"Tripping" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... to duck beneath the swing of a powerful fist. And this last, failing to find a mark, threw its owner off his balance. Tripping awkwardly over the low curbing of the dooryard walk, he reeled and went a-sprawl on his knees, while his hat fell off and (such is the impish habit of toppers) rolled ...
— The Day of Days - An Extravaganza • Louis Joseph Vance
... nearly all filled up with services of one kind or another, and were well attended, or otherwise, according as the Indians might be present at the village, or away hunting, or fishing, or "tripping" for the Hudson's Bay Company. What pleased us very much was the fact that in the homes of the people there were so many family altars. It was very delightful to take a quiet walk in the gloaming through the village, and hear from so many little ...
— By Canoe and Dog-Train • Egerton Ryerson Young
... seated herself at the piano once more in the broad open window. The light tripping music, unmarred by the sound of sliding feet, floated over the lawn and across the street and up into the Swinburne balcony. Suddenly the lazy group on the Osgood veranda caught sight of a flickering ...
— The Wide Awake Girls in Winsted • Katharine Ellis Barrett
... contemplated doing anything so handsome for the girl as this, but why should he not establish her here? There were many possible mothers in view, and thrilling with a sense of his generosity he had almost fixed on one but mistrusted the glint in her eye and on another when she saved herself by tripping and showing an ...
— Sentimental Tommy - The Story of His Boyhood • J. M. Barrie
... single one of them was she proficient enough to teach. Fine sewing she could not do. Her dresses had all been made by the mantua-maker, and her fine sewing by the family sempstress. She had been raised in idle pleasure—had spent her time in thrumming on the piano, making calls, tripping about ...
— The Lights and Shadows of Real Life • T.S. Arthur
... at the door-edge, missed it and, tripping over a rent in the cheap mat that lay against the door inside, stumbled against ...
— Jacqueline of Golden River • H. M. Egbert
... the House Beautiful" is his biographer's not very respectful comment on the margin of the history. There were too many merry-hearted damsels running up and down that house for Mr. Fearing. He could not lift his eyes but one of those too-tripping maidens was looking at him. He could not stir a foot but he suddenly ran against a talking and laughing bevy of them. There was one thing he loved above everything, and that was to overhear the talk that went on at that season in that house about the City above, and about ...
— Bunyan Characters (Second Series) • Alexander Whyte
... the valley, our route lay across a region where no blade of grass had ever grown. As far as the eye reached, the scene was one of utter desolation. The horses picked their steps gingerly, and the foot-soldiers stumbled along as best they could, tripping now and then over the stones and boulders that strewed the path. All day long, with intervals for rest, we tramped, and the coming of night still found us pursuing ...
— At the Point of the Sword • Herbert Hayens
... surprise. At a signal from the Duchess, the author of Roxelane took his place at the piano and swept his beard over the keys as he struck two penetrating chords. Immediately at the far end of the rooms the curtains were drawn from the door, and down the vista of brilliant apartments, tripping along on the tips of her little gilt slippers, came a charming brunette in the close bodice and puffed skirts of the ballet, conducted at arm's-length by a gloomy person with hair in rolls and a cadaverous countenance divided by a dead black moustache. It is Dea! Dea, the folly of the ...
— The Immortal - Or, One Of The "Forty." (L'immortel) - 1877 • Alphonse Daudet
... that lived in the apple-tree was fairly outgeneralled the next morning; for Miss Prissy was up before him, tripping about the chamber on the points of her toes, knocking down all the movable things in the room, in her efforts to be still, so as not to wake Mary; and it was not until she had finally upset the stand by the bed, with ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various
... knowing how to talk to each other; wandering apart, and gathering flowers idly, to pass the time. Carrie held a large bunch of bluebells in her hand. She wore a cotton dress of greyish-blue, just such a dress as Phoebe might have worn in her first youth. The skirt was short, and showed her tripping feet. Under her shady hat with its pink rose, her eyes glanced timidly towards the house, and then withdrew themselves again. Fenwick saw that the eyes were in truth darker than Phoebe's, and the hair much darker—no golden mist like her mother's, but nearer to his own—a warm brown, curly ...
— Fenwick's Career • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... tyrant, a bully, and a coward, and would be careful how he attacked me again. "But be on your guard," said he, "he will never forgive you; and, when he is most agreeable, there is the most mischief to be dreaded. He will lull you into security, and, whenever he can catch you tripping, he will try you by a court-martial. You had better go on shore, and settle all your business, and, if possible, be on board before your leave is out. It was only your threat of writing to the port-admiral that procured ...
— Frank Mildmay • Captain Frederick Marryat
... unaccountable, even to him. Finally she drew rein before one of the houses facing the Row, dismounted, and throwing the train of her habit gracefully over her arm, walked to the door with a brisk step. Paul instantly likened her to a bird, so lightly tripping over the walk that her feet scarcely seemed to touch the ground. She was a wee thing—certainly not more than five foot tall—and petite, almost to an extreme. The Boy had expressed a preference, only a few days before, for tall, magnificent women. ...
— One Day - A sequel to 'Three Weeks' • Anonymous
... upon the swaggering position, with legs apart and elbows out, of Donatello's "St. George," or Perugino's "St. Michael;" and a young Athenian who should have assumed the attitude of Verrocchio's "David," with tripping legs and hand clapped on his hip, would have been sent away from school as ...
— The Contemporary Review, Volume 36, September 1879 • Various
... feet were pattering, wooden shoes clattering, Little hands clapping, and little tongues chattering, And, like fowls in a barnyard when barley is scattering, Out came the children running. All the little boys and girls, With rosy cheeks and flaxen curls, And sparkling eyes and teeth like pearls, Tripping and skipping ran merrily after The wonderful music—with ...
— The Evolution of Expression Vol. I • Charles Wesley Emerson
... isolation from external attraction. They followed him about, they looked into his dark, melancholy eyes; it was impossible, they thought, that he could continue this superb acting forever. A glance, a smile, a burst of ingenuous confidence, a covert appeal to his chivalry would yet catch him tripping. But the melancholy eyes that had gazed at the treasures of Ashley Grange and the opulent ease of its guests without kindling, opened to their first emotion,—wonder! At which Lady Elfrida, who had ingenuously admired him, hated him ...
— Tales of Trail and Town • Bret Harte
... stroke of noon. Most of the passengers were aboard, but, as Mr. Greyne stepped out of his cab, and prepared to pay the Maltese driver, a trim little lady, plainly dressed in black, and carrying a tiny and rather coquettish hand-bag, was tripping lightly across the gangway. Mr. Greyne glanced at her as he turned to follow, glanced, and then started. That back was surely familiar to him. Where could he have seen it before? He searched his memory as ...
— The Mission Of Mr. Eustace Greyne - 1905 • Robert Hichens
... left the room with rapid strides, and would have dragged Manuela after him, if that young lady had not been endued with a pace— neat, active, and what is sometimes called "tripping,"—which kept her easily alongside of the ancient ...
— The Rover of the Andes - A Tale of Adventure on South America • R.M. Ballantyne
... later I was tripping up-stairs in the wake of a smart young maid whom Mayor Packard had addressed as Ellen. I liked this girl at first sight and, as I followed her up first one flight, then another, to the room which had been chosen for me, the hurried glimpses ...
— The Mayor's Wife • Anna Katharine Green
... feel belated as she went. There was a suspicion of frost in the air which made it deliciously fresh and exhilarating. The early morning mists still hung about, but the sun was brightly busy dispelling them. The rabbits were tripping hither and thither, too intent on their own business to pay much heed to Evadne. A bird sprang up from her feet, and soared out of sight, and she paused a moment with upturned face, dilated eyes, and lips apart, to watch him. ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... have been the provincial Richard III., to whom the Ratcliffe of the theatre—who ordinarily played harlequin, and could not enter without something of that tripping and twirling gait peculiar to pantomime—brought the information, long before it was due, that "the Duke of Buckingham is taken!" "Not yet, you fool," whispered Richard. "Beg pardon; thought he was," cried Harlequin Ratcliffe, as, carried away by his feelings or the force of habit, ...
— A Book of the Play - Studies and Illustrations of Histrionic Story, Life, and Character • Dutton Cook
... the ground, along the broad pavement on the house-side of Piccadilly, lost half in misery, half in thought, when he was stopped by a little crowd about an awning that stretched across the footway. The same instant rose a murmur of admiration, and down the steps from the door came tripping, the very Allegra of motion, the same Barbara to whose mould his being seemed to have shaped itself. He stood silent as death, but something made her cast a look on him, and she saw the large eyes of his suffering fixed ...
— There & Back • George MacDonald
... the characters in the novel wandering about in front of the house. There was Barnaby Rudge himself, there was his supernaturally wicked old raven; old Joe Willet, the landlord, stood smoking in his shirt-sleeves, while pretty Dolly Varden herself was tripping down to town. "There," said my host, "isn't that clever? It stood for many years at the 'Hen and Chickens' in Birmingham, and Dickens used to admire it very much when he used to visit that town on his reading tours." Two little Japanese figures, reposing upon the top of the ...
— The Idler Magazine, Volume III, April 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... music with a jingle he played, that to the puritanic-bred girl suggested nothing but a heart bubbling over with gladness, but he meant it should make her heart flutter and her foot beat time to the tripping measure. In his world feet were attuned to gay music. But Marcia stood with quiet dignity a little away from the instrument, her lips parted, her eyes bright with the pleasure of the melody, her hands clasped, and her breath coming ...
— Marcia Schuyler • Grace Livingston Hill Lutz
... middle of it. First, a line of Moorish girls in their embroidered hazzams dancing after their native fashion, bending and rising, twisting and turning, but keeping their feet in the same place constantly. Then, a line of Jewish girls in their kilted skirts dancing after the Jewish manner tripping on their slippered toes, whirling and turning around with rapid motions, and playing timbrels and tambourines held high above their heads by their shapely arms and hands. Then passages of the Koran chanted by a group of Moorish boys in ...
— The Scapegoat • Hall Caine
... said he at last. And then he added: "I had better go with you, young man." And Tom had no objection, for such company was both respectable and safe; so the truncheon coiled its thong neatly round its handle, to prevent tripping itself up—for the thong had got loose in running—and marched on by ...
— The Water-Babies - A Fairy Tale for a Land-Baby • Charles Kingsley
... seek to catch me tripping? You conduct your case with too much animus. You must allow me to grasp the exact purport of your inquiry before I can undertake to ...
— The Beetle - A Mystery • Richard Marsh
... modest and retiring men in existence, was standing the other night among the mob, in one of the drawing-rooms, while a waltzing-party were figuring away, at which, with that fondness for 'la danse' that characterizes every German of any age, he was looking with much interest, when my lady came tripping up, and the following short dialogue ensued within ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Complete • Charles James Lever (1806-1872)
... solution of the puzzle was in his very hand—in the form of a stout cord stretching from right to left. He was just in time to avoid tripping over it. It was suspended about ...
— The First Hundred Thousand • Ian Hay
... some sudden movement which combines flexion of the knee with medial rotation of the femur upon the tibia, as, for example, in rising quickly from a squatting position, or turning rapidly and pushing off with the foot, in the course of some game such as football or tennis. It may occur also from tripping on a loose stone ...
— Manual of Surgery Volume Second: Extremities—Head—Neck. Sixth Edition. • Alexander Miles
... door and shoots the bolt, then tripping behind me into the light she casts back her hood and flings her arms round her father's neck with ...
— A Set of Rogues • Frank Barrett
... toward the guest of honor, tripping over the legs of Bulliwinkle as he went, and offered his hand ...
— Double Trouble - Or, Every Hero His Own Villain • Herbert Quick
... creaked noisily, and Beth waited, listening in suspense; but nobody moved; so she slipped out into the passage. It was quite dark there, and the floor felt very cold to her bare feet. She stumbled down the passage, tripping over the bed-clothes as she went, and dreading to be caught and stopped, but not afraid of anything else. The door was open when she reached it, and there was a dim light in the room. This was unexpected, and she paused to peep in before she entered. ...
— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand
... pursuance of which idea he would put into her hand some poem that touched his fancy, tell her to read it, and as she read, he would adapt to it an accompaniment according to the meaning and measure of the lines,—grandly solemn, daintily tripping, or wildly inspiriting. It was more like a chant than a song. To-night he chose Tennyson's Bugle-song. Her voice was subservient to the accompaniment, that shook its faint, sweet bugle-notes at first as in a rosy splendor; ...
— Other Things Being Equal • Emma Wolf
... 1. As I was tripping lightly homeward, I passed the kind old gentleman, about half way down the street. He took me gently by the arm; and, retaining his hold, began to address me thus, as we ...
— Parker's Second Reader • Richard G. Parker
... came, one after another, pushing each other, tripping each other—joking, laughing. Among them came a young private, wearing glasses, who ...
— Tom Slade Motorcycle Dispatch Bearer • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... to depend upon acts (and words). No person, be he a man virtuously following the domestic mode of life, or be he a king, or be he a Brahmacharin, has ever succeeded in conducting himself without tripping. It is better to do an act which is good and in which there is small merit than to totally abstain from all acts, for total abstention from acts is very sinful. When a high-born and righteous person succeeds in obtaining affluence, ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... separate compartments called pologs are arranged in a continuous circle. The girl gets a start and is clear of the marriage if she can run through all the compartments without being caught by the bridegroom. The women of the encampment place every obstacle in the man's way, tripping him up, belabouring him with switches, and so forth, so that he has little chance of succeeding unless the girl wishes it and waits for him. Similar customs appear to have been practised by all the Teutonic ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... made even a shrewd remark sound foolish. He was the most industrious creature in the world, and a model of official decorum. His papers were always in order, his despatches always neat and correct, and I don't believe any one ever caught him tripping in office work. But he had no more conception than a child of the kind of trouble that was brewing. He knew never an honest man from a rogue, and the result was that he received all unofficial communications with a polite disbelief. I used to force him to see people-miners, ...
— The Moon Endureth—Tales and Fancies • John Buchan
... great! Walk along the streets on some spring morning. The little women, daintily tripping along, seem to blossom out like flowers. What a delightful, charming sight! The dainty perfume of violet is everywhere. The city is gay, and everybody notices the women. By Jove, how tempting they are in their light, thin dresses, which occasionally give ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... he is as tripping of speech as if he were some young aristocrat; but for my own part I care not for the stops so ...
— Vera - or, The Nihilists • Oscar Wilde
... In the helmet-cheek and shoulder-bone below The Child was smit, and left so sore astound, He, tripping still and staggering to and fro, Scarce kept himself from falling to the ground. Rodomont fain would close upon his foe; But his foot fails him, weakened by the wound, Which pierced his thigh: he overtasked his might; And on his kneepan fell the ...
— Orlando Furioso • Lodovico Ariosto
... although embodied close In solid phalanx; doubt it not; my spear Shall chase and scatter them, if Jove, in truth, High-thundering mate of Juno, bid me on. So saying he roused the courage of them all 190 Foremost of whom advanced, of Priam's race Deiphobus, ambitious of renown. Tripping he came with shorten'd steps,[5] his feet Sheltering behind his buckler; but at him Aiming, Meriones his splendid lance 195 Dismiss'd, nor err'd; his bull-hide targe he struck But ineffectual; where the hollow ...
— The Iliad of Homer - Translated into English Blank Verse • Homer
... of those terrors which she had hitherto surmounted; she cast her mantle hastily around her head, as if to shroud her sight from some blighting vision, and tripping back to the cabinet, with more speed and a less firm step than when she left it, she directed Gillian to lend her assistance in conveying Eveline to the next room; and having done so, carefully secured the door of communication, ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott
... good lords the judges of assize in these northern parts, besides pleasing the King himself, who is sure to hear of it, and reward my praiseworthy zeal. Look to yourself, Mistress Nutter, and take care you are not caught tripping. And now, ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... tripping o'er Land, sea and mountain, lake and pebbly shore, Spreading th' entrancing tidings, near and far, Of the sun's advent in ...
— Home Lyrics • Hannah. S. Battersby
... had the sharpened horn in his hand but knew better than to try and stand up to Ch'aka in open combat; there had to be another way. He looked back quickly to see his enemy still following and narrowly missed tripping over the outstretched leg of a slave. They were all against him! They were all against each other and no man was safe from any other man's hand. He ran free of the slaves and scrambled to the top of a shifting ...
— The Ethical Engineer • Henry Maxwell Dempsey
... offering to carry the child, or call her brother for her; his ideas of gallantry were submerged in the confusion of his thoughts. He watched her tripping lightly with the child on her shoulder. He saw her choose a path by the back of the white dairy buildings, and then he heard her clear voice calling, "Harold! Harold!" All up the yard's length to windows of house and stable he heard her calling, till at length came the answering shout. ...
— What Necessity Knows • Lily Dougall
... B. Bernstein, and informed Mr. Esmond Warrington that his relatives at Castlewood, and among them a dear friend of his grandfather, were most anxious that he should come to "Colonel Esmond's house in England." And now, accordingly, the lad made his appearance, passing under the old Gothic doorway, tripping down the steps from one garden terrace to another, hat in hand, his fair hair blowing from his flushed cheeks, his slim figure clad in mourning. The handsome and modest looks, the comely face and person, of the young lad pleased the lady. He made her a low bow which would ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray
... she had no sooner spoke, But straight he came tripping over: The plank was saw'd, it snapping broke, And sous'd ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton
... material, and with slippers upon his feet (as is the custom in that country, where every one endeavors to keep as cool as may be), Miss Eliza, the youngest of the three daughters—a brisk, handsome miss of sixteen or seventeen—came tripping into the room and handed him a sealed letter, which she declared a stranger had just left at the door, departing incontinently so soon as he had eased himself of that commission. You may conceive of Barnaby's astonishment when he opened the note ...
— Stolen Treasure • Howard Pyle
... yard, just reaching the alley, when the same woman who had first spoken to Jack again opened her door. In one hand she held a mop. This she threw with such aim or luck that it passed between the running man's legs, tripping him. ...
— The Submarine Boys on Duty - Life of a Diving Torpedo Boat • Victor G. Durham
... of young flesh. Peals of laughter. A breathless pianola. The tripping of dancing-feet. Voices husked with drink and voices soft with love. The shrill accents of vulgarity. Hustling waiters. Shop-girls. Bourgeois couples. Tired families of four and upward. Sleeping children. A boy selling candy. ...
— The House of the Vampire • George Sylvester Viereck
... Bride, who look so prettily, with such a smirking countenance; be you merry, you are the Bride; yea the Bride that occasions all this tripping and dansing; now you shall have a husband too, a Protector, who will hug and imbrace you, and somtimes tumble and rumble you, and oftimes approach to you with a morning salutation, that will comfort the very cockles of your heart. He will (if all falls out well) be ...
— The Ten Pleasures of Marriage and The Confession of the New-married Couple (1682) • A. Marsh
... he let the handkerchief fall behind little Nell Morton, but she was watching, so she grabbed it and chased Addy Gravvy, trying to catch him before he could get round the circle into her place. He ran so fast he would have beaten her had not Willie Baker stuck out his foot, tripping him up so that little ...
— Jerry's Reward • Evelyn Snead Barnett
... red stallion made short plunges. Slone reached low for the tripping reins. When he straightened up in the saddle Wildfire ...
— Wildfire • Zane Grey
... kris, and also, a smaller dagger, called a 'pepper-crusher' in the vernacular, and in her hand she held a drawn sword, which she brandished as she walked. At her back came some three hundred women, moving down the street with that queer half-tripping, half-running gait, which Malay women always affect when they go abroad in a crowd at the heel of their Princess. The way in which they run into and press against one another, on such occasions, together with the little quick short steps they take, always reminds ...
— In Court and Kampong - Being Tales and Sketches of Native Life in the Malay Peninsula • Hugh Clifford
... walnut-and-green-rep style of some years ago. Somerset had expected to find his friends living in an old house with remnants of their own antique furniture, and he hardly knew whether he ought to meet them with a smile or a gaze of condolence. His doubt was terminated, however, by the cheerful and tripping entry of Miss De Stancy, who had returned from her drive to Markton; and in a few more moments Sir William came in from ...
— A Laodicean • Thomas Hardy
... deeds alike are out of place. Amongst other good results obtained through this out-door system of meals may be mentioned these: There is the necessity of walking home when the meal is over, and a consequent anxiety not to be caught tripping under the influence of wine, since they all know of course that the supper-table must be presently abandoned, (10) and that they must move as freely in the dark as in the day, even the help of a torch (11) to guide the steps being forbidden to all ...
— The Polity of the Athenians and the Lacedaemonians • Xenophon
... stumbling over stones, tripping over roots, and running against stumps and briars; but they kept along cheerfully, believing that they would soon reach the road where it would not be ...
— Pixy's Holiday Journey • George Lang
... path, with a hand-rail at the corners (such as they have at Ilfracombe), Master Charlie tripped along—and indeed there was much tripping, and he must have been an active fellow to recover as he did—and after him walked I, much hoping (for his own poor sake) that he might ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 5 • Various
... a bang. The shameless creature was tripping downstairs as gayly as though the house belonged to her. The ease of her descent spoke for youth; it was in three minds that old fools are always more susceptible to the wiles of young adventuresses. The sisters averted their faces from the contaminating ...
— Otherwise Phyllis • Meredith Nicholson
... now, whose ready rhymes. Like Tommy Moore's, came tripping to their places— Reeling along a merry troll of chimes, With careless truth,—a dance of fuddled Graces; Hear it—Gazette, Post, Herald, Standard, Times, I'd write an epic! Coffee for its basis; Sweet as e'er warbled forth from cockney ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... evening the extremity of fear expressed in a man's face: he had now to admit that he had been wrong. Mr. Lance's terror was a Circe to him and sunk him into something grotesque and inhuman; he ran once or twice in a little tripping, silly run backwards and forwards like an animal trapped and out of its wits; and his face had the look of a man suffering from a nausea; so that Mitchelbourne, seeing him, was ashamed and ...
— Ensign Knightley and Other Stories • A. E. W. Mason
... boots—which hurt his feet. He gave away the tails of his shirt, also his brass studs and sleeve-buttons. And with his keg of rum, and his broad-sword dragging and tripping him, he paid visits from lodge to lodge, and ...
— Boys' Book of Indian Warriors - and Heroic Indian Women • Edwin L. Sabin
... angry before, he was much more so after his fall. "What do you mean, sir," he said, "by tripping me?" ...
— Among the Farmyard People • Clara Dillingham Pierson
... room; and, going to meet it, recognized a certain Pennsylvania gentleman, whose wound-fever had taken a turn for the worse, and, depriving him of the few wits a drunken campaign had left him, set him literally tripping on the light, fantastic toe "toward home," as he blandly informed me, touching the military cap which formed a striking contrast to the severe simplicity of the rest of his decidedly undress uniform. When ...
— Hospital Sketches • Louisa May Alcott
... been more natural than for this sunny-hearted-boy, tripping along to Sunday-school, with his mind teeming with freshly learned incentives to high and virtuous action, to say ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... Longfellow's most aboriginal and "American" book. The tripping trochaic measure he borrowed from the Finnish epic Kalevala. The vague, child-like mythology of the Indian tribes, with its anthropomorphic sense of the brotherhood between men, animals, and the forms of inanimate nature, he took from Schoolcraft's Algic Researches, 1839. He fixed forever, ...
— Initial Studies in American Letters • Henry A. Beers
... forgot either an injury or a friend, and, the preceding October, when tripping, he fell helpless, Black Jim twice, with murderous intent, had brought a gun-butt down upon his unprotected skull. Excitement was at all times as wine to him, so, promising to be at the rendezvous, he rode homeward faster than before, with a sense of anticipation ...
— Thurston of Orchard Valley • Harold Bindloss
... affection. The men had misplaced their latch-key perhaps; the girls were advising that they search another pocket. Or the lock refused to turn and the girls were whispering how it could be persuaded. Some of them were arriving in taxis; others, less lucky or more economic, were tripping by on foot along the pavement. He noticed how closely they clung together and he thought of Terry. It would be jolly to be young, to build a nest and, by and by, to see your own white pram wheeled out to take its place ...
— The Kingdom Round the Corner - A Novel • Coningsby Dawson
... settled down to the artistic satisfaction of describing the sensuous delight of his hero in the roasted marrow-bones of a dead mammoth, when the pretty woman in the other room stirred, and presently came tripping into the study, gay and vivacious, and—as her husband of a few months most justly thought—altogether beautiful in a bright ...
— The Cosmic Express • John Stewart Williamson
... glad to see, had his men well under his command, as was shown by the orderly manner in which they waited, despite their eager impatience to be off, until he gave the command to march. And hard marching we found it, as we floundered about that rough, rocky place, tripping and stumbling, and now and then hearing a crash in the darkness as one of our men went down. But, somehow or other, we certainly managed to get over the ground very rapidly; and all the while the sounds of the fight that was raging hotly struck with ...
— The Aztec Treasure-House • Thomas Allibone Janvier
... his mind to have nothing more to do with the thimble, when along the trottoir came tripping a pretty damsel, with the purest of white caps, a sallow face, with fine dark eyes and abundant black hair. She bore over her shoulder, expanded, a plum-coloured umbrella. It had ceased raining, but the plum-colour threw out her pleasant face into relief: she knew that, ...
— In Troubadour-Land - A Ramble in Provence and Languedoc • S. Baring-Gould
... while birds of every wing and song, continue their full concert from twilight to twilight, you may hear, if you listen, the chime of the cheering cowbell, made mellow by the distance, wakening the music of contentment in the heart, tolling the steps of the tripping hours, and sounding the notes ...
— Summerfield - or, Life on a Farm • Day Kellogg Lee
... silver of the fittings a little tarnished to a critical eye; yet it was a splendid article, commodious and capacious, though ill-provided with air and light. However, nobody cared for stuffiness, certainly not the three young ladies, who, fan in hand, came tripping down the steps that were unrolled for them. The eldest paused to administer a fee to their entertainer's servants who had brought them home, and the coach rolled on to dispose of the remainder of ...
— Love and Life • Charlotte M. Yonge
... said an enterprising bell-boy, flinging himself in the way and tripping up the scoundrel ...
— The Mystery of Mary • Grace Livingston Hill
... understand, without the slightest recognition of the inventor's rights. On the axle of each of these rollers is keyed a circular eccentric cam plate, those at the same side being connected together by a linking bar so as to move in concert. Adjustable tripping plates attached to the sides of the slide, are so arranged that when the loaded gun has been run forward its carriage base rests hard down, with its full weight upon the top faces of the slide, and ...
— Scientific American, Vol.22, No. 1, January 1, 1870 • Various
... I passed through a village, and at the outer edge of it a little girl, about four years old, tried to cross the road. Tripping, she fell down almost in front of me. It was only by a powerful and sudden exertion that I prevented myself from going over her, and as I wheeled across the road my machine came within two feet of her. She lay there yelling in the dust. I ...
— A Bicycle of Cathay • Frank R. Stockton
... there the very tables and benches were clamped to the floor; the windows were too high above us for anyone to be thrown out, and on a board nailed beyond our reach was the legend, "Order must and will be preserved." But that boarding-house was very exciting; my last excitement In it was tripping up a man, treading on his wrist and taking away a razor with which he meant to cut throats. In Hull we never went further than a good common "scrap," though ...
— A Tramp's Notebook • Morley Roberts
... from the tops of the roofs on the gleaming flagstones below, rendering everything indistinct and vague through the misty atmosphere. At times we passed by a lady, struggling with her skirts, unsteadily tripping along in her high wooden shoes, looking exactly like the figures painted on screens, tucked up under a gaudily daubed paper umbrella. Or else we passed a pagoda, where an old granite monster, squatting in the water, ...
— Madame Chrysantheme • Pierre Loti
... found them weary and worn, plodding and wading silently "homewards," shovel on shoulder, across four or five kilos of desolate mud; falling and tripping over stagnant bodies, masses of tangled wire, bricks and jagged wood-work everywhere impeding progress. And yet a consciousness of good work done reacted on their spirits. They reflected contentedly of the meal awaiting, of their ...
— Norman Ten Hundred - A Record of the 1st (Service) Bn. Royal Guernsey Light Infantry • A. Stanley Blicq
... mind had again reverted to its vetoed notion when, an hour later, on his way to the Queen's apartments he met the Princess Charlotte tripping gaily along the corridor. She stopped to give him her "return home" embrace. "How well you are looking, papa!" cried she, admiring his flushed countenance. But the King, though he smiled, remained preoccupied ...
— King John of Jingalo - The Story of a Monarch in Difficulties • Laurence Housman
... laugh AT those worthies as well as with them; whereas the "prodigious" French wits are to us quite incomprehensible. Fancy a duchess as old as Lady —— herself, and who should begin to tell us "of what she would do if ever she had a mind to take a lover;" and another duchess, with a fourth lover, tripping modestly among the ladies, and returning the gaze of the men by veiled glances, full of coquetry and attack!—Parbleu, if Monsieur de Viel-Castel should find himself among a society of French duchesses, and they should tear his eyes ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... archery practice when he came to tell him of the death of Wolsey. It was in this Park, at the farther end near Kingston Bridge, that Fox saw Oliver Cromwell just before his fatal seizure, and it was in this Park, it is believed, that the tripping of his horse over a molehill caused William the Third's fatal fall. Just across the road bordering the northern boundary of the Palace grounds lies the great extent of Bushy Park, with its magnificent chestnut avenue; and mention may be made ...
— Hampton Court • Walter Jerrold
... head. be near the truth, be warm, get warmer, burn; smoke, scent, sniff, catch a whiff of, smell a rat. open the eyes to; see through, see daylight, see in its true colors, see the cloven foot; detect; catch, catch tripping. pitch upon, fall upon, light upon, hit upon, stumble upon, pop upon; come across, come onto; meet with, meet up with, fall in with. recognize, realize; verify, make certain of, identify. Int. ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... little fellow, Who dresses all in yellow, In yellow with an overcoat of green; With his hair all crisp and curly, In the springtime bright and early A-tripping o'er the meadow he is seen. Through all the bright June weather, Like a jolly little tramp, He wanders o'er the hillside, down the road; Around his yellow feather, Thy gypsy fireflies camp; His companions are the wood ...
— Poems Teachers Ask For, Book Two • Various
... some modern Tiresias shall appear to decide the point, the assertion appears to be borne out, if we reason by analogy from human life; where we find that it is not the heavy blow of sudden misfortune tripping the ladder of our ambition and laying us prostrate, which constitutes life's intermittent "fitful fever;" but the thousand petty vexations of hourly occurrence.—We return to Mrs Beazeley, who continued—"Why, it's ...
— Newton Forster - The Merchant Service • Captain Frederick Marryat
... Dexterously tripping Brick to the floor, he bound his ankles and wrists. Then he dragged him across the room, and threw open the door of a small, low closet that was level with ...
— The Camp in the Snow - Besiedged by Danger • William Murray Graydon
... tent, raising the curtains between the pologs successively, and passing under. The bridegroom instantly followed in hot pursuit; but the women who were stationed in each compartment threw every possible impediment in his way, tripping up his unwary feet, holding down the curtains to prevent his passage, and applying the willow and alder switches unmercifully to a very susceptible part of his body as he stooped to raise them. The ...
— Tent Life in Siberia • George Kennan
... ma'am. But I won't be in it, when the brother appears on the scene, I fear! So, to make hay while the sun shines, won't you go in and dance with me? I hear the light fantastics tripping in ...
— Patty and Azalea • Carolyn Wells
... "When tripping over the pavement," Madame Celnart says, "a lady should gracefully raise her dress a little above her ankle. With her right hand she should hold together the folds of her gown and draw them toward the right side. To raise the dress on both sides, and with both hands, ...
— How To Behave: A Pocket Manual Of Republican Etiquette, And Guide To Correct Personal Habits • Samuel R Wells
... a deft hand seized the casket from behind. There was a sharp, warning cry from Laodice. The old man staggered only a moment from the tripping that the wrench gave him, but in that instant of ...
— The City of Delight - A Love Drama of the Siege and Fall of Jerusalem • Elizabeth Miller
... astonishment, as she surveys the spectacle, feels the curtains, and smooths her old gloves during the moment she remains unseen, was very good; but Josie's unaffected start when she sees her, and the cry: 'Why, there's mother!' was such a hearty little bit of nature, it hardly needed the impatient tripping over her train as she ran into the arms that seemed now to be her ...
— Jo's Boys • Louisa May Alcott
... intervals of the second, the characteristics of direct and inverted forms lose some of their distinctness; but in this degree the wave is effectively used to put into relief occasional words, or, with median stress and long quantities, to give to the otherwise short and tripping character of the second a dignified and impressive effect suited to the rendering of all serious and important diction ...
— The Ontario Readers: The High School Reader, 1886 • Ministry of Education
... the vacuum of a great bell-glass which shut them away from the rustling, breathing, living world. Sylvia said again, imploringly, "Oh, Father!" He looked at her angrily, sprang from the porch, and walked rapidly towards the road, stumbling and tripping over the laces of his shoes, which Sylvia had loosened when she had persuaded him to lie down. Sylvia ran after him, her long bounds bringing her up to his side in a moment. The motion sent the blood racing through ...
— The Bent Twig • Dorothy Canfield
... again. We felt immensely relieved. It seemed, in a manner, easy. There was not a man in the party but believed that with a little practice he could stand in a row, especially if there were others along; there was not a man but believed he could bow without tripping on his coat tail and breaking his neck; in a word, we came to believe we were equal to any item in the performance except that complicated smile. The Consul also said we ought to draft a little address to the Emperor, ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... strange, if Adele had not some day formed her ideal of a lover. What young girl, indeed, does not? Who cannot recall the sweet illusions of those tripping youthful years, when, for the first time, Sir William Wallace strode so gallantly with waving plume and glittering falchion down the pages of Miss Porter,—when sweet Helen Mar wasted herself in love for the hero,—when the sun-browned Ivanhoe dashed so grandly into that famous tilting-ground ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 100, February, 1866 • Various
... him, proceeded to the outer and larger hall, where he took his seat, with his nephew at his side. And hardly had he done so when Daireh was brought in. He salaamed with a confident air, which expressed, "Who will find me tripping? It would take a clever fellow to do that. They are willing enough to agree to my terms when they want to borrow, but when I claim my own, there is all this bother and outcry, and I am dragged ...
— For Fortune and Glory - A Story of the Soudan War • Lewis Hough
... tripping down the stairs, With a' her maids before her, And soon as he saw her weel faured face, He coost the glamour ...
— Folk Lore - Superstitious Beliefs in the West of Scotland within This Century • James Napier
... hidden thing. You know how in Bach even the piano works move as if all parts were to be sung by voices. It reminds one of conversation; of the story, of the question and answer, of the merry chat in a pleasant company. Some bits of sentence are tripping and full of laughter,[17] others grave and majestic,[18] others have wonderful dignity of heart ...
— Music Talks with Children • Thomas Tapper
... have watched her for three seasons going lightly and merrily through all the gaieties of Cloudland; they have listened to the scandal of the cuckoos among the pine-trees and rhododendrons, but they have not caught her tripping. Oh, no, they will never catch her tripping. She does not trip for their amusement: perhaps she trips it when they go on the light fantastic toe, but there is no evidence; there is only a zephyr of conjecture, only the world's low whisper not ...
— Twenty-One Days in India; and, the Teapot Series • George Robert Aberigh-Mackay
... the estate. Tightly laced, with jingling bracelets on her wrists, she went into the kitchen, the granary, the cattle-yard, tripping along with tiny steps, wriggling her spine; and whenever she talked to the steward or to the peasants, she used, for some reason, to put on a pince-nez. Vera's grandfather always sat in the same place, playing patience or dozing. He ate ...
— The Duel and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... to overcome her new resolution which politeness demanded. But Selina came tripping across the room, and took up her position on the ...
— A Prince of Sinners • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... marriage is never improbable. You women have a knack of tripping up the most unlikely subjects! In this case, I had the details from an old friend of mine. She happened to be stopping at the same hotel as Lenox at Zermatt. Then one morning he disappeared; and, as she had ...
— The Great Amulet • Maud Diver
... It made him shudder to think of spending it in such an uncanny place; so he tried to hurry faster, but he only made the less speed, for he could not now see well enough to choose his steps judiciously; consequently he kept tripping over roots and tangling himself in vines ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... with any strategic soundness. He was moreover manifestly a little nervous about the river in his rear. He gave ground in a curve, and so came right across the rapidly abandoned camp of the family in mourning, crunching a teacup under his heel, oversetting the teapot, and finally tripping backwards over the hamper. The eel flew out at a tangent from his hand and became a mere looping relic ...
— The History of Mr. Polly • H. G. Wells
... cunning little wrinkles at the corners of them. In spite of appearances, she was unwilling to present any outward acknowledgment of the march of time. Her hair was palpably dyed—her hat was jauntily set on her head, and ornamented with a gay feather. She walked with a light tripping step, swinging her bag, and holding her head up smartly. Her manner, like her dress, said as plainly as words could speak, "No matter how long I may have lived, I mean to be young and charming to the end of my days." To Alban's surprise she stopped ...
— I Say No • Wilkie Collins
... have been shocked had he heard the words tripping from the tongue of Adele; yet, for her, they had no meaning save as expressive of a deep yearning for ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 103, May, 1866 • Various
... voices sounding through the gruesome air As from the ferry where the Boat of Doom With her blaspheming cargo reels and rides: The while his children, the brave ships, No more adventurous and fair Nor tripping it light of heel as home-bound brides, But infamously enchanted, Huddle together in the foul eclipse, Or feel their course by inches desperately, As through a tangle of alleys murder-haunted, From sinister ...
— The Song of the Sword - and Other Verses • W. E. Henley |
