"Straddle" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... at once wafted to any port they desired. A few of them did not need any canoes: they were of such height they could step from island to island, and could wade through the deepest oceans without submerging their heads. Kana would often straddle from Kauai to Oahu, like a colossus of Rhodes, and when a king of Kahiki, who was keeper of the sun, undertook to deprive the people of it, because of some slight, Kana waded across the sea and forced that king to behave himself instanter; then, having seen the light properly ...
— Myths & Legends of our New Possessions & Protectorate • Charles M. Skinner
... out of the burning house, throwing armfuls of goods right and left. The "Hecla" was a-straddle of the well, and rows of men ...
— The Skipper and the Skipped - Being the Shore Log of Cap'n Aaron Sproul • Holman Day
... were not more 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
... 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
... 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 on her a race of worthies, 285 ...
— Hudibras • Samuel Butler
... and flank-fires, was the killing of a light beef, beheading and splitting it open, leaving the hide to hold the parts together. By turning the animal flesh side down and taking ropes from a front and hind foot to the pommels of two saddles, the men, by riding apart, could straddle the flames, virtually rubbing the fire out with the dragging carcass. Other men followed with wet blankets and beat out any remaining flames, the work being carried on at a gallop, with a change of horses every mile or so, and the fire was thus ...
— Reed Anthony, Cowman • Andy Adams
... chance to make rules and regulations for my feller-citizens—and then again I might have took to gambling and drinking and raising blazes, and broke my poor wife's broom-handle with my hard head. So I reckon we'll let it slide as it is. Now you straddle that cayuse of yours and come along with me and I'll show you some ...
— Red Saunders • Henry Wallace Phillips
... is 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
... even at that it's the same old bunk. What about your testimonials? Fake 'em, and forge 'em, and bribe and blackmail for 'em and then stand up to me and pull the pious plate-pusher stuff about being straight. Oh, my Gawd! It'd make a straddle-bug spit at the sun, to hear you. Why, I'm no saint, but the medical line was too strong for my stomach. I got ...
— The Clarion • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... that thou shalt go no farther: here will I spill thy soul! And with that he threw a flaming dart at his breast.' In the cut he throws a dart with either hand, belching pointed flames out of his mouth, spreading his broad vans, and straddling the while across the path, as only a fiend can straddle who has just sworn by his infernal den. The defence will not be long against such vice, such flames, such red-hot nether energy. And in the fourth cut, to be sure, he has leaped bodily upon his victim, sped by foot and pinion, and roaring as he leaps. The fifth shows the climacteric ...
— Lay Morals • Robert Louis Stevenson
... stern. Stoun', pang, throb. Stoure, dust. Stourie, dusty. Stown, stolen. Stownlins, by stealth. Stoyte, to stagger. Strae death, death in bed. (i. e., on straw). Staik, to stroke. Strak, struck. Strang, strong. Straught, straight. Straught, to stretch. Streekit, stretched. Striddle, to straddle. Stron't, lanted. Strunt, liquor. Strunt, to swagger. Studdie, an anvil. Stumpie, dim. of stump; a worn quill. Sturt, worry, trouble. Sturt, to fret; to vex. Sturtin, frighted, staggered. Styme, the faintest trace. Sucker, sugar. Sud, should. ...
— Poems And Songs Of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... want you to see how multiple it is, and yet it is beautiful. Now there is a very interesting thing yet to tell you about this parallelism. Such poems as those of the "Kalevala" have always to be sung not by one singer but by two. The two singers straddle a bench facing each other and hold each other's hands. Then they sing alternately, each chanting one line, rocking back and forward, pulling each other to and fro as they sing—so that it is like the motion of rowing. One chants a line and pulls backward, ...
— Books and Habits from the Lectures of Lafcadio Hearn • Lafcadio Hearn
... by Cino of Pistoja. The lower floor being choked with rubbish and fallen masonry, the only access to our retreat was by a broken beam projecting from the original doorway. You jumped for this, caught it if you were expert enough, and must swing yourself up to straddle it. You could then gain the string-course of brick which encircled the tower, and, edging along that, reach the lower sill of a window. That window was our front door. The interior was perfectly dry, rainproof and (from all quarters but one) windproof. ...
— The Fool Errant • Maurice Hewlett
... 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 ...
— Military Instructors Manual • James P. Cole and Oliver Schoonmaker
... when one 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 his ...
— Finn The Wolfhound • A. J. Dawson
... happened 'ceptin stealin' my old master's company's hoss and runnin' a race. White chillun too. Them as couldn't ride sideways ridin' straddle. Better not ride Rob Roy—that was old master's ridin' hoss and my mistis saddle hoss. That was the hoss he was talkin' bout ridin' to the war when the last battle was fit in Helena. But he was too ...
— Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves - Arkansas Narratives Part 3 • Works Projects Administration
... it, pushing. When they get it as high as they can, they'll shoot their jatos, let go, and come bumbling back home. So they have to practice getting back home and landing. For practicing it doesn't matter how they get aloft. When they get down, a big straddle truck on caterpillar treads picks them up—they land in the doggonedest places, sometimes!—and brings 'em back. Then a crane heaves them up on a high-speed truck and they do it ...
— Space Platform • Murray Leinster
... scene 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
... 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 light British cruiser Aurora, Arethusa, ...
— 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
... at 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 no snow-shoes on ...
— The Crew of the Water Wagtail • R.M. Ballantyne
... themselves but for the party electors who are pledged to the entire party ticket. Party conventions take advantage of this disability on the part of the voter to work an electioneering device known as a "straddle," the aim of which is to please opposite interests by giving each a place on the ticket. After Garfield was nominated, the attempt was made to placate the defeated faction by nominating one of its adherents for Vice-President, and now that nominee unexpectedly ...
— The Cleveland Era - A Chronicle of the New Order in Politics, Volume 44 in The - Chronicles of America Series • Henry Jones Ford
... give foundations, furnish foundations, afford foundations, supply foundations, lend foundations; bottom, found, base, ground, imbed, embed. maintain, keep on foot; aid &c 707. Adj. supporting, supported &c v.; fundamental; dorsigerous^. Adv. astride on, straddle. ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... here, face down, so I can straddle him with my knees!" Fred called out. "Now, some of you begin, and work his arms back and forth regularly, while I press down on his lungs so as to induce artificial breathing. That's the only way to get things started, you see. A little harder, Brad, ...
— Fred Fenton on the Crew - or, The Young Oarsmen of Riverport School • Allen Chapman
... mamma took me en come on to de house en when Miss Jane see dat leg, she say, "Cindy, what de matter?" My mamma say, "John call me a liar en I never take it." Miss Jane tell em to send after Sam Watson right den. Sam Watson was a rough old overseer en he been so bowlegged dat if he stand straddle a barrel, he be settin down on it just as good as you settin dere. Sam Watson come dere en make dat fellow lay down on a plank in de fence jam en he take dat cat o' nine tail he have tie round his waist en strike John 75 times. De blood run down off him just ...
— Slave Narratives Vol. XIV. South Carolina, Part 2 • Works Projects Administration
... an' gie the tod such a dirl 'ith heed, that he kilt him deed's a herrin, an' we micht a' witness the same by gannin to the Shouther o' Birkin Brae." And truly it was as he said, for we found the mark of the little Highlandman's shillela on the fox's head, while he himself was sitting a straddle on him, like "the devil looking over Lincoln Minster," and the dogs ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 19, No. - 537, March 10, 1832 • Various
... stand at "Attention," head up and chest out, not looking at his feet, as the ataxic always wishes to do. At first this is enough to require; it will not do to be too particular about how his feet are placed, so long as he does not straddle. He can repeat this effort for himself a dozen times a day, for a minute or two each time. Next we try the same position with a little more care about getting the feet pretty near together and parallel, or with ...
— Fat and Blood - An Essay on the Treatment of Certain Forms of Neurasthenia and Hysteria • S. Weir Mitchell
... Let us not straddle the fence. Business is a game, and so is politics. Neither knows any sentiment. Suppose you should favour this N.C.O. crowd in a mistaken idea that you were doing the right thing, and that subsequently numberless fellow- citizens developed the idea that you had not done ...
— The Valley of the Giants • Peter B. Kyne
... any result whatever, and succumbed next morning with a very ill grace to my aunt Susan's insistence upon the resources of his dress-suit. In my memory those black legs of his, in a particularly thin and shiny black cloth—for evidently his dress-suit dated from adolescent and slenderer days—straddle like the Colossus of Rhodes over my approach to my mother's funeral. Moreover, I was inconvenienced and distracted by a silk hat he had bought me, my first silk hat, much ennobled, as his was also, by a deep ...
— Tono Bungay • H. G. Wells
... throughout the empire to be painted in the most glaring and fantastic colors, and passed a considerable portion of his time riding on a wooden rocking-horse—a degenerate practice for a scion of the bold Catharine, who used to dress herself in men's clothes, and ride a-straddle on the back of a live horse to review her troops. Alexander I., in his ukase of September, 1827, perpetrated a very fine piece of Russian humor. The period of military service for serfs is fixed at twenty years in ...
— The Land of Thor • J. Ross Browne
... luck we had come there to eat up their crops; but in a little while they flocked to our doors and admired our traps, remarking that they believed each iron box contained a couple of white dwarfs, which we carry on our shoulders, sitting straddle-legs, back to back, and they fly off to eat people whenever they get the order. One of these visitors happened to be the sister of one of my men, named Baruti, who no sooner recognised her brother, than, without saying a word, she clasped her head with her ...
— The Discovery of the Source of the Nile • John Hanning Speke
... till they bethink 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
... garment, being removed from your person, is again taken to the tailor's 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 ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... 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
... 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
... sun and having eaten our rude breakfast set forth, some six miles to the west, to mark the location of our claims with the "straddle-bugs." ...
— A Son of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... took 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
... chateau, after a succession of proprietors, came to the Panisse family through marriage with the daughter of a Marseilles notary, who got the chateau by foreclosing a mortgage. During the Revolutionary period, the property was saved from confiscation by a clever straddle. The owner stayed in France, and supported the Revolution, while the son emigrated with the Bourbons. The peerage was created just a hundred years ago by Louis XVIII, in reward for the refusal of the Panisses to follow Napoleon ...
— Riviera Towns • Herbert Adams Gibbons
... 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 ...
— The Killer • Stewart Edward White
... 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. Bailey, an old settler—of two ...
— The Moccasin Ranch - A Story of Dakota • Hamlin Garland
... mighty bad case I had," he observed philosophically. "But d'ye know what was the matter with me? Well, I never tumbled to it till afterward, but it was jest because she was like Sallie—talked like her and rode like her, straddle, that way. But I wanter tell you, boy," he added mournfully, ...
— Hidden Water • Dane Coolidge
... in the 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, then they all had the same ...
— The Making of Religion • Andrew Lang
... dang darn shame I got to straddle strange horses just because there ain't another in the country like you, Coaley," he muttered, leaning forward to smooth the silky hide under the crinkly mane. "It's going to set hard, now I'm tellin' yuh, to throw my saddle on some plain, ordinary cayuse. But it's a bet I can't afford to overlook; ...
— Rim o' the World • B. M. Bower
... all cropping peacefully at the hay that had been liberally distributed among them because there was hardly grass enough for a "burro." We were all ready to turn in, but there stood our temporary commander, his long legs a-straddle, his hands clasped behind him, and the flickering light of the fire betraying in his face both profound ...
— Starlight Ranch - and Other Stories of Army Life on the Frontier • Charles King
... 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
... a thought-reading seance. Right.' He turned the chair about, sat on it straddle-wise and crossed his arms over the curved top bar. 'Let me see,' he mused, leaning forward, pulling at his cigar and bringing his eyes, after they had travelled over the crowd, back firmly to us. ''Two souls with but a single thought,'' he quoted, ''two ...
— Foe-Farrell • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... caster, roulette, rowel; gear, cogwheel, miter wheel; pulley, sheave (wheel of a pulley). Associated words: spoke, felly, hub, strake, tire, straddle, cog, sprocket, linchpin, arbor, axle, axletree, sprag, traction, trochilics, trochilic, ratchet, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... All were Eastlake and in good taste, the colors sage-green, pumpkin-yellow and ginger-brown, dashed with splashes of peacock feathers and Japanese fans. The vases were straddle-legged and pot-bellied Asiatic shapes. Dragons in bronze and ivory, sticky-looking faience and glittering majolica, stood in the corners. Silk embroideries representing the stork—a scrawny bird with a scalp-lock ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 26, September 1880 • Various
... heading, "Administration of the San Tome Silver Mine. Sulaco. Republic of Costaguana." He had written it furiously, snatching page after page on Charles Gould's table. Mrs. Gould had looked several times over his shoulder as he wrote; but the Senor Administrador, standing straddle-legged, would not even glance at it when it was finished. He had waved it away firmly. It must have been scorn, and not caution, since he never made a remark about the use of the Administration's paper for such a compromising document. And that ...
— Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard • Joseph Conrad
... holding on steadily north-poleward with a brave faith and faculty of 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" at the opening ...
— A Walk from London to John O'Groat's • Elihu Burritt
... more, the scarcity is due to Surra (vide p. 336), which has enormously reduced the pony stock. There are occasionally sales of American horses, and it is now one of the novelties to see them driven in carriages, and American ladies riding straddle-legged on tall hacks. In Spanish days no European gentleman or lady could be seen in a carromata [235] (gig) about Manila; now this vehicle is in general use for both sexes of all classes. Bicycles were known in the Islands ten years ...
— The Philippine Islands • John Foreman
... with my bubbies, admiring their whiteness, firmness, and volume. He pressed them closely together and remarked that the narrow channel thus made would just fit his instrument. He placed me half sitting on an ottoman and made me recline on my back on the divan. He then made Amy straddle my chest, her bottom just resting on the top of my breasts, her face turned towards me, thus presenting her delicious buttocks to his gaze. He now stood between my thighs, his right knee coming in contact with my hairy mount. He then placed his instrument ...
— The Life and Amours of the Beautiful, Gay and Dashing Kate Percival - The Belle of the Delaware • Kate Percival
... diminish the climb the elephant kneels down in the road. A naked heathen brings a ladder, rests it against the side of the beast and the passengers climb up and take their seats in the saddle. Another naked heathen, who sits straddle the animal's neck, looks around at the load, inquires if everybody is ready, jabs the elephant under the ear with a sharpened iron prong and then the trouble begins. It is a good deal ...
— Modern India • William Eleroy Curtis
... satisfied to sit down and hem good crash towels for their mother, but must turn themselves into boys, and play ranchmen and baseball and hockey on the ice, and Wild West shows with the dogs and the pony—and even riding him a-straddle—and want to go to college just because their two brothers are going, and, for all I know, join a fraternity and have secrets from their own mother and a football team!" She paused long enough to ...
— Flamsted quarries • Mary E. Waller
... night 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 ...
— A Heap o' Livin' • Edgar A. Guest
... 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 ...
— Oklahoma Sunshine • Freeman E. (Freeman Edwin) Miller
... wreck's going all to pieces, so that we'll each have to pick out a timber, and straddle mighty soon, if it keeps on this way!" Bandy-legs ...
— Afloat on the Flood • Lawrence J. Leslie
... With light bare feet and lighter 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
... 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
... I've tended 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 ...
— The Hand of Ethelberta • Thomas Hardy
... 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 yuh. And keep ...
— Skyrider • B. M. Bower
... forgot his other loss for a minute, and declared that Mr. Tortoise didn't win the race at all—that he couldn't have covered that much ground in a half a day alone, and he asked Mr. Fox if he was going to let that great straddle bug ruin his reputation for speed and make him the laughing stock of the Big Deep Woods, besides all the other ...
— How Mr. Rabbit Lost his Tail • Albert Bigelow Paine
... hermetically closed that night when Angela di Sereno and Nick Hilliard were imprisoned; and Billy, standing on Nick's shoulders, had to work a few tedious moments before he could induce one of these windows to open. By the time the wiry, slim figure was ready to straddle the window-sill, slip out, dangling, and drop on the grass, night had closed in, fragrant and purple in the open, heavy and ...
— The Port of Adventure • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... very most. He could handle a flail with e'er a man that ever stepped in black leather; and at spade-work there wasn't his aquil. Indeed, he had a brain for everything: he could thatch better nor many that arned their bread by it; could make a slide-car, straddle, or any other rough carpenter work, that it would surprise you to think of it; could work a kish or side creel beautifully; mow as much as any two men, and go down a ridge of corn almost as fast as you could walk; was ...
— The Ned M'Keown Stories - Traits And Stories Of The Irish Peasantry, The Works of - William Carleton, Volume Three • William Carleton
... wondering if they were thick enough and soft enough, so that he wouldn't get hurt if he should fall, when all at once, quicker than you can wheel the baby carriage down hill, when he was right in the middle, Buddy's foot slipped, and down he went, right a straddle across the tight rope, and the pole fell with ...
— Buddy And Brighteyes Pigg - Bed Time Stories • Howard R. Garis
... 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 a pint of wine at a neighbouring tavern. The hero, though he loved the chaste ...
— The History of the Life of the Late Mr. Jonathan Wild the Great • Henry Fielding
... cross-arm he knew that the glow must come from a skylight; and that the skylight must be the one that had saved that hidden little office room from being dark. He was no lineman, but he knew enough to be careful about the wires, so it took him several minutes to work his way to where he could straddle a crosstree that had ...
— Starr, of the Desert • B. M Bower
... whom I have mentioned more than once, is an odd figure, with his bluff, red face,—coarsely red,—set in silver hair,— his clumsy legs, which he moves in a strange straddle, using, I believe, a broomstick for a staff. The breadth of back of these fat men ...
— Passages From The American Notebooks, Volume 1 • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... 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 ...
— A Treasury of Eskimo Tales • Clara Kern Bayliss
... lost no 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 ...
— Frank of Freedom Hill • Samuel A. Derieux
... 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 ash to ...
— The Vertical City • Fannie Hurst
... go to Hen's house?" called out Landy, looking worried because he was to be left behind, and would have to straddle his ...
— Afloat - or, Adventures on Watery Trails • Alan Douglas
... 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 ...
— The Wrecker • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... that down at Henry Grundy's. That's the only cool place in the county in midsummer. And if you'll take my advice and straddle one of his thoroughbreds once a day, you'll get some color in your face. I've fixed everything for you. You're to have a front room on the ground floor, and pay twelve dollars a month. That's cheaper than stealing it. But you don't want to make a hermit of yourself ...
— The Love Story of Abner Stone • Edwin Carlile Litsey
... but, I beg your pardon, stage-managing's more my business,' news that seemed to cast a gloom over the faces of the ministers; and leaving them to make what they could of his reply, he drew Kate forward confidentially and pointed to an old man sitting straddle-legged on a high narrow table just on a line with the window. He was covered with clay; his forehead and beard were plastered with it, and before him was an iron plate, kept continually whirling by steam, which he could stop by a pressure of his foot. He squeezed ...
— A Mummer's Wife • George Moore
... 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 ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... on—I want to hear what it was—I've been laying here all this time waiting to know what great thing it was that skeered you so much. I never laughed so in all my life as I did when he got a-straddle of you. I was coming up to the sled, when I saw you streaking it through the vines and briers, and then I squatted down awhile to see what would turn ...
— Wild Western Scenes • John Beauchamp Jones
... dwindled from an uproar to a last vindictive popping. As the smoke slowly eddied away, the youth saw that the charge had been repulsed. The enemy were scattered into reluctant groups. He saw a man climb to the top of the fence, straddle the rail, and fire a parting shot. The waves had receded, leaving bits of dark debris ...
— The Red Badge of Courage - An Episode of the American Civil War • Stephen Crane
... trying all the 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 ...
— The School for Husbands • Moliere
... with his back to the fire and his legs a-straddle. Cai stuck his hands in his pockets and stared gloomily out of window. For some three minutes neither spoke, then Cai, of a sudden, ...
— Hocken and Hunken • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... 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
... 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 ...
— Georgian Poetry 1913-15 • Edited by E. M. (Sir Edward Howard Marsh)
... 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
... 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 ...
— Forbidden Fruit • Anonymous
... 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, exhausted by her exertions ...
— The Wife and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... thing," said Blue Dave, shifting about on his feet uneasily, "you look so much like my young marster w'at died in Perginny. En den dat day w'en de speckerlater put me up on de block, you 'uz settin' dar straddle er yo' pony, en you 'lowed dat he oughter be 'shame er hisse'f fer ter ...
— Mingo - And Other Sketches in Black and White • Joel Chandler Harris
... has succeeded. He has with him henceforth money, speculation, the Bourse, the Bank, the counting-room, the strong-box, and all those men who pass so readily from one side to the other, when all they have to straddle is shame. He made of M. Changarnier a dupe, of M. Thiers a stop-gap, of M. de Montalembert an accomplice, of power a cavern, of the budget his farm. They are coining at the Mint a medal, called the medal of the 2nd of December, in honour of the manner in which he keeps ...
— Napoleon the Little • Victor Hugo
... momentous expedition, taking a hitch of the blind-cord round a branch before he permitted her to move. Two or three times he was obliged to make the cord fast and return to help her, for she was not an 'expert'; her arms seemed soft, and she was inclined to straddle instead of trusting to one foot. But at last they were settled, streaked indeed with moss, on the top branch but two. They rested there, silent, listening to the rooks soothing an outraged dignity. Save for this slowly ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... you see this nag of mine? He isn't as good a horse as I want to straddle and I sometimes get out of patience with him, but I know his faults as well as his p'ints. He goes fairly well as hosses go, and it might take me a long while to git used to another hoss' faults. For, like men, all hosses hev faults. ...
— The Lincoln Story Book • Henry L. Williams
... down and rose up among their horse, in the black tents, that loved and hated among their horse, that lived and died among their horse, and ye would talk to me o' spells. Did I but say the word to that black horse, not you nor any o' the folk ye cam' crooked among would straddle him and live to boast ...
— The McBrides - A Romance of Arran • John Sillars
... than a hundred 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 ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield
... admire the fanciful brackets and other wooden straddle-bugs people are so fond of decorating their houses with. By the way, if these brackets are purely ornamental, there ought not to be two alike, any more than you'd have two busts or two pictures alike in one room. Suppose you collect an assortment of the rich and rarest ...
— Homes And How To Make Them • Eugene Gardner
... 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 ...
— The Trail of the Lonesome Pine • John Fox, Jr.
... friend, and I have never had faith in your friendship. I know how other men's and some women's names have suffered at your hands, and I don't know what you may have done to mine, but——" and now Harris was on his feet, standing over Willett—sitting there gripping the frail arms of a canvas-covered straddle-box, and looking up into the elder soldier's—the junior officer's—face in amaze. Never before had Willett been so braved by man or woman—"But your name shall be protected for just two reasons—and protected just so long as you can show you're ...
— Tonio, Son of the Sierras - A Story of the Apache War • Charles King
... 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 ...
— The Twins of Table Mountain and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... 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 chimes ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood
... said, gently, quieting his wife by a motion of the hand, "but 'tain't what you think. It's a man's saddle. You'd have to set straddle. ...
— Meadow Grass - Tales of New England Life • Alice Brown
... of formal balance over the centre is that it produces a straddle, as, in hopscotch one lands with both feet on either side of a dividing line. In all pictures of deep perspective the best mode of entrance is to triangulate in, with a series of zigzags, made easy through the habit of the eye to follow lines, especially long and receding ...
— Pictorial Composition and the Critical Judgment of Pictures • Henry Rankin Poore
... succeed, I've got all my eyes picketed on the notes. It would have been as well if I'd reeserved at least one for scenery. But I don't; an' so it befalls that when we-all is in the very heart of the toone, an' at what it's no exaggeration to call a crisis in our destinies, I walks straddle of a stump. An' sech is my fatal momentum that the drum rolls up on the stump, an' I rolls up on the drum. That's the finish; next day the Silver Cornet Band by edict of the Sni-a-bar pop'lace is re-exiled to them woods. But I don't go; old Hickey excloodes me, an' my hopes of moosical ...
— Wolfville Nights • Alfred Lewis
... sirree, yo' cain't git me to straddle that there animal. Ef 'twas a hoss I'd be tickled to death, but you cain't git a snorting ...
— The Boy Scout Fire Fighters • Irving Crump
... 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. ...
— The Clockmaker • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... it were, with empty desirous hands, towards the unborn possibilities of the engineer. And Durer, too, was a Modern, with the same turn towards creative invention. In our times these men would have wanted to make viaducts, to bridge wild and inaccessible places, to cut and straddle great railways athwart the mountain masses of the world. You can see, time after time, in Durer's work, as you can see in the imaginary architectural landscape of the Pompeian walls, the dream of structures, lighter and bolder than stone or brick can ...
— A Modern Utopia • H. G. Wells
... have you sigh For the Aveiro bakeress, 380 For the inn you'll come to by and by And then we'll off with the packsaddle And the innkeeper we'll straddle If he have not, to slake our thirstiness, Good wine at threepence and kid at less, And for hard bread soft buttermilk, A fair wench to serve and sheets of silk, If the floor's strewn with rushes the night be long, If it hails, be the roof both new and strong, When the lamp burns dim welcome fiddler's ...
— Four Plays of Gil Vicente • Gil Vicente
... 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 around ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume IV. (of X.) • Various
... could do to keep even by playing on the square with big "injins," as I found them very good card players. I held out a hand, but had to wait some time for the "wild man of the forest." At last there was a big "blind and straddle," and I kept raising it before the draw. They all "stayed," and drew two or three cards (I do not remember which). I took one, and when we came to "show down," I was the lucky fellow. This was too much for the bucks, so three of them dropped out, and left an old chief and myself ...
— Forty Years a Gambler on the Mississippi • George H. Devol
... 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 all moved or stood at a respectful ...
— Punch Among the Planets • Various
... crows Joe. "He's a jolly ole brick, that Frisbie! I'm a-gunter set straddle on the ridge-pole, an' carry a ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 83, September, 1864 • Various
... these in modern navies is the so-called "armored" cruiser,—a type to which belonged the four principal vessels of Cervera's squadron. The name itself is interesting, as indicating the inveterate tendency of mankind to straddle,—the reluctance to choose one of two opposite things, and frankly to give up the other. Armor, being an element of fighting power, belongs properly to the battleship rather than the cruiser; and in the latter, ...
— Lessons of the war with Spain and other articles • Alfred T. Mahan
... 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 again ...
— The Trail of the White Mule • B. M. Bower
... 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 ...
— Man Size • William MacLeod Raine
... fence and picked up the hoe. "Stand this way! Straddle the furrow with your back in the direction you are going to hoe; or else stand on the left side of the furrow facing it. Grasp the handle of the hoe in the right hand near the upper end. The back of your hand should be up. Now ...
— The Library of Work and Play: Gardening and Farming. • Ellen Eddy Shaw
... stop and look at me while I have been 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 a minister. He ...
— Eben Holden - A Tale of the North Country • Irving Bacheller
... sort o' fancy, maybe, for the country, but I knew he'd like it fancy—at his age. I got it good an' high, so's it could straddle stumps good. They's so many tree-stumps in our woods, an' I know Sonny ain't a-goin' to drive nowhere but in the woods so long ez they's a livin' thin' to scurry away at his approach, or a flower left in bloom, ...
— Sonny, A Christmas Guest • Ruth McEnery Stuart
... 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 had broken loose and was floating about. Once a ...
— The Way of the Wild • F. St. Mars
... blade and waited 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
... totem of the deceased is drawn on the ground, and beside it a shallow trench is dug about a foot deep and fifteen feet long. Over this trench a number of men, elaborately decorated with down of various colours, stand straddle-legged, while a line of women, decorated with red and yellow ochre, crawl along the trench under the long bridge made by the straddling legs of the men. The last woman carries the arm-bone of the ...
— The Belief in Immortality and the Worship of the Dead, Volume I (of 3) • Sir James George Frazer
... little I have ever made myself do anything. But I don't care. I go straight to God and I say, 'Father, I have sinned against Heaven and before Thee, and am no more worthy to be called Thy son.' But I am His son, for all that, and I know it and He knows it; and Apollyon may straddle across the way as much as he likes, but he can't stop me. If he does stop me, he only ...
— Father Payne • Arthur Christopher Benson
... 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 ...
— 'Sequil' - Or Things Whitch Aint Finished in the First • Henry A. Shute
... 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 ...
— Zone Policeman 88 - A Close Range Study of the Panama Canal and its Workers • Harry A. Franck
... his shabby gondola on the Grand Canal, and on the way they would beg to stop for just a moment at the famous well with two porphyry lions. Andrea was tall enough to clamber by himself after the manner of young Venetians, and nothing would do but Paolo must lift Maria, so she, too, would proudly straddle one of the fierce figures. There they would sit while the old caretaker would count the pigeons bathing and ...
— Chico: the Story of a Homing Pigeon • Lucy M. Blanchard
... muscles and ligaments are able to dislocate or preternaturally bend their joints. In entertainments of an arena type and even in what are now called "variety performances" are to be seen individuals of this class. These persons can completely straddle two chairs, and do what they call "the split;" they can place their foot about their neck while maintaining the upright position; they can bend almost double at the waist in such a manner that the back of the head will touch the calves, while the legs are perpendicular with the ground; ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... half the question. For whose benefit shall they be conserved—for the benefit of the many, or for the use and profit of the few? The great conflict now being fought will decide. There is no other question before us that begins to be so important, or that will be so difficult to straddle, as the great question between special interest and equal opportunity, between the privileges of the few and the rights of the many, between government by men for human welfare and government by money ...
— The Fight For Conservation • Gifford Pinchot
... Neptun Heemskirk, standing straddle-legs in the flood of moonlight, his inky shadow falling right across the quarter- deck, made no sign at his approach, but secretly he felt something like the heave of the sea in his chest at the sight of that man. Jasper waited before ...
— 'Twixt Land & Sea • Joseph Conrad
... and perfect machinery? Still to-day the sea has a residue of the uncontrollable, and probably will have for some ages to come. Neptune has not ceased from his wrath against the man of thought, who tries to straddle and ride him, and Zeus still supports at times the Sea-god's appeal for honor, when his prerogative is violated. Yet not always by any means, for Zeus belongs to the true Olympians, deities of intelligence, who once put down ...
— Homer's Odyssey - A Commentary • Denton J. Snider
... 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 ...
— Laughing Bill Hyde and Other Stories • Rex Beach
... that riles 'em. They take on awful about her ridin' in pants, an' it certainly is a heap more modest than ridin' straddle in a hitched up caliker skirt, same as some of ...
— Judith Of The Plains • Marie Manning
... captain, raising himself with difficulty on his feet. "If one of you dismount, he dies. Tom, my good fellow, you will help me to straddle ...
— The Spy • James Fenimore Cooper
... to do as the Arab had done, and seating herself straddle-legged behind Godwin, to clasp him around ...
— The Brethren • H. Rider Haggard
... plank is put in to catch voters. On some questions the plank may not be plain, but may straddle the issues. ...
— Citizenship - A Manual for Voters • Emma Guy Cromwell
... 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
... under paragraphs (6) and (7) of section 1902(a) include 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 security issues and carry out ...
— Homeland Security Act of 2002 - Updated Through October 14, 2008 • Committee on Homeland Security, U.S. House of Representatives
... well cleared; and then came a problem that could n't be worked-out on a draught-board. I have already said that we had n't any draught horses; indeed, the only thing on the selection like a horse was an old "tuppy" mare that Dad used to straddle. The date of her foaling went further back than Dad's, I believe; and she was shaped something like an alderman. We found her one day in about eighteen inches of mud, with both eyes picked out by the crows, and her hide bearing evidence that a feathery tribe had made a roost of ...
— On Our Selection • Steele Rudd
... tasted practical revenge. Though a grown girl of nineteen, she still kept three or four dolls. And I would steal her dolls, pull their dresses for shame over their heads, and set them straddle the banisters. ...
— Tramping on Life - An Autobiographical Narrative • Harry Kemp
... twenty-two inches, and belongs to his Majesty, George the Fourth. It represents two boys, a little child, a woman, and a dog. One boy has broken the strap of his trousers, and, bracing himself up for a clinch, is evidently encroaching on the other with his foot. He stands with his legs on the straddle, both fists made up for mischief, and head turned away in profile, with hat and books flung down upon the turf; while the other—the lamb—keeps his satchel in his hand, with one arm raised to parry the blow he is expecting. He has a meek, boyish face, and we have it in full. The back ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 106, August, 1866 • Various
... 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 ...
— She • H. Rider Haggard
... 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 ...
— Wyn's Camping Days - or, The Outing of the Go-Ahead Club • Amy Bell Marlowe
... she directed, swinging the baby up and depositing him a-straddle her left hip. "You're just simply ...
— Masters of Space • Edward Elmer Smith
... strange Englishman, too, Bluewater would say; and yet I never see the fellow straddle a horse that I do not wish it were a studding-sail-boom run out to leeward! We sailors fancy we ride, Mr. Wychecombe, but it is some such fancy as a marine has for the fore-topmast-cross-trees. Can a horse be had, to go as ...
— The Two Admirals • J. Fenimore Cooper
... He 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 share to twelve thousand. All in a few weeks. ...
— Flowing Gold • Rex Beach
... cods, rub your hands, pick your ears, retch, or spit too far. Don't tell lies, or squirt with your mouth, gape, pout,or put your tongue in a dish to pick dust out. Don't cough, hiccup, or belch, straddle your legs, or scrub your body. Don't pick your teeth, cast stinking breath on your lord, fire your stern guns, or expose your codware before your master. Many other improprieties a good servant will avoid.' 'Sir, pray teach me how to carve, handle a knife, and cut up birds, fish, and flesh.' 'Hold ...
— Early English Meals and Manners • Various
... 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 foller that straddle-bug to Mexico but what he would find out where he was bound ...
— Short Stories for English Courses • Various (Rosa M. R. Mikels ed.)
... 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. This conveyor discharged ...
— Concrete Construction - Methods and Costs • Halbert P. Gillette
... such unanimity among Southern whites has been, naturally, factitious; and by no means an unmixed good for the party. Apart from the "Solid South," the period after 1875 is characterized by two other party difficulties. The first was the attempt from 1878 to 1896 to "straddle" the silver issue;[7] the second, an attempt after 1896 to harmonize general elements of conservatism and radicalism within the party. In 1896 the South and West gained control of the organization, and the national campaigns of 1896 and ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 8, Slice 2 - "Demijohn" to "Destructor" • Various
... the Pasture romped to the fence and whistled at these newcomers. Jean espied a white-faced black horse that gladdened his sight. "Hello, Whiteface! I'll sure straddle you," called Jean. Then up the gentle slope he saw the tall figure of his father—the same as he had seen him thousands of times, bareheaded, shirt sleeved, striding with long step. Jean waved ...
— To the Last Man • Zane Grey
... Dutch, may I be shot—ow! me leg! Here, ye butcher, don't ye know better'n to handle a mon like a trunk! Kneel, ye spalpeen, whilst I straddle the ...
— Where the Souls of Men are Calling • Credo Harris
... 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 ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... around his neck, a man climbed the telegraph pole and the other end of the chain was passed up to him and made fast to the cross-arm. Others brought a long forked stick which Miller was made to straddle. By this means he was raised several feet from the ground and then let fall. The first fall broke his neck, but he was raised in this way and let fall a second time. Numberless shots were fired into the dangling body, for ...
— The Red Record - Tabulated Statistics and Alleged Causes of Lynching in the United States • Ida B. Wells-Barnett
... knots blazes in the centre of a mound, and over it hangs an iron kettle, on a straddle, filled with corn-grits. Around this, and anxiously watching its boiling, are the lean figures of negroes, with haggard and sickly faces, telling but too forcibly the tale of their troubles. They ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams |
