"Sprawl" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... is repair day, rips are sewed up, buttons sewed on clothing, and for the initiated, the darning of socks. In camps with permanent buildings a big log fire roars in the fireplace, the boys sprawl on the floor with their faces toward the fire, and while the rain plays a tattoo[1] upon the roof some one reads aloud an interesting story, such as "Treasure Island," "The Shadowless Man," "The Bishop's Shadow," or the chapters on "The Beneficent Rain" and "When the Dew Falls," ...
— Camping For Boys • H.W. Gibson
... been holding Watts in a sitting posture by a firm grip on his collar, allowed the limp figure to sprawl headlong again. He wanted to plunge both hands deeply into his trousers pockets, because men of his type associate attitude so closely with thought that the one is apt to become almost dependent on the other. And so, for the moment, the safeguarding of Watts was of no consequence. But Watts had ...
— The Stowaway Girl • Louis Tracy
... beneath bending willows arched over this merry brook, one sun-bright morning riotous with song of birds, sat Jocelyn with Robin a-sprawl beside him. ...
— The Geste of Duke Jocelyn • Jeffery Farnol
... prick-song, scores of finches crossed the slopes, dipping from bush to bush. Ippolita clasped her hands behind her head, and looked lazily at all this early glory. The freedom of her heart seemed explicit in that of her limbs. What she could do with her legs, for instance! How she could sprawl at ease! She was just like all the others—as ragged, as dirty, at least; and soon she would be as brown. Dio buono, the splendid ...
— Little Novels of Italy • Maurice Henry Hewlett
... mistaking that; she held her head up like one, and dressed as real ladies do, expensively but plainly—ay, old Jacob knows; he didn't go yachting for years for nothing. But it wasn't for me to form opinions. My berth was an easy one—just a sprawl all day long with a pipe in my mouth, and a good night's rest to follow; and that was all it was ...
— In Luck at Last • Walter Besant
... importance than the rocks. The earth on which men have lived, where the work of their hand is evident, with all the sentiment of the presence of man, with smoke arising from numberless homes, is foreign to Mr. Hone. The monsters of the primeval world might sprawl on the rocks, for all the evidence of lapse of time since their day, in many of his pictures. He, too, has refined away his world until only fragments of the earth remain to him where he can dream in; and these are waste places, where the salt of the sea is in ...
— Imaginations and Reveries • (A.E.) George William Russell
... for help. Then Keston stumbled and went down in a sprawl on the rough gray ice. The bear was almost on him and there ...
— Astounding Stories, July, 1931 • Various
... was right about blouses... perhaps they were "slommucky." She remembered phrases she had heard about people's figures... "falling abroad"... "the middle-aged sprawl"... that would come early to her as she was so old and worried... perhaps that was why one had to wear boned bodices... and never breathe in gulps of air like this?... It was as if all the worry were being taken out of her temples. She felt her eyes grow strong and clear; ...
— Pointed Roofs - Pilgrimage, Volume 1 • Dorothy Richardson
... with occasionally. In his savage way he loved them; but they were far from satisfying or restful companions. Tantor was a great mountain of calm, of poise, of stability. It was restful and satisfying to sprawl upon his rough pate and pour one's vague hopes and aspirations into the great ears which flapped ponderously to and fro in apparent understanding. Of all the jungle folk, Tantor commanded Tarzan's greatest ...
— Jungle Tales of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... was—fond of her, I will admit. But he had a life of his own that she knows nothing about. He was too proud to tell her about it, and she hadn't wit enough to see it for herself. That's the truth, and this emotional sprawl she's indulging in now doesn't change it.—Meanwhile, she is adding to ...
— Mary Wollaston • Henry Kitchell Webster
... out in swifter stride, Kirkwood was inspired to put a spoke in his wheel; and a foot thrust suddenly out from behind the gate-post accomplished his purpose with more success than he had dared anticipate. Stumbling, the mate plunged headlong, arms and legs a-sprawl; and the momentum of his pace, though checked, carried him along the sidewalk, face downwards, a full yard ere ...
— The Black Bag • Louis Joseph Vance
... shadows. I ask, where am I? Go way, then, Mallare. Leave me. I persist without Mallare. I remain. Let me dissolve into this. Let me sprawl before the door of enchantments. It is illusion. Let it be. She will come out. Rita, my vanished one, come back to me. It is I who ask. Not the Cold One, not the Indifferent One, not Mallare. But I ...
— Fantazius Mallare - A Mysterious Oath • Ben Hecht
... failing party must be cast out of this presence. Later they learn that good sense and character make their own forms every moment, and speak or abstain, take wine or refuse it, stay or go, sit in a chair or sprawl with children on the floor, or stand on their head, or what else soever, in a new and aboriginal way; and that strong will is always in fashion, let who will be unfashionable. All that fashion demands is composure and self-content. A circle of men perfectly well-bred would be a company ...
— Essays, Second Series • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... I'd ruther be— Needn't fence it in fer me—! Jes' the whole sky overhead, And the whole airth underneath— Sorto' so's a man kin breathe Like he ort, and kindo' has Elbow-room to keerlessly Sprawl out len'thways on the grass Where the shadders thick and soft As the kivvers on the bed Mother fixes in the loft Allus, ...
— Afterwhiles • James Whitcomb Riley
... never finished, for with a sprawl, the "Parson" stumbled over the blade of grass and came down on the other side ...
— The Cheerful Cricket and Others • Jeannette Marks
... home, no nest, no coop, preferring to fly into the trees and roost away from the places where they belong. The word has also come to mean people who are too indolent and lazy to stand up or sit up, but sprawl out anywhere. "The Jukes" are a family that did not make good homes, did not provide themselves with comforts, did not work steadily. They are like hens that fly into the trees ...
— Jukes-Edwards - A Study in Education and Heredity • A. E. Winship
... the world is full of noise, The ragged peoples storm the palaces, They rave, they laugh, they thirst, they lap the stream That trickles from the regal vestments down, And, lapping, smack their heated chaps for more, And ply their daggers for it, till the kings All die and lie in a crooked sprawl of death, Ungainly, foul, and stiff as any heap Of villeins rotting on a battle-field. 'Tis true, that when these things have come to pass Then never a king shall rule again in France, For every villein shall be king in France: ...
— The Poems of Sidney Lanier • Sidney Lanier
... the churchyard wall, there may be seen also, as they sprawl on the dry, faded herbage, a score of "strollers for work" that is to say, of folk who, a community apart, consist of "nowhere people," of dreamers who live constantly in expectation of some stroke of luck, some kindly smile from fortune, and of wastrels ...
— Through Russia • Maxim Gorky
... held out his hand to her, she is casting herself into a mire from which it will be impossible, with the best will in the world, ever to rescue her. I dwell so many miles above the puddles in which these filthy little vermin sprawl and crawl and bawl their cheap obscenities, that I cannot possibly be spattered by the witticisms of a Verdurin!" he cried, tossing up his head and arrogantly straightening his body. "God knows that I have honestly attempted to pull Odette out of that sewer, and to teach her to ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust
... silver bell you hear, That summons you to all the pride of prayer; Light quirks of music, broken and uneven, Make the soul dance upon a jig to heaven. On painted ceilings you devoutly stare, Where sprawl the saints of Verrio or Laguerre, On gilded clouds in fair expansion lie, And bring all Paradise before your eye. To rest, the cushion and soft Dean invite, Who never mentions hell to ears polite. But hark! the chiming clocks to dinner call; A hundred ...
— Essay on Man - Moral Essays and Satires • Alexander Pope
... by an arrow, Cupid's arrow, in favour of "Snooks." Degrading confession of feminine weakness! She imagined the terrible rejoicings of certain girl friends, of certain grocer cousins from whom her growing refinement had long since estranged her. How they would make it sprawl across the envelope that would bring their sarcastic congratulations. Would even his pleasant company compensate her for that? "It is ...
— Twelve Stories and a Dream • H. G. Wells
... O what a world it is— Where full-grown men cut capers in the German, Cotillion, waltz, or what you will, and whizz And spin and hop and sprawl about like mermen! I wonder if our future Grant or Sherman, As these youths pass their time, is passing his— If eagles ever come from painted eggs, Or deeds of arms succeed to deeds ...
— Black Beetles in Amber • Ambrose Bierce
... o' stalls to sprawl your dirty carcase on?... Outside, I tell yer, Tommy Atkins, this ain't a music-'all nor yet a pub. Soldiers not ''alf-price to cheap seats' nor yet full-price—nor yet for ten pound a ...
— Snake and Sword - A Novel • Percival Christopher Wren
... both combatants were in the saw-pit, Bird said: "Now, Compton, thou shalt not escape me," and brandished his sword above his head. While he was doing this, Compton "in a moment run him through the Body; so that his Pride fell to the ground, and there did sprawl out its last vanity." ...
— The Curious Case of Lady Purbeck - A Scandal of the XVIIth Century • Thomas Longueville
... haunts. The willow and brown birch, long ago cut off by the Indians for wattles, have come back to the streamside, slender and virginal in their spring greenness, and leaving long stretches of the brown water open to the sky. In stony places where no grass grows, wild olives sprawl; close-twigged, blue-gray patches in winter, more translucent greenish gold in spring than any aureole. Along with willow and birch and brier, the clematis, that shyest plant of water borders, slips down season by season to within a hundred yards of the village street. Convinced after ...
— The Land Of Little Rain • Mary Hunter Austin
... with the hostess, the visitor, whether a lady or a gentleman, looks about quietly, without hurry, for a convenient chair to sit down upon, or drop into. To sit gracefully one should not perch stiffly on the edge of a straight chair, nor sprawl at length in an easy one. The perfect position is one that is easy, but dignified. In other days, no lady of dignity ever crossed her knees, held her hands on her hips, or twisted herself sideways, ...
— Etiquette • Emily Post
... standing outside the old fretworked boarding house he lived in—looking in at the window of the "sitting room" where the ancient, wispy landlady sat among her antimacassared chairs and the ridiculous tiny seashell ashtrays that overflowed after two butts. He wanted desperately to get in and sprawl in the huge bat-winged chair by the fire and stroke the enormous old gray cat that would leap up and trample and paw his stomach before settling down to grumble to ...
— Far from Home • J.A. Taylor
... small weak lapses—not driven by hate or love, but by pique or boredom, lowering our flag to salute a pleasure boat, not a battleship. Pouf," she made a little gesture of disgust that he was beginning to know. "We occupy the places that other people make for us. We curl on their divans, we sprawl in their gutters, we sit proudly on the pedestals they put for us, we occupy their altars, and when we are alone, what happens to us? We dissolve ...
— Balloons • Elizabeth Bibesco
... one morning thumb-marked about the sealing, and covered with the generous sprawl of ...
— Aladdin O'Brien • Gouverneur Morris
... with platitudes. Whenever we disguise ourself in the seemly toggery of the godly, and enter meekly into the tabernacle, hoping to pass unobserved, the parson is sure to detect us and explode a bombful of bosh upon our devoted head. No sooner do we pick up a religious weekly than we stumble and sprawl through a bewildering succession of inanities, manufactured expressly to ensnare our simple feet. If we take up a tract we are laid out cold by an apostolic knock straight from the clerical shoulder. We ...
— The Fiend's Delight • Dod Grile
... gudgeons brought to her. At night when the young king was sleeping, his wife was to draw the clothes off him and empty the bucketful of cold water with the gudgeons in it over him, so that the little fishes would sprawl about him. When this was done, he woke up and cried "Oh, what makes me shudder so?—-what makes me shudder so, dear wife? Ah! now I know ...
— Household Tales by Brothers Grimm • Grimm Brothers
... by the peculiar slant of his slouch hat, the rosy glow of his face, and the way in which his trousers clung to the curves of his well-developed legs, and ended in a sprawl that half covered his shoes. I recognized, too, a carpet-bag, a ninety-nine-cent affair, an "occasion," with galvanized iron clasps and paper-leather sides,—the ...
— A Gentleman Vagabond and Some Others • F. Hopkinson Smith
... of his tether; and the quick jerk, which caused the tree itself to crack, brought him to his haunches, while the noose tightening on his throat was fast strangling him. But for the thick matted hair it would have done so, but this saved him, and he continued to sprawl and struggle at the end of the rope. The tree kept on cracking, and as I began to fear that it might give way and precipitate me to the ground, I thought it better to slip down. I ran direct to where I had dropped the caps; and, having got hold of the box, I soon had one upon ...
— Popular Adventure Tales • Mayne Reid
... Tiger loud may roar, High may the hovering Vulture soar; Alas! regardless of them all, Soon shall the empurpled glutton sprawl - Soon, in the desert's hushed repose, Shall trumpet tidings through his nose! Alack, unwise! that nasal song Shall be the ...
— Moral Emblems • Robert Louis Stevenson
... cling and crawl Straight up, with strong endeavor; But down it came with a slippery sprawl, As near to the ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... curtains after breakfast, light candles, place the flask of Green Chartreuse and a liqueur-glass on the table, drop one drip of the liquid into the glass, burn a stinking pastille of incense, place a Birmingham "god" or an opening lily before him, ruffle his hair, and sprawl on the sofa with a wicked French novel he could not read—hoping for visitors ...
— Driftwood Spars - The Stories of a Man, a Boy, a Woman, and Certain Other People Who - Strangely Met Upon the Sea of Life • Percival Christopher Wren
... long after he had learned to sprawl, Jerry had learned that. One took his chances. As long as Mister Haggin, or Derby, or Bob, was about, the niggers took their chasing. But there were times when the white lords were not about. Then it was "'Ware niggers!" One must dare to chase only with due precaution. ...
— Jerry of the Islands • Jack London
... placed on the south side of the church, and the chief buildings occupy their usual positions round it. But the cloister garth, as at Chichester, is not rectangular, and all the surrounding buildings are thus made to sprawl in a very awkward fashion. The church follows the plan adopted by the Austin canons in their northern abbeys, and has only one aisle to the nave—that to the north; while the choir is long, narrow and ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... Roasting clams as in the old days When the Tamals lived upon it. Gone are now the limpid shallows; Gone the oysters and the mussels, And no more are grassy meadows Dappled with the spreading oak trees; For great factories, grim and sordid, Sprawl in squalid blocks around it, And the smoke of forge and furnace Rise from stacks ...
— The Legends of San Francisco • George W. Caldwell
... the words when the giant carcass of Philip tottered and fell, dragging Kate along with it, who never for a moment lost or loosened her hold. Her opponent now began to sprawl and kick out his feet from a sense of suffocation, and in attempting to call for assistance, nothing but low, deep gurgling noises could issue from his lips, now livid with the pressure on his throat and covered with foam. His face, too, at all times dark and savage, ...
— The Emigrants Of Ahadarra - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... book again—forget All else,—long years, lost hopes, regret; Sighs for the joys we ne'er attain, Prayers we have lifted all in vain; Tears for the faces seen no more, Once as the roses at the door! Take the enchanted book—And lo, On grassy swards of long ago, Sprawl out again, beneath the shade The breezy old-home orchard made, The veriest barefoot boy indeed— And I will listen ...
— Songs of Friendship • James Whitcomb Riley
... a-dry—neglect and time Had marr'd the work of artisan and mason, And efts and croaking frogs, begot of slime, Sprawl'd in the ruin'd bason. ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood
... of some unknown ancestor, either on the father's or mother's side. She was a big girl—her father was rather short and squat—with black hair and dark eyes, limbs loosely set, with a tendency to sprawl, large feet and hands. She had a handsome, regular face, a little freckled; but the mouth, although it was beautifully curved, was a trifle too long, and except when she was in a passion, was not sufficiently under ...
— Miriam's Schooling and Other Papers - Gideon; Samuel; Saul; Miriam's Schooling; and Michael Trevanion • Mark Rutherford
... I made a little more out of my work than I have made for a long while back; though even now I cannot make things fall into sentences - they only sprawl over the paper in bald orphan clauses. Then I was about in the afternoon with Baxter; and we had a good deal of fun, first rhyming on the names of all the shops we passed, and afterwards buying needles and quack drugs from open-air vendors, and taking much pleasure in their inexhaustible eloquence. ...
— The Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 1 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... as my fist runs to size, set it down to that quill, dear old pal; Correspondents is on to me lately, complains as I write like a gal. Sixteen words to the page, and slopscrawly, all dashes and blobs. Well, it's true; But a quill and big sprawl is the fashion, so wot is a ...
— Punch, or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, August 15, 1891 • Various
... somewhat wobbly legs. But as time passed Spot began to weary of never-ending play. There were moments when Spot wanted to lie still and doze. But as soon as he had settled himself for a nap the puppy was sure to come bouncing up and sprawl all over him. He would seize one of Spot's long ears between his teeth and give it a bit of a nip. Sometimes he ...
— The Tale of Old Dog Spot • Arthur Scott Bailey
... bang of the carbines again, and in the instant the leader collapsed in the road, a sprawl of clothes, hit by half a dozen bullets. It was an extraordinary effect. As though the figure had been deflated. It was incredible that a moment before this thing had been a man, an individual, ...
— The Research Magnificent • H. G. Wells
... varieties of cowpeas. These varieties differ in form, in the size of seed and of pod, in the color of seed and of pod, and in the time of ripening. They differ, too, in the manner of growth. Some grow erect; others sprawl on the ground. In selecting varieties it is well to choose those that grow straight up, those that are hardy, those that fruit early and abundantly, and those that hold their leaves. The variety selected for seed should also suit the ...
— Agriculture for Beginners - Revised Edition • Charles William Burkett
... their perfume. The Abbey stands in a rocky valley looking south. The grounds are laid out in a succession of terraces, and from every nook and crevice rare specimens of cacti, sedums, and mesembryanthemums with their orange and purple bloom sprawl over the rocks and run riot among the borders. In the gardens South American aloes throw up their flowering stalks heavy with aromatic fragrance, 20 feet high, and giant dracaenas wave their feathery heads in the balmy breeze. Exotic ...
— The Cornwall Coast • Arthur L. Salmon
... first widened the interval between the two ranks, and founded a wholesome repulsion between them. In our own times, we have read descriptions of West India planters admitting the infant children of their slaves to play and sprawl about their saloons: but now, since the slave has acquired the station of a free man, and (from the fact of not having won this station meritoriously, but passively received it as a boon) is too generally disposed to use it in a ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine—Vol. 54, No. 333, July 1843 • Various
... their cup of domestic happiness would be overflowing. Babcock's long ungratified yearning for the things of the spirit were fully met by these cosey evenings, which he would have been glad to continue to the crack of doom. To smoke and sprawl and read a little, and exchange chit-chat, was poetry enough for him. So contented was he that his joy was apt to find an outlet in ditties and whistling—he possessed a slightly tuneful, rollicking knack at both—a proceeding which commonly culminated ...
— Unleavened Bread • Robert Grant
... endeavoured to make an artificial mother, by wrapping up a piece of buffalo-skin into a bundle, and suspending it about a foot from the floor. At first this seemed to suit it admirably, as it could sprawl its legs about and always find some hair, which it grasped with the greatest tenacity. I was now in hopes that I had made the little orphan quite happy; and so it seemed for some time, until it began to remember its lost parent, and try to suck. It would pull itself up close to ...
— The Malay Archipelago - Volume I. (of II.) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... demeanour made a very favourable impression. But a year or two after his return, he was joined by a Labour representative who displayed the characteristics of altogether a different sort. For one thing, he was a vulgarly overdressed man, and he used to sprawl about the benches with outstretched arms, making his cry of condescending patronage heard in answer to any utterance of which he might approve from such inconsiderable persons as Gladstone or Harcourt or Forster. ...
— Recollections • David Christie Murray
... the boat alongside the bank, made her fast, helped the still awkward Mole safely ashore, and swung out the luncheon-basket. The Mole begged as a favour to be allowed to unpack it all by himself; and the Rat was very pleased to indulge him, and to sprawl at full length on the grass and rest, while his excited friend shook out the table-cloth and spread it, took out all the mysterious packets one by one and arranged their contents in due order, still gasping: "O my! O my!" at each fresh revelation. ...
— The Wind in the Willows • Kenneth Grahame
... a flash, the younger combatant gave up the fight. But as he turned, instead of merely crawling away defeated, he made a sudden convulsive sprawl which the older bull was not expecting, and dug his teeth into the cow who had given rise to all the trouble, and lifted her bodily. The old beachmaster, his mane bristling with rage, made after him, but the younger bull, although he was forced to move on the stump of his wounded flipper, held ...
— The Boy With the U. S. Fisheries • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... but also by keeping the cars at such an amazing heat that the victims promptly fade into a swoon. Nowhere will you see a more complete abandonment to the wild postures of fatigue and despair than in the pathetic sprawl of these human forms upon the simmering plush settees. A hot eddy of some varnish-tinctured vapour—certainly not air—rises from under the seats and wraps the traveller in a nightmarish trance. Occasionally he starts wildly from his dream and glares frightfully through the misted pane. It ...
— Pipefuls • Christopher Morley
... merry, and never were four hard-worked old ladies who deserved it better. All a woman can do in war-time they do daily and cheerfully. Just as their men-folk are doing it at the Front; and now, with the mops and pails laid aside, they sprawl gracefully at ease. There is no intention on their part to consider peace terms until a decisive victory has been gained in the field (Sarah Ann Dowey), until the Kaiser is put to the right-about (Emma Mickleham), and singing very small ...
— Echoes of the War • J. M. Barrie
... a winner, he had made Monte Carlo recognise that he had come,—although he did not go into detail as to the manner of his departure,—and he had brought home a present for everybody. The skin he had taken from a lion somewhere in some remote jungle to sprawl, rug fashion in Wanda's room, where it created no little havoc in the furniture arrangement and finally caused the dressing table to be shifted to a corner to make place for the enormous, gaping head with the fierce eyes; an Indian shawl for Mrs. Leland, selected evidently ...
— The Short Cut • Jackson Gregory
... came down at that, with a run; hanging to the rope at one side, and dragging, till she tumbled in a sprawl upon ...
— Real Folks • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... such other truck as accumulates where horses are kept standing around. When we left Bolivar we were in considerable of a hurry, with no time to primp or comb our hair, and neither did we bring our tents along, so we are just living out of doors now, and "boarding at Sprawl's." There is plenty of wood, though, to make fires, and we have jayhawked enough planks and boards to lie on to keep us out of the mud, so we just curl up at night in our blankets with all our clothes on, and manage to get along fairly well. Our worst trouble now is the lack of grub. The ...
— The Story of a Common Soldier of Army Life in the Civil War, 1861-1865 • Leander Stillwell
... [astronomical units of distance] astronomical unit, AU, light- year, parsec. [metric units of length] nanometer, nm, micron, micrometer, millimicron, millimeter, mm, centimeter, cm, meter, kilometer, km. pedometer, perambulator; scale &c (measurement) 466. V. be long &c adj.; stretch out, sprawl; extend to, reach to, stretch to; make a long arm, drag its slow length along. render long &c adj.; lengthen, extend, elongate; stretch; prolong, produce, protract; let out, draw out, spin out^; drawl. enfilade, look along, view ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... Practically anybody who chose could walk into the palace and see the king playing with his children, or paring his nails. The people possessed the monarch, as the people possess Primrose Hill; that is, they cannot move it, but they can sprawl all over it. The old French monarchy was founded on the excellent principle that a cat may look at a king. But nowadays a cat may not look at a king; unless it is a very tame cat. Even where the press is free for criticism it is only used for adulation. The substantial ...
— What's Wrong With The World • G.K. Chesterton
... was certainly not a pretty sight. His muscular arms and legs were all a-sprawl and his head hung back at a strange angle to his body, so that his fiery red beard pointed upwards, exposing all the thick sinewy throat beneath it. His eyes were half open and looked bleared and unhealthy, while his thick ...
— The Firm of Girdlestone • Arthur Conan Doyle
... it's as clear as mud. Let's sit down here just as if we were going to take a rest; let's sprawl on the ground just as if we weren't thinking about that shack at all. Then we can talk about what ...
— Roy Blakeley's Bee-line Hike • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... fitfully and feebly capering on the windy blackness outside the open workshop of Crickledon, the carpenter, fronting the sea-beach. Mr. Tinnnan's house was inquired for. Crickledon left off planing; at half-sprawl over the board, he bawled out, "Turn to the right; right ahead; can't mistake it." He nodded to one of the cronies intent on watching his labours: "Not unless they mean to be bait for whiting-pout. Who's that for Tinman, I wonder?" The speculations ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... distance, when he suddenly lurched against me, as if he had slipped and lost his footing. That was what I believed in that startling moment—but as I went head first overboard I was aware that his fall was confined to a sprawl into the scuppers. Overboard I went!—but he remained where he was. And my weight—I was weighing a good thirteen stone at that time, being a big and hefty youngster—carried me down and down into the green water, for I had been shot over the side with considerable impetus. And when I came up, a ...
— Dead Men's Money • J. S. Fletcher
... "neither foot-hold nor handhold among all the props and stays in the precious word of life;" but presently he would find some gracious assurance—he knew not how—sustaining him. At one time he would appear to himself like a child fallen into a mill-pond, "who thought it could make some shift to sprawl and scramble in the water," yet, as it could find nothing to which to cling, must sink at last; but by and by he would perceive that an unseen power was buoying him up, and encouraging him to cry from the depths. At another ...
— Life of Bunyan • Rev. James Hamilton
... can wait. It's nice to be able just to sprawl about—sprawl in a comfortable old chair. I like this little room. We are being turned into an Italian villa, you know. I don't quite see how I'll ever live up to it." As he spoke he took out a plebeian tobacco pouch and a nondescript pipe. ...
— The Gorgeous Girl • Nalbro Bartley
... hadn't married a fiery sojer, to make me bring fatherless children into the world, all through his dreadful calling! Why didn't a man of no sprawl ...
— The Dynasts - An Epic-Drama Of The War With Napoleon, In Three Parts, - Nineteen Acts, And One Hundred And Thirty Scenes • Thomas Hardy
... of its first year the infant begins to crawl and toddle about the room and gallery, to sprawl into the hearth and eat charcoal, and to get into all sorts of mischief in the usual way. During the first year he lives chiefly on his mother's milk, but takes also thick rice-water from an ...
— The Pagan Tribes of Borneo • Charles Hose and William McDougall
... it! You wake up singing like a fool canary; you wear imported hosiery; you've made a soft, warm wallow for yourself at this club, and here you bask your life away, waddling downtown to nail contracts and cut coupons, and uptown to dinners and theaters, only to return and sprawl here in luxury without one single thought for posterity. Your crime is ...
— The Tracer of Lost Persons • Robert W. Chambers
... a shy at you; SALISBURY stout, and bespectacled CROSS, Each in his season has joined in the cry at you, Little, 'twould seem, to your damage or loss. Still you eight-headed and lanky-limbed monster, you Sprawl and monopolise, spread and devour. Many assail you, but hitherto, none stir you. Say, has the hero arrived, and the hour? No Infant Hercules, surely, can tackle you, Ancient abortion, with hope of success. ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99., October 11, 1890 • Various
... see what's doing," and Seaton started to walk toward one of the windows with his free, swinging stride. Instantly he was a-sprawl, the effort necessary to carry his weight upon the Earth's surface lifting him into the air in a succession of ludicrous hops, but he soon recovered ...
— The Skylark of Space • Edward Elmer Smith and Lee Hawkins Garby
... a place of many lights, which, when thus suddenly disclosed, blinded him at first. Then Raimbaut perceived Guillaume lying a-sprawl across an oaken chest. The Prince had fallen backward and lay in this posture, glaring at the intruders with horrible eyes which did not move and would not ever move again. His breast was crimson, for some one had stabbed him. A woman stood above the corpse and lighted yet ...
— The Certain Hour • James Branch Cabell
... blow the man down, bullies, blow the man down! Way-ay, blow the man down. O blow the man down in Liverpool town! Give me some time to blow the man down. 'Twas aboard a Black-Bailer I first served my time, And in that Black-Bailer I wasted my prime. 'Tis larboard and starboard on deck you will sprawl, For blowers and strikers command the Black Ball. So, it's blow ...
— Blow The Man Down - A Romance Of The Coast - 1916 • Holman Day
... vehicle whatever, but the fleetest no more than just touched the flying cutter, though a hundred soggy mittens grasped for it, then reeled and whirled till sometimes the wearers of those daring mittens plunged flat in the snow and lay a-sprawl, reflecting. For this was the holiday time, and all the boys and girls in town were out, most of them ...
— The Magnificent Ambersons • Booth Tarkington
... is a dismal sailors' bar, smelling of absinthe. Then we come to an empty, decayed square, where a crippled, noseless "Gallia" stands on a fountain; some half-drunk coachmen lounge dreaming on antediluvian cabs, and a few old convicts sprawl on benches. ...
— Two Years with the Natives in the Western Pacific • Felix Speiser
... sure taste gave her that ultra-smart appearance which does everything for a type that is less attractive in a dinner gown, and still less in negligee. And which, after marriage, usually lets a straight strand of hair sprawl across ...
— The Crimson Tide • Robert W. Chambers
... were hatch'd; By this you cannot fail to know them; 'Tis needless, therefore, that I show them." At length God gives the owl a set of heirs, And while at early eve abroad he fares, In quest of birds and mice for food, Our eagle haply spies the brood, As on some craggy rock they sprawl, Or nestle in some ruined wall, (But which it matters not at all,) And thinks them ugly little frights, Grim, sad, with voice like shrieking sprites. "These chicks," says he, "with looks almost infernal, Can't be the darlings of our friend nocturnal. I'll sup of them." And so he did, ...
— A Hundred Fables of La Fontaine • Jean de La Fontaine
... sight, by the side of Mentone, San Remo is sadly prosaic. The valleys seem to sprawl, and the universal olives are monotonously grey upon their thick clay soil. Yet the wealth of flowers in the fat earth is wonderful. One might fancy oneself in a weedy farm flower-bed invaded by stray oats and beans and cabbages and garlic from the kitchen-garden. ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... a little more out of my work than I have made for a long while back; though even now I cannot make things fall into sentences—they only sprawl over the paper in bald orphan clauses. Then I was about in the afternoon with Baxter; and we had a good deal of fun, first rhyming on the names of all the shops we passed, and afterwards buying needles and quack drugs from open-air vendors, and taking much pleasure in their inexhaustible ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 23 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... of the summer of 1921 made it the first impulse of travelers to plunge straight into the cool, kindly ocean, where they could wade and bathe in the surf, sprawl for hours in the sand, or indulge in races and various games ...
— See America First • Orville O. Hiestand |
