"Stark naked" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... nearly a week, whilst the bargains were in progress, they were kept entirely without food. It was no wonder then, every man of the Brisk who first looked upon them did so with a feeling of loathing and abhorrence of such a trade. All over the vessel, but more especially below, old women, stark naked, were dying in the most disgusting "ferret-box" atmosphere; while all those who had sufficient strength were pulling up the hatches, and tearing at the salt fish they found below, like dogs ...
— The Discovery of the Source of the Nile • John Hanning Speke
... proper fine pen-man would needs bestow the grist on me, at the Windmill, to hear some martial discourse; where I so marshall'd him, that I made him drunk with admiration; and, because too much heat was the cause of his distemper, I stript him stark naked as he lay along asleep, and borrowed his suit to deliver this counterfeit message in, leaving a rusty armour, and an old brown bill to watch him till my return; which shall be, when I have pawn'd his apparel, and spent the better part O' the ...
— Every Man In His Humor - (The Anglicized Edition) • Ben Jonson
... unusually heavy flash came from Merapi, we saw below us a beautiful Javanese girl clasped in the arms of her brown lover. Each seemed to be stark naked as they stood under a Cocoanut tree like ...
— Flash-lights from the Seven Seas • William L. Stidger
... brought him such ill luck. Poljensio, who was washing sponges on the platform outside, and had for this reason not been at his brother's house, where he slept, when that domicile was searched, was called in, and while his official master rested, was made to strip himself stark naked, and turn his few slight garments—the clothing of a Moro is always an uncertain quantity—inside out to show that nothing ...
— Anting-Anting Stories - And other Strange Tales of the Filipinos • Sargent Kayme
... "Well, all I've got to say is this, Miss Bab. You'll last just twenty days at the rate you are going, and will have to go stark naked all year." ...
— Bab: A Sub-Deb • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... conversation of two dogs. Sometimes the king deigns to laugh, sometimes to question or jest with them, his voice sounding shrilly from the cabin. By his side he may have the heir-apparent, Paul, his nephew and adopted son, six years old, stark naked, and a model of young human beauty. And there will always be the favourite and perhaps two other wives awake; four more lying supine under mats and whelmed in slumber. Or perhaps we came later, fell on a more private hour, and found Tembinok' ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 18 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... (op. cit., p. 6 f.) relates that on a certain occasion when his party was driven from its wagons by a swarm of bees, a Nandi man appeared, announced that he was of the bee totem, and volunteered to restore quiet, which he did, going stark naked into the swarm. His success was doubtless due to his knowledge of the ...
— Introduction to the History of Religions - Handbooks on the History of Religions, Volume IV • Crawford Howell Toy
... thank his foes for the boon, for they struck his only son dead, and tore his heart out before his father's eyes. Hardly any man or woman survived, except by accident. A body of some hundred burghers made their escape across the snow into the open country. They were, however, overtaken, stripped stark naked, and hung upon the trees by the feet, to freeze, or to perish by a more lingering death. Most of them soon died, but twenty, who happened to be wealthy, succeeded, after enduring much torture, in purchasing their lives of their inhuman persecutors. The principal burgomaster, ...
— A Wanderer in Holland • E. V. Lucas
... yet, till at last we could scarcely breathe, and the perspiration poured out of us. Half an hour more, and though we were all now stark naked, we could hardly bear it. The place was like an antechamber of the infernal regions proper. I dipped my hand into the water and drew it out almost with a cry; it was nearly boiling. We consulted a little ...
— Allan Quatermain • by H. Rider Haggard
... prizes? I tell you, therefore—and it shall surely be—that if I again catch you talking such nonsense, I will either forfeit my own head and be no more called father of Telemachus, or I will take you, strip you stark naked, and whip you out of the assembly till you go blubbering ...
— The Iliad • Homer
... difficulty. Here, again, if we have recourse to the comparison of ceremonies, we may obtain some light. Among the tribes of the Gold Coast of Africa the wives of men who have gone to war make a daily procession through the town. They are stark naked, painted all over with white, and decorated with beads and charms. Any man who is found in the town is attacked and driven away. And on the occasion of a battle the women imitate the actions the men are thought to be performing, with guns, sticks, and knives. The Gold Coast is a ...
— The Science of Fairy Tales - An Inquiry into Fairy Mythology • Edwin Sidney Hartland
... deep wells gained by long flights of steps whither the ladies of the palaces used to resort in the hottest weather. Evening was drawing on and the profundities of this cavern were forbiddingly gloomy; nor was the scene rendered more alluring by the presence of three white-bearded old men, almost stark naked and leaner than greyhounds, who shivered and grimaced, and suggested nothing so much as fugitives from the grave. They were, however, not only alive, but athletically so, being professional divers who earned an exceedingly uncomfortable living by dropping, feet first, from the highest ...
— Roving East and Roving West • E.V. Lucas
... performed at Labuan Deli, in Sumatra, on the Chinese New Year. A Chinaman of the coolie class was squatted stark naked on the roadside, holding on his knees a brass pan the size of a wash-hand basin, piled a foot high with red-hot charcoal. The heat reached one's face at two yards, but if it had been a tray of ices the man couldn't have been more unconcerned. ...
— Modern Mythology • Andrew Lang
... them. Swimming we had been taught by an old sailor, who gave lessons to the school, and at last I could pick up an egg from the bottom of the overfall, a depth of about ten feet. I have also been upset from my boat, and had to lie stark naked on the grass in the sun till my clothes were dry. Twice I have been nearly drowned, once when I wandered away from the swimming class, and once when I could swim well. This later peril is worth a word or two, and I may as well say them now. I was staying ...
— The Early Life of Mark Rutherford • Mark Rutherford
... preposterous excess the Indian notion, that insanity is endowed with a mysterious and superhuman power. Their country was full of pretended maniacs, who, to propitiate their guardian spirits, or okies, and acquire the mystic virtue which pertained to madness, raved stark naked through the villages, scattering the brands of the lodge-fires, and upsetting everything in ...
— The Jesuits in North America in the Seventeenth Century • Francis Parkman
... thing about the surf that I do not understand, and that is why witches always walk stark naked along the beach by it at night, and eat sea crabs the while. That such is a confirmed habit of theirs is certain; and they tell me that while doing this the witches emit a bright light, and also that there is a certain medicine, which, if you have it with you, you can throw over the witch, and ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... been exposed stark naked to the sun for over five hours. I felt and no doubt looked like a raw beefsteak. Maclean's foot had got severely hurt in the course of his adventure, and he ...
— Reminiscences of a South African Pioneer • W. C. Scully
... up a man or a woman who walked stark naked in the street? and why is no one shocked by absolutely nude statues, by pictures of the Madonna and of Jesus that may ...
— Voltaire's Philosophical Dictionary • Voltaire
... the heat, her passions, hunger, and wretchedness, her head was turned, and she became so mad that she went out of the house stark naked, and ran up and down St. Peter's Place, asking those who stopped her to take her to my house. This sad story went all over the town and caused me a great deal of annoyance. The poor wretch was sent to an asylum, and did not recover her reason for five years. When ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... under way when Tommy pounded on my stateroom door, challenging me to a dip overboard. There was a glorious joy in his voice, as far reaching as reveille, that found response in the cockles of my heart. Gates, never happier than when standing beneath stretched canvas, hove-to as he saw us dash stark naked up the companionway stairs and clear the rail head-first, but he laid by only while we had our splash and continued the course southward the moment ...
— Wings of the Wind • Credo Harris
... senses at length enabled me to recognise as a native dug-out canoe. She was about forty feet long by four feet beam and about two feet deep; and was manned by thirty as ferocious- looking savages as one need ever wish to see. They were stark naked, save for a kind of breech-clout round the loins, and squatted in pairs along the bottom of the canoe, plying short broad-bladed paddles with which they seemed to be urging their craft at a pretty good pace through the water. A big, brawny, and most repulsive-looking savage, who was probably ...
— A Middy of the Slave Squadron - A West African Story • Harry Collingwood
... war-clubs and short knives. A suitable place was selected. The whole village of the Tetons emptied itself to witness the combat. Men, women, and children swarmed about the arena. The two youthful combatants made their appearance, stark naked, and took their positions about thirty yards apart. Just when the signal was given, Do-ran-to's eye caught that of his betrothed Ni-ar-gua in the crowd. Then said his heart, “Be strong and my arm big!” There was ...
— The Great Salt Lake Trail • Colonel Henry Inman
... rose to being a pirate captain, making his headquarters in Madagascar. From here he sailed out to the East Indies, and preyed on the ships of the East India Company. Several times he was wrecked, once he was the only survivor, and swam ashore at Madagascar stark naked. The unusual sight of a naked Englishman spread terror amongst the natives who were on the beach, and they all fled into the jungle except one, a woman, who from previous personal experience knew that this was but a human being and not ...
— The Pirates' Who's Who - Giving Particulars Of The Lives and Deaths Of The Pirates And Buccaneers • Philip Gosse
... order. He ignored the command of E McGinnis, received over the ship's communicator when they arrived at the scene of the crime, to stand clear of the planet. What policeman moving in to make an arrest for an illegal act—and certainly running around stark naked, posing in lewd and indecent postures in full view of the public, was an illegal act—would pay any attention to the request of an onlooker which amounted to ...
— Eight Keys to Eden • Mark Irvin Clifton
... we had to go after some canoe full of fishermen, and ask our way, hat in hand, as one does in the street. It was a funny sight to see the great black hull of the Belle-Poule, with her white sails scarcely filled by the light breeze, hugging the land, amongst a crowd of canoes full of noisy stark naked savages, hung with necklaces, and with arrows stuck in their heads of fuzzy hair, looking like handfuls of horse-hair pulled out of a mattress and clipped into any number of different shapes. A regular market ...
— Memoirs • Prince De Joinville
... their sustenance. Owing to this, several families in Mal-hado were in great straits while the Spaniards resided among them, as many had died and the survivors strictly observed the custom. The houses in the island were of mats, and strewed with oyster shells, on which they lay at night stark naked round the fire. The inhabitants of the province of Tegesta[136], reaching from the Martyrs to Cape Cannaveral, feed better than those Indians among whom Cabeza resided, being extraordinarily expert fishers. Two of them will venture out in a small canoe ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 5 • Robert Kerr
... water. Standing behind rocks, one at each side of the inner entrance to the passage, which was evidently that communicating with the pathway indicated by Ghamba as the one they were to approach by, were two powerful-looking men, stark naked, and as black as ebony, their skins shining in the light of the fire. Each man held a coiled thong in his hands, after the manner of a sailor about to heave a line. While they were looking, a woman, somewhat younger in appearance than any of those who sat by ...
— Stories by English Authors: Africa • Various
... enter." This occasioned yet more trouble of mind; for I was loth to go naked: but at last thought it better to go in naked, than not at all. So I at last fell to stripping, thinking that a few pitiful rags should not hinder me of so great an enjoyment.—And when I was stripped stark naked as ever I was born, I tried to enter, and found no great difficulty; and so soon as I was entered, one met me, and cast a garment of pure white linen over me, which reached to my feet; and he brought me into a narrow room and said, "Rest ...
— A Short History of a Long Travel from Babylon to Bethel • Stephen Crisp
... whipping had a thick piece of sole-leather, the end of which was cut in three strips, and this tacked on to the end of a paddle. After the charges and specifications had been read (both men being stark naked), the whipper "lit in" on Rube, who was the youngest. I do not think he intended to hit as hard as he did, but, being excited himself, he blistered Rube from head to foot. Thirty-nine lashes was always the number. Now, three times thirty-nine ...
— "Co. Aytch" - Maury Grays, First Tennessee Regiment - or, A Side Show of the Big Show • Sam R. Watkins
... to reason was to apply yourselves to the true source of all our opinions and the only motive to all our conduct! Now, it seems, you think yourselves affronted, because a few of us express some indignation at the minister who has thought fit to strip us stark naked, and expose the true state of our poxed and pestilential habit to the world! Think or say what you will in Ireland, I shall ever think it a crime hardly to be expiated by his blood. He might, and ought, by a longer continuance or by an earlier ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VI. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... were all good and drunk, one of Vladimir's guests, Prince Galitzin, bet the host the price of the supper and a champagne bath for all, that he could induce the famous danseuse Mshinskaya to descend the stairs stark naked and walk among the tables below without ...
— Secret Memoirs: The Story of Louise, Crown Princess • Henry W. Fischer
... to earn a comfortable support, and even the means of procuring some land; which ought to be the utmost wish of every person who has health and hands to work. I knew a man who came to this country, in the literal sense of the expression, stark naked; I think he was a Frenchman, and a sailor on board an English man-of- war. Being discontented, he had stripped himself and swam ashore; where, finding clothes and friends, he settled afterwards at Maraneck, in the county ...
— Letters from an American Farmer • Hector St. John de Crevecoeur
... my Mistresss Toilet this Morning, for I am admitted when her Face is stark naked: She frowned, and cryed Pish when I said a thing that I stole; and I will be judged by you whether it was not very pretty. Madam, said I, you [shall [5]] forbear that Part of your Dress; it may be well ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... are very amusing. This morning four of them stripped stark naked under my window, put off in a boat, and thirty yards from the shore fished for cockle fish, which they do by diving like ducks, throwing their feet up in the air as the ducks do their tails. The creatures are perfectly amphibious; they don't ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William - IV, Volume 1 (of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville
... demolishing and drowning. Its terrible progress was marked by a layer of mud a foot thick, dotted with rocks, trees, wrecks of houses, machinery, furniture, barrels, mattresses, carcasses of animals, and dead bodies, most of them stark naked, the raging flood having torn their clothes ...
— Put Yourself in His Place • Charles Reade
... Berkshire, Puritan magistrates, had had wind of a scandal. One moonlit summer night they had ridden out with their posse and there, among the hills, they had come upon a company of men and women, dancing, stark naked, among the sheepcotes. The magistrates and their men had ridden their horses into the crowd. How self-conscious the poor people must suddenly have felt, how helpless without their clothes against armed and booted horsemen! The dancers were arrested, whipped, gaoled, set in the stocks; the moonlight ...
— Crome Yellow • Aldous Huxley
... perambulator by a convulsive movement, and found myself behind the hansom. A happy thought saved me, and as this drove slowly along I followed in its immediate wake, trembling and astonished at the turn of my adventure. And not only trembling, but shivering. It was a bright day in January and I was stark naked and the thin slime of mud that covered the road was freezing. Foolish as it seems to me now, I had not reckoned that, transparent or not, I was still amenable to the weather and all ...
— The Invisible Man • H. G. Wells
... sweepers, in dirty rags, but loaded down on ankles and arms by heavy silver bangles and painted in the center of the forehead with her caste mark. She was followed by a poverty-stricken Mohammedan leading a little boy, stark naked, while a girl with brilliant cap held the boy's hand. A naked Tamil, with only a dirty loin cloth, brushed elbows with three Parsee girls, beautifully dressed. And so this purely democratic human tide flowed on for hours, rich and poor showing a childlike pleasure ...
— The Critic in the Orient • George Hamlin Fitch
... whites, stark naked, ran about miserably in the midst of this pandemonium. On a litter was being borne the nude body of a stout man, in whose breast a dagger was sticking as a cross is ...
— The Memoirs of Victor Hugo • Victor Hugo
... them there, standing at attention, stark naked, so that they were half-frozen when the gray, cold light of the dawn began to show behind them in the east. And then the Germans laughed, and told ...
— A Minstrel In France • Harry Lauder
... powers of inventiveness, and possessing the knack of making pleasant what would otherwise be uncomfortable, plume themselves before their brethren, and turn them to derision: and it appears the more ridiculous, as they all are as stark naked as an unclothed animal, and have really nothing to boast of ...
— What Led To The Discovery of the Source Of The Nile • John Hanning Speke
... nothing now too rich or good For poor men, not the King's own food. Now like a singing bird my feet Touch earth, and I must drink and eat. Welcome to all men: I'll not care What any of my fellows wear; We'll not let cloth divide our souls, They'll swim stark naked in the bowls. Welcome, poor beggar: I'll not see That hand of yours dislodge a flea,— While you sit at my side and beg, Or right foot scratching your left leg. Farewell restraint: we will not now Measure the ale our brains allow, ...
— Foliage • William H. Davies
... to find a city in keeping with these surroundings,—of fairy palaces and stately mansions; in place whereof was nought but a wilderness of mean, low, squalid houses, with meandering, ill-paved alleys, and all past everything for unsavoury smells,—heaps of refuse lying before every door, stark naked brats of children screaming everywhere, and a pack of famished dogs snapping at ...
— A Set of Rogues • Frank Barrett
... had married his godmother; but what was my surprise, my fright, my trouble, when I saw in a san-benito and mitre a figure which resembled that of Pangloss! I rubbed my eyes, I looked at him attentively, I saw him hung; I fainted. Scarcely had I recovered my senses than I saw you stripped, stark naked, and this was the height of my horror, consternation, grief, and despair. I tell you, truthfully, that your skin is yet whiter and of a more perfect colour than that of my Bulgarian captain. This spectacle redoubled all the feelings which overwhelmed and devoured me. I screamed ...
— Candide • Voltaire
... other laid his pistol down on the turf, and also proceeded to undress, until the two men stood face to face, stark naked. ...
— I Saw Three Ships and Other Winter Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... fitness, so we at once went to the surgeon's tent. I had previously heard all sorts of stories as to the thoroughness of this examination, that sometimes the prospective recruits had to strip, stark naked, and jump about, in order to show that their limbs were perfect. But I was agreeably disappointed in that regard. The surgeon, at that time, was a fat, jolly old doctor by the name of Leonidas Clemmons. I was about scared to death when the Captain presented ...
— The Story of a Common Soldier of Army Life in the Civil War, 1861-1865 • Leander Stillwell
... of memory crowded his mind. When he had first met Niaga, almost a week before, she had been lying on the sandy bank of the stream, idly plaiting a garland of red and blue flowers. Niaga! A copper-skinned goddess, stark naked and unashamed in the bright spot light of sun filtered through the trees. Languorous, laughing lips; long, black hair loosely caught in a net of filmy material that ...
— Impact • Irving E. Cox
... shocking beyond description. The poor unhappy victims were surprised in the midst of their sleep, and had neither time nor power to make any resistance; men, women, and children, in all upward of twenty, ran out of their tents stark naked, and endeavoured to make their escape; but the Indians having possession of all the landside, to no place could they fly for shelter. One alternative only remained, that of jumping into the river; but, as none of them attempted it, they all fell a ...
— Pioneers in Canada • Sir Harry Johnston
... man of some authority, but who, not being a Christian, was wrong. But, there! these preparatory digressions are the idle digressions and fastidious commentaries which certain unbelievers compel a man to wind about a tale, swaddling clothes about an infant when it should run about stark naked. May the great devil give them a clyster with his red-hot three-pronged fork. I am going on with my ...
— Droll Stories, Volume 3 • Honore de Balzac
... the case of a family in Houndsditch, where a man and his daughter (the rest of the family being, as I suppose, carried away before by the dead cart) were found stark naked, one in one chamber and one in another, lying dead on the floor, and the clothes of the beds (from whence it is supposed they were rolled off by thieves) stolen, and carried ...
— History of the Plague in London • Daniel Defoe
... stark naked in the Morning at Sunrising, and bound to a Post, so that he could not stir Hand nor Foot, but as he was mov'd; and was placed with his Face Eastward against the Sun. In the Afternoon they turned his Face toward the West, that the Sun might still be in his Face; ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898—Volume 39 of 55 • Various
... pent-up and pitchy, where, by a refinement of cruelty, the ceiling has been built low so that no man can stand upright. Here fifteen or twenty were crowded together, and, in the burning atmosphere, they stripped themselves stark naked, so that when in the morning the cell-doors were opened, they came forth as from the grave, begging for death. There are women's cells too; for this great and valiant government recognized women as belligerents, and locked them up close to a sentry's cartridge, so that, in the bitterness of ...
— Campaigns of a Non-Combatant, - and His Romaunt Abroad During the War • George Alfred Townsend
... Egyptians, Bohemians, and other wandering troupes who stole the holy things from the Church of St. Martin, and in the place and exact situation of Madam the Virgin, left by way of insult and mockery to our Holy Faith, an abandoned pretty little girl, about the age of an old dog, stark naked, an acrobat, and of Moorish descent like themselves. For this almost nameless crime it was equally decided by the king, people, and the churchmen that the Mooress, to pay for all, should be burned ...
— Droll Stories, Complete - Collected From The Abbeys Of Touraine • Honore de Balzac
... to repose. 'Tis LIFE to revel down the road, And QUEER each o'erfraught chaise's load, To rave and rattle at the GATE, And shower upon the gatherer's pate Damns by the dozens, and such speeches As well betokens one's SLANG riches: To take of Deady's bright STARK NAKED A glass or so—'tis LIFE to take it! To see the Hurst with tents encampt on; Lurk around Lawrence's at Hampton; Join the FLASH crowd (the horse being led Into the yard, and clean'd and fed); Talk to Dav' Hudson, and Cy' Davis (The last a fighting rara avis), And, half in secret, scheme ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton
... and Write, that they cannot hinder them from it."—Locke, on Education, p. 271. "The Malteses do so, who harden the Bodies of their Children, and reconcile them to the Heat, by making them go stark Naked."—Idem, Edition of 1669, p. 5. "CHINESE, n. s. Used elliptically for the language and people of China: plural, Chineses. Sir T. Herbert."—Abridgement of Todd's Johnson. This is certainly absurd. For if Chinese is used elliptically for the people ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... was taken, the prisoners were questioned, and despoiled. Often, indeed, they were stripped stark naked, and granted the privilege of seeing their finery on a pirate's back. Each buccaneer had the right to take a shift of clothes out of each prize captured. The cargo was then rummaged, and the state of the ship ...
— Great Pirate Stories • Various
... farther to the eastwards about Cape Garcias a Dios are almost black, of a fierce aspect, go stark naked, are very savage, and according to Giumbe eat mans flesh and raw fish. They have their ears bored with holes, large enough to admit a hens egg, owing to which circumstance the admiral called this coast De las Orejas, or the Land of Ears[10]. ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. III. • Robert Kerr
... himself with flinging over his shoulders the skins of the animals he had killed. He prepared these skins with flint scrapers, and sewed them together with bone needles. In hot weather man probably roamed about stark naked. Shame is not a natural instinct; education alone develops it. Writing in 1617, Fynes Morison speaks of having seen at Cork young girls quite naked, engaged in crushing corn with a stone. The Tchoutchi women, says Nordenskiold, ...
— Manners and Monuments of Prehistoric Peoples • The Marquis de Nadaillac
... be transported in a balloon from Temple Bar right down here, what a barbarous land he would say Canada was, and his note-book would run thus: "Landed on the banks of a river twice as broad as the Thames, and saw the inhabitants burnt brown, and stark naked, ...
— Canada and the Canadians, Vol. 2 • Richard Henry Bonnycastle
... see a number of women and girls strolling about stark naked before the house of a man who had died of diphtheria. This, I was told, was their mourning dress.... The same custom prevails in ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck
... there with him all that night; but as soon as it was day, I beckoned to him to come with me, and let him know I would give him some clothes; at which he seemed very glad, for he was stark naked. As we went by the place where he had buried the two men, he pointed exactly to the place, and showed me the marks that he had made to find them again, making signs to me that we should dig them up again, and eat them. At this I appeared very angry, expressed my ...
— The Children's Hour, v 5. Stories From Seven Old Favorites • Eva March Tappan
... the table where sat the two officers with the paper forms. "Name?" "Sabre." The officer nearer him drew a form towards him and poised a fountain pen over it. Sabre felt it extraordinarily odd to be standing stark naked before two men fully dressed. In his rejection at Tidborough the time ...
— If Winter Comes • A.S.M. Hutchinson
... clothes and their own cloth. They would not let the slaves have anything much. To keep them from being stark naked, they'd give them ...
— Slave Narratives: Arkansas Narratives - Arkansas Narratives, Part 6 • Works Projects Administration
... hearing the Name of Jesus they cou'd not prevail. Whereupon they quit this House, and Carry the Soldier to an exceeding high Mountain, where they show him a Number of Men and Women far beyond any of the former. These Wretches sat Stark Naked with their Toes bent, and look'd towards the North, as if they expected every minute to expire that way. And while the Soldier stood wondering what they waited for, one of the Devils said unto him: Possibly thou wondrest what these People expect with so much trembling and fear, but if thou agree ...
— The Purgatory of St. Patrick • Pedro Calderon de la Barca
... practicable entrances. Happiness is an antique reliquary painted on one side only. Ecclesiastes says: 'All is vanity.' I agree with that good man, who never existed, perhaps. Zero not wishing to go stark naked, clothed himself in vanity. O vanity! The patching up of everything with big words! a kitchen is a laboratory, a dancer is a professor, an acrobat is a gymnast, a boxer is a pugilist, an apothecary is a chemist, a wigmaker is an artist, a hodman is an architect, ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... sight. The party of Europeans, all strangers to the dead but all deeply moved; the group of black-robed and turbaned Copts; the sailors from the boats; the gaily dressed dragomans; several brown-shirted fellaheen and the thick crowd of children—all the little Abab'deh stark naked and all behaving so well, the expression on their little faces touched me most of all. As Muslims, Omar and the boatmen laid him down in the grave, and while the English prayer was read the sun went ...
— Letters from Egypt • Lucie Duff Gordon
... shriek and began to swim for the beach with all his might, still howling; and as soon as he touched land he ran away wildly, stark naked, through the country. ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... 26th, the boat and pinnace went ashore well armed to fetch in our davy, which is a piece of timber by which the anchor is hauled up; and a little beyond it, they found the body of Harrington stark naked, which they buried in an island near Pemba. The natives of this island seemed well disposed towards us; for, at our first coming, they made signs to us, as if warning us to take care of having our throats cut, which we then ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. VIII. • Robert Kerr
... something fearful. You know I'm a country-bred man myself, and ain't used to the town, or to such awful sights of squalor. It almost made me weep, I do assure you. One room that I looked into had a mother and two children in it, and I declare to you that the little boy was going about stark naked, and his sister was only just ...
— Dusty Diamonds Cut and Polished - A Tale of City Arab Life and Adventure • R.M. Ballantyne
... instinctively towards the open part of the hut and looked across towards the village. Up from the little open space in front of the King's dwelling-house leaped a hissing bright flame; they had kindled a fire, and black forms of men, stark naked and wounding themselves with spears, danced around it and made the air hideous with discordant cries. The King himself, too drunk to stand, squatted upon the ground with an empty bottle by his side. A breath of wind brought a strong, noxious odour to the two men who stood watching. ...
— A Millionaire of Yesterday • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... natives were brown, thick-lipped folk, all with rings in their ears and dead, brown eyes; they were almost naked, with just a strip of cotton cloth or plaited leaves round the middle, and the women had also a short petticoat of cotton stuff to cover them. All the children went about stark naked night and day, with great big prominent bellies ...
— Pan • Knut Hamsun
... creek, and held up a long pole, with a white bit of cloth on it, for a signal of peace to them. We found they understood us presently, for they came flocking to us, men, women, and children, most of them, of both sexes, stark naked. At first they stood wondering and staring at us, as if we had been monsters, and as if they had been frighted; but we found they inclined to be familiar with us afterwards. The first thing we did to try them, ...
— The Life, Adventures & Piracies of the Famous Captain Singleton • Daniel Defoe
... Andramark, stark naked and still bleeding in many places, sat cross-legged in the cave, at the very rim of the medicine-spring. His head hung forward on his chest. All his muscles were soft and relaxed. After a while the hangings of the cave entrance were drawn a little to one side and a stone plumped into the spring ...
— IT and Other Stories • Gouverneur Morris
... such a wicked, miserable world. I'd crawl somewhere to a cave, and slink there. And yet, 'tis a noble and heroic thing, the wind! who ever conquered it? In every fight it has the last and bitterest blow. Run tilting at it, and you but run through it. Ha! a coward wind that strikes stark naked men, but will not stand to receive a single blow. Even Ahab is a braver thing—a nobler thing than that. Would now the wind but had a body; but all the things that most exasperate and outrage mortal man, all these things are bodiless, but only bodiless as objects, ...
— Great Sea Stories • Various
... all take boat and row (or paddle as we call it) away. I should have observed, that for an hour or more before they went off they were dancing, and I could easily discern their postures and gestures by my glass. I could not perceive, by my nicest observation, but that they were stark naked, and had not the least covering upon them; but whether they were men or women ...
— Robinson Crusoe • Daniel Defoe
... into which only persons of note are permitted to enter. On these occasions of giving audience, every person who come to speak to him, however high may be his rank, is in the first place obliged to strip himself stark naked, except the small cloth in front formerly mentioned; and, immediately on entering the court, he falls down on his knees, bows down his head to the ground, and scatters dust with both hands on his own head and shoulders; neither is even ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. II • Robert Kerr
... are often masterpieces. During the revolution their character as a class became materially worse. There are more than ten thousand of them who do literally nothing, possess nothing, and lie about the streets stark naked, with the exception of a ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 57, No. 352, February 1845 • Various
... mother's lap, by Michael Angelo. The figure of Christ is as much emaciated, as if he had died of a consumption: besides, there is something indelicate, not to say indecent, in the attitude and design of a man's body, stark naked, lying upon the knees of a woman. Here are some good pictures, I should rather say copies of good pictures, done in Mosaic to great perfection; particularly a St. Sebastian by Domenichino, and Michael the Archangel, from a painting of Guido ...
— Travels Through France and Italy • Tobias Smollett
... year after the War. Mother's mother was left in Jackson, Tennessee. Mother was sold at Vicksburg, Mississippi. Father's mother was left at Pittsburg, Virginia. Father was brought to Lake Providence and sold to Master Ross and Mr. Coleman was his overseer. He was stripped stark naked and put up on the block. That was Nigger Traders Rule, he said. He was black as men get to be. Mother was three-fourths white. Her master was her father. He had two families. They was raised up in the same house with his white family. Master's white wife raised ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States from Interviews with Former Slaves, Arkansas Narratives, Part 4 • Works Projects Administration
... spent when they reached a Kaffir kraal, and here Mr. Celliers sank down in agony of mind and body, too great for words. More Kaffir beer was respectfully tendered to him and he drank it gratefully, meanwhile watching with dull interest the Kaffir babies, jet black and stark naked, except for a small fringe of blue beads about the loins, as they crept around him, ...
— The Petticoat Commando - Boer Women in Secret Service • Johanna Brandt
... God was to put back the devil into hell, whereto he had condemned him. The girl asked him how this might be done; and he, 'Thou shalt soon know that; do thou but as thou shalt see me do.' So saying, he proceeded to put off the few garments he had and abode stark naked, as likewise did the girl, whereupon he fell on his knees, as he would pray, and caused her abide over ...
— The Decameron of Giovanni Boccaccio • Giovanni Boccaccio
... retire to the Pena Pobre in company with a hermit, and there he took his fill of weeping until Heaven sent him relief in the midst of his great grief and need. And if this be true, as it is, why should I now take the trouble to strip stark naked, or do mischief to these trees which have done me no harm, or why am I to disturb the clear waters of these brooks which will give me to drink whenever I have a mind? Long live the memory of Amadis and let him be imitated ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... what was happenin'. And when at last we was able to get a pretty clear view, the sight we saw was enough to freeze a man's blood. They'd got all our chaps lashed to stakes set up in a clear, open space in front of the village, and one of the pore unfort'nit fellers was stripped stark naked and bein' tormented by a crowd o' niggers what was puttin' burnin' splinters between his fingers, and stickin' 'em into his flesh, and pourin' red-hot cinders into his mouth, what they'd prised open by thrustin' a thick stick in between his jaws; and the shrieks as that unhappy man ...
— A Middy in Command - A Tale of the Slave Squadron • Harry Collingwood
... had no letters from home. We were actually marooned on Lemnos Island: as literally marooned on a barren desert isle as any buccaneer of the old Spanish galleon days. We went suddenly back to a savage life. We went down to bathe stark naked, with the sunset glowing orange on our sunburnt limbs. Here it was that Hawk proved himself a wonderfully good swimmer. He was lithe and supple and well-made—an extraordinary specimen of virile manhood—and he spent ...
— At Suvla Bay • John Hargrave
... down to the veranda of my own house. There he hangs the actor's raincoat where it hung before, and emerges again. But this time he is naked. He has been naked under the coat all this time. Is it possible? Why not? No inhibitions, no restraint, no covering; Solem has thought it all out. Now, stark naked, he stalks to ...
— Look Back on Happiness • Knut Hamsun
... are used to stab upward from below, the wielder lying flat in the grass. Some of these men were fantastically painted with a groundwork ochre, on which had been drawn intricate wavy designs on the legs, like stockings, and varied stripes across the face. One particularly ingenious individual, stark naked, had outlined a roughly entire skeleton! He was a gruesome object! They stalked here and there through the camp, looking at our men and their activities with a lofty ...
— The Land of Footprints • Stewart Edward White
... Sun" (iv). Parts of Hurlothrumbo, particularly the scene between Lady Flame and Wildfire (both of whom are described in the list of characters as "mad") in which Wildfire threatens to cast off his clothes and "run about stark naked" (48), bear an odd resemblance to "The King's Cameleopard" in Huckleberry Finn. But the disconnected verbal structure, along with the music and dancing, achieves a strange mixture that must have amused and, to a certain extent, bemused ...
— The Merry-Thought: or the Glass-Window and Bog-House Miscellany - Parts 2, 3 and 4 • Hurlo Thrumbo (pseudonym)
... tapioca workers in the woods near Singapore, we found them busily engaged, the children running about stark naked, the parents clothed in the usual loose rags. Our party attracted great attention. We asked our guide to tell the people that we came from a country where the water in such a pond as that before us ...
— Autobiography of Andrew Carnegie • Andrew Carnegie
... I first came across the evidences of civilisation aforesaid, that my only surprise was I had not reached them before. Walking about were Europeans in the usual dress of the Australian prospector. Suddenly a strange feeling of shyness and hesitancy came over me. Almost stark naked and darkened as I was—a veritable savage, in fact—I realised I could not go and introduce myself to these men without proper clothing. I knew the value of caution in approaching so-called civilised men, having had bitter experience with the Giles expedition. Returning to ...
— The Adventures of Louis de Rougemont - as told by Himself • Louis de Rougemont
... lighted lamp into the midst of them and smashed it, then, in darkness, strode along the tunnel muttering and cursing as he went— stark naked. ...
— Caesar Dies • Talbot Mundy
... One small alleviation we had in the man whose province it was to bale the water out of the boat; he threw it on our bodies to cool them. However, what with the scorching of the sun and cooling of the water, our skin was blistered all over. By day we were stark naked; by night we had on shirts or loose coats; for we had left our clothing ashore, on purpose to ...
— The Pirates Own Book • Charles Ellms
... Shoreditch, as he was going across the fields on some business. Hartly gave him a blow on the head with his pistol, after which Reeves bid him stand, and whistling, four more of the gang came up, seized him, and knocked him down. They stripped him stark naked and carried away all his clothes, tying him hand and foot in a cruel manner and leaving him in a ditch hard by. However he was relieved, and Reeves and Hartly being soon after taken, they were both tried and convicted ...
— Lives Of The Most Remarkable Criminals Who have been Condemned and Executed for Murder, the Highway, Housebreaking, Street Robberies, Coining or other offences • Arthur L. Hayward
... the sun, among the dogs and filth and refuse of the camp, or crouched over small fires as if it were bitter cold. The dogs started up yelping, for a blackfellow's dog doesn't know how to bark properly, as the white men passed, but their masters took no notice. A stark naked gin, with a fillet of greasy skin bound round her head, and a baby slung in a net on her back, came whining to Turner with outstretched hands. She had mixed with the stockkeepers before, and knew a few ...
— The Moving Finger • Mary Gaunt
... were gloomy and forbidding in the extreme; but when we came to one of the people of the country's villages, and saw the men dressed in gay turbans, the women walking about with curious earthen vessels on their heads, and the stark naked black children playing in the water, I was altogether bewildered, and could scarcely credit that I, who saw these things and had come to dwell amongst them, was the same boy who had been bred up so peacefully in that English ...
— Athelstane Ford • Allen Upward
... accommodate ourselves to the tastes and habits of those we were about to visit. "Do at Rome as the Romans do," is the essence of all politeness. As our friends were accustomed to be in naturalibus—vulgice, stark naked, we adopted their Adamite fashion, and, undressing, in we plunged. Our success was greater with the finny, than was that of any exquisite with the fair tribe. We captivated and captured pailfuls. We drove our entertainers into the narrow creeks ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard
... might be expected. Even as in song or in vice there is no holding her, so remorse, when it has fastened upon such a woman's heart, will know no bounds. I may tell you that on one occasion two young merchants took her, stripped her stark naked, and drove her in their carriage down Zhitnaia Street, with themselves sitting on the seats of the vehicle, and Felitzata standing upright between them—yes, in a state of nudity! Thereafter they ...
— Through Russia • Maxim Gorky
... shuddered with joy as it came; As it came and caressed and possessed them, till panting and laughing with light From mountain to mountain the water was kindled and stung to delight. And the grey gaunt heights that embraced and constrained and compelled it were glad, And the rampart of rock, stark naked, that thwarted and barred it, was clad With a stern grey splendour of sunrise: and scarce had I sprung to the sea When the dawn and the water were wedded, the hills and the sky set free. The chain of the ...
— Astrophel and Other Poems - Taken from The Collected Poetical Works of Algernon Charles - Swinburne, Vol. VI • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... slave, which serves to subsist them like criminals on bread and water; so that to save charges, we send them on board our ships the very first opportunity; before which, their masters strip them of all they have on their backs, so that they come on board stark naked, as well women as men. In which condition they are obliged to continue, if the master of the ship is not so charitable (which he commonly is) as to bestow something on them to cover their nakedness. Six or seven hundred are sometimes put on board a vessel, where ...
— Some Historical Account of Guinea, Its Situation, Produce, and the General Disposition of Its Inhabitants • Anthony Benezet
... an Arab encampment,—with as much unwillingness as Sailor Bill had done but an hour before. Equally sans ceremonie, or even with less ceremony, did they enter among the tents, and certainly in a less becoming costume,—since all three were stark naked with the ...
— The Boy Slaves • Mayne Reid
... Bahia, "Who would believe it? there are shops full of those poor wretches, who are exposed there stark naked and bought like cattle, over whom the buyers have the same power; so that upon slight disgust they may kill them, almost without fear of punishment, or at least treat them as cruelly as they please. I know not how such barbarity can be reconciled to the maxims ...
— Journal of a Voyage to Brazil - And Residence There During Part of the Years 1821, 1822, 1823 • Maria Graham
... of breast-plates, greaves, and buff-coat to the other. But because the soldier is better without his armour it does not exactly follow that it is desirable that our defenders should strip themselves stark naked; and it is not more apparent why laissez-faire—great and beneficial as it may be in all that relates to the accumulation of wealth—should be the one great commandment which the State is to obey in all other matters; and especially ...
— Critiques and Addresses • Thomas Henry Huxley
... I?" He stood aside to let her pass in. "I've nothing to be ashamed of. I don't wear the garment of respectability, but then I'm not stark naked. Every man clothes himself in some article of faith, virtue if you like." The name of Sally and Sally's face swept across his mind. There was one virtue at least which he could put on. "You people, the set you want me to join, ...
— Sally Bishop - A Romance • E. Temple Thurston
... with difficulty been hitherto restrained by the united exertions of the three women, here burst from their arms, tossed off his blanket, and leaped with a whoop into the middle of the floor;—except the short petticoat about his loins he was stark naked. "I'm twal stane wecht—my name's Aleck Lawther—I'll slap ony man o' ye for four-an'-twenty tens!" As he uttered this challenge, tossing his long arms about his head, bouncing upright, and cutting like a posture-master at the end of every clause, while the ...
— Tales from Blackwood, Volume 7 • Various
... pictures of David the defunct, we need not, then, say much. Romulus is a mighty fine young fellow, no doubt; and if he has come out to battle stark naked (except a very handsome helmet), it is because the costume became him, and shows off his figure to advantage. But was there ever anything so absurd as this passion for the nude, which was followed by all the painters of the Davidian epoch? And how are we to suppose yonder straddle to ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... determined to give me a thrashing, and he had with him a piece of oak stick just suited for the purpose. After we had taunted each other for some time, as we went along, he flung his stick on the ground, and stripped himself stark naked. I took off my hat and my neck-cloth, and took his stick in my hand, whereupon running to the hedge he took a stake, and straight we set to like two furies. After fighting some time, our sticks were shivered to pieces and quite ...
— Wild Wales - Its People, Language and Scenery • George Borrow
... you want towels?' And stark naked he went out into the hall, striding a strange, white figure between the unliving furniture. He came back with the towels, and took his former position, crouching seated before the fire ...
— Women in Love • D. H. Lawrence
... and an anxious inquiry from above: 'What's the matter?' 'Haul away,' is the response, and the bucket comes heavy this time. Oh, it's only a man, stark naked, fainting, with a rope beneath his arms, and head away to one side. 'Hospital case, overcome, haul away,' ...
— Porto Rico - Its History, Products and Possibilities... • Arthur D. Hall
... the kitchen, where, amid clouds of vapour, Mrs. Mayow and her daughter Cherry were washing the children. Each had a tub and a child in it; and three children, already washed, skipped around the floor stark naked, one with a long churchwarden pipe blowing bubbles which the other two pursued. In the far corner, behind a deal table, sat Mr. Mayow, and patiently tuned a fiddle—a quite ...
— The Laird's Luck • Arthur Quiller-Couch
... sprinkled it on the ground, and in an twinkling of an eye a large river rose up on the spot. When the ogre saw this new obstacle, and that he could not make holes so fast as they found bungs to stop them, he stripped himself stark naked and swam across to the other side of the river with ...
— Stories from Pentamerone • Giambattista Basile
... so Mr. Bynoe flushed a native; but before the rest of the party could come up, he had taken to flight. The simultaneous cries of "here's a native!" "where!" "here!" "there he goes stark naked," rose; and before ALL EYES could catch a glimpse, his dark figure insensibly blended with the waving branches of his wild solitude, and without a cry of fear or joy, he was lost to us, perhaps ...
— Discoveries in Australia, Volume 2 • John Lort Stokes
... forest. And all the way he went along, he cut marks on the trees. Now this damsel had been carried off by the Leshy, and had lived in his hut for three years—her clothes were all worn out, or had got torn off her back, so that she was stark naked but she wasn't a bit ashamed of that. When they reached the village, the sportsman began asking whether there was any one there who had lost a girl. Up came the priest, and cried, "Why, that's my daughter." Up came running the priest's wife, ...
— Russian Fairy Tales - A Choice Collection of Muscovite Folk-lore • W. R. S. Ralston
... was unbottoned too: then, first giving Polly an encouraging kiss, he stole, as it were, the shift off the girl, who being, I suppose, broke and familiarized to this humour, blushed indeed, but less than I did at the apparition of her, now standing stark naked, just as she came ont of the hands of pure nature, with her black hair loose and a-float down her dazzling white neck and shoulders, whilst the deepened carnation of her cheeks went off gradually into the hue of glazed ...
— Memoirs Of Fanny Hill - A New and Genuine Edition from the Original Text (London, 1749) • John Cleland
... the boat and made signs for him to go there and get it the women sometimes shook their hands to him, and the boys laughing and hooping. A few more trifles were here given to them. A little before this all our people got out of the boat stark naked as was desired and walked somewhat near the natives, on which the old man sent the boys away to the women, and he, after having been in a great passion, made signs for us to go to the boat, began to retire with his face to us and brandishing ...
— The Logbooks of the Lady Nelson - With The Journal Of Her First Commander Lieutenant James Grant, R.N • Ida Lee
... Nevertheless I laid the boat close to the rocks and beckoned to them to approach but none of them would come within 200 yards of us. They were armed in the same manner as the people we had seen from Restoration Island; they were stark naked, their colour black, with short bushy hair or wool, and in their appearance were similar to them in every respect. An island of a good height bore north half west four miles from us, at which I resolved to land and from ...
— A Voyage to the South Sea • William Bligh
... burden! Three corpses, stark naked but for a decent waistband, were laid out upon the marble table. One was that of a child who had been fished up from the Seine that morning; the second that of a stonemason who had fallen from a scaffolding and broken his neck and both legs; the third was the murdered man of the Hotel Paradis, ...
— The Thin Red Line; and Blue Blood • Arthur Griffiths |
