"Stray" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... flickered and without warning the candle went out, in a gust of wind which shook the house to its foundations. Stray currents of air had come through the crevices of the rattling windows and kept up an imperfect ventilation. She took another candle from her satchel, put it into a candlestick of blackened brass, ...
— A Spinner in the Sun • Myrtle Reed
... his hobby, which consisted of being an advance-agent for small happenings or possible happenings that were or seemed imminent in the social world around him; he found a perpetual and unflagging satisfaction in acquiring and retailing any stray items of gossip or information, particularly of a matrimonial nature, that chanced to come his way. Given the bare outline of an officially announced engagement he would immediately fill it in with all manner of details, true or, ...
— The Unbearable Bassington • Saki
... Signa's wedding, Emil was kneeling before a box in the sitting-room, packing his books. From time to time he rose and wandered about the house, picking up stray volumes and bringing them listlessly back to his box. He was packing without enthusiasm. He was not very sanguine about his future. Alexandra sat sewing by the table. She had helped him pack his trunk in the afternoon. ...
— O Pioneers! • Willa Cather
... summer ones." Mrs. Burnham's face lighted with amusement, and, as she took the chair Miss Gibbie pushed toward her, she brushed back the stray strands of hair the breeze had blown across her ...
— Miss Gibbie Gault • Kate Langley Bosher
... deception, cher pere" laughed the young man. "I really do not give myself the trouble to have personal ambition beforehand. I behold my much-loved father standing in the sunshine of renown, and I quite composedly allow a few stray beams from his splendor to alight upon myself. I would not say, though, that I am wholly devoid of ambition. I only avoid talking about ...
— The Youth of the Great Elector • L. Muhlbach
... that that was what she had always vaguely reminded me of. You remember the insect, don't you, in Through the Looking-Glass? It lived on sawdust. One lesson one has every opportunity of learning on board ship is to suffer fools, if not gladly, at least with patience. The curious people who stray across one's path! One woman came on at Port Said—a globe-trotter, globe-trotting alone. Can you imagine anything more ghastly? She is very tall, dark and mysterious-looking, and last night when G. and I were in the music saloon before dinner, she sat down beside us and began ...
— Olivia in India • O. Douglas
... enemy's bullets. I also deployed a line of skirmishers, resting on our right and left flanks encircling our rear, in order to prevent a surprise from any detached force of the enemy that might approach us from that direction and to prevent any straggling of either stray animals ...
— The Battle of Atlanta - and Other Campaigns, Addresses, Etc. • Grenville M. Dodge
... in the heavens, and the crickets chirped unbearably. The luminous dew lay heavily upon the surrounding fields, and now and then a stray breeze, amid the overhanging branches of the trees that lined the roadway, aroused in the consciousness of the single wayfarer a feeling closely akin to panic. When he reached the summit of the hill, ...
— At the Sign of the Jack O'Lantern • Myrtle Reed
... was all in confusion and covered with ashes. On one side, sitting among the cinders, with his face blackened, and crying aloud, was his elder brother. On the other side sat the younger, Jeekewis, also with blackened face, his head covered with stray feathers and tufts of swan-down. This one presented so curious a figure that Maidwa could not keep from laughing. He seemed to be so lost and far-gone in grief that he could not notice his brother's arrival. The eldest, however, after a while, lifting ...
— The Indian Fairy Book - From the Original Legends • Cornelius Mathews
... bee, And through the air dim perfume steams Of Syrian frankincense; and He, Our leader, from his thyrsus spray A torchlight tosses high and higher, A torchlight like a beacon-fire, To waken all that faint and stray; And sets them leaping as he sings, His tresses rippling to the sky, And deep beneath the Maenad cry His proud voice rings: "Come, O ye ...
— Hippolytus/The Bacchae • Euripides
... bottle of native wine before him, and dreamed of her. He was very fat, the little Georgiev, very swarthy, very pathetic. The Balkan kettle was simmering in those days, and he had been set to watch the fire. But instead he had kindled a flame of his own, and was feeding it with stray words, odd glances, a bit of music, the curve of a woman's hair behind her ears. For reports he wrote verses in modern Greek, and through one of those inadvertences which make tragedy, the Minister of War down in troubled ...
— The Street of Seven Stars • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... With streaming eyes and throbbing hearts recoil, Plunge their fair forms, and dive beneath the soil.— Closed round their heads reluctant eddies sink, And wider rings successive dash the brink.— Three thousand steps in sparry clefts they stray, 120 Or seek through sullen mines their gloomy way; On beds of Lava sleep in coral cells, Or sigh o'er jasper fish, and agate shells. Till, where famed ILAM leads his boiling floods Through flowery meadows and impending woods, 125 Pleased with light spring they leave the dreary night, And ...
— The Botanic Garden. Part II. - Containing The Loves of the Plants. A Poem. - With Philosophical Notes. • Erasmus Darwin
... should have the means wherewith to offer a sacrifice. Perhaps they had a billy-goat on board, and made him do duty, in default of anything better. Or failing even a billy-goat, as the Lord God of the Hebrews could only be propitiated by the shedding of blood, they perhaps caught and immolated a stray rat. The nature of their "vows" is not recorded, but it is not unreasonable to assume that they swore never again to take on board a passenger fleeing "from the presence of ...
— Bible Romances - First Series • George W. Foote
... others. The abbess and nuns were alarmed at their absence, for no one could give any account of them. In the eve of St. John, a cowherd, passing by them, beheld a beautiful child seated on a cushion between this pair of runaway nuns. He hastened to the abbess with news of these stray sheep; she came and beheld this lovely child playfully seated between these nymphs; they, with blushing countenances, inquired if the second bell had already rung? Both parties were equally astonished to find our young devotees had been there from the Nativity of Jesus ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... sheets. The celandines in particular delighted me with their clean, happy brightness, so beautifully trim and newly varnished, as though they too had had the painters at work on them. Then, when the anemones went, came a few stray periwinkles and Solomon's Seal, and all the birdcherries blossomed in a burst. And then, before I had a little got used to the joy of their flowers against the sky, came the lilacs—masses and masses of them, in clumps on the grass, with other shrubs ...
— Elizabeth and her German Garden • "Elizabeth", AKA Marie Annette Beauchamp
... of a foreign tongue need cramp the ardent thought of the evangelist, but in his native English he may tell the story of salvation through a land large as half a dozen European kingdoms, where thousands of his brethren according to the flesh are perishing for want of knowledge. A few stray Methodists alone have pushed into the moral wilderness of the backwoods; and what are they among so many? Look at the masses of lumberers: it is computed that on the Ottawa and its tributaries alone they number thirty thousand men; spending their Sabbaths, as a late observer has ...
— Cedar Creek - From the Shanty to the Settlement • Elizabeth Hely Walshe
... adding papers on "Making Plans," "Conversation," "Get up, M. le Comte!" "Sunday," and "A good Time;" "Coming out" has been omitted, and "Friendship and Love" somewhat altered. The present form has been adopted in order to make it match the other volumes of "Stray Thoughts." ...
— Stray Thoughts for Girls • Lucy H. M. Soulsby
... appeared to be necessary at the MacDonald ranch, Ralston hinted at hunting stray horses; and casually expressed a hope that he might be able to pick up a bunch of good ponies at a reasonable figure—which explanation was entirely satisfactory to all save Smith. The latter frequently voiced the ...
— 'Me-Smith' • Caroline Lockhart
... I said, I say it once more, I, a wanderer, do not stray from myself. I am a kind of parrot; the mirror is holden to me; What the Eternal says, I stammering say again. Give me what you will; I eat thistles as roses, And according to my food I grow and I give. Scorn ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 6, April, 1858 • Various
... on Sunday morning the shepherd brought the stray lamb into the paved yard at The Poplars, and roused the slumbering household to ...
— The Guardian Angel • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... our whole body is nothing more than a blood-spring, and that, with its last drop, mind and thought dissolve into nothing. They share all the infirmities of the body; why, then, should they not cease with its dissolution? Why not evaporate in its decomposition? Let a drop of water stray into your brain, and life makes a sudden pause, which borders on non-existence, and this pause continued is death. Sensation is the vibration of a few chords, which, when the instrument is broken, ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... mixed lights. He paints flowers with such curious felicity that different writers have attributed to him a fondness for particular flowers, as Clement the cyclamen, and Rio the jasmin; while, at Venice, there is a stray leaf from his portfolio dotted all over with studies of violets and the wild rose. In him first appears the taste for what is bizarre or recherche in landscape; hollow places full of the green shadow of bituminous rocks, ridged reefs of trap-rock which cut the water into quaint ...
— The Renaissance - Studies in Art and Poetry • Walter Pater
... her children. His son Giovanni, generally known as Prince of Sant' Ilario, was among the volunteers at the last and sat for half a day upon his horse in the Pincio, listening to the bullets that sang over his head while his men fired stray shots from the parapets of the public garden into the road below. Giovanni is fifty-two years old, but though his hair is grey at the temples and his figure a trifle sturdier and broader than of old, he is little changed. His son, ...
— Don Orsino • F. Marion Crawford
... orders more faithfully next time. A man was shot dead by a stray bullet not three feet ...
— The Captain of the Kansas • Louis Tracy
... will not enjoy this amiable exchange of courtesies," answered Alexius. "Wherefore I would advise you neither to stray far into the van nor into the rear, but to abide by the standard where the best infidels make their efforts, and the best knights are required to ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... young wives place their babes by the side of this stream, so that they might lack nought in time to come. For, said she, if they should stray or be lost, He will bring them back; He will give strength, to the sick, and here they shall not want meat, drink, or clothes. So they left their young ones ...
— The Pilgrim's Progress in Words of One Syllable • Mary Godolphin
... has cut himself loose from all his friends. Strangers were not likely to consider his superior claims when the kind of work for which he was now applying could be done by anybody as well or better. He counted himself uncommonly happy if he got a stray book to review or a job at the Museum, or if Vaughan held out the promise of giving ...
— The Divine Fire • May Sinclair
... in, talking eagerly, laughing, and rejoicing that the wild night ride proposed by Cordula von Montfort, which had led over dark forest paths, lighted only by a stray moonbeam, and often across fields and ditches and through streams, had ended without ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... for such a ship to keep the seas for any length of time, even had their build fitted them for the buffetings of the stormy home waters. For short cruises, coast work, rapid forays, and "shock tactics," she was admirable; but she could not stray far from a friendly port, nor put out in foul weather. The roundship, dromond, or cargo boat, was often little more than two beams long, and therefore far too slow to compete with ships of the galley type. She could ...
— On the Spanish Main - Or, Some English forays on the Isthmus of Darien. • John Masefield
... whispering said, or seem'd to say, No lasting joys to earth are given, No longer near these ashes stray, Go, mourner! hence, away! away! Thy lost ones ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 20. No. 568 - 29 Sept 1832 • Various
... away to the catacombs under Paris, formed by the old Gallo-Roman quarrymen as they quarried the stone used to rebuild Lutetia. For centuries this enclosure was the refuge of vagabonds and scamps of all kinds, a receptacle for garbage, the haunt of stray cats and dogs, whose howlings by night made sleep impossible to nervous folk; and the lugubrious clocheteur, or crier of the dead, with lantern and bell, his tunic figured with skull and cross-bones, ...
— The Story of Paris • Thomas Okey
... felt drawn by a vague but strong attraction. He recognised the defects of his education, and formed the resolution, as far as possible, to regain lost ground. In the last five years he had read much and seen something; he had many stray ideas in his head; any professor might have envied some of his acquirements, but at the same time he did not know much that every schoolboy would have learnt long ago. Lavretsky was aware of his limitations; he was secretly conscious of being eccentric. The Anglomaniac had done his son ...
— A House of Gentlefolk • Ivan Turgenev
... estimates of costs and the estimated saving per ton, but Mary Fortune allowed her attention to stray. She was thinking of Rimrock Jones, and she was watching Rimrock's proxy. Like a criminal on trial L. W. sat glowering, his dead cigar still in his teeth; and before the end of the report was reached the sweat was beading ...
— Rimrock Jones • Dane Coolidge
... lives up on the mountain," said the latter, composedly, searching in her pocket, and then pulling out a stray bit of tobacco and pressing it tenderly ...
— Meadow Grass - Tales of New England Life • Alice Brown
... by the hand, leading me very slowly, with much feeling about and frequent halts to assure himself that he did not stray ...
— The Gods of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... call the fruit a berry, because the edible, succulent pulp is really a juicy cushion over which numerous small seeds are plentifully dotted; whilst the name Strawberry is a corruption of Strayberry, in allusion to the trailing runners, which stray in all ...
— Herbal Simples Approved for Modern Uses of Cure • William Thomas Fernie
... settlement by white men, and makes no mention of any Indian residents of the place. He saw many Indians here, but gives the impression that they were come from a distance to visit the Indian Agent whose headquarters lay at the foot of Otsego Lake. On the other hand, a stray hint comes from the papers of William Cooper, among which is a memorandum including various notes relating to population and other statistics, jotted down apparently in preparation for a speech or article on early conditions here, and containing ...
— The Story of Cooperstown • Ralph Birdsall
... "Often Rosa's goats would stray toward Giovanni's vineyard as dusk came, and they would drive them home together, always laughing, always singing, hand in hand, as the sun slipped golden over the top of the hills across the lake. Sometimes they would walk together in the afterglow, and Giovanni would weave a crown of the little ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1915 - And the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... stupor of silence for more than an hour, waiting against hope to be resuscitated by any stray echoes that should drop in from the neighboring hubbub and waken it up, when it caught among its bleak angles the cheery voice of David's Little Scout, and revived—as some old men do under the charm of gentle words—to a more respectable opinion of itself. So immediately it seemed refreshed, ...
— In the Yule-Log Glow, Book I - Christmas Tales from 'Round the World • Various
... sensation in the soles of his feet, and, startled, looked down to find that he was standing in a tiny pool of water. With a cry of alarm he sprang to where the big copper sat. A glance confirmed his worst fears; a stray bullet had torn a great hole in the vessel near the bottom, and of their precious store of water barely a ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... friends as might join the circle. Occasional visits to Paris, to the galleries, and to the studios of his artist-circle, kept him in touch with the world to which he belonged. His books, too, were his unfailing companions, though he never cared to stray far beyond the circle of his youthful friendships, Homer, and Virgil, and especially the Bible, which he looked upon as the book of painters, the inexhaustible source of the noblest and most touching subjects, capable of expression in ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 8 (of 8) • Various
... had been the very first time in her life that she had ever walked alone, and if words cannot describe the joy and triumph of it how was it likely that she should have been able to resist the temptation to stray aside up a lovely little lane that lured her on and on from one bend to another till it left her at last high up, breathless and dazzled, on the edge of the heath, with Exmoor rolling far away in purple waves to the sunset and all the splendour of the evening ...
— The Princess Priscilla's Fortnight • Elizabeth von Arnim
... winds and leaps down many a rocky fall, a clear, babbling, noisy rivulet, that affords excellent sport to the brethren of the angle. Thither, accordingly, in the summer season occasionally resort the Waltons of the neighbourhood—young farmers, retired traders, with now and then a stray artist, or a roving student from one of the universities. Hence the solitary hostelry of A——, being somewhat more frequented, is also more clean and comfortable than could reasonably be anticipated from the insignificance and remoteness of ...
— Night and Morning, Volume 1 • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... examination made by naturalists of the various Danish and Swiss deposits of the Recent period has been so searching, that the finding in them of a stray elephant or rhinoceros, should it ever occur, would prove little more than that some few individuals lingered on, when the species was on the verge of extinction, and such rare exceptions would not render the classification ...
— The Antiquity of Man • Charles Lyell
... this to satisfy one, and as soon as I can prevail upon them to let me escape, I mount and wheel away, several huge dogs escorting me, for some minutes, in the peculiar manner Koordish dogs have of escorting stray 'cyclers. ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... remained in that good mind for a month, during which they were confined to that station by contrary winds, till all the wine and the bread were gone which they had brought with them. When their victuals were gone, necessity compelled them to stray in quest of whatever fish or fowl they could snare, which that coast did not yield in any great abundance. Then Ulysses prayed to all the gods that dwelt in bountiful heaven, that they would be pleased to yield them some means to stay their hunger without ...
— THE ADVENTURES OF ULYSSES • CHARLES LAMB
... glittering wonder of the northern lights, in which, as Greenlanders believe, souls of the wicked dance tormented, are familiar to us. The she-bear stays at home; but the he-bear hungers, and looks in vain for a stray seal or walrus—woe to the unarmed man who meets him in his hungry mood! Wolves are abroad, and pretty white arctic foxes. The reindeer have sought other pasture-ground. The thermometer runs down to more than sixty ...
— Voyages in Search of the North-West Passage • Richard Hakluyt
... very outset of the writer's literary career, a friend, long since dead, gave him the subject of this Study. Later on he found the same story in a collection published about the beginning of the present century. To the best of his belief, it is some stray fancy of the brain of Hoffmann of Berlin; probably it appeared in some German almanac, and was omitted in the published editions of his collected works. The Comedie Humaine is sufficiently rich in original creations for the author ...
— The Elixir of Life • Honore de Balzac
... down upon the world, sitting erect, with his golden padlock and chain glittering in any stray gleams of sunshine; his white coat evenly spotted with black, his long drooping ears, neat row of carefully-painted black curls across the forehead, and that proud smile which, though the whole village had been smitten down before him, would still ...
— Soap-Bubble Stories - For Children • Fanny Barry
... ago, as we reached our first balanced budget, I asked that we meet our responsibility to the next generation by maintaining our fiscal discipline. Because we refused to stray from that path, we are doing something that would have seemed unimaginable seven years ago: We are actually paying down the national debt. If we stay on this path, we can pay down the debt entirely in 13 years and make America ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... Arctic to the Gulf. There were rumors of coyotes turning up in Indiana. Then came the tale that a strange breed of small yellow wolves had appeared in Michigan. Those sheepmen who summered their sheep in the high valleys of the western mountains complained that stray coyotes quit the flats and followed them into the hills to prey upon the flocks. The buffalo wolves that had once infested the range country were gone and it was seldom that any of the big gray killers turned ...
— The Yellow Horde • Hal G. Evarts
... place in mid-pasture; the high bank where the ash-trees grew; the sudden slope of the old marl-pit making a red background for the burdock; the huddled roofs and ricks of the homestead without a traceable way of approach; the gray gate and fences against the depths of the bordering wood; and the stray hovel, its old, old thatch full of mossy hills and valleys with wondrous modulations of light and shadow such as we travel far to see in later life, and see larger, but not more beautiful. These are the things that make the gamut of joy in landscape to midland-bred ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... and when the sun rose, the Island of Curacao appeared upon our weather bow. Continuing upon the starboard tack all that day, we hove about again at the beginning of the first dog-watch, thinking that we might possibly be able to pick up a stray Spaniard or Dutchman. ...
— Under the Meteor Flag - Log of a Midshipman during the French Revolutionary War • Harry Collingwood
... little Susie was there—she who was the very sunshine of the old home! And how they all loved her, from the white-headed grandfather down to the little ploughboy, who brought her all the poor motherless or sick creatures he found on the farm, were it but a half-fledged bird or a stray kitten, certain of her thanks, and a sweet smile; and as to her three big brothers, who had such influence over them as little Susie? for even when they were disputing as to whose turn it was to ride Brown ...
— Parables from Flowers • Gertrude P. Dyer
... see where St. Paul is. Its distance from all known civilization—all civilization that has succeeded in obtaining acquaintance with the world at large—is very great. Even American travelers do not go up there in great numbers, excepting those who intend to settle there. A stray sportsman or two, American or English, as the case may be, makes his way into Minnesota for the sake of shooting, and pushes on up through St. Paul to the Red River. Some few adventurous spirits visit the Indian ...
— Volume 1 • Anthony Trollope
... he did bring it back. That was the beginning. He lived through all the experiences a small boy waif and stray would be likely to come in contact with. The abnormal class treated him ill, and the normal class treated him well. He managed to get enough food to eat to keep him from starvation. Sometimes he slept under a roof and much oftener out-of-doors. He preferred to sleep out- of-doors more than ...
— T. Tembarom • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... so, too, and they were glad when it was over. They went back to the house, leaving some of the cowboys on guard, to see that no stray sparks started ...
— Six Little Bunkers at Uncle Fred's • Laura Lee Hope
... to a neighboring river-town to look after the shipments to the West Indies in which he was now interested in company with the Squire. But this had not forbidden a little cursory reading of a sentimental kind. There may have been a stray volume of Pelham upon his table, and a six-volume set of Byron in green and gold upon his limited book-shelf, (both of which were strongly disapproved of by Mrs. Elderkin, but tolerated by the Squire,)—besides which, there were ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 100, February, 1866 • Various
... excursions to the country, the native Indians, with a stray half-breed, generally of the China Mestizo race, are nearly the only people met with, as few Europeans are settled in the provinces, except in the provincial capitals, or near the alcalde, whose dependents they generally are. Should a stranger be able to speak ...
— Recollections of Manilla and the Philippines - During 1848, 1849 and 1850 • Robert Mac Micking
... Clipped was I from some head thou lovest not; Or, I am kin to thee, and here, as thou, I come to weep and deck our father's grave. Aid me, ye gods! for well indeed ye know How in the gale and counter-gale of doubt, Like to the seaman's bark, we whirl and stray. But, if God will our life, how strong shall spring, From seed how small, the new tree of our home!— Lo ye, a second sign—these footsteps, look,— Like to my own, a corresponsive print; And look, another footmark,—this his own, And that the ...
— The House of Atreus • AEschylus
... madding crowd's ignoble strife, Their sober wishes never learned to stray; Along the cool, sequester'd vale of life They kept the ...
— Graded Memory Selections • Various
... wont, Makes thee fall back in unsound vacancy. True substances are these, which thou behold'st, Hither through failure of their vow exil'd. But speak thou with them; listen, and believe, That the true light, which fills them with desire, Permits not from its beams their feet to stray." ...
— The Divine Comedy, Complete - The Vision of Paradise, Purgatory and Hell • Dante Alighieri
... bison grazed free on the prairie, the grisly sometimes harassed their bands as it now does the herds of the ranchman. The bison was the most easily approached of all game, and the great bear could often get near some outlying straggler, in its quest after stray cows, yearlings, or calves. In default of a favorable chance to make a prey of one of these weaker members of the herds, it did not hesitate to attack the mighty bulls themselves; and perhaps the grandest sights ...
— Hunting the Grisly and Other Sketches • Theodore Roosevelt
... commotion had subsided, and quarters were assigned to all but a stray man or two wandering about in search of some Mr. Brown or Mr. Jones, whose room he was to share. Climbing into my berth, I soon fell asleep; but only for a few moments. The shrill whistle, the vehement ringing of the captain's bell, the heavy ...
— A Trip to Manitoba • Mary FitzGibbon
... his father's sheep, with which occupation his first miracle was associated. Being called one day to dinner, and having no one to take his place as shepherd, he drew a circle round the flock with his crook, and bade the sheep, in the name of the Lord, not to stray beyond it. The sheep obeyed, and thenceforward on repeating the same manoeuvre he left them with an easy mind. In course of time his father died, and Cuthman determined to travel; intense filial piety determined him to take his ...
— Highways & Byways in Sussex • E.V. Lucas
... She's a gad-about grinny, she is, if ever was. A gad-about grinny. Mucked up my mushroom bed to rights, she did, and I 'aven't forgot it. Got the feet of a centipede, she 'as—ll over everything and neither with your leave nor by your leave. Like a stray 'en in a pea patch. Cluck! cluck! Trying to laugh it off. I laughed 'er off, I ...
— The History of Mr. Polly • H. G. Wells
... great advantage from it. Attached to an exploring party they are frequently invaluable, as their perceptive powers are very great, and enable them both to see and hear anything at a much greater distance than a European. In tracking stray animals, and keeping on indistinct paths, they display a degree of perseverance and skill that is really wonderful. They are useful also in cutting bark canoes to cross a river, should such impede the progress ...
— Journals Of Expeditions Of Discovery Into Central • Edward John Eyre
... household had already been taken across the Volga, the process having occupied a full week. She herself shone with the charm of a rose grown to perfection; in her face a new emotion was visible which found expression now in a musing smile, now in a stray tear. Her face was shadowed with the consciousness of a new life, of a far stretching future with unknown duties, a new dignity and a new happiness. Vikentev wore an expression of modesty, almost of timidity, ...
— The Precipice • Ivan Goncharov
... Mr. Anderson having secured the property en cache, determined to return to Jasper's house, in order to procure at least a part of the much wanted supply of leather. On their way back they had the good fortune to light upon a stray horse, which they converted into provender: they also shot a moose deer; and thus providentially supplied, they suffered ...
— Service in the Hudson's Bay Territory • John M'lean
... approval of his nephew's choice of a minister. After a few stray remarks, and an affable salute to Miss Thompson, he hobbled away, and then the three sealed volcanoes breathed, and Lucy's arm ceased to be squeezed quite so much up to ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... private, the first man of the Regiment killed in the war, was Private Winsor. He was shot dead through the heart by a stray bullet.] ...
— The Record of a Regiment of the Line • M. Jacson
... languor drugs my veins And fills with sleep the droning times, Like sluggish dreams among my brains, There runs the drollest sort of rhymes, Idle as clouds that stray through heaven And vague as if they were a myth, But in these rhymes is always given A health for old ...
— Songs, Merry and Sad • John Charles McNeill
... of the rock is crumbled a little by its action; then its own decay furnishes a very little addition to that. In favourable situations a stray oak leaf or two falls and lies there, and also decays, and by and by there is a little coating of soil or a little lodgment of it in a crevice or cavity, enough for the flying spores of some moss to take root and ...
— Melbourne House, Volume 2 • Susan Warner
... a few seconds for her confidence, but she waited in vain. Lady Priscilla had retired completely behind her shield, and it was quite obvious that she had no intention of exposing herself any further to stray shots. ...
— The Swindler and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... at watch within Against all sin Upon salvation's path may wend Without a fear. 20 In snares of Hell that shall waylay, Dark and awful wiles among, Thee to molest, As thou advancest on thy way Fall not nor stray, But let thy beauty join the throng ...
— Four Plays of Gil Vicente • Gil Vicente
... were for the game, and in a few minutes were seated at a large green table, drawing cards and betting with a good will, and interspersing their play with stray remarks on the events ...
— Saracinesca • F. Marion Crawford
... little scarlet berries of this plant render it, when well grown, one of the prettiest of ornaments for the hothouse, conservatory, or even for a warm room. It is quite easily managed, stray seeds of it even growing where they fall, and making handsome specimens. For indoor decoration few subjects are more interesting, and a few plants may be so managed as to have them in fruit in succession all the year round. Any kind of soil will answer ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 358, November 11, 1882 • Various
... when, as in him, "a great heart is the household fire of a grand intellect" (to quote his own words), because he sees and sympathizes with all human suffering. He has always seemed to me, in his remote moods, like a stray Seraph, who had experienced in his own life no evil, but by the intention of a divine intellect, saw and sorrowed ...
— Memories of Hawthorne • Rose Hawthorne Lathrop
... the forest for many years,' said the stranger to the priest, 'and I love it for its great beauty. As I flit in and out among the dark shadows of the trees, I play with the stray sunbeams as they cast their glances here and there ...
— Undine • Friedrich de la Motte Fouque
... thoughts imply the idea of a very great number of subjects on which the author lets his pen stray without the pretension ...
— The Lesser Bourgeoisie • Honore de Balzac
... Old English life—the great event of the day—was Noon-meat, or dinner in the great hall. A little before three, the chief and all his household, with any stray guests who might have dropped in, met in the hall, which stood in the centre of its encircling bowers—the principal apartment of every Old English house. Clouds of wood smoke, rolling up from a fire which blazed in the middle of the floor, ...
— The Ontario Readers - Third Book • Ontario Ministry of Education
... apparatus nicely before packing it away in the mess-basket, the consequence of which was, that another nice napkin must be stealthily whisked out, to wipe the dishes when the hour for meals arrived—the fun of the young gentleman in hunting up his stray articles, thus misappropriated, from the nooks and corners of the boat, tying them with a cord, and hanging them over the stern, to make their way down the Wisconsin ...
— Wau-bun - The Early Day in the Northwest • Juliette Augusta Magill Kinzie
... large dark apartment the night wind was drawing over the roofs of the hill through the open windows, fluttering stray sheets of music along the stone floor. Mrs. Conry lighted a candle on the piano, and throwing aside her hat and veil, dropping her gloves on the floor, struck some heavy chords. She sang the song they had ...
— Together • Robert Herrick (1868-1938)
... then the few stray blossoms that were left She kissed and strewed upon the little mound— Looked lingering back towards the sacred ground, As from the shade she bore ...
— The Death of Saul and other Eisteddfod Prize Poems and Miscellaneous Verses • J. C. Manning
... Paula preferred the summer, she said, when she ran barefoot through the flower-covered fields or when she accompanied her father as they gathered the wheat. Then at other times she had to take her turn caring for the flocks of sheep and goats, and see that the lambs and little kids did not stray too far away. She never tired of watching these happy little creatures with their thousand antics as ...
— Paula the Waldensian • Eva Lecomte
... comfortable, although my lady never relaxed her vigilance, and went her round of the walls, early and late. At Walter's request she began to wear a morion on her head, and a breast-plate of fine steel, to protect her against any stray arrow, and in them, to my mind, she looked bonnier than ever. In good sooth, I think the very English soldiers loved her, not to speak of our own men; for whenever she appeared they would raise their caps as if in homage, and hum a ...
— Tales From Scottish Ballads • Elizabeth W. Grierson
... to it, mother," said Ralph; "it is packed, and the oxen are already tied to the yokes for fear lest they should stray." ...
— Swallow • H. Rider Haggard
... them, leaning down to stab them, rising up to reach at those who climbed the banks. Under that tide of cavalry the Duke's army melted. They fought in clumps desperately. They flung away their weapons. They fled. They rushed down desperately to meet death. It was all a medley of broken noises, oaths, stray shots, cries, wounded men whimpering, hurt horses screaming. The horses were the worst part of it. Perhaps you ...
— Martin Hyde, The Duke's Messenger • John Masefield
... up some stray steers, and I saw him just before the storm with the hosses. I wasn't near enough to talk to him, but that night I spoke to him, and he couldn't deny that he took 'em in the first place. He was terribly afraid I'd give him away, and he said if I did he'd say I took 'em. ...
— Dave Porter at Star Ranch - Or, The Cowboy's Secret • Edward Stratemeyer
... King's Own or Lancashire Fusiliers, who were holding the sector from "Plugstreet" to Le Touquet Station. It was a quiet sector except for rifle fire at night, and it was very bad luck that during our first few hours in trenches we lost 2nd Lieut. G. Aked, who was killed by a stray bullet in the front line. There was some slight shelling of back areas with "Little Willies," German field gun shells, but these did no damage, and gave us in consequence a useful contempt for this kind of projectile. Trench mortars were not ...
— The Fifth Leicestershire - A Record Of The 1/5th Battalion The Leicestershire Regiment, - T.F., During The War, 1914-1919. • J.D. Hills
... Science never taught to stray, Far as the Statesman's walk or Patriot-way; Yet simple Nature to his hopes had given Out of a cloud-capp'd head a humbler heaven; Some untam'd World in depths of wood embraced— Some happier Island in the wat'ry-waste— And where admitted ...
— The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman • Laurence Sterne
... that Arend would soon return to the camp with the stray horse, and miss them. The water-vessel would also be missed, and a search would be made for it in the right direction. No doubt Arend, seeing that the bucket was taken away from the camp, and finding that they did not return, would come toward the drift,—the only place ...
— The Giraffe Hunters • Mayne Reid
... destroyed whatever sentiment there might have been in the thought that this was my last night in Rome—the last of the friendly nights of talk in the Nazionale to which we always returned no matter how far we might occasionally stray from it—the friendly nights of talk when I learned my folly in ever having believed that anything in the world mattered, that anything in the world existed, ...
— Nights - Rome, Venice, in the Aesthetic Eighties; London, Paris, in the Fighting Nineties • Elizabeth Robins Pennell
... the boy who had captured the stray falcon, and also the woman who had stolen a remnant of cloth from a weaver; but he was too late to save the man who had been convicted of killing a ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... fire to kick a stray log. "It is only idle speculation at the best, Miss Deane," he replied. "Would you like to help me to drag some timber up from the beach? If we get a few big planks we can build a fire that will last for hours. We want some extra clothes, too, and it ...
— The Wings of the Morning • Louis Tracy
... it. We began the search at once; Mr. jorkins unlocking the drawers and desks, and we all taking out the papers. The office-papers we placed on one side, and the private papers (which were not numerous) on the other. We were very grave; and when we came to a stray seal, or pencil-case, or ring, or any little article of that kind which we associated personally with him, we spoke ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens
... The widower sank abjectly down in his saddle, and with his apprehensive eyes turned sideways on the spinster, surreptitiously thrust the stray glove into the depths of his pocket. The widow, convulsed with mingled laughter and rage, gave no doubt of genuine color now, for her face was crimson. Thus, like two prisoners under military guard, they moved on, with Jemima riding in grim vigilance ...
— A Noble Woman • Ann S. Stephens
... once, Joe," he spoke quietly. "He dropped his hand on my shoulder like that, and I never forgot the weight of it. You watch him, Joe—watch him closely for a while, because—because, you see, a man does stray along once in so often who's so badly bewildered and trail weary, so tired of trying and—and hurt in soul, that the thought of such a journey as you speak of begins to seem the shortest route after all to an end of thoughts which even alcohol can't wipe out. You take care of him, and if he wakes ...
— Then I'll Come Back to You • Larry Evans
... chatter was but a by-play. The others crept along under protection of the grade until they were clear of stray shots from the gang that had waylaid the engine. There they broke into a run, though Murphy complained bitterly at turning his back to a sure fight for one that might never come off. Four hundred yards from the trestle Mahon ordered them ...
— The Return of Blue Pete • Luke Allan
... brought her into the suburbs, and ere long she stood before the entrance. The great central gate was chained, but the little side gate was completely broken from its hinges, and lay on the ground. Alas! this was but the beginning. As she entered she saw, with dismay, that the yard was full of stray cattle. Cows, sheep, goats browsed about undisturbed among the shrubbery which her guardian had tended so carefully. She had not been here since he sold it; but even Charon saw that something was strangely amiss. He bounded off, and soon cleared ...
— Beulah • Augusta J. Evans
... with curious eyes and sick surmise We watched him day by day, And wondered if each one of us Would end the self-same way, For none can tell to what red Hell His sightless soul may stray. ...
— Book of Old Ballads • Selected by Beverly Nichols
... the wren told them that a cat was in the wood during the time forbidden to cats to be outside the houses of men. "It is the King of the Cats," said the wren. None of the hawks lifted a wing. They were waiting for the chickens that would stray about ...
— The King of Ireland's Son • Padraic Colum
... Negro sellers of fruit and fly-embroidered lumps of meat, or brilliant-coloured pottery, and cheap, bright stuffs, were rolling up their wares for the night, in red and purple rags or tattered matting. Beggars lingered, hoping for a stray dried date, or a coin before crawling off to secret dens; and two deformed dwarfs in enormous turbans and blue coats, claimed power as marabouts, chanting their own praises and the praises of ...
— The Golden Silence • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... hold," the guard cried, and without more ado the lad was lowered down to the little group of loafers who had come to see the sight and to pick up any stray penny that might be available. A minute later George Fairburn was rapidly thawing before the rousing fire in the inn's best parlour, and was gulping down the cup of hot mulled ale the good-natured landlady had ...
— With Marlborough to Malplaquet • Herbert Strang and Richard Stead
... about them now. They are almost all herring gulls, although occasionally a stray bird of another species may be seen. The dark-gray ones are the young. They grow lighter and more innocent-looking as they grow older, until they are pure white, except the back and the top of the wings, which are of the softest pearl gray. The head ...
— Days Off - And Other Digressions • Henry Van Dyke
... Well, for many reasons! I told you he was my son. You probably knew that he was not. A little over a year ago I never had seen him. He joined one of my lumber gangs from the road. He is a stray, left at one of your homes for the friendless here in Chicago. When he grew up the superintendent bound him to a brutal man. He ran away and landed in one of my lumber camps. He has no name or knowledge of legal birth. The Angel—we have talked of her. You see what she ...
— Freckles • Gene Stratton-Porter
... this journey there are no beasts or birds to be seen. It is reported, that many evil spirits reside in the wilderness, which occasion wonderful illusions to travellers who happen unfortunately to lag behind their companions calling them even by their names, and causing them to stray farther from the right course, so that they lose their way and perish in the sands. In the night time also they hear noises as of their friends, and sometimes the sound of music is heard in the air, and people imagine that they hear the din of drums, as if armies were marching ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 1 • Robert Kerr
... to no one nor acknowledge speech from any one. Vainly striving to paint, he would suddenly burst into violent rage, tear up his attempt, stamp it into the deck, then get out his large- calibred automatic rifle, perch himself on the forecastle-head, and try to shoot any stray porpoise, albacore, or dolphin. It seemed to give him great relief to send a bullet home into the body of some surging, gorgeous-hued fish, arrest its glorious flashing motion for ever, and turn it on its side slowly to sink down ...
— Michael, Brother of Jerry • Jack London
... long distances, ate their luncheon in a shady place under the trees behind the meeting-house, for there was an afternoon service to come, a service with another long sermon. They separated after the modest meal to walk about the Common or stray along the road to the Academy, where there was a ...
— The Story Of Waitstill Baxter • By Kate Douglas Wiggin
... three months from leaving Guachacoya; and though they had fought no pitched battle during all that time, they were never free from alarm night or day, so that they had lost forty soldiers during this last useless and circuitous march. The Indians on every opportunity shot all who happened to stray from the main body, and would often crawl on all fours at night into their quarters, shoot their arrows, and make their escape, unseen by the centinels. To add to their distresses, the winter now began to set in, with much rain, snow and ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 5 • Robert Kerr
... Temple usually led the way. Norman Grant, being a careless, easy-going, drowsy fellow, not to be trusted, was placed in the middle, and Sam Sorrel brought up the rear. Sam's duty was to prevent straggling, and pick up stray ...
— Chasing the Sun • R.M. Ballantyne
... cannot describe the anguished spirit's flight; and whether it soars to ecstasy or sinks to despair it comes back wide-eyed and silent. So any action which has been prompted by passion cannot be explained by a calculating mind, and to seek a reason where none exists is to stray still farther from the truth. Virginia Huff was poor and waited on the table for what she could eat and get to wear; and when she returned stock which was worth twelve hundred dollars without even a note of thanks it was not for any reason of the mind. It was a reason ...
— Shadow Mountain • Dane Coolidge
... this sudden marriage of his a long-meditated act of revenge. By that in her eyes (and as she thought, in the eyes of all Dryhope) he had ill-requited her, put her to unthinkable shame. She saw herself with her favours of person and power passed over for a nameless, haunted, dumb thing, a stray from some other world into a world of men, women, and the children they rear to follow them. She scorned Mabilla for flinching so much, she scorned her for not flinching more. That Mabilla could be desirable to Andrew King made her scoff; that Andrew King should ...
— Lore of Proserpine • Maurice Hewlett
... off the alarm there, by the way), and ran along the deck (there was a cold night wind), and hastily descended the steep steps that led into the boarder's room. The door that was at the bottom of the steps was not fastened, and, as I opened it, a little stray moonlight illumed the room. I hastily stepped to the bed and shook the boarder by the shoulder. He kept ...
— Rudder Grange • Frank R. Stockton
... head is shaved, it is washed with warm water in an old-fashioned brass barber's basin, such, as was in use in England two hundred years ago, and, after having had the few straggling hairs on lip and chin removed, the patient (for truly he deserves the name) goes through the torture of having all stray hairs extracted from the inner coating of the nose and ears, an absurd and barbarous custom that often leads to permanent injury of the latter organs. If he chances to have ophthalmia, the barber considers that his eyes need cleaning, and proceeds to wipe out ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No. 6, December 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... boundless in the direction in which he wished to proceed. This was the Stony Desert. That night they camped in it, and the next morning came to an earthy plain, with here and there a few bushes of polygonum growing beside some stray channel, in some of which they, luckily, found a little muddy rain water still left. When they camped at night they sighted, for a short time, some hills to the north, and, on examining them through the telescope, saw dark shadows on their faces as if produced by ...
— The History of Australian Exploration from 1788 to 1888 • Ernest Favenc
... gloomily smoking our brier-wood pipes, thinking our thoughts, and listening to the rain pattering against the canvas. That, and the occasional whine of a hungry cur, foraging on the outskirts of the camp for a stray bone, alone broke the silence, save when a vicious drop of rain detached itself meditatively from the ridge-pole of the tent, and fell upon the wick of our tallow candle, making it "cuss," as Ned Strong described it. The candle was in the midst of one of its most profane fits when ...
— Quite So • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... where my strange feet shall stray All markets hush and traffickers forget, In my gold head forget their meaner gold, The poor man ...
— English Poems • Richard Le Gallienne
... woman always finds for the man who has won her gratitude by supplementing her deficiency in strength and courage with his own, she was worthier love than ever. At this view, too, he was sure that, unlike too many of the divas of these spielungs, or dens, she was not one of the stray creatures who sell pleasure to some and give it to others, and for themselves keep only shame—fatal ignominy, wealth at best very unsubstantial, and if, at last, winners, they laugh—one would rather see ...
— The Son of Clemenceau • Alexandre (fils) Dumas
... back and asked him to hold his horse, while he went to catch Jemmy's. He did it by opening one of the bags and taking out a little grain, and by means of it enticing the stray horse near enough to enable him to take hold of the bridle. He then fastened him behind the wagon, and putting Jemmy's two bags in, he turned round and went back to carry Jemmy home, leaving Malleville and Phonny to walk the rest of the way to Mary Erskine's. Besides their ride, ...
— Mary Erskine • Jacob Abbott
... for the eighteenth-century novelists. They have a shelf of their own in the case, and a corner of their own in my brain. For years you may never think of them, and then suddenly some stray word or train of thought leads straight to them, and you look at them and love them, and rejoice that you know them. But let us pass to something ...
— Through the Magic Door • Arthur Conan Doyle
... They fled, the newcomer over the wall, Slum Kitty under the very box where she had been born. This whole back region appealed to her strongly, and here again she took up her abode. The yard had no more garbage food than the other and no water at all, but it was frequented by stray Rats and a few Mice of the finest quality; these were occasionally secured, and afforded not only a palatable meal, but were the cause of her winning ...
— Animal Heroes • Ernest Thompson Seton
... "Oh, please don't!" she exclaimed, looking frightened. "I shall be quite distressed if a stray word of mine should debar you from accepting a good offer ...
— Hilda Wade - A Woman With Tenacity Of Purpose • Grant Allen
... woman can tell any tidings of a horse with four feet, two ears, that did stray about the seventh hour, three minutes in the forenoon ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. IX • Various
... more, whither do stray The golden atoms of the day; For, in pure love, heaven did prepare Those powders to enrich your hair. Ask me no more, whither doth haste The nightingale, when May is past; For in your sweet dividing throat She winters, and keeps warm ...
— English Songs and Ballads • Various
... as Bo-Peep did stray Over the meadows hard by, That there she espied their tails side by side, All hung on ...
— Cole's Funny Picture Book No. 1 • Edward William Cole
... of May there penetrated into the largest of the workrooms that rarest of visitants, a stray sunbeam. Only if the sun happened to shine at given moments could any of its light fall directly into the room I speak of; this afternoon, however, all circumstances were favourable, and behold the floor chequered with uncertain gleam. The workers were arranged in groups of three, called 'parties,' ...
— The Nether World • George Gissing
... here, and brought our families out, and we can't afford to abandon it to these crooks and gamblers and gun-slingers from the four corners of the earth. I let them put me in for mayor, but I haven't got any more power than a stray dog. This chance to put in a marshal is the first one I've had to land them a kick in the gizzards, and by Jeems River, Seth, I want to double ...
— Trail's End • George W. Ogden
... upset about the cat. She hated cats, particularly ugly old alley cats. "Elmer Elevator," she said to my father, "if you think I'm going to give that cat a saucer of milk, you're very wrong. Once you start feeding stray alley cats you might as well expect to feed every stray in town, and I am ...
— My Father's Dragon • Ruth Stiles Gannett
... Perkins, solemnly, "I drawed that much from Jute. He seen 'em hisself. I noticed a s'pressed 'citement en talk in the quarters this evenin', an' I follered hit right up an' I ast roun' till I pinned Jute. He was over the fur side of the run lookin' fur a stray crow, an' he seen 'em. But they was bein' chased lively. Mad Whately—beg pardon—Mr. Madison was arter them with whip and spur. Didn't yer hear a crack of a rifle? I did, and reckoned it was one o' the Simcoe boys out gunnin', but Jute says hit was one o' our men fired ...
— Miss Lou • E. P. Roe
... cruel rheumatism that is the doom of the field-worker; and against the brass and leather of his boots the stubble whispered loudly. Overhead the rooks and gulls gave short, harsh cries as they circled around hoping for stray grains; but the thousand little lives which had thriven in the corn—the field mice and frogs and toads—had been stilled by the sickles; some few had escaped to the shelter of the hedges, but most were sacrifices ...
— Secret Bread • F. Tennyson Jesse
... he wrote to her several times, and came again twice, each time endeavouring to surprise her into talking with him. The girl grew to watch nervously every approach of the daily stage which brought stray travellers from the station four miles distant, and was actually glad when a heavy snow-storm shut them in and made it unlikely that her unwelcome visitor would venture again ...
— The Man of the Desert • Grace Livingston Hill
... part of the house. Then, with the aid of a pair of strong opera glasses, she may proceed to scrutinize carefully the occupants of the boxes—noting carefully any irregular features. Technical phraseology, useful in this connection, includes "unearthly creature," "stray leopard" ...
— Perfect Behavior - A Guide for Ladies and Gentlemen in all Social Crises • Donald Ogden Stewart
... Squeak not unconscious of their father's guilt. Did he not see her gleaming thro' the glade! Belike 'twas she, the maiden all forlorn. What the she milk no cow with crumpled horn, Yet, aye she haunts the dale where erst she stray'd: And aye, beside her stalks her amorous knight Still on his thighs their wonted brogues are worn, And thro' those brogues, still tatter'd and betorn, His hindward charms gleam an unearthly white. Ah! thus thro' broken clouds ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... the sight of the girl's life and brightness; and, apart from this, it would not have been like Dolly Crewe if she had not sympathized, half unconsciously, half because she was constitutionally sympathetic, with even this poor stray. If she had been of a more practical turn of mind, in all probability she would have taken Belinda in hand and attacked the work of training her with laudable persistence; but, as it was, private misgivings as to the strength of her own domestic accomplishments caused her ...
— Vagabondia - 1884 • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... and ride down with Mr. Matthew and show him where to put our wheat, Mother?" asked Polly as she snuggled up to her mother, who was pinning a stray pink into Matthew's button-hole ...
— The Golden Bird • Maria Thompson Daviess
... like a nightmare took possession of him, and all the unlucky accidents that might destroy him occurred to his mind. The Russians might fall on his left wing, might break through his center, he himself might be killed by a stray cannon ball. All this was possible. In former battles he had only considered the possibilities of success, but now innumerable unlucky chances presented themselves, and he expected them all. Yes, it was like a dream in which a man fancies that a ruffian is coming to attack ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy |
