"Wooden leg" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the old man's wooden leg, and scrambling over the wall by the south porch of the church they were soon out of danger on the ...
— The Altar Steps • Compton MacKenzie
... about seeking a fortune and finding one, which was prettily put, and Frenchy as best man was heard to mutter something about "Beautiful ... loss to camp ... happiness ... wooden leg," and ...
— Fifty-Two Stories For Girls • Various
... the cicatrices are so much in the way, and the bones are so ill covered, that the patient can never rest his leg on the stump itself, but has either to rest his weight on his patella impinging on the top of a bottle-shaped leg, or just to stick out his stump behind him and kneel on the top of his wooden leg; therefore it is no use to have a stump longer than a few inches; in fact, the longer the stump is the more it is in the way. And more than this, many of the stumps made near the ankle, or through the ...
— A Manual of the Operations of Surgery - For the Use of Senior Students, House Surgeons, and Junior Practitioners • Joseph Bell
... you heard the news," she began, "about this Captain James? A sailor,—with a wooden leg, I have no doubt. What would the poor, dear, deceased master have said to it, if he had known who was to be his successor! My dear, I have often thought of the postman's bringing me a letter as one of the pleasures I shall miss in heaven. But, really, I think Mr. Horner may be ...
— My Lady Ludlow • Elizabeth Gaskell
... to school when he was five years of age. A man by the name of Hobby lived in one of his father's tenements, and he served the public in the double capacity of parish sexton and school-master. It is claimed that he was a wounded soldier with a wooden leg, a kind, Christian gentleman, whose very limited education may have qualified him to dig graves and open the house of worship, but not to teach the young. However, he did teach school quite a number of years, and some of his pupils ...
— From Farm House to the White House • William M. Thayer
... with due respect, as the prop of a hero. With this leg, which is fitted with a very handsome boot, he reviews his troops next Sunday, putting his best foot foremost; for generally he merely wears an unadorned wooden leg. The shoemaker, a Spaniard, whom I can recommend to all customers as the most impertinent individual I ever encountered, was arguing, in a blustering manner, with a gentleman who had brought a message from the general, desiring ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon de la Barca
... face, about as moist as one of the tubful of huge suet puddings, tied up in bags alongside of him. The cook, aided by "Quamino," lifts the lids off the coppers, that the captain may peer into them, and ascertain whether or not all is clean and nice. With the end of his wooden leg the cook then gives a twist to the cock of the coppers, to let some of the pease-soup in preparation run off and show itself to the noble commander's inspection. The oven-doors are next opened, the range or large fire stirred up, and every hole and corner exposed to view; the object of ...
— The Lieutenant and Commander - Being Autobigraphical Sketches of His Own Career, from - Fragments of Voyages and Travels • Basil Hall
... perhaps, all!" Clara murmured dreamily, as they passed the long rows of weather-beaten heroes basking in the sun. "Did you notice that very old one, with a red face, who was drawing a map in the dust with his wooden leg, and all the others watching? I think it was a plan of ...
— A Tangled Tale • Lewis Carroll
... shot the man in the leg. The wound festered and the leg was amputated; then the man was sentenced to the mines at Yakutsk. It was I know not how many thousand miles—it took him two years to walk there on his wooden leg—walking, walking every day." ...
— The Destroyer - A Tale of International Intrigue • Burton Egbert Stevenson
... in an empty cow-stall, mending Pelle's clothes, while the boy played up and down the foddering passage. He had found in the herdsman's room an old boot-jack, which he placed under his knee, pretending it was a wooden leg, and all the time he was chattering happily, but not quite so loudly as usual, to his father. The morning's experience was still fresh in his mind, and had a subduing effect; it was as if he had performed some great deed, and was now nervous ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... holes in each other with baynits. An' whin its all over they'se me an' Chamberlain at home victoryous an' Kruger an' Schwartzmeister at home akelly victoryous. An' they make me prime minister or aldherman but whin I want a man to put in me coal I don't take wan with a wooden leg. ...
— Mr. Dooley's Philosophy • Finley Peter Dunne
... parts of the world—some being kept always handy for contingent use, and others being occasionally hundreds of miles away. A machine is merely a supplementary limb; this is the be all and end all of machinery. We do not use our own limbs other than as machines; and a leg is only a much better wooden leg ...
— Erewhon • Samuel Butler
... lordship," replied the man; "but that angel, the baroness, has had a wooden leg made for me,—I could dance with it if I wished,—so I don't need to beg any more, for I can cut wood now, and thus earn my living. May God bless her who has done ...
— The Nameless Castle • Maurus Jokai
... before. They are to be washed a third time in a stronger soap liquor, made hot and tinged with blueing, and rinsed in clean water. Before they are quite dry, they are to be stoved with brimstone, and afterwards polished with glass upon a wooden leg. Gauzes are whitened in the same manner, only a little gum is put in the soap liquor before ...
— The Cook and Housekeeper's Complete and Universal Dictionary; Including a System of Modern Cookery, in all Its Various Branches, • Mary Eaton
... War, I always occupied a comfortable brass camp bedstead which had formerly belonged to the Mexican General, Santa Anna. It seems that just after the battle of Cerro Gordo this warrior made a hasty flight, leaving behind him his camp furniture and even, it is said, his wooden leg. This bedstead was captured as a trophy of war, and finally came into General Scott's possession. The memory of this man's brutal deeds, however, never disturbed my midnight repose. Texas history tells the story of the Alamo and of the six brave men there ...
— As I Remember - Recollections of American Society during the Nineteenth Century • Marian Gouverneur
... River. For some reason, I could not learn how, he was known as "Gentle J——." He was a remarkably small man, but was noted as being a very plucky one. His store was stuck-up by a man called "Waddy Mundoo-i," from his having a wooden leg. Smith fought and knocked him out, afterwards giving him help to get along the road. We spent about a fortnight in Townsville having repairs made to the drays, etc., and we started on our return journey to Oak Park on the 14th of ...
— Reminiscences of Queensland - 1862-1869 • William Henry Corfield
... flame flickering round the neck of the phial as he opened it. By the way, from the peculiar stumping noise which he made in crossing the bare-boarded apartment, I knew at once that my strange entertainer had a wooden leg. Over the dust which lay quite thick on the boards, you could see the mark of one foot very neat and pretty, and then a round O, which was naturally the impression made by the wooden stump. I own I had ...
— Roundabout Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... closed behind him as he rushed through toward his horse. Glendin stood dazed, his face mottled with a sick pallor. Then he moved automatically toward the bar. Murphy hobbled down the length of the room on his wooden leg and placed bottle and glass before ...
— Trailin'! • Max Brand
... fer a place ware work 's the time o' day, You know thet 's wut I never did,—except the other way); Ef it 's the Presidential cheer fer wich I 'd better run, Wut two legs anywares about could keep up with my one? There aint no kin' o' quality in can'idates, it 's said, So useful ez a wooden leg,—except a wooden head; There 's nothin' aint so poppylar—(wy, it 's a parfect sin To think wut Mexico hez paid fer Santy Anny's pin;)— Then I haint gut no principles, an', sence I wuz knee-high, I never did hev any gret, ...
— The Biglow Papers • James Russell Lowell
... the morning, carried thither by a wooden-legged man who rode a donkey. There is a general understanding that the wooden-legged men in country parishes should be employed as postmen, owing to the great steadiness of demeanour which a wooden leg is generally found to produce. It may be that such men are slower in their operations than would be biped postmen; but as all private employers of labour demand labourers with two legs, it is well that the lame and halt should find a refuge in the less ...
— He Knew He Was Right • Anthony Trollope
... stood in the camp doorway in the patch of sunlight where he had sat two years before when I looked over his leg. He sat down again, in the shifting sunshine, the wooden leg sticking out straight and pathetic, and began to take the covers off a package. There were many covers; the package was apparently valuable. As he worked at it the odors of hemlock and balsam, distilled by hot sunlight, rose ...
— Joy in the Morning • Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews
... he rolled, with a nautical gait, towards the door by which the domestic had re-entered the room, and having reached the stairfoot, and finding himself alone, he added, with a sudden snarl, 'I'd like to give three of ye a chance of earning a wooden leg anyhow—coming into my house and guzzling my best beer the very minute ...
— VC — A Chronicle of Castle Barfield and of the Crimea • David Christie Murray
... 'you have acted your part to perfection; but now you must choose your career. If you like to stick to the church, you will possess great revenues, and nothing to do; if you choose to go into the army, you will risk your arm or your leg, but in time you may be a major-general with a wooden leg and a glass eye, the spectacle of an indifferent, ungrateful court. ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 1 • Grace Wharton and Philip Wharton
... never make use of anybody to row me that has not lost either a leg or an arm. I would rather bate him a few strokes of his oar than not employ an honest man that has been wounded in the Queen's service. If I was a lord or a bishop ... I would not put a fellow in my livery that had not a wooden leg." ...
— Camps, Quarters, and Casual Places • Archibald Forbes
... not pleasant as he said this, and he grasped the letter in front of him in a violent way, as if he were wishing his long fingers were round the writer's throat. Tapping with his wooden leg on the floor, he was about to recommence his musings, when he heard a step in the passage, and the door of his office being pushed violently open, a man entered without further ceremony, and flung himself down on a chair ...
— Madame Midas • Fergus Hume
... feelin' some more. 'Now, here is a distant luxation in the lumber regions.' He talked like Pinto had a wooden leg. ...
— Heart's Desire • Emerson Hough
... "Oh! I don't know that," was the reply, "I am a capital walker, I assure you. I remember a young man, quite as young as you, and a good deal stouter, who could not walk nearly as far as I can; to be sure," she added as she left the room, "he had a wooden leg, poor fellow!" ...
— Frank Fairlegh - Scenes From The Life Of A Private Pupil • Frank E. Smedley
... shuns nothing so much. "Always be ready to speak your minds" said Blake, "and a base man will avoid you." But to insist that he also shall speak his mind is to go a step further, it is to take from the impostor his wooden leg, to prohibit his lucrative whine, his mumping and his canting, to force the poor silly soul to stand erect among its fellows and declare itself. His occupation is gone, and he does not love the censor who deprives him of the weapons of ...
— Style • Walter Raleigh
... however, defied the brain-power alike of Indian and Eskimo; and no wonder, for it was a wooden leg, discovered by Anteek in what must have been the doctor's cabin—or a cabin which had been used for doctor's stuff and material. Like letters of the alphabet given in confusion for the purpose of being formed ...
— The Walrus Hunters - A Romance of the Realms of Ice • R.M. Ballantyne
... up before a particularly dreary and greasy beershop, into which Gregory rapidly conducted his companion. They seated themselves in a close and dim sort of bar-parlour, at a stained wooden table with one wooden leg. The room was so small and dark, that very little could be seen of the attendant who was summoned, beyond a vague and dark impression of ...
— The Man Who Was Thursday - A Nightmare • G. K. Chesterton
... that you should make them, Godfrey, and also the wooden leg when he is ready for it," Alexis had said. "It is just as well that their gratitude should be divided a little, so I will hand that part of the work ...
— Condemned as a Nihilist - A Story of Escape from Siberia • George Alfred Henty
... exceptional formations may turn to account in athletic exercises. A squinting eye is a treasure to a boxer, a left-handed batter is a prize in a cricketing eleven, and one of the best gymnasts in Chicago is an individual with a wooden leg, which he takes off at the commencement of affairs, thus economizing weight and stowage, and performing ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 7, Issue 41, March, 1861 • Various
... have none of him. He may be a danger to other children, if he has fits he will not be received. He may rob the tills of small shopkeepers, but if he is lame, half-blind, has heart disease, or if his brain is not sound and his body strong, if he has lost a hand, got a wooden leg, if he suffers from any disease or deprivation, prison, and prison only, is the place for him. So to prison the afflicted one goes if over fourteen; if under fourteen back to his home, to graduate in ...
— London's Underworld • Thomas Holmes
... mourning cloak to his cudgel by way of flag, and was holding it aloft to catch the breezes which streamed through the narrow defiles of the hills. None but sailors, well practised in treading the deck of a rolling ship, could possibly have maintained their footing: for the boatswain, the wooden leg, and the fisherman, kept up their horses inexorably to their duty of an immutable gallop; the hearse and its plumes flew through the solitary valley; the post-chaises, carrying a similar crew on their upper decks, flew after ...
— Walladmor: - And Now Freely Translated from the German into English. - In Two Volumes. Vol. I. • Thomas De Quincey
... leg shot off at Lexington. To the old man's dying day he used to grow red in the face whenever he told the story, and bring his fist down hard on the table, with "damn the leg, sir! 'Twasn't the leg I cared for: 'twas the not having another chance at those damned British rascals;" and the wooden leg itself would twitch and rap on the floor in his impatient indignation. One of Hetty's earliest recollections was of being led about the farm by this warm-hearted, irascible, old grandfather, whose wooden leg was a perpetual and unfathomable mystery to her. Where the flesh leg left ...
— Hetty's Strange History • Anonymous
... he said, "with his wooden leg. He makes a dot after every step. We shall catch him in a ...
— Fisherman's Luck • Henry van Dyke
... on the left-hand slope of the raised causeway. Probably fearing the intense competition, these musicians intended to garner at the propylaea the first fruits of the liberality which had here not yet spent itself. There were a girl harpist with repulsive, staring eyes; an old invalid with a wooden leg, who, on a dreadful, evidently home-made instrument, half dulcimer, half barrel-organ, was endeavoring by means of analogy to arouse the pity of the public for his painful injury; a lame, deformed boy, forming with his violin one single, indistinguishable ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VI. • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... too, the old leaven of Oxford burst forth sometimes. Of course, we generally performed the music of Handel and other classical authors; Mendelssohn's compositions were still considered as mere twaddle by some of the old school. At one of these evenings, the old organist of New College, with his wooden leg, after sitting through a rehearsal of Mendelssohn's Hymn of Praise, which I was conducting at the pianoforte, walked up to me, as I thought, to thank me; but no, he burst out in a torrent of real and somewhat coarse abuse of me, ...
— My Autobiography - A Fragment • F. Max Mueller
... minutes. But tell me now, what's being done with those poor wounded creatures? The girl told me the old man had had his leg blown off. Well, well! He won't refuse a chair next time he comes to see you, I'll wager. Or maybe he'll have his twenty-five thousand sovereigns made into a special wooden leg to take the place of the ...
— The Rider of Waroona • Firth Scott
... was so rich. Mrs. Boffin wore velvet dresses, and Mr. Boffin, thinking that now he was rich he ought to know a great deal about books, bought a big volume of the History of the Roman Empire and hired a man with a wooden leg who kept a ballad shop near by to come and read to ...
— Tales from Dickens • Charles Dickens and Hallie Erminie Rives
... lawn is covered with them, all stamped down. Look at these, for instance. These are the tracks of a man with a wooden leg"—Kent nodded—"in all probability a sailor, newly landed from Java, carrying a Singapore walking-stick, and with a tin-whistle tied ...
— Winsome Winnie and other New Nonsense Novels • Stephen Leacock
... Wagner's hand had done, they obeyed. Six men of them there were: surly crippled Manning, with eyes ablaze and jaws set like a trap; lank Wagner with his hands still in his pockets; Rank Judge, stumping on his wooden leg; greasy adipose Buck Walker, who ran the meat market; Slim Simpson, from the eating joint opposite, pale as the tucked-in apron around his waist; last of all the stranger, tall, smooth-shaven, alien in knickerbockers and blouse, his lips compressed, at his throat the arteries pounding visibly through ...
— Where the Trail Divides • Will Lillibridge
... Aston had his brains beaten out with his own wooden leg, at the storming of Tredagh in ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... with a gentleman fixed and finished once for all—one who invariably appeared drunk, jolly, sad. And for the purpose of characterisation nothing more was needed than some physical deformity like a clubfoot, a wooden leg, a red nose; or the person concerned was made to repeat some phrase like "That's capital!" or "Barkis is willin'," or something of that kind. This manner of regarding human beings as homogeneous is preserved even by the great Moliere. Harpagon ...
— Plays by August Strindberg, Second series • August Strindberg
... Bach eagerly confirmed the supposition, and continued his report, which now wrought up the narrator himself to a pitch of excitement and horror: Colard and Bancal held the old man's legs, while the tobacconist and his sweetheart seized his head and arms. A gentleman with a wooden leg and a three-cornered hat held a candle high in the air. There was something weird about the emergence of this new figure; if it stood for nothing more than a finishing touch to the horror of that night of murder, it fulfilled ...
— The German Classics, v. 20 - Masterpieces of German Literature • Various
... came down upon the moors as thick as ever I saw it; and there was no sound of any sort, nor a breath of wind to guide us. The little stubby trees that stand here and there, like bushes with a wooden leg to them, were drizzled with a mess of wet, and hung their points with dropping. Wherever the butt-end of a hedgerow came up from the hollow ground, like the withers of a horse, holes of splash were pocked and pimpled in the yellow sand of coneys, or under the dwarf tree's ovens. But soon it was ...
— Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor • R. D. Blackmore
... to repent of their movements; for in one corner of the tap-room sat Billy Waters, a well-known character about town, a Black Man with a wooden leg was fiddling to a Slaughterman from Fleet-market, in wooden shoes, who, deck'd with all the paraphernalia of his occupation, a greasy jacket and night-cap, an apron besmeared with mud, blood, and grease, nearly ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... no sooner come to the Temple stairs, but we were surrounded with a crowd of watermen offering us their respective services. Sir Roger, after having looked about him very attentively, spied one with a wooden leg, and immediately gave him orders to get his boat ready. As we were walking towards it, "You must know," says Sir Roger, "I never make use of any body to row me, that has not either lost a leg or an arm. I would rather bate him a few strokes of his oar[186] ...
— The De Coverley Papers - From 'The Spectator' • Joseph Addison and Others
... told him this was the second time that I had heard him coin a word. When Foote broke his leg, I observed that it would make him fitter for taking off George Faulkner as Peter Paragragh, poor George having a wooden leg. Dr Johnson at that time said, 'George will rejoice at the DEPEDITATION of Foote'; and when I challenged that word, laughed, and owned he had made it, and added that he had not made above three or four in his dictionary. [Footnote: ...
— The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides with Samuel Johnson, LL.D. • James Boswell
... entered with a plate of cornbread and a pot of coffee, and a minute later Reuben Merryweather paused on the threshold to shake off a sprinkling of bran from his hair and beard. He was a bent, mild looking old man, with a wooden leg which made a stumping noise when he walked, and a pair of wistful brown eyes, like those of an aged hound that has been worn out by hard service. Past seventy now, his youth had been trained to a different civilization, ...
— The Miller Of Old Church • Ellen Glasgow
... in, day after day, at Reinsberg:—still more are their salaries and maintenance a mystery to us, in that frugal establishment. There is Wolden for Hofmarschall, our old Custrin friend; there is Colonel Senning, old Marlborough Colonel with the wooden leg, who taught Friedrich his drillings and artillery-practices in boyhood, a fine sagacious old gentleman this latter. There is a M. Jordan, Ex-Preacher, an ingenious Prussian-Frenchman, still young, who acts as "Reader and Librarian;" of whom we shall hear a good deal more. "Intendant" ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. X. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—At Reinsberg—1736-1740 • Thomas Carlyle
... a high brick wall, and looked very dull. Over a door in this wall was a board with SALEM HOUSE upon it; and through a grating in this door we were surveyed when we rang the bell by a surly face, which I found, on the door being opened, belonged to a stout man with a bull-neck, a wooden leg, overhanging temples, and his hair cut ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens
... pirate must indeed have looked, as well as acted, the part, since his appearance is described by Captain Johnson as follows: "A Fellow with a terrible pair of Whiskers, and a wooden Leg, being stuck round with Pistols, like the Man in ...
— The Pirates' Who's Who - Giving Particulars Of The Lives and Deaths Of The Pirates And Buccaneers • Philip Gosse
... gate was reached, she caught sight of him in the verandah, taking his ease very completely in one of those ungainly chairs, with arms extending to long wooden leg-rests, which seem to belong to India and no other country in the world. He had exchanged his coat for a Japanese smoking jacket, whose collar and cuffs could ill afford to brave daylight; and his boots for slippers of Linda's making, whose conflicting colours might have set an oyster's teeth ...
— Captain Desmond, V.C. • Maud Diver
... Arnold is called for by friends to play on the piano at an evening entertainment. Mrs. Brown and I, being left alone, begin a conversation of the personal kind, which is the only resource among the poor. If she had had any infirmity—a wooden leg or a glass eye—she would naturally have begun by showing it to me, but as she had been spared intact she chose ...
— The Woman Who Toils - Being the Experiences of Two Gentlewomen as Factory Girls • Mrs. John Van Vorst and Marie Van Vorst
... I returned to Paris with my gentleman whose leg I had cut off; I dressed him, and God healed him. I sent him to his house merry with a wooden leg; and he was content saying he had got off cheap, not to have been miserably burned to stop the blood, as you write in your ...
— The Harvard Classics Volume 38 - Scientific Papers (Physiology, Medicine, Surgery, Geology) • Various
... full-orbed, jolly visage was illuminated by a most valiant red nose, shaped something like an overgrown doughnut, and looking as if it had been thrown at his face, and happened to hit in the middle. Then there was old Israel Peters, with a wooden leg, which tramped into meeting, with undeviating regularity, ten minutes before meeting time; and there was Jedediah Stebbins, a thin, wistful, moonshiny-looking old gentleman, whose mouth appeared as if it had been gathered ...
— The May Flower, and Miscellaneous Writings • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... unearthly bell-ringer who visited this sublunary sphere only at five A.M., and then for the sole purpose of disturbing your morning nap. You are also complimented by the wood-man and wood-sawyer, an English sailor with a wooden leg, who once nearly swamped you in a tornado of nautical interjections, on your presenting him a new pea-jacket. And then comes the German fruit-woman, whose first customer you have the distinguished honor to be, and who, in consequence, has taken breakfast in your kitchen for the ...
— Trifles for the Christmas Holidays • H. S. Armstrong
... taciturn intellectual visage. He spoke slowly, weightily, and with great precision. Morris had, even then, an expression of cynicism and contempt on his handsome bold face, and he swore magnificently whenever his new wooden leg interfered with his comfort or dignity. Hamilton, with his fair mobile face, powerful, penetrating, delicate, illuminated by eyes full of fire and vivacity, but owing its chief attraction to a mouth as sweet as it was firm and humorous, made the other men look almost ...
— The Conqueror • Gertrude Franklin Atherton
... you here, citizens," a voice said, as Jean Martin and Leigh rode into the little courtyard, and a man with a wooden leg came out from the side door ...
— No Surrender! - A Tale of the Rising in La Vendee • G. A. Henty
... Eileen Pederstone turn you down! Man alive,—Eileen wouldn't have the heart to turn you down if you had a wooden leg. I'll tell you what! If she turns you down, I'll ask her for a dance myself; and I ...
— The Spoilers of the Valley • Robert Watson
... impressions. I passed along the tradesmen's path, but found it all trampled down and indistinguishable. Just beyond it, however, at the far side of the kitchen door, a woman had stood and talked with a man, whose round impressions on one side showed that he had a wooden leg. I could even tell that they had been disturbed, for the woman had run back swiftly to the door, as was shown by the deep toe and light heel marks, while Wooden-leg had waited a little, and then had gone away. I thought at the time that this might be the maid and her sweetheart, ...
— The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
... thank you, Demming." The vagabond waved his hand with a feeble assumption of his familiar gesture. "Yo' a square man, Cunnel. I allus set a heap by you, though I didn't let on. An' she's a right peart young lady. I'm glad yo' gwine ter be so happy. Laws, I kind o' wish I wuz to see it, even on a wooden leg—" The woman at his side began to sob. "Thar, thar, Alwynda, don' take on so; cyan't be helped. You mus' 'scuse her, gen'lemen; she so petted on me ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 7 • Various
... I wait till dark," replied Biff. "I can go down to the Blue Star, and for ten iron men apiece can get you as fine a bunch of yeggs as ever beat out a cripple's brains with his own wooden leg." ...
— The Making of Bobby Burnit - Being a Record of the Adventures of a Live American Young Man • George Randolph Chester
... Lieutenant, whose steed had got the heels of the others, finding it would be great folly and presumption in him to pretend to keep the saddle with his wooden leg, very wisely took the opportunity of throwing himself off in his passage through a field of rich clover, among which he lay at his ease; and seeing his captain advancing at full gallop, hailed him with the salutation of 'What ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange
... officials of the express company on one of these lines of railroad. The exhaustive amount of information that they had been able to collect regarding this interesting man with the wooden leg was astonishing. From out of the abundance of the data there were a few items that were of interest to the officer. Several of Eldridge's haunts when not actively engaged in his profession were located. In one of these haunts ...
— Cattle Brands - A Collection of Western Camp-fire Stories • Andy Adams
... Land of Oz," replied the Emperor, "no one can ever be killed. A man with a wooden leg or a tin leg is still the same man; and, as I lost parts of my meat body by degrees, I always remained the same person as in the beginning, even though in the end I was all tin and ...
— The Tin Woodman of Oz • L. Frank Baum
... and your people are on a bad errand. No good can come of it. You are far from your own country. A large force is now on your trail. If you rob or kill any one you will be hung. We know your plans. A bad white chief has brought you here. He has a wooden leg with an iron ring around the bottom of it. He come down lake in a big boat with you. Night before last you stole two ...
— In the Days of Poor Richard • Irving Bacheller
... me nothin' more strength'nin than riches in mine," said Uncle Peter Henchman, who boasted great wisdom and experience, based mysteriously on the possession of a wooden leg. "I've been in this world up'ards of seventy years, forty-five of it a-walkin' on a wooden leg, and I hain't never seen that poverty was ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, October 1885 • Various
... his mark. As for epithets, he always avoids those that are near akin to the sense. Such matches are unlawful and not fit to be made by a Christian poet; and therefore all his care is to choose out such as will serve, like a wooden leg, to piece out a maimed verse that wants a foot or two, and if they will but rhyme now and then into the bargain, or run upon a letter, it is a work of supererogation. For similitudes, he likes the hardest and most obscure best; for as ladies wear ...
— English Satires • Various
... round him, blowing the dust off it; and the bride and bridegroom stand before the altar. There is no bridesmaid, unless Susan Nipper is one; and no better father than Captain Cuttle. A man with a wooden leg, chewing a faint apple and carrying a blue bag in has hand, looks in to see what is going on; but finding it nothing entertaining, stumps off again, and pegs his way among the echoes ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... this way," he said at last. "I've got to pull off something over there. That's all. Got to get in the papers and get a medal and a wooden leg. She'd stand for a wooden leg better than a milk one," he ...
— More Tish • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... of the fleet scattered in flight; Thrand and his men, with the other vikings, got them away each as he might, and sailed west over the Sea; Onund went with him, and Balk and Hallvard Sweeping; Onund was healed, but went with a wooden leg all his life after; therefore as long as he lived was ...
— The Story of Grettir The Strong • Translated by Eirikr Magnusson and William Morris
... of eight! Golden guineas!" exclaimed Norine. "Why those are pirate coins! They remind me of Treasure Island; of Long John Silver and his wooden leg; of Ben Gunn and all the rest." With a voice made hoarse, doubtless to imitate the old nut- brown seaman with the saber-scar and the tarry pig-tail, who sat sipping his rum and water in the Admiral Benbow Inn, she began ...
— Rainbow's End • Rex Beach
... sore-eyed duck: another was feeding a blind crow, who, it must be confessed, looked here very much like some fat member of the New York Ring cunningly availing himself of the more toothsome rations in the sick ward of the penitentiary. My friend pointed out to me a heron with a wooden leg. "Suppose a gnat should break his shoulder-blade," I said, "would they put his wing ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 17, - No. 97, January, 1876 • Various
... they landed at the garden wall, washed by the Nile. The Athenian bounded lightly from the boat, the Spartan following with a heavier, firmer tread. Aristomachus had a wooden leg, but his step was so firm, even when compared with that of the light-footed Phanes, that it might have been thought ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... Hokey Fly!" sez Peter Begg. "Suppose 'e comes 'ome with a wooden leg. Suppose 'e isn't fit to darnce at all, Then, ain't we 'asty fixin' up this ball? A little tournament at Bridge is my Idear," sez ...
— Digger Smith • C. J. Dennis
... met them at dinner in one or two neighbouring houses.) On the same days, and on Mondays as well, old Jean Pierre Pichou, ex-boatswain of the Didon frigate, would come along arm-in-arm with Julien Carales, alias Frap d'Abord, ex-marechal des logis—Pichou, with his wooden leg, and Frap d'Abord twisting a grey moustache and uttering a steady torrent of imprecation—or so it sounded. These could be counted on; but scores of others stopped and turned at the Bayfield elm, and Polly had names for them all. Moreover, on one memorable day Dorothea had watched one who did not ...
— The Westcotes • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... "Once at King George's Sound a native presented himself to me with one leg only, and requested me to supply him with a wooden leg. He had traveled in this maimed state about ninety-six miles, for this purpose. I examined the limb, which had been severed just below the knee, and found that it had been charred by fire, while about two inches of the partially calcined bone protruded through the flesh. I at once removed this with ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... to give alms without some security for their money; and a wooden leg or a withered arm is a sort of draftment upon heaven for those who choose to have their money ...
— Pearls of Thought • Maturin M. Ballou
... was a jovial beggar, He had a wooden leg, Lame from his cradle, And forced for to beg. And a-begging we will go, Will go, will go, ...
— The Children's Garland from the Best Poets • Various
... time on my back; but after I got them, I learned to walk with them and they enabled me to stand before the loom, and to earn bread once more for my family. That man yonder from Hochdorf has had the same experience, and the wooden leg of William, the toll-gate keeper, who entered here shortly before me, was made ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... ludicrously furious attack on the Mission in a St. John's paper, for its alleged misrepresentations. It seems that last year the former superintendent took down a boy from the Children's Home to give him a chance at further education. He had a wooden leg, his own having been removed by an operation for tuberculosis. On his arrival in Montreal the omnivorous reporter saw in him excellent copy, and forthwith printed the following purely fictitious account of the cause of his disability. Little ...
— Le Petit Nord - or, Annals of a Labrador Harbour • Anne Elizabeth Caldwell (MacClanahan) Grenfell and Katie Spalding
... another tent I found a young man who had attempted to escape to our lines more than a year before, but was overtaken and shot by his master, shivering the bones six inches above the ankle, making amputation necessary. He was beginning to use his wooden leg. His master was taken prisoner by our men a few days before, and he, with one hundred fellow-slaves, fell into the hands of the Union army. He was fitted with a whole suit. This was done in but few instances, the general destitution forbidding it. It would have pleased the donors to see me with ...
— A Woman's Life-Work - Labors and Experiences • Laura S. Haviland
... Celery-Root, you know him, the bloke with a wooden leg. Well, as he was going back to his native place, he wanted to treat us. Oh! We were all right, if it hadn't been for that devil of a sun. In the street everybody looks shaky. ...
— L'Assommoir • Emile Zola
... a place ware work's the time o' day, You know thet's wut I never did,—except the other way;) Ef it's the Presidential cheer fer wich I'd better run, Wut two legs anywares about could keep up with my one? There aint no kin' o' quality in can'idates, it's said, 130 So useful eza wooden leg,—except a wooden head; There's nothin' aint so poppylar—(wy, it 's a parfect sin To think wut Mexico hez paid fer Santy Anny's pin;)— Then I haint gut no princerples, an', sence I wuz knee-high, I never did hev any gret, ez you can testify; I'm a decided peace-man, tu, an' go agin the ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... from 1647-1664; He was a fiery old fellow, with a great love of pomp, and a tremendous opinion of his own importance. He had lost a leg in the Spanish Wars, and now he stamped about with a wooden one. But as no plain wooden leg would please his taste for grandeur he had it bound ...
— This Country Of Ours • H. E. Marshall Author: Henrietta Elizabeth Marshall
... through the firm deal-board, and now hastily drawing itself back! Mystery, perhaps Treason? The wooden frame-work is impetuously broken up; and behold, verily a mystery; never explicable fully to the end of the world! Two human individuals, of mean aspect, one of them with a wooden leg, lie ensconced there, gimlet in hand: they must have come in overnight; they have a supply of provisions,—no 'barrel of gunpowder' that one can see; they affect to be asleep; look blank enough, and give the lamest account ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... only try. But let me see, it can't be Laud. Then it shall be that cruel drinking old man, with the wooden leg made of gold, who was governor of Oxford when the king was away. He must be hobbling along after the queen in a buff coat and breastplate, holding his hat with a long drooping ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes
... the same kind that you chaps do," returned Boswell. "Everybody experiments with new fads, too, just as you do. Old Peter Stuyvesant, for instance, always drives with his wooden leg, and never uses anything else unless he gets a lie where he's ...
— The Enchanted Typewriter • John Kendrick Bangs
... people to get on. My uncle, whose services would have got him made a prince under the other, had then retired with the mere rank of sub-lieutenant. But you should have seen him in his uniform, his cross of St. Louis, his wooden leg, his white moustaches, and his noble countenance. You would have said he was a portrait of one of those old heroes in powdered hair which ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... is of medium height, dark, thin, and hard as a hatchet, with eyes that are black like the very flaming thrust of night. He is quite a savage. There is something strange about his dancing, the violent way he works one shoulder. He has a wooden leg, from the knee-joint. Yet he dances well, and is inordinately proud. He is fierce as a bird, and hard with energy as a thunderbolt. He will dance with the blonde signora. But he never speaks. He is like some violent natural phenomenon ...
— Twilight in Italy • D.H. Lawrence
... bore medals of the Franco-Prussian war. In the solemn inclosure, where all stood at salute, the veterans stood with lances. The flag was presented to an old sick soldier, who stumped forward on a wooden leg, his breast covered with the medals of the Crimea and the Italian campaign. He received it for France, and when it was placed over the organ, the listening crowds that jammed the Place des Invalides heard the singing of the "Marseillaise" by the cracked old voices first, ...
— The New York Times Current History of the European War, Vol 1, Issue 4, January 23, 1915 • Various
... me think that the Stockton girls are having their house painted by a man with a wooden leg. Billy Evans picked him up somewhere and Seth Curtis was telling me how he came to lose that leg. Seems like he was prospecting somewheres in Montana, got drunk, froze it, gangrene set in and they had to amputate. They say he's a mighty ...
— Green Valley • Katharine Reynolds
... at Mr. Harthop's Perswasion they promised to stay till 2 a Clock in the Afternoon for Captain Swan, and the rest of the Men, if they would come aboard; but they suffered no Man to go ashore, except one William Williams that had a wooden Leg, and another that ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898—Volume 39 of 55 • Various
... he got his nickname from his once having brought home to his wife a couple of finely trussed pigeons to roast, but they were in fact a pair of plucked ravens, which in that part of the country are called "crappies." Crappy Zachy, who had a wooden leg, spent most of his time knitting woolen stockings and jackets; and with his knitting he used to sit about in the village wherever there was any opportunity to gossip. This gossiping, in the course of which he heard all sorts of news, was a source of some very profitable side-business ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VIII • Various
... of like craft to ourselves." Then the dumb man called to him in a great voice and said, "Welcome, brother; come and sit while there is still some of the feast left and a little Malmsey in the pottle." At this, the lame man, who had taken off his wooden leg and unstrapped his own leg, and was sitting with it stretched out upon the grass so as to rest it, made room for Robin among them. "We are glad to see thee, brother," said he, holding out ...
— The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood • Howard Pyle
... began to consider the groupe with more attention. At length I discovered rear-admiral Balderick, the companion of my youth, whom I had not seen since he was appointed lieutenant of the Severn. He was metamorphosed into an old man, with a wooden leg and a weatherbeaten face, which appeared the more ancient from his grey locks, that were truly venerable — Sitting down at the table, where he was reading a news-paper, I gazed at him for some minutes, with a mixture of ...
— The Expedition of Humphry Clinker • Tobias Smollett
... wooden leg: allusion to a jury mast, which is a temporary substitute for a mast carried away by a storm, or any ...
— 1811 Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue • Captain Grose et al.
... peaceful; not much jealousy, and no heartburnings. It strengthens with time, and survives the smallpox and a wooden leg. It doubles our joys, divides our griefs, and warms our ...
— For Auld Lang Syne • Ray Woodward
... his short arms encircling his uncle's paunch. The old man wore a dirty white shirt with a tabbed bosom; a single shiny white china button held the neckband together at the back. Below the button the shirt billowed open, showing his naked back. His wooden leg stuck straight out to the side, its worn brass tip carrying a blob of red mud, and his good leg dangled down straight, with the trousers hitched half-way up the bare shank and a soiled white-yarn sock ...
— The Escape of Mr. Trimm - His Plight and other Plights • Irvin S. Cobb
... away, that I might have taken a young Lady, who was the most considerable Fortune in the County, along with me. I preferred the Pursuit of Fame at that time to all other Considerations, and tho' I was not absolutely bent on a Wooden Leg, resolved at least to get a Scar or two for the good of Europe. I have at present as much as I desire of this Sort of Honour, and if you could recommend me effectually, should be well enough contented to pass ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... gol darned pretty and up-and-coming. I must confess I wouldn't have been so eager about it if she had been jimber-jawed and cross-eyed, but, by the great jumping jingo, I'd say be my long-lost cousin now if she had a wooden leg, a glass eye ...
— The Comings of Cousin Ann • Emma Speed Sampson
... distant part of his father's plantation, and is said to have been besides the sexton or grave-digger of the neighborhood; and was, I have my private reasons for thinking, a broken-down old soldier, with a big cocked hat that shaded a kindly and weather-beaten face, and a wooden leg,—an ornament for which he was indebted to a cannon-ball, and took more pride in than if it had been a sound one of flesh and bone. As it is rarely ever the case that men with wooden legs are called upon to fight the battles of their country, ...
— The Farmer Boy, and How He Became Commander-In-Chief • Morrison Heady
... reopened this wound, and amputation became necessary. This saved his life, but he could no longer partake of the amusements of the chase, although still able to indulge in the more delicate pursuits of the naturalist. With his wooden leg he was able to hobble about the house and lawn, prune the trees, and attend to his pets that had grown to be quite numerous, while Hugot at all times followed him about like his shadow. The boys, however, went abroad ...
— The Boy Hunters • Captain Mayne Reid
... was one man, however, whom the old carpenter could never suppress. Beth did not know how this man got his living. He came from the village to gossip, wore a tweed suit, not like a workman's, nor was it the national Irish dress. He had a red nose and a wooden leg, and, after she knew him, for a long time she always expected a man with a wooden leg to have a red nose, but, somehow, she never expected a man with a red nose to have a wooden leg. This man was always cheery, and very voluble. ...
— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand
... well as by his wonderful command of language. But Morris was admired more than he was trusted; and, while he supported the efforts for a strong government, his support was not always as great a help as might have been expected. A crippled arm and a wooden leg might detract from his personal appearance, but they could not subdue his ...
— The Fathers of the Constitution - Volume 13 in The Chronicles Of America Series • Max Farrand
... to see each other seldom, and perchance no more. For ever and ever in the eddies of time and accident we whirl away. Besides which, some of us have a perpetual motion in our wooden heads, as Wodenblock had in his wooden leg; and like him we travel on, without rest or sleep, and have hardly time to take a friend by the hand in passing; and at length are seen hurrying through some distant land, worn to a skeleton, ...
— Hyperion • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... 'em by first telling 'em yarns till they fell asleep and then choking 'em with Henry Wiggett's wooden leg," resumed ...
— Light Freights • W. W. Jacobs
... only old gentleman of my acquaintance, a wooden leg seemed the natural and suitable accompaniment of old age. Persons, it appeared, in their riper years, cast off a leg, as trees dropped their leaves. But my grandmother puzzled me. Undeniably she retained both of hers, yet her hair was just as white, ...
— There's Pippins And Cheese To Come • Charles S. Brooks
... saw a strange man eating with the cook; a rough person with a head of dark red hair and grayish red beard all round his mouth and under his chin. She observed that he was one-legged, and used a common wooden crutch on the side of the wooden leg. Two long scars covered his face, and one shaggy eyebrow was ...
— Bohemian Days - Three American Tales • Geo. Alfred Townsend
... which, mixed with a few people from the fair, I observed moving about a great many individuals in quaint dresses of blue, with strange three-cornered hats on their heads; most of them were mutilated; this had a wooden leg—this wanted an arm; some had but one eye; and as I gazed upon the edifice, and the singular-looking individuals who moved before it, I guessed where I was. "I am at —-" said I; "these individuals are ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... to him the merest idiocy. "A valiant, weather-beaten, mettlesome, obstinate, leathern-sided, lion-hearted, generous-spirited old governor"—the adjectives describe him well; a sufficiently imposing figure, with his slashed hose and velvet jacket and tall cane and silver-banded wooden leg, he ruled the colony for twenty years with a rod of iron, fortifying it, enlarging it, settling its boundaries, keeping the Indians over-awed, the veriest dictator this continent ever saw, until, one August day in 1664, an English ...
— American Men of Action • Burton E. Stevenson
... don't think it funny thinking how one might be dead," replied Penworthy. "It gives me the creeps. It's all very well for you. You'll stump around for the rest of your life like a gentleman on a wooden leg. Chaps like you have all the luck; but as soon as I get out of this, I'll be passed fit for active service ... and not so much of your larfing at not being ...
— The Rough Road • William John Locke
... him a lesson," retorted El Mariane. "You'll see." Whereupon he crawled into the cave and reappeared soon with El Cojo's wooden leg in one hand and a ...
— The Quest • Pio Baroja
... Amanda Mr. Punch The Churchwarden Mr. Hanlon The Sly Old Fox The Old Codger with the Wooden Leg Mr. Lemuel Mizzen The Cabin-Boy Marmaduke Captain Lingo Ketch the Practitioner The Third Vice-President Mr. Matthew Speak Shiraz the Rug-Merchant The King and Queen Robert, Jenny, and James ...
— The Old Tobacco Shop - A True Account of What Befell a Little Boy in Search of Adventure • William Bowen
... in November, wind northeast, a poor old woman with a wooden leg was seen struggling against the fitful gusts of the bitter breeze, along a stony, zig-zag road full of deep and irregular cart-ruts. Her ragged petticoat was blue, and so was her wretched nose. A stick was in her left hand, which assisted her to dig and hobble her way along; ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 4, September, 1850 • Various
... Netherland, 1664.—The English government now determined to conquer New Netherland. An English fleet sailed to New Amsterdam. Stuyvesant thumped up and down on his wooden leg. But he was almost the only man in New Amsterdam who wanted to fight. He soon surrendered, and New Netherland became an English colony. The Dutch later recaptured it and held it for a time; but in 1674 they finally handed ...
— A Short History of the United States • Edward Channing
... nicely; in fact, since then she has never spoken to me again; but what I said to her was quite true. She was right in deciding that she had nothing to do with love; if you ever have to buy yourself a wooden leg, you may as well get a wooden heart at the same time. But her pose was too obvious—ridiculously obvious. She would have done better with something in the way of a religious enthusiasm—something very mystical. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 102, May 7, 1892 • Various
... battle, Miss, that's one thing," remarked on obliging by-stander who leaned heavily upon a wooden leg. "Bless you, I kin a'most taste the powder." He smacked his lips and spat into the dust. "To think that I went all the way down to Mexico fur a fight," he pursued regretfully, "when I could have set right here at home and had it all in old Virginny. Well, ...
— The Battle Ground • Ellen Glasgow
... great man's look: Let those, that have a mind, turn slave to eat, And live contented by another's plate: I rate my freedom higher, nor will I, For food and rayment track my liberty. But if I must to my last shift be put, To fill a bladder, and twelve yards of gut, Richer with counterfeited wooden leg, And my right arm tyed up, I'll choose to beg. I'll rather choose to starve at large, than be, The gaudiest ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Volume II • Theophilus Cibber
... he replied. "This plaguey leg will have to come off; maybe I shall return home with a wooden leg and stump about as port ...
— Humphrey Bold - A Story of the Times of Benbow • Herbert Strang
... spoke the Bo'sun stood up very straight despite his wooden leg, and when he touched his hat again, his very pigtail seemed ...
— The Amateur Gentleman • Jeffery Farnol et al
... a comfortable deck chair, and Bull had another beside him. There were many officers already on board, and Terence presently perceived, in one who was stumping about on a wooden leg, a figure he recognized. He was passing on without recognition, ...
— Under Wellington's Command - A Tale of the Peninsular War • G. A. Henty
... ain't no difference. I'm a regular invalid, as they calls them, and just as bad as some of our poor chaps who go back to live on the top of a wooden leg all ...
— !Tention - A Story of Boy-Life during the Peninsular War • George Manville Fenn
... absurdities by arguments that conveyed not the smallest meaning to her intellect. Look at him now, for instance; a cripple for life, and pretending to see nothing in it but a joke, and expressing as much admiration for his horrible wooden leg as though it had been a king's sceptre! In Aunt Charlotte's view, Austin ought to have pitied himself immensely, and expressed a hope that God would help him to bear his burden with orthodox resignation to the Divine will; instead of which, he seemed totally unconscious of having ...
— Austin and His Friends • Frederic H. Balfour
... once for all that followed. Mrs. Gamp's pathetic allusion, immediately afterwards, to her recollection of the time "when Gamp was summonsed to his long home," and when she "see him a-laying in the hospital with a penny-piece on each eye, and his wooden leg under his left arm," not only confirmed the delighted impression of the hearers as to their having her there before them in her identity, but was the signal for the roars of laughter that, rising and falling in volume all through the Reading, ...
— Charles Dickens as a Reader • Charles Kent
... leg! It was an implement, however, he only used upon occasions—whenever the natural one—the ankle of which had been damaged by some accident—gave out through the fatigue of a march. At other times he carried the wooden leg, as I first saw it, suspended ...
— The Wild Huntress - Love in the Wilderness • Mayne Reid
... bottom of a paper bag, or part of an apple which was generously specked, and so well on its way to ruin, or shared the half of a lemon, which the two sucked, turn about, all such being the gifts of a certain old gentleman with a wooden leg who carried on a thriving trade in the vicinity of the nearest public school. But the periods between the contributions were so long, and the amount of fruit consumed was so small, that Johnnie was never even a quarter satisfied—except at ...
— The Rich Little Poor Boy • Eleanor Gates
... Miller had the misfortune to fall on the ice Friday and break his wooden leg. This will lay Mr. Miller up for some time as the limb will have to be sent away for repairs or perhaps necessitates his ...
— News Writing - The Gathering , Handling and Writing of News Stories • M. Lyle Spencer
... soldier. He was now so sorry for Corp that the tear rolled down. But at the same moment he saw how the effect could be still further heightened by doing away with his friend's rude state of health, and he immediately jammed him between the buffers of two railway carriages, and gave him a wooden leg. It was at this point that a lady who had kept her arms still too long rocked them frantically, then said, with cutting satire: "Are you not feeling well, or have you hurt yourself? You seem to be very lame." And Tommy woke with a start, to see that he was hobbling ...
— Tommy and Grizel • J.M. Barrie
... sight of them. This crowd had just come back from Vincennes, whither it had gone to demand the heads of Charles X.'s ministers, who were shut up in the fortress, from General Daumesnil, "the man with the wooden leg," and having failed in that attempt it wanted to ...
— Memoirs • Prince De Joinville
... the death of my friend Rollinat. My body is cured, but my soul! I should have to stay a week with you to refresh myself in your affectionate strength; for cold and purely philosophical courage to me, is like cauterizing a wooden leg. ...
— The George Sand-Gustave Flaubert Letters • George Sand, Gustave Flaubert
... pointing with terror to the courtyard of the house. They looked in this direction, and saw a man standing at the threshold; they approached him. He stepped forward, as if to place himself between them. He was tall, dark; his clothes were torn; he had a wooden leg; his countenance was stern. He surveyed Bertrande with a gloomy look: she cried aloud, and fell back insensible; . . . she ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... Signer Loothere'—you will observe that he changed the name according to the custom of his country—'is an Englishman?' I admitted that he was the victim of circumstances and had that misfortune. 'Sir,' said he, 'one word more. Has he a servant with a wooden leg?' 'Great heaven, sir,' said I, 'how do I know? I should think not, but it is possible.' 'It is always,' said the Frenchman, 'possible. Almost all the things of the world are always possible.' 'Sir,' said I—you may imagine ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... Patmore's hint that the cosmos is a thing that God made huge only "to make dirt cheap"; just as nobody will ever forget the sudden shout he uttered when he first heard Mrs. Todgers asked for the rough outline of a wooden leg. These things are not jokes, but discoveries. But the very fact that Patmore was, as it were, the Catholic Browning, keeps him out of the Victorian atmosphere as such. The Victorian English simply thought ...
— The Victorian Age in Literature • G. K. Chesterton
... wore a short blue jacket with tattered white facings, a pair of white linen trousers patched at the knees, a round tarpaulin hat, a burst shoe upon his hale foot, and carried a japanned knapsack—all powdered with white dust of the road in which his wooden leg had been prodding small round holes for ...
— The Mayor of Troy • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... revenues, and have nothing to do; or, with a small portion, you will risk the loss of a leg or arm, and be the fructus belli of an insensible court, to arrive in your old age at the dignity of a major-general, with a glass eye and a wooden leg.' 'I know,' said I, 'that there is no comparison between these two situations, with regard to the conveniences of life; but, as a man ought to secure his future state in preference to all other considerations, I am resolved ...
— The Memoirs of Count Grammont, Complete • Anthony Hamilton
... and confers no wisdom, over the next bit of history that will be exchanged between the heroines of the alley-gate? When Mrs. Jones tells Mrs. Baker that Mrs. Briggs has delivered a daughter, and that Mr. Briggs said he had rather she had given him a wooden leg, the epigram is quite as good as a Bric-a-Brac anecdote, the people are quite as worthy as Cowper's barber, and the effect upon the history of letters quite as close and important. With this demurrer, we will apply ourselves for a moment ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Vol. XV., No. 85. January, 1875. • Various
... the few who gave me a half-penny as they passed, did it with a shake of the head, and an injunction not to trouble them with a long story. In short, I found that people do n't care to give alms without some security for their money,—such as a wooden leg, or a withered arm, for example. So I changed my plan, and instead of telling my own misfortunes, began to prophesy ...
— McGuffey's Sixth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... the rest of the day. Night after night they travelled on. Sometimes they met people during the day, and either little notice was taken of them, or Paul easily answered the questions put to him. Reuben always had his crutches ready, and in a wonderfully quick time he was on his wooden leg, and hobbling along at a rate of a mile or so an hour, so that no one would have suspected that he had a long journey before him. The whole party were in very good spirits, for as they had found friends when they least expected it, and got out of difficulties when they ...
— Paul Gerrard - The Cabin Boy • W.H.G. Kingston
... of grace, physical perfection, and majesty. Think of the lion and the tiger and the leopard, and then think of man—that poor thing!—the animal of the wig, the ear-trumpet, the glass eye, the porcelain teeth, the wooden leg, the trepanned skull, the silver wind-pipe—a creature that is mended and patched all over from top to bottom. If he can't get renewals of his bric-a-brac in the next world what will he look like? ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... to glorify their kind. In some of these energies of theirs I blame them, in others I praise; but it is plainly evident that they know how to binge. I wished (for a moment) to be altogether of their race, like that strong cavalry man of their race to whom they have put up a statue pointing to his wooden leg. What an incredible people to build such ...
— On Something • H. Belloc
... bread, the scraps of food which no good Christian refused them, who haunted the lonely farms at night and to whom a stray lamb or kid or chicken never came amiss. This figure was ragged like them; it stooped, and limped upon a wooden leg and a stick; an empty sleeve was pinned across its breast. And the rags were those of a soldier's uniform, and the dark, bent face was tanned by hotter suns ...
— Angelot - A Story of the First Empire • Eleanor Price
... striking contrast to their usual appearance at home. Major W. Coffey, one of the refugees, who was washed seven miles down the Conemaugh, was acting as officer of the guard, and limped up and down on his wooden leg, which had been badly damaged by ...
— The Johnstown Horror • James Herbert Walker
... Thomson with the wooden leg, and G. Pen, and dined with my lord and Mr. Blackburne, who told me that it was certain now that the King must of necessity come in, and that one of the Council told him there is something doing in order to a treaty ...
— The Diary of Samuel Pepys • Samuel Pepys |
