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Straying   /strˈeɪɪŋ/   Listen
Straying

adjective
1.
Unable to find your way.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Straying" Quotes from Famous Books



... instructions is not to pass over any infringement of the new h'act. Straying is to be ...
— The Vicissitudes of Bessie Fairfax • Harriet Parr

... a cow straying on the line at Acton Bridge last week a goods train was derailed. It seems that the unfortunate animal was not aware that ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Dec. 5, 1917 • Various

... came and began to cut the long grass in the Home Field, and the meadow by the brook. Bevis could see them from the garden, and it was impossible to prevent him from straying up the footpath, so eager was he to go nearer. The best thing that could be done, since he could not be altogether stopped, was to make him promise that he would not go beyond a certain limit. He might wander as much as he pleased inside ...
— Wood Magic - A Fable • Richard Jefferies

... now thy swift dogs, over stone and bush, After me, straying sheep, loud barking, rush. There's Fear, and Shame, and Empty-heart, and Lack, And Lost-love, and a thousand at their back! I see thee not, but know thou hound'st them on, And I am lost indeed—escape is none. See! there they come, ...
— A Book of Strife in the Form of The Diary of an Old Soul • George MacDonald

... to grieve, and sought out what to grieve at, when in another's and that feigned and personated misery, that acting best pleased me, and attracted me the most vehemently, which drew tears from me. What marvel that an unhappy sheep, straying from Thy flock, and impatient of Thy keeping, I became infected with a foul disease? And hence the love of griefs; not such as should sink deep into me; for I loved not to suffer, what I loved to look on; but such as upon hearing their ...
— The Confessions of Saint Augustine • Saint Augustine

... came slowly toward the cameras, hand in hand, a typical pair of straying lovers, so affected by each other's presence that they spoke only with their eyes, sidelong glances of ardent devotion. Then they stood still, facing each other, their profiles toward the cameras, he holding her hands down to her sides, telling her of his love ...
— Spring Street - A Story of Los Angeles • James H. Richardson

... one of those hearts, "This was your doing!" He told them that for every sin of every one among them, that Sacrifice was a sufficient atonement: and that if for any one the atonement was not efficacious, that was not Christ's fault, but his own. There was room at the marriage-supper for every pauper straying on the high-way; and if one of them were not there, it would be because he had refused ...
— Earl Hubert's Daughter - The Polishing of the Pearl - A Tale of the 13th Century • Emily Sarah Holt

... surveying the scene as if looking out from the top of the Matterhorn. A sailor followed him, and drew a chalk-line around his feet. I assume the reader knows what this means; if he does not, he can learn by straying into the sailors' quarters the first time he is on board an ocean steamer. But the professor absolutely refused to ...
— The Reminiscences of an Astronomer • Simon Newcomb

... her as she sat on the stairs, looked exactly like one of Raphael's Madonne alla Fornarina. Her large eyes followed seriously every movement of the painters. Caper, learning that she was a widow, did not know but what her affections were straying ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2 No 4, October, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various

... sky, Glad soaring bird; Sing out thy notes on high 10 To sunbeam straying by Or passing cloud; Heedless if thou art heard ...
— Goblin Market, The Prince's Progress, and Other Poems • Christina Rossetti

... nature of those animals which the common law recognizes as the subject of ownership to stray, and when straying to do damage by trampling down and eating crops. At the same time it is usual and easy to restrain them. On the other hand, a dog, which is not the subject of property, does no harm by simply crossing the land of others than its owner. Hence to this extent the ...
— The Common Law • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.

... apart, independently of the weaker cord which ties the animal to either a stake or tree. Should the buffalo break away during the night, it cannot wander far, as the bushes will quickly anchor the rope which confines the fore legs; the tiger would then assuredly attack the straying animal and kill it within the jungles. In such a case the drive should take place without delay, as the dead buffalo will certainly be hidden in the nearest convenient spot, and the tiger will be somewhere in ...
— Wild Beasts and their Ways • Sir Samuel W. Baker

... the moon rise in the sky, he grew a bit lonely and thoughtful, and found himself longing for some one to love and cherish, for this is the nature of all good men. But when he realized how his thoughts were straying he began to sing again, and he drove away ...
— Mother Goose in Prose • L. Frank Baum

