"Straggle" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... of a Highland army, the first thing I did was to advise the Prince to endeavour to get proper people for provisors and commissaries, for otherwise there would be no keeping the men together, and they would straggle through the whole country upon their marches if it was left to themselves to find provisions; which, beside the inconveniency of irregular marches, and much time lost, great abuses would be committed, which, above all things, we were to ...
— Memoirs of the Jacobites of 1715 and 1745 - Volume III. • Mrs. Thomson
... sees a "blood-red beam through the shutter's chink," which proves that morning is come. Let him open the lattice and see! He goes to open it, and no movement can he make but vexes her, as he gropes his way where the "tall, naked geraniums straggle"; pushes the lattice, which is behind a frame, so awkwardly that a shower of dust falls on her; fumbles at the slide-bolt, till she exclaims that "of course it catches!" At last he succeeds in getting the window opened, and her only direct acknowledgment is to ...
— Browning's Heroines • Ethel Colburn Mayne
... 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 ...
— Lying Prophets • Eden Phillpotts
... devising means of subsistence for the widows and orphans of the men who will straggle out to be slaughtered to-night,' said Luciano; 'you have ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... and work when the children were tolerably good and obeyed her, but boys were a great deal too much for her, and she had frail health, and such a bad leg that she never could walk down the lane to the old Church. So, after Sunday School, the children used to straggle down to Church without anyone to look after them, and sit on the benches in the aisle and do pretty much what they pleased, except when admonished by Master ...
— Old Times at Otterbourne • Charlotte M. Yonge
... of the lake. These birds are not such exclusive westerners as their ebon-hued cousins just described; for I found them breeding at Lake Minnetonka, near Minneapolis, Minnesota, a few years ago, and they sometimes straggle, I believe, as far east as Ohio. A most beautiful bird is this member of the Icteridae family, a kind of Beau Brummel among his fellows, with his glossy black coat and rich yellow—and even orange, in highest feather—mantle covering the whole head, neck, and ...
— Birds of the Rockies • Leander Sylvester Keyser
... agonies he was to depict, tramping from one bed to another until he reached the one where the cries and contortions were the most frightful. Such a scene he has reproduced. No hospital physician would have pictured the straggle in such colors. In the same way, that other realist, M. Zola, has painted a patient suffering from delirium tremens, the disease known to common speech as "the horrors." In describing this case he does all that language can do to make it more horrible ...
— Over the Teacups • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... nine o'clock, and two hours behind schedule, when a very limp and rumpled Lilly followed the weary straggle of weary passengers through the pale fog of the New Jersey station to the waiting ferry. She found a place at the very bow, and, standing there beside her bags, hat off to the sudden kiss of fresh air, her prostrated senses seemed ...
— Star-Dust • Fannie Hurst
... the evenin', for instance. It was after the second number, and I'd made a dash into the gents' dressin' room to see if my white tie showed any symptoms of ridin' up in the back, and I'd just strolled out into the entrance hall again, watchin' the push straggle in, when who should show up through the double doors but a tall, lanky young chap with lop ears and a nose one was bound ...
— Torchy, Private Sec. • Sewell Ford
... 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 finger ...
— The Making of Bobby Burnit - Being a Record of the Adventures of a Live American Young Man • George Randolph Chester
... higher than if I had been overcharged separately for everything. "Mr." is the Master of the Arts of extras. He does not wish to make a profit; oh no! but—ahem—he makes it. As for the outsiders who straggle in casually for luncheon and want to be sharp with "Mr." afterwards, they are soon settled. One who won't be done, complains of a prince's ransom for a potato-salad.—"If you haf pertatas, you pay for pertatas."—TALLEYRAND could not ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 103, August 27, 1892 • Various
... and reconnoitres, cautiously; the silence still continuing, bodies follow heads, and jaded, half smothered creatures group themselves about, stretch their cramped limbs, draw in deep draughts of the grateful fresh air, gossip with the neighbors from the next cave; maybe straggle off home presently, or take a lounge through the town, if the stillness continues; and will scurry to the holes again, by-and-bye, when the war- tempest ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... fortresses are less isolated than ours were at that period, and, secondly, no such intelligent being as the Chieftain you have named, had started up among the Indian nations until now. What Tecumseh may not effect in course of time, should he not perish in the straggle for his country's liberty, ought to be a matter of serious consideration ...
— The Canadian Brothers - or The Prophecy Fulfilled • John Richardson
... Its chronology is as important as its localities, and it is hard to follow the course of the struggle if the narrative loses itself in the different threads of the various corps engaged. For all were fighting at the same time, and the only generalizations possible are that the straggle tended to concentrate from both wings towards the apex at Ypres and to culminate in the combat of the last day ...
— A Short History of the Great War • A.F. Pollard
... the tower; but they could not bear to turn away, though the clock beneath pealed out hour after hour; for still, as the flames were subdued in one place they broke out in another; but gradually smoke became predominant, and then grew thinner, and as some of the black specks began to straggle into the road as if returning to Compton, the desire to hear became more pressing than that to see, and the three ladies began to descend—a slow and weary process, cutting them off from the view, and lasting so long, that ...
— The Three Brides • Charlotte M. Yonge
... bullets and faded by weather, still sheds a sorrowful beauty that is perhaps the more impressive because of these marks of desecration. It forms the center of the tiny village, whose houses cluster close to the mourning image and then straggle thinly along the three roads. Not even the war which swept over in all its ferocity has robbed Vauchelles of its winding charm. Many houses have collapsed, but the village still retains its ancient outline of peaked roofs, and on all sides orderly ...
— Where the Sabots Clatter Again • Katherine Shortall
... limited in its scope, it requires no narrator. In a dozen scenes or so the characters may set it forth on their own account, and we have only to look on; nobody need stand by and expound. The situation involves no more than a small company of people, and there is no reason for them to straggle far, in space or time; on the contrary, the compactness of the situation is one of its special marks. Its point is that it belongs to a little organized circle, a well-defined incident in their lives. And since the root ...
— The Craft of Fiction • Percy Lubbock
... which 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 in Boston, ...
— Myths and Marvels of Astronomy • Richard A. Proctor
... time the militia began to straggle in; the regular officers had long been busy getting their own troops, artillery, and military stores in readiness. The regulars felt the utmost disappointment at the appearance of the militia. They numbered ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume Three - The Founding of the Trans-Alleghany Commonwealths, 1784-1790 • Theodore Roosevelt
... and foot, till they heard farther. In the next place, seeing the savages were all come on shore, and that they had bent their course directly that way, they opened the fences where the milch cows were kept, and drove them all out; leaving their goats to straggle in the woods, whither they pleased, that the savages might think they were all bred wild; but the rogue who came with them was too cunning for that, and gave them an account of it all, for they went directly to ...
— The Further Adventures of Robinson Crusoe • Daniel Defoe
... 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. The back ...
— Moths of the Limberlost • Gene Stratton-Porter
... together," replied Bart. "We have a compass, and can find our way back, but if we straggle off alone some of us may get lost, and none of us knows these woods well enough to ...
— Frank Roscoe's Secret • Allen Chapman
... "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 on her knees and one hand under her ...
— Children of the Mist • Eden Phillpotts
... the Jumna Musjid for morning prayer, and the nonchalant British officials began to straggle into the vacant Hall of ...
— A Fascinating Traitor • Richard Henry Savage
... bass voice once more, "supposing some of the military should straggle along? There might be one who has seen you before. Alas! I despair! You will not hide yourself; you will stay here till they ...
— Arms and the Woman • Harold MacGrath
... the westward, the watering places the native had relied on were found to be dry, and it was only after the most acute sufferings from thirst, and the loss of some more horses, that they managed to straggle back to Mount Welcome. Austin's conduct during these terrible marches seems to have approached the heroic. When his companions fell off one by one and laid down to die, and the native inhabitant of the wilds was cowering weeping under a bush, he managed ...
— The History of Australian Exploration from 1788 to 1888 • Ernest Favenc
... employ, whose chief business was to furnish plenty of wood for the guides' camp and start a good fire every evening by sundown. As it grew dark and the blaze shone high and bright, the guests would begin to straggle in; and every man, woman and child seemed to view it as a religious duty to pause by the fire and add a stick or two, before passing into camp. The wood was thrown on endwise, crosswise, or any way, so that it would burn, precisely as a ...
— Woodcraft • George W. Sears
... the next morning. The British, who had some women and children with them, and who still kept a good deal of rum in their canteens, began to stir much earlier than had been arranged. The French escort had not arrived when the British column began to straggle out on the road to Fort Edward. When the march began the scattered column was two or three times as long as it ought to have been. Meanwhile a savage enemy was on the alert. Before daylight the Abnakis of Acadia, ...
— The Passing of New France - A Chronicle of Montcalm • William Wood
... Terre, and west of it is another island known as Grande Isle. Between these two long land gates is a broad, deep channel which serves as entrance to the bay. On the western side lies a host of smaller islands, the passes between them made by the bayous which straggle down through the land. Northward the bay stretches sixteen miles inland, and then breaks up into a medley of bayous and small lakes, cutting far into the land, and yielding an easy passage to the level of the Mississippi, opposite ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 2 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... other mule, doesn't care—some one'll have to keep him moving. I usually carry a little rubber sling shot in my pocket, and when Nigger gets too lazy and begins to straggle off I turn around and peck him one with a pebble. Then you ought to see him get into his place and promise to ...
— The Young Alaskans on the Missouri • Emerson Hough
... the trumpeter, who was always talking about Mayorga and Rueda and Bennyventy.) 'We made the rear-guard, under General Paget, and drove the French every time; and all the infantry did was to sit about in wine-shops till we whipped 'em out, an' steal an' straggle an' play the tom-fool in general. And when it came to a stand-up fight at Corunna, 'twas the horse, or the best part of it, that had to stay sea-sick aboard the transports, an' watch the infantry in the thick o' the caper. Very well they behaved, too; 'specially ...
— Wandering Heath • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... unintermitted hollow blowing of the wind (according to the weather) are equally mournful. The rotten soil is cleft and torn into gulleys and small channels, in which the mahogany-coloured rivulets, springing from the peat morass, straggle silently with a sluggish motion in harmony with the lifeless scene. There, if a weedy-roofed hut do appear, (detected by its thin feeble smoke column) or the shepherd who tenants it should show his solitary figure in the distance, the only upright ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol 58, No. 357, July 1845 • Various
... eyes to see a necklace of opalescent jewels gathering about his neck; he tore at it and the phosphorescent water gleamed all about him with feathery pendants. And when his head thrust above water, the moment's respite had allowed the skiff to straggle beyond his reach. ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1921 • Various
... 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
... aside that Carlsen's bullin' 'em, as you say. Equal? They 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 tenth ...
— A Man to His Mate • J. Allan Dunn
... copra on their lands; women bound for the bush to gather flowers against the evening toilet; and, twice a day, the toddy-cutters, each with his knife and shell. In the first grey of the morning, and again late in the afternoon, these would straggle past about their tree-top business, strike off here and there into the bush, and vanish from the face of the earth. At about the same hour, if the tide be low in the lagoon, you are likely to be bound yourself across ...
— In the South Seas • Robert Louis Stevenson
... of the enemy passed, laden in the most extraordinary degree with the spoil of war. They had only a rough sort of discipline in their retirement: the captains or chieftains marched together, leaving the companies to straggle as they might, for was not the country deserted by every living body but themselves? In van of them they drove several hundreds of black and red cattle, and with the aid of some rough ponies, that pulled such sledges (called carns) as are used for the hauling home of peat ...
— John Splendid - The Tale of a Poor Gentleman, and the Little Wars of Lorn • Neil Munro
... with a smile, "that you would not submit tamely to death. You have a brave soul, my little sister, and will know how to straggle against misfortune. But I—I have no spirit, I can only suffer and obey; and before I die, I must open my heart to you—you shall receive ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... going in closer to discover what I can," I said quietly. "I may be gone for half an hour. Advance your men carefully into the shadow of that cabin there, and wait orders. Don't let them straggle, for I want to know where they are." I bent lower and whispered in his ear, "Don't let that negro out of your sight; but no shooting—rap him with a butt if necessary. ...
— Love Under Fire • Randall Parrish
... from the mountain rock 14 The snow of Lebanon? Or the streams from the hills dry up, The cold flowing streams?(446) Yet Me have My people forgotten, 15 And burned(447) to vanity, Stumbling from off their ways, The tracks of yore, To straggle along the by-paths, An unwrought road; Turning their land to a waste, 16 A perpetual hissing. All who pass by are appalled, And shake their heads. With(448) an east wind strew them I shall, 17 In ...
— Jeremiah • George Adam Smith
... the feelings and swipe off the tops of fifty juniors, is a revelation. White pine, hemlock, and spruce share this country with maples, black and white birches, and beech. Maple seems to have few preferences, and the white birches straggle and shiver on the outskirts of every camp; but the pines hold together in solid regiments, sending out skirmishers to invade a neglected pasture on the first opportunity. There is no overcoat warmer than the pines in a gale when ...
— Letters of Travel (1892-1913) • Rudyard Kipling
... think of Devon Where the garden's all aglow With the flowers that stray across the grey old wall: Then we'll climb it, out of heaven, From the other side, you know, Straggle over it from heaven With the apple-blossom snow, Tumble back again to Devon Laugh and love as long ago, Where there isn't any fiery ...
— Collected Poems - Volume Two (of 2) • Alfred Noyes
... hers, roaming over the little flower plot in search of room for the geranium, which did not appear; prince's feather and marigolds so choked up the ground where balsams did not straggle over it. Molly looked as Daisy did at the possibilities of the case, looked again at the strange sweet little face which was so busy in her garden; and then made a sudden movement. With two or three motions of hands and knees she drew herself a few steps back to one of the exclusive bunches ...
— Melbourne House • Elizabeth Wetherell
... Gallery. Contained in two vast edifices on both sides of the Arno; united by long corridors, which from the Uffizi straggle down to the river, cross the bridge, and reach the Pitti Palace by the upper story of the houses bordering ...
— The South of France—East Half • Charles Bertram Black
... once he did move) a long, circuitous road. As yet there was no cold except the usual sharpness of autumn nights; but the summer uniforms of the troops were tattered and their shoes worn. Germans, Italians, and Illyrians began to straggle, and the horrors of the approaching cold, as depicted by Russian prisoners, sank deep into the minds of the dispirited French, so far away ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. III. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... 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 took Mrs. Gallatin to the table, he believed that a ...
— Jefferson and his Colleagues - A Chronicle of the Virginia Dynasty, Volume 15 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Allen Johnson
... Al-Mutanabbi, and, wrapping themselves in their rugs, fell asleep. But in the morning they were rudely jostled from their dreams by a spurt from the hose of the sailors washing the deck. Complaining not, they straggle down to their bunks to change their clothes. And Khalid, as he is doing this, implores Shakib not to mention to him any more that New-World paradise. "For I have dreamt last night," he continues, "that, in the multicoloured robes of an Arab amir, on a caparisoned dromedary, at the head ...
— The Book of Khalid • Ameen Rihani
... tribe as the Jews, who refuse on religions grounds to have close contact with the Christians." It was necessary, in his opinion, to resort to legal repression in order to counteract "the intellectual superiority of the Jews," which enables them to emerge victorious in the straggle for existence. ...
— History of the Jews in Russia and Poland. Volume II • S.M. Dubnow
... that this retreat was unassailable; their plan of a night attack had failed; but they did not lose the hope that they held the Romans at their mercy. The fight had become a blockade; they would coop the Romans within their narrow limits, or force them to straggle on their way under a renewal of the same merciless assault. To have withstood the legions and occupied their ground, was itself a triumph for Gaetulians and Moors. They spread their long lines round either hill and lighted a great ring of watchfires; ...
— A History of Rome, Vol 1 - During the late Republic and early Principate • A H.J. Greenidge
... the seventh ballast[1] change and rechange, and here let the novelty be my excuse, if my pen straggle[2] a little. And although my eyes were somewhat confused, and my mind bewildered, those could not flee away so covertly but that I clearly distinguished Puccio Sciancato, and he it was who alone, of the three companions ...
— The Divine Comedy, Volume 1, Hell [The Inferno] • Dante Alighieri
... not likely to meet any one on your way, not even a tramp. Presently the 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 coast. The sea ...
— The Romance of the Coast • James Runciman
... absolute silence, absently watching the occupants of the now nearly deserted tables straggle out in twos and threes, until the room was quite empty, and Patricia could bear it ...
— Miss Pat at School • Pemberton Ginther
... the savages were all come on shore, and that they bent their course directly that way, they opened the fences where their milch-goats were kept, and drove them all out, leaving their goats to straggle into the wood, whither they pleased, that the savages might think they were all bred wild; but the rogue who came with them was too cunning for that, and gave them an account of it all, for they went ...
— The Life and Adventures of Robinson Crusoe (1808) • Daniel Defoe
... and rest!" Van Dorn exclaimed. "Let those sleep who can. Let any straggle or riot ...
— The Entailed Hat - Or, Patty Cannon's Times • George Alfred Townsend
... or less ragtag lot, picked up anyhow in the bazaars. They were soft, ill-disciplined and uncertain. For five or six hours they marched well enough. Then the sun began to get very hot, and some of them began to straggle. They had, of course, no intention of deserting, for their only hope of surviving lay in staying with us; but their loads had become heavy, and they took too many rests. We put a good man behind, but without much avail. In open country a safari can be permitted to straggle over miles, for always ...
— The Land of Footprints • Stewart Edward White
... air. flit, take wing; migrate, emigrate; trek; rove, prowl, roam, range, patrol, pace up and down, traverse; scour the country, traverse the country; peragrate|; circumambulate, perambulate; nomadize[obs3], wander, ramble, stroll, saunter, hover, go one's rounds, straggle; gad, gad about; expatiate. walk, march, step, tread, pace, plod, wend, go by shank's mare; promenade; trudge, tramp; stalk, stride, straddle, strut, foot it, hoof it, stump, bundle, bowl along, toddle; paddle; tread a path. take horse, ride, drive, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... dressed in a wretched brown coat and dirty checkered trousers that fitted his lean, bony limbs tightly. A straw sombrero, artistic in spite of being broken, covered an enormous head and allowed his dirty gray, almost red, hair to straggle out long and kinky at the end like a poet's curls. But the most notable thing about this man was not his clothing or his European features, guiltless of beard or mustache, but his fiery red face, from which he got the nickname by which he was known, Camaroncocido. ...
— The Reign of Greed - Complete English Version of 'El Filibusterismo' • Jose Rizal
... tersely. "One, with the address written in the clear, bold hand of a gentleman, and one, the straggle ...
— A Daughter of the Land • Gene Stratton-Porter
... and laid them before him. He took up the fatal letter. "Why, this is not written by Mrs. Little. I know her neat Italian hand too well. See how the letters slant and straggle." ...
— Put Yourself in His Place • Charles Reade
... get out of him except more chuckles. I files away the name, though; and that afternoon, while we was waitin' for a quorum of directors to straggle into the General Offices, I ...
— The House of Torchy • Sewell Ford
... Lamotte?" inquired a particularly dirty woman, whose cap, stuck on the side of her, head, allowed locks of grey hair to straggle from under it. "Ah! is that Monsieur ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - DERUES • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... 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 ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 1 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... cowered before the other's energy. He was of that class who were once denominated "poor whites." The war taught him that he was as good a man to stop bullets as one that was gentler bred, and during that straggle which the non-slaveholders fought at the beck and in the interest of the slaveholding aristocracy, he had learned more of manhood than he had ever known before. In the old days his father had been an overseer on a plantation ...
— Bricks Without Straw • Albion W. Tourgee
... already provided crockets, finials and carved bands of foliage so that it needed but little change to connect these into one growing plant. Sometimes these Manoelino designs, as in the palace at Cintra, are really beautiful when the parts are small and do not straggle all over the surface, but sometimes as in the Marvilla door at Santarem, or in that of the convent of the Madre de Deus at Lisbon, the mouldings are so clumsy and the design so sprawling and ill-connected, that they can only be looked on ...
— Portuguese Architecture • Walter Crum Watson
... declined sharply. "We've taken our place and we must stick to it. We can't afford to straggle. Hullo! it's just on twelve. Thwaite has had three hours to prepare, and he's bound to have wakened the south. I fancy the business won't quite come off ...
— The Half-Hearted • John Buchan
... declared. For some time the Russians, fearing the enmity of Austria, 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 ...
— Roumania Past and Present • James Samuelson
... dinners the women do not wear diamonds and pearls. Lucy seldom entertains more than six at a time. "Shall we go out?" she says when her Delia mumbles something from the door. You straggle across the hall into the dining-room, where thirteen carnations—you count them later, there's time enough—where thirteen stiff carnations are doing duty in the center of the prim table. At each place there is a soup plate sending forth a cloud of steam. You wait until Lucy points out your place ...
— The Fifth Wheel - A Novel • Olive Higgins Prouty
... it," said Trefusis. "There never was such a mark as that on a road. It may be a very bad attempt at a briar, but briars don't straggle into the middle of roads frequented as that one seems to be—judging by those overdone ruts." He put the etching away, showing no disposition to look further into the portfolio, and remarked, "The only art that ...
— An Unsocial Socialist • George Bernard Shaw
... Eminence of the Gau. Shoulder, I called it, of this Height of Siptitz; but more properly it is on a continuation, or lower ulterior height dipping into Elbe itself, that Torgau stands. Siptitz Height, nearly a mile from Elbe, drops down into a straggle of ponds; after which, on a second or final rise, comes Torgau dipping into Elbe. Not a shoulder strictly, but rather a CHEEK, with NECK intervening;—neck GOITRY for that matter, or quaggy with ponds! The old Town stands high enough, but ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XX. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... blue violets and white houstonia. Vines, thinly covered with fresh leaves, straggle over the walls,—Virginia creeper, poison ivy, grapevine, and at least one other, the name of which I do not know. A clump of tall blackberry vines is full of white blossoms, "bramble roses faint and pale," and in one corner is a tuft of scarlet ...
— A Florida Sketch-Book • Bradford Torrey
... has its crowd of camp followers, who straggle and scatter. We are like a comet, bright at the head but tailing away into mere gas behind. However, every man may speak for himself, and I do not feel that your charge comes home to me. I am only bigoted against bigotry, ...
— The Stark Munro Letters • J. Stark Munro
... ungirded, and the blue tassels trailed on the carpet; her luxuriant hair instead of being braided and classically coiled, was gathered in three or four large heavy loops, and fastened rather loosely by the massive silver comb that allowed one long tress to straggle across her shoulder, while the folds in front slipped low on ...
— Vashti - or, Until Death Us Do Part • Augusta J. Evans Wilson
... up the village of Bennecourt, whose yellow houses straggle along the river bank for about a couple of thousand yards. All the villagers were in the fields; they only met three cows, led by a little girl. He, with an outstretched arm, told her all about the locality; seemed to know whither he was going, and when ...
— His Masterpiece • Emile Zola
... noble and 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, to the rights of ...
— A Review of Uncle Tom's Cabin - or, An Essay on Slavery • A. Woodward
... relations of the rose," said her governess. "And do you notice how fragrant they are? The tree is always low and crooked, just as you see it, and the branches straggle not very gracefully. The under part of the dark-green leaves is whitish and downy-looking, and the flowers are handsome enough to warrant the cultivation of the tree just for their sake, but the large golden fruit is much prized for preserves, and in the autumn a small tree ...
— Among the Trees at Elmridge • Ella Rodman Church
... every indication of inhabitants our feeling of security had increased to such an extent, that even Johnny ventured sometimes to straggle behind, or to run on before, and occasionally made a hasty incursion into the borders of the grove, though he took care never to be far out of sight or hearing of the main body. Soon after starting, we doubled a projecting promontory, and lost sight of the boat and ...
— The Island Home • Richard Archer
... (having got Scrope's permission, without which he dared not cross the Border on affairs of war) attempted a retaliatory raid on Armstrongs within seven miles of the Border, the Armstrongs of Hollace, or Hollhouse. "He found only empty houses;" he "sought a prey" in vain; he let his men straggle, and returning homeward, with some fifteen companions, he was ambushed by the Armstrongs near Bewcastle, was refused shelter by a Graham, was taken prisoner, and was sent to Buccleuch at Branksome. On 15th July he came home under a bond ...
— Sir Walter Scott and the Border Minstrelsy • Andrew Lang
... grown up round an old chateau, and used 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, some contented themselves with roofing over their cellars. And while we were observing ...
— Antwerp to Gallipoli - A Year of the War on Many Fronts—and Behind Them • Arthur Ruhl
... 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
... about 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 ...
— The Straw • Eugene O'Neill
... result was a straggle for the trade of the West. Favored by the river system, the farmers of the West were able to float their produce, on raft and flatboat, to New Orleans. Before the introduction of the steamboat, navigation up the Mississippi was all but impossible. Flatboats, rafts, barges, ...
— A Brief History of the United States • John Bach McMaster
... was being talked about outside on account of the gold deposits along the upper reaches of the Stanley—largely mythically I believe. However that may be, prospectors began to straggle in, and in the summer of the year following Ernest's return from college, the government sent in a surveyor, one Frank Starling, to survey the claims, and adjust disputes. Starling brought with him his daughter Clare, a young lady of ...
— The Woman from Outside - [on Swan River] • Hulbert Footner
... long hour 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 the sand filling their ears with clamor, and ...
— Culm Rock - The Story of a Year: What it Brought and What it Taught • Glance Gaylord
... when the sharper lines of nature are softened by the haze, some came to us from across the mountains to make up for the deserters. From time to time a little group would straggle to the gates of the station, weary and footsore, but overjoyed at the sight of white faces again: the fathers walking ahead with watchful eyes, the women and older children driving the horses, and the babies slung to the pack in hickory withes. Nay, some of our best citizens came to Kentucky swinging ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... an' her folks but I reckon ye'll have yer hands full to-day," he remarked. "Ye don't need no scout on that kind o' reconnoiterin'. You go on ahead an' git through with yer smackin an' bym-by I'll straggle in." ...
— In the Days of Poor Richard • Irving Bacheller
... now intently occupied with the succulent delights of "drum-sticks" and gizzards. And yet the man whose fingers now form these letters then sits alone. Time has not passed lightly over his head. The few hairs that straggle from beneath his skull-cap are gray, and the faintest breath makes him wrap closer in his thickly-wadded dressing-gown. His face is worn and pale, and the wrinkled hand, though it only holds a little cigarette, will sometimes tremble as it moves. ...
— Trifles for the Christmas Holidays • H. S. Armstrong
... ramble, range, rove, stroll, roam, stray, straggle, itinerate, saunter, gad, peregrinate, digress, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... As when rival muscles tussle, Highland lad or British tar, 'Tis a furious fight a outrance, knitted, knotted each to each, Heels firm-planted, hands tense-clenching, till the knobby knuckles bleach. Federated Masters straggle, Federated Toilers strain, Each intent on selfish interest, each on individual gain, And a chasm yawns between them, and a gulf is close behind! What is the most likely issue of such conflict fierce and blind? Unionism 'gainst Free Labour, Capital ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99., Nov. 1, 1890 • Various
... Rivoli or the Rialto Theatres." Had she made it clear that the masterpieces lack either an easy mode of identification or a theme popular for this generation, she would be wholly right in saying that this "explains why the people straggle into the Metropolitan by twos and threes and struggle into the Rialto and Rivoli by hundreds. The twos and threes look at a picture in the Art Museum for less than ten minutes—unless they chance to be art students, critics, ...
— Public Opinion • Walter Lippmann
... 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
... 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 ...
— The Cattle-Baron's Daughter • Harold Bindloss
... roosters, and snatches of songs, enlivened the march. If something interposed, or a halt was ordered, the men would throw themselves in the dust, wipe their foreheads, drink from their canteens, gossip, grin, and shout confusedly, and some sought opportunities to straggle off, so that the regiments were materially decimated before they reached the field. The leading officers maintained a dignity and a reserve, and reined their horses together in places, to confer. At one time, a private soldier came out to ...
— Campaigns of a Non-Combatant, - and His Romaunt Abroad During the War • George Alfred Townsend
... people were there, Max and Dudley having been pressed into the service of filling cardboard drums with sweets for what Max called "the everlasting tree." The tree itself stood in a corner of the room, a colossal but lop-sided plant with a lamentable tendency to straggle about the lower branches, and an inclination to run to weedy and ...
— The Wharf by the Docks - A Novel • Florence Warden
... The searchers began to straggle in, bringing with them a sadly drenched and battered lot of gunmen. Not one but looked as though he had been through the wars. An inventory of wounds showed a sprained ankle, a broken shoulder blade, a cut head, and various other minor wounds. Nearly every ...
— Gunsight Pass - How Oil Came to the Cattle Country and Brought a New West • William MacLeod Raine
... resources when alone,—a sort of Indian wiliness and subtlety of resource. Their gregariousness and love of drill made them more easy to keep in hand than white American troops, who rather like to straggle or go in little squads, looking out for themselves, without being bothered with officers. The blacks ...
— Army Life in a Black Regiment • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... was driven from the field, it was found that there was a line of infantry not far to the right and rear. Indeed, the left of the infantry line overlapped the right of the cavalry. Attention was called to the fact when, after the fight, some of the cavalrymen began to straggle to the rear and returning, said that the Twenty-sixth Michigan infantry was only a little way off, and a good many of the men went over for a brief hand-shake with ...
— Personal Recollections of a Cavalryman - With Custer's Michigan Cavalry Brigade in the Civil War • J. H. (James Harvey) Kidd
... marching at attention, order your men to march at ease and to light cigarettes and eat bananas. Then, having fixed bayonets, give the order: Across the road—straggle! ...
— The First Hundred Thousand • Ian Hay
... foot up tenderly and examined it with care. "My, my!" he murmured. "You poor little soldier. If I hadn't looked around that time I expect you'd been willing to walk all the way to Richmond on a foot that would make a whole regiment straggle. Just see where you've cut it—right under the second little piggie. We'll have to tie it right up and keep the bothersome old dust from getting in. By morning you'll hardly ...
— The Littlest Rebel • Edward Peple
... lamp burning, when I returned, and everything undisturbed. They must have entered noiselessly, and carried her off without a straggle," replied Sir Norman, with a ...
— The Midnight Queen • May Agnes Fleming
... coming in one by one, reported them undefended: and the battalion, though perforce moving slowly, kept good order. Towards the summit, indeed, the front ranks appeared to straggle and extend themselves confusedly: but the disorder, no more than apparent, came from the skirmishers returning and falling back upon either flank as the column scrambled up the last five hundred yards and halted ...
— Fort Amity • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... bare Now straggle in the evening sky; And the wan moon wheels round to glare On the long corse that shivers there Of him who came ...
— Poems • Samuel Rogers
... not only for their safety, but for the success of the assault, that men should not straggle from their column that the Major-General feels it his duty to direct all commanding officers to impress this strictly upon their men, and he is confident that after this warning the men's good sense and discipline will induce them to obey their officers and keep ...
— A Narrative Of The Siege Of Delhi - With An Account Of The Mutiny At Ferozepore In 1857 • Charles John Griffiths
... 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 determined, ...
— Truxton King - A Story of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... by the Commonwealth Entrusted to chastise All knaves that straggle up and down To raise ...
— Cavalier Songs and Ballads of England from 1642 to 1684 • Charles Mackay
... authorities time for deliberation, and for taking the rioters at disadvantage. If the magistrates could get them out of the city, it would be a great point; they could then shut the gates upon them, and deal with them as they would. In that case, too, the insurgents would straggle, and divide, and then they might be disposed of in detail. They were showing symptoms of returning fury, when a voice suddenly cried out, "Agellius the Christian! Agellius the sorcerer! Agellius to the lions! To the farm of Varius—to the cottage of Agellius—to ...
— Callista • John Henry Cardinal Newman
... Italy, entered upon a long and arduous straggle with Carthage, which ruled without a rival the western waters of the Mediterranean. This great and powerful city was founded by the Phoenicians[26] of Tyre in B.C. 814, according to the common chronology. Its inhabitants ...
— A Smaller History of Rome • William Smith and Eugene Lawrence
... stared, though he is as good a scholar as any layman in the town, except the barber. Thus, cousin, you must be content with London for the centre of your wealth and fame; we have no relish for you. Wit must describe its proper circumference, and not go beyond it, lest (like little boys, when they straggle out of their own parish), it may wander to places where it is not known, and be lost. Since it is so, you must excuse me that I am forced at a visit to sit silent, and only lay up what excellent ...
— The Tatler, Volume 1, 1899 • George A. Aitken
... Darling, who, forty years before, had been Governor of New South Wales. Sir Charles was destined to troublous times; for he had not been long in the colony ere a most vexatious hitch took place in the working of constitutional government. It arose out of a straggle with regard to what is called "Protection to ...
— History of Australia and New Zealand - From 1606 to 1890 • Alexander Sutherland
... red-dotted cherry-trees: purchasable for a mere fraction, but not to be feloniously abstracted. Through Altenburg, Zwickau, Oederon, and Chemnitz; up steep hill paths, and by the side of unpronounceable villages, until, on the morning of the fourth day, we straggle into Freiberg. ...
— A Tramp's Wallet - stored by an English goldsmith during his wanderings in Germany and France • William Duthie
... use, because in transplanting to 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 ...
— The Library of Work and Play: Gardening and Farming. • Ellen Eddy Shaw
... road that looked unnaturally white and ghostly in the pale dawn of the early morning. It was down hill for about a mile, and traveling was comparatively easy at first, but when the road reached the bottom of the valley it stopped and seemed to straggle off into numerous little foot-paths. The broadest and most traveled looking path Lucia followed, picking her way carefully for fear of stumbling and thus losing some of the ...
— Lucia Rudini - Somewhere in Italy • Martha Trent
... did the last of the scouts straggle in. None of these bore any news, and all agreed that no signs could they find of any large band of men, nor of any men at all. Turlough heard their reports, letting Brian sleep, and only when the last man came in were any tidings brought. This man bore a strip of sheepskin, which, he said, an old ...
— Nuala O'Malley • H. Bedford-Jones |
