"Underfoot" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... of no meaning, I got my eyes down to my canvas and began to peck at it perfunctorily, when a snapping of twigs underfoot and a swishing of branches in the thicket warned me of a second intruder, not approaching by the path, but forcing a way toward it through the underbrush, and very briskly too, ...
— The Guest of Quesnay • Booth Tarkington
... You have been here alone with me with that door shut. Have I said or done anything that a Gorgio duke wouldn't do? Ah, God's love, but you were bold to come! I married you by the River Starzke; I looked upon you as my wife; and here you were alone with me! I had my rights, and I had been trampled underfoot ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... Grant were the names of these friends. They were all sitting on the lawn when the post came in. The sunset cast a pink glow on the curves of the beautiful river; the roses were in perfect bloom; overhead and underfoot the grass and trees were of that rich and tender green which is peculiar to England. The letter interested Mrs. Boyd so much that she read it aloud to her friends, who were rich and kind-hearted people, with one ...
— Nine Little Goslings • Susan Coolidge
... the view on every side. The actual field underfoot, the actual site of the fair, is visible, but the surrounding valleys and the Downs beyond them are hidden with vast masses of grey mist. For a moment, perhaps, a portion may lift as the breeze drives it along, and the bold, sweeping curves of a distant ...
— Nature Near London • Richard Jefferies
... atmosphere gathered into dull grey, formless clouds; it became quite warm, the thermometer rising to twenty below; and the moisture fell out of the sky in hard frost-granules that hissed like dry sugar or driving sand when kicked underfoot. After that it became clear and cold again, until enough moisture had gathered to blanket the earth from the cold of outer space. That was all. Nothing happened. No storms, no churning waters and threshing forests, nothing but the machine-like precipitation of accumulated moisture. ...
— The Faith of Men • Jack London
... upon the dais—"nor His teachings. They did not like the new order, and they wandered off, to join those outcasts who had broken His laws, and had been sent to the smaller land of this world, where it is always warm, and where there are great trees thick with moss, and the earth underfoot steams, and brings forth wriggling life. Neen, we call that land, as this larger land ...
— The God in the Box • Sewell Peaslee Wright
... with clay. For an army or even a regiment to go as he goes would be almost impossible, and this not because of the woodland or undergrowth, but because of the lack of water, the lack of towns or large villages and the clay underfoot. ...
— England of My Heart—Spring • Edward Hutton
... blurred landscape, wreathed in engine-smoke, had streamed by her; by night she had seen nothing but the dull, stuffed walls of her sleeping compartment, and it was an exquisite physical pleasure to have the firm, unshaken floor underfoot, to be surrounded by the appointments of a beautiful house, to be able to move of one's own volition again, and not to be taken like a parcel in a van from one end of Europe to the other. And how delicious also it was to be clean, to have revelled in soap and water, instead ...
— Daisy's Aunt • E. F. (Edward Frederic) Benson
... feel of gravel underfoot ought to guide her down the drive to the great gateway; and once outside the park, clear of its overshadowing trees, one would surely find mitigation of darkness sufficient to show ...
— Red Masquerade • Louis Joseph Vance
... about the tariff, and the general was wrangling with him. The Barclays were talking to themselves, and the children were clattering about underfoot, and in the trees overhead. Bob's eyes and Molly's met, and the man shuddered at what he saw of pathos and yearning, and he said: "Well, why not? It's no worse to go than to want to go. What's wrong about ...
— A Certain Rich Man • William Allen White
... it, and took long, thankful draughts. It was all most grateful after the scorching desert. The fresh trees meeting in canopy overhead were full of monkeys and bright birds; festooned vines swung their great ropes here and there; long heavy grass carpeted underfoot. ...
— African Camp Fires • Stewart Edward White
... resort. The king sits in a small raised gallery; ambassadors, great men belonging to the court, and strangers of quality, are within the innermost rail directly under him, that space being raised from the ground, covered overhead with canopies of silk and velvet, and laid underfoot with good carpets. The meaner men, representing what we would call gentry, are within the outer rail; the common people being on the outside of all, in a base court, so that all may see the king. The whole of this disposition hath much resemblance to ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume IX. • Robert Kerr
... as water now," said she; "but we must not quarrel with anything to-day on that account; and matting will dry on the hill better than at home. If it turns out rotten, we must try and spare a piece of the cloth from overhead, to lay underfoot: but George will feel it more like home, if he has a bit of matting to ...
— The Settlers at Home • Harriet Martineau
... poor Jones quite as well as the lieutenant did yesterday. "If you have a brain, sir, don't use it. Stay in sight of the enemy and be shot." Then he sent us by a way I never should have chosen in cold blood, across the top of a steep slope, with sliding sand and loose stones underfoot, while all the time the same wind and rain whipped and beat us unmercifully. At last we were halted behind another hill, put in skirmish line, and told what we were to do. We were to rush the ridge, then to run down to a trench made and occupied by our engineers, while they, being ...
— At Plattsburg • Allen French
... Snow underfoot this morning; and a brown blink on the horizon which shows that more is coming. I have the odd feeling that I have never really seen my house before, the snow lights it all up so strangely, tinting the ceilings a glowing white, touching up high lights on the top of picture-frames, and throwing the ...
— The Altar Fire • Arthur Christopher Benson
... this common sense, which had never long deserted her in the past, could never permanently desert her in the future. She imagined that nothing was stronger than common sense; she had small suspicion that in their noblest hours men and women have invariably despised common sense, and trampled it underfoot as the most contemptible of human attributes. Therefore she was content and unalarmed. And she found pleasure even in trifles, as, for example, that the maid had set two cups-and-saucers and two only; the duality struck her as delicious. She looked close at Arthur's ...
— Leonora • Arnold Bennett
... clash of blade upon blade; the occasional explosion of a pistol; the dull, crushing sound of unwarded blows; the sharp scream of agony as some poor wretch felt the stroke of the merciless steel; the cries and groans of those who had been smitten down, and, still conscious, were being trampled underfoot by the combatants; the deep muttered curse; the sharp word of command; and the occasional cheer that broke from the lips of our own gallant lads. Suddenly there was a louder hurrah, a quick scurrying rush, a loud shout of command in Spanish for every man to save himself, ...
— The Pirate Slaver - A Story of the West African Coast • Harry Collingwood
... with Sissy's impertinent finger under her wrist, while all outdoors was calling to her; for which she had forborne often and often during the week, only to be more thoroughly bullied on Saturdays. Yet she tore it across and recklessly trampled it underfoot. Then with her hands over her ears, lest she hear the imperturbable and maddeningly excellent Sissy play "In Sweet Dreams" without the ...
— The Madigans • Miriam Michelson
... of December, when miry snow underfoot and grayish fog all around combined to make Spitalfields a malarious marsh, the Red Beadle, coming in with the week's wages, found to his horror a doctor hovering over Hulda's bed like the shadow ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... seems, even more visibly than it wastes nations. Already the streets were ankle-deep in filth. There were broken lamps and broken bottles and broken windowpanes everywhere, and one could not step without an accompaniment of crunching glass from underfoot. ...
— Paths of Glory - Impressions of War Written At and Near the Front • Irvin S. Cobb
... and virtuous than any other she soever, and to maintain that same against him, on horse or afoot, with lance, battle-axe or sword. Thus, see you messire, even a love-lorn lover hath betimes his compensations, and the sward is soft underfoot, and level." Saying which, the knight cocked a delicate eyebrow in questioning fashion, and laid a slender finger to the ...
— Beltane The Smith • Jeffery Farnol
... lay in a bay some two miles from the shore, and let me tell you, if you do not know it, that Arctic ice is no skating-rink. There are great hills, and knolls, and bergs, and valleys spread all over, and even where it's about level, the underfoot is as hard going as a newly-metalled road before the steam-roller ...
— The Literary World Seventh Reader • Various
... fragrance of the field, listening to the hum of insect life stirring back to awareness after a season of inactivity. Then he was running and tumbling, barefoot, his shirt open, feeling the soft grass give way underfoot and the soil was good and rich ...
— Pleasant Journey • Richard F. Thieme
... cold January night and everybody, as usual, walked to the party; the snow creaked and ground underfoot, one could hear the arriving steps in the drawing-room. They stamped and scraped to get rid of it in the porch, and hurried through the hall, muffled figures in overshoes, to emerge from an upstairs bedroom radiant, ...
— The Imperialist • (a.k.a. Mrs. Everard Cotes) Sara Jeannette Duncan
... loyalty to the race of Sforza. The period of anarchy and confusion which followed is described in mournful language by the Milanese chroniclers. During the next forty years, the city was continually taken and sacked by contending armies, her fair parks and gardens were trampled underfoot by foreign soldiery, and her beautiful churches and palaces destroyed by shells and cannon-balls. French and German ruffians tore the clothes off the backs of the poor, and snatched the bread from the lips of starving children. People ...
— Beatrice d'Este, Duchess of Milan, 1475-1497 • Julia Mary Cartwright
... here you can watch the variable glow of color spread over the whole breadth of country, from the ground at one's feet to the distant purple hilltops of Bethlehem. The fluid air seems to swim, as if laden with incense. The rocks underfoot are of all tones of lavender in shadow, and of tender, warm gleams in the light, casting vivid violet shadows athwart the mottled orange of ...
— Public Speaking • Irvah Lester Winter
... it, they are jovial fellows. But how different is a cellar, and especially a cellar neglected. You plunge down rough steps into a cavern. A mouldy air from dried-up and forgotten vegetables meets you. The earth may not be moist underfoot, but it has not the kind feeling of sun-warmed earth. And if big rats hide there, how bold and hideous they are! There are cool farmhouse cellars floored with cement and shelved with sweet-smelling ...
— Old Caravan Days • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... afford little protection against the wind, and so stiff with blubber that they would stand up by themselves, in spite of frequent scrapings with knives and rubbings with penguin skins, and always there were underfoot the great granite boulders which made walking difficult even in daylight and calm weather. As Levick said, "the road to hell might be paved with good intentions, but it seemed probable that hell itself would be paved something after the style ...
— The Worst Journey in the World, Volumes 1 and 2 - Antarctic 1910-1913 • Apsley Cherry-Garrard
... hardiment from the confidence of the good knights, and smote him as he fled so sore that he pierced him with his spear to the heart and toppled him to the ground dead. And the one whose leg Lancelot had lopped off was so trampled underfoot of the knights that he had ...
— High History of the Holy Graal • Unknown
... with it," he cried, and flung the remains of his lighted cigarette on the pile of the carpet, and trod it viciously underfoot with his heavy ...
— The Man in the Twilight • Ridgwell Cullum
... is impossible to walk in that fateful way in a crowded city thoroughfare. Besides, one passes so many confectioners with their mingled temptation and disgust. Pudge rode on the trolley as far as the city limits. Here there was softer ground underfoot and a hint of melancholy in the fields. A flock of crows going over gave the ...
— The Sturdy Oak - A Composite Novel of American Politics by Fourteen American Authors • Samuel Merwin, et al.
... after a St. Martin's summer unusually prolonged, the rain came down in terrible earnest. Day after day, the clouds condensed, grew water, and poured like a squeezed sponge. A wet November indeed it was—wet overhead—wet underfoot—wet all round! and ...
— Paul Faber, Surgeon • George MacDonald
... early morning, though it had not been too much for the birds that sang in the garden back of us, had left a skim of ice in damp spots, and now, in the late gray of the afternoon, the ice was visible and palpable underfoot in the Colosseum, where crowds of people wandered severally or collectively about in the half-frozen mud. They were, indeed, all over the place, up and down, in every variety of costume and aspect, but none were so picturesque ...
— Roman Holidays and Others • W. D. Howells
... rails in the ground, climbing almost hidden in the withered grass underfoot. Poterloo points out with his foot this bit of abandoned track, and smiles; "That, that's our railway. It was a cripple, as you may say; that means something that doesn't move. It didn't work very quickly. A snail could have kept pace with it. We shall remake it. But certainly ...
— Under Fire - The Story of a Squad • Henri Barbusse
... converted into a sort of reliquary. She took out of it the half-burned cigarette, the old glove, the withered violets, and a visiting-card with his name, on which three unimportant lines had been written. She insulted these keepsakes, she tore them with her nails, she trampled them underfoot, she reduced them to fragments; she left nothing whatever of them, except a pile of shreds, which at last she set fire to. She had a feeling as if she were employed in executing two great culprits, who deserved cruel tortures at her hands; and, with ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... am very, very humble. I have put my foolish pride underfoot. I am not broken. I am still very proud and, I fear, self-conceited, in spite of my severe lesson. Enid is beautiful, and I know it, and it helps me write this letter, but I have no right to ask even friendship from you. My proved failure as a playwright ...
— The Light of the Star - A Novel • Hamlin Garland
... and rumbling and hammering. Little by little the scene grew plain: towering, black buildings here and there, long rows of shops and sheds, little railways branching everywhere, bare gray cinders underfoot and oceans of billowing black smoke above. On one side of the grounds ran a railroad with a dozen tracks, and on the other side lay the lake, where steamers came ...
— The Jungle • Upton Sinclair
... heavy jowl, cut by the cheek-strap, and the bullying eyes, he felt both hate and fear, as if brought face to face with all that he despised and loathed, yet strangely dreaded. The cold certainty of law and order upholding the strong, treading underfoot the weak, the smug front of meanness that only the purest spirits may attack, seemed to be facing him. And the odd thing was, this man was only carrying out his duty. Shelton moistened ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... and others opened the door and took their coats. The first thing they saw was a huge, fireplace, a fireplace a dozen feet across, made of great boulders, and with whole sections of a pine tree blazing in it. Underfoot was polished hardwood, with skins of bear and buffalo. The firelight flickered upon shields and battle-axes and broad-swords, hung upon the oaken pillars; while between them were tapestries, picturing the Song of Roland and ...
— The Metropolis • Upton Sinclair
... set up planks outdoors to feed the lot I'll be bringing, Aaron," the Captain said. "Come five-years' springtime, when I bring your Amish neighbors out, I'll not forget to have in my pockets a toot of candy for the little Stoltzes I'll expect to see underfoot." Martha, whose English was rusty, blushed none the less. Aaron grinned as he slapped the reins over the rumps of his team. "Giddap!" The cart rumbled across the deck and down the ramp, onto the soil of ...
— Blind Man's Lantern • Allen Kim Lang
... morning in May. Spring had really come at last with its warm, life-giving sunshine, and the air was heavy with the smell of growing things. Overhead the blue sky was clear and cloudless, underfoot the new grass made a thick carpet invitingly cool and refreshing. The trees were sporting fresh garlands of leaves, and in woods and gardens the bright-colored blossoms glowed and blushed. How beautiful ...
— The Lilac Lady • Ruth Alberta Brown
... of science this is frank mysticism; but without a sense of the unknown and unknowable, life is flat and barren. Without the emotion of the beautiful, the sublime, the mysterious, there is no art, no religion, no literature. How to get from the clod underfoot to the brain and consciousness of man without invoking something outside of, and superior to, natural laws, is the question. For my own part I content myself with the thought of some unknown and doubtless unknowable tendency ...
— The Breath of Life • John Burroughs
... in the vividness of their crimson and orange, while the bracken was a sea of pale gold. There were all sorts of delightful things to be found—acorns lay so plentifully in the pathway that the girls could not help scrunching them underfoot. A few were already sending out tiny shoots in anticipation of spring, and these were carefully saved to take home and grow in bottles. A stream ran through the wood, its banks almost completely covered with vivid green mosses, in sheets so thick and compact that ...
— The Luckiest Girl in the School • Angela Brazil
... was to meet on the 13th. Instead of taking any immediate action he issued a proclamation, which in no way faced the exigencies of the situation, and was no sooner posted on the walls at Brussels than it was torn down and trampled underfoot. It is only just to say that the king had behind him the unanimous support of the Dutch people, especially the commercial classes. To them separation was far preferable to admitting the Belgians to that predominant share of the representation ...
— History of Holland • George Edmundson
... highway, dusty with a week's drought, carried back his thoughts so fully to old times that he walked on unconscious of the noontide heat and the sultriness of the road. Yet when he came to the lanes, green overhead and underfoot, and as silent as the mountain-heights round Engelberg, he felt the solace of the change. All the recollections treasured up in the secret cells of memory were springing into light at every step; and these were remembrances less bitter than those ...
— Cobwebs and Cables • Hesba Stretton
... forward; not a laggard in the ranks; not a man who shirked the leaden shower; not one who failed to offer his breast openly and fearlessly to the red death which to them might come when it would. Unwaveringly over rocks, chasms and mines, they followed the tall figure of their leader; death underfoot, death overhead! What would courage avail against concealed mines? Yet like a pack of hounds that reck naught while the scent is warm, they pressed forward, ever forward; across the level opening, where some dropped out of the race, and over the ramparts! A brief struggle; confusion, turmoil; ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham
... and appreciated and enjoyed, every phase of that heterogeneous crowd—miners in their exaggeratedly rough clothes, brocaded or cotton clad Chinese, gorgeous Spaniards or Chilenos, drunken men, sober men, excited men, empty cans or cases kicking around underfoot, frantic runners for hotels or steamboats trying to push their way by, newsboys and cigar boys darting about and miraculously worming their way through impenetrable places. Atop a portable pair of steps a pale, well-dressed young man was playing thimble-rig on his knees with a gilt pea. ...
— The Gray Dawn • Stewart Edward White
... opposite; you are feeding on Shakespeare just now, and you are doing well! He is the author who puts men at grips with events; observe that by them, whether for good or for ill, the event is always conquered. In his works, it is crushed underfoot. ...
— The George Sand-Gustave Flaubert Letters • George Sand, Gustave Flaubert
... and hands dripping red, were trying to get a boat overside when Bedient regained a sort of consciousness. The Truxton was wallowing underfoot—as one in the saddle feels the tendons of his mount give way after a race. The Captain helped a huge Chinese to hold the wheel. The sea was insane.... They got the boat over and tumbled in—a dozen men. A big sea broke them and the little boat like a basket of eggs ...
— Fate Knocks at the Door - A Novel • Will Levington Comfort
... sunny overhead and damp underfoot, with a thrill in the air like a reminiscence of frost. I went up into the sloping garden behind the inn and smoked a pipe pleasantly enough, to the tune of my landlady's lamentations over sundry cabbages and cauliflowers ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XXII (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... of New York. My memory is still haunted by the vision of certain hapless creatures who fled blinking from one hole in the wall to another, with little or nothing on, and of other creatures much in liquor and loudly scolding and quarrelling, with squalid bits of childhood scattered about underfoot, and vague shapes of sickness and mutilation, and all the time a buying and selling ...
— London Films • W.D. Howells
... caught sight of something almost entirely buried in the earth. In an instant he had disinterred a dainty morocco case, ornamented and clasped in gilt. It had been trodden heavily underfoot, and thus escaped the hurried search of Mr. Raeburn. Mr. Rolles opened the case, and drew a long breath of almost horrified astonishment; for there lay before him, in a cradle of green velvet, a diamond ...
— New Arabian Nights • Robert Louis Stevenson
... your tears, keep on your mask, and elbow your way through the crowd," she said, when she had heard Belinda's story. "If you stop to be civil and 'hope I don't hurt ye,' you will be trod underfoot." ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol IV. • Editors: Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... was growing rougher and ruder; ever its backbone was beginning to puiver and flounder like a whale underfoot, with its liquescent body of cold, grey, murky water bursting with increasing frequency from its shell of ice, and lapping ...
