"Straggling" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... about forty-five years before, principally by a number of Dutch families which moved thither from Pennsylvania; but to the rather picturesque little village of the same name, nestling among the pines that fringed the River Rouge, came straggling immigrants or persons grown tired of the solitude and the privations of backwoods life. But to distant portions of the province this thriving village came to be known rather through the terrible reputation of the adjacent swamp than through the thrift, ...
— The Four Canadian Highwaymen • Joseph Edmund Collins
... if they were painted, seem chiefly in possession. In this direction there is a very pretty stretch of shore, out of the town, through the fortifications (which are Vauban's, by the way); through, also, a diminutive public garden or straggling shrubbery, which edges the water and carries its stunted verdure as far as a big Etablissernent des Bains. It was too late in the year to bathe, and the Etablissement had the bank- rupt aspect which belongs to such places out of the season; so I turned my back upon it, ...
— A Little Tour in France • Henry James
... quantity of sewage flowing into the sewers is very great, but it reduces as the population increases, owing to the diversity of the occupations and habits of the inhabitants. In all cases where the residential portions of the district are straggling, and the outfall works are situated at a long distance from the centre of the town, the flow becomes steadier, and the inequalities are not so prominently marked at the outlet end of the sewer. The rate of flow increases more or less gradually ...
— The Sewerage of Sea Coast Towns • Henry C. Adams
... also playing the march from Saul. The first band had now reached the top of the Square, and was scarcely audible from King Street. The reiterated glitter in the sun of memorial cards in hats gave the fanciful illusion of an impossible whitish snake that was straggling across the town. Three-quarters of an hour elapsed before the tail of the snake came into view, and a rabble of unkempt boys closed in ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett
... districts behind us, we were in Papenoo, a straggling village of a few hundred people along the road, the houses, all but the half-dozen stores of the Chinese, set back a hundred yards, and the domestic animals and ...
— Mystic Isles of the South Seas. • Frederick O'Brien
... lights on the wharfs of Dyea, sparkling like jewels against the gray night. Their radiant promise helped over the last mile miraculously. We were wet to the knees and covered with mud as we entered upon the straggling street of the decaying town. We stopped in at the first restaurant to get something hot to eat, but found ourselves almost too tired to enjoy even pea soup. But it warmed us up a little, and keeping on down the street we came at last to a hotel of very comfortable ...
— The Trail of the Goldseekers - A Record of Travel in Prose and Verse • Hamlin Garland
... plums does well in the same districts as the Japanese varieties just dealt with, but has the advantage of being resistant to the fruit fly. The trees are usually more or less straggling growers, the fruit is of small size, but good for cooking or jam-making. One or more of the varieties of this plum are bad setters, though they blossom profusely, but this may be overcome either by working two varieties which bloom ...
— Fruits of Queensland • Albert Benson
... old Joel, and Rube turned to the stable, while Dolph kept an eye on the sheep, which were lying on the road or straggling down the river. As Rube opened the stable-door, a dirty white object bounded out, and Rube, with a loud curse, tumbled over backward into the mud, while a fierce old ram dashed with a triumphant bleat for the open gate. Beelzebub, as the Turner mother had ...
— The Little Shepherd of Kingdom Come • John Fox
... with the haze of morning hanging over it. A few horsemen passed us, pricking along, too much engrossed in their own errand to inquire ours. A couple of carts and a long string of pack-horses, laden principally with bales of wool, came straggling along a byroad, and the drivers waved their broad hats to us and wished us God-speed. At Dunbridge the folk were just stirring, and paused in taking down the cottage shutters to come to the garden railings and watch us pass. ...
— Micah Clarke - His Statement as made to his three Grandchildren Joseph, - Gervas and Reuben During the Hard Winter of 1734 • Arthur Conan Doyle
... bearded backwoodsmen, rifle on shoulder, and with grave earnest faces; but walking rather than marching, irregularly keeping together, or straggling, as they chose. ...
— The Trial - or, More Links of the Daisy Chain • Charlotte M. Yonge
... again. Afterwards, side by side, they did much journeying to and from the nearest sawmill—each trip through a day and a night—thirty odd miles away. The mill was a small, primitive affair, almost lost in the straggling box-elders and soft maples that bordered the muddy Missouri, producing, amid noisy protestations, the most despisable of all lumber on the face of the globe—twisting, ...
— A Breath of Prairie and other stories • Will Lillibridge
... companion on a walk," writes Mr A. Egmont Hake, "whether across country or in the slums of Houndsditch. His enthusiasm for nature was peculiar; he could draw more poetry from a wide-spreading marsh with its straggling rushes than from the most beautiful scenery, and would stand and look at it ...
— The Life of George Borrow • Herbert Jenkins
... When morning purifies the earth; He leans upon a gate and sees The pastures, and the quiet trees. Low, woody hill, with gracious bound, Folds the still valley almost round; The cuckoo, loud on some high lawn, Is answer'd from the depth of dawn; In the hedge straggling to the stream, Pale, dew-drench'd, half-shut roses gleam; But, where the farther side slopes down, He sees the drowsy new-waked clown In his white quaint-embroider'd frock Make, whistling, tow'rd his mist-wreathed ...
— Poetical Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold
... character of the landscape changed. The semi-tropical vegetation grew gradually sparse, and after a while in the distance, seemingly in the midst of the path, a great rock loomed gigantic and gaunt, cutting in two the blue dome of the sky. Still farther on, they came upon stretches of straggling wild peach, olive, and lemon trees. Beyond again, tangles of hawthorn were interspersed with patches of dried weeds and grass. But as they neared the mining district the soil was bleak and barren. The mountain rivers were dry, and their beds made ...
— The Title Market • Emily Post
... moment the Emperor stood like a statue, staring at old Luke. The expression on his face was that of a madman, but a madman through whose brain a straggling ray of realization has dawned. It was the look upon his face that held the whole assemblage spellbound. ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, October, 1930 • Various
... every creature in Grasmere, down to the two-year-old babies,' said Hammond, Mary having just stopped to converse with an infantine group, straggling and struggling over the boulders. 'Pray, do you happen to know a man called Barlow, a very ...
— Phantom Fortune, A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... women can't keep a secret after this," cried Josie, rocking to and fro in paroxysms of laughter. And in the straggling explanations that followed they learned that Mr. Montgomery had been ...
— Marguerite Verne • Agatha Armour
... through dust and sunshine, past orchards of lemons and oranges, among prickly pears and agave overgrown with pink and red geranium, by rocky slopes of mesembryanthemum, yellow marguerites, broom and sweet peas, between white walls with roses straggling over them and occasional glimpses of the sea dotted with fishing boats and, now and then, of the land covered with olives, ...
— Diversions in Sicily • H. Festing Jones
... plaguey Peace!—shipped here seventeen men that were Dutch. Though we looked upon our hardships as being now pretty well over, several Ran from us here that had come out of England with us, being straggling, lazy, good-for-nothings, that can't leave their old Trade of deserting, though now they had a good sum due to each of 'em for Wages. Their shares for Plunder of course were forfeited, and equitably divided among those that stuck by us. ...
— The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, Vol. 3 of 3 • George Augustus Sala
... thus, the girl once down the hill caught hold of Ragamuffin and spun him along the valley between the hills till she came to the coastguard station, straggling like a flock of ...
— Boy Woodburn - A Story of the Sussex Downs • Alfred Ollivant
... of Samuel McCombs, two days after. When the smoke rose, after the first discharge of the rifles, the commander, nine men and two horses lay dead or wounded on the ground. The trumpets immediately sounded a recall. But by the time the scattered dragoons had collected and formed, a straggling fire from a different direction, into which the patriots had extended, showed the unerring aim of each American marksman, and greatly increased the confusion of the surprise. Perfectly acquainted with every foot of the grounds, the patriots ...
— Sketches of Western North Carolina, Historical and Biographical • C. L. Hunter
... danger, I requested the governor's permission to erect a tent upon a spacious plain, at about two miles distance from the town, called Green Point, and to send my people on shore thither during the day, under the care of an officer, to prevent their straggling. This permission the governor immediately granted, and gave orders that ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 12 • Robert Kerr
... view; warm fancy had revelled there, and her airy dance had left vestiges, scarcely visible to a mortal eye. Some perpendicular lines pointed out that melancholy had predominated in his constitution; yet the straggling hairs of his eye-brows showed that anger had often shook his frame; indeed, the four temperatures, like the four elements, had resided in this little world, and produced harmony. The whole visage was bony, and an energetic frown had knit the flexible ...
— Posthumous Works - of the Author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman • Mary Wollstonecraft
... rose, and stepping to him laid a hand on his straggling dark hair. "What is more, he has deserved it, not to-day only but by his goodness over many years. The Lord shall be his illumination," she said gravely, quoting the motto of the University which (amazing thought!) was to be his University. "May the light ...
— Hetty Wesley • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... the palm-tree grove, through a village crowded with dirty, straggling Arab children, on to the cultivated plain, beyond which the Pyramids stood, now full before them; the two large Pyramids, a smaller one, and the huge sphynx's head all in a ...
— An Unprotected Female at the Pyramids • Anthony Trollope
... half-continent. The three million people have grown to eight, and the west of the wandering Indian holds cities greater than the largest of the east at Confederation. From a people overwhelmingly agricultural they have become a people almost equally divided between town and country. The straggling two thousand miles of railways have been multiplied fifteen-fold, forming great transcontinental systems unmatched in the United States. An average wheat crop yields more than ten times the total at Confederation, and the output of the mine has increased at even a more rapid rate. Great manufacturing ...
— The Day of Sir Wilfrid Laurier - A Chronicle of Our Own Time • Oscar D. Skelton
... were floating in the air, I could not feel my feet touching the floor. All the lights merged into one dazzling glow and my heart kept time to the rhythm of the music. When the music stopped, the glorious illumination seemed to go out and leave only a little straggling light from a few badly smelling kerosene lamps. The beautiful, fantastic music had been in reality only a harsh horn accompanied by a concertina or some other stupid instrument jangling vile music. The young boys and girls ...
— An Anarchist Woman • Hutchins Hapgood
... bygone lords, who had died in rebellions and crusades, were too ancient to grip the imagination. At first his veneration for the race which he served inspired an outward show of respect on the part of his hearers. But soon, in straggling twos and threes, they lagged behind to explore and pluck wall-flowers from the crannies. Girls, feeling the pressure of lovers' arms about their waists, giggled shrilly. They wandered off to shady nooks in the grass-grown ramparts where woolly ...
— The Kingdom Round the Corner - A Novel • Coningsby Dawson
... when he looked at Mookoomahn's ghastly face, framed in a mass of long, straggling black hair; at other times he was overcome with a heart-rending pity for Mookoomahn that brought tears to his eyes. But tears froze, and ...
— The Gaunt Gray Wolf - A Tale of Adventure With Ungava Bob • Dillon Wallace
... the courtyard. The first guests came in a straggling fashion, and then suddenly everyone seemed to be rushing in at once. Patricia laughed as she recognized the tall, lanky figure of Bob Wetherill, whose attachment to Rosamond Merton was the bane of that young lady's life. Then she gave a little cry. ...
— Miss Pat at Artemis Lodge • Pemberton Ginther
... of Hopituh stock had been building their straggling dwellings along the canyon brinks, and grouping in villages around the base of the East Mesa, other migratory bands of Hopituh had begun to arrive on the Middle Mesa. As already said, it is admitted that the Snake were the first occupants of ...
— A Study of Pueblo Architecture: Tusayan and Cibola • Victor Mindeleff and Cosmos Mindeleff
... made very happy this morning by the messages from home, and especially Fred's and Jamie's baby efforts. They wanted to send mamma their love, and the straggling characters meant for words, convey as much meaning as though they were in good English, for they speak to me in unmistakable language. Why do I understand so well? Ah, John, I see. Because, being filled with love for them, I recognize the same quality in what they feel ...
— The Right Knock - A Story • Helen Van-Anderson
... dinnertime; about a dozen boarders straggling in, with Vida in a pretty frock anxious because darling Clyde was ten minutes late and of course something fatal must of happened to him in crossing a crowded street. But nothing had. He showed up ...
— Ma Pettengill • Harry Leon Wilson
... where the bare walls, the scanty furniture the brand-new photographic apparatus, the little fireplace a la prussienne, also new, which had never seen a fire, were disastrously apparent in the bright light that fell from the glass roof. The drawn features and straggling beard of the young man, whose very light eyes, high, narrow forehead, and long fair hair thrown back in disorder gave him the appearance of a visionary, all were accentuated in the uncompromising light; and so was the dogged will expressed in that ...
— The Nabob, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... foundation was sawn through, clean and straight. He gazed at it for a moment in astonishment. Then he turned back towards the cottage, to receive another shock. About forty yards up the lane, drawn in close to a straggling hedge, was a small motor-car, revealed to him by a careless swing of his torch. He turned sharply towards it, keeping his torch as much concealed as possible. It was empty—a small coupe of pearl-grey—a powerful two-seater, with deep, cushioned ...
— The Devil's Paw • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... village straggling below—white houses with russet tiles and crowns of smoke, vineyards where the young leaves were beginning to unfold, the red-capped spire, a thread of bubbling stream, an old stone cross. He had been fourteen years struggling up from ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... old people, women and children formed a long straggling cortege; while on the other—brilliant youth constituted a homogeneous and solid mass, marching to ...
— With Those Who Wait • Frances Wilson Huard
... labyrinth. Such as choose to follow her may. For our part, we prefer accompanying the youthful Becky to her chamber, whither she was also attended by the lady of the mansion. Becky's destiny for the night lay at the top of one of those little straggling wooden stairs common in old houses, which creaked in all directions. The bed was placed in a recess dark as Erebus, and betwixt the bed and the wall, was a depth profound, which Becky's eye ...
— Marriage • Susan Edmonstone Ferrier
... passed, sometimes we met at breakfast, sometimes at supper, sometimes we fished together or sat in the straggling orchard and talked; she neither avoided me nor sought me. She is the most charming mixture of child and woman I ever met. She is a dual creature. Now I never met that in a man. When she is here without getting ...
— Victorian Short Stories • Various
... the O. A. C., and Western representative of the syndicate that owned the big mine and stamp mill to the south of town. It was the mine that had made the straggling ...
— Frank Merriwell, Junior's, Golden Trail - or, The Fugitive Professor • Burt L. Standish
... of victory on that day of September 25th—of victory and its price. I met great numbers of the lightly wounded men, mostly "Jocks," and they were in exalted spirits because they had done well in this ordeal and had come through it, and out of it—alive. They came straggling back through the villages behind the lines to the casualty clearing—stations and ambulance-trains. Some of them had the sleeves of their tunics cut away and showed brown, brawny arms tightly bandaged and smeared with blood. Some of them were wounded in ...
— Now It Can Be Told • Philip Gibbs
... Auckland. To right and left the ground rises abruptly and steeply, and the streets become irregular in outline. Nor is the shore a straight and continuous line; these heights on either hand are promontories jutting out into the stream, and hiding deep bays behind them, round which, straggling and irregular, sweeps ...
— Brighter Britain! (Volume 1 of 2) - or Settler and Maori in Northern New Zealand • William Delisle Hay
... onwards the people began to assemble, coming from all parts of the large and straggling district, and sat about in groups gravely talking. Towards eleven o'clock a large number of peasants had arrived, and the altar was covered with not a fair white cloth as usual, but with something suspiciously resembling a long and ...
— The Land of the Black Mountain - The Adventures of Two Englishmen in Montenegro • Reginald Wyon
... the first spells Africa puts upon those whom she means to make her own. Ever after, with the poignant memory of that Cross of straggling stars there is a thought of Africa, and the two cannot be torn apart. For April there was always to be a memory of Vereker Sarle, too, associated with it, for he it was who first picked out the Cross for her in the luminant heavens, and he it ...
— Blue Aloes - Stories of South Africa • Cynthia Stockley
... across the meadow-like bottom of the halting-ground, till he was near the narrow gap through which the regiment had passed, to recommence his furtive movements, seeking the shelter of stone after stone till he disappeared between the folding rocks, while in his track came in a straggling body quite a hundred active-looking men of the same type—strongly built, fierce-looking, bearded fellows, each carrying a long jezail, powder-horn, and bullet-bag, while a particularly ugly ...
— Fix Bay'nets - The Regiment in the Hills • George Manville Fenn
... of the 20th, three of the officers set out on a shooting party, rather contrary to my inclination; as I found the natives, at least some of them, were continually watching every opportunity to rob straggling parties, and were daily growing more daring. About three o'clock in the afternoon, I got intelligence that they were seized and stripped of every thing they had about them. Upon this I immediately went on shore with a boat's crew, accompanied ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 14 • Robert Kerr
... and stood leaning there weakly. With fumbling fingers she brought from inside her dress a soiled sheet of folded paper and drew a long breath of resolution, passing one hand over her face where the hair fell wispy and straggling. Then she braced herself with all the strength and self-will that ...
— The Roof Tree • Charles Neville Buck
... in its long, low meadows and level gardens, close to the little town, straggling red roof above red roof, up its ...
— Red Pottage • Mary Cholmondeley
... through the expanding force of heat; when she had not yet attained her definiteness of form and had neither beauty nor purpose, but only heat and motion. Gradually, when her vapours were condensed into a unified rounded whole through a force that strove to bring all straggling matters under the control of a centre, she occupied her proper place among the planets of the solar system, like an emerald pendant in a necklace of diamonds. So with our soul. When the heat and motion ...
— Sadhana - The Realisation of Life • Rabindranath Tagore
... Padre Esteban sauntered leisurely up the garden, that gradually ascended the slight elevation on which the greater part of the pueblo was built. Through a low gateway in the wall he passed on to the crest of the one straggling street of Todos Santos. On either side of him were ranged the low one-storied, deep-windowed adobe fondas and artisans' dwellings, with low-pitched roofs of dull red pipe-like tiles. Absorbed in his fanciful dreams, he did not at first notice that those dwellings appeared deserted, ...
— The Crusade of the Excelsior • Bret Harte
... the poet's walk in the shrubbery, where, pacing up and down the live-long morning, he composed his Lalla Rookh. It is a little confined gravel-walk, in length about twenty paces; so narrow, that there is barely room on it for two persons to walk abreast: bounded on one side by a straggling row of stinted laurels, on the other by some old decayed wooden paling; at the end of it was a huge haystack. Here, without prospect, space, fields, flowers, or natural beauties of any description, was that most imaginative poem conceived, planned, and executed. ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 13, No. 356, Saturday, February 14, 1829 • Various
... instead of a straggling town with a few muddy streets and about three thousand inhabitants, Jefferson would find our national capital one of the most beautiful cities on the face of the earth, with a population of nearly three hundred thousand; and on March 4 he would behold a scene such as he never dreamed ...
— Our Holidays - Their Meaning and Spirit; retold from St. Nicholas • Various
... sun, lifting above the eastern hills, found long irregular lines of horses straggling across dewy fields to water at the rushing streams of the Manawatu River. On one bare-backed horse of every four sat a trooper, clad sketchily in shirt and breeches tugged on hastily, as a sergeant had called the roll. They played the fool as they passed, laughing and chattering, losing ...
— The Tale of a Trooper • Clutha N. Mackenzie
... themselves Josephites, and do not practise polygamy. There is probably not a sect or schism in the United States that has not its representative in California. Until 1865 San Bernardino was merely a straggling settlement, and a point of distribution for Arizona. The discovery that a large part of the county was adapted to the orange and the vine, and the advent of the Santa Fe railway, changed all that. Land that then might have been bought for $4 an acre is now sold at from $200 to ...
— Our Italy • Charles Dudley Warner
... the western entrance to the seas; and as there is always a strong rush of water through the passage towards the ocean, we had to steam hard against a considerable current. The town, of which I spoke in my last chapter, has a very straggling and neat cleanly appearance. There are no forts or other defences to indicate that not so long ago this town offered defiance and a short resistance ...
— In Eastern Seas - The Commission of H.M.S. 'Iron Duke,' flag-ship in China, 1878-83 • J. J. Smith
... pamphlets lay heaped on the floor, and in the corners were four desks, at one of which three men, whom I learned later to be an Italian, an Englishman and a Spaniard, were talking together intensely. They took no notice of my entrance, for many other visitors, burly, sooty creatures, were constantly straggling in and out. ...
— The Harbor • Ernest Poole
... shown that, whether he tried or not, he had not forgotten. Even that last one received three weeks ago, the note scrawled in the handwriting of a child, from Wadi Halfa, with the large unsteady words straggling unevenly across the page, and the letters running into one another wherein he had told his calamity and renounced his suit—even that proved, and perhaps more surely than its hopeful forerunners—that he had not forgotten. As she waited at the window she understood very clearly that ...
— The Four Feathers • A. E. W. Mason
... the stitches, if they may be so called, are threads laid side by side—and bound down at intervals by cross stitches, or fastenings—upon rather a fine linen cloth; and that the parts intended to represent flesh are left untouched by the needle. I obtained a few straggling shreds of the worsted with which it is worked. The colors are generally a faded or bluish green, crimson, and pink. About the last five feet of this extraordinary roll are in a yet more decayed and imperfect state than ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 4 (of 10) • Various
... idyl of Beirut came now the wrestler from Aleppo, Ahmet Ali, and the occurrence irritated Campbell to a degree which he had not conceived possible. There he passed the door with his dreamy Syrian face, his red rose, his white burnoose, his straggling followers. And Fenzile smiled her ...
— The Wind Bloweth • Brian Oswald Donn-Byrne
... through openings in the brush, scrambling over the dwarf fir, then down through the fallen timber. It was half-past seven o'clock when we descended the last slope and found the path to Glenora. Here we met a straggling party of whites and Indians just starting out to ...
— Alaska Days with John Muir • Samual Hall Young
... Skenk—whom we had seen on arrival—sitting on her front porch, satchel in hand, patiently awaiting us. Ajax helped her to mount—no light task, for she was a very heavy and enfeebled woman. I drove. As we trotted down the long straggling street our passenger spoke with feeling of the changes that had taken place in the old ...
— Bunch Grass - A Chronicle of Life on a Cattle Ranch • Horace Annesley Vachell
... be a straggling adobe house, shaded by cottonwoods and built around three sides of a square. It was roomy, cool, and comfortable, with a picturesqueness all its own. To Solange, it was inviting and homelike, much more so than the rather cold luxury ...
— Louisiana Lou • William West Winter
... they professed an enmity to the soldiers of both parties, their hatred was in most places levelled chiefly against the royalists, from whom they had met with the worst treatment. Many thousands of these tumultuary peasants were assembled in different parts of England; who destroyed all such straggling soldiers as they met with, and much ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part E. - From Charles I. to Cromwell • David Hume
... miles wide, by about eighteen deep; it is fronted by a group of straggling islands of low coral formation, crowned with small trees and bushes: the centre of the northernmost islet is in latitude 11 degrees 41 minutes 50 seconds, longitude 134 degrees 10 minutes 5 seconds. To the eastward of Cape Stewart, the western head of the bay, the coast is ...
— Narrative of a Survey of the Intertropical and Western Coasts of Australia] [Volume 2 of 2] • Phillip Parker King
... a straggling little town of one street and rows of villas overlooking the sea. La Panne, with the guns of Nieuport constantly in one's ears, and the low, red flash of them along the sandy beach; with ambulances bringing in their wounded now that night covers their movements; with ...
— Kings, Queens And Pawns - An American Woman at the Front • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... colony would literally starve to death. Yes, starve to death with untold millions of fruitful acres all about us. Had we strength to fight I would not care so much. With but two companies of undisciplined troops, a mere straggling handful, officered by drunkards, we could not defend this post a day against ...
— The Black Wolf's Breed - A Story of France in the Old World and the New, happening - in the Reign of Louis XIV • Harris Dickson
... a job somewhere, and cannot come home; they must have bread to eat, and he must work. This is the house,' pointing to a low white cottage at the end of a long straggling street of similar houses; two or three untidy-looking children were playing in the front garden with some oyster-shells and a wooden horse without a head. One little white-headed urchin clapped his hands when he saw Mr. Hamilton, and a pretty little girl with a very dirty ...
— Uncle Max • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... blue veil, "was ware," as old chronicles say, of a country-looking gentleman coming down the street in a mild, lazy, dreamy fashion, his hat pushed up at a considerable elevation from his forehead, leaving a mass of light hair straggling out at the back, his eyes bent thoughtfully on the pavement, and his hands ...
— Agatha's Husband - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik (AKA: Dinah Maria Mulock)
... speckled over, like Jacob's sheep; each man had one of the weeds stuck rakishly in the corner of his mouth, and was knocking off the ashes upon his deviled biscuits; and, to the right of the president's chair, a long straggling regiment of empty bottles gave dumb but eloquent proof of the bibulous capabilities of the company. Each man was talking vehemently to his neighbour, and every one for himself; in order, as a wag among them said, to get through the work quickly, and jump at once ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume 2 - Historical, Traditional, and Imaginative • Alexander Leighton
... the following week. The grounds were located a mile from the straggling little village which was the center of the county's activities. All religious denominations used the spacious auditorium for their services. The Methodists camped there an entire month. The Baptists stayed but two weeks. The Baptist temperament frowned on the social ...
— The Southerner - A Romance of the Real Lincoln • Thomas Dixon
... Straggling members, who had met to enjoy the generous political banquet, and who still remain to see the night "through" with appropriate honour, are apprised of the sudden disappearance of this very valuable piece of property. They are ready for any turn of excitement,—anything for "topping off" ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams
... quite superfluous, civilians clogged every movement and made confusion worse confounded. "The march," says Sherman, who commanded a brigade, "demonstrated little save the general laxity of discipline; for, with all my personal efforts, I could not prevent the men from straggling for water, blackberries, or anything on the way they fancied." In the whole of the first long summer's day, the sixteenth of July, the army only marched six miles; and it took the better part of the seventeenth to herd its stragglers back again. ...
— Captains of the Civil War - A Chronicle of the Blue and the Gray, Volume 31, The - Chronicles Of America Series • William Wood
... gone when there came to her a little package, through the Tiverton mail. It was tied with the greatest caution, and directed in a straggling hand. Mary opened it just as she struck into the Gully Road, on her way home. Inside was a little purse, and three gold pieces. She paused there, under the branches, the purse in one hand, and the gold lying within her other palm. For a long time ...
— Tiverton Tales • Alice Brown
... finding ourselves cheated out of our dream of summer coolness, we resolved on substituting for it what the Italians call 'un bel giro.' So we went to Ancona ... where we stayed a week, living on fish and cold water." They found Ancona "a straggling sea city, holding up against the brown rocks, and elbowing out the purple tides," and Mrs. Browning felt an inclination to visit it again when they might find a little air and shadow. They went on to Loreto, and then to Ravenna, where in the early dawn of a summer morning they stood by the tomb ...
— The Brownings - Their Life and Art • Lilian Whiting
... behind the leaders, since it takes a generation or two for the ideas of the old leaders to permeate any society. Now and then a great leader finds a great following in his own lifetime, but his leadership rarely involves a new principle. There will always be a few ground breakers, behind them a few straggling followers, and far, far behind, the great mass ...
— The Foundations of Personality • Abraham Myerson
... Rogron off to walk if the weather was fine. Sure of seeing the colonel and being able to question him, Sylvie dressed herself as coquettishly as she knew how. The old maid thought she was attractive in a green gown, a yellow shawl with a red border, and a white bonnet with straggling gray feathers. About the hour when the colonel usually came Sylvie stationed herself in the salon with her brother, whom she had compelled to stay in the house in his dressing-gown ...
— Pierrette • Honore de Balzac
... and children, all in panic flight before the dreaded invaders, fleeing for refuge in Paris. At various places these stricken multitudes joined the army ambulances, taking the shortest routes. Rumors of the coming of the uhlans ran along the straggling lines with tales of the grievous havoc and ruin which these horsemen, vanguards of the German columns, had wrought in the land. Hardly had the retirement begun, when a body of uhlans entered Amiens and demanded from the mayor the surrender of the town. This was formally given, and ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume III (of 12) - The War Begins, Invasion of Belgium, Battle of the Marne • Francis J. Reynolds, Allen L. Churchill, and Francis Trevelyan
... close under the low, turf-constructed battlement, and, as we were in the act of scrambling over it, we received a straggling and ill-directed fire ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard
... between each action. Though the events are scattered over such an extent of surface, and relate to such a variety of characters, yet the links which bind the different interests of the story together are never entirely broken. The most straggling and seemingly casual incidents are contrived in such a manner as to lead at last to the most complete development of the catastrophe. The ease and conscious unconcern with which this is effected only makes the skill more wonderful. The business ...
— Characters of Shakespeare's Plays • William Hazlitt
... crased, and he was indeed! Into the town at dead of night Forlorn and weary, half dead with fright, Into the town the company came, Draggled and straggling, half dead with shame, That they should have marched and tramped about At a lunatic's whim, now in, now out, The livelong night, through garden and hall, Would they ever forget Ben ...
— Seaport in Virginia - George Washington's Alexandria • Gay Montague Moore
... one corner of the school, makes a line almost like a reversed "s" to the corner diagonally opposite, and comes back to the track on the left hand, the others straggling after with about as much precision and grace as Jill followed Jack down the hill; but, before they are fairly aware how very ill they have performed the manoeuvre, they perceive that their teacher not only aimed at having them learn how to turn to the left ...
— In the Riding-School; Chats With Esmeralda • Theo. Stephenson Browne
... his scanty wallet and bade farewell to father and mother, and the few friends and neighbors he knew in the straggling forest hamlet, Bernard Palissy closed the first chapter of his life. The second was a long period ...
— Eclectic School Readings: Stories from Life • Orison Swett Marden
... which a sunbeam filtered here and there—one striking her hair which had darkened to a duller gold—striking it eagerly, unerringly, as though it had started for just such a shining mark. Below her was outspread the little town—the straggling, wretched little town—crude, lonely, lifeless! She could not be happy in Lonesome Cove after she had known the Gap, and now her horizon had so broadened that she felt now toward the Gap and its people as she had then ...
— The Trail of the Lonesome Pine • John Fox, Jr.
... Technical College had just begun to ring, and a stream of students appeared out of the long straggling buildings and poured through the gate, breaking up then into little knots and groups that went their several ways into ...
— The Great Hunger • Johan Bojer
... Tarn, a small lake belonging to the property, studded with little islands, each of which is covered with its own thicket of hollies, birch, and dwarfed oaks. The house itself is poor, ill built, with straggling passages and low rooms, and is a sombre, ill-omened looking place. When Josephine Murray was brought there as a bride she thought it to be very sombre and ill-omened; but she loved the lakes and mountains, and dreamed of some vague mysterious joy ...
— Lady Anna • Anthony Trollope
... river obstructions to the free passage of our little craft between Pontoise and L'Isle-Adam, above Auvers. We were going by easy stages now, even the long tows of grain and coal-laden barges were gaining on us, for we were straggling disgracefully and stopping at ...
— The Automobilist Abroad • M. F. (Milburg Francisco) Mansfield
... were merely indicated by a few fine and very short hairs; the free edges of the eyelids were without cilia, but the bulb of each of these was indicated by a small, whitish point. The beard was so thin and weak that Beauvais clipped it off only every three weeks. A few straggling hairs were observed on the breast and pubic region, as in young people on the approach of puberty. There was scarcely any under the axillae. It was rather more abundant on the inner parts of the legs. The voice ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... wheeled round, and put themselves in position for the advance. Another blast from those same trumpets, given with all the verve and joyousness of coming victory, and the horses of their own accord sprang forward to the attack. Then the straggling and dismayed body of Frenchmen who had been pushing on in advance of their fellows to fall upon the flying English, found themselves opposed to one of those magnificent cavalry charges which made the glory and the ...
— In the Days of Chivalry • Evelyn Everett-Green
... this massacre was, that during Richard's first campaign after Philip's departure for France, Saladin put to the sword all the Christians taken in battle or caught straggling, and ordered their bodies to be left without burial, as those of the garrison of St. Jean d'Acre had been. Some months afterwards Richard conceived the idea of putting an end to the struggle between Christendom and Islamry, which he was not succeeding in terminating by war, ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume II. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... saw several dolphins and bonnettas about the ship, and the next day some straggling birds, which were brown on the back and the upper part of their wings, and white on the rest of the body, with a short beak, and a short pointed tail. The variation was now decreased to 4 deg. 43' E. our latitude was 24 deg. 30' S. our ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 12 • Robert Kerr
... they found a piece of paper—a significant document, for it explained the motive for the crime. Kid Wolf read it and understood. It was written in straggling handwriting: ...
— Kid Wolf of Texas - A Western Story • Ward M. Stevens
... considered meet that such as purchased the buildings of monasteries should in the same grant have the Libraries (the stuffing thereof) conveyed unto them. And now these ignorant owners, so long as they might keep a ledger-book or terrier by direction thereof to find such straggling acres as belonged unto them, they cared not to preserve any other monuments. The covers of books, with curious brass bosses and clasps, intended to protect, proved to betray them, being the baits of covetousness. ...
— The Book-Hunter in London - Historical and Other Studies of Collectors and Collecting • William Roberts
... holding together along its mountainous vertebrae some eight southern states; northeastern Kentucky, all of West Virginia, the eastern part of Tennessee, western North Carolina, the four northwestern counties of South Carolina, and straggling foothills in northern Georgia and northeastern Alabama. The broad valley of the Tennessee River separates the mountain system on the west from the Cumberland Plateau which is an extension of the West ...
— Blue Ridge Country • Jean Thomas
... impressed by a disappointment of its own momentary gratification than by the most obvious well-being of a nation; but, glad or sorry, of Fort Edward was not left one stone upon another. Several single stones lay about promiscuous rather than belligerent. Flag-staff and palisades lived only in a few straggling bean-poles. For the heavy booming of cannon rose the "quauk!" of ducks and the cackling of hens. We went to the spot which tradition points out as the place where Jane McCrea met her death. River flowed, and raftsmen sang below; ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. July, 1863, No. LXIX. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... note to her. She took it into the companion, where a light was burning; her name and that of the yacht were in straggling handwriting that she ...
— The Queen's Cup • G. A. Henty
... far up on the mountain-side was their own dear home sad and lonely without them. Up there, too, the sun still shone, doubtless,—at least there were the rose-glow and the Silver Lake to look at, while down here there was nothing, nothing but gray shadows, a long dreary road, and a straggling house or two in sight. From above, the valley might look to be a fairyland of loveliness, but in reality it was nothing but a dismal ...
— Just David • Eleanor H. Porter
... seton bobbed up and down on its breast. Lost in a saddle that swallowed him up, supported at the back by a valise and in front by the mail-bag, which was passed through the saddle-bow, its rider sat huddled on it like a monkey. His small face, adorned with straggling blond whiskers and as wrinkled and rough as a winter apple, was hidden by a large oil-cloth hat lined with felt; a sort of gray coutil coat was drawn up to his hips and bagged around his stomach, while his trousers stopped at the knees and disclosed his bare legs reddened by the rubbing of ...
— Over Strand and Field • Gustave Flaubert
... will be as well to have one with you, in case of your not getting a good chance to cast either of the others. But just now the less noise that's made the better. Who knows, but that some of these traitorous redskins may be still straggling about? Hearing shots they'd be sure to come up to us; which we don't want, though ever so much wishing to come up with them. Therefore, I say, use either the balls or ...
— Gaspar the Gaucho - A Story of the Gran Chaco • Mayne Reid
... soil. Fields of oats waved gray and yellow in the afternoon sun; an immense green pasture was divided by a willow-bordered brook, and here were droves of horses, and out on the rolling bare flats were straggling herds of cattle. ...
— The Man of the Forest • Zane Grey
... of the story is easily told. Emerson was born in Boston, then a straggling town, in 1803. When his turn came he went to Harvard, and largely supported himself there by such odd jobs as only a poor student knows how to find. Wasted time he called it; for he took little interest in college ...
— Outlines of English and American Literature • William J. Long
... survivors of the bloody contest, thirteen in all, came straggling wearily into a white settlement on the Kanawha River in Virginia. Of the remainder of their party and their gallant leader nothing was ever heard again. One of the men reported that he had stayed with the wounded colonel during ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 2 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... up in front of an unpainted farm-house straggling beside the road, a farm-house which began with the dignity of fluted pilasters and ended in a tumble-down open shed filled with a rusty sleigh and a hundred nondescript articles—some of which seemed to be moving. Intently studying this phenomenon from her runabout, ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... pony too! A new arrangement had just been made, that the Friarswood letters should be fetched from Elbury every morning, and then left at the various houses of the large straggling district that depended on that post-office. All letters from thence must be in the post before five o'clock, at which time they were to be sent in to Elbury. The post- master at Elbury asked if Mrs. King's sons could undertake this; and accordingly she made a great effort, and bought a ...
— Friarswood Post-Office • Charlotte M. Yonge
... twigs and branches, now feasted upon the succulent tops of the mimosas. Throngs of women and children mounted upon camels, protected by the peculiar gaudy saddle hood, ornamented with cowrie-shells, accompanied the march; thousands of sheep and goats, driven by Arab boys, were straggling in all directions; baggage-camels, heavily laden with the quaint household goods, blocked up the way; the fine bronzed figures of Arabs, with sword and shield, and white topes, or plaids, guided their milk-white dromedaries through the confused throng with the usual ...
— The Nile Tributaries of Abyssinia • Samuel W. Baker
... upon the greensward Where his straggling hoofs had trod, Pure and bright, a fountain flowing From ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... padding; but to carry off the width of Andy's shoulders required a very ample and voluptuous outline indeed, and Andy could not help wishing the straw was a little sweeter which they were packing under his nose. At last, however, after soaping down his straggling hair on his forehead, and tying a bonnet upon his head to shade his face as much as possible, the disguise was completed, and the next move was to put Oonah in a ...
— Handy Andy, Vol. 2 - A Tale of Irish Life • Samuel Lover
... the air, until we disappeared again down the opposite and more gradual slope. Late in the afternoon we emerged upon the plain, but no post-road or station-house was in sight, as we expected; nothing but a few Kirghiz kibitkas among the straggling rocks, like the tents of the Egyptian Arabs among the fallen ...
— Across Asia on a Bicycle • Thomas Gaskell Allen and William Lewis Sachtleben
... entirely forget the panting herd straggling on far behind him, choking and coughing in its own dust. He must arrange somewhere, somehow for pasturage. So he made a detour and looked in on Brocky Lane first, then on Rod Norton. Both old friends were glad to see him and gave him hard ...
— Man to Man • Jackson Gregory
... perhaps some one had beat him to it with news from the Blue Duck, but he put it from him. There were tears in her eyes and one was straggling down between the crimples of her cheeks where it looked as if she had lain on the folds of her handkerchief all night. There came a new tenderness in his voice. This was Mark's mother, and this was the way she felt. Well, ...
— The City of Fire • Grace Livingston Hill
... (D.) A spoiled and scattered form; the seeds too conspicuous, but the flowers very delicate, hence 'Gratiola minima' in Gesner. The confused ramification of the clusters worth noting, in relation to the equally straggling fibres ...
— Proserpina, Volume 2 - Studies Of Wayside Flowers • John Ruskin
... said Madame, as she took off her bonnet and tenderly put back the straggling hair. "No wonder, after all you have gone through, my ...
— A Romance of the Republic • Lydia Maria Francis Child
... the marks of an earthquake. A long flight of steps led up to the door of the mosque, and as we ascended we were rewarded by the most charming view of the city and the grand plain. Konia lay at our feet—a wide, straggling array of low mud dwellings, dotted all over with patches of garden verdure, while its three superb mosques, with the many smaller tombs and places of worship, appeared like buildings left from some former and more magnificent capital. Outside of ...
— The Lands of the Saracen - Pictures of Palestine, Asia Minor, Sicily, and Spain • Bayard Taylor
... the fact urged is true. But even now a straggling street extends to the river, ending in a large suburb on its banks, and a famous bridge there crosses the river to the south side where now the foreign settlements are. There may have been suburbs on that side to justify the por le mi, or ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo, Volume 2 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... mother of the two lads stretched out her hand, and took the paper, and looked at the straggling marks. The fat baby, that she carried in the hood of her reindeer suit, crowed over her shoulder at the piece of paper, and Anvik forgot to be angry. He put his pencil in his mother's hand. She looked curiously ...
— Out of the Triangle • Mary E. Bamford
... cup or indusium. But some observations led me to suspect that nevertheless insect agency here comes into play; for I found by holding a camel-hair pencil parallel to the pistil, and moving it as if it were a bee going to suck the nectar, the straggling hairs of the brush opened the lip of the indusium, entered it, stirred up the pollen, and brought out some grains. I did this to five flowers, and marked them. These five flowers all set pods; whereas ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin Volume II - Volume II (of II) • Charles Darwin
... blazing crimson and gold, and the mountains behind us were growing purple when we entered the little settlement where the Bishop lives. We drove briskly through the scattered, straggling little village, past the store and the meeting-house, and drew up before the dwelling of the Bishop. The houses of the village were for the most part small cabins of two or three rooms, but the Bishop's was more pretentious. It was a frame building and ...
— Letters of a Woman Homesteader • Elinore Pruitt Stewart
... and I think I had fallen asleep over the cup of coffee which the servant set before me after my meal, when I was awakened by a sudden uproar from outside, and, starting up, I went out to see what was happening. Down the road I saw several straggling natives—every one of them was running, and every one of them was shouting or crying or blubbering, ...
— Chatterbox, 1906 • Various
... in the discourse, and soon the van descended the hill leading into the long straggling village. When the houses were reached the passengers dropped off one by one, each at his or her own door. Arrived at the inn, the returned emigrant secured a bed, and having eaten a light meal, sallied forth upon the scene he had known so well in his early days. Though flooded with ...
— Life's Little Ironies - A set of tales with some colloquial sketches entitled A Few Crusted Characters • Thomas Hardy
... comfortably, and drawing forth a sort of wallet, proceeded to satisfy the cravings of hunger. He ate but little, and returning the bag or sack to its hiding-place in the broad girdle which was passed about his waist beneath the blanket, stretched himself on the ground, with not even a straggling bough between him and the deep blue vault ...
— Inez - A Tale of the Alamo • Augusta J. Evans
... in a little straggling town in the southeast of Ireland, and was succeeded by a languor proportioned to the wild excitement it never failed to create. But of all in the village, its publicans suffered most under the reaction of great bustle. Few of their ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 4 • Charles Dudley Warner
... pause of silence. The eyes of both were turned to the colliery village far below, at the foot of the hill. From this high stretch of garden one looked across the valley and its straggling line of houses, to the pits on the further hillside, the straight black line of the "bank," the pulley wheels, and tall chimneys against the sky. To the left, along the ascending valley, similar chimneys and "banks" were scattered ...
— Sir George Tressady, Vol. I • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... and Barry watched her, taking a strange sort of delight in the skipping grace with which she negotiated the stepping stones of the swollen little stream which intervened between her and the cabin of Ba'tiste Renaud, then clambered over the straggling pile of massed logs and dead timber which strewed the small stretch of flat before the rise began, leading to where he rested. More like some graceful, agile boy was she than a girl. Her clothing was of that type which has ...
— The White Desert • Courtney Ryley Cooper
... some twenty men, slowly straggling in. There was a woman of middle age, and beside her a girl of about sixteen years, evidently her daughter. Dave's eyes approved of the girl, and though she was a stranger to his tongue, she did not fail to find an immediate means of ...
— Panther Eye • Roy J. Snell
... comeliness. It was a day or two before Fleda found out that it was all one; she thought at first that it was a collection of several houses that had somehow inexplicably sat down there with their backs to each other; it was so straggling and irregular a pile of building, covering so much ground, and looking so very unlike the different parts to each other. One portion was quite old; the other parts ranged variously between the present and the far past. ...
— Queechy, Volume I • Elizabeth Wetherell
... journey they entered a small, straggling village, so completely buried in mountains that its existence was unknown save to its own rustic inhabitants. The appearance of a monk evidently caused an unusual excitement, which was speedily explained. The chief of the villagers approached Father Ambrose, and, addressing ...
— The Vale of Cedars • Grace Aguilar
... chance Cyril had in his pocket the oil-can of his father's bicycle; he put the carpet down at the foot of the stairs, and he lay on his back, with his head on the top step and his feet straggling down among his young relations, and he oiled the bolt till the drops of rust and oil fell down on his face. One even went into his mouth—open, as he panted with the exertion of keeping up this unnatural position. Then he tried again, but still the bolt would not move. So now he tied his handkerchief—the ...
— The Phoenix and the Carpet • E. Nesbit
... contributions wherever they pass. The inevitable consequences of this system are universal pillage and a total relaxation of discipline; the loss of private property and the violation of individual rights, are followed by the massacre of all straggling parties, and the ordinary peaceful and non-combatant inhabitants are converted into bitter and ...
— Elements of Military Art and Science • Henry Wager Halleck
... more than three thousand miles from ocean to ocean, and so situated in geographical configuration and commercial relations as to make the very idea of disunion absurd, save for men in whose minds fanaticism for the moment usurped the place of sound judgment. The men of 1783 dwelt in a long, straggling series of republics, fringing the Atlantic coast, bordered on the north and south and west by two European powers whose hostility they had some reason to dread. But nine years had elapsed since, in the first Continental ...
— The Critical Period of American History • John Fiske
... cannot be very different from the Tilford of the days of Cobbett. It is a straggling little hamlet, lying about the triangle formed by its cricket-green. The Wey runs halfway round the green, and is crossed by two grey and ancient bridges. But the chief glory of Tilford is its mighty oak, one of the greatest of English trees. Its ...
— Highways and Byways in Surrey • Eric Parker
... rolling blue waves, back of the long water trail over which he had come, there were chapel and bell and robed priest, and the word which made all fast forever. But back of the wilderness mission, back of the straggling settlements of Montreal and Quebec, back of the blue waters of the ocean, there, too, were church and minister; and there dwelt a woman whose figure stood now before his eyes, part of this mental picture of the white road lined ...
— The Mississippi Bubble • Emerson Hough
... they had been detained three days without tasting food. Some hundreds died of famine or fatigue; and those who lived to return to their own habitations found them plundered and sacked by the papists, so that the greater number perished for want, or were murdered by straggling parties of the enemy. Yet these very people had for the most part obtained protection from King James, to which no respect ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 12 • Editor-In-Chief Rossiter Johnson
... of the city, Where the straggling huts are piled, At a casement stood a pretty Painted thing, almost a child. "Greet thee, maiden!" "Thanks—art weary? Wait, and quickly I'll appear!" "What art thou?"—"A Bayadere, And the home of love is here." She rises; the cymbals she strikes as she dances, And whirling, and bending with grace, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 348 • Various
... lead," said the Doctor, "and be prudent, Youngster. You know where a letter will reach me. See that the girls get off safely!" He shook hands all round. The cars shot out of the gate, tooted for a passage through the straggling line of tired men in Khaki, took the first turn to get out of the way, and shot down the ...
— Told in a French Garden - August, 1914 • Mildred Aldrich
... was of a different sort, and illustrates the Italian love of bargaining, and their notion of a sliding scale of prices. One of our expeditions to the hills was one day making its long, straggling way through the narrow street of a little village of the Piano, when I lingered behind my companions, attracted by a handcart with several large baskets of oranges. The cart stood untended in the street; and selecting a large orange, which would measure twelve ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... put in M. Flocon. "When he wrote the early part, he was calm and collected; the last entries, so straggling, so ragged, and so badly written, were made when he was fresh from the crime, excited, upset, little master of himself. Naturally he would ...
— The Rome Express • Arthur Griffiths
... Near the straggling settlement at the cove a group of shacks had sprung up to shelter the "Portygees" from the stranded-vessel. As her bones were slowly engulfed in the marching sands, through the decades that passed, the people who had come ashore from the big wreck ...
— Sheila of Big Wreck Cove - A Story of Cape Cod • James A. Cooper
... poor littery place; standing white-washed, but much unswept: in two straggling rows, now wide enough apart (no Konigseck need now get burnt there): utterly silent under the hot sun; not a child looked out on us, and I think the very dogs lay wisely asleep. Church and steeple are at the farther or south ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XIII. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... the deserted way, from a lane among the straggling shacks, a figure issued. I disregarded it, only to hear it pattering behind me and ...
— Desert Dust • Edwin L. Sabin
... and after they had partaken freely of wine the conspirators were to be introduced, disguised as women, and to complete their work by the assassination of the polemarchs. On the day before the banquet, Pelopidas, with six other exiles, arrived at Thebes from Athens, and, straggling through the gates towards dusk in the disguise of rustics and huntsmen, arrived safely at the house of Charon, where they remained concealed till the appointed hour. While the polemarchs were at table ...
— A Smaller History of Greece • William Smith
... almost say that Margaret Mackenzie was ungainly. Her brown hair was rough, and did not form itself into equal lengths. Her cheek-bones were somewhat high, after the manner of the Mackenzies. She was thin and straggling in her figure, with bones larger than they should have been for purposes of youthful grace. There was not wanting a certain brightness to her grey eyes, but it was a brightness as to the use of which she had no early knowledge. At this time her father lived at Camberwell, and ...
— Miss Mackenzie • Anthony Trollope
... battle-field of Guasimas about noon, without stopping to examine it, and pushed on toward Sevilla with a straggling, disorderly column of soldiers belonging to the Second and Twenty-first Infantry, who were following a battery of light artillery to the front. The men seemed to be suffering intensely from the heat, and every few hundred yards we would find one of them lying unconscious in the ...
— Campaigning in Cuba • George Kennan
... my business, as an officer of the United States, to see that no soldier strays from camp unauthorizedly, or depredates upon private property. I will take your names, and report you, first for straggling, secondly ...
— Campaigns of a Non-Combatant, - and His Romaunt Abroad During the War • George Alfred Townsend
... just rising. In two years of mutation and change it had seen the little cottage clinging like a swallow's nest to the rocky caves of a great Sierran canyon give way to a straggling, many-galleried hotel, and a dozen blackened chimneys rise above the barren tableland where once had stood the lonely forge. To that conservative orb of light and heat there must have been a peculiar satisfaction in looking down a few hours earlier upon ...
— A Phyllis of the Sierras • Bret Harte
... Coon!" shouted Blackhawk, and the boys skurried through the dark woods, getting many a scratch and fall. As it was, Yan and Wesley arrived together and touched the tree at the same moment. The rest came straggling up, with Char-less last and Guy a little ahead of him. Guy wanted to relate the full particulars of his latest glorious victory over Char-less, but all attention was now on old Turk, who was barking savagely ...
— Two Little Savages • Ernest Thompson Seton |
