"Splay" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... see or notice any of these. All she saw was a tall, dark, ungainly looking, long-legged creature, half as tall again as her mother had been, with no horns, a long clumsy head, thick overhanging nose, and big splay hooves. She didn't quite know whether to be frightened at this great, dark form or not. But she stopped her noise, I can ...
— Children of the Wild • Charles G. D. Roberts
... when two persons, Moors, came up to us. I almost started at sight of the first; he was a huge old barbarian with a white uncombed beard, dirty turban, haik, and trousers, naked legs, and immense splay feet, the heels of which stood out a couple of inches at least ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... Blackwood's new number. There is a description of me in it: 'A little, splay-footed, ugly dumpling of a fellow, with a mouth from ear to ear.' Conceive how such a charge must affect a man so enamoured of his ...
— Home Life of Great Authors • Hattie Tyng Griswold
... flow back into it. Mary Magdalen had brought a dog with her—a yellow dog of unknown ancestry, of shamefaced demeanor, a ropy tail, splay feet, and a rolling eye; named, she and heaven ...
— A Woman Named Smith • Marie Conway Oemler
... the mocking voices that made answer. Coarser still were the jests that they made. Then one, bolder than his fellows, spurned her kneeling figure with his foot, while another brushed before her and stepping into the pond, defiled its clarity by churning up the mud that lay below with his great splay feet. ...
— A Book of Myths • Jean Lang
... She always called De Bernis her pigeon pattu (splay-footedpigeon—on account of his large feet and his love-songs). Voltaire had previously nicknamed him Babet le bouquetiere, at first because the abbe always introduced flowers into his poetry; afterward, on account of the resemblance he bore to a flower girl ...
— International Miscellany of Literature, Art and Science, Vol. 1, - No. 3, Oct. 1, 1850 • Various
... were shabby people for the most part, whose black masks nobody would feel a curiosity to remove. You could see no more of their figures than if they had been stuffed in bolsters; and even their feet were brought to a general splay uniformity by the double yellow slippers which the wives of true believers wear. But it is in the Greek and Armenian quarters, and among those poor Christians who were pulling figs, that you see the beauties; and a man ...
— Notes on a Journey from Cornhill to Grand Cairo • William Makepeace Thackeray
... chest of drawers on sale, shall be of mahogany and French-polished; east of the stride, it shall be of deal, smeared with a cheap counterfeit resembling lip-salve. West of the stride, a penny loaf or bun shall be compact and self-contained; east of the stride, it shall be of a sprawling and splay-footed character, as seeking to make more of itself for the money. My beat lying round by Whitechapel Church, and the adjacent sugar-refineries,— great buildings, tier upon tier, that have the appearance of being nearly related to the dock-warehouses at Liverpool,—I turned off to my right, and, ...
— The Uncommercial Traveller • Charles Dickens
... out at night," he said to Catherine. "Then you don't keep looking off at things; you can look inside;" and he struck his breast with his splay hand. ...
— A Mountain Woman and Others • (AKA Elia Wilkinson) Elia W. Peattie
... left Maud Matchin in a state of high excitement and anger. The admiration of a man so splay and ungainly was in itself insulting, when it became so enterprising as to propose marriage. She felt as if she had suffered the physical contact of something not clean or wholesome. Besides, she had been greatly stirred by his reference to ...
— The Bread-winners - A Social Study • John Hay
... saturnine person my eyes ever beheld, either before I practised or since; of a middle stature; broad forehead, beetle-browed, thick shoulders, flat nosed, full lips, down-looked, black curling stiff hair, splay-footed; to give him his right, he had the most piercing judgment naturally upon a figure of theft, and many other questions, that I ever met withal; yet for money he would willingly give contrary judgments, was much addicted to debauchery, ...
— William Lilly's History of His Life and Times - From the Year 1602 to 1681 • William Lilly
... light, that the jackdaws had been busy there too, coming in and out by the loop-hole, and building a nest which was supported upon a scaffolding of sticks which curved up from the stone step on which it rested, and from that to the splay and ...
— The Young Castellan - A Tale of the English Civil War • George Manville Fenn
... understanding and sneering camel in a narrow passage will force you to take what chance there is of escape in desecrating a mosque, while Moslems watch you as the only Christian there, or of going under its slobbering mouth and splay feet. It does ...
— Old Junk • H. M. Tomlinson
... her feet, Running beside her like a dog, biting her earthy, splay feet, Nipping her ankles, Which she drags apathetic away, though without ...
— Tortoises • D. H. Lawrence
... ready, they can hardly miss him. And yet they have missed him up to now!" Holmes had gone to the window and was examining with his lens the blood mark on the sill. "It is clearly the tread of a shoe. It is remarkably broad; a splay-foot, one would say. Curious, because, so far as one can trace any footmark in this mud-stained corner, one would say it was a more shapely sole. However, they are certainly very indistinct. What's ...
— The Valley of Fear • Arthur Conan Doyle
... 45 deg.. In the doorway, in the east end of the building, the greater width of the opening is on the inside, a rather unusual arrangement; in the window, on the north side, this arrangement is reversed, the splay being outward. On the south side are indications of a similar opening, but at the present time the wall is so broken out that no well defined jamb can be traced, and it is impossible to determine whether the splayed opening was ...
— Eighth Annual Report • Various
... station was in a muddle—heads, things, buildings. Strings of dusty niggers with splay feet arrived and departed; a stream of manufactured goods, rubbishy cottons, beads, and brass-wire set into the depths of darkness, and in return came a precious trickle ...
— Heart of Darkness • Joseph Conrad
... music clash'd and swell'd, And the restless child to the silk skirt clung Unnoticed tho' unrepelled. They've paled, those rosebud lips that I kist, That slim waist has thickened rather, And the cub has the sprawling mutton fist, And the great splay foot of ...
— Poems • Adam Lindsay Gordon
... hips being set wide apart. The hind-legs should be well bent at the stifle, with great length from the hip to the hock, which should be broad and flat. Cow hocks, weak pasterns, straight stifles, and splay feet are very bad faults. COAT—The hair on the body, neck, and quarters should be harsh and wiry, and about 3 inches or 4 inches long; that on the head, breast, and belly is much softer. There should be a slight hairy fringe on the inside of the fore ...
— Dogs and All About Them • Robert Leighton
... which expressed itself in his growing shyness, his splay-footed awkwardness, his rapidly increasing deference to Father, Mr. Hartwig saw Lena, the maid, spread forth tables for the social and intellectual game of progressive euchre; saw Father combat mightily with that king of euchre-players, ...
— The Innocents - A Story for Lovers • Sinclair Lewis
... here. His Imperial Majesty, who wuz in a eggslent condition to make crowds large enough, remarked to me as we wuz ridin through the streets: "'Splen 'splay! 'Mor'n ten 'unerd sousand people—mor'n ten million people—mor'n ten 'unerd million people—mor'n ten 'unerd sousand million people—and alluvum 'sporters my ...
— "Swingin Round the Cirkle." • Petroleum V. Nasby
... that he felt it, running his splay fingers through his beard in evident embarrassment, while Rainey took the book silently, looking through the pages for the ...
— A Man to His Mate • J. Allan Dunn
... ahead of him was a tall, gaunt Virginian, clad in butternut-colored jeans of queer cut and pattern, and a great bell-crowned hat of rough, gray beaver. Though his gait was shambling and his huge splay feet rose and fell in the most awkward way, he went over the ground with a swiftness that made it rather doubtful whether Jake was gaining on him at all. But the latter was encouraged by the sings of his chase's distress. First the bell-crowned ...
— The Red Acorn • John McElroy |
