"Underfoot" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... travel," said Wharton sardonically. "A raw wind, driving snow, pitchy darkness, slush and everything objectionable underfoot. Yet I'd like to be in Weber's place. A curse upon the man who invented life in the trenches! Of all the dirty, foul, squalid ...
— The Hosts of the Air • Joseph A. Altsheler
... towns, it seems, even more visibly than it wastes nations. Already the streets were ankle-deep in filth. There were broken lamps and broken bottles and broken windowpanes everywhere, and one could not step without an accompaniment of crunching glass from underfoot. ...
— Paths of Glory - Impressions of War Written At and Near the Front • Irvin S. Cobb
... whatever you don't understand. Careful observation of this maxim had somewhat dulled the cry of that shrill queer music. It now caused only a faint pain in his mind. Still, he walked that way because the little meadow by the pond was agreeably soft underfoot. Also, when he walked close beside the water the voices were silent. That is worth noting, he said to himself. If you go directly at the heart of a mystery, it ceases to be a mystery, and becomes only a question ...
— Where the Blue Begins • Christopher Morley
... futility of Earth's best efforts against the advanced science of these invaders from far-off Rikor. Encased in their colossal machine-bodies of glittering metal, and armed with such terrible weapons as the black ray projector, the Shining Ones would be as invulnerable as men trampling an anthill underfoot. ...
— The Cavern of the Shining Ones • Hal K. Wells
... overhead and damp underfoot, with a thrill in the air like a reminiscence of frost. I went up into the sloping garden behind the inn and smoked a pipe pleasantly enough, to the tune of my landlady's lamentations over sundry ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XXII (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... said Sir Humphrey; and five minutes afterwards a match was applied to the heap of perfectly dry wood underfoot. It caught fire at once and began blazing up, sending forth such a glow of light that the men set up a cheer, drawn from them by the excitement and wonder of the ...
— Old Gold - The Cruise of the "Jason" Brig • George Manville Fenn
... at the edge of the white field. I looked up quickly, to catch a glimpse of a bright object hurtling through the air above our heads. The bellowing scream ended abruptly in a thunderous crash. I felt a tremor of the ground underfoot. ...
— Astounding Stories, March, 1931 • Various
... joys and fears that fretted her like a cloud of midges day and night? How small they seemed in the wide silence of these brooding hills, with the sunlight lying warm on the murmuring ocean below, and the sweet kindly earth underfoot! ...
— Saturday's Child • Kathleen Norris
... concern for her comfort. It was a bond of union also to remember that he himself was apt to resent the incursions of this domineering young matron, and she noted with delight that, while Bridgie was apparently delighted to be trampled underfoot, he was ready and able to ...
— More about Pixie • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... one o'clock before we weathered Point Cunningham, when the tide was urging us forward rapidly. In steering round the point we found ourselves passing through some light coloured water and, before we could extricate the brig, were in three and a half fathoms; the anchor was immediately dropped underfoot and, with the assistance of the sails, which were kept full, the vessel was retained whilst the whale-boat was veered astern, and ascertained that the shoalest part had been already passed; therefore the anchor ...
— Narrative of a Survey of the Intertropical and Western Coasts of Australia] [Volume 2 of 2] • Phillip Parker King
... of the age, the barber is abased, trodden underfoot, given over to the sneers and the gibes of them that flatter the powerful ones; he is as the winter worm, as the crocodile in the slime of his sleep by the bank, as the sick eagle before moulting. But I say, O King, that he will come ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... invites compassion, certainly, but we may be very well assured, before undertaking his relief without a pole, that his conception of a prosperous life is merely to have his nose above the surface with another gentleman underfoot. ...
— The Shadow On The Dial, and Other Essays - 1909 • Ambrose Bierce
... want to hear him open his mouth again, nor none of his folks; that she was through with the whole lot of 'em forever and ever, 'n' she wished to the Lord she'd had sense enough to put her foot down fifteen years ago, 'n' she hoped he'd enjoy bein' tread underfoot for the rest of his natural life, 'n' she wouldn't speak to him again if she met him in her porridge dish. She then slammed the door and went upstairs to cry as if she were sixteen, as she watched ...
— Timothy's Quest - A Story for Anybody, Young or Old, Who Cares to Read It • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... accept, in humble part, Truth that shines on every heart; Never to be set on high, Where the envious curses fly; Never name or fame to find, Still outstripped in soul and mind; To be hid, unless to God, As one grass-blade in the sod; Underfoot with millions trod? If you dare, come with us, be Lost ...
— Poems with Power to Strengthen the Soul • Various
... with buckets of the vilest contents, or importuned for alms by beggars who thrust their deformed limbs into his very face. It is but natural to fear contagion of some sort from contact with such creatures, and yet the crowd is so dense that it is impossible to entirely avoid them. Underfoot the streets are wet, muddy, tortuous, and slippery, so that one comes from them with a feeling that a hot bath is an immediate necessity. Why some deadly pestilence does not at once break out and sweep away the people is a mystery. We know that the Ghetto at Rome, ...
— Due West - or Round the World in Ten Months • Maturin Murray Ballou
... was blocked up by carriages. The uproar and the glare made the horses unmanageable, and in a few moments the whole mass, human beings and animals, was mingled in helpless confusion, making flight impossible by their very eagerness to fly, and trampling one another underfoot in bewildered misery. Of those who did succeed in extricating themselves from the square, half made their way to the road which runs along the bank of the river, and found that they had only exchanged one danger for another, which, though ...
— The Life of Marie Antoinette, Queen of France • Charles Duke Yonge
... your feelings, rooted in that cherished grave, would have stretched up toward Heaven their delicate leaves, and caught the dews of His grace, who watcheth the lilies. But now,—with your heart cast underfoot, or buffeted on the lips of a lying world,—finding no shelter and no abiding place!—alas, we do guess at infinitude only ...
— Dream Life - A Fable Of The Seasons • Donald G. Mitchell
... little girl; I see that now, looking back. But not the little girl I had in my mind. So I missed you, thinking of the little girl you were not. We do that all our lives, Robina. We are always looking for the flowers that do not grow, passing by, trampling underfoot, the blossoms round about us. It was the same with Dick. I wanted a naughty boy. Well, Dick was naughty, no one can say that he was not. But it was not my naughtiness. I was prepared for his robbing orchards. I rather hoped he would rob orchards. ...
— They and I • Jerome K. Jerome
... reminiscently, "means where stunted willows emphasize by their starved and shivering appearance the nearness of the timber; where the snow-drifts, each with its little feather of drifting snow sheering from its crest, are heaped high; where the snow underfoot is unbroken; where under snow-filled skies a wind studded with needle-sharp ice crystals blows a perfect gale; where the lonely and frozen desolation is peopled only by the haunting shape of fear that next morning a wan and feeble sun may find you staggering ...
— The Boy With the U.S. Census • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... live is licked up by the sunrays, or how they support life during a long season of drought, no man clearly knows, but it is believed that they burrow deep into the earth, and live in the moist mud underfoot until better times come with the ...
— In Court and Kampong - Being Tales and Sketches of Native Life in the Malay Peninsula • Hugh Clifford
... explosion of a pistol; the dull, crushing sound of unwarded blows; the sharp scream of agony as some poor wretch felt the stroke of the merciless steel; the cries and groans of those who had been smitten down, and, still conscious, were being trampled underfoot by the combatants; the deep muttered curse; the sharp word of command; and the occasional cheer that broke from the lips of our own gallant lads. Suddenly there was a louder hurrah, a quick scurrying rush, a loud shout ...
— The Pirate Slaver - A Story of the West African Coast • Harry Collingwood
... people resort. The king sits in a small raised gallery; ambassadors, great men belonging to the court, and strangers of quality, are within the innermost rail directly under him, that space being raised from the ground, covered overhead with canopies of silk and velvet, and laid underfoot with good carpets. The meaner men, representing what we would call gentry, are within the outer rail; the common people being on the outside of all, in a base court, so that all may see the king. The whole of this disposition hath ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume IX. • Robert Kerr
... in the view on every side. The actual field underfoot, the actual site of the fair, is visible, but the surrounding valleys and the Downs beyond them are hidden with vast masses of grey mist. For a moment, perhaps, a portion may lift as the breeze drives it along, and the bold, sweeping curves of a distant hill ...
— Nature Near London • Richard Jefferies
... of the moon and the artificial luxuries of its cities, after the agoraphobic vastness of Earth's giant surface, to be within this little close-knit familiar world was soothing and relaxing. It was a green glade of leaves and branches, greenness underfoot and overhead, a brown metal cliff with vines and a door to his left, a larger brown metal cliff like the round head of a barrel with doors in it to his right, and a circular silver door in the center. Behind the small right hand cliff was the small amount of regulating ...
— The Man Who Staked the Stars • Charles Dye
... up," he continued, "I 'd like you to have my Latin grammar here—you 've seen me reading it. You might stick it away in a bookcase, for the sake of old times. It goes against me to think of it falling into rough hands or being kicked about camp and trampled underfoot." ...
— Quite So • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... now held in his hand Guentz's views, succinctly and definitely expressed; but whither had flown his former keen spirit? He could no longer summon up the old impetuous dash with which he had meant to fall upon his opponent's arguments one after another, raze them to the ground and trample them underfoot like the entrenchments and fortifications in ...
— 'Jena' or 'Sedan'? • Franz Beyerlein
... weight of the German counter-attack fell on the 19th, and they simply wilted before it. There was no great force in the German blow, which was merely designed to relieve the pressure of Kornilov's advance; but Russian troops refused to fight, and ran away trampling underfoot and killing officers who strove to stem the rout. By the 20th German patrols were in Tarnopol, which the Russians had held since August 1914, and in a fortnight they were across the Russian frontier as far south as the borders of Bukovina (see Map, ...
— A Short History of the Great War • A.F. Pollard
... bedded in the low brush between the bosses of the hills, kept a look out across the gullies from which Greenhow attempted to ambuscade him. Day by day the man would vary the method of approach until almost within rifle range, and then the wind would change or there would be the click of gravel underfoot, or the scrape of a twig on stiff overalls, and suddenly the long oval ears would slope forward, the angular lines flow into grace and motion and the ...
— Defenders of Democracy • Militia of Mercy
... sweep of flat country upon the other side. Often his eyes ran far ahead, seeking swiftly for the slender figure he constantly expected to see riding eastward before him; often they dropped to the trail underfoot to see that her horse's tracks had not turned to right or left should she leave this main horseman's highway for some one of the countless ...
— Six Feet Four • Jackson Gregory
... icicles depending from the tree trunks where the openings faced the light and the sun; farther in, and once safely past these glacial outposts, scarcely any signs of storm appeared; last year's leaves, still matted together underfoot, were tangled with the green vine of the creeping linnaea and a rare root of the lustrous winter-green. Here, beneath the thick canopy of branches not all devoid of their foliage since many larches and pines were ...
— Ringfield - A Novel • Susie Frances Harrison
... and up the other side. The way led through fields of barley now standing almost waist-high. It seemed a monstrous pity that the harvest would never be garnered, that soon it would be crushed by gun-wheels and trodden underfoot by thousands of horses. As we drew nearer the Turkish lines we proceeded with extreme caution lest we ran into their patrols, and shortly after midnight halted, noiselessly unlimbered the guns and dug them in. We had to tie the horses' ...
— With Our Army in Palestine • Antony Bluett
... observant of the material facts as I had been at first. But I was better qualified to judge of what I saw, and I had now a vivid sense of the costliness of Mrs. Strange's environment. There were thousands of dollars in the carpets underfoot; there were tens of thousands in the pictures on the walls. In a bronze group that withdrew itself into a certain niche, with a faint reluctance, there was the value of a skilled artisan's wage for five years of hard work; in the bindings of the books that showed from the library shelves ...
— Through the Eye of the Needle - A Romance • W. D. Howells
... to know that he cannot duplicate the bird's wing it becomes infinitely high or great to him and so wins his respect. To the boy who has been taught to think seriously, the mode of locomotion of a worm or a snake is likewise a marvel, and he observes it with awe. The boy who treads a worm underfoot gives indisputable evidence that he has never given serious thought to its mode of travel. Had he done so, he would never commit so ruthless an act. The worm would have won his respect by its ability to do a thing at which he himself would certainly fail. He sees the worm scaling ...
— The Reconstructed School • Francis B. Pearson
... against and only a person of authority. Only a person can be grieved. You cannot grieve a mere influence or power. In Heb. x. 29, we read, "Of how much sorer punishment, suppose ye, shall he be thought worthy, who hath trodden underfoot the Son of God, and hath counted the blood of the covenant, wherewith he was sanctified, an unholy thing, and hath done despite unto the Spirit of grace?" Here we are told that the Holy Spirit is "done despite unto" ("treated with contumely"—Thayer's ...
— The Person and Work of The Holy Spirit • R. A. Torrey
... trample religion underfoot, that the victory gained over it may place us on an equality with heaven" (book i.). See Diogenes Laertius, "Lives of the Philosophers," bk. x. ch. xxiv. pp. 453,454 (Bohn's edition); Lucretius, "On the Nature of Things," bk. i. ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... been the fate of so many other explorers; the hand of the savage almost grasped our throats—we should have fallen a sacrifice in the cause of discovery, and our bones left to moulder on this distant shore, would have been trodden heedlessly underfoot by the ...
— Discoveries in Australia, Volume 2 • John Lort Stokes
... were busy ones for all, though rather dismal to me, as I was confined almost entirely indoors, owing to the awful state of the streets; for in the colonies, at this season of the year, one may go out prepared for fine weather, with blue sky above, and dry underfoot, and in less than an hour, should a colonial shower come on, be unable to cross some of the streets without a plank being placed from the middle of the road to the pathway, or the alternative of walking in ...
— A Source Book Of Australian History • Compiled by Gwendolen H. Swinburne
... and the day was crisp and snappy, with a light powdering of snow underfoot and a blue tang and sparkle in the air. Dunny accompanied me in the taxicab, but was less talkative than usual. Indeed, he spoke only two or three times between the ...
— The Firefly Of France • Marion Polk Angellotti
... sigh of no meaning, I got my eyes down to my canvas and began to peck at it perfunctorily, when a snapping of twigs underfoot and a swishing of branches in the thicket warned me of a second intruder, not approaching by the path, but forcing a way toward it through the underbrush, and very briskly too, ...
— The Guest of Quesnay • Booth Tarkington
... quite well when you've got one in the hand as when you hain't. To be sure I wasn't as squeamish as you are. I'd jumped at the offer you had this afternoon; but I reckon I'd taken toll too often to be very profitable. But in this way I always kept a-goin'—never got down underfoot so the stronger ones could tread on me. When it comes to that, I want to die. Now if you've got plenty of clear grit—Leetle disposed to show the white feather ...
— Barriers Burned Away • E. P. Roe
... these possibilities did not occur to me till we were at least a mile from the beach. Little Fellow was trotting ahead, La Robe Noire jogging behind, and both glided through the brake without disturbing a fern branch, while I—after the manner of my race—crunched flags underfoot and stamped down stalks enough to be tracked by keen-eyed Indians for a week afterwards. Twice I saw Little Fellow pull up abruptly and look warily through the cedars on one side. Once he stooped down and peered among the ...
— Lords of the North • A. C. Laut
... skies are not blue, and they are not overhead, but underfoot. Of course you know all about the Norwegian ski, but perhaps your younger brother does not, so I will say for his benefit that the ski is a sort of Norwegian snow-shoe, only it is almost as swift as the seven-league boots. ...
— The Dozen from Lakerim • Rupert Hughes
... which supported the tree was nothing more than a thin shell, all the heart having perished by decay. The floor, by the falling of this debris of rotten wood, was raised above the level of the water, and felt firm and dry underfoot. Near its centre I could perceive the ashes and half-burnt embers of an extinct fire; and along one side was strewed a thick covering of dry tillandsia, that had evidently been used as a bed. An old blanket lying upon the moss gave ...
— The Quadroon - Adventures in the Far West • Mayne Reid
... beckoned the visitors to come down into the pit. Tazzuchi led, and Kettle followed, wallowing down the slopes of slime, and there at the bottom, in the dim, milky light, one of the professional divers slipped a shovel into his hand and thrust it downward, till it jarred against something solid underfoot. ...
— A Master of Fortune • Cutcliffe Hyne
... hours, a reaction was at that moment in possession of him, in favor of his wife, who had been to him a well of sweet water through all those years. If evil was drawing near to her, why push her toward it? Surely a finer thing would be to warn and protect her, to beat down underfoot his own wounded ego and ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 5, June 1905 • Various
... milkman's horse might run away while he was at some door. The rancor which possessed her father, the kicking against the pricks, was possessing her. She felt a futile rage, like that of some little animal trodden underfoot. A boy whom she knew ran past whooping, with a tin-pail, after the milkman. Evidently his mother wanted some extra milk. The sun was reflected on the sides of the swinging pail, and the flash of light seemed to hurt her, and she felt the same unreasoning wrath against the boy. ...
— By the Light of the Soul - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... indeed, harassed by misgivings, and worn with many vigils, presented a sufficiently woe-begone picture. The effect was heightened by the disorder of his clothes, which were all daubed with clay in a manner quite surprising to O'Toole, who knew the ground to be dry underfoot. ...
— Clementina • A.E.W. Mason
... Underfoot, as the column advanced in a long line, loose dust and wood-ashes rose in clouds. The air grew thick and ...
— Darkness and Dawn • George Allan England
... to harm him; he felled them by twos and by threes, some under their horses, some beside them. The space began to widen round Sir Gawain and Morien; for all there deemed that he came forth from hell, and was hight Devil, in that he so quelled them and felled them underfoot that many hereafter spake thereof. That men thrust and smote at him troubled him little, therein was he like to his father, the noble knight Sir Agloval; he held parley with no man, but smote ever, blow after blow, on all who came nigh him. His blows ...
— The Romance of Morien • Jessie L. Weston
... outwitted the man ahead when the latter had waited to scan the back trail for signs of pursuit; more than once he had gained ground when screened by timber growth close to the trail; every stretch of dust-filled trail had been taken advantage of, while the soft going underfoot had deadened the sound of ...
— The Coyote - A Western Story • James Roberts
... neglected by him entirely. Smells of pomace, and the hiss of fermenting cider, which reached him from the back quarters of other tenements, revealed the recent occupation of some of the inhabitants, and joined with the scent of decay from the perishing leaves underfoot. ...
— The Woodlanders • Thomas Hardy
... "Louis carrying a knife to clear the road. For a little way we followed a fairly open path that had previously been cleared by Louis, but by and by it began to close up and become treacherously boggy underfoot. Several times we were ankle-deep in mud and water, and Louis had to slash down the tall vegetation that obstructed our way. Before long he cried out: 'Behold your banana patch!' And there it was, sure enough—a great number of sturdy, thickset young plants, many with bunches ...
— The Life of Mrs. Robert Louis Stevenson • Nellie Van de Grift Sanchez
... knew his way very well in the Kasbah, which he never tired of exploring, though he had spent eight winters in Algiers. By and by he guided his friend into a street not so narrow as the others they had climbed, though it was rather like the bed of a mountain torrent, underfoot. Because the moon could pour down a silver flood it was not dark, but the lamps were so dull that the moonlight seemed to put ...
— The Golden Silence • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... floundering through one of those unheralded storms which make coast travel so hazardous. The morning had turned off gray, the sky was of a leaden hue which blended perfectly with the snow underfoot, there was no horizon, it was impossible to see more than a few yards in any direction. The trail soon became obliterated and their eyes began to play tricks. For all they could distinguish, they might ...
— The Boy Scouts Book of Campfire Stories • Various
... himself, and that the Metropolitan Board of Works made everything. But in this country, where you really see humanity—raw, brown, naked humanity—with nothing between it and the blazing sky, and only the used-up, over-handled earth underfoot, the notion somehow dies away, and most folk come back to simpler theories. Life, in India, is not long enough to waste in proving that there is no one in particular at the ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... than it had upon their entering. Surely they should have reached the garden entrance by now. And the surface underfoot remained level instead of slanting upward. Suddenly Ricky gave a ...
— Ralestone Luck • Andre Norton
... process. Then would come a patch of Jack-pine, where trees seven to ten feet high grew in such profusion that it was well-nigh impossible to find a passage between them; and on the heels of this would follow a stretch of muskeg, quaking underfoot, and full of boggy traps for the unwary. In the larger timber also, the deadfalls presented an immense difficulty. Trees, with their span of life exhausted, year after year, had dropped where they stood, and dragging others down in their fall, cumbered the ground ...
— A Mating in the Wilds • Ottwell Binns
... that this volume holds. To the rigid man of science this is frank mysticism; but without a sense of the unknown and unknowable, life is flat and barren. Without the emotion of the beautiful, the sublime, the mysterious, there is no art, no religion, no literature. How to get from the clod underfoot to the brain and consciousness of man without invoking something outside of, and superior to, natural laws, is the question. For my own part I content myself with the thought of some unknown and doubtless unknowable tendency or power in the elements themselves—a kind of universal mind pervading ...
— The Breath of Life • John Burroughs
... "dead" rock containing no gold is left on the floor of the drift, and there is then only the labor and expense of bringing the valuable quartz itself, a much less amount in bulk, to the surface of the ground. The accumulating mass of the dead rock underfoot, will then be constantly raising the floor of the drift, and as constantly bringing the miners within convenient working-distance of the receding roof. In the case of "understoping," however, in which the blasts are made from the floor ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 79, May, 1864 • Various
... significance of Arrival, the arrival of a whole civilization. To do this, art must refine and re-refine upon itself; it must use methods of unapproached delicacy, of unimagined subtlety and celerity. It is easy enough to catch the look of the patrician in the upper air, of the plebeian underfoot, but to render the image of a world-bourgeoisie, compacted in characters of undeniable verisimilitude, that will be difficult, but it will be possible, and the success will be of an effulgence such as has never yet taken the eyes ...
— Imaginary Interviews • W. D. Howells
... spring-day. Overhead there was a soft blue sky with translucent clouds floating in it; underfoot and on all sides the mystery of life was beginning to stir and manifest itself. The last touch of bitterness had passed from the breeze, and all living growth was making haste out into the air. The hedges were green with open buds, and bubbling ...
— By What Authority? • Robert Hugh Benson
... All was in the same state there. A clutter of stuff came down as I pushed at the double doors of the salon, and I had to strike a stinking French sulphur match to see into the room at all. Underfoot was like walking on thicknesses of flannel, and except where we put our feet the place was as printless as a snowfield—dust, dust, unbroken grey ...
— Widdershins • Oliver Onions
... been my desire to become a Saint, but I have always felt, in comparing myself with the Saints, that I am as far removed from them as the grain of sand, which the passer-by tramples underfoot, is remote from the mountain whose summit is lost in ...
— The Story of a Soul (L'Histoire d'une Ame): The Autobiography of St. Therese of Lisieux • Therese Martin (of Lisieux)
... time in riding through the thicket. A very dense forest of young Callitris trees next impeded us, and were more formidable than even the vines. The day was passed in forcing our way through these various scrubs, the ground declining by a gentle slope only. We next found firmer soil underfoot, that where the Callitris scrub grew having been sandy, and we saw at length, with a feeling of relief, that only brigalow scrub was before us; we ascended gravelly hills, came upon a dry water-course, and then on a chain ...
— Journal of an Expedition into the Interior of Tropical Australia • Thomas Mitchell
... castaways, I, musing, late in the autumn day, gazing off southward, Alone, held by the eternal self of me that threatens to get the better of me and stifle me, Was seized by the spirit that trails in the lines underfoot, In the ruin, the sediment, that stands for all the water and all ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 30, April, 1860 • Various
... been here alone with me with that door shut. Have I said or done anything that a Gorgio duke wouldn't do? Ah, God's love, but you were bold to come! I married you by the River Starzke; I looked upon you as my wife; and here you were alone with me! I had my rights, and I had been trampled underfoot by ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... on through a forest of pines, the trail underfoot being of lava, as hard and smooth as a road could be. They were gradually drawing nearer to Sunset Mountain. After a time they turned off to the right, heading ...
— The Pony Rider Boys in the Grand Canyon - The Mystery of Bright Angel Gulch • Frank Gee Patchin
... Europe, over the jolt and rattle of the racing wheels; by day the blurred landscape, wreathed in engine-smoke, had streamed by her; by night she had seen nothing but the dull, stuffed walls of her sleeping compartment, and it was an exquisite physical pleasure to have the firm, unshaken floor underfoot, to be surrounded by the appointments of a beautiful house, to be able to move of one's own volition again, and not to be taken like a parcel in a van from one end of Europe to the other. And how delicious also it was to be clean, to have revelled in soap and ...
— Daisy's Aunt • E. F. (Edward Frederic) Benson
... us alone, Mrs. Merritt. With four girls, it is simply terrible—callers underfoot wherever you stir. You must know something about it, with two daughters; so you can fancy it multiplied by two. Really, sometimes I get out of all patience—I haven't a corner of my house to myself on Sundays! But I realize it is the penalty for having ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume X (of X) • Various
... at the companion, Wicks at his heels, Tommy and Amalu following. They trod the body of Holdorsen underfoot, and flew up-stairs and forth into the dusky blaze of a sunset red as blood. The numbers were still equal, but the Flying Scuds dreamed not of defence, and fled with one accord for the forecastle scuttle. Brown was first in flight; he disappeared ...
— The Wrecker • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... grandfather, wielding his infirmities as a rod of iron; a father and mother, hearty, hospitable, subservient to the aged tyrant, but keeping in filial check a family of sons and daughters-in-law, with an underfoot delegation of grandchildren, who seemed to spend their time in a bewildering manouver of dashing out at one door to dash in at another. A tumultuous rain had set in shortly after dawn, with lightning ...
— His Unquiet Ghost - 1911 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... had been, the training chambers had not prepared him for the surface of Pyrrus. There was the basic similarity of course. The feel of the poison grass underfoot and the erratic flight of a stingwing in the last instant before Grif blasted it. But these were scarcely noticeable in the crash of the elements ...
— Deathworld • Harry Harrison
... companionway leading up from the dining-room, he could not have told how he succeeded in making his way through the corridor jammed with panicky passengers without having been beaten to death, strangled, or trodden underfoot. His hands and forehead were bruised, and he was clinging to the door-post with all his might, parleying violently with Doctor Wilhelm. Doctor Wilhelm clutched him, and the two physicians, in defiance of death, climbed up to the bridge, ...
— Atlantis • Gerhart Hauptmann
... which the dog took only a very moderate share. The remaining portion of the ascent was simple enough. The zigzag onto the top shoulder was if anything less steep than the lower one, and the path, being rougher underfoot, was less treacherous. ...
— A Dog with a Bad Name • Talbot Baines Reed
... endlessly cries for her castaways, I musing late in the autumn day, gazing off southward, Held by this electric self out of the pride of which I utter poems, Was seiz'd by the spirit that trails in the lines underfoot, The rim, the sediment that stands for all the water and all the land of ...
— Leaves of Grass • Walt Whitman
... sharper and the rumble of guns was uninterrupted, growling like thunder after a summer storm or as the shells passed shrieking and then bursting with jarring detonations. Underfoot the pavements were inch-deep with fallen glass, and as you walked it tinkled musically. With inborn sense of order, some of the housewives abandoned their knitting and calmly swept up the glass into neat piles. ...
— With the Allies • Richard Harding Davis
... sight of something almost entirely buried in the earth. In an instant he had disinterred a dainty morocco case, ornamented and clasped in gilt. It had been trodden heavily underfoot, and thus escaped the hurried search of Mr. Raeburn. Mr. Rolles opened the case, and drew a long breath of almost horrified astonishment; for there lay before him, in a cradle of green velvet, a diamond of prodigious magnitude ...
— New Arabian Nights • Robert Louis Stevenson
... still oftener sworn, whereby truth and right are trodden underfoot with the clear knowledge of all the witnesses of the act. An oath is the jurist's metaphysical pons asinorum, and like this should be used as seldom as ever possible. When it cannot be avoided, it should be taken with great solemnity, always in the presence of the clergy—nay, even in a church ...
— Essays of Schopenhauer • Arthur Schopenhauer
... court, the blue sky overhead, velvety grass underfoot and the windows of the house all around us. Most of these were open and in some of them were caged birds singing gloriously, and against all the sills were window-boxes full of flowers. Flowering ivy and climbing roses trailed here and there up the sides of the building, and there were so many ...
— The Enchanted Island • Fannie Louise Apjohn
... them, underfoot rich soils; Silence and Savage at their presence fled; This Giant's Causeway, sacred through their toils, Resounded ...
— A Wreath of Virginia Bay Leaves • James Barron Hope
... a blue haze hung over the lonely fields from which the reapers had departed, and the golden leaves were wet underfoot, the old enchanter went for a walk down the lane, and finding the day agreeable, kept on until he found himself in the woods. Arriving at the crest of a little hill in the woodland, he saw below him, almost at the foot of the slope, a countryman with a white puppy ...
— The Firelight Fairy Book • Henry Beston
... break one's way through untrodden forests. It is easier to walk after we "learn how," and learning how is simply doing it over and over until the legs and feet have acquired habits of motion and accommodation to distances and to what is underfoot. It is easy to do anything after we have done it again and again, so that it has become second-nature, and "second-nature" is habit. The wise man early forms certain habits of personal care, of eating, sleeping, exercising; of study, of meeting the usual occurrences of life. The first day he ...
— Applied Psychology for Nurses • Mary F. Porter
... fox, she was living up to her faith as few do; when she gathered flowers and lay in the sun, she was dwelling in a mystical atmosphere as vivid as that of the saints; when she recoiled from cruelty, she was trampling evil underfoot, perhaps more surely than those great divines who destroyed one another in their zeal for ...
— Gone to Earth • Mary Webb
... confusion. Twenty or so of the boys were still in the dormitories, working under Percy Witherspoon to save clothing and furniture, and the older girls were sorting over bushels of shoes and trying to fit them to the little ones, who were running about underfoot and wailing dismally. ...
— Dear Enemy • Jean Webster
... accomplish nothing. Brion turned instantly and did as he was bidden. The buildings grew further apart until he realized from the sand underfoot that he was back in the planet-wide desert. It could be a trap—he hadn't recognized the voice behind the whisper—yet he had to take this chance. A darker shape appeared in the dark night near him, and a burning hot ...
— Planet of the Damned • Harry Harrison
... shook hands with him, and then plunged into the darkness, my only guidance at first that single ray of light streaming through the unshaded window. The ground underfoot was roughly irregular, cleared forest land evidently, as I occasionally stumbled over an unremoved stump, although there was nothing to seriously obstruct my passage until I reached the fence surrounding the garden. By this time the outlines of the house were plainly ...
— The Devil's Own - A Romance of the Black Hawk War • Randall Parrish
... with it," he cried, and flung the remains of his lighted cigarette on the pile of the carpet, and trod it viciously underfoot with his heavy ...
— The Man in the Twilight • Ridgwell Cullum
... Justice herself can find no fault with natures such as these; and they will be the saviours of our State; disciples of another sort would only make philosophy more ridiculous than she is at present. Forgive my enthusiasm; I am becoming excited; but when I see her trampled underfoot, I am angry at the authors of her disgrace. 'I did not notice that you were more excited than you ought to have been.' But I felt that I was. Now do not let us forget another point in the selection of our disciples—that ...
— The Republic • Plato
... be what it will—to trample underfoot, if it wishes, taste and morals and the whole of society. But when those who are not geniuses wish to do the same thing they only make themselves ridiculous and odious. There have been too many monkey Wagners in France. During the last ten or twenty years ...
— Musicians of To-Day • Romain Rolland
... obey my father. My heart leapt within me at the thought of doing my duty, and to calm myself I put on my hat and wandered into the glen. It was very silent in the glen. There was no sound but the rustling of the leaves overhead, the popping of the insects underfoot, the sneezing of the cattle, the whistling of the pigs, the coughing of the field-mice, the roaring of the rabbits, and the deep organ-song of ...
— Once a Week • Alan Alexander Milne
... or longer was made of bamboo, the top of twenty half sections of the rounded tubes, polished by nature, but slippery for bottles and glasses. A bench ran on both sides, and underfoot was the deep-green vegetation that covers every foot of ground in Moorea except where repeated footfalls, wheels, or labor kills it, and which is the ...
— Mystic Isles of the South Seas. • Frederick O'Brien
... is why they get torn to pieces. When two men are fighting for life they don't bother about upsetting a table with a vase, or notice any "Keep off the grass" signs; no, not even if the family Bible be underfoot. ...
— My Year of the War • Frederick Palmer
... hot, white highway, dusty with a week's drought, carried back his thoughts so fully to old times that he walked on unconscious of the noontide heat and the sultriness of the road. Yet when he came to the lanes, green overhead and underfoot, and as silent as the mountain-heights round Engelberg, he felt the solace of the change. All the recollections treasured up in the secret cells of memory were springing into light at every step; and these were remembrances less ...
— Cobwebs and Cables • Hesba Stretton
... summer, is the true emblem of the fall. The gardeners' tidy souls could not abide the gold and green and russet pattern on the grass. The gravel paths must lie unstained, ordered, methodical, without knowledge of the realities of life, nor of that slow and beautiful decay which flings crowns underfoot to star the earth with fallen glories, whence, as the cycle rolls, ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... the wound upon which the slender chance of Boyle's life depended. Boyle was unconscious, as he had been from the moment he fell. They stretched him on the doctor's cot. With the blankets spread underfoot to keep down the dust, the early sun shining in through the lifted flap, Slavens put aside whatever animosity he held against the man and went to work earnestly in an endeavor ...
— Claim Number One • George W. (George Washington) Ogden
... leaving white scars on their trunks, and to follow such a trail you stand at your first tree until you see the blaze on the next, then go to that and look for the one farther on; going in this way from tree to tree you keep the trail though it may, underfoot, ...
— On the Trail - An Outdoor Book for Girls • Lina Beard and Adelia Belle Beard
... would exert to the full this very night to thwart those enemies of his own and of the Queen's, who worked so subtly in concert. Many would be wronged, much harm would be done, the liberties of some thousands of freeborn Englishmen would be trampled underfoot. What did it matter? It was necessary that his Grace of Buckingham should ...
— The Historical Nights Entertainment, Second Series • Rafael Sabatini
... there is no time for faith, is there time for sentiment? I think not. And therefore there shall be none between my readers and me, save this—a friendly warning. Belief—belief in God—belief in all things noble, unworldly, lofty, and beautiful, is rapidly being crushed underfoot by—what? By mere lust of gain! Be sure, good people, be very sure that you are RIGHT in denying God for the sake of man—in abjuring the spiritual for the material—before you rush recklessly onward. The end for all of you can be but death; and are you quite positive ...
— A Romance of Two Worlds • Marie Corelli
... appearance of syphilis. A discussion, however, on these questions does not belong to our present work. What seems characteristic of Italy at this time, is that here marriage and its rights were more often and more deliberately trampled underfoot than anywhere else. The girls of the higher classes were carefully secluded, and of them we do not speak. All passion was directed to ...
— The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy • Jacob Burckhardt
... as my hurt hip and the trailing folds of the rug allowed. The grass underfoot was grey with dew, and overhead the birds were singing. An old horse that had been sleeping in his pasture heaved himself up and gazed at me as I went by, and either his snort of contempt or the sound of my footsteps must have struck on Mr. Rogers's ...
— The Adventures of Harry Revel • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... like a mean-spirited imbecile with Sissy's impertinent finger under her wrist, while all outdoors was calling to her; for which she had forborne often and often during the week, only to be more thoroughly bullied on Saturdays. Yet she tore it across and recklessly trampled it underfoot. Then with her hands over her ears, lest she hear the imperturbable and maddeningly excellent Sissy play "In Sweet Dreams" without the notes, ...
— The Madigans • Miriam Michelson
... with savage glee, as he drove his mount squarely against one of the wretches, bowling him over and underfoot. ...
— The Submarine Boys for the Flag - Deeding Their Lives to Uncle Sam • Victor G. Durham
... windy, or rainy, or wet underfoot, or cold, or hot, or looks as if it was going to ...
— Preventable Diseases • Woods Hutchinson
... in a cellar that was damp underfoot, and the soft earth deadened all sound as they walked upon it—and they seemed to be walking on interminably. It was too far—much too far! She felt her nerve failing her. She looked behind her again. That opening, ...
— The White Moll • Frank L. Packard
... bolts were shot back to see a hundred of them pop up into the air at the same time, flashing in the sun as though they were glad to have done their work and to get out again. They rolled by the dozens underfoot, and twinkled in the grass, and when one shifted his position in the narrow trench, or stretched his cramped legs, they tinkled musically. It was like wading in a gutter filled ...
— Notes of a War Correspondent • Richard Harding Davis
... reached her again, then the rush of flight, and out in the garden a flying figure darted in and out among the walks. For several minutes two dark figures played at vigorous hide-and-seek. Occasionally gravel crunched underfoot and shrubbery snapped back with a sharp swish where it was caught and held for support at corners. Pursued and pursuer were alike silent; the scene ...
— The Port of Missing Men • Meredith Nicholson
... long preserved, than the recent haunt of naked savages. There were deer and quail in abundance, here and there an open field of grain. Long beards of pale green moss waved from the white oaks, wild flowers, golden red and pale blue, burst underfoot. There were hedges of sweet briar, acres of lupins, purple and yellow. Altogether the ideal estate of a nobleman; and Rezanov, who had liked nothing in California so well, gave his imagination rein and saw the counterpart of ...
— Rezanov • Gertrude Atherton
... Uncle Moses, who seemed restless, "I was a-thinking, Bob, that you and me might have our pipes outside, being dry underfoot." For Uncle Moses, being gouty, was ill-shod for wet weather. He was slippered, though not lean. And though Mrs. Burr, coming in just then, added her testimony that the children were quite safe and happy, only making a great mess, Uncle Moses would not be content to remain indoors, but must ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... gently over sunlit waters, and soon touched the shore. Bragi then proceeded on foot, threading his way through the bare and silent forest, playing as he walked. At the sound of his tender music the trees began to bud and bloom, and the grass underfoot was gemmed with ...
— Myths of the Norsemen - From the Eddas and Sagas • H. A. Guerber
... day gone. It is cold here—slushy underfoot, snow dirty, sky dark. How different from ...
— The Letters of Franklin K. Lane • Franklin K. Lane
... Flagg. "I'm standing here judging you by the way you break this jam of the jillpokes. Walk over the cowards, you real men! Come on, you bully chaps! Come running! Hi yoop! Underfoot with 'em!" ...
— Joan of Arc of the North Woods • Holman Day
... forest; and through this forest is the lovers' lane, made long ago by the early colonists and kept in perfect trim by the latest,—a lane that is green-arched overhead and fern-walled on either side, and soft with the dust of dead pine boughs underfoot. There also are streams and waterfalls and rustic bridges such as one might look for in some stately park in England, but hardly in Alaska. Surely there is no bit of wilderness finer than this. All is sweet and grave and silent, save for the ripple ...
— Over the Rocky Mountains to Alaska • Charles Warren Stoddard
... demon fortunately put me out of it, as he did the Syracusan, and made me throw abroad all my reserve at random, the pleasure of a certain journey I took at very great expense having made me spurn this fond love of money underfoot; by which means I am now fallen into a third way of living (I speak what I think of it), doubtless much more pleasant and regular, which is, that I live at the height of my revenue; sometimes the one, sometimes the other may perhaps exceed, but 'tis very little and but rarely that they differ. ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... things. What little moisture had oozed into the atmosphere gathered into dull grey, formless clouds; it became quite warm, the thermometer rising to twenty below; and the moisture fell out of the sky in hard frost-granules that hissed like dry sugar or driving sand when kicked underfoot. After that it became clear and cold again, until enough moisture had gathered to blanket the earth from the cold of outer space. That was all. Nothing happened. No storms, no churning waters and threshing forests, nothing but the machine-like precipitation of accumulated ...
— The Faith of Men • Jack London
... reply. He hovered about her, clumsily solicitous, and whichever way she turned, he managed to get underfoot, until, thoroughly vexed, she stood stock-still and opened her arms with a ...
— The Danger Mark • Robert W. Chambers
... Snow underfoot this morning; and a brown blink on the horizon which shows that more is coming. I have the odd feeling that I have never really seen my house before, the snow lights it all up so strangely, tinting the ceilings a glowing white, ...
— The Altar Fire • Arthur Christopher Benson
... searched the barrens all day, from sun-up to dark, north, south and inland. It was a gray day, sloppy underfoot and raw overhead. At one time the skipper halted and lit his pipe within three yards of the point of the edge of the cliff from which Quinn had pitched to his death; but wind, snow and thaw had obliterated all trace of those blindly staggering feet. The searchers explored the inner, tangled ...
— The Harbor Master • Theodore Goodridge Roberts
... and (like a princess in a tragedy, oppressed by the weight of all her senseless jewellery) with no gratitude towards the officious hand which had, in curling those ringlets, been at pains to collect all my hair upon my forehead; trampling underfoot the curl-papers which I had torn from my head, and my new hat with them. My mother was not at all moved by my tears, but she could not suppress a cry at the sight of my battered headgear and my ruined jacket. I did not, however, hear her. "Oh, my poor little hawthorns," ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust
... a day meant a hard day's work, particularly after the saws lost their keen edge—for even ice will dull a saw in a day or two. We had also to be pretty careful, for it was over deep black water, and a cake when nearly sawed across is likely to break off suddenly underfoot. ...
— A Busy Year at the Old Squire's • Charles Asbury Stephens
... avengers, with hair of snakes and whips of scorpions,—all beyond expression devilish. Floor it has none, nor ceiling, for, with the Meinam so near, neither boards nor plaster can keep out the ooze. Underfoot, a few planks, loosely laid, are already as soft as the mud they are meant to cover; the damp has rotted them through and through. Overhead, the roof is black, but not with smoke; for here, where the close ...
— The English Governess At The Siamese Court • Anna Harriette Leonowens
... she, "in this world below, I know nothing worse calumniated than God and the eighteenth century; for as I look back over my own young days, I do not recollect that a single duchess trampled the proprieties underfoot as you have just done. Novelists and scribblers brought the reign of Louis XV into disrepute. Do not believe them. The du Barry, my dear, was quite as good as the Widow Scarron, and the more agreeable woman of the two. In my time a woman could keep her dignity among her gallantries. ...
— The Thirteen • Honore de Balzac
... was born in a wild smother of flying snow, which died at dawn to let a pale, heatless sun peer tentatively over the southern mountains, his slanting beams setting everything aglitter. Frost particles vibrated in the air, coruscating diamond dust. Underfoot, on the path beaten betwixt house and stable, the snow crunched and complained as they walked, and in the open where the mad winds had piled it in hard, white windrows. But in the thick woods it lay as it had fallen, ...
— North of Fifty-Three • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... fists and regarded them angrily. In his super-arrogance this huge bully towered over the couple, and treated them to a stare, a derisive, angry, contemptuous inspection, which humbled them exceedingly. Indeed, Henri and Jules might have been simply noxious animals, mere beetles to be trodden underfoot, so contemptuous was this bullying ...
— With Joffre at Verdun - A Story of the Western Front • F. S. Brereton
... had happened, and rode out with all his knights. When he saw this mass of ragged rascals, drunk and savage, but all wearing the red cross, he fell in a rage and attacked them. Those who did not fly were trampled underfoot and sabred down so mercilessly, that, out of the sixty thousand, only three thousand reached Constantinople, among whom was ...
— Historical Miniatures • August Strindberg |
