"Strutting" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... time out of mind, and we have hundreds of thousands of apologists and admirers of injustice, misery, and brutality, as perpetrated among children. Flushed with praise and victory over Master Toffy, George wished naturally to pursue his conquests further, and one day as he was strutting about in prodigiously dandified new clothes, near St. Pancras, and a young baker's boy made sarcastic comments upon his appearance, the youthful patrician pulled off his dandy jacket with great spirit, and giving it in charge to the friend who accompanied him (Master ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... polished ebony. Flowers grew all about it,—sweet peas, mignonette, and large purple pansies—while red and white climbing roses rioted in untrained profusion over its wide sill. Above it was a quaintly built dovecote, where some of the strutting fan-tailed inhabitants were perched, swelling out their snowy breasts, and discoursing of their domestic trials in notes of dulcet melancholy; while lower down, three or four ring-doves nestled on the roof in a patch of sunlight, spreading up their pinions like miniature sails, ...
— Thelma • Marie Corelli
... copyhold tenure, of manorial rights and customs, and the hundred and one legal fictions connected with actions at law and bills in chancery that constitute the routine of an attorney's profession. I yearned to breathe an ampler air; and when one day I saw Dick Cludde, returned home on leave, strutting past with Mytton and other boon companions, in all the bravery of cocked hat, laced coat and buckled shoes, I flung down my pen and donned my cap, and set off, with bitter rage and envy in my heart, to pour out my soul to my constant friend, ...
— Humphrey Bold - A Story of the Times of Benbow • Herbert Strang
... was in command who posed as a strict disciplinarian and acted up to his idea that there was very little else in the world for him to learn. He critically examined the paper and then looked into the saddle bags that were swung over the mule's back. Then strutting haughtily about, said: ...
— The Story of Paul Boyton - Voyages on All the Great Rivers of the World • Paul Boyton
... waist. He could climb like a cat, and he soon made his way through the roof, but, as ill luck would have it, Bartholomew Sholto was still in the room, to his cost. Tonga thought he had done something very clever in killing him, for when I came up by the rope I found him strutting about as proud as a peacock. Very much surprised was he when I made at him with the rope's end and cursed him for a little blood-thirsty imp. I took the treasure-box and let it down, and then slid down myself, having first left the sign of the four upon ...
— The Sign of the Four • Arthur Conan Doyle
... Head. The one goes as far back as to colonial Pennsylvania for the beginning of its chronicle and the other as far as to Salem in the days of the first clipper ship; and yet by no paraphernalia of languid airs or archaic idioms or strutting heroics does either of the novels fall into the orthodox historical tradition. They have the vivid, multiplied detail of a contemporary record. And this is the more notable for the reason that the characters in each of them stand against the background ...
— Contemporary American Novelists (1900-1920) • Carl Van Doren
... without end in the sketches of character which abound in Walpole's works. But if we were to form our opinion of his eminent contemporaries from a general survey of what he has written concerning them, we should say that Pitt was a strutting, ranting, mouthing actor, Charles Townshend an impudent and voluble jack-pudding, Murray a demure, cold-blooded, cowardly hypocrite, Hardwicke an insolent upstart, with the understanding of a pettifogger and the heart of a hangman, Temple an impertinent poltroon, ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... might marry George; and she answered, 'If you are tired of easy days, Arenta, go, and take a husband,' After a while I spoke to her about Lieutenant Hyde, and she said, 'she had seen the little cockrel strutting about ...
— The Maid of Maiden Lane • Amelia E. Barr
... coxcomb!' said lord Worcester to himself, pacing his room. 'These pelting cockerel squires and yeomen nowadays go strutting and crowing as if all the yard were theirs! We shall see how far this heat will carry the rogue! I doubt not the boy would tell everything than see his mare whipped. He's a fine fellow, and it were a thousand pities he turned coward ...
— St. George and St. Michael • George MacDonald
... has been produced.' This assertion has been made with great confidence, by many writers and speakers. It is a gross exaggeration, and absurd as it is gross. I say nothing of the unseemly egotism of a dominant caste, thus parading its own merits, flaunting its plumes, strutting and crowing over the common folk—of this pharisaic spirit of the ascendant Protestant, standing close to the altar, reciting to God and the world the number of his resplendent virtues, and scornfully contrasting his excellent moral condition with the ...
— The Land-War In Ireland (1870) - A History For The Times • James Godkin
... von night, I cleared out a muzzy cove quite; [9] He'd been a strutting avay like a king, And on his digit he sported a ring, A di'mond sparkler, flash and knowing, Thinks I, I'll vatch the vay he's going, And fleece my gemman neat and clever, So, at least I'll try my ...
— Musa Pedestris - Three Centuries of Canting Songs - and Slang Rhymes [1536 - 1896] • John S. Farmer
... burst of laughter the boatswain marched the man up to where Terry was, strutting ...
— Syd Belton - The Boy who would not go to Sea • George Manville Fenn
... know these things, and so when Brownwell, who, since his marriage, had taken up his abode at the Culpeppers', hinted at his "extravagant family," the town refused to take him seriously. And the strutting, pompous little man, who referred grandly to "my wife," and then to "the madame," and finally to "my landlady," in a rather elaborate attempt at jocularity, laughed alone at his merriment along this line, and never knew that no one cared for ...
— A Certain Rich Man • William Allen White
... that occasion, I was not informed. The rector came back among us with his head high in the air, strutting magnificently on his wizen little legs. He embraced his daughter in pathetic silence, and gave me his hand with a serene smile of condescension worthy of the greatest humbug (say Louis the Fourteenth) that ever sat on a throne. When he got the better ...
— Poor Miss Finch • Wilkie Collins
... great nobles drive four horses through the drifts like little hills, and are wrapped in furs like bears! The grand military parades—how I shall laugh when I think of our poor little Presidios with their dozen officers strutting about—" She stopped abruptly and bursting wildly into tears flung herself into her brother's arms. "But I never could leave you! And my father! my mother! all! all! Ay, Dios de mi alma! what an ingrate I am! I should die of homesickness! My ...
— Rezanov • Gertrude Atherton
... most delightful bird. Where a Thrush is, we defy you to anticipate his song in the morning. He is indeed an early riser. By the way, Chanticleer is far from being so. You hear him crowing away from shortly after midnight, and, in your simplicity, may suppose him to be up and strutting about the premises. Far from it;—he is at that very moment perched in his polygamy, between two of his fattest wives. The sultan will perhaps not stir a foot for several hours to come; while all the time ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson
... like husband and wife. We infantrymen must bring the child into the world when a victory is to be born. The artillery has only the pleasure, just like a man's part in love. It is not until after the child has been baptized that he comes strutting out proudly. Am I not right, Captain?" he asked, appealing to the cavalry officer. "You are an equestrian on ...
— Men in War • Andreas Latzko
... common acquaintance by Leonora, after what has passed between us?" "Passed between us! Do you intend to affront me before this gentleman?" "D—n me, affront the lady," says Bellarmine, cocking his hat, and strutting up to Horatio: "does any man dare affront this lady before me, d—n me?" "Hark'ee, sir," says Horatio, "I would advise you to lay aside that fierce air; for I am mightily deceived if this lady has not a violent desire to get your worship a ...
— Joseph Andrews Vol. 1 • Henry Fielding
... a time a western blast, At least twelve inches overcast, Reckoning roof, weathercock, and all, Which came with a prodigious fall; And, tumbling topsy-turvy round, Lit with its bottom on the ground: For, by the laws of gravitation, It fell into its proper station. This is the little strutting pile You see just by the churchyard stile; The walls in tumbling gave a knock, And thus the steeple got a shock; From whence the neighbouring farmer calls The steeple, Knock; the vicar, Walls.[2] The vicar once a-week creeps in, Sits with his knees up to his chin; Here cons ...
— The Poems of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Volume I (of 2) • Jonathan Swift
... loud and clapped Larry on the back, and told him it was a shame for him to be walking about in boots full of holes, when he might be strutting up and down as fine as any gentleman in the place, to say nothing of regular pay and quarters, and all the chance of glory. And Patrick added his persuasions, and quoted his own example as a great argument. And between them Larry let the shilling drop into his ...
— The Adventures of a Three-Guinea Watch • Talbot Baines Reed
... struggling—rouged, and lying, and fawning—I have wanted some one to be friends with. I have said to friends conversant with that history, Show me some good person about that Court; find me, among those selfish courtiers, those dissolute, gay people, some one being that I can love and regard. There is that strutting little sultan, George II; there is that hunchbacked, beetle-browed Lord Chesterfield; there is John Hervey, with his deadly smile, and ghastly, painted face—I hate them. There is Hoadly, cringing from one bishopric to another: yonder comes little Mr. Pope, from Twickenham, with his friend, ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... a newspaper, a magazine, a review, or some book or other in his hand, gets, at last, his head stuffed with such a jumble, that he knows not what to think about any thing. An empty coxcomb, that wastes his time in dressing, strutting, or strolling about, and picking his teeth, is certainly a most despicable creature, but scarcely less so than a mere reader of books, who is, generally, conceited, thinks himself wiser than other men, in proportion to the number of leaves that he has turned ...
— Advice to Young Men • William Cobbett
... at anchor and the fulling moon is fair, And the giddy folk are strutting up and down the smooth parade, And in her wild distraction she seems not to be aware That she lives no ...
— Satires of Circumstance, Lyrics and Reveries, with - Miscellaneous Pieces • Thomas Hardy
... a deep well; a great earthen mound for keeping vegetables in, in winter time; and a pigeon-house, whose little apertures looked, as they do in all pigeon-houses, very much too small for the admission of the plump and swelling-breasted birds who were strutting about it, though they tried to get in never so hard. That interest exhausted, I took a survey of the inn's two parlours, which were decorated with coloured prints of Washington, and President Madison, and of a white-faced young lady (much speckled by the flies), who held up her ...
— American Notes for General Circulation • Charles Dickens
... dragoons shuffled by, their big shapeless boots covered with dust, and their whalebone plumes hanging in straight points to the middle of their backs; now a group of strutting students and cocottes passed noisily, the girls in spotless spring plumage, the students vying with each other in the display of blinking eyeglasses, huge bunchy neckties, and sleek checked trousers. Policemen, trim little grisettes ...
— In the Quarter • Robert W. Chambers
... this charming day In the open field to stray, And have no roof above my head But that whereon the gods do tread. Before the yellow barn I see A beautiful variety Of strutting cocks, advancing stout, And flirting empty chaff about; Hens, ducks, and geese, and all their brood, And turkeys gobbling for their food; While rustics thrash the wealthy floor, And tempt ...
— The Age of Pope - (1700-1744) • John Dennis
... high protects an inner court, where even in January the turf is firm, springy, and close. At the farther end, on steps leading into the garden, a peacock looks wonderfully appropriate, and some white fantails strutting in front of the heavy walls add very much to the picture. There is scarcely any sign of the old 'pleasaunce,' except a low and fairly broad box-hedge, which runs each side of a path in the present garden, where a few violets and one or ...
— Devon, Its Moorlands, Streams and Coasts • Rosalind Northcote
... any white ones?" remembering the beautiful white pigeon with pink eyes which had her nest up in the cupola of our barn, and whose big beautiful brown husband was so proud of her and always was cooing to her when they were on the roof of our barn and was always strutting around so very proud, with his neck all puffed out ...
— Shenanigans at Sugar Creek • Paul Hutchens
... Taft as the American representative at the funeral. There was a gathering in London of thirteen reigning monarchs, and many curious stories are told about the occasion. Of course the Kaiser was there, strutting about and trying to patronize everybody. Mr. Roosevelt had been politely received by the Kaiser and believed, as did every one, that beneath his arrogant manners, there was a great deal of ability. But he did ...
— Theodore Roosevelt • Edmund Lester Pearson
... beauty of this big round world must show as a new-minted farthing beside his treasure chests, as one slight shining unimportant coin which—even this also!—belongs to earth, but has been overlooked by him as yet. Presently this hour, and whatever is strutting through this hour, is added to the heaped crypts wherein lie all that was worthiest ...
— Figures of Earth • James Branch Cabell
... in contempt. "We would make a couple of fine-looking officers, strutting around without ...
— The Boy Allies On the Firing Line - Or, Twelve Days Battle Along the Marne • Clair W. Hayes
... army came pouring down the street in the pale moonlight, and halted in front of my compound, which chanced to face the house at that time occupied by Tungku Indut, the door of which abutted on the main thoroughfare. Tungku Aminah led the van, strutting along with an arrogant and truculent swagger most laughable to see. She was dressed for the occasion after the fashion of the Malay warrior. Her body was encased in a short-sleeved, tight-fitting fighting jacket, which only served to emphasise the femininity of her bust. She wore striped silk ...
— In Court and Kampong - Being Tales and Sketches of Native Life in the Malay Peninsula • Hugh Clifford
... for this misguided girl," mused the captain, solemnly strutting backward and forward by the lonely river-side. "I always have looked upon her—I always shall look upon her—in the light of ...
— No Name • Wilkie Collins
... strangely surmounted by a helmet with barred visor, another smothered with brocade and skins hastily tossed over it. Amongst this heterogeneous still life, several speckled and white pigeons were perched or strutting, too tame to fly at the entrance of men; three corpulent toads were crawling in an intimate friendly way near the door-stone; and a white rabbit, apparently the model for that which was frightening ...
— Romola • George Eliot
... the air, and through a long courtyard, with brewhouse and dairy on each side, and a pleasant smell of baking bread, and dogs winking in the sun, cats at the corners of doors, satisfied with life, and turkeys parading, and fowls, strutting cocks, that overset the dignity of Mr. Raikes by awakening his imitative propensities. Certain white-capped women, who were washing in a tub, laughed, and one observed: 'He's for all the world like the little bantam cock stickin' 'self up in a crow against the Spaniar'.' And this, and the landlady's ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... with his little dreadful air of fervid solemnity—and I don't know whether I dreamed it or whether it was really there—very spruce and strutting about the lawns of Amerley Park at that garden-party they took ...
— The Belfry • May Sinclair
... He waved his right hand in conversation and spoke in a lofty way, which to Allan and myself was funny. When he had got his sealegs and his appetite, he began lecturing the passengers as to what they ought to do, enlarging on organizing a committee, of which he was to be head. I think I see him, strutting up and down the deck by the side of the captain with whom it gratified him to walk. The only other passenger besides him who was not connected with farming was Mr Kerr, to whom I became much attached. He was well-informed ...
— The Narrative of Gordon Sellar Who Emigrated to Canada in 1825 • Gordon Sellar
... diameter, which he clears of every leaf, twig, and branch. On the margin of this circus there is invariably a projecting branch, or overarching root a few feet above the ground, on which the female takes her place to watch the exhibition. This consists of the male strutting about, pluming his feathers, and generally ...
— Blown to Bits - or, The Lonely Man of Rakata • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... was left boasting and strutting in the sumac, but in his heart he found it lonesome business. Being the son of a king, he was much too dignified to beg for a mate, and besides, it took all his time to guard the sumac; but his eyes were wide open to all that went on around him, and he envied the blackbird his glossy, devoted ...
— The Song of the Cardinal • Gene Stratton-Porter
... both Jehaleen and some strangers, set to making themselves comfortable. There arrived a large body of the Fellahheen, headed by Shaikh Suliman es Said, a ragged and ugly crew, he as dirty as the rest, but strutting about in a ...
— Byeways in Palestine • James Finn
... of June Hobb, coming to the gate of his garden, saw with surprise a peacock strutting on the hillbrow, his fan spread in the sun, a luster of green and blue and gold, and behind him was another, and further south three more. So Hobb went out to look at them, and found not five but fifty peacocks sweeping the Downs with ...
— Martin Pippin in the Apple Orchard • Eleanor Farjeon
... above the town, Grey as the soul of silence, Except where two white strutting domes Stand aloof and frown On the huddled homes Of world-wept love and pain,— They do not heed that tall disdain, But sleep, grey, under ...
— The Five Books of Youth • Robert Hillyer
... sniggling at the predicament of the public which paid them for its protection against precisely the kind of thing which they openly tolerated and encouraged; yes, and even the militia, the guarantee of law and order, Broadcastle's own command, were decked out in tinsel and pipeclay, strutting to music in a palpable bid for applause and admiration. And yonder—the tide of anarchy was slowly but surely rising about the Rathbawne Mills, presaging riot, bloodshed, God alone knew what!—but one ...
— The Lieutenant-Governor • Guy Wetmore Carryl
... party in Carthage also prepared for the struggle. But Hasdrubal, who was placed at the head of their army, was one of the usual army-destroyers whom the Carthaginians were in the habit of employing as generals; strutting about in his general's purple like a theatrical king, and pampering his portly person even in the camp, that vain and unwieldy man was little fitted to render help in an exigency which perhaps even the genius of Hamilcar and the arm of Hannibal could have no longer ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... things familiar flitted across his mind. He saw his mother in a cocked hat; Cuddie Collingwood, his pet canary, strutting the maindeck and picking his teeth; and Gwen with a tarred pigtail, her brawny bosom tattooed ...
— The Gentleman - A Romance of the Sea • Alfred Ollivant
... was on the ground and strutting finely as he hurried about for his horse. "A plague upon the beast!" he cried. "He hath slipped halter and strayed. I had come up with the young lord while ...
— A Boy's Ride • Gulielma Zollinger
... thought he would go out in the air and play, because his great dinner made him feel very uncomfortable. When he was out in the barnyard it was just growing dusk, and Donald, through his half-closed eyes, observed a gobbler strutting about. To his great surprise the gobbler approached him ...
— Good Cheer Stories Every Child Should Know • Various
... his own disciplined emotions, underlying much sincere aspiration after spiritual humility. And it is this confidence that makes his intercourse with women so interesting to a modern. It would be easy, of course, to make fun of the whole affair, to picture him strutting vaingloriously among these inferior creatures, or compare a religious friendship in the sixteenth century with what was called, I think, a literary friendship in the eighteenth. But it is more just and profitable to recognise what there is sterling and human ...
— Familiar Studies of Men & Books • Robert Louis Stevenson
... sneered Palafox, glancing back threateningly, and speaking in Spanish. "Be careful who you charm. Best not be coddling Nine Eyes, or any other man, while I'm livin'. Bring another bottle. You could have kept those girls here for me, if you'd tried. You allowed that strutting dandy to carry them off before your eyes. This makes the second time he got away from me. The third time is the charm. Not your kind of charm, Mex, but ...
— A Dream of Empire - Or, The House of Blennerhassett • William Henry Venable
... Parliament with the pencil, in having the exceptional material for work upon Mr. Gladstone at his most interesting period, Parnell's rise and fall, Churchill's rise and fall, Bradlaugh's rise and fall, and a host of others strutting their brief hour on the political stage. Where are they now? Mr. Chamberlain alone interests the caricaturist. Parliament itself is dull, the public is apathetic, and everything appertaining to politics is flat and unprofitable. ...
— The Confessions of a Caricaturist, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Harry Furniss
... and enjoy immediately; you have a good mile of pleasant dry walk around your own farm. It would make you laugh to see Emma and her mother fitting up pig-sties and hencoops, and already the Canal is enlivened with ducks, and the cock is strutting with his ...
— The Life of Nelson, Vol. II. (of 2) - The Embodiment of the Sea Power of Great Britain • A. T. (Alfred Thayer) Mahan
... their creator, and his life runs through and pervades theirs, just as the life of our Creator flows through us. In Him we live and move and have our being. And I submit that the writer of a tragedy is not cast down or undone at the time he pictures his heroic situations and conjures forth his strutting spirits. When the play ends and the curtain falls on the fifth act, there is still one man alive, and that is the author. He may be gorged with crime and surfeited with blood, but there is a surging exultation in his veins as he views ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 2 of 14 - Little Journeys To the Homes of Famous Women • Elbert Hubbard
... you?" asked the woodchuck, strutting up and down the gravel walk before her and swinging ...
— Twinkle and Chubbins - Their Astonishing Adventures in Nature-Fairyland • L. Frank (Lyman Frank) Baum
... we talk of something else," said Polly, "so I'll tell you that Sir Mortimer is strutting around our garden this morning with a new collar that I bought for him, and the big pink satin bow upon ...
— Princess Polly's Gay Winter • Amy Brooks
... insensibility to lying and to making others lie; total oblivion, and flinging overboard, for the nonce, of any real thing you can call veracity, morality; with dextrous putting-on the cast-clothes of that real thing, and strutting about in them! What Legislating can you get out of a man in that fatal situation? None that will profit much, one would think! A Legislator who has left his veracity lying on the door-threshold, he, why verily he—ought to be sent out to seek ...
— Past and Present - Thomas Carlyle's Collected Works, Vol. XIII. • Thomas Carlyle
... yonder heaven and earth shall mingle, Or—which is likelier to befall— 'Til death exterminate us all. I marry without more ado. My dear Dick Redcap, what say you?" Dick heard, and tweedling, ogling, bridling, Turned short 'round, strutting, and sidling, Attested, glad, his approbation Of an immediate conjugation. Their sentiments, so well express'd, Influenced mightily the rest; All pair'd, and each pair built a nest. But, though the birds were thus in haste, ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various
... everything was ready packed in the provision baskets (this was of great importance to us afterwards). That evening we all met out walking, on the only riding-road there was in those days. Rajah spoke to the school-children, and we all amused ourselves with the little Middletons, boys of four and five, strutting along with turbaned hats and long walking-sticks. It was a dull evening, and we all felt unaccountably gloomy. We fancied it was because Rajah was not well enough to come and dine with us, as he had purposed in the morning; but during dinner I remembered afterwards that ...
— Sketches of Our Life at Sarawak • Harriette McDougall
... is chiefly one of apeing our betters and strutting before the lesser members of the flock. The large cities are full of people in search of some way to display their superior wealth, taste and exclusiveness. If an ingenious dealer takes a dozen eggs from common candled stock, places ...
— The Dollar Hen • Milo M. Hastings
... going to get the idea that you sure hate yourself!" he remarked, standing with his hands on his hips while Applehead came strutting into the foreground. "You'll never make any one believe you were ever a real, honest-to-God sheriff. They'll put you down as an extra picked up through a free employment agency and feeling like you owned the plant ...
— The Phantom Herd • B. M. Bower
... got there, how he did stare, To see the yeomen strutting about; He scratched his head, and rubbed down his hair, In the ear of a noble ...
— Ancient Poems, Ballads and Songs of England • Robert Bell
... Sir Toady, and with the Heir tugging at his legs, found himself presently worsted and precipitated over the cliff in place of Frank Kennedy. This ending considerably disarranged the story, so that it was with no little trouble that the pair of strutting victors were induced to "play by the book," and to accept (severally) death and captivity in the hold of the ...
— Red Cap Tales - Stolen from the Treasure Chest of the Wizard of the North • Samuel Rutherford Crockett
... notorious. It was known all over the country for its roughs or "Bowery B'hoys," as they were called, its rowdy firemen, and its doubtful women. In short, it was the paradise of the worst element of New York. On this street the Bowery boy was in his glory. You might see him "strutting along like a king" with his breeches stuck in his boots, his coat on his arm, his flaming red shirt tied at the collar with a cravat such as could be seen nowhere else; with crape on his hat, the hat set deftly on the side of his head, his hair evenly plastered down ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe
... walk as taken off on the comic opera stage, the termination of each strutting, dragging step accentuated by cymbals smashed together F-F-F? That was how the god walked. He was all in scarlet, with a long feather sticking straight up from a scarlet cap. And the magic he sang (now that you knew the sounds he made were those of a tenor voice, you knew that it was a glorious ...
— IT and Other Stories • Gouverneur Morris
... of Ehrestadt were walking on the promenade, dressed in their best; the men strutting, the women hanging on their arms, the children toddling behind. In the square a band was playing; the nut trees were in full leaf, and the air was warm and sweet with the scent of the rose buds. The wheel of the ...
— The Black Cross • Olive M. Briggs
... strutting in with the kid about 12 looking like she hadn't done nothing out of the way and when she seen me she squeeled and come romping over for a kiss. Well Al she didn't get it. I kissed little Al all right but I didn't see where she had a right to expect favors. Well she seen how things stood and ...
— Treat 'em Rough - Letters from Jack the Kaiser Killer • Ring W. Lardner
... as if just aware of it. "I declare I believe I miss him, too! I believe to my soul I'd like to hear him crow—I wouldn't mind if he came strutting in here!" And "in here" was Aunt Olivia's beloved garden of flowers. Surely she was ...
— Rebecca Mary • Annie Hamilton Donnell
... they had a mocking one. They did not wait for Cervantes to begin laughing; these variable and many-sided beings sneered at high-flown sentiments and experienced them too. They sang the Song of Roland, and read with delight a romance in which the great emperor is represented strutting about before his barons, his crown on his head and his sword in his hand, asking the queen if he is not the most admirable prince in the world.[203] To his surprise, the queen says no, there is a better, there is King Hugon, emperor of Greece and of Constantinople. ...
— A Literary History of the English People - From the Origins to the Renaissance • Jean Jules Jusserand
... the gates, and the small parties of threes and fours who arrested motors and carts for their barricades. Among these were some who were only infants—one boy seemed about twelve years of age. He was strutting the centre of the road with a large revolver in his small fist. A motor car came by him containing three men, and in the shortest of time he had the car lodged in his barricade, and dismissed its stupified occupants with a ...
— The Insurrection in Dublin • James Stephens
... don't cry; hold on a while. If your forehead tells the truth, you'll be President of the United States by and by. Then, "the master" (quite oblivious of Harry Gray,) will go strutting round, telling all creation and his cousin, that he had the honor of first teaching your "young ideas how ...
— Little Ferns For Fanny's Little Friends • Fanny Fern
... my wits, rubbed my eyes, and looked at my visitor. It was the gold eagle off the City Hall! I don't expect to be believed; but I wish you'd been here to see, for I give you my word, it was a sight to behold. How he ever got in at such a small window I can't tell; but there he was, strutting majestically up and down the room, his golden plumage rustling, and his keen eyes flashing as he walked. I really didn't know what to do. I couldn't imagine what he came for; I had my doubts about the propriety of offering him a chair; and he ...
— Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag • Louisa M. Alcott
... that is well! The King of Sumatra needs a new crown!" cried the wild man, strutting up and down in front of the cabin. "Give it to me, that I may see if it fits." And he held out ...
— Dave Porter and the Runaways - Last Days at Oak Hall • Edward Stratemeyer
... no goat. Bunny saw a big bird, with his wings dragging along on the ground, his feathers all puffed up, and with what looked like a red tassel hanging dangling, dangling down over his beak, strutting ...
— Bunny Brown and His Sister Sue on Grandpa's Farm • Laura Lee Hope
... officer and private, arms and quarters, camp and drill, command and obedience, honor and duty, esprit and excellence, every moral and material belonging of the regiment, bore the impress of his genius. In the eyes of civilians, Colonel Kellogg was nothing but a horrid, strutting, shaggy monster. But request any one of the survivors of the Nineteenth Infantry or the Second Artillery to name the most perfect soldier he ever saw, and this will surely be the man. Or ask him to conjure up the ideal soldier of his imagination, still the same figure, complete in feature, ...
— The County Regiment • Dudley Landon Vaill
... 'I saw her strutting about with him yesterday, looking as if she thought the two of them made ...
— Echoes of the War • J. M. Barrie
... would not have done so if he had remained as quiet as the other Israelites. David was one of those who could not be easy so long as the enemies of his country were in the ascendant. To see a Philistine strutting about, defying the armies of the living God, was more than he could bear. Is not this the spirit which should animate Christians to-day? It is not one GOLIATH merely, there are many. DRUNKENNESS, PROFANITY, SUPERSTITION, ...
— Broken Bread - from an Evangelist's Wallet • Thomas Champness
... strong," and the like. And when we approached Fort Henry I fully expected to see some grand, imposing structure with "battled towers," "donjon keep," "portcullis," "drawbridges," and what not, and perhaps some officer of high rank with a drawn sword, strutting about on the ramparts and occasionally shouting, at the top of his voice, "What, warder, ho!" or words to that effect. But, to my utter amazement and disgust, when we steamed up opposite Fort Henry I saw only a little squatty, insignificant looking mud affair, without the slightest feature ...
— The Story of a Common Soldier of Army Life in the Civil War, 1861-1865 • Leander Stillwell
... captain, strutting up, and cocking his hat in the face of our adventurer, "you may be mad as ever a straw-crowned monarch in Moorfields, for aught I care, but damme! don't you be saucy, otherwise I shall dub your worship with a good stick across your ...
— The Adventures of Sir Launcelot Greaves • Tobias Smollett
... west to east, and had traversed it in every direction, but at a cost which had been wearing out both to mind and body. He drops a tear over the Universities Mission, but becomes merry over Bishop Tozer strutting about with his crosier at Zanzibar, and in a fine clear day getting a distant view of the continent of which he claimed to be Bishop. He denounces the vile policy of the Portuguese, and laments the indecision of some influential persons who virtually upheld it. He is tickled with the generous ...
— The Personal Life Of David Livingstone • William Garden Blaikie
... burned in him in his great moments. It was possible for her to smile at Donnegan; it was possible even to pity him for his fragility, his touchy pride about his size; to criticize his fondness for taking the center of the stage even in a cheap little mining camp like this and strutting about, the center of all attention. Yet there were qualities in him which escaped her, a possibility of metallic hardness, a pitiless ...
— Gunman's Reckoning • Max Brand
... his patron, and both were watching Tuetzi with interest. He had already become aware of the doves and reared his head above the level of the bastion roof, where they were strutting about unsuspicious of danger. His hideous lidless eyes regarded them intently, with a view ...
— In Brief Authority • F. Anstey
... she customarily treated things failing to waft her enthusiasm. In regard to Philippa, he behaved well: he bestowed more of his attention on Beatrice, nearer Leo's age, in talk about games and story-books and battles; nothing that he did when the girls were present betrayed the strutting plumed cock, bent to attract, or the sickly reptile, thirsty for a prize above him and meaning to have it, like Satan in Eden. Still, of course, he could not help his being a handsome fellow, having a ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... a caravan of figures travelling as all are travelling: her mother, Gaspare, Giulia, with her plump and swarthy face; Monsieur Emile, to whom she had drawn so pleasantly, interestingly near in these last days; the Marchesino (strutting from the hips and making his bold eyes round), Peppina, Ruffo. They went by and returned, gathered about her, separated, melted away as people do in our musings. Her eyes were fixed on the low roof ...
— A Spirit in Prison • Robert Hichens
... is often called Oswego tea, because the Indians are supposed to have used it for tea. Then, again, you will hear it called Indian's plume. This name seems most suitable. I can just imagine a chief strutting around with this gay plume on his head. It likes a somewhat secluded, moist, shady, cool place. I think it would be possible for some of you to make it grow at home. For colour it would be invaluable. The cardinal flower is the only flower more ...
— The Library of Work and Play: Gardening and Farming. • Ellen Eddy Shaw
... souls, our strutting wits, Our labour'd, puny passion-fits— Ah, may she scorn them still, till we Scorn them as bitterly ...
— Poetical Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold
... was left to Spring. And she peered about to see what she could do with it. Presently she saw a dejected dog coming prowling down the road, so she sang to him and he gambolled. I saw him next day strutting by with something of an air. Where there were trees she went to them and whispered, and they sang the arboreal song that only trees can hear, and the green buds came peeping out as stars while yet it is twilight, ...
— Fifty-One Tales • Lord Dunsany [Edward J. M. D. Plunkett]
... Clarke, you are an impudent impostor! You have written no word that is your own. You are an embezzler of the mind, strutting through life ...
— The House of the Vampire • George Sylvester Viereck
... going," the detective said, strutting across the room, with his little round belly protruding like that of an insect. "You can always find me at the hotel down here, if I'm in this part of the country. Just ask for me ask for me and I'll ...
— Boy Scouts in the Coal Caverns • Major Archibald Lee Fletcher
... is hyacinthine purple. You know what that costs. It would support the wives and children of many among you for ten long years. 'How heavy must be the purse which can expose such a treasure to sun and rain!' is the thought of every one who sees him strutting about as proudly as a peacock. And his purse is loaded with many talents. Only it is a pity that, day after day, most of you must give your children a little less bread and deprive yourselves of many a draught of wine to deck him out so bravely. His father, Eumenes, was a tax-collector, ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... formed, and his dress was a matter of extreme study. But it is rather libellous on the memory of this man of taste to suppose, that he at all resembled in this important matter the strutting display which we have seen in later times, and which irresistibly strikes the beholder with surprise, that any man capable of seeing himself in the glass could exhibit so strong a temptation to laughter; while to the more knowing ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 55, No. 344, June, 1844 • Various
... had got near enough to distinguish the forms of the birds, they saw they were two old "gobblers" and a hen. The gobblers were strutting about with their tails spread like fans, and their wings trailing along the grass. Every now and then they uttered their loud "gobble—obble—obble," and by their attitude and actions it was evidently an affair ...
— The Boy Hunters • Captain Mayne Reid
... assembled for their parade. They had regular "stamping grounds" on certain ridges, Where the soil was beaten smooth by the pressure of their restless feet. I often passed within a few yards of them.—I can see them now, the cocks leaping and strutting, with trailing wings and down-thrust heads, displaying their bulbous orange-colored neck ornaments while the hens flutter and squawk in silly delight. All the charm and mystery of that prairie world comes back to me, and I ache with an illogical desire to recover it and ...
— A Son of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... without complaining, right manfully lop off miles when walking on the water, and get to be known—at least visually—to the entire first cabin before they have paraded half way across the Atlantic. (There was once a man who had the strutting disease so badly that he literally walked from Sandy Hook to Gaunt's Rock, but, who, on getting to London, refused to walk from the Savoy to the Cecil because of a weak heart.) The worst feature about these inveterate water-walkers ...
— The Prince of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... their own people they recovered from their alarm. Ambrose suspected their present confidence to be as little founded on reason as their previous terror. Watusk, strutting like a turkey-cock in his military finery, issued ...
— The Fur Bringers - A Story of the Canadian Northwest • Hulbert Footner
... which she avowed to everybody, was simple excited curiosity for a look into a new world. The mystery and the glamour of it attracted her. Paula's proposal gave her the opportunity to see what these strange persons were like when they were not strutting their ...
— Mary Wollaston • Henry Kitchell Webster
... from a friend of ours when we came," said Bill, "but most of that has been frittered away. Besides that, he hasn't a cent although he goes strutting around as though he had a little private wad to draw on. But I know he hasn't any. Where would he get money? His folks have only ...
— Battling the Clouds - or, For a Comrade's Honor • Captain Frank Cobb
... skilful There are, they will even Lay siege to the ladies. They first to the kitchens Make sure of admission, And then through the maids Gained access to the mistress. See, there he goes, strutting Along through the courtyard 60 And jingling the keys Of the house like a Barin. And soon he will spit In the teeth of the peasants; The pious old women, Who always before At the house have been welcome, He'll speedily banish. The people, however, Can see in these pilgrims 70 A good side as well. ...
— Who Can Be Happy And Free In Russia? • Nicholas Nekrassov
... yard Polly was strutting, proud as a peacock, in her scarlet sash. The ends swept the ground, and she glanced back over her shoulder at them every step. Roberta burst out laughing, Polly looked ...
— That Old-Time Child, Roberta • Sophie Fox Sea
... of a mountain-ash that hung its clusters of red berries just before my window, was basking himself in the sunshine, and piping a few querulous notes; and a peacock was displaying all the glories of his train, and strutting with the pride and gravity of a Spanish ...
— Old Christmas From the Sketch Book of Washington Irving • Washington Irving
... customary warning about not staying late and Beth went off with a lighter heart than usual. It was a delightful day. The homes all looked so cheery, and the children were playing at the gates as she went down the street. There was one her eye dwelt on more than the rest. The pigeons were strutting on the sloping roof, the cat dozed in the window-sill, and the little fair-haired girls were swinging under the cherry-tree. Yes, marriage and home must be sweet after all. Beth had always said she never would marry. She wanted to write stories and not have other cares. ...
— Beth Woodburn • Maud Petitt
... he said, still staring. Minnie felt absolutely convinced now that he was mad, and directed the cabman home on her own responsibility. "Put on my shoes? Certainly, dear," said he, as the cab began to turn, and hid the strutting black figure, now small in the distance, from his eyes. Then suddenly something grotesque struck him, and he laughed. Then he remarked, "It is really ...
— The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... bonds that unite us one and all; whether by the soft binding of Love, or the iron chaining of Necessity, as we like to choose it. More than once have I said to myself, of some perhaps whimsically strutting Figure, such as provokes whimsical thoughts: 'Wert thou, my little Brotherkin, suddenly covered up within the largest imaginable Glass bell,—what a thing it were, not for thyself only, but for the world! Post Letters, more or fewer, from all ...
— Sartor Resartus - The Life and Opinions of Herr Teufelsdrockh • Thomas Carlyle
... discouraged my friendly advance with a cold indifference, and my idea of chumming with him during my pay-day "bust" soon went glimmering. Yet I admired him mightily from the moment I first clapped eyes upon him, and endeavored to imitate his carriage of utter recklessness in my own strutting. ...
— The Blood Ship • Norman Springer
... importance, putting a finger to their lips, screwing up their eyes to enjoin secrecy. A provincial flavor distinguished them all, with differences of inflection, Southern excitability, the drawling accent of the Centre, Breton sing-song, all blended in the same idiotic, strutting self-sufficiency; frock-coats after the style of Landerneau, mountain shoes, and home-spun linen; the monumental assurance of village clubs, local expressions, provincialisms abruptly imported into political and administrative language, the limp, colorless phraseology ...
— The Nabob, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... imaginary feelings and then proceeded to assail him for having them. He was accused, especially, of pluming himself highly upon the title of the "American Scott." Hazlitt, for instance, seeing him strutting, as he terms it, in the streets of Paris, was enabled to detect by the way the novelist walked the way he felt upon this special matter, and afterward to state the conclusion at which he had arrived as a positive fact. Similar specimens ...
— James Fenimore Cooper - American Men of Letters • Thomas R. Lounsbury
... hands in its pockets and strutting to and fro, smiling loftily: "Repeat the answer for the ...
— Yollop • George Barr McCutcheon
... privilege of sending food and clothing through the lines to us. Of course but a small part of that sent ever reached its destination. There were too many greedy Rebels along its line of passage to let much of it be received by those for whom it was intended. We could see from our windows Rebels strutting about in overcoats, in which the box wrinkles were still plainly visible, wearing new "U. S." blankets as cloaks, and walking in Government shoes, worth fabulous ...
— Andersonville, complete • John McElroy
... when he stated that Soma was the man that Leith had picked as first assistant. The big Kanaka was placed in charge of the other five carriers, and he immediately imitated Leith by shrieking out orders and strutting about in a manner that was ludicrous. Professor Herndon was bubbling over with excitement. The stories which Leith had fed to him continuously concerning the remains of an extinct civilization had worked him up to a pitch that bordered on insanity, and it was pitiful to watch him as he made endless ...
— The White Waterfall • James Francis Dwyer
... you," sighed Cynthia hopelessly. "I wish I could, but I can't—I was born different—so different." "Bless your heart, honey, I was born different myself, and if I'd kept my leg and my arm I dare say I'd be strutting round on one and shaking the other in the face of God Almighty just as I used to do. A two-legged man is so busy getting about the world that he never has time to sit down and take a look around him. I tell you I see more in one hour as I am now than I saw in all the ...
— The Deliverance; A Romance of the Virginia Tobacco Fields • Ellen Glasgow
... and when it was necessary to have any dealing with their people the Chief acted through Wattahomigie. He had often begged us to visit their Canyon home, and we promised to go when we could. He came strutting into our house one summer day and invited us to accompany him home, as the season of peaches and melons was at its height. He had been so sure we would go that he left orders for members of the tribe to meet us at Hilltop where the steep trail begins. ...
— I Married a Ranger • Dama Margaret Smith
... the turkey-cock, strutting young officer," cried Cosetta harshly in his own tongue. "Eye the young Gringo upstart well. You must know him again, for he is to be a marked man in the streets of ...
— Dave Darrin at Vera Cruz • H. Irving Hancock
... my brain. The girl who had given me the rose was young, pretty, and rich. I could make my fortune before one could turn round. And sheep and pigs, turkeys, and fat geese stuffed with apples—verily, I seemed to see the Porter strutting up to me: "Seize your luck, Receiver, seize your luck! 'Marry young, you're never wrong;' take home your bride, live in the country, and live well." Plunged in these philosophical reflections, I sat me down on a stone, for, since I had no money, ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries: - Masterpieces of German Literature Translated into English, Volume 5. • Various
... time this Dictator was strutting with the powerful persuasion that the United States must be subordinate to his will, he was ambitious to live in the palace of the Governor General, putting an impertinance to that effect in his correspondence, but General Merritt told him he wanted it for himself and had already occupied and taken ...
— The Story of the Philippines and Our New Possessions, • Murat Halstead
... framed some vague sentence of democratic sentiment when suddenly doubts overwhelmed him. His belief in his heroic quality and calling he found had altogether lost its assured conviction. The picture of a little strutting futility in a windy waste of incomprehensible destinies replaced it. Abruptly it was perfectly clear to him that this revolt against Ostrog was premature, foredoomed to failure, the impulse of passionate inadequacy against inevitable things. He thought of that swift flight of aeroplanes ...
— The Sleeper Awakes - A Revised Edition of When the Sleeper Wakes • H.G. Wells
... horses passed upon the road, as though in triumph at their freedom. There were dull pigs too, turning up the ground in search of dainty food, and grunting their monotonous grumblings as they prowled about, or crossed each other in their quest; plump pigeons skimming round the roof or strutting on the eaves; and ducks and geese, far more graceful in their own conceit, waddling awkwardly about the edges of the pond or sailing glibly on its surface. The farm-yard passed, then came the little inn; the humbler beer-shop; and the village tradesman's; then the lawyer's ...
— The Old Curiosity Shop • Charles Dickens
... Hospital. The influence of the French eighteenth-century literature on the mind of England was first combated and then baldly denied. The premier journalist of the age declared, with the satisfaction of a turkey-cock strutting round his yard, that no trace of the lowest level of what could be called popularity remained in England to the writers of France, and he felt himself "entitled to treat as an imbecile conceit the ...
— Some Diversions of a Man of Letters • Edmund William Gosse
... stepping lightly lest the children hear— I from a side door slipped, and crossed a lane With bitter Mayweed lined, and over a field Snapping with grasshoppers, until I came Down where an interrupted brook held way Among the alders. There, on a strutting branch Leaving my straw, I sat and wooed the west, With breast and palms ...
— Penguin Persons & Peppermints • Walter Prichard Eaton
... evidently; and Samuel stared, marveling at the splendor. He came to a great estate with a stone gateway and iron railings ten feet high, and an avenue of stately elm trees; there were bright green lawns with peacocks and lyre birds strutting about, and a great colonial mansion with white pillars in the distance. "Fairview," read the name ...
— Samuel the Seeker • Upton Sinclair
... mistress's coffee she found her sitting up in bed. On her white lap lay the old reticule of fawn-skin. She had broken the clasp of its inner pocket and held in her hand a rudely scrawled paper whose blue ink and strutting signature the unlettered maid knew at a glance was from her old-time persecutor, Cornelius. It was the letter her father had dropped under the chair when she was a child. Across its face were still the bold figures of his own pencil, and from its blue lines ...
— John March, Southerner • George W. Cable
... afternoon of weather serene beyond all belief of the North, mild, tired, softly radiant, still as a summer noon; as he sat with Bertran in a courtyard where were lemon-trees and a fountain, and above the old white walls, and above the strutting pigeons, a square of blue, he began to speak of his affairs, of what he had done and ...
— The Life and Death of Richard Yea-and-Nay • Maurice Hewlett
... the man's face, as she had already seen from the empty tracks, that no such train was in readiness, she ran at one of the puffing and strutting children whose muffler was loose, and tied it up again. Then, struck by another thought, she returned to the impassive man whom she had ...
— What Necessity Knows • Lily Dougall
... wanted me to talk about him during the acting." I agreed to carry out his wishes, and my worthy friend, Howard, and I, having been supplied with the "matter," commenced to rehearse the scene we had prepared expressly for Jacky. There were two figures strutting about the stage. "Good morning, Mr Catgill" said one of them. "Why, you are smart this morning." "Well, you know it is Addingham Feast," was the reply of the other figure. "Are you in want of a sweetheart?" "No," said Jacky's double; "I came here to buy some cattle." Upon this the real ...
— Adventures and Recollections • Bill o'th' Hoylus End
... promise," murmured Bridget; and a few minutes later Colonel Faversham went away, strutting along the street with his chest puffed out, walking on air, and certainly never doubting that Bridget's promise would be fulfilled. At the end of Golfney Place his expression changed as he saw Jimmy Clynesworth—on his way to No. 5, no doubt! Well, let Jimmy make the most of his opportunities. ...
— Enter Bridget • Thomas Cobb
... them told him that if he would give his address, he would be given the preference whenever a vacancy occurred. Carroll knew that he was mentally appraised as a promising person to direct ladies to ribbon and muslin counters. He looked at another floor-walker strutting up and down the aisle, and felt sure that he could do better, and all this amused contempt for himself deepened and bored its way into his very soul. He always asked himself, with the demand of an unpitying judge, ...
— The Debtor - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... nationalities and types on the Zone, enumerating would have become more than monotonous. But the enumerated took care to break the monotony. There was the wealth of nomenclature for instance. What more striking than a shining-black waiter strutting proudly about under the name of Levi McCarthy? There was no necessity of asking Beresford Plantaganet if he were a British subject. Naturally the mother of Hazarmaneth Cumberbath Smith, baptized that very week, had to claw out the family Bible from among the ...
— Zone Policeman 88 - A Close Range Study of the Panama Canal and its Workers • Harry A. Franck
... Bond-street strutting, Did he greet his friends of yore; Such a universal cutting Never man received before. Till at last his pride revolted; Pale, and lean, and stern, he grew; And his wife REBECCA ...
— Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, March 1844 - Volume 23, Number 3 • Various
... female instinct in the human. In the animal world the male has the plumage and does the strutting and fascinating act; but in the human animal the female is the ...
— Evening Round Up - More Good Stuff Like Pep • William Crosbie Hunter
... Gumbo had already trumpeted his master's greatness, and Mr. Draper's clerk announced that the new-comer was a "high fellar." Then, the rooms surveyed, the two gentlemen went to Leicester Field, Mr. Gumbo strutting behind his master: and, having looked at the scene of his grandsire's wound, and poor Lord Castlewood's tragedy, they returned to the Temple ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray
... of his daemon. All this, I say, you could see in the abstracted, resigned and composed look of Mr. Gladstone at the moment when his triumphant enemies, in their summer garb, with their smiling faces, and strutting walk, entered the House of Commons. If you wanted to see at once the contrast, not only of the temper of the hour, but the still greater and more momentous contrast of temperaments, you had only to look from the face of Mr. Gladstone to that of Mr. Chamberlain. ...
— Sketches In The House (1893) • T. P. O'Connor
... it, and the footman obeyed. While Ormond was waiting impatiently for the answer, his horse, as impatient as himself, would not stand still. A groom, who was sauntering about, saw the uneasiness of the horse, and observing that it was occasioned by a peacock, who, with spread tail, was strutting in the sunshine, he ran and chased the bird away. Ormond thanked the groom, and threw him a luck token; but not recollecting his face, asked how long he had been at Annaly. "I think you were not here when I was here ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. IX - [Contents: Harrington; Thoughts on Bores; Ormond] • Maria Edgeworth
... on the affair of his mortgage. The Lord Bareacres, strutting into the apartment with a haughty air, shrank back, nevertheless, with surprise on beholding the magnificence around him. "Little Mordecai," said Rafael to a little orange-boy, who came in at the heels of ...
— Burlesques • William Makepeace Thackeray
... seemed to lull. She sat down in one of the inner recesses and looked out on the row of ivy-covered studies and the little gate that led down to the town. A tame jackdaw was hopping among the stones, and a couple of fan-tail pigeons were strutting near him. The mellow brightness of the October sunshine seemed to flood the whole court. Oh, how peaceful it looked, how calm and still! and then Audrey suddenly put down her face on her hands and cried like ...
— Lover or Friend • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... his wealth would be a great trouble to him, when he met in his path a pretty little shrew-mouse of the noble race of shrew-mice, who bear all gules on an azure ground. By the gods! be sure that it was a splendid animal, with the finest tail of the whole family, and was strutting about in the sun like a brave shrew-mouse. It was proud of having been in this world since the Deluge, according to letters-patent of indisputable nobility, registered by the parliament of the universe, since it appears from ...
— Droll Stories, Volume 2 • Honore de Balzac
... of his imagination he conjured forth his strutting spirits; and the names he gave to each are as fitting and as funny as the absurd smallclothes and ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 1 of 14 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Good Men and Great • Elbert Hubbard
... think Conkling was the equal in debate with Blaine."—George F. Hoar, Autobiography, Vol. 2, p. 55. "Conkling was the more dignified and commanding, but Blaine more aggravating and personal. When Blaine likened Conkling to a strutting turkey-gobbler, the House slightly hissed. But on the whole that debate was regarded as a draw."—William ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... is," replied the king, strutting about the yard, and looking as haughty and as full of fight as only a Spanish cock can, "to see my detested rival over the fence yonder humbled in ...
— Little Folks (November 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... way into the nave and strode down the middle aisle, Morgan at his heels, full of astonishment and healthy country disgust. Any gallant who came strutting along to show his fine feathers received scant courtesy or elbow-room from the indignant forester. He thrust more than one roughly aside, without so much as a "by your leave," and his angry face, huge frame, and athletic build forced the hustled ones to keep civil tongues in their ...
— Sea-Dogs All! - A Tale of Forest and Sea • Tom Bevan
... de Lionne, a woman of eclectic taste, smiled upon these armed young men with impartial sensibility and an equal share of interest. Madame de Lionne took her delight in the infinite variety of the human species. All the eyes in the drawing-room followed the departing officers, one strutting, the other striding, with curiosity. When the door had closed after them one or two men who had already heard of the duel imparted the information to the sylphlike ladies, who received it with little shrieks ...
— The Point Of Honor - A Military Tale • Joseph Conrad
... all-in-all, and he had an undisguised contempt for higher education. To send a boy to college was, in his opinion, to run no inconsiderable risk of ruining him. What did they amount to when they came home, strutting like peacocks, full of fads and fancies, and much too good to associate with decent, hard-working citizens? Nevertheless when autumn came and my friends departed with eclat for the East, I was desperate indeed! Even the contemplation ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... Proudly strutting onward and crowing, Coquerico at last arrived at Rome, the place to which all roads lead. Scarcely had he reached the city when he hastened to the great Church of St. Peter. Grand and beautiful as it was, he did not stop to admire it, but, planting himself in front of the main ...
— Laboulaye's Fairy Book • Various
... with a girl on his arm. And later, as he stood by his buggy, looking around with an amused sense of the playful contrast it all was to what he had seen at Chickamauga, he saw another sentinel brought to a sudden halt by a surprised exclamation from a girl, who was being shown through the camp by a strutting lieutenant. The sentinel was Basil and ...
— Crittenden - A Kentucky Story of Love and War • John Fox, Jr. |
