"Barefoot" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... In summer he went barefoot. He did not have to turn out at every mud-puddle, and he could plash into the mill-pond and give the frogs a crack over the head without stopping to take off stockings and shoes. Paul did not often have a dinner of roast ...
— Winning His Way • Charles Carleton Coffin
... the bush, small twigs and sticks penetrated the wool and pricked her feet. With an expression of disgust she took the slippers off and threw them into the bush. That was the only time I saw her other than barefoot." She never boiled or filtered the water she drank, two precautions which Europeans do not omit without suffering. She ate native food, and was not particular when meals were served. Breakfast might be at ...
— Mary Slessor of Calabar: Pioneer Missionary • W. P. Livingstone
... father was a poor crofter, a hard working, God fearing man of the Covenanter type, who labored unceasingly to earn a living from the soil of a rented farm. The children went barefoot in all seasons, almost from the time they could walk they were expected to labor and at thirteen Bobbie was doing a man's work at the plow or the reaping. The toil was severe, the reward, at best, was to escape dire ...
— Outlines of English and American Literature • William J. Long
... hands and knees, and apparently poking at it, each with a bit of wood, or about to lay the bits of wood on it, were two little girls, shock-headed, barefoot and bare-legged, clad only in coarse tunics of rusty dark wool. I am not accurate as to children's ages: I took these girls for seven and five; but they may have been six and four or eight and six. At sight of us they scrambled to their feet and fled through ...
— Andivius Hedulio • Edward Lucas White
... the contrast between herself as a town madam and this piece of the summer country that we all admired so, for she had rather dressed after Ellen that morning as to thinness and scantiness, and went barefoot ...
— News from Nowhere - or An Epoch of Rest, being some chapters from A Utopian Romance • William Morris
... chance, revelled in what he considered ease; that is to say, no two of his garments matched or appeared to have been made in the same century; he wore a flannel shirt, and was inclined to go about barefoot when the ladies were not on deck, and he adorned his ducal forehead with a red worsted cap, price ...
— Doctor Claudius, A True Story • F. Marion Crawford
... no alteration in his manners. He never wore the orarium, a kind of stole then used by bishops, nor other clothes than his usual coarse garb, which was the same in winter and summer. He went sometimes barefoot: he never undressed to take rest, and always rose to prayer before the midnight office. His diet chiefly consisted of pulse and herbs, with which he contented himself, without consulting the palate's gratification by borrowed tastes: but in more advanced years, finding ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler
... are willing to take hard knocks for nothing, but never to sell ribands cheap; that they are ready to go on fervent crusades, to recover the tomb of a buried God, but never on any travels to fulfil the orders of a living one;—that they will go anywhere barefoot to preach their faith, but must be well bribed to practise it, and are perfectly ready to give the Gospel gratis, but never ...
— Selections From the Works of John Ruskin • John Ruskin
... friends might walk, two and two, to the grave; but there must be no prayer uttered. The secret was, that the traditions of the English and Romish Churches must be avoided at all sacrifices. "Doctor," said King James to a Puritan divine, "do you go barefoot because the Papists wear shoes and stockings?" Even the origin of the frequent New-England habit of eating salt fish on Saturday is supposed to have been the fact that Roman ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. September, 1863, No. LXXI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... hid their route from the Camucones in such wise that they were not followed, for they could have easily been overtaken in two strokes of the oar. They betook themselves inland to the mountains, where their sufferings were not abated, for they were barefoot and naked, until they reached the convents of our father St. Francis, where they found hospitable welcome, aid, care, and provision. In their journeyings they reached the shipyard, where a vessel was being built; for it was necessary to get a champan there ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, Volume XXIV, 1630-34 • Various
... had time to parley long. The women with their children, barefoot and ragged, bareheaded and unkempt, started down the mountain, intent on reaching food, while I went up the road wondering how often this scene was to be repeated as I advanced ...
— Ox-Team Days on the Oregon Trail • Ezra Meeker
... smoke or gather a choice selection of profane and vulgar words; he may have smaller feet and better clothes, but he often fails in attaining a healthy body and pure mind and never knows what a royal, wide-open chance for enjoying boyhood days he has missed. He never knows the delight of wading barefoot down a mountain brook where the clear water leaps over mossy ledges and where he can pull trout from every foam-flecked pool! He never realizes the charming suspense of lying upon the grassy bank ...
— Pocket Island - A Story of Country Life in New England • Charles Clark Munn
... that the sloop's movements had been watched from the shore, for although the melancholy waste of moor and mountain disclosed no other habitation, a score of half-naked barefoot figures were gathered on the jetty; while others could be seen hurrying down the hillside. These cried to one another in an unknown tongue, and with shrill eldritch voices, which vied with the screams of the gulls ...
— The Wild Geese • Stanley John Weyman
... bread. Who would believe that I am Sitis, the wife of Job, who was clothed in fine linen woven with gold, that washed her feet in basins of silver and gold, that lay softly and was nurtured in plenty; but now I go barefoot, in rags, and sell my hair for bread. One thing only remains, for my bones are broken with very weariness of spirit. Arise and eat this bread, and satisfy thy hunger, and then speak a word against the Lord, and die; and I shall be freed from my misery and labour, ...
— Old Testament Legends - being stories out of some of the less-known apochryphal - books of the old testament • M. R. James
... much disturbed. He gave Enoch his undershirt, and another boy endowed him with a pair of drawers. With these donations, they got him out of the bushes, and forming a close circle round him, escorted him barefoot and bareheaded to one of the village stores, where he was rigged up—on credit—so that he could go home. There was a great deal of joking, yet the prevalent feeling was one of indignation; and if the two tricksters ...
— When Life Was Young - At the Old Farm in Maine • C. A. Stephens
... were hard at work. But he had minded neither curse nor blow. He had always said to himself, "I am a painter." Whilst camps were soaked with blood and echoing only the trumpets of war, he had only seen the sweet divine smile of Art. He had gone barefoot to Italy for love of it, and had studied, and laboured, and worshipped, and been full of the fever of great effort and content with the sublime peace of conscious power. He had believed in himself: it is much. But it is not all. As ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida
... police of the old regime. They were thus described by a Spanish writer, W. E. Retana, in a note to Ventura F. Lopez's El Filibustero (Madrid, 1893): "Municipal guards, whose duties are principally rural. Their uniform is a disaster; they go barefoot; on horseback, they hold the reins in the right hand and a lance in the left. They are usually good-for-nothing, but to their credit it must be said that they do no damage. Lacking military instruction, provided with fire-arms of the first part of the century, of which one in a hundred ...
— The Social Cancer - A Complete English Version of Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal
... front was tall, erect, powerfully muscled. His features and short-clipped hair were coarse, but self-assured intelligence shone in his smoky eyes. He moved across the loose sand, barefoot, with ...
— Rebels of the Red Planet • Charles Louis Fontenay
... to his entire satisfaction, making it fit to a hair. The Duke's butler himself patronized me, by sending me a coat which was all hair-powder and pomate, to get a new neck put to it. And James Batter, aye a staunch friend of the family, dispatched a barefoot cripple lassie down the close to me, with a brown paper parcel, tied with skinie, and having a memorandum letter sewed on the top of it, and wafered with a wafer. It ran as follows; "Maister Batter has sent down, per the bearer, with his compliments to Mr Wauch, a cuttikin of corduroy, deficient ...
— The Life of Mansie Wauch - Tailor in Dalkeith, written by himself • David Macbeth Moir
... mention of free tickets, but none was made. I was about as anxious to see Dworken's show as I was to walk barefoot across the Mare Imbrium, but I asked with ...
— Show Business • William C. Boyd
... to the old man and his wife; I don't know who it was, and I don't remember their names. They were musicians. In the fine streets they sang hymns, and in the poor streets they sang comic songs. It was cold, to be sure, standing barefoot on the pavement—but I got plenty of halfpence. The people said I was so little it was a shame to send me out, and so I got halfpence. I had bread and apples for supper, and a nice little corner under the staircase, to sleep in. ...
— The Fallen Leaves • Wilkie Collins
... any young ladies, and very few young men, but plenty of rosy, blooming children, who run about barefoot all the year. Besides the Hilo residents, there are some planters' families within seven miles, who come in to sewing circles, church, etc. There is a small class of reprobate white men who have ostracized themselves by ...
— The Hawaiian Archipelago • Isabella L. Bird
... not be sorry to stop at all," Jack said, "for these loose yellow slipper things are horrid for walking in. I have tried going barefoot for a bit, but there are prickly things in the grass and I soon ...
— A Chapter of Adventures • G. A. Henty
... numerous cortege, consisting of a troop of horse in their full equipments, a band of archers with their bows over their shoulders, and a long train of barefoot monks, who had been permitted to attend, set out from the abbey. Behind them came a varlet with a paper mitre on his head, and a lathen crosier in his hand, covered with a surcoat, on which was emblazoned, but torn and reversed, the arms of Paslew; argent, ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... felt free to come and go as he chose. He had always believed and understood and felt that area to be his, and he still held to that old impression. There was not a foot of that six hundred acres that he had not explored alone, with his father, with Dolly Ferrara, season after season. He had gone barefoot over the rocks, dug clams on the beaches, fished trout in the little streams, hunted deer and grouse in the thickets, as far back as he could remember. He had loved the cliffs and the sea, the woods around the Cove with an affection bred in use and occupancy, confirmed by the sense of inviolate ...
— Poor Man's Rock • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... was said to have unjustly taken, and when the dawning light of day brought cooler counsel, swift to send the rest of his murmuring suitors empty away; at another bowing panic-stricken in his chapel before some sudden word of ominous prophecy; or as a pilgrim, barefoot, with staff in hand; or kneeling through the night before a shrine, with scourgings and fastings and tears. His steady sense of order, justice, and government, broken as it was by fits of violent passion, resumed its sway as soon as the storm was over; but the awful wrath which would suddenly ...
— Henry the Second • Mrs. J. R. Green
... aside. From now on it will be stuffy. Those military boots were killing me. I borrowed the rig from one of the pirates, but I'll have to go barefoot." ...
— The Pagan Madonna • Harold MacGrath
... real service to God that one rolls in a bed of thorns, or walks barefoot over sharp stones, or kneels all night on a hard, cold floor? There are so many beautiful things in the world, and God ...
— A Little Girl in Old Quebec • Amanda Millie Douglas
... what manner of fellow he was. For one thing he was huge of size, or so he seemed to me in the half-light. He wore nothing but a shirt and trousers, and I could hear by the flap of his feet on the sand that he was barefoot. ...
— Prester John • John Buchan
... spot beneath the skies When the canker-worms don't rise,— When the dust, that sometimes flies Into your mouth and ears and eyes. In a quiet slumber lies, NOT in the shape of unbaked pies Such as barefoot ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... pinch you if you were wearing them," said Calvert, grimly. "But you are not. Suppose you were? Better wear even Marlitt's shoes than hop about the world barefoot. You are a singularly sensitive young man. I come up-town to offer you Warrington's place, and your reply is ...
— A Young Man in a Hurry - and Other Short Stories • Robert W. Chambers
... the Oaks were awakened by plaster from the ceilings falling on their bed and had barely time to flee for their lives. One singer was seen standing in the street, barefoot, and clad only in his underwear, but clutching a favorite violin which he carried with him in his flight. Rossi, though almost in tears, was heard trying his voice at a corner ...
— Complete Story of the San Francisco Horror • Richard Linthicum
... attractive to one accustomed to country life. Bounding over the ditch which separated it from the common path, he was about to continue his walk along its margin, when his step was arrested by a sound of distress. He looked round and saw a little boy, barefoot and thinly clad, sitting on the ground and weeping bitterly. A little basket, half filled with chips, told what his occupation had been, while his pale face and meagre form were such as to awaken pity in the heart of the most ...
— Watch—Work—Wait - Or, The Orphan's Victory • Sarah A. Myers
... We must cross rivers without bridges; we must fasten our clothes (or rather our "two pieces of cloth") with two pins instead of with a row of buttons; we must wear sandals without stockings (or go barefoot); must warm ourselves over a pot of ashes; judge plays or lawsuits on a cold winter morning sitting in the open air; we must study poetry with very little aid from books, geography without real maps, and politics without newspapers; ...
— A Day In Old Athens • William Stearns Davis
... through the valleys of Shachen and Muotta, across the almost impassable rocks, to Schwyz. The heavy rains rendered the undertaking still more arduous; the Russians, owing to the badness of the road, speedily became barefoot; the provisions were also exhausted. In this wretched state they reached Muotta on the 29th of September and learned the discouraging news of Korsakow's defeat. Massena had already set off in the hope of cutting off Suwarow, but had missed ...
— Germany from the Earliest Period Vol. 4 • Wolfgang Menzel, Trans. Mrs. George Horrocks
... cotton shirts for Sunday, and father his 'fine shirt' to wear to church and for visiting. Your papa was dressed suitably for our station in life—neither better nor worse than the sons of neighbors in our circumstances. As for going barefoot, all country boys at that time did so during the summer months; your papa ...
— The Story of a Summer - Or, Journal Leaves from Chappaqua • Cecilia Cleveland
... tile-roofed house in which the foreman dwelt—an olive- skinned, slightly built, wiry man, with an olive-skinned wife and eight as pretty, fair-haired children as one could wish to see. He usually went barefoot, and his manners were not merely good but distinguished. Corrals and outbuildings were near this big house. On the opposite side of the field stood the row of steep-roofed, palm- thatched huts in which the ordinary ...
— Through the Brazilian Wilderness • Theodore Roosevelt
... kindness I had any claim. Money I had none, and what I then wore comprised my whole stock of movables. I had just lost my shoes, and this loss rendered my stockings of no use. My dignity remonstrated against a barefoot pilgrimage, but to this, necessity now reconciled me. I threw my stockings between the bars of a stable-window, belonging, as I thought, to the mansion I had just left. These, together with my shoes, I left to pay the cost of ...
— Arthur Mervyn - Or, Memoirs of the Year 1793 • Charles Brockden Brown
... carrying iron of a given weight a stipulated distance, an accused person might traverse barefoot a certain space in which nine hot ploughshares were laid lengthwise. To this species of judgment Queen Emma, mother of Edward the Confessor, is alleged to have submitted, when charged with adultery with Alwyn, Bishop of Winchester. The precise ...
— The Customs of Old England • F. J. Snell
... Aesculapius, and where the God was supposed sometimes to appear in person. Here he became professedly a disciple of the sect of Pythagoras. He refrained from animal food, and subsisted entirely on fruits and herbs. He went barefoot, and wore no article of clothing made from the skins of animals. [127] He further imposed on himself a noviciate of five years silence. At the death of his father, he divided his patrimony equally with his brother; and, that brother having ...
— Lives of the Necromancers • William Godwin
... nature that, awaking from sin, could not have been contented with the sober duties of mediocre goodness; that would have plunged into the fiery depths of monkish fanaticism, wrestled with the fiend in the hermitage, or marched barefoot on the infidel with a sackcloth for armor,—the cross for a sword. Now, the impatient desire for redemption took a more mundane direction, but with something that seemed almost spiritual in its fervor. And this enthusiasm flowed through strata of such profound melancholy! Deny it ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... of their slovenly housekeeping, and the women thought her very proud. Once when Mrs. Bergson, on her way to Norway Creek, stopped to see old Mrs. Lee, the old woman hid in the haymow "for fear Mis' Bergson would catch her barefoot." ...
— O Pioneers! • Willa Cather
... Kubayama was a barefoot Japanese fisherman like the others now on the west coast. One morning two Japanese battleships appeared and anchored in the harbor. From the reed-and vegetation covered jungle shore, a sun-dried, brown panga was rowed out by the barefooted fisherman using ...
— Secret Armies - The New Technique of Nazi Warfare • John L. Spivak
... back to where We were youngsters! Meet me there, Dear old barefoot chums, and we Will be as we used to be, Lawless rangers up and down The old ...
— The Second Chance • Nellie L. McClung
... stream which wound at the foot of the craigs, so that to reach it it was necessary to wade knee deep through the water. This was no inconvenience to the lads, all of whom, as was common with their class at the time, were accustomed to go barefoot, although they sometimes wore a sort of sandal. Bushes were cut down, and arbours made capable of containing them. The spot was but a little distance from the foot of the path up the craigs, and any one descending the path could ...
— In Freedom's Cause • G. A. Henty
... planking on wooden sleepers. This device was more than a century old when George Stephenson was born. In some places this had been improved by plating the planks with iron. While the Wylam lad was still a barefoot boy, cast-iron rails were being introduced in Leicestershire, a wheel having been designed with a flange to keep it on the narrow track. Thus the railway was brought to a stage which needed only the application of steam to its motive ...
— Ten Englishmen of the Nineteenth Century • James Richard Joy
... lobbed a novel on to my brother-in-law's back, and withdrew before he had time to retaliate. Then I stepped barefoot downstairs, to perform ...
— Berry And Co. • Dornford Yates
... them frequently within three rods of me. Had it been on cleared land, I should soon have been overtaken by them; but the bushes were so large and thick as frequently to entangle their swords. I was barefoot; and had I worn shoes, they would soon have been lost in the mud. My feet and legs were so badly cut with the oyster shells, that the blood flowed freely; add to this, my head was very painful and swollen, and my shoulder smarted severely. In this manner and direction I ran till the sun about an ...
— Narrative of the shipwreck of the brig Betsey, of Wiscasset, Maine, and murder of five of her crew, by pirates, • Daniel Collins
... vouchsafed after a minute. "Well, I'll tell you what—I haven't got any now, but in a day or two I'll take you over to the village and see what Skinner's got that will fit you. Oh, we'll have some shoes, father, never fear!" he laughed. "You don't suppose I'm going to let my father go barefoot!—eh?" And he laughed again. ...
— Across the Years • Eleanor H. Porter
... bileto. Banker bankiero. Bankrupt bankroto. Bankrupt, to become bankroti. Banner flago, standardo. Banns edzigxanonco. Banquet festeno. Banter moki. Baptism bapto. Baptize bapti. Bar bari. Barbarian barbaro. Barbarism barbarismo. Barber barbiro. Bard bardo. Bare nuda. Barefoot nudpiede. Bargain marcxandi. Barge sxargxbarko. Bark (ship) barko. Bark (of dog) hundobleko, bojo. Bark (of tree) sxelo. Bark (a tree) sensxeligi. Barley hordeo. Barm fecxo. Barn garbejo. Barometer barometro. Baron barono. ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... kept it, alike with the learned—for he had learning—and with the simple, whose simplicity he shared. He had had the knack, in fact, of getting himself accepted on his own terms, exorbitant as they were; and of both rich and poor alike he had demanded entire equality. "Barefoot I stand," had been his proposition, "of level inches with your lordship, or with you, my hedgerow acquaintance. Take me for a man, decently furnished within, or take me not at all. Take me never, at least, for a clothes-horse." In all these things, ...
— Rest Harrow - A Comedy of Resolution • Maurice Hewlett
... might have had a few dollars coming, something else would happen: shoes would be worn out, he'd have to buy new ones for the children couldn't go barefoot in the winter. He himself had to wear heavy boots in the mine in order to work at all, for Clate had to stand in water most of the time when he picked or loaded. Another time the house caught fire and burned up their beds, chairs, everything. ...
— Blue Ridge Country • Jean Thomas
... embraced him, and then the whole gay company began to sing. Later the duchess saw her son whirling madly in the dance with a girl dressed in many colours, who, though beautiful, was undoubtedly only the daughter of a swineherd, for she was barefoot, and kiss her red lips—which indeed no Greylock ought to have done, yet his mother did ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... I suppose your feet has got spread with wearing those old ones; but you should try to use yourself to decent ones, or you'll soon be barefoot; and I do think it was a ...
— Friarswood Post-Office • Charlotte M. Yonge
... my barefoot height against the dormitory wall, and made a deep pencil-mark thereon: which done, I reached up to a great height, and made a mark to represent Radley. After these preliminaries there was nothing to do but to wait developments. One practice which aided growth ...
— Tell England - A Study in a Generation • Ernest Raymond
... was supported by the clergy, these saying they had doubts if the boy was really the son of the elder Haakon and grandson of King Sverre. Such things were not in those days usually settled in courts of law, but by what was called the ordeal, one form of which was to walk barefoot over red-hot irons. If not burned the accused was thought to have proved the justice of ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 9 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality. Scandinavian. • Charles Morris
... patrolling constantly among them and near us on the well deck. The guards wore revolvers and side-arms, but did not appear at all particular in the matter of uniform. Names of various ships appeared on their caps, while some had on their caps only the words "Kaiserliche Marine." Some were barefoot, some wore singlets and shorts, while some even dispensed with the former. Most of the crew at work wore only shorts, and, as one of the lady prisoners remarked, the ship presented a rather unusual exhibition of the European male torso! There ...
— Five Months on a German Raider - Being the Adventures of an Englishman Captured by the 'Wolf' • Frederic George Trayes
... stem, That dew of morning studs with silvery gem. Then every butterfly that crossed our view With joyful shout was greeted as it flew, And moth and lady-bird and beetle bright In sheeny gold were each a wondrous sight. Then as we paddled barefoot, side by side, Among the sunny shallows of the Clyde, Minnows or spotted par with twinkling fin, Swimming in mazy rings the pool within, A thrill of gladness through our bosoms sent Seen in the power ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 3 • Various
... she is able to carry thus a tolerably heavy basket, or a trait (a wooden tray with deep outward sloping sides) containing a weight of from twenty to thirty pounds; and is able to accompany her mother, sister, or cousin on long peddling journeys,—walking barefoot twelve and fifteen miles a day. At sixteen or seventeen she is a tall robust girl,—lithe, vigorous, tough,—all of tendon and hard flesh;—she carries a tray or a basket of the largest size, and a burden ...
— Two Years in the French West Indies • Lafcadio Hearn
... this one, like nearly all spotted animals, showed his weak parts by letting up in his fore-feet, which became contracted to such an extent that the surgeon had to cut them nearly off. We were compelled to let him go barefoot until they grew out. This is one of the spotted mules I have referred to before. You ...
— The Mule - A Treatise On The Breeding, Training, - And Uses To Which He May Be Put • Harvey Riley
... painful subjects. A few rainy days assisted me materially on my journey; but it was to the no small detriment of my boots, the soles of which were better suited to Count Peter than to the poor foot- traveller. I was soon barefoot, and a new purchase must be made. The following morning I commenced an earnest search in a market-place, where a fair was being held; and I saw in one of the booths new and second-hand boots set out for sale. ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors: German (V.2) • Various
... aid was sent a body of Athenians, under the command of Phocion, a friend of Plato, and one of the sternest of Stoics, of whom it was said that no one had ever seen him laugh, weep, or go to the public baths. He went about barefoot, and never wrapped himself up if he could help it, so that it was a saying, "Phocion has got his cloak on; it is a hard winter." He was a great soldier, and, for the time, drove back the Macedonians from ...
— Aunt Charlotte's Stories of Greek History • Charlotte M. Yonge
... you'll see how fine it is to have your stockings held up for you. Hi! Here are some sandals, Bob! Barefoot sandals, only we'll wear them over stockings to-day, since we're going shopping. Now for these blue garments I wonder how they go. Shapeless-looking things, they look to me. I suppose they'll resolve into baggy knickers and the sort of long shirt with a belt to it the youngsters of ...
— Red Pepper Burns • Grace S. Richmond
... world one met Staff-Captains, Staff-Commanders, Staff-Lieutenants, and Secretaries, with Paymasters so senior that they almost ranked with Admirals. There were Warrant Officers, too, who long ago gave up splashing about decks barefoot, and now check and issue stores to the ravenous, untruthful fleets. Said one of these, guarding a collection of desirable things, to a cross between a sick-bay attendant and a junior writer (but he was really an expert burglar), "No! An' you can tell Mr. So-and-so, with my compliments, ...
— Sea Warfare • Rudyard Kipling
... One brother will be civilised and the other a barbarian. I've occasionally met young girls who were so brutally, insolently, wilfully indifferent to the arts which make civilisation that they ought to have been clothed in the skins of wild beasts and gone about barefoot with clubs over their shoulders. Yet they were of polite origin, and their parents were at least respectful of the things that these ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... our cabin. One day we made a cross and carried it in procession for nearly a mile: we sang psalms, and part of the way went barefoot, until we reached the spot where we planted the cross, which was our consolation and our safeguard, as there were in this desert a great number of rattlesnakes and other reptiles no less dangerous. When we left our retreat we would sometimes step upon them and ...
— Memoir • Fr. Vincent de Paul
... all is good," he muttered to himself, "but if I go wandering about in my sooty shoes I will leave black tracks to follow me, so there is nothing to do but e'en to go barefoot." ...
— Otto of the Silver Hand • Howard Pyle
... forces from Kilkenny against the Irish. Several of the inferior chiefs hastened barefoot and with halters round their necks to implore his mercy; but M'Murchad spurned the idea of submission, and boasted that he would extirpate the invaders. He dared not indeed meet them in open combat; but it was his policy ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... A sudden note of passion thrilled in Muriel's voice. She lifted her head sharply. With the tears upon her cheeks she yet spoke with a certain exultation. "I—I would follow him barefoot across the world," she said, "if—if he would only lift one finger to call me. But oh, Daisy,"—her confidence vanished at a breath—"where's the use of talking? He never, ...
— The Way of an Eagle • Ethel M. Dell
... cried: "Bring in now some sheaves of the harvest we win, we lads of the oar and the arrow!" Then was there a stir at the screen doors, and folk pressed forward to see, and, lo, there came forward a string of women, led in by two weaponed carles; and the women were a score in number, and they were barefoot and their hair hung loose and their gowns were ungirt, and they were chained together wrist to wrist; yet had they gold at arm and neck: there was silence in the hall when they stood amidst of ...
— The Story of the Glittering Plain - or the Land of Living Men • William Morris
... happen," she said, with a laugh. "I believe I shall have to do as you children have done, and go barefoot," and she glanced at Sue, who, by this time, had off her shoes ...
— Bunny Brown and His Sister Sue at Christmas Tree Cove • Laura Lee Hope
... mental vision we regard the fruitful results, which, with the aid of God, religious persons—especially the Friars Minor of Observance [56] known as "Discalced" ["barefoot"], of the custodia of St. Gregory in the Philippine Islands of the Western Indias—are zealously gathering by their own toil, as so many workmen in the field of the Lord, busy for the glory of God and the spiritual health of peoples dwelling in those very remote regions ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 - Volume VI, 1583-1588 • Emma Helen Blair
... that he had seen Fritz a few weeks back in perfect health and in the best of spirits, but barefoot and in rags. His trousers were so tattered that he might as well have been without, and Mr. Greyling had provided him with another pair. With unkempt beard and long hair he seemed to justify the jest about a "gorilla" war with which some of our ...
— The Petticoat Commando - Boer Women in Secret Service • Johanna Brandt
... forget that any creature which eats ants is a decided boon to humanity. Ants, besides being wood borers, invaders of pantries, killers of young birds, nuisances to campers and barefoot {109} boys, care for and perpetuate plant lice which infest vegetation in all parts of the country to our very serious loss. Professor Forbes, in his study of the corn plant louse, found that in spring ants mine ...
— The Bird Study Book • Thomas Gilbert Pearson
... movement was angrily reproved. The tension was too great to admit of a touch through any sense. Some, unable to bear the extended strain, sank upon the ground and covered their faces with their hands. But the half-grown children, wan with privations and fever, ragged and barefoot, watched steadily the horse and its rider, their round, gleaming eyes full of wonder ...
— Remember the Alamo • Amelia E. Barr
... the turf presents ample food for the humorist; while the strange contrast of character and countenance affords the man of, feeling and discernment subject for amusement and future contemplation." It was in the midst of one of the most numerous meetings ever remembered at Tattersall's, when Barefoot won the race, contrary to the general expectation of the knowing ones, that we made our entre. With Echo every sporting character was better known than his college tutor, and not a few kept an eye upon the boy, with hopes, no doubt, of ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... "ladders," and sells the privilege of netting them at a dollar the pound. As for the wild fish, we were informed by a sharp boy who volunteered to show us the chalybeate spring, and who guided us through the woods barefoot, making himself ill with "sarvice" berries as he went,—we were instructed by this naturalist that the trout were eaten away from the streams "by the alligators." This we regarded as a sun-myth, or some other form of aboriginal superstition, until we were informed by several of the gravest ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII. No. 31. October, 1873. • Various
... was found, with thick knotted cords round the waist, upon the body of Charles, for he delighted in deeds of mortification. He often used to place pebbles in his shoes, and once walked two leagues barefoot in the snow to visit the relics of St. Ives, in consequence of which he was laid up for three months. He was buried at Guingamp, and his widow and children desired his canonisation; but de Montfort, fearing such a step would render ...
— Brittany & Its Byways • Fanny Bury Palliser
... hunted on the prairies, and speared fish in the neighboring pools. On Easter day, the Sieur le Gros, one of the chief men of the company, went out after the service to shoot snipes; but, as he walked barefoot through the marsh, a snake bit him, and he soon after died. Two men deserted, to starve on the prairie, or to become savages among savages. Others tried to escape, but were caught; and one of them was hung. A knot of desperadoes ...
— France and England in North America, a Series of Historical Narratives, Part Third • Francis Parkman
... then sin must be an unpardonable crime!... Nathan treated David as I treated Rasputin, although both were guilty of the same offense.... He was grossly illiterate,—the only schooling he ever got was in the Monastery Abalaksky and what he acquired from the lips of monks while making his rounds as a barefoot pilgrim from place to place.... His claims of having visions I ascribed to his empty stomach, although others gave credence to the nonsense.... Alice at first abhorred him; finally she began to regard him as a rare specimen in self-hypnosis who was ...
— Rescuing the Czar - Two authentic Diaries arranged and translated • James P. Smythe
... its barrenness. The days of my mortal life were drawing to a close, when I was besought and drawn into wearing the hat which descends every day from bad head to worse.[32] St. Peter and St. Paul came lean and barefoot, getting their bread where they could; but pastors now-a-days must be lifted from the ground, and have ushers going before them, and train-bearers behind them, and ride upon palfreys covered with their spreading mantles, ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Volume 1 • Leigh Hunt
... voluntarily chose it, probably in imitation of St. Patrick, or other saints, who had there dedicated themselves to a penitential state. They usually spent several days here, living on bread and water, lying on rushes, praying and making stations barefoot." ...
— Purgatory • Mary Anne Madden Sadlier
... had left behind me up the newly whitened steps. The passing people elbowed and jostled them, but their confounded intelligence was arrested. 'Thud, thud, thud, when, thud, shall we see, thud, his face, thud, thud.' 'There's a barefoot man gone up them steps, or I don't know nothing,' said one. 'And he ain't never come down again. And his ...
— The Invisible Man • H. G. Wells
... this fortune was Jay Gould, father of the present holding generation. He was the son of a farmer in Delaware County, New York, and was born in 1836. As a child his lot was to do various chores on his father's farm. In driving the cows he had to go barefoot, perforce, by reason of poverty, and often thistles bruised his feet—a trial which seems to have left such a poignant and indelible impression upon his mind that when testifying before a United States Senate investigating committee forty years later he pathetically ...
— Great Fortunes from Railroads • Gustavus Myers
... astonished, my girl, to see you poor and in rags, clothed like a fagot, running barefoot about the fields on the Sabbath, when you carry about you more treasures than you could dig up in the grounds of the abbey. Do not the townspeople pursue, and torment you ...
— Droll Stories, Complete - Collected From The Abbeys Of Touraine • Honore de Balzac
... duties; he did not leave the house even after dinner and right into the night was scribbling and copying out his report to his superior officer, mercilessly disregarding the rules of spelling, always putting an exclamation mark after the word but and a semi-colon after however. Next morning a barefoot Jewish boy in a tattered gown brought him a letter from Emilie—the first letter that Kuzma Vassilyevitch had received ...
— Knock, Knock, Knock and Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... street walked the three little rag-pedlers; and it did seem as if they were met by all the people in town, from the minister down to the barefoot boys going fishing. At last they arrived ...
— Dotty Dimple's Flyaway • Sophie May
... barefoot scamp, both mean and sly, Soon after chanced this Dove to spy; And, being arm'd with bow and arrow, The hungry codger doubted not The bird of Venus, in his pot, Would make a soup before the morrow. Just ...
— The Talking Beasts • Various
... to have de frolic with de fiddle or banjo or windjammer. Dey dances out on de grass, forty or fifty niggers, and dem big gals nineteen year old git out dere barefoot as de goose. It jes' de habit of de times, 'cause dey all have shoes. Sometimes dey call de jig dance and some of dem sho' dance it, too. De prompter call, 'All git ready.' Den he holler, 'All balance,' and den he sing out, 'Swing you pardner,' ...
— Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves. - Texas Narratives, Part 2 • Works Projects Administration
... Behold! A barefoot wretch went by With slingshot in his hand. Said he: "You'll make a pigeon pie That will be kind of grand." He meant to murder the gentle bird— Who ...
— Fables in Rhyme for Little Folks - From the French of La Fontaine • Jean de La Fontaine
... pitch me i' the mire, 5 Nor lead me, like a firebrand, in the dark Out of my way, unless he bid 'em: but For every trifle are they set upon me; Sometime like apes, that mow and chatter at me, And after bite me; then like hedgehogs, which 10 Lie tumbling in my barefoot way, and mount Their pricks at my footfall; sometime am I All wound with adders, who with cloven tongues Do hiss me ...
— The Tempest - The Works of William Shakespeare [Cambridge Edition] [9 vols.] • William Shakespeare
... under the same head. Heresy was to be destroyed throughout England: Sir Francis Drake was singled out for special vengeance. The Queen was to be taken alive, at all costs: she was to be sent prisoner over the Alps to Rome, there to make her humble petition to the Pope, barefoot and prostrate, that England might be re-admitted to communion with the Holy See. Did Philip imagine that any amount of humiliation or coercion would have wrung such words as these from the ...
— Clare Avery - A Story of the Spanish Armada • Emily Sarah Holt
... the fall before the little girl's thirteenth birthday, and she was wearing her hair in a braid and her dresses to her shoe-tops. That summer, for the first time in her life, she had not gone barefoot. She had also taken to riding a side-saddle with a red plush seat. When her mother, therefore, suggested that the trip would be a hard one, that the post was a rough place, and that, since the colonel's family had gone to a new ...
— The Biography of a Prairie Girl • Eleanor Gates
... suppose I care about Tom Pearce? I can whisper a few words in his ear that will take some of the starch out of him! He's been mighty uppish about you, although he's let you run round the beach barefoot these ...
— The Dock Rats of New York • "Old Sleuth"
... if he makes Nicolette his mistress. A creature wholly of affection and the senses, he sees on the way to paradise only a feeble company of aged priests, "clinging day and night to the chapel altars," barefoot or in patched sandals. With or even without Nicolette, "his sweet mistress whom he so much loves," he, for his part, is ready to start on the way to hell, along with "the good scholars," as he says, and the actors, and the ...
— The Renaissance - Studies in Art and Poetry • Walter Pater
... said Mrs. Linnet, who also had her spectacles on, but chiefly for the purpose of seeing what the others were doing, 'there didn't want much to drive people away from a religion as makes 'em walk barefoot over stone floors, like that girl in Father Clement—sending the blood up to the head frightful. Anybody might see that was an ...
— Scenes of Clerical Life • George Eliot
... to find themselves once more on land. Rosette thanked the good man warmly. She accepted the offer of his cloak, and having wrapped herself in it walked barefoot to his hut. There he lit a little fire of dry straw, and took from a chest his dead wife's best dress, with a pair of stockings and shoes, which the princess put on. Clad thus in peasant's attire, with Frillikin gambolling ...
— Old-Time Stories • Charles Perrault
... let them grow big and black, when the young fellows go into the trees with long reeds and shake them down on the grass for the women to collect—a pretty sight which your Excellency must see some day: the grey trees with the brown, barefoot lads craning, balanced in the branches, and the turquoise sea as background just beneath.... That sea of ours—it is all along of it that I wish to ask for money. Looking up from my desk, I see the ...
— Hauntings • Vernon Lee
... Francis with that of the Indians, which is born of laziness and full of greed; for theirs is the infamous poverty which Virgil places in hell: et turpis egestas. [257] And just as the economy of a poor wretch is not reckoned as fasting, so it will not be proper to say that if St. Antony [258] went barefoot, the Indians do the same; and that they live on certain roots, as did the fathers of the Thebaid. [259] For the fasting and the austerities of St. Arsenius [260] had a different impelling motive—since he left the pleasures and esteem of the court of the emperor Theodosius [261]—than ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 - Volume 40 of 55 • Francisco Colin
... began going barefoot last summer and he's only four," she stated briefly, proceeding towards the ...
— The Bent Twig • Dorothy Canfield
... three miles off, had borrowed from a still more distant neighbor, a book of great interest. I started off, barefoot, in the snow, to obtain the treasure. There were spots of bare ground, upon which I would stop to warm my feet. And there were also, along the road, occasional lengths of log fence from which the snow had melted, and upon ...
— Eclectic School Readings: Stories from Life • Orison Swett Marden
... guided his horses, and saw an evenly furrow turned up by the share, his thoughts were on other themes; he was straying in haunted glens, when spirits have power—looking in fancy on the lasses "skelping barefoot," in silks and in scarlets, to a field-preaching—walking in imagination with the rosy widow, who on Halloween ventured to dip her left sleeve in the burn, where three lairds' lands met—making the "bottle ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... further off in the lake, and covered with water, called Lachavanny: this is esteemed of singular virtue; standing thereon healeth pilgrims' feet, bleeding as they are with cuts and bruises got in going barefoot round the ...
— The Station; The Party Fight And Funeral; The Lough Derg Pilgrim • William Carleton
... them, because their feet were bare, whereas the poorest children in my native Carlisle have wonderfully nice shoes, bound in brass. But all the Scot—and perhaps the crofter—rose in Sir S. when I mourned over the little dusty feet. "Do you think they go barefoot because they've no shoes?" he asked. "You're wrong. You don't know your own country-folk yet. They've as good shoes as those Carlisle kids, and better, maybe. It's because they don't like the feel of the shoes when they play, and they're saving them for Sundays. I did the ...
— The Heather-Moon • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... little voice on the platform. A barefoot girl, wearing a sunbonnet, passed under the car windows, holding up a basket full, that shone like great black beads. A gentleman who had just helped two ladies to alight from the steps of a parlor car called to her and began to fumble in his ...
— Big Brother • Annie Fellows-Johnston
... their course. This, in its turn, was followed by light winds and fair weather, with a sun so hot that the pitch began to melt and bubble out of the deck seams, so that the mariners, who had hitherto been going about their duty barefoot, were fain to don shoes to save their feet from being blistered. Finally, after a voyage of twenty-four days, they came to the Azores, where they remained four days, filling up their fresh water, replenishing their stock of wood, and taking in a bounteous supply of vegetables and fruit, ...
— Two Gallant Sons of Devon - A Tale of the Days of Queen Bess • Harry Collingwood
... an aged Hermit go by him barefoot, Father, says he, you are in a very miserable Condition if there is not another World. True, Son, said the Hermit; but what is thy Condition if there is? Man is a Creature designed for two different States of ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... representing the upper hierarchy of the angelic host. The other angels, not upon wheels, no doubt belong to the second hierarchy; while those that have but one pair of wings (not three) represent the lowest hierarchy. "All, like our Lord, are barefoot. All of them have their hands lifted in prayer.... For every lover of English heraldry this cope, so plentifully blazoned with armorial bearings, will have a special value, equal to that belonging to many an ancient roll of arms." The orphrey, morse and hem contain the arms of Warwick, Castile ...
— Needlework As Art • Marian Alford
... knew, or nobody did. And was not her aspect a benign proof of the observation? But thy these wamblings in thy cursed gizzard, and thy awkward grimaces, I see thou'rt but a novice in it yet!—Ah, Belford, Belford, thou hast a confounded parcel of briers and thorns to trample over barefoot, before religion will illuminate ...
— Clarissa Harlowe, Volume 9 (of 9) - The History Of A Young Lady • Samuel Richardson
... of the spray that now and again came spattering over the derelict, the heat had been conducted throughout the craft. Not having thought of the possibility of a heated metal deck, Eric was barefoot. Of what use was it for him to be on board unless he could find out whether any one were there! The decks were empty. The steamer had sunk too deep for any one to be below, and live. There was only one place in which a ...
— The Boy With the U. S. Life-Savers • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... leaving his shoes at the church door. The infidel fool is always represented in twelfth and thirteenth century MS. as barefoot—the Christian having "his feet shod with the preparation of the Gospel of Peace." Compare "How beautiful are thy feet with shoes, ...
— Our Fathers Have Told Us - Part I. The Bible of Amiens • John Ruskin
... blinders of our civilization. Fortunate in that respect. And they never have had a shoe on their feet. Their feet are perfect, firm and sound, strong and healthy and elastic; natural, like those of the Indians, who run barefoot, who go over the rough places of the wilds as easily as these horses can run up the stairs or over the cobble stones of the pavement if they were turned ...
— Our Boys - Entertaining Stories by Popular Authors • Various
... have done my last inch. For the last four hours I felt as if walking upon hot irons, so sore are my feet; and indeed, I could not have travelled at all, if I had not taken your advice and gone barefoot." ...
— Saint Bartholomew's Eve - A Tale of the Huguenot WarS • G. A. Henty
... child," she said to herself, "to be walking about barefoot this time of night? She'll get her death of cold;" and she put down her work and went up stairs, intending to administer a sisterly lecture. To her surprise, Faithful was fast asleep in bed, and no other living creature ...
— Not Pretty, But Precious • John Hay, et al.
... her if she walked barefoot over red-hot ploughshares, for the pain she would suffer would be slight indeed compared to that which she must feel when, with a smile on her lips, she leaves her own youth behind and enters the regions of despair we call "growing old," and ...
— The Dangerous Age • Karin Michaelis
... drive on, had evidently forgotten all about it. She stood in the little dell which the stream had made, Walter in her arms—her figure thrown back, so as to poise the child's weight. Her right hand kept firm hold of Guy, who was paddling barefoot in the stream: Edwin, the only one of the boys who never gave any trouble, was soberly ...
— John Halifax, Gentleman • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
... Winchester, but carried his rigour against her no farther. The stories of his accusing her of a participation in her son Alfred's murder, and of a criminal correspondence with the Bishop of Winchester, and also of her justifying herself by treading barefoot, without receiving any hurt, over nine burning ploughshares, were the inventions of the monkish historians, and were propagated and believed from the silly wonder of posterity [b]. [FN [a] Anglia Sacra, vol. i. p. 237. [b] ...
— The History of England, Volume I • David Hume
... tribute to Charles Frohman was the most remarkable demonstration of sorrow in the history of the theater. The one-time barefoot boy of Sandusky, Ohio, who had projected so many people into eminence and who had himself hidden behind the rampart of his own activities, was ...
— Charles Frohman: Manager and Man • Isaac Frederick Marcosson and Daniel Frohman
... I have to say is that they must have very optimistic thermometers. I just wish some of these poor little seashore boys could have a chance to try the Old Swimming-hole up above the dam. Certainly along about early going-barefoot time the water is a little cool, but you take it in the middle of August—ah, I tell you! When you come out of the water then you don't have to run up and down to get your blood in circulation or pile the warm sand on yourself or hunt for the ...
— Back Home • Eugene Wood
... let me be Young once more and fancy free; Let me wander where I will, Down the lane and up the hill, Trudging barefoot in the dust In an age that knows no "must," And no voice insistently Speaks of duty unto me; Let me tread the happy ...
— When Day is Done • Edgar A. Guest
... be changed to a slow tempo without destroying their force. Instances: The Patrick Henry speech on page 110, and the following passage from Whittier's "Barefoot Boy." ...
— The Art of Public Speaking • Dale Carnagey (AKA Dale Carnegie) and J. Berg Esenwein
... And you ought to have a hole in your hat instead of that grand black feather. And—oh, good gracious!—what funny boots! I never saw anything like them—all shiny, and with such pointed toes. How can you walk in them? I as often as not go barefoot all day long; but then I am a wild thing, a changeling, and I suppose, after ...
— A Modern Tomboy - A Story for Girls • L. T. Meade |
