"Wooden leg" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... don't think it funny thinking how one might be dead," replied Penworthy. "It gives me the creeps. It's all very well for you. You'll stump around for the rest of your life like a gentleman on a wooden leg. Chaps like you have all the luck; but as soon as I get out of this, I'll be passed fit for active service ... and not so much of your larfing at not ...
— The Rough Road • William John Locke
... Ben, whose sea tales were one of Nancy's chiefest joys, and whose wooden leg was her greatest perplexity, I felt deserved some recognition of his service, and, to shorten the telling, in less than a month these houses were occupied as Nancy had desired they should be—Father Michel being given the large one, with Nancy's dwarfed boy, Dame Dickenson ...
— Nancy Stair - A Novel • Elinor Macartney Lane
... sorry for Corp that the tear rolled down. But at the same moment he saw how the effect could be still further heightened by doing away with his friend's rude state of health, and he immediately jammed him between the buffers of two railway carriages, and gave him a wooden leg. It was at this point that a lady who had kept her arms still too long rocked them frantically, then said, with cutting satire: "Are you not feeling well, or have you hurt yourself? You seem to be very lame." And Tommy woke with a start, to see that he was hobbling as if one ...
— Tommy and Grizel • J.M. Barrie
... Loothere'—you will observe that he changed the name according to the custom of his country—'is an Englishman?' I admitted that he was the victim of circumstances and had that misfortune. 'Sir,' said he, 'one word more. Has he a servant with a wooden leg?' 'Great heaven, sir,' said I, 'how do I know? I should think not, but it is possible.' 'It is always,' said the Frenchman, 'possible. Almost all the things of the world are always possible.' 'Sir,' said I—you may imagine my condition and dismal sense of my own absurdity, by this time—'that ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... strong frost to preserve impressions. I passed along the tradesmen's path, but found it all trampled down and indistinguishable. Just beyond it, however, at the far side of the kitchen door, a woman had stood and talked with a man, whose round impressions on one side showed that he had a wooden leg. I could even tell that they had been disturbed, for the woman had run back swiftly to the door, as was shown by the deep toe and light heel marks, while Wooden-leg had waited a little, and then had gone away. I thought at the time that this might be the maid and her sweetheart, ...
— The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
... stumping of a wooden leg, and Colonel Bradner appeared. "So you belong to the Riverlawns, Captain? Come in, I would like to talk ...
— An Undivided Union • Oliver Optic
... with a wooden leg, Her father was a miller; He tossed a dumpling at her head, And swore ...
— A History of Nursery Rhymes • Percy B. Green
... murmured dreamily, as they passed the long rows of weather-beaten heroes basking in the sun. "Did you notice that very old one, with a red face, who was drawing a map in the dust with his wooden leg, and all the others watching? I think it was ...
— A Tangled Tale • Lewis Carroll
... as you can, Mrs. Coleman." "Oh! I don't know that," was the reply, "I am a capital walker, I assure you. I remember a young man, quite as young as you, and a good deal stouter, who could not walk nearly as far as I can; to be sure," she added as she left the room, "he had a wooden leg, poor fellow!" ...
— Frank Fairlegh - Scenes From The Life Of A Private Pupil • Frank E. Smedley
... if I wait till dark," replied Biff. "I can go down to the Blue Star, and for ten iron men apiece can get you as fine a bunch of yeggs as ever beat out a cripple's brains with his own wooden leg." ...
— The Making of Bobby Burnit - Being a Record of the Adventures of a Live American Young Man • George Randolph Chester
... "Old Silverleg," because, having lost one limb in battle, he had it replaced by a sturdy wooden leg securely bound with silver. ...
— The Great Round World and What Is Going On In It, Vol. 1, No. 60, December 30, 1897 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various
... the more part of the fleet scattered in flight; Thrand and his men, with the other vikings, got them away each as he might, and sailed west over the Sea; Onund went with him, and Balk and Hallvard Sweeping; Onund was healed, but went with a wooden leg all his life after; therefore as long as he lived ...
— The Story of Grettir The Strong • Translated by Eirikr Magnusson and William Morris
... for my little companion a wooden leg out of a match, and he hops upon my shoulder as formerly," ...
— The Red Lily, Complete • Anatole France
... mettlesome, obstinate, leathern-sided, lion-hearted, generous-spirited old governor"—the adjectives describe him well; a sufficiently imposing figure, with his slashed hose and velvet jacket and tall cane and silver-banded wooden leg, he ruled the colony for twenty years with a rod of iron, fortifying it, enlarging it, settling its boundaries, keeping the Indians over-awed, the veriest dictator this continent ever saw, until, one August ...
— American Men of Action • Burton E. Stevenson
... alcove we saw the golden thigh of Pythagoras, which had so divine a meaning; and, by one of the queer analogies to which the virtuoso seemed to be addicted, this ancient emblem lay on the same shelf with Peter Stuyvesant's wooden leg, that was fabled to be of silver. Here was a remnant of the Golden Fleece, and a sprig of yellow leaves that resembled the foliage of a frost-bitten elm, but was duly authenticated as a portion of the golden branch by which AEneas gained admittance to the realm of Pluto. Atalanta's ...
