"Straggle" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... temperament. To balance this there were great individual resources when alone,—a sort of Indian wiliness and subtlety of resource. Their gregariousness and love of drill made them more easy to keep in hand than white American troops, who rather like to straggle or go in little squads, looking out for themselves, without being bothered with officers. The blacks ...
— Army Life in a Black Regiment • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... ordered to "knuckle down and bore it hard," are now intently occupied with the succulent delights of "drum-sticks" and gizzards. And yet the man whose fingers now form these letters then sits alone. Time has not passed lightly over his head. The few hairs that straggle from beneath his skull-cap are gray, and the faintest breath makes him wrap closer in his thickly-wadded dressing-gown. His face is worn and pale, and the wrinkled hand, though it only holds a little cigarette, ...
— Trifles for the Christmas Holidays • H. S. Armstrong
... labours) followed after, and last of all came such of the dead man’s friends and relations as could keep up with such a rapid procession; these, especially the women, would get terribly blown, and would straggle back into the rear; many were fairly “beaten off.” I never observed any appearance of mourning in the mourners: the pace was too severe for any ...
— Eothen • A. W. Kinglake
... De Wet attempts to cross behind me, I want that transport to deceive him. He would never dream of it being unprotected. He cannot be in any strength; besides, I shall want every mounted man I have got for my scheme. The transport, ox and mule, must take its chance. But see that it doesn't straggle. The mule can keep up with us as long as possible, but it must keep together. Likewise the ox-transport, taking its own time, must keep closed up. I assure you the only object of these people on this ...
— On the Heels of De Wet • The Intelligence Officer
... enjoying a brief holiday from the trenches in a cantonment near the field, straggle forward and gather timidly about the airplane, listening open-mouthed for what its rider ...
— Flying for France • James R. McConnell
... enemy a little. There was some small skirmishing, and while it was going on, Farnese opened a tremendous fire across the river upon Lagny. The weak walls soon crumbled; a breach was effected, the signal for assault was given, and the troops posted on the other side, after a brief but sanguinary straggle, overcame all, resistance, and were masters of the town. The whole garrison, twelve hundred strong, was butchered, and the city thoroughly sacked; for Farnese had been brought up in the old-fashioned school of Alva; and Julian Romero and Com-. ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... now the hills that should be covered with violets are full of murderous holes, and the holes are half full of empty meat tins, and the garden walls have gone and the gardens with them, and there are no woods left to shelter anemones. Boundless masses of brown barbed wire straggle over the landscape. All the orchards there are cut down out of ruthless spite to hurt France whom they cannot conquer. All the little trees that grow near gardens are gone, aspen, laburnum and lilac. It is like this for hundreds of miles. Hundreds of ruined towns gaze ...
— Tales of War • Lord Dunsany
... fact, we learned later that all the servants were out except the nursery governess. There were two small children. There was a servants' ball somewhere, and, with the exception of the butler, it was after two before they commenced to straggle in. Except two plain-clothes men from the central office, a physician who was with Elinor in her room, and the governess, there was no one else in the house but the children, ...
— Sight Unseen • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... appointed time the militia began to straggle in; the regular officers had long been busy getting their own troops, artillery, and military stores in readiness. The regulars felt the utmost disappointment at the appearance of the militia. They numbered but few of the trained ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume Three - The Founding of the Trans-Alleghany Commonwealths, 1784-1790 • Theodore Roosevelt
... the flitter closer to the ground so that when a domed structure arose out of a tangle of overgrown shrubs and trees they were not more than fifty feet above it. There was no sign of life about the dwelling, if dwelling it was, and the unkempt straggle of growing things suggested that it had been left to itself through more than one season. Lablet wanted to set down and explore, but the captain was intent upon reaching the city. A solitary farm was of little value compared with what they might learn from a metropolis. So, rather to Raf's relief, ...
— Star Born • Andre Norton
... The collection is taken with a view to letting others know what each one does. At the proper time a couple of the men take their places at a table before the pulpit and invite the people to come forward with their offerings. The people straggle up the aisle with their gifts, being constantly urged to hasten so as not to delay the service. After half an hour or so the results obtained are remarkable and the social emulation redounds to the benefit of the preacher. It is difficult for the white visitor to get anything but ...
— The Negro Farmer • Carl Kelsey
... developed, enabling thousands to enjoy the last frontier. And it is amazing, how, in this short time, wild life has increased within the borders of the park. Beavers have returned, their dams and houses are along every stream; deer and elk straggle along the trails to welcome wide-eyed visitors; upon the promontories curious, friendly mountain sheep are regal silhouettes ...
— A Mountain Boyhood • Joe Mills
... taken up their residence in the rushes and flags of the upper end of the lake. These birds are not such exclusive westerners as their ebon-hued cousins just described; for I found them breeding at Lake Minnetonka, near Minneapolis, Minnesota, a few years ago, and they sometimes straggle, I believe, as far east as Ohio. A most beautiful bird is this member of the Icteridae family, a kind of Beau Brummel among his fellows, with his glossy black coat and rich yellow—and even orange, in highest feather—mantle covering the whole head, neck, and breast, and a large ...
