"Splay" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... a magnificent demonstration here. His Imperial Majesty, who wuz in a eggslent condition to make crowds large enough, remarked to me as we wuz ridin through the streets: "'Splen 'splay! 'Mor'n ten 'unerd sousand people—mor'n ten million people—mor'n ten 'unerd million people—mor'n ten 'unerd sousand million people—and alluvum 'sporters my policy. 'Rah ...
— "Swingin Round the Cirkle." • Petroleum V. Nasby
... rug which some aunt had made with her own hands from odds and ends; and a huge work-basket spilling worsteds, and last, and by no manner of means least, a big chintz-covered rocking-chair, the little lady's very own—its thin ankles and splay feet hidden by a modest frill. There were all these things and a lot more—and yet I still maintain that the room was just one big fireplace. Not alone because of its size (and it certainly was big: many a doubting curly head, losing its ...
— The Little Gray Lady - 1909 • F. Hopkinson Smith
... notice any of these. All she saw was a tall, dark, ungainly looking, long-legged creature, half as tall again as her mother had been, with no horns, a long clumsy head, thick overhanging nose, and big splay hooves. She didn't quite know whether to be frightened at this great, dark form or not. But she stopped her noise, I ...
— Children of the Wild • Charles G. D. Roberts
... be found nearer than the Tower. But what is Berezdah compared even with a second-rate European city? However, in a crowd, it yields to none: the streets at this time of the day are thronged to choking, and, to make matters worse, a huge splay-footed camel every now and then, heaving from side to side like a lubber-rowed boat, with a long beam on his back, menacing the heads of those in the way, or with two enormous loads of fire-wood, ...
— MacMillan's Reading Books - Book V • Anonymous
... thought that very probably it was nothing more than a blind, and that Master Necronsett came out at night and said charms and things over Ann Mary as she slept. However that might be, she could have kissed his funny, splay feet every time she looked at her sister's bright eyes and red lips; and when she thought of the joy it would be to her father, she could have kissed his ...
— Hillsboro People • Dorothy Canfield
... crooked grows, It well-nigh kissed her chin; thick bristled hair Grew on her upper lip, and here and there A rugged wart with grisly hairs behung; Her breasts shrunk up, her nails and fingers long; Her left leant on a staff, in her right hand She always carried her enchanting wand. Splay-footed, beyond nature, every part So patternless deformed, 'twould puzzle art To make her counterfeit; only her tongue, Nature had that most exquisitely strung, Her oily language came so smoothly from her, And her quaint action did so well become her, Her winning rhetoric met with no ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... the projecting promontories we find hollowed through and through by a tall rugged archway; while the outer pier of the arch,—if pier we may term it,—worn to a skeleton, and jutting outwards with a knee-like angle, presents the appearance of a thin ungainly leg and splay foot, advanced, as if in awkward courtesy, to the breakers. But in a winter or two, judging from its present degree of attenuation, and the yielding nature of its material, which resembles a damaged mass of arrow-root, consolidated by lying in the leaky hold ...
— The Cruise of the Betsey • Hugh Miller
... to the command of New Sweden, looms largely in ancient records as a gigantic Swede, who, had he not been rather knock-kneed and splay-footed, might have served for the model of a Samson or a Hercules. He was no less rapacious than mighty, and withal, as crafty as he was rapacious, so that there is very little doubt that, had he lived some four ...
— Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete • Washington Irving
... His splay feet in their broken shoes fairly spurned the sidewalk as he darted northward, boring his way through the lanes of pedestrians, knocking people aside out of their stride and followed as he went by a wake of curses and grunts and curious glances. On a street where nearly ...
— From Place to Place • Irvin S. Cobb
... mouldings are bold, numerous and well-cut. There is no triforium; but a passage, at a slightly lower level than in Archbishop Roger's bays, runs below the great clearstorey windows, which were once, no doubt, gorgeous with stained glass. Their arches are moulded, but the splay is left plain. The roof-shafts, which are in clusters of three and have fillets upon them, spring from semi-octagonal corbels, and where each cluster passes the string-course there is an angel holding a shield. A sign of decadence may be found, perhaps, in the ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Ripon - A Short History of the Church and a Description of Its Fabric • Cecil Walter Charles Hallett
... power in his bearing which bespoke him a true Flaherty of the mountains. His men were like himself in this respect, and after they had fraternized with Brian's men they began to feel the same unbounded surety in Yellow Brian as Cathbarr expressed. Their axes were the usual splay-bladed affairs that their grandfathers had used under Red Hugh at the Yellow Ford, nor indeed in all his life had Brian ever seen another ax like to that ...
— Nuala O'Malley • H. Bedford-Jones
... something twenty times more valuable than yourself. I am not speaking of what you killed in me, nor of the years of application, the records, measurements, analyses which you hoofed into nothing with no more thought than a splay coon's for an ant-heap. Nor will I trouble you with any tale of the personal hopes I had built on them, for you to murder. The gods suffer men of your calibre to exist, and they must know why. But I tell you this, though ...
— Foe-Farrell • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... more apt, to others another— Because of differing forms of seeds and pores. Thus on and on along the zephyrs bees Are led by odour of honey, vultures too By carcasses. Again, the forward power Of scent in dogs doth lead the hunter on Whithersoever the splay-foot of wild beast Hath hastened its career; and the white goose, The saviour of the Roman citadel, Forescents afar the odour of mankind. Thus, diversly to divers ones is given Peculiar smell that leadeth each along To his own food or makes him start ...
— Of The Nature of Things • [Titus Lucretius Carus] Lucretius
... well recollect her when I was at home—a great, gawky, carroty creature, with a foot like a pair of bellows." Where is truth, forsooth, and who knoweth it? Is Beauty beautiful, or is it only our eyes that make it so? Does Venus squint? Has she got a splay-foot, red hair, and a crooked back? Anoint my eyes, good Fairy Puck, so that I may ever consider the Beloved Object a paragon! Above all, keep on anointing my mistress's dainty peepers with the very strongest ointment, so that my noddle may ever appear lovely to her, and that she ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray
... Moll Drum, in a rage. "Woman yourself, and T—— in your teeth, and woman to the mother that bore you, and sat in the stocks for Lightness! Who are you, quotha, old reverend smock with the splay foot? Come up, now, prithee, Bridewell Bird! You will drink, will you? I saw no dust or cobwebs come out of your mouth. Go hang, you moon-calf, false faucet, you roaring horse-courser, you ranger of Turnbull, you dull malt-house with ...
— The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, Vol. 1 of 3 • George Augustus Sala
... ordinary but very ill-expressed metaphor. The ladies and gentlemen to whom I allude, not looking very clearly into the systems of pains and pleasures in accordance with which we have to live, put their splay feet down now upon this ordinary operation and now upon that, and call upon the world to curse the cruelty of those who will not agree with them. A lady whose tippet is made from the skins of twenty animals ...
— The American Senator • Anthony Trollope
... my cat?" a vixen squalled. "Yes, where are our cats?" the witches bawled, And began to call them all by name: As fast as they called the cats, they came: There was bob-tailed Tommy and long-tailed Tim, And wall-eyed Jacky and green-eyed Jim, And splay-foot Benny and slim-legged Beau, And Skinny and Squally, and Jerry and Joe, And many another that came at call,— It would take too long to count them all. All black,—one could hardly tell which was which, ...
— The One Hoss Shay - With its Companion Poems How the Old Horse Won the Bet & - The Broomstick Train • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... belfry of the tower of Earls Barton Church are windows of five or six lights, the divisions between which are formed by these curious balluster shafts. The semicircular-headed single-light window of this style may be distinguished from those of the Norman style by the double splay of the jambs, the spaces between which spread or increase in width outwardly as well as inwardly, the narrowest part of the window being placed on the centre of the thickness of the wall; whereas the jambs of windows in the Norman style ...
— The Principles of Gothic Ecclesiastical Architecture, Elucidated by Question and Answer, 4th ed. • Matthew Holbeche Bloxam |
