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More "Strut" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... who wishes to give up his life for his master he, too, had the stately walk, or strut, of a minister. The character of the newspaper writer was performed by the same Mr. Palmer who acted the part of the Nabob, but every one said, what I thought, that he made him far too much of a gentleman. His person, and his dress also, were too ...
— Travels in England in 1782 • Charles P. Moritz
... geese were out of hearing. "I don't want them about the farmyard. I haven't time to bother with them. Besides, they're so stupid that I never could teach them anything. I walked ahead of them, across the farmyard, to show them the stylish strut. But they couldn't learn it. They'll waddle to the ...
— The Tale of Turkey Proudfoot - Slumber-Town Tales • Arthur Scott Bailey
... commonplace woman now and there are such a lot of 'em in the world. When I remember all you have done for us it makes me ill to think of some in our town—giggling, silly little flirts, with no higher ambition than to strut down the street in a ...
— Miss Lou • E. P. Roe
... he went on scornfully. "She couldn't shoot or run or fight. All she did was to lie around or strut about with a veil around her head and a golden girdle (sensible costume!) and serve the hero with ambrosia and ruddy nectar. I've never eaten ambrosia, but I'm pretty sure it was some sweet, sticky stuff, like her." There is no measure for ...
— Paradise Garden - The Satirical Narrative of a Great Experiment • George Gibbs
... "capping" of the under-graduates, to such a man are real luxuries, and the relish with which he enjoys them is deep and strong. And if he have but the luck to immortalize himself by holding some University office, to strut through his year of misrule as proctor, or even as his humble "pro," then does he at once emerge from the obscurity of the family annals a being of a higher sphere. And when there comes up to commemoration a waddling old lady, and two thin sticks ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 349, November, 1844 • Various
... so busy serving that they have little time to strut and pose in the show places. Few of them are "prominent clubmen." You rarely find their names in the society page. They rarely give "brilliant social functions." Their idle ...
— The University of Hard Knocks • Ralph Parlette
... procession of bears come out, led, I believe, by a rooster who claps his wings and crows, and then they walk round a old man with a hour glass who strikes the hour on a bell. But the bears lead the programmy and bow and strut ...
— Around the World with Josiah Allen's Wife • Marietta Holley
... existing rot is chargeable the editor, at least of all others, had the power to stop or check it, and failure to meet this great responsibility shows that the strut of this great personage is assumed, and that, like the rest, his necessities have been used by the master to bend and break him till he no longer dare ...
— Confiscation, An Outline • William Greenwood
... install the power equipment. This consists of a small battery motor driven with two dry cells. The design and installation of such things as stern-tubes and propeller-shafts have been taken up in detail in an earlier part of this book. The strut that holds the propeller-shaft is shown in Fig. 91. This consists merely of a brass bushing held in a bracket made of a strip of brass 1/2 inch wide. The brass strip is wound around the bushing and soldered. ...
— Boys' Book of Model Boats • Raymond Francis Yates
... thing to wake us up! Here are you and I, dashing blades, who have been doing penance by trying to be fine gentlemen at watering-places, when it wasn't at all in our line. I began to think we looked as much like fops as the rest of the scented and bearded dress-coats, who strut about, and imagine the world is looking at them. This would throw us into quite another rank of life, and give us new ideas. How shall we manage it though, my fine fellow?" "Nothing easier in the world. Let us ...
— Holidays at the Grange or A Week's Delight - Games and Stories for Parlor and Fireside • Emily Mayer Higgins
... bear the brunt of the late ambassador's malice, and to engage at a little later period in hottest controversy with him, personal and political. "Why should van der Myle strut about, with his arms akimbo like a peacock?" complained Aerssens one day in confused metaphor. A question not easy ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... said Hope, dryly. "Praise is sweet, especially behind one's back. So pray go on, unless you have something better to say to each other;" and Hope retired briskly into his office. But when the lovers took him at his word, and began to strut up and down hand in hand, and murmur love's music into each other's ears, he could not take his eyes off them, and his thoughts were sad. She had only known that young fellow a few months, yet she loved him passionately, and he would take ...
— A Perilous Secret • Charles Reade
... Sunset Tribe and a man named Tintint the Captain of the Sunrise Tribe. Tintint had a very pink skin and eyes so faded in their pink color that he squinted badly in order to see anything around him. He was a fat and pompous little fellow and loved to strut up and down his line of warriors twirling his long, pointed stick so that all might ...
— Sky Island - Being the further exciting adventures of Trot and Cap'n - Bill after their visit to the sea fairies • L. Frank Baum
... learned his lessons had it not been for the desire to appear a good scholar before little Lucy. Jim had never been a self-conscious boy, but that day he was so keenly worried about her opinion of him that his usual easy swing broke into a strut when he crossed the room. He need not have been so troubled, because little Lucy was not looking at him. She was not looking at any boy or girl. She was only trying to learn her lesson. Little Lucy was that rather rare creature, a very gentle, obedient ...
— The Copy-Cat and Other Stories • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... the strut and meen Of new prais'd Poets, having often seen Some of his Fellows, who have writ before, When Nel has danc'd her Jig, steal to the Door, Hear the Pit clap, and with conceit of that Swell, and believe themselves the ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. III • Aphra Behn
... that he wanted to see you personally. Jay, you did a tremendous thing, man! Damn it, why don't you strut a little? Be—be normal for once! Why, I'd be damned near bursting with pride if one of the Hasturs insisted on ...
— The Planet Savers • Marion Zimmer Bradley
... that appellation, but the mountaineers) have a fine cast of countenance; and the most beautiful women I ever beheld, in stature and in features, we saw levelling the road broken down by the torrents between Delvinachi and Libochabo. Their manner of walking is truly theatrical; but this strut is probably the effect of the capote, or cloak, depending from one shoulder. Their long hair reminds you of the Spartans, and their courage in desultory warfare is unquestionable. Though they have some cavalry amongst the Gegdes, I never saw a good Arnaout horseman; my own preferred ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 2 • George Gordon Byron
... controls? What, as a rule, DO men believe in? ... Themselves! ... only themselves! They are, in their own opinion, the Be-All and the End-All of everything! ... as if the Supreme Creative Force called God were incapable of designing any Higher Form of Thinking-Life than their pigmy bodies which strut on two legs and, with two eyes and a small, quickly staggered brain, profess to understand and weigh the whole foundation and plan of ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... and feathers, until full grown. Then their wings moult, and the stumps are concealed behind their dress, which is like that of a man. They walk, when grown up, on clogs a foot high, which are like stilts, as they have but one support instead of two, like the sort which men wear. The tengus strut about easily on these, ...
— Japanese Fairy World - Stories from the Wonder-Lore of Japan • William Elliot Griffis
... the certain knowledge that it would be forthcoming enabled Davis to display a great deal of bravado on approaching what was supposed to be his end. As the reader can readily imagine, from what I have heretofore said of him, Davis was the man to improve to the utmost every opportunity to strut his little hour, and he did it in this instance. He posed, attitudinized and vapored, so that the camp and the country were filled with stories of the wonderful coolness with which he contemplated ...
— Andersonville, complete • John McElroy
... half-crown, in English three-pence hight. One nymph, to whom fat Sir John Falstaff's lean, 10 There with her single person fills the scene. Another, with long use and age decay'd, Dived here old woman, and rose there a maid. Our trusty doorkeepers of former time There strut and swagger in heroic rhyme. Tack but a copper-lace to drugget suit, And there's a hero made without dispute: And that, which was a capon's tail before, Becomes a plume for Indian emperor. But all ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol II - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden
... play, all in; It's the cruellest team will win. So hold your nose against the stink And never stop too long to think. Wars don't change except in name; The next one must go just the same, And new foul tricks unguessed before Will win and justify this War. Kaisers and Czars will strut the stage Once more with pomp and greed and rage; Courtly ministers will stop At home and fight to the last drop; By the million men will die In some new horrible agony; And children here will thrust and poke, Shoot and die, ...
— Fairies and Fusiliers • Robert Graves
... you, Tom," Mollie cut into his sentence sharply. "You're just a fool boy chasin' cows' tails for thirty dollars a month. I'm not going to have any of this nonsense. Bear Cat's a law-abidin' place. We're all proud of it. We don't let bad-men strut around an' shoot up our citizens, an' we don't let half-grown punchers go crazy an' start hangin' folks without reason. Now do we?" A persuasive smile broke out on the harsh face and transformed it. Every waif, every under-dog, every sick woman and child within fifty miles had ...
— The Fighting Edge • William MacLeod Raine
... Manor by the Thames; I've seen it oft through beechen stems In leafy Summer weather; We've moored the punt its lawns beside Where peacocks strut in flaunting pride, The ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, November 4, 1914 • Various
... can be all puffed up with pride without showing it. Happy Jack Squirrel couldn't. Just to have looked at him you would have known that he was feeling very, very good about something. When he thought no one was looking, he would actually strut. And it was all because he considered himself a very bold fellow. That was a new feeling for Happy Jack. He knew that all his neighbors considered him rather timid, and many a time he had envied, actually envied Jimmy Skunk and Reddy Fox and Unc' Billy Possum and even Sammy Jay because they ...
— Happy Jack • Thornton Burgess
... to be great friends, for he cries out against him for his house and yard and God knows what. For my part, I do hope, when all is done, that my following my business will keep me secure against all their envys. But to see how the old man do strut, and swear that he understands all his duty as easily as crack a nut, and easier, he told my Lord Chancellor, for his teeth are gone; and that he understands it as well as any man in England; and that he will never ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... polite element abroad on polling day. Men are so respectful and hurl such affectionate terms at one another. Even the dogs are upset, and strut about in quite a different manner than on ordinary days, so puffed out with vanity are they, on account of their decorations. The members' wives and their friends are all taking part in the scene too, bringing voters along in their ...
— Lazy Thoughts of a Lazy Girl - Sister of that "Idle Fellow." • Jenny Wren
... own part, but the whole play—he has to undergo a severe physical training, part of which consists in standing for an hour every day with his mouth wide open, to inhale the morning air. He is taught to sing, to walk, to strut, and to perform a variety of gymnastic exercises, such as standing on his head, or turning somersaults. His first classification is as male or female actor, no women having been allowed to perform since the days of the Emperor ...
— The Civilization Of China • Herbert A. Giles
... treasure, and the gods call dross, Life seems a fest of Fate's contriving, 80 Only secure in every one's conniving, A long account of nothings paid with loss, Where we poor puppets, jerked by unseen wires, After our little hour of strut and rave, With all our pasteboard passions and desires, Loves, hates, ambitions, and immortal fires, Are tossed pell-mell together in the grave. But stay! no age was e'er degenerate, Unless men held it at too cheap a rate, For in our likeness still we ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... her hand into his own, feeling the pulse as if merely caressing the slender wrist. Then he began to describe his bailiff's cottage, with woodbine round the porch, the farm-yard, the bee-hives, the pretty duck-pond with an osier island, and the great China gander who had a pompous strut, which made him the droll est creature possible. And Sophy should go there in a day or two, and be as happy as one of the bees, but not so busy. Sophy listened very earnestly, very gravely, and then sliding her hand from the Mayor, caught hold of her grandfather's arm firmly, ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... we in our viciousness grow hard, O, misery on't! the wise gods seal our eyes: In our own filth drop our clear judgments, make us Adore our errors, laugh at us while we strut To our confusion." ...
— Julian Home • Dean Frederic W. Farrar
... an all-seeing Providence, was suddenly cut short. He fought against his disease (small pox) with that rashness that had been his ruling spirit through life, and thus ingloriously terminated his days. The pride of this man was to strut through the Mexican towns and gloat over his many crimes. To the gazing crowd, he would point out the trophies of his murders, which he never failed to have about him. To his fringed leggins were attached the phalanges (or finger bones) of those victims whom he ...
— The Life and Adventures of Kit Carson, the Nestor of the Rocky Mountains, from Facts Narrated by Himself • De Witt C. Peters
... criticism. His lords brave each other in smart epigramatic speeches, but the dialogue is in costume, and does not please on the second reading: it is not warm with life. In Shakspeare alone the speakers do not strut and bridle, the dialogue is easily great, and he adds to so many titles that of being the best-bred man in England and in Christendom. Once or twice in a lifetime we are permitted to enjoy the charm of noble manners, in ...
— Essays, Second Series • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... "I must be off to London in half an hour. The matter is far too serious to play fast-and-loose with. It is quite possible that we shall have to stop the organ, or even to forbid the use of the church altogether, till we can shore and strut the arch. I must go and put my ...
— The Nebuly Coat • John Meade Falkner
... scrutinizing every automobile in sight. Near her was a short, stout woman whose personality seemed to be strangely familiar to Medenham. He never forgot anyone, and this lady was certainly not one of his acquaintances; nevertheless, her features, her robin-like strut, her very amplitude of girth and singular rotundity of form, came definitely within the net of ...
— Cynthia's Chauffeur • Louis Tracy
... I strut and dance, and fool my life away; I'm nautical in past and future tenses! Long as I know an ocean from a bay, I'll shy the rest, and take the consequences. I'm the dearest, I'm the sweetest little mid That ever graced the tail-end ...
— The Wit of Women - Fourth Edition • Kate Sanborn
... may strut, dapper George, but 't will all be in vain, We know 't is Queen Caroline, ...
— The Ladies - A Shining Constellation of Wit and Beauty • E. Barrington
... was expected. The Little Lady surrendered to Arnaux and the Available Lady to the Big Blue. Two nests were begun and everything shaped for a "lived happily ever after." But the Big Blue was very big and handsome. He could blow out his crop and strut in the sun and make rainbows all round his neck in a way that might turn the heart of the ...
— Animal Heroes • Ernest Thompson Seton
... power; but more than all, I love the way of life. Talk of romances and adventure! What romance or adventure is half so wonderful as those that come daily to my notice? And I play a part in every one of them, and none the less a leading part because I do not shout and strut ...
— Montezuma's Daughter • H. Rider Haggard
... you may believe, I was taught a manner of entering, in the way, by the hints of Sir Harry and the philosophy of the noble Lord Chesterfield, of a gentleman. It had to do with squared shoulders, the lift of the head, a strut, a proud and contemptuous glance. Many a night, as a child, when I fair fainted of vacancy and the steam and smell of salt pork was an agony hardly to be endured, I must prance in and out, to please my fastidious uncle, while he sat critical ...
— The Cruise of the Shining Light • Norman Duncan
... these poachers, who fish in others' ponds, are proud of their achievements. They will talk. They brag in their cups and strut and ...
— The Scarlet Stigma - A Drama in Four Acts • James Edgar Smith
... now the senate (if things hit, And thou at Stockbridge[4] wert not bit) Must feel thy eloquence and fire, Approve thy schemes, thy wit admire, Thee with immortal honours crown, While, patriot-like, thou'lt strut and frown. What though by enemies 'tis said, The laurel, which adorns thy head, Must one day come in competition, By virtue of some sly petition: Yet mum for that; hope still the best, Nor let such cares disturb thy rest. Methinks I hear thee loud as trumpet, As bagpipe ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift
... groves, and hedges of flowering cactus, dazzling banks of azaleas, marble- basined fountains, in which chestnut-and-white pond-herons step daintily amid exotic water-lilies, while golden pheasants strut about on alabaster terraces. The whole effect rather suggests the idea that Providence and Norman Wilkinson have dropped mutual jealousies and collaborated to produce a background for an open-air Russian Ballet; in point of fact, it is merely the background to your luncheon party. ...
— The Toys of Peace • Saki
... because of the many beauties, the veritable grandeurs of their styles, we cannot quite learn to love yours. For in you the disease was aggravated by the presence of another powerful incentive to strut and posture and externalize and inflate your art. For you were the virtuoso. You were the man whose entire being was pointed to achieve an effect. You were the man whose life is lived on the concert-platform, whose values are those of the concert-room, who ...
— Musical Portraits - Interpretations of Twenty Modern Composers • Paul Rosenfeld
... the actual cautery. But was virtue the cause of all this interest? Was it devotion to a young and innocent girl that made me willing to undertake so difficult and so delicate a task? Doubtless these motives went for something, but I will not attempt to strut in borrowed plumes, and must freely confess that if she had been ugly and stupid I should probably have left her to her fate. In short, selfishness was at the bottom of it all, so let us say ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... Nation. I hear men debate peace who understand neither its nature nor the way in which we may attain it with uplifted eyes and unbroken spirits. But I know that none of these speaks for the Nation. They do not touch the heart of anything. They may safely be left to strut their uneasy hour and ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... always profuse where its selfishness is appealed to, not otherwise. You must find, then, what pleases it, and pander to its tastes. So will ye cheat it,—or ye will cheat it also by affecting the false virtues which it admires itself,—rouge your sentiments highly, and let them strut with a buskined air; thirdly, my good young men, ye will cheat it by profuse flattery, and by calling it in especial "the ...
— Paul Clifford, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... three of their best Towns, the Nation dispirited, and Credit sunk, and nothing but a dismal Scene of Poverty and Misery: And yet in the midst of all this Misery, (as the Spanish Beggars are said to strut about in their Cloak and Bilboes at their Side) so this Gasping Monarch had the Assurance not only to talk of making a Descent, but actually equipp'd a small nimble Fleet with a Body of Men, and persuaded ...
— Memoirs of Major Alexander Ramkins (1718) • Daniel Defoe
... and bullies about, we learn from Duerer's prints. In every crowd these gentlemen in leathern tights, with other ostentatious additions to their costume, besides poniards and daggers to emphasise the brutal male, strut straddle-legged and self-assured; and of course raw lads and loutish prentices yielded them the sincerest flattery. We can well understand that the model boy, to whom "God had given diligence," with his long hair ...
— Albert Durer • T. Sturge Moore
... off then down the hotel corridor with a strut to his resentment that was bantam and ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1921 and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... very borders of the forest. Cecile, walking quickly, reached it before long; then she stood still, leaning over the paling and looking across the enchanted ground. This paling in itself was English, and the very strut of the barn-door fowl reminded her of Warren's Grove. How she wished that fair child to run out! How she hoped to hear even one word of the only language she understood! No matter her French origin, Cecile was all English at this moment. Toby stood by her ...
— The Children's Pilgrimage • L. T. Meade
... minds on worldly glory, and spent their money on extravagant dress. "The men," said he, "wear capes reaching down to the ground, and their long hair falls down to their shoulders; and the women wear so many petticoats that they can hardly drag themselves along, and strut about like the Pope's courtezans, to the surprise and disgust of the whole world." What right had these selfish fops to call themselves Christians? They did more harm to the cause of Christ than all the Turks and ...
— History of the Moravian Church • J. E. Hutton
... them in walking. That this custom was entirely an outcome of vanity and emulation, and not a manifestation of the esthetic sense, is made clear by the further observations of Livingstone. Men who could not afford so many of these copper rings would still, he found, strut along as if they had them. "That is the way," he was informed, "in which they show off their lordship in these parts." Among the Mojave Indians "nose-jewels designate a man of wealth and rank," and elaborate headdresses of feathers are the insignia of the chiefs[93]. Champlain says that among the ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck
... to the upper-crust tavern wear a huge round thing with a ribbon fastened to their coats, and strut awfully under them, as if they were the crowning glory of all creation. Maybe they are; I don't know, not being highly educated ...
— Phemie Frost's Experiences • Ann S. Stephens
... envelope unwritten upon, and tolerably clean. It was a prize: and that evening, when the public were shrieking with laughter over the capers of a clown arm-in-arm with a tame bear, followed by a couple of monkeys skilfully mimicking their very strut, Ned was behind one of the vans scribbling with pencil a few frantic, ill-spelt words that, when the crumpled envelope arrived at the Bunk, were wept over and laughed over in tumultuous joy. The penny thrown him went for ...
— The Captain's Bunk - A Story for Boys • M. B. Manwell
... "illustrators," as to mesmerize them completely into his manner. And certainly his illustrators are drugged with the Dickens atmosphere. Those hideous-lovely persons, whose legs and arms are so thin that it is impossible to suppose they ever removed their clothes; do they not strut and leer and ogle and grin and stagger and weep, in the very ...
— Visions and Revisions - A Book of Literary Devotions • John Cowper Powys
... or any other material is used for a pillar or strut, it has not only to resist a crushing force, but also a force tending to ...
— Instructions on Modern American Bridge Building • G. B. N. Tower
... the high or to pleasure the low; so being left to itself, and not ennobled by any prosecution, as the schemers expected, it became as foisonless as the "London Gazette" on ordinary occasions. Those behind the curtain, who thought to bounce out with a grand stot and strut before the world, finding that even I used it as a convenient vehicle to advertise my houses when need was, and which I did by the way of a canny seduction of policy, joking civilly with Mr Absolom anent his paper trumpet, as I called it, they were utterly vanquished by seeing ...
— The Provost • John Galt
... It is my fate always to grow fond of a fashion just as it is passing out. I recalled the exaggerated military styles for men that came in with the Spanish-American and the South African wars. Those enormously padded shoulders and tight-shaped waists and swelling trouser legs, and the strut and the stoop that went with the whole ugly ensemble, roused my anger. My feelings remained unchanged until some time after the Russo-Japanese War, and then one day it came to me that I must have a suit of military ...
— The Patient Observer - And His Friends • Simeon Strunsky
... high-flown titles and affected phraseology which was so beloved of Byzantine scribes. "Glorious Dukes of the Thebaid," "most magnificent counts and lieutenants," "all-praiseworthy secretaries," and the like strut across the pages of the letters and documents which begin "In the name of Our Lord and Master, Jesus Christ, the God and Saviour of us all, in the year x of the reign of the most divine and praised, great, and beneficent Lord Flavius Heraclius (or other) the eternal Augustus and Auto-krator, ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, And Assyria In The Light Of Recent Discovery • L.W. King and H.R. Hall
... himself very annoying to the King of the Cats. He used to strut up and down saying to himself over and over again, "I'm Cock-o'-the-Walk, I'm Cock-o'-the-Walk." Sometimes he would come into the Forge and say it to the horses. The King of the Cats wondered how the human beings could put up with a creature who was so stupid and so vain. He had a red comb ...
— The King of Ireland's Son • Padraic Colum
... no high tone assume, Nor strut in arms;—farewell my cap and plume: Brief be my verse, a task within my power, I tell my feelings in one happy hour; But what an hour was that! when from the main I reach'd this lovely valley once again! A glorious harvest fill'd my eager sight, Half ...
— May Day With The Muses • Robert Bloomfield
... go to the footlights with the greatest possible strut.> Both Leaders: King Solomon he ...
— Chinese Nightingale • Vachel Lindsay
... six years, had always considered his Grandfather Michel the greatest man in the world; then I came into his life; and whether it was I, or the American bon bons I lavished on him, or the overseas chapeau I let him strut about in now and then, I completely won his little heart. Darling little Andree in far off Ancey-le-Franc, now eight going on nine, ...
— The Greater Love • George T. McCarthy
... might lay down the pen, were it not for our dislike to strut in borrowed plumes; and that inclineth us to inform the gentle reader that no part of this simple story is of our invention, except the last disclosure of the senior Wag's relationship to his namesake, which we ventured to add, fearing that ...
— Tales from Blackwood, Volume 7 • Various
... true statement. Beverley read the paper when Clark sent for him; but he could not join in the extravagant delight of his fellow officers and their brave men. What did all this victory mean to him? Hamilton to be treated as an honorable prisoner of war, permitted to strut forth from the feat with his sword at his side, his head up—the scalp-buyer, the murderer of Alice! What was patriotism to the crushed heart of a lover? Even if his vision had been able to pierce the future and realize ...
— Alice of Old Vincennes • Maurice Thompson
... now and see this long train of camels coming up to the king's gate, and the ox-trains from Egypt, gold and silver and precious stones, and beasts of every hoof, and birds of every wing, and fish of every scale! See the peacocks strut under the cedars, and the horsemen run, and the chariots wheel! Hark to the orchestra! Gaze upon the dance! Not stopping to look into the wonders of the temple, step right on to the causeway, and pass ...
— New Tabernacle Sermons • Thomas De Witt Talmage
... out, Reginald having ascertained that no one was near. As they left the gates of the house the rajah walked rapidly along, concealing his face in his robe, while Reginald swaggered on by his side with a martial strut assumed generally by the sowars. A large number of people were still abroad; and as they passed on they caught some of the expressions which were being uttered. It was very evident that a rebellion had taken place, and that the star of Mukund ...
— The Young Rajah • W.H.G. Kingston
... these lines at his assemblies: O you who, in sumptuous array, strut about like princes and scorn the hatred of the poor, know that the saddle-cloth changeth not the nature of the ass, neither do splendid trappings change the nature ...
— A Boswell of Baghdad - With Diversions • E. V. Lucas
... over his eyes, whirls around and offers his arm to DAISY. They strut into the store, DAVE gazing contemptuously at JIM as he passes. Crowd roars with laughter, much to the embarrassment ...
— The Mule-Bone: - A Comedy of Negro Life in Three Acts • Zora Hurston and Langston Hughes
... wanting in talent! We see and hear a great many virtuosos, old and young, with and without talent, renowned and obscure. They either play in an entirely mechanical manner and with faulty and miserable touch, or else, which is less bearable, they strut with unendurable affectation and produce musical monstrosities. In order to conceal their indistinct mode of execution, they throw themselves upon the two pedals, and are ...
— Piano and Song - How to Teach, How to Learn, and How to Form a Judgment of - Musical Performances • Friedrich Wieck
... who was once at point (O giglot fortune!) to master Caesar's sword, Made Lud's town with rejoicing fires bright, And Britons strut with courage." ...
— Bulfinch's Mythology • Thomas Bulfinch
... barb, touched with wararra poison, or ten times distilled kakodyle, and a layer of honey over all, Dewhurst hurried away, to make no call. He was hard to subdue, and a puppy, whose passion it was to strut, in the perfection of a refined toilette, among fashionable street-walkers. While he was abroad, his cares rankling within were overborne by the consciousness of being "in position." The dog's nose is cold ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, XXII • various
... living; you see something really good, and good throughout. Not one touch of that stage-strut and vulgar bombast of tone, which the English actor fancies indispensable to scenic illusion, is tolerated here. For the first time in my life, I saw something represented in a style uniformly good, and should have ...
— Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Vol. II • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... fact that a connecting rod functions as a strut, it is considered that this part should be only stiff enough to prevent any whipping action during the running of the engine. The greater the fatigue-resisting property that one can put into the rod after this stiffness is ...
— The Working of Steel - Annealing, Heat Treating and Hardening of Carbon and Alloy Steel • Fred H. Colvin
... grew. Soon it swooped. With a hoarse croak it lit on the snow at a wary distance, and began to strut back and forth. Presently, its suspicions at rest, the raven advanced, and with eager beak began its dreadful meal. By this time another, which had seen the first one's swoop, was in view through the ether; then another; then another. In an hour the brotherhood of ravens, thus telegraphically notified, ...
— The Blazed Trail • Stewart Edward White
... Kirkwood's pocket, all right enough. By George, can you beat it! And here's another thing. A man hates to talk against his own flesh and blood; and you may think I'm not in a position to strut around virtuously and talk about other people's sins; but I guess I've got some sense of honor left. I've never stolen any money. I did run off with another man's wife, and I got my pay for that. That was in ...
— Otherwise Phyllis • Meredith Nicholson
... beginning to gleam. A stout father with wife and children dozes. Painted women are practicing their dances. Grotesque mimes strut towards ...
— The Verse of Alfred Lichtenstein • Alfred Lichtenstein
... to honor, that in such a case he will put aside the welfare of a nation for the miserable sake of party popularity? Are we to stand here in the guise and manner of free men, knowing that we are driven together like a flock of sheep into the fold by the howling of the wolves outside? Are we to strut and plume ourselves upon our unhampered freedom, while we act like slaves? Worse than slaves we should be if we allowed one breath of party spirit, one thought of party aggrandizement, to enter into the choice we are about to make. Slaves are driven to their work; shall ...
— An American Politician • F. Marion Crawford
... the monastery, a group of wounded soldiers were just entering. With them was a woman in a man's uniform. Her hair was curly and short, and her chin pointed. Her feet looked ridiculously small in the heavy, high, soldier's boots, and in spite of a strut her knees knocked together in an unmistakably feminine manner. But the men treated her quite as one of themselves. One soldier, who had had his leg cut off up to the thigh, supported himself by her shoulder. I have seen ...
— Trapped in 'Black Russia' - Letters June-November 1915 • Ruth Pierce
... astonishment, and they watched the wrathful gallant strut down the street, his back as ...
— Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... sunshiny face that never stayed clouded long, and chuckled softly. "Judson's on the crest right now. Oh, let him ride. He's doomed, so let him have his little strut. He comes to me a few days backward into the gone on, and says, says he, important and commercial like, 'O'mie, I shall not need you any more. I've got a person to take your place.' 'All right,' I ...
— The Price of the Prairie - A Story of Kansas • Margaret Hill McCarter
... otherwise than did my father, upon whose middle age it came as a monstrous iron innovation. The locomotive is one of the wonders of modern childhood. Children crowd upon a bridge to see the train pass beneath. Little boys strut along the streets puffing and whistling in imitation of the engine. All that romance, silly as it looks, becomes sacred in afterlife. Besides, when it is not underground in a foul London tunnel, a train is a beautiful thing. Its pure, white fleece ...
— Cashel Byron's Profession • George Bernard Shaw
... Susan Tall, "Gable Oak is coming it quite the dand. He now wears shining boots with hardly a hob in 'em, two or three times a-week, and a tall hat a-Sundays, and 'a hardly knows the name of smockfrock. When I see people strut enough to be cut up into bantam cocks, I stand dormant with wonder, ...
— Far from the Madding Crowd • Thomas Hardy
... They have studied the strange British apparitions which disfigure the Boulevard des Italiens in the autumn, their knowledge of our race is limited to the unfortunate selection of specimens who strut about their streets, and—according to their light—they are not guilty of outrageous exaggeration. I venture to assert that an Englishman will meet more unpleasant samples of his countrymen and countrywomen in an August day's walk in Paris, than he will come across during a ...
— The Cockaynes in Paris - 'Gone abroad' • Blanchard Jerrold
... always play. I'd rather any day get up and strut over the stage, shrieking 'Is that a dagger that I see before me?' than sit down and keep my fingers on the right ...
— Elizabeth Hobart at Exeter Hall • Jean K. Baird
... 'I will ravage and riot in my Kingdoms. I will rage like the Caesars, and be a withering blight where I pass like Sennacherib, and wallow in soft delights like Sardanapalus. I will build me a palace, vast as a city, in which to strut and parade my Monarchy before the Heavens, with stones of pure molten gold, and rough frontispiece of diamond, and cupola of amethyst, and pillars of pearl. For there were many men to the eye: but there was One only, really: and I was he. And always I knew it:—some faintest secret whisper which ...
— The Purple Cloud • M.P. Shiel
... be the lover. There's nothing in the pockets, and that's very interesting, for that's half of an unfortunate attachment. And here we have the nut-cracker's boots, with spurs to them. Row, dow, dow! how they can stamp and strut! They shall represent the unwelcome wooer, whom the lady does not like. What kind of a play will you have now? Shall it be a ...
— Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen
... head erect, he paced three or four times round the company, saying, in a loud voice :—"God preserve you, good people." Then taking the habit off indignantly, he threw it from him with contempt, and, turning to Elias, "That is the way," he said, "that the bastard brethren of our Order will strut." After this he resumed his usual demeanor and walked humbly with his old and tattered habit, saying:—"Such is the deportment of the true Friars Minor." Then, seating himself amongst them, he addressed them in the mildest manner, and spoke on poverty and humility, of which he so forcibly pointed ...
— The Life and Legends of Saint Francis of Assisi • Father Candide Chalippe
... and Pfauentritt (peacock-strut), were nicknames given to the leaders of the guilds who rebelled against the patrician families in Nuremberg, from whom alone the aldermen or town-council could be elected. This patrician class originated in 1198 under the Emperor Henry IV., who ennobled 38 families of the citizens. They ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... rank amang farmers I hae muckle pride, But I mauna speak high when I 'm tellin' o't, How brawlie I strut on my shelty to ride, Wi' a sample to shew for the sellin' o't. In blue worset boots that my auld mither span, I 've aft been fu' vanty sin' I was a man, But now they 're flung by, and I 've bought cordivan, And my wifie ne'er grudged ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel , Volume I. - The Songs of Scotland of the past half century • Various
... down here to the store an' loafed round a-talkin' about when I was out South, an' arguin' with folks that didn't know nothin', about what the generals done. There! I see me now just as he see me then; but after I had my boy-strut out, I took holt o' the old farm 'long o' father, an' I've made it bounce. Look at them old meadows an' see the herd's grass that come off of 'em last year! I ain't ashamed o' my place now, if I did ...
— A Country Doctor and Selected Stories and Sketches • Sarah Orne Jewett
... D—— fifteen thousand francs settled income, ten thousand in perquisites; total, twenty-five thousand francs,—who have kitchens, who have liveries, who make good cheer, who eat moor-hens on Friday, who strut about, a lackey before, a lackey behind, in a gala coach, and who have palaces, and who roll in their carriages in the name of Jesus Christ who went barefoot! You are a prelate,—revenues, palace, horses, ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... you going in, Dick?' said a little stout man who walked with a strut and wore a hat like ...
— A Mummer's Wife • George Moore
... for success—effect. But now that I have been wisely and scrupulously and unscrupulously examined by the most exalted rulers of the Inner Temple, and they pronounce me all that man should be, why shouldn't I strut some? But, damn it, strutting brings that Devil's clutch—and a man cannot be anything more strutty than a dish-rag then. In William James you will find a questionnaire, "Why do I believe in immortality? 'Because I think I'm just ...
— The Letters of Franklin K. Lane • Franklin K. Lane
... now approached the fire, swinging his rifle jauntily in his hand and throwing his shoulders back until his body swung forward with a decided strut. He looked from one boy to the other as he came closer, apparently seeking to learn from their expressions exactly what was in their minds. The boys' faces ...
— Boy Scouts on the Great Divide - or, The Ending of the Trail • Archibald Lee Fletcher
... And so, when he heard bravery extolled and cowardice derided, it woke him up. He was ashamed. Perhaps his sweetheart turned up her nose and said, "I am told that you are a coward!" It was not HE that turned over the new leaf—she did it for him. HE must not strut around in the merit ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... laughter?—It was the different cut of a coat. It was a silk bag, in which the hair was tied, an old sword, and a dangling pair of ruffles; which none of them suited with the poverty of the dress, and meagre appearance, of a person who seemed to strut and value himself upon such ...
— Anna St. Ives • Thomas Holcroft
... any more use for plain folks, Polly. She's going to do herself proud shoppin', so she can go to Boston and strut about like a frilled peacock. You'll have to be satisfied with your mother, Polly; Pawliney doesn't ...
— A Princess in Calico • Edith Ferguson Black
... strong points in her own favor—the indifference, as every heart perceived, of despairing grief. Then came the manners on the hostile side—the haggard consciousness of guilt, the drooping tone, the bravado and fierce strut which sought to dissemble all this. Not one amongst all the witnesses, assembled on that side, had (by all agreement) the bold natural tone of conscious uprightness. Hence it could not be surprising that the storm of ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... the servants Ready for thy descent; and now skip down And smooth the creases from thy coat, and order The laces on thy breast; a little stoop, And on thy snowy stockings bend a glance, And then erect thyself and strut away Either to pace the promenade alone,— 'T is thine, if 't please thee walk; or else to draw Anigh the carriages of other dames. Thou clamberest up, and thrustest in thy head And arms and shoulders, ...
— Modern Italian Poets • W. D. Howells
... unsteadiness in the doctor's walk, and no flush on his face. He certainly did strut when he entered the room; and he held up his head with dignity, when he discovered Mountjoy. But he seemed to preserve his self-control. Was ...
— Blind Love • Wilkie Collins
... cleanly best, John's pockets are an integral part of his personality. He feels after his pocket instinctively while yet in what corresponds in the genus homo with the polywog state in batrachia. The incipient man begins to strut as soon as mamma puts pockets into his kilted skirt—a stride as prophetic as the strangled crow of the cockerel upon the lowest ...
— The Secret of a Happy Home (1896) • Marion Harland
... elected, I shall, unless you assure me that I have mistaken de l'Estorade's meaning, find occasion to let him and others of his kind know that one can, if so disposed, climb over the walls of their little parks and strut ...
— The Deputy of Arcis • Honore de Balzac
... defect. The disposition to derision and insult is awakened by the softness of foppery, the swell of insolence, the liveliness of levity, or the solemnity of grandeur; by the sprightly trip, the stately stalk, the formal strut, the lofty mien; by gestures intended to catch the eye, and by looks elaborately ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D, In Nine Volumes - Volume the Third: The Rambler, Vol. II • Samuel Johnson
... government. But one fact they seemed fully sensible of, viz.: That 'Othello' occupation would indeed soon 'be gone,' and they were determined to 'crush the scoundrels' who dared to question the policy, or even justice, or a government keeping up such an expensive army of La Trobian idlers as strut about in borrowed plumes with all the insolence of office; who, in fact, have proved themselves, with a few honourable exceptions, fit for little else than bringing the colony into debt; creating disaffection amongst the people, and stamping indelible disgrace upon any government ...
— The Eureka Stockade • Carboni Raffaello
... understand the observations which I have made on scrofula or cancer, their heads are too empty—their ignorance too profound—and their pretensions consequently too barefaced. Relying upon the credulity of the public, they make no scruple in being guilty of glaring plagiarism; they thus strut about in borrowed plumes, and their presumption keeps pace with their want ...
— Observations on the Causes, Symptoms, and Nature of Scrofula or King's Evil, Scurvy, and Cancer • John Kent
... a cowboy-like strut as she made this assertion, shaking her head in a bronco gesture which dashed the dark hair from her eyes and made her look like an unbroken thoroughbred. Never in all his life, even in the magazine pictures ...
— Hidden Water • Dane Coolidge
... but a poor scurvy wretched living there below. And, on the contrary, the philosophers and others, who in this world had been altogether indigent and wanting, were great lords there in their turn. I saw Diogenes there strut it out most pompously, and in great magnificence, with a rich purple gown on him, and a golden sceptre in his right hand. And, which is more, he would now and then make Alexander the Great mad, so enormously would he abuse him when he had not well patched his breeches; for he used to pay his skin ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... very long time ago—to speak of political society with a certain distaste, as a necessary evil, an irritating but inevitable restriction upon the "natural" sovereignty and entire self-government of the individual. That was the dream of the egotist. It was a theory in which men were seen to strut in the proud consciousness of their several and "absolute" capacities. It would be as instructive as it would be difficult to count the errors it has bred in political thinking. As a matter of fact, men have never dreamed of wishing ...
— When a Man Comes to Himself • Woodrow Wilson
... they numbered all From Roman Nero down to Russian Paul, Could grate upon my ear so mean, so base, As the rank jargon of that factious race, Who, poor of heart and prodigal of words, Formed to be slaves, yet struggling to be lords, Strut forth, as patriots, from their negro-marts, And shout for rights, with rapine in their hearts. Who can, with patience, for a moment see The medley mass of pride and misery, Of whips and charters, manacles and rights, Of slaving ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... the sun turns against the clock, When Avon waters upward flow, When eggs are laid by barn-door cock, When dusty hens do strut and crow, When up is down, when left is right, Oh, then I'll break the troth I plight, With careless eye Away I'll fly ...
— Georgian Poetry 1918-19 • Various
... became a terrible trial. He could not work in the garden. On Sundays the fortifications were deserted; he could no longer strut about among the workingmen's families dining on the grass, and pass from group to group in a neighborly way, his feet encased in embroidered slippers, with the authoritative demeanor of a wealthy landowner of the vicinity. This he missed more than anything else, consumed ...
— Fromont and Risler, Complete • Alphonse Daudet
... Conkling's "haughty disdain, his grandiloquent swell, his majestic, supereminent, overpowering, turkey-gobbler strut." Accordingly when Garfield disregarded Conkling's wishes in regard to the representation which New York should have in the cabinet, Conkling laid the blame upon his ...
— The United States Since The Civil War • Charles Ramsdell Lingley
... be shear across the grain. The use of wood for pins or tree-nails involves resistance to shear across the grain. Another common instance of the latter is where the steel edge of the eye of an axe or hammer tends to cut off the handle. In Fig. 10 the action of the wooden strut tends to shear off along the grain the portion AB of the wooden tie rod, and it is essential that the length of this portion be great enough to guard against it. Fig. 11 shows characteristic failures ...
— The Mechanical Properties of Wood • Samuel J. Record
... her figure—there was something masterful, something dominating, something tremendously proud. Considering her sparseness of bulk she had a most astoundingly big strong voice, and in the voice as in the strut was ...
— From Place to Place • Irvin S. Cobb
... quite amusing to see the pompous strut of the men on a Sunday, as they walk to mass in their ill-made silk coats, with gold-headed sticks in hand. Both men and women are the worst-favoured race I ever saw: their flat, unmeaning countenances, small, lacklustre ...
— Trade and Travel in the Far East - or Recollections of twenty-one years passed in Java, - Singapore, Australia and China. • G. F. Davidson
... he did not try to strike them, as he might have done a while before. They were afraid of him, yet down in their hearts the brothers all thought that when they were grown up they wanted to be just like him and strut around with their wings trailing, their tails spread, their necks drawn back, and their feathers ruffled. Then, they thought, when other people came near them, they would puff and gobble and cry, "Get out of my way!" They tried it once in a while to see how it would seem, but ...
— Among the Farmyard People • Clara Dillingham Pierson
... ruler of all India!" she said. "Another may wear the baubles, but thou shalt be the true king, even as thy name is! And behind thee, me, Yasmini, whispering wisdom and laughing to see the politicians strut!" ...
— Caves of Terror • Talbot Mundy
... should tell These red-coats 'tis a paltry swell, Such careless customs backing; If they must strut in spurs and boots, For once I'd join the chalk recruits, And ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... estrangement cannot, indeed, rob them of their portion in the past, but it will rob them of any effect of reality. The whole of their history becomes more and more foreign, more and more like some queer barbaric drama played in a forgotten tongue. There they strut through their weird metamorphoses of caricature, those premiers and presidents, their height preposterously exaggerated by political buskins, their faces covered by great resonant inhuman masks, their voices couched in the foolish idiom of ...
— In the Days of the Comet • H. G. Wells
... Whatever dress Of thought you take to royalize your nature,— Gorgeous shawls of kingship, a world's fear, Or ample weavings of imagination, Or the spun light of wisdom,—like a gust Of flame, that weather of impersonal thought You strut beneath, that hanging storm of Love, Strikes down a terrible swift dazzling finger, Sight of some woman, on your clothed hearts, And plucks the winding folly off, and leaves Bare nature there. And hear another likeness. Look, if the ...
— Emblems Of Love • Lascelles Abercrombie
... juice warmed his vitals and his breath. Good drop of gin, that was. His frocktails winked in bright sunshine to his fat strut. ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... Talbot's sense." Thus we dispose of all poetic merit, Yours Milton's genius, and mine Homer's spirit. Call Tibbald Shakespeare, and he'll swear the nine, Dear Cibber! never matched one ode of thine. Lord! how we strut through Merlin's cave, to see No poets there, but Stephen, you, and me. Walk with respect behind, while we at ease Weave laurel crowns, and take what names we please. "My dear Tibullus!" if that will ...
— Essay on Man - Moral Essays and Satires • Alexander Pope
... proud as a peacock, don't I? Well, I am just as proud. You ought to see me strut, and hear me talk when the hen-turkeys are around. Why, sometimes when there is a large troop of us in the woods you can hear us gobble, gobble, gobble, for many miles. We are so fond of ...
— Birds Illustrated by Color Photography, Vol. II., No. 5, November 1897 - A Monthly Serial designed to Promote Knowledge of Bird-Life • Various
... of mounting barbed steeds To fright the souls of fearful adversaries,— He capers nimbly in a lady's chamber To the lascivious pleasing of a lute. But I,—that am not shap'd for sportive tricks, Nor made to court an amorous looking-glass; I, that am rudely stamp'd, and want love's majesty To strut before a wanton ambling nymph; I, that am curtail'd of this fair proportion, Cheated of feature by dissembling nature, Deform'd, unfinish'd, sent before my time Into this breathing world scarce half made up, And that so lamely and unfashionable That dogs bark at me as I halt by them;— Why, I, ...
— The Life and Death of King Richard III • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]
... where the great yellow cat, so soft and beautiful, springs on Kitty's shoulder, rounds its back, and, purring, insists on caresses; in the large, clean stables where the horses munch the corn lazily, and look round with round inquiring eyes, and the rooks croak and flutter, and strut about Kitty's feet. ...
— Celibates • George Moore
... stove went out into the airy kitchen, and a larger flock of geese squawked in the weeds and ditches. Again Andy and Jim drove the cows, Andy of a morning with a dreamy stroll, and Jim of an evening with a strut that was intended for a military gait. Who had told little Jim of West Point, the family did not know. But he had been ...
— The Widow O'Callaghan's Boys • Gulielma Zollinger
... Washington was overrun with "Smartness": Smart pages, smart messengers, smart cabmen, smart publicans, smart politicians, smart women, smart scoundrels! Greatness became commonplace here, and Mr. Douglas might drink at Willard's Bar, with none so poor to do him reverence, or General Winfield Scott strut like a colossus along "the Avenue," and the sleepy negroes upon their backs would give him the attention of only one eye. It was interesting, to notice how rapidly provincial eminence lost caste here. Slipkins, who was "Honorable" at home, and of whom his county newspaper said that ...
— Campaigns of a Non-Combatant, - and His Romaunt Abroad During the War • George Alfred Townsend
... writer's constant aim. Instead of a general term like "walk," for example, he should select a specific, picture-making word such as hurry, dash, run, race, amble, stroll, stride, shuffle, shamble, limp, strut, stalk. For the word "horse" he may substitute a definite term like sorrel, bay, percheron, nag, charger, steed, broncho, or pony. In narrative and descriptive writing particularly, it is necessary to use words that make pictures and that reproduce sounds and other ...
— How To Write Special Feature Articles • Willard Grosvenor Bleyer
... be hind' hand se date' trudg' ing com pos' ed ly fid' dler strut' ted ap pro ba' tion re sumed' af firmed' dis a gree' a ble whith ...
— De La Salle Fifth Reader • Brothers of the Christian Schools
... chanced to say, And his chest swelled big as a load of hay. About himself, like a rooster, he crowed; Of his wonderful work he bragged and blowed He marched around with a peacock strut; Gigantic to him was the figure he cut;— But he wore a very small-sized suit, And loosely it ...
— It Can Be Done - Poems of Inspiration • Joseph Morris
... their part, are desirous to avoid him; excepting when any of them may have a purpose to gain, by arresting his attention, with an ungainly cringe; or when some of those who have no sort of present dependence on him, are disposed to cross his way with a look and strut of rudeness, to show how little they care for him. The servility, and the impudence, almost equally repress in him all friendly disposition toward a voluntary intercourse with the class. There is thus as complete a dissociation ...
— An Essay on the Evils of Popular Ignorance • John Foster
... Juno heard, And cried, 'Shame on you, jealous bird! Grudge you the nightingale her voice, Who in the rainbow neck rejoice, Than costliest silks more richly tinted, In charms of grace and form unstinted,— Who strut in kingly pride, Your glorious tail spread wide With brilliants which in sheen do Outshine the jeweller's bow window? Is there a bird beneath the blue That has more charms than you? No animal in everything can shine. By just partition of our gifts ...
— The Fables of La Fontaine - A New Edition, With Notes • Jean de La Fontaine
... what good-for-nothings you are! Why do you strut and turn up your noses as if you were the lords of creation? Well, I am going to give you orders. Go up and dress. Get some travelling money, ...
— Plays by August Strindberg, Second series • August Strindberg
... about it if he happened to meet it, he didn't have the least intention of doing anything of the kind. He was just idly boasting and nothing more. You see, Reddy is one of the greatest boasters in the Green Forest or on the Green Meadows. He likes to strut around and talk big. But like most boasters, he is a coward ...
— The Adventures of Prickly Porky • Thornton W. Burgess
... "Admiral's Head," in the presence of Mr. JOHN B-LL (the famous P.R. referee), between the vaunted "Whopper" and a smart and handy light-weight known as "Quickfire," their owl-eyes might, having been a little opened, and their peacock-strut a bit modified. ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100. March 7, 1891. • Various
... own act, and partly with the help of Destiny (the greater jester than I) I have stripped myself of all these garments of life which not only enabled me to strut peacock-fashion in the pleasant places of the world, but also ...
— Simon the Jester • William J. Locke
... running out to some distance, would leap upon a rock that was there; then, after dropping his wings, flirting with his spread tail, erecting the ruff upon his neck, and throwing back his head, he would swell and strut upon the rock, exhibiting himself like a diminutive turkey-cock. After manoeuvring in this way for a few moments, he would commence flapping his wings in short quick strokes, which grew more rapid as he proceeded, until a 'booming' ...
— Popular Adventure Tales • Mayne Reid
... at school, boot-licked his way to favor until he lorded it over the whole house. Then he grew right saucy and impudent, but my father minded it not, deeming the fellow indispensable in managing the estate. But when I came back it irked me sorely to see the fellow strut about as though he owned the place. He was sly enough with me at first, and would brow-beat the Squire only while I was out of earshot. It chanced one day, however, that I heard loud voices through an open window and paused to hearken. That vile servant called my father 'a ...
— Robin Hood • J. Walker McSpadden
... reality of kings and queens and court pageantry was not so far past that it did not appeal powerfully to the imaginations of the frequenters of the Globe, the Rose, and the Fortune. They had no such feeling as we have in regard to the pasteboard kings and queens who strut their brief hour before us in anachronic absurdity. But, besides that he wrote in the spirit of his age, Shakespeare wrote in the language and the literary methods of his time. This is not more evident in the contemporary poets than in the chroniclers of that day. They all delighted ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... genuine, or, on the other hand, if they did know the lines, I made some blunder in quoting them which painfully added to a conviction already formed that I was a wild, inconsequent, and shallow-minded boy whose only idea was to "show off" and strut about in borrowed plumes. After all, even if that was a mistaken diagnosis it was not ...
— The Adventure of Living • John St. Loe Strachey
... weeds grow," remarked Sister Reparata. Another of Dionea's amusements is playing with pigeons. The number of pigeons she collects about her is quite amazing; you would never have thought that San Massimo or the neighboring hills contained as many. They flutter down like snowflakes, and strut and swell themselves out, and furl and unfurl their tails, and peck with little sharp movements of their silly, sensual heads and a little throb and gurgle in their throats, while Dionea lies stretched out full length in the sun, putting out her lips, which they come ...
— Hauntings • Vernon Lee
... they march up and down, even in the more select Pulman cars, slam the doors, awakening one out of a much needed doze, and throw themselves down on the chairs and pick their teeth! "Dressed in a little brief authority, they strut before High Heaven," and make one wish they had never been evolved but remained altogether apes. The waiters at hotels are often pleasant enough, but the dislike of the white Americans to domestic service has ...
— The British Association's visit to Montreal, 1884: Letters • Clara Rayleigh
... cane, hooked over his arm, swung jauntily, was not entirely at his ease. Mrs. Tretherick, however, vouchsafed him a gracious smile and a glance of her dangerous eyes; and the colonel, with an embarrassed cough and a slight strut, took his place at ...
— Selected Stories • Bret Harte
... bitterly. "Yes, that's what they say when an actor dares to think. 'Go on! Play your part! Be a marionette forever!' That's what you tell us! 'Slave for your living, you sordid little puppet! Squirm and sweat and strut, but don't you ever dare to think!' You tell us that because you know if we ever did stop to think for one instant about ourselves you wouldn't have any actors! Actors! Faugh! What do we get, ...
— Harlequin and Columbine • Booth Tarkington
... deep-sorrowing, On the low rock beside the stream. Up to the oak he looks, Looks up to heaven, While in his noble eye there gleams a tear. Then, rustling through the myrtle boughs, behold, There comes a wanton pair of doves, Who settle down, and, nodding, strut O'er the gold sands beside the stream, And gradually approach; Their red-tinged eyes, so full of love, Soon see the inward-sorrowing one. The male, inquisitively social, leaps On the next bush, and looks Upon him kindly ...
— The Poems of Goethe • Goethe
... variety of angles; every room had a particular inclination; the gable had tilted towards the garden, after the manner of a leaning tower, and one of the former proprietors had buttressed the building from that side with a great strut of wood, like the derrick of a crane. Altogether, it had many marks of ruin; it was a house for the rats to desert; and nothing but its excellent brightness—the window-glass polished and shining, the paint well scoured, the brasses radiant, the very prop all wreathed about with climbing ...
— The Merry Men - and Other Tales and Fables • Robert Louis Stevenson
... on it in autumn." All through the great history of Thiers, wherein he recites the scenes of the French revolution, the Consulate, the Empire, and the rock of St. Helena, there runs one consistent observation that youth is noble and magnanimous. The thousands of characters who "strut their brief hour" upon the stage in the terrible drama which this historian depicts are young and generous, lofty and incorruptible. Then they ripen into manhood, glory waits upon their comings and their goings, and they are soon between two masters, ...
— The Golden Censer - The duties of to-day, the hopes of the future • John McGovern
... I tried to be a gentleman. I may strut up and down Market street in fine clothes, switch my rattan about, talk nonsense to silly ladies, swear, and drink wine; but if I don't pay my ...
— Off-Hand Sketches - a Little Dashed with Humor • T. S. Arthur
... during the winter, I was very much astonished, one day, as the King of Italy passed, to see a whole school of little boys under the direction of three Christian Brothers, strut by with their little noses in the air, and without raising their hats. At the same pension with myself was a young Swiss Benedictine monk, who sat by me at table d'hote, and with whom I struck up a warm friendship. I commented to him on what I had seen. "Oh!" he replied, ...
— In Troubadour-Land - A Ramble in Provence and Languedoc • S. Baring-Gould
... jaws and croaking gut, See how the half-star'd Frenchmen strut, And call us English dogs: But soon we'll teach these bragging foes That beef and beer give heavier blows Than soup and ...
— The Works of William Hogarth: In a Series of Engravings - With Descriptions, and a Comment on Their Moral Tendency • John Trusler
... of a slave. They look into him shrewdly, as an old jockey does into a horse. They will pick him out, at rifle-shot distance, among a thousand freemen. They have a nice eye to detect shades of vassalage. They saw in the aristocratic popinjay strut of a counterfeit Democrat an itching aspiration to play the slaveholder. They beheld it in 'the cut of his jib,' and his extreme Northern position made him the very tool for their purpose. The little ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... pick, shovelling it into a large corve or basket which stood at hand ready for the reception of the lumps. At first the work was tolerably easy, as he could stand upright and swing his pick with all his force. As he got deeper and deeper into the bed, he had to fix a strut or post with a cross beam to support the weight of the roof, and he had to get the coal out by stooping down low or resting on his knees. Finally he had to work lying down on one elbow, swinging his pick ...
— The Mines and its Wonders • W.H.G. Kingston
... of the gown, whose awkward, spruce, prim, sneering, and smirking countenances, the very tone of their voices, and an ungainly strut in their walk, without one single talent for any one office, have contrived to get good preferment by the mere force of flattery and cringing: for which two virtues (the only two virtues they pretend to) they were, however, utterly ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. III.: Swift's Writings on Religion and the Church, Vol. I. • Jonathan Swift
... painted show to strut Of girlish toilet, manner skittish: It may be Fin-de-Siecle, but It ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Volume 102, March 5, 1892 • Various
... into lateral and medial groups (Figs. 5, 6). The lateral division consisted of temporal and masseter masses. The temporal arose from the upper rim of the temporal opening, from the lateral wall of the skull behind the postorbital strut, and from the dorsal roof of the skull. The bones of origin included jugal, postorbital, postfrontal, parietal and squamosal. This division may also have arisen from the fascia covering the temporal opening (Romer and Price, 1940:53). The ...
— The Adductor Muscles of the Jaw In Some Primitive Reptiles • Richard C. Fox
... beyond it. Man, what do you wish to happen to you? I am satisfied if I desire and avoid conformably to nature, if I employ movements towards and from an object as I am by nature formed to do, and purpose and design and assent. Why then do you strut before us as if you had swallowed a spit? My wish has always been that those who meet me should admire me, and those who follow me should exclaim, O the great philosopher! Who are they by whom you wish to be admired? Are they not those ...
— A Selection from the Discourses of Epictetus With the Encheiridion • Epictetus
... afternoon, she could no more have helped strutting than the bud to open on the appointed day. She was obeying one of Nature's laws. I think I promised long ago to tell you of the day when Grizel would strut no more. Well, this is the day. Observe her strutting for the last time. It was very strange and touching to her to remember in the after years that she had once strutted, but it was still more ...
— Tommy and Grizel • J.M. Barrie
... knows how to strut, too! It's all on the cards that the Queen Will ask him to Buckingham Palace, to say what he's done and he's seen. Victoria's fond of her soldiers: and she's got a nose for a fight. If Tom tells a cleverish story—there is such a thing as a knight! And don't he look roguish and handsome!—To ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... for with his mother's help, he had contrived a robe of state, which looked like purple velvet and ermine, though it was really canton flannel. But it had a grand and noble air, and King wore it with a majestic strut that would have done credit ...
— Marjorie's Maytime • Carolyn Wells
... literal, decorous English has no synonym. As we went, she danced and sang, and laughed out joyously at everything and at nothing, and talked the most fascinating nonsense—all in the role of "Cousin Burwell." She could imitate him to perfection; her strut and swagger and slang threw me into paroxysms of delight. We picked huckleberries, and dived into the woods to feast upon wild plums that had ten drops of syrupy juice between tough skins and flinty stones encased in the pulp of bitterness, and gathered ...
— When Grandmamma Was New - The Story of a Virginia Childhood • Marion Harland
... and as I shall have other things to tell of him later on, I may as well relate here what manner of man he was. His stature was but medium, not exceeding five feet four inches, I think; and to make the most of it, he flung his head far back, and gave himself a little strut in walking. He had a thin face with a sharp nose that looked as if it would peck you, and grey eyes that could pierce a millstone if there was a guinea on the far side of it. His hair, for he wore his own, had been red, though it was ...
— Moonfleet • J. Meade Falkner
... position to know them, "I can compare to nothing but lazy tigers licking their paws, growling and trying to find a few more drops of blood just spilled, awaiting a fresh supply." Far from hiding away they strut about and show themselves. One of them, Petit-Mamain, son of an innkeeper at Bordeaux and a former soldier, "with a pale, wrinkled face, sharp eyes and bold air, wearing a scimitar at his side and pistols ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 3 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 2 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... proud that you are born an Irishman. My father is Irish, and if you want to see him get up and strut give him a teeny opening to enlarge on his race. He says that if the Irish had decent territory they'd lead the world. He says they've always been handicapped by lack of space and of fertile soil. He says if Ireland ...
— Freckles • Gene Stratton-Porter
... bloody War, her best Troops ruin'd, incapable to win a Battle, every Campaign carry'd two or three of their best Towns, the Nation dispirited, and Credit sunk, and nothing but a dismal Scene of Poverty and Misery: And yet in the midst of all this Misery, (as the Spanish Beggars are said to strut about in their Cloak and Bilboes at their Side) so this Gasping Monarch had the Assurance not only to talk of making a Descent, but actually equipp'd a small nimble Fleet with a Body of Men, and persuaded the Pretender to go upon the ...
— Memoirs of Major Alexander Ramkins (1718) • Daniel Defoe
... course, no fashion plates in that day, nor were there any "living models" to strut back and forth before keen-eyed customers; but fully dressed dolls were imported from France and England, and sent from town to town as examples of properly attired ladies. Eliza Southgate Bowne, after seeing the dolls in her shopping expeditions, ...
— Woman's Life in Colonial Days • Carl Holliday
... a new intelligibleness illumines the universe. The arbitrary and cruel Creator who inflicts pain and pleasure at will then disappears from the stage; and it is well, for he is indeed an unnecessary character, and, worse still, is a mere creature of straw, who cannot even strut upon the boards without being upheld on all sides by dogmatists. Man comes into this world, surely, on the same principle that he lives in one city of the earth or another; at all events, if it is too much to say that this is ...
— Light On The Path and Through the Gates of Gold • Mabel Collins
... we will absorb it with the rest: we have absorbed many others! I just laugh at the air of triumph they assume, and the pusillanimity of some of my fellow-countrymen. They think they have conquered us, they strut about our boulevards, and in our newspapers and reviews, and in our theaters and in the political arena. Idiots! It is they who are conquered! They will be assimilated after having fed us. Gaul has a strong stomach: in these twenty centuries she has digested more ...
— Jean Christophe: In Paris - The Market-Place, Antoinette, The House • Romain Rolland
... night For Scotch half-crown, in English three-pence hight. One nymph, to whom fat Sir John Falstaff's lean, 10 There with her single person fills the scene. Another, with long use and age decay'd, Dived here old woman, and rose there a maid. Our trusty doorkeepers of former time There strut and swagger in heroic rhyme. Tack but a copper-lace to drugget suit, And there's a hero made without dispute: And that, which was a capon's tail before, Becomes a plume for Indian emperor. But all ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol II - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden
... best, John's pockets are an integral part of his personality. He feels after his pocket instinctively while yet in what corresponds in the genus homo with the polywog state in batrachia. The incipient man begins to strut as soon as mamma puts pockets into his kilted skirt—a stride as prophetic as the strangled crow of the cockerel upon the lowest ...
— The Secret of a Happy Home (1896) • Marion Harland
... wrought busily until his charges glowed redly against the water plants in their shining bowl. Creepers crept, plants grew, and ferns waved under the care of Nathan Spiderwitz, Monitor of the Window Boxes. There was such a martