"Sprawl" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... street is narrow and dirty, lined by old brick houses; here and there is a carved doorway with brackets, showing that, like most streets in the vicinity, it was better built than now inhabited, and it is probable that where sickly children now sprawl on doorsteps stately ladies in hoops and silken skirts once stepped forth. St. George's National Schools are here, and a public-house with the odd name of Hole in the Wall, a name adopted by Mr. Morrison in his recent novel ...
— Holborn and Bloomsbury - The Fascination of London • Sir Walter Besant
... through happiness, Shoals of small bright fishes were; In and out weed-thickets bent Perch and carp, and sauntering went With mounching jaws and eyes a-stare; Or on a lotus leaf would crawl A brindled loach to bask and sprawl, Tasting the warm sun ere it dipped Into the water; but quick as fear Back his shining brown head slipped To crouch on the gravel of his lair, Where the cooled sunbeams, broke in wrack, Spilt shattered gold about his back. So within that green-veiled ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 2 (of 4) • Various
... provoking rapidity, and have often wondered since why I refrained; but I did, and continued to scuttle after him, now slipping down and barking my shins, now nearly losing my carbine, and often compelled to sprawl on all fours. He was now forty or fifty yards ahead of me, and I was nearly giving up the useless chase, when an unforeseen accident turned the tables in my favour, and caused me to push on with redoubled vigour. As ...
— Australian Search Party • Charles Henry Eden
... and time Had marr'd the work of artisan and mason, And efts and croaking frogs, begot of slime, Sprawl'd in the ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood
... Sirius could be more fiercely devoted than she, who had to atone for her past injustice. She was angry that blind Brian should be thus coldly stared at, and that a man in better health than he should calmly sprawl in the ...
— Everyman's Land • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... even to those exalted fanatical souls, that there was no chance for them, and that they must get out of these fatal rocks and into the desert again. They galloped down the pass, and it is a frightful thing to see a camel galloping over broken ground. The beast's own terror, his ungainly bounds, the sprawl of his four legs all in the air together, his hideous cries, and the yells of his rider who is bucked high from his saddle with every spring, make a picture which is not to be forgotten. The women ...
— The Tragedy of The Korosko • Arthur Conan Doyle
... of Green Chartreuse and a liqueur-glass on the table, drop one drip of the liquid into the glass, burn a stinking pastille of incense, place a Birmingham "god" or an opening lily before him, ruffle his hair, and sprawl on the sofa with a wicked French novel he could not read—hoping ...
— Driftwood Spars - The Stories of a Man, a Boy, a Woman, and Certain Other People Who - Strangely Met Upon the Sea of Life • Percival Christopher Wren
... some beggar's haffet squattle; [Quick, temples settle] There ye may creep, and sprawl, and sprattle Wi' ither kindred, jumping cattle, In shoals and nations; Whare horn nor bane ne'er dare unsettle [i.e. comb] Your ...
— Robert Burns - How To Know Him • William Allan Neilson
... air is heavy with their perfume. The Abbey stands in a rocky valley looking south. The grounds are laid out in a succession of terraces, and from every nook and crevice rare specimens of cacti, sedums, and mesembryanthemums with their orange and purple bloom sprawl over the rocks and run riot among the borders. In the gardens South American aloes throw up their flowering stalks heavy with aromatic fragrance, 20 feet high, and giant dracaenas wave their feathery heads ...
— The Cornwall Coast • Arthur L. Salmon
... divided we sprawl," I said. Then he walked away. That was the second day at Poughkeepsie and most all day the Elks were busy turning Skinny into a fish. Some of the rest of us went up to Metzger's Candy Store to get some jaw-breakers. Did you ever eat those? Pee-wee was quiet for an hour munching one. The licorice ...
— Roy Blakeley's Adventures in Camp • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... the walls—three or four flower-pictures by Varelst; three pictures of horses and dogs by Hondius, and a couple of Dutch pictures by Hoogstraaten. Over the fireplace was a chimney-breast by Gibbons; and the ceiling was all a-sprawl with gods and goddesses, I suppose by Verrio. In the windows, which looked out on two sides, over the river and into a little court, were little tables covered with curious things, for His Majesty delighted in such ingenuities—Dutch ...
— Oddsfish! • Robert Hugh Benson
... dim afternoon was closing, he was allowed, for half an hour before sleep, to sprawl upon the carpet in front of the fire. He had with him his rattle and a large bear which he stroked because it was comfortable; he had no ...
— The Golden Scarecrow • Hugh Walpole
... couple with such amazing velocity it was invisible; but, ere the crouching convict could press the trigger of his rifle, he was seen to sprawl forward, his gun flying from his grasp. The terrible javelin had gone entirely through his body as though it were tissue paper, and pinned him like an impaled ...
— The Land of Mystery • Edward S. Ellis
... waving hair like spun black glass, circled with faint tracery of stars. A black glass belt bound her narrow waist like clasped hands, and her robe, stark white, bore an ugly embroidery across the breasts, the flat sprawl of a conventionalized Toad God, Nebran. Her features were delicate, chiseled, pale; a Dry-town face, all human, all woman, but set in an alien and unearthly repose. The great eyes gleamed red. They were fixed, almost unseeing, but the crimson ...
