"Tripping" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... excellent voyageurs in the canoe. There is a native gaiety, and vivacity of character, which impel them forward, and particularly so, under the individual and encouraging appellation of 'bon homme.' When tripping, they are commonly all life, using the whip, or more commonly a thick stick, barbarously upon their dogs, vociferating as they go "Sacres Crapeaux," "Sacree Marne," "Saintes Diables," and uttering expressions of the most appalling blasphemy. In the rivers, their canoe songs, ...
— The Substance of a Journal During a Residence at the Red River Colony, British North America • John West
... brown sparrow came tripping Across the green grass at my feet; A kingfisher poised, and was peering Where ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... of those terrors which she had hitherto surmounted; she cast her mantle hastily around her head, as if to shroud her sight from some blighting vision, and tripping back to the cabinet, with more speed and a less firm step than when she left it, she directed Gillian to lend her assistance in conveying Eveline to the next room; and having done so, carefully secured the door of communication, ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott
... treatment, for he does not know that he is a bore. It is only the Occasional Bore, a sensitive, well-meaning fellow who would not harm anybody, whose head lies sleepless on a pillow hot with his blushes while he goes over and over so apt and tripping a dialogue that it would withhold Gabriel from blowing his trumpet. So it seems to him in his bed; but alas, these dialogues are never of any practical use. They comfort, but they do not cure. For no person ever talks to us as we talk to ourselves. ...
— The Perfect Gentleman • Ralph Bergengren
... in her dressing-gown, and tripping across the floor with the prettiest little bare feet in the world, she took a chair in the ...
— Hills of the Shatemuc • Susan Warner
... East, I've Been to the West, I've Been to the Jay-Bird's Altar; and Skip-to-My-Lou; and The Juniper Tree; and Go In and Out the Window; and The Jolly Old Miller; and Captain Jinks; and lots more of them. Boyds and Burnses and Smythes tripping the light fantastic with them, and not half a dozen dresses better than alpacas in the crowd, and the men many of them in drilling trousers—and half of them with hayseed in their hair from the load on which they rode ...
— Vandemark's Folly • Herbert Quick
... to look right over their heads and their newspapers, for tripping down the aisle all by herself at last, came the girl of his fruitless choice. His eyes, deep with dreams, met hers. She smiled upon him, radiantly, blushed a little, and hurried on ...
— The Blood of the Conquerors • Harvey Fergusson
... figure half-naked he views Played about by the frolicsome breeze, Her light-tripping totties, her ten little tooes, All bare and besprinkled wi' Fall's chilly dews, While her great gallied eyes, through her hair hanging loose, Sheened as stars through a tardle ...
— Wessex Poems and Other Verses • Thomas Hardy
... Somerset had expected to find his friends living in an old house with remnants of their own antique furniture, and he hardly knew whether he ought to meet them with a smile or a gaze of condolence. His doubt was terminated, however, by the cheerful and tripping entry of Miss De Stancy, who had returned from her drive to Markton; and in a few more moments Sir William came in from ...
— A Laodicean • Thomas Hardy
... parade and play the man this day," cried Colonel Dearman, as he hurried out to meet the General, scoring his right boot with his left spur and tripping over his ...
— 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
... the gallery!... He was there, tripping down the stepped pathway between the drums. The demonstrations grew general. The orchestra applauded after its own fashion. He reached the conductor, smiled at the conductor and bowed very admirably. He seemed to be absolutely at his ease. Then there was a delay. The ...
— The Lion's Share • E. Arnold Bennett
... an Andante and Scherzo of Beethoven. How the girl threw herself into it, bringing out the wailing love-song of the Andante, the dainty tripping mirth of the Scherzo, in a way which set every nerve in Langham vibrating! Yet the art of it was wholly unconscious. The music was the mere natural voice of her inmost self. A comparison full of excitement was going on in ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... it may happen to any part of the ankle. It is seen more often in the hind than in the fore legs. Interfering causes a bruise of the skin and deeper tissues, generally accompanied with an abrasion of the surface. It may cause lameness, dangerous tripping, and thickening of the injured ...
— Special Report on Diseases of the Horse • United States Department of Agriculture
... and lofty leap Through honey-dew and fragrance: You'll never mount the airy steep With all your tripping vagrance. ...
— Faust • Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
... investigations, beginning to think that the world is here upside down. Here is a man who comes tripping along; but no, it cannot be a man, in spite of the small and carefully curled mustache. The dressing of the hair, the powder and paint on the face, the blackened eyebrows, the gold earrings, the bouquet of flowers ...
— The Sexual Question - A Scientific, psychological, hygienic and sociological study • August Forel
... Will me confront, although embodied close In solid phalanx; doubt it not; my spear Shall chase and scatter them, if Jove, in truth, High-thundering mate of Juno, bid me on. So saying he roused the courage of them all 190 Foremost of whom advanced, of Priam's race Deiphobus, ambitious of renown. Tripping he came with shorten'd steps,[5] his feet Sheltering behind his buckler; but at him Aiming, Meriones his splendid lance 195 Dismiss'd, nor err'd; his bull-hide targe he struck But ineffectual; where the hollow wood ...
— The Iliad of Homer - Translated into English Blank Verse • Homer
... crossing the hall on the way to the cloak-room, when who should come tripping downstairs but Mary herself, trim and neat as ever, but casting a glance the reverse of approving at the strange young woman who had come to ...
— Sisters Three • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... adversary, by having portraits of him in different parts of the house. At the bottom of the grand staircase stood the colossal statue of the emperor, by Canova. It was of marble, in the antique style, with one arm partly extended, holding a figure of victory. Over this arm the ladies, in tripping upstairs to the ball, had thrown their shawls. It was a singular office for the statue of Napoleon to perform in the mansion of ...
