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Underfoot   Listen
adjective
Underfoot  adj.  Low; base; abject; trodden down.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Underfoot" Quotes from Famous Books



... society lecture in America. On the contrary, the setting is a gloomy one. In England, in winter, night begins at four in the afternoon. In the manufacturing towns of the Midlands and the north (which is where the philosophical societies flourish) there is always a drizzling rain and wet slop underfoot, a bedraggled poverty in the streets, and a dimness of lights that contrasts with the glare of light in an American town. There is no visible sign in the town that a lecture is to happen, no placards, ...
— My Discovery of England • Stephen Leacock

... at the distant haze of a peak. Trackless and tortuous, the way underfoot was incredibly difficult. Yet the distances melted in ephemeral slopes as lovely in their tints as they were accursed in their reality of cruelty. Rhoda, unaccustomed to day travel, panted and gasped as they walked. But she held her own fairly well, while DeWitt, sick and overstrained ...
— The Heart of the Desert - Kut-Le of the Desert • Honore Willsie Morrow

... clash of blade upon blade; the occasional explosion of a pistol; the dull, crushing sound of unwarded blows; the sharp scream of agony as some poor wretch felt the stroke of the merciless steel; the cries and groans of those who had been smitten down, and, still conscious, were being trampled underfoot by the combatants; the deep muttered curse; the sharp word of command; and the occasional cheer that broke from the lips of our own gallant lads. Suddenly there was a louder hurrah, a quick scurrying rush, a loud shout of command in Spanish for ...
— The Pirate Slaver - A Story of the West African Coast • Harry Collingwood

... uncharted ranged his mind and soul. Whence, conquering, he returned to make Man see At last what can, what cannot, come to be; By what law to each Thing its power hath been Assigned, and what deep boundary set between; Till underfoot is tamed Religion trod, And, by His victory, Man ...
— Five Stages of Greek Religion • Gilbert Murray

... the faces of these twelve hundred, and despair, for most part, of ever "commanding" them at all. Miserable distorted blockheads, the generality; ape-faces, imp-faces, angry dog-faces, heavy sullen ox-faces; degraded underfoot perverse creatures, sons of indocility, greedy mutinous darkness, and in one word, of STUPIDITY, which is the general mother of such. Stupidity intellectual and stupidity moral (for the one always means the other, as you will, with surprise or not, discover if you ...
— Latter-Day Pamphlets • Thomas Carlyle

... a village, but saw nothing save a red mist that swam before him like a fog. The road underfoot seemed to rise and fall in wavelike undulations. Still he ran, with sobbing gasps and limbs that swerved under his weight; at his elbow hung death unnamable, and the fear of it urged him on while every instinct ...
— Uncanny Tales • Various

... want the walk!" she answered resignedly. "Though you've a queer taste in walks, for the streets are terrible underfoot. But I suppose you're shut up all day at your work. You'll just have to sit down and wait till I've checked the literature and handed in the takings. I doubt yon stout body in plum-coloured velveteen who bought R.J. Campbell on the Social Evil with such ...
— The Judge • Rebecca West

... most admirable institutions for keeping fools in awe, and holding the mob underfoot, that the cunning may live the more at their ease. Rare institutions, doubtless. They are something like the fences my boors plant so closely to keep out the hares—yes I' faith, not a hare can trespass on the enclosure, ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller

... The ground was rough underfoot, and the matted cover of vegetation that effectually hid stray boulders from view made it all the worse. In places the wattle grew over our heads in a profusion that was almost tropical, and more than once we would have lost our way had I not taken ...
— The Lost Valley • J. M. Walsh

... as he stepped on to the rugged wood in the black darkness, for the moonbeams were shut out now by the rocks, overhead, and then, as he took step for step behind his companion, so close to him that he kept kicking his heels, he felt the difference underfoot for a few paces and the tree trunk yield and give a little in an elastic way. Then all at once the character of the path was changed, and Nic felt the ...
— First in the Field - A Story of New South Wales • George Manville Fenn

... the day we had looked forward to—promised as good an evening as we could wish. The Capitalist, whose courteous and bland demeanor would never have suggested the thought that he was a robber and an enemy of his race, who was to be trampled underfoot by the beneficent regenerators of the social order as preliminary to the universal reign of peace on earth and good-will to men, astonished us all with a proposal to escort the three ladies and procure a carriage for their conveyance. The ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)

... into a wreath by a bit of red ribbon rummaged out of some drawer of odds-and-ends; and her thin brown arms and hands appeared under the white cloak—nothing but a sheet—which was being now trodden underfoot in the child's passionate efforts to get away from her aunt. Ten minutes before she had been a happy queen flaunting over her attic floor in a dream of joy before a broken, propped-up looking-glass under the splendid illumination of three dips, long since secreted ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... come down to peddle their handiwork in the streets. The people throng the narrow ways, a chattering, happy, careless stream of buoyant humanity. Preposterous children rigged out with the shortest of ballet skirts and gilt wings, howl, underfoot, among the effervescent crowds. Especially is the arrival of the presidential party, at the opening of the season, attended with pomp, show and patriotic demonstrations of enthusiasm ...
— Cabbages and Kings • O. Henry

... said Sir Humphrey; and five minutes afterwards a match was applied to the heap of perfectly dry wood underfoot. It caught fire at once and began blazing up, sending forth such a glow of light that the men set up a cheer, drawn from them by the excitement and wonder of the weird ...
— Old Gold - The Cruise of the "Jason" Brig • George Manville Fenn

... the floors had assumed an apparent tilt. Loose gear was rolling and sliding along underfoot, propelled forward by centrifugal force. Aft of Stores, I heard the whistle of escaping air and high pressure gasses from ruptured lines. Vapor clouds fogged the air. I called for floodlights ...
— Greylorn • John Keith Laumer

... of my nights after leaving the town was spent on a shaggy grass patch on a cliff, under three old twisted yew trees. Underfoot was an abundance of wild lavender and the air was laden with the scent. I am now at New Athos monastery, ten miles from Sukhum, and am writing this in the cell that the hospitable monks have given me. My last night ...
— A Tramp's Sketches • Stephen Graham

... profuse sweat. His breathing became easier, and then he was running lightly. His second wind had come to him. He was no longer exhausted. He felt as if he could run forever, and ran on more swiftly still. Suddenly the flashlight beam showed him a deep furrow in the rotting vegetation underfoot, and something glistened. A musky reek filled his nostrils. The thing's trail—the furrow left by its dragging tail! That musky reek was the thing's blood. It was bleeding from the wounds the explosive bullets ...
— The Fifth-Dimension Tube • William Fitzgerald Jenkins

... snow-shoes, and the only possible passage in summer-time is by means of the numerous paths worn through the scrub by the passing of animals for untold ages. So one or the other of the two splendid brutes that now approached each other in the narrow way must turn aside or be beaten down underfoot. ...
— Northern Trails, Book I. • William J. Long

... he felled them by twos and by threes, some under their horses, some beside them. The space began to widen round Sir Gawain and Morien; for all there deemed that he came forth from hell, and was hight Devil, in that he so quelled them and felled them underfoot that many hereafter spake thereof. That men thrust and smote at him troubled him little, therein was he like to his father, the noble knight Sir Agloval; he held parley with no man, but smote ever, blow after blow, on all who came nigh him. His blows were so mighty; did a spear ...
— The Romance of Morien • Jessie L. Weston

... most powerful and the profoundest of all the instincts of humanity laid claim upon her. But it rose before her, that instinct, arrayed—how could it be otherwise?— in the inevitable habiliments of a Victorian marriage; and she had the strength to stamp it underfoot. 'I have an intellectual nature which requires satisfaction,' she noted, 'and that would find it in him. I have a passionate nature which requires satisfaction, and that would find it in him. I have a moral, an active nature which requires satisfaction, and that would not find ...
— Eminent Victorians • Lytton Strachey

... good run, although it was not altogether in the sun. The country hereabout was pretty well wooded, but there were roads cut through the woods, and there were some open places, and everywhere, underfoot, the sand was about six inches deep. Rectus took Corny by one hand, and I took her by the other, and we made her trot through that sand, in sunshine and shade, until she declared she was warm enough ...
— A Jolly Fellowship • Frank R. Stockton

... with wet. The air was full of the prolonged thunder of the surf, and at intervals sea-birds passed overhead with an occasional piping cry. Wreckage was tumbled about here and there; and innumerable cocoanut shards, huge, brown cups of fuzzy bark, lay underfoot and in the crevices of the rocks. They found a jellyfish—a pulpy translucent mass; and once even caught a sight of a seal in the hollow of a breaker, with sleek and shining head, his barbels bristling, and heard his hoarse croaking bark as he ...
— Blix • Frank Norris

... therefore, turning softly like a thief, Lest the harsh shingle should grate underfoot, And feeling all along the garden wall, Lest he should swoon and tumble and be found, Crept to the gate, and opened it, and closed, As lightly as a sick man's chamber door, Behind him, and came out upon the waste. And there he would have knelt but that his knees Were ...
— McGuffey's Sixth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey

... desperate efforts were all unavailing. He could not escape. The thing came up too rapidly. Following that first mad thrill of contact with it underfoot, he was lifted swiftly and irresistibly into the air. Almost instantly he was floundering in knee-deep waters that parted, cascading away on either hand. Then, elevated well above the sea, he slid and fell prone upon a ...
— The False Faces • Vance, Louis Joseph

... very, very humble. I have put my foolish pride underfoot. I am not broken. I am still very proud and, I fear, self-conceited, in spite of my severe lesson. Enid is beautiful, and I know it, and it helps me write this letter, but I have no right to ask even friendship from you. My proved failure as a ...
— The Light of the Star - A Novel • Hamlin Garland

... helpless, and she must treat her conquerors with deference as superiors. But Japan has never been conquered by the foreigner. She is the only nation among all the nations of the Orient that has never been trodden underfoot by the European. She has never been subjugated and never been drugged. And, curious coincidence, she has reached a level with the foremost powers of the world, and holds the rank of a first-class nation. All this without having had ...
— Peking Dust • Ellen N. La Motte

... the rights and privileges of citizens, provided they had been born of free parents on both sides. The white people were enraged by the decision, turned royalist, and trampled the national cockade underfoot; and throughout the summer armed strife and conflagration were the rule. To add to the confusion the black slaves struck for freedom and on the night of August 23, 1791, drenched the island in blood. In the face of these ...
— A Social History of the American Negro • Benjamin Brawley

... sense. The leaves were dropping from the trees; the sunlight slanted through the lacy boughs in exquisite design, and the sky was as blue as midsummer. There was a smell of wood smoke in the crisp air; the feel of the sweet leaves, underfoot, was delightful. Kathryn "scruffed" along, unmindful of her high heels and thin silk stockings. She did not know that ...
— At the Crossroads • Harriet T. Comstock

... sigh of no meaning, I got my eyes down to my canvas and began to peck at it perfunctorily, when a snapping of twigs underfoot and a swishing of branches in the thicket warned me of a second intruder, not approaching by the path, but forcing a way toward it through the underbrush, and very briskly ...
— The Guest of Quesnay • Booth Tarkington

... desperately to shield from harm—that holy thing which had become dearer to her than life itself—desecrated, broken, and lying in the dust. And it was Burke who had flung it there, Burke who now ruthlessly trampled it underfoot. ...
— The Top of the World • Ethel M. Dell

... himself, elate, and with a springy step, on thoughts of ambition intent, till he came at last to a cool and shadowy place, where as yet the ferns were NOT broken down and trampled underfoot, though Guy Waring found them so some twenty ...
— What's Bred In the Bone • Grant Allen

... exactly at this moment will never be known. Whether a stone underfoot gave way, or whether the Admiral's voice brought down a serac of rotten wall, is not clear. There was a rumbling sound, an oath or two—and then both telescope and Admiral disappeared, ...
— The Astonishing History of Troy Town • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... endlessly cries for her castaways, I, musing, late in the autumn day, gazing off southward, Alone, held by the eternal self of me that threatens to get the better of me and stifle me, Was seized by the spirit that trails in the lines underfoot, In the ruin, the sediment, that stands for all the water and all the land ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 30, April, 1860 • Various

... But into the land came an evil and a pagan knight, the knight of the Dragon, and he willed that all should scorn and despise the good Christ, and should turn to the old gods of the standing stones and the oaken groves. And those that would not he slew, and their folk he trampled underfoot, and their herds and fields he destroyed and desolated. And I, fair lord, have lost my dear wife and my wee bairns, and I wonder why I fled and kept my life, ...
— King Arthur's Knights - The Tales Re-told for Boys & Girls • Henry Gilbert

... Jonas said, "I have powers. Strange powers. I could make you—" He reflected for a minute. "I could make you into a beetle, and squash you underfoot. As a matter of fact, I think I will." He gazed reflectively at the bald man, who gulped and turned a ...
— Wizard • Laurence Mark Janifer (AKA Larry M. Harris)

... say, is her continual contrast between the ever-recurrent idyllicism of open meadows or wilding clusters of simple rustic thickets, and the enormous antiquity of these two hoary ecclesiastic fanes. History is in the air, and you feel that the very daisies you crush underfoot, the very copses from which you pluck a scented spray, have their delicate rustic ancestries, dating back to Attila, who is said once to have brought his destructive presence where now such sweet solemnity of desertion and ...
— Italy, the Magic Land • Lilian Whiting

... home, she fled up the path to the door, feeling at every step the friendliness of the way. The late fall flowers nodded kindly to her through the dark, and underfoot were the stones and hollows of the pathway familiar to her ...
— Country Neighbors • Alice Brown

... when it's windy, or rainy, or wet underfoot, or cold, or hot, or looks as if it was going to be any ...
— Preventable Diseases • Woods Hutchinson

... paints in the barn or the shed, for it's altogether too handy to the house and the women-folks. Take my advice and have a place to yourself, even if it's a small one. A shop or a barn has saved many a man's life and reason Cephas, for it's ag'in' a woman's nature to have you underfoot in the house without hectorin' you. Choose a girl same's you would a horse that you want to hitch up into a span; 't ain't every two that'll stan' together without kickin'. When you get the right ...
— The Story Of Waitstill Baxter • By Kate Douglas Wiggin

... have been the fate of so many other explorers; the hand of the savage almost grasped our throats—we should have fallen a sacrifice in the cause of discovery, and our bones left to moulder on this distant shore, would have been trodden heedlessly underfoot by ...
— Discoveries in Australia, Volume 2 • John Lort Stokes

... monster! Turn him, O Infinite Spirit, turn this reptile back into his dog-shape ... that he may crawl on his belly before me ... that I may trample the abandoned wretch underfoot. Not the first!... Woe! Woe not to be grasped by any human soul, that more than one should sink into this abyss of misery—that the first, in her writhing agony before the eyes of the All-merciful, should not have made satisfaction for the guilt of all others. The misery of this ...
— The Faust-Legend and Goethe's 'Faust' • H. B. Cotterill

... The royal Agamemnon, sighing, grasp'd The hand of Menelaus, and while all Their followers sigh'd around them, thus began.[9] I swore thy death, my brother, when I swore This truce, and set thee forth in sight of Greeks 180 And Trojans, our sole champion; for the foe Hath trodden underfoot his sacred oath, And stained it with thy blood. But not in vain, The truce was ratified, the blood of lambs Poured forth, libation made, and right hands join'd 185 In holy confidence. The wrath of Jove May sleep, but will not always; they shall pay Dear penalty; their own obnoxious heads ...
— The Iliad of Homer - Translated into English Blank Verse • Homer

... miles inland, so I had to give that up. Before three months had passed I wanted to abdicate the worst way. I wanted to tread a deck again, an' rove around with Bull McGinty. I wanted th' smell o' the open sea an' th' heave o' th' Dashin' Wave underfoot. I was tired o' breadfruit an' guavas an' cocoanuts an' all th' rest o' th' blasted grub that Pinky was feedin' me, an' most of all I was gettin' tired o' Pinky. She would put cocoanut oil in her hair. Yet (here Mr. Gibney's voice vibrated ...
— Captain Scraggs - or, The Green-Pea Pirates • Peter B. Kyne

... trees he passes, leaving white scars on their trunks, and to follow such a trail you stand at your first tree until you see the blaze on the next, then go to that and look for the one farther on; going in this way from tree to tree you keep the trail though it may, underfoot, be overgrown and indistinguishable. ...
— On the Trail - An Outdoor Book for Girls • Lina Beard and Adelia Belle Beard

... little girl; I see that now, looking back. But not the little girl I had in my mind. So I missed you, thinking of the little girl you were not. We do that all our lives, Robina. We are always looking for the flowers that do not grow, passing by, trampling underfoot, the blossoms round about us. It was the same with Dick. I wanted a naughty boy. Well, Dick was naughty, no one can say that he was not. But it was not my naughtiness. I was prepared for his robbing orchards. I rather hoped he would rob orchards. All the high-spirited ...
— They and I • Jerome K. Jerome

... of the forest—to the majesty of white-bearded and majestic trees. The dove and the zephyr now shared her song, and a deep sigh commonly closed it. She was changed from what she was. The affections had suddenly bounded into being, trampling the petty vanities underfoot; and those first lessons of humility which are taught by love, had subdued a spirit which, ...
— Charlemont • W. Gilmore Simms

... he cried, and flung the remains of his lighted cigarette on the pile of the carpet, and trod it viciously underfoot with ...
— The Man in the Twilight • Ridgwell Cullum

... he continued, "I 'd like you to have my Latin grammar here—you 've seen me reading it. You might stick it away in a bookcase, for the sake of old times. It goes against me to think of it falling into rough hands or being kicked about camp and trampled underfoot." ...
— Quite So • Thomas Bailey Aldrich

... what had happened, and rode out with all his knights. When he saw this mass of ragged rascals, drunk and savage, but all wearing the red cross, he fell in a rage and attacked them. Those who did not fly were trampled underfoot and sabred down so mercilessly, that, out of the sixty thousand, only three thousand reached Constantinople, among whom ...
— Historical Miniatures • August Strindberg

... from the wash with every vestige of printing washed out from the notes, leaving nothing but the watermarks. It occurred to me that the same thing had happened in this case. The murderer, when about to descend to the pit to conceal the money, had accidentally dropped a note and trodden it underfoot, and it had lain out in the open exposed to heavy rains and dew until every ...
— The Shrieking Pit • Arthur J. Rees

... Emperor of the West. He found some of them submissive, others not so. Milan received his commands with contempt, and its proud magistrates went so far as to tear the seal from the imperial edict and trample it underfoot. ...
— Historical Tales, Vol 5 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality, German • Charles Morris

... the heavens were opened. From the eastern sky swept a sheer sheet of rain. With the first stabbing drops horses turned their heads away, trembling, and no whip or spur could bring them up to it. It drove through mackintoshes as if they were blotting-paper. The air was filled with hissing; underfoot you could see solid earth melting into mud, and mud flowing away in water. It blotted out hill and dale and enemy in one grey curtain of swooping water. You would have said that the heavens had opened to drown the wrath of man. And through it the guns still thundered and the ...
— From Capetown to Ladysmith - An Unfinished Record of the South African War • G. W. Steevens

... slope, when the impatience of the French horsemen burst all bounds. The reckless cavalry charge swept right through the disordered ranks of the crossbowmen, whose groans and cries as they were trampled underfoot by the mail-clad steeds, inspired the rear ranks of the French with the vain belief that the English were hard pressed, and made them eager to join the fray. The charge, as disorderly and as badly directed as the fatal attack of Bannockburn, never ...
— The History of England - From the Accession of Henry III. to the Death of Edward III. (1216-1377) • T.F. Tout

... Pierre, supporting his limp body. It delayed the whole gang, for they could not go on faster than a jog-trot. The wind, however, was falling off in violence. Its shrill whistling ceased, at length, and they went on, accompanied only by the harsh crunching of the snow underfoot. ...
— Riders of the Silences • John Frederick

... on your mask, and elbow your way through the crowd," she said, when she had heard Belinda's story. "If you stop to be civil and 'hope I don't hurt ye,' you will be trod underfoot." ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol IV. • Editors: Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton

... bay some two miles from the shore, and let me tell you, if you do not know it, that Arctic ice is no skating-rink. There are great hills, and knolls, and bergs, and valleys spread all over, and even where it's about level, the underfoot is as hard going as a newly-metalled road before the steam-roller ...
— The Literary World Seventh Reader • Various

... the day of glory Comes at last your swords to claim. Let us all in future story Rival our forefathers' fame. Underfoot the yoke of tyrants Let us now indignant trample, Mindful of the great example, And avenge our ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Vol. 3 (of 7) • Lord Byron

... was also to be wounded by the use of the vilest-smelling drugs, by trampling underfoot and spitting upon the picture of the devil, or even by sprinkling upon it foul compounds. Some even tried to scare the demon by using large-sounding ...
— Three Thousand Years of Mental Healing • George Barton Cutten

... two ladies, he continued: "See where she comes, and brings your froward wives as prisoners to her womanly persuasion. Katharine, that cap of yours does not become you; off with that bauble, and throw it underfoot." ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles and Mary Lamb

... fifty; her hair was russet red, and blew about her forehead in little curls; her eyes, brown like a brook in shady places, and kind. It was a mild face, but not weak. Below them the valley shimmered in the heat; the grass was hot and brittle underfoot; popples bent and twisted in a scorching wind, and a soft, dark glitter of movement ran through the pines on ...
— Life at High Tide - Harper's Novelettes • Various

... said Uncle Moses, who seemed restless, "I was a-thinking, Bob, that you and me might have our pipes outside, being dry underfoot." For Uncle Moses, being gouty, was ill-shod for wet weather. He was slippered, though not lean. And though Mrs. Burr, coming in just then, added her testimony that the children were quite safe and happy, only making a great mess, Uncle ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan

... the season in which the pleasure of dancing was carried to the highest pitch. For the scene of it, they chose a shady and delightful part of a wood, where the sunshine could not incommode them, and where care was taken to clear the ground underfoot, for their performance. A young lady of the most eminence for rank and beauty was chosen to personate the goddess Ceres. Her dress was of an exquisite taste, ornamented with tufts of gold, in imitation of wheat-sheaves: ...
— A Treatise on the Art of Dancing • Giovanni-Andrea Gallini

... Overhead there was a soft blue sky with translucent clouds floating in it; underfoot and on all sides the mystery of life was beginning to stir and manifest itself. The last touch of bitterness had passed from the breeze, and all living growth was making haste out into the air. The hedges were green with open buds, and bubbling with the laughter and ecstasy ...
— By What Authority? • Robert Hugh Benson

... on the nose of the fort bluff and had before and below us and underfoot all the old famous scene, for centuries the beginning of all trans-Isthmian travel,—the scalloped surf-washed shore with its dwindling palm groves curving away into the west, the Chagres pushing off into the jungled land. We descended to the beach of the outer bay and swam in the salt sea, ...
— Zone Policeman 88 - A Close Range Study of the Panama Canal and its Workers • Harry A. Franck

... from the mountain and into the pleasing valley of the Adige in as pelting a heat as ever mortal suffered under. The way underfoot was parched and white; I had newly come out of a wilderness of white limestone crags, and a sun of Italy blazed blindingly in an azure Italian sky. You are to suppose, my dear aunt, that I had had enough and something more of my craze for foot-marching. A fortnight ago I had ...
— The Moon Endureth—Tales and Fancies • John Buchan

... pine-wood. They reached and passed the spot where she and Scott had turned back on their first walk together. The snow crunched crisply underfoot. The ascent was becoming more and ...
— Greatheart • Ethel M. Dell

... for their compartments. Seats were littered with snake-skins like immense, decayed apple parings; fearsome, crescent-shaped knives; leopard rugs in embryo; and strange headgear in many varieties. Stuffed crocodiles fell down from racks and got underfoot: men walked about with elephant tusks under their arms; dragomans solicited a last tip; a six-foot seven Dinka, black as ink and splendid as a Greek statue, brought flowers from the Palace for some ...
— It Happened in Egypt • C. N. Williamson & A. M. Williamson

... venerable city that David took for his own. From here you can watch the variable glow of color spread over the whole breadth of country, from the ground at one's feet to the distant purple hilltops of Bethlehem. The fluid air seems to swim, as if laden with incense. The rocks underfoot are of all tones of lavender in shadow, and of tender, warm gleams in the light, casting vivid violet shadows athwart the ...
— Public Speaking • Irvah Lester Winter

... stones—somehow or other they were walking through a wood, the same wood on the edge of the fields, that they had driven past on their way to the farm: how quiet it was and how deliciously soft the moss underfoot, while a gentle breeze ...
— The Pigeon Tale • Virginia Bennett

... the town. The Pinetum is the name given to a pine-shaded avenue that leads from the Pier to the Arcade Gate. Here, in storm or shine, is shelter from the winter wind or shade from the summer sun, while underfoot the fallen acicular leaves of the pines are impervious to the damp. These Gardens are more than a mile and a half in extent, and are computed to possess some four miles of footpaths. The Upper Gardens are contained within the Branksome estate, ...
— Bournemouth, Poole & Christchurch • Sidney Heath

... of snow hiding the levelled logs and boulders, stalactites of ponderous icicles depending from the tree trunks where the openings faced the light and the sun; farther in, and once safely past these glacial outposts, scarcely any signs of storm appeared; last year's leaves, still matted together underfoot, were tangled with the green vine of the creeping linnaea and a rare root of the lustrous winter-green. Here, beneath the thick canopy of branches not all devoid of their foliage since many larches and pines were to be found there, was another climate; coming ...
— Ringfield - A Novel • Susie Frances Harrison

... up and stared about him. There, in the shadowy distance, lay the surrounding forest, and here, close at hand, stood the outline of the village buildings. But, underfoot, beyond question, lay nothing but the broken heaps of stones that betokened a building long since crumbled to dust. Then he saw that the stones were blackened, and that great wooden beams, half burnt, ...
— Three More John Silence Stories • Algernon Blackwood

... recover my spirits and be as I have been in my best days, but what I lose in one way perhaps I shall gain in another. Just think how my ambition has been crushed at every point by my ill-health, and even the ambition to be useful and a comfort to those about me trampled underfoot, to teach me what I could not have ...
— The Life and Letters of Elizabeth Prentiss • George L. Prentiss

... creature. He would have liked to have crushed him underfoot like a cockroach. But as that was impossible, nothing remained for him to do but to depart, leaving the track of his dirty boots on the shining corridor. His last glimpse of his cousins' home was of two little serving-maids scuttering up with ...
— Kimono • John Paris

... ancient ruins and walls and weave a spring garment even for the sombre cypress who has none of his own. Love-song of birds, laughter of men and women, the passionate blue above, the sun-warmed cobblestones underfoot—in these also there is magic, unseizable, irresistible as the happiness of a child. There is nothing great about Como, nothing in the measured beauty of her encircling hills to uplift or strike awe into the soul of a ...
— Captain Desmond, V.C. • Maud Diver

... his humility he swept the floor of the synagogue with his beard. To cite Rashi himself, "I never protest against the usages in the school of my master, Jacob ben Yakar: I know that he possessed the finest qualities. He considered himself a worm which is trodden underfoot, and he never arrogated to himself the honor-though he would have been justified in so doing-of having ...
— Rashi • Maurice Liber

... and the rope over my shoulder, bent double hauling at the sled, I trudged along all day, panting and sweating, through four or five inches of new-fallen snow, while the glare of the sun was terrific. It seemed impossible that, surrounded entirely by ice and snow, with millions of tons of ice underfoot, it could be so hot. But we took the loads right through to the head of the glacier that day, rising some four thousand feet in the course of five miles, and cached them there. On other days a smother ...
— The Ascent of Denali (Mount McKinley) - A Narrative of the First Complete Ascent of the Highest - Peak in North America • Hudson Stuck

... toes, taking cautious strides, ventured along the road. The sleety rain was turning to snow. The air was stealthily cold. Beneath an inch of water was a layer of ice, so that as they wavered with their suit-cases they slid and almost fell. The wet snow drenched their gloves; the water underfoot splashed their itching ankles. They scuffled inch by inch for three blocks. In front of Harry ...
— Main Street • Sinclair Lewis

... rising over the lake. And then they went down into the glen, where the mountain streamlet tumbled. Here had been wood-sorrel, and a carpet of the white trillium; and now there was adder's tongue, quaint and saucy, and columbine, and the pale dusty corydalis. There was soft new moss underfoot, and one walked as if ...
— Love's Pilgrimage • Upton Sinclair

... the house. The wind whistled shrill among the poor shrubs, and the surf beat upon the beach; there was no other sound. Cautiously Dick footed it forth, stumbling among bushes, and groping with his hands; and presently the crisp noise of gravel underfoot told him that he had struck upon ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 8 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... Pelliter and Little Mystery were happy, and Billy fought with himself every hour to keep down his own gloom and despair. The sun helped him. It rose earlier each day and remained longer in the sky, and soon the warmth of it began to soften the snow underfoot. The vast fields of ice began to give evidence of the approach of spring, and the air was more and more filled with the thunderous echoes of the "break up." Great floes broke from the shore-runs, and the sea began to open. ...
— Isobel • James Oliver Curwood

... ghostly and elusive, the hills beyond are a sea of unsubstantial texture, the world a visible spirit, the spiritual within us rises out of its darkness, loses something of its weight and body, and swims up towards heaven. This road that was a mere rutted white dust, hot underfoot, blinding to the eye, is now a soft grey silence, with the glitter of a crystal grain set starlike in its silver here and there. Overhead, riding serenely through the spacious blue, is the mother of the silence, she who has spiritualised the world, alone save for two attendant ...
— The Wheels of Chance - A Bicycling Idyll • H. G. Wells

... institutions, closely connected with the institution of property, enabled the foreign conquerors to oppress the children of the soil. A cruel penal code, cruelly enforced, guarded the privileges, and even the sports, of the alien tyrants. Yet the subject race, though beaten down and trodden underfoot, still made its sting felt. Some bold men, the favourite heroes of our oldest ballads, betook themselves to the woods, and there, in defiance of curfew laws and forest laws, waged a predatory war against their oppressors. Assassination ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 1 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... with his burden of sin, but certainly journeying to hell instead of heaven. On board he looked round for the best position, at first stationing himself near the boiler-pipe; but, finding the deck damp underfoot, he went to the cabin-door, and took his stand on the stairs, protected from the wind, but very incommodiously placed for those who wished to pass. All this was done without any bravado or forced impudence, but in the most quiet way, merely because he was seeking his own comfort, and considered ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... kind, it had only one central street, which was steep and winding. Underfoot were the usual cobbles, and the walls had a queer look of leaning inwards over the road with a protective air. He had not gone many yards before he came upon the little village square. Half of it was shut in by a huge, castle-like structure, which with its carved stone ...
— "Contemptible" • "Casualty"

... going forth by night— (For Chil! Look you, for Chil!) Now come I to whistle them the ending of the fight. (Chil! Vanguards of Chil!) Word they gave me overhead of quarry newly slain, Word I gave them underfoot of buck upon the plain. Here's an end of every trail—they ...
— Songs from Books • Rudyard Kipling

... renown as a hunter. No one uttered a word for fear of giving warning to any elephants who might be feeding near at hand, and who would break away should they hear our voices. Before long, however, we came upon traces of several animals; young saplings being trampled underfoot, bows torn down, and hanging vines dragged away. The king made a sign to us to proceed even more cautiously than before. We expected every moment to be in sight of a herd of the huge animals. Presently we heard a ...
— The Two Supercargoes - Adventures in Savage Africa • W.H.G. Kingston

... which you pretend to know all about, you are like the deserter fleeing from the field of battle, and, to stifle his shame, sneering at war and at valour. Cynicism stifles pain. In some novel of Dostoevsky's an old man tramples underfoot the portrait of his dearly loved daughter because he had been unjust to her, and you vent your foul and vulgar jeers upon the ideas of goodness and truth because you have not the strength to follow them. You are frightened of every honest and truthful hint at ...
— The Lady with the Dog and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov

... the vision of certain hapless creatures who fled blinking from one hole in the wall to another, with little or nothing on, and of other creatures much in liquor and loudly scolding and quarrelling, with squalid bits of childhood scattered about underfoot, and vague shapes of sickness and mutilation, and all the time a buying and selling of ...
— London Films • W.D. Howells

... knowledge of yourself—that comes too late—a crop of unextinguishable regrets. I have wrestled with death. It is the most unexciting contest you can imagine. It takes place in an impalpable grayness, with nothing underfoot, with nothing around, without spectators, without clamor, without glory, without the great desire of victory, without the great fear of defeat, in a sickly atmosphere of tepid skepticism, without much belief in your own ...
— Heart of Darkness • Joseph Conrad

... upon his face, another followed, and then he heard the patter of falling water increasing swiftly. Before he could gain the door the storm had broken. It swept up the street with tropical violence, while a breath sighed out of the night, lifting the litter from underfoot and pelting him with flying particles. Over the roofs the wind rushed with the rising moan of a hurricane while the night grew suddenly noisy ahead ...
— The Spoilers • Rex Beach

... bellies, so Silver Jack had to drive at a plunging walk. Occasionally one or the other of the two stood up and thrashed his arms about. At noon they ate sandwiches of cold fried bacon, which the frost rendered brittle as soon as it left the warmth of their inside pockets. Underfoot the runners of the cutter shrieked loudly. They saw the tracks of deer and wolves and partridge, and encountered a few jays, chickadees, and woodpeckers. Otherwise the forest seemed quite empty. By half-past two they had made ...
— Blazed Trail Stories - and Stories of the Wild Life • Stewart Edward White

... dark road, with many blind alleys, many sudden turnings, many unaccountably crooked portions; a road which, if it has a few sign-posts to guide us, bristles with threatening notices, now upon the one side and now upon the other, the very ground underfoot being often full of unsuspected perils threatening to ...
— The Story Of Ireland • Emily Lawless

... against and grieved (cf. Eph. iv. 30). Only a person can be rebelled against and only a person of authority. Only a person can be grieved. You cannot grieve a mere influence or power. In Heb. x. 29, we read, "Of how much sorer punishment, suppose ye, shall he be thought worthy, who hath trodden underfoot the Son of God, and hath counted the blood of the covenant, wherewith he was sanctified, an unholy thing, and hath done despite unto the Spirit of grace?" Here we are told that the Holy Spirit is "done despite ...
— The Person and Work of The Holy Spirit • R. A. Torrey

... thundering on about the tariff, and the general was wrangling with him. The Barclays were talking to themselves, and the children were clattering about underfoot, and in the trees overhead. Bob's eyes and Molly's met, and the man shuddered at what he saw of pathos and yearning, and he said: "Well, why not? It's no worse to go than to want to go. What's wrong about ...
— A Certain Rich Man • William Allen White

... with the pall of Valley dust. Horses lay stark across the way, or, dying, stared with piteous eyes. The sky was like a bowl of brass, and in the concave buzzards were sailing. All along there was underfoot much of soldiers' impedimenta—knapsacks, belts, accoutrements of all kinds, rolled blankets and oilcloths, canteens. Dead men did not lack. They lay in strange postures, and on all the dust was thick. There were many wounded; the greater ...
— The Long Roll • Mary Johnston

... anchored, instead of drifting around underfoot? How does he bear, Mr. Mayo?" He was now back to pilot-house formality ...
— Blow The Man Down - A Romance Of The Coast - 1916 • Holman Day

... directory, with men willing to give them their support. The laws enacted in favour of priests and emigrants were revoked, and the oath of hatred to royalty renewed. Thus a revolutionary government returned; and the constitution was trodden underfoot by men who ostensibly were its supporters. And ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan

... slewed her for the channel between the pier-ends of the reef, the breakers sounding and whitening to either hand. Straight through the narrow band of blue she shot to seaward; and the captain's heart exulted as he felt her tremble underfoot, and (looking back over the taffrail) beheld the roofs of Papeete changing position on the shore and the island mountains rearing higher in ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XIX (of 25) - The Ebb-Tide; Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson

... its surface, for life is still a conflict, and the passions, though chained as vassals by the victor hand of religion, will sometimes clank their fetters and threaten to resume their lost dominion; but they have not trampled underfoot the new-born blossoms of wedded joy. I am happy, as happy as a pilgrim and sojourner ought to be; and even now, there is danger of my forgetting, in the fulness of my heart's content, that eternal country, whither ...
— Ernest Linwood - or, The Inner Life of the Author • Caroline Lee Hentz

... smoke-fog it bred. Every-thing was damply streaked with the soot: the walls of the houses, inside and out, the gray curtains at the windows, the windows themselves, the dirty cement and unswept asphalt underfoot, the very sky overhead. Throughout this murky season he continued his explorations, never seeing a face he knew—for, on Sunday, those whom he remembered, or who might remember him, were not apt to be ...
— The Magnificent Ambersons • Booth Tarkington

... good time for hunting, for the swamps were frozen and the foliage was off the trees. The leaves were sodden, and no longer rustled underfoot. Red and gray squirrels scampered across our path, but Willis disdained to fire at them. He was loaded for deer; besides he had but three extra charges. Powder and shot ...
— The Junior Classics Volume 8 - Animal and Nature Stories • Selected and arranged by William Patten

... grand, noble ideas and eternal verities melted like wax at the thought of her day of infamy that was at hand. And instead of trampling underfoot the folk that she despised, her one thought was how best she might avoid or ...
— Sanine • Michael Artzibashef

... would put on ski and go for a run with anybody who had not a pony to exercise. The visibility was frequently limited, particularly on overcast days; one would glide along over the sea ice, which was in places wind-swept and in others covered with snow. Nothing in sight but the gray-white shadow underfoot and the blue-black sky above, a streak or band just a mere smudge of daylight in the north, but this would be sufficient to give one direction to go out on. Then slowly, dim, spectre-like shapes would appear which would gradually sort themselves out into ...
— South with Scott • Edward R. G. R. Evans

... like a splendid English park, long preserved, than the recent haunt of naked savages. There were deer and quail in abundance, here and there an open field of grain. Long beards of pale green moss waved from the white oaks, wild flowers, golden red and pale blue, burst underfoot. There were hedges of sweet briar, acres of lupins, purple and yellow. Altogether the ideal estate of a nobleman; and Rezanov, who had liked nothing in California so well, gave his imagination rein and saw the counterpart of the castle ...
— Rezanov • Gertrude Atherton

... beginning! Do you not know, messire, that twenty-two years agone, in the year of grace one thousand four hundred and seven, on the selfsame day and at the selfsame hour, under yonder porch, nine thousand six hundred and thirty-eight persons, without reckoning women and children, trampled each other underfoot and perished miserably? An you met the same fate, I should never smile again. To see you is to love you, messire; to know you is to conceive a sudden and ...
— The Merrie Tales Of Jacques Tournebroche - 1909 • Anatole France

... towered above them, stripped and blackened columns, that seemed to stretch between earth and sky. There was no limb left them, and they rose, majestic in their cylindrical symmetry, in apparently endless battalions, a vista of plutonic desolation. Underfoot there was charcoal, and feathery ashes that whirled aloft, and sprinkling the men with a fine grey powder ...
— Alton of Somasco • Harold Bindloss

... insignificant portion of my Education, which depended on Schools, there need almost no notice be taken. I learned what others learn; and kept it stored-by in a corner of my head, seeing as yet no manner of use in it. My Schoolmaster, a downbent, brokenhearted, underfoot martyr, as others of that guild are, did little for me, except discover that he could do little: he, good soul, pronounced me a genius, fit for the learned professions; and that I must be sent to the Gymnasium, and one day to the University. Meanwhile, ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle

... as fast as my hurt hip and the trailing folds of the rug allowed. The grass underfoot was grey with dew, and overhead the birds were singing. An old horse that had been sleeping in his pasture heaved himself up and gazed at me as I went by, and either his snort of contempt or the sound of my footsteps must have struck on Mr. Rogers's ...
— The Adventures of Harry Revel • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... first day gone. It is cold here—slushy underfoot, snow dirty, sky dark. How different from ...
— The Letters of Franklin K. Lane • Franklin K. Lane

... of time. The Christian Socialism of 1848—one of the finest episodes in our moral history—had been trampled underfoot by the wickedness of the Crimean War. To all appearance, it fell into the ground and died. After two years of aimless bloodshed, peace was restored in 1856, and a spell of national prosperity succeeded. The Repeal of the Corn Laws had done its ...
— Fifteen Chapters of Autobiography • George William Erskine Russell

... laggard in the ranks; not a man who shirked the leaden shower; not one who failed to offer his breast openly and fearlessly to the red death which to them might come when it would. Unwaveringly over rocks, chasms and mines, they followed the tall figure of their leader; death underfoot, death overhead! What would courage avail against concealed mines? Yet like a pack of hounds that reck naught while the scent is warm, they pressed forward, ever forward; across the level opening, where some dropped out of the race, and over the ramparts! A brief struggle; ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham

... solitude. It was a lovely autumn evening. He went into the woods behind the house. The leaves were still thick upon the trees, but most of them had changed to gold, and brown, and red; and the sweet faint odours of those that had fallen, and lay thick underfoot, ascended like a voice from the grave, saying: "Here dwelleth some sadness, but no despair." As he strolled about among them, the whole history of his past life arose before him. This often happens before any change in our history, and is surest to take place at the approach of the greatest ...
— David Elginbrod • George MacDonald

... our principles, our sense of justice trodden underfoot. We see the wild straining of the felon arms that would drag our land into the abyss of ...
— Germany, The Next Republic? • Carl W. Ackerman

... than it had upon their entering. Surely they should have reached the garden entrance by now. And the surface underfoot remained level instead of slanting upward. Suddenly Ricky gave a ...
— Ralestone Luck • Andre Norton

... alive except one, which, from the sand being pumped from under its feet, had not been able to stand during the gale, and in consequence had been trampled underfoot by the other horses and so much injured that we were compelled to destroy it. About an hour before dark we reached, with a fresh and favourable breeze, a point between the two largest of the Sir Charles Hardy's Islands, where one of the anchors was let go and, upon its ...
— Journal of Landsborough's Expedition from Carpentaria - In search of Burke and Wills • William Landsborough

... a walk it was! What air over my head; what grass under my feet! The sweetness of the inner land, and the crisp saltness of the distant sea, were mixed in that delicious breeze. The short turf, fragrant with odorous herbs, rose and fell elastic, underfoot. The mountain-piles of white cloud moved in sublime procession along the blue field of heaven, overhead. The wild growth of prickly bushes, spread in great patches over the grass, was in a glory of yellow bloom. On we went; now up, now down; now bending ...
— Poor Miss Finch • Wilkie Collins

... art must refine and re-refine upon itself; it must use methods of unapproached delicacy, of unimagined subtlety and celerity. It is easy enough to catch the look of the patrician in the upper air, of the plebeian underfoot, but to render the image of a world-bourgeoisie, compacted in characters of undeniable verisimilitude, that will be difficult, but it will be possible, and the success will be of an effulgence such as has never yet taken ...
— Imaginary Interviews • W. D. Howells

... other she soever, and to maintain that same against him, on horse or afoot, with lance, battle-axe or sword. Thus, see you messire, even a love-lorn lover hath betimes his compensations, and the sward is soft underfoot, and level." Saying which, the knight cocked a delicate eyebrow in questioning fashion, and laid a slender finger to the pommel of his ...
— Beltane The Smith • Jeffery Farnol

... I would that I were gather'd to my rest, And mingled with the famous kings of old, On whom about their ocean-islets flash The faces of the Gods—the wise man's word, Here trampled by the populace underfoot, There crown'd with worship—and these eyes will find The men I knew, and watch the chariot whirl About the goal again, and hunters race The shadowy lion, and the warrior-kings, In height and prowess more than human, strive Again for glory, while the golden lyre Is ever sounding in heroic ...
— Alfred Tennyson • Andrew Lang

... are still oftener sworn, whereby truth and right are trodden underfoot with the clear knowledge of all the witnesses of the act. An oath is the jurist's metaphysical pons asinorum, and like this should be used as seldom as ever possible. When it cannot be avoided, ...
— Essays of Schopenhauer • Arthur Schopenhauer

... button precipitated darkness upon the Board Room. He made his way out, and downstairs to the street. It was a rainy, windy October night, sloppy underfoot, dripping overhead. At the corner before him, a cabman, motionless under his unshapely covered hat and glistening rubber cape, sat perched aloft on his seat, apparently asleep. Thorpe hailed him, with a peremptory tone, and gave the brusque ...
— The Market-Place • Harold Frederic

... the hill into the Tozitna basin the wind rose again, now charged with heavy, driving snow, while in the valley the underfoot snow grew deep, so that it was drawing to dusk when we reached the cabin on a fork of the Tozitna where Bob the mail-man had spent the previous ...
— Ten Thousand Miles with a Dog Sled - A Narrative of Winter Travel in Interior Alaska • Hudson Stuck

... Citizen Forces during the annual training of that year and found very suitable for dismounted work. The camp site is a rounded knoll of some few acres in extent, possessing the advantages of good natural drainage, a liberal number of shady trees, and firm soil underfoot. The surrounding country is broken by the foothills of the Darling Range and intersected by roads, fences, and—here and there—small watercourses. However, sufficient level ground is available to suit ordinary purposes and, altogether, the locality ...
— The 28th: A Record of War Service in the Australian Imperial Force, 1915-19, Vol. I • Herbert Brayley Collett

... again, but after a St. Martin's summer unusually prolonged, the rain came down in terrible earnest. Day after day, the clouds condensed, grew water, and poured like a squeezed sponge. A wet November indeed it was—wet overhead—wet underfoot—wet all round! ...
— Paul Faber, Surgeon • George MacDonald

... endlessly cries for her castaways, I musing late in the autumn day, gazing off southward, Held by this electric self out of the pride of which I utter poems, Was seiz'd by the spirit that trails in the lines underfoot, The rim, the sediment that stands for all the water and all ...
— Leaves of Grass • Walt Whitman

... boy. On the lip of what seemed to be a hollow a fig-tree grew, the naked, interlacing roots of which made the final stages of the ascent easy and safe. Briskly hauling myself up, I stepped over the edge of the depression, and the solid rock lapsed and slid underfoot. ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield

... lived in a villa on the banks of the Thames. Mr. and Mrs. Grant were the names of these friends. They were all sitting on the lawn when the post came in. The sunset cast a pink glow on the curves of the beautiful river; the roses were in perfect bloom; overhead and underfoot the grass and trees were of that rich and tender green which is peculiar to England. The letter interested Mrs. Boyd so much that she read it aloud to her friends, who were rich and kind-hearted people, with one little boy of ...
— Nine Little Goslings • Susan Coolidge

... front. What a long time it may be since any loving hand was laid on the shoulder of many of those Recruits! Life, the rough, pitiless life of the great city, has always been pushing them along lower and lower down till it got them underfoot. Here they listen to the sound of a voice of sympathy, and feel the pressure of a hand that wishes to lead them. And there above sits The General for a while in an arm-chair, saying: 'The deepest-fallen may ...
— The Authoritative Life of General William Booth • George Scott Railton

... occasional day's labor, he still was expected to work on the roads, and he still had to pay annoying fees for oven, mill, and wine-press. Then, too, his own crops might be eaten with impunity by doves from the noble dovecote or trampled underfoot by a merry hunting-party from the manor-house. The peasant himself ventured not to hunt: he was precluded even from shooting the deer that devoured his garden. Certain other customs prevailed in various localities, conceived originally no doubt in a spirit of good-natured familiarity between ...
— A Political and Social History of Modern Europe V.1. • Carlton J. H. Hayes

... flown his former keen spirit? He could no longer summon up the old impetuous dash with which he had meant to fall upon his opponent's arguments one after another, raze them to the ground and trample them underfoot like the entrenchments and ...
— 'Jena' or 'Sedan'? • Franz Beyerlein

... it, she wondered? It had wholly ceased to nerve her for resistance. How was it? Was she too physically exhausted to fan it into flame, or had he torn this also from her to wither underfoot with her dead pride? Surely not! With all his boasts of mastery, he had not mastered her yet. She would never submit to him—never, never! Crush her, trample her as he would, she would never yield herself voluntarily to him. It was only when he began to spare her that ...
— The Odds - And Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell

... upbuilding followed, constantly interrupted by petty illnesses of a depressing kind. The house at Itu was completed, she herself laying down a cement floor, and Jean whitewashing the walls. Cement underfoot for many reasons was preferred, one being that it was impervious to ants. If these pests obtained hold of a house it was difficult to drive them out, and many a night her entire family was up waging battle with them. In connection with ...
— Mary Slessor of Calabar: Pioneer Missionary • W. P. Livingstone

... were interwoven bushes and vines beside the road, and then tall reeds and marsh grasses; now there was sand underfoot, now mud. But it was a better path by far than any we could have beaten out for ourselves, and we all—except the cook—were well pleased ...
— The Mutineers • Charles Boardman Hawes

... it is true, for I was cool as though trying a cause at law, and he was very angry: so that he got most of my leads, and I but few of his, albeit jarring me enough to make my ears sing and my eyes blur somewhat, although of pain I was no more conscious than a fighting dog. The turf was soft underfoot, and the space wide, so that we fought very happily and comfortably over perhaps a hundred feet of country, first one and then the other coming in; until at last I had him so well blown that he stood, and I knew we must now end it toe to toe. I bethought ...
— The Lady and the Pirate - Being the Plain Tale of a Diligent Pirate and a Fair Captive • Emerson Hough

... their faces and hands dripping red, were trying to get a boat overside when Bedient regained a sort of consciousness. The Truxton was wallowing underfoot—as one in the saddle feels the tendons of his mount give way after a race. The Captain helped a huge Chinese to hold the wheel. The sea was insane.... They got the boat over and tumbled in—a dozen men. A big sea broke them and the little boat like a ...
— Fate Knocks at the Door - A Novel • Will Levington Comfort

... were placed on opposite sides of the gridiron, and half a dozen footballs were produced. Punting and catching punts was the order of the day, and Neil was soon busily at work. The afternoon was warm, but not uncomfortably so, the turf was springy underfoot, the sky was blue from edge to edge, the new men supplied plenty of amusement in their efforts, the pigskins bumped into his arms in the manner of old friends, and Neil was happy as a lark. After one catch for which he had to run back several ...
— Behind the Line • Ralph Henry Barbour

... entirely. Smells of pomace, and the hiss of fermenting cider, which reached him from the back quarters of other tenements, revealed the recent occupation of some of the inhabitants, and joined with the scent of decay from the perishing leaves underfoot. ...
— The Woodlanders • Thomas Hardy

... humour, when I know not what good demon fortunately put me out of it, as he did the Syracusan, and made me throw abroad all my reserve at random, the pleasure of a certain journey I took at very great expense having made me spurn this fond love of money underfoot; by which means I am now fallen into a third way of living (I speak what I think of it), doubtless much more pleasant and regular, which is, that I live at the height of my revenue; sometimes the one, sometimes the other may perhaps exceed, but 'tis very little ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne

... Dorle caught up with Nasha. They walked together, their metal shoes crunching the ground underfoot. Nasha ...
— The Gun • Philip K. Dick

... and a cooling breeze played gently upon the skin. The dewy air, so spring-like, fresh and sweet, was a positive pleasure to breathe, and we both felt the intoxication, the rapture of life, as we had never felt it since our boyhood. The grass underfoot was green as emerald, and soft as velvet; fountains were flashing in the sunshine, statues gleaming amongst the flowering trees, and birds ...
— A Trip to Venus • John Munro



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