"Astride" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... June 12, 1917, the British won new and valuable positions astride the Souchez River. In the night the Germans in force delivered a counterattack to regain the lost ground, displaying a disregard for safety and stolid bravery as they pushed on in spite of heavy losses. But the British were in a situation where they could rake the German lines ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume VI (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various
... of her own. Her first attempts to make fast to the mole ahead of the Vindictive failed, as her grapnels were not large enough to span the parapet. Two officers, Lieutenant-Commander Bradford, and Lieutenant Hawkins, climbed ashore and sat astride the parapet trying to make the grapnels fast, till each was killed, and fell down between the ship and the wall. Commander Valentine Gibbs had both legs shot away, and died next morning. Lieutenant Spencer though wounded, took command and ...
— History of the World War - An Authentic Narrative of the World's Greatest War • Francis A. March and Richard J. Beamish
... their train like living sunbeams or flying blossoms. In the orchard, they were greeted by the birds that banqueted in the fruit-trees. The sparrows, the chaffinches, the golden orioles, the bullfinches, showed them the ripest fruit scarred by their hungry beaks; and while they sat astride the branches and breakfasted, birds twittered and sported round them like children at play, and even purloined the fruit beneath their very feet. Albine found even more amusement in the meadows, where she caught the little green frogs with eyes of gold, that lay ...
— Abbe Mouret's Transgression - La Faute De L'abbe Mouret • Emile Zola
... said to the Tiger: "I could not bring you any of the other beasts because the way was blocked by a fat old Tiger with a Flying Squirrel sitting astride its muzzle." On hearing this the Tiger exclaimed, "Let us go and find it and drive it away." The three therefore set out, the Flying Squirrel perched upon the Tiger's muzzle and the Mouse-deer sitting astride ...
— The Talking Beasts • Various
... eight sat astride upon a farmyard gate, whistling and beating time with a hazel-switch. He had fastened his belt round the gate-post and was using it as a bridle, his bare knees gripped the wooden bar under him, and his little brass-tipped heels ...
— Secret Bread • F. Tennyson Jesse
... below the yard, the middle parts being supported by stirrups. When a man is to "lay out," he throws his breast across the yard with his feet on the horse. The man at the "weather earing," or eye for the reef pendent, has to sit astride the yard, and ...
— Outward Bound - Or, Young America Afloat • Oliver Optic
... architectonic. For instance, once upon a time[512] I was walking down the Euston Road. There passed me a fellow dragging a truck, on which truck there were three barrels with the heads knocked out, so that each barrel ensheathed, to a certain extent, the one in front of it. Astride of the centre barrel, his arms folded and a pipe in his mouth, there sat a man in a sort of sailor-costume—trousers, guernsey, and night-cap—surveying the world, and his fellow who dragged him, with an air of placid goguenarderie. ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury
... some of whom lay on heaps of straw, asleep, or, at all events, giving no sign of consciousness; others sat in the corners of the room, huddled close together, and staring with a lazy kind of interest at the visitors; two were astride of some planks, playing with the dirtiest pack of cards that I ever happened to see. There was only one figure in the least military among all these twenty prisoners of war,—a man with a dark, intelligent, moustached face, wearing a shabby cotton uniform, which ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 57, July, 1862 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... latter completely forgot about it. But that same young gentleman, in the pea-green caftan, came from Poltava, bringing with him a little book, and, opening it in the middle, showed it to us. Thoma Grigorovitch was on the point of setting his spectacles astride of his nose, but recollected that he had forgotten to wind thread about them and stick them together with wax, so he passed it over to me. As I understand nothing about reading and writing, and do not wear spectacles, I undertook to read it. I had not turned two leaves ...
— Taras Bulba and Other Tales • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... the whalers who were absent from home for years, and who came back to find their children and their grandchildren waiting for them. I told how I had seen them, in our New England coast towns, covered, as a ship is covered with barnacles, by grandchildren who rode on their shoulders and sat astride of their necks as they walked down the village streets. And now at last the sneer left my old man's loose lips. He had grandchildren somewhere. He twisted uneasily in his seat, coughed, and finally took out a big red handkerchief and wiped his ...
— The Story of a Pioneer - With The Collaboration Of Elizabeth Jordan • Anna Howard Shaw
... to tell you how it comes to pass that I am able to glide up a steeple like a spider, get astride upon the cross, and pull off my cap to the crowd below, like a gentleman on horseback saluting his acquaintances.[2] You want me to explain on what principle, as you call it, I do this. Well: principle, I suppose, means the rule or law by which a man does ...
— Chambers' Edinburgh Journal - Volume XVII., No 423, New Series. February 7th, 1852 • Various
... in the Arras Battle, 1917, was small. Already at the time of our arrival the later stages of the fighting had been reached. The British advance astride the River Scarpe had stopped on its north side beneath the low ridge spoken of as Greenland Hill and on its south before a wood known as the Bois du Vert. As on the Somme in November, 1916, local ...
— The Story of the 2/4th Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire Light Infantry • G. K. Rose
... any stage super who ever wore his spurs upside down in a hunting-chorus. His expression was mild and inoffensive, and his watery pale eyes and receding chin gave one the idea that he was hardly to be trusted astride anything more spirited than a gold-headed cane. And yet, somehow, he aroused compassion rather than any sense of the ludicrous: he had that look of shrinking self-effacement which comes of a recent ...
— The Talking Horse - And Other Tales • F. Anstey
... rides since the birth of time, Told in story or sung in rhyme,— On Apuleius's Golden Ass, Or one-eyed Calendar's horse of brass, Witch astride of a human back, Islam's prophet on Al-Borak,— The strangest ride that ever was sped Was Ireson's, out from Marblehead! Old Floyd Ireson, for his hard heart, Tarred and feathered and carried in a cart By the women ...
— The Golden Treasury of American Songs and Lyrics • Various
... man in model riding costume, astride a bob-tailed sorrel, rashly took a fence where gate there was none, and came cantering across the Colonel's ...
— A Romance of Billy-Goat Hill • Alice Hegan Rice
... already mounted his horse, and straightway he proceeded to the bridge beyond the northern gate, and waited for Hsueeh P'an. A long while elapsed, however, before he espied Hsueeh P'an in the distance, hurrying along astride of a high steed, with gaping mouth, staring eyes, and his head, banging from side to side like a pedlar's drum. Without intermission, he glanced confusedly about, sometimes to the left, and sometimes to the right; but, as soon as he got where he had to pass in front of Hsiang-lien's horse, ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... horseback. They seem to have quite a passion for riding in the island, and have often to be prevented racing through the streets of Honolulu. The horses are of a poor breed; but the women, who sit astride like the men, seem plucky riders, their long, flowing dresses making respectable riding-habits. Most of the girls wore garlands of ohelo and other flowers round their heads, ...
— A Boy's Voyage Round the World • The Son of Samuel Smiles
... the doctor the ropes were drawn taut and the poor beast stretched out helplessly upon its back, while the doctor seated himself astride, sought for the tiny punctures made by the rattlesnake's poison-fangs, and found them where the skin was thinnest and most devoid of hair, the successful discovery being due to a tiny drop of yellowish gummy ...
— The Peril Finders • George Manville Fenn
... said Harry, creeping slowly out upon the branch; and then, seating himself astride, he began to work himself out over the water, while the bough quivered and bent at every movement. "Can you see it, Phil?" said the adventurer. "Just under the bough, now, and coming nearer. It's gone!" he ...
— Hollowdell Grange - Holiday Hours in a Country Home • George Manville Fenn
... The Indian with M'Clure now coolly informed him by signs that when the horseman arrived, he (M'Clure) was to be bound and carried off as a prisoner with his feet tied under the horse's belly. In order to explain it more fully, the Indian got astride of the log, and locked his legs together underneath it. M'Clure, internally thanking the fellow for his excess of candor, determined to disappoint him, and while his enemy was busily engaged in riding the ...
— Heroes and Hunters of the West • Anonymous
... said "Mother." The soldier who was now standing astride of him, the better to keep off the crowding men, thought he was ...
— Love Stories • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... including two peculiarly curved "wing-cases"—if one may borrow a figure from the flying beetles—remained expanded stiffly. In the middle was a long rounded body like the body of a moth, and on this Mr. Butteridge could be seen sitting astride, much as a man bestrides a horse. The wasp-like resemblance was increased by the fact that the apparatus flew with a deep booming hum, exactly the sound made by ...
— The War in the Air • Herbert George Wells
... passed the kirk, in the adjoining field he fell in with a crew of men and women, who were busy pulling stems of the plant ragwort. He observed that as each person pulled a ragwort, he or she got astride of it, and called out, "Up, horsie!" on which the ragwort flew off, like Pegasus, through the air with its rider. The foolish boy likewise pulled his ragwort, and cried with the rest, "Up, horsie!" and, strange to tell, away he flew with the company. The first ...
— The Letters of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... could get astride A broom, and have a horse to ride; Or climb into the swing, and be A sailor on the deep blue sea, Or b'lieve a chair a choo-choo train, Bound anywhere ...
— Bib Ballads • Ring W. Lardner
... express my admiration at the natural politeness of almost every Chileno. We met, near Mendoza, a little and very fat negress, riding astride on a mule. She had a goitre so enormous that it was scarcely possible to avoid gazing at her for a moment; but my two companions almost instantly, by way of apology, made the common salute of the country by taking off their hats. Where would one of ...
— The Andes and the Amazon - Across the Continent of South America • James Orton
... while she seems to have almost forgotten her sex. She began to dress as a boy, and took to smoking large quantities of tobacco. Her natural brother, who was an officer in the army, came down to Nohant and taught her to ride—to ride like a boy, seated astride. She went about without any chaperon, and flirted with the young men of the neighborhood. The prim manners of the place made her subject to a certain amount of scandal, and the village priest chided her in language that was far from ...
— Famous Affinities of History, Vol 1-4, Complete - The Romance of Devotion • Lyndon Orr
... double eyeglass had been astride his nose instead of swinging in his fingers, he might have noticed a faint paleness blending with the deep yellow of Mr. Chiffield's complexion. That gentleman replied, a little more ...
— Round the Block • John Bell Bouton
... no breath in futile rage. He strode to the nearest hitching-post and flung himself astride leather. The horse's hoofs pounded down the road ...
— Gunsight Pass - How Oil Came to the Cattle Country and Brought a New West • William MacLeod Raine
... by the feet, pulls it downward to the left; then, passing the right hand under the front of the dress, she again seizes the feet and extracts it by a kind of podalic delivery. Another common way of carrying children is astride the neck. The subject is one that the Chucki artist often ...
— The First Landing on Wrangel Island - With Some Remarks on the Northern Inhabitants • Irving C. Rosse
... simple, efficacious, and above all bloodless. Smith-Dorrien's brigade, who were winning in the Western army something of the reputation which Hart's Irishmen had won in Natal, were placed astride of the river to the west, with orders to push gradually up, as occasion served, using trenches for their approach. Chermside's brigade occupied the same position on the east. Two other divisions and the cavalry stood round, alert and eager, like terriers round a rat-hole, while all day the pitiless ...
— The Great Boer War • Arthur Conan Doyle
... lead, with Laura astride his neck, and the newly-inspired and very grateful immigrants picked up their tired limbs with quite a spring in them and ...
— The Gilded Age, Complete • Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner
... branks in mickle pride, And eke a braw new brechan, My Pegasus I'm got astride, And up Parnassus pechin; Whiles owre a bush wi' donwward crush, The doited beastie stammers; Then up he gets, and off he sets, For ...
— Poems And Songs Of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... usual place— on his hands and knees, with Little Mystery astride his back. He paused in a mad race across the cabin floor and looked up with inquiring eyes. The little girl held up her arms, and MacVeigh tossed her half-way to the ceiling and then hugged her golden head close up to ...
— Isobel • James Oliver Curwood
... through the crowd: he has passed the door and is inhaling with grateful lungs the fresh coolness of the cloudy October night. Has any one seen him go? Did any one know what he did?—None who will reveal it. He is astride his mare, and they are off toward the old farm, where his boyhood was spent, and where stands the great hollow oak which, thirty years ago, Captain Joe used to canvass for woodpeckers' nests and squirrel hordes. He had thought, in those ...
— The History of the United States from 1492 to 1910, Volume 1 • Julian Hawthorne
... turned and ran with all their might toward headquarters. There was fighting up and down the street. Half a dozen huzzaing and sabring troopers saw the three and shouted to others nearer yet. "Officers! Cut them off, you there!" The three were taken. A captain, astride of a great reeking horse, towered above them. "Staff? You're staff? Is Jackson in the town?—and ...
— The Long Roll • Mary Johnston
... the house, the orchard, and I saw Veronica's window, other feelings moved me. Not because I saw familiar objects, nor because I was going home—it was the relation in which I stood to them, that I felt. We drove through the gate, and saw a handsome little boy astride a window-sill, with two pipes in his mouth, "Papa!" he shrieked, threw his pipes down, and dropped on the ground, to run ...
— The Morgesons • Elizabeth Stoddard
... British and French launched an offensive in Picardy, pressed forward about seven miles on a front of 20 miles, astride the river Somme and captured several towns and 10,000 prisoners. It was in this engagement that the hard fighting at Chipilly Ridge occurred, in which the Americans so ably assisted, notably former National Guardsmen from Chicago and vicinity. Montdidier ...
— History of the American Negro in the Great World War • W. Allison Sweeney
... indeed pleased with his commission. Never before had he been astride this so-wonderful horse. As he rode along, testing the ease of Pat's gait, noting with what readiness he responded to the reins, he fell to wishing that it were not so near dusk, since then he might become the object of envious eyes in town. But he could not control ...
— Bred of the Desert - A Horse and a Romance • Marcus Horton
... own eyes, upon a cask astride, Forth through the cellar-door I saw him ride— Heavy as lead my feet are growing. (Turning to the table.) I wonder is the ...
— Faust Part 1 • Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
... what followed. He had stolen up softly behind me, and, unconscious that he was on the edge of a bluff, had stepped a step beyond me. Of course he went over at once, heels over head, turning a complete somersault, and alighted erect, astride the neck ...
— The Rose of Old St. Louis • Mary Dillon
... into the sea off the yard with me. Though dressed only in a light shirt and trousers, I was nearly exhausted. Had I retained my jacket, I believe that I should have been unable to keep myself afloat. Just then a shout reached my ears, and I saw Bill seated astride a piece of timber, not far from me. With my remaining strength I made towards it, and he, seizing me by the shirt, hauled me up, and made me fast with some ...
— Charley Laurel - A Story of Adventure by Sea and Land • W. H. G. Kingston
... my eyelids and tickle my nose, And scratch at my cheeks with their little pink toes; And sometimes to give them a laugh and a scare I snap and I growl like a cinnamon bear; Then over I roll, and with three kids astride I gallop away ...
— The Path to Home • Edgar A. Guest
... left was astride a railway embankment in front of a large mine. The Subaltern's Company was directly in front of the village itself; another Company to the right, the fourth in local reserve. The work of entrenchment began immediately. There was not time to construct a trench, as laid ...
— "Contemptible" • "Casualty"
... up. Sitting astride the wall, Frank lent the others a helping hand and soon they were over ...
— The Boy Allies with Uncle Sams Cruisers • Ensign Robert L. Drake
... spirit of his commander's order. In a twinkling he had the boy astride of his neck with the kettle-drum resting on his head, and then the rattling music began. Clark followed, pointing onward with his sword. The half frozen and tottering soldiers sent up a shout that went back to where Captain Bowman was bringing up the ...
— Alice of Old Vincennes • Maurice Thompson
... a little thirsty," said Donald, flinging himself down on a seat in a free-and-easy way, with his legs astride, so as to allow free suspension to his huge goat-skin purse, and doffing his bonnet, and wiping the perspiration from his forehead—"Herself's no fery hungry, but a little thirsty; and she'll teukit, if you please, a fery small ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume 2 - Historical, Traditional, and Imaginative • Alexander Leighton
... the great birds of this land of Lethe, as Mr. Waples' stalagmite broke off and dropped him and set him astride of an ancient pterodactyl bird that flew off with its burden to an immense height, and swinging him there by the seat of his breeches, as if he were to be the pendulum of a fundamental and firmamental ...
— Tales of the Chesapeake • George Alfred Townsend
... give to these primeval woods a character of solemnity, absent in those of countries long civilised. Shortly after sunset we bivouacked for the night. Our female companion, who was rather good-looking, belonged to one of the most respectable families in Castro: she rode, however, astride, and without shoes or stockings. I was surprised at the total want of pride shown by her and her brother. They brought food with them, but at all our meals sat watching Mr. King and myself whilst eating, till we were fairly shamed into feeding ...
— A Naturalist's Voyage Round the World - The Voyage Of The Beagle • Charles Darwin
... Nick's astride the beast, 'tis clear! Old Nicholas, to a tittle! But all agree he'd disappear, 75 Would but the Parson venture near, And through his teeth,[302:1] right o'er the steer, ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... which I should be likely to experience, I think, if I had lodgings on the first-floor of a powder-mill. She was laden with flour, some casks of which commodity were stored upon the deck. The captain coming up to have a little conversation, and to introduce a friend, seated himself astride of one of these barrels, like a Bacchus of private life; and pulling a great clasp-knife out of his pocket, began to 'whittle' it as he talked, by paring thin slices off the edges. And he whittled with such industry and hearty ...
— American Notes for General Circulation • Charles Dickens
... can see to this day. As soon as one's eyes got a little accustomed to the gloom the outline of the stalls became first visible. Then a human figure seated on the top of an old refrigerator, with a pistol in one hand, pointed at a corner opposite, came into view. Then another man, seated astride the division between the stalls, could be seen. And last, but not least, I saw the dark mass on the floor in the far corner, where the dead horse lay mangled and the monster of a lion sprawled across his carcass, with great paws outstretched, ...
— Adventures in Many Lands • Various
... no sooner seated than Wild Bill threw himself upon the sled, with one leg under him and the other stretched at full length behind. This was a method of steering that had come into vogue since the Trapper's boyhood, for in his day the steersman sat astride the sled, with his feet thrust forward, and steered by the pressure of either heel ...
— Holiday Tales - Christmas in the Adirondacks • W. H. H. Murray
... said Montgomery; "it's just the way with carnivores. After a kill, they drink. It's the taste of blood, you know.—What was the brute like?" he continued. "Would you know him again?" He glanced about us, standing astride over the mess of dead rabbit, his eyes roving among the shadows and screens of greenery, the lurking-places and ambuscades of the forest that bounded us in. "The taste of ...
— The Island of Doctor Moreau • H. G. Wells
... But Sir Pertinax, astride his charger that cropped joyously at sweet, cool grass, sat chin on fist, lost in the throes of composition, nothing heeding, even when came the ten steeds with the ...
— The Geste of Duke Jocelyn • Jeffery Farnol
... or clubbed down, with the cry "For France" on his lips, and his comrades, standing astride his body, fought with bayonets and clubbed muskets till they too fell in turn. Almost the last one was the old Sergeant. Wounded to death, and bleeding from numberless gashes, he still fought, shouting his battle-cry, "For ...
— "A Soldier Of The Empire" - 1891 • Thomas Nelson Page
... thanked him for the compliment, and the child, who had now got astride of his alpenstock, stood looking about him, while he attacked a second lump of sugar. Winterbourne wondered if he himself had been like this in his infancy, for he had been brought to ...
— Daisy Miller • Henry James
... dropping off to sleep from sheer weariness when he awoke to find his roommate astride him and clutching him ...
— Frank Merriwell at Yale • Burt L. Standish
... saw an old woman riding a horse astride: and I was convinced on the spot that this is the rightest way of riding, and that the sidesaddle was a foolish and affected invention. The horse was fine, and so was the young man leading it: the old woman was upright and stately, with a wide hat and ...
— An Englishwoman's Love-Letters • Anonymous
... even more than the burro, that excited their mirth. His long legs were working like those of a jumping jack, and though astride of the burro, Juan was walking at a lively pace. It reminded one of the way men propelled ...
— The Pony Rider Boys in New Mexico • Frank Gee Patchin
... clapped his hands together and turned head over heels in the air. As he came right side up again he saw a bit of thistle-down drifting on up the hill, and he was so little that when he flew after it and set himself astride of it, it seemed as big as a barrel to him. He floated on up the hill with it, and the wind was ...
— The Counterpane Fairy • Katharine Pyle
... that it was always dressed as a BOY, and was distinctly the most HUMAN-looking of all her progeny. Indeed, in spite of the faculties that were legibly printed all over its smooth, white, hairless head, it was appallingly lifelike. Left sometimes by Mary astride of the branch of a wayside tree, horsemen had been known to dismount hurriedly and examine it, returning with a mystified smile, and it was on record that Yuba Bill had once pulled up the Pioneer Coach at the request of curious and imploring passengers, ...
— Selected Stories • Bret Harte
... studied the lay of wall and slope, and when he had circled the huge depression he made sure that Wildfire could not get out except by the narrow pass through which he had gone in. Slone sat astride Nagger in the mouth of this pass—a wash a few yards wide, walled by broken, rough rock on one side and an ...
— The Boy Scouts Book of Campfire Stories • Various
... blue-blooded Talcott line which traced back a hundred years to a member of the cabinet, it was hard for me to believe that I knew these exalted beings, that I had sat with Rufus Blight and talked of days in the valley, that Penelope and I had galloped over the country astride the same white mule, that I even had engaged with one so distinguished as Herbert Talcott in a brawl in a restaurant. Gilded by those who report the comings and goings of those whom one should know, ...
— David Malcolm • Nelson Lloyd
... children to the pond. Some of them are ordinary paths, which have a rail on each side, and are made by men with their coats off, but others are vagrants, wide at one spot, and at another so narrow that you can stand astride them. They are called Paths that have Made Themselves, and David did wish he could see them doing it. But, like all the most wonderful things that happen in the Gardens, it is done, we concluded, at night after the gates are closed. We ...
— Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens • J. M. Barrie
... be necessary for one scout to carry an injured comrade. The scout should first turn the patient on his face; he then steps astride his body, facing toward the patient's head, and, with hands under his arm-pits, lifts him to his knees; then, clasping hands over the abdomen, lifts him to his feet; he then, with his left hand, seizes the patient by the left wrist and draws his left arm around his (the bearer's) ...
— Boy Scouts Handbook - The First Edition, 1911 • Boy Scouts of America
... breath she, Tara, sprang to her feet and swung herself astride a downward sweeping branch just above Roy's head. There she perched like a slim blue flower, dangling her tan-stockinged legs and shaking her hair at him like golden rain. She was in one of her impish moods; reaction, perhaps,—though she knew it not—from the high tragedy ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver
... again with bare feet, waiting whenever the wind snatched at him with redoubled fury, to lean against it and grip the rock with numb fingers. Ismail swung the lamp, for reasons best known to himself, and half-way over King sat astride the ridge again to shout to him to hold it still. But ...
— King—of the Khyber Rifles • Talbot Mundy
... coral islands grouped into 26 atolls; archipelago of strategic location astride and along major sea lanes in ...
— The 1995 CIA World Factbook • United States Central Intelligence Agency
... short, stout, slightly bald, and somehow radiated comfort, even while sitting astride of a cane-bottomed chair, and smoking another man's brand of cigarettes, in a one-windowed room nine feet by ten and ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 5, June 1905 • Various
... for a long time until he was almost starved with hunger; at last he ventured to peep out, and seeing a fine large butterfly on the ground, near the place of his concealment, he got close to it and jumping astride on it was carried up into the, air. The butterfly flew with him from tree to tree and from field to field, at last returned to the court, where the King and nobility all strove to catch him; but at last poor Tom fell ...
— The Junior Classics, Volume 1 • Willam Patten
... stranger; and he made a desperate effort to throw his adversary from his chest, but only for Waller to wrench out his hands plant them upon the other's breast, and thrust him down helpless and exhausted, while he raised himself up, got well astride, and sat up, laughing in the stranger's face, as he raised one hand and dragged the strap of the creel over his head ...
— The New Forest Spy • George Manville Fenn
... one of the Chambers of "Rhetoric" in which the hard-handed but half-artistic mechanics and shopkeepers of the Netherlands loved to disport themselves was called, then exhibited upon an opposite scaffold a magnificent representation of Jupiter astride upon an eagle and banding down to the Stadholder as if from the clouds that same principality. Nothing could be ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... step forward; "he's an old un, dead lame." "Don't leave go, Rube," I said. "He'll do for our turn." He was a miserable old beast, but I felt that he would do as well as the best horse in the world for us. Rube saw my meaning, and in a minute we were both astride on his back. He tottered, and I thought he'd have gone down on his head. Kicking weren't of no good; so I out with my knife and gave him a prod, and off we went. It weren't far, some two hundred yards ...
— Out on the Pampas - The Young Settlers • G. A. Henty
... Miss Lamarque, whose penetration showed her by this time that the pilot was only playing on our fears, for want of a better instrument for his skill. "I quite enjoy the idea that you have actually been astride a fragment of the arctic glacier, and that we may perhaps make the acquaintance of a white bear ourselves when we get near our iceberg, or a gentle seal. Wouldn't you like one for ...
— Miriam Monfort - A Novel • Catherine A. Warfield
... with an intelligent animal, the freedom, the fresh air, the scenery, all give enjoyment of life, and the constant movement acts as a most delicious tonic. There is only one correct way to ride for both sexes, and that is astride. The side saddle position keeps the spine twisted so that it takes away much of the benefit to be derived from riding. Out west the approved manner of riding for women is astride. The women of the west make a ...
— Maintaining Health • R. L. Alsaker
... performing queer gyrations. The Japanese had turned his back toward Orme and swung the imprisoned arm over his shoulder. A quick lurch forward, and Orme sailed through the air, coming down heavily on his side. His arm was still held, and in a few seconds he was on his back, his assailant astride him and smiling ...
— The Girl and The Bill - An American Story of Mystery, Romance and Adventure • Bannister Merwin
... he is astride the yard sliding out fully twelve feet from the main mast—now he is loosening the rope by which the top-sail is fastened to the arm! Redfox ought to do that himself," said the helmsman to himself. "But no, he forces the boy before him out on the yard, orders him ...
— The Shipwreck - A Story for the Young • Joseph Spillman
... a pole; to "ride the stang" was to be subjected to a form of mob justice by which the patient was borne shoulder-high astride a pole. ...
— Ringan Gilhaize - or The Covenanters • John Galt
... The trousers had soon parted company with their friends. The substitutes were red jeans, which, while they did not well match his court costume, were better able to withstand the old man's abuse, for if, in addition to his frequent religious excursions astride his beast, there ever was a man who was fond of sitting down with his feet higher than his head, it was ...
— The Best American Humorous Short Stories • Various
... connected with dilapidations,—one of the lowest and least remunerative departments of the architect's calling. But he had the good sense not to be above his trade, and he had the resolution to work his way upward, so that he only got a fair start. One hot day in July a friend found him sitting astride of a house roof occupied with his dilapidation business. Drawing his hand across his perspiring countenance, he exclaimed, "Here's a pretty business for a man who has been all over Greece!" However, he did his work, such as it was, thoroughly and well; he persevered ...
— Self Help • Samuel Smiles
... means, Mr. Valentine. You are deeply concerned in this. (Valentine takes a chair from the table and sits astride of it, leaning over the back, near the ottoman.) Mrs. Clandon: your husband demands the custody of his two younger children, who are not of age. (Mrs. Clandon, in quick alarm, looks instinctively to ...
— You Never Can Tell • [George] Bernard Shaw
... to the right place, worked so vigorously that he succeeded in detaching the anchor, and the latter, violently jerked, at that moment, by the start of the balloon, caught the rascal between the limbs, and carried him off astride of it ...
— Five Weeks in a Balloon • Jules Verne
... fear—as they reach at last some house and welcome human companionship, of the wild baying of the hounds that drifted through the murk night to their ears, or of the sudden vision of the pack passing at whirlwind speed across bog and marsh urged onward by a grim black figure astride a giant dark horse from whose smoking nostrils came flame ...
— Legend Land, Volume 2 • Various
... from the stiff folds of azure or rose-colored kerchiefs. American officers tower by on their big horses, or American women in white drill habits. There are droves of American children on native ponies, the girls riding astride, their fat little legs in pink or blue stockings bobbing against the ponies' sides. There are boys' schools out for a walk in charge of shovel-hatted priests. There are demure processions of maidens from the colegios, sedately ...
— A Woman's Impression of the Philippines • Mary Helen Fee
... weighted with less of sin than had he lived thirty more. Be ye comforted in this, distressful rogues, the shorter our life the less we sin, the which is a fair, good thing. As for these shackles, though our bodies be 'prisoned our souls go free, thus, while we languish here, our souls astride a sunbeam may mount aloft, 'bove all pains and tribulations soever. Thus if we must dance together in noose, our souls, I say, escaping these fleshy bonds, shall wing away to freedom everlasting. Bethink ye of this, grievous knaves, and take heart. ...
— The Geste of Duke Jocelyn • Jeffery Farnol
... preceded by a herald who bore their device, two roses intertwined above the motto, 'We droop when separated.' My knight rode at the head, attended by two British Officers, and his two esquires, the one bearing his lance, the other his shield emblazoned with his device—Cupid astride a lion—over ...
— The Loyalist - A Story of the American Revolution • James Francis Barrett
... boatswain whistled, the marines presented arms, and the officers all took off their hats as the captain came on the deck, and then the guard was dismissed, and they all walked about the deck as before; but I found it very pleasant to be astride on the gun, so I remained where I was. 'What do you mane by that, you big young scoundrel?' says he, when he saw me. 'It's nothing at all I mane,' replied I; 'but what do you mane by calling an O'Brien a scoundrel?' 'Who is he?' said the captain to the first lieutenant. 'Mr O'Brien, ...
— Peter Simple and The Three Cutters, Vol. 1-2 • Frederick Marryat
... at the horrors within (as became a healthy-minded English boy) it was but a step to the equestrian statue of Henri Quatre, on the Pont-Neuf (the oldest bridge in Paris, by the way); there, astride his long-tailed charger, he smiled, le roy vert et galant, just midway between either bank of the historic river, just where it was most historic; and turned his back on the Paris of the Bourgeois King with the pear-shaped face and the ...
— Peter Ibbetson • George du Marier et al
... loudly at their old-fashioned attire—the wide-skirted coats and flapped waistcoats of the young men, and the ancient cap and gown of the blooming girl. One limped across the floor like a gouty grandfather; one set a pair of spectacles astride of his nose, and pretended to pore over the black-letter pages of the book of magic; a third seated himself in an arm-chair, and strove to imitate the venerable dignity of Doctor Heidegger. Then all shouted mirthfully, and leaped about the room. The ...
— The Great English Short-Story Writers, Vol. 1 • Various
... them with reproachful summons. Lo, these too split apart, and out from each appears a man! These take black iron pots and go off. Presently they come swinging back with the pots filled with water. Meantime the fire is finely started, the pots are slung astride a long pole set over the fire, the wood crackles, the flames shoot up wrapping the pots around. And now the camp is all astir. The black objects are twice as numerous as before, moving about with increased animation. You imagine Little Antietam to ...
— Our campaign around Gettysburg • John Lockwood
... off the table, shot a swift glance at the group—at Hilary lying back smoking, with slightly knitted forehead, one unsteady hand playing on his chair; at Peter sitting on the marble floor with the torn fragments of paper in his hands and Illuminato astride on his knee. Peggy's grey, Irish eyes were at the moment a little speculative, touched with a dispassionate curiosity and a good deal of sisterly and wifely and maternal and slightly compassionate affection. She was so fond of them all, ...
— The Lee Shore • Rose Macaulay
... to gain a firm footing on Latin soil. It was also, as it turned out, an admirable base of operations for carrying on war in the long and narrow peninsula, so awkward, as Hannibal found to his cost, for working out a definite plan of conquest. From Rome, astride of the Tiber, armies could operate on "interior lines" against any combination—could strike north, east, and south at the same moment. With Latium faithful behind her she could not be taken in the rear; the unconquerable Hannibal ...
— Social life at Rome in the Age of Cicero • W. Warde Fowler
... wrong. There was a sofa, chairs, a square table, and the window being open, one could see how they sat—legs issuing here, one there crumpled in a corner of the sofa; and, presumably, for you could not see him, somebody stood by the fender, talking. Anyhow, Jacob, who sat astride a chair and ate dates from a long box, burst out laughing. The answer came from the sofa corner; for his pipe was held in the air, then replaced. Jacob wheeled round. He had something to say to THAT, though the sturdy red-haired boy at the table seemed ...
— Jacob's Room • Virginia Woolf
... comes a bright-eyed young lady, probably his daughter-in-law, hung all over with bangles, in a white muslin petticoat, crimson cotton-velvet jacket, and green gauze veil, with her naked brown baby astride on her hip: a clever, smiling, delicate little woman, who is quite aware of the brightness of her own eyes. And who are these three boys in dark blue coatees and trousers, one of whom carries, hanging at one end of a long bamboo, a couple of sweet ...
— At Last • Charles Kingsley
... him, he hastened forth. The moonlight beamed brightly on the path he was taking, and seemed to throw all sorts of queer shadows before him; now it was an immense yardstick, now a thimble supported on two needles like a pair of spindle legs, then a goose with a pair of shears astride on the handle. ...
— Funny Big Socks - Being the Fifth Book of the Series • Sarah L. Barrow
... of the rear door of the barn, fresh from the interview with the old captain which had so shocked him, Tunis saw a small boy astride the low stone fence that marked the rear boundary of the Ball farm. The captain of the Seamew was in no mood to bandy words with little John-Ed Williams, but the sharp tooth of his troubled thought fastened upon one indubitable fact: if there is anything odd going on in a community, the ...
— Sheila of Big Wreck Cove - A Story of Cape Cod • James A. Cooper
... pass to-day, Billy, Kate and Robin, All astride upon the back of old grey Dobbin? Jigging, jogging off to school, down the dusty track— What must Dobbin think of it—three upon his back? Robin at the bridle-rein, in the middle Kate, Billy holding on behind, his legs ...
— A Book for Kids • C. J. (Clarence Michael James) Dennis
... noticed he had a rope in his hand, and was dragging something. As the people who had been between us hurried on I saw—I saw a child, two or three years old, in a flapping, pink sun-bonnet. He was sitting astride a toy horse. The horse was clumsily made, and had lost its tail. But it had its head still, and the board it was mounted on had fat, wooden rollers. The horse was only about that long, and so near the ground that, for all his advantage in the matter of rollers, still the little rider's ...
— The Convert • Elizabeth Robins
... did as they pleased with papa, for the oldest member of the family, sitting astride a broomstick, continued to command a charge of cavalry (a reminiscence of the Cirque-Olympique), the second blew a tin trumpet, while the third did its best to keep up with the main body of the army. Their mother was at work ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... Bennet went straight to his room, scribbled off a number of notes, threw himself astride his horse Mercury (called Ivy for short), and was on his way to the post-office before Daisy had time to stop the exclamation gaps in the girls' faces with the correct answers ...
— The Motor Girls on a Tour • Margaret Penrose
... not in a mood to receive Humphreys kindly. He hated him by intuition, and a liking for him had not been begotten by Betsey's assurances that he was making headway with Julia. August was riding astride a bag of corn on his way to mill, when Humphreys, taking a walk, ...
— The End Of The World - A Love Story • Edward Eggleston
... likely to forget you. It doesn't need E. B. H. cut on all the trees and railings to remind me of my sailor boy'; and Mrs Jo took the seat nearest the blue figure astride the balustrade, not quite sure how to begin the little sermon she wanted ...
— Jo's Boys • Louisa May Alcott
... draws to a close, and now two or three inquire together for Mr. Yates. He has mysteriously disappeared! The children have already left the table, and Paul B. is romping with a great show of equine spirit about the garden paths, astride of a stick. Jim is looking at him in undisguised admiration. "I do believe," he exclaims, "that the little feller thinks he's a hoss, with a neck more nor three feet long. See 'im bend it over agin the check-rein he's got in his ...
— Sevenoaks • J. G. Holland
... word! A fine lad!... His father lies on his deathbed and he amuses himself setting a policeman astride a bear! For shame, sir, for shame! It would be better if you ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... London so violated the immemorial usage of the Church, that, like the gravedigger's child I have heard of, trying to ring the bell, he hath half-hanged himself in the rope of the Church, or rather pulled all the Church with the Holy Father astride of it ...
— Becket and other plays • Alfred Lord Tennyson
... should be nearly drowned, the best way to revive him is to lay him, as quickly as possible, flat on his face on level ground, just turning his head a little to one side so that his nose and mouth will not be blocked. Then, kneeling astride of his legs, put both your hands on the small of his back and press downward with all your weight while you count three. This squeezes the abdomen and the lower part of the chest so as to drive the air ...
— The Child's Day • Woods Hutchinson
... mother: King Charles spaniels, Italian greyhounds, affectionate to her crinoline—you never saw them now. You saw no quality of any sort, indeed, just working people sitting in dull rows with nothing to stare at but a few young bouncing females in pot hats, riding astride, or desultory Colonials charging up and down on dismal-looking hacks; with, here and there, little girls on ponies, or old gentlemen jogging their livers, or an orderly trying a great galumphing cavalry horse; no thoroughbreds, no grooms, no bowing, ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... afford support, supply support, lend support, give foundations, furnish foundations, afford foundations, supply foundations, lend foundations; bottom, found, base, ground, imbed, embed. maintain, keep on foot; aid &c. 707. Adj. supporting, supported &c. v.; fundamental; dorsigerous[obs3]. Adv. astride on, straddle. ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... deadened. Then Merthyr drawing nearer beneath the crag, saw one who had life in him slipping down toward the body, and knew the man for Beppo. Beppo knocked his hands together and groaned miserably, but flung himself astride the beak of the crag, and took the body in his arms, sprang down with it, and lay stunned at Merthyr's feet. Merthyr looked on the face ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... twigs, lighted the candle, and set it in the hut, carefully added pinches of punk and shavings, and at length got a little blaze, by the light of which I gradually added larger shavings, then twigs all set on end astride the inner flame, making the little hut higher and wider. Soon I had light enough to enable me to select the best dead branches and large sections of bark, which were set on end, gradually increasing the height and corresponding light of the hut fire. ...
— Travels in Alaska • John Muir
... of the overturned wagon. The traces were unfastened and the horse was free, and the strange man was actually astride the animal. ...
— Dorothy Dale's Camping Days • Margaret Penrose
... came to find herself, the afternoon of the next day, astride a self-willed and unmanageable little mustang, riding in the rear of her friends, on the way through a cedar forest toward a place ...
— The Call of the Canyon • Zane Grey |
