"Stark naked" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... plea and complaint to the emperor in the hearing of all, but they consider him an idle babbler because he says that he has seen the empress stark naked. All the town is stirred thereat; some, when they hear this news, esteem it mere folly, others advise and counsel the emperor to go to the tower. Great is the uproar and the tumult of the folk who set out after him. But they find nothing in the tower, for Fenice and Cliges are on their ...
— Cliges: A Romance • Chretien de Troyes
... by this time, been exposed stark naked to the sun for over five hours. I felt and no doubt looked like a raw beefsteak. Maclean's foot had got severely hurt in the course of his adventure, and he was much bruised ...
— Reminiscences of a South African Pioneer • W. C. Scully
... order. He ignored the command of E McGinnis, received over the ship's communicator when they arrived at the scene of the crime, to stand clear of the planet. What policeman moving in to make an arrest for an illegal act—and certainly running around stark naked, posing in lewd and indecent postures in full view of the public, was an illegal act—would pay any attention to the request of an onlooker which amounted to "Aw, let ...
— Eight Keys to Eden • Mark Irvin Clifton
... a fire on the floor, at which Lieutenant Splinter, in his shirt and trowsers, drenched, unshorn, and deathlike, was roasting a joint of meat, whilst a dwarfish Indian, stark naked, sat opposite to him, squatting on his hams, more like a large bull—frog than a man, and fanning the flame with a palm leaf. In the dark corner of the hut half a dozen miserable sheep shrunk huddled together. Through ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... ever, by the most cogent arguments, will be prevailed with to disrobe himself at once of all his old opinions, and pretences to knowledge and learning, which with hard study he hath all this time been labouring for; and turn himself out stark naked, in quest afresh of new notions? All the arguments that can be used will be as little able to prevail, as the wind did with the traveller to part with his cloak, which he held only the faster. To this of wrong hypothesis may be reduced the errors that ...
— An Essay Concerning Humane Understanding, Volume II. - MDCXC, Based on the 2nd Edition, Books III. and IV. (of 4) • John Locke
... Phadhrig?' (How d'ye do, Pat?) 'Slan, go raimh math agut!' (Pretty well, thank you,) says the bear. The people were surprised to hear how plainly he spoke—but the mayor ordered him directly to be ripped up; and after some opposition, and a good deal of difficulty, Pat stepped forth stark naked out of the bear's-skin wherein he had been fourteen or fifteen days most cleverly stitched. The women made off—the men stood astonished—and the mayor ordered his keepers to be put in goal unless they satisfied him; but that was presently done. The bear afterwards told ...
— Irish Wit and Humor - Anecdote Biography of Swift, Curran, O'Leary and O'Connell • Anonymous
... joy would we fly through the upper sky! We are washed, we are 'nointed, stark naked are we; But our toil and our ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... weeks since the last one was shot outside the Japanese lines at night, and now there is nothing but regular soldiery encamped around us. This last Boxer was a mere boy of fifteen, who had stripped stark naked and smeared himself all over with oil after the manner of Chinese thieves, so that if he came into our clutches no hands would be able to hold him tight. The most daring ones have always been boys. He had crept fearlessly right up to the ...
— Indiscreet Letters From Peking • B. L. Putman Weale
... or three series of condemned cells, pent-up and pitchy, where, by a refinement of cruelty, the ceiling has been built low so that no man can stand upright. Here fifteen or twenty were crowded together, and, in the burning atmosphere, they stripped themselves stark naked, so that when in the morning the cell-doors were opened, they came forth as from the grave, begging for death. There are women's cells too; for this great and valiant government recognized women as belligerents, and locked them up close ...
— Campaigns of a Non-Combatant, - and His Romaunt Abroad During the War • George Alfred Townsend
... own food. Now like a singing bird my feet Touch earth, and I must drink and eat. Welcome to all men: I'll not care What any of my fellows wear; We'll not let cloth divide our souls, They'll swim stark naked in the bowls. Welcome, poor beggar: I'll not see That hand of yours dislodge a flea,— While you sit at my side and beg, Or right foot scratching your left leg. Farewell restraint: we will not now Measure the ale our brains allow, But drink as much as we ...
— Foliage • William H. Davies
... continuing, swam to the third lock, his clothes being carried by a school fellow who accompanied him; this being a distance of some two miles, for this the Doctor rewarded him with 10/- and a whole holiday. He also, it may be added, as a reckless feat, when bathing, leapt stark naked across the first lock; a performance which the slightest ...
— A History of Horncastle - from the earliest period to the present time • James Conway Walter
... was a typically unpleasant day. It started with a touch of comedy, Weatherby arriving stark naked in my room at 6.30 A.M., just when I was shaving, saying, "I say, sir, may I finish my dressing in here? They're shelling the bathroom!" He had a towel and a few clothes on his arm, et praeterea nihil. (He, M.-B., and St Andre, though sleeping in different rooms, used to dress in the ...
— The Doings of the Fifteenth Infantry Brigade - August 1914 to March 1915 • Edward Lord Gleichen
... pearls that are to be seen in the whole world. Leaving this country, I travelled fifty days journey to the southward, along the shore of the ocean, when I came to a country called Lamouri[2], in which, owing to the extreme heat, the whole inhabitants go stark naked, both men and women, and they derided me for wearing clothes, saying, that Adam and Eve were created naked. In this country the women are all common, so that no one has a wife; and when a child is born, the mother gives ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 1 • Robert Kerr
... upon him, which brought him to the ground. The infuriated men then jumped upon him, knocking out his teeth, breaking his jaw-bone and right hand, and terribly mutilating his whole body. Supposing him to be dead, they then stripped him stark naked and left him on the pavement, a ghastly spectacle to the passers-by. Officer Phillips ran the gauntlet almost unharmed, but was pursued block after block by a portion of the mob, till he reached Thirty-ninth street. Here he attempted ...
— The Great Riots of New York 1712 to 1873 • J.T. Headley
... recourse to the comparison of ceremonies, we may obtain some light. Among the tribes of the Gold Coast of Africa the wives of men who have gone to war make a daily procession through the town. They are stark naked, painted all over with white, and decorated with beads and charms. Any man who is found in the town is attacked and driven away. And on the occasion of a battle the women imitate the actions the men are thought to be performing, with guns, sticks, ...
— The Science of Fairy Tales - An Inquiry into Fairy Mythology • Edwin Sidney Hartland
... carried our politeness still further, and showed our good breeding in endeavouring to accommodate ourselves to the tastes and habits of those we were about to visit. "Do at Rome as the Romans do," is the essence of all politeness. As our friends were accustomed to be in naturalibus—vulgice, stark naked, we adopted their Adamite fashion, and, undressing, in we plunged. Our success was greater with the finny, than was that of any exquisite with the fair tribe. We captivated and captured pailfuls. We drove our entertainers ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard
... deck and line up for review. The fellows hadn't a rag on. Thus, in Nature's garb, we gave three cheers for the German flag on the Choising. The men on the Choising told us afterward 'we couldn't make out what that meant, those stark naked fellows all cheering!' The sea was too high, and we had to wait two days before we could board the Choising on December 16. We took very little with us; the schooner was taken in tow. In the afternoon we sunk the Ayesha and we were all very sad. The good old Ayesha had served us faithfully ...
— World's War Events, Vol. I • Various
... able to get a pretty clear view, the sight we saw was enough to freeze a man's blood. They'd got all our chaps lashed to stakes set up in a clear, open space in front of the village, and one of the pore unfort'nit fellers was stripped stark naked and bein' tormented by a crowd o' niggers what was puttin' burnin' splinters between his fingers, and stickin' 'em into his flesh, and pourin' red-hot cinders into his mouth, what they'd prised open by thrustin' a thick stick in between his jaws; and the shrieks as that unhappy ...
— A Middy in Command - A Tale of the Slave Squadron • Harry Collingwood
... midnight was awakened by a feeling of great warmth, and, to my surprise, found myself covered by a large deerskin, under which lay my friend, his two wives, and their favourite puppy, all fast asleep and stark naked. Supposing this was all according to rule, I left them to repose in peace, and resigned ...
— Three Voyages for the Discovery of a Northwest Passage from the • Sir William Edward Parry
... impressive sight. The party of Europeans, all strangers to the dead but all deeply moved; the group of black-robed and turbaned Copts; the sailors from the boats; the gaily dressed dragomans; several brown-shirted fellaheen and the thick crowd of children—all the little Abab'deh stark naked and all behaving so well, the expression on their little faces touched me most of all. As Muslims, Omar and the boatmen laid him down in the grave, and while the English prayer was read the sun went down in a glorious flood of light ...
— Letters from Egypt • Lucie Duff Gordon
... pounded on my stateroom door, challenging me to a dip overboard. There was a glorious joy in his voice, as far reaching as reveille, that found response in the cockles of my heart. Gates, never happier than when standing beneath stretched canvas, hove-to as he saw us dash stark naked up the companionway stairs and clear the rail head-first, but he laid by only while we had our splash and continued the course southward the moment our hands grasped ...
— Wings of the Wind • Credo Harris
... condition of affairs which was heart-sickening. Children began their life in the coal mines at five, six, or seven years of age. Girls and women worked like boys and men, they were less than half clothed, and worked alongside of men who were stark naked. There were from twelve to fourteen working hours in the twenty-four, and these were often at night. Little girls of six or eight years of age made ten to twelve trips a day up steep ladders to the surface, carrying half a hundred weight of coal in wooden buckets on their backs at each journey. ...
— An Introduction to the Industrial and Social History of England • Edward Potts Cheyney
... Certain magistrates in Berkshire, Puritan magistrates, had had wind of a scandal. One moonlit summer night they had ridden out with their posse and there, among the hills, they had come upon a company of men and women, dancing, stark naked, among the sheepcotes. The magistrates and their men had ridden their horses into the crowd. How self-conscious the poor people must suddenly have felt, how helpless without their clothes against armed and ...
— Crome Yellow • Aldous Huxley
... and we were obliged to walk without them. Swimming we had been taught by an old sailor, who gave lessons to the school, and at last I could pick up an egg from the bottom of the overfall, a depth of about ten feet. I have also been upset from my boat, and had to lie stark naked on the grass in the sun till my clothes were dry. Twice I have been nearly drowned, once when I wandered away from the swimming class, and once when I could swim well. This later peril is worth a word or two, and I may as well say them now. I was staying by the sea-side, ...
— The Early Life of Mark Rutherford • Mark Rutherford
... lust he brings it up again into his mouth to a second enjoyment, and plays an after-game of lechery with his tongue much worse than that which the Cunnilingi used among the old Romans. He strips Nature stark naked, and clothes her in the most fantastic and ridiculous fashion a wild imagination can invent. He is worse and more nasty than a dog, for in his broad descriptions of others' obscene actions he does but lick up the vomit ...
— Character Writings of the 17th Century • Various
... only his money, which consisted of fifteen cents. Then they led him to a room and told him to strip for a bath; after which he had to walk down a long gallery, past the grated cell doors of the inmates of the jail. This was a great event to the latter—the daily review of the new arrivals, all stark naked, and many and diverting were the comments. Jurgis was required to stay in the bath longer than any one, in the vain hope of getting out of him a few of his phosphates and acids. The prisoners roomed two in a cell, but that day there was ...
— The Jungle • Upton Sinclair
... nearer him, the high marsh grasses undulating. Finally he saw a countless flock rising from the bed of the marshes. Beasts, groups of beasts, whose horns one saw like bayonets, jostled each other trying to keep to the firm land. Many of them swam and on the backs of some were naked men, stark naked, with hair falling to their shoulders and streaming behind them like manes. They shouted war-cries and waved their clubs. Rouletabille stopped short before this prehistoric invasion. He would never have imagined that a few miles from the Newsky Prospect ...
— The Secret of the Night • Gaston Leroux
... we reached the Burity it rained heavily, and next day the rain continued. In the morning the mules were ferried over, while the oxen were swum across. Half a dozen of our men—whites, Indians, and negroes, all stark naked and uttering wild cries, drove the oxen into the river and then, with powerful overhand strokes, swam behind and alongside them as they crossed, half breasting the swift current. It was a fine sight to ...
— Through the Brazilian Wilderness • Theodore Roosevelt
... that is to be found in Europe. Their statuettes and images of saints are often masterpieces. During the revolution their character as a class became materially worse. There are more than ten thousand of them who do literally nothing, possess nothing, and lie about the streets stark naked, with the exception ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 57, No. 352, February 1845 • Various
... in fawn- skins, with little pikes that had no steel about them, but were ivy-wreathed like themselves, and toy bucklers that tinkled at a touch; they took the tambourines for shields, you see; and then there were a few bumpkins among them, stark naked, who danced wildly, and had tails, and horns ...
— Works, V3 • Lucian of Samosata
... home—he had determined to give me a thrashing, and he had with him a piece of oak stick just suited for the purpose. After we had taunted each other for some time, as we went along, he flung his stick on the ground, and stripped himself stark naked. I took off my hat and my neck-cloth, and took his stick in my hand, whereupon running to the hedge he took a stake, and straight we set to like two furies. After fighting some time, our sticks were shivered to pieces and quite short; sometimes we were upon the ground, but did not give ...
— Wild Wales - Its People, Language and Scenery • George Borrow
... into the midst of them and smashed it, then, in darkness, strode along the tunnel muttering and cursing as he went— stark naked. ...
— Caesar Dies • Talbot Mundy
... Dutchmen in body and stature; some of them have well formed features, bodies and limbs; they all have black hair and eyes, but their skin is yellow. In summer they go naked, having only their private parts covered with a patch. The children and young folks to ten, twelve and fourteen years of age go stark naked. In winter, they hang about them simply an undressed deer or bear or panther skin; or they take some beaver and otter skins, wild cat, raccoon, martin, otter, mink, squirrel or such like skins, which are plenty in this country, and sew some of ...
