"Three-legged" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... drink he would bob against her lips, and spill the ale over her withered chin; and presently after, when the same old dame was gravely seating herself to tell her neighbors a sad and melancholy story, Puck would slip her three-legged stool from under her, and down toppled the poor old woman, and then the old gossips would hold their sides and laugh at her, and swear they never wasted a ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles and Mary Lamb
... emblem is the snake—the other aspect of the heavenly divinity whose symbols are the doves. It may be noted that at Gournia Miss Boyd (Mrs. Hawes) found a primitive figure of a goddess, twined with snakes and accompanied by doves, together with a low, three-legged altar, and the familiar horns of consecration. Strangely enough, along with the Snake Goddess of Knossos there was found in the Temple Repositories a cross of veined marble, with limbs of equal length, which ...
— The Sea-Kings of Crete • James Baikie
... scenes to which these gloomy visions gave rise.[585] And in the Highlands of Scotland anybody who pleased could hear proclaimed aloud the names of parishioners doomed to perish within the next twelve months, if he would only take a three-legged stool and go and sit on it at three cross-roads, while the church clock was striking twelve at midnight on Hallowe'en. It was even in his power to save the destined victims from their doom by taking with him articles of wearing apparel ...
— Balder The Beautiful, Vol. I. • Sir James George Frazer
... combed with a three-legged stool? No, blast me if I do! I've stayed out this long just to make her sensible of her unkindness to one of the best of husbands—and I'm not going home until I am dead drunk. I guess that'll bring her to her bearings. Ha! Don't ...
— The Two Wives - or, Lost and Won • T. S. Arthur
... very excess of well-being; and, as if made audacious by the invincible aspect of the peace, he felt he cared for nothing that could happen to him to the end of his days. From time to time he glanced idly at a chart pegged out with four drawing-pins on a low three-legged table abaft the steering-gear case. The sheet of paper portraying the depths of the sea presented a shiny surface under the light of a bull's-eye lamp lashed to a stanchion, a surface as level and smooth as the glimmering surface of the waters. Parallel rulers with a pair of dividers reposed ...
— Lord Jim • Joseph Conrad
... beside the three-legged table sat Darke, booted, spurred, and armed with pistol and sabre. In an old rocking-chair, without arms, the singular woman, who seemed to accompany him everywhere, sat rocking to and fro, and carelessly tapping with a small whip, the handsome ...
— Mohun, or, The Last Days of Lee • John Esten Cooke
... to give Rembrandt a room in his own house, but he preferred the old mill, and a wheat-bin was fitted up for a private studio. The fittings of the studio must have cost fully two dollars, according to all accounts; there were a three-legged stool, an easel, a wooden chest, and a straw bed in the corner. Only one window admitted the light, and this was so high up that the occupant was not ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 4 (of 14) - Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Painters • Elbert Hubbard
... some tree, and supported by round legs set in auger holes, had the honor of standing for a table—around which, like a brood of chickens around their mother, were promiscuously collected several three-legged stools of similar workmanship. In one corner of the room were a few shelves; on which were ranged some wooden trenchers, pewter plates, knives and forks, and the like necessary articles, while a not very costly collection of pots and kettles took a less dignified and ...
— Ella Barnwell - A Historical Romance of Border Life • Emerson Bennett
... moment the great shaggy head moved, only an infuriating scratch was given, the smoke betrayed the man's place, and the Grizzly made savage, three-legged haste to catch ...
— The Biography of a Grizzly • Ernest Thompson Seton
... themselves to collect a model dairy, sparing neither time nor expense in providing themselves with perfect sets of improved appurtenances for those dairies, from rich, well-watered pastures down to good, substantial three-legged milking stools, and labor incessantly from sunrise until sundown, that their barns may be in perfect order and everything connected with the business neat and clean, in order that their material may come into the hands of the manufacturer ...
— Prairie Farmer, Vol. 56: No. 4, January 26, 1884 - A Weekly Journal for the Farm, Orchard and Fireside • Various
... which sucked in the manhood of the town, to belch it forth weary and work-stained every night. Little groups of children straggled to school, or loitered to peep through the single, front windows at the big, gilt-edged Bibles, balanced upon small, three-legged tables, which were their usual adornment. Stout women, with thick, red arms and dirty aprons, stood upon the whitened doorsteps, leaning upon their brooms, and shrieking their morning greetings across the road. One stouter, redder, and dirtier than the rest, had gathered a small ...
— Round the Red Lamp - Being Facts and Fancies of Medical Life • Arthur Conan Doyle
... specimen of house-dwelling Gipsies in the Midlands I have visited. In the room downstairs there were a broken-down old squab, two rickety old chairs, and a three-legged table that had to be propped against the wall, and a rusty old poker, with a smoking fire-place. The Gipsy father was a strong man, not over fond of work; he had been in prison once; the mother, a strong Gipsy ...
