"Long-legged" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Because of his ragged appearance his name had been picked up by the crowd and sent drifting about the field; now they called on him loudly. For every rancher and every ranch-hand in Glosterville was summoning Alcatraz to vindicate the range-stock against the long-legged mares which had been imported from the East for the sole purpose of shaming the native products. The cry shook in a wailing chorus across the field: "Alcatraz!" and again: "Alcatraz!" With tingling cowboy yells in between. And mightily the chestnut ...
— Alcatraz • Max Brand
... is often a most pernicious pest on roses, grapes, and other plants. The ungainly, long-legged, grayish beetles occur in sandy regions and often swarm into vineyards and destroy the blossoms and foliage. Spray thoroughly with arsenate of lead, 10 lb. in 100 gal. of water. Repeat the application if necessary. (See ...
— Manual of Gardening (Second Edition) • L. H. Bailey
... Billy Wickliffe—you kin ax him all you wanter." Tim giggled, then clapped his hand over his mouth. Tim was lathy—long-legged, long-armed, with an ashy-black complexion and very big eyes. As he stood fondling the Flower's nose, he glared disdain of all the other candidates, or, rather, of the knots of folk ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 5, June 1905 • Various
... you I do know him; he's a yaller dog, a long-legged thing with a short tail, and he goes about with a girl, and he's called Dick. I shouldn't have said I know'd ...
— Dick and Brownie • Mabel Quiller-Couch
... little dip, almost a pit, a long-legged, long-bodied man sat before a rude oven built of stones evidently gathered from the surrounding slopes. Within the oven smoldered coals which gave out so little smoke that it was not discernible above the bushes. On the flat top of the oven strips ...
— The Riflemen of the Ohio - A Story of the Early Days along "The Beautiful River" • Joseph A. Altsheler
... am, over here," the voice said, and then out from behind a clump of tall, waving cat-tail plants, that grew in a pond of water, there stepped a long-legged bird, with a long, sharp bill like a ...
— Bully and Bawly No-Tail • Howard R. Garis
... little scamp. Och! oh and where is me brooch? I thought all the time the little divvil was afther something. Thieves! Murther!" Confusion in pandemonium now reigned supreme. For one precious moment the air seemed full of long-legged stockings and delicate hands and purses. Luckily, the brooch was found and peace restored at once. And Rose said, "Oh, girls, how could you!" and she begged my pardon and said they did not mean it. And then I made myself very useful and agreeable to these lovely maids, lacing their shoes and ...
— Tales of Aztlan • George Hartmann
... vile plagiarisms of European names causes a Babelonish confusion of ideas, enough to disturb the equanimity of a "grisly saint;" and, with all humility, I disclaim having any pretensions to that character. I have frequently heard a long-legged, sallow-looking backwoodsman talk of having come lately from Paris, or Mecca, when instead of meaning the capital of La grande nation, or the city of "the holy prophet," he spoke of some town containing a few hundred inhabitants, situated in ...
— A Ramble of Six Thousand Miles through the United States of America • S. A. Ferrall
... up of hands and eyes, the string of superlatives—the bellissimos, santissimos, gloriosissimos, and maravigliosissimos, with which they expressed their applause and delight. I stood in the back-ground of this strange scene, supported on one of the long-legged chairs which V—— placed for me against a pillar, at once amazed, diverted, and disgusted by this display of profaneness and superstition, till the heat and crowd overcame me, and I was obliged to leave the church. I shall never certainly forget the "Bambino" ...
— The Diary of an Ennuyee • Anna Brownell Jameson
... enable the party to land without using the sampan. All hands, including the seamen, rushed in the direction of the spot where the pig had been seen. The game was readily found. The animal was something like a Kentucky hog, often called a "racer," because he is so tall and lank. He was a long-legged specimen; and Achang said that was because they hunted through swamps and shallow water in search of food, and much use had made their legs long. He added that they were a nuisance because they rooted up the rice, and farmers had to fence ...
— Four Young Explorers - Sight-Seeing in the Tropics • Oliver Optic
... false alarm; just a long-legged girl of twelve rushing round the corner, followed by a lot of others. It hadn't been meant for me, of course, but in the second when I had remembered that precious paper and Tausig's rage when he should miss it, I had pulled my hand away ...
— In the Bishop's Carriage • Miriam Michelson
... met with the mountain goat, an animal which participates both of the deer and the common goat, but whose flesh is far superior to either. It is gracefully shaped—long-legged and very fleet. One of them, whose fore-leg I had broken with a rifle ball, escaped from our fleetest horse (Castro's), after a chase of nearly thirty minutes. The mountain goat is found on the great platforms of the Rocky Mountains, and also at the broad waters of the ...
— Travels and Adventures of Monsieur Violet • Captain Marryat
... that remark of yours, I can assure you. Now, I prophesy quite the contrary; Alfred will never go to sea again. He will be taken with the charms of some Scotch settler's daughter; some Janet or Moggy, and settle down into a Canadian farmer, mounted on a long-legged black pony." ...
— The Settlers in Canada • Frederick Marryat
... when this long-legged gestour they espied, They, laughing, hemmed him in on every side, And, "See, a Fool! A Fool! The Fool must sing," And "Fool! A Fool!" upon the air did ring, Wherefore the Duke betook him to his lute, And strummed until the chattering ...
— The Geste of Duke Jocelyn • Jeffery Farnol
... long-legged as Ghip-Ghisizzle, and his head was thicker and his nose flatter. But that pleased the Boolooroo all the more. He realized that when the great knife had sliced the prisoners in two and their halves were patched ...
— Sky Island - Being the further exciting adventures of Trot and Cap'n - Bill after their visit to the sea fairies • L. Frank Baum
... smooth forehead, soft blue eyes, and gentle pleasant face. "Is this your eldest son?" said he, turning to Dr. May—and the manner of both was as if they were already well acquainted. "No, this is my second. The eldest is not quite such a long-legged fellow," said Dr. May. And then followed the question addressed to Norman himself, ...
— The Daisy Chain, or Aspirations • Charlotte Yonge
... on the table, and there were glasses and knives and forks. A highly-coloured portrait of her late Majesty Queen Victoria confronted a long-legged horse desperately winning a race in which he had apparently no competitors. There was a wall-paper of imitation marble and a broken-down book-case with some torn paper editions languishing upon it. Beyond the open window there ...
— The Captives • Hugh Walpole
... years old long-legged, thin, and growing fast The doctor marked this combination and said: "Send him on a ...
— Two Little Savages • Ernest Thompson Seton
... the handsome boy who lounged long-legged in the chair opposite him. Like many very shy persons, he had one friend with whom he was completely unreserved, and that was this cousin of his, for whose charm and insouciant brilliance he ...
— Michael • E. F. Benson
... swept back, and again ran up swiftly before the impending wave, which sometimes overtook them and bore them off their feet. But they floated as lightly as one of their own feathers on the breaking crest. In their airy flutterings, they seemed to rest on the evanescent spray. Their images—long-legged little figures, with gray backs and snowy bosoms—were seen as distinctly as the realities in the mirror of the glistening strand. As I advanced, they flew a score or two of yards, and, again alighting, recommenced their dalliance with the surf wave; and thus they bore me company along ...
— Footprints on The Sea-Shore (From "Twice Told Tales") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... and work it out, but as the dimensions of this volume are not elastic, the impending social essay shall be postponed, and we will confine ourselves to a brief description of Sandy's outer cat. He was of a pure breed, far removed from the long-legged, lanky race of ordinary station-cats, who from time to time disappeared into the bush and contracted alliances with the still more degraded specimens of their class who had long been wild among the scrub. No: Sandy came of "pur sang," and held his small square head erect, with a haughty ...
— Station Amusements • Lady Barker
... was! The wide village street seemed empty, with the exception of a black collie lying asleep in the middle of the road, and a patient donkey belonging to a travelling tinker. The clean, sleek country sparrows were enjoying a dust bath, and a long-legged chicken—evidently a straggler from the brood—was pecking fitfully at a cabbage stalk, unmindful of the alarmed clucking of ...
— Herb of Grace • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... old-fashioned remedies, blisters, mustard baths, hot herb teas and fomentations. He told her she would soon be well, but Kitty knew better. On the third day, she asked in a whisper for Jim, but told them first to wash his face and hands with salt water. So the long-legged, bright-eyed boy came and sat by his mother's bed and held her hot hands. As he gazed on her over-bright ...
— The Preacher of Cedar Mountain - A Tale of the Open Country • Ernest Thompson Seton
... Steel Spring, I observed that that amiable, long-legged individual eyed the stockman rather narrowly, as though he expected a few words of reproach, or something worse; but in this he was mistaken; for Hardum contented himself with expressing surprise at the length of his pedal extremities, ...
— The Gold Hunter's Adventures - Or, Life in Australia • William H. Thomes
... rifles upon their shoulders. There they drank with seamen as wild as themselves who served in the ships of Jackson's small naval force or had offered to lend a hand behind the stockades, and with lean, long-legged Yankees from down East, swarthy outlaws who sailed for Pierre Lafitte, Portuguese and Norwegian wanderers who had deserted their merchant vessels, and even Spanish adventurers from the ...
— The Fight for a Free Sea: A Chronicle of the War of 1812 - The Chronicles of America Series, Volume 17 • Ralph D. Paine
... make her laws to a certain extent serve his own ends. He could, for instance, by breeding carefully from short-legged sheep, in itself a fortuitous and unaccountable variation from the normal type, produce a species that should be unable to leap fences which their long-legged ancestors could surmount; he could thus save himself the trouble of erecting higher fences. This power in man, this faculty for rapid self-improvement, differentiated him from all the beasts of the field; how had that faculty ...
— Beside Still Waters • Arthur Christopher Benson
... "Where can the nest be, then? Up in that nut? Well, to be sure! Wonders I hadn't seen that afore now. That's it though, 'pend upon it; right up in the clunch o' that bough." Before I could say a word he was half-way up amongst the branches, long-legged and struggling, to put the bird ...
— Change in the Village • (AKA George Bourne) George Sturt
... and in parts overhung by the branches of trees, amid which birds of gorgeous hue were fluttering; while near at hand one of the gaily-decked patos reales, or royal ducks, with its young brood, floated on the calmer water; and farther off a long-legged water-fowl, of the crane or bittern species, stood gazing at us with a watchful eye as we approached its domain. Had we possessed a larger supply of ammunition, I might have shot the duck for breakfast; but I was unwilling to expend a charge ...
— The Young Llanero - A Story of War and Wild Life in Venezuela • W.H.G. Kingston
... bridge so recently replaced by this structure was much more picturesque, curving across the flood and supported upon multitudinous feet, like a long-legged centipede of the innocuous kind. For three hundred years it had stood over the stream firmly and well, and it had its ...
— Glimpses of an Unfamiliar Japan - First Series • Lafcadio Hearn
... the time he was nineteen it helped him to a place in a newspaper office. He took dictation from a nervous and harried editor, who, when he was driven to frenzy by overwork and incompetencies, found that the long-legged, clean youth with the grin never added fuel to the flame of his wrath. He was a common young man, who was not marked by special brilliancy of intelligence, but he had a clear head and a good temper, and a queer aptitude for being able to ...
— T. Tembarom • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... not coming to sit still and do nothing," said her father firmly, "so I'll stay at home and write letters." He watched them from the terrace a little later, racing across the lawn, and smiled a little. It was so unlikely that this long-legged family of his ...
— Captain Jim • Mary Grant Bruce
... going about, or else, should they be in a hurry and not wish to travel in grand style, on pony or donkey's back. Europeans, as a rule, like the latter mode of travelling best, as the Corean sedan-chairs are somewhat too short for the long-legged foreigner, and a journey of six or seven hours in a huddled-up position is occasionally apt to give one the cramp, especially as Western bones and limbs do not in general possess the pliability which characterises those composing the skeleton of ...
— Corea or Cho-sen • A (Arnold) Henry Savage-Landor
... hoss——" Her voice lowered almost to a reverential pitch. "Ever sence I grew to be a long-legged gal, seems like all I've really wanted was a hoss. I s'pose," she turned dark, rather wistful eyes on the girls, "it's purty hard for you gals to understand what I'm talkin' about. You never longed fer a thing so's your heart ached till it seemed like it was dead inside of you. So you ...
— The Outdoor Girls in the Saddle - Or, The Girl Miner of Gold Run • Laura Lee Hope
... Space had a long-legged seat. At another birth Cloudy heavens brought forth a head. This was the head that was said to have fallen from the heavens. Space set it up on his high stool and said to it, "O beloved! be a son—be a second ...
— Samoa, A Hundred Years Ago And Long Before • George Turner
... a glimpse of trouble ahead, right there; for that chump of a Danvers never made a move when I gives him the wink. All he could get into that peanut head of his at one time was to collect those leather bags and get ready to trot around wherever that long-legged old ...
— Shorty McCabe • Sewell Ford
... sorrow down with a long brier pipe, and the Byrd chirped his little three-year-old protest in concert with us both. Most eighteen-year-old men would have resented having a motherless little brother and a long-legged girl neighbor eternally at their heels, but Sam never had; or, if he did, he gently kicked the Byrd and me out of the way, and we never knew that was what he was doing. We even loved him for the kicks. Then as the tears misted ...
— Over Paradise Ridge - A Romance • Maria Thompson Daviess
... which hid his mouth, was observed to twitch, and the wrinkles at the corner of his steely-blue eyes followed suit. It was a way of his when trying not to smile. Then Bright was heard to say that where the laws were silent, wise lawyers should he likewise, an epigram which long-legged Lieutenant Blake, of Camp McDowell, was delightedly and explosively repeating for the benefit of certain of the ladies looking on from among the cedars, even as 'Tonio appeared. Then no crier was needed to proclaim silence and declare this honorable court now open. Blake had come to Prescott ruefully ...
— Tonio, Son of the Sierras - A Story of the Apache War • Charles King
... weariness came over Cuchulain after that night, and a great thirst, after his exhaustion.[2] Then it was that the Morrigan, daughter of Emmas, came from the fairy dwellings, in the guise of an old hag, [3]with wasted knees, long-legged,[3] [4]blind and lame,[4] engaged in milking a [5]tawny,[5] three-teated [6]milch[6] cow before the eyes of Cuchulain.[a] And for this reason she came in this fashion, that she might have redress from Cuchulain. For none whom Cuchulain ...
— The Ancient Irish Epic Tale Tain Bo Cualnge • Unknown
... going into the stable to find that the horse was no other than his own old Diamond! Diamond, grown very thin and bony and long-legged. The horse hearing his master's voice, turned his long neck. And when his old friend went up to him and laid his hand on his side, he whinnied for joy and laid his big head on his master's breast. This settled the matter. Diamond's father put his ...
— At the Back of the North Wind • Elizabeth Lewis and George MacDonald
... been at this day under your roof, a recruiting instead of a marching officer; neither should I have been bound up in a covenant, like the law of Moses, could Burgoyne have made head against their long-legged marchings and countermarchings. Sir, I drink their healths, with all my heart; and with such a bottle of golden sunshine before me, rather than displease so good a friend, I will go through Gates' whole army, ...
— The Pilot • J. Fenimore Cooper
... he spoke, with his mice's cage under his arm, when he looked back over his shoulder at his partner's slight figure standing at the top in the dim light watching him. Turning suddenly, he was by Frank's side again in two long-legged strides. ...
— Our Frank - and other stories • Amy Walton
... felt a thrill of joy, it was then. Willie ran straight to his arms, in spite of the long-legged officer striding to catch him, and pulling down his neck, hugged him, and kissed him, and hugged and kissed him again, with such ardor that the delighted bystanders cheered, and the pursuing policeman stepped back with a laugh ...
— The Drummer Boy • John Trowbridge
... guests, but assiduously avoided them, until at last she saw the thin, long-legged keeper going towards his cottage with Dash, the faithful ...
— The House of Whispers • William Le Queux
... witches were long-legged, slender dancing gals, in tall black witch caps and long black capes, crimson-lined, and very little else. Each had long hair that swirled ...
— Prologue to an Analogue • Leigh Richmond
... happen to break away from the bonds that limit and restrain most Red brides? This is the question that has troubled ethnologists since the North was first invaded by the, scientific. We think we have found the answer. Along the shores of Fond du Lac we descry a long-legged wader, the phalarope. This is the militant suffragette of all bird-dom. Madame Phalarope lays her own eggs (this depository act could scarcely be done by proxy), but in this culminates and terminates all her responsibilities connubial and maternal,—"this, no more." Father Phalarope builds the house, ...
— The New North • Agnes Deans Cameron
... of the same mind, not they. As soon as they set eyes on her, they took to their heels as fast as they could, for they thought the Evil One was come to catch them. But it was no good, for Grizzel was long-legged and swift-footed, and she came up with them before they ...
— Popular Tales from the Norse • Sir George Webbe Dasent
... A lean long-legged clever-looking fellow, rather wide at the knees, with a brown complexion, and not unpleasant expression of face, stood before the door plaiting a cracker for his stockwhip. He looked pleased when he saw Sam, and indeed it must be a surly fellow indeed, who did not greet Sam's honest phiz with a smile. ...
— The Recollections of Geoffrey Hamlyn • Henry Kingsley
... I saw by the blue light of the brimstone match was the barrel of old Sir Harry's pistol glimmering about six inches from my nose. On my left stood a long-legged footman, also with a pistol. But all this, though discomposing, was no more than I had begun to expect. What really startled me, as old Jenkins lit the candles, was the sight of two women standing a few ...
— Wandering Heath • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... the platform. They wore white sun-hats, and were leaving for Malta, in anticipation of war in Egypt. They were young soldiers—English by the white facings—with a colonel whose moustache reached his shoulders, and a number of fresh-faced long-legged subalterns. I chiefly remember one of the colour-sergeants, a man of immense size and ferocious face, who leaned upon his Martini, with two little white kittens peeping over either shoulder from the flaps of his knapsack. I was so moved at the sight of these ...
— The Stark Munro Letters • J. Stark Munro
... veranda railings, were swung round front-face. Greetings, light as rubber balls, bounded from porch to porch. Fine needles flashed through dainty fabrics stretched like drum parchment across embroidery hoops; young children, shrilling and shouting in the heat of play, darted beneath maternal eyes; long-legged girls in knee-high skirts strolled up and down the sidewalks, ...
— Every Soul Hath Its Song • Fannie Hurst
... student of baseball could weigh these two facts against each other and understand something of Delaney's trouble. It was not possible to camp on Red Gilbat's trail. The man was a jack-o'-lantern, a will-o'-the-wisp, a weird, long-legged, long-armed, red-haired illusive phantom. When the gong rang at the ball grounds there were ten chances to one that Red would not be present. He had been discovered with small boys peeping through knotholes at the vacant left field he was supposed ...
— The Redheaded Outfield and Other Baseball Stories • Zane Grey
... that long-legged slab of a Hatteras went out to-night down the harbour. The old man brought home a lot of money bags, but what was in ...
— A Bid for Fortune - or Dr. Nikola's Vendetta • Guy Boothby
... idea of what was doing and all began to brighten up. Men off watch, supposed to be asleep in their cots below, began to stroll up and have a look around decks. Some lingered near the wireless door, and every time the messenger passed they sort of stuck their ears up at him. He was a long-legged lad in rubber boots who took the deck in big strides. His lips never opened, but his eyes talked. The men turned from him with pleased ...
— The U-boat hunters • James B. Connolly
... feed her poultry; and what a noise there was among the turkeys, and geese, and ducks, and hens!—all so hungry for breakfast, and all pushing round without the slightest regard for good manners. After them there were the calves to feed. Six long-legged shaky little things—they wondered they could ever grow into anything to be afraid of. Before they had half finished looking round nurse called them to ...
— Laugh and Play - A Collection of Original stories • Various
... described in his work. I have seen but two. Walking in the woods one day in early fall, in the vicinity of West Point, I started up a thrush that was sitting on the ground. It alighted on a branch a few yards off, and looked new to me. I thought I had never before seen so long-legged a thrush. I shot it, and saw that it was a new acquaintance. Its peculiarities were its broad, square tail; the length of its legs, which were three and three quarters inches from the end of the middle toe to the hip-joint; ...
— Wake-Robin • John Burroughs
... waste of red sand and gray mud. The two brothers crept shivering and horror-struck into the kitchen. The water had gutted the whole first floor; corn, money, almost every movable thing had been swept away, and there was left only a small white card on the kitchen table. On it, in large, breezy, long-legged letters, ...
— Types of Children's Literature • Edited by Walter Barnes
... scoffed at the "feminine propagandists of woman's rights" exhibiting themselves in "short petticoats and long-legged boots."[46] Nevertheless, the convention aroused such genuine interest that evening meetings were continued for two weeks, featuring as speakers Ernestine Rose, Antoinette Brown, Samuel J. May, and William Henry Channing, the young Unitarian minister from Rochester; and ...
— Susan B. Anthony - Rebel, Crusader, Humanitarian • Alma Lutz
... the big hand had grasped him again and had shown him to two long-legged creatures who he had guessed were human children, because they looked much as his mother had described them in one of her favorite lullaby coos. He had not been afraid of them, but, flattered by their delighted exclamations, had eaten everything ...
— Chico: the Story of a Homing Pigeon • Lucy M. Blanchard
... this only made them worse,—like a bad baby, which, the more you tell it to be quiet, sets to work the more earnestly to increase and add to the vigour of its roaring. So Martin wisely let the parrots alone. They also startled, in passing through swampy places, several large blue herons, and long-legged cranes; and on many of the trees they observed the curious hanging nests of a bird, which the hermit told them was the large oriole. These nests hung in long strings from the tops of the palm-trees, and the birds were very actively employed moving ...
— Martin Rattler • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... Jack was sitting by an open window of an elevated railway car. This was another entirely new experience, and Jack found it hard to rid himself of the notion that possibly the whole long-legged railway might tumble down or the train suddenly shoot off from the track and ...
— Crowded Out o' Crofield - or, The Boy who made his Way • William O. Stoddard
... see those little bodies high in the air, carried about on mysterious legs. They have such a resolute look on their round faces, what wonder that nervous old gentlemen with tender feet wince and tremble while the long-legged ...
— Hans Brinker - or The Silver Skates • Mary Mapes Dodge
... of yelling, throwing his arms wildly about, and digging his heels into the sides of his long-legged horse, succeeded in coming close up with the bull, which once or twice turned his clumsy body half round and glared furiously at its pursuer with its small black eyes. Suddenly it stuck out its tail, stopped short, and turned full round. ...
— The Dog Crusoe and His Master - A Story of Adventure in the Western Prairies • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... in the gaucho vernacular synonymous with "ostrich, be hanged!" adding, as he continues to gaze hopelessly around, "I wish I'd let the long-legged brute go its way. Like as not, it'll hinder me going mine, till too late. And if so, there'll be a pretty tale to tell! Santissima! whatever am I to do? I don't even know the way back to the house; though that wouldn't be any good if I did. I daren't go there without taking some news with ...
— Gaspar the Gaucho - A Story of the Gran Chaco • Mayne Reid
... of the big fish boats came in. It was loaded with several kinds of fish, some big flat ones, white on one side, and black on the other. These were flounders. There were some blue fish, large and small, and some long-legged "fiddler" crabs. But they were not the kind that ...
— Bunny Brown and his Sister Sue • Laura Lee Hope
... long-legged, kicking creature has wings that are apparently more useful to man than to itself. In fact, the possession of these apparently superfluous appendages is generally the cause of its being hunted by man and by ...
— The Giraffe Hunters • Mayne Reid
... were looking at each other, and wondering: "What can the long-legged boy see in this stupid and plain-featured girl who is years older than he? or she in the young swaggering ragged fool? And how much wiser and happier is our marriage than, in any event, ...
— Figures of Earth • James Branch Cabell
... as if every fowl on the farm heard the call and was coming. There were big hens and little hens, brown hens, black hens, white hens, and speckled hens. There were fluffy baby chicks and long-legged middle- sized chickens. There were proud roosters with bright combs and gay, glossy feathers. There were stately turkeys with long necks and great fan-like tails. There were ducks with long fat ...
— Five Little Friends • Sherred Willcox Adams
... their horses up the last slope. As always in a short spurt, the long-legged black of Jacqueline out-distanced the cream-colored mare, and it was she who first topped the rise of land. The girl whirled in her saddle with raised arm, screamed back at Pierre, and rode on at a still more ...
— Riders of the Silences • Max Brand
... would he live, hadst Thou Not given him a glimpse of Heaven's light 45 Which he calls reason, and employs it only To live more beastlily than any beast. With reverence to Your Lordship be it spoken, He's like one of those long-legged grasshoppers, Who flits and jumps about, and sings for ever 50 The same old song i' the grass. There let him lie, Burying his nose ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... whole. The pool swarmed with water-fowl; snowy egrets, dark-coloured striped herons, and storks of various species standing in rows around its margins. Small flocks of macaws were stirring about the topmost branches of the trees. Long-legged piosocas (Perra Jacana) stalked over the water plants on the surface of the pool, and in the bushes on its margin were great numbers of a kind of canary (Sycalis brasiliensis) of a greenish-yellow colour, which has a short and not very melodious song. We had advanced but a ...
— The Naturalist on the River Amazons • Henry Walter Bates
... a long-legged boy with a lean, but good-natured face, now streaked with perspiration and dirt, struggled to his feet, and began to feel his lower extremities sympathetically, as though the terrific strain had centered mostly upon that particular part ...
— Jack Winters' Gridiron Chums • Mark Overton
... haven't,' said he, 'but your cussed hoss has, and nearly broke my neck. You are like all the Connecticut men I ever see, a nasty, mean, long-necked, long-legged, narrow-chested, slab-sided, ...
— Nature and Human Nature • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... call it learning—'tis mother-wit. No one else sees the lady-moon sit On the sea, her nest, all night, but the owl, Hatching the boats and the long-legged fowl. When the oysters gape to sing by rote, She crams a pearl down each stupid throat. Howlowlwhitit that's wit, there's ...
— Cross Purposes and The Shadows • George MacDonald
... on Montagnais Lake, 1 mile west to another lake. No signs of Indians here. Camped at west end of this. Saw two caribou. Dropped pack and grabbed rifle; was waiting for them 250 yards away when a cussed little long-legged bird scared them. At point near camp where lakes meet, I cast a fly, and half pound and pound fontanalis, as fast as I could pull them out. What a feed at 2 P.M. lunch. Climbing ridge, saw that lake empties by little strait into another ...
— A Woman's Way Through Unknown Labrador • Mina Benson Hubbard (Mrs. Leonidas Hubbard, Junior)
... comfortably in life, and had a family of three. She might have sent them down to the burdocks to pick snails quite well, but she would take them out walking with her instead. They were picked up (all four of them) by two long-legged Irish boys, who put them into a basket and took them home. I do not think the young gentlemen meant any harm, for they provided plenty of food, and took them to bed with them. They set my daughter at liberty next day, and she spoke very handsomely of the young gentlemen, and said they had cured ...
— Brothers of Pity and Other Tales of Beasts and Men • Juliana Horatia Gatty Ewing
... down the hillside, plunged a noisy group of children, and behind them in hot pursuit came Nance Molloy, angular, long-legged, lithe as a young sapling and half mad ...
— Calvary Alley • Alice Hegan Rice
... money, I suppose?" remarked his companion, Francis Goring, a long-legged, middle-aged man, who, in a suit of well-worn tweeds, presented the ideal type of the English landowner, as indeed he was—owner of Keswick Hall, a fine place a few miles distant, and a Justice of the Peace for the county ...
— The White Lie • William Le Queux
... the note to your long-legged friend, but—it's his eyes, man! It's his eyes! They ain't human! I seen a man like him once what went mad from the heat an'—" he lowered his voice, "they found him at his mate's throat a-sucking ...
— The Web of the Golden Spider • Frederick Orin Bartlett
... These peculiar long-legged Ducks are very abundant in southern Texas during the summer months. They build their nests in hollow trees, often quite a distance from the water. They lay their eggs upon the bottom of the cavity with only a scant lining, if any, of feathers and down. They are ...
— The Bird Book • Chester A. Reed
... the stables—those of the captain and the two strangers, my own which was in a state of prostration, and a thin long-legged beast whose body was ...
— My Sword's My Fortune - A Story of Old France • Herbert Hayens
... like my chickens, mighty uncertain. Now, that fine-looking cockerel of mine is the stupidest one of the lot, and the ugly, long-legged chap is the king of the yard, he's so smart; crows loud enough to wake the Seven Sleepers; but the handsome one croaks, and is no end of a coward. I get snubbed; but you wait till I grow up, and then see'; and Ted looked so like his own long-legged pet that everyone ...
— Jo's Boys • Louisa May Alcott
... retreating from the bench on which she had been seated, and he quickly followed, murmuring protest and reassurance in such Spanish as he could command, declaring he had never yet had opportunity to thank her for a deed of daring that perhaps had saved his life (he knew it hadn't—the long-legged, nimble-tongued reprobate), and trembling, timorous, sweetly hesitant she lingered; she even let him seize her hand and only faintly strove to draw it away. She began even to listen to his pleading. She shyly hung her pretty head and coyly turned away and furtively peeped ...
— A Wounded Name • Charles King
... he raced. Long-legged, light-flanked, long-winded, and underfed, he had the adaptability for speed of a little race-horse. Jerome Edwards was quite a famous boy in the village for his prowess in running. No other boy could equal him. Marvellous stories ...
— Jerome, A Poor Man - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... is to raise cabbages, and to succeed in this the young plants must on no account be allowed to stand so long together in the hills as to crowd each other, making a tall, weak, slender growth,—getting "long-legged," as ...
— Cabbages and Cauliflowers: How to Grow Them • James John Howard Gregory
... Solomon in the hall," said the Squire, "and playing my fav'rite tune, I believe—"The flaxen-headed ploughboy"—he's for giving us a hint as we aren't enough in a hurry to hear him play. Bob," he called out to his third long-legged son, who was at the other end of the room, "open the door, and tell Solomon to come in. He shall give us a ...
— Silas Marner - The Weaver of Raveloe • George Eliot
... everywhere, the glacier would have kept quiet, as it has done before, as far back as man's memory goes. I knew at once that mischief was brewing when you and your black Satan came here with your pocket-furnaces, and your long-legged gazing-tubes, and all the rest of your new-fangled deviltry. If you don't hurry up and get out of my house this very day, I will whip you off ...
— Ilka on the Hill-Top and Other Stories • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... come a good way. Our saddles and bridles were rusty-looking and worn; the horses were the only things that were a little too good, and might bring the police to suspect us. We had to think of a yarn about them. We looked just the same as a hundred other long-legged six-foot natives with our beards and hair pretty wild—neither better ...
— Robbery Under Arms • Thomas Alexander Browne, AKA Rolf Boldrewood
... Mesa the round-up had proceeded with unusual facility. Scores of wiry, long-legged steers had drifted down the ridges or gulches that led to the canon; and many a cow, followed by its calf, had stumbled forward to the herd and apparently accepted the inevitable. But before Helen Messiter had well started out of the canyon's mouth ...
— Wyoming, a Story of the Outdoor West • William MacLeod Raine
... crash, more cries from Snoop and out into the middle of the barn floor dashed the black cat with a big, long-legged, feathered creature clinging to ...
— The Bobbsey Twins at Meadow Brook • Laura Lee Hope
... CALLED ALSO THE OLD LINCOLNSHIRE, was at one time the largest stock of the pig family in England, and perhaps, at that time, the worst. It was long-legged, weak in the loins, with coarse white curly hair, and flabby flesh. Now, however, it has undergone as great a change as any breed in the kingdom, and by judicious crossing has become the most valuable we possess, being a very well-formed pig throughout, with a good head, a pleasant docile countenance, ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton
... machine, confident in her ability to manage it. There were few autos out, and the highway was almost deserted. Her pretty Shaker hood, which had lately come home from Madam Julia's, was unbound, and the loose, chiffon strings flew out in the wind like long-legged birds. Turning into a broad avenue, Cora realized that she was on the road leading to the garage where she had met Paul Hastings, the handsome chauffeur who had given her such ...
— The Motor Girls • Margaret Penrose
... of Batard and Leclere is a history of war—of five cruel, relentless years, of which their first meeting is fit summary. To begin with, it was Leclere's fault, for he hated with understanding and intelligence, while the long-legged, ungainly puppy hated only blindly, instinctively, without reason or method. At first there were no refinements of cruelty (these were to come later), but simple beatings and crude brutalities. In one of these Batard had an ear injured. He never regained control of ...
— The Faith of Men • Jack London
... else not talk at all. Though droughts should come, and though sheep should die, his fowls were his sole delight; He left his shed in the flood of work to watch two gamecocks fight. He held in scorn the Australian Game, that long-legged child of sin; In a desperate fight, with the steel-tipped spurs, the British Game must win! The Australian bird was a mongrel bird, with a touch of the jungle cock; The want of breeding must find him out, when facing the English ...
— Rio Grande's Last Race and Other Verses • Andrew Barton 'Banjo' Paterson
... sandy banks of the Soane were full of martins' nests, each one containing a pair of eggs. The deserted ones were literally crammed full of long-legged spiders (Opilio), which could be raked out with a stick, when they came pouring down the cliff like corn from a sack; the quantities are quite inconceivable. I did not observe the martin ...
— Himalayan Journals (Complete) • J. D. Hooker
... mail arrived, on horseback. There was but one letter, and it was for the postmaster. The long-legged youth who carried the mail tarried an hour to talk, for there was no hurry; and in a little while the male population of the village had assembled to help. As a general thing, they were dressed in ...
— The Gilded Age, Complete • Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner
... streams; the grey-backed fishes that threaded the dim waters, the eels whose presence was betrayed by a slight quivering of the water-plants, the young fry, which dispersed like blackish sand at the slightest sound, the long-legged flies and the water-beetles that ruffled into circling silvery ripples the stagnant surface of the pools; all that silent teeming life which drew them to the water and impelled them to dabble and stand in it, so that they might ...
— Abbe Mouret's Transgression - La Faute De L'abbe Mouret • Emile Zola
... LEGS. A tall long-legged man; also a giant, said to be buried in Weston church, near Baldock, in Hertfordshire, where there are two stones fourteen feet distant, said to be the head and feet stones of his grave. This giant, says Salmon, as fame goes, lived in a wood here, and was a great robber, but ...
— 1811 Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue • Captain Grose et al.
... forces were routed in the first battle of Bull Run, there were many civilians present, who had gone out from Washington to witness the battle. Among the number were several Congressmen. One of these was a tall, long-legged fellow, who wore a long-tailed coat and a high plug hat. When the retreat began, this Congressman was in the lead of the entire crowd fleeing toward Washington. He outran all the rest, and was the first man to arrive in the city. No person ever made such good use of ...
— Lincoln's Yarns and Stories • Alexander K. McClure
... straight black hair depending behind, and its oblique eyes; but in other respects it diverges widely. On Egyptian monuments the sphinx never appears standing as in this fresco, but crouching in the attitude of reposeful observation. Its form also was always fuller and more rounded than the long-legged, attenuated spectre before us, and it was invariably wingless; whereas the Etruscan sphinx had short wings with curling points, spotted and barred with stripes of black, red, and yellow. This strange mixture of the human and the brutal might be regarded as a symbol of the religious ...
— Roman Mosaics - Or, Studies in Rome and Its Neighbourhood • Hugh Macmillan
... tufts of grass or rushes, or the debris of the shore, heaped together with as little order and constructive art as might be expected from the webbed feet and clumsy bill of these birds, the latter better adapted for seizing fish than for forming a delicate nest. The long-legged, broad-billed flamingo, who is continually stalking over muddy flats in search of food, heaps up the mud into a conical stool, on the top of which it lays its eggs. The bird can thus sit upon them conveniently, and they are kept dry, out of ...
— Contributions to the Theory of Natural Selection - A Series of Essays • Alfred Russel Wallace
... Norah, He had been given to her as a foal, when Norah used to ride a round little black sheltie, as easy to fall off as to mount. He was a beauty even then, Norah thought; and her father had looked approvingly at the long-legged baby, with his fine, well-bred head. "You will have something worth riding when that fellow is fit to break in, my girlie," he had said, and his prophecy had been amply fulfilled. Mick Shanahan said he'd never put a leg over a finer pony. Norah knew there never had been a finer anywhere. ...
— A Little Bush Maid • Mary Grant Bruce
... men, dressed in the garb of northern hunters—light-coloured moleskin trousers tucked into the tops of long-legged sealskin moccasins, short jackets and peakless caps—stood before the post kitchen or lounged upon the rough board walk which extended the full length of the reservation in front of the servants' quarters and storehouses. ...
— Ungava Bob - A Winter's Tale • Dillon Wallace
... raccoon ascended the bank, with the purpose of returning to her lair in the old sycamore. She stopped abruptly, however, as a new sound, very different from that of the frog chorus, fell upon her heedful ear. It was an excited, yelping whine; and presently she caught sight of a long-legged, plumy-tailed dog, rushing wildly hither and thither, nose to earth, quartering the ground for ...
— The Watchers of the Trails - A Book of Animal Life • Charles G. D. Roberts
... savoured stable-yard, with the piggeries opening into it. In unpleasantly close quarters, the Schneiderlein, or little tailor, i.e. the biggest and fiercest of all the knappen, was grooming Nibelung; three long-backed, long-legged, frightful swine were grubbing in a heap of refuse; four or five gaunt ferocious-looking dogs came bounding up to greet their comrade Festhold; and a great old long-bearded goat stood on the top of the mixen, looking much disposed ...
— The Dove in the Eagle's Nest • Charlotte M. Yonge
... the ring steward in a voice like thunder, and a long-legged grey horse came trotting into the ring and sidled about uneasily. His rider pointed him for the first jump, and went at it at a terrific pace. Nearing the fence the horse made a wild spring, and cleared it by feet, while the crowd yelled applause. ...
— Three Elephant Power • Andrew Barton 'Banjo' Paterson
... Those who have seen them say that it is a wonderful spectacle. Nothing living escapes them. They search every hole, nook, and cranny. Here, dozens may be seen surrounding a great spider or scorpion; there, they chase sprawling long-legged creatures across the window-panes; yonder, hundreds of them may be observed dragging out a rat or a mouse which they have killed: even snakes can not escape from the sharp and poisonous bite of these bold foragers. ...
— Harper's Young People, October 19, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... A long-legged "son of a gun" of a Yankee had a "clapper-claw," or handshake, with a planting attorney in a kind of four-posted gig, canopied in leather and curtained clumsily. The Yankee laughed at the heavy straight shafts ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... Edith, almost sixteen now, long-legged, silent, and friendly, said, "Yes, mother" and helped herself so liberally to butter that her hostess thought ...
— The Vehement Flame • Margaret Wade Campbell Deland
... ingeniously might I not have written, "Ralph Rattlin blackened Master Simpkin's left eye—Ralph Rattlin led on the attack upon Farmer Russel's orchard, and Ralph Rattlin fought three rounds, with no considerable disadvantage, with the long-legged pieman." Alas! I cannot even shelter myself under the mistiness of the peremptory we. I have made a great mistake. But I have this consolation, in common with other great men, that, for our mistake, the public ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard
... and caught fish. She did many things besides, however, as by that time family funds were so low and the farm so unproductive it was necessary for some member of the family to begin to make money. She was fourteen at the time her grandfather died—a slim long-legged girl giving promise of the beauty that the old soldiers and the drummer on the Rye House porch acknowledged later on. Even then the wire-spring energy was hers that still puzzled her mother—energy and ...
— The Comings of Cousin Ann • Emma Speed Sampson
... Dad's hope. Pointing proudly to the long-legged, big-headed, ugly moke mooching by the door, smelling the dust, he would say: "Be a fine horse in another year! Little sleepy-looking yet; ...
— On Our Selection • Steele Rudd
... of thy guinea, child, that Paris and Hugon and I drank at the crossroads last night. 'Burn me,' says I to them, 'if that long-legged lass of mine shan't have a drop in the cup!' ...
— Audrey • Mary Johnston
... implied by the fact of their selection. Man keeps the natives of many climates in the same country; he seldom exercises each selected character in some peculiar and fitting manner; he feeds a long and a short-beaked pigeon on the same food; he does not exercise a long-backed or long-legged quadruped in any peculiar manner; he exposes sheep with long and short wool to the same climate. He does not allow the most vigorous males to struggle for the females. He does not rigidly destroy all inferior animals, but protects ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various
... resulted in the arrival of a genuine product of county Galway, a long-legged, raw-boned hunter, with a wild, frightened eye, quivering, suspicious-looking ears, and an ill-omened name compounded of kill and of kick, which Maurice alone endeavoured to pronounce; also an outside car, very nearly as good as new. This last exceeded Ulick's commission, ...
— The Young Step-Mother • Charlotte M. Yonge
... arts and crafts show we have on exhibition loot from the four corners of the earth, and the club woman who has not heard it whispered around in our art circles that Mr. Sargent is painting too many portraits lately, and that a certain long-legged model whose face is familiar in the weekly magazines is no better than she should be—a club woman in our town who does not know of these things is out of caste in clubdom, and women say of her that she is giving too much time ...
— In Our Town • William Allen White
... devote to Melisse. The snow was softening rapidly, and the daily increasing warmth of the sun hastened the movement of the trappers. Mukee's people from the western Barren Lands arrived first, bringing with them great loads of musk-ox and caribou skins, and an army of big-footed, long-legged Mackenzie hounds that pulled like horses and wailed like whipped puppies when the huskies and Eskimo dogs set ...
— The Honor of the Big Snows • James Oliver Curwood
... encasing the vague longing of a too-rapid adolescence. The desire could never be fed and the bloom wore off. Look at Duccio's work on the facade of San Bernardino, Duccio was a Florentine, but where in Florence would you see his like? What a revel of disproportion in these long-legged nymphs, full- lipped and narrow-eyed as any of Rossetti's curious imaginings. Take the Poverta, a weedy girl with the shrinking paps of a child. Here again (exquisite as she is in modelling and intensity of expression) ...
— Earthwork Out Of Tuscany • Maurice Hewlett
... English when he chose, and interpreted the command to mean, run faster. Receiving it in that sense, he obeyed. Somebody behind him began to run too. In short, it was a chase; and Carl, glancing backwards, saw long-legged Silas Ropes, one of the ringleaders of the mob, taking appalling strides after him, across the ...
— Cudjo's Cave • J. T. Trowbridge
... and a bulky Digest of the Revenue laws. A tin pipe ascends through the ceiling, and forms a medium of vocal communication with other parts of the edifice. And here, some six months ago—pacing from corner to corner, or lounging on the long-legged stool, with his elbow on the desk, and his eyes wandering up and down the columns of the morning newspaper—you might have recognised, honoured reader, the same individual who welcomed you into his cheery little study, where the sunshine glimmered so pleasantly through ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... to me, "pull off your saddle, an' let Jud feed that long-legged son of a seacook. He'll float ...
— Dwellers in the Hills • Melville Davisson Post
... was a sharp lad—only I couldn't rightly understand their French lingo, which put me out. But I understood the affair of the little Mamsell well enough. She lived opposite; her father was a grocer and she helped in the shop. At first we didn't buy anything there, till a long-legged Englishman told my Baron that this grocer kept a fine Hungarian wine. It was out of the King's wine-cellar and he wasn't drinking any more wine because he had gone to the 'Gartine/ And a few sensible people had divided the wine, which was only right, and it was to be had ...
— The Story Of The Little Mamsell • Charlotte Niese
... sister was much more tractable. She had been christened Alberta, and was called Snooky. She promised to be pretty when she grew up, but was at this time in that distressing transitional stage between twelve and fifteen; was long-legged, and endowed with all the awkwardness of a colt. Her shoes were still innocent of heels; but on those occasions when she was allowed to wear her tiny first pair of corsets she was exalted to an almost celestial pitch of silent ecstasy. The clasp ...
— Blix • Frank Norris
... worm-eaten covers, and from between the pages of each the hunchback saw issue forth a curious throng of little people that danced here and there through the apartment. Each one of these little creatures was shaped so as to bear resemblance to some one of the letters of the alphabet. One tall, long-legged fellow seemed like the letter A; a burly fellow, with a big head and a paunch, was the model of B; another leering little chap might have passed for a Q; and so on through the whole. These fairies—for fairies they were—climbed upon the hunchback's ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various
... a clever fellow in his profession, the long-haired, long-legged young doctor, with his harum-scarum ways and his ready laugh. He had made a true diagnosis of his own case. Before doctors and nurses could be got to him he ...
— A Sheaf of Corn • Mary E. Mann
... stirrups rattled against the brush Burrows's long-legged sorrel struck out down the narrow stretch of open ...
— Waifs and Strays - Part 1 • O. Henry
... compact, and serviceable mare. It is just as necessary as in the crossing of any other animal. It certainly is more profitable to raise good animals than poor ones; and you cannot raise good mules from bad mares, no matter what the jack is. You invariably see the bad mare in the flabby, long-legged mule. ...
— The Mule - A Treatise On The Breeding, Training, - And Uses To Which He May Be Put • Harvey Riley
... he said; "you see for the last week I've been wearing that steel helmet—that cast-iron sombrero that weighs so much it almost breaks your neck, and two minutes before that long-legged baby kicked me, the tin hat ...
— "And they thought we wouldn't fight" • Floyd Gibbons
... He did not touch his skean. From the table he caught a long four-thonged whip, making it whistle through the air. The long-legged child scuttled backward. I stepped back one pace, trying to conceal my desperate puzzlement. I could not guess what had prompted Kyral's attack, but whatever it was, I must have made some bad mistake and could count myself lucky to get ...
— The Door Through Space • Marion Zimmer Bradley
... nostrils spoke of the Eastern blood of the far-back wife of the Crusader. Already she was tall for her age, with something of that lankiness which marks the early development of a really fine figure. Long-legged, long- necked, as straight as a lance, with head poised on the proud neck like a ...
— The Man • Bram Stoker
... journeyed over the alkali at noon. Then the Desert came close on us and looked us fair in the eyes, concealing nothing. She killed poor Deuce, the beautiful setter who had traveled the wild countries so long; she struck Wes and the Tenderfoot from their horses when finally they had reached a long-legged water tank; she even staggered the horses themselves. And I, lying under a bush where I had stayed after the others in the hope of succoring Deuce, began idly shooting at ghostly jack-rabbits that looked real, but through which the revolver ...
— The Mountains • Stewart Edward White
... a sort of grinding whisper, "you think that I am not the equal of this long-legged fellow! You would think otherwise if I had him here. You will think otherwise when I have killed him with my naked hands. Oh, very soon you ...
— Domnei • James Branch Cabell et al
... bird, a red and long-legged plover, the Somal tell the following legend. Originally her diet was meat, and her society birds of prey: one night, however, her companions having devoured all the provisions whilst she slept, she swore never ...
— First footsteps in East Africa • Richard F. Burton
... dusky dabs, but swam right out in the middle, seemed to stand up on the water, stretching out his neck and flapping his wings so sharply that something right on the other side moved suddenly, and Robin saw that there was another bird which he had not seen before—a long-necked, long-legged, loose-feathered gray creature with sharp eyes and a thin beak, standing in the water and staring eagerly at the drake as ...
— Young Robin Hood • G. Manville Fenn
... not move, but returned its stare. The cat was enormous, common, and yet bizarre with its rusty coat yellowish like old coke ashes and grey as the fuzz on a new broom, with little white tufts like the fleece which flies up from the burnt-out faggot. It was a genuine gutter cat, long-legged, with a wild-beast head. It was regularly striped with waving lines of ebony, its paws were encircled by black bracelets and its eyes lengthened by two ...
— La-bas • J. K. Huysmans
... town had more heathens than whites in it, and before we'd gone a block I seen a buck Injun and his squaw idlin' along, lookin' into the store winders. The buck was a hungry, long-legged feller, and when we neared him Mike said ...
— Laughing Bill Hyde and Other Stories • Rex Beach
... her to the ball at the Hygeia the night she met Gordon, little dreaming that this long-legged Yankee parson from the West, who did not even know how to dance, would hang around the edges of the ballroom and take her from him. They were engaged after the child fashion of Southern girls and boys—always with the tacit understanding that if they saw anybody they ...
— The One Woman • Thomas Dixon
... I've set my heart on it. It's within your reach, if you are good for anything. Let me see the great seal—let me handle it before I die—do, that's a dear; if not, go back to your Colony pond, and sing with your provincial frogs, and I hope to Heaven the fust long-legged bittern that comes there will ...
— The Attache - or, Sam Slick in England, Complete • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... on a beach of sand, soft as a velvet carpet. Peter jumped out. A long-legged sandpiper and her mate ran down the shore ahead of him. He perked up his angular ears, and then his nose caught a fresh scent under his feet where a porcupine had left his trail. And he heard more clearly the raucous tumult ...
— The Country Beyond - A Romance of the Wilderness • James Oliver Curwood
... modification is a result of this particular action and exercise. Lamarck thought that by a very simple supposition based on this truth he could explain the origin of the various animal species: he said, for example, that the short-legged birds which live on fish had been converted into the long-legged waders by desiring to get the fish without wetting their bodies, and so stretching their legs more and more through successive generations. If Lamarck could have shown experimentally, that even races of animals could be produced in this way, there might have been some ground for his ...
— A Critical Examination Of The Position Of Mr. Darwin's Work, "On The Origin Of Species," In Relation To The Complete Theory Of The Causes Of The Phenomena Of Organic Nature • Thomas H. Huxley
... sat alone under the clock, with both hands in his pockets, and looked mournfully out over the assemblage. No one here knew what a burden he bore, what a responsibility he had assumed. At home there was one who knew,—for he was betrothed. A large, long-legged spider was crawling over the floor and drew near his foot; he was in the habit of treading on this loathsome insect, but to-day he tenderly raised his foot that it might go in peace whither it would. His voice was as gentle ...
— A Happy Boy • Bjornstjerne Bjornson
... will that long-legged bondholder of a devil come up with the honest Dutchman? It serves him right: why did he put his name to stamped paper? And yet we should not wonder if some lucky chance should turn up in the burgomaster's favor, and his infernal creditor lose his ...
— George Cruikshank • William Makepeace Thackeray
... of the lead wagon sat stout Molly Wingate and her husband. Little Molly's cart came next. Alongside the Caleb Price wagon, wherein now sat on the seat—hugging a sore-footed dog whose rawhide boots had worn through—a long-legged, barefoot girl who had walked twelve hundred miles since spring, trudged Jed Wingate, now grown from a tousled boy into a lean, self-reliant young man. His long whip was used in baseless threatenings now, for any driver ...
— The Covered Wagon • Emerson Hough
... process the conversation melted out of one of these subjects and into the next, until the topic of skeletons raised up Nicodemus Dodge out of the deep grave in my memory where he had lain buried and forgotten for twenty-five years. When I was a boy in a printing-office in Missouri, a loose-jointed, long-legged, tow-headed, jeans-clad countrified cub of about sixteen lounged in one day, and without removing his hands from the depths of his trousers pockets or taking off his faded ruin of a slouch hat, whose broken ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... there was no doubt about it. While I was with Jenkins I thought cats were vermin, like rats, and I chased them every chance I got. Mrs. Jenkins had a cat, a gaunt, long-legged, yellow creature, that ran whenever we looked ...
— Beautiful Joe • Marshall Saunders
... were leaving happy holidays for school. Along a rough, rocky road and down a shining river, now sunk to deep pools with trickling riffles between—for a drouth was on the land—rode a tall, gaunt man on an old brown mare that switched with her tail now and then at a long-legged, rough-haired colt stumbling awkwardly behind. Where the road turned from the river and up the mountain, the man did a peculiar thing, for there, in that lonely wilderness, he stopped, dismounted, tied the reins ...
— The Little Shepherd of Kingdom Come • John Fox
... which one could see had been spared all week, and the young girls in light, bright dresses with bouquets of wild flowers on their bodices. A few children were in the hall, too, and they danced together child-fashion, not even stopping with the music. A long-legged person in a swallow-tailed coat, a provincial lion, with monocle and curled hair, mail clerk or something like it, looking like the comic figure of a Danish novel in the flesh, seemed to be the manager of the festivities and director of the ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries - Masterpieces of German Literature Vol. 19 • Various
... Grandfather Frog, trying to make his voice sound as if he weren't interested. "I just wondered where the long-legged nuisance might be." ...
— Mother West Wind "How" Stories • Thornton W. Burgess
... past him, long-legged and proud as a turkey cock, a magnificent camel. The sight quickened his pulse; where there were camels lions could not be far away, and indeed within five minutes he saw coming towards him with guns on their shoulders, a whole company of ...
— Tartarin de Tarascon • Alphonse Daudet
... A rather long-legged young man, in canvas puttees, a buoyant and irrepressible light in his face which the fatigues and disappointments of the long road had not dimmed; a light-haired man, with his hat pushed back from his forehead, and a speckled shirt on him, and trousers rather tight—that was what ...
— The Duke Of Chimney Butte • G. W. Ogden
... creatures of the wild, an old cow moose, black and ungainly, and her long-legged, awkward calf. Yet they supplied the detail that was missing. They were the one thing needed to complete the picture—the crowning touch that revealed this land as it was—the virgin wilderness where the creatures of the ...
— The Sky Line of Spruce • Edison Marshall
... got hold of Clem's hand and was holding it tight, and he was already rather out of breath, as Clem was walking fast—very fast for him—and he has always been a long-legged chap for his age, thin and wiry, too; whereas, in those days—though, thank goodness, he is growing like a house on fire now—Peterkin was as broad as he was long. So to keep up with Clement's strides he had to trot, and that sort of pace soon makes ...
— Peterkin • Mary Louisa Molesworth
... spectacle; but it has a particularly depressing effect when the relentless rays of a dazzling July sun pour down full upon the brown, tumble-down roofs of the houses and the deep ravine, and the parched, dusty common over which the thin, long-legged hens are straying hopelessly, and the remains of the old manor-house, now a hollow, grey framework of aspenwood, with holes instead of windows, overgrown with nettles, wormwood, and rank grass, and the pond black, as though charred and covered with goose feathers, ...
— A Sportsman's Sketches - Volume II • Ivan Turgenev
... youngster, ruling the nursery with a small hand of iron, in half a year Drina had grown into a rather slim, long-legged, coolly active child; and though her hair had not been put up, her skirts had been lowered, and shoes and stockings substituted for half-hose ...
— The Younger Set • Robert W. Chambers
... rich and she is poor. I can't look at her straight, but I love her so that I can hardly stand it. All the other girls in school love her too, and she is not at all afraid of the boys, but treats them just as if they were human beings and could be loved as such. That awful long-legged Tony walks home with her almost every day and they all laugh ...
— Phyllis • Maria Thompson Daviess
... and which is regarded as the sacrificial stone of the erection. "It is a current belief," says Dr. Hibbert, in an elaborate paper in the "Transactions of the Scottish Antiquaries," that upon this stone a victim of royal birth was immolated. Halfdan the Long-legged, the son of Harold the Fair-haired, in punishment for the aggressions of Orkney, had made an unexpected descent upon its coasts, and acquired possession of the Jarldom. In the autumn succeeding Halfdan was retorted ...
— The Cruise of the Betsey • Hugh Miller
... Cheeta or Hunting-Leopard, still kept for the chase by native noblemen in India, is an animal very distinct from the true leopard. It is much more lanky and long-legged than the pure felines, is unable to climb trees, and has claws only partially retractile. Wood calls it a link between the feline and canine races. One thousand Cheetas were attached to Akbar's hunting establishment; and the chief one, called Semend-Manik, was carried to the ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo Volume 1 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... the town, where the packed-dirt streets faded into loose dust and garbage was already piled several feet high, they were met by Rene Malhomme. He sat long-legged with his back leaning against a weathered stone outcropping. He seemed old already, though he was not yet fifty; his windblown hair was almost the color of the surrounding grey dust and rock—perhaps because it was filled with that dust, Rynason thought. He stopped ...
— Warlord of Kor • Terry Gene Carr
... at the side of the road. It was empty, but from underneath it protruded a pair of long legs, while beside it stood a girl, at the sight of whom George's heart began to thump so violently that the long-legged one might have been pardoned had he supposed that his engine had started again of its ...
— A Damsel in Distress • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... at the further end. My word, I gave such a start that my shako nearly broke its chin-strap! It was only a glance, but, none the less, I had time to see that the fellow had a hairy Cossack cap on his head, and that he was a great, long-legged, broad-shouldered brigand, with a sabre at his waist. My faith, even Etienne Gerard was a little staggered at being left alone with such a creature ...
— The Exploits Of Brigadier Gerard • Arthur Conan Doyle
... once been a well-kept garden-plot, but now was become a mere stack of odds and ends of boards and beams, shavings, mortar, and broken brick. A long-legged fellow with a green patch over one eye was building a pair of stairs to a door beside which a sign read: "Playeres Here: ...
— Master Skylark • John Bennett
... Olaf nearly choked on the whiskey as he spluttered in reply. "Ay know vere one of das cuff-buttons is, all right! Und Ay bet you das long-legged old fake Hemlock Holmes never finds it, either! He is a big bluffer. He doesn't do a single thing but stand around und talk sassy to us fellers at the castle, und since das Earl is half-stewed all the time, drinking das expensive vine mit Harrigan ...
— The Adventures of the Eleven Cuff-Buttons • James Francis Thierry
... rain continued, so I sat here in the inn looking out through the mist at a few men who were unlading hookers that had come in with turf from Connemara, and at the long-legged pigs that were playing in the surf. As the fishermen came in and out of the public-house underneath my room, I could hear through the broken panes that a number of them still used the Gaelic, ...
— The Aran Islands • John M. Synge |
