"Flat-footed" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... natural antagonism of an indigenous dark-haired people to a race of blonde invaders.{22} Another curious requirement—in the Isle of Man and Northumberland—is that the "first-foot" shall not be flat-footed: he should be a person with a high-arched instep, a foot that "water runs under." Sir John Rhys is inclined to connect this also with some racial contrast. He remarks, by way of illustration, that English shoes do not as a rule fit Welsh feet, ...
— Christmas in Ritual and Tradition, Christian and Pagan • Clement A. Miles
... No flat-footed Indian had left the track. It was too sharp, too decisive, had been left plainly by a shoe of ...
— The Pirate of Panama - A Tale of the Fight for Buried Treasure • William MacLeod Raine
... something else. And the dark flanks of the fishing-boats all aslope above, in their shining quietness, hot in the morning sun, rusty and seamed with square patches of plank nailed over their rents; just rough enough to let the little flat-footed fisher-children haul or twist themselves up to the gunwales, and drop back again along some stray rope; just round enough to remind us, in their broad and gradual curves, of the sweep of the green surges ...
— The Harbours of England • John Ruskin
... woman in a cheap, homemade calico dress, and with rows upon rows of flounces on the skirt. She sat on the next-to-the-top step of the porch while her shoes were planted flat-footed on the walk. She was very short-waisted, while her limbs, accentuated by the model of the flounced skirt seemed ...
— Janice Day, The Young Homemaker • Helen Beecher Long
... falling like the back of a caterpillar in haste, would swing up through the quivering dust and trot past to a chorus of quick cackling. That was a gang of changars—the women who have taken all the embankments of all the Northern railways under their charge—a flat-footed, big-bosomed, strong-limbed, blue-petticoated clan of earth-carriers, hurrying north on news of a job, and wasting no time by the road. They belong to the caste whose men do not count, and they walked with squared elbows, ...
— Kim • Rudyard Kipling
... frog to jump. And you bet you he did learn him, too. He'd give him a little punch behind, and the next minute you'd see that frog whirling in the air like a doughnut—see him turn one summerset, or maybe a couple, if he got a good start, and come down flat-footed and all right, like a cat. He got him up so in the matter of ketching flies, and kep' him in practice so constant, that he'd nail a fly every time as fur as he could see him. Smiley said all a frog wanted was education, and he could do ...
— The Boy Scouts Book of Stories • Various
... habit, to the little unlettered door which admitted employes to the big, bright, inner office. But he did not use it. Instead he turned suddenly and walked down the hall to the double door which led into the reception room. He threw out his legs stiffly and came down rather flat-footed, the way George Cohan does when he's pleased with himself in the ...
— Personality Plus - Some Experiences of Emma McChesney and Her Son, Jock • Edna Ferber
... watched so often and by whom he had been watched. To-night she had on her summer dress, a respectable, rather shiny gown of grayish mauve, a bonnet edged with white ribbon, a pair of white thread gloves. She carried her little bag and a small Japanese fan. Walking in a strange, flat-footed way that was peculiar to her, and glancing narrowly about her, yet keeping her hand almost still, she advanced towards the band-stand. As she came opposite to Artois the orchestra of women struck ...
— A Spirit in Prison • Robert Hichens
... along the fence. There may happen to be a board loose where we can slip through. That would be better than trying the gate, to be turned down flat-footed." ...
— The Outdoor Chums at Cabin Point - or The Golden Cup Mystery • Quincy Allen
... attempt to escape from the enemy has led to an interesting development, which will be more fully explained in a later section when we speak of the history of the horse. The early mammals walked flat-footed, as we do on our feet and as the raccoon and the bear do on theirs. Gradually, however, as their enemies became more fierce and better able to injure the larger mammals, the latter gained in power of flight, and this gain consisted first in rising from the toes, lifting the heels completely ...
— The Meaning of Evolution • Samuel Christian Schmucker
... and heavy silver rings upon her toes. She turned her face, which was overshadowed by a hood, to look at Shere Ali as he rode by. He saw the heavy stud of silver and enamel in her nostril, the withered brown face. He turned and looked at her, as she walked flat-footed and ungainly, her pyjamas of pink cotton showing beneath her cloak. He had no part or lot with any of these people of the East. The face of Violet Oliver shone before his eyes. There was his mate. He recalled the exquisite daintiness of her ...
— The Broken Road • A. E. W. Mason
... up, however, and Grimbal noted how the flutter of past tears shook her round young breast, marked the spring of her step, the freedom of her gait, and the trim turn of her feet and ankles. After the flat-footed Kaffir girls, Phoebe's instep had a right noble arch in ...