— Gipsy Life - being an account of our Gipsies and their children • George Smith
... that same in a brace of shakes," and sitting down upon a ricketty three-legged stool of his own manufacturing, he commenced his tailoring by tearing off a piece of his trousers to patch the elbows of his jacket. And this trifling act, simple as it may appear, was a perfect type of the boy's general conduct, and marked his progress through life. The present ...
— Roughing it in the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... rattle in the gibbet?" said Villon. "They are all dancing the devil's jig on nothing, up there. You may dance, my gallants, you'll be none the warmer! Whew! what a gust! Down went somebody just now! A medlar the fewer on the three-legged medlar-tree!—I say, Dom Nicolas, it'll be cold to-night on the St. Denis ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 4 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... woman took her cake from the griddle, and laid it on a wooden platter, then caught up a three-legged stool, set it down by Richard, seated herself at his knee, and assumed the look of mystery wherewith she was in the habit of garnishing every bit of knowledge, real or fancied, which it pleased ...
— St. George and St. Michael • George MacDonald
... the summer evening in the bay window of the hall. Tibble sat on a three-legged stool by him, writing in a crabbed hand, in a big ledger, and Kit Smallbones towered above both, holding in his hand a bundle of tally-sticks. By the help of these, and of that accuracy of memory which writing has destroyed, he was unfolding, down to the very last farthing, the ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... in a minute," she answered. "You go out to the big apple- tree, and I'll come in a minute." The apple-tree was in the farthest corner of the large garden. Near it was the summer-house where Guida and her mother used to sit and read, Guida on the three-legged stool, her mother on the low, wide seat covered with ferns. This spot Guida used to "flourish" with flowers. The vines, too, crept through the rough latticework, and all together made the place a bower, secluded ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... Mary was directing the children's sports. Little creatures seethed round about her, making a shrill, tinny clamour; others clustered about the skirts and trousers of their parents. Mary's face was shining in the heat; with an immense output of energy she started a three-legged race. Denis looked on ...
— Crome Yellow • Aldous Huxley
... us, in a delightful passage, of the manner in which Philemon and Baucis received the gods unawares as guests in their humble cottage. On the three-legged table, which was levelled by means of a potsherd under one of the legs, they served cabbage soup, rusty bacon, eggs poached for a minute in the hot cinders, cornel-berries pickled in brine, honey, and fruits. In this rustic abundance one dish was lacking; an essential dish, which the Baucis ...
— Social Life in the Insect World • J. H. Fabre
... of mischief dashed wildly about the floor and up the bed-curtains, with its back up and its tail thickened, and its green eyes glaring defiance at everything animate, inanimate, or otherwise, insomuch that Maggot made sundry efforts to quell it with the three-legged stool—and Mrs Maggot followed suit with ...
— Deep Down, a Tale of the Cornish Mines • R.M. Ballantyne
... red up the house, the Auld Licht lassies sat in the gloaming at their doors on three-legged stools, patiently knitting stockings. To them came stiff-limbed youths who, with a "Blawy nicht, Jeanie" (to which the inevitable answer was, "It is so, Cha-rles"), rested their shoulders on the doorpost, and silently followed with their eyes the flashing ...
— Auld Licht Idyls • J.M. Barrie
... nearer, stooped, and peeped through the keyhole. Just opposite the door, on a three-legged stool, sat the prisoner. His head was thrown back and he was looking at the sky through the bars in the top of his cell. The song had ceased and he was talking softly to himself. The king, in a whisper, told the prime minister to bring ...
— Boys and Girls Bookshelf (Vol 2 of 17) - Folk-Lore, Fables, And Fairy Tales • Various
... a creature of about the size of a toad, came ambling, three-legged fashion, under our feet. Upon that it stiffened its tail, growled, and snuffed the air with ...
— Through Russia • Maxim Gorky
... back and jambs of the fireplace was of stone. A hole about two feet square constituted the window. Frequently the floor was the smooth, solid earth. A split slab supported by sticks driven into auger-holes, formed a table. A few three-legged stools supplied the place of chairs. Some wooden pins, driven into holes bored in the logs, supported shelves. A bedstead was framed by a network of ...
— David Crockett: His Life and Adventures • John S. C. Abbott
... listened, I declare the fellow sighed. Might not this have been a brave African traveller, or gone to the Indies after Drake? But it is an evil age for the gypsily inclined among men. He who can sit squarest on a three-legged stool, he it is who has the ...
— An Inland Voyage • Robert Louis Stevenson
... upon a little three-legged table, all made of solid glass. There was nothing on it but a tiny golden key, and Alice's first idea was that this might belong to one of the doors of the hall; but, alas! either the locks were too large, or the key was too small, for, at any rate, it would not open any of them. However, on the ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books - Vol. II: Fiction • Arthur Mee, J. A. Hammerton, Eds.
... swamp, as silently as possible, with all our forces, and then to force the pack out so as to face our volley. This, should the method be successful, would finish the whole hunt at once; but should the three-legged savage succeed in making his escape, we were to hunt him by relays, bivouacking upon the ground wherever night should find us, and taking up the chase again upon the following morning, until continual fatigue should wear out the fierce brute. I had ...
— Warwick Woodlands - Things as they Were There Twenty Years Ago • Henry William Herbert (AKA Frank Forester)
... a shout behind me; and, glancing back, saw my pursuers, three now, with my full-bodied cousin for whipper-in—change their course as I leapt a brook and headed for the crowded enclosure. A somnolent fat man, bulging, like a feather-bed, on a three-legged stool, dozed at the receipt of custom, with a deal table and a bowl of sixpences before him. I dashed on him ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 20 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... my feet. I must be doing something. There—sit down on that three-legged 'creepie,' and, whatever you do, ...
— Patsy • S. R. Crockett
... bad wind which blows no one any good, and so, though I verily believe I suffer all a man can suffer with a broken bone, yet when I look at the fair face of Maggie Miller I feel that I would not exchange this high old bed, to enter which needs a short ladder, even for a seat by you on that three-legged stool behind the old writing-desk. I never saw anything like her in my life. Everything she thinks, she says, and as to flattering her, it can't be done. I've told her a dozen times at least that she was beautiful, and she didn't mind it any more than Rose ...
— Maggie Miller • Mary J. Holmes
... the finest kind of company for a gray day. And there is your attic. Why, I always spend hours in my attic these still, gentle days. I go up there to read old letters and look over old boxes full of queer keepsakes. I sit in a three-legged chair and sometimes, if I find an old coverless book and if the rain begins to drum softly on the shingles, I go to sleep on an ancient sagging sofa and dream great dreams. Haven't you ransacked that attic of yours yet?" she ...
— Green Valley • Katharine Reynolds
... and wring the fowls' necks, and perhaps for all we know murder each other. It is a horrible thought, isn't it? They look so thoroughly innocent, these country children. Do you see that little boy crying because he was knocked down in the three-legged steeplechase. His life race is only just beginning. His father is in gaol for theft, his mother incurable in a Samaritan infirmary, yet he is only crying because he grazed his knee and did not win ...
— When the Birds Begin to Sing • Winifred Graham
... was very stormy, Diamond forgot all about the hole, for he was busy making a cave by the side of his mother's fire with a broken chair, a three-legged stool, and a blanket, and then sitting in it. His mother, however, discovered it, and pasted a bit of brown paper over it, so that, when Diamond had snuggled down the next night, he had no occasion to ...
— At the Back of the North Wind • George MacDonald
... feet of the inventor of all musical sound by breath of man. And if you will now compare finally the eager tilting of the workman's seat in 22 and 6, and the working of the wood in the painter's low table for his pots of colour, and his three-legged stool, with that of Tubal Cain's anvil block; and the way in which the lines of the forge and upper triptych are in each composition used to set off the rounding of the head, I believe you will have little hesitation in accepting my own view of the matter—namely, that the three pieces ...
— Mornings in Florence • John Ruskin
... long "navy" revolver (slung on right side, hammer to the front), and projecting from his boot a horn-handled bowie knife. The furniture of the hut was neither gorgeous nor much in the way. The rocking-chairs and sofas were not present and never had been, but they were represented by two three-legged stools, a pine-board bench 5 four feet long, and two empty candle boxes. The table was a greasy board on stilts, and the tablecloth and napkins had not come—and they were not looking for them, either. A battered tin platter, a knife and fork, ...
— Story Hour Readings: Seventh Year • E.C. Hartwell
... Doret picked him up by the elbows and kissed him again and again, then set him down gently, at which Molly scrambled forward, and without word or presentation speech gave him her heart's first treasure. She held out the three-legged puppy, for a gun and a dog should ever go together; then, being of the womankind aforesaid, she began to cry as she kissed her pet good-bye on its ...
— The Barrier • Rex Beach
... of the inheritance of mutilations or malformations arising congenitally from some abrupt variation in the reproductive elements. In such cases as the one-eared rabbits, the two-legged pigs, the three-legged dogs, the one-horned stags, hornless bulls, earless rabbits, lop-eared rabbits, tailless dogs, &c., if the father or the mother or the embryo had suffered from some accident or disease which might plausibly have been assigned as the cause of the original malformation, these transmitted ...
— Are the Effects of Use and Disuse Inherited? - An Examination of the View Held by Spencer and Darwin • William Platt Ball
... morning, as Captain Edward Waverley was setting out for his morning walk, he found the castle of Bradwardine by no means the enchanted palace of silence he had first discovered. Milkmaids, bare-legged and wild-haired, ran about distractedly with pails and three-legged stools in their hands, crying, "Lord, guide us!" and ...
— Red Cap Tales - Stolen from the Treasure Chest of the Wizard of the North • Samuel Rutherford Crockett
... Old Hulk, sat on the top of a tall three-legged stool in his own snug little office in the sea-port town of Bilton, with his legs swinging to and fro; his socks displayed a considerable way above the tops of his gaiters; his hands thrust deep into his breeches pockets; ...
— Martin Rattler • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... rattle in the gibbet?" said Villon. "They are all dancing the devil's jig on nothing, up there. You may dance, my gallants, you'll be none the warmer! Whew! what a gust! Down went somebody just now! A medlar the fewer on the three-legged medlar-tree! - I say, Dom Nicolas, it'll be cold to-night on the St. Denis ...
— New Arabian Nights • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Dowden, and, somewhat more gently, poussetted with her likewise. The young men were not slow to imitate the example of their elders, and seized the maids; Grandfer Cantle and his stick jigged in the form of a three-legged object among the rest; and in half a minute all that could be seen on Rainbarrow was a whirling of dark shapes amid a boiling confusion of sparks, which leapt around the dancers as high as their waists. The chief noises were women's shrill cries, men's laughter, Susan's stays and pattens, Olly ...
— The Return of the Native • Thomas Hardy
... workmen and their wives was afterwards held in the Library Hall at Pittsburgh to greet me, and I addressed them from both my head and my heart. The one sentence I remember, and always shall, was to the effect that capital, labor, and employer were a three-legged stool, none before or after the others, all equally indispensable. Then came the cordial hand-shaking and all was well. Having thus rejoined hands and hearts with our employees and their wives, I felt that a great ...
— Autobiography of Andrew Carnegie • Andrew Carnegie
... fat old gendarme. The absurd little drama of coquetry and worship went on until the old fellow arose with a friendly bon jour, to me, and a whistle to Lil, who followed him with a supercilious nose in the air. The despised Schwartz stood a while, and then set out after her at a ridiculous three-legged run, but before he had gone ten yards he stopped short, looked after the retreating fair in silence, and then walked off with a dispirited aspect ...
— Schwartz: A History - From "Schwartz" by David Christie Murray • David Christie Murray
... delivered the oracles was called the Pythia, after the serpent Python, which was killed by Apollo. Having first bathed in the waters of the Castalian spring, she was conducted into the temple by the priests, and was seated on a sort of three-legged stool or table, called a tripod, which was placed over the mouth of a cave whence issued sulphurous vapours. Here she gradually became affected in a remarkable manner, and fell into an ecstatic condition, in which she uttered wild and extraordinary phrases, which were held to be ...
— Myths and Legends of Ancient Greece and Rome • E.M. Berens
... bent andirons supporting the blazing logs, in the increasing bed of embers upon the bricks, in the sharp odour of the knot of resinous pine she had thrown on with the hickory, brought before her the winter evenings in Delphy's little cabin, when they sat upon three-legged stools and roasted early winesaps. She saw the negro faces in the glow of the hearth, and she saw Nicholas and herself sitting side by side in the shadow. His childish face, with its look of ancient care, came back to her with the knotted boyish hands that had carried and ...
— The Voice of the People • Ellen Glasgow
... have been proof against a robe with high neck and tight sleeves. Mrs. Rayne's face always seemed to crown her costume like a rose out of green leaves, yet I cannot but think that if I had seen her first in a calico gown and sitting on a three-legged stool milking a cow, I should still have thought her ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 11, - No. 22, January, 1873 • Various
... they reached the farm, and Germain put him down on his bed without waking him. Then he entered upon such explanations as he was able to give. Pere Maurice, sitting upon his three-legged stool in the doorway, listened gravely to him, and, although he was ill pleased with the result of the expedition, when Germain, after describing the widow's system of coquetry, asked his father in-law if he had time to go and pay court to her fifty-two Sundays in the year with the chance ...
— The Devil's Pool • George Sand
... in many places had fallen into decay, and admitted through countless crevices the wind and rain. A broken chair, a three-legged stool, and the shattered remains of an oak table, deficient of one of its supporters, but propped up with bricks, comprised the whole furniture of the ...
— Mark Hurdlestone - Or, The Two Brothers • Susanna Moodie
... his three-legged machine to one side, and was about to start moving the film, as Ruth, Alice and the others, presumably of a gay yachting party, started up ...
— The Moving Picture Girls - First Appearances in Photo Dramas • Laura Lee Hope
... in—a sturdy young man, with well-knit limbs, and round, good-humoured countenance, with the universal smock, and shoes few legs but such as his could lift. When I spoke of James, his countenance grew sad, and, rising from his three-legged stool, he left the cottage, and did not return for nearly ...
— Old Jack • W.H.G. Kingston
... found it impossible to escape the games. The potato and three-legged races brought the contestants to his side of the deck, and his reading was constantly interrupted by an avalanche of noisy spectators who rushed through the cross passages from one side of the boat to the other, exhibiting a ...
— The Honorable Percival • Alice Hegan Rice
... in a room that was hung with black and gold brocade. White mats lay upon the ground, and placed irregularly about the room were large brass vases filled with lotus blossoms. Here Freydis sat on a three-legged stool, in conference with a panther. From the ceiling hung rigid blue and orange and reddish-brown serpents, all dead and embalmed; and in the middle of the ceiling was painted a face which was not quite human, looking downward, with evil eyes half closed, and with its ...
— Figures of Earth • James Branch Cabell
... up his three-legged turntables, each of which bore an angle-iron supporting a twisted length of lead pipe, stood a bucket of water beneath one, and explained that in a few minutes he would be ready to begin. Donning a linen blouse, he attacked the mass of damp clay powerfully, throwing great pieces onto the ...
— The Nest Builder • Beatrice Forbes-Robertson Hale
... are something of which much may be made. There are untold potentialities in human nature. The tree cut down, concerning which its heathen owner debated whether he should make it into a god or into a three-legged stool, was positively nothing in its capacity of coming to different ends and developments, when we compare it with each human being born into this world. Man is not so much a thing already, as he is the germ of something. He is, so to speak, material ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 48, October, 1861 • Various
... the garret for some toys her sister's children had left with her last year, and gave me permission to pull all the flowers I wanted in the garden. I carried three maimed dolls, a headless horse, a three-legged cat, and a Britannia tea-set to a summer-house at the end of a long walk, and made believe that I was Titania, the Queen of the Fairies, of whom I had read in a tattered copy of Shakespeare I found in a lumber closet. By and by, Malviny brought out ...
— When Grandmamma Was New - The Story of a Virginia Childhood • Marion Harland
... the empty house—finding now a three-legged armchair which she propped up with a stone, now a single Venetian glass scrolled in gold for her ...
— The Happy Foreigner • Enid Bagnold
... one side, is a nicely-folded tablecloth, and, on the other, a wooden-handled butcher-knife and a well-worn Bible. Around the room are ranged a few "split-bottomed" chairs, exclusively for use, not ornament. In the chimney-corners, or under the table, are several three-legged stools, made for the children, who—as the bridegroom laughingly insinuates while he points to the uncouth specimens of his handiwork—"will be coming in due time." The wife laughs in her turn—replies, "no doubt"—and, taking one of the graceful tripods in her hand, carries it forth to sit ...
— Western Characters - or Types of Border Life in the Western States • J. L. McConnel
... was Miss Grundy's exclamation when after supper the next evening she saw the three-legged stand loaded down with Billy's and ...
— The English Orphans • Mary Jane Holmes
... two, and my life won't be of no more vally, If I'm to see other folk's darlins, and none of mine, playing like angels in our alley, And what shall I do but cry out my eyes, when I looks at the old three-legged chair, As Billy used to make coaches and horses of, and there ain't no Billy there! I would run all the wide world over to find him, if I only know'd where to run, Little Murphy, now I remember, ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood
... Chesebro's "Children of Light," and Samuel Irenaeus Prime's "Elizabeth Thornton or the Flower and Fruit of Female Piety, and other Sketches." Miss Pinckney opened one of the windows to let in air; Phyl, who had said nothing, stood looking about her at the forsaken toys, the chairs, and the little three-legged stool most evidently once the property of ...
— The Ghost Girl • H. De Vere Stacpoole
... that he was eating mouthfuls of bread and nothing else, and continually snuffing the two candles next him till he had reduced them to mere glimmers drowned in their own grease. Creedle now appeared with a specially prepared dish, which he served by elevating the little three-legged pot that contained it, and tilting the contents into a dish, exclaiming, simultaneously, "Draw back, gentlemen and ...
— The Woodlanders • Thomas Hardy
... corner the bed was constructed by driving into the ground crotched sticks, whence poles extended to the crevices of the walls; upon these poles were laid boards, and upon these boards were tossed leaves and skins and such other alleviating material as could be found. Three-legged stools and a table were hewed from the felled trees with an axe, which was often the settler's only and invaluable tool, and which he would travel long miles to sharpen. If a woman wanted a looking-glass, ...
— Abraham Lincoln, Vol. I. • John T. Morse
... we agree," said the old man, and followed close behind her. Going up to the fireplace, he pushed the big kettle aside and reached for a smaller one that was suspended on a chain. Then sitting down on a three-legged stool, he kindled a bright fire. When the kettle was boiling, the old man put a large piece of cheese on a long iron fork, and held it over the fire, turning it to and fro, till it was golden-brown ...
— Heidi - (Gift Edition) • Johanna Spyri
... afforded satisfaction to the eye, in strong contrast to the bare and barkless trunks of trees riven by the frequent storms that devastate these hills. In one place a most gruesome sight was met with. Under a small tree beside a tiny stream stood a three-legged cooking-pot, and round it lay three skeletons, with a scattering of shrapnel bullets to silently tell the story of the tragedy. Beside one body lay a Rifleman's haversack, an eloquent if speechless travesty on the fortunes of war, ...
— The Second Battalion Royal Dublin Fusiliers in the South African War - With a Description of the Operations in the Aden Hinterland • Cecil Francis Romer and Arthur Edward Mainwaring
... and co-operation. These are stupendous demands. People not only think more fully and elaborately about life than they ever did before, but marriage obliges us to make that ever more accidented progress a three-legged race of ...
— The New Machiavelli • Herbert George Wells
... she said. "I thought of Dick, your telling him. Dick's just got his book ready for the printer: Democracy, you know, in three-legged verse. And they'll say it's full of insight and prophecy. That's what they said about the other one: insight, prophecy! But Dick won't have the least idea what you're ...
— Old Crow • Alice Brown
... friction-pulley upon the armature shaft, another friction-pulley upon the driven axle, and a third friction-pulley which could be brought in contact with the other two by a suitable lever. Each wheel of the locomotive was made with metallic rim and a centre portion made of wood or papier-mache. A three-legged spider connected the metal rim of each front wheel to a brass hub, upon which rested a collecting brush. The other wheels were subsequently so equipped. It was the intention, therefore, that the current should enter the locomotive wheels at one side, and after ...
— Edison, His Life and Inventions • Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin
... It looked out, by two long windows, on a wide sweep of lawn which stretched away from the end of the house. In this room, in chairs of various luxurious styles, sat Mr. Caske and his two friends. Each of the three men was smoking a churchwarden pipe; and at the elbow of each stood a little three-legged, japanned smoker's table, on which was a stand of matches, an ash-tray, ...
— The Golden Shoemaker - or 'Cobbler' Horn • J. W. Keyworth
... the crane, with its black hooks, from which hung the iron tea-kettle and three-legged pot; then she settled the long spit in the grooves made for it in the tall andirons, and put the dripping-pan underneath, for in those days meat was roasted as it should be, not ...
— Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag VI - An Old-Fashioned Thanksgiving, Etc. • Louisa M. Alcott
... wrinkled, aged-looking face and a little beard that grew out of his neck, and a well-grown young man in a new crimson shirt and big wading boots, who had been out hunting and come in for the night. They were sitting on a bench at a little three-legged table on which a tallow candle stuck into ...
— The Horse-Stealers and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... some stone seats were placed for them. The brutal guards dragged Jesus to the foot of the flight of stairs which led to the judgment-seat of Pilate. Pilate was reposing in a comfortable chair, on a terrace which overlooked the forum, and a small three-legged table stood by his side, on which was placed the insignia of his office, and a few other things. He was surrounded by officers and soldiers dressed with the magnificence usual in the Roman army. The Jews and the priests ...
— The Dolorous Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ • Anna Catherine Emmerich
... borders; sometimes she was kneeling at her beehive with fresh flowers for her bees; sometimes she was in the poultry yard, scattering corn from her sieve amongst the eager chickens; and in the evening she was often seated in a little honeysuckle arbour, with a clean, light, three-legged deal table before her, upon which she ...
— The Parent's Assistant • Maria Edgeworth
... drips continually; the haystack drips; the thatch of the stack, which has to be pulled off before the hay-knife can be used, is wet; the old decaying wood of the rails and gates is wet. They sit on the three-legged milking-stool (whose rude workmanship has taken a dull polish from use) in a puddle; the hair of the cow, against which the head is placed, is wet; the wind blows the rain into the nape of the neck behind, the position being stooping. Staggering under the heavy ...
— Hodge and His Masters • Richard Jefferies
... centre of the hall was placed the accused woman. She was seated upon a rude three-legged stool, which was firmly fixed upon a raised flooring, elevated about three feet from the ground—her face turned towards her judge. A slight chain passed round the middle of her body, and fastened her down to her seat. She was still attired ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 348 • Various
... heart. I weep over them in a sort of milky way. I have always seen cows in comfortable stables, with nice, clean straw under their feet and pails full of succulent food placed within easy reach, while at certain intervals a tidy, tender- hearted young milkmaid appears with a three-legged stool and a roomy pail, and extracts what the cow chooses to give her. But here the wiry creatures roam from door to door, and drop a pint or so at each call. It is pitiful to see the poor, degraded things, with their offspring following behind. The latter are graciously ...
— In the Courts of Memory 1858-1875. • L. de Hegermann-Lindencrone
... had. Mary, said I sternly, if you don't give Dan up and sware to be mine, I will hang myself this night. To this she replied, hang on if you are fool enough, and continued smoking her pipe as though not the least alarmed. I took out the rope from under my jacket, and got upon a three-legged stool, and putting the rope first over the beam in the ceiling, then made a slip-knot, and brought it down round my neck, taking good care to have it short enough that it would not choke me, and in this way I stood upon the stool for some considerable time, groaning and struggling, and making every ...
— Narrative of the Life of J.D. Green, a Runaway Slave, from Kentucky • Jacob D. Green
... table—buttered and toasted biscuits spread with honey, iced cocoa with whipped cream, and a big square chocolate cake. Quite suddenly he remembered how far he had walked and how hungry he was and with equal suddenness forgot his pressing necessity for setting off again. He sat down on the three-legged stool that the Beeman offered him, sampled the hot biscuit and the cold drink, and breathed a deep, involuntary sigh of content. In the presence of these friendly, shabbily dressed strangers he felt, for the first time since leaving home, ...
— The Windy Hill • Cornelia Meigs
... their milk cans. Doubtless you all remember how Cain killed his brother Abel because Abel would not let him do the churning. We can picture Cain and Abel driving mooly cows up to the house from the pasture in the southeast corner of the garden, and Adam standing at the bars with a tin pail and a three-legged stool, smoking a meerschaum pipe and singing "Hold the fort for I am coming through the rye," while Eve sat on the verandah altering over her last year's polonaise, and winking at the devil who stood behind the milk house singing, "I want to be an angel." After he got through milking ...
— Peck's Sunshine - Being a Collection of Articles Written for Peck's Sun, - Milwaukee, Wis. - 1882 • George W. Peck
... entire process from the milking of the cows down to the great wheels (which look like millstones) and the completed cheese. Milking is a process with which you are, perhaps, not familiar. It is done with the help of a maiden and a three-legged stool, while the cow goes on chewing the worn-out cud of her last meal, occasionally giving a Cenci-like glance ...
— The Sunny Side of Diplomatic Life, 1875-1912 • Lillie DeHegermann-Lindencrone
... observe, we do not hazard a remark so false as that the one produces the other—their relations are far from being mutual; but we only suggest that the mind, as well as the body, hobbles like a three-legged OEdipus, resting on its proper staff of life. And what can be more provocative of scribbling than travel? How eagerly we hasten to describe unheard-of adventures, how anxiously record exaggerated marvels! to prove some printed hand-book quite wrong in the number of steps up a round-tower: ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... Poll." In the former case he can obtain a distinction in mathematics, classics, the sciences, theology, etc. The names of the successful students are arranged in three classes in a list called the Tripos, a name derived from the three-legged stool whereon sat in former days one of the bachelors, who recited a set of satirical verses at the time the degrees were conferred. In the Mathematical Tripos the first class are called Wranglers, and the others Senior and Junior Optimes. Thus graduate ...
— England, Picturesque and Descriptive - A Reminiscence of Foreign Travel • Joel Cook
... "Here's to the three-legged mare," cried Peter. "To the tree that bears fruit all the year round, and yet has neither bark nor branch. You won't refuse ...
— Rookwood • William Harrison Ainsworth
... or discus, or do any other of the ordinary stunts, might, at least, have some chance of winning a prize in the climbing of the greased pole, the catching of the greased pig, the running of the obstacle race, or testing their ability to hop in the three-legged race, where each couple of boys would have a right and left leg bound together, and then attempt to cross a given line ahead of all ...
— The Chums of Scranton High on the Cinder Path • Donald Ferguson
... in the hut except a rough board table and a three-legged stool. Tom searched about eagerly in the hope that he might find some food left by its last occupants. He was not particular, and even mouldy crusts would have been eagerly welcomed. But even in this he was ...
— Army Boys on the Firing Line - or, Holding Back the German Drive • Homer Randall
... were going to fall. This is their own fault, not the fault of the window, for that is just like a parlour window, where they have no sensation of the sort. A man sits peaceably enough on the top of a tall, three-legged stool, and could hitch himself round and round, and then get up and stand upon it erect for half a day, without any risk of falling. Now, a steeple is much more securely fixed than a stool; its top is as broad as a table; and there is nothing ...
— Chambers' Edinburgh Journal - Volume XVII., No 423, New Series. February 7th, 1852 • Various
... youngish man, ruddy, and of a cheerful countenance, a substantial load for his sturdy nag, and altogether, in his glossy black cloth, a figure very different from their gaunt, sad-visaged, shaggily-garbed old guest. He was at the time of Father Rooney's approach seated on a two-legged, three-legged stool, propped precariously against the ray-rosed cabin wall, and was teaching Dan and Nicholas the twelfth proposition of the second book of Euclid. Dan had not yet grasped it, but it all lay as clear as a sunbeam athwart Nicholas's brain, ...
— Strangers at Lisconnel • Barlow Jane
... my eyes it was with a startled conviction that I was no longer alone in the little boxed-in office. In the murky indoor darkness of a moonless night I could barely distinguish the surroundings, the shelf-desk, the black bulk of the old safe, the three-legged stool, and at the end of the room the gray patch which placed the single window. Then, with a cold sweat starting from every pore, I saw the humped figure of a man beside the safe. As nearly as I could make out, he was sitting with his back to the wall and his knees ...
— Branded • Francis Lynde
... say?" drawled little Eve Edgarton. Thuddingly she set down the empty beef-jar. "Oh, Father'll say: What in creation is Eve out trying to save to-night? A dog? A cat? A three-legged deer?" ...
— Little Eve Edgarton • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
... hidden behind the altar, suffer in a darkness that can never be explored. The facilities offered you for approaching the picture in such cases are a mockery of your irritated wish. You stand at tip-toe on a three-legged stool, you climb a rickety ladder, you almost mount upon the shoulders of the custode. You do everything but see the picture. You see just enough to be sure it's beautiful. You catch a glimpse of a divine head, ...
— Italian Hours • Henry James
... this is still discernible through all transitory emotions of fear, hate, love or anguish, and does not fail to produce very tragi-comic combinations. I remember a group of a man in the dress of an Antwerp burgher sitting on a three-legged stool, with his head on the knee of a discreet-looking woman in a long-waisted, plain-skirted gown, with a high square bodice closed by a plaited neckerchief, her hair drawn tightly back under a close round cap, her pocket hanging from her girdle on one side, and on the other a small ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 90, June, 1875 • Various
... alone, by the side of the pool, A tall man sat on a three-legged stool, Kicking his heels on the dewy sod, And putting in order his reel and rod; Red were the rags his shoulders wore, And a high red cap on his head he bore; His arms and his legs were long and bare; And two or three locks of ...
— English Satires • Various
... one it was who turned back to Inkston?" Beaumaroy had seated himself on a low three-legged stool, opposite to the big chair where Alec sat, and was smoking his pipe, his hands clasped round his knees. "It doesn't seem to me to come to much, though I'm much obliged to you all the same. ...
— The Secret of the Tower • Hope, Anthony
... you're a clever hand at finding these things out. I'd have never dreamed of looking down at my feet, but blundered right into the shack to see if——Oh! What do you think of the luck we're in this day, Tom? See what stands there on that poor old three-legged table!" ...
— Air Service Boys Over The Enemy's Lines - The German Spy's Secret • Charles Amory Beach
... carrying a three-legged stool that aided him in surmounting the bar across the kitchen door, trekked for the old well. Planting the stool at one side of the square enclosure, he looked down into the cavernous depths; leaning far over, reached for the ...
— Watch Yourself Go By • Al. G. Field
... alley. It was mine by right of long acquaintance. We were neighbors for twenty years. Yet I never knew why it was called Cat Alley. There was the usual number of cats, gaunt and voracious, which foraged in its ash-barrels; but beyond the family of three-legged cats, that presented its own problem of heredity,—the kittens took it from the mother, who had lost one leg under the wheels of a dray,—there was nothing specially remarkable about them. It was not an ...
— The Battle with the Slum • Jacob A. Riis
... there, and don't move till you're told," said she, pointing to a little three-legged stool in ...
— Tom, Dick and Harry • Talbot Baines Reed
... and water up to our ankles; over stumps and sticks; through a dilapidated gateway, stoup, and wash-house, to a long, low room, where the table was laid for tea. Seated round it on benches, chairs, three-legged stools—in fact, on anything they could get hold of—were the engine-driver, conductor, express-man, and other officials. The meal consisted of bread and butter, potatoes boiled in their jackets, fried ...
— A Trip to Manitoba • Mary FitzGibbon
... was penniless, and could take nothing to his home but regrets for the past. The rickety old door now creaked on its rusty, worn-out hinges, and admitted a creature as strange looking as it was unexpected. It moved straight toward Nick, and perched itself upon a three-legged stool close beside him. This mysterious thing could not be pronounced supernatural, and yet it was as unlike anything human as is possible to imagine. It was more like some fantastic figure seen ...
— Nick Baba's Last Drink and Other Sketches • George P. Goff
... felt drowsy, and as there was no sofa or chair, and no back to the little three-legged stool, I was obliged to dispense with a nap. I walked up and down my splendid hall instead, longing desperately for a mouthful of fresh air by way of dessert, or a few minutes' chat with my friends, who I dare say were in ...
— Prisoner for Blasphemy • G. W. [George William] Foote
... wide apart and his hands deep in his pockets. "You hired a horse!" he chuckled, with the humorous wrinkles coming and going at the corners of the kindly eyes. "Did you have the nerve to think you were going to climb down from a three-legged stool in a Boston law office one day and ride the fifty miles from Twin Buttes to the capital ...
— The Honorable Senator Sage-Brush • Francis Lynde
... bobbing heads—Scots, Northerners, Yorkshiremen, Taffies. To right and left a long array of carriages and carts, ranging from the squire's quiet landau and Viscount Birdsaye's gorgeous barouche to Liz Burton's three-legged moke-cart with little Mrs. Burton, the twins, young Jake (who should have walked), and Monkey (ditto) packed away inside. Beyond the Silver Lea the gaunt Scaur raised its craggy peak, and the Pass, trending along its side, ...
— Bob, Son of Battle • Alfred Ollivant
... Python. The apartment of the oracle was immediately over the chasm from which the vapour issued. A priestess delivered the responses, who was called Pythia, probably in commemoration of the exploit which had been performed by Apollo. She sat upon a tripod, or three-legged stool, perforated with holes, over the seat of the vapours. After a time, her figure enlarged itself, her hair stood on end, her complexion and features became altered, her heart panted and her bosom swelled, and her voice grew ...
— Lives of the Necromancers • William Godwin
... light such as we had left at the bottom. The guard ran on in the light, and finally stepped forth to a landing no wider than the stairs; where there hung a lantern over a three-legged stool, beyond which was a door. At sight of ...
— The Bright Face of Danger • Robert Neilson Stephens |
