"Underfoot" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... so thinks I to myself it won't do for you to go on chopping at that rate, for when I fended off he made my whole hand tingle with the force of his blow; so I darts at him and drives the hilt of my cutlass right into his mouth, and he fell, and his own men trod him underfoot, and on we went, hammer and tongs. By this time the boarding of the launch and pinnace to leeward, for they could not get up as soon as we did, created a divarsian, and bothered the Frenchman, who ...
— Poor Jack • Frederick Marryat
... from his bungalow, pulling upon his feet clumsy native sandals of wood, with a button between the toes. For underfoot lay the things he dreaded, the heat things, the things bred by this warm climate enclosed between the high wall of the mountains and the infitting curve of the sea. He tramped awkwardly along in his loose fitting ...
— Civilization - Tales of the Orient • Ellen Newbold La Motte
... up and stared about him. There, in the shadowy distance, lay the surrounding forest, and here, close at hand, stood the outline of the village buildings. But, underfoot, beyond question, lay nothing but the broken heaps of stones that betokened a building long since crumbled to dust. Then he saw that the stones were blackened, and that great wooden beams, half burnt, half rotten, made lines through the general debris. He stood, ...
— Three More John Silence Stories • Algernon Blackwood
... comforts blessed; To accept, in humble part, Truth that shines on every heart; Never to be set on high, Where the envious curses fly; Never name or fame to find, Still outstripped in soul and mind; To be hid, unless to God, As one grass-blade in the sod; Underfoot with millions trod? If you dare, come with us, be Lost ...
— Poems with Power to Strengthen the Soul • Various
... There were old houses, as a matter of course; but who can appreciate antiquities when his legs are wet about the knees and his boots are squirting water? Nevertheless, I tried to notice a few things besides the vileness underfoot. One was a rudely-carved image of the Virgin in a niche covered by a grating. This was in such a dark little street that it seemed as if the sun had given up all hope of ever shining there again. I struggled through the slush to the church, built, with the town, on ...
— Wanderings by southern waters, eastern Aquitaine • Edward Harrison Barker
... plough their hands they put, And wheresoe'er the soil had need The furrow drave, and underfoot They sowed themselves ...
— A Cluster of Grapes - A Book of Twentieth Century Poetry • Various
... me, and I had sent a ball into his shoulder; he bounded into a thicket; the dogs followed. While I was reloading, my assistant came up, fired, and missed the bull. My boy, seeing himself disarmed, sought to cut at the bull's legs, but it gored him and stamped him underfoot. Placed as I was, I could not fire at the animal for fear of finishing my man. I took my large buccaneer's knife and threw myself between them. I received a blow of its horn which ripped up my thigh, a second broke ...
— A Romance of the West Indies • Eugene Sue
... stirring, a rolling and rumbling and hammering. Little by little the scene grew plain: towering, black buildings here and there, long rows of shops and sheds, little railways branching everywhere, bare gray cinders underfoot and oceans of billowing black smoke above. On one side of the grounds ran a railroad with a dozen tracks, and on the other side lay the lake, where ...
— The Jungle • Upton Sinclair
... How brave, how valiant they must have appeared! Even the gorgeous wild flowers paled with chagrin as the bold, venturesome Spaniards trampled them underfoot as they marched steadily onward, hoping yet to find the crystal fountain which should ...
— Dorothy Dainty's Gay Times • Amy Brooks
... hill-tops, because they are bound to be used for lookouts, is why they get torn to pieces. When two men are fighting for life they don't bother about upsetting a table with a vase, or notice any "Keep off the grass" signs; no, not even if the family Bible be underfoot. ...
— My Year of the War • Frederick Palmer
... upon the stones below in shredded foam: one was pink in colour. Here once a general and his lady were riding, and the lady's horse slipped. The general grasped her but lost his own balance, and both fell into the river and were killed. The track wound up and down, often very slippery underfoot, and the horses, shod with the usual flat plates of iron, were slithering and sliding on the edge of the precipices. At last we got off and walked. It was an immense relief: our saddles were intensely hard, stirrups ...
— The Luck of Thirteen - Wanderings and Flight through Montenegro and Serbia • Jan Gordon
... together, Medland plunged again whole-heartedly into his speech, and slowly, gradually, almost, it seemed, step by step and man by man, he won back the thoughts of his audience. He wrestled with that strange paper rival and overthrew it. Man after man dropped it; its course was stayed; it fell underfoot or fluttered idly down the gangways. The nods ceased, the whispers were hushed, the stir fell and rose no more. Once again he had them, and, inspired by that knowledge, the surest spur of eloquence, there rang from his lips the last burning words, the picture of the vision that ruled his life, ...
— Half a Hero - A Novel • Anthony Hope
... terrible gun walked noiselessly through the Green Forest, stepping with the greatest care to avoid snapping a stick underfoot, searching with keen eye every thicket and likely hiding-place for a glimpse of Lightfoot, and studying the ground for traces to show that ...
— The Adventures of Lightfoot the Deer • Thornton W. Burgess
... the tomb, his head bared. The marble underfoot bore the imprint of many shoes and rubbers and hobnails, of all sizes and—mayhap—of all nations. He recollected, with a burn on his cheeks, a sacrilege of his raw and eager youth, some twelve years since; he had forgotten to take off his hat. Never would he forget the ...
— A Splendid Hazard • Harold MacGrath
... passed, Mr. Bolles's journeys to the school were all to show it was not some pioneer colony in a new, white, silent world that heard only the playful shouts and songs of the buccaroos. The sun overhead and the hard-crushing snow underfoot filled every one with ...
— The Jimmyjohn Boss and Other Stories • Owen Wister
... prime rope fra' somewheers, an' we creeps out after nightfall. It was a dree night, the owd bracken underfoot damp an' sodden, an' th' tall firs looking grim an' gho-ostly in th' gloom. Soon theer was a crackling o' twigs, like a tank ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, June 11, 1919 • Various
... boys stole away, leaving the cattle to sleep out the night. Once the hackberry was reached, the horses were given free rein, when restraint became necessary to avoid galloping home. The snow crunched underfoot, the mounts snorted their protest at hindrance, vagrant breezes and biting cold cut the riders to the marrow, but on approaching the homestead the reins were shaken out and the horses dashed up ...
— Wells Brothers • Andy Adams
... No, no; you ain't waiting," mimicked Miss Krakow, and her voice was like autumn leaves that crackle underfoot. "Well, then, if you ain't waiting here he comes now. I dare you to come on home with me now, ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1915 - And the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... subterranean-like stream, speaking seldom, and listening intently for the breaks in the deathlike stillness that spoke of life. Now and then they caught the ghostly flutter of owls in the gloom, like floating spirits; back in the forest saplings snapped and brush crashed underfoot as caribou or moose caught the man-scent; they heard once the panting, sniffing inquiry of a bear close at hand, and Philip reached forward for his rifle. For an instant Josephine's hand fluttered to his own, and held it back, and the dark glow of her eyes said: "Don't kill." Here there were ...
— God's Country—And the Woman • James Oliver Curwood
... I was ceasing to be so keenly observant of the material facts as I had been at first. But I was better qualified to judge of what I saw, and I had now a vivid sense of the costliness of Mrs. Strange's environment. There were thousands of dollars in the carpets underfoot; there were tens of thousands in the pictures on the walls. In a bronze group that withdrew itself into a certain niche, with a faint reluctance, there was the value of a skilled artisan's wage for five years of hard work; in the bindings of the ...
— Through the Eye of the Needle - A Romance • W. D. Howells
... get my army more than three miles inland, so I had to give that up. Before three months had passed I wanted to abdicate the worst way. I wanted to tread a deck again, an' rove around with Bull McGinty. I wanted th' smell o' the open sea an' th' heave o' th' Dashin' Wave underfoot. I was tired o' breadfruit an' guavas an' cocoanuts an' all th' rest o' th' blasted grub that Pinky was feedin' me, an' most of all I was gettin' tired o' Pinky. She would put cocoanut oil in her hair. Yet (here Mr. Gibney's voice vibrated with emotion as he conjured ...
— Captain Scraggs - or, The Green-Pea Pirates • Peter B. Kyne
... and tumble time, delighting in negation and destruction, crushing underfoot the tender blossoms of poetry and faith, living up to its quasi motto, "What will not die of itself, must be put to death," will suddenly come to a stop in its mad career of annihilation. That will mark the ...
— Jewish Literature and Other Essays • Gustav Karpeles
... phase of that heterogeneous crowd—miners in their exaggeratedly rough clothes, brocaded or cotton clad Chinese, gorgeous Spaniards or Chilenos, drunken men, sober men, excited men, empty cans or cases kicking around underfoot, frantic runners for hotels or steamboats trying to push their way by, newsboys and cigar boys darting about and miraculously worming their way through impenetrable places. Atop a portable pair of steps a pale, well-dressed young man was playing thimble-rig on his knees with a gilt pea. ...
— The Gray Dawn • Stewart Edward White
... whined. It settled over the head of the outlaw and instantly was jerked tight. Wild Fire, coming down hard for a second lunge at the green crumpled heap underfoot, was dragged sharply sideways. Another lariat snaked ...
— Tangled Trails - A Western Detective Story • William MacLeod Raine
... walks with open eyes and with bleeding heart through the shambles of our civilisation needs no such fantastic images of the poet to teach him horror. Often and often, when I have seen the young and the poor and the helpless go down before my eyes into the morass, trampled underfoot by beasts of prey in human shape that haunt these regions, it seemed as if God were no longer in His world, but that in His stead reigned a fiend, merciless as Hell, ruthless as the grave. Hard it is, no doubt, to read in Stanley's pages of the slave-traders ...
— "In Darkest England and The Way Out" • General William Booth
... mother endlessly cries for her castaways, I, musing, late in the autumn day, gazing off southward, Alone, held by the eternal self of me that threatens to get the better of me and stifle me, Was seized by the spirit that trails in the lines underfoot, In the ruin, the sediment, that stands for all the water and all the land of ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 30, April, 1860 • Various
... journey (a connoisseur speaks it) is some morning when it has rained well the day or night before, and the soil of the road, where it is not evenly packed, is of about that substance of which the fingers can make fine "tees" for golfing. This is the precise composition of earth and dampness underfoot most sympathetic to the spine, the knee sockets, the muscles, tendons, ligaments of limb, back, neck, breast and abdomen, and the spirit of locomotion in the ancient exercise of walking. On this day the protruding stones have been washed bald ...
— Walking-Stick Papers • Robert Cortes Holliday
... taking advantage of the slight alleviation of heat, I rose and went into the gardens to enjoy a dip in a pool, making, with its surrounding jungle of flowers, one of the pleasantest things about the wood-king's forest citadel. The very earth seemed scorched and baking underfoot—and the pool was gone! It had run as dry as a limekiln; nothing remained of the pretty fall which had fed it but a miserable trickle of drops from the cascade above. Down beyond the town shone a gleam of water where the bitter canal steamed and simmered in the first grey of the morning, but ...
— Gulliver of Mars • Edwin L. Arnold
... the tillers of the soil cursed the traveller who brought the potato, the substitute for bread, the poor man's daily food.... They shook the precious gift out of his outstretched hands, flung it in the mud, trampled it underfoot. ...
— Dream Tales and Prose Poems • Ivan Turgenev
... containing no gold is left on the floor of the drift, and there is then only the labor and expense of bringing the valuable quartz itself, a much less amount in bulk, to the surface of the ground. The accumulating mass of the dead rock underfoot, will then be constantly raising the floor of the drift, and as constantly bringing the miners within convenient working-distance of the receding roof. In the case of "understoping," however, in which the blasts are made from the floor of the drift, it will ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 79, May, 1864 • Various
... dripped from the leaves, and the earth was sodden underfoot. Lofty arches yawned in the sunlight and a silence as of the grave reigned, broken only by an occasional caw from an inquisitive crow, or the ...
— Banked Fires • E. W. (Ethel Winifred) Savi
... request, so at once they all turned and walked back to the City. As it was still muddy underfoot, the Rainbow's Daughter took a cloak from one of the women, partly rolled it, and threw it upon the ground. Then she stepped upon it and began walking forward. The cloak unrolled as she advanced, affording a constant carpet ...
— Sky Island - Being the further exciting adventures of Trot and Cap'n - Bill after their visit to the sea fairies • L. Frank Baum
... planning of this portion of the town. The Pinetum is the name given to a pine-shaded avenue that leads from the Pier to the Arcade Gate. Here, in storm or shine, is shelter from the winter wind or shade from the summer sun, while underfoot the fallen acicular leaves of the pines are impervious to the damp. These Gardens are more than a mile and a half in extent, and are computed to possess some four miles of footpaths. The Upper Gardens are contained within the Branksome estate, and are consequently ...
— Bournemouth, Poole & Christchurch • Sidney Heath
... opened. From the eastern sky swept a sheer sheet of rain. With the first stabbing drops horses turned their heads away, trembling, and no whip or spur could bring them up to it. It drove through mackintoshes as if they were blotting-paper. The air was filled with hissing; underfoot you could see solid earth melting into mud, and mud flowing away in water. It blotted out hill and dale and enemy in one grey curtain of swooping water. You would have said that the heavens had opened to drown the wrath of man. And through it the guns still thundered and the khaki ...
— From Capetown to Ladysmith - An Unfinished Record of the South African War • G. W. Steevens
... anything beyond. And once a gentleman who was a stranger and had ridden a long way, lost his path at night, and his horse took him into the very middle of the wild country, where everything was upside down, and there were dreadful marshes and great stones everywhere, and holes underfoot, and the trees looked like gibbet-posts, because they had great black arms that stretched out across the way. And this strange gentleman was very frightened, and his horse began to shiver all over, and at last it stopped and wouldn't go any farther, and the gentleman got down and tried to lead ...
— The House of Souls • Arthur Machen
... the purple faction, who were cheering and bawling with all their might as the enemy came in sight. In an instant the conflict had begun. The purple banners were the first objects of attack, and disappeared every one of them, in less than five minutes, underfoot. Seen from one of the upper storeys of the houses, the square looked like a great pot full of boiling confusion. By degrees the wearers of purple were driven hard against the "Angel" yard-gates, which opened to receive them; some who were not successful in securing admittance ...
— The Revolution in Tanner's Lane • Mark Rutherford
... he wished for a few moments of solitude. It was a lovely autumn evening. He went into the woods behind the house. The leaves were still thick upon the trees, but most of them had changed to gold, and brown, and red; and the sweet faint odours of those that had fallen, and lay thick underfoot, ascended like a voice from the grave, saying: "Here dwelleth some sadness, but no despair." As he strolled about among them, the whole history of his past life arose before him. This often happens before any change in our history, and is surest ...
— David Elginbrod • George MacDonald
... the people. I was curious enough to enter with the rest, and, I must own, I was quite surprised at the magnificence and taste with which the building was decorated. The walls were covered with silk and velvet hangings, ornamented with gold fringe, while rich carpets were spread underfoot. On large tables, in the middle of the nave, were displayed the most valuable specimens of the church plate, gold and silver vases, immense dishes, plates, and goblets, artistically engraved, and ornamented with embossed ...
— A Woman's Journey Round the World • Ida Pfeiffer
... burned silently, but no one looked up at them. Underfoot, lay the thick, black veil of mud, which the Lane never lifted, but none looked down on it. It was impossible to think of aught but humanity in the bustle and confusion, in the cram and crush, in the wedge and the jam, in the squeezing and shouting, ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... Chinese, their faces and hands dripping red, were trying to get a boat overside when Bedient regained a sort of consciousness. The Truxton was wallowing underfoot—as one in the saddle feels the tendons of his mount give way after a race. The Captain helped a huge Chinese to hold the wheel. The sea was insane.... They got the boat over and tumbled in—a dozen men. A big sea broke them and the little boat ...
— Fate Knocks at the Door - A Novel • Will Levington Comfort
... ensued baffles description. The men hoisted the colours half-mast high. The Union Jack was pulled down and dragged through the mud. The distinctive ribbons worn round the hats of the men as badges were pulled off and trampled underfoot. I saw men crying like children with shame and despair. Some went raving up and down that they were Englishmen no longer; others, with flushed and indignant faces, sat contemplating their impending ruin, 'refusing ...
— South Africa and the Transvaal War, Vol. 1 (of 6) - From the Foundation of Cape Colony to the Boer Ultimatum - of 9th Oct. 1899 • Louis Creswicke
... thankful draughts. It was all most grateful after the scorching desert. The fresh trees meeting in canopy overhead were full of monkeys and bright birds; festooned vines swung their great ropes here and there; long heavy grass carpeted underfoot. ...
— African Camp Fires • Stewart Edward White
... Browning, I want the spring according to the new 'style' (mine), and not the old one of you and the rest of the poets. To me unhappily, the snowdrop is much the same as the snow—it feels as cold underfoot—and I have grown sceptical about 'the voice of the turtle,' the east winds blow so loud. April is a Parthian with a dart, and May (at least the early part of it) a spy in the camp. That is my idea of what you ...
— The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett, Vol. 1 (of 2) 1845-1846 • Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett
... the thicket. A very dense forest of young Callitris trees next impeded us, and were more formidable than even the vines. The day was passed in forcing our way through these various scrubs, the ground declining by a gentle slope only. We next found firmer soil underfoot, that where the Callitris scrub grew having been sandy, and we saw at length, with a feeling of relief, that only brigalow scrub was before us; we ascended gravelly hills, came upon a dry water-course, and then on a chain of ponds. Near one of these ponds, ...
— Journal of an Expedition into the Interior of Tropical Australia • Thomas Mitchell
... the naked, interlacing roots of which made the final stages of the ascent easy and safe. Briskly hauling myself up, I stepped over the edge of the depression, and the solid rock lapsed and slid underfoot. ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield
... Jane Brown had been rather too worried to think about Twenty-two. She had grown accustomed to seeing him coming slowly back toward her ward, his eyes travelling much faster than he did. Not, of course, that she knew that. And to his being, in a way, underfoot a part of every day, after the Head had made rounds and was safely out of the road ...
— Love Stories • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... fool anchored, instead of drifting around underfoot? How does he bear, Mr. Mayo?" He was now back to ...
— Blow The Man Down - A Romance Of The Coast - 1916 • Holman Day
... recorded in New York. The thermometer had dropped to 8 degrees below zero and was still falling. Fifth Avenue glittered, sheathed in frost; traffic police on post stamped and swung their arms to keep from freezing; dry snow underfoot squeaked when trodden on; crossings were greasy with ...
— In Secret • Robert W. Chambers
... out across the gullies from which Greenhow attempted to ambuscade him. Day by day the man would vary the method of approach until almost within rifle range, and then the wind would change or there would be the click of gravel underfoot, or the scrape of a twig on stiff overalls, and suddenly the long oval ears would slope forward, the angular lines flow into grace and motion and the game ...
— Defenders of Democracy • The Militia of Mercy
... real brook sparkled over the stones—somehow or other they were walking through a wood, the same wood on the edge of the fields, that they had driven past on their way to the farm: how quiet it was and how deliciously soft the moss underfoot, while a gentle breeze swayed the ...
— The Pigeon Tale • Virginia Bennett
... rank, beating frantically at the strange missiles, wheeled about and clawed at the rank behind, battling to force its way through. But the rolling masses were not to be denied. After a brief, terrible struggle, the would-be fugitives were borne down and trodden underfoot. The new-comers were greeted with a second discharge of the blazing brands, and the dreadful scene repeated itself. But now there was a difference. For many of the assailants, realizing that there ...
— In the Morning of Time • Charles G. D. Roberts
... and you Italian, I see no reason but self-love why passion for your country could not move you as it did the Ultramontanes. Cast it to earth now, and do not wait for time, since time does not wait for you—trampling such selfishness underfoot, with hate of vice and ...
— Letters of Catherine Benincasa • Catherine Benincasa
... fortunate to find us alone, Mrs. Merritt. With four girls, it is simply terrible—callers underfoot wherever you stir. You must know something about it, with two daughters; so you can fancy it multiplied by two. Really, sometimes I get out of all patience—I haven't a corner of my house to myself on Sundays! But I realize it is the penalty for having ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume X (of X) • Various
... memory is still haunted by the vision of certain hapless creatures who fled blinking from one hole in the wall to another, with little or nothing on, and of other creatures much in liquor and loudly scolding and quarrelling, with squalid bits of childhood scattered about underfoot, and vague shapes of sickness and mutilation, and all the time a buying and selling of ...
— London Films • W.D. Howells
... as he plunged with fresh zeal and ringing warcry into the heart of the fray, he became aware of a knight and his squire that as surely as his shadow, kept but a pace behind him; and the blows that were struck in that fight under the burning sun and with the loose sand of the desert underfoot made the day one to be remembered long by ...
— The Iron Star - And what It saw on Its Journey through the Ages • John Preston True
... of December, when miry snow underfoot and grayish fog all around combined to make Spitalfields a malarious marsh, the Red Beadle, coming in with the week's wages, found to his horror a doctor hovering over Hulda's bed ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... to the open the priest crashed back into cover, and I went to the village of Arti-goth for a drink. It was pleasant to be able to see the horizon all round, as well as the ground underfoot. ...
— Life's Handicap • Rudyard Kipling
... devoted husband to you. Any man who gets the love of a good woman," continued Yates earnestly, plagiarizing Renmark, "gets more than he deserves; but surely such love as mine is not given merely to be scornfully trampled underfoot." ...
— In the Midst of Alarms • Robert Barr
... arise! the day of glory Comes at last your swords to claim. Let us all in future story Rival our forefathers' fame. Underfoot the yoke of tyrants Let us now indignant trample, Mindful of the great example, And avenge our ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Vol. 3 (of 7) • Lord Byron
... that ye might have life.' They can never be so madly ungrateful as to slight a Saviour. Mercy never wooed their stubborn, proud hearts as it does ours. They have abused grace, it is true, but they never trampled mercy underfoot. This more than diabolical sin is reserved for thee, careless sinner. Now thou hearest Christ compassionately say in the text, 'Ye will not come unto Me,' and thou remainest unmoved; but the time cometh when Jesus, who meekly entreats, shall sternly curse; when He who in tender patience ...
— Fletcher of Madeley • Brigadier Margaret Allen
... to advance; the concourse was too great,—it was stifling: carts, waggons, cannon, were overturned; bullocks lay struggling on the ground, unable to rise, and striking out at all who approached them. The cries of persons trodden underfoot echoed everywhere. I was fainting with hunger and terror: I could scarcely see; for daylight was nearly closed. At the corner of a street I perceived two horses tied to a stake, and they completely barred my passage; the crowd pressed them against me; and I was squeezed ...
— Barn and the Pyrenees - A Legendary Tour to the Country of Henri Quatre • Louisa Stuart Costello
... look abroad. I wonder whether I should have been with the party if I had not been lame. I dare say something would have taken off from the pleasure if I had. But how well I can remember what the pleasure is! the jumping stiles—the feel of the turf underfoot,—the running after every flower,—the going wherever one has a fancy to go,— how well I remember it all! And yet it gives me a sort of surprise to see the activity of these children, and how little they are aware of what their ...
— Deerbrook • Harriet Martineau
... with tar-like streaks, knocked down the women, who carried their children on their hips. The provisions in the baskets were pouring out; in walking, pieces of salt, parcels of gum, rotten dates, and gourou nuts were crushed underfoot; and sometimes on vermin-covered bosoms there would hang a slender cord supporting a diamond that the Satraps had sought, an almost fabulous stone, sufficient to purchase an empire. Most of them did not even know what ...
— Salammbo • Gustave Flaubert
... turnings, many unaccountably crooked portions; a road which, if it has a few sign-posts to guide us, bristles with threatening notices, now upon the one side and now upon the other, the very ground underfoot being often full of unsuspected perils threatening ...
— The Story Of Ireland • Emily Lawless
... is marvelous. For years I championed their cause in Russia, and paid the penalty under the governments of Alexander II and III.[365] The sympathy of every unbiased man, to whatever race or religion he may belong, will naturally go out to a race or a nation which is trodden underfoot, as were the ill-starred Jews of Russia ever since the partition of Poland. But equality one would have thought sufficient to meet the grievance. Full equality without reservation. That was the view taken by numerous Jews ...
— The Inside Story Of The Peace Conference • Emile Joseph Dillon
... first-class organiser, Colonel Ward of Islington fame, who with the assistance of Colonel Stoneman systematised the collection and issue of all the food, civil and military, so as to stretch it to its utmost. With rain overhead and mud underfoot, chafing at their own idleness and humiliated by their own position, the soldiers waited through the weary weeks for the relief which never came. On some days there was more shell-fire, on some less; on some there was sniping, on some none; on some they sent ...
— The Great Boer War • Arthur Conan Doyle
... denounce the law; I declare it unconstitutional; that is enough; it shall not be executed. Men in arms are ready to resist its execution. An attempt to enforce it shall cover the land with blood. Elsewhere it may be binding; but here it is trampled underfoot." ...
— The Great Speeches and Orations of Daniel Webster • Daniel Webster
... absolute freedom from human restraints that excited them to the galloping and shouting condition of maniacs; perhaps it was the idea of sweeping over unbounded space in these interminable plains, or the influence of the fresh air around, the sunny blue sky overhead, and the flower-speckled sward underfoot—perhaps it was all these put together, but, whatever the cause, our three travellers commenced their journey at a pace that would have rendered them incapable of further progress in a few hours had they kept it up. Their state of mind was aptly expressed, at ...
— Over the Rocky Mountains - Wandering Will in the Land of the Redskin • R.M. Ballantyne
... sits in the hollow of the tree, but at night she is far too wide-awake to dream. And so great are the owl's powers of sight and hearing, and so swift is her "stoop" from the sky to the ground, that the bank-vole has little chance of escape should a single grass-stalk rustle underfoot when she is hovering near his haunt. Far from being shy and retiring in her disposition, the brown owl, directly night steals over the woodlands, is so fearless that probably no animal smaller than the hare can ...
— Creatures of the Night - A Book of Wild Life in Western Britain • Alfred W. Rees
... longer than it had upon their entering. Surely they should have reached the garden entrance by now. And the surface underfoot remained level instead of slanting upward. Suddenly Ricky gave a ...
— Ralestone Luck • Andre Norton
... hostile days of the year when chatterbox ladies remain miserably in their homes to save the carriage and harness, when clerks' wives hate living in lodgings, when vehicles and people appear in the street with duplicates of themselves underfoot, when bricklayers, slaters, and other out-door journeymen sit in a shed and drink beer, when ducks and drakes play with hilarious delight at their own family game, or spread out one wing after another in the ...
— The Hand of Ethelberta • Thomas Hardy
... icy sheet—this is now peeling off and falling with a clatter to the deck, from which the moist slush is rapidly evaporating. In a few hours the ship will be dry—much to our satisfaction; it is very wretched when, as last night, there is slippery wet snow underfoot and on every ...
— Scott's Last Expedition Volume I • Captain R. F. Scott
... my view, alongside of this pass that lay in front of me. I set my hat hard on my head, clenched my teeth, and went right before me up the face of the sand-wreath. It made a hard climb, being steep, and the sand like water underfoot. But I caught hold at last by the long bent-grass on the brae-top, and pulled myself to a good footing. The same moment men stirred and stood up here and there, six or seven of them, ragged-like knaves, each with a dagger in his hand. The fair truth ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 11 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... little? Your husband, I am ready to admit, stands high in my esteem, and when he wants me he will no doubt send for me. But never again will I cross this threshold uninvited, or enter a house where right is trodden underfoot, where defenceless innocence is ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... new, and, if possible; still more striking objects met the eye, while mysterious sounds struck the ear. Low grumbling noises and gurglings were heard underfoot, as if great boulders were dropping into buried lakes from the roofs of sub-glacial caverns, while, on the surface, the glacier was strewn here and there with debris which had fallen from steep ...
— Rivers of Ice • R.M. Ballantyne
... like fools," she is supposed to say, "and they will worship you; stoop to make up to them, and they will directly tread you underfoot." ...
— The Works of Lord Byron: Letters and Journals, Volume 2. • Lord Byron
... fragrant leaf; on either side Acanthus, and each odorous bushy shrub, Fenced up the verdant wall; each beauteous flower, Iris all hues, roses, and jessamin, Reared high their flourished heads between, and wrought Mosaick; underfoot the violet, Crocus, and hyacinth, with rich inlay Broidered the ground, more coloured than with stone Of costliest emblem: Other creature here, Bird, beast, insect, or worm, durst enter none, Such was their awe of Man. In shadier ...
— Paradise Lost • John Milton
... folk beside their fires For comfort after their wage-work is done, Speak of the King; and Merlin in our time Hath spoken also, not in jest, and sworn Though men may wound him that he will not die, But pass, again to come; and then or now Utterly smite the heathen underfoot, Till these and all men hail him for ...
— Idylls of the King • Alfred, Lord Tennyson
... wild cherry-trees are in bloom, The bloodroot is white underfoot, The serene early light flows on, Touching with glory the world, And flooding the large upper room Where a sick man sleeps. Slowly he opens his eyes, After long weariness, smiles, And stretches arms overhead, While ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... long shingle displayed on one side the legend Librairie Universelle, while the other bore the word [Greek: BIBLIOPOLION], which you may translate as it please your fancy. Inside the narrow doors were craters and trenches and redoubts and dug-outs of books. They lay everywhere, underfoot and overhead. They ran up at the back in a steep glacis with embrasures for curios, and were reflected to infinity in tall dusty pier-glasses propped against the walls. High up under the mansard roof hung an antique oriental candelabrum with one candle. Hanging from twine were ...
— Aliens • William McFee
... back. But not the little girl I had in my mind. So I missed you, thinking of the little girl you were not. We do that all our lives, Robina. We are always looking for the flowers that do not grow, passing by, trampling underfoot, the blossoms round about us. It was the same with Dick. I wanted a naughty boy. Well, Dick was naughty, no one can say that he was not. But it was not my naughtiness. I was prepared for his robbing orchards. I rather hoped ...
— They and I • Jerome K. Jerome
... and a swirl of smoke, in a long succession of way-coaches, and chocolate coloured Pullmans, grimy with the dust of the great deserts of the Southwest. The quivering of the trestle's supports set a tremble in the ground underfoot. The thunder of wheels drowned all sound of the flowing of the creek, and also the noise of the buckskin mare's hoofs descending from the trail upon the gravel about the creek, so that Hilma, turning about after the passage of the train, saw Annixter ...
— The Octopus • Frank Norris
... room, underfoot and overhead, were setting-boards and pill-boxes, blowpipes and crucibles. One could not move without upsetting something; and yet it was here that the Gang came to ...
— Peggy • Laura E. Richards
... strove to stamp it out, then to smother it with damp mould. But as he followed its wormlike course, always ahead he saw the thin, blue signals rising through living moss—everywhere the attenuated spirals creeping from the ground underfoot. ...
— A Young Man in a Hurry - and Other Short Stories • Robert W. Chambers
... duck, and they passed tinder a low roof where water dripped on them, and the rock underfoot was the bed of a shallow stream. After that the track began to rise, and the grade grew so steep that even Ismail, the ...
— King—of the Khyber Rifles • Talbot Mundy
... the pilot had taken possession of the bridge; as we descended, the tender left us with flying handkerchiefs and shrill good-bys; and as we bowed to Miss Werner on the promenade deck, there came a deep, slow throbbing underfoot, and our voyage ...
— The Amateur Cracksman • E. W. Hornung
... impressed by the solemnity of mortal conditions than if they were delving gardens in the greenest corner of England. There are serenades and suppers and much gallantry among the myrtles overhead; and meanwhile the foundation shudders underfoot, the bowels of the mountain growl, and at any moment living ruin may leap sky-high into the moonlight, and tumble man and his merry-making in the dust. In the eyes of very young people, and very dull old ones, there is something indescribably reckless and desperate in such a picture. ...
— Virginibus Puerisque • Robert Louis Stevenson
... ye do not remember to be charitable, ye are as dross, which the refiners do cast out, (it being of no worth), and is trodden underfoot ...
— Principles of Teaching • Adam S. Bennion
... as wet as water now," said she; "but we must not quarrel with anything to-day on that account; and matting will dry on the hill better than at home. If it turns out rotten, we must try and spare a piece of the cloth from overhead, to lay underfoot: but George will feel it more like home, if he has a bit of matting to ...
— The Settlers at Home • Harriet Martineau
... "isn't the roof underfoot? You stand on the roof and it's underfoot. Your overhead expenses may be down in the cellar. Just the same as a scout can do a good turn while he's walking straight ahead. ...
— Roy Blakeley's Camp on Wheels • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... the strife; swords flashed, pikes ran red, shouts of triumph mingled with groans of despair; men went down and were trampled underfoot in the horrible press; we were tossed and buffeted from side to side, but we fought on with savage desperation, and the cry, "For the Admiral!" still rose in triumph. Truly it could not be said that we ...
— For The Admiral • W.J. Marx
... And I saw two young men enter the house and attack the old man, while his companion, whom they did not see, stole out of a back door and fled. And they dashed the wounded old man against the stones, and they marred his visage with savage blows; and they trod him underfoot, and tore from him ...
— Mark Hurdlestone - Or, The Two Brothers • Susanna Moodie
... colonels or secretary under the Crown. Here are the tombs of the Atkinsons, the Jaffreys, the Sherburnes, the Sheafes, the Marshes, the Mannings, the Gardners, and others of the quality. All around you underfoot are tumbled-in coffins, with here and there a rusty sword atop, and faded escutcheons, and crumbling armorial devices. You are moving in ...
— An Old Town By The Sea • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... born in a wild smother of flying snow, which died at dawn to let a pale, heatless sun peer tentatively over the southern mountains, his slanting beams setting everything aglitter. Frost particles vibrated in the air, coruscating diamond dust. Underfoot, on the path beaten betwixt house and stable, the snow crunched and complained as they walked, and in the open where the mad winds had piled it in hard, white windrows. But in the thick woods it lay as it had fallen, full five ...
— North of Fifty-Three • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... of individuals, there sometimes comes a moment when it is possible to make the "Great Refusal" of which Dante sang; and "History teaches that those who decline, or prove unworthy of, the leading role which is offered to them, are trodden mercilessly underfoot." In closing the German edition of my book with these words, I expressed the conviction that "for a State such as Austria there could only be one choice"; but unhappily her statesmen have preferred the fatal alternative.[1] "The historic mission of the House of ...
— The War and Democracy • R.W. Seton-Watson, J. Dover Wilson, Alfred E. Zimmern,
... cried Jean-Christophe. "I have made my friend weep!... Heap insults on me, beat me, trample me underfoot! I am a wretch! I do not deserve ...
— Jean-Christophe, Vol. I • Romain Rolland
... brilliant evening star in the early twilight, and underfoot the earth was half frozen. It was Christmas Eve. Also the War was over, and there was a sense of relief that was almost a new menace. A man felt the violence of the nightmare released now into the general air. Also there had been another ...
— Aaron's Rod • D. H. Lawrence
... things, and God made him ruler over many things. For out of those monasteries sprang—what did not spring? They restored again and again sound law and just government, when the good old Teutonic laws, and the Roman law also, was trampled underfoot amid the lawless strife of ambition and fury. Under their shadow sprang up the towns with their corporate rights, their middle classes, their artizan classes. They were the physicians, the alms-givers, the relieving officers, the schoolmasters of the middle-age world. They first taught ...
— The Roman and the Teuton - A Series of Lectures delivered before the University of Cambridge • Charles Kingsley
... a mental upheaval of later life, the basis of that theological training has made itself felt to me, as one feels rocks or stumps or solid things underfoot in the sickly swaying of wet sands. I may not always believe all I was taught, but what I was taught has helped me to what I believe. I certainly think of those ...
— McClure's Magazine, March, 1896, Vol. VI., No. 4. • Various
... is more than my much-inventing spirit can suppose. For my part, I travel not to go anywhere, but to go. I travel for travel's sake. The great affair is to move; to feel the needs and hitches of our life more nearly; to come down off this feather-bed of civilization, and find the globe granite underfoot and strewn with cutting flints. Alas, as we get up in life, and are more preoccupied with our affairs, even a holiday is a thing that must be worked for. To hold a pack upon a pack-saddle against a gale out of the freezing ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 1 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... yellow ankle-pantaloons, and flung red shoulder-cloak; and all in the heavily-wooded park, and all about the low rock-steps up the hill, profusions of man-dragora; and from the rock-steps to the house a narrow long avenue of acacias, mossy underfoot, that mingle overhead, the house standing about four yards from the edge of the perpendicular sea-cliff, whence one can see the Speranzas main top-mast, and broken mizzen-mast-head, in her quiet ...
— The Purple Cloud • M.P. Shiel
... Wichita Falls, where there was shelter overhead and pavements underfoot, the sheep shearing ...
— Flowing Gold • Rex Beach
... that phase passed. Early in the game he found that there was small percentage in getting into crowds. It led to all sorts of complications, including the starting of minor rows, one person thinking another was pushing when it was simply a matter of Crowley trying to get out from underfoot. ...
— The Common Man • Guy McCord (AKA Dallas McCord Reynolds)
... Williams, as he suggested, at the little store, while they, tugging their basket between them, found and followed the path by the Rushing Water. It was as alluring as ever—berries still clung to the undergrowth, gleaming red against the dark of the fir trees; the dead leaves underfoot crackled softly as though protesting their intrusion; there was a whirring of wings and always the ...
— Red-Robin • Jane Abbott
... are the worst months of the Russian year-especially the Petrograd year. Under dull grey skies, in the shortening days, the rain fell drenching, incessant. The mud underfoot was deep, slippery and clinging, tracked everywhere by heavy boots, and worse than usual because of the complete break-down of the Municipal administration. Bitter damp winds rushed in from the Gulf of Finland, and the chill fog rolled through the streets. ...
— Ten Days That Shook the World • John Reed
... no meaning, I got my eyes down to my canvas and began to peck at it perfunctorily, when a snapping of twigs underfoot and a swishing of branches in the thicket warned me of a second intruder, not approaching by the path, but forcing a way toward it through the underbrush, and very briskly too, judging by ...
— The Guest of Quesnay • Booth Tarkington
... nothing. Brion turned instantly and did as he was bidden. The buildings grew further apart until he realized from the sand underfoot that he was back in the planet-wide desert. It could be a trap—he hadn't recognized the voice behind the whisper—yet he had to take this chance. A darker shape appeared in the dark night near him, and a burning hot ...
— Planet of the Damned • Harry Harrison
... poor soul! it is the night—the night; Against thy door drifts up the silent snow, Blocking thy threshold: 'Fall' thou sayest, 'fall, fall Cold snow, and lie and be trod underfoot. Am not I fallen? wake up and pipe, O wind, Dull wind, and heat and bluster at my door: Merciful wind, sing me a hoarse rough song, For there is other music made to-night That I would fain not hear. Wake, thou still sea, Heavily ...
— Poems by Jean Ingelow, In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Jean Ingelow
... the car, and others opened the door and took their coats. The first thing they saw was a huge, fireplace, a fireplace a dozen feet across, made of great boulders, and with whole sections of a pine tree blazing in it. Underfoot was polished hardwood, with skins of bear and buffalo. The firelight flickered upon shields and battle-axes and broad-swords, hung upon the oaken pillars; while between them were tapestries, picturing the Song of Roland and the battle of Roncesvalles. ...
— The Metropolis • Upton Sinclair
... assist others who prosecuted them, nay would even procure such, as he did the Petilii against Scipio; but not being able to destroy him, by reason of the nobleness of his family, and the real greatness of his mind, which enabled him to trample all calumnies underfoot, Cato at last would meddle no more with him; yet joining with the accusers against Scipio's brother Lucius, he succeeded in obtaining a sentence against him, which condemned him to the payment of a large sum ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... the ground at such a clip that on the third day, with screech of whistle and clang of bell, we slowed at Oakland pier, where a crowd was cheering like the end of a race—which it was—and kodak fiends were underfoot as if I'd ...
— The Range Dwellers • B. M. Bower
... against him all the while. My sister caught my wrist—I pushed her away. Tom Tot laid his hand on my shoulder—I threw it off with an oath. My heart was in a flame of rage and resentment. That this castaway should succour our enemy! I saw, again, a great, wet sweep of deck, glistening underfoot—heard the rush of wind, the swish of breaking seas, the throb and clank of engines, the rain on the panes—once again breathed the thick, gray air of a cabin where two men sat at cards—heard the curse and blow and outcry—saw my ...
— Doctor Luke of the Labrador • Norman Duncan
... above the pine-wood. They reached and passed the spot where she and Scott had turned back on their first walk together. The snow crunched crisply underfoot. The ascent was becoming more ...
— Greatheart • Ethel M. Dell
... Podgie d'Auvergne to the pebbles underfoot, returning to his hurt like a sow to her wallow, "supposing I was sitting there with her on that seat and some fellow came along and insulted her!" He considered unhinging possibilities with a brow of thunder. "Damn it!" ...
— The Long Trick • Lewis Anselm da Costa Ritchie
... institutions, closely connected with the institution of property, enabled the foreign conquerors to oppress the children of the soil. A cruel penal code, cruelly enforced, guarded the privileges, and even the sports, of the alien tyrants. Yet the subject race, though beaten down and trodden underfoot, still made its sting felt. Some bold men, the favourite heroes of our oldest ballads, betook themselves to the woods, and there, in defiance of curfew laws and forest laws, waged a predatory war against their oppressors. Assassination was ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 1 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... across miles of dark plain, until he came to the empty channel of the stream by which they had sat in March. Underfoot not a blade of grass or green thing; no stranger would have believed that living thing had ever grown there. The flocks and herds had long since gone to the mountain pastures. The dry channel between shelvy banks of gravel showed white in the unclouded yet dull ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 9 • Various
... been held close to the earth by the smoke-fog it bred. Every-thing was damply streaked with the soot: the walls of the houses, inside and out, the gray curtains at the windows, the windows themselves, the dirty cement and unswept asphalt underfoot, the very sky overhead. Throughout this murky season he continued his explorations, never seeing a face he knew—for, on Sunday, those whom he remembered, or who might remember him, were not apt to be found within the limits of the town, but were congenially occupied with the new ...
— The Magnificent Ambersons • Booth Tarkington |
