"Sprawl" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the fingers on one hand were sufficient to decide the issue. A shot sung in through the uncovered window which carried back no "spat" to the man who fired it. But the eyes which had guided it beheld the half-breed at the counter sprawl across the account book which had yielded him so much satisfaction. Almost at the instant of his fall a lean, agile, dusky, disreputable figure leaped into the room through the aperture which his knife had ...
— The Triumph of John Kars - A Story of the Yukon • Ridgwell Cullum
... the churchyard wall, there may be seen also, as they sprawl on the dry, faded herbage, a score of "strollers for work" that is to say, of folk who, a community apart, consist of "nowhere people," of dreamers who live constantly in expectation of some stroke of luck, ...
— Through Russia • Maxim Gorky
... supports them in sheer idleness; and, dressed like natives, but still retaining some foreign element of gait or attitude, still perhaps with some relic (such as a single eye-glass) of the officer and gentleman, they sprawl in palm-leaf verandahs and entertain an island audience with memoirs of the music-hall. And there are still others, less pliable, less capable, less fortunate, perhaps less base, who continue, even in these isles ...
— The Ebb-Tide - A Trio And Quartette • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... innocent fun as much as he ought, but, as I have shown, there are few or none in which the element of humor is altogether wanting. The two of whom I am just now speaking, shook with laughter, as they saw Lone Bear sprawl over Deerfoot, his heels flying in air, and their mirth became so great when the young Shawanoe used his crown as a stepping stone, that ...
— Footprints in the Forest • Edward Sylvester Ellis
... coming directly, senor," and the horseman waited silent on a motionless horse. But if perchance he had to dismount, then, after a while, from the door of that hovel or of that pulperia, with a ferocious scuffle and stifled imprecations, a cargador would fly out head first and hands abroad, to sprawl under the forelegs of the silver-grey mare, who only pricked forward her sharp little ears. She was used to that work; and the man, picking himself up, would walk away hastily from Nostromo's revolver, reeling a little along the street and snarling low curses. At sunrise Captain ...
— Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard • Joseph Conrad
... expense of a fellow-creature who has loyally held out his hand to her, she is casting herself into a mire from which it will be impossible, with the best will in the world, ever to rescue her. I dwell so many miles above the puddles in which these filthy little vermin sprawl and crawl and bawl their cheap obscenities, that I cannot possibly be spattered by the witticisms of a Verdurin!" he cried, tossing up his head and arrogantly straightening his body. "God knows that I have honestly attempted to pull Odette out of that sewer, and to teach her to breathe ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust
... else,—long years, lost hopes, regret; Sighs for the joys we ne'er attain, Prayers we have lifted all in vain; Tears for the faces seen no more, Once as the roses at the door! Take the enchanted book—And lo, On grassy swards of long ago, Sprawl out again, beneath the shade The breezy old-home orchard made, The veriest barefoot boy indeed— And I ...
— Songs of Friendship • James Whitcomb Riley
... millinery. At each corner is a dismal sailors' bar, smelling of absinthe. Then we come to an empty, decayed square, where a crippled, noseless "Gallia" stands on a fountain; some half-drunk coachmen lounge dreaming on antediluvian cabs, and a few old convicts sprawl on benches. ...
— Two Years with the Natives in the Western Pacific • Felix Speiser
... two in the outfit," I went on, "that have got any sprawl to them; and they are old Tom their ...
— Vandemark's Folly • Herbert Quick
... dipping from bush to bush. Ippolita clasped her hands behind her head, and looked lazily at all this early glory. The freedom of her heart seemed explicit in that of her limbs. What she could do with her legs, for instance! How she could sprawl at ease! She was just like all the others—as ragged, as dirty, at least; and soon she would be as brown. Dio buono, the splendid life of ...
— Little Novels of Italy • Maurice Henry Hewlett
... in the shadows. I ask, where am I? Go way, then, Mallare. Leave me. I persist without Mallare. I remain. Let me dissolve into this. Let me sprawl before the door of enchantments. It is illusion. Let it be. She will come out. Rita, my vanished one, come back to me. It is I who ask. Not the Cold One, not the Indifferent One, not Mallare. But ...
— Fantazius Mallare - A Mysterious Oath • Ben Hecht
... middling small, with a square jaw, snub nose and sandy hair. Sue was tall and easy moving, with an abundance of soft brown hair worn low over large and irregular features. She had fascinating eyes. She could sprawl on a rug or a sofa as lazy and indolent as you please—all but her eyes, they were always doing something or other, letting this out or keeping that ...
— The Harbor • Ernest Poole
... materialized. Floods threaten, but only at certain definable spots. Human beings boom outward from the Washington metropolis and the other centers of population in search of a fuller life, and the consumptive sprawl and sameness of the communities built to receive them often deny it to them. But in modern terms there are not really enormous numbers of them yet, and for their pleasure and fulfillment a great deal of varied ...
— The Nation's River - The Department of the Interior Official Report on the Potomac • United States Department of the Interior
... varieties of cowpeas. These varieties differ in form, in the size of seed and of pod, in the color of seed and of pod, and in the time of ripening. They differ, too, in the manner of growth. Some grow erect; others sprawl on the ground. In selecting varieties it is well to choose those that grow straight up, those that are hardy, those that fruit early and abundantly, and those that hold their leaves. The variety selected for seed should also suit ...
— Agriculture for Beginners - Revised Edition • Charles William Burkett
... Finding it so fond of hair, I endeavoured to make an artificial mother, by wrapping up a piece of buffalo-skin into a bundle, and suspending it about a foot from the floor. At first this seemed to suit it admirably, as it could sprawl its legs about and always find some hair, which it grasped with the greatest tenacity. I was now in hopes that I had made the little orphan quite happy; and so it seemed for some time, until it began to remember its lost ...
— The Malay Archipelago - Volume I. (of II.) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... the worst of it, French Frank and John Barleycorn sprang unfairly into the fight. Scotty protested and reached for French Frank, who whirled upon him and fell on top of him in a pummelling clinch after a sprawl of twenty feet across the sand. In the course of separating these two, half a dozen fights started amongst the rest of us. These fights were finished, one way or the other, or we separated them with drinks, while all the time Nelson and Soup Kennedy fought on. Occasionally we returned to ...
— John Barleycorn • Jack London
... sprawl, now that the heat of day is best, Flat on his belly in the pit's much mire, With elbows wide, fists clenched to prop his chin; And, while he kicks both feet in the cool slush, And feels about his spine small ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various
... age-bent and blind, and others sprawl, And stagger in the Long-Knife's villages; And some are dead, and some have fled away, And some are lurking in the forest here, Sneaking, like dogs, ...
— Tecumseh: A Drama • Charles Mair
... swift will that no ponderings smother! The dumb life in me fumbles out to the shade Thou lurkest in. In vain—evasive ever through the glade Departing footsteps fail; And only where the grasses have been pressed, Or by snapped twigs I follow a fruitless trail. So—give o'er the quest! Sprawl on the roots and moss! Let the lithe garter squirm across my throat! Let the slow clouds and leaves above me float Into mine eyeballs and across,— Nor think them further! Lo, the marvel! now, Thou whom ...
— More Songs From Vagabondia • Bliss Carman and Richard Hovey
... their perfume. The Abbey stands in a rocky valley looking south. The grounds are laid out in a succession of terraces, and from every nook and crevice rare specimens of cacti, sedums, and mesembryanthemums with their orange and purple bloom sprawl over the rocks and run riot among the borders. In the gardens South American aloes throw up their flowering stalks heavy with aromatic fragrance, 20 feet high, and giant dracaenas wave their feathery heads ...
— The Cornwall Coast • Arthur L. Salmon
... sprawl," Roy said. "There are more of us, too, only they're not here. They're by ...
— Roy Blakeley in the Haunted Camp • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... like a row o' stalls to sprawl your dirty carcase on?... Outside, I tell yer, Tommy Atkins, this ain't a music-'all nor yet a pub. Soldiers not ''alf-price to cheap seats' nor yet full-price—nor yet for ten pound a time. Out yer ...
— Snake and Sword - A Novel • Percival Christopher Wren
... north-east towards Calais, so as to have a clearly defined course to the aircraft depot of Saint Gregoire. After a cross-Channel flight one notes a marked difference between the French and English earthscapes. The French towns and villages seem to sprawl less than those of England, and the countryside in general is more compact and regular. The roads are straight and tree-bordered, so that they form almost as good a guide to an airman as the railways. In England ...
— Cavalry of the Clouds • Alan Bott
... the man's death had distorted the face that lay in the trough of the stretcher, but it was pitiful and ugly rather than terrible or horrifying. The body, its inertness, the still sprawl of the limbs, were puppet-like, with none of death's pomp and menace. Jovannic stood gazing; the sergeant, with the blanket over his arm, ...
— Those Who Smiled - And Eleven Other Stories • Perceval Gibbon
... By this you cannot fail to know them; 'Tis needless, therefore, that I show them." At length God gives the Owl some heirs, And while at early eve abroad he fares, In quest of birds and mice for food, Our Eagle haply spies the brood, As on some craggy rock they sprawl, Or nestle in some ruined wall, (But which it matters not at all,) And thinks them ugly little frights, Grim, sad, with voice like shrieking sprites. "These chicks," says he, "with looks almost ...
— The Talking Beasts • Various
... on a reconnoitering expedition to the end of the passage, and reported that the jump-off there was higher than himself but he could get down. I now crawled through the hole and found the passage to be a "crawl" or rather a "sprawl," from fifteen to eighteen inches high, but having an ample width varying from three to six feet. The smooth, straight floor has a steep downward inclination and is thickly ...
— Cave Regions of the Ozarks and Black Hills • Luella Agnes Owen
... the moment—professed to see in the distance, when he suddenly lurched against me, as if he had slipped and lost his footing. That was what I believed in that startling moment—but as I went head first overboard I was aware that his fall was confined to a sprawl into the scuppers. Overboard I went!—but he remained where he was. And my weight—I was weighing a good thirteen stone at that time, being a big and hefty youngster—carried me down and down into ...
— Dead Men's Money • J. S. Fletcher
... seriously. Half the stately interior of that glorious thirteenth century pile is encrusted and overlaid by hideous gewgaw monstrosities of the flashiest Bernini and baroque period. There they sprawl their obtrusive legs and wave their flaunting theatrical wings to the utter destruction of all repose and consistency in one of the noblest and most perfect buildings of Europe. Nowadays, any child, any workman can ...
— Post-Prandial Philosophy • Grant Allen
... informed that Miss Irish was in the boudoir. This was good news because it meant sitting on the floor and lovers all the world over are at their happiest when they sit on the floor. There is something soothing and familiar about it. A man loves to sprawl and a woman is always at her best curled up among cushions. It is impossible to be disagreeable when you are sitting on the floor. You couldn't conceivably have a row in that position. Perhaps a little sulking might be done but very little and only of the kind that provokes ...
— Men of Affairs • Roland Pertwee
... process, they clear away the rocks below the trap, piling them in it over its floor, until it finally sinks and remains stationary on the cleared spot of sandy bed. Their task being ended, the three trap setters come to shore, and sprawl on the hot sands to warm their dripping skins, while the sun dries ...
— The Bontoc Igorot • Albert Ernest Jenks
... to be scrupulously neat. It stood on a knoll, as do most gulch cabins, in order that occasional freshets might pass below, and the knoll looked as though it had been clipped with a pair of scissors. Not a crooked little juniper bush was allowed to intrude its plebeian sprawl among the dignified pines and the gracefully infrequent bushes. In front of the cabin itself was a "rockery" of pink quartz, on which were piled elk antlers. The building was L-shaped, of two low stories, had a veranda with a railing, and possessed various ornamental wood edgings, ...
— The Claim Jumpers • Stewart Edward White
... one at last, that Robin hight, Renown'd for pinching maids by night, Has bent him up aloof; And full against the beam he flung, Where by the back the youth he hung To sprawl ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 189, June 11, 1853 • Various
... was as ungainly a lad, with as helpless a sprawl of legs and arms and as staring and shamefaced a surprise at my suddenly realised height of growth, when jostled by a girl or a younger lad, and utter discomfiture before an unexpected deepness of tone when essaying a polite response to an inquiry of ...
— The Heart's Highway - A Romance of Virginia in the Seventeeth Century • Mary E. Wilkins
... heat of the summer of 1921 made it the first impulse of travelers to plunge straight into the cool, kindly ocean, where they could wade and bathe in the surf, sprawl for hours in the sand, or indulge in races and various games along ...
— See America First • Orville O. Hiestand
... demeanour made a very favourable impression. But a year or two after his return, he was joined by a Labour representative who displayed the characteristics of altogether a different sort. For one thing, he was a vulgarly overdressed man, and he used to sprawl about the benches with outstretched arms, making his cry of condescending patronage heard in answer to any utterance of which he might approve from such inconsiderable persons as Gladstone or Harcourt or Forster. His "Hear, hear, hear," ...
— Recollections • David Christie Murray
... shouting for help. Then Keston stumbled and went down in a sprawl on the rough gray ice. The bear was almost on him and there was ...
— Astounding Stories, July, 1931 • Various
... had been holding Watts in a sitting posture by a firm grip on his collar, allowed the limp figure to sprawl headlong again. He wanted to plunge both hands deeply into his trousers pockets, because men of his type associate attitude so closely with thought that the one is apt to become almost dependent ...
— The Stowaway Girl • Louis Tracy
... cut me soon, farmer, I shall sprawl on the ground," said the Rye, and she bowed her heavy ear quite down towards ...
— The Junior Classics Volume 8 - Animal and Nature Stories • Selected and arranged by William Patten
... thinks of her sailor son As clutched in the arms of war, But mother should listen, as I have done, To this same little, innocent sailor son Sprawl in his ...
— Biltmore Oswald - The Diary of a Hapless Recruit • J. Thorne Smith, Jr.
... perfectly harmless things that other people say. And the only society where they're ever happy, is that of a lot of other people with shady, shabby things that they're on the defensive about. And they all get together and call it Bohemia. And they sprawl around in studios and talk about sex and try to feel superior and emancipated. Well, maybe they are. All I say is they don't belong with us. Oh, you know it's true! You hate that as ...
— The Real Adventure • Henry Kitchell Webster
... that, with a run; hanging to the rope at one side, and dragging, till she tumbled in a sprawl upon the floor. ...
— Real Folks • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... therefore can never be taught perfectly to children; to say nothing of distracting their attention with two difficult things at the same time. But that boys should stand motionless, while they are pronouncing the most impassioned language, is extremely absurd and unnatural; and that they should sprawl into an aukward, ungain, and desultory action, is still more offensive and disgusting. What then remains, but that such a general style of action be adopted, as shall be easily conceived and easily executed, which, though not expressive of any particular passion, shall ...
— The Young Gentleman and Lady's Monitor, and English Teacher's Assistant • John Hamilton Moore
... very Oedipus, I confess I have not yet unravelled it. Come, there is Washington Irving's autograph for you; read it; is it not quite in character? Shall I write any more? One of Sir Walter's, or Mr. Southey's, or Mr. Milman's or Mr. Disraeli's? or shall I sprawl a Byron?" ...
— Vivian Grey • The Earl of Beaconsfield
... virgin lawn, in a spot that will someday lie in the shade of a great oak, a group of students sit, sprawl, lie. The oldest of them is sixteen, and it is true that not one of them has any reverence for college degrees, because the entrance requirements demand the scholastic level of bachelor in the arts, the sciences, ...
— The Fourth R • George Oliver Smith
... to his feet. He had been sitting with a stiff sprawl in the corner of a small divan. He arose when the fragrance of that Havana cigar smote his nostrils like the odor of battle. He was in great boots stained with the red shale, for the roads outside Banbridge were heavy from a recent rain. He was collarless, his greasy coat hung ...
— The Debtor - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... do not stride so. And keep your elbows in. Why! you walk like a grenadier. And don't sprawl in your seat that way. Are you not ...
— The Girls of Central High Aiding the Red Cross - Or Amateur Theatricals for a Worthy Cause • Gertrude W. Morrison
... embody the tremendous text, "But if the light in your body be darkness, how great is the darkness," it was certainly he. Great men like Ariosto, Rabelais, and Shakspere fall in foul places, flounder in violent but venial sin, sprawl for pages, exposing their gigantic weakness, are dirty, are indefensible; and then they struggle up again and can still speak with a convincing kindness and an unbroken honour of the best things in the world: Rabelais, of the instruction of ardent and austere youth; Ariosto, of holy chivalry; ...
— All Things Considered • G. K. Chesterton
... you ever know a man to sprawl a note all over two sheets of paper, with nothing to distinguish the end from the beginning? In the nature of things, you'd expect her to commence at the top of a sheet, and, in a careless moment, she may have done so. Let me see—yes, here it is: ...
— Master of the Vineyard • Myrtle Reed
... years have bleached, is bare; they have tied an emblematic bundle of grass on his back; a garland of nettles and thistles is round his neck: in this manner; led with ropes; goaded on with curses and menaces, must he, with his old limbs, sprawl forward; the pitiablest, most unpitied of all ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... he is greedier than I," retorted Papillon. "He will eat till he won't be able to run about with us after dinner; and then he will sprawl upon mother's satin train by the fire, with Ganymede and Phosphor, and she will tell everybody how good and gentle he is, and how much better bred than his sister. And now, if people are ever going to leave off eating, we may as well begin our games before it is quite dark. ...
— London Pride - Or When the World Was Younger • M. E. Braddon
... they laugh, they thirst, they lap the stream That trickles from the regal vestments down, And, lapping, smack their heated chaps for more, And ply their daggers for it, till the kings All die and lie in a crooked sprawl of death, Ungainly, foul, and stiff as any heap Of villeins rotting on a battle-field. 'Tis true, that when these things have come to pass Then never a king shall rule again in France, For every villein shall be king in France: And who hath lordship in him, whether born In hedge or silken bed, ...
— The Poems of Sidney Lanier • Sidney Lanier
... continually seen current in North Wales, bearing for their heraldic distinction three human legs in armor, but so placed in relation to each other that always one leg is vertical and mounting guard on behalf of the other two, which, therefore, are enabled to sprawl aloft in the air—in fact, to be as absurdly negligent as they choose, relying upon their vigilant brother below, and upon the written legend or motto, STABIT QUOCUNQUE JECERIS (Stand it will upright, though you should fling it in any conceivable direction). What gave another feature ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... place of many lights, which, when thus suddenly disclosed, blinded him at first. Then Raimbaut perceived Guillaume lying a-sprawl across an oaken chest. The Prince had fallen backward and lay in this posture, glaring at the intruders with horrible eyes which did not move and would not ever move again. His breast was crimson, for some one had stabbed him. A woman stood above the ...
— The Certain Hour • James Branch Cabell
... at the window of the "sitting room" where the ancient, wispy landlady sat among her antimacassared chairs and the ridiculous tiny seashell ashtrays that overflowed after two butts. He wanted desperately to get in and sprawl in the huge bat-winged chair by the fire and stroke the enormous old gray cat that would leap up and trample and paw his stomach before settling down to grumble to itself asthmatically ...
— Far from Home • J.A. Taylor
... hostess, the visitor, whether a lady or a gentleman, looks about quietly, without hurry, for a convenient chair to sit down upon, or drop into. To sit gracefully one should not perch stiffly on the edge of a straight chair, nor sprawl at length in an easy one. The perfect position is one that is easy, but dignified. In other days, no lady of dignity ever crossed her knees, held her hands on her hips, or twisted herself sideways, or even leaned back in her chair! To-day all these things are done; and the only etiquette left ...
— Etiquette • Emily Post
... that I hadn't married a fiery sojer, to make me bring fatherless children into the world, all through his dreadful calling! Why didn't a man of no sprawl content me! ...
— The Dynasts - An Epic-Drama Of The War With Napoleon, In Three Parts, - Nineteen Acts, And One Hundred And Thirty Scenes • Thomas Hardy
... flash of memory, August Naab's words steadied Jack's shaken nerves. He aimed low and ahead of the running bear. Down the beast went in a sliding sprawl with a muffled roar of rage. Up he sprang, dangling a useless leg, yet leaping swiftly forward. One blow sent the attacking dog aside. Jack fired again. The bear became a wrestling, fiery demon, death-stricken, but full ...
— The Heritage of the Desert • Zane Grey
... it may be said that other countries produce the freckle-backed salmon and the dark broad-shouldered turbot; though trout frequent many a stream besides those of England, and lobsters sprawl on other sands than ours; yet, let it be remembered, that our native country possesses these altogether, while other lands only know them separately; that, above all, whitebait is peculiarly our country's—our city's own! Blessings ...
— The Fitz-Boodle Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... I can give it a bath with some sort of disinfectant stuff. Now there's another one to greet! I'll not be able to eat fish again for a year. Why didn't luck send the old vagabond hunting with the rest? I can endure the women, for they don't sprawl around you and shake hands with you. Just tell me what I'm to donate for being allowed to bask in the light of Akkomi's countenance? Haven't a thing over here ...
— That Girl Montana • Marah Ellis Ryan
... he passed through the place, went on—all the offices of life, the whole bustle of the market, and withal, surprisingly, scarce less that of the nursery and the playground; the whole sprawl in especial of the great gregarious fireside: it was a complete social scene in itself, on which types might figure and passions rage and plots thicken and dramas develop, without reference to any other sphere, or perhaps even to anything at all outside. The signs of this met him ...
— The Finer Grain • Henry James
... on again; they were always switching on currents that he switched off—and paid for. They found him lying in a crumpled sprawl that ...
— In a Little Town • Rupert Hughes
... Nothing to be seen outside, but darkness made visible; nothing inside but every variety of bunch into which the human form can be twisted, rolled, or "massed," as Miss Prescott says of her jewels. Every man's legs sprawl drowsily, every woman's head (but mine,) nods, till it finally settles on somebody's shoulder, a new proof of the truth of the everlasting oak and vine simile; children fret; lovers whisper; old folks snore, and somebody privately imbibes brandy, when the lamps go out. The penetrating perfume rouses ...
— Hospital Sketches • Louisa May Alcott
... was vexed. She was his chosen friend, his confidante, his champion now! Not even Sirius could be more fiercely devoted than she, who had to atone for her past injustice. She was angry that blind Brian should be thus coldly stared at, and that a man in better health than he should calmly sprawl in the best chair, screening ...
— Everyman's Land • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... goddesses, his exquisite Eros and radiant Psyche of the Farnesina, are indeed succeeded but too soon by the Olympus of Giulio Romano, an Olympus of harlots and acrobats, who smirk and mouth and wriggle and sprawl ignobly on the walls and ceilings of the dismantled palace which crumbles away among the stunted willows, the stagnant pools, and rank grass of the marshes of Mantua. But this is no more the fault of antiquity than it is the fault of the Middle Ages; it is the fault of that great ...
— The Contemporary Review, Volume 36, September 1879 • Various
... out from the broken trench and hurried across the open. There were not more than fifty yards to cross, but in that narrow space the bodies lay huddled singly and heaped in little clumps. They reminded one exactly of the loafers who sprawl asleep and sunning themselves in the Park on a Sunday afternoon. Only the dead lay in that narrow strip; the living had been moved or had moved themselves long since. Macgillivray pushed on into the trench, along it to a communication trench, and up and down one alley ...
— Between the Lines • Boyd Cable
... side on the knoll and Tito told of his wanderings. At times he spit to show his growth in grace, and after studying the long sprawl of Mark's legs disposed his own in as close an imitation as their length would permit. It was when his story was over and the conversation showed a tendency ...
— Treasure and Trouble Therewith - A Tale of California • Geraldine Bonner
... fixing an eye on some point on the wall directly between Selwyn and the hostess. 'We sprawl over the world—why? To develop resources? No! It is to reap the natural growth of others' endeavours? Yes! The Englishman never creates. He is the world's ...
— The Parts Men Play • Arthur Beverley Baxter
... repression of speed, but also by keeping the cars at such an amazing heat that the victims promptly fade into a swoon. Nowhere will you see a more complete abandonment to the wild postures of fatigue and despair than in the pathetic sprawl of these human forms upon the simmering plush settees. A hot eddy of some varnish-tinctured vapour—certainly not air—rises from under the seats and wraps the traveller in a nightmarish trance. Occasionally he starts wildly from his dream and glares frightfully ...
— Pipefuls • Christopher Morley
... Willetts was a kind of odd number at camp was evidenced by his unfamiliarity with the things that were very familiar to most boys there. He was too restless to hang around the pavilion or sprawl under the trees or idle about with the others in and near Council Shack. He never read the bulletin board posted outside, and the inside was a place of so little interest to him that he had not even seen the beautiful ...
— Tom Slade on Mystery Trail • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... journey, they set out in much better spirits. But they make not many steps—if steps they can be called—before discovering the difficulties at which the old sealer has hinted, saying, "ye'll see." Steps, indeed! Their progress is more a sprawl than a walk; a continuous climb and scramble over trunks of fallen trees, many so decayed as to give way under their weight, letting them down to their armpits in a mass of sodden stuff, as soft as mud, and equally bedaubing. ...
— The Land of Fire - A Tale of Adventure • Mayne Reid
... in some beggar's hauffet squattle; There ye may creep and sprawl and sprattle Wi' ither kindred jumping cattle, In shoals and nations, Whare horn nor bane ne'er daur unsettle Your ...
— English Poets of the Eighteenth Century • Selected and Edited with an Introduction by Ernest Bernbaum
... see what's doing," and Seaton started to walk toward one of the windows with his free, swinging stride. Instantly he was a-sprawl, the effort necessary to carry his weight upon the Earth's surface lifting him into the air in a succession of ludicrous hops, but he soon ...
— The Skylark of Space • Edward Elmer Smith and Lee Hawkins Garby
... where it seems of less importance than the rocks. The earth on which men have lived, where the work of their hand is evident, with all the sentiment of the presence of man, with smoke arising from numberless homes, is foreign to Mr. Hone. The monsters of the primeval world might sprawl on the rocks, for all the evidence of lapse of time since their day, in many of his pictures. He, too, has refined away his world until only fragments of the earth remain to him where he can dream in; and these are ...
— Imaginations and Reveries • (A.E.) George William Russell
... surprise the crayfish, the ash-tree in which he found his first goldfinch's nest, and "the flat stone on which he heard, for the first time, the mellow ringing of the bellringer frog." (1/4.) Later, when writing to his brother, he was to recall the good days of still careless life, when "he would sprawl, the sun on his belly, on the mosses of the wood of Vezins, eating his black bread and cream" or "ring the bells of Saint-Lons" and "pull the tails of the bulls ...
— Fabre, Poet of Science • Dr. G.V. (C.V.) Legros
... gyard he had his gloved fist home on my cheek an' down I went full-sprawl. "Will that content you?" sez he, blowin' on his knuckles for all the world like a Scots Greys orf'cer. "Content!" sez I. "For your own sake, man, take off your spurs, peel your jackut, an' onglove. 'Tis the beginnin' av the overture; ...
— Soldier Stories • Rudyard Kipling
... at having missed the excitement at Bogova, he fairly writhed with envy of Stubbs and Wilson. As he listened he hitched back and forth in his chair, leaned over the table until he threatened to sprawl among the glasses, and groaned jealously at every crisis. Wilson told his story as simply as possible from its beginning; the scenes at the house, his finding the map, his adventures in Bogova, the long trip to the cave, his danger there, ...
— The Web of the Golden Spider • Frederick Orin Bartlett
... old man, I ought to have included a mirror in the outfit. The look of learned respectability, set off with the garments of a disreputable tramp, makes a combination that is simply killing. Well, you can't spoil that suit, anyhow. Now sprawl." ...
— In the Midst of Alarms • Robert Barr
... dead came to their ends, shod in accordance with the grim phrase of their times, there remains one just outside the town of Tombstone to the north. Here straggling mesquite bushes grow on the summit of the ridge; cacti and ocatilla sprawl over the sun-baked earth hiding between their thorny stems the headboards and the long narrow heaps of stones which no man could mistake. Some of these headboards still bear traces of black-lettered epitaphs which tell how death came to strong men ...
— When the West Was Young • Frederick R. Bechdolt
... three of Brassbound's men, overcome by the midday heat, sprawl supine on the floor, with their reefer coats under their heads, their knees uplifted, and their calves laid comfortably on the divan. Those who wear shirts have them open at the throat for greater coolness. Some have jerseys. All wear boots ...
— Captain Brassbound's Conversion • George Bernard Shaw
... astonishing epithets, and inspired by a certain grim Titanic force. His sentences are often clumsily built. He himself said of them: "Perhaps not more than nine-tenths stand straight on their legs; the remainder are in quite angular attitudes; a few even sprawl out helplessly on all sides, quite broken-backed and dismembered." There is no modern writer who possesses so large a profusion of figurative language. His works are also full of the pithiest and most memorable sayings, such as ...
— A Brief History of the English Language and Literature, Vol. 2 (of 2) • John Miller Dow Meiklejohn
... the windows. Between the panels were pictures hung upon the walls—three or four flower-pictures by Varelst; three pictures of horses and dogs by Hondius, and a couple of Dutch pictures by Hoogstraaten. Over the fireplace was a chimney-breast by Gibbons; and the ceiling was all a-sprawl with gods and goddesses, I suppose by Verrio. In the windows, which looked out on two sides, over the river and into a little court, were little tables covered with curious things, for His Majesty delighted in such ingenuities—Dutch figures ...
— Oddsfish! • Robert Hugh Benson
... theme of the Maeonian lyre; When bold to battle march'd the accoutred frogs, And the deep tumult thunder'd through the bogs. Pierced by the javelin bulrush on the shore Here agonizing roll'd the mouse in gore; And there the frog (a scene full sad to see!) Shorn of one leg, slow sprawl'd along on three; He vaults no more with vigorous hops on high, But mourns in hoarsest croaks his destiny. 70 And now the day of woe drew on apace, A day of woe to all the pigmy race, When dwarfs were doom'd ...
— The Poetical Works of Beattie, Blair, and Falconer - With Lives, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Rev. George Gilfillan [Ed.]
... first day, and at night she would creep under my coat to sleep. At first I was afraid that during unconsciousness I should roll on her. But she was too wary for that. If I showed a tendency to sprawl or turn over, she would wake and pierce my ears with a sharp 'Take your ...
— The Spread Eagle and Other Stories • Gouverneur Morris
... floor is thronged. I have a large, hundred-ounce poke of dust, and I unloose the thong. Suddenly with a mad shout I scatter its contents round the hall. Like a shower of golden rain it falls on men and women alike. See how they grovel for it, the brutes, the vampires! How they fight and grab and sprawl over it! How they shriek and howl and curse! It is like an arena of wild beasts; it is pandemonium. Oh, how I despise them! My gorge rises, but—to the end, to the end. ...
— The Trail of '98 - A Northland Romance • Robert W. Service
... narrow and dirty, lined by old brick houses; here and there is a carved doorway with brackets, showing that, like most streets in the vicinity, it was better built than now inhabited, and it is probable that where sickly children now sprawl on doorsteps stately ladies in hoops and silken skirts once stepped forth. St. George's National Schools are here, and a public-house with the odd name of Hole in the Wall, a name adopted by Mr. Morrison in his recent ...
— Holborn and Bloomsbury - The Fascination of London • Sir Walter Besant
... peculiar slant of his slouch hat, the rosy glow of his face, and the way in which his trousers clung to the curves of his well-developed legs, and ended in a sprawl that half covered his shoes. I recognized, too, a carpet-bag, a ninety-nine-cent affair, an "occasion," with galvanized iron clasps and paper-leather sides,—the kind ...
— A Gentleman Vagabond and Some Others • F. Hopkinson Smith
... you mean?' asks he, 'I often think it does one a great deal of good to be cross. I wish Mrs Grundy didn't come between us and the carpet, it would be so delightful to sprawl full length on it and roar; I remember I used to derive a great deal of comfort in it in ...
— Lippa • Beatrice Egerton
... afternoon was closing, he was allowed, for half an hour before sleep, to sprawl upon the carpet in front of the fire. He had with him his rattle and a large bear which he stroked because it was comfortable; he had ...
— The Golden Scarecrow • Hugh Walpole
... stands the civic museum, entrusted, just now, to the care of a quite remarkably ignorant and slatternly woman. It contains two rooms, whose exhibits are smothered in dust and cobwebs; as neglected, in short, as her own brats that sprawl about its floor. I enquired whether she possessed no catalogue to show where the objects, bearing no labels, had been found. A catalogue was unnecessary, ...
— Old Calabria • Norman Douglas
... many spaniels; And though all the while it grew hotter and hotter, They swam just as if they were hunting an otter. 'Twas a glorious sight to behold the fair sex All wading with gentlemen up to their necks, And view them so prettily tumble and sprawl In a great smoking kettle as big as our hall; And to-day many persons of rank and condition Were boil'd, by command of an ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... drydock here till I'm pretty nearly crazy. I want to go on a cruise, even if it isn't but a half mile one. Don't you want to cart me down to your anchorage and let me see how you and General Minot and the gilt whisk broom get along? I can sprawl on that seaweed and be as comfortable as a gull on a clam flat. Come on now! Heave ahead! Give us ...
— Fair Harbor • Joseph Crosby Lincoln
... as I said, it, the huddle of the green body and the fantastic sprawl of the limbs in the moonlight told me clearly enough that it was all over with him. My bullet had passed through his heart, and it was only his own iron will which had held him so long in the saddle. He had lived hard, this Montluc, and I will do him justice to say that ...
— The Exploits Of Brigadier Gerard • Arthur Conan Doyle
... was a great deal more interested in making himself comfortable than he was in those eggs. He had picked out a place where all day long Mr. Sun poured down his warmest rays, and he had dug a place to sprawl out in comfortably. The sand he had thrown in a pile at one side. When Mrs. 'Gator went to consult Mr. 'Gator about those precious eggs and her worries when the cool of evening had come, she happened to put one foot in that loose pile of sand, and she found that while the sand ...
— Mother West Wind "Where" Stories • Thornton W. Burgess
... my fist runs to size, set it down to that quill, dear old pal; Correspondents is on to me lately, complains as I write like a gal. Sixteen words to the page, and slopscrawly, all dashes and blobs. Well, it's true; But a quill and big sprawl is the fashion, so wot is a ...
— Punch, or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, August 15, 1891 • Various
... an inner beauty than Il Gesu, which is the most baroque church in Rome, without the power of coming together for a unity of effect which baroque churches sometimes have. It is a tumult of virtuosity in painting, in sculpture, in architecture. Statues sprawl into frescoed figures at points in the roof, and frescoed figures emerge in marble at others. Marvels of riches are lavished upon chapels and altars, which again are so burdened with bronze gilded or silver plated, and precious stones ...
— Roman Holidays and Others • W. D. Howells
... will "hump over" at their desks, if the muscles of their backs and necks are strong and vigorous, and their brains well ventilated. Nor will many of them bore their noses into their books, or sprawl all over their copy books when they write, unless the light is poor, or they have some defect of the eyes which has not been corrected by proper glasses. A bad position or a bad carriage in a child ...
— A Handbook of Health • Woods Hutchinson
... coal-black shining eyes, and plenty of rings and jewels on his fingers and about his person, and a very considerable portion of his shirtsleeves turned over his coat to take the air. His great hands (which can sprawl over half a piano, and produce those effects on the instrument for which he is celebrated) are encased in lemon-coloured kids, new, or cleaned daily. Parenthetically, let us ask why so many men, with coarse red wrists and big hands, persist in the white kid glove and wristband system? Baroski's ...
— Men's Wives • William Makepeace Thackeray
... caution came too late. At top speed the auto struck the wayfarer, and before the boys' horrified eyes he was thrown high in the air, to fall, a confused sprawl of legs and ...
— The Boy Inventors' Radio Telephone • Richard Bonner
... against hope. On reaching Worthing he put his luggage into the local train, and set out across the Downs for Wansdon, trying to walk off his aching irresolution. So long as he went full bat, he could enjoy the beauty of those green slopes, stopping now and again to sprawl on the grass, admire the perfection of a wild rose or listen to a lark's song. But the war of motives within him was but postponed—the longing for Fleur, and the hatred of deception. He came to the old chalk-pit above Wansdon with ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... "Sure, it's as clear as mud. Let's sit down here just as if we were going to take a rest; let's sprawl on the ground just as if we weren't thinking about that shack at all. Then we can talk about ...
— Roy Blakeley's Bee-line Hike • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... in some beggar's haffet squattle; [Quick, temples settle] There ye may creep, and sprawl, and sprattle Wi' ither kindred, jumping cattle, In shoals and nations; Whare horn nor bane ne'er dare unsettle [i.e. ...
— Robert Burns - How To Know Him • William Allan Neilson
... People are jumping with a vengeance. The paint is disturbed upon your partner's face. Pretty lips speak ugly words. Honi soit qui mal y pense; but then the gentleman is between two and three wines, and the lady is rallying him because he has sense enough left to be a little modest. A couple sprawl in a waltz. A gentleman roars a toast. The hostess prays for less noise. An altercation breaks out in the antechamber. Two ladies exchange slaps on the face, and you thank madame for a ...
— The Cockaynes in Paris - 'Gone abroad' • Blanchard Jerrold
... twisting round a corner, he darted through a swing door into a stone-paved court, surrounded by brick walls. I was at his heels at the moment or I should have lost him there. I darted through the swing door after him. I went full sprawl over his body on the other side. He had, quite used ...
— Martin Hyde, The Duke's Messenger • John Masefield
... in the dish; and then he smoked his pipe, puffing slowly, while the two poor children, overcome with fatigue, went to sleep with their heads resting on the table. Thus Macquart passed his days in lazy enjoyment. It seemed to him quite natural that he should be kept in idleness like a girl, to sprawl about on the benches of some tavern, or stroll in the cool of the day along the Cours or the Mail. At last he went so far as to relate his amorous escapades in the presence of his son, who listened with glistening eyes. The children never protested, accustomed as ...
— The Fortune of the Rougons • Emile Zola
... mists for the weaving of dreams—ay, and, upon rare days, the smoke of the great ships, bound down the Straits—and when dreams had worn the patience there were huge loose rocks handy for rolling over the brow of the cliff—and there was gray moss in the hollows, thick and dry and soft, to sprawl on and rest from the delights of the day. So the Watchman was a playground for my mother and me—my sister, my elder by seven years, was all the day long tunefully busy about my father's comfort and the little duties of the house—and, on that blue day, ...
— Doctor Luke of the Labrador • Norman Duncan
... That waiting; though it seems so safe to fight Behind high walls, and hurl down foes into Deep fosses, or behold them sprawl on spikes Strewed to receive them, still I like it not— 560 My soul seems lukewarm; but when I set on them, Though they were piled on mountains, I would have A pluck at them, or perish in hot ...
— The Works of Lord Byron - Poetry, Volume V. • Lord Byron
... the design is spoilt by the broken and curly volutes which sprawl across the aisles, by ugly finials at the corners, and by a rather clumsy balustrading to ...
— Portuguese Architecture • Walter Crum Watson
... our trenches on the night of the 12th, I am thankful to say. It was so dark that I could not see the man in front of me, though I could touch him with my hand. I "came," as the Irish say, a great sprawl over a bridge across a ditch, the chief difficulty being to find my uniform cap in the darkness and mud, as, of course, one did not wish to give away where we were by even a flash from one's electric torch. However, here we are in billets once again, with the rain pouring down and ...
— Letters of Lt.-Col. George Brenton Laurie • George Brenton Laurie
... sentinel on the margin of the creek, and there are groves of slim palms with narrow truncated leaves—palms which creep and sprawl over vegetation of independent character, and palm& which coquette with the sun with huge fans. Orchid& display sprays of yellowish-green flowers, which contribute a decided savour to the medley of scents, and palm-like Cycads meander ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield
... even to those exalted fanatical souls, that there was no chance for them, and that they must get out of these fatal rocks and into the desert again. They galloped down the pass, and it is a frightful thing to see a camel galloping over broken ground. The beast's own terror, his ungainly bounds, the sprawl of his four legs all in the air together, his hideous cries, and the yells of his rider who is bucked high from his saddle with every spring, make a picture which is not to be forgotten. The women screamed as this ...
— The Tragedy of The Korosko • Arthur Conan Doyle
... quarter-staff poised upon his shoulder, he presently heard the music of a pipe now very mournful and sweet, anon breaking into a merry lilt full of rippling trills and soft, bubbling notes most pleasant to be heard. Wherefore he went aside and thus, led by the music, beheld a jester in his motley lying a-sprawl beneath a tree. A long-legged knave was he, pinched and something doleful of visage yet with quick bright eyes that laughed 'neath sombre brows, and a wide, up-curving mouth; upon his escalloped cape and flaunting cock's-comb were many little bells that rang a silvery ...
— Beltane The Smith • Jeffery Farnol
... boy turned a somersault for every extra, while the baby, trying to follow his example, bunched over in a sidewise sprawl and cut his foot on the axe with which his mother had prized up the box-lid. That sobered them, they carried the books indoors. Mrs. Duncan had a top shelf in her closet cleared for them, far above the reach of meddling ...
— Freckles • Gene Stratton-Porter
... the calves were not many ... merely to walk along the sides of the five cars in my keeping, and see that the calves kept on their legs and did not sprawl over each other ... sometimes one of them would get crushed against the side of the car, and his leg would protrude through the slats. And I would push his leg back, to keep it from being broken ... I made my rounds every time the freight ...
— Tramping on Life - An Autobiographical Narrative • Harry Kemp
... side of Mentone, San Remo is sadly prosaic. The valleys seem to sprawl, and the universal olives are monotonously grey upon their thick clay soil. Yet the wealth of flowers in the fat earth is wonderful. One might fancy oneself in a weedy farm flower-bed invaded by stray oats and beans and cabbages and garlic from the kitchen-garden. The country does not suggest ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... Way-ay, blow the man down. O blow the man down in Liverpool town! Give me some time to blow the man down. 'Twas aboard a Black-Bailer I first served my time, And in that Black-Bailer I wasted my prime. 'Tis larboard and starboard on deck you will sprawl, For blowers and strikers command the Black Ball. So, it's ...
— Blow The Man Down - A Romance Of The Coast - 1916 • Holman Day
... nobs. Many have menaced you, some had a shy at you; SALISBURY stout, and bespectacled CROSS, Each in his season has joined in the cry at you, Little, 'twould seem, to your damage or loss. Still you eight-headed and lanky-limbed monster, you Sprawl and monopolise, spread and devour. Many assail you, but hitherto, none stir you. Say, has the hero arrived, and the hour? No Infant Hercules, surely, can tackle you, Ancient abortion, with hope of success. It needeth a true full-grown hero to shackle you, Jupiter's son, ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99., October 11, 1890 • Various
... was adventure. Not long after he had learned to sprawl, Jerry had learned that. One took his chances. As long as Mister Haggin, or Derby, or Bob, was about, the niggers took their chasing. But there were times when the white lords were not about. Then it was "'Ware niggers!" One must dare to chase only with due precaution. Because then, beyond the ...
— Jerry of the Islands • Jack London
... the discovery of a vessel filled with gold, off which the whole family lived happily ever after. But the drollest of all is the story of Roraishi. This paragon, though seventy years old, used to dress in baby's clothes and sprawl about upon the floor. His object was to delude his parents, who were really over ninety years of age, into the idea that they could not be so very old, after all, seeing that they still had such a ...
— Peeps at Many Lands: Japan • John Finnemore
... nervous disorder afflicting the young and inexperienced. A passion that goeth before a sprawl. ...
— The Devil's Dictionary • Ambrose Bierce
... adventure was beautifully set—the conventional stage for the adventure of a young girl, her mother's drawing-room. Her mother had the art of setting stages. The room was not large,—a New York brownstone front in the upper Sixties even though altered as to entrance, and allowed to sprawl backward over yards not originally intended for its use, is not a palace,—but it was a room and not a corridor; you had the comfortable sense of four walls about you when its one small door was ...
— The Happiest Time of Their Lives • Alice Duer Miller
... three little taps on the wall and lay listening, all agog.... Three like little taps answered! This was so unexpected that at first he sat wondering whether he could believe his ears; then he began to swim and sprawl in his bed, bit his teeth so as not to shout out his overflowing delight and started banging on the wall, this time with his fists. It was too late to-night: to-morrow, he would go to her and ask her ...
— The Path of Life • Stijn Streuvels
... with me to the Punch-Bowl," said the Broom-Squire; "but I'll not go for half-an-hour, becos I don't want to overtake that lanky, black-jawed chap as they call Lonegon. He ain't got much love for me, and might try to repay that blow on his wrist, and sprawl on the floor I ...
— The Broom-Squire • S. (Sabine) Baring-Gould
... phantoms, into the wide hall; Like phantoms, to the iron porch, they glide; Where lay the Porter, in uneasy sprawl, With a huge empty flaggon by his side: The wakeful bloodhound rose, and shook his hide, But his sagacious eye an inmate owns: By one, and one, the bolts full easy slide:— The chains lie silent on the footworn ...
— Keats: Poems Published in 1820 • John Keats
... first year the infant begins to crawl and toddle about the room and gallery, to sprawl into the hearth and eat charcoal, and to get into all sorts of mischief in the usual way. During the first year he lives chiefly on his mother's milk, but takes also thick rice-water ...
— The Pagan Tribes of Borneo • Charles Hose and William McDougall
... unattractive; but Margarita's daughter, perfect in health, beautiful as a baby angel, active, daring, and enchantingly affectionate, satisfied the old lady's pride completely and she sat for hours contentedly watching her sprawl on an Indian blanket on ...
— Margarita's Soul - The Romantic Recollections of a Man of Fifty • Ingraham Lovell
... the grimy-faced workers, their sagging, shapeless women and their litters of children. Their windows open upon broken little streets and bubbling alleys. Idiot-faced wooden houses sprawl over one another with their rumps in the mud. The years hammer away—digesting the paint from houses. The years grind away, yet life persists. Beneath the grinding of the years, life gropes, shrieks, ...
— Erik Dorn • Ben Hecht
... gave a quick glance, pointed with driest humor, from under his bent brows at Simon Basset's great jumble of gray hair and Doctor Prescott's spidery sprawl of red wig. A subdued and half-alarmed chuckle ran through the company. Simon Basset chewed imperturbably, but Doctor Seth Prescott's handsome face was pale ...
— Jerome, A Poor Man - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... uttered the words when the giant carcass of Philip tottered and fell, dragging Kate along with it, who never for a moment lost or loosened her hold. Her opponent now began to sprawl and kick out his feet from a sense of suffocation, and in attempting to call for assistance, nothing but low, deep gurgling noises could issue from his lips, now livid with the pressure on his throat and covered with foam. His face, too, at all times dark and savage, became literally ...
— The Emigrants Of Ahadarra - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... who I am," and he spoke a name in the Swede's ear—a name that more effectually subdued the scoundrel than many beatings—then he gave him a push that carried him bodily through the tent doorway to sprawl ...
— The Son of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... course, of great length. Here was clustered the rocking-chairs, and sofas, and work-tables, and very often the cradle of the family. Here stood Mrs. Heathcote's sewing-machine, and here the master would sprawl at his length, while his wife, or his wife's sister, read to him. It was here, in fact, that they lived, having a parlor simply for their meals. Behind the main edifice there stood, each apart, various buildings, forming an irregular quadrangle. The kitchen came first, with a ...
— Harry Heathcote of Gangoil • Anthony Trollope
... mare swerved, but she was so near the back of the wagon that her wheel to the right did not carry her beyond the trunk, itself bounding to the right. The unexpected sheer did not unhorse her rider, but the mare went down in a helpless sprawl over the great obstacle in her path, and the girlish figure in ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 6, July 1905 • Various
... the doctor's own hand went swiftly to his head. There was a tug at the reins, and it fetched old Dapple up with a sprawl. ...
— Corporal Sam and Other Stories • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... is, as before said, blackguardly and bleak. Paris swarms before us, full of famine, shame, and death; monks and the servants of great lords hold high wassail upon cakes and pastry; the poor man licks his lips before the baker's window; people with patched eyes sprawl all night under the stalls; chuckling Tabary transcribes an improper romance; bare-bosomed lasses and ruffling students swagger in the streets; the drunkard goes stumbling homeward; the graveyard is full of bones; and away on Montfaucon, Colin de Cayeux and Montigny hang draggled in the rain. ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 3 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... artist there is in me has been given to turbine machines and boat building and the problem of flying, and do what I will I fail to see how I can be other than a lax, undisciplined story-teller. I must sprawl and flounder, comment and theorise, if I am to get the thing out I have in mind. And it isn't a constructed tale I have to tell, but unmanageable realities. My love-story—and if only I can keep up the ...
— Tono Bungay • H. G. Wells
... slightly under the throb of the engines, or occasionally swaying slowly forward or slowly back as the ship's course changes, but otherwise motionless, for here the sea is always calm. You raise your head, look about, sprawl in a new position on your mattress, fall asleep. On one of these occasions you find unexpectedly that the velvet-gray night has become steel-gray dawn, and that the kindly old quartermaster is bending over you. Sleepily, very sleepily, you stagger to your ...
— African Camp Fires • Stewart Edward White
... Her knock was followed by a silence, and after a minute or two the door was opened by a handsome young man whose ruffled hair and general air of creased disorder led her to conclude that he had just risen from a long-limbed sprawl on a sofa strewn with tumbled cushions. This sofa, and a grand piano bearing a basket of faded roses, a biscuit-tin and a devastated breakfast tray, almost filled the narrow sitting-room, in the remaining corner ...
— The Reef • Edith Wharton
... perhaps, there would be a baby, and then their cup of domestic happiness would be overflowing. Babcock's long ungratified yearning for the things of the spirit were fully met by these cosey evenings, which he would have been glad to continue to the crack of doom. To smoke and sprawl and read a little, and exchange chit-chat, was poetry enough for him. So contented was he that his joy was apt to find an outlet in ditties and whistling—he possessed a slightly tuneful, rollicking knack at both—a proceeding which commonly culminated ...
— Unleavened Bread • Robert Grant
... where I'd ruther be— Needn't fence it in fer me!— Jes' the whole sky overhead, And the whole airth underneath— Sorto' so's a man kin breathe Like he ort, and kindo' has Elbow-room to keerlessly Sprawl out len'thways on the grass Where the shadders thick and soft As the kivvers on the bed Mother fixes in the loft Allus, when ...
— Riley Farm-Rhymes • James Whitcomb Riley
... Genius, like goodness (which can stand alone), would arise in a democratic society as frequently as elsewhere; but it might not be so well fed or so well assimilated. There would at least be no artificial and simulated merit; everybody would take his ease in his inn and sprawl unbuttoned without respect for any finer judgment or performance than that which he himself was inclined to. The only excellence subsisting would be spontaneous excellence, inwardly prompted, sure ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... say, just cornflowers, gemming the golden grain; Ah no! You can't deceive me. Can't I believe my eyes? Look! It's the dead, my comrades, stark on the dreadful plain, All in their dark-blue blouses, staring up at the skies. Comrades of canteen laughter, dumb in the yellow wheat. See how they sprawl and huddle! See how their brows are white! Goaded on to the shambles, there in death and defeat. . . . Father of Pity, hide them! Hasten, ...
— Rhymes of a Red Cross Man • Robert W. Service
... tree. But he soon came to the end of his tether; and the quick jerk, which caused the tree itself to crack, brought him to his haunches, while the noose tightening on his throat was fast strangling him. But for the thick matted hair it would have done so, but this saved him, and he continued to sprawl and struggle at the end of the rope. The tree kept on cracking, and as I began to fear that it might give way and precipitate me to the ground, I thought it better to slip down. I ran direct to where ...
— Popular Adventure Tales • Mayne Reid
... suppose, in their fresh brilliancy, they might well have startled a not very squeamish eye. The effect, such as it is, of this picture, is much injured by the high altar and its canopy, which stands close against the wall, and intercepts a considerable portion of the sprawl of nakedness with which Michael Angelo has filled his sky. However, I am not unwilling to believe, with faith beyond what I can actually see, that the greatest pictorial miracles ever yet achieved have been wrought upon the walls and ceiling ...
— Passages From the French and Italian Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... finishing his tea went on deck with the cook, and gave himself up to all the delights of a quiet sprawl. Fatigued with their exertions, neither of them moved until nine o'clock, and then, with a farewell glance in the direction in which Dick might be expected to come, ...
— The Skipper's Wooing, and The Brown Man's Servant • W. W. Jacobs
... now perhaps our simpletons maybe surprised to hear that the wretched animal which was the innocent cause of loss and misery was poisoned by a narcotic. In his efforts to move freely he strained himself, for the subtle drug deprived him of the power of using his limbs, and he could only sprawl and wrench his sinews. This is the fourth case of the kind which has recently occurred; and now clever judges have hit upon the cause which has disabled so many good horses, after the rascals of the Ring have ...
— The Ethics of Drink and Other Social Questions - Joints In Our Social Armour • James Runciman
... multiplication table failed here, and at this, variously a-sprawl on the turf beneath, the ...
— Red Cap Tales - Stolen from the Treasure Chest of the Wizard of the North • Samuel Rutherford Crockett
... to-day I cannot do so any longer. That is what I most miss,—the ability to lie a-sprawl in the spring grass and dream out an uncharted world,—a dream so vivid that, beside it, reality grew tenuous, and the actual world became one of childhood's ...
— Gallantry - Dizain des Fetes Galantes • James Branch Cabell
... was never finished, for with a sprawl, the "Parson" stumbled over the blade of grass and came down on the ...
— The Cheerful Cricket and Others • Jeannette Marks
... she splashed him and he barked joyfully. He made for her, to paw and sprawl upon her. ...
— Boy Woodburn - A Story of the Sussex Downs • Alfred Ollivant
... his sentences perhaps not more than nine-tenths stand straight on their legs; the remainder are in quite angular attitudes, buttressed up by props (of parentheses and dashes), and ever with this or the other tagrag hanging from them; a few even sprawl out helplessly on all sides, quite broken-backed and dismembered. Nevertheless, in almost his very worst moods, there lies in him a singular attraction. A wild tone pervades the whole utterance of the man, like its keynote and regulator; now screwing itself ...
— Sartor Resartus - The Life and Opinions of Herr Teufelsdrockh • Thomas Carlyle
... Anything rather than that fetid huddling, that shameless communal sprawl. And yet, was this so much better? The nearness to the surface was meaningless; it only tantalized. And the privacy ...
— The Moon is Green • Fritz Reuter Leiber
... irregular. The cloister is duly placed on the south side of the church, and the chief buildings occupy their usual positions round it. But the cloister garth, as at Chichester, is not rectangular, and all the surrounding buildings are thus made to sprawl in a very awkward fashion. The church follows the plan adopted by the Austin canons in their northern abbeys, and has only one aisle to the nave—that to the north; while the choir is long, narrow and aisleless. Each transept has an ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... roar, High may the hovering Vulture soar; Alas! regardless of them all, Soon shall the empurpled glutton sprawl - Soon, in the desert's hushed repose, Shall trumpet tidings through his nose! Alack, unwise! that nasal song Shall ...
— Moral Emblems • Robert Louis Stevenson
... separate human figures; but he was increasingly surprised by the way in which they moved as one man. They seemed to be dressed in dark clothes and plain hats, like any common crowd out of the streets; but they did not spread and sprawl and trail by various lines to the attack, as would be natural in an ordinary mob. They moved with a sort of dreadful and wicked woodenness, like a staring army ...
— The Man Who Was Thursday - A Nightmare • G. K. Chesterton
... or Milton 'tis in vain to look; These shelves admit not any modern book. And now the chapel's silver bell you hear, That summons you to all the pride of prayer; Light quirks of music, broken and uneven, Make the soul dance upon a jig to heaven. On painted ceilings you devoutly stare, Where sprawl the saints of Verrio or Laguerre, On gilded clouds in fair expansion lie, And bring all Paradise before your eye. To rest, the cushion and soft Dean invite, Who never mentions hell to ears polite. But hark! ...
— Essay on Man - Moral Essays and Satires • Alexander Pope
... the green showed itself on them, like a thin gauze veil. These hedges are not all so well kept and trimmed as I expected to find them. Some, it is true, are cut very carefully; these are generally hedges to ornamental grounds; but many of those which separate the fields straggle and sprawl, and have some high bushes and some low ones, and, in short, are no more like a hedge than many rows of bushes that we have at home. But such as they are, they are the only dividing lines of the fields, and it is certainly a more picturesque mode of ...
— Sunny Memories Of Foreign Lands, Volume 1 (of 2) • Harriet Elizabeth (Beecher) Stowe
... so ill at this place that I was compelled to halt the caravan for him for two days. He seemed to be affected with a disease in the limbs, which caused him to sprawl, and tremble most painfully, besides suffering from an attack of acute dysentery. But constant attendance and care soon brought him round again; and on the third day he was able to ...
— How I Found Livingstone • Sir Henry M. Stanley
... it. He was—fond of her, I will admit. But he had a life of his own that she knows nothing about. He was too proud to tell her about it, and she hadn't wit enough to see it for herself. That's the truth, and this emotional sprawl she's indulging in now doesn't change it.—Meanwhile, she is adding to her collection ...
— Mary Wollaston • Henry Kitchell Webster
... of its due place. Books in the living room I rearrange, Then in the dining room my pewter mugs, And put her little brown nasturtium bowl Where she can see it when she telephones. Up in my den the papers are a-sprawl And litter up my desk: these too I sort Thinking, to-morrow I will rise betimes And do my work neglected.... Tiptoe then I pass into the Shrine. She is asleep, Dark hair across the moon-blanched pillow slip. Her eyes are sealed ...
— Songs for a Little House • Christopher Morley
... candles, place the flask of Green Chartreuse and a liqueur-glass on the table, drop one drip of the liquid into the glass, burn a stinking pastille of incense, place a Birmingham "god" or an opening lily before him, ruffle his hair, and sprawl on the sofa with a wicked French novel he could not read—hoping for visitors and ...
— Driftwood Spars - The Stories of a Man, a Boy, a Woman, and Certain Other People Who - Strangely Met Upon the Sea of Life • Percival Christopher Wren
... O what a world it is— Where full-grown men cut capers in the German, Cotillion, waltz, or what you will, and whizz And spin and hop and sprawl about like mermen! I wonder if our future Grant or Sherman, As these youths pass their time, is passing his— If eagles ever come from painted eggs, Or deeds of arms succeed to ...
— Black Beetles in Amber • Ambrose Bierce
... next to him. During the first part of the night, Stumps, either overcome by weariness or subdued by his friends' discourses on the stellar world, behaved pretty well. Only once did he fling out and bestow an unmerited blow on the pork-barrel. But, about daybreak, he began to sprawl, gradually working his way to the extreme edge of the raft, where a piece of wood, nailed there on purpose, prevented him from rolling off altogether. It did not, however, prevent his tossing one of his long legs over the edge, which he accordingly did. The leg and foot ...
— The Battery and the Boiler - Adventures in Laying of Submarine Electric Cables • R.M. Ballantyne
... cud gyard he had his gloved fist home on my cheek an' down I went full-sprawl. 'Will that content you?' sez he, blowin' on his knuckles for all the world like a Scots Greys orf'cer. 'Content!' sez I. 'For your own sake, man, take off your spurs, peel your jackut, an' onglove. 'Tis the beginnin' ...
— Indian Tales • Rudyard Kipling
... at the shapely brig with a lively curiosity, as if here was something really interesting. Presently a boat splashed into the water and was tied alongside the vessel while a dozen of the crew tumbled in to sprawl upon the thwarts and shove the oars into the thole-pins. An erect, graceful man in a red coat and a great beaver hat roared a command from the stern-sheets and the pinnace pulled in the ...
— Blackbeard: Buccaneer • Ralph D. Paine
... somewhat. First we would all be down in a pile at the forward end of the stage, nearly in a sitting posture, and in a second we would shoot to the other end 20 and stand on our heads. And we would sprawl and kick, too, and ward off ends and corners of mail bags that came lumbering over us and about us; and as the dust rose from the tumult, we would all sneeze in chorus, and the majority of us would grumble, and probably say some hasty 25 thing, like, "Take ...
— Story Hour Readings: Seventh Year • E.C. Hartwell
... like some folks in white cravats, Contemptuous of sharps and flats, Sat up and sang dogsologies. Meanwhile the cats set up a squall, And, safe upon the garden-wall, All night kept cat-a-walling, As if the feline race were all. In one wild cataleptic sprawl, Into love's ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... as accumulates where horses are kept standing around. When we left Bolivar we were in considerable of a hurry, with no time to primp or comb our hair, and neither did we bring our tents along, so we are just living out of doors now, and "boarding at Sprawl's." There is plenty of wood, though, to make fires, and we have jayhawked enough planks and boards to lie on to keep us out of the mud, so we just curl up at night in our blankets with all our clothes on, and ...
— The Story of a Common Soldier of Army Life in the Civil War, 1861-1865 • Leander Stillwell
... sweep through Palmetto Town, Bringing with piney tang the old romance Of Pirates and of smuggling gentlemen; And tongues as languorous as southern France Flow down her streets like water-talk at fords; While through iron gates where pickaninnies sprawl, The sound floats back, in rippled banjo chords, From lush magnolia shade where mockers call. Mornings, the flower-women hawk their wares— Bronze caryatids of a genial race, Bearing the bloom-heaped ...
— Carolina Chansons - Legends of the Low Country • DuBose Heyward and Hervey Allen
... idleness, Moving like dreams through happiness, Shoals of small bright fishes were; In and out weed-thickets bent Perch and carp, and sauntering went With mounching jaws and eyes a-stare; Or on a lotus leaf would crawl A brindled loach to bask and sprawl, Tasting the warm sun ere it dipped Into the water; but quick as fear Back his shining brown head slipped To crouch on the gravel of his lair, Where the cooled sunbeams, broke in wrack, Spilt shattered gold about his ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 2 (of 4) • Various |