— Through Russia • Maxim Gorky
... the Sergeant, and we started for the air outside—something we could breathe, something with a sky overhead and the dear earth underfoot, something the sun warmed and ...
— The Underdog • F. Hopkinson Smith
... it, you see. If they had stuck to their rights and enforced them you wouldn't be trying to trample mine underfoot in this bland way now. I haven't any disposition to give you unnecessary trouble, but it is my duty to protect the next man from this kind of imposition. So I must have my car. Otherwise I will wait in Chicago and sue the company for violating ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... had but to look in the faces of these twelve hundred, and despair, for most part, of ever "commanding" them at all. Miserable distorted blockheads, the generality; ape-faces, imp-faces, angry dog-faces, heavy sullen ox-faces; degraded underfoot perverse creatures, sons of indocility, greedy mutinous darkness, and in one word, of STUPIDITY, which is the general mother of such. Stupidity intellectual and stupidity moral (for the one always means the other, as you will, with surprise or not, discover if you look) had borne this ...
— Latter-Day Pamphlets • Thomas Carlyle
... flower, Iris all hues, Roses, and Jessamin Rear'd high their flourish't heads between, and wrought Mosaic; underfoot the Violet, Crocus and Hyacinth with rich inlay Broidered the ground, more coloured than with stone Of ...
— The plant-lore & garden-craft of Shakespeare • Henry Nicholson Ellacombe
... was not merely a smell; it was a physical fact. There was a damp grayish substance underfoot which I recognized as snow; and in a hard-surfaced roadway there were a number of wheeled vehicles moving, which caused the liquefying snow to splash about me. I adjusted my coat controls for warmth and deflection, but that was the best I could do. The reek of stale decay remained. ...
— The Day of the Boomer Dukes • Frederik Pohl
... rustle up, hoarse and sibilant, Where the fierce old mother endlessly cries for her castaways, I, musing, late in the autumn day, gazing off southward, Alone, held by the eternal self of me that threatens to get the better of me and stifle me, Was seized by the spirit that trails in the lines underfoot, In the ruin, the sediment, that stands for all the water and all the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 30, April, 1860 • Various
... this violent manner than to take the keys which my wife and I, standing on either side, continued to offer. The granaries served for the reception of their horses among the grain and meal, which the wretches, with the greatest barbarity, made them trample underfoot. The very bread destined for my little children, like the rest, was contemptuously trodden ...
— The Huguenots in France • Samuel Smiles
... foothills he would have found the road to the Jordan ranch climbing up the Eagles with leisurely swinging curves, but the slopes just above him were heart-breaking, and Alcatraz began to realize in an hour that a mountainside from a distance is a far gentler thing than the same slope underfoot. It was the heart of twilight before he came to the middle of his climb and stepped onto a nearly level shoulder some acres in compass. Here he stood for a moment while the muscles, cramped from climbing, loosened again, and he looked down at ...
— Alcatraz • Max Brand
... of the human mind very much as the naturalist classifies the objects of his study, rather than to praise or blame them; that there is a measure of the same absurdity in his trampling on a poem, a novel, or an essay that does not please him as in the botanist's grinding a plant underfoot because he does not find it pretty. He does not conceive that it is his business rather to identify the species and then explain how and where the specimen is imperfect and irregular. If he could once acquire this simple idea of his duty he would be much more agreeable company than he now ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... bayberry, that through sweet bevies thread Of round-faced roses, pink and petulant, Look back and beckon ere they disappear. Only my heart, only my heart responds. Yet, ah, my path is sweet on either side All through the dragging day,—sharp underfoot And hot, and like dead mist the dry dust hangs— But far, oh, far as passionate eye can reach, And long, ah, long as rapturous eye can cling, The world is mine: blue hill, still silver lake, Broad field, bright flower, and the long white road A gateless garden, ...
— Second April • Edna St. Vincent Millay
... home, and see if I happen to meet anyone. Two hours to wait; a little restless already, I brush the dust and heather from my clothes. I know the places I pass by, trees and stones stand there as before in their solitude; the leaves rustle underfoot as I walk. The monotonous breathing and the familiar trees and stones mean much to me; I am filled with a strange thankfulness; everything seems well disposed towards me, mingles with my being; I love it all. I pick up a little ...
— Pan • Knut Hamsun
... altogether too handy to the house and the women-folks. Take my advice and have a place to yourself, even if it's a small one. A shop or a barn has saved many a man's life and reason Cephas, for it's ag'in' a woman's nature to have you underfoot in the house without hectorin' you. Choose a girl same's you would a horse that you want to hitch up into a span; 't ain't every two that'll stan' together without kickin'. When you get the right girl, keep out of her way consid'able an' ...
— The Story Of Waitstill Baxter • By Kate Douglas Wiggin
... fled up the path to the door, feeling at every step the friendliness of the way. The late fall flowers nodded kindly to her through the dark, and underfoot were the stones and hollows of the pathway familiar to her from a ...
— Country Neighbors • Alice Brown
... forest of young Callitris trees next impeded us, and were more formidable than even the vines. The day was passed in forcing our way through these various scrubs, the ground declining by a gentle slope only. We next found firmer soil underfoot, that where the Callitris scrub grew having been sandy, and we saw at length, with a feeling of relief, that only brigalow scrub was before us; we ascended gravelly hills, came upon a dry water-course, and then on a chain of ponds. Near ...
— Journal of an Expedition into the Interior of Tropical Australia • Thomas Mitchell
... upheaval of later life, the basis of that theological training has made itself felt to me, as one feels rocks or stumps or solid things underfoot in the sickly swaying of wet sands. I may not always believe all I was taught, but what I was taught has helped me to what I believe. I certainly think of those ...
— McClure's Magazine, March, 1896, Vol. VI., No. 4. • Various
... a sheer sheet of rain. With the first stabbing drops horses turned their heads away, trembling, and no whip or spur could bring them up to it. It drove through mackintoshes as if they were blotting-paper. The air was filled with hissing; underfoot you could see solid earth melting into mud, and mud flowing away in water. It blotted out hill and dale and enemy in one grey curtain of swooping water. You would have said that the heavens had opened to drown the wrath of man. And through it the guns still thundered and ...
— From Capetown to Ladysmith - An Unfinished Record of the South African War • G. W. Steevens
... fought on the bridge like wild animals, and those who had horses trod their comrades underfoot, or pushed them over the parapet. Twelve thousand perished on the banks or in the river; and sixteen thousand were left behind to the ...
— Barlasch of the Guard • H. S. Merriman
... from his bungalow, pulling upon his feet clumsy native sandals of wood, with a button between the toes. For underfoot lay the things he dreaded, the heat things, the things bred by this warm climate enclosed between the high wall of the mountains and the infitting curve of the sea. He tramped awkwardly along in his loose fitting ...
— Civilization - Tales of the Orient • Ellen Newbold La Motte
... my army more than three miles inland, so I had to give that up. Before three months had passed I wanted to abdicate the worst way. I wanted to tread a deck again, an' rove around with Bull McGinty. I wanted th' smell o' the open sea an' th' heave o' th' Dashin' Wave underfoot. I was tired o' breadfruit an' guavas an' cocoanuts an' all th' rest o' th' blasted grub that Pinky was feedin' me, an' most of all I was gettin' tired o' Pinky. She would put cocoanut oil in her hair. Yet (here Mr. Gibney's voice vibrated with emotion as he conjured up these memories ...
— Captain Scraggs - or, The Green-Pea Pirates • Peter B. Kyne
... cried, and charged at the companion, Wicks at his heels, Tommy and Amalu following. They trod the body of Holdorsen underfoot, and flew up-stairs and forth into the dusky blaze of a sunset red as blood. The numbers were still equal, but the Flying Scuds dreamed not of defence, and fled with one accord for the forecastle scuttle. ...
— The Wrecker • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... cloud, and felt the sluggish flow against his legs as he moved. The bottom was soft, yet his feet did not sink deeply, although it was rather difficult wading. However, the clay gave him more confidence than sand underfoot, and there was less depth of water even than he had anticipated. He was wet only to the thighs when he toiled up on to the low spit of sand, and put the girl down a moment to catch a fresh breath and examine the broader stretch of water ahead. They could see both shores now, that ...
— Molly McDonald - A Tale of the Old Frontier • Randall Parrish
... squabble with Dan, Junior. The imp was always underfoot on Saturdays. He was supposed to help—to run errands, and take out in a basket certain orders to nearby customers who ...
— Hiram The Young Farmer • Burbank L. Todd
... life upon the marsh is limited; but there is by no means the scarcity here which is so often noted in the forests and wild prairies of corresponding extent. Indeed, the marsh was birdy—rich in numbers if not in species. Underfoot, in spots, sang the marsh-wrens; in larger patches the sharp-tailed sparrows; and almost as wide-spread and constant as the green was the singing of the seaside sparrows. Overhead the fish-hawks crossed frequently to their castle nest ...
— Roof and Meadow • Dallas Lore Sharp
... from the home of the north wind. The creature brought within him an amplitude of Northern knowledge. Glacial catastrophes, snowstorm episodes, glittering auroral effects, Polaris in the zenith, Franklin underfoot,—the category of his commonplaces was wonderful. But the bird, like many other philosophers, seemed as he looked at the reddleman to think that a present moment of comfortable reality was worth a decade ...
— The Return of the Native • Thomas Hardy
... then, letting myself down at dark by a rope made of the sheet I drew from under you, I ran through the streets to the quarter of the merchants. La Gioconda had forgotten to pack a cloak in the bundle; the night was snowing, with snow underfoot; and I had run past the quays before the fear struck me that, at so late an hour, the jewellers would have closed their shops. But in the street behind the Dogano I found one open, and the jeweller asked ...
— Sir John Constantine • Prosper Paleologus Constantine
... Susan's heart. What of these petty little hopes and joys and fears that fretted her like a cloud of midges day and night? How small they seemed in the wide silence of these brooding hills, with the sunlight lying warm on the murmuring ocean below, and the sweet kindly earth underfoot! ...
— Saturday's Child • Kathleen Norris
... you in the ashes? And what could he do if he did find you? Your house is burned, your chickens carried away and your cabbages trampled underfoot. A sorry home he will return to. You would be just one more mouth to feed. No! that plan will never do. If your father thinks you are dead, he will go off to another province to get work. That would save ...
— A Chinese Wonder Book • Norman Hinsdale Pitman
... were marching us through street after street, one of them whistling that pleasing tune, Le lendemain elle etait souriante. Dark passage ways intervened between us and our destination: we threaded them. The cobble stones of the underfoot were not easy to walk on for my companion, shod in high-heels from the Place Vendome.... The urchins amused each other and us by capers on the way. They could have made our speed walking on their hands, and they accomplished at least a third of the journey this way. Of course, I ...
— The Merry-Go-Round • Carl Van Vechten
... nothing more; but, to Earle's higher scientific intelligence it was an absorbingly interesting mystery. For they had scarcely penetrated it to the depth of a mile before the American began to be aware that the character of his surroundings was undergoing a subtle change, the herbage underfoot, the rushes that edged the lagoons and water channels, the plants that here and there in wide patches hid the surface of the water, the ferns that decked the banks of the water-courses, were all new and strange to him; and ...
— In Search of El Dorado • Harry Collingwood
... you will be attentive to my story, continued he, instead of having so bad an opinion of me, you will be touched with compassion at my misfortunes. But, far from hearkening to him, they fell upon him, trod him underfoot, took away his clothes, and tore his shirt. Then observing the scars on his back, O you dog! cried they, redoubling their blows, would you have us to believe you are an honest man, when your back convinces us to the contrary? Alas! said my brother, my faults must be very great, ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Volume 1 • Anonymous
... silent glooms of the forest—to the majesty of white-bearded and majestic trees. The dove and the zephyr now shared her song, and a deep sigh commonly closed it. She was changed from what she was. The affections had suddenly bounded into being, trampling the petty vanities underfoot; and those first lessons of humility which are taught by love, had subdued a spirit which, hitherto, ...
— Charlemont • W. Gilmore Simms
... father tossed him a bucket, and with it swinging from his hand, he made through the wood towards a music of water. Goldenrod and farewell-summer and the red plumes of the sumach lined his path, while far overhead the hickories and maples reared a fretted, red-gold roof. Underfoot were moss and coloured leaves, and to the right and left the squirrels watched him with bright eyes. He found the stream where it rippled between banks of fern and mint. As he knelt to fill the pail, the red haw and the purple ...
— Lewis Rand • Mary Johnston
... airily over the low fence near the covert, and Killaloe took it almost in his stride. Then they were racing side by side down the long slope, with the green turf like wet velvet underfoot; and the next hedge seemed rushing to meet them. Over, landing lightly in the next field; before them only the "Master" and whip, and the racing hounds, with burning eyes for the little red ...
— Captain Jim • Mary Grant Bruce
... one of those unheralded storms which make coast travel so hazardous. The morning had turned off gray, the sky was of a leaden hue which blended perfectly with the snow underfoot, there was no horizon, it was impossible to see more than a few yards in any direction. The trail soon became obliterated and their eyes began to play tricks. For all they could distinguish, they might have been suspended in space; they seemed to be treading ...
— The Boy Scouts Book of Campfire Stories • Various
... grey morning, and I and my two companions of the day before had soon distanced the others. At first the trail was rough and slippery, and all ups and downs. The vegetation was of almost tropical density, and the moisture underfoot and overhead was so great that it seemed to me I had never been wetter except in a bathtub. As we descended to lower levels the valley broadened out, and the going improved so that we were able to make very good time. At one point, after passing through a little ...
— A Wayfarer in China - Impressions of a trip across West China and Mongolia • Elizabeth Kendall
... beech-leaves, till Guy ceased babbling and crooning, and dropped into a slumber, as he soon does in the fresh of the morning. Then we had to go slowly for fear he should be wakened by the noise of the dead wood underfoot, for, as we passed over it with wheels and boots, it snapped and crackled like a freshly-kindled fire. It was a relief to get at last to the soft matting of brown needles and cones under the Needle-trees, for there we could go pretty quickly without either jolting ...
— A Child's Book of Saints • William Canton
... camp, then get instructions from Earth. So we just have to wait. The air is very cold, but the Sun is hot as hell when it hits you. The sky is a blinding pink, or maybe more of a pale fuchsia. Kroger says it's the dust. The sand underfoot is kind of rose-colored, and not really gritty. The particles are ...
— The Dope on Mars • John Michael Sharkey
... had fallen was composed of some smooth substance suggesting black marble. The floor underfoot was quite different—more of a metallic quality with a curious corrugation. Before me, in the dim distance, I could just make out a ...
— The Girl in the Golden Atom • Raymond King Cummings
... joy of it, the sweetness, the freshness, the beauty, the odour! The air overhead, which had been dense with dust, was clearing and whitening as if the water washed it. And the ground underfoot, which had reeked of creeping and crawling things, was running like a wholesome river, and bearing back to the lips a taste ...
— The Scapegoat • Hall Caine
... had been gripping London. It was one of those afternoons which intrude on the bleakness of winter with a false but none the less agreeable intimation that Spring is on its way. The sidewalks were wet underfoot, and the gutters ran with thawed snow. The sun shone exhilaratingly from a sky the ...
— The Little Warrior - (U.K. Title: Jill the Reckless) • P. G. Wodehouse
... been, the training chambers had not prepared him for the surface of Pyrrus. There was the basic similarity of course. The feel of the poison grass underfoot and the erratic flight of a stingwing in the last instant before Grif blasted it. But these were scarcely noticeable in the crash of ...
— Deathworld • Harry Harrison
... neck and thick hair and a stain of ink, a snail's bed. Yet someone had loved him, borne him in her arms and in her heart. But for her the race of the world would have trampled him underfoot, a squashed boneless snail. She had loved his weak watery blood drained from her own. Was that then real? The only true thing in life? His mother's prostrate body the fiery Columbanus in holy zeal bestrode. She was no more: the ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... once a general and his lady were riding, and the lady's horse slipped. The general grasped her but lost his own balance, and both fell into the river and were killed. The track wound up and down, often very slippery underfoot, and the horses, shod with the usual flat plates of iron, were slithering and sliding on the edge of the precipices. At last we got off and walked. It was an immense relief: our saddles were intensely hard, stirrups unequal lengths, and with ...
— The Luck of Thirteen - Wanderings and Flight through Montenegro and Serbia • Jan Gordon
... problem had, however, in these latter days, put a curb on generous impulse. There were no more niggers underfoot, and hospitality was necessarily curtailed. The people who at the time of the August Horse Show had once packed great hampers with delicious foods, and who had feasted under the trees amid all the loveliness of mellow-tinted hills, now ordered by telephone a luncheon of cut-and-dried ...
— The Trumpeter Swan • Temple Bailey
... is hidden by dense masses of snowy foam and spray, rising in an everlasting creation of cloud up into the sky, and vailing the frantic fury of the caldron below, where the waves churn and tread each other underfoot in the rocky abyss that receives them, in darkness which the sun's rays cannot penetrate nor the strongest wind for a moment disperse; a mystery, of which its thousand voices reveal nothing. It is nonsense writing about it—seeing and ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... and the left, praying he might see something. In every direction were the silvery trunk of the beeches, each with a vivid green streak on one side. With every step the last year's russet leaves rustled underfoot, maddeningly loud. ...
— Three Soldiers • John Dos Passos
... a shambles, the San Jose from stem to stern in sorry case. Underfoot lay the dead and wounded, her guns were silenced, her men-at-arms overmastered. They had fought with desperate bravery, but the third attack of the English had been elemental in its force. A rushing wave, a devastating flame, they had swept the ship, and ...
— Sir Mortimer • Mary Johnston
... the game he found that there was small percentage in getting into crowds. It led to all sorts of complications, including the starting of minor rows, one person thinking another was pushing when it was simply a matter of Crowley trying to get out from underfoot. ...
— The Common Man • Guy McCord (AKA Dallas McCord Reynolds)
... towards the road of Laval. But I found it impossible to advance; the concourse was too great,—it was stifling: carts, waggons, cannon, were overturned; bullocks lay struggling on the ground, unable to rise, and striking out at all who approached them. The cries of persons trodden underfoot echoed everywhere. I was fainting with hunger and terror: I could scarcely see; for daylight was nearly closed. At the corner of a street I perceived two horses tied to a stake, and they completely barred my passage; the crowd pressed them against me; and I ...
— Barn and the Pyrenees - A Legendary Tour to the Country of Henri Quatre • Louisa Stuart Costello
... approach, but not to reach. Far from having to await a remote emancipation to become completely itself, the soul's supremest life was in its hours of heroic stress, when it kept some dragon of unbelief quiet underfoot, ...
— Robert Browning • C. H. Herford
... wrenched it from me as if I were a girl, threw it fifty feet away, sprang to the ground and caught it up, fired it in the air, and with one blow against a tree sent the stock flying, threw the barrel underfoot, leapt upon it, tore his hair and his hat, and cursed and champed and howled. I sat holding his horse and feeling my satisfaction rise like the mercury in a warmed thermometer. Contrasting this mood with the cold malignancy ...
— The Cavalier • George Washington Cable
... clear day of middle March; the sun rode high in a blue sky, and some jays bragged and jeered in the spruces. The frost was not yet out of the ground, but the shaded road was dry underfoot. ...
— The Quality of Mercy • W. D. Howells
... were alive except one, which, from the sand being pumped from under its feet, had not been able to stand during the gale, and in consequence had been trampled underfoot by the other horses and so much injured that we were compelled to destroy it. About an hour before dark we reached, with a fresh and favourable breeze, a point between the two largest of the Sir Charles Hardy's Islands, where one of the anchors was let go and, upon its dragging, ...
— Journal of Landsborough's Expedition from Carpentaria - In search of Burke and Wills • William Landsborough
... stopped," he said, "but the pavements are still wet underfoot. Has your grace taken the precaution to come out in a ...
— The Swoop! or How Clarence Saved England - A Tale of the Great Invasion • P. G. Wodehouse
... mountain household. It held an exceedingly venerable grandfather, wielding his infirmities as a rod of iron; a father and mother, hearty, hospitable, subservient to the aged tyrant, but keeping in filial check a family of sons and daughters-in-law, with an underfoot delegation of grandchildren, who seemed to spend their time in a bewildering manouver of dashing out at one door to dash in at another. A tumultuous rain had set in shortly after dawn, with lightning and wind,—"the tail of a harricane," as the host called it,—and a terrible ...
— His Unquiet Ghost - 1911 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... of stone hung pieces of armor, and swords and lances, and great branching antlers of the stag. Overhead arched the rude, heavy, oaken beams, blackened with age and smoke, and underfoot was a chill pavement ...
— Otto of the Silver Hand • Howard Pyle
... Hiva-oa, owing to the inveterate cannibalism of the natives, that local beliefs have been most rudely trodden underfoot. It was here that three religious chiefs were set under a bridge, and the women of the valley made to defile over their heads upon the road-way: the poor, dishonoured fellows sitting there (all observers ...
— In the South Seas • Robert Louis Stevenson
... directory, with men willing to give them their support. The laws enacted in favour of priests and emigrants were revoked, and the oath of hatred to royalty renewed. Thus a revolutionary government returned; and the constitution was trodden underfoot by men who ostensibly were its supporters. And all this they ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... firelight, down the gentle slope of the field, swept a ragged cohort of men, some bare-headed, some in their scarlet nightcaps, as though they had escaped from bed, and all yelling. One of the foremost, who met the captain's bullet, was carried stumbling his own length before he sank underfoot; as the Mausers flashed from between the sand-bags, another and another man fell to his knees or toppled sidelong, tripping his fellows into a little knot or windrow of kicking arms and legs; but the main wave poured on, all the faster. Among ...
— Dragon's blood • Henry Milner Rideout
... with savage glee, as he drove his mount squarely against one of the wretches, bowling him over and underfoot. ...
— The Submarine Boys for the Flag - Deeding Their Lives to Uncle Sam • Victor G. Durham
... The ground was rough underfoot, and the matted cover of vegetation that effectually hid stray boulders from view made it all the worse. In places the wattle grew over our heads in a profusion that was almost tropical, and more than once we would have ...
— The Lost Valley • J. M. Walsh
... sacrificed their life than their liquor. This passion we share with them, and herein we are like them. Grant that their flight is feigned; yet they will light upon the Scots ere they can come back. This gold shall never rust in the country, to be trodden underfoot of swine or brutes: it will better serve the use of men. Besides, if we plunder the spoil of the army that prevailed over us, we transfer the luck of the conqueror to ourselves. For what surer omen of triumph could be got, ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")
... and with the pall of Valley dust. Horses lay stark across the way, or, dying, stared with piteous eyes. The sky was like a bowl of brass, and in the concave buzzards were sailing. All along there was underfoot much of soldiers' impedimenta—knapsacks, belts, accoutrements of all kinds, rolled blankets and oilcloths, canteens. Dead men did not lack. They lay in strange postures, and on all the dust was ...
— The Long Roll • Mary Johnston
... round, and saw before me And underfoot a lake, that from the frost The semblance had of glass, ...
— Divine Comedy, Longfellow's Translation, Hell • Dante Alighieri
... No, no; you ain't waiting," mimicked Miss Krakow, and her voice was like autumn leaves that crackle underfoot. "Well, then, if you ain't waiting here he comes now. I dare you to come on home with me ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1915 - And the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... paid the penalty under the governments of Alexander II and III.[365] The sympathy of every unbiased man, to whatever race or religion he may belong, will naturally go out to a race or a nation which is trodden underfoot, as were the ill-starred Jews of Russia ever since the partition of Poland. But equality one would have thought sufficient to meet the grievance. Full equality without reservation. That was the view taken by ...
— The Inside Story Of The Peace Conference • Emile Joseph Dillon
... hair was russet red, and blew about her forehead in little curls; her eyes, brown like a brook in shady places, and kind. It was a mild face, but not weak. Below them the valley shimmered in the heat; the grass was hot and brittle underfoot; popples bent and twisted in a scorching wind, and a soft, dark glitter of movement ran through the pines on the ...
— Life at High Tide - Harper's Novelettes • Various
... rugged wood in the black darkness, for the moonbeams were shut out now by the rocks, overhead, and then, as he took step for step behind his companion, so close to him that he kept kicking his heels, he felt the difference underfoot for a few paces and the tree trunk yield and give a little in an elastic way. Then all at once the character of the path was changed, and Nic felt the ...
— First in the Field - A Story of New South Wales • George Manville Fenn
... after a while, and scorn to tread on anything less than one of His Majesty's colonels or secretary under the Crown. Here are the tombs of the Atkinsons, the Jaffreys, the Sherburnes, the Sheafes, the Marshes, the Mannings, the Gardners, and others of the quality. All around you underfoot are tumbled-in coffins, with here and there a rusty sword atop, and faded escutcheons, and crumbling armorial devices. You are moving in ...
— An Old Town By The Sea • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... it's windy, or rainy, or wet underfoot, or cold, or hot, or looks as if it was going to be any ...
— Preventable Diseases • Woods Hutchinson
... and let down the landing ramps. It was a very old world that they set foot upon. Whatever mountains or hills it had ever had, had long ago been leveled by erosion, so that now there was only a vaguely undulating plain studded with smooth and rounded boulders. The soil underfoot was packed and barren, and there was no vegetation for as far as ...
— Shepherd of the Planets • Alan Mattox
... trudged along all day, panting and sweating, through four or five inches of new-fallen snow, while the glare of the sun was terrific. It seemed impossible that, surrounded entirely by ice and snow, with millions of tons of ice underfoot, it could be so hot. But we took the loads right through to the head of the glacier that day, rising some four thousand feet in the course of five miles, and cached them there. On other days a smother of mist lay all over the glacier surface, ...
— The Ascent of Denali (Mount McKinley) - A Narrative of the First Complete Ascent of the Highest - Peak in North America • Hudson Stuck
... false oaths are still oftener sworn, whereby truth and right are trodden underfoot with the clear knowledge of all the witnesses of the act. An oath is the jurist's metaphysical pons asinorum, and like this should be used as seldom as ever possible. When it cannot be avoided, it should ...
— Essays of Schopenhauer • Arthur Schopenhauer
... had happened, and rode out with all his knights. When he saw this mass of ragged rascals, drunk and savage, but all wearing the red cross, he fell in a rage and attacked them. Those who did not fly were trampled underfoot and sabred down so mercilessly, that, out of the sixty thousand, only three thousand reached Constantinople, among whom ...
— Historical Miniatures • August Strindberg
... by him entirely. Smells of pomace, and the hiss of fermenting cider, which reached him from the back quarters of other tenements, revealed the recent occupation of some of the inhabitants, and joined with the scent of decay from the perishing leaves underfoot. ...
— The Woodlanders • Thomas Hardy
... night for travel," said Wharton sardonically. "A raw wind, driving snow, pitchy darkness, slush and everything objectionable underfoot. Yet I'd like to be in Weber's place. A curse upon the man who invented life in the trenches! Of all the dirty, foul, squalid ...
— The Hosts of the Air • Joseph A. Altsheler
... walked along by himself, elate, and with a springy step, on thoughts of ambition intent, till he came at last to a cool and shadowy place, where as yet the ferns were NOT broken down and trampled underfoot, though Guy Waring found them so some ...
— What's Bred In the Bone • Grant Allen
... have begun badly, sir.' Skepsey rattled the dry facts in his head to right them. From his not having begun well, they had become dry as things underfoot. It was an error to have led off with the sentiments. 'Two very, two very respectable persons—respectable—were desirous to witness a short display of my, my system, I would say; of my science, ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... hundreds and hundreds of thousands of innocent folk trampled underfoot in the ditch of competition, the mad, race in which the devil ...
— NEVER AGAIN • Edward Carpenter
... nay would even procure such, as he did the Petilii against Scipio; but not being able to destroy him, by reason of the nobleness of his family, and the real greatness of his mind, which enabled him to trample all calumnies underfoot, Cato at last would meddle no more with him; yet joining with the accusers against Scipio's brother Lucius, he succeeded in obtaining a sentence against him, which condemned him to the payment of a large sum of money to the state; and being insolvent, and in danger of being ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... and the pirate's trade to which he had now set his hand was of all trades the one for which he was by nature best equipped. He was harsh and overbearing, impatient of correction and prone to trample other men's feelings underfoot. Was this, he asked himself in all honesty, a mate for Rosamund? Could he entrust her happiness to the care of such a man? ...
— The Sea-Hawk • Raphael Sabatini
... a space, and successively overarching and under arching each other with circular layers of brightness above and blackness beneath; each starry hollow overhead being a heaven inhabited by gods and blessed souls, each lurid hollow underfoot being a hell filled with demons and wicked souls in penance. The Arabian kosmos, beginning with the earth, ascended to a world of water above the firmament, next to a world of air, then to a world of fire, followed in rising order by ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... New York is at this moment, much the most disgraced state in the Union, notwithstanding she has never failed to pay the interest on her public debt; and her disgrace arises from the fact that her laws are trampled underfoot, without any efforts, at all commensurate with the object, being made to enforce them. If words and professions can save the character of a community, all may yet be well; but if states, like individuals, are to be judged by their actions, and the "tree is to be known by ...
— Satanstoe • James Fenimore Cooper
... was interesting when the bolts were shot back to see a hundred of them pop up into the air at the same time, flashing in the sun as though they were glad to have done their work and to get out again. They rolled by the dozens underfoot, and twinkled in the grass, and when one shifted his position in the narrow trench, or stretched his cramped legs, they tinkled musically. It was like wading in a ...
— Notes of a War Correspondent • Richard Harding Davis
... on the pavement. Country women, in picturesque cinnamon-coloured skirts, moved gravely among the citizens. The houses, when not whitewashed, showed their building stone of red volcanic tufa; windows were aflame with cacti and carnations; slumberous oranges glowed in courtyards; the roadways underfoot were of lava—pitch-black. It was a brilliant medley, overhung by a deep blue sky. The canvas was indeed overcharged, as Denis ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas
... on through a forest of pines, the trail underfoot being of lava, as hard and smooth as a road could be. They were gradually drawing nearer to Sunset Mountain. After a time they turned off to the right, ...
— The Pony Rider Boys in the Grand Canyon - The Mystery of Bright Angel Gulch • Frank Gee Patchin
... grown sharper and the rumble of guns was uninterrupted, growling like thunder after a summer storm or as the shells passed shrieking and then bursting with jarring detonations. Underfoot the pavements were inch-deep with fallen glass, and as you walked it tinkled musically. With inborn sense of order, some of the housewives abandoned their knitting and calmly swept up the glass ...
— With the Allies • Richard Harding Davis
... the walk!" she answered resignedly. "Though you've a queer taste in walks, for the streets are terrible underfoot. But I suppose you're shut up all day at your work. You'll just have to sit down and wait till I've checked the literature and handed in the takings. I doubt yon stout body in plum-coloured velveteen who bought R.J. Campbell on the Social ...
— The Judge • Rebecca West
... abominable. There were old houses, as a matter of course; but who can appreciate antiquities when his legs are wet about the knees and his boots are squirting water? Nevertheless, I tried to notice a few things besides the vileness underfoot. One was a rudely-carved image of the Virgin in a niche covered by a grating. This was in such a dark little street that it seemed as if the sun had given up all hope of ever shining there again. I struggled through the slush to the church, built, with the town, on the side of a hill rising ...
— Wanderings by southern waters, eastern Aquitaine • Edward Harrison Barker
... region as barren and apparently as irreclaimable as that through which Childe Roland journeyed in quest of the Dark Tower; lying, too, in a temperature so fiery that it coagulated the blood in the veins, and stopped the beating of the heart. Underfoot were fine dust, and whitened bones; the air was prismatic and magical, ever conjuring up phantom pictures, whose characteristic was that they were at the farthest remove from any possible reality. The azure sky descended and became ...
— The Golden Fleece • Julian Hawthorne
... told him; "isn't the roof underfoot? You stand on the roof and it's underfoot. Your overhead expenses may be down in the cellar. Just the same as a scout can do a good turn while he's walking straight ahead. ...
— Roy Blakeley's Camp on Wheels • Percy Keese Fitzhugh |