— Narratives of New Netherland, 1609-1664 • Various
... the Niger and the Gaboon (especially on the Cameroon River, at Old Calabar, and in the Niger Delta), it is, or was, customary for young women to go about completely nude before they were married. In Swaziland, until quite recently, unmarried women and very often matrons went stark naked. Even amongst the prudish Baganda, who made it a punishable offense for a man to expose any part of his leg above the knee, the wives of the King would attend at his Court perfectly naked. Among the Kavirondo, all unmarried girls are completely nude, and although women ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 1 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... pitching about stiffly to the roll of the ship, with no one offering to touch them. There were a score more of sick, shrieking and knotting themselves in their agony. The survivors were in two sorts of panic—the comatose, and the madly violent. A crowd of yelling dancing negroes, most of them stark naked, had set up a ju-ju on a barrel of the fore-deck winch, and were sacrificing to it a hen which they had stolen from one of the coops. The little wooden god I knew: it was one that I had picked up in the Kasai country, and I was taking it home as ...
— The Harmsworth Magazine, v. 1, 1898-1899, No. 2 • Various
... Pobre in company with a hermit, and there he took his fill of weeping until Heaven sent him relief in the midst of his great grief and need. And if this be true, as it is, why should I now take the trouble to strip stark naked, or do mischief to these trees which have done me no harm, or why am I to disturb the clear waters of these brooks which will give me to drink whenever I have a mind? Long live the memory of Amadis and let him be imitated so far as is possible by Don Quixote of La Mancha, of ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... to Procopius and Agathias, the Persians were never wont to bury their Dead Bodies, so far were they from bestowing any Funeral Honours upon them: But, as these Authors tell us, they exposed them stark naked in the open fields, which is the greatest shame our Laws do allot to the most infamous Criminals, by laying them open to the view of all upon the highways: Yea, in their opinion it was a great unhappiness, if either Birds or Beasts did not devour their Carcases; and they commonly made ...
— A Further Contribution to the Study of the Mortuary Customs of the North American Indians • H.C. Yarrow
... not cut their hair, for they said that the children that they would bear would have no hair. When a woman is about to give birth, some men undress until they are stark naked. Then taking shields and catans, one takes his stand in the silong, and another on the ridge of the house, and they continually fence with the wind with their catans as long as the parturition lasts. I have removed some from this performance by force of punishment. They say that it is to ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 - Volume 40 of 55 • Francisco Colin
... came [to [4]] my Mistresss Toilet this Morning, for I am admitted when her Face is stark naked: She frowned, and cryed Pish when I said a thing that I stole; and I will be judged by you whether it was not very pretty. Madam, said I, you [shall [5]] forbear that Part of your Dress; it may be well in others, ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... one lock up a man or a woman who walked stark naked in the street? and why is no one shocked by absolutely nude statues, by pictures of the Madonna and of Jesus that may be ...
— Voltaire's Philosophical Dictionary • Voltaire
... his opinion, and in moral value, but in real effect commonly rob, sometimes murder, ever exceedingly wrong his neighbour. It is often the sole reward of a man's virtue and all the fruit of his industry; so that by depriving him of that, he is robbed of all his estate, and left stark naked of all, excepting a good conscience, which is beyond the reach of the world, and which no malice or misfortune can divest him of. Full then of iniquity, full of uncharitableness, full of all wickedness is this practice; and consequently ...
— Sermons on Evil-Speaking • Isaac Barrow
... on the bridge of Notre-Dame, inhabited principally by Protestants, were witnesses to many a scene of cruelty. All the inmates of one house were massacred, except a little girl, who was dipped stark naked in the blood of her father and mother and threatened to be served like them if she turned Huguenot. The Protestant booksellers and printers were particularly sought after. Spire Niquet was burned over a slow fire made out of his own books, and thrown lifeless, but not dead, into the river. ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1-20 • Various
... brushing through them, and, looking up, she saw with horror something worse than the worst she had feared. It was an awful face glaring at her,—a something made of devil, man, and beast in their most dreadful, forms. It was like a haggard old man, with wolfish eyes; he was stark naked; his shoulders and lips were gnawed away, as if, when mad with hunger, he had eaten his own flesh. He carried a bundle on big back. The woman had heard of the terrible Chenoo, the being who comes from the far, icy ...
— The Algonquin Legends of New England • Charles Godfrey Leland
... should have observed, that for an hour and more before they went off, they went to dancing, and I could easily discern their postures and gestures by my glasses; I could only perceive, by my nicest observation, that they were stark naked, and had not the least covering upon them; but whether they were men or women, that I ...
— The Life and Adventures of Robinson Crusoe (1808) • Daniel Defoe
... way to Pocasset, she "attempted," reads the tale, "to get over a river or arm of the sea near by, upon a raft, or some pieces of broken wood; but whether tired and spent with swimming, or starved with cold and hunger, she was found stark naked in Metapoiset [near present Swansea of southern Massachusetts, at the Rhode Island line], not far from the water side, which made some think she was first half drowned; and ...
— Boys' Book of Indian Warriors - and Heroic Indian Women • Edwin L. Sabin
... abroad with my protector the sorrel nag, and the weather exceeding hot, I entreated him to let me bathe in a river that was near. He consented, and I immediately stripped myself stark naked, and went down softly into the stream. It happened that a young female Yahoo, standing behind a bank, saw the whole proceeding, and inflamed by desire, as the nag and I conjectured, came running with all speed, and leaped into ...
— Gulliver's Travels - into several remote nations of the world • Jonathan Swift
... on for a little while decorously; but one day the old wild blood in him boiled up—away went shovel-hat and boots, he peeled off his gaiters and knee-breeches, tore his lawn sleeves to rags, and dashed off a howling savage, stark naked, to take to himself a dozen wives, and to go head-hunting. What was born in the bone would come out ...
— Castles and Cave Dwellings of Europe • Sabine Baring-Gould
... is there in this house? Let's all strip stark naked. We may as well do the thing thoroughly when we're about it. We've stripped ourselves morally naked: well, let us strip ourselves physically naked as well, and see how we like it. I tell you I can't bear this. I was brought up to be respectable. I don't mind the ...
— Heartbreak House • George Bernard Shaw
... encampment,—with as much unwillingness as Sailor Bill had done but an hour before. Equally sans ceremonie, or even with less ceremony, did they enter among the tents, and certainly in a less becoming costume,—since all three were stark naked with the ...
— The Boy Slaves • Mayne Reid
... became harmless or even obligatory on Wednesday or Thursday. It was all very hard for a rational being to understand and explain: but he meant to fathom it, all the same, to the very bottom—to find out why, for example, in Uganda, whoever appears before the king must appear stark naked, while in England, whoever appears before the queen must wear a tailor's sword or a long silk train and a headdress of ostrich-feathers; why, in Morocco, when you enter a mosque, you must take off your shoes and catch a violent cold, in order to show your respect for Allah; while in Europe, on entering ...
— The British Barbarians • Grant Allen
... on were two men, stark naked, who had been bathing near by. About fifty or sixty people soon collected, and some time passed before it occurred to any one to remark that these two men ...
— The War in the Air; Vol. 1 - The Part played in the Great War by the Royal Air Force • Walter Raleigh
... number of languages arose from all parts of The Enormous Room. Rockyfeller gave a contemptuous look around him and proceeded with his conversation. A curse emanated from the darkness. Up sprang The Fighting Sheeney, stark naked; strode over to the bed of ...
— The Enormous Room • Edward Estlin Cummings
... intemperance. At a dinner which a wealthy Alderman gave to some of the leading members of the government, the Lord Treasurer and the Lord Chancellor were so drunk that they stripped themselves almost stark naked, and were with difficulty prevented from climbing up a signpost to drink His Majesty's health. The pious Treasurer escaped with nothing but the scandal of the debauch: but the Chancellor brought on a violent fit of his complaint. His life was for some time thought ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 2 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... about the surf that I do not understand, and that is why witches always walk stark naked along the beach by it at night, and eat sea crabs the while. That such is a confirmed habit of theirs is certain; and they tell me that while doing this the witches emit a bright light, and also that there is a certain medicine, which, if you have it with you, you can throw over the witch, and ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... neither know nor believe, that any of our company, one or other, did offer insult to any of their women, and yet we saw many hundreds, and had many in our power, and of those very young and excellently favoured, which came among us without deceit, stark naked. Nothing got us more love amongst them than this usage; for I suffered not any man to take from any of the nations so much as a pina (pineapple) or a potato root without giving them contentment, nor any man so much as to offer to ...
— The Discovery of Guiana • Sir Walter Raleigh
... on the platform outside, and had for this reason not been at his brother's house, where he slept, when that domicile was searched, was called in, and while his official master rested, was made to strip himself stark naked, and turn his few slight garments—the clothing of a Moro is always an uncertain quantity—inside out to show ...
— Anting-Anting Stories - And other Strange Tales of the Filipinos • Sargent Kayme
... you want towels?' And stark naked he went out into the hall, striding a strange, white figure between the unliving furniture. He came back with the towels, and took his former position, crouching seated before the fire ...
— Women in Love • D. H. Lawrence
... board, groped along the dusky passage, pushed open a door and looked in on the kitchen, where, amid clouds of vapour, Mrs. Mayow and her daughter Cherry were washing the children. Each had a tub and a child in it; and three children, already washed, skipped around the floor stark naked, one with a long churchwarden pipe blowing bubbles which the other two pursued. In the far corner, behind a deal table, sat Mr. Mayow, and patiently tuned a fiddle—a quite hopeless task in ...
— The Laird's Luck • Arthur Quiller-Couch
... Nevertheless I laid the boat close to the rocks and beckoned to them to approach but none of them would come within 200 yards of us. They were armed in the same manner as the people we had seen from Restoration Island; they were stark naked, their colour black, with short bushy hair or wool, and in their appearance were similar to them in every respect. An island of a good height bore north half west four miles from us, at which I resolved to land and from thence to take a look at the coast. At this isle we arrived about ...
— A Voyage to the South Sea • William Bligh
... with a great wind, and five days by land. He discoursed of the whole country, and of every province, and of their sagamores, and their number of men and strength. The wind beginning to rise a little, we cast a horseman's coat about him; for he was stark naked, only a leather about his waist, with a fringe about a span long or little more. He had a bow and two arrows, the one headed, and the other unheaded. He was a tall, straight man, the hair of his head black, long behind, only short before, none ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. IX (of X) - America - I • Various
... and legs about, wagging his head, grimacing and uttering whinnying and other curious noises. Never had Martin looked upon so strange a man! He was long and lean so that you could have counted his ribs, and he was stark naked, except for the hair of his head and face, which half covered him. His skin was of a yellowish brown colour, and the hair the colour of old dead grass; and it was coarse and tangled, falling over his shoulders ...
— A Little Boy Lost • Hudson, W. H.
... foes for the boon, for they struck his only son dead, and tore his heart out before his father's eyes. Hardly any man or woman survived, except by accident. A body of some hundred burghers made their escape across the snow into the open country. They were, however, overtaken, stripped stark naked, and hung upon the trees by the feet, to freeze, or to perish by a more lingering death. Most of them soon died, but twenty, who happened to be wealthy, succeeded, after enduring much torture, in purchasing their lives of their inhuman persecutors. ...
— A Wanderer in Holland • E. V. Lucas
... But, there! these preparatory digressions are the idle digressions and fastidious commentaries which certain unbelievers compel a man to wind about a tale, swaddling clothes about an infant when it should run about stark naked. May the great devil give them a clyster with his red-hot three-pronged fork. I am going on with my story ...
— Droll Stories, Volume 3 • Honore de Balzac
... as we were sailing along, we saw people stand on the shore looking at us: we could also perceive they were black and stark naked. I was inclined to go on shore, but Xury cried, "No, no:" however, I approached nearer, and I found they run along the shore by me a good way. They had no weapons in their hands, except one, who held a long stick, which Xury told me was a lance, with which ...
— The Life and Most Surprising Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, of - York, Mariner (1801) • Daniel Defoe
... grievous damage; after the report, however, of some of the men of the yacht Aernem, who being wounded on the 11th aforementioned, succeeded in making their escape, the natives are tall black men with curly heads of hair and two large holes through their noses, stark naked, not covering even their privities; their arms are arrows, bows, assagays, callaways and the like. They have no vessels either large or small, nor has the coast any capes or bights that might afford shelter from west- and south-winds, the whole shore being ...
— The Part Borne by the Dutch in the Discovery of Australia 1606-1765 • J. E. Heeres
... my ancient jerkin, which abandoned me in cowardly wise, at the beginning of the winter, under the pretext that it was falling into tatters, and that it required repose in the basket of a rag-picker. What is one to do? Civilization has not yet arrived at the point where one can go stark naked, as ancient Diogenes wished. Add that a very cold wind was blowing, and 'tis not in the month of January that one can successfully attempt to make humanity take this new step. This garment presented itself, I took it, and I left my ancient ...
— Notre-Dame de Paris - The Hunchback of Notre Dame • Victor Hugo
... The description of the Algonquin shields by Champlain, when compared with his drawings, suggests that we cannot always take artistic representations as exact. In his designs only a few Algonquins and one Iroquois carry the huge shields; the unshielded men are stark naked, as on the Mycenaean silver vase. But in his text Champlain says that the Iroquois, like the Algonquins, "carried arrow-proof shields" and "a sort of armour woven of cotton thread"—Homer's [Greek: linothoraex] (Iliad, II. 259, 850). These facts appear in only ...
— Homer and His Age • Andrew Lang
... a house, where a sorcerer was about to perform as doctor, and to cure a woman, who lay very ill. I was determined to watch him as narrowly as possible. Both doctor and patient were stark naked. After a series of most horrible grimaces, the sorcerer produced a very large yam, which he held up, pretending that he had limpt it, (for thus they call this species of legerdemain), out of the ...
— Letters on the Nicobar islands, their natural productions, and the manners, customs, and superstitions of the natives • John Gottfried Haensel
... progress, they were kept entirely without food. It was no wonder then, every man of the Brisk who first looked upon them did so with a feeling of loathing and abhorrence of such a trade. All over the vessel, but more especially below, old women, stark naked, were dying in the most disgusting "ferret-box" atmosphere; while all those who had sufficient strength were pulling up the hatches, and tearing at the salt fish they found below, like dogs in ...
— The Discovery of the Source of the Nile • John Hanning Speke
... table where sat the two officers with the paper forms. "Name?" "Sabre." The officer nearer him drew a form towards him and poised a fountain pen over it. Sabre felt it extraordinarily odd to be standing stark naked before two men fully dressed. In his rejection at Tidborough the time ...
— If Winter Comes • A.S.M. Hutchinson
... of a mile below the bateau. Here he waited for a time, while the thickness of the clouds broke, and a gray light came through them, revealing dimly the narrow path of pebbly wash along the shore. Silently, a stark naked shadow in the night, he came back to the bateau and ...
— The Flaming Forest • James Oliver Curwood
... seasons, or in the bitter cold of winter, primeval man contented himself with flinging over his shoulders the skins of the animals he had killed. He prepared these skins with flint scrapers, and sewed them together with bone needles. In hot weather man probably roamed about stark naked. Shame is not a natural instinct; education alone develops it. Writing in 1617, Fynes Morison speaks of having seen at Cork young girls quite naked, engaged in crushing corn with a stone. The Tchoutchi women, says Nordenskiold, wear ...
— Manners and Monuments of Prehistoric Peoples • The Marquis de Nadaillac
... the heat, her passions, hunger, and wretchedness, her head was turned, and she became so mad that she went out of the house stark naked, and ran up and down St. Peter's Place, asking those who stopped her to take her to my house. This sad story went all over the town and caused me a great deal of annoyance. The poor wretch was sent to an asylum, and did not recover her reason for five years. When ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... I should have done the same for the natives had I had the time, especially for Rul, but I had not. About dusk I brought to, just off the Cape, and dropped them over the side one after another—only just realising, ten minutes previously, that I was still stark naked! ...
— Yorke The Adventurer - 1901 • Louis Becke
... old fellow to Malak, stroking my face with his horny, grimy palm. "I never saw anything like it before." Most of the men were clothed in dirty, discoloured rags. The women wore simply a cloth tied loosely over the loins, while male and female children fourteen or fifteen years old ran about stark naked. ...
— A Ride to India across Persia and Baluchistan • Harry De Windt
... been hitherto restrained by the united exertions of the three women, here burst from their arms, tossed off his blanket, and leaped with a whoop into the middle of the floor;—except the short petticoat about his loins he was stark naked. "I'm twal stane wecht—my name's Aleck Lawther—I'll slap ony man o' ye for four-an'-twenty tens!" As he uttered this challenge, tossing his long arms about his head, bouncing upright, and cutting like a posture-master at ...
— Tales from Blackwood, Volume 7 • Various
... more semblance of uniform than hunting shirts on a common pattern. In the following December, he wrote of many men as either shivering in garments fit only for summer wear or as entirely naked. There was a time in the later campaign in the South when hundreds of American soldiers marched stark naked, except for breech cloths. One of the most pathetic hardships of the soldier's life was due to the lack of boots. More than one of Washington's armies could be tracked by the bloody footprints of his barefooted men. Near ...
— Washington and his Comrades in Arms - A Chronicle of the War of Independence • George Wrong
... plump and cushioned; large-lipped, perfect, redundant and ample,[FN130] and their faces were as moons and their hair as night upon day, for that they were of the daughters of the Kings. When they were clean, they came up out of the water, stark naked, as the moon on the night of fullness and the old woman questioned Hasan of them, company by company, if his wife were among them; but, as often as she asked him of a troop, he made answer, "She is not among these, O my lady."—And Shahrazad perceived the dawn of day and ceased ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 8 • Richard F. Burton
... held up a long pole, with a white bit of cloth on it, for a signal of peace to them. We found they understood us presently, for they came flocking to us, men, women, and children, most of them, of both sexes, stark naked. At first they stood wondering and staring at us, as if we had been monsters, and as if they had been frighted; but we found they inclined to be familiar with us afterwards. The first thing we did to try them, was, we held up our hands to our mouths, as if ...
— The Life, Adventures & Piracies of the Famous Captain Singleton • Daniel Defoe
... of war. He would often, even in mid-winter, have one or two pailsful of cold water poured upon him, as he rose from his bed, and then, in his shirt, leap upon an unsaddled horse and scour the camp with the speed of the wind. Sometimes he would appear, in the early morning, at the door of his tent, stark naked, and crow like a cock. This was a signal for the tented host to spring to arms. Occasionally he would visit the hospital, pretending that he was a physician, and would prescribe medicine for those whom he thought sick, and ...
— The Empire of Russia • John S. C. Abbott
... the ruins of Carthage saw not such a sight as presented itself to the afflicted people of San Francisco in the dim haze of the smoke pall at the end of the second day. Ruins stark naked, yawning at fearful angles and pinnacled into a thousand fearsome shapes, marked the site of what was three-fourths of the ...
— Complete Story of the San Francisco Horror • Richard Linthicum
... hearing the Name of Jesus they cou'd not prevail. Whereupon they quit this House, and Carry the Soldier to an exceeding high Mountain, where they show him a Number of Men and Women far beyond any of the former. These Wretches sat Stark Naked with their Toes bent, and look'd towards the North, as if they expected every minute to expire that way. And while the Soldier stood wondering what they waited for, one of the Devils said unto him: Possibly thou wondrest what these People ...
— The Purgatory of St. Patrick • Pedro Calderon de la Barca
... was always ready "to leap up in Extasy; and dip ... [his] Pen in the Sun" (iv). Parts of Hurlothrumbo, particularly the scene between Lady Flame and Wildfire (both of whom are described in the list of characters as "mad") in which Wildfire threatens to cast off his clothes and "run about stark naked" (48), bear an odd resemblance to "The King's Cameleopard" in Huckleberry Finn. But the disconnected verbal structure, along with the music and dancing, achieves a strange mixture that must have amused and, to a certain extent, bemused ...
— The Merry-Thought: or the Glass-Window and Bog-House Miscellany - Parts 2, 3 and 4 • Hurlo Thrumbo (pseudonym)
... robbers on the road," he said. "Northward, through the Circassian Gates, or eastward it's all the same. There's a man in a room across the way who was stripped stark naked and beaten because they thought he might have money in his clothes. When he reached this place without a stitch on him he still had all his money in his clenched fists! Quite a sportsman—what? Imagine his juggling with it ...
— The Eye of Zeitoon • Talbot Mundy
... earn a comfortable support, and even the means of procuring some land; which ought to be the utmost wish of every person who has health and hands to work. I knew a man who came to this country, in the literal sense of the expression, stark naked; I think he was a Frenchman, and a sailor on board an English man-of- war. Being discontented, he had stripped himself and swam ashore; where, finding clothes and friends, he settled afterwards at Maraneck, in the county of Chester, in the province of ...
— Letters from an American Farmer • Hector St. John de Crevecoeur
... their own clothes and their own cloth. They would not let the slaves have anything much. To keep them from being stark naked, they'd give ...
— Slave Narratives: Arkansas Narratives - Arkansas Narratives, Part 6 • Works Projects Administration
... laid his pistol down on the turf, and also proceeded to undress, until the two men stood face to face, stark naked. ...
— I Saw Three Ships and Other Winter Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... had no letters from home. We were actually marooned on Lemnos Island: as literally marooned on a barren desert isle as any buccaneer of the old Spanish galleon days. We went suddenly back to a savage life. We went down to bathe stark naked, with the sunset glowing orange on our sunburnt limbs. Here it was that Hawk proved himself a wonderfully good swimmer. He was lithe and supple and well-made—an extraordinary specimen of virile manhood—and he spent ...
— At Suvla Bay • John Hargrave
... and Spanish privateers, and eventually rose to being a pirate captain, making his headquarters in Madagascar. From here he sailed out to the East Indies, and preyed on the ships of the East India Company. Several times he was wrecked, once he was the only survivor, and swam ashore at Madagascar stark naked. The unusual sight of a naked Englishman spread terror amongst the natives who were on the beach, and they all fled into the jungle except one, a woman, who from previous personal experience knew that this was but a human being and not a sea devil. She supplied ...
— The Pirates' Who's Who - Giving Particulars Of The Lives and Deaths Of The Pirates And Buccaneers • Philip Gosse
... stark naked in the Morning at Sunrising, and bound to a Post, so that he could not stir Hand nor Foot, but as he was mov'd; and was placed with his Face Eastward against the Sun. In the Afternoon they turned his Face toward the West, that the Sun might still be in his Face; and thus he stood all Day, ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898—Volume 39 of 55 • Various
... began swimming and diving about like a lot of schoolboys. There is a great deal of the schoolboy in all Englishmen, that is what makes them so lovable. When they came out they ran over the grass to dry themselves, and then began playing lawn tennis, just as they were, stark naked, the future rulers of England. I shall never forget the scene. Wilfred Blunt had gone up to his wife's apartments and had changed into some fantastic pyjamas; suddenly he opened an upper window and came out and perched himself, cross-legged, on the balcony, looking down at the mad game of lawn ...
— Oscar Wilde, Volume 2 (of 2) - His Life and Confessions • Frank Harris
... second year after the War. Mother's mother was left in Jackson, Tennessee. Mother was sold at Vicksburg, Mississippi. Father's mother was left at Pittsburg, Virginia. Father was brought to Lake Providence and sold to Master Ross and Mr. Coleman was his overseer. He was stripped stark naked and put up on the block. That was Nigger Traders Rule, he said. He was black as men get to be. Mother was three-fourths white. Her master was her father. He had two families. They was raised up in the same house with his white family. Master's white wife raised her and kept her till her death. ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States from Interviews with Former Slaves, Arkansas Narratives, Part 4 • Works Projects Administration
... body in this life; he must see the Past as it is in its great disembodied minds; he must behold the famous heroes of Troy as they are in reality, not as they are in the glamor of poetry. As tested by their life and deeds he sees them below in the Netherworld; Greek souls stark naked in Hades he beholds, and then rises out ...
— Homer's Odyssey - A Commentary • Denton J. Snider
... the Indies, had an opportunity of seeing some of these at Bhopal, and the following is the picturesque description that he gives of them: "I remarked some groups of religious mendicants of a frightfully sinister character. They were Jogins, who, stark naked and with dishevelled hair, were walking about, shouting, and dancing a sort of weird dance. In the midst of their contortions they brandished long, sharp poniards, of a special form, provided with steel ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 446, July 19, 1884 • Various
... bestow the grist on me, at the Windmill, to hear some martial discourse; where I so marshall'd him, that I made him drunk with admiration; and, because too much heat was the cause of his distemper, I stript him stark naked as he lay along asleep, and borrowed his suit to deliver this counterfeit message in, leaving a rusty armour, and an old brown bill to watch him till my return; which shall be, when I have pawn'd his apparel, and spent the better part ...
— Every Man In His Humor - (The Anglicized Edition) • Ben Jonson
... grey ash which emphasised his rather potent eyes. His features in profile were pure Greek, and on his low forehead there was a touch of gold. His particular followers or disciples had the silly expression of a mesmerist's subjects; they sat in the dust stark naked and unashamed, and looked ...
— From Edinburgh to India & Burmah • William G. Burn Murdoch
... he was blistered from head to foot, notwithstanding all the eloquence of his tears and supplications. When I was satisfied with the stripes I had bestowed, we carried off his clothes, which we hid in a hedge near the place, and left him stark naked to find his way home in the best manner he could, while I took care to be there before him. I afterwards understood that, in his way to the lodgings of a friend, who lived in the skirts of the town, he was picked up by the watch, who carried him to the round-house, from whence he sent for ...
— The Adventures of Roderick Random • Tobias Smollett
... at first, then loudly, frantically. But no answer came, except that now the mocking din of the baboons seemed to jeer at us. They appeared to be gathered near us, all together. As we ran towards the sound the moon burst through a rift in the clouds. There ahead of us, stark naked, and running swiftly towards the baboons, we saw the figure of Hector, his body gleaming white in the moonbeams, and by his side the grey figure ...
— A Rip Van Winkle Of The Kalahari - Seven Tales of South-West Africa • Frederick Cornell
... knew that the way of bringing us to reason was to apply yourselves to the true source of all our opinions and the only motive to all our conduct! Now, it seems, you think yourselves affronted, because a few of us express some indignation at the minister who has thought fit to strip us stark naked, and expose the true state of our poxed and pestilential habit to the world! Think or say what you will in Ireland, I shall ever think it a crime hardly to be expiated by his blood. He might, and ought, by ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VI. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... against the background of dark foliage, were silently and dexterously maneuvered by small yellow men, stark naked, with long hair piled up in womanlike fashion on their heads. Gradually, as we advanced further up the green channel, the perfumes became more penetrating, and the monotonous chirp of the cicalas swelled out like an orchestral crescendo. Above us, on the luminous ...
— Madame Chrysantheme • Pierre Loti
... natives were brown, thick-lipped folk, all with rings in their ears and dead, brown eyes; they were almost naked, with just a strip of cotton cloth or plaited leaves round the middle, and the women had also a short petticoat of cotton stuff to cover them. All the children went about stark naked night and day, with great big prominent bellies simply glistening ...
— Pan • Knut Hamsun
... the islands above the Lake of St. Peter, and hid themselves all night in the rushes. In the morning they took heart, emerged from their hiding-places, descended to Quebec, and went thence to Tadousac, whither Champlain accompanied them. Here the squaws, stark naked, swam out to the canoes to receive the heads of the dead Iroquois, and, hanging them from their necks, danced in triumph along the shore. One of the heads and a pair of arms were then bestowed on Champiain,—touching memorials ...
— Great Epochs in American History, Volume I. - Voyages Of Discovery And Early Explorations: 1000 A.D.-1682 • Various
... Andramark, stark naked and still bleeding in many places, sat cross-legged in the cave, at the very rim of the medicine-spring. His head hung forward on his chest. All his muscles were soft and relaxed. After a while the hangings of the ...
— IT and Other Stories • Gouverneur Morris
... Mr. Celliers sank down in agony of mind and body, too great for words. More Kaffir beer was respectfully tendered to him and he drank it gratefully, meanwhile watching with dull interest the Kaffir babies, jet black and stark naked, except for a small fringe of blue beads about the loins, as they crept around him, ...
— The Petticoat Commando - Boer Women in Secret Service • Johanna Brandt
... supped at the 'Ermitaj' and when they were all good and drunk, one of Vladimir's guests, Prince Galitzin, bet the host the price of the supper and a champagne bath for all, that he could induce the famous danseuse Mshinskaya to descend the stairs stark naked and walk among the tables below ...
— Secret Memoirs: The Story of Louise, Crown Princess • Henry W. Fischer
... where thou shalt find some leavings of beer [FN123] which thou mayest drink." So she ate and drank and washed her hands, and went and lay down by the side of the slave, upon the cane trash and, stripping herself stark naked, she crept in with him under his foul coverlet and his rags and tatters. When I saw my wife, my cousin, the daughter of my uncle, do this deed[FN124] I clean lost my wits, and climbing down from the roof, I entered and took ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... confidence in the noise and rumor. The enemy immediately fired the house of the said master-of-camp, killing him and all the inmates, so that no one escaped except the wife, and her they left grievously wounded and stark naked, believing her to be dead, although she was afterward cured of her wounds. During this time of this their first act of cruelty, the citizens were assured of the truth; and although none of them had ever imagined so unlooked-for an event, finally ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 - Volume VI, 1583-1588 • Emma Helen Blair
... "I may now bid farewell to life, these cursed witches will convey me to the pantry or cellar of some nobleman, and there leave me, to pay with my neck for their robberies; or they will abandon me stark naked, to freeze to death upon the sea-brink of old Shire Caer, {3} or some other cold, distant place;" but on reflecting that all the old hags whom I had once known had long been dead and buried, and perceiving that these people took pleasure ...
— The Sleeping Bard - or, Visions of the World, Death, and Hell • Ellis Wynne
... world. I'd crawl somewhere to a cave, and slink there. And yet, 'tis a noble and heroic thing, the wind! who ever conquered it? In every fight it has the last and bitterest blow. Run tilting at it, and you but run through it. Ha! a coward wind that strikes stark naked men, but will not stand to receive a single blow. Even Ahab is a braver thing—a nobler thing than that. Would now the wind but had a body; but all the things that most exasperate and outrage mortal man, all these things are bodiless, but only ...
— Great Sea Stories • Various
... actor's raincoat where it hung before, and emerges again. But this time he is naked. He has been naked under the coat all this time. Is it possible? Why not? No inhibitions, no restraint, no covering; Solem has thought it all out. Now, stark naked, he stalks to ...
— Look Back on Happiness • Knut Hamsun
... drowned; charming prospect!—tossed about for seven hours; driven into the port of Cronsflot. Czar leaves us, saying, 'Too much of a jest, eh, gentlemen?' All got ashore wet as dog-fishes, made a fire, stripped stark naked (a Dutch ambassador stark naked,—think of it, Sir!), crept into some covers of sledges, and rose next morning with the ague,—positive fact, Sir! Had the ague for two months. Saw the Czar in August; 'A charming excursion to my pleasure-house,' ...
— Devereux, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... performed at Labuan Deli, in Sumatra, on the Chinese New Year. A Chinaman of the coolie class was squatted stark naked on the roadside, holding on his knees a brass pan the size of a wash-hand basin, piled a foot high with red-hot charcoal. The heat reached one's face at two yards, but if it had been a tray of ices the man couldn't have been more ...
— Modern Mythology • Andrew Lang
... says of Bahia, "Who would believe it? there are shops full of those poor wretches, who are exposed there stark naked and bought like cattle, over whom the buyers have the same power; so that upon slight disgust they may kill them, almost without fear of punishment, or at least treat them as cruelly as they please. I know not how such barbarity can be reconciled to the maxims ...
— Journal of a Voyage to Brazil - And Residence There During Part of the Years 1821, 1822, 1823 • Maria Graham
... came other braves as though to meet and ask Stabber explanation of his strange quitting the field. Down came a dozen others, young braves mad for battle, eager to join the ranks of this new leader, and Ray, who had turned on Field once more, fixed his glasses on that stalwart, nearly stark naked, brilliantly painted form, foremost of the Indian array and now at last ...
— A Daughter of the Sioux - A Tale of the Indian frontier • Charles King
... trampish while I had the disguise on, that he used to come at me with a golluf stick and whack me on the head. And when I got into my own room I kept right on being a tramp. Took off my clothes—still a tramp. Took off my false whiskers—still a tramp. I'd be there stark naked and I'd still be a tramp. Yes, sir. That's the kind of detective disguising I did. And then I'd take a bath. Then I was myself again. Yes, sir. When I'd scrubbed myself in the bathtub I figured I'd got rid of the tramp disguise right down into the skin, and I'd be ...
— Philo Gubb Correspondence-School Detective • Ellis Parker Butler
... should immediately draw a tooth: after which they have gone in a body and smoked a cobler. The same company at another night has each man burned his cravat, and one, perhaps, whose estate would bear it, has thrown a long wig and laced hat into the fire. Thus they have jested themselves stark naked, and run into the streets and frighted the people very successfully. There is no inhabitant of any standing in Covent Garden, but can tell you a hundred good humours where people have come off with a little ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange
... of fifteen, perhaps, was plaiting pandanus-leaf to make a hat, and an old woman was sitting on her haunches smoking a pipe. Then I saw Ata. She was suckling a new-born child, and another child, stark naked, was playing at her feet. When she saw me she called out to Strickland, and he came to the door. He, too, wore nothing but a . He was an extraordinary figure, with his red beard and matted hair, and his ...
— The Moon and Sixpence • W. Somerset Maugham
... spirits, and to be sanguine about a change of men and of measures. Je n'en crois rien. Charles said last night if I would give him five guineas he would give me 100 if I lost my place. He must get one himself to justify my accepting the proposal. The match of tennis stark naked was not played, which I am sorry for. Another red Ribbon vacant, Sir C. Montagu. Clinton anticipated that which Lord ...
— George Selwyn: His Letters and His Life • E. S. Roscoe and Helen Clergue
... in dirty rags, but loaded down on ankles and arms by heavy silver bangles and painted in the center of the forehead with her caste mark. She was followed by a poverty-stricken Mohammedan leading a little boy, stark naked, while a girl with brilliant cap held the boy's hand. A naked Tamil, with only a dirty loin cloth, brushed elbows with three Parsee girls, beautifully dressed. And so this purely democratic human tide flowed on ...
— The Critic in the Orient • George Hamlin Fitch
... we met Connor, who had turned back to see how we were getting on, and who informed us we had only one-half hour more before us. Going on, we were greeted by a shout of welcome from our first Ilongot, standing in the trail, subligate, or gee-stringed, otherwise stark naked, and armed with a spear, the sentinel of a sort of outpost, equally naked, with which we soon came up. They were all armed, too, spears and shields, and all insisted on shaking hands with every one of us. ...
— The Head Hunters of Northern Luzon From Ifugao to Kalinga • Cornelis De Witt Willcox
... flushed a native; but before the rest of the party could come up, he had taken to flight. The simultaneous cries of "here's a native!" "where!" "here!" "there he goes stark naked," rose; and before ALL EYES could catch a glimpse, his dark figure insensibly blended with the waving branches of his wild solitude, and without a cry of fear or joy, he was lost to us, perhaps for ever! We burst through the same brushwood he had recently thrown aside, and entered a labyrinth ...
— Discoveries in Australia, Volume 2 • John Lort Stokes
... supply has other uses; and ships well charged with it seem to sail the stiffest:—there is a touch of pathos. The Egoist surely inspires pity. He who would desire to clothe himself at everybody's expense, and is of that desire condemned to strip himself stark naked, he, if pathos ever had a form, might be taken for the actual person. Only he is not allowed to rush at you, roll you over and squeeze your body for the briny drops. There is ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... seene 300 men goe to warrs, and each man his boat, ffor they are that makes the least boats. The company that we had filled above 360 boats. There weare boats that caryed seaven men, and the least two. It was a pleasur to see that imbarquing, ffor all the yong women went in stark naked, their hairs hanging down, yett it is not their coustoms to doe soe. I thought it their shame, but contrary they thinke it excellent & old custome good. They sing a loud and sweetly. They stood in their boats, and remained in that posture halfe a day, to encourage us ...
— Voyages of Peter Esprit Radisson • Peter Esprit Radisson
... remains of crude paving. All else was a morass. Single palm trees shot up straight, to burst like rockets in a falling star of fronds. Men and women, clad in a single cotton shift reaching to the knees, lounged in the doorways or against the frail walls, smoking cigars. Pot-bellied children, stark naked, played everywhere, but principally in the mudholes and on the offal dumps. Innumerable small, hairless dogs were everywhere about, a great curiosity to us, who had never even heard of such things. We looked into some of the interiors, but saw nothing in the way of decent furniture. The ...
— Gold • Stewart White
... yet, till at last we could scarcely breathe, and the perspiration poured out of us. Half an hour more, and though we were all now stark naked, we could hardly bear it. The place was like an antechamber of the infernal regions proper. I dipped my hand into the water and drew it out almost with a cry; it was nearly boiling. We consulted a little thermometer we ...
— Allan Quatermain • by H. Rider Haggard
... alert as we approached the curve that opens the meadow into view, and—as I am a Christian man, living in the twentieth century—I saw this Vision: I beheld beneath the shade of the midmost oak eight men sitting stark naked, whereof one blew on a flute, one played a concertina, and the rest beat their palms together, marking the time; while before them, in couples on the sward, my gang of navvies rotated in a clumsy waltz watched by a ring ...
— News from the Duchy • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... caresses which again roused the fire within me. My staff of love started up proud and erect as if eager to exhibit its full proportions to her ardent gaze. Upon me the effect was most delicious. To find myself lying there stark naked before a lovely girl and undergoing the delightful touches with which she covered every part of my person as she explored my most secret charms, and at the same time to gaze on all her splendid beauties which were as freely exposed before me, was ...
— Laura Middleton; Her Brother and her Lover • Anonymous
... which they have gone in a Body and smoaked a Cobler. The same Company, at another Night, has each Man burned his Cravat; and one perhaps, whose Estate would bear it, has thrown a long Wigg and laced Hat into the same Fire. [2] Thus they have jested themselves stark naked, and ran into the Streets, and frighted Women very successfully. There is no Inhabitant of any standing in Covent-Garden, but can tell you a hundred good Humours, where People have come off with little Blood-shed, and yet scowered all the witty Hours of the Night. I know a Gentleman that ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... not larger than that of an oyster-shell, which when open to the tide, his mouth very much resembled. As for his neck, it was so long that no portion of dress at that time discovered was capable of covering more than one third of it; so that there were always two parts out of three left stark naked, and helplessly exposed to the elements. Whenever he smiled he looked as if he was about to weep. As the squire said, he was dreadfully round-shouldered—had dangling arms, that kept napping about him as if ...
— Willy Reilly - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... they kept them there, standing at attention, stark naked, so that they were half-frozen when the gray, cold light of the dawn began to show behind them in the east. And then the Germans laughed, and ...
— A Minstrel In France • Harry Lauder
... was taken, the prisoners were questioned, and despoiled. Often, indeed, they were stripped stark naked, and granted the privilege of seeing their finery on a pirate's back. Each buccaneer had the right to take a shift of clothes out of each prize captured. The cargo was then rummaged, and the state of the ship looked to, with an eye to using her as a cruiser. As a rule, the prisoners were put ashore ...
— On the Spanish Main - Or, Some English forays on the Isthmus of Darien. • John Masefield
... necessary was to be examined by the regimental surgeon as to my physical fitness, so we at once went to the surgeon's tent. I had previously heard all sorts of stories as to the thoroughness of this examination, that sometimes the prospective recruits had to strip, stark naked, and jump about, in order to show that their limbs were perfect. But I was agreeably disappointed in that regard. The surgeon, at that time, was a fat, jolly old doctor by the name of Leonidas Clemmons. I was about scared ...
— The Story of a Common Soldier of Army Life in the Civil War, 1861-1865 • Leander Stillwell
... suppose, must be the case of a family in Houndsditch, where a man and his daughter (the rest of the family being, as I suppose, carried away before by the dead cart) were found stark naked, one in one chamber and one in another, lying dead on the floor, and the clothes of the beds (from whence it is supposed they were rolled off by thieves) stolen, and ...
— History of the Plague in London • Daniel Defoe
... trouble in the streets. Mobs. And that's an incredible feat of observation," Costa marveled. "I had the feeling that if I came in here stark naked, you wouldn't ...
— The K-Factor • Harry Harrison (AKA Henry Maxwell Dempsey)
... drunk sometimes and get on the niggers and beat them up. He would have them stark naked and would be beating them. Then old missis would come right out there and stop him. She would say, 'I didn't come all the way here from North Carolina to have my niggers beat up for nothin'.' She'd take hold of the cowhide, and he would have to quit. My father had both her picture and ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States - Volume II. Arkansas Narratives. Part I • Work Projects Administration
... do I, and heartily upon my conscience, burie him stark naked, he would rise again, within two hours imbroidered: sow mustard-seeds, and they cannot come up so thick as his new sattens do, and clothes of silver, ...
— Wit Without Money - The Works of Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher • Francis Beaumont |