— Birds of the Rockies • Leander Sylvester Keyser
... he walked down to Lumley to post his letters. And he looked at Lumley. And he found it a damn god-forsaken hell of a hole. It was a long straggle of a dusty road down in the valley, with a pale-grey dust and spatter from the pottery, and big chimneys bellying forth black smoke right by the road. Then there was a short cross-way, up which one saw the iron foundry, a black and rusty place. A little further on was the railway junction, and ...
— The Lost Girl • D. H. Lawrence
... you say. Equal? They ain't my equal, none of 'em, man to man. All men are born free an' equal, says the Constitution an' by-laws of this country of ours. Granted. But they don't stay that way long. They're all lined up to toe the mark on the start, but watch 'em straggle afore they've run a tenth ...
— A Man to His Mate • J. Allan Dunn
... subject to a raking—enfilading—fire, he deferred the signal to tack till his van had passed some distance beyond the French rear, because thus they would have to approach in a slanting direction. He left out of his account here the fact that all long columns tend to straggle in the rear; hence, although he waited till his three or four leading ships had passed the enemy before making signal to tack, the rear had got no farther than abreast the hostile van. Two of the clearest witnesses, Baird of the Portland, next to the then rear ...
— Types of Naval Officers - Drawn from the History of the British Navy • A. T. Mahan
... reddish brown tinge that surrounded the typical eye-spot of all the Attacus group for almost three-fourths of its circumference. The bottom of the eye was blackish blue, shading abruptly to pale blue at the top. The straggle M of white was in its place at the extreme tip, on the usual rose madder field. From there a broad clay-coloured band edged the wing and joined the dark colour in escallops. Through the middle of it in an irregular wavy line was ...
— Moths of the Limberlost • Gene Stratton-Porter
... walls of its immense abbey the town of Villeneuve has built itself a rough faubourg; the fragments with which the soil was covered having been, i suppose, a quarry of material. There are no streets; the small, shabby houses, almost hovels, straggle at random over the uneven ground. The only important feature is a convent of cloistered nuns, who have a large garden (always within the walls) behind their house, and whose doleful establishment you look down into, ...
— A Little Tour in France • Henry James
... according to the regular routine; the fresh men were all drawn up now, armed, the order given, and the relieved tramped into the guard-room and soon began to straggle out again, eager to troop over to a kind of buttery-hatch by the great kitchen, where a mug of milk and a hunch of bread for a refresher would be waiting for distribution, by Lady Royland's ...
— The Young Castellan - A Tale of the English Civil War • George Manville Fenn
... their feasts, or their attendance at church, they are generally behind the appointed hour. If a council is called to commence at noon, three or four Indians will have perhaps assembled at that hour; others straggle in as the day wears on; they sit or lie about, smoking their pipes, chewing tobacco, and talking; and it will probably be three o'clock before the ...
— Missionary Work Among The Ojebway Indians • Edward Francis Wilson
... her foot up tenderly and examined it with care. "My, my!" he murmured. "You poor little soldier. If I hadn't looked around that time I expect you'd been willing to walk all the way to Richmond on a foot that would make a whole regiment straggle. Just see where you've cut it—right under the second little piggie. We'll have to tie it right up and keep the bothersome old dust from getting in. By ...
— The Littlest Rebel • Edward Peple
... their lands; women bound for the bush to gather flowers against the evening toilet; and, twice a day, the toddy-cutters, each with his knife and shell. In the first grey of the morning, and again late in the afternoon, these would straggle past about their tree-top business, strike off here and there into the bush, and vanish from the face of the earth. At about the same hour, if the tide be low in the lagoon, you are likely to be bound yourself across the island for a bath, and may enter close at their heels ...
— In the South Seas • Robert Louis Stevenson
... at a gallop, though the horses obtained at Windsor were already jaded, and very slowly the bluff grew higher. Glancing over his shoulder, Grant saw a few moving objects straggle across the crest of the rise. They seemed to grow plainer while he watched them, and more ...
— The Cattle-Baron's Daughter • Harold Bindloss
... has its crowd of camp followers, who straggle and scatter. We are like a comet, bright at the head but tailing away into mere gas behind. However, every man may speak for himself, and I do not feel that your charge comes home to me. I am only bigoted against bigotry, ...
— The Stark Munro Letters • J. Stark Munro
... they heard farther. In the next place, seeing the savages were all come on shore, and that they had bent their course directly that way, they opened the fences where the milch cows were kept, and drove them all out; leaving their goats to straggle in the woods, whither they pleased, that the savages might think they were all bred wild; but the rogue who came with them was too cunning for that, and gave them an account of it all, for they went directly ...
— The Further Adventures of Robinson Crusoe • Daniel Defoe
... like Sir Walter Scott, show themselves to be singularly obtuse to the advantage of placing emphatic material in an emphatic position. Scott is almost always careless of his chapter endings: he allows the sections of his narrative to drift and straggle, instead of rounding them to an emphatic close. But more artistic novelists, like Victor Hugo for example, never fail to take advantage of the terminal position. Consider the close of Book XI, Chapter II, of "Notre Dame de Paris." The gypsy-girl, Esmeralda, has been hanged in the Place ...
