"Legged" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... to speak to a passenger named Mr. Jarvis Lorry, then on his way to Paris,—as faithfully chronicled in A Tale of Two Cities. Again, in the early part of the present century, when a certain friendless but dear and artless boy, named David Copperfield,—who having been first robbed by a "long-legged young man with a very little empty donkey-cart, which was nothing but a large wooden-tray on wheels," of "half a guinea and his box," under pretence of "driving him to the pollis," and subsequently defrauded by an unscrupulous tailor named one Mr. Dolloby ("Dolloby ...
— A Week's Tramp in Dickens-Land • William R. Hughes
... tugged away at the crane, with its black hooks, from which hung the iron tea-kettle and three-legged pot; then she settled the long spit in the grooves made for it in the tall andirons, and put the dripping-pan underneath, for in those days meat was roasted as it should be, not ...
— Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag VI - An Old-Fashioned Thanksgiving, Etc. • Louisa M. Alcott
... de Spain walked with him out into the barn to inspect the horses. Passing the very last of the box-stalls, the manager saw in it a pony. He stopped. No second glance was needed to tell him it was a good horse; then he realized that this wiry, sleek-legged roan, contentedly munching at the moment some ...
— Nan of Music Mountain • Frank H. Spearman
... realize it, but that cub's name must be George! I'll look out for the Georges. I'm glad I've been warned. I'll see that no two-legged object named George enters this house! You'll never go anywhere where there's anybody named George ...
— The Green Mouse • Robert W. Chambers
... politely from the floor, where she was sitting cross-legged, after the Moorish fashion. I have seen exalted ladies in this position at Madrid, and it is very common in the antechambers of the Court and the palace of the Princess of the Asturias. The Spanish women sit in church in the ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... of the grim old clock, undisturbed by all the noise without, still beat heavily within its dusty case; the tottering presses slunk from the sight, as usual, in their melancholy corners; the echoes of footsteps returned the same dreary sound; the long-legged spider paused in his nimble run, and, scared by the sight of men in that his dull domain, hung motionless on the wall, counterfeiting death until they should have passed ...
— The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby • Charles Dickens
... procure supplies. Pedro de Ircio requested to have the command on this occasion, to which Cortes assented: But as I knew Ircio to be a better prater than marcher, I whispered to Cortes and Sandoval to prevent him from going, as he was a duck-legged fellow, who could not get through the miry ground, and would only interrupt us in our search. Cortes accordingly ordered him to remain, and five of us set out with two Indian guides across rivers and marshes, and came at length to some Indian houses where we found provisions ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. IV. • Robert Kerr
... have seen a good many young men dressed that way. I believe it is considered the tip of the fashion. I haven't seen any of the bare-legged dandies yet with a high silk hat and an umbrella, but I expect it won't be long before I meet one. We often see the Highland soldiers that belong to the garrison at the castle, and they look mighty fine with their plaid shawls and their scarfs and their feathers; but to see a ...
— Pomona's Travels - A Series of Letters to the Mistress of Rudder Grange from her Former - Handmaiden • Frank R. Stockton
... was a large, oblong hall, with a great figure of Buddha, cross-legged, imperturbable, enthroned in a niche at its further end, like the apse or recess in a church in Italy. Before it stood an altar. The Buddha sat and smiled on us with his eternal smile. A complacent ...
— Hilda Wade - A Woman With Tenacity Of Purpose • Grant Allen
... that any attempt at disguise would be futile; but with so respectable a person as a Dutch burgher, or so suspicious an individual as an English lawyer, the case is altogether different. We have specimens of the respectable devil in the "long-legged bondholder" who appears to his unfortunate Dutch debtor; the portly, well-dressed little man in the "Gentleman in black"; and the seedy looking old clothes dealer of "Peter Schlemihl." Quite a different devil to any of these is the ...
— English Caricaturists and Graphic Humourists of the Nineteenth Century. - How they Illustrated and Interpreted their Times. • Graham Everitt
... there were no Indian writers arose on the other side, the fact was considered as fully admitted and established, that the two-legged race of animals before mentioned were mere cannibals, detestable monsters, and many of them giants—which last description of vagrants have, since the time of Gog, Magog, and Goliath, been considered as outlaws, and have received no quarter in either ...
— Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete • Washington Irving
... here spoken of is, as Major Smith tells me, the Darraj of the Persians, the Black Partridge of English sportsmen, sometimes called the Red-legged Francolin. The Darraj is found in some parts of Egypt, where its peculiar call is interpreted by the peasantry into certain Arabic words, meaning "Sweet are the corn-ears! Praised be the Lord!" In India, Baber tells us, the call of the Black ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo Volume 1 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... and distorted, but recognisable, description of Shakespeare, who, I infer from many indications in his opponents' plays, wore his hair in a peculiar manner, was not very tall, and was also somewhat thin-legged. The Chandos portrait which shows his shoulders, suggests that they were slightly sloping and somewhat round rather than square. On the whole, a physical type not calculated to inspire fear in a bully. Greene, on the other hand, is described ...
— Shakespeare's Lost Years in London, 1586-1592 • Arthur Acheson
... mile like a scared wolf. Until it came the roan's turn to go again, no untoward incident happened, friendly timekeepers posting me at every change of mounts. But when this bolter's turn came again, he reared and plunged away stiff-legged, crossed the inward furrow, and before I could turn him again to the track, cut inside the course for two stakes or possibly fifty yards. By this time I was beyond recall, but as I came round and passed the starting-point, ...
— A Texas Matchmaker • Andy Adams
... Miss Maria. Turning the corner, she picked up her petticoats and legged it along like ...
— The Ladies - A Shining Constellation of Wit and Beauty • E. Barrington
... and doing a big business, and gettin' up that lock-box dodge so as ye couldn't find out whar I hung out and what I was doin'—wasn't it enough for ME to go on with all this play-actin', but YOU, you long-legged or nary cuss! must get up and go ...
— Stories in Light and Shadow • Bret Harte
... Ha, Ha, Ha, the folly and the craziness of men! To see him changing them from one thing to the next, as if they wouldn't be a two-legged laughing stock whatever way ...
— Three Wonder Plays • Lady I. A. Gregory
... going to," he muttered fiercely. "They'll have two-legged horses to ride, and so will you. Now, I'm going over by the door, and when I get there I want you ...
— Where the Souls of Men are Calling • Credo Harris
... forgotten to run. Standing still on the asteroid meant turning with it, from darkness into sunlight and back again. He yelled at Santos and legged it out of there, moving in long, gliding steps. He regained the shadow and ...
— Rip Foster Rides the Gray Planet • Blake Savage
... rim was so curly at the sides. A halo that was curly was just no halo at all. But, anyway, how was he going to manage about Penn's waistcoat? It reached almost to his knees, and to attempt to get out a bare-legged Venus with a halo on her head and four cubic feet of waistcoat around her middle would ruin his business. It would make the ...
— Elbow-Room - A Novel Without a Plot • Charles Heber Clark (AKA Max Adeler)
... 1. Three-legged swimming. 2. Tug of War. 3. Bobbing for Corks. 4. Plunging through hoops for height or distance. 5. Diving for objects. 6. Egg Race; holding the egg in a spoon either in the mouth or hand. 7. Tag games. 8. Potato race; using corks instead of potatoes. 9. Candle race; candles are lighted ...
— Camping For Boys • H.W. Gibson
... and back tracking that yielded not a square inch of target and no more than the dust of his final disappearance. Wood gatherers heard at times above their heads the discontented whine of deflected bullets. Windy mornings the quarry would signal from the high barrens by slow stiff legged bounds that seemed to invite the Pot Hunter's fire, and at the end of a day's tracking among the punishing stubs of the burnt district, Greenhow returning would hear the whistling cough of the mule-deer in the ravine not a rifle shot ...
— Defenders of Democracy • Militia of Mercy
... three of us in the turret: Molo and I, and my watchful, silent guard who sat cross-legged, with a ray-gun pointed ...
— Wandl the Invader • Raymond King Cummings
... and home, and what to the wonderful realm of play and fancy. Moreover, his anticipations were always aroused when Elizabeth changed her habit, and he had seen in the twinkling of his eye that she was bare-legged and bare-headed and provided with a pole. So he barked joyously and scampered away upon ...
— An Australian Lassie • Lilian Turner
... be played in caverns, and sixpenny-whist in the howling wilderness.' Ha! ha! how well I remember riding across Bullington Green one fine afternoon, and finding four Oxford hacks haltered in a row, and the four undergraduates that had hired them on long tick, sitting cross-legged under the hedge like Turks or tailors, round a rude table with the legs sawed down to stumps. You had two packs, and a portable inkstand, and were so hard at it that I put my mare's nose right over the quartet before you saw either her or me. That ...
— The Woman-Hater • Charles Reade
... past. Dixon threw the car in gear and savagely pulled down the gas lever. With throttle wide open they hurtled around the perilous curves of the narrow road, but always in the rocks beside and above them they heard the scuttling progress of some huge, many-legged creature that ...
— Astounding Stories, May, 1931 • Various
... seven hours to reach the place where he had left the constrictor. It was gone, of course. How far, he could not know. He took the one telepathic stone from his pocket. He found a spot where he could sit in the open, cross-legged, with his eyes fixed on the stone. From the corner of his eye he saw a brown detached eye on a stalk pop up from the surface of the water, but he paid no attention. He ...
— The Wealth of Echindul • Noel Miller Loomis
... little and rest often. A good writer, moreover, is one of Nature's peculiar and very rare products. There is a mystery about the art of composition. Who shall explain to us why Charles Dickens can write about a three-legged stool in such a manner that the whole civilized world reads with pleasure; while another man of a hundred times his knowledge and five times his quantity of mind cannot write on any subject so as to interest ...
— Famous Americans of Recent Times • James Parton
... haitch is a funny letter, but it's a letter as I shall practise. Still, haitches or no haitches," he concluded, with a profound sigh, "I wish as I knowed 'ow I could set about coming it over that 'ere one-legged widder lidy at Putney what 'ave the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, Jan. 29, 1919 • Various
... red-legged grasshopper is always most abundant in the fall and for this reason we have selected it for our studies. It is about an inch long, olive-brown in color with the ends of the hind legs bright red. It is found everywhere in pastures, meadows and along country roads. Approach ...
— An Elementary Study of Insects • Leonard Haseman
... fashion of his people, sat on the ground cross-legged, and when it came his turn to help himself from the common dish he plunged his fingers into the hot contents, and fishing out a long piece introduced it into his mouth. When his mouth was full as it would hold he took his knife-blade, and after his fashion cut off a piece ...
— The Young Alaskans • Emerson Hough
... window furnished with a low cushioned seat, wide enough for any one to curl up with a book. Mr. Linton and the boys selected rooms principally remarkable for bareness. Jim had a lively hatred for furniture; they left him discussing with Allenby the question of removing a spindle-legged writing table. Mr. Linton and Norah went downstairs, with sinking hearts, ...
— Captain Jim • Mary Grant Bruce
... sweetened with sugar, a negro boy generally takes his station in one corner of a spacious room, pours out the liquor, and sends it to the guests by another boy. The tea table is a round stand, about twelve inches from the ground, at which the tea boy sits down on a leather cushion, cross legged. ...
— An Account of Timbuctoo and Housa Territories in the Interior of Africa • Abd Salam Shabeeny
... squeaked a little bow-legged Cockney. "'E's a fair winner, 'e is." A pompous prelate appeared in the lobby, walking with an air of having just consecrated the building free of charge, and followed by a nervous-lipped lady and a deacon who looked like a startled owl. "There ...
— Anthony Lyveden • Dornford Yates
... see the white line of the road stretching out in front of them and winding away over the undulating veldt. To right and left spread a broad expanse of wiry grass stretching to the horizon, with low bushes and scrub scattered over it in patches. Here and there were groups of long-legged, unhealthy-looking sheep, who crashed through the bushes in wild terror as the riders swept by them. Their plaintive calls were the only sounds which broke the silence of the night, save the occasional dismal hooting of the ...
— The Firm of Girdlestone • Arthur Conan Doyle
... silence of the night was added the silence of slumber. No one was to be seen; a small cow, rendered lean by active climbing in search of sustenance, breathed peacefully near the tumble-down fence; the ubiquitous, long-legged, yellow dog, rendered trustful by long seclusion, aroused himself from his nap to greet the arrival with a series of heavy raps upon the rickety porch-floor with a solid but languid tail. Lennox stepped over him in reaching ...
— Lodusky • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... resource was the French MAISON RUSTIQUE, or FARM-HOUSE, which, it is said, was the book that first tempted DUQUESNOIS (I think that was the name), the famous physician, in the reign of Louis XIV., to learn to read. Here are all the four-legged animals, from the horse down to the mouse, portraits and all; all the birds, reptiles, insects; all the modes of rearing, managing, and using the tame ones; all the modes of taking the wild ones, and of destroying those that are mischievous; all the various traps, ...
— Advice to Young Men • William Cobbett
... Erasmus, with gray hair hanging about his shoulders, with his hat drawn over his eyes and his hands behind him, as if in deep meditation; John Fransham, the Norwich metaphysician and mathematician, might well excite the curiosity of the casual observer, especially when I add that he was bandy-legged, that he was short of stature, that he wore a green jacket, a broad hat, large shoes, and short worsted stockings. A Norwich weaver had helped to make Fransham a philosopher. Wright said Fransham could discourse well on the nature ...
— East Anglia - Personal Recollections and Historical Associations • J. Ewing Ritchie
... something which you at first take for a deformed blackbird, but which turns out to be a water-hen. As far as our own observations go, we do aver this to be a very handsome average of a French sportsman's day's shooting. If by chance he has knocked down a red-legged partridge, (grey ones are very scarce in France,) his exultation knows no bounds. The day on which such a thing occurs is a red-letter day with him for the rest of his life. He goes home at once and inscribes the circumstance ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 55, No. 340, February, 1844 • Various
... implied by the fact of their selection. Man keeps the natives of many climates in the same country; he seldom exercises each selected character in some peculiar and fitting manner; he feeds a long and a short-beaked pigeon on the same food; he does not exercise a long-backed or long-legged quadruped in any peculiar manner; he exposes sheep with long and short wool to the ...
— The World's Greatest Books - Volume 15 - Science • Various
... of the jubilee, it happened that one day Anna Apenborg went to the brew-house, which lay inside the convent walls (it was one of Sidonia's praying days), and there she saw a strange apparition of a three-legged hare. She runs and calls the other sisters; whereupon they all scamper out of their cells, and down the steps, to see the miracle, and behold, there sits the three-legged hare; but when Agnes Kleist took off her slipper, ...
— Sidonia The Sorceress V2 • William Mienhold
... underfoot. The coyote is your real lord of the mesa, and so he makes sure you are armed with no long black instrument to spit your teeth into his vitals at a thousand yards, is both bold and curious. Not so bold, however, as the badger and not so much of a curmudgeon. This short-legged meat-eater loves half lights and lowering days, has no friends, no enemies, and disowns his offspring. Very likely if he knew how hawk and crow dog him for dinners, he would resent it. But the badger is not very well ...
— The Land Of Little Rain • Mary Hunter Austin
... and the shutter slammed. Soon the door was opened, and Tobias welcomed them to his house. And a very good house it was, for Tobias was wealthy. He called his slave, and she brought food and wine, and they sat at the trestled board on cross-legged stools and ate until they could eat no more. Then Tobias asked questions, and Nicanor told of his home and of his parents and of his mother's words, while Valerius, full-fed, dozed with his head on the table. And as Nicanor talked, ...
— Nicanor - Teller of Tales - A Story of Roman Britain • C. Bryson Taylor
... now led before the governor himself, a stern and grave-looking man, sitting cross-legged on a divan surrounded by officers and attendants. He heard in silence the account given him by the escort, bowed his head at the commands of Suleiman, and, without addressing a word to Cuthbert, indicated to two attendants that he was to be removed into the interior of the house. Here the young ...
— The Boy Knight • G.A. Henty
... he that walketh bare-armed, and bare-legged, and fayneth hymselfe mad, and caryeth a packe of wool, or a stycke with baken on it, or such lyke toy, and nameth himselfe Poore ...
— Microcosmography - or, a Piece of the World Discovered; in Essays and Characters • John Earle
... to show her what a farm was like. There was the herd of cows, and in a field by themselves the young ones from three months to a year. There were two pretty colts Mr. Manning was raising. And there was a flock of sheep on a stony pasture lot, with some long-legged, awkward-looking lambs who had outgrown their babyhood. Then they espied James weeding ...
— A Little Girl in Old Boston • Amanda Millie Douglas
... over, aunt Hannah disappeared from the back porch, with a milk-pail in one hand and a three-legged stool in the other. Uncle Nathan followed her example, but more slowly, and the cotton handkerchief of many colors that his sister had tied on her head, disappeared over the back garden-fence before he had half ...
— The Old Homestead • Ann S. Stephens
... but there is nevertheless in generic Alpine scenery, a fountain of feeling yet unopened—a chord of harmony yet untouched by art. It will be struck by the first man who can separate what is national, in Switzerland, from what is ideal. We do not want chalets and three-legged stools, cow-bells and buttermilk. We want the pure and holy hills, treated as a link ...
— Modern Painters Volume I (of V) • John Ruskin
... and chocolate-colored English carpet covered the middle of the floor, and a row of straw chairs stood around it, on the bare, lead-colored boards. A huge bed, with a chintz top shaped like an elephant's back, was in one corner, and a six-legged mahogany table in another. One side of the room where the fireplace was set was paneled in wood; its fire had burned down in the shining Franklin stove, and broken brands were standing upright. The charred backlog still smoldered, ...
— The Morgesons • Elizabeth Stoddard
... ma'am, is a rich China silk I bought in the streets of Shanghai, where the long-legged chickens come from. Come, now, ...
— Hidden Hand • Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte Southworth
... my bee-parasites,—said the Scarabee, showing me a box full of glass slides, each with a specimen ready mounted for the microscope. I was most struck with one little beast flattened out like a turtle, semi-transparent, six-legged, as I remember him, and every leg terminated by a single claw hooked like a lion's and as formidable for the size of the creature as that of ...
— The Poet at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... gravel and clay, growing higher with every mile. The deciduous trees gave way to the desert growths: the cholla, "the shower of gold," and the palo verde and the other acacias. Here were the California or valley-quail; and lean, long-legged jack-rabbits. Here too were the coyotes, leaner than the rabbits, but efficient, shifty-eyed, and insolent. One could admire ...
— Through the Grand Canyon from Wyoming to Mexico • E. L. Kolb
... wheat still waited to be stacked and thrashed, past the carcasses of horses sprawled stiff-legged in the ditch or in the stubble, we tramped on to Crepy-en-Valois. The country was empty, scoured by the flood that had swept across it, rolled back again, and now was thundering, foot by foot, farther and farther below the horizon to the north. The ...
— Antwerp to Gallipoli - A Year of the War on Many Fronts—and Behind Them • Arthur Ruhl
... to a shelf above the serried volumes of Sam Carr's library, lifted the cover of a tin tobacco box and took out a letter. This she gave to Thompson. Then she sat down cross-legged on the wolfskin beside her youngster, looking up at her visitor impassively, her moon face void of expression, except perhaps the mildest ...
— Burned Bridges • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... Gervaise Macquart with her four children: bandy-legged, pretty, and industrious Gervaise, whom her lover Lantier turned into the street in the faubourg, where she met the zinc worker Coupeau, the skilful, steady workman whom she married, and with whom she lived so happily at first, having three women working in her laundry, ...
— Doctor Pascal • Emile Zola
... sun was far over in the west—when Rusty Wren reached Mr. Frog's tailor's shop overlooking Black Creek. Rusty pushed open the door and stepped inside, expecting to find Mr. Frog sitting cross-legged upon his table and sewing busily, according to the tailor's custom, until sunset, which marked the close of ...
— The Tale of Rusty Wren • Arthur Scott Bailey
... no harm, Baloo; but only that thou art, as it were, like the cocoanut in the husk, and I am the same cocoanut all naked. Now that brown husk of thine——" Mowgli was sitting cross-legged, and explaining things with his forefinger in his usual way, when Bagheera put out a paddy paw and pulled him over backward into ...
— The Second Jungle Book • Rudyard Kipling
... to belong to a very ancient date, generally represent a man seated cross-legged on the back of a turtle. The head is shaved, except the top, where the hair is left to grow, and is plaited Chinese fashion. Not unfrequently the arms are extended, the hands rest upon pillars inscribed with characters much resembling Chinese. I have had one of these ...
— The Mayas, the Sources of Their History / Dr. Le Plongeon in Yucatan, His Account of Discoveries • Stephen Salisbury, Jr.
... Clerk, having lighted a cigar for himself, sat down in his revolving chair, turned his back to his desk, and threw himself into an easy cross-legged attitude, which showed that he was perfectly at home in that office. Harry Covare mounted a high stool, while the visitors seated themselves in three wooden arm-chairs. But few words had been said, and each man had scarcely tossed his first tobacco-ashes on the floor, when some one wearing ...
— A Chosen Few - Short Stories • Frank R. Stockton
... Difference of environment and social customs will account for the superior virility of Europeans as compared with their distant kinsmen whose lot is cast in the sweltering tropics. But no one who has observed Bengali schoolboys standing up bare-legged to fast bowling will question their bravery. In fact, the instinct of combativeness is universal, and among protected communities ...
— Tales of Bengal • S. B. Banerjea
... long-legged and thin, but had always been reckoned one of those wiry sort of chaps, built on the order of a greyhound. He could run like the wind, and jump higher than any fellow in all Chester, barring none. But when that awful cramp seized him in ...
— Jack Winters' Baseball Team - Or, The Rivals of the Diamond • Mark Overton
... railings, were swung round front-face. Greetings, light as rubber balls, bounded from porch to porch. Fine needles flashed through dainty fabrics stretched like drum parchment across embroidery hoops; young children, shrilling and shouting in the heat of play, darted beneath maternal eyes; long-legged girls in knee-high skirts strolled up and down the ...
— Every Soul Hath Its Song • Fannie Hurst
... sat cross-legged on the grass among half a dozen youngsters like himself, he even began to forget that he was a new boy, and was surprised to find himself holding familiar converse with one and ...
— The Fifth Form at Saint Dominic's - A School Story • Talbot Baines Reed
... came to Gadabout's household, though the dog-day sun beat upon the waste of reeds and rushes about us and though striped-legged mosquitoes were our nearest and most attentive neighbours. Fortunately, the mosquitoes did not feel that hospitality required them to call upon the strangers or to show them any attention except in the evening. Even then they were more or less distant, rarely coming into the houseboat, ...
— Virginia: The Old Dominion • Frank W. Hutchins and Cortelle Hutchins
... candlesticks which stood one on either side of a carved oak press. The room thus illumined showed itself to be a roughly-timbered apartment in the style of the earliest Tudor times, and all the furniture in it was of the same period. The thick gate-legged table—the curious chairs, picturesque, but uncomfortable—the two old dower chests— the quaint three-legged stools and upright settles, were a collection that would have been precious to the art dealer and curio hunter, ...
— Innocent - Her Fancy and His Fact • Marie Corelli
... ant-hill looking performances of the Akkas, or the bark huts of the Fan, with no windows, and just an extra broad bit of bark to slip across the hole that serves as a door. On going into an Igalwa house you will see a four-legged table, often covered with a bright-coloured tablecloth, on which stands a water bottle, with two clean glasses, and round about you will see chairs—Windsor chairs. These houses have usually three, sometimes more rooms, and a separate ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... for I mix the marvel of the Boon Children, strange pale little flowers of the American theatre, with my conscious joy in bringing back to my mother, from our forage in New York, a gift of such happy promise as the history of the long-legged Mr. Hamilton and his two Bavarian beauties, the elder of whom, Hildegarde, was to figure for our small generation as the very type of the haughty as distinguished from the forward heroine (since I think our categories really came to no more than those). I couldn't ...
— A Small Boy and Others • Henry James
... offer, the hostess took it herself, and see-sawed on it nearly the whole time. It was a very awkward, high-legged, crouch-backed rocking-chair, and shamefully unprovided with anything in ...
— The Best American Humorous Short Stories • Various
... reed—on a bit of proverbial philosophy as weak as the weakest of Mr. Tupper's. That Nature does sometimes make a leap, and a pretty long one, must be obvious to any visitor to the Museum of the London College of Surgeons, who has examined the two-headed and four-legged human foeti there preserved in spirits. It may be said that these are leaps in the wrong direction. Be it so. Still, whoever can leap backward can make an equal leap forward, and most people will find the latter the easier feat of the two. The power, whatever ...
— Old-Fashioned Ethics and Common-Sense Metaphysics - With Some of Their Applications • William Thomas Thornton
... threadbare clothes. But the sun only came into the stable yard for an hour or two, and as it withdrew itself slowly along the length of the table he shifted his position to move with it, unconsciously, like a tired animal. Francey, cross-legged and smoking, on the couch which at night unfolded itself into a bed, saw the movement and smiled at him. Her eyes were as steady in their serenity as his were steady with hunger. She did not change ...
— The Dark House • I. A. R. Wylie
... personage who arrived in Eski Baba by carriage about two hours ago, and whose arrival I remember caused quite a flurry of excitement among the natives. The pasha is found surrounded by a number of bearded Turks, seated cross-legged on a carpet in the open air, smoking nargilehs and cigarettes, and sipping coffee. This pasha is fatter and more unwieldy, if possible, than the one for whose edification I rode the bicycle this afternoon; noticing ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... aves and go to sleep, Bella Gelsomina," concluded the sub-keeper, "for the fishermen have left off shouting to say their prayers. Per Diana! The bare-headed and bare-legged rascals are as impudent as if St. Mark were their inheritance! The noble patricians should give them a lesson in modesty, by sending every tenth knave among them to the galleys. Miscreants! to disturb the quiet of an orderly ...
— The Bravo • J. Fenimore Cooper
... half outside. Thus there were three circles, one of wheat and the other two described by the horses as they dashed wildly around, the drivers shouting, the wheat flying and being quickly threshed under the swift-moving hoofs of the twelve four-legged flails! ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2 No 4, October, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... at the far side of a wide circle or parade ground. The open space before the balconies was fully three hundred yards square, and was paved. From each side stretched the velvety green with its fountains, its trees, its arbors, its flowers, its grottos and its red-legged soldiers. ...
— Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... looked at the little short-legged and short-winded animal of miscellaneous extraction with an expression of contempt and affection, mingled about half and half. "Worry 'em! If they wanted to sleep, I rather guess he would worry 'em! If barkin' would ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... know Christabel!" said Mr Vanburgh, smiling, "and her friend who comes to lessons every day: the brown-legged stork, with the red cap and the curly locks. I like that child. She looks honest ...
— A Houseful of Girls • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... way, and it may be a bit old-fashioned, but I like the right way. And then again she took possession o' me as I may say, and little Molly had to run after us in the garden walks that are too narrow for three, just like a little four-legged doggie; and the other was so full of listening to me, she never turned round for to speak a word to Molly. I don't mean to say they're not fond of each other, and that's in Roger's sweetheart's favour, and it's very ungrateful in me to go and find fault with ...
— Wives and Daughters • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... straighter 'n a ramrod. An' there's Heman an' Roxy! She don't look a day older'n twenty-five. Proper nice folks, all on 'em, but they make me kind o' homesick jest because they be folks. They do look so sort o' common in their bunnits an' veils, an' I keep thinkin' o' little four-legged creatur's, all fur!" The Tiverton folk saluted them, always cordially, yet each after his kind. They liked Dilly as a product all their own, but one to be partaken of sparingly, like some wild, ...
— Meadow Grass - Tales of New England Life • Alice Brown
... said Grandfather Frog, trying to make his voice sound as if he weren't interested. "I just wondered where the long-legged nuisance ...
— Mother West Wind "How" Stories • Thornton W. Burgess
... side-hill, and if the fox took the circuit indicated he would probably be there in twelve or fifteen minutes. Running up an angle of 45 degrees seems quite easy work for a four-footed beast like a dog or a fox, but for a two-legged animal like a man it is very heavy and awkward. Before I got halfway up there seemed to be a vacuum all about me, so labored was my breathing, and when I reached the summit my head swam and my knees were about giving out; but pressing on, I had barely time to ...
— Winter Sunshine • John Burroughs
... the study she found her husband standing at the window with his head a little on one side—a tall, long-legged figure in clothes of a pleasant tweed, and wearing a low turn-over collar (not common in those days) and a blue silk tie, which she had knitted, strung through a ring. He was humming and gently ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... to come, doesn't it? But they didn't no more come. They all died and none of them got the balance. I ain't never got nothin' either. I gave my papers to Adams and Singfield. I give them to Adams; Adams is a Negro that one-legged Wash Jordan sent to me. They all say he's a big crook, but I didn't know it. Adams kept coming to my house until he got my papers and then when he got the papers he didn't come ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States from Interviews with Former Slaves, Arkansas Narratives, Part 4 • Works Projects Administration
... afternoon and the white-hot rage of the evening had choked the furnace of brain and soul with clinkers so that he was thinking unevenly and disconnectedly. On the surface he was cool and unruffled. He stopped for a moment at the railroad tracks to talk with Stumpy Gans, the one-legged gateman. The little bell above Stumpy's shanty was ringing its warning, so he strolled leisurely over to the depot platform to see the 7:15 come in from Chicago. When the train pulled out Buzz went on down the street. ...
— Cheerful—By Request • Edna Ferber
... A stout, bare-legged hizzie appeared now, and kindly offered the old man a pinch of snuff out of a little paper to overcome the effects of the smell, and keep it from striking into his heart. This was one errand; to find out who was talking to ...
— The Letters of "Norah" on her Tour Through Ireland • Margaret Dixon McDougall
... moment that she knew he was coming a strange stillness seemed to fall upon the child. She had grown long-legged and was at the fledgling stage when even a pretty girl sometimes looks plain, and she, who had as yet no claim to beauty, was at her worst. She was quite aware of it, with her intense soul-worship of all beautiful things. Some unreasoned impulse made her ...
— Halcyone • Elinor Glyn
... enough, her parents married her to Herr Marker. It was hardly a love match, but in Brohl, Son & Company's house such folly as love was not considered. Herr Marker was the son of a wholesale coffee-merchant, and was neither handsome nor distinguished-looking; he was small, thin, bandy-legged, with an unwholesome complexion, a peevish expression, ...
— The Malady of the Century • Max Nordau
... W.D. Fox, in Woodburn's 'Gallery of Rare Portraits' 1816 volume 2) with a completely hairy face who was exhibited in London in 1663, and another instance has recently occurred. Colonel Hallam (12/7. 'Proc. Zoolog. Soc.' 1833 page 16.) has described a race of two-legged pigs, "the hinder extremities being entirely wanting;" and this deficiency was transmitted through three generations. In fact, all races presenting any remarkable peculiarity, such as solid-hoofed swine, Mauchamp sheep, niata cattle, etc., ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication - Volume I • Charles Darwin
... city of Dark-Grotto a certain man named Minecco Aniello, who was so persecuted by fortune that all his fixtures and moveables consisted only of a short-legged cock, which he had reared upon bread-crumbs. But one morning, being pinched with appetite (for hunger drives the wolf from the thicket), he took it into his head to sell the cock, and, taking it to the market, ...
— Stories from Pentamerone • Giambattista Basile
... showing differences in disposition under different circumstances. I believe that many a shikari passes at times within a few yards of a tiger without knowing it, the tendency of the animal being to crouch and hide until the strange-looking two-legged beast has passed. The narrowest escape I ever had is an instance. I had hunted a large tiger, well known for the savageness of his disposition, on foot from ravine to ravine on the banks of the Pench, one hot day in June, and, ...
— Natural History of the Mammalia of India and Ceylon • Robert A. Sterndale
... incurred for his sake. He sat with his back to a cedar and watched the kindling of fires, the deft manipulating of biscuit dough in a basin, and the steaming of pots. The generous meal was spread on a canvas cloth, around which men and women sat cross-legged, after the fashion of Indians. Hare found it hard to adapt his long legs to the posture, and he wondered how these men, whose legs were longer than his, could sit so easily. It was the crown of a cheerful dinner after hours of anxiety and abstinence to have ...
— The Heritage of the Desert • Zane Grey
... into a sitting-room, with tall French windows opening to a little veranda, and a view across the lime-trees of the garden to the blinding silver of the lake of Thun and the eternal snow-fields of the Bernese Oberland. Beside the window and before a little spindle-legged writing-table a man sat. He turned his head as Herr ...
— Those Who Smiled - And Eleven Other Stories • Perceval Gibbon
... stools observed show very primitive workmanship, and are usually made of a single piece of wood. Fig. 107 illustrates two forms of wooden stool from Zui. The small three-legged stool on the left has been cut from the trunk of a pion tree in such a manner as to utilize as legs the three branches into which the main stem separated. The other stool illustrated is also cut from a single piece of tree ...
— A Study of Pueblo Architecture: Tusayan and Cibola • Victor Mindeleff and Cosmos Mindeleff
... be told is that there is no possibility of breeding horses in this country, as hath often been proved by trial. For even when a great blood-mare here has been covered by a great blood-horse, the produce is nothing but a wretched wry-legged weed, not fit to ride. ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo, Volume 2 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... thin-legged little man, with a jerky quality in his motions; he had seen fit to clothe his extraordinary mind in a cricket cap, an overcoat, and cycling knickerbockers and stockings. Why he did so I do not know, for he never cycled and he never played cricket. It was a fortuitous ...
— The First Men In The Moon • H. G. Wells
... quiet, so bright, so cosy. Over-stuffed velvet in the living room, with silk lampshades, and small tables holding books and magazines and little boxes containing cigarettes or hard candies. Very modern. A gate-legged table in the dining room. Caramel-coloured walnut in the bedroom, rich and dark and smooth. She loved it. An orderly woman. Everything in its place. Before eleven o'clock the little apartment was shining, spotless; ...
— Gigolo • Edna Ferber
... Shrewsbury. The room was full of March sunshine, and a great wood fire blazed on the hearth. Part of the floor was carpeted, and overhung with a canopy, proceeding from the tapestried wall, and here was a cross-legged velvet chair on which sat Queen Mary. This was all that Cis saw at first, while the Earl advanced, knelt on one step of the dais, with bared head, exchanging greetings with the Queen. He then added, that his wife, the Countess, and her daughter, having been ...
— Unknown to History - A Story of the Captivity of Mary of Scotland • Charlotte M. Yonge
... the pier taking in cargo. Long-legged cranes are taking hold of bales and barrels and boxes and lowering them through the ship's hatches with a rattle of chains. Wooden cases bound with steel ropes and containing heavy machinery are being hoisted slowly from ...
— Banzai! • Ferdinand Heinrich Grautoff
... aged languid flies, settled under the lintels and covered with white dust, he ordered the windows to be opened everywhere; they had not been opened ever since the death of Glafira Petrovna. Everything in the house had remained as it was; the thin-legged white miniature couches in the drawing-room, covered with glossy grey stuff, threadbare and rickety, vividly suggested the days of Catherine; in the drawing-room, too, stood the mistress's favourite arm-chair, with high straight ...
— A House of Gentlefolk • Ivan Turgenev
... the horse was taken in charge by a long-legged lad of fifteen, without hat or shoes; and the whole party crossed the ...
— Southern Literature From 1579-1895 • Louise Manly
... advance one step towards him. If he had seen the least sign of coming-on-ness in her, he would have fluttered off in a great dither. Nothing horrified him more than a woman who was coming-on towards him. It horrified him, it exasperated him, it made him hate the whole tribe of women: horrific two-legged cats without whiskers. If he had been a bird, his innate horror of a cat would have been such. He liked the angel, and particularly the angel-mother in woman. Oh!—that ...
— The Lost Girl • D. H. Lawrence
... melancholy case as he sat cross-legged at receipt of prayer, holding a little scourge that the years had broken (and no one heeded the scourge and no one prayed and no one came with squealing sacrifice; and he had been a god), then I took pity on the ...
— Fifty-One Tales • Lord Dunsany [Edward J. M. D. Plunkett]
... there were the bakeshop emitting enticing smells, mostly of currants and burnt sugar, and the hardware store, full of nails and pocket-knives, and old Mr. Jacobs, the tailor, who sat cross-legged on a wide table in a room down four stone steps from the sidewalk, and the grog-shops—more's the pity—one on every ...
— Felix O'Day • F. Hopkinson Smith
... tell her what a bad play it was and how poor her part was and how much better the other parts were and how absolutely it fell to pieces after the first act? Of course I did as I was bid, and I argued with the woman for hours, and finally got her round, the while he sat cross-legged, after his fashion, on a deep chair and implored me with his eyes to do my worst. It happened long ago, and I was so obsessed with the desire to please him that the humor of the ...
— Charles Frohman: Manager and Man • Isaac Frederick Marcosson and Daniel Frohman
... made an end of eating in there and were now arranging the programme of Iskender's conduct towards the young Emir. His uncle sat cross-legged by the wall, puffing slowly at a narghileh, his mother opposite to him, in the same posture, also with a narghileh, not smoking for the moment, but leaning forward with one hand out, talking eagerly. A saucer-lamp ...
— The Valley of the Kings • Marmaduke Pickthall
... a milk pail and trotted off to the barn, where he sat down on his three-legged stool and began milking the ...
— The Tale of Snowball Lamb • Arthur Bailey
... - thinking is too much bother - but it's just there, like a commonplace fact. You are all temperament, and high-strung nerves, and soul, and enthusiasm, and that sort of thing, which makes you a great actress. I'm just a two-legged, superior sort of animal, who hasn't much brain, but knows what he likes, and usually does it without wasting time on pros and cons. Consequently, I'm just as likely to end in prison as anywhere else, and take it without much concern as ...
— Winding Paths • Gertrude Page
... men, and there were no women that I could see anywhere. Half of these were making a great ring with joined hands round the fire, and some piled more fuel on it—turf and branches of dwarf oak trees—and others sat round, watching the dozen or so that minded Harek. One sat cross-legged near me, with a great pot covered tightly with skin ...
— King Alfred's Viking - A Story of the First English Fleet • Charles W. Whistler
... there are usually executions. Others stroll to the Suk-er-Rekik and criticise the points of the slave girls as the dealers offer them for sale. But the Khalifa has returned to his house, and his council have been summoned. The room is small, and the ruler sits cross-legged upon his couch. Before him squat the Emirs and Kadis. Yakub is there, with Ali-Wad-Helu and the Khalifa Sherif. Only the Sheikh-ed-Din is absent, for he is a dissolute youth and much ...
— The River War • Winston S. Churchill
... one-half. The Dhob is very common in the Arabian deserts, where the Arabs form tobacco purses of its skin. It lives in holes in the sand, which have generally two openings; it runs fast, but a dog easily catches it. Of birds I saw red-legged partridges in great numbers, pigeons, the Katta, but not in such large ...
— Travels in Syria and the Holy Land • John Burckhardt
... provided, but for gossip and the interchange of news. They are very numerous all over the city, and are generally fronted by three or more wooden archways painted in some bright colour and open to the street. Outside are the "dekkas," or high benches, on which, sitting cross-legged, the customer enjoys his coffee or his pipe. Indoors are a few chairs, and the square tiled platform on which are placed the cooking-pots and little charcoal fire of the cafe-keeper. Generally an awning of canvas ...
— Peeps at Many Lands: Egypt • R. Talbot Kelly
... kicking, and hollering, and like to have wriggled away, so the cuss that was with me ran up to help. Then I heard little John making kind of a squeally noise in his throat like he was being choked, and that was all I wanted. I legged it into the sage-brush. I heard them swearing and coming after me, and ran harder, and, what saved me, I tripped and fell down and hurt myself, so I lay still and they lost track of me. I was scared, ...
— The Lions of the Lord - A Tale of the Old West • Harry Leon Wilson
... pictures. I saw the dortoire—[dormitory]—and the cells of the priests, and we went into one; a very pretty little room, very clean, hung with pictures, set with books. The Priest was in his cell, with his hair clothes to his skin, bare-legged, with a sandal! only on, and his little bed without sheets, and no feather bed; but yet, I thought, soft enough. His cord about his middle; but in so good company, living with ease, I thought it a very good life. A pretty library they have. And I was in the refectoire, where every man his napkin, ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... remonstrance and proof against the rebuke of spur. Perhaps he could not control the fault; at all events he did not, and the effect was not pleasant. The rider felt a sudden jar, as though the horse had come down stiff-legged from a hurdle-leap; and sometimes it would be so sharp as to shake loose the forage-cap upon his rider's head. He sometimes did it when going at easy lope, but never when his little girl-friend was on his back; then he went ...
— Starlight Ranch - and Other Stories of Army Life on the Frontier • Charles King
... the street after the Roumis, stopped at the portals of the mosque and the sacred tomb. But there was a humming in the air like the song of bees, which floated rhythmically out from the zaouia, the school in the mosque where many boys squatted cross-legged before the aged Taleb who taught the Koran; bowing, swaying towards him, droning out the words of the Prophet, some half asleep, nodding against the ...
— The Golden Silence • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... Louvre is of limestone, the sculptor has not shown less freedom in its composition. We recognize in this figure one of those somewhat flabby and heavy subordinate officials of whom so many examples are to be seen in Oriental courts. He is squatting cross-legged on the pedestal, pen in hand, with the outstretched leaf of papyrus conveniently placed on the right: he waits, after an interval of six thousand years, until Pharaoh or his vizier deigns to resume the interrupted ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 2 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... write about it than to feel what it means, unless one has tried it for three or four months. Just round the corner from Heatley Street, we stopped at the open door of a very little cottage. A good-looking young Irishwoman sat there, upon a three- legged stool, suckling her child. She was clean; and had an intelligent look. "Let's see, missis," said the visitor, "what do you pay for this nook?" "We pay eighteenpence a week—and they WILL have it—my word." "Well, ...
— Home-Life of the Lancashire Factory Folk during the Cotton Famine • Edwin Waugh
... ever saw a respectable shiner goin' about with a three-legged stool for a blackin' box? It ain't the thing. The rig'lars chaffs me fit to throw it at their 'eads, they does—only there's too many on 'em, an' I've got to dror it mild. A box I must have, or a feller's ockypation's gone. Look ye here! One bob, one tanner, and a joey! There! that's what comes ...
— Stephen Archer and Other Tales • George MacDonald
... do you remember the day we stole peaches from old man Price, and one of his bow-legged niggers came after us with dogs, and how we made up our minds we'd catch that nigger and ...
— The Boys' Life of Mark Twain • Albert Bigelow Paine
... and heat and weariness. My horse, a gift from the Chief which I had not been wise enough to try out on a short journey before undertaking such a trip, was as stiff as a wooden horse. I told the Chief I knew Mescal was knock-kneed and stiff-legged. ...
— I Married a Ranger • Dama Margaret Smith
... visit this court was filled with individual groups of about thirty students, each around a professor; they were sitting cross-legged on the floor, and were chanting their lessons with a swaying motion of the body. A class of small children was of special interest, studying passages of the Koran from cards. The Mosque of El Hakim was completed in 1013, and was so resplendent throughout ...
— Travels in the Far East • Ellen Mary Hayes Peck
... red and long-legged plover, the Somal tell the following legend. Originally her diet was meat, and her society birds of prey: one night, however, her companions having devoured all the provisions whilst she slept, she swore never to fly with friends, never ...
— First footsteps in East Africa • Richard F. Burton
... miraculously into the possession of an inhabitant of Kii, who carried it to the prince, and at once the sickness was stayed. When, however, the army attempted to advance into the interior, no roads were found and precipitous mountains barred the progress. In this dilemma the Sun goddess sent down the three-legged crow of the Sun** to ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... prodigious; his fist would fell an ox, and his kick!—oh! his kick was tremendous, and, when he had his boots on, would—to use an expression of his own, which he had picked up in the holy wars—would "send a man from Jericho to June." He was bull-necked and bandy-legged; his chest was broad and deep, his head large and uncommonly thick, his eyes a little bloodshot, and his nose retrousse with a remarkably red tip. Strictly speaking, the Baron could not be called handsome; but his tout ensemble was singularly impressive; and when ...
— Half-Hours with Great Story-Tellers • Various
... there was excitement in the room. In an apparently occult way the excitement instantly permeated everywhere. The one-legged boy who worked on the other side of Johnny bobbed swiftly across the floor to a bin truck that stood empty. Into this he dived out of sight, crutch and all. The superintendent of the mill was coming along, accompanied by a young man. He was well dressed and ...
— When God Laughs and Other Stories • Jack London
... with foliage and chimerical animals, tempted with its broad bed the fatigued or idle guest. Two chairs, the seats made of Nile reeds, with sloping back, strengthened by stays, a wooden foot-stool cut in the shape of a shell and resting upon three legs, an oblong table, also three-legged, bordered with inlaid work and ornamented in the centre with uraeus snakes, wreaths, and agricultural symbols, and on which was placed a vase of rose and blue lotus,—completed the furniture of the room, which was pastoral in its simplicity ...
— The Works of Theophile Gautier, Volume 5 - The Romance of a Mummy and Egypt • Theophile Gautier
... I sit cross-legged on the floor with my feet on a red and gold cushion and rotate my waist like an oriental dancer. I stand on my head and hands and curve my body to right and left in graceful flexings. I do this no matter how cold it is. I do not feel the cold, for I am all ...
— Possessed • Cleveland Moffett
... started to crawl. It appeared that he had a bullet through the thigh, though he hadn't said anything about it before. We crawled a little way, and then the bullets were flying so thick that I got an insane desire to run and get away from them. I got to my feet and legged it. So did Smith, though how he did it with a wounded thigh I ...
— A Yankee in the Trenches • R. Derby Holmes
... give a beautiful course for, instead of pushing straight for the jungle, she made a great circuit on the patina, as though in the endeavor to make once more for the river. The long-legged ones were going at a tremendous pace, and, being fresh, they rapidly overhauled her; gradually the distance between them diminished, and at length they had a fair course down a gentle inclination which led toward the river. Here the greyhounds soon made an end ...
— Eight Years' Wandering in Ceylon • Samuel White Baker
... gave me a circumstantial account of how he found the first snow bunting's nest in Sutherlandshire; I recall the Rev. Mathew (? Mathews) of Gumley, an ardent Leicestershire ornithologist, whose friendship I gained at a tender age on discovering the nest of a red-legged partridge, from which I took every one of the thirteen eggs. "Surely six would have been enough," he said—a remark which struck me as rather unreasonable, seeing that French partridges were not exactly as ...
— Alone • Norman Douglas
... Alcinous insists that the leading Phaeacians should each one of them give Ulysses a still further present of a large kitchen copper and a three-legged stand to set it on, "but," he continues, "as the expense of all these presents is really too heavy for the purse of any private individual, I shall charge the whole of them on the rates": literally, "We will repay ourselves by getting it in from among ...
— The Humour of Homer and Other Essays • Samuel Butler
... father came in, who seated himself at once on the end of the bed, and began to talk to him, whilst I looked round the room. There was absolutely nothing in it, except the bed on which the sick man lay, the chair that supported him, and a small three-legged table. The low roof was terribly out of repair, and the window was patched with newspaper; but through the glass panes that were left, in full glory streamed the sun, and in the midst of the blaze stood a pot of musk in full bloom. The soft yellow flowers looked so grand, ...
— Melchior's Dream and Other Tales • Juliana Horatia Ewing |