... result of the diagnosis is different, and that on mature consideration the doctor should decide that a ghost and not a sorcerer is at the bottom of the mischief. The question then naturally arises whether the sick man has not of late been straying on haunted ground and infected himself with the very dangerous soul-stuff or spiritual essence of the dead. If he remembers to have done so, some leaves are fetched from the place in the forest where the mishap occurred, and with them the whole body of the sufferer or the wound, as the case may ...
— The Belief in Immortality and the Worship of the Dead, Volume I (of 3) • Sir James George Frazer

... sympathies of the fastidious. Truesdale, whether or no, found himself restricted within reasonable bounds by his own good taste. Nor was Paston permitted much greater latitude; whatever his taste, the condition of his finances would alone have checked him from straying too widely outside the ...
— With the Procession • Henry B. Fuller

... long a time had Jim been known as the hardest sinner on the plantation that no one had tried to reach the heart under his outward shell even in camp-meeting and revival times. Even good old Brother Parker, who was ever looking after the lost and straying sheep, gave him ...
— The Strength of Gideon and Other Stories • Paul Laurence Dunbar

... doubtless you have carried the ring for many months and learned the writing. Well, sir, though we were far apart, and though perchance I cherished the memory of him who wore this ring, and for his sake remained unwed, it seems that his heart went a straying—to the breast indeed of some savage woman whom he married, and who bore him children. That being so, my answer to the prayer of your dead friend is that I forgive him indeed, but I must needs take back the vows which I swore to him for this life and for ever, since he has ...
— Montezuma's Daughter • H. Rider Haggard

... tried to gather his straying wits to him. With a sharp effort that seemed to send a tremor through his whole long body he forced his faculties back into their grooves. With a muttered word of encouragement from the Bishop, ...
— The Shepherd of the North • Richard Aumerle Maher

... is reported of his early life in that little home; there are no accounts of any hair-breadth escapes from being run over by cart-wheels, or of his being nearly burnt to death while playing with the kitchen fire, or of his straying away from home and taking to the adjacent woods, and the whole neighbourhood being out in quest of him, or that he even, during this interesting period of his history, either fell headlong into a coal-pit, or wandered out of his depth in the canal near by; there is, however, every probability, ...
— Little Abe - Or, The Bishop of Berry Brow • F. Jewell

... near, With a head that's full of jingles—and the fumes of bottled beer; For I always have a fancy that, if I am over there When the Army prays for Watty, I'm included in the prayer. It would take a lot of praying, lots of thumping on the drum, To prepare our sinful, straying, erring souls for Kingdom Come. But I love my fellow-sinners! and I hope, upon the whole, That the Army gets a hearing when it prays for Watty's soul. -When ...
— Children of the Bush • Henry Lawson

... ice-sheet. Here we hunt large animals and sea-shore beasts, and trap small-deer very ingeniously; we fish in the large northward-flowing rivers; and eventually (heaven knows after how long, or how far back from now) we borrowed a notion, probably from pastorals imprudently straying too far along those northward river-lanes through the forests, and domesticated our best of beasts, the reindeer; stealing a march here on our Alaskan cousins, who call them caribou and treat them so: they ...
— The Unity of Civilization • Various

... deserve to be pounded {94} for straying from poetry to oratory: but both have such an affinity in the wordish considerations, that I think this digression will make my meaning receive the fuller understanding: which is not to take upon me to teach poets how they should do, but ...
— A Defence of Poesie and Poems • Philip Sidney

... poverty. She went about it with the pathetic confidence of youth and ignorance. She rode up and down the canyons and over the higher, grassier ridges, to watch the cattle on their summer range and keep them from straying. She went with John Pringle after posts and helped him fence certain fertile slopes and hollows for winter grazing. She drove the rickety old mower through the waving grass along the creek bottom and hummed little, contented ...
— The Ranch at the Wolverine • B. M. Bower

... although he was extremely orthodox, to the extent of believing that those who already had united with his church were on the proper road to heaven, he nevertheless realized, as a practical man, that frequently there is more trouble with sheep in the road than with those who are straying about. ...
— All He Knew - A Story • John Habberton

... time what are you saying, What are ye seeking, and what do you miss? Locks like the thistledown floating and straying, Cheeks like the budding ...
— Yesterdays • Ella Wheeler Wilcox

... but the germ of "The Playboy of the Western World" in the story told Synge in Inishmaan of the hiding there from the police of the man that killed his father, but there is old Mourteen's comparison of an unmarried man to "an old jackass straying in the rocks," which later we find transferred to Michael James Flaherty almost as Synge heard it—"an old braying ...
— Irish Plays and Playwrights • Cornelius Weygandt

... so touches the common heart of humanity as does the straying of a little child. Their feet are so uncertain and feeble; the ways ...
— The Four Million • O. Henry

... gently, with the hopes that guide The lowliest brother straying from thy side If right, they bid thee tremble for thine own; If wrong, the verdict is for ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

... might thee call A Fluttering Ray of Light Decked in prismatic hues, Which a radiance diffuse Just like a beam of glory straying ...
— The Emigrant Mechanic and Other Tales In Verse - Together With Numerous Songs Upon Canadian Subjects • Thomas Cowherd

... of rain outside, and I was conscious that my long wanderings through muddy streets had rendered me unpresentable. Still, my wish had been granted me. There stood Karine Cunningham, in white from head to foot; a long soft evening cloak, with shining silver threads straying over its snowy surface, hung loosely about her, for she had fastened it at the throat, and I could see a gleam of bare neck, hung with a rope of pearls, and the delicate folds of chiffon belted in with jewels ...
— The House by the Lock • C. N. Williamson

... the caged tigers behind these hard-held ramparts. Facing north and east, the gladiators of the morrow lie on their arms, ready now for the summons to fall in, for a wild rush on Sherman's pressing lines. It is no holiday camp, with leafy bowers and lovely ladies straying in the moonlight. No dallying and listening to Romeos in gray and gold. No silver-throated bugles wake the night with "Lorena." No soft refrain of the "Suwanee River" melts all the hearts. It is not a gala evening, when "Maryland, my Maryland," rises in grand appeal. The ...
— The Little Lady of Lagunitas • Richard Henry Savage

... occasion several years ago, I saw a number of young ants of L. niger brought out of the nest by five or six old ants, which watched over the young and kept them from straying away. The young ants played about the nest entrance for some time, and were then conducted back into the hive ...
— The Dawn of Reason - or, Mental Traits in the Lower Animals • James Weir

... the plough, a twilight saunter on Parnassus. As, with a careful hand and a steady eye, he guided his horses, and saw an evenly furrow turned up by the share, his thoughts were on other themes; he was straying in haunted glens, when spirits have power—looking in fancy on the lasses "skelping barefoot," in silks and in scarlets, to a field-preaching—walking in imagination with the rosy widow, who on Halloween ventured to dip her left sleeve in the burn, where three ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham

... stoves and other contents of the wagon. The oxen, straying through the valley, fattened themselves on the sweet grass until the snow fell; she then slaughtered and flayed the fattest one, and cutting up the carcase, packed it away for winter's use. Dry logs and limbs of trees, brought together and chopped up with ...
— Woman on the American Frontier • William Worthington Fowler

... rounding, And bubbling and troubling and doubling, And grumbling and rumbling and tumbling, And chattering and battering and shattering; Retreating and beating and meeting and sheeting, Delaying and straying and playing and spraying, Advancing and prancing and glancing and dancing, Recoiling, turmoiling, and toiling and boiling, And gleaming and streaming and steaming and beaming, And rushing and flushing and brushing and gushing, And flapping and rapping and clapping and slapping, And curling and whirling ...
— Elson Grammer School Literature, Book Four. • William H. Elson and Christine Keck

... the nature of the country in which the sheep is straying; and also the nature of the sheep that is straying there. He knows the roughness of the mountain passes, and the silliness of the solitary truant sheep; he divines accordingly what track it will take. ...
— The Parables of Our Lord • William Arnot

... grated ogive straying, The sea-breeze mingles with the Moka's fume, Where softly o'er thy form the moonbeams playing Glance on thy couch, rich from ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII No. 6 June 1848 • Various

... these same ledger-men could spy Fair Isabella in her downy nest? How could they find out in Lorenzo's eye A straying from his toil? Hot Egypt's pest 140 Into their vision covetous and sly! How could these money-bags see east and west?— Yet so they did—and every dealer fair Must see behind, as doth ...
— Keats: Poems Published in 1820 • John Keats

... came on again in the morning, clouds of them, but we held them back with the gatlings and the maxims, and towards evening they again retired. To-day nothing has happened except the arrival of an envoy with an arrogant letter from Shere Ali, asking why we are straying inside the borders of his country 'like camels without nose-rings.' We shall show him why to-morrow. For to-morrow we attack the fort on the maidan. Good-night, mother. I am very tired." And the last sentence ...
— The Broken Road • A. E. W. Mason

... to his dignity as a captain's dog; but, although remonstrated with by his master's valet, who had charge of him when the captain did not take him ashore—aye, and even whipped for thus straying forwards—'Gyp' would persist in his unseemly predilection for low life, utterly regardless of his proper rank as an officer, with a collar and badge. This article was of gold lace, and became him well, contrasting favourably with his black-and-tan head and soft white coat, which latter ...
— Young Tom Bowling - The Boys of the British Navy • J.C. Hutcheson

... without method; but in this very lack of order—which shows that "browsing" instinct which Charles Lamb declared to be essential to a right feeling for literature—the charm of the book lies. This habit of straying, and his lack of style, prove Aelianus more of a vagabond in the domain of letters ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner

... not thyself in the counsel of thine own heart; that thy soul be not torn in pieces as a bull [straying alone.] ...
— Deuteronomical Books of the Bible - Apocrypha • Anonymous

... the little lake, Sharp purple-blue; the birches, thin And silvery, crowd the edge, yet break To let a straying sunbeam in. ...
— Rose and Roof-Tree - Poems • George Parsons Lathrop

... Mr. Peake," he said. "I reckon he must be the one that come ashore from the wreck t'other night. I heard all about it, 'cause some of our men were over to help out," he added, in a low tone, taking advantage of Darry straying off a bit to examine a colored print that hung on the wall, and offered all manner of inducements to young fellows wishing to ...
— Darry the Life Saver - The Heroes of the Coast • Frank V. Webster

... Territory of Arizona was one vast open range, over the grassy portions of which cattle belonging to hundreds of different ranches roamed at will. Most of the big ranches employed a few cowboys the year around to keep the fences in repair and to prevent cows from straying too far from the home range. The home range was generally anywhere within a twenty-mile radius ...
— Arizona's Yesterday - Being the Narrative of John H. Cady, Pioneer • John H. Cady

... the sole reliance, so far as the herd was concerned, the Professor suggested that they should thereafter keep the team within the enclosure, so as to prevent their straying, as they might, in the absence of ...
— The Wonder Island Boys: Exploring the Island • Roger Thompson Finlay

... horse had great difficulty in making its way, and dropped behind the rest. There was no fear of its straying; the animals being accustomed to keep together, ...
— Snow Shoes and Canoes - The Early Days of a Fur-Trader in the Hudson Bay Territory • William H. G. Kingston

... reporting that the animal had not been seen by them. Some persons thought that after its fright had passed over it would return of its own accord. It had worn a pretty collar, with its owner's name engraved upon it, so that it could easily be known from any other fawn that might be straying about the woods. Before many hours had passed a hunter presented himself to the lady whose pet the little creature had been, and showing a collar with her name on it said that he had been out in the woods, and saw a fawn in the distance: the little animal ...
— International Weekly Miscellany Vol. I. No. 3, July 15, 1850 • Various

... spring-dazzle of the stars grow pale night after night. They were bad hours to be awake, those hours of the April dawn, for in them, the shepherds said, a strange call came down from the country inland, straying scents of moss and primroses reaching out towards the salt sea, calling men away from the wind-stung levels and the tides and watercourses, to where the little inland farms sleep in the sheltered hollows among the hop-bines, and the sunrise ...
— Joanna Godden • Sheila Kaye-Smith

... and with their long whips, which they kept on cracking like pistol-shots, they kept order among their unruly charge. Shouting and shrieking, they galloped round from the rear to the side to bring back any beast which showed an intention of straying away, their dogs sagaciously rendering them assistance by barking at the heels of the animals, and turning them back into the herd. What with the thunder-like bellowing of the cattle and the tramp of their feet, the shouting ...
— The Gilpins and their Fortunes - A Story of Early Days in Australia • William H. G. Kingston

... flat stone. Overshadowing both cellar and well were three ancient elms, storm-beaten and lightning-cleft, but still standing as if to guard the very solitude which was unbroken save by the tinkling bell, which told whither the farmer's flock was straying. From Mr. Thompson I learned the history ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 4 • Various

... came along Knightsbridge still thinking of her sitting there waiting for him, his mind straying from that to the kiss, the dinner, the bowl of roses ...
— The Man Who Lost Himself • H. De Vere Stacpoole

... red-taped nurse had reminded him of Alice Mellen, and of those last days in Johannesburg. Now it was a two-day trek, as escort for a convoy train whose long lines of bullock-drawn wagons marked the brown veldt with a wavering stripe of duller brown. Again a wounded picket came straying back to camp, bleeding and dazed, to report the inevitable sniping which furnished the running accompaniment to most other events; or an angry squad came riding in, to tell of the shots which had followed close upon the raising of the white flag, or of ...
— On the Firing Line • Anna Chapin Ray and Hamilton Brock Fuller

... loose horses were straying all over the country, and I took this to be one from another battery which had come ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, Feb. 19, 1919 • Various

... evident that the person and character of the shepherd must mean a great deal more to the sheep than they can possibly mean in this country. With us, sheep left to themselves may be seen any day—in a field or on a hill-side with a far-travelling fence to keep them from straying. But I do not remember ever to have seen in the East a flock ...
— Four Psalms • George Adam Smith

... thing," Charley declared. "We will lead the ponies out to the end and then fell a few pines across the neck here. That will form a kind of a fence and keep them from straying away. There's grass enough on the point to keep them busy for a ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely

... object to this supposition.) However, Jacques was anxious to push on, and spent little time listening. But he was a good-hearted man, and, though he would not delay for his own amusement, he could not refuse to stop when fellow-pilgrims asked him for assistance. Little children were continually straying from the path, and without Jacques and his little dog would inevitably have been lost. Feeble old people were standing looking with despair at some obstacle that without Jacques's friendly arm they would have found it impossible to pass. Young men who never looked ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - February, 1876, Vol. XVII, No. 98. • Various

... conscious that the had been successful and had brought some long labor to a worthy ending. Presently he would light the gas, and enjoy the satisfaction that only the work could give him, but for the time he preferred to linger in the darkness, and to think of himself as straying from stile to stile through the scented meadows, and listening to the bright brook that sang ...
— The Hill of Dreams • Arthur Machen

... the wind. The straying fingers of the moonbeams through the chinks pencilled it strangely, and the shadows were huddled black behind it. But now it hung revealed, with no more likeness to a human body than any average well-meaning farm-implement ...
— Earth's Enigmas - A Volume of Stories • Charles G. D. Roberts

... man before him knew the cravings of a yet keener need: was fainting under the weight of a yet heavier load. Instantly he recognised the seeking soul within, even as the Shepherd of Pendle a few hours previously, out on the hillside, had recognised his master's mark on the straying sheep. Forgetting his own weariness, even for the time putting aside the remembrance of the visions he had seen, he set himself to win and satisfy this humble soul ...
— A Book of Quaker Saints • Lucy Violet Hodgkin

... Fifth Avenue at Fifty-ninth Street and straying northwestward into the early autumn splendor of the Park, it seemed as though for the first time she could understand the viewpoint of those unidentified myriads to whom New York is a fetich; and as she walked on beneath the ...
— White Ashes • Sidney R. Kennedy and Alden C. Noble

... in Nordiske Old-skrifter, xxvii., pp. 123-128, and 140-143, Copenhagen, 1860), this song is said to have been heard by two men, who, on their way to church, had lost their road, and were overtaken by the darkness of night, and, in order to escape straying too far out of their way, sought shelter under the lee of a sheer rock which chanced to be on their way. They soon found a mouth of a cave where they knew not that any cave was to be looked for, whereupon one of the wayfarers set up a cross-mark in the door of the cave, and then with his fellow-traveller ...
— The Story of Grettir The Strong • Translated by Eirikr Magnusson and William Morris

... this passage the writer says: "Several persons have told me that they had lost flocks of sheep, by straying, in the forests of Mont Auroux, which covered the flanks of the mountain from La Cluse to Agneres. These declivities are now as bare as the palm ...
— The Earth as Modified by Human Action • George P. Marsh

... amazed to find, in this nest of Islamite savagery and among these wild rocks, the uttermost accent of modern French politeness. Your presence is a windfall in quarters so retired, and you sit among orange plants and straying gazelles, while the military band throws softly out against the inaccessible crags the famous tower-scene from the fourth act of Il Trovatore. As night draws on, tired of your explorations, you seek a ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 11, No. 24, March, 1873 • Various

... practices and caresses are conventional rather than natural, like everything the Hindoos do. A bayaderes straying to Paris and making use of them would be a curiosity so extraordinary that she would certainly enjoy a succes de vogue ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck

... "For truth is seldom so intrusive as to need avoiding. But we are straying. There was a score upon which you were inquisitive, you said; from which I take it that you sought knowledge at my hands. Pray seek it; I ...
— The Lion's Skin • Rafael Sabatini

... rather confusing to find him straying off into "Henry V." Still, "In peace there's nothing so becomes a man," seems to promise Shakespeare at least,—so compose ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 59, September, 1862 • Various

... to the Heavens was struck, above all, with the brilliancy of this solitary globe, straying among the stars. The Moon first suggested an easy division of time into months and weeks, and the first astronomical observations were limited to the study of ...
— Astronomy for Amateurs • Camille Flammarion

... of the shallow valleys that furrowed, like ploughshares, its long slant, there was a dolmen, three huge stones, with a fourth poised on it. Their grey brows rose over the billows of bracken, and briers, laden with the promise of fruit, made garlands for their ancient heads. Christian's straying advance brought her along the lip of the little valley in which they reposed, and quite suddenly there rose in her the conviction that her quest was nearing success. She was of that mysteriously-gifted company to whom the lairs of things lost are revealed. She "found ...
— Mount Music • E. Oe. Somerville and Martin Ross

... who still further amazed him by treating him to a much larger share of her attention than the law of the dinner-table prescribed. Her talk, in the main, was local and personal; and Roy simply let it flow; his eyes flagrantly straying down the table towards Miss Arden and Hayes, who seemed very intimate ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver

... served over toast. The clams of course were the main dainty, and when dipped in butter slid down with amazing rapidity. After dinner the girls threw themselves down in the sand in various attitudes of relaxation, while Professor Wheeler, his eyes straying again and again toward Hinpoha, told stories of ...
— The Camp Fire Girls in the Maine Woods - Or, The Winnebagos Go Camping • Hildegard G. Frey

... lads!" said the lieutenant; "and mind this: there must be no straying off in any shape whatever—that is, if we land. These fellows seem friendly, but we are only a few among hundreds, and I suppose you know what your fate would be if they got the ...
— The Adventures of Don Lavington - Nolens Volens • George Manville Fenn

... to straying hair. "I'm falling to pieces. I have but two desires in the world—a cold bath and food. Perhaps ...
— The Mountebank • William J. Locke

... decent night's sleep since I heard the child was sick," Miss Cornelia told Anne, "and Mary Vance has cried until those queer eyes of hers looked like burnt holes in a blanket. Is it true that Carl got pneumonia from straying out in the graveyard that ...
— Rainbow Valley • Lucy Maud Montgomery

... is not at all creditable to the machine. But Hurd's instincts and sympathies are not those of Gus Hartman, Hare, Wolfe and Leavitt. Had the anti-machine forces had even semblance of organization there would have been no straying, and the accomplishment of the legislative session of 1909 would have been more satisfactory to the best ...
— Story of the Session of the California Legislature of 1909 • Franklin Hichborn

... unwary, that these devils were rulers over certain territory and certain types of people—these teachings naturally led to the assumption that the imps chose certain persons as their very own. Moreover, the constant reminders of the danger of straying from the strait and narrow way, and of the tortures of the afterworld led to self-consciousness, introspection, and morbidness. The idea that Satan was at all times seeking to undermine the Puritan church also made it easy to believe that anyone living outside ...
— Woman's Life in Colonial Days • Carl Holliday

... is marked with 'F.A.' I suppose the blanchisseuse mixes them in hotels. Let us burn the memento of a husband's straying fancies then; the taste in perfumes of his inamorata is anything but refined," and Verisschenzko tossed the bit of cambric into the fire which sparkled ...
— The Price of Things • Elinor Glyn

... proved large and airy, with four big windows, the lower sashes of which were painted white to prevent wandering eyes straying from lesson books to the view outside. It was fitted with desks arranged to face a low platform on which stood the blackboard, a chair, and a large desk for the teacher. The walls were hung with maps and views ...
— The Nicest Girl in the School - A Story of School Life • Angela Brazil

... Sicily, And begs her to accept it for his sake. She bows him from the room, and puts the fruit Before her on her music, once again Dreaming of me, and singing some wild song Of Pan, who, by the river straying down, Cut reeds, and blew upon them with such power, He charmed the lilies and the dragon-flies. Now while the song is swaying to its close, I seem to come myself into the room, And clasp true arms about my darling Grace; She lays Gianni's orange in my hand, And says that I must eat it; ...
— Stories in Verse • Henry Abbey

... through their owners' inclosures and escape, if found, they are driven back and fastened in again; and even slaveholders would execrate as a wretch, the man who should tie them up, and bruise and lacerate them for straying away; but when slaves that have escaped are caught, they are flogged with the most terrible severity. When herds of cattle are driven to market, they are suffered to go in the easiest way, each by himself; but when slaves are driven to market, they are fastened together with handcuffs, ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society

... sets forth the superiority of the husband over the wife, and what superiority, if you please? that of simple duty fulfilled, while the wife was straying from hers. Here she is, fixed by the bent of this bad education; here she is, gone out after the scene of the ball, with the young boy, Leon, as inexperienced as herself. She coquets with him but does not dare to go further; nothing happens. Then comes Rodolphe who takes the woman to himself. ...
— The Public vs. M. Gustave Flaubert • Various

... grasp and rushed off into the darkness. Mastering an almost overpowering desire to run for the redoubt, he assisted two signallers to investigate and discovered that the wire had caught in the foot of a straying camel, which had proceeded on its thoughtless way with the ...
— The Fifth Battalion Highland Light Infantry in the War 1914-1918 • F.L. Morrison

... straying away again from his mother. Her stick was tied to a peg in the ground and she could not follow him. A part-grown puppy, somewhat larger and older than he, came toward him slowly, with ostentatious and ...
— White Fang • Jack London

... are transported into diversified countries, such as Sierra Leone, the Malay archipelago, and Madeira, they are exposed to new conditions of life; and apparently in consequence vary in a somewhat greater degree. When closely confined, either for the pleasure of watching them, or to prevent their straying, they must be exposed, even in their native climate, to considerably different conditions; for they cannot obtain their natural diversity of food; and, what is probably more important, they are abundantly fed, whilst debarred from taking much exercise. Under these circumstances ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication - Volume I • Charles Darwin

... meeting to go to. We had been too well brought up to think of working in the fields, as the Healys and others of the neighbours did; and the day was long—longer to Stephen than to me. I used to read and sing to him and the babies; and if we got through the day without his straying off to Healy's or some of the neighbours, I was happy. He might by chance come home sober on other nights, but on Sunday—never; and it was like death to ...
— Stephen Grattan's Faith - A Canadian Story • Margaret M. Robertson

... you're straying Afar from 'stick' and type— Your heart has 'gone a-maying,' And you taste old kisses, ripe Again on lips that pucker At your ...
— Songs of Friendship • James Whitcomb Riley

... came out after dinner with food for him, and speech—the bird seemed to like being spoken to, and always put his head on one side so that he might listen more attentively. A little further on Evelyn met three goslings straying under the flowering laburnums, and she returned them to their mother in the orchard. Something was moving among the potato ridges, and wondering what it could be, she discovered the cat playing with the long-lost tortoise. How funny her great fluffy tom-cat ...
— Sister Teresa • George Moore

... been for Dr. Henry Guillemard, who has not edited it, or of course the whole affair would have been better, but who has most kindly gone through the proof sheets, lassoing prepositions which were straying outside their sentence stockade, taking my eye off the water cask and fixing it on the scenery where I meant it to be, saying firmly in pencil on margins "No you don't," when I was committing some more than usually heinous literary crime, and so on. In cases where his activities in these ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley

... straying from the point. What I have to defend is the having likened you, in giving your outward form, to the Cnidian and the Garden Aphrodite, to Hera and Athene; such comparisons you find out of all proportion. I will deal directly with them, then. ...
— Works, V3 • Lucian of Samosata

... Gewar the mystification that had followed on his straying, and straightway asked him for his daughter. Gewar answered that he would most gladly favour him, but that he feared if he rejected Balder he would incur his wrath; for Balder, he said, had proffered him a like ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")

... by these women utterly insupportable. The house stifled him with its teeming feminine life. In it he felt superfluous, futile. Hurrying out, he stumbled down the slope and, stripping, dived into the water. Its cold touch robbed him of thought; he became at once merely one of Nature's straying children returned again to ...
— The Nest Builder • Beatrice Forbes-Robertson Hale

... first near view of her, his eyes widened. He had never seen anything just like her; with that he began realizing dully that he was straying into strange pastures. He took her two hands because there was nothing else to do, feeling just a trifle awkward in the unaccustomed act. He looked down into Gloria's face, which was lifted so artlessly up to his. Hers were the softest, tenderest grey eyes he had ever looked into. He had ...
— The Everlasting Whisper • Jackson Gregory

