"Straggling" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... gossip, did her sewing, watched events, as the case might be, was not conscious of her servitude or anxious to market it. Sometimes she shared her outlook with an old woman—a horrible, greasy go-between, with straggling grey hair and a gin-inflamed face. She chatted with this beldame happily, she cupped her vile old dewlap, or stroked her dishonourable head; sometimes a man in shirt sleeves was with her, treated her familiarly, with rude embraces, with kisses, nudges and leers. She accepted ...
— Lore of Proserpine • Maurice Hewlett
... the street was very lively. It woke to its work about seven o'clock, at the time when the newsboys made their appearance together with the day laborers. The laborers went trudging past in a straggling file—plumbers' apprentices, their pockets stuffed with sections of lead pipe, tweezers, and pliers; carpenters, carrying nothing but their little pasteboard lunch baskets painted to imitate leather; gangs of street workers, their overalls soiled ...
— McTeague • Frank Norris
... attendants had shaken off the crowd who had followed them from Guildford along the Pilgrims' Way and now, the mounted archers having beaten off the more persistent of the spectators, they rode at their ease in a long, straggling, glittering train over the dark ...
— Sir Nigel • Arthur Conan Doyle
... a piece of paper—a significant document, for it explained the motive for the crime. Kid Wolf read it and understood. It was written in straggling handwriting: ...
— Kid Wolf of Texas - A Western Story • Ward M. Stevens
... toward the lake; there were but a few houses. It was about eleven or twelve o'clock or after and the good people in the straggling cottages thereabout had put out their lights and retired to slumber before that ...
— Pee-wee Harris on the Trail • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... they overran my cabin in the woods, and gave me a good deal of annoyance; so much so that I tried trapping them, using the ordinary circular trap with four or five holes and wire springs. One night I heard the trap spring in the attic over my head, followed by the kicking and straggling of the mouse. This continued for a few moments, when all was still. "There," I said, "that mouse is dead." Presently the rattling of the trap recommenced, and continued so long at short intervals that going to sleep was out of the question. ...
— Squirrels and Other Fur-Bearers • John Burroughs
... a minute or two, considering what I should do, I moved down what appeared to be the street of a small straggling town; presently I passed by a church, which rose indistinctly on my right hand; anon there was the rustling of foliage and the rushing of waters. I reached a bridge, beneath which a small stream was running in the direction of the south. I stopped and leaned over the parapet, for I have always loved ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... straggling marauders belonged not to the French corps, but to the allies, who possessed none of the discipline of the French soldiery, and whose conduct throughout the campaign was largely responsible for the intense animosity excited by the invaders, and for the suffering ...
— Through Russian Snows - A Story of Napoleon's Retreat from Moscow • G. A Henty
... to the place where their ways severed. The old grey moors were all about them; in the midst a few sheep wandered; and they could see on the one hand the straggling caravan scaling the braes in front of them for Cauldstaneslap, and on the other, the contingent from Hermiston bending off and beginning to disappear by detachments into the policy gate. It was in these circumstances that they turned to say farewell, and deliberately exchanged ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XIX (of 25) - The Ebb-Tide; Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the straggling shoreward street, and as we neared the waterside we heard the shouts and laughter of the strangers plainly enough. And over the houses were the mastheads of their three ships. One of them had a forked ...
— A King's Comrade - A Story of Old Hereford • Charles Whistler
... A long, straggling country village, between low wooded hills, with a canal passing through it. Old Japanese cottages, dingy, neutral-tinted, with roofs of thatch, very steeply sloping, above their wooden walls and paper shoji. Green patches on all the roof-slopes, some sort of grass; and on ...
— Glimpses of an Unfamiliar Japan - First Series • Lafcadio Hearn
... fault respecting the courses to be taken; and, after hallooing and running about the woods and pastures at random, nearly an hour, without discovering any traces either of the lost cattle or the missing pursuers, at length came straggling back to the Town House, and, by way of saving their own credit, reported to Fitch, Peters, and the small party remaining there, that their swiftest runners were last seen nearly up with the cattle, and would soon be in with them, or that the creatures had been headed, and were on their way back, ...
— The Rangers - [Subtitle: The Tory's Daughter] • D. P. Thompson
... days had passed, the men's feet were cracked and blistered from the effects of fungus, dampness, and constant marching. The compact military marching order which had characterized the first few days of march had long since deteriorated into a straggling column, where the weaker were supported by ...
