"Stray" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... to start. They left True Tammas sitting on the doorstep with his ears drooped and his eyes looking very sorrowful. He wanted to go with them, but he knew well that he must stay at home to guard the sheep from stray dogs. ...
— The Scotch Twins • Lucy Fitch Perkins
... laughed at him, and in a good-natured way told him the East Tennessee climate gave him that disease known among soldiers as "crawfishing." This I did to withdraw his mind from this gloomy brooding. We had no real battle, but a continual skirmish with the enemy, with stray shots throughout the day. As we were moving along in line of battle, I heard that peculiar buzzing noise of a bullet, as if in ricochet, coming in our direction, but high in the air. As it neared the column it seemed to lower and come with a more hissing ...
— History of Kershaw's Brigade • D. Augustus Dickert
... Rhine! How long delighted The stranger fain would linger on his way! Thine is a scene alike where souls united Or lonely Contemplation thus might stray; And could the ceaseless vultures cease to prey[it] On self-condemning bosoms, it were here, Where Nature, nor too sombre nor too gay, Wild but not rude, awful yet not austere,[iu] Is to the mellow Earth as Autumn to ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 2 • George Gordon Byron
... there was no one on the road; a few stray laborers, of whom they caught barely a glimpse, were on their way to their ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... Valientes!..." Manuel was beginning his peroration. He would lead them, now, against the English ship. The terrified heretics would surrender. There was always gold in English ships. He stopped his speech, and then called loudly, "Let the boats keep touch with each other, and not stray in that fog." ...
— Romance • Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer
... boots soaked and slopped when he stepped. A boom of thunder sounded overhead and a vivid flash of lightning lit up for an instant a great elm tree. He saw all its branches shining with water, drops glistening along a thousand stray twigs. Then the voices of the labourers returning over the hills broke in upon his ears. He heard their shouts, the snatches of their songs, their noise, all the ribaldry of ...
— Waysiders • Seumas O'Kelly
... squirrel gun and waited with fluttering breath for the sound of Fletcher's footsteps along the road. On that day it had seemed to him that the hand of the Lord was in his own Godlike vengeance nerving his little wrist. He had meant to shoot—for that he had saved every stray penny from his sales of hogs and cider, of watermelons and chinkapins; for that he had bought the gun and rammed the powder home. Even when the thud of footsteps beat down the sunny road strewn with brown honeyshucks, he had felt neither fear nor hesitation as he crouched amid the underbrush. ...
— The Deliverance; A Romance of the Virginia Tobacco Fields • Ellen Glasgow
... felt a curious sensation in the soles of his feet, and, startled, looked down to find that he was standing in a tiny pool of water. With a cry of alarm he sprang to where the big copper sat. A glance confirmed his worst fears; a stray bullet had torn a great hole in the vessel near the bottom, and of their precious store of water barely ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... go, downcast and dreary, With my pilgrim staff to stray, Till I lay my head aweary In some ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VI. • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... am," she answered calmly. "A stray young woman like myself must have something to occupy ...
— The Illustrious Prince • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... introduced in the year 1502; eighty-six years afterwards, in the time of Cavendish, it is known that they were exceedingly numerous. More than a century afterwards, in 1731, when the evil was complete and irretrievable, an order was issued that all stray animals should be destroyed. It is very interesting thus to find, that the arrival of animals at St. Helena in 1501, did not change the whole aspect of the island, until a period of two hundred and twenty years had elapsed: for the ...
— The Voyage of the Beagle • Charles Darwin
... I've tasted of thy love. Keep my tongue and let me talk Of thy goodness. Help me walk As a Christian every day; Keep me ever true, I pray. Let no harm or sickness come Near our happy little home. In thy hands my all I lay; May I never from thee stray. Keep me, Lord, I ask again. Praise the ...
— Light On the Child's Path • William Allen Bixler
... such poems as have an intelligible aim and shape, many a stray idea and transitory emotion found imperfect and abrupt expression, and then again lost themselves in silence. As he never wandered without a book and without implements of writing, I find many such, in his manuscript books, that ...
— Notes to the Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley • Mary W. Shelley
... popularizing the expression outside of Germany. Carlyle first introduced it into English literature in 1827. In a note to the discussion of Goethe in the second edition of German Romance, he speaks of a Philistine as one who "judged of Brunswick mum, by its utility." He adds: "Stray specimens of the Philistine nation are said to exist in our own Islands; but we have no name for them like the Germans." The term occurs also in Carlyle's essays on The State of German Literature, 1827, ...
— Selections from the Prose Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold
... possible. But, in the course of the last nine months, I have come into possession of a certain quantity of supplementary matter, which the appearance of the book has elicited from various quarters. Stray letters have been hunted up. Half-forgotten anecdotes have been recalled. Floating reminiscences have been reduced to shape;—in one case, as will be seen from the extracts from Sir William Stirling Maxwell's letter, by no unskilful hand. I should have been tempted to draw more ...
— Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay • George Otto Trevelyan
... Laverick continued. "You see, you've been wise. You haven't given yourself away altogether. You've simply said that you don't recollect any one coming in. Why should you recollect? At the end of a day's work you are not likely to notice every stray customer. Stick to it, and, if you take my advice, don't go throwing any money about, and don't give your notice in for another week or so. Pave the way for it a bit. Ask the governor for a rise—say you're not making a ...
— Havoc • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... upon my shoulder; stray tresses of her hair brushed against my temple and my cheek; her half-parted lips, glowing like newly opened rose-buds, never attained a distance of more than an inch from mine, and for the most part they ...
— Princess Zara • Ross Beeckman
... the song ol nightingales beguiled the tedium of waiting, shut within a barrier, for the train from Knin, for one is not allowed to stray about until the train arrives. After a little further climbing, the summit of the range was pierced, and the lovely Riviera of the Castelli lay spread before us far below. The long island of Bua stretched ...
— The Shores of the Adriatic - The Austrian Side, The Kuestenlande, Istria, and Dalmatia • F. Hamilton Jackson
... him with scarcely a change of feature, and tried to withdraw some stray fold of her garments from his grasp. He resisted; he would not let her go. His heart was aching with his own trouble, and with the consciousness of her loss—Angela's loss—all the suffering that Richard's death would inflict upon these two women who had loved him ...
— Under False Pretences - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... cadets marched out of mess hall and back along the sidewalk to barracks, those who allowed their gaze to stray ever so little across the roadway in the direction of the administration building noted that the holiday crowd ...
— Dick Prescott's Third Year at West Point - Standing Firm for Flag and Honor • H. Irving Hancock
... stray, We are cast away, Poor battered old hulks and spars! But we hope and pray, On the judgment Day, We shall strike it, up in ...
— Down the Mother Lode • Vivia Hemphill
... sheep-shearing festivals, had taken to smoking, as in harmony with his bucolic transformation. An old setter lay dozing at his feet; a small spaniel—old, too—was sauntering lazily in the immediate neighbourhood, looking gravely out for such stray bits of biscuit as had been thrown forth to provoke him to exercise, and which hitherto had escaped his attention. Half seated, half reclined on the balustrade, apart from the baronet, but within reach of his conversation, lolled a man in the prime of life, with an air of unmistakable and sovereign ...
— Lucretia, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... cried Roger anxiously. And this well might have been the case, since, though there was a lull in the fighting immediately in front of Company E, there were plenty of stray bullets, not to mention pieces of shrapnel and bits of high explosive shells, that might ...
— The Khaki Boys Over the Top - Doing and Daring for Uncle Sam • Gordon Bates
... at the dA(C)nouement of As., etc., etc. It is understood, we presume, that the modern farce occupies no exalted position in the comic scale, is distinguished by the grotesquerie of its characters, incidents and dialogue, and is indulgently permitted to stray far from the paths of realism. Even in Shakespearian farce, note the exaggerated antics of the two Dromios in "The Comedy of Errors." It is significant then that farce is a staple of ...
— The Dramatic Values in Plautus • William Wallace Blancke
... child?" repeated her mother, "But do not stray far into the wood. And take heed that thou come ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... cord. Snowshoes. A waterproof cloak could be easily carried. Her light hatchet for wood. She cast about to see if there was anything else. She had almost forgotten cartridges—and a revolver. Nothing more. She kicked a stray brand or so into the fire, put on some more wood, damped the fire with an armful of snow to make it last longer, and set out toward the willows into which ...
— The Literary World Seventh Reader • Various
... pointed to a row of batteries, with a number of electric bells upon the wall behind. "The more vulnerable spots are connected at night with these bells," he said triumphantly. "Any attempt to scale the barbed wire or to force either gate would set two or more of these ringing. A stray cow raised one false alarm," he added, "and a careless rook threw us into a perfect panic ...
— The Insidious Dr. Fu-Manchu • Sax Rohmer
... where the next coolie had turned over a stone. The man picked up his puggari and moved a few yards off to wind it round his head again, and almost immediately the goat-boy appeared and asked him if he had seen a stray goat. ...
— Adventures in Many Lands • Various
... gay We shall not choose, though gipsies may, Through country lanes and woods to stray, Not likely. We shall enter An up-to-date Bohemian lot, And, if you read The Daily Rot, You'll find it has observed us (what?) Proceeding at a smartish trot Through ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, May 21, 1919. • Various
... we can discern, Thy holy law proclaim and learn. Is not Thy presence near alway To them who penitently pray, But far from those who sinning stray? ...
— Hebrew Literature
... my hand, and tears were standing in his eyes. It is odd that suppressed laughter and expressed grief should both display the same token, is it not? I stole into her room. I dared not kiss her for fear of waking her; but a stray lock of her hair—you remember how long it was—fell over the pillow, nearly reaching to the floor. I pressed my lips against it, where it trailed over the bedstead, till they bled. I have it still upon my lips, the ...
— Paul Kelver • Jerome Klapka, AKA Jerome K. Jerome
... was a born match maker, and she had cultivated the gift by diligent practice. As the sight of a tendrilled vine suggests the need and fitness of a trellis, and a stray glove invariably brings to mind the thought of its absent fellow, so every disengaged spinster of marriageable age was an appeal—pathetic and sure—to the dear woman's helpful sympathy, and her whole soul went out in compassion over such "nice" and an appropriated bachelors ...
— At Last • Marion Harland
... no foe, save the wild boar and a stray wolf, although I have tramped the forest from the rising to the setting sun," ...
— The Rival Heirs being the Third and Last Chronicle of Aescendune • A. D. Crake
... beginning justly to be referred either to the first or second sort of poor aforementioned, but, degenerating into the thriftless sort, they do what they can to continue their misery, and, with such impediments as they have, to stray and wander about, as creatures abhorring all labour and every honest exercise. Certes I call these casual means, not in the respect of the original of all poverty, but of the continuance of the same, from whence they will not be delivered, such is their own ungracious ...
— Chronicle and Romance (The Harvard Classics Series) • Jean Froissart, Thomas Malory, Raphael Holinshed
... Square, as on the sofa in Brook Street; and her nephew does not require her to run, having found another companion in the person of a fat, very plain little girl; but after some time she has to go home, and Teddy having worried the life out of a stray cat, returns to his aunt, with a red, ...
— Lippa • Beatrice Egerton
... chiefly the fault of the whites, soon resulted in the precipitation of a terrible Indian outbreak. A party of Cherokees, returning home in May, 1758, seized some stray horses on the frontier of Virginia—never dreaming of any wrong, says an old historian, as they saw it frequently done by the whites. The owners of the horses, hastily forming a party, went in pursuit of the Indians and killed twelve or fourteen ...
— The Conquest of the Old Southwest • Archibald Henderson
... experiment with a light wireless set for aeroplanes. As no machines were available for fitting, a station was constructed on Burntwick Island, the conditions being as nearly as possible the conditions in an aeroplane. Stray signals were received from this station by H.M.S. Actaeon, about one mile distant. In June 1912 Commander Samson, flying the first Short seaplane, fitted with a practice wireless set such as used in destroyers, succeeded in sending messages a distance of three, four, and, on ...
— The War in the Air; Vol. 1 - The Part played in the Great War by the Royal Air Force • Walter Raleigh
... he prepared himself a good dinner and ate it in leisurely enjoyment, sharing a morsel now and then with the old dog. "You're a plaguey sight better company than she was," he mused. "That poor little stray cat of a Jane! What will become of her? Well, well! Soon as she's old enough to cut loose from her mother, I'll try to give her a chance, ...
— He Fell in Love with His Wife • Edward P. Roe
... wife—not poor Corinne, of course, who poured out her heart in a letter instead, which she entrusted to her mother to deliver; and Holker Morris and Mrs. Morris, and the Fosters and the Granthams and Wildermings and their wives and daughters and sons, and one stray general, who stopped over on his way to the West, and who said when he entered, looking so very grand and important, that he didn't care whether he had been invited to the ceremony or not, at which Miss Felicia was delighted, he being ...
— Peter - A Novel of Which He is Not the Hero • F. Hopkinson Smith
... does one stray thought of the past contain within itself. It is like a rocket thrown up in the night. It suddenly expands into a brilliant light, and sheds a thousand sparkling meteors, that scatter in all directions, as if inviting attention each to its ...
— Nature and Human Nature • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... where we would be exposed. On getting to the first street my guide galloped ahead to show the way, and as the French were not on the lookout for anything of the kind at these dangerous points, only a few stray shots were drawn by the lieutenant, but when I followed, they were fully up to what was going on, and let fly a volley every time they saw me in the open. Fortunately, however, in their excitement ...
— The Memoirs of General Philip H. Sheridan, Vol. II., Part 6 • P. H. Sheridan
... explanation was suggested, and finally they were compelled to accept my own one, and agree that leaving the cattle undisturbed by abandoning the fall round-up was the real solution of the problem. The only work my men did that winter was to keep the fences up and in good shape, and whenever they saw stray cattle in my pasture to turn them out at once, fearing the danger of bad example. Next winter, the loco being still very bad, the same tactics were adopted and only one solitary yearling of mine was affected. ...
— Ranching, Sport and Travel • Thomas Carson
... spruce trees on the edge of the waterway and made a camp. The coffin, at the side of the fire, served for seat and table. The wolf-dogs, clustered on the far side of the fire, snarled and bickered among themselves, but evinced no inclination to stray off into ...
— White Fang • Jack London
... the June roses, and slammed the door after him. A moment later she opened it again and held the light to show us the dripping path to the gate. Framed in the doorway with the light held up by her round white arm, the dampness putting a softer curl in every stray lock of her rich brown hair, the roses still blooming on her cheeks, she sent us away. Too young and sweet-spirited she seemed for any evil to assail her in ...
— The Price of the Prairie - A Story of Kansas • Margaret Hill McCarter
... of melon rind. To this small yard or poultry-run a length of planking served as a fence, while beyond it lay a kitchen garden containing cabbages, onions, potatoes, beetroots, and other household vegetables. Also, the garden contained a few stray fruit trees that were covered with netting to protect them from the magpies and sparrows; flocks of which were even then wheeling and darting from one spot to another. For the same reason a number of scarecrows with outstretched arms ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... stroke at the present moment; and yet I feel that I never was a greater artist than now. When, while the lovely valley teems with vapour around me, and the meridian sun strikes the upper surface of the impenetrable foliage of my trees, and but a few stray gleams steal into the inner sanctuary, I throw myself down among the tall grass by the trickling stream; and, as I lie close to the earth, a thousand unknown plants are noticed by me: when I hear the buzz of the little ...
— The Sorrows of Young Werther • J.W. von Goethe
... a shot rang out down the valley, and two of the pigeons came tumbling to the ground, a stray feather floating after. With a startled exclamation she took a step forward. Her brain became confused and disturbed. She had looked out on Eden, and it had been ravaged before her eyes. She had been thinking of to-morrow, and this vast prospect of beauty and serenity had been part of the pageant ...
— Northern Lights • Gilbert Parker
... unknown to the queen herself, who has much respect for me; therefore it was singularly fortunate that you addressed yourself to me rather than elsewhere. You are secure in my house, where I advise you to continue, if you think fit; and provided you do not stray from hence, I dare assure you you will have no just cause to complain; so that you are under no ...
— Fairy Tales From The Arabian Nights • E. Dixon
... her bedroom and arrayd herself in a grass green muslin of decent cut a lace scarf long faun colored kid gloves and a muslin hat to correspond. She carried a parasole in one hand also a green silk bag containing a few stray hair pins a clean handkerchief five shillings and a pot of ruge in case. She looked a dainty vishen [Pg 80] with her fair hair waving in the breeze and Bernard bit his lips rarther hard for he could hardly contain himself and felt he must marry Ethel soon. He looked a ...
— The Young Visiters or, Mr. Salteena's Plan • Daisy Ashford
... shading it with his hand from the chilly wind, and stooped down. Yes; there was an unmistakable trail, and with renewed hope he hurried on, taking care not to stray to either side. Within the next ten minutes, to his delight, he caught the twinkle of a star-like point of light among the trees, a ...
— The Jungle Fugitives • Edward S. Ellis
... were now again left to their solitude and silence, a few stray persons visiting them only from curiosity, to see the place and its productions which had caused such excitement. But the mania did not abate all at once. A village patriarch, skilled in fairy lore, entertained some of the gold-seekers with the following legend, which had the effect of sending them ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 447 - Volume 18, New Series, July 24, 1852 • Various
... ballad, "violence has already robbed me of the ordinary decorations of my rank; and the few that nature gave me have been destroyed by sorrow and by fear." Yet while she spoke thus, she again let her slender fingers stray through the wilderness of the beautiful tresses which veiled her kingly neck and swelling bosom, as if, in her agony of mind, she had not altogether lost the consciousness of her unrivalled charms. Roland Graeme, on whose youth, inexperience, and ardent sense of what was dignified and lovely, ...
— The Abbot • Sir Walter Scott
... Gatherer'—R. M. Staigg, N. A. We owe this artist much for his beautiful inculcations of the charities of life. How many stray pennies may not his little street sweeper have drawn from careless passers-by? No. 59, 'Cat's Cradle,' is another pleasing representation of an ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol III, Issue VI, June, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... expected she will be brought back to-night. They can do nothing but get her married to the man at Church. She is 18, he 30, and no Gentleman. She was advertised and 20 guineas reward offered to anyone who could give an account of the stray sheep. It is a sad History. What misery this idle girl has caused her parents, and probably ensured her ...
— The Letter-Bag of Lady Elizabeth Spencer-Stanhope v. I. • A. M. W. Stirling (compiler)
... I returned coldly. "The stray imprint of a man's boot on the turf is scarcely evidence that I have had a companion. Kindly stand aside, and permit me ...
— Beyond the Frontier • Randall Parrish
... Piney—story-telling. Neither Mr. Oakhurst nor his female companions caring to relate their personal experiences, this plan would have failed, too, but for the Innocent. Some months before he had chanced upon a stray copy of Mr. Pope's ingenious translation of the Iliad. He now proposed to narrate the principal incidents of that poem—having thoroughly mastered the argument and fairly forgotten the words—in the current vernacular of Sandy Bar. And so for the rest of that night the Homeric demigods again walked ...
— Short Stories for English Courses • Various (Rosa M. R. Mikels ed.)
... foreground, and here and there occasional hillocks. Once we saw mountains of sand, called the Gebel Abu Batah range. Sometimes a few native huts would appear (the mere semblance of a village), then a stray camel or two, or a group of natives with their pigskins, intent on securing water. The Great Bitter Lake is a fine body of water, and it afforded us a temporary relief from the monotony of the Canal. There was a short stay ...
— Travels in the Far East • Ellen Mary Hayes Peck
... of Mrs. Peniston's drawing-room were drawn down against the oppressive June sun, and in the sultry twilight the faces of her assembled relatives took on a fitting shadow of bereavement. They were all there: Van Alstynes, Stepneys and Melsons—even a stray Peniston or two, indicating, by a greater latitude in dress and manner, the fact of remoter relationship and more settled hopes. The Peniston side was, in fact, secure in the knowledge that the bulk of Mr. Peniston's property "went back"; while the direct connection hung suspended on the disposal ...
— House of Mirth • Edith Wharton
... tried always to illustrate only the central thought, and not the innumerable divergencies, because only so can a great or strange thought be made clear. Later, when the thought is known, then it is easy to stray into the byways of thought, always remembering that they are byways, wandering from a ...
— The Soul of a People • H. Fielding
... the book to me. "In this second book you will, in like manner, enter anything that you can learn about Walter Hornby, and, in the third book, data concerning John Hornby. As to the fourth book, you will keep that for stray facts connected with the case but not coming under either of the other headings. And now let us look at ...
— The Red Thumb Mark • R. Austin Freeman
... on their account, quite putting aside the chance of securing a stray vote here or there, I feel it a duty not to spare myself, but to go through with it just for their sakes, don't ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... To bind the roving appetite, and lead Blind nature to a God not yet revealed. 'Tis Revelation satisfies all doubts, Explains all mysteries, except her own, And so illuminates the path of life, That fools discover it, and stray no more. Now tell me, dignified and sapient sir, My man of morals, nurtured in the shades Of Academus, is this false or true? Is Christ the abler teacher, or the schools? If Christ, then why resort ...
— The Task and Other Poems • William Cowper
... him for it at the time! But when he come to figure out the profits, Mr. Ellins don't do a thing but rustle around, lease all the stray factories in the market, from a canned gas plant in Bayonne to a radiator foundry in Yonkers, fit 'em up with the proper machinery, and set 'em to turnin' out battle pills by ...
— Wilt Thou Torchy • Sewell Ford
... dressed and adorned with scrupulous care; her eyebrows trimmed of every stray hair that might deform the beauty-arch; the lids pencilled with lampblack; the palms of her hands and the soles of her feet stained with henna; not one stray lock encroached on the straight parting of her ...
— Studies in Literature and History • Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall
... that shining in the power of deft and delightful expression, there is another sphere in which it would be expected that his power would prevail, but in which he had either no actual talent or very little. However we may admire The Haunch of Venison and other stray pieces, Goldsmith was really not a writer of what is now called "Society verse." In that delightful sphere Austin Dobson has no rival. In the higher realms of poetry there are many who will regret that necessity forced Goldsmith to turn almost exclusively to prose. ...
— Oliver Goldsmith • E. S. Lang Buckland
... deep woods, and the great division although it had rested nearly all the day was quiet in the night. But some ardent souls could not rest. A group of officers, including Colonel Winchester and the three young members of his staff, walked forward through the woods, taking the chance of stray shots from sentinels or skirmishers. But they knew that this ...
— The Sword of Antietam • Joseph A. Altsheler
... for the time being. My loco. had jolted its way over the rough section, carrying away an obstruction labelled V.R., and had reached the next points. I was still two or three days ahead of my official work; and there had happened to be a stray half-crown in the pocket of the spare oriflamme I had unfurled at my camp. Should I push on to Hay on the strength of that half-crown, draw my 8 6s. 8d., and send my clothier a guileful letter, containing a money-order for, say, ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy
... already in the preparatory class, and so is regarded as grown up, and the cleverest. He is playing entirely for the sake of the money. If there had been no kopecks in the saucer, he would have been asleep long ago. His brown eyes stray uneasily and jealously over the other players' cards. The fear that he may not win, envy, and the financial combinations of which his cropped head is full, will not let him sit still and concentrate his mind. He fidgets as though he were sitting on thorns. When he wins, he snatches up the money ...
— The Cook's Wedding and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... rubbing shoulders—noisy self-interest side by side with introspective revery, where stray priests nodded in among the traders,—many-peopled India surged in miniature between the four hot walls and through the passage to the overflowing street; changeable and unexplainable, in ever-moving flux, but more conservative ...
— Rung Ho! • Talbot Mundy
... The pretty and affectionate girl beside him would make an ideal wife. Of her family and blood he was sure. She was his mother's choice, and his mother had set her heart upon their marriage. Why not speak to her now, and thus give himself the best possible protection against stray flames ...
— The House Behind the Cedars • Charles W. Chesnutt
... merely marked by a ploughed furrow, not very straight, which started near the lake, and went eastward along the plains. In the Rises no plough could make a line through the rocks, and the boundaries there were imaginary. Stray cattle were roaming over the country, eating the grass, and the main resource of the squatters was the Pounds Act. Hay was then sold at 80 pounds per ton at Bendigo; a draft of fat bullocks was worth a mine of gold at Ballarat, ...
— The Book of the Bush • George Dunderdale
... should bring pride and joy To parent-hearts, alway,— Should bear the fresh soul of the boy Into the earnest man's employ, And ne'er from honor stray. ...
— Stories of Many Lands • Grace Greenwood
... think with some alarm of the muddled palette of the future. He couldn't get used to her interest in the arts he cared for; it seemed too good to be real—it was so unlikely an adventure to tumble into such a well of sympathy. One might stray into the desert easily—that was on the cards and that was the law of life; but it was too rare an accident to stumble on a crystal well. Yet if her aspirations seemed at one moment too extravagant to be real they struck ...
— The Lesson of the Master • Henry James
... propriety of washing and rinsing their table apparatus nicely before packing it away in the mess-basket, the consequence of which was, that another nice napkin must be stealthily whisked out, to wipe the dishes when the hour for meals arrived—the fun of the young gentleman in hunting up his stray articles, thus misappropriated, from the nooks and corners of the boat, tying them with a cord, and hanging them over the stern, to make their way down the ...
— Wau-bun - The Early Day in the Northwest • Juliette Augusta Magill Kinzie
... Muley Cow, she went about her business as if no great change had come into her life. And if now and then she took a notion to look for better grass in the back pasture on the edge of the woods, she would jump the fence just as she always had and stray off among the ...
— The Tale of the The Muley Cow - Slumber-Town Tales • Arthur Scott Bailey
... her maids went to the little farmhouse which was at one corner of the old building, and chiefly constructed out of its ruins; and while the parties on whom the cares of hospitality devolved were consulting with the farmer's wife about preparations for tea, any stray guest might search for wood-plants in the skirts of the copse on the hill behind, or talk with the children who were jumping in and out of an old saw-pit in the wood, or if contemplative, might watch the minnows in the ...
— Deerbrook • Harriet Martineau
... a long silence, which Peter resolved not to break. Through the shuttered window, the distant bells chimed faintly into the room. The sick man's stray arm moved restlessly on the coverlet, but otherwise he ...
— Captivating Mary Carstairs • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... honour's sway An all-loving breast Whose devotion cannot stray, Never gloom-oppressed— If this noble breast still wake For a worthy motive's sake, There a pillow I will make For thy head ...
— Robert F. Murray - his poems with a memoir by Andrew Lang • Robert F. Murray
... who operated the auto according to the magazine pictures of racing chauffeurs, leaning far forward, should topple into the road? Suppose a stray breeze should tilt the machine and throw out ...
— Mr. Hawkins' Humorous Adventures • Edgar Franklin
... indictment on Callixenus, insisting that his proposal was unconstitutional, and this view of the case was applauded by some members of the assembly. But the majority kept crying out that it was monstrous if the people were to be hindered by any stray individual from doing what seemed to them right. And when Lysicus, embodying the spirit of those cries, formally proposed that if these persons would not abandon their action, they should be tried by the same vote along with the generals: a proposition ...
— Hellenica • Xenophon
... enemy's fire-ships. During each day's battle, then, they hovered round the flagship, getting out of the way whenever she was engaged, as she often was, on both broadsides, and although once or twice struck by stray shots, the Fan Fan received no serious damage. In this encounter of giants, the little yacht was entirely overlooked, and none of the great ships wasted a shot upon her. Two or three times each day, when the Admiral's ship had beaten off her foes, a fire-ship directed ...
— When London Burned • G. A. Henty
... themselves, as many a bruised white arm or shoulder afterwards testified. There was scarcely a man burnt on the occasion, husbands, lovers, and fathers escaped, leaving all the heroic deeds to be done by some few devoted men-servants, some workmen who happened to be passing, a stray Englishman or American, and mothers who perished in attempting to ...
— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand
... miracle happened. Suddenly the German dropped his bayonet with a crash and threw up both arms. He spun on his heel and then fell to the ground without an outcry. A stray bullet had done what Chester had been unable to accomplish, and for the moment the lad ...
— The Boy Allies At Verdun • Clair W. Hayes
... market were peon restaurants, a ragged strip of canvas as roof, under it an ancient wooden table and two benches. Unwashed Indian women cooked in several open earthen bowls the favorite Mexican dishes,—frijoles (a stew of brown beans), chile con carne, rice, stews of stray scraps of meat and the leavings of the butcher-shops. These were dished up in brown glazed jars and eaten with strips of tortilla folded between the fingers, as the Arab eats with gkebis. Indeed there were many things reminiscent of the markets and streets of Damascus, ...
— Tramping Through Mexico, Guatemala and Honduras - Being the Random Notes of an Incurable Vagabond • Harry A. Franck
... to match his hair and eyes) and he would carry him around on his shoulder, it was a mighty pretty sight! the gray cat sound asleep against papa's gray coat and hair. The names that he has given our different cats, are realy remarkably funny, they are namely Stray Kit, Abner, Motley, Fraeulein, Lazy, Bufalo Bill, Cleveland, Sour Mash, and ...
— Chapters from My Autobiography • Mark Twain
... if you press me further, I will say A word to madden you.—Stand still! You stray Around the margin of a precipice. I know what pleasure 'tis to pluck the flowers That hang above destruction, and to gaze Into the dread abyss, to see such things As may be safely seen. Tis perilous: The eye grows dizzy as we gaze below, And a wild wish possesses us to spring Into the vacant ...
— Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1856-1911: Francesca da Rimini • George Henry Boker
... killed. A stray shot, when she was giving tea to the men in the trenches.... It meant a lot... to all of us. The Englishman was killed too, so he was all right. I think Semyonov would have liked that same end; but he didn't get it, so he's remained desolate. Really desolate, in a way that only your thorough ...
— The Secret City • Hugh Walpole
... A stray lock of heavy hair had fallen across the girl's violet eyes, and with an impatient gesture at the reminder of her sex, Alexander tossed it back. "I gives ye my pledge," ...
— A Pagan of the Hills • Charles Neville Buck
... Camp-stools abounded, with here and there a bundle looking like quilts and pillows. Every lady had a waterproof and every man an umbrella, and the talk was of "tents," and "division meetings," and "the morning boats," with stray words like "Fairpoint" and "Mayville" coming in every now and then. These two words, the girls knew had to do with their hopes; so they began ...
— Four Girls at Chautauqua • Pansy
... security and her friendly duty. As for the feelings of her heart, she was at rest. Strong in self-confidence, she had no fear that her mind could be influenced to stray from its proper path. It is true that during the previous evening, in the first tumult of troubled thought, she had felt a vague presentiment that a day of temptation might be before her, not as the result of any deliberate ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 5, May, 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... Castle, a refuge for all the stray goblins of the country, was completely deserted. It stood on the top of a high rock, two miles from the town, and was seldom visited. Sometimes a few strangers took it into their heads to explore these old historical ...
— The Underground City • Jules Verne
... supper on the sand. Negro sellers of fruit and fly-embroidered lumps of meat, or brilliant-coloured pottery, and cheap, bright stuffs, were rolling up their wares for the night, in red and purple rags or tattered matting. Beggars lingered, hoping for a stray dried date, or a coin before crawling off to secret dens; and two deformed dwarfs in enormous turbans and blue coats, claimed power as marabouts, chanting their own praises and the praises of Allah, in ...
— The Golden Silence • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... centre of the porch and stood sunning herself in a stray shaft of light, like a very bird of paradise. The "tempestuous petticoat," sky-blue and laced with silver, swelled proudly outwards, the gleaming satin bodice slipped low over the snowy shoulders and the heaving bosom, ...
— Prisoners of Hope - A Tale of Colonial Virginia • Mary Johnston
... his home with Pierce in the tiny backwoods settlement of Marshall. They were both men of unusual caliber and were interested vitally in the affairs of the territory, particularly educational questions. Many are the discussions these two must have held, to which a stray copy of a translation of M. Victor Cousin's report on "The State of Public Instruction in Prussia," made to the French ministry of Public Instruction, which fell into the hands of Pierce, certainly contributed not a little. Here was the account ...
— The University of Michigan • Wilfred Shaw
... of dust, or fragments of meals, or dirty plates. There was neither a Winged Victory, a Venus de Milo, nor a Hermes after Praxiteles. And except for the bust of Bubbles there was no example of Barbara's own work by which to fish for stray compliments from the casual visitor. Of the amenities the studio had but a thick carpet, an open fireplace, and a pair of plain but easy chairs. Upon a strong tremorless table placed near the one great window, a huge lump of clay, swathed in damp cloths, alone ...
— The Penalty • Gouverneur Morris
... under lock and key; the kennel was mute, and the muzzled dogs looked piteously at one another, and hung their heads, as if they had given themselves up to the certain prospect of being drowned. The very hares knew how matters were, and passed to and fro before the garden-windows; and a stray wolf, which came one evening into the court-yard, sat on his hind-quarters and looked us impudently in the face; as to the birds, they ate up very nearly every peach and apricot we had. The silence of the grave reigned everywhere—the house seemed a very ...
— Le Morvan, [A District of France,] Its Wild Sports, Vineyards and Forests; with Legends, Antiquities, Rural and Local Sketches • Henri de Crignelle
... profession by Church fellowship with living union with Christ. Much more is this true of our missionary efforts, and the apparent converts whom they make. The results that appear are no measure of the results that have actually been accomplished. We often hear of men who had caught up some stray word in a Bengali market-place, or received a tract by the roadside from some passing missionary, and who, having carried away the seed in their hearts, had long been living as Christians remote from all ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. John Chapters I to XIV • Alexander Maclaren
... leaves. With this is mixed the little hop-clover, and the sucklings, and other tiny gold-dust blossoms. Meadow vetchling, and the tall meadow crowfoot, with rich yellow blooms and dainty leaves, are set off by the pinks of the clover and the crimson of stray sainfoin clusters. All these blossoms with the various flowers of the grasses, tend to ripen and come to perfection together, the heats of June bringing the whole multitude on together as in a natural forcing-pit. It is then that the mowing grass is said to be "ripe," when all the ...
— The Naturalist on the Thames • C. J. Cornish
... description was the true one, he did not stop to inquire whether every detail was correct. Nor did he always enjoy an extensive knowledge of the epoch which he delineated. But he possessed to the full the poet's faculty of building the whole form and feature of a past age out of a few stray fragments of information. The historical colour of Ruy Blas is said to be based on two French books, carelessly consulted, yet of Ruy Blas M. Paul de Saint-Victor, after making a close study of the period, wrote: 'Ce fragment de siecle que je venais d'exhumer de tant de recherches, ...
— La Legende des Siecles • Victor Hugo
... dream, in all these years, Of patient faith and silent tears,— That Love's strong hand would put aside The barriers of place and pride,— Would reach the pathless darkness through, And draw me softly up to you. But that is past. If you should stray Beside my grave, some future day, Perchance the violets o'er my dust Will half betray their buried trust, And say, their blue eyes full of dew, "She loved ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 15, January, 1859 • Various
... mind unpleasant impressions, and created doubts and misgivings which his tutors could with difficulty dispel. But he shut his eyes, blinded his mind, and allowed the hour of his visitation to pass by. Now, the words of this Mr. Chase, a stray traveler, roaming through the world without aim or object, so far as known, had aroused this slumbering phantom of the past, and provoked, if not challenged, him anew. He recalled the story of Catholic missions that had read to him like a continuation of Apostolic labors; statistics, gathered altogether ...
— Hubert's Wife - A Story for You • Minnie Mary Lee
... beast or robber; and the crook, or rod. By this crook, the shepherd guided a sheep in a dangerous pass, placing the crook under the sheep's neck, to hold him up and assist his steps. When a sheep was disposed to stray, the shepherd could hold him back with his crook. When the sheep had fallen into the power of a beast, the crook assisted in drawing him away. A good sheep loved the crook as much as the staff,—to be guided, as well as to be defended. Both of the shepherd's instruments ...
— Catharine • Nehemiah Adams
... (Isaiah xl. 3) belongs to that part of the book which our critic and his fellow critics have decided was predicted by some stray prophet, unknown to the world, to the Jewish people or the church. We prefer the statement of John the Baptist, and its indorsement by ...
— The Testimony of the Bible Concerning the Assumptions of Destructive Criticism • S. E. Wishard
... for ventilation, and this, Miss Wendover told Ida, was generally taken for a haunted corner, as the ventilating window gave utterance to unearthly noises in the dead watches of the night, and sometimes gave entrance to a stray cat from adjacent tiles. A cat less agile than the rest of his species had been known to entangle himself in the little swing window, and to hang there all the night, sending forth unearthly caterwaulings, ...
— The Golden Calf • M. E. Braddon
... the street, we stray down into one of the shops,—a shop local and naive, a veritable French country-store. We have noticed the hemp-soled sandals worn by many of the mountaineers, and incline to test them for the approaching excursion to Gavarnie. The dark-eyed little proprietor and his wife spring to greet ...
— A Midsummer Drive Through The Pyrenees • Edwin Asa Dix
... lie to your honour? I did know him; and thereupon, seeing him wander about, took him up for a stray, and impounded him, with intention to restore him ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Vol. 7 (of 18) - The Duke of Guise; Albion and Albanius; Don Sebastian • John Dryden
... power of exhortation, therefore a man like the Rev. Mr. Benderson, who had that gift abnormally developed, was too valuable to be localized; so he spent the year going from place to place, sweeping, driving, coaxing, or frightening into the fold those stray sheep that hovered on the outskirts; once they were within the religious ring- fence the local minister was supposed to keep them there. The latter, who had given out the hymn, was a man of very different caliber. He was tall, pale, and thin, and ...
— In the Midst of Alarms • Robert Barr
... the construction. The general appearance of the power plant can be seen by referring to Fig. 77, which is a view of the complete boiler and engine mounted together on the same base. The boiler is shown at A and the safety-valve and filler at L. The base or firebox B protects the burner from stray drafts of air, and also supports ...
— Boys' Book of Model Boats • Raymond Francis Yates
... of worse beasts still. Worse beasts, certainly, Sturmi and his comrades would have met, if they had met them in human form. For there were waifs and strays of barbarism there, uglier far than any waif and stray of civilization, border ruffian of the far west, buccaneer of the Tropic keys, Cimaroon of the Panama forests; men verbiesterte, turned into the likeness of beasts, wildfanger, huner, ogres, wehr-wolves, ...
— The Roman and the Teuton - A Series of Lectures delivered before the University of Cambridge • Charles Kingsley
... then concluded thus:— Here amidst sylvan bowers we'll rove, From lawn to woodland stray; Blest as the songsters of the ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Oliver Goldsmith • Oliver Goldsmith
... carnage; the little band which surrounded the king was cut to pieces at his side; and Louis himself, with his back against a rock, defended himself, alone, for some minutes, against several Turks, till they, not knowing who he was, drew off, whereupon he, suddenly throwing himself upon a stray horse, rejoined his advanced guard, who believed him dead. The army continued their march pell-mell, king, barons, knights, soldiers, and pilgrims, uncertain day by day what would become of them on the morrow. The Turks harassed ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume II. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... smoke which covered us there; so that my eye endured not to stay open[1] wherefore my sage and trusty Escort drew to my side and offered me his shoulder. Even as a blind man goes behind his guide, in order not to stray, and not to butt against anything that may hurt or perhaps kill him, I went along, through the bitter and foul air, listening to my Leader, who was ever saying, "Take care that thou be not cut off ...
— The Divine Comedy, Volume 2, Purgatory [Purgatorio] • Dante Alighieri
... This poor stray crop on the roofs, the harvest of which will fall to the neighboring sparrows, has carried my thoughts to the rich crops which are now falling beneath the sickle; it has recalled to me the beautiful walks I took as a child through my native province, when the threshing-floors at the ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... I chanced to stray, The village death-bell smote my ear; They winked aside, and seemed to say, 'Countess, prepare, ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 3 - Sorrow and Consolation • Various
... athwart the pebbled brook, Let me with judgment cast the feather'd hook, Silent along the grassy margin stray, And with a fur wrought ...
— The Teesdale Angler • R Lakeland
... stray tear from her cheek and smiled bravely up into his face, in a wordless pledge that to the administration of this treatment she would ...
— 'Smiles' - A Rose of the Cumberlands • Eliot H. Robinson
... frankly, nipping the rock-pile with her riding whip, and bending over to peer, with undisguised curiosity, into the yawning shaft-hole. "I ride out from San Juan for vat you call constitutional—mercy, such a vord, senor!—an' I stray up dis trail. See? It vas most steep, my, so steep, like I slide off; but de mustang he climb de hill, all right, an' den I see you, senor, an' know dere vas a mine here. Not de big mine—bah! I care not for dat kind—but just one leetle mine, vere I no be 'fraid to go down. ...
— Beth Norvell - A Romance of the West • Randall Parrish
... had lost its hardness. The ponies' hoofs sank deep into the cinders, making progress slow for the party. They managed to get to the base of the mountain, but the mustangs were pretty well fagged. The animals were turned out for the night after having been hobbled so that they could not stray far away. ...
— The Pony Rider Boys in the Grand Canyon - The Mystery of Bright Angel Gulch • Frank Gee Patchin
... water-woman then became quiet, and the Prince told her all he knew, and how anxious he was to find the beautiful Princess. The good woman of the sea then told him that she and her companions had come up on the shore every night for a year, hoping that the Princess would stray that way, and be induced by them to return to her ocean home. Then she told him who the Princess really was, and thus her ...
— Ting-a-ling • Frank Richard Stockton
... as the six little Bunkers had! Daddy Bunker was up before any of them, to see that little fingers were not burned by pieces of punk or stray ends of fire-crackers, and before breakfast Russ and Laddie had made enough noise, their mother ...
— Six Little Bunkers at Grandma Bell's • Laura Lee Hope
... surprised was I that, spent and dead, They should not, like the many, be at rest, But stray as apparitions; hence I said, "Why, having slipped ...
— Satires of Circumstance, Lyrics and Reveries, with - Miscellaneous Pieces • Thomas Hardy
... much there was to do. Positively, even rhymes left unrhymed in 'Lady Geraldine's Courtship.' You don't write so carelessly, not you, and the reward is that you haven't so much trouble in your new editions. I see your book advertised in a stray number of the 'Athenaeum' lent to me by Mr. Tennyson—Frederick. He lent it to me because I wanted to see the article on the new poet, Alexander Smith, who appears so applauded everywhere. He has the poet's ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Volume II • Elizabeth Barrett Browning
... thoughtful stray Along the coast, where dashing spray With rising mist o'erhangs the day, And wets the shore, And thick the vivid flashes play ...
— Cottage Poems • Patrick Bronte
... house was shut up, awaiting the entry of some new tenant. There were no shutters to shut; the long low window was blinking in the rays of the morning sun; the house and cow-house doors were closed, and no poultry wandered about the field in search of stray grains of corn, or early worms. It was a strange and unfamiliar silence, and struck solemnly on Sylvia's mind. Only a thrush in the old orchard down in the hollow, out of sight, whistled and gurgled with ...
— Sylvia's Lovers, Vol. III • Elizabeth Gaskell
... not!" But I had to yield. My dream was that our General had told me a fable. It was of a young rat, which seeing a cockerel, whose tail was scarcely longer than his own, leap down into a barrel, gather some stray grains of corn and fly out again, was tempted to follow his example, but having got in, could only stay there. The boys furnished the moral; it was ...
— The Cavalier • George Washington Cable
... plain Roman roast pork predominated over the variety of baked meats and the refined sauces and dishes of fish. Of the riddles and drinking songs, of the Greek rhetoric and philosophy, which played so great a part in the originals, we meet only a stray trace now and then in ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... continued: "There's some things that I'd like to talk to you about before I make up my mind when to start," he said; "I've been worrying about what to do with my stock while I'm gone. I wouldn't want it to stray or be run off by Dunlavey's gang." The appeal in his eyes did ...
— The Coming of the Law • Charles Alden Seltzer
... the brilliantly uniformed officers stationed at Fort Louis, the silks and satins of the nobles, the soberer woolens of the burghers and seamen, all combined to give the room a peculiar charm and color. Thus, with the golden pistole of Spain, the louis and crown and livre of France, and the stray Holland and English coins, Maitre le Borgne began quickly to gorge his treasure-chests; and no one begrudged him, unless it was Maitre Olivet ...
— The Grey Cloak • Harold MacGrath
... brothers. It made him ache to think of Dorothy, with her feeble mother, the boys, as wild as preacher's sons proverbially are, and the old farm running down on her hands; the fences all needed mending, and there went Reuben Barton, now, careering over the fields in chase of a stray yearling. His mother's house was big, and lonely, and empty; and he flushed as he thought of the "one ewe-lamb" he coveted, out of Friend Barton's rugged pastures. As he raised the gate, and leaned to watch the water swirl and gurgle through the "trunk," sucking the long weeds with it, and ...
— Stories by American Authors (Volume 4) • Constance Fenimore Woolson
... seen to it, mother," said Ralph; "it is packed, and the oxen are already tied to the yokes for fear lest they should stray." ...
— Swallow • H. Rider Haggard
... he took me by the hand, leading me very slowly, with much feeling about and frequent halts to assure himself that he did not stray ...
— The Gods of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... how rude soe'er the hand That ventures o'er thy magic maze to stray; 20 O wake once more! though scarce my skill command Some feeble echoing of thine earlier lay; Though harsh and faint, and soon to die away, And all unworthy of thy nobler strain, Yet if one heart throb higher at its sway, 25 The wizard note ...
— Lady of the Lake • Sir Walter Scott
... with the times of Mary Queen of Scots. Craigmillar Castle was within a few miles of the city; there was also Crighton Castle, and above all Borthwick Castle. This grand massive old ruin left a deep impression on my mind. The sight of its gloomy interior, with the great hall lighted up only by stray glints of sunshine, as if struggling for access through the small deep-seated windows in its massive walls, together with its connection with the life and times of Queen Mary, had a far greater influence upon my ...
— James Nasmyth's Autobiography • James Nasmyth
... mighty torrents stray, Thither the brook pursues its way, And tinkling rill, There all are equal; side by side The poor man and the son of ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... my venerable friend,' said the man of intelligence, 'is a stray child of Time, and is flying from his father into the region of the infinite. Continue your pursuit and you will doubtless come up with him; but as to the earthly gifts you expect, he has scattered them all among ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 385. November, 1847. • Various
... Sabbath morning. Soft and silvery, like stray notes from the quivering chords of an archangel's harp, floated the clear, sweet voice of the church-bells through the hushed heart of the great metropolis, while old men and little children—youth in its hope, ...
— Words of Cheer for the Tempted, the Toiling, and the Sorrowing • T. S. Arthur
... to press her, because her attitudes and attention on Sunday were far from satisfactory. On Tuesday and Thursday Albinia had a class at school, and so, likewise, had Lucy, who kept a jealous watch over every stray necklace and curl, and had begun thoroughly to enjoy the importance and bustle of charity. She was a useful assistant in the penny club and lending library, which occupied Albinia on other mornings in the week, until the hour when she came in for the girls' studies. After ...
— The Young Step-Mother • Charlotte M. Yonge
... cogitation the wily chaplain concluded that it would be best to hear the general opinion of the Beorminster gossips in order to pick up any stray scraps of information likely to be of use to him. Afterwards he intended to call on Mr Inspector Tinkler and hear officially the more immediate details of the case. By what he heard from the police and the social prattlers, Cargrim ...
— The Bishop's Secret • Fergus Hume
... than once passed their perihelion. Those most familiarly known complete their periods in years as follows:—Encke's 3.3; Swift's, 5.5; Winnecke's, 5.6; Tempel's, 6; Brorsen's, 5.5; Faye's, 7.4; Tuttle's, 13.8, and Halley's, 76. Comets with parabolic and hyperbolic orbits may be regarded as stray objects which visit our system once, and depart never to return again. Besides those already mentioned there are many comets with orbits of such marked eccentricity that their ellipses when near perihelion cannot be distinguished from parabolae. The great comets ...
— The Astronomy of Milton's 'Paradise Lost' • Thomas Orchard
... gone by way of the BRUDERSTRASSE, where he called in to investigate the vase mentioned in the letter. Afterwards, they commenced an informal wandering from one haunt to another, now by themselves, now with stray acquaintances. Krafft, who was still enfeebled by the previous night, and who, under the best of circumstances, could not carry as much as his friends, was the first to give in. For a time, they got him about ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson
... will teach those who have eyes exactly how it should be grown. There will appear here and there in a garden stray or rogue Parsley plants. No matter how regularly the hoeing and weeding may be done, a stray Parsley plant will occasionally appear alone, perhaps in the midst of Lettuces, or Cauliflowers, or Onions. When ...
— The Culture of Vegetables and Flowers From Seeds and Roots, 16th Edition • Sutton and Sons
... will say that for ye. She's a gad-about grinny, she is, if ever was. A gad-about grinny. Mucked up my mushroom bed to rights, she did, and I 'aven't forgot it. Got the feet of a centipede, she 'as—ll over everything and neither with your leave nor by your leave. Like a stray 'en in a pea patch. Cluck! cluck! Trying to laugh it off. I laughed 'er off, I ...
— The History of Mr. Polly • H. G. Wells
... horse-racing and rouge-et-noir! But there is no excitement that can approach boat-racing on a southern river! One by one people pop up the ladders and throng the rails. First come the unemployed deck-hands, then a stray gentleman or two, and finally ladies and children, till the rail is full and every eye is anxiously strained to the ...
— Four Years in Rebel Capitals - An Inside View of Life in the Southern Confederacy from Birth to Death • T. C. DeLeon
... to be sure, of the Colonel's studied secrecy in the matter, but secrets are ticklish things at the best, and no stray hint was likely to have been lost upon a girl of May's intelligence. He had a notion that, if he could get a word with Nanni himself, it would be easy to sound him on the point; a delusion that was destined to ...
— A Venetian June • Anna Fuller
... mingling in new associations with those now visibly passing before him, and these again confused with other images of his own ceaseless, sleepless imagination, flashing by in sudden troops. Fancy how his paper will be covered with stray symbols and blots, and undecipherable shorthand:—as for his sitting down to "draw from Nature," there was not one of the things which he wished to represent, that stayed for so much as five seconds together: but none of them escaped for all that: ...
— On the Old Road Vol. 1 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... gardened, and Mrs. Challoner sat under the mulberry-tree and watched them; on another occasion they took a long country walk, and lost themselves, and came back merry and tired, and laden with primrose-roots and ferns: they had met no one, except a stray laborer,—had seen glow-worms, picked wild flowers, and declared themselves mightily refreshed. One evening Phillis, who was not to be ...
— Not Like Other Girls • Rosa N. Carey
... stiff with his great age and the cruel rheumatism that is the doom of the field-worker; and against the brass and leather of his boots the stubble whispered loudly. Overhead the rooks and gulls gave short, harsh cries as they circled around hoping for stray grains; but the thousand little lives which had thriven in the corn—the field mice and frogs and toads—had been stilled by the sickles; some few had escaped to the shelter of the hedges, but most were ...
— Secret Bread • F. Tennyson Jesse
... not catching a turtle during the night; the season for them had however now passed away, so that we could only hope to cut off a stray one which might have lingered behind its fellows. The next day was occupied in sticking up a steer-oar with a tin canister attached to it, containing a letter in which was detailed the plan I intended to follow, so that in the event of any accident ...
— Journals Of Two Expeditions Of Discovery In North-West And Western Australia, Vol. 1 (of 2) • George Grey
... extended its benignant patronage over all the people of such town; or, if a stray Episcopalian or Seven-Day Baptist were here and there living under the wing of the parish, they were regarded with a serene and stately gravity, as necessary exceptions to the law of Divine Providence,—like scattered instances of red hair or of ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 88, February, 1865 • Various
... escaped from Buckingham's lips. Raoul, who loved, comprehended it all. He fixed upon his friend one of those profound looks which a bosom friend or mother can alone extend, either as protector or guardian, over the one who is about to stray from the right path. Towards two o'clock in the afternoon the sun shone forth anew, the wind subsided, the sea became smooth as a crystal mirror, and the fog, which had shrouded the coast, disappeared like a veil withdrawn from before it. The smiling hills ...
— Ten Years Later - Chapters 1-104 • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... nurse her, and was by her when she died. Mary Wollstonecraft remembered her loss ten years afterwards in these "Letters from Sweden and Norway," when she wrote: "The grave has closed over a dear friend, the friend of my youth; still she is present with me, and I hear her soft voice warbling as I stray over the heath." ...
— Letters written during a short residence in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark • Mary Wollstonecraft
... said languidly, gazing at my reflection in the mirror and replacing a stray lock, "I suppose I'd rather be a gateway than ...
— The Fifth Wheel - A Novel • Olive Higgins Prouty
... drove stage from Casper to Meander, that I knew every pair of pants between the Chugwater and the Wind River. If one man ever had come out wearin' another feller's pants, I'd 'a' spotted 'em quick as I would a brand on a stray horse. Pants wasn't as thick in them days as they are now, and crooks wasn't as plentiful neither. I knew one old sheepman back on the Sweetwater that wore one pair ...
— Claim Number One • George W. (George Washington) Ogden
... no scintillations in the air, the rim or margin of the sun appears to be a perfect circle, as defined, in outline, as if carved. By interposing an adjusted circular card, to cut off the direct rays of the sun, thus improvising an eclipse, not a stray ray of light is seen to dart in any direction from the sun, except what is reflected to the instrument, diffusively, from our atmosphere; thus proving that the corona, the coruscations or flashes of light, seen during a total ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 3, September 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... over the continent from the Arctic to the Gulf. There were rumors of coyotes turning up in Indiana. Then came the tale that a strange breed of small yellow wolves had appeared in Michigan. Those sheepmen who summered their sheep in the high valleys of the western mountains complained that stray coyotes quit the flats and followed them into the hills to prey upon the flocks. The buffalo wolves that had once infested the range country were gone and it was seldom that any of the big gray killers turned up on the open range except when ...
— The Yellow Horde • Hal G. Evarts
... am," cried Paul. "A waif and stray, an unknown figure coming out of the darkness. I have nothing to give you but ...
— The Fortunate Youth • William J. Locke
... Cave, and was discovered a few years before by a young brother of Sam Wiles. The boy, Ephraim Wiles, one day was hunting stray cattle on some hills skirting the Cumberlands River, when he came to the top of a hill which was nearly bare of timber and whose southern side was a sheer perpendicular of rock for several feet down. The boy stood ...
— The Kentucky Ranger • Edward T. Curnick
... wooded in its character, the bark-hunters, whose quest obliged them to stray in short flights around the wings of the column, redoubled their mazes. The careless air of these Bolivian retrievers, their voluntary doublings through the most difficult jungles, and their easy way of walking over everything with their noses in the air, proved well their indifference to ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, No. 23, February, 1873, Vol. XI. • Various
... household at Shoulthwaite Moss, following his occupations with constancy, and always obsequious in the acknowledgment of his obligations. It was observed that he manifested a peculiar eagerness when through any stray channel intelligence was received in the valley of the sayings and doings in the world outside. Nothing was thought of this until one day the passing pedler brought the startling news that the Lord Protector was dead. The family were at breakfast ...
— The Shadow of a Crime - A Cumbrian Romance • Hall Caine
... with no social or personal passports of any kind, must force his way over drawbridge and beneath portcullis—or whatever else might be the method of entering a feudal pile—into the presence of the chatelaine whose abode here must be that of some legendary princess, and bend her to his will. Stray memories came to him of Siegfrieds and Prince Charmings, with a natural gift for this sort of thing, but only to make his own appearance in the role ...
— The Street Called Straight • Basil King
... investigation isn't an exact science. Success or failure depends in a large measure on applied common sense, and the possession of a great deal of special information. Mrs. Pickett knows certain things which neither you nor I know, and it's just possible that she may have some stray piece of information which will provide the key to the ...
— Death At The Excelsior • P. G. Wodehouse
... clothed themselves in language "unbecoming to a Christian woman"—so at least said Mrs. Saunders, to whom most of the language was applied. Nor was she, on her part, surprised at Mrs. Crick's conduct in letting her hens stray into other body's gardens, and then abusing of them, seeing as how she remembered things against Mrs. Crick—and the latter simultaneously had recollections of lurking episodes in the past of Susan Saunders that were nothing to her credit. ...
— Reginald in Russia and Other Sketches • Saki (H.H. Munro)
... fat and florid, might speak with a twang and wear gaudy hats and gowns. My life in New York, even though I was but a quiet observer, had made me critical of women, and when I could brood unhappily over Gladys Todd's stray wisps of hair I could have little sympathy with the type of the imaginary Penelope Blight. But this morning, when the far-borne freshness of the woods and fields was in the air, and I longed to feel the soft earth beneath my feet, to break from the enclosing walls ...
— David Malcolm • Nelson Lloyd
... time, they were never free from alarm night or day, so that they had lost forty soldiers during this last useless and circuitous march. The Indians on every opportunity shot all who happened to stray from the main body, and would often crawl on all fours at night into their quarters, shoot their arrows, and make their escape, unseen by the centinels. To add to their distresses, the winter now began to set in, with much rain, snow and excessive cold weather. On coming ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 5 • Robert Kerr |