— The Door Through Space • Marion Zimmer Bradley
... o'clock tune on the bells, heedless in that elevation of our career—in less than no time John Knox, preaching from a house half-way down the Canongate, gave us the go-by—and down through one long wide sprawl of men, women, and children we wheeled past the Gothic front, and round the south angle of Holyrood, and across the King's-park, where wan and withered sporting debtors held up their hands and cried, Hurra—hurra—hurra—without stop ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, - Issue 286, December 8, 1827 • Various
... makes the trip to Cui-kau at the beginning of the rapids, but it leaves at two o'clock in the morning and is literally crowded to overflowing with evil-smelling Chinese who sprawl over every available inch of deck space, so that even the missionaries strongly advised us against taking it. The passengers not infrequently are pushed off into the water. One of the missionaries witnessed an incident which illustrates in a typical ...
— Camps and Trails in China - A Narrative of Exploration, Adventure, and Sport in Little-Known China • Roy Chapman Andrews and Yvette Borup Andrews
... right, child," returned the giant placidly; and then Verity put down Babs on the grass to sprawl among the daisies. ...
— Herb of Grace • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... finishing his tea went on deck with the cook, and gave himself up to all the delights of a quiet sprawl. Fatigued with their exertions, neither of them moved until nine o'clock, and then, with a farewell glance in the direction in which Dick might be expected to come, went below ...
— The Skipper's Wooing, and The Brown Man's Servant • W. W. Jacobs
... for help. Then Keston stumbled and went down in a sprawl on the rough gray ice. The bear was almost on him and there was nothing I ...
— Astounding Stories, July, 1931 • Various
... you ever know a man to sprawl a note all over two sheets of paper, with nothing to distinguish the end from the beginning? In the nature of things, you'd expect her to commence at the top of a sheet, and, in a careless moment, she may have done so. Let me see—yes, here it ...
— Master of the Vineyard • Myrtle Reed
... "Sure, it's as clear as mud. Let's sit down here just as if we were going to take a rest; let's sprawl on the ground just as if we weren't thinking about that shack at all. Then we can talk about what we'd ...
— Roy Blakeley's Bee-line Hike • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... had been holding Watts in a sitting posture by a firm grip on his collar, allowed the limp figure to sprawl headlong again. He wanted to plunge both hands deeply into his trousers pockets, because men of his type associate attitude so closely with thought that the one is apt to become almost dependent on the other. And ...
— The Stowaway Girl • Louis Tracy
... flash of memory, August Naab's words steadied Jack's shaken nerves. He aimed low and ahead of the running bear. Down the beast went in a sliding sprawl with a muffled roar of rage. Up he sprang, dangling a useless leg, yet leaping swiftly forward. One blow sent the attacking dog aside. Jack fired again. The bear became a wrestling, fiery demon, death-stricken, but full of savage fury. Jack aimed ...
— The Heritage of the Desert • Zane Grey
... asks he, 'I often think it does one a great deal of good to be cross. I wish Mrs Grundy didn't come between us and the carpet, it would be so delightful to sprawl full length on it and roar; I remember I used to derive a great deal of comfort in it in the ...
— Lippa • Beatrice Egerton
... standing outside the old fretworked boarding house he lived in—looking in at the window of the "sitting room" where the ancient, wispy landlady sat among her antimacassared chairs and the ridiculous tiny seashell ashtrays that overflowed after two butts. He wanted desperately to get in and sprawl in the huge bat-winged chair by the fire and stroke the enormous old gray cat that would leap up and trample and paw his stomach before settling down to grumble ...
— Far from Home • J.A. Taylor
... and blind, and others sprawl, And stagger in the Long-Knife's villages; And some are dead, and some have fled away, And some are lurking in the forest here, Sneaking, ...
— Tecumseh: A Drama • Charles Mair
... splendid swimmer, there was no doubt about that, but his ordeal in the water had told on him severely. He grabbed Clancy's outstretched hand desparingly, and was assisted to climb over the bulwarks. Once aboard, he fell in a sprawl on the boat's bottom, ...
— Owen Clancy's Happy Trail - or, The Motor Wizard in California • Burt L. Standish
... about two hundred varieties of cowpeas. These varieties differ in form, in the size of seed and of pod, in the color of seed and of pod, and in the time of ripening. They differ, too, in the manner of growth. Some grow erect; others sprawl on the ground. In selecting varieties it is well to choose those that grow straight up, those that are hardy, those that fruit early and abundantly, and those that hold their leaves. The variety selected for seed should also suit the land and ...
— Agriculture for Beginners - Revised Edition • Charles William Burkett
... the failing party must be cast out of this presence. Later they learn that good sense and character make their own forms every moment, and speak or abstain, take wine or refuse it, stay or go, sit in a chair or sprawl with children on the floor, or stand on their head, or what else soever, in a new and aboriginal way; and that strong will is always in fashion, let who will be unfashionable. All that fashion demands ...
— Essays, Second Series • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... and body in a magnificent vigor. If his soul had been lodged in a sickly, rickety body, he could hardly have written these lines from 'Saul'. Nor could he have written 'Caliban upon Setebos', especially the opening lines: "Will sprawl, now that the heat of day is best, flat on his belly in the pit's much mire, with elbows wide, fists clenched to prop his chin. And, while he kicks both feet in the cool slush, and feels about his spine small ...
— Introduction to Robert Browning • Hiram Corson
... outfit," I went on, "that have got any sprawl to them; and they are old Tom their bunged-up ...
— Vandemark's Folly • Herbert Quick
... caution came too late. At top speed the auto struck the wayfarer, and before the boys' horrified eyes he was thrown high in the air, to fall, a confused sprawl of legs and ...
— The Boy Inventors' Radio Telephone • Richard Bonner
... are kept standing around. When we left Bolivar we were in considerable of a hurry, with no time to primp or comb our hair, and neither did we bring our tents along, so we are just living out of doors now, and "boarding at Sprawl's." There is plenty of wood, though, to make fires, and we have jayhawked enough planks and boards to lie on to keep us out of the mud, so we just curl up at night in our blankets with all our clothes on, ...
— The Story of a Common Soldier of Army Life in the Civil War, 1861-1865 • Leander Stillwell
... divided we sprawl," Roy said. "There are more of us, too, only they're not here. They're by ...
— Roy Blakeley in the Haunted Camp • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... kind of odd number at camp was evidenced by his unfamiliarity with the things that were very familiar to most boys there. He was too restless to hang around the pavilion or sprawl under the trees or idle about with the others in and near Council Shack. He never read the bulletin board posted outside, and the inside was a place of so little interest to him that he had not even seen the beautiful canoe that was exhibited there, and on which ...
— Tom Slade on Mystery Trail • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... strength of which, in truth, that tiger-like suppleness should have warned him, Dolly Poole provoked a quarrel, and being himself a stout fellow, nor unaccustomed to athletic exercises, began to spar; the next moment he was at the other end of the room full sprawl on the floor; and two minutes afterwards, the quarrel made up by conciliating banqueters, with every bone in his skin seeming still to rattle, he was generously blubbering out that he never bore malice, and shaking hands with Jasper Losely as if he had found ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... sat down, Kirby trying the cushions with his foot until he found some firm enough to allow him to retain his dignity. Cavalry dress-trousers are not built to sprawl on cushions in; a man should sit reasonably upright or ...
— Winds of the World • Talbot Mundy
... herself to the end of time without his dying of it. He was—fond of her, I will admit. But he had a life of his own that she knows nothing about. He was too proud to tell her about it, and she hadn't wit enough to see it for herself. That's the truth, and this emotional sprawl she's indulging in now doesn't change it.—Meanwhile, she is adding to her collection ...
— Mary Wollaston • Henry Kitchell Webster
... with the hostess, the visitor, whether a lady or a gentleman, looks about quietly, without hurry, for a convenient chair to sit down upon, or drop into. To sit gracefully one should not perch stiffly on the edge of a straight chair, nor sprawl at length in an easy one. The perfect position is one that is easy, but dignified. In other days, no lady of dignity ever crossed her knees, held her hands on her hips, or twisted herself sideways, or even leaned back in her chair! To-day ...
— Etiquette • Emily Post
... inclined to sprawl as a town, was transformed by sun, flags and people into a place of great attraction when the Prince arrived. And if there was not any high pomp about the visit, there was certainly prettiness. The pretty girls of Hull had transformed themselves into representatives of all the ...
— Westward with the Prince of Wales • W. Douglas Newton
... girl watched furtively. When, at last, Hodges stirred from his indolent sprawl, knocked the dottle from his pipe, and looked up at her, she shrank visibly. The blood rushed back to her heart in a flood, leaving her pallid, and she was trembling. Even in the feeble light from the guttering ...
— Heart of the Blue Ridge • Waldron Baily
... usual grim-browed resolution, foot in front, horse in rear; but they have a terrible problem at that Kesselsdorf, with its retrenched batteries, and numerous grenadiers fighting under cover. The very ground is sore against them; uphill, and the trampled snow wearing into a slide, so that you sprawl and stagger sadly. Thirty-one big guns, and about 9,000 small, pouring out mere death on you, from that knoll-head. The Prussians stagger; cannot stand it; bend to rightwards, and get out of shot-range; cannot manage ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XV. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... look on, all day and every day; and sing, gamble, dance, carouse half the night every night. They had a most noble good time. You never saw such people. Those banks of beautiful ladies, shining in their barbaric splendors, would see a knight sprawl from his horse in the lists with a lanceshaft the thickness of your ankle clean through him and the blood spouting, and instead of fainting they would clap their hands and crowd each other for a better view; only sometimes one would dive into her handkerchief, and look ostentatiously ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... Ah no! You can't deceive me. Can't I believe my eyes? Look! It's the dead, my comrades, stark on the dreadful plain, All in their dark-blue blouses, staring up at the skies. Comrades of canteen laughter, dumb in the yellow wheat. See how they sprawl and huddle! See how their brows are white! Goaded on to the shambles, there in death and defeat. . . . Father of Pity, hide them! ...
— Rhymes of a Red Cross Man • Robert W. Service
... never finished, for with a sprawl, the "Parson" stumbled over the blade of grass and came down on the other side ...
— The Cheerful Cricket and Others • Jeannette Marks
... it may be said that other countries produce the freckle-backed salmon and the dark broad-shouldered turbot; though trout frequent many a stream besides those of England, and lobsters sprawl on other sands than ours; yet, let it be remembered, that our native country possesses these altogether, while other lands only know them separately; that, above all, whitebait is peculiarly our country's—our city's own! Blessings and ...
— The Fitz-Boodle Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... The DeGraff muddle can wait. It's nice to be able just to sprawl about—sprawl in a comfortable old chair. I like this little room. We are being turned into an Italian villa, you know. I don't quite see how I'll ever live up to it." As he spoke he took out a plebeian tobacco pouch and a nondescript pipe. ...
— The Gorgeous Girl • Nalbro Bartley
... through the place, went on—all the offices of life, the whole bustle of the market, and withal, surprisingly, scarce less that of the nursery and the playground; the whole sprawl in especial of the great gregarious fireside: it was a complete social scene in itself, on which types might figure and passions rage and plots thicken and dramas develop, without reference to any other sphere, or perhaps even to anything ...
— The Finer Grain • Henry James
... the Twins' feet didn't behave well at all. They seemed to want to do everything they could to bother them. They would sprawl way apart; then they would toe in and run into ...
— The Dutch Twins • Lucy Fitch Perkins
... dropped from college for laziness and for gambling. Bismarck failed to get a University degree, because he lacked power to study and because he preferred midnight beer to midnight oil. George Washington, in student days, could never grasp the simplest rules of spelling. The young Lincoln loved to sprawl in the shade with fish-pole or tattered book, when ...
— Bruce • Albert Payson Terhune
... They are entirely open to the street in front, but in the far dim recesses of every one there is a species of carved reredos, over which dragons, lacquered black, or lacquered red, gilded or silvered, sprawl artistically. In front of this screen there is always a red-covered joss table, where red lights burn, and incense-sticks smoulder, all of which, as shall be explained later, are precautions to ...
— Here, There And Everywhere • Lord Frederic Hamilton
... the chapel's silver bell you hear, That summons you to all the pride of prayer: Light quirks of music, broken and uneven, Make the soul dance upon a jig to heaven. On painted ceiling you devoutly stare, Where sprawl the saints of Verrio or Laguerre, On gilded clouds in fair expansion lie, And bring all ...
— Art in England - Notes and Studies • Dutton Cook
... somersault for every extra, while the baby, trying to follow his example, bunched over in a sidewise sprawl and cut his foot on the axe with which his mother had prized up the box-lid. That sobered them, they carried the books indoors. Mrs. Duncan had a top shelf in her closet cleared for them, far above the reach of meddling ...
— Freckles • Gene Stratton-Porter
... petted and nursed like children—a staff of trained attendants waited on them. I'm not sure they didn't have a doctor to take their temperature—at any rate the place was full of thermometers. And they didn't sprawl on the ground like ordinary melons; they were trained against the glass like nectarines, and each melon hung in a net which sustained its weight and left it free on all sides to the ...
— Tales Of Men And Ghosts • Edith Wharton
... 'Will sprawl, now that the heat of day is best, Flat on his belly in the pit's much mire, With elbows wide, fists clenched to prop his chin; And, while he kicks both feet in the cool slush, And feels about his spine small eft-things course, Run in and out ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various
... beat again heavily, for his hands, which flew up, were resting upon one side of a long, slight, fruit-gathering ladder—one of those which sprawl out widely at the foot, and run up very narrow at the top, a form which makes them safe from tilting sidewise, and so balanced that they are easy to carry ...
— The Vast Abyss - The Story of Tom Blount, his Uncles and his Cousin Sam • George Manville Fenn
... smoked his pipe, puffing slowly, while the two poor children, overcome with fatigue, went to sleep with their heads resting on the table. Thus Macquart passed his days in lazy enjoyment. It seemed to him quite natural that he should be kept in idleness like a girl, to sprawl about on the benches of some tavern, or stroll in the cool of the day along the Cours or the Mail. At last he went so far as to relate his amorous escapades in the presence of his son, who listened with glistening ...
— The Fortune of the Rougons • Emile Zola
... small friend, and pretend to bite him, and upset him off his somewhat wobbly legs. But as time passed Spot began to weary of never-ending play. There were moments when Spot wanted to lie still and doze. But as soon as he had settled himself for a nap the puppy was sure to come bouncing up and sprawl all over him. He would seize one of Spot's long ears between his teeth and give it a bit of a nip. Sometimes he would even ...
— The Tale of Old Dog Spot • Arthur Scott Bailey
... was—why, what d'ye expect a king does, anyhow? You don't suppose I worked, do you? Because I didn't. I ate and drank and slept and went in swimmin' with the court officers and did a little fishin' an' fightin'; and on moonlight nights I used to sprawl in the grass out on the edge of Hakatuea with my head in my queen's lap, rubberin' up at the Southern Cross and watchin' the rollers breakin' white over the reef. And everything'd be as still as death ...
— Captain Scraggs - or, The Green-Pea Pirates • Peter B. Kyne
... I'd ruther be— Needn't fence it in fer me!— Jes' the whole sky overhead, And the whole airth underneath— Sorto' so's a man kin breathe Like he ort, and kindo' has Elbow-room to keerlessly Sprawl out len'thways on the grass Where the shadders thick and soft As the kivvers on the bed Mother fixes in the loft Allus, when ...
— Riley Farm-Rhymes • James Whitcomb Riley
... of past and of coming voyages. Under the white awnings long lounge-chairs sprawl here and there,—each with an occupant, smoking in silence, or dozing with head drooping to one side. A young man, awaking as I pass to my cabin, turns upon me a pair of peculiarly luminous black eyes,—creole eyes. Evidently ...
— Two Years in the French West Indies • Lafcadio Hearn
... suit the action to the word; the boat heels over—and the Pirate's crouch becomes a sprawl. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 103, August 13, 1892 • Various
... they tell all that they hear or see. Suddenly they laugh, and suddenly they weep. Always they cry, jangle, and jape; that unneth they be still while they sleep. When they be washed of filth, anon they defile themselves again. When their mother washeth and combeth them, they kick and sprawl, and put with feet and with hands, and withstand with all their might. They desire to drink always, unneth they are out of bed, when they ...
— Mediaeval Lore from Bartholomew Anglicus • Robert Steele
... transition to terra firma also involved a greater compactness of body, so that there should not be too great friction on the surface. An animal like the jellyfish is unthinkable on land, and the elongated bodies of some land animals like centipedes and snakes are specially adapted so that they do not "sprawl." They are ...
— The Outline of Science, Vol. 1 (of 4) - A Plain Story Simply Told • J. Arthur Thomson
... of course, of great length. Here was clustered the rocking-chairs, and sofas, and work-tables, and very often the cradle of the family. Here stood Mrs. Heathcote's sewing-machine, and here the master would sprawl at his length, while his wife, or his wife's sister, read to him. It was here, in fact, that they lived, having a parlor simply for their meals. Behind the main edifice there stood, each apart, various buildings, forming an irregular quadrangle. The kitchen came first, with a small adjacent chamber ...
— Harry Heathcote of Gangoil • Anthony Trollope
... his position a little uneasily. His attitude became less of a sprawl. His eyes were fixed ...
— The Pawns Count • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... therefore, that I show them." At length God gives the owl a set of heirs, And while at early eve abroad he fares, In quest of birds and mice for food, Our eagle haply spies the brood, As on some craggy rock they sprawl, Or nestle in some ruined wall, (But which it matters not at all,) And thinks them ugly little frights, Grim, sad, with voice like shrieking sprites. "These chicks," says he, "with looks almost infernal, Can't be the darlings ...
— A Hundred Fables of La Fontaine • Jean de La Fontaine
... have tied an emblematic bundle of grass on his back; a garland of nettles and thistles is round his neck: in this manner; led with ropes; goaded on with curses and menaces, must he, with his old limbs, sprawl forward; the pitiablest, most ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... I said, it, the huddle of the green body and the fantastic sprawl of the limbs in the moonlight told me clearly enough that it was all over with him. My bullet had passed through his heart, and it was only his own iron will which had held him so long in the saddle. He had lived hard, this Montluc, and I will do him ...
— The Exploits Of Brigadier Gerard • Arthur Conan Doyle
... of the summer of 1921 made it the first impulse of travelers to plunge straight into the cool, kindly ocean, where they could wade and bathe in the surf, sprawl for hours in the sand, or indulge in races and various ...
— See America First • Orville O. Hiestand
... how I sprawl between my native land and this New France, as it was termed until the other month. A man's heart can be in many places, a woman's only in one, and my affections, I confess, have mostly been a divided allegiance. They have gone out ...
— The Black Colonel • James Milne
... astonishing epithets, and inspired by a certain grim Titanic force. His sentences are often clumsily built. He himself said of them: "Perhaps not more than nine-tenths stand straight on their legs; the remainder are in quite angular attitudes; a few even sprawl out helplessly on all sides, quite broken-backed and dismembered." There is no modern writer who possesses so large a profusion of figurative language. His works are also full of the pithiest and most memorable sayings, such as ...
— A Brief History of the English Language and Literature, Vol. 2 (of 2) • John Miller Dow Meiklejohn
... bullies, blow the man down! Way-ay, blow the man down. O blow the man down in Liverpool town! Give me some time to blow the man down. 'Twas aboard a Black-Bailer I first served my time, And in that Black-Bailer I wasted my prime. 'Tis larboard and starboard on deck you will sprawl, For blowers and strikers command the Black Ball. So, it's blow the ...
— Blow The Man Down - A Romance Of The Coast - 1916 • Holman Day
... short in the ray of candlelight that was fitfully and feebly capering on the windy blackness outside the open workshop of Crickledon, the carpenter, fronting the sea-beach. Mr. Tinnnan's house was inquired for. Crickledon left off planing; at half-sprawl over the board, he bawled out, "Turn to the right; right ahead; can't mistake it." He nodded to one of the cronies intent on watching his labours: "Not unless they mean to be bait for whiting-pout. Who's that for Tinman, I wonder?" The speculations of Crickledon's ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... ancient oaks for pleasure, Roasting clams as in the old days When the Tamals lived upon it. Gone are now the limpid shallows; Gone the oysters and the mussels, And no more are grassy meadows Dappled with the spreading oak trees; For great factories, grim and sordid, Sprawl in squalid blocks around it, And the smoke of forge and furnace Rise ...
— The Legends of San Francisco • George W. Caldwell
... raked away, and here and there she could see a berry reddening in the morning sun. In addition, some of her most important vegetables, and her prettiest flower border, had been cleaned and nicely dressed. A long row of Dan O'Rourk peas, that had commenced to sprawl on the ground, was now hedged in by brush; and, better still, thirty cedar poles stood tall and straight among her Lima beans, whose long slender shoots had been vainly feeling round for a support ...
— What Can She Do? • Edward Payson Roe
... Not long after he had learned to sprawl, Jerry had learned that. One took his chances. As long as Mister Haggin, or Derby, or Bob, was about, the niggers took their chasing. But there were times when the white lords were not about. Then it was "'Ware niggers!" One must ...
— Jerry of the Islands • Jack London
... his unassuming and natural demeanour made a very favourable impression. But a year or two after his return, he was joined by a Labour representative who displayed the characteristics of altogether a different sort. For one thing, he was a vulgarly overdressed man, and he used to sprawl about the benches with outstretched arms, making his cry of condescending patronage heard in answer to any utterance of which he might approve from such inconsiderable persons as Gladstone or Harcourt or Forster. His "Hear, hear, hear," was the very essence of ...
— Recollections • David Christie Murray
... but she was so near the back of the wagon that her wheel to the right did not carry her beyond the trunk, itself bounding to the right. The unexpected sheer did not unhorse her rider, but the mare went down in a helpless sprawl over the great obstacle in her path, and the girlish figure in the ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 6, July 1905 • Various
... he is greedier than I," retorted Papillon. "He will eat till he won't be able to run about with us after dinner; and then he will sprawl upon mother's satin train by the fire, with Ganymede and Phosphor, and she will tell everybody how good and gentle he is, and how much better bred than his sister. And now, if people are ever going to leave off eating, we may as well begin our games before it is ...
— London Pride - Or When the World Was Younger • M. E. Braddon
... well kept and trimmed as I expected to find them. Some, it is true, are cut very carefully; these are generally hedges to ornamental grounds; but many of those which separate the fields straggle and sprawl, and have some high bushes and some low ones, and, in short, are no more like a hedge than many rows of bushes that we have at home. But such as they are, they are the only dividing lines of the fields, and it is certainly a more picturesque mode of division than our stone or worm fences. Outside ...
— Sunny Memories Of Foreign Lands, Volume 1 (of 2) • Harriet Elizabeth (Beecher) Stowe
... several efforts, but was too weak to succeed, and could only sprawl and squirm in ...
— The Jacket (The Star-Rover) • Jack London
... may lie out of its due place. Books in the living room I rearrange, Then in the dining room my pewter mugs, And put her little brown nasturtium bowl Where she can see it when she telephones. Up in my den the papers are a-sprawl And litter up my desk: these too I sort Thinking, to-morrow I will rise betimes And do my work neglected.... Tiptoe then I pass into the Shrine. She is asleep, Dark hair across the moon-blanched pillow slip. Her eyes are sealed with peace, but as ...
— Songs for a Little House • Christopher Morley
... the words when the giant carcass of Philip tottered and fell, dragging Kate along with it, who never for a moment lost or loosened her hold. Her opponent now began to sprawl and kick out his feet from a sense of suffocation, and in attempting to call for assistance, nothing but low, deep gurgling noises could issue from his lips, now livid with the pressure on his throat and covered with foam. His face, too, at all times dark and savage, ...
— The Emigrants Of Ahadarra - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... of her sailor son As clutched in the arms of war, But mother should listen, as I have done, To this same little, innocent sailor son Sprawl in ...
— Biltmore Oswald - The Diary of a Hapless Recruit • J. Thorne Smith, Jr.
... him by the peculiar slant of his slouch hat, the rosy glow of his face, and the way in which his trousers clung to the curves of his well-developed legs, and ended in a sprawl that half covered his shoes. I recognized, too, a carpet-bag, a ninety-nine-cent affair, an "occasion," with galvanized iron clasps and paper-leather sides,—the kind opened ...
— A Gentleman Vagabond and Some Others • F. Hopkinson Smith
... fleetest no more than just touched the flying cutter, though a hundred soggy mittens grasped for it, then reeled and whirled till sometimes the wearers of those daring mittens plunged flat in the snow and lay a-sprawl, reflecting. For this was the holiday time, and all the boys and girls in town were out, most ...
— The Magnificent Ambersons • Booth Tarkington
... he put his luggage into the local train, and set out across the Downs for Wansdon, trying to walk off his aching irresolution. So long as he went full bat, he could enjoy the beauty of those green slopes, stopping now and again to sprawl on the grass, admire the perfection of a wild rose or listen to a lark's song. But the war of motives within him was but postponed—the longing for Fleur, and the hatred of deception. He came to the old chalk-pit above Wansdon with his mind no more ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... having missed the excitement at Bogova, he fairly writhed with envy of Stubbs and Wilson. As he listened he hitched back and forth in his chair, leaned over the table until he threatened to sprawl among the glasses, and groaned jealously at every crisis. Wilson told his story as simply as possible from its beginning; the scenes at the house, his finding the map, his adventures in Bogova, the long trip ...
— The Web of the Golden Spider • Frederick Orin Bartlett
... Still—I could see Sue on the stage. She was not at all like me. I was middling small, with a square jaw, snub nose and sandy hair. Sue was tall and easy moving, with an abundance of soft brown hair worn low over large and irregular features. She had fascinating eyes. She could sprawl on a rug or a sofa as lazy and indolent as you please—all but her eyes, they were always doing something or other, letting this out or keeping that back, practicing ...
— The Harbor • Ernest Poole
... Raphael's grand gods and goddesses, his exquisite Eros and radiant Psyche of the Farnesina, are indeed succeeded but too soon by the Olympus of Giulio Romano, an Olympus of harlots and acrobats, who smirk and mouth and wriggle and sprawl ignobly on the walls and ceilings of the dismantled palace which crumbles away among the stunted willows, the stagnant pools, and rank grass of the marshes of Mantua. But this is no more the fault of antiquity than ...
— The Contemporary Review, Volume 36, September 1879 • Various
... "one" for your numerous nobs. Many have menaced you, some had a shy at you; SALISBURY stout, and bespectacled CROSS, Each in his season has joined in the cry at you, Little, 'twould seem, to your damage or loss. Still you eight-headed and lanky-limbed monster, you Sprawl and monopolise, spread and devour. Many assail you, but hitherto, none stir you. Say, has the hero arrived, and the hour? No Infant Hercules, surely, can tackle you, Ancient abortion, with hope of success. It needeth a true full-grown hero to shackle you, Jupiter's son, and Alcmene's, ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99., October 11, 1890 • Various
... fears. "I am not afraid of death, Peter. I have walked before God all my life save in one or two points, which, I believe, in His mercy, He has forgiven me; but I cannot endure the idea of being found here some day in some unconsidered posture, fallen out of a chair, or a-sprawl on the floor. I wish to die with dignity, Peter, as I ...
— Birthright - A Novel • T.S. Stribling
... democratic than any of the monarchies of today. Practically anybody who chose could walk into the palace and see the king playing with his children, or paring his nails. The people possessed the monarch, as the people possess Primrose Hill; that is, they cannot move it, but they can sprawl all over it. The old French monarchy was founded on the excellent principle that a cat may look at a king. But nowadays a cat may not look at a king; unless it is a very tame cat. Even where the press is free for criticism it is only used for adulation. The substantial ...
— What's Wrong With The World • G.K. Chesterton
... could have kept him by his side and fashioned his life. But that boy was gone; long years ago he had left him, and none had come after him to stand in his place. His little, worn books, which he used to sprawl upon the floor and read, were treasured there on their sacred shelf behind the bookcase glass. The light had failed out of the eyes which had found wonders in them, more than thirty ...
— The Bondboy • George W. (George Washington) Ogden
... ['Will sprawl, now that the heat of day is best, Flat on his belly in the pit's much mire, With elbows wide, fists clenched to prop his chin. And, while he kicks both feet in the cool slush, And feels about his spine small eft-things course, Run in and out each arm, and make him laugh: ...
— Robert Browning: How To Know Him • William Lyon Phelps
... "That will do. Don't sprawl in that way. Sit up. Try and remember where you are. Look at your cousin," and the mother indicated Ethel. Peg sat up demurely and looked at Ethel. She chuckled to herself as she turned back ...
— Peg O' My Heart • J. Hartley Manners
... a knoll, as do most gulch cabins, in order that occasional freshets might pass below, and the knoll looked as though it had been clipped with a pair of scissors. Not a crooked little juniper bush was allowed to intrude its plebeian sprawl among the dignified pines and the gracefully infrequent bushes. In front of the cabin itself was a "rockery" of pink quartz, on which were piled elk antlers. The building was L-shaped, of two low ...
— The Claim Jumpers • Stewart Edward White
... during the process, they clear away the rocks below the trap, piling them in it over its floor, until it finally sinks and remains stationary on the cleared spot of sandy bed. Their task being ended, the three trap setters come to shore, and sprawl on the hot sands to warm their dripping skins, while the sun dries and ...
— The Bontoc Igorot • Albert Ernest Jenks
... motionless horse. But if perchance he had to dismount, then, after a while, from the door of that hovel or of that pulperia, with a ferocious scuffle and stifled imprecations, a cargador would fly out head first and hands abroad, to sprawl under the forelegs of the silver-grey mare, who only pricked forward her sharp little ears. She was used to that work; and the man, picking himself up, would walk away hastily from Nostromo's revolver, reeling a little along the street and snarling ...
— Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard • Joseph Conrad
... book again—forget All else,—long years, lost hopes, regret; Sighs for the joys we ne'er attain, Prayers we have lifted all in vain; Tears for the faces seen no more, Once as the roses at the door! Take the enchanted book—And lo, On grassy swards of long ago, Sprawl out again, beneath the shade The breezy old-home orchard made, The veriest barefoot boy indeed— And I will listen as ...
— Songs of Friendship • James Whitcomb Riley
... of ideas; most of whatever artist there is in me has been given to turbine machines and boat building and the problem of flying, and do what I will I fail to see how I can be other than a lax, undisciplined story-teller. I must sprawl and flounder, comment and theorise, if I am to get the thing out I have in mind. And it isn't a constructed tale I have to tell, but unmanageable realities. My love-story—and if only I can keep up the spirit of truth-telling all through as strongly ...
— Tono Bungay • H. G. Wells
... spread is already being slowed. Water shortages loom, but have not yet seriously materialized. Floods threaten, but only at certain definable spots. Human beings boom outward from the Washington metropolis and the other centers of population in search of a fuller life, and the consumptive sprawl and sameness of the communities built to receive them often deny it to them. But in modern terms there are not really enormous numbers of them yet, and for their pleasure and fulfillment a great deal of varied and handsome and historic landscape has been more or less ...
— The Nation's River - The Department of the Interior Official Report on the Potomac • United States Department of the Interior
... the ground, however, touching mother earth again with a jerk that nearly dislocated my ankles, besides making me fall sideways all a-sprawl, than the baboon, giving vent to a vicious snarl, caught hold of my left leg with both his paws, just as a dog might seize a bone, and bit me ...
— Young Tom Bowling - The Boys of the British Navy • J.C. Hutcheson
... sight, by the side of Mentone, San Remo is sadly prosaic. The valleys seem to sprawl, and the universal olives are monotonously grey upon their thick clay soil. Yet the wealth of flowers in the fat earth is wonderful. One might fancy oneself in a weedy farm flower-bed invaded by stray oats and beans and cabbages and garlic from the kitchen-garden. The country does not suggest ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece • John Addington Symonds
... don't cut me soon, farmer, I shall sprawl on the ground," said the Rye, and she bowed her heavy ear quite ...
— The Junior Classics Volume 8 - Animal and Nature Stories • Selected and arranged by William Patten
... air Went darting gaily here and there; Now crossed a mirror's face, and next Shot up amidst the sprawl'd, perplex'd Olympus overhead. At last, Jerk'd sidelong by a random cast, The striker miss'd it, and it fell Full on the book DICK ...
— Collected Poems - In Two Volumes, Vol. II • Austin Dobson
... injury just then to have to take care of him. All the time that her mother was sorting, counting, and arranging where things should go, she sat in the window sullen and unhappy, looking out at the pansy-bed. Peter grew tired of a companion who did nothing to amuse him, and began to sprawl ...
— Nine Little Goslings • Susan Coolidge
... was resting on a shoulder, legs uncouthly a-sprawl, quite without movement of any perceptible sort; his face more than half-turned to the floor, and masked ...
— The Lone Wolf - A Melodrama • Louis Joseph Vance
... it most," he murmured. He lay down again in his lounging sprawl, with his grave eyes intently ...
— The Jimmyjohn Boss and Other Stories • Owen Wister
... a young girl, her mother's drawing-room. Her mother had the art of setting stages. The room was not large,—a New York brownstone front in the upper Sixties even though altered as to entrance, and allowed to sprawl backward over yards not originally intended for its use, is not a palace,—but it was a room and not a corridor; you had the comfortable sense of four walls about you when its one small door was once shut. It was filled, perhaps a little too much filled, with objects which ...
— The Happiest Time of Their Lives • Alice Duer Miller
... Brassbound's men, overcome by the midday heat, sprawl supine on the floor, with their reefer coats under their heads, their knees uplifted, and their calves laid comfortably on the divan. Those who wear shirts have them open at the throat for greater coolness. Some have jerseys. All wear boots and ...
— Captain Brassbound's Conversion • George Bernard Shaw
... shapely brig with a lively curiosity, as if here was something really interesting. Presently a boat splashed into the water and was tied alongside the vessel while a dozen of the crew tumbled in to sprawl upon the thwarts and shove the oars into the thole-pins. An erect, graceful man in a red coat and a great beaver hat roared a command from the stern-sheets and the pinnace pulled in the direction of ...
— Blackbeard: Buccaneer • Ralph D. Paine
... the expense of a fellow-creature who has loyally held out his hand to her, she is casting herself into a mire from which it will be impossible, with the best will in the world, ever to rescue her. I dwell so many miles above the puddles in which these filthy little vermin sprawl and crawl and bawl their cheap obscenities, that I cannot possibly be spattered by the witticisms of a Verdurin!" he cried, tossing up his head and arrogantly straightening his body. "God knows that I have honestly attempted to pull Odette out of ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust
... would be a baby, and then their cup of domestic happiness would be overflowing. Babcock's long ungratified yearning for the things of the spirit were fully met by these cosey evenings, which he would have been glad to continue to the crack of doom. To smoke and sprawl and read a little, and exchange chit-chat, was poetry enough for him. So contented was he that his joy was apt to find an outlet in ditties and whistling—he possessed a slightly tuneful, rollicking knack at both—a proceeding which ...
— Unleavened Bread • Robert Grant |
