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Stray   Listen
verb
Stray  v. i.  (past & past part. strayed; pres. part. straying)  
1.
To wander, as from a direct course; to deviate, or go out of the way. "Thames among the wanton valleys strays."
2.
To wander from company, or from the proper limits; to rove at large; to roam; to go astray. "Now, until the break of day, Through this house each fairy stray." "A sheep doth very often stray."
3.
Figuratively, to wander from the path of duty or rectitude; to err. "We have erred and strayed from thy ways." "While meaner things, whom instinct leads, Are rarely known to stray."
Synonyms: To deviate; err; swerve; rove; roam; wander.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Stray" Quotes from Famous Books



... way back to the hidden canon. He felt a little lonely as he thought of Collie. He gave the burro some scraps of camp bread, knowing that the little animal would not stray so long as he was fed, even ...
— Overland Red - A Romance of the Moonstone Canon Trail • Henry Herbert Knibbs

... Bailey, Jr., overdrew his account, was politely notified of that oversight by the bank. He hunted about, casually, for stray funds, but to his intense surprise discovered nothing ...
— Athalie • Robert W. Chambers

... learned of men and the gravest and purest livers have regularly done the same thing. But I feel sure that I shall easily obtain permission from those who know the character and calibre of the authors in whose footsteps I am treading, to stray in company with men whom it is an honour to follow, not only in their serious but in their lightest moods. I will not mention the names of those still living for fear of seeming to flatter, but is a ...
— The Letters of the Younger Pliny - Title: The Letters of Pliny the Younger - - Series 1, Volume 1 • Pliny the Younger

... promise to sing at the service she found an eager crowd waiting for the opening. Every available space was occupied; people stood in the rear aisles, others waited in the churchyard by the open windows and hoped to catch there some stray ...
— Patchwork - A Story of 'The Plain People' • Anna Balmer Myers

... Flora, as if sharing the general elation, but had begun again to tell of Greenleaf, when from far over in Camp Street her subtle ear caught a faint stray sigh of saxhorns. ...
— Kincaid's Battery • George W. Cable

... kept this letter some days in my writing-box, till I could meet with a stray member of parliament, for it is not worth making you pay for: but when you talk to me I cannot help answering incontinently; besides, can one take up a letter at a long distance, and heat one's reply over again with the same interest that it occasioned at first? Adieu! I ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole

... prompted him, and thought him tiresome with his mild way of getting to know so many things that were no concern of his. The shrewd guesses which he was making, and the terrible mosaic that he was piecing together out of such stray fragments as he could pick up—and he was always picking them up—were hidden from her; and she understood nothing of the mingled surmise and certainty which made his interest in her partly retrospective and partly prophetic, as he fitted in bit by bit that hidden ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, April, 1876. • Various

... the gleaners, and bending her back like the rest gathered the stray ears left by the binders. The overseer watched both laborers and gleaners. All were known to him, even the beautiful stranger from the land ...
— A Farmer's Wife - The Story of Ruth • J. H. Willard

... church choir gave last winter! I was invited two or three times and went. But you know it has struck me once or twice as a little odd that we church singers, as such, should go into that sort of thing. If some of us should stray into it individually it's nothing remarkable, I suppose. But isn't it a bit queer that, as a company, we should lead off in those things? I suppose," with a twinkle of malicious enjoyment in her eyes, "our Emmanuel church neighbors could not find vent ...
— The First Soprano • Mary Hitchcock

... fence between the Sweeneys and the Joneses was unfinished still, and the old feud between the Dunderblitzens and the Blitzendunders was more deadly than ever—it started three generations ago over a stray bull. The O'Dunn was still fighting for his great object in life, which was not to be 'onneighborly', as he put it. 'I DON'T want to be onneighborly,' he said, 'but I'll be aven wid some of 'em yit. It's almost impossible for a dacent man to live in sich a neighborhood and not be onneighborly, ...
— Joe Wilson and His Mates • Henry Lawson

... wonder if I am the child Of calm, law-loving parents, or a stray From some wild gypsy camp. I cannot stay Quiet among my fellows; when this wild Longing for freedom takes me I must fly To my dear woods ...
— A Woman's Love Letters • Sophie M. Almon-Hensley

... Surajah; and it will be just as well to lie down for a bit, until we see whether any of their shots come through the wall. I think we are quite safe from the distant fire, but from the house opposite it is possible they may penetrate it. Anyhow, don't stand in the line of a loophole. A stray ball might ...
— The Tiger of Mysore - A Story of the War with Tippoo Saib • G. A. Henty

... glanced her eye in wrath across this superscription, thinking to herself, "Oh, you good people! how you make us long in our hearts for trouble with you." She controlled the impulse, and mollified her spirit on her way home by distributing stray leaves of the tract to the outlying heaps of rubbish, and to one inquisitive pig, who was looking up from a badly-smelling sty for what the heavens ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... were all dressed in their best clothes and ready to start. They left True Tammas sitting on the doorstep with his ears drooped and his eyes looking very sorrowful. He wanted to go with them, but he knew well that he must stay at home to guard the sheep from stray dogs. ...
— The Scotch Twins • Lucy Fitch Perkins

... have travelled by the diligence. Yet I cannot escape the contagious disease of Modernity, and I choose to be whirled through the most delicious and restful scenery in the world, at the most perfect moment of the year, in three hours (including the interval for lunch) in a motor 'bus, while any stray passengers on the road, as by common accord, plant themselves on the further side of the nearest big tree until our fearsome engine of modernity has safely passed. It is an adventure ...
— Impressions And Comments • Havelock Ellis

... instance, the mere sound of that German band sent me off. Not that all music will do so, but certain sounds, certain vibrations, at once key me up to the requisite pitch, and off I go. Wagner's music always does it, and that band must have been playing a stray bit of Wagner. But I'll come to all that later. Only first, I must ask you to send away your ...
— Three More John Silence Stories • Algernon Blackwood

... us in the sense that he loves us. "The Father himself loveth you." "I have loved thee with an everlasting love." "God so loved the world." He has a deep and abiding affection for every soul, and even when we stray away from him into the depth of sin, his heart yearns over us as a mother over her erring boy, only his love is stronger than a mother's. He sends his servants out to seek the lost, and his Spirit to plead with them. Sinner, he loves you. Though you have grieved ...
— Heart Talks • Charles Wesley Naylor

... on until he came to the marble pavilion, and would have gone on to stray farther into the gardens, but that he caught sight of a woman's mantle upon the floor as he passed by the open doorway. He went up the few steps ...
— Marzio's Crucifix and Zoroaster • F. Marion Crawford

... muslins and changing her mind, Emma went to the door for amusement.—Much could not be hoped from the traffic of even the busiest part of Highbury;—Mr. Perry walking hastily by, Mr. William Cox letting himself in at the office-door, Mr. Cole's carriage-horses returning from exercise, or a stray letter-boy on an obstinate mule, were the liveliest objects she could presume to expect; and when her eyes fell only on the butcher with his tray, a tidy old woman travelling homewards from shop with her full basket, two curs quarrelling over a dirty bone, ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen

... indifference. He is often whole-souled and big-hearted, constantly allows himself to be imposed upon, but has an inconvenient habit of occasionally standing up for his rights and resenting too much oppression. He is exceedingly good-natured, and will often drive some stray cattle several miles for the convenience of a perfect stranger, and a man to whom ...
— My Native Land • James Cox

... was and I told him of it. With his hand on God's word he declared that he knew no more about her than Pani's story, and that he had loved his wife too well for his thoughts ever to stray elsewhere. He was an honest, upright man and I believe him. He planned at first to take the child to New Orleans, but Mademoiselle, who was about fourteen, objected strenuously. She was jealous of her father's love for the child. M. Bellestre was a large, fair man with auburn hair and hazel ...
— A Little Girl in Old Detroit • Amanda Minnie Douglas

... manly tears I will not wipe away, But from this place, the scholar's home, I'll stray. The bonze for mercy I shall thank; under the lotus altar shave my pate; With Yuean to be the luck I lack; soon in a twinkle we shall separate, And needy and forlorn I'll come and go, with none to care about my fate. Thither shall I a suppliant be for a fog wrapper and rain hat; my warrant I ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin

... slates and pencils; to help to lace their boots, and put on their hats neatly; to make Milly and Kitty wear their gloves, and prevent Robin and Wilfred from filling their pockets with nut shells, stones, frogs, or other unsuitable articles which were apt to stray out in class and call down the vials of the mistress's wrath upon their heads. She saw that they learnt their home lessons, did their sums, practised their due portions upon the piano: and it took up so much of ...
— The Nicest Girl in the School - A Story of School Life • Angela Brazil

... and then lay still. He turned to see what his companions had done, with their brisk fusillade. But he could not make out. They were still watching the setter, that was again being encouraged to go on, lest a stray bird or two might still be in hiding. However, the quest was fruitless. The whole of the small covey had risen simultaneously. So Roderick picked up the dead birds and put them on a conspicuous stone, at the same time signalling to the gillie with ...
— Prince Fortunatus • William Black

... a long silence, which Peter resolved not to break. Through the shuttered window, the distant bells chimed faintly into the room. The sick man's stray arm moved restlessly on the coverlet, but otherwise he ...
— Captivating Mary Carstairs • Henry Sydnor Harrison

... that her dad had not watched her work in that serial. For that matter, she hoped that Lone Morgan would never stray into a movie where any of her pictures were ...
— Sawtooth Ranch • B. M. Bower

... sloughs at her horse's feet. There flashed into her mind the night-and-day horror of the Indian's face and hand, and she began to whistle a little to rally heart as she rode beyond the cows to turn a stray. ...
— The Biography of a Prairie Girl • Eleanor Gates

... not but have known that he took no delight in coming thither. She had acknowledged this to herself; but she had consoled herself with the reflection that marriage would make this all right. Mr. Gibson was not the man to stray from his wife, and she could trust herself to obtain a sufficient hold upon her husband hereafter, partly by the strength of her tongue, partly by the ascendency of her spirit, and partly, also, by the comforts which she would provide for him. She had not doubted but that it would be ...
— He Knew He Was Right • Anthony Trollope

... demented him," said the parson. "These persons are like those addressed by St Chrysostom, fitly called the golden-mouthed, who said, 'Miserable wretches that ye be! ye cannot expel a flea, much less a devil!' It will be well if it serves no other purpose but to bring back these stray sheep to the fold of the Church. So this story has gained much ...
— The Haunters & The Haunted - Ghost Stories And Tales Of The Supernatural • Various

... wrote you about, because I saw a more effective way of using the main episode—to wit: by telling it through the lips of Huck Finn. So I have started Huck Finn and Tom Sawyer (still 15 years old) and their friend the freed slave Jim around the world in a stray balloon, with Huck as narrator, and somewhere after the end of that great voyage he will work in the said episode and then nobody will suspect that a whole book has been written and the globe circumnavigated merely to get that episode in an effective (and at the ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... no Pharisee, but he was not a Samaritan either. He had deliberately set himself to pull up any stray weeds of moral scruple that lingered in a mind stripped bare of Christian ethic, a task harder than some realize, since thousands of men who have no faith in Christ practise virtues that were not known for virtues ...
— Nightfall • Anthony Pryde

... will, of course, lunch with us to-morrow," Mrs. Polkington said, as if stray guests to lunch were the most usual and convenient thing in the world. The Polkingtons kept up a good many of their farces in private life; most of them found it easier, as well as pleasanter, to do so. "The cold beef," Mrs. Polkington said, mentally ...
— The Good Comrade • Una L. Silberrad

... bulwarks," Frank said. "They are not good shots, but a stray ball might come on board, and there is no use ...
— The Queen's Cup • G. A. Henty

... exactly," Sir Rupert replied, "unless they stray in by themselves. He's very eccentric and I don't think has been quite himself since the queen abdicated. They say he was in love with her, notwithstanding the fact that she ...
— A Queen's Error • Henry Curties

... who had been giving orders to his young men not to let the camels stray, rejoined them, and he gave the doctor ...
— In the Mahdi's Grasp • George Manville Fenn

... Monticelli; its painters painted nakedness in footlight effects with blobs for faces and blue shadows where they were needed to conceal the defects of impudent drawing; its composers maundered with both ears spread wide for stray echoes of Salome; its sculptors, stupefied by Rodin, achieved sections of human anatomy protruding from lumps of clay and marble; its dramatists, drugged by Mallarme and Maeterlinck, dabbled in dullness, platitude and mediocre ...
— The Common Law • Robert W. Chambers

... to be amused was at once at home, on the same footing with him.... More spontaneous than the first troubadours, he banished from his writings abstract and general types, "romanticized" life itself, and not myths, those eternal legends that stray through the highways ...
— Une Vie, A Piece of String and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant

... serving under my command, I can offer no higher compliment than in having thus placed their severe and zealous labours before the public; and no professional reader who reads these "Stray Leaves," can fail, I am certain, to perceive how heavily must have fallen the labours here recounted upon the men and officers of the steam tenders, and how deep an obligation I their commander must ...
— Stray Leaves from an Arctic Journal; • Sherard Osborn

... grown to love would return after a little. He always came back. He had never failed him. So he began to hunt about for a spring beauty or a dog-tooth violet, and for some time he was careful not to stray very far away from where the outfit ...
— The Grizzly King • James Oliver Curwood

... dear, and wait patiently for your return. Follow in your father's footsteps. Do the right, and fear not whatever may happen; be brave and gentle, and filled with love for your country, even as he was. Keep his memory green in your heart, and you cannot stray from ...
— At the Point of the Sword • Herbert Hayens

... my love did stray, For me he search'd the banks around; But, ah! the sad and fatal day, My love, the pride of swains, ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various

... wander, Thy steps, O traveller, stay! Turn to the island yonder, And listen to my lay. Thy every meditation Bid hither, hither stray: On yonder banks its station Had ...
— Ellen of Villenskov - and Other Ballads • Anonymous

... come forth from their stronghold they were accustomed to strew a little fresh earth over the entire spot, and thus afford an additional precaution against the chance of detection on the part of any one who might chance to stray in that direction. We may also add that the trap-door was provided with a massive bolt which fastened it inside when closed, and that the handle of the bell-wire, which gave the signal to open the trap, was concealed in a small hollow in the old ...
— Wagner, the Wehr-Wolf • George W. M. Reynolds

... welcoming, the blue-shirted porter take my knapsack and show me the way to the coffee-room. His business was to sit still and guard that archway. Paying guests, and those known to the family,—yes! But stray mountain goats, chickens, inquisitive, pushing peddlers, pigs, and wandering dogs,—well, he would look ...
— A Gentleman Vagabond and Some Others • F. Hopkinson Smith

... down the tree-darkened lane that led to the main street of the village. Beneath a forest oak, where the desolate town cow and the stray sheep had come to seek freedom from the annoyances of the day, he halted and looked back. The few remaining lanterns were like fire-flies in a growth of giant grass. The members of the "string-band" were singing a negro melody. The notes came floating with the mirth-shriek of a maiden, and the ...
— Old Ebenezer • Opie Read

... A stray tear now stole down his cheeks, and then another. The poor boy was overcome, and he gave way to a sudden outburst of grief. Then he rested his head in his hand, and tried to think again. But his mind was wearied ...
— The Boy Broker - Among the Kings of Wall Street • Frank A. Munsey

... press me further, I will say A word to madden you.—Stand still! You stray Around the margin of a precipice. I know what pleasure 'tis to pluck the flowers That hang above destruction, and to gaze Into the dread abyss, to see such things As may be safely seen. Tis perilous: The eye grows dizzy ...
— Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1856-1911: Francesca da Rimini • George Henry Boker

... I dare say I was to blame—shamefully to blame, if you like. I only wonder what you would have done in my place. On your word of honor as a man, would you have let that beautiful creature wander back to the shelter of the stone quarry like a stray dog? God help the woman who is foolish enough to trust and love you, if you would ...
— The Lock And Key Library - Classic Mystery And Detective Stories, Modern English • Various

... they were protected from the enemy's bullets. I also deployed a line of skirmishers, resting on our right and left flanks encircling our rear, in order to prevent a surprise from any detached force of the enemy that might approach us from that direction and to prevent any straggling of either stray animals ...
— The Battle of Atlanta - and Other Campaigns, Addresses, Etc. • Grenville M. Dodge

... said Mrs. McNab, twitching violently a stray lock of her flaming hair and tucking it beneath her cap, "I dinna ken how you could tak' upon yourself to send such a ward as that, when Mr. Brown is just on the creesis of his fever and not one of ye as knows how-to tak' care o' him more than a ...
— Adele Dubois - A Story of the Lovely Miramichi Valley in New Brunswick • Mrs. William T. Savage

... crowd boarded the rum-runner and joined issues with the crews of the two allied boats but when from out of the skies there descended a swooping monster, apparently about to fall upon them as might a stray meteor from unlimited space in the firmament, and that strange, racking pain gripped their eyes, nothing but panic could describe their condition with any degree ...
— Eagles of the Sky - With Jack Ralston Along the Air Lanes • Ambrose Newcomb

... encouraging smile of Mlle. Remy happily diverted Fouchette from the consideration of her critics. Every kind word and every smile went home to Mlle. Fouchette. And for the moment she gave way to the pleasure they created, as a stray kitten leans up against a warm brick. Sometimes it seemed as if she must break down and throw herself upon the breast of this lovely girl and claim her natural right to be kept there, forever next ...
— Mlle. Fouchette - A Novel of French Life • Charles Theodore Murray

... provocation. On the other hand, there came a time when she grew just a little weary of these dear sweet friends, and began to find them less charming than of old; but she was never uncivil to them; they always remained on her list, and received stray gleams from the sunlight ...
— The Lovels of Arden • M. E. Braddon

... course, in such a republic, art and literature, as the highest manifestation of mind, would have the supreme direction. Do you smile, reader? I smile now; but it was serious earnest with me then. It is unnecessary to say more on this point. I have said so much to render intelligible the stray link of communion which riveted the charm of my new acquaintance's conversation; there was both agreement enough and difference enough in our views to render our ...
— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.

... villa gay We shall not choose, though gipsies may, Through country lanes and woods to stray, Not likely. We shall enter An up-to-date Bohemian lot, And, if you read The Daily Rot, You'll find it has observed us (what?) Proceeding at a smartish trot Through London's ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, May 21, 1919. • Various

... you right here against getting the society bug in your head. I'd sooner you'd smoke these Turkish cigarettes which smell like a fire in the fertilizer factory. You're going to meet a good many stray fools in the course of business every day without going out to hunt up the ...
— Letters from a Self-Made Merchant to His Son • George Horace Lorimer

... the raspberry Red for the gatherer springs, Two children did we stray and talk Wise, ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 1 (of 4) • Various

... one day," said Llewellyn, "but the men were drunk at the time and frightened them away; so they never came back again when we needed them. Only a stray gull or two occasionally flew by, so far out of reach that none of us could ...
— The Wreck of the Nancy Bell - Cast Away on Kerguelen Land • J. C. Hutcheson

... and not very far from the mountain's most extreme point. The playground is inclosed on all sides by round knolls, which conceal it from any and all who do not happen to come right upon it. And in the month of March it is not at all likely that any pedestrians will stray off up there. All the strangers who usually stroll around on the rocks, and clamber up the mountain's sides the fall storms have driven away these many months past. And the lighthouse keeper out there on the point; the old fru on the ...
— The Wonderful Adventures of Nils • Selma Lagerlof

... pleasures of the day, which for a few hours has made you one of the most eminent women this side the Rocky Mountains. There is a bugle at the house here with which to make the echoes, I shall take it with me, and from time to time send up a sweet reminder that you are not to stray away ...
— Moods • Louisa May Alcott

... at best but a hole in the roof to serve as one. The doors stood open, even though "the storms of snow and rain prevailed abroad," and in spite of the good fire, it must have been comfortless enough. Yet many a stray bird might well be drawn thither by the ...
— English Literature For Boys And Girls • H.E. Marshall

... unusual height. Suddenly he thought of his canoe. He hastened over the rocks to find it far afloat. There he was left alone on the island with only the fish of the ocean for food and the sky to cover his head. That day and the next he watched for a stray canoe. On the morning of the third day, as he scanned the ocean to the East, he discerned a distant ...
— Some Three Hundred Years Ago • Edith Gilman Brewster

... Professor Roumann, "we'll have to be on the lookout for wandering meteors or other stray heavenly bodies. But our instruments will give us timely warning of them. Now, I think we can leave the projectile to herself while I make sure that all the machinery is running smoothly. You boys may stay here if you like, though there isn't ...
— Lost on the Moon - or In Quest Of The Field of Diamonds • Roy Rockwood

... madding crowd's ignoble strife, Their sober wishes never learned to stray; Along the cool, sequester'd vale of life They kept the noiseless ...
— Graded Memory Selections • Various

... soul, attracted by its blaze, Still follows where it points the way, And while attentively I gaze, Considers not how far I stray. ...
— Wit and Wisdom of Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

... wear upon Stella's nerves at last. It was so futile, yet so pathetic—the same soft minor tinkle, only a few stray notes played over and over, over and over, till her brain rang with the maddening little refrain. She was glad when the meal was over, and she could make the excuse to move to the drawing-room. There was a piano here, a rickety instrument long since hammered into tunelessness. ...
— The Lamp in the Desert • Ethel M. Dell

... started from first, but he could recall many of the places where he had lived, and why he had left them—usually because somebody, like old Nathan, had wanted to have him bound out, or had misused Jack, or would not let the two stray off into the woods together, when there was nothing else to be done. He had stayed longest where he was now, because the old man and his son and his girl had all taken a great fancy to Jack, and had let the two guard cattle in the mountains ...
— The Little Shepherd of Kingdom Come • John Fox

... eyes, nor send your glance about. Oh, watch your feet, nor stray beyond the kerb. Oh, bind your heart lest it find secrets out. For thus no punishment Of magic shall ...
— This Is the End • Stella Benson

... is only, we feel, a stray sample of what there is to be seen. What may there not be in those forest depths which we dare not enter for fear of losing our way! What other towering forest monarchs might we not come across if we plunged into ...
— The Heart of Nature - or, The Quest for Natural Beauty • Francis Younghusband

... hear him go, but when I spoke again there was no answer, and I devoted all my energy to my task, though it had become so monotonous that my thoughts began to stray, and I found myself wondering how matters were going in the cabin—whether they were very much alarmed by the noise of the steam, or whether they felt as confident as the mate did about our ultimate mastery of the fire, and how Walters and ...
— Sail Ho! - A Boy at Sea • George Manville Fenn

... Gibson could have asked Osborne, or in default, Roger Hamley to go to the ball with them and to sleep at their house,—or if, indeed, she could have picked up any stray scion of a 'county family' to whom such an offer would have been a convenience, she would have restored her own dressing-room to its former use as the spare-room, with pleasure. But she did not think it was worth her while to put ...
— Wives and Daughters • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell

... my Butler back to me; I stray and lapse alone! If this be freedom, to be free Were something best unknown. He used to look so grand and grave— So sad when I was slack; 'Twas difficult to misbehave— Oh, bring ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 103, August 20, 1892 • Various

... clergy of a State Church enjoy many advantages over those of unprivileged and unendowed religious persuasions; but they lie under a correlative responsibility to the State, and to every member of the body politic. I am not aware that any sacredness attaches to sermons. If preachers stray beyond the doctrinal limits set by lay lawyers, the Privy Council will see to it; and, if they think fit to use their pulpits for the promulgation of literary, or historical, or scientific errors, it is not only the right, ...
— Collected Essays, Volume V - Science and Christian Tradition: Essays • T. H. Huxley

... and carefully, as the work of destruction went on, for the pot of gold beneath the floor, or the secret hoard which fancy assigns to all old houses; but not even a stray penny turned up. Yet I got several souvenirs. One of these is a nail in my foot whereby I shall remember my iconoclasm for some time. Another is a curiously wrought wooden scoop, a sort of butter-worker, the historian tells me, carved, seemingly, ...
— Old Plymouth Trails • Winthrop Packard

... its track from the James would be enabled to co-operate with the columns previously mentioned. It is instructive to note that, upon the other side, the untrained instinct of President Lincoln was always turning in the same direction. In perusing the field of operations his finger would always stray to the eastern coast of North Carolina as the vital point, and no persuasions could induce him to give up the apparently useless foothold which we kept there for more than three years without material advantage. It ...
— Bricks Without Straw • Albion W. Tourgee

... roses, and slammed the door after him. A moment later she opened it again and held the light to show us the dripping path to the gate. Framed in the doorway with the light held up by her round white arm, the dampness putting a softer curl in every stray lock of her rich brown hair, the roses still blooming on her cheeks, she sent us away. Too young and sweet-spirited she seemed for any evil to assail her in ...
— The Price of the Prairie - A Story of Kansas • Margaret Hill McCarter

... went worse still; in vain did Matthias, the oldest of the nine children, take his twin sister into the fields to search the brambles for stray hips, or locks of wool the sheep had not left there willingly; men and women even worse off had been there before them, and they came home at night, tired out and footsore, only to hear Zitza's fretful cry for food, and the constant chatter of Meister Hans, ...
— Our Young Folks—Vol. I, No. II, February 1865 - An Illustrated Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various

... with him for the good life he was leading and hoped to lead with his present Queen,[1116] "after sundry troubles of mind which had happened to him by marriages".[1117] At last he thought he had reached the haven of domestic peace, whence no roving fancy should tempt him to stray. Twenty-four hours later Cranmer put in his hand proofs of the Queen's misconduct. Henry refused to believe in this rude awakening from his dreams; he ordered a strict investigation into the charges. Its results left no room for doubt. Dereham confessed his intercourse; Mannock admitted ...
— Henry VIII. • A. F. Pollard

... a stray one here and there! There is many a solitary family still dwells among the mountains since the time of ...
— Early Plays - Catiline, The Warrior's Barrow, Olaf Liljekrans • Henrik Ibsen

... the rest of us to believe that they were not painting the lily rather freely in their accounts of them. But the Story Girl was the soul of honour; and Peter, early in life, had had his feet set in the path of truthfulness by his Aunt Jane and had never been known to stray from it. When they assured us solemnly that their dreams all happened exactly as they described them we were compelled to believe them. But there was something up, we felt sure of that. Peter and the Story Girl certainly had a ...
— The Story Girl • Lucy Maud Montgomery

... seemed as wild as then. Anthony suspected that there were houses—perhaps villages—hidden from his view; but vast stretches of enchanted jungle intervened, which he determined to explore, letting his feet stray whither they would. If game, of which he had heard great stories, fell to his hand, ...
— The Ne'er-Do-Well • Rex Beach

... enough to undo the elixir. From early dawn to midnight I bent over the test-tube and the furnace. Above all, I collected the papyri and the chemical flasks of the Priest of Thoth. Alas! they taught me little. Here and there some hint or stray expression would raise hope in my bosom, but no good ever came of it. Still, month after month, I struggled on. When my heart grew faint I would make my way to the tomb by the palm-trees. There, ...
— The Captain of the Pole-Star and Other Tales • Arthur Conan Doyle

... Coralline," page 96) states that Ombellularia was procured in latitude 79 deg N. STICKING to a LINE from the depth of 236 fathoms; hence this coral either must have been floating loose, or was entangled in stray line at the bottom. Off Keeling atoll a compound Ascidia (Sigillina) was brought up from 39 fathoms, and a piece of sponge, apparently living, from 70, and a fragment of Nullipora also apparently living ...
— Coral Reefs • Charles Darwin

... the precedence; she actually pushed before her. Mrs. Van Dorn had closed the front door very softly, and they stood in a long, narrow hall, with an obsolete tapestry carpet, and large-figured gold and white paper revealing its gleaming scrolls in stray patches of light. Mrs. Lee went close to an old-fashioned black-walnut hat-tree, the one article of furniture besides ...
— The Debtor - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman

... Jennie was asleep, Dorothea, wide-eyed, communed with the Monster. This was not an imitation Lady Ursula jealousy at all. That was an interesting game at which one played when Amiel occasionally walked and talked with some stray damsel in the colony. She had no real jealousy of the young ladyhood that at times intruded. But this was different; here she was out- ranked in HER OWN CLASS. In that lay the sting. She reflected dismally that this ...
— Stories from Everybody's Magazine • 1910 issues of Everybody's Magazine

... Potomac to-night!" Except here and there a stray picket Is shot, as he walks on his beat, to and fro, By a rifleman ...
— War Poetry of the South • Various

... available works of an historical character then existing in the English tongue, and Caxton not only printed them but himself continued the latter up to his own time. A translation of Boethius, a version of the AEneid from the French, and a tract or two of Cicero, were the stray first-fruits of the classical press ...
— History of the English People, Volume III (of 8) - The Parliament, 1399-1461; The Monarchy 1461-1540 • John Richard Green

... garland was fastened in its place, the last stray bit of evergreen and rubbish swept from the doors, the church garnished and beautiful to behold. There was the noisy bustle of preparing for departure and ...
— The Rose of Old St. Louis • Mary Dillon

... fear you are not the man that once you were; Of your so daring, such a faint-heart now! I have ground to know the foot that flustered you Were but a few stray groups of Netherlanders; For my good spies in Brussels send me cue That up to now the English have not stirred, But cloy ...
— The Dynasts - An Epic-Drama Of The War With Napoleon, In Three Parts, - Nineteen Acts, And One Hundred And Thirty Scenes • Thomas Hardy

... realise what formidable forces of annihilation are kept in check in our communities by bonds of social ideas; nay, made into multitudinous manifestations of beauty and fruitfulness. Thus we know that evils are, like meteors, stray fragments of life, which need the attraction of some great ideal in order to be assimilated with the wholesomeness of creation. The evil forces are literally outlaws; they only need the control and cadence of spiritual laws to change ...
— Creative Unity • Rabindranath Tagore

... of the Fifth book, they leave the solitary valley, taking its pensive inhabitant along with them, and stray on to where the landscape sinks down into milder features, till they arrive at a church, which stands on a moderate elevation in the centre of a wide and fertile vale. Here they meditate for a while among the monuments, ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson

... enough, throttled the traditional grey goose. The farmer watches for the frozen thatch to drip; the gentleman visiting the stable looks up disconsolately at the icicles dependent from the slated eave with the same hope. The sight of a stray seagull wandering inland is gladly welcomed, as the harbinger of drenching clouds sweeping up on soft south-westerly gales ...
— Hodge and His Masters • Richard Jefferies

... point before night. My wits are working, but I like to trust to chance for a stray idea or so; we must walk fast, or we shall be smothered with ...
— Peter Simple and The Three Cutters, Vol. 1-2 • Frederick Marryat

... made short trips along the foothills hoping to find some trace of the guide, but search as they would they were unable to locate him. Nor did they dare stray far from the camp for fear of being unable to find their way back. The foothills all looked so alike that if one unfamiliar with them should lose his way he would find himself in a ...
— The Pony Rider Boys in Montana • Frank Gee Patchin

... had been I would have taken good care that there was a better watch set," replied Tim Callaghan. "I couldn't leave because my wife was ill, but I heard through the police, who sent me word that I should be fined for letting my cattle stray to the danger of other people's property, and that I should have doubtless lost the greater part of my mob for good and all if it had not been for a Mr. Dalrymple Plumstead, who rode after the thieves and gave warning to the police. There is one comfort about ...
— The Adventurous Seven - Their Hazardous Undertaking • Bessie Marchant

... thrill of pleasure when we see beauty linked to beauty, like kindred flame to flame, or from applauding the voluptuous fancy that raises and adorns the fairy fabric of thought, that nature has begun! Pleasure is "scattered in stray-gifts o'er the earth"—beauty streaks the "famous poet's page" in occasional lines of inconceivable brightness; and wherever this is the case, no splenetic censures or "jealous leer malign," no idle ...
— The Spirit of the Age - Contemporary Portraits • William Hazlitt

... half chanted a nursery rhyme. It was a sight fair to see! Elizabeth never seemed more lovely: her artificial, dissimulating smile changed into hearty, maternal glee, her smooth cheek flushed with exercise, a stray ringlet escaping from the stiff coif!—And, alas, the moment the two ladies caught sight of Rivers, all the charm was dissolved; the child was hastily put on the floor; the queen, half ashamed of being natural, ...
— The Last Of The Barons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... waited a few seconds for her confidence, but she waited in vain. Lady Priscilla had retired completely behind her shield, and it was quite obvious that she had no intention of exposing herself any further to stray shots. ...
— The Swindler and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell

... of the hut, and joyfully announced the discoveries he had made. The travellers dismounted. The horse and mule were picketed on lassoes on the plain. The llamas were left to go at will. They would not stray far from ...
— Popular Adventure Tales • Mayne Reid

... these events Sandy was restored to the bosom of the church, and, enfolded by its sheltering arms, was no longer tempted to stray from the path of rectitude, but became even a more rigid Methodist than before ...
— The Marrow of Tradition • Charles W. Chesnutt

... among the Scotch hills, I doubt not—specially lays itself out for the humble-bee, and its masses form almost his highest pasture-grounds; but the butterflies—insect vagrants that they are—have no fixed home, and they therefore stray far above the level at which bee-blossoms altogether cease to grow. Now, the butterfly differs greatly from the bee in his mode of honey-hunting: he does not bustle about in a business-like manner from one buttercup or dead-nettle to its nearest fellow; but he flits ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner

... Lance becoming unselfish enough to inquire into one or two facts concerning her life which did not immediately affect him. Her mother had died on the plains when she was a baby, and her brother had run away from home at twelve. She fully expected to see him again, and thought he might sometime stray into their canon. "That is why, then, you take so much stock in ...
— Frontier Stories • Bret Harte

... gaiety, however coarse it may appear to us—and how rare a thing is gaiety!—has, after all, nothing unwholesome about it; and this is too often overlooked. Where does he tempt one to stray from duty? Where, even indirectly, does he give pernicious advice? Whom has he led to evil ways? Does he ever inspire feelings that breed misconduct and vice, or is he ever the apologist of these? Many poets and romance writers, under cover of a fastidious style, without ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais

... As., etc., etc. It is understood, we presume, that the modern farce occupies no exalted position in the comic scale, is distinguished by the grotesquerie of its characters, incidents and dialogue, and is indulgently permitted to stray far from the paths of realism. Even in Shakespearian farce, note the exaggerated antics of the two Dromios in "The Comedy of Errors." It is significant then that farce is a ...
— The Dramatic Values in Plautus • William Wallace Blancke

... about it; it was a dog. But where could a dog have come from? I did not keep one; could some stray dog have run in, I wondered. I called my servant; Filka was his name. He came in ...
— Knock, Knock, Knock and Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev

... attached and staked down on the ground. Any one stumbling over one of these wires explodes the bomb and throws a charge of broken iron to a distance of fifty feet. How the Spaniards are going to prevent stray cattle and their own soldiers from wandering into these man-traps it is difficult ...
— Cuba in War Time • Richard Harding Davis

... marl-pit making a red background for the burdock; the huddled roofs and ricks of the homestead without a traceable way of approach; the gray gate and fences against the depths of the bordering wood; and the stray hovel, its old, old thatch full of mossy hills and valleys with wondrous modulations of light and shadow such as we travel far to see in later life, and see larger, but not more beautiful. These are the things that make ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot

... more will I stray From my Savior away, But I'll follow the Lamb till I die; I will take up my cross, And count all things but loss, Till I meet with ...
— The Otterbein Hymnal - For Use in Public and Social Worship • Edmund S. Lorenz

... not near. I honour each man's merit; and to Tasso Am barely just. His eye, that covets nothing, Light ranges over all; his ear is fill'd With the rich harmony great nature makes; What ancient records, what the living scene, Disclose, his open bosom takes it all; What beams of truth stray scattered o'er this world, His mind collects, converges. How his heart Has animated the inanimate! How oft ennobled what we little prize, And shown how poor the treasures of the great! In this enchanted circle of his own Proceeds the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol 58, No. 357, July 1845 • Various

... further graceful idealization, an attractive pastel, you may call it, the lady he most frequently admired, and, of the remainder, two or three Kit-Cat portraits, a head and shoulders here, and there a stray face."[31] ...
— Short Story Writing - A Practical Treatise on the Art of The Short Story • Charles Raymond Barrett

... were, lots of them," said Grace, stopping before a mirror to tuck in a stray lock that had come loose in the general confusion. "Only you and Betty were talking so hard and fast, you didn't hear us. Goodness, but ...
— The Outdoor Girls in Army Service - Doing Their Bit for the Soldier Boys • Laura Lee Hope

... her elbows, the under skirt a pale pink, the upper a deeper rose colour; but stiff as was the attire, she had managed to give it a slight general air of disarrangement, to get her cap a little on one side, a stray curl loose on her forehead, to tear a bit of the dangling lace on her arms, and to splash her robe with a puddle. He was in air, feature, and complexion a perfect little dark Frenchman. The contour of her ...
— A Modern Telemachus • Charlotte M. Yonge

... into a sullen silence, and no sound was heard but the unsteady rumble of the wheels, the creak of an ungreased axle, and the occasional crack of a whip. Clouds of dust arose and were whipped by the stray winds into the faces of the travelers, the fine particles burning like hot ashes. The train moved slowly and heavily, as if it dragged a wounded length ...
— The Last of the Chiefs - A Story of the Great Sioux War • Joseph Altsheler

... army marched slowly forward. The regular officers had endless difficulty with the pack horsemen, who allowed their charges to stray or be stolen, and they strove to instruct the militia in the rudiments of their duties, on the march, in camp, and in battle. A fortnight's halting progress through the wilderness brought the army to a small branch of the Miami of the Lakes. Here a horse patrol captured a Maumee ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume Three - The Founding of the Trans-Alleghany Commonwealths, 1784-1790 • Theodore Roosevelt

... obliged to one of two distasteful and perilous alternatives; either to shut the door altogether and set his portmanteau out upon the wayside, a wonder to all beholders; or to leave the door ajar, so that any thievish tramp or holiday schoolboy might stray in and stumble on the grisly secret. To the last, as the least desperate, his mind inclined; but he must first insure himself that he was unobserved. He peered out, and down the long road; it lay dead ...
— Tales and Fantasies • Robert Louis Stevenson

... pretty and affectionate girl beside him would make an ideal wife. Of her family and blood he was sure. She was his mother's choice, and his mother had set her heart upon their marriage. Why not speak to her now, and thus give himself the best possible protection against stray flames ...
— The House Behind the Cedars • Charles W. Chesnutt

... to stop now was destruction. Though to go on might bring no profit to her, yet her safety depended upon closing forever the path of reconciliation toward which his mind seemed to stray. And step by step, shrouding as far as possible her own agency, she spread out before him that basis of fact upon which she so well knew how to erect a false superstructure. She told him how the intimacy of AEnone and Cleotos had led her to keep watch—how AEnone ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 4, October, 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various

... flies, mosquitoes, and sand-flies, their horses scattered and rambled incessantly. While the brothers were absent, searching one day for the horses, the party at the camp allowed the solitary mule to stray away with its pack on. The mule was never found again, and it carried with it, in its pack, some of their most necessary articles, reducing them nearly to the same state of deprivation as their determined enemies, the aboriginals. ...
— The Explorers of Australia and their Life-work • Ernest Favenc

... plaint convey? Or if we put on patience, short is a lover's life, After his heart's beloved is torn from him away. Nothing, alas! is left me but sorrow and despair And tears that adown my cheeks without cessation stray. Thou that art ever absent from my desireful sight, Thou that art yet a dweller within my heart alway, Hast thou kept troth, I wonder, with one who loves thee dear, Whose faith, whilst time endureth, never shall know ...
— The Book Of The Thousand Nights And One Night, Volume I • Anonymous

... foot with the new wine of the year I sped on again, stray daffodils lighting the wayside, until I heard the voice of the stream and reached the field gate which leads to the lower meadows. There before me lay spring's pageant; green pennons waving, dainty maids curtseying, ...
— The Roadmender • Michael Fairless

... the light of subsequent events I fear I cannot speak very well of him. He was an idle and careless young rascal, and only that very morning I had to tell Pharaoh to give him a beating for letting the oxen stray, which Pharaoh did with the greatest gusto, although he was by way of being very fond of Jim-Jim. Indeed, I saw him consoling Jim-Jim afterwards with a pinch of snuff from his own ear-box, whilst he explained to him that the next time it came in the way of duty to flog him, ...
— A Tale of Three Lions • H. Rider Haggard

... strings thy fingers are straying, O'er my heart stray the tones; And it wanders obeying, Far away from the zones; Up tending, Round thee bending, Round thy heart to be growing And clinging, Round thee flinging, Its glad mirth overflowing— Oh! thou Spirit from me springing, Life on me bestowing! Dazzled, blinded, ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 5 • Various

... found in them. Undoubtedly, however, the great sanctuary of a district was frequently, as he represents, in the recesses of a wood. Under a mighty tree a tribe would hold its meetings and sit in judgment and in council; and there were sacred groves in which no human foot might stray, where the god was supposed to dwell, where great sacrifices both of animal and of human victims took place, where the boughs were hung with the bones of former sacrifices which in war were carried ...
— History of Religion - A Sketch of Primitive Religious Beliefs and Practices, and of the Origin and Character of the Great Systems • Allan Menzies

... instruments—the staff, for his own support, and to attack a beast or robber; and the crook, or rod. By this crook, the shepherd guided a sheep in a dangerous pass, placing the crook under the sheep's neck, to hold him up and assist his steps. When a sheep was disposed to stray, the shepherd could hold him back with his crook. When the sheep had fallen into the power of a beast, the crook assisted in drawing him away. A good sheep loved the crook as much as the staff,—to be guided, as well as to be defended. ...
— Catharine • Nehemiah Adams

... of orderly lives that they stray from nature's path, while they themselves follow it; as people in a ship think those move who are on the shore. On all sides the language is similar. We must have a fixed point in order to judge. The harbour decides for those who are in a ship; but ...
— Pascal's Pensees • Blaise Pascal

... Lakes, New Jersey, where they raise prize winning collie dogs. Photographs come from New Jersey showing Mr. and Mrs. Terhune taking afternoon tea, entirely surrounded by magnificently coated collies. You will also find, if you stray into a bookstore this autumn, a book with a jacket drawn by Charles Livingston Bull—a jacket from which looms a colossal collie. He carries in a firmly knotted shawl or blanket or sheet or something (the knot clenched ...
— When Winter Comes to Main Street • Grant Martin Overton

... Clover, but Mr. Hammond is always careful not to turn them into a field of Clover when they are very hungry, or to let them stray in by accident. If they got in they would eat it ravenously, and many would very likely die. Too hearty a meal of Clover has the same effect on them as a great quantity of new bread would ...
— Wildflowers of the Farm • Arthur Owens Cooke

... Almighty God, and asked for a blessing on his undertaking. And in his subsequent proclamation to the empire, he spoke of that God as follows: "God has given to every man a conscience; and if all men acted in accordance with its dictates, they would not stray from the right path. . . . The way of God is to bless the good and punish the bad. He has sent down calamities on the House of Hsia, ...
— Religions of Ancient China • Herbert A. Giles

... extending for miles, was by no means a common feature, it was perhaps more striking to us, on coming from the soft plains, on account of its firmness, neither hoofs nor wheels leaving any impression upon it. The two men came in with the stray bullock soon after the tents were pitched, and thus our party was again in a state ...
— Three Expeditions into the Interior of Eastern Australia, Vol 1 (of 2) • Thomas Mitchell

... doing this the young ostriches set to work and ate up all the stray eggs they could find, one or two small animals, and some young wild birds who were so unsophisticated as to believe them to be mother hens, and so injudicious as to hop quite close to them in order to pick up ...
— Rataplan • Ellen Velvin

... pours out with untiring energy his feeble monotonous song, little knowing that by so doing he has betrayed the spot where he has fixed his nest to the marauder. The eggs, of which I have seen about fifteen or twenty, answer the description given in 'Stray Feathers' exactly." ...
— The Nests and Eggs of Indian Birds, Volume 1 • Allan O. Hume

... said, probably took place in England in the seventh or eighth century; in earlier form, perhaps in the original brief ballads, it may have been brought to the country either by the Anglo-Saxons or by stray 'Danes.' It is fundamentally a heathen work, and certain Christian ideas which have been inserted here and there, such as the mention of Cain as the ancestor of Grendel, and the disparagement of heathen gods, merely show that one of the later poets ...
— A History of English Literature • Robert Huntington Fletcher

... acquainted with some members of the Common Council" (he laid emphasis on the word "slightly," to imply that he was on terms of the closest intimacy with them), "and can easily obtain from them the privilege of catching all the stray dogs, and taking them out of the country ...
— Round the Block • John Bell Bouton

... his shoulder, it was a mighty pretty sight! the gray cat sound asleep against papa's gray coat and hair. The names that he has given our different cats, are realy remarkably funny, they are namely Stray Kit, Abner, Motley, Fraeulein, Lazy, Bufalo Bill, Cleveland, Sour Mash, ...
— Chapters from My Autobiography • Mark Twain

... Vallejo exhausting, had contracted the habit of slipping out in the first reaches of the dawn to a saloon down the street. It was a safe habit, for even the few night-roving tenants the Vallejo had were housed at that hour, and if a belated reveler should stray in, the door was always left on the latch. Moreover he only stayed a few minutes; a warming gulp and he was back again, wide-awake for the call of the day. His was the figure Mayer had seen walking down ...
— Treasure and Trouble Therewith - A Tale of California • Geraldine Bonner

... time before he was able to draw up out of his boyhood memories, so newly made a gift to him, the stray, elucidating fact of his father's early visit to this spot and the possibility of his dream having shaped itself about some unremembered account of it. He climbed up to the galleries to give himself ...
— The Lovely Lady • Mary Austin



Words linked to "Stray" :   sporadic, vagabond, roll, domestic animal, domesticated animal, drift, locomote, ramble, range, gad, tramp, roam, isolated, travel



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