"Stray" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... "This is a stray dog," said one, "he has lost his collar, there is not even the price of a mouthful of wine on him. Shall we kill him and leave ...
— The Unknown Quantity - A Book of Romance and Some Half-Told Tales • Henry van Dyke
... live, and I shall live till the last day's work shall fail. Have patience now but a little and I will tell you the tale Of how and why she died, And why I am weak and worn, And have wandered away to the meadows and the place where I was born; But here and to-day I cannot; for ever my thought will stray To that hope fulfilled for a little and the bliss of the earlier day. Of the great world's hope and anguish to-day I scarce can think; Like a ghost, from the lives of the living and their earthly deeds I shrink. I will go adown by the water and over the ancient ...
— Poems By The Way & Love Is Enough • William Morris
... her tractability and adaptability. She was quick to see what was wanted, and lent herself energetically to the task of performance. The good sisters encouraged her. Especially in bringing to them any stray ideas she had picked up among her companions. Sister Angelique, severe to fanaticism in all the forms of religion, early impressed upon the child the importance and imperative duty of the truth. It was not only a service to the community, but a service to ...
— Mlle. Fouchette - A Novel of French Life • Charles Theodore Murray
... about twenty feet distant from us, we heard the deep tones of her bell in the engine-room, as it rang the order to back; but not before we had discovered her men at quarters, and, in fact, presenting every appearance of a ship intending to board an enemy. A single stray pistol-shot would have brought on the engagement, and to judge from the lights and signals glancing along the fortifications, the Frenchmen would have taken a hand, too. The appearance of our decks next morning was amusing. The ...
— The Cruise of the Alabama and the Sumter • Raphael Semmes
... bank arm-in-arm, and strolled into the shade of the pines, which grew deeper and deeper, till only here and there a stray sunbeam lighted up the green mossy carpet. So cool was the air that Mozart soon had to put on the coat, which, but for his prudent wife, he would ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VII. • Various
... Englishman in charge of the shed, and, loading the carts, set back to cover the ground he had already passed. He left some of the children and half his goats at the famine-shed. For this he was not thanked by the Englishman, who had already more stray babies than he knew what to do with. Scott's back was suppled to stooping now, and he went on with his wayside ministrations in addition to distributing the paddy. More babies and more goats were added unto him; but now some of the babies wore rags, and beads round their wrists or necks. 'That,' ...
— The Kipling Reader - Selections from the Books of Rudyard Kipling • Rudyard Kipling
... I go, downcast and dreary, With my pilgrim staff to stray, Till I lay my head aweary In some cool grave ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VI. • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... had just been to the village store to purchase some groceries. One of his parcels was tied up in a stray leaf of a recent New York Daily, in which he discovered an item which he felt sure would make Aunt Lucy unhappy. He communicated it to Mrs. Mudge, who highly approved his design. She called the old lady from the ...
— Paul Prescott's Charge • Horatio Alger
... treasure-house of Italian works of fiction. Thomas Hoby translated Castiglione's 'Courtier' in 1561. As a proof of the extent to which Italian books were read in England at the end of the sixteenth century, we may take a stray sentence from a letter of Harvey, in which he disparages the works of Robert Greene:—'Even Guicciardine's silver histories and Ariosto's golden cantos grow out of request: and the Countess of Pembroke's "Arcadia" is not green enough for queasy stomachs; but they must have seen Greene's "Arcadia," ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Second Series • John Addington Symonds
... his mouth, and stray hairs caught inside his lips when he opened and closed them. His lips, like his eyes, were pale, and his skin sickly as that of a man who sees but little of the light. His cheeks and chin were stubbly, like his ...
— Mr. Wicker's Window • Carley Dawson
... Forrester, made his appearance among the squatters while thus situated. Seeing them armed as on the previous day, he was apprehensive of some new evil; and as he approached the several stray groups, made known his apprehensions to his companion in strong language. He was not altogether assured of Forrester's own compunction, and the appearance of those around almost persuaded him ...
— Guy Rivers: A Tale of Georgia • William Gilmore Simms
... I desire you to insert this Word for Word in your next, as you value a Lovers Prayers. You see it is an Hue and Cry after a stray Heart (with the Marks and Blemishes underwritten) which whoever shall bring to you, shall receive Satisfaction. Let me beg of you not to fail, as you remember the Passion you had for her to whom you ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele
... gleaned with toil From fields now dimm'd in a long-sped day; In a clime where naught but dim shadows stray Yet its grain may sprout ...
— Reminiscences of a South African Pioneer • W. C. Scully
... fools always do do that sort of thing. Take quite ignorant people before almost any beautiful work of art and they will laugh at it as absurd. If one sits on a popular evening in that long room at South Kensington which contains Raphael's cartoons, one remarks that perhaps a third of those who stray through and look at all those fine efforts, titter. If one searches in the magazines of a little while ago, one finds in the angry and resentful reception of the Pre-Raphaelites another instance of the absolutely indefensible nature of many ...
