"Straddle" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... preference to King Henry the Eighth. Though, as a woman, I bear him no rancour, for his wives were—fools, point blank. No man was ever so manageable. My diplomatist is getting liker and liker to him every day. Leaner, of course, and does not habitually straddle. Whiskers and morals, I mean. We must be silent before our prudish sister. Not a prude? We talk diplomacy, dearest. He complains of the exclusiveness of the port of Oporto, and would have strict alliance between Portugal and ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... there was two birds sitting on a fence, he would bet you which one would fly first; or if there was a camp-meeting, he would be there reg'lar, to bet on Parson Walker, which he judged to be the best exhorter about here, and so he was, too, and a good man. If he even seen a straddle-bug start to go anywheres, he would bet you how long it would take him to get wherever he was going to, and if you took him up, he would foller that straddle-bug to Mexico but what he would find out where he was ...
— Humorous Masterpieces from American Literature • Various
... at mining a leased claim up here, but I'll admit I'm nothing but a wandering cow-puncher—a kind of mounted hobo. I have an itch to keep moving. I've been here a year and I'm crazy to straddle a horse and ride off into the West. I know the South and East pretty well—so the open country for me is off there where the sun goes down." His voice had a touch of poetry in it, and the other man, though he felt the bigness of the ...
— They of the High Trails • Hamlin Garland
... just naturally have t' pike along after 'em an' take care of it ourselves. They ain't got such a rip-roarin' start of us—an' I'm the boy can foller that track from hell t' breakfast an' back again. So let's eat a bite, an' then straddle our caballos ...
— Raw Gold - A Novel • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... with his back to the fire and his legs a-straddle. Cai stuck his hands in his pockets and stared gloomily out of window. For some three minutes neither spoke, then Cai, of a sudden, gave ...
— Hocken and Hunken • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... that witnessed the unbecoming straddle of this French Bourbon between revolution and reaction, beheld the restoration of another Bourbon in the person of Ferdinand VII to the throne of Spain, and the return of Pope Pius VII, amid the enthusiastic shouts of the Romans, to the ancient see upon the Tiber. ...
— A Political and Social History of Modern Europe V.1. • Carlton J. H. Hayes
... Therefore, I ask as a personal favor, seein' that BARNUM sarved me same's he did old Plymouth Rock, that when this august assemblage of Fossilized human bein's comes down onto the mail portion of the U. States, old P.T. be turned over to us. I'le make him think he's got straddle his wooly hoss, and an army of mermades was after him with ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 22, August 27, 1870 • Various
... deed's a herrin, an' we micht a' witness the same by gannin to the Shouther o' Birkin Brae." And truly it was as he said, for we found the mark of the little Highlandman's shillela on the fox's head, while he himself was sitting a straddle on him, like "the devil looking over Lincoln Minster," and the dogs lying ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 19, No. - 537, March 10, 1832 • Various
... to dissuade us the next day from going down into the canon: "Don't straddle a mule and poke your noses down to the ground, and plunge down that dangerous icy trail, imagining, because you get a few shivers down your backs, you are seeing the glories of the canon, or getting any conception of the noble ...
— Our Friend John Burroughs • Clara Barrus
... time, and it was all I could do to keep even by playing on the square with big "injins," as I found them very good card players. I held out a hand, but had to wait some time for the "wild man of the forest." At last there was a big "blind and straddle," and I kept raising it before the draw. They all "stayed," and drew two or three cards (I do not remember which). I took one, and when we came to "show down," I was the lucky fellow. This was too much for the bucks, so three of them dropped out, and left an old chief and myself single-handed. ...
— Forty Years a Gambler on the Mississippi • George H. Devol
... peacefully at the hay that had been liberally distributed among them because there was hardly grass enough for a "burro." We were all ready to turn in, but there stood our temporary commander, his long legs a-straddle, his hands clasped behind him, and the flickering light of the fire betraying in his face both profound dejection ...
— Starlight Ranch - and Other Stories of Army Life on the Frontier • Charles King
... silver, an' driv'[FN: drove] de stock to de swamp. Dey didn' burn nothin', but us hear'd tell o' burnin's in Scooba an' Meridian. I were a-plowin' a mule an' de Yankees made me take him out. De las' I seen o' dat mule, he were headed for Scooba wid three Yankees a-straddle of 'im. ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves - Mississippi Narratives • Works Projects Administration
... ROBERTS, a heavy light brown woman with a basket on her arm. A boy about ten walks beside her carrying a small child about a year old straddle of his back. Her skirts are sweeping the ground. She walks up to the step, puts one foot upon the steps and looks forlornly at all the men, then fixes her look ...
— The Mule-Bone: - A Comedy of Negro Life in Three Acts • Zora Hurston and Langston Hughes
... Stratford town if he must needs wait until the end of the world or go to the Indies after it. And he has had his breakfast served in Master Geoffrey Inchbold's own room at the Swan, and swears that he will walk the whole way to Coventry sooner than straddle the horse that the burgesses have sent ...
— Master Skylark • John Bennett
... harness shop to get a pint of strap oil to oil some harnes, and if i wood go with him ferst he would go with me. so i said yes and we went. jest before we got there Beany said you go in and ask for it, and i will wait becaus old Kellog dont like me very well. so i went in and old Kellog was sitting straddle of a seet with big wooden nippers on it and he was sowing on a harness and he said cross like what do you want and i said i want a pint of strap oil and he said o yes i have got some good strap oil and he got down and grabed me by the coller and took down a strap ...
— 'Sequil' - Or Things Whitch Aint Finished in the First • Henry A. Shute
... and about fifty stumps—were pretty well cleared; and then came a problem that could n't be worked-out on a draught-board. I have already said that we had n't any draught horses; indeed, the only thing on the selection like a horse was an old "tuppy" mare that Dad used to straddle. The date of her foaling went further back than Dad's, I believe; and she was shaped something like an alderman. We found her one day in about eighteen inches of mud, with both eyes picked out by the crows, and her hide bearing evidence that a feathery tribe had made a roost of her carcase. Plainly, ...
— On Our Selection • Steele Rudd
... how he'd finish when he began. Now for that dear Mr. Harlan," Buck replied, vaulting into the saddle. He turned and looked at Hopalong, and his wonder grew. "Hey, you! Yes, you! Come out of that an' put on yore lid! Straddle leather—we can't stay ...
— Bar-20 Days • Clarence E. Mulford
... therefore begin with balancing lessons. The patient is directed to stand at "Attention," head up and chest out, not looking at his feet, as the ataxic always wishes to do. At first this is enough to require; it will not do to be too particular about how his feet are placed, so long as he does not straddle. He can repeat this effort for himself a dozen times a day, for a minute or two each time. Next we try the same position with a little more care about getting the feet pretty near together and parallel, or ...
— Fat and Blood - An Essay on the Treatment of Certain Forms of Neurasthenia and Hysteria • S. Weir Mitchell
... "We straddle all day long to lift up the green leaves in the sunshine," replied the branches. "We have to spread ourselves on every side, so that they may all get the same amount. If you could look up here, you would see that some of us are crooked with the mere effort. ...
— The Old Willow Tree and Other Stories • Carl Ewald
... mercenaries." That there were many swaggerers and bullies about, we learn from Duerer's prints. In every crowd these gentlemen in leathern tights, with other ostentatious additions to their costume, besides poniards and daggers to emphasise the brutal male, strut straddle-legged and self-assured; and of course raw lads and loutish prentices yielded them the sincerest flattery. We can well understand that the model boy, to whom "God had given diligence," with his long hair lovely as a girl's, and his ...
— Albert Durer • T. Sturge Moore
... ye this time," he muttered between his compressed lips; "ye shan't git out of me hands till ye's down flat on yer back and mesilf layin' a-straddle of ye. There's a difference between boxin' and sparrin' and I shall taich ye ...
— The Hunters of the Ozark • Edward S. Ellis
... have too much of a good thing.... But the round grating under the timbers yonder, where Hanne's father drowned himself, was a thing one never grew weary of. The depths were forever bubbling upward, filling the little children with a secret horror; and the half- grown girls would stand a-straddle over the grating, shuddering at the cold breath that came murmuring up from below. The grating was sure enough the way down to hell, and if you gazed long enough you could see the faintest glimmer of the inky stream that was ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... larger class of hand wheel hoes which are very useful in working close planted garden and truck crops. They either straddle the row, working the soil on both sides at the same time, or, running between the rows, work the soil to a width of from six to ...
— The First Book of Farming • Charles L. Goodrich
... contortionists by the laxity of their muscles and ligaments are able to dislocate or preternaturally bend their joints. In entertainments of an arena type and even in what are now called "variety performances" are to be seen individuals of this class. These persons can completely straddle two chairs, and do what they call "the split;" they can place their foot about their neck while maintaining the upright position; they can bend almost double at the waist in such a manner that the back of the head will touch the calves, while ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... Polly; but come to us again, as soon as they are gone.—But, hark ye, Child, if 'tis the Gentleman who was here Yesterday about the Repeating Watch; say, you believe we can't get Intelligence of it 'till to-morrow. For I lent it to Suky Straddle, to make a figure with it to-night at a Tavern in Drury-Lane. If t'other Gentleman calls for the Silver-hilted Sword; you know Beetle-brow'd Jemmy hath it on, and he doth not come from Tunbridge 'till Tuesday Night; so that it ...
— The Beggar's Opera • John Gay
... wings, wide and flat, stood high upon her six legs and waited. I fairly shouted at this change, for slight though it was, it worked magic, and the queen Atta was a queen no more, but a miniature, straddle-legged aeroplane, pushed into position, and overrun by a crowd of mechanics, putting the finishing touches, tightening the wires, oiling every pliable crevice. A Medium came along, tugged at a leg and the obliging little plane lifted it for inspection. For three ...
— Edge of the Jungle • William Beebe
... a thought-reading seance. Right.' He turned the chair about, sat on it straddle-wise and crossed his arms over the curved top bar. 'Let me see,' he mused, leaning forward, pulling at his cigar and bringing his eyes, after they had travelled over the crowd, back firmly to us. ''Two souls with but a single thought,'' he quoted, ''two hearts ...
— Foe-Farrell • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... 90 shows an excellent type of wheel-hoe with five blades, and Fig. 91 shows one with a single blade and that may be used in very narrow rows. Two-wheeled hoes (Fig. 92) are often used, particularly when it is necessary to have the implement very steady, and the wheels may straddle the rows of low plants. Many of these wheel-hoes are provided with various shapes of blades, so that the implement may be adjusted to many kinds of work. Nearly all the weeding of beds of onions and like plants can be done by means of these wheel-hoes, if the ground is well prepared ...
— Manual of Gardening (Second Edition) • L. H. Bailey
... with a tarnel grizzly bear. I can rope and throw the longhorn of the wildest Texas brand, And in Indian disagreements I can play a leading hand, But at last I got my master and he surely made me squeal When the boys got me a-straddle ...
— Cowboy Songs - and Other Frontier Ballads • Various
... don't care. I go straight to God and I say, 'Father, I have sinned against Heaven and before Thee, and am no more worthy to be called Thy son.' But I am His son, for all that, and I know it and He knows it; and Apollyon may straddle across the way as much as he likes, but he can't stop me. If he does stop me, he only sends ...
— Father Payne • Arthur Christopher Benson
... were with them as much as they could be during the day. They took them on little picnics and excursions, and two small ponies were trained so Bert and Nan could ride them. As for Flossie and Freddie, they had to ride in the cart. Freddie wanted to be a cowboy, and straddle a pony as Bert did, but his mother thought him too small. But Freddie and Flossie had good times in the cart, so they did ...
— The Bobbsey Twins in the Great West • Laura Lee Hope
... want to ride. So I told the man he would not suit me. He answered by suddenly throwing himself upon his stomach across the backbone of his horse, and then, by turning round as on a pivot, got up a-straddle of him; then he gave his horse a kick in the ribs that caused him to jump out with all his legs, like a frog, and then off went the spoon-legged animal with a gait that was not a trot, nor yet precisely pacing. He rode around our grass ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume IV. (of X.) • Various
... the mazes of this crevassed section I had frequently to cross bridges that were only knife-edges for twenty or thirty feet, cutting off the sharp tops and leaving them flat so that little Stickeen could follow me. These I had to straddle, cutting off the top as I progressed and hitching gradually ahead like a boy riding a rail fence. All this time the little dog followed me bravely, never hesitating on the brink of any crevasse that I had jumped, but now that it ...
— Travels in Alaska • John Muir
... ivery, ickery Ann, Fillacy, fallacy, Nicholas Dan; Queevery, quavery, English navy, Come striddle, come straddle, come out!" ...
— Treasure Valley • Marian Keith
... morning when the things arrived, and set me in the seventh heaven of satisfaction. My father (for I can scarcely say myself) was trying at this time a "straddle" in wheat between Chicago and New York; the operation so called, is, as you know, one of the most tempting and least safe upon the chess-board of finance. On the Thursday, luck began to turn against my ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 13 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the old gate which led to the bridge. Close by, in the little place, was the hut of the consumo, the local custom-house, with officials lounging at the door or sitting straddle-legged on chairs, lazily smoking. Opposite was a tobacconist's, with the gaudy red and yellow sign, Campania arrendataria de tabacos, and a dram-shop where three hardy Spaniards from the mountains stood drinking aguardiente. Than this, by the ...
— The Land of The Blessed Virgin; Sketches and Impressions in Andalusia • William Somerset Maugham
... straddle-ways across a chair between the two girls, and Esther had drawn back a little so that her face was in shadow. Micky glanced at her once, but could only see the glint of firelight on her hair and her hands ...
— The Phantom Lover • Ruby M. Ayres
... or no politics, I want to see a law enforced so long as it's a law. If a party cannot hold together and keep on top with any other system, then the party is 'in' wrong. I don't believe General Waymouth intends to straddle. He'll enforce the law." ...
— The Ramrodders - A Novel • Holman Day
... of the Republican Party, who could not adopt the Democratic plan for the free coinage of silver, without contradicting all their utterances in the past, denounced this proposal as a subterfuge, a straddle, an attempt to deceive the people and get votes by pledges not ...
— Autobiography of Seventy Years, Vol. 1-2 • George Hoar
... and they were at once wafted to any port they desired. A few of them did not need any canoes: they were of such height they could step from island to island, and could wade through the deepest oceans without submerging their heads. Kana would often straddle from Kauai to Oahu, like a colossus of Rhodes, and when a king of Kahiki, who was keeper of the sun, undertook to deprive the people of it, because of some slight, Kana waded across the sea and forced that king to behave himself instanter; ...
— Myths & Legends of our New Possessions & Protectorate • Charles M. Skinner
... comes to me An' climbs a-straddle of my knee An' starts to fondle me an' pet, Then asks me if I've found one yet. An' ma says: "Now don't tell him yes; You know they make an awful mess." An' starts their faults to catalogue. But every boy should have ...
— A Heap o' Livin' • Edgar A. Guest
... than two inches from the floor any of the time. We were just going to slip Pa down a board with slivers in to give him a realizing sense of the rough road a reformed man has to travel, and got him straddle of the board, when the Dutchman came home from the dance fullern a goose, and he drove us boys out, and we left Pa, and the Dutchman said, 'Vot you vas doing here mit dose boys, you old duffer, and vere vas ...
— Peck's Compendium of Fun • George W. Peck
... the fence and picked up the hoe. "Stand this way! Straddle the furrow with your back in the direction you are going to hoe; or else stand on the left side of the furrow facing it. Grasp the handle of the hoe in the right hand near the upper end. The back of your hand should be up. Now the left hand should be a foot or more below ...
— The Library of Work and Play: Gardening and Farming. • Ellen Eddy Shaw
... a pet tarantula I called Jenny," told Yellin' Kid. "She was absolutely the meanest critter I ever see! She could just about straddle a saucer, that's how big she was. Had a coat of hair like a grizzly. She won five fights for me, and I was all set to match her against a spider some puncher brought all the way from Oklahoma, when she took a sudden likin' to Jeff Peters, and her ca-reer was brought ...
— The Boy Ranchers on Roaring River - or Diamond X and the Chinese Smugglers • Willard F. Baker
... of Irishmen, rather startling from its numbers, entered the yard. Among them was Mr. Farren. They surrounded my lifting-apparatus, while I, unseen, surveyed them from a back window. I saw Mr. Farren take the handle, straddle the hogshead, throw himself into a lifting posture, and, straining every muscle to its utmost tension, give a tremendous pull. But the weight made no sign; and his friends, thinking he was merely feeling it, said, "Wait a bit,—Pat'll ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 09, No. 51, January, 1862 • Various
... do as the Arab had done, and seating herself straddle-legged behind Godwin, to clasp him around ...
— The Brethren • H. Rider Haggard
... big straw hat, Hum made breeches and all o' that. And when I got there I would just take a peep, To see if old cider mill John was asleep, And if he was I'd go snooking round 'Till a great big round rye straw I'd found; I'd straddle a barrel and quick begin To fill with cider right up ...
— Nye and Riley's Wit and Humor (Poems and Yarns) • Bill Nye
... swaggering posture which became such a special feature of his painting, should have originated with Donatello. Donatello was, before all things, a realist, and it was probably the habitual attitude of the cavalry soldier of the day, accustomed to straddle over the broad back of his war-horse, but there is little doubt that it was adopted by Signorelli from the "S. George" of Or San Michele, and perhaps half-unconsciously signified to him—what that statue so well embodies—the ...
— Luca Signorelli • Maud Cruttwell
... potatoes, with a sober grin such as came to him always after he had swapped 'hosses' and got the worst of it. Then he would show me again, with a little impatience in his manner, how to hold the handle and straddle the row. He would watch me for a moment, turn to Uncle Eb, laugh hopelessly and say: 'Thet boy'll hev to be a minister. ...
— Eben Holden - A Tale of the North Country • Irving Bacheller
... it. It was an uncomfortable horse to ride on, it required exertion to keep in motion, and it hurt his feelings. Especially the last. He was a horseman, a jockey, he'd ridden the best blood in the equine world; and here he was condemned through no fault of his own to straddle a cross between a llama and a woolly toy sheep. It hurt his pride. He felt bitterly about it. Indeed, he fairly ...
— The Killer • Stewart Edward White
... has staked, the player to his left, who is called No. 1, has the option of "straddling," i.e. of staking a sum double that of the ante. If No. 1 does not straddle the ante, no other player may do so, and the dealer proceeds to ...
— Round Games with Cards • W. H. Peel
... an absolutely infantile game. A low, overhanging branch of a tree is chosen, and as many as it will bear, old and young, men and women, straddle it; and, holding on to the higher overhanging branches, they swing up and down with as much spring as they can get out of the branch they ...
— The Euahlayi Tribe - A Study of Aboriginal Life in Australia • K. Langloh Parker
... knots blazes in the centre of a mound, and over it hangs an iron kettle, on a straddle, filled with corn-grits. Around this, and anxiously watching its boiling, are the lean figures of negroes, with haggard and sickly faces, telling but too forcibly the tale of their troubles. They watch and watch, ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams
... cousin-german, With whom he serv'd, and fed on vermin; And when these fail'd, he'd suck his claws, And quarter himself upon his paws. And tho' his countrymen, the Huns, 275 Did stew their meat between their bums And th' horses backs o'er which they straddle, And ev'ry man eat up his saddle; He was not half so nice as they, But eat it raw when 't came in's way. 280 He had trac'd countries far and near, More than LE BLANC, the traveller; Who writes, he ...
— Hudibras • Samuel Butler
... what you are, Merritt," said Greenbrier, laying one elbow in his salad and the other in his butter. "You are a concentrated, effete, unconditional, short-sleeved, gotch-eared Miss Sally Walker. God made you perpendicular and suitable to ride straddle and use cuss words in the original. Wherefore you have suffered his handiwork to elapse by removing yourself to New York and putting on little shoes tied with strings, and making faces when you talk. I've seen you rope and tie a steer in 42 1/2. If you was ...
— Strictly Business • O. Henry
... spill thy soul! And with that he threw a flaming dart at his breast.' In the cut he throws a dart with either hand, belching pointed flames out of his mouth, spreading his broad vans, and straddling the while across the path, as only a fiend can straddle who has just sworn by his infernal den. The defence will not be long against such vice, such flames, such red-hot nether energy. And in the fourth cut, to be sure, he has leaped bodily upon his victim, sped by foot and pinion, and roaring as he leaps. The fifth shows the climacteric of the ...
— Lay Morals • Robert Louis Stevenson
... of formal balance over the centre is that it produces a straddle, as, in hopscotch one lands with both feet on either side of a dividing line. In all pictures of deep perspective the best mode of entrance is to triangulate in, with a series of zigzags, made easy through the habit of the eye to follow lines, ...
— Pictorial Composition and the Critical Judgment of Pictures • Henry Rankin Poore
... take a look at the cemetery, and there find all they sought. This man stood under the archway of the Pack-horse Inn (by A. Walters), with his soft hat tilted over his nose, a cigar in his mouth, hands in his trouser pockets, and legs a-straddle, and smoked and eyed the passers-by with a twinkle ...
— Old Fires and Profitable Ghosts • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... as well to explain here that the straddle-leg patent, as it was called, often caused sailors to be both killed and drowned. They used to give advice in a flippant way to each other that if they were forced to let go their hands to be sure to hold on by the skin of their teeth or their feet. This ...
— The Shellback's Progress - In the Nineteenth Century • Walter Runciman
... we are trying our best to get out of their way. Overtaking him, the bull would have run his long, sharp horns directly under the young fugitive's arms, and, giving him a toss high up in the air, let him drop down a-straddle of his back, just behind the hump, for a pleasant evening ride. Understand me, now—I am not positive in saying that this is precisely what the bison would have done had our hero taken to his heels. Though the thing may have happened once or twice since time began, I have never heard ...
— The Red Moccasins - A Story • Morrison Heady
... steps right along, an' the chap a-straddle of him is got on store-clo'es. Fetch me my rifle, Babe. I'll meet that feller half-way an' make some inquirements about his famerly, an' maybe I'll fetch ...
— Free Joe and Other Georgian Sketches • Joel Chandler Harris
... who descended in a warm October sunshine to the surprise. In the breakfast-room she discovered an awe-stricken Snagsby standing with his plate-basket before her husband, and her husband wearing strange unusual tweeds and gaiters,—buttoned gaiters, and standing a-straddle,—unusually a-straddle, on the hearthrug. ...
— The Wife of Sir Isaac Harman • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... ill grace to my aunt Susan's insistence upon the resources of his dress-suit. In my memory those black legs of his, in a particularly thin and shiny black cloth—for evidently his dress-suit dated from adolescent and slenderer days—straddle like the Colossus of Rhodes over my approach to my mother's funeral. Moreover, I was inconvenienced and distracted by a silk hat he had bought me, my first silk hat, much ennobled, as his was also, by a ...
— Tono Bungay • H. G. Wells
... hours my soul will smite With prickly seconds, or less tolerably With dull-blade minutes flatwise slapping me. Wait, Heart! Time moves. — Thou lithe young Western Night, Just-crowned king, slow riding to thy right, Would God that I might straddle mutiny Calm as thou sitt'st yon never-managed sea, Balk'st with his balking, fliest with his flight, Giv'st supple to his rearings and his falls, Nor dropp'st one coronal star about thy brow Whilst ever dayward thou art steadfast drawn! Yea, would I rode ...
— The Poems of Sidney Lanier • Sidney Lanier
... darn shame I got to straddle strange horses just because there ain't another in the country like you, Coaley," he muttered, leaning forward to smooth the silky hide under the crinkly mane. "It's going to set hard, now I'm tellin' yuh, to throw my saddle on some plain, ordinary cayuse. But it's a bet I can't afford to overlook; ...
— Rim o' the World • B. M. Bower
... resolved to relax his mind after his fatigue, in the conversation of the fair. He therefore set forwards to his lovely Laetitia; but in his way accidentally met with a young lady of his acquaintance, Miss Molly Straddle, who was taking the air in Bridges-street. Miss Molly, seeing Mr. Wild, stopped him, and with a familiarity peculiar to a genteel town education, tapped, or rather slapped him on the back, and asked him to treat ...
— The History of the Life of the Late Mr. Jonathan Wild the Great • Henry Fielding
... young men watch the growth of their moustache and are critical of their clothes, and so you can imagine the devout awe with which Spiridon approached him. Yegor Alexyevitch had to throw back his head, to straddle his legs like an inverted V, first lift up his arms, then let them fall. Spiridon measured him several times, walking round him during the process like a love-sick pigeon round its mate, going down on one ...
— The Wife and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... an' that ain't but half of it," the lank rider complained regretfully. "It ain't ever gonna be any more. These here red-coats are plumb ruinin' trade. Squint at a buck cross-eyed, whisper rum to him, an' one o' these guys jumps a-straddle ...
— Man Size • William MacLeod Raine
... face of every man on the Platte, soldier, cowboy, Indian or halfbreed, but fell abashed if a laundress looked at him. Billy Ray, captain of the sorrel troop and the best light rider in Wyoming, was the only man he ever allowed to straddle a beautiful thoroughbred mare he had bought in Kentucky, but, bad hands or good, there wasn't a riding woman at Frayne who hadn't backed Lorna time and again, because to a woman the ...
— A Daughter of the Sioux - A Tale of the Indian frontier • Charles King
... a beast for a Red-skin to straddle!" he cried, as he made the animal go through some of its wild paces. "There's not a brigadier in all Kentucky that can call himself master of so sleek and well-jointed a nag! A Spanish saddle too, like a grandee of the Mexicos! and look at the ...
— The Prairie • J. Fenimore Cooper
... straight ahead was a short line of broken limestone so common on bluegrass turnpikes, but Judith had the Southern girl's trust and courage, and seemed to notice the reckless drive as little as did Crittenden, who made the wheels straddle the stones, when the variation of an inch or two would have lamed his horse ...
— Crittenden - A Kentucky Story of Love and War • John Fox, Jr.
... superintending, one holding a funnel shaped exactly like a port wine strainer, of which the narrow end was fixed in an incision in the breast, no doubt in the great pectoral artery; while the third, who was depicted as standing straddle-legged over the corpse, held a kind of large jug high in his hand, and poured from it some steaming fluid which fell accurately into the funnel. The most curious part of this sculpture is that both the man with the funnel and the man who pours the fluid are drawn holding their noses, either I suppose ...
— She • H. Rider Haggard
... reaching out as it were, with empty desirous hands, towards the unborn possibilities of the engineer. And Durer, too, was a Modern, with the same turn towards creative invention. In our times these men would have wanted to make viaducts, to bridge wild and inaccessible places, to cut and straddle great railways athwart the mountain masses of the world. You can see, time after time, in Durer's work, as you can see in the imaginary architectural landscape of the Pompeian walls, the dream of structures, lighter and bolder than stone or brick can yield.... These Utopian town buildings will be ...
— A Modern Utopia • H. G. Wells
... somewhere in England. I, like the curling tongs, was at last packed up in a box, and brought to America, but it took a rather larger box to take me and my friends, than it took to pack up him and his friends, with all their thin straddle legs." ...
— Who Spoke Next • Eliza Lee Follen
... design emblematic of the totem of the deceased is drawn on the ground, and beside it a shallow trench is dug about a foot deep and fifteen feet long. Over this trench a number of men, elaborately decorated with down of various colours, stand straddle-legged, while a line of women, decorated with red and yellow ochre, crawl along the trench under the long bridge made by the straddling legs of the men. The last woman carries the arm-bone of the dead in its parcel, and as soon as she emerges from the trench, the bone is snatched from her ...
— The Belief in Immortality and the Worship of the Dead, Volume I (of 3) • Sir James George Frazer
... all. Tonight 'long 'bout dance time I want that saddle horse o' yourn an' yer sideways saddle, too. They's a gal o' mine come in on the train, which she'll be wantin', mebbe, to take a ride, an' hain't fetched no split-up clothes fer to straddle a real saddle. That sideways contraption you sent fer 'fore yer gal got to ridin' man-ways is the only one in Wolf River, an' likewise hern's the only horse that'll stand fer bein' rigged ...
— The Texan - A Story of the Cattle Country • James B. Hendryx
... left old Barnum pretty weak physically, but had evidently not weakened his will. He left Hopkins in the office figuring up his account and he jumped a-straddle of a bare-backed mule and went up on the hill and rented the new 40-room house, "The Bravadere," and sub-rented enough rooms to pay the expenses of his company. He also got a porter, bus and team and sent to the landing to meet every steam boat to carry passengers and their baggage free of charge ...
— The Second William Penn - A true account of incidents that happened along the - old Santa Fe Trail • William H. Ryus
... looked after him thoughtfully. "Well, dog my skin!" he ejaculated to himself, "ef I hadn't seen that man—that same Ruth Pinkney—straddle a friend's body in this yer very room, and dare a whole crowd to come on, I'd swar that he hadn't any grit in him. ...
— The Twins of Table Mountain and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... by Cino of Pistoja. The lower floor being choked with rubbish and fallen masonry, the only access to our retreat was by a broken beam projecting from the original doorway. You jumped for this, caught it if you were expert enough, and must swing yourself up to straddle it. You could then gain the string-course of brick which encircled the tower, and, edging along that, reach the lower sill of a window. That window was our front door. The interior was perfectly dry, rainproof and (from all quarters but one) windproof. ...
— The Fool Errant • Maurice Hewlett
... He led the momentous expedition, taking a hitch of the blind-cord round a branch before he permitted her to move. Two or three times he was obliged to make the cord fast and return to help her, for she was not an 'expert'; her arms seemed soft, and she was inclined to straddle instead of trusting to one foot. But at last they were settled, streaked indeed with moss, on the top branch but two. They rested there, silent, listening to the rooks soothing an outraged dignity. Save for this slowly subsiding demonstration it was marvellously peaceful and remote up ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... and I would have you sigh For the Aveiro bakeress, 380 For the inn you'll come to by and by And then we'll off with the packsaddle And the innkeeper we'll straddle If he have not, to slake our thirstiness, Good wine at threepence and kid at less, And for hard bread soft buttermilk, A fair wench to serve and sheets of silk, If the floor's strewn with rushes the night be long, ...
— Four Plays of Gil Vicente • Gil Vicente
... be occupied in the inspiriting task of dragging a dead sheep after his horse, to make a trail to lead the wild dogs up to some poisoned meat; while the lady, clad in light and airy garments, with a huge white sunbonnet for head-gear, would be riding straddle-legged in search of strayed cows. When Grant left the station, and went away to make his fortune in mining, it was, perhaps, just a coincidence that this magnificent young creature grew tired of the old place and "cleared out," too. She certainly ...
— An Outback Marriage • Andrew Barton Paterson
... discomfited captain, raising himself with difficulty on his feet. "If one of you dismount, he dies. Tom, my good fellow, you will help me to straddle Roanoke again." ...
— The Spy • James Fenimore Cooper
... who collared him, "old chap, you can't walk any further; we know you, and as we always make gentlemen ride in these parts, you may just prepare to straddle that rail!" ...
— A Unique Story of a Marvellous Career. Life of Hon. Phineas T. • Joel Benton
... two others were able to juggle and return, but many were too flashing for them to cope with. In front of the ferry house lay a deep and quaggish puddle of slime, crossable only by ginger-footed work upon sheets of tin. Endymion rafted his tenuous form across with a delicate straddle of spidery limbs. The secretary followed, with a more solid squashing technique. "Ha," cried the new member; "grace before meat!" Endymion and the secretary exchanged secret glances. Lawton, although he knew it not, was ...
— Plum Pudding - Of Divers Ingredients, Discreetly Blended & Seasoned • Christopher Morley
... riles 'em. They take on awful about her ridin' in pants, an' it certainly is a heap more modest than ridin' straddle in a hitched up caliker skirt, same as some ...
— Judith Of The Plains • Marie Manning
... was passive in your hands, laying quiet enough, as Charlie made you straddle over him, and settle yourself down on his big upstanding prick, till it was all out of sight in your cunt. "Now ride him well, Gertie, or you will be made to move yourself," and he stepped away to cut his switch, a couple of minutes only sufficing him to make a ...
— Forbidden Fruit • Anonymous
... alone; hosts of Little People passed them, going in the same direction. Peter said most of them rode "straddle-legs" on night birds or moths, while some flew along on a funny thing that was horse before and weeds behind. I judge this must have been the buchailin buidhe or benweed, which the faeries bewitch and ride the same as a witch mounts ...
— The Primrose Ring • Ruth Sawyer
... was a little too much for the pony; so it was at a dignified walk that the Maestro, his naked, dripping, muddy and still defiant prisoner a-straddle in front of him, the captured kite passed over his left arm like a knightly shield, made his ...
— Americans All - Stories of American Life of To-Day • Various
... dandy, Lyddie! She's a jim-dandy of a little girl! She ought to come out and learn to ride straddle with her cousins. I got a boy about her age—say, they'd look fine together! He's a towhead, like all the rest ...
— The Squirrel-Cage • Dorothy Canfield
... the joys of winter! Whut's the fun of foolin' round With the posies dead en buried, en the snows upon the ground? When the wind's a-tossin' blizzards in a most distressin' way Tell you have to set a-straddle of the fire-place all the day! But I tell ye life's a-livin' when the summer grows the grass Over all the nooks en crannies whayre a feller's feet kin pass, En the whole world seems of heaven but a half-forgotten ...
— Oklahoma Sunshine • Freeman E. (Freeman Edwin) Miller
... a straddle of the raggedest proposition in this country. One of your dusters at this moment is jamming his cayuse through the horizon between here and the post. Pretty soon things is going to bust loose. 'Bout to-morrer evening we'll be eating hog-bosom ...
— Pardners • Rex Beach
... greenhorn. I even affected to be listening to the music. The wheel spun again; the game was declared, the rake was busy, but I did not move. At last the man I had displaced touched me on the arm and whispered, "Better make a straddle and divide your stake this time." I did not understand him, but as I saw he was looking at the board, I was obliged to look, too. I drew back dazed and bewildered! Where my coin had lain a moment before was a glittering ...
— Under the Redwoods • Bret Harte
... deeper than he'd been ordered to go when—blooie! Over the top she went with fourteen hundred barrels.... Desdemona's the name of a camp below here, but they call it Hog Town. More elegant! Down there the derricks actually straddle one another, and they have to board them over to keep from drowning one another out when they blow in. Fellow in Dallas brought in the first well, and it was so big that his stock went from a hundred dollars a share to twelve thousand. All in a few ...
— Flowing Gold • Rex Beach
... support, supply support, lend support, give foundations, furnish foundations, afford foundations, supply foundations, lend foundations; bottom, found, base, ground, imbed, embed. maintain, keep on foot; aid &c 707. Adj. supporting, supported &c v.; fundamental; dorsigerous^. Adv. astride on, straddle. ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... dragged upward by a rope attached to its horns. Kicking and struggling, they were swung upwards over the side of the ship and lowered into the lighter below. Sometimes they were swung out too far and landed straddle on the side of the lighter, straddling the rail, kicking and roaring. And sometimes, when the loosely moored lighter drifted away a little from the ship's side, an animal would be lowered between the ship's side and the lighter, and squeezed ...
— Civilization - Tales of the Orient • Ellen Newbold La Motte
... truckle, caster, roulette, rowel; gear, cogwheel, miter wheel; pulley, sheave (wheel of a pulley). Associated words: spoke, felly, hub, strake, tire, straddle, cog, sprocket, linchpin, arbor, axle, axletree, sprag, traction, trochilics, trochilic, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... to see it, and liked the windows and staircase. I can't conceive how he entered it. I should have figured him like Gulliver cutting down some of the largest oaks in Windsor Forest to make joint-stools, in order to straddle over the battlements and peep in at the windows of Lilliput. I can't deny myself this reflection (even though he liked Strawberry,) as he has not employed you ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 2 • Horace Walpole
... it's just the very worst!" he said with a deep sigh, as he reached a stile and sat down a-straddle of it. ...
— Andy the Acrobat • Peter T. Harkness
... fer one thing," said Blue Dave, shifting about on his feet uneasily, "you look so much like my young marster w'at died in Perginny. En den dat day w'en de speckerlater put me up on de block, you 'uz settin' dar straddle er yo' pony, en you 'lowed dat he oughter be 'shame er hisse'f fer ter chain me up ...
— Mingo - And Other Sketches in Black and White • Joel Chandler Harris
... with the sun and having eaten our rude breakfast set forth, some six miles to the west, to mark the location of our claims with the "straddle-bugs." ...
— A Son of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... Lion, Tiger, and Princess Royal kept straight ahead till they were able to "straddle" even the leading ship of the enemy's line. The Tiger and Lion poured shells into the Seydlitz, but were unable to do much damage to the Moltke. While they were thus engaged the Princess Royal singled out the Derfftinger for her target. ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume III (of 12) - The War Begins, Invasion of Belgium, Battle of the Marne • Francis J. Reynolds, Allen L. Churchill, and Francis Trevelyan |