— A Virtuoso's Collection (From "Mosses From An Old Manse") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... Peg-leg, him being down on his knees over Clarence, an' his back turned, but without sensin' very much what I'm a-doin' of I grabs holt o' the first part o' Peg-leg that comes handy, which, so help me, Bob, is his old wooden leg. I starts to pull him off o' Clarence, but instead o' that I pulls off the wooden leg an' goes a-staggerin' back agin the wall with the thing in ...
— A Deal in Wheat - And Other Stories of the New and Old West • Frank Norris
... course of a few weeks three or four cast up, among whom was a laddie of Ben Aits the mealmonger, and a son of William Burlings the baker; to say little of the callant of Saunders Broom the sweep, that would fain have put his blackit-looking bit creature with the one eye and the wooden leg under my wing; but I aye looked to respectability in these matters; so glad was I when I got the offer of Mungo Glen.—But more of this ...
— The Life of Mansie Wauch - tailor in Dalkeith • D. M. Moir
... there is a space of two feet, but in that space you will always find four feet and their owners, unless one of them happens to have a wooden leg. Under ordinary circumstances four into two won't go, but the sardine-cars defy the laws ...
— The Silly Syclopedia • Noah Lott
... usually men much older than he. At the "Moot Club" he took part with James Duane, who was to be New York's first continental mayor; Gouverneur Morris, who had not at that time acquired the wooden leg which he once snatched off and brandished with happy effect before a Paris mob; and Samuel Jones, who was to take as 'prentice and drill that ...
— Little Journeys To the Homes of the Great, Volume 3 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... this Colonel Stumper, C.B. For one thing he limped, and that meant, they decided, that he had a wooden leg. They never called it such, of course, but indicated obliquely that the injured limb was made of oak or walnut, by referring to the other as "his living leg," "his good leg," and so forth. For another ...
— The Extra Day • Algernon Blackwood
... "I saw it; but not quite so fine as mine." He went up to Highgate to look through the engravings of Charles Matthews the elder. They were all duplicates—of course inferior ones. "Damn him, sir!" cried Matthews afterwards to a friend; "I should like him to have had a duplicate of my wooden leg." ...
— The Book-Hunter in London - Historical and Other Studies of Collectors and Collecting • William Roberts
... to march forthwith for Alexandria, in order to surprise the place and to prevent the Turks from making preparations for defence. The troops instantly commenced their march. Not a horse was yet landed: the staff of Bonaparte, and Caffarelli himself, notwithstanding his wooden leg, had to walk four or five leagues over the sands, and came at daybreak ...
— History Of Egypt From 330 B.C. To The Present Time, Volume 12 (of 12) • S. Rappoport
... car now, Edith. I'm not joking. There was a lot of outside work, and the organization came over. I've been after it for six months. We can have a ride, and supper somewhere. How's the young man with the wooden leg?" ...
— A Poor Wise Man • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... is of medium height, dark, thin, and hard as a hatchet, with eyes that are black like the very flaming thrust of night. He is quite a savage. There is something strange about his dancing, the violent way he works one shoulder. He has a wooden leg, from the knee-joint. Yet he dances well, and is inordinately proud. He is fierce as a bird, and hard with energy as a thunderbolt. He will dance with the blonde signora. But he never speaks. He is like some violent natural ...
— Twilight in Italy • D.H. Lawrence
... the Peninsula. A fall from his horse reopened this wound, and amputation became necessary. This saved his life, but he could no longer partake of the amusements of the chase, although still able to indulge in the more delicate pursuits of the naturalist. With his wooden leg he was able to hobble about the house and lawn, prune the trees, and attend to his pets that had grown to be quite numerous, while Hugot at all times followed him about like his shadow. The boys, however, went abroad ...
— The Boy Hunters • Captain Mayne Reid
... think you came down here pretty fast, eh?" asked Randy Bronson, crossing one wooden leg over the other and stretching them both out toward the great fire of hickory logs that were roaring ...
— Golden Days for Boys and Girls - Volume XIII, No. 51: November 12, 1892 • Various
... come to the Temple Stairs, but we were surrounded with a crowd of watermen offering us their respective services. Sir ROGER, after having looked about him very attentively, spied one with a wooden leg and immediately gave him orders to get his boat ready. As we were walking towards it, You must know, says Sir ROGER, I never make use of any body to row me, that has not either lost a leg or an arm. I would rather bate him ...
— The Coverley Papers • Various
... closed behind him as he rushed through toward his horse. Glendin stood dazed, his face mottled with a sick pallor. Then he moved automatically toward the bar. Murphy hobbled down the length of the room on his wooden leg and placed bottle and ...
— Trailin'! • Max Brand
... one warm summer day, when Jason Fletcher should have been about forty years of age, there strayed into the village a blind mendicant, with a dog for guide, and a wooden leg rudely fastened to one stiff stump. This stranger, white-headed and with the care-lines of many years on his sadly furrowed face, sought out poor Hannah Lee, and told her that he had, by the grace of God, come ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I. February, 1862, No. II. - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... you heard the news," she began, "about this Captain James? A sailor,—with a wooden leg, I have no doubt. What would the poor, dear, deceased master have said to it, if he had known who was to be his successor! My dear, I have often thought of the postman's bringing me a letter as one of the pleasures I shall miss in heaven. But, really, I think Mr. Horner ...
— My Lady Ludlow • Elizabeth Gaskell
... lawn is covered with them, all stamped down. Look at these, for instance. These are the tracks of a man with a wooden leg"—Kent nodded—"in all probability a sailor, newly landed from Java, carrying a Singapore walking-stick, and with a tin-whistle tied round ...
— Winsome Winnie and other New Nonsense Novels • Stephen Leacock
... perhaps, the subconscious thought that it was a question if Old Tory Brown, who was Scotch, even if he were a Methodist, could resist leaving a mere preaching to hear a real Piper. The two were willing to bet almost anything on the superior attractions of the music, Duke offering to put up his wooden leg against ...
— In Orchard Glen • Marian Keith
... Pedersen," he said, "with his wooden leg. He makes a dot after every step. We shall catch him ...
— Fisherman's Luck • Henry van Dyke
... style, and black with age, with a broad esplanade between it and the river, on which, mixed with a few people from the fair, I observed moving about a great many individuals in quaint dresses of blue, with strange three-cornered hats on their heads; most of them were mutilated; this had a wooden leg—this wanted an arm; some had but one eye; and as I gazed upon the edifice, and the singular-looking individuals who moved before it, I guessed where I was. "I am at —-" said I; "these individuals ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... he, "to look for the last time on our beloved little devil and his inestimable proof-sheet? How shall we be able to pass No. 14 Infirmary Street and feel that all its attractions are over? How shall we bid farewell for ever to that excellent man, with the long greatcoat, wooden leg and wooden board, who acts as our representative at the gate of Alma Mater?" But alas! he had no choice: Mr. Tatler, whose career, he says himself, had been successful, passed peacefully away, and has ever since dumbly implored "the bringing ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XXII (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... of the famous work on the relations of the French nobility and the Church. A crucifix stood upon the desk. On the wall were two engravings, that of Monseigneur Pie, the holy Bishop of Poitiers, and that of General de Sonis, on foot, with his wooden leg, and a painting representing St. Francois, the patron of the house. Those were the only artistic decorations of the modest habitation. The nobleman often said: "I have freed myself from the tyranny of objects." But with that marvellous background ...
— Cosmopolis, Complete • Paul Bourget
... brains beaten out with his own wooden leg, at the storming of Tredagh in Ireland ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... carpenter could never suppress. Beth did not know how this man got his living. He came from the village to gossip, wore a tweed suit, not like a workman's, nor was it the national Irish dress. He had a red nose and a wooden leg, and, after she knew him, for a long time she always expected a man with a wooden leg to have a red nose, but, somehow, she never expected a man with a red nose to have a wooden leg. This man was always cheery, and very voluble. He used the worst language possible in the pleasantest ...
— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand
... Bengal tiger—that ideal of grace, physical perfection, and majesty. Think of the lion and the tiger and the leopard, and then think of man—that poor thing!—the animal of the wig, the ear-trumpet, the glass eye, the porcelain teeth, the wooden leg, the trepanned skull, the silver wind-pipe—a creature that is mended and patched all over from top to bottom. If he can't get renewals of his bric-a-brac in the next world what will he look like? He has just that one stupendous superiority—his imagination, ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... by the hand. "Friends must be torn asunder, and swept along in the current of events, to see each other seldom, and perchance no more. For ever and ever in the eddies of time and accident we whirl away. Besides which, some of us have a perpetual motion in our wooden heads, as Wodenblock had in his wooden leg; and like him we travel on, without rest or sleep, and have hardly time to take a friend by the hand in passing; and at length are seen hurrying through some distant land, worn to ...
— Hyperion • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... waiting to a country mayor who had to read an address, but who went on with his compliment standing. "Kneel, sir, kneel!" cries my lord, in dreadful alarm. "I can't!" says the mayor, turning round; "don't you see I have got a wooden leg?" In the capital Burney Diary and Letters, the home and Court life of good old King George and good old Queen Charlotte are presented at portentous length. The king rose every morning at six: and ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... appeared at the gate of the little court. This was a tall old man with large, white mustache and neglected beard; he walked with difficulty with the help of a wooden leg, and wore a uniform-coat of green with an orange-colored collar; a wallet of leather slung on his back carried his modest baggage; he supported himself on a thick cane made from the dogwood tree, and on his head was a big Hungarian cap ...
— A Romance of the West Indies • Eugene Sue
... the look of a student, a taciturn intellectual visage. He spoke slowly, weightily, and with great precision. Morris had, even then, an expression of cynicism and contempt on his handsome bold face, and he swore magnificently whenever his new wooden leg interfered with his comfort or dignity. Hamilton, with his fair mobile face, powerful, penetrating, delicate, illuminated by eyes full of fire and vivacity, but owing its chief attraction to a mouth as sweet as it was firm ...
— The Conqueror • Gertrude Franklin Atherton
... theirs I blame them, in others I praise; but it is plainly evident that they know how to binge. I wished (for a moment) to be altogether of their race, like that strong cavalry man of their race to whom they have put up a statue pointing to his wooden leg. What an incredible people to build ...
— On Something • H. Belloc
... its bedrabbled main street, with a great stone trough into which a stream of ice-cold water is forever flowing, and where comely young women of substantial ankles, with their flaxen hair braided down their backs, are forever washing linen; each has its beggar, with a goitre or a wooden leg, lying in wait for you; and each, in turn, with its purple and green and red tiled roofs, is charming to approach and ...
— The Queen of Sheba & My Cousin the Colonel • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... ef he'd a died right here in this free country, 'though nobody to give him a drink of water, blamed ef I wouldn't a been ashamed to set on the platform at a Fourth of July barbecue, and to hold up my wooden leg fer to make the boys cheer! That was the selfishest thing I ever done. We're all selfish akordin' ...
— The Hoosier Schoolmaster - A Story of Backwoods Life in Indiana • Edward Eggleston
... that you should make them, Godfrey, and also the wooden leg when he is ready for it," Alexis had said. "It is just as well that their gratitude should be divided a little, so I will hand that part of the ...
— Condemned as a Nihilist - A Story of Escape from Siberia • George Alfred Henty
... reason for military suspicion of the Press. The officers rang up the nearest telephone which connected with the front trenches, the batteries, and regimental and brigade headquarters, to apprehend two men of such-and-such description. They were taken as easily as a one-eyed, one-eared man, with a wooden leg and red hair would be in trying to get out of police headquarters when the doormen had his Bertillon photograph and measurements ...
— My Year of the War • Frederick Palmer
... with a plate of cornbread and a pot of coffee, and a minute later Reuben Merryweather paused on the threshold to shake off a sprinkling of bran from his hair and beard. He was a bent, mild looking old man, with a wooden leg which made a stumping noise when he walked, and a pair of wistful brown eyes, like those of an aged hound that has been worn out by hard service. Past seventy now, his youth had been trained to ...
— The Miller Of Old Church • Ellen Glasgow
... mean of course Mr. Pecksniff on the one hand and Mrs. Gamp on the other. The humour of both of them is gigantesque. Nobody will ever forget the first time he read the words "Now I should be very glad to see Mrs. Todgers's idea of a wooden leg." It is like remembering first love: there is still some sort of ancient sweetness and sting. I am afraid that, in spite of many criticisms to the contrary, I am still unable to take Mr. Pecksniff's hypocrisy seriously. He does not seem to me so much a hypocrite ...
— Appreciations and Criticisms of the Works of Charles Dickens • G. K. Chesterton
... one will ever forget the first time he read Patmore's hint that the cosmos is a thing that God made huge only "to make dirt cheap"; just as nobody will ever forget the sudden shout he uttered when he first heard Mrs. Todgers asked for the rough outline of a wooden leg. These things are not jokes, but discoveries. But the very fact that Patmore was, as it were, the Catholic Browning, keeps him out of the Victorian atmosphere as such. The Victorian English simply thought him an indecent sentimentalist, as they did all the hot ...
— The Victorian Age in Literature • G. K. Chesterton
... the old man's wooden leg, and scrambling over the wall by the south porch of the church they were soon out of ...
— The Altar Steps • Compton MacKenzie
... of—"Well! will this do?" "Is this the right thing?" "Are you satisfied at last?" But, in the midst of this, I remember we all grew silent on hearing the old cynical amateur, L. S——, that laudator temporis acti, stumping along with his wooden leg; he entered the room with his usual scowl, and, as he advanced, he continued to growl and stutter the whole way—"Not an original idea in the whole piece—mere plagiarism,—base plagiarism from hints that ...
— Miscellaneous Essays • Thomas de Quincey
... when he was five years of age. A man by the name of Hobby lived in one of his father's tenements, and he served the public in the double capacity of parish sexton and school-master. It is claimed that he was a wounded soldier with a wooden leg, a kind, Christian gentleman, whose very limited education may have qualified him to dig graves and open the house of worship, but not to teach the young. However, he did teach school quite a number of years, and some of his pupils called him ...
— From Farm House to the White House • William M. Thayer
... had been laid up with rheumatism and gout—ah! and asthma, that's more—for a matter of eleven weeks; pretty bad he'd been too, and everybody had said he would never pull through, being, you see, ninety-seven, and a wooden leg in, that he'd lost in the Crimean War; at least, not the wooden one, for he'd found that in the loft over the stable years ago and ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 28, April 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... have been Governors and Governors, there is, when the gubernatorial office is mentioned, one figure that strides down the centuries before all the rest; that is the old Dutch Governor of New York, with his wooden leg—Peter Stuyvesant. There have been heroines, too, who have aroused the poetry and eloquence of all times, but none who have about them the substantial aroma of the ...
— Model Speeches for Practise • Grenville Kleiser
... your career. If you like to stick to the church, you will possess great revenues, and nothing to do; if you choose to go into the army, you will risk your arm or your leg, but in time you may be a major-general with a wooden leg and a glass eye, the spectacle of an indifferent, ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 1 • Grace Wharton and Philip Wharton
... Frenchman with a wooden leg, dressed as a sailor. As he hopped slowly down the street with the aid of a crutch, his grizzled beard and scowling face turned mechanically to right and left, sweeping the street with threatening eyes that gave him the look of a retired pirate, begging the tribute that he had taken by force in ...
— Jonah • Louis Stone
... groupe with more attention. At length I discovered rear-admiral Balderick, the companion of my youth, whom I had not seen since he was appointed lieutenant of the Severn. He was metamorphosed into an old man, with a wooden leg and a weatherbeaten face, which appeared the more ancient from his grey locks, that were truly venerable — Sitting down at the table, where he was reading a news-paper, I gazed at him for some ...
— The Expedition of Humphry Clinker • Tobias Smollett
... building, the logs of which it was constructed still rejoicing in their primitive covering of bark, the openings between them being closed with clay thrown in by hand. Mr. G., the owner,—a short, gray-haired, brisk little man with a wooden leg, gave me a cordial welcome, and, to show how willing he was to have the meeting in his cabin, pointed to his shoemaker's bench, and various articles of furniture, including a bedstead, trundle-bed, and bedding, which had ...
— The Cabin on the Prairie • C. H. (Charles Henry) Pearson
... soldier. "Let me tell you about this wound." And he tore off the handkerchief around his head. His eyes at that moment fell on Simon's wooden leg, which he had not before seen. "Ah! you are one ...
— The Son of Monte Cristo • Jules Lermina
... he rolled, with a nautical gait, towards the door by which the domestic had re-entered the room, and having reached the stairfoot, and finding himself alone, he added, with a sudden snarl, 'I'd like to give three of ye a chance of earning a wooden leg anyhow—coming into my house and guzzling my best beer the very minute my ...
— VC — A Chronicle of Castle Barfield and of the Crimea • David Christie Murray
... private room; and in a few minutes the gallant old veteran stumped in on his wooden leg, and saluted me with,— ...
— Under the Meteor Flag - Log of a Midshipman during the French Revolutionary War • Harry Collingwood
... "Once at King George's Sound a native presented himself to me with one leg only, and requested me to supply him with a wooden leg. He had traveled in this maimed state about ninety-six miles, for this purpose. I examined the limb, which had been severed just below the knee, and found that it had been charred by fire, while about two inches ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... he got his nickname from his once having brought home to his wife a couple of finely trussed pigeons to roast, but they were in fact a pair of plucked ravens, which in that part of the country are called "crappies." Crappy Zachy, who had a wooden leg, spent most of his time knitting woolen stockings and jackets; and with his knitting he used to sit about in the village wherever there was any opportunity to gossip. This gossiping, in the course of which he heard all sorts of news, was a source ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VIII • Various
... For some reason, I could not learn how, he was known as "Gentle J——." He was a remarkably small man, but was noted as being a very plucky one. His store was stuck-up by a man called "Waddy Mundoo-i," from his having a wooden leg. Smith fought and knocked him out, afterwards giving him help to get along the road. We spent about a fortnight in Townsville having repairs made to the drays, etc., and we started on our return journey to Oak Park on the 14th of November, 1869, ...
— Reminiscences of Queensland - 1862-1869 • William Henry Corfield
... some analogy between them, for neither are preferred from any especial fitness for the office. A cardinal is made pope because he is old, infirm, and imbecile,—our friend Caboose was made cook because he had been Lord Nelson's coxswain, was a drunken rascal, and had a wooden leg; for, as to his gastronomical qualifications, he knew no more of the science than just sufficient to watch the copper where the salt junk and potatoes were boiling. Having been a little in the wind overnight, he had quartered himself, in the superabundance of his heroism, ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... Eileen Pederstone turn you down! Man alive,—Eileen wouldn't have the heart to turn you down if you had a wooden leg. I'll tell you what! If she turns you down, I'll ask her for a dance myself; and I never danced in ...
— The Spoilers of the Valley • Robert Watson
... very moment Hal stepped into the pastrycook's shop a poor, industrious man with a wooden leg, who usually sweeps the dirty corner of the walk which turns at this spot to the Wells, held his hat to Ben, who, after glancing his eye at the petitioner's well-worn ...
— Forgotten Tales of Long Ago • E. V. Lucas
... worked on the corners of the broad, square collar, and his blue trousers were very wide at the bottom. He always wore one trouser leg over his wooden limb and sometimes it would flutter in the wind like a flag because it was so wide and the wooden leg so slender. His rough kersey coat was a pea-jacket and came down to his waistline. In the big pockets of his jacket he kept a wonderful jackknife, and his pipe and tobacco, and many bits of string, and matches and keys and lots of other things. Whenever Cap'n Bill thrust ...
— The Sea Fairies • L. Frank Baum
... assumption of his familiar gesture. "Yo' a square man, Cunnel. I allus set a heap by you, though I didn't let on. An' she's a right peart young lady. I'm glad yo' gwine ter be so happy. Laws, I kind o' wish I wuz to see it, even on a wooden leg—" The woman at his side began to sob. "Thar, thar, Alwynda, don' take on so; cyan't be helped. You mus' 'scuse her, gen'lemen; she so petted on me ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 7 • Various
... whose full-orbed, jolly visage was illuminated by a most valiant red nose, shaped something like an overgrown doughnut, and looking as if it had been thrown at his face, and happened to hit in the middle. Then there was old Israel Peters, with a wooden leg, which tramped into meeting, with undeviating regularity, ten minutes before meeting time; and there was Jedediah Stebbins, a thin, wistful, moonshiny-looking old gentleman, whose mouth appeared as if ...
— The May Flower, and Miscellaneous Writings • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... Governor from 1647-1664; He was a fiery old fellow, with a great love of pomp, and a tremendous opinion of his own importance. He had lost a leg in the Spanish Wars, and now he stamped about with a wooden one. But as no plain wooden leg would please his taste for grandeur he ...
— This Country Of Ours • H. E. Marshall Author: Henrietta Elizabeth Marshall
... the face whenever he told the story, and bring his fist down hard on the table, with "damn the leg, sir! 'Twasn't the leg I cared for: 'twas the not having another chance at those damned British rascals;" and the wooden leg itself would twitch and rap on the floor in his impatient indignation. One of Hetty's earliest recollections was of being led about the farm by this warm-hearted, irascible, old grandfather, whose wooden leg was a ...
— Hetty's Strange History • Anonymous
... (laughter). Feeling rather weary of London, I went for a trip round the world, and it was during that trip that I met the uncommon one. At Nice I made her acquaintance. She was the daughter of a retired Colonel with a wooden leg, and she took my fancy. Why, I cannot tell, but there is no accounting for taste. Her manner to me was cold and haughty, which had the effect of making me all the more eager, and after a week's acquaintance I proposed. I offered to make handsome settlements, even ...
— Australia Revenged • Boomerang
... but the guilt of the robbery was never brought home to them. One man was arrested twenty miles away, at the other end of Missinaba county, who not only corresponded exactly with the description of the robber, but, in addition to this, had a wooden leg. Vagrants with one leg are always regarded with suspicion in places like Mariposa, and whenever a robbery or a murder happens they ...
— Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town • Stephen Leacock
... blood, and not, as you have sometimes supposed, an unearthly bell-ringer who visited this sublunary sphere only at five A.M., and then for the sole purpose of disturbing your morning nap. You are also complimented by the wood-man and wood-sawyer, an English sailor with a wooden leg, who once nearly swamped you in a tornado of nautical interjections, on your presenting him a new pea-jacket. And then comes the German fruit-woman, whose first customer you have the distinguished honor to be, and who, in consequence, has taken ...
— Trifles for the Christmas Holidays • H. S. Armstrong
... she saw him going out in the morning and returning in the evening. He was a tall spare old man, sixty-five or seventy years old, with clothes worn almost to threads, a broad-brimmed old felt hat on his head, and one of his knees stiff, so that he walked like a man with a wooden leg. But he was erect as a soldier, and always walked swiftly, even when returning, tired no doubt, from a long day's wandering and burdened with his bundle of cane and three or four old broken chairs—his day's harvest. But what a face was that old man's! He ...
— Fan • Henry Harford
... at her with pleasure and admiration, when suddenly the growl swelled into a roar again, and a frightful bumping noise was heard above, as if a giant with a wooden leg were trying to bore it through the ceiling to come at us. Upon this Clara said to Herbert, "Papa wants ...
— Great Expectations • Charles Dickens
... climbed upon the seat beside him, and then I saw that he had a wooden leg, and straightway understood his smart bearing, and general ...
— The Broad Highway • Jeffery Farnol
... Miller had the misfortune to fall on the ice Friday and break his wooden leg. This will lay Mr. Miller up for some time as the limb will have to be sent away for repairs or perhaps necessitates his buying an entirely ...
— News Writing - The Gathering , Handling and Writing of News Stories • M. Lyle Spencer
... morning in November, wind north-east, a poor old woman with a wooden leg was seen struggling against the fitful gusts of the bitter breeze, along a stony zigzag road, full of deep and irregular cart-ruts. Her ragged petticoat was blue, and so was her wretched nose. A stick was in her left hand, which assisted her to dig and hobble her way along; ...
— The International Weekly Miscellany, Volume I. No. 8 - Of Literature, Art, and Science, August 19, 1850 • Various
... for the rest of the day. Night after night they travelled on. Sometimes they met people during the day, and either little notice was taken of them, or Paul easily answered the questions put to him. Reuben always had his crutches ready, and in a wonderfully quick time he was on his wooden leg, and hobbling along at a rate of a mile or so an hour, so that no one would have suspected that he had a long journey before him. The whole party were in very good spirits, for as they had found friends when they least expected it, and got out of difficulties when they thought that ...
— Paul Gerrard - The Cabin Boy • W.H.G. Kingston
... the Royal Navy, my lady. And with your permission, I'll relate the tale in proof of it. I had a friend engaged to a young lady, niece of an old sea-captain of the old school, the Benbow school, the wooden leg and pigtail school; a perfectly salt old gentleman with a pickled tongue, and a dash of brine in every deed he committed. He looked rolled over to you by the last wave on the shore, sparkling: he was Neptune's own for humour. And when his present ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... Henery," ses Bob, in a kind voice. "I've no doubt Mr. Sutton'll throw in a wooden leg if you want it, and look here, if he does, I won't trouble you for my ...
— Captains All and Others • W.W. Jacobs
... definite understanding of what they were employed in, day after day, at Reinsberg:—still more are their salaries and maintenance a mystery to us, in that frugal establishment. There is Wolden for Hofmarschall, our old Custrin friend; there is Colonel Senning, old Marlborough Colonel with the wooden leg, who taught Friedrich his drillings and artillery-practices in boyhood, a fine sagacious old gentleman this latter. There is a M. Jordan, Ex-Preacher, an ingenious Prussian-Frenchman, still young, who acts as "Reader and Librarian;" of whom we shall hear a good deal more. "Intendant" is Captain ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. X. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—At Reinsberg—1736-1740 • Thomas Carlyle
... railroad came to town and the march of improvement struck it, after I had gone away. Century-old institutions were ruthlessly upset. The police force, which in my boyhood consisted of a man and a half—that is, one with a wooden leg—was increased and uniformed, and the night watchmen's chant was stopped. But there are limits to everything. The town that had been waked every hour of the night since the early Middle Ages to be told that it slept soundly, could not possibly take a night's rest without it. It lay awake dreading ...
— The Making of an American • Jacob A. Riis
... I presume, and of Zachary Taylor and Winfield Scott; and possibly the treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, whereby Mexico ceded to us the whole of Texas, New Mexico, and Upper California, and we paid her fifteen millions. No doubt you know that Santa Anna, the Mexican General, had a wooden leg. Well, there is more to know than that, and I found it out much later. I found out that General Grant, who had fought with credit as a lieutenant in the Mexican War, briefly summarized it as "iniquitous." ...
— A Straight Deal - or The Ancient Grudge • Owen Wister
... terror and dismay. All this martial excellency of appearance was inexpressibly heightened by an accidental advantage, with which I am surprised that neither Homer nor Virgil have graced any of their heroes. This was nothing less than a wooden leg, which was the only prize he had gained in bravely fighting the battles of his country, but of which he was so proud that he was often heard to declare he valued it more than all his other limbs put together: indeed, so highly did he esteem it that he had it gallantly enchased ...
— Little Masterpieces of American Wit and Humor - Volume I • Various
... to commit all the horrors inspired by the most unbridled licence: La Bretesche, a lieutenant-general, declared to me that he had never seen anything like it, although he had several times been at pillages and sackings. He was very grateful that he had not yielded to my advice, and taken off his wooden leg to be more at ease; for in a short time we ourselves were invaded, and had some trouble to defend ourselves. As we bore the livery of M. de Lorges, we were respected, but those who bore that of M. de Joyeuse were in some cases ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XIV., His Court and The Regency, Complete • Duc de Saint-Simon
... here enjoying the solitude and my fancies among the low branches of the wood, at my right I heard a crashing, and saw a squat broad figure in a stained and tattered military coat, and loose short trousers, one limb of which flapped about a wooden leg. He was forcing himself through. His face was rugged and wrinkled, and tanned to the tint of old oak; his eyes black, beadlike, and fierce, and a shock of sooty hair escaped from under his battered wide-awake nearly to his shoulders. This forbidding-looking ...
— Uncle Silas - A Tale of Bartram-Haugh • J.S. Le Fanu
... mail-bag; in old Tillie, known up and down the world for her waffles, and perpetually peering out between shelves of plants and wax fruit set across the window of the "eating-house"; in Peleg Bemus, wood-cutter, stumping about the platform on his wooden leg, wearing modestly the prestige he had won by his flute-playing and by his advantage of New York experience—"a janitor in the far east, he was," Timothy Toplady had once told me; in Timothy Toplady himself, who always meets the trains, but for no reason unless to say an ...
— Friendship Village • Zona Gale
... have been done," Pearl said, reassuringly. "Ma knew a woman once, and whenever she wanted to keep her man at home she hid his wooden leg. I suppose, now, she hasn't——" ...
— The Second Chance • Nellie L. McClung
... and confers no wisdom, over the next bit of history that will be exchanged between the heroines of the alley-gate? When Mrs. Jones tells Mrs. Baker that Mrs. Briggs has delivered a daughter, and that Mr. Briggs said he had rather she had given him a wooden leg, the epigram is quite as good as a Bric-a-Brac anecdote, the people are quite as worthy as Cowper's barber, and the effect upon the history of letters quite as close and important. With this demurrer, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Vol. XV., No. 85. January, 1875. • Various
... Kara[vz]i['c], throughout his life, was aiming at. While Milo[vs] Obrenovi['c] in Serbia took up the arms which Kara George had dropped, and used some others of his own, Vuk Kara[vz]i['c] was tramping with his wooden leg round Serbia and Montenegro, Macedonia and Bulgaria, Syrmia and the Banat. He longs to find out where his country lies and, having found his people, to use their own language as the spoken and the written language of the nation. ...
— The Birth of Yugoslavia, Volume 1 • Henry Baerlein
... revenge for his interference, some of them played a practical joke upon him; but they did not know their man, for no sooner had the joke been carried into effect (gunpowder in his pipe) than Ross seized his stick and knocked two of his tormentors down, the rest quickly fleeing out of doors. His wooden leg greatly handicapped him, but he at length got one of the men in a corner, who, on finding there was no means of escape, struck out right and left at Ross's somewhat prominent nose, causing the claret to flow like the cataract of Lodore. Now his Scotch blood ...
— Jethou - or Crusoe Life in the Channel Isles • E. R. Suffling
... in front of the house. Bach eagerly confirmed the supposition, and continued his report, which now wrought up the narrator himself to a pitch of excitement and horror: Colard and Bancal held the old man's legs, while the tobacconist and his sweetheart seized his head and arms. A gentleman with a wooden leg and a three-cornered hat held a candle high in the air. There was something weird about the emergence of this new figure; if it stood for nothing more than a finishing touch to the horror of that night ...
— The German Classics, v. 20 - Masterpieces of German Literature • Various
... spun half round as upon a peg, the second wooden leg lightly touched the thwart, and the next moment, when it seemed as if the poor fellow's wooden appendages must go through the frail bottom of the boat, they came down with a light tip-tap, and he was standing up looking smilingly in the young ...
— The Lost Middy - Being the Secret of the Smugglers' Gap • George Manville Fenn
... descried it in the far future, and made towards it. We do not observe this to be the manner of human progress. Our mechanical inventions, which, as I ventured to say in "Erewhon," through the mouth of the second professor, are really nothing but extra-corporaneous limbs—a wooden leg being nothing but a bad kind of flesh leg, and a flesh leg being only a much better kind of wooden leg than any creature could be expected to manufacture introspectively and consciously—our mechanical inventions have almost invariably grown ...
— Life and Habit • Samuel Butler
... carbine laid across two sticks, and solicited, or rather enforced, the alms of the passer-by, by an appeal to his fears no less than to his pity. The readers of the old drama will recall to mind the shifts and devices of the 'Jovial Beggars;'—how easily a wooden leg was slipped off and turned into a bludgeon; how inscrutable were the disguises, and how copious and expressive the slang, of the mendicant crew. Coleridge has justly described 'The Beggar's Bush' as one of the ...
— Old Roads and New Roads • William Bodham Donne
... battle, Miss, that's one thing," remarked on obliging by-stander who leaned heavily upon a wooden leg. "Bless you, I kin a'most taste the powder." He smacked his lips and spat into the dust. "To think that I went all the way down to Mexico fur a fight," he pursued regretfully, "when I could have set right here at home and had it all in old ...
— The Battle Ground • Ellen Glasgow
... the Louis XV. pattern, bearing on his breast the little oval plaque of red cloth, with the crossed swords, the soldier's cross of Saint-Louis, and adorned, in addition, with a coat-sleeve, which had no arm within it, with a silver chin and a wooden leg. Marius thought he perceived that this man had an extremely well satisfied air. It even struck him that the aged cynic, as he hobbled along past him, addressed to him a very fraternal and very merry wink, as though some chance had ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... score of persons have lost their lives in attempting to rediscover it. In 1836, according to the traditional story, a man named Smith, distinguished from the rest of the Smith family by the possession of a wooden leg, was journeying with several companions from Yuma over the Colorado desert. On account of his wooden stump he was ...
— Wealth of the World's Waste Places and Oceania • Jewett Castello Gilson
... by his cleverness and quick wit as well as by his wonderful command of language. But Morris was admired more than he was trusted; and, while he supported the efforts for a strong government, his support was not always as great a help as might have been expected. A crippled arm and a wooden leg might detract from his personal appearance, but they could not subdue ...
— The Fathers of the Constitution - Volume 13 in The Chronicles Of America Series • Max Farrand
... like that since he came to Grand Avenue ten years ago. It has always turned out that Tobias takes off his white shirt and puts on his sailor's black sweater and fastens on his old wooden leg and follows the one ...
— A Thousand and One Afternoons in Chicago • Ben Hecht
... you'll be from Dublin, by the sound of your speakin'. So was my father, who is now drowned forever, and with his wooden leg," she added mournfully, finding a cord in some recess of her pocket, entangled there with a rosary and a cluster of small fishhooks. She patted the odd scapular into the cleft of her bosom and smiled at Rawling. "Them in the kitchen are tellin' me you'll be ownin' this whole ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various |
