"Shoeless" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... difference of shoes and stockings!' Trotty thought. But his heart yearned towards the child, for the love of those same shoeless and stockingless boys, predestined (by the Alderman) to turn out bad, who might have been the ...
— The Chimes • Charles Dickens
... only partially, but now it was for his own soul to settle how long and how often it would afflict itself, and it determined to do so at every opportunity. And the great opportunity came soon. Not the Black Fast when the congregation sat shoeless on the floor of the synagogue, weeping and wailing for the destruction of Jerusalem, but the great White Fast, the terrible Day of Atonement commanded in the Bible. It was preceded by a long month of solemn prayer, ushering in the New Year. ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... human breath and perspiration, stale beer, the sweet sickly smell of gin, and the sour and hardly less disgusting one of new cloth. On the floor, thick with dust and dirt, scraps of stuff and ends of thread, sat some dozen haggard, untidy, shoeless men, with a mingled look of care and recklessness that made me shudder. The windows were tight closed to keep out the cold winter air; and the condensed breath ran in streams down the panes, chequering the dreary outlook of chimney-tops and smoke. ...
— Alton Locke, Tailor And Poet • Rev. Charles Kingsley et al
... heap of rags upheld by the three men groaned. Never was seen so destitute and demoralised an Afghan. He was turbanless, shoeless, caked with dirt, and all but dead with rough handling. Hira Singh started slightly at the sound of the man's pain. Dirkovitch took ...
— Soldier Stories • Rudyard Kipling
... bed during the winter evenings, because I could not afford a fire." Travelling on foot to Bath, he there obtained an engagement as a cellarman, but shortly after we find him back in the metropolis again almost penniless, shoeless, and shirtless. He succeeded, however, in obtaining employment as a cellarman at the London Tavern, where it was his duty to be in the cellar from seven in the morning until eleven at night. His health broke down under this confinement in the dark, added to the heavy work; and he ...
— Self Help • Samuel Smiles
... took his ease in his house. The chair had been a recent gift from an anonymous admirer whose political necessities, the Honorable Mr. Linder idly surmised, had not yet driven him to reveal his identity. Its occupant stretched his shoeless feet, as was his custom, upon the broad window-sill, flooded by the seasonable warmth of sunshine, the while he considered the ripening mayoralty situation. He found it highly satisfactory. In the language of his inner man, ...
— Average Jones • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... obeisance from man to man was wonderful, and the overpowering delight in the faces of the pilgrims was striking, as they accomplished the deeds of reverence they had come so many hundreds of miles shoeless to perform. Sometimes as many as three thousand pilgrims arrive in ...
— Through Finland in Carts • Ethel Brilliana Alec-Tweedie
... he fired, making an incurable wound in the "porcupig," which, nevertheless, tried harder than ever to escape. I lay listening, when, close on the heels of the report of the gun, came excited shouts for a revolver. Snatching up my Smith and Wesson, I hastened, shoeless and hatless, to the scene of action, wondering what was up. I found my companion struggling to detain, with the end of the gun, an uncertain object that was trying to crawl off into the darkness. "Look out!" said Orville, as he saw my ...
— Locusts and Wild Honey • John Burroughs
... thin and consumptive; but still she did heavy work at the houses around, day by day. Well, one fine day a commercial traveller betrayed her and carried her off; and a week later he deserted her. She came home dirty, draggled, and shoeless; she had walked for a whole week without shoes; she had slept in the fields, and caught a terrible cold; her feet were swollen and sore, and her hands torn and scratched all over. She never had been pretty even before; but her eyes were quiet, ...
— The Idiot • (AKA Feodor Dostoevsky) Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... to the foot of the stair. Quietly, in his shoeless feet, he began to climb them. He wanted to cry out Marette's name even before he came to the top. He wanted to reach up to her with his arms outstretched. But he came silently to her door ...
— The Valley of Silent Men • James Oliver Curwood
... joined them, and they stood talking together upon the state of affairs in Spain, and of the advance of the Spanish army on Madrid, which was then just taking place. As they did so two very ragged, unkempt Spanish boys, shoeless and wretched-looking, limped up, and began to beg. General Hill shook his head, and the ...
— The Young Buglers • G.A. Henty
... returned through Bontoc, after following Aguinaldo into the heart of the Quiangan area, he left in the pueblo some sixty shoeless men under a volunteer lieutenant. The lieutenant promptly appointed an Ilokano presidente, vice-presidente, secretary, and police force in Bontoc and also in Sagada, and when the soldiers left in a few weeks he gave seven guns to the "officials" in Bontoc ...
— The Bontoc Igorot • Albert Ernest Jenks
... Totagalpa, they were still drinking "chicha;" and I shall not forget the solemn satisfied look of the shoeless corporation, as they sipped their drink in sight of their townspeople, now and then singling out some friend, to whom they signed to come and quaff at the big bowl. The warm drink had loosened the tongue of the solemn alcalde. He came, ...
— The Naturalist in Nicaragua • Thomas Belt
... Though he was shoeless, he was inspired with lofty ideas of freedom such as many reared in cities never dream about. The father had to make a long journey to some far-away place for the shoes. The day before starting all the children were made to put their ...
— Sustained honor - The Age of Liberty Established • John R. Musick,
... like sea-wreck on a broken barrel. Israel was in his right mind. He was sitting by the door of his house, with a dejected air, a hopeless look, but the slow sad eyes of reason. His clothing was one worn and torn kaftan; his feet were shoeless, and his head was bare. But so grand a head the Mahdi thought he had never beheld before. Not until then had he truly seen him, for the poverty and misery that sat on him only made his face stand out the clearer. It was the face of a man who for good or ill, for struggle or submission, had ...
— The Scapegoat • Hall Caine
... Cossacks, who, though 80 years old, was ambitious of independence to be won for him by the prowess of Charles XII. Instead of 30,000 men Mazeppa brought to the King of Sweden only himself as a fugitive with 40 or 50 attendants; but in the spring of 1809 he procured for the wayworn and part shoeless army of Charles the alliance of the Saporogue Cossacks. Although doubled by these and by Wallachians, the army was in all but 20,000 strong with which he then determined to besiege Pullowa; and there, after two months' siege, he ventured to give battle to a relieving army ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... severity of the magistrates. Not long ago, however, I witnessed a sad and striking scene of it at Twickenham. It was on a Sunday morning. Several boys surrounded two players, one of the latter being about 14 years of age, well dressed, and the other of about 10 years, all in tatters and shoeless. The younger urchin had a long run of good luck, whereat his antagonist exhibited much annoyance, swearing intemperately. At length, however, his luck changed in turn, and he went on winning until the former ...
— The Gaming Table: Its Votaries and Victims - Volume II (of II) • Andrew Steinmetz
... marched through Cavetown to Boonsboro', where he bivouacked for the night. Stuart, it was ascertained, marched till about midnight to the small town of Leitersburgh, where he rested his worn and wearied command. His condition was really pitiable. A large number of his men were mounted on shoeless horses, whose leanness showed that they had made many a long march through and from Virginia. Or, as was the case with a large proportion of them, they had fat horses, which were stolen from the fields and stalls of the invaded States, but, being entirely unused ...
— Three Years in the Federal Cavalry • Willard Glazier
... chattering, rattling noise that an alarmed camp alone produces. The shrill commands of the little officers in frantic endeavor to steady their men, the patter of many shoeless feet, the breaking of rifle-stacks, and the clanking of bayonets and swords, made a medley of camp music that was ...
— Bamboo Tales • Ira L. Reeves
... fascination, Sir James held out his hand to the first comely lass he saw disengaged, and in spite of the steel-guarded boots that he wore, answered foot for foot, spring for spring, to the deft manoeuvres of her shoeless feet, with equal agility and greater grace. Nigel frowned more than ever at this exhibition, and when the knight had led his panting partner to a seat, and called for a tankard of ale for her refreshment, he remonstrated more seriously ...
— The Caged Lion • Charlotte M. Yonge
... cars have the words "Descalcos Bagagem" (literally, "For the Shoeless and Baggage") printed across them. In these the poorer classes and the tieless can ride for half-price. And to make room for the constantly inflowing people from Europe, two great hills are being removed and "cast ...
