"Straggler" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Lynde's fresh outbreak. Some one picked up his hat and set it on the back of his head, giving him quite a rakish air. His dignity suffered until the wind took the hat again. The party proceeded in silence, halting once to tighten a girth, and another time to wait for a straggler. If the men spoke to one another it was in subdued tones or whispers. Two of the horsemen trotted on a hundred yards in advance, like skirmishers thrown out in front of an attacking force. There was something in all this mysterious precaution and reticence which bewildered and ...
— The Queen of Sheba & My Cousin the Colonel • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... French, "Archibuse pattue" or "Buse pattue."—Though its visits seem not so absolutely confined to the autumn as the Common Buzzard, the Rough-legged Buzzard is a much more uncommon visitant to the Channel Islands, and can only be looked upon as a rare occasional straggler. Mr. MacCulloch informs me that one was killed near L'Hyvreuse, which is perhaps now more commonly known as the New Ground, in Guernsey, about Christmas, 1870, and I found one at the bird-stuffer and carpenter's shop at Alderney, which had been shot by ...
— Birds of Guernsey (1879) • Cecil Smith
... the last straggler of the party had disappeared from Lydia, who had watched their retreat from the door of the Warren Lodge. When she turned to go in she saw Cashel cautiously entering from the room in which he had lain concealed. His excitement had passed off; he looked cold and anxious, as if a reaction were ...
— Cashel Byron's Profession • George Bernard Shaw
... commandant's mind, and although the gas-jets continued contumacious (the gas-workers were all called up to the colours) the maire was not molested. It was here that we heard a shameful story (for the truth of which I will not vouch) of a certain straggler from our army, a Highlander, who tarried in amorous dalliance and was betrayed by his enchantress to the Huns, who, having deprived him of everything but his kilt, led him mounted upon a horse in Bacchanalian procession round the town. As to what became ...
— Leaves from a Field Note-Book • J. H. Morgan
... shows nor right nor wrong in Him, Nor kind, nor cruel: He is strong and Lord. 'Am strong myself compared to yonder crabs 100 That march now from the mountain to the sea; 'Let twenty pass, and stone the twenty-first, Loving not, hating not, just choosing so. 'Say, the first straggler that boasts purple spots Shall join the file, one pincer twisted off; 105 'Say, this bruised fellow shall receive a worm, And two worms he whose nippers end in red; As it likes me each ...
— Selections from the Poems and Plays of Robert Browning • Robert Browning
... get here before the third day. It was the second, after having crossed the first great torrent, that I met some soldiers from Missolonghi. I had let them all pass me, ere I had resolution enough to enquire the news from Missolonghi. I then rode back, and demanded of a straggler the news. I heard nothing more than—Lord Byron is dead,—and I proceeded on in gloomy silence." The writer adds, after detailing the particulars of the poet's illness and death, "Your pardon, Stanhope, ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. 6 (of 6) - With his Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... sleep. The town becomes as silent as the graveyards which have been filled with its victims. Not a sound is heard save the crackling of the flames and the challenges of the sentries to some belated newspaper man or straggler. ...
— The Johnstown Horror • James Herbert Walker
... into the Union. It was a wild region, with many bears and other wild animals still in the woods. There I grew up. There were some schools, so-called, but no qualification was ever required of a teacher beyond 'readin', writin', and cipherin', to the rule of three. If a straggler, supposed to understand Latin, happened to sojourn in the neighborhood, he was looked upon as a wizard. There was absolutely nothing to excite ambition for education. Of course, when I came of age I did not know much. Still, somehow, I could read, write, and cipher to the rule of ...
— Our American Holidays: Lincoln's Birthday • Various
... course not!" exclaimed Mrs Keswick. "She can't be expected to see what a wretched plight she has got herself into by marrying this straggler from nobody ...
— The Late Mrs. Null • Frank Richard Stockton
... separate their respective territories remain altogether uninhabited; the natives invariably dwelling in the depths of the valleys, with a view of securing themselves from the predatory incursions of their enemies, who often lurk along their borders, ready to cut off any imprudent straggler, or make a descent upon the inmates of some sequestered habitation. I several times met with very aged men, who from this cause had never passed the confines of their native vale, some of them having never even ascended midway up the mountains in the whole ...
— Typee - A Romance of the South Sea • Herman Melville
... and burned their empty wigwams and a few acres of maize fields, what the better are you then? You can but travel back again to your own land with a cloud of unseen men lurking behind you, and a scalp-yell for every straggler. You are a soldier yourself, sire. I ask you if such a war is an easy task for a handful of soldiers, with a few censitaires straight from the plough, and a troop of coureurs-de-bois whose hearts are all the time are with their traps ...
— The Refugees • Arthur Conan Doyle
... strategy would leave the north of the Fort wholly unguarded. Any rock, any black ravine, any clump of trees or bushes, might well be the lurking-place of hostiles, who would only too gladly wreak their vengeance upon any hapless straggler falling into their hands. I was unarmed, save for the long hunting-knife I carried in the bosom of my shirt; but my thought was not of fighting,—it was to get ...
— When Wilderness Was King - A Tale of the Illinois Country • Randall Parrish
... and peace, are by no means proper to be discussed in this place; but they will easily offer themselves to the skilful in maritime affairs. However, as the Manilla ships are the only ones which have ever traversed this vast ocean, except a French straggler or two, which have been afterwards seized on the coast of Mexico; and as, during near two ages, in which this trade has been carried on, the Spaniards have secreted with the utmost care all accounts of their voyages ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 11 • Robert Kerr
... ringing of bells mingled with a low buzz of merriment inside the house, there were many travellers went by. They came, nearly all of them, from the Manchester side; sometimes three or four in company, and sometimes a lonely straggler. Some of them had poor-looking little bundles in their hands; and, with a few exceptions, their dress, their weary gait, and dispirited looks led me to think that many of them were unemployed factory operatives, who had been wandering away to beg where they would not be known. ...
— Home-Life of the Lancashire Factory Folk during the Cotton Famine • Edwin Waugh
... expended by the two squadrons engaged in an incessant advance for one hour and fifteen minutes averaged less than ten rounds per man. The fine quality of these troops is also shown by the fact that there was not a single straggler, and in not one instance was an attempt made by any soldier to fall out in the advance to assist the wounded or carry back the dead. The fighting on the left flank was equally creditable and was remarkable, ...
— The Colored Regulars in the United States Army • T. G. Steward
... faith in the owl, Robert, is beginning to shake too. It may be an Indian belonging to the band that the scout told about, but I still don't think we're in any danger of attack. We're in too small force to try it down here, but they might cut off a straggler." ...
— The Sun Of Quebec - A Story of a Great Crisis • Joseph A. Altsheler
... short eager blast, and angled in between the herd and a straggler on the edge of it, a yearling elk, a spike bull, his first antler growth consisting of two pointed spikes eighteen inches long. He was not alarmed,—but it was a new kind of coyote that faced him now, one that had learned pack hunting ...
— The Yellow Horde • Hal G. Evarts
... some celestial, unspeakable pap, "sweeter than the lids of Juno's eyes, or Cytherea's breath." How the brother and sister would croon over him "with murmurs made to bless," calling him their "tender novice" "in the first bloom of his nigritude," their belated straggler from the "rear of darkness thin," their little night-shade, not deadly, their infantile Will-o'-the-wisp caught before his sins, their "poor Blot," "their innocent Blackness," their ...
— Spare Hours • John Brown
... climbing, but unfortunately selected a tree with branches higher than he could hold out to reach; so he fell back to the ground. Then came the inexorable demands of breakfast, with which no one who has been up since four o'clock will decline to comply. On my return, the straggler was mounted on a post that held a tennis net, three or four feet from the ground. One of the old birds was on the rope close by him, and there I left them. Once more I saw him fall, but I concluded that since he had learned to climb, and the parents would not ...
— A Bird-Lover in the West • Olive Thorne Miller
... address and daring which were delightful to look at. He waved an urgent hand from three or four hundred yards away towards Polson, who responded by a gesture indicating the route he meant to take. The last straggler having been thus rounded up, the officer turned and reined in his charger for a final look at the retreating forces of the enemy; and somewhere from the black middle mass of them down in the shadow of the valley there came a flash and a volley of smoke, and almost directly ...
— VC — A Chronicle of Castle Barfield and of the Crimea • David Christie Murray
... may feel here, to be sure! In spite of the huge numbers, which at first sight look a little equivocal, nothing in the least degree reprehensible can happen among these granites; which are, moreover, in a single piece, without the least crack or hole into which the straggler could contrive to crawl. No. The figures and the crosses denote simple blocks of stones, covered with hieroglyphics, and correspond to a chaste catalogue where each Pharaonic inscription may be found translated in the most ...
— Egypt (La Mort De Philae) • Pierre Loti
... way up Pleasant it were upon some broad smooth rock To sit and sun me, and look down below And watch the goatherd down that high-bank'd path Urging his flock grotesque; and bidding now His lean rough dog from some near cliff to drive The straggler; while his barkings loud and quick Amid their trembling bleat arising oft, Fainter and fainter from the hollow road Send their far echoes, till the waterfall, Hoarse bursting from the cavern'd cliff beneath, Their dying murmurs drown. A little yet Onward, ...
— Poems • Robert Southey
... completed, the army was gotten clear of Nashville, the last straggler driven out, all the stores which could not be carried off, nor distributed to the citizens, burned, and the capitol of Tennessee (although we did not know it then) was abandoned finally to the enemy. Morgan's squadron was the ...
— History of Morgan's Cavalry • Basil W. Duke
... stealth insidious, It quite obscured its classic grace, And where was once a noble picture Of the Beauteous and the True, There hung a mass of straggling herbage Flecked with blooms of sickly hue. The Summer passed: the plant had flourished, As every weed in Summer will; When Winter came and struck the straggler To the heart with bitter chill. It died: the winds of March played round it, Laughing at its wretched plight. Then blew it from its slender holding, Like a feather out of sight. But still in undimmed freshness standing, Reared the vase its classic face; Rare in its old, eternal beauty, Majestic ...
— The Death of Saul and other Eisteddfod Prize Poems and Miscellaneous Verses • J. C. Manning
... sack of buffalo-chips that, at each slow step, rolled first to one hand and then to the other. Yet with all the difficulty of balancing the fuel-sack and preventing its falling to the ground, the straggler did not fail to keep ...
— The Plow-Woman • Eleanor Gates
... another hour to avoid the chance of their being surprised by any straggler. Then, proceeding to the shore, they launched a small boat. Hawtry stepped the mast and hoisted the sail, and they were soon making their way off the land. The wind was light, and their progress slow. For a time they kept straight out to sea, and then ...
— Jack Archer • G. A. Henty
... streams of this plentifully watered country, the movement slowly progressed. They had not advanced far when a shell screamed over their heads, uncomfortably close to the Surgeon and Chaplain, some fifty yards in the rear, and mangled awfully a straggler at least half a mile further back. As may be supposed, his fate was a standing warning against straggling for the balance ...
— Red-Tape and Pigeon-Hole Generals - As Seen From the Ranks During a Campaign in the Army of the Potomac • William H. Armstrong
... at their backs the countless graves that hold the youth of France, the men who had known the Marne, the Yser, Champagne, who had known death for nearly two years, night and day, almost constantly. Yet during the fifteen minutes I watched there was not one order, not one straggler; there was a sense of the regularity with which the blood flows through the human arteries in this tide, and it was the blood ...
— They Shall Not Pass • Frank H. Simonds
... above, no earth beneath. The interior of a raised biscuit could not have been more densely uniform than the atmosphere. It seemed as if the world had slipped its moorings and drifted off its course into companionless space, leaving me behind, as an ocean steamer sometimes leaves a straggler on an uninhabited shore. I felt like sending forth a call that should give my bearings and bring back a boat to the rescue. I groped my way down the steps, and, following an intuition, sought the station. Ahead of me I heard muffled steps, yet saw no form. But suddenly a ...
— A String of Amber Beads • Martha Everts Holden
... deserted save for an occasional straggler making his weary way home after a day spent in ministering to the wants and the pleasures of the strangers who ...
— The End of Her Honeymoon • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... matter to fix the spot in his mind. When he came back he needed only to follow along the rail fence until he came to the corner. Not far from the fence corner, in the woods, stood Farmer Green's sugar house. And about the same distance on the other side of the fence a lone straggler of a maple tree stood on a knoll in the pasture. The departed Mr. and Mrs. Woodchuck had been wise enough to dig the opening to their burrow between the roots of the tree. They knew that if Tommy Fox tried to dig them out of their underground home, he would find the passage ...
— The Tale of Dickie Deer Mouse • Arthur Scott Bailey
... there this night those eyes were on him. Presently the last straggler had left the deck. It was a clear night, but there was no moon—objects ...
— The Return of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... weeks before his memory ceased to dwell on the horrid event. The Cowboys rode steadily on their route, as if nothing had occurred; and the body was left swinging in the wind, until chance directed the wandering footsteps of some lonely straggler to the place. ...
— The Spy • James Fenimore Cooper
... Greece, to Pater Noster Row and the Old Corner Book Store—nearly all of them trying to make the wrong connections with the right things or the right connections with things they have no connection with, and only now and then a straggler lagging behind perhaps, at some left-over bookstall, who truly knows how to read, or some beautiful, over-grown child let loose in a library—making connections for himself, who knows the uttermost ...
— The Lost Art of Reading • Gerald Stanley Lee
... lighted up my face, and Brennan turning toward me as the last limping straggler disappeared over the ridge, saw it, and grew ...
— My Lady of the North • Randall Parrish
... only rifles and some special instruments of attack which I have stored in canvas sacks below. Two men must remain on board. Head in close to those rocks before us. They are out of sight of the shack and there is ice stranded there—a straggler will scarcely tell our craft from it. I have no doubt there are a number of them and that they are hardy ruffians. We must proceed ...
— Lost In The Air • Roy J. Snell
... which will enable them to render the Moon forces fruitful for further development. And this will occur at a time when, side by side with the high development of a certain number of human souls, another development, that of those who have chosen the path of evil, will parallel it. These straggler-souls will have accumulated in their Karma so much sin, ugliness and evil, that at first they will form a separate community, a perverse and erring section of humanity, keenly opposing what we understand as "good." The "good" humanity will acquire little by little the power of using the ...
— An Outline of Occult Science • Rudolf Steiner
... over the cliff. "Dead he must be; unless a man can fall two hundred feet and still live; which isn't likely. That clears the way, I take it; and unless I have the ill luck to meet some one coming up—a straggler—it'll be all right. As sound ascends, I ought to hear them before they could see me. I shall keep my ...
— The Free Lances - A Romance of the Mexican Valley • Mayne Reid
... agreeable. I pretend about them, and decide what they'll be like. When I see a man that takes my fancy, I add him to the list. Mostly they're clean-shaved, but I saw one the other day with a beard—" She lifted a warning finger to stay Bridgie's cry of protest. "Not a straggler, but a naval one, short and trim; and you wouldn't believe how becoming it was! I decided then to have one with a beard. And they are mostly tall and handsome, and rolling in riches, so that I can buy anything I like, nose included. But one must be poor and sad, because that," announced Pixie, in ...
— The Love Affairs of Pixie • Mrs George de Horne Vaizey
... away; in which case the runner is invariably fired at The supply of ammunition is in the centre, carried generally by about fifteen natives, and strongly escorted by guards. The rear of the party is closed by another flag behind which no straggler is permitted. The rear flag is also guarded by six or eight men, with a box of spare ammunition. With these arrangements the party is always ...
— The Albert N'Yanza, Great Basin of the Nile • Sir Samuel White Baker
... out from the white-painted meeting-house, all ablaze with light; or as much ablaze as a kerosene chandelier and six side lamps could make it. The horse sheds were crowded with teams of various sorts, the horses well blanketed and standing comfortably in straw; and the last straggler was entering the right-hand door of the church as Dick neared the steps. Simultaneously the left-hand door opened, and on the background of the light inside appeared the figure of Mrs. Todd, the wife of his ...
— The Romance of a Christmas Card • Kate Douglas Wiggin |