— First and Last Things • H. G. Wells
... with macadamized streets that are lined with houses of an architecture of various degrees of badness. Where birds once sang, and squirrels gambolled, and stray foxes lurked, the morning hours are made musical by the voices of milkmen, and the squirrels have given place to children and nurse-maids. Where sturdy oaks stood like sentinels guarding the forest folk from intrusion from the outside world ...
— The Booming of Acre Hill - And Other Reminiscences of Urban and Suburban Life • John Kendrick Bangs
... And made a Gryphon of the two. But when his handiwork he eyed, He frowned—and it was petrified, Doomed for all time to represent Impatience on a monument. Sometimes upon our path to-day Its living counterpart will stray— Columbia's Eagle strutting in An awf'ly English Lion's skin, With glass in eye and swagg'ring gait: Behold the ...
— The Mythological Zoo • Oliver Herford
... public applause for himself. The judge cannot bear to hide his charming light under a bushel. Instead of not suffering one hand to know what the other is doing, he is not content with its being published in a book, but advertises his charity in a newspaper as a man would one of his stray cattle. From his liberal conduct to the Editor of the Journal and others, he is perhaps excusable in calling his charity about him as soon as possible, even if he offers a considerable reward for it in the next advertisement which he puts into ...
— A Review and Exposition, of the Falsehoods and Misrepresentations, of a Pamphlet Addressed to the Republicans of the County of Saratoga, Signed, "A Citizen" • An Elector
... fitted up for the accommodation of the British senate. In the lords the address was moved by the Earl of Hardwicke, and seconded by Lord Gage. An amendment was moved by Lord Melbourne, which was apparently framed for the purpose of catching stray votes, by being so constructed that even its success could not lead to the resignation of the ministry. The Earl of Ripon and the Duke of Richmond, who had both been connected with the late government, expressed their ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... stray or range, Whate'er I do, thou dost not change; I steadier step when I recall That if I slip thou ...
— A Singer from the Sea • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... treats his brothers and relations who have become kings; how he reins them in; how he applies the spur and the whip and makes them trot and jump fences and ditches, may be found in his correspondence; every stray impulse to take the lead, even when justified by an unforeseen urgency and with the most evident good intention, is suppressed as a deviation, is arrested with a brusque roughness which strains the loins and weakens the knees of the delinquent. ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 5 (of 6) - The Modern Regime, Volume 1 (of 2)(Napoleon I.) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... bleed: Nor yet by wintry skies confin'd, He mounts upon the rudest wind, From danger tears the vital spoil, And with affection sweetens toil. Ah! cease, too vent'rous, cease to dare; In thine, our dearer safety spare. From him, ye cruel falcons stray; And turn, ye fowlers, far away, —All-giving Pow'r, great source of life, Oh! hear the parent, hear the wife: That life thou lendest from above, Though little, make it large in love. Oh! bid my feeling heart expand To ev'ry claim on ev'ry hand, To those, from whom ...
— The Governess - The Little Female Academy • Sarah Fielding
... he is," continued old Jacob aloud to himself. "And what's more, he's been and gone and forgot all about his own home, and all he wants is summat to eat. I'll take him and keep him, that's what I'll do: for he's a stray lamb, and belongs to him that finds him, like any other lamb I finds. I'll make him believe I'm his old dad; for he's little and will believe most anything you tells him. I'll learn him to do things about the house—to ...
— A Little Boy Lost • Hudson, W. H.
... leave my sheep, sir," replied Gerhardt. "They will stray into the forest, and may be eaten by wolves or ...
— Tiger and Tom and Other Stories for Boys • Various
... looking at our advance as if we were on review. W. H. rushed forward and grabbed his horse by the bridle, telling him at the same time to surrender. The Yankee seized the reins, set himself back in the saddle, put the muzzle of his pistol in W. H.'s face and fired. About the time he pulled trigger, a stray ball from some direction struck him in the side and he fell off dead, and his horse becoming frightened, galloped off, dragging him through the Confederate lines. His pistol ...
— "Co. Aytch" - Maury Grays, First Tennessee Regiment - or, A Side Show of the Big Show • Sam R. Watkins
... to the acoustic conditions of the rooms. . . . The tunes are all mournful and sad. . . . The guests are gradually brought to a melancholy mood and grow pensive. Thoughts of the brevity of human life, of mutability, of worldly vanity stray through their brains. . . . They recall the deceased Zavzyatov, a thick-set, red-cheeked man who used to drink off a bottle of champagne at one gulp and smash looking-glasses with his forehead. And when they sing "With Thy Saints, O Lord," and the sobs of their hostess are audible, ...