— Through Five Republics on Horseback • G. Whitfield Ray
... dancing, contorting her body in the small circle of light formed by a flickering lanthorn which was hung across the street from house to house, striking the muddy pavement with her shoeless feet, all to the sound of a be-ribboned tambourine which she struck now and again with her small, grimy hand. From time to time she paused, held out the tambourine at arm's length, and went the round of the spectators, asking for ...
— The League of the Scarlet Pimpernel • Baroness Orczy
... head seemed to be stretched a canopy, made by some Eastern magic, of a mixture of colours woven by the hands of Love and Hate, Passion and Revenge, underneath which she stood disheartened, dishevelled, in crumpled clothes and shoeless feet, with fear-distended eyes in a fatigue-shadowed face, searching vainly for something alive and near, be it human, dog, ...
— Desert Love • Joan Conquest
... tide over five months for a family of eight. These five months had to be caught up in some way, so every month his salary, depreciated ten per cent by the change, had gone across the waters. He wore camisas and no shoes, he stole bananas. And his value, shoeless, camisa-clothed, was sixty dollars a month. He was just so much capital. He had to be ...
— The Spinner's Book of Fiction • Various
... my boat had drifted once more across the schooner's bows. I pulled it round until its nose touched the anchor chain, and made the painter fast. Then slipping my hand up the chain, I stood with my shoeless feet upon the gunwale by the bows. Still grasping the chain, I sprang and swung myself out to the jib-boom that, with the cant of the vessel, was not far above the water: then pressed my left foot in between the stay and the brace, while I hung for ...
— Dead Man's Rock • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... will see, at any rate, if I can obtain some money from the political agents. I have next to nothing in my military chest, and our forces are at a standstill for the want of it. But that does not seem to matter. While our troops are ill-fed, ragged, almost shoeless, and unpaid, every Spanish or Portuguese rascal who holds out his hand can get it filled with gold. As to arms, they are in the first place wanted for the purpose of the Portuguese militia, who are likely to be a good deal more useful ...
— With Moore At Corunna • G. A. Henty
... been when my weight was so fantastically far from hinting at later developments. But the romance of the hour was particularly in what I have called the eccentric note, the fact that the children, my entertainers, riveted my gaze to stockingless and shoeless legs and feet, conveying somehow at the same time that they were not poor and destitute but rich and provided—just as I took their garden-feast for a sign of overflowing food—and that their state as of children of nature was a refinement of freedom and grace. ...
— A Small Boy and Others • Henry James
... seventeen, to overtake them—he by a good road, they by a new and half-worked one. Miles, therefore, counted for much that night, and though many of the men wore rags wrapped about their feet, for want of shoes, and the shoeless artillery horses had to be dragged or pushed along over the slippery places, to prevent their falling, the column pushed on with unflagging energy ...
— The Campaign of Trenton 1776-77 • Samuel Adams Drake
... door I stumbled over a man at the threshold. He was sobbing hysterically and his arms flapped like the wings of a goose. It was Wali Dad, Agnostic and Unbeliever, shoeless, turbanless, and frothing at the mouth, the flesh on his chest bruised and bleeding from the vehemence with which he had smitten himself. A broken torch-handle lay by his side, and his quivering lips murmured, "Ya Hasan! Ya Hussain!" as I stooped over ...
— Indian Tales • Rudyard Kipling
... corporal, too, was signalling, he and his men at a halt. They, too, had made discoveries: the track, as it later developed, of two shod horses pursued by shoeless Indian ponies. Southeastward this trail went up a long, shallow ravine, then veered round to the south. It told of fugitives and, for a time, of pursuers. Ten minutes after the first discovery, down in the sandy ...
— To The Front - A Sequel to Cadet Days • Charles King
... in Paris took no exception; and on February sixth, 1794, he was confirmed, receiving an assignment for service in the new and regenerated Army of Italy, which had replaced as if by magic the ragged, shoeless, ill-equipped, and half-starved remnants of troops in and about Nice that in the previous year had been dignified by the same title. This gambler had not drawn the first prize in the lottery, but what he had secured was enough to justify his course, ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. I. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... taken in the very act; and their shoeless feet, their confession of a guilty conscience, were reported ...
— Miss Ashton's New Pupil - A School Girl's Story • Mrs. S. S. Robbins
... shelter of forest trees and stood on broken ground, without a path to guide them. Vittoria did her best to laugh at her mishaps in walking, and compared herself to a Capuchin pilgrim; but she was unused to going bareheaded and shoeless, and though she held on bravely, the strong beams of the sun and the stony ways warped her strength. She had to check fancies drawn from Arabian tales, concerning the help sometimes given by genii of the air and enchanted birds, that were so ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... Hatless, shoeless, and coatless were the oafs who surrounded the object of his speculations, some lying flat, with elbows forward and chins to fist; some creeping and scrambling about her to get her notice, or fire her into a rage; some squatting at an easy distance with ribaldries to exchange. ...
— The Spanish Jade • Maurice Hewlett
... Mulcahy, wearing the corporal's stripe, went out in a troopship and joined Her Majesty's Royal Loyal Musketeers, commonly known as the "Mavericks," because they were masterless and unbranded cattle - sons of small farmers in County Clare, shoeless vagabonds of Kerry, herders of Ballyvegan, much wanted "moonlighters" from the bare rainy headlands of the south coast, officered by O'Mores, Bradys, Hills, Kilreas, and the like. Never to outward seeming was there more promising material ...
— This is "Part II" of Soldiers Three, we don't have "Part I" • Rudyard Kipling
... accepted by the townsfolk. She wrangled with and fought the schoolboys with keener invective and quite as powerful arm. She followed the trails with a woodman's craft, and the master had met her before, miles away, shoeless, stockingless, and bareheaded, on the mountain road. The miners' camps along the stream supplied her with subsistence during these voluntary pilgrimages, in freely offered alms. Not but that a larger protection had been previously extended to M'liss. The Rev. Joshua McSnagley, "stated" preacher, ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. X (of X) - America - II, Index • Various
... the Indies for want of boots, say that, 'If a thing is easy, it is never done?' So everything went well—except the boots. I beheld a vision of thee, fully dressed, but without a hat! appareled in waistcoats, yet shoeless! and bethought me of sending a pair of moccasins given to Florine as a curiosity by an American. Florine offered the huge sum of forty francs, that we might try our luck at play for you. Nathan, Blondet, and I had such luck (as we were ...
— Eve and David • Honore de Balzac
... written, or—I hope I may add—that I know them to be good. Apropos—when I first opened upon the just mentioned poem, in a careless tone I said to Mary as if putting a riddle "What is good for a bootless bean?" to which with infinite presence of mind (as the jest book has it) she answered, a "shoeless pea." It was the first joke she ever made. Joke the 2d I make you distinguish well in your old preface between the verses of Dr. Johnson of the man in the Strand, and that from the babes of the wood. I was thinking whether taking your own ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 5 • Edited by E. V. Lucas
... Scotland, and tramped from Granton to Yorkshire, where an accidental encounter with an old acquaintance tempted him to linger at Raynham. The two tramps, scoundrels both, and both alike penniless and shoeless, had stood side by side at the gates of the park, to see the stately ...
— Run to Earth - A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... amounting, as it did, to more than two for one. But this was unavoidable. The Southern army had been worn out by their long marching and fighting. Portions of the command were scattered all over the roads of Northern Virginia, wearily dragging their half-clothed limbs and shoeless feet toward Winchester, whither they were directed to repair. This was the explanation of the fact that, in spite of the ardent desire of the whole army to participate in the great movement northward, Lee had in line of battle at Sharpsburg "less than ...
— A Life of Gen. Robert E. Lee • John Esten Cooke
... their season, in order to administer them as required to the people of the farm. When she was within a few feet of Julien, she recognized him, and her brow clouded over; but almost immediately she noticed his altered features and that one of his feet was shoeless, and divined that something unusual had happened. Going straight ...
— A Woodland Queen, Complete • Andre Theuriet
... influence over the population of one of the worst slums in London. Mr. Thomas Wright, the "Journeyman Engineer," has already told in print elsewhere the story of Runciman's descent into the depths of Deptford, how he set about humanising the shoeless, starving, conscience-little waifs who were drafted into his school, and how, before many months had passed, he never walked through the squalid streets of his own quarter without two or three loving little fellows all in tatters trying to touch the hem of his garment, while a group ...
— Side Lights • James Runciman
... cock crew, she heard The sound o' shoeless feet; Whan the red cock crew, she heard the door, And a ...
— Alec Forbes of Howglen • George MacDonald
... slipping, as the ship pitches and lurches about. Meanwhile, the spade-man stands on the sheet itself, perpendicularly chopping it into the portable horse-pieces. This spade is sharp as hone can make it; the spademan's feet are shoeless; the thing he stands on will sometimes irresistibly slide away from him, like a sledge. If he cuts off one of his own toes, or one of his assistants', would you be very much astonished? Toes are scarce among ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... with shoeless inhabitants, monotonously flat, few buildings for dread of earthquake being over one story, even the national palace and cathedral sitting low and squat. An elevation of five thousand feet gives it a pleasant June weather, but life moves with a drowsy, self-contented ...
— Tramping Through Mexico, Guatemala and Honduras - Being the Random Notes of an Incurable Vagabond • Harry A. Franck
... obtained from it a better and more enduring knowledge of its events and horrors and of the actors in that great national tragedy, than I have received from all subsequent reading. I remember also how happy I was in being able to borrow the books of a Mr. Keyes after a two-mile tramp through the snow, shoeless, my feet swaddled ...
— How to Succeed - or, Stepping-Stones to Fame and Fortune • Orison Swett Marden
... becomes, in Maori legend, a woman, one Rona by name. This lady, it seems, once had occasion to go by night for water to a stream. In her hand she carried an empty calabash. Stumbling in the dark over stones and the roots of trees she hurt her shoeless feet and began to abuse the moon, then hidden behind clouds, hurling at it some such epithet as "You old tattooed face, there!" But the moon-goddess heard, and reaching down caught up the insulting Rona, calabash and all, into the sky. In vain the frightened ...
— The Long White Cloud • William Pember Reeves
... English troops were, as we have seen, mere shoeless, shivering, starving vagabonds. The Earl had generously advanced very large sums of money from his own pocket to relieve their necessity. The States, on the other hand, had voluntarily increased the monthly contribution of 200,000 florins, to which their contract ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... sack-maker. Here he continued to work day and night until desperation, long threatened, seized upon him. Court journals grew tired of articles showing little talent for political discussion, and he became ragged and almost shoeless. In the only despondent letter ever sent to his mother, he wrote of having stumbled into an open grave one day while walking in St. Pancras's Churchyard. The Angells, touched with his poverty and ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 7 of 8 • Charles F. (Charles Francis) Horne
... eyes travelled over the picturesque figure on the bed, noting everything—the shoeless foot, the stockings wet to some inches above the small ankles, the mud-stained skirt, the bedraggled cloak saturated for quite a foot of its length. Her hair had lost its comb and had fallen about her shoulders. Mrs. Fenton frowned as she saw ...
— Madame Flirt - A Romance of 'The Beggar's Opera' • Charles E. Pearce
... the Crusades had made the glory of France: her old NOBLESSE. Their ancestors had oppressed the people, had crushed them under the scarlet heels of their dainty buckled shoes, and now the people had become the rulers of France and crushed their former masters—not beneath their heel, for they went shoeless mostly in these days—but a more effectual weight, the knife ...
— The Scarlet Pimpernel • Baroness Orczy
... members are expected to join. It is to one of these shouts of the negro children that Mr. Russell alludes in his Diary when describing a visit which he paid to a plantation near Charleston in April, 1861. He speaks of the children as a set of 'ragged, dirty, and shoeless urchins, who came in shyly, oftentimes running away till they were chased and captured, dressed into line with much difficulty, and, then, shuffling their flat feet, clapping their hands, and drawling out in a monotonous sort of chant something about the 'River Jawdam.'' Such ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 2, August, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... a little smile appeared, and then a merrier, and in a moment she was laughing with him. And certainly for a man commonly most careful of his appearance, he cut a comical enough figure, with his shoeless feet and tangled hair, and the great ill-fitting sheep-skin coat huddled round him to hide the ...
— Vandrad the Viking - The Feud and the Spell • J. Storer Clouston
... she could not guess. Averil was sound asleep, breathing deeply and regularly, so that it was; a pleasure to listen to her; and Mary did not fear wakening her by a shoeless voyage of discovery to the place whence ...
— The Trial - or, More Links of the Daisy Chain • Charlotte M. Yonge
... remained, doing duty in the trenches, until the 24th of September, at which time the 10th Corps marched to the rear to rest a few days preparatory to an advance upon Richmond then in contemplation. While here our ragged, dirty, and shoeless men were clad, washed, and shod as rapidly ...
— The Black Phalanx - African American soldiers in the War of Independence, the - War of 1812, and the Civil War • Joseph T. Wilson
... the men of the North, under intense suffering for liberty's sake, has been almost godlike! History has so recorded it. Who comprised that gallant army, without food, without pay shelterless, shoeless, penniless, and almost naked, in that dreadful winter,—the midnight of our Revolution,—whose wanderings could be traced by their blood-tracks in the snow; whom no arts could seduce, no appeal lead astray, no sufferings ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... invasion the Confederate soldiers had endured every privation; one-half were in rags, and thousands barefooted had marked their path with crimson. Yet shoeless, hatless, and ragged, they had marched and fought with a heroism like that of the Revolutionary times. But they met their equals at Antietam. Jackson's and Hooker's men fought until both sides were nearly exterminated, and when the broken fragments fell back, the windrows of dead showed ...
— A Brief History of the United States • Barnes & Co.
... back these misguided souls, neither threats nor promises, neither gentleness nor violence, nor anything else is now successful. The Penguin clergy pine in desolation; our country priests, reduced to following the humblest of trades, are shoeless, and compelled to live upon such scraps as they can pick up. In our ruined churches the rain of heaven falls upon the faithful, and during the holy offices they can hear the noise of stones falling from the arches. The tower of the ...
— Penguin Island • Anatole France
... same old priests, and halt old men and maimed, who all day and night cower continually before the altars, and in these old crypts; and such folks as wear old amices, and old clouted frocks, and naked folks and shoeless, and those covered with sores, who perish of hunger and thirst, and of cold, and of wretchedness. These be they that go into Paradise; with them have I naught to make. But into Hell would I fain go; for into Hell fare the goodly clerks, and goodly knights that fall in tourneys and great wars, and ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner
... Ludovicka extended toward the Prince her shoeless little foot. He took it between his hands and breathed on it with his glowing breath, and pressed upon it ...
— The Youth of the Great Elector • L. Muhlbach
... that he meant to draw back; he spoke truth in saying he would have died first; he was a good swimmer, and he had no serious doubt of his ability to reach the shore, but he did not fancy being dragged out on a pier drenched and shoeless, and having to give an account of himself. And in that case Corinna would win out anyway. The only way he could really get the better of her would be by committing suicide, and he was not prepared to go ...
— The Deaves Affair • Hulbert Footner
... that Peter would get talking to the rest of the crew, and hear something about Captain Hawkes which might induce him to go on shore again, the last boy having run from the ship, though shoeless and penniless, rather than endure ...
— The History of Little Peter, the Ship Boy • W.H.G. Kingston
... that the wanderer Neither saw nor heard the banker, Though his tread was swift and heavy, For a mighty storm was raging! Yet above the noise and howling Of the wind and rain and tempest, The outcast heard the shoeless footfall Of a little homeless brother, Lost amid the blinding shadows. And soon they slept, secure and thankful, Though the maddening storm grew fiercer,— Slept, but dreamed: The window rose a richer mansion Than ever sheltered Wall-street banker— A castle wrought of childish fancy, ...
— The Loom of Life • Cotton Noe
... pipe between his teeth, lay Jimmy Crocker. He was shoeless and in his shirt-sleeves. There was a crumpled evening paper on the floor beside the bed. He seemed to be taking his rest after the labours of a ...
— Piccadilly Jim • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... hundred miles, from the south side of the Catawba to the north side of the Dan, in which the whole State of North Carolina was crossed by the ragged and largely shoeless army, was the salvation of the Southern States. In Greene's camp there was only joy and congratulation. Little did the soldiers heed their tattered garments, their shoeless feet, their lack of blankets and of regular food, in their pride at having outwitted the ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 2 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... in our past except where it had touched his future. I think his mother held his hand beneath the table. Imam Din—shoeless, out of respect to the floors—brought him his medicine, poured it drop by ...
— Actions and Reactions • Rudyard Kipling
... even a half-donkey. Of course, the more sensible animal of the two is knocked up; whilst the rider assumes the airs of one versed in the haute cole. The only difficulty, by no fault of the mules, was the matter of irons: shoeless they could travel only in sand; and, as has been said, the ...
— The Land of Midian, Vol. 1 • Richard Burton
... was a well-equipped communications room. Brion had taken a quick look at it when he had first toured the building. The duty operator had earphones on—though only one of the phones covered an ear—and was monitoring through the bands. His shoeless feet were on the edge of the table, and he was eating a thick sandwich held in his free hand. His eyes bulged when he saw Brion in the doorway and he jumped into a ...
— Planet of the Damned • Harry Harrison
... sentry—the strangest thing I ever saw in the guise of a soldier—a brown Indian of the coast, dressed in some rags that were a uniform once, shoeless, filthy in the extreme, and armed with an amazing old flint-lock. He is bad enough to look at, in all conscience, and really worse than he looks, for—no doubt—he has been pressed into the service against his will, and hates ...
— Anahuac • Edward Burnett Tylor
... them together, for it was time to put up the shop shutters. It seemed just like the night when he had followed Susan and the little girl, and loitered outside in the doorway opposite, to see what would happen after she had left her in the shop. He fancied he was a ragged, shoeless boy again, nobody loving him, or caring for him, and that he saw old Oliver and Dolly standing on the step, looking out for the mother, who had gone away, never, never to see her darling again. Tony's heart was very full; and when he tried to whistle, he was obliged to give it up, lest ...
— Alone In London • Hesba Stretton
... as I shall tell thee now: Thither go these same old priests, and halt old men and maimed, who all day and night cower continually before the altars and in the crypts; and such folk as wear old amices and old clouted frocks, and naked folk and shoeless, and covered with sores, perishing of hunger and thirst and of cold, and of little ease. These be they that go into Paradise; with them I have naught to make. But into Hell would I fain go; for into Hell fare the goodly clerks, and goodly knights that fall in tourneys ...
— A Study of Poetry • Bliss Perry
... wandering about among ash-bins and apple-bins, reservoirs and coal-heaps and cobwebs, she discovers the hanging-shelf which has been the ignis fatuus of her search. Something extremely cold crossing her shoeless feet at this crisis suggests pleasant fancies of a rat. Keturah is ashamed to confess that she has never in all the days of the years of her pilgrimage set eyes upon a rat. Depending solely upon her imagination, her conception of that animal is a cross between an alligator and ...
— Men, Women, and Ghosts • Elizabeth Stuart Phelps
... well, as far as it went; but she might as well have supplied us with some substitute for the objectionable articles, for it was a bitterly cold night, and the highly polished wood passages and steep staircase felt very cold to our shoeless feet. The apartment we were shown into was so exact a type of a room in any Japanese house, that I may as well describe it once for all. The woodwork of the roof and the framework of the screens were all made of a handsome ...
— A Voyage in the 'Sunbeam' • Annie Allnut Brassey
... them. There is no measuring the benefit it would have been to the Southern cause if all the hundreds of tanners and shoemakers in the Stockade could have, been persuaded to go outside and labor in providing leather and shoes for the almost shoeless people and soldiery. The machinists alone could have done more good to the Southern Confederacy than one of our brigades was doing harm, by consenting to go to the railroad shops at Griswoldville and ply ...
— Andersonville, complete • John McElroy
... entertainment. They were fortunate, for at this moment came round the corner an individual notorious throughout Clerkenwell as 'Mad Jack.' Mad he presumably was—at all events, an idiot. A lanky, raw-boned, red-beaded man, perhaps forty years old; not clad, but hung over with the filthiest rags; hatless, shoeless. He supported himself by singing in the streets, generally psalms, and with eccentric modulations of the voice which always occasioned mirth in hearers. Sometimes he stood at a corner and began the ...
— The Nether World • George Gissing
... saplings, we succeeded in prying the wheels out of the mire. Then the driver discovered that one of the horses had lost his shoes, and insisted on having them replaced before he proceeded. We were midway between two 'relay-houses,' each being six miles distant, and the Jehu decided on taking the shoeless horse back to the one we had passed. As he was unharnessing the animal, I ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2 No 4, October, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... To flirt with shoeless Seraphinas, To shrink at every ruffian's shako; Without a pair of shirts between us, Morn, noon, and night to smell tobacco; To live my days in Gallic hovels, Untouched by water since the flood; To wade through streets, where famine grovels ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 290 - Volume X. No. 290. Saturday, December 29, 1827. • Various
... most delightful afternoon I had ever spent in my life. We seemed to become old friends in a few minutes, and in an hour or two she was the closest friend I had on earth. Not all the little shoeless friends in Raxton, not all the beautiful sea-gulls I loved, not all the sunshine and wind upon the sands, not all the wild bees in Graylingham Wilderness, could give the companionship this child could give. My flesh tingled with delight. (And yet all the while I was not ...
— Aylwin • Theodore Watts-Dunton
... still unprovided, he was terribly perplexed. Now while he was in this perplexity, Prometheus came to inspect the distribution, and he found that the other animals were suitably furnished, but that man alone was naked and shoeless, and had neither bed nor arms of defence. The appointed hour was approaching when man in his turn was to go forth into the light of day; and Prometheus, not knowing how he could devise his salvation, stole the mechanical ...
— Protagoras • Plato
... cried the old woman, full of wrath at the sight of the shoeless boy. "What have you done with your ...
— The Children's Book of Christmas Stories • Various
... the way," was the sole notice to that crowd of helpless creatures lying in their cots, at three o'clock in the morning. Men and women begged for mercy. In vain their cries. The officer in charge of the matter was inexorable. Clotheless and shoeless, the inmates of the almshouse ran in terror from the spot to seek shelter in the ravines. But there were those who could not run, who, while the train was laying, rent the air with shrieks of terror. The train was fired at the expiration of the allotted time. The whole side of the house went in ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 92, June, 1865 • Various
... read much since infancy of the sufferings of our army during the Revolution,—how they were hatless, ragged, starved, and badly armed. We have shuddered at the pictures of the snow at Valley Forge, tracked by the blood from the feet of shoeless soldiers. Yet, in the year 1861, with abundant means and with all the sympathy and aid of a wealthy country, there has been more suffering in the army than the Revolution witnessed, and it was due in a great measure ...
— Continental Monthly - Volume 1 - Issue 3 • Various
... the Grenadiers, German, tall, padded, smart, and stout, had held their ground. It was not until Thursday, and by noon, that they were slowly driven up the hill by the ragged lads, the Gauls, shoeless, some not in uniform at all, half-mutinous, drunk with pain and glory. And I remembered, as the scene returned to me, that this battle, like so many of the Revolution, had been a battle of men against boys; how grey and veteran and trained in arms ...
— First and Last • H. Belloc
... or—I hope I may add—that I know them to be good? A propos, when I first opened upon the just-mentioned poem, in a careless tone I said to Mary, as if putting a riddle, "What is good for a bootless bene?" [3] To which, with infinite presence of mind (as the jest-book has it) she answered, "A shoeless pea." It was the first joke she ever made. Joke the second I make. You distinguish well, in your old preface, between the verses of Dr. Johnson, of the "Man in the Strand," and that from "The Babes in the Wood," I was thinking whether, taking ...
— The Best Letters of Charles Lamb • Charles Lamb
... provided for, hued in the sun and tinged for once with joy, Marriage, the street, the factory, farm, the house-room, lodging-room, Labor and toll, the bath, gymnasium, playground, library, college, The student, boy or girl, led forward to be taught, The sick cared for, the shoeless shod, the orphan father'd and mother'd, The hungry fed, the houseless housed; (The intentions perfect and divine, The workings, ...
— Leaves of Grass • Walt Whitman
... greatly altered since I had seen him last. His clothes hung in tatters about his body, while his large feet were shoeless and bleeding profusely: but the fire of his black eyes was unquenched, and the bony form, still upright in spite of the hard labor to which he had been subjected, gave assurance, to my dismay, that he ...
— The Gold Hunter's Adventures - Or, Life in Australia • William H. Thomes
... brows bristling like a wire-haired terrier's—were on the boy in the farther corner, who sat on his backer's knee, shoeless, stripped to the buff, with an angry red mark on the right breast below the collar-bone; a slight boy and a trifle undersized, but lithe, clear-skinned, and in the pink of condition; a handsome boy, ...
— Hetty Wesley • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... sky. It brought him no consolation. On the contrary it reminded him of Hannibal and other conquerors leading their footsore armies over the Alps. When he allowed a despondent fancy to wander uncontrolled, he saw great multitudes of men staggering shoeless along with feet and ankles inflamed to the color of tomatoes. Then he pulled himself together and set his teeth. Dennymede came to visit him and heard with dismay the verdict of science, which crushed his hope of a high position in the new ...
— Septimus • William J. Locke
... nothing but death. He remembered how his heart bounded with joy on the morning when he and his associates, in their leaky dug-out, had arrived in sight of the Mississippi. Then, he was ragged, hatless, and almost shoeless, weary with watching, and living in constant fear of recapture. Now, he was among friends, the Old Flag waved above him, and he was the second in command of one of the finest vessels in ...
— Frank on the Lower Mississippi • Harry Castlemon
... even in part to give men employment. Rewards are not held out for such a policy, and therefore it is unreasonable to expect such a performance. Though a favorite popular belief is that we must 'work to live,' we have no current adage of a 'right to work.' This winter there are shoeless men and women, closed shoe-factories, and destitute shoemakers; children in New England with no woolen clothing, half-time woolen mills, and unemployed spinners and weavers. Why? Simply because the ...
— An American Idyll - The Life of Carleton H. Parker • Cornelia Stratton Parker
... pretty—they were not even interesting. Mother and children were alike—unwashed, uncombed, shoeless, and clothed in dirty, faded calico. The children were all girls—the oldest not more than ten years old, and the youngest scarce five. None of them pleaded for the prisoner, but still the woman wailed and moaned, and the children stood ...
— Romance of California Life • John Habberton
... him, and passed within two hundred paces of where he lay. Smoothly and silently it glided on. There was no chinking of bits, no jingling of spurs, no clanking of sabres. Alone could be heard the dull stroke of the shoeless hoof, or at intervals the neigh of an impatient steed, suddenly checked by a reproof from his rider. Silently they passed on—silent as spectres. The full moon gleaming upon them ...
— The White Chief - A Legend of Northern Mexico • Mayne Reid
... The shoeless, capless, unwashed boy, with his ragged trousers hitched to his shoulders by one suspender, frowned up at the judge through a fringe of ...
— Calvary Alley • Alice Hegan Rice
... only were houses deserted, but growing crops were left and heavier household articles abandoned, and the roads leading to the south and through Salt Lake City were crowded day by day with loaded wagons, their owners—even the women, often shoeless trudging along and driving their animals before them. These refugees were, a little later, joined by Young and most of his associates, and by a large part of the inhabitants of Salt Lake City itself. It was estimated ...
— The Story of the Mormons: • William Alexander Linn
... the stairs on shoeless feet the burglar entered the dining-room, picked the locks of the sideboard with marvellous celerity, unfolded a canvas bag, and placed therein whatever valuables he could lay hands on. Proceeding next to the drawing-room floor, he began to examine and appropriate the articles ...
— My Doggie and I • R.M. Ballantyne
... the sea aren't the land, and here on these wild wastes o' waters there's chancy things beyond any man's wisdom as any mariner'll—ha, what's yon?" says he under his breath and whipping round, knife in hand. "'Twas like a shoeless foot, Mart'n ... creeping murder ... 'Tis there again!" Speaking, he tore open the door and I saw his knife flash as he sprang into the darkness beyond; as for me I quaffed my ale. Presently back he comes, claps to the door (mighty careful) and ...
— Black Bartlemy's Treasure • Jeffrey Farnol
... with hesitating steps, and felt that his appearance was, indeed, sorely against him. He had no covering to his head, had nothing on, indeed, but a pair of trousers. He was shoeless and stockingless, and presented the appearance of a beggar boy, rather than the smart young sailor whom she had seen on board ...
— Under Drake's Flag - A Tale of the Spanish Main • G. A. Henty
... squeeze, he disappeared with the same cautious creak upon the stair, crept shoeless over the pavement of the yard, and, locking the gates behind him, passed out into the front where he had left his shoes. If the same way had been paved with burning ploughshares, it is not at all improbable that John would have traversed ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens
... of the breathless morning Oh the thin, tin, crackling roofs, To the haze of the burned back-ranges And the dust of the shoeless hoofs— To the risk of a death by drowning, To the risk of a death by drouth— To the men of a million acres, To the Sons of the ...
— The Kipling Reader - Selections from the Books of Rudyard Kipling • Rudyard Kipling
... adjoining counties, dragged from their beds, and hurried away, half naked, from their frantic wives and weeping children. The arrests, in numerous instances, were attended with every circumstance of barbarity short of death. Prisoners were goaded, with shoeless and bleeding feet, on the road to Pittsburg; numbers of them were tied back to back, and thrown into a wet cellar as a place of detention. One man, whose child was dying, came forward voluntarily when the arrests were being made, hoping that humanity ...
— The Land We Live In - The Story of Our Country • Henry Mann
... were and battered, Shoeless, and knocked about; From under their ragged forelocks Their hungry eyes ...
— Rio Grande's Last Race and Other Verses • Andrew Barton 'Banjo' Paterson
... fellow-men as to associate them at once with his nobility of soul, and elevate them to a standard little short of his own? That he did do this we have the proof. Pillage was almost unknown amongst the Garibaldians; and these famished, ill-clad, shoeless men marched on from battle to battle with scarcely an instance of crime that called for the interference of ...
— Cornelius O'Dowd Upon Men And Women And Other Things In General - Originally Published In Blackwood's Magazine - 1864 • Charles Lever
... day of cold and sleet, A little nomad of the street With tattered garments, shoeless feet, And face with hunger wan, Great wonder-eyes, though beautiful, Hedged in by features pinched and dull, Betraying lines so ...
— Poems - Vol. IV • Hattie Howard
... cases on board, one of which the captain sent for; and the third mate, who acted as supercargo, disposed of the whole of them, though there was some difficulty in finding articles for barter when their cash ran short. Had not the governor helped them, they would have remained shoeless. We were delighted with the quantity of fruit which was brought to us. There were cherries, and very large strawberries, and melons, and grapes—all of which, we had no doubt, were planted originally by Robinson Crusoe. We lunched with the governor; and then, while the captain ...
— A Voyage round the World - A book for boys • W.H.G. Kingston
... Land we live in," "Oh, the Roast Beef of Old England!" "May we all live the days of our life." In John Bull Done Over, a very different picture is presented to our notice. The whole of John's fat is gone; he sits, a lean, starving, tattered, shoeless object in a bottomless chair, the embodiment of human misery. In place of his invoices lie the Gazette, which announces his bankruptcy, and a number of tradesmen's bills; on the back of his chair is coiled a rope, and on the table before him a razor lies on a treatise on suicide,—John ...
— English Caricaturists and Graphic Humourists of the Nineteenth Century. - How they Illustrated and Interpreted their Times. • Graham Everitt
... canst move through fields of acorns, Through the sand and ocean-pebbles, There for thee is tracked a pathway, Through the woodlands on the sea-coast, To the Northland's farthest limits, To the dismal plains of Lapland, There 'tis well for thee to lumber, There to live will be a pleasure. Shoeless there to walk in summer, Stockingless in days of autumn, On the blue-back of the mountain, Through the swamps and fertile lowlands. "If thou canst not journey thither, Canst not find the Lapland-highway, Hasten on a little distance, In the bear-path leading northward. To the grove of Tuonela, ...
— The Kalevala (complete) • John Martin Crawford, trans.
... took leave in ten minutes—to find good influences in a Kelly pool-parlor on Third Avenue. He returned to his room at ten, and, sitting with his shoeless feet cocked up on his bed, read a story in Racy Yarns. While beyond the partition, about four feet from him, Una Golden lay in bed, her smooth arms behind her aching head, and worried about Phil's ...
— The Job - An American Novel • Sinclair Lewis
... companion we followed him accordingly and so into a small cabin occupied—or, let me rather say, filled—by the stoutest woman it has ever been my lot to meet. She reclined—in such a position as to display a pair of colossal feet, shoeless, clothed in thick worsted stockings—upon a locker on the starboard side: and no one, regarding her, could wonder that this also was the side towards which the vessel listed. Her broad recumbent back was supported by a pile ...
— The Adventures of Harry Revel • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... Innocent the Third, and to ask from him some formal recognition. The pontiff, so the story goes, was walking in the garden of the Lateran when the momentous meeting took place. Startled by the sudden apparition of an emaciated young man, bareheaded, shoeless, half-clad, but—for all his gentleness—a beggar who would take no denial, Innocent hesitated. It was but for a brief hour, ...
— The Coming of the Friars • Augustus Jessopp
... a severe reproach it is to human nature, to see a lovely child in rags and shoeless, running the streets, exposed to the pitiless weather, while a splendid equipage passes, in which a lady holds up her lapdog at the window to give it an airing!! Is not this a greater crime than sends many a poor wretch to ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... her, when the lank figure of a man emerged from the other shanty. This man wore a cotton shirt and patched butternut trousers; he way hatless and shoeless, and his hair stood out from his head in a great flaming shock. He, too, was smoking a cob-pipe. Suddenly the man put out a long arm which found its way about the lady's waist, an attention that culminated in a ...
— The Prodigal Judge • Vaughan Kester
... I had seemed formidable to a woman, and I raised my hand to my head—my hat was gone—to smooth my ruffled hair; then my glance fell from my shirt sleeves, soiled and in tatters, down over my torn trousers to my shoeless feet; my socks were in rags. 'I am sorry,' I began, but she refused to listen. 'Don't you say a word,' she warned and had the rifle to her shoulder, looking along the sight. 'If you do, I'll shoot, and ...
— The Rim of the Desert • Ada Woodruff Anderson
... the sea. And under the arcades of the temples cool shadows, dense and blue, trenchant against the white marble like an irregular mosaic of lapis lazuli, with figures gliding along between the tall columns, priests in white robes, furtive of gait, slaves of the pontificate, shoeless and silent and as if detached from the noise and bustle of the Forum, like ghosts that haunt the ...
— "Unto Caesar" • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... profits by the approach of the patrol, who causes a turmoil, in the midst of which they all escape. Alcindor the old admirer finds only two bills awaiting him, when he returns with the new shoes. Musette has been carried away shoeless by her ...
— The Standard Operaglass - Detailed Plots of One Hundred and Fifty-one Celebrated Operas • Charles Annesley
... becoming unpleasant towards evening, one by one the passengers went below; and the Prince, turning gradually pale, showed unequivocal symptoms of being affected by a malady which, like death, is no respecter of persons, but fastens indifferently on the sceptred monarch and the shoeless cowherd, when either ventures to go "ploughing the billows ...
— Journal of a Visit to Constantinople and Some of the Greek Islands in the Spring and Summer of 1833 • John Auldjo
... is preceded by a vowel, it is sometimes omitted; as in duly, truly, awful, argument; but much more frequently retained; as in dueness, trueness, blueness, bluely, rueful, dueful, shoeless, eyeless. 2. The word wholly is also an exception to the rule, for nobody writes it wholely. 3. Some will have judgment, abridgment, and acknowledgment, to be irreclaimable exceptions; but I write them with the e, upon the authority of Lowth, Beattie, Ainsworth, ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... lengthened by the desire of the family to avoid the main road. They were all intensely ashamed; Darius was ashamed to tears, and did not know why; even his little sister wept and had to be carried, not because she was shoeless and had had nothing to eat, but because she was going to the Ba-ba-bastille; she had no notion what the place was. It proved to be the largest building that Darius had ever seen; and indeed it was the ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett
... their way towards a rill of very clear water, that ran down from a little hill, amid great rocks and green herbage, into a valley overshaded with many trees and there, going about in the water, bare-armed and shoeless, they fell to taking various diversions among themselves, till supper-time drew near, when they returned to the palace and there supped merrily. Supper ended, the queen called for instruments of music and bade Lauretta lead up a dance, whilst Emilia sang a song, to the accompaniment ...
— The Decameron of Giovanni Boccaccio • Giovanni Boccaccio
... is commendable, if indeed doing anything we ought to do can be spoken of as being commendable, it is commendable for me to give a good pair of strong shoes to the man who in the midst of a severe winter is practically shoeless, the man who is exerting every effort to earn an honest living and thereby take care of his family's needs. And if in giving the shoes I also give myself, he then has a double gift, ...
— In Tune with the Infinite - or, Fullness of Peace, Power, and Plenty • Ralph Waldo Trine
... a starving woman and child. The children are indeed dreadful; they run unguarded and unwatched out of the side courts into the broader and more lively Strand—the ceaseless world pushes past—they play on the pavement unregarded. Hatless, shoeless, bound about with rags, their faces white and scarred with nameless disease, their eyes bleared, their hair dirty; little things, such as in happy homes are sometimes set on the table to see how ...
— Amaryllis at the Fair • Richard Jefferies
... in a different style of dress to what he had been accustomed to see her in; as at New Orleans she had not kept to her national costume. Besides, there was a soupcon of shabbiness about her present attire, and then the shoeless feet! ...
— The Free Lances - A Romance of the Mexican Valley • Mayne Reid
... suld gae doon to the Heelands to see Scotland"; from which remark it may be reasonably inferred that she was a "Heeland" woman. We were painfully struck by the number of paupers and intoxicated females in the streets; and some of our party saw, for the first time in their lives, white women shoeless, and shivering in scanty rags, which scarcely concealed their nakedness, with the thermometer at the freezing point. Whitaker's British Almanac publishes, statistically, the drinking propensities of the population of the three kingdoms, from which it appears that ...
— The Narrative of a Blockade-Runner • John Wilkinson
... at the point or on the banks of the rocky ford beyond; but, in the shallows, close to the shore, lay the body of the second outrider, shot and scalped. In a clump of willows lay another body, that of a pinto pony, hardly cold, while the soft, sandy shores were cut by dozens of hoof tracks—shoeless. The tracks of the mules and wagon lay straight away across the stream bed—up the opposite bank and out on the northward-sweeping bench beyond. Hay's famous four, and well-known wagon, contents and all, therefore, had been spirited away, not ...
— A Daughter of the Sioux - A Tale of the Indian frontier • Charles King
... blubber, and strives to hold it from slipping, as the ship pitches and lurches about. Meanwhile, the spade-man stands on the sheet itself, perpendicularly chopping it into the portable horse-pieces. This spade is sharp as hone can make it; the spademan's feet are shoeless; the thing .. he stands on will sometimes irresistibly slide away from him, like a sledge. If he cuts off one of his own toes, or one of his assistants', would you be very much astonished? Toes are scarce among veteran ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville
... can recall the view from the windows distinctly, as though time had stood still ever since. There are no gardens under our windows in Buckingham Street. Buckingham Gate stands the entrance to a desert of mud, on which the young Arabs—shoeless, stockingless—are disporting themselves. It is low water, and the river steamers keep towards the middle arches of Waterloo. Up aloft the Hungerford Suspension rears itself in mid air, and that spick-and-span new bridge, across which trains run now ceaselessly, has not yet ...
— The Uninhabited House • Mrs. J. H. Riddell
... Mississippian was on the other. Thinking that his visitor had now stayed about long enough, the Mississippian stooped down quietly and removed one shoe. He slyly watched Belton's room-mate, chuckling inwardly. But his fun died away into a feeling of surprise when he saw that his shoeless foot was not even ...
— Imperium in Imperio: A Study Of The Negro Race Problem - A Novel • Sutton E. Griggs
... schools, and received subsidies from the municipality. Not only were all children under sixteen admitted to these schools without any fees, but the books, stationery, and all other material necessary were furnished gratuitously, and those who were shoeless were even provided with shoes, the only requisites being cleanliness and regular attendance. The direction was rigidly non-sectarian. The trustees were unpaid, and they comprised many of the leading citizens interested in popular education. They had built for their service ...
— The Autobiography of a Journalist, Volume I • Stillman, William James
... listened very closely there might have been heard the stealthy sound of shoeless feet ascending the rickety step-ladder which led to the large front garret. Shoeless feet going up and down many, many times. Trays, too, of precious crockery were carried up, baskets piled with evergreens and flowers were conveyed thither, the linen ...
— Polly - A New-Fashioned Girl • L. T. Meade
... minutes before eight, Passepartout, hatless, shoeless, and having in the squabble lost his package of shirts and shoes, ...
— Around the World in 80 Days • Jules Verne
... by a steep ladder upon a jetty with a gridiron top, only safe for shoeless feet, and Mr. Hawley and I went up to the fort by steps cut in the earth. There are fine mango-trees on the slopes, said to have been planted by the Dutch two centuries ago. The fort is nearly oblong, and has a wall of stones and earth round ...
— The Golden Chersonese and the Way Thither • Isabella L. Bird (Mrs. Bishop)
... bruised to any degree and now he knew that he could not have fallen more than two or three feet. Perhaps he had struck first upon the little pack which he had fastened upon his back. It reminded him that he was shoeless and coatless and undoing the ...
— The Texan Star - The Story of a Great Fight for Liberty • Joseph A. Altsheler
... leading down to a door. Curiosity naturally led her to examine it. The key was in the lock. It opened outwards, and there she found herself, to her surprise, in the heart of another dwelling, of lowlier aspect. She never saw Robert; for while he approached with shoeless feet, she had been glancing through the open door of the gable-room, and when he knelt, the light which she held in her hand had, I presume, hidden him from her. He, on his part, had not observed that the moveless ...
— Robert Falconer • George MacDonald
... fast, and was soon at home. He had put his horse in the stable, and, shoeless, was creeping up to bed, when, as he passed his father's door, it opened, and the old man came out, light ...
— The Recollections of Geoffrey Hamlyn • Henry Kingsley
... thrilled down to him. . . . Then she remembered that he stood there shoeless; and, giving a little cry, would have run barefoot down the moonlit rocky steps, ...
— Lady Good-for-Nothing • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... political—went down with a terrible crash. Dissimilar as are the times and the circumstances, we are reminded of the collapse of the military systems of Austria and Prussia under the onset of the ragged Jacobins of France, shivering and shoeless, but full of demonic energy, when we read of the humiliating discomfiture of this stately Ostrogothic monarchy—doubtless possessing an ordered hierarchy of nobles, free warriors, and slaves—by the squalid, hard-faring and, so to say, democratic ...
— Theodoric the Goth - Barbarian Champion of Civilisation • Thomas Hodgkin
... run, and she lay shrieking at the bottom, for she was much hurt, while he pitched down headforemost after her, a whole army of ants following. The deck literally swarmed with them; the creatures came creeping forward, attacking our shoeless feet and biting in a most frightful manner. For the instant I thought that they would have driven me and my crew overboard; the men at the warp quickly recovering hauled away as before, though they were unable to withstand stamping and leaping in ...
— The Three Lieutenants • W.H.G. Kingston
... at Angela was to love her, though as yet I knew not that I had regained my liberty only to lose my heart. My feelings at the moment oscillated between admiration of her and a painful sense of my own disreputable appearance. Bareheaded and shoeless, covered with the dust of the desert, clad only in a torn shirt and ragged trousers, my arms and legs scored with livid marks, I must have seemed a veritable scarecrow. Angela looked like a queen, or would ...
— Mr. Fortescue • William Westall
... was that valley! He felt it as soon as he turned into it; certainty increased as he progressed between those gigantic walls black with tall, straight, beautiful spruce. So, when he sat shoeless, resting his blistered feet on Locker's porch, he was ready to make his decision. The mere making of it was a ...
— Scattergood Baines • Clarence Budington Kelland
... responsible for the bloodshed. France trembled for a moment. She aimed at the traitors within her borders, and struck down many a gallant friend in error. But she recovered from the panic. Then her sons, half-starved, ragged, shoeless, ill-armed, marched to the frontier, hurled back her enemies, and swept the trained armies of Europe into flight. They would be free, and who should say them nay? They were not to be terrified or deluded by "the blood on the hands of the king or the lie at the lips ...
— Flowers of Freethought - (Second Series) • George W. Foote
... horse on the river bank, and listening to the careless laughter of those about me, I could think only of that other half-starved army in whose camp I had been the evening before, and of those scenes of suffering witnessed during the past winter at Valley Forge—the shoeless feet, the shivering forms, the soldiers dying from cold and hunger, the snow drifting over us as we slept. What a contrast between this foolish boy's play, and the stern man's work yonder. Somehow the memory stiffened me to the playing of my own part, helping me to crush back ...
— My Lady of Doubt • Randall Parrish
... hundred thousand strong, suffered horribly in the latter days of the struggle. It was not included in the armistice made at the close of January, 1871, between Bismarck and Jules Favre, for Favre was in total ignorance of its position. Bourbaki attempted suicide. His soldiers, shoeless, tentless, and unprovided with provisions, pushed into the defiles of the Jura in the depths of one of the coldest winters ever known in Europe, hoping to escape into Switzerland. Eighty thousand men made their way over the mountains; fifteen thousand were made prisoners. ...
— France in the Nineteenth Century • Elizabeth Latimer
... yard or so within the dead line, a group of officers in the Federal uniform—evidently men of culture and refinement, spite of their hatless and shoeless condition, ragged, soiled raiment, unkempt hair, and unshaven faces—sit on the ground, like their comrades in ...
— Elsie's Womanhood • Martha Finley
... difficulties that daily they braved death a thousand times at the passage of the rivers. For the rainy season was at its height, and consequently the rivers were swollen outside their beds, and had very swift currents. They came afoot and shoeless, for the mud unshod them in two steps. Their food was morisqueta. [55] They suffered so great need of all things, although not through the fault of the father commissary, who ever treated them with great liberality and no less ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, Volume XXIV, 1630-34 • Various
... in Valley Forge, and once, in the darkest time, discovered Washington on his knees in a lonely thicket, praying aloud for his country. This gave him hope, when hope was well-nigh dead, and he followed his commander across the Jerseys, one of the two thousand who wrote in blood, from their shoeless feet, their protest against British rule on the soil ...
— Half a Century • Jane Grey Cannon Swisshelm
... discomforts of travel. But the tour proved too much for his strength. He caught a bad cold and sore throat, and was ordered home by the doctor. He went by boat, arriving brown, shabby, and almost shoeless, among his London friends. ...
— English Literature For Boys And Girls • H.E. Marshall
... he bounded swiftly away. Bathalda sat listening for a moment, to discover the direction from which the troops were coming. As soon as he made out the soft tread of the shoeless feet, he dipped his paddle in the water, and the boat glided ...
— By Right of Conquest - Or, With Cortez in Mexico • G. A. Henty
... Hyams, the Cohen, came last—the Priest whose functions had so curiously dwindled since the times of the Temples. To be called first to the reading of the Law, to bless his brethren with symbolic spreadings of palms and fingers in a mystic incantation delivered, standing shoeless before the Ark of the Covenant at festival seasons, to redeem the mother's first-born son when neither parent was of priestly lineage—these privileges combined with a disability to be with or near the dead, differentiated his religious position from that of the Levite or the Israelite. Mendel ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... and joy. The sorrows of Jewry are more apparent than real. After every Black Fast, when the congregations used to sit shoeless on the stone floors of the synagogues, weeping and wailing on account of the destruction of Jerusalem, the youngsters, and the grown-ups as well, were counting the hours before the Feast ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 11 (of 14) - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Businessmen • Elbert Hubbard
... shoes, to sit on the throne-like chairs, and women and girls waited their turns. John Conroy and a negro from Mississippi were the additions to the profession, and during the incarceration of the premier artist, his sweetheart, a former hula danseuse, remained faithful to his brushes. When a shoeless man or woman regarded the new-fangled importations interestedly, the proprietors offered to beautify their naked feet, and, ridiculous as it may seem, ...
— Mystic Isles of the South Seas. • Frederick O'Brien
... inkstand, pen, and small handwriting amuse them very much. Miss K., the typical American travelling lady, who is encountered everywhere from the Andes to the Pyramids, tireless, with an indomitable energy, Spartan endurance, and a genius for attaining everything, and myself, a limp, ragged, shoeless wretch, complete the group, and our heaps of saddles, blankets, spurs, and gear tell of real travelling, past and future. It is a most picturesque sight by the light of the flickering fire, and the fire which is unquenchable ...
— The Hawaiian Archipelago • Isabella L. Bird
... shoeless, along with the greater part of my command, though the weather was bitter cold, and my feet were bleeding, and yet when I heard that trumpet voice, ordering us from the wagons to make one more stand, I never thought of my feet. Nor was there a shirker among the men—and all because ...
— A Little Union Scout • Joel Chandler Harris
... round the small wet face tangles of raven hair fell limp and streaming; dark raiments clung to her form, diapered with sand and sea-foam, sodden with the moisture that dripped from them to the floor; under the hem of her skirt one foot peered forth, shoeless in its mud-stained stocking. ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle
... officer and therefore could not take the oath of allegiance to a usurping dynasty." This declaration he made with all the pride learnt in this caricature of an army, which emphasised all the ceremonies of ancient warfare, and who, ragged and shoeless as they were, with their swords by their sides, never failed to transmit orders to each other as "high-born officer." But the real reason which prevented Luna from returning to Toledo was that he wished to follow the course of events, to see new ...
— The Shadow of the Cathedral • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... her place by Richard and they drove off to Bennington, at a slower pace than usual for Richard wished to "favor" the shoeless foot. ...
— Rainbow Hill • Josephine Lawrence
... and entering the house. She was at once recalled to the verandah by a juvenile voice that called "Mrs. Latchness!" The speaker soon appeared in the person of a small boy, about twelve years old, who, hatless, coatless, and shoeless, ran up from the river bank. "Vat you vant vis me, Tommee?" asked Madame. "I come from Widder Toner's—Ben's dyin', she says, and can't move a stir. She wants to know if they's anybody here as knows anything about doctorin', ...
— Two Knapsacks - A Novel of Canadian Summer Life • John Campbell
... makes Mrs. A. snub Mrs. B. because the B.-bonnet is within a hair's breadth's less danger of falling down her back, or is decorated with lace made by a poor bonnetless girl in one town of Europe, at a time when fashion has declared that it should bloom with flowers made by a poor shoeless girl in another: it instigates Mrs. C. to make a friendly call on Mrs. D. for the purpose of exulting over the inferior style in which her house is furnished: it tempts F. to overreach his business friend, or to embezzle his employer's money, that he may live in a house with ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various
... accident on board the 'Pilot.' One night whilst at anchor I was ordered to row the dinghy ashore. It was very wet and dark, and in the act of climbing down the painter which attached the boat to the boom, it was so slippery that I lost my grip and fell. My shoeless feet came in contact with the boat's crutch (an instrument with two arms into which the oar fits); my right foot bled profusely, as one of these arms had pierced the flesh deeply. I managed to get on board to the sick berth, and after the steward's treatment it ceased bleeding. Whilst ...
— From Lower Deck to Pulpit • Henry Cowling
... days of Antwerp's reign of terror fully 300,000 fugitives sought shelter in Bergan-op-Zoom about twenty-five miles northward across the Dutch frontier. Most of these were in a condition almost indescribable, ragged, travel-worn, shoeless, and bespattered and hungry. Few had money; valuables or other resources. All they owned they carried on their backs or in bundles. The little Dutch town of Bergen-op-Zoom with but 15,000 inhabitants was swamped; but the Hollanders did their ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume III (of 12) - The War Begins, Invasion of Belgium, Battle of the Marne • Francis J. Reynolds, Allen L. Churchill, and Francis Trevelyan
... was a camp of insurgents—little, thin, brown fellows, ragged, dirty, shoeless—each with a sugar-loaf straw hat, a Remington rifle of the pattern of 1882, or a brand new Krag-Jorgensen donated by Uncle Sam, and the inevitable and ever ready machete swinging in a case of embossed leather on the left ...
— Crittenden - A Kentucky Story of Love and War • John Fox, Jr.
... the narrow doorway was thronged with men; swarthy black-browed men, ragged, hatless, shoeless, but all armed, all with rifle cocked, all pressing ...
— Rita • Laura E. Richards
... available being taken for the guns. Among the divisions in front the disorganization was great indeed. It was a mob rather than an army, and only when attacked did they form up, and with sullen fury drive off the foe. At other times they tramped along silently, ragged, and often shoeless, their feet wrapped in rough bandages. Whenever one fell from weakness, he lay there unnoticed, save that sometimes a comrade would, in answer to his entreaties to kill him rather than to leave him to the mercy of the peasants, put ...
— Through Russian Snows - A Story of Napoleon's Retreat from Moscow • G. A Henty
... homilies even in drunkenness, prates about the beauty of charity, and duty of forgiveness, but is altogether a canting humbug, and is ultimately so reduced in position that he becomes a "drunken, begging, squalid, letter-writing man," out at elbows, and almost shoeless. Pecksniff's specialty is the "sleek, smiling abominations ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... alder clump and caught a glimpse of her aunt standing near the garden gate talking with Mr. Coulson, Elizabeth became suddenly overwhelmed with a sense of her shoeless and disheveled condition. She knew that, while untidy hair and a dirty pinafore were extremely reprehensible, bare feet put one quite beyond the possibility of being genteel. That word "genteel" had become the shibboleth ...
— 'Lizbeth of the Dale • Marian Keith
... of the sentence destroyed the suspicions raised by the former. Any one would have been justified in regarding Mulvaney as mad. He was hatless and shoeless, and his shirt and trousers were dropping off him. But he wore one wondrous garment—a gigantic cloak that fell from collar-bone to heel—of pale pink silk, wrought all over in cunningest needlework of hands long since dead, with the loves of the Hindu gods. The monstrous figures leaped in and out ...
— Life's Handicap • Rudyard Kipling
... would concentrate attention on that corner; it could not be long before the shelves were broken in, and if he did not escape now there would be no possibility later. Then he unslid the inside bolt, and the portrait swung open; he closed it behind, and sped on silent shoeless feet down the polished floor ...
— By What Authority? • Robert Hugh Benson
... promotion to some of her little parts. But again the old man was reputed to be worth a world of money. He was supposed to have fifty pounds a year clear of the theatre. And then came staring upon her the figures of her little stockingless and shoeless sisters. And when she looked at her own neat white cotton stockings, which her situation at the theatre had made it indispensable for her mother to provide for her, with hard straining and pinching from the family stock, and thought how glad she should be to cover their ...
— MacMillan's Reading Books - Book V • Anonymous
... speech, which was again interrupted by a terrific thundering at the door, which opened,—not to a deputation, but to a whole platform of rejected humanity, presenting the most grotesque appearance. Falstaff's invincibles would convey no comparison. Some were hatless and shoeless; some had sleeveless coats and tattered trousers: others had collars but no shirts; all had faces immersed in massive beards. Two-and-two abreast, they walked, in with an independent air, each provided with a Saunder's circular, and took up a position in a half-circle just behind the seats ...
— The Adventures of My Cousin Smooth • Timothy Templeton
... quartermaster was under obligations to the partners. We learn that one partner in that firm gave 40l. toward a service of plate for the quartermaster, and 60l. toward a carriage for Mrs. Fremont. We learn how futile were the efforts of any honest tradesman to supply good shoes to soldiers who were shoeless, and the history of one special pair of shoes which was thrust under the nose of the quartermaster is very amusing. We learn that a certain paymaster properly refused to settle an account for matters with which he had no ...
— Volume 2 • Anthony Trollope
... suite with those of Sir Giles and Lady Brotherton. It was for a man an easy drop to this landing. Quiet as a cat, I crept over the roof, let myself down, crossed the court swiftly, drew back the bolt which alone secured the wicket, and, with no greater mishap than the unavoidable wetting of shoeless feet, was soon safe in my own room, exchanging my evening for a morning dress. When I looked at my watch, I found ...
— Wilfrid Cumbermede • George MacDonald
... headstrong Junot, nicknamed "the tempest" by the army, was too artless to catch the prince by guile; but he hurried his soldiers over mountains and through flooded gorges until, on November 30th, 1,500 tattered, shoeless, famished grenadiers straggled into Lisbon—to find that the royal quarry ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose |
