"Straggle" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... it, or it would sink beneath the tread, and bury the visitor in the gloomy depth beneath. The desolation and decay impress themselves on all the senses. The air has a mouldering smell, and an earthy taste; any stray outer sounds that straggle in with some lost sunbeam, are muffled and heavy; and the worm, the maggot, and the rot have changed the surface of the wood beneath the touch, as time will seam and roughen a smooth hand. If ever Ghosts act plays, they act them on this ...
— Pictures from Italy • Charles Dickens
... humanized natural beauty, in which the village church and the ivy-clad ruin play their part. Perhaps some such formula as this would represent the typical scene that springs to the mind's eye with the phrase "the English countryside": a village green, with some geese stringing out across it. A straggle of quaint thatched cottages, roses climbing about the windows, and in front little, carefully kept gardens, with hollyhocks standing in rows, stocks and sweet-williams and such old-fashioned flowers. At one end of the village, rising out of a clump of yews, the mouldering church-tower, ...
— Vanishing Roads and Other Essays • Richard Le Gallienne
... colour from here lightened as it neared the margin. At the apex it changed to a reddish brown tinge that surrounded the typical eye-spot of all the Attacus group for almost three-fourths of its circumference. The bottom of the eye was blackish blue, shading abruptly to pale blue at the top. The straggle M of white was in its place at the extreme tip, on the usual rose madder field. From there a broad clay-coloured band edged the wing and joined the dark colour in escallops. Through the middle of it in an irregular wavy line was traced an almost hair-fine marking of strong brown. ...
— Moths of the Limberlost • Gene Stratton-Porter
... and talent of the other. I am, therefore, content, and with regard to that I have nothing to say. But I have a word to say, which no advocate, however anxious and devoted he may be, can utter for me. I say, whatever part I may have taken in the straggle for my country's independence, whatever part I may have acted in my short career, I stand before you, my lords, with a free heart and a light conscience, to abide the issue of your sentence. And now, my lords, ...
— Speeches from the Dock, Part I • Various
... cross behind me, I want that transport to deceive him. He would never dream of it being unprotected. He cannot be in any strength; besides, I shall want every mounted man I have got for my scheme. The transport, ox and mule, must take its chance. But see that it doesn't straggle. The mule can keep up with us as long as possible, but it must keep together. Likewise the ox-transport, taking its own time, must keep closed up. I assure you the only object of these people on this journey will be to get away. Two blocks of moving waggons ...
— On the Heels of De Wet • The Intelligence Officer
... matter of fact, we learned later that all the servants were out except the nursery governess. There were two small children. There was a servants' ball somewhere, and, with the exception of the butler, it was after two before they commenced to straggle in. Except two plain-clothes men from the central office, a physician who was with Elinor in her room, and the governess, there was no one else in the house but the children, asleep ...
— Sight Unseen • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... on at a gallop, though the horses obtained at Windsor were already jaded, and very slowly the bluff grew higher. Glancing over his shoulder, Grant saw a few moving objects straggle across the crest of the rise. They seemed to grow plainer while he watched them, and ...
— The Cattle-Baron's Daughter • Harold Bindloss
... swift, glancing movement, shrilling that peculiar cry all the while. Like clouds of drifting fog they swept by, and in such myriads that, even after the Maluka began to time them, full fifteen minutes passed before they began to straggle out, and twenty before the last few stragglers were gone. Then, as we turned up stream to look after them, we found that there the dense cloud was rising and fanning out over the tree tops. The evening drink accomplished, it was ...
— We of the Never-Never • Jeanie "Mrs. Aeneas" Gunn
... the farms and villages began to straggle into the camp. They were armed with rifles, ordinary shotguns and antique "blunderbusses;" swords, staves and aged lances. All were willing to die in the service of the little Prince; all they needed was a ...
— Truxton King - A Story of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... and with a bandage over his forehead. He bent low before her, and offered her his services, but, as he told her, he and Ridley had been talking it over, and they thought it vain to try to hold out the Tower, even if any stout men did straggle back from the battle, for the country round was chiefly Lancastrian, and it would be scarcely possible to get provisions, or to be relieved. Moreover, the Gilsland branch of the family, who would be the male heirs, were on the side of the King and Queen, and might drive ...
— Grisly Grisell • Charlotte M. Yonge
... the year, in 48-sized pots filled with rather firm soil; and as the seedlings straggle through and show two pairs of leaves, pot them off singly, and give the shelter of a close pit or frame until they become established. They must not be allowed to suffer for lack of water, but there is no necessity to give them manure water at any stage of growth. An occasional re-potting ...
— The Culture of Vegetables and Flowers From Seeds and Roots, 16th Edition • Sutton and Sons
... sail, carrying on the color of the plowed fields above the village, and elsewhere, scraps of flaming bunting flashing like flowers in a reed bed. Behind the masts, along the barbican, the cottages stand close and thick, then clamber and straggle up the acclivities behind, decreasing in their numbers as they ascend. Smoke trails inland on the wind—black as a thin crepe veil, from the funnel of a coal "tramp" about to leave the harbor, blue from the dry wood burning on a hundred cottage hearths. A smell of fish—where ...
— Lying Prophets • Eden Phillpotts
... with his leg horribly mangled. A hammock had meanwhile been rigged, and in this he was carried back to the village from which they had set out. Kettle led the retreat in front of the hammock bearers. He left his force of soldiers and carriers to follow, or straggle, or desert, as they pleased. The occupation of ivory raiding had completely passed from his mind; he had forgotten his schemes of wholesale conversion; he had nothing but Clay's ...
— A Master of Fortune • Cutcliffe Hyne
... lowered, bashful eyes, brought coffee, ripe olives from the can, potato salad, and thick, hot steaks. Soon thereafter the boys began to straggle in. Helen heard them at the gate, noisy and eager; for them the supper hour was diurnally a time of a joyous lift of spirit. They clattered along the porch like a crowd of schoolboys just dismissed; they washed outside by the kitchen door with ...
— The Desert Valley • Jackson Gregory
... and hazels that straggle about the rude wall of the little enclosure, on the contrary, they say, you may discover the broom and the rag-wort, in which witches mysteriously delight. But this ...
— J.S. Le Fanu's Ghostly Tales, Volume 5 • J.S. Le Fanu
... from the Spanish Fleet. Over the moonlit waves their galleons came Towering, crowding, plunging down the wind In full chase, while the tempter, Drake, laughed low To watch their solid battle-order break And straggle. When once more the golden dawn Dazzled the deep, the labouring galleons lay Scattered by their unequal speed. The wind Veered as the sun rose. Once again the ships Of England lay to windward. Down swooped Drake Where like a mountain the San Marcos heaved Her giant flanks alone, having out-sailed ...
— Collected Poems - Volume One (of 2) • Alfred Noyes
... I came down from the North and opened a grocery store at Jefferson Corners. It is a little store and there aren't many houses near it—just the railroad station and a big shed or two. Beyond the sheds a few cabins straggle along the road, and then begin the great plantations, which really aren't plantations any more, because nobody around here raises much of anything in these days. They just sit and sigh over the things that ...
— The Gay Cockade • Temple Bailey
... sandwiches and cake and lemonade and paper napkins and souvenirs and everything. We'll feel more like eating a little later. What do you all say? If each of us goes home we'll never get together again; we'll all straggle in there one ...
— Pee-Wee Harris Adrift • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... each carrying a share of the provisions, commenced to follow the shore of Aotea Bay. From prudential motives they did not allow themselves to straggle, and by instinct they kept a look-out over the undulating plains to the eastward, ready with their loaded carbines. Paganel, map in hand, took a professional pleasure ...
— In Search of the Castaways • Jules Verne
... hen amid her brood, Though fledged and feathered, and well pleased to part And straggle from her presence, still a brood, And she herself from the maternal bond Still undischarged; yet doth she little more 250 Than move with them in tenderness and love, A centre to the circle which they make; And now and ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. III • William Wordsworth
... twenty-two million things he liked about her that she did not shake hands like two ounces of cold fish, as did some of the girls he knew. She was dressed in a half-formal house-gown, and the one curl of her waving brown hair that would persistently straggle down upon her forehead was in its accustomed place. He had always been obsessed with a nearly irresistible impulse to put his ...
— The Making of Bobby Burnit - Being a Record of the Adventures of a Live American Young Man • George Randolph Chester
... generous sons and daughters of Kentucky and Tennessee, conferring the boon of freedom on the African race, within their borders. Missouri and Maryland will soon follow their example; nor will North Carolina and Virginia long lag behind; South Carolina will straggle long and hard, but she must ultimately yield; and the soft zephyr of freedom will then fan the fair fields of Alabama, Mississippi and Arkansas; Louisiana will feel its refreshing influence; and the Lone Star, (Texas), cannot long stand alone, in her opposition, ...
— A Review of Uncle Tom's Cabin - or, An Essay on Slavery • A. Woodward
... susceptible of politeness, as others are only capable of great talents or solid virtues. It is true politeness puts merit forward, and renders it agreeable, and a man must have eminent qualifications to support himself without it." Perhaps even the greatest merit cannot successfully straggle against unfortunate and disagreeable manners. Lord Chesterfield says that the Duke of Marlborough owed his first promotions to the suavity of his manners, and that without it he ...
— The Laws of Etiquette • A Gentleman
... astronomers still allow to straggle over their star maps no longer have any real scientific interest, they still possess a certain charm, not only for the student of astronomy, but for many who care little or nothing about astronomy as a science. When I was giving a course of twelve lectures ...
— Myths and Marvels of Astronomy • Richard A. Proctor
... is not much of a spieler. Raucous-voiced, red- faced, greasy, he stands outside his gaudy tent, dilating on the wonders within. One or two, perhaps, straggle in. But the crowd, made wary by bitter experience of the sham and cheap fraud behind the tawdry canvas flap, stops a moment, laughs, and passes on. Then Temptation, in a panic, seeing his audience drifting away, summons from inside the tent his bespangled and bewitching ...
— Roast Beef, Medium • Edna Ferber
... Pacific slope of North America conspicuously allied with Oceanica in cultural achievements, whose origin he therefore assigns to that vast congeries of islands stretching from Asia toward South America in latitude 25 deg. south. These islands, closely clustered as far as the Paumota group, straggle along with widening spaces between, through Easter Isle, which carries the indestructible memorials of a strange civilization, through Sala-y-Gomez, San Felix, and St. Ambrose almost to the threshold of the Peruvian coast. It is to be noted that these islands lie just outside the westward-bearing ...
— Influences of Geographic Environment - On the Basis of Ratzel's System of Anthropo-Geography • Ellen Churchill Semple
... passed. The bit of wreck that was jammed between the rocks went to pieces and came ashore. Ben's mate came with it, but no Noll. The men began to straggle homeward, weary and worn with the night's vigil, till only Dirk and Hark Darby were left to keep the stricken master of the stone house company. Oh, such a weary waiting it was!—the ceaseless pouring of the waves upon ...
— Culm Rock - The Story of a Year: What it Brought and What it Taught • Glance Gaylord
... fields; heights called "hills;" and wood of fair growth,—one reads of "beech-avenues" of "high linden-avenues:"—a country rather of the ornamented sort, before the Prince with his improvements settled there. Many lakes and lakelets in it, as usual hereabouts; the loitering waters straggle, all over that region, into meshes of lakes. Reinsberg itself, Village and Schloss, stands on the edge of a pleasant Lake, last of a mesh of such: the SUMMARY, or outfall, of which, already here a good strong brook or stream, is called the RHEIN, Rhyn or Rein; and gives name to the little place. ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. X. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—At Reinsberg—1736-1740 • Thomas Carlyle
... from the Chicago men who step off of its platforms and tarry with us. We send our brides off on it with an entire change of bill at each performance. We get our peeps into wonderland and romance and comedy from the theatrical troupes which straggle out of its cars and rush to the baggage car to make sure that no varlet has attached their trunks since the last stop. It is the magic carpet which carries our youth forth into the great world to wonder and learn and prevail. And now and then ...
— Homeburg Memories • George Helgesen Fitch
... with immense waste of time and toil, proved useless under the fire that galled the artillerymen. The weak, undisciplined, and bewildered army was hemmed in on every side, and the men were shot down as they huddled together or tried to straggle away, till half their number was left upon the field. Of course none of the wounded were spared. The Americans were tomahawked and scalped where they fell; one of the savages told afterwards that he plied his hatchet until he could hardly lift his arm. All the Ohio tribes shared ...
— Stories Of Ohio - 1897 • William Dean Howells
... as a sort of summer resort by Warsaw people, was nothing but blackened chimneys and heaps of brick. The Russians had burned everything, and the inhabitants, who had fled into the pines, were just now beginning to straggle back. Some had set up little stands in front of their burned houses and were trying to sell apples, plums, pears, about the only marketable thing left; some were cleaning brick and trying to rebuild, ...
— Antwerp to Gallipoli - A Year of the War on Many Fronts—and Behind Them • Arthur Ruhl
... flitter closer to the ground so that when a domed structure arose out of a tangle of overgrown shrubs and trees they were not more than fifty feet above it. There was no sign of life about the dwelling, if dwelling it was, and the unkempt straggle of growing things suggested that it had been left to itself through more than one season. Lablet wanted to set down and explore, but the captain was intent upon reaching the city. A solitary farm was of little value compared with what they might learn from ...
— Star Born • Andre Norton
... ranks," Sir John said; "remember that any who straggle may be attacked by a score of these wild men, and slain before others can come to their help. Ride forward in perfect silence, till we are ...
— Both Sides the Border - A Tale of Hotspur and Glendower • G. A. Henty
... which had massed troops on the Wallachian frontier, remained on the defensive, but in October Omar Pasha assumed the aggressive, sending a small force across the Danube at Vidin, and it was thought that the straggle between the contending forces would take place in 'Lesser Wallachia.' Omar Pasha, however, either intended this as a feint, or changed his plan, for he soon afterwards occupied strong positions on the Danube at Turtukai and Oltenitza, between Silistria and Rustchuk, ...
— Roumania Past and Present • James Samuelson
... told, was disastrous to them. Watanabe and Ashizuke were killed by Tajima no Kami's own hand. Kondo[u] Noborinosuke thrust his spear through the belly of Yokoyama Daizo[u]. Jinnai brought off in safety the bulk of the party. Ogita had tried to bring down the lady princess by a gun shot. In the straggle with Hiko[u]zaemon he purposely did the old man as little injury as possible. Respect for the grand old warrior, an amused interest in one whose influence lay in plain speaking, held his hand. If O[u]kubo Dono was entitled freely to express his opinion of the Sho[u]gun Ke, Kuro[u]ji ...
— Bakemono Yashiki (The Haunted House) - Tales of the Tokugawa, Volume 2 (of 2) • James S. De Benneville
... passing and repassing; one line carrying its guns and camp outfit, its whole paraphernalia of war, going to the battle front in the hills; another never-ceasing procession with its martial impedimenta coming out of the hills to rest. A few horses hauling big gun carriages straggle through the dust. Here and there, but rarely, is a group of marching men—generally men singing as they march. Occasionally a troop of German prisoners marching with the goose step, comes swinging along carrying their shovels at a martial angle—road menders—which proves ...
— The Martial Adventures of Henry and Me • William Allen White
... humiliation of the Seven Years' War. Crippled and impoverished as she was at its close, France could do nothing to break the world-power which was rising in front of her; but in the very moment of her defeat, the foresight of Choiseul had seen in a future straggle between England and her Colonies a chance of ruining the great fabric which Pitt's triumphs had built up. Nor was Pitt blind to the steady resolve of France to renew the fight. In every attempt which he had made to construct a Ministry he had laid down as the corner-stone of his foreign policy ...
— History of the English People, Volume VIII (of 8) - Modern England, 1760-1815 • John Richard Green
... know that they are near home, and prick up their ears, and go briskly onward. Scarcely a quarter of a mile is gone before the buildings of the "lower plantation" come into view,—a row of cabins built irregularly upon the highest points straggle along the river banks. Each cabin has its little garden with its row of coleworts and its beehives, or perhaps a pumpkin or two shows its yellow sides amid the withered vines. Outside the cabins, fish-nets are hung to dry, and from within comes the sleepy drone of ...
— Plantation Sketches • Margaret Devereux
... meant to abide to the end. As all old soldiers know, the fighting line, granting that enough remain to make a fighting line, is never so strong as the moment after the first shock of battle has shaken out the men that always straggle on the march and skulk on the field. When, therefore, the first compact line faced about, it was with determination and with hope; yet scarcely had the fires of resolution been relit and begun to kindle to a glow than they were ...
— History of the Nineteenth Army Corps • Richard Biddle Irwin
... the French dared not straggle. Every man who left the ranks or lagged behind was killed. The Arabs were seldom seen, but they lay concealed behind every inequality of the ground, every clump of bushes. Occasionally, when there seemed to be an opening, a horde of Arabs would sweep ...
— At Aboukir and Acre - A Story of Napoleon's Invasion of Egypt • George Alfred Henty
... hills open, and you come to the prettiest village on the whole coast. The green common slopes down to the sea, and great woods rustle and look glad all round the margin of the luxuriant grass-land. Along the cliff straggle a few stone houses, and the square tower with its sinister arrow-holes dominates the row. There is smooth water inshore; but half a mile or so out eastward there runs a low range of rocks. One night a terrible storm broke on the ...
— The Romance of the Coast • James Runciman
... throng—not much of a feat, considering his advantages. He placed himself in the lead, his wooden sword still in hand, and solemnly directed the march, conforming his pace to theirs and occasionally turning as if to see that his forces did not straggle. Surely such a leader never before ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Vol. II: In the Midst of Life: Tales of Soldiers and Civilians • Ambrose Bierce
... gradually falling. Now we can only see white things clearly—the new parts of houses, the walls, the high road, joined to the other one by footpaths which straggle through the dark fields, the big white stones, tranquil as sheep, and the horse-pond, whose gleam amid the far obscurity imitates whiteness in unexpected fashion. Then we can only see light things—the stains of faces and hands, those faces which see each other in the gloom longer than ...
— Light • Henri Barbusse
... Colonel Graves sadly. "Plenty of men would volunteer, but, much as every one is suffering—the ladies almost as bad as your wounded, Morton—I dare not send them, for they would never get back with their loads. Many of the brave fellows would straggle back, of course, but instead of bringing ice, Doctor, they would be bearing their ...
— Fix Bay'nets - The Regiment in the Hills • George Manville Fenn
... tons of equipments and provisions over the nearly impassable Chilkoot and White Passes. For those who came too late in the season it was quite impassable, the trails and rivers were stopped by snow and ice, and numbers had to endure a long and miserable winter in the primitive coast settlements or straggle back ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 1 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... every nobler portion of the town The curling billows roll their restless tide: In parties now they straggle up and down, As armies, unopposed, for ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol I - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden
... lived, poor fellow, five miles out of town, I drove C—— down. It was such a day as I hope, for the credit of nature, is seldom seen in any parts but these—muddy, foggy, wet, dark, cold, and unutterably wretched in every possible respect. Now, C—— has enormous whiskers, which straggle all down his throat in such weather, and stick out in front of him, like a partially unravelled bird's-nest; so that he looks queer enough at the best, but when he is very wet, and in a state between jollity ...
— The Letters of Charles Dickens - Vol. 3 (of 3), 1836-1870 • Charles Dickens
... fragment to fragment, and tell me, that were I to stay five years at Rome, I should not see half it contained. The thought alone, of so much to look at, is quite distracting, and makes me resolve to view nothing at all in a scientific way; but straggle and wander about, just as the spirit chooses. This evening, it led me to the Coliseo, and excited a vehement desire in me to break down and pulverize the whole circle of saints' nests and chapels, which disgrace ...
— Dreams, Waking Thoughts, and Incidents • William Beckford
... and the Germans alternating in its possession. Victory at this point finally lay with the British, who on July 12 gained possession of the whole locality, together with the Trones wood, which had also been the scene of a bloody straggle. By this time some 30,000 German prisoners had been taken by the Allies during the offensive, while the losses in killed and wounded on both sides, in the absence of official reports, could only ...
— America's War for Humanity • Thomas Herbert Russell
... And if you're going to be an American violinist you'll have to look it—with a foreign finish." He let his hair grow. Fanny watched with interest for the appearance of the unruly lock which had been wont to straggle over his white forehead in his schoolboy days. The new and well-cut American clothes effected surprisingly little change. Fanny, surveying him, shook ...
— Fanny Herself • Edna Ferber
... baronial and old-world look. Fort Santo Antonio, a tall white house upon a bastioned terrace, crowns proudly enough a knob of black rock and low green growth. On both sides of it, north and south, stretches the town; from this distance it appears a straggle of brown thatched huts and hovels, enlivened here and there by some whitewashed establishments, mining or 'in the mercanteel.' The soil is ruddy and rusty, and we have the usual ...
— To The Gold Coast for Gold, Vol. II - A Personal Narrative • Richard Francis Burton and Verney Lovett Cameron
... flowering trailers. It is often difficult to tell what the architecture is, or what is house and what is vegetation; for all angles, and lattices, and balustrades, and verandahs are hidden by jessamine or passion-flowers, or the gorgeous flame-like Bougainvillea. Many of the dwellings straggle over the ground without an upper story, and have very deep verandahs, through which I caught glimpses of cool, shady rooms, with matted floors. Some look as if they had been transported from the old-fashioned villages of the Connecticut Valley, with their clap-board fronts painted white and jalousies ...
— The Hawaiian Archipelago • Isabella L. Bird
... with corselet nor casque (Being loth to burden the brave brown mare). Young Clare kept watch on the wall—he cried, "Now, haste, Ralph! this is the time to seize; The rebels are round us on every side, But here they straggle by twos and threes." Then out I led her, and up I sprung, And the postern door on its ...
— Poems • Adam Lindsay Gordon
... consul, nor the master of the horse those of the dictator. No one would then pay any deference to men, no, nor even to the gods. Neither edicts of generals nor auspices would be observed. The soldiers, without leave of absence, would straggle at random through the lands of friends and of foes; and regardless of their oath would, influenced solely by a wanton humour, quit the service whenever they might choose. The standards would be unattended and forsaken: the men would neither assemble in pursuance ...
— The History of Rome, Books 01 to 08 • Titus Livius
... the ground the little strawberry baskets may be knocked apart without disturbing the plant nearly so much as if it were planted in a compact box. Be sure to line the basket with paper before filling with earth. When the plants began to straggle about and bend over stakes were driven into the ground and the plants tied ...
— The Library of Work and Play: Gardening and Farming. • Ellen Eddy Shaw
... of bushes and shrubs. Follow the East Lyn up to Watersmeet, which is about two miles from Lynmouth through one of the most beautiful wooded gorges in England. Past the hotels you go, and a little straggle of small modern houses, past the untidy little patch which would be the suburb of a larger community, with upturned boats and washing drying in the sun, and within five minutes a turn of the road hides Lynmouth and the sea from your backward look, and you stand in ...
— Lynton and Lynmouth - A Pageant of Cliff & Moorland • John Presland
... were worn out, and this, even more than their raggedness, made winter marching out of the question. The barefooted men had to be left behind, and of those who started the more poorly shod would straggle, no matter how good their own will was or how carefully the officers tried to enforce discipline and ...
— Military Reminiscences of the Civil War V2 • Jacob Dolson Cox
... to straggle in next week. Coneways' isn't due until the 31st—the very last minute! But he's always prompt, ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol 31, No 2, June 1908 • Various
... forty in number, straggle in from the dining-room by twos and threes, chatting in low tones. The men and women with few exceptions separate into two groups, the women congregating in the left right angle of chairs, the men sitting or standing in the right right angle. In appearance, most of the patients ...
— The Straw • Eugene O'Neill
... dropping out of the ranks filled the woods with a penumbra of stragglers. Hunger and fatigue, stimulated by the remembrance of abandoned camps passed through, later in the day led squads—Beauregard and some of his staff say, led regiments—to straggle back from the fighting front to the restful and attractive rear. Language cannot be stronger than that used by General Beauregard. The fire of the gunboats, many of the shells passing over the high river-bank and exploding far inland, ...
— From Fort Henry to Corinth • Manning Ferguson Force
... night; For folk by day are rare, yet a still week Leaves hardly ten yards anywhere uncrossed; Tempest spreads all revirginate like snow, Half burying dead wood snapped off from tossed trees, Since right along the foreshore, out of reach Of furious driven waves, three hundred pines Straggle the marches between sand and soil. Like maps of stone-walled fields their branching roots Hold the silt still so that thin grass grows there, Its blades whitened with travelling powdery drift The besom of the lightest breeze sets stirring. That woman's gaze toils worn ...
— Miscellany of Poetry - 1919 • Various
... larger proportion than some other States, but they spring up in all sorts of out-of-the-way places. The young fellow I saw this morning had on an old flannel shirt, a pair of trowsers that meant hard work, and a cheap cloth cap pushed back on his head so as to let the large waves of hair straggle out over his forehead; he was tugging at his rope with the other sailors, but upon my word I don't think I have seen a young English nobleman of all those whom I have looked upon that answered to the notion of "blood" so well as this young ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... for Sunday was Beetle Ring's day—not of rest, but of carousal. Two men had started out rather early—the camp's jug delegation to the Skylark. Presently the men began to straggle out to the snug row of sheds where the horses were kept. Posey Breem yawned lazily as he threw open the door of his particular stall, then suddenly brought himself together with ...
— Good Cheer Stories Every Child Should Know • Various
... before the end of March (ante pp. 432-435). Then, feeling themselves powerless as an independent party, they changed their tactics. No sooner had the Protectoratists or Cromwellians triumphed collectively under Thurloe's leadership than there had begun among them that fatal straggle between the two divisions of their body of which the beaten Republicans could not fail to take advantage. The Court party of the Cromwellians, still led by Thurloe in the Commons, desired to preserve the Protectorate ...
— The Life of John Milton, Volume 5 (of 7), 1654-1660 • David Masson
... invited to dinner the new British Minister Merry and his wife, the Spanish Minister Yrujo and his wife, the French Minister Pichon and his wife, and Mr. and Mrs. Madison. When dinner was announced, Mr. Jefferson gave his hand to Mrs. Madison and seated her on his right, leaving the rest to straggle in as they pleased. Merry, fresh from the Court of St. James, was aghast and affronted; and when a few days later, at a dinner given by the Secretary of State, he saw Mrs. Merry left without an escort, while Mr. Madison ...
— Jefferson and his Colleagues - A Chronicle of the Virginia Dynasty, Volume 15 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Allen Johnson
... one shivering forms straggle up from below, like reluctant spirits answering a premature last call. Bare feet in slippers, and shivering forms with overcoats over nightgowns, gradually ...
— Editorials from the Hearst Newspapers • Arthur Brisbane
... curtain of mist lifted. Sight and mind and soul concentrated on the nearest horror. She saw the whirlpool at the foot of the garden, horses and men in a straggle among dead and wounded, which had grown fiercer now that the portion of the retreat that had not been cut off in the defile pressed forward the more madly. She had thought of herself as ashes; as an immovable creature of flayed nerves, incapable ...
— The Last Shot • Frederick Palmer
... opinion of himself. I cannot help thinking, as I look at him, that I have seen civilised men almost as well contented with themselves with as little cause. We do not find any of our men inclined to straggle, after what they have seen. We hurry down to the beach. The boat has been left hauled off at some distance, under charge of three men, well armed. They pull in when they see us, and say that they are not a little glad to find us safe, ...
— The Cruise of the Mary Rose - Here and There in the Pacific • William H. G. Kingston
... itself on them, like a thin gauze veil. These hedges are not all so well kept and trimmed as I expected to find them. Some, it is true, are cut very carefully; these are generally hedges to ornamental grounds; but many of those which separate the fields straggle and sprawl, and have some high bushes and some low ones, and, in short, are no more like a hedge than many rows of bushes that we have at home. But such as they are, they are the only dividing lines of the fields, and it is certainly ...
— Sunny Memories Of Foreign Lands, Volume 1 (of 2) • Harriet Elizabeth (Beecher) Stowe
... of soldiers, enjoying a brief holiday from the trenches in a cantonment near the field, straggle forward and gather timidly about the airplane, listening open-mouthed for what its rider is ...
— Flying for France • James R. McConnell
... of cultivation. There are some side-hills so rocky and sterile as to defy human industry, and these are given up to brush-wood, which I presume is cut occasionally and bound into faggots for fuel. Some of it may straggle up, if permitted, into trees, but I saw little that would fairly justify the designation of Forest. Of Fruit-trees, save in the villages, there ...
— Glances at Europe - In a Series of Letters from Great Britain, France, Italy, - Switzerland, &c. During the Summer of 1851. • Horace Greeley
... off—and Blunt unlimbered his guns, and began to fire, when we soon saw a body of cavalry moving off across our front, to turn our left flank, and Blunt said we must go back to defend our camp. So he limbered up, and we all (i.e. our squadron and Blunt's guns) began to straggle back through the high crops. But Blunt said he must leave one troop with two of his guns, and French's troop was stopped for the purpose. Instead of staying with it, he felt so sure we should have a chance at the cavalry we had seen (Mutineers) that he came on with me, and together ...
— Seen and Unseen • E. Katharine Bates
... getting them roused to do anything for three days to come. And yet the work is urgent, and plenty of it. "Iglau, first of all," urges Friedrich, "where the Austrians, 10,000 or so, under Prince Lobkowitz, have posted themselves [right flank of that long straggle of Winter Cantonments, which goes leftwards to Budweis and farther], and made Magazines: possession of Iglau is the foundation-stone of our affairs. And if we would have Iglau WITH the Magazines and not without, surely ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XIII. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... said tersely. "One, with the address written in the clear, bold hand of a gentleman, and one, the straggle of a country clod-hopper." ...
— A Daughter of the Land • Gene Stratton-Porter
... Xanadu, and twenty other whimsical things. At nearly midnight, when we go to bed, we take a last look at it. It is a ruin, like the Colosseum,—great gaps of darkness are there, with broken rows of splendor. The lights are gone on one side the dome,—they straggle fitfully here and there down the other and over the faade, fading even as we look. It is melancholy enough. It is a bankrupt heiress, an old and wrinkled beauty, that tells strange tales of its former wealth and charms, when the world was ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various
... ambition, and in any country but England she would have been a conspirator, and in old times might have risen to be a queen; but as it was, she was only a proud, discontented woman. She knew, too, that it was all she could be—all that her sex allowed her to be—yet did she not the less straggle and toil on. The fate of her father still haunted her; her promise and his death-bed still rose oft and solemnly before leer; the humiliations she had known in her early condition—the homage that had attended her later ...
— Godolphin, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... the fugitives did not make for the city, but scattered themselves all over the country, which was hilly and wooded, full of torrents and precipices, and impassable for cavalry, he made no pursuit, but encamped before dark. As he conjectured that the enemy after their rout would straggle back into the city by twos and threes under cover of the darkness, he concealed many of the Achaeans, armed with daggers, in the rough ground near the city. By this stratagem Nabis's force suffered great ...
— Plutarch's Lives, Volume II • Aubrey Stewart & George Long
... share in a sacrifice for sin! (5.) For these there remains nothing but a fearful looking for of judgment! (6.) Wherefore these are the true fugitives and vagabonds, that being left of God, of Christ, of grace, and of the promise, and being beyond all hope, wander and straggle to and fro, even as the devil, their associate, until their time shall come to die, or until they descend in ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... of its immense abbey the town of Villeneuve has built itself a rough faubourg; the fragments with which the soil was covered having been, I suppose, a quarry of material. There are no streets; the small, shabby houses, almost hovels, straggle at random over the uneven ground. The only im- portant feature is a convent of cloistered nuns, who have a large garden (always within the walls) behind their house, and whose doleful establishment you look down into, or down at simply, from the battlements of the citadel. One ...
— A Little Tour in France • Henry James
... that prudence could not then approve, That clung to Nature with a truant's love, O'er Gallia's wastes of corn my footsteps led; 45 Her files of road-elms, high above my head In long-drawn vista, rustling in the breeze; Or where her pathways straggle as they please By lonely farms and secret villages. But lo! the Alps ascending white in air, [11] 50 Toy with the ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth - Volume 1 of 8 • Edited by William Knight
... their teeth and fund them innosent. they all appear to be fond of the water, to which they fly for shelter immediately on being pursued.- we saw much sign of Elk but met with none of them. from the appearance of bones and excrement of old date the buffaloe sometimes straggle into this valley; but there is no fresh sighn of them and I begin think that our harrvest of white puddings is at an end, at least untill our return to the buffaloe country. our trio of pests still invade and obstruct us on all occasions, ...
— The Journals of Lewis and Clark • Meriwether Lewis et al
... order and without premeditated plan. "I have no drill-sergeant to arrange my pieces (of writing) save hap-hazard only," he writes; "just as my ideas present themselves, I heap them together; sometimes they come rushing in a throng, sometimes they straggle single file. I like to be seen at my natural and ordinary pace, all a-hobble though it be; I let myself go, just as it happens. The parlance I like is a simple and natural parlance, the same on paper as in the ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume V. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... of these birds: and besides, as I have prevailed on him to buy the Naturalist's Journal (with which he is much delighted), I shall expect that he will be very exact in his dates. It is very extraordinary, as you observe, that a bird so common with us should never straggle to you. ...
— The Natural History of Selborne • Gilbert White
... light! The first burst of flame drives all the sad lonesome feelings away, and the blaze of the increasing fire creates positively a home-feeling in the breast. The reason of this is plain enough. Before the fire is kindled the eye wanders restlessly through the dim light that may chance to straggle among the trees. The mind follows the eye, and gets lost among indistinct objects which it cannot understand. The feelings and the faculties are scattered—fixed upon nothing, except perhaps on this, that the wanderer ...
— Digging for Gold - Adventures in California • R.M. Ballantyne
... round we run through an eternity of lives and deaths. Surfeited with the unqualified pleasures of heaven, we "straggle down to this terrene nativity:" When, amid the sour exposures and cruel storms of the world, we have renewed our appetite for the divine ambrosia of peace and sweetness, we forsake the body and ascend to heaven; this constant ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... wished to get on with the report of the committee of supply on the ordnance estimates. On a division, however, ministers were left in a minority of twenty-two. It was clear from this that ministers had more to decide on than the reform question, and that they had to straggle not merely for their bill, but their places. On the next day, therefore, they ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... the "newtakes" straggle up Cosdon's eastern flank and mark a struggle between man and the giant beacon, Chris Blanchard rested a while upon the grass by the highway. Tim, wrapped in a shawl, slept soundly beside his mother, and she sat with her elbows ...
— Children of the Mist • Eden Phillpotts
... ain't my equal, none of 'em, man to man. All men are born free an' equal, says the Constitution an' by-laws of this country of ours. Granted. But they don't stay that way long. They're all lined up to toe the mark on the start, but watch 'em straggle afore they've run a ...
— A Man to His Mate • J. Allan Dunn
... surprised to have visitors drop in on him at that hour. The better part of his income was derived from the sale of water, brought up from his well by burro power, to prospectors and others who happened along that way. Such customers were liable to straggle in from any ...
— Frank Merriwell, Junior's, Golden Trail - or, The Fugitive Professor • Burt L. Standish
... with the long, steady stroke of the practised oarsman, Stafford sent the boat along like an arrow, and presently he drove it up to the spot where the dog strove in its death straggle. ...
— At Love's Cost • Charles Garvice |