— The Crayon Papers • Washington Irving
... to induce the sphere to abide in the hollow prepared for it. Navailles had got a large Pulcinello doll that squeaked, and was pretending to treat it as an oracle, and to interpret its mechanical utterances as profound comments on his companions and prophecies as to their fortunes. Albret was tripping over a skipping-rope; Gironne puffed at a spinning windmill; Choisy played on a bagpipes, and Montaubert on a flute. In the background Monsieur Peyrolles watched all this mirthfulness with indifference and ...
— The Duke's Motto - A Melodrama • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... utmost stretch of your courtesy to-night. I am not troubled about those from whom I come. You remember the man whose wife sent him to a neighbor with a pitcher of milk, and who, tripping on the top step, fell, with such casual interruptions as the landing afforded, into the basement; and while picking himself up had the pleasure of hearing his wife call out: "John, did you break the pitcher?" "No, I didn't," said John, "but I be ...
— America First - Patriotic Readings • Various
... tripping tongue of thine. I have no wish to be hurt, but I would gladly bear much ...
— Little Men - Life at Plumfield With Jo's Boys • Louisa May Alcott
... on a sunny morning, while the lark was singing sweet, Came, beyond the ancient farmhouse, sounds of lightly-tripping feet. 'Twas a lowly cottage maiden, going,—why, let young hearts tell,— With her homely pitcher laden, ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... A bustling landlord came up, and offering us some glasses of bad milk, said that every year a fair is held in the Bush for three weeks, or rather, on three successive Sundays, for during the week days the booths are closed. The landlady also came tripping towards us, and invited us, in a very friendly manner, to spend the next Sunday with them. She assured us that we should "amuse ourselves charmingly;" that we elder members of the company should find ...
— A Woman's Journey Round the World • Ida Pfeiffer
... I must have her in the sleigh with me! Now, Jane, dear," continued the young lady, tripping into the drawing-room followed by her brother and Harry, "put on your hat at once, that's a good girl; we wouldn't miss ...
— Elinor Wyllys - Vol. I • Susan Fenimore Cooper
... after her again, running as he had not run in years, in savage, determined pursuit, tearing through brier and scrub, tripping, falling, rising, never losing sight of the blue-clad figure before him until at last she tripped and fell, and he stood panting ...
— The Best American Humorous Short Stories • Various
... all over the world and even in Pegana, where dwell the gods, it was dark when the child Inzana, the Dawn, first found her golden ball. Then running down the stairway of the gods with tripping feet, chalcedony, onyx, chalcedony, onyx, step by step, she cast her golden ball across the sky. The golden ball went bounding up the sky, and the Dawnchild with her flaring hair stood laughing upon the stairway of the gods, and it was day. So gleaming fields below saw the first of ...
— Time and the Gods • Lord Dunsany [Edward J. M. D. Plunkett]
... don't come, come for me, James. Ah, the waltz is my mastering passion! The trip-tripping airs are as sweet As love to my turning feet, While I clasp the fair doll of fashion, My fiance. But come for ...
— Along the Shore • Rose Hawthorne Lathrop
... Malachi Mulligan, two dactyls. But it has a Hellenic ring, hasn't it? Tripping and sunny like the buck himself. We must go to Athens. Will you come if I can get the aunt to fork ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... little prayer at the altar of the calm, white Virgin. There had been a wondrous burst of music from the great organ as she knelt there, an over-powering perfume of many flowers, the glittering dazzle of many lights, and the dainty frou-frou of silken skirts of wedding guests filing and tripping. So Miss Sophie stayed to the wedding, for what feminine heart, be it ever so old and seared, does not delight in one? And why shouldn't a poor little Creole ...
— Violets and Other Tales • Alice Ruth Moore
... [her letter ran, tripping and stumbling in its course], "I have got to tell you about something that has just happened here, and you needent laugh at the speling, or the way I tell it, but just pay attention to the thing itself, if you please. ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... than the quaint old dock. It was crowded with promenaders, who, doubtless, were taking a bite of the sea-air. Through the dusk the tripping figures of gentlemen in white flannels and jaunty caps brushed the provincial Honfleur swells. Some gentle English voices told us some of the villa residents had come down to the pier, moved by the beauty of ...
— In and Out of Three Normady Inns • Anna Bowman Dodd
... arrested by some virile language thrown off from the part affected. Then they began to carry me towards the gate of the park, despite the fact that the stretcher had been meant to hold someone about six inches shorter than I. Almost immediately the rear man, tripping on a root, fell on top of me, and the front man, being brought to a sudden stop, sat on my feet. When we had sorted ourselves out, and I had stopped talking, more from lack of breath than of matter, we ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. CL, April 26, 1916 • Various
... rude chanting in the little church had a magical charm for him; and Mistress Alison would hear the boy, in his room overhead, singing softly to himself for very gladness of heart, like a little bird of the dawn, or tapping out some tripping beat of time; when she would wonder and speak to God of what was in ...
— Paul the Minstrel and Other Stories - Reprinted from The Hill of Trouble and The Isles of Sunset • Arthur Christopher Benson
... suffered? Do you think because you see me tripping through some foolish, insipid role that I am capable of nothing better? Give me a chance and see what I ...
— Successful Recitations • Various
... lies that way now; a pittifull Complaint of the Ladies when they were banish'd the Towne[234] with their husbands to their Countrey houses, compeld to change the deere delight of Maske and Revells here for Wassail and windie bagpipes; instead of Silken Fairies tripping in the Banquetting Roome, to see the Clownes sell fish in the hall and ride the wild mare, and such Olimpicks, till the ploughman breake his Crupper, at which the Villagers and plumporidge men boile over while the Dairy maid ...
— A Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. II • Various
... the pavilion the mayor fell into a little tripping trot, waved his hands, and, taking a run, slid along the ice in his huge golosh boots up to the ...
— The Horse-Stealers and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... mother was taken sick, he left school and became her nurse. It was hard for him to lay down his books, for he loved them, but it was pleasant to wait upon her. The neighbors were kind. Azalia Adams often came tripping in with something nice,—a tumbler of jelly, or a plate of toast, which her mother had prepared; and she had such cheerful words, and spoke so pleasantly, and moved round the room so softly, putting everything in order, that the room was ...
— Winning His Way • Charles Carleton Coffin
... show of living sociably with him, on the principle that the more friendly you are with a man the more easily you may catch him tripping; and also for the reason that he wanted to have somebody who would listen to his stories of manifestations, apparitions, ghosts, and all the rest of the imbecile spook-lore. He had it all at his fingers' ends; and he spun those ghostly yarns in a persistent, colourless voice, giving them ...
— Tales Of Hearsay • Joseph Conrad
... weep. She ached from the impossibility of weeping. She stumbled away from her desk, tripping in her long robes, and stretched herself out at full length on the floor, like a girl in the first embrace of sorrow. But hearing Ito's footsteps, she rose ashamed, and took an attitude befitting ...
— A Touch Of Sun And Other Stories • Mary Hallock Foote
... circle. But at present she is at a sad disadvantage. I noticed her a few minutes ago at the top of the iron staircase, and said to myself that she would have just time enough to come down, for there was an isthmus of sand some twenty feet wide as yet to be obliterated by the crawling tide. A quickly-tripping foot would have accomplished it, but the fair-fat-and-forty lady occupied one whole minute in coming down. Now that she has reached the bottom step there is a wide wash of sea between her and the mainland, and she raises her hands in horror. How is she to get over? ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, August, 1878 • Various
... you had better see, perhaps, what there is to make up as good a meal as possible for Mr. Compton," said her mother, sitting down opposite to the stranger, whose long limbs were stretched over half the floor, with the intention of tripping up Elinor, it seemed; but she glided past him and went on her way—not offended, oh, not at all—waving her hand to him as she avoided the very choice ...
— The Marriage of Elinor • Margaret Oliphant
... city, and ten in the Piraeus: he put, also, a garrison into the Acropolis, and made Callibius, a Spartan, the governor of it; who afterwards taking up his staff to strike Autolycus, the athlete, about whom Xenophon wrote his "Banquet," on his tripping up his heels and throwing him to the ground, Lysander was not vexed at it, but chid Callibius, telling him he did not know how to govern freemen. The thirty rulers, however, to gain Callibius's favor, a ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... A quaint old house it was, with many crooks, corners, and gables, and small lattice diamond-paned windows, through one of which gleamed the ruddy glow of a fire. Ah! the air was crisp, the sun well-nigh gone, the evening creeping on. Inna sighed, and, tripping through the little green gate, mounted the three white steps, and, by dint of straining, reached up, and knocked with the knocker almost as loudly as a timid mouse. But it brought an answer, in the shape of a middle-aged woman, in a ...
— The Heiress of Wyvern Court • Emilie Searchfield
... and belief, to that ridiculous, high-souled Montmorency Minks, who, while his master worked in overalls, took the air himself on Clapham Common, or pored with a wet towel round his brow beneath the oleograph of Napoleon in the attempt to squeeze his exuberant emotion into tripping verse. For Minks admired intensely from a distance. He attended to the correspondence in the flat, and made occasional visits down to Essex, but otherwise enjoyed a kind of extra holiday of his own. For Minks ...
— A Prisoner in Fairyland • Algernon Blackwood
... years old, a student by fits, and a young man given to be moody. He had powers of gaiety far eclipsing Algernon's, but he was not the same easy tripping sinner and flippant soul. He was in that yeasty condition of his years when action and reflection alternately usurp the mind; remorse succeeded dissipation, and indulgences offered the soporific to remorse. The friends of the two imagined that Algernon was, or would become, his evil genius. In ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... word and also in the compound backgammon. In a gammon of bacon we have the Picard form of Fr. jambon, a ham, an augmentative of jambe, leg. Cotgrave has jambon, "a gammon." Gambit is related, from Ital. gambetto, "a tripping up of one's heels" (Torriano). A game leg is in dialect a gammy leg. This is Old Fr. gambi, "bent, crooked, bowed" (Cotgrave), which is still used in some French dialects in the sense of lame. It comes from the same Celtic root ...
— The Romance of Words (4th ed.) • Ernest Weekley
... us again to ourselves and a bottle of wine, ere he was back harping on my proposal. When and where was I to meet my friend Mr. Thomson; was I sure of Mr. T.'s discretion; supposing we could catch the old fox tripping, would I consent to such and such a term of an agreement—these and the like questions he kept asking at long intervals, while he thoughtfully rolled his wine upon his tongue. When I had answered ...
— Kidnapped • Robert Louis Stevenson
... a strange little creature, tripping along so daintily, so ethereally that the cub looked at it more in astonishment than with savage design. Onward it came across the moonlit strip of grassy plain and the soft light falling upon it revealed a plump body clothed in a coat of black fur with white stripes while above, like ...
— The Black Phantom • Leo Edward Miller
... parts, so the tongue of talkative persons, ever suffering from inflammation and a throbbing pulse, attracts and draws to it secret and hidden things. And so the tongue ought to be fenced in, and have reason ever before it, as a bulwark, to prevent its tripping: that we may not seem to be more silly than geese, of whom it is said that, when they fly from Cilicia over Mt. Taurus which swarms with eagles, they carry in their mouths a large stone, which they employ as a gag or bridle for their scream, and so ...
— Plutarch's Morals • Plutarch
... monosyllable in his presence. Harvey's face would twitch, and his fingers clench of themselves as he touched his cap. And with my Aunt Caroline he was the same. He vouchsafed but a curt reply to all her questions, nor did her raptures over the stud soften him in the least. She would come tripping into the stable yard, daintily holding up her skirts, and crying, "Oh, Harvey, I have heard so much of Tanglefoot. I must see him before I go." Tanglefoot is led out begrudgingly enough, and Aunt Caroline goes ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... passed, now was the time to act. Jimmie raced to the top of the hill, and found it empty. He plunged down it, vaulted a stone wall, forced his way through a tangle of saplings, and held his breath to listen. Just beyond him, over a jumble of rocks, a hidden stream was tripping and tumbling. Joyfully it laughed and gurgled. Jimmie turned hot. It sounded as though from the darkness the spy mocked him. Jimmie shook his fist at the enshrouding darkness. Above the tumult of the coming storm and the tossing ...
— The Boy Scout and Other Stories for Boys • Richard Harding Davis
... a fair maiden so rich in attire, Second but to an angel her mien did appear; Quick were her footsteps in tripping the sand, And flowers resplendent were borne in ...
— The Poetry of Wales • John Jenkins
... are yon humble broom bowers, Where the blue-bell and gowan lurk lowly unseen; For there, lightly tripping amang the wild flowers, A listening the linnet, aft wanders ...
— Language of Flowers • Kate Greenaway
... humour, which he pretended not to see, and which only the more exasperated his troubled spirit. He took down a volume of Dante, and pretended to be deeply interested in the Purgatorio, though he knew not a word he was reading, as Marionetta was well aware; who, tripping across the room, peeped into his book, and said to him, 'I see you are in the middle of Purgatory.'—'I am in the middle of hell,' said Scythrop furiously. 'Are you?' said she; 'then come across the room, and I will sing you the ...
— Nightmare Abbey • Thomas Love Peacock
... pert, tart, tripping wight, And still his precious self his dear delight; Who loves his own smart shadow in the streets, Better than e'er the fairest she he meets; Much specious lore, but little understood, (Veneering oft outshines the solid wood), His solid sense, by ...
— Poems And Songs Of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... of young flesh. Peals of laughter. A breathless pianola. The tripping of dancing-feet. Voices husked with drink and voices soft with love. The shrill accents of vulgarity. Hustling waiters. Shop-girls. Bourgeois couples. Tired families of four and upward. Sleeping children. A boy selling candy. ...
— The House of the Vampire • George Sylvester Viereck
... hour before the players were ready to begin. The rules of the game were few and simple. The play was to be one hour each way, with a quarter of an hour rest between. There was to be no tripping, no hitting on the shins when the ball was out of the scrimmage, and all disputes were to be settled by the umpire, who on this occasion was the master of ...
— Glengarry Schooldays • Ralph Connor
... Quick music with a jingle he played, that to the puritanic-bred girl suggested nothing but a heart bubbling over with gladness, but he meant it should make her heart flutter and her foot beat time to the tripping measure. In his world feet were attuned to gay music. But Marcia stood with quiet dignity a little away from the instrument, her lips parted, her eyes bright with the pleasure of the melody, her hands clasped, and her breath coming quickly. She ...
— Marcia Schuyler • Grace Livingston Hill Lutz
... animated rarities that to him seemed most worthy of selection. The hilarious hyenas, the seals, the polar bears plunging from their lofty rocks, all attracted his commendation; and we, who walked behind in such order as our friendships or familiarity taught us, were perpetually tripping upon his honest figure brought to a halt before some object more than usually interesting. Exclamations of delight at the bride's beauty, politely wrapped in whispers, arose on all sides as we penetrated the throng: it was a proud thing to be a part of ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Vol. XV., No. 85. January, 1875. • Various
... "Omens" are observed; tripping as one lands is lucky (as with our William the Norman). Portents, such as a sudden reddening of the sea where the hero is drowned, are ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")
... occasional boom still go on: meant to give note that the day is opening. Nothing more awe-inspiring or poetical can be conceived than this 'cock-crow' promenade. Here are little portals suddenly opening on the stage, with muffled figures darting out, and worthy Belgians tripping from their houses—betimes, indeed—and hurrying away to mass. Thus to make the acquaintance of that grandest and most astonishing of old cathedrals, is to do so under the best and most suitable conditions: very different from the guide ...
— A Day's Tour • Percy Fitzgerald
... Chilenos a blow that sent him down as if he had been shot, and cried out loudly, "Murder!" "Mutiny!", Mancillo meanwhile making savage thrusts at him with his knife, and the other man trying to run him through with his cutlass; but the mate, unarmed as he was, was able to cope with them both, for tripping up Mancillo he struck him on the chest so violently that he fell against the man ...
— The South Seaman - An Incident In The Sea Story Of Australia - 1901 • Louis Becke
... scholarship, and would order about their servant-girls in Tuscan, and scold their babies in Ciceronian Latin. Among these fair grammarians, however, he met none that wore her learning lightly. They were forever tripping in the folds of their doctors' gowns, and delivering their most trivial views ex cathedra; and too often the poor philosophers, their lords and fathers, cowered under their harangues like frightened boys under ...
— The Valley of Decision • Edith Wharton
... after this he left off his bandages and tried to walk. He made his way into the garden and hobbled successfully along one of the alleys, but in the midst of his progress was pulled up by a spasm of pain which forced him to stop and call for help. In an instant Euphemia came tripping along the path and offered him her ...
— Madame de Mauves • Henry James
... in this way, you know at once every thing grows even worse than it was before,—the sun feels hotter, the rocks harder, the water tastes more disagreeably, and the crab's claws less palatable. But in the midst of all the trouble, May would come tripping over the rocks,—a little sunburnt girl now, with tattered clothes and bare feet,—and she would bring a pretty pink conch-shell or the lovely rose-colored sea-mosses, and tell her funny little story of where she found them. The discontented people would gather around ...
— The Stories Mother Nature Told Her Children • Jane Andrews
... a time, at the ships of a becalmed fleet, slowly twisting round, changing their position, and rolling from side to side, as silently as if they had been in harbour, or accompanied only by the faint, rippling sound tripping along the water-line, as the copper below the bends alternately sunk into the sea, or rose out of it, dripping wet, and shining as bright and clean as a new coin, from the constant friction of the ocean during the previous rapid passage ...
— The Lieutenant and Commander - Being Autobigraphical Sketches of His Own Career, from - Fragments of Voyages and Travels • Basil Hall
... out with my heart tripping against my blouse, "you said something the other day about buried treasure. Did you really find some? And would you mind telling us how you set ...
— Explorers of the Dawn • Mazo de la Roche
... said Tom. "We'd better not take any chances of tripping over it on the way back. We might be in ...
— Treachery in Outer Space • Carey Rockwell and Louis Glanzman
... the rain falling in cascades from the tops of the roofs on the gleaming flagstones below, rendering everything indistinct and vague through the misty atmosphere. At times we passed by a lady, struggling with her skirts, unsteadily tripping along in her high wooden shoes, looking exactly like the figures painted on screens, tucked up under a gaudily daubed paper umbrella. Or else we passed a pagoda, where an old granite monster, squatting in the water, seemed to make a ...
— Madame Chrysantheme • Pierre Loti
... panelling of some dark-grained wood which gave forth a pleasant smell as of violets. A broad night of steps rose up from the farther end of the hall, down which as we entered a young sweet-faced maid came tripping, with an old dame behind her, who bore in her hands a pile of fresh napery. At the sight of us the elder one retreated up the stairs again, whilst the younger came flying down three steps at a time, threw her arms round the old Mayor's neck, and kissed him fondly, looking ...
— Micah Clarke - His Statement as made to his three Grandchildren Joseph, - Gervas and Reuben During the Hard Winter of 1734 • Arthur Conan Doyle
... snow dotting the vast cerulean. Still another change—the earth was clad in a robe of spotless ermine, and the gray dawn opened her pale eye on iciness and desolation; men hurried to and fro as nature were a plague, and they its victims; the sparkling, tripping, garrulous brooks, whose sweet voices had so long gone up like a spirit's on the air, now sped their way with a faint and death-like gurgle; the laurel, pine, and cedar, disdaining to be poor pensioners on ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII No. 6 June 1848 • Various
... against him. He cannot play lawn tennis, or, at least according to my observation, he cannot play lawn tennis oftener than once in two weeks. In between games he limps round, stiff as a hat tree and sore as a mashed thumb. Time was when he might mingle in the mystic mazes of the waltz, tripping the light fantastic toe or stubbing it, as the case may be. But that was in the days of the old-fashioned square dance, which was the fat man's friend among dances, and also of the old-fashioned two-step, and not in these times when dancing is a cross between a wrestling ...
— Cobb's Anatomy • Irvin S. Cobb
... at the door-edge, missed it and, tripping over a rent in the cheap mat that lay against the door inside, stumbled against the table-edge ...
— Jacqueline of Golden River • H. M. Egbert
... door and charged through, with the others tripping over my heels. Then my revolver swung across ...
— Wings of the Wind • Credo Harris
... the ocean, Trembling with emotion, Panting at the notion, See the rivers run— In the golden weather, Tripping o'er the heather, Laughing all together— ...
— Poems • Denis Florence MacCarthy
... Ah, me! how charming and how beautiful "artistes" were in those golden days! Whence have they vanished? Ladies in blue tights and flaxen hair dance before my eyes to-day, but move me not, unless it be towards boredom. Where be the tripping witches of twenty years ago, whom to see once was to dream of for a week, to touch whose white hand would have been joy, to kiss whose red lips would have been to foretaste Heaven. I heard only the other day that the son of ...
— The Second Thoughts of An Idle Fellow • Jerome K. Jerome
... were nearly all filled up with services of one kind or another, and were well attended, or otherwise, according as the Indians might be present at the village, or away hunting, or fishing, or "tripping" for the Hudson's Bay Company. What pleased us very much was the fact that in the homes of the people there were so many family altars. It was very delightful to take a quiet walk in the gloaming through the ...
— By Canoe and Dog-Train • Egerton Ryerson Young
... to the morning's lecture, with his plump childish face, his round innocent eyes, his absurdly non-prehensile fat hand carrying his cap, his grey trousers braced up much too high, his feet a trifle inturned, and going across the great court with a queer tripping pace that seemed cultivated even to my naive undergraduate eye. Or I see him lecturing. He lectured walking up and down between the desks, talking in a fluting rapid voice, and with the utmost lucidity. If he could ...
— The New Machiavelli • Herbert George Wells
... truth &c 494; put the saddle on the right horse, hit the right nail on the head. be near the truth, be warm, get warmer, burn; smoke, scent, sniff, catch a whiff of, smell a rat. open the eyes to; see through, see daylight, see in its true colors, see the cloven foot; detect; catch, catch tripping. pitch upon, fall upon, light upon, hit upon, stumble upon, pop upon; come across, come onto; meet with, meet up with, fall in with. recognize, realize; verify, make certain of, identify. Int. ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... security; and generally do it in the most provoking words they can invent; while those who are down, are sometimes tempted to speak in favour of a lost cause, and therefore, without great caution, must needs be often caught tripping, and thereby furnish plenty of ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D. D., Volume IV: - Swift's Writings on Religion and the Church, Volume II • Jonathan Swift
... that church where my daughter sees you every day when she says her prayers?—For I have brought up my children religiously, sir. I did not want them to take to the theatre. Ah! the hussies! If I catch them tripping! I do not jest, that I don't! I read them lessons on honor, on morality, on virtue! Ask them! They have got to walk straight. They are none of your unhappy wretches who begin by having no family, and end by espousing the public. One ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... off early in the morning for the hill on which Old Pipes lived. It was hard work for the fat little fellow, and when he had crossed the valley and had gone some distance into the woods on the hill-side, he stopped to rest, and, in a few minutes, the Dryad came tripping along. ...
— The Bee-Man of Orn and Other Fanciful Tales • Frank R. Stockton
... medium height, wore a single-breasted black broadcloth suit, cut business style and fitting close. His collar was black and his string tie and black silk shirt blended into his black vest. The little bride, tripping across the sidewalk with her soon-to-be, wore black silk slippers, a black silk dress sparingly overlaid with black chiffon. Her wedding veil was a broad strip of black silk edged and overlaid with black tulle, ending in large bows. This ...
— News Writing - The Gathering , Handling and Writing of News Stories • M. Lyle Spencer
... the river in his rear. He gave ground in a curve, and so came right across the rapidly abandoned camp of the family in mourning, crunching a teacup under his heel, oversetting the teapot, and finally tripping backwards over the hamper. The eel flew out at a tangent from his hand and became a mere ...
— The History of Mr. Polly • H. G. Wells
... was crossing the yard, just reaching the alley, when the same woman who had first spoken to Jack again opened her door. In one hand she held a mop. This she threw with such aim or luck that it passed between the running man's legs, tripping him. ...
— The Submarine Boys on Duty - Life of a Diving Torpedo Boat • Victor G. Durham
... friend tried and sentenced yesterday; you may yourself stand in the dock to-morrow, knowing yourself morally innocent, astounded at finding yourself technically guilty. Yet you yourself by your civic neglect or ignorance contributed to the enactment of the statute which now catches you tripping. You had better search into these matters, and find out what the authorities whom you helped to office are doing with ...
— The Subterranean Brotherhood • Julian Hawthorne
... looking at them during church; so that I lost a good deal of the sermon. In a word, they were a beautiful pair of boots. But all this only unfitted them the more for sea-service; as I soon discovered. They had very high heels, which were all the time tripping me in the rigging, and several times came near pitching me overboard; and the salt water made them shrink in such a manner, that they pinched me terribly about the instep; and I was obliged to gash them cruelly, which went to my very heart. The legs were quite long, coming a good way up toward ...
— Redburn. His First Voyage • Herman Melville
... were ourselves inclined to fear that Milton had been here caught tripping. In this instance, at least, he seems to be in error. But there is no trusting to appearances. In meditating upon the question, we happened to remember that the most colossal and Miltonic of painters had fallen into the ...
— Theological Essays and Other Papers v2 • Thomas de Quincey
... open at the neck, his face glowing with the exercise, the late typewriter salesman darted in and out among the other scrubbers, leaving the spot he was working on to pounce upon any fresh space of planking sluiced by the water. Getting in everybody's way, tripping himself with his own broom, hopping like a cat in a puddle when his toes were jabbed by the bristles, he displayed three men's energy and accomplished the work ...
— Gold Out of Celebes • Aylward Edward Dingle
... shop, as any bridegroom tripping to the bridal chamber might come, and by his look of cheeriness seeming to dispense a sort of morning through the night, in came the cosmopolitan; but marking the old man, and how he was occupied, he ...
— The Confidence-Man • Herman Melville
... One day as he left the studio he met little Miss Alexander tripping in for her turn, and asked ...
— Whistler Stories • Don C. Seitz
... world." The young ladies had not yet entered the apartment, and the three night-watchers were busy relating to the three matrons the terrible events of the night. The lawyer was sitting with his back to the door, conversing with Mrs. Carruthers, when Miss Carmichael came tripping in, followed by Miss Du Plessis and Miss Halbert. The lawyer's hair was brown, and so was her uncle's. The coat was the Squire's, and the white collar above it. So she slipped softly up to the back of the chair, took the ...
— Two Knapsacks - A Novel of Canadian Summer Life • John Campbell
... court-yard, he fell; but he was up in an instant, and brushed speedily along. It must have been a strange spectacle to see this old man, as black as a mute at a funeral, with his black gloves, black boots, black coat, all black in short, tripping gayly along over the snow with three dogs at his heels, sometimes whistling and shouting aloud, sometimes cracking his pocket-whip, and occasionally pointing his fowling-piece in the direction of ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 2, No. 4, March, 1851 • Various
... a rosier beam hath cleft The damp and fragrant-smelling earth, A handful of snow-drops peeping forth; As if King Winter had dropped and left— Stumbling and tripping the steep hills down— Had clutched his robe and dropped his crown: Or as if the very snow had power, Out of itself to fashion a flower; So vase-like, slender, and exquisite, Like ...
— The Coming of the Princess and Other Poems • Kate Seymour Maclean
... take place the next evening (there was no opera that season); but it was not a real Spanish tauromachy—only a theatrical combat, as you could see by the picture in which the horseman was cantering off at three miles an hour, the bull tripping after him with tips to his gentle horns. Mules interminable, and almost all excellently sleek and handsome, were pacing down every street: here and there, but later in the day, came clattering along a smart rider on a prancing Spanish horse; and in the afternoon a few families might be seen in ...
— Notes on a Journey from Cornhill to Grand Cairo • William Makepeace Thackeray
... end of the round Ramsden staggered on to the terrace, tripping over his feet, and handed Wilberforce back in good condition. Eunice, who had just reached the chapter where the hero decides to give up all for love, thanked him perfunctorily without looking up from her book; and so ended the first spasm of Ramsden ...
— The Clicking of Cuthbert • P. G. Wodehouse
... passed through a village, and at the outer edge of it a little girl, about four years old, tried to cross the road. Tripping, she fell down almost in front of me. It was only by a powerful and sudden exertion that I prevented myself from going over her, and as I wheeled across the road my machine came within two feet of her. She lay there yelling in the dust. I dismounted, and, picking her up ...
— A Bicycle of Cathay • Frank R. Stockton
... offerings at the feet of the Archangel Michael; Norman dukes and monks of the middle ages have paid their devotion at his shrine, and troops of pilgrims in all ages, even to this day, when a party of English school-girls come tripping across the bay, provided with a passport and a fee, bent upon having the terrors of the prison-house shewn to them as easily as the 'chamber of horrors' ...
— Normandy Picturesque • Henry Blackburn
... was the most industrious creature in the world, and a model of official decorum. His papers were always in order, his despatches always neat and correct, and I don't believe any one ever caught him tripping in office work. But he had no more conception than a child of the kind of trouble that was brewing. He knew never an honest man from a rogue, and the result was that he received all unofficial communications with a polite disbelief. I used to force him to see ...
— The Moon Endureth—Tales and Fancies • John Buchan
... among the fresh fair flowers, And saw the birds come tripping from their bowers, Where they had rested them all night; and they, Who were so joyful at the light of day, Began to honour May with ...
— Playful Poems • Henry Morley
... carried his listeners into an ethereal world of delicate sounds. Ingred, hidden behind a protecting barrier of schoolfellows, could see all the sylphs dancing and the fairy pipers piping as the crisp notes came tripping from his practised fingers. At the end she came back as from a dream, to realize that she was not in elf-land, but in the College Lecture Hall, and that she was sitting on a form next to Miss Strong, who held on her knee a little red-coated, brown-haired ...
— A Popular Schoolgirl • Angela Brazil
... of which idea he would put into her hand some poem that touched his fancy, tell her to read it, and as she read, he would adapt to it an accompaniment according to the meaning and measure of the lines,—grandly solemn, daintily tripping, or wildly inspiriting. It was more like a chant than a song. To-night he chose Tennyson's Bugle-song. Her voice was subservient to the accompaniment, that shook its faint, sweet bugle-notes at first as in a rosy splendor; it rose and swelled ...
— Other Things Being Equal • Emma Wolf
... night of the great ball at Lady Merivale's town house. A Blue Hungarian Band was playing dreamily the waltz of the season, to the accompaniment of light laughter and gaily tripping feet. The scent of roses filled the air. Masses of their great pink blooms lurked in every small nook and corner; while in the centre of the room, half-hidden by them, a fountain sent its silver spray into ...
— Adrien Leroy • Charles Garvice
... you, Maloney," he answered. "If you want a quiet life, just you go back where you came from. If you stay here, you're a marked man; and when you are found tripping it'll be a lifer for you, at the least. Free trade's a fine thing but the market's too full of men like you for us to need ...
— My Friend The Murderer • A. Conan Doyle
... in his long white nightgown, that kept tripping him up as Madame Ratignolle led him along by the hand. With the other chubby fist he rubbed his eyes, which were heavy with sleep and ill humor. Edna took him in her arms, and seating herself in the rocker, began to coddle and caress him, calling him all manner of tender ...
— The Awakening and Selected Short Stories • Kate Chopin
... however, did not come as interest on capital inherited from her father, but was an annuity which a former lover had settled on her: a good-natured, fat tallow-chandler, who had been with great regret obliged to give the youthful Albina Worzuba the go-by, as his wife had caught him tripping. He had sweetened the farewell for ...
— 'Jena' or 'Sedan'? • Franz Beyerlein
... chin, wishing the singer would finish this pleasing song. But she never did, though he often heard that, as well as other childish ditties, sung in the same gay voice, with bursts of laughter and the sound of lively feet tripping up and down the boarded walks. Johnny longed intensely to know who the singer was; for her music cheered his solitude, and the mysterious sounds he heard in the garden increased his wonder and his longing ...
— The Louisa Alcott Reader - A Supplementary Reader for the Fourth Year of School • Louisa M. Alcott
... merrily, and went tripping on faster. Her grassy robe swept and swirled about her steps, and wherever it passed over withered leaves, they went fleeing and whirling in spirals, and running on their edges like wheels, all about ...
— At the Back of the North Wind • George MacDonald
... powers. He had a charming style. We never find him searching for the mot juste as for a needle in a bottle of hay. Could he have looked through a certain window by the river at Croisset or in the quadrangle at Brasenose, how he would have laughed! He blew on his pipe, and words came tripping round him, like children, like pretty little children who are perfectly drilled for the dance, or came, did he will it, treading in their precedence, like kings, gloomily. And I think it is to the credit of the reading mob that, by reason of his beautiful style, all that he said was taken for the ...
— The Works of Max Beerbohm • Max Beerbohm
... should have descended from the sunny Parnassus of its own vernacular to the meads below, where disport the unlearned and uninspired, the mere kids and lambs of its celestial audience: a generous absurdity, at which the very Devil of Delphos might have demurred. These are the dapper gentlemen, who, tripping gayly along to the blasts and tinklings of Lanner's Waltzes, would judge every man's intellect by the measure of their own. Know, oh dwarfed descendants of Procustes, that the quality of humor is not strained, but droppeth as the gentle dew from heaven; and if, after patient blending ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I. February, 1862, No. II. - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... he was looking through an upper back window over a screened part of the garden. The door beneath him opened, and a figure appeared tripping forth. She went round out of sight to where the gardener was at work, and presently returned with a bunch of green stuff fluttering in each hand. It was Avice, her dark hair now braided up snugly under a cap. She sailed on with a rapt and ...
— The Well-Beloved • Thomas Hardy
... on bravely, bending to the fierce blasts, heading the wind as best they could, till Mooka, tripping a second time in a little hollow where a brook ran deep under the snow, and knowing now that they were but wandering in an endless circle, seized Noel's ...
— Northern Trails, Book I. • William J. Long
... colts. But in a few minutes the nine of them were on snowshoes and watched and instructed by Uncle Dick were learning their first lesson in the rather ticklish art of scuffling over the soft snow without tripping and plunging headlong ...
— Betty Gordon at Mountain Camp • Alice B. Emerson
... body once again those hands that made her tingle from the tips of her toes to the roots of her hair. She resisted only because such was the duty of a well-educated Christian girl. Like a young she-goat she would dash off with graceful, tripping bounds between the rows of orange-trees, and su senoria, the member from Alcira, would give chase with all his might, his nostrils quivering and ...
— The Torrent - Entre Naranjos • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... one, and includes the best and the worst; they sometimes recite the "Troilus" of Chaucer,[572] and sometimes the ancient romances of chivalry, altered, spoiled, shorn of all their poetry. Chaucer had ridiculed these versions of the old heroic stories, written in tripping verses, but in vain. Throughout his life, after as well as before "Sir Thopas," he could wonder and laugh at the success of stories, composed in the very style of his own burlesque poem, about heroes who, being all peerless, are necessarily all alike: one is "stalworthe ...
— A Literary History of the English People - From the Origins to the Renaissance • Jean Jules Jusserand
... Roger, his eyes following the Brat, who is lightly tripping up the stone steps, looking very small and agile in his white-flannel cricketing things, "what is that boy's real name? Why do you call ...
— Nancy - A Novel • Rhoda Broughton
... moment the elfin hill opened, and an old elfin maiden, hollow behind, came tripping out; she was the old elf king's housekeeper, and a distant relative of the family; therefore she wore an amber heart on the middle of her forehead. Her feet moved very fast, "trip, trip;" good gracious, how she could trip right down to the sea ...
— Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen
... mathematical skill, it had probably been cut under the eye of the eccentric but accomplished Sir Thomas Urquhart; when a third lady, greatly younger than the others, and whom I had never seen before, came hurriedly tripping down the garden-walk, and, addressing the other two apparently quite in a flurry—"O, come, come away," she said, "I have been seeking you ever so long." "Is this you, L——?" was the staid reply: "Why, what now?—you have run yourself out of breath." The young lady was, I saw, very ...
— My Schools and Schoolmasters - or The Story of my Education. • Hugh Miller
... and tram horses, almost the only representatives of English horseflesh. There are always a few detached horses stampeding round ownerless, or limping feebly down with a lost, hopeless look in their eyes, tripping at every step over a tattered head-rope, and seeming to belong to nobody and care for nothing. We always ride down in strict order, each man leading ...
— In the Ranks of the C.I.V. • Erskine Childers
... desperation asking everybody I knew if they had seen anything of the company. Luckily I came across an entraining officer, who told me that the company were entraining at "Point Six-Hangar de Laine,"—three miles away. I simply ran there, asking my way of surly, sleepy sentries, tripping over ropes, nearly falling ...
— Adventures of a Despatch Rider • W. H. L. Watson
... understand (on account of the clerks), but coming briskly up, with the best little laugh upon her face that ever played in opposition to the fountain and beat it all to nothing. For, fifty to one, Tom had been looking for her in the wrong direction, and had quite given her up, while she had been tripping towards him from the first, jingling that little reticule of hers (with all the keys in it) to attract his ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... in the Borromean Islands. What a French idea! How strangely incongruous had the pastoral simplicity of his lovers appeared in such a scene! It must have changed, if not the whole plan, at least the whole colouring of the tale. Imagine la divine JULIE tripping up and down the artificial terraces of the Isola Bella, among flower pots and statues, and colonnades and grottos; and St. Preux sighing towards her, from some trim fantastic wilderness in ...
— The Diary of an Ennuyee • Anna Brownell Jameson
... misery, half in thought, when he was stopped by a little crowd about an awning that stretched across the footway. The same instant rose a murmur of admiration, and down the steps from the door came tripping, the very Allegra of motion, the same Barbara to whose mould his being seemed to have shaped itself. He stood silent as death, but something made her cast a look on him, and she saw the large eyes of his suffering fixed on her. She gave a short musical cry, and turning darted through the crowd, ...
— There & Back • George MacDonald
... it in a stage-struck exuberance of spirits. The night was hardly cold enough to call for fringed leather chaparejos, and their guns should have been left in their blankets; nor are long-shanked Texas spurs quite the proper thing about camp, having a dirty way of catching and tripping their wearers; but the rodeo outfit felt that it was on dress parade and was trying its best to look the cowboy part. Bill Lightfoot even had a red silk handkerchief draped about his neck, with the slack in front, like a German napkin; and his cartridge belt was slung so low that ...
— Hidden Water • Dane Coolidge
... Amelia came tripping into the drawing-room in a white muslin frock, prepared for conquest at Vauxhall, singing like a lark, and as fresh as a rose—a very tall ungainly gentleman, with large hands and feet, and large ears, set off by a closely cropped head of black hair, ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... before, he naturally was terribly frightened, and, after a second hasty glance at the awful phantom, he fled back to his room, tripping up in his long winding-sheet as he sped down the corridor, and finally dropping the rusty dagger into the Minister's jack- boots, where it was found in the morning by the butler. Once in the privacy of his own apartment, he flung himself down on a small pallet- bed, and hid his face under ...
— Selected Prose of Oscar Wilde - with a Preface by Robert Ross • Oscar Wilde
... "And thou earnest tripping lightly down the stairs, clad of a russet gown, and leddest me up to see Anstace. 'Do I remember it!' Ah, Joyce, my sister, there be ...
— It Might Have Been - The Story of the Gunpowder Plot • Emily Sarah Holt
... went away Dennis's heart sank within him. Reaction followed the strong excitements of the day, and a strange sense of weariness and despondency crept over him. The gay music in the other room seemed plaintive and far away, and the tripping feet sounded like the patter of rain on autumn leaves. The very lights appeared to burn dimmer, and the color to fade out of his life. Mechanically he packed up the few remaining articles, to be called for in the morning, and then leaned ...
— Barriers Burned Away • E. P. Roe
... down the narrow board walk together, Percival carefully holding the lady's arm to prevent her tripping over the loosened planks, but neither exchanging a word. The man was smiling, the fingers of one hand toying with the curl of his moustache, but Natalie appeared somewhat sobered by her visit, and West noticed that ...
— The Case and The Girl • Randall Parrish
... to greet her with its fresh bright face; for the spring had till lately been so cold and wet that the flowers could not bloom at the right time, and now, called out by the mild soft air, they all came crowding eagerly together, looking over each other's shoulders, as it were, and almost tripping each other up in their haste. So Iris found kingcups, primroses, and cowslips all in blossom together in different parts of the fields, and the garden was suddenly bright with all sorts of flowers which had seldom seen the sunshine in each other's company before. And ...
— A Pair of Clogs • Amy Walton |
