"Barefooted" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... him a cup of hot wine, and brought back word that he was sleeping and not to be disturbed; and an hour later, when Anne lifted the tapestry and listened at his door, she heard his loud regular breathing. She thought it might be a feint, and stayed a long time barefooted in the passage, her ear to the crack; but the breathing went on too steadily and naturally to be other than that of a man in a sound sleep. She crept back to her room reassured, and stood in the window watching the moon set through the trees of the park. The ...
— Kerfol - 1916 • Edith Wharton
... confess the truth. But she abode by what she had said from the first; whereupon he delivered her over to the two women who had brought in the cauldron, to strip her naked as she was born, and to clothe her in the black torture-shift; after which they were once more to lead her barefooted up the steps before the worshipful court. But one of these women was the sheriff his housekeeper (the other was the impudent constable his wife), and my daughter said that she would not suffer herself to be touched save by honest women, and assuredly not by the housekeeper, and begged Dom. ...
— Sidonia The Sorceress V2 • William Mienhold
... men. From that day to this I have never set eyes on them. That is all my story. Who were they? What could they be? How can you explain that mystery of the mother giving them up; of the remarkable splendor and elegance of their appearance while under her care; of their barefooted squalor in Venice, a month afterwards; of their shabby habiliments at Laybach? Had the father gambled away his money, and sold their clothes? How came they to have passed out of the hands of a refined ...
— Roundabout Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... of the most tenacious and troublesome of the little visitors is the jigger, which has an uncomfortable habit of seeking a soft spot under the toe-nail. Once lodged it is extremely difficult to get him out. These pests are mainly found in sandy soil and give the Negroes who walk about barefooted unending trouble. ...
— An African Adventure • Isaac F. Marcosson
... shoes. It would seem very strange to us—would it not?—to wear wooden shoes; but Piccola and her mother had never worn anything else, and never had any money to buy stockings. Piccola almost always ran about barefooted, like the kittens and the chickens and the little ducks. What a good time they had that day, and how glad Piccola's mother was that her little girl could have such a pleasant, safe place to play in, while she ...
— Christmas Stories And Legends • Various
... popped in. Soon there was a light on the ground floor. The door opened. A very stout man, barefooted, who had struggled into a pair of abnormally ...
— The Stowaway Girl • Louis Tracy
... life in England. The poorest creditable person, of either sex, would be ashamed to appear in public without them. In Scotland, custom has rendered them a necessary of life to the lowest order of men; but not to the same order of women, who may, without any discredit, walk about barefooted. In France, they are necessaries neither to men nor to women; the lowest rank of both sexes appearing there publicly, without any discredit, sometimes in wooden shoes, and sometimes barefooted. Under necessaries, therefore, I comprehend, not only those things which nature, but ...
— An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations • Adam Smith
... all their games. And when that morning the spade, hat, and shoe were discovered upon the shore, not far from the very rock, the poor children had to draw plenty of morals on the consequences of selfishness. No doubt that poor little Michael had pursued them barefooted and ...
— That Stick • Charlotte M. Yonge
... The latter, being barefooted, had an advantage over Ben, but our young adventurer crept after him as softly as he could. Jerry found a bale screened from observation by the higher piles on each side, where he thought they could sleep unobserved. Following his lead, Ben ...
— Ben, the Luggage Boy; - or, Among the Wharves • Horatio Alger
... had been directed. Now, after two months, they were about to renew the attempt with greater resolution against less robust opponents. At twelve o'clock our scouts heard the sounds of the chanting of hymns in the Boer camps. At two in the morning crowds of barefooted men were clustering round the base of the ridge, and threading their way, rifle in hand, among the mimosa-bushes and scattered boulders which cover the slope of the hill. Some working parties were moving ...
— The Great Boer War • Arthur Conan Doyle
... but it was still far from broad daylight, when Ellen was awakened. She found little Ellen Chauncey pulling and pushing at her shoulders, and whispering "Ellen! Ellen!" in a tone that showed a great fear of waking somebody up. There she was, in nightgown and nightcap, and barefooted, too, with a face brimfull of excitement, and as wide awake as possible. Ellen roused herself in no little surprise, and asked what ...
— The Wide, Wide World • Elizabeth Wetherell
... and barefooted girls tripped gayly along the streets, merry and uncomplaining; and, surrounded by velvet, silver, and marble, by every superfluity of luxury, Cornelia Graham, with a bitter heart and hopeless soul, shivered ...
— Beulah • Augusta J. Evans
... introduced, one by one, by Tiahuana, who, as each person presented himself in the doorway, loudly proclaimed the rank and titles of the visitor, who then, barefooted, and carrying a light burden upon his shoulders as an act of humility in the presence of his sovereign, slowly advanced, with head and body humbly bent, until he reached the footstool, when he knelt down on the bare stone floor and kissed, first the hands and then the feet of the young ...
— Harry Escombe - A Tale of Adventure in Peru • Harry Collingwood
... directly beneath was the portrait of President Davis. A crayon drawing of the C. S. N. V. Florida, from the portfolio of the amateur Mr. Simp, was arched by two crossed cutlasses, hired for the occasion; and upon an enormous iced cake, in the centre of the table, stood a barefooted soldier, with his back against a pine tree, defying both a Yankee ...
— Bohemian Days - Three American Tales • Geo. Alfred Townsend
... lay down upon a loaded carreta, also out of doors, while Louis and Manuel took possession of hammocks in one of the houses. It was a cloudless night, with brilliant moon. The air soon grew cool. After midnight, I was aroused by the most frightful yelling, and opening my eyes, I saw a barefooted, bareheaded Indian yelling out the most frightful imprecations and oaths. At first I thought that he was insulting some one in the house, but both the houses were fast closed. Ramon, completely wrapped in his blanket, could attract no notice, and I did not believe that I had been ...
— In Indian Mexico (1908) • Frederick Starr
... success was the standard of merit, and every man was supposed to be the arbiter of his own fortune, ignoring that Providence who so often refuses the race to the swift and the battle to the strong. He was what in our time would be called eccentric. He walked barefooted, meanly clad, and withal not over cleanly, seeking public places, disputing with every body willing to talk with him, making every body ridiculous, especially if one assumed airs of wisdom or knowledge,—an exasperating opponent, since he wove a web around ...
— The Old Roman World • John Lord
... stood staring after her, his small eyes blinking in babylike bewilderment. And so through the dusk and dark and dawn this love-mad maiden walked the wilderness, innocent of arms, and with no one near to protect her save the little barefooted bowman whom the white man calls ...
— The Last Spike - And Other Railroad Stories • Cy Warman
... verandah, which led down to the garden and was decorated by lemon and pomegranate trees in tubs, and with cactus and aloe and flowering plants, stood a young girl of about twenty, scattering millet from two plates held by a barefooted child of twelve. At her feet were assembled hens, turkeys, ducks, pigeons, sparrows and daws. She called to the birds to come to breakfast, and cocks, hens and pigeons fell to, looking round every moment as if they feared treason, ...
— The Precipice • Ivan Goncharov
... itself in her children. Lycurgus dipped in the cupboard "between meals," and Aristides came home from school without shoes, leaving those important articles at the threshold, for the delights of a barefooted walk down the ditches. Octavia and Cassandra were "keerless" of their clothes. So that with but one exception, however the "Prairie Rose" might have trimmed, pruned, and trained her own natural luxuriance, the little ...
— The Luck of Roaring Camp and Other Tales • Bret Harte
... deal like a fairy tale when you think of it; the barefooted boy of Hannibal, who had become a printer, a pilot, a rough-handed miner, being summoned, not so many years later, by royalty as one of America's foremost men of letters. The honor was no greater than many others he had received, certainly not greater than the calls of Canon Kingsley and ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... dicas: no learning, no knowledge, no civility, scarce common, sense, nought but barbarism amongst them, belluino more vivunt, neque calceos gestant, neque vestes, like rogues and vagabonds, they go barefooted and barelegged, the soles of their feet being as hard as horse-hoofs, as [2255]Radzivilus observed at Damietta in Egypt, leading a laborious, miserable, wretched, unhappy life, [2256]"like beasts and juments, ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... the 15th of October, 1764, as I sat musing amidst the ruins of the Capitol, while the barefooted friars were singing vespers in the temple of Jupiter, that the idea of writing the decline and fall of the city first started to my mind. But my original plan was circumscribed to the decay of the city, rather than of the empire: and, tho my reading and ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. IV (of X)—Great Britain and Ireland II • Various
... hawk-eyes that the Englishmen looked up to her weird beauty as to that of an inspired saint; and when the Normans came on to the assault there stood on a grassy mound behind the English fort a figure clothed in sackcloth, barefooted and bareheaded, with fetters shining on waist, and wrist, and ankle,—her long black locks streaming in the wind, her long white arms stretched crosswise toward heaven, in imitation of Moses of old above the battle with Amalek; invoking St. Etheldreda and all ...
— Hereward, The Last of the English • Charles Kingsley
... you, good sir," she answered. "If what you say is true, I will go on pilgrimage barefooted to Our Lady of Loretto to pray to her for ...
— Christ in Flanders • Honore de Balzac
... contrabands of all ages and of all sizes, from the little barefooted piccaninnies and chimney sweeps to the old, gray-haired uncles and turbaned aunties. While all appeared bubbling over with joy, yet they were quiet and orderly, greeting us with bows and courtesies, and a "God bress ye! we're so powerful glad ye've come!" ...
— The Flag Replaced on Sumter - A Personal Narrative • William A. Spicer
... There's the road home; you know every crook and turn of it as well as we. You are free, perfectly free, to go that way if you prefer it; we shall say nothing, do nothing to hinder you; only, if you choose that road, you shall have to travel it without our good help, without our pleasant company, barefooted—ugly hills, cutting stones, scratching briars, piercing thorns! There's the road to grandpap's house—level and smooth, shady and pleasant! You may not know every crook and turn of it as well as you do of the other, that is true; but we do, so what's ...
— The Red Moccasins - A Story • Morrison Heady
... noses, and flat ones in their ears, and gold chains and amber beads about their necks, with images and white fish bones, bent round, and the ends fastened together, hanging down between their breasts; they have bracelets on their wrists and on their ankles, and go barefooted. I had bought a small snuff-box, filled with snuff, at Morocco, and showed it to the women in the principal street of Timbuctoo, which is very wide. There were a great number about me in a few minutes, ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish
... when the grass Had sprung up in the pass, And the meadows with velvet were green, We children would tease, "O, dear mother, please Let us doff shoes and stockings, (Ah! naught gave us shockings), And barefooted run o'er the leas, Aye, ...
— Mother Truth's Melodies - Common Sense For Children • Mrs. E. P. Miller
... displayed wings and taken to flight. "Surefooted" mules on such ground would have fallen and rolled like loosened boulders. Many a time, where the slopes are far lower, I have been compelled to take off my shoes and stockings, tie them to my belt, and creep barefooted, with the utmost caution. No wonder then, that I watched the progress of these animal mountaineers with keen sympathy, and exulted in the boundless sufficiency of wild nature displayed in their invention, construction, and ...
— The Mountains of California • John Muir
... catch, but there was a boy trying to catch them. He was on the opposite bank; had crawled down it, only other boys can tell how, a barefooted urchin of ten or twelve, with an enormous bagful of worms hanging from his jacket button. To put a new worm on the hook without coming to destruction, he first twisted his legs about a young birch, and put his arms round it. He was after a big one, he informed Corp, though ...
— Tommy and Grizel • J.M. Barrie
... trembling, she began to take off her shoes and stockings. She would do what Edith did! ... It was a tremor of aspiration!—an effort to develop in herself a quality he liked in Edith. She went, barefooted, with wincing cautiousness, and with Bingo stepping gingerly along beside her, across the mowed grass; then, haltingly, down the bank to the sandy edge of the river; there, while the little dog looked up at her anxiously, ...
— The Vehement Flame • Margaret Wade Campbell Deland
... more than threescore years ago, David Matson, with his young wife and his two healthy, barefooted boys, stood on the bank of the river near their dwelling. They were waiting there for Pelatiah Curtis to come round the Point with his wherry, and take the husband and father to the Port, a few miles below. The Lively ...
— Our Young Folks—Vol. I, No. II, February 1865 - An Illustrated Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various
... close and muggy. The houses, built right up to the sidewalks, over which, in little gutters, the steaming sewage ran, seemed to have discharged their occupants into the street to enjoy the cool of the day. Barefooted children by the score paddled in the mud. All the steps were filled with loungers; some of the men had discarded not only coats but shirts as well, and now sat in flaming ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 1 of 14 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Good Men and Great • Elbert Hubbard
... there was little girl, pretty and dainty. But in summer time she was obliged to go barefooted because she was poor, and in winter she had to wear large wooden shoes, so that her ...
— Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen
... peculiar to those which have sent the word of command along a line of battle. I felt as I heard it more impressed with the personal greatness, and even with the rank and power, of the Prince before me, than when I knelt to kiss the hand of the Most Christian King, or stood barefooted before the greatest modern successor of the conqueror ...
— Across the Zodiac • Percy Greg
... often told me of certain ascetic ambitions, very much like my own, for he had kept all the moral ambition of youth with a moral courage peculiar to himself, as for instance—'Yeats, the other night I was arrested by a policeman—was walking round Regent's Park barefooted to keep the flesh under—good sort of thing to do—I was carrying my boots in my hand and he thought I was a burglar; and even when I explained and gave him half a crown, he would not let me go till I had promised to put on my boots before ...
— Four Years • William Butler Yeats
... by hundreds of men and women in our ranks who have given up friends, parents, home, prospects and everything they possess to walk barefooted beneath India's burning sun in order to seek the weal of its people cannot fail I believe to stir up the rich and well-to-do, nay all but those too poor to help,—to make some sacrifice to heal the unutterable woes, and to sweeten the hard and bitter lot of those ...
— Darkest India - A Supplement to General Booth's "In Darkest England, and the Way Out" • Commissioner Booth-Tucker
... opened very slowly and a little negro girl, with a round woolly head and big startled eyes, stood peering in. She was barefooted, and wore a straight garment of ...
— Yankee Girl at Fort Sumter • Alice Turner Curtis
... who come to meddle with the text, One stretches and another cramps its rule. Bonaventura's life in me behold, From Bagnororegio, one, who in discharge Of my great offices still laid aside All sinister aim. Illuminato here, And Agostino join me: two they were, Among the first of those barefooted meek ones, Who sought God's friendship in the cord: with them Hugues of Saint Victor, Pietro Mangiadore, And he of Spain in his twelve volumes shining, Nathan the prophet, Metropolitan Chrysostom, and Anselmo, and, who deign'd ...
— The Divine Comedy, Complete - The Vision of Paradise, Purgatory and Hell • Dante Alighieri
... whin I was that full of clams that I needed a shell instead of a weskit, I walked on the beach with the admirin' crowds of summer tourists and lovely women. It was fine weather and the little ones were barefooted and the old ones bareheaded, and the wind was gentle, and the life-savers were polishin' their boat in full view of the wondherin' throng; and I thought of this ould tub out here on the ind of a chain and pitied thim all. Thin I sthrolled around the point to the bay and found me bould ...
— The Boy Scouts Book of Stories • Various
... that I had had a duel which had brought me into trouble, and required I should go into hiding, I followed my messenger half-an-hour afterwards: and, I warrant me, there was no want of a good reception, for presently, being introduced into an empty room by the barefooted maid who waited upon Mrs. Barry, the door was opened, and the poor mother flung herself into my arms with a scream, and with transports of joy which I shall not attempt to describe—they are but to be comprehended by women who have held in their arms an only child after ...
— Barry Lyndon • William Makepeace Thackeray
... this time attained the top of the winding stair which led to his own apartment, and opening a door, and pushing aside a piece of tapestry with which it was covered, his first exclamation was, "What are you about here, you sluts?" A dirty barefooted chambermaid threw down her duster, detected in the heinous fact of arranging the sanctum sanctorum, and fled out of an opposite door from the face of her incensed master. A genteel-looking young woman, who was superintending the operation, stood her ground, ...
— The Antiquary, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... rose in her throat. She caught her hand to it, forcing it back. Then, barefooted, she stepped out into the grey dimness that veiled all things, and left the door of Rufus's cottage open ...
— The Tidal Wave and Other Stories • Ethel May Dell
... ready to run barefooted on the perilous fringe of cream-wet sand where land and ocean met, a new and wonderful thing attracted their attention. Down from the dark pines and across the sandhills ran a man, naked save for narrow trunks. He was smooth and rosy-skinned, cherubic-faced, with a ...
— The Valley of the Moon • Jack London
... ground before Mr. Budlong could reach him, then darted away across lots barefooted through the snow towards the Detwillers'. Mr. Budlong treed him just before he reached the neighbors. But the boy would not come down till his father promised immunity both from punishment ...
— Mrs. Budlong's Chrismas Presents • Rupert Hughes
... bamboo-pole, or reaching for pieces of bananas which the boarders passed him from the dinner-table. "Have you chowed yet?" asked a grating voice, which, on a negative reply, ordered a place to be made ready for me at the table. Barefooted muchachos placed the thumb-marked dishes on the dirty table-cloth. I might add that a napkin had been spread to cover the spot where the tomato catsup had been spilled, and that the chicken-soup, in which a slice ...
— The Great White Tribe in Filipinia • Paul T. Gilbert
... own sovereigns have often felt the weight of the papal power. King Edgar was enjoined by Dunstan, the abbot of Glastonbury, not to wear his crown for seven years, to which he was compelled to submit. Henry II. was forced to walk barefooted three miles to visit Becket's shrine, and there to receive fourscore lashes from the monks on his bare back. King John was compelled to resign his crown to the pope's legate, and take it back on condition of paying a yearly sum of a thousand ...
— Guy Fawkes - or A Complete History Of The Gunpowder Treason, A.D. 1605 • Thomas Lathbury
... Belgrade, coming from below, is interesting, and one has a vivid recollection ever afterward of swarms of barefooted coal-heavers, clad in coarse sacking, rushing tumultuously up and down a gang-plank, as negroes do when wooding up on a Southern river; of shouting and swaggering Austrian customs officials, clad in gorgeous raiment, but smoking cheap cigars; of Servian gendarmes emulating ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December 1878 • Various
... on her elbow, Carmencita listened. There was no sound save the ticking of the little clock on the mantel. For a moment she waited, then with a swift movement of her hand threw back the covering on the cot, slipped from it, and stood, barefooted, in her nightgown, in the middle of the floor. Head on the side, one hand to her mouth, the other outstretched as if for silence from some one unseen, she raised herself on tiptoe and softly, lightly, crossed the room to ...
— How It Happened • Kate Langley Bosher
... labored and waited. Still in her heart she heard the funeral dirge of the ocean, But with its sound there was mingled a voice that whispered, "Despair not?" Thus did that poor soul wander in want and cheerless discomfort Bleeding, barefooted, over the shards and thorns of existence. Let me essay, O Muse! to follow the wanderer's footsteps;— Not through each devious path, each changeful year of existence; But as a traveller follows a streamlet's course through the valley: Far from its margin at times, and ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... country inns of Scotland. As soon as our car stopped at the door we felt the difference. At an English inn of this size, a waiter, or the master or mistress, would have been at the door immediately, but we remained some time before anybody came; then a barefooted lass made her appearance, but she only looked at us and went away. The mistress, a remarkably handsome woman, showed us into a large parlour; we ordered mutton-chops, and I finished my letter to Mary; writing on the same window-ledge on which William ...
— Recollections of a Tour Made in Scotland A.D. 1803 • Dorothy Wordsworth
... with the uncommon beauty of one sturdy little fellow. He was barefooted (on Cape Cod, in January), and ragged enough to have satisfied the most crazy devotee of the picturesque. His shapely head was set on his shoulders in an exceedingly high-bred way, while its bad archangel effect ...
— Cape Cod Folks • Sarah P. McLean Greene
... change!" she cries. "I who, but now, was so happy—I, who was Queen of the Meadows and could command all—I, for whom every youth would have gone barefooted amongst a nest of serpents—to be contemned, avoided, the terror of the country! And Pascal—he also flies me, as if I were a pest: yet I pitied him in his wretchedness; perhaps he has no pity to ...
— Barn and the Pyrenees - A Legendary Tour to the Country of Henri Quatre • Louisa Stuart Costello
... heap of withered boughs was piled, Of juniper and rowan wild, Mingled with shivers from the oak, Rent by the lightning's recent stroke. Brian, the Hermit, by it stood, 65 Barefooted, in his frock and hood. His grizzled beard and matted hair Obscured a visage of despair; His naked arms and legs, seamed o'er, The scars of frantic penance bore. 70 That monk, of savage form and face, ...
— Lady of the Lake • Sir Walter Scott
... marahan, matinik may mababaw, He who walks slowly, though he may put his foot on a thorn, will not be hurt very much (Tagals mostly go barefooted). ...
— Lineage, Life, and Labors of Jose Rizal, Philippine Patriot • Austin Craig
... morning she came down to the cottage and sat on the edge of the verandah, looking as wretchedly miserable as a girl could. She was in rags—at least, she had a rag of a dress on—and was barefooted and bareheaded. She said that her aunt had turned her out, and she was going to walk down the coast to Whale Bay to her grandmother—a long day's ride. The teacher was troubled, because he was undecided what to do. He had to be careful to avoid any unpleasantness ...
— Over the Sliprails • Henry Lawson
... on the Walker place, in 1869. My father was a slave to Mr. Bob. I used to drive Miss Lelia (Eulalie) to the Catholic church here in Pine Bluff. She used to let me go barefooted, ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States - Volume II. Arkansas Narratives. Part I • Work Projects Administration
... seized and smashed the machine, but did not search for our men with much zeal. The latter lay hid till dark and then found their way to the Aisne, across which they swam, reaching camp in safety, but barefooted. ...
— The New York Times Current History of the European War, Vol 1, Issue 4, January 23, 1915 • Various
... and Woodstock, marching a day or two and then remaining in camp that length of time to give rest to the troops, after their long march. It must be remembered we had been two months cut off from the outside world—no railroad nearer than Staunton, the men being often short of rations and barefooted and badly clad; scarcely any mail was received during these two months, and seldom a paper ever made its appearance in camp. We only knew that Lee was holding his own. We reached and passed through Strausburg on the 13th. ...
— History of Kershaw's Brigade • D. Augustus Dickert
... is heavy with sleep; he dodges uncertainly at the tapers as he lights and extinguishes them; and his manner to the congregation, as he passes through it to the altar, is altogether rasped and nervous. I think it is best to be one's self a little sleepy,—when the barefooted friar at the altar (if it is in the church of the Scalzi, say) has a habit of getting several centuries back from you, and of saying mass to the patrician ghosts from the tombs under your feet and there is nothing ...
— Venetian Life • W. D. Howells
... man, barefooted and bareheaded, and riding upon an ass, went through the cities and towns and villages of Europe, in the eleventh century, carrying—not a lance, but a crucifix. When he came near a town the word ran like a forest fire, "It ...
— The Book of Missionary Heroes • Basil Mathews
... nothing but my own self. Once I took every penny I had off a voyage to the public-house, and I stopped there and never had my boots off till I went to sea again. Every duty was neglected, my wife went cold in the bad weather, and my children were barefooted. When you're drinking and fooling you can see nothing at all, and you think you're a-doing all right, and everybody else is wrong when they try to help you. Out at sea I gambled and drunk when I could get the money; I made rare game of religious men, and lived as if I had ...
— A Dream of the North Sea • James Runciman
... change her doom, allowing her to dwell near the pit, but forbidding, by proclamation, anyone going to her or supplying her with food. Gersiwaz conducted her to the place; and stripping her of her rich garments and jewels, left her bareheaded and barefooted, ...
— Persian Literature, Volume 1,Comprising The Shah Nameh, The - Rubaiyat, The Divan, and The Gulistan • Anonymous
... sir," shouted Rogers, picking up one of the rings of rope they had ready, and throwing it over his shoulder, as he stood barefooted on ...
— Syd Belton - The Boy who would not go to Sea • George Manville Fenn
... pyjamas, barefooted, he fully clothed. His leather shoes drove into me viciously, even as his face turned purple. The pain was excruciating, but I dared not cry out. His left thumb found my eye, was ...
— Astounding Stories, May, 1931 • Various
... to her middle; she was everywhere devoured by them. One single crumb was scorching her and making her scratch herself till she bled. Besides, when one eats a cake isn't it usual to shake out the bedclothes afterward? Fontan, white with rage, had relit the candle, and they both got up and, barefooted and in their night dresses, they turned down the clothes and swept up the crumbs on the sheet with their hands. Fontan went to bed again, shivering, and told her to go to the devil when she advised him to wipe the soles of his feet carefully. And in the ...
— Nana, The Miller's Daughter, Captain Burle, Death of Olivier Becaille • Emile Zola
... quaintly fashioned houses, mostly occupied by shopkeepers, so that the space between presented perhaps the greatest thoroughfare then known in the Queen of Cities. And at about two o'clock in the afternoon, barefooted, ragged, fevered, and agitated, Shamus mingled with the turbid human stream, that roared and chafed over the as restless and as evanescent stream which buffeted the arches of old London Bridge. In a situation so novel ...
— Stories by English Authors: Ireland • Various
... smiling face, I could see that he was greatly flattered by my visit. Two peasant women helped me off with my coat in the entry, and a peasant in a red shirt hung it on a hook, and when Ivan Ivanitch and I went into his little study, two barefooted little girls were sitting on the floor looking at a picture-book; when they saw us they jumped up and ran away, and a tall, thin old woman in spectacles came in at once, bowed gravely to me, and picking ...
— The Wife and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... preserved for the purpose. During the burning of the log there is much merry-making and songs and dances and telling of stories. It was the subject of several superstitions. If it did not burn all night that was looked upon as a misfortune, and if a barefooted or squinting person came to the house while it was burning that also was a bad omen. The name Yule carries us back to the far-off ages when the heathen nations of the North held their annual winter festival in ...
— Little Folks (December 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... undeserving I was of your attachment. I did not deceive myself, Eugene; I always felt assured that such would be the case, that your love for me necessarily rested on your affliction. But for all that I never at least had a dream or a desire but for your happiness; and God knows, that if again, by walking barefooted, not to Cologne, but to Rome—to the end of the world—I could save you from a much less misfortune than that of blindness, I would cheerfully do it; yes, even though I might foretell all the while that, on my return, you would speak ...
— The Pilgrims Of The Rhine • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... the sultana at once shook hands. Her nimble fingers first manipulated my shoes (the first point of notice in these barefooted climes), then my overalls, then my waistcoat, more particularly the buttons, and then my coat—this latter article being so much admired, that she wished I would present it to her, to wear upon her own fair person. Next my hands and fingers were mumbled, and declared to be as soft as a child's, ...
— What Led To The Discovery of the Source Of The Nile • John Hanning Speke
... sympathisers considered the significant fact that this agitation is literally the bread of life to those who have created and still maintain it. Many of the Home Rule Irish Members of Parliament have risen from the lowest ranks of society—from the barefooted peasantry, where their nearest relations are still to be found—into the outward condition of gentlemen living in comparative affluence. It is not being uncharitable, nor going behind motives, to ask, Cui bono? For whose advantage is a certain movement carried ...
— About Ireland • E. Lynn Linton
... the mood to go for the cows. It meant an hour or so of patting barefooted and bare headed along the soft dust of the road, or over the slippery brown grass of the mountain pastures, with tall pines on every hand and a ...
— The Junior Classics Volume 8 - Animal and Nature Stories • Selected and arranged by William Patten
... gleaming, straggling, silver lines over the deep reflections of the shipping moored by the side of the jetty. The rising tide, lapping slowly and gently in from the ocean, was floating the boats beached on the shingle, and was gradually driving back the crowd of barefooted children who had ventured out in search of mussels, and was sending them, shrieking with mirth, scampering up the seaweed-covered steps that led to the fish market. On the crag-top above the town the corn had been cut, and harvesters ...
— Monitress Merle • Angela Brazil
... now, on the water-side, is the Viceroy's palace; that to the right, again, is the convent of the barefooted Carmelites: yon lofty spire is the cathedral of St Catherine, and that beautiful and light piece of architecture is the church of our Lady of Pity. You observe there a building, with a dome, rising behind the ...
— The Phantom Ship • Captain Frederick Marryat
... found deepest poverty. The greatest luxury of the poor people is the "schooling" of their children. Parents will go hungry for this. Many of the children trudged along barefooted for miles when ice was on the pools by the roadside. I found, as I have before, churches and schools leavening their communities with more intelligent manhood and womanhood, with better homes, with wiser industries and economies, with stronger and truer characters. ...
— The American Missionary - Volume 50, No. 4, April 1896 • Various
... isn't always easy to make comfortable summer arrangements. As you start so you go on, for changing horses in mid-stream has ever been a parlous business. A temperamental high-school boy who came to drive the motor and water the garden, though he appeared barefooted to drive me to town, and took French leave for a day's fishing, pinning a note to the kitchen door, saying, "Expect me when you see me and don't wait dinner," afflicted me one entire summer. I tried to ...
— The Smiling Hill-Top - And Other California Sketches • Julia M. Sloane
... only smiled again more kindly than before, and answered, in a tone which he understood better than her words,—"A great man said his coat-of-arms was a pair of shirt-sleeves, and a sweet poet sang about a barefooted boy; so I need not be too proud to ride with one. Up with you, Ben, my man, and let us be off, or we shall be late for ...
— Under the Lilacs • Louisa May Alcott
... elderly gentlemen would have needed "their lass with a lantern," to escort them from their chambers. The old city guard sputtered their Gaelic, and stamped up and down for warmth. The chairmen drank their last fee to keep out the cold—and in and out of the low doorways moved middle-aged women barefooted, and in curch and short gown, who, when snooded maidens, had gazed on the white cockade, and the march of Prince Charlie Stuart and his Highlandmen. Down the narrow way, in the drizzly dusk, ran a slight figure, entirely muffled up. Fleet of foot was the runner, ...
— Girlhood and Womanhood - The Story of some Fortunes and Misfortunes • Sarah Tytler
... of the streams, and where the current quickened, tall wheels were lifting water for the fields in circles of brimming and spilling pockets. Along the embankments, where a new track was being laid, barefooted women were at work with pick and spade and barrow, and little yellow-haired girls were lugging large white-headed babies, and watching the train go by. At an up grade where it slowed in the ascent he began to throw out to the children the pfennigs which had been left ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... Ulf was barefooted, for although he generally wore soft shoes which were almost as noiseless as the naked foot, he was dressed in rags, and a foot covering of any sort would have been out of place. Always keeping in the shade, having his eyes fixed on ...
— Wulf the Saxon - A Story of the Norman Conquest • G. A. Henty
... now, on the water-side, is the viceroy's palace; that to the right again, is the convent of the barefooted Carmelites; yon lofty spire is the cathedral of St. Catherine; and that beautiful and light piece of architecture is the church of our Lady of Pity. You observe there a building with a dome, rising ...
— The Phantom Ship • Frederick Marryat
... the night, it did not fail of its reward, for just as I had begun to drowse, the gallery steps creaked as if beneath some immoderate weight, and the noble form of Keredec emerged upon my field of vision. From the absence of the sound of footsteps I supposed him to be either barefooted or in his stockings. His visible costume consisted of a sleeping jacket tucked into a pair of trousers, while his tousled hair and beard and generally tossed and rumpled look were those of a man who ...
— The Guest of Quesnay • Booth Tarkington
... and boys are barefooted, according to the economical custom of a time when shoes in summer are regarded as luxuries not necessities. The costume of most is limited to shirt and trousers, the material for which their own hands or those of their women-folk have ...
— The Duke of Stockbridge • Edward Bellamy
... impassioned utterances, "borne on the tones of a wild and quite artless melody," is Gorky's mad, unbridled, powerful voice, as he sings of the "madness of the brave," of the barefooted dreamers, who are proud of their idleness, who possess nothing and fear nothing, who are gay in their misery, though miserable in ...
— Foma Gordyeff - (The Man Who Was Afraid) • Maxim Gorky
... Kit to dress, but Kit's clothes were still a little wet in the thick parts. And Kat had to go barefooted and carry her one ...
— The Book of Stories for the Storyteller • Fanny E. Coe
... small turtles is because for two or three years the young turtles bury themselves in the ground and keep hidden from observation. From a Maine farmer he heard that both male and female hawks take part in incubation. A barefooted New Jersey boy told him that "lampers" die as soon as they have built their nests and laid their eggs. How apt he is in similes! The pastoral fields of Scotland are "stall-fed," and the hill-sides "wrinkled and dimpled, like the forms of ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 7 • Various
... through bogs, and climbed through glens and ravines, before he came on the scent of a bear, and a bear's scent, you may know, is strong, and quite unmistakable. Finally he discovered some tracks in the moss, like those of a barefooted man, or, I should rather say, perhaps, a man-footed bear. The Prince was just turning the corner of a projecting rock, when he saw a huge, shaggy beast standing on its hind legs, examining in a leisurely manner the inside ...
— Boyhood in Norway • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... is an extremely picturesque, old-time village. Its thatched-roofed cottages huddle together in a beautiful green valley, and about the edge of a pond where ducks swim, and happy, barefooted children play. One of the old houses is a place of interest to many, as the great poet, John Milton, lived there after he fled from London at the time ...
— John and Betty's History Visit • Margaret Williamson
... and sickly as an infant, and reared with difficulty; but, though a prince, he was fed on the simplest food, and exposed to hardships like the sons of peasants; he was allowed to run bareheaded and barefooted, exposed to heat and rain, in order to strengthen his constitution. Amid the hills at the base of the Pyrenees, in the company of peasants' children, he thus acquired simple and natural manners, and accustomed himself to fatigues and dangers. He was educated in the reformed doctrines, ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VIII • John Lord
... live, I don't believe these shoes will ever be dry by school time. S'posing we have to go barefooted, and this the last day of the term! Cherry, you've got too many columbines in that horn. They look pinched. Put some in ...
— At the Little Brown House • Ruth Alberta Brown
... should go in nearer and nearer to the land till she could discern men, women, and children, and their occupations. A fisherman and his wife sat in the porch above their hanging garden, the woman knitting, the man mending his nets, barefooted boys and girls astride the keel of a boat below them. The princess eyed them and wept. 'They give me happiness; I can give ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... as a barefooted boy, caught trout in Ragged Brook, until the winter of '62, when, a sturdy young man of eighteen, he had fallen deeply in love with Liddy Camp, a few changes had taken place in Southton. Three different principals had been ...
— Pocket Island - A Story of Country Life in New England • Charles Clark Munn
... different from all around them, they were so attractive, they were so agreeable, and sweet, and fresh, and happy, that the poor fellows would have liked above all things to have gotten very near to them and have heard their kind words,—possibly shake hands; but no, some were barefooted, some almost bareheaded; some were still expecting clean clothes from home; some were sick and disheartened; some were on guard; some in the guard-house, and others too modest; and so, to many, the innocent visitor became a sort of ...
— Detailed Minutiae of Soldier life in the Army of Northern Virginia, 1861-1865 • Carlton McCarthy
... was a curious place. The children's benches consisted of split logs on pegs, without backs. The sides of the building were logs and sods, and the roof was constructed of logs and pine boughs. All of the children were barefooted, and several had but poor and scanty clothing. Yet the very simplicity of the place had ...
— The Log School-House on the Columbia • Hezekiah Butterworth
... finished speaking ere Rodney appeared at the door, barefooted, hatless, his blouse dirty, his cheeks aglow, and his eyes blazing with excitement. In his grimy hands he clasped some precious treasure. He hesitated for an instant when he saw so many women in the room. But nothing could restrain him. He had made a marvellous ...
— Rod of the Lone Patrol • H. A. Cody
... up his wallet and his book, and came down to the road. Then first the clergyman saw that he was barefooted. In his childhood he had himself often gone without shoes and stockings, yet the youth's lack of ...
— Donal Grant • George MacDonald
... "particular" boy made a bee-line for the tree that happened to catch his eye by the light of the camp-fire. Had any of his chums thought to observe the movements of Smithy they would have discovered that for once he did not even think of stopping to brush his hair, or pick his steps. Barefooted as he was, he dashed over the intervening ground, and hugged the trunk of his tree with a zeal that spoke ...
— The Boy Scouts' First Camp Fire - or, Scouting with the Silver Fox Patrol • Herbert Carter
... up Nob and Telegraph hills all Wednesday was a pitiful sight. Many were barefooted and lightly clad. There was nothing to eat ...
— Complete Story of the San Francisco Horror • Richard Linthicum
... since last autumn, not having visited Fort Providence for more than a year; and so successful had they been, that they were enabled to supply us with upwards of seventy pounds of dried meat, and six moose skins fit for making shoes, which were the more valuable as we were apprehensive of being barefooted before the journey could be completed. The evening was sultry, and the musquitoes appeared in great numbers. The distance made ...
— Narrative of a Journey to the Shores of the Polar Sea, in the years 1819-20-21-22, Volume 2 • John Franklin
... this spark to a flame; science, too, had at times been his chosen field; and when he had built a mousetrap which actually caught mice, he saw himself a millionaire inventor. As for being president, that was a commonplace in his dreams. And all the time, he was barefooted, ill-clad and dreamed his dreams to the accompaniment of the growl of the plow cutting the roots under the brown furrow-slice, or the wooshing of the milk in the pail. At twenty-eight, he considered ...
— The Brown Mouse • Herbert Quick
... Sir Richard, continuing to read. "The thought arose—'gather in the most forlorn and wretched children; those who are seldom seen to smile, or heard to laugh; there are many such who require Christian sympathy.' The thought was immediately acted on. A little barefooted ragged boy was sent into the streets to bring in the children. Soon there was a crowd round the school-door. The most miserable among the little ones were admitted. The proceedings commenced with prayer—then the toys were distributed, ...
— Dusty Diamonds Cut and Polished - A Tale of City Arab Life and Adventure • R.M. Ballantyne
... the quartermaster in the pilot house and the bows swung round. Half an hour afterwards, he rang his telegraph and the clang of engines died away while the throb of the propeller stopped. In what seemed an unnatural silence, a few barefooted deck-hands began to move about, and one stood on the forecastle, where his dark figure cut against the shining sea. The rest went aft with a line the other held, and when Mayne raised his hand there was a splash as the deep-sea lead plunged. A man aft called the depth while he gathered ...
— The Buccaneer Farmer - Published In England Under The Title "Askew's Victory" • Harold Bindloss
... his unhappy musings to find a gigantic, barefooted negro standing before him. The slave was middle-aged; his kinky hair was growing gray; but he was of superb proportions, and the muscles which showed through the rents in his cotton garments were as smooth and supple as those of a stripling. His black face ...
— Rainbow's End • Rex Beach
... leader of the boys in his neighborhood, and he was fond of engaging with them in various athletic games. He also formed a military company of the little negroes on the family estate, and drilled them keenly, actually making something like a military show with the barefooted, ragged pickaninnies, with their rolling eyes and woolly heads. Like all other young Virginians he was accustomed to riding from his infancy, and before he was ten years old there were few horses that he could not ...
— A Treasury of Heroes and Heroines - A Record of High Endeavour and Strange Adventure from 500 B.C. to 1920 A.D. • Clayton Edwards
... rooms on the ground-floor, and I know not what narrow, low-roofed chambers above. Two small girls, with brown, German faces, were paring wormy apples under the porch; and a round-shouldered, bareheaded, and barefooted woman, also with a German face and a strong German accent, was drawing water at the well. I asked her for a drink, which she kindly gave me, and invited me into ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 97, November, 1865 • Various
... of elevating inspirations... Only when the family had "moved" into the malarious backwoods of Indiana, the mother had died, and a stepmother, a woman of thrift and energy, had taken charge of the children, the shaggy-headed, ragged, barefooted, forlorn boy, then seven years old, "began to feel like a human being." Hard work was his early lot. When a mere boy he had to help in supporting the family, either on his father's clearing, or hired out to other ...
— The Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln, Complete - Constitutional Edition • Abraham Lincoln
... have it on. But it will hurt me to go barefooted. Never mind—I wish to try how you live, in every way. How pleasant it will be to sleep in the free air to-night! But you will like my bed with the flowered curtains, and the pictures, and ...
— The Magician's Show Box and Other Stories • Lydia Maria Child
... in this procession of wood-carters was a boy of perhaps ten or eleven. He rode his horse, and was barefooted and barelegged; but he had a cigarette in his mouth, and to each brown heel was fastened an enormous spur. Who was it that infected the world with the foolish and disastrous notion that work and play are two different things? And was it Emerson, or some other ...
— A Florida Sketch-Book • Bradford Torrey
... fear. We were then led into the pavilion, being strictly charged not to touch any of the tent ropes, which they consider as equivalent to the threshold of a house, which must not be touched. We entered the tent barefooted and with our heads uncovered, forming a strange spectacle in their eyes; for though Friar John de Plano Carpini had been there before me, yet being a messenger from the Pope, he had changed his habit that he might not be despised. We were brought forward ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 1 • Robert Kerr
... the hotel Mr. Carson stopped with me at a store and he bought me a new suit of clothes, a hat and a pair of boots, for I was barefooted and almost bareheaded. Thus dressed I could hardly realize that I was the Will Drannan ...
— Thirty-One Years on the Plains and In the Mountains • William F. Drannan
... flannel, difficult to wash, and entirely unfit for a tropical climate. The trousers were poor, wearing badly. We did not get any other clothing until we were just about to leave Cuba, by which time most of the men were in tatters; some being actually barefooted, while others were in rags, or dressed partly in clothes captured from the Spaniards, who were much more suitably clothed for the climate and place than we were. The ponchos were poor, being inferior to the Spanish rain-coats ...
— Rough Riders • Theodore Roosevelt
... enthusiasm ferments into madness, not untinctured with craft. She becomes the prophetess, the mother of the faithful, holds disputations with the devil, issues sealed pardons to her adorers, and lies in of the Shiloh. Place Joanna Southcote at Rome. She founds an order of barefooted Carmelites, every one of whom is ready to suffer martyrdom for the Church: a solemn service is consecrated to her memory; and her statue, placed over the holy water, strikes the eye of every stranger who ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... varied hues, not only of the sky and water, the earth and the buildings, but of the dresses and very skins of the peasantry. Every cake out of my paint-box would have been required, I was sure, to give effect to the scene. Even the barefooted porters wore red scarfs round their waists, while shawls and handkerchiefs of every tint adorned the heads and shoulders of the women—hats, however, being worn generally by the older dames. Then there was the fine tawny colour of the persevering ...
— My First Voyage to Southern Seas • W.H.G. Kingston
... our parlor that household altar, the blazing wood fire, whose wholesome, hearty crackle is the truest household inspiration. I quite agree with one celebrated American author who holds that an open fireplace is an altar of patriotism. Would our Revolutionary fathers have gone barefooted and bleeding over snows to defend air-tight stoves and cooking-ranges? I trow not. It was the memory of the great open kitchen-fire, with its back log and fore stick of cord-wood, its roaring, hilarious voice of invitation, ...
— Household Papers and Stories • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... for preparation, though Mrs. Ford kindly provided her with all that was necessary for her respectable appearance in her new place, so that she went back to the city which had been her former abode a very different-looking girl from the barefooted, gipsy-like child, who had wandered, uncared for, about its streets. "I know the place well, ma'am," she said to Mrs. Ford; "it isn't as if I had never been there. I won't feel a bit strange." And though the spring was approaching, and she was for many reasons very ...
— Lucy Raymond - Or, The Children's Watchword • Agnes Maule Machar
... dying," said the physician. "There is some moral malady which has made great progress, and it has complicated her physical condition, which was already dangerous, and made still more so by her great imprudence. To walk about barefooted at night! to go out when I forbade it! on foot yesterday in the rain, to-day in a carriage! She must have meant to kill herself. But still, my judgment is not final; she has youth, and a most amazing nervous strength. It may be ...
— The Thirteen • Honore de Balzac
... privileges of the municipality were respected, the magistrates were not changed. Yet the people could not see a conqueror enter their hitherto unconquered castle without tears of rage and shame. Even the barefooted Carmelites, who had renounced all pleasures, all property, all society, all domestic affection, whose days were all fast days, who passed month after month without uttering a word, were strangely moved. It was in vain that Lewis attempted to soothe them by marks of respect and ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 4 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... your mother mean," he cried, savagely, "by letting you run barefooted around the country just like poor white trash? An' what are you playing with low-flung niggers for? Haven't you ever been taught any better? I suppose it's some of your father's ...
— The Little Colonel • Annie Fellows Johnston
... Bethel stood the old stage tavern where "man and beast" found accommodation, The stable-man was rather dissipated, but possessed of some humor. On my return I found him parading the streets, and attending in the stable, barefooted, but in a pair of sky-blue nankeen pantaloons—just the color of my uniform trousers—with a strip of white cotton sheeting sewed down the outside seams in imitation of mine. The joke was a huge one in the mind of many of the people, ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... Then master Iames Lancaster our captaine, and M. Edmund Barker his lieutenant, and other of the companie manning the boat, went on shoare to see what inhabitants might be found. And comming on land we found the tracking of some barefooted people which were departed thence not long before: for we sawe their fire still burning, but people we sawe none, nor any other living creature, saue a certaine kind of foule called oxe birds, which are a gray kind of Sea-foule, like a Snite in colour, but not in beake. Of ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries of - The English Nation, Vol. 11 • Richard Hakluyt
... lame, or infirm labourers, women, and children. The universal war of the Continent left scarcely a man unmaimed to be seen in civil life. The women who met my eyes were all fat, with very round and very brown faces. Most of them were barefooted, nay, barelegged, and had on odd small caps, very close round their visages. The better sort, I fancy, at that critical time, had hidden themselves or ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 3 • Madame D'Arblay
... place is that all the inhabitants go barefooted. Ladies (?) will pass you with their stiffly-starched white dresses, and raven-black hair neatly done up with colored ribbons, but with feet innocent of shoes. Soldiers and policemen tramp the streets, ...
— Through Five Republics on Horseback • G. Whitfield Ray
... callow and conceited, and I resolved to try the virtue of my nom de guerre. I very soon had an opportunity. I knocked at a miner's lonely log cabin in the foothills of the Sierras just at nightfall. It was snowing at the time. A jaded, melancholy man of fifty, barefooted, opened the door to me. When he heard my nom de guerre he looked more dejected than before. He let me in—pretty reluctantly, I thought—and after the customary bacon and beans, black coffee and hot whiskey, I took a pipe. This sorrowful man had not said three words up to this ...
— Chapters from My Autobiography • Mark Twain
... her diatribe concerning the lively Judith: "Surely you remember her, Jeff. She used to come here selling blackberries when she was a kid—a little barefooted girl and as pert as you please even then. After old Dick Buck died she used to trap rabbits and bring them here for sale and sometimes fish. It always made me mad for Aunt Em'ly to encourage her by making Mother buy the things. I think poor persons should ...
— The Comings of Cousin Ann • Emma Speed Sampson
... it was really and truly a boy sitting there. The other seemed to be not over ten years of age, judging from his size. He was barefooted, and without either hat or coat, though the ...
— The Outdoor Chums on the Gulf • Captain Quincy Allen
... I were a barefooted snowbird, I know, I would not stay out in the cold and the snow. I pity him so! Oh, how cold he must be, And yet he ...
— Stories of Birds • Lenore Elizabeth Mulets
... more extraordinary scene took place. While M. de Laubardemont was questioning one of the nuns, the superior came down into the court, barefooted; in her chemise, and a cord round her neck; and there she remained for two hours, in the midst of a fearful storm, not shrinking before lightning, thunder, or rain, but waiting till M. de Laubardemont and the other exorcists should come out. At length the door opened ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... her. He takes to his heels and remains away until she puts things in order and returns to her senses. This is the proof of a queer ineradicable cowardice in every man, that the bravest and hardiest of them who does not shrink from marching barefooted through winter snows to meet the enemy in overwhelming numbers will fly before the face of one woman who has made up her mind to wet his feet with scouring water if he does not get out of ...
— The Co-Citizens • Corra Harris
... he was sleeping and not to be disturbed; and an hour later, when Anne lifted the tapestry and listened at his door, she heard his loud regular breathing. She thought it might be a feint, and stayed a long time barefooted in the cold passage, her ear to the crack; but the breathing went on too steadily and naturally to be other than that of a man in a sound sleep. She crept back to her room reassured, and stood in the window watching the moon set through the trees of the park. The sky was misty and starless, ...
— The Early Short Fiction of Edith Wharton, Part 1 (of 10) • Edith Wharton
... the thumb to the fingers. In considering this point, however, it must not be forgotten that the civilized great toe, confined and cramped from childhood upwards, is seen to a great disadvantage, and that in uncivilized and barefooted people it retains a great amount of mobility, and even some sort of opposability. The Chinese boatmen are said to be able to pull an oar; the artisans of Bengal to weave, and the Carajas to steal fishhooks, ...
— Lectures and Essays • T.H. Huxley
... three leaps towards the procession, upon which the company in the coach, thinking we were fighting with all the devils, cried out most terribly; yet it is a question whether our company was in a greater fright than the imaginary devils that put us into it, who, it seems, were a parcel of barefooted reformed Augustine friars, otherwise called the Black Capuchins, who, seeing two men advancing towards them with drawn swords, one of them, detached from the fraternity, cried out, "Gentlemen, we are poor, harmless friars, only come to bathe in this river for our healths." ...
— The Memoirs of Cardinal de Retz, Complete • Jean Francois Paul de Gondi, Cardinal de Retz
... which Goethe was born, and the scenes he frequented in his childhood, and remembered in his old age. Such for example are the walks around the city, outside the moat; the bridge over the Maine, with the golden cock on the cross, which the poet beheld and marvelled at when a boy; the cloister of the Barefooted Friars, through which he stole with mysterious awe to sit by the oilcloth-covered table of old Rector Albrecht; and the garden in which his grandfather walked up and down among fruit-trees and rose-bushes, in long morning gown, black velvet cap, and ...
— Hyperion • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... and Samuel J. Tilden were once barefooted boys, with a suspender apiece. It doesn't seem possible, ...
— Remarks • Bill Nye
... brought for it in her blue apron, fastened up round her waist; she stands with her pail on her head, evidently the village coquette, for she has a neat bodice, and pretty striped petticoat under the blue apron, and red stockings. Nearer us, the cowherd, barefooted, stands on a piece of the limestone rock (for the ground is thistly and not pleasurable to bare feet);—whether boy or girl we are not sure; it may be a boy, with a girl's worn-out bonnet on, or a girl ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... respective rooms to recuperate their wearied energies by a loll, if not a siesta, that they might be in trim for the evening's enjoyment (Christmas lasted a whole week at Ridgeley) when four strapping field hands, barefooted, that their tramp might not break the epicurean slumbers, brought down from the desolate upper chamber a rough pine coffin, manufactured and screwed tight by the plantation carpenter, and after halting a minute ...
— At Last • Marion Harland
... was difficult to judge him by European standards, because the conditions of the warfare he conducted were totally unlike anything in Europe. He never commanded a real army with well-organized departments and good equipment. His troops were usually barefooted, half-starved, and for several years incapable of performing the simplest parade manoeuvre. Brilliant movements, except on a small scale, as at Princeton, were rarely within his reach; and large complicated movements were impossible because he ...
— Washington's Birthday • Various
... He was smiling, his own shy, secret smile. He held his head erect and looked ahead of him as if in the far, far distance he had seen something, a beckoning something, toward which he was to strive. Barefooted Peter, poverty-stricken, lonely Peter for the first time glimpsed ...
— The Purple Heights • Marie Conway Oemler
... sense of their importance. She had put back the wild hair that used to fly about her face until her father called her "An owl in an ivy bush" and her mother admonished her that her "head was like a mop." Now, being in her teens, she wore her dresses longer and never ran about barefooted, paddling in the brook below the spring, although she would like to do so; still she was child enough to run when she should walk, and to laugh ...
— The Eye of Dread • Payne Erskine
... were determined to give up the unlawful intercourse which had made him guilty before God. The king, having answered, without being disconcerted, that he was ready to make atonement to God and the holy Roman Church, was introduced to the assembly. He came barefooted, in a posture of devotion and humility, confessing his sin and promising to purge him of his excommunication by expiatory deeds. And thus, by your authority, he earned absolution. Then laying his hand on the book of the holy Gospels, he took an oath, in the following ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume I. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... a smile. She could afford to smile, being complete to the last detail and quite sure of taking the ballroom by storm. She found Dinah scurrying barefooted about the room with her hair in a loose bunch on her neck, her attire of the scantiest description, her expression ...
— Greatheart • Ethel M. Dell
... impulse, took off their hats as if entering a church, without being sensible of so doing. The Greeks and Catholics shed torrents of tears; and, presently beginning to cross themselves with unfeigned devotion, asked if they might be permitted to take off the covering from their feet, and proceed, barefooted to the Holy Sepulchre. We had not been prepared for the grandeur of the spectacle which the city alone exhibited. Instead of a wretched and ruined town, by some described as the desolated remnant of Jerusalem, ...
— Palestine or the Holy Land - From the Earliest Period to the Present Time • Michael Russell
... to Donjalolo, barefooted; but in their homes, their proud latchets were tied by their slaves. Before their king-belted prince, they stood rope-girdled like self-abased monks of St. Francis; but with those ropes, before their palaces, they hung Innocence ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. I (of 2) • Herman Melville
... with interest at his little bare feet, and thought he would like some shoes. In fact they would be his first, for thus far in life he had been a barefooted boy. ...
— From Canal Boy to President - Or The Boyhood and Manhood of James A. Garfield • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... the lantern was swallowed up in the passage, I found my bundle and rifle and set out to follow the man. Four paces brought me to the foot of more steps. I walked barefooted, frequently pausing to listen. There were many carvings upon the walls, but I had no leisure to ...
— Fire-Tongue • Sax Rohmer
... ragged, several of them barefooted, nearly all bare-headed, but they danced with noisy merriment. One there was, a little girl, on crutches; incapable of taking a partner, she stumped round and round, circling upon the pavement, till giddiness came upon her and she ...
— Thyrza • George Gissing
... Queen Elizabeth, Charles's wife, endeavored to ward off the stroke of Heaven by solemn processions. For nine successive days, laying aside all tokens of her royal rank, simply clad, and with uncovered face, she walked barefooted, and accompanied by a large number of poor boys and girls, from the wood of Vincennes, where the court still lingered, to the city of Paris. After devoutly praying for the king's recovery at the Sainte-Chapelle and at the shrine of Notre Dame, ...
— History of the Rise of the Huguenots - Volume 2 • Henry Baird
... seen in small groups at almost every street corner, and in such quarters of the town where reside known sympathisers with the attacking party much military movement is noticeable. Every few hundred yards are stationed pickets of gendarmes or barefooted soldados; and after dusk, no matter who you be or what your errand, you stand every chance of a bullet should you fail to give prompt satisfaction on being challenged with the usual ...
— Adventures in Many Lands • Various
... toy was made from the warning appendage that once vibrated to the wrath of one of these "cruel serpents." Sometimes one of them, coaxed out by a warm sun, would writhe himself down the hillside into the roads, up the walks that led to houses,—worse than this, into the long grass, where the barefooted mowers would soon pass with their swinging scythes,—more rarely into houses, and on one memorable occasion, early in the last century, into the meeting-house, where he took a position on the pulpit-stairs,—as is narrated in the "Account of Some Remarkable ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... first two hundred persons in uniform dresses, with large plumes of feathers, marching two and two in deep silence, barefooted, with their eyes ...
— Peter Parley's Tales About America and Australia • Samuel Griswold Goodrich
... Belfast on a wet day!" A sense of loneliness descended upon him as he gazed at the grey, dribbling skies and the damp pavements. The trams were full of moist, huddled men and women; the foot-passengers hurried homewards, their heads bent against the wind and rain; the bleak-looking newspaper boys, barefooted, pinched, hungry and cold, stood shivering in doorways, with wet, sticky papers under their arms; and wherever he looked, John saw only unfriendliness, haste and discomfort. There would not be a train to Ballyards until late in the afternoon, and as he stood there, growing less cheerful ...
— The Foolish Lovers • St. John G. Ervine
... suppose you mean the barefooted children that are taught by a bloody ape like you. ...
— A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man • James Joyce
... destroyed by man, may stand here for five centuries more, since its enormous walls are five feet thick, and the mortar used in their construction has rendered them almost as solid as if hewn from rock. As I descended, at the station a quarter of a mile away, a little barefooted Mexican boy approached and shyly offered me his hand. "Are you the ...
— John L. Stoddard's Lectures, Vol. 10 (of 10) - Southern California; Grand Canon of the Colorado River; Yellowstone National Park • John L. Stoddard
... mistaken. If he had turned through Tremont and Boylston streets he might have seen a ragged, barefooted boy sauntering along with his hands in his pockets, stopping now and then to look into a shop window, yet ever keeping a keenly watchful eye on every policeman he met. The boy looked as if he had not a penny in those ragged pockets of ...
— The Bishop's Shadow • I. T. Thurston
... of modern electricity, not even the talking from one hemisphere to another, is rightly the accomplishment of any one man, for the origin of the discovery can be traced at least as far back as the days of that barefooted shepherd boy Magnus, who first observed the phenomena ...
— Manhood of Humanity. • Alfred Korzybski
... pasturage, or idling in the shade. Upon the whole it was oftener this last than any other occupation. With her neglected knitting in her hands she would sit for hours under a certain low-spreading cedar not far from the door, barefooted, coarsely clad, beautiful,—every tinge of the sun, every indifferent leisurely movement, a new suggestion of ...
— Lodusky • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... Confederate soldiers had endured every privation; one-half were in rags, and thousands barefooted had marked their path with crimson. Yet shoeless, hatless, and ragged, they had marched and fought with a heroism like that of the Revolutionary times. But they met their equals at Antietam. Jackson's and Hooker's men fought until both sides were nearly exterminated, ...
— A Brief History of the United States • Barnes & Co.
... afternoon, there being no sails in sight, he turned aside from the bay and walked westward towards the ocean, halting only at the league-long line of foam which marked the breaking Pacific surges. Here he was surprised to see a little child, half-naked, following barefooted the creeping line of spume, or running after the detached and quivering scraps of foam that chased each other over the wet sand, and only a little further on, to come upon Cara herself, sitting with her elbows on her knees and her round chin in her hands, apparently gazing over the waste ...
— Mr. Jack Hamlin's Mediation and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... dune, near to a cluster of sweet-scented pines, stood two or three cottages built of grey stone, after the Breton manner, with high-pitched roofs of dove-coloured slate, and arched stone doorways, around which scratched pigs and hens, on equal terms with barefooted children. One of the cottages had "Buvette" inscribed over it in large, white letters, and a bench outside under a little awning; and opposite to this, a rough pathway led out of the road over the waste land to a hamlet ...
— A Loose End and Other Stories • S. Elizabeth Hall
... mainland, carrying them about three quarters of a mile up to our knees in mud, from which point the lake became a little firmer, and the horses carried the loads out. I cannot speak too highly of the manner in which my companions assisted me on this trying occasion. Having been obliged to work barefooted in the mud, the soles of Mr. Hamersley's feet were in a very bad state, and he was hardly able to walk for a fortnight. Seeing a native fire several miles to the southward, I intend sending Tommy Windich and ...
— Explorations in Australia • John Forrest
... awakened at daylight by the discordant orisons of the Lama; these commenced by the boys beating the great tambourine, then blowing the conch-shells, and finally the trumpets and thigh-bone. Shortly the Lama entered, clad in scarlet, shorn and barefooted, wearing a small red silk mitre, a loose gown girt round the middle, and an under-garment of questionable colour, possibly once purple. He walked along, slowly muttering his prayers, to the end of the apartment, whence ...
— Himalayan Journals (Complete) • J. D. Hooker
... to throw the enemy north of the Potomac," he wrote his wife, "but thousands of our men were barefooted, thousands with fragments of shoes, and all without overcoats, blankets or warm clothing. I could not bear to expose them to certain suffering.... I am glad you have some socks for the army. Send them to me.... Tell ...
— On the Trail of Grant and Lee • Frederick Trevor Hill
... attempt was little else than ludicrous. Anthony laughed fiercely to himself as he pictured the landing of the treacherous fools at Dingle, of Sir James FitzMaurice and his lady, very wretched and giddy after their voyage, and the barefooted friars, and Dr. Sanders, and the banner so solemnly consecrated; and of the sands of Smerwick, when all was over a year later, and the six hundred bodies, men and women who had preferred Mr. Buxton's spiritual kingdom ...
— By What Authority? • Robert Hugh Benson
... It belonged to a girl of eighteen, bareheaded and barefooted, holding in the other hand a small oil-can. Her ...
— Dr. Sevier • George W. Cable
... intended thereby that you should merit by your generosity, and he by his patience? For it is the bread of the starving that you cling to; it is the clothes of the naked that hang locked in your wardrobe; it is the shoes of the barefooted that are ranged in your room; it is the silver of the needy that you hoard. For you are injuring whoever is in want.' And ...
— Mediaeval Socialism • Bede Jarrett |
