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Stray   /streɪ/   Listen
Stray

noun
1.
An animal that has strayed (especially a domestic animal).



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"Stray" Quotes from Famous Books



... Many of the boys would not be satisfied with coming once; they came again and again, and some laid their faces down on his and sobbed. Several hymns were sung: "Here we suffer grief and pain," "There is a happy land," and "My God, my Father, while I stray," and prayer also ...
— Missionary Work Among The Ojebway Indians • Edward Francis Wilson

... was released, and then she stray'd O'er the sharp shingles with her bleeding feet, And stumbled almost every step she made; And something roll'd before her in a sheet, Which she must still pursue howe'er afraid: 'T was white and indistinct, nor stopp'd to meet ...
— Don Juan • Lord Byron

... days following the revelation of the clandestine meetings with Maxwell, that Murray was depending upon her to see that Anne's affections did not stray into forbidden paths. He said as much one afternoon when he found Amy alone in an atmosphere of old portraits, old books, old bronzes. She sat in a Jacobean chair and poured tea for him. The massive lines of the chair made her proportions seem wraithlike. Her white ...
— The Gay Cockade • Temple Bailey

... nothing but grass and flowers, borne there by the winds, which leave no track. There is no animal life even in this secluded spot save the birds, and they too leave no track. By and by there comes a hard winter, or a dearth of food, and a pair of stray squirrels emigrate from their home in the valley below; and the history of our hill and its woods begins. Mere chance decides the choice of the particular oak-tree in which the squirrels make their home. From the foot of this tree they make excursions here and there for their store ...
— Young Folks' Library, Volume XI (of 20) - Wonders of Earth, Sea and Sky • Various

... animals, led the way. I must confess that, in spite of some pretty hard experience of bad roads in the coast range of California, there were times during our mad career over the lava-beds when visions of maimed limbs and a mutilated head crossed my mind. Should my horse stumble on a stray spike of lava, what possible chance of escape would there be? Falling head foremost on harrows and rakes would be fun to a fall here, where all the instruments capable of human destruction, from razors, saws, and meat-axes down to spike-nails ...
— The Land of Thor • J. Ross Browne

... Tennessee climate gave him that disease known among soldiers as "crawfishing." This I did to withdraw his mind from this gloomy brooding. We had no real battle, but a continual skirmish with the enemy, with stray shots throughout the day. As we were moving along in line of battle, I heard that peculiar buzzing noise of a bullet, as if in ricochet, coming in our direction, but high in the air. As it neared the column it seemed to lower and come with a more ...
— History of Kershaw's Brigade • D. Augustus Dickert

... seen in his wife's countenance what might now have been seen in this dark-eyed woman's as she caught a stray glance of flirtation from one or other of the red-coated gallants outside, he would have passed many days in an agony of restless jealousy and doubt. But Manston was not such a husband, and he was, moreover, calmly attending ...
— Desperate Remedies • Thomas Hardy

... will come to me, fall on me— You are so heavy, and I am so flat. And I? I shall not be at home when you call on me, But stray down the wind like a gentleman's hat: I shall list to the stars when the music is purple, Be drawn through a pipe, and exhaled into rings; Turn to sparks, and then straightway get stuck in the gateway That stands ...
— A Nonsense Anthology • Collected by Carolyn Wells

... the centre of the broad asphalt path, dirty, ragged and disreputable-looking. He had not altered much since he left Ballarat, save that he looked more dilapidated- looking, but stood there in his usual sullen manner, with his hat drawn down over his eyes. Some stray wisps of grass showed that he had been camping out all the hot day on the green turf under the shadow of the trees, and it was easy to see from his appearance what a vagrant he was. Vandeloup was annoyed at the meeting and cast a rapid look around ...
— Madame Midas • Fergus Hume

... xxvi. 1, does not occur elsewhere in the Pentateuch. It specially emphasizes the holiness of Jehovah; as has been said, in H He is the person to whom the cult is performed, while the question of how is more elaborately dealt with in P. There are stray allusions which almost seem to point to pre-exilic days; e.g. to idols, xxvi. 30, Moloch being explicitly mentioned, xviii. 21, xx. 2; and the various sanctuaries presupposed by xxvi. 31 would almost seem to carry us back to a point before ...
— Introduction to the Old Testament • John Edgar McFadyen

... the reins of their animals over their heads as an intimation to the creatures not to stray and then made ...
— The Boy Ranchers in Death Valley - or Diamond X and the Poison Mystery • Willard F. Baker

... had come long distances, ate their luncheon in a shady place under the trees behind the meeting-house, for there was an afternoon service to come, a service with another long sermon. They separated after the modest meal to walk about the Common or stray along the road to the Academy, where there was ...
— The Story Of Waitstill Baxter • By Kate Douglas Wiggin

... to Miss Madeira at last, and let them drop slowly into the crock, watching carefully for stray ...
— Sally of Missouri • R. E. Young

... the murmur of voices, wondering what went on inside, wherefrom all the servant-maids had been expelled at the beginning of the interview, and now stood clustered by the palings with half-covered faces in a chatter of curious speculation. He forgot himself there trying to catch a stray word through the bamboo walls, till the captain of the steamer, who had walked up with the girl, fearing a sunstroke, took him under the arm and led him into the shade of his own verandah: where Nina's trunk ...
— Almayer's Folly - A Story of an Eastern River • Joseph Conrad

... hundred. In some respects, the man did deserve a century, being a good Pole and a worthy priest, notwithstanding one weakness which beset him, for Father Cassimer took special delight in hunting. It was said that once, when robed for mass, a wild boar chanced to stray past; whereon the good priest mounted his horse, which was usually fastened to the church-door, and started after the game in full canonicals. That was in his youth; but Father Cassimer never denied the tale, and the peasants who remembered ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 5, No. 3, March, 1852 • Various

... Come, stray into my heart, you tender little feet, and leave the everlasting print of songs on my ...
— The Fugitive • Rabindranath Tagore

... money, nothing beyond a stray sovereign or two in her purse. She had taken off most of her jewellery with the exception of an old diamond bangle of quaint design. She hated the sight of it now as she hated the sight of anything that suggested wealth and money. ...
— The Slave of Silence • Fred M. White

... furrowed land, And the milkmaid singeth blithe, And the mower whets his scythe, And every shepherd tells his tale Under the hawthorn in the dale. Straight mine eye hath caught new pleasures, Whilst the landskip round it measures: Russet lawns, and fallows grey, Where the nibbling flocks do stray; Mountains on whose barren breast The labouring clouds do often rest; Meadows trim, with daisies pied; Shallow brooks, and rivers wide; Towers and battlements it sees Bosomed high in tufted trees, Where perhaps some beauty lies, The cynosure of neighbouring eyes. Hard ...
— L'Allegro, Il Penseroso, Comus, and Lycidas • John Milton

... dressed and adorned with scrupulous care; her eyebrows trimmed of every stray hair that might deform the beauty-arch; the lids pencilled with lampblack; the palms of her hands and the soles of her feet stained with henna; not one stray lock encroached on the straight parting of ...
— Studies in Literature and History • Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall

... came to a newly mown field where the farmers had piled up the weeds in order to burn them. Coquerico approached a smoking heap, hoping to find some stray kernels of corn, and saw a little flame which was charring the green stalks without being able to set ...
— Laboulaye's Fairy Book • Various

... alone behind them all to listen to the approach of the hostile chariots. He laid his ear to the ground on the shore of the bay, and he could trust to the sharpness of his hearing; how often, in this attitude, he had caught the distant tramp of stray cattle or, while hunting, the approach of a herd of ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... The abbess and nuns were alarmed at their absence, for no one could give any account of them. In the eve of St. John, a cowherd, passing by them, beheld a beautiful child seated on a cushion between this pair of runaway nuns. He hastened to the abbess with news of these stray sheep; she came and beheld this lovely child playfully seated between these nymphs; they, with blushing countenances, inquired if the second bell had already rung? Both parties were equally astonished to find our young devotees had been there from the Nativity of Jesus to that of St. John. ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli

... itself have you so well learned to lie? Talk on. Tell me that he held you here perforce, and that you passed the days and the nights in weeping. Have I not heard of your smiles and your contentment? Whither did you stray this morning? Did you go into the wood ...
— Veranilda • George Gissing

... with crape round the handle. The coffin-bearers, grumbling and altercating among themselves, laid the coffin on the hearse; the garrison soldiers lighted their torches, which at once began crackling and smoking; a stray old woman, who had joined herself on to the party, raised a wail; the deacons began to chant, the fine snow suddenly fell faster and whirled round like 'white flies.' Mr. Ratsch bawled, 'In God's name! start!' and the procession started. Besides Mr. Ratsch's family, there ...
— The Jew And Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev

... was offered to the little girl who should pick up the largest number of scraps of paper which littered all the streets and alleys. The children that spring had been organized into a league, and each member had been provided with a stiff piece of wire upon the sharpened point of which stray bits of paper were impaled and later soberly counted off into a large box in the Hull-House alley. The little Italian girl who thus won the scepter took it very gravely as the just reward of hard labor, and we were all so absorbed in the ...
— Twenty Years At Hull House • Jane Addams

... disapproved of stray acquaintances for his sister, and now that anxiety for her safety was assuaged, began to feel aggrieved at having been ...
— Betty Trevor • Mrs. G. de Horne Vaizey

... on Vindex, and these were camped on a water-hole which had been filled by a stray thunderstorm. The remainder of the sheep from the run were travelling for grass and water on the coast near Townsville. As a compliment, I was allowed to replenish my water-bag, and to obtain one drink for each of ...
— Reminiscences of Queensland - 1862-1869 • William Henry Corfield

... the forest for many years,' said the stranger to the priest, 'and I love it for its great beauty. As I flit in and out among the dark shadows of the trees, I play with the stray sunbeams as they cast their glances here and there on ...
— Undine • Friedrich de la Motte Fouque

... moved his lips, but uttered no sound. "Then fareweel!" she said, "and God forgive you! Your hand has sealed my evidence.—When I was in life, I was the mad randy gipsy, that had been scourged, and banished, and branded—that had begged from door to door, and been hounded like a stray tike [*Dog.] from parish to parish—wha would hae minded her tale?—But now I am a dying woman, and my words will not fall to the ground, any more than the earth ...
— Guy Mannering • Sir Walter Scott

... however, the locality and temper of Mrs. Wharton's briefer stories are not so remote as these from the center of her particular world, wherein subtle and sophisticated people stray in the crucial mazes of art or learning or love. Her artists and scholars are likely to be shown at some moment in which a passionate ideal is in conflict with a lower instinct toward profit or reputation, as when in The Descent of Man an eminent scientist turns his feet ruinously ...
— Contemporary American Novelists (1900-1920) • Carl Van Doren

... towers of the Louvre and the Tour de Bois away leftward, to the Tour de Billy away right ward, I urged my horse with a jubilant heart. It was a quite dark Paris by the time I plunged into it. The Rue St. Denis, along which I rode, was beginning to be lighted here and there by stray rays from windows. The still narrower streets, that ran, like crooked corridors in a great chateau, from the large thoroughfare, seemed to be ...
— An Enemy To The King • Robert Neilson Stephens

... lead me where I am. This is the divine association I was so long seeking elsewhere in vain; I find in its forms the true symbols of a universal religion; and I now perceive that the seeming errors, in which I was for a time permitted to stray, were wisely designed to convince me of the sublime truth, that celibacy is the single condition befitting a holy ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various

... what a world of direful kind, The Bard illustrious leads my mind, 'Midst heaths and wilds to stray; Where the fierce whirlwinds sweep the plain; Where the moon feebly holds her reign; And ghosts elude ...
— Translations of German Poetry in American Magazines 1741-1810 • Edward Ziegler Davis

... off-hand, I've picked out an off-hand subject and arise to give you 'Lucinda.' Having never met her I feel able to say nothing good about her and I call the company present to witness that I shall say nothing bad either. I gather from what I have had a stray chance of picking up that Lucinda is all that she should be, and nothing frisque. The latter quality is too bad, but it's not my fault. Therefore, I say again 'Lucinda', and here's to her very good health. May she never regret that ...
— The Rejuvenation of Aunt Mary • Anne Warner

... Don't touch it yet with your hands. It's so frightened still it might scratch you. Here, Cricket, take it in the table-cloth, there. Better give it something to eat. It's a stray cat, and probably half starved, and that's why it tried to eat tomato ...
— Cricket at the Seashore • Elizabeth Westyn Timlow

... days all the drama of the flowing and ebbing tides may be watched with ever increasing wonder and delight The sea is caught by the islands and goes whirling down the channels. It is turned backwards by some stray spit of land and set beating against some other current of the same tide which has taken a different way and reached the same point in strong opposite flow. The little glistening wavelets leap to meet each other, like lovers reunited whose mouths ...
— Priscilla's Spies 1912 • George A. Birmingham

... never easy to stray far from the master in high moral, aesthetic, and literary matters and be on the safe side; we are only to try to escape his individual bias, to break over his limitations and "brave the landscape's look" with our own eyes. We ...
— The Last Harvest • John Burroughs

... stray lots of fish during the summer?-Not much. Sometimes, perhaps, we get a 'supper piltock.' The men take home a few fish for their own family use, Sometimes a man has large family, and another man has a small family, but they require to take ...
— Second Shetland Truck System Report • William Guthrie

... Peisianax, and others served a notice of indictment on Callixenus, insisting that his proposal was unconstitutional, and this view of the case was applauded by some members of the assembly. But the majority kept crying out that it was monstrous if the people were to be hindered by any stray individual from doing what seemed to them right. And when Lysicus, embodying the spirit of those cries, formally proposed that if these persons would not abandon their action, they should be tried by the same vote along with the generals: ...
— Hellenica • Xenophon

... country where the mail passes only once a week, where all communication is by horse-paths or by the slow course of the flat-boat, where schools are not known and churches are never seen, where the Methodist itinerant preacher gives all the religious instruction, and a stray newspaper furnishes all the political information. Does any one doubt my statement? Then let him ask a passage up-stream in one of the flat-boats that supply the primitive necessities of the small farmers ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 76, February, 1864 • Various

... willow. Just after sundown a horse came galloping from the west and went in with our horses that were feeding a little farther down. In the morning two soldiers came from the fort, inquiring after the stray horse, but Dallas said he had seen none, and they did not hunt around among the willows for the lost animal. Probably it would be the easiest way to report back to the fort—"Indians got him." When we hitched up in the morning he put the horse on the off side of his ...
— Death Valley in '49 • William Lewis Manly

... born match maker, and she had cultivated the gift by diligent practice. As the sight of a tendrilled vine suggests the need and fitness of a trellis, and a stray glove invariably brings to mind the thought of its absent fellow, so every disengaged spinster of marriageable age was an appeal—pathetic and sure—to the dear woman's helpful sympathy, and her whole ...
— At Last • Marion Harland

... princesses. Her petticoat was dark blue, her apron white, and so was her handkerchief, and round her handsome throat was a small hair chain, or ribbon, with a little gold cross attached. Her feet were in sabots; and she held a whip in her hand, with which to chastise her stray sheep; on her arm hung a flat basket, in which were probably her provisions for the day, or she might have filled it with walnuts which were being gathered close by. I never saw a sweeter figure altogether, and ...
— Barn and the Pyrenees - A Legendary Tour to the Country of Henri Quatre • Louisa Stuart Costello

... the House. In the Boxes and Dress-circle are friends and relations of the Author. In the Stalls are a couple of Stray Critics who leave early, actors and actresses "resting" more friends and relations. In the Pit, the front row is filled by the Author's domestic servants, the landladies of several of the performers, and a theatrical charwoman or ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Volume 102, April 2, 1892 • Various

... bargained with a stray blackfellow to bring her some wood, and while he was at work she went in search of a missing cow. She was absent an hour or so, and the native black made good use of his time. On her return she was so astonished to see a good heap of wood by the chimney, ...
— While the Billy Boils • Henry Lawson

... unexpected finding of a stray letter which stimulates curiosity, and Berkeley turned it in his hand to read the address. The envelope was soiled like the coat of a traveler, and the letter was crumpled as though a hand had closed over it roughly. The writing ...
— Princess • Mary Greenway McClelland

... eternity to Tibo, they arrived at the mouth of a cave between two rocky hills. The opening was low and narrow. A few saplings bound together with strips of rawhide closed it against stray beasts. Bukawai removed the primitive door and pushed Tibo within. The hyenas, snarling, rushed past him and were lost to view in the blackness of the interior. Bukawai replaced the saplings and seizing Tibo roughly by the arm, dragged him ...
— Jungle Tales of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... natives have a trail, not much used, by which they pass. If you descend, be careful not to leave or lose this trail, for in many parts your horse will not be able to get back to it if you suffer him to stray off even a few yards, the lava is so sharp and jagged. As you descend the mountain on the Makawao side you will notice two finely shaped craters on the side of the mountain, which also in their time spewed out lava. Nearer the coast your eye, ...
— Northern California, Oregon, and the Sandwich Islands • Charles Nordhoff

... is emancipated from prakriti or sensuous bondage, in that proportion his approximation to the soul state is attained; and it is this that constitutes disparities in the intellectual, moral, and religious culture of human beings and their consequent approximation to God.—Spiritual Stray Leaves, ...
— Five Years Of Theosophy • Various

... and weeks and months passed away, during which we were almost constantly at sea, but incidents worth relating had grown scarce, as we were now in piping times of peace, when even a stray pirate had become a rarity, and a luxury denied to all but the small craft people. On one of our cruises, however, we had been working up all morning to the southward of the Pedro shoals, with the wind ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott

... conducted Lord George's division led them off the road; this was, however, a necessary precaution in order to shun houses, the lights from which might have tempted the drenched and hungry soldiers to stray, and take shelter. Then the hardy and energetic general of his matchless forces first felt the effects of this laborious march ...
— Memoirs of the Jacobites of 1715 and 1745 - Volume III. • Mrs. Thomson

... that—"In Prussia, Livonia, and Lithuania, although the inhabitants suffer considerably from the rapacity of wolves throughout the year, in that these animals rend their cattle, which are scattered in great numbers through the woods, whenever they stray in the very least, yet this is not regarded by them as such a serious matter as what they endure ...
— The Book of Were-Wolves • Sabine Baring-Gould

... men, granted to dwell among us, of more delicate mental fibre than their fellows; men whose minds have as it were exquisite filaments which they throw out to intercept, apprehend and conduct home to Man stray messages between the outer mystery of the Universe and the inner mystery of his soul; even as modern telegraphy has learnt to search out, snatch and gather home messages wandering astray over waste waters of Ocean. Such men are the poets, ...
— Poetry • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... Fisher,'you'd better! Richard is going into a decline, madam, I suppose you know. And the major is drowning careand himself with it. And Lancaster's pining for war and a stray bullet;and Stuart Nightingale Then in town here there's a list of killed, wounded and missing as long as my arm. O I must tell you the best joke. There was a parcel of men dining at the club the other day, and toasting Miss Kennedy, witch, sorceress, ...
— The Gold of Chickaree • Susan Warner

... bands separated soon after this council, to follow the drift of the buffalo, some in the vicinity of the Black Hills and others in the Big Horn region. Small war parties came down from time to time upon stray travelers, who received no mercy at their hands, or made dashes upon neighboring forts. Red Cloud claimed the right to guard and hold by force, if need be, all this territory which had been conceded ...
— Indian Heroes and Great Chieftains • [AKA Ohiyesa], Charles A. Eastman

... slow 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 a little, ...
— Overland Red - A Romance of the Moonstone Canon Trail • Henry Herbert Knibbs

... stay there for years, but no one would take from a cache. If one has plenty of wood by the seashore or in the forest, he may cord it and go his way and no one will touch it. A deer hangs on a tree where dogs may not reach it, but no stray hunter would slice even a ...
— Kalitan, Our Little Alaskan Cousin • Mary F. Nixon-Roulet

... there should be greater rejoicing over the recovery of one stray sheep, or the saving of a soul that had been as one lost, than over the many who have not been in such jeopardy. In the safe-folded ninety and nine the shepherd had continued joy; but to him came a new accession of happiness, brighter and ...
— Jesus the Christ - A Study of the Messiah and His Mission According to Holy - Scriptures Both Ancient and Modern • James Edward Talmage

... Kindred Delusions" was published nearly twenty years ago, and has been long out of print, so that the author tried in vain to procure a copy until the kindness of a friend supplied him with the only one he has had for years. A foolish story reached his ears that he was attempting to buy up stray copies for the sake of suppressing it. This edition was in the press at ...
— Medical Essays • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

... at daybreak to the house of Mr. Gordon, where he had spent the previous night. At daybreak, however, he was roused by a fearful disturbance in the courtyard below, occasioned by the quarrels of some stray soldiers. For a moment he thought death was certain, but the soldiers had no suspicion of his presence in the house, and as soon as they had settled their ...
— The True Story Book • Andrew Lang

... as their leaders show them the way. Mr. Anderson having secured the property en cache, determined to return to Jasper's house, in order to procure at least a part of the much wanted supply of leather. On their way back they had the good fortune to light upon a stray horse, which they converted into provender: they also shot a moose deer; and thus providentially supplied, they ...
— Service in the Hudson's Bay Territory • John M'lean

... carelessly to munch some pieces of melon rind. To this small yard or poultry-run a length of planking served as a fence, while beyond it lay a kitchen garden containing cabbages, onions, potatoes, beetroots, and other household vegetables. Also, the garden contained a few stray fruit trees that were covered with netting to protect them from the magpies and sparrows; flocks of which were even then wheeling and darting from one spot to another. For the same reason a number of scarecrows with outstretched arms stood reared on long poles, ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol

... bring together in this paper such stray reminiscences of doggery in general as may occur to me while I write, illustrating the subject, as I proceed, with occasional passages from the careers, of humble, but eccentric ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 25, November, 1859 • Various

... insects next their heads. Wilson's warblers, pine creepers, black-throats, myrtle and magnolia warblers, oven birds, peewits, blue jays, purple finches, passed silently or noisily, each according to his kind. Once a lone spruce hen dusted herself in a stray patch of sunlight until it shimmered on a tree trunk, raised upward, and disappeared, to give place to long level dusty shafts that shot here and there through the pines laying the spell of sunset on ...
— The Blazed Trail • Stewart Edward White

... sorrow, and that this I could not indicate better than by these wise and tender words from Dickens. "No philosophy will bear these dreadful things, or make a moment's head against them, but the practical one of doing all the good we can, in thought and deed. While we can, God help us! ourselves stray from ourselves so easily; and there are all around us such frightful calamities besetting the world in which we live; nothing else will carry us through it. . . . What a comfort to reflect on what you tell me. Bulwer Lytton's conduct is that of a generous ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster

... old wild road whereon we stray, Meseems, might bring us face to face with one Whom seeing we could not but give thanks, and pray For England's love our father and her son To speak with us as once in days long done With all men, sage and churl and monk and mime, Who knew not as we know the ...
— A Midsummer Holiday and Other Poems • Algernon Charles Swinburne

... empty-handed, and it was necessary to find some work at once which would at least provide them with daily bread. Ruth, looking out over the fields where already the barley was being cut, made up her mind to go and work there. The poor were always allowed to follow the reapers and glean the stray ears of corn that fell unnoticed. She might at least gather enough to feed ...
— The Babe in the Bulrushes • Amy Steedman

... and I set out after wild flowers, accompanied by Turk and mother's caution not to stray too far, as wild beasts, 'twas said, lurked in the neighboring forest; but the prettiest flowers were always just beyond, and we wandered afield until we reached a fringe of timber half a mile from the house, where we tarried ...
— Last of the Great Scouts - The Life Story of William F. Cody ["Buffalo Bill"] • Helen Cody Wetmore

... these roads are always full of ants, coming and going," continued Uncle Ben. "There is a great crowd of them at the entrance, but they thin out as they get further from home. They stray off under the grass, seeking for the ripe seeds which may have dropped. They do not seem to climb the grass for the seeds, but only hunt for them on ...
— Harper's Young People, September 7, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various

... lyttel byfore erto wat[gh] wonte; 172 To calle hyr lyste con me enchace, Bot baysme{n}t gef myn hert a bru{n}t, I se[gh] hyr in so strange a place, Such a burre my[gh]t make my{n} herte blu{n}t 176 e{n}ne vere[gh] ho vp her fayre frou{n}t, Hyr vysayge whyt as playn yuore, at stonge my{n} hert ful stray atou{n}t, & eu{er} e lenger, e more ...
— Early English Alliterative Poems - in the West-Midland Dialect of the Fourteenth Century • Various

... all my world survey! And could I stand while Paradise descrying, Still for these verdant meads should I be sighing, Where thy dear roof-peaks skirt the verdant way: Beyond these bounds my heart longs not to stray. ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various

... here now a little space, while I go and gather forest flowers. They are sweeter than those that grow in my garden. O, right glad am I to be alone in the forest, relieved from the observation of those grim-visaged sentinels, to stray solitary in the dim mysterious forest, and to think my own thoughts there, and dream my dreams, and recall that vision which I have seen. O Naysi, son of Usna, sweeter than harps is the mere sound ...
— The Coming of Cuculain • Standish O'Grady

... of his sentences, and the moderation of his gestures, were all in strong contrast to the flowing, loose, impassioned manner of the Southern orators, who ruled the House. It was something like coming upon a stray number of the old Edinburgh Review in a heap of novels and Ladies' Magazines. Chief-Justice Marshall, who heard his first speech, being himself a Federalist, was so much delighted to hear his own opinions expressed with such power and ...
— Famous Americans of Recent Times • James Parton

... be readily understood that the cattle, whether horned beasts or horses, which wander from pasture to pasture over the vast extent of the Campagna are liable to stray occasionally, and perhaps to become mingled with the herds belonging to another proprietor. It is necessary, therefore, that they should be marked; and this marking is the occasion of a great and very remarkable festival and solemnity. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 90, June, 1875 • Various

... here's the scamp of the village come to see you; keep him here till I come back. I'm after some stray sheep'; and shutting the door with a ...
— Teddy's Button • Amy Le Feuvre

... garden, throwing bits of sweetened rice-flour cakes to the goldfishes in their chocolate-colored pond near the tea pavilion. He found himself later skirting Stow Lake, pursued by flocks of ubiquitous coots, bent upon any stray crumbs flung in their direction. Finally he dipped suddenly down into the wilder reaches of the Park, taking aimless trails that wandered off into sandy wastes or fetched up quite suddenly upon the trimly bordered main driveway. He always had preferred the untamed ...
— Broken to the Plow • Charles Caldwell Dobie

... led, We shall not in the desert stray; We shall not full direction need; Nor miss our providential way; As far from danger as from fear, While love, ...
— The Hallam Succession • Amelia Edith Barr

... painful process, for Young Pete cared nothing for that sort of education and suffered only that he might please his venerable partner. When it came to the plaiting of rawhide into bridle-reins and reatas, the handling of a rope, packing for a hunting trip, reading a dim trail when tracking a stray horse, or any of the many things essential to life in the hills, Young Pete took hold with boyish enthusiasm, copying Annersley's methods to the letter. Pete was repaid a thousand-fold for his efforts by the ...
— The Ridin' Kid from Powder River • Henry Herbert Knibbs

... fear was that the bird might stray further outside of his care; and yet he dared not try and wake the boy, for he knew that this was death, if the soul was thrust apart from the body, and if he broke the unseen chain that bound them; so he waited and ...
— Paul the Minstrel and Other Stories - Reprinted from The Hill of Trouble and The Isles of Sunset • Arthur Christopher Benson

... such as the general, or trierarch, or ambassador. Whereas now every single individual among the allies is forced to pay flattery to the People of Athens because he knows that he must betake himself to Athens and win or lose (48) his case at the bar, not of any stray set of judges, but of the sovereign People itself, such being the law and custom at Athens. He is compelled to behave as a suppliant (49) in the courts of justice, and when some juryman comes into court, to grasp his hand. For this reason, ...
— The Polity of the Athenians and the Lacedaemonians • Xenophon

... freedom, and untried; No sport of every random gust, Yet being to myself a guide, Too blindly have reposed my trust: And oft, when in my heart was heard Thy timely mandate, I deferr'd The task, in smoother walks to stray; But thee I now would serve ...
— The Golden Treasury - Of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language • Various

... superficial, and the arrest of young Burton may not be at all warranted by the facts. As it happens, Miss Cavanaugh," easily, "there are no very pressing matters to engage me just now; and since you are so interested, suppose I look into it, and see if I can gather up any stray threads missed ...
— Ashton-Kirk, Criminologist • John T. McIntyre

... at last in a compromise. Tim received gracious permission himself to go to the police to ask the way, provided he left "us" in the wood—"us" promising to be very good, not to stray out of a certain distance, to speak to no possible passers-by, and to hide among the brushwood if any suspicious-looking ...
— "Us" - An Old Fashioned Story • Mary Louisa S. Molesworth

... answered she, "for of a truth I know not wherein it lieth. I hold that which I find in the book; and I trow an' I keep close by the words of Christ, I cannot stray ...
— Mistress Margery • Emily Sarah Holt

... not, taking some one firm decision, rule circumstances! Soft speeches will not serve, hard grape-shot is questionable; but hovering between the two is unquestionable. Ever wilder swells the tide of men; their infinite hum waxing even louder into imprecations, perhaps into crackle of stray musketry—which latter, on walls nine feet thick, cannot do execution. The outer drawbridge has been lowered for Thuriot; new deputation of citizens (it is the third and noisiest of all) penetrates that way into the outer court: soft ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine—Vol. 54, No. 333, July 1843 • Various

... heir-apparent of the house, with his short stout mistrustful wife, who hated society, but went everywhere lest it might be thought she had been left out; the "beautiful Mrs. Beringer," a lovely aimless being, who kept (as Laura Fairford said) a home for stray opinions, and could never quite tell them apart; little Dicky Bowles, whom every one invited because he was understood to "say things" if one didn't; the Harvey Shallums, fresh from Paris, and dragging in their wake a bewildered nobleman vaguely designated as "the Count," who ...
— The Custom of the Country • Edith Wharton

... the Church they would give us some ale, And a pleasant fire our souls to regale, We'd sing and we'd pray all the livelong day, Nor ever once wish from the Church to stray. ...
— Poems of William Blake • William Blake

... Major's growing interest in the Angel had assumed almost fatherly proportions. Hitherto this zeal had taken itself out in various expeditions for her entertainment similar to the one ending in Mr. Tomlin's rescue. To-day it was produced in the shape of a somewhat damaged peach purchased with a stray penny. But the Angel, in her generous fashion, insisting on a division of the dainty, Joey at first stoutly declining, weakened and took half, seeing to it, however, that his was ...
— The Angel of the Tenement • George Madden Martin

... Venice, the view of which from the Zueca, a word contracted from Giudecca, as I am told, would invite one never more to stray from it—farther at least than to St. George's church, on another little opposite island, whence the prospect is surely wonderful; and one sits longing for a pencil to repeat what has been so often exquisitely painted by Canaletti, just as foolishly ...
— Observations and Reflections Made in the Course of a Journey through France, Italy, and Germany, Vol. I • Hester Lynch Piozzi

... turn'd its eye To some gay reticule's construction, It ne'er had stray'd from duty's tie, Nor felt a magnet's sly seduction. Girls would you keep tranquil hearts, Your snowy fingers must be nimble; The safest shield against the darts ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton

... it. They'll back into the station in a minute, and then we're done for." And suiting the action to the word, he rushed down the car towards the front of the train. The rest followed him with the best speed they could muster, falling over boxes and bundles, getting entangled in stray shoes, and running foul of swinging portieres. Fortunately the cars were vestibuled, so the platforms offered no impediment. The train seemed absolutely interminable, for as they dashed through sleeper after sleeper, one more always appeared ahead, and Banborough could ...
— His Lordship's Leopard - A Truthful Narration of Some Impossible Facts • David Dwight Wells

... also of endeavouring to cut off any stray parties of Boers who might be making their way north from Colesberg and that neighbourhood. Broadwood was in command of us. There was a stray party, sure enough, but it was 7000 strong. It passed across our bows, fifteen miles ...
— With Rimington • L. March Phillipps

... course of these excursions to the country, the native Indians, with a stray half-breed, generally of the China Mestizo race, are nearly the only people met with, as few Europeans are settled in the provinces, except in the provincial capitals, or near the alcalde, whose dependents they generally are. Should a stranger ...
— Recollections of Manilla and the Philippines - During 1848, 1849 and 1850 • Robert Mac Micking

... things crossed his mind, Larry smote his thigh so often and so vigorously, that he ran the risk of being taken up for unwarrantably discharging his revolver in the streets, and he whistled once or twice so significantly, that at least five stray dogs answered to the call. At last he hitched up the band of his trousers, and, hastening round to the front door, essayed to ...
— The Golden Dream - Adventures in the Far West • R.M. Ballantyne

... was over, and the sheep were brought home, again most of the missing sheep belonged to Thorbiorn, and again Olaf went to the mountains alone and brought back the stray ones. All thanked him, except the master of Bathstead, to whom Olaf drove back sixty wethers. Thorbiorn had grown daily more enraged at Olaf's popularity, his strength and beauty, and his evident love ...
— Hero-Myths & Legends of the British Race • Maud Isabel Ebbutt

... three more minnows, eating two and saving the third for breakfast. The sun had dried stray shreds of moss, and he was able to warm himself with hot water. He had not covered more than ten miles that day; and the next day, travelling whenever his heart permitted him, he covered no more than five miles. But his stomach did not give him the slightest uneasiness. It had ...
— Love of Life - and Other Stories • Jack London

... and nurse it for Me?" Will you dare to say Him nay? Dare to let His children perish, Or in evil paths to stray? ...
— God's Answers - A Record Of Miss Annie Macpherson's Work at the - Home of Industry, Spitalfields, London, and in Canada • Clara M. S. Lowe

... Staigg, N. A. We owe this artist much for his beautiful inculcations of the charities of life. How many stray pennies may not his little street sweeper have drawn from careless passers-by? No. 59, 'Cat's Cradle,' is another pleasing ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol III, Issue VI, June, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... I answered, with a calm confidence. I didn't tell Mother Spurlock, and I didn't know exactly why I didn't, but I was deeply involved in a clandestine affair with the Stray which was fast becoming one of the adventures of my life. It had begun in a positively weird manner and was continuing along the same lines. One morning several weeks after my first acquaintance and turtle adventure with him I had waked up at dawn and gone to look out of the window ...
— The Heart's Kingdom • Maria Thompson Daviess

... a few weeks in the summer, to the unspeakable rejoicing of the whole family; but it was a break of light in a cloudy day; the clouds closed again. Only now and then a stray sunbeam of a letter ...
— Hills of the Shatemuc • Susan Warner

... behind at the Lodge, very happy because her fairy princess had actually thrown her a smile as she passed, was still following the distant figure on the bridge with wistful eyes, as Joyce busily searched her pockets for a few stray crumbs with which to feed the swans in the moat. The scarlet riding-dress, glossy tippet, and scarlet feather in the big brown hat were all faithfully reflected in the clear water below, except where the swans interrupted the vivid picture with dazzling snowy ...
— A Book of Quaker Saints • Lucy Violet Hodgkin

... that it is today. We built our homes here, and brought our families out, and we can't afford to abandon it to these crooks and gamblers and gun-slingers from the four corners of the earth. I let them put me in for mayor, but I haven't got any more power than a stray dog. This chance to put in a marshal is the first one I've had to land them a kick in the gizzards, and by Jeems River, Seth, I want to double ...
— Trail's End • George W. Ogden

... many lodgings, he informed the lady. And then he thought of Madame Magnotte. Was it not his duty to secure this stray lodger for that worthy ...
— Charlotte's Inheritance • M. E. Braddon

... admirable fitness, as the contest goes forward, the relative position of the speakers begins to change. Hitherto, Job only had been passionate; and his friends temperate and collected. Now, becoming shocked at his obstinacy, and disappointed in the result of their homilies, they stray still further from the truth in an endeavour to strengthen their position, and, as a natural consequence, visibly grow angry. To them, Job's vehement and desperate speeches are damning evidence of the truth ...
— Short Studies on Great Subjects • James Anthony Froude

... for a man in the habit of losing or mislaying his temper to argue with himself that such a proceeding is folly, that it serves no end, and does nothing but harm. It is useless for him to argue that in allowing his temper to stray he is probably guilty of cruelty, and certainly guilty of injustice to those persons who are forced to witness the loss. It is useless for him to argue that a man of uncertain temper in a house is like a man who goes about a house with a loaded revolver ...
— The Human Machine • E. Arnold Bennett

... from my story, and that I must not do, for I have many things to tell, so many that it will not be well for me to stray away from the ...
— The Birthright • Joseph Hocking

... as with a fan waves the breeze to its nostrils, and asks the breeze whether the hunters have not poisoned the food: so Protazy left the road and circled over the meadow around the house; he twirled his stick in his hand and pretended that he had somewhere seen some stray cattle; thus skilfully manoeuvring he arrived close to the garden; he bent down and ran so that you would have said that he was trailing a land rail; then he suddenly jumped over the fence and plunged ...
— Pan Tadeusz • Adam Mickiewicz

... nursery only the other day? "I'm not made of wood, darling, am I?" said he. And Gwen replied, refitting spars in calmer water:—"No, dear, that you are not, but Lincoln's Inn Fields is. Sitting there like an Egyptian God, with his hands on his knees!" She repacked a stray flood of gold that had escaped from its restraints—the most conspicuous record of the recent gale—and reassured her father with a liberal kiss. Then she thawed towards the legal mind. "I'm sure he's very good and kind and all that—Lincoln's Inn Fields, ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan

... Christianity. All that appeals to the eye in the rites and ceremonies impresses them—the glamour and pomp of the procession attract them; they are very fervent in outward observances, but ever prone to stray towards the idolatrous. A pretended apparition of the Blessed Virgin is an old profitable trick of the natives, practised as recently as December, 1904, in the village of Namacpacan (Ilocos), where a woman, who declared the Virgin had appeared to her in the form of the ...
— The Philippine Islands • John Foreman

... impossible for a sunbeam to force its shining entrance into such a circle of dense gloom. Yet there was a shower of golden light pouring aslant down one of the highest of the hills, brightening to vivid crimson stray clumps of heather, touching into pale green some patches of moss and lichen, and giving the dazzling flash of silver to the white wings of a sea- gull which soared above our heads uttering wild cries like a creature in pain. Pale blue mists were rising from the surface of the lake, and the fitful ...
— The Life Everlasting: A Reality of Romance • Marie Corelli

... you ladies going to do with yourselves?" he said. "Will you come out and sit under the trees and look on—taking the chance of being hit by a stray ...
— Say and Seal, Volume I • Susan Warner

... leave my sheep, sir," replied Gerhardt. "They will stray into the forest, and may be eaten by wolves or stolen ...
— Tiger and Tom and Other Stories for Boys • Various

... hill![4] where early joy Spread roses o'er my brow; Where science seeks each loitering boy With knowledge to endow. Adieu, my youthful friends or foes, Partners of former bliss or woes; No more through Ida's path we stray; Soon must I share the gloomy cell, Whose ever-slumbering inmates dwell ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. XX. No. 556., Saturday, July 7, 1832 • Various

... our horses to a run in crossing some open streets where we would be exposed. On getting to the first street my guide galloped ahead to show the way, and as the French were not on the lookout for anything of the kind at these dangerous points, only a few stray shots were drawn by the lieutenant, but when I followed, they were fully up to what was going on, and let fly a volley every time they saw me in the open. Fortunately, however, in their excitement they overshot, ...
— The Memoirs of General P. H. Sheridan, Complete • General Philip Henry Sheridan

... triumph, for they find in this appellative form, always and necessarily sharp and boisterous at the same time, a striking confirmation of their system. Here I seem to stray far from the solution which I thought I already grasped! Far from it; the light is breaking. Hitherto the examples evoked had only increased my obscurity by their multiplicity, and I saw nothing ...
— Delsarte System of Oratory • Various

... by. The very cabmen on their 'stands' nodded in blissful dreams. The motley colours in the Park—a stray cardinal-coloured parasol or two added to the effect—glinted behind the trees. The image of the happy tourists in the foreign streets grew more vivid. The restlessness increased every hour, and was not ...
— A Day's Tour • Percy Fitzgerald

... don't care who he is," said Mrs. Archibald, "or what your rules are, but when a perfectly good-mannered man comes to us and asks simply to be allowed to rest, I don't want him to be driven away as if he were a stray pig on a lawn. Mr. Archibald, shouldn't he be allowed to ...
— The Associate Hermits • Frank R. Stockton

... the cheerful fire, Our Mother's patient look, The firelight on her silver hair, And on the Holy Book;— Where e'er our erring feet may stray, The welcome waits the same,— That light, that look will follow ...
— The Coming of the Princess and Other Poems • Kate Seymour Maclean

... disposed of his camera and obtained a microscope—a short, complacent-looking implement it is, of brass—and he goes about everywhere now with little glass bottles in his pocket, ready to jump upon any stray polly-woggle he may find, and hale it home and pry into its affairs. Within his study window are perhaps half a dozen jars and basins full of green scum and choice specimens of black mud in which his victims live. He persists in making me look through this instrument, though ...
— Certain Personal Matters • H. G. Wells

... Tampawang, my native boy, saw him. It does not appear generally to inhabit the N.W. interior. The present was a very large specimen, with a beautifully soft skin, and as it was the only one noticed during a residence of nearly six months at the same place, it was in all probability a stray animal. ...
— Expedition into Central Australia • Charles Sturt

... been carefully gathered in lest rain might fall in the night. The trail-ropes of our animals were looked to: we did not fear their being stolen, but horses on their first few days' journey are easily "stampeded," and will sometimes stray home again. This would have been a great misfortune, but most of us were old travellers, and every caution was observed in securing against such a result. There was no guard kept, though we knew the time would come when that ...
— The Hunters' Feast - Conversations Around the Camp Fire • Mayne Reid

... Americans crawled homewards in stray, exhausted parties, dropping fast by the way as they went. 'I did not look into a hut or a tent,' wrote a horrified observer, 'in which I did not find a dead or dying man.' Disorganization became so complete that no exact returns ...
— The Father of British Canada: A Chronicle of Carleton • William Wood

... was no doubt begging from house to house for the handful of oatmeal which was the recognized, and, in the court of custom-taught conscience, the legalized dole upon which every beggar had a claim; and if she picked up at the same time a chicken, or a boy's rabbit, or any other stray luxury, she was only following the general rule of society, that your first duty is to take care of yourself. She was generally regarded as a gipsy, but I doubt if she had any gipsy blood in her veins. She was simply a tramper, with occasional fits of localization. ...
— Robert Falconer • George MacDonald



Words linked to "Stray" :   jazz around, domesticated animal, gad, domestic animal, locomote, move, isolated, lost, gallivant, tell, go, maunder, sporadic, travel



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