... endure!" he cried. "All day the thought of what I've lost was like a constant sword-thrust in my heart. Instead of deference and respect that once was mine from high and low, 'twas laugh and jibe and pointing finger. And, too," (his voice grew shrill and querulous) "I saw young lovers straying in the lanes together. How can I endure that sight day after day when my arms must remain for ever empty? And little children prattled by their father's side no matter where I turned. I, who shall never know a ...
— The Little Colonel's Chum: Mary Ware • Annie Fellows Johnston

... gay handful in The Fop if she's ridden him into that bunch of younglings.—It's her territory, you know," he elucidated to Graham. "All the house horses and lighter stock is her affair. And she gets grand results. I can't understand it, myself. It's like a little girl straying into an experimental laboratory of high explosives and mixing the stuff around any old way and getting more powerful combinations than the ...
— The Little Lady of the Big House • Jack London

... a few minutes later the horses came into camp, lead by an old black mare who carried a bell, and driven by the four black boys riding bareback. Everything was bustle for a few minutes. The horses were again hobbled to prevent them from straying, and then the men all settled down to breakfast. Vaughan usually took charge of the tea. Directly a quart-pot came to the boil, he tipped in some sugar and a pinch of tea, and moved the pot away from the fire. Sax superintended the tucker—a slab of damper, or a Johnny-cake, and a chunk of salt meat ...
— In the Musgrave Ranges • Jim Bushman

... hours the march continued with such frequent halts, owing to the straying of the cattle, that we had only progressed the short distance of ten miles, when, at 4.40 P.M., we entered the valley of Jon Joke. We saw before us the hill covered with plantain groves where we had slept when ...
— Ismailia • Samuel W. Baker

... not master him, he masters it. High up out of reach, he stands turning a concentrated light; he turns the pivot with his finger; he baffles the swiftest runners as he stands, and easily overtakes and envelops them. The time straying toward infidelity and confections and persiflage he withholds by his steady faith; he spreads out his dishes; he offers the sweet firm-fibred meat that grows men and women. His brain is the ultimate brain. He is ...
— Poems By Walt Whitman • Walt Whitman

... that the First Consul liked her best in white, and that it was said when Madame Bonaparte (who was herself fond of more gorgeous costumes) appeared in white, it was a sign either that she was jealous of her husband and was trying to win back his straying affections, or that she wanted some special favor granted. Very likely this was only idle court gossip, but it might easily be true, for I could hardly think her so nearly beautiful in any other dress as in that softly falling white, with high girdle of gold, richly jeweled, and her ...
— The Rose of Old St. Louis • Mary Dillon

... Cape Finisterre, the full tally of 183 was counted. After passing that cape, the traders probably parted for their several destinations, each body under a suitable escort. The stoppages for the rounding-up of straying or laggard vessels, or for re-establishing the observance of order which ever contributes to regulated movement, and through it to success, were not in this case time lost. The admiral made of them opportunities for exercising his ships-of-the-line in the new system of signals, and in the simple ...
— Types of Naval Officers - Drawn from the History of the British Navy • A. T. Mahan

... approached the Culm houses, loitering along the moist, shining sand, over which the waves had rolled and rippled but a few hours before, and marking their devious path with straying footprints. Noll's heart began to beat somewhat faster as they neared the fishermen's houses, and he kept a keen watch upon his uncle's face in order to detect the first look of surprise and astonishment that should come ...
— Culm Rock - The Story of a Year: What it Brought and What it Taught • Glance Gaylord

... us where thou hast hidden the boy whom thou hast slaine? And therewithall they pulled him downe to the ground, beating him with their fists, and spurning him with their feete. Then he answered unto them saying, titathat he saw no manner of boy, but onely found the Asse loose and straying abroad, which he tooke up to the intent to have some reward for the finding of him and to restore him againe to his Master. And I would to God (quoth he) that this Asse (which verely was never seene) could speake as a man to give witnesse of mine innocency: Then would you be ashamed of the ...
— The Golden Asse • Lucius Apuleius

... long abstinence from food had sapped their strength, yet to remain where they were meant certain death; all hope found its centre amid those distant beckoning trees. Mechanically the girl gathered back her straying tresses, and tied them with a rag torn from her frayed skirt. Hampton noted silently how heavy and sunken her eyes were; he felt a dull pity, yet could not sufficiently arouse himself from the lethargy of exhaustion to speak. His body seemed a leaden weight, his brain a dull, inert ...
— Bob Hampton of Placer • Randall Parrish



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