— A Manual of the Art of Fiction • Clayton Hamilton
... straggle, and a long one, in the proud heart of Mr Austin before he could consent to this act of justice. Mary had pointed out the propriety of it early in the morning, and it was not until late in the evening, after having remained in silence and with his eyes closed for the whole day, that Austin made ...
— The Poacher - Joseph Rushbrook • Frederick Marryat
... friends leave the wharf-house behind them, and straggle uneasily, and very conscious of sunburn, up the now silent length of Pearl Street to seek the nearest horse-cars, they are aware of a curious fidgeting of the nurse, who flies from one side of the pavement to the other and violently shifts the baby ...
— Suburban Sketches • W.D. Howells
... Minerva's? She'll have chicken salad and ice cream and sandwiches and cake and lemonade and paper napkins and souvenirs and everything. We'll feel more like eating a little later. What do you all say? If each of us goes home we'll never get together again; we'll all straggle in there one ...
— Pee-Wee Harris Adrift • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... about all. Some of the wives begun to straggle off home, mostly in tears, and some hung round till later. I was one of these, not wishing to miss anything of an absorbing character. Edgar Tomlinson went early, too. Edgar writes 'The Lounger in the Lobby' column for the Recorder, and he'd come out to report the entertainment; but ...
— Somewhere in Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson
... are blue violets and white houstonia. Vines, thinly covered with fresh leaves, straggle over the walls,—Virginia creeper, poison ivy, grapevine, and at least one other, the name of which I do not know. A clump of tall blackberry vines is full of white blossoms, "bramble roses faint and pale," and in one corner is a tuft of scarlet blooms,—sage, perhaps, ...
— A Florida Sketch-Book • Bradford Torrey
... I have known, is grown wonderfully popular there since he was taken prisoner and tied hand and foot. To do faction justice, it is of no cowardly nature; it abuses while it attacks, and loads with panegyric those it defeats. We have nothing in Parliament but a quiet straggle for an extension of the Habeas Corpus.(871) It passed our House swimmingly, but will be drowned with the same ease in the House of Lords. On the new taxes we had an entertaining piece of pomp from the Speaker: Lord Strange (it was in a committee) said, "I will bring him ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 2 • Horace Walpole
... other men to frenzied action. There was confusion in the bunkhouse where men collided with their fellows as they plunged about for discarded garments, gun-belts, and boots. But soon they began to straggle out of the door in twos and threes and singly, racing for the corral and for the lean-to where they ...
— The Trail Horde • Charles Alden Seltzer
... long hour passed. The bit of wreck that was jammed between the rocks went to pieces and came ashore. Ben's mate came with it, but no Noll. The men began to straggle homeward, weary and worn with the night's vigil, till only Dirk and Hark Darby were left to keep the stricken master of the stone house company. Oh, such a weary waiting it was!—the ceaseless pouring of the waves upon the sand filling their ears with clamor, and the fearful tide bringing them not ...
— Culm Rock - The Story of a Year: What it Brought and What it Taught • Glance Gaylord
... two weeks before General Custer and his famished troopers began to straggle in. During that period of anxious waiting we lived almost exclusively on wild turkey, and longed for nature's meat—the buffalo; but there were none of the shaggy beasts at that time in the vicinity, so we had to content ...
— The Old Santa Fe Trail - The Story of a Great Highway • Henry Inman
... sought the Jumna Musjid for morning prayer, and the nonchalant British officials began to straggle into the vacant ...
— A Fascinating Traitor • Richard Henry Savage
... from late Gothic, which had already provided crockets, finials and carved bands of foliage so that it needed but little change to connect these into one growing plant. Sometimes these Manoelino designs, as in the palace at Cintra, are really beautiful when the parts are small and do not straggle all over the surface, but sometimes as in the Marvilla door at Santarem, or in that of the convent of the Madre de Deus at Lisbon, the mouldings are so clumsy and the design so sprawling and ...
— Portuguese Architecture • Walter Crum Watson
... little strawberry baskets may be knocked apart without disturbing the plant nearly so much as if it were planted in a compact box. Be sure to line the basket with paper before filling with earth. When the plants began to straggle about and bend over stakes were driven into the ground and ...
— The Library of Work and Play: Gardening and Farming. • Ellen Eddy Shaw
... late; but Nora thinks it's horrid, and Phil and Felix always hang back for the very last, and try to look as if they didn't belong to us at all. Nannie and Maedel go with papa, Kathie and Paul with Miss Marston, and the rest of us straggle along as we like until we get to the church. It's brown and very large, and has a good deal of ivy growing all over it. It's the church where Murray Unsworth and Helen Vassah stood sponsors for their little cousin Paul; they go there and ...
— We Ten - Or, The Story of the Roses • Lyda Farrington Kraus
... Contained in two vast edifices on both sides of the Arno; united by long corridors, which from the Uffizi straggle down to the river, cross the bridge, and reach the Pitti Palace by the upper story of the houses ...
— The South of France—East Half • Charles Bertram Black
... hand on his, as if beseeching him to forgo his irony, which hurt her. They sat silent for some time. The sheep broke their cluster, and began to straggle back to the upper side ...
