"Naked" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the army. Heaven knows what accounts were circulated of the Russians, who, as Bonaparte solemnly stated in his proclamation, had come from the extremity of the world. They were represented as half-naked savages, pillaging, destroying and burning wherever they went. It was even asserted that they were cannibals, and had been seen to eat children. In short, at that period was introduced the denomination of ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne
... country, where their labor is a source of immense gain, and a power to control the markets of the world, and send them to a land of ignorance, idolatry, and indolence, which was the home of their forefathers, but not theirs? Slavery is a blessing. Were they not in their ancestral land naked, scarcely lifted above brutes, ignorant of the course of the sun, controlled by nature? And in their new abode have they not been taught to know the difference of the seasons, to plough, and plant, and reap, to drive oxen, to tame the horse, to ...
— Our American Holidays: Lincoln's Birthday • Various
... subdued, and Numbers of our Natives have distinguish'd themselves, by their Skill in different Arts and Handicrafts, but till this Humour wears off, of slighting whatever is wrought at Home, it were better they had learn'd to Fast than to Work. We keep Crowds of our Artificers naked who well-deserve to be cloathed; many are as ill hutted as so many Greenlanders or Russian Peasants, who ought to be well housed, if any one thought them worth taking Care of and Encouraging. But what is still ...
— A Dialogue Between Dean Swift and Tho. Prior, Esq. • Anonymous
... ugly, even the mother was forced to admit that to herself, though she only said it was 'large' and 'strong.' 'You won't need any teaching when you are once in the water,' she told him, with a glance of surprise at the dull brown which covered his back, and at his long naked neck. And indeed he did not, though he was not half so pretty to look at as the little yellow ...
— The Orange Fairy Book • Andrew Lang
... awful weeks I have faced the primeval. God stripped me naked—naked as Adam, and like him, left me alone. In my hunger I cried out; in my weakness I prayed. No answer—nothing but silence—horrible, overpowering silence. Then in my despair I began to curse—to strike the trees with ...
— Homo - 1909 • F. Hopkinson Smith
... wish for a telescope, by means of which I might be able to see a little more than with my naked eyes. But I found that I could not get anything of much use, short of 20L. I could not for a long time feel justified in spending so much money for my own personal enjoyment. My children were then young and dependent upon me. They required to attend ...
— Men of Invention and Industry • Samuel Smiles
... to forgive him, till he should have been so forced, would be weak and injurious to the community. As to that, he had quite made up his mind, in spite of all doctrine to the contrary. Men in this world would have to go naked if they gave their coats to the robbers who took their cloaks; and going naked is manifestly inexpedient. His office of parish priest would be lowered in the world if he forgave, out of hand, such offences as these which had been committed against him ...
— The Vicar of Bullhampton • Anthony Trollope
... slave hard to sell, maybe couldn' be sold, 'cause when a man went to buy a slave he would make him strip naked and look him over for whip marks and other blemish, jus' like dey would a horse. But even if it done damage to de sale to whip him, dey done it, 'cause dey figgered, kill a nigger, breed another—kill ...
— Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves. - Texas Narratives, Part 2 • Works Projects Administration
... same power of lifting us up fur above the world and settin' down our naked souls in the presence of Him who searcheth the heart, searchin' and probin' to our consciences, and yet consolin', puttin' us in mind of that text, "As a father pitieth his children" and yet wants 'em to mind. It wuz a prayer ...
— Samantha at Coney Island - and a Thousand Other Islands • Marietta Holley
... Augustine, down, theologians have tried to compel people to accept their special interpretation of the Scripture, and the tortures of the inquisition, the rack, the thumb-screw, the stake, the persecutions of witchcraft, the whipping of naked women through the streets of Boston, banishment, trials for heresy, the halter about Garrison's neck, Lovejoy's death, the branding of Captain Walker, shouts of infidel and atheist, have all been ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... The bridge is snapped. Years will not repair the fearful ravage. The evening sun sets on a desolate waste. Men sit along the road-side wringing their hands beside their ruined crops. Children creep out upon their naked feet, and look and wonder. Where is the little kid that ran before and licked their hands? Where is the gray-skinned, soft-eyed cow that hardly needed a cord to lead her? The shapely cob, so brave with its tinkling bells and crimson tassels? The cob that daddy drove to ...
— The Italians • Frances Elliot
... of these statues, white as snow, and looking just like life. And they were all naked, with never a rag to cover them, but for all that one could look at them, as calm and pure as on the face of God. For they were so beautiful that one could think of nothing but the sacred beauty God has given to the human form. ...
— The Song Of The Blood-Red Flower • Johannes Linnankoski
... are very good examples of the skill with which he could present a complicated subject in a simple form, the subject seeming to unroll itself by the force of its own naked logic, and carrying conviction the further through the simplicity of its presentation. Indeed, an unfriendly critic once paid him an unintended compliment, when trying to make out that he was no great speaker; that all he did was to set some interesting theory unadorned ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 2 • Leonard Huxley
... They have a wonderful grace, wonderful sweetness, and wonderful humour, and the chastity of the writer enhances its charm. When he is told that the bathing hour has come—which is the ninth hour in winter and the eighth in summer—he takes a walk naked in the sun, if there is no wind. Then he plays at ball for a long spell, throwing himself heartily into the game, for it is by means of this kind of active exercise that he battles with old age. After his bath he lies down and waits a ...
— The Letters of the Younger Pliny - Title: The Letters of Pliny the Younger - - Series 1, Volume 1 • Pliny the Younger
... above whose guilty head, Suspended by a thread, The naked sword is hung for evermore, Not feasts Sicilian shall With all their cates recall That zest the simplest fare could once inspire; Nor song of birds, nor music of the lyre Shall his lost sleep restore: But gentle sleep shuns not The rustic's lowly cot, Nor mossy ...
— Horace • Theodore Martin
... her on. Ruth spoke not; but the negro, with one grasp Upon the white man, caused her quick release. He turned, and in the face struck Karagwe. The patient slave did not return the blow, But the next day they tied him to a post, And fifty stripes his naked shoulders flayed. Stricken in mind at being deeply wronged, Filled with a noble scorn, that men most learned Would so degrade a brother race of men, He wept at heart; no groan ...
— Stories in Verse • Henry Abbey
... In any event, it is present at the dance, and thus consecrates an unique orgy, not Rubens' "Kermesse" in the open air, racy and healthy, but a nocturnal boulevard-jollification, a "Mardi-gras" composed of lean and haggard scapegraces.—In the great nave of the Cathedral, "the dancers, almost naked, with bare necks and breasts, and stockings down at the heel," writhe and stamp, "howling the carmagnole." In the side chapels, which are "shut off by high tapestries, prostitutes with shrill voices" pursue their avocation.[3222]—To ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 4 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 3 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... holding the box, tied with great bunches of red ribbon, in her hand. She scorned to put a brown-paper cover over it; she would take it in all its naked glory into the ...
— Light O' The Morning • L. T. Meade
... killing the bear they had to take the greatest care lest they hurt the child, as the bear seemed in its ferocity to think more of defending the child from them than of saving its own life. The child when rescued was perfectly naked, yet was fat and healthy, and cried bitterly when taken away from the warm den and the body of the dead bear that it ...
— Three Boys in the Wild North Land • Egerton Ryerson Young
... of whom he would never have allowed to enter his house. He was jealous of what he really loved. To him, it would have been a real and keen suffering to see his marble Aphrodite set up in a hall of the Louvre, to be admired in her naked perfection by every passing tourist, criticised and compared with famous living models by loose-talking art students, and furtively examined by prurient and disapproving old maids from distant countries. He prized her, ...
— Fair Margaret - A Portrait • Francis Marion Crawford
... space of half a mile with pitiful entreaties. But the age is one of incredulity; these superstitious decorations speedily fell off; and the facts of the story itself, like the bones of a giant buried there and half dug up, survived, naked and imperfect, in the memory of the scattered neighbours. To this day, of winter nights, when the sleet is on the window and the cattle are quiet in the byre, there will be told again, amid the silence of the young and the additions ...
— Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... here and there relieved the eye; a few holly-bushes, singly and in groups, proudly displayed their bright dark leaves and red berries; and one unrivalled hemlock, on the west, threw its graceful shadow quite across the lawn, on which, as on itself, the white chimney-tops, and the naked branches of oaks and elms, was the faint ...
— The Wide, Wide World • Elizabeth Wetherell
... By his more happy absence, what then did he? Not check his wicked thoughts; no, now new deeds, (Mischief doth ever end where it begins) An act of horror, fathers! he dragg'd forth The aged gentleman that had there lain bed-rid Three years and more, out of his innocent couch, Naked upon the floor, there left him; wounded His servant in the face: and, with this strumpet The stale to his forged practice, who was glad To be so active,—(I shall here desire Your fatherhoods to note but my collections, As most remarkable,—) thought ...
— Volpone; Or, The Fox • Ben Jonson
... threatenings, pleading the cause of those who are ready to perish. Let me urge every one to buy the books written on this subject; read them, and lend them to your neighbors. Give your money no longer for things which pander to pride and lust, but aid in scattering "the living coals of truth upon the naked heart of the nation"; in circulating appeals to the sympathies of Christians in behalf ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... undo, destroy, melt. deshielo thaw. deshonrar to dishonor. desierto desert. designar to designate. deslenguado free-tongued, loquacious. deslizar to slip, glide. deslucir to dim, tarnish, obscure. desmantelado ruined. desmoronar to destroy, demolish. desnudar to strip. desnudo naked, bare. desoir not to hear or heed. despachar to dispatch, despatch, make haste, sell. despacho office. despacio slowly. desparpajo pertness. desparramar to spread. despavorido frightened. despedazar to tear to pieces. despedida ...
— Novelas Cortas • Pedro Antonio de Alarcon
... plate-glass observation-window at the rear end, watching the surge and ripple of the ties crowded back behind them, and, it is believed, making notes of the scenery. Cheyne moved nervously between his own extravagant gorgeousness and the naked necessity of the combination, an unlit cigar in his teeth, till the pitying crews forgot that he was their tribal enemy, and did ...
— "Captains Courageous" • Rudyard Kipling
... nose broad and flat, slightly elevated towards the root; the muzzle broad, and prominent lips and chin, with scattered gray hairs; the under lip highly mobile, and capable of great elongation when the animal is enraged, then hanging over the chin; skin of the face and ears naked, and of a dark ...
— Lectures and Essays • T.H. Huxley
... left. Then shall the King say unto them on his right hand, 'Come, ye blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world: for I was hungry, and ye gave me to eat; I was thirsty, and ye gave me drink; I was a stranger, and ye took me in; naked, and ye clothed me; I was sick, and ye visited me; I was in prison, ...
— His Last Week - The Story of the Passion and Resurrection of Jesus • William E. Barton
... to go naked, would she order a garment from her of any description whatever. And the friends she had sent to her as customers! Why, half the woman's trade was owing to ...
— Winding Paths • Gertrude Page
... were watched with unutterable amazement and awe by a multitude of men, women, and children of cinnamon hue, different from any kind of people the Spaniards had ever seen. All were stark naked and most of them were more or less greased and painted. They thought that the ships were sea-monsters and the white men supernatural creatures descended from the sky.[518] At first they fled in terror as these formidable ...
— The Discovery of America Vol. 1 (of 2) - with some account of Ancient America and the Spanish Conquest • John Fiske
... head of the group, and serves as a sort of vanguard, and is, perhaps, the most dangerous of all. A gloomy collection of black rocks, full of crevices worn by the action of the winds, the waters, and the tempests, it does not nourish a single plant; not an atom of soil adheres to its surface; it is naked and barren; its steep sides bristle with cockle ...
— Two Festivals • Eliza Lee Follen
... place. He accepts as genuine the two added volumes of the Sentimental Journey and the Koran, though he admits that the former were published by a friend, not "without additions of his own," and he uses these volumes directly at least in one instance in establishing his parallels, the rescue of the naked woman from the fire in the third volume of the Journey, and the similar rescue from the waters in the "Nachlass des Diogenes."[34] That Sterne had any connection with these volumes is improbable, and the Koran is surely a pure fabrication. Behmer seeks in ...
— Laurence Sterne in Germany • Harvey Waterman Thayer
... observance of the visible letter. But now, as if they were living by themselves in a desert, and were souls without bodies, and knew nothing of city or village or house or intercourse with men, they despise all that seems valuable to the many, and search for bare and naked truth as it is in itself. Such people the sacred Scripture teaches to give good heed to a good reputation, and to abolish none of those customs which greater and more inspired men than we instituted in the past. For, because the seventh day teaches us symbolically ...
— Philo-Judaeus of Alexandria • Norman Bentwich
... in which the ingredients of granite are blended into a finely granular mass, mica being usually absent, and, when present, in such minute flakes as to be invisible to the naked eye. It is sometimes called FELDSTONE, and when the crystals of feldspar are conspicuous it becomes FELDSPAR PORPHYRY. All these and other varieties of granite pass into certain kinds of trap— a circumstance which affords one of many arguments in favour ...
— The Student's Elements of Geology • Sir Charles Lyell
... suggested that the inability of so many teachers to live up to the spirit, or even to the letter, of my primary "truism," may be due to its having too much evidence for them, to their being blinded by the naked light of its truth. ...
— What Is and What Might Be - A Study of Education in General and Elementary Education in Particular • Edmond Holmes
... coot and hern I come, I come! ye have called me long I knew an old wife lean and poor I lov'd a lass, a fair one I'm lonesome since I cross'd the hill I'm sitting on the stile, Mary In going to my naked bed In good King Charles's golden days In her ear he whispered gaily In the merry month of May In Wakefield there lives a jolly pinder I sprang to the stirrup, and Joris, and he Is there for honest poverty I tell thee, Dick, where I have been ...
— English Songs and Ballads • Various
... would seem that there can be true virtue without charity. For it is proper to virtue to produce a good act. Now those who have not charity, do some good actions, as when they clothe the naked, or feed the hungry and so forth. Therefore true virtue is ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... Naked and starved, they often fall victims to the inclemencies of the weather, and inhumanly beaten; sacrifices to the turbulent ...
— Anti-Slavery Opinions before the Year 1800 - Read before the Cincinnati Literary Club, November 16, 1872 • William Frederick Poole
... flames rose so high that we could see figures moving in the light of them. And wild enough figures they were—half naked fellows, taller than ordinary men, and waving ...
— Swept Out to Sea - Clint Webb Among the Whalers • W. Bertram Foster
... themselves, the allies took the clothes and jewels. At this Kimon was thought to have made a most ridiculous division of the spoil, as the allies went swaggering about with gold bracelets, armlets, and necklaces, dressed in Median robes of rich purple, while the Athenians possessed only the naked bodies of men who were very unfit for labour. Shortly afterwards, however, the friends and relations of the captives came down to the Athenian camp from Phrygia and Lydia, and ransomed each of them for great sums of money, so that Kimon ...
— Plutarch's Lives, Volume II • Aubrey Stewart & George Long
... traditions to which her name is appended. She has repeated to the grown man the tales she had told to the child thirty years before; nor has her narration lost a shade of the old sincerity, vivacity, and grace. The reader will only find the cold and naked words; but Messia's narration consists, more than in words, in the restless movement of the eyes, in the waving of the arms, in the gestures of the whole person, which rises, walks around the room, bends, and is again uplifted, making her voice now soft, now ...
— The Science of Fairy Tales - An Inquiry into Fairy Mythology • Edwin Sidney Hartland
... her was little short of aversion. "Some time or other," he said, "I will tell you why I feel thus towards her." A few days after, when they were bathing together in the Gulf of Lepanto, pointing to his naked ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Letters and Journals, Vol. 1 • Lord Byron, Edited by Rowland E. Prothero
... ground, ducks, swans, geese ... with as many strange beasts as it will have been possible to secure." But truth absolute was observed when the state of innocence had to be represented: "Now must Adam rise all naked and look round with an air of admiration and wonder."[796] Beholders doubtless returned his wonder and admiration. In the Chester Mysteries a practical recommendation is made to the actors who personate the first couple: "Adam and Eve shall stande nakede, and shall not be ashamed."[797] ...
— A Literary History of the English People - From the Origins to the Renaissance • Jean Jules Jusserand
... number of Latin words; but assimilated them to the Celtic mold so that you would never recognise them; whereas in a page of English the Latin borrowings stand out by the score. Look at that ascend, for instance: Latin ascendere parading itself naked and unashamed, and making no pretense whatever to be anything else. You shall find ascendere, too, on any page of Welsh; or rather, you shall not find him, by reason of his skillful camouflage. He has cut off his train, as ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris
... group—that simper and look askance at the mirrors and wonder, with infinity of interest, "how that one geranium leaf does look;" this shrivelling up of man's moral dignity, until it is no more observable with the naked eye; this taking of a woman's heart, that God meant should be filled with all amenities, and compressing it until all the fragrance, and simplicity, and artlessness are squeezed out of it; this inquisition of a small shoe; this agony of tight lacing; this wrapping up ...
— The Abominations of Modern Society • Rev. T. De Witt Talmage
... fell from the lofty tower, and life deserted his bones. Teucer likewise with a shaft wounded Glaucus, the brave son of Hippolochus, as he was rushing on, against the lofty wall, in a part where he perceived his arm naked; and made him cease from combat. But he sprang back from the wall, concealing himself, that none of the Greeks might perceive him wounded, and insult him with words. Then grief came upon Sarpedon on account of Glaucus departing, ...
— The Iliad of Homer (1873) • Homer
... a narrow gorge which is cut into the bottom of the main canyon, determined to take earnest exercise next day. No plushy boughs did my ill-behaved bones enjoy that night, nor did my bumped head get a spicy cedar plume pillow mixed with flowers. I slept on a naked boulder, and when I awoke all ...
— Steep Trails • John Muir
... themselves that they reserve the choicest of their indignation. A man may naturally disclaim all moral kinship with the Reverend Mr. Zola or the hobgoblin old lady of the dolls; for these are gross and naked instances. And yet in each of us some similar element resides. The sight of a pleasure in which we cannot or else will not share moves us to a particular impatience. It may be because we are envious, or because we are sad, or because we dislike noise and ...
— Across The Plains • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Snawdor, "she's got to have her perfumery, an' her feather in her hat, an' the whitewash on her face, no matter if Dan's feet are on the groun', an' his naked hide shinin' ...
— Calvary Alley • Alice Hegan Rice
... contended with the odious. During my residence in this town, the holy office had to busy itself about a pretended sorceress; it doomed her to go through all quarters of the town astride on an ass, her face turned towards the tail, and naked down to the waist. Merely to observe the commonest rules of decency, the poor woman had been plastered with a sticky substance, partly honey, they told me, to which adhered an enormous quantity of little feathers, so that to say the truth, the victim resembled a fowl ...
— Biographies of Distinguished Scientific Men • Francois Arago
... as I sprang down I heard behind me fiendish yells and the clambering of many feet. In an instant I recognised it as the savage war cry of the Dagombas, and next second a hundred half-naked blacks, looking veritable fiends in the red glare, swept down headlong to the spot where I stood and, headed by Kona brandishing his spear, dashed straight upon the defenders. The effect of this was to cause the others to spring forward as reinforcements, ...
— The Great White Queen - A Tale of Treasure and Treason • William Le Queux
... are, madam," answered Varney. "I pretend not to be a champion of that same naked virtue called truth, to the very outrance. I can consent that her charms be hidden with a veil, were it but for decency's sake. But you must think lower of my head and heart than is due to one whom my ...
— Kenilworth • Sir Walter Scott
... this whole interior of the Seward Peninsula, uninhabited and unfit for habitation; a country of naked rock and bare hillside and desolate, barren valley, without amenities of any kind and cursed with ...
— Ten Thousand Miles with a Dog Sled - A Narrative of Winter Travel in Interior Alaska • Hudson Stuck
... o'clock, the combatants entered the lists, attended by their four seconds and the umpire of the field. Fougas, naked to the waist, was as handsome as a young god. His lithe and agile figure, his proud and radiant features, the manly grace of his movements, assured him a flattering reception. He made his English horse caper, and saluted the lookers-on with ...
— The Man With The Broken Ear • Edmond About
... revolver from under the pillow, a mechanical arrangement, a memory of his Indian life in the midst of untrusted subordinates, the officer seized in his left hand the Sikh tulwar, which was his own "property saber" of Thibetan royalty. Its naked, wedge-shaped blade was as keen as ...
— A Fascinating Traitor • Richard Henry Savage
... long winter sleep. Already caravans were astir, and we passed lines of laden camels now almost at the end of the long journey from Outer Mongolia, whither we were bound. But, instead of splendid beasts with upstanding humps and full neck beards, the camels now were pathetic mountains of almost naked skin on which the winter hair hung in ragged patches. The humps were loose and flat and flapped disconsolately as the great ...
— Across Mongolian Plains - A Naturalist's Account of China's 'Great Northwest' • Roy Chapman Andrews
... daylight ceased to make its way through the thickly intwined branches of trees and climbing vines, great torches would be lighted, and by their fitful glare the soldiers and sailors worked on in the water and mud. The light glared from the furnaces of the steamers, lighting up the half-naked forms of the stokers. Now and then some dry vine or tree would catch a spark from a torch, and in an instant would be transformed into a pillar of fire. After eight days of work the canal was finished, and was found to be of sufficient depth for the passage ...
— The Naval History of the United States - Volume 2 (of 2) • Willis J. Abbot
... Circassian are several Poems addressed to Sylvia; Naked Truth, from the second Book of Ovid's Fastorum; Heathen Priestcraft, from the first Book of Ovid's Fastorum; A Midsummer's Wish; and an Ode on Florinda, seen while she was Bathing. He is also author of a curious work, in one Volume ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753),Vol. V. • Theophilus Cibber
... figure, in a summery gray suit and a gray felt hat. He was sauntering in a leisurely way toward her, stopping now and then to admire some beautiful dog sniffing the scent of water-rats in the weeds, or a group of babies tumbling on the sand, or a half-naked undergraduate sculling along the serpentine reaches of the river, or a college crew cleaving the waters with the precision of an arrow, to a long, rhythmic swing of eight slim bodies and a low, brief grunt of command. The rich October light striking silvery ...
— The Street Called Straight • Basil King
... flood of confused memories. Sight of his familiar face filled her with fear. The haunting past came back to her in all its evil hideousness—the past which she had put behind her for ever now arose in all its cruel reality and naked bitterness. ...
— The White Lie • William Le Queux
... store of gold. To this Bramante replied in a sonnet full of allusions to Calliope, Erato, and all the Muses, begging his friends for pity's sake to give him a crown, if they would not see him left barefoot and naked to battle with rude Boreas. A whole series of curious sonnets from Bramante's pen has been lately discovered by M. Muntz among the Italian manuscripts in the Bibliotheque Nationale, and reveal the burlesque side of the ...
— Beatrice d'Este, Duchess of Milan, 1475-1497 • Julia Mary Cartwright
... then took possession of her chain and the other trinkets with which her wedding-dress was adorned, and caused her to be entirely stript of her clothing. She was then scourged with rods till her beautiful body was bathed in blood, and at last alone, naked, nearly mad, was sent back into the city. Here the forlorn creature wandered up and down through the blazing streets, among the heaps of dead and dying, till she was at last put out of her misery by a gang ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. X (of X) - America - II, Index • Various
... Throstle with the nyhtingale: Thus er he wiste into a Dale He cam, wher was a litel plein, All round aboute wel besein With buisshes grene and Cedres hyhe; And ther withinne he caste his yhe. 360 Amidd the plein he syh a welle, So fair ther myhte noman telle, In which Diana naked stod To bathe and pleie hire in the flod With many a Nimphe, which hire serveth. Bot he his yhe awey ne swerveth Fro hire, which was naked al, And sche was wonder wroth withal, And him, as sche which was godesse, Forschop anon, and the ...
— Confessio Amantis - Tales of the Seven Deadly Sins, 1330-1408 A.D. • John Gower
... the hoop; an ancient marine custom. Four or more boys having their left hands tied fast to an iron hoop, and each of them a rope, called a nettle, in their right, being naked to the waist, wait the signal to begin: this being made by a stroke with a cat of nine tails, given by the boatswain to one of the boys, he strikes the boy before him, and every one does the same: at first the blows are but gently administered; but each irritated by ...
— 1811 Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue • Captain Grose et al.
... and gloomy are the holes where so many poor and honest workmen languish exhausted, forced to abandon their beds to their infirm wives, and to leave with powerless despair their half-starving, naked children, struggling with the cold, in ...
— Mysteries of Paris, V3 • Eugene Sue
... They pounced on the little cavalcade, and the hard-earned wealth of the singer, amounting to nearly a hundred thousand dollars, passed out of his possession in a twinkling. The cruel humor of the chief of the banditti bound Garcia to a tree, after he had been stripped naked, and as it was known that he was a singer he was commanded to display his art for the pleasure of these strange auditors. For a while the despoiled man sternly refused, though threatened with immediate death. At last he began an aria, but ...
— Great Singers, Second Series - Malibran To Titiens • George T. Ferris
... died into stillness until scarce a leaf of the weather-beaten poplars stirred. From the tangle of roses, sweet fern and bayberry that overgrew the fields the note of a thrush rose clear on the quiet air. A whirling bevy of gulls circled the bar, left naked and opalescent by the receding tide. Peace was everywhere, divine peace, save in the breasts of those who gazed only to find a ...
— Flood Tide • Sara Ware Bassett
... a good-natured fellow and honest. He was better educated, too, than most of the other coolies, and could both read and write. His dress on march was characteristic of the man. He was nearly naked; his clothes hardly hung together; he wore no sandals on his feet; but round his neck he carried a small earthenware phial of opium ash. In the early stages he delayed us all an hour or two every day, but he improved as we went further. And then he was ...
— An Australian in China - Being the Narrative of a Quiet Journey Across China to Burma • George Ernest Morrison
... poems it is impossible not to perceive that the natural tendency of the poet's mind is to great objects and elevated conceptions. The poem entitled FIDELITY is for the greater part written in language, as unraised and naked as any perhaps in the two volumes. Yet take the following stanza and compare it with the preceding ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... immediate neighbourhood. He stood still and listened with bated breath. He felt himself seized by heavy hands and thrown to the ground, and saw another form seize the ass. Two men with blackened faces tore off his turban and robe and left him lying half-naked by the roadside, after having warned him to keep quiet as to this attack unless he wished to lose his life. Trembling with fright and rage, he saw the robbers disappear with his ass in the direction of the mountain. What pained him most was the loss ...
— Tales of Wonder Every Child Should Know • Various
... creatures stood upright to face the concealment from which they had sprung. One was covered with matted, brown hair. Its arms were long, and its fists pounded upon a barrel-like chest, while it growled hoarsely. The other ape-thing, naked and hairless, did the same. They were both uttering those sounds, that at times seemed almost like grunted words, when ...
— Astounding Stories, May, 1931 • Various
... more admirable, however, than Signor Puccini's use of it to heighten the dramatic climaxes; the merry tune with which Cio-Cio-San diverts her child in the second act and the use of a bald native tune thundered out fortissimo in naked unison with periodic punctuations of harmony at the close are striking cases in point. Nor should the local color in the delineation of the break of day in the beginning of the third act, and the charmingly felicitous use ...
— Chapters of Opera • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... feast. 100 Men wanting Timber wherewith they should build, And not a Forrest in Felicia found, Shall be enforc'd vpon the open Field, To dig them caues for houses in the ground: The Land thus rob'd, of all her rich Attyre, Naked and bare her selfe to heauen doth show, Begging from thence that Iove would dart his fire Vpon those wretches that disrob'd her so; This beastly Brood by no meanes may abide The name of their braue Ancestors to heare, 110 By whom their sordid slauery is descry'd, So vnlike them as though not ...
— Minor Poems of Michael Drayton • Michael Drayton
... soon felt the influence of Jonathan, the "black prince." The niggers, naked except for the loin cloth, swaggered along with arms in their hands, and grinned with insolent familiarity into our faces. They may have an intense respect and an unbounded love for the British—I have read scores of times that they have—but I ...
— Campaign Pictures of the War in South Africa (1899-1900) - Letters from the Front • A. G. Hales
... plant, for in Thuringia, when a young woman gets married, she places flax in her shoes as a charm against poverty. It is supposed, also, to have health-giving virtues; for in Germany, when an infant seems weakly and thrives slowly, it is placed naked upon the turf on Midsummer day, and flax-seed is sprinkled over it; the idea being that as the flax-seed grows so the infant will gradually grow stronger. Of the many beliefs attached to the ash-tree, we are told in the North of England that if the first parings of a child's ...
— The Folk-lore of Plants • T. F. Thiselton-Dyer
... relic, a piece of the true cross, whether possessed by a church, a crowned head or a private individual, is a minute speck of wood, scarcely visible to the naked eye, set sometimes on an ivory tablet, and always inclosed in a costly reliquary. M. Rohault de Fleury, who calculates that the total volume of the wood of the original cross must have been somewhere about 178,000,000 cubic millimetres, has made a list of all the relics ...
— Primitive Psycho-Therapy and Quackery • Robert Means Lawrence
... day for interment in the ground kept for the purpose outside the fortifications. I recovered sufficiently after about six weeks to be able to get out a little on the ramparts, and there a fearful spectacle often met my gaze, for the dead were brought out of the convents completely naked, and after they had been pitched into carts like so many pieces of wood, were carried out and put into holes scarcely large enough to admit of such a number. This unpleasant office of burying the dead fell chiefly on the Portuguese convicts, and it was surprising to see ...
— The Autobiography of Sergeant William Lawrence - A Hero of the Peninsular and Waterloo Campaigns • William Lawrence
... all I have left; I am a poor man, naked, Yet something for remembra[n]ce: four a piece Gentlemen, And so my body where ...
— Beaumont & Fletcher's Works (2 of 10) - The Humourous Lieutenant • Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher
... minutes that part of the park seemed to have been stripped naked, and the few vehicles, tables, and little platforms which had formed the centre of the Demonstration appeared, like the limbs of a tree suddenly bereft of foliage, looking curiously small and bare. I am told that ...
— The Message • Alec John Dawson
... snow spat venomously against the windows of Dr. Hunt's office in one of those fine old houses on Bay Street overlooking the harbor. The wind roared sonorously through the naked, tortured branches of the great elm-trees, and the snow piled sharp and smooth in fence corners and around north gables of ...
— Shapes that Haunt the Dusk • Various
... look behind and it was pitiful to hear her outcry of despair and terror. But Luke faced about and, backing after her through the flood, prepared to meet the hound naked-handed. Hardy sprang to his tiptoes in the stirrups, his curses pealing across the water. "If you hurt that dog," he ...
— The Flower of the Chapdelaines • George W. Cable
... C. Bates, who was a Surgeon of the Prison Hospital, (a Rebel), testified that the condition of things in his division was horrible. Nearly naked men, covered with lice, were dying on all sides. Many were lying in ...
— Andersonville, complete • John McElroy
... descended another mile or two to an inferno, full of naked, sooty devils forever feeding sulphurous pitfires in the nethermost parlors of the damned; but they said this was the stokehole; and I was in no condition to argue with them, for I had suddenly begun to realize that I was far ...
— Europe Revised • Irvin S. Cobb
... in the house, from dado above to where they rested in the brick base below, showed the naked wood, untouched so long by paint that it had grown furzy from rain and snow, and splintery from sun and heat. Its green shutters hung, some of them, on one hinge; and those which could be closed, were shut up close and sombre ...
— The Bishop of Cottontown - A Story of the Southern Cotton Mills • John Trotwood Moore
... fossickers from the days when he used to slip out first thing in the morning and take a run across the frosty flat in his shirt. Long Bob Sawkins would often tell how Isley came home one morning from his run in the long, wet grass as naked as he was born, with the information that he had lost ...
— While the Billy Boils • Henry Lawson
... but be pleased. Moreover there were better effects to follow. One occurred to him at this very moment, an admirable one. He fumbled in his breast and took out the flag. A minute later he saw the Colonel of the forepost join the group, hack nervously with his naked sword at a burning log, and dispatch a subaltern down ...
— Ensign Knightley and Other Stories • A. E. W. Mason
... last. There was something of sorrow, or bitterness, in the compressed or quivering lip. Her eye was bright as ever, but it was the brightness of the icicle glancing in the winter sun—it was soon quenched in tears, and as she gazed out upon the gloomy mountain, naked forest, and frozen lake, she murmured: "I used to love summer and day so much; now——" [A servant entered with lights. "Take them away," said Alice. She was obeyed.]—"the dark soul in the dark scene—there is almost repose ...
— The Rector of St. Mark's • Mary J. Holmes
... that flutter'd from its bough, Pale with the sereness of keen-biting frosts, Would teach me that the ties of earth must loose, One after one, the interests and joys That made life's excellent completeness up, Until the trunk, stripped of its verdant dress, Stand in the naked dreadfulness of death. Thus will my soul learn wisdom true and deep, Not in the school of petty prejudice, Where truth is measured out by interest, And duty shrinks into expediency; Not in the volumes of pedantic fools, Who bind up knowledge, ...
— Eidolon - The Course of a Soul and Other Poems • Walter R. Cassels
... principle of the thing. I didn't employ you, and I didn't want you. I told you so, and shook my head at you, and told you to get behind me, Satan, and all that sort of thing; and now I'm not going to pay you for making a nuisance of yourself. On the naked question of charity, I could do something for you, on account of your numerous fathers and mothers. As it is, good by, Sweden;" and Scott went ...
— Up The Baltic - Young America in Norway, Sweden, and Denmark • Oliver Optic
... prison; and that the lictors were so eager to seize his robe, that they rent it in several pieces, and tore away the tips of his ears, to get the rich jewels with which they were adorned. In this condition he was cast, quite naked, and in the utmost terrors, into a deep dungeon, where he spent six days in struggling with hunger and the fear of death, retaining a strong desire of life to his last gasp; an end, continues Plutarch, worthy of his wicked deeds, Jugurtha having ...
— The Ancient History of the Egyptians, Carthaginians, Assyrians, • Charles Rollin
... the world of matter. Garrison with his paper, having found a place for his feet, demonstrated speedily his ability to push from its solid base the world of mind. His plan was very simple, viz., to reveal slavery as it then existed in its naked enormity, to the conscience of the North, to be "as harsh as truth and as uncompromising as justice." And so, week after week, he packed in the columns of the Liberator facts, the most damning facts, against ...
— William Lloyd Garrison - The Abolitionist • Archibald H. Grimke
... the older boys play at knuckle-bones, others whip spinning-tops, and a little naked girl runs behind supporting herself with a stick, on the head of which is carved a bird. The procession is brought up by the queen- mother, who carries the youngest baby ...
— Legends Of Babylon And Egypt - In Relation To Hebrew Tradition • Leonard W. King
... employment, and refused it insolently too, because the wages offered by the professor, though fully equal to those paid by other employers, were less than they chose to consider themselves entitled to. Their wives and children were, by their own admission, naked and starving, and here was an opportunity to clothe and feed them, yet they rejected it scornfully. And naked, starving though the families of these wretches might be and actually were, almost every man of them, bearing out the professor's criticism of them, had a short dirty ...
— The Log of the Flying Fish - A Story of Aerial and Submarine Peril and Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... and we ordered the brioches from the Hotel du Sauvage at La Ferte; the son of the house is a very good patissier. It is a funny, old-fashioned little hotel, not very clean, but has an excellent cuisine, also a wonderful sign board—a bright red naked savage, with feathers in his hair and a club in his hand—rather like the primitive pictures of North American Indians ...
— Chateau and Country Life in France • Mary King Waddington
... breast of Almeryl by a dream of the Serpents of the Lake Karatis—the lake of the Jewel; and she stood up, and there was in the street a hum of voices, and she saw there before the house armed men with naked steel in their hands. Scarce had she called Almeryl to her, when the outer door of their house was forced, and she shrieked to him, ''Tis thou they come for: fly, O my Prince, my husband! the way of ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... demanded a bold game. Under some circumstances he knew that to throw away the scabbard and dash with naked sword into the ...
— The Albert Gate Mystery - Being Further Adventures of Reginald Brett, Barrister Detective • Louis Tracy
... a hundred paces distant; others were buying the daily papers. Some were promenading with that careless gayety that never deserts the French even in their darkest days, while they insolently eyed the shameless women, who, with bold gaze and naked shoulders, stood there endeavoring to attract the attention of the passers-by. Others rushed to the gambling saloons, already dreaming of the stroke of good fortune that would enlarge the rolls of assignats with ...
— Which? - or, Between Two Women • Ernest Daudet
... are, on the whole, favorable to the natives. The English, while wooding and watering, were surprised by the visit of eight men and a boy. They were unarmed, except that one of them carried a stick, pointed at the end. They were of middling stature, slender, and naked. On different parts of their bodies were ridges, both straight and curved, raised in the skin: the hair of the head and beard was smeared with red ointment. They were indifferent to presents; they rejected bread, and the flesh of the sea ...
— The History of Tasmania , Volume II (of 2) • John West
... a symptom of success in things made by man, not of success in selling, but of success in making. If an object made by man gives us pleasure in itself, then it has beauty; if we got pleasure only from the belief that in it we are enjoying what we ought to enjoy, then very likely it is as naked of beauty as the Emperor was of clothes. The great mass of people now have a belief that ornament is necessarily beauty, that, without it, nothing can be beautiful. But ornament is often only added ugliness, like a wen on a man's face. It is ...
— Essays on Art • A. Clutton-Brock
... because ... because ... she had begun to care, really to care, for the man to whom she had written that letter this morning, and this man had scarcely said one word to her, or given her one glance, beyond such as a brother might give to a sister. There was the naked truth. ...
— The Necromancers • Robert Hugh Benson
... the blade, That sharp and polished at thy right hand lies, Draw naked forth, and like the blade of Mars Flash it upon the eyes of all. The point Press 'twixt thy finger-tips, and bowing low Offer the handle to her. Now is seen The soft and delicate playing of the muscles In the white hand upon its work intent. The graces that ...
— Modern Italian Poets • W. D. Howells
... Epistle, concerning the ark, "wherein few, that is eight souls, were saved by water; the like figure whereunto, even baptism, doth also now save us by the resurrection of Jesus Christ." Sometimes, indeed, the act of baptism is represented in a more literal manner, by a naked figure immersed in the water; sometimes, perhaps, by ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various
... Their appearance was excessively ridiculous, as the garments neither suited their age nor size, and caused great mirth to us all; but my wife had preferred this disguise to the alternative of their going naked. ...
— The Swiss Family Robinson; or Adventures in a Desert Island • Johann David Wyss
... way, and, venomous from so many failures, would follow now for days in an effort to take him. He saw the huge Ojibway again with all the intensity of reality, his malignant face, his mighty body, naked to the waist and painted in hideous designs. He saw too the warriors who were with him, many of them, and they were fully as eager and fierce ...
— The Lords of the Wild - A Story of the Old New York Border • Joseph A. Altsheler
... in a degree to the picturesqueness which now renders Mexico so attractive. Radical progress in one direction must needs be destructive in another, and while some of the allurements of her strong individuality will disappear, her moral and physical status will be greatly improved. Her ragged, half-naked people will don proper attire, sacrificing the gaudy colors which now make every out-door scene kaleidoscopic; a modern grain thresher will take the place of weary animals plodding in a circle, treading out the grain; ...
— Aztec Land • Maturin M. Ballou
... human creatures, Now blasted of their features, Or stamped with blank despair; Or with dumb faces smiling as for gladness, Though stricken by utter blight Of motionless, inert, and hopeless sadness. Fear you the naked horrors of a war? Then cherish peace, and take up arms no more. For, if you fight, you must Behold your brothers' dust Unpityingly ground down And mixed with blood and powder, To write the annals of renown That make a ...
— Dreams and Days: Poems • George Parsons Lathrop
... have they to give you? Your pillagers take all; there is not even time for them to make you the offer. Turn your eyes round towards the entrance of the imperial head-quarters. Do you see that man? He is all but naked; he groans and extends towards you a hand of supplication. That unhappy man who excites your pity, is one of those very nobles whose assistance you look for: yesterday, he was hurrying to meet you, full of ardour, ...
— History of the Expedition to Russia - Undertaken by the Emperor Napoleon in the Year 1812 • Count Philip de Segur
... even Dom. Consul, and he began to threaten the old hag with the rack if she told such lies; whereupon she answered and said, "List, then, whether I lie! When she went naked into the water she had no mark on her body, but when she came out again I saw that she had between her breasts a mark the size of a silver penny, whence I perceived that the devil had given it her, although I had not seen him about her, nor, indeed, ...
— Sidonia The Sorceress V2 • William Mienhold
... them a drink of brandy which when they had tasted, said strong, strong, but smacked their lips as if it was not stronger than they liked. I lay in the waggon looked out upon this group, which as the glare of the fire fell on the grim visages, & bare, brawny arms, & naked bodies; having nothing on the upper part of the body but their loose blanket, & as they move their arms about when speaking, their bodies are half naked most of the time, the contrast was striking between their wild looks & savage dress, ...
— Across the Plains to California in 1852 - Journal of Mrs. Lodisa Frizzell • Lodisa Frizell
... Circe, how canst thou bid me be gentle to thee, who hast turned my company into swine within thy halls, and holding me here with a guileful heart requirest me to pass within thy chamber and go up into thy bed, that so thou mayest make me a dastard and unmanned when thou hast me naked? Nay, never will I consent to go up into thy bed, except thou wilt deign, goddess, to swear a mighty oath, that thou wilt plan nought else of mischief to ...
— DONE INTO ENGLISH PROSE • S. H. BUTCHER, M.A.
... strolling through the village, I soon made acquaintance with a native Dyak, who requested me to enter his house. He introduced me to his family, consisting of several fine girls and a young lad. The former were naked from the shoulders to below the breasts, where a pair of stays, composed of several circles of whalebone, with brass fastenings, were secured round their waists; and to the stays was attached a cotton ...
— Borneo and the Indian Archipelago - with drawings of costume and scenery • Frank S. Marryat
... spectator as appearing before him in the air, without a support or background other than the deep red of the wall. "Justice" holds the globe in one hand, signifying the extent of her sway. In the other hand she holds a naked sword upright, in token of the terribleness ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol II, After-Dinner Speeches E-O • Various
... upon the instant; more lanterns and soldiers crowded in front of the shed; an officer elbowed his way in. In the midst was the big naked body, soiled with blood. Some one had covered him with his blanket; but as he lay there in agony, he ...
— St Ives • Robert Louis Stevenson
... sigh I heave That thoughts my naked soul should flay. Yet dreams of death he bids me leave, And glory in the living day. Before me in the path he leaps. He reads my mood, and bids me, "Come! Sweet Summer's in the wooded deeps!" And yet men say that ...
— More Toasts • Marion Dix Mosher
... us that Noah was burdened with these manifold duties after the flood, yet Moses does not mention them. It appears to him sufficient to confine his remarks to the statement that Noah began to plant a vineyard, and that he lay in his tent drunken and naked. ...
— Commentary on Genesis, Vol. II - Luther on Sin and the Flood • Martin Luther
... passed their time. They would take a canoe and go six miles down the Grand Lake, where, at the north end, is a great ledge of rock and sixty feet of water. There they stayed. All day long they ran about naked or swam; they were wanton, witch-like girls, liking eccentric and ...
— The Algonquin Legends of New England • Charles Godfrey Leland
... the seeds of the mushroom. They are of various sizes and shapes, with a variety of surface markings. They are very small, as fine as dust, and invisible to the naked eye, except as they are seen in masses on the grass, on the ground, or on logs, or in a spore print. It is the object of every fungus to produce spores. Some fall on the parent host or upon the ground. Others are wafted away by every ...
— The Mushroom, Edible and Otherwise - Its Habitat and its Time of Growth • M. E. Hard
... tomb of all historic cults. All concrete religions die eventually in the pure air of philosophy. So long then as the life of nations is in need of religion as a motive and sanction of morality, as food for faith, hope, and charity, so long will the masses turn away from pure reason and naked truth, so long will they adore mystery, so long—and rightly so—will they rest in faith, the only region where the ideal presents itself to them in an ...
— Amiel's Journal • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... an hour of drunkenness," says St. Jerom, "let his body be seen naked, which he had kept ...
— Ebrietatis Encomium - or, the Praise of Drunkenness • Boniface Oinophilus
... noise reached the royal chamber; a rush of the assassins followed; and Catharine Douglass, one of the queen's maids of honor, springing forward to bolt the door, found the bar had been clandestinely removed. With resolute self-devotion she supplied the place with her naked arm.—To present a view of the interior of the room, and the passage outside, it will be necessary to place a partition from the front of the stage, near the footlights, to the left hand corner in the background. In the smallest apartment stands Catharine Douglass. The ...
— Home Pastimes; or Tableaux Vivants • James H. Head
... Bogus Democracy of the nineteenth century leads fallen sinful man to the throne of God, needs no office to elevate him. These Johnson Democrats enjoy the pure religion of Democracy—a religion which enters the closet—pours forth its supplications in private, feeds the poor, clothes the naked—inflames not the prejudices of Protestant sects—is modest and unassuming in its demeanor—is charitable and kind to the persecuted and pious Catholics—bears with the infirmities of Foreign Paupers—is not ambitious and designing, ...
— Americanism Contrasted with Foreignism, Romanism, and Bogus Democracy in the Light of Reason, History, and Scripture; • William Gannaway Brownlow
... crossing an uncultivated rather than a sterile plain, and the word "wilderness" came up in his mind, for the only trees and plants he saw were wildings, wild artichokes, tall stems, of no definite colour, with hairy fruits; rosemary, lavender and yellow broom, and half-naked bushes stripped of their foliage by the summer heat, covered with dust; nowhere a blade of grass—an indurated plain, chapped, rotted by stagnant waters, burnt again by the sun. And they rode over this plain for hours, the horses avoiding the baked earth, ...
— Sister Teresa • George Moore
... visit she asked permission to be left alone among the women for some hours. As they flocked round her, she spoke to those who were mothers, of the miserable state of their children, dirty and almost naked, pining for want of proper food, air, and exercise. She said she would like to get a school for the children, to which they gladly assented. Then, after talking kindly to many of the women, she read to them aloud the parable of the Lord of the vineyard, in the 20th ...
— Excellent Women • Various
... secondary roads that even when finished may be left for years or forever with denuded clay shoulders and ditches and banks that wash with every rain. And so, most particularly, do the great polygons of rolling land around the Basin's town and cities that are stripped naked by bulldozers and left sitting in that condition for long periods, while they await the erection of buildings and blocks of homes. This is occurring throughout the Basin, but most notably around Washington, where the highest ...
— The Nation's River - The Department of the Interior Official Report on the Potomac • United States Department of the Interior
... on board ship; and as to the master poor John Broom served now, his cruelty made the memory of the farm-bailiff a memory of tenderness and gentleness and indulgence. Till he was half-naked and half-starved, and had only short snatches of sleep in hard corners, it had never struck him that when one has got good food and clothes, and sound sleep in a kindly home, he has got more than many people, and enough ...
— Tales from Many Sources - Vol. V • Various
... hot. So then because thou art lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will spue thee out of my mouth.... Thou sayest, I am rich, and increased with goods, and have need of nothing; and knowest not that thou art wretched, and miserable, and poor, and blind, and naked."' ...
— A Laodicean • Thomas Hardy
... magnificent. Not a cloud dimmed the luster of the stars, which spangled the heavens in surpassing brilliancy, and several nebulae which hitherto no astronomer had been able to discern without the aid of a telescope were clearly visible to the naked eye. ...
— Off on a Comet • Jules Verne
... lived now, I saw, I understood. The plain spread out naked and deserted, all white in the broad sunlight. It exhibited its desolation beneath the intense serenity of heaven; heaps of corpses were sleeping in the warmth, and the trees that had been brought down, seemed to be other dead who were dying. There was not a breath of air. A frightful silence ...
— International Short Stories: French • Various
... whips went off; the oxen pulled, tossed their unwieldy horns, and bellowed; the Dutchmen growled and shouted; the half-naked "Totties" and Bushmen flung their arms and legs about, glared and gasped like demons; the monstrous waggons moved; "Settlers' Town" was slowly left behind, and our adventurers, heading for the thorny jungles of the Zwartkops ...
— The Settler and the Savage • R.M. Ballantyne
... this sudden change of base. In the train the thermometer stood at 116 deg.. The heat made of everything a solitude. Frawley, lifeless, stifling, and numbed, glued himself to the air-holes with eyes fastened on the horizon, while the train sped across the naked, singeing back of the plains like the welt that springs to meet the fall of the lash. For two nights he watched the distended sun, exhausted by its own madness, drop back into the heated void, and the tortured stars rise over the stricken desert. At the end of thirty-six hours of agony he arrived ...
— Murder in Any Degree • Owen Johnson
... gray, set smirk, and his eyes took on a steely glint. He knew when the naked, unadorned truth was spoken to him. Words came slowly to his lips, but he said: "You'll be glad to come to me for help some ...
— Cavanaugh: Forest Ranger - A Romance of the Mountain West • Hamlin Garland
... if craft failed, his passion, roused by resistance, sprang at his prey with a lion's leap: and whoever examines the career of this extraordinary personage, will perceive, that whatever might be his habitual hypocrisy, he seemed to lose sight of it wholly when once resolved upon force. Then the naked ferocity with which the destructive propensity swept away the objects in his path becomes fearfully and startlingly apparent, and offers a strange contrast to the wily duplicity with which, in calmer moments, he seems to have sought to coax the victim into his folds. Firmly ...
— The Last Of The Barons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... you, the round earth's like a sleeping serpent, Who drops her dusky tail upon her crown Just here. Oh, we are like two mountain peaks Of two close planets, catching in the air: You, King Olympus, a great pile of summer, Wearing a crown of gods; I, the vast top Of the ghosts' deadly world, naked and dark, With nothing reigning on my desolate head But an old spirit of a murdered god, Palaced within the corpse of ...
— Books and Characters - French and English • Lytton Strachey
... relief to escape from the confinement of a ship, even if it be only to stroll along the vacant sands of some naked beach. As soon as the vessels were secured, we poured ashore in a body, and the people were given a holiday. There was no longer an enemy to apprehend; and we all enjoyed the liberty of movement, and the freedom from care that accompanied ...
— Afloat And Ashore • James Fenimore Cooper
... Day, I saw a woman at a door. They had turned her out as a joke, to give her a taste of the frost because she had been crying so much, and they shut the door behind her. At nine o'clock in the morning she was already quite drunk, dishevelled, half-naked, covered with bruises, her face was powdered, but she had a black-eye, blood was trickling from her nose and her teeth; some cabman had just given her a drubbing. She was sitting on the stone steps, a salt fish of some sort was in her hand; ...
— Notes from the Underground • Feodor Dostoevsky
... was crowded with strings of camels, forever going both ways, into Cairo and out, one wondered why —and there were flocks of woolly brown sheep, and donkeys drawing sideless carts in which whole families of veiled women and half-naked children were seated tailor fashion. On we spun, past the Zoo, past scattered villas of Frenchified, Oriental fashion which might have been designed by a confectioner: past azure lakes left by the ebbing Nile, and so into sudden dazzling sight of three geometric mountains ...
— It Happened in Egypt • C. N. Williamson & A. M. Williamson
... find the sun apparently still at the same altitude, and then once more at 6 a.m. to see it still no higher. The altitude had changed, of course, but so slightly that it was imperceptible with the naked eye. To us it appeared as though the sun made the circuit of the heavens at exactly the same altitude. The times of day that I have given here are calculated according to the meridian of Framheim; we continued to reckon our ...
— The South Pole, Volumes 1 and 2 • Roald Amundsen
... primary origin is derived from the cataracts of the Nile and the borders of the Blemmyae, all the men are warriors of equal rank; half naked, clad in coloured cloaks down to the waist, overrunning different countries, with the aid of swift and active horses and speedy camels, alike in times of peace and war. Nor does any member of their tribes ever take plough in hand or cultivate a tree, ...
— The Roman History of Ammianus Marcellinus • Ammianus Marcellinus
... and the sustaining faiths of great souls more than moonshine. So if the apple-tree will make too much wood, it can bear no fruit; during summer it is full of haughty thrift, but the autumn, which brings grace to so many a dwarfed bush and low shrub, shows it naked and ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 7, No. 43, May, 1861 • Various
... chorus of plaintive howls, followed by angry shouts, rang through the forest. Naked, painted savages darted out of the windfall toward the ...
— The Last Trail • Zane Grey
... part of the business was this: every one of the honest skipper's sailor-soldiers had a white linen shirt on over his dress, and as the men's legs were bare to the knees, they all looked as near to naked as decency would permit. While Tom stopped to laugh aloud, Captain Bulbous hastened ...
— As We Sweep Through The Deep • Gordon Stables
... Gayarre in a tone of bravado; "if he dare hint at such a thing to Mademoiselle—ay, or even to you, Aurore—I shall make the place too hot for him. He shall visit here no more, the naked adventurer! On that ...
— The Quadroon - Adventures in the Far West • Mayne Reid
... crept out of the bush half-naked and in a piteous plight, and began to ponder how he should take his revenge, and serve his late companion some trick. At last he went to the judge, and complained that a rascal had robbed him of his money, and beaten him into the bargain; and that the fellow who did it carried a ...
— Grimms' Fairy Tales • The Brothers Grimm
... thine angry howl, And raging bend the naked tree; Thy gloom will soothe my cheerless soul, When Nature all ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 3 (of 4) • Various
... neglected. This may be difficult to amend, the poor woman having come in from her village, and perforce brought her progeny with her; but the strong, stout man in rags, who prefers begging to working—the half-naked woman who would consider herself degraded by doing anything to better her condition, except asking for alms—the dogs which wander up and down during divine service,—all these might be brought to ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon de la Barca
... come out of the water or go into it at the same time that one does one's self. Moreover, the beach at bathing time is daily thronged with spectators, before whose admiring gaze one has to emerge all dripping, like Venus, from the waves, and nearly as naked; for one's bathing-dress clings to one's figure, and makes a perfect wet drapery study of one's various members, and so one has to wade slowly and in much confusion of face, thus impeded, under the public gaze, through heavy sand, about half a quarter of a mile, ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble
... the sky, in which the gentleman of the house put on his toga as he went out. [Footnote: When Cincinnatus went out to work in the field, he left his toga at home, wearing his tunic only, and was "naked" (nudus), as the Romans said. The custom illustrates MATT, xxiv., 18. (See p. 86.)] Double doors admitted the visitor to the entrance-hall or ostium. There was a threshold, upon which it was unlucky to place the left foot; a knocker afforded means of announcing one's ...
— The Story of Rome From the Earliest Times to the End of the Republic • Arthur Gilman
... "Shure thin," said one half-naked urchin, stuck up in a small tree, growing just out of one of the banks over which the horses were to pass; "shure thin, Playful's an illigant swate baste entirely. I'll go bail there's nothin 'll come ...
— The Macdermots of Ballycloran • Anthony Trollope
... chapel opened, and there came forth a tall negro, entirely nude, and bearing in his hand the sacrificial knife. He was followed by an apparition still more strange and shocking: Madam Mendizabal, naked also, and carrying in both hands and raised to the level of her face, an open basket of wicker. It was filled with coiling snakes; and these, as she stood there with the uplifted basket, shot through the osier grating and curled about her arms. At the sight of this, ...
— The Dynamiter • Robert Louis Stevenson and Fanny van de Grift Stevenson
... the other primates in being almost naked. But a few short straggling hairs are found over the greater part of the body in the man, and fine down on that of the woman. The different races differ much in hairiness; and in the individuals of the same race the hairs are highly variable, not only in abundance, ...
— The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex • Charles Darwin
... a brownish yellow. They have not the thick lips of the Kaffirs and natives of Mozambique. Their hair is black and woolly, curly, but not thick. They rub the entire body with fat and soot. A Hottentot who paints himself looks less naked, and more complete, so to say, than one who only rubs himself with grease. Hence the saying, "A Hottentot without paint, is ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part 2. The Great Navigators of the Eighteenth Century • Jules Verne
... My heart till then. He smiles, and sleeps!—sleep on, And smile, thou little, young inheritor Of a world scarce less young: sleep on, and smile! 20 Thine are the hours and days when both are cheering And innocent! thou hast not plucked the fruit— Thou know'st not thou art naked! Must the time Come thou shalt be amerced for sins unknown, Which were not thine nor mine? But now sleep on! His cheeks are reddening into deeper smiles, And shining lids are trembling o'er his ...
— The Works of Lord Byron - Poetry, Volume V. • Lord Byron
... endowments, or private endowments, are ready to help every capable boy, as far as Huxley was helped, and in his progress from boyhood to supreme distinction, there is nothing that cannot be emulated by every boy at school to-day. The minds of human beings when they are born into the world are as naked as their bodies; it matters not if parents, grandparents, and remoter ancestors were unlettered or had the wisdom of all the ages, the new mind has to build up its own wisdom from the beginning. We cannot even say with certainty that children inherit mental ...
— Thomas Henry Huxley; A Sketch Of His Life And Work • P. Chalmers Mitchell |
