"Stray" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... and surprised: Gringo never prowled anywhere. Like most rather meaty individuals, he was a very sound sleeper; and in the morning he often felt a little uneasy in his conscience as to the matter of stray trespassing cats or such small fry. He had every confidence that his instincts would warn him of really important things, like burglars. Still, the important things are not all of life, nor burglars all the duty of ...
— The Gray Dawn • Stewart Edward White
... athwart the glooming flats Thy hoarse, nocturnal whispers stray— Much to the horror of the bats— We're one day nearer home, and that's A ...
— Rhymes of the East and Re-collected Verses • John Kendall (AKA Dum-Dum)
... sensation in the soles of his feet, and, startled, looked down to find that he was standing in a tiny pool of water. With a cry of alarm he sprang to where the big copper sat. A glance confirmed his worst fears; a stray bullet had torn a great hole in the vessel near the bottom, and of their precious store of ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... spring-time's lyric words, Drowsed round us while we tried to find the lane That to our coming feet had been so plain, And lost ourselves among the sweetfern's growth, And thickets of young pine-trees, nothing loath, Amidst the wilding loveliness to stray, And spend, if need were, looking for the way, Whole hours; but blundered into the right course Suddenly, and came out upon our horse, Where we had left him—to our great surprise, Stamping and switching at the pestering flies, But not apparently anxious to depart, When nearly overturning at the ...
— The Daughter of the Storage - And Other Things in Prose and Verse • William Dean Howells
... missionaries, as lay teacher he had served their cause well over in the cannibal atolls to the westward. As a reward, he had been sent to the paradise of Fitu-Iva, where all were or had been good converts, to gather in the backsliders. Unfortunately, Ieremia had become too well educated. A stray volume of Darwin, a nagging wife, and a pretty Fitu-Ivan widow had driven him into the ranks of the backsliders. It was not a case of apostasy. The effect of Darwin had been one of intellectual fatigue. What was the use of trying to understand this ...
— A Son Of The Sun • Jack London
... a slight track, partly formed by stray cattle which led up it, and casting his eyes upon this, he saw the marks of a horse's feet. "Some one of the gang got home before me," he said. "I'm right glad of that, anything better than ...
— The Recollections of Geoffrey Hamlyn • Henry Kingsley
... grow like magic under his touch. There were the monks in their brown and white robes, fat and laughing, or lean and anxious-minded. There were the people who came to say their prayers in church, little children clinging to their mothers' skirts, beggars and rich folks, even the stray dog that sometimes wandered in. Yes, and the pretty girls who laughed and talked in whispers. He drew them all, just as he had often seen them. Then, when the last piece of wall was covered, ...
— Knights of Art - Stories of the Italian Painters • Amy Steedman
... desire to have a fourth added to her three boys, for her own made enough noise and trouble for her. She protested, saying she knew how it was with such stray children and they could expect ...
— What Sami Sings with the Birds • Johanna Spyri
... And yet, from a stray word or two, which were pronounced more distinctly, he did not seem to be thinking in anger over that interview; but it would appear that it rather had recalled to his remembrance circumstances of a painful and a degrading nature, which time ...
— Varney the Vampire - Or the Feast of Blood • Thomas Preskett Prest
... pop! of the anti-aircraft shrapnel and the whizz! of the pieces of shell went almost unnoticed by the two boys, so intent were they on their quest. Once bits of shell tore through one of the planes, and once a few stray bits rattled against the light armor ...
— The Brighton Boys with the Flying Corps • James R. Driscoll
... discomfort, and his hand began to stray about him, and he found that his double-barrelled gun, slung by a strap across his shoulders, was beneath his back, and the lock was ...
— Fire Island - Being the Adventures of Uncertain Naturalists in an Unknown Track • G. Manville Fenn
... they took no heed; but leaving it to the wolves, the gluttons, or any other carnivorous creatures that might chance to stray that way, they turned back up the ravine; and, striking off on a path that led towards the tent of the Laplander, reached their smoky quarters in good ...
— Bruin - The Grand Bear Hunt • Mayne Reid
... away, And her lightning glance at once did stray Meeting gaze direct and true, yet fond withal, Of those eyes whose strange, mysterious power cast Spell upon her heart, that thrilled to swift response. Dark eyes softened, flashed again with sudden fire, Pocahontas stood entranced, ...
— Pocahontas. - A Poem • Virginia Carter Castleman
... ran up the rampart, and then down again into the fosse. He liked the trench best, and ran along it in the hollow, picking up stray flints and throwing them as far as he could. The trench wound round the hill, and presently when he saw a low hawthorn-bush just outside the broad green ditch, and scrambled up to it, the waggon was gone and the plain, for he had reached the other side of the camp. There the top of the hill was ...
— Wood Magic - A Fable • Richard Jefferies
... to revise his works. It is perhaps worthy of note that for several years, while he was at the height of his popularity, his books had very little sale. From 1842 to 1848 they were out of print, with the exception of some stray copies of a cheap Philadelphia edition, and a Paris collection (a volume of this, at my hand, is one of a series entitled a "Collection of Ancient and Modern British Authors"), they were not to be found. The Philadelphia publishers did not think there was ...
— Washington Irving • Charles Dudley Warner
... life as at this retention amid a great civilisation of the barbaric method of settling international differences. He would ask in astonishment how an intelligent and generally humane race, a race which raises homes for stray cats and aged horses, could cling to a system which, on infallible experience, plunges one or more countries in the deepest suffering every few years. He would learn that there has not been a war in Europe for a hundred years the initial cause of which would not have been better ...
— The War and the Churches • Joseph McCabe
... with a stray blackfellow to bring her some wood, and while he was at work she went in search of a missing cow. She was absent an hour or so, and the native black made good use of his time. On her return she was so astonished ...
— While the Billy Boils • Henry Lawson
... in short, was a journalist's bivouac, filled with odds and ends of no value, and the most curiously bare apartment imaginable. A scarlet tinder-box glowed among a pile of books on the nightstand. A brace of pistols, a box of cigars, and a stray razor lay upon the mantel-shelf; a pair of foils, crossed under a wire mask, hung against a panel. Three chairs and a couple of armchairs, scarcely fit for the shabbiest lodging-house in the street, ...
— A Distinguished Provincial at Paris • Honore de Balzac
... disreputable-looking. He had not altered much since he left Ballarat, save that he looked more dilapidated- looking, but stood there in his usual sullen manner, with his hat drawn down over his eyes. Some stray wisps of grass showed that he had been camping out all the hot day on the green turf under the shadow of the trees, and it was easy to see from his appearance what a vagrant he was. Vandeloup was annoyed at the meeting and cast a rapid look around to see if he was observed. The few people, however, ...
— Madame Midas • Fergus Hume
... Honey Tone managed to keep one state ahead of his reputation. Thus he avoided the iron impedimenta which the laws of the land drape around the ankles and feet that stray from the straight and narrow trail—around wrists and hands whose idleness affords the devil welcome opportunity to function ...
— Lady Luck • Hugh Wiley
... Certainly, in these Memoirs she is generally content to keep herself in the background, while giving us a faithful picture of the brilliant Court at which she was for long the most lustrous ornament. It is only by stray touches, a casual remark, a chance phrase, that we, as it were, gauge her temperament in all its wiliness, its egoism, its love of supremacy, and its shallow worldly wisdom. Yet it could have been no ordinary woman that held the handsome Louis so long her captive. The fair Marquise ...
— The Memoirs of Madame de Montespan, Complete • Madame La Marquise De Montespan
... the other canoe, with the help of such an expert, was an easy matter. When it was ready Roderick held it while Fred tumbled in. Stray cushions and paddles, and even an armful of soaking golden-rod were rescued, and then the two young men looked ...
— The End of the Rainbow • Marian Keith
... sturdily and fiercely above the shifting forms of life, like a peak above the forest, did not appear at once either desirable or even beautiful. It blocked the view and the way; it forbade one to stray or loiter; but the obedience one reluctantly gave to it came simply from a realisation of its strength and of its presence. It stood for an order of some kind, which interfered at many points with one's hopes and desires, but with which one was compelled to make ...
— Escape and Other Essays • Arthur Christopher Benson
... on until he came to the marble pavilion, and would have gone on to stray farther into the gardens, but that he caught sight of a woman's mantle upon the floor as he passed by the open doorway. He went up the ...
— Marzio's Crucifix and Zoroaster • F. Marion Crawford
... The cliffs ran up precipitously from the sea, carved grotesquely over their whole surface into strange and fantastic shapes; while the golden and gray lichens embroidered them richly, and bright sea-flowers, and stray tufts of grass, lent them the most vivid and gorgeous hues. Beyond the channel, against the clear western sky, lay the island of Guernsey, rising like a purple mountain out of the opal sea, which lay like a lake between us, sparkling and changing ...
— The Doctor's Dilemma • Hesba Stretton
... spots in the spacious rooms of the Mint—which had not been swept, and were covered with half an inch of mud—for their precious charge, and there they remained to watch over them; while the men sauntered about, or tried to sit where anything like sitting was practicable. Stray shots were heard, and from the city went up rockets, which were regarded as signals to the Sepoys outside. Most were awake as if it were full day. Between three and four in the morning, as I was sitting with two or three others on a native bedstead, a person came and said, "Where ...
— Life and Work in Benares and Kumaon, 1839-1877 • James Kennedy
... brother who had, when a boy, so oppressed, so worried, and rendered miserable his brother Charles, as to cause him in a fit of desperation to stray away from home, whither he knew not. His parents saw now—alas! too late—their fatal error; but the boy was gone, no tidings could be had of him, and they believed him dead. The honest tar, whose yarn the ...
— The Sea-Witch - or, The African Quadroon A Story of the Slave Coast • Maturin Murray
... Fearful heat; not a breath of air; fowl and beast sought the shade; everything silent; the great Bush slept. In the west a stray cloud or two that had been ...
— On Our Selection • Steele Rudd
... way by a circuitous route through the less-used corridors, she hurrying on like a guilty creature, a hood drawn over her face, and her heart in a flutter at every stray footfall. But fortune stood her friend. She met no one, and soon found herself at the eastern postern gate. A couple of phlegmatic Swiss guardsmen leaned upon their muskets upon either side, and the lamp above shone upon the carriage which awaited her. ...
— The Refugees • Arthur Conan Doyle
... older part of the town near the water. The houses were all wooden, weather-beaten, and gray, and had great patches of yellow lichen on their walls and roofs; thin rims of starved-looking grass edged the streets, and stray blades stood up here and there among the old sunken ...
— Saxe Holm's Stories • Helen Hunt Jackson
... and asked him to hold his horse, while he went to catch Jemmy's. He did it by opening one of the bags and taking out a little grain, and by means of it enticing the stray horse near enough to enable him to take hold of the bridle. He then fastened him behind the wagon, and putting Jemmy's two bags in, he turned round and went back to carry Jemmy home, leaving Malleville and Phonny to walk the rest ...
— Mary Erskine • Jacob Abbott
... dear Sir, if you WILL take the management of your affairs into your own hands after entrusting them to your solicitor, you must also take the consequences.' Here Mr. Perker drew himself up with conscious dignity, and brushed some stray grains of ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens
... contributors to the truly valuable "N. & Q.," that no tittle of knowledge concerning these early philological researches ought to be allowed to remain unrecorded; and with the position which the "N. & Q." occupies, and the facilities that journal offers for the preservation of these stray scraps of knowledge, surely it would not be amiss to send them to the Editor, and let him decide as he is very capable of doing, as ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 227, March 4, 1854 • Various
... in frosty mornings in my path with portions of their bodies still numb and inflexible, waiting for the sun to thaw them. On the 1st of April it rained and melted the ice, and in the early part of the day, which was very foggy, I heard a stray goose groping about over the pond and cackling as if lost, or like the ...
— Walden, and On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience • Henry David Thoreau
... getting up anchors, with the forts playing upon them. However, it is mere waste of powder and shot on such a night as this. I don't suppose the gunners can make them out, now; for a certainty they won't be able to do so, as soon as they have moved off another quarter of a mile. Of course a stray shot may hit them, but practically ...
— No Surrender! - A Tale of the Rising in La Vendee • G. A. Henty
... her alarm—she had played most sincerely—but it was the power behind the play that caused her to tremble and grow hot and cold. What was it within her that had driven her where wiser girls would fear to stray? What was it that was not love in the least and yet had caused her heart to beat at Raymond's touch or glance? Whatever it was, Joan concluded, it could not be depended upon. It could lay waste every holy spot unless it were understood and controlled, and Joan ...
— The Shield of Silence • Harriet T. Comstock
... He began by tending his father's sheep, with which occupation his first miracle was associated. Being called one day to dinner, and having no one to take his place as shepherd, he drew a circle round the flock with his crook, and bade the sheep, in the name of the Lord, not to stray beyond it. The sheep obeyed, and thenceforward on repeating the same manoeuvre he left them with an easy mind. In course of time his father died, and Cuthman determined to travel; intense filial piety determined ...
— Highways & Byways in Sussex • E.V. Lucas
... life so lazy as that of the cowboy who has nothing to do but ride a spirited horse, day in and day out to drive sluggish-blooded cows from one pasture to another or to a market-place, to watch over them as they grazed, or to ride along the outskirts of a scattering herd to see that they did not stray beyond a set boundary-line. That life, as he saw it, was an existence without responsibility, without fatigue, even tinged with something of exhilaration as one galloped up and down over wide grassy meadows. To-day he began to learn that a gay-colored picture may ...
— Under Handicap - A Novel • Jackson Gregory
... strongly and stoutly built, and with a good-natured, if somewhat stupid and heavy face. Her hair was dun in colour, coarse in texture, and done up loosely and carelessly in two heavy braids, arranged about her head in such a manner as to permit stray wisps of hair to escape about her face and neck. She was dressed in a loose pink wrapper, all too plainly of home manufacture, gathered in at the waist, and successfully obliterating any lines that might indicate the ...
— Corporal Cameron • Ralph Connor
... "A stray dog!" he muttered. "Of as much account—and he'd better forget the sister of the rose. Here's a good place to put imagination to sleep—here's a ...
— The Landloper - The Romance Of A Man On Foot • Holman Day
... present time the house is included within the city limits. When I took up my quarters there, however, the mansion stood alone on the verge of the open country, at the end of a straggling street on which a few stray houses produced at dusk the impression of a jaw from which most of the teeth ...
— International Short Stories: French • Various
... Investigating Committee of 1870, "determined to betray his own associates, and silent, and imperturbable, by nods and whispers directed all."-Gold Panic Investigation: 14.] By this time, it seems, Fisk and his partner in the brokerage business, Belden, had some stray inklings of Gould's real plan; yet all that they knew were the fragments Gould chose to tell them, with perhaps some surmises of their own. Gould threw out just enough of an outline to spur on their appetite ...
— Great Fortunes from Railroads • Gustavus Myers
... was over to see Reid—he's sent him a new wagon over there. Tim says you and Swan must both 'a' been asleep and let the two bands stray together, and of course it was human for Swan to want to take away more than he brought. Well, it was sheepman, anyhow, ...
— The Flockmaster of Poison Creek • George W. Ogden
... of them, tying one to the other like the elephants in the circus when they march around, holding each other's tails. Then one of us will ride in front, another in the rear, and one on each side. In that way we'll keep them going and they won't stray off." ...
— Tom Swift in Captivity • Victor Appleton
... "that this little darling has done his duty so well, do get up and take a look about, in case anyone should stray in this direction. I don't want to part with you so soon, but it would never do for anyone to come in and catch us ...
— Laura Middleton; Her Brother and her Lover • Anonymous
... pervaded the room—the smell of singed and burning clothing. A cloud of blackened rags fluttered to the ground as the last fold of the curtain was unloosed, and among them—most pitiful sight of all—were stray gleams of gold where a severed lock of hair lay on the carpet, its end ...
— About Peggy Saville • Mrs. G. de Horne Vaizey
... fellow. In London"—and he nodded back, as if London were merely across the room—"they're awfully good to the somebodies. It's the way you take in the nobodies over here that is so astonishing—the stray leaves that blow in with your 'trade,' and can't show any credentials but a letter or two, and their faces; and those"—his diablerie danced out again—"sometimes such deucedly ...
— The Coast of Chance • Esther Chamberlain
... herself for not coming earlier to see if he was ill. She wishes some body would come; it wouldn't do to leave him alone, and what can she do by herself? There's a knock at the outer door, she thinks—no; it is only a stray goat that frequents that quarter of the city, and has come for her accustomed offering of food. She hasn't any heart to stop now, and the disappointed animal goes off again to try her next neighbor. There's no milk-man, nor ...
— The Elm Tree Tales • F. Irene Burge Smith
... which is declared to be the most picturesque and fascinating in all India. Throngs of natives in quaint costumes come from all parts of the country around, representatives of tribes which do not often stray so far away from their homes. They come from Nepaul, Thibet, Sikkim and the surrounding countries, and bring articles of home manufacture to exchange for "store goods." The features of the people are unmistakable testimony of their Mongolian ...
— Modern India • William Eleroy Curtis
... therefore peril to herself. And yet, so various is the nature of woman, that, while steering straitly by one star, she levies upon the light of other stars. Faithful and sincere, yet loving power, curious and adventurous, she must needs, without intention, without purpose, stray into perilous paths. ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... foreign tongue need cramp the ardent thought of the evangelist, but in his native English he may tell the story of salvation through a land large as half a dozen European kingdoms, where thousands of his brethren according to the flesh are perishing for want of knowledge. A few stray Methodists alone have pushed into the moral wilderness of the backwoods; and what are they among so many? Look at the masses of lumberers: it is computed that on the Ottawa and its tributaries alone they ...
— Cedar Creek - From the Shanty to the Settlement • Elizabeth Hely Walshe
... so chary of his presence at Heavitree, that Camilla could not but have known that he took no delight in coming thither. She had acknowledged this to herself; but she had consoled herself with the reflection that marriage would make this all right. Mr. Gibson was not the man to stray from his wife, and she could trust herself to obtain a sufficient hold upon her husband hereafter, partly by the strength of her tongue, partly by the ascendency of her spirit, and partly, also, by the comforts ...
— He Knew He Was Right • Anthony Trollope
... there, nevertheless—the human nature, and the poetry, and the something ready to thrill to better things. A gentleman has a lovely place not far from us, where the trees have been spared by a miracle. Nightingales seldom wander so far north, but a few years ago a stray one was heard there, and the wonder and the beauty of its voice brought hundreds from the mills and crowded streets to hear it sing. Special trains were run from the neighbouring city to accommodate the crowds that came nightly to wait in the moonlight and listen; ...
— Ideala • Sarah Grand
... a stray. apple blossom among the fruit in autumn, or an occasional violet deceived by caressing Indian Summer into thinking another spring has come, surprises no one; but when the witch-hazel bursts into bloom for the first ...
— Wild Flowers, An Aid to Knowledge of Our Wild Flowers and - Their Insect Visitors - - Title: Nature's Garden • Neltje Blanchan
... dream, to let his fancies stray over half-imagined, delicious things, indulging a virgin mind in its wanderings. The hot air seemed to beat upon him in palpable waves, and the nettle sting tingled and itched intolerably; and he was alone upon the fairy hill, within the great mounds, within the ring of oaks, ...
— The Hill of Dreams • Arthur Machen
... In silent halls to sculptured marbles bow, And hang fresh wreaths round Newton's awful brow. Oft shall they seek some peasant's homely shed, Who toils, unconscious of the mighty dead, To ask where Avon's winding waters stray, And thence a knot of wild flowers bear away; Anxious enquire where Clarkson, friend of man, Or all-accomplished Jones his race began; If of the modest mansion aught remains Where Heaven and Nature prompted Cowper's strains; Where Roscoe, to whose patriot ...
— Eighteen Hundred and Eleven • Anna Laetitia Barbauld
... some of the freer and more honourable qualities of the old Whig aristocracy, as well as their wonderful worldliness and their strange faith in the passing fashion of our politics. For instance, she speaks of Jingo Imperialism with a healthy English contempt; and she perceives stray and striking truths, and records them justly—as, for instance, the greater democracy of the Southern and Catholic countries of Europe. But in her dealings with social formulae here in England she is, it must frankly be said, a common mystagogue. She does not, ...
— All Things Considered • G. K. Chesterton
... order to ward off the ruin that their increase would otherwise entail. Thus, the plantations of the Northern slave States now present to the traveller very few of the darker and more oppressive peculiarities of the system; and, provided he does not stray too near the precincts where the negroes are sold, or come across gangs of them on their way to Georgia, Louisiana, or Alabama, he may, if he is a very superficial observer, conclude that the most prosperous slavery is not much worse than the ...
— Journal of a Residence on a Georgian Plantation - 1838-1839 • Frances Anne Kemble
... streets, during the long summers, different green-blue wagons. The drivers were different, too—I recall one was a hunchback. These outfits formed one of the fascinating horrors of our bringing-up—the fork, the noose, the stray dog tossed into a maddened pulp of stray dogs, the door slammed, and no word at all from the driver—nothing we could build on, or learn his character by. He was a part of the law, and we were taught ...
— Child and Country - A Book of the Younger Generation • Will Levington Comfort
... the troops marching steadily on board, she saw Archdale near the gangway. He seemed to be in command. She watched him a moment with a feeling of sadness. Who could tell that he would ever come back, that youth and prowess might not prove too weak for the sword of the enemy or for some stray shot? How lightly Mr. Edmonson had spoken of such a thing! She did not know whom he had been talking of, but his tone was mocking. He paid people in society more attention than Archdale did, he certainly was more kind and interested in all that concerned herself. And yet, ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 4 • Various
... far from hence doth dwell A cunning man hight Sidrophel, That deals in destiny's dark counsels, And sage opinion of the moon sells; To whom all people, far and near, On deep importances repair; When brass and pewter hap to stray, And linen slinks out of the way; When geese and pullen are seduced, And sows of sucking pigs are chows'd; When cattle feel indisposition, And need the opinion of physician; When murrain reigns in hogs or sheep And chickens languish of the pip; When yeast and outward ...
— The Mysteries of All Nations • James Grant
... St. Paul is. Its distance from all known civilization—all civilization that has succeeded in obtaining acquaintance with the world at large—is very great. Even American travelers do not go up there in great numbers, excepting those who intend to settle there. A stray sportsman or two, American or English, as the case may be, makes his way into Minnesota for the sake of shooting, and pushes on up through St. Paul to the Red River. Some few adventurous spirits visit the Indian settlements, and pass over into the unsettled regions of Dacotah and Washington ...
— Volume 1 • Anthony Trollope
... album of some rare colorist, and became bewildered amid successive wreaths of pictured flowers, with hues that seemed to burn, and freshness that seemed fragrant, one could hardly quarrel with a few stray splashes of purple or carmine spilt heedlessly on the pages. Such a book is "Azarian"; and if few are so lavish and reckless with their pigments as Harriet Prescott, it is because few have access to such wealth. If one proceeds from the theory ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 84, October, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... 1 Stray birds of summer come to my window to sing and fly away. And yellow leaves of autumn, which have no songs, flutter and fall ...
— Stray Birds • Rabindranath Tagore
... least to something of what the eldest have never reached. They had gained some information about life. In one thing old and young resemble each other; they are practical and prosperous by descent. They never allow their thoughts to stray very far. They know quite well that the glow which they feel as they listen to the words and music of great minds is not to be taken too seriously; it is only "What one always ...
— The Bridal March; One Day • Bjornstjerne Bjornson
... the weight of her fur tippet, the pale face under the plumy hat took an unusual pink bloom; her eyes shone with a moist radiance. Rupert, glancing up at her, as, bent upon one knee, he sought for stray violets amid the thick green leaves, thought it was thus a maiden looked who waited to be won; and though all of true love that he could ever give to woman lay buried with his little bride, he felt his pulses quicken with a certain aesthetic pleasure in the situation. Presently he rose, and, ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle
... two slim hands float, Shines vaguely in the twilight pink and gray, Whilst with a sound like wings, note after note Takes flight to form a pensive little lay That strays, discreet and charming, faint, remote, About the room where perfumes of Her stray. ...
— Poems of Paul Verlaine • Paul Verlaine
... stray crop on the roofs, the harvest of which will fall to the neighboring sparrows, has carried my thoughts to the rich crops which are now falling beneath the sickle; it has recalled to me the beautiful walks I took as a child through ...
— An "Attic" Philosopher, Complete • Emile Souvestre
... Anvik went again to school, but Tanana and the father went off to look at the ice-traps wherein Eskimos catch any stray wolves or foxes. ...
— Out of the Triangle • Mary E. Bamford
... taken to see the shop. An empty house is like a stray dog or a body from which life has departed. Decay sets in at once in every part of it, and what mould and wind and weather would spare, street boys commonly destroy. Ernest's shop in its untenanted state was a dirty unsavoury place enough. The house was not old, but it had been ...
— The Way of All Flesh • Samuel Butler
... reck'n," remarked Garey. "Buffler don't often o' late years stray so far to the southert, though I've killed some ...
— The War Trail - The Hunt of the Wild Horse • Mayne Reid
... drainage the Panjab plains have ceased to be to anything like the old extent the haunt of wild beasts and wild fowl. The lion has long been extinct and the tiger has practically disappeared. Leopards are to be found in low hills, and sometimes stray into the plains. Wolves are seen occasionally, and jackals are very common. The black buck (Antilope cerricapra) can still be shot in many places. The graceful little chinkara or ravine deer (Gazella Bennetti) is found in sandy tracts, ...
— The Panjab, North-West Frontier Province, and Kashmir • Sir James McCrone Douie
... deliberately about it, tearing off thin slathers from the fat pine, and arranging them into a light frame-work, beneath a topping of kindling and logs that he placed on the massive brass andirons. He crawled about on hands and knees, picking up the stray bits of chips and moss that had fallen from his arms when he came in. Then sitting back on his heels he looked meditatively into the blaze which he had kindled and scratched his nose with a splinter of pine wood. When Hosmer presently left ...
— At Fault • Kate Chopin
... of art and they will laugh at it as absurd. If one sits on a popular evening in that long room at South Kensington which contains Raphael's cartoons, one remarks that perhaps a third of those who stray through and look at all those fine efforts, titter. If one searches in the magazines of a little while ago, one finds in the angry and resentful reception of the Pre-Raphaelites another instance of the absolutely indefensible nature of many of the most ...
— First and Last Things • H. G. Wells
... and early in the morning all our grown-ups set forth to Charlottetown, to be gone the whole day. They left us many charges as usual, some of which we remembered and some of which we forgot; but with Felicity in command none of us dared stray far out of line. The Story Girl and Peter came over, of course, and we all agreed that we would haste and get the work done in the forenoon, that we might have an afternoon of uninterrupted enjoyment. A taffy-pull after dinner and then a jolly hour of coasting on the ...
— The Golden Road • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... water; her eyes were bluer; white as the sands her bare arms glimmered. Was it a sunbeam caught entangled in her burnished hair, or a stray strand, that burned ...
— A Young Man in a Hurry - and Other Short Stories • Robert W. Chambers
... doubt that this quietude, this soothing sense of calm, is higher happiness than all the glitter and all the splendour of the ball-room, and that in the dropping words we now exchange, and in the stray glances, there is a significance and an exquisite delight we never felt till now; for, glorious as is the thought of a returned affection, full of ecstasy the sense of a heart all, all our own, there ...
— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever
... no caress of lover with half the power of those little pink hands, as they stray about, seeking whereby to lay hold on life. And the infant glances, now turned upon the breast, now raised to meet our own! What dreams come to us as we watch the clinging nursling! All our powers, whether of mind or body, are at its service; for it we breathe and think, ...
— Letters of Two Brides • Honore de Balzac
... begged Ferdinand to sing again, mentioning several songs by name. He shook his head, letting his apparently boneless and square-nailed hands stray about over the piano all the time she ...
— The Way of Ambition • Robert Hichens
... From stray fragments and traditions, From authenticated pages, From all evidence existing, We transcribe the names of brothers Who have served our state and county In divergent fields of labor; Who have lent their minds and bodies To the profit of ...
— The Song of Lancaster, Kentucky - to the statesmen, soldiers, and citizens of Garrard County. • Eugenia Dunlap Potts
... what color they shall be. Like Suzanna, the lady was dressed in white, flowing as to skirt, and trimmed with quantities of fine old lace. On her hand was one ring, a lovely moonstone. Suzanna at once loved that ring, not because it was a piece of jewelry, but because it did look like a stray moonbeam that the rain had ...
— Suzanna Stirs the Fire • Emily Calvin Blake
... there was to do. Positively, even rhymes left unrhymed in 'Lady Geraldine's Courtship.' You don't write so carelessly, not you, and the reward is that you haven't so much trouble in your new editions. I see your book advertised in a stray number of the 'Athenaeum' lent to me by Mr. Tennyson—Frederick. He lent it to me because I wanted to see the article on the new poet, Alexander Smith, who appears so applauded everywhere. He has the poet's stuff in him, one may ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Volume II • Elizabeth Barrett Browning
... man in my mind now who has exactly the head and face, if face it can be called, of an ant. It is not a head, but a helmet. I knew all the butterflies—they were mostly small ones, but of lovely varieties. A stray dragon-fly would now and then delight me; and there were hunting-spiders and wood-lice, and queerer creatures of which I do not yet know the names. Then there were grasshoppers, which for some time I took to be made of green leaves, and I thought they grew like fruit on the trees till ...
— Wilfrid Cumbermede • George MacDonald
... exceedingly contracted in our notions of the Christian preacher's just province. If we confine it to administering directly to the soul's spiritual wants and everlasting interests, we stray wide from the example, which God himself sets, when he writes a revelation for man. The Bible is full of histories, maxims, laws, just as might be expected in a book, which ignored any other life, than that which now is. One half of it (within ...
— The Growth of Thought - As Affecting the Progress of Society • William Withington
... weak Woman chance to go astray, If strongly charm'd she leave the thorny Way, And in the softer Paths of Pleasure stray, Ruin ensues, Reproach and endless Shame; And one false Step entirely damns her Fame: In vain, with Tears, the Loss she may deplore, In vain look back to what she was before, She sets, like Stars that fall, to rise ...
— The Life and Romances of Mrs. Eliza Haywood • George Frisbie Whicher
... thick a veil to my sight nor to my feeling so harsh of tissue as that smoke which covered us there; so that my eye endured not to stay open[1] wherefore my sage and trusty Escort drew to my side and offered me his shoulder. Even as a blind man goes behind his guide, in order not to stray, and not to butt against anything that may hurt or perhaps kill him, I went along, through the bitter and foul air, listening to my Leader, who was ever saying, "Take care that thou be not cut ...
— The Divine Comedy, Volume 2, Purgatory [Purgatorio] • Dante Alighieri
... byes; it was his sole error all the morning. Raffles sat enchanted; so in truth did I; but between the overs I endeavoured to obtain particulars of his latest parley with Dan Levy, and once or twice extracted a stray detail. ...
— Mr. Justice Raffles • E. W. Hornung
... could talk of where he had been, talk without end, and always with the intimate little touches which you never found in the guidebooks. He captured old Perrault at the first assault. Old Perrault from behind his counter happening to catch a stray word, listened, looked up, and, noting the animated features, hastily signalled the new-comer to come out of the crowd. One minute later he had put the vital question: Had Mr. Bowen ever been ...
— Wide Courses • James Brendan Connolly
... of spending money; for although their father was strongly opposed to the idea of making any child of his a definite allowance, he allowed them to keep the change whenever they executed small commissions for him, and to wheedle from him stray quarter and half dollars. Lydia had only to watch for the favourable moment to get whatever she asked, and with Leonard he was especially generous. Martie knew that she could save, if she determined to do so. She imagined Rodney's ...
— Martie the Unconquered • Kathleen Norris
... would seriously delay their progress and thereby protract their sufferings. Next to a gale of wind, indeed, a calm and its consequent delay was what they had most to dread, for they were in a part of the ocean little frequented by craft of any description, except a stray whaler now and then, and their only reasonable hope of salvation rested upon the possibility of their being able to reach land before starvation and thirst ...
— The Pirate Island - A Story of the South Pacific • Harry Collingwood
... to meet another,' that before one of the messengers had unladed all his budget, another's arrival has antiquated and put aside his store? True, we are often brought very low; there may not be much in the barn but sweepings, and a few stray grains scattered over the floor. We may have but a handful of meal in the barrel, and be ready to dress it 'that we may eat it, and die.' But it never really comes to that. The new ever comes before the old is all eaten up; or if it be delayed even beyond that time, it comes before ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus and Numbers • Alexander Maclaren
... among the Scotch hills, I doubt not—specially lays itself out for the humble-bee, and its masses form almost his highest pasture-grounds; but the butterflies—insect vagrants that they are—have no fixed home, and they therefore stray far above the level at which bee-blossoms altogether cease to grow. Now, the butterfly differs greatly from the bee in his mode of honey-hunting: he does not bustle about in a business-like manner from one ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... of the boys had from time to time allowed their thoughts to stray away, and mental pictures of the Lawson crowd suffering from hunger and cold intruded upon their minds. They forgot whatever they chanced to be doing at that moment, ...
— The Banner Boy Scouts Snowbound - A Tour on Skates and Iceboats • George A. Warren
... find the young Missus, here, or I don't think we'll be finding her the night. It's a cursed counthry to live in, Misther Strides, where a young lady of the loveliness and pithiful beauty of Miss Maud can be lost in the woods, as it might be a sheep or a stray baste that was for ...
— Wyandotte • James Fenimore Cooper
... little path is closely worn, Where prattling children often stray, And o'er their sainted mother mourn, To shield ...
— Withered Leaves from Memory's Garland • Abigail Stanley Hanna
... they were the "light reading" of adults, the equivalent of to-day's Ally Sloper or the penny dreadful, is much more probable. No doubt children who came across them had a surreptitious treat, even as urchins of both sexes now pounce with avidity upon stray copies of the ultra-popular and so-called comic papers. But you could not call Ally Sloper, that Punchinello of the Victorian era—who has received the honour of an elaborate article in the Nineteenth Century—a child's hero, nor is his humour ...
— Children's Books and Their Illustrators • Gleeson White
... Swearing to a large Amount. Two Prisoners, with their Two Views. Two Nuns, Two Pieces of Dough, and Two Kisses. A Halt. Affair near Frexedas. Arrival near Guarda. Murder. A stray Sentry. Battle of Sabugal. Spanish and Portuguese Frontiers. Blockade of Almeida. Battle-like. Current Value of Lord Wellington's Nose. Battle of Fuentes D'Onor. The Day after the Battle. A grave Remark. The Padre's House. ...
— Adventures in the Rifle Brigade, in the Peninsula, France, and the Netherlands - from 1809 to 1815 • Captain J. Kincaid
... have endeavoured to present, with something of the concrete character of a picture, Dionysus, the old Greek god, as we may discern him through a multitude of stray hints in art and poetry and religious custom, through modern speculation on the tendencies of early thought, through traits and touches in our own actual states of mind, which may seem sympathetic with those tendencies. In such a picture there must necessarily be ...
— Greek Studies: A Series of Essays • Walter Horatio Pater
... would have been unfair to possible white employers to have said more. Fundi was, when I left the country, precisely in the position of any young man who tries to rise in the world. He would not again take a load as porter, and he was not yet skilled enough or known enough to pick up more than stray jobs as gunbearer. Before him was struggle and hard times, with a certainty of a highly considered profession if he won through. Behind him was steady work without outlets for ambition. It was distinctly up to him ...
— The Land of Footprints • Stewart Edward White
... in the proportion of one stray sheep to the ninety-nine, and of one lost coin to the nine, contrasted with the sad equality of obedience and disobedience in the two sons. One per cent., ten per cent., are bearable losses, but ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... replied Phellion; "detached thoughts imply the idea of a very great number of subjects on which the author lets his pen stray without the pretension ...
— The Lesser Bourgeoisie • Honore de Balzac
... childhood, and Guide of my youth, Thou Father of mercies, and Fountain of truth;— Protect and direct me wherever I stray, And bless little Henry each hour ...
— The Adventures of Little Bewildered Henry • Anonymous
... victory," quoth Midshipman Page, "and the only fellow who can feel cheap about it is the fellow who doesn't win. Cheer up, Davy. It's all well enough to wallop a stray college, here and there, but the one victory that sinks in deep and does our hearts good is the one we carry away from the Army. Whoop! ...
— Dave Darrin's Fourth Year at Annapolis • H. Irving Hancock
... whom he sat facing, he must have noted it before he had been in the room five minutes. Bud did not care to talk with Pollard, whom he agreed perfectly with Buck Thornton in calling a rattlesnake, and yet he talked rather wildly to him of branding and fence building and stray horses and hold-up men and the weather and last year's politics. And Winifred, for a little, watched both ...
— Six Feet Four • Jackson Gregory
... and only they, Who from His precepts never stray. Who know what's right, nor only so, But always practice what ...
— Anxious Audrey • Mabel Quiller-Couch
... A stray branch of a grape-vine had grown over the hedge, and stretched itself across the brook. Uncle Ben bent it down and ...
— Harper's Young People, October 19, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... hero, a mighty bowman, the dispeller of the fears of my sons! Alas, that hero, reft of life, lieth (on the earth), like mountain struck down by Indra! The fulfilment of Duryodhana's wishes is even like locomotion to one that is lame, or the gratification of the poor man's desire, or stray drops of water to one that is thirsty! Planned in one way, our schemes end otherwise. Alas, destiny is all powerful, and time incapable of being transgressed! Was my son Duhshasana, O Suta, slain, while flying away ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... have my voice!" The exclamation recurred at intervals, as a quick fear, that bubbled up from blind sensation, of her being utterly abandoned, and a stray thing carrying no light, startled her. Darkness she still had her desire for; but not to be dark in the darkness. She looked back on the recent night as a lake of fire, through which she had plunged; and of all the faculties ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... but strong attraction. He recognised the defects of his education, and formed the resolution, as far as possible, to regain lost ground. In the last five years he had read much and seen something; he had many stray ideas in his head; any professor might have envied some of his acquirements, but at the same time he did not know much that every schoolboy would have learnt long ago. Lavretsky was aware of his limitations; ...
— A House of Gentlefolk • Ivan Turgenev
... an agent, in a low voice, to the stupefied woman thus assailed. He laughed at her discomfiture. "It is waste kindness and waste time. You can't do anything with that sort of riffraff. It's only a stray cat fed to scratch you. They're ...
— Mlle. Fouchette - A Novel of French Life • Charles Theodore Murray
... cream-coloured old lace, and heavy-brocaded cope, that is afterwards exchanged for one of ermine, and flashing rings and jewelled cross. There is no music, but a deep quiet pervades the dim golden domes overhead and the faintly-lighted transepts. Stray rays of light catch the smooth surface of the mosaics, which throw off sparkles of brightness and cast deeper shadows beyond the uncertain radiance. After the midnight mass is celebrated you pass out with the stream of people into the cold, frosty ...
— Christmas: Its Origin and Associations - Together with Its Historical Events and Festive Celebrations During Nineteen Centuries • William Francis Dawson
... a few minutes, to make sure none of 'em stray off. I can't see just how many there are in this bunch, ...
— The Boy Ranchers - or Solving the Mystery at Diamond X • Willard F. Baker
... queen and with his infant did the feeble monarch stray, And the jungle was his palace, darksome ...
— Maha-bharata - The Epic of Ancient India Condensed into English Verse • Anonymous
... day the Desert Rat and his Indian retainer worked through the stringers and pockets of the Baby Mine, while the man from Boston sat looking at them, or, when the spirit moved him, casting about in the adjacent sand for stray "specimens" of which he managed to secure quite a number. The next morning, as soon as it was light enough to see, the work was commenced again, and by noon the last piece of rotten honeycombed rock with its streaks and wens of dull virgin gold had ...
— The Long Chance • Peter B. Kyne
... self was furl'd Far away from the heart of the woman. Her hand Droop'd, and from it, unloosed from their frail silken band, Fell those early love-letters, strewn, scatter'd, and shed At her feet—life's lost blossoms! Dejected, her head On her bosom was bow'd. Her gaze vaguely stray'd o'er Those strewn records of passionate moments no more. From each page to her sight leapt some words that belied The composure with which she that day had denied Every claim on her heart to those poor perish'd years. They avenged themselves now, ...
— Lucile • Owen Meredith
... for wisdom's various arts renown'd, Long exercised in woes, O Muse! resound; Who, when his arms had wrought the destined fall Of sacred Troy, and razed her heaven-built wall, Wandering from clime to clime, observant stray'd, Their manners noted, and their states survey'd, On stormy seas unnumber'd toils he bore, Safe with his friends to gain his natal shore: Vain toils! their impious folly dared to prey On herds devoted ...
— The Odyssey of Homer • Homer, translated by Alexander Pope
... her, and gently laid her down. The face of Appius Claudius wore the Claudian scowl and sneer, And in the Claudian note he cried, "What doth this rabble here? Have they no crafts to mind at home, that hitherward they stray? Ho! lictors, clear the market-place, and fetch the corpse away!" The voice of grief and fury till then had not been loud; But a deep sullen murmur wandered among the crowd, Like the moaning noise that goes before the whirlwind on the deep, Or the growl of a fierce watch-dog but ...
— Lays of Ancient Rome • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... more than a few minutes. She got up, and went to the glass before the mantelpiece. Taking out the pins that held her large Gainsborough hat, she arranged her hair with her hands, putting the curls of the fringe in their right place, fastening up some stray ends. She had given orders, as we have seen, to admit no one, and was presumably going to bed. Nevertheless, her behaviour was instinctively the behaviour of one who ...
— Sir George Tressady, Vol. II • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... again. It was not framed for village churls, But for high dames and mighty earls; He'd play'd it to King Charles the Good, When he kept Court at Holyrood; And much he wish'd, yet fear'd, to try The long-forgotten melody. Amid the strings his fingers stray'd, And an uncertain warbling made, And oft he shook his hoary head. But when he caught the measure wild The old man raised his face, and smiled; And lighten'd up his faded eye, With all a poet's ecstasy! In varying ...
— Sir Walter Scott - (English Men of Letters Series) • Richard H. Hutton
... civilization of the New World arose from that of the Old. They simply suggest that after the people of the Mediterranean regions had become well civilized and after those of America were also sufficiently civilized to assimilate new ideas, a stray ship or two was blown by the trade-winds across the Atlantic. That hypothetical voyage was the precursor of the great journey of Columbus. Without the tradewinds this historic discoverer never could have found the West Indies. Suppose that a strong west wind ...
— The Red Man's Continent - A Chronicle of Aboriginal America, Volume 1 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Ellsworth Huntington
... come round from Melbourne with the additional camels, says that the two camels which a short time since made their way into this colony overland, and were brought to town from Truro, were two out of the three that belonged to his son, and that they were allowed to stray, by a man left in charge of them whilst Mr. Wills was engaged in some astronomical pursuits. The man left the camels to make some tea, and, on his return, the animals had disappeared. Two of them, as already stated, have been recovered, but no tidings have been received ...
— Successful Exploration Through the Interior of Australia • William John Wills
... that way. He smiled a little, but I think he was not overmuch pleased. I asked him why I couldn't take a bucket of water and dip the shingle in it and drown them. He said, well, I could try it. I did try it,—first wrapping my hand in a cloth to prevent contact with any stray bug. To my amazement, the moment they touched the water they all spread unseen wings and flew away, safe and sound. I should not have been much more surprised to see Halicarnassus soaring over the ridge-pole. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 55, May, 1862 • Various
... known that women played a prominent part in the Nihilistic propaganda. On the other hand, it was clear, from the guard's statement, that the man must have been hidden there BEFORE the others arrived, and how unlikely the coincidence that conspirators should stray exactly into the very compartment in which a spy was already concealed! Besides, this explanation ignored the man in the smoking carriage, and gave no reason at all for his simultaneous disappearance. The police had little difficulty in showing ...
— Tales of Terror and Mystery • Arthur Conan Doyle
... OF LANCASHIRE" having long been out of print—stray copies commanding high prices—it has been determined to republish the whole in a more compact and less costly form. This, the fourth and the only complete edition, includes the First Series of twenty tales, published in two volumes (1829, demy 8vo, ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... a few stray guests, islanders or from the inland country, to whom Mrs. Todd offered the hospitalities of a single meal, we were quite by ourselves all summer; and when there were signs of invasion, late in July, and a certain Mrs. Fosdick appeared like ...
— The Country of the Pointed Firs • Sarah Orne Jewett
... Pharisee, but he was not a Samaritan either. He had deliberately set himself to pull up any stray weeds of moral scruple that lingered in a mind stripped bare of Christian ethic, a task harder than some realize, since thousands of men who have no faith in Christ practise virtues that were not known ...
— Nightfall • Anthony Pryde
... advise"!' said Mr. Maxwell of Summertrees; 'what the devil can I advise you to do, excepting to send the bellman through the town to cry your lost sheep, as they do spaniel dogs or stray ponies?' ...
— Redgauntlet • Sir Walter Scott
... more whither do stray The golden atoms of the day: For in pure love did Heav'n prepare Those powders to enrich ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald - in two volumes, Vol. 1 • Edward FitzGerald
... Certain stray little sunbeams, half wild with glee, rushing hither and thither through the roses, discover Miss Penelope Blake sitting in the drawing-room at Moyne. She is dressed in her very best lavender silk, that would stand alone, and be glad to do it if it was let, ...
— Rossmoyne • Unknown
... of the banditti had come forth from their stronghold they were accustomed to strew a little fresh earth over the entire spot, and thus afford an additional precaution against the chance of detection on the part of any one who might chance to stray in that direction. We may also add that the trap-door was provided with a massive bolt which fastened it inside when closed, and that the handle of the bell-wire, which gave the signal to open the trap, was concealed in a small hollow in the ...
— Wagner, the Wehr-Wolf • George W. M. Reynolds
... matter writ on the rocks o' the yearth!" exclaimed Grinnell, with a laugh. "Waal, jes keep that sayin' o' mine in yer head, an' tell him when he kems home. An' look a-hyar, ef enny mo' o' his stray shoats kem about hyar, I'll snip thar ears an' gin ...
— The Riddle Of The Rocks - 1895 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... the text has once more been subjected to a searching revision, and it is hoped that the book now contains no statement which is not in accord with common sense and the present state of philological knowledge. Only those who have experience of such work know how easy it is to stray unconsciously from the exact truth in publishing the results of etymological research. Moreover, new light is constantly being thrown on old problems, and theories long triumphant have occasionally to yield to fresh evidence. To take an example from this volume, the traditional ...
— The Romance of Words (4th ed.) • Ernest Weekley
... the mechanics and peasantry around him, who were, perhaps, born in the same village. My young superiors never insulted the clouterly appearance of my plough-boy carcase, the two extremes of which were often exposed to all the inclemencies of all the seasons. They would give me stray volumes of books; among them, even then, I could pick up some observations, and one, whose heart, I am sure, not even the "Munny Begum" scenes have tainted, helped me to a little French. Parting with these my young friends and benefactors, as they occasionally went off for the ...
— Stories of Achievement, Volume IV (of 6) - Authors and Journalists • Various
... allowed to grow fainter; the dim groups gathered more and more round the great cauldrons, or passed, laughing and clattering, into the inner passages of that ancient house. Soon there were only some ten loiterers in the garden; soon only four. Finally the last stray merry-maker ran into the house whooping to his companions. The fire faded, and the slow, strong stars came out. And the seven strange men were left alone, like seven stone statues on their chairs of stone. Not one of them had spoken ...
— The Man Who Was Thursday - A Nightmare • G. K. Chesterton
... on his journey southward. This was the only species of thrush I saw in the Adirondacks. Near Lake Sandford, where were large tracks of raspberry and wild cherry, I saw numbers of them. A boy whom we met, driving home some stray cows, said it was the "partridge-bird," no doubt from the resemblance of its note, when disturbed, to the cluck ...
— Wake-Robin • John Burroughs
... loved very much, whereon St. Anne and other saints played among roses and raspberries, beautiful to behold. These things made both the picker-up and the payer exceedingly contented. Meanwhile Peter with difficulty restrained Leslie from "picking up" stray pieces of mosaic from tessellated pavements, and other curios. Oddly together with Leslie's feeling for the costly went the insane and indiscriminate avidity of ...
— The Lee Shore • Rose Macaulay
... boy!' She released her hand and caressed his cheek again. 'If you were older than you are I shouldn't allow you to take these liberties, you know.' Then she bent forward sideways a little, and allowed her hand to stray beyond his shoulder. 'What makes you fancy that you love an old woman ...
— Despair's Last Journey • David Christie Murray
... the sand. Negro sellers of fruit and fly-embroidered lumps of meat, or brilliant-coloured pottery, and cheap, bright stuffs, were rolling up their wares for the night, in red and purple rags or tattered matting. Beggars lingered, hoping for a stray dried date, or a coin before crawling off to secret dens; and two deformed dwarfs in enormous turbans and blue coats, claimed power as marabouts, chanting their own praises and the praises of ...
— The Golden Silence • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... members were constantly wishing to return; the crops might be attacked by strange diseases, by storms or drought, and man himself was liable to seasonal disease or sudden pestilence. The cattle and sheep might stray into the remote forest and become the prey of evil beasts, if not of evil spirits. How was the farmer to meet all these troubles, caused, as he supposed, by spirits whose ways he did not understand? How were they to be propitiated as they themselves would wish? ...
— The Religious Experience of the Roman People - From the Earliest Times to the Age of Augustus • W. Warde Fowler
... humbly ... it has hailed and snowed ... With voices low and lanterns lit; So very simple is the road, That we may stray from it. ...
— Poems • G.K. Chesterton
... no alien incense fling! Through Him—by Him—for Him—all goodness know! 'Tis from the source alone each stream must flow. To please Him, wife, and wealth, and rank, and state Must be forsaken—strait the heavenly gate. Poor silly sheep! afar you err and stray From Him who is The Life, The Truth, The Way! My grief chokes utterance! I see your fate, As round the fold the hungry wolves of hate Closer and fiercer rage: from sword and flame One shelter for His flock—one only Name! The Cross alone our victor over fears, Not this thy strength,—thy ...
— Polyuecte • Pierre Corneille
... tut!" exclaimed Mr. Nestor. "It isn't your fault, Mary, but this Tom Swift must be taught a lesson. He was careless, if nothing worse, and, for all he knew, there might have been some stray bits of dynamite in that packing box. It won't do! It won't do! I'll write him a letter, and give him a piece of ...
— Tom Swift and his Big Tunnel - or, The Hidden City of the Andes • Victor Appleton
... after thirty years of fighting, the year 1896 had served to convince him that the power of concentrated wealth could never be controlled, but could only be destroyed. He had published a pamphlet about it, and set out to organize a party of his own, when a stray Socialist leaflet had revealed to him that others had been ahead of him. Now for eight years he had been fighting for the party, anywhere, everywhere—whether it was a G.A.R. reunion, or a hotel-keepers' convention, or an Afro-American businessmen's ...
— The Jungle • Upton Sinclair
... is answered—good measure, pressed down, running over—not only a temperance boy to the very core, but a Christian; then a quick little thrill of pain—oh, his work was done, but his duty had been left undone; the Lord had gathered in this stray waif, but he was not the servant. Then, first great astonishment, and afterward humble, very humble thanksgiving. So then he was the servant after all; the Lord had called him in to help, and the work was begun ...
— Three People • Pansy
... taking up Dominique on the way. It was evening when his coach brought him past the gate sentry and through the stray groups in the courtyard of the Quarters, so that he noticed nothing particular until he entered Collinot's office to report himself. The Adjutant received him with unusual stiffness. When he, soon after, descended in his uniform and ...
— The False Chevalier - or, The Lifeguard of Marie Antoinette • William Douw Lighthall
... resisted, by the sinner's soul. Wretches! while still they course the glittering prize The law of God eludes their ears and eyes. Life, then, were virtue, did they thus obey; But wide from life's chief good they headlong stray. Now glory's arduous toils the breast inflame; Now avarice thirsts, insensible of shame; Now sloth unnerves them in voluptuous ease, And the sweet pleasures of the body please. With eager haste they rush the gulf within, And their whole souls are centred in their sin. But, oh, great Jove! ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... "This is a stray dog," said one, "he has lost his collar, there is not even the price of a mouthful of wine on him. Shall we kill him and leave him for the vultures?" "What have the vultures done for us," said another, "that we should feed them? Let us take his cloak and ...
— The Sad Shepherd • Henry Van Dyke
... brandy-and-water would bring him round. The second glass would make him the fondest husband living; but the third would restore to him the memory of all his wrongs, and give him courage against his wife or all the world,—even to the detriment of the furniture around him, should a stray poker chance to meet his hand. All these peculiarities of his character were not, however, known to Cradell; and when our friend saw him enter the drawing-room with his wife on his ...
— The Small House at Allington • Anthony Trollope
... been accustomed to playing with such a thong from his boyhood, and had become expert in its use in capturing wild cattle in the course of his adventures. Unfortunately, there were no wild bulls likely to be met with in the neighborhood, to become the subjects of his skill. A stray cow in the road, an ox or a horse in a pasture, must serve his turn,—dull beasts, but moving marks to ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, No. 38, December, 1860 • Various
... laden with the sweet abundance of that valley stirred her hair. And with that womanly gesture which has been the same through the ages she put up her hand; deftly tucking in the stray ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... frantically under the table for even stray pieces of the letter, but she could not ...
— Wild Kitty • L. T. Meade
... hear him go, but when I spoke again there was no answer, and I devoted all my energy to my task, though it had become so monotonous that my thoughts began to stray, and I found myself wondering how matters were going in the cabin—whether they were very much alarmed by the noise of the steam, or whether they felt as confident as the mate did about our ultimate mastery of the fire, and how Walters ...
— Sail Ho! - A Boy at Sea • George Manville Fenn
... security and her friendly duty. As for the feelings of her heart, she was at rest. Strong in self-confidence, she had no fear that her mind could be influenced to stray from its proper path. It is true that during the previous evening, in the first tumult of troubled thought, she had felt a vague presentiment that a day of temptation might be before her, not as the result of any deliberate choice upon her part, but rather as a cruel destiny ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 5, May, 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... see that gawk get Jane wound up in her miseries," she told herself, while Janet Clarke hunted for stray tennis balls in the hedge. "Jane is such a dear with sympathy that this girl's very crimes would appeal to her—in compassion. No-sir- ree!" She volleyed a vicious ball—"Jane will not see the impossible ...
— Jane Allen: Junior • Edith Bancroft
... he said gently, "among your many good and kindly works, I hear you have rescued a poor stray boy from the streets of Rouen—and that he is with you ...
— The Master-Christian • Marie Corelli
... plots, struggling with the mildewed earth to be grass, or to win any show of compromise; its silent pavements, unaccustomed to the tread of feet, and even to the observation of eyes, except when a stray face looked down from the upper world, wondering what nook it was; its sun-dial in a little bricked-up corner, where no sun had straggled for a hundred years, but where, in compensation for the sun's neglect, the snow would lie for weeks when it lay ...
— The Haunted Man and the Ghost's Bargin • Charles Dickens
... should have repudiated the base insinuation with scorn. For I humbly conceived that I was a poet of the first water; and had indeed corrected a great many mistakes in Wordsworth and other writers, and written fifty-six or fifty-seven sonnets before ever the club was thought of. And Stray himself, who was accounted our Laureate, had only written thirty-four, and they averaged quite ...
— Boycotted - And Other Stories • Talbot Baines Reed
... the stone, Manhood hath arisen: Still are we thine own, Unharmed by bond or prison. When earth—life—fade away In the last meal's solemn gladness, Around thy cup dare stray No ...
— Peter Schlemihl etc. • Chamisso et. al.
... Celestine, not a doubt but Cupid's darts Would in a trice have wounded both of their fond, loving hearts; But he has never left New York to stray in foreign parts (Because ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various
... behaved with great humility and compliance, protesting that his chief study should be to contrive parties for her pleasure and satisfaction. But no sooner did he regain possession of his stray sheep, than he locked her up more closely than ever; and after having revolved various schemes for her reformation, determined to board her in a convent, under the inspection of a prudent abbess, ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett
... as we reached our first balanced budget, I asked that we meet our responsibility to the next generation by maintaining our fiscal discipline. Because we refused to stray from that path, we are doing something that would have seemed unimaginable seven years ago: We are actually paying down the national debt. If we stay on this path, we can pay down the debt entirely in 13 years and make America debt-free for the first ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... in the heavens, and the crickets chirped unbearably. The luminous dew lay heavily upon the surrounding fields, and now and then a stray breeze, amid the overhanging branches of the trees that lined the roadway, aroused in the consciousness of the single wayfarer a feeling closely akin to panic. When he reached the summit of the hill, he was ...
— At the Sign of the Jack O'Lantern • Myrtle Reed
... with their multitude of rings!... Hiding himself away in a corner, he took from time to time a rapid survey of the faces of all the guests, without even distinguishing them, and then stared obstinately at his own feet. When at last a stray musician with a worn face, long hair, and an eyeglass stuck into his contorted eyebrow sat down to the grand piano and flinging his hands with a sweep on the keys and his foot on the pedal, began to attack a fantasia ...
— Dream Tales and Prose Poems • Ivan Turgenev
... and asking himself whether the phantom he had seen might have been a stray reflection of one of the torches, the lights all at once disappeared from the ...
— The Tiger Hunter • Mayne Reid
... rimmed glasses. He spends much of his time in company thinking up apposite quotations and verifying them. He has worn out two Bartlett's. Wurm is also addicted to maps and dictionaries, and is a great reader of special articles. Consequently his mind is a pound for stray collarless facts; or rather, in its variety of contents, it more closely resembles a building contractor's back yard—odd salvage—rejected doors—a job of window-frames—a pile of bricks for chipping—discarded plumbing—broken junk gathered here ...
— Chimney-Pot Papers • Charles S. Brooks
... nooks and corners and in the cool, wide doorways sat still other slaves: porters waiting for a stray job; grayheads, too old for burdens, plaiting baskets; or a fat mammy behind ...
— Through stained glass • George Agnew Chamberlain |