— The Trespasser • D.H. Lawrence
... tersely. "One, with the address written in the clear, bold hand of a gentleman, and one, the straggle of a country clod-hopper." ...
— A Daughter of the Land • Gene Stratton-Porter
... its peculiar impress: the delicately blown breath of the first cold. The stubbles straggle wanly sunwards, and the falling leaves rustle to the earth, with a sound as of ...
— Hunger • Knut Hamsun
... every indication of inhabitants our feeling of security had increased to such an extent, that even Johnny ventured sometimes to straggle behind, or to run on before, and occasionally made a hasty incursion into the borders of the grove, though he took care never to be far out of sight or hearing of the main body. Soon after starting, we doubled a projecting promontory, and lost sight of the boat and the islet. The reef bent ...
— The Island Home • Richard Archer
... the blue tassels trailed on the carpet; her luxuriant hair instead of being braided and classically coiled, was gathered in three or four large heavy loops, and fastened rather loosely by the massive silver comb that allowed one long tress to straggle across her shoulder, while the folds in front slipped low ...
— Vashti - or, Until Death Us Do Part • Augusta J. Evans Wilson
... patients, about forty in number, straggle in from the dining-room by twos and threes, chatting in low tones. The men and women with few exceptions separate into two groups, the women congregating in the left right angle of chairs, the men sitting or standing in the right right angle. In appearance, most of the patients are tanned, ...
— The Straw • Eugene O'Neill
... chausse, French, hose; extinguo, stand, squench, quench, stint; foras, forth; species, spice; recito, read; adjuvo, aid; [Greek: aion], aevum, ay, age, ever; floccus, lock; excerpo, scrape, scrabble, scrawl; extravagus, stray, straggle; collectum, clot, clutch; colligo, coil: recolligo, recoil; severo, swear; stridulus, shrill; procurator, proxy; pulso, to push; calamus, a quill; impetere, to impeach; augeo, auxi, wax; and vanesco, vanui, wane; syllabare, to ...
— A Grammar of the English Tongue • Samuel Johnson
... other mule, doesn't care—some one'll have to keep him moving. I usually carry a little rubber sling shot in my pocket, and when Nigger gets too lazy and begins to straggle off I turn around and peck him one with a pebble. Then you ought to see him get into his place ...
— The Young Alaskans on the Missouri • Emerson Hough
... little town, grown up round an old chateau, and used as a sort of summer resort by Warsaw people, was nothing but blackened chimneys and heaps of brick. The Russians had burned everything, and the inhabitants, who had fled into the pines, were just now beginning to straggle back. Some had set up little stands in front of their burned houses and were trying to sell apples, plums, pears, about the only marketable thing left; some were cleaning brick and trying to rebuild, some contented ...
— Antwerp to Gallipoli - A Year of the War on Many Fronts—and Behind Them • Arthur Ruhl
... are not all so well kept and trimmed as I expected to find them. Some, it is true, are cut very carefully; these are generally hedges to ornamental grounds; but many of those which separate the fields straggle and sprawl, and have some high bushes and some low ones, and, in short, are no more like a hedge than many rows of bushes that we have at home. But such as they are, they are the only dividing lines of the fields, and it is certainly a more picturesque mode of division than our stone ...
— Sunny Memories Of Foreign Lands, Volume 1 (of 2) • Harriet Elizabeth (Beecher) Stowe
... estimate, as our own column moving in the middle of the road. I could say of the men of the Kanawha division, as Richard Taylor said of his Louisiana brigade with Stonewall Jackson, that they had not yet learned to straggle. [Footnote: See Taylor's "Destruction and Reconstruction," p. 50, for a curious interview with Jackson.] I tried to prevent their learning it. We had a roll-call immediately upon halting after the march, and another half an hour later, with prompt ...
— Military Reminiscences of the Civil War V1 • Jacob Dolson Cox
... each carrying a share of the provisions, commenced to follow the shore of Aotea Bay. From prudential motives they did not allow themselves to straggle, and by instinct they kept a look-out over the undulating plains to the eastward, ready with their loaded carbines. Paganel, map in hand, took a professional pleasure in ...
— In Search of the Castaways • Jules Verne
... Doctor, looking through the open gate, where the weary soldiers were beginning to straggle by, "perhaps it will not be necessary for all of us to go." And he went close to the officers, and drew his papers from his pocket. There was a hurried whispered conversation, in which the Critic and the Journalist joined. When it was over, the Doctor said, "I understand," ...
— Told in a French Garden - August, 1914 • Mildred Aldrich
... sweat-streaked, motley-dressed homeseekers would straggle up to this end of the long trail. Their thoughts went back to their old homes, or to the loved ones that they had laid away tenderly in the shifting sands of the Plains. Most of them faced the future with fortitude; the ...
— Ox-Team Days on the Oregon Trail • Ezra Meeker
... reached, but there the weary Lakerimmers were discouraged to find nothing but a smoldering fire and the signs of a hard straggle. ...
— The Dozen from Lakerim • Rupert Hughes
... he pointed to some cleverly scattered boughs and strips of bark which completely effaced the traces of last night's bivouac. "We can't afford to call the attention of any packer or hunter who might straggle this way to this particular spot and this particular tree; the more naturally," he added, "as they always prefer to camp over an old fire." Accepting this explanation meekly, as partly a reproach for her caprice of the previous ...
