"Strutting" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... would be given the preference whenever a vacancy occurred. Carroll knew that he was mentally appraised as a promising person to direct ladies to ribbon and muslin counters. He looked at another floor-walker strutting up and down the aisle, and felt sure that he could do better, and all this amused contempt for himself deepened and bored its way into his very soul. He always asked himself, with the demand of an unpitying judge, if he could not ...
— The Debtor - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... the Lord Bareacres, on the affair of his mortgage. The Lord Bareacres, strutting into the apartment with a haughty air, shrank back, nevertheless, with surprise on beholding the magnificence around him. "Little Mordecai," said Rafael to a little orange-boy, who came in at the heels of the noble, "take this gentleman out and let him have ten thousand pounds. I can't ...
— Burlesques • William Makepeace Thackeray
... Dictator was strutting with the powerful persuasion that the United States must be subordinate to his will, he was ambitious to live in the palace of the Governor General, putting an impertinance to that effect in his correspondence, but General Merritt told him ...
— The Story of the Philippines and Our New Possessions, • Murat Halstead
... "Court of Miracles" seemed to follow in the Prelate's train, strutting but tottering; a procession of old wrecks, dressed out in such garments as are sold from the dead-house, staggered along holding each other's arms, propped one against another. Every reach-me-down that had been ...
— The Cathedral • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... the life of our Creator flows through us. In Him we live and move and have our being. And I submit that the writer of a tragedy is not cast down or undone at the time he pictures his heroic situations and conjures forth his strutting spirits. When the play ends and the curtain falls on the fifth act, there is still one man alive, and that is the author. He may be gorged with crime and surfeited with blood, but there is a surging exultation in his veins as he views the ruin ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 2 of 14 - Little Journeys To the Homes of Famous Women • Elbert Hubbard
... contradictions without end in the sketches of character which abound in Walpole's works. But if we were to form our opinion of his eminent contemporaries from a general survey of what he has written concerning them, we should say that Pitt was a strutting, ranting, mouthing actor, Charles Townshend an impudent and voluble jack-pudding, Murray a demure, cold-blooded, cowardly hypocrite, Hardwicke an insolent upstart, with the understanding of a pettifogger and the heart of a hangman, Temple an impertinent poltroon, ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... at this hour, the flagged court was crowded by pigeons, strutting fearlessly between the feet of the passers-by, and filling the air with ...
— Herb of Grace • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... authority, was literally no position at all. Its preliminary stage was that of an idle pleasure-seeker; its more progressive, that of an artful husband hunter, and its summit—ah! its summit was where she stood herself, and where a deplorable percentage of our society wives and mothers are standing or strutting about with their brilliant plumage expanded, airing their silly pride and lisping out in self-laudatory accents the story of their ...
— The Doctor's Daughter • "Vera"
... wits, rubbed my eyes, and looked at my visitor. It was the gold eagle off the City Hall! I don't expect to be believed; but I wish you'd been here to see, for I give you my word, it was a sight to behold. How he ever got in at such a small window I can't tell; but there he was, strutting majestically up and down the room, his golden plumage rustling, and his keen eyes flashing as he walked. I really didn't know what to do. I couldn't imagine what he came for; I had my doubts about the propriety of offering him a chair; and he was ...
— Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag • Louisa M. Alcott
... fear gentleness has not only been exercised; a number of little cannon are placed to which the birds apply a substance at the end of a little stick which causes them to go off, when some fall and pretend to die and the victors advance with their muskets, and strutting about give you to understand that the fort is taken ...
— How to Enjoy Paris in 1842 • F. Herve
... tall, square, and broad, with a chest like a pouter pigeon's in its plumage of bright waistcoats, came strutting towards them. ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... nineteenth century that the art of tunnel construction, through sand, wet ground or under rivers was undertaken so as to come rightly under the head of practical engineering. In 1803 a tunnel was built through very soft soil for the San Quentin Canal in France. Timbering or strutting was employed to support the walls and roof of the excavation as fast as the earth was removed and the masonry lining was built closely following it. From the experience gained in this tunnel were developed the various systems of soft ground subterranean ...
— Marvels of Modern Science • Paul Severing
... something. Honest to John, I wouldn't have a brat like that on the place! How she's managed to put up with me all these years is more than I can figure; it gets my goat to look back at the kinda mark I've been—strutting around, spending money I never earned, and never thanking her—feeling abused, by thunder, because she didn't—oh, it's hell! I can't talk about it. I'm going back and see her, and tell her where ...
— The Lookout Man • B. M. Bower
... proportion." In truth Tom, tired of the army, was home-sick. He says to Fraser that he is "feeling an indescribable degree of anxiety to see my dearest mother, sisters, and yourself, not forgetting to include my estate, where I often figure myself, strutting about like unto a mighty Bashaw; which peaceful idea I sincerely hope will be realized, some day or other, if it pleases God to spare me so long; ... my only desire is now that blessed time may be near at hand or even that I could afford to set out ...
— A Canadian Manor and Its Seigneurs - The Story of a Hundred Years, 1761-1861 • George M. Wrong
... herb, and a perennial. It is often called Oswego tea, because the Indians are supposed to have used it for tea. Then, again, you will hear it called Indian's plume. This name seems most suitable. I can just imagine a chief strutting around with this gay plume on his head. It likes a somewhat secluded, moist, shady, cool place. I think it would be possible for some of you to make it grow at home. For colour it would be invaluable. The cardinal flower is the only flower more gaudy in red than ...
— The Library of Work and Play: Gardening and Farming. • Ellen Eddy Shaw
... thing I 've given up all my chances for—you, a miserable, drunken jay, without a jay's decency. No one had ever looked at you until I picked you up and you 've been strutting around ever since, showing off because I was kind to you, and now this is the way you pay me back. Drunk half the time and half drunk the rest. Well, you know what I told you the last time you got 'loaded'? I mean it too. You 're not the only star ...
— The Sport of the Gods • Paul Laurence Dunbar
... I judge most from, is their making the females do the most laborious work, as if they were pack-horses. I have seen a woman carrying a large bundle on her back, or a child on her back and a bundle under her arm, and a fellow strutting before her with nothing but a club or spear, or some such thing. We have frequently observed little troops of women pass, to and fro, along the beach, laden with fruit and roots, escorted by a party of men ...
— A Voyage Towards the South Pole and Round the World Volume 2 • James Cook
... don't you laugh when you observe a dignified looking individual strutting down the street wearing a paper tail that has been pinned to his coat by some ...
— Writing for Vaudeville • Brett Page
... open the door of a large bare, well-lighted room, that somehow managed, in spite of rather poor furniture and much disorder, to look attractive and inviting; and Patricia saw on a huge easel a tall canvas with beautiful, gorgeous peacocks strutting proudly against a background ...
— Miss Pat at Artemis Lodge • Pemberton Ginther
... glancing back threateningly, and speaking in Spanish. "Be careful who you charm. Best not be coddling Nine Eyes, or any other man, while I'm livin'. Bring another bottle. You could have kept those girls here for me, if you'd tried. You allowed that strutting dandy to carry them off before your eyes. This makes the second time he got away from me. The third time is the charm. Not your kind of charm, Mex, but one ...
— A Dream of Empire - Or, The House of Blennerhassett • William Henry Venable
... figure drawing nearer in the sunshine it seemed to him that there was a terror in that gold which he had often worshipped. If that figure should be Salvatore! He strained his eyes. At one moment he fancied that he recognized the wild, free, rather strutting walk of the fisherman. At another he believed that his fear had played him a trick, that the movements of the figure were those of an old man, some plodding contadino of the hills. Artois wondered increasingly what he was looking at. A silence ...
— The Call of the Blood • Robert Smythe Hichens
... heaven and earth shall mingle, Or—which is likelier to befall— 'Til death exterminate us all. I marry without more ado. My dear Dick Redcap, what say you?" Dick heard, and tweedling, ogling, bridling, Turned short 'round, strutting, and sidling, Attested, glad, his approbation Of an immediate conjugation. Their sentiments, so well express'd, Influenced mightily the rest; All pair'd, and each pair built a nest. But, though the birds were thus in haste, The ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various
... have never been able to find a maimed hero, and seldom more than a broken feather." I shall have to recur to this subject, but I may here add that with the Tetrao cupido of the United States, about a score of males assemble at a particular spot, and, strutting about, make the whole air resound with their extraordinary noises. At the first answer from a female the males begin to fight furiously, and the weaker give way; but then, according to Audubon, both the victors and vanquished search for the female, so ...
— The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex • Charles Darwin
... promise," murmured Bridget; and a few minutes later Colonel Faversham went away, strutting along the street with his chest puffed out, walking on air, and certainly never doubting that Bridget's promise would be fulfilled. At the end of Golfney Place his expression changed as he saw Jimmy Clynesworth—on his way to No. 5, no doubt! ...
— Enter Bridget • Thomas Cobb
... faith and with a sense of inspiration; it is only when he comes to read what he has written that surprise and disquiet seize upon his mind. What is he to do, poor man? All his little fishes talk like whales. This yeasty inflation, this stiff and strutting architecture of the sentence has come upon him while he slept; and it is not he, it is the Alps, who are to blame. He is not, perhaps, alone, which somewhat comforts him. Nor is the ill without a remedy. Some day, when the spring returns, he shall go down a little ...
— Essays of Travel • Robert Louis Stevenson
... little hood, and snipped it up in a twinkling, and whisked it off, off, off,—fluttering and bobbing up and down, quite across a wide, waste, snowy field, and finally lodged it on the top of a tall, strutting rail, that was leaning, very independently, quite another way from all the ...
— The May Flower, and Miscellaneous Writings • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... things, and I was not afraid. But then and ever since I hated our way of life. My father had money, and we had finery about us in a disorderly way; always there were men and women coming and going; there was loud laughing and disputing, strutting, snapping of fingers, jeering, faces I did not like to look at—though many petted and caressed me. But then I remembered my mother. Even at first when I understood nothing, I shrank away from all those things outside me into companionship with thoughts ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... wild waves whist,[388-99] Foot it featly here and there; And, sweet sprites, the burden bear. Hark, hark! { Burden dispersedly. The watch-dogs bark: { Bow-wow. Hark, hark! I hear; { Bow-wow. The strain of strutting { chanticleer. ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 8 • Charles H. Sylvester
... But now that I have been wisely and scrupulously and unscrupulously examined by the most exalted rulers of the Inner Temple, and they pronounce me all that man should be, why shouldn't I strut some? But, damn it, strutting brings that Devil's clutch—and a man cannot be anything more strutty than a dish-rag then. In William James you will find a questionnaire, "Why do I believe in immortality? 'Because I think I'm just about ready to begin to live.'" ...
— The Letters of Franklin K. Lane • Franklin K. Lane
... a time an old red hen Went strutting 'round with pompous clucks, For she had little babies ten, A part of which were tiny ducks. "'T is very rare that hens," said she, "Have baby ducks as well as chicks— But I possess, as you can see, Of chickens four and ...
— The Holy Cross and Other Tales • Eugene Field
... said the captain, strutting up, and cocking his hat in the face of our adventurer, "you may be mad as ever a straw-crowned monarch in Moorfields, for aught I care, but damme! don't you be saucy, otherwise I shall dub your worship with a good ...
— The Adventures of Sir Launcelot Greaves • Tobias Smollett
... her mother was strutting about the yard with all her children behind her, crying "cluck, cluck!" as she scratched up bits for them among the straw, Gip, the little pet dog, ...
— Dick and His Cat and Other Tales • Various
... us," said Dan. "I'd laugh if she happened to go to the door just as Felicity and Peter were strutting up. I guess she'll be cross. It's ...
— The Golden Road • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... emigres, returned with the Bourbons; little withered, spindle-shanked old noblemen, clad in court dresses, that figured in these saloons before the revolution, and have been carefully treasured up during their exile; with the solitaires and ailes de pigeon of former days; and the court swords strutting out behind, like pins stuck through dry beetles. See them haunting the scenes of their former splendor, in hopes of a restitution of estates, like ghosts haunting the vicinity of buried treasure; while ...
— The Crayon Papers • Washington Irving
... of a burst of laughter the boatswain marched the man up to where Terry was, strutting and ...
— Syd Belton - The Boy who would not go to Sea • George Manville Fenn
... was told you were all here, and young H. too upon a very extraordinary occasion; so I was willing to see how causes went among you. It will be long enough before you come to see me."—"My brother, and Lord Davers, and Mr. H. have all rode out."—"Well, niece," strutting with his hands behind him, and his head held up—"Ha!—He has made a fine kettle on't—han't he?—that ever such a rake should be so caught! They tell me, she's plaguy cunning, and quite smart and handsome. But I wish his father were living. ...
— Pamela (Vol. II.) • Samuel Richardson
... know these things, and so when Brownwell, who, since his marriage, had taken up his abode at the Culpeppers', hinted at his "extravagant family," the town refused to take him seriously. And the strutting, pompous little man, who referred grandly to "my wife," and then to "the madame," and finally to "my landlady," in a rather elaborate attempt at jocularity, laughed alone at his merriment along this line, and never knew that no one cared ...
— A Certain Rich Man • William Allen White
... the train, which is long and top-heavy, when set on end. When the train is up, nothing appears of the bird before but its head and neck; but this would not be the case were those long feathers fixed only in the rump, as may be seen by the turkey cock when in a strutting attitude. By a strong muscular vibration these birds can make the shafts of their long feathers clatter like the swords of a sword-dancer; they then trample very quick with their feet, and run backwards ...
— The Natural History of Selborne, Vol. 1 • Gilbert White
... had got near enough to distinguish the forms of the birds, they saw they were two old "gobblers" and a hen. The gobblers were strutting about with their tails spread like fans, and their wings trailing along the grass. Every now and then they uttered their loud "gobble—obble—obble," and by their attitude and actions it was evidently an affair ...
— The Boy Hunters • Captain Mayne Reid
... after the affair in Chicago, Dr. P. St. C. Smith was seen strutting around in Charters st., New Orleans, confident in his security, smiling in the brightness of the scenes around him; he had just negotiated for an office, had already concocted his advertisements, and subscribed for the papers, when lo! the same due bill from Boston appeared to ...
— The Humors of Falconbridge - A Collection of Humorous and Every Day Scenes • Jonathan F. Kelley
... country, was a lagging "patriot" that night. His breath came short and labored. His throat was dry. As they passed the Opera, however, he threw his head up. The performance was over, but the great house was still lighted, and in the foyer, strutting about, was his successor. Old ...
— Long Live the King • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... looted the stores, station, and mining office at Elandslaagte, and in addition had looted a lot of luggage taken in the captured train. The evening before he had seen a drunken Boer strutting about dressed in a suit of evening clothes belonging to an English officer. There were a lot of low-class Boers amongst the eight hundred there who spent riotous evenings, getting drunk on the liquor found in the stores; but others of them seemed decent sort ...
— Impressions of a War Correspondent • George Lynch
... Polly was strutting, proud as a peacock, in her scarlet sash. The ends swept the ground, and she glanced back over her shoulder at them every step. Roberta burst out laughing, ...
— That Old-Time Child, Roberta • Sophie Fox Sea
... conversation. Little Napoleon Charles, who was on a visit to his grandmother, picked up the Emperor's cocked hat, placed it upon his head, and putting the sword-belt over his neck, with the dangling sword, began strutting behind the Emperor with a very military tread, attempting to whistle a martial air. Napoleon, turning around, saw the child, and catching him up in his arms, hugged and kissed him, saying to Josephine, "What a charming picture!" Josephine immediately ordered a portrait ...
— Hortense, Makers of History Series • John S. C. Abbott
... Numidians returning home, Massinissa put his troops in motion, and the patriot party in Carthage also prepared for the struggle. But Hasdrubal, who was placed at the head of their army, was one of the usual army-destroyers whom the Carthaginians were in the habit of employing as generals; strutting about in his general's purple like a theatrical king, and pampering his portly person even in the camp, that vain and unwieldy man was little fitted to render help in an exigency which perhaps even the genius of ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... and to be got at the point of the sword, to put on the heads of insolents like Lord Leicester!" His face was flaming, he was like a cock strutting upon a ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... of existence is chiefly one of apeing our betters and strutting before the lesser members of the flock. The large cities are full of people in search of some way to display their superior wealth, taste and exclusiveness. If an ingenious dealer takes a dozen eggs from common candled stock, places them in a blue lined box and labels them "Exquisite ...
— The Dollar Hen • Milo M. Hastings
... bully with assuming pace, Cocks his broad hat, edged round with tarnish'd lace, Yield not the way—defy his strutting pride, And thrust him to the muddy kennel's side, Yet rather bear the shower and toils of mud, Than in the doubtful quarrel ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott
... Gretchen was strutting about with a dock leaf held over her head for a parasol, and trailing the beautiful mull overskirt on the ground, endeavoring to realize the feelings of a fine lady in a ...
— Our Young Folks at Home and Abroad • Various
... became greater and greater; there was quite a crush of men and cattle. They walked in the road, and close by the paling; and at the barrier they even walked into the tollman's potato field, where his own fowl was strutting about with a string to its legs, lest it should take fright at the crowd, and stray away, and so be lost. This fowl had short tail feathers, and winked with both its eyes, and looked very cunning. "Cluck! cluck!" said the fowl. What it thought when it said this ...
— Journeys Through Bookland V2 • Charles H. Sylvester
... to the northward far She followed the torch of Waziya's star. For leagues away o'er the prairies green, On the billowy vast, may a man be seen, When the sun is high and the stars are low; And the sable breast of the strutting crow Looms up like the form of the buffalo. The Bloody River [40] she reached at last, And boldly walked in the light of day, On the level plain of the valley vast; Nor thought of the terrible Chippeway. She was safe from the wolves of her father's band, But she trode on the treacherous "Bloody ...
— Legends of the Northwest • Hanford Lennox Gordon
... a strutting attitude that somehow retained a sort of modesty, "I 'ad the gweatess success. Hah! a nuss is a nuss those time'. Only some time' 'e's not. 'Tis accawding to the povvub,—what is that povvub, now, ag'in?" The proverb did ...
— Dr. Sevier • George W. Cable
... great pigeon, purple and congested with rage. Strutting to the new-comer, he glared insolently up into ...
— Pardners • Rex Beach
... bank of the latter, a goose was strutting importantly at the head of a string of round, fluffy, yellow goslings, whilst driving the brood were two little girls—the one a child but little larger than the goose itself, dressed in a red frock, and armed with ...
— Through Russia • Maxim Gorky
... you," sighed Cynthia hopelessly. "I wish I could, but I can't—I was born different—so different." "Bless your heart, honey, I was born different myself, and if I'd kept my leg and my arm I dare say I'd be strutting round on one and shaking the other in the face of God Almighty just as I used to do. A two-legged man is so busy getting about the world that he never has time to sit down and take a look around him. I tell you I see more in ...
— The Deliverance; A Romance of the Virginia Tobacco Fields • Ellen Glasgow
... and hard. So on an afternoon of weather serene beyond all belief of the North, mild, tired, softly radiant, still as a summer noon; as he sat with Bertran in a courtyard where were lemon-trees and a fountain, and above the old white walls, and above the strutting pigeons, a square of blue, he began to speak of his affairs, of what he had done and ...
— The Life and Death of Richard Yea-and-Nay • Maurice Hewlett
... these conditions is temperature. Whether it be in the test tube of the laboratory or the workshop of nature, all organic chemical reactions take place only within a restricted range of heat. Man, the latest of the ephemera, is pitifully a creature of temperature, strutting his brief day on the thermometer. Behind him is a past wherein it was too warm for him to exist. Ahead of him is a future wherein it will be too cold for him to exist. He cannot adjust himself to that future, because he cannot alter universal law, because ...
— The Human Drift • Jack London
... pleasant anecdote of the late John Palmer, who, it will be remembered, was somewhat stiltish. "Palmer, whose father was a bill-sticker, and who had occasionally practised in the same humble occupation himself, strutting one evening in the green-room at Drury-Lane Theatre, in a pair of glittering buckles, a gentleman present remarked that they greatly resembled diamonds. 'Sir,' said Palmer, with warmth, 'I would have you to know, that I never wear anything but diamonds.' 'Jack, your pardon,' ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 19, No. 533, Saturday, February 11, 1832. • Various
... wanting. They are too small, these towns; you so soon know everyone by sight, and grow tired both of them and their costumes. There is a good deal of stir and life about all the same. There are bands, niggers, clairvoyantes, fire-eaters; plenty indeed for you to see and hear when you are weary of strutting up and down and nodding to your friends. And yet, in spite of all, you grow tired of "London by the sea," after a few weeks, even in that dead ...
— Lazy Thoughts of a Lazy Girl - Sister of that "Idle Fellow." • Jenny Wren
... risen, plumage puffed out, strutting with wings bowed and tail spread, facing the dog. The sudden pigmy defiance thrilled her. "Brave! Brave!" she exclaimed, enraptured; but at the sound of her voice the bird crouched like a flash, large dark liquid eyes ...
— The Fighting Chance • Robert W. Chambers
... cooling into a black-faced pond, suggests to him the image of a "gay French lady," dropped, with straightened limbs, into the silent ocean of death; while the Hungarian Tokay (Tokayer Ausbruch), in its concentrated strength, seems to jump on to the table as a stout pigmy castle-warder, strutting and swaggering in his historic costume, and ready to defy twenty men at once ...
— A Handbook to the Works of Browning (6th ed.) • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... intrigues,—at the very moment when God was sending me a soul of price, an angel with golden wings! Bah! I'll make a poem on it, and perhaps the chance will come again. Heavens! the luck of that little La Briere,—strutting about in my lustre—plagiarism! I'm the cast and he's to be the statue, is he? It is the old fable of Bertrand and Raton. Six millions, a beauty, a Mignon de La Bastie, an aristocratic divinity loving poetry and the ...
— Modeste Mignon • Honore de Balzac
... leaders of the society in which she moved. The nature of that society is plainly enough revealed in the letters and the memoirs that have come down to us. The days of formal pomp and vast representation had ended for ever when the 'Grand Monarque' was no longer to be seen strutting, in periwig and red-heeled shoes, down the glittering gallery of Versailles; the intimacy and seclusion of modern life had not yet begun. It was an intermediate period, and the comparatively small group formed by the elite of the ...
— Books and Characters - French and English • Lytton Strachey
... dewdrops were still sparkling upon the terraced lawns like little globules of flashing silver, and the tumult of noisy songsters from the thick shrubberies alone broke the sweet silence. The peacocks strutting about the grey stone balcony and perched upon the worn balustrade were in deshabille, not being accustomed to display their splendors to an empty paradise, and the few fat blackbirds who were hopping about on the lawn did so in a desultory manner, ...
— The New Tenant • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... It tells in the dukes and earls. Never mind, though; I don't need a book for that. Boxton Park, Witham, Essex," she mused. The posts came back again with the stone balls on top of them; and a few oriel-windows; and a peacock or two strutting on a terrace. The prospect widened; ditches and hedge-rows under a low, gray sky, packs of yelping hounds, hunters following ...
— With the Procession • Henry B. Fuller
... quota, and what a glorious harvest they were reaping! Baltimore Americans, at five cents each; New York Heralds, Tribunes, and Times, at ten cents; and everything sold early. One little fellow was strutting around with a pair of spurs on, and styled himself 'colonel;' the others he introduced as his staff. The day's work was over, and larking had begun. I found the spurs were for use. The colonel had bought an old condemned brute, which his companions were trying to buy at the advanced price ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 3 No 2, February 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... close to poor Tom as he lay upon the deck, and roared with laughter to see his miserable yellow face, and the way in which he screwed up his eyes. But it was only three days before when I was really ill that Tom was strutting about the deck ridiculing sea-sickness, and telling me what a poor sort of a fellow I was to knuckle under to ...
— The Golden Magnet • George Manville Fenn
... down. We aint had no colored overseers to whip us nor no white ones. We just went 'long so and did what we had to, wid out no body watching over us. Every body was just plum crazy 'bout master. Doing the day you could see him strutting down the field like a big turkey gobbler to see how the work was going on. Always had a smile and a joke wid you. He allu's tell us we was doing fine, even sometimes when we want. We'd always catch up our work, so he wouldn't have to fuss. We loved Misses and the chillen so much we wouldn't ...
— Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States, From Interviews with Former Slaves - Virginia Narratives • Works Projects Administration
... life—God and the devil. I mean on a Wagner night! Here is the inspiration of a sainted poet, here is ecstasy unthinkable, flung wide and glorious as the dawn; and here is all the sodden and brutal vulgarity of wealth, deaf, blind, and strutting in its insolent pomposity. ...
— The Journal of Arthur Stirling - "The Valley of the Shadow" • Upton Sinclair
... of monarchy were furbished anew, sacred oil from the little phial of Rheims anointed the brow of a new dynast, and a Roman Pontiff blessed the diadem with which a once poor, pensioned, disaffected Corsican patriot crowned himself lord of France in Notre Dame. The old pomposities of a court came strutting back to their places:—Arch Chancellors, Grand Electors, Constables, Grand Almoners, Grand Chamberlains, Grand Marshals of the Palace, Masters of the Horse, Masters of the Hounds, Madame Mere and a bevy of Imperial Highnesses with their ladies-in-waiting. One ...
— The Story of Paris • Thomas Okey
... died with impatience to know who had written The elegant verses, with which he was smitten. His thoughts were all now on discovery bent, And, in haste, for the PARROT he instantly sent: Who shortly arriv'd, overjoy'd beyond measure, [p 9] And, strutting, demanded ...
— The Peacock and Parrot, on their Tour to Discover the Author of "The Peacock At Home" • Unknown
... the stupid, strutting representatives of littleness! The more insignificant the petty masters, the more conceited are the petty ambassadors. I have no time to see them to-day. We are at peace with the whole world, and our only diplomacy regards marrying and ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... kneel and stoop (Some write) to take his rider up, So HUDIBRAS his ('tis well known) Wou'd often do to set him down. 440 We shall not need to say what lack Of leather was upon his back; For that was hidden under pad, And breech of Knight, gall'd full as bad. His strutting ribs on both sides show'd 445 Like furrows he himself had plow'd; For underneath the skirt of pannel, 'Twixt ev'ry two there was a channel His draggling tail hung in the dirt, Which on his rider he wou'd flurt, 450 Still as his tender side he prick'd, With arm'd heel, or with unarm'd kick'd: ...
— Hudibras • Samuel Butler
... innocent boy that had once been he, furtively strutting about in his velvet cap, rehearsing the theological disputation he was to hold at the wedding-table, and sniffing the cakes and preserves his mother was preparing for the feast, what time the mail was bringing the news of the sudden death of ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... true. It was a severe but useful time of learning. My master was a Unitarian—that is, he did not believe Christ was the son of God and the Saviour of the world, but only the best of teachers; yet so little had he learnt of Him that his heaven consisted in making money, strutting about with his gay wife, and regaling ...
— The Authoritative Life of General William Booth • George Scott Railton
... diminished attention. That is to say, no matter whether the scythes were softly swishing through the grass, or ricks were being built, or rafts were being loaded, he would allow his eyes to wander from his men, and to fall to gazing at, say, a red-billed, red-legged heron which, after strutting along the bank of a stream, would have caught a fish in its beak, and be holding it awhile, as though in doubt whether to swallow it. Next he would glance towards the spot where a similar bird, but one not yet in possession of a fish, was engaged in watching the ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... started forward in a whirl of her animated talk, Peter leading with a dutiful face, Hare strutting solemnly along in the ...
— Captivating Mary Carstairs • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... got as much further down the street as the post-office, when I again beheld Trabb's boy shooting round by a back way. This time, he was entirely changed. He wore the blue bag in the manner of my great-coat, and was strutting along the pavement towards me on the opposite side of the street, attended by a company of delighted young friends to whom he from time to time exclaimed, with a wave of his hand, "Don't know yah!" Words cannot state the amount of aggravation and injury wreaked upon me by ...
— Great Expectations • Charles Dickens
... and twittering in the space behind him caused him to turn sharply away from the books and bottles. Then he saw that he was no longer alone. Half a score sparrows, busy, bustling little bodies, had come in by the open window, and were strutting about amongst the grey ashes in front ...
— The Chestermarke Instinct • J. S. Fletcher
... and forth before the shops in lively Plateros street were elegance and fashion and display, the languishing beauty of Spain, the brilliancy of the Second Empire, the Teuton's martial strutting, the Mexican's elation that Europe had come to him and with the money to pay for it. The toughened Boone gazed on the bright morning parade of ravishing shoppers and ogling cavaliers with the unterrified innocence ...
— The Missourian • Eugene P. (Eugene Percy) Lyle
... family. It's a boy—nine pounds—with lots of dark hair. There have been three girls, in the Stefan family," he explained to Rose-Marie, "and so they are wild with joy at this latest addition. Papa Stefan is strutting about like a proud turkey, with his chest out. And Mamma Stefan is trying to sing a lullaby. I feel something like a tool in the hand of Providence, to-night!" He threw himself ...
— The Island of Faith • Margaret E. Sangster
... was well formed, and his dress was a matter of extreme study. But it is rather libellous on the memory of this man of taste to suppose, that he at all resembled in this important matter the strutting display which we have seen in later times, and which irresistibly strikes the beholder with surprise, that any man capable of seeing himself in the glass could exhibit so strong a temptation to laughter; while to the more knowing in the affairs ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 55, No. 344, June, 1844 • Various
... to the taps that fell on his small head from surrounding bows. And when at last the tuning was done and there burst forth the wonderful new melody of the choral, Sebastian's heart went dizzy with the joy of it. And Uncle Heinrich on the platform, strutting proudly back and forth, conducting the choral—his own choral—forgot his anger and forgot Reinken, and forgot everything except the Bachs playing there before him—playing as only the Bachs, the united Bachs, could play—in all Germany or in all ...
— Unfinished Portraits - Stories of Musicians and Artists • Jennette Lee
... try me and see," responded Liza, with a laugh. "That's nothing to what Nabob Johnny said to me once, and I gave him a slap over the lug for it, the strutting and smirking old peacock. Why, he's all lace—lace at his neck and at his wrists, ...
— The Shadow of a Crime - A Cumbrian Romance • Hall Caine
... as though hypnotized on his pile of fresh black earth. Carl stalked him. As always happened, the gopher popped into his hole just before Carl reached him; but it certainly did seem that he had nearly been caught; and Gertie was jumping with excitement when Carl returned, strutting, cocking ...
— The Trail of the Hawk - A Comedy of the Seriousness of Life • Sinclair Lewis
... of nationalities and types on the Zone, enumerating would have become more than monotonous. But the enumerated took care to break the monotony. There was the wealth of nomenclature for instance. What more striking than a shining-black waiter strutting proudly about under the name of Levi McCarthy? There was no necessity of asking Beresford Plantaganet if he were a British subject. Naturally the mother of Hazarmaneth Cumberbath Smith, baptized that very week, had to claw out the family ...
— Zone Policeman 88 - A Close Range Study of the Panama Canal and its Workers • Harry A. Franck
... of repute, And wrote full many a playe, Now strutting in a silken sute, Then begging by ...
— The Works of Christopher Marlowe, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Christopher Marlowe
... she ejaculated, suddenly, as if just aware of it. "I declare I believe I miss him, too! I believe to my soul I'd like to hear him crow—I wouldn't mind if he came strutting in here!" And "in here" was Aunt Olivia's beloved garden of flowers. Surely she was being ...
— Rebecca Mary • Annie Hamilton Donnell
... gift of seeing beneath the shams of things, and to him this dead Aristocracy cried out loudly for burial. There was an incredible amount of drunkenness, and of debauchery scarcely hidden; there was pretense strutting like a peacock, and avarice skulking like a hound; there were jealousy, and base snobbery, and raging spite, and a breath of suspicion and scandal hanging like a poisonous cloud over everything. These people came and went, an endless procession of them; they laughed ...
— Love's Pilgrimage • Upton Sinclair
... (this was of great importance to us afterwards). That evening we all met out walking, on the only riding-road there was in those days. Rajah spoke to the school-children, and we all amused ourselves with the little Middletons, boys of four and five, strutting along with turbaned hats and long walking-sticks. It was a dull evening, and we all felt unaccountably gloomy. We fancied it was because Rajah was not well enough to come and dine with us, as he had purposed ...
— Sketches of Our Life at Sarawak • Harriette McDougall
... to speak respectfully of any privileged class or person who had not distinguished himself in some good way and therefore earned the right to public respect. There was still the sneer behind for mere pedigree—"he is nothing, has done nothing, only an accident, a fraud strutting in borrowed plumes; all he has to his account is the accident of birth; the most fruitful part of his family, as with the potato, lies underground." I wondered that intelligent men could live where another human being was born to a privilege which was not also their birthright. I was never tired ...
— Autobiography of Andrew Carnegie • Andrew Carnegie
... "that he would be very willing to give him charity and help him as he could" and as he added "for my father it was that put you up in business" (which was a monstrous lie, for Frog had done this) he did but offend. Then to Mr. William Eagle, that was a strutting, arrogant fellow, but willing to be a friend, he wrote every Monday to say that the house of Bull was lost unless Mr. Eagle would very kindly protect it and every Thursday to challenge him to mortal combat, so that ...
— On Nothing & Kindred Subjects • Hilaire Belloc
... it, and the footman obeyed. While Ormond was waiting impatiently for the answer, his horse, as impatient as himself, would not stand still. A groom, who was sauntering about, saw the uneasiness of the horse, and observing that it was occasioned by a peacock, who, with spread tail, was strutting in the sunshine, he ran and chased the bird away. Ormond thanked the groom, and threw him a luck token; but not recollecting his face, asked how long he had been at Annaly. "I think you were not here when I was here last?" ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. IX - [Contents: Harrington; Thoughts on Bores; Ormond] • Maria Edgeworth
... assistants:—"I beg you to lend me that habit." Elias did not dare refuse: he went aside and took it off and brought it to him. Francis put it on over his own, smoothed it down, plaited it nicely under the girdle, threw the cowl over his head, and then, strutting fiercely with his head erect, he paced three or four times round the company, saying, in a loud voice :—"God preserve you, good people." Then taking the habit off indignantly, he threw it from him with contempt, and, ...
— The Life and Legends of Saint Francis of Assisi • Father Candide Chalippe
... pardon, do you?" said the Captain," I thought as much; I thought you'd come to;-so you have lost your relish for an English salutation, have you?" strutting up to him ...
— Evelina • Fanny Burney
... the middle was set with a white cloth. The family from Birmingham had come. Father and mother, absurd pouter-pigeons swelling and strutting; two putty-faced unmarried daughters, sulking; one married one, pink and proper, and the son-in-law, sharp eyed and bald-headed. From their table in the centre they stared at her where she dined by herself at her table ...
— The Romantic • May Sinclair
... went upon the pomegranate and almond trees in the garden, and some of the earliest roses were in their prime; everywhere was so full leaf that the wantonest of the strutting nymphs was forced into a sort of decent seclusion, but the careless naiad of the fountain burnt in sunlight that subtly increased its fervors day by day, and it was no longer beginning to be warm, it was warm, when one morning Ferris and Miss Vervain sat on the steps of the terrace, waiting ...
— A Foregone Conclusion • W. D. Howells
... long courtyard, with brewhouse and dairy on each side, and a pleasant smell of baking bread, and dogs winking in the sun, cats at the corners of doors, satisfied with life, and turkeys parading, and fowls, strutting cocks, that overset the dignity of Mr. Raikes by awakening his imitative propensities. Certain white-capped women, who were washing in a tub, laughed, and one observed: 'He's for all the world like the little bantam cock stickin' 'self ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... to suck my cock! I couldn't bathe today anyway, because I was at a funeral; dandy fellow, he was too, good old Chrysanthus slipped his wind! Why, only the other day he said good morning' to me, and I almost think I'm talking to him now! Gawd's truth, we're only blown-up bladders strutting around, we're less than flies, for they have some good in them, but we're only bubbles. And supposing he had not kept to such a low diet! Why, not a drop of water or a crumb of bread so much as passed his lips for five days; and yet he joined the ...
— The Satyricon, Complete • Petronius Arbiter
... By your reverence's favour, hold a little; I must examine you something better, before you go.—Heyday! who have we here? Father Dominick is shrunk in the wetting two yards and a half about the belly. What are become of those two timber logs, that he used to wear for legs, that stood strutting like the two black posts before a door? I am afraid some bad body has been setting him over a fire in a great cauldron, and boiled him down half the quantity, for a recipe. This is no father Dominick, no huge overgrown abbey-lubber; this is but a diminutive sucking friar. As sure as a gun, now, father ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Vol. 6 (of 18) - Limberham; Oedipus; Troilus and Cressida; The Spanish Friar • John Dryden
... laugh. It was a comical sight. The rooster went strutting around the tent backwards as rapidly and steadily as a normal chicken. It was ludicrous to watch it proceed, pecking at ...
— Andy the Acrobat • Peter T. Harkness
... Clarke, you are an impudent impostor! You have written no word that is your own. You are an embezzler of the mind, strutting through life in borrowed and ...
— The House of the Vampire • George Sylvester Viereck
... mad to join them; and what do you think? Sir Lupus consented, and General Schuyler lent his kind offices, and to-day, if you please, my brother is strutting about the yard in the uniform of a ...
— The Maid-At-Arms • Robert W. Chambers
... of the troops showed that the lessons of the last ten years of warfare against the French had borne fruit. The command was left to those who made it their profession. Henceforth we hear no more of factors and writers strutting about in uniform, calling themselves colonels and captains for a few weeks, and then returning to their ledgers. We have done with the Midfords and the Browns. Out of the thirteen years he had served the ...
— The Pirates of Malabar, and An Englishwoman in India Two Hundred Years Ago • John Biddulph
... considerations that made me look forward to the end of the term with misgiving. Since it had been made plain to me that I was a remarkable boy, I had rather enjoyed my life at school. I had conceived myself as strutting with a measured dignity before a background of the other boys—a background that moved and did not change, like a wind-swept tapestry; but I was quite sure that I would not be allowed to give myself airs at home. It seemed to me that a youngest brother's portion of freedom would compare ...
— The Ghost Ship • Richard Middleton
... things familiar flitted across his mind. He saw his mother in a cocked hat; Cuddie Collingwood, his pet canary, strutting the maindeck and picking his teeth; and Gwen with a tarred pigtail, her ...
— The Gentleman - A Romance of the Sea • Alfred Ollivant
... challenge is this gage, A gauntlet flung for love or war; As strutting barnyard chanticleer Defies his neighboring lord: So calls this crested pheasant-king For combat or for peace. The meek brown mate upon her nest Feels happy and secure While thus her lord by deed and word Displays his woodland bravery ...
— Trail Tales • James David Gillilan
... breath and eyed the two young officers who trailed after the colonel. Emotionally exhausted, he had to clamp his jaw against a huge laugh that struggled up in his throat. For just an instant there, the colonel had reminded him of a movie version of General Rommel strutting up and down before his tanks. But it wasn't a swagger stick the colonel had tucked under his arm. It was a folded newspaper. Opening it, the colonel flung it ...
— The Plague • Teddy Keller
... dangers still beset him, Jones' fame was now assured. England and France rang with his victory, and while the English drew cartoons of him as a bloody pirate, strutting on a quarter deck that was lined with the bodies of his victims, the French king, Louis the Sixteenth, presented him with a gold mounted sword and the cross of the Order of Military Merit. Congress passed a resolution commending him for his gallantry and he received a complimentary ...
— A Treasury of Heroes and Heroines - A Record of High Endeavour and Strange Adventure from 500 B.C. to 1920 A.D. • Clayton Edwards
... their parade. They had regular "stamping grounds" on certain ridges, Where the soil was beaten smooth by the pressure of their restless feet. I often passed within a few yards of them.—I can see them now, the cocks leaping and strutting, with trailing wings and down-thrust heads, displaying their bulbous orange-colored neck ornaments while the hens flutter and squawk in silly delight. All the charm and mystery of that prairie world comes back to me, and I ache with an illogical desire to recover it and hold it, and preserve it ...
— A Son of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... strutting forward, "if I may speak my opinion, I should think, as you happen to be quite alone, a little agreeable company would be no such bad thing. At least ...
— Cecilia vol. 2 - Memoirs of an Heiress • Frances (Fanny) Burney (Madame d'Arblay)
... said Walthall reflectively; "but did I follow him up to do it? Wasn't he dogging after me all day, and strutting around bragging about what he was going to do? Didn't I play the little stray lamb till he rubbed his ...
— Free Joe and Other Georgian Sketches • Joel Chandler Harris
... prosperity, such as it is, has been produced.' This assertion has been made with great confidence, by many writers and speakers. It is a gross exaggeration, and absurd as it is gross. I say nothing of the unseemly egotism of a dominant caste, thus parading its own merits, flaunting its plumes, strutting and crowing over the common folk—of this pharisaic spirit of the ascendant Protestant, standing close to the altar, reciting to God and the world the number of his resplendent virtues, and scornfully contrasting ...
— The Land-War In Ireland (1870) - A History For The Times • James Godkin
... trait of self-expression we may follow from its innocent natural form in strutting cock or stamping stag up to the characteristics we label vanity and pride. The degradation of women in forcing them to adopt masculine methods of personal decoration as a means of livelihood, has carried with ...
— The Forerunner, Volume 1 (1909-1910) • Charlotte Perkins Gilman
... long- chair looking out from my pavilion upon the drowsy garden on a hot noontide, I did not much care. It was cooler indoors, comfortable enough; the open door framed the courtyard where pigeons were strutting on the gravel walks between flower-beds. Beyond, and thrown deeper into the perspective by the outer frame of the great archway, road and fields and forest fringes were revealed, lying tremulously in the hot sunshine. The foreground gained a human (though not lively) ...
— The Guest of Quesnay • Booth Tarkington
... instinct in the human. In the animal world the male has the plumage and does the strutting and fascinating act; but in the human animal the female is the bird with ...
— Evening Round Up - More Good Stuff Like Pep • William Crosbie Hunter
... Cooper imaginary feelings and then proceeded to assail him for having them. He was accused, especially, of pluming himself highly upon the title of the "American Scott." Hazlitt, for instance, seeing him strutting, as he terms it, in the streets of Paris, was enabled to detect by the way the novelist walked the way he felt upon this special matter, and afterward to state the conclusion at which he had arrived as a positive fact. Similar specimens of fine critical insight into Cooper's motives and ...
— James Fenimore Cooper - American Men of Letters • Thomas R. Lounsbury
... was in command who posed as a strict disciplinarian and acted up to his idea that there was very little else in the world for him to learn. He critically examined the paper and then looked into the saddle bags that were swung over the mule's back. Then strutting haughtily ...
— The Story of Paul Boyton - Voyages on All the Great Rivers of the World • Paul Boyton
... heralded by a flourish of silver trumpets, was borne in by liveried servants walking two and two, with rubicund marshals strutting in front and behind, bearing white wands in their hands, not only as badges of their office, but also as weapons with which to repel any impertinent inroad upon the dishes in the journey from the kitchen to the hall. Boar's heads, enarmed and endored ...
— Sir Nigel • Arthur Conan Doyle
... rope wound round his waist. He could climb like a cat, and he soon made his way through the roof, but, as ill luck would have it, Bartholomew Sholto was still in the room, to his cost. Tonga thought he had done something very clever in killing him, for when I came up by the rope I found him strutting about as proud as a peacock. Very much surprised was he when I made at him with the rope's end and cursed him for a little blood-thirsty imp. I took the treasure-box and let it down, and then slid down myself, having first left the sign of the four ...
— The Sign of the Four • Arthur Conan Doyle
... considerable body of men had been seen, only those who held the gates, and the small parties of threes and fours who arrested motors and carts for their barricades. Among these were some who were only infants—one boy seemed about twelve years of age. He was strutting the centre of the road with a large revolver in his small fist. A motor car came by him containing three men, and in the shortest of time he had the car lodged in his barricade, and dismissed its stupified occupants with a wave of ...
— The Insurrection in Dublin • James Stephens
... the body of a dress which had been meant for his wife on his own nether limbs—thrusting his great feet through the sleeves, and thereby splitting them to the shoulder. Another tied a tippet round his waist, and a woman was found strutting about in a pair of fisherman's boots, and a straw bonnet with the back to ...
— Sunk at Sea • R.M. Ballantyne
... children, partly from an instinctive fear of their tricks and their thoughtlessness; partly, I suspect, from jealousy. Jealousy seems a strange tragic passion to attribute to the inmates of the basse cour,—but only look at that strutting fellow of a bantam cock (evidently a favourite), who sidles up to his old mistress with an air half affronted and half tender, turning so scornfully from the barley-corns which Annie is flinging ...
— Our Village • Mary Russell Mitford
... match, indeed; a griffiness for such a creature as you!" said the goat, strutting ...
— The Pilgrims Of The Rhine • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... procession of monks, like a strain of low comedy in the sober religious drama of early New England Puritan life; so out of place, so unreal is this fussy, pompous, restless tithingman, with his fantastic wand of office fringed with dangling foxtails,—creaking, bustling, strutting, peering around the quiet meeting-house, prodding and rapping the restless boys, waking the drowsy sleepers; for they slept in country churches in the seventeenth century, notwithstanding dread of fierce correction, just as they nod and doze ...
— Sabbath in Puritan New England • Alice Morse Earle
... him, with his little dreadful air of fervid solemnity—and I don't know whether I dreamed it or whether it was really there—very spruce and strutting about the lawns of Amerley Park at that garden-party they ...
— The Belfry • May Sinclair
... they slept. They did not hear The challenge of Sir Chanticleer, Who on the empty threshing-floor, Disdainful of the rain outside, Was strutting with a martial stride, As if upon his thigh he wore The famous broadsword of the Squire, And said, "Behold me, ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... an eye Vandy's importance was snatched from him, and the prophet's mantle had fallen upon Adele. Where, but a moment before, he had been strutting in all the pride of a proprietor, she held the stage. More. Neither our discomfited host nor his sisters could divine what was toward, and the fact that their guests crowded eagerly about Adele, encouraging her to "let them have it," was more ...
— Berry And Co. • Dornford Yates
... strutting young officer," cried Cosetta harshly in his own tongue. "Eye the young Gringo upstart well. You must know him again, for he is to be a marked man in the streets ...
— Dave Darrin at Vera Cruz • H. Irving Hancock
... stage, this custom is an almost mesmeric one to watch. We certainly do see other people at a disadvantage when they are strutting the Boards of Illusion . . . men especially. But to a foreigner, who is not used to seeing a man's hands disappear the moment he is asked to stand up, the sight must come with something of a shock. ...
— Over the Fireside with Silent Friends • Richard King
... knew at least, though I a shadow might be, this also was an island in a sea of shadows. Far from all land its marbles might be reared, yet they were warm to my touch, and these were nightingales, and those strutting doves beneath the ...
— Henry Brocken - His Travels and Adventures in the Rich, Strange, Scarce-Imaginable Regions of Romance • Walter J. de la Mare
... little silver-topped bottles on his table, the crease in his trousers, his shining neat hair, the pearl pin in his black tie, his precise and careful speech, the way that he said "Nu tak... Spasebo... gavoreet... gariachy..." She was never tired of imitating him; and very soon he caught her strutting about the dining-room with a man's cap on her head, twisting a cane and bargaining with an Isvostchick—this last because, only the evening before, he had told them with great pride of his cleverness in that especial direction. ...
— The Secret City • Hugh Walpole
... found out. Jack Kilmeny, in evening dress, was jesting in animated talk with India when the engaged couple reentered the room. He turned, the smile still on his face, to greet Joyce as she came forward beside Verinder. The little man was strutting pompously toward Lady Farquhar, the arm of the young woman tucked ...
— The Highgrader • William MacLeod Raine
... house designed to look well, even age has not taken from it its artificiality. Neither is there any cone nor cart-horses about. Why, even a tall chanticleer makes a home look homely. I do like to see a tall proud chanticleer strutting in the yard and barely giving way as I advance, almost ready to do battle with a stranger like a mastiff. So I prefer the simple old home by ...
— Field and Hedgerow • Richard Jefferies
... green and white, with all its improvements on it, whatever the sun does. And above all I keep seeing the Man on it, full of defiance and of love and worship, being born and buried—the little-great man, running about and strutting, flying through space on it, all his interests and his loves wound about it like clouds, but beckoning to worlds as he flies. And whatever the Man does with the other worlds or with this one, I always keep seeing this one, the same old ...
— The Voice of the Machines - An Introduction to the Twentieth Century • Gerald Stanley Lee
... of the wings. Beyond a gate in the court-yard wall the flower-garden drew its dark-green squares and raised its statues against the yellowing background of the park. In the borders only a few late pinks and crimsons smouldered, but a peacock strutting in the sun seemed to have gathered into his out-spread fan all the summer glories ...
— The Reef • Edith Wharton
... means pleased with the contempt expressed for his personal appearance by his lengthy associate, and impressed with a keener sense than ever of the crimes of his coat and the vices of his other garment,—"Oh, breathe not its name!"—followed doggedly and sullenly the strutting steps of the coxcombical Mr. Pepper. That personage arrived at last at a small tavern, and arresting a waiter who was running across the passage into the coffee-room with a dish of hung-beef, demanded (no doubt ...
— Paul Clifford, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... singers tried to soothe the bass down, but they couldn't. He looked like a great pouter pigeon, strutting about the room, and then he got red, and I thought he looked like an angry turkey cock. The secretary of the society came in, and the ...
— Between You and Me • Sir Harry Lauder
... good deal in my time about the foolishness of hens, but when it comes to right-down, plum foolishness, give me a rooster, every time. He's always strutting and stretching and crowing and bragging about things with which he had nothing to do. When the sun rises, you'd think that he was making all the light, instead of all the noise; when the farmer's wife throws the scraps in the henyard, he crows ...
— Letters from a Self-Made Merchant to His Son • George Horace Lorimer
... it should have been redoubled. Always beware of the anarchist when he has been good: look out for the reaction. It annoys him to be compelled to remain quiet when there is a grand opportunity for strutting across the world's stage, and when he misses the psychological moment, he is apt to turn ...
— The Triumphs of Eugene Valmont • Robert Barr
... to go to the Committee-room to see what was being done. When I entered, I found that little cock-sparrow, Governor Pickens, of South Carolina, addressing the meeting, and strutting about like a rooster around a barn-yard coop, ...
— The Great Conspiracy, Complete • John Alexander Logan
... Strutting along, supported by his fine clothes, and the consciousness of doing the right thing in the right way, the newly-rich man walked up the path to Young's house and ascended the steps quietly. The door stood open. Without knocking, he stepped ...
— The Secret of the Storm Country • Grace Miller White
... of Raphael is like Spenser. Again, there is Piero di Cosimo's Death of Procris: the poor young woman lying dead by the lake, with the little fishing town in the distance, the swans sailing and cranes strutting, and the dear young faun—no Praxitelian god with invisible ears, still less the obscene beast whom the late Renaissance copied from Antiquity—a most gentle, furry, rustic creature, stooping over ...
— Renaissance Fancies and Studies - Being a Sequel to Euphorion • Violet Paget (AKA Vernon Lee)
... enough at all times, was blackest of all to us; nor was his brother the Papist more complaisant. They had but brought us there that they might dazzle us with their glitter and gee-gaws, in order that we might bear a fine report of them back to the West with us. There were supple-backed courtiers, and strutting nobles, and hussies with their shoulders bare, who should for all their high birth have been sent to Bridewell as readily as any poor girl who ever walked at the cart's tail. Then there were the gentlemen of the chamber, with ...
— Micah Clarke - His Statement as made to his three Grandchildren Joseph, - Gervas and Reuben During the Hard Winter of 1734 • Arthur Conan Doyle
... feelings of those who were about to stand around this grave, but concluded that he probably understood the people with whom he had to deal. Presently this functionary—a lantern-jawed, nimble old man, with a dirty nightcap on his head—made his appearance to take a final look at his work. After strutting round the very shallow hole he had dug, in an airy, self-satisfied manner, he concluded that everything was as it should be, and retired for the priest ...
— Wanderings by southern waters, eastern Aquitaine • Edward Harrison Barker
... struggle." Leaving the town I scanned the faces of the passers-by apprehensively, and said "Good-morning" or "Good-evening" very meekly to all dangerous-looking persons, but a fortnight later I was even strutting on the road with a smile almost malicious ...
— A Tramp's Sketches • Stephen Graham
... as tightly as would a vise, when their high-heeled shoes were as unyielding as if made of wood, and their trails of taffeta, often as much as fifteen yards long, and great feathered head-dresses compelled them to turn round as slowly as strutting peacocks? How could the men, with their buckram-stiffened coat-shirts, execute any other dance, when their elaborate powdered wigs compelled them to carry their hats under their arms, and their swords concurrently ...
— History and Comprehensive Description of Loudoun County, Virginia • James W. Head
... unbounded delight, and proceeded to adjust the belt to his own Ethiopian waist. It mattered little with him that he got the scabbard on the wrong side of his body: a sword was a sword; and he wore it in awkward and ridiculous fashion, strutting up and down in the fire-lighted cave, to the envy and disgust of old Toby, the rage of Lysander, and the amusement of ...
— Cudjo's Cave • J. T. Trowbridge
... grown-up daughters at home, Ethelberta and Picotee, with their brother Joey, were sitting near her; the two youngest children, Georgina and Myrtle, who had been strutting in and out of the room, and otherwise endeavouring to walk, talk, and speak like the gentleman just gone away, were packed off to bed. Emmeline, of that transitional age which causes its exponent to ...
— The Hand of Ethelberta • Thomas Hardy
... clothing takes a very living interest in it; indeed the adornment of person and the minute care devoted to details of the toilet by young people of both sexes remind one irresistibly of the preening of the feathers, the strutting and other antics of birds before ...
— Youth and Sex • Mary Scharlieb and F. Arthur Sibly
... choose The formal garden With lilac hedges And vistas of velvet lawn And marble fountain Shining pool and Marble bench o'er-topped By drooping willow; Massed color in trim beds, And stately garden house Festooned with wisteria And guarded by strutting peacock? ...
— A Little Window • Jean M. Snyder
... Audubon says that the old maids and bachelors of the Canada goose move off by themselves during the courting of the younger birds. In order to succeed in love, fear must be overcome in the male as well as in the female. Courage is the essential male virtue, love is its outcome and reward. The strutting, crowing, dancing, and singing of male birds and the preliminary movements generally of animals must gorge the neuromotor and muscular systems with blood and put them in better fighting trim. The effects of this upon the feelings of the animal himself must ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 3 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... Donnegan; it was possible even to pity him for his fragility, his touchy pride about his size; to criticize his fondness for taking the center of the stage even in a cheap little mining camp like this and strutting about, the center of all attention. Yet there were qualities in him which escaped her, a possibility of metallic hardness, ...
— Gunman's Reckoning • Max Brand
... is going to get the idea that you sure hate yourself!" he remarked, standing with his hands on his hips while Applehead came strutting into the foreground. "You'll never make any one believe you were ever a real, honest-to-God sheriff. They'll put you down as an extra picked up through a free employment agency and feeling like you owned the plant because you're earning a couple of dollars. Go back down there ...
— The Phantom Herd • B. M. Bower
... he got there, how he did stare, To see the yeomen strutting about; He scratched his head, and rubbed down his hair, In the ear of a noble he gave ...
— Ancient Poems, Ballads and Songs of England • Robert Bell
... stair. He was before her, standing on the verandah directly in front of the doors. His back was to her. She saw that he was very tall and thin, not unlike her uncle in build, but with a distinction that gentleman did not possess. Her father was strutting up and down the drive, ...
— The Californians • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... was about to take Perilla off to Africa, where he was to be proconsul. The shadow of the parting had thrown into high relief the happiness of the day. Perilla had always said that it was worth while to pay attention to her father's birthday, because he could accept family incense without strutting like a god and was never so charming as when he was being spoiled. To-day they had spared no pains, and his manner in return had fused with the tenderness kept for them alone the gallantry, at once that of worldling and of poet, which made ...
— Roads from Rome • Anne C. E. Allinson
... drive four horses through the drifts like little hills, and are wrapped in furs like bears! The grand military parades—how I shall laugh when I think of our poor little Presidios with their dozen officers strutting about—" She stopped abruptly and bursting wildly into tears flung herself into her brother's arms. "But I never could leave you! And my father! my mother! all! all! Ay, Dios de mi alma! what an ingrate I am! I should die of homesickness! My ...
— Rezanov • Gertrude Atherton
... a dream; for it is impossible I should be really esteemed a common acquaintance by Leonora, after what has passed between us?" "Passed between us! Do you intend to affront me before this gentleman?" "D—n me, affront the lady," says Bellarmine, cocking his hat, and strutting up to Horatio: "does any man dare affront this lady before me, d—n me?" "Hark'ee, sir," says Horatio, "I would advise you to lay aside that fierce air; for I am mightily deceived if this lady has not a violent ...
— Joseph Andrews Vol. 1 • Henry Fielding
... had never experienced kind treatment in all his life. So it was no wonder that when the little girl entered the fifth boudoir she was followed by the parrot, the lamb, the cat and the dog, who all stood beside her and watched her feed the peacock, which she found strutting around and mewing like a cat for ...
— Sky Island - Being the further exciting adventures of Trot and Cap'n - Bill after their visit to the sea fairies • L. Frank Baum
... into one of the coach-houses and the yard stood empty, sunlit, silent, save for the voices of the pigeons wheeling in the air, or strutting on the roof of the great ...
— The Ghost Girl • H. De Vere Stacpoole
... the customary warning about not staying late and Beth went off with a lighter heart than usual. It was a delightful day. The homes all looked so cheery, and the children were playing at the gates as she went down the street. There was one her eye dwelt on more than the rest. The pigeons were strutting on the sloping roof, the cat dozed in the window-sill, and the little fair-haired girls were swinging under the cherry-tree. Yes, marriage and home must be sweet after all. Beth had always said she never would marry. She wanted to write stories and not have other ...
— Beth Woodburn • Maud Petitt
... ungraceful ornaments; they strike, rather than please; the images are magnified by affectation; the language is laboured into harshness. The mind of the writer seems to work with unnatural violence. "Double, double, toil and trouble." He has a kind of strutting dignity, and is tall by walking on tiptoe. His art and his struggle are too visible, and there is too little ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. in Nine Volumes - Volume the Eighth: The Lives of the Poets, Volume II • Samuel Johnson
... am resolved this charming day In the open field to stray, And have no roof above my head But that whereon the gods do tread. Before the yellow barn I see A beautiful variety Of strutting cocks, advancing stout, And flirting empty chaff about; Hens, ducks, and geese, and all their brood, And turkeys gobbling for their food; While rustics thrash the wealthy floor, And tempt ...
— The Age of Pope - (1700-1744) • John Dennis
... miens and aspects warlike and unwarlike; himself of their whole care, and their business! weapons in their hands, some bright, some rusty, equally venerable for their antiquity and inoffensiveness! others of more authoritative demeanour, strutting before with fine painted staves! shoals of people following, with a Which is he whom the young lady appears against?— Then, let us look down, look up, look round, which way we will, we shall see all the doors, the shops, the windows, the sign-irons, and balconies, (garrets, gutters, and chimney-tops ...
— Clarissa, Volume 4 (of 9) - History Of A Young Lady • Samuel Richardson |
