"Spread-eagle" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... brought to the bar for trial few escape; for modern talesmen, being hard-headed men, regard the whole thing as a matter of business and try to get through with it as quickly and as efficiently as possible. The bombastic spread-eagle orator, the grandiloquent gas bag, the highfaluting stump speaker gain few verdicts and win small applause except from their clients. And district attorneys who ape the bloodhound in their mien and tactics win scant approval and less acquiescence ...
— By Advice of Counsel • Arthur Train
... command two warriors fell upon me and fastened cords to my wrists and ankles and staked me out in spread-eagle style, and then sat beside me, one on each side. Half a dozen of the older men remained in the camp. Dale was mumbling something to the girl and she rose as if at ...
— A Virginia Scout • Hugh Pendexter
... fact, because we Yankees are thought to be fond of the spread-eagle style, and nothing can be more remote from that than his. We are reckoned a practical folk, who would rather hear about a new air-tight stove than about Plato; yet our favorite teacher's practicality is not in the least of the Poor Richard variety. If he have any Buncombe ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 40, February, 1861 • Various
... all means. Two or three of them, in fact, to spread-eagle whatever it is. Never take any chances. It's probably an Osnomian, but you never can tell. It may be one of those other people. We know they were around here a few weeks ago, and they're the only ones I know of that have intra-atomic power besides ...
— Skylark Three • Edward Elmer Smith
... behind the hovel-wall of that dense female, Mounted and tense, spread-eagle, out-reaching out of the shell In tortoise-nakedness, Long neck, and long vulnerable limbs extruded, spread-eagle over her house-roof, And the deep, secret, all-penetrating tail curved beneath her walls, Reaching and gripping tense, more reaching anguish ...
— Tortoises • D. H. Lawrence
... gleaming from beneath shaggy eyebrows, a quadrangular breadth of jawbone, and a mouth which bespoke strong will, he stood like a sturdy Roundhead sentinel on guard before the gates of the Constitution. Holding in profound contempt what he termed spread-eagle oratory, his only gesticulations were up-and- down motions of his arm, as if he were beating out with sledge- hammers his forcible ideas. His peroration was sublime, and every loyal American heart has since echoed the last ...
— Perley's Reminiscences, Vol. 1-2 - of Sixty Years in the National Metropolis • Benjamin Perley Poore
... good pens, on the previous Saturday; and while waiting for her to begin her dictation, and full serious thought himself, he had almost unconsciously made the grand flourish at the top of the paper which he had learnt at school, and which was there called a spread-eagle. ...
— Sylvia's Lovers, Vol. I • Elizabeth Gaskell
... Nero," he confided suddenly, patting the dog's shaggy head, "my life is developing certain elements of intrigue and mystery exceedingly offensive to my spread-eagle tastes. There's a knife and a bullet now, Johnny's two men and the auto, and a cuff and a most mysterious link between our lady and the Baron. I'll be hanged if I like any of it. And why in thunder ...
— Diane of the Green Van • Leona Dalrymple
... no man stood in his way. Instantly the maniac wheeled, as a huge spread-eagle wind-vane on its staff, and stood at gaze, the broad uninterrupted light of the beacon shining down on him and the mysterious man. The street ended short of the wall. About the base of the fortification was an ...
— The City of Delight - A Love Drama of the Siege and Fall of Jerusalem • Elizabeth Miller
... like but can't make poetry of. Do you realize what my job is? I go round twenty-four hours a day, in mud and blizzard, trying my damnedest to heal everybody, rich or poor. You—that 're always spieling about how scientists ought to rule the world, instead of a bunch of spread-eagle politicians—can't you see that I'm all the science there is here? And I can stand the cold and the bumpy roads and the lonely rides at night. All I need is to have you here at home to welcome me. I don't expect you to be passionate—not any more I don't—but I do expect you to appreciate ...
— Main Street • Sinclair Lewis
... Country, 'tis of thee," dating from 1832, fixes the date when America, soon after the second war with England, which ended in 1814, consciously felt herself as a Holy Land; far as visitors like Dickens felt her from the perfection implied in her soaring Spread-Eagle rhetoric. The Pilgrim Fathers went to America merely for their own freedom of religious worship: they were actually intolerant to others. From a sectarian patriotism developed what I have called "The Melting Pot," with its high universal mission, first ...
— Chosen Peoples • Israel Zangwill
... closely. The paper bore our Florentine water-mark, and was written with a Spread-Eagle. 'I type-wrote it,' I answered, gazing at it with care to make sure I ...
— Miss Cayley's Adventures • Grant Allen
... sign of No.— being ready, which is not surprising, as the hay had to be cut and the place drained more or less. The French and English officers here all sit at different tables, and don't hobnob much. Six officers of the Royal Flying Corps are here, double-breasted tunics and two spread-eagle wings on left breast. Troops are still arriving at the docks, which are the biggest I have ever seen. The men on the trams give us back our sous, ...
— Diary of a Nursing Sister on the Western Front, 1914-1915 • Anonymous
... like deer, too, with a quick folding motion of the legs, drawn up and turned to one side with a sidelong twist of the body. I remembered the sprawling spread-eagle way in which some of the fellows used to come over the line—and tried to learn the trick. We did not easily catch up with these ...
— Herland • Charlotte Perkins Stetson Gilman
... cormorants were almost always about the river. Sometimes they sat upon stakes in a patriotic, spread-eagle (American eagle) attitude, as if drying their wings,—a curious sight till one became accustomed to it. Snakebirds and buzzards resort to the same device, but I cannot recall ever seeing any Northern bird thus engaged. From the south bridge I one ...
— A Florida Sketch-Book • Bradford Torrey
... cable in those days, and our steamer carried out the news of the seven days' battles before Richmond, which terminated in the retreat of General McClellan. We had a Fourth of July dinner on board, but between seasickness and heart sickness it was the toughest experience of making a spread-eagle speech I ever had. After landing at Queenstown I went to Belfast and thence to Edinburgh. I found the people of Edinburgh intensely excited over our war and the current of popular sentiment running against us like a mill-race. For instance, I was recognized by my soft ...
— Recollections of a Long Life - An Autobiography • Theodore Ledyard Cuyler
... of Old Eli!" he began, with a spread-eagle gesture that came near causing him to lose his balance and fall off headlong. "This is the great day when we can get up on our hind legs and make the welkin ring with war whoops of victory. To-day we ...
— Frank Merriwell's Races • Burt L. Standish
... upon the easy man who was to provide him with ready money, as he hoped. He admired ease as much as anybody, and believed that he had it. But he was very much in love with Lucy, and felt the highest disapproval of Urquhart's kind of spread-eagle hardihood. He bent over his plate like the willow-tree upon one. His eyelids glimmered, he was rather pink, and used his napkin to his lips. To his neighbour of the left, who was Lady Bliss, he spoke sotto voce ...
— Love and Lucy • Maurice Henry Hewlett
... of the Tooley Street affair, of which one Taylor, lieutenant to Capt. William Boys of the Royal Sovereign, was the active cause. At the "Spread-Eagle" in Tooley Street he and his gang one evening pressed a privateersman—an insult keenly resented by the master of the ship. He accordingly sent off to the tender, whither the pressed man had been conveyed for security's sake, two wherries filled ...
— The Press-Gang Afloat and Ashore • John R. Hutchinson |
