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Wading   Listen
noun
Wading  n.  A. & n. from Wade, v.
Wading bird. (Zool.) See Wader, 2.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Wading" Quotes from Famous Books



... that a single hair extracted from that colour would suffice to form night's darkest shades. It would seem that the morning had struck him on the forehead and thus made it white, for which reason he took his revenge by wading into the entrails of the morning, and thus whitening his legs. He paces slowly, yet one of his names is Lightning; he wears a veil, having his face covered with white, as if to conceal it, and yet beauty itself would be his only ...
— A Boswell of Baghdad - With Diversions • E. V. Lucas

... Their clothing, however, is of a healthy substantial character, and the women consult comfort rather than ornament. Many of them wear cloth pantaloons under their petticoats, which, therefore, they are able to gather under their arms in wading through snow-drifts. I did not see a low-necked dress or a thin shoe ...
— Northern Travel - Summer and Winter Pictures of Sweden, Denmark and Lapland • Bayard Taylor

... is disgusting. Does it disgust you? Being nothing much, surely I'd better go gently. For it's something rather outside that makes one marry, if you follow me: not exactly oneself. (Don't hurry the horse.) We want to marry, and yet—I can't explain. I fancy I'll go wading: this is our stream." ...
— The Longest Journey • E. M. Forster

... Saw ye my Annie, Saw ye my Annie, Wading 'mang the dew? My Annie walks as light As shadow in the night Or downy cloudlet light ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume IV. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various

... a leg and a bit of back," said Melchior; "but it might have belonged to any poor drowned beast swept out of the lake. Why, Gros! old Gros!" he cried, wading up to the mule, "this is the grandest sight I've had these many days!" while the mule literally squealed and stamped, sending the water flying in its delight at hearing human ...
— The Crystal Hunters - A Boy's Adventures in the Higher Alps • George Manville Fenn

... scarcely stay at an inn without scratching something humorous on the window pane. At the Four Crosses in the Wading Street Road, Warwickshire, ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange

... freezing there as anywhere on the Northwest Coast. I never voyaged so far in all my life. You shall see men you never heard of before, whose names you don't know, going away down through the meadows with long ducking-guns, with water-tight boots wading through the fowl-meadow grass, on bleak, wintry, distant shores, with guns at half-cock, and they shall see teal, blue-winged, green-winged, shelldrakes, whistlers, black ducks, ospreys, and many other wild and noble sights before night, such as they who sit in parlors ...
— A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers • Henry David Thoreau

... dead and his ship captured, the result being that the resistance of the Ottomans began to weaken. Then thirty galleys took to flight from the neighbourhood of the Christian flagship; so hotly were they pursued that they ran on shore, the crews swimming or wading to the ...
— Sea-Wolves of the Mediterranean • E. Hamilton Currey

... delight him was a far more common one: the moon wading through clouds blown slowly across the sky—especially if by an upper wind, unfelt below. Now she would be sinking helpless in a black faint—growing more and more dim, until at last she disappeared from the night—was blotted ...
— Gutta-Percha Willie • George MacDonald

... to place at your disposal means to launch you in your profession in a way commensurate with your talents and deservings." ("Um-m-m.") "I trust you will soon return to Newbury, or permit me to see you in Jefferson, and when the past may" ("I don't care about wading the Chagrin, Judge, and helping your daughter out of the woods was no more than leading out any other man's daughter, and I don't want to hear more of either. Just let me alone.") "be atoned for. I need not say that my wife unites with ...
— Bart Ridgeley - A Story of Northern Ohio • A. G. Riddle

... far behind, and was skirting the great marsh. Sometimes he shaded his eyes with his hand and looked far across this low wet land to see if perhaps Beppo had strayed into its uncertain foothold; but nothing could he see but the waving rushes and the tall bitterns wading about ...
— Christmas in Legend and Story - A Book for Boys and Girls • Elva S. Smith

... or wading, we arrived at last at the little islands, and found them covered with a thick, low scrub; deep sedge, and among them Pinguins, like huge pine-apples without the apple; gray wild Pines—parasites on Matapalos, which of course have established themselves, ...
— At Last • Charles Kingsley

... slavery? If not, look to the consequences. Reflect how you are to govern a people who think they ought to be free, and think they are not. Your scheme yields no revenue; it yields nothing but discontent, disorder, disobedience: and such is the state of America, that, after wading up to your eyes in blood, you could only end just where you begun,—that is, to tax where no revenue is to be found, to —— My voice fails me: my inclination, indeed, carries me no further; all is ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. II. (of 12) • Edmund Burke

... hair; the particular object of whose researches was the coals which accidentally fell from the sides of the lighters. Her constant resort was the neighbourhood of Blackfriars, where she was always to be seen, even before the tide was down, wading into the water, nearly up to the middle, and scraping together from the bottom, the coals which she felt with her feet. Numbers of passengers who have passed by that quarter, particularly over Blackfriars Bridge, have often stopped to contemplate with astonishment, a female engaged in an occupation ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan

... he had got when he had fallen over the lawn mower about a year before. It was the biggest cut of all, and was near his right knee. He called it his "wig-wag" cut, because it was a sort of wavy scar, and when he wanted to go in wading his mother always told him never to go in water that would come above that cut, else he would get his ...
— The Bobbsey Twins on Blueberry Island • Laura Lee Hope

... river, on the 12th of January they reached Werowocomoco. The river was frozen half a mile from the shore, and when the barge could not come to land by reason of the ice and muddy shallows, they effected a landing by wading. Powhatan at their request sent them venison, turkeys, and bread; the next day he feasted them, and then inquired when they were going, ignoring his invitation to them to come. Hereupon followed a long game of fence between Powhatan and Captain Smith, each trying to overreach the other, and each ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner

... grey branches moved by the wind, and the red squirrels leaped from branch to branch and tree to tree as if blown by the same air. She wandered up one side of the clearing and down the other, sometimes wading knee-deep in loud rustling maple leaves gathered in dry hollows within the wood, sometimes stumbling over frozen furrows as she crossed corners of the ploughed land, walking all the time in helpless, ...
— What Necessity Knows • Lily Dougall

... reached a quarter where the houses stood far apart, with vacant lots between them. Still he kept on. Then came fields, and cottages, and farm-houses, surrounded by tall trees. Still on he went, still wading through a mass of chaotic fancies, springing up, and reeling and flitting through his mind; shadows of things that had been, and might be; ghosts of the past; prophets of the future. He had become a very child. At last ...
— Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, March 1844 - Volume 23, Number 3 • Various

... King's fierce sallies, and desperate valor, could not avail. Point after point was lost for him. Koppen, a Prussian Lieutenant-Colonel, native to the place, who has bathed in those waters in his youth, remembers that, by wading to the chin, you could get round the extremity of Charles's main outer line. Koppen states his project, gets it approved of;—wades accordingly, with a select party, under cloud of night (4th of November, ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Volume IV. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—Friedrich's Apprenticeship, First Stage—1713-1728 • Thomas Carlyle

... degree of trepidation. She was half afraid that Mr. Dancy would join her at once, in the full view of curious eyes; but he knew better. He sauntered on slowly until she had reached the Parade and was going towards a part of the beach where there was only a knot of children wading knee-deep in the water, sailing a toy-boat. She stood and watched them dreamily, until the voice she expected sounded in ...
— Not Like Other Girls • Rosa N. Carey

... upright while he was speaking, but the moment he ceased, the dim light through the kitchen window revealed her wading through the wet plaintain leaves as she turned a ...
— The Old Homestead • Ann S. Stephens

... boy would not have stayed a day on Earraid, which is only what they call a tidal islet, and, except, in the bottom of the neaps, can be entered and left twice in every twenty-four hours, either dry-shod, or, at the most, by wading. Even I, who had seen the tide going out and in before me in the bay, and even watched for the ebbs, the better to get my shellfish—even I (I say), if I had sat down to think, instead of raging at my fate, must have soon guessed ...
— The Ontario High School Reader • A.E. Marty

... Paestum. The landscape was changing on both sides of the way, as now they were crossing over marshy portions of land. On the soft meadows flocks of buffaloes, rude animals that appeared carved out in hatchet strokes, were wading and grazing. ...
— Mare Nostrum (Our Sea) - A Novel • Vicente Blasco Ibanez

... of flying trees and houses, bright in the late sunlight, Pottsville, with children wading and shouting, under the bridge, Hunt's Crossing, then the ...
— Mother • Kathleen Norris

... tubes, a reed may be used: one of the long bones of an animal, or of a wading bird, will be an indifferent substitute for ...
— The Art of Travel - Shifts and Contrivances Available in Wild Countries • Francis Galton

... the water complained of. I found it right aft, as Mrs Vansittart had suggested, and in order to test the tightness of the boat I baled it all out, or at least as much of it as could be got rid of with the baler, leaving no more than perhaps half a tumblerful. Then, wading ashore, I sat down on the sand, with my back against the upright oar to which the boat was moored, and began to review the situation. Five minutes later, despite my soaked clothing and my general state of discomfort, I was ...
— The First Mate - The Story of a Strange Cruise • Harry Collingwood

... to know how the Germans carry on war. We have therefore made selections from these documents in order to compile this small pamphlet. A dismal task, this wading through mud and blood! And a hard task, to run through all these reports, pencil in hand, with the idea of underlining the essential facts! You find yourself noting down each page, marking each paragraph; and, lo and behold, at the end of the book, ...
— Their Crimes • Various

... news, as Milton's spirits in metaphysical disquisition. At length signals of the approach of the game were descried and heard. Distant shouts resounded from valley to valley, as the various parties of Highlanders, climbing rocks, struggling through copses, wading brooks, and traversing thickets, approached more and more near to each other, and compelled the astonished deer, with the other wild animals that fled before them, into a narrower circuit. Every now and then the report of muskets was heard, repeated by a thousand echoes. The baying of the ...
— Waverley • Sir Walter Scott

... Leonard's face, and saw that the moment had arrived; he was going. She was gripped with a sense of suffocation and panic. It was the same feeling that she had experienced as a child when she had gone in wading and had slipped into the water over her head. She clung to Leonard now just as she had ...
— Four Days - The Story of a War Marriage • Hetty Hemenway

... set it aflame by the heat of his presence; and when he wished to join his fellow gods by the Urdar fountain, under the shade of the sacred tree Yggdrasil, he was forced to make his way thither on foot, wading through the rivers Kormt and Ormt, and the two streams Kerlaug, to ...
— Myths of the Norsemen - From the Eddas and Sagas • H. A. Guerber

... connection with the sewer. The liquid refuse is emptied on the sidewalk or into the street, giving forth sickening exhalations, and uniting its fetid streams with others from similar sources. There are more than four hundred families in this ward whose homes can only be reached by wading through a disgusting deposit of filthy refuse. 'In one tenant-house one hundred and forty-six were sick with small-pox, typhus fever, scarlatina, measles, marasmus, phthisis pulmonalis, dysentery, and chronic diarrhea. In another, containing three hundred and forty-nine persons, one in nineteen ...
— The American Woman's Home • Catherine E. Beecher and Harriet Beecher Stowe

... a grass ground of many thousand acres, where fifty years ago the Indians had pastured, but where now the farmers laboriously saved their hay when the floods allowed, and in spring launched their punts and went duck-shooting with long guns and wading-boots. For in winter one sheet of water—or of ice, as it might happen—covered the meadows and made the great river one with the many brooks that threaded their way to her. But at this season they ran low between their banks and the eye easily traced ...
— Lady Good-for-Nothing • A. T. Quiller-Couch

... perhaps, the puppets will grow faint; the original memory swim up instant as ever; and I shall once more lie in bed, and see the little sandy isle in Allan Water as it is in nature, and the child (that once was me) wading there in butterburrs; and wonder at the instancy and virgin freshness of that memory; and be pricked again, in season and out of season, by the desire to ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume 9 • Robert Louis Stevenson

... of the tangled and heavy willows, the mud lay deep in a long, half-drained pool of water which stood in the middle of the willow-covered fiat. Into this, silently as they could, they were obliged to plunge, wading across, sometimes waist deep. In spite of the noise thus made there was no challenge, and the little body of men, re-forming into an irregular line, presently arrived at the outer edge of the willow flat. Here, in the light which hung above the river's surface, they ...
— The Purchase Price • Emerson Hough

... rather poor soil. Houses half finished, and most of them without roofs, tents, and a liberty pole, with the capitol, were all exhibited to our view at once. We approached the President's mansion, however, wading through water above our ankles. This abode of President Houston is a small log house, consisting of two rooms, and a passage through, after the southern fashion. The moment we stepped over the threshold, on the right hand of the passage we ...
— John James Audubon • John Burroughs

... from it. "Being willing to make an experiment," says Maundrell, "I went into it, and found that it bore up my body in swimming with an uncommon force; but as for that relation of some authors, that men wading into it were buoyed up to the top as soon as they got as deep as the middle, I found it, upon ...
— Palestine or the Holy Land - From the Earliest Period to the Present Time • Michael Russell

... from the demolition of a neighbouring abbey. The eastern end of this church is perhaps as old as any ecclesiastical edifice in Normandy;[171] and its exterior (to which we could only approach by wading through rank grass as high as our knees) is one of the most interesting of its kind. During our admiration of all that was curious in this venerable edifice, we were struck by our old friends, the penitents,—busy in making confession. In more than one confessional ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume One • Thomas Frognall Dibdin

... was difficult to keep up with them. I could do nothing but follow, as it would have been impossible to turn them. I have always thought of this storm as a cloudburst. Anyhow, in an incredibly short time there was not a dry thread left on me. My boots were as full of water as if I had been wading over boot-top depth, and the water ran through my hat as though it were a sieve. I was almost blinded in the fury of the wind and water. Many tents were leveled by this storm. One of our neighboring trains suffered great loss by the sheets of water on the ground floating away camp equipage, ox yokes, ...
— Ox-Team Days on the Oregon Trail • Ezra Meeker

... commander had said to him while they were wading through their last swamp, "when we are somewhere near the summit I shall go on alone. I want no one with me when I look down the other side of that range. Whether I see a mere lake, which these savages may call a sea, or—something greater, I am not ...
— Days of the Discoverers • L. Lamprey

... he happened to see a little bare-foot-ed boy in the open field near the road. He was tending a large flock of geese that were picking the short grass, and wading ...
— Fifty Famous Stories Retold • James Baldwin

... to appreciate it. Standing on its edges, leaping from rock to rock, slipping waist deep at times, wading recklessly to reach some pool or eddy of special promise, searching the rapids, peering under the alders, testing the pools; that's the way to make friends with a river. You study its moods and its ways as those ...
— The Book of the National Parks • Robert Sterling Yard

... it, and wound an old crimson sash round both. Then she took up her little bundle in which were the wooden cup and a broken comb, and some pieces of hempen cloth and a small loaf of maize bread, and went on along the water, wading and hopping in it, as the water-wagtails did, jumping from stone to stone, and sometimes sinking up to ...
— The Waters of Edera • Louise de la Rame, a.k.a. Ouida

... water, could not come within some distance of it. Between the legionaries and the land stretched yards of sea, shoulder-deep to begin with, and concealing who could say what treacherous holes and quicksands beneath its surface. And their wading had to be done under heavy fire; for the British cavalry and chariots had already come up, and occupied every yard of the beach, greeting with a shower of missiles every motion of the Romans to disembark. This was more than even Caesar's soldiers were quite ...
— Early Britain—Roman Britain • Edward Conybeare

... Polyphemus, had shut up in his cavern, contrived to surprise their keeper in his sleep, and though they were wholly unable to kill him on account of his colossal magnitude, they succeeded in putting out his eye, and AEneas and his companions saw the blinded giant, as they passed along the coast, wading in the sea, and bathing his wound. He was guiding his footsteps as he walked, by means of the trunk of a tall pine which served him for ...
— Romulus, Makers of History • Jacob Abbott

... banks threw their shadows across its shallow, turbulent waters ("stormy," the hymn makes them, which is rather a complimentary stretch of fancy,) and we could not judge of the width of the stream by the eye. We knew by our wading experience, however, that many streets in America are double ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... if the reader succeeds in wading through it there is nothing left to tell about the fire. Why not begin the story in this way and leave something for the ...
— Newspaper Reporting and Correspondence - A Manual for Reporters, Correspondents, and Students of - Newspaper Writing • Grant Milnor Hyde

... end to overflow; but, on the contrary, it only aggravated the trouble. For the first mile or two there was nothing for it but to go through it, and at 20 deg. below it is a miserable business to be wading in moccasins even for an hour. We had rearranged our load so that it stood up somewhat higher, but we could not avoid wetting the things on the bottom of the sled, and the ice formed about it very inconveniently. Moreover, the little dog, who had a great dislike to ...
— Ten Thousand Miles with a Dog Sled - A Narrative of Winter Travel in Interior Alaska • Hudson Stuck

... hapless pedestrians in his line of fire. Sometimes he would turn his assaults upon me, and, springing suddenly at my "wide-awake," take it from my head, trailing it wildly away through the mud, and dropping it in some place where it would be difficult to get at it without wading. Then I would have to conciliate him to fetch it,—a favor not to be obtained without much ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 25, November, 1859 • Various

... for the white crane, a rare and beautiful bird. I never saw one. The name has been celebrated among the Hurons as long as any one of them can remember. The Indians call her the White Crane, or Walk-in-the-Water, because of her love for wading ...
— Betty Zane • Zane Grey

... mist and the drizzle; again the country lane, but without the warm club-house fire, the cheery lights, the highball, and the thumping motor car. Soggy, squashy mud instead of the clean tonneau; heavy, cruel wading through unknown by-ways in place of the thrilling rush to Fenlock. Not twenty-four hours had passed, and yet it seemed that ages lay between the joyous midnight and the ...
— The Flyers • George Barr McCutcheon

... for the first time, touch for an instant something hard. It might have been the top of a rock, and he would be again in deep water; but no—he stretched out one leg. It met the sand—a hard beach. Directly after, he was wading, and rapidly rising higher out of the water. He found some difficulty in withstanding the waters as they receded, but they did not seem to run back with the force they frequently do; and struggling manfully, he at length worked his ...
— Paul Gerrard - The Cabin Boy • W.H.G. Kingston

... hung about the gate while she went stumbling up the driveway, leaning heavily on the great dog. When she had safely reached the house he went slowly homeward, wading in trouble even as he waded in the white dust of the pike. For when one drinks too deeply of the cup of tyranny the lees are apt to be like the little book the Revelator ate—sweet as honey in the mouth and bitter in ...
— The Quickening • Francis Lynde

... the merry glee of my dear boisterous little prophets and patriots, if I could set them catching tadpoles in a clear wayside pool, or hunting hens' nests in the alder bushes behind the barn, or pulling yellow cow lilies in the pond, or wading for cat-o'-nine-tails, with their ragged little trousers tucked above their knees. And oh! hardest of all to bear, I think of our poor little invalids, so young to struggle with languor and pain! Just to imagine the joy of my poor, lame boys and my weary, pale, and peevish ...
— The Story of Patsy • Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin

... island was inhabited, and saw several people, on a point of the land we had passed, wading to the reef, where, as they found the ship leaving them quickly, they remained. But others, who soon appeared in different parts, followed her course; and sometimes several of them collected into small bodies, who ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 15 (of 18) • Robert Kerr

... water-proof boots, reaching up to the hips, for wading the rivers; and India-rubber pilot-jackets for keeping the chest and back secure from the spray of foss, or wave. Indeed, we had all that the heart of man could wish, and all ...
— A Yacht Voyage to Norway, Denmark, and Sweden - 2nd edition • W. A. Ross

... exposed to excessive fatigue and extreme hardship. The effect of these hardships was much increased by the privations under which the American troops suffered. While in almost continual motion, wading deep rivers, and encountering every vicissitude of the seasons, they were without tents, newly without shoes, or winter clothes, and ...
— Life And Times Of Washington, Volume 2 • John Frederick Schroeder and Benson John Lossing

... reinforcements they had all the time been descending, showed himself ever in greater strength the farther they advanced; and here the road was flooded for a long way on both sides of the bridge. There was therefore a good deal of wading to be done; but the road was an embankment, there was little current, and in safety at last they ascended the rising ground on which the farm-building stood. When they reached the yard, they sent Gibbie to find shelter for Crummie, and themselves ...
— Sir Gibbie • George MacDonald

... this adverb often, for all the happenings on that night were sudden—I saw a biggish animal break through the reeds on the far side. It entered the water and, whether wading or swimming I could not see, came out a little distance. Then some sense must have told it of my presence, for it turned and with a grunt made its ...
— Prester John • John Buchan

... from the beginning of June to the end of November, have a few scattered huts in several parts of this island and of Quivetta, used by the divers during their season, in which they sleep and open their oysters, so that the sandy beach is covered with fine mother-of-pearl shells. In wading only to the middle, we could reach large pearl oysters with our hands, which at first pleased us much; but we found them as tough as leather, and quite unpalatable. Having no seyne, I can say little about other kinds of fish. We occasionally observed ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume X • Robert Kerr

... meanwhile were roaming in wild excitement along the shore; their torches were seen glimmering in evident commotion about the scene of the calamity, where some were wading into the water in search of the body, and others were shouting incoherent questions and replies. At the rumour of Agrippina's escape they rushed off in a body to her villa to express their congratulations, where they were dispersed by the soldiers of Anicetus, who ...
— Seekers after God • Frederic William Farrar

... going to do for him, but it didn't; and now I think that if somebody near by does a little cussing,—not that anyone can cuss like the boss,—he'll pull through. I think he'll stick this time. You'd ought to have seen him wading into them d—d Fee-neens, swinging his sledge, and singing 'Onward, Christian soldiers.' Then, with me to chip in a cuss word now and again when things got hot, he pulled through the day without ripping an oath. I tell you, it was a sight. He bowled 'em over like nine-pins. ...
— In the Midst of Alarms • Robert Barr

... the tower. I uttered a silent prayer of gratitude. We were safe for the present. The attempt of the Indians to burn us out had failed; and after the reception they had met with from our fire-arms, they were not likely to venture again up to the tower by wading through the water. I called down to my ...
— In the Wilds of Florida - A Tale of Warfare and Hunting • W.H.G. Kingston

... d'esprit and especially the Koranic citations scattered about the text; and my indices will enable him to hunt up the tale or the verses which he may require for quotation wven when writing an ordinary letter to a "native" correspondent. Thus he will be spared the wasted labour of wading through volumes in order to pick ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 10 • Richard F. Burton

... 16,000 gallons per acre, all carried on the shoulders in such pails as stand in the foreground. The material is applied with long-handled dippers holding a gallon, dipping it from the pails, the men wading, with bare feet and trousers rolled above the knees, in the water of the furrows between the beds. This is one of their ways of "feeding the crop," and they have other methods of "manuring ...
— Farmers of Forty Centuries - or, Permanent Agriculture in China, Korea and Japan • F. H. King

... we see the sun wading in snow. The morning has perhaps been clear, but in the afternoon a bank of gray filmy or cirrus cloud meets him in the west, and he sinks deeper and deeper into it, till, at his going down, his muffled beams are entirely hidden. Then, on ...
— Locusts and Wild Honey • John Burroughs

... lily-leaves, far out in the water, and there was not a breath of wind to stir it. If the water had not been deep she could have waded ashore; but her practised ear told her, from the sound of the little waves against her hand, that wading was not to be thought of. To be sure, Gypsy could swim; but a walk of half a mile in drenched clothes was hardly preferable to sitting still in a dry boat, to say nothing of the inconvenience of swimming in crinoline, and on ...
— Gypsy Breynton • Elizabeth Stuart Phelps

... importance of the 1696 catalogue is indisputable. And now, after wading through this dry forest of figures and dates and haphazard or dogmatic attributions, we are at the fatal number, thirty-four—only thirty-four authentic Vermeers in existence. Some one must be mistaken. Who owns the ...
— Ivory Apes and Peacocks • James Huneker

... he perceived, beneath the deep shade of the Matautu shore, the first sign of animation in that sleepy settlement. A crowd of natives were straggling out to a whaleboat that was apparently being made ready for sea. Men and girls were wading to it, with baskets of food, kegs of beef, a tin of biscuit, and a capacious chest. A couple of children bailed frantically in the stern sheets, while a shrill old woman slid over the gunwale with a live pig in her arms. Strange packages of tapa cloth were carried ...
— Wild Justice: Stories of the South Seas • Lloyd Osbourne

... dark some of the cavalry at Long Bridge effected a crossing by wading and floundering through the water and mud, leaving their horses behind, and drove away the cavalry pickets. A pontoon bridge was speedily thrown across, over which the remainder of the army soon passed ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan

... garment woven and sewn; and in her hand she bore a naked sword, with golden hilts and gleaming blade. But the second bore on her roses done in like manner, both blossoms and green leaves, wherewith her body was covered decently, which else had been naked. The third was clad as though she were wading the wheat-field to the waist, and above was wrapped in the leaves and bunches of the wine-tree. And the fourth was clad in a scarlet gown flecked with white wool to set forth the winter's snow, and broidered over with the burning brands ...
— The Roots of the Mountains • William Morris

... toes were not webbed, but who had under force of circumstances little by little in the course of many generations learned to swim, either from having lived near a lake, and having learnt the art owing to its fishing habits, or from wading about in shallow pools by the sea-side at low water, and finding itself sometimes a little out of its depth and just managing to scramble over the intermediate yard or so between it and safety—such a bird did not probably conceive the idea of swimming on ...
— Evolution, Old & New - Or, the Theories of Buffon, Dr. Erasmus Darwin and Lamarck, - as compared with that of Charles Darwin • Samuel Butler

... shallows surrounding it we heard a shot in our rear that told us the body had been found. As we turned in the direction of the signal, Stallings was standing on a large driftwood log, and signaling. We started back to him, partly wading and partly swimming, while from both sides of the river men were swimming their horses for the brushy island. Our squad, on nearing the lower bar, was compelled to swim around the driftwood, and some twelve or fifteen men from either shore reached the scene before ...
— The Log of a Cowboy - A Narrative of the Old Trail Days • Andy Adams

... lagoon had been planned; for, on approaching the battery, it was found to be bordered on three sides by a bank of ooze, some ten fathoms broad, which ooze proved to be of such a consistency that, whilst it was much too liquid and too deep to permit of a man wading through it, it was at the same time so thick as to render the passage of a boat through it almost impossible. It took the crew of the gig more than twenty minutes to force the boat through this semi-liquid ...
— The Rover's Secret - A Tale of the Pirate Cays and Lagoons of Cuba • Harry Collingwood

... the trio stood or staggered. And, there, between them and the beach, raged Lad. None of the three cared to risk wading shoreward, with such an obstacle between themselves and land. The girl on the bank added her quota of squalls to those of her semi-engulfed friend; and one of the men began to reach far under water for a rock to throw ...
— Further Adventures of Lad • Albert Payson Terhune

... was surprised. And what's more, we got hold of that dollar at exactly the right moment. The secret service men arrested a Mexican who was wading the Rio Grande at El Paso last night. They searched him and found nothing on him that seemed incriminating. They questioned him and the fellow finally said he had smuggled some tobacco into this country, so they put him in jail as a smuggler. The fellow had ...
— The Secret Wireless - or, The Spy Hunt of the Camp Brady Patrol • Lewis E. Theiss

... sent out to look for him, and the anxious duchess, together with her ladies, assisted in this search, walking about in every direction through the cold and the slush of the thawing snow. Suddenly they came upon the boy barefooted and in his shirt-sleeves, wading toward them through the mud and snow. He was alarmed and confused at this unexpected meeting, and confessed that a moment before, while he had been playing in front of the garden, a family had passed by so poor and ragged that it was painful ...
— Queen Hortense - A Life Picture of the Napoleonic Era • L. Muhlbach

... out, but with each step the snow became deeper, and presently he floundered in to his waist. "Must be a ditch!" he said, turning a little to the right and exclaiming, "Thought so!" as the wading got shallower. Whereupon he stepped into a deep hole and fell. After plunging and plowing about, it was brought home to him that he had lost the path. Even at that the difficulty remained one of hard walking alone, ...
— Aladdin O'Brien • Gouverneur Morris

... natives had reached that part of the beach where the boat was lying, and were wading through the water towards us; but as we had no wish at present to communicate with them, for fear that, by refusing anything we had in the boat, for which their importunity would perhaps be very great, a quarrel might be occasioned, we pulled off into deeper water where ...
— Narrative of a Survey of the Intertropical and Western Coasts of Australia] [Volume 2 of 2] • Phillip Parker King

... him, and get a wish—just one wish, no more. The three brothers were seven years on the journey, climbing mountains that seemed to have no top, and scrambling through forests full of thorn-bushes, and wading through swamps where the mosquitoes tried to eat them up, and sailing down rivers where the rapids broke up their rafts and ...
— Boys and Girls Bookshelf (Vol 2 of 17) - Folk-Lore, Fables, And Fairy Tales • Various

... mighty beetles the size of pie dishes, they have flown at your head, got into your hair and then nipped you smartly. You have been also considerably stung and bitten by flies, ants, etc., and are most likely sopping wet with rain, or with the wading of streams, and you are tired and your feet go low along the ground, and it is getting, or has got, dark with that ever-deluding tropical rapidity, and then you for your sins get into a piece of ground which last year was a native's farm, and, placing one foot under the tough vine ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley

... subsist for the most part on fish, which they obtain by wading in the water, and taking the fish with their hands instead of with ...
— Myths and Legends of China • E. T. C. Werner

... He became a pauper and fled away from those to whom he owed money. After long wanderings he found himself on a high mountain in the center of the Isthmus of Panama. To the southward sparkled the waters of a new sea. He called it the South Sea. Wading into it waist deep, he waved his sword in the air and took possession of it for his royal master, the King of Spain. This was in 1513. Seven years later, in 1520, Magellan, a Portuguese seaman in ...
— A Short History of the United States • Edward Channing

... oar, Which, providentially for him, was washed Just as his feeble arms could strike no more, And the hard wave o'erwhelmed him as 't was dashed Within his grasp; he clung to it, and sore The waters beat while he thereto was lashed; At last, with swimming, wading, scrambling, he Rolled on the ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron

... entreated his master to let him go down and help her, but his desire was refused. As the prisoners one after another came up he inquired for her, and at length the news of her death was told to him. In wading the river she had been thrown down by the water and entirely submerged. Yet after great difficulty she had succeeded in reaching the bank, and had penetrated to the foot of the mountain. Here, however, her ...
— The Romance of Old New England Rooftrees • Mary Caroline Crawford

... tell you," insisted the stranger. "What in the world do you mean by wading out to such a place? Why, ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1907 to 1908 • Lucy Maud Montgomery

... few whip-cracks rang out like pistol-shots; and the dogs took the water, swimming slowly here and there. Men scrambled along the bank. Some, entering the river, reinforced the line spread out across the head rapid while others joined the second row wading steadily up-stream and splashing about as they advanced with iron-tipped poles. Nothing rewarded their efforts. The dogs suddenly turned and went down-stream; and then everybody ran or waded toward the tail outflow. A clamor of ...
— Vane of the Timberlands • Harold Bindloss

... more now, thank goodness,' he said vaguely, referring to the peat, though Mother was already far ahead, wading among boots ...
— A Prisoner in Fairyland • Algernon Blackwood

... them. Yet a fair number held their ground, and when the troops on foot advanced they opened a blistering fire which laid not a few Americans low. But the victory was ours, and soon the followers of Old Glory were wading or swimming the river, while the engineering corps set to work to repair the damage done to railroad and bridge, so that the armored and baggage ...
— The Campaign of the Jungle - or, Under Lawton through Luzon • Edward Stratemeyer

... at Seaview to have fun. The children could go in wading and swimming, they could play in the sand, they could sail toy boats in the inlet and they could go out in a real boat with their ...
— Six Little Bunkers at Cousin Tom's • Laura Lee Hope

... his spear down, and was exploring a deep bath-like pool. He had waded up to his knees, and was in the act of wading further when he was suddenly seized by the foot. It was just as if his ankle had been suddenly caught in a clove hitch and the rope drawn tight. He screamed out with pain and terror, and suddenly and viciously a whip-lash shot out from the water, lassoed him round the left knee, drew ...
— The Blue Lagoon - A Romance • H. de Vere Stacpoole

... courage of thee: Once more I have the means to reinstate myself into my glory. I feel my love to Philocles within me Shrink, and pull back my heart from this hard trial. But it must be, when glory says it must: As children, wading from some river's bank, First try the water with their tender feet; Then, shuddering up with cold, step back again, And straight a little further venture on, Till, at the last, they plunge into the deep, ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Vol. II • Edited by Walter Scott

... Man alone holding on by the canoe, nearly full of water, with me still clinging to the seat of it, and the very next wave likely to devour us. In desperation, I sprang for the reef, and ran for a man half-wading, half-swimming to reach us; and God so ordered it, that just as the next wave broke against the silvery rock of coral, the man caught me and partly swam with me through its surf, partly carried me till I was set safely ashore. Praising God, I looked ...
— The Story of John G. Paton - Or Thirty Years Among South Sea Cannibals • James Paton

... chocolate held safely above the water. I was directly behind him. A long column marching in single file through a muddy stream soon cuts a deep channel; and the last two hundred men to cross made wet work of the wading. ...
— The Greater Love • George T. McCarthy

... of everything which seems to come in between us, and I have seemed to see you lately through a mist of oddly dressed females. It's a system, I suppose, a social system, to enable people to waste their time. I feel as if I had got caught in a sort of glue—wading in glue. One ought to live life, or the best part of it, on one's own lines. I feel as if I was on show just ...
— Watersprings • Arthur Christopher Benson

... the boats and the surf was as crowded as a city street. "Cats" were wading out with flagons of water on their shoulders. The sailors, tired of the lukewarm filthy drink from the hogsheads aboard, longed for a draught from the ice-cold font de Gas. Tiny girls from the cabins along shore, their ragged skirts innocently rolled high above their ...
— Mayflower (Flor de mayo) • Vicente Blasco Ibanez

... forth, to and fro, but found no resting-place and returned. Then I took out a raven and sent it forth. The raven went forth, and when it saw that the waters had abated, it came near again, cautiously wading through the water, but did not return. Then I let out all the animals, to the four winds of heaven, and offered a sacrifice. I raised an altar on the highest summit of the mountain, placed the ...
— Chaldea - From the Earliest Times to the Rise of Assyria • Znade A. Ragozin

... we saw from fifteen to twenty, and from their tracks they must be very numerous indeed. The walking was difficult, for owing to the softness of the ground, we often sank in up to our thighs, and generally to our knees: and a short distance in this sort of wading in stiff mud serves to knock a man up. I was fortunate enough to kill one of the deer, and have no doubt that with more favorable light a man might get many. The night's repose in the hut was broken and uncomfortable, and ...
— The Expedition to Borneo of H.M.S. Dido - For the Suppression of Piracy • Henry Keppel

... a wide expanse of water stretching away until it seemed to touch the sky met his view. Here and there it was dotted with dark patches which were, Rabah told him, clumps of waterfowl, and in the shallow water near the margin, which was but a quarter of a mile away, he could see vast numbers of wading birds, white cranes, and white and black ibises, while numbers of other waterfowl, looking like black specks, ...
— The Cat of Bubastes - A Tale of Ancient Egypt • G. A. Henty

... far a snow-storm began to rage. Now, the snow-storms in Mo are different from ours, for the snow is popcorn, and on this day it fell so thick and fast that poor Timtom had much difficulty in wading through it. He was obliged to stop frequently to rest, and ate a great deal of the popcorn that cumbered his path, for it was nicely buttered ...
— The Surprising Adventures of the Magical Monarch of Mo and His People • L. Frank Baum

... never had realized it until the day after the great storm. All that night they had hunted in vain for something to eat and at daylight had crept into their house to rest awhile before starting on another hunt. They had neither the strength nor the courage to search any longer then. Wading through snow is very hard work at best and very tiresome, but when your stomach has been empty for so long that you almost begin to wonder what food tastes like, it becomes harder work still. You see, it is food that makes strength, and lack of food ...
— Old Granny Fox • Thornton W. Burgess

... still be traced among the trees, which are planted in terraces above the river, whose water is as bright and glittering as those of the Loire itself: green meadows and pretty aits adorn the stream, and the usual picturesque idleness of fishing is carried on by its banks, while groups of wading washerwomen, in high-coloured petticoats and white caps, enliven ...
— Barn and the Pyrenees - A Legendary Tour to the Country of Henri Quatre • Louisa Stuart Costello

... passionate nature, brooded awfully for days and weeks together over the unchangeable inheritance of their children; till at last the stones, hot like live embers, scorched the naked sole, till the water clung warm, and sickly, and as if thickened, about the legs of lean men with girded loins, wading thigh-deep in the pale blaze of the shallows. And it would happen now and then that the Sofala, through some delay in one of the ports of call, would heave in sight making for Pangu ...
— End of the Tether • Joseph Conrad

... shore, Jeanne, in a small boat, was rowing toward the island. She was pulling at the great oars with feeble strokes, and making no headway against the current which was sweeping down the tidal way. There was no time for hesitation. Andrew threw off his coat, and wading into the water, reached her just in time. He clambered into the boat and took the oars from her trembling fingers. He was not a moment too soon, for the long tidal waves were rushing in now before the storm. He bent to his task, ...
— Jeanne of the Marshes • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... savages in the water were wading across the river towards the bateau, evidently in the belief that the party had deserted her. They continued to hoot and yell, while they advanced, as though they intended to storm a garrisoned fortress, instead of ...
— Hope and Have - or, Fanny Grant Among the Indians, A Story for Young People • Oliver Optic

... shell. Guarded by these, they hang in myriads on the smooth ledges of rock, where the water runs gently a few inches deep. These are abundant everywhere: but I never saw so many of them as in the exquisite Cother brook, near Middleham, in Yorkshire. In that delicious glen, while wading up beneath the ash-fringed crags of limestone, out of which the great ring ouzel (too wild, it seemed, to be afraid of man) hopped down fearlessly to feed upon the strand, or past flower-banks where the golden globe-flower, and the great blue geranium, and the giant campanula bloomed ...
— Prose Idylls • Charles Kingsley

... you. Half an hour, did you say? More than likely that means about dark, if there's any temptation to hunt ashore. So I suppose I'll just have to duck, and do the great wading act. For I count it next door to a crime to be so near delicious oysters and not have them at least once ...
— The Outdoor Chums on the Gulf • Captain Quincy Allen

... happily there are many fields and waste places in the East already harboring the brilliant runaways. The narrow heads may be two and a half inches long. A meadow of this fodder plant makes one envious of the very cattle that may spend the summer day wading through acres of its deep ...
— Wild Flowers, An Aid to Knowledge of Our Wild Flowers and - Their Insect Visitors - - Title: Nature's Garden • Neltje Blanchan

... in spring collect for lovers, (For who but I should understand lovers and all their sorrow and joy? And who but I should be the poet of comrades?) Collecting I traverse the garden the world, but soon I pass the gates, Now along the pond-side, now wading in a little, fearing not the wet, Now by the post-and-rail fences where the old stones thrown there, pick'd from the fields, have accumulated, (Wild-flowers and vines and weeds come up through the stones and partly ...
— Leaves of Grass • Walt Whitman

... scarcely a thousand yards away, but its bright lights were reflected in a sheet of dark silent water that stretched between it and the two men. Wading and splashing, they soon reached it, and a gully where the surplus water was pouring into the valley below. "Fower feet o' water round her, but can't get any higher. So ye see she's all right for a month o' sich weather." Inwardly admiring the perspicacity of his companion, Jeff was ...
— Jeff Briggs's Love Story • Bret Harte

... "Wading," she replied. "If we clamber down the side of the bank—it isn't so very steep—we could get right under the bridge. There's a bit of dry ground at each side of the water, isn't there, Hugh? We could make that our dressing-room, ...
— The Christmas Fairy - and Other Stories • John Strange Winter

... Holland, he little knew that "their High Mightinesses the States of the United Provinces" would send him out, within a year, to the forests of Guiana, to subdue rebel negroes. He never imagined that the year 1773 would behold him beneath the rainy season in a tropical country, wading through marshes and splashing through lakes, exploring with his feet for submerged paths, commanding impracticable troops and commanded by an insufferable colonel, feeding on gree-gree worms and fed upon by mosquitoes, howled at by jaguars, hissed at by serpents, and shot ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 31, May, 1860 • Various

... honour; of the tremendous expenses of elections; of the long, tedious hours of unpaid labour: of the weary days passed in the House; but, nevertheless, the prize is one very well worth the price paid for it—well worth any price that can be paid for it short of wading ...
— Doctor Thorne • Anthony Trollope

... in time. Should we take the south, we must cut through the whole garrison before we could reach the earl. And on this side, the morass lies too near the foot of the rock to admit an approach without the greatest danger. But on the north, where I descended, by wading through part of the Leven, and climbing from cliff to cliff, I have every ...
— The Scottish Chiefs • Miss Jane Porter

... the woodcock are so entirely hidden by the thick and falling branches, so enveloped in deep shade, that you must have eyes made on purpose to be able to discover their large brown bodies plunging in the crystal water and wading amongst the flags. In aid of the sportsman, now as in the spring, a little fly comes buzzing and wheeling about in the air to warn the sportsman of the arrival of the birds, which, directly the moon's white horn is seen glancing between the trees, arrive flapping their wings in small ...
— Le Morvan, [A District of France,] Its Wild Sports, Vineyards and Forests; with Legends, Antiquities, Rural and Local Sketches • Henri de Crignelle

... steep incline and, with one last shoot in the air, roll, shaking, quivering, into a mighty heap on the bank of Kingdom Come. And then the "rafting" of those logs—dragging them into the pool of the creek, lashing them together with saplings driven to the logs with wooden pins in auger-holes—wading about, meanwhile, waist deep in the cold water: and the final lashing of the raft to a near-by tree with a grape-vine cable—to await the ...
— The Little Shepherd of Kingdom Come • John Fox

... could no longer be followed, they made down to the lake. They were many miles distant from it, and Harold was completely worn out when at last he saw a gleam of water through the trees. He was not yet to rest. Entering the lake, they began wading through it at a few feet from ...
— True to the Old Flag - A Tale of the American War of Independence • G. A. Henty

... doesn't deserve a pension," said Doyle, "and wouldn't get one if we were wading up to ...
— General John Regan - 1913 • George A. Birmingham

... hurry, like a man wading a river with loose clothes gathered in one arm and the other arm ready in case of falling. He took much less trouble than King not to tread on people, and oaths' ...
— King—of the Khyber Rifles • Talbot Mundy

... and overhanging rocks, numerous lights all of a sudden showed themselves. The machine with a lurch entered something in the nature of a carriage drive, and I found myself on the threshold of Dorlin—a lodge of unusual size, which seemed to be almost wading in the water. When the door opened I was greeted by an odor of peat smoke. An old London butler conducted me up a flight of stairs, and I was presently in a drawing-room filled with familiar figures. Besides my host and hostess and their then ...
— Memoirs of Life and Literature • W. H. Mallock

... channels of water. As we could not get over the bar in a large boat, two small skiffs were bound together with a matting of bamboo, and provided with an awning. By means of this contrivance, which was drawn by three strong carabaos (the whole body of men with evident delight and loud mirth wading knee-deep in the black mud and assisting by pushing behind) we succeeded, as if on a sledge, in getting over the obstacle into the river; which on my first visit overflowed the fields in many places, till the huts of the natives rose out of ...
— The Former Philippines thru Foreign Eyes • Fedor Jagor; Tomas de Comyn; Chas. Wilkes; Rudolf Virchow.

... had not depth sufficient even for such slender barks. It expanded into a wide but extremely shallow stream, with many sand-bars, and occasionally various channels. They got one of their canoes a few miles down it, with extreme difficulty, sometimes wading and dragging it over the shoals; at length they had to abandon the attempt, and to resume their journey on foot, aided by their faithful old pack-horse, who had recruited strength during ...
— Astoria - Or, Anecdotes Of An Enterprise Beyond The Rocky Mountains • Washington Irving

... and artillery crossed at once by the ford, as well as a portion of the infantry, the latter wading almost to the armpits. But the construction of the bridge was soon temporarily completed by Gens. Geary and Kane; and the rest of the troops and the pack-mules passed safely, by the light of huge bonfires lighted on the banks. The men were in the highest possible spirits, ...
— The Campaign of Chancellorsville • Theodore A. Dodge

... indeed he was also in his youthful heart, for the smallest of all the Mortimers—a lovely little child about three years old—took entire possession of it; and when he was not up a tree with the boys in a daring hunt after bergamy pears, or wading barefoot in a shallow stream at the bottom of the garden catching water-beetles, caddis-worms, and other small cattle for a freshwater aquarium, he was generally carrying this child about the garden pickaback, or otherwise obeying her little behests, ...
— Fated to Be Free • Jean Ingelow

... disease associated with urban environments, similar to Dengue Fever; characterized by sudden onset of fever, rash, and severe joint pain usually lasting 3-7 days, some cases result in persistent arthritis. water contact diseases acquired through swimming or wading in freshwater lakes, streams, and rivers: Leptospirosis - bacterial disease that affects animals and humans; infection occurs through contact with water, food, or soil contaminated by animal urine; symptoms include high fever, severe headache, vomiting, jaundice, and diarrhea; untreated, the ...
— The 2005 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency

... Indians of Carmel. The valley drained by the river so named is a true Californian valley, bare, dotted with chaparal, overlooked by quaint, unfinished hills. The Carmel runs by many pleasant farms, a clear and shallow river, loved by wading kine; and at last, as it is falling towards a quicksand and the great Pacific, passes a ruined mission on a hill. From the mission church the eye embraces a great field of ocean, and the ear is filled with a continuous sound of distant breakers on the shore. But the day of the Jesuit ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 2 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... in his office, smoking a fat cigar, and wading through reports brought in by subordinates concerning every opium den and Chinese boarding house in the East ...
— Number Seventeen • Louis Tracy

... fourth tree he found Clementina; she took his arm, and they set off together, wrestling with the wind, wading through the snow. It seemed to Clementina that her companion was possessed by some new fear. He said no single word to her; he dragged her with a fierce grip upon her wrist; if she stumbled, he jerked ...
— Clementina • A.E.W. Mason

... Bob was really not so very villanous-looking; there was even something agreeable in his snub-nosed face, with its close-curled border of red hair. But then his trousers were always rolled up at the knee, for the convenience of wading on the slightest notice; and his virtue, supposing it to exist, was undeniably "virtue in rags," which, on the authority even of bilious philosophers, who think all well-dressed merit overpaid, is notoriously likely to remain unrecognized (perhaps ...
— The Mill on the Floss • George Eliot

... midnight, and four large trees were thus prepared and lashed together, and one, wading in the water along the beach, using a pole, the other, with the rope, they held it within poling distance of the shore. In this manner the logs and detached pieces were floated down to the mouth of the stream, and having tied the small raft to the ...
— The Wonder Island Boys: The Tribesmen • Roger Finlay

... I am—except that I revolt. I have written of it so far as if it were just a joke. But indeed bad and foolish political institutions cannot be a joke. Sooner or later they prove themselves to be tragedy. This war is that. It is yesterday's lazy, tolerant, "sense of humour" wading out now into the lakes of ...
— In The Fourth Year - Anticipations of a World Peace (1918) • H.G. Wells



Words linked to "Wading" :   wade, wading pool, wading bird, walking



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