"Stray" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... true. When Spiller last saw her she was hardly better than a waif and stray. She was thin and bony, her growth impeded by insufficient food, irregular hours and not a little ill usage. At Miss Pinwell's she had lived well, she was happy, she had had love illusions and Nature ...
— Madame Flirt - A Romance of 'The Beggar's Opera' • Charles E. Pearce
... be. You went there, didn't you?"—he made a sign of miserable assent—"but I made them promise not to tell! There was an old mistress of novices there still who used to be very fond of me. She got one of the houses of the Sacre Coeur to take me in—at Poitiers. They thought they were gathering a stray sheep back into the fold, you understand, as I was brought up a Catholic—of sorts. And I didn't mind!" The familiar intonation, soft, complacent, humorous, rose like a ghost between them. "I used to like going to mass. But this Easter they wanted ...
— The Marriage of William Ashe • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... States the township has a field-driver and a pound-keeper, whose respective duties are to take stray animals to the pound, an enclosure kept for the purpose, and to retain them with good care until the owner is notified and pays all expenses; two or more fence-viewers, who decide disputes about fences; surveyors of lumber, who measure and mark lumber offered for sale; and sealers, who test and certify ...
— Elements of Civil Government • Alexander L. Peterman
... in a stray number of a professional journal picked up in the office of a medical missionary, devoted column after column to the uselessness of all known methods of disinfection. Sulphur, formaldehyde, carbolic acid, permanganate of potash, chloride of lime, ...
— Ten Thousand Miles with a Dog Sled - A Narrative of Winter Travel in Interior Alaska • Hudson Stuck
... purport of which Myra did not comprehend. But she gathered that a wrong of some kind was being done to her and (this was more important) to Clem, and she connected it with the loss of their liberty. Until this moment she had known no schooling. Her grandmother in stray hours had taught her the alphabet and some simple reading, and the rest of her knowledge she had picked up for herself. She well remembered the last of these stray hours. It fell on a midsummer evening, three years before, when she and Clem—then a child of four—had spent a long day riding to ...
— Shining Ferry • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... treble the value of the produce you receive. Your cows will die, or, for want of being properly looked after, will soon cease to give any milk; your pigs will cost you more for food than will buy the pork four times over; your chickens and ducks will stray away, or be stolen; your garden-produce will, if worth anything, find its way to Covent Garden; and each quarter your bills from the seedsman and miller will amount to as much as would supply you with meat, bread, milk, butter, eggs, and poultry, ...
— Our Farm of Four Acres and the Money we Made by it • Miss Coulton
... education I could not devise any way of making them so. I spent more than a fortnight grubbing among the black ruins of the enclosure and on the beach where the boats had been burnt, looking for nails and other stray pieces of metal that might prove of service. Now and then some Beast-creature would watch me, and go leaping off when I called to it. There came a season of thunder-storms and heavy rain, which greatly retarded my work; but at ...
— The Island of Doctor Moreau • H. G. Wells
... thinking of all the other things that could happen to a man out and about on a velocipede without a lamp after lighting-up time. In particular, I recalled the statement of a pal of mine that in certain sections of the rural districts goats were accustomed to stray across the road to the extent of their chains, thereby forming about as sound a booby trap ...
— Right Ho, Jeeves • P. G. Wodehouse
... reading about. The history of her times rises and lives around her. In her vivid description we see the new rugged country, over which she travelled from end to end; in her accounts of current literature we pick up stray bits of information as to new authors and new words. "Playfulness," for instance, is one which she stigmatizes as "silly in sound and significance," and declares that she does not read the new ...
— The Forerunner, Volume 1 (1909-1910) • Charlotte Perkins Gilman
... well knowing the futility of the attempt in such a broken country, had placed themselves on the top of the highest hill they could find, and picketing their horses near them, as a signal to me, had lain down and fallen asleep. The stray cattle had been recovered, as the emigrants told us, about noon. Before sunset, we ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 7 • Charles H. Sylvester
... his masters admitted that, when they weren't carping at him for his daydreaming. Take that model of a spaceship they had brought to school one day, with a retired astrogator to explain to the pupils how the thing was run, and how it avoided stray meteors. He had sat down at the controls, and even the astrogator had been surprised at how confidently he took over the role of pilot, how he got the idea ...
— Runaway • William Morrison
... airs in the book Betty had given him, and already had become proficient in some lively jigs and dancing tunes, as we knew at the time of Betty's first party in the garden. The clumsy fellow had a real gift for music. Some stray fairy must have passed his way and left an unexpected gift. The little audience on the shore were ready to applaud, and two or three boats came near, while some young people in one began to sing "Bonny Doon," softly, while Seth played, ...
— Betty Leicester - A Story For Girls • Sarah Orne Jewett
... grandeur of the family spectacle on which you are gazing? These inquiries proved very harassing to R. W. who, besides being a little disturbed by wine, was in perpetual terror of committing himself by the utterance of stray words that would betray his guilty foreknowledge. However, the scene being over, and—all things considered—well over, he sought refuge in a doze; which gave his ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... fie! Thou cloy'st me with delight; Sweet thoughts, you kill me if you lower stray! O many be the joys of one short night! Tush, fancies never can desire allay! Happy, unhappy thoughts! I think, and have not. Pleasure, O pleasing pain! Shows nought avail me! Mine own conceit doth glad me, more I crave not; Yet wanting substance, woe doth still assail me. ...
— Elizabethan Sonnet Cycles - Idea, by Michael Drayton; Fidessa, by Bartholomew Griffin; Chloris, by William Smith • Michael Drayton, Bartholomew Griffin, and William Smith
... sword. Now, Master Baine, and you, Sir Andrew, shall be witnesses that there is upon my body not so much as a scratch of recent date. I will strip me here as naked as when first I had the mischance to stray into this world, and you shall satisfy yourselves of that. Thereafter I shall beg you, Master Baine, to indite the document I have mentioned." And he removed his doublet as he spoke. "But since I will not give these louts who accuse me so much satisfaction, lest I seem to go in fear ...
— The Sea-Hawk • Raphael Sabatini
... Another stray Christian military tomb, erected by a captain of the sixth battalion, named Claudius Ingenuus, was found, in 1868, in the Vigna Grandi, near S. Sebastiano. Here also we find the intention of avoiding an open profession of faith. A regular cemetery of Christian praetorians ...
— Pagan and Christian Rome • Rodolfo Lanciani
... her dreaded jungle. It was so confusing she did not know which way to turn. The roar and clang of a great city smote on her ears as she stood in the big Union depot, helpless, bewildered, and as lost as a stray kitten in the midst of that noisy, pushing crowd. Sharp elbows jostled her this way and that; strange faces streamed past her by thousands, it seemed. How could anybody find anybody else in such a whirlpool of people? Hunting for a needle in ...
— The Little Colonel's House Party • Annie Fellows Johnston
... around for that day—I've got the same idea now. You're tryin' to locate that heathen idol. You're wastin' your time. You're doin' more—you're runnin' a heap of risk. For what you've just got is only a sample of what you'll get if you stray over onto my range again. That goes for the sneakin' thief you call your father, or ...
— The Boss of the Lazy Y • Charles Alden Seltzer
... was of an intense blue that was almost purple. The blue-jays were flitting and calling. A few stray crows hovered over a distant corn-stubble—these were all the signs ...
— Golden Days for Boys and Girls, Vol. XII, Jan. 3, 1891 • Various
... in my pocket. My only hope is that no stray gleam from it may pierce the shrubbery and bring ...
— The Millionaire Baby • Anna Katharine Green
... sail trimmers. It was therefore impossible for such a ship to keep the seas for any length of time, even had their build fitted them for the buffetings of the stormy home waters. For short cruises, coast work, rapid forays, and "shock tactics," she was admirable; but she could not stray far from a friendly port, nor put out in foul weather. The roundship, dromond, or cargo boat, was often little more than two beams long, and therefore far too slow to compete with ships of the galley type. She could stand heavy weather better than the galley, ...
— On the Spanish Main - Or, Some English forays on the Isthmus of Darien. • John Masefield
... one of his daughters, a child of eight years old, whom Mrs. Stewart was under the necessity of entrusting with this commission; for her own motions, and those of all her elder inmates, were closely watched. With ingenuity beyond her years, the child used to stray about among the soldiers, who were rather kind to her, and thus seize the moment when she was unobserved and steal into the thicket, when she deposited whatever small store of provisions she had in charge at some marked spot, where her father might find it. Invernahyle supported life for several ...
— Waverley, Or 'Tis Sixty Years Hence, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... hydra of Huguenots in France; from that time the Reformers had lived in modest retirement. "I have no complaint to make of the little flock," Mazarin would say; "if they eat bad grass, at any rate they do not stray." During the troubles of the Fronde, the Protestants had resumed, in the popular vocabulary, their old nickname of Tant s'en fault (Far from it), which had been given them at the time of the League. "Faithful to the king in those hard ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume V. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... fingers, patted Helen's cheek, rippled all over when Dicky danced before her, and even permitted Katharine to take her on her lap. This was a concession on Katharine's part as well as on Elisabeth's, for Katharine was not much interested in a stray baby. She saw, however, that the Mortons all were in love with the little creature so she did her best to ...
— Ethel Morton's Holidays • Mabell S. C. Smith
... picturesque that it was hard for the rest of us to believe that they were not painting the lily rather freely in their accounts of them. But the Story Girl was the soul of honour; and Peter, early in life, had had his feet set in the path of truthfulness by his Aunt Jane and had never been known to stray from it. When they assured us solemnly that their dreams all happened exactly as they described them we were compelled to believe them. But there was something up, we felt sure of that. Peter and the Story Girl certainly had a secret between them, which they ...
— The Story Girl • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... Kuno, you must know, sir, is one of the hunt servants, and a most ignorant, intemperate man: a right Gruenewalder, as we say in Gerolstein. We know him well, in this house; for he has come as far as here after his stray dogs; and I make all welcome, sir, without account of state or nation. And, indeed, between Gerolstein and Gruenewald the peace has held so long that the roads stand open like my door; and a man will make no more of the frontier ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 7 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... different commandos who had strayed—some on purpose—passed us here in groups of two or ten or more. Some of them were going to their own districts, right through the English lines, others were looking for their cattle, which they had allowed to stray in order to evade the enemy. I could only tell them that the veldt between Nelspruit and Barberton up to Avoca, was, so far as I had been able to discover, full of cattle and waggons belonging to farmers who now had no chance ...
— My Reminiscences of the Anglo-Boer War • Ben Viljoen
... stately setting, there was little formality. The magistrate of the day sat behind a tall desk, with a clerk of record at his elbow, and the officer gave his testimony briefly: Edinburgh being quite overrun by stray and unlicensed dogs, orders had recently been given the Burgh police to report such animals. In Mr. Traill's place he had seen a small terrier that appeared to be at home there; and, indeed, on the dog's going out, Mr. Traill had called a servant lassie to fetch a bone, and to open the ...
— Greyfriars Bobby • Eleanor Atkinson
... East Tennessee climate gave him that disease known among soldiers as "crawfishing." This I did to withdraw his mind from this gloomy brooding. We had no real battle, but a continual skirmish with the enemy, with stray shots throughout the day. As we were moving along in line of battle, I heard that peculiar buzzing noise of a bullet, as if in ricochet, coming in our direction, but high in the air. As it neared the column it seemed to lower and come with a more hissing sound. It struck the man square in the ...
— History of Kershaw's Brigade • D. Augustus Dickert
... well read. Besides the papers and pamphlets of "the Idea," he had also read on stray sheets the views of Michelet and other liberal actors on ...
— The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... escorted as by a Caffre guard of honor, Captain Delano, assuming a good-humored, off-handed air, continued to advance; now and then saying a blithe word to the negroes, and his eye curiously surveying the white faces, here and there sparsely mixed in with the blacks, like stray white pawns venturously involved in the ranks of the ...
— The Piazza Tales • Herman Melville
... careful to impress their readers that the losses of the French were appalling, but here and there a stray word or sentence lifts the veil and ...
— What Germany Thinks - The War as Germans see it • Thomas F. A. Smith
... Cape Fligely and abundance of birds. Consequently, in May and June we should have no difficulty as regards food, not to mention that it would be strange indeed if we had not before that time met with a bear or a seal or some stray birds. ...
— Farthest North - Being the Record of a Voyage of Exploration of the Ship 'Fram' 1893-1896 • Fridtjof Nansen
... even though there be Some notes that unto other lyres belong, Stray echoes from the elder sons of song; And think how from its neighbouring native sea The pensive shell doth borrow melody. I would not do the lordly masters wrong By filching fair words from the shining throng Whose music ...
— An Anthology of Australian Verse • Bertram Stevens
... Rastus. W'en I went ter dat chu'ch, I went des ez umbill ez de nex' one. I went dar fer ter sing, an' fer ter pray, an' fer ter wushup, an' I mos' giner'lly allers had a stray shin-plarster w'ich de ole 'oman say she want sont out dar ter dem cullud fokes 'cross de water. Hit went on dis way twel bimeby, one day, de fus news I know'd der was a row got up in de amen cornder. Brer Dick, he 'nounced dat dey wern't nuff money in de box; an' Brer Sim said if dey wern't ...
— Uncle Remus • Joel Chandler Harris
... bushel. Instead of not suffering one hand to know what the other is doing, he is not content with its being published in a book, but advertises his charity in a newspaper as a man would one of his stray cattle. From his liberal conduct to the Editor of the Journal and others, he is perhaps excusable in calling his charity about him as soon as possible, even if he offers a considerable reward for it in the next advertisement which he puts ...
— A Review and Exposition, of the Falsehoods and Misrepresentations, of a Pamphlet Addressed to the Republicans of the County of Saratoga, Signed, "A Citizen" • An Elector
... so. If my opinion be worth anything with you, go back to her from whom you have allowed yourself to stray in your folly. To me you must not address yourself again. If you do, it will be an insult." Then she rose up, queenly in her beauty, and slowly left ...
— Ralph the Heir • Anthony Trollope
... better lookout, but as a general thing the whole blame was thrown on the Germans. Hooker himself attributed the trouble to the fact that Howard did not follow up Jackson's movements, and allowed his men to stray from their arms. ...
— Chancellorsville and Gettysburg - Campaigns of the Civil War - VI • Abner Doubleday
... were for the game, and in a few minutes were seated at a large green table, drawing cards and betting with a good will, and interspersing their play with stray remarks on ...
— Saracinesca • F. Marion Crawford
... which came down from the mountains on to the flat, and tethered out our horses upon ground as free as we could find it from anything round which they might wind the rope and get themselves tied up. We dared not let them run loose, lest they might stray down the river home again. We then gathered wood and lit the fire. We filled a tin pannikin with water and set it against the hot ashes to boil. When the water boiled we threw in two or three large pinches of ...
— Erewhon • Samuel Butler
... Street, Wood Street, Cheapside, is a modern edifice, and contains, among other pictures, a portrait of Dame Alice Owen, who narrowly escaped death from an archer's stray arrow while walking in Islington fields, in gratitude for which she founded an hospital. In the hall window is some old painted glass. The Brewers were incorporated in 1438. The quarterage in this Company is paid on the quantity of malt consumed by its members. In 1851 a handsome schoolhouse ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... reading and affect an interest in those things they can be certain of giving the best training, while they themselves will grow in happiness and nearness to their offspring. In the fields of literature they can stray together with the consciousness that with all the beauty there is ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 10 - The Guide • Charles Herbert Sylvester
... grinny, she is, if ever was. A gad-about grinny. Mucked up my mushroom bed to rights, she did, and I 'aven't forgot it. Got the feet of a centipede, she 'as—ll over everything and neither with your leave nor by your leave. Like a stray 'en in a pea patch. Cluck! cluck! Trying to laugh it off. I laughed 'er off, I ...
— The History of Mr. Polly • H. G. Wells
... exchanged impressions. Then, all at once, a railway official—it may have been M. Piquet himself—rushed along the platform in the direction of the engine, shouting as he went: "Depechez! Depechez! Sauvez-vous!" At the same moment a stray artilleryman was seen hastening towards us; but suddenly there came a terrific crash of glass, a shell burst through the roof and exploded, and the unlucky artilleryman fell on the platform, evidently ...
— My Days of Adventure - The Fall of France, 1870-71 • Ernest Alfred Vizetelly
... himself. There was no deprecation of Kellogg's goodness in his mood, simply determination no longer to be a charge upon it. To contemplate the sum total of the benefits he had received at Kellogg's hands, since the day when the latter had found him ill and half-starved, friendless as a stray pup, on the bench in Washington Square, staggered his imagination. He could never repay it, he told himself, save inadequately, little by little—mostly by gratitude and such consideration as he purposed now to exhibit by removing himself and his distresses from the other's ken. Here ...
— The Fortune Hunter • Louis Joseph Vance
... the girls; may be they will know," said Ben to himself as, after looking vainly for more stray leaves, he trudged on, enjoying the bobolink's song, the warm sunshine, and a comfortable sense of friendliness and safety, which soon set him to whistling as gayly as any blackbird ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, January 1878, No. 3 • Various
... not monopolized by the frequenters of Barnes' store. Indeed it seemed as if the place had taken on new life and ambition, and if at any corner or turn of the road one chose to listen, he could often hear a few stray bits of conversation in regard to the interests which lay nearest to the ...
— Randy and Her Friends • Amy Brooks
... classes of the day before to look to their soles and their skirt braids. The next row kneeled and peered over the shoulders of the first. The third row stood up and saw what it could. The others stood up and saw nothing, unless they were very tall or had been lucky enough to secure a place on a stray chair or a radiator. The balcony railings and posts were draped with bunting, and in every hand waved banners and streamers, purple and yellow on one side, red and green ...
— Betty Wales Freshman • Edith K. Dunton
... silent—though there were more than twenty people in it—that nothing could be heard but the patter of the rain against the window-shutters, accompanied by the occasional hiss of a stray drop that fell down the chimney into the fire, and the steady puffing of the man in the corner, who had now resumed his pipe of ...
— Stories by English Authors: England • Various
... to be no greater than it was fifty years ago; and this leads to the conclusion that the present delicate balance could easily be disturbed the wrong way. Fortunately, it seems reasonably certain that the Indians of the Canadian Barren Grounds, the Eskimo of the far north, and the stray explorers all live outside the haunts of the species, and come in touch only with the edge of the musk-ox population as a whole. This leads us to hope and believe that, through the difficulties involved ...
— Our Vanishing Wild Life - Its Extermination and Preservation • William T. Hornaday
... commands Her lighted lamp to burn, And youthful feet inured to stray Are wisely warn'd to duty's way, Repentant ...
— Man of Uz, and Other Poems • Lydia Howard Sigourney
... I'll confess, too," said Ives, with a grin. "I own the hotel. I don't run it, of course, but I always keep a suite on the third floor for my use when I happen to stray into town." ...
— Strictly Business • O. Henry
... it never occurred to her to desert Duncan. She might have said, "You run on to the shop with the beans while I study the map," for Duncan knew his way well enough; but the little fellow had ever depended upon her, and been her inseparable companion. She would guide him into stray paths, but it would never occur to her to forsake him, or withdraw from him the protection of her fearless, daring spirit. One good point, however small and obscure it is, may be taken as a proof that there ...
— Little Folks - A Magazine for the Young (Date of issue unknown) • Various
... prosperity acquired for the pure love of owning a good horse. He would sell the horses, except Barney and one to pack his bed, and he would drift—drift just as do the range-cattle when a blizzard strikes them in the open. Billy felt like a stray. His range was gone—gone utterly. He would roll his bed and drift; and perhaps, somewhere, he could find a stretch of earth as God had left it, unscarred by fence and plow, undefiled by cabbages ...
— The Long Shadow • B. M. Bower
... qualm lest she should be making a mistake. She felt the weight upon her of the great thing she had undertaken to do, with a certain half-pleasing sense of the solemnity of the position and of its difficulties; but she was not afraid that she was going wrong or suffering her fancy to stray further than the facts justified; neither was she troubled by any idea of going beyond her sphere by interfering thus energetically in her friend's affairs. Phoebe did not easily take any such idea into her head. It seemed natural ...
— Phoebe, Junior • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant
... worried, my dear," whispered Betty, as she tucked some stray strands of hair under her Tam-o'-Shanter. "Grace is so nervous lately," went on Betty, under pretense of wrapping the robe around Amy. "I don't know what is the matter with her, but she seems to fly to pieces if you look ...
— The Outdoor Girls in a Winter Camp - Glorious Days on Skates and Ice Boats • Laura Lee Hope
... This poor stray crop on the roofs, the harvest of which will fall to the neighboring sparrows, has carried my thoughts to the rich crops which are now falling beneath the sickle; it has recalled to me the beautiful walks I took as a child through my native province, when the threshing-floors ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... continued. "You see, you've been wise. You haven't given yourself away altogether. You've simply said that you don't recollect any one coming in. Why should you recollect? At the end of a day's work you are not likely to notice every stray customer. Stick to it, and, if you take my advice, don't go throwing any money about, and don't give your notice in for another week or so. Pave the way for it a bit. Ask the governor for a rise—say you're not making a ...
— Havoc • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... the poor humorist, whose tortured mind See jokes in crowds, though still to gloom inclined— Whose simple appetite, untaught to stray, His brains, renewed by night, consumes by day. He thinks, admitted to an equal sty, A graceful hog would bear ...
— The Devil's Dictionary • Ambrose Bierce
... the clasp of the Grand Inquisitor himself, the venerable Pedro Arbuez d'Espila who gazed at him with tearful eyes, like a good shepherd who had found his stray lamb. ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery - Riddle Stories • Various
... work is known." A piece of honey-comb, one day, Discover'd as a waif and stray, The hornets treated as their own. Their title did the bees dispute, And brought before a wasp the suit. The judge was puzzled to decide, For nothing could be testified Save that around this honey-comb There had been seen, as if at home, Some longish, brownish, buzzing ...
— A Hundred Fables of La Fontaine • Jean de La Fontaine
... see, but they evidently did, for one of them perched upon the lilac, and filled the air with anxious "chucks," announcing to all whom it might concern—after the fashion of some birds—that here was a stray infant to be had for the picking up. Perhaps, however, the hue-and-cry kept off the quiet-loving cat; at any rate nothing happened to him, I think, for in a day or two the three young birds became so expert on wing that the whole ...
— In Nesting Time • Olive Thorne Miller
... engaged upon a treatise on modern husbandry; but though he locked himself into his study every morning, he had not written a couple of pages in a dozen years. If anybody called to see him, he always contrived to be discovered rummaging among his papers, hunting for a stray note or mending a pen; but he spent the whole time in his study on puerilities, reading the newspaper through from end to end, cutting figures out of corks with his penknife, and drawing patterns on his blotting-paper. He would turn over the leaves of his Cicero to see if ...
— Two Poets - Lost Illusions Part I • Honore de Balzac
... hear thy charming Voice, my Fair, And see, bright Nymph, thy Swain is here; Who his Devotions had much earlier paid, But that a Lamb of thine was stray'd; And I the little Wanderer have brought, That with one angry Look from thy fair Eyes, Thou may'st the little Fugitive chastise, Too great a Punishment for any Fault. Come, Galatea, haste away, The Sun is up and will not stay, And oh how very ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. II • Aphra Behn
... to take leave of his father, who was believed to be dying. The invalid recovered, and then followed another period of torture for the young student—aunts, uncles, and cousins all trying to drive the stray sheep back into the commercial fold. Exhausted by the struggle, Haydon at last consented to relinquish his career, and enter the business. Great was his delight and surprise when his father refused ...
— Little Memoirs of the Nineteenth Century • George Paston
... the stray cat at "Chez Nous" is never likely to get into the newspapers. On the other hand, lots of incidents which do get in never deserve to. It's all a question of head-lining, which is the bluff by which the public is induced to read matter it would ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, October 20, 1920 • Various
... grass and jimson-weeds beneath. This building, I learned when I bought the place, had been used as a schoolhouse for several years prior to the breaking out of the war, since which time it had remained unoccupied, save when some stray cow or vagrant hog had sought shelter within its walls from the chill rains and nipping ...
— The Conjure Woman • Charles W. Chesnutt
... meet with the smoke so far from land as he supposed himself to be. He hastily planed upwards, in case, by some error of navigation, he had come upon land and might endanger the aeroplane among hills or tree-tops, and also to avoid the risk of explosion from a stray spark. Still more surprised was he when, after only a few seconds, the aeroplane passed completely through the smoke, and he saw the sea again. At that instant, just as they reached the windward side of the smoke-cloud, which ...
— Round the World in Seven Days • Herbert Strang
... were alone, the plastered skeleton thrust its arms forward, and, without giving me time to know what I was about, the creature gave me a horrible kiss, and then one of her hands began to stray with ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... a change of late years: the Wanderer is being called to her Father's house, but we would have the call yet louder, we would have the proffered welcome more unstinted. There are still stray remnants of the old intolerant distrust. It is still possible for even a French historian of the Church to enumerate among the articles cast upon Savonarola's famous pile, poesies erotiques, tant des anciens que des modernes, livres impies ou corrupteurs, Ovide, Tibulle, Properce, pour ...
— Shelley - An Essay • Francis Thompson
... the proper finish of the rug, and this generally consists in a careful going over of the work after it has come from the loom—the cutting of stray ravelings and sewing of loose ends, and the knotting of the long ...
— How to make rugs • Candace Wheeler
... it. I suppose there are lilies when in season. There is a bridge over the moat—not the draw kind of bridge. And the castle has eight towers—four round and four square ones, and a courtyard in the middle, all green grass, and heaps of stones—stray bits of castle, I suppose they are—and a great white may-tree in the middle that Mrs. Bax said was hundreds ...
— New Treasure Seekers - or, The Bastable Children in Search of a Fortune • E. (Edith) Nesbit
... Roberts—not in the least," affirmed the Chief with the emphasis of strong conviction. "Even if we should allow ourselves to regard these stray bits of circumstantial evidence as in any way conclusive of the extraordinary theory you have advanced, he's much too able and cautious a man to yield to any such fool temptation as that. But to let that matter pass for ...
— The Mystery of the Hasty Arrow • Anna Katharine Green
... of one thing and do think of another,' pursued Mrs Tickit, 'I hardly need to tell you, Mr Clennam, that I think of the family. Because, dear me! a person's thoughts,' Mrs Tickit said this with an argumentative and philosophic air, 'however they may stray, will go more or less on what is uppermost in their minds. They will do it, sir, and a ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens
... in a double or triple line, behind which were only about a dozen soldiers, who marched round Maqueda, holding their shields aloft in order to protect her from stray arrows. With these, too, came our four selves, a number of camp-followers and others, carrying on their shields those of the regiment who were too badly wounded ...
— Queen Sheba's Ring • H. Rider Haggard
... o'clock in the morning, and I had to walk home, not a vehicle being attainable. I did not know my way to my headquarters, and I had no friend to go with me, but I fastened on a stray gentleman, who proved to be an ex-member of the House, and who accompanied me to 17 Dover Street, where I sought my bed with a satisfying sense of having done a good day's work and having been well paid ...
— Our Hundred Days in Europe • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... sudden intuition of a great secret brotherhood of the synagogue ramifying beneath all the outward life of Church and State; of a society honeycombed with Judaism that persisted tenaciously and eternally though persecution and expulsion, not in stray units, such as the Inquisition ferreted out, but in ineradicable communities. It was because the incautious physician had mistaken him for a member of the brotherhood of Israel that he had ventured upon his now transparent jests. "Good God!" thought Da ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... relation to man to which it seems entitled. Only here and there is it kept in considerable numbers or made the basis of extensive industries. The reason for this seems to be that these animals cannot readily be kept in flocks in the manner of sheep. They are only partly gregarious, and tend to stray from the owner's keeping. There seems reason also to believe that they cannot easily be made to vary in other characteristics except their hairy covering at the will of the breeder, and so varieties cannot be formed, as is the case with sheep, to suit each peculiarity ...
— Domesticated Animals - Their Relation to Man and to his Advancement in Civilization • Nathaniel Southgate Shaler
... will not wipe away, But from this place, the scholar's home, I'll stray. The bonze for mercy I shall thank; under the lotus altar shave my pate; With Yuean to be the luck I lack; soon in a twinkle we shall separate, And needy and forlorn I'll come and go, with none to care about ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... paler and more weary than usual, and she chides herself for not coming earlier to see if he was ill. She wishes some body would come; it wouldn't do to leave him alone, and what can she do by herself? There's a knock at the outer door, she thinks—no; it is only a stray goat that frequents that quarter of the city, and has come for her accustomed offering of food. She hasn't any heart to stop now, and the disappointed animal goes off again to try her next neighbor. There's no milk-man, nor ...
— The Elm Tree Tales • F. Irene Burge Smith
... a stray hint or an indelicate expression for the poor fellow's two shillings. The fraud, was complete. It was not like the ground coffee, pepper and mustard in a London shop—in which there is as often as not a pinch of real coffee, mustard and pepper to a pound of ...
— It Is Never Too Late to Mend • Charles Reade
... a ship's crew being sent ashore on the coast of India for the purpose of cutting wood, the curiosity of one of the men having led him to stray to a considerable distance from his companions, he was much alarmed by the appearance of a large lioness, who made toward him; but, on her coming up, his fear was allayed, by her lying down at his feet, and looking ...
— Stories about Animals: with Pictures to Match • Francis C. Woodworth
... Attack, though both are simply developments of the one idea of concentration. It is unfortunate for us that Nelson, like most men of action, reveals his reasoning processes, not in ordered discussion, but by stray gleams of expression, too often unrecorded, from which we can infer only the general tenor of his thought. It is in the chance phrase, transmitted by Stewart, coupled with the change of object, so definitely announced in the second instance,—the ...
— The Life of Nelson, Vol. II. (of 2) - The Embodiment of the Sea Power of Great Britain • A. T. (Alfred Thayer) Mahan
... the strand dost wander, Thy steps, O traveller, stay! Turn to the island yonder, And listen to my lay. Thy every meditation Bid hither, hither stray: On yonder banks its station Had once ...
— Ellen of Villenskov - and Other Ballads • Anonymous
... troubled to find that all her loyalty was for Laura, with nothing left for Kenmure, whom indeed she seemed to regard as a sort of objectionable altar, on which her darlings were being sacrificed. When she came to particulars, certain stray fears of my own were confirmed. It seemed that Laura's constitution was not fit, Janet averred, to bear these irregular hours, early and late; and she plaintively dwelt on the untasted oatmeal in the morning, the insufficient luncheon, the precarious dinner, the excessive walking, the evening ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 117, July, 1867. • Various
... Abbey, in his black robe and cowl, paced this narrow path on his way to his Cistercian brethren at Buckfast, meeting some of them on his road as they wandered over the desolate moor in their white robes and black scapularies in search of stray sheep. For the Cistercians were shepherds and wool-weavers, while the Benedictines devoted themselves to learning, and the track of about twenty-five miles from one abbey to the other, which still remains, was worn ...
— A Book of Natural History - Young Folks' Library Volume XIV. • Various
... At times there could be seen, in the little clearings, animals darting along. There were numbers of monkeys, an occasional herd of buffaloes were observed, sometimes a solitary stray elephant was noted, and as for birds, there were thousands of them. It was like living over ...
— Tom Swift and his Electric Rifle • Victor Appleton
... suppose you can't,' he added. 'It is a great break-up for you; but you are a lucky girl to be taken in here! It reminds me of what Beechcroft used to be to me when I was a stray fish, though not quite so lonely as you are. Make the most of it, for there aren't many in these days like Aunt ...
— The Two Sides of the Shield • Charlotte M. Yonge
... and irritated her desire to get at the bottom of Tyrrel's mystery, if there was one, and secure him to her own party. If you were ever at a watering-place, reader, you know that while the guests do not always pay the most polite attention to unmarked individuals, the appearance of a stray lion makes an interest as strong as it is reasonable, and the Amazonian chiefs of each coterie, like the hunters of Buenos-Ayres, prepare their lasso, and manoeuvre to the best advantage they can, ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott
... Sepulchre's could not by any stretch of the imagination be called a fashionable place of worship. It stood in a crowded quarter of the city, and the gentry were content to leave it to the small tradesfolk and humble working people who made up its parish. Now and again a stray antiquarian paid it a fleeting visit; but, speaking generally, the coming of a stranger was so rare as to ...
— Historic Ghosts and Ghost Hunters • H. Addington Bruce
... Quedlinburg was no nervous weakling. He snatched the pot of grease from the woman's hands, daubed gobs of the stuff liberally on his face and hands, and sat up—resembling an unknown kind of angry animal with his eyebrows and mustache burned off except for a stray, outstanding whisker here and there. In a voice like a bull's at the smell of blood he reversed what he had shouted through the flames, and commanded his Turks to arrest the ...
— The Eye of Zeitoon • Talbot Mundy
... this army, commanded by Harrison in person, set forth for the destruction of the Tippecanoe rendezvous. On the way stray redskins were encountered, but the advance was not resisted, and to his surprise Harrison was enabled to lead his forces unmolested to within a few hundred yards of the Prophet's headquarters. Emissaries now came saying that the invasion was wholly ...
— The Old Northwest - A Chronicle of the Ohio Valley and Beyond, Volume 19 In - The Chronicles Of America Series • Frederic Austin Ogg
... artist or dreamer of dreams chance to stray along the roads full of deep ruts, or over the heavy land which secures the place against intrusion, he will wonder how it happened that this romantic old place was set down in a savanna of corn-land, a desert of chalk, and sand, and marl, where gaiety dies ...
— A Woman of Thirty • Honore de Balzac
... which the older and more serious members held to be grounds for forebodings of evil. One morning after we had left camp, a favorite cow was missing from the drove. "Jack" Aston and Major Crewdson, both young fellows, rode back in search of the stray. From a little hill-top they saw, in a ravine below, some half dozen Indians busily engaged in skinning the cow. "Jack" and the Major returned and merely reported what they had seen. They were asked why they had not demanded of those "rascally" ...
— Crossing the Plains, Days of '57 - A Narrative of Early Emigrant Tavel to California by the Ox-team Method • William Audley Maxwell
... an hour In sleet and shower By the lighthouse rock I stray; And watch till dark 10 For the winged bark Of him that ...
— The Ontario High School Reader • A.E. Marty
... have got to see her a great many times,' said the girl, speaking fast because it was not easy to speak at all. 'I am coming to sing to you, and read to you, and to do all sorts of things.' And with a smile like a stray sunbeam she left the room, and after a minute with Mrs. Reo which straightway made her over, 'as good as two,' Hazel flitted away up the hill again, as far as to Mr. Falkirk's cottage; walking in through ...
— Wych Hazel • Susan and Anna Warner
... organized a revolt, compelled Diaz to flee to Europe in 1911, and was himself chosen President. Taft meanwhile had sent troops to the border, stray bullets from across the line killed a few American citizens and the demand for intervention began. Madero was soon overthrown by General Victoriano Huerta, who became provisional president. Shortly afterward Madero was ...
— The United States Since The Civil War • Charles Ramsdell Lingley
... tree Beheld engraved, upon the woody shore, What as the writing of his deity He knew, as soon as he had marked the lore. This was a place of those described by me, Whither oft-times, attended by Medore, From the near shepherd's cot had wont to stray The beauteous ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner
... next afternoon she went over to the city with Ann and found nothing more dangerous than a forlorn little stray dog. ...
— The Visioning • Susan Glaspell
... ecstasy, and dashed against the faces of the inhabitants—who tightly shut their mouths and eyes as they stoop to resist the onset. Then the south-easter yells while it sweeps dust, small stones, twigs, leaves, and stray miscellanies, right over Signal Hill into ...
— Six Months at the Cape • R.M. Ballantyne
... what it may be. Stay in your cave, hermit of Wayback, and say your Ave Clarissa as patiently as you can: when the edict calls you to court, your part will be cast for you, and you will have nothing to do but say the lines. If you break bounds again and stray from your proper posture before the throne, or put in any more of your irreverent gags, I am done ...
— A Pessimist - In Theory and Practice • Robert Timsol
... getting things that nobody wants, and nobody cares for after they are got; and I am glad, for my part, that you are going to get up a variety in this line; in fact, I should like to give you one of these stray leaves to help on," said he, dropping a ten dollar note into her paper. "I like to encourage girls to think of something ...
— The May Flower, and Miscellaneous Writings • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... I will give you the password. It is three short, sharp barks. On seeing another dog, all our members bark this password and if the dog they bark at does not reply in like manner, they know it is a stray dog. The cats all give three caterwauls ...
— Billy Whiskers' Adventures • Frances Trego Montgomery
... presented by the industry and commerce of the great city of Orbajosa, and, finding only new motives of weariness, he bent his steps in the direction of the Paseo de las Descalzas; but he saw there only a few stray dogs, for, owing to the disagreeable wind which prevailed, the usual promenaders had remained at home. He went to the apothecary's, where various species of ruminant friends of progress, who chewed again and again the cud of the same endless theme, were accustomed to meet, but there he was ...
— Dona Perfecta • B. Perez Galdos
... the country, it is said to be very fertile wherever properly irrigated. At present the water is distributed about as badly as it could be. The annual rise of the river makes vast feverish swamps, and the rest of the country is waterless. Any stray Bedouin tribe that feels like growing a crop can go and cut a hole in the bank and irrigate a patch for one season and then leave it; and these cuts form new channels which as often as not lose themselves in a swamp. Meanwhile this haphazard draining off of the water is seriously impairing the ...
— Letters from Mesopotamia • Robert Palmer
... to oppose this part of his plan, but upon second thoughts I did not, but selected a better spot for my hiding-place by creeping among the stones towards where Sandho was grazing, so as to keep him well under my observation for fear he should stray too far, and not be within reach should danger arise. There he was, in a snug nook where the grass grew thickly consequent upon there being suggestions of a trickling spring. The spot was well surrounded, ...
— Charge! - A Story of Briton and Boer • George Manville Fenn
... Mr. Anderson having secured the property en cache, determined to return to Jasper's house, in order to procure at least a part of the much wanted supply of leather. On their way back they had the good fortune to light upon a stray horse, which they converted into provender: they also shot a moose deer; and thus providentially supplied, they suffered little ...
— Service in the Hudson's Bay Territory • John M'lean
... who gave me all, Between your so small hands, With the blind, untaught, unfaltering touch A woman understands; And save me, since I would be saved, And do not let me stray With the little wandering, laughing loves That ...
— Married Life - The True Romance • May Edginton
... has been long out of print, so that the author tried in vain to procure a copy until the kindness of a friend supplied him with the only one he has had for years. A foolish story reached his ears that he was attempting to buy up stray copies for the sake of suppressing it. This edition was in the ...
— Medical Essays • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... could recall many of the places where he had lived, and why he had left them—usually because somebody, like old Nathan, had wanted to have him bound out, or had misused Jack, or would not let the two stray off into the woods together, when there was nothing else to be done. He had stayed longest where he was now, because the old man and his son and his girl had all taken a great fancy to Jack, and had let the two guard cattle in the mountains ...
— The Little Shepherd of Kingdom Come • John Fox
... "took pity" on a stray donkey in Palestine. Government oats soon made a tremendous difference, and the donkey was sold at Yalo for, I think, L11. Unfortunately, the previous owner met the new purchaser with the donkey, and all ...
— The Fife and Forfar Yeomanry - and 14th (F. & F. Yeo.) Battn. R.H. 1914-1919 • D. D. Ogilvie
... Bryanite—and after thirty years of fighting, the year 1896 had served to convince him that the power of concentrated wealth could never be controlled, but could only be destroyed. He had published a pamphlet about it, and set out to organize a party of his own, when a stray Socialist leaflet had revealed to him that others had been ahead of him. Now for eight years he had been fighting for the party, anywhere, everywhere—whether it was a G.A.R. reunion, or a hotel-keepers' convention, or an Afro-American businessmen's banquet, or a Bible ...
— The Jungle • Upton Sinclair
... to Coleridge at Keswick in November 1802, Lamb wrote—"If you find the Miltons in certain parts dirtied and soiled with a crumb of right Gloucester, blacked in the candle (my usual supper), or peradventure, a stray ash of tobacco wafted into the crevices, look to that passage more especially: depend upon it, it contains good matter." To Lamb, a book ...
— The Social History of Smoking • G. L. Apperson
... adapted to their grasp; while its tragedy, the murder of Montague Tigg—the finest description of the breaking of the sixth commandment in the language—leaves nothing to be desired in the way of excitement. But here we stray beyond our bounds, for 'Martin Chuzzlewit' is not a 'sick book;' or rather, it is one of the very few productions of human genius on the merits of which the opinions of both Sick and ...
— Some Private Views • James Payn
... a politician "spouting," in a perfectly illogical, broken-English stump speech, about the condition of the country and the reason why things are so bad. Never once do the various subjects stray far beyond their connection with the country's deplorable condition and always they come back to it. Furthermore, not one of the observations is about anything that a politician of his mental calibre would not make. Also the construction ...
— Writing for Vaudeville • Brett Page
... 30 The gleaming rushes lean a thousand ways,— Of leaves that slumber in a cloudy mass, Or whiten in the wind, of waters blue That from the distance sparkle through Some woodland gap, and of a sky above, 35 Where one white cloud like a stray lamb doth move. ...
— The Vision of Sir Launfal - And Other Poems • James Russell Lowell
... Father grieveth over thee no less than thy fleshly father, and the holy angels veil their faces for sorrow that thou, who wert once their darling sister, art now become the sister and bride of the devil. Return therefore, and repent! This day thy Saviour calleth thee, poor stray lamb, back into His flock, 'And ought not this woman, being a daughter of Abraham, whom Satan hath bound ... be loosed from this bond?' Such are His merciful words (Luke xiii.); item, 'Return, thou backsliding Israel, saith the Lord, and I will not cause mine anger ...
— The Amber Witch • Wilhelm Meinhold
... Scattered over the Northwest were 500,000 shares that were worth $500,000.00. Nearly all the men who had put money into the enterprise were Yankees,—mining men from Spokane, just over the border. These men began now to pick up all the stray shares that could be found; and in a little while eight-tenths of the shares were held by men living south of the line. At Northport, in Washington, they built one of the finest smelters in the Northwest, hauled their ...
— The Last Spike - And Other Railroad Stories • Cy Warman
... I should have begun In my youth's morning, now late must be done; And I, as giddy travellers must do, Which stray or sleep all day, and, having lost Light and strength, dark and tir'd ...
— Lives of the Poets, Vol. 1 • Samuel Johnson
... snows on one hand, and the dizzy depths of the world upon the other; was furnished with just soil enough for a gentian to struggle skywards and open its stiff azure stars; and offered no lodgement, no hope of salvation, to any rootlet which should stray beyond its inexorable limits. ...
— Father and Son • Edmund Gosse
... better. It vexed me to see how much there was to do. Positively, even rhymes left unrhymed in 'Lady Geraldine's Courtship.' You don't write so carelessly, not you, and the reward is that you haven't so much trouble in your new editions. I see your book advertised in a stray number of the 'Athenaeum' lent to me by Mr. Tennyson—Frederick. He lent it to me because I wanted to see the article on the new poet, Alexander Smith, who appears so applauded everywhere. He has the poet's ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Volume II • Elizabeth Barrett Browning
... youth, these are strange times,' observed the President, 'when a doctor of divinity and an undergraduate set forth, like a knight-errant and his squire, in search of a stray damsel. Methinks I am an epitome of the church militant, or a new species of polemical divinity. Pray Heaven, however, there be no such encounter in store for us; for I utterly forgot to provide myself ...
— Hawthorne - (English Men of Letters Series) • Henry James, Junr.
... prison with many courts and passages so like one another and so uniformly paved that I seemed to gain a new comprehension, as I passed along, of the fondness that solitary prisoners, shut up among the same staring walls from year to year, have had—as I have read—for a weed or a stray blade of grass. In an arched room by himself, like a cellar upstairs, with walls so glaringly white that they made the massive iron window-bars and iron-bound door even more profoundly black than they were, we ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... makes us free. What would please Him she resolved should be the one thought to which she would give careful attention. Now, it is perhaps worthy of mention, that this closely following disciple did not once stop to determine whether it would please Him to give such tender care to this stray child of His, or whether she would be considered doing not just the thing, in His eyes, if she entertained her ...
— Ester Ried Yet Speaking • Isabella Alden
... plant-spirit, and through the response which this spirit made to the stimulus of its surroundings that all the wonderful development of plant life has taken place. The plant-spirit had to keep within the lines of plant life; it could not stray beyond it to develop lions and tigers. But within the lines of plant life it could stretch out to illimitable distances. All that was wanted was the stimulus of favourable conditions, and from ...
— The Heart of Nature - or, The Quest for Natural Beauty • Francis Younghusband
... be just like the old chap, for he knows nothing of fear," Frank replied; "but of course there's no necessity for both of us to go with him. One might remain here, so as to knock over any stray beast that managed to escape the attention of those who ...
— The Saddle Boys in the Grand Canyon - or The Hermit of the Cave • James Carson
... seen a picture that she never forgot. It was about noon, all the warmth that was in the December sun filled the garden (which the leafless trees no longer shaded). There was no snow on the ground, for the few stray flakes premonitory of winter which had fallen from time to time in the month had melted almost as soon as they had touched the ground. The air was like an Indian summer's day; it seemed impossible that winter could be ...
— The Bay State Monthly - Volume 2, Issue 3, December, 1884 • Various
... Judges sometimes stray into humour without intending it. At an election petition trial one allegation was, that a number of rosettes, or "marks of distinction," had been kept in a table drawer in the central committee-room. To meet ...
— Law and Laughter • George Alexander Morton
... William Lamberton, Bishop of St. Andrew's, testified his having come into the peace of the king of England, and {406}found himself to answer for the temporalities of his bishopric to the English king. Stray discoveries are now and then made in the charter-rooms of royal burghs, as sometime ago there was found in the Town-house of Aberdeen a charter and several confirmations by King Robert Bruce. The ecclesiastical records of Scotland also suffered in our own day; ...
— Notes and Queries, No. 209, October 29 1853 • Various
... infallible remedies against that trouble, and the infinite dismay with which he must have faced the tumbled vastness where the gorge had once come out. But the rest of his story of mischances is lost to me, save that I know of his evil death after several years. Poor stray from that remoteness! The stream that had once made the gorge now bursts from the mouth of a rocky cave, and the legend his poor, ill-told story set going developed into the legend of a race of blind men somewhere "over there" one may ...
— The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... characters more odd than interesting. Their local habitations seemed to be the liquor-shops which fairly filled that portion of the town. About the doors of these shops the "Enders" were most frequently seen. If one of them chanced to stray into the business street of the town, he seemed as greatly confused and troubled as a lost boy. In his own quarter, however, and among his own kind, the Ender displayed a composure which was simply superb. No one could pass through the End ...
— Romance of California Life • John Habberton
... "got up some size" he was required to do small tasks, but the master was not very exacting. There were the important tasks of ferreting out the nests of stray hens, turkeys, guineas and geese. These nests were robbed to prevent the fowls from hatching too far from the hen house. Quite a number of these eggs got roasted in remote corners of the plantation by the finders, who built fires and wrapped the eggs in wet rags ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States - From Interviews with Former Slaves - Florida Narratives • Works Projects Administration
... Magnan were sentenced to the galleys for ten years. Naudaud died there, but Magnan finished his time and then became a scavenger, and, faithful to his vocation as a dealer of death, a poisoner of stray dogs. ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... a stray cat took refuge under my table. I was not aware of it, but no sooner had I sat down than I felt surcharged with electricity. I rang for Jeanne, and when she came into the room the creature darted from its hiding-place, and ...
— The Dangerous Age • Karin Michaelis
... Bolingbroke: if ever I were traitor, My name be blotted from the book of life, And I from heaven banish'd as from hence! But what thou art, God, thou, and I, do know; And all too soon, I fear, the king shall rue. Farewell, my liege. Now no way can I stray; Save back to England, all ...
— The Tragedy of King Richard II • William Shakespeare [Craig, Oxford edition]
... and tender embodiment to be found in any art of elemental human love in all its splendour, loveliness, fearfulness, terror and utter selfishness. Thousands of years hence, when Europe has sunk under the waves and fresh continents have arisen, perhaps a stray copy by hazard preserved in the Fiji Islands will come to light, will be deciphered by pundits, and a new race will see in it a primitive but consummate work of art, and the pundits will argue themselves black in the face about ...
— Richard Wagner - Composer of Operas • John F. Runciman
... both smiled upon her and said, "It is more beautiful than the most beautiful thing here to see how, under the low skies and in the short days, a soul will turn to our Father. And sometimes," said Ama, "when I am watching, one will wander and stray, and be led into the dark till my heart is sick; then come back and make me glad. Sometimes I cry out within myself to the Father, and say, 'O my Father, it is enough!' and it will seem to me that it is not possible to stand by and see his destruction. ...
— A Little Pilgrim - Stories of the Seen and the Unseen • Margaret O. (Wilson) Oliphant
... and florid, might speak with a twang and wear gaudy hats and gowns. My life in New York, even though I was but a quiet observer, had made me critical of women, and when I could brood unhappily over Gladys Todd's stray wisps of hair I could have little sympathy with the type of the imaginary Penelope Blight. But this morning, when the far-borne freshness of the woods and fields was in the air, and I longed to feel the soft earth ...
— David Malcolm • Nelson Lloyd
... fill the spoon it was emptied by the ducks, who stuck their big yellow bills into it and devoured the contents, letting the chickens below scramble and push and pick each other for any stray bits ...
— Dickey Downy - The Autobiography of a Bird • Virginia Sharpe Patterson
... up a flagstaff on the highest point of the island—(poor "island,"—that was not many inches)—and floated an ensign upside down from it, in the hope that this signal of distress might be sighted by some stray vessel, and indicate the presence of a castaway to those on board. Every morning I made my way to the flagstaff, and scanned the horizon for a possible sail, but I always had to come away disappointed. This became a habit; yet, so eternal is hope, that day by day, week by ...
— The Adventures of Louis de Rougemont - as told by Himself • Louis de Rougemont |
