"Stray" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... trees; but after looking at us for some time, as if he would like to pounce upon some of the sheep or goats, he walked off, intimidated by the shouts and cries of the Arabs. We took warning, and did not stray from the camp. ...
— Saved from the Sea - The Loss of the Viper, and her Crew's Saharan Adventures • W.H.G. Kingston
... they move, And circling, whisper and say, Fair are the blossoming meads of delight Through which we stray. ...
— Peacock Pie, A Book of Rhymes • Walter de la Mare
... youth had been happy enough, with recurrent intervals of ennui and discontent. Intervals too of poetic enthusiasm, or ascetic religion. At eighteen she had been practically a Catholic, influenced by the charming wife of one of her father's aides-de-camp. And then—a few stray books or magazine articles had made a Darwinian and an agnostic of her; the one phase ...
— Delia Blanchflower • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... you the advice to go to the animal asylum," he said. "Stray dogs and other animals are taken there and good care given them until ...
— Pixy's Holiday Journey • George Lang
... registering marks, but at a quarter before eight in the morning the bombardment began. "The thunderous orchestra of the guns shook the earth and rent the skies. Columns of earth rose over the Turkish lines, and pillars of smoke, green and white and brown and yellow, and columns of water, where a stray shell—Turkish no doubt—plunged ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume IV (of 8) • Francis J. (Francis Joseph) Reynolds, Allen L. (Allen Leon)
... again, nearly scared out of its wits. A goldfinch came and perched on a furze-bush near, looked wonderingly at the odd-shaped thing that made such funny noises, and then flew away to a thistle and began to search for any stray seeds that might have been overlooked. Little spiders ran over the boulder and put out delicate feelers to try to discover what curious pinky-white things those were that lay on the old stone; then, after a first venture, finding them harmless, ran over and over Esther's hand in a perfect ...
— The Carroll Girls • Mabel Quiller-Couch
... to the gale, Now clothe those meadows once with verdure gay; Amidst the windings of that lonely vale The teeming antelope and ostrich stray. ...
— Oriental Literature - The Literature of Arabia • Anonymous
... shoulders, we two nurses in our uniforms, then two officers and some more soldiers. As we went down the road to the little church in R—— we passed long lines of soldiers going somewhere, and everyone saluted. A few stray people followed us into the church and afterwards to the graveyard, where we left Le Roux with his comrades who had gone before. I had not been there since All Saints Day and it was sad to see how many more graves had been ...
— 'My Beloved Poilus' • Anonymous
... his flat boat, what would you do to be bounding over the water as we are now? I am sitting Turk-fashion on the deck-floor, leaning against the mast, and, as you see, writing with a pencil, being afraid to use my inkstand, lest some stray wave should give it a capsize. There comes one now, that has washed our floor for us, and it needed it badly enough; nor do I mind the wetting, for I am bare-footed and my duck trousers always expect ...
— Hurrah for New England! - The Virginia Boy's Vacation • Louisa C. Tuthill
... with his bride, made his home with Pierce in the tiny backwoods settlement of Marshall. They were both men of unusual caliber and were interested vitally in the affairs of the territory, particularly educational questions. Many are the discussions these two must have held, to which a stray copy of a translation of M. Victor Cousin's report on "The State of Public Instruction in Prussia," made to the French ministry of Public Instruction, which fell into the hands of Pierce, certainly contributed not a little. Here was the account of a state system of public instruction ...
— The University of Michigan • Wilfred Shaw
... sloppy ruts made by the heavy lumbering cart and the uncomfortable drosky—the latter a four-wheeled concern peculiar to Russia, possessing a couple of seats running fore and aft, and so near the ground that the passengers' feet are in imminent danger of being brought in contact with stray stones and ...
— In Eastern Seas - The Commission of H.M.S. 'Iron Duke,' flag-ship in China, 1878-83 • J. J. Smith
... died first, then the aged and infirm. Deaths in the street were not uncommon; nearly every morning bodies were found beneath the portales. Starving creatures crept to the market in the hope of begging a stray bit of food, and some of them died there, between the empty stalls. The death-wagons, heavy with their daily freight, rumbled ceaselessly through the streets, adding to the giant piles of ...
— Rainbow's End • Rex Beach
... better; for we love not to be seen: 'Tis thirty winters long since some of us Did stray ...
— The Jew of Malta • Christopher Marlowe
... memorials of her esteem; nor was the daughter backward in such expressions of regard; she already considered his interest as her own, and took frequent opportunities of secreting for his benefit certain stray trinkets that she happened to pick up in her excursions ...
— The Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom, Complete • Tobias Smollett
... once more! how rude soe'er the hand That ventures o'er thy magic maze to stray; O, wake once more! though scarce my skill command Some feeble echoing of thine earlier lay: Though harsh and faint, and soon to die away, And all unworthy of thy nobler strain, Yet if one heart throb higher at its sway, The wizard note has not been touched ...
— The Lady of the Lake • Sir Walter Scott
... I told him then, I told him then, That I had kept me from all men Since we joined lips and swore. Whereat he smiled, and thinned away As the wind stirred to call up day ... —'Tis past! And here alone I stray ...
— A Cluster of Grapes - A Book of Twentieth Century Poetry • Various
... without warning the candle went out, in a gust of wind which shook the house to its foundations. Stray currents of air had come through the crevices of the rattling windows and kept up an imperfect ventilation. She took another candle from her satchel, put it into a candlestick of blackened brass, and ...
— A Spinner in the Sun • Myrtle Reed
... frogs, and muskrats are his especial delight, and he will occasionally succeed in pouncing upon a snipe or wild duck, which he will greedily devour. Crawfish, [Page 190] snails, and water insects of all kinds also come within the range of his diet, and he sometimes makes a stray visit to some neighboring poultry yard to satisfy the craving of his abnormal hunger. A meal off from his own offspring often answers the same purpose; and a young chicken in the egg he considers the ne ...
— Camp Life in the Woods and the Tricks of Trapping and Trap Making • William Hamilton Gibson
... was stiff with his great age and the cruel rheumatism that is the doom of the field-worker; and against the brass and leather of his boots the stubble whispered loudly. Overhead the rooks and gulls gave short, harsh cries as they circled around hoping for stray grains; but the thousand little lives which had thriven in the corn—the field mice and frogs and toads—had been stilled by the sickles; some few had escaped to the shelter of the hedges, but most were sacrifices to ...
— Secret Bread • F. Tennyson Jesse
... not for nothing she had studied a hundred trials, with a woman's observation and patient docility. She had found out how badly people plead their own causes, and had noticed the reasons: one of which is that they say too much, and stray from the point. The line she took, with one ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 107, September, 1866 • Various
... classes. A few of the country gentry had some pretension to learning, but the majority cared little except for hawks and hounds, gaming and drinking; and if they read it was some old chronicle, or story of knightly adventure, "Amadis de Gaul," or a stray playbook, or something like the "History of Long Meg of Westminster," or perhaps a sheet of news. To read and write were still rare accomplishments in the country, and Dogberry expressed a common notion when he said reading ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... don't know. That would be somewhat hard upon us poor girls, whose lovers are more to our taste, than M. Denot is to yours. I know not that our knights will fight the worse for a few stray smiles, though the ...
— La Vendee • Anthony Trollope
... eye hath caught new pleasures, While the landscape round it measures; Russet lawns and fallows gray, Where the nibbling flocks do stray; Mountains, on whose barren breast The laboring clouds do often rest; Meadows trim with daisies pied, Shallow brooks and livers wide: Towers and battlements it sees Bosom'd high ...
— Sunny Memories Of Foreign Lands, Volume 1 (of 2) • Harriet Elizabeth (Beecher) Stowe
... one stray thought of the past contain within itself. It is like a rocket thrown up in the night. It suddenly expands into a brilliant light, and sheds a thousand sparkling meteors, that scatter in all directions, as if inviting attention each to its own train. ...
— Nature and Human Nature • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... Enchantress's bell these four and old Joy were gathered about Gideon Hayle, Watson, and Hugh Courteney—such an inspiringly different Hugh! Two or three showed a divided attention, letting an occasional glance stray down the waters ahead, where Old Town Bend ...
— Gideon's Band - A Tale of the Mississippi • George W. Cable
... the venerable applicant strictly obeyed, and found her hopes realized! Other supernatural answers were subsequently given by the saint to various applications of the neighboring peasantry, and stolen fowls and stray cattle were recovered by her indications. But the concourse of people at last grew so great that that the ecclesiastical authorities interfered in behalf of the sybil, whom they placed in safety and repose within the walls of a convent, ...
— The International Monthly Magazine - Volume V - No II • Various
... will have to get rid of the dogs. The pound is not a boarding place for stray dogs, and the fact that you pay for their feed after a certain ...
— Prince Jan, St. Bernard • Forrestine C. Hooker
... mile of camp, the Ghoorkhas were engaged with stray riflemen. A mile farther they were met by the main body, and were unable to proceed farther without support. The flanking regiments, however, presently came up, and the advance continued. The road ...
— Through Three Campaigns - A Story of Chitral, Tirah and Ashanti • G. A. Henty
... of their knights, she bethought her of a balsam which she had observed in coming along; and so, looking about for it, brought it back with her to the spot, together with a herdsman whom she had met on horseback in search of one of his stray cattle. The blood was ebbing so fast, that the poor youth was on the point of expiring; but Angelica bruised the plant between stones, and gathered the juice into her delicate hands, and restored his strength with infusing it into the wounds; so ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Vol. 2 • Leigh Hunt
... three-hour's turn at night guard round the herd to an all-night's vigil. He took it as a matter of course. And his rope and running iron were ever ready, and his weather eye alert for a chance to catch and decorate with the X brand any stray cattle that ventured within his range. This was a peculiar phase of cowboy character. While not himself profiting a penny by these inroads on neighboring herds, he was never quite so happy as when he had added another maverick to the herd bearing his employer's brand, an increase always obtained ...
— The Red-Blooded Heroes of the Frontier • Edgar Beecher Bronson
... having long been out of print—stray copies commanding high prices—it has been determined to republish the whole in a more compact and less costly form. This, the fourth and the only complete edition, includes the First Series of twenty tales, published in two volumes (1829, demy ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... a body of cavalry was seen riding down from the direction of the Old Town. The Turks took them to be the long-expected reinforcements from Sicily. They are seen to fall upon stray parties of Turks; they must be the advance guard of Philip's army. Pi[a]li in alarm runs to his galleys; the Turks who had all but carried the long-contested bastion pause in affright lest they be taken in rear. ...
— The Story of the Barbary Corsairs • Stanley Lane-Poole
... further advance, in the proportion of one stray sheep to the ninety-nine, and of one lost coin to the nine, contrasted with the sad equality of obedience and disobedience in the two sons. One per cent., ten per cent., are bearable losses, but fifty per ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... and deserted passages he should escape the crowd and reach his home in safety. As luck would have it he almost directly came upon a house of ill-fame to which a band of drunken soldiers were in process of laying siege, and considering that a stray shot, should one reach him in the fracas, would be equally as unpleasant as one intended for him, he made haste to retrace his steps. Resolving to have done with it he pushed on to the end of the Grande Rue, now gaining a few feet by balancing himself, rope-walker fashion, along ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola
... there should be greater rejoicing over the recovery of one stray sheep, or the saving of a soul that had been as one lost, than over the many who have not been in such jeopardy. In the safe-folded ninety and nine the shepherd had continued joy; but to him came a new accession of happiness, brighter and stronger because of his recent grief, when the lost ...
— Jesus the Christ - A Study of the Messiah and His Mission According to Holy - Scriptures Both Ancient and Modern • James Edward Talmage
... service must have been shorter than the act of Parliament allowed, and this seeming bar to their hypothesis caused many winks and shrugs over the tankards of ale consumed of an evening at the King George tavern in the village of Brunswick. Furthermore, for some months the deserter columns of such stray numbers of the "London Gazette" as occasionally drifted to the ordinary were eagerly scanned by the loungers, on the possibility that they might contain some advertisement of a fellow standing five feet ten, with broad shoulders, ...
— Janice Meredith • Paul Leicester Ford
... was about to steal forth, when he paused with a new idea. It came from a stray piece of wrapping-paper lying ...
— The Young Railroaders - Tales of Adventure and Ingenuity • Francis Lovell Coombs
... throughout the realm. Law and order had been established in recognised courts and tribunals, the titles of property had been ascertained and secured, not without loss, no doubt, to many arrogant lords who had seized upon stray land without any lawful title, or on whom it had been illegally bestowed during the Albany reign—but to the general confidence and safety. And the condition of the people had no doubt improved in consequence. It is difficult to form any estimate of what this condition was. All foreign witnesses ...
— Royal Edinburgh - Her Saints, Kings, Prophets and Poets • Margaret Oliphant
... dried nipa branches, fastened down with bamboo laths. The only pictures on the walls are the cheap prints of saints, the "Lady of the Rosary," or illustrations clipped together with the reading matter from some stray American magazine. The picture of a certain popular shoe manufacturer is sometimes given the place of honor near the crucifix. If any attempt at decoration has been made, the lack of taste of the Visayans is at once apparent. For the ancient fly-specked chromo of the ...
— The Great White Tribe in Filipinia • Paul T. Gilbert
... 30th dawned raw and cloudy. The little minister neither ate nor slept now. The doorbell rang at brief intervals throughout the day, and stray quarters, dimes, and nickels, with an occasional dollar, were added to the precious store until it amounted to nine hundred and eighty-nine dollars ...
— The Tangled Threads • Eleanor H. Porter
... ye beloved glades, Ye lone and peaceful valleys, fare ye well! Through you Johanna never more may stray! For, ay, Johanna bids you now farewell. Ye meads which I have watered, and ye trees Which I have planted, still in beauty bloom! Farewell ye grottos, and ye crystal springs! Sweet echo, vocal spirit of the vale. Who sang'st responsive ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... the provincial bathroom. Manila, being the metropolis of the Philippines, has running water and the regular tub and shower baths in tiled rooms. The Capiz bathroom had a floor of bamboo strips which kept me constantly in agony lest somebody should stray beneath, and which even made me feel apologetic toward the pigs rooting below. There was a tinaja, or earthenware jar, holding about twenty gallons of water, and a dipper made of a polished cocoanut shell. I poured water over my body till the contents of the tinaja ...
— A Woman's Impression of the Philippines • Mary Helen Fee
... so many a time, and as no harm had happened to the children in their absence, such a course became habitual with them. Jan and Trueey were cautioned not to stray far from the nwana, and always to climb to the tree, should they perceive any animal that might be dangerous. Before the destruction of the hyenas and lions, they had been used to remain altogether ...
— Popular Adventure Tales • Mayne Reid
... presence at Heavitree, that Camilla could not but have known that he took no delight in coming thither. She had acknowledged this to herself; but she had consoled herself with the reflection that marriage would make this all right. Mr. Gibson was not the man to stray from his wife, and she could trust herself to obtain a sufficient hold upon her husband hereafter, partly by the strength of her tongue, partly by the ascendency of her spirit, and partly, also, by the comforts ...
— He Knew He Was Right • Anthony Trollope
... that Sara was seated in Stephen's pew, next to Stephen himself, and Stephen felt a strange pleasure unknown before, like that of the shepherd who having brought the stray back to the fold cares little that its wool is torn by the bushes, and it looks a ragged and disreputable sheep. It was only Sara's wool that might seem disreputable, for she was a very good-faced sheep. He ...
— Stephen Archer and Other Tales • George MacDonald
... reception of the Dreiser novels, and the efforts made by the New York Society for the Suppression of Vice to stop their sale. The thing to notice here is that the author's difficulties with "Sister Carrie" came within an ace of turning him from novel-writing completely. Stray copies of the suppressed first edition, true enough, fell into the hands of critics who saw the story's value, and during the first year or two of the century it enjoyed a sort of esoteric vogue, and encouragement came from unexpected sources. Moreover, a somewhat ...
— A Book of Prefaces • H. L. Mencken
... life. It was in that capacity that he was known to the Devonshire world; it was as such that he journeyed about with his humble carpetbag, staying away from his parsonage a night or two at a time; it was in that character that he received now and again stray visitors in the single spare bedroom—not friends asked to see him and his girl because of their friendship—but men who knew something as to this buried stone, or that old land-mark. In all these things his daughter let him have his own way, assisting and encouraging him. That was his line of ...
— Victorian Short Stories • Various
... then; And o'er Elysium drearily The May-time flew for men;[14] The morning rose ungreeted From ocean's joyless breast; Unhail'd the evening fleeted To ocean's joyless breast— Wild through the tangled shade, By clouded moons they stray'd, The iron race of Men! Sources of mystic tears, Yearnings for starry ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 53, No. 331, May, 1843 • Various
... of the melee a radar set had been turned on but it couldn't pick up any targets. This did, however, eliminate the possibility of the lights' being aircraft. They weren't stray balloons either, because the winds at all altitudes were blowing in a westerly direction. They obviously weren't meteors. They weren't searchlights on a haze layer because there was no weather conducive to forming a haze layer and there ...
— The Report on Unidentified Flying Objects • Edward Ruppelt
... all have our little faults, And well will it be with us If, when ruin impends, We can win new friends, Like our gentle and brave stray puss. ...
— Chatterbox, 1905. • Various
... Town Hall, was striking the matutinal hour of ten. The population of Sandypoint might all have been dead and buried, for any sign of life Independence street showed. Doors and windows were all closed in a melancholy way—a stray, draggled dog the only living creature to ...
— A Terrible Secret • May Agnes Fleming
... permitted himself to enjoy the comforts of the Greshamsbury dining-table? Frank hinted and grumbled; talked to Beatrice of the determined constancy of his love, and occasionally consoled himself by a stray smile from some of the neighbouring belles. The black horse was made perfect; the old grey pony was by no means discarded; and much that was satisfactory was done in the sporting line. But still the house was dull, and Frank ...
— Doctor Thorne • Anthony Trollope
... the house-place 'tidied,' which seldom meant more than the harassing of a few stray specks of dust, Kate in her best fripperies and mother in her churchgoing gown started for the vicar's. I stood in the porch and watched them across the cobbled yard and along the road till they dropped out of sight beyond ...
— The Yeoman Adventurer • George W. Gough
... that while cleaning up the store, he came upon a barrel which contained, among a lot of forgotten rubbish, some stray volumes of Blackstone's "Commentaries," and that this lucky find still further quickened his interest in the law. Whether this tale be true or not it seems certain that during the time the store was running its downward course ...
— The Boys' Life of Abraham Lincoln • Helen Nicolay
... beginning in the art of pottery-making. The Saracens did not, however, remain in Spain. There was an uprising of the Christians and they were either driven out or slaughtered, almost every relic of their civilization being destroyed. A stray temple or palace alone remains as a monument to them and this was more the result of chance, probably, than of intention. For two centuries following came an interval known as the Dark Ages, when none of the ...
— The Story of Porcelain • Sara Ware Bassett
... or a command of Providence, I stooped and peered intently downward, and saw that the movement was the almost imperceptible reflection of a stray ray of light from above on the surface of water. At the time I merely wondered idly if the water came from the same source as that in the lake outside, not thinking it sufficiently important to mention ...
— Under the Andes • Rex Stout
... tenant. There were no shutters to shut; the long low window was blinking in the rays of the morning sun; the house and cow-house doors were closed, and no poultry wandered about the field in search of stray grains of corn, or early worms. It was a strange and unfamiliar silence, and struck solemnly on Sylvia's mind. Only a thrush in the old orchard down in the hollow, out of sight, whistled and gurgled with continual ...
— Sylvia's Lovers — Complete • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... the soberer woolens of the burghers and seamen, all combined to give the room a peculiar charm and color. Thus, with the golden pistole of Spain, the louis and crown and livre of France, and the stray Holland and English coins, Maitre le Borgne began quickly to gorge his treasure-chests; and no one begrudged him, unless it was Maitre Olivet of the Pomme ...
— The Grey Cloak • Harold MacGrath
... Christian myths and symbols with those of Greece. For instance, they see, in the story of Daniel in the lions' den, another form of the legend of Orpheus taming the wild beasts; in Jonah, they recognize Arion and the dolphin; and the symbol of the Good Shepherd, carrying home the stray lamb on his shoulders, is considered another form of the familiar Greek figure of Hermes carrying ...
— Critical & Historical Essays - Lectures delivered at Columbia University • Edward MacDowell
... hillock all my world survey! And could I stand while Paradise descrying, Still for these verdant meads should I be sighing, Where thy dear roof-peaks skirt the verdant way: Beyond these bounds my heart longs not to stray. ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various
... go, but when I spoke again there was no answer, and I devoted all my energy to my task, though it had become so monotonous that my thoughts began to stray, and I found myself wondering how matters were going in the cabin—whether they were very much alarmed by the noise of the steam, or whether they felt as confident as the mate did about our ultimate mastery of the fire, and how Walters ...
— Sail Ho! - A Boy at Sea • George Manville Fenn
... rollicking band of stockmen from the outlying ranches celebrating in the open in front of an ancient wooden hotel. One great roisterer from the sheep country who had just instigated a movement toward the bar, swept Curly in like a stray goat with the rest of his flock. The princes of kine and wool hailed him as a new zoological discovery, and uproariously strove to preserve him in the diluted alcohol of their ...
— Heart of the West • O. Henry
... I knew not he resumes, set free From my constraining love, alas for me! His part in our tune goes with him; my part Is locked in me for ever; I stand as mute As one with full strong music in his heart Whose fingers stray ...
— Poems • Alice Meynell
... impatiently up to the moon, as if accusing her of betraying him by the magnificence of her lustre. In a moment Roland Graeme stood before him—"A goodly night," he said, "Mistress Catherine, for a young lady to stray forth in disguise, and to meet with men ...
— The Abbot • Sir Walter Scott
... and Emily Barnard, her fanatic devotee, retired with her to the bank, where they made a lazy pretence of "washing up." But Aruna's eyes would stray toward the recumbent figure of Roy, when she fancied Emmie was not looking. And Emmie—who could see very well without looking—wished him at the bottom of ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver
... afternoon, the boys made short trips along the foothills hoping to find some trace of the guide, but search as they would they were unable to locate him. Nor did they dare stray far from the camp for fear of being unable to find their way back. The foothills all looked so alike that if one unfamiliar with them should lose his way he would find himself in a ...
— The Pony Rider Boys in Montana • Frank Gee Patchin
... hidden in the bushes with his squirrel gun and waited with fluttering breath for the sound of Fletcher's footsteps along the road. On that day it had seemed to him that the hand of the Lord was in his own Godlike vengeance nerving his little wrist. He had meant to shoot—for that he had saved every stray penny from his sales of hogs and cider, of watermelons and chinkapins; for that he had bought the gun and rammed the powder home. Even when the thud of footsteps beat down the sunny road strewn with brown honeyshucks, he had felt neither fear nor hesitation as he crouched ...
— The Deliverance; A Romance of the Virginia Tobacco Fields • Ellen Glasgow
... Stray not, my Love, 'mid the sarcophagi — Tempt not the silence, for the fates are deep, Lest all the dreamers, deeming doomsday nigh, Leap forth in terror from their haunted sleep; And like the peal of an accursed bell Thy voice call ghosts of dead things ...
— The Little Book of Modern Verse • Jessie B. Rittenhouse
... from bed to bed, until often they were too weak to finish their task. Their only relief was to get an occasional run into Ladysmith, and to that they looked forward as a haven of rest. What mattered if shells did fly about!—they had an occasional stray bullet at Intombi too—and shells, much as they were dreaded, were ...
— From Aldershot to Pretoria - A Story of Christian Work among Our Troops in South Africa • W. E. Sellers
... first, but he could recall many of the places where he had lived, and why he had left them—usually because somebody, like old Nathan, had wanted to have him bound out, or had misused Jack, or would not let the two stray off into the woods together, when there was nothing else to be done. He had stayed longest where he was now, because the old man and his son and his girl had all taken a great fancy to Jack, and had let the two guard cattle in the mountains ...
— The Little Shepherd of Kingdom Come • John Fox
... they would be when he was gone, and wonder through how many silent days, weeks, months, and years, they would continue just as grave and undisturbed. He had to think—would any other child (old-fashioned, like himself) stray there at any time, to whom the same grotesque distortions of pattern and furniture would manifest themselves; and would anybody tell that boy of little Dombey, who had been there once? He had to think of a portrait on ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... seen no foe, save the wild boar and a stray wolf, although I have tramped the forest from the rising to the setting sun," ...
— The Rival Heirs being the Third and Last Chronicle of Aescendune • A. D. Crake
... pretty hard experience of bad roads in the coast range of California, there were times during our mad career over the lava-beds when visions of maimed limbs and a mutilated head crossed my mind. Should my horse stumble on a stray spike of lava, what possible chance of escape would there be? Falling head foremost on harrows and rakes would be fun to a fall here, where all the instruments capable of human destruction, from razors, saws, and meat-axes down to spike-nails ...
— The Land of Thor • J. Ross Browne
... him, and in a good-natured way told him the East Tennessee climate gave him that disease known among soldiers as "crawfishing." This I did to withdraw his mind from this gloomy brooding. We had no real battle, but a continual skirmish with the enemy, with stray shots throughout the day. As we were moving along in line of battle, I heard that peculiar buzzing noise of a bullet, as if in ricochet, coming in our direction, but high in the air. As it neared the column it seemed to lower and come with a more hissing sound. It struck the man ...
— History of Kershaw's Brigade • D. Augustus Dickert
... appendant to the pastoral office. He, to whom the care of a congregation is entrusted, is considered as the shepherd of a flock, as the teacher of a school, as the father of a family. As a shepherd, tending not his own sheep but those of his master, he is answerable for those that stray, and that lose themselves by straying. But no man can be answerable for losses which he has not power to prevent, or for vagrancy which he has not authority ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume V: Miscellaneous Pieces • Samuel Johnson
... very angry with the people who will bother about non-essentials; who, when you have got hold of the vital centre of a question, stray off to side issues. They are first-cousins of the people who ...
— The Farringdons • Ellen Thorneycroft Fowler
... that the cattle, whether horned beasts or horses, which wander from pasture to pasture over the vast extent of the Campagna are liable to stray occasionally, and perhaps to become mingled with the herds belonging to another proprietor. It is necessary, therefore, that they should be marked; and this marking is the occasion of a great and very remarkable ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 90, June, 1875 • Various
... begged Ferdinand to sing again, mentioning several songs by name. He shook his head, letting his apparently boneless and square-nailed hands stray about over the piano all the time she was ...
— The Way of Ambition • Robert Hichens
... Nothing can be 'evil' which knits me more closely to God; and whatever tempest drives me to His breast, though all the four winds of the heavens strive on the surface of the sea, it will be better for me than calm weather that entices me to stray ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... depth and dream of my desire, The bitter paths wherein I stray, Thou knowest Who hast made the Fire, Thou knowest Who hast ...
— Red Pottage • Mary Cholmondeley
... him bits of cake on the end of a stick, or to toss them into his mouth, which he opened widely for that purpose. Another, apparently an elderly bear, not having skill nor agility for these gymnastics, sat on the ground, on his hinder end, groaning most pitifully. The third took what stray bits he could get, without earning them by ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... Dorothy, with her feeble mother, the boys, as wild as preacher's sons proverbially are, and the old farm running down on her hands; the fences all needed mending, and there went Reuben Barton, now, careering over the fields in chase of a stray yearling. His mother's house was big, and lonely, and empty; and he flushed as he thought of the "one ewe-lamb" he coveted, out of Friend Barton's rugged pastures. As he raised the gate, and leaned to watch the water swirl and gurgle ...
— Stories by American Authors (Volume 4) • Constance Fenimore Woolson
... more whither do stray The golden atoms of the day: For in pure love did Heav'n prepare Those powders to ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald - in two volumes, Vol. 1 • Edward FitzGerald
... brambled cares of everyday, The tiny humdrum things, May bind my feet when they would stray, But still my heart has wings, While red geraniums are bloomed against my window-glass, And low above my green-sweet ...
— Spring Street - A Story of Los Angeles • James H. Richardson
... Cynthia oft had seen The fair Eliza, (joyous once and gay,) With pensive step, and melancholy mien, O'er the broad plain in love-born anguish stray. ...
— Poetic Sketches • Thomas Gent
... have always been brimming over with brilliant ideas on all sorts of subjects, which never would arrange themselves or be arranged under any given head, but presented a series of remarkable literary fragments, jotted down on stray bits of paper, in old account books and diaries, and even, on one or two occasions, when seized by a sudden inspiration, on a smooth stone, taken from the brook, a fair sheet of birch bark, and the front of a pew in a white-painted country church. Having been subject to these inspirational attacks ...
— The Continental Monthly, Volume V. Issue I • Various
... him he had come for the great surrender. At first he asked himself how he should get away; then, with the failing belief in the power, the very desire to move gradually left him. He had come, as he always came, to lose himself; the fields of light were still there to stray in; only this time, in straying, he would never come back. He had given himself to his Dead, and it was good: this time his Dead would keep him. He couldn't rise from his knees; he believed he should never rise again; all ...
— The Altar of the Dead • Henry James
... restrain her, and occasionally exclaimed, "Oh, Mabel!" at some more than ordinary sally of wit; but the younger girl talked on, posing in rather whimsical attitudes, and letting her roving glance stray over the tourists close by, as if judging the effect ...
— The Jolliest School of All • Angela Brazil
... not 'mistrustful' of me, no, because she don't fear I shall make mainprize of the stray cloaks and umbrellas down-stairs, or turn an article for Colburn's on her sayings and doings up-stairs,—but spite of that, she does mistrust ... so mistrust my common sense,—nay, uncommon and dramatic-poet's ...
— The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett, Vol. 1 (of 2) 1845-1846 • Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett
... by one, and followed him, and Mowgli made it very clear to the children with him that he was the master. He beat the buffaloes with a long, polished bamboo, and told Kamya, one of the boys, to graze the cattle by themselves, while he went on with the buffaloes, and to be very careful not to stray away from the herd. ...
— The Kipling Reader - Selections from the Books of Rudyard Kipling • Rudyard Kipling
... so wild, Squeak not unconscious of their father's guilt. Did he not see her gleaming thro' the glade! Belike 'twas she, the maiden all forlorn. What the she milk no cow with crumpled horn, Yet, aye she haunts the dale where erst she stray'd: And aye, beside her stalks her amorous knight Still on his thighs their wonted brogues are worn, And thro' those brogues, still tatter'd and betorn, His hindward charms gleam an unearthly white. Ah! thus thro' broken clouds at night's high noon Peeps to fair fragments ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... any excuses to himself. He had a sort of idea that if he saw the magnificence that housed her, it would through her sheer remoteness kill the misery in him. But he regarded himself with a sort of humorous pity, and having picked up a stray dog, he addressed it ...
— A Poor Wise Man • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... of my last feast. But there were many at the Moot, which was even now dispersing, who had seen only this new face of mine, and I could not trust to remaining long unrecognized. None might harm me, that was true; but to be driven on, like a stray dog, from place to place, man to man, for fear of what should be done to him who aided me in word or deed, was worse, to my thought, than ...
— A Thane of Wessex • Charles W. Whistler
... and threes, and sixes; and after the caravan has passed they return by the trail, some to reach Yambuya and upset the young officers with their tales of woe and war; some to fall sobbing under a spear-thrust; some to wander and stray in the dark mazes of the woods, hopelessly lost; and some to be carved for the cannibal feast. And those who remain compelled to it by fears of greater danger, mechanically march on, a prey to dread ...
— "In Darkest England and The Way Out" • General William Booth
... nearly as much courage and endurance to work as it had taken to fight; indeed it took rather more, at times, to keep on working. Theoretically he should not lose caste. Yet MacRae knew he would,—unless he made a barrel of money. There had been stray straws in the past month. There were, it seemed, very nice people who could not quite understand why an officer and a gentleman should do work that wasn't,—well, not even clean. Not clean in the purely objective, physical sense, like banking or brokerage, ...
— Poor Man's Rock • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... skirt her plain, To lofty Harrow now, and now to where Majestic Windsor lifts his princely brow In lovely contrast to this glorious view Calmly magnificent, then will we turn To where the silver Thames first rural grows There let the feasted eye unwearied stray, Luxurious, there, rove through the pendent woods That nodding hang o'er Harrington's retreat, And stooping thence to Ham's embowering walks, Beneath whose shades, in spotless peace retir'd, With her the pleasing partner of his heart, The worthy Queensbury yet laments ...
— Flowers and Flower-Gardens • David Lester Richardson
... comfort, and little cool ripples washed over the toes of her stockings—she had pulled her shoes off long ago in the house. She ran up and down the edge of the water a few times, and then began picking up sticks and stray leaves to throw into it. Higher and higher her spirits rose with the sport. If it had not been for Barbara's song, Robin would surely have heard Elsy shout. But Robin was lazy in his old age, and was actually snoring. Elsy spied a pretty goose-feather, ...
— Harper's Young People, August 24, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... mound at its foot. In dry summer weather, when we often sat out, the big fly-wheel of the well was commonly heard spinning round, and so the sound became associated with those pleasant days. He used to like to watch us playing at lawn-tennis, and often knocked up a stray ball for us with the curved handle ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume I • Francis Darwin
... bitter feud was quell'd, the culverin No longer flash'd, us blighting mischief round, But many an age was on those ivies green, Ere Taste's calm eye had scann'd the gifted ground; Bade the fair path o'er glade or woodland stray, Bade Avon's swans through new Rialtos glide, Forced through the rock its deeply channell'd way, And threw, to Arts of peace, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 366 - Vol. XIII, No. 366., Saturday, April 18, 1829 • Various
... here's the scamp of the village come to see you; keep him here till I come back. I'm after some stray sheep'; and shutting the door with ...
— Teddy's Button • Amy Le Feuvre
... in trade, acquiring personal property by its practice, and becoming the owners of a sum of money in bank, or of a dwelling-house in the city. The English law of succession was understood to be a law for all, and consequently, in some out-of- the-way cases, a stray Irish family might be found in course of time with an elder branch possessed of a fair amount of property, and able to emerge from the dead level of the common misery. Such a possibility could not of course be permitted by the English ...
— Irish Race in the Past and the Present • Aug. J. Thebaud
... Latin underneath the gloom Of timbers dark as frowning usher's looks, Where thought would stray beyond that sordid room To saucy chessmen ...
— Ionica • William Cory (AKA William Johnson)
... clammy clothes. Water trickles down the tent poles and only forms icicles in contact with the snow floor. The warmth of our bodies has formed a snow bath in the floor for each of us to lie in. This is a nice little catchwater for stray streams to run into before they freeze. This they cannot do while a warm human lies there, so they remain liquid and the accommodating bag mops them up. When we go out to do the duties of life, fill the cooker, etc., for the next ...
— The Worst Journey in the World, Volumes 1 and 2 - Antarctic 1910-1913 • Apsley Cherry-Garrard
... of heat lightning, like a rush of meteors, so suddenly and constantly you were dazzled while you were delighted, and afterward found it difficult to single out any distinct flash or separate meteor from the multitude.... This most wonderful of her gifts can only be represented by a few stray sentences gleaned here and there from the faithful ...
— The Wit of Women - Fourth Edition • Kate Sanborn
... expected she will be brought back to-night. They can do nothing but get her married to the man at Church. She is 18, he 30, and no Gentleman. She was advertised and 20 guineas reward offered to anyone who could give an account of the stray sheep. It is a sad History. What misery this idle girl has caused her parents, and probably ensured her own ...
— The Letter-Bag of Lady Elizabeth Spencer-Stanhope v. I. • A. M. W. Stirling (compiler)
... from my heart the poor temptations of sense—I, who fed only the most glorious visions, the most august desires—I, denied myself their fruition, trembling and spell-bound in the cerements of human laws, without hope, without reward,—losing the very powers of virtue because I would not stray into crime. ...
— Eugene Aram, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... the meantime, had completely forgotten Lord Bearwarden's existence—had forgotten Mr. Ryfe's visit the night before at his club, the unintelligible quarrel, the proposed meeting, everything but that Nina was lost. Lost! a stray lamb, helpless in the streets of London! His blood ran cold to think of it. He hastened down to Putney, and indeed only knew that he had made so sure of finding her there, by his disappointment to learn she had not returned home. ...
— M. or N. "Similia similibus curantur." • G.J. Whyte-Melville
... was destruction. Though to go on might bring no profit to her, yet her safety depended upon closing forever the path of reconciliation toward which his mind seemed to stray. And step by step, shrouding as far as possible her own agency, she spread out before him that basis of fact upon which she so well knew how to erect a false superstructure. She told him how the intimacy of AEnone and Cleotos had led her to keep watch—how AEnone had once confessed having had ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 4, October, 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... a week after her fourth birthday, Aglaia disappeared. When last seen she was plucking wild flowers by the side of the road in front of the cottage. A little while later her mother went out to see that she did not stray too far away, and she ...
— Sixes and Sevens • O. Henry
... woods descended close about the little camp fire, and its soft breezes wafted stray sparks here and there like errant stars. The newcomer, with shining eyes, breathed deep in satisfaction. He was keenly alive to the romance, the grandeur, the mystery, the beauty of the littlest things, seeming to derive a deep and solid contentment from ...
— The Blazed Trail • Stewart Edward White
... expanse" of dirty salt water, which must, in the nature of things, be associated in every one's mind with sick stomachs and lost dinners. The same people get so tired of their interminable view of poetry, that they will nearly crowd each other overboard, to get sight of a stray flying fish, or porpoise, or the back fin of a shark sticking out of the water. This trip to Hilton Head came near taking the poetry ...
— History of Morgan's Cavalry • Basil W. Duke
... closet had a little swing window at the top for ventilation, and this, Miss Wendover told Ida, was generally taken for a haunted corner, as the ventilating window gave utterance to unearthly noises in the dead watches of the night, and sometimes gave entrance to a stray cat from adjacent tiles. A cat less agile than the rest of his species had been known to entangle himself in the little swing window, and to hang there all the night, sending forth unearthly caterwaulings, to the unspeakable terror of Miss Wendover's guest, unfamiliar with ...
— The Golden Calf • M. E. Braddon
... that I cannot understand this treatment of the subject. It may indeed serve an immediate purpose. It may take in an unwary reader, or even a stray reviewer. I must suppose that it has even deceived the writer himself. But magna est veritas. My paper on the Silence of Eusebius was founded on an induction of facts; and therefore I feel confident that, unwelcome as ...
— Essays on "Supernatural Religion" • Joseph B. Lightfoot
... regeneration, and justification by faith, but were careful to add to these Calvinistic dogmas admonitions to such practical Christianity as was taught by Arminian preachers. The Separatists feared lest the doctrine of works would cause men to stray too far from the doctrine of justification by faith alone, and they were often very intemperate in their denunciation of such "false teachers." It was a day of freer speech than now, and at least two of the great leaders in the revival had set ...
— The Development of Religious Liberty in Connecticut • M. Louise Greene, Ph. D.
... in a state continually of the highest excitement and apprehension. He kept stealthily along wherever he could find the deepest shadows, under walls, and through the most obscure and the narrowest streets. He was in constant fear lest some stray dart or arrow should strike Anchises or Creusa, or lest some band of Greeks should come suddenly upon them, in which case he knew well that they would all be cut down without mercy, for, loaded down as he was with his burden, he would be entirely unable ...
— Romulus, Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... with in this matter: he fills a very peculiar niche, he is a lodestar to enthusiastic undergraduates; he is the joy of sober common-rooms. I wish with all my heart that the convenances of life permitted Egeria herself to stray into those book-lined rooms, dim with tobacco-smoke, to warble and sing to the accompaniment of Perry's cracked piano, to take her place among the casual company. But as Egeria cannot go to Perry, and as Perry will not go to Egeria, they must respect each other from a distance, and do ...
— From a College Window • Arthur Christopher Benson
... in the woods. Most of them might take "leg-bail" for it, and, maybe, his "dear friend" King Dingo Bingo might not guard them from this so very carefully! Some of them might find their way to their own homes again, but a good many would be likely to stray back to King Dingo's town, and it would be a hard matter to identify goods that were so much like each ...
— Ran Away to Sea • Mayne Reid
... her how great that influence was. She had come now to look on Ruth's destiny as something for which she was personally responsible—a fact which was noted and resented by others, in particular Ruth's brother Bailey, who regarded his aunt with a dislike and suspicion akin to that which a stray dog feels towards the boy who saunters towards him with a ...
— The Coming of Bill • P. G. Wodehouse
... Opdyke, overflowing full of interests, it took the smallest possible share of time: a look of comprehension, a word of casual greeting, and, on rare occasions, a bit of a walk together when their ways chanced to coincide. Still more occasionally, a stray hour was spent at Mory's, or in Opdyke's room in Lawrence. As yet, a boyish delicacy had kept Opdyke from seeking to invade what he knew could not fail to be the barrenness of ...
— The Brentons • Anna Chapin Ray
... usually an easy matter to find home of a piece of stray quartz upon the mountain side. Days and weeks may pass while search is made up the slope, for the fragment must have come from some point above. But the ledge, once discovered, is traced along the surface for the purpose of determining its direction ...
— The Western United States - A Geographical Reader • Harold Wellman Fairbanks
... he roamed beside the brook, his feet treading the elastic, velvety turf, and crushing heedlessly late primrose and stray violet, his blood quickened by the soft spring breeze, fragrant with hawthorn and the smell of the moist brown earth, La Boulaye's happiness gathered strength from the joy that on that day of spring ...
— The Trampling of the Lilies • Rafael Sabatini
... that could sustain life. Flora it knew not, for the little trees, with their perennial fortune of brilliant brown-tinted leaves, monopolised vegetable life, and slew all comers. It seemed like some stray tract of another planet, where the condition of living things was different. There was a strange sense of having been thrown up—thrown up, as it were, into mid-heaven, there to hang for ever—neither this world nor the world to come. The silence of it all was such as would ...
— With Edged Tools • Henry Seton Merriman
... cross-legged. No need to hush my boy,—the silence there, so subduing, checked with its mysterious awe even his inquisitive young mind. The venerable high-priest sat with his face jealously covered, lest his eyes should tempt his thoughts to stray. I changed my position to catch a glimpse of his countenance; he drew his fan-veil more closely, giving me a quick but gentle half-glance of remonstrance. Then raising his eyes, with lids nearly closed, he chanted in an infantile, ...
— The English Governess At The Siamese Court • Anna Harriette Leonowens
... you mean you are doing what you are prompted to do by every vagrant impulse that happens to stray into your mentality, aren't you?" she said archly. "You haven't really seriously thought out your way, else you would not be here now urging Congress to spread a blanket of ignorance over the human mind. If you will reflect seriously, if you will lay aside monetary considerations, and a little ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... of historical data and facts. He stayed at the Sherwood Inn at Little Trent. One evening he returned from his explorations with a white, frightened face; when questioned he shivered but gave no answers. He hurriedly took his departure and, from stray bits of paper in the fire-grate in his room, it was surmised he had burnt his copious notes about the keep, no doubt being terrified by some ...
— The Rider in Khaki - A Novel • Nat Gould
... to round up stray bullocks I learned the army would avoid the deep gorge and falls in the river by marching ten miles inland and parallel to the east bank, joining Colonel ...
— A Virginia Scout • Hugh Pendexter
... seldom seen eating a bit of fruit, or a bun, at other than the regular meals. Once I saw a woman, in an Oxford street omnibus, eating a basket of gooseberries, and so unusual was the sight, that I could not help wondering if she were not some stray American. ...
— The Education of American Girls • Anna Callender Brackett
... Anstice and Hassan stationed themselves at the second window; Iris leaning against the wall, very pale, but apparently quite composed, on a pile of rugs which Anstice had arranged for her well out of range of a possible stray shot. ...
— Afterwards • Kathlyn Rhodes
... McCunn completed the polishing of his smooth cheeks with the towel, glanced appreciatively at their reflection in the looking-glass, and then permitted his eyes to stray out of the window. In the little garden lilacs were budding, and there was a gold line of daffodils beside the tiny greenhouse. Beyond the sooty wall a birch flaunted its new tassels, and the jackdaws were circling about the steeple of the Guthrie Memorial Kirk. ...
— Huntingtower • John Buchan
... for a youth of your abilities to be seeking a stray falcon? A throne is a richer prize. Betake yourself ...
— Our Little Korean Cousin • H. Lee M. Pike
... you take that series of parables in Luke xv., and note the metaphors there, you will see three different sides given of the process by which men's hearts stray away from God. There is the sheep that wanders. That is partly conscious, and voluntary, but in a large measure simply yielding to inclination and temptation. Then there is the coin that trundles away under some piece of furniture, and is lost—that is a picture ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Matthew Chaps. IX to XXVIII • Alexander Maclaren
... as we reached our first balanced budget, I asked that we meet our responsibility to the next generation by maintaining our fiscal discipline. Because we refused to stray from that path, we are doing something that would have seemed unimaginable seven years ago: We are actually paying down the national debt. If we stay on this path, we can pay down the debt entirely in 13 years and make America debt-free for the first ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... abroach^, circumfuse^. turn adrift, cast adrift; scatter to the winds; spread like wildfire, disperse themselves. Adj. unassembled &c (assemble) &c 72; dispersed &c v.; sparse, dispread, broadcast, sporadic, widespread; epidemic &c (general) 78; adrift, stray; disheveled, streaming. Adv. sparsim^, here ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... morning a mockery of judicial investigation was perpetrated in the name of justice. Standing in a crowd the prisoners were informed of the offences charged against them; huddled together in the dock, like cattle in a pen, they caught stray sentences from the lips of the perjured rascals who had seized them in the public ways; and whilst they thus in a frenzy of surprise and fear listened to the statements of counsel for the prosecution, and to the fabrications ...
— A Book About Lawyers • John Cordy Jeaffreson
... Sun is ever in their hearts. Ah, Rose of the world, dear Lily of the fields, you will return; like Spring you will come from that heaven where you are, and in every valley the flowers will run before you and the poppies will stray among the corn, and the proud gladiolus will bow its violet head; then on the hillside I shall hear again the silver laughter of the olives, and in the wide valleys I shall hear all the rivers running ...
— Florence and Northern Tuscany with Genoa • Edward Hutton
... She found all the pumpkin gone and the children crying for something to eat, and the stray baby was crying louder than any. She said we were the greediest ...
— Little Mr. Thimblefinger and His Queer Country • Joel Chandler Harris
... the wild grace of Weber's "Invitation to the Valse." From the street the usual London night sounds floated up until well after midnight. There was the dull, pessimistic tramp of the constable, and the long rumble of the Southwark-bound omnibus. Sometimes a stray motor-car would hoot and jangle in the distance, swelling to a clatter as it passed, and falling away in a pathetic diminuendo. A traction-engine grumbled its way along, shaking foundations and setting bed and ornaments a-trembling. Then came the blustering excitement of chucking-out at the "Galloping ...
— Nights in London • Thomas Burke
... enthusiast oft would take his way, Listening, with pleasing dread, to the deep roar Of the wide-weltering waves. In black array, When sulphurous clouds roll'd on the autumnal day, Even then he hasten'd from the haunt of man, Along the trembling wilderness to stray, What time the lightning's fierce career began, And o'er heaven's rending arch ...
— The Poetical Works of Beattie, Blair, and Falconer - With Lives, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Rev. George Gilfillan [Ed.]
... little black spider with a red spot on its back. Large spiders, called (incorrectly) tarantulas, credited by some with being poisonous, come into the houses. But they are really not in any way dangerous. I knew a man who used to keep tarantulas under his mosquito-nets so that they might devour any stray mosquitoes that got in. The example is hardly worth following. The Australian tarantula, though innocent of poison, is a horrible object, and would, I think, give you a bad fright if it flopped on to ...
— Peeps At Many Lands: Australia • Frank Fox
... of the Scottish Border. Previous to the publication of that work, several excellent collections of the older Scottish ballads had been made, and industrious gleaners have since gathered up every stray traditionary ear of corn which still lay unnoticed in the furrow. Our excellent friend Robert Chambers, availing himself of all these labours, has given, in a popular form, the essence and spirit of the whole; nor does there, we believe, exist a single ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 379, May, 1847 • Various
... be seen upon the winter snow; facing the twin summits which rise in the far North, the highest waves of the great land-storm in all this billowy region,—suggestive to mad fancies of the breasts of a half-buried Titaness, stretched out by a stray thunderbolt, and hastily hidden away beneath the leaves of the forest,—in that home where seven blessed summers were passed, which stand in memory like the seven golden candlesticks in the beatific vision of the ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... stolen, or stray'd, The heart of a young maid; Whoever the same shall find, And prove so very kind, To yield it on desire, They shall rewarded be, And that most handsomely, With kisses one, two, three. Cupid is the crier, Ring-a-ding, a-ding, Cupid ...
— Snarley-yow - or The Dog Fiend • Frederick Marryat
... you're actually asking me to tell her so too? Mary, are you insane? Embarrassed? What if she is embarrassed? And what do I care if—What? Sweet and pretty? Mary, don't be an idiot. Am I to improvise a wife, in my own house, because a stray girl may object to visiting a bachelor? Not if I know it. Not much." The Governor bristled with indignation. "Confound the girl, I'll—" At this point Mary, though portly, vanished like a vision of the night, and there stood in the doorway ...
— The Militants - Stories of Some Parsons, Soldiers, and Other Fighters in the World • Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews
... beautiful! The Pincian, in spite of its afternoon parade, had the sad air of forced retirement of some well-to-do family. The Piazza di Spagna basked in its wonted flood of sunshine with a curious Sabbatical calm. A stray forestieri might occasionally cross its blazing pavements and dive into Piale's or Cook's, and a few flower girls brought their irises and big white roses to the steps, more from habit than for profit surely. The Forum was like a wild, empty garden, and the Palatine, a melancholy ...
— The World Decision • Robert Herrick |
