"Sprawling" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... give my money to sharpers'—'Sharpers!' retorted one—'Sharpers!' re-echoed the other, and began mutually to hustle me—My valour was roused: I faced about, with the first blow laid the gentleman of Wales sprawling, and with the second made the captain's eyes strike fire. The attack was infinitely more vigorous and powerful than they could have expected. The Welsh gentleman shook his ears; the captain clapped his white handkerchief to his eyes. They swore a few oaths in ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... and rifle and blanket sprawling on the gravel-covered floor of a flat car. Casey, the old lineman, grinned at him over the familiar short, ...
— The U.P. Trail • Zane Grey
... squalid poverty in Seven Dials, there is indeed a world of novelty in the first view of the tropical poverty that is not squalid but contentedly luxurious—of the dusky father with his wife or wives (the mere number is a detail) sprawling at full length, half clad, in the eye of the sun, before the palm-thatched hut, while the fat black babies and the fat black little pigs wallow together almost indistinguishably in the dust at his side, just out ...
— Science in Arcady • Grant Allen
... off, burning a hole through the Dome roof. The automatic sealers glued-in instantly. Ledman went sprawling helplessly out into the middle of the floor, the wheelchair upended next to him, its wheels slowly revolving in the air. The blaster flew from his hands at the impact of landing and spun out near me. In one quick motion I rolled over and covered ...
— The Hunted Heroes • Robert Silverberg
... four men that had followed behind him so far, closed their horses round his. The boy had his sword out and his coat gave as he ran. Lascelles closed near him on the grass, stretched out a foot to trip, and the boy lay sprawling, his hands stretched out, his sword three yards before him. The four men that had run from the arch had him up upon his feet and held his arms when Culpepper had ridden the hundred yards from the ...
— Privy Seal - His Last Venture • Ford Madox Ford
... Collin's throat; but he, keeping his eye on the foe, gave him a straight blow, and sent him sprawling on his back three yards off; then Trompe-la-Mort went calmly up to Bibi-Lupin, and held out a hand to help him rise, exactly like an English boxer who, sure of his superiority, is ready for more. Bibi-Lupin knew better than to call out; but he sprang ...
— Scenes from a Courtesan's Life • Honore de Balzac
... it is not getting on with the Book. A score of men and women are crowding up to these pages waiting to get into the story. And the town of Harvey, how it is bursting its bounds, how it is sprawling out over the white paper, tumbling its new stores and houses and gas mains and water pipes all over the table; with what a clatter and clamor and with what vain pride! Now the pride of those years ...
— In the Heart of a Fool • William Allen White
... is about ninety-five English feet in length, by thirty in width, and sixty in heighth. The sprawling painting by Philippe de Champagne, at the end of it, has no other merit than that of covering so many square feet of wall. The architecture of this chapel is of the XIVth century: the stained glass windows are of the latter end of the XVth. On completing the circuit of the cathedral, ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume One • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... say, although they were of rich and sober fabric, were enormously too large for him in every measurement—the trousers hanging on his legs and rolled up to keep them from the ground, the waist of the coat below his haunches, and the collar sprawling wide upon his shoulders. Strange to relate, this ludicrous accoutrement was far from moving me to laughter. Rather, as there was something ...
— Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde • ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON
... with ashamed surprise At "swinging signs" which now offend our eyes! Long have Advertisement's obtrusive arts Pervaded our huge maze of malls and marts; But now the "swinging signs" of ogre Trade, Even the smoke-veiled vault of heaven invade, And sprawling legends of the tasteless crew Soar to the clouds and spread across the blue. See—if you can—where Paul's colossal dome Rises o'er realms that dwarf Imperial Rome. Cooped, cramped, half hid, the glorious work ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99, September 6, 1890 • Various
... one of the fads from Gnosticism to Christian Science would indeed have been obvious and tame. But to have avoided them all has been one whirling adventure; and in my vision the heavenly chariot flies thundering through the ages, the dull heresies sprawling and prostrate, the wild ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... the air. The expectation of everyone was raised, while, beneath her pallor and composure, it could be seen that Mrs. Trent was deeply moved. It was evident that aesthetically she was by far the most important person present. Faull watched her, with his face sunk on his chest, sprawling as usual. ...
— A Voyage to Arcturus • David Lindsay
... and him are purty good friends now. Gee-whoa-haw," continued he, taking hold of the string behind, and endeavouring to drive the silent captive like an ox. The young chief whirled round indignantly, and with such force as to send Sneak sprawling several paces to one side. He rose amid the laughter that ensued, and remembering the words of Boone, conducted his prisoner away ...
— Wild Western Scenes • John Beauchamp Jones
... sat sprawling on the ground, and did not bestir himself to do anything. As soon as my hands and mind were free I took him by the scruff of the neck and kicked him behind with a good will. My rage at him for ...
— Lazarre • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... at Anderson's side leaped forward through the hedge. Mr. Crow was dimly conscious of a mishap to his erstwhile captor. He heard him curse as he went sprawling over a ...
— Anderson Crow, Detective • George Barr McCutcheon
... saying something. Sprawling out from the corner of the window-seat, he stared with sulky, unseeing eyes into ...
— Mary Olivier: A Life • May Sinclair
... as much," muttered the stockbroker, as he recognised traces of his brother's sprawling penmanship upon the pad. The message had been written with a heavy hand and a spongy quill pen, and had left a tolerably clear impression of ...
— Birds of Prey • M. E. Braddon
... Alderman as he did fire, had grumblingly loosened the child from the chain; when that was done, the Alderman threw Gargousse into the air, received him on the end of a most magnificent kick, and sent him sprawling ten feet off. The ape cried like a burned child, gnashed his teeth, but fled quickly, and went to take refuge on the top of a shed, where he shook his fist at the Alderman. 'Why do you beat my ape?' said Cut-in-half to the Alderman. 'You ought rather to ...
— Mysteries of Paris, V3 • Eugene Sue
... besides. The short road—avenue, our landlord termed it—which led from this to the house, had a strawberry-bank on one side, a row of cherry-trees on the other; and the garden, although overgrown with weeds and sprawling shrubs, looked quite capable of being easily made very pretty indeed. The entrance to this our magnificent chateau was through the kitchen only; for the room next it, although it could boast of an outside-door likewise, had none which opened into the interior of the house, ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 437 - Volume 17, New Series, May 15, 1852 • Various
... rescinded; they are declared null and non-extant. Romme, Ruhl, Goujon and the ringleaders, some thirteen in all, are decreed Accused. Permanent-session ends at three in the morning. (Deux Amis, xiii. 129-46.) Sansculottism, once more flung resupine, lies sprawling; ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... do, Kent?" said Charlotte to a young man who was sprawling on the sloping grass between the benches and the court. The young man blinked, sat up, and snatched ...
— The Heart of Rachael • Kathleen Norris
... humorous, sensible expression, though he was dissipated, I'd heard, but very gentle in his manners. I had a talk with him under the trees of the college campus in the moonlight, Commencement night. I can see the boy lying there now, sprawling on the grass with a ...
— In the Arena - Stories of Political Life • Booth Tarkington
... There was a moment of heat and then he knew himself to be sprawling upon green turf. A little of the strength of desperation was still with him and he bounded to his feet and looked about. There were no wolves. Beside him was a great flat rock, and he clambered upon this, and then, ...
— The Story of Ab - A Tale of the Time of the Cave Man • Stanley Waterloo
... in the Newcomes he atones for this in 'Esmond,' if any atonement is needed for sprawling, which is probably only that Thackeray felt that there is nothing so elastic and sprawling as a human person, whether he be a villain or ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Patrick Braybrooke
... shrouds. When our last man fell I made a dash for them, and directly I got to the top I cut them, and half a dozen men who were climbing after me fell sprawling to the deck. Then I cut them on the other side. I thought then that they would at once shoot me, but there was a lively argument among them and shouts of laughter, and they evidently thought that it would be a great joke to leave me up here until ...
— By Conduct and Courage • G. A. Henty
... brought him upon his knees. With this blow he also broke his helmet, and with the next he cut off an arm. Then did the giant roar so hideously, that his voice frighted the women, and yet they were glad to see him lie sprawling upon the ground. Now the lions were chained, and so of themselves could do nothing.[125] Wherefore, when old Grim, that intended to back them, was dead, Mr. Great-heart said to the Pilgrims, Come now, and follow me, and no ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... listening I began to creep along, step by step, close to the starboard bulwark, keeping my hands thereon for a few paces, till becoming bolder I stepped out more, but stumbled directly over something big and soft, and went sprawling ...
— Sail Ho! - A Boy at Sea • George Manville Fenn
... bacon, and juicy relishing ham; not a turkey but he beheld daintily trussed up, with its gizzard under its wing, and, peradventure, a necklace of savoury sausages; and even bright chanticleer himself lay sprawling on his back, in a side dish, with uplifted claws, as if craving that quarter which his chivalrous spirit disdained ...
— Legends That Every Child Should Know • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... converse with the condemned without a brawl at the very door? Mother of God! what meaneth the fracas? Where is the guard? Why don't some of them jab their steel in the blasphemous ragamuffins who thus make mock of the holy offices of religion? Take that, you black, sprawling beast!" ...
— Prisoners of Chance - The Story of What Befell Geoffrey Benteen, Borderman, - through His Love for a Lady of France • Randall Parrish
... Thursday mornings, and nailed upon the outside of the gatehouse, so that any who pleased could come there and get first-hand information; and an interpreter stood there sometimes, one of the educated younger sons of Mr. Piers, and read out to the groups from Lady Maxwell's sprawling old handwriting, news ...
— By What Authority? • Robert Hugh Benson
... the letter as people do twist letters when they do not immediately recognise their correspondents either by the writing or the seal. She was sitting at her glass brushing her hair, and rising every other minute to play with her boy who was sprawling on the bed, and who engaged pretty nearly the whole attention of the maid as well as ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... London was the place of adventures. He had lived in New York and Paris, but neither of these cities had for him the same fascination as the sprawling giant of the Thames. Paris was as stimulating and provocative as a paid mistress, but palled as quickly. In New York mysteries beckoned at every street corner, but too importunately. Neither city was sufficiently discreet for Colwyn's reticent mind. But London! London was ...
— The Hand in the Dark • Arthur J. Rees
... still making the same sprawling movements ahead of me up the street. The sight of this infirm creature constantly in front of me, commenced to irritate me—his journey seemed endless; perhaps he had made up his mind to go to exactly the same place as I had, and I must needs have him before my eyes the whole way. In my irritation ...
— Hunger • Knut Hamsun
... by nightfall. In this vicinity are the Burnham beeches, made known almost everywhere by the camera and the brush of the artist. A byway runs directly among the magnificent trees, which we found as imposing as the pictures had represented—sprawling old trees, many feet in circumference, but none of very great height. Near by is Stoke-Poges church, whose memory is kept alive by the "Elegy" of the poet Gray. It is one of the best known of the English ...
— British Highways And Byways From A Motor Car - Being A Record Of A Five Thousand Mile Tour In England, - Wales And Scotland • Thomas D. Murphy
... his back, sprawling with outstretched limbs in the centre of the room. He was clad only in a pink dressing gown, which covered his night clothes. There were carpet slippers on his bare feet. The doctor knelt beside him and held down the hand lamp which had stood on the table. One glance at the victim was enough ...
— The Valley of Fear • Arthur Conan Doyle
... on a dead run. Muskwa pegged valiantly after him. Twice they made the circle of the basin, and in spite of his shorter legs, Muskwa was a close second in the race when Pipoonaskoos, turning an affrighted glance sidewise for an instant, hit against a rock and went sprawling. In another moment Muskwa was at him again, and he would have continued biting and snarling until there was no more strength left in him had he not happened to see Thor and Iskwao disappearing slowly over the edge of ...
— The Grizzly King • James Oliver Curwood
... that he fell backward into the horse-trough under the pump, which was full of water. The wedding-guests had hardly time to realize what was happening when a great splash sent the water flying into their faces, and the burly form of John Garvestad was seen sprawling helplessly in the horse-trough. But then—then they realized it with a vengeance. And a laugh went up—a veritable storm of laughter—which swept through the entire crowd and re-echoed with a ghostly hilarity from the mountains. John Garvestad in the meanwhile had ...
— Boyhood in Norway • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... saffron banners and the | |sprawling dragons clawing at red suns | |over the roofs of Chinatown yesterday | |there was a tension of unrest and of | |speculation. It all had to do with the | |luncheon to be given to his Imperial | |Highness Prince Tsai Tao ...
— Newspaper Reporting and Correspondence - A Manual for Reporters, Correspondents, and Students of - Newspaper Writing • Grant Milnor Hyde
... spinnerets, which contract or expand their pores, or close them entirely, at the faller's pleasure. And so, with gentle moderation, she pays out this living plumb-line, of which my lantern clearly shows me the plumb, but not always the line. The great squab seems at such times to be sprawling in space, without the ...
— The Wonders of Instinct • J. H. Fabre
... spot where she had seen the men fighting in the roadway, she found Jack McCoy bending over the sprawling figure ...
— El Diablo • Brayton Norton
... representation is aimed at and the event portrayed as an historical fact, it is proof enough that all direct interest is gone and nothing left but the technical problem. The martyrdoms are vulgar execution-scenes,—the angels, men sprawling upon clouds. Michel Angelo was a noble, devout man, but it is clear that the God he prayed to was not ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 77, March, 1864 • Various
... could strike again, however, I got in my right hand and he was sprawling on his back on the floor. My wrist bled freely, and quite a little pool trickled on to the carpet. I saw that my friend was not intent on further effort, and occupied myself binding up my wrist, keeping a wary eye on the prostrate figure all the time. When the attendants rushed in, and ...
— Dracula • Bram Stoker
... at the sound of that deep and hearty ho! ho! ho! of Memba Sasa. Even at something genuinely amusing he never laughed much, nor without a very definite restraint. In fact, about him was no slackness, no sprawling abandon of the native in relaxation; but always a taut efficiency and a ...
— The Land of Footprints • Stewart Edward White
... tampered with by a mischievous wag, the result being that when he dips his pen into the inkstand he draws it out all covered with mud, when he fancies he is sitting down on a solid chair he finds himself sprawling on the floor, in a word his actions are all topsy-turvy or mere beating the air, while in every case the effect is invariably one of momentum. Habit has given the impulse: what was wanted was to check the movement or deflect it. He did nothing of the sort, but continued like ...
— Laughter: An Essay on the Meaning of the Comic • Henri Bergson
... heavily, and his hearers, like the self-conscious, emotionally shy young colonials they were, felt half amused by, half-superior to the histrionic display. They lounged in easy, ungraceful postures while he read, reclining one against another, or sprawling forward over the desks, their heads on their arms. It was the first hour after dinner, when one's thoughts were sleepy and stupid, and Mr. Repton was not a pattern disciplinarian; but the general abandonment of attitude had another ground as well. It had to do with the shape ...
— The Getting of Wisdom • Henry Handel Richardson
... never see such a splendid one; when PONG went one shot. Every face went pale: R—R—R—R—R went the whole detachment [of troops], and the whole crowd of gentlemen and ladies turned and cut. Such a scene!—-ladies, gentlemen, and vagabonds went sprawling in the mud, not shot but tripped up, and those that went down could not rise—they were trampled over.... I ran a short time straight on and did not fall, then turned down a side street, ran fifty yards, and felt tolerably safe; looked for papa; did not see ...
— Heroes of the Telegraph • J. Munro
... Jeremy, sprawling on the bed again and laughing, "don't look all that serious. Bring back your brigadier and I'll kiss him on both cheeks while you hold him! But say; suppose that doctor's one of these swabs who serve out number nine pills for shell-shock, broken leg, ...
— Affair in Araby • Talbot Mundy
... arms shot out, his hands seized John's arms so quickly, and he lifted the boy off his feet and keeled him over with such dexterity, that the lad lay sprawling on his back almost before he ...
— Far Past the Frontier • James A. Braden
... leached out, it is well worth saving for the humus still in it, and it may be dug in in the vegetable garden, or placed in a large flat pile about two feet high while still loosely spread. Melons, squash, pumpkins or similar sprawling vines may be grown in it. For each plant dump about one-half a wheelbarrow of good soil on the top, level and sow in it, or set out plants, if the seedlings are started elsewhere. The roots of these plants like the loose run the open manure allows. In extreme ...
— Making a Garden of Perennials • W. C. Egan
... not so awkward in handling the enemies of his country in battle as in handling friends he esteemed in a dance, he gave no quarter to an old maid aunt, whom, in the violence of his gesticulation, he knocked down with his elbow and laid sprawling on the ground. He was sober when ...
— Memoirs of the Court of St. Cloud, Complete - Being Secret Letters from a Gentleman at Paris to a Nobleman in London • Lewis Goldsmith
... pigs embarking by the same conveyance, and insinuated into the steamer by all sorts of coaxing, threatening, and wheedling. Seamen are singing and yeehoing on board; grimy colliers smoking at the liquor-shops along the quay; and as for the bridge-there is a crowd of idlers on that, you may be sure, sprawling over the balustrade for ever and ever, with long ragged coats, steeple-hats, ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors - Vol. II Great Britain And Ireland, Part Two • Francis W. Halsey
... broken in upon rudely when he was thrust into what proved to be the guardhouse. In reality he was thrown in by the two soldiers who had picked him up and sent him sprawling on the floor. 'What less could one expect from a Boche?' he muttered. For aught he knew, he soon would get worse. A sentry was posted at the door and Francois was informed that if he tried to escape he would be shot ...
— The Children of France • Ruth Royce
... comes a yoke of huge clumsy prows, shaggy with carving, and driving through the water with considerable velocity; the immense sprawling sail holding the wind like a bag. She seemed full of men; and from the dissonant cries borne over to us, and the canoe's widely yawing, it was plain that we had occasioned no small sensation. They seemed undetermined what course to pursue: whether ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. I (of 2) • Herman Melville
... is what has happened at Tangley and at Crowhurst Place, and in each case the remains of the hall can be traced in the superb oak tie-beams which cross the bedrooms from side to side of the house. The hall is cased by a more modern building, a rich timber framework with the date 1582 carved sprawling on the wood. The garden has every charm that can belong to lichened brick walls, loop-holed and many-gated, and through the garden round the house runs a moat, in which trout swim, or once swam. John Evelyn of Wotton knew the Tangley manor moat and garden; possibly some ...
— Highways and Byways in Surrey • Eric Parker
... walked in on Billy Jones, the foreman at the Halfway stables, that afternoon, after months of absence and road-making, there was not even a team horse in his stables, let alone my own saddle mare. There was not a soul about the place, either, but Billy himself, blandly idle and sprawling over a grubby old newspaper in front of the stove in ...
— The La Chance Mine Mystery • Susan Carleton Jones
... the little creatures crawling aimlessly about. Aimless, did I say? There they were, filling up the floor of the glass case, moving with difficulty, getting in each other's way, sprawling and colliding, apparently without aim or purpose. At that spectacle my thoughts might well have taken a leap into the future and seen, instead of a crowded mass of butterflies, a crowded mass of humanity. ...
— The Blue Germ • Martin Swayne
... humid. After we had been on guard possibly an hour, John Officer and I riding in one direction on opposite sides of the herd, and The Rebel circling in the opposite, Officer's horse suddenly struck a gopher burrow with his front feet, and in a moment horse and rider were sprawling on the ground. The accident happened but a few rods from the sleeping herd, which instantly came to their feet as one steer, and were off like a flash. I was riding my Nigger Boy, and as the cattle headed toward me, away from the cause of their fright, I had ...
— The Log of a Cowboy - A Narrative of the Old Trail Days • Andy Adams
... a shriek of alarm; and, wriggling more violently than before in the hands of those holding me as I tried to release myself, I managed somehow or other to jerk away from their grasp, sending them all sprawling backward on the deck inboard, while I shot out of the port like a catapult, tumbling headlong into the sea as if taking ...
— Crown and Anchor - Under the Pen'ant • John Conroy Hutcheson
... my perch on the top of the hack, all sprawling, the vehicle was approaching one of those small public houses at the corner of a cross street, which abound in the upper part of New York and Harlem. In front of it burned a street lamp. Tom Thornton—and I could distinctly make him out now, though I did not see his face—had ...
— Seek and Find - or The Adventures of a Smart Boy • Oliver Optic
... response. He hurriedly advanced, the four men following quietly. He turned the angle of the corridor, and ran so rapidly that by the time the officers had come in sight of him again he was twenty steps away. He ran past a huge, shapeless object, sprawling, crawling, and floundering along, and arrived at the ...
— The Ape, the Idiot & Other People • W. C. Morrow
... oak on his walls hung kindly notes relating to the Cure from great personages or their secretaries. At the bottom of one ran the sprawling signature of the Grand Duke who had hailed him as "ce bon Sypher" at the Gare de Lyon when he started on the disastrous adventure of the blistered heel. There was the neatly docketed set of pigeonholes containing the proofs of all the advertisements ...
— Septimus • William J. Locke
... corral. One of the four quadrupeds drowsing under the brush shelter languidly turned an inquiring eye and interrogative ear in his direction, and conveyed, after the manner of the mule, a suggestion as to supper. A Mexican boy sprawling in the shade of a bale of government hay, and clad in cotton shirt and trousers well-nigh as brown as the skin that peeped through occasional gaps, glanced up at him with languid interest an instant, and then resumed the more ...
— Foes in Ambush • Charles King
... wait long for the refreshments. Mrs. Copley came out and passed around cake and cookies and things and she was nice and friendly. And while we were sprawling around on the porch eating, a man came around with ...
— Roy Blakeley's Bee-line Hike • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... in the sunshine and the open air. Fathers played with their children in the street: one winter morning, when, after a heavy fall of snow and a subsequent frost, the ground was as slippery as glass, I watched a white-haired shopkeeper, lying prone on a home-made toboggan, with his feet sprawling behind for rudder, steer a load of merry youngsters full tilt down a steep lane behind his house. The sight was so exhilarating that I also forgot I was not a child; and on the second journey I joined the sportive party, and came to grief because the shopkeeper kicked too quickly at a turn in ...
— Creatures of the Night - A Book of Wild Life in Western Britain • Alfred W. Rees
... used to the incessant cries and outcries, quarrels, accidents, and miseries of a great city. Mrs. Rowles ran swiftly down the sloppy stairs to the open door, there she found Juliet leaning against the railings, while the baby lay sprawling on the step. ...
— Littlebourne Lock • F. Bayford Harrison
... which unlucky follower, thus unexpectedly checked in his career, fell plump backwards, knocking down the rest of the line like a nest of card-houses. There is no harm done; but there they lie, roaring, kicking, sprawling, in every attitude of comic distress, whilst Jack Rapley and Mayflower, sole authors of this calamity, stand apart from the throng, fondling, and coquetting, and complimenting each other, and very visibly laughing, May in her black eyes, Jack in his wide, close-shut mouth, and his whole monkey-face, ...
— Our Village • Mary Russell Mitford
... from the market place they came upon a sprawling old tavern, with a fenced yard at one side. As they approached, a sled drawn by a wild looking pair of rough, red-roan ponies, dashed out of the yard and stopped at the broad front portico of ...
— Nan Sherwood at Pine Camp - or, The Old Lumberman's Secret • Annie Roe Carr
... the youngest boys in a corner, and can place his hand on whichever he likes. Into what a small compass they have forced themselves! But the one behind has the wall at his back, and, taking advantage of so good a purchase, he sends his three laughing companions sprawling on the floor, and is himself caught through their having fallen, as his shoulder is the first that is grasped by Blindman-buff—so that he must now submit to ...
— Christmas: Its Origin and Associations - Together with Its Historical Events and Festive Celebrations During Nineteen Centuries • William Francis Dawson
... the greater the destiny, the weaker the immediate self-protection may be. And to me it seems that your complete and perfect imperialism, ruled by Germans for Germans, is in its scope and outlook a more antiquated and smaller and less noble thing than these sprawling emergent giant democracies of the West that ...
— Mr. Britling Sees It Through • H. G. Wells
... creedal definitions, but to a Person. Christians have been people believing in Jesus Christ. This abiding element has put unity into Christian history. The stream of Christian thought and progress has never been twice the same, yet for all that it has been a continuous stream and not an aimless, sprawling flood, and this unity and consistency have existed for one reason chiefly: the influence of the personality of Jesus. Folk may have been Romanists or Protestants, ritualists or Quakers, reactionaries or progressives, but still they have believed in Jesus. His personality has ...
— Christianity and Progress • Harry Emerson Fosdick
... captor suddenly tripped the captive and laid him sprawling at Lanigan's feet; before the fallen man was up, Morrison, using the commander's sturdy shoulders and the thrust of the willing arms of his helper, had swung himself back to the top of the plinth. He kneeled ...
— All-Wool Morrison • Holman Day
... to be sick beyond recovery. It was here, too, that I could at last gratify my curiosity with the sight of a native house in the very article of dissolution. It had fallen flat along the paepae, its poles sprawling ungainly; the rains and the mites contended against it; what remained seemed sound enough, but much was gone already; and it was easy to see how the insects consumed the walls as if they had been bread, and the air and the rain ate into ...
— In the South Seas • Robert Louis Stevenson
... baroque facades, a square tower, the bulge of a market building, tile roofs, chimneypots, ate into the star-dusted sky to the right and left of them, until in a great gust of wind they came out on an empty square, where were few gas-lamps; in front of them was a heavy arch full of stars, and Orion sprawling above it. Under the arch a pile of rags asked for alms whiningly. The jingle of money was crisp in ...
— Rosinante to the Road Again • John Dos Passos
... later, Nikky got up. He was another minute in locating himself. His cap lay in the gutter. Beside him, on his back, lay a sprawling and stertorous figure, with, so quick the downfall, a cane still ...
— Long Live the King • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... aware of a freak of physics which in accord, I suppose, with the laws of horizontals and parallels decrees that a man cut off short from life by quick and violent means and fallen prone upon the earth, seems to shrink up within himself and to grow shorter in body and in sprawling limb, whereas one hanged with a rope by the neck has the semblance of stretching out to unseemly and unhuman lengths all ...
— From Place to Place • Irvin S. Cobb
... and so was the little looking-glass which hung upon the wall. And beside the looking-glass, and above it, and in fact all over the walls, were trophies and wonders of all kinds and descriptions. There was the starfish with ten legs, pinned up in sprawling scarlet; and there, beside him, the king of all the sea-urchins, resplendent with green and purple horns. And here were ropes of shells, and branches of coral, and over the bed a great shining star, made of the delicate gold-shells. That was Daddy's present to her on her last birthday. ...
— Captain January • Laura E. Richards
... the little house the fellow stumbled over some obstruction in his path and fell sprawling to the ground. He arose with an impatient oath and moved on again, but not before the watcher had recognized both the figure and the voice. Will turned back to ...
— The Call of the Beaver Patrol - or, A Break in the Glacier • V. T. Sherman
... miles from his sprawling house to the Mesa Dry Lake launching site, due east, into the sun. He pulled to the top of Six Mile Hill and stopped in the middle of the highway. Two miles ahead was Launching Base I, throwing long, sharp shadows at him in ...
— Sound of Terror • Don Berry
... hump-backed blotch, that was sprawling blackly beside a misshapen block, was either wriggling on the floor as if trying to stand upright . . . or else there was something wrong with ...
— Drolls From Shadowland • J. H. Pearce
... high as the little coon-skin cap had been, and backward tumbled the household idol into a dense clump of pea-vines which, with a smart sprinkling of briers, grew in the fence-corner behind him. In an instant the little man had vanished, and there instead lay sprawling a yelling urchin; the yelling, however, considerably smothered by his coon-skin cap rammed down over his mouth, and by his two shirts turned up over his head. With a swing of his huge limbs that made the knitted panels shake and rattle, Burl had flung himself over the fence, and was now engaged ...
— Burl • Morrison Heady
... sprawling on the grass, And beavers fell in showers; There was another Floorer there ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood
... kitchen. They had a cheerless aspect on a November afternoon, and nobody knew exactly where to sit. Light was obtained in the evening from Grecian lamps, which made it easy to understand why the ancient Athenians, as a rule, went to bed early. You dined sprawling on a couch. This was no doubt practicable when you took your plate into your hand and fed yourself with your fingers; but with a knife and fork the meal had all the advantages of a hot picnic. You did not feel luxurious or ...
— They and I • Jerome K. Jerome
... That sprawling corpse, the startled realization of death stamped for ever in the wide, staring eyes, was indeed a subject for meditation. There, in the midst of all the evidences of Hartley Parrish's meteoric rise to affluence and power, Greve pondered for an instant on the ...
— The Yellow Streak • Williams, Valentine
... easily imagine that you have one. I want merely an outline of figure,—something sprawling and ungainly." ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... details. He merely fell upon them, like a blind but raging force, irresistible as a falling hillside and almost as disastrous. They both went down before him like calves, and rolled over and over, stunned and sprawling. ...
— Kings in Exile • Sir Charles George Douglas Roberts
... the sands, above on the bluffs, were set the homes of the summer residents—those whom Gusty Durgin, the waitress at the hotel, termed "the big bugs." On the farthest point visible in this direction was a sprawling, ornate villa with private dock and boathouses, and a small breakwater behind which floated a fleet of small craft. Louise heard the "put-put-a-put" of a motor and descried a swift craft coming from ...
— Cap'n Abe, Storekeeper • James A. Cooper
... down so you can ask me sumpin'? I'll do dat! Of course I will! (He proceeded to do so—wiping his nose on his sleeve and sprawling down on the doorsill). My pappy name George, black George they call him in slavery time, 'cause dere was a small yallow slave on de place, named George. My mammy name Ca'line. My pappy b'long to de McNeals and my mammy b'long to Marse Joe Beard. His wife was my mistress. Her name ...
— Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves • Works Projects Administration
... incipient Diogenes, like others, all ignorant of his Why, his How or Whereabout, was opening his eyes to the kind Light; sprawling out his ten fingers and toes; listening, tasting, feeling; in a word, by all his Five Senses, still more by his Sixth Sense of Hunger, and a whole infinitude of inward, spiritual, half-awakened Senses, endeavoring daily to acquire for himself some knowledge of this strange Universe ...
— Sartor Resartus - The Life and Opinions of Herr Teufelsdrockh • Thomas Carlyle
... suspended in the air of the hold had glowed dull-red at the moment of the explosion. In the twinkling of an eye, in an infinitesimal fraction of a second since the first tilt of the bench, I was sprawling full length on the cargo. I picked myself up and scrambled out. It was quick like a rebound. The deck was a wilderness of smashed timber, lying crosswise like trees in a wood after a hurricane; an immense curtain of soiled rags waved gently before me—it was the mainsail blown to strips. I ...
— Youth • Joseph Conrad
... down in a chair under the open window and read this communication slowly. The writing was large and sprawling; it sloped slightly-upward from left to right across the sheet and left a triangle of white paper at the ...
— The Red Redmaynes • Eden Phillpotts
... responded, and at the same moment the bedroom door was flung open, and her brother, who had been hastily fetched by the neighbours on the other side, burst into the room and with one hearty blow sent Mr. Grummit sprawling. ...
— Captains All and Others • W.W. Jacobs
... isn't," he continued. "Lucille has killed it. Nothing to be terrified about.... Oh, chuck it, man! Get up and blow your nose...." He was sent sprawling on his back as Lucille dropped by Dam's side and strove to raise his ...
— Snake and Sword - A Novel • Percival Christopher Wren
... sprawling in a soft leather chair in front of the open fire. With the privilege of an old school-fellow and college classmate, he had been jabbing the soft coal with his walking-stick, causing it to burst into tiny flames. His cigarette drooped from his lips, his hat was cocked over ...
— The Lost House • Richard Harding Davis
... There was no need for me to look behind, I knew that it was just at the back of me. I could scarcely breathe. My race had almost exhausted me; my breath came in gasps. I made one final effort and fell sprawling at Vitalis' feet. I could ...
— Nobody's Boy - Sans Famille • Hector Malot
... dancing excitedly about—until he got in the fireman's way, to receive such a furious push that he went sprawling on his back. He lifted himself to his feet as if something new had entered his experience, and ...
— The Return of Blue Pete • Luke Allan
... tail spread out behind her, and her legs sprawling in the sky, came old Black-eyed Susan, straight towards them. Jack Frost and Marmaduke jumped back; the Old Man-in-the-Moon moved a little too. They were afraid she ...
— Seven O'Clock Stories • Robert Gordon Anderson
... maelstrom of sound, so swelled the lustful cry of the dark multitude at the base of the Ziggurat, while the arch-priest chanted his litany in a sort of triumphant exultation. Then, all at once, one of the executioners roughly tripped the golden haired girl, sprawling her helpless on the bloody stones; and, before Nelson could quite realize it, the slender, silver hued form lay limp and helpless between ...
— Astounding Stories, March, 1931 • Various
... of the translations of Mozart's letters which have found their way into the books betray want of familiarity with the idioms and colloquialisms employed by Mozart, as well as understanding of his careless, contradictory and sprawling epistolary style. Some of the intimacy of that style the new translation seeks to preserve, but the purpose has chiefly been ...
— Mozart: The Man and the Artist, as Revealed in his own Words • Friedrich Kerst and Henry Edward Krehbiel
... attention of Sophia from the melancholy reflections which she had been before indulging. We instantly quitted our seats and ran to the rescue of those who but a few moments before had been in so elevated a situation as a fashionably high Phaeton, but who were now laid low and sprawling in the Dust. "What an ample subject for reflection on the uncertain Enjoyments of this World, would not that Phaeton and the Life of Cardinal Wolsey afford a thinking Mind!" said I to Sophia as we were hastening ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... doll. Characters like Hercules have such weaknesses occasionally. Was the one I had fallen in love with at all beautiful? No. I can see her now. She had a splotch of vermilion on either cheek, short soft arms, horrible wooden hands, and long sprawling legs. Her flowered petticoat was fastened at the waist with two pins. Even now I cans see the balck heads of those two pins. It was a decidedly vulgar doll—smelt of the faubourg. I remember perfectly well that, child as I was then, before ...
— The Crime of Sylvestre Bonnard • Anatole France
... so that it seemed like a single shot that thundered through the room. Van Heerden slid forward, and fell sprawling ...
— The Green Rust • Edgar Wallace
... The architect was sprawling under a large oak tree, whose trunk, with a huge spread of bough and foliage, ragged with age, stood on the verge ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... to last these settlements on the Mississippi, the Wabash, and the Illinois had remained, in French hands, mere sprawling villages. The largest of them, Kaskaskia, may have contained in its most flourishing days two thousand people, many of them voyageurs, coureurs-de-bois, converted Indians, and transients of one sort or another. In 1765 ...
— The Old Northwest - A Chronicle of the Ohio Valley and Beyond, Volume 19 In - The Chronicles Of America Series • Frederic Austin Ogg
... strode into the house, and brusquely threw open the door of a room which he knew to be Varillo's own specially private retreat. A woman with a mass of bright orange-gold hair, half-dressed in a tawdry blue peignoir trimmed with cheap lace, was sprawling lazily on a sofa smoking a cigarette. She sprang up surprised and indignant,—but shrank back visibly as she recognised the intruder, and met the steady tigerish glare of the ...
— The Master-Christian • Marie Corelli
... more modern. Of the illuminations, it will be only necessary to mention the large one at fol. iij.c. (ccc.) in which the gray tints and the gold are very cleverly managed. At the end is seen, in a large sprawling character, the following inscription: "Ce Livre est A Le Harne. Fille Et Seur de Roys de France, Duchesse de Bourbonnois et dauuergne. Contesse de Clermont et de Tourez. Dame de Beaujeu." This inscription bears the date of 1468; not very long before which I suspect ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume Two • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... ceremony as though the bullet had lodged in himself, Lanyard tumbled back into the room, tripped, and fell sprawling; while to a tune of clattering boots two sergents de ville lumbered valiantly into the library and pulled up to discover Madame Omber standing calmly, safe and sound, beside her desk, and Lanyard picking himself up from the floor ...
— The Lone Wolf - A Melodrama • Louis Joseph Vance
... line outside of guard. It worked like a charm, and left end sped through with Joel bracing him at the turn and the left half going ahead. Four yards were netted, Meach, the substitute left half, being tackled by Post. In the mix-up that followed Joel found himself sprawling over the runner, with Cloud sitting astride the small of his back, a very uncomfortable part of the body with which to support a weighty opponent. But he would not have minded that alone; but when Cloud arose his foot came into violent contact with Joel's head, which caused that youth to see ...
— The Half-Back • Ralph Henry Barbour
... was in no mood for finesse: with a vicious shove he sent the vindictive Pud-Pud sprawling, then ...
— Terry - A Tale of the Hill People • Charles Goff Thomson
... with his awful wig and gold-headed cane! There are the fubsy boys—copied apparently from cherubim—who, with glowing, distended cheeks, are simpering on the ceiling, doing the tenor, with wide open mouths that would shame e'er a barn-door in the village; their red, stumpy fingers sprawling over the music which they are (not) reading. The pale, lantern-jawed youths, in yellow waistcoats and tall shirt-collars, who look as if they were about to whistle a match, are holloing out what is professionally, and in this instance ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 54, No. 338, December 1843 • Various
... of hurrying feet only urged the boy on. He had caught hold of the bucket and was leaning far over the dark opening when he felt a heavy hand upon his shoulders, and himself lifted from his high perch, only to be dropped sprawling on the ground with a shower of tin pans rattling about his devoted head. Then the women, half fainting from fright, fell upon him, each in a desperate effort to first embrace him in thankfulness over his rescue from falling into ...
— Watch Yourself Go By • Al. G. Field
... very inconvenient." I found it so when, worn out with walking, I crawled into an abandoned barn halfway to Westfield and dug down in the hay, wet through and hungry as a bear. It stormed and rained all night, and a rat or a squirrel fell from the roof on my face. It felt like a big sprawling hand, and woke me up in a ...
— The Making of an American • Jacob A. Riis
... realized numbly how symbolic of his future that present moment might be. New conditions arose suddenly to confront him, only to find him halting, incompetent. He took a step forward. In his embarrassment his foot caught beneath a rug's edge. Calvert Carter's hand, alone, kept the king from sprawling frog-wise on the polished floor. A sudden pallor at the untimely accident came to the ...
— Trusia - A Princess of Krovitch • Davis Brinton
... moment Quidd felt a severe blow from behind, which sent him sprawling. I also received a push or a drive, and a loud laugh burst ...
— Young Folks Treasury, Volume 3 (of 12) - Classic Tales And Old-Fashioned Stories • Various
... lay half hidden in the general melee. It had a bold, irrepressible look, as though it were aware of having blown the room to smithereens and was rather amused. Stonehouse could see the large, sprawling hand that covered it. He touched it, not knowing why—nor yet that he was angry. Something that had been asleep in him for a long time ...
— The Dark House • I. A. R. Wylie
... road, to live the greatest number of good hours, is wisdom. It is not the part of men, but of fanatics, or of mathematicians if you will, to say that the shortness of life considered, it is not worth caring whether for so short a duration we were sprawling in want or sitting high. Since our office is with moments, let us husband them. Five minutes of today are worth as much to me as five minutes in the next millennium. Let us be poised, and wise, and our own, today. Let us treat the men and women well; treat them as if they ...
— Essays, Second Series • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... time to look the sledge and the two men hurtled past me; I braced myself to stop them, but might as well have attempted to hold an express train. With the first jerk I was whipped off my legs, and we all three lay sprawling on our backs and flying downward with an ever-increasing velocity. For some reason the first thought that flashed into my mind was that someone would break a limb if he attempted to stop our mad career, and I shouted ...
— The Voyages of Captain Scott - Retold from 'The Voyage of the "Discovery"' and 'Scott's - Last Expedition' • Charles Turley
... by the lake, upon a sloping bank which lay below. It did not seem to be more than fifty yards away. The doors and windows were gone. Five or six ill-looking fellows were near the doorway, some sprawling on the ground, others lolling and lounging about. One glance at the men was sufficient to assure him that they were the brigands, and also to show him that they kept no guard or scout or outpost of any kind, at ...
— The American Baron • James De Mille
... game, my lads?" the strange creature seemed to say, as it struck out alternately in front with both its feet, sending the black and the Irishman sprawling on their backs to a considerable distance—happily not breaking their limbs, which, from the apparent strength of its legs, it might very easily have done. It then whisked round, and rushed off with a curious action at a great rate through the forest, leaping over fallen trees and all other ...
— The South Sea Whaler • W.H.G. Kingston
... broken in, and was not to be got at, of course. But, catching out my pistol, as we scrambled through the hemlock, I discharged it at the old fellow, hitting him, I guess; for he growled and came straight after me. 'Twas no time to be loitering. Down the slope we all ran together, slumping and sprawling full length in the soft snow! Up and on again, knocking out spiles and kicking over sap-buckets, bumping and grazing ourselves against the rough bark of the maples; for it was pitch dark in the woods. But on we went for dear life, expecting every ...
— Happy Days for Boys and Girls • Various
... as it descended, fell like a blanket round Ismay's head. He stumbled, tripped and fell headlong down the steps, sprawling and cursing. ...
— The Bandbox • Louis Joseph Vance
... prostrate dial we used to moralise about. And the ground inside it, that was nice turf once, with the rill running down it that perhaps supplied the moat—all stony now, and overgrown, and tangled, with ugly-looking elder-bushes sprawling through the ivy. To a painter it might have proved very attractive; but to me it seemed so dreary, and so sombre, and oppressive, that, although I am not sentimental, as you know, I actually turned away, to put my little visit off, until I should be in better spirits for it. And that, my ...
— Springhaven - A Tale of the Great War • R. D. Blackmore
... doubter that he figures in the memory of those who knew him; but rather as a victorious believer, and under great difficulties a victorious doer. An example to us all, not of lamed misery, helpless spiritual bewilderment and sprawling despair, or any kind of drownage in the foul welter of our so-called religious or other controversies and confusions; but of a swift and valiant vanquisher of all these; a noble asserter of himself, as worker and speaker, in spite ...
— The Life of John Sterling • Thomas Carlyle
... my kivey," he said to the bargee, as he sent him sprawling. Then, turning round, he asked a townsman: "What do you charge for a pint of Dutch pink?" following up the question by ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books - Vol. II: Fiction • Arthur Mee, J. A. Hammerton, Eds.
... pleasanter still was it to lie in the sleigh snugly wrapped in furs, and watch the inky sky powdered with stars—Ursa Major (now almost overhead) sprawling its glittering shape across the heavens, and the little Pleiades twinkling like a diamond spray against dark velvet. At times I could make out every lonely peak and valley in the lunar world, and even distinguish far-away ...
— From Paris to New York by Land • Harry de Windt
... and frog-marched to the gate. One guard pushed my skean back into its clasp. The other shoved me hard, and I stumbled, fell sprawling in the dust of the cobbled street, to the accompaniment of a profane statement about what I could expect if I came back. A chorus of jeers from a cluster of chak children and veiled women ...
— The Door Through Space • Marion Zimmer Bradley
... lad!" I sung out. "Up with you,—there are others remaining;" and I went sprawling along the line to the deck-house, there to encounter another rush of water, which washed as high as my thighs, and fetched me such a thump in the stomach that I thought I must ...
— Great Sea Stories • Various
... Ogilvie's pen traced the letters more slowly on the page. Once she paused altogether, and said aloud to her image in the mirror opposite her escritoire, 'What a fool I am!' and then stooped again over her task. The sprawling writing had hardly covered half a sheet of notepaper when the red-gold head with its crown of plaits was raised again, and the woman in the mirror looked at her with a face that was suddenly livid. Her lips were white ...
— Peter and Jane - or The Missing Heir • S. (Sarah) Macnaughtan
... had only his left arm, and it was not his strongest; but back of it he felt a new power. He took Hamilton beneath the chin, and with a lurch the man fell sprawling over a table among the glasses. In the screaming confusion that followed, Monte fought his way to the door, using his shoulders and a straight arm to clear a path. In another second he had lifted ...
— The Triflers • Frederick Orin Bartlett
... scramble down the coral banks, waddle with uncertain steps across the strip of smooth sand to be rolled over and over in their helplessness by the gentle break of the sea. They cool their panting bodies by a series of queer, sprawling marine gymnastics, swim about buoyantly for a few minutes, are tumbled on to the sand, and waddle with contented cheeps each back to its own birthplace among hundreds of highly-decorated eggs, and hundreds of infants ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield
... bears to a seal of office. Even this was displayed only on a single panel, whispering, rather than proclaiming, our relations to the mighty state; whilst the beast from Birmingham, our green-and-gold friend from false, fleeting, perjured Brummagem, had as much writing and painting on its sprawling flanks as would have puzzled a decipherer from the tombs of Luxor. For some time this Birmingham machine ran along by our side—a piece of familiarity that already of itself seemed to me sufficiently Jacobinical. But all at once a movement of the horses ...
— The English Mail-Coach and Joan of Arc • Thomas de Quincey
... lake, he detected one of the Indians crouching beside the canoe, and evidently tampering with its bark covering. Naked as he was, the young fellow bounded to the spot and, ere the Indian was aware of his presence, knocked him sprawling with a single blow. Like a panther the savage sprang to his feet, and, knife in hand, rushed at his assailant. Suddenly he paused, his outstretched arm fell to his side, and he stood like one petrified, with his eyes fixed on Donald. Then, in ...
— At War with Pontiac - The Totem of the Bear • Kirk Munroe and J. Finnemore
... the galleon, was magnified by our hero's imagination into ten times its magnitude from the crash which it delivered and from the cloud of splinters it would cast up into the moonlight. At last he suddenly beheld one poor man knocked sprawling across the deck, who, as he raised his arm from behind the mast, disclosed that the hand was gone from it, and that the shirt sleeve was red with blood in the moonlight. At this sight all the strength fell away from poor Harry, and he felt sure that a like fate ...
— Howard Pyle's Book of Pirates • Howard I. Pyle
... had just hit a large wild dog, a long shot, making him jump high off the ground; but this beast is as tenacious of life as a cat, and instead of falling dead, he limped off and escaped. But to resume: I fired, and never heard a ball strike with more satisfaction in my life. It laid the alligator sprawling, feet uppermost. There was no time to be lost in getting him on shore; two or three strokes with the oars brought us alongside of the monster, as he floated on the surface of the stream. The business was to attach a line to one of his legs; and as we knew that he was not dead, but only ...
— Discoveries in Australia, Volume 2 • John Lort Stokes
... before did I behold such a form, nor such feats of strength! He was another Hercules. It was rumored he was from the forests of Germany. If you will believe it, which I scarce can, though I saw it, he fought successively with six of Sosia's best men, and one after another laid them all sprawling. A seventh was then set upon him, he having no time to breathe, or even drink. Many however cried out against this. But Romans, you know, like not to have their fun spoiled, so the seventh was not taken off. As every one foresaw, this was too ...
— Aurelian - or, Rome in the Third Century • William Ware
... It is that of a teaching Brother. He is a thin grizzled man of sixty, with an expression of melancholy benevolence in his rugged face. I have watched him sitting upon a bench with his arm round some little village urchin by his side, while the children from the outlying hamlets, sprawling upon a heap of stones in the sun, ate their mid-day meal of bread and cheese or buckwheat pancakes that their mothers had put into their baskets before they trudged off in the early morning. I have noticed by many signs that he is full ...
— Wanderings by southern waters, eastern Aquitaine • Edward Harrison Barker
... boy's grasp, Polly started to run, the other girls following. One boy thrust out his foot tripping Grace who fell sprawling in the dusty road. Her companions stopped in their flight to come to her rescue. "Oh, you bad, bad boys," cried Molly indignantly. "If I don't tell Cap'n Dave ...
— Three Little Cousins • Amy E. Blanchard
... due to thin out some." The Texan stooped to recover the bartender's gun from the floor and as he did so Ike Stork stepped around the corner of the bar, and taking instant advantage of his position, administered a kick that sent the cowboy sprawling at the feet of the bartender. Pandemonium broke loose in the smashing of glass and the thud of blows. Forgetting his injured arm the bartender joined Stork who had followed up his advantage by leaping upon the struggling Texan. Reaching ...
— Prairie Flowers • James B. Hendryx
... with emotion; 'see it comes to me again; ah, what great favours the fathers of all grant me this day,' and, passing his hand gently over the sprawling animal, he inhaled from his palm deeply and long, at the same time invoking the favour of the gods. Then he leaned his chin upon his hand, and with large, wistful eyes regarded his ugly captive as it sprawled about, blinking its meal-bedimmed eyes, and clawing the smooth floor in ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... knuckles which I hardly felt. I dashed out of the door into the clear sunlight. Some one was close behind, I knew not whom. Right in front, the doctor was pursuing his assailant down the hill, and, just as my eyes fell upon him, beat down his guard, and sent him sprawling on his back, with a great ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 6 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... over she went headforemost into the ditch! and now, spying Dilsey, who was running with all her might to gain the lumber-pile, he took after her, and catching up with her just as she reached the gin-house, placed his head in the middle of her back, and sent her sprawling on her face. Diddie and Chris had by this time regained their feet, both of them very muddy, and Chris with her face all scratched from the roots and briers in the ditch. Seeing Old Billy occupied with Dilsey, they ...
— Diddie, Dumps, and Tot • Louise-Clarke Pyrnelle
... out by the heels, for it was very shallow, and the descent was effected by not more than two or three steps. After accomplishing this, he called him many opprobrious names, and threatened him with his foot, as he lay sprawling on the deck. "Think you," said he, "who are a dog and a Jew, and pay as a dog and a Jew; think you to sleep in the cabin? Undeceive yourself, beast; that cabin shall be slept in by none to-night but this Christian Cavallero." The sage made no reply, but arose from the deck and stroked ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... came on; fired again, point-blank, into its ugly face. I saw its features vanish in a flash: its face was driven in. Yet it passed me, gripped Montgomery, and holding him, fell headlong beside him and pulled him sprawling upon itself ...
— The Island of Doctor Moreau • H. G. Wells
... Markheim's eyes returned to the body of his victim, where it lay both humped and sprawling, incredibly small and strangely meaner than in life. In these poor, miserly clothes, in that ungainly attitude, the dealer lay like so much sawdust. Markheim had feared to see it, and, lo! it was nothing. And yet, as he gazed, this bundle of old clothes and pool of blood began ...
— English Prose - A Series of Related Essays for the Discussion and Practice • Frederick William Roe (edit. and select.)
... sprawling at his ease with a pipe on the verandah some hours later, the appearance of a small girl with bare brown legs and a very abbreviated white muslin frock, hugging an unwilling mongoose to her breast, came as a surprise; ...
— The Lamp in the Desert • Ethel M. Dell
... poet's own bearing, or fail to recognize the strength that flows from his joyous, fearless personality, and the might of his intellect and heart. "When British literature," said Carlyle of Scott and Cobbett, "lay all puking and sprawling in Wertherism, Byronism and other Sentimentalisms, nature was kind enough to send us two healthy men." And he breaks out into a eulogy of mere health, of "the just balance of faculties that radiates ...
— Browning as a Philosophical and Religious Teacher • Henry Jones
... arrived at the spot where Major Sam should be at bay, they heard a crashing of brush and branches, a grinding of rock and gravel. They peered over. It was three hundred feet to the creek below—and plunging, scrambling, now on its haunches, now on its nose, the white horse was bounding, leaping, sprawling, already half way down, with the major firmly astride, reins in one hand, ...
— Boys' Book of Frontier Fighters • Edwin L. Sabin
... "False hound! Will you not silent keep that mouth where truth was never found? For you to boast! the lion scare have you forgotten too? How through the open door you rushed, across the court-yard flew; How sprawling in your terror on the wine-press beam you lay? Ay! never more, I trow, you wore the mantle of that day. There is no choice; the issue now the sword alone can try; The daughters of my Cid ye spurned; that must ye justify. On every count I here declare their cause the cause of right, And thou shall ...
— National Epics • Kate Milner Rabb
... her. Merdek, having proceeded so far courageously, stooped to take up the dissevered members of the cat, but before he could effect this, a blow upon the side of the head, from his incensed lady, laid him sprawling on the floor. ...
— Eastern Tales by Many Story Tellers • Various
... Burney, and he made a rush at Glyn to collar him and make him prisoner; but before he could reach the offending lad a foot was thrust out by Singh, over which he tripped and fell sprawling upon his face. ...
— Glyn Severn's Schooldays • George Manville Fenn
... under the surface, and was completely drenched, I made an enthusiastic move toward the bank. Now snowshoes are not adapted for walking either in swift water or among boulders. I realized this thoroughly after they had several times tripped me, sprawling, into the liquid cold. Finally I sat down in the water, took them off, and came ...
— Wild Life on the Rockies • Enos A. Mills
... more ancient, wore a double veil. They hid their sense in verbiage, and also in narrow Germanifled letters, farther deformed by contractions and ornamental flourishes, whose joint effect made a word look like a black daddy-long-legs, all sprawling fantastic limbs and the ...
— Love Me Little, Love Me Long • Charles Reade |
