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Underfoot   /ˌəndərfˈʊt/   Listen
Underfoot

adverb
1.
Under the feet.  "Green grass growing underfoot"
2.
In the way and hindering progress.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Underfoot" Quotes from Famous Books



... 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 ...
— Fate Knocks at the Door - A Novel • Will Levington Comfort

... 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 ...
— Rezanov • Gertrude Atherton

... turned out clear and frosty. Winter having set in so early seemed bent on keeping up its unusual record. The snow on the ground crackled underfoot in the fashion dear to the heart of every boy who loves ...
— The Banner Boy Scouts Snowbound - A Tour on Skates and Iceboats • George A. Warren

... it was that MacRae almost knew the feel of the ground underfoot. He led us a hundred yards along the rim of the bank ...
— Raw Gold - A Novel • Bertrand W. Sinclair

... leein' cur!... I will say this thing, too, that my heart warmed to the lad at the very time of it—that he had spunk to speak his mind. I have seen too much of the supple stock. Sirs, it is but an ill thing to be over-rich, in which estate mankind is seen at the worst. The fawning sort cringe underfoot for favors, and the true breed of kindly folk are all o'erapt to pass the rich man by, verra scornful-like." He looked hard at Peter Johnson. "I am ...
— Copper Streak Trail • Eugene Manlove Rhodes

... 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 night, and ...
— Ten Thousand Miles with a Dog Sled - A Narrative of Winter Travel in Interior Alaska • Hudson Stuck

... 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 departing ...
— It Happened in Egypt • C. N. Williamson & A. M. Williamson

... firm and fragrant leaf; on either side Acanthus, and each odorous bushy shrub, Fenced up the verdant wall; each beauteous flower, Iris all hues, roses, and jessamin, Reared high their flourished heads between, and wrought Mosaick; underfoot the violet, Crocus, and hyacinth, with rich inlay Broidered the ground, more coloured than with stone Of costliest emblem: Other creature here, Bird, beast, insect, or worm, durst enter none, Such was their ...
— Paradise Lost • John Milton

... followed the path he had taken. The thickly grown wood was alive with spirit of spring. Small animals scampered underfoot, and overhead a bird breathed forth its soul in incomparable song. She stopped for a minute to listen to the latter—clear-throated as an English nightingale—singing away as though winter and the stark desolation had never been. A slight breeze ...
— Colorado Jim • George Goodchild

... 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 ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 30, April, 1860 • Various

... thicket. A very dense forest of young Callitris trees next impeded us, and were more formidable than even the vines. The day was passed in forcing our way through these various scrubs, the ground declining by a gentle slope only. We next found firmer soil underfoot, that where the Callitris scrub grew having been sandy, and we saw at length, with a feeling of relief, that only brigalow scrub was before us; we ascended gravelly hills, came upon a dry water-course, and then ...
— Journal of an Expedition into the Interior of Tropical Australia • Thomas Mitchell

... of the age, the barber is abased, trodden underfoot, given over to the sneers and the gibes of them that flatter the powerful ones; he is as the winter worm, as the crocodile in the slime of his sleep by the bank, as the sick eagle before moulting. But I say, ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... haughty in spirit after a while, and scorn to tread on anything less than one of His Majesty's colonels or secretary under the Crown. Here are the tombs of the Atkinsons, the Jaffreys, the Sherburnes, the Sheafes, the Marshes, the Mannings, the Gardners, and others of the quality. All around you underfoot are tumbled-in coffins, with here and there a rusty sword atop, and faded escutcheons, and crumbling armorial devices. You are moving ...
— An Old Town By The Sea • Thomas Bailey Aldrich

... and others opened the door and took their coats. The first thing they saw was a huge, fireplace, a fireplace a dozen feet across, made of great boulders, and with whole sections of a pine tree blazing in it. Underfoot was polished hardwood, with skins of bear and buffalo. The firelight flickered upon shields and battle-axes and broad-swords, hung upon the oaken pillars; while between them were tapestries, picturing the Song of Roland and the battle of Roncesvalles. ...
— The Metropolis • Upton Sinclair

... connoisseur speaks it) is some morning when it has rained well the day or night before, and the soil of the road, where it is not evenly packed, is of about that substance of which the fingers can make fine "tees" for golfing. This is the precise composition of earth and dampness underfoot most sympathetic to the spine, the knee sockets, the muscles, tendons, ligaments of limb, back, neck, breast and abdomen, and the spirit of locomotion in the ancient exercise of walking. On this day the protruding stones have been washed ...
— Walking-Stick Papers • Robert Cortes Holliday

... the ashes? And what could he do if he did find you? Your house is burned, your chickens carried away and your cabbages trampled underfoot. A sorry home he will return to. You would be just one more mouth to feed. No! that plan will never do. If your father thinks you are dead, he will go off to another province to get work. That ...
— A Chinese Wonder Book • Norman Hinsdale Pitman

... carriages. The uproar and the glare made the horses unmanageable, and in a few moments the whole mass, human beings and animals, was mingled in helpless confusion, making flight impossible by their very eagerness to fly, and trampling one another underfoot in bewildered misery. Of those who did succeed in extricating themselves from the square, half made their way to the road which runs along the bank of the river, and found that they had only exchanged one danger for another, which, though of an opposite character, was equally ...
— The Life of Marie Antoinette, Queen of France • Charles Duke Yonge

... 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, but my lord claps spurs ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller

... 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 had made. ...
— The Fifth-Dimension Tube • William Fitzgerald Jenkins

... streets of a peaceful city run blood with their contentions. It did not bring back the scenes in some old Italian cities, where family met family, and faction met faction, and mutually trampled the laws underfoot. No; the men in that house were regularly enrolled under the sanction of the mayor. There being no militia in Alton, about seventy men were enrolled with the approbation of the mayor. These relieved each other every other night. ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 7 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Orators • Elbert Hubbard

... there—Pelle was the expression of them all. They stared at his indomitable figure, and drew themselves up. "A devil of a chap!" they told one another joyfully; "he looks as if he could trample 'em all underfoot! Look at him—he scarcely makes way for that great loaded wagon! Long live ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo

... his pale, heavy jowl, cut by the cheek-strap, and the bullying eyes, he felt both hate and fear, as if brought face to face with all that he despised and loathed, yet strangely dreaded. The cold certainty of law and order upholding the strong, treading underfoot the weak, the smug front of meanness that only the purest spirits may attack, seemed to be facing him. And the odd thing was, this man was only carrying out his duty. Shelton ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... it, you see. If they had stuck to their rights and enforced them you wouldn't be trying to trample mine underfoot in this bland way now. I haven't any disposition to give you unnecessary trouble, but it is my duty to protect the next man from this kind of imposition. So I must have my car. Otherwise I will wait in Chicago and sue the ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... 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 ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan

... man made an effort to rise; but his strength failed him; he fell back exhausted on the mattress. A sudden movement took place among the crowd, the stretcher was overturned, the old man and his companion were trodden underfoot, and their groans were drowned in the cries of "Death to the body-snatchers!" The yells were renewed with fresh fury, but the ferocious band, who respected nothing in their savage fury, were soon after obliged to open their ranks to several workmen, ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue

... white highway, dusty with a week's drought, carried back his thoughts so fully to old times that he walked on unconscious of the noontide heat and the sultriness of the road. Yet when he came to the lanes, green overhead and underfoot, and as silent as the mountain-heights round Engelberg, he felt the solace of the change. All the recollections treasured up in the secret cells of memory were springing into light at every step; and these were remembrances less bitter than those ...
— Cobwebs and Cables • Hesba Stretton

... 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 scrap ...
— The Shrieking Pit • Arthur J. Rees

... 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 from that ...
— Ringfield - A Novel • Susie Frances Harrison

... Teddy were in no less haste. Quickly getting their trunks packed, they started off for the river. The moon had come out after the storm and the air was fresh and fragrant, though underfoot the evidences of the storm ...
— The Circus Boys On the Mississippi • Edgar B. P. Darlington

... sloppy with melting snow, and the roofed passages of the bazaar, being dry underfoot, are crowded with people to an unusual extent; albeit they are pretty well crowded at any time. Most of the dervishes in the city have been driven, by the inclemency of the weather, to seek shelter in ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens

... southland a few years ago; a wide, coolly-dark veranda ran the length of the building; through three-feet-thick walls the doorways invited to further coolness. Howard stood aside for them to enter. They found underfoot a bare floor; it had been sprinkled from a watering pot earlier in the afternoon. The room was big and dusky; a few rawhide-bottomed chairs, a long rough table painted moss-green, some shelves with books, furnished the apartment. At one end was ...
— The Desert Valley • Jackson Gregory

... sofa, rolling a cigarette between his thin, expressive fingers, looking at no one and at nothing, while Madame X. moves about with solid vivacity in the midst of her extraordinary menagerie of bric-a-brac. The spoils of all the world are there, in that incredibly tiny salon; they lie underfoot, they climb up walls, they cling to screens, brackets, and tables; one of your elbows menaces a Japanese toy, the other a Dresden china shepherdess; all the colours of the rainbow clash in a barbaric discord ...
— Figures of Several Centuries • Arthur Symons

... emphasize by their starved and shivering appearance the nearness of the timber; where the snow-drifts, each with its little feather of drifting snow sheering from its crest, are heaped high; where the snow underfoot is unbroken; where under snow-filled skies a wind studded with needle-sharp ice crystals blows a perfect gale; where the lonely and frozen desolation is peopled only by the haunting shape of fear that next morning ...
— The Boy With the U.S. Census • Francis Rolt-Wheeler

... heaven. And I saw two young men enter the house and attack the old man, while his companion, whom they did not see, stole out of a back door and fled. And they dashed the wounded old man against the stones, and they marred his visage with savage blows; and they trod him underfoot, and tore from him his idol, ...
— Mark Hurdlestone - Or, The Two Brothers • Susanna Moodie

... 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 ...
— The Iliad of Homer - Translated into English Blank Verse • Homer

... see, I am 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 playwright robs me of every chance of meeting you ...
— The Light of the Star - A Novel • Hamlin Garland

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

... 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

... 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

... your feelings, rooted in that cherished grave, would have stretched up toward Heaven their delicate leaves, and caught the dews of His grace, who watcheth the lilies. But now,—with your heart cast underfoot, or buffeted on the lips of a lying world,—finding no shelter and no abiding place!—alas, we do guess at ...
— Dream Life - A Fable Of The Seasons • Donald G. Mitchell

... most grateful after the scorching desert. The fresh trees meeting in canopy overhead were full of monkeys and bright birds; festooned vines swung their great ropes here and there; long heavy grass carpeted underfoot. ...
— African Camp Fires • Stewart Edward White

... wide street bordered by maples, now shorn of their leaves, but furnishing a carpet of yellow underfoot, past the church, the store, the schoolhouse and on to the old brown house sitting back behind an orchard of gnarled, crooked apple trees. The place was all grown up with weeds, though here and there were signs of a former garden. Up the rotting pillars of the porch a woodbine ...
— A Dear Little Girl's Thanksgiving Holidays • Amy E. Blanchard

... dripped from the leaves, and the earth was sodden underfoot. Lofty arches yawned in the sunlight and a silence as of the grave reigned, broken only by an occasional caw from an inquisitive crow, or the intermittent chattering ...
— Banked Fires • E. W. (Ethel Winifred) Savi

... 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 ...
— Beltane The Smith • Jeffery Farnol

... 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 ...
— The Story Of Ireland • Emily Lawless

... and hair. It could only be Etta. Paul stooped down and looked at her, but he did not touch her. He went a few paces forward and closed the door. Beyond Etta a black form lay across the passage, all trodden underfoot and dishevelled. Paul held the lamp down, and through the mud and blood Claude de ...
— The Sowers • Henry Seton Merriman

... none have been more fortunate, than Charles Darwin. He found a great truth trodden underfoot, reviled by bigots, and ridiculed by all the world; he lived long enough to see it, chiefly by his own efforts, irrefragably established in science, inseparably incorporated with the common thoughts ...
— Darwiniana • Thomas Henry Huxley

... impertinent finger under her wrist, while all outdoors was calling to her; for which she had forborne often and often during the week, only to be more thoroughly bullied on Saturdays. Yet she tore it across and recklessly trampled it underfoot. Then with her hands over her ears, lest she hear the imperturbable and maddeningly excellent Sissy play "In Sweet Dreams" without ...
— The Madigans • Miriam Michelson

... I must own, I was quite surprised at the magnificence and taste with which the building was decorated. The walls were covered with silk and velvet hangings, ornamented with gold fringe, while rich carpets were spread underfoot. On large tables, in the middle of the nave, were displayed the most valuable specimens of the church plate, gold and silver vases, immense dishes, plates, and goblets, artistically engraved, and ornamented ...
— A Woman's Journey Round the World • Ida Pfeiffer

... followed is described in mournful language by the Milanese chroniclers. During the next forty years, the city was continually taken and sacked by contending armies, her fair parks and gardens were trampled underfoot by foreign soldiery, and her beautiful churches and palaces destroyed by shells and cannon-balls. French and German ruffians tore the clothes off the backs of the poor, and snatched the bread from the lips of starving children. People were everywhere seen dying of hunger ...
— Beatrice d'Este, Duchess of Milan, 1475-1497 • Julia Mary Cartwright

... bright eve ere summer in autumn sank At stardawn standing on a grey sea-bank He felt the wind fitfully shift and heave As toward a stormier eve; And all the wan wide sea shuddered; and earth Shook underfoot as toward some timeless birth, Intolerable and inevitable; and all Heaven, darkling, trembled like a stricken thrall. And far out of the quivering east, and far From past the moonrise and its guiding ...
— Songs of the Springtides and Birthday Ode - Taken from The Collected Poetical Works of Algernon Charles - Swinburne—Vol. III • Algernon Charles Swinburne

... "in this world below, I know nothing worse calumniated than God and the eighteenth century; for as I look back over my own young days, I do not recollect that a single duchess trampled the proprieties underfoot as you have just done. Novelists and scribblers brought the reign of Louis XV into disrepute. Do not believe them. The du Barry, my dear, was quite as good as the Widow Scarron, and the more agreeable woman of the two. In my time a woman could keep ...
— The Thirteen • Honore de Balzac

... foil of rice and fried onions, is upset in the foreground. Malays, Lascars, Hindus, Chinese, Japanese, Burmans—the whole gamut of racetints, from saffron to tar-black—are twisting and writhing round it, while their vermilion, cobalt, amber, and emerald turbans and head-cloths are lying underfoot. Pressed against the yellow ochre of the iron bulwarks to left and right are frightened women and children in turquoise and isabella-coloured clothes. They are half protected by mounds of upset bedding, straw mats, red lacquer boxes, and plaited bamboo trunks, mixed up with tin plates, ...
— Letters of Travel (1892-1913) • Rudyard Kipling

... have life.' They can never be so madly ungrateful as to slight a Saviour. Mercy never wooed their stubborn, proud hearts as it does ours. They have abused grace, it is true, but they never trampled mercy underfoot. This more than diabolical sin is reserved for thee, careless sinner. Now thou hearest Christ compassionately say in the text, 'Ye will not come unto Me,' and thou remainest unmoved; but the time cometh when Jesus, who meekly entreats, shall sternly curse; when He who in tender patience ...
— Fletcher of Madeley • Brigadier Margaret Allen

... with tall blooming weeds emitting offensive smells—weeds whose red and yellow and purple hues formed a polychrome as dazzling as that of cultivated flowers. She went stealthily as a cat through this profusion of growth, gathering cuckoo-spittle on her skirts, cracking snails that were underfoot, staining her hands with thistle-milk and slug-slime, and rubbing off upon her naked arms sticky blights which, though snow-white on the apple-tree trunks, made madder stains on her skin; thus she drew quite near to Clare, still unobserved ...
— Tess of the d'Urbervilles - A Pure Woman • Thomas Hardy

... underfoot. The great cold did not keep them away. Men sauntered around, trading, loafing. Women sat on the floor, papooses on their backs, beadwork in hand. Our trade was extended to Indian shawls, blankets, moccasins and furs, for which the post found ready ...
— Land of the Burnt Thigh • Edith Eudora Kohl

... intense. The air grew moist and steamy, and the sweat trickled down Dermot's face. The earth underfoot was sodden and slushy. Little streams began to trickle, for the water from the mountains ten miles away that sinks into the soil at the foot of the hills and flows to the south underground, here rises to the surface and gives the whole forest its ...
— The Elephant God • Gordon Casserly

... on May 15 the explicit decree that the people of color were to have all 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 ...
— A Social History of the American Negro • Benjamin Brawley

... below was terrible, and the wild yells of the Masai rose high over the snorting and bellowing. But great as was the slaughter, the immense herd poured up bodily, until they were but thirty yards down the hill, the bodies of the killed trampled underfoot, those behind pressing the others ...
— The Rogue Elephant - The Boys' Big Game Series • Elliott Whitney

... of Bertrand's lamp shone vaguely inwards, revealing a narrow passage that wound between rugged cliff-walls into darkness. The rock gleamed black and shiny on all sides. Underfoot were stones of all shapes and sizes, worn smooth by ...
— The Rocks of Valpre • Ethel May Dell

... in front of him was a wild mallard—just arrived from the home of the north wind. The creature brought within him an amplitude of Northern knowledge. Glacial catastrophes, snowstorm episodes, glittering auroral effects, Polaris in the zenith, Franklin underfoot,—the category of his commonplaces was wonderful. But the bird, like many other philosophers, seemed as he looked at the reddleman to think that a present moment of comfortable reality was ...
— The Return of the Native • Thomas Hardy

... land where I dwelt. Ye gods, the happy country!" Like a great child he stood, and his breast broke into sobs, but his eyes glowed with splendid visions. "Apollo's golden shafts could scarce penetrate the shadowy groves, and Diana's silver arrows pierced only the tossing treetops. And underfoot the crocus flamed, and the hyacinth. Flocks and herds fed in pastures rosy with blossoms, and there were white altars warm with flame in every thicket. There were dances, and mad revels, and love and laughter"—he paused, and the ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1920 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various

... and thick hair and a stain of ink, a snail's bed. Yet someone had loved him, borne him in her arms and in her heart. But for her the race of the world would have trampled him underfoot, a squashed boneless snail. She had loved his weak watery blood drained from her own. Was that then real? The only true thing in life? His mother's prostrate body the fiery Columbanus in holy zeal bestrode. She was no more: the trembling skeleton of a twig burnt in the fire, an odour ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce

... the hollow of the tree, but at night she is far too wide-awake to dream. And so great are the owl's powers of sight and hearing, and so swift is her "stoop" from the sky to the ground, that the bank-vole has little chance of escape should a single grass-stalk rustle underfoot when she is hovering near his haunt. Far from being shy and retiring in her disposition, the brown owl, directly night steals over the woodlands, is so fearless that probably no animal smaller than the hare can in ...
— Creatures of the Night - A Book of Wild Life in Western Britain • Alfred W. Rees

... of the trees, like huge withered leaves, hung bats, and from some of the trees the beard-moss hung yards long, and of a spectral gray; the very weeds trodden underfoot were sappy, and the smell of their squirting juice mixed itself with the ...
— The Pools of Silence • H. de Vere Stacpoole

... through sweet bevies thread Of round-faced roses, pink and petulant, Look back and beckon ere they disappear. Only my heart, only my heart responds. Yet, ah, my path is sweet on either side All through the dragging day,—sharp underfoot And hot, and like dead mist the dry dust hangs— But far, oh, far as passionate eye can reach, And long, ah, long as rapturous eye can cling, The world is mine: blue hill, still silver lake, Broad field, bright flower, ...
— Second April • Edna St. Vincent Millay

... 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

... anxiety to detain us. O'Toole was told to be as dumb as an oyster as to ourselves, but wide awake as to the designs of our dubious friends. The general gave him five eagles for his purchase, tribute-money. He jumped into the canoe, and all returned to the fort. We dropped anchor underfoot to await his return, keeping a sharp lookout for any strange sail. The two hours passed in pleasant surmises as to what he would bring off; another half-hour passed, and no sign of his return; and we began to ...
— Famous Adventures And Prison Escapes of the Civil War • Various

... his house, so dignified and so permanent, soothed him a little. As he hung his coat upon the substantial rack in the dark and spacious hall, he was soothed still further. Ascending to his drawing-room, the thick carpet underfoot completed his tranquillity. Surely nothing disconcerting could happen to a man who owned such a house as this. But alas! regrettable episodes have a habit, like migrant ...
— The Prodigal Father • J. Storer Clouston

... order, and they wandered off, to join those outcasts who had broken His laws, and had been sent to the smaller land of this world, where it is always warm, and where there are great trees thick with moss, and the earth underfoot steams, and brings forth wriggling life. Neen, we call that land, as this larger land ...
— The God in the Box • Sewell Peaslee Wright

... hiding behind the remotest and dustiest box. If rats or mice inhabit it, they are jovial fellows. But how different is a cellar, and especially a cellar neglected. You plunge down rough steps into a cavern. A mouldy air from dried-up and forgotten vegetables meets you. The earth may not be moist underfoot, but it has not the kind feeling of sun-warmed earth. And if big rats hide there, how bold and hideous they are! There are cool farmhouse cellars floored with cement and shelved with sweet-smelling pine, where apple-bins make incense, and swinging-shelves of butter, tables of milk crocks, lines of ...
— Old Caravan Days • Mary Hartwell Catherwood

... which she was never to know again. The 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 ...
— Eminent Victorians • Lytton Strachey

... confidingly, "that if I dared I would run barefoot over the grass even yet. I remember to this day the happiness of taking off my stockings when I came home from the Keswick school, and racing over the fresh grass to feel the daisies underfoot. I could ...
— The Lilac Sunbonnet • S.R. Crockett

... invaders of their realm and then, taking imaginary fright, galloped off through the tree-tops in panic, only to stop a little distance further on and throw down fruit or bits of stick at the men below them. Gorgeous birds, too, flitted about like jewels seen in a setting of green velvet, while underfoot there was no lack of life either. Strange insects, shaped like sticks or leaves or even bits of moss, attracted the attention of the alert boys although they passed over hundreds of such nature mimics unnoticed, owing to the ...
— The Boy Aviators in Africa • Captain Wilbur Lawton

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

... when Ma came back to earth and opened her eyes there were the great smiling mountains, the clear, clean waters foaming over the rocks, and underfoot was the cool, green grass, not that hot, hard 'dobe clay she had always known. Trees, too! Beautiful whispering trees, with smooth leaves instead of burrs and spines and stickers. Nor was there the faintest choking smell ...
— Flowing Gold • Rex Beach

... more; but, to Earle's higher scientific intelligence it was an absorbingly interesting mystery. For they had scarcely penetrated it to the depth of a mile before the American began to be aware that the character of his surroundings was undergoing a subtle change, the herbage underfoot, the rushes that edged the lagoons and water channels, the plants that here and there in wide patches hid the surface of the water, the ferns that decked the banks of the water-courses, were all new and strange ...
— In Search of El Dorado • Harry Collingwood

... involved in the same false charge? Despair. For by these Oracles they are most manifestly confuted whenever they argue about the patronage of Angels, about free will, about the faithful departed, about the intercession of Saints. Is it possible? So much perversity, so much audacity? After trampling underfoot Church, Councils, Episcopal Sees, Fathers, Martyrs, Potentates, Peoples, Laws, Universities, Histories, all vestiges of Antiquity and Sanctity, and declaring that they would settle their disputes by the written word of God alone, to think that they should have emasculated that same Word, which ...
— Ten Reasons Proposed to His Adversaries for Disputation in the Name • Edmund Campion

... she had striven so 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

... Athanasius. On hearing his story, they compelled him by threats and by violence to swear that Macarius had burst in upon him while he was giving Holy Communion in the church, had overturned the altar, broken the chalice, trampled the sacred Host underfoot and burned the holy books. They reported that all this had been done by order ...
— Saint Athanasius - The Father of Orthodoxy • F.A. [Frances Alice] Forbes

... 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 ...
— The False Faces • Vance, Louis Joseph

... ceasing to be so keenly observant of the material facts as I had been at first. But I was better qualified to judge of what I saw, and I had now a vivid sense of the costliness of Mrs. Strange's environment. There were thousands of dollars in the carpets underfoot; there were tens of thousands in the pictures on the walls. In a bronze group that withdrew itself into a certain niche, with a faint reluctance, there was the value of a skilled artisan's wage for five years of hard work; in the bindings of the ...
— Through the Eye of the Needle - A Romance • W. D. Howells

... is always searching for learning and riches, and everlastingly crushing underfoot all new riches and learning. It tried to make Fabre, a born lover of nature, desert her; it forced him to teach mathematics for decades instead. The first thing the world does to a genius is to make ...
— The Crow's Nest • Clarence Day, Jr.

... while he pulled down their houses and converted them into fortifications, at which the principal citizens were compelled to work in person. Dissatisfied, moreover, with a contribution of eighteen millions, he robbed the great Hamburg bank, treading underfoot every private and national right, all, as he, miserable slave as he was,[15] declared, in obedience to ...
— Germany from the Earliest Period Vol. 4 • Wolfgang Menzel, Trans. Mrs. George Horrocks

... 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 ...
— Old Gold - The Cruise of the "Jason" Brig • George Manville Fenn

... breaking stick, and he was dashed senseless against the steel walls of the magazine, falling in a tumbled heap upon the floor. Without looking to see whether the man was unconscious or not, Frobisher dashed at the fuse and trampled it fiercely underfoot until the smouldering spark was entirely extinguished; then, with a sob of relief, he withdrew its other end from a pile of explosives and tossed it ...
— A Chinese Command - A Story of Adventure in Eastern Seas • Harry Collingwood

... many places," said the Princess; "flat miles on miles of slim pines melting into grayness, sunlight sifting through their plumy tops, with gray birds wheeling in flocks, or troops of red-headed woodpeckers, and underfoot nothing but needles and gray sand. Far ahead on every side the pines draw together, but where one walks they are wide apart, so that one seems always about to approach a forest and never finds ...
— The Trail Book • Mary Austin et al

... turban, yellow ankle-pantaloons, and flung red shoulder-cloak; and all in the heavily-wooded park, and all about the low rock-steps up the hill, profusions of man-dragora; and from the rock-steps to the house a narrow long avenue of acacias, mossy underfoot, that mingle overhead, the house standing about four yards from the edge of the perpendicular sea-cliff, whence one can see the Speranzas main top-mast, and broken mizzen-mast-head, in her quiet haven. After examining the place I went down again to the village, and ...
— The Purple Cloud • M.P. Shiel

... said, "but the pavements are still wet underfoot. Has your grace taken the precaution to come out in a good stout pair ...
— The Swoop! or How Clarence Saved England - A Tale of the Great Invasion • P. G. Wodehouse

... down which I had fallen was composed of some smooth substance suggesting black marble. The floor underfoot was quite different—more of a metallic quality with a curious corrugation. Before me, in the dim distance, I could just make out ...
— The Girl in the Golden Atom • Raymond King Cummings

... Waterfoot the copses grew close. The green turf was velvet underfoot. The blackbirds fluted in the hazels there. None of them listened to the voice of Gregory Jeffray, or cared for what he said to Grace Allen when she went nightly to meet ...
— Bog-Myrtle and Peat - Tales Chiefly Of Galloway Gathered From The Years 1889 To 1895 • S.R. Crockett

... reliquary. She took out of it the half-burned cigarette, the old glove, the withered violets, and a visiting-card with his name, on which three unimportant lines had been written. She insulted these keepsakes, she tore them with her nails, she trampled them underfoot, she reduced them to fragments; she left nothing whatever of them, except a pile of shreds, which at last she set fire to. She had a feeling as if she were employed in executing two great culprits, who deserved ...
— Jacqueline, Complete • (Mme. Blanc) Th. Bentzon

... cleared 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! and the rivers ...
— Paul Faber, Surgeon • George MacDonald

... 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

... that was damp underfoot, and the soft earth deadened all sound as they walked upon it—and they seemed to be walking on interminably. It was too far—much too far! She felt her nerve failing her. She looked behind her again. That opening, still discernible ...
— The White Moll • Frank L. Packard

... of artists, but she never expected to meet any. That sort of thing lay outside the lives of those who had to make their living as quickly as possible in beaten tracks; tracks so well-beaten, in fact, that all the flowers had been trodden underfoot and exterminated. ...
— Jan and Her Job • L. Allen Harker

... Snow underfoot this morning; and a brown blink on the horizon which shows that more is coming. I have the odd feeling that I have never really seen my house before, the snow lights it all up so strangely, tinting the ceilings a glowing white, touching up high lights on the ...
— The Altar Fire • Arthur Christopher Benson

... coming between the trees on the closing west in long swords of sunset red. They could hear the jolting of the laden cart on its way down the glen. The birds were fairly rioting overhead, and all sorts of joyous sounds filled the air. Underfoot there were long ferns and gorse, which caught at her crinkling dress sometimes, and then he liberated her and they laughed. A trailing bough of deadly nightshade was hanging from the broken head of an old ash stump, whose wasted feet were overgrown by ...
— The Manxman - A Novel - 1895 • Hall Caine

... covered with white and glistening stalactites; underfoot, the floor was strewn with bits of carbonate and the broken bases of stalagmites, which had been shattered to make a path for the ruthless iconoclast who had made his home in this ...
— The Tale of Timber Town • Alfred Grace

... the lieutenant did yesterday. "If you have a brain, sir, don't use it. Stay in sight of the enemy and be shot." Then he sent us by a way I never should have chosen in cold blood, across the top of a steep slope, with sliding sand and loose stones underfoot, while all the time the same wind and rain whipped and beat us unmercifully. At last we were halted behind another hill, put in skirmish line, and told what we were to do. We were to rush the ridge, then to run down to a ...
— At Plattsburg • Allen French

... and he would also assist others who prosecuted them, nay would even procure such, as he did the Petilii against Scipio; but not being able to destroy him, by reason of the nobleness of his family, and the real greatness of his mind, which enabled him to trample all calumnies underfoot, Cato at last would meddle no more with him; yet joining with the accusers against Scipio's brother Lucius, he succeeded in obtaining a sentence against him, which condemned him to the payment of a large sum ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough

... him one now. At the sound of a slight, crushing of gravel underfoot, he had risen and stepped toward the end of the veranda, and, standing there beside the great tree-fern, he saw her coming from the side garden into the faint rays of light from the house. She had her two hands folded over her ...
— Blue Aloes - Stories of South Africa • Cynthia Stockley

... decided that it was my duty to obey my father. My heart leapt within me at the thought of doing my duty, and to calm myself I put on my hat and wandered into the glen. It was very silent in the glen. There was no sound but the rustling of the leaves overhead, the popping of the insects underfoot, the sneezing of the cattle, the whistling of the pigs, the coughing of the field-mice, the roaring of the rabbits, and the deep organ-song ...
— Once a Week • Alan Alexander Milne

... pretended Christians who do not practise what they preach, because, all the time they are singing their songs of Brotherhood and Love, they are fighting with each other, and strangling each other and trampling each other underfoot in their ...
— The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists • Robert Tressell

... a pretty woman still, though she was nearly 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 the ...
— Life at High Tide - Harper's Novelettes • Various

... resistance, were filled with vengeance and a thirst for blood. Wedged into one mass, we grappled together, for there was no room for fair fighting, seeking each other's hearts with shortened weapons, struggling and falling together on the deck, rolling among the dead and the dying, or trodden underfoot by the others who still maintained the combat with ...
— The Privateer's-Man - One hundred Years Ago • Frederick Marryat

... but no one looked up at them. Underfoot, lay the thick, black veil of mud, which the Lane never lifted, but none looked down on it. It was impossible to think of aught but humanity in the bustle and confusion, in the cram and crush, in the wedge and ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill

... I can see it clearly enough when you point it out," he admitted, putting his craftsman pride underfoot, as he was always obliged to do in these talks with her. "I should be discouraged if you didn't keep on telling me that the story, as a ...
— The Price • Francis Lynde

... left was the flaming orb of the sun; and directly underfoot, rotating against the vast background of the North Atlantic, he now saw the asteroid, glinting metallically along its craggy length as it swung over. Carse centered every bit of power he had on it, and at maximum acceleration began to ...
— The Passing of Ku Sui • Anthony Gilmore

... diminishing of the sounds that filled the place. They died away like a fading wind. Then the chill sweep of air from the door surged across the room, like a great fear congealing the blood. In the sloppy mess underfoot could be heard the sucking, splashing sound of feet moving, as men all about drew back instinctively and rapidly to be out of ...
— Louisiana Lou • William West Winter

... at the companion, Wicks at his heels, Tommy and Amalu following. They trod the body of Holdorsen underfoot, and flew up-stairs and forth into the dusky blaze of a sunset red as blood. The numbers were still equal, but the Flying Scuds dreamed not of defence, and fled with one accord for the forecastle ...
— The Wrecker • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne

... of her obsequious husband's alleged neglect, "no more like the woman I was than an apple is like an oyster"; the description of the poor man making her broth with his own hands, jeered at by the maids and trampled underfoot by Mrs. Gamp; the preparations for the christening supper and the preliminary feast of scandal—are full of such bright and rich humor as to recall even the creator of Dogberry and Mrs. Quickly. It is of Shakespeare again that we are reminded in the next chapter, by the description ...
— The Age of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne

... stumble by, their calcimined faces streaked with tears and fright. Gray-haired old men shiver with terror and try to hide in any small corner. Lost children and deserted ones, frantic with fear, cling to any passer-by, only to be shoved into the street and often trampled underfoot. And through it all, the mob runs and pitilessly mows down with sword and knife as it goes, and plunders and sacks till ...
— The Lady and Sada San - A Sequel to The Lady of the Decoration • Frances Little

... that there is no one higher than himself, and that the Metropolitan Board of Works made everything. But in this country, where you really see humanity—raw, brown, naked humanity—with nothing between it and the blazing sky, and only the used-up, over-handled earth underfoot, the notion somehow dies away, and most folk come back to simpler theories. Life, in India, is not long enough to waste in proving that there is no one in particular at ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling

... mountains Turned first his horse's head; And fast fled Ferentinum, And fast Lanuvium fled. The horsemen of Nomentus Spurred hard out of the fray; The footmen of Velitrae Threw shield and spear away. And underfoot was trampled, Amidst the mud and gore, The banner of proud Tusculum, That never stooped before: And down went Flavius Faustus, Who led his stately ranks From where the apple blossoms wave On Anio's echoing banks, And Tullus of Arpinum, Chief of the Volscian ...
— Lays of Ancient Rome • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... ye do not remember to be charitable, ye are as dross, which the refiners do cast out, (it being of no worth), and is trodden underfoot of men." (Alma 34:18-29.) ...
— Principles of Teaching • Adam S. Bennion

... conscious that I wanted to return to England, wanted it very much, wanted to be out of this; to get somewhere where there was stability and things that one could understand. Everything here seemed to be in a mist, with the ground trembling underfoot. ...
— The Inheritors • Joseph Conrad

... change not only paired each with the other's wife but brought the brother-in-law next to Ramsey. Underfoot meantime the engine bells jingled, overhead the scape-pipes roared, and in every part the boat quivered as her great wheels churned or was strangely quiet as they paused for another signal. So all sat down, well aware what the landing was for, and began blithely to converse and be waited on, ...
— Gideon's Band - A Tale of the Mississippi • George W. Cable

... silent glooms 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

... small thing in my view, alongside of this pass that lay in front of me. I set my hat hard on my head, clenched my teeth, and went right before me up the face of the sand-wreath. It made a hard climb, being steep, and the sand like water underfoot. But I caught hold at last by the long bent-grass on the brae-top, and pulled myself to a good footing. The same moment men stirred and stood up here and there, six or seven of them, ragged-like knaves, each with a dagger in ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 11 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... The ground was moist underfoot, and the rock on which they leaned felt damp. Quebec grayness infused with light softened the autumn world. No one could behold without a leap of the heart that vast reach of river and islands, and palisade and ...
— The Chase Of Saint-Castin And Other Stories Of The French In The New World • Mary Hartwell Catherwood

... him fast, and he was stirring to them as of old he stirred to the realities of which they were the shadows. He had done this thing before, somewhere in that other and dimly remembered world, and he was doing it again, now, running free in the open, the unpacked earth underfoot, the wide ...
— The Call of the Wild • Jack London

... much the same thing as the preceding. We started in the grey morning, and I and my two companions of the day before had soon distanced the others. At first the trail was rough and slippery, and all ups and downs. The vegetation was of almost tropical density, and the moisture underfoot and overhead was so great that it seemed to me I had never been wetter except in a bathtub. As we descended to lower levels the valley broadened out, and the going improved so that we were able to make very good time. At one point, after ...
— A Wayfarer in China - Impressions of a trip across West China and Mongolia • Elizabeth Kendall

... the tide was urging us forward rapidly. In steering round the point we found ourselves passing through some light coloured water and, before we could extricate the brig, were in three and a half fathoms; the anchor was immediately dropped underfoot and, with the assistance of the sails, which were kept full, the vessel was retained whilst the whale-boat was veered astern, and ascertained that the shoalest part had been already passed; therefore the anchor was again weighed, and eventually dropped ...
— Narrative of a Survey of the Intertropical and Western Coasts of Australia] [Volume 2 of 2] • Phillip Parker King

... display of Nature's mood. They were treading underfoot a growth of lank grass, and the slopes of the valley were clad with bluffs of bare-poled woodlands. The air was warm. It was warmer than the breath of a temperate winter, and the low-growing scrub marking the course of the ...
— The Heart of Unaga • Ridgwell Cullum

... seems to me I can never 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

... that there is no forgiveness for one who speaks against the Holy Spirit, i.e. one who by wilful and overt conduct does violence to the sanctifying influence of the Holy Spirit which he has already partaken of. Of such an one it is written in Heb. x. 29, "he 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 to the Spirit of grace." But not every sin committed after faith and the baptism of repentance has this effect. The ...
— An Essay on the Scriptural Doctrine of Immortality • James Challis

... be what it will—to trample underfoot, if it wishes, taste and morals and the whole of society. But when those who are not geniuses wish to do the same thing they only make themselves ridiculous and odious. There have been too many monkey Wagners in France. During the last ten or twenty years scarcely one French musician has escaped ...
— Musicians of To-Day • Romain Rolland

... happen to meet anyone. Two hours to wait; a little restless already, I brush the dust and heather from my clothes. I know the places I pass by, trees and stones stand there as before in their solitude; the leaves rustle underfoot as I walk. The monotonous breathing and the familiar trees and stones mean much to me; I am filled with a strange thankfulness; everything seems well disposed towards me, mingles with my being; I love it all. I pick up a little dry twig and hold it in my hand and sit looking at it, and think my ...
— Pan • Knut Hamsun

... predicted it was a fine clear night, dry underfoot, starry overhead. If Miss Van Tuyn had had with her a chosen companion she would have enjoyed her walk. She was absolutely self-possessed, and thoroughly capable of taking care of herself. No terrors of London affected her spirit. But she was angry and bored at being ...
— December Love • Robert Hichens

... 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 Lady thanked him in ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)

... was blood that was pouring from them. Voices cracked with hoarseness as men stood panting like dogs torn from the embrace of battle and waiting only for the leash to loosen and free them again for renewed battle. Underfoot they trod the confetti-like scraps of torn papers. Among them went the men with green watering-pots. Outside newsboys called yet new extras. The market had been open an hour and the Street was seeing ...
— Destiny • Charles Neville Buck

... 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, no advertisements, nothing. The lecturer is conducted by a chairman through ...
— My Discovery of England • Stephen Leacock

... worst months of the Russian year-especially the Petrograd year. Under dull grey skies, in the shortening days, the rain fell drenching, incessant. The mud underfoot was deep, slippery and clinging, tracked everywhere by heavy boots, and worse than usual because of the complete break-down of the Municipal administration. Bitter damp winds rushed in from the Gulf of Finland, and the chill ...
— Ten Days That Shook the World • John Reed

... but these few days, but each of them seemed like a month to look back upon as I rode under the shadow of the hills that I had last seen as a hopeless captive. It grew warm and soft as the midday sun shone on us, and the road was muddy underfoot with the chill water that had filled all the brooks again, but I hardly noticed the change, so eager was I to be back. Glad enough I was when we saw the village and the mighty earthworks above it, and yet more glad when the guards at the ...
— A Prince of Cornwall - A Story of Glastonbury and the West in the Days of Ina of Wessex • Charles W. Whistler

... landscape, wreathed in engine-smoke, had streamed by her; by night she had seen nothing but the dull, stuffed walls of her sleeping compartment, and it was an exquisite physical pleasure to have the firm, unshaken floor underfoot, to be surrounded by the appointments of a beautiful house, to be able to move of one's own volition again, and not to be taken like a parcel in a van from one end of Europe to the other. And how delicious ...
— Daisy's Aunt • E. F. (Edward Frederic) Benson

... not evil enough, Mother, and anguish on earth Born with a man at his birth, Wastes underfoot, and above Storm out of heaven, and dearth Shaken down from the shining thereof, Wrecks from afar overseas And peril of shallow and firth, And tears that spring and increase In the barren places of mirth, That thou, having wings as a dove, Being girt with desire for a girth, That thou ...
— Atalanta in Calydon • Algernon Charles Swinburne

... volume so as to resemble the noise of cannon rattling along the road, "spreading into an awful noise, that seemed to pervade at once the troubled earth below and the still air above." At the same time the floors began to heave underfoot, the walls visibly swayed to and fro, and the crash of falling masonry was heard on all sides, while universal terror took possession of the populace, who rushed into the streets, the black portion of the community ...
— Volcanoes: Past and Present • Edward Hull

... suffering badly in the process. Then would come a patch of Jack-pine, where trees seven to ten feet high grew in such profusion that it was well-nigh impossible to find a passage between them; and on the heels of this would follow a stretch of muskeg, quaking underfoot, and full of boggy traps for the unwary. In the larger timber also, the deadfalls presented an immense difficulty. Trees, with their span of life exhausted, year after year, had dropped where they stood, and dragging ...
— A Mating in the Wilds • Ottwell Binns

... him and his flock it was a question of insuring their lives, since they were attacked even in their fields and houses. From the moment he first came to Hippo, as a simple priest, he had thrown himself intrepidly into this struggle. He never ceased till Donatism was conquered and trampled underfoot. To establish peace and Catholic unity everywhere was the great ...
— Saint Augustin • Louis Bertrand

... that they will resist the election of a Third Estate with the voting power to sweep all these privileges away, to compel the Privileged to submit themselves to a just equality in the eyes of the law with the meanest of the canaille they trample underfoot, to provide that the moneys necessary to save this state from the bankruptcy into which they have all but plunged it shall be raised by taxation to be borne by themselves in the ...
— Scaramouche - A Romance of the French Revolution • Rafael Sabatini

... accidents, and understood the meaning of the noises he heard. There was death in them, death for the weak by squeezing, and smothering, and trampling underfoot. It was a grim moment, and no one who was there has forgotten it, the manager ...
— The Primadonna • F. Marion Crawford

... sprawled forward in the miry yard. It got up, painfully swaying on its feet. It was Mr. Trimm, looking for food. He moved slowly toward the house, tottering with weakness and because of the slick mud underfoot; peering near-sightedly this way and that through the murk; starting at every sound and stopping often ...
— The Escape of Mr. Trimm - His Plight and other Plights • Irvin S. Cobb

... passionate and brutal, and the pirate's trade to which he had now set his hand was of all trades the one for which he was by nature best equipped. He was harsh and overbearing, impatient of correction and prone to trample other men's feelings underfoot. Was this, he asked himself in all honesty, a mate for Rosamund? Could he entrust her happiness to the care of such a man? Assuredly ...
— The Sea-Hawk • Raphael Sabatini

... lovers' lane, made long ago by the early colonists and kept in perfect trim by the latest,—a lane that is green-arched overhead and fern-walled on either side, and soft with the dust of dead pine boughs underfoot. There also are streams and waterfalls and rustic bridges such as one might look for in some stately park in England, but hardly in Alaska. Surely there is no bit of wilderness finer than this. All is sweet and grave and silent, save for the ripple ...
— Over the Rocky Mountains to Alaska • Charles Warren Stoddard

... outside; the murmur descends from aloft. There was a frost last night and the leaves will soon fall. A beech leaf detaches itself now and then and flutters peacefully and waywardly to the ground, careless whether it finds its grave in the bracken or on the road where it will be trodden underfoot. The bramble is beginning to turn to blood. It is strange that leaves should show such character. Here is a corner on which there are not two of the same tint, but they spring from the same root, and the circumstances ...
— More Pages from a Journal • Mark Rutherford



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