"Wooden leg" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... sank into a chair, laughing heartily, and pounding his knee. It seemed he had told her that I was coming home with a wooden leg! 'That is the reason I held your arm,' she said. 'I was expecting to hear it squeak every moment as we left the depot. But when I saw that you walked so naturally I knew Uncle Eb had been ...
— Eben Holden - A Tale of the North Country • Irving Bacheller
... till dark," replied Biff. "I can go down to the Blue Star, and for ten iron men apiece can get you as fine a bunch of yeggs as ever beat out a cripple's brains with his own wooden leg." ...
— The Making of Bobby Burnit - Being a Record of the Adventures of a Live American Young Man • George Randolph Chester
... If you like to stick to the church, you will possess great revenues, and nothing to do; if you choose to go into the army, you will risk your arm or your leg, but in time you may be a major-general with a wooden leg and a glass eye, the spectacle of an indifferent, ungrateful court. Make ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 1 • Grace Wharton and Philip Wharton
... victories, I presume, and of Zachary Taylor and Winfield Scott; and possibly the treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, whereby Mexico ceded to us the whole of Texas, New Mexico, and Upper California, and we paid her fifteen millions. No doubt you know that Santa Anna, the Mexican General, had a wooden leg. Well, there is more to know than that, and I found it out much later. I found out that General Grant, who had fought with credit as a lieutenant in the Mexican War, briefly summarized it as "iniquitous." I gradually, through my reading as a man, learned the truth about the ...
— A Straight Deal - or The Ancient Grudge • Owen Wister
... Nicholas Top, of Twist Tickle, was of a cut so grotesque that folk forgot their manners when he stumped abroad. Bowling through the streets of St. John's, which twice a year he tapped with staff and wooden leg, myself in leading—bowling cheerily, with his last rag spread, as he said, and be damned to the chart—he left a swirling wake of amazement: craning necks, open mouths, round eyes, grins so frank, the beholders being taken ...
— The Cruise of the Shining Light • Norman Duncan
... considered a great invention in finance, well placed:—"As to Mr. Pitt's project for paying off the national debt by applying a million a year for that purpose while he continues adding more than twenty millions a year to it, it is like setting a man with a wooden leg to run after a hare;—the longer he runs, the farther he is off." The conclusion is one of his peculiar flourishes of his own trumpet:—"I have now exposed the English system of finance to the eyes of all nations,—for this work ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 26, December, 1859 • Various
... stocking," declared the housekeeper. "Half a pair of stockings—humph! that's no good to anybody, unless it's a person with a wooden leg." ...
— The Corner House Girls at School • Grace Brooks Hill
... Corner nothing especial occurred in the Gilbert family, except the marriage of Adaline with a rich bachelor, who must have been many years older than her father, for he colored his whiskers, wore false teeth and a wig, besides having, as Nellie declared, a wooden leg! For the truth of this last I will not vouch, as Nellie's assertion was only founded upon the fact of her having once looked through the keyhole of his door, and espied standing by his bed something which looked like a cork leg, but which might have been a boot! What Adaline saw in him to like I ...
— Homestead on the Hillside • Mary Jane Holmes
... this point we cordially agreed with them; but our sly acquaintance, Mons. C., was not disinclined to lead us to ground more debateable, and lay a trap for our national vanity. The master of the vessel had a wooden leg, which led to the subject of artificial limbs, and the perfection to which the art of making them had arrived in England. We accidentally mentioned the case of Lord Anglesey. "Et qui est ce Lord Anglesey?" said M.C., looking archly. "Un de nos plus grands seigneurs, ...
— Itinerary of Provence and the Rhone - Made During the Year 1819 • John Hughes
... taciturn intellectual visage. He spoke slowly, weightily, and with great precision. Morris had, even then, an expression of cynicism and contempt on his handsome bold face, and he swore magnificently whenever his new wooden leg interfered with his comfort or dignity. Hamilton, with his fair mobile face, powerful, penetrating, delicate, illuminated by eyes full of fire and vivacity, but owing its chief attraction to a mouth as sweet as it was firm ...
— The Conqueror • Gertrude Franklin Atherton
... and he had a wooden leg. He had no tobacco, no tobacco could he beg. Another old nigger was as cunning as a fox, And he always had tobacco in his ...
— Trent's Last Case - The Woman in Black • E.C. (Edmund Clerihew) Bentley
... was to serve as meeting-house. It was a long, low, one-roomed building, the logs of which it was constructed still rejoicing in their primitive covering of bark, the openings between them being closed with clay thrown in by hand. Mr. G., the owner,—a short, gray-haired, brisk little man with a wooden leg, gave me a cordial welcome, and, to show how willing he was to have the meeting in his cabin, pointed to his shoemaker's bench, and various articles of furniture, including a bedstead, trundle-bed, and bedding, which had been removed ...
— The Cabin on the Prairie • C. H. (Charles Henry) Pearson
... ludicrously furious attack on the Mission in a St. John's paper, for its alleged misrepresentations. It seems that last year the former superintendent took down a boy from the Children's Home to give him a chance at further education. He had a wooden leg, his own having been removed by an operation for tuberculosis. On his arrival in Montreal the omnivorous reporter saw in him excellent copy, and forthwith printed the following purely fictitious account of the cause of his ...
— Le Petit Nord - or, Annals of a Labrador Harbour • Anne Elizabeth Caldwell (MacClanahan) Grenfell and Katie Spalding
... so much. "Always be ready to speak your minds" said Blake, "and a base man will avoid you." But to insist that he also shall speak his mind is to go a step further, it is to take from the impostor his wooden leg, to prohibit his lucrative whine, his mumping and his canting, to force the poor silly soul to stand erect among its fellows and declare itself. His occupation is gone, and he does not love the censor who deprives him of the weapons of ...
— Style • Walter Raleigh
... hand had done, they obeyed. Six men of them there were: surly crippled Manning, with eyes ablaze and jaws set like a trap; lank Wagner with his hands still in his pockets; Rank Judge, stumping on his wooden leg; greasy adipose Buck Walker, who ran the meat market; Slim Simpson, from the eating joint opposite, pale as the tucked-in apron around his waist; last of all the stranger, tall, smooth-shaven, alien in knickerbockers and blouse, his lips compressed, ...
— Where the Trail Divides • Will Lillibridge
... Hospital for Blighty he was still holding his own. I have never heard what happened to him, but should not be at all surprised to meet him one day in the trenches with a wooden leg, still leading his splendid chaps. Death can't kill men of ...
— The Glory of the Trenches • Coningsby Dawson
... carried thither by a wooden-legged man who rode a donkey. There is a general understanding that the wooden-legged men in country parishes should be employed as postmen, owing to the great steadiness of demeanour which a wooden leg is generally found to produce. It may be that such men are slower in their operations than would be biped postmen; but as all private employers of labour demand labourers with two legs, it is well that the lame and halt should find a refuge in the less exacting ...
— He Knew He Was Right • Anthony Trollope
... railroad came to town and the march of improvement struck it, after I had gone away. Century-old institutions were ruthlessly upset. The police force, which in my boyhood consisted of a man and a half—that is, one with a wooden leg—was increased and uniformed, and the night watchmen's chant was stopped. But there are limits to everything. The town that had been waked every hour of the night since the early Middle Ages to be told that it slept soundly, could not ...
— The Making of an American • Jacob A. Riis
... Aunt Amanda Mr. Punch The Churchwarden Mr. Hanlon The Sly Old Fox The Old Codger with the Wooden Leg Mr. Lemuel Mizzen The Cabin-Boy Marmaduke Captain Lingo Ketch the Practitioner The Third Vice-President Mr. Matthew Speak Shiraz the Rug-Merchant The King and Queen Robert, Jenny, ...
— The Old Tobacco Shop - A True Account of What Befell a Little Boy in Search of Adventure • William Bowen
... the names of several old friends, began to consider the groupe with more attention. At length I discovered rear-admiral Balderick, the companion of my youth, whom I had not seen since he was appointed lieutenant of the Severn. He was metamorphosed into an old man, with a wooden leg and a weatherbeaten face, which appeared the more ancient from his grey locks, that were truly venerable — Sitting down at the table, where he was reading a news-paper, I gazed at him for some minutes, with a mixture of pleasure ...
— The Expedition of Humphry Clinker • Tobias Smollett
... than you were before," said the toy hospital doctor, putting the Elephant on a shelf. "And now for the broken leg of the Rocking Horse. Dear me, that is quite a bad break," said the toy doctor. "I think I shall have to make him a whole new wooden leg." ...
— The Story of a White Rocking Horse • Laura Lee Hope
... saw the golden thigh of Pythagoras, which had so divine a meaning; and, by one of the queer analogies to which the virtuoso seemed to be addicted, this ancient emblem lay on the same shelf with Peter Stuyvesant's wooden leg, that was fabled to be of silver. Here was a remnant of the Golden Fleece, and a sprig of yellow leaves that resembled the foliage of a frost-bitten elm, but was duly authenticated as a portion of the golden ...
— A Virtuoso's Collection (From "Mosses From An Old Manse") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... replied. "This plaguey leg will have to come off; maybe I shall return home with a wooden leg and stump about as ...
— Humphrey Bold - A Story of the Times of Benbow • Herbert Strang
... the fleet scattered in flight; Thrand and his men, with the other vikings, got them away each as he might, and sailed west over the Sea; Onund went with him, and Balk and Hallvard Sweeping; Onund was healed, but went with a wooden leg all his life after; therefore as long as he lived was ...
— The Story of Grettir The Strong • Translated by Eirikr Magnusson and William Morris
... be the toy doctor," the little boy went on. "It's the wooden leg of a Calico Clown I'm going ...
— The Story of Calico Clown • Laura Lee Hope
... honour to dance a minuet with your Ladyship?" The whole room was in titters at Jack's blunder; for, as you know very well, poor Lady Susan HAS A WOODEN LEG. Ha! ha! fancy a minuet and a ...
— Catherine: A Story • William Makepeace Thackeray
... little.' 'Sir,' said he, 'I presume the Signer Loothere'—you will observe that he changed the name according to the custom of his country—'is an Englishman?' I admitted that he was the victim of circumstances and had that misfortune. 'Sir,' said he, 'one word more. Has he a servant with a wooden leg?' 'Great heaven, sir,' said I, 'how do I know? I should think not, but it is possible.' 'It is always,' said the Frenchman, 'possible. Almost all the things of the world are always possible.' 'Sir,' said I—you may imagine my condition ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... Paris, in the public walks, in the sight-seeing places of resort, until we evidently began to think ourselves a couple of Monsieur Tonsons. To-night, as I was standing near the public platform, whose face should appear in the halo of countenances but that of my colonel! The poor fellow had a wooden leg, and he was obliged to stump on in his orbit as well as he could, while I kept my eye on him, determined to catch a look of recognition if possible. When he got so far forward as to bring me in his line of sight, our eyes met, and he smiled ...
— Recollections of Europe • J. Fenimore Cooper
... difference between the anatomy of nature and the anatomy of art. Do you know,' said Mr Pecksniff, leaning over the banisters, with an odd recollection of his familiar manner among new pupils at home, 'that I should very much like to see Mrs Todgers's notion of a wooden leg, if perfectly agreeable ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens
... familiarly known as "Old Silverleg," because, having lost one limb in battle, he had it replaced by a sturdy wooden leg securely bound with silver. ...
— The Great Round World and What Is Going On In It, Vol. 1, No. 60, December 30, 1897 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various
... of broken, ragged line. One might see, now, some of the chief characteristics by contrast. There was a wooden leg in the line. Hats were all drooping, a group that would ill become a second-hand Hester Street basement collection. Trousers were all warped and frayed at the bottom and coats worn and faded. In the glare of the store lights, some of the faces looked dry and chalky; others were red with blotches ...
— Sister Carrie • Theodore Dreiser
... bag to collect bones and crusts of bread, the scraps of food which no good Christian refused them, who haunted the lonely farms at night and to whom a stray lamb or kid or chicken never came amiss. This figure was ragged like them; it stooped, and limped upon a wooden leg and a stick; an empty sleeve was pinned across its breast. And the rags were those of a soldier's uniform, and the dark, bent face was tanned by hotter suns than the sun ...
— Angelot - A Story of the First Empire • Eleanor Price
... said, "with his wooden leg. He makes a dot after every step. We shall catch him in ...
— Fisherman's Luck • Henry van Dyke
... New Netherland, 1664.—The English government now determined to conquer New Netherland. An English fleet sailed to New Amsterdam. Stuyvesant thumped up and down on his wooden leg. But he was almost the only man in New Amsterdam who wanted to fight. He soon surrendered, and New Netherland became an English colony. The Dutch later recaptured it and held it for a time; but in 1674 they finally handed it over ...
— A Short History of the United States • Edward Channing
... may be, there is usually a smack of ecclesiasticism in the ordinary give-and-take of conversation. I cannot illustrate this better than by giving the Lewis man's reply to an enquiry as to how his wooden leg was behaving. The enquirer was a newly-elected United Free elder, while he of the timber toes was a staunch Disruptionist. "Well," said the latter, "my wooden leg is not unlike a U. F. elder; it's not exactly perfection, but, considering everything, ...
— Literary Tours in The Highlands and Islands of Scotland • Daniel Turner Holmes
... bearing on his breast the little oval plaque of red cloth, with the crossed swords, the soldier's cross of Saint-Louis, and adorned, in addition, with a coat-sleeve, which had no arm within it, with a silver chin and a wooden leg. Marius thought he perceived that this man had an extremely well satisfied air. It even struck him that the aged cynic, as he hobbled along past him, addressed to him a very fraternal and very merry wink, as though some chance had created an understanding between them, ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... martial excellency of appearance was inexpressibly heightened by an accidental advantage, with which I am surprized that neither Homer nor Virgil have graced any of their heroes. This was nothing less than a wooden leg,[50] which was the only prize he had gained in bravely fighting the battles of his country, but of which he was so proud that he was often heard to declare he valued it more than all his other limbs put together; indeed, so highly did he esteem it ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. IX (of X) - America - I • Various
... Zechariah, and he got his nickname from his once having brought home to his wife a couple of finely trussed pigeons to roast, but they were in fact a pair of plucked ravens, which in that part of the country are called "crappies." Crappy Zachy, who had a wooden leg, spent most of his time knitting woolen stockings and jackets; and with his knitting he used to sit about in the village wherever there was any opportunity to gossip. This gossiping, in the course of which he heard all sorts of news, was a source of some very profitable side-business ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VIII • Various
... this treatment, he fitted out an expedition against both parties, landed in Mexico, was taken prisoner, and in consideration of the services once rendered his country his life was spared; but he was again banished, to finish his days in poverty and in a foreign land. His wooden leg, captured during our war with Mexico, is in the Smithsonian Institution at Washington. The town which surrounds the immediate locality of these shrines of Guadalupe has a population of about three thousand, and is particularly memorable ...
— Aztec Land • Maturin M. Ballou
... make no objection. So she and her aunt walked out into the shady streets and lanes of Rosedale. On their way, they saw a poor old soldier, with a wooden leg, hobbling towards them slowly. As soon as Minnie saw him advancing, ...
— Aunt Amy - or, How Minnie Brown learned to be a Sunbeam • Francis Forrester
... didn't Corney Van Zandt see him at midnight, stalking about in the meadow with his wooden leg, and a drawn sword in his hand, that flashed like fire? And what can he be walking for but because people have been troubling the place where he buried ...
— Stories by Modern American Authors • Julian Hawthorne
... out this way," he said at last. "I've got to pull off something over there. That's all. Got to get in the papers and get a medal and a wooden leg. She'd stand for a wooden leg better than a milk ...
— More Tish • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... eagerly confirmed the supposition, and continued his report, which now wrought up the narrator himself to a pitch of excitement and horror: Colard and Bancal held the old man's legs, while the tobacconist and his sweetheart seized his head and arms. A gentleman with a wooden leg and a three-cornered hat held a candle high in the air. There was something weird about the emergence of this new figure; if it stood for nothing more than a finishing touch to the horror of that night of murder, it fulfilled ...
— The German Classics, v. 20 - Masterpieces of German Literature • Various
... he was five years of age. A man by the name of Hobby lived in one of his father's tenements, and he served the public in the double capacity of parish sexton and school-master. It is claimed that he was a wounded soldier with a wooden leg, a kind, Christian gentleman, whose very limited education may have qualified him to dig graves and open the house of worship, but not to teach the young. However, he did teach school quite a number of years, and some of his ...
— From Farm House to the White House • William M. Thayer
... Kavanagh was a man of parts, and had been a close friend of the old skipper. He was a man of the world, having sailed deep-sea voyages in his youth. He was a grand fiddler, a grand singer, and had made more "Come-all-ye's" than you could count on your fingers and toes. He had a wooden leg; and his daughter was the finest girl in Chance Along. His best known Come-all-ye, which is sung to this day from Caplin Arm to Bay Bulls, starts ...
— The Harbor Master • Theodore Goodridge Roberts
... warm summer day, when Jason Fletcher should have been about forty years of age, there strayed into the village a blind mendicant, with a dog for guide, and a wooden leg rudely fastened to one stiff stump. This stranger, white-headed and with the care-lines of many years on his sadly furrowed face, sought out poor Hannah Lee, and told her that he had, by the grace of God, come back, at last, to die. Leading him ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I. February, 1862, No. II. - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... were seldom believed; and the few who gave me a half-penny as they passed, did it with a shake of the head, and an injunction not to trouble them with a long story. In short, I found that people do n't care to give alms without some security for their money,—such as a wooden leg, or a withered arm, for example. So I changed my plan, and instead of telling my own misfortunes, began to prophesy happiness ...
— McGuffey's Sixth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... sounds, pointing with terror to the courtyard of the house. They looked in this direction, and saw a man standing at the threshold; they approached him. He stepped forward, as if to place himself between them. He was tall, dark; his clothes were torn; he had a wooden leg; his countenance was stern. He surveyed Bertrande with a gloomy look: she cried aloud, and fell back insensible;... she recognised ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - MARTIN GUERRE • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... the only old gentleman of my acquaintance, a wooden leg seemed the natural and suitable accompaniment of old age. Persons, it appeared, in their riper years, cast off a leg, as trees dropped their leaves. But my grandmother puzzled me. Undeniably she retained both of hers, yet her hair was just as white, and she was almost ...
— There's Pippins And Cheese To Come • Charles S. Brooks
... able to read our thoughts," said her father, solemnly, "and it is only from Him that we must not conceal any thing. But what is that? Is not your mother weeping outside?" And old Prohaska jumped up and limped, as quickly as his wooden leg permitted, toward ...
— NAPOLEON AND BLUCHER • L. Muhlbach
... heard a thumping; and I knew it was the stumping Of the Corporal, our old neighbor, on that wooden leg he wore, With a knot of women round him,—it was lucky I had found him,— So I followed with the others, and ...
— Poems of American Patriotism • Brander Matthews (Editor)
... world—some being kept always handy for contingent use, and others being occasionally hundreds of miles away. A machine is merely a supplementary limb; this is the be all and end all of machinery. We do not use our own limbs other than as machines; and a leg is only a much better wooden leg than any ...
— Erewhon • Samuel Butler
... Clara murmured dreamily, as they passed the long rows of weather-beaten heroes basking in the sun. "Did you notice that very old one, with a red face, who was drawing a map in the dust with his wooden leg, and all the others watching? I think it was ...
— A Tangled Tale • Lewis Carroll
... Golden guineas!" exclaimed Norine. "Why those are pirate coins! They remind me of Treasure Island; of Long John Silver and his wooden leg; of Ben Gunn and all the rest." With a voice made hoarse, doubtless to imitate the old nut- brown seaman with the saber-scar and the tarry pig-tail, who sat sipping his rum and water in the Admiral Benbow Inn, ...
— Rainbow's End • Rex Beach
... sunburned skin. "I came from the Foundling Hospital," she said, briefly. Then, with an awkward courtesy, she passed limping into the house, and the Captain heard, as she went away on the pavement of the court, the hard sound of the little wooden leg. ...
— Ten Tales • Francois Coppee
... the Indians around Esopus, the little settlement which the province had planted midway on the Hudson between New Amsterdam and Beaverwyck (now Albany), were growing restless and defiant. Thump, thump, thump, across the floor went the wooden leg with its silver bands, and with every thump the Heer Governor grew still more puzzled and angered. For the Heer Governor could not bear to have ...
— Good Cheer Stories Every Child Should Know • Various
... Patmore's hint that the cosmos is a thing that God made huge only "to make dirt cheap"; just as nobody will ever forget the sudden shout he uttered when he first heard Mrs. Todgers asked for the rough outline of a wooden leg. These things are not jokes, but discoveries. But the very fact that Patmore was, as it were, the Catholic Browning, keeps him out of the Victorian atmosphere as such. The Victorian English simply thought him an indecent sentimentalist, as they did all the hot and humble religious diarists ...
— The Victorian Age in Literature • G. K. Chesterton
... enjoying the solitude and my fancies among the low branches of the wood, at my right I heard a crashing, and saw a squat broad figure in a stained and tattered military coat, and loose short trousers, one limb of which flapped about a wooden leg. He was forcing himself through. His face was rugged and wrinkled, and tanned to the tint of old oak; his eyes black, beadlike, and fierce, and a shock of sooty hair escaped from under his battered wide-awake nearly to his shoulders. This forbidding-looking ...
— Uncle Silas - A Tale of Bartram-Haugh • J.S. Le Fanu
... has always held sway. There a character became synonymous with a gentleman fixed and finished once for all—one who invariably appeared drunk, jolly, sad. And for the purpose of characterisation nothing more was needed than some physical deformity like a clubfoot, a wooden leg, a red nose; or the person concerned was made to repeat some phrase like "That's capital!" or "Barkis is willin'," or something of that kind. This manner of regarding human beings as homogeneous is preserved even by the great Moliere. ...
— Plays by August Strindberg, Second series • August Strindberg
... more strength'nin than riches in mine," said Uncle Peter Henchman, who boasted great wisdom and experience, based mysteriously on the possession of a wooden leg. "I've been in this world up'ards of seventy years, forty-five of it a-walkin' on a wooden leg, and I hain't never seen that poverty was ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, October 1885 • Various
... in the face whenever he told the story, and bring his fist down hard on the table, with "Damn the leg, sir! 'Twasn't the leg I cared for: 'twas the not having another chance at those damned British rascals;" and the wooden leg itself would twitch and rap on the floor in his impatient indignation. One of Hetty's earliest recollections was of being led about the farm by this warm-hearted, irascible, old grandfather, whose wooden leg was a perpetual and unfathomable mystery to her. Where ...
— Hetty's Strange History • Helen Jackson
... sore-eyed duck: another was feeding a blind crow, who, it must be confessed, looked here very much like some fat member of the New York Ring cunningly availing himself of the more toothsome rations in the sick ward of the penitentiary. My friend pointed out to me a heron with a wooden leg. "Suppose a gnat should break his shoulder-blade," I said, "would they put his ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 17, - No. 97, January, 1876 • Various
... swearing about the revival in the church, and her praying. He often declared that if he ever caught me in his house, he would "give me something for myself." He was at all times a very irascible man, and being troubled with a wooden leg, it made him worse. As he was unable to work in the mine, he was dependent for his support on the parish authorities, who employed him to break stones on ...
— From Death into Life - or, twenty years of my ministry • William Haslam
... closed behind him as he rushed through toward his horse. Glendin stood dazed, his face mottled with a sick pallor. Then he moved automatically toward the bar. Murphy hobbled down the length of the room on his wooden leg and placed bottle and glass ...
— Trailin'! • Max Brand
... ladies must settle among themselves who was to be his second, while his first was alive, to his mortification and theirs. He met the first lady's brother, and shot him; next day called out the second, whose wooden leg stuck fast in the ploughed land, so Sir Kit, with great candour, fired over his head, whereupon they shook hands cordially, and went home together ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol IV. • Editors: Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... especial fitness for the office. A cardinal is made pope because he is old, infirm, and imbecile,—our friend Caboose was made cook because he had been Lord Nelson's coxswain, was a drunken rascal, and had a wooden leg; for, as to his gastronomical qualifications, he knew no more of the science than just sufficient to watch the copper where the salt junk and potatoes were boiling. Having been a little in the wind ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... me an' Chamberlain at home victoryous an' Kruger an' Schwartzmeister at home akelly victoryous. An' they make me prime minister or aldherman but whin I want a man to put in me coal I don't take wan with a wooden leg. ...
— Mr. Dooley's Philosophy • Finley Peter Dunne
... foreclosure on his mortgage. It's move out and trust in Providence for Lige and Lige's." This comment came in piping falsetto from a thin youth who had just been shaven raw, but still lingered in the shop, and it met prompt reply from a grizzled old fellow with a wooden leg. ...
— The Tyranny of Weakness • Charles Neville Buck
... done," Pearl said, reassuringly. "Ma knew a woman once, and whenever she wanted to keep her man at home she hid his wooden leg. I suppose, now, she hasn't——" Pearl ...
— The Second Chance • Nellie L. McClung
... teach the tender sprouts [h]ow to shoot, knowing t[h]e same so well themselves, gently laid to rest a score and one Cossacks, past members of the [F]lambeau Club, wh[o] had lingered behind for the reason that they were past. But, we ask, ad quod damnum?—i.e., isn't it as futile as cauterizing a wooden leg? How much longer, O Jove, must we let our public-opinion moulds cool off while we chase enthusiastic young patriots away from our alfal[f]a!!!... In conclusion, with a cool brow, we are constrained to say that if the ...
— The Missourian • Eugene P. (Eugene Percy) Lyle
... later they met a duck with only one good leg, and the other one was made of wood, and this duck wanted to get over a fence but she couldn't, on account of her wooden leg. ...
— Uncle Wiggily's Travels • Howard R. Garis
... expecting to see a great sailor, with a wooden leg and a bandage over one eye; when to her great surprise, she beheld a man of about thirty, tall and finely formed, with two sound legs and two ...
— International Short Stories: French • Various
... firm deal-board, and now hastily drawing itself back! Mystery, perhaps Treason? The wooden frame-work is impetuously broken up; and behold, verily a mystery; never explicable fully to the end of the world! Two human individuals, of mean aspect, one of them with a wooden leg, lie ensconced there, gimlet in hand: they must have come in overnight; they have a supply of provisions,—no 'barrel of gunpowder' that one can see; they affect to be asleep; look blank enough, and give the lamest ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... for the last time on our beloved little devil and his inestimable proof-sheet? How shall we be able to pass No. 14 Infirmary Street and feel that all its attractions are over? How shall we bid farewell for ever to that excellent man, with the long greatcoat, wooden leg and wooden board, who acts as our representative at the gate of Alma Mater?' But alas! he had no choice: Mr. Tatler, whose career, he says himself, had been successful, passed peacefully away, and has ever since dumbly implored 'the bringing ...
— Lay Morals • Robert Louis Stevenson
... a corner house not far from Cavendish Square, a man with a wooden leg had sat for some years, with his remaining foot in a basket in cold weather, picking up a living on this wise:—Every morning at eight o'clock, he stumped to the corner, carrying a chair, a clothes-horse, a pair of trestles, ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... with age, with a broad esplanade between it and the river, on which, mixed with a few people from the fair, I observed moving about a great many individuals in quaint dresses of blue, with strange three-cornered hats on their heads; most of them were mutilated; this had a wooden leg—this wanted an arm; some had but one eye; and as I gazed upon the edifice, and the singular-looking individuals who moved before it, I guessed where I was. "I am at —-" said I; "these individuals are battered tars of Old England, ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... by the officials of the express company on one of these lines of railroad. The exhaustive amount of information that they had been able to collect regarding this interesting man with the wooden leg was astonishing. From out of the abundance of the data there were a few items that were of interest to the officer. Several of Eldridge's haunts when not actively engaged in his profession were located. In one of these haunts was a woman, ...
— Cattle Brands - A Collection of Western Camp-fire Stories • Andy Adams
... in November, wind northeast, a poor old woman with a wooden leg was seen struggling against the fitful gusts of the bitter breeze, along a stony, zig-zag road full of deep and irregular cart-ruts. Her ragged petticoat was blue, and so was her wretched nose. A stick was in her ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 4, September, 1850 • Various
... is, I'm neurasthenic," he said simply, just as if he had been saying, "The fact is, I've got a wooden leg." ...
— The Matador of the Five Towns and Other Stories • Arnold Bennett
... indignantly, 'I don't like this way. I likes to speckerlate with a bookie—one with a wooden leg as can't run for preference—who tells you what odds 'e's going to give an' doesn't 'ave to work it out in vulgar ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, June 18, 1919 • Various
... for Corp that the tear rolled down. But at the same moment he saw how the effect could be still further heightened by doing away with his friend's rude state of health, and he immediately jammed him between the buffers of two railway carriages, and gave him a wooden leg. It was at this point that a lady who had kept her arms still too long rocked them frantically, then said, with cutting satire: "Are you not feeling well, or have you hurt yourself? You seem to be very lame." And Tommy woke with a start, ...
— Tommy and Grizel • J.M. Barrie
... All this martial excellency of appearance was inexpressibly heightened by an accidental advantage, with which I am surprised that neither Homer nor Virgil have graced any of their heroes. This was nothing less than a wooden leg, which was the only prize he had gained in bravely fighting the battles of his country, but of which he was so proud that he was often heard to declare he valued it more than all his other limbs put together: indeed, so highly did he esteem it that he had it gallantly enchased and relieved with ...
— Little Masterpieces of American Wit and Humor - Volume I • Various
... scientific men, who, they said, had started the idea of she expedition to order to make these searches. Jests were showered upon them, even in their presence. The men called an ass a savant; and said of Caffarelli Dufalga, alluding to his wooden leg, 'He laughs at all these troubles; he has one foot ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... houses.) On the same days, and on Mondays as well, old Jean Pierre Pichou, ex-boatswain of the Didon frigate, would come along arm-in-arm with Julien Carales, alias Frap d'Abord, ex-marechal des logis—Pichou, with his wooden leg, and Frap d'Abord twisting a grey moustache and uttering a steady torrent of imprecation—or so it sounded. These could be counted on; but scores of others stopped and turned at the Bayfield elm, and Polly had names for them all. Moreover, on one memorable day Dorothea had watched one ...
— The Westcotes • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... what they were employed in, day after day, at Reinsberg:—still more are their salaries and maintenance a mystery to us, in that frugal establishment. There is Wolden for Hofmarschall, our old Custrin friend; there is Colonel Senning, old Marlborough Colonel with the wooden leg, who taught Friedrich his drillings and artillery-practices in boyhood, a fine sagacious old gentleman this latter. There is a M. Jordan, Ex-Preacher, an ingenious Prussian-Frenchman, still young, who acts as "Reader and Librarian;" ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. X. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—At Reinsberg—1736-1740 • Thomas Carlyle
... (laughter). Feeling rather weary of London, I went for a trip round the world, and it was during that trip that I met the uncommon one. At Nice I made her acquaintance. She was the daughter of a retired Colonel with a wooden leg, and she took my fancy. Why, I cannot tell, but there is no accounting for taste. Her manner to me was cold and haughty, which had the effect of making me all the more eager, and after a week's acquaintance I proposed. I offered to make handsome settlements, ...
— Australia Revenged • Boomerang
... sticking to the church, you will possess great revenues, and have nothing to do; or, with a small portion, you will risk the loss of a leg or arm, and be the fructus belli of an insensible court, to arrive in your old age at the dignity of a major-general, with a glass eye and a wooden leg.' 'I know,' said I, 'that there is no comparison between these two situations, with regard to the conveniences of life; but, as a man ought to secure his future state in preference to all other considerations, I am resolved to renounce the church for the ...
— The Memoirs of Count Grammont, Complete • Anthony Hamilton
... occasion, Judge Dooly had been challenged by Judge Tait,—the same Judge Tait who had made himself so obnoxious to General John Clarke. Judge Tait had a wooden leg; and Judge Dooly, in replying to the challenge, referred to this fact, and said he did not think they could fight on equal terms. He hoped his refusal would not be interpreted as a reflection on the misfortunes of Judge Tait. This reply made Judge Tait more indignant than ever. He wrote a severe ...
— Stories Of Georgia - 1896 • Joel Chandler Harris
... fixed an oar out at each side as a leg, and could scarcely get rest from the fear that one or other of my beautiful oars would be snapped as they bent and groaned with remonstrances against supporting several tons of weight in the capacity of a wooden leg. ...
— The Voyage Alone in the Yawl "Rob Roy" • John MacGregor
... shabby-looking houses, standing in contact, close by the Ceiriog. In a kind of little back room, lighted by a good fire and a window which looked up the Ceiriog valley, we found the landlady, a gentlewoman with a wooden leg, who on perceiving me got up from a chair, and made me the best curtsey that I ever saw made by a female with such a substitute for a leg of flesh and bone. There were three men, sitting with jugs of ale near them on a table by the fire, two were ...
— Wild Wales - Its People, Language and Scenery • George Borrow
... an empty cow-stall, mending Pelle's clothes, while the boy played up and down the foddering passage. He had found in the herdsman's room an old boot-jack, which he placed under his knee, pretending it was a wooden leg, and all the time he was chattering happily, but not quite so loudly as usual, to his father. The morning's experience was still fresh in his mind, and had a subduing effect; it was as if he had performed some great deed, and was now nervous ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... proceeds, "was to see the inside of the stage, and all the 'tiring-rooms and machines; and, indeed, it was a sight worth seeing. But to see their clothes, and the various sorts, and what a mixture of things there was—here a wooden leg, there a ruff, here a hobby-horse, there a crown, would make a man split himself to see with laughing; and particularly Lacy's wardrobe and Shotrell's. But then, again, to think how fine they show on the stage by ...
— A Book of the Play - Studies and Illustrations of Histrionic Story, Life, and Character • Dutton Cook
... into his private room; and in a few minutes the gallant old veteran stumped in on his wooden leg, and ...
— Under the Meteor Flag - Log of a Midshipman during the French Revolutionary War • Harry Collingwood
... we generally performed the music of Handel and other classical authors; Mendelssohn's compositions were still considered as mere twaddle by some of the old school. At one of these evenings, the old organist of New College, with his wooden leg, after sitting through a rehearsal of Mendelssohn's Hymn of Praise, which I was conducting at the pianoforte, walked up to me, as I thought, to thank me; but no, he burst out in a torrent of real and somewhat coarse abuse of me, for venturing to introduce such flimsy ...
— My Autobiography - A Fragment • F. Max Mueller
... leg lying on the counter, and observed it with due respect, as the prop of a hero. With this leg, which is fitted with a very handsome boot, he reviews his troops next Sunday, putting his best foot foremost; for generally he merely wears an unadorned wooden leg. The shoemaker, a Spaniard, whom I can recommend to all customers as the most impertinent individual I ever encountered, was arguing, in a blustering manner, with a gentleman who had brought a message from the general, desiring some ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon De La Barca
... though; only try. But let me see, it can't be Laud. Then it shall be that cruel drinking old man, with the wooden leg made of gold, who was governor of Oxford when the king was away. He must be hobbling along after the queen in a buff coat and breastplate, holding his hat with a long drooping white feather in ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes
... rolled, with a nautical gait, towards the door by which the domestic had re-entered the room, and having reached the stairfoot, and finding himself alone, he added, with a sudden snarl, 'I'd like to give three of ye a chance of earning a wooden leg anyhow—coming into my house and guzzling my best beer the very minute my ...
— VC — A Chronicle of Castle Barfield and of the Crimea • David Christie Murray
... seats there is a space of two feet, but in that space you will always find four feet and their owners, unless one of them happens to have a wooden leg. Under ordinary circumstances four into two won't go, but the sardine-cars defy ...
— The Silly Syclopedia • Noah Lott
... Invalides by the old soldiers who bore medals of the Franco-Prussian war. In the solemn inclosure, where all stood at salute, the veterans stood with lances. The flag was presented to an old sick soldier, who stumped forward on a wooden leg, his breast covered with the medals of the Crimea and the Italian campaign. He received it for France, and when it was placed over the organ, the listening crowds that jammed the Place des Invalides ...
— The New York Times Current History of the European War, Vol 1, Issue 4, January 23, 1915 • Various
... John Miller had the misfortune to fall on the ice Friday and break his wooden leg. This will lay Mr. Miller up for some time as the limb will have to be sent away for repairs or perhaps necessitates his buying an ...
— News Writing - The Gathering , Handling and Writing of News Stories • M. Lyle Spencer
... me off with him down the street. He cleared the ground with that crutch and wooden leg like a steam-engine. "Come! come along!" he cried; "I've something to ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 1 • Various
... who, without waiting to discuss claims and titles, pounced at once upon the nest of nefarious squatters, carried off twenty-five of them in chains to the Manhattoes, nor did he stay his hand, nor give rest to his wooden leg, until he had driven every Yankee back into the bounds of Connecticut, or obliged him to acknowledge allegiance to their High Mightinesses. He then established certain out-posts, far in the Indian country, to keep an eye over these debateable lands; ...
— Wolfert's Roost and Miscellanies • Washington Irving
... praise; but it is plainly evident that they know how to binge. I wished (for a moment) to be altogether of their race, like that strong cavalry man of their race to whom they have put up a statue pointing to his wooden leg. What an incredible people to build ...
— On Something • H. Belloc
... repent of their movements; for in one corner of the tap-room sat Billy Waters, a well-known character about town, a Black Man with a wooden leg was fiddling to a Slaughterman from Fleet-market, in wooden shoes, who, deck'd with all the paraphernalia of his occupation, a greasy jacket and night-cap, an apron besmeared with mud, blood, and grease, nearly an inch thick, and a leathern girdle, from which was suspended ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... Peter reeled with the blow, and turning up his eyes beheld a thousand suns, besides moons and stars, dancing about the firmament; at length, missing his footing, by reason of his wooden leg, down he came on his seat of honor with a crash which shook the surrounding hills, and might have wrecked his frame, had he not been received into a cushion softer than velvet, which Providence, or Minerva, or St. Nicholas, or some ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... being dispersed, I returned to Paris with my gentleman whose leg I had cut off; I dressed him, and God healed him. I sent him to his house merry with a wooden leg; and he was content saying he had got off cheap, not to have been miserably burned to stop the blood, as you write in your ...
— The Harvard Classics Volume 38 - Scientific Papers (Physiology, Medicine, Surgery, Geology) • Various
... that certain things which the world regards as too awful to be talked of,—except in the way of scandal, may be discussed and then laid aside just like other subjects. What though I wear a wig or a wooden leg, I may still be fairly comfortable among my companions unless I crucify myself by trying to hide my misfortune. It is not the presence of the skeleton that crushes us. Not even that will hurt us much if we let him go about the house as he lists. ...
— The Duke's Children • Anthony Trollope
... long row, cripples, the blind, the young, the aged, it was a company of mendicants which eccentric painters would have given five years of life to have seen. Except for consumptive coughs, the misstep of a wooden leg of which the clumsy ferule slipped on a cobblestone, and the querulous whimper of a child, half-starved and imperfectly swaddled in a tattered shawl, on a flaccid bosom, the mob were silent in an expectation ...
— The Son of Clemenceau • Alexandre (fils) Dumas
... not a workhouse orphan. No chance-child was he, for he could trace his genealogy all the way back to his parents, who lived hard by; his mother being a washerwoman, and his father a drunken soldier, discharged with a wooden leg, and a diurnal pension of twopence-halfpenny and an unstateable fraction. The shop-boys in the neighbourhood had long been in the habit of branding Noah in the public streets, with the ignominious epithets of 'leathers,' 'charity,' ...
— Oliver Twist • Charles Dickens
... affair wore a tolerably encouraging aspect; for the academy had increased in numbers, and two old fellows, liking the notion of the broth and the 6d. a month—one a barber, Will Potts, ruined by a shake in his right hand, the other a drunken pensioner, Phil Doolan, with a wooden leg—petitioned to be enrolled, and were, accordingly, admitted. Then Aunt Becky visited the gaols, and had a knack of picking up the worst characters there, and had generally two or three discharged felons on her hands. Some people said she was ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... not seem to have been actually punished. In a very short time he was out and away again at the old work. There were plenty with him. After the business at Gibraltar, Philip's subjects were not safe in English harbours. Jacques le Clerc, a noted privateer, called Pie de Palo from his wooden leg, chased a Spaniard into Falmouth, and was allowed to take her under the guns of Pendennis. The Governor of the castle said that he could not interfere, because Le Clerc had a commission from the Prince of Conde. It was proved that in the summer of 1563 there were 400 English and Huguenot ...
— English Seamen in the Sixteenth Century - Lectures Delivered at Oxford Easter Terms 1893-4 • James Anthony Froude
... ease and elegant dexterity with which the old fellow managed his angle, throwing the fly with unerring certainty at a great distance and among overhanging bushes, and waving it gracefully in the air, to keep it from entangling, as he stumped with his staff and wooden leg from one bend of the river to another. He kept up a continual flow of cheerful and entertaining talk, and what I particularly liked him for was, that though we tried every way to entrap him into some abuse of America and its inhabitants, ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... face, about as moist as one of the tubful of huge suet puddings, tied up in bags alongside of him. The cook, aided by "Quamino," lifts the lids off the coppers, that the captain may peer into them, and ascertain whether or not all is clean and nice. With the end of his wooden leg the cook then gives a twist to the cock of the coppers, to let some of the pease-soup in preparation run off and show itself to the noble commander's inspection. The oven-doors are next opened, the range or large fire stirred up, ...
— The Lieutenant and Commander - Being Autobigraphical Sketches of His Own Career, from - Fragments of Voyages and Travels • Basil Hall
... hears his admonition that he'd better hurry up, as the live uncle is coming in sight. The thrill with which you read of the ghost in Ellis Parker Butler's The Late John Wiggins, who deposits his wooden leg with the family he is haunting, on the plea that it is too materialistic to be worn with ease, and therefore they must take care of it for him, doesn't altogether leave you even when you discover that the late ...
— Humorous Ghost Stories • Dorothy Scarborough
... and returning in the evening. He was a tall spare old man, sixty-five or seventy years old, with clothes worn almost to threads, a broad-brimmed old felt hat on his head, and one of his knees stiff, so that he walked like a man with a wooden leg. But he was erect as a soldier, and always walked swiftly, even when returning, tired no doubt, from a long day's wandering and burdened with his bundle of cane and three or four old broken chairs—his day's harvest. But what a face was that old man's! He had long hair, ...
— Fan • Henry Harford
... you sir," said the mariner, saluting the visitor with a quick bob of the head, and a backward scrape of the wooden leg. "You couldn't make port at a better time, sir,—and because why?—because the kettle's a biling, sir, the muffins is piping hot, and the shrimps is a-laying hove to, waiting to be took aboard, sir." Saying which, Peterday bobbed his head again, ...
— The Money Moon - A Romance • Jeffery Farnol
... sexton or grave-digger of the neighborhood; and was, I have my private reasons for thinking, a broken-down old soldier, with a big cocked hat that shaded a kindly and weather-beaten face, and a wooden leg,—an ornament for which he was indebted to a cannon-ball, and took more pride in than if it had been a sound one of flesh and bone. As it is rarely ever the case that men with wooden legs are called upon to fight the ...
— The Farmer Boy, and How He Became Commander-In-Chief • Morrison Heady
... when John Gordon reached the corner of the road at which stood Croker's Hall, he met, outside on the roadway, close to the house, a most disreputable old man with a wooden leg and a red nose. This was Mr Baggett, or Sergeant Baggett as he was generally called, and was now known about all Alresford to be the husband of Mr Whittlestaff's housekeeper. For news had got abroad, and tidings were told that Mr Baggett was about to arrive in the neighbourhood ...
— An Old Man's Love • Anthony Trollope
... Nature had cut him out, Scott used to say, for a stalwart soldier, for he was tall, vigorous, active, and fond of athletic exercises, but accident had marred her work, the loss of a limb in boyhood having reduced him to a wooden leg. He was brought up, therefore, for the Church, whence he was occasionally called the Dominie, and is supposed, by his mixture of learning, simplicity, and amiable eccentricity, to have furnished many traits for the character ...
— Abbotsford and Newstead Abbey • Washington Irving
... something, almost inaudible, about seeking a fortune and finding one, which was prettily put, and Frenchy as best man was heard to mutter something about "Beautiful ... loss to camp ... happiness ... wooden leg," and the speech ...
— Fifty-Two Stories For Girls • Various |