— Frontier Stories • Bret Harte
... brigade to see that there was no straggling in the ranks, and that the baggage carts in the rear kept close up. The task was no easy one, and was unpleasant as well as hard. Many of the officers plodded sulkily along, paying no attention whatever to their men, allowing them to straggle as they chose; and they were obliged to report several of the worst cases to the brigadier. With the Mayo Fusiliers they had less trouble than with others. Terence had, when he joined them at their first halt after the retreat began, found them ...
— With Moore At Corunna • G. A. Henty
... do think you ought to discard that convict cut. Besides, it isn't becoming. And if you're going to be an American violinist you'll have to look it—with a foreign finish." He let his hair grow. Fanny watched with interest for the appearance of the unruly lock which had been wont to straggle over his white forehead in his schoolboy days. The new and well-cut American clothes effected surprisingly little change. Fanny, surveying ...
— Fanny Herself • Edna Ferber
... proved useless under the fire that galled the artillerymen. The weak, undisciplined, and bewildered army was hemmed in on every side, and the men were shot down as they huddled together or tried to straggle away, till half their number was left upon the field. Of course none of the wounded were spared. The Americans were tomahawked and scalped where they fell; one of the savages told afterwards that ...
— Stories Of Ohio - 1897 • William Dean Howells
... During this constant Straggle it happened, that Phillis one Day at publick Prayers smote the Heart of a gay West-Indian, who appear'd in all the Colours which can affect an Eye that could not distinguish between being fine and tawdry. This American in a Summer-Island Suit was too shining and too gay to be resisted ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... rose," said her governess. "And do you notice how fragrant they are? The tree is always low and crooked, just as you see it, and the branches straggle not very gracefully. The under part of the dark-green leaves is whitish and downy-looking, and the flowers are handsome enough to warrant the cultivation of the tree just for their sake, but the large golden fruit is much ...
— Among the Trees at Elmridge • Ella Rodman Church
... persecuted, now permitted—till, by the edict of pacification of 1570, it was agreed that persons of both religions should in future live together in good intelligence. The immortal horrors of St. Bartholomew, however, changed the face of things, and a long straggle ensued; during which, at different times, the Rochellois showed themselves undaunted defenders of the faith. Always opposed and persecuted, the Protestants were never publicly allowed, by the State, to follow the exercise ...
— Barn and the Pyrenees - A Legendary Tour to the Country of Henri Quatre • Louisa Stuart Costello
... refresh themselves; when we again moved forward, passing the wood where the gallant Ross was killed. It was noon, and as yet all had gone on smoothly with out any check or alarm. So little indeed was pursuit dreamt of, that the column began to straggle, and to march without much regard to order; when suddenly the bugle sounded from the rear, and immediately after some musket shots were heard. In an instant the men were in their places, and the regiments wheeled into line, facing towards the enemy. ...
— The Campaigns of the British Army at Washington and New Orleans 1814-1815 • G. R. Gleig
... not likely to meet any one on your way, not even a tramp. Presently the hills open, and you come to the prettiest village on the whole coast. The green common slopes down to the sea, and great woods rustle and look glad all round the margin of the luxuriant grass-land. Along the cliff straggle a few stone houses, and the square tower with its sinister arrow-holes dominates the row. There is smooth water inshore; but half a mile or so out eastward there runs a low range of rocks. One night ...
— The Romance of the Coast • James Runciman
... those base eyes of jealousy Which hope to see a covert murder done. I find the finest needle in the house, And press the point down on the slimy hide. The blunt edge crushes, does not pierce the shape, And brings the straggle that I gloat to see. The legs stretch out, and work to get away; A barbed tongue and twin fangs drool from the mouth. The eyes protrude, and glare with deadly hate, Until they fix at last in ...
— Stories in Verse • Henry Abbey
... of Liebenstein (for the greater part timber-framed and red-tiled) straggle up the immediate hills which surround it. Those of more pretention and inevitable ugliness range themselves decently and in order along two parallel roads. Aloof as this village is from "the madding crowd's ignoble strife," it has yet been touched to its ...
— A War-time Journal, Germany 1914 and German Travel Notes • Harriet Julia Jephson
... any use in that, they haven't any milk, or wool either. Let them stand still as they are. They've been worked to their full value; all the fruit has dropped off of them already. Don't you see how they straggle along aimlessly, alone, untended? Why, I do believe they're dumb with age; they don't even bleat at being away from the rest of the flock. They seem perfectly harmless—just silly. Let's go ...
— Amphitryo, Asinaria, Aulularia, Bacchides, Captivi • Plautus Titus Maccius
... the horrors of the days of slavery are by many forgotten, and the children who have been born since the War of the Rebellion know of that fearful straggle, and of the causes that led to it, only as ...
— Harriet, The Moses of Her People • Sarah H. Bradford
... neatness. The trim brown paths were swept clean of every leaf or fallen petal, each of the little square beds had its border of big white quahog clamshells, and not even a sweet-pea vine would have dared to straggle from its appointed course under ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1905 to 1906 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... intoned the verses of Al-Mutanabbi, and, wrapping themselves in their rugs, fell asleep. But in the morning they were rudely jostled from their dreams by a spurt from the hose of the sailors washing the deck. Complaining not, they straggle down to their bunks to change their clothes. And Khalid, as he is doing this, implores Shakib not to mention to him any more that New-World paradise. "For I have dreamt last night," he continues, "that, in the multicoloured robes of an Arab amir, on a caparisoned dromedary, at ...
— The Book of Khalid • Ameen Rihani
... Lamotte?" inquired a particularly dirty woman, whose cap, stuck on the side of her, head, allowed locks of grey hair to straggle from under it. "Ah! is ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... declaring everyone (except the superior clergy) under the severest censure of the Church if they should dare approach. Not a bad place for prayer and meditation is Yaguaron. A score or two of little houses, built of straw and wood and thatched with palm-leaves, straggle on the hillside above the shores of a great camalote-covered* lake. Parrots scream noisily amongst the trees, and red macaws hover like hawks over the little patches of maize and mandioca planted amongst the palms. Round every house is ...
— A Vanished Arcadia, • R. B. Cunninghame Graham
... and it is hard to follow the course of the struggle if the narrative loses itself in the different threads of the various corps engaged. For all were fighting at the same time, and the only generalizations possible are that the straggle tended to concentrate from both wings towards the apex at Ypres and to culminate in the combat of the last day ...
— A Short History of the Great War • A.F. Pollard
... sadly. "Plenty of men would volunteer, but, much as every one is suffering—the ladies almost as bad as your wounded, Morton—I dare not send them, for they would never get back with their loads. Many of the brave fellows would straggle back, of course, but instead of bringing ice, Doctor, they would be bearing ...
— Fix Bay'nets - The Regiment in the Hills • George Manville Fenn
... trains and motor transport; don't forget the railways and roads on every side; don't forget the canals; and for the Lord's and everybody else's sake, don't be surprised by Hun aircraft. As regards the pilots—keep in close formation when possible; don't straggle and don't climb above ...
— Cavalry of the Clouds • Alan Bott
... running off a dried stream bed. Altogether it is a glorious affair, and is just settling down to the stage when personal combat begins when a bugle blares out the "Cease fire." This is followed by the "assembly," and we straggle to the edge of the wood to find most of our battalion there. The brigade is again formed up and we sit down for lunch. The cavalry, our enemies of the morning, trot back to camp, where a hot meal awaits them, and we know we shall not see them ...
— From the St. Lawrence to the Yser with the 1st Canadian brigade • Frederic C. Curry
... in the room, poor souls, were all cross and sleepy. Nobody had time to converse with Johnnie. As they went down the stairs another contingent began to straggle up, having eaten a hasty meal after their night's work, and making now for certain of ...
— The Power and the Glory • Grace MacGowan Cooke
... yards off—and Blunt unlimbered his guns, and began to fire, when we soon saw a body of cavalry moving off across our front, to turn our left flank, and Blunt said we must go back to defend our camp. So he limbered up, and we all (i.e. our squadron and Blunt's guns) began to straggle back through the high crops. But Blunt said he must leave one troop with two of his guns, and French's troop was stopped for the purpose. Instead of staying with it, he felt so sure we should have a chance at the cavalry we had seen (Mutineers) ...
— Seen and Unseen • E. Katharine Bates
... roaming over the little flower plot in search of room for the geranium, which did not appear; prince's feather and marigolds so choked up the ground where balsams did not straggle over it. Molly looked as Daisy did at the possibilities of the case, looked again at the strange sweet little face which was so busy in her garden; and then made a sudden movement. With two or three motions of hands and knees she drew herself ...
— Melbourne House • Elizabeth Wetherell
... wife clasped a hand of Mabel between them. Mr. Altman and his wife clung to each other, while George Ashbridge had fallen slightly to the rear with Agnes, while the rangers seemed to straggle irregularly forward, as they had done when pushing through the woods, but, in truth, they were advancing in accordance with a well-defined idea of the best course to ...
— The Phantom of the River • Edward S. Ellis
... Hetman! Damnation! Who do you think you are! Who do you think I am!" burst out the Red officer in a fury. "Get out of my way!——" He pushed the peasants right and left and strode away toward the convent. His soldiers began to straggle after him. One of them winked at the wood-cutters with his tongue in his cheek, and slung the rifle he carried over his right shoulder ...
— The Crimson Tide • Robert W. Chambers
... walked down the crooked trail along which straggle the cabins, I saw something white in a tree at the far end. Supposing it to be a White-rabbit in a snare, I went near and found, to my surprise, first that it was a dead house-cat, a rare species here; second, ...
— The Arctic Prairies • Ernest Thompson Seton
... declined sharply. "We've taken our place and we must stick to it. We can't afford to straggle. Hullo! it's just on twelve. Thwaite has had three hours to prepare, and he's bound to have wakened the south. I fancy the business won't quite come ...
— The Half-Hearted • John Buchan
... landscape. It is a town of steep streets and staircases, with quaintly framed prospects, and solemn vistas opening at every turn across the lowland. One of these views might be selected for especial notice. In front, irregular buildings losing themselves in country as they straggle by the roadside; then the open post-road with a cypress to the right; afterwards, the rich green fields, and on a bit of rising ground an ancient farmhouse with its brown dependencies; lastly, the blue hills above Fossato, and far ...
— New Italian sketches • John Addington Symonds
... got some distance to the westward, the watering places the native had relied on were found to be dry, and it was only after the most acute sufferings from thirst, and the loss of some more horses, that they managed to straggle back to Mount Welcome. Austin's conduct during these terrible marches seems to have approached the heroic. When his companions fell off one by one and laid down to die, and the native inhabitant of the wilds was cowering weeping under a bush, he managed to reach the little ...
— The History of Australian Exploration from 1788 to 1888 • Ernest Favenc
... always talking about Mayorga and Rueda and Bennyventy.—'We made the rear-guard, after General Paget; and drove the French every time; and all the infantry did was to sit about in wine-shops till we whipped 'em out, an' steal an' straggle an' play the tom-fool in general. And when it came to a stand-up fight at Corunna, 'twas we that had to stay seasick aboard the transports, an' watch the infantry in the thick o' the caper. Very well they behaved, too—'specially ...
— The Boy Scouts Book of Stories • Various
... removed to the Nark, the captives placed aboard, and that then Lieutenant Summers had steamed away, leaving a detail of men on guard at the house and the radio plant to round up any of the smugglers who, thinking the place deserted, might straggle back. ...
— The Radio Boys with the Revenue Guards • Gerald Breckenridge
... of England has not a striking effect upon the visitor as he approaches it. It is scattered over a broad surface upon a gently undulating plain, and its suburbs straggle out into the country villages, which it is steadily absorbing in its rapid growth; the Irwell passes in a winding course through the city, receiving a couple of tributaries; this river divides Manchester ...
— England, Picturesque and Descriptive - A Reminiscence of Foreign Travel • Joel Cook
... walked, dressed in a wretched brown coat and dirty checkered trousers that fitted his lean, bony limbs tightly. A straw sombrero, artistic in spite of being broken, covered an enormous head and allowed his dirty gray, almost red, hair to straggle out long and kinky at the end like a poet's curls. But the most notable thing about this man was not his clothing or his European features, guiltless of beard or mustache, but his fiery red face, from which he got the nickname by which he was ...
— The Reign of Greed - Complete English Version of 'El Filibusterismo' • Jose Rizal
... time the French dared not straggle. Every man who left the ranks or lagged behind was killed. The Arabs were seldom seen, but they lay concealed behind every inequality of the ground, every clump of bushes. Occasionally, when there ...
— At Aboukir and Acre - A Story of Napoleon's Invasion of Egypt • George Alfred Henty
... men dropping out of the ranks filled the woods with a penumbra of stragglers. Hunger and fatigue, stimulated by the remembrance of abandoned camps passed through, later in the day led squads—Beauregard and some of his staff say, led regiments—to straggle back from the fighting front to the restful and attractive rear. Language cannot be stronger than that used by General Beauregard. The fire of the gunboats, many of the shells passing over the high river-bank and exploding far inland, appeared even ...
— From Fort Henry to Corinth • Manning Ferguson Force
... stately pleasure-dome of Kubla Khan in Xanadu, and twenty other whimsical things. At nearly midnight, when we go to bed, we take a last look at it. It is a ruin, like the Colosseum,—great gaps of darkness are there, with broken rows of splendor. The lights are gone on one side the dome,—they straggle fitfully here and there down the other and over the faade, fading even as we look. It is melancholy enough. It is a bankrupt heiress, an old and wrinkled beauty, that tells strange tales of its former wealth and charms, when the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various
... orchard of red-dotted cherry-trees: purchasable for a mere fraction, but not to be feloniously abstracted. Through Altenburg, Zwickau, Oederon, and Chemnitz; up steep hill paths, and by the side of unpronounceable villages, until, on the morning of the fourth day, we straggle ...
— A Tramp's Wallet - stored by an English goldsmith during his wanderings in Germany and France • William Duthie
... chaperon. She was just as ready as anyone in her train to stop in front of shop windows, to straggle slowly down the middle of the street, or to thrust her hand into Richard's bag of peanuts whenever he passed it around. Cracking shells and munching the nuts, they strolled along with a sense of freedom which thrilled Georgina to the core. She had never felt it ...
— Georgina of the Rainbows • Annie Fellows Johnston
... the same day McClellan and other generals straggled about the country, visiting cities hundreds of miles distant from the camp. And such generals complain of straggling! Make the army fight! inspire with confidence the soldier—then he will not straggle. ...
— Diary from March 4, 1861, to November 12, 1862 • Adam Gurowski
... out one by one from their nest of gunny-bags under the cart-tilts. There were always many who could do no more than breathe, and the milk was dropped into their toothless mouths drop by drop, with due pauses when they choked. Each morning, too, the goats were fed; and since they would straggle without a leader, and since the natives were hirelings, Scott was forced to give up riding, and pace slowly at the head of his flocks, accommodating his step to their weaknesses. All this was sufficiently absurd, and he ...
— The Day's Work, Volume 1 • Rudyard Kipling
... their plan of a night attack had failed; but they did not lose the hope that they held the Romans at their mercy. The fight had become a blockade; they would coop the Romans within their narrow limits, or force them to straggle on their way under a renewal of the same merciless assault. To have withstood the legions and occupied their ground, was itself a triumph for Gaetulians and Moors. They spread their long lines round either hill and lighted a great ring of watchfires; but their minds were set on passing ...
— A History of Rome, Vol 1 - During the late Republic and early Principate • A H.J. Greenidge
... invited to dinner the new British Minister Merry and his wife, the Spanish Minister Yrujo and his wife, the French Minister Pichon and his wife, and Mr. and Mrs. Madison. When dinner was announced, Mr. Jefferson gave his hand to Mrs. Madison and seated her on his right, leaving the rest to straggle in as they pleased. Merry, fresh from the Court of St. James, was aghast and affronted; and when a few days later, at a dinner given by the Secretary of State, he saw Mrs. Merry left without an escort, while Mr. Madison ...
— Jefferson and his Colleagues - A Chronicle of the Virginia Dynasty, Volume 15 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Allen Johnson
... not a large garden, this of Anne Peace's, but every inch of space was made the most of. The little square and oblong beds lay close to the fence, and from tulip-time to the coming of frost they were ablaze with flowers. Nothing was allowed to straggle, or to take up more than its share of room. The roses were tied firmly to their neat green stakes; the crown-imperials nodded over a spot of ground barely large enough to hold their magnificence; while the phlox and sweet-william actually had to fight ...
— "Some Say" - Neighbours in Cyrus • Laura Elizabeth Howe Richards
... shepherd has a sheep dog, partly for the sake of companionship and partly for assistance. A good sheep dog is a very useful and valuable animal. He aids the shepherd in keeping the flock together whenever any of them show a disposition to straggle, and the sheep speedily learn to know him and regard him as their friend. He never injures them, though he frequently makes a great pretense of doing so. Sometimes he takes a refractory sheep by the ear, or seizes it by the wool on his neck, but the case is exceedingly ...
— The Land of the Kangaroo - Adventures of Two Youths in a Journey through the Great Island Continent • Thomas Wallace Knox
... would be best to leave you here. None of your party will straggle this way. They have all fled. You can lie here and ...
— In the Valley • Harold Frederic
... the letters, and laid them before him. He took up the fatal letter. "Why, this is not written by Mrs. Little. I know her neat Italian hand too well. See how the letters slant and straggle." ...
— Put Yourself in His Place • Charles Reade
... the forest assumed the appearance of those towards Khegumpa. Q. robur, recommences, cedars straggle down; Pinus pendula, more common, Arenariae sp., Lomaria of Khegumpa, Hottoneoides ranunculofolia common, Luzula, Sedi sp., Sambucus common throughout in shady spots, Radsurae sp., Daphne papyracea, rare, Acer sterculiacea ...
— Journals of Travels in Assam, Burma, Bhootan, Afghanistan and The - Neighbouring Countries • William Griffith
... if you are devising means of subsistence for the widows and orphans of the men who will straggle out to be slaughtered to-night,' said Luciano; 'you ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... Oceanica in cultural achievements, whose origin he therefore assigns to that vast congeries of islands stretching from Asia toward South America in latitude 25 deg. south. These islands, closely clustered as far as the Paumota group, straggle along with widening spaces between, through Easter Isle, which carries the indestructible memorials of a strange civilization, through Sala-y-Gomez, San Felix, and St. Ambrose almost to the threshold of the ...
— Influences of Geographic Environment - On the Basis of Ratzel's System of Anthropo-Geography • Ellen Churchill Semple
... I can get out of him except more chuckles. I files away the name, though; and that afternoon, while we was waitin' for a quorum of directors to straggle into the General Offices, I ...
— The House of Torchy • Sewell Ford
... to Besca Nova, a most picturesque and equally evil-smelling port, sheltered by widely stretching rocky points (one of which bears the appropriate name of Punta Scoglia), which rise to mountainous masses behind the little town, with a modern cemetery chapel on one of the lower spurs. The houses straggle round the curve of the shore, with groups of trees here and there, and little creeks running up into the land, crossed by narrow bridges; the streets, mere alleys often, scarcely permitting two persons to pass each other, rise ...
— The Shores of the Adriatic - The Austrian Side, The Kuestenlande, Istria, and Dalmatia • F. Hamilton Jackson
... Thorlakson on a handcar or a freight train. But again he had not reckoned on the number of men with whom he would have to deal at the camp. McIvor's party proper consisted only of three men beside himself; but the half-breeds and others who had been invited for a spree began to straggle in till escape became almost impossible. They caught him the first time he tried it and after that he had been guarded more closely. It was plain to him that Nickleby, knowing of this McIvor expedition, had paid McIvor's agent to carry him into the heart of the wilderness with ...
— Every Man for Himself • Hopkins Moorhouse
... committee of supply on the ordnance estimates. On a division, however, ministers were left in a minority of twenty-two. It was clear from this that ministers had more to decide on than the reform question, and that they had to straggle not merely for their bill, but their places. On the next day, therefore, ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan |
