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Wooden leg   /wˈʊdən lɛg/   Listen
Wooden leg

noun
1.
A prosthesis that replaces a missing leg.  Synonyms: leg, peg, pegleg.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Wooden leg" Quotes from Famous Books



... a chair, laughing heartily, and pounding his knee. It seemed he had told her that I was coming home with a wooden leg! 'That is the reason I held your arm,' she said. 'I was expecting to hear it squeak every moment as we left the depot. But when I saw that you walked so naturally I knew Uncle Eb had ...
— Eben Holden - A Tale of the North Country • Irving Bacheller

... too, the old leaven of Oxford burst forth sometimes. Of course, we generally performed the music of Handel and other classical authors; Mendelssohn's compositions were still considered as mere twaddle by some of the old school. At one of these evenings, the old organist of New College, with his wooden leg, after sitting through a rehearsal of Mendelssohn's Hymn of Praise, which I was conducting at the pianoforte, walked up to me, as I thought, to thank me; but no, he burst out in a torrent of real and somewhat coarse ...
— My Autobiography - A Fragment • F. Max Mueller

... first policeman had made his appearance. Such incidents are by no means uncommon in the Bowery and its purlieus at night. It is quite different now, remember, from the Bowery it was when old Peter Stuyvesant used to dot its cow-paths with the tip of his wooden leg. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 121, November, 1867 • Various

... France. The flag was met at the Invalides by the old soldiers who bore medals of the Franco-Prussian war. In the solemn inclosure, where all stood at salute, the veterans stood with lances. The flag was presented to an old sick soldier, who stumped forward on a wooden leg, his breast covered with the medals of the Crimea and the Italian campaign. He received it for France, and when it was placed over the organ, the listening crowds that jammed the Place des Invalides heard the singing of the "Marseillaise" by the cracked old voices first, then by ...
— The New York Times Current History of the European War, Vol 1, Issue 4, January 23, 1915 • Various

... own responsibility, which is tolerably bold, do not believe that you are permitted to substitute a fictitious member of your own construction for the living one you have lopped off; and be cautious lest, without being aware of it, you replace an arm of flesh by a wooden leg. But break up all your presses rather than make him say, under the seal of his own signature, the contrary of what he has written, thought, or felt. To do this is an offence almost amounting to a moral crime." I write more at length on this topic to my friends of the Place Louis Quinze, ...
— Memoirs To Illustrate The History Of My Time - Volume 1 • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot

... ourselves." Then the dumb man called to him in a great voice and said, "Welcome, brother; come and sit while there is still some of the feast left and a little Malmsey in the pottle." At this, the lame man, who had taken off his wooden leg and unstrapped his own leg, and was sitting with it stretched out upon the grass so as to rest it, made room for Robin among them. "We are glad to see thee, brother," said he, holding out ...
— The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood • Howard Pyle

... and lost a leg while serving under him at the battle of Waterloo. Hence the designation of him by a Roman Catholic bishop in an article published by him in one of the Italian journals, as "the adventurer with the wooden leg." ...
— The Huguenots in France • Samuel Smiles

... to give alms without some security for their money; and a wooden leg or a withered arm is a sort of draftment upon heaven for those who choose to have their money placed to ...
— Pearls of Thought • Maturin M. Ballou

... spread on the ground, and around it sat the picnic party, partaking ravenously of dry sandwiches and cheese and cheer. Such laughing and crowding and romping as there was! Jake gave correct imitations of everybody in the Cabbage Patch, Chris did some marvelous stunts with his wooden leg, and Lovey Mary sang every funny song that she knew. Mrs. Wiggs stood in the wagon above them, and dispensed hospitality as long as it lasted. Cuba, hitched to a fence near by, needed no material nourishment. He was ...
— Lovey Mary • Alice Hegan Rice

... one warm summer day, when Jason Fletcher should have been about forty years of age, there strayed into the village a blind mendicant, with a dog for guide, and a wooden leg rudely fastened to one stiff stump. This stranger, white-headed and with the care-lines of many years on his sadly furrowed face, sought out poor Hannah Lee, and told her that he had, by the grace of God, come back, at last, to die. Leading ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I. February, 1862, No. II. - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various

... with a wooden leg, Her father was a miller; He tossed a dumpling at her head, And swore ...
— A History of Nursery Rhymes • Percy B. Green

... but they were seldom believed; and the few who gave me a halfpenny as they passed did it with a shake of the head, and an injunction not to trouble them with a long story. In short, I found that people don't care to give alms without some security for their money; a wooden leg or a withered arm is a sort of draught upon heaven for those who choose to have their money placed to account there; so I changed my plan, and, instead of telling my own misfortunes, began to prophesy happiness ...
— The Man of Feeling • Henry Mackenzie

... be the toy doctor," the little boy went on. "It's the wooden leg of a Calico Clown I'm going ...
— The Story of Calico Clown • Laura Lee Hope

... and strange to them. In another tent I found a young man who had attempted to escape to our lines more than a year before, but was overtaken and shot by his master, shivering the bones six inches above the ankle, making amputation necessary. He was beginning to use his wooden leg. His master was taken prisoner by our men a few days before, and he, with one hundred fellow-slaves, fell into the hands of the Union army. He was fitted with a whole suit. This was done in but few instances, the general destitution forbidding it. It would have pleased the donors to ...
— A Woman's Life-Work - Labors and Experiences • Laura S. Haviland

... this passion of hers as a healthy man regards the loss of a leg or an arm. It is a great nuisance, a loss that maims the whole life,—a misfortune to be much regretted. But because a leg is gone, everything is not gone. A man with a wooden leg may stump about through much action, and may enjoy the keenest pleasures of humanity. He has his eyes left to him, and his ears, and his intellect. He will not break his heart for the loss of that leg. And so it was with Lucy Morris. ...
— The Eustace Diamonds • Anthony Trollope

... to have been actually punished. In a very short time he was out and away again at the old work. There were plenty with him. After the business at Gibraltar, Philip's subjects were not safe in English harbours. Jacques le Clerc, a noted privateer, called Pie de Palo from his wooden leg, chased a Spaniard into Falmouth, and was allowed to take her under the guns of Pendennis. The Governor of the castle said that he could not interfere, because Le Clerc had a commission from the Prince of ...
— English Seamen in the Sixteenth Century - Lectures Delivered at Oxford Easter Terms 1893-4 • James Anthony Froude

... sunburned skin. "I came from the Foundling Hospital," she said, briefly. Then, with an awkward courtesy, she passed limping into the house, and the Captain heard, as she went away on the pavement of the court, the hard sound of the little wooden leg. ...
— Ten Tales • Francois Coppee

... at her with pleasure and admiration, when suddenly the growl swelled into a roar again, and a frightful bumping noise was heard above, as if a giant with a wooden leg were trying to bore it through the ceiling to come at us. Upon this Clara said to Herbert, "Papa wants me, ...
— Great Expectations • Charles Dickens

... the dock was a singular specimen of humanity: he was a thin, wizen-looking man of about seventy, with a wooden leg: and as he stood up to plead, leant on two crutches, while his head shook a good deal, as if he had got the palsy. A smile went round the bar, and in some places broke out into a laugh: the situation ...
— The Humourous Story of Farmer Bumpkin's Lawsuit • Richard Harris

... stream of ice-cold water is forever flowing, and where comely young women of substantial ankles, with their flaxen hair braided down their backs, are forever washing linen; each has its beggar, with a goitre or a wooden leg, lying in wait for you; and each, in turn, with its purple and green and red tiled roofs, is charming to approach and delightful ...
— The Queen of Sheba & My Cousin the Colonel • Thomas Bailey Aldrich

... about seeking a fortune and finding one, which was prettily put, and Frenchy as best man was heard to mutter something about "Beautiful ... loss to camp ... happiness ... wooden leg," and ...
— Fifty-Two Stories For Girls • Various

... foot on the floor, leaving his wooden leg in its horizontal position, and looked round ...
— J. S. Le Fanu's Ghostly Tales, Volume 3 • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu

... me nothin' more strength'nin than riches in mine," said Uncle Peter Henchman, who boasted great wisdom and experience, based mysteriously on the possession of a wooden leg. "I've been in this world up'ards of seventy years, forty-five of it a-walkin' on a wooden leg, and I hain't never seen that poverty was anything but ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, October 1885 • Various

... familiarly known as "Old Silverleg," because, having lost one limb in battle, he had it replaced by a sturdy wooden leg securely bound with silver. ...
— The Great Round World and What Is Going On In It, Vol. 1, No. 60, December 30, 1897 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various

... a jovial beggar, He had a wooden leg, Lame from his cradle, And forced for to beg. And a-begging we will go, Will go, will go, ...
— The Children's Garland from the Best Poets • Various

... it said, "Ah, I can sympathize with him, poor fellow, for I have a wooden leg myself," or, "Yes, being a widow, I know what a widow's feelings ...
— Fated to Be Free • Jean Ingelow

... enforced, the alms of the passer-by, by an appeal to his fears no less than to his pity. The readers of the old drama will recall to mind the shifts and devices of the 'Jovial Beggars;'—how easily a wooden leg was slipped off and turned into a bludgeon; how inscrutable were the disguises, and how copious and expressive the slang, of the mendicant crew. Coleridge has justly described 'The Beggar's Bush' as one of the most pleasant of Fletcher's comedies; and if the Spanish novelists do not greatly belie ...
— Old Roads and New Roads • William Bodham Donne

... departure for the war and had returned with the same child-like, enchanted smile, the same ideal of futile joy, and kissed their passing comrades as gayly as ever. Some of them had a sleeve lying limp now, or walked with a crutch, or even on a wooden leg, but it ...
— The Secret of the Night • Gaston Leroux

... that gunpowder old hero; who, without waiting to discuss claims and titles, pounced at once upon the nest of nefarious squatters, carried off twenty-five of them in chains to the Manhattoes, nor did he stay his hand, nor give rest to his wooden leg, until he had driven every Yankee back into the bounds of Connecticut, or obliged him to acknowledge allegiance to their High Mightinesses. He then established certain out-posts, far in the Indian country, to keep an eye over these debateable lands; one of these border-holds was the ...
— Wolfert's Roost and Miscellanies • Washington Irving

... a wooden leg is realized in the "peg" of the Greenwich pensioner. This humble contrivance has done excellent service in its time, and may serve a good purpose still in some cases. A plain working-man, who has outlived his courting-days and need not sacrifice much to personal appearance, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 11, Issue 67, May, 1863 • Various

... much. I wish I could say the same for the poor nigger. His foot is sure to go. It's in such a state that I believe the cleverest surgeon alive couldn't save it, and, even if he could, what's left of it would be of no use. You know I have a mechanical turn, and could make him a splendid wooden leg if you will pluck up courage ...
— Wrecked but not Ruined • R.M. Ballantyne

... of this I cannot take an affirmation—a light green and violet flame flickering round the neck of the phial as he opened it. By the way, from the peculiar stumping noise which he made in crossing the bare-boarded apartment, I knew at once that my strange entertainer had a wooden leg. Over the dust which lay quite thick on the boards, you could see the mark of one foot very neat and pretty, and then a round O, which was naturally the impression made by the wooden stump. I own I had a queer thrill as I saw that mark, and ...
— Roundabout Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray

... have nothing to do; or, with a small portion, you will risk the loss of a leg or arm, and be the fructus belli of an insensible court, to arrive in your old age at the dignity of a major-general, with a glass eye and a wooden leg.' 'I know,' said I, 'that there is no comparison between these two situations, with regard to the conveniences of life; but, as a man ought to secure his future state in preference to all other considerations, ...
— The Memoirs of Count Grammont, Complete • Anthony Hamilton

... being dispersed, I returned to Paris with my gentleman whose leg I had cut off; I dressed him, and God healed him. I sent him to his house merry with a wooden leg; and he was content saying he had got off cheap, not to have been miserably burned to stop the blood, as you write in ...
— The Harvard Classics Volume 38 - Scientific Papers (Physiology, Medicine, Surgery, Geology) • Various

... sir," said Sam Mason. "Well, he holds up his wooden leg perpendicular and the greedy crock comes on with a snap, but the wooden leg was a trifle more than he could get over; there it stuck and propped his great ugly maws wide open; out crawls Snowball, a kind of sorter modern Jonah, none the worse ...
— Jack Harkaway and his son's Escape From the Brigand's of Greece • Bracebridge Hemyng

... Scotch, even if he were a Methodist, could resist leaving a mere preaching to hear a real Piper. The two were willing to bet almost anything on the superior attractions of the music, Duke offering to put up his wooden leg ...
— In Orchard Glen • Marian Keith

... matter. I care not if the Graces three Have here withheld perfection: Brown, black, or fair, the same to me,— E'en age is no objection. A pleasing squint, or but one eye, Will do as well as any; A mouth between a laugh and cry, Or wrinkled, as my granny. A hobbling gait, or a wooden leg, Or locks of silvery gray; Or name her Madge, or Poll, or Peg, She still shall have my lay. Perfection centres in the mind, The gen'rous must acknowledge: Then, Muse, be candid, just, and kind, ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle

... care to risk having his words carried through the town by the little slave girl Minna, now clattering the breakfast dishes as she moved about the kitchen. "Does Peter Stuyvesant ever need a reason for his follies?" he asked dryly. "His head is as hard as his wooden leg and never a new idea has pierced his brain since the day he was born. He hates our people with as much reason as our black Minna fears witches and the evil eye. It is said that he has written to the directors at Amsterdam, begging that none of the Jewish nation ...
— The New Land - Stories of Jews Who Had a Part in the Making of Our Country • Elma Ehrlich Levinger

... the Sinking Fund, then considered a great invention in finance, well placed:—"As to Mr. Pitt's project for paying off the national debt by applying a million a year for that purpose while he continues adding more than twenty millions a year to it, it is like setting a man with a wooden leg to run after a hare;—the longer he runs, the farther he is off." The conclusion is one of his peculiar flourishes of his own trumpet:—"I have now exposed the English system of finance to the eyes of all nations,—for ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 26, December, 1859 • Various

... presume the Signer Loothere'—you will observe that he changed the name according to the custom of his country—'is an Englishman?' I admitted that he was the victim of circumstances and had that misfortune. 'Sir,' said he, 'one word more. Has he a servant with a wooden leg?' 'Great heaven, sir,' said I, 'how do I know? I should think not, but it is possible.' 'It is always,' said the Frenchman, 'possible. Almost all the things of the world are always possible.' 'Sir,' said I—you may imagine ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster

... the stumping of a wooden leg, and Colonel Bradner appeared. "So you belong to the Riverlawns, Captain? Come in, I would ...
— An Undivided Union • Oliver Optic

... draw on Peg-leg, him being down on his knees over Clarence, an' his back turned, but without sensin' very much what I'm a-doin' of I grabs holt o' the first part o' Peg-leg that comes handy, which, so help me, Bob, is his old wooden leg. I starts to pull him off o' Clarence, but instead o' that I pulls off the wooden leg an' goes a-staggerin' back agin the wall with the thing ...
— A Deal in Wheat - And Other Stories of the New and Old West • Frank Norris

... for the old man's wooden leg, and scrambling over the wall by the south porch of the church they were soon out of ...
— The Altar Steps • Compton MacKenzie

... the various species of boots and polishing. We are told minutely that he was engaged in "brushing the dirt off a pair of boots . . . " There were two rows before him, one cleaned, the other dirty. "There were eleven pair, and one shoe, as belongs to No. 6 with the wooden leg." "The eleven boots is to be called at half-past eight (an odd consensus in eleven persons), and the shoe at nine." He set to work upon ...
— Pickwickian Studies • Percy Fitzgerald

... comrades, and that, by nature sad and irritable, he was always considerate of them in the many discussions which took place. Corot, ill at ease in the revolutionary atmosphere, made an occasional appearance. Diaz, he of meridional extraction, turbulent and emphatic, stamped his wooden leg, and was as illogical in debate as in painting. Charles Jacque, with the keen smile and the facility for absorbing ideas from the best of them; Ziem even, who painted Venice for some years in the shades of Fontainebleau; Dupre, whose nature expresses itself in deep sunsets ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. 6, No. 5, April, 1896 • Various

... you heard the news," she began, "about this Captain James? A sailor,—with a wooden leg, I have no doubt. What would the poor, dear, deceased master have said to it, if he had known who was to be his successor! My dear, I have often thought of the postman's bringing me a letter as one of the pleasures I shall ...
— My Lady Ludlow • Elizabeth Gaskell

... character became synonymous with a gentleman fixed and finished once for all—one who invariably appeared drunk, jolly, sad. And for the purpose of characterisation nothing more was needed than some physical deformity like a clubfoot, a wooden leg, a red nose; or the person concerned was made to repeat some phrase like "That's capital!" or "Barkis is willin'," or something of that kind. This manner of regarding human beings as homogeneous is preserved even by the great Moliere. ...
— Plays by August Strindberg, Second series • August Strindberg

... placed in a comfortable deck chair, and Bull had another beside him. There were many officers already on board, and Terence presently perceived, in one who was stumping about on a wooden leg, a figure he recognized. He was passing on ...
— Under Wellington's Command - A Tale of the Peninsular War • G. A. Henty

... terror and dismay. All this martial excellency of appearance was inexpressibly heightened by an accidental advantage with which I am surprised that neither Homer nor Virgil have graced any of their heroes. This was nothing less than a wooden leg, which was the only prize he had gained in bravely fighting the battles of his country, but of which he was so proud that he was often heard to declare he valued it more than all his other limbs put together; indeed, ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 8 • Charles H. Sylvester

... day he used to grow red in the face whenever he told the story, and bring his fist down hard on the table, with "damn the leg, sir! 'Twasn't the leg I cared for: 'twas the not having another chance at those damned British rascals;" and the wooden leg itself would twitch and rap on the floor in his impatient indignation. One of Hetty's earliest recollections was of being led about the farm by this warm-hearted, irascible, old grandfather, whose wooden leg was a ...
— Hetty's Strange History • Anonymous

... a half-penny as they passed, did it with a shake of the head, and an injunction not to trouble them with a long story. In short, I found that people do n't care to give alms without some security for their money,—such as a wooden leg, or a withered arm, for example. So I changed my plan, and instead of telling my own misfortunes, began to ...
— McGuffey's Sixth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey

... must be torn asunder, and swept along in the current of events, to see each other seldom, and perchance no more. For ever and ever in the eddies of time and accident we whirl away. Besides which, some of us have a perpetual motion in our wooden heads, as Wodenblock had in his wooden leg; and like him we travel on, without rest or sleep, and have hardly time to take a friend by the hand in passing; and at length are seen hurrying through some distant land, worn to a skeleton, ...
— Hyperion • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

... by the officials of the express company on one of these lines of railroad. The exhaustive amount of information that they had been able to collect regarding this interesting man with the wooden leg was astonishing. From out of the abundance of the data there were a few items that were of interest to the officer. Several of Eldridge's haunts when not actively engaged in his profession were located. In one of these haunts was a woman, and toward this one he was heading, though ...
— Cattle Brands - A Collection of Western Camp-fire Stories • Andy Adams

... to repent of their movements; for in one corner of the tap-room sat Billy Waters, a well-known character about town, a Black Man with a wooden leg was fiddling to a Slaughterman from Fleet-market, in wooden shoes, who, deck'd with all the paraphernalia of his occupation, a greasy jacket and night-cap, an apron besmeared with mud, blood, and ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan

... boys think you came down here pretty fast, eh?" asked Randy Bronson, crossing one wooden leg over the other and stretching them both out toward the great fire of hickory logs that were roaring in ...
— Golden Days for Boys and Girls - Volume XIII, No. 51: November 12, 1892 • Various

... striking contrast to their usual appearance at home. Major W. Coffey, one of the refugees, who was washed seven miles down the Conemaugh, was acting as officer of the guard, and limped up and down on his wooden leg, which had been ...
— The Johnstown Horror • James Herbert Walker

... moderns offend much in this respect—the hint is good—and some exhibit studies from models about their rooms, that evidently sat without their stays. Gerard was the man for contrivances—here is a capital one. He does not quite approve of painting a wooden leg; but if it be to be done, see with what skill even that in the hands of a Gerard may be dignified—and the painter absolved, "lege solutus." "But if the hero insist upon the introducing of such a leg, on a supposition that 'tis an honour to have lost a limb in his ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 55, No. 340, February, 1844 • Various

... met a duck with only one good leg, and the other one was made of wood, and this duck wanted to get over a fence but she couldn't, on account of her wooden leg. ...
— Uncle Wiggily's Travels • Howard R. Garis

... o' bein' clean you don't want him to learn the difference at your cost. If you lose your leg, Mrs. Lathrop, it certainly will be a awful thing for you. A woman can't ever say 's she was a brakeman or in the war, 'n' them 's the only good excuses 's can be give. Then, too, if you have a wooden leg 'n' the wind catches you at it, it'll take you in a way 's 'll make you look more like a scarecrow 'n a Christian. Mrs. Macy says 't she was speakin' to Mr. Kimball about you, 'n' he was nigh to serious f'r once in his life. She says he says 't they take ...
— Susan Clegg and Her Friend Mrs. Lathrop • Anne Warner

... when ready I said, "Now my men, examine your flints and priming, so that all things may go right." They did so, saying, "All right, corporal, we will follow you;" so I too sang out, "Now for a gold chain or a wooden leg!" and having told them what to do and to act together, we jumped up, and giving them a volley, we charged them before they had any time to take an aim at us, and succeeded in gaining the cannon and driving the men ...
— The Autobiography of Sergeant William Lawrence - A Hero of the Peninsular and Waterloo Campaigns • William Lawrence

... closed behind him as he rushed through toward his horse. Glendin stood dazed, his face mottled with a sick pallor. Then he moved automatically toward the bar. Murphy hobbled down the length of the room on his wooden leg and placed bottle and ...
— Trailin'! • Max Brand

... idea of a sailor—whether with a commodore's broad pendant, a lieutenant's wooden leg, or a foremast-man's pigtail—was, at one time, a wild, thoughtless, rollicking man, with very broad shoulders and a very red face, who talked incessantly about shivering his timbers, and thought no more of eating a score or two ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 350, December 1844 • Various

... a nautical gait, towards the door by which the domestic had re-entered the room, and having reached the stairfoot, and finding himself alone, he added, with a sudden snarl, 'I'd like to give three of ye a chance of earning a wooden leg anyhow—coming into my house and guzzling my best beer the very minute my ...
— VC — A Chronicle of Castle Barfield and of the Crimea • David Christie Murray

... people during the day, and either little notice was taken of them, or Paul easily answered the questions put to him. Reuben always had his crutches ready, and in a wonderfully quick time he was on his wooden leg, and hobbling along at a rate of a mile or so an hour, so that no one would have suspected that he had a long journey before him. The whole party were in very good spirits, for as they had found friends when they least expected ...
— Paul Gerrard - The Cabin Boy • W.H.G. Kingston

... a buccaneering looking set; with hairy chests, purple shirts, and arms wildly tattooed. The mate had a wooden leg, and hobbled about with a crooked cane like a spiral staircase. There was a deal of swearing on board of this craft, which was rendered the more reprehensible when she came to moor alongside the ...
— Redburn. His First Voyage • Herman Melville

... the way, and the bones are so ill covered, that the patient can never rest his leg on the stump itself, but has either to rest his weight on his patella impinging on the top of a bottle-shaped leg, or just to stick out his stump behind him and kneel on the top of his wooden leg; therefore it is no use to have a stump longer than a few inches; in fact, the longer the stump is the more it is in the way. And more than this, many of the stumps made near the ankle, or through the calf, are not only useless, but positively painful. The skin becomes attached to ...
— A Manual of the Operations of Surgery - For the Use of Senior Students, House Surgeons, and Junior Practitioners • Joseph Bell

... of our victories, I presume, and of Zachary Taylor and Winfield Scott; and possibly the treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, whereby Mexico ceded to us the whole of Texas, New Mexico, and Upper California, and we paid her fifteen millions. No doubt you know that Santa Anna, the Mexican General, had a wooden leg. Well, there is more to know than that, and I found it out much later. I found out that General Grant, who had fought with credit as a lieutenant in the Mexican War, briefly summarized it as "iniquitous." I gradually, through my reading ...
— A Straight Deal - or The Ancient Grudge • Owen Wister

... though; only try. But let me see, it can't be Laud. Then it shall be that cruel drinking old man, with the wooden leg made of gold, who was governor of Oxford when the king was away. He must be hobbling along after the queen in a buff coat and breastplate, holding his hat with a long drooping ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes

... conveyed not the smallest meaning to her intellect. Look at him now, for instance; a cripple for life, and pretending to see nothing in it but a joke, and expressing as much admiration for his horrible wooden leg as though it had been a king's sceptre! In Aunt Charlotte's view, Austin ought to have pitied himself immensely, and expressed a hope that God would help him to bear his burden with orthodox resignation to the Divine will; instead of which, he seemed totally unconscious ...
— Austin and His Friends • Frederic H. Balfour

... was not pleasant as he said this, and he grasped the letter in front of him in a violent way, as if he were wishing his long fingers were round the writer's throat. Tapping with his wooden leg on the floor, he was about to recommence his musings, when he heard a step in the passage, and the door of his office being pushed violently open, a man entered without further ceremony, and flung himself down on a chair ...
— Madame Midas • Fergus Hume

... There was one man, however, whom the old carpenter could never suppress. Beth did not know how this man got his living. He came from the village to gossip, wore a tweed suit, not like a workman's, nor was it the national Irish dress. He had a red nose and a wooden leg, and, after she knew him, for a long time she always expected a man with a wooden leg to have a red nose, but, somehow, she never expected a man with a red nose to have a wooden leg. This man was always cheery, ...
— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand

... a charity-boy, but not a workhouse orphan. No chance-child was he, for he could trace his genealogy all the way back to his parents, who lived hard by; his mother being a washerwoman, and his father a drunken soldier, discharged with a wooden leg, and a diurnal pension of twopence-halfpenny and an unstateable fraction. The shop-boys in the neighbourhood had long been in the habit of branding Noah in the public streets, with the ignominious epithets of 'leathers,' 'charity,' ...
— Oliver Twist • Charles Dickens

... up and stood him straight on his one wooden leg. Then he put the old felt hat on ...
— Seven O'Clock Stories • Robert Gordon Anderson

... and replied, "Ay, ay, Jack, everybody knows your tongue is no slander; but, howsomever, I'll work you to an oil for this, you dog." So saying, he lifted up one of his crutches, intending to lay it gently across Mr. Hatchway's pate; but Jack, with great agility, tilted up his wooden leg, with which he warded off the blow, to the no small admiration of Mr. Pickle, and utter astonishment of the landlord, who, by the bye, had expressed the same amazement, at the same feet, at the same hour, every ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett

... veterinary surgeon of Kirkintilloch, Scotland, arrived yesterday from Glasgow with photographs of a cow with a wooden leg on the starboard quarter, which the veterinary says is almost as good to the cow as an ordinary leg of beef and much more effective in knocking out folks who try to milk ...
— Practical English Composition: Book II. - For the Second Year of the High School • Edwin L. Miller

... contrast to the colonists, who yelled and shouted for joy, and clapped their hands at every salute from the guns. And when the fort was reached (it was only a few steps from the river-bank) the man with the wooden leg turned to those who followed him. The guns were silent, ...
— The Story of Manhattan • Charles Hemstreet

... been sick over the death of my friend Rollinat. My body is cured, but my soul! I should have to stay a week with you to refresh myself in your affectionate strength; for cold and purely philosophical courage to me, is like cauterizing a wooden leg. ...
— The George Sand-Gustave Flaubert Letters • George Sand, Gustave Flaubert

... will not be received. He may rob the tills of small shopkeepers, but if he is lame, half-blind, has heart disease, or if his brain is not sound and his body strong, if he has lost a hand, got a wooden leg, if he suffers from any disease or deprivation, prison, and prison only, is the place for him. So to prison the afflicted one goes if over fourteen; if under fourteen back to his home, to graduate ...
— London's Underworld • Thomas Holmes

... said. 'I will go and tell the Commission that I have shed my blood, and sacrificed my life, for my country.' And he got up early one morning, and shaved himself with his left hand (since the expense of a barber was not worth while), and set out, wooden leg and all, to see the President of the Commission. But first he asked where the President lived, and was told that his house was in Naberezhnaia Street. And you may be sure that it was no peasant's hut, ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol

... history that will be exchanged between the heroines of the alley-gate? When Mrs. Jones tells Mrs. Baker that Mrs. Briggs has delivered a daughter, and that Mr. Briggs said he had rather she had given him a wooden leg, the epigram is quite as good as a Bric-a-Brac anecdote, the people are quite as worthy as Cowper's barber, and the effect upon the history of letters quite as close and important. With this demurrer, we will apply ourselves for a moment to Mr. Stoddard's last collection, which of course ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Vol. XV., No. 85. January, 1875. • Various

... up again. "Kneel, sir, kneel!" cried my lord in waiting to a country mayor who had to read an address, but who went on with his compliment standing. "Kneel, sir, kneel!" cries my lord, in dreadful alarm. "I can't!" says the mayor, turning round; "don't you see I have got a wooden leg?" In the capital Burney Diary and Letters, the home and Court life of good old King George and good old Queen Charlotte are presented at portentous length. The king rose every morning at six: and had ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray

... think it funny thinking how one might be dead," replied Penworthy. "It gives me the creeps. It's all very well for you. You'll stump around for the rest of your life like a gentleman on a wooden leg. Chaps like you have all the luck; but as soon as I get out of this, I'll be passed fit for active service ... and not so much of your larfing at ...
— The Rough Road • William John Locke

... astonished infants in their arms, were struggling for front places against the opposite railings; and every window, from the drawing-rooms to the attics, in Pleasant-terrace were studded with heads, in someway resembling the doll heads in a gingerbread lottery, with which a man on a wooden leg was tempting the monied portion of the juvenile alarmists. Agamemnon opened the door, and being flanked by the whole of his household, proceeded to address the populace on the present satisfactory state of his kitchen chimney. The ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, September 25, 1841 • Various

... soldier. "Let me tell you about this wound." And he tore off the handkerchief around his head. His eyes at that moment fell on Simon's wooden leg, which he had not before seen. "Ah! you are one of us, then?" ...
— The Son of Monte Cristo • Jules Lermina

... forget the first time he read Patmore's hint that the cosmos is a thing that God made huge only "to make dirt cheap"; just as nobody will ever forget the sudden shout he uttered when he first heard Mrs. Todgers asked for the rough outline of a wooden leg. These things are not jokes, but discoveries. But the very fact that Patmore was, as it were, the Catholic Browning, keeps him out of the Victorian atmosphere as such. The Victorian English simply thought him an indecent sentimentalist, as they did all the hot and humble religious ...
— The Victorian Age in Literature • G. K. Chesterton

... in triumph. From the point of view of humour, it is really rather sad that they never will. The German Emperor's idea of a Gothic cathedral is as provocative to the fancy as Mrs. Todgers' idea of a wooden leg. But I think it perfectly probable that they really intended to set up such beautiful buildings as they could. Having been blasphemous enough to ruin such things, they might well be blasphemous enough to replace them. Even if the Prussian attempt on Paris had not wholly ...
— The Appetite of Tyranny - Including Letters to an Old Garibaldian • G.K. Chesterton

... saw how the effect could be still further heightened by doing away with his friend's rude state of health, and he immediately jammed him between the buffers of two railway carriages, and gave him a wooden leg. It was at this point that a lady who had kept her arms still too long rocked them frantically, then said, with cutting satire: "Are you not feeling well, or have you hurt yourself? You seem to be very lame." And Tommy woke with a start, to ...
— Tommy and Grizel • J.M. Barrie

... There ar-re two large bequests to charity. Wan is a thrust fund set aside f'r his maiden sister Annybelle, who will receive f'r life th' income on eight hundhred dollars in stock iv th' Hackensack Meadows Comp'ny. Th' other is forty-two dollars to buy a wooden leg f'r his brother Isaac, it bein' undherstood that no charge is to be made be th' estate against th' brother f'r a set iv false teeth bought f'r him in th' year nineteen four. Th' balance iv th' property is left in trust f'r th' minor childher until they ...
— Mr. Dooley Says • Finley Dunne

... old Pedersen," he said, "with his wooden leg. He makes a dot after every step. We shall catch ...
— Fisherman's Luck • Henry van Dyke

... honour to dance a minuet with your Ladyship?" The whole room was in titters at Jack's blunder; for, as you know very well, poor Lady Susan HAS A WOODEN LEG. Ha! ha! fancy a minuet and a wooden leg, hey, ...
— Catherine: A Story • William Makepeace Thackeray

... other day when I said I didn't like bread-and-treacle treacled so long before, and soaked in, and you said I ought to be thankful that I had bread-and-treacle at all, and that I hadn't a wooden leg, and to eat anything I could get, like the old sailor man at the corner; well, do you know, I've thought of something I am so thankful for, and that is that I haven't a red screen to ...
— Mrs. Overtheway's Remembrances • Juliana Horatia Ewing

... an old nigger, and he had a wooden leg. He had no tobacco, no tobacco could he beg. Another old nigger was as cunning as a fox, And he always had tobacco ...
— Trent's Last Case - The Woman in Black • E.C. (Edmund Clerihew) Bentley

... her coachman alighted to deliver the first letter and cards, that he had one club foot and one wooden leg; it was then that the full significance of 'lamiter' came to her. He was covered, however, as Salemina had supposed, and the occurrence gave us a precious opportunity of chaffing that dungeon of learning. He was tolerably ...
— Penelope's Experiences in Scotland • Kate Douglas Wiggin

... and Miller Douglas came home just before Christmas and Glen St. Mary met them at the station with a brass band borrowed from Lowbridge and speeches of home manufacture. Miller was brisk and beaming in spite of his wooden leg; he had developed into a broad-shouldered, imposing looking fellow and the D. C. Medal he wore reconciled Miss Cornelia to the shortcomings of his pedigree to such a degree that she tacitly recognized ...
— Rilla of Ingleside • Lucy Maud Montgomery

... learning, the affair wore a tolerably encouraging aspect; for the academy had increased in numbers, and two old fellows, liking the notion of the broth and the 6d. a month—one a barber, Will Potts, ruined by a shake in his right hand, the other a drunken pensioner, Phil Doolan, with a wooden leg—petitioned to be enrolled, and were, accordingly, admitted. Then Aunt Becky visited the gaols, and had a knack of picking up the worst characters there, and had generally two or three discharged felons on her hands. Some people said she was a bit of a Voltarian, ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu

... give him a lesson," retorted El Mariane. "You'll see." Whereupon he crawled into the cave and reappeared soon with El Cojo's wooden leg in one hand and a ...
— The Quest • Pio Baroja

... here enjoying the solitude and my fancies among the low branches of the wood, at my right I heard a crashing, and saw a squat broad figure in a stained and tattered military coat, and loose short trousers, one limb of which flapped about a wooden leg. He was forcing himself through. His face was rugged and wrinkled, and tanned to the tint of old oak; his eyes black, beadlike, and fierce, and a shock of sooty hair escaped from under his battered wide-awake nearly to his shoulders. This forbidding-looking person ...
— Uncle Silas - A Tale of Bartram-Haugh • J.S. Le Fanu

... of vagrants and suspicious characters—were made, but the guilt of the robbery was never brought home to them. One man was arrested twenty miles away, at the other end of Missinaba county, who not only corresponded exactly with the description of the robber, but, in addition to this, had a wooden leg. Vagrants with one leg are always regarded with suspicion in places like Mariposa, and whenever a robbery or a murder happens ...
— Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town • Stephen Leacock

... any especial fitness for the office. A cardinal is made pope because he is old, infirm, and imbecile,—our friend Caboose was made cook because he had been Lord Nelson's coxswain, was a drunken rascal, and had a wooden leg; for, as to his gastronomical qualifications, he knew no more of the science than just sufficient to watch the copper where the salt junk and potatoes were boiling. Having been a little in the wind overnight, he had quartered himself, in the superabundance of his heroism, at a gun where he had ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott

... the other side of Onund's. Then there was a general flight. Thrand and the rest of the vikings escaped any way they could, and sailed away westwards. They took with them Onund and Balki and Hallvard Sugandi. Onund recovered and went about for the rest of his life with a wooden leg, wherefore he was called Onund Treefoot as ...
— Grettir The Strong - Grettir's Saga • Unknown

... of which it was constructed still rejoicing in their primitive covering of bark, the openings between them being closed with clay thrown in by hand. Mr. G., the owner,—a short, gray-haired, brisk little man with a wooden leg, gave me a cordial welcome, and, to show how willing he was to have the meeting in his cabin, pointed to his shoemaker's bench, and various articles of furniture, including a bedstead, trundle-bed, and bedding, which had been removed from the room, and piled ...
— The Cabin on the Prairie • C. H. (Charles Henry) Pearson

... the Bo'sun stood up very straight despite his wooden leg, and when he touched his hat again, his very pigtail seemed ...
— The Amateur Gentleman • Jeffery Farnol et al

... This man was short and stout, with a harelip and cleft palate, which at once gave him the well-known slurring speech of persons so afflicted, and imparted also to the timbre of his voice a peculiarly hollow, resonant, trumpet-like note. He stumped about energetically on a wooden leg of home manufacture. It was a cumbersome instrument, heavy, with deep pine socket for the stump, and a projecting brace which passed under a leather belt around the man's waist. This instrument he used ...
— The Blazed Trail • Stewart Edward White

... brain-power alike of Indian and Eskimo; and no wonder, for it was a wooden leg, discovered by Anteek in what must have been the doctor's cabin—or a cabin which had been used for doctor's stuff and material. Like letters of the alphabet given in confusion for the purpose of being formed into words, this leg puzzled investigators because of their inevitable ...
— The Walrus Hunters - A Romance of the Realms of Ice • R.M. Ballantyne

... esteemed. Nature had cut him out, Scott used to say, for a stalwart soldier, for he was tall, vigorous, active, and fond of athletic exercises, but accident had marred her work, the loss of a limb in boyhood having reduced him to a wooden leg. He was brought up, therefore, for the Church, whence he was occasionally called the Dominie, and is supposed, by his mixture of learning, simplicity, and amiable eccentricity, to have furnished many traits ...
— Abbotsford and Newstead Abbey • Washington Irving

... sooner come to the Temple Stairs, but we were surrounded with a crowd of watermen, offering us their respective services. Sir Roger, after having looked about him very attentively, spied one with a wooden leg, and immediately gave him orders to get his boat ready. As we were walking towards it, 'You must know,' says Sir Roger, 'I never make use of anybody to row me, that has not either lost a leg or an arm. I would rather bate him a few strokes of his oar than not employ an honest man that ...
— Halleck's New English Literature • Reuben P. Halleck

... Lieutenant, whose steed had got the heels of the others, finding it would be great folly and presumption in him to pretend to keep the saddle with his wooden leg, very wisely took the opportunity of throwing himself off in his passage through a field of rich clover, among which he lay at his ease; and seeing his captain advancing at full gallop, hailed him with the salutation of 'What cheer? ho!' The Commodore, ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange

... had previously been light. It fell a dead calm soon after the stranger had been sighted. Our First-Lieutenant, Mr Schank, who, in spite of having a wooden leg, was as active as any man on board, having gone aloft himself to take a look at her, came to the opinion that she was a brig of war. From the way in which she increased her distance from the frigate after she was seen, ...
— Ben Burton - Born and Bred at Sea • W. H. G. Kingston

... Aston had his brains beaten out with his own wooden leg, at the storming of Tredagh ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... of New Netherland, 1664.—The English government now determined to conquer New Netherland. An English fleet sailed to New Amsterdam. Stuyvesant thumped up and down on his wooden leg. But he was almost the only man in New Amsterdam who wanted to fight. He soon surrendered, and New Netherland became an English colony. The Dutch later recaptured it and held it for a time; but in 1674 they finally ...
— A Short History of the United States • Edward Channing

... for taking her in because she is so gol darned pretty and up-and-coming. I must confess I wouldn't have been so eager about it if she had been jimber-jawed and cross-eyed, but, by the great jumping jingo, I'd say be my long-lost cousin now if she had a wooden leg, a ...
— The Comings of Cousin Ann • Emma Speed Sampson

... lawn is covered with them, all stamped down. Look at these, for instance. These are the tracks of a man with a wooden leg"—Kent nodded—"in all probability a sailor, newly landed from Java, carrying a Singapore walking-stick, and with a tin-whistle tied round ...
— Winsome Winnie and other New Nonsense Novels • Stephen Leacock

... thrown away upon one of Barny's readiness to avail himself of every point in his favor: and, accordingly, when they left the brig, Barny said to his companions, "Why, thin, boys, 'pon my conscience, but I'm as proud as a horse wid a wooden leg this minit, that we met them poor unfort'nate craythers this blessed day, and was enabled to extind our charity to them. Sure, an' it's lost they'd be only for our comin' acrass them, and we, through the blessin' o' God, enabled to do an act o' marcy, that is, feedin' the hungry; and ...
— Stories of Comedy • Various

... Ben, whose sea tales were one of Nancy's chiefest joys, and whose wooden leg was her greatest perplexity, I felt deserved some recognition of his service, and, to shorten the telling, in less than a month these houses were occupied as Nancy had desired they should be—Father ...
— Nancy Stair - A Novel • Elinor Macartney Lane

... long row, cripples, the blind, the young, the aged, it was a company of mendicants which eccentric painters would have given five years of life to have seen. Except for consumptive coughs, the misstep of a wooden leg of which the clumsy ferule slipped on a cobblestone, and the querulous whimper of a child, half-starved and imperfectly swaddled in a tattered shawl, on a flaccid bosom, the mob were silent in an expectation as intense as the lookers-on. The wind brought the whistle of the railway locomotives ...
— The Son of Clemenceau • Alexandre (fils) Dumas

... them at dinner in one or two neighbouring houses.) On the same days, and on Mondays as well, old Jean Pierre Pichou, ex-boatswain of the Didon frigate, would come along arm-in-arm with Julien Carales, alias Frap d'Abord, ex-marechal des logis—Pichou, with his wooden leg, and Frap d'Abord twisting a grey moustache and uttering a steady torrent of imprecation—or so it sounded. These could be counted on; but scores of others stopped and turned at the Bayfield elm, and Polly had names for them all. Moreover, on one memorable day Dorothea had watched ...
— The Westcotes • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... of broken, ragged line. One might see, now, some of the chief characteristics by contrast. There was a wooden leg in the line. Hats were all drooping, a group that would ill become a second-hand Hester Street basement collection. Trousers were all warped and frayed at the bottom and coats worn and faded. In the glare of the store lights, some of the faces looked ...
— Sister Carrie • Theodore Dreiser

... requested this enigma to me to be solved, and it appeared that one Greenwich fair, Opposition Bill had set off home rather the worse for what he had drunk, and so it happened that, crossing the road next to the hospital, his wooden leg had stuck in one of the iron plug-holes of the water conduit. Bill did not, in his situation, perceive that anything particular had occurred, and continued playing his fiddle and singing, and, as he supposed, walking on the whole time, instead of ...
— Poor Jack • Frederick Marryat

... go. The gate-keeper hobbled thudding over the logs of the crossing, with his wooden leg. He had fastened the gate. Then he also turned, and called to ...
— Women in Love • D. H. Lawrence

... if I wait till dark," replied Biff. "I can go down to the Blue Star, and for ten iron men apiece can get you as fine a bunch of yeggs as ever beat out a cripple's brains with his own wooden leg." ...
— The Making of Bobby Burnit - Being a Record of the Adventures of a Live American Young Man • George Randolph Chester

... a battle, Miss, that's one thing," remarked on obliging by-stander who leaned heavily upon a wooden leg. "Bless you, I kin a'most taste the powder." He smacked his lips and spat into the dust. "To think that I went all the way down to Mexico fur a fight," he pursued regretfully, "when I could have set right here at home and had it all in old Virginny. Well, ...
— The Battle Ground • Ellen Glasgow

... idiocy. "A valiant, weather-beaten, mettlesome, obstinate, leathern-sided, lion-hearted, generous-spirited old governor"—the adjectives describe him well; a sufficiently imposing figure, with his slashed hose and velvet jacket and tall cane and silver-banded wooden leg, he ruled the colony for twenty years with a rod of iron, fortifying it, enlarging it, settling its boundaries, keeping the Indians over-awed, the veriest dictator this continent ever saw, until, one August day in 1664, ...
— American Men of Action • Burton E. Stevenson

... free afternoon repairing his frayed linen and his shabby uniform, with his wooden leg stretched out before him and his pipe clutched firmly in his teeth. Then, freshly shaved and brushed, he started on a painful search after work. With no result. And, indeed, he was hopeless before he began. ...
— Long Live the King • Mary Roberts Rinehart

... I did not do quite as much as my gun. But I flatter myself it was that gun that brought clown the Turkish Admiral's main-mast; and the stump left wasn't long enough to make a wooden leg for Lord Nelson." ...
— White Jacket - or, the World on a Man-of-War • Herman Melville

... holding it aloft to catch the breezes which streamed through the narrow defiles of the hills. None but sailors, well practised in treading the deck of a rolling ship, could possibly have maintained their footing: for the boatswain, the wooden leg, and the fisherman, kept up their horses inexorably to their duty of an immutable gallop; the hearse and its plumes flew through the solitary valley; the post-chaises, carrying a similar crew on their upper decks, flew after ...
— Walladmor: - And Now Freely Translated from the German into English. - In Two Volumes. Vol. I. • Thomas De Quincey

... rode behind him, with his short arms encircling his uncle's paunch. The old man wore a dirty white shirt with a tabbed bosom; a single shiny white china button held the neckband together at the back. Below the button the shirt billowed open, showing his naked back. His wooden leg stuck straight out to the side, its worn brass tip carrying a blob of red mud, and his good leg dangled down straight, with the trousers hitched half-way up the bare shank and a soiled white-yarn sock falling down into the wrinkled and gaping top ...
— The Escape of Mr. Trimm - His Plight and other Plights • Irvin S. Cobb

... the street I heard a thumping; and I knew it was the stumping Of the Corporal, our old neighbor, on that wooden leg he wore, With a knot of women round him,—it was lucky I had found him,— So I followed with the others, and ...
— Poems of American Patriotism • Brander Matthews (Editor)

... finished reading a ludicrously furious attack on the Mission in a St. John's paper, for its alleged misrepresentations. It seems that last year the former superintendent took down a boy from the Children's Home to give him a chance at further education. He had a wooden leg, his own having been removed by an operation for tuberculosis. On his arrival in Montreal the omnivorous reporter saw in him excellent copy, and forthwith printed the following purely fictitious account of the cause of his disability. Little Kommak, so the story ran (the boy is of pure Irish ...
— Le Petit Nord - or, Annals of a Labrador Harbour • Anne Elizabeth Caldwell (MacClanahan) Grenfell and Katie Spalding

... left-hand slope of the raised causeway. Probably fearing the intense competition, these musicians intended to garner at the propylaea the first fruits of the liberality which had here not yet spent itself. There were a girl harpist with repulsive, staring eyes; an old invalid with a wooden leg, who, on a dreadful, evidently home-made instrument, half dulcimer, half barrel-organ, was endeavoring by means of analogy to arouse the pity of the public for his painful injury; a lame, deformed boy, forming with his violin one single, indistinguishable ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VI. • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke

... fleet scattered in flight; Thrand and his men, with the other vikings, got them away each as he might, and sailed west over the Sea; Onund went with him, and Balk and Hallvard Sweeping; Onund was healed, but went with a wooden leg all his life after; therefore as long as he lived ...
— The Story of Grettir The Strong • Translated by Eirikr Magnusson and William Morris

... 1647-1664; He was a fiery old fellow, with a great love of pomp, and a tremendous opinion of his own importance. He had lost a leg in the Spanish Wars, and now he stamped about with a wooden one. But as no plain wooden leg would please his taste for grandeur he had it bound ...
— This Country Of Ours • H. E. Marshall Author: Henrietta Elizabeth Marshall

... you should make them, Godfrey, and also the wooden leg when he is ready for it," Alexis had said. "It is just as well that their gratitude should be divided a little, so I will hand that part of ...
— Condemned as a Nihilist - A Story of Escape from Siberia • George Alfred Henty

... that have been done," Pearl said, reassuringly. "Ma knew a woman once, and whenever she wanted to keep her man at home she hid his wooden leg. I suppose, now, she hasn't——" Pearl ...
— The Second Chance • Nellie L. McClung

... houses makes me think that the Stockton girls are having their house painted by a man with a wooden leg. Billy Evans picked him up somewhere and Seth Curtis was telling me how he came to lose that leg. Seems like he was prospecting somewheres in Montana, got drunk, froze it, gangrene set in and they had to amputate. They say he's a ...
— Green Valley • Katharine Reynolds

... towards it. We do not observe this to be the manner of human progress. Our mechanical inventions, which, as I ventured to say in "Erewhon," through the mouth of the second professor, are really nothing but extra-corporaneous limbs—a wooden leg being nothing but a bad kind of flesh leg, and a flesh leg being only a much better kind of wooden leg than any creature could be expected to manufacture introspectively and consciously—our mechanical inventions have almost invariably grown up from small beginnings, ...
— Life and Habit • Samuel Butler

... continued his report, which now wrought up the narrator himself to a pitch of excitement and horror: Colard and Bancal held the old man's legs, while the tobacconist and his sweetheart seized his head and arms. A gentleman with a wooden leg and a three-cornered hat held a candle high in the air. There was something weird about the emergence of this new figure; if it stood for nothing more than a finishing touch to the horror of that night of murder, it fulfilled its aim to perfection. The wooden-legged man ...
— The German Classics, v. 20 - Masterpieces of German Literature • Various

... Henery," ses Bob, in a kind voice. "I've no doubt Mr. Sutton'll throw in a wooden leg if you want it, and look here, if he does, I won't trouble you for ...
— Captains All and Others • W.W. Jacobs

... no difference. I'm a regular invalid, as they calls them, and just as bad as some of our poor chaps who go back to live on the top of a wooden leg all the ...
— !Tention - A Story of Boy-Life during the Peninsular War • George Manville Fenn

... of Ben Aits the mealmonger, and a son of William Burlings the baker; to say little of the callant of Saunders Broom the sweep, that would fain have put his blackit- looking bit creature with the one eye and the wooden leg under my wing; but I aye looked to respectability in these matters; so glad was I when I got the offer of Mungo Glen.—But more of this in ...
— The Life of Mansie Wauch - Tailor in Dalkeith, written by himself • David Macbeth Moir

... counter, and observed it with due respect, as the prop of a hero. With this leg, which is fitted with a very handsome boot, he reviews his troops next Sunday, putting his best foot foremost; for generally he merely wears an unadorned wooden leg. The shoemaker, a Spaniard, whom I can recommend to all customers as the most impertinent individual I ever encountered, was arguing, in a blustering manner, with a gentleman who had brought a message from the general, desiring some alteration in the boot: and wound up by muttering, as the messenger ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon De La Barca

... very favorable to the unfortunate captain. It happened that a pirate, with a prodigious pair of whiskers, a wooden leg, and stuck round with pistols, came blustering and swearing upon the quarter deck, inquiring "where was Captain Mackra." He naturally supposed that this barbarous-looking fellow would be his executioner; but, as he approached, he took the captain ...
— The Pirates Own Book • Charles Ellms

... accommodation for you here, citizens," a voice said, as Jean Martin and Leigh rode into the little courtyard, and a man with a wooden leg came out from the side door of ...
— No Surrender! - A Tale of the Rising in La Vendee • G. A. Henty

... one market day, Mrs. Lightfoot told him, "There has been one asking for you, Kenton, Seth Coleman, the loriner's son, that went soldiering when your brother did. He landed last week from Ireland with a wooden leg, and said he, 'Where shall I come to the speech of one Steadfast Kenton? I have a greeting from his brother, the peculiarly favoured,' or some such word, 'Jephthah Kenton, who told me I should hear tidings of him from Mrs. Bakester ...
— Under the Storm - Steadfast's Charge • Charlotte M. Yonge

... in the direction of the buffet. I had no idea on what a serious mission he was bound, of course, and so I called him to introduce him to the pretty girl, who had with her an aunt, a veritable witch, as hideous as a Medusa, and who, in addition, is afflicted with a wooden leg. Dick gave the aunt only a glance. That was enough, but he was all smiles for her pretty niece, who, I must admit, is somewhat of a flirt. Anyhow she rolled her eyes so eloquently at him that he forgot ...
— The Mask - A Story of Love and Adventure • Arthur Hornblow

... inclined to like this Colonel Stumper, C.B. For one thing he limped, and that meant, they decided, that he had a wooden leg. They never called it such, of course, but indicated obliquely that the injured limb was made of oak or walnut, by referring to the other as "his living leg," "his good leg," and so forth. For another thing, he did not ...
— The Extra Day • Algernon Blackwood

... he was five years of age. A man by the name of Hobby lived in one of his father's tenements, and he served the public in the double capacity of parish sexton and school-master. It is claimed that he was a wounded soldier with a wooden leg, a kind, Christian gentleman, whose very limited education may have qualified him to dig graves and open the house of worship, but not to teach the young. However, he did teach school quite a number of years, and some of his pupils called him "Old Wooden Leg"—a fact that confirms ...
— From Farm House to the White House • William M. Thayer

... at King George's Sound a native presented himself to me with one leg only, and requested me to supply him with a wooden leg. He had traveled in this maimed state about ninety-six miles, for this purpose. I examined the limb, which had been severed just below the knee, and found that it had been charred by fire, while about two inches of the partially calcined bone protruded through the ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... sez Peter Begg. "Suppose 'e comes 'ome with a wooden leg. Suppose 'e isn't fit to darnce at all, Then, ain't we 'asty fixin' up this ball? A little tournament at Bridge is my Idear," sez ...
— Digger Smith • C. J. Dennis

... has bought a wooden leg and prefers the old one," said he; asking at the same time, "What's the course, captain, and why do ...
— The House Under the Sea - A Romance • Sir Max Pemberton

... Miller had the misfortune to fall on the ice Friday and break his wooden leg. This will lay Mr. Miller up for some time as the limb will have to be sent away for repairs or perhaps necessitates his buying an ...
— News Writing - The Gathering , Handling and Writing of News Stories • M. Lyle Spencer

... is beginning to form over the new flesh. A few weeks more, and then a wooden leg. You will run along like ...
— The New Book Of Martyrs • Georges Duhamel

... Golden guineas!" exclaimed Norine. "Why those are pirate coins! They remind me of Treasure Island; of Long John Silver and his wooden leg; of Ben Gunn and all the rest." With a voice made hoarse, doubtless to imitate the old nut- brown seaman with the saber-scar and the tarry pig-tail, who sat sipping his rum and water in the Admiral Benbow Inn, she ...
— Rainbow's End • Rex Beach

... you sir," said the mariner, saluting the visitor with a quick bob of the head, and a backward scrape of the wooden leg. "You couldn't make port at a better time, sir,—and because why?—because the kettle's a biling, sir, the muffins is piping hot, and the shrimps is a-laying hove to, waiting to be took aboard, sir." Saying which, Peterday bobbed his head again, shook his wooden leg ...
— The Money Moon - A Romance • Jeffery Farnol

... was reached, she caught sight of him in the verandah, taking his ease very completely in one of those ungainly chairs, with arms extending to long wooden leg-rests, which seem to belong to India and no other country in the world. He had exchanged his coat for a Japanese smoking jacket, whose collar and cuffs could ill afford to brave daylight; and his boots for slippers of Linda's making, whose conflicting colours ...
— Captain Desmond, V.C. • Maud Diver

... a small sum of money. His real name was Zechariah, and he got his nickname from his once having brought home to his wife a couple of finely trussed pigeons to roast, but they were in fact a pair of plucked ravens, which in that part of the country are called "crappies." Crappy Zachy, who had a wooden leg, spent most of his time knitting woolen stockings and jackets; and with his knitting he used to sit about in the village wherever there was any opportunity to gossip. This gossiping, in the course of which he heard all sorts of news, was a source of some very profitable ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VIII • Various

... Land of Oz," replied the Emperor, "no one can ever be killed. A man with a wooden leg or a tin leg is still the same man; and, as I lost parts of my meat body by degrees, I always remained the same person as in the beginning, even though in the end I was all ...
— The Tin Woodman of Oz • L. Frank Baum

... of theirs I blame them, in others I praise; but it is plainly evident that they know how to binge. I wished (for a moment) to be altogether of their race, like that strong cavalry man of their race to whom they have put up a statue pointing to his wooden leg. What an incredible people to build such an ...
— On Something • H. Belloc

... forthwith for Alexandria, in order to surprise the place and to prevent the Turks from making preparations for defence. The troops instantly commenced their march. Not a horse was yet landed: the staff of Bonaparte, and Caffarelli himself, notwithstanding his wooden leg, had to walk four or five leagues over the sands, and came at daybreak within ...
— History Of Egypt From 330 B.C. To The Present Time, Volume 12 (of 12) • S. Rappoport

... looked here very much like some fat member of the New York Ring cunningly availing himself of the more toothsome rations in the sick ward of the penitentiary. My friend pointed out to me a heron with a wooden leg. "Suppose a gnat should break his shoulder-blade," I said, "would they put his wing in ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 17, - No. 97, January, 1876 • Various

... bottom of a paper bag, or part of an apple which was generously specked, and so well on its way to ruin, or shared the half of a lemon, which the two sucked, turn about, all such being the gifts of a certain old gentleman with a wooden leg who carried on a thriving trade in the vicinity of the nearest public school. But the periods between the contributions were so long, and the amount of fruit consumed was so small, that Johnnie was never even a quarter satisfied—except at one ...
— The Rich Little Poor Boy • Eleanor Gates

... said, "I saw it; but not quite so fine as mine." He went up to Highgate to look through the engravings of Charles Matthews the elder. They were all duplicates—of course inferior ones. "Damn him, sir!" cried Matthews afterwards to a friend; "I should like him to have had a duplicate of my wooden leg." ...
— The Book-Hunter in London - Historical and Other Studies of Collectors and Collecting • William Roberts

... Mr. Boffin, "I came by here one morning and heard you reading through your ballads to a butcher-boy. I thought to myself, 'Here's a literary man with a wooden leg, and all print is open to him! And here am I without a wooden leg, and all print is shut ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol III • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.



Words linked to "Wooden leg" :   prosthetic device, prosthesis



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