"Footprint" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... were scanning the ground he walked about the outskirts of the camp with his glances on the ground. There was not a footprint, not a thing to indicate that any person outside of themselves had been near the camp. Tad was looking in particular for the strings with which the stuff had been tied to the rope. Not finding these he was certain that some human being ...
— The Pony Rider Boys in Alaska - The Gold Diggers of Taku Pass • Frank Gee Patchin
... recent as a week. At the same place I found the handle of a clasp-knife. From here struck out south for a short distance from the creek, and found a distinct camel's track and droppings on a native path: the footprint was about four months old and going east. I then sent the black boy to follow the creek, and struck across some sandy country in a bend on the north side. No tracks here; and coming on a native path leading my way, I followed it, as the most ...
— Successful Exploration Through the Interior of Australia • William John Wills
... reversing the main end and object of philosophy, would render the philosopher who clung to it less sagacious in divining the future than even the ordinary man? But, in truth, the existing premises, wholly altered by geologic science, are no longer those of Hume. The footprint on the sand—to refer to his happy illustration—does not now stand alone. Instead of one, we see many footprints, each in turn in advance of the print behind it, and on a higher level; and, founding at once on an acquaintance with the past, ...
— The Testimony of the Rocks - or, Geology in Its Bearings on the Two Theologies, Natural and Revealed • Hugh Miller
... came to the bottom step, I saw patches of wet all up and down the passage. I shone my lantern on them. It was the imprint of a wet foot on the oilcloth of the passage; not an ordinary footprint, but a queer, soft, flabby, spreading imprint, that gave me a ...
— Carnacki, The Ghost Finder • William Hope Hodgson
... with a smile, "and the print of a foot in a tulip bed, and a number of other things. The oddest part is, Miss Innes, that the thumb-mark is probably yours and the footprint certainly." ...
— The Circular Staircase • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... clothes, stretched out, and drawing a pear from the basket began to eat it. As he did so his glance explored the place and brought up on a mark at the water's edge. It interested him, and still gnawing the pear, he crawled down to it—a footprint, large and as clearly impressed as if cast in plaster. Not far from it was a triangular indentation, its point driven deep—the mark ...
— Treasure and Trouble Therewith - A Tale of California • Geraldine Bonner
... detail of his perfectly commonplace appearance. Then the boy followed him into the garden, and, true to the habit which was rapidly becoming an instinct, he dropped a glance on Albert's track. There was a patch of damp earth near the door, and the lodger's footprint was plainly stamped on it. At the first swift look Chippy gathered that there was something slightly different from usual about the heel-print. He did not look closely, for you must never let anyone know that either he himself or the trail he leaves, is being ...
— The Wolf Patrol - A Tale of Baden-Powell's Boy Scouts • John Finnemore
... cows. The strange feeling of oppression vanished. Wherever the gentle beasts had passed, I could go, sure of finding sunny openings, grassy spots, and nothing uncanny. Meekly I followed in their footsteps; the solemn grandeur of the forest had so stirred me that even the footprint ...
— Little Brothers of the Air • Olive Thorne Miller
... in his hand a gun; his feet and legs were bare; he stood in an attitude of horror and surprise; his body was bent far back, and his eyes, which seemed starting out of his head, were fixed upon a mark on the sand—a large distinct mark—a human footprint! Reader, is it necessary to name the book which now stood open in my hand, and whose very prints, feeble expounders of its wondrous lines, had produced within me emotions strange and novel? Scarcely, for it was a book which has exerted ...
— The Pocket George Borrow • George Borrow
... entire manner of life are spending the days of their pilgrimage as they should. Jesus has walked the true way of life; we are told to walk in his steps. If we will step each day just where Jesus stepped, then on looking back, we can not see a footprint of our own; but if we take a single misstep, our footprint will show our departure from the true way of life. How deep and awful are the words of Scripture wherein we are commanded to walk even as "Jesus walked"! Jesus says, "I am the way." There is no other right and perfect ...
— How to Live a Holy Life • C. E. Orr
... the abstract wealth, which there might be in the growth and development of those who learn the alphabet of life upon our knee, take one pang from the natural and pardonable sorrow with which we watch the heavy footprint of an inevitable experience, crushing out the last frail remnant of childhood from the hearts of those who such a little while ...
— The Doctor's Daughter • "Vera"
... day: Then died away 50 That voice, in silence as of sorrow; Then footsteps echoing like a sigh Passed me by, Lingering footsteps slow to pass. On the morrow I saw upon the grass Each footprint marked in blood, and on my door The ...
— Goblin Market, The Prince's Progress, and Other Poems • Christina Rossetti
... good-looking Wherry boy to come and scratch the furniture. I don't suppose Carl invited him for that purpose," added Aunt Agatha fairly, "but he did it, anyway. I can't for the life of me see why it is that young Mr. Wherry is perpetually making scratches where his feet rest. And I'm sure he left his footprint on the piano and thundered through every roll on the player, for they're all out of place, and the Williston caretaker heard him, though like as not it was Carl for that matter. He's a Westfall, and he'd do it if he ...
— Diane of the Green Van • Leona Dalrymple
... excursions into the plain, either by himself or with Carefinotu, Godfrey had seen no wild animal. He had even come upon no traces of such. The river to which they would come to drink bore no footprint on its banks. During the night there were no howlings nor suspicious noises. Besides the domestic animals continued to give no signs ...
— Godfrey Morgan - A Californian Mystery • Jules Verne
... of thought began at the door steps we have passed, all whitened beautifully so as to display every footprint, and all representing an expenditure of useless, injurious labor in hearthstoning, that ought to madden an intelligent housemaid. I dont think our Armande is particularly intelligent; but I am resolved ...
— The Irrational Knot - Being the Second Novel of His Nonage • George Bernard Shaw
... eye and of perception. She understood. She saw the Lad's inhalingly seeking muzzle was steady above a faint mark in the road-dust;—the mark of a buckskin shoe's print. Long and carefully the dog sniffed. Then, with heavy deliberation he moved on to the next footprint and the next. The runabout's driver had taken less than a half dozen steps in all; during his short descent to the ground. But Lad did not stop until he had found and identified ...
— Further Adventures of Lad • Albert Payson Terhune
... alway feels a certain kind of awe stick To the skirts of contemplation, cramped with nympholeptic weight: Feels his faint sense charred and branded by the touch of solar caustic, On the forehead of his spirit feels the footprint of a Fate." ...
— The Heptalogia • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... life and sober gaiety; but in late September—the season of the year in which I made its acquaintance—its pasture-lands lie desolate, the rugged paths along the cliffs are seldom trodden by human foot, and the sands are a desert waste on which, for days together, no footprint appears save that left by ...
— John Thorndyke's Cases • R. Austin Freeman
... covered with dead leaves and the needles and cones of the fir-trees, which retain no footprint. It was, therefore, only in the open patches where the snow had fallen on the ground that Sperver ...
— The Man-Wolf and Other Tales • Emile Erckmann and Alexandre Chatrian
... propped a fallen fir sapling aslant by the sled, and, forgetting he was ready to drop, he ran swiftly hack along the way he came. They had travelled all that afternoon and evening on the river ice, hard as iron, retaining no trace of footprint or of runner possible to verify even in daylight. The Yukon here was fully three miles wide. They had meant to hug the right bank, but snow and ice refashion the world and laugh at the trustful geography of men. A traveller ...
— The Magnetic North • Elizabeth Robins (C. E. Raimond)
... said Ossaroo, holding the string between his fingers— that portion of it which had been applied around the footprint—"twice the length of dis reachee to the top of he shoulder; that how Ossaroo know he ...
— The Cliff Climbers - A Sequel to "The Plant Hunters" • Captain Mayne Reid
... way to find out, and he took the method in the face of his weariness. He climbed the peak also, with now and then a footprint to guide him. He was not one of these geniuses at trailing who could tell, by a mere footprint, what had been in Miss Allen's mind when she had passed that way; but for all that it seemed logical that she had gone up there to see if she ...
— The Flying U's Last Stand • B. M. Bower
... will play man-Friday till It's time to wet her paw And make her walk on the window-sill (For the footprint Crusoe saw); Then she fluffles her tail and mews, And scratches and won't attend. But Binkie will play whatever I choose, And he ...
— Just So Stories • Rudyard Kipling
... is any distinctive mark by which a thing may be recognized or its presence known, and may be intentional or accidental, natural or artificial, suggestive, descriptive, or wholly arbitrary; thus, a blush may be a sign of shame; the footprint of an animal is a sign that it has passed; the sign of a business house now usually declares what is done or kept within, but formerly might be an object having no connection with the business, as "the sign of the trout;" the letters of the alphabet are signs of certain ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald
... old men arose to stir the fire, and in deep surprise noted the absence of the women. He called his brother, and the two held a hurried consultation. They circled the lodge, but in the dimness of the light could discern no guiding footprint to tell the direction in which their young wives had gone. Returning to the camp, they filled their sacred pipes, and in silence sat and smoked. Soon a thin curl of smoke was seen drifting southward, winding in and out among the pinons; then another on the north side. These they followed, bearing ...
— The North American Indian • Edward S. Curtis
... and the Burney girl who prophesied "Evelina," and the Davidson sisters. In the midst of these commonplace exercises which Miss Darley read over so carefully were two or three that had something of individual flavor about them, and here and there there was an image or an epithet which showed the footprint of a passionate nature, as a fallen scarlet feather marks the path ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume V, Number 29, March, 1860 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... back to the elder tree and then walked slowly away from this to the spot where he found the broken willow twig. He examined every foot of the ground, but there was nothing to be seen that was of any interest to him-not a footprint, or anything to prove that some one else had passed that way a short time before. And yet it would have been impossible to pass that way without leaving some trace, for the ground was cut up in ...
— The Lamp That Went Out • Augusta Groner
... from this point became rougher and rougher, alongside deep precipices and chasms. Every now and then she would stop on a ledge of rock, and, without staying her prattle for a moment, stoop down and examine the earth with eyes that would not have missed the footprint of a rat. When I saw her pause, as she sometimes would in the midst of her scrutiny, to gaze inquiringly down some gulf, which then seemed awful to my inexperienced eyes, but which later on in the day, when ...
— Aylwin • Theodore Watts-Dunton
... gigantic footprint gathered most of the scientific members of the expedition, wearing their oddly shaped air-tight suits, connected with telephonic wires, and the spectacle, but for the impressiveness of the discovery, would have been laughable in the extreme. Bending over ...
— Edison's Conquest of Mars • Garrett Putnam Serviss
... and, with his heart in his mouth, he struck into it. At the spot where the canyon branched into another he found a little stream which ran in the direction he thought he ought to go, and close beside the stream was a footprint which he took to be his own. He was all right now, and with every mile he travelled the faster he went, in the hope of finding something else that was encouraging, but that solitary footprint was the only thing he saw. There was one thing about it that kept up ...
— Elam Storm, The Wolfer - The Lost Nugget • Harry Castlemon
... of sand not much larger than my hand, I discovered a human footprint, with a dog's track imposed upon it. I wigwagged to my companions, received their answering signal, and went on down the trough, whistling to the dog and shouting his name though I could not hope he would hear me above that gale. I searched ...
— A Mountain Boyhood • Joe Mills
... how conscious we are of our weakness when we try to bring our energies into action; and I know that my pride will suffer, for I have never seen my footprint on ...
— The Choice of Life • Georgette Leblanc
... a perfect day, Leaving a footprint of pale primrose gold Along the west, that when her lover, Night, Fled with his starry lances in pursuit, Across the sky, the way she went might shew. From the faint ting'd ridges of the sea, the Moon Sprang up like Aphrodite from the wave, Which ...
— Old Spookses' Pass • Isabella Valancy Crawford
... caused it to enter his foot." On another occasion a native told Mr. Howitt that he had seen black fellows putting poison in his foot-tracks. Bosman mentions a similar practice among the people of Guinea. In Scottish folk-lore a screw nail is fixed into the footprint of the person ...
— Myth, Ritual, and Religion, Vol. 1 • Andrew Lang
... exultant shout. There, sure enough, was a broad patch bearing marks of recent occupation, much the same as the other at the top of the cliff. We were able easily to distinguish the exact spot where the thief had laid the unconscious dog while he put on his boots. The discovery of an unmistakable footprint in a more marshy spot, which could only have been imprinted by a stockinged foot, completed my ...
— The Mystery of the Green Ray • William Le Queux
... most beautiful was evolved at Rome. On the border of the medieval city stands the church of "Domine quo vadis"; it was erected in honour of a stone, which is still preserved, bearing a mark resembling a human footprint—perhaps the bed of ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... the history of the Buddha's relics and especially of this tooth. Of the minor distinctions between Buddhism and Hinduism one of the sharpest is this cultus. Hindu temples are often erected over natural objects supposed to resemble the footprint or some member of a deity and sometimes tombs receive veneration.[53] But no case appears to be known in which either Hindus or Jains show reverence to the bones or other fragments of a human body. It is hence remarkable that relic-worship should ...
— Hinduism and Buddhism, An Historical Sketch, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Charles Eliot
... vanity and a strong sense of independence. Hunting is their most congenial business, or, if the occasion offers, a little amateur detection. In tracking a criminal, following a particular horse along a beaten highway, and drawing inductions from a hair or a footprint, one of these somnolent, grinning Hodges will suddenly display activity of body and finesse of mind. By their names ye may know them, the women figuring as Loveina, Larsenia, Serena, Leanna, Orreana; the men answering to Alvin, Alva, or Orion, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 2 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... inspection, which resulted in discovering a fresh imprint, in the soft mud on one side of the brook, of a small moccasined foot. This curious and unexpected discovery, uncertain as were its indications of any identity of the person, or even of the age or sex of the person, by whom that delicate footprint was made, at once diverted his attention, from the particular care by which it had been engrossed, and started that other of the two trains of thought, which, for the last month, but especially since his singular awakening the past night, had constituted the ...
— Gaut Gurley • D. P. Thompson
... house and put on his boots. But he did not wade through the snow to the fodder stack that was burning so briskly. He merely made a detour around it, at some yards distant. Nowhere did he see the mark of a footprint. ...
— Hiram The Young Farmer • Burbank L. Todd
... If Time's footprint from my brow is driven, Canst thou, too, take with thy subtle powers The burden of thinking, and let me go drinking The careless pleasures of youth's bright hours? If silver threads from my tresses vanish, If a glow once more in my pale cheek gleams, Wilt ...
— The Kingdom of Love - and Other Poems • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... since, a small decorative panel showing a strip of yellow sand, a black dot of a boat, and a line of blue sky, so true in tone and sure in composition that when Mr. Crocker first passed that way and stood astounded before it—as did Robinson Crusoe over Friday's footprint—he was so overjoyed to find another artist besides himself in the town, that he turned into the shop, and finding only a ...
— The Fortunes of Oliver Horn • F. Hopkinson Smith
... time she was taken from the Lotus, and these left little or no spoor in the well-tramped earth of the narrow path; but a careful and minute examination on the part of Theriere finally resulted in the detection of a single small footprint a hundred yards from the point they had struck the trail after ascending the cliffs. This far at least she ...
— The Mucker • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... answered Don, and the listeners heard him pushing his way through the cane toward the path in which his brother stood. "But I don't call this a bear track," he added, after a moment's pause, during which he was closely examining the footprint his brother pointed out to him. "A barefooted man or boy has been along here, and that track was made not more than ten minutes ago. And, Bert," he continued, in a lower tone, "you were right about that boat after all. Come on, now, ...
— The Boy Trapper • Harry Castlemon
... Senator Sorghum. "His mind is in the clouds. He is an intellectual aviator. When he comes down he will leave a dent, not a footprint." ...
— More Toasts • Marion Dix Mosher
... of these precautions (as the good wife might aver), or in despite of them, the dwelling be robbed while the family are asleep, search is made early in the morning for the footprints of the burglar; and a moxa [11] is set burning upon each footprint. By this operation it is hoped or believed that the burglar's feet will be made so sore that he cannot run far, and that the police may easily ...
— Glimpses of an Unfamiliar Japan • Lafcadio Hearn
... was speaking, he bent over and looked keenly at a footprint on the earthen floor of the room. It was not such a print as the foot-covering of a Chinese man would leave. It had been made by the long heel of an ...
— Boy Scouts on Motorcycles - With the Flying Squadron • G. Harvey Ralphson
... onward, with perfect ease, for the marshy ground was sodden and took every footprint deeply. That some man had crossed this way, and recently, too, was perfectly plain. The footprints wavered a little that was all, showing that the man who made them was uncertain upon his feet. And Wynne had left the ...
— The Riddle of the Frozen Flame • Mary E. Hanshew
... let in a flood of evidence. The man was an impostor, a tool, as criminal as his employer—not the footprint on the sand was more suggestive to Robinson Crusoe than that luminous streak to me, nor the ...
— Miriam Monfort - A Novel • Catherine A. Warfield
... a long walk, early one most exhilarating morning, I sat down to work, and did not give it the last stroke till near nine in the evening. Then I felt a delightful glow, as if I had put a good deal of my true life in it, and as if, should I go away now, the measure of my footprint would be left ...
— Lives of Girls Who Became Famous • Sarah Knowles Bolton
... which is twelve miles long by two and a half wide, and found the spot where Admiral White had left the colony in 1587. Eagerly searching for any tokens of the lost ones, they soon traced in the light soil of the island the imprint of the moccasin of the savage, but looked in vain for any footprint of civilized man. What ...
— Voyage of The Paper Canoe • N. H. Bishop
... was far out and wet hard sand stretched in every direction, very pleasing to stamp over, and retaining little trace of any footprint. Only gray gulls and drifting fog banks distinguished the ...
— The Spanish Chest • Edna A. Brown
... "A footprint, I declare!" shouted the boy, springing forward and examining the print, which was pretty clearly defined in a little patch of soft sand that lay on the bare rock. "Why, Jo! it's Poopy's. I'd know it anywhere, by the ...
— Gascoyne, The Sandal Wood Trader - A Tale of the Pacific • R. M. Ballantyne
... full of snow; and the soft, moist flakes were still falling thickly, obscuring the air, beplastering the gray trunks, weighing to the earth the boughs of spruce and pine, and hiding every footprint of the narrow path. The Fathers missed their way, and toiled on till night, shaking down at every step from the burdened branches a shower of fleecy white on their black cassocks. Night overtook them in a spruce swamp. Here they made a fire with great difficulty, cut the evergreen boughs, ...
— The Jesuits in North America in the Seventeenth Century • Francis Parkman
... Rogers, William Rockefeller, and James Stillman would each give five millions from his private fortune if this seemingly unimportant detail had then been provided for. Its neglect is the bloody finger-print on the knife-handle of the murderer, it is the burglar's footprint in the snow. In this case it furnishes the evidence of the crime ...
— Frenzied Finance - Vol. 1: The Crime of Amalgamated • Thomas W. Lawson
... but when Henry went as usual through the forest that afternoon, he came upon a footprint. He followed it and found two or three more, and then they were lost on rocky ground. The discovery was full of significance to him, and he thought once of hurrying back to the cabin, and of leaving with Paul at once. But he quickly changed his mind. In the forest they would be without defense save ...
— The Forest Runners - A Story of the Great War Trail in Early Kentucky • Joseph A. Altsheler
... paraphernalia of a warlike people. It is surprising how stuff accumulates in a mountain fastness. But she managed the retreat with conspicuous ability. Ma led the long caravan into the bed of a running stream, so that there would remain not a single footprint to guide pursuers, then she sat in her saddle and gazed back ...
— Flowing Gold • Rex Beach
... flickering red light on all the surrounding trees. They scanned the big Basswood without getting sight of their quarry. Caleb took a torch and found on the bark some fresh mud. By going back on the trail to where it had crossed the brook they found the footprint—undoubtedly that of a ...
— Two Little Savages • Ernest Thompson Seton
... is unsubject to the universal economy; his pure body, visible as a light image, is free from any debt to nature. The casual gaze may see nothing extraordinary in an avatar's form but it casts no shadow nor makes any footprint on the ground. These are outward symbolic proofs of an inward lack of darkness and material bondage. Such a God-man alone knows the Truth behind the relativities of life and death. Omar Khayyam, so grossly misunderstood, sang of this liberated ...
— Autobiography of a YOGI • Paramhansa Yogananda
... his men, and Henry and Shif'less Sol drew back in the thicket. They were flattered by Braxton Wyatt's frank admission of their power, but they were annoyed that the footprint had been seen. Henry had felt that they could work much better, if the warriors ...
— The Keepers of the Trail - A Story of the Great Woods • Joseph A. Altsheler
... are from under him, and he is drawn with all four from under him. In truth, his hind legs are under him when his fore legs are from under him, and his fore legs are under him when his hind legs are from under him; his hind feet pass over where his fore feet rested, so that from footprint to footprint he clears very little space. In fact, owing to what is called leading with one leg, the line between his two fore feet and the line between his two hind feet are by no means at right angles to the ...
— Hints on Horsemanship, to a Nephew and Niece - or, Common Sense and Common Errors in Common Riding • George Greenwood
... companion gave her fresh strength and she went on beside him. In the next arroyo they found a footprint deeply marked in a bed of sand. As Mead glanced at it he saw some grains of sand fall down from the rim of the depression. He called Marguerite's attention ...
— With Hoops of Steel • Florence Finch Kelly
... or she whom it represents will die within the year. Again, the women carefully sweep out the ashes from under the fireplace and flatten them down neatly on the open hearth. If they find next morning a footprint turned towards the door, it signifies a death in the family within the year; but if the footprint is turned in the opposite direction, it bodes a marriage. Again, divination by eavesdropping is practised ...
— Balder The Beautiful, Vol. I. • Sir James George Frazer
... oozy clay. It was impossible that a man could have clambered out over that without leaving some impression. He reached the corner and found the clay intact; at least, nowhere could he discover a mark of hands or a footprint set as would be that of a ...
— St. Martin's Summer • Rafael Sabatini
... N. indication; symbolism, symbolization; semiology, semiotics, semeiology^, semeiotics^; Zeitgeist. [means of recognition: property] characteristic, diagnostic; lineament, feature, trait; fingerprint, voiceprint, footprint, noseprint [for animals]; cloven hoof; footfall; recognition (memory) 505. [means of recognition: tool] diagnostic, divining rod; detector. sign, symbol; index, indice^, indicator; point, pointer; exponent, note, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... groundwork and it will have to observe every footprint of vanishing creeds. Only, it must not be overlooked that the beginning of the chronology of religion has not been reached, and that the origin of the generally diffused ancestor worship, at least on the Philippines, ...
— The Former Philippines thru Foreign Eyes • Fedor Jagor; Tomas de Comyn; Chas. Wilkes; Rudolf Virchow.
... passport had been vised to which her name was attached. It was then certain that she was still in Paris. But what method could he devise for a systematic search? He thought of the argus-eyed, keen-scented police, who, with the faintest clew, can trace out any footprint once made within the precincts of the far-spreading barriers; but could he drag his cousin's name before those public authorities? Could he describe her person to them, and enter into details which would enable them to hunt her ...
— Fairy Fingers - A Novel • Anna Cora Mowatt Ritchie
... exclamation of surprise, and looking down at something in the grass at his feet. He then kicked a dark object out of a tall bunch of fern, towards us. It was an old beaver hat crushed flat, and covered with mildew and dirt. Robinson Crusoe was not more startled by the footprint in the sand, than were we at the sight of this unequivocal trace of civilised man. Arthur picked it up, and restoring it partially to its proper shape, examined the inside. On the lining of the crown ...
— The Island Home • Richard Archer
... poets to which Donne belonged so severely, and in some points so justly, possessed a tithe of the rich fancy, the sublime intuition, and the lofty spirituality of Donne. How characteristic of the difference between these two great men, that, while the one shrank from the slightest footprint of death, Donne deliberately placed the image of his dead self before his eyes, and became familiar with the shadow ere ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... much this duck, this footprint in the sand, and these strange thrushes from the far north, enhanced the interest and charm of the ...
— Wake-Robin • John Burroughs
... Impossible; and yet, periodically he would make some painful discovery about the external world and the horrible reality of its consciousness and its intelligence. The red notebook was one of these discoveries, a footprint in the sand. It put beyond a doubt the fact that the ...
— Crome Yellow • Aldous Huxley
... long in coming to one in a hollow beneath a great pile of moss-grown rock down whose sides trickled the water to form at last a good-sized pool of the most limpid kind; but the mossy boggy earth around was untrodden, the water clear, and no trace to be seen of a single footprint other ...
— Mother Carey's Chicken - Her Voyage to the Unknown Isle • George Manville Fenn
... sheriff pointed silently. Distinctly marked in the soil was the print of a shoe—a woman's shoe, long, narrow. All three of the dogs now moved toward a gap in the row of stumps which formed a rude hedge for the cleared right of way. At this little gap the narrow footprint was seen again, with others made by bare feet. At the edge of the wood, there came a long, low, sobbing call from the lead dog, and presently the others wailed their confirmation; so that the trail was ...
— The Law of the Land • Emerson Hough
... II., found Tor Bay a safe place for their fleet to anchor, and William of Orange, probably having heard of this, chose the same portion of the Devonshire seaboard. The exact spot on which the Dutch prince first placed his foot on shore is marked by a brass footprint, and close by stands the statue of England's third William, overlooking the quaint quay, the brown-sailed fishing-boats, and the ...
— What to See in England • Gordon Home
... edge of the barren spot and began to circle around its edge, while Dick did likewise, following his example. They found a footprint at last and took the trail. It did not lead them far before they came to a path on top of the hill that was so well used that any attempt to follow it was useless; but, intent on seeing where it led, they ...
— The Plunderer • Roy Norton
... April, 1855. In August of the same year he visited Smithell's Hall, in Bolton le Moors, concerning which he had already heard its legend of "The Bloody Footstep," and from that time on, the idea of this footprint on the threshold-stone of the ancestral mansion seems to have associated itself inextricably with the dreamy substance of his yet unshaped romance. Indeed, it leaves its mark broadly upon Sibyl Dacy's wild legend in "Septimius Felton," and ...
— The Ancestral Footstep (fragment) - Outlines of an English Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... Christen Mitchell also was accused that 'the Devil gave thee a nip on the back of thy right hand, for a mark that thou was one of his number'.[285] According to Boguet, writing in 1598, the witches of Eastern France were usually marked on the left shoulder, and the mark was in the shape of the foot or footprint of a hare, but he ...
— The Witch-cult in Western Europe - A Study in Anthropology • Margaret Alice Murray
... indicates the clinical appearances. The arch is exaggerated and the instep abnormally high; there is hyper-extension of the toes at the metatarso-phalangeal joints, and plantar-flexion at the inter-phalangeal joints; the plantar fascia and muscles are shortened. The footprint shows that neither border of the foot touches the ground. The patient complains of pain in the instep, of painful corns over the heads of the metatarsal bones, and of difficulty ...
— Manual of Surgery Volume Second: Extremities—Head—Neck. Sixth Edition. • Alexander Miles
... head and her two rings. Whilst he was making the attempt, however, the skeleton is said to have withdrawn its hand so that he might not possess himself of the rings. A greater curiosity which the church contains is a footprint on a stone slab, said to have been left by Christ when He appeared to Ste. Radegonde in her cell. This ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... the margins of the trail, we picked up in the grayness the track of a lion. Strange to say, the dogs had not smelled it, but when we pointed to the footprint in the dust, which was apparently none too fresh, they took up the work of tracking. It is astonishing to see how a dog can tell which way a track leads. If in doubt, he runs quickly back and forth on the scent, and thus gauges the way the animal has progressed. A mediocre dog cannot do ...
— Hunting with the Bow and Arrow • Saxton Pope
... series of comic pictures painted in vivid green and red. First, a blazing sun; then a boy with a big head and a boy with a small head topped with two flags; then a misshapen-looking man with a short cloak and a long staff and above his head a plume; then a low-roofed house, a footprint under a blazing sun; and, lastly, a man sitting on the ground. What do you make of all this, as, especially privileged, you peep over the shoulder of 'Hualpilli the 'tzin, in the portico of his porphyry baths? Nothing, ...
— Historic Boys - Their Endeavours, Their Achievements, and Their Times • Elbridge Streeter Brooks
... not concerned with the basin. However, in the soft, damp sand beside the basin, plainly imprinted there, as if someone's raiding party had interrupted someone's bathing party, there remained a single, small and dainty footprint. ...
— The Marooner • Charles A. Stearns
... and it was the cautious Stalky who found the track of his pugs on the very floor of their lair one peaceful afternoon when Stalky would fain have forgotten Prout and his works in a volume of Surtees and a new briar-wood pipe. Crusoe, at sight of the footprint, did not act more swiftly than Stalky. He removed the pipes, swept up all loose match-ends, and departed to ...
— Stalky & Co. • Rudyard Kipling
... placed some holy relics, including a tooth of St. Athanasius, and a stone said to show a footprint of our Lord. For fifty years Henry watched his new Abbey growing to completion, and determined it should be the burying-place of himself and the Plantagenet line. He was laid temporarily in the place from which the Confessor's bones ...
— Little Folks (Septemeber 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... here since I passed," declared George. "I found a footprint in the moss over there, ...
— The Meadow-Brook Girls Afloat • Janet Aldridge
... the expression Crusoe must have worn when he spied the footprint, he turned to his sister, and, grasping a lock of hair upon his brow, bent his head ...
— The Prodigal Father • J. Storer Clouston
... have already observed, when the crime had become known, the permanent detective force had been most assiduous in the attentions they had given it. The only piece of valuable evidence, however, that they had been able to accumulate, was a footprint on a flower-bed near the centre of the yard, and another in the hall of the house itself. Now it was definitely settled, by a careful comparison of these imprints, that the murderer, whoever he might have been, wore his boots down considerably on the left heel, and on the inside. Now, as every ...
— My Strangest Case • Guy Boothby
... had hoped to find in the different libraries of the city. But great had been his surprise, on visiting the libraries, to find that the books he wanted were invariably out. It was a little startling, at first, to come upon this footprint in the sand; but a little reflection set the feeling at rest. The subject was an odd one to him, to be sure, but there were thousands of people in the city who might very naturally be concerned in it, particularly at this time, when Saint Patrick's Day was ...
— Saint Patrick - 1887 • Heman White Chaplin
... bewildered. I did not know what to make of it. My first impression was that I was all alone and that I had the solar system all to myself. Like Robinson Crusoe, I fancied myself monarch of all I surveyed. But then, like Robinson Crusoe, I discovered a footprint, and found that the planet on which I had been so mysteriously cast was inhabited.. There were two of us—myself ...
— Mushrooms on the Moor • Frank Boreham
... futurity, at the best; a building without a corner stone; a chateau-d'Espagne nowhere to be found. Where, except in the glowing fictions of Scheherezade, may the personification of such a phantom be detected? History, whether ancient or modern, may be ransacked in vain for one footprint of the realised existence and miraculous economical prodigies worked upon the absolute free-trade principle, in the spontaneous creation, the progress unrivalled, the prosperity Pactolean, of ingenious manufactures. The El-Dorado ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXII. - June, 1843.,Vol. LIII. • Various
... have pretended to say that this is but dew, but can dew redden a cambric handkerchief? And this is what the bloody footstep will surely do when the appointed night and hour come round." A local tradition says that the stone bearing the imprint of the mysterious footprint was once removed and cast into a neighbouring wood, but in a short time it had to be restored to its original position owing to the alarming noises which troubled the neighbourhood. This strange footprint is traditionally said to have been caused by ...
— Strange Pages from Family Papers • T. F. Thiselton Dyer
... impressions began to fade. At last I had a breathing space and rubbed my feet clean with my hands, and so got away altogether. The last I saw of the chase was a little group of a dozen people perhaps, studying with infinite perplexity a slowly drying footprint that had resulted from a puddle in Tavistock Square, a footprint as isolated and incomprehensible to them as ...
— The Invisible Man • H. G. Wells
... places, or sit motionless in the conning towers of the creosote. The poet may have "named all the birds without a gun," but not the fairy-footed, ground-inhabiting, furtive, small folk of the rainless regions. They are too many and too swift; how many you would not believe without seeing the footprint tracings in the sand. They are nearly all night workers, finding the days too hot and white. In mid-desert where there are no cattle, there are no birds of carrion, but if you go far in that direction the chances are that you will find yourself shadowed by their tilted wings. ...
— The Land of Little Rain • Mary Austin
... of where the fellow had lain behind the fringe of sage, but the ground was so hard that it would not take a human footprint. As he looked he formulated a plan of his own. Half a mile or more beyond this hill, in the direction of the Kerr place, a small butte stood, its steep sides grassless, its flat top bare. That would be his watchtower from that day forward until he had his hand on this defiant ...
— The Duke Of Chimney Butte • G. W. Ogden
... that eastern shore of Lake Huron now known as Georgian Bay, from French River to Parry Sound and Midland and Penetang. Where these little towns to-day stand on the hillsides was a howling wilderness of forest, with never a footprint but the zigzagging trail of the Indians back from Georgian Bay to ...
— Canada: the Empire of the North - Being the Romantic Story of the New Dominion's Growth from Colony to Kingdom • Agnes C. Laut
... with traffic)—I feel I've overstayed my time allowance. My ships are firewood and wreckage, my owners are only funny portraits in offices that run ten-thousand-ton steamers, and the boys are bones. Poplar? This isn't Poplar. I feel like Robinson Crusoe—only I can't find a footprint in ...
— London River • H. M. Tomlinson
... by the following illustration: The conventionalized figure of a turtlehead is the symbol for a "turtle," ak, ac, or aac in Maya; and a conventionalized footprint is the symbol for "step" or "road," be, beil, in Maya. These may be brought together to form the word akyab or kayab, which may have no reference to the original signification of the combined symbols. These two glyphs ...
— Day Symbols of the Maya Year • Cyrus Thomas
... tree, the Avalia sept the aonla [332] tree, the Meheda sept the bahera [333] tree, and so on. The Mori sept worship the peacock. They go into the jungle and look for the tracks of a peacock, and spreading a piece of red cloth before the footprint, lay their offerings of grain upon it. Members of this sept may not be tattooed, because they think the splashes of colour on the peacock's feathers are tattoo-marks. Their women must veil themselves if they see a peacock, and they think that ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume II • R. V. Russell
... born coincidentally with, or were in the broader sense contemporaries of Robert Browning. There is no such thing as a fortuitous birth. Creation does not occur spontaneously, as in that drawing of David Scott's where from the footprint of the Omnipotent spring human spirits and fiery stars. Literally indeed, as a great French writer has indicated, a man is the child of his time. It is a matter often commented upon by students of literature, that great men do not appear at the beginning, ...
— Life of Robert Browning • William Sharp
... miles, which was rapidly passed over, without even the most minute investigations bringing to light the least trace of any old or recent landings; no debris, no mark of an encampment, no cinders of a fire, nor even a footprint! ...
— The Mysterious Island • Jules Verne
... could be simpler than that Mr. Peters should have enlisted female aid? The female of the species is more deadly than the male. Probably she makes a better purloiner of scarabs. At any rate, there the footprint was, unmistakably feminine. ...
— Something New • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... departed early this morning to climb Adam's Peak, the ascent of which is a long and tedious affair, but it cannot be difficult, as thousands of aged and infirm pilgrims go every year to worship at the Buddhist or Mohammedan temples at the summit. The giant footprint has been reverenced alike by both religions from the earliest ages. Its existence is differently accounted for, however, by the two sects. The Buddhists say it is the footprint of Buddha, and that an account of its origin was written 300 or 400 years B.C. The Mohammedans say that it is the first ...