— Despoilers of the Golden Empire • Gordon Randall Garrett
... upon Mecca with about ten thousand men. Abu Sofian having come out of the town in the evening to reconnoitre, he fell in with Al Abbas, who, out of friendship to his countrymen, had ridden from the army with the hope of meeting some straggling Meccans whom he might send back with the news of Mahomet's approach, and advise the Meccans to surrender. Al Abbas, recognizing Abu Sofian's voice, called to him, and advised him to get up behind him, and go ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 4 • Various
... crossed and turned the boat adrift, just as his pursuers reached the bank. Next day he marched into Glasgow with his five men and nine prisoners in column, and the United States flag flying at the front. He scared the citizens of the place and two or three straggling Confederates, who were there, horribly. The flag and ...
— History of Morgan's Cavalry • Basil W. Duke
... adopted the idea that the "marking" was effected by red-hot irons or in some other manner involving torture. The Navy Discipline Act 1866, and the Naval Deserters Act 1847, contain similar provisions to the Army Act of 1881 for dealing with desertions from the navy. In the United States navy the term "straggling" is applied to absence without leave, where the probability is that the person does not intend to desert. The United States government offers a monetary reward of between $20 and $30 for the arrest and delivery of deserters from the army ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 8, Slice 2 - "Demijohn" to "Destructor" • Various
... carry upstairs, helped by John Girdlestone. The old woman was in the upper room. It seemed to Kate that she might never again have such an opportunity of carrying out the resolve which she had formed. She put on her bonnet, and began to stroll listlessly about in front of the door, picking a few straggling leaves from the neglected lawn. Gradually she sauntered away in this manner to the head of the avenue, and then, taking one swift timid glance around, she slipped in among the trees, and made the best of her ...
— The Firm of Girdlestone • Arthur Conan Doyle
... of the town; but, here and there, you heard the steps of fugitives cranching them warily, or saw their pale and haggard faces by the blue glare of the lightning or the more unsteady glare of torches, by which they endeavored to steer their steps. But ever and anon the boiling water, or the straggling ashes, mysterious and gusty winds, rising and dying in a breath, extinguished these wandering lights, and with them the last living hope of ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 03 • Various
... Norfolk, the solitary seaport, which, with its six or seven thousand inhabitants, formed the most glaring exception that any rule solicitous of proof could possibly desire. Williamsburg, the capital, was a straggling village, somewhat overweighted with the public buildings and those of the college. It would light up into life and vivacity during the season of politics and society, and then relapse again into the country stillness. Outside of Williamsburg and Norfolk there were various points which ...
— George Washington, Vol. I • Henry Cabot Lodge
... men and boys of the family, from distant Appomattox, from the Army of Tennessee, came straggling home. All had walked interminable miles,—all wore equally ragged, dirty, foot-sore, weary, dejected, despairing. They had done their best and had failed. ...
— Memories - A Record of Personal Experience and Adventure During Four Years of War • Fannie A. (Mrs.) Beers
... I could not discover. In the end we started, and towards evening Antonio pointed out to us the hacienda of Concepcion, a large white building standing on a hill which overshadowed San Jose, a straggling little place, half-town, half-village, with a ...
— Doctor Therne • H. Rider Haggard
... days left him to live, he was on the point of getting ready for his day's business, as usual, when the memory of his dream flashed upon him, and he was appalled to decide what he should do first. Breakfast was generally a hurried and silent meal with him. The children usually came straggling down at irregular intervals, and it was very seldom that the family all sat down together. This morning Mr. Hardy waited until all had appeared, and while they were eating he held ...
— Robert Hardy's Seven Days - A Dream and Its Consequences • Charles Monroe Sheldon
... humble lot of books, Which in her cottage window, heretofore, Had been piled up against the corner panes In seemly order, now, with straggling leaves, Lay scatter'd here and there, open or shut, As they ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson
... gait. The afternoon had well advanced when Venters struck the trail of the red herd and found where it had grazed the night before. Then Venters rested the horse and used his eyes. Near at hand were a cow and a calf and several yearlings, and farther out in the sage some straggling steers. He caught a glimpse of coyotes skulking near the cattle. The slow sweeping gaze of the rider failed to find other living things within the field of sight. The sage about him was breast-high ...
— Riders of the Purple Sage • Zane Grey
... raked into cocks to keep them from the dew against our return at daybreak; and we made the cocks as tall and steep as we could, for in that shape they best keep off the dew, and it is easier also to spread them after the sun has risen. Then we raked up every straggling blade, till the whole field was a clean floor for the tedding and the carrying of the hay next morning. The grass we had mown was but a little over two acres; for that is all the pasture on my little ...
— Hills and the Sea • H. Belloc
... beings had entirely forsaken the world and left it to the prairie dogs, the coyotes, and the lazily coiled rattle-snakes that lay basking upon the rocks in the hot glare of the sun. Even the occasional bunches of range cattle did not eye her with their accustomed interest, but lay in straggling groups close beside the cold waters ...
— The Gold Girl • James B. Hendryx
... shook his head, staring moodily out over the dreary prospect of wet campus and slushy road. A mile away the little town of Peterboro lay straggling along the river, the chimneys of its three or four factories spouting thick black smoke into the heavy air. Jerry was disappointed. It meant a good deal to win election to the Lyceum, and, in spite of what he ...
— The New Boy at Hilltop • Ralph Henry Barbour
... sat beside him. Being ignorant of shorthand she had invented a little system of her own, and she was glad when she could make him laugh over her funny pot-hooks and her straggling sketches. ...
— Mistress Anne • Temple Bailey
... my Skill consists in giving an Account of things lost: I would not have the Reader suppose that I descend to the trifling Study of consulting Fate, about who stole a Spoon, or what became of a straggling Thimble, Things of which the Stars take no Cognizance. These Toys I leave to the Six-penny Philomaths of Moorfields, and the Astrologers of Grub-street: My Enquiries are a little more sublime. I ...
— The Theater (1720) • Sir John Falstaffe
... on one side, and seeming indifference on the other, when the party reached Prairie Round, every one of the chiefs who had been present at the council of the previous night, was there before it. The Indians were straggling about, but remained sufficiently near the point where the bee-hunter and his followers reached the prairie, to assemble around the group in a very few minutes after it made ...
— Oak Openings • James Fenimore Cooper
... who had an enormous bundle balanced on her head, while she waved in her hand, like a sword, a long-handled tin dipper. Such a picturesque medley of fun, war, and music I believe no white regiment in the service could have shown; and yet there was no straggling, and a single tap of the drum would at any moment bring order out of this seeming chaos. So we marched our seven miles out upon the smooth and shaded road,—beneath jasmine clusters, and great pine-cones dropping, and great bunches of misletoe still in bloom among ...
— Army Life in a Black Regiment • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... formed up in the road and the roll was called over. At last we set off slowly, squelching through the mud on the wet roads, the rain pouring down unceasingly. We soon struck the pave road that runs through Dickebusch, a long straggling village, still fairly intact and occupied by Belgian civilians. It was shelled now and again but not severely. When we reached this place, the battalion opened out considerably, platoons keeping 200 yards apart; a precaution necessary on roads ...
— Q.6.a and Other places - Recollections of 1916, 1917 and 1918 • Francis Buckley
... home-returning caravan, and every hundred yards or so I passed the swollen corpse of some unfortunate porter who had fallen out and died by the wayside. Before very long I came up with the rearguard of this straggling army, and here I was witness of as unfeeling an act of barbarism as can well be imagined. A poor wretch, utterly unable to go a step further, rolled himself up in his scarlet blanket and lay down by the roadside ...
— The Man-eaters of Tsavo and Other East African Adventures • J. H. Patterson
... before this storm which he had brewed; Allison himself pale; and the girl whose eyes were staring back at him with no clear understanding in their depths. He made no move toward action, not even when the singing pack surged up and spread out before him, until a jostling crescent, straggling at the points, half encircled him and swallowed up as well the little knot behind which had come bristling to its feet. Their onslaught had seemed an irresistible thing, bent upon instant violence; and yet little by little their syncopated defiance died ...
— Then I'll Come Back to You • Larry Evans
... threaded through a bewildering maze of narrow valleys, gorges, and ravines—just the type of territory made for defensive ambushes to rock reckless Yankees out of their saddles. The turnpike was to be left for the use of the rear guard of fighting men, while the wagon trains and straggling mass of the disorganized Army of the Tennessee split up to follow the dirt roads toward Bainbridge and ...
— Ride Proud, Rebel! • Andre Alice Norton
... straggling sheep, The stone-chat, or the sand-lark, restless Bird, Piping along the margin of ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 5 • Edited by E. V. Lucas
... the contrary, the stage and cab drivers I meet seem to be under a blight, and to have lost all interest in life. They lounge on the box, their legs straggling aimlessly, one hand holding the reins, the other hanging dejectedly by the side. Yet there is little doubt that these heartbroken citizens are earning double what their London confreres gain. The shadow of the ...
— Worldly Ways and Byways • Eliot Gregory
... heard them repeatedly call "Yâkob." Somewhat composed, I determined upon giving up the search of the encampment till day-light, and went about to find a tree under which to sleep, if I could. I went to one, but did not like it, being low and straggling on the ground, exposed to the first chance intruder. I sought another, which I had before observed, for in this state I was forced to pick out the objects of the plain. I found my tree, which in passing before by it I thought would make me a good bed. I could ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson
... brought his horses to a stand, Dick perceived that, while some notice was given to the oddity of his team, scarce a glance was bestowed on its unusual driver. The visiting eleven were the objects of interest to the straggling crowd in front of ...
— Ambrotox and Limping Dick • Oliver Fleming
... first climbing over the bushes in their neighborhood, and as they learn the use of their wings becoming more venturesome, till at last, every time a hard-working mother brings a morsel of food, she has to hunt up her straggling offspring before she can dispose of it. Though eager for food as most youngsters, they are altogether too busy investigating this new and interesting world to stay two minutes in one place. So far from waiting, like Mr. Micawber, ...
— Upon The Tree-Tops • Olive Thorne Miller
... little, but it was in a straggling, desultory kind of way; and I think it was a relief to all of us when we finished the round of the gardens and went in through one of the drawing-room windows. The room was lighted with lamps and candles placed about upon the tables, and Mrs. Darrell was sitting near her husband, ...
— Milly Darrell and Other Tales • M. E. Braddon
... never for very long, however, for when Ona began to cry, Jurgis could not stay angry. The poor fellow looked like a homeless ghost, with his cheeks sunken in and his long black hair straggling into his eyes; he was too discouraged to cut it, or to think about his appearance. His muscles were wasting away, and what were left were soft and flabby. He had no appetite, and they could not afford to tempt him with delicacies. It ...
— The Jungle • Upton Sinclair
... was no alternative, then, but to pass around the left of the enemy, and rejoin the army, at such expense of time or labor as the new conditions imposed; and that this was done, at great pains and with great celerity, without straggling or loss. ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Vol. II, No. 6, March, 1885 - A Massachusetts Magazine • Various
... straggling few got up to go, leaving there the rest With that hope that springs eternal within the human breast; For they thought if only Casey could get one whack, at that They'd put up even money, with Casey ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume VI. (of X.) • Various
... disorder, till he was suddenly surprised by the astounding news that Brasidas was preparing for a sally. Cleon at once resolved to retreat. But his skill was equal to his valour. He conducted his retreat in the most disorderly manner. His left wing had already filed off and his centre with straggling ranks was in the act of following, when Brasidas ordered the gates of the town to be flung open, and, rushing out at the head of only 150 chosen soldiers, charged the retreating columns in flank. They were immediately routed; but Brasidas received a mortal wound ...
— A Smaller History of Greece • William Smith
... the sun was beginning to fling his rays obliquely through the branches, when Don Rafael resumed his route; and shortly after, through the last straggling trees of the forest, he perceived the crystal current of the Ostuta running its tranquil course between banks thickly covered ...
— The Tiger Hunter • Mayne Reid
... still sleeping when the first straggling feeble rays of dawn began to creep through the darkness. Diana stood at the door of the van and looked anxiously at the sunrise. Her experienced eye soon saw that it was going to be a fine day, and she gave ...
— "Us" - An Old Fashioned Story • Mary Louisa S. Molesworth
... and somewhat dreary road, only relieved by rows of tall poplar-trees, break into a more picturesque country. An antique mouldering village, with quaint little church, its grey lichen-marked stones brightened by the warm sunshine of a September day, and the straggling vines drooping their pale dusty leaves over the cottage-doors, made a welcome variety in the monotonous landscape. How hazy yet cheerful was the brightness in which the poor mean houses seemed to sleep! After this the road swept down a long declivity, crowned on one side by an ...
— Pascal • John Tulloch
... arcaded streets; and though some of them were anything but clean or sweet, Marjorie forgave everything for the sake of the beauty and picturesqueness of the scene. She wandered here, there, and all over; she found herself in the long, straggling market, and made hasty sketches of the men and women chaffering at their stalls; of camels, with their strange, sleepy, or vicious faces, padding softly along, turning their heads this way and that. She watched the lading of the beasts, and ...
— Fifty-Two Stories For Girls • Various
... quarter of a minute after his time. The public-houses, with gas-lights burning inside, were already open. By degrees, other shops began to be unclosed, and a few scattered people were met with. Then, came straggling groups of labourers going to their work; then, men and women with fish-baskets on their heads; donkey-carts laden with vegetables; chaise-carts filled with live-stock or whole carcasses of meat; milk-women with pails; an unbroken concourse of people, trudging ...
— Oliver Twist • Charles Dickens
... squatter removed his pipe from his mouth and smoothed the thready white beard, straggling ...
— The Secret of the Storm Country • Grace Miller White
... chin and straggling locks fell forward on his breast. He stared sombrely at the young people before him, in an attitude which, as usual, was the attitude ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... he understood, to save her from pain, but presently it might be necessary for her to suffer. She lay up in her bed with an effect of being enthroned, very white and still, her strong profile with its big nose and her straggling hair and a certain dignity gave her the appearance of some very important, very old man, of an aged pope for instance, rather than of an old woman. She had made no remark after they had set her and dressed her and put her to bed except "send for Hughie Britling, The Dower House, ...
— Mr. Britling Sees It Through • H. G. Wells
... Bacheller, tentatively, using a hillside filled with straggling stalks as a means ...
— Toaster's Handbook - Jokes, Stories, and Quotations • Peggy Edmund & Harold W. Williams, compilers
... seat and had a court house surrounded by trees. It looked long and straggling in the summer dusk. Zene, riding ahead to secure lodgings, came back as far as the culvert to tell Grandma Padgett there was no room at the tavern Court, was session, and the lawyers on the circuit filled the house. But there was another place, ...
— Old Caravan Days • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... America, when Gen. Washington commissioned him captain of the "Franklin," and instructed him to proceed directly to sea. An express with the commission and instructions was hurried off to Marblehead, then a straggling little city. He was instructed to find the "Hon. Samuel Tucker," and to deliver to him the packets in his charge. When the messenger arrived, Tucker was working in his yard. The messenger saw a rough-looking ...
— The Naval History of the United States - Volume 1 (of 2) • Willis J. Abbot
... well imagine what the horrors of a city slum are like, let me describe the nightly scene in a typical city alley. It is cold in the pantomime season; but the folk in that alley have not much fire. Joe, the costermonger, Bill, the market-labourer, Tom, the fish-porter, and the rest come home in a straggling way; and, if they can buy a pennyworth of coal, they boil the little kettle. Then one of the children runs to the chandler's and gets a halfpennyworth of tea, a scrap of bread, and perhaps a penny slice of sausage. ...
— Side Lights • James Runciman
... true we would find ourselves entirely cut off from French supplies, and this colony would literally starve to death. Yes, starve to death with untold millions of fruitful acres all about us. Had we strength to fight I would not care so much. With but two companies of undisciplined troops, a mere straggling handful, officered by drunkards, we could not defend this post a ...
— The Black Wolf's Breed - A Story of France in the Old World and the New, happening - in the Reign of Louis XIV • Harris Dickson
... had taken it to her in her room, had become a thing without value or distinction, one of the 'little blues' that she had received in the course of the day—I had difficulty in recognising the futile, straggling lines of my own handwriting beneath the circles stamped on it at the post-office, the inscriptions added in pencil by a postman, signs of effectual realisation, seals of the external world, violet bands symbolical of life itself, which for the first time came to espouse, ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust
... contributed something of grace, of energy, or of music. In the vast field of criticism on which we are entering, innumerable reapers have already put their sickles. Yet the harvest is so abundant that the negligent search of a straggling gleaner may be ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... of dreams. They had left him now too wan and weak to dream again; left him to lie torpid, faintly remembering far-off things; just able to turn his eyes and gaze through the window near his cot at the trickle of river running by in the sands, at the straggling milk-bush of the Karoo beyond. He knew what the Karoo was now, even if he had not seen a Boer roll over like a rabbit, or heard the whine of flying bullets. This pestilence had sneaked on him before he had smelled powder. A thirsty day and a rash ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... shriveled husks, from which the season's crop of yellow ears had been torn, flapped dejectedly against their dried and broken stalks. Here and there a square of rich, black loam, freshly turned, bespoke the forehanded farmer; while in the fields of his neighbors straggling groups of cattle and hogs gleaned ...
— The Promise - A Tale of the Great Northwest • James B. Hendryx
... revealed to her as they sang—a joyless, straggling place, full of people who pretended. When she woke up she knew that ...
— Where Angels Fear to Tread • E. M. Forster
... door and looked forth. He was habited in a long, faded, palm-figured bed-gown, all muffled up round his chin, and sheep-skin slippers without heels. He had a lank, pale, discouraged visage, and thin, light hair, streaked with gray, in a very untidy state straggling about his face. He pulled his wrapper up yet closer about his head, when he discovered the washerwoman, and shambled across the clean-swept floor, his heelless slippers going clip-clap after him, as he stalked along. What a gaunt, unhealthy-looking ...
— Eventide - A Series of Tales and Poems • Effie Afton
... where Steyning's ales could be obtained, the over-reaching sprays of a great chestnut tree fell in delicate tracery on the white dust. The road led under the railway embankment, and looking through the arched opening, one could see the dirty town, straggling along the canal or harbour, which runs parallel with the sea. A black stain was the hull of a great steamer lying on her side in the mud, but the tapering masts of yachts were beautiful on the sky, and at the end of a row of slatternly houses there were sometimes spars and rigging ...
— Spring Days • George Moore
... other fruit trees; for formerly the Post and factories used to be situated on the island—now only their trees remain for various reasons, one being that in the wet season it is a good deal under water. Everything is now situated on the mainland north bank, in a straggling but picturesque line; first comes Woermann's factory, then Hatton and Cookson's, and John Holt's, close together with a beach in common in a sweetly amicable style for factories, who as a rule firmly stockade themselves off from their next door neighbours. Then Dumas' beach, a little ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... is the picture. It is full summer. We have lunched, Madame and Ben and Andrew and I, at the little cafe restaurant at the near-by straggling end of the town. At other tables, other aristocratic members of the troupe. The humbler have cooked their food in the vague precincts of the circus. We have returned to all that Ben and his wife know as home. It is one o'clock. ...
— The Mountebank • William J. Locke
... outside attested the nature of the place. The front door was open, but the interior was concealed by a gaudy curtain stretched across the entrance within. Over the door was the inscription, in straggling characters, "Sander's Place;" and when he saw half-a-dozen Negroes enter, the minister knew instantly that he now beheld the colored saloon which was the frequenting-place of his hostess's son 'Lias; and he wondered, ...
— Americans All - Stories of American Life of To-Day • Various
... for the entertainment to which they had invited themselves, and these sums, together with the amounts pressed from the reluctant estates, and the forced contributions paid by luckless peasants, enabled him to keep his straggling troops together a few weeks longer. Mutiny, however, was constantly breaking out, and by the eloquent expostulations and vague promises of the ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... situation of a village at the place where the stream had its junction with the ocean. The vales seemed well cultivated, the little enclosures into which they were divided skirting the bottom of the hills, and sometimes carrying their lines of straggling hedge-rows a little way up the ascent. Above these were green pastures, tenanted chiefly by herds of black cattle, then the staple commodity of the country—, whose distant low gave no unpleasing animation to the landscape. ...
— Guy Mannering • Sir Walter Scott
... their enemies, the chief forbade a gun being fired off; no straggling was allowed; none but the spies were to go beyond a ...
— Dahcotah - Life and Legends of the Sioux Around Fort Snelling • Mary Eastman
... straggling homes and those long impersonal rows depressing in their middle-class respectability, and lowered the veil over her smarting eyes. She also squared her shoulders and strode along with an independent swing ...
— Sleeping Fires • Gertrude Atherton
... man with an ill-fitting suit, a straggling gray beard and a corpulent umbrella hopped from the conglomeration of cabs and street cars to the ...
— The Trimmed Lamp • O. Henry
... greensward Where his straggling hoofs had trod, Pure and bright, a fountain flowing From ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... big as if half a dozen years had passed over their leafy heads. As for the roses, I never saw anything like the way they flourish at their own sweet will. Scarcely a leaf is to be seen on the ugly straggling tree—nothing but masses of roses of every tint and kind and old-fashioned variety. The utmost I can do in the way of gathering daily basketsful appears only in the light of judicious pruning, and next ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, April, 1876. • Various
... afternoon wind; its faint regular metallic squeak pricked the dry silence wearingly. Rampant fuchsias, red-jewelled, heavy, ran up its framework, with crowding heliotrope and nasturtiums. Thick straggling roses hung over the kitchen windows, and a row of dusty eucalyptus trees rustled their stiff leaves, and gave an ...
— The Forerunner, Volume 1 (1909-1910) • Charlotte Perkins Gilman
... two friars had an air of mock humility, and was weakly-looking, with a straggling yellowish beard and a crafty expression; Father Martin, on the contrary, looked like a pasha parading through his dominions. He was tall, stout, of an imposing aspect, with a grizzly blond beard, blue eyes, ...
— Caesar or Nothing • Pio Baroja Baroja
... in a large straggling building of no attraction whatever except its cubic capacity. It was fairly new, and devoid of any of the interest of antiquity, but it presented none of the advantages of modern architecture. In fact, it was extremely ugly and extremely inconvenient, but ...
— A Surgeon in Belgium • Henry Sessions Souttar
... of the world with no women companions to keep her company. Then he remembered that for all he knew she might not be the only one of her sex on the Shoe-Bar, and when the meal was over and the men were straggling back toward the bunk-house, he put the question to Bud Jessup, who ...
— Shoe-Bar Stratton • Joseph Bushnell Ames
... Peggy; but when in due time Rob escorted her to see his precious garden, her face was blank with disappointment. Two straggling beds with a rockery filling up the corner, and scarcely a gleam of colour from one end to another! That at least was the effect from a distance, but as the proprietor pointed out his treasures, insignificant little blossoms were distinguishable among the greenery, and flowers the size ...
— More About Peggy • Mrs G. de Horne Vaizey
... such a grotesque shape as to be easily recognizable by any one who had ever glanced into a picture-book of quadrupeds. The long craning neck, with an almost earless head and gibbous profile; the great straggling limbs, callous at the knees, and ending in broad, wide splitting hooves; the slender hind-quarters, and tiny, tufted tail,—both ludicrously disproportioned,—the tumid, misshapen trunk; but, above all, the huge hunch rising above the shoulders, at once proclaimed ...
— The Boy Slaves • Mayne Reid
... Presently the boat was run upon the beach, and in all eleven men landed, whereof three were unarmed and bound, whom I could perceive using passionate gestures of entreaty and despair. Presently the seamen were all gone straggling in the woods, leaving the three distressed men under a tree a little distance from me. I resolved to discover myself to them, and marched with Friday towards them, and called aloud in Spanish, "What are ye, gentlemen?" ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol III • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... a diary—kept it the entire year. It was written in the straggling characters of a child of ten. As I peruse it now, twenty-five years afterward, I am struck not so much with what it records, as with what it leaves unrecorded. The great places visited and the names of great men are chronicled, ...
— From the Bottom Up - The Life Story of Alexander Irvine • Alexander Irvine
... blocks the clue-lines swiftly run; The extending sheets on either side are mann'd, Abroad they come! the fluttering sails expand; The yards again ascend each comrade mast. The leeches taught, the halyards are made fast, 200 The bow-lines haul'd, and yards to starboard braced, [15] And straggling ropes in pendent order placed. The main-sail, by the squall so lately rent, In streaming pendants flying, is unbent: With brails [16] refix'd, another soon prepared, Ascending, spreads along beneath the yard. To each yard-arm the head-rope [17] they extend, And soon ...
— The Poetical Works of Beattie, Blair, and Falconer - With Lives, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Rev. George Gilfillan [Ed.]
... the morning of the 15th of May, the three steamers weighed anchor, and stood up Pearl river, the Westfield and the Clifton following in the wake of the Sachem. At eleven o'clock, Pearlington was reached, a straggling village. Here two schooners and a small steamer (the William Hancock) were found, and boarded by Mr. Harris of the Sachem; but when it was proved that they had not been engaged in aiding the rebel cause, they were not further molested. ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No 3, September 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... seemed as if the party had reached the shores of a great, level, grassy sea, with only here and there a seeming islet, where a thicket grew, to break the sky-line of the horizon. For a few minutes the rear-guard drew up to collect the straggling baggage-mules, and then away they went with a wild shout, as if they were moved by the same glad feeling of freedom that affects the petrel when it swoops over the billows of the ...
— The Rover of the Andes - A Tale of Adventure on South America • R.M. Ballantyne
... stock of provisions besides a common room like a barn, where all must herd together; and neither chair, nor table, nor food to be had. It was a solitary-looking house, standing lonely on the plain, with a few straggling sheep nibbling the brown grass in the vicinity. A fine spring of water from which it takes its name, and Orizaya, which seems to have travelled forward, and stands in bold outline against the sapphire sky, were all that we saw there ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon de la Barca
... impression of insanity or animal ferocity. The latter was his chief characteristic. His face was thin and scored with scars, mainly long and narrow. These, in a measure, testified to his past. His mouth, half hidden beneath a straggling mustache, was his worst feature. One can only liken it to a blubber-lipped gash, lined inside with two rows of yellow fangs, all in a more or less ...
— The Story of the Foss River Ranch • Ridgwell Cullum
... And unto ears as rugged seemed a song! In scattered groups upon the golden sand, They game—carouse—converse—or whet the brand; Select the arms—to each his blade assign, And careless eye the blood that dims its shine; 50 Repair the boat, replace the helm or oar, While others straggling muse along the shore; For the wild bird the busy springes set, Or spread beneath the sun the dripping net: Gaze where some distant sail a speck supplies, With all the thirsting eye of Enterprise; Tell o'er the tales of many a night of toil, And marvel where they next shall seize a spoil: ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Vol. 3 (of 7) • Lord Byron
... chiefly because the errand was so incongruous a mission on which to despatch him—David put his arm around the neck of the child with a quick protecting gesture, and then gathered her close in his arms, where she clung, quivering and sobbing, the unkempt curls straggling helplessly over ...
— Turn About Eleanor • Ethel M. Kelley
... relics of a lost people. In the damp shadow of what seems a virgin forest, the axe and plough bring strange secrets to light: huge pits, close packed with skeletons and disjointed bones, mixed with weapons, copper kettles, beads, and trinkets. Not even the straggling Algonquins, who linger about the scene of Huron prosperity, can tell their origin. Yet, on ancient worm-eaten pages, between covers of begrimed parchment, the daily life of this ruined community, its firesides, ...
— The Jesuits in North America in the Seventeenth Century • Francis Parkman
... were then a new feature in its life. The Master was a kind of queer patron saint among them, and to a chosen three or four, an intimate mentor and lasting friend. His sixty odd years, and the streaks of grey in his red straggling locks, his European reputation as a scholar and thinker, his old sister, and his quiet house, forbade the slightest breath of scandal in connection with these girl-friendships. Yet the girls to whom the Master devoted himself, whose essays he read, whose blunders he corrected, whose schools he ...
— Lady Connie • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... with him. They were pretty fairly matched, now, in unpopularity and general ill-luck and misery, and they had no trouble in meeting upon this common ground with advantage and something of comfort to both. But Tracy's movements had been watched, and in a few minutes the tormentors came straggling one after another to the roof, where they began to stroll up and down in an apparently purposeless way. But presently they fell to dropping remarks that were evidently aimed at Tracy, and some of them at the tinner. The ringleader of this little mob was a short-haired ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... pace to the other end of the long, straggling street, where there was a humbler inn, called the "Cross Keys." Here he entered, and asked for a bed-room, with a good fire, and something or other ...
— Run to Earth - A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... indicated by a few fine and very short hairs; the free edges of the eyelids were without cilia, but the bulb of each of these was indicated by a small, whitish point. The beard was so thin and weak that Beauvais clipped it off only every three weeks. A few straggling hairs were observed on the breast and pubic region, as in young people on the approach of puberty. There was scarcely any under the axillae. It was rather more abundant on the inner parts of the legs. The voice was like that of a full-grown and well-constituted man. Beauvais ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... much friendly interest. "Little Miss Immigrant," they called her, and vied with each other in making her feel that they were all welcoming her. But they did not waste much time over dinner—soon one after another got up and sauntered away, lighting his pipe, and presently there were straggling lines of figures going back to work across the paddocks. After which Norah and Tommy bullied Bob into eating something—he had been far too anxious to wait on his hungry "bee" to think of feeding himself, and then the ladies of the party lunched with the ardour of the long-delayed, ...
— Back To Billabong • Mary Grant Bruce
... which it is the scene, lifts little Charlotte Bronte into the company of the poets. No one, however, can enter into all the art of her landscapes unless he knows those Yorkshire moors, the straggling upland villages, bare, cold, gray, uncanny, with low, unlovely stone buildings, and stern church towers and graveyards, varied with brawling brooks and wooded glens, and here and there a grim manor-house that had seen war. It is so often that the dwellers in the least picturesque and ...
— Studies in Early Victorian Literature • Frederic Harrison
... skullcap, and slippers, just as they are in pictures and theaters, and just as they were three thousand years ago, no doubt. You can easily understand that a tribe (somehow our pilgrims suggest that expression, because they march in a straggling procession through these foreign places with such an Indian-like air of complacency and independence about them) like ours, made up from fifteen or sixteen states of the Union, found enough to stare at in this shifting panorama of ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... the other workmen, skillful fellows, who knew as Hugh had never known, the science of their iron craft, came straggling through the shop door into his presence. They were a little embarrassed before him. The greatness of his name rang ...
— Poor White • Sherwood Anderson
... beach whispered to the open sky! How our irreverent voices seemed to jar upon the privacy of the little cove! The mossy rocks doubled themselves without a flaw in the clear, dark water. The gleaming white beach lay fringed with its deep deposits of odorous sea-weed, gleaming black. The steep, straggling sides of the cliffs raised aloft their rugged angles against the burning blue of the sky. I remember, when Miss Blunt stepped ashore and stood upon the beach, relieved against the heavy shadow of a recess in the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 100, February, 1866 • Various
... the hill beyond the bridge begins a roadway, planted with young aspens, that leads in a straight line to the first houses in the place. These, fenced in by hedges, are in the middle of courtyards full of straggling buildings, wine-presses, cart-sheds and distilleries scattered under thick trees, with ladders, poles, or scythes hung on to the branches. The thatched roofs, like fur caps drawn over eyes, reach down over about a third of the low windows, whose coarse convex glasses have knots in the middle ...
— Madame Bovary • Gustave Flaubert |