— Children of the Mist • Eden Phillpotts
... yours, with their long lashes. A man is built for work, like a truck. Gold and leather upholstering do not belong there. Women are different; it is their place in life to be beautiful, and when they fail in that, they fail entirely. They have no license to be fat, flabby double-chinned, flat-footed. It is not seemly, and of course you cannot tell how any of them may turn out. They are all pretty at sixteen. That is what ...
— Purple Springs • Nellie L. McClung
... Elliot, who were laboriously waltzing with a twin pair of flat-footed Watteau Shepherdesses, immediately ran to his assistance; and later, with a plentiful application of cold water and still colder air, restored Mr Clifford to his ...
— In the Quarter • Robert W. Chambers
... at Dion, and, without a word, adjusted the handkerchief deftly, and pinned it in place with a safety-pin which she drew out of her dress. Then she left the room with her flat-footed walk. As she shut the door ...
— In the Wilderness • Robert Hichens
... Katy, "I'll just tell ye flat-footed there ain't going to be any punch, but, young sir, you're eshcortin' a very capable young lady, and don't ye bewail the punch, because ye might be complimenting your face with something ye ...
— Her Father's Daughter • Gene Stratton-Porter
... needles—Sister Tarsesias particularly, and Sister Tobias. But there's a new Emigration Jane among the housemaids. You've seen her—the sallow thing with the greasy light-coloured fringe in curlers, who walks flat-footed like a wader on the mud. I keep expecting to hear her quack.... Well, Billy got hold of her. She didn't know my name, being new, but she recognised me by Billy's description, and sympathised with him, having ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... the inner room. MRS. MILER, gazes round her, pins up her skirt, sits down in the armchair, takes off her hat and puts it on the table, and slowly rolls up her sleeves; then with her hands on her knees she rests. There is a soft knock on the door. She gets up leisurely and moves flat-footed towards it. The door ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... understand, could certainly trust up to a point, in her mind against Arabian, the unsafe man, whom she could not place, could not understand, could not trust. And, mentally, she had clung to Craven. And if those two bovine sentimentalists had not intruded flat-footed upon the great waste of Camber and the romance of the coming night, and Craven had yielded to his impulse and had kissed her, she might have clung to him in very truth. And then? She might have been protected against Arabian. But evidently it was ...
— December Love • Robert Hichens
... which ship would be suited by having the breeze on the beam. Long before he ever saw the outside of the bar he had heard of every point on the coast. The possibility of becoming anything but a sailor never entered his head. He tried to copy the flat-footed rolling walk of the seamen, and he longed for the time when he might wear a braided cap and smoke a pipe. While yet little more than a child he went on his trial voyage, and had his first experience ...
— The Romance of the Coast • James Runciman
... FAMOUS FOREIGN ASTRONOMER. M. de Lalande advanced to meet me—-I will not be quite positive it was on tiptoe, but certainly with a mixture of jerk and strut that could not be quite flat-footed. He kissed my hand with the air of a petit-matre, and then broke forth into such an harangue of loges, so solemn with regard to its own weight and importance, and so fade(291) with respect to the little personage addressed, ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madam D'Arblay Volume 2 • Madame D'Arblay
... wading, in view of such glorious company! What was the use of complaining: had he been there she would never have gone in, trust her for that! Wilkinson and he were right in their old compact: the female sex is a delusion and a snare. Thank heaven! there's the prayer gong, but will that staring, flat-footed, hawhawing, Civil Service idiot be looking on while she reattires herself! He had half a mind to descend and brain him on the spot, if he had any brains, so as to render impossible the woeful calamity. But the fates were merciful, ...
— Two Knapsacks - A Novel of Canadian Summer Life • John Campbell
... upon his canvas the tenacious and indomitable soul of the Englishman. You saw it looking out at you from the steady, light blue eyes in the plain face with its craggy nose and obstinate chin; and you saw the kindness and delicacy of the firm mouth. There he stood, flat-footed, easy in his well-worn clothes, one hand in his pocket, the other holding the blackthorn walking-stick he always carried, and looked at you with the quiet sureness of integrity and of power. Peter added a few last touches; and then, instead ...
— The Purple Heights • Marie Conway Oemler
... but we must be willing to bend sometimes or we are apt to get some pretty hard bumps when we hold our heads too high. Remember that you can't please everybody. Sometimes it is best to say 'Yes' when people ask you to do certain things, and sometimes a flat-footed 'No' is the thing. Remember that if you agree with everybody who expresses an opinion, you have the respect of nobody. Think for yourself, but think carefully. If you choose to grovel at the feet of those about you, you must expect to get stepped on and run over. ...
— Crayon and Character: Truth Made Clear Through Eye and Ear - Or, Ten-Minute Talks with Colored Chalks • B.J. Griswold
... moment, fails to ignite. But you must allow us one heretical whisper,—very small and low. The negro of the North is an ideal negro; it is the negro refined by white culture, elevated by white blood, instructed even by white iniquity;—the negro among negroes is a coarse, grinning, flat-footed, thick-skulled creature, ugly as Caliban, lazy as the laziest of brutes, chiefly ambitious to be of no use to any in the world. View him as you will, his stock in trade is small;—he has but the tangible instincts of all creatures,—love of life, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 19, May, 1859 • Various
... within a month of their arrival there came about the most hopeless specimen I can remember to have seen. His name was Sullivan, though he pronounced it Soolikan, and he was an embodiment of every awkwardness and stupidity. He was a shambling, flat-footed, weak-kneed, round-shouldered youth, and the Fourth asked with amazement how on earth the doctors had been induced to pass him. So far as I remember, he never learned anything. The various drills laboured at him like galley-slaves, ...
— The Making Of A Novelist - An Experiment In Autobiography • David Christie Murray
... made his way down the winding staircase from the upper deck, dropped flat-footed on the asphalt pavement, turned his collar up, leaned into the gust of wind from the South, and swung into ...
— When Winter Comes to Main Street • Grant Martin Overton
... (representative women) about the door. Comba disappeared in the mass with a giggle, and old Grace spoke up, about as follows: "I'se come to you, sir"—pause—"I'se been working fer owner three years, and made with my chillun two bales cotton last year, two more this year. I'se a flat-footed pusson and don't know much, but I knows those two bales cotton fetch 'nough money, and I don't see what I'se got for 'em. When I take my leetle bit money and go to store, buy cloth, find it so dear, dear Jesus!—the money all gone and leave chillun naked. Some people go out yonder ...
— Letters from Port Royal - Written at the Time of the Civil War (1862-1868) • Various
... at the club, or day after day among the army crowd at the Ebbitt, or in some fellow's den at the Department, and never once did I hear one word of frank, outspoken, fearless praise of some other fellow's work or deeds, unless it were to his face. Ask a man flat-footed if that wasn't a capital scout of Striker's last winter in the Tonto Basin, or if Jake Randlett hadn't done a daring thing in going all alone through the Sioux country to drum up Crow scouts for Crook's command, or what he thought of Billy Ray's cutting ...
— Under Fire • Charles King
... sword. (He looked like the pictures you see hung upon the walls). We cross the railroad. Halloo! here comes a cavalry charge from the Yankee line. Now for it; we will see how Yankee cavalry fight. We are not supported; what is the matter? Are we going to be captured? They thunder down upon us. Their flat-footed dragoons shake and jar the earth. They are all around us—we are surrounded. "Form square! Platoons, right and left wheel! Kneel and fire!" There we were in a hollow square. The Yankees had never seen anything like that before. It was something new. They charged right ...
— "Co. Aytch" - Maury Grays, First Tennessee Regiment - or, A Side Show of the Big Show • Sam R. Watkins
... sorry for you on Friday just by the sideboard. I remember it perfectly. All the same, if you will waste Berry's substance at places of entertainment in the West End, and then fling a priceless heirloom down in the hall of the theatre, you mustn't be surprised if some flat-footed seeker after pleasure ...
— The Brother of Daphne • Dornford Yates
... the principal. Recess was a frantic nightmare for Hedrick, and his homeward progress at noon a procession of such uproarious screamers as were his equals in speed. The nethermost depths were reached when an ignoble pigtailed person he had always trodden upon flat-footed screamed across the fence from next door, as he reached fancied ...
— The Flirt • Booth Tarkington
... earnest and elderly flirt; a German of the Germans. Now Carlyle had humour; he had it in his very style, but it never got into his philosophy. His philosophy largely remained a heavy Teutonic idealism, absurdly unaware of the complexity of things; as when he perpetually repeated (as with a kind of flat-footed stamping) that people ought to tell the truth; apparently supposing, to quote Stevenson's phrase, that telling the truth is as easy as blind hookey. Yet, though his general honesty is unquestionable, he was by no means ...
— The Victorian Age in Literature • G. K. Chesterton
... reconcile it with their conscience to allow their daughters to be educated in the cloisters. They proceed from the premises that an ignorant woman is more easy to lead than one who is posted. Conflicts and disappointment are inevitable. Laboulaye gives the flat-footed advice to keep woman in moderate ignorance, because "notre empire est detruit, si l'homme est reconnu" (our empire is over if man ...
— Woman under socialism • August Bebel
... was silent awhile. "Gully's knocked about a deuce of a lot," he resumed presently. "Now and again he'll open up a bit and talk, but mostly he's as close as an oyster—and the way he can drop that drawl and come out 'flat-footed' with the straight turkey—why, it'd surprise you! You'd think he was an out and out Westerner, born and bred. He's a mighty good man on a horse, and around cattle—and with a lariat. I don't know where the beggar's picked it up. He claims he's ...
— The Luck of the Mounted - A Tale of the Royal Northwest Mounted Police • Ralph S. Kendall
... ... an exquisite young creature. Alva was gawky and younger. She was callow and moulting, flat-footed and long-shanked. Her face was sallow and full ...
— Tramping on Life - An Autobiographical Narrative • Harry Kemp
... cook, a flabby great flat-footed man, all in white, and snorting strangely, bundled up with a poll-axe, ...
— The Gentleman - A Romance of the Sea • Alfred Ollivant
... is not readily to be surpassed. At one moment he pleases the uncritical mass of readers, in another mood he wins the verdict of the raffine. It is a success which scarce any English poet but Shakespeare has excelled. His faults have rarely, if ever, been those of flat-footed, "thick-ankled" dulness; of rhetoric, of common- place; rather have his defects been the excess of his qualities. A kind of John Bullishness may also be noted, especially in derogatory references to France, which, true or untrue, ...
— Alfred Tennyson • Andrew Lang
... sibilants collided here. "His wit?"—no, that would be flat-footed awkwardness in the management of your vowel-sounds; the lengthened "a" was almost requisite. . . . Pope was fretting over the imbroglio when he absent-mindedly glanced up to perceive that his Sarah, not irrevocably offended, ...
— The Certain Hour • James Branch Cabell
... Fetherston, in the ordinary course, would have been the recipient of high honours from the Sovereign. But he was a writer, and not a financier. He could not afford to subscribe to the party funds, a course suggested by the flat-footed old Lady G——, who was the tout ...
— The Doctor of Pimlico - Being the Disclosure of a Great Crime • William Le Queux
... position to achieve your ambitions: beauty and brains alone wouldn't do it. Senator North," she continued from the list in her hand: "Mrs. North is wonderfully improved, by the way; has not been so well in twenty years. Senator Burleigh: he is out flat-footed against free silver since the failure of the bi-metallic envoys, and his State is furious. Senator Shattuc is for it, so they probably don't speak. Senator Ward might be induced to fall in love with Lady Mary and turn his eloquence on the Senate in behalf of a marriage ...
— Senator North • Gertrude Atherton
... the freehold of the streets. Rob them of this without giving them something better, and we shall speedily have a race of flat-footed, flat-chested, round-shouldered poor, with no brains for mental work, and no strength for physical work. A race exactly qualified for the conditions to which we so freely submit it in prison. And above those conditions that race will have no aspirations. ...
— London's Underworld • Thomas Holmes
... handrail and looked back at his two unit-mates, Roger Manning and Astro. Manning, a slender cadet, with close-cropped blond hair, was yawning and blinking his eyes sleepily, while Astro, the third member of the unit, a head taller than either of his unit-mates and fifty pounds heavier, stood flat-footed on the step, eyes closed, his giant bulk swaying slightly with the motion of ...
— On the Trail of the Space Pirates • Carey Rockwell
... by a flat-footed old Russian female, who ran down passages and round corners like a wet hen, trying to find a man-servant. The place seemed deserted, but presently she came on her quarry in the back yard, and a very small boy in a tarboosh and knickerbockers carried ...
— Jimgrim and Allah's Peace • Talbot Mundy
... gentleman, for when that little lady came into the drawing-room, dressed in her decent silk gown, with soft white lace at her throat, bearing herself with sweet dignity, and stepping with dainty grace on her toes, after the manner of the fine ladies of the old school, and not after the flat-footed, heel-first modern style, the colonel abandoned his usual careless manner and rose ...
— The Man From Glengarry - A Tale Of The Ottawa • Ralph Connor
... politics-soaked soul by showing me, under such happy conditions, the beauties and the possibilities of your island. And I came to know two men at least, whose heads and hearts were working for a less pudgy and flat-footed world. ... To have enthusiasm is to beat the Devil. So I have you down in ...
— The Letters of Franklin K. Lane • Franklin K. Lane
... long, tireless, strides. The girl continued to puzzle him. Even her manner of walking expressed personality. There was none of the flat-footed Indian shuffle about her gait. She moved lightly, springily, as one does who finds in it the joy of calling ...
— Man Size • William MacLeod Raine |
