"Sprawling" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... came out of his trance with a start to find a hundred and seventy pounds of cow-puncher sprawling in his lap and clinging about his neck. His dull eyes, gummy with sleep, showed him a hat of sorts, ...
— Louisiana Lou • William West Winter
... Architecture as mourners, and Michael Angelo's bust above, the whole assuming a pyramidal form. You pass a shrine, within its framework of marble pillars and a pediment, and come next to Dante's monument, a modern work, with likewise its sarcophagus, and some huge, cold images weeping and sprawling over it, and an unimpressive statue of Dante ...
— Passages From the French and Italian Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... was suddenly upon his knees. "Here," he cried, seizing the blue ball. He rolled it to young Stephen. It was caught, dropped and then the fat fingers had flung themselves upon Mr. Zanti's coat. He let himself go and was pulled back sprawling upon the floor, his huge body stretching from end to end of ...
— Fortitude • Hugh Walpole
... throttle and allowed the General to lose speed. Tom, Andrews, and Brown stood aside while the men filed from the tender into the cab. The first stood on the step for a moment, then jumped. Tom saw him strike the trackside and go sprawling. The second jumped ... ...
— Tom of the Raiders • Austin Bishop
... expression of melancholy benevolence in his rugged face. I have watched him sitting upon a bench with his arm round some little village urchin by his side, while the children from the outlying hamlets, sprawling upon a heap of stones in the sun, ate their mid-day meal of bread and cheese or buckwheat pancakes that their mothers had put into their baskets before they trudged off in the early morning. I have noticed ...
— Wanderings by southern waters, eastern Aquitaine • Edward Harrison Barker
... put his shoulder to the mouldering door. It fell inward with a dull crash and as it did so the professor leaped backward with a startled cry, stumbling over a deck beam and sprawling in ...
— The Boy Aviators' Polar Dash - Or - Facing Death in the Antarctic • Captain Wilbur Lawton
... boat again, he thought, and it seemed to him as if his hands felt the fish wriggling and sprawling for its life, and shooting its snout backwards and forwards to ...
— Weird Tales from Northern Seas • Jonas Lie
... among the cattle. Wat had broken the ring, and men were hacking and slipping among the slab sides of the wearied beasts. The shelty came down over the rump of a red bullock, and Sim was sprawling on his face in the trampled grass. He struggled to rise, and some one had him ...
— The Moon Endureth—Tales and Fancies • John Buchan
... conviction, my first impulse was to save the man; and, without knowing what I was going to do, I stepped quickly toward him, but stumbling over something I did not see I fell sprawling. Before I could regain my feet I saw Kaldhein fall backward to the ground, where a scene took place, so terrible that I shall not attempt to describe it. When, with trembling steps, I approached, the man was dead. The invisible dog had almost torn ...
— The Stories of the Three Burglars • Frank Richard Stockton
... was checked with an abruptness that threatened to drag the bitts out of her as the strain of the line, with the plunging, struggling monster at the end of it, was suddenly thrown upon them, while the shock sent every individual, fore and aft, sprawling upon the deck, to the uproarious and most undignified amusement of the young Inca, and the mortal terror of his faithful subjects. Then, as all hands scrambled to their feet again and instinctively regained possession of their ...
— Harry Escombe - A Tale of Adventure in Peru • Harry Collingwood
... she read the story in de Spain's face and in what she saw, as he knelt, perfectly still, only waiting to be sure there was no ruse. She watched the rifle come slowly down, unfired, and saw his drawn face slowly relax. Without taking his eyes off the sprawling speck, he rose stiffly to his feet. As if in a dream she saw his hand stretched toward her and heard, as he looked across the ...
— Nan of Music Mountain • Frank H. Spearman
... me. It seemed small and alien and Cambridge surprised me by revealing itself as a sprawling and rather drab assemblage of wooden dwellings, shops and factories. Even the University campus was less admirable, architecturally, than I had supposed it to be, and the residences of its famous professors ...
— A Daughter of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... about among the rocky ribs of Mother Earth, closely attended by the flickering lights and weird shadows cast by the tallow-dip with which he had prudently provided himself early in the day. Emerging into the light of heaven they all rested for a while, sprawling there upon the sun-baked hillside, looking down into a quiet wooded valley full of brooding sunshine and heavenly shadows, while their ears were filled with the din of the ore-bucket, restored to its legitimate function, rattling up ...
— Peak and Prairie - From a Colorado Sketch-book • Anna Fuller
... or twice the King's weight threatened to drag both the boy and the goat into the well, to keep Rinkitink company. But they pulled sturdily, being aware of this danger, and at last the King popped out of the hole and fell sprawling full length upon ...
— Rinkitink in Oz • L. Frank Baum
... had fastened to the end of the string a pellet of tobacco stolen from the old man's pouch. With this bait he had been fishing in the lotus pond; and a frog had swallowed it, and was now suspended high above the pebbles, sprawling in rotary motion, kicking in frantic spasms of disgust and despair. ...
— Glimpses of an Unfamiliar Japan • Lafcadio Hearn
... instant the loud crack of a musket rang upon the still night air. At the same instant Dick Dare fell sprawling upon his face on the ground, and ...
— The Dare Boys of 1776 • Stephen Angus Cox
... captain's military cloak, which he took for Cluffe himself, followed in the track of the boat, whisking, sprawling, and tumbling, in what Puddock supposed to be the agonies of drowning, and went over the weir and disappeared from view, returning no answer to his screams of 'Strike out, Cluffe! to your right, Cluffe. Hollo! to your right,' he quite gave the ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... the mark, and shamed him into action by superior courage. Fred found a chance to speak to him as the long string rested al noon under the narrow shade of a cactus hedge, and warned him in about fifty words of what was intended. (The askaris, almost as leg-weary as the gang, were sprawling at the far end of ...
— The Ivory Trail • Talbot Mundy
... together, so that it seemed like a single shot that thundered through the room. Van Heerden slid forward, and fell sprawling across ...
— The Green Rust • Edgar Wallace
... speaking in defence of particular composers," said Campbell; "figured music may be right, yet Mozart or Beethoven inadmissible. In like manner, you don't suppose, because I tolerate Roman architecture, that therefore I like naked cupids to stand for cherubs, and sprawling women for the cardinal virtues." He paused. "Besides," he added, "as you were saying yourself just now, we must consult the genius of our country and the ...
— Loss and Gain - The Story of a Convert • John Henry Newman
... in the street, who every day marched into battle to the music of the barrel-organ. And this high pride in being human had lifted him unaccountably to an infinite height above the monstrous men around him. For an instant, at least, he looked down upon all their sprawling eccentricities from the starry pinnacle of the commonplace. He felt towards them all that unconscious and elementary superiority that a brave man feels over powerful beasts or a wise man over powerful errors. He knew that he had neither the intellectual ...
— The Man Who Was Thursday - A Nightmare • G. K. Chesterton
... charge I started to join the company—and became sound asleep whilst walking down the hill. Stumbling into a quarry hole, I found myself sprawling on a dead Mexican soldier—his glazed eyes wide open, within a few inches of mine. For a moment I felt that horror of a corpse which many persons have, at times, experienced. The probability that, in a short time after daylight—in ...
— Company 'A', corps of engineers, U.S.A., 1846-'48, in the Mexican war • Gustavus Woodson Smith
... blazing all over the lower floor of the sprawling building; but from the left of the front door came the sound of dancing. Some of the windows were open and the shades were up. Janice, standing in the darkness of the porch, could see the dancers passing back ...
— How Janice Day Won • Helen Beecher Long
... severer shock came, and as I reeled about on the pavement trying to keep my footing, I saw a sight! The entire front of a tall four-story brick building in Third street sprung outward like a door and fell sprawling across the street, raising a dust like a great volume of smoke! And here came the buggy—overboard went the man, and in less time than I can tell it the vehicle was distributed in small fragments along ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... that, in spite of his effort to resist the force of the attack, his chair was overturned backward, and he found himself the next instant sprawling upon the floor. ...
— A Woman at Bay - A Fiend in Skirts • Nicholas Carter
... single sheet that the envelope contained. On it was written, in a sprawling, heavy hand, ...
— Dave Porter and His Rivals - or, The Chums and Foes of Oak Hall • Edward Stratemeyer
... you, my kivey," he said to the bargee, as he sent him sprawling. Then, turning round, he asked a townsman: "What do you charge for a pint of Dutch pink?" following up the question by striking ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books - Vol. II: Fiction • Arthur Mee, J. A. Hammerton, Eds.
... in progress. Father and Mother were at table, Father feeding the baby with cake dipped in tea, Mother fussily busy with the teapot, while two bigger youngsters, with paper headdresses from the crackers, were sprawling on the rug, engaged in the exciting sport of toast-making. It made me sick. A little later the snow unexpectedly came down, and the moon came out and flung long passages of light over the white world, and forced me home ...
— Nights in London • Thomas Burke
... outside of the shelter had reached his ears. Bill Harney had been standing close to some firewood, and without warning Sam had rushed at the big guide and sent him sprawling backward. ...
— The Rover Boys In The Mountains • Arthur M. Winfield
... which now offend our eyes! Long have Advertisement's obtrusive arts Pervaded our huge maze of malls and marts; But now the "swinging signs" of ogre Trade, Even the smoke-veiled vault of heaven invade, And sprawling legends of the tasteless crew Soar to the clouds and spread across the blue. See—if you can—where Paul's colossal dome Rises o'er realms that dwarf Imperial Rome. Cooped, cramped, half hid, the glorious work of WREN ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99, September 6, 1890 • Various
... the shrouds. When our last man fell I made a dash for them, and directly I got to the top I cut them, and half a dozen men who were climbing after me fell sprawling to the deck. Then I cut them on the other side. I thought then that they would at once shoot me, but there was a lively argument among them and shouts of laughter, and they evidently thought that it would be a great joke to leave me up here until I chose to slide ...
— By Conduct and Courage • G. A. Henty
... all—I'd do it for twopence!" He took hold of the Sergeant's coat-collar, jerked him on to his legs, and propelled him to the kitchen and through it to the back door. Opening it, he dispatched the Sergeant through the doorway with an accurate and vigorous kick. He fell, and lay sprawling on the ground for a second, then gathered himself up and ran hastily over the heath, soon disappearing in the darkness. The memory of Beaumaroy's look was even keener than the sensation caused by Beaumaroy's boot. It sent him in flight back to Inkston, thence to London, ...
— The Secret of the Tower • Hope, Anthony
... two of us left in the berry-patch; Bryan O'Lin and Jack had gone to Norwich.— They called him Jack a' Nory, half in fun And half because it seemed to anger him.— So there we stood and let the berries go, Talking of men we knew and had forgotten. A sprawling, humpbacked mountain frowned on us And blotted out a smouldering sunset cloud That broke in fiery ashes. "Well," he said, "Old Adam Brown is dead and gone; you'll never See him any more. He used to wear A long, brown coat that buttoned ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various
... jungle spirit, a goblin of the forest. Only Binu Charley was not perturbed. He flung his poisoned spear over the head of the captive at the flitting form. It was a mighty cast, well intended, but the shadow, leaping, received the spear harmlessly between the legs, and, tripping upon it, was flung sprawling. Before he could get away, Binu Charley was upon him, clutching him by his snow-white hair. He was only a young man, and a dandy at that, his face blackened with charcoal, his hair whitened with wood-ashes, with the freshly severed tail of a wild pig thrust through his perforated nose, ...
— Adventure • Jack London
... to beware of princes, beware of idle princes; and letting his florid fancy loose on these eminent persons, they were at one moment silver lamps, at another poising hawks, and again sprawling pumpkins; anything except useful citizens. How could they be? They had the attraction of the lamp, the appetite of the hawk, the occupation of the pumpkin: nothing was given them to do but to shine, destroy, and fatten. Their hands were ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... to the other side he was off, dodging in and out among the wagons in the mad idea that he could escape; but before he had gone a hundred yards he came out suddenly upon a mounted man, and the next instant he went sprawling over a lance-shaft, and the steel-shod butt end was planted upon his back to keep ...
— A Dash from Diamond City • George Manville Fenn
... it occupied a definite place among the shadows. Trennahan flung back the curtains and opened the window, closing the lower inside blinds. A cloud hurried across the face of the sun, as if light had no place in that ghastly room. About the limp body and sprawling hands clung the delicate prismatic tapestry of the spiders. It was rent in twain, and it quivered, and threatened to drop and trail upon the floor. The little weavers were racing about, full of anger and consternation, bent on repair. A number had already gathered ...
— The Californians • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... upon his feet: "False hound! Will you not silent keep that mouth where truth was never found? For you to boast! the lion scare have you forgotten too? How through the open door you rushed, across the court-yard flew; How sprawling in your terror on the wine-press beam you lay? Ay! never more, I trow, you wore the mantle of that day. There is no choice; the issue now the sword alone can try; The daughters of my Cid ye spurned; that must ye justify. On every count I here declare ...
— National Epics • Kate Milner Rabb
... even stroke, the small boat was rowed across the brief, intervening space, and the mate, Dick Horton, reached down, took the hand of the General and gave so lusty a pull that he stumbled forward and barely saved himself from sprawling on his hands and knees. The next instant Jack sprang among his friends, who crowded around, grasped his hands and showered ...
— Up the Forked River - Or, Adventures in South America • Edward Sylvester Ellis
... behind. Walford was about to rush to the gangway, and hail the fast receding boat, when the ever-watchful Talbot caught him by the collar, and flung him from him with an "Ah! would yer," and a kick which sent the unfortunate officer sprawling upon the deck. ...
— The Voyage of the Aurora • Harry Collingwood
... vastness. But in lieu of simple vastness, the modern world aims to achieve either beauty or utility. By the Washington monument, if completed, neither would be achieved. An obelisk with the proportions of a needle may be very graceful; but an obelisk which requires an expanse of flat-roofed, sprawling buildings for its base, and of which the shaft shall be as big as a cathedral tower, cannot be graceful. At present some third portion of the shaft has been built, and there it stands. No one has a word to say for it. No one thinks ...
— Volume 2 • Anthony Trollope
... red glow, most of them now standing. The sentry who had given the alarm still sat on top of the flat-car, swinging his legs. His companions, however, had jumped down. Kurt heard men of his own party crawling and whispering behind him, and he saw dim, dark, sprawling forms under the far end ...
— The Desert of Wheat • Zane Grey
... retired to the shore, and there, with little Nilen at their head, suddenly threw themselves upon Henry Bodker. He was knocked down and buried beneath the swarm, which lay in a sprawling heap upon the top of him, pounding down with clenched fists wherever there was an opening. But then a pair of fists began to push upward, tchew, tchew, like steam punches, the boys rolled off on all sides with their hands to their faces, and ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... making him jump high off the ground; but this beast is as tenacious of life as a cat, and instead of falling dead, he limped off and escaped. But to resume: I fired, and never heard a ball strike with more satisfaction in my life. It laid the alligator sprawling, feet uppermost. There was no time to be lost in getting him on shore; two or three strokes with the oars brought us alongside of the monster, as he floated on the surface of the stream. The business was to attach a line to one of his legs; and as we knew that he was not dead, ...
— Discoveries in Australia, Volume 2 • John Lort Stokes
... Desert the book, "How to observe," in order to have given a complete and satisfactory description of the fashionable Libyo-Saharan hair-dressing. The old lady sits down, spreading out her knees, and the young sable belle throws herself flat at full length sprawling on the terrace floor, putting her head into the lap of the arbitress of The Desert toilette, her heels meanwhile kicking up, and sometimes not very decently. The operation then commences. The woolly locks, not more than ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson
... nerving myself for the signal, having already selected my man on whom I meant to open fire — a great fellow sprawling on the ground within three feet of little Flossie — Alphonse's teeth began to chatter again like the hoofs of a galloping giraffe, making a great noise in the silence. The rag had dropped out in the agitation of his mind. Instantly a Masai within three paces of us woke, and, ...
— Allan Quatermain • by H. Rider Haggard
... harvest.... In many conventicles and places of rendezvous there has been checkered work indeed, several preaching and several exhorting and praying at the same time, the rest crying or laughing, yelping, sprawling, fainting, and this revel maintained in some places many days and nights together without intermission; and then there were the blessed outpourings of the Spirit!... After him came one Tennent, a monster! impudent and noisy, and told them they were ...
— A History of American Christianity • Leonard Woolsey Bacon
... at the Chinaman, who, being a great coward, immediately turned about and fled. But Charlie was upon him in a moment, and with the leg of pork dealt him a blow on the back of the head, which sent him sprawling on the ground. A knife fell from his hand and Charlie at once seized it. The woman, seeing what had befallen her husband, scrambled to her feet and toddled to him shouting, 'Foreigners!' as she went. To prevent her being heard Fred clapped his hand over her mouth, ...
— Chatterbox, 1905. • Various
... each other. A small wagon with a team of nine dogs carried a quantity of tea and sugar from the Variag's boats to a warehouse. When the work was finished I took a ride on the wagon, and was carried at good speed. I enjoyed the excursion until the vehicle upset and left me sprawling on the gravel with two or three bruises and a prejudice against that kind of traveling. By the time I gained my feet the dogs were disappearing in the distance, and fairly running away from the driver. ...
— Overland through Asia; Pictures of Siberian, Chinese, and Tartar - Life • Thomas Wallace Knox
... father pointed to his heir sprawling on the grass and plucking daisies on the lawn, while the young mother's voice rose merrily, laughing ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... how long a while, Perion propped his chin between his hands and, still sprawling upon the rushes, stared hard into the little, crackling fire. He was thinking of a Perion de la Foret that once had been. In him might have been found a fit mate for Melicent had this boy not ...
— Domnei • James Branch Cabell et al
... origin to an indolent attention, and he resumed his reading. Suddenly something in the text suggested a thought which made him start and drop the book for the third time to the side of the sofa, whence, escaping from his hand, it fell sprawling to the floor, back upward. Brayton, half-risen, was staring intently into the obscurity beneath the bed, where the points of light shone with, it seemed to him, an added fire. His attention was now fully aroused, his ...
— Stories by Modern American Authors • Julian Hawthorne
... would fill the opening of the burrow like an operculum. But a close examination shows us that this operculum is really composed of two halves, on two separate segments of the body, the segment at the extremity only being the true head, armed with its powerful, sharp, curved jaws. As he lies there sprawling on his six spider-like legs, we may now easily test the skill of his trap, and gain some idea ...
— My Studio Neighbors • William Hamilton Gibson
... reeled, and fell sprawling face upwards on the ground. His great neck hung heavily backwards and a deep sleep took hold upon him. Presently he turned sick, and threw up both wine and the gobbets of human flesh on which he had been gorging, for he was very drunk. Then I thrust the beam of wood far ...
— The Odyssey • Homer
... constituting her recognized society. But strangest of all to Lily was the encounter, in this latter group, of several of her acquaintances. She had supposed, and not without relief, that she was passing, for the moment, completely out of her own circle; but she found that Mr. Stancy, one side of whose sprawling existence overlapped the edge of Mrs. Fisher's world, had drawn several of its brightest ornaments into the circle of the Emporium. To find Ned Silverton among the habitual frequenters of Mrs. ...
— House of Mirth • Edith Wharton
... the way, there was another sound. It proceeded from the cabin where our three friends lay sleeping on the sofas. The sound was that of snoring, and it issued from the wide-open mouth of Sam Sorrel, who lay sprawling on his back, with Tittles ...
— Chasing the Sun • R.M. Ballantyne
... Vulcans and sprawling Satyrs want to display their powers over flesh and muscle, they may find something real and not vulgar among ...
— Rides on Railways • Samuel Sidney
... out of the pot and couched on a platter amid vegetables when they arrived. Carhaix, sprawling in an ...
— La-bas • J. K. Huysmans
... space within filled with solidly packed earth sloping inwards, making a kind of open air auditorium. It is a huge place, 394 feet long, and 213 feet at the widest. The earthen slope is entirely devoid of seats; everybody casts himself down sprawling or on his haunches, perhaps with an old himation under him. Directly before the sitters runs a long ledge hewn out of the rock, forming, as it were, the "stage" side of the theater. Here the rock has been cut away, so as to leave a sizable stone pulpit standing forth, with ...
— A Day In Old Athens • William Stearns Davis
... mean things!" muttered Pepper to himself. "I'll soon stop that!" And he made a leap over the guard-rail of the craft. The ax was raised for another blow, but before it could be delivered, Pepper caught the bully by the shoulders and sent him sprawling ...
— The Mystery at Putnam Hall - The School Chums' Strange Discovery • Arthur M. Winfield
... fired at me—from some twelve or fifteen yards' distance. And whether he meant to kill me, or only to cripple me, I don't know; but the bullet went through my left knee, at the lower edge of the knee-cap, and the next thing I knew I was sprawling on all-fours on the earth, and the next—and it was in the succeeding second, before even I felt a smart—I was staring up from that position to see the vengeance that fell on my would-be murderer in the very instant of his attempt on me. For as he fired and I fell, a woman sprang out of the ...
— Dead Men's Money • J. S. Fletcher
... I reached my perch on the top of the hack, all sprawling, the vehicle was approaching one of those small public houses at the corner of a cross street, which abound in the upper part of New York and Harlem. In front of it burned a street lamp. Tom Thornton—and I could distinctly make him out now, though I did not see his face—had ...
— Seek and Find - or The Adventures of a Smart Boy • Oliver Optic
... and struck at Rob so fiercely that had he not worn the Garment of Protection his skull would have been crushed by the blow. At it was, the bar rebounded with a force that sent the murderous Frenchman sprawling upon the roof, and Rob turned around and ...
— The Master Key - An Electrical Fairy Tale • L. Frank Baum
... knees, but as I had gone under the surface, and was completely drenched, I made an enthusiastic move toward the bank. Now snowshoes are not adapted for walking either in swift water or among boulders. I realized this thoroughly after they had several times tripped me, sprawling, into the liquid cold. Finally I sat down in the water, took them off, ...
— Wild Life on the Rockies • Enos A. Mills
... weeny" little house. Mr. Se'noks was now beginning to assume a refinement in Miss Winchelsea's memory out of all proportion to the facts of the case, and she tried in vain to imagine his cultured greatness in a "teeny weeny" little house. "Am busy enamelling a cosy corner," said Fanny, sprawling to the end of her third sheet, "so excuse more." Miss Winchelsea answered in her best style, gently poking fun at Fanny's arrangements, and hoping intensely that Mr. Se'noks might see the letter. Only this hope enabled her to write at ...
— The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... ceremony as though the bullet had lodged in himself, Lanyard tumbled back into the room, tripped, and fell sprawling; while to a tune of clattering boots two sergents de ville lumbered valiantly into the library and pulled up to discover Madame Omber standing calmly, safe and sound, beside her desk, and Lanyard picking himself up from the floor ...
— The Lone Wolf - A Melodrama • Louis Joseph Vance
... low, but Zahn, with legs and arms extended, shot across the asphalt pavement, and fell sprawling at the feet of a dainty figure dressed in muslins and ribbons ...
— The Tale of Timber Town • Alfred Grace
... inflict on one of those literary slovens whose manuscripts bring even the most philosophic editor to the point of exasperation: 'I should like to stick red-hot skewers through the writer, whose style is as sprawling as his handwriting.' By all means. But much that even the most sympathetic reader finds repellent in George Eliot's later work might perhaps never have been, if Mr. Lewes had not practised with more than Russian rigour a censorship of the ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol 3 of 3) - The Life of George Eliot • John Morley
... remember. There were the great, square, white-painted, red-tiled houses lining both banks of the river; the picturesque groups beating their clothes on the flat steps which led down to the water; and the sprawling wooden bridge in the distance where the stream made an abrupt sweep to ...
— A Woman's Impression of the Philippines • Mary Helen Fee
... addressed was at the moment lying in a somewhat undignified position on the floor. Half sprawling, half resting on one knee, Robbie was surprised in the midst of an amusement of which the perky little body whom he claimed as his sweetheart had previously expressed her high disdain. This consisted of a hopeless endeavor to make a lame dog ...
— The Shadow of a Crime - A Cumbrian Romance • Hall Caine
... was right before him, a few feet away. For her he darted, and dropped suddenly into her lap a big-eyed, hump-back toad. Instantly there followed a wild shriek of terror, as the spinster leaped from her chair, sending the innocent toad sprawling upon the floor. The strain was too much for Miss Arabella, and she properly collapsed, much to the consternation ...
— Rod of the Lone Patrol • H. A. Cody
... myself and the orderly, to whose horses the panic seemed to have communicated itself. The clouds of dust raised by the animals' feet, prevented us from seeing whither we were going. Suddenly there was an explosion that seemed to shake the very earth under us, and Ready, the orderly, and myself, lay sprawling with our horses on the ground. Before we could collect our senses and get up, we were nearly deafened by a tremendous roar of artillery close to us, and at the same moment a shower of stones and fragments of brick and mortar clattered about ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 54, No. 335, September 1843 • Various
... progression that is in itself particularly fatiguing and objectionable, but not without excitement, for we never knew the moment when we might chance to put our hands on a dormant snake, or find ourselves sprawling over a nest of bulldog ants. We were successful in completely surprising the camp, which consisted entirely of gins and piccaninnies, all the males, as usual, being out hunting. The gins spoke quite a different language from ...
— Australian Search Party • Charles Henry Eden
... I took the same stage that had brought me to Jacksonville. This time I rode on the City of Alton, a better boat than the one that had brought me from La Salle to Bath; but all the conditions were the same. There was the same roistering and sprawling crowd; the same loudness and profanity; the same abundance of whisky and its intemperate indulgence; the same barbaric hilarity of negroes, driven and cursed. And now many goatees, and much talk of ...
— Children of the Market Place • Edgar Lee Masters
... quite provident. Well, seeing I'm in the hands of a Yankee, there is nothing for it but to concede;" and St. Clare rapidly wrote off a deed of gift, which, as he was well versed in the forms of law, he could easily do, and signed his name to it in sprawling capitals, concluding ...
— Uncle Tom's Cabin • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... stick over Tom's head; but in a moment it was spinning harmlessly in the air, and Jonas himself lay sprawling in the ditch. In the momentary struggle for the stick, Tom had brought it into violent contact with his opponent's forehead; and the blood welled out profusely from a deep cut on the temple. Tom was first apprised of this by seeing that he pressed his handkerchief to the wounded part, and ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens
... had by this time run over the carelessly-written, sprawling page of the letter, and her face flushed up crimson as she said, "I really do wish Jerrem would give over all this silly nonsense. He has no business to write in ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 26, August, 1880 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various
... the gate Dragonfly was on was as wide open as it could go, and Dragonfly who didn't have a very good hold with his hands—and the gate being icy anyway—slipped off and went sprawling head over heels into a snowdrift in ...
— Shenanigans at Sugar Creek • Paul Hutchens
... down on the sturdy figure sprawling in the garden chair. The Cap'n's pipe clouds curled about his head, and his hands were stuffed comfortably into his ...
— The Skipper and the Skipped - Being the Shore Log of Cap'n Aaron Sproul • Holman Day
... the sill where the Nurse had been in the habit of leaving crumbs. Billy Grant, very sleepy and contented now that he had got his way, dictated a line or two on a blank symptom record, and signed his will in a sprawling hand. ...
— Love Stories • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... place of adventures. He had lived in New York and Paris, but neither of these cities had for him the same fascination as the sprawling giant of the Thames. Paris was as stimulating and provocative as a paid mistress, but palled as quickly. In New York mysteries beckoned at every street corner, but too importunately. Neither city was sufficiently discreet for Colwyn's reticent ...
— The Hand in the Dark • Arthur J. Rees
... Markheim's eyes returned to the body of his victim, where it lay both humped and sprawling, incredibly small and strangely meaner than in life. In these poor, miserly clothes, in that ungainly attitude, the dealer lay like so much sawdust. Markheim had feared to see it, and, lo! it was nothing. And yet, as ...
— Short Stories for English Courses • Various (Rosa M. R. Mikels ed.)
... had begun to bud and sprout, the fountains plashed in the sunshine, the children of the quarter, both the dingier types from the south side, who played games that required much chalking of the paved walks, and much sprawling and crouching there, under the feet of passers, and the little curled and feathered people who drove their hoops under the eyes of French nursemaids—all the infant population filled the vernal air with small sounds which had a crude, tender quality, like the leaves and the thin herbage. ...
— The Bostonians, Vol. II (of II) • Henry James
... for her bureau, and snatching her own motto down, crumpled its face securely against her skirt and started for the door. Just what the motto was no one but herself knew. Sprawling in paint-brush hieroglyphics on a great flapping sheet of brown wrapping-paper, the sentiment, whatever it was, had been nailed face down to the wall ...
— The White Linen Nurse • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
... nowhere about. The mutineers had made a great fire of driftwood, more for its cheerful effect than for any other reason, for the night was oppressively warm. At some distance from it the men were sitting or lying in sprawling attitudes. Some were sleeping, some singing, while one tall man, whom Drew recognized as Ditty, was engaged in earnest conversation with ...
— Doubloons—and the Girl • John Maxwell Forbes
... fraternity, and then they sang till they were hoarse, and then they began hugging each other and shrieking, and lastly, they got up and danced and skipped and frisked about, till tripping up their heels they toppled down on deck, and lay sprawling about unable to move. Now and then one tried to rise, but all he could do was to reach a bottle, and to pour a little more liquor down his throat, which soon finished him off completely, and he, like the rest, lay utterly ...
— Will Weatherhelm - The Yarn of an Old Sailor • W.H.G. Kingston
... gazing at the sprawling flowers on the wall, and doing his best not to count them. The door opened suddenly. "Well, well, old fellow." Jasper came up to the bedside with the air of one who had been in the habit of running in every little while. "It's good to see you again, Pick," he added, ...
— Five Little Peppers Grown Up • Margaret Sidney
... aboard the locomotive, unheeding Chester's cry of wonder, released the brakes, and threw the throttle wide open. Then he dropped sprawling to the ground, while the engine ...
— The Boy Allies On the Firing Line - Or, Twelve Days Battle Along the Marne • Clair W. Hayes
... Desmond's resistance, Richard, purple with wrath, advanced to seize the boy. But Desmond, nimbly evading his clutch, slipped his foot within his brother's, and with a dexterous movement tripped him up, so that he fell sprawling, with many an oath, on the miry road. Before he could regain his feet, Desmond had vaulted the hedge and set off at a run towards home. Diggle was nowhere ...
— In Clive's Command - A Story of the Fight for India • Herbert Strang
... two Dick glanced down at his adversary in cold contempt. Then suddenly, without a word, he bent over, seizing Dodge by the shirt collar and belt, and threw him sprawling out into ...
— The High School Boys' Fishing Trip • H. Irving Hancock
... about. And the ground inside it, that was nice turf once, with the rill running down it that perhaps supplied the moat—all stony now, and overgrown, and tangled, with ugly-looking elder-bushes sprawling through the ivy. To a painter it might have proved very attractive; but to me it seemed so dreary, and so sombre, and oppressive, that, although I am not sentimental, as you know, I actually turned away, ...
— Springhaven - A Tale of the Great War • R. D. Blackmore
... on its three sprawling legs, while Polly tried to gather her pets around her. But by this time Blackie, the cat, was chasing a squirrel (though he did not catch him), and Banty, the hen, was away off scratching for worms; and Gyp, the dog, ...
— Boys and Girls Bookshelf; a Practical Plan of Character Building, Volume I (of 17) - Fun and Thought for Little Folk • Various
... and Dr. Bird's two hundred pounds of bone and muscle crashed against the door. The lock gave and the Doctor barely saved himself from sprawling headlong on the hall floor. A woman's scream rang out, and the Doctor swore ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science April 1930 • Various
... yet another illustration of the Gita Govinda[70]. All three sets of illustrations are in a closely similar style—a style which, while possessing roots in Jain painting is now considerably laxer and more sprawling. The faces are no longer shown three-quarter view, the detached obtruding eye has gone and in place of the early sharpness there is now a certain slovenly crudity. We do not know for whom these manuscripts were ...
— The Loves of Krishna in Indian Painting and Poetry • W. G. Archer
... her daughters she used to read herself, occasionally imparting some of their contents to 'that good Clare.' But anybody might read my lord's letters. There was no great fear of family secrets oozing out in his sprawling lines of affection. But once Mrs. Kirkpatrick came upon a sentence in a letter from Lord Cumnor, which she was reading out loud to his wife, that caught her eye before she came to it, and if she could have skipped it and kept it for private perusal, she would gladly have done ...
— Wives and Daughters • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... Myrra stretched forth her hand and, taking the reed pen which Lyga smilingly handed to her, drew it firmly and deliberately through Sachar's sprawling signature. ...
— In Search of El Dorado • Harry Collingwood
... ANDY. He underlined his points heavily, and his hearers, like the self-conscious, emotionally shy young colonials they were, felt half amused by, half-superior to the histrionic display. They lounged in easy, ungraceful postures while he read, reclining one against another, or sprawling forward over the desks, their heads on their arms. It was the first hour after dinner, when one's thoughts were sleepy and stupid, and Mr. Repton was not a pattern disciplinarian; but the general abandonment of attitude had another ground as well. It had to do with the shape of the master's legs. ...
— The Getting of Wisdom • Henry Handel Richardson
... at each other. Miners came along the street, tried the door and went away grumbling. Word ran from lip to lip up the hillside. "The mine manager has closed Nance McGregor's shop," said the women leaning over back fences. Children sprawling on the floors of the houses put up their heads and howled. Their lives were a succession of new terrors. When a day passed that a new terror did not shake them they went to bed happy. When the miner and his woman stood by the ...
— Marching Men • Sherwood Anderson
... dust or of hardened mud. The horses, dirty and thin, seemed ready to drop. Their necks were covered with sores, and they were hanging their heads to eat, but seemed not to have strength enough to take their food. Drivers and non-commissioned officers were sprawling about, sleeping heavily. Their cadaverous faces, beards of a week's growth and drawn features showed even in their sleep how exhausted they were. I could hardly recognise the original colour of their dingy uniforms under the accumulation ...
— In the Field (1914-1915) - The Impressions of an Officer of Light Cavalry • Marcel Dupont
... conversation with a friend he had not met since his misfortune, he suddenly recalled her—that is, what was left of her when he had run like one distraught into the cloak room of the railway station—on the table, shamelessly sprawling out among strangers, the bloodstained body so lately full of life; the head unhurt dropping back with its weight of hair, and the curling tresses about the temples, and the exquisite face, with red, half-opened mouth, the strange, fixed expression, piteous on the lips ...
— Anna Karenina • Leo Tolstoy
... and the loathsome sprawling of the trunk of Argus under the chariot, are the essential contributions of Rubens' own Netherland personality. Then the rest of the treatment he learned from other schools, but adopted with ...
— Lectures on Landscape - Delivered at Oxford in Lent Term, 1871 • John Ruskin
... at the dim, sprawling figure, then turned and made his way off the pier and again to the door of the pawnshop. Casey was gone; he could see no one within but Old Isaac, ...
— Children of the Whirlwind • Leroy Scott
... more important, as the honour of the whole village is at stake, and it is carried on with redoubled impetuosity, every object which might impede them in their career is knocked down and trodden under foot without mercy, and before the game is decided, it is a common thing to see numbers sprawling on the ground with wounded legs and broken heads, yet this never creates any disputes or ill-will after the play is ...
— Pioneers in Canada • Sir Harry Johnston
... step she hardly knew, but, scrambling, falling, in her haste she gained her place of safety, sprawling flat on her ...
— A Dear Little Girl • Amy E. Blanchard
... the low-lying hills began to cast cool shadows down their eastern slopes, there appeared against the velvet green of the distance the sprawling blotch of a little town, ugly, naked, and unashamed in its bustling newness. And nearer, by a mile or more, on a green slope which caught the golden-red rays of the sinking sun, was a little enclosure, naked and ugly ...
— Emerson's Wife and Other Western Stories • Florence Finch Kelly
... spite of thy lions. And with that he gave him again a downright blow, and brought him upon his knees. With this blow he also broke his helmet, and with the next he cut off an arm. Then did the giant roar so hideously, that his voice frighted the women, and yet they were glad to see him lie sprawling upon the ground. Now the lions were chained, and so of themselves could do nothing.[125] Wherefore, when old Grim, that intended to back them, was dead, Mr. Great-heart said to the Pilgrims, Come now, and follow me, and no hurt shall happen ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... on the moist trail; her quick eyes missed nothing—not the dainty imprint of deer, fresh made, nor the sprawling insignia of rambling raccoons—nor the big barred owl huddled on a pine limb overhead, nor, where the swift gravelly reaches of the brook caught sunlight, did she miss the swirl and furrowing and milling of painted trout on ...
— The Flaming Jewel • Robert W. Chambers
... was one long nightmare to the unfortunate captive. He had been thrown, sprawling, into the iron-railed "carryall" platform at the back of the buckboard, and lay on the nut-studded slats, where he was jolted and bumped about like the proverbial ...
— The Story of the Foss River Ranch • Ridgwell Cullum
... parents marry and have a son, who falls in love with his mother. As she refuses to yield to his passion he follows and overpowers her. She immediately jumps up and runs away crying. The son follows her to soothe her, and when he catches her she falls sprawling on the earth, her body begins to swell, two streams of water spring from her breasts and her body falls in pieces. Fifteen gods spring from her disrupted body. [Motive of the mutilation of the maternal body. The dismembered lion also naturally contains ...
— Hidden Symbolism of Alchemy and the Occult Arts • Herbert Silberer
... occasionally occurred between them and the hated "bull-dogs." At dusk stones were thrown at us, which it was difficult to avoid in the then badly lighted streets. Sudden sorties were made from alleys, to take us unawares, and send us sprawling on the coggles. Especially in snowy weather we were assailed with snowballs on our way from school to the Doctor's house, and although we stood shoulder to shoulder and made a spirited resistance, it not uncommonly occurred that these missiles ...
— A History of Horncastle - from the earliest period to the present time • James Conway Walter
... thick, the wrists massive-boned, the arm-bones and the shoulder-bones of the same massive order. With one flip of his right hand, with what I might call an open-handed, lifting, upward slap, save that it was the ends of the fingers only that touched Larry's face, he lifted Larry into the air, sprawling him backward on ...
— The Mutiny of the Elsinore • Jack London
... spiflicate, as the puppets were spiflicated by Don Quixote. Yes, even now Demos begins to discern. The same spirit that has revived rouge, smote his mouth as it grinned at the wondrous painter of mist and river, and now sends him sprawling for the pearls that Meredith dived for in ...
— The Works of Max Beerbohm • Max Beerbohm
... to administer him a blow on the head that would have been enough to kill a bull, she fortunately slipped on the ice and went sprawling over her victim. The soldier, more dead than alive, had raised himself on his knees, when that demon in female attire rose again and embracing him most tenderly, bit his cheek so hard as to draw a regular stream ...
— Corea or Cho-sen • A (Arnold) Henry Savage-Landor
... refugees arrive, the street-selling is naturally augmented by a more hopeful crowd, and it was possible to see one day little bears with scarlet ribbons round their necks being offered for sale on the pavement, tiny baby-bears with pink noses and sprawling feet, fed ...
— Europe—Whither Bound? - Being Letters of Travel from the Capitals of Europe in the Year 1921 • Stephen Graham
... the side of the cattle pony, and, as the horse veered away, Hal Dozier dropped limply into his arms. He lay with his limbs sprawling at odd angles beside him. His muscles seemed paralyzed, but his eyes were bright and wide, and ...
— Way of the Lawless • Max Brand
... their sharp hoofs. But the gigantic stranger troubled himself with no such details. He merely fell upon them, like a blind but raging force, irresistible as a falling hillside and almost as disastrous. They both went down before him like calves, and rolled over and over, stunned and sprawling. ...
— Kings in Exile • Sir Charles George Douglas Roberts
... Waters, as a sprawling Cat landed all unannounced in the centre of the tail-race. "Is that you, Mewsalina? You seem to have been quarrelling with your best friend. Get over to the left. It's shallowest there. Up on that alder-root with all four ...
— Traffics and Discoveries • Rudyard Kipling
... foam round every gray rock and headland; the gold-tipped pinnacles of the Autelets, with their fluttering halos of gulls and sea-pies and cormorants, and their ridi-fringe of tawny seaweed and foamy lace; the rounded slopes of the Eperquerie; the bold cliffs behind, with their sprawling gray feet in the emerald sea, and their green and gold shoulders humping up into the blue sky; beyond them the black Gouliot rocks and foaming Race, and the long soft bulk of Brecqhou with its seamy ...
— Pearl of Pearl Island • John Oxenham |
