"Straddle" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the hot water, he cut a couple of long splints of birch, as nearly as possible half an inch wide and an eighth of an inch thick, and put them to steep with the bark. Next he made two or three straddle pins or clamps, like clothes pegs, by splitting the ends of some sticks which had ...
— Rolf In The Woods • Ernest Thompson Seton
... with the sun and having eaten our rude breakfast set forth, some six miles to the west, to mark the location of our claims with the "straddle-bugs." ...
— A Son of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... ceremony of all. On that day a design emblematic of the totem of the deceased is drawn on the ground, and beside it a shallow trench is dug about a foot deep and fifteen feet long. Over this trench a number of men, elaborately decorated with down of various colours, stand straddle-legged, while a line of women, decorated with red and yellow ochre, crawl along the trench under the long bridge made by the straddling legs of the men. The last woman carries the arm-bone of the dead in its parcel, and as soon as she emerges from the ...
— The Belief in Immortality and the Worship of the Dead, Volume I (of 3) • Sir James George Frazer
... dirl 'ith heed, that he kilt him deed's a herrin, an' we micht a' witness the same by gannin to the Shouther o' Birkin Brae." And truly it was as he said, for we found the mark of the little Highlandman's shillela on the fox's head, while he himself was sitting a straddle on him, like "the devil looking over Lincoln Minster," and the dogs lying panting ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 19, No. - 537, March 10, 1832 • Various
... stern. Stoun', pang, throb. Stoure, dust. Stourie, dusty. Stown, stolen. Stownlins, by stealth. Stoyte, to stagger. Strae death, death in bed. (i. e., on straw). Staik, to stroke. Strak, struck. Strang, strong. Straught, straight. Straught, to stretch. Streekit, stretched. Striddle, to straddle. Stron't, lanted. Strunt, liquor. Strunt, to swagger. Studdie, an anvil. Stumpie, dim. of stump; a worn quill. Sturt, worry, trouble. Sturt, to fret; to vex. Sturtin, frighted, staggered. Styme, the faintest trace. Sucker, sugar. Sud, should. ...
— Poems And Songs Of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... and picked up the hoe. "Stand this way! Straddle the furrow with your back in the direction you are going to hoe; or else stand on the left side of the furrow facing it. Grasp the handle of the hoe in the right hand near the upper end. The back of your hand should ...
— The Library of Work and Play: Gardening and Farming. • Ellen Eddy Shaw
... continues our eloquent Professor, "Man is a Tool-using Animal (Handthierendes Thier). Weak in himself, and of small stature, he stands on a basis, at most for the flattest-soled, of some half-square foot, insecurely enough; has to straddle out his legs, lest the very wind supplant him. Feeblest of bipeds! Three quintals are a crushing load for him; the steer of the meadow tosses him aloft, like a waste rag. Nevertheless he can use Tools; can devise Tools: with these the granite ...
— Sartor Resartus - The Life and Opinions of Herr Teufelsdrockh • Thomas Carlyle
... breeches and all o' that. And when I got there I would just take a peep, To see if old cider mill John was asleep, And if he was I'd go snooking round 'Till a great big round rye straw I'd found; I'd straddle a barrel and quick begin To fill with cider right ...
— Nye and Riley's Wit and Humor (Poems and Yarns) • Bill Nye
... Irishmen, rather startling from its numbers, entered the yard. Among them was Mr. Farren. They surrounded my lifting-apparatus, while I, unseen, surveyed them from a back window. I saw Mr. Farren take the handle, straddle the hogshead, throw himself into a lifting posture, and, straining every muscle to its utmost tension, give a tremendous pull. But the weight made no sign; and his friends, thinking he was merely feeling it, said, "Wait a bit,—Pat'll ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 09, No. 51, January, 1862 • Various
... loose and destroys, in spite of skillful navigation and perfect machinery? Still to-day the sea has a residue of the uncontrollable, and probably will have for some ages to come. Neptune has not ceased from his wrath against the man of thought, who tries to straddle and ride him, and Zeus still supports at times the Sea-god's appeal for honor, when his prerogative is violated. Yet not always by any means, for Zeus belongs to the true Olympians, deities of intelligence, who once put down ...
— Homer's Odyssey - A Commentary • Denton J. Snider
... to give the true sense and humour of the passage in English, depending, as it does, on the double meaning of {diabainein} (1) to cross (a river), (2) to stride or straddle (of the legs). The army is unable to cross the Centrites; Xenophon dreams that he is fettered, but the chains drop off his legs and he is able to stride as freely as ever; next morning the two young men come to him with the story how they have found themselves able to walk cross ...
— Anabasis • Xenophon
... and faculty of patience that moves mountains, or as much of them as blocks its course. The progress is slow, silent, but sure. The world, busy in other doings, does not hear the pick, nor the speech of the powder when it speaks to a huge rock a-straddle the path. The world, even including the shareholders, hears but little, if anything, of the progress of the work for months, perhaps for a year. Then the consummation is announced in the form of an invitation to the public to "assist" at the opening of a railroad ...
— A Walk from London to John O'Groat's • Elihu Burritt
... fifty year that other folk might straddle 'em, here I be now not a penny the better! Often-times, when I see so many good things about, I feel inclined to help myself in common justice ...
— The Hand of Ethelberta • Thomas Hardy
... grizzly bear. I can rope and throw the longhorn of the wildest Texas brand, And in Indian disagreements I can play a leading hand, But at last I got my master and he surely made me squeal When the boys got me a-straddle of that ...
— Cowboy Songs - and Other Frontier Ballads • Various
... the notes. It would have been as well if I'd reeserved at least one for scenery. But I don't; an' so it befalls that when we-all is in the very heart of the toone, an' at what it's no exaggeration to call a crisis in our destinies, I walks straddle of a stump. An' sech is my fatal momentum that the drum rolls up on the stump, an' I rolls up on the drum. That's the finish; next day the Silver Cornet Band by edict of the Sni-a-bar pop'lace is re-exiled to them woods. But I don't go; old Hickey excloodes me, an' my hopes of moosical ...
— Wolfville Nights • Alfred Lewis
... being removed from your person, is again taken to the tailor's laboratory, and the embrasures carefully and artistically fine-drawn. The process for walking or riding trousers only varies in these particulars—for the one you should stand upright, for the other you should straddle the back of a chair. Trousers cut on these principles entail only two inconveniences, to which every one with the true feelings of a gentleman would willingly submit. You must never attempt to sit down in your walking trousers, or venture to assume an upright position in your ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... took her in just as much as she did you, Mr. Spy." Rutherford glowered at him menacingly. "I'd advise you to straddle that horse ...
— The Sheriff's Son • William MacLeod Raine
... All were Eastlake and in good taste, the colors sage-green, pumpkin-yellow and ginger-brown, dashed with splashes of peacock feathers and Japanese fans. The vases were straddle-legged and pot-bellied Asiatic shapes. Dragons in bronze and ivory, sticky-looking faience and glittering majolica, stood in the corners. Silk embroideries representing the stork—a scrawny bird with ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 26, September 1880 • Various
... Eighth. Though, as a woman, I bear him no rancour, for his wives were—fools, point blank. No man was ever so manageable. My diplomatist is getting liker and liker to him every day. Leaner, of course, and does not habitually straddle. Whiskers and morals, I mean. We must be silent before our prudish sister. Not a prude? We talk diplomacy, dearest. He complains of the exclusiveness of the port of Oporto, and would have strict alliance between Portugal and England, with mutual privileges. I wish the alliance, and think ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... to serve as mercenaries." That there were many swaggerers and bullies about, we learn from Duerer's prints. In every crowd these gentlemen in leathern tights, with other ostentatious additions to their costume, besides poniards and daggers to emphasise the brutal male, strut straddle-legged and self-assured; and of course raw lads and loutish prentices yielded them the sincerest flattery. We can well understand that the model boy, to whom "God had given diligence," with his long hair lovely as a girl's, and his consciousness of being nearly always in the right, had much to ...
— Albert Durer • T. Sturge Moore
... one that had saved that hidden little office room from being dark. He was no lineman, but he knew enough to be careful about the wires, so it took him several minutes to work his way to where he could straddle a crosstree that had ...
— Starr, of the Desert • B. M Bower
... Fox, he say he wish he had one, An' 'mongst all de yuthers he'd be de glad un; He'd git a bridle an' a bran' new saddle, An' git on de hoss an' ride 'im straddle; He say, sezee, "He'd do some trottin', Kaze when I git started, I'm a mighty hot un!" Brer Rabbit, he smole a great big smile, Wid, "I can't ride myse'f, kaze I got ...
— Uncle Remus and Brer Rabbit • Joel Chandler Harris
... here are my girls that can't be satisfied to sit down and hem good crash towels for their mother, but must turn themselves into boys, and play ranchmen and baseball and hockey on the ice, and Wild West shows with the dogs and the pony—and even riding him a-straddle—and want to go to college just because their two brothers are going, and, for all I know, join a fraternity and have secrets from their own mother and a football team!" She paused long enough to help ...
— Flamsted quarries • Mary E. Waller
... tempter—the original Jacobs—was called in Hebrew a nachash, so I'm told. But folks don't seem to understand exactly what this nachash was. Some say it was a rattlesnake, some a straddle-bug. Old Dr. Adam Clarke, I've heard, vowed it was a monkey. They're all out of their reckoning. It's as plain as a pikestaff that it was nothing but Fried Fat cooked up to order, and it's been a-tempting weak sisters ever since. That's ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 85, November, 1864 • Various
... the race and forgot his other loss for a minute, and declared that Mr. Tortoise didn't win the race at all—that he couldn't have covered that much ground in a half a day alone, and he asked Mr. Fox if he was going to let that great straddle bug ruin his reputation for speed and make him the laughing stock of the Big Deep Woods, besides all the other damage ...
— How Mr. Rabbit Lost his Tail • Albert Bigelow Paine
... throughout the empire to be painted in the most glaring and fantastic colors, and passed a considerable portion of his time riding on a wooden rocking-horse—a degenerate practice for a scion of the bold Catharine, who used to dress herself in men's clothes, and ride a-straddle on the back of a live horse to review her troops. Alexander I., in his ukase of September, 1827, perpetrated a very fine piece of Russian humor. The period of military service for serfs is fixed at twenty years in the Imperial Guard, and twenty-two in other ...
— The Land of Thor • J. Ross Browne
... it was, an' that ain't but half of it," the lank rider complained regretfully. "It ain't ever gonna be any more. These here red-coats are plumb ruinin' trade. Squint at a buck cross-eyed, whisper rum to him, an' one o' these guys jumps a-straddle o' yore ...
— Man Size • William MacLeod Raine
... old gate which led to the bridge. Close by, in the little place, was the hut of the consumo, the local custom-house, with officials lounging at the door or sitting straddle-legged on chairs, lazily smoking. Opposite was a tobacconist's, with the gaudy red and yellow sign, Campania arrendataria de tabacos, and a dram-shop where three hardy Spaniards from the mountains stood drinking aguardiente. ...
— The Land of The Blessed Virgin; Sketches and Impressions in Andalusia • William Somerset Maugham
... called off. He was a thousand feet deeper than he'd been ordered to go when—blooie! Over the top she went with fourteen hundred barrels.... Desdemona's the name of a camp below here, but they call it Hog Town. More elegant! Down there the derricks actually straddle one another, and they have to board them over to keep from drowning one another out when they blow in. Fellow in Dallas brought in the first well, and it was so big that his stock went from a hundred dollars a share to twelve thousand. All in a few weeks. Of course, he started a bank. Funniest people ...
— Flowing Gold • Rex Beach
... politics or no politics, I want to see a law enforced so long as it's a law. If a party cannot hold together and keep on top with any other system, then the party is 'in' wrong. I don't believe General Waymouth intends to straddle. ...
— The Ramrodders - A Novel • Holman Day
... nearly a six-footer, but he loomed large as an elephant, came clacking past between the ranked tree-boles, stopping a moment to straddle a sapling and browse; while the wolverine, sitting motionless and wide-legged, watched him. Once a lynx, with its eternal, set grin, floated by, half-seen, half-guessed, as if a wisp of wood mist had broken loose and was floating about. Once ...
— The Way of the Wild • F. St. Mars
... directed, swinging the baby up and depositing him a-straddle her left hip. "You're just ...
— Masters of Space • Edward Elmer Smith
... might have had 1,000 steers of my own, and a chance to make rules and regulations for my feller-citizens—and then again I might have took to gambling and drinking and raising blazes, and broke my poor wife's broom-handle with my hard head. So I reckon we'll let it slide as it is. Now you straddle that cayuse of yours and come along with me and I'll ...
— Red Saunders • Henry Wallace Phillips
... bombarded, and the houses they had burned, and the honest hearts they had broken! To hell with them! Besides, for the matter of that, he was feeling sort of sick himself—sort of numb and shivery—and he staggered like a drunken man as he went slowly back up to the wall. It was all he could do to straddle the blamed thing, and then it was only with the help of a wounded Samoan who took his hand. The Kanaka, dizzily seen through a kind of mist, was no other than Tua; together, like men in a dream, they searched for Fetuao's ...
— Wild Justice: Stories of the South Seas • Lloyd Osbourne
... the Panisse family through marriage with the daughter of a Marseilles notary, who got the chateau by foreclosing a mortgage. During the Revolutionary period, the property was saved from confiscation by a clever straddle. The owner stayed in France, and supported the Revolution, while the son emigrated with the Bourbons. The peerage was created just a hundred years ago by Louis XVIII, in reward for the refusal of the Panisses to follow Napoleon a second time ...
— Riviera Towns • Herbert Adams Gibbons
... his mighty calves, his big red rural face. We greeted these things as children greet the loved pictures in a storybook lost and mourned and found again. We recognised them as one recognises the handwriting on letter-backs. Beside the road we saw a ploughboy straddle whistling on a stile, and he had the merit of being not only a ploughboy but a Gainsborough. Beyond the stile, across the level velvet of a meadow, a footpath wandered like a streak drawn by a finger over a surface of fine plush. We followed it from field to field ...
— A Passionate Pilgrim • Henry James
... would fly first; or if there was a camp-meeting, he would be there reg'lar to bet on Parson Walker, which he judged to be the best exhorter about here—and so he was, too, and a good man. If he even seen a straddle-bug start to go anywheres, he would bet you how long it would take to get wherever he was going to, and if you took him up, he would foller that straddle-bug to Mexico, but what he would find out where he was bound for and how long he was on the road. Lots of boys here ...
— The Bed-Book of Happiness • Harold Begbie
... wide and unyielding as a table-top, was strapped securely to each donkey, and to this seat we clung, with no secureness at all. An exceedingly wide seat it was, with stirrups dangling somewhere out of reach, and which could not be reached even by the widest effort to straddle that square wide pad. Behind each donkey ran its owner, flicking its heels with a long-lashed whip, urging it to a speed likely to pitch ...
— Peking Dust • Ellen N. La Motte
... dragging a dead sheep after his horse, to make a trail to lead the wild dogs up to some poisoned meat; while the lady, clad in light and airy garments, with a huge white sunbonnet for head-gear, would be riding straddle-legged in search of strayed cows. When Grant left the station, and went away to make his fortune in mining, it was, perhaps, just a coincidence that this magnificent young creature grew tired of the old place and "cleared out," too. She certainly went away ...
— An Outback Marriage • Andrew Barton Paterson
... speakin' done on some subjects when he comes back, and given' squaws a free rein and lettin' 'em ride rough-shod over everybody and everything is one of 'era. Things is gittin' mighty funny when a danged squaw kin straddle my horses and ride 'em to death, and sass me when I say a word agin ...
— The Heritage of the Sioux • B.M. Bower
... old Barnum pretty weak physically, but had evidently not weakened his will. He left Hopkins in the office figuring up his account and he jumped a-straddle of a bare-backed mule and went up on the hill and rented the new 40-room house, "The Bravadere," and sub-rented enough rooms to pay the expenses of his company. He also got a porter, bus and team and sent to the landing to meet every steam boat to carry passengers ...
— The Second William Penn - A true account of incidents that happened along the - old Santa Fe Trail • William H. Ryus
... might not be disturbed in their darling but stupid affectation of nature, by observation of the quantity. How many "periwig-pated fellows" (as Shakspeare called such people), must we suffer, who imagine they are affording the public an enjoyment, when they straddle along the boards with their awkward persons, considering the words which the poet has given them to repeat merely as a necessary evil. Our players are less anxious to please than the French. By the creation of standing national theatres as ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel
... begin with balancing lessons. The patient is directed to stand at "Attention," head up and chest out, not looking at his feet, as the ataxic always wishes to do. At first this is enough to require; it will not do to be too particular about how his feet are placed, so long as he does not straddle. He can repeat this effort for himself a dozen times a day, for a minute or two each time. Next we try the same position with a little more care about getting the feet pretty near together and parallel, or with the toes turned out only a very little. In another ...
— Fat and Blood - An Essay on the Treatment of Certain Forms of Neurasthenia and Hysteria • S. Weir Mitchell
... he does not vote directly for the candidates themselves but for the party electors who are pledged to the entire party ticket. Party conventions take advantage of this disability on the part of the voter to work an electioneering device known as a "straddle," the aim of which is to please opposite interests by giving each a place on the ticket. After Garfield was nominated, the attempt was made to placate the defeated faction by nominating one of its adherents for Vice-President, ...
— The Cleveland Era - A Chronicle of the New Order in Politics, Volume 44 in The - Chronicles of America Series • Henry Jones Ford
... soul! And with that he threw a flaming dart at his breast.' In the cut he throws a dart with either hand, belching pointed flames out of his mouth, spreading his broad vans, and straddling the while across the path, as only a fiend can straddle who has just sworn by his infernal den. The defence will not be long against such vice, such flames, such red-hot nether energy. And in the fourth cut, to be sure, he has leaped bodily upon his victim, sped by ...
— Lay Morals • Robert Louis Stevenson
... after him thoughtfully. "Well, dog my skin!" he ejaculated to himself, "ef I hadn't seen that man—that same Ruth Pinkney—straddle a friend's body in this yer very room, and dare a whole crowd to come on, I'd swar that he hadn't any grit in him. ...
— The Twins of Table Mountain and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... BARNUM sarved me same's he did old Plymouth Rock, that when this august assemblage of Fossilized human bein's comes down onto the mail portion of the U. States, old P.T. be turned over to us. I'le make him think he's got straddle his wooly hoss, and an army of mermades was after him ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 22, August 27, 1870 • Various
... the man who collared him, "old chap, you can't walk any further; we know you, and as we always make gentlemen ride in these parts, you may just prepare to straddle that rail!" ...
— A Unique Story of a Marvellous Career. Life of Hon. Phineas T. • Joel Benton
... thatch of brown, gazed straight into the face of every man on the Platte, soldier, cowboy, Indian or halfbreed, but fell abashed if a laundress looked at him. Billy Ray, captain of the sorrel troop and the best light rider in Wyoming, was the only man he ever allowed to straddle a beautiful thoroughbred mare he had bought in Kentucky, but, bad hands or good, there wasn't a riding woman at Frayne who hadn't backed Lorna time and again, because to a woman the ...
— A Daughter of the Sioux - A Tale of the Indian frontier • Charles King
... standing straddle-legs in the flood of moonlight, his inky shadow falling right across the quarter- deck, made no sign at his approach, but secretly he felt something like the heave of the sea in his chest at the sight of that man. Jasper waited before him ...
— 'Twixt Land & Sea • Joseph Conrad
... your hands, laying quiet enough, as Charlie made you straddle over him, and settle yourself down on his big upstanding prick, till it was all out of sight in your cunt. "Now ride him well, Gertie, or you will be made to move yourself," and he stepped away to cut his switch, a couple of ...
— Forbidden Fruit • Anonymous
... could be during the day. They took them on little picnics and excursions, and two small ponies were trained so Bert and Nan could ride them. As for Flossie and Freddie, they had to ride in the cart. Freddie wanted to be a cowboy, and straddle a pony as Bert did, but his mother thought him too small. But Freddie and Flossie had good times in the cart, so they did ...
— The Bobbsey Twins in the Great West • Laura Lee Hope
... joys of winter! Whut's the fun of foolin' round With the posies dead en buried, en the snows upon the ground? When the wind's a-tossin' blizzards in a most distressin' way Tell you have to set a-straddle of the fire-place all the day! But I tell ye life's a-livin' when the summer grows the grass Over all the nooks en crannies whayre a feller's feet kin pass, En the whole world seems of heaven but a half-forgotten type, When the roas'in'-ears air plenty en ...
— Oklahoma Sunshine • Freeman E. (Freeman Edwin) Miller
... that riles 'em. They take on awful about her ridin' in pants, an' it certainly is a heap more modest than ridin' straddle in a hitched up caliker skirt, same as ...
— Judith Of The Plains • Marie Manning
... a smaller edition of the moon-jeep that had brought them from the ship to the city. It was a brightly-polished metal body, raised some ten feet off the ground on outrageously large wheels. It was very similar to the straddle-trucks used in lumberyards on Earth. It would straddle boulders in its path. It could go anywhere in spite of dust and detritus, and its metal body was air-tight and held air for breathing, even ...
— Operation: Outer Space • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... with his back to the fire and his legs a-straddle. Cai stuck his hands in his pockets and stared gloomily out of window. For some three minutes neither spoke, then Cai, of a sudden, ...
— Hocken and Hunken • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... It tasted sweetish and bitterish—I don't exactly know how, but as soon as it was down, I jumped up five times and yelled ‘Out of the way, you little ones, and let me ride’; and after running alongside, and climbing up his slimy scales, I got straddle of a big snake, who turned his head round, blowing his hot, sickening breath in my face. I waved my old wool hat, and kicking him into a fast run, sung out to the little devils to get up behind, and off we started, screeching, ‘Hurrah for Hell!’ The old gentleman rolled ...
— The Great Salt Lake Trail • Colonel Henry Inman
... support, supply support, lend support, give foundations, furnish foundations, afford foundations, supply foundations, lend foundations; bottom, found, base, ground, imbed, embed. maintain, keep on foot; aid &c 707. Adj. supporting, supported &c v.; fundamental; dorsigerous^. Adv. astride on, straddle. ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... admire the fanciful brackets and other wooden straddle-bugs people are so fond of decorating their houses with. By the way, if these brackets are purely ornamental, there ought not to be two alike, any more than you'd have two busts or two pictures alike in one room. Suppose you collect an assortment of the rich and rarest specimens, and ...
— Homes And How To Make Them • Eugene Gardner
... go, to be sure! They told me Mayor Bigelow hated proscription—but I knew it was gammon! He must follow the fashion, and Cochituate is all the go. There ain't no pumps now—it's all fountain! Pump water is full of animalculae, and straddle bugs don't exist in pond water—of course not. Nobody ever see young pollywogs and snapping turtles floating down stream in fly-time. Certainly not! I'm getting old—of course I am; that's the talk! I've been in office ...
— The Three Brides, Love in a Cottage, and Other Tales • Francis A. Durivage
... old an enormous man lived with other members of the Inuit tribe in a village beside a large inlet. He was so tall that he could straddle the inlet, and he used to stand that way every morning and wait for the whales to pass beneath him. As soon as one came along he used to scoop it up just as easily as other men scoop up a minnow. And he ate the whole whale just as other ...
— A Treasury of Eskimo Tales • Clara Kern Bayliss
... hosts of Little People passed them, going in the same direction. Peter said most of them rode "straddle-legs" on night birds or moths, while some flew along on a funny thing that was horse before and weeds behind. I judge this must have been the buchailin buidhe or benweed, which the faeries bewitch and ride the same as a witch mounts ...
— The Primrose Ring • Ruth Sawyer
... daddy is dead, but I can't tell you how; He left me six horses to follow the plough; With my whim wham waddle ho! Strim stram straddle ho! Bubble ho! ...
— The Baby's Opera • Walter Crane
... uncomfortable horse to ride on, it required exertion to keep in motion, and it hurt his feelings. Especially the last. He was a horseman, a jockey, he'd ridden the best blood in the equine world; and here he was condemned through no fault of his own to straddle a cross between a llama and a woolly toy sheep. It hurt his pride. He felt bitterly about it. Indeed, he ...
— The Killer • Stewart Edward White
... mistaken, sir! I taught my daughter to straddle a horse before I taught her to walk. Handle him? Of course she can handle him! Jimpson!" he roared in conclusion, "put ...
— A Romance of Billy-Goat Hill • Alice Hegan Rice
... took my widest strides To straddle halfway down her zides; An' champen Vi'let, sprack an' light, That foam'd an' pull'd wi' all her might: An' Whitevoot, leaezy in the treaece, Wi' cunnen looks an' show-white feaece; Bezides a bay woone, short-tail Jack, That wer a treaece-hoss ...
— Poems of Rural Life in the Dorset Dialect • William Barnes
... her rooming house. It was as long and as lean and as brown as a witch, and, to the more fanciful, something even of the riding of a broom in the straddle of the doorway, with an empty flagpole jutting from it. And then there was the cat, too—not a black one with gold eyes, just one of the city's myriad of mackerel ones, with chewed ear and a skillful crouch for the leap from ash to ...
— The Vertical City • Fannie Hurst
... boodle in their jeans. I reckon we'll just naturally have t' pike along after 'em an' take care of it ourselves. They ain't got such a rip-roarin' start of us—an' I'm the boy can foller that track from hell t' breakfast an' back again. So let's eat a bite, an' then straddle our ...
— Raw Gold - A Novel • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... ain't a braver man in Grant's army than that one right now a-straddle of your horse. Why, just the way he got ...
— The Cavalier • George Washington Cable
... mamma took me en come on to de house en when Miss Jane see dat leg, she say, "Cindy, what de matter?" My mamma say, "John call me a liar en I never take it." Miss Jane tell em to send after Sam Watson right den. Sam Watson was a rough old overseer en he been so bowlegged dat if he stand straddle a barrel, he be settin down on it just as good as you settin dere. Sam Watson come dere en make dat fellow lay down on a plank in de fence jam en he take dat cat o' nine tail he have tie round his waist ...
— Slave Narratives Vol. XIV. South Carolina, Part 2 • Works Projects Administration
... two birds setting on a fence, he would bet you which one would fly first; or if there was a camp-meeting he would be there reg'lar to bet on Parson Walker, which he judged to be the best exhorter about here, and so he was too, and a good man. If he even see a straddle-bug start to go anywhere, he would bet how long it would take him to get to—to wherever he was going to, and if you took him up, he would foller that straddle-bug to Mexico but what he would find out where he was bound for and how long he was on the road. Lots of the ...
— Little Masterpieces of American Wit and Humor - Volume I • Various
... like a hard proposition, and Giraffe had to cudgel his brains with considerable gusto before he was able to produce any result. But it dawned upon him finally that if the men were compelled to lie flat on their faces on the ground, and place their hands behind them, Bumpus might straddle each in turn, and fasten their wrists, while he, ...
— The Boy Scouts in the Maine Woods - The New Test for the Silver Fox Patrol • Herbert Carter
... Here the Earl gasped, and was visibly affected. 'You may have heard, sir,' the patrician went on, 'of a commercial transaction of nature unfathomable to myself—I have not sought for information,' he waved his hand impatiently, 'a transaction called a Straddle?' ...
— The Disentanglers • Andrew Lang
... dem spurs an' put em underneat' o' Caesar's saddle, So dey'd press down in his backbone soon ez Sam had got a-straddle. ...
— Fifty years & Other Poems • James Weldon Johnson
... as the Arab had done, and seating herself straddle-legged behind Godwin, to clasp him around ...
— The Brethren • H. Rider Haggard
... if there's trouble," uttered Somers, dryly. He climbed the fence, close to the gate. An instant later Josh Owen darted out. As he passed, Eph, with a fine eye, measured the time, and dropped fairly a-straddle of the ...
— The Submarine Boys on Duty - Life of a Diving Torpedo Boat • Victor G. Durham
... big Swede's plans. All Hands And Feet, depending on his sheer horse power and superior weight, always fought in mass formation, as it were. His modus operandi was to embrace his enemy in those terrible arms, squeeze the breath out of him with one bearlike hug, then lay him on the deck, straddle him, and pummel him into insensibility at his leisure. Matt gave ground rapidly and held up ...
— Cappy Ricks • Peter B. Kyne
... want you to see how multiple it is, and yet it is beautiful. Now there is a very interesting thing yet to tell you about this parallelism. Such poems as those of the "Kalevala" have always to be sung not by one singer but by two. The two singers straddle a bench facing each other and hold each other's hands. Then they sing alternately, each chanting one line, rocking back and forward, pulling each other to and fro as they sing—so that it is like the motion of rowing. One chants a line and pulls backward, then the other chants the next line and pulls ...
— Books and Habits from the Lectures of Lafcadio Hearn • Lafcadio Hearn
... main road, far into the heart of the woods. We straddle stumps, bend down saplings, stop while the horse takes a bite of sweet birch, tack and tip and tumble and back through the tight squeezes between the trees; and finally, after a prodigious amount of "whoa"-ing and "oh"-ing and squealing ...
— The Hills of Hingham • Dallas Lore Sharp
... away. We played for some time, and it was all I could do to keep even by playing on the square with big "injins," as I found them very good card players. I held out a hand, but had to wait some time for the "wild man of the forest." At last there was a big "blind and straddle," and I kept raising it before the draw. They all "stayed," and drew two or three cards (I do not remember which). I took one, and when we came to "show down," I was the lucky fellow. This was too much for ...
— Forty Years a Gambler on the Mississippi • George H. Devol
... grace to my aunt Susan's insistence upon the resources of his dress-suit. In my memory those black legs of his, in a particularly thin and shiny black cloth—for evidently his dress-suit dated from adolescent and slenderer days—straddle like the Colossus of Rhodes over my approach to my mother's funeral. Moreover, I was inconvenienced and distracted by a silk hat he had bought me, my first silk hat, much ennobled, as his was also, by ...
— Tono Bungay • H. G. Wells
... We kain't afford to be hawgs, this trip. Straddle your hosses and take 'em over to that far corner where we laid the fence down. Remember what I said about keepin' to the rocky draws. I'll wait here and turn these loose, and foller along and set up the fence after yuh. And keep agoin'—only don't swing over toward Baptista's place, mind. Keep to ...
— Skyrider • B. M. Bower
... bench. Lettice was lying down upstairs, but all the rest of the household were gathered together, the visitors provided with chairs in honour of their position, Norah seated on the stairs, Raymond straddle-leg over the banister, Mr Bertrand and Geraldine lowly on buffets, while Hilary was perched on the top of a huge packing chest, enveloped in a pink "pinafore," and looking all the prettier because her brown hair was ruffled a little out of its usual ...
— Sisters Three • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... when the things arrived, and set me in the seventh heaven of satisfaction. My father (for I can scarcely say myself) was trying at this time a "straddle" in wheat between Chicago and New York; the operation so called, is, as you know, one of the most tempting and least safe upon the chess-board of finance. On the Thursday, luck began to turn against my father's calculations; ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 13 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... old squire, whom I have mentioned more than once, is an odd figure, with his bluff, red face,—coarsely red,—set in silver hair,— his clumsy legs, which he moves in a strange straddle, using, I believe, a broomstick for a staff. The breadth of back of these fat ...
— Passages From The American Notebooks, Volume 1 • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... work—one superintending, one holding a funnel shaped exactly like a port wine strainer, of which the narrow end was fixed in an incision in the breast, no doubt in the great pectoral artery; while the third, who was depicted as standing straddle-legged over the corpse, held a kind of large jug high in his hand, and poured from it some steaming fluid which fell accurately into the funnel. The most curious part of this sculpture is that both the man with the funnel and the man who pours the fluid are drawn holding their noses, ...
— She • H. Rider Haggard
... England. I, like the curling tongs, was at last packed up in a box, and brought to America, but it took a rather larger box to take me and my friends, than it took to pack up him and his friends, with all their thin straddle legs." ...
— Who Spoke Next • Eliza Lee Follen
... an absolutely infantile game. A low, overhanging branch of a tree is chosen, and as many as it will bear, old and young, men and women, straddle it; and, holding on to the higher overhanging branches, they swing up and down with as much spring as they can get out of the branch they ...
— The Euahlayi Tribe - A Study of Aboriginal Life in Australia • K. Langloh Parker
... 'em, Polly; but come to us again, as soon as they are gone.—But, hark ye, Child, if 'tis the Gentleman who was here Yesterday about the Repeating Watch; say, you believe we can't get Intelligence of it 'till to-morrow. For I lent it to Suky Straddle, to make a figure with it to-night at a Tavern in Drury-Lane. If t'other Gentleman calls for the Silver-hilted Sword; you know Beetle-brow'd Jemmy hath it on, and he doth not come from Tunbridge 'till Tuesday Night; so that it cannot be ...
— The Beggar's Opera • John Gay
... section 1902(a) include investigations of radiation detection equipment in configurations suitable for deployment at seaports, which may include underwater or water surface detection equipment and detection equipment that can be mounted on cranes and straddle cars used to move shipping containers; and (3) have the authority to establish or contract with 1 or more federally funded research and development centers to provide independent analysis of homeland security issues and carry out ...
— Homeland Security Act of 2002 - Updated Through October 14, 2008 • Committee on Homeland Security, U.S. House of Representatives
... and forced his cattle into a scrambling gallop, and we drew up with the deserted carriage, whose mules were standing straddle-legged, and panting as though they were going to burst. He pulled up there, but Haigh snatched hold of the reins through the front window, and turning the animals off the road, sent them with a yell into the palm scrub that ...
— The Recipe for Diamonds • Charles John Cutcliffe Wright Hyne
... six hundred paces when, at a sudden turning, I came upon her, where she held a little urchin a-straddle of her big deer-hound "Courage." The child gave chuckles o' delight as he slipped from side to side, and the sun through the beech-leaves made their heads as like as two crown pieces. Even as I was about ...
— A Brother To Dragons and Other Old-time Tales • Amelie Rives
... With whom he serv'd, and fed on vermin; And when these fail'd, he'd suck his claws, And quarter himself upon his paws. And tho' his countrymen, the Huns, 275 Did stew their meat between their bums And th' horses backs o'er which they straddle, And ev'ry man eat up his saddle; He was not half so nice as they, But eat it raw when 't came in's way. 280 He had trac'd countries far and near, More than LE BLANC, the traveller; Who writes, he spous'd in India, Of noble house, ...
— Hudibras • Samuel Butler
... occasions Peppo could quit his board and straddle upon an ass. And now he came upon his ass, set Antonio before him, and carried him off to his home or den. The boy was put into a small recess contiguous to the apartment which his uncle occupied with some of his guests. He overheard this conversation: "Can the boy do any ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 62, No. 384, October 1847 • Various
... said Blue Dave, shifting about on his feet uneasily, "you look so much like my young marster w'at died in Perginny. En den dat day w'en de speckerlater put me up on de block, you 'uz settin' dar straddle er yo' pony, en you 'lowed dat he oughter be 'shame er hisse'f fer ter chain ...
— Mingo - And Other Sketches in Black and White • Joel Chandler Harris
... be jimmy?" crows Joe. "He's a jolly ole brick, that Frisbie! I'm a-gunter set straddle on the ridge-pole, an' ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 83, September, 1864 • Various
... England, who was blockading him with ships of the line, frigates, and anything that could hoist a sail, he crossed over, and there he was in France. For he always had the power, mind you, of crossing the seas at one straddle. ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 3 • Various
... Slim, not entirely assured, and breathing somewhat heavily as he contemplated the distance he had to fall if the telegraph wire should break, was the next to climb a-straddle the crude "air-line" trolley, on its second trip to the ...
— The Brighton Boys in the Radio Service • James R. Driscoll
... Bland, who had glanced over his shoulder and glimpsed some one coming,—some one who much resembled a messenger boy,—turned the motor over with one mighty pull, and made the cockpit in two jumps and a straddle. ...
— The Thunder Bird • B. M. Bower
... blooming old wreck's going all to pieces, so that we'll each have to pick out a timber, and straddle mighty soon, if it keeps on this way!" Bandy-legs ...
— Afloat on the Flood • Lawrence J. Leslie
... straddle!" exclaimed the delighted Ogden, adjusting his glasses. "Why do you object to their union ...
— Lin McLean • Owen Wister
... children by the water's edge, eager to bathe and yet fearful. There never was anything at once so droll and so pathetic. One did not know whether to laugh or to cry. And when at last she had made an end of all her deprecations and drawings back, and summoned up heart enough to straddle over the rope, one leg at a time, it was a sight to see her ruffle herself up like a peacock and go away down the lane with her damaged nose, seeming to think discretion the better part of valour, and rather uneasy lest they should ask her to repeat the exploit. Much as I had enjoyed the grace ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XXII (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... cycle; truckle, caster, roulette, rowel; gear, cogwheel, miter wheel; pulley, sheave (wheel of a pulley). Associated words: spoke, felly, hub, strake, tire, straddle, cog, sprocket, linchpin, arbor, axle, axletree, sprag, traction, trochilics, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... larger class of hand wheel hoes which are very useful in working close planted garden and truck crops. They either straddle the row, working the soil on both sides at the same time, or, running between the rows, work the soil to a width of ...
— The First Book of Farming • Charles L. Goodrich
... best. In treading the mazes of this crevassed section I had frequently to cross bridges that were only knife-edges for twenty or thirty feet, cutting off the sharp tops and leaving them flat so that little Stickeen could follow me. These I had to straddle, cutting off the top as I progressed and hitching gradually ahead like a boy riding a rail fence. All this time the little dog followed me bravely, never hesitating on the brink of any crevasse that I had jumped, but now that ...
— Travels in Alaska • John Muir
... or spasmodic paresis, or something, and, having stood a compurgation and "ordeal" trial, was released. The historian very truly but inelegantly says, if memory serves the writer accurately, that Godwin was such a political straddle-bug that he early abandoned the use of pantaloons and returned to the toga, which was the only garment able to stand the strain of ...
— Comic History of England • Bill Nye
... thought of her last words. "If you were so much as half a man I'd break you in two pieces right now; but you're not, you're nothing but a dead-on-the-hoof lunger, and there's nothing to do but run you out. So take this as your final notice. You straddle a horse and head east and keep a-ridin', and if I catch you with my girl again, I'll deal you a whole hatful of misery—now ...
— The Forester's Daughter - A Romance of the Bear-Tooth Range • Hamlin Garland
... ye this time," he muttered between his compressed lips; "ye shan't git out of me hands till ye's down flat on yer back and mesilf layin' a-straddle of ye. There's a difference between boxin' and sparrin' and I shall taich ye the same, ...
— The Hunters of the Ozark • Edward S. Ellis
... dope, eh? Well, even at that it's the same old bunk. What about your testimonials? Fake 'em, and forge 'em, and bribe and blackmail for 'em and then stand up to me and pull the pious plate-pusher stuff about being straight. Oh, my Gawd! It'd make a straddle-bug spit at the sun, to hear you. Why, I'm no saint, but the medical line was too strong for my stomach. ...
— The Clarion • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... is in the happy position called in American speculative circles 'a straddle.' If a man has an hallucination when alone, he was in circumstances conducive to the sleeping state. So the hallucination is probably a dream. But, if the seer was in company, who all had the same hallucination, ...
— The Making of Religion • Andrew Lang
... Let us not straddle the fence. Business is a game, and so is politics. Neither knows any sentiment. Suppose you should favour this N.C.O. crowd in a mistaken idea that you were doing the right thing, and that subsequently numberless fellow- citizens ...
— The Valley of the Giants • Peter B. Kyne
... thinks more of your old boot than she does of Annear's wedding suit, yet her husband will be the last man to know it. No man can figure to a certainty on a woman. Three guesses is not enough, for she will and she won't, and she'll straddle the question or take the fence, and when you put a copper on her to win, she loses. God made them just that way, and I don't want to criticise His handiwork. But if my name is Lance Lovelace, and I'm sixty-odd ...
— A Texas Matchmaker • Andy Adams
... it, pushing. When they get it as high as they can, they'll shoot their jatos, let go, and come bumbling back home. So they have to practice getting back home and landing. For practicing it doesn't matter how they get aloft. When they get down, a big straddle truck on caterpillar treads picks them up—they land in the doggonedest places, sometimes!—and brings 'em back. Then a crane heaves them up on a high-speed truck and they do it all ...
— Space Platform • Murray Leinster
... what you are, Merritt," said Greenbrier, laying one elbow in his salad and the other in his butter. "You are a concentrated, effete, unconditional, short-sleeved, gotch-eared Miss Sally Walker. God made you perpendicular and suitable to ride straddle and use cuss words in the original. Wherefore you have suffered his handiwork to elapse by removing yourself to New York and putting on little shoes tied with strings, and making faces when you talk. I've seen ...
— Strictly Business • O. Henry |
