"Ankle-deep" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... a light, and proceeded to mop up, as best I could, and then endeavored to find a dry place to sleep in. This, however, was no easy task, for my own bed was drenched, and every other berth occupied. The deck, too, was ankle-deep in water, as I found when I tried to get across to the deck-house sofa. At last I lay down on the floor, wrapped in my ulster, and wedged between the foot stanchion of our swing bed and the wardrobe athwart-ship; so that as the yacht rolled heavily, ...
— Lives of Girls Who Became Famous • Sarah Knowles Bolton
... were oftener stopped up with rags. Before the doors were heaps of manure and pools of stagnant water. There was no regular footway, but a mere beaten track in front of the cabins, and this, on wet days, was ankle-deep in mud. The women hung about the doors all day long, knitting the men's blue stockings, and did little else apparently. Both men and women were usually in a torpid state, the result, doubtless, of breathing ...
— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand
... into the dark alleyway of the inn. The guards drove back the rabble, and the door was closed and barred. The eager crowd remained outside, standing ankle-deep in slush, with their noses flattened against the panes. A profound silence settled upon the house. Having by this time got into my clothes, I opened the door part way to listen, and see if it would be possible to escape from my unpleasant quarters. I heard the ...
— The Dean's Watch - 1897 • Erckmann-Chatrian
... the terrible storm beating on the combatants. The wind blew violently, and the rain descended in torrents. The men sank ankle-deep in the softened soil, but "Forward!" sounded the battle-cry, and the soldiers left their shoes in the mud, rushing in their socks or bare-footed on the enemy, who fought with lion-hearted courage, ...
— NAPOLEON AND BLUCHER • L. Muhlbach
... feel the radiation of a sledge-hammer sun from their bevelled summits—close enough to be the channel, in summer, of every scorching blast diverted by them; in winter, every icy draught. Pestilential place, goal of whirlwinds and dust-devils, ankle-deep in desert drift—prototype of Berber in a sandstorm—as comfortless by night as day. But as in nature, so in the handiwork of men, even in the most repulsive shapes it is possible to find some saving feature. De Aar has one—one only. Its saving feature is where a ...
— On the Heels of De Wet • The Intelligence Officer
... till they are trapped to buy some unchewable old poultry, tough tup-mutton, stringy cow beef, or stale fish, at a very little less than the price of prime and proper food. With savings like these they toddle home in triumph, cackling all the way, like a goose that has got ankle-deep into ...
— The Cook's Oracle; and Housekeeper's Manual • William Kitchiner
... perch into the ankle-deep water and waded out to the boat. Here he burrowed for a moment, presently emerging with a box. This he carried gingerly to a convenient rock and opened. First he lifted out some soft padding. A small tin box honey-combed inside came to light. With infinite precaution ...
— The Mystery • Stewart Edward White and Samuel Hopkins Adams
... says she, looking around upon the floor ankle-deep in dead leaves, twigs and the ...
— Black Bartlemy's Treasure • Jeffrey Farnol
... rather amusement, because if you don't let other folks have the benefit of your money, Society will take no account of it. But have money and spend it well (that is, let Society live on it, gorge with it, walk ankle-deep in it), and you may be anything and do anything; you may have been an omnibus conductor in the Strand, and you may marry a duke's daughter; you may have been an oyster-girl in New York, and you may entertain royalties. It is impossible to exaggerate ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida
... landed, and the way towards Cap Gris Nez. The streets were narrow, tortuous, and mostly evil-smelling, with a mixture of stale fish and damp cellar odours. There had been heavy rain here during the storm last night, and sometimes Marguerite sank ankle-deep in the mud, for the roads were not lighted save by the occasional glimmer from a ...
— The Scarlet Pimpernel • Baroness Orczy
... the form of tents or of crude canvas and wooden houses. The few substantial buildings stood like rocks in a tossing sea. No attempt, of course, had been made as yet toward public improvements. The streets were ankle-deep in dust or neck-deep in mud. A great smoke of dust hung perpetually over the city, raised by the trade winds of the afternoon. Hundreds of ships lay at anchor in the harbor. They had been deserted by their crews, and, before they could be re-manned, the faster clipper ...
— The Forty-Niners - A Chronicle of the California Trail and El Dorado • Stewart Edward White
... sympathy for them. Alive with comicality, they move us, almost unconsciously, to fondle them. And yet we know not why we would fondle the sable "rascals." One knot is larking on the grass, running, toddling, yelling, and hooting; another, ankle-deep in mud, clench together and roll among the ducks, work their clawy fingers through the tufts of each other's crispy hair, and enjoy their childish sports with an air of genial happiness; while a third ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams
... anyway?" said Gettysburg, remaining ankle-deep in the mud. "Don't you know this here is the 'Laughin' Water' claim, ...
— The Furnace of Gold • Philip Verrill Mighels
... with him so long, and now desired us to ride on. The sun was almost set before we reached Datliboo. In the evening we had a most tremendous tornado. The house in which we lodged being flat-roofed, admitted the rain in streams; the floor was soon ankle-deep, the fire extinguished, and we were left to pass the night upon some bundles of firewood that happened ...
— Travels in the Interior of Africa - Volume 1 • Mungo Park
... faded by the sun and rain. In the course of the morning he lay in wait very patiently near a spot overflowed by the river, where, the day before, he had noticed lily-pads growing. After a time a doe and a spotted fawn came and stood ankle-deep in the water, and ate of the lily-pads. Thorpe lurked motionless behind his screen of leaves; and as he had taken the precaution so to station himself that his hiding-place lay downwind, the beautiful animals were unaware ...
— The Blazed Trail • Stewart Edward White
... boomed, the lightning glared, the storm-winds raged, the deluge poured down. The mimic royalty on the stage, with their soaked satins clinging to their bodies, slopped about ankle-deep in water, warbling their sweetest and best, the fiddlers under the eaves of the state sawed away for dear life, with the cold overflow spouting down the backs of their necks, and the dry and happy King sat in his lofty box and wore his ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... cards is called for at every deal, and the "old" ones are then thrown upon the floor, and in such an immense quantity, that the writer of this letter has seen a very large room nearly ANKLE-DEEP, in the greatest part of it, by four o'clock in the morning! Judge, then, to what height they must ...
— The Gaming Table: Its Votaries and Victims - Volume II (of II) • Andrew Steinmetz
... measured south from near Kanab for about ten miles. Christmas day came with rain and small prospect of special enjoyment, and we all kept the shelter of the tent after hunting up the horses in mud ankle-deep. But our dinner was a royal feast, for Mrs. Thompson herself made a huge plum-pudding and Prof. supplied butter and milk from Kanab, making this feature of the holiday an immense success. In the evening a number of us rode up to the settlement to witness a dance that had been announced ...
— A Canyon Voyage • Frederick S. Dellenbaugh
... the two donned their harness, helping each other to arm, and then fell a-fighting, Palamon like a wild lion, and Arcite like a cruel tiger, till they were ankle-deep ...
— The Sources and Analogues of 'A Midsummer-night's Dream' • Compiled by Frank Sidgwick
... coming in. It was night. It had been raining for thirty-six hours, and as we stepped into the unlighted hut, my muchacho and I, right away the floor grew sticky and slimy with the mud on our feet, and as we groped about blindly, we seemed ankle-deep in something greasy and abominable like gore. After a while the boy got a torch outside, and as he flared it I caught sight of Miller on his cot, backed up into one corner. He was sitting upright, staring straight ahead and a little down, as if in careful consideration. As I stepped ...
— The Spinner's Book of Fiction • Various
... the next morning. The city was shrouded in a low layer of cloud, and his glassed-in penthouse office was gloomy with the morning. He motioned me to sit down. I dragged one of his Bank of England chairs through the ankle-deep pile of his rug and set it down next ...
— The Right Time • Walter Bupp
... sign that the violence of the eruption is diminished," remarked the young merchant, who was in search of fun, as he prepared to wade ankle-deep in the loose pumice up ...
— Blown to Bits - or, The Lonely Man of Rakata • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... still. I went to and fro, till at length I reached the spot where my huts had been. The outer fence of the huts still stood; the fire had not caught it. I passed through the fence; there within were the ashes of the burnt huts—they lay ankle-deep. I walked in among the ashes; my feet struck upon things that were sharp. The moon was bright, and I looked; they were the blackened bones of my wives and children. I flung myself down in the ashes in bitterness of heart; I covered myself over with the ashes of my kraal and with the bones ...
— Nada the Lily • H. Rider Haggard
... only an index to the general ferment, it is also the inspiration, and even the standard, of a young, violent, and fierce generation. It is the most visible and the most successful manifestation of their will, or they think it is. Political reform, social reform, literature even, move slowly, ankle-deep in the mud of materialism and deliquescent tradition. Though not without reason Socialists claim that Liberals ride their horses, the jockeys still wear blue and buff. Mr. Lloyd George stands unsteadily on the shoulders of Mr. Gladstone; the bulk ...
— Art • Clive Bell
... had taken such heavy toll from Hun and Ally, we heard a warning shout: "Keep to the edge of the road!" We wondered at the caution. The middle of the road was comparatively clean, while towards the edges it was ankle-deep in sticky mud, and we had been floundering around in a quagmire for the last eleven days. But we soon knew the reason; for while we hesitated up came a battery of guns at full gallop—big howitzers at that. Drivers shouted; horses plunged and tugged at their traces; the ...
— Through St. Dunstan's to Light • James H. Rawlinson
... quite unanimous chorus of condemnation from all—British, Americans, and Canadians. One lively traveller in 1840 protested that on his way from Montreal, he was compelled to walk at the carriage side for hours, ankle-deep in mud, with the reins in his hands, and that, with infinite fatigue to both man and beast, he accomplished sixty miles in two days—a wonderful performance.[5] In the very heart of the rebellion, W. L. Mackenzie seems to have found the roads fighting against ...
— British Supremacy & Canadian Self-Government - 1839-1854 • J. L. Morison
... you will say, no harm came, and everything was as it should be. Well, there are some who plunge through the mud ankle-deep; and there are others that got but over shoe; and here and there one that crosses on tiptoe; but you would rather that they all chose a better road. And intoxication is not a good thing, whatever may be the means thereto; and the sweet, fresh years of which Dr. Maryland had spoken, ...
— Wych Hazel • Susan and Anna Warner
... mud was unloaded there and thrown on the mountain, and soon the air was filled with the foulest of smells. They waded ankle-deep in filth, and their clothes, hands, and faces were ...
— In Midsummer Days and Other Tales • August Strindberg
... be the one word with which to describe modern war. Mud everywhere! Mud ankle-deep upon the roads; mud into which you sank up to your knees the moment you stepped off it; tents and huts to which you waded through the mud, avoiding the slimy gangways on which you slipped and fell; mud-bespattered men, mud-bespattered horses, little donkeys, looking as if they had been ...
— All Roads Lead to Calvary • Jerome K. Jerome
... the snow and ice were gone, I liked to wade ankle-deep in the mud. Father had to buy me a pair of rubber boots, and that is the first present I remember. They filled my soul with joy. When I said my prayers I had one on each side of me, and when I slept it was with both boots on my pillow. At first I could think of nothing ...
— Aunt Madge's Story • Sophie May
... were of gold set with jewels. The dishes also were all of gold set with jewels, the walls were hung with purple cloths sewn with gold, and on the floor, covered with a net of gold, fresh roses were strewn ankle-deep, that as the slaves trod them sent up their perfume. Once again I was bidden to stand, with Charmion and Iras and Merira, behind the couch of Cleopatra, and, like a slave, from time to time call out the hours as they flew. And there ...
— Cleopatra • H. Rider Haggard
... to alight halfway, and walk a short distance. The Embankment had given way. Luckily the weather was favourable, inasmuch as we had only a violent storm of wind. Had it rained, we should have been wetted to the skin, besides being compelled to wade ankle-deep in mud. We were next obliged to remain in the open air, awaiting the arrival of the train from Stockerau, which unloaded its freight, and received ...
— Visit to Iceland - and the Scandinavian North • Ida Pfeiffer
... was low water, and it seemed at that time to be nearly always so, you had to be carried ashore by the dingheewallahs on an antiquated kind of wooden chair or board, as the mud between the river and ghaut was more than ankle-deep. It was of course an immense improvement in every sense when the land was reclaimed from the river, and the present roadway at that part of the Strand was made and extended in a straight line as far as Tackta Ghaut. The railway to the docks did not then exist nor the two houses ...
— Recollections of Calcutta for over Half a Century • Montague Massey
... but we did not leave off until our hands had become powerless from exhaustion, and our tomahawks were so blunted as to be rendered of no use. When we left the scene of massacre, we had to pass over a pool of blood ankle-deep, and such was the bowling of those who were not quite dead, that the deer and elk were in every direction struggling to rise and fly [see note 1]. We had been employed more than four hours in our work of destruction, when we returned to the ...
— Travels and Adventures of Monsieur Violet • Captain Marryat
... we found the Huon pine-trees, interspersed with many others of different species, growing in great profusion, within three yards of the edge of the water, upon a soil of decomposed vegetable matter, which in many parts was so soft that we often suddenly sank ankle-deep, and occasionally up to the knees in it: this swampy nature of the soil is to be attributed to the crowded state of the trees; for they grow so close to each other as to prevent the rays of the sun from penetrating ...
— Narrative of a Survey of the Intertropical and Western Coasts of Australia - Performed between the years 1818 and 1822 • Phillip Parker King
... gliddery rocks. They staggered out of the water; waist-deep, knee-deep, ankle-deep; falling and rising again. They crawled up ...
— The Ruling Passion • Henry van Dyke
... thing!" he exclaimed joyously, as his foot sank deep in soft slime. "Yes, indeed, the very spot. Now must I cover up its black mud so that the blurred eyes of old Shag will see only a fair trail, not over ankle-deep." ...
— The Outcasts • W. A. Fraser
... at a brisk pace to warm my blood, which had taken a chill from the draught of the doorway. The snow by this time lay ankle-deep, and even deeper in the pitfalls with which the ill-lit streets abounded; but in twenty minutes I had reached the Via Balbi. The wind was rising; in spite of the snow driven against my face I had not noticed until I heard ...
— Sir John Constantine • Prosper Paleologus Constantine
... trampling feet of the animals gone ahead, and of villagers' donkeys returning from the city. Mile after mile is devoted to the unhappy task of trundling the bicycle ahead, rear wheel aloft, through mud and slush varying from ankle-deep to worse, occasionally varying the programme by ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens
... rising, though more slowly, and as soon as they left the high ground they were splashing along ankle-deep in the water. Winding in and out among the trees, they came upon a boat which had been hauled out the previous fall. And three chechaquos, who had managed to get into the country thus far over the ice, had piled themselves into it, ...
— A Daughter of the Snows • Jack London
... the morning, but the farmyard was ankle-deep in water and slush, and the sky was leaden with lurid clouds in the east, when we started at 4.10 A.M. We pushed on slowly in column for the few miles to Serches, and there we halted at the cross-roads on the top of the plateau and parked the brigade whilst the situation was cleared up by ...
— The Doings of the Fifteenth Infantry Brigade - August 1914 to March 1915 • Edward Lord Gleichen
... to the appointed place which was near the byre of the headman's house. But my Love was already there, weeping. She feared that the flood had swept my hut at the Barhwi Ford. When I came softly through the ankle-deep water, She thought it was a ghost and would have fled, but I put my arms round Her, and—I was no ghost in those days, though I am an old man now. Ho! Ho! Dried corn, in truth. Maize without juice. Ho! Ho! [Footnote: I grieve to say that the Warden of Barhwi ford is responsible ...
— Indian Tales • Rudyard Kipling
... down the twig, and are the most malignant thorns I ever met with. Whatever part of your garments they catch hold of, from that they have never been known to part. Presently our road became inhabited by a stream of water, and every step that avoided the stones was ankle-deep in mud. How the mule could have got on, as I could not see, I cannot imagine, but the box which it carried was not seriously damaged. The two guides in their opunkas walked firmly, but the others were tumbling frequently. The female who had come with us now fairly "compounded," according ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 57, No. 351, January 1845 • Various
... was alive and much to be feared, for was it not so big that no one could see where it ended? They sat and watched its enticing gestures, and, gathering courage, stood tremulously while the tide splashed their feet and retreated. The boldest walked in ankle-deep and danced in daredevilry, and soon young and old were gambolling uncouthly, tasting the sea's quality, shouting and splashing. None ventured more than knee-deep; some crawled and wallowed in the wet sand, ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield
... they saw in nowise relieved the tenseness of the situation. Two carabinieri and an inspector of seals, dusty but stern of countenance, came up the path. O'Mally, recollecting the vast prison at Naples, saw all sorts of dungeons, ankle-deep in sea-water, and iron bars, shackles and balls. Every one stood up and waited for this new development to unfold itself. La Signorina alone seemed indifferent to this official cortege. The inspector signed ...
— The Lure of the Mask • Harold MacGrath
... his shoes, putting off his clothes, while the others wait, O Zarathustra! he shall enter the river, and take the dead out of the water; he shall go down into the water ankle-deep, knee-deep, waist-deep, or a man's full depth, till he ...
— Sacred Books of the East • Various
... after so many days, and to find it (in the seclusion of a desert) still unchanged, must have impressed the mind of the most careless. And yet it was not that which struck us into pillars of stone; but the sight (which yet we had been half expecting) of Secundra ankle-deep in the grave of his late master. He had cast the main part of his raiment by, yet his frail arms and shoulders glistered in the moonlight with a copious sweat; his face was contracted with anxiety and expectation; his blows resounded on the grave, as thick as sobs; and behind him, strangely ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition, Vol. XII (of 25) - The Master of Ballantrae • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Chene is, without exception, the muddiest village I ever was in. We drove through streams of mud; fences were built in mud, mud extended on every side for acres. The houses were so surrounded with mud, ankle-deep, nay, knee-deep, that one wondered how the inmates ever got out. Yet they told us that in a few weeks all would be quite dry; that what were now some of the largest mud-lakes would then be the finest wheat-fields; and it is possible that mud here may have the same ...
— A Trip to Manitoba • Mary FitzGibbon
... quietly in this dim street, haunted with the shades of Memling and Maes, and Otto Veneris and Philip de Champagne, or whether he would go into the East and seek new types, and lie under the red Egyptian heavens and create a true Cleopatra, which no man has ever done yet,—young Cleopatra, ankle-deep in roses and fresh from Caesar's kisses,—leaning there, he saw a little peasant go by below, with two little white feet in two wooden shoes, and a face that had the pure and simple radiance of ...
— Bebee • Ouida
... was heavy. Gordon had to pick his way through the mossy swamp, leading the pack-horse by the bridle. Sometimes he was ankle-deep in water of a greenish slime. Again he had to drag the animal from the bog to a hummock of grass which gave a spongy footing. This would end in another quagmire of peat through which they must plough with the mud ...
— The Yukon Trail - A Tale of the North • William MacLeod Raine
... cliffs. As if they had caught fire from it, a score of torches broke into flame on the eastward rocks, and in the sudden blaze, under the detonating fire of musketry, the men of Troy could be seen tumbling out of their boats and splashing ankle-deep to the shore. ...
— The Mayor of Troy • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... wild scrambles for places, packed tight as sardines in the sweltering heat. Only a genuine enthusiast will undertake the trip more than once. For the Marina itself—at this season, at least—is an unappetizing spot; a sordid agglomeration of houses, a few dirty fruit-stalls, ankle-deep dust, swarms of flies. I prefer to sleep through the warm hours of the day, and then take the air in that delightful public garden which, by the way, has already become too ...
— Old Calabria • Norman Douglas
... laborious, for they sank ankle-deep, but it was very much worse when they faced the ascent. Short as the hill was, it took them some time to climb; and, with the hired man's assistance, Edgar carried a heavy trunk up the last part of it. Then he ...
— Ranching for Sylvia • Harold Bindloss
... flows after the priestly ax has done its work is supposed to please the terrible goddess. The morning of my visit there were sacrifices every few minutes, and on the great day of Kali-worship, in October, the place runs ankle-deep in blood. ...
— Where Half The World Is Waking Up • Clarence Poe
... wonderful river running through a place where living waters had never flowed. The stream begins with a few strings of water trickling out from under the door-step of the temple, and rises gradually but steadily ankle-deep, knee-deep, loin-deep, over-head, until flood-tide is reached, and an ever rising and deepening flood-tide. And everywhere the waters go is life with beauty, and fruitfulness. There is no drought, no ebbing, but a continual flowing in, and ...
— Quiet Talks on Power • S.D. Gordon
... away, with a wave of his hand to Leddy; he was going over the precipice's edge after thanking the danger sign. He did not hasten, nor did he loiter. The precipice resolved itself into an incident of a journey of the same order as an ankle-deep ...
— Over the Pass • Frederick Palmer
... families were homeless in the street. Half a dozen patrol wagons and five ambulances were taking the people away to shelter, women and babies first. It was an hour—an hour of standing in the street, with bare feet on the ice, under the ankle-deep slush—before old Tom and his wife got their turn to be taken. Then Susan and Etta and Ashbel, escorted by a policeman, set out for the station house. As they walked along, someone ...
— Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise • David Graham Phillips
... Neapolitan tenement. It was littered with dead cats and fowls and fish and castaway vegetables and rotten fruit and tin cans and greasy ashes and refuse from fishing nets and decaying cocoanuts by the million and sodden rags. This stewing garbage was strewn ankle-deep upon the sand or was floating on the surface of the river, not drifting seaward, as one would expect, but languidly following the tide up and down, forever lolling along the bank. Above this putrefying feast swarmed myriads of flies, their buzzing combining in a drone like that of ...
— Where the Strange Trails Go Down • E. Alexander Powell
... natural enough, to go straight from the Market-place, to the House of the Capulets, now degenerated into a most miserable little inn. Noisy vetturini and muddy market-carts were disputing possession of the yard, which was ankle-deep in dirt, with a brood of splashed and bespattered geese; and there was a grim-visaged dog, viciously panting in a doorway, who would certainly have had Romeo by the leg, the moment he put it over ...
— Pictures from Italy • Charles Dickens
... took their way along the shadowy depths of the forest where once Twenty-Third Street had lain. Bravely and strongly the girl bore her half of the load as they broke through the undergrowth, clambered over fallen and rotten logs, or sank ankle-deep in mossy swales. ...
— Darkness and Dawn • George Allan England
... | Playing ankle-deep in mud before a | |wildly enthusiastic gathering of football| |rooters, the gridiron warriors of Siwash | |College defeated the Tigers this | |afternoon on Siwash athletic field by the| |score of ...
— Newspaper Reporting and Correspondence - A Manual for Reporters, Correspondents, and Students of - Newspaper Writing • Grant Milnor Hyde
... And brushing ankle-deep in flowers, We heard behind the woodbine vail The milk that bubbled in the pail, And buzzings of the ...
— International Weekly Miscellany, Vol. 1, No. 2, July 8, 1850 • Various
... miserable inn with bad wine, scanty fare and high charges, we took a hasty breakfast, and procuring a guide we walked out to see the curiosities of the place. It rained hard and the road was excessively bad, sometimes almost ankle-deep in mud. Notwithstanding the forbidding weather and bad road, we labored up the deep ravine on the sides of which the excavations are made. Dark peaks frowned above us capped with clouds and snow; white patches midway the sides showed ...
— Samuel F. B. Morse, His Letters and Journals - In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Samuel F. B. Morse
... place on bitter black rainy mornings in June or July, and seen her trudging about the yard—that was ankle-deep in black liquid filth—with an old pair of Blucher boots on, and an old coat of her husband's, or maybe a three-bushel bag over her shoulders. I've seen her climbing on the roof by means of the water-cask at the corner, and trying ...
— Joe Wilson and His Mates • Henry Lawson
... the Rhine early in 1743, both in the same regiment. James was now sixteen, Edward fifteen. The march was a terrible one for such delicate boys. The roads were ankle-deep in mud; the weather was vile; both food and water were very bad. Even the dauntless Wolfe had to confess to his mother that he was 'very much fatigued and out of order. I never come into quarters without aching hips and knees.' ...
— The Winning of Canada: A Chronicle of Wolf • William Wood
... chloroform; odours evil, angelic, and anonymous. They painted—painted by Satan!—upon his cerebellum more than music—music that merged into picture; and he was again in the glade of the Druids. The huge scent-symphony dissolved in a shower of black roses which covered the ground ankle-deep. An antique temple of exotic architecture had thrown open its bronze doors, and out there surged and rustled a throng of Bacchanalian beings who sported and shouted around a terminal god, which, with smiling, ironic lips, accepted their delirious homage. White ...
— Visionaries • James Huneker
... your inquiries After Milton's prose metaphor, drawn from Osiris; But, as Cicero says he won't say this or that (A fetch, I must say, most transparent and flat), After saying whate'er he could possibly think of,— I simply will state that I pause on the brink of A mire, ankle-deep, of deliberate confusion, 350 Made up of old jumbles of classic allusion: So, when you were thinking yourselves to be pitied, Just conceive how much harder your teeth you'd have gritted, An 'twere not for the dulness I've ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... prostrate multitude Looked—and ankle-deep in blood, Hope, that maiden most serene, Was walking with ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... reached the end of the board-walk, and plunging ankle-deep into the sand, trudged slowly along as if pushed back by the wind. It whipped her skirts about her and blew the ends of her fringed scarf back over her shoulder. She made a bright flash of color ...
— Georgina of the Rainbows • Annie Fellows Johnston
... fields were, and the woods, but scarcely touched by the blight of autumn, were gray as usual from the limestone turnpike, which, when he crossed it, was ankle-deep in dust. A cloud of yellow butterflies fluttered crazily before him in a sunlight that was hardly less golden, and when he climbed the fence a rabbit leaped beneath him and darted into a patch of ironweeds. Instinctively he leaped after it, crashing, through the purple crowns, and as suddenly ...
— The Heart Of The Hills • John Fox, Jr.
... the example by putting one foot on the gunwale and springing in lightly. Mike followed, and then the captain; while the man standing ankle-deep in the water waited till they were seated, and then, giving the boat a good thrust out, sprang on the stern, and climbed in as they glided over the transparent water, stepping forward quickly to seize an oar, and ...
— Cormorant Crag - A Tale of the Smuggling Days • George Manville Fenn
... the gully, stumbled over the boulder wash, and began to toil in the ankle-deep sand of a little sage-brush flat this side of the next ascent. Schwartz followed steadily enough now, but had fallen forty or fifty feet behind. This was a nuisance, as we bad to keep turning to see if ...
— Arizona Nights • Stewart Edward White
... nearer, but we saw no boar. Many other animals came wonderingly forward: some foxes, trailing their long tails gracefully over the snow, looked about them and trotted off; a furtive deer cautiously peered around with ears erect and trotted off also; but it is not for such as these we stand ankle-deep in the snow, shivering with cold and half frozen. A shot now would spoil all the sport. One has a longing to talk when one is told to be quiet. I can't remember ever having thought of so many clever things I wanted to say as when I stood behind the ducal back—things ...
— In the Courts of Memory 1858-1875. • L. de Hegermann-Lindencrone
... Ankle-deep in the powdery sand, we entered the little town with its business row facing the water front. One glance at the empty levees told you of the town's dead glory. Not a steamboat's stacks, blackening in the ...
— The River and I • John G. Neihardt
... into which we were peering was about six feet wide at the bottom, coming together some twenty feet above our heads, having been apparently widened at the base by the action of the water, which, being here ankle-deep, rushed foaming over and around the many blocks of lava with which the channel was encumbered. As far as we could see, the fissure led straight away without a bend; and Joe was for trying to walk down it at once. I suggested, however, that we leave that ...
— The Boys of Crawford's Basin - The Story of a Mountain Ranch in the Early Days of Colorado • Sidford F. Hamp
... rocking back and forth, three or four feet from the boom piles. Suddenly a man ran the length of the boom, leaped easily into the air, and landed with both feet square on one end of the floating log. That end disappeared in an ankle-deep swirl of white foam, the other rose suddenly, the whole timber, projected forward by the shock, drove headlong to the middle of the little pond. And the man, his arms folded, his knees just bent in the graceful nervous attitude of the circus-rider, ...
— Blazed Trail Stories - and Stories of the Wild Life • Stewart Edward White
... brilliancy of the halo which encircles your head. They legalize the rights of my sword. I, too, adore my native land—no one more than I! I, too, bow before the infinite judge and submit my case to His wise decision. O God, Thou who protecteth France, look down and behold him who rides yonder, his horse ankle-deep in the blood of his countrymen, who looks without pity on the dying legions and says, 'It is well!' Then, O God, look Thou upon this saint here, who prays for her persecutors, and pass judgment between the two: which of the two is Thy ...
— The Nameless Castle • Maurus Jokai
... the southeast, lies Tabiri, the "Grand Quivira." Huddled on the projecting slopes of the rounded ridges, access to it is a weary, dreary march. The nearest water is forty miles away. Toiling through sand ankle-deep, the traveler plods across the edge of the plains, through troughlike valleys, and up the wooded slope of the Mesa de los Jumanos. A mile to the south a whale-back ridge springs from the ...
— The Round-up - A Romance of Arizona novelized from Edmund Day's melodrama • John Murray and Marion Mills Miller
... shop the usual game of quaits" was in progress, and the drug clerk on the corner was chasing a crony with the squirt pump, with which he was about to wash the windows. A few teams stood ankle-deep in the mud, tied to the fantastically gnawed pine pillars of the wooden awnings. A man on a load of hay was "jawing" with the attendant of the platform scales, who stood below, ...
— Main-Travelled Roads • Hamlin Garland
... of this letter that Livingstone was struck down by that severe attack of rheumatic fever, accompanied by great loss of blood, to which reference has already been made. "I got it," he writes to Mr. Maclear, "by sleeping in the wet. There was no help for it. Every part of a plain was flooded ankle-deep. We got soaked by going on, and sodden if we stood still." In his former journey he had been very desirous to visit Matiamvo, paramount chief of the native tribes of Londa, whose friendship would have ...
— The Personal Life Of David Livingstone • William Garden Blaikie
... deepened towards winter, the rains came, torrential rains such as we thought we had never known the like of before. We heard that the trenches were flooded, and that our soldiers were eating, sleeping, and fighting ankle-deep (sometimes knee-deep) in water. At night, on going to our white beds at home, we had remorseful visions of those slimy red ruts in Flanders where our boys were lying out in the drenching rain under the heavy darkness of the sky. It was ...
— The Drama Of Three Hundred & Sixty-Five Days - Scenes In The Great War - 1915 • Hall Caine
... oven; and by their sides sausages, their somewhat plethoric waists girdled by pink ribbon sashes, seemed ready to join them in the frolic. In one cookshop window a trio of plaster nymphs who stood ankle-deep in a pool of crimped green paper, upheld a huge garland of cunningly moulded wax roses, dahlias, and lilac, above which perched a pheasant regnant. This trophy met with vast approbation until a rival establishment across the way, not to be outdone, exhibited ...
— A Versailles Christmas-Tide • Mary Stuart Boyd
... the thunder rolled, and the whole prospect was veiled in mist and cloud. He soon regretted his intention. His soaked umbrella did not protect him from the rain, which whipped his face and poured down on his clothes, and his feet sank ankle-deep in the muddy ground. He was continually knocking against and stumbling over unevennesses in the ground or tree stumps, treading in holes and pools. He was obliged to stand still until a flash of lightning lighted up a few yards ...
— The Precipice • Ivan Goncharov
... radiant face, a line of flax in his hand and a measuring reed. And wherever this man of radiant face measured he caused the waters to run in dry places and deep rivers to course where the waters were but ankle-deep; fish to swarm again in the rivers and the seas to be free of pollution; salt to come in the miry places and trees to grow upon the land with unwithering leaves ...
— The French in the Heart of America • John Finley
... now fallen. A torrential rain had set in. The car slid from one side of the road to the other like a Scotchman coming home from celebrating Bobbie Burns's birthday and repeatedly threatened to capsize in the ditch. The mud was ankle-deep and the road back to Malines was now in the possession of the Germans, so we were compelled to make a detour through a deserted country- side, running through the inky blackness without lights so as not to invite ...
— Fighting in Flanders • E. Alexander Powell
... slip in his greasy hands, did not try to lead. It was sufficient if he could keep pace with the rest of the wood-choppers, which was, after all, a thing most men, reared as he had been, would certainly not have done. The lust of conflict was upon him that night, and, balancing himself ankle-deep in water on the trunk that heaved and dipped beneath him, he swung the trenchant steel. He felt that he was pitted against great primeval forces, and, with the gorged veins rising on his forehead and the perspiration dripping from him, man's primitive pride and passions ...
— The Greater Power • Harold Bindloss
... where one sank ankle-deep, for no one paved the street at that time, strangely enough preferring to pay the sixpence fine per square yard for leaving it undone. At one place, Brandon told me, a load of hay blocked the streets, compelling ...
— When Knighthood Was in Flower • Charles Major
... was all the same to George; and he was as happy as happy could be. At the breakfast-table, he could hardly eat his bread and milk for looking at his shining axe, which he had laid beside him on the table; and, before it was fairly broad daylight, he was out at the wood-yard, ankle-deep in snow, cutting and chopping away at the hard-seasoned beech and maple logs, as if it lay with him, for that day at least, to keep the whole family, white and black, from freezing. By and by, however, he found this ...
— The Farmer Boy, and How He Became Commander-In-Chief • Morrison Heady
... Madame Duval; who answered, "Why, as we were a-coming along, all in the rain, Monsieur Du Bois was so obliging, though I'm sure it was an unlucky obligingness for me, as to lift me up in his arms to carry me over a place that was ankle-deep in mud; but instead of my being ever the better for it, just as we were in the worst part,-I'm sure I wish we had been fifty miles off,-for somehow or other his foot slipt,-at least, I suppose so,-though I can't think how it happened, for I'm so such great weight;-but, however that was, ...
— Evelina • Fanny Burney
... crouched under the drenching rain, looking only to keep dry the locks of their pieces. The water, in muddy rivulets, began to trickle through the shingle, and eddying around the rocks, covered the wide channel in which we now stood, ankle-deep. Both above and below us, the stream, gathered up by the narrowing of the channel, was running with ...
— The Scalp Hunters • Mayne Reid
... sein-ends in the water, The boats separate—they diverge and row off, each on its rounding course to the beach, enclosing the mossbonkers; The net is drawn in by a windlass by those who stop ashore, Some of the fishermen lounge in their boats—others stand negligently ankle-deep in the water, poised on strong legs; The boats are partly drawn up—the water slaps against them; On the sand, in heaps and winrows, well out from the water, lie the green- backed ...
— Poems By Walt Whitman • Walt Whitman
... was the depth of winter—an unusually hard winter even for that part of Canada. My first glimpse of the Tete du Pont Barracks was of a square of low buildings, very much like the square of a Hudson Bay Fort. The parade ground was ankle-deep in trampled snow and mud. A bleak wind was blowing from off the river. Squads of embryo officers were being drilled by hoarse-voiced sergeants. The officers looked cold, and cowed, and foolish; the sergeants employed ruthlessly the age-old army ...
— The Glory of the Trenches • Coningsby Dawson
... wandered through new clearings neglected for a season and waded ankle-deep in strawberry blooms, and, later, fed there upon such scarlet fruit, so fragrant and with such a flavor of its own that the scientific horticulturist owns to-day his weakness? Have you looked out upon the flats some bright ...
— A Man and a Woman • Stanley Waterloo
... pictures I shall remember belonging to Modder camp is the sight of the soldiers at early mass. You can picture to yourself a wide, flat dusty plain held in the bent arm of the river, with not a tree or bush on it; flat as a table, ankle-deep in grey dust, and with a glaring, blazing sun looking down on it. The dust is so hot and deep that it reminds one more of the ashes on the top of Vesuvius—you remember that night climb of ours?—than of ...
— With Rimington • L. March Phillipps
... roofs too low for them to stand upright, often so low as to compel them to creep on all- fours in the black slime of the floors. Some with laden baskets on their backs climbed many times a day up steep ascents. Some stood ankle-deep in water from morning till night in the depths of the pit, wearing out their little ...
— Ten Englishmen of the Nineteenth Century • James Richard Joy
... his quest had been pointed out to him he strode over to her, with a motion of his hand bidding the soldier remain at his post. The girls, who were working ankle-deep in the thick earth, fell back as this grim embodiment of authority passed and stole fearful glances at him as he laid his hand upon the shoulder of one of their number who was throwing stones out of the roadway. She was a slender girl, almost too delicate ...
— Tom Slade with the Boys Over There • Percy K. Fitzhugh
... stems of the graceful birch stand out in bold relief; while the bank of some stream, or the margin of a lake, is marked by fringing thickets of alder. In many parts are moist, swampy bogs, into which the sportsman sinks ankle-deep at every step. The ground, however, is everywhere thickly carpeted by a luxuriant growth of a species of lichen. It possesses wonderfully nutritive qualities; so much so, that large quantities of alcohol ...
— The Western World - Picturesque Sketches of Nature and Natural History in North - and South America • W.H.G. Kingston
... neither pleasant to the eye nor good for food. I believe in a rotation of crops, morally and socially, as well as agriculturally. When you have taken the measure of a man, when you have sounded him and know that you cannot wade in him more than ankle-deep, when you have got out of him all that he has to yield for your soul's sustenance and strength, what is the next thing to be done? Obviously, pass him on; and turn you "to fresh woods and pastures new." Do you work ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 59, September, 1862 • Various
... time Wheeler's division of dismounted cavalry, including the Rough Riders and Kent's infantry division, advanced as best it could over the horrible Santiago road, ankle-deep in mud and water, to El Poso Hill, on and about which it passed a wretchedly uncomfortable night. Seven thousand heavily equipped men, mingled with horses, artillery, pack-mules, and army wagons, all huddled into a narrow gully ...
— "Forward, March" - A Tale of the Spanish-American War • Kirk Munroe
... wait to take me aboard again," said the captain, when the wharf was reached; and the two men went slowly together into the town, along the streets of ankle-deep sand, towards ...
— Those Who Smiled - And Eleven Other Stories • Perceval Gibbon
... Australian generation is represented by a thin, lanky youth of about fifteen. He is milking. The cow-yard is next the house, and is mostly ankle-deep in slush. The boy drives a dusty, discouraged-looking cow into the bail, and pins her head there; then he gets tackle on to her right hind leg, hauls it back, and makes it fast to the fence. There are eleven ...
— While the Billy Boils • Henry Lawson
... captain had hung to the ceiling, and which swung to and fro with the lurching of the ship. The wind was whistling shrilly among the rigging, and every plank and board in the vessel groaned and creaked under the beating of the waves. Now and then her feet were ankle-deep in water, and she dreaded to see it sweep over the low berth. In the rare intervals of the storm she could hear the hurried movements overhead, and the shouts of the sailors as they called to one another from the rigging. But vaguely she heard, and saw, and felt. Her ...
— Brought Home • Hesba Stretton
... of the hotel, the paths lay ankle-deep in scattered confetti. Already the scores of lights were going out and those that remained shone on the ...
— The Lighted Match • Charles Neville Buck
... heard his whistle, and back I ran recklessly through the thickening darkness to the school-house. When I saw the tree rise, I had been on ground hardly wet as yet with the rain; but by the time Waster Lunny sent that reassuring whistle to me I was ankle-deep in water, and the rain was coming down like hail. I saw ...
— The Little Minister • J.M. Barrie
... the ships may go About men's business to and fro. But I, the egg-shell pinnace, sleep On crystal waters ankle-deep: I, whose diminutive design, Of sweeter cedar, pithier pine, Is fashioned on so frail a mould, A hand may launch, a hand withhold: I, rather, with the leaping trout Wind, among lilies, in and out; I, the unnamed, ...
— Underwoods • Robert Louis Stevenson
... tour was replete with stirring incident. When the company reached Bradford, Pennsylvania, they found the town in the throes of oil excitement. Oil was on everybody's tongue and ankle-deep in some of the streets. A great multitude collected at the theater. After the first part of the show the gallery, which was full of people, creaked and settled a few inches, creating a near panic. While this was being subdued an oil-warehouse on the outskirts ...
— Charles Frohman: Manager and Man • Isaac Frederick Marcosson and Daniel Frohman
... camp, we made across country to a town named Nanglooi, distant six miles. The men were in high spirits notwithstanding the difficulties we had to encounter in traversing a route wellnigh impassable from the recent rains, and ankle-deep in mud. Two broad swamps also had to be crossed, the soldiers wading waist-high in the water, and carrying their ammunition-pouches on their heads. Three hours and more were passed before we arrived at the village, and here information reached the General that ...
— A Narrative Of The Siege Of Delhi - With An Account Of The Mutiny At Ferozepore In 1857 • Charles John Griffiths
... ceased. The last oleaginous corpse was pushed over the edge. And the city, save for an ankle-deep sheet of water that was rapidly draining out the vents in the streets, presented ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science September 1930 • Various
... worry about crevasses; for we had not reached the long stretch where the moving Barrier, with the weight of many hundred miles of ice behind it, comes butting up against the slopes of Mount Terror, itself some eleven thousand feet high. Now we were still plunging ankle-deep in the mass of soft sandy snow which lies in the windless area. It seemed to have no bottom at all, and since the snow was much the same temperature as the air, our feet, as well as our bodies, got colder ...
— The Worst Journey in the World, Volumes 1 and 2 - Antarctic 1910-1913 • Apsley Cherry-Garrard
... has come or is coming to be merely a thing to be lightly taken by human hands, in order that its dropped garment may be sold for filthy lucre. There are warehouses in this city where it is possible for a person to walk ankle-deep—literally to wade—in bright-plumaged bird-skins, and see them piled shoulder-high on either side of him—a sight to ...
— Birds in Town and Village • W. H. Hudson
... temptation and opportunity spreads before a man, and if he goes to the praying circle he must give up these things. The man who goes to the weekly service regularly through moonlight and pitch darkness, through good walking and slush ankle-deep, will in the book of judgment find it set down to his credit. He will have a better seat in heaven than the man who went only when the walking was good, and the weather comfortable, and the services attractive, and his health perfect. That service which costs nothing ...
— Around The Tea-Table • T. De Witt Talmage
... gentleman relate the following incident in a large meeting: 'Some time back,' he said, 'I was passing through the streets of Liverpool. It was a cold, raw, wintry day. The streets were ankle-deep in an unpleasant mixture of mud and ice, and battling through it all, the came along a little procession of ragged, haggard, hungry looking boys. Splash, splash, on they went, through freezing slush, at every step making the onlookers shudddered as they stood by in ...
— The Authoritative Life of General William Booth • George Scott Railton
... head, in the first canoe. His canoemen checked their swing, for the beach was close at hand, and then backed water. The bow scraped, and a dozen hands were outstretched in aid, but Governor Denonville stepped briskly out into the ankle-deep water and carried his own pack ashore. A cheer went up from the little line at the sally-port. Du Luth's voyageurs and coureur de bois caught it up, and then it swept far out over the water and was echoed back ...
— The Road to Frontenac • Samuel Merwin
... behind and underneath it. The position was exceedingly awkward, for the ladder obliged them to stoop, and they did not dare to move their feet except with caution, for fear of slipping off the beams into the water—in which, even as it was, they were ankle-deep while standing on the beams. They were soon soaked to the skin by the drippings and spirtings from the pipes, and almost incapable of hearing each other speak, owing to the din. If Rooney had dropped the lead-soled boots or the shoulder-weights, they would have ...
— Under the Waves - Diving in Deep Waters • R M Ballantyne
... only a little lighter than the night. He crossed the lake, his snow-shoes sinking ankle-deep at every step, and once each half- hour he fired a single shot from his rifle. He heard shots to the south, and knew that it was Ledoq; each report coming to him more faintly than the last, until ...
— The Honor of the Big Snows • James Oliver Curwood
... mist that hung over them, their color and every object along the shore was quite indistinct. The next morning was beautiful. Dall and I ran down to the beach before breakfast; there are no sands, unluckily, but we stood ankle-deep in the shingles, watching the ebbing tide and sniffing the sweet salt air for a long time with great satisfaction. After breakfast we rehearsed "The Provoked Husband," and from the theater proceeded to take ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... cause us to resemble an unsuccessful compromise between Esau and an Eskimo, they keep our bodies warm. We wish we could say the same for our feet. On good days we stand ankle-deep; on bad, we are occasionally over the knees. Thrice blessed then are our Boots, Gum, Thigh, though even these cannot altogether ward ...
— All In It K(1) Carries On - A Continuation of the First Hundred Thousand • John Hay Beith (AKA: Ian Hay) |
