"Straggling" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... each other like bits of a puzzle. They hovered over rivulets, dancing in the sunlight; or stained with colour the rocks thickly silvered with a brocade of lichen, or else hid suddenly in the heather which, mingling with pale green bracken, made a straggling pattern of amethyst and jade for miles along the way. Oh, it was all lovely; and we stayed a night there, at an ideal inn where fishermen engage their rooms years beforehand. A dear old waiter in the Loch Maree hotel advised me in the kindest way never, never to speak of fresh herring ...
— The Heather-Moon • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... street, by "gateway and wicket", as the poem says, led through a narrow passage way; and there faced one a small, low roofed house, built of alternate red and black bricks (the latter glazed), almost entirely covered by an aged ivy which clambered over the roof. The straggling branches even nodded above the wide chimneys; at both sides of the door stood comfortable settles, inviting to rest; and the pretty garden charmed with its bloom and fragrance. The whole formed such a restful retreat, such an oasis of quiet in the very heart of the busy city, that ...
— Over the Border: Acadia • Eliza Chase
... A Company came straggling up the path, led by no other than the Major, who had been his Company Commander at the beginning ...
— "Contemptible" • "Casualty"
... centre. The furniture of the office was some old Empire stuff, upholstered in red velvet. There was a little mahogany centre table, and a gilt clock. Then, on the left of the passage, near the kitchen, was the general refectory, with two long tables, covered with oilcloth, and surrounded by straggling chairs, whose straw seats were badly damaged. Just a make-believe sweep with a broom was given there every day: one could divine long-amassed, tenacious dirt in every dim corner; and the place reeked with an odor of bad cookery mingled with that ...
— Fruitfulness - Fecondite • Emile Zola
... the busy city looked gray. It looked drab and dirty and he thought longingly of the desert with its miles and miles of clean sand. He thought of his mine and how he had fought for it, and of all his friends in the straggling town; of Old Juan and L. W. and hearty Old Hassayamp with his laugh and his Texas yupe. And of Mary Fortune, the typist, as he had known her at first—but now she was sending ...
— Rimrock Jones • Dane Coolidge
... myself feeling stronger, and in less pain as I exercised my muscles. They found me seated before the fireplace, indulging in a pot of fresh coffee. Haines was a small, sandy-complexioned man, with a straggling beard and light blue eyes. He appeared competent enough, a bundle of nervous energy, and yet there was something about the fellow which instantly impressed me unfavorably—probably his short, jerky manner of speech, and his inability to look ...
— The Devil's Own - A Romance of the Black Hawk War • Randall Parrish
... Saint Medard Within, one Horatio Sebastian Fynes, bachelor, aged twenty-one, son of Horatio Sebastian Fynes, gentleman, was married to one Sophia Flannery, spinster, aged twenty-one, daughter of James Flannery, merchant," with witnesses duly attesting. And underneath an ill-formed straggling hand had added a superscription in ink that was now brown and wasted: "Martin born January 2, 1801, at ten minutes past twelve, night." He laid it on the table and folded it out flat, and knew that he had under his eyes that certificate of the first marriage (of the only true marriage) of Martin's ...
— The Nebuly Coat • John Meade Falkner
... is hard to fancy a more forlorn crew, while waiting at the depot to get the baggage off before coming to the house. We burst out laughing as we looked at each lengthened face. Such a procession through the straggling village has hardly been seen before. How we laughed at our forlorn plight as we trudged through the hilly streets,—they have no pavements here,—looking like emigrants from the Ould Counthry, as we have watched them ...
— A Confederate Girl's Diary • Sarah Morgan Dawson
... an open country, after passing a small suburb beyond the western gate of the city. They brought us to a villa which was a kind of appendage to one of the Emperor's palaces, about eight miles beyond Pekin. The buildings, consisting of a number of small detached apartments, straggling over a surface of ground, about fifteen acres in extent, were neither sufficiently numerous to lodge the suite, nor to contain the presents and our baggage; and were moreover so miserably out of repair and in so ruinous a condition, that the greater ...
— Travels in China, Containing Descriptions, Observations, and Comparisons, Made and Collected in the Course of a Short Residence at the Imperial Palace of Yuen-Min-Yuen, and on a Subsequent Journey thr • John Barrow
... Tertullian to the death of Jonathan Edwards, strike the average pitch of its doctrinal temper, and you will get this result: that in the field of human souls Satan is the harvester, God the gleaner; hell receives the whole vintage in its wine press of damnation, heaven obtains only a few straggling clusters plucked for salvation. The crowded wains roll staggering into the iron doorways of Satan's fire and brimstone barns; the redeemed vestiges of the world crop of men are easily borne to heaven in the arms of a few weeping angels. How different is the prevailing ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... warm, light dress is renewed once or twice a year, generally so gradually that the change is imperceptible—but you may have seen fowls and ducks straggling about the farmyard with half their feathers gone—on the principle of being off with the old coat before they are on with ...
— Twilight And Dawn • Caroline Pridham
... them were caught and detained at the Jamestown fort, for Captain Smith suspected treachery on Powhatan's part and determined to hold them until all the stolen articles were sent back. In return the Indians captured two straggling Englishmen and came in a shouting throng to the fort clamoring for the release of the imprisoned Indians. Out came the bold Captain and demanded the instant freeing of the settlers. His force and tactics were so ...
— Ten American Girls From History • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... be effected in almost every part of its circumference. The town of Hydra is built in an irregular manner on the fall of the mountain about the port, and presents a clean appearance, the houses being all whitewashed. There is not a tree on the island, though there are a few straggling bushes. There is scarcely any land capable of cultivation; but there are some vineyards on the south side and a few small gardens near the town. The port is small, the water deep, and the vessels made fast by ...
— The Life of Thomas, Lord Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald, Vol. II • Thomas Lord Cochrane
... want it. You almost break your neck tripping over a long, firm cord, which proves to be a pair of reins left hanging on a chair by some careless urchin. The carpet and furniture are strewed with long, straggling pieces of packthread. You find a white end dangling conspicuously from your waistcoat pocket. As you walk the streets you see twine flying from fences, or lying useless on the sidewalk, black with dust and age. To crown the whole, a friend comes with a piece of twine extending across two rooms, ...
— Autumn Leaves - Original Pieces in Prose and Verse • Various
... round his congregation and found himself able to believe the report that the country districts were apathetic. He was an ugly little man with straggling brown whiskers and unruly hair, and had no great appearance of illumination, yet he was a true evangelist, labouring hard to pull souls from the pit of social and moral corruption. That was why he had been ...
— Women of the Country • Gertrude Bone
... sitting-room door and looked forth. He was habited in a long, faded, palm-figured bed-gown, all muffled up round his chin, and sheep-skin slippers without heels. He had a lank, pale, discouraged visage, and thin, light hair, streaked with gray, in a very untidy state straggling about his face. He pulled his wrapper up yet closer about his head, when he discovered the washerwoman, and shambled across the clean-swept floor, his heelless slippers going clip-clap after him, as he stalked along. What a gaunt, unhealthy-looking ...
— Eventide - A Series of Tales and Poems • Effie Afton
... misery as they wandered aimlessly, seeking that which none might find: food and shelter and warmth for their chilled bodies. When the Canada herds pushed down upon them the boys gave over trying to keep them north of the river; while they turned one bunch a dozen others were straggling out from shore, the timid following single file behind a leader more venturesome or more ...
— The Lure of the Dim Trails • by (AKA B. M. Sinclair) B. M. Bower
... a scattered group of log cabins, surrounded by little whitewashed palings, and at their approach a decrepit old Negro, followed by a slinking black-and-tan foxhound, came beneath the straggling hopvine over one of the doors and through the open gate out into the road. His bent old figure was huddled within his carefully patched clothes ...
— The Deliverance; A Romance of the Virginia Tobacco Fields • Ellen Glasgow
... post mortem examination attached to the intestine. In this bird there was no male development of comb or wattles, a full development of neck hackles, a certain development of saddle hackles, a few straggling badly curved feathers in the tail and short blunt spurs on the legs. Lode [Footnote: Wiener klin. Wochenschr., 1895.] (1895) found that testes could easily be transplanted into subcutaneous tissue and elsewhere, and that the male characters ...
— Hormones and Heredity • J. T. Cunningham
... endangered his arriving at the office, a quarter of a minute after his time. The public-houses, with gas-lights burning inside, were already open. By degrees, other shops began to be unclosed, and a few scattered people were met with. Then, came straggling groups of labourers going to their work; then, men and women with fish-baskets on their heads; donkey-carts laden with vegetables; chaise-carts filled with live-stock or whole carcasses of meat; ...
— Oliver Twist • Charles Dickens
... adjacent tribes removed farther west. So that when improvements were begun to be made in the wilderness of North Western Virginia, it had been almost entirely deserted by the natives; and excepting a few straggling hunters and warriors, who occasionally traversed it in quest of game, or of human beings on whom to wreak their vengeance, almost its only tenants were beasts of ...
— Chronicles of Border Warfare • Alexander Scott Withers
... the Emperor stood like a statue, staring at old Luke. The expression on his face was that of a madman, but a madman through whose brain a straggling ray of realization has dawned. It was the look upon his face that held the whole assemblage spellbound. Then ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, October, 1930 • Various
... monarch, while he had been too far removed from the stirring passions which had gradually excited those nearer to the throne, to lose their respect for its sanctity, and to sully its brightness with blood. When the transient and straggling visiters that, at long intervals, visited his settlement, spoke of the Protector, who for so many years ruled England with an iron hand, the eyes of the old man would gleam with sudden and singular interest; and once, when commenting ...
— The Wept of Wish-Ton-Wish • James Fenimore Cooper
... Guasimas about noon, without stopping to examine it, and pushed on toward Sevilla with a straggling, disorderly column of soldiers belonging to the Second and Twenty-first Infantry, who were following a battery of light artillery to the front. The men seemed to be suffering intensely from the heat, and every few hundred yards we would find one of them lying unconscious in the bushes by the roadside, ...
— Campaigning in Cuba • George Kennan
... o'er the plain, Pours his full tribute to the circling main, A band of fishers chose their humble seat; Contented labor blessed the fair retreat, Inured to hardship, patient, bold, and rude, They braved the billows for precarious food: Their straggling huts were ranged along the shore, Their nets and little boats their ...
— Redburn. His First Voyage • Herman Melville
... left the Ship and landed at different parts of the Island, and before we could well look about us we were surrounded by 2 or 300 People, and, notwithstanding that they were all Arm'd, they came upon us in such a confused, straggling manner that we hardly suspected that they meant us any harm; but in this we were very soon undeceived, for upon our Endeavouring to draw a line on the sand between us and them they set up the War dance, and immediately some of them attempted to seize the 2 Boats. Being disappointed in this, ...
— Captain Cook's Journal During the First Voyage Round the World • James Cook
... came straggling up the incline, coming nearer and nearer the men in ambush, until the latter could see clearly that every driver was a half-breed and that every man of them had a rifle across his knees. When they were well within the line, ...
— The Spoilers of the Valley • Robert Watson
... of Cooling Castle, beyond wide fields—turnips or cabbages—of the colour of dark-green jade, the Church of Cliffe, with its lichgate, standing out boldly from its ridge of chalk, overlooks a straggling village of old and weather-boarded houses. It would be into the road from Cliffe to Rochester, at a point about half a mile from Cooling, that Uncle Pumblechook's chaise-cart would debouch when he took Mrs. Joe to Rochester market ...
— Dickens-Land • J. A. Nicklin
... which are descended by cuttings from the Holy Thorn still exist in and about Glastonbury. One of them, of somewhat scanty and straggling growth, occupies the site of the original thorn, on the summit of Weary-all Hill. Another, a much finer tree, compact and healthy, stands on private premises, near the entrance of a house that faces the abbot's kitchen. These descendants of the Holy Thorn inherit ...
— A Righte Merrie Christmasse - The Story of Christ-Tide • John Ashton
... my design at first not to make any attempt till it was dark; and it being now two o'clock, in the very heat of the day, the sailors were all straggling in the woods, and undoubtedly were lain down to sleep. The three poor distressed creatures, too anxious to get any repose, were however seated under the shade of a great tree, about a quarter of ...
— The Life and Most Surprising Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, of - York, Mariner (1801) • Daniel Defoe
... hidden. What connection had a rugged, stirring lad with a brown sombre potato patch when the strong insistent voice of the wild was calling him to fields afar? There was no inspiration here—among these straggling rows. Nothing to thrill a boy's heart, or to send the blood surging and tingling through his body. But there—! He sighed as he leaned upon his hoe and looked yearningly around. Down on the shore; in a sheltered cove among the trees, the Scud, a small boat, ...
— The Fourth Watch • H. A. Cody
... the land the Indians urge their horses down a steep, winding trail and arrive at the river's bank. Here they ford, follow the course of the stream for a while, and then at a bend reach an open flat dotted here and there with shapely live-oaks. In this park-like opening the long straggling line ...
— The North American Indian • Edward S. Curtis
... And the little get-off-the-track goes rumbling on through the village, past the homes of the fishermen—a straggling line of low stone houses with quaint gabled roofs, and still quainter chimneys, and old doorways giving glimpses of dark interiors and dirt floors. Past the modest houses of the mayor, the baker, the butcher and Monsieur le Cure; then through the small public square, ...
— A Village of Vagabonds • F. Berkeley Smith
... foot-passengers. There is not a straight or level street in all Tangier. Veiled women, clad in white, move about the lanes like uneasy spirits; men in scarlet turbans and striped robes lounge carelessly about, with their bare heels sticking out of yellow slippers. Now we meet a tawny Arab, a straggling son of the desert, his striped abba or white bournous (robe-like garments) hanging in graceful folds about his tall, straight figure; and now a Nubian, with only a waistcloth about his body. The scene is constantly changing. There are Jews, ...
— Foot-prints of Travel - or, Journeyings in Many Lands • Maturin M. Ballou
... few canvas tents became dazzling to the eye, and the white wooded corral of the stage office and hotel insupportable. For two hours no one ventured in the glare of the open, or even to cross the narrow, unshadowed street, whose dull red dust seemed to glow between the lines of straggling houses. The heated shells of these green unseasoned tenements gave out a pungent odor of scorching wood and resin. The usual hurried, feverish toil in the claim was suspended; the pick and shovel were left sticking in the richest "pay gravel;" the toiling millionaires themselves, ...
— Devil's Ford • Bret Harte
... and half as much again as that of Prussia, or of peninsular Italy. It equals three fourths of France, or three fifths of Germany. It has, moreover, the great advantage of compactness, forming a single solid mass, with no straggling or outlying portions; and it is strongly defended on almost every side by natural barriers offering great difficulties to ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 3. (of 7): Media • George Rawlinson
... were so blended that, like Cromwell's Ironsides, they were daunted by no odds. At first they depended upon the guerilla type of warfare, to which the hills of Judea were especially adapted. By enforcing the law of circumcision, by punishing the apostates, and by attacking straggling Syrian bands, they encouraged the faltering Jews, and intimidated the agents of Antiochus. Mattathias soon died, leaving the leadership to his third son, Judas. The poem recording his dying injunctions ...
— The Makers and Teachers of Judaism • Charles Foster Kent
... has been said, was a brawny savage, well on toward middle life. He was attired in the usual fashion among the Indians, his dress looking slouchy and untidy. His straggling black hair, instead of being ornamented with eagle feathers, was gathered in a knot, so as to form what is often called a scalp-lock, and to proclaim the fact that the wearer of the same challenged any one to take it if he could. Besides ...
— Camp-fire and Wigwam • Edward Sylvester Ellis
... mustering sound of the drum; then it seemed as if it were coming towards him; while in advance rode another horseman, the same kind of headlong messenger, in appearance, who had passed the house with his ghastly cry of alarum; then appeared scattered countrymen, with guns in their hands, straggling across fields. Then he caught sight of the regular array of British soldiers, filling the road with their front, and marching along as firmly as ever, though at a quick pace, while he fancied that ...
— Septimius Felton - or, The Elixir of Life • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... awake. Utter midnight blackness all around, the profound and impressive stillness made more profound and impressive by the trickling of some current near, the occasional glimpse of some tiny star twinkling among the dark, straggling clouds overhead; such was ...
— Adrift in the Wilds - or, The Adventures of Two Shipwrecked Boys • Edward S. Ellis
... retired from the siege of Placentia, having traversed nearly the whole length of Italy through the midst of enemies, while following Hannibal as he was retiring to Metapontum, were taken to Tarentum by mistaking the roads; where they were seized by some Roman foragers, who were straggling through the fields, and brought before the proprietor, Caius Claudius. At first they endeavoured to baffle him by evasive answers, but threats of applying torture being held out to them, they were compelled ...
— History of Rome, Vol III • Titus Livius
... was unsuccessful. The heavy gates would not budge. Suddenly a straggling, irregular cheer was heard from the direction of the Square. "There!" said Temple, "my friend the orator has ...
— The Bread-winners - A Social Study • John Hay
... form one very straggling commune, and the church where the slain men of Sarlat lie serves for the entire population. This edifice of the eleventh and twelfth centuries deserves a brief description. There is much grandeur in its vast, deeply-recessed Romanesque ...
— Two Summers in Guyenne • Edward Harrison Barker
... were at the same time conscious, that their high pay, splendid appointments, and immediate dependence on the Emperor, were subjects of envy to the other forces. They, therefore, kept much in the neighbourhood of their own barracks, and were seldom seen straggling remote from them, unless they had a commission of government intrusted ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... came, and Barry watched her, taking a strange sort of delight in the skipping grace with which she negotiated the stepping stones of the swollen little stream which intervened between her and the cabin of Ba'tiste Renaud, then clambered over the straggling pile of massed logs and dead timber which strewed the small stretch of flat before the rise began, leading to where he rested. More like some graceful, agile boy was she than a girl. Her clothing was of that type which has all too soon taken the place of the buckskin ...
— The White Desert • Courtney Ryley Cooper
... deep-cut road a little farther back he withdrew his men. He had not expected so early to find such opposition, and his aim was to crush with the senseless weight of force, but the shot-guns were too deadly. Now he was cool and cautious. The fire from the whites was straggling. Suddenly out from behind the brick building rushed three black giants, torches in hand, making desperately for the court-house. It was indeed a forlorn hope, for one by one they fell, the last, so death-defying was he, that he fell upon the steps and his torch flew from his hand into ...
— An Arkansas Planter • Opie Percival Read
... leaned against the door and watched, had also bowed his head. A pain was in his throat—and in his heart—a pain that gripped him, till two great tears rolled down his war-worn cheek and were lost in his straggling beard. ...
— The Littlest Rebel • Edward Peple
... consist usually of one straggling street, outside of which lie the barns, and the mills, factories, and workshops. The houses are well built, of brick, stone, or wood, very plain; each with a sufficient garden, but mostly standing immediately on the street. They use no paint, believing that the wood lasts ...
— The Communistic Societies of the United States • Charles Nordhoff
... himself in line with a number of that spontaneous class which at the first hint of sensation springs up from nowhere in the streets of Manhattan. Early as was the hour, they were already quite fifty strong; and every minute brought re-enforcements straggling up ...
— The Day of Days - An Extravaganza • Louis Joseph Vance
... possibilities of the first street, and the party debouched into the second, which was long and straggling, and composed entirely ...
— All In It K(1) Carries On - A Continuation of the First Hundred Thousand • John Hay Beith (AKA: Ian Hay)
... thoroughly scouring the adjacent country in the hope of meeting with parties of straggling Indians, but, as the result proved, without success, returned to Fort Massachusetts, where he had the satisfaction of learning that Colonel St. Vrain, in his expedition, had caught other bands of these same Indians, and most ...
— The Life and Adventures of Kit Carson, the Nestor of the Rocky Mountains, from Facts Narrated by Himself • De Witt C. Peters
... a few fine and very short hairs; the free edges of the eyelids were without cilia, but the bulb of each of these was indicated by a small, whitish point. The beard was so thin and weak that Beauvais clipped it off only every three weeks. A few straggling hairs were observed on the breast and pubic region, as in young people on the approach of puberty. There was scarcely any under the axillae. It was rather more abundant on the inner parts of the legs. The voice was like that of a full-grown and well-constituted ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... can give rise to merit of any kind. Curiously, through these incondite masses of tradition, vituperation, complaint, ejaculation in the Koran, a vein of true direct insight, of what we might almost call poetry, is found straggling. The body of the Book is made up of mere tradition, and as it were vehement enthusiastic extempore preaching. He returns forever to the old stories of the Prophets as they went current in the Arab memory: how Prophet after Prophet, the Prophet Abraham, the Prophet Hud, the Prophet ...
— Sacred Books of the East • Various
... delicate yellow blossoms of the Soffrana rose; trailing ivy-leaved geraniums with gay heads of carmine flowers; the honey-scented budleia with its little globes of dark yellow flowerets: clumps of gorgeous scarlet salvia; and straggling masses of the pretty cosmia, red, pink and white. Humming-bird hawk-moths darted hither and thither in the sunshine, restless little creatures whose wings are never for a moment still, as they poise gracefully over each separate blossom in turn. The pergola ...
— The Naples Riviera • Herbert M. Vaughan
... rock the few appeared, Like the last remnant of the red-deer's herd; 60 Their eyes were feverish, and their aspect worn, But still the hunter's blood was on their horn. A little stream came tumbling from the height, And straggling into ocean as it might, Its bounding crystal frolicked in the ray, And gushed from cliff to crag with saltless spray; Close on the wild, wide ocean, yet as pure And fresh as Innocence, and more secure, Its silver ...
— The Works of Lord Byron - Poetry, Volume V. • Lord Byron
... Long, straggling, Swiss-like towns, these villages on the Ammer meadows are. You may find a hundred such between Innsbruck and Zuerich. Stone houses, plastered outside and painted white, stand close together, each one passing gradually backward into woodshed, barn, and stable. You may lose your way in ...
— The Story of the Innumerable Company, and Other Sketches • David Starr Jordan
... problem of how to pass the next three hours. The loungers, who by this time had changed to a sitting posture, and who were staring at him with an unwinking fixedness which made him rather nervous, did not seem very congenial companions. The town consisted of merely a few, straggling, unpainted buildings, while in every direction extended the apparently interminable stretches of undulating prairie, partially covered with sage brush and wild cactus. Though early in the season, the heat was intense, and the glare of the sunlight reflected from the patches of ...
— The Award of Justice - Told in the Rockies • A. Maynard Barbour
... flats carry back with them to better lands a picture of one grossly monotonous type continuing day upon day. Pine and birch woods, often ordered with the regularity and industry of the German forest organization, but often also straggling and curiously stunted and small, break or confuse the view ...
— A General Sketch of the European War - The First Phase • Hilaire Belloc
... than not bow low enough." So the soldiers, after a twenty-mile march, were kept mending and cleaning all night long without closing their eyes, while the adjutants and company commanders calculated and reckoned, and by morning the regiment—instead of the straggling, disorderly crowd it had been on its last march the day before—presented a well-ordered array of two thousand men each of whom knew his place and his duty, had every button and every strap in place, and ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... do not occur very frequently. No doubt the quickened perception of those who especially attend to meteors will detect a shower when others see only a few straggling shooting stars; but, speaking generally, we may say that the present generation can hardly have witnessed more than two or three such occurrences. I have myself seen two great showers, one of which, in November, 1866, has impressed ...
— The Story of the Heavens • Robert Stawell Ball
... sere foliage to be seen, and it has, moreover, a glossy appearance, whence the specific name. The flowers are not of much effect, though, from their earliness, not without value; they are in the way of the flowers of the more common species, A. alpina, but less in size; they are also more straggling in the raceme; these two features render it inferior as a flower; the stalks are 3in. to 6in. high. The leaves are arranged in lax flattened rosettes, are 1in. to 3in. long, somewhat spathulate, notched, fleshy, of a very dark green colour, and shining. The habit is ...
— Hardy Perennials and Old Fashioned Flowers - Describing the Most Desirable Plants, for Borders, - Rockeries, and Shrubberies. • John Wood
... shingle of what we call "the street," we reached the low straggling crofter-cottage under its thick trammon tree (supposed to keep off the evil spirits), I rapped with my knuckles at the door, and it was opened by a tall scraggy woman with a ...
— The Woman Thou Gavest Me - Being the Story of Mary O'Neill • Hall Caine
... being pitched on shore for the purpose of an observatory; as well as to the drawing of the Seine in different parts of the bay for fish; only pointing out the restrictions that would be necessary to prevent the sailors from straggling into the country. On their taking leave, it was most politely intimated, that no restraint would be imposed upon the officers, whenever they came on shore to the town, in which they were free to pass wherever they desired. A conduct so opposite ...
— An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales, Vol. 1 • David Collins
... in Argyllshire, the spin- drift was driving over the bay, the Yezo mountains loomed darkly and loftily through rain and mist, and wind and thunder, and "noises of the northern sea," gave me a wild welcome to these northern shores. A rocky head like Gibraltar, a cold-blooded- looking grey town, straggling up a steep hillside, a few coniferae, a great many grey junks, a few steamers and vessels of foreign rig at anchor, a number of sampans riding the rough water easily, seen in flashes between gusts of rain and spin-drift, were all ...
— Unbeaten Tracks in Japan • Isabella L. Bird
... visited their cave. At some distance they saw Cassim's mules straggling about the rock, with great chests on their backs. Alarmed at this, they galloped full speed to the cave. They drove away the mules, which strayed through the forest so far, that they were soon out of sight, and went directly, with their naked ...
— Fairy Tales Every Child Should Know • Various
... a mail stage came rattling along, without any passengers, and Mr. Sanford took his nephew aboard. They stopped before a low, straggling pile of buildings, located upon both sides of a sluggish looking race-way which supplied the water power, covered passage-ways connecting different ...
— Illustrated Science for Boys and Girls • Anonymous
... guest in this big, lonesome caravansary, that looked as though a dozen old-fashioned Dutch farm-houses had been placed in the midst of a wood-lot, and then connected by the roofs, the whole forming one straggling, weather-stained, labyrinthine building, full of little nests of rooms, high-pitched gables, cumbrous outside chimney-stacks, cavernous fireplaces, and low, wide corridors open at either end, where were uncertain shadows, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 122, December, 1867 • Various
... semi-tropical scenery which I had pictured in my mind. I did not find the grass so green, nor the woods so beautiful, nor the flowers so plentiful, as they were in Connecticut. Instead, the red earth partly covered by tough, scrawny grass, the muddy, straggling roads, the cottages of unpainted pine boards, and the clay-daubed huts imparted a "burnt up" impression. Occasionally we ran through a little white and green village that was like ...
— The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man • James Weldon Johnson
... Miss Rebecca stepped to the honeysuckle vine with a detached air and snipped off a straggling tendril with her shears. "That is a large ...
— The Law-Breakers and Other Stories • Robert Grant
... Duke of Hamilton, reinforced by three thousand Royalists of the North, had advanced as far as Preston. With an army which now numbered ten thousand men, Cromwell poured down on the flank of the Duke's straggling line of march, attacked the Scots on the seventeenth of August as they retired behind the Ribble, passed the river with them, cut their rearguard to pieces at Wigan, forced the defile at Warrington, where the flying enemy made a last and ...
— History of the English People, Volume VI (of 8) - Puritan England, 1642-1660; The Revolution, 1660-1683 • John Richard Green
... near the falls of that river. Greene's division, which, having been less in action, was more entire than any other, covered the rear, and the corps of Maxwell remained at Chester until the next day as a rallying point for the small parties and straggling soldiers who might ...
— Life And Times Of Washington, Volume 2 • John Frederick Schroeder and Benson John Lossing
... no further," they emphatically said, turning their dark sides to the waves to augment the idle roar. The view was sterile; still little patches of earth of the most exquisite verdure, enamelled with the sweetest wild flowers, seemed to promise the goats and a few straggling cows luxurious herbage. How silent and peaceful was the scene! I gazed around with rapture, and felt more of that spontaneous pleasure which gives credibility to our expectation of happiness than I had for a long, long time before. ...
— Letters written during a short residence in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark • Mary Wollstonecraft
... arriving at Santa Barbara, one of the most beautiful places in the province, and at that time much larger than Monterey. As the ship came into the roadstead which served as a harbor, the town lay spread out before them: in the foreground, straggling along the beach and for some distance back, were the adobe houses of the inhabitants, about one hundred in number, most of them glittering white in the brilliant sunlight; among them, somewhat distant from the shore, was the huge, low building of the presidio, frowning ...
— Old Mission Stories of California • Charles Franklin Carter
... but they call themselves Josephites, and do not practise polygamy. There is probably not a sect or schism in the United States that has not its representative in California. Until 1865 San Bernardino was merely a straggling settlement, and a point of distribution for Arizona. The discovery that a large part of the county was adapted to the orange and the vine, and the advent of the Santa Fe railway, changed all that. Land that then might have been bought for ...
— Our Italy • Charles Dudley Warner
... instead of rambling and straggling over a large subject, each sermon seized a single thought, or definite view, or real difficulty or objection, and kept closely and distinctly to it; and at the same time treated it with a largeness and grasp and ease which only a full command over much beyond it could give. Every sermon ...
— Occasional Papers - Selected from The Guardian, The Times, and The Saturday Review, - 1846-1890 • R.W. Church
... period that has elapsed since we left her, Antonina has remained secure in her solitude, happy in her well-chosen concealment. The few straggling Goths who at rare intervals appeared in the neighbourhood of her sanctuary never intruded on its peaceful limits. The sight of the ravaged fields and emptied granaries of the deserted little property ...
— Antonina • Wilkie Collins
... and more, describing a half circle; the ships at anchor increased to a dense mass floating many flags; and then, hurrah, on the near shore, against the hills of this the west side of the bay appeared a straggling jumble of low buildings, already enshadowed by dusk and dotted with lights, some stationary, others moving. The murmur of many voices, punctuated by shouts and hammering, floated across the smooth water, ...
— Gold Seekers of '49 • Edwin L. Sabin
... chorus a hundred voices, and the scattered and straggling groups pressed up the street, nearer and nearer to ...
— Zicci, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... to see another Boer. I admitted to myself they sat their horses well and that their rifle seemed a familiar friend, but when you have seen one you have seen them all. I never could have imagined so many men absolutely alike: all had long straggling beards, old felt hats, shabby clothes, and some evil-looking countenances. Most of those I saw were men of from forty to fifty years of age, but there were also a few sickly-looking youths, who certainly did not look bold warriors. These had not arrived at the dignity ...
— South African Memories - Social, Warlike & Sporting From Diaries Written At The Time • Lady Sarah Wilson
... the whole coast line between Maine and Florida, you could not light upon a drearier, dirtier, duller little town than the town of Sandypoint, Massachusetts. It was a straggling place, more village than town, consisting mainly of one long street, filled with frame houses of staring white, picked out with red doors and very green shutters. Half a dozen pretentious "stores," a school-house, one or two churches, ...
— A Terrible Secret • May Agnes Fleming
... but the scrub fullback between Tom and the opposite goal line, though it was some distance away. Most of the leading team lads, streaming and straggling along, were shouting ...
— Tom Fairfield's Pluck and Luck • Allen Chapman
... went the rounds of the village, collecting the guests. It is doubtful if Fairfield was ever more surprised than at the realisation of how much there was of her—using the pronoun out of respect to the majority—"when she was bunched," as Red said. You would not have believed that straggling, lonesome-looking place held so many people. As Red could discover no means in the town's resources to provide a meal for three hundred people it was necessarily a basket party, which struck Mr. ...
— Red Saunders • Henry Wallace Phillips
... tumbling from the height And straggling into ocean as it might. Its bounding crystal frolicked in the ray And gushed from cliff to crag with saltless spray, Close on the wild wide ocean,—yet as pure And fresh as Innocence; and more secure. Its ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... corn land and meadow, intersected by green hedgerows and dotted with villages and pleasant country seats, would appear as moors overgrown with furze, or fens abandoned to wild ducks. We should see straggling huts built of wood and covered with thatch, where we now see manufacturing towns and seaports renowned to the farthest ends of the world. The capital itself would shrink to dimensions not much exceeding those of its present suburb on the south of the Thames. ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 1 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... northern coast, having drawn on my boots while I was gathering together my straggling plants and seaweeds, a white bear approached unawares the verge of the rock on which I stood. I wished to throw off my slippers and move off to an adjacent island, which I expected to reach over a rock whose head towered above ...
— Peter Schlemihl • Adelbert von Chamisso
... hand, Beauregard's defenders replied that the army was so reduced by the terrible struggle of twelve hours—and more by straggling after the rich spoils of the captured camp—as to render further advance madness. And in addition to this, it was claimed that he relied on the information of a most trusty scout—none other than Colonel John Morgan—that Buell's advance could not possibly reach the ...
— Four Years in Rebel Capitals - An Inside View of Life in the Southern Confederacy from Birth to Death • T. C. DeLeon
... former prison, and chuckled at the thought that he should soon have an opportunity of revenging himself for his sufferings within its walls. To make the most of his time before the appearance of Baltasar, he hastily descended the naked rock on which he stood, and sought shelter amongst the bushes and straggling trees clothing the middle and lower slopes of the mountain. Thence he commanded a near view of the convent. No change was visible in the grey, ghostly-looking edifice; so still was every thing about it, that it might have been deemed uninhabited but for the portress, who sat ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 367, May 1846 • Various
... pleasure as an artist, and his duty as a citizen. He suspected, though, that the trotting-match was the only fact of the Pymantoning County Fair that could be persuaded to lend itself to his purpose. Certainly, there was nothing in the fair-house, with those poor, dreary old people straggling through it, to gladden an artistic conception. Agricultural implements do not group effectively, or pose singly with much picturesqueness; tall stalks of corn, mammoth squashes, huge apples and potatoes want the beauty and quality that ...
— The Coast of Bohemia • William Dean Howells
... boastful language, they should be at once tripped up and silenced: is there not something brave and spirited in such a termination? and does not life go down with a better grace, foaming in full body over a precipice, than miserably straggling to an end in sandy deltas? When the Greeks made their fine saying that those whom the gods love die young, I cannot help believing they had this sort of death also in their eye. For, surely, at whatever age it overtake the man, ...
— The Pocket R.L.S. - Being Favourite Passages from the Works of Stevenson • Robert Louis Stevenson
... consisted entirely of raw and undisciplined troops. Cromwell marched with great speed through Wales to Gloucester, and then on through Leicester and Nottingham, and joined Lambert at Barnet Castle on the 12th of August. Then he marched against the Scotch army, which, straggling widely and thinking Cromwell still at a distance, was advancing toward Manchester. On the 16th the duke with his advanced guard was at Preston, with Langdale on his left. Cromwell attacked Langdale with his whole force next morning, and the Royalists after fighting stoutly were entirely defeated. ...
— Friends, though divided - A Tale of the Civil War • G. A. Henty
... the street was very lively. It woke to its work about seven o'clock, at the time when the newsboys made their appearance together with the day laborers. The laborers went trudging past in a straggling file—plumbers' apprentices, their pockets stuffed with sections of lead pipe, tweezers, and pliers; carpenters, carrying nothing but their little pasteboard lunch baskets painted to imitate leather; gangs of street workers, their overalls soiled with yellow ...
— McTeague • Frank Norris
... their enemies, the chief forbade a gun being fired off; no straggling was allowed; none but the spies were to go beyond a certain ...
— Dahcotah - Life and Legends of the Sioux Around Fort Snelling • Mary Eastman
... until her lowly sisters are rocked into a balmy slumber." The bramble, from its manner of growth, has been chosen as the type of lowliness; and "from the fierceness with which it grasps the passer-by with its straggling prickly stems, as ...
— The Folk-lore of Plants • T. F. Thiselton-Dyer
... leader, and the King hanging at its tail as journalist, the whole story of our problem was insignificant. In the presence of that army the red Notting Hills and the green Bayswaters were alike tiny and straggling groups. In its presence the whole struggle round Pump Street was like an ant-hill under the hoof of an ox. Every man who felt or looked at that infinity of men knew that it was the triumph of Buck's brutal arithmetic. Whether Wayne was ...
— The Napoleon of Notting Hill • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... with my handkerchief fanning my face, which felt quite warm, until the moment for departure drew near. Several times during this interval I caught myself regretting that I had arrived so early; half an hour or more elapsed before my young followers began to appear, straggling in ...
— Fibble, D. D. • Irvin Shrewsbury Cobb
... foundation was sawn through, clean and straight. He gazed at it for a moment in astonishment. Then he turned back towards the cottage, to receive another shock. About forty yards up the lane, drawn in close to a straggling hedge, was a small motor-car, revealed to him by a careless swing of his torch. He turned sharply towards it, keeping his torch as much concealed as possible. It was empty—a small coupe of pearl-grey—a powerful two-seater, with deep, cushioned seats and luxuriously ...
— The Devil's Paw • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... it has been ever since Christmas: for Aberalva knows no winter: and there are grown-up men in it who never put on a skate, or made a snowball in their lives. A most cleanly, bright-coloured, foreign-looking street, is that long straggling one which runs up the hill towards Penalva Court: only remark, that this cleanliness is gained by making the gutter in the middle street the common sewer of the town, and tread clear of cabbage-leaves, ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume I • Charles Kingsley
... dominion of this white master. Keith leaned forward, staring at the string of deserted ponies tied to the rail. Success depended on his choice, and he could judge very little in that darkness. Men were straggling in along the street to their right, on foot and horseback, and the saloon on the corner was being well patronized. A glow of light streamed forth from its windows, and there was the sound of many voices. But this narrow alley was deserted, and black. ...
— Keith of the Border • Randall Parrish
... the lake; there were but a few houses. It was about eleven or twelve o'clock or after and the good people in the straggling cottages thereabout had put out their lights and retired to slumber before that ...
— Pee-wee Harris on the Trail • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... far away to the eastward rose the first straggling cabins of the town. Creeping toward them down the road rolled a dark squat figure. It grew and spread slowly on the horizon until it became a fat old black woman, hooded and aproned, with great ...
— The Quest of the Silver Fleece - A Novel • W. E. B. Du Bois |
