"Underfoot" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... of a peaceful city run blood with their contentions. It did not bring back the scenes in some old Italian cities, where family met family, and faction met faction, and mutually trampled the laws underfoot. No; the men in that house were regularly enrolled under the sanction of the mayor. There being no militia in Alton, about seventy men were enrolled with the approbation of the mayor. These relieved ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 7 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Orators • Elbert Hubbard
... worthy of you, but I will be a devoted husband to you. Any man who gets the love of a good woman," continued Yates earnestly, plagiarizing Renmark, "gets more than he deserves; but surely such love as mine is not given merely to be scornfully trampled underfoot." ...
— In the Midst of Alarms • Robert Barr
... logic for a futile purpose. The most you can hope from it is some knowledge of yourself—that comes too late—a crop of unextinguishable regrets. I have wrestled with death. It is the most unexciting contest you can imagine. It takes place in an impalpable grayness, with nothing underfoot, with nothing around, without spectators, without clamor, without glory, without the great desire of victory, without the great fear of defeat, in a sickly atmosphere of tepid skepticism, without much belief in your ...
— Heart of Darkness • Joseph Conrad
... on her. "You just go out of here," she said. "I don't want you 'round underfoot, pestering me at meal-time nohow. I guess I can get a meal for four just as easy as for three and I don't need your ...
— Little Maid Marian • Amy E. Blanchard
... the way, lying through waist-high fir scrub, was pretty bad underfoot, but beyond was a stretch of fine timber, where the trees had done much to arrest the snow, and the going was not so severe. Aladdin calculated that he should make the distance in an hour and a half; and when the wood ended, he looked at his watch and found that ...
— Aladdin O'Brien • Gouverneur Morris
... the reason. If I had set less store upon your love, and upon her—her—liking for me, then doubtless I should have borne the displacement with better grace. But it put me on the rack. Believe me, if I have behaved to your displeasure, and hers, it has been from very excess of tenderness trampled underfoot." ...
— In the Valley • Harold Frederic
... climbing up the Eagles with leisurely swinging curves, but the slopes just above him were heart-breaking, and Alcatraz began to realize in an hour that a mountainside from a distance is a far gentler thing than the same slope underfoot. It was the heart of twilight before he came to the middle of his climb and stepped onto a nearly level shoulder some acres in compass. Here he stood for a moment while the muscles, cramped from climbing, loosened again, and ...
— Alcatraz • Max Brand
... polished floor, but, Lord bless you, I found myself doing nothing else but sneezing, in spite of the odd rugs, for in a drawing-room you don't just happen to think where you're standing. But here when you just sit down at your table or by your fire it would be so easy to take care you've got the thing underfoot. I must send you a rug to-morrow—you know I ...
— Cleo The Magnificent - The Muse of the Real • Louis Zangwill
... suppose. For my part, I travel not to go anywhere, but to go. I travel for travel's sake. The great affair is to move; to feel the needs and hitches of our life more nearly; to come down off this feather-bed of civilization, and find the globe granite underfoot and strewn with cutting flints. Alas, as we get up in life, and are more preoccupied with our affairs, even a holiday is a thing that must be worked for. To hold a pack upon a pack-saddle against a gale out of the freezing north is no high industry, but it is one that serves to ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 1 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... heat of the sun, digging with busy teeth in the mortar-quarry of the road hard by. So great is her zeal that she hardly moves out of the way of the passer-by; more than one allows herself to be crushed underfoot, absorbed as she ...
— The Mason-bees • J. Henri Fabre
... the hollow of the tree, but at night she is far too wide-awake to dream. And so great are the owl's powers of sight and hearing, and so swift is her "stoop" from the sky to the ground, that the bank-vole has little chance of escape should a single grass-stalk rustle underfoot when she is hovering near his haunt. Far from being shy and retiring in her disposition, the brown owl, directly night steals over the woodlands, is so fearless that probably no animal smaller than the hare ...
— Creatures of the Night - A Book of Wild Life in Western Britain • Alfred W. Rees
... clothes suffering badly in the process. Then would come a patch of Jack-pine, where trees seven to ten feet high grew in such profusion that it was well-nigh impossible to find a passage between them; and on the heels of this would follow a stretch of muskeg, quaking underfoot, and full of boggy traps for the unwary. In the larger timber also, the deadfalls presented an immense difficulty. Trees, with their span of life exhausted, year after year, had dropped where they stood, and dragging others down in their fall, cumbered the ground in all directions, ...
— A Mating in the Wilds • Ottwell Binns
... does not help to rope them. So I sit at my ease, as befits a mahout,—not a mere hunter,—a mahout, I say, and a man who gets a pension at the end of his service. Is the family of Toomai of the Elephants to be trodden underfoot in the dirt of a Keddah? Bad one! Wicked one! Worthless son! Go and wash Kala Nag and attend to his ears, and see that there are no thorns in his feet. Or else Petersen Sahib will surely catch thee and make thee a wild hunter—a follower of elephant's foot tracks, ...
— The Jungle Book • Rudyard Kipling
... cool as though trying a cause at law, and he was very angry: so that he got most of my leads, and I but few of his, albeit jarring me enough to make my ears sing and my eyes blur somewhat, although of pain I was no more conscious than a fighting dog. The turf was soft underfoot, and the space wide, so that we fought very happily and comfortably over perhaps a hundred feet of country, first one and then the other coming in; until at last I had him so well blown that he stood, and I knew we must now end it toe to toe. I bethought me of a trick of my old boxing ...
— The Lady and the Pirate - Being the Plain Tale of a Diligent Pirate and a Fair Captive • Emerson Hough
... cannot duplicate the bird's wing it becomes infinitely high or great to him and so wins his respect. To the boy who has been taught to think seriously, the mode of locomotion of a worm or a snake is likewise a marvel, and he observes it with awe. The boy who treads a worm underfoot gives indisputable evidence that he has never given serious thought to its mode of travel. Had he done so, he would never commit so ruthless an act. The worm would have won his respect by its ability to do a thing at which he himself ...
— The Reconstructed School • Francis B. Pearson
... orang-outang, the name which we incorrectly apply to the great red-haired anthropoid, means "man in debt.") The Bornean jungle is a place of indescribable dismalness and dread, its gloom seldom dissipated by the sun, its awesome silence broken only by the stirrings of the unseen creatures which lurk underfoot and overhead ...
— Where the Strange Trails Go Down • E. Alexander Powell
... sigh of no meaning, I got my eyes down to my canvas and began to peck at it perfunctorily, when a snapping of twigs underfoot and a swishing of branches in the thicket warned me of a second intruder, not approaching by the path, but forcing a way toward it through the underbrush, and very briskly too, judging by ...
— The Guest of Quesnay • Booth Tarkington
... none might come at him to harm him; he felled them by twos and by threes, some under their horses, some beside them. The space began to widen round Sir Gawain and Morien; for all there deemed that he came forth from hell, and was hight Devil, in that he so quelled them and felled them underfoot that many hereafter spake thereof. That men thrust and smote at him troubled him little, therein was he like to his father, the noble knight Sir Agloval; he held parley with no man, but smote ever, blow after blow, on all who came nigh him. His blows were so mighty; did a spear fly towards him, ...
— The Romance of Morien • Jessie L. Weston
... ways to traverse to reach them. One went along through the darkness until the sound of men's voices, the glare of charcoal in a bucket bored with holes, the flicker of a match, told of the buried army almost underfoot or huddled in its flimsy ...
— The Amazing Interlude • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... had been discussed long before may be inferred from a remark of Estienne in his Apology for Herodotus, that while some of his contemporaries carry their admiration of antiquity to the point of superstition, others depreciate and trample it underfoot.] on which he proposes to give an impartial decision by instituting a comprehensive comparison in all fields, theoretical, imaginative, ...
— The Idea of Progress - An Inquiry Into Its Origin And Growth • J. B. Bury
... going from Paris, the other staying. Both were links in a long chain of political conspiring. They walked now down the street that was dark and old, underfoot old mire and mica-like glistening of fresher rain. The ...
— Foes • Mary Johnston
... uplifted with hope, and the very oxen pulling their best. But Piet Naude said nothing, for he had a strange doubt in his heart, and he rode on anxiously. And when they came to the kloof they saw that all the Burgher had said was even less than true. The veld underfoot was soft and tender as satin, and the grass was fresh and green. On each side the tall hills cast back the sun, so that the beautiful cool shade fell like a blessing on their scorched faces. There was wild hemp {dagga} for the Kafirs to smoke; and wild apricots ...
— Vrouw Grobelaar and Her Leading Cases - Seventeen Short Stories • Perceval Gibbon
... formless clouds; it became quite warm, the thermometer rising to twenty below; and the moisture fell out of the sky in hard frost-granules that hissed like dry sugar or driving sand when kicked underfoot. After that it became clear and cold again, until enough moisture had gathered to blanket the earth from the cold of outer space. That was all. Nothing happened. No storms, no churning waters and threshing forests, nothing but the machine-like ...
— The Faith of Men • Jack London
... the leaves, and the earth was sodden underfoot. Lofty arches yawned in the sunlight and a silence as of the grave reigned, broken only by an occasional caw from an inquisitive crow, or the ...
— Banked Fires • E. W. (Ethel Winifred) Savi
... him on the altar in the chapel," whispered Rosa. "Holy Michael was treading him underfoot. He's like a worm, but he has a face and horns on his head. Father Szypulski says he comes to tempt us. Pray, pray! He pokes the fire in Purgatory, in which the souls are burning. 'Pray for the peace of the poor souls in ...
— Absolution • Clara Viebig
... clash of blade upon blade; the occasional explosion of a pistol; the dull, crushing sound of unwarded blows; the sharp scream of agony as some poor wretch felt the stroke of the merciless steel; the cries and groans of those who had been smitten down, and, still conscious, were being trampled underfoot by the combatants; the deep muttered curse; the sharp word of command; and the occasional cheer that broke from the lips of our own gallant lads. Suddenly there was a louder hurrah, a quick scurrying rush, a loud shout ...
— The Pirate Slaver - A Story of the West African Coast • Harry Collingwood
... stopped," he said, "but the pavements are still wet underfoot. Has your grace taken the precaution to come out in a good stout pair ...
— The Swoop! or How Clarence Saved England - A Tale of the Great Invasion • P. G. Wodehouse
... within to show that our cautious withdrawal had been observed. I stared about, but was able to perceive little beyond the small group awaiting my orders. The fog clung thick and heavy on all sides, the lungs breathed it in, and the deck underfoot was as wet as though from heavy rain. Moisture dripped from yards and canvas, and it was impossible for the eye to penetrate to either rail. Fortunately there was no weight of sea running, and the bark ...
— Wolves of the Sea • Randall Parrish
... him, in favor of his wife, who had been to him a well of sweet water through all those years. If evil was drawing near to her, why push her toward it? Surely a finer thing would be to warn and protect her, to beat down underfoot his own wounded ego ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 5, June 1905 • Various
... the room, underfoot and overhead, were setting-boards and pill-boxes, blowpipes and crucibles. One could not move without upsetting something; and yet it was here that the Gang came to have its ...
— Peggy • Laura E. Richards
... that was damp underfoot, and the soft earth deadened all sound as they walked upon it—and they seemed to be walking on interminably. It was too far—much too far! She felt her nerve failing her. She looked behind her again. That opening, still discernible to her straining ...
— The White Moll • Frank L. Packard
... of burning straw and clothing and foodstuffs mingling with the yet low-lying powder smoke and with the pall of Valley dust. Horses lay stark across the way, or, dying, stared with piteous eyes. The sky was like a bowl of brass, and in the concave buzzards were sailing. All along there was underfoot much of soldiers' impedimenta—knapsacks, belts, accoutrements of all kinds, rolled blankets and oilcloths, canteens. Dead men did not lack. They lay in strange postures, and on all the dust was thick. There were many wounded; the greater ...
— The Long Roll • Mary Johnston
... fifty; her hair was russet red, and blew about her forehead in little curls; her eyes, brown like a brook in shady places, and kind. It was a mild face, but not weak. Below them the valley shimmered in the heat; the grass was hot and brittle underfoot; popples bent and twisted in a scorching wind, and a soft, dark glitter of movement ran through the ...
— Life at High Tide - Harper's Novelettes • Various
... and coronal and bell April underfoot renews, And the hope of man as well Flowers among ...
— Last Poems • A. E. Housman
... invariable accompaniment of a sense of injury among Englishwomen of her class expressed itself in her answer to Amelius. "I speak as I think, sir. I have some spirit in me; I am not a woman to be trodden underfoot—and so Mrs. Farnaby shall find, before she ...
— The Fallen Leaves • Wilkie Collins
... faces streaming sweat looked as haggard as though it was blood that was pouring from them. Voices cracked with hoarseness as men stood panting like dogs torn from the embrace of battle and waiting only for the leash to loosen and free them again for renewed battle. Underfoot they trod the confetti-like scraps of torn papers. Among them went the men with green watering-pots. Outside newsboys called yet new extras. The market had been open an hour and the Street was seeing the most ...
— Destiny • Charles Neville Buck
... from the east fled before the pursuers, but the Britons following after did them sore mischief. They waxed weary of slaying, so that they trod the Romans underfoot. Blood ran in runnels, and the slain they lay in heaps. Fair palfreys and destriers ran masterless about the field, for the rider was dead, and had neither joy nor delight in the sun. Arthur rejoiced and made merry over so noble ...
— Arthurian Chronicles: Roman de Brut • Wace
... firelight, down the gentle slope of the field, swept a ragged cohort of men, some bare-headed, some in their scarlet nightcaps, as though they had escaped from bed, and all yelling. One of the foremost, who met the captain's bullet, was carried stumbling his own length before he sank underfoot; as the Mausers flashed from between the sand-bags, another and another man fell to his knees or toppled sidelong, tripping his fellows into a little knot or windrow of kicking arms and legs; but the main wave poured on, all the faster. Among and above them, like ...
— Dragon's blood • Henry Milner Rideout
... acquaintance. But all the while his attention remained fixed upon the door numbered XI, behind which this quietly significant affair proceeded. The whole place seemed a very temple of stillness. The thick carpet underfoot, the noiseless doors, the admirable system of the place—all contributed to create ...
— Dawn of All • Robert Hugh Benson
... foot!" yelled Flagg. "I'm standing here judging you by the way you break this jam of the jillpokes. Walk over the cowards, you real men! Come on, you bully chaps! Come running! Hi yoop! Underfoot with 'em!" ...
— Joan of Arc of the North Woods • Holman Day
... nights after leaving the town was spent on a shaggy grass patch on a cliff, under three old twisted yew trees. Underfoot was an abundance of wild lavender and the air was laden with the scent. I am now at New Athos monastery, ten miles from Sukhum, and am writing this in the cell that the hospitable monks have given me. My last night ...
— A Tramp's Sketches • Stephen Graham
... thicket. A very dense forest of young Callitris trees next impeded us, and were more formidable than even the vines. The day was passed in forcing our way through these various scrubs, the ground declining by a gentle slope only. We next found firmer soil underfoot, that where the Callitris scrub grew having been sandy, and we saw at length, with a feeling of relief, that only brigalow scrub was before us; we ascended gravelly hills, came upon a dry water-course, and then on a chain of ponds. Near one of these ponds, sate an old woman, beside ...
— Journal of an Expedition into the Interior of Tropical Australia • Thomas Mitchell
... on like a mad torrent that could not stay itself, and in the front we cut furiously with our swords at the tail of their long line whenever chance was afforded. Not many so we slew, but a number tripped over in the rush were trampled underfoot, or threw themselves in the streamlet's bed, wherein afterwards they ...
— The Fall Of The Grand Sarrasin • William J. Ferrar
... the solemnity of mortal conditions than if they were delving gardens in the greenest corner of England. There are serenades and suppers and much gallantry among the myrtles overhead; and meanwhile the foundation shudders underfoot, the bowels of the mountain growl, and at any moment living ruin may leap sky-high into the moonlight, and tumble man and his merry-making in the dust. In the eyes of very young people, and very dull old ones, there is something indescribably reckless ...
— Virginibus Puerisque • Robert Louis Stevenson
... us trample religion underfoot, that the victory gained over it may place us on an equality with heaven" (book i.). See Diogenes Laertius, "Lives of the Philosophers," bk. x. ch. xxiv. pp. 453,454 (Bohn's edition); Lucretius, "On the Nature of ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... dollars to worry about, for what is set down upon a few square yards of 'out of doors.' And inside of that, a great contriving and going without, to put something warm underfoot over the sixteen square feet that we live ...
— We Girls: A Home Story • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... copses grew close. The green turf was velvet underfoot. The blackbirds fluted in the hazels there. None of them listened to the voice of Gregory Jeffray, or cared for what he said to Grace Allen when she went nightly to meet him ...
— Bog-Myrtle and Peat - Tales Chiefly Of Galloway Gathered From The Years 1889 To 1895 • S.R. Crockett
... his bungalow, pulling upon his feet clumsy native sandals of wood, with a button between the toes. For underfoot lay the things he dreaded, the heat things, the things bred by this warm climate enclosed between the high wall of the mountains and the infitting curve of the sea. He tramped awkwardly along in his loose fitting sandals, fast at the toe, clapping up and down at the heel. The ...
— Civilization - Tales of the Orient • Ellen Newbold La Motte
... in front of him there came back to his ears the clang and thud of iron horseshoes upon granite, the rattle of rocks along the trail; now and again he saw a spark struck out underfoot. Then, far ahead as the canon widened suddenly and a little thinning of the darkness resulted, he made out dim, running forms, and again he fired ...
— Man to Man • Jackson Gregory
... be a suspicion of the pinkish,—no sign of rawness in that; none whatever. It is as becoming to him as to the salmon; it is as natural to your pea-chick in his best cookery, as it is to the finest October morning,—moist underfoot, when partridge's and puss's and ...
— Citation and Examination of William Shakspeare • Walter Savage Landor
... oppressed by the weight of all her senseless jewellery) with no gratitude towards the officious hand which had, in curling those ringlets, been at pains to collect all my hair upon my forehead; trampling underfoot the curl-papers which I had torn from my head, and my new hat with them. My mother was not at all moved by my tears, but she could not suppress a cry at the sight of my battered headgear and my ruined jacket. ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust
... sheet—this is now peeling off and falling with a clatter to the deck, from which the moist slush is rapidly evaporating. In a few hours the ship will be dry—much to our satisfaction; it is very wretched when, as last night, there is slippery wet snow underfoot and on every object ...
— Scott's Last Expedition Volume I • Captain R. F. Scott
... came a diminishing of the sounds that filled the place. They died away like a fading wind. Then the chill sweep of air from the door surged across the room, like a great fear congealing the blood. In the sloppy mess underfoot could be heard the sucking, splashing sound of feet moving, as men all about drew back instinctively and rapidly to be ...
— Louisiana Lou • William West Winter
... as acquiescence and, it being early moonlight and dangerous underfoot, took his hand to lead him safely around the flower beds. Skippy having just discovered the secret to success encased himself in ...
— Skippy Bedelle - His Sentimental Progress From the Urchin to the Complete - Man of the World • Owen Johnson
... had not much time to think of the trees and streams, for suddenly he heard the steps of some one hurrying through the forest, crushing the fallen twigs and crisp leaves underfoot in his great ...
— Stories of King Arthur's Knights - Told to the Children by Mary MacGregor • Mary MacGregor
... deluged to death if there was any cover to be had anywhere. They nosed about, and soon discovered a few sheets of corrugated iron, bore them privily hence and weathered the night out under some logs further down the valley. My batman trod me underfoot at seven next morning, "Goin' to be blinkin' murder done in this camp presently, Sir," he announced cheerfully. "Three officers went to sleep in bivvies larst night, but somebody's souvenired 'em since an' they're all lyin' hout in the hopen now, Sir. Their blokes daresent ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Sept. 5, 1917 • Various
... the latest. Whenever it's wet underfoot I must put on my galoshes. Tonight even, he wanted me to put them on, but I wouldn't. The next thing he'll buy me ...
— Dubliners • James Joyce
... street I saw that for about two hundred yards ahead it was sparkling as with hoar-frost. Suddenly the soles of our boots "scrunched" something underfoot. I looked down. The ground was covered with splinters of glass. As we drew nearer we caught sight of a cordon of police, and behind them a great fire springing infernally from the earth, and behind the fire a group of soldiers, whose figures were silhouetted against ...
— Leaves from a Field Note-Book • J. H. Morgan
... whole gang, for they could not go on faster than a jog-trot. The wind, however, was falling off in violence. Its shrill whistling ceased, at length, and they went on, accompanied only by the harsh crunching of the snow underfoot. ...
— Riders of the Silences • John Frederick
... English posies! Ye that have your own Buy them for a brother's sake Overseas, alone. Weed ye trample underfoot Floods his heart abrim— Bird ye never heeded, Oh, she calls his dead to him! Far and far our homes are set round the Seven Seas. Woe for us if we forget, we that hold by these! Unto each his mother-beach, bloom ...
— The Seven Seas • Rudyard Kipling
... portion of the town. The Pinetum is the name given to a pine-shaded avenue that leads from the Pier to the Arcade Gate. Here, in storm or shine, is shelter from the winter wind or shade from the summer sun, while underfoot the fallen acicular leaves of the pines are impervious to the damp. These Gardens are more than a mile and a half in extent, and are computed to possess some four miles of footpaths. The Upper Gardens ...
— Bournemouth, Poole & Christchurch • Sidney Heath
... brave, how valiant they must have appeared! Even the gorgeous wild flowers paled with chagrin as the bold, venturesome Spaniards trampled them underfoot as they marched steadily onward, hoping yet to find the crystal fountain which should grant ...
— Dorothy Dainty's Gay Times • Amy Brooks
... Overhead there was a soft blue sky with translucent clouds floating in it; underfoot and on all sides the mystery of life was beginning to stir and manifest itself. The last touch of bitterness had passed from the breeze, and all living growth was making haste out into the air. The hedges were green with open buds, and bubbling with the laughter and ecstasy ...
— By What Authority? • Robert Hugh Benson
... eastern sky swept a sheer sheet of rain. With the first stabbing drops horses turned their heads away, trembling, and no whip or spur could bring them up to it. It drove through mackintoshes as if they were blotting-paper. The air was filled with hissing; underfoot you could see solid earth melting into mud, and mud flowing away in water. It blotted out hill and dale and enemy in one grey curtain of swooping water. You would have said that the heavens had opened to drown ...
— From Capetown to Ladysmith - An Unfinished Record of the South African War • G. W. Steevens
... their estates in peace and quiet. The turmoil of the great struggle had not spared even the obscure village of Haversleigh. The inhabitants went about their tasks with an air of unrest. It seemed scarcely worth while to plough the fields, and sow corn which might be trampled underfoot by the soldiery before there was a chance to reap it. There were loud and deep murmurs among the villagers at the many exactions and tyrannies of Sir Mervyn Stamford, the then occupant of the Manor, the estates of which he administered on behalf of his ...
— The Manor House School • Angela Brazil
... gray cabins, the clear bright water on the race, the silent forests, the billows of laurel, the song of the brown thrashers, the shy children in a dusky doorway, the lean pigs not shy at all, the bloodroot underfoot, the soft, hazy sky overhead, the sense that here life was always as it is, and always will be, with no change but the changing seasons. I remember once more how I met the Spring at Thumping Dick, like a dryad dancing through the wood, caught her in the very act of climbing up ...
— Penguin Persons & Peppermints • Walter Prichard Eaton
... achieved renown as a hunter. No one uttered a word for fear of giving warning to any elephants who might be feeding near at hand, and who would break away should they hear our voices. Before long, however, we came upon traces of several animals; young saplings being trampled underfoot, bows torn down, and hanging vines dragged away. The king made a sign to us to proceed even more cautiously than before. We expected every moment to be in sight of a herd of the huge animals. ...
— The Two Supercargoes - Adventures in Savage Africa • W.H.G. Kingston
... Malays, Lascars, Hindus, Chinese, Japanese, Burmans—the whole gamut of racetints, from saffron to tar-black—are twisting and writhing round it, while their vermilion, cobalt, amber, and emerald turbans and head-cloths are lying underfoot. Pressed against the yellow ochre of the iron bulwarks to left and right are frightened women and children in turquoise and isabella-coloured clothes. They are half protected by mounds of upset bedding, straw mats, red ...
— Letters of Travel (1892-1913) • Rudyard Kipling
... evil or evil spirits. Banish the concept and you banish the thing. The action is as quick as thought, and thought is as quick as lightning. "I have given you power," He goes on to add, "to tread serpents and scorpions underfoot, and to trample on all the power of the Enemy; and in no case shall anything do ...
— The Conquest of Fear • Basil King
... Reefy and his courtship of the tall dark girl who became his wife and left her money to him is a very curious story. It is delicious, like the twisted little apples that grow in the orchards of Winesburg. In the fall one walks in the orchards and the ground is hard with frost underfoot. The apples have been taken from the trees by the pickers. They have been put in barrels and shipped to the cities where they will be eaten in apartments that are filled with books, magazines, furniture, and people. On the trees are only a few gnarled apples that ...
— Winesburg, Ohio • Sherwood Anderson
... Bentrik, he was escorted to the suite prepared for him; it was luxurious in the extreme but scarcely above Sword-World standards. There were a surprising number of human servants, groveling and fawning and getting underfoot and doing work robots could have been doing better. What robots there were were inefficient, and much work and ingenuity had been lavished on efforts to copy human form to the detriment ...
— Space Viking • Henry Beam Piper
... said Wharton sardonically. "A raw wind, driving snow, pitchy darkness, slush and everything objectionable underfoot. Yet I'd like to be in Weber's place. A curse upon the man who invented life in the trenches! Of all the dirty, foul, squalid monotony it ...
— The Hosts of the Air • Joseph A. Altsheler
... strife; swords flashed, pikes ran red, shouts of triumph mingled with groans of despair; men went down and were trampled underfoot in the horrible press; we were tossed and buffeted from side to side, but we fought on with savage desperation, and the cry, "For the Admiral!" still rose in triumph. Truly it could not be said that we grudged our lives ...
— For The Admiral • W.J. Marx
... piles of the wharf. The rain was now subdued to a noiseless vertical descent, through which he could hear the tap of the river against the piles. Scarce knowing what he fled or whither he was flying, he let himself down the steps and found the flat of a boat's bottom underfoot. A boatman, distinguishable only as a black bulk in the stern, steadied his descent with outstretched hand; then the bow swung round, and after a labouring stroke or two they caught the current and were swept down through the ...
— The Valley of Decision • Edith Wharton
... great men belonging to the court, and strangers of quality, are within the innermost rail directly under him, that space being raised from the ground, covered overhead with canopies of silk and velvet, and laid underfoot with good carpets. The meaner men, representing what we would call gentry, are within the outer rail; the common people being on the outside of all, in a base court, so that all may see the king. The whole of this disposition ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume IX. • Robert Kerr
... looking back. But not the little girl I had in my mind. So I missed you, thinking of the little girl you were not. We do that all our lives, Robina. We are always looking for the flowers that do not grow, passing by, trampling underfoot, the blossoms round about us. It was the same with Dick. I wanted a naughty boy. Well, Dick was naughty, no one can say that he was not. But it was not my naughtiness. I was prepared for his robbing orchards. I rather hoped he would rob orchards. All the ...
— They and I • Jerome K. Jerome
... prime rope fra' somewheers, an' we creeps out after nightfall. It was a dree night, the owd bracken underfoot damp an' sodden, an' th' tall firs looking grim an' gho-ostly in th' gloom. Soon theer was a crackling o' twigs, like a tank ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, June 11, 1919 • Various
... whole-heartedly into his speech, and slowly, gradually, almost, it seemed, step by step and man by man, he won back the thoughts of his audience. He wrestled with that strange paper rival and overthrew it. Man after man dropped it; its course was stayed; it fell underfoot or fluttered idly down the gangways. The nods ceased, the whispers were hushed, the stir fell and rose no more. Once again he had them, and, inspired by that knowledge, the surest spur of eloquence, ...
— Half a Hero - A Novel • Anthony Hope
... he found the outer world much obscured by the storm, and hoped that nobody would need his services that night, as he went stumbling home though the damp and clogging snow underfoot. He felt a strange pleasure in the sight of a small, round head at the front study window between the glass and the curtain, and Nan came to open the door for him, while Marilla, whose unwonted Sunday afternoon leisure seemed to have been devoted to fragrant experiments ...
— A Country Doctor and Selected Stories and Sketches • Sarah Orne Jewett
... southland a few years ago; a wide, coolly-dark veranda ran the length of the building; through three-feet-thick walls the doorways invited to further coolness. Howard stood aside for them to enter. They found underfoot a bare floor; it had been sprinkled from a watering pot earlier in the afternoon. The room was big and dusky; a few rawhide-bottomed chairs, a long rough table painted moss-green, some shelves with books, furnished the apartment. At one end ...
— The Desert Valley • Jackson Gregory
... very, very humble. I have put my foolish pride underfoot. I am not broken. I am still very proud and, I fear, self-conceited, in spite of my severe lesson. Enid is beautiful, and I know it, and it helps me write this letter, but I have no right to ask even friendship from you. My proved failure as a playwright ...
— The Light of the Star - A Novel • Hamlin Garland
... intelligent. Constantly he was faced with that fact. She did not understand the significance of the war; she lacked imagination; but her understanding was sometimes terrible. She was devious; but she had a religion. He was her religion. She would cast the god underfoot—and then in a passion of repentance restore it ardently to ...
— The Roll-Call • Arnold Bennett
... into a sort of reliquary. She took out of it the half-burned cigarette, the old glove, the withered violets, and a visiting-card with his name, on which three unimportant lines had been written. She insulted these keepsakes, she tore them with her nails, she trampled them underfoot, she reduced them to fragments; she left nothing whatever of them, except a pile of shreds, which at last she set fire to. She had a feeling as if she were employed in executing two great culprits, ...
— Jacqueline, Complete • (Mme. Blanc) Th. Bentzon
... they walked in the shadows, they wept gently with tenderness. The ground crackled underfoot with the broken glass and the sidewalk was bloody. Death and the night were lying in ambush round about their love. But above their heads like a magic circle beyond the embrasure of the two black walls in the narrow street, as through a chimney, the heart of a star throbbed ...
— Pierre and Luce • Romain Rolland
... unridden young colt of an ass and rides through the city surrounded by the crowds under the very eyes of these leaders and their hireling legal minions. The tenseness of the whole scene, the power of restraint so put forth, the volcano smouldering underfoot waiting the slightest extra jar to loose out its explosion, all are revealed in the little sentence so pregnant in its concealed dynamic meaning, Jesus "hid Himself from, them." There's an exquisite blending ...
— Quiet Talks on John's Gospel • S. D. Gordon
... corn-sheaves in the flood-time Spin down the whirling Po. False Sextus to the mountains Turned first his horse's head; And fast fled Ferentinum, And fast Lanuvium fled. The horsemen of Nomentus Spurred hard out of the fray; The footmen of Velitrae Threw shield and spear away. And underfoot was trampled, Amidst the mud and gore, The banner of proud Tusculum, That never stooped before: And down went Flavius Faustus, Who led his stately ranks From where the apple blossoms wave On Anio's echoing banks, And Tullus of Arpinum, Chief of the Volscian aids, And Metius with the long fair ...
— Lays of Ancient Rome • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... far as to say that she wouldn't mind if the Burches came every once in a while, but she was afraid he'd spread abroad the fact of his visit, and missionaries' families would be underfoot the whole continual time. As a case in point, she gracefully cited the fact that if a tramp got a good meal at anybody's back door, 't was said that he'd leave some kind of a sign so that all other tramps would know where they were likely to ...
— Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... walked along by himself, elate, and with a springy step, on thoughts of ambition intent, till he came at last to a cool and shadowy place, where as yet the ferns were NOT broken down and trampled underfoot, though Guy Waring found them so ...
— What's Bred In the Bone • Grant Allen
... she ran into the night to comfort the little fox, she was living up to her faith as few do; when she gathered flowers and lay in the sun, she was dwelling in a mystical atmosphere as vivid as that of the saints; when she recoiled from cruelty, she was trampling evil underfoot, perhaps more surely than those great divines who destroyed one another in ...
— Gone to Earth • Mary Webb
... it unconstitutional; that is enough; it shall not be executed. Men in arms are ready to resist its execution. An attempt to enforce it shall cover the land with blood. Elsewhere it may be binding; but here it is trampled underfoot." ...
— The Great Speeches and Orations of Daniel Webster • Daniel Webster
... put her pony to a long, easy, swinging canter and her followers did likewise. As they got outward into the valley Shefford lost the sense of being overshadowed and crowded by the nearness of the huge walls and crags. The trail appeared level underfoot, but at a distance it was seen to climb. Shefford found where it disappeared over the foot of a slope that formed a graceful rising line up to the cedared flank of the mesa. The valley floor, widening away to the north, remained level and green. ...
— The Rainbow Trail • Zane Grey
... more beautiful than upon that November afternoon. October's rich coloring had given place to the dull reds, burnt-umbers, and rich wood browns of late autumn, though the grass was still green underfoot, and the holly and fir trees greener ...
— Peggy Stewart: Navy Girl at Home • Gabrielle E. Jackson
... a village, but saw nothing save a red mist that swam before him like a fog. The road underfoot seemed to rise and fall in wavelike undulations. Still he ran, with sobbing gasps and limbs that swerved under his weight; at his elbow hung death unnamable, and the fear of it urged him on while every instinct of his exhausted body called ...
— Uncanny Tales • Various
... conduct his guests across a field which consisted mostly of moleheaps, and in which the party had to pick their way between strips of ploughed land and of harrowed. Soon Chichikov began to feel weary, for the terrain was so low-lying that in many spots water could be heard squelching underfoot, and though for a while the visitors watched their feet, and stepped carefully, they soon perceived that such a course availed them nothing, and took to following their noses, without either selecting or avoiding ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... when the impatience of the French horsemen burst all bounds. The reckless cavalry charge swept right through the disordered ranks of the crossbowmen, whose groans and cries as they were trampled underfoot by the mail-clad steeds, inspired the rear ranks of the French with the vain belief that the English were hard pressed, and made them eager to join the fray. The charge, as disorderly and as badly directed as ...
— The History of England - From the Accession of Henry III. to the Death of Edward III. (1216-1377) • T.F. Tout
... and shovel. The great majority, ant-like in their indefatigable busyness, neither turned a head nor looked up: backs were bent, eyes fixed, in a hard scrutiny of cradle or tin-dish: it was the earth that held them, the familiar, homely earth, whose common fate it is to be trodden heedlessly underfoot. Here, it was the loadstone that drew all men's thoughts. And it took toll of their bodies in odd, exhausting forms of labour, which were swift to weed ...
— Australia Felix • Henry Handel Richardson
... or horseman passed, Mr. Bolles's journeys to the school were all to show it was not some pioneer colony in a new, white, silent world that heard only the playful shouts and songs of the buccaroos. The sun overhead and the hard-crushing snow underfoot filled every one ...
— The Jimmyjohn Boss and Other Stories • Owen Wister
... overhead and damp underfoot, with a thrill in the air like a reminiscence of frost. I went up into the sloping garden behind the inn and smoked a pipe pleasantly enough, to the tune of my landlady's lamentations over sundry cabbages and cauliflowers that had been ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XXII (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... because they are bound to be used for lookouts, is why they get torn to pieces. When two men are fighting for life they don't bother about upsetting a table with a vase, or notice any "Keep off the grass" signs; no, not even if the family Bible be underfoot. ...
— My Year of the War • Frederick Palmer
... one of those unheralded storms which make coast travel so hazardous. The morning had turned off gray, the sky was of a leaden hue which blended perfectly with the snow underfoot, there was no horizon, it was impossible to see more than a few yards in any direction. The trail soon became obliterated and their eyes began to play tricks. For all they could distinguish, they might have been suspended in space; they seemed to be treading the measures of an endless ...
— The Boy Scouts Book of Campfire Stories • Various
... was growing rougher and ruder; ever its backbone was beginning to puiver and flounder like a whale underfoot, with its liquescent body of cold, grey, murky water bursting with increasing frequency from its shell of ice, and ...
— Through Russia • Maxim Gorky
... thought," said Sir Humphrey; and five minutes afterwards a match was applied to the heap of perfectly dry wood underfoot. It caught fire at once and began blazing up, sending forth such a glow of light that the men set up a cheer, drawn from them by the excitement and wonder of the ...
— Old Gold - The Cruise of the "Jason" Brig • George Manville Fenn
... of the coldest ever recorded in New York. The thermometer had dropped to 8 degrees below zero and was still falling. Fifth Avenue glittered, sheathed in frost; traffic police on post stamped and swung their arms to keep from freezing; dry snow underfoot squeaked when trodden on; crossings were greasy with ...
— In Secret • Robert W. Chambers
... you will see to the execution of these instructions and that you will maintain the honour of the Philippines by your courage and in no way permit your rights to be trampled underfoot." [189] ...
— The Philippines: Past and Present (vol. 1 of 2) • Dean C. Worcester
... before, dispatched a courteous reply, and followed it in person. Traveling through all that extent of country after three years of peace, he blessed the better days on which the world had fallen. The corn was golden, not drenched in unnatural red; was bound in sheaves for food, not trodden underfoot by men in mortal fight. The smoke rose up from peaceful hearths, not blazing ruins. The carts were laden with the fair fruits of the earth, not with wounds and death. To him who had so often seen the terrible reverse, these things were beautiful indeed; and they ...
— A Budget of Christmas Tales by Charles Dickens and Others • Various
... confusion of the incident were considerable. Morgan was too old a fighter to look behind him at a critical moment. No man could say he had meant to draw when he stamped the card underfoot, but de Spain read it in his eye and knew that Lefever's sudden diversion at the rear had made him hesitate; the crisis passed like a flash. "Sorry you feel that way, Duke," returned de Spain, undisturbed. ...
— Nan of Music Mountain • Frank H. Spearman
... up to the horses' bellies, so Silver Jack had to drive at a plunging walk. Occasionally one or the other of the two stood up and thrashed his arms about. At noon they ate sandwiches of cold fried bacon, which the frost rendered brittle as soon as it left the warmth of their inside pockets. Underfoot the runners of the cutter shrieked loudly. They saw the tracks of deer and wolves and partridge, and encountered a few jays, chickadees, and woodpeckers. Otherwise the forest seemed quite empty. By half-past two they ...
— Blazed Trail Stories - and Stories of the Wild Life • Stewart Edward White
... stood, carrying away earth, and tombstones, and bones. Nor was it a garden. Nothing grew in the dank air but crawling things which were horrible to the eye. There were great rank growths of toadstools, yellow, blue, livid white, or spotted like adders, which squirmed and squelched underfoot to send up a sickly odour of decay. The only green thing was some ivy, a parasitic vampire which drew its lifeblood from the mouldering ...
— The Moon Rock • Arthur J. Rees
... seems, even more visibly than it wastes nations. Already the streets were ankle-deep in filth. There were broken lamps and broken bottles and broken windowpanes everywhere, and one could not step without an accompaniment of crunching glass from underfoot. ...
— Paths of Glory - Impressions of War Written At and Near the Front • Irvin S. Cobb
... household. It held an exceedingly venerable grandfather, wielding his infirmities as a rod of iron; a father and mother, hearty, hospitable, subservient to the aged tyrant, but keeping in filial check a family of sons and daughters-in-law, with an underfoot delegation of grandchildren, who seemed to spend their time in a bewildering manouver of dashing out at one door to dash in at another. A tumultuous rain had set in shortly after dawn, with lightning and wind,—"the tail of a harricane," ...
— His Unquiet Ghost - 1911 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... philosophies perish, and mere talk is wiped from the lips. You do not talk of Humanity in India, because in India "you really see humanity—raw, brown, naked humanity—with nothing between it and the blazing sky, and only the used-up, overhandled earth underfoot." Mr Kipling's Indian administrators are practical and simple men, who obey orders and accept the incredible because their position requires them to administer India as though they were never at fault, ...
— Rudyard Kipling • John Palmer
... anything beyond. And once a gentleman who was a stranger and had ridden a long way, lost his path at night, and his horse took him into the very middle of the wild country, where everything was upside down, and there were dreadful marshes and great stones everywhere, and holes underfoot, and the trees looked like gibbet-posts, because they had great black arms that stretched out across the way. And this strange gentleman was very frightened, and his horse began to shiver all over, and at last it stopped and wouldn't go any farther, and ...
— The House of Souls • Arthur Machen
... preceding. We started in the grey morning, and I and my two companions of the day before had soon distanced the others. At first the trail was rough and slippery, and all ups and downs. The vegetation was of almost tropical density, and the moisture underfoot and overhead was so great that it seemed to me I had never been wetter except in a bathtub. As we descended to lower levels the valley broadened out, and the going improved so that we were able to make very ...
— A Wayfarer in China - Impressions of a trip across West China and Mongolia • Elizabeth Kendall
... and taking advantage of the slight alleviation of heat, I rose and went into the gardens to enjoy a dip in a pool, making, with its surrounding jungle of flowers, one of the pleasantest things about the wood-king's forest citadel. The very earth seemed scorched and baking underfoot—and the pool was gone! It had run as dry as a limekiln; nothing remained of the pretty fall which had fed it but a miserable trickle of drops from the cascade above. Down beyond the town shone a gleam of water where the bitter canal steamed ...
— Gulliver of Mars • Edwin L. Arnold
... channel between the pier ends of the reef, the breakers sounding and whitening to either hand. Straight through the narrow band of blue, she shot to seaward: and the captain's heart exulted as he felt her tremble underfoot, and (looking back over the taffrail) beheld the roofs of Papeete changing position on the shore and the island mountains rearing higher ...
— The Ebb-Tide - A Trio And Quartette • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... On I went, climbing down as best I might, until I found myself in a sort of green basin, very cool after the heat and glare of the roads, for the high, tree-clad sides afforded much shade. On I went, past fragrant thickets and bending willows, with soft lush grass underfoot and leafy arches overhead, and the brook singing and chattering at my side; albeit a brook of changeful mood, now laughing and dimpling in some fugitive ray of sunshine, now sighing and whispering in the shadows, but ever moving upon its appointed way, ...
— The Broad Highway • Jeffery Farnol
... Lier-in-Wait brushed them with his wing, it meant no more than that they should cease talk for the instant, and for the instant hold hands, as even utter strangers on the deep may do when their ship rolls underfoot. ...
— A Diversity of Creatures • Rudyard Kipling
... old man cried, upsetting the popper. "Don't get a child around here underfoot. I'm too old. I deserve grown folks. My head ...
— Christmas - A Story • Zona Gale
... wallowing down the slopes of slime, and there at the bottom, in the dim, milky light, one of the professional divers slipped a shovel into his hand and thrust it downward, till it jarred against something solid underfoot. ...
— A Master of Fortune • Cutcliffe Hyne
... be in any storms. The cutter Bennington anchors in the harbors, and, besides, the boys will be ashore in town at Kadiak. You don't suppose that Uncle Sam will let me have them around underfoot all the time, do you? I'll have something ...
— The Young Alaskans • Emerson Hough
... of summer heat. Jubilant, Roger spun around in circles, inhaling the fragrance of the field, listening to the hum of insect life stirring back to awareness after a season of inactivity. Then he was running and tumbling, barefoot, his shirt open, feeling the soft grass give way underfoot and the soil was good and ...
— Pleasant Journey • Richard F. Thieme
... level with our own; the window was flung open, and a beautiful statue was hurled on to the pavement below. Down came rich hangings, costly pictures and gilded mirrors; the small articles only were stolen, the others were hacked and chopped and trampled to pieces underfoot. ...
— My Sword's My Fortune - A Story of Old France • Herbert Hayens
... to my left, and nigher than the door on that side, ran up a broad staircase, carpeted and brightly lit all the way, so that a very blaze fell on me as I stood. Under the first flight, close to my left shoulder, was a line of pegs with many cloaks and hats depending therefrom. Underfoot, I remember, the hall was richly tiled in squares ...
— The Splendid Spur • Arthur T. Quiller Couch
... and into a pair of eyes that wavered between ingenuousness and a childish cunning; and from them down to her slim ankles and a pair of dancing-shoes, so fairy-like and diminutive that they seemed scarcely to press the grass underfoot. ...
— Poison Island • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch (Q) |
