"Sprawling" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Newcomes he atones for this in 'Esmond,' if any atonement is needed for sprawling, which is probably only that Thackeray felt that there is nothing so elastic and sprawling as a human person, whether he be a villain or ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Patrick Braybrooke
... I gasped, and I threw him from me sprawling on the sod. He fell, in his weariness, in an awkward and helpless mass; the knife, still in his hand, pierced him on the shoulder, and thus the injury I could not give him by my will was given him by Providence. Over on his back he turned with a plash of blood oozing ...
— John Splendid - The Tale of a Poor Gentleman, and the Little Wars of Lorn • Neil Munro
... might never see such a splendid one,' when plong went one shot—every face went pale—r-r-r-r-r went the whole detachment, [and] the whole crowd of gentlemen and ladies turned and cut. Such a scene!—ladies, gentlemen, and vagabonds went sprawling in the mud, not shot but tripped up; and those that went down could not rise, they were trampled over.... I ran a short time straight on and did not fall, then turned down a side street, ran fifty yards and felt tolerably safe; looked for papa, did not see him; ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume 9 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... darted about with even greater confusion than before. Occasionally one of them, seized with a sudden impulse, would spring forward toward the nucleus of the comet with a sudden access of velocity that would fling every one of its crew from his feet, and all would lie sprawling on the floor of the car while it rushed, as it seemed, ...
— Edison's Conquest of Mars • Garrett Putnam Serviss
... through the air. The expectation of everyone was raised, while, beneath her pallor and composure, it could be seen that Mrs. Trent was deeply moved. It was evident that aesthetically she was by far the most important person present. Faull watched her, with his face sunk on his chest, sprawling as usual. ...
— A Voyage to Arcturus • David Lindsay
... the glare waited the taxi, with Bill Hunt and Dennis Green sprawling on one side, their hats tilted over their faces, while on the other, Moira Morrison, in a bonnet like a huge strawberry, ...
— The Garden Party • Katherine Mansfield
... thing was come and gone in a breath. Before Herrick could turn about, before Davis could complete his cry of horror, the clerk lay in the sand, sprawling and convulsed. ...
— The Ebb-Tide - A Trio And Quartette • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... flowers, which are 1in. to 2in. across, are borne on slender stems, 4in. to 6in. long. They are nearly white, but have various tints, bluish reflections, with a line of blue in each petal. The leaves resemble those of the snowdrop when overgrown and turning flabby, and have a somewhat untidy and sprawling habit; they are abundantly produced from the rather small cocoon-shaped bulbs. On the whole, the plant is very ornamental when in flower, and the bloom is produced more or less for many weeks; at any rate, it is an early flower, and if it cannot be used indoors it should be extensively ...
— Hardy Perennials and Old Fashioned Flowers - Describing the Most Desirable Plants, for Borders, - Rockeries, and Shrubberies. • John Wood
... their reach, till his turn comes, and then, whack goes one of the batter puddings against the big one's ribs, and bang goes the other into the big one's face, and, staggering, shuffling, slipping, tripping, collapsing, sprawling, down goes the big one in a miscellaneous bundle.—If my young friend, whose excellent article I have referred to, could only introduce the manly art of self-defence among the clergy, I am satisfied ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... being surgeon's work, Bass, throbbing with energy, looked about him for some useful employment. The whole of the New South Wales settlement at this time consisted of an oblong—the town of Sydney itself—on the south side of Port Jackson, a few sprawling paddocks on either side of the fang-like limbs of the harbour, some small pieces of cultivated land further west, at and beyond Parramatta, and a cultivable area to the north-west on the banks of the Hawkesbury River. A sketch-map prepared by Hunter, in 1796, illustrates ...
— The Life of Captain Matthew Flinders • Ernest Scott
... that they must be somewhere near the centre of the earth, the mule gave an unusually violent plunge forward, and then stopped so suddenly that poor Derrick found himself sprawling on the animal's back, with both arms clasped tightly about his neck. With this the mule began to caper and shake himself so violently that the boy was forced to loose his hold and fall to the ground, amid roars of laughter from a score of miners ...
— Derrick Sterling - A Story of the Mines • Kirk Munroe
... were sprawling on the grass, And beavers fell in showers; There was another Floorer there ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood
... with an air of unconcern by a blocky young man with bare red hands. The horse stood without being tied, in an apparently listless and melancholy dream. A red and white cow came out of the lane and attempted to cross the slippery sidewalk, sprawling helplessly for a moment, and then with a great effort recovered herself and went back the way she came, limping painfully, the blocky young man hastening her movements by throwing at her a piece of box lid, with the remark ...
— Purple Springs • Nellie L. McClung
... overtook him—the dogs having already commenced biting at his hind feet. This was too much for his equanimity, so, suddenly turning round, he struck two or three of them with his fore paws, sending them sprawling to a distance. As he did so the glare of our torches dazzled his eyes, and so perplexed him that he seemed not to know what to do. Of one thing only he must have been convinced,—that he was in for a fight; and, brave ...
— Afar in the Forest • W.H.G. Kingston
... Moliere are the highwater mark of French taste in this branch of decoration. In the old quarto first editions of Corneille's early plays, such as 'Le Cid' (Paris 1637), the printers used lax and sprawling combinations of flowers and fruit. These, a little better executed, were the staple of Ribou, de Luynes, Quinet, and the other Parisian booksellers who, one after another, failed to ...
— Books and Bookmen • Andrew Lang
... always would throw out a fine salmon on the bank. Toward this the cubs would start in their hunger, but the old lady, reproving them for their eagerness, would then cuff them soundly on the head, knocking them sprawling over in the water, to their very great disgust. Once in a while one of them, his ears tight to his head, would sit down in the water, lift up his nose and complain bitterly at this hard treatment. Then again he would make a half-hearted stroke at some of the fish which he could see swimming about ...
— The Young Alaskans • Emerson Hough
... and had fastened to the end of the string a pellet of tobacco stolen from the old man's pouch. With this bait he had been fishing in the lotus pond; and a frog had swallowed it, and was now suspended high above the pebbles, sprawling in rotary motion, kicking in frantic spasms of disgust and despair. 'Kaji!' shouted ...
— Glimpses of an Unfamiliar Japan • Lafcadio Hearn
... remembrance of jolting in a wagon, and of pitying faces bent over me, but where was I now? Again I opened my eyes, and noted the gay patchwork covering of the bed, and the green paper curtain of the window in the golden wall—green, with a tall yellow flower-pot on it, with sprawling roses of blue and red. Turning with an effort toward the side whence all the brightness came, in a moment two warm arms were round my neck, and a face that I could not see was pressed ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII. No. 31. October, 1873. • Various
... warning, a large dark shape loomed out of the mist. Smith instantly warped his planes, and the machine dived so precipitately as almost to throw him from his seat. Next moment there was a shock; he was flung headlong forward, and found himself sprawling half suffocated on a damp yielding mass, which, when he had recovered his wits, he knew to be the unthatched top ...
— Round the World in Seven Days • Herbert Strang
... mystery. Might it be regret at leaving behind your preux chevaliers of California—that grand, gallant De Lara, whom, at our last interview, we saw sprawling in the road dust? You ought to feel relieved at getting rid of him, as I of my importunate suitor, the Senor Calderon. By the way, I wonder whatever became of them! Only to think of their never coming near us to say good-bye! And that ...
— The Flag of Distress - A Story of the South Sea • Mayne Reid
... although he had just determined to give the Doctor a bit of his mind, felt his strength depart from him. His sentences lacked power to stand upright and fell sprawling. "No offence, Doctor, I merely wanted you to know—not so much my own views—difficulty to keep our friends together. Short—you know Tom Short—was saying to ...
— Pages from a Journal with Other Papers • Mark Rutherford
... still making the same sprawling movements ahead of me up the street. The sight of this infirm creature constantly in front of me, commenced to irritate me—his journey seemed endless; perhaps he had made up his mind to go to exactly the same place ...
— Hunger • Knut Hamsun
... who pleased could come there and get first-hand information; and an interpreter stood there sometimes, one of the educated younger sons of Mr. Piers, and read out to the groups from Lady Maxwell's sprawling old handwriting, ...
— By What Authority? • Robert Hugh Benson
... In one corner stood the poor captain shivering in his shirt, which was all torn to rags: with a woeful visage, scratched all over by his wife, who had by this time wrapped the counterpane about her, and sat sobbing on the side of her bed. At the other end lay the old usurer, sprawling on Miss Jenny's bed, with his flannel jacket over his shirt, and his tawny meagre limbs exposed to the air; while she held him fast by the two ears, and loaded him with execrations. When he asked what was the matter, ...
— The Adventures of Roderick Random • Tobias Smollett
... even guess, she was so greatly bewildered. But bye and bye, as she stared ahead into the black chasm with a beating heart, she began to dimly see the form of the horse Jim—his head up in the air, his ears erect and his long legs sprawling in every direction as he tumbled through space. Also, turning her head, she found that she could see the boy beside her, who had until now remained as still and ...
— Dorothy and the Wizard in Oz • L. Frank Baum.
... entreating brown eyes at her elbow, straightway forgave Toady, and released her victim so suddenly that he fell sprawling into a nest of sharp-thorned Mormon pears; but of this she was unaware, for with one swoop she gathered up the now hysterical baby, and stalked off toward the house, saying grimly, "You boys stay ...
— Tabitha's Vacation • Ruth Alberta Brown
... of the situation. The men had placed the bench close to the door, which, owing to the stairs within, opened outwards; so that at the first push by the pair inside to release themselves the bench must have gone over, and sent the smokers sprawling on their faces. He whispered to her to ascend the column and ...
— Two on a Tower • Thomas Hardy
... Hastings, sprawling comfortably in a low chair by the south window in the music room, stopped his whittling when Berne Webster came in with Judge Wilton. "Meddlesome Mike!" thought the ...
— No Clue - A Mystery Story • James Hay
... seemed to notice the young thrall when he came among them and began to refill the empty cups. The older men, sprawling on the sun-flecked grass and over the rude benches, were still drowsy from too deep soundings in too many mead horns. The four young people were talking together. They sat a little apart in the shade of some birch trees ...
— The Thrall of Leif the Lucky • Ottilie A. Liljencrantz
... lay on his back, sprawling with outstretched limbs in the centre of the room. He was clad only in a pink dressing gown, which covered his night clothes. There were carpet slippers on his bare feet. The doctor knelt beside him and held down the hand lamp which had stood on the table. One glance at the ...
— The Valley of Fear • Arthur Conan Doyle
... well-housed, prudent, and moral New England lies back of her group of poets, and is voiced by them,—so America as a whole, our turbulent democracy, our self-glorification, our faith in the future, our huge mass movements, our continental spirit, our sprawling, sublime, and unkempt nature, lie back of Whitman and ...
— Whitman - A Study • John Burroughs
... whole series of our conduct convinces me, that we shall soon see as silent a change as that in "The Rehearsal," of King Usher and King Physician. It may well be so, when the disposition of the drama is in the hands of the Duke of Newcastle—those hands that are always groping and sprawling, and fluttering, and hurrying on the rest of his precipitate person. But there is no describing him but as M. Courcelle, a French prisoner, did t'other day: "Je ne scais pas," dit il, "je ne scaurois m'exprimer, mais il a un certain tatillonage." If one could ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole - Volume I • Horace Walpole
... fastened his eyes again upon the scene. Looking at things would keep him from thinking. To think was to cry out. He had learned this. His eyes, dark and heavy, fastened themselves upon the walls of the inn lost in shadows, painted with nymphs and satyrs sprawling over tapestried landscapes. He devoured their details, his heart searching in them for the mystery of Rachel and finding only a deeper emptiness—insistently naked bodies of nymphs lying like newly bathed housemaids amid stiff park sceneries. Miracles of photographic ...
— Erik Dorn • Ben Hecht
... order, and two figures from the corner sprang forward to seize the flyer with long clinging fingers. Their strength he had overestimated, for a violent throw of his body twisted him free, and his outstretched hands sent the two sprawling across the room. Their leader took one quick step forward, then paused as if hesitating to meet ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, November, 1930 • Various
... Ainsley left the party sprawling flat at the foot of the rim, while he crept up to locate the position over the mine shaft. Each man had brought about a dozen small bombs and one large one packed with high explosive. Before leaving the ditch, on Ainsley's directions, each man tied his own lot in one bundle, bringing the ends ...
— Action Front • Boyd Cable (Ernest Andrew Ewart)
... Jack wandered round the little room, swinging the blind cords, and trifling with the broken-down metronome on the mantelpiece. It was this very instrument that had been upset when he sent Rosher sprawling into the fireplace; and yet, here was the same fellow talking about keeping up a correspondence. A litter of torn music lay on the top of the piano; among it a tattered hymn-book. Jack turned over the pages until he came to "Hark, hark, my ...
— Soldiers of the Queen • Harold Avery
... lion and an ox; the face too is turned away from the action of the figure, and is so badly set upon the neck, with such poverty of art and so ill a grace, that nothing worse was ever seen; his sprawling shoulders are like the two pommels of an ass' pack-saddle; his breasts and all the muscles of the body are not portrayed from a man, but from a big sack full of melons set upright against a wall. The loins seem to be modelled from a bag of lanky pumpkins; ...
— The Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini • Benvenuto Cellini
... but I felt it was time to leave it. I took hold of the iron handle at the back of the truck, pulled strongly with my left hand, and sprang. My feet struck the ground in two gigantic strides, and the next instant I was sprawling in the ditch, considerably shaken but unhurt. The train, my faithful ally of the night, ...
— London to Ladysmith via Pretoria • Winston Spencer Churchill
... settlement sprawling on both sides of an historic river should be a part of his native New England seemed at times to be a hideous dream; nor could he comprehend what had happened to him, and to the world of order and standards and religious sanctions into which he had been born. His had been a life of relinquishments. ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... he was saying, 'you'll have me on my nose if you go that pace, man; you and I are more at home on deck than on slippery ground; don't send me sprawling at the very church door, ...
— Two Maiden Aunts • Mary H. Debenham
... this moment Quidd felt a severe blow from behind, which sent him sprawling. I also received a push or a drive, and a loud laugh burst from ...
— Young Folks Treasury, Volume 3 (of 12) - Classic Tales And Old-Fashioned Stories • Various
... sharp drop into a small lake on one side and a swamp on the other. But the rider evidently had more caution than we generally credit to motorcyclists and made no attempt to pass us, so we were not treated to the spectacle of a man and a motorcycle turning a somersault into the lake or sprawling ...
— The Campfire Girls Go Motoring • Hildegard G. Frey
... he aroused, for some part, and the things about him began to take form. He saw that the ground in the deep shadows was cluttered with men, sprawling in every conceivable posture. Glancing narrowly into the more distant darkness, he caught occasional glimpses of visages that loomed pallid and ghostly, lit with a phosphorescent glow. These faces expressed in their lines the deep stupor of the tired soldiers. They ...
— The Red Badge of Courage - An Episode of the American Civil War • Stephen Crane
... of pain and amazement, the man shot sprawling over the bank, and landed, half-stunned, in a clump of blueberry bushes. Dazed and furious, he picked himself up, passed a heavy hand across his scratched, smarting face, and turned to see the ram disappearing among the thickets above the road. His disappointment so overcame his wrath that ...
— The Watchers of the Trails - A Book of Animal Life • Charles G. D. Roberts
... was attacked by a bully and ex-prize fighter who was hired by some of his enemies to teach him the rewards to be won from "meddling." The result was unexpected. The bully went sprawling, knocked down by a well directed blow from the undersized, bespectacled young assemblyman—and some of the gang that attempted to bring aid to the fallen also found themselves upon the floor. Roosevelt, flashing his teeth in characteristic manner, told the little knot of ...
— A Treasury of Heroes and Heroines - A Record of High Endeavour and Strange Adventure from 500 B.C. to 1920 A.D. • Clayton Edwards
... with cheerful and childlike pleasure in both antique and modern, like Benozzo, crowding together half-naked youths and nymphs treading the grapes and scaling the trellise with Florentine magnificos in plaited skirts and starched collars, among the pines, and porticos, the sprawling children, barking dogs, peacocks sunning themselves, and partridges picking up grain, of his Pisan frescoes; yet others using the antique as mere pageant shows, allegorical mummeries, destined to amuse some Duke of Ferrara or Marquis of Mantua, ...
— Euphorion - Being Studies of the Antique and the Mediaeval in the - Renaissance - Vol. I • Vernon Lee
... Colonial School's sprawling five-mile complex of buildings and tropical parks, the second student shift was headed for breakfast, while a larger part of the fourth shift moved at a more leisurely rate toward their bunks. The school's organized activities were not ...
— Legacy • James H Schmitz
... ... and the Thing moved! Tommy leaped like a madman shouting. As his feet struck the ground a mass of sold-seeming fungus gave way beneath him. He fell sprawling, but clutching the gun fast. The spreading beam of the flashlight showed him Evelyn turning, her face filled with a wakening horror—the horror of one released from the fascination of a snake. She ...
— The Fifth-Dimension Tube • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... enraged at any toleration being extended to Hypatia, refused to let the youth enter the archbishop's house, and then struck him full in the face. The blow was intolerable, and in an instant Peter's long legs were sprawling on the pavement, while he bellowed like a bull to all the monks that stood by, "Seize him! The traitor! The heretic! He holds communion with heathens! And he was in ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Volume V. • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... therefore, the circumstances in all their sprawling complexity, the overt act which signalizes them, the stereotyped bulletin which publishes the signal, and the meaning that the reader himself injects, after he has derived that meaning from the experience which directly ...
— Public Opinion • Walter Lippmann
... was on a root of gorse which cropped up at the edge of the pit. He aimed to swing himself back with all his might, depending on his grasp of the root. The root snapped short off close to the ground, and Chippy went tumbling and sprawling head-long into the pit, ...
— The Wolf Patrol - A Tale of Baden-Powell's Boy Scouts • John Finnemore
... the scarlet geraniums in the plaster vases on the wall of the grandest of the mansions had done blooming, and beyond scarlet geraniums on the wall the horticultural taste of Les Fontaines had never risen. The old cottages, with heavy thatched roofs and curious attic windows, with fruit trees sprawling over the walls, and orchards in the rear, were better than the new villas; but even these lacked the neatness and picturesque beauty of an English cottage in a pastoral landscape. There was a shabby dustiness, ...
— The Golden Calf • M. E. Braddon
... from his grasp a second time, she caught him a stinging buffet on the ducal cheek which—so greatly did it take him by surprise—all but sent him sprawling. ...
— Love-at-Arms • Raphael Sabatini
... put his shoulder to the mouldering door. It fell inward with a dull crash and as it did so the professor leaped backward with a startled cry, stumbling over a deck beam and sprawling ...
— The Boy Aviators' Polar Dash - Or - Facing Death in the Antarctic • Captain Wilbur Lawton
... twisted limbs. Why had they not left him in the forest, where there was no mirror to tell him how loathsome he was? Why had his father not killed him, rather than sell him to his shame? The hot tears poured down his cheeks, and he tore the white rose to pieces. The sprawling monster did the same, and scattered the faint petals in the air. It grovelled on the ground, and, when he looked at it, it watched him with a face drawn with pain. He crept away, lest he should see it, and covered his eyes with his hands. ...
— A House of Pomegranates • Oscar Wilde
... the other, and struck out awkwardly. He wanted to hit Joe on the nose, but the boy dodged with ease, and Sam Cullum fell sprawling over ...
— Joe The Hotel Boy • Horatio Alger Jr.
... little Gerard's little mole; but she could not stop there; she presently had him sprawling on her lap, and kissed his back all over again and again, and seemed to worry him as wolf a lamb; Catherine looking on and smiling. She had seen a good many of these ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... then as it is now)—there was the man chattering and ogling his best, when who should come up but Gus and I? And in the twinkling of a pegpost, as Lord Duberley says, my gentleman was seized by the collar of his coat and found himself sprawling under a stand of hackney-coaches; where all the watermen were grinning at him. The best of it was, he left his head of hair and whiskers in my hand: but Mary said, "Don't be hard upon him, Samuel; it's ...
— The History of Samuel Titmarsh - and the Great Hoggarty Diamond • William Makepeace Thackeray
... them like a flash of fire; no time for anything but dodging, and the pilot threw his craft wildly aside with a swerve that sent the men sprawling against a stanchion. Then up and back, where the other had turned ...
— Astounding Stories, February, 1931 • Various
... in one or two places behind Outpost craters. There were spots where the top of the parapet was not of sufficient thickness to keep out a rifle bullet. And it was just by one of these spots that the Company Commander, going round one night, suddenly stumbled on something that lay sprawling at the bottom of the trench—an unmistakable something. It lay half on the fire step and half off, midway between two saps, and the head sagged back helplessly. He switched on his torch, and having looked ...
— No Man's Land • H. C. McNeile
... clerk now brought in a batch of duplicate certificates for the Commissioner to sign. As he traced his sprawling signature, "Hollis Summerfield, Comr. Genl. Land Office," on each one, the chief clerk stood, deftly removing them ...
— Whirligigs • O. Henry
... this day. Uncle Prudent and Phil Evans were left entirely to themselves. They hardly noticed Frycollin sprawling at full length in the bow, keeping his eyes shut so that he could see nothing. And they were not attacked by vertigo, as might have been expected. There was no guiding mark, and there was nothing to cause the vertigo, ...
— Rubur the Conqueror • Jules Verne
... the market-place and gave himself up to the fat sergeant. As they reached the outskirts of the village a sorry camel came with a sprawling gallop after them, and swaying and rolling above it was Yusef, the drunken ghaffir, his naboot of ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... drifting like a heavy current. The women are seated, by church instinct, all together on the left, with perhaps an odd man at the end of a row, beside his wife. On the right, sprawling in the benches, are several groups of bersaglieri, in grey uniforms and slanting cock's-feather hats; then peasants, fishermen, and an odd couple or so of brazen girls taking their places ...
— Twilight in Italy • D.H. Lawrence
... own drapery before, fell suddenly prostrate in the door-way that connected the chapel with the abbey, and was instantaneously buried under a pyramid of ghostly carcasses, that fell over him and each other, and lay a rolling chaos of animated rotundities, sprawling and bawling in unseemly disarray, and sending forth the names of all the saints in and out of heaven, amidst the clashing of swords, the ringing of bucklers, the clattering of helmets, the twanging of bow-strings, the whizzing of arrows, the screams of women, ...
— Maid Marian • Thomas Love Peacock
... Chinaman, who, being a great coward, immediately turned about and fled. But Charlie was upon him in a moment, and with the leg of pork dealt him a blow on the back of the head, which sent him sprawling on the ground. A knife fell from his hand and Charlie at once seized it. The woman, seeing what had befallen her husband, scrambled to her feet and toddled to him shouting, 'Foreigners!' as she went. To prevent her being ...
— Chatterbox, 1905. • Various
... warning there came the roaring rush of great wings beating the air just above him. Powell tried to dive for cover, but he was too late. A slender snaky tentacle came lashing down and struck his shoulder with a force that sent him sprawling forward upon his face. Before he could rise, two of the tentacles twined around him, and he was jerked up into the air like a wood-grub captured by a ...
— Devil Crystals of Arret • Hal K. Wells
... the rush from the direction of the village green came round the corner. The first to appear was the proprietor of the cocoanut shy, a burly man in a blue jersey. He was astonished to see the lane empty save for three men sprawling absurdly on the ground. And then something happened to his rear-most foot, and he went headlong and rolled sideways just in time to graze the feet of his brother and partner, following headlong. The two were then kicked, knelt on, fallen over, and cursed by quite ...
— The Invisible Man • H. G. Wells
... high up on a pile of shabby furniture on a moving van, mopped a shining black face with the end of a very dirty undershirt sleeve. A boy came wavering along on a bicycle, swerved in to the curbing across the street, stopped, got off and went in to the Baptist Seminary, leaving the bicycle sprawling in the gutter. An old woman came out of nowhere; he heard her uncertain steps before he saw her as she approached him; the wide pavement the moment before had been entirely deserted. She walked as though she had no definite ...
— Stubble • George Looms
... latter gave a convulsive spring forward. But his driver had not taken into consideration that the farm-wagon was the stronger of the two vehicles, and that in any collision the buggy must come off second best. So it happened that a wheel of the buggy was broken, and the driver, in the shock, thrown sprawling into a puddle on the other side of the road. The wagon suffered no damage, but the old horse, terrified, set off at a rapid pace. Herbert looked back to see if the stranger was injured, but seeing that he had already picked himself up unwounded, but decidedly dirty, he concluded ...
— Try and Trust • Horatio Alger
... such a wipe with my cane on his sword-arm that his wrist snapped, and his sword dropped to the ground. Enraged at the sight of my own blood, which now covered my clothes in front, I was not satisfied with this, but applying my foot to his counter, two or three vigorous kicks sufficed to send him sprawling into the street. Captain Hopkins arrived just as the fracas was over, and instantly sent for a surgeon, and in the meantime I received the congratulations of all present on my victory. I learned that my man was a certain Don Carlos Alvarez, a broken down hidalgo, who had formerly ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848 • Various
... limbs quivered under his teeth. Yet not unavenged. Ulysses brooked not this, nor even in such straits did the Ithacan forget himself. For so soon as he, gorged with his feast and buried in wine, lay with bent neck sprawling huge over the cave, in his sleep vomiting gore and gobbets mixed with wine and blood, we, praying to the great gods and with parts allotted, pour at once all round him, and pierce with a sharp weapon the huge eye that lay sunk single under his savage brow, in fashion of an Argolic ...
— The Aeneid of Virgil • Virgil
... missive into my pocket and resumed a study of the immediate landscape. It had not changed as we progressed: ocean, sand, low dunes crowned with impenetrable tangles of wild bay, sparkleberry, and live-oak, with here and there a weather-twisted palmetto sprawling, and here and there the battered blades of cactus and Spanish-bayonet thrust menacingly forward; and over all the vultures, sailing, sailing—some mere circling motes lost in the blue above, some sheering the earth so close that their swiftly sweeping shadows slanted continually ...
— In Search of the Unknown • Robert W. Chambers
... across the trail. It was a small thing that a horse might ordinarily take in his natural stride without noticing its presence; but Werper's horse was jaded, his feet were heavy with weariness, and as the branch caught between his front legs he stumbled, was unable to recover himself, and went down, sprawling in the trail. ...
— Tarzan and the Jewels of Opar • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... sailing—or punting. The picture of that London cad sprawling in the water, which my approval had created in his mind, had done it. And it was early and late too (there were few visitors that month); down by the Weir below the lock as far as Cliveden; up the backwater to the Mill—William stretched beside me while ...
— The Parthenon By Way Of Papendrecht - 1909 • F. Hopkinson Smith
... concert hall. Everything seemed to sweep down on her to tear it out from under her cape. If one had that, the world became one's enemy; people, buildings, wagons, cars, rushed at one to crush it under, to make one let go of it. Thea glared round her at the crowds, the ugly, sprawling streets, the long lines of lights, and she was not crying now. Her eyes were brighter than even Harsanyi had ever seen them. All these things and people were no longer remote and negligible; they had to be met, they were lined up against her, they were there to take something from her. Very well; ...
— Song of the Lark • Willa Cather
... the great piano sprawling over it; and in front of this, rows and rows and rows—and rows upon ...
— The Best British Short Stories of 1922 • Edward J. O'Brien and John Cournos, editors
... senseless lie. The whole monument is one wearisome aggregation of that species of ornamental flourish, which, when it is done with a pen, is called penmanship, and when done with a chisel, should be called chiselmanship; the subject of it being chiefly fat-limbed boys sprawling on dolphins, dolphins incapable of swimming, and dragged along the sea ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume I (of 3) • John Ruskin
... Emmy's—their shrill voices with her tender ringing tones; their attitudes and their elbows and their starch, with her humble soft movements and modest graces. Poor Swartz was seated in a place where Emmy had been accustomed to sit. Her bejewelled hands lay sprawling in her amber satin lap. Her tags and ear-rings twinkled, and her big eyes rolled about. She was doing nothing with perfect contentment, and thinking herself charming. Anything so becoming as the satin the sisters ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... set down so you can ask me sumpin'? I'll do dat! Of course I will! (He proceeded to do so—wiping his nose on his sleeve and sprawling down on the doorsill). My pappy name George, black George they call him in slavery time, 'cause dere was a small yallow slave on de place, named George. My mammy name Ca'line. My pappy b'long to de McNeals and my mammy b'long to Marse Joe Beard. His wife was ...
— Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves • Works Projects Administration
... but Dicey's cup happened to be at his lips at the moment, and was quite full. The effect on him was unfortunate. He was thrown violently on his back, and the tea poured over his face and drenched his hair as he lay sprawling on the floor. The steward saved himself by dropping the bread-tray and grasping the handle of the cabin door. So violent was the shock that the ship's ...
— Fast in the Ice - Adventures in the Polar Regions • R.M. Ballantyne
... Calumet. The latter became aware of the boy's presence when the latter seized his left hand from behind, and he turned with a snarl, his six-shooter half drawn, to confront the boy, whose grip on the hand had not been loosened. Calumet drew the hand fiercely away, overturning Bob so that he fell sprawling into the dust at his feet. The youngster was up again before Betty and Malcolm could reach him, hobbling toward Calumet, his thin face working from excitement, his big eyes alight over the discovery he ...
— The Boss of the Lazy Y • Charles Alden Seltzer
... are in a grave that mine hands hollowed, for truly hath it been said that the child of man maketh his own path evil;" and her beautiful voice quivered, and broke in a note as soft as any wood-bird's. Suddenly her eye fell upon the sprawling frame of Billali, and she seemed to ...
— She • H. Rider Haggard
... withal, the Piece is crude in parts, and far enough from perfect. Our good painter has yet several things to learn, and to unlearn. His brush is not always of the finest; and dashes about, sometimes, in a recognizably sprawling way: but it hits many a feature with decisive accuracy and felicity; and on the palette, as usual, lie the richest colors. A grand merit, too, is the brevity of everything; by no means a spontaneous, or ...
— The Life of John Sterling • Thomas Carlyle
... of Celestial mythology. Then came more pagodas, and companies of standard-bearers in lavender tunics, red sashes, green and orange leggings and slippers; more and more splendid banners, painted with dragons sprawling in distressed attitudes; litters containing minor gods and the paraphernalia they were accustomed to need on a journey like this; more litters bearing Chinese orchestras, gongs going at full blast, fiddles squeaking, drums rumbling, trumpets shrieking, cymbals ...
— Marm Lisa • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... walls. Presently there was a scarcely perceptible click, as of a door closing, and Brother Andrew came from the direction of the Superior's room. John called to him and he stepped up on tip-toe, for the monk hates noise as an evil spirit. The sprawling features of the big fellow ...
— The Christian - A Story • Hall Caine
... was fading into evening as the car went over the first ridge and dropped out of sight of Clair and the sprawling hospital in which Ruth Fielding ...
— Ruth Fielding at the War Front - or, The Hunt for the Lost Soldier • Alice B. Emerson
... her violently. She was also escorted by gaudy female relatives, by looking at whom one could anticipate the awful possibilities of her maturity. As for the bridegroom, he was a Hebrew of the florid type. His waistcoat was protuberant; he had a red face with red whiskers sprawling all over it; he wore flash jewellery; his hair shone with pomatum; there was that in his bearing which indicated that he followed some sordid calling, such as pawnbroking, or the backing of horses ...
— The Idler, Volume III., Issue XIII., February 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly. Edited By Jerome K. Jerome & Robert Barr • Various
... yacht's forward progress was checked with an abruptness that threatened to drag the bitts out of her as the strain of the line, with the plunging, struggling monster at the end of it, was suddenly thrown upon them, while the shock sent every individual, fore and aft, sprawling upon the deck, to the uproarious and most undignified amusement of the young Inca, and the mortal terror of his faithful subjects. Then, as all hands scrambled to their feet again and instinctively regained possession of their weapons, the hooked ...
— Harry Escombe - A Tale of Adventure in Peru • Harry Collingwood
... Quest. Suddenly the latter sprang up, seized him by the leg and sent him sprawling. The gun fell from his hand. Quest picked it up and held it firmly out, covering both men. Gallagher was on his knees, groping for his ...
— The Black Box • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... kill a man-child with ease; the greater the destiny, the weaker the immediate self-protection may be. And to me it seems that your complete and perfect imperialism, ruled by Germans for Germans, is in its scope and outlook a more antiquated and smaller and less noble thing than these sprawling emergent giant democracies of the West that struggle so ...
— Mr. Britling Sees It Through • H. G. Wells
... strength leached out, it is well worth saving for the humus still in it, and it may be dug in in the vegetable garden, or placed in a large flat pile about two feet high while still loosely spread. Melons, squash, pumpkins or similar sprawling vines may be grown in it. For each plant dump about one-half a wheelbarrow of good soil on the top, level and sow in it, or set out plants, if the seedlings are started elsewhere. The roots of these plants like the loose run the open manure allows. In ...
— Making a Garden of Perennials • W. C. Egan
... their own farms and the manufacture of their own wives; the women were in primitive short gowns and petticoats, with the venerable sun-bonnets of Holland origin. The lower part of the valley was cut up into small farms, each consisting of a little meadow and corn-field; an orchard of sprawling, gnarled apple-trees, and a garden, where the rose, the marigold, and the hollyhock were permitted to skirt the domains of the capacious cabbage, the aspiring pea, and the portly pumpkin. Each had its prolific little mansion teeming with children; with an old hat nailed against ...
— Wolfert's Roost and Miscellanies • Washington Irving
... Sprawling over the table with arrested pen, he glanced out of the door, and in that frame of his vision he saw all the stars flying upwards between the teakwood jambs on a black sky. The whole lot took flight together and disappeared, leaving only a blackness flecked with white flashes, for the sea ...
— Typhoon • Joseph Conrad
... we six, then," said Much. He tumbled off his horse, and the other three of them did the like; and then strode over to where Robin stood. "Release him," said the miller, determinedly; and he promptly knocked two of the foresters sprawling. ...
— Robin Hood • Paul Creswick
... hand in a clutch of steel, and, before the astonished boy could offer any resistance, had wrenched it over in such a manner that, without exactly knowing what had occurred, Roy found himself sprawling on his back. ...
— The Girl Aviators' Sky Cruise • Margaret Burnham
... less sympathizing made their way to the small boats which waited below. The individual in question had come alongside in a handsome barge, rowed by a dozen stout blacks, in the undress uniform of the Zouaves. These men, well drilled and disciplined, seemed of a different sort from the sprawling, screaming creatures in the other boats, and their bright red caps and white tunics became them well. But he who now claimed my attention was of British birth and military profession. His face was ardent, his pantaloons were of white flannel, his expression of countenance was ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 19, May, 1859 • Various
... cried, when at length Farrington remained sprawling upon the floor. "Get up if you can, ...
— The Fourth Watch • H. A. Cody
... bow window at the mention of Plum Corner—he could just see the flutter of Amaryllis' dress in the distance between the trees. That part of the garden was called Plum Corner because of a famous plum tree—the one that had not been pruned and was sprawling about the wall. ...
— Amaryllis at the Fair • Richard Jefferies
... of victory, Jack, desirous of a share in the glory of conquest, ran close to the creature, firing his pistol into its side, when he was sent sprawling over and over by a movement of its tail, excited to a last galvanic ...
— Journeys Through Bookland V3 • Charles H. Sylvester
... mate if he had heard anything, when my eyes fell suddenly upon something which projected from under the table. It was the leg of a man—a leg with a long sea-boot upon it. I stooped, and there was a figure sprawling upon his face, his arms thrown forward and his body twisted. One glance told me that it was Armstrong, the first officer, and a second that he was a dead man. For a few moments I stood gasping. Then I rushed on to the deck, called Allardyce ...
— The Green Flag • Arthur Conan Doyle
... a hotel, was actually painted, and on some of the shanties and rude huts of the newly arrived settlers were signs giving notice of hardware, groceries, and other commodities for sale within. On one structure, partly made of sawed boards and partly of canvas, was painted in sprawling letters, ...
— The Boy Settlers - A Story of Early Times in Kansas • Noah Brooks
... was broad daylight. The noise brought my friends hurrying into the apartment, and we found, sprawling over my improvised bed, the dismayed valet, who, while bringing me my morning cup of tea, had tripped over this obstacle in the middle of the floor, and fallen on his stomach, spilling, in spite of himself, my breakfast ...
— Library of the World's Best Mystery and Detective Stories • Edited by Julian Hawthorne
... Mr. Pound, taking a limp, sprawling arm and lifting the culprit to his feet. "Tell me, who was the tempter who brought ...
— David Malcolm • Nelson Lloyd
... four dead horses lay there sprawling in the road, three or four dead men in a trim row at one side of it, and a little back, down the hill. All but one were cavalrymen belonging to the Federal advance. One was a quartermaster. The general commanding the division and the colonel commanding the brigade, ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Vol. II: In the Midst of Life: Tales of Soldiers and Civilians • Ambrose Bierce
... down the coral banks, waddle with uncertain steps across the strip of smooth sand to be rolled over and over in their helplessness by the gentle break of the sea. They cool their panting bodies by a series of queer, sprawling marine gymnastics, swim about buoyantly for a few minutes, are tumbled on to the sand, and waddle with contented cheeps each back to its own birthplace among hundreds of highly-decorated eggs, and hundreds of infants ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield
... at the same moment the bedroom door was flung open, and her brother, who had been hastily fetched by the neighbours on the other side, burst into the room and with one hearty blow sent Mr. Grummit sprawling. ...
— Captains All and Others • W.W. Jacobs |