— The Schoolmaster and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... of course ignored, though to the great lady of the county, who cuts her in town, she is cringingly obsequious. The visitors consist mainly of relays of youths, fast, foolish, and fashionable, with now and then a stray politician or journalist thrown in to give the party a soupcon of intellect. The principle of invitation is very simple. No one is asked who will not be of use in town. Any brainless little fop, any effete dandy, is sure of a welcome, provided he is ...
— Modern Women and What is Said of Them - A Reprint of A Series of Articles in the Saturday Review (1868) • Anonymous
... which she would give careful attention. Now, it is perhaps worthy of mention, that this closely following disciple did not once stop to determine whether it would please Him to give such tender care to this stray child of His, or whether she would be considered doing not just the thing, in His eyes, if she entertained her in ...
— Ester Ried Yet Speaking • Isabella Alden
... 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 Book of Prefaces • H. L. Mencken
... children are reading and affect an interest in those things they can be certain of giving the best training, while they themselves will grow in happiness and nearness to their offspring. In the fields of literature they can stray together with the consciousness that with all the beauty there is nothing ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 10 - The Guide • Charles Herbert Sylvester
... lie, yet seeing his grace so much irritated, he durst not open his lips on the subject, further than by saying, "But, my lord duke, you must always remember that Hogg is no ordinary man, although he may have shot a stray moorcock." And then turning to me he said, "Before you had ventured to give any saucy language to a low scoundrel of an English gamekeeper, you should have thought of Fielding's tale ...
— Essays in English Literature, 1780-1860 • George Saintsbury
... beginning of the Massacre of St. Bartholomew—the same bells that tolled all that dreadful night while the slaughter went on, while the effeminate Charles IX fired from the windows of the Louvre upon stray fugitives on the quay—bells the reminiscent sound of which, a legend (which I fear is not true) says, at length drove Catharine ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... its hinges, and lay rotting in the rank grass and jimson-weeds beneath. This building, I learned when I bought the place, had been used as a schoolhouse for several years prior to the breaking out of the war, since which time it had remained unoccupied, save when some stray cow or vagrant hog had sought shelter within its walls from the chill rains and ...
— The Conjure Woman • Charles W. Chesnutt
... ago. Now if you stray through the South of England during the months between May and October, you may yet meet Bill and his companions. Trotter still wears tights, but he is thinner and much more wholesome to see; but the Signor has added a kind of shiny servility to ...
— Those Who Smiled - And Eleven Other Stories • Perceval Gibbon
... of unwanted babies; no orphanages, because there were no stray children; the absence of extreme wealth and dire poverty prevented destitution, and the Natives had little or no insanity; they had no cancer or syphilis, and no venereal diseases because they ...
— Native Life in South Africa, Before and Since • Solomon Tshekisho Plaatje
... from the Heaven which he never gave over thinking of and longing for, and he wanted to keep it, for afterwhile he was sure it would find a way to tell him wherewith it was charged. And he took the gentle stray in his hand, and nursed it with exceeding tenderness. There are times when it seems such a blessing that memories lie shallow and easy to stir; and now he recalled how the winged nuncio felt like the hand he was ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 1 • Lew. Wallace
... ran gayly from the forest; taking long strides over the grass, and sowing it with little white pearls, breathing on the bare branches of the trees, and sheathing them in glittering mail, pouncing slyly on stray wayfarers, and pinching their ears and noses till they roared again! Then Captain Jack laughed; it sounded like the sharp crack of a pistol through the ...
— Funny Big Socks - Being the Fifth Book of the Series • Sarah L. Barrow
... muscles small, and healthy, with sound nervous system; never had anaemia. Thick brown hair; pubic hair thick, and hair on toes and legs up to umbilicus; it began to appear at the age of 10 (before pubic hair) and continued until 18. A few stray hairs round nipples, and much dark down on upper lip, as well as light down on arms and hands. Hips, normal; nates, small; labia minora, large; and clitoris, deeply hooded. Hymen thick, vagina, probably small. Considerable pigmentation of ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 1 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... else the history of great genius is melancholy, and offers posterity but slight encouragement to exertion, which is the reason, alas! that many hopeful and aspiring spirits are repressed. I feel indignant that this unique Mozart is not yet engaged at some royal or imperial court. Forgive me if I stray from the subject—but I love ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 361, November, 1845. • Various
... pieces at his side; and Louis himself, with his back against a rock, defended himself, alone, for some minutes, against several Turks, till they, not knowing who he was, drew off, whereupon he, suddenly throwing himself upon a stray horse, rejoined his advanced guard, who believed him dead. The army continued their march pell-mell, king, barons, knights, soldiers, and pilgrims, uncertain day by day what would become of them on the morrow. The Turks harassed them afield; the towns ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume II. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... and these had joy in what they saw and felt according to the measure of their temperament. Shiel Crozier saw and felt much of it, and probably the Young Doctor saw more of it than any one; stray people here and there who take no part in this veracious tale had it in greater or less degree; fat Jesse Bulrush was so sensitive to it that he, as he himself said, "almost leaked sentimentality" and Kitty Tynan possessed ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... no game in the valley. In its centre was a solitary lake, black and bottomless, and haunted by a giant white water-snake, sluggish, blind and very old. Stray prospectors swore they had seen it, just at dusk, and its sightless, staring eyes were too terrible ever ...
— The Trail of '98 - A Northland Romance • Robert W. Service
... the custom as carried out on the borders of the Palatine county of Chester, while cases such as the famous one of Rob Roy's sons speak to its late continuance in Scotland. In Ireland it survived in a stray instance or two into this century, and songs like "William Riley" attest the sympathy of the peasant with the ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")
... cream-coloured old lace, and heavy-brocaded cope, that is afterwards exchanged for one of ermine, and flashing rings and jewelled cross. There is no music, but a deep quiet pervades the dim golden domes overhead and the faintly-lighted transepts. Stray rays of light catch the smooth surface of the mosaics, which throw off sparkles of brightness and cast deeper shadows beyond the uncertain radiance. After the midnight mass is celebrated you pass out with the stream of people into the cold, frosty night, with only the bright stars ...
— Christmas: Its Origin and Associations - Together with Its Historical Events and Festive Celebrations During Nineteen Centuries • William Francis Dawson
... up late the night before, finishing a lot of letters that Mrs. Blythe was anxious to have mailed as soon as possible. It was midnight when she covered her typewriter, and the heat and a stray mosquito which had eluded both Mrs. Crum and the screens, made her wakeful and restless. That accounted for her physical exhaustion, while the experiences of the morning were enough to send her spirits to the ...
— Mary Ware's Promised Land • Annie Fellows Johnston
... stag must feel toward the bed of fern from which he has been roused. But, for the minute, there was one imperative necessity—to go on—to go on anywhere, anyhow, so long as it took him far enough from the spot where masked men had loosed the handcuffs from his wrists and stray shots had come ringing after him. In his path there were lakelets, which he swam, and streams, which he forded. Over the low hills he scrambled through an undergrowth so dense that even the snake or the squirrel might have avoided ...
— The Wild Olive • Basil King
... the road hot coffee and "blue ruin" are dealt out to thirsty souls by a ponderous mulatto woman. There are always a plenty of the denizens of the place, in slovenly dresses and slouched hats, hands in pockets, and puffing cigarettes, who do the heavy standing-round business. Stray dogs hang about the car-wheels and track to pick up the crumbs which passengers throw away from their lunch-baskets. Just over the wild-pineapple hedge close at hand, half a score of naked negro children ...
— Due South or Cuba Past and Present • Maturin M. Ballou
... the elevator boy to the head doctor, and, really, I excused her. The head nurse in Mary's ward is very harsh with her, but I let her and everyone in the place understand that Miss Gemmell is no stray waif without influence to back her. Every day I send out thought-waves—hypnotism—whatever you like to call it—to compel that Dean woman to think of something else than the making of trained nurses, and physical wrecks ...
— The Making of Mary • Jean Forsyth
... papers, Bert and Nan and Flossie and Freddie roamed about. They did not go alone, as that would not have been safe. Harvey Hallock, the good-natured driver of the wagon, went with them, and foreman Bill Dayton told him to be especially careful not to let Flossie and Freddie stray away. ...
— The Bobbsey Twins in the Great West • Laura Lee Hope
... discovery. Most of them are under the impression that it has been concocted by "bookworms," "jurists," "professors," or other "theorists," instead of, as is the fact, mainly by statesmen, diplomatists, prize courts, generals and admirals. This is, however, a wide field, into which I must not stray. I have even avoided the pleasant by-paths of disquisition on contraband, privateering, and the Declaration of Paris generally, into which some of your correspondents have courteously invited me. I fear we are as yet far ...
— Letters To "The Times" Upon War And Neutrality (1881-1920) • Thomas Erskine Holland
... rather absently, letting her eyes stray. 'Never mind. You had something particular to ...
— Thyrza • George Gissing
... help was possible, were writhing in agony, for the retreat of the English artillery had had to be executed without thought of those left behind; wounded horses, wildly kicking to free themselves from their harness, increased the horror of the terrible scene, whilst stray divisions of English cavalry riding amongst them were fired upon by their own infantry out of fear of the advance of the Russian riflemen. Although in war all battlefields present a spectacle of the utmost horror, so that only the excitement of the ...
— The Coming Conquest of England • August Niemann
... rank and wealth towards any pupils likely to give them livings, whereof more anon; at present, an appropriate instance occurs to me. I was in my thirteenth year monitor of the playground, when one Dillon, a scion of a titled family, hunted and killed a stray dog there, and much to their credit for humanity a number of other boys hunted and pelted him into a dry ditch or vallum, dug for the leaping-pole under a Captain Clias who taught us athletics. I was technically responsible for this open insult offered to Hibernian nobility, however well disposed ...
— My Life as an Author • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... order, two yards apart, we noiselessly crept across No Man's Land. It was nervous work; every minute we expected a machine gun to open fire on us. Stray bullets "cracked" around us, or ...
— Over The Top • Arthur Guy Empey
... but from mere carelessness. The next two days he was out with his laborers, and if a cow or pig chanced—(the villain! we'll hang him to a certainty)—chanced, I say, to stray into the field, he would shy the shovel hat at them, without remorse. Oh! we must have him, by all means. But who next? Sir Jenkins Joram. Give him plenty to drink, and he ...
— Willy Reilly - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... 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 ...
— The Brentons • Anna Chapin Ray
... the boys had from time to time allowed their thoughts to stray away, and mental pictures of the Lawson crowd suffering from hunger and cold intruded upon their minds. They forgot whatever they chanced to be doing at that moment, and came ...
— The Banner Boy Scouts Snowbound - A Tour on Skates and Iceboats • George A. Warren
... always to illustrate only the central thought, and not the innumerable divergencies, because only so can a great or strange thought be made clear. Later, when the thought is known, then it is easy to stray into the byways of thought, always remembering that they are byways, wandering from a ...
— The Soul of a People • H. Fielding
... times shells burst about the beach, and then that ceased. Each time that happened all the lizards scuttled in and hid for a space. That was all the mischief done, except that once a stray bullet gashed the stone hard by—made ...
— The Door in the Wall And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... from man;[52] Revive Arabian tales[53], and vainly hope To rival St. John, and his scholar, Pope;[54] Though metaphysicks spread the gloom of night, By reason's star he guides our aching sight; The bounds of knowledge marks; and points the way To pathless wastes, where wilder'd sages stray; Where, like a farthing linkboy, Jennings stands, And the dim torch drops from his feeble hands. Impressive truth, in splendid fiction drest,[55] Checks the vain wish, and calms the troubled breast; O'er the dark mind a ...
— A Poetical Review of the Literary and Moral Character of the late Samuel Johnson (1786) • John Courtenay
... garden undulate in red waves and flashed the glass house in her eyes, and spangled the kitchen with bright knives, and made Mrs. Jarvis, the rector's wife, think at church, while the hymn-tune played and Mrs. Flanders bent low over her little boys' heads, that marriage is a fortress and widows stray solitary in the open fields, picking up stones, gleaning a few golden straws, lonely, unprotected, poor creatures. Mrs. Flanders had been a widow for ...
— Jacob's Room • Virginia Woolf
... short, was a journalist's bivouac, filled with odds and ends of no value, and the most curiously bare apartment imaginable. A scarlet tinder-box glowed among a pile of books on the nightstand. A brace of pistols, a box of cigars, and a stray razor lay upon the mantel-shelf; a pair of foils, crossed under a wire mask, hung against a panel. Three chairs and a couple of armchairs, scarcely fit for the shabbiest lodging-house in the ...
— A Distinguished Provincial at Paris • Honore de Balzac
... the zone of fire—except for stray activities in which Boche airplanes might indulge themselves, as our hosts were frequently likely to remind us, lest we fancy ourselves too secure, I suppose—we were by no means out of hearing of the grim work that was going ...
— A Minstrel In France • Harry Lauder
... five hundred slaves 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 other as ...
— Ran Away to Sea • Mayne Reid
... offered to the little girl who should pick up the largest number of scraps of paper which littered all the streets and alleys. The children that spring had been organized into a league, and each member had been provided with a stiff piece of wire upon the sharpened point of which stray bits of paper were impaled and later soberly counted off into a large box in the Hull-House alley. The little Italian girl who thus won the scepter took it very gravely as the just reward of hard ...
— Twenty Years At Hull House • Jane Addams
... saddle and gave her horse a light touch with her riding-crop, a strange sound was borne upon the sharp wind, the unmistakable sound of a runaway horse. Sergeant McGillicuddy and Anita heard the sound at the same moment, and stood motionless to listen. It grew rapidly near and nearer and stray passers-by turned toward the main entrance, from which direction came the wild clatter of iron-shod hoofs in maddened flight. Suddenly through the open main entrance dashed Gamechick ...
— Betty at Fort Blizzard • Molly Elliot Seawell
... better lookout, but as a general thing the whole blame was thrown on the Germans. Hooker himself attributed the trouble to the fact that Howard did not follow up Jackson's movements, and allowed his men to stray from their arms. ...
— Chancellorsville and Gettysburg - Campaigns of the Civil War - VI • Abner Doubleday
... there was the shock and confusion of the two parties meeting, with stray shots, the clatter of sword against sword, with sparks flying in the darkness, and the shouts and cheers ...
— Syd Belton - The Boy who would not go to Sea • George Manville Fenn
... before. Next moment he was alongside of me and I was telling him all my trouble and what had been happening to Marget and her uncle. While we were talking we turned a curve and saw old Ursula resting in the shade of a tree, and she had a lean stray kitten in her lap and was petting it. I asked her where she got it, and she said it came out of the woods and followed her; and she said it probably hadn't any mother or any friends and she was going to take it home and take care of it. ...
— The Mysterious Stranger and Other Stories • Mark Twain
... wedges, and the composure which she felt, or had assumed, stirred Mayo's admiration. The plump hand which she held against her forehead to shield her eyes did not tremble. From the little Dutch cap, under the edge of which stray locks peeped, down over her attire to her toes, she seemed to be still trim and trig, in spite of her experiences below in the darkness and the wet. With a sort of mild interest in her, he reflected that her up-country beau would be very properly proud of her if ...
— Blow The Man Down - A Romance Of The Coast - 1916 • Holman Day
... poor humorist, whose tortured mind See jokes in crowds, though still to gloom inclined— Whose simple appetite, untaught to stray, His brains, renewed by night, consumes by day. He thinks, admitted to an equal sty, A graceful hog would bear ...
— The Devil's Dictionary • Ambrose Bierce
... Thither the mighty torrents stray, Thither the brook pursues its way, And tinkling rill, There all are equal; side by side The poor man and the son of ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... broad, clear pool; and on its banks in little nooks cleared away among the trees, miniature log-houses in utter ruin and neglect. A labyrinth of narrow, obstructed paths connected these habitations one with another. Sometimes we met a stray calf, a pig or a pony, belonging to some of the villagers, who usually lay in the sun in front of their dwellings, and looked on us with cold, suspicious eyes as we approached. Farther on, in place of the log-huts of the Kickapoos, we found the pukwi lodges of their neighbors, ...
— The Oregon Trail • Francis Parkman, Jr.
... However, Lord and Lady P. are gone there and it is 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)
... into another path, and Colonel Vaughan saw no more of Gladys that day, though he peeped into various stray corners of the house in the hope of doing so. Moreover, he found Freda captious and cross, and particularly annoyed at his and her father's visit to Pentre. He punished her by playing chess with her father nearly all the evening, and leaving her to a variety of reflections that were ...
— Gladys, the Reaper • Anne Beale
... not ready. One must act honourably, my daughter. I couldn't pick up my own grandson as if he'd been a stray hen, or a few clothes off the line. It took me five years to save those ten ...
— Brothers of Pity and Other Tales of Beasts and Men • Juliana Horatia Gatty Ewing
... picture, "The Deserted Garden"; likewise Mr. Fildes' picture of a group of Venetian girls sitting on steps, the principal figure in a blue dress with an orange handkerchief round her neck, the simple—I may say child-like—scheme of colour beyond which Mr. Fildes never seems to stray. The Lawson and the Fildes agree no better than do the Moore and the Bartlett; and the only thing that occurs to me is that the cities should toss up which should go for Fildes and Bartlett, and which for Lawson and Moore. By such division harmony ...
— Modern Painting • George Moore
... woman was tumultuously squatting. Her gin-soddened face came, like a scarlet cloud, to the view from the embrace of a vagabond black bonnet, braided with rags, viciously glittering here and there with the stray bugles which survived from some bygone era of comparative respectability. Her penetrating snores denoted that she was oblivious of the lounging approach of the policeman, whose blue and burly form was visible in the extreme distance. Julian stopped ...
— Flames • Robert Smythe Hichens
... dark night and a strangely still one. The weather was unusually warm and close for Cape May. Over the flat marshes and islands the heat was oppressive. The residents of the summer cottages left their doors and windows open, hoping that a stray breeze might spring up during the night to refresh them. No one seemed to have ...
— Madge Morton's Victory • Amy D.V. Chalmers
... two weeks before the cherries were ripe Silas went halting in a casual way across the south yard towards his daughter Rose, who was spreading out some linen to bleach. He picked up a few stray sticks on the way, ostentatiously, as if that were ...
— Pembroke - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... the young ostriches set to work and ate up all the stray eggs they could find, one or two small animals, and some young wild birds who were so unsophisticated as to believe them to be mother hens, and so injudicious as to hop quite close to them in order to ...
— Rataplan • Ellen Velvin
... becomes the devoted slave of any one who shows him consideration. But none dare openly love him, for that would be regarded as undue indulgence, and therefore bad for the boy. So, what with scolding and chiding, he becomes very much like a stray dog that has ...
— The Hungry Stones And Other Stories • Rabindranath Tagore
... until their two flanks were close in against the wall of rock, and then the deadly rifles began to spit spitefully, the balls casting up the soft dirt in clouds or flattening against the stones. The two men crouched lower, hugging their pile of slag, unable to perceive even a stray assailant within range of their ready revolvers. Hampton remained cool, alert, and motionless, striving in vain to discover some means of escape, but the little marshal kept grimly cheerful, creeping constantly from point to point in the endeavor to get ...
— Bob Hampton of Placer • Randall Parrish
... pattern: When I slam out of our house mad, I go along over to my Aunt Kate's. She's not really my aunt. The kids around here call her Crazy Kate the Cat Woman because she walks along the street in funny old clothes and sneakers talking to herself, and she sometimes has half a dozen or more stray cats living with her. I guess she does sound a little looney, but it's just because she does things her own way, and she doesn't give a hoot what people think. She's sane, all right. In fact she makes a lot better ...
— It's like this, cat • Emily Neville
... mischief, or evil doing. To mich, for to skulk, to lurk, was an old English verb in common use in Shakspeare's time; and Malicho, or Malhecho, misdeed, he has borrowed from the Spanish. Many stray words of Spanish and Italian were then affectedly used in common conversation, as we have seen French used in more recent times. The Quarto spell the word Mallicho. Our ancestors were not particular in orthography, and often spelt ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 72, March 15, 1851 • Various
... merely injures Hale's fame as a whole. Perhaps some will chiefly feel not so much that his stories are different among themselves, but that they are not strongly anything—anybody's—in particular, that they lack strong personality. The pathway to fame is strewn with stray exhibitions of talent. Apart from his purely literary productions, Hale was one of the large moral forces of his time, through "uplift" both in speech and the ...
— The Best American Humorous Short Stories • Various
... evening gathering. This house was one at which she had not before been a guest, and she was full of lively curiosity about the people she was to meet there. The hostess was fond of collecting together all sorts of stray oddities, and of trying to further a scheme of universal brotherhood by mixing up in her drawing-room a most motley crowd, including all classes, from the ultra fine lady to the emancipated slave. It was not, perhaps, very amusing to the portion of her guests who found themselves lost ...
— A Canadian Heroine, Volume 1 - A Novel • Mrs. Harry Coghill
... Jennie, did you see anything of a stray parcel, with some lace and other things inside of it? or have I really tossed it into ...
— Miss Dexie - A Romance of the Provinces • Stanford Eveleth
... she stopped the horse and acquiesced by slipping her arms into the coat, and he felt upon his hand the caress of a stray wisp of hair at her neck. Under a spell of thought and feeling, seemingly laid by the magic of the night, neither spoke for a space. And then Victoria summoned her forces, and turned to him again. Her tone bespoke the subtle intimacy ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... sides of the chasm green, its verdure overhanging the strip of sea that dashes and foams into the hollow. Sea-weed, besides what grows upon and shags the submerged rocks, is tossed into the harbor, together with stray pieces of wood, chips, barrel-staves, or (as to-day) an entire barrel, or whatever else the sea happens to have on hand. The water rakes to and fro over the pebbles at the bottom of the chasm, drawing ...
— Passages From The American Notebooks, Volume 2. • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... fire to kick a stray log. "It is only idle speculation at the best, Miss Deane," he replied. "Would you like to help me to drag some timber up from the beach? If we get a few big planks we can build a fire that will last for hours. We ...
— The Wings of the Morning • Louis Tracy
... with a grim smile, "she won't stray far, I'll be bound. I've an extra pack mule above here; you can ride on her, and lead me into camp, and to-morrow come ...
— The Story of a Mine • Bret Harte
... lower lines of the bridle, is set in such a way that a jerk on the line will free it, causing the log to lie flat so that it can be hauled in. The first 10 or 15 fathoms of line from the log-chip are called "stray line," and the end of this is distinguished by a mark of red bunting. Its purpose is to let the chip get clear of the vessel's wake. The marks on the line (called knots) are pieces of fish line running through the strands of the reel line to the number of two, three, four, etc. A piece of white ...
— Lectures in Navigation • Ernest Gallaudet Draper
... that such errors are not confined to stray instances, such as we have noticed, in which the imposition of preconceived ideas can readily be detected by a little closer attention to the actual facts. He believes that a falsification due to preconceived ideas, runs right through the ...
— The Misuse of Mind • Karin Stephen
... understand it at all," said the perplexed owner of the stray yacht. "What does Captain Blastblow mean by treating me in this manner, when I ordered him to be at ...
— Up the River - or, Yachting on the Mississippi • Oliver Optic
... With fry innumerable swarm, and shoals Of fish that with their fins, and shining scales, Glide under the green wave, in sculls that oft Bank the mid sea: part single, or with mate, Graze the sea-weed their pasture, and through groves Of coral stray; or, sporting with quick glance, Show to the sun their waved coats dropt with gold; Or, in their pearly shells at ease, attend Moist nutriment; or under rocks their food In jointed armour watch: on smooth the seal And bended dolphins ...
— Paradise Lost • John Milton
... gallery is thrown across it, or it would sink beneath the tread, and bury the visitor in the gloomy depth beneath. The desolation and decay impress themselves on all the senses. The air has a mouldering smell, and an earthy taste; any stray outer sounds that straggle in with some lost sunbeam, are muffled and heavy; and the worm, the maggot, and the rot have changed the surface of the wood beneath the touch, as time will seam and roughen a smooth hand. If ever Ghosts act plays, they act ...
— Pictures from Italy • Charles Dickens
... very neatly embalmed. The hand of the restorer rests on it constantly; but this artist has not, as at Carcassonne, had miracles to accomplish. The interior is very still and empty, with small stony, whitewashed streets, tenanted by a stray dog, a stray cat, a stray old woman. In the middle is a little place, with two or three cafs decorated by wide awnings—a little place of which the principal feature is a very bad bronze statue of Saint Louis by Pradier. It is almost as bad as the breakfast I had at the inn that ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 3 • Various
... heart, has been as successful as Oliver Optic. There is a period in the life of every youth, just about the time that he is collecting postage-stamps, and before his legs are long enough for a bicycle, when he has the Oliver Optic fever. He catches it by reading a few stray pages somewhere, and then there is nothing for it but to let the matter take its course. Belief comes only when the last page of the last book is read: and then there are relapses whenever a new book appears until one is safely on through the ...
— Taken by the Enemy • Oliver Optic
... historic, and its five or six days of tearful blindness and catarrh began to look as if they would reach to the very crack of doom. Those fog-bound days, in which it was impossible for a Midland-bred stranger to stray ten yards from his own door without hopelessly losing himself, are amongst the most despondent and mournful of my life. But, on a sudden, the dawning day revealed to me the other side of the street in an air as crisp, clear, and invigorating ...
— Recollections • David Christie Murray
... athwart the Row Stray loafers linger, loth to go Past the mid-crossing, and are so Resolved to die, Hoping that, as you gallop near You'll maul them by your mad career— ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, November 7, 1891 • Various
... know the hour of feeding as well as if they carried watches, and are promptly on hand when their dinner time arrives. In this way they are kept under domestication and accustomed to the presence of men, but occasionally they stray away and disappear. The safer way is to keep a native boy or man constantly with each herd of ostriches, and the herder is held responsible for the loss ...
— The Land of the Kangaroo - Adventures of Two Youths in a Journey through the Great Island Continent • Thomas Wallace Knox
... and made everything better. It vexed me to see how much there was to do. Positively, even rhymes left unrhymed in 'Lady Geraldine's Courtship.' You don't write so carelessly, not you, and the reward is that you haven't so much trouble in your new editions. I see your book advertised in a stray number of the 'Athenaeum' lent to me by Mr. Tennyson—Frederick. He lent it to me because I wanted to see the article on the new poet, Alexander Smith, who appears so applauded everywhere. He has the poet's stuff in him, one may see from the extracts. Do you know him? And Coventry Patmore—have ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Volume II • Elizabeth Barrett Browning
... cruel needle. Therefore, expecting every hour that the king would apply to him for more money, the marquis had resolved that, at such time as he should do so, he would make an attempt to lead the stray sheep within the fold—for the marquis was not one of those who regarded a protestant ...
— St. George and St. Michael • George MacDonald
... that of a well-bred woman. "A cup of cold water, I pray you." "Water? Cert. Steer yourself against the cooler over there. You look above the Weary Willie business. Sit down until I find a jumping-off place in this article on 'The Monetary Situation,' and perhaps I can fish up a stray quarter that's dodged the foreign mission fund." He bowed his thanks and sank wearily into the proffered seat. In five minutes he was sleeping softly, and the editor made a careful study of his face. It was ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... hili ho! To distant groves and glens away! Hili ho! boys, hili ho! E'en so the tide of empire flows— Ho! boys, hili ho! Rejoicing as it westward goes! Ho! boys, hili ho! To refresh our weary way Gush the crystal fountains, As a pilgrim band we stray Cheerly ...
— Poems • George P. Morris
... please to watch us, Guard us both by night and day; Pity show to little children, Who like lambs too often stray. ...
— Happy Days for Boys and Girls • Various |
