"Sprawl" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... watched furtively. When, at last, Hodges stirred from his indolent sprawl, knocked the dottle from his pipe, and looked up at her, she shrank visibly. The blood rushed back to her heart in a flood, leaving her pallid, and she was trembling. Even in the feeble light from the guttering candle, Hodges could perceive her disturbance. It gratified ...
— Heart of the Blue Ridge • Waldron Baily
... 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. It needeth a true full-grown hero to shackle you, Jupiter's ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99., October 11, 1890 • Various
... never finished, for with a sprawl, the "Parson" stumbled over the blade of grass and came down on the other side with ...
— The Cheerful Cricket and Others • Jeannette Marks
... phantoms, into the wide hall; Like phantoms, to the iron porch, they glide; Where lay the Porter, in uneasy sprawl, With a huge empty flaggon by his side: The wakeful bloodhound rose, and shook his hide, But his sagacious eye an inmate owns: By one, and one, the bolts full easy slide:— The chains lie silent ...
— Keats: Poems Published in 1820 • John Keats
... silent on a motionless horse. But if perchance he had to dismount, then, after a while, from the door of that hovel or of that pulperia, with a ferocious scuffle and stifled imprecations, a cargador would fly out head first and hands abroad, to sprawl under the forelegs of the silver-grey mare, who only pricked forward her sharp little ears. She was used to that work; and the man, picking himself up, would walk away hastily from Nostromo's revolver, reeling a little along ...
— Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard • Joseph Conrad
... the way through the broad, straggling plantation to the great pool which begins in a narrow creek leading from the river and ends in a sprawl of water to the east ...
— Bones - Being Further Adventures in Mr. Commissioner Sanders' Country • Edgar Wallace
... no longer doubt; He ran, he leapt into the flood; There sprawl'd a while, and scarce got out, All cover'd o'er with ...
— The Poems of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Volume I (of 2) • Jonathan Swift
... offender; who without any more ado instantly occupied it. It was a fine thing to hear the jingling of the twenty pieces in his pocket, the oaths which he distributed between the landlord, the guests, and the liquor—to remark the sprawl of his mighty jack-boots, before the sweep of which the timid guests edged farther and farther away; and the languishing leers which he cast on the landlady, as with wide-spread arms he ...
— Catherine: A Story • William Makepeace Thackeray
... fellow-creature who has loyally 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 ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust
... cornflowers, gemming the golden grain; Ah no! You can't deceive me. Can't I believe my eyes? Look! It's the dead, my comrades, stark on the dreadful plain, All in their dark-blue blouses, staring up at the skies. Comrades of canteen laughter, dumb in the yellow wheat. See how they sprawl and huddle! See how their brows are white! Goaded on to the shambles, there in death and defeat. . . . Father of Pity, hide them! ...
— Rhymes of a Red Cross Man • Robert W. Service
... where it seems of less 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, ...
— Imaginations and Reveries • (A.E.) George William Russell
... you ever know a man to sprawl a note all over two sheets of paper, with nothing to distinguish the end from the beginning? In the nature of things, you'd expect her to commence at the top of a sheet, and, in a careless moment, she may have done so. Let ...
— Master of the Vineyard • Myrtle Reed
... so near the back of the wagon that her wheel to the right did not carry her beyond the trunk, itself bounding to the right. The unexpected sheer did not unhorse her rider, but the mare went down in a helpless sprawl over the great obstacle in her path, and the girlish figure in ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 6, July 1905 • Various
... sprawl, now that the heat of day is best, Flat on his belly in the pit's much mire, With elbows wide, fists clenched to prop his chin. And, while he kicks both feet in the cool slush, And feels about his spine small eft-things ...
— Selections from the Poems and Plays of Robert Browning • Robert Browning
... something to eat at the end of their journey, they set out in much better spirits. But they make not many steps—if steps they can be called—before discovering the difficulties at which the old sealer has hinted, saying, "ye'll see." Steps, indeed! Their progress is more a sprawl than a walk; a continuous climb and scramble over trunks of fallen trees, many so decayed as to give way under their weight, letting them down to their armpits in a mass of sodden stuff, as soft as mud, ...
— The Land of Fire - A Tale of Adventure • Mayne Reid
... the 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 ...
— Fantazius Mallare - A Mysterious Oath • Ben Hecht
... was closing, he was allowed, for half an hour before sleep, to sprawl upon the carpet in front of the fire. He had with him his rattle and a large bear which he stroked because it was comfortable; he had no personal feeling ...
— The Golden Scarecrow • Hugh Walpole
... 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 he could ...
— The Black Bag • Louis Joseph Vance
... It not only justified a slow progress up the hill, but at the crest a sprawl on the turf beside the road, to contemplate the Weald from the south. In a matter of two days he had crossed that spacious valley, with its frozen surge of green hills, its little villages and townships here and there, its copses ...
— The Wheels of Chance - A Bicycling Idyll • H. G. Wells
... him 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 kind opened ...
— A Gentleman Vagabond and Some Others • F. Hopkinson Smith
... judicious use of the curb rein, you collect a tired horse; tired horses are inclined to sprawl about. You draw his hind-legs under him, throw him upon his haunches, and render him less liable to fall even on his weary or weak fore-legs. But a pull at the reins when a horse is falling may make him hold up his head, but cannot make ...
— A New Illustrated Edition of J. S. Rarey's Art of Taming Horses • J. S. Rarey
... made a picture that brought an awed hush over the place. He stood in the glaring light, a gun in each hand, the muscles of his face and neck standing out like whipcords; his legs a-sprawl, his eyes blazing with awful rage as they roved around the room, scanning the faces of every man there. The other Circle L men had drawn their weapons, too. But Shorty dominated. It was upon him that all ...
— The Trail Horde • Charles Alden Seltzer
... Shoals of small bright fishes were; In and out weed-thickets bent Perch and carp, and sauntering went With mounching jaws and eyes a-stare; Or on a lotus leaf would crawl A brindled loach to bask and sprawl, Tasting the warm sun ere it dipped Into the water; but quick as fear Back his shining brown head slipped To crouch on the gravel of his lair, Where the cooled sunbeams, broke in wrack, Spilt shattered gold about his back. So within that green-veiled air, Within that white-walled ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 2 (of 4) • Various
... brutes. They felt nor inspired but little affection. The younger apes Tarzan still played 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 ...
— Jungle Tales of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... 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 into ...
— The Legends of San Francisco • George W. Caldwell
... fire escapes Or sprawl over the stoops... Upturned faces glimmer pallidly— Herring-yellow faces, spotted as with a mold, And moist faces of girls Like dank white lilies, And infants' faces with open parched mouths that suck at the air ...
— The Ghetto and Other Poems • Lola Ridge
... hundred 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 ...
— Agriculture for Beginners - Revised Edition • Charles William Burkett
... the night, Stumps, either overcome by weariness or subdued by his friends' discourses on the stellar world, behaved pretty well. Only once did he fling out and bestow an unmerited blow on the pork-barrel. But, about daybreak, he began to sprawl, gradually working his way to the extreme edge of the raft, where a piece of wood, nailed there on purpose, prevented him from rolling off altogether. It did not, however, prevent his tossing one of ...
— The Battery and the Boiler - Adventures in Laying of Submarine Electric Cables • R.M. Ballantyne
... last, that Robin hight, Renown'd for pinching maids by night, Has bent him up aloof; And full against the beam he flung, Where by the back the youth he hung To sprawl unneath the roof." ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 189, June 11, 1853 • Various
... goldfinch's nest, and "the flat stone on which he heard, for the first time, the mellow ringing of the bellringer frog." (1/4.) Later, when writing to his brother, he was to recall the good days of still careless life, when "he would sprawl, the sun on his belly, on the mosses of the wood of Vezins, eating his black bread and cream" or "ring the bells of Saint-Lons" and "pull the tails of ...
— Fabre, Poet of Science • Dr. G.V. (C.V.) Legros
... multiplication table failed here, and at this, variously a-sprawl on the turf beneath, the smaller ...
— Red Cap Tales - Stolen from the Treasure Chest of the Wizard of the North • Samuel Rutherford Crockett
... Oh, that's the trouble, is it? Well, then, sit here and talk to me." He gave a mighty yawn—"I'm not sleepy, either; I can go days without it. Here!—here's a comfortable chair to sprawl in. . . . It's daylight already; doesn't the morning air smell sweet? I've a jug of milk and some grapes and peaches in my ice-cupboard if you feel inclined. No? All right; stretch out, sight for a thousand yards, and fire ...
— The Younger Set • Robert W. Chambers
... a somersault for every extra, while the baby, trying to follow his example, bunched over in a sidewise sprawl and cut his foot on the axe with which his mother had prized up the box-lid. That sobered them, they carried the books indoors. Mrs. Duncan had a top shelf in her closet cleared for them, far above the reach of ...
— Freckles • Gene Stratton-Porter
... counsel, but they tell all that they hear or see. Suddenly they laugh, and suddenly they weep. Always they cry, jangle, and jape; that unneth they be still while they sleep. When they be washed of filth, anon they defile themselves again. When their mother washeth and combeth them, they kick and sprawl, and put with feet and with hands, and withstand with all their might. They desire to drink always, unneth they are out of bed, when they ...
— Mediaeval Lore from Bartholomew Anglicus • Robert Steele
... 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
... your partner's face. Pretty lips speak ugly words. Honi soit qui mal y pense; but then the gentleman is between two and three wines, and the lady is rallying him because he has sense enough left to be a little modest. A couple sprawl in a waltz. A gentleman roars a toast. The hostess prays for less noise. An altercation breaks out in the antechamber. Two ladies exchange slaps on the face, and you thank ...
— The Cockaynes in Paris - 'Gone abroad' • Blanchard Jerrold
... kind of odd number at camp was evidenced by his unfamiliarity with the things that were very familiar to most boys there. He was too restless to hang around the pavilion or sprawl under the trees or idle about with the others in and near Council Shack. He never read the bulletin board posted outside, and the inside was a place of so little interest to him that he had not even seen the beautiful canoe that was exhibited there, ...
— Tom Slade on Mystery Trail • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... the doctor's own hand went swiftly to his head. There was a tug at the reins, and it fetched old Dapple up with a sprawl. ...
— Corporal Sam and Other Stories • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... 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 ...
— Riley Farm-Rhymes • James Whitcomb Riley
... contribution of two hundred and fifty-one pupils to my happiest memories of Matsue: a Japanese sword of the time of the daimyo. Silver karashishi with eyes of gold—in Izumo, the Lions of Shinto—swarm over the crimson lacquer of the sheath, and sprawl about the exquisite hilt. And the committee who brought the beautiful thing to my house requested me to accompany them forthwith to the college assembly-room, where the students were all waiting to bid me good-bye, after ...
— Glimpses of an Unfamiliar Japan • Lafcadio Hearn
... Does about the Dale, And with the Lady prioress of the house To play at leap-frog, naked in their smocks, Until the merry wenches at their mass Cry teehee weehee; And tickling these mad lasses in their flanks, They'll sprawl, and squeak, and pinch their fellow Nuns. Be lively, boys, before the wench we lose, I'll make the Abbas wear the ...
— The Merry Devil • William Shakespeare
... lightning flash of memory, August Naab's words steadied Jack's shaken nerves. He aimed low and ahead of the running bear. Down the beast went in a sliding sprawl with a muffled roar of rage. Up he sprang, dangling a useless leg, yet leaping swiftly forward. One blow sent the attacking dog aside. Jack fired again. The bear became a wrestling, fiery demon, death-stricken, but full of savage fury. Jack aimed ...
— The Heritage of the Desert • Zane Grey
... 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 The Man Down - A Romance Of The Coast - 1916 • Holman Day
... favourite passages, but they evidently represent rather afterthought than forethought. He is not good at generalities, and when he tries them is apt, instead of flying (as an Ariel of criticism should do), to sprawl. Yet it was impossible for a man who was so almost invariably right in particulars, to go very wrong in general; and the worst that can be said of Leigh Hunt's general critical axioms and conclusions is that they are much better than the reasons that support them. For instance, he is probably ...
— Essays in English Literature, 1780-1860 • George Saintsbury
... of the design is spoilt by the broken and curly volutes which sprawl across the aisles, by ugly finials at the corners, and by a rather clumsy ...
— Portuguese Architecture • Walter Crum Watson
... heart began to beat again heavily, for his hands, which flew up, were resting upon one side of a long, slight, fruit-gathering ladder—one of those which sprawl out widely at the foot, and run up very narrow at the top, a form which makes them safe from tilting sidewise, and so balanced that they are easy to carry about from ...
— The Vast Abyss - The Story of Tom Blount, his Uncles and his Cousin Sam • George Manville Fenn
... to her. At night when the young king was sleeping, his wife was to draw the clothes off him and empty the bucket full of cold water with the gudgeons in it over him, so that the little fishes would sprawl about him. Then he woke up and cried: 'Oh, what makes me shudder so?—what makes me shudder so, dear wife? Ah! now I know what ...
— Grimms' Fairy Tales • The Brothers Grimm
... which flowed through the garden, and had a whole bucketful of 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 what it is ...
— The Junior Classics, Volume 1 • Willam Patten
... rim of a brandreth, oor which a seety rattencreak hung dangling fra a black randletree. The walls were plaister'd with dirt, and a stee, with hardly a rung, was rear'd into a loft. Araund the woman her lile ans sprawl'd on the hearth, some whiting speals, some snottering and crying, and ya ruddy-cheek'd lad threw on a bullen to make a loww, for its mother to find her loup. By this sweal I ...
— English Dialects From the Eighth Century to the Present Day • Walter W. Skeat
... scarcely uttered 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 ...
— The Emigrants Of Ahadarra - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... University degree, because he lacked power to study and because he preferred midnight beer to midnight oil. George Washington, in student days, could never grasp the simplest rules of spelling. The young Lincoln loved to sprawl in the shade with fish-pole or tattered book, when he should ...
— Bruce • Albert Payson Terhune
... and 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 ...
— The Story of a Common Soldier of Army Life in the Civil War, 1861-1865 • Leander Stillwell
... gyard he had his gloved fist home on my cheek an' down I went full-sprawl. 'Will that content you?' sez he, blowin' on his knuckles for all the world like a Scots Greys orf'cer. 'Content!' sez I. 'For your own sake, man, take off your spurs, peel your jackut, an' onglove. 'Tis the beginnin' ...
— Indian Tales • Rudyard Kipling
... merry, chocolate-coloured dame supports them in sheer idleness; and, dressed like natives, but still retaining some foreign element of gait or attitude, still perhaps with some relic (such as a single eye-glass) of the officer and gentleman, they sprawl in palm-leaf verandahs and entertain an island audience with memoirs of the music-hall. And there are still others, less pliable, less capable, less fortunate, perhaps less base, who continue, even in these isles of plenty, to ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XIX (of 25) - The Ebb-Tide; Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Corliss making his final sprawl, and the entire committee of investigation ready with any quantity of newly hatched theories, probable and improbable. Cutting short their eloquence, however, Mr. Lamotte recommended them to talk as little as possible among the townspeople, and to pursue the investigation ...
— The Diamond Coterie • Lawrence L. Lynch
... Milton 'tis in vain to look; These shelves admit not any modern book. And now the chapel's 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 footsteps ...
— Essay on Man - Moral Essays and Satires • Alexander Pope
... cling and crawl Straight up, with strong endeavor; But down it came with a slippery sprawl, As near to the ground ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... 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 life of ...
— Little Novels of Italy • Maurice Henry Hewlett
... adventure. Not 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
... speed, 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 ...
— Pipefuls • Christopher Morley
... 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. ...
— A Hundred Fables of La Fontaine • Jean de La Fontaine
... was twelve feet broad, and, of course, of great length. Here was clustered the rocking-chairs, and sofas, and work-tables, and very often the cradle of the family. Here stood Mrs. Heathcote's sewing-machine, and here the master would sprawl at his length, while his wife, or his wife's sister, read to him. It was here, in fact, that they lived, having a parlor simply for their meals. Behind the main edifice there stood, each apart, various buildings, forming an irregular quadrangle. ...
— Harry Heathcote of Gangoil • Anthony Trollope
... o'clock tune on the bells, heedless in that elevation of our career—in less than no time John Knox, preaching from a house half-way down the Canongate, gave us the go-by—and down through one long wide sprawl of men, women, and children we wheeled past the Gothic front, and round the south angle of Holyrood, and across the King's-park, where wan and withered sporting debtors held up their hands and cried, Hurra—hurra—hurra—without stop ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, - Issue 286, December 8, 1827 • Various
... Margarita's daughter, perfect in health, beautiful as a baby angel, active, daring, and enchantingly affectionate, satisfied the old lady's pride completely and she sat for hours contentedly watching her sprawl on an ...
— Margarita's Soul - The Romantic Recollections of a Man of Fifty • Ingraham Lovell
... do our best, Mr. Sprawl, to make you feel at home here," smiled the hotel clerk, who had acquired the idea that it pays to be good ...
— More Toasts • Marion Dix Mosher
... down one bank and scrambled up the other, our party inside got mixed somewhat. First we would all be down in a pile at the forward end of the stage, nearly in a sitting posture, and in a second we would shoot to the other end, and stand on our heads. And we would sprawl and kick, too, and ward off ends and corners of mail-bags that came lumbering over us and about us; and as the dust rose from the tumult, we would all sneeze in chorus, and the majority of us would grumble, and probably say some hasty thing, like: "Take ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... her there was a resurrection 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 the control of her muscles, ...
— Miriam's Schooling and Other Papers - Gideon; Samuel; Saul; Miriam's Schooling; and Michael Trevanion • Mark Rutherford
... matter. Like the chance crowd on which you may look down in the square of a great city, they range from the infant to the worn and sinking aged. There is this difference, however, that the embryos of worlds sprawl, gigantic and luminous, across the expanse; that the dark and mighty bodies of the dead rush, like the rest, at twenty or fifty miles a second; and that at intervals some appalling blaze, that dims even the fearful furnaces of the living, ...
— The Story of Evolution • Joseph McCabe
... gives one suggestion of past and of coming voyages. Under the white awnings long lounge-chairs sprawl here and there,—each with an occupant, smoking in silence, or dozing with head drooping to one side. A young man, awaking as I pass to my cabin, turns upon me a pair of peculiarly luminous black eyes,—creole eyes. Evidently a ...
— Two Years in the French West Indies • Lafcadio Hearn
... those lean legs that were carrying him over the roots with such provoking rapidity, and have often wondered since why I refrained; but I did, and continued to scuttle after him, now slipping down and barking my shins, now nearly losing my carbine, and often compelled to sprawl on all fours. He was now forty or fifty yards ahead of me, and I was nearly giving up the useless chase, when an unforeseen accident turned the tables in my favour, and caused me to push on with redoubled vigour. ...
— Australian Search Party • Charles Henry Eden
... sleds to any 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 on ...
— The Magnificent Ambersons • Booth Tarkington
... shouting for help. Then Keston stumbled and went down in a sprawl on the rough gray ice. The bear was almost on him and there was nothing I ...
— Astounding Stories, July, 1931 • Various
... which was the innocent cause of loss and misery was poisoned by a narcotic. In his efforts to move freely he strained himself, for the subtle drug deprived him of the power of using his limbs, and he could only sprawl and wrench his sinews. This is the fourth case of the kind which has recently occurred; and now clever judges have hit upon the cause which has disabled so many good horses, after the rascals of the Ring have succeeded ...
— The Ethics of Drink and Other Social Questions - Joints In Our Social Armour • James Runciman
... in a spot that will someday lie in the shade of a great oak, a group of students sit, sprawl, lie. The oldest of them is sixteen, and it is true that not one of them has any reverence for college degrees, because the entrance requirements demand the scholastic level of bachelor in the arts, the sciences, in language and ...
— The Fourth R • George Oliver Smith
... sprawl," I said. Then he walked away. That was the second day at Poughkeepsie and most all day the Elks were busy turning Skinny into a fish. Some of the rest of us went up to Metzger's Candy Store to get some jaw-breakers. Did you ever eat those? Pee-wee was quiet for an hour munching one. ...
— Roy Blakeley's Adventures in Camp • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... feel inclined to sit down and let men sprawl all over us, or run into people with knives. I never heard such stuff. A mountain ledge, a well-balanced load, a driver you can trust to let you pick your own way, and I'm your mule. But—the other things—no!" said Billy, with a ...
— The Jungle Book • Rudyard Kipling
... wind by 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 ...
— Through Russia • Maxim Gorky
... 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: And who hath ...
— The Poems of Sidney Lanier • Sidney Lanier
... had 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. ...
— The Stowaway Girl • Louis Tracy
... 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 impossible," ...
— The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... to be scrupulously neat. It stood on a knoll, as do most gulch cabins, in order that occasional freshets might pass below, and the knoll looked as though it had been clipped with a pair of scissors. Not a crooked little juniper bush was allowed to intrude its plebeian sprawl among the dignified pines and the gracefully infrequent bushes. In front of the cabin itself was a "rockery" of pink quartz, on which were piled elk antlers. The building was L-shaped, of two low stories, had a veranda ...
— The Claim Jumpers • Stewart Edward White
... 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 palms, the bamboo, the sugar-cane, ...
— The Cornwall Coast • Arthur L. Salmon
... 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 ...
— The Pagan Tribes of Borneo • Charles Hose and William McDougall
... shapely brig with a lively curiosity, as if here was something really interesting. Presently a boat splashed into the water and was tied alongside the vessel while a dozen of the crew tumbled in to sprawl upon the thwarts and shove the oars into the thole-pins. An erect, graceful man in a red coat and a great beaver hat roared a command from the stern-sheets and the pinnace pulled in the direction of ...
— Blackbeard: Buccaneer • Ralph D. Paine
... view to the east. Here barren pastures sprawl over the hills, dotted in places with herds of cattle or flocks of mountain sheep. But the Valley of Lavedan, which we expected now to overlook, is not yet in sight. After a long descent before us, there is another though ...
— A Midsummer Drive Through The Pyrenees • Edwin Asa Dix
... 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. When all was ready, ...
— The Wind in the Willows • Kenneth Grahame
... The sprawl and fulness of babes, the bosoms and heads of women, the folds of their dress, their style as we pass in the street, the contour of their shape downwards, The swimmer naked in the swimming-bath, seen as he swims ...
— Leaves of Grass • Walt Whitman
... then 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 in his causing Selma ...
— Unleavened Bread • Robert Grant
... straight. I mustn't sprawl with my elbows on the table. It is only common, vulgar ...
— The Second Thoughts of An Idle Fellow • Jerome K. Jerome
... on the fingers on one hand were sufficient to decide the issue. A shot sung in through the uncovered window which carried back no "spat" to the man who fired it. But the eyes which had guided it beheld the half-breed at the counter sprawl across the account book which had yielded him so much satisfaction. Almost at the instant of his fall a lean, agile, dusky, disreputable figure leaped into the room through the aperture which his knife ...
— The Triumph of John Kars - A Story of the Yukon • Ridgwell Cullum
... 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 time he would be so discouraged and daunted, that he scarcely dared to ...
— Life of Bunyan • Rev. James Hamilton
... said it was funny how Pee-Wee could fall asleep so easy and he guessed he'd just sprawl on one of the seats and think. Good night! but didn't he snore while he was thinking. All of a sudden Westy went sliding down to the floor and I dragged him up on the seat again. He was dead ...
— Roy Blakeley's Camp on Wheels • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... 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 ...
— Popular Adventure Tales • Mayne Reid
... 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 ...
— The Certain Hour • James Branch Cabell
... A certain nervous disorder afflicting the young and inexperienced. A passion that goeth before a sprawl. ...
— The Devil's Dictionary • Ambrose Bierce
... child," returned the giant placidly; and then Verity put down Babs on the grass to sprawl ...
— Herb of Grace • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... Amiens and take the Cathedral seriously. Half the stately interior of that glorious thirteenth century pile is encrusted and overlaid by hideous gewgaw monstrosities of the flashiest Bernini and baroque period. There they sprawl their obtrusive legs and wave their flaunting theatrical wings to the utter destruction of all repose and consistency in one of the noblest and most perfect buildings of Europe. Nowadays, any child, any workman ...
— Post-Prandial Philosophy • Grant Allen
... Genius, like goodness (which can stand alone), would arise in a democratic society as frequently as elsewhere; but it might not be so well fed or so well assimilated. There would at least be no artificial and simulated merit; everybody would take his ease in his inn and sprawl unbuttoned without respect for any finer judgment or performance than that which he himself was inclined to. The only excellence subsisting would be spontaneous excellence, inwardly prompted, sure of itself, and inwardly rewarded. For such excellence to grow general mankind must ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... of the city passes into that of the drunken debauch, where the chief men of Samaria sprawl, 'smitten down' by wine, and with the innocent flowers on their hot temples drooping in the fumes of the feast. But bright and sunny as the valley is, glittering in the light as the city sits on her hill, careless and confident as the revellers are, a black cloud lies on the horizon, ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Isaiah and Jeremiah • Alexander Maclaren
... democratic than any of the monarchies of today. 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 difference comes to something ...
— What's Wrong With The World • G.K. Chesterton
... 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. His "Hear, hear, hear," was the very essence of ...
— Recollections • David Christie Murray
... 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
... Festivals," was at one time a resident. The street is narrow and dirty, lined by old brick houses; here and there is a carved doorway with brackets, showing that, like most streets in the vicinity, it was better built than now inhabited, and it is probable that where sickly children now sprawl on doorsteps stately ladies in hoops and silken skirts once stepped forth. St. George's National Schools are here, and a public-house with the odd name of Hole in the Wall, a name adopted by Mr. Morrison in his recent ...
— Holborn and Bloomsbury - The Fascination of London • Sir Walter Besant
... the most striking and indeed astonishing epithets, and inspired by a certain grim Titanic force. His sentences are often clumsily built. He himself said of them: "Perhaps not more than nine-tenths stand straight on their legs; the remainder are in quite angular attitudes; a few even sprawl out helplessly on all sides, quite broken-backed and dismembered." There is no modern writer who possesses so large a profusion of figurative language. His works are also full of the pithiest and most memorable ...
— A Brief History of the English Language and Literature, Vol. 2 (of 2) • John Miller Dow Meiklejohn
... Water shortages loom, but have not yet seriously materialized. Floods threaten, but only at certain definable spots. Human beings boom outward from the Washington metropolis and the other centers of population in search of a fuller life, and the consumptive sprawl and sameness of the communities built to receive them often deny it to them. But in modern terms there are not really enormous numbers of them yet, and for their pleasure and fulfillment a great deal of varied and handsome and historic ...
— The Nation's River - The Department of the Interior Official Report on the Potomac • United States Department of the Interior
... men, overcome by the midday heat, sprawl supine on the floor, with their reefer coats under their heads, their knees uplifted, and their calves laid comfortably on the divan. Those who wear shirts have them open at the throat for greater coolness. Some have ...
— Captain Brassbound's Conversion • George Bernard Shaw
... had his gloved fist home on my cheek an' down I went full-sprawl. "Will that content you?" sez he, blowin' on his knuckles for all the world like a Scots Greys orf'cer. "Content!" sez I. "For your own sake, man, take off your spurs, peel your jackut, an' onglove. 'Tis the beginnin' av the ...
— Life's Handicap • Rudyard Kipling |
