"Straddle" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... serv'd, and fed on vermin; And when these fail'd, he'd suck his claws, And quarter himself upon his paws. And tho' his countrymen, the Huns, 275 Did stew their meat between their bums And th' horses backs o'er which they straddle, And ev'ry man eat up his saddle; He was not half so nice as they, But eat it raw when 't came in's way. 280 He had trac'd countries far and near, More than LE BLANC, the traveller; Who writes, he spous'd in India, Of noble house, a lady gay, And got ...
— Hudibras • Samuel Butler
... Ann, Fillacy, fallacy, Nicholas Dan; Queevery, quavery, English navy, Come striddle, come straddle, come out!" ...
— Treasure Valley • Marian Keith
... a heavy light brown woman with a basket on her arm. A boy about ten walks beside her carrying a small child about a year old straddle of his back. Her skirts are sweeping the ground. She walks up to the step, puts one foot upon the steps and looks forlornly at all the men, then fixes ...
— The Mule-Bone: - A Comedy of Negro Life in Three Acts • Zora Hurston and Langston Hughes
... soul! And with that he threw a flaming dart at his breast.' In the cut he throws a dart with either hand, belching pointed flames out of his mouth, spreading his broad vans, and straddling the while across the path, as only a fiend can straddle who has just sworn by his infernal den. The defence will not be long against such vice, such flames, such red-hot nether energy. And in the fourth cut, to be sure, he has leaped bodily upon his victim, sped by foot and pinion, ...
— Lay Morals • Robert Louis Stevenson
... dandy, Lyddie! She's a jim-dandy of a little girl! She ought to come out and learn to ride straddle with her cousins. I got a boy about her age—say, they'd look fine together! He's a towhead, like all the rest of ...
— The Squirrel-Cage • Dorothy Canfield
... of Pistoja. The lower floor being choked with rubbish and fallen masonry, the only access to our retreat was by a broken beam projecting from the original doorway. You jumped for this, caught it if you were expert enough, and must swing yourself up to straddle it. You could then gain the string-course of brick which encircled the tower, and, edging along that, reach the lower sill of a window. That window was our front door. The interior was perfectly dry, rainproof and (from all quarters but one) windproof. Enchanting occupancy to me! fit household ...
— The Fool Errant • Maurice Hewlett
... seance. Right.' He turned the chair about, sat on it straddle-wise and crossed his arms over the curved top bar. 'Let me see,' he mused, leaning forward, pulling at his cigar and bringing his eyes, after they had travelled over the crowd, back firmly to us. ''Two souls with but a single thought,'' he quoted, ''two hearts that beat as one.' ...
— Foe-Farrell • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... investors in the adventure came to going aloft. Grimshaw contented himself with standing on the main crosstrees. Captain Doane climbed even higher, seating himself on the stump of the foremast with legs a-straddle of the butt of the fore-topmast. And Simon Nishikanta tore himself away from his everlasting painting of all colour-delicacies of sea and sky such as are painted by seminary maidens, to be helped and hoisted up ...
— Michael, Brother of Jerry • Jack London
... don't straddle across the stairs. Let the cabman and the landlady come down, and let me go up ...
— Where Angels Fear to Tread • E. M. Forster
... of old an enormous man lived with other members of the Inuit tribe in a village beside a large inlet. He was so tall that he could straddle the inlet, and he used to stand that way every morning and wait for the whales to pass beneath him. As soon as one came along he used to scoop it up just as easily as other men scoop up a minnow. And he ate the whole whale just as other men eat ...
— A Treasury of Eskimo Tales • Clara Kern Bayliss
... was to do as the Arab had done, and seating herself straddle-legged behind Godwin, to clasp him ...
— The Brethren • H. Rider Haggard
... patience that moves mountains, or as much of them as blocks its course. The progress is slow, silent, but sure. The world, busy in other doings, does not hear the pick, nor the speech of the powder when it speaks to a huge rock a-straddle the path. The world, even including the shareholders, hears but little, if anything, of the progress of the work for months, perhaps for a year. Then the consummation is announced in the form of an invitation to the public to "assist" ...
— A Walk from London to John O'Groat's • Elihu Burritt
... oil some harnes, and if i wood go with him ferst he would go with me. so i said yes and we went. jest before we got there Beany said you go in and ask for it, and i will wait becaus old Kellog dont like me very well. so i went in and old Kellog was sitting straddle of a seet with big wooden nippers on it and he was sowing on a harness and he said cross like what do you want and i said i want a pint of strap oil and he said o yes i have got some good strap oil and he got down and grabed me by the coller and took down a strap and licked me ...
— 'Sequil' - Or Things Whitch Aint Finished in the First • Henry A. Shute
... Hands And Feet, depending on his sheer horse power and superior weight, always fought in mass formation, as it were. His modus operandi was to embrace his enemy in those terrible arms, squeeze the breath out of him with one bearlike hug, then lay him on the deck, straddle him, and pummel him into insensibility at his leisure. Matt gave ground rapidly and ...
— Cappy Ricks • Peter B. Kyne
... bull-elk, nearly a six-footer, but he loomed large as an elephant, came clacking past between the ranked tree-boles, stopping a moment to straddle a sapling and browse; while the wolverine, sitting motionless and wide-legged, watched him. Once a lynx, with its eternal, set grin, floated by, half-seen, half-guessed, as if a wisp of wood mist ...
— The Way of the Wild • F. St. Mars
... brought back more tarantulas with them, and so we had quite a menagerie arranged along the shelves of the room. Some of these spiders could straddle over a common saucer with their hairy, muscular legs, and when their feelings were hurt, or their dignity offended, they were the wickedest-looking desperadoes the animal world can furnish. If their glass prison-houses were touched ever so lightly they were up and spoiling ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... dem spurs an' put em underneat' o' Caesar's saddle, So dey'd press down in his backbone soon ez Sam had got a-straddle. ...
— Fifty years & Other Poems • James Weldon Johnson
... before her rooming house. It was as long and as lean and as brown as a witch, and, to the more fanciful, something even of the riding of a broom in the straddle of the doorway, with an empty flagpole jutting from it. And then there was the cat, too—not a black one with gold eyes, just one of the city's myriad of mackerel ones, with chewed ear and a skillful crouch for the leap from ...
— The Vertical City • Fannie Hurst
... Latrines on opposite side of camp from kitchens. Short camps, straddle trenches. Long camps, trenches 2 by 6 by 12 with seats. Have latrines screened. Burn the trenches out daily and keep covered. Wash boxes and ...
— Military Instructors Manual • James P. Cole and Oliver Schoonmaker
... towards the unborn possibilities of the engineer. And Durer, too, was a Modern, with the same turn towards creative invention. In our times these men would have wanted to make viaducts, to bridge wild and inaccessible places, to cut and straddle great railways athwart the mountain masses of the world. You can see, time after time, in Durer's work, as you can see in the imaginary architectural landscape of the Pompeian walls, the dream of structures, lighter and bolder than stone or brick can yield.... These Utopian town ...
— A Modern Utopia • H. G. Wells
... consider camels: only think Of camels long enough, and you'ld go mad— With all their humps and lumps; their knobbly knees, Splay feet, and straddle legs; their sagging necks, Flat flanks, and scraggy tails, and monstrous teeth. I've not forgotten the first fiend I met: 'Twas in a lane in Smyrna, just a ditch Between the shuttered houses, and so narrow The brute's bulk blocked the road; the huge green stack Of dewy fodder that it slouched beneath ...
— Georgian Poetry 1913-15 • Edited by E. M. (Sir Edward Howard Marsh)
... the work—one superintending, one holding a funnel shaped exactly like a port wine strainer, of which the narrow end was fixed in an incision in the breast, no doubt in the great pectoral artery; while the third, who was depicted as standing straddle-legged over the corpse, held a kind of large jug high in his hand, and poured from it some steaming fluid which fell accurately into the funnel. The most curious part of this sculpture is that both the man with the funnel and the ...
— She • H. Rider Haggard
... occupied in the inspiriting task of dragging a dead sheep after his horse, to make a trail to lead the wild dogs up to some poisoned meat; while the lady, clad in light and airy garments, with a huge white sunbonnet for head-gear, would be riding straddle-legged in search of strayed cows. When Grant left the station, and went away to make his fortune in mining, it was, perhaps, just a coincidence that this magnificent young creature grew tired of the old place and "cleared out," too. She certainly went away ...
— An Outback Marriage • Andrew Barton Paterson
... tangled thatch of brown, gazed straight into the face of every man on the Platte, soldier, cowboy, Indian or halfbreed, but fell abashed if a laundress looked at him. Billy Ray, captain of the sorrel troop and the best light rider in Wyoming, was the only man he ever allowed to straddle a beautiful thoroughbred mare he had bought in Kentucky, but, bad hands or good, there wasn't a riding woman at Frayne who hadn't backed Lorna time and again, because to a woman the major simply ...
— A Daughter of the Sioux - A Tale of the Indian frontier • Charles King
... children, and were with them as much as they could be during the day. They took them on little picnics and excursions, and two small ponies were trained so Bert and Nan could ride them. As for Flossie and Freddie, they had to ride in the cart. Freddie wanted to be a cowboy, and straddle a pony as Bert did, but his mother thought him too small. But Freddie and Flossie had good times in the cart, so they did ...
— The Bobbsey Twins in the Great West • Laura Lee Hope
... boys. We kain't afford to be hawgs, this trip. Straddle your hosses and take 'em over to that far corner where we laid the fence down. Remember what I said about keepin' to the rocky draws. I'll wait here and turn these loose, and foller along and set up the fence after ...
— Skyrider • B. M. Bower
... ye this time," he muttered between his compressed lips; "ye shan't git out of me hands till ye's down flat on yer back and mesilf layin' a-straddle of ye. There's a difference between boxin' and sparrin' and I shall taich ye the same, ...
— The Hunters of the Ozark • Edward S. Ellis
... serene. In the villages I everywhere saw preparations for Sunday; and I passed by a little car loaded with rye, that presented, for the pencil and heart, the sweetest picture of a harvest home I had ever beheld. A little girl was mounted a- straddle on a shaggy horse, brandishing a stick over its head; the father was walking at the side of the car with a child in his arms, who must have come to meet him with tottering steps; the little creature was stretching out its arms to cling ...
— Letters written during a short residence in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark • Mary Wollstonecraft
... chest and back, his short corduroys, his mighty calves, his big red rural face. We greeted these things as children greet the loved pictures in a storybook lost and mourned and found again. We recognised them as one recognises the handwriting on letter-backs. Beside the road we saw a ploughboy straddle whistling on a stile, and he had the merit of being not only a ploughboy but a Gainsborough. Beyond the stile, across the level velvet of a meadow, a footpath wandered like a streak drawn by a finger over a surface of fine ...
— A Passionate Pilgrim • Henry James
... hundred paces when, at a sudden turning, I came upon her, where she held a little urchin a-straddle of her big deer-hound "Courage." The child gave chuckles o' delight as he slipped from side to side, and the sun through the beech-leaves made their heads as like as two crown pieces. Even as I was about to lift up my voice to halloo unto her, ...
— A Brother To Dragons and Other Old-time Tales • Amelie Rives
... tempter—the original Jacobs—was called in Hebrew a nachash, so I'm told. But folks don't seem to understand exactly what this nachash was. Some say it was a rattlesnake, some a straddle-bug. Old Dr. Adam Clarke, I've heard, vowed it was a monkey. They're all out of their reckoning. It's as plain as a pikestaff that it was nothing but Fried Fat cooked up to order, and it's been a-tempting weak sisters ever since. That's what's ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 85, November, 1864 • Various
... portion of the mainmast bitts projected out of the water, so, Jackson, climbing down on to these and supporting himself as well as he could by balancing his body with his feet | extended outwards straddle-ways, commenced to slash away at the mast here; while the rest of the men, under Mr Marline's directions, proceeded to clear away the rigging and unreeve those ropes which they were able to reach, in order to leave the spar clear for Jackson ...
— The White Squall - A Story of the Sargasso Sea • John Conroy Hutcheson
... is so slippery old Flyin' Cloud can't get a good stride in his moccasins. Me, I can straddle out and take holt with my spikes. Them spikes is goin' to put us on easy street. You see! I don't care how good he is, they're goin' to give me four hundred head of broncs and a cute little pigeon to look out for 'em. Me, I'm goin' to lay back and learn to play the guitar. ...
— Laughing Bill Hyde and Other Stories • Rex Beach
... a Wednesday morning when the things arrived, and set me in the seventh heaven of satisfaction. My father (for I can scarcely say myself) was trying at this time a "straddle" in wheat between Chicago and New York; the operation so called is, as you know, one of the most tempting and least safe upon the chess-board of finance. On the Thursday, luck began to turn against my father's calculations; and by the Friday evening, I was posted on the boards as a defaulter ...
— The Wrecker • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... represents the porch of their gymnasium. They hang out threads across the opening; they stretch others from the ring to the nearest points of the trellis-work. On these foot-bridges, they perform slack-rope exercises amid endless comings and goings. The tiny legs open out from time to time and straddle as though to reach the most distant points. I begin to realize that they are acrobats aiming at loftier heights than ...
— The Life of the Spider • J. Henri Fabre
... out!—spurs and quirts—in short, all the necessary paraphernalia and accoutrements of a couple of knights of the cattle country. If they lose the two hundred dollars we win the two outfits! And to-morrow, instead of riding in a Pullman toward San Francisco, we straddle what they call a hay-burner for the blue rim of mountains in ...
— Under Handicap - A Novel • Jackson Gregory
... split, with a fair wind on the packet, went right off home and said to his wife, 'Now do for gracious' sake, mother, jist look here, and see how slick them folks go along; and that captain has nothin' to do all day, but sit straddle legs across his tiller, and order about his sailors, or talk like a gentleman to his passengers; he's got most as easy a time of it as Ami Cuttle has, since he took up the fur trade, a-snarin' rabbits. I guess I'll buy a vessel, and leave the lads to ...
— The Clockmaker • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... sitting on a fence he would bet you which one would fly first; or if there was a camp-meeting, he would be there reg'lar to bet on Parson Walker, which he judged to be the best exhorter about here—and so he was, too, and a good man. If he even seen a straddle-bug start to go anywheres, he would bet you how long it would take to get wherever he was going to, and if you took him up, he would foller that straddle-bug to Mexico, but what he would find out where he was bound for and ...
— The Bed-Book of Happiness • Harold Begbie
... "Attention," head up and chest out, not looking at his feet, as the ataxic always wishes to do. At first this is enough to require; it will not do to be too particular about how his feet are placed, so long as he does not straddle. He can repeat this effort for himself a dozen times a day, for a minute or two each time. Next we try the same position with a little more care about getting the feet pretty near together and parallel, or with the ...
— Fat and Blood - An Essay on the Treatment of Certain Forms of Neurasthenia and Hysteria • S. Weir Mitchell
... heart, A smiling face, a big straw hat, Hum made breeches and all o' that. And when I got there I would just take a peep, To see if old cider mill John was asleep, And if he was I'd go snooking round 'Till a great big round rye straw I'd found; I'd straddle a barrel and quick begin To fill with cider right ...
— Nye and Riley's Wit and Humor (Poems and Yarns) • Bill Nye
... old Barnum pretty weak physically, but had evidently not weakened his will. He left Hopkins in the office figuring up his account and he jumped a-straddle of a bare-backed mule and went up on the hill and rented the new 40-room house, "The Bravadere," and sub-rented enough rooms to pay the expenses of his company. He also got a porter, bus and team and sent to ...
— The Second William Penn - A true account of incidents that happened along the - old Santa Fe Trail • William H. Ryus
... laboratory, and the embrasures carefully and artistically fine-drawn. The process for walking or riding trousers only varies in these particulars—for the one you should stand upright, for the other you should straddle the back of a chair. Trousers cut on these principles entail only two inconveniences, to which every one with the true feelings of a gentleman would willingly submit. You must never attempt to sit down in your walking trousers, or venture to assume an upright position in your ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... 'em. They take on awful about her ridin' in pants, an' it certainly is a heap more modest than ridin' straddle in a hitched up caliker skirt, same as ...
— Judith Of The Plains • Marie Manning
... asked me if I intended to purchase that horse, and added, that, if I did, she would never want to ride. So I told the man he would not suit me. He answered by suddenly throwing himself upon his stomach across the backbone of his horse, and then, by turning round as on a pivot, got up a-straddle of him; then he gave his horse a kick in the ribs that caused him to jump out with all his legs, like a frog, and then off went the spoon-legged animal with a gait that was not a trot, nor yet precisely pacing. He rode ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume IV. (of X.) • Various
... came to the land of "the straddle-bug"—the squatters' watch dog—three boards nailed together (like a stack of army muskets) to mark a claim. Burke resembled a man taking his first sea-voyage. His eyes searched the plain restlessly, and his brain dreamed. ...
— The Moccasin Ranch - A Story of Dakota • Hamlin Garland
... and quite unsuspicious woman who descended in a warm October sunshine to the surprise. In the breakfast-room she discovered an awe-stricken Snagsby standing with his plate-basket before her husband, and her husband wearing strange unusual tweeds and gaiters,—buttoned gaiters, and standing a-straddle,—unusually ...
— The Wife of Sir Isaac Harman • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... with visible impatience for the word. He had that word. And Bland, who had glanced over his shoulder and glimpsed some one coming,—some one who much resembled a messenger boy,—turned the motor over with one mighty pull, and made the cockpit in two jumps and a straddle. ...
— The Thunder Bird • B. M. Bower
... if there was two birds setting on a fence, he would bet you which one would fly first. Or if there was a camp-meeting, he would be there reg'lar to bet on Parson Walker, which he judged to be the best exhorter about here, and so he was, too, and a good man. If he even see a straddle-bug start to go anywheres he would bet you how long it would take him to get to—to wherever he was going to; and if you took him up he would follow that straddle-bug to Mexico but what he would find out where he was bound for and how long he was on the road. Lots of the boys ...
— Initial Studies in American Letters • Henry A. Beers
... gravel for concrete were brought in by bottom or side dump gondola cars from pits located about 30 miles out on the Chicago, Milwaukee & St. Paul Ry. The cars were switched onto the main side track and unloaded under the bins which straddle this track. A receiving hopper, with its top at rail level and long enough to permit two cars to be unloaded at once, received the sand or gravel and distributed it through twelve gate openings onto an 18-in. horizontal belt conveyor 65 ft. long. ...
— Concrete Construction - Methods and Costs • Halbert P. Gillette
... was a thousand feet deeper than he'd been ordered to go when—blooie! Over the top she went with fourteen hundred barrels.... Desdemona's the name of a camp below here, but they call it Hog Town. More elegant! Down there the derricks actually straddle one another, and they have to board them over to keep from drowning one another out when they blow in. Fellow in Dallas brought in the first well, and it was so big that his stock went from a hundred dollars a ...
— Flowing Gold • Rex Beach
... spectacles up to the court— Your lordship observes they are made with a straddle, As wide as the ridge of the nose is; in short, Designed to sit close to it, just ...
— MacMillan's Reading Books - Book V • Anonymous
... in the hot water, he cut a couple of long splints of birch, as nearly as possible half an inch wide and an eighth of an inch thick, and put them to steep with the bark. Next he made two or three straddle pins or clamps, like clothes pegs, by splitting the ends of some sticks which had ...
— Rolf In The Woods • Ernest Thompson Seton
... to give the true sense and humour of the passage in English, depending, as it does, on the double meaning of {diabainein} (1) to cross (a river), (2) to stride or straddle (of the legs). The army is unable to cross the Centrites; Xenophon dreams that he is fettered, but the chains drop off his legs and he is able to stride as freely as ever; next morning the two young men come to him with the story how they have found themselves able to walk ...
— Anabasis • Xenophon
... going all to pieces, so that we'll each have to pick out a timber, and straddle mighty soon, if it keeps on ...
— Afloat on the Flood • Lawrence J. Leslie
... looking for the Commissary." Idle children attached themselves to his footsteps, and trotted after him back and forward between the hotel and the office. Leon might try as he liked; he might roll cigarettes, he might straddle, he might cock his hat at a dozen different jaunty inclinations - the part of Almaviva was, under ...
— New Arabian Nights • Robert Louis Stevenson
... and, above all, without giving the least suspicion that I was a greenhorn. I even affected to be listening to the music. The wheel spun again; the game was declared, the rake was busy, but I did not move. At last the man I had displaced touched me on the arm and whispered, "Better make a straddle and divide your stake this time." I did not understand him, but as I saw he was looking at the board, I was obliged to look, too. I drew back dazed and bewildered! Where my coin had lain a moment before was ...
— Under the Redwoods • Bret Harte
... she, "you must have your share too—just turn your bottom towards me and straddle ...
— The Life and Amours of the Beautiful, Gay and Dashing Kate Percival - The Belle of the Delaware • Kate Percival
... support, give foundations, furnish foundations, afford foundations, supply foundations, lend foundations; bottom, found, base, ground, imbed, embed. maintain, keep on foot; aid &c. 707. Adj. supporting, supported &c. v.; fundamental; dorsigerous[obs3]. Adv. astride on, straddle. ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... it is because the costume became him, and shows off his figure to advantage. But was there ever anything so absurd as this passion for the nude, which was followed by all the painters of the Davidian epoch? And how are we to suppose yonder straddle to be the true characteristic of the heroic and the sublime? Romulus stretches his legs as far as ever nature will allow; the Horatii, in receiving their swords, think proper to stretch their legs too, and to thrust ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... juggle and return, but many were too flashing for them to cope with. In front of the ferry house lay a deep and quaggish puddle of slime, crossable only by ginger-footed work upon sheets of tin. Endymion rafted his tenuous form across with a delicate straddle of spidery limbs. The secretary followed, with a more solid squashing technique. "Ha," cried the new member; "grace before meat!" Endymion and the secretary exchanged secret glances. Lawton, although he knew it not, was ...
— Plum Pudding - Of Divers Ingredients, Discreetly Blended & Seasoned • Christopher Morley
... wonderful address, brought this great and glorious action to a happy conclusion, resolved to relax his mind after his fatigue, in the conversation of the fair. He therefore set forwards to his lovely Laetitia; but in his way accidentally met with a young lady of his acquaintance, Miss Molly Straddle, who was taking the air in Bridges-street. Miss Molly, seeing Mr. Wild, stopped him, and with a familiarity peculiar to a genteel town education, tapped, or rather slapped him on the back, and asked him to treat her with ...
— The History of the Life of the Late Mr. Jonathan Wild the Great • Henry Fielding
... the enemies of the Republican Party, who could not adopt the Democratic plan for the free coinage of silver, without contradicting all their utterances in the past, denounced this proposal as a subterfuge, a straddle, an attempt to deceive the people and get votes by pledges not meant to be ...
— Autobiography of Seventy Years, Vol. 1-2 • George Hoar
... she know what 'tis, for months and months To stoop and straddle in the clogging fallows, Bearing about a living babe within you? And then at night to fat yourself and it On fir-bark, ...
— The Saint's Tragedy • Charles Kingsley
... to the earth again, the monkey sitting a-straddle of his back. They came to the mountain again, and the tortoise being a little lazy, waited at the foot while the monkey scampered off, saying he would be back in an hour. The two creatures had become so well ...
— Japanese Fairy World - Stories from the Wonder-Lore of Japan • William Elliot Griffis
... the mirror. The further it can be thrown, the more pieces will be made. If anybody objects, smash it over his head. Do not, under any circumstances, drop the tongs down from the second story; the fall might break its legs, and render the poor thing a cripple for life. Set it straddle of your shoulder, and carry it down carefully. Pile the bedclothes carefully on the floor, and throw the crockery out of the window. By the time you will have attended to all these things, the fire will certainly be arrested, ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... thrust out of reach of harm beneath the oak bench. Lettice was lying down upstairs, but all the rest of the household were gathered together, the visitors provided with chairs in honour of their position, Norah seated on the stairs, Raymond straddle-leg over the banister, Mr Bertrand and Geraldine lowly on buffets, while Hilary was perched on the top of a huge packing chest, enveloped in a pink "pinafore," and looking all the prettier because her brown hair was ruffled a little out of its ...
— Sisters Three • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... Princess Royal kept straight ahead till they were able to "straddle" even the leading ship of the enemy's line. The Tiger and Lion poured shells into the Seydlitz, but were unable to do much damage to the Moltke. While they were thus engaged the Princess Royal singled out the Derfftinger for her target. The ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume III (of 12) - The War Begins, Invasion of Belgium, Battle of the Marne • Francis J. Reynolds, Allen L. Churchill, and Francis Trevelyan
... holding the spectacles up to the court, "Your lordship observes, they are made with a straddle As wide as the ridge of the Nose is; in short, Designed to sit close to it, ...
— McGuffey's Fifth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... the old man to clamber to the rail, straddle the barbed wire, and gain the deck. Ishikola was a dirty old savage. One of his tambos (tambo being beche-de-mer and Melanesian for "taboo") was that water unavoidable must never touch his skin. He who lived by the salt sea, in a land of tropic downpour, ...
— Jerry of the Islands • Jack London
... do it. An' that hain't all. Tonight 'long 'bout dance time I want that saddle horse o' yourn an' yer sideways saddle, too. They's a gal o' mine come in on the train, which she'll be wantin', mebbe, to take a ride, an' hain't fetched no split-up clothes fer to straddle a real saddle. That sideways contraption you sent fer 'fore yer gal got to ridin' man-ways is the only one in Wolf River, an' likewise hern's the only horse that'll stand fer ...
— The Texan - A Story of the Cattle Country • James B. Hendryx
... buckles on de bridle wuz solid gol'. When de ladies went to ride dey wore long skirts of red, blue, an' green velvet, an' dey had plumes on dey hats dat blew in de win'. Dey wouldn' be caught wearin' britches an' ridin' straddle like de womens do dese days. In dem times ...
— Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States • Various
... Eighth. Though, as a woman, I bear him no rancour, for his wives were—fools, point blank. No man was ever so manageable. My diplomatist is getting liker and liker to him every day. Leaner, of course, and does not habitually straddle. Whiskers and morals, I mean. We must be silent before our prudish sister. Not a prude? We talk diplomacy, dearest. He complains of the exclusiveness of the port of Oporto, and would have strict alliance between Portugal and England, with mutual privileges. I wish the alliance, and ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... Micky was sitting straddle-ways across a chair between the two girls, and Esther had drawn back a little so that her face was in shadow. Micky glanced at her once, but could only see the glint of firelight on her hair and her hands clasped listlessly in the lap of her frock. He glanced at them; she still wore Ashton's ring, ...
— The Phantom Lover • Ruby M. Ayres
... not think that you are going to march straight there by force of will, or straight there at all. You are in a world full of cross-purposes and counter-currents and side-winds, of accumulated conservatisms and masses of mere inertia and oppositions which straddle or shoulder themselves across your path. You will probably wreck your undertakings, and will certainly waste your strength in needless collisions and shovings aside, unless you take all these things into account. The capacity to do this is wisdom, as distinct from knowledge or right intentions, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, November 1885 • Various
... bad, it's just the very worst!" he said with a deep sigh, as he reached a stile and sat down a-straddle ...
— Andy the Acrobat • Peter T. Harkness
... their muscles and ligaments are able to dislocate or preternaturally bend their joints. In entertainments of an arena type and even in what are now called "variety performances" are to be seen individuals of this class. These persons can completely straddle two chairs, and do what they call "the split;" they can place their foot about their neck while maintaining the upright position; they can bend almost double at the waist in such a manner that the back of the head will ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... rather steep bank, and straight ahead was a short line of broken limestone so common on bluegrass turnpikes, but Judith had the Southern girl's trust and courage, and seemed to notice the reckless drive as little as did Crittenden, who made the wheels straddle the stones, when the variation of an inch or two would have lamed ...
— Crittenden - A Kentucky Story of Love and War • John Fox, Jr.
... hour of ten approaches; bills are paid, pocket-pistols filled, sandwiches stowed away, horses accoutred, and our bevy straddle forth into the town, to the infinite gratification of troops of dirty-nosed urchins, who, for the last hour, have been peeping in at the windows, impatiently watching for the exeunt of our worthies.—They mount, and away—trot, ...
— Jorrocks' Jaunts and Jollities • Robert Smith Surtees
... the cisterns and wells around—hasn't it been dry?—they are using to try to save Swope's house, and the one next to it. Is that where Lonny Wheeler lives? I knew it was up this way somewhere. Don't he look ridiculous, sitting up there a-straddle of his ridgepole, with a tin-cup? A tin-cup, if you please. Over this way a little. See better. They're wetting down the roof. Line of fellows passing buckets to the ladder, and a line up the ladder. What big sparks those are! Puts you in mind of Fourth of July. How the ...
— Back Home • Eugene Wood
... about the joys of winter! Whut's the fun of foolin' round With the posies dead en buried, en the snows upon the ground? When the wind's a-tossin' blizzards in a most distressin' way Tell you have to set a-straddle of the fire-place all the day! But I tell ye life's a-livin' when the summer grows the grass Over all the nooks en crannies whayre a feller's feet kin pass, En the whole world seems of heaven but a half-forgotten type, When the roas'in'-ears ...
— Oklahoma Sunshine • Freeman E. (Freeman Edwin) Miller
... straight to God and I say, 'Father, I have sinned against Heaven and before Thee, and am no more worthy to be called Thy son.' But I am His son, for all that, and I know it and He knows it; and Apollyon may straddle across the way as much as he likes, but he can't stop me. If he does stop me, he only sends ...
— Father Payne • Arthur Christopher Benson
... he'd finish when he began. Now for that dear Mr. Harlan," Buck replied, vaulting into the saddle. He turned and looked at Hopalong, and his wonder grew. "Hey, you! Yes, you! Come out of that an' put on yore lid! Straddle leather—we can't stay ...
— Bar-20 Days • Clarence E. Mulford
... say he wish he had one, An' 'mongst all de yuthers he'd be de glad un; He'd git a bridle an' a bran' new saddle, An' git on de hoss an' ride 'im straddle; He say, sezee, "He'd do some trottin', Kaze when I git started, I'm a mighty hot un!" Brer Rabbit, he smole a great big smile, Wid, "I can't ride myse'f, kaze I got ...
— Uncle Remus and Brer Rabbit • Joel Chandler Harris
... didn't care who knew it. It was an uncomfortable horse to ride on, it required exertion to keep in motion, and it hurt his feelings. Especially the last. He was a horseman, a jockey, he'd ridden the best blood in the equine world; and here he was condemned through no fault of his own to straddle a cross between a llama and a woolly toy sheep. It hurt his pride. He felt bitterly about it. Indeed, he fairly harped ...
— The Killer • Stewart Edward White
... mused. "Well, if Shin-je is built in our proportions that makes it about right. The length of this thing would give him just about a two thousand foot leg. Yes—he could just about straddle that hill." ...
— The Metal Monster • A. Merritt
... digging potatoes, with a sober grin such as came to him always after he had swapped 'hosses' and got the worst of it. Then he would show me again, with a little impatience in his manner, how to hold the handle and straddle the row. He would watch me for a moment, turn to Uncle Eb, laugh hopelessly and say: 'Thet boy'll hev to be ...
— Eben Holden - A Tale of the North Country • Irving Bacheller
... he comes to me An' climbs a-straddle of my knee An' starts to fondle me an' pet, Then asks me if I've found one yet. An' ma says: "Now don't tell him yes; You know they make an awful mess." An' starts their faults to catalogue. But every boy should have ...
— A Heap o' Livin' • Edgar A. Guest
... Pobyedimsky. My beloved tutor was then at the stage when young men watch the growth of their moustache and are critical of their clothes, and so you can imagine the devout awe with which Spiridon approached him. Yegor Alexyevitch had to throw back his head, to straddle his legs like an inverted V, first lift up his arms, then let them fall. Spiridon measured him several times, walking round him during the process like a love-sick pigeon round its mate, going down on one knee, bending double.... My mother, weary, ...
— The Wife and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... large building somewhere in England. I, like the curling tongs, was at last packed up in a box, and brought to America, but it took a rather larger box to take me and my friends, than it took to pack up him and his friends, with all their thin straddle legs." ...
— Who Spoke Next • Eliza Lee Follen
... they's goin' to be some danged plain speakin' done on some subjects when he comes back, and given' squaws a free rein and lettin' 'em ride rough-shod over everybody and everything is one of 'era. Things is gittin' mighty funny when a danged squaw kin straddle my horses and ride 'em to death, and sass me when I say a word agin ...
— The Heritage of the Sioux • B.M. Bower
... standing largely a-straddle with the thumbs of his gloved hands hooked into his sword-belt. He was rosy as a pippin and ...
— Those Who Smiled - And Eleven Other Stories • Perceval Gibbon
... Jim laughed heartily and said: "Yes, you'll settle down with a band of sheep when you are too old to straddle a horse and your eyes too dim to take in an Indian. I have often thought of the same thing," he continued. "I have a place picked out now about fifteen miles east of Fort Bridger on Black's Fork, near the lone tree. There is where ...
— Thirty-One Years on the Plains and In the Mountains • William F. Drannan
... horses fifty year that other folk might straddle 'em, here I be now not a penny the better! Often-times, when I see so many good things about, I feel inclined to help myself in common justice to ...
— The Hand of Ethelberta • Thomas Hardy
... with one, is a bull-necked, whole-hearted, hard-headed, cast-iron fellow who can ride the beam of a snorting, rock-tearing steam-shovel all day, wrestle the night through with various starred Hennessey and its rivals, and continue that round indefinitely without once failing to turn up to straddle his beam in the morning. He seems to have been created without the insertion of nerves, though he is never lacking in "nerve." He is a fine fellow in his way, but you sometimes wish his way branched off from yours for a few hours, when bed-time or a mood for quiet musing comes. He is a ...
— Zone Policeman 88 - A Close Range Study of the Panama Canal and its Workers • Harry A. Franck
... wheelbarrow suddenly when it is in a brown study, and you undertake to straddle it, so to speak, and all at once you find the wheelbarrow on top. I may say, I think, safely, that the wheelbarrow is, as a rule, phlegmatic and cool; but when a total stranger startles it, it spreads desolation and ...
— Remarks • Bill Nye
... made for a single night, shallow trenches, 12 inches deep and 15 to 18 inches wide, which the men may straddle, will suffice. ...
— Infantry Drill Regulations, United States Army, 1911 - Corrected to April 15, 1917 (Changes Nos. 1 to 19) • United States War Department
... same ancient race. This was the formidable Dutch Sam, who fought at nine stone six, and yet possessed such hitting powers, that his admirers, in after years, were willing to back him against the fourteen-stone Tom Cribb, if each were strapped a-straddle to a bench. Half a dozen other sallow Hebrew faces showed how energetically the Jews of Houndsditch and Whitechapel had taken to the sport of the land of their adoption, and that in this, as in more serious ...
— Rodney Stone • Arthur Conan Doyle
... The theatre, too small, shall suffocate Its squeezed contents, and more than it admits Shall sigh at their exclusion, and return Ungratified. For there some noble lord Shall stuff his shoulders with King Richard's bunch, Or wrap himself in Hamlet's inky cloak, And strut, and storm, and straddle, stamp, and stare, To show the world how Garrick did not act, For Garrick was a worshipper himself; He drew the liturgy, and framed the rites And solemn ceremonial of the day, And called the world to ...
— The Task and Other Poems • William Cowper
... to Hen's house?" called out Landy, looking worried because he was to be left behind, and would have to straddle his wheezy ...
— Afloat - or, Adventures on Watery Trails • Alan Douglas
... my aunt Susan's insistence upon the resources of his dress-suit. In my memory those black legs of his, in a particularly thin and shiny black cloth—for evidently his dress-suit dated from adolescent and slenderer days—straddle like the Colossus of Rhodes over my approach to my mother's funeral. Moreover, I was inconvenienced and distracted by a silk hat he had bought me, my first silk hat, much ennobled, as his was also, by a ...
— Tono Bungay • H. G. Wells
... happy position called in American speculative circles 'a straddle.' If a man has an hallucination when alone, he was in circumstances conducive to the sleeping state. So the hallucination is probably a dream. But, if the seer was in company, who all had the same hallucination, ...
— The Making of Religion • Andrew Lang
... is dead, I'll pour a little of this nitric acid in her yeer to make shore.' And as he took the stopper out of the bottle, P'silly opens one eye an' says, 'Doc' Simpson, if you pour that in my yeer, you'll never straddle that hoss ...
— Shawn of Skarrow • James Tandy Ellis
... in 125-foot-long rows and one equally long raised bed. Each row grows only one or two types of vegetables. The central focus of my water-wise garden is its irrigation system. Two lines of low-angle sprinklers, only 4 feet apart, straddle an intensively irrigated raised bed running down the center of the garden. The sprinklers I use are Naans, a unique Israeli design that emits very little water and throws at a very low angle (available ...
— Gardening Without Irrigation: or without much, anyway • Steve Solomon
... but I can't tell you how; He left me six horses to follow the plough; With my whim wham waddle ho! Strim stram straddle ho! Bubble ho! ...
— The Baby's Opera • Walter Crane
... after him thoughtfully. "Well, dog my skin!" he ejaculated to himself, "ef I hadn't seen that man—that same Ruth Pinkney—straddle a friend's body in this yer very room, and dare a whole crowd to come on, I'd swar that he hadn't any grit in him. Thar's ...
— The Twins of Table Mountain and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... could see the enemy. Tubby had emitted nothing but a series of excruciating grunts; but now, when he saw the goat making ready for another charge, he met the animal with a yell, leaping into the air with his legs a-straddle, so that the Billie ran between them, and then Tubby footed it up the gully as fast as he ...
— Wyn's Camping Days - or, The Outing of the Go-Ahead Club • Amy Bell Marlowe
... proposition, and Giraffe had to cudgel his brains with considerable gusto before he was able to produce any result. But it dawned upon him finally that if the men were compelled to lie flat on their faces on the ground, and place their hands behind them, Bumpus might straddle each in turn, and fasten their wrists, while he, Giraffe ...
— The Boy Scouts in the Maine Woods - The New Test for the Silver Fox Patrol • Herbert Carter
... absolutely infantile game. A low, overhanging branch of a tree is chosen, and as many as it will bear, old and young, men and women, straddle it; and, holding on to the higher overhanging branches, they swing up and down with as much spring as they can get out of the branch they ...
— The Euahlayi Tribe - A Study of Aboriginal Life in Australia • K. Langloh Parker
... me," said Hendrick. "I'll take a turn round of a few hundred yards to show you how. The chief thing you have to guard against is treading with one shoe on the edge of the other, at the same time you must not straddle. Just pass the inner edge of one shoe over the inner edge of the other, and walk very much as if you had ...
— The Crew of the Water Wagtail • R.M. Ballantyne
... the deceased is drawn on the ground, and beside it a shallow trench is dug about a foot deep and fifteen feet long. Over this trench a number of men, elaborately decorated with down of various colours, stand straddle-legged, while a line of women, decorated with red and yellow ochre, crawl along the trench under the long bridge made by the straddling legs of the men. The last woman carries the arm-bone of the dead ...
— The Belief in Immortality and the Worship of the Dead, Volume I (of 3) • Sir James George Frazer
... bank beside him as if he fully expected to lay his hand on the specimen of gold-bearing rock. He went so far as to utter a surprised oath when he failed to find it. He felt in his pockets. He went forward and scanned the top of the ledge almost convincingly. He turned and stood a-straddle, his hands on his hips, and gazed on the pile of dirt he had thrown out of the hole. Last, he pushed his hat back so that with the next movement he could push it forward ...
— The Trail of the White Mule • B. M. Bower
... Commandments, or to be an illustration of the value of training-schools and kindergartens, or to afford a commentary upon the vanity of human wishes. Humanize your facts to the extent of making them interesting, if you have the art to do it, but leave the dog a dog, and the straddle-bug a straddle-bug. ...
— Ways of Nature • John Burroughs
... him; but after having refused a dozen times the work of a Strand loafer whom he was in the habit of "treating," he would say, "Send it in, my boy, send it in, I'll see what can be done with it." There was a long counter, and the way to be published by Mr. B. was to straddle on the counter and play with a black cat. There was an Irishman behind this counter who, for three pounds a week, edited the magazine, read the MS., looked after the printer and binder, kept the accounts when ...
— Confessions of a Young Man • George Moore
... seconds, or less tolerably With dull-blade minutes flatwise slapping me. Wait, Heart! Time moves. — Thou lithe young Western Night, Just-crowned king, slow riding to thy right, Would God that I might straddle mutiny Calm as thou sitt'st yon never-managed sea, Balk'st with his balking, fliest with his flight, Giv'st supple to his rearings and his falls, Nor dropp'st one coronal star about thy brow Whilst ever dayward thou art steadfast drawn! Yea, would ...
— The Poems of Sidney Lanier • Sidney Lanier
... all I could do to keep even by playing on the square with big "injins," as I found them very good card players. I held out a hand, but had to wait some time for the "wild man of the forest." At last there was a big "blind and straddle," and I kept raising it before the draw. They all "stayed," and drew two or three cards (I do not remember which). I took one, and when we came to "show down," I was the lucky fellow. This was too much for the bucks, so three of them dropped out, ...
— Forty Years a Gambler on the Mississippi • George H. Devol
... of the other pups began to nuzzle the bone; and, at times, these snorts would be vehement enough to make him lose his balance and roll helplessly off the bone on to the ground. Then the other three pups would straddle across his tubby body and snort defiance at him, each with a paw planted victoriously in his protuberant stomach or on ...
— Finn The Wolfhound • A. J. Dawson
... such a praist, as the likes of yees has no nade of throubling! Yer conscience is aisy, Misther Straddle, so that yer belly is filled, and yer wages is paid. Bad luck o ...
— Wyandotte • James Fenimore Cooper
... off the main road, far into the heart of the woods. We straddle stumps, bend down saplings, stop while the horse takes a bite of sweet birch, tack and tip and tumble and back through the tight squeezes between the trees; and finally, after a prodigious amount of "whoa"-ing and "oh"-ing and squealing and screeching, we land right ...
— The Hills of Hingham • Dallas Lore Sharp
... a braver man in Grant's army than that one right now a-straddle of your horse. Why, just the way he got your ...
— The Cavalier • George Washington Cable
... Thomas; "yet both he and Glaston walk rather A-STRADDLE, methinks. They might have stepped up to thee more straightforwardly, and told thee the trade ill suiteth thee, having little fire, little fantasy, and little learning. Furthermore, that one poet, as one bull, sufficeth for two parishes, ...
— Citation and Examination of William Shakspeare • Walter Savage Landor
... and told her tail. Therefore, I ask as a personal favor, seein' that BARNUM sarved me same's he did old Plymouth Rock, that when this august assemblage of Fossilized human bein's comes down onto the mail portion of the U. States, old P.T. be turned over to us. I'le make him think he's got straddle his wooly hoss, and an army of mermades was after him ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 22, August 27, 1870 • Various
... ascend Mont Blanc by the Brenva route?" he asked. "There's a thin ridge of ice—I read an account in Moore's 'Journal'—you have to straddle across the ridge with a ...
— Running Water • A. E. W. Mason
... long poles while I sat in the middle and took the compass sights as we passed along. There were some sharp little rapids full of rocks, and sometimes it was all we could do to stick on, for the raft being flexible naturally would straddle a big rock and take the form of a very steep house roof. The banks were thick with currant bushes loaded with ripe fruit and we kept a supply of branches on the raft to pick off the currants as we went along. Everywhere ...
— A Canyon Voyage • Frederick S. Dellenbaugh
... connection with a snare. One end is planted in the ground in the centre of the path and the other, slanting up toward the snare, is used as a guide toward the loop, since a bear walking forward would straddle the pole. In a further effort to getting the animal's head in the right place, the hunter smears the upper end of the pole ...
— The Drama of the Forests - Romance and Adventure • Arthur Heming
... mouth. He must have command over the exit from the valley so that every individual, every log, every article of merchandise that entered or left the valley, should pass through his hands. That was to be the next step. He must straddle the mouth of the valley like the ...
— Scattergood Baines • Clarence Budington Kelland
... mistaken, sir! I taught my daughter to straddle a horse before I taught her to walk. Handle him? Of course she can handle him! Jimpson!" he roared in conclusion, ...
— A Romance of Billy-Goat Hill • Alice Hegan Rice
... the system is little marked or comes on late, and the first observed sign of illness is the firm swelling, heat, and tenderness of the bag. As the inflammation increases and extends, the hot, tender udder causes the animal to straddle with its hind limbs, and, when walking, to halt on the limb on that side. If the cow lies down it is on the unaffected side. With the increase in intensity and the extension of the inflammation the general fever manifests itself ...
— Special Report on Diseases of Cattle • U.S. Department of Agriculture
... bombed is such that a sense of personal security takes a long while to outlive the insistent curiosity that compels one to stare fascinated at the death above. An up-stretched neck and straddle-legged attitude predominated—so did neck-ache. ...
— Norman Ten Hundred - A Record of the 1st (Service) Bn. Royal Guernsey Light Infantry • A. Stanley Blicq
... longer alone; hosts of Little People passed them, going in the same direction. Peter said most of them rode "straddle-legs" on night birds or moths, while some flew along on a funny thing that was horse before and weeds behind. I judge this must have been the buchailin buidhe or benweed, which the faeries bewitch and ride the same as ...
— The Primrose Ring • Ruth Sawyer
... breastwork before the final ditch into which in his hour the gunfighter has finally gone down. Desperate characters, men wanted in two states and perhaps in many more, flocked here where they found the one chance to live out their riotous lives riotously. Here they could "straddle" the line, and when wanted upon one side slip to the other. And hereabouts, for very many miles in all directions, the big cattle men, the small ranchers, the "little fellows," all slept "with their eyes open ...
— Six Feet Four • Jackson Gregory
... hour's walk, no doubt, for a short-legged Pygmy to journey from head to foot of the Giant. He would lay down his great hand flat on the grass, and challenge the tallest of them to clamber upon it, and straddle from finger to finger. So fearless were they, that they made nothing of creeping in among the folds of his garments. When his head lay sidewise on the earth, they would march boldly up, and peep into the great ...
— Tanglewood Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... right was the sea, dotted with ships. Parties of men in red coats, and carrying in their hands curiously-shaped sticks, were walking about in all directions. They all looked very earnest, some of them were gloomy, some positively furious. Occasionally they stopped, placed themselves in an uncouth straddle-legged attitude, whirled their sticks, looked eagerly towards the horizon, and then marched on again as solemnly as before. One party in particular attracted the attention of Father TIME. It was a large, mixed gathering of men, and women, and children. They ...
— Punch Among the Planets • Various
... where you save Maisie by jumping from your horse to a wild steer that's pursuing her. You'll have to twist its head and throw the brute after you straddle it." ...
— Steve Yeager • William MacLeod Raine
... grizzly bear. I can rope and throw the longhorn of the wildest Texas brand, And in Indian disagreements I can play a leading hand, But at last I got my master and he surely made me squeal When the boys got me a-straddle of that ...
— Cowboy Songs - and Other Frontier Ballads • Various
... passive in your hands, laying quiet enough, as Charlie made you straddle over him, and settle yourself down on his big upstanding prick, till it was all out of sight in your cunt. "Now ride him well, Gertie, or you will be made to move yourself," and he stepped away to cut his switch, a couple of minutes only sufficing him to make ...
— Forbidden Fruit • Anonymous
... problem that could n't be worked-out on a draught-board. I have already said that we had n't any draught horses; indeed, the only thing on the selection like a horse was an old "tuppy" mare that Dad used to straddle. The date of her foaling went further back than Dad's, I believe; and she was shaped something like an alderman. We found her one day in about eighteen inches of mud, with both eyes picked out by the crows, and her ...
— On Our Selection • Steele Rudd
... jimmy?" crows Joe. "He's a jolly ole brick, that Frisbie! I'm a-gunter set straddle on the ridge-pole, an' ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 83, September, 1864 • Various
... yards from its mud-besmeared mouth the convenient mangroves disappear and the little creek assumes becoming airs. Huge tea-trees, with cushiony bark, straddle it, and ferns grow strongly in all its nooks and bends. When the big trees blossom in watery yellow, yellow-eared honey-eaters, blue-bibbed sun-birds, and screeching parrots in accordant colours, assemble joyously, for the aroma, as of burnt honey, spreads far and wide, bidding all, butterflies ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield
... what it was, an' that ain't but half of it," the lank rider complained regretfully. "It ain't ever gonna be any more. These here red-coats are plumb ruinin' trade. Squint at a buck cross-eyed, whisper rum to him, an' one o' these guys jumps a-straddle o' yore ...
— Man Size • William MacLeod Raine
... themselves of stepping up the hill to take a look at the cemetery, and there find all they sought. This man stood under the archway of the Pack-horse Inn (by A. Walters), with his soft hat tilted over his nose, a cigar in his mouth, hands in his trouser pockets, and legs a-straddle, and smoked and eyed the passers-by with ...
— Old Fires and Profitable Ghosts • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... serve as mercenaries." That there were many swaggerers and bullies about, we learn from Duerer's prints. In every crowd these gentlemen in leathern tights, with other ostentatious additions to their costume, besides poniards and daggers to emphasise the brutal male, strut straddle-legged and self-assured; and of course raw lads and loutish prentices yielded them the sincerest flattery. We can well understand that the model boy, to whom "God had given diligence," with his long hair lovely as a girl's, and his consciousness of being nearly ...
— Albert Durer • T. Sturge Moore
... airlock with a smaller edition of the moon-jeep that had brought them from the ship to the city. It was a brightly-polished metal body, raised some ten feet off the ground on outrageously large wheels. It was very similar to the straddle-trucks used in lumberyards on Earth. It would straddle boulders in its path. It could go anywhere in spite of dust and detritus, and its metal body was air-tight and held air for breathing, even out on ...
— Operation: Outer Space • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... as long as he remembers, and that he never forgets. Do you know that Dave sent his horse back to the stable here to be hired out for his keep, and told it right and left that when you came back he was comin', too, and he was goin' to straddle that horse until he found you, and then one of you had to die? How he found out you were comin' about this time I don't know, but he has sent word that he'll be here. Looks like he hasn't made ...
— The Trail of the Lonesome Pine • John Fox, Jr.
... than two inches from the floor any of the time. We were just going to slip Pa down a board with slivers in to give him a realizing sense of the rough road a reformed man has to travel, and got him straddle of the board, when the Dutchman came home from the dance fullern a goose, and he drove us boys out, and we left Pa, and the Dutchman said, 'Vot you vas doing here mit dose boys, you old duffer, and vere vas your pants?' and Pa pulled off the handkerchief ...
— Peck's Compendium of Fun • George W. Peck
... investigations of radiation detection equipment in configurations suitable for deployment at seaports, which may include underwater or water surface detection equipment and detection equipment that can be mounted on cranes and straddle cars used to move shipping containers; and (3) have the authority to establish or contract with 1 or more federally funded research and development centers to provide independent analysis of homeland ...
— Homeland Security Act of 2002 - Updated Through October 14, 2008 • Committee on Homeland Security, U.S. House of Representatives
... distressing, but sometimes it is dangerous; and when you get it manifested in the head of the State, and it has become the policy of a great empire, it is about time that it should be ruthlessly put away. [Loud applause.] I do not believe he meant all these speeches; it was simply the martial straddle he had acquired. But there were men around him who meant every word of them. This was their religion. Treaties? They tangle the feet of Germany in her advance. Cut them with the sword! Little nations? They hinder the advance of Germany. Trample them in the mire under the German heel! The Russian ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War from the Beginning to March 1915, Vol 1, No. 2 - Who Began the War, and Why? • Various
... Irishmen, rather startling from its numbers, entered the yard. Among them was Mr. Farren. They surrounded my lifting-apparatus, while I, unseen, surveyed them from a back window. I saw Mr. Farren take the handle, straddle the hogshead, throw himself into a lifting posture, and, straining every muscle to its utmost tension, give a tremendous pull. But the weight made no sign; and his friends, thinking he was merely feeling it, said, "Wait a bit,—Pat'll have it up the next pull." Mr. Farren ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 09, No. 51, January, 1862 • Various
... Averse to running long, and apt to be paid off at sight: In legal phrase, for every class to understand me still, I never was in stirrups yet a tenant but at will; Or, if you please, in artist terms, I never went a-straddle On any horse without 'a want of keeping' in the saddle. In short," and here I blush'd, abash'd and held my head full low, "I'm one of those whose infant ears have heard the ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood
... sauces, and those petticoats called breeches; those tiny shoes, covered with ribbons, which make you look like feather-legged pigeons; and those large rolls wherein the legs are put every morning, as it were into the stocks, and in which we see these gallants straddle about with their legs as wide apart, as if they were the beams of ...
— The School for Husbands • Moliere
... weight was a little too much for the pony; so it was at a dignified walk that the Maestro, his naked, dripping, muddy and still defiant prisoner a-straddle in front of him, the captured kite passed over his left arm like a knightly shield, made his triumphant ...
— Americans All - Stories of American Life of To-Day • Various
... and arr-e-e'd and forced his cattle into a scrambling gallop, and we drew up with the deserted carriage, whose mules were standing straddle-legged, and panting as though they were going to burst. He pulled up there, but Haigh snatched hold of the reins through the front window, and turning the animals off the road, sent them with a yell into the palm scrub that fringed ...
— The Recipe for Diamonds • Charles John Cutcliffe Wright Hyne
... time. He sat up straddle-legged like a tailor, and pulled the dog's head on his knee. Frank's eyes were green with excitement, foam rose from his bruised throat, his tail beat a tattoo on ...
— Frank of Freedom Hill • Samuel A. Derieux
... this crevassed section I had frequently to cross bridges that were only knife-edges for twenty or thirty feet, cutting off the sharp tops and leaving them flat so that little Stickeen could follow me. These I had to straddle, cutting off the top as I progressed and hitching gradually ahead like a boy riding a rail fence. All this time the little dog followed me bravely, never hesitating on the brink of any crevasse that I had jumped, but now that ...
— Travels in Alaska • John Muir |
