Return unto their lands: ...
— The AEneids of Virgil - Done into English Verse • Virgil

... absorbed in thought, into a deserted road which branched off from one of the narrow streets on the outskirts of the town, Jose stumbled upon a figure crouching in the moonlight. Almost before he realized that it was a human being a hand had reached up and ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking

... pages were one day wandering in the outskirts of the forest, clothed in light hunting dresses—tunics, confined by broad belts and edged with fur; while leggings protected the feet and ankles from thorns. They each had hunting spears and bows, which were borne by young thralls, with sheaves of arrows strung to their ...
— The Rival Heirs being the Third and Last Chronicle of Aescendune • A. D. Crake

... disputing with another boy of my own age, and we fought in the street until we were separated by a cobbler and the blows of a leather strap, to which he added kicks. Later, I foolishly quarrelled and fought whenever the other boys set me on. In our stone-throwing escapades on the outskirts of the town, I was always the aggressor, ...
— Youth and Egolatry • Pio Baroja

... wherein, perhaps, we see the germs of the Mayfair we know. It must be remembered that Grosvenor and Berkeley Squares, with their diverging streets, were not then begun, and that all this land now covered by a network of houses lay in fields on the outskirts of London, while Hyde Park Corner was still the end of the world so far as Londoners were concerned. It was about the end of the seventeenth century that the above-mentioned squares were built, and at once became fashionable, and as the May fair continued to flourish until 1708, it ...
— Mayfair, Belgravia, and Bayswater - The Fascination of London • Geraldine Edith Mitton



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