— A Voyage in the 'Sunbeam' • Annie Allnut Brassey
... the truck. Had we not been very much on the alert, he would undoubtedly have got one of us, and we realised that we had had a very lucky and very narrow escape. The next morning we found Brock's bullet embedded in the sand close to a footprint; it could not have missed the lion by more than an inch or two. Mine was nowhere to ...
— The Man-eaters of Tsavo and Other East African Adventures • J. H. Patterson
... When she had been utterly lost for hours he would suddenly swing their horses' heads about and guide them home with the accuracy of the wild goose on its nights to the nesting grounds. He read every sign of footprint, leaf, water, and sky with unfailing insight. He had no knowledge of books, and she had at first thought him ignorant, but as the days went by she had found in him a mine of wisdom which shamed her ...
— The Cow Puncher • Robert J. C. Stead
... leave its quarry until it had it fast by the throat, and the hare knew it also by some instinct that is not to be fathomed, for I suppose that no hare, save by the merest chance, ever escaped that pursuer. The creature seemed puzzled by my footprint, and sat up, turning its sharp eyes right and left until it spied me; but when it did so it was not feared of me, but took up the trail of the hare again. And by that time I was ready, and my hand was steady, and the shaft sped and smote it fairly, and the hare's one chance had come to it. ...
— A Prince of Cornwall - A Story of Glastonbury and the West in the Days of Ina of Wessex • Charles W. Whistler
... the morning, after a fresh fall of snow, and see at all points where he has crossed the road. Here he has leisurely passed within rifle-range of the house, evidently reconnoitring the premises with an eye to the hen-roost. That clear, sharp track,—there is no mistaking it for the clumsy footprint of a little dog. All his wildness and agility are photographed in it. Here he has taken fright, or suddenly recollected an engagement, and in long, graceful leaps, barely touching the fence, has gone careering up the hill as fleet as ...
— Winter Sunshine • John Burroughs
... on the road, the driver will, with his knife, cut all around the sod where the animal has left its footprint. Lifting this out, he will cut a cross on it and replace it the other side uppermost. This cure is most implicitly ...
— Through Five Republics on Horseback • G. Whitfield Ray
... full as sharp as the Red Indians of North America. They seem, in fact, to have the instinct of dogs, and can follow a track when the keenest white's eye cannot detect the smallest trace of a footprint. It is something marvellous what some ...
— A Final Reckoning - A Tale of Bush Life in Australia • G. A. Henty
... photographs that General Gilmore had taken of Charleston siege still in the bookcase with the glass doors? Or have they vanished like the child's footprint that I made for you when we were planting the—the "plant," and I ...
— The Penalty • Gouverneur Morris
... in the habit of making a step three yards long, is he?" Hewitt asked, pointing at the last footmark and then at the door, which was quite that distance away from it. "Besides," he added, opening the door, "there's no footprint here ...
— Martin Hewitt, Investigator • Arthur Morrison
... for you to be informed about some matters," Rodan said slowly. "For instance, unless it is otherwise disturbed, a footprint, or the like, will endure for millions of years on the Moon—as surely as if impressed in granite—because there is no weather left to rub it out. You will be working here. I am preserving some of these markings. ...
— The Planet Strappers • Raymond Zinke Gallun
... swagman about a mile on struggling away from the town, through mud and water. He did not seem to have heart enough to bother about trying to avoid the worst mud-holes. There was a low-spirited dingo at his heels, whose sole object in life was seemingly to keep his front paws in his master's last footprint. The traveller's body was bent well forward from the hips up; his long arms—about six inches through his coat sleeves—hung by his sides like the arms of a dummy, with a billy at the end of one and a bag at the end of the other; but his head was thrown back against the top end of ...
— While the Billy Boils • Henry Lawson
... be obtained; for, by its freshness, it indicated to his mind how near he was to the chance of obtaining and adding another pound or so of valuable fur to his stock on hand. To him, this small event, or one like it, as for instance, a fresh footprint, with its neatly defined claw-tracks, as moulded in the moistened earth or sand, was of a greater importance than the wonderful and striking workmanship exhibited in a dam; for, the latter might be old and deserted, ...
— The Life and Adventures of Kit Carson, the Nestor of the Rocky Mountains, from Facts Narrated by Himself • De Witt C. Peters
... or to the south. Fortunately the water was high, so that I had the soft sand to tread on, my feet being on the margin. As fast as I could move, afraid even for an instant to step on the dry sand lest I might leave a footprint behind me, I went on. Sometimes I had to climb over rocks; but fortunately there were no cliffs in this part of the island rising sheer out of the water, or my progress would ...
— Twice Lost • W.H.G. Kingston
... more, for it was well known the cavern extended to Cabul!!! Finding it useless endeavouring to revive the broken spirits of these cravens, we reluctantly commenced a retrograde movement, and I was obliged to remain in lasting ignorance of the nature of the mysterious origin of the footprint. ...
— A Peep into Toorkisthhan • Rollo Burslem
... tracks enough, and all heading away from the camp," said the patrol leader presently, "let's see how we can classify them, for every footprint will be different from ...
— The Boy Scouts of Lenox - Or The Hike Over Big Bear Mountain • Frank V. Webster
... footprints—not a square foot that didn't contain a crater at least ten inches across, there was not a square inch without its half-inch crater. Nearly all of these had been made millions of years ago, but here and there, the rim of a crater covered part of a footprint, clear evidence that it ...
— All Day September • Roger Kuykendall
... footprint carved on one of these rocks. It is spoken of as that of a famous queen, who reigned over all this region. In looking at these rude attempts at commemoration, one feels the value of letters. In the history of Angola we find that the famous queen Donna Anna de ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone
... the Barber of the Brothers; to him I owe that memory—of Zobeide alone in the accursed city whose monstrous silence is broken by the voice of the one man spared by the wrath of God as he repeats his solitary prayer—which ranks with Crusoe's discovery of the footprint in the thrilling moments of my life; it was he who, by refraining from the use of pepper in his cream tarts, contrived to kitchen those confections with the very essence of romance; it was he that clove asunder the Sultan's kitchen-wall ...
— Views and Reviews - Essays in appreciation • William Ernest Henley
... had broken the brothers searched for the traces which they supposed would have been left by their tremendous nocturnal visitor; but not a trace, not a footprint had he left behind. All ...
— Tales of Wonder Every Child Should Know • Various
... and real. Those obscure solitudes which their imagination had peopled with spectral equestrian statues, are rescued by the sound of his cheery voice as part of the familiar and daylight world. We suspect that Agesilaus on his hobby-horse first humanized antiquity for most of us. Here was the human footprint which persuaded us that the past was inhabited ...
— The Function Of The Poet And Other Essays • James Russell Lowell
... Abraham, they wandered by chance to this very spot, desolate and forsaken. While Hagar was diligently searching for water, more anxious to save the life of her son than her own, Ishmael, boy-like, sat poking the sand with his heel; when, behold, a spring of water bubbled up in his footprint. And this was none other than the sacred well Zemzem, whose brackish waters are still eagerly sought by every Moslem pilgrim. As Ishmael grew to manhood and established his home in the sacred city, Abraham was summoned to join him, that they together might rebuild the Kaaba. But in the succeeding ...
— Oriental Religions and Christianity • Frank F. Ellinwood
... life itself, and evermore each path Is traced in suffering, and one footprint still Obliterates another; and we are all Vain shadows here that seem a little while, And suffer, and pass. Let me not fight in vain, O Son of God, with thine immortal word, Yon tyrant of eternity and time, ...
— Modern Italian Poets • W. D. Howells
... lone and lovely Isle denoted a paradise of unkempt vegetation, unfeared birds. No stump was there to betray the passing of the devastating axe. No footprint except that of birds—erratic, rectangular, scribbling—dented the sand. No human being had ever visited those groves perfumed by orchids, gauzy as the wings of the butterflies which poised over them and sipped the nectar ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield
... through the unknown deep. Thus, like a God- created fire-breathing spirit host, we emerge from the Inane, haste stormfully across the astonished earth, then plunge again into the Inane. Earth's mountains are levelled and her seas filled up. On the hardest adamant some footprint of us is stamped; the rear of the host read traces of the earliest van. But whence, O Heaven, whither? Sense knows not. Faith knows not; only that it is through Mystery to Mystery, from ...
— Thomas Carlyle - Biography • John Nichol
... in a straight line to his destination was only a mile; but a rocky bluff and a ravine necessitated his making a wide detour. While lightly leaping over a brook his keen eye fell on an imprint in the sandy loam. Instantly he was on his knees. The footprint was small, evidently a woman's, and, what was more unusual, instead of the flat, round moccasin-track, it was pointed, with a sharp, square heel. Such shoes were not worn by border girls. True Betty and Nell had them; but they never went into the ...
— The Last Trail • Zane Grey
... wilderness. Beautiful flowers shone white and pink and yellow in the opaline light of the evening; and 'Tana mechanically plucked a few that touched her as she passed, but she gave little notice to their beauty. All her thought was on the slender footprint of the man in the woods, ...
— That Girl Montana • Marah Ellis Ryan
... imported by Ryan for some definite purpose, but just what his game is beats me. There'll be more developments, of course. After I'd signed up with Smith I spent half an hour of valuable time looking for the rascal, but couldn't find a footprint anywhere. He seems to have a special gift for appearing and disappearing. If he decides to stay with us, though, he'll explain himself to me to-morrow, or I'll ...
— Captivating Mary Carstairs • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... suddenly arrested his steps. It was a concert of voice and instruments, which in this lost solitude seemed to him like a dream, or a miracle. The music was good-even excellent. He recognized a prelude of Bach, arranged by Gounod. Robinson Crusoe, on discovering the footprint in the sand, was not more astonished than Camors at finding in this desert so lively ...
— Monsieur de Camors, Complete • Octave Feuillet
... civil meshes of his nets, and wonder how the blustering people of the town could have done this elvish work. The twine looks like a new river weed, and is to the river as a beautiful memento of man's presence in nature, discovered as silently and delicately as a footprint in the sand. ...
— Excursions • Henry D. Thoreau
... thing to laugh about it in London, and it is another to stand out here in the darkness of the moor and to hear such a cry as that. And my uncle! There was the footprint of the hound beside him as he lay. It all fits together. I don't think that I am a coward, Watson, but that sound seemed to freeze my ...
— The Hound of the Baskervilles • A. Conan Doyle
... I could make as slick a backout as that, without carryin' away anybody's footprint, I'd rate myself a headliner among the trouble dodgers. Pinckney, though, don't seem to appreciate ...
— Odd Numbers - Being Further Chronicles of Shorty McCabe • Sewell Ford
... mud at Kanab Canyon we saw an old footprint of some person who had come down to the river through this narrow, gloomy gorge. It was here that Major Powell terminated his second voyage, on account of extreme high water. A picture they made showed their boats floated up in this side ...
— Through the Grand Canyon from Wyoming to Mexico • E. L. Kolb
... were there; the records of the "Age of ice;" slight, truly; to be effaced by the next farmer who needs to build a wall; but unmistakeable, boundless in significance, like Crusoe's one savage footprint on the sea-shore; and the naturalist acknowledges the finger-mark of God, ...
— Glaucus; or The Wonders of the Shore • Charles Kingsley
... great museums you see stone slabs with the marks of rain that fell hundreds of years before Adam lived, and the footprint of some wild bird that passed across the beach in those olden times. The passing shower and the light foot left their prints on the soft sediment; then ages went on, and the sediment hardened into stone; and there the prints remain, and will ...
— Architects of Fate - or, Steps to Success and Power • Orison Swett Marden
... about the ship in the midst of the sea, the three men in the house could scarcely have been more stunned than by this incident. The mug passed round; each sipped, each smelt of it; each stared at the bottle in its glory of gold paper as Crusoe may have stared at the footprint; and their minds were swift to fix upon a common apprehension. The difference between a bottle of champagne and a bottle of water is not great; between a shipload of one or the other lay the whole ...
— The Ebb-Tide - A Trio And Quartette • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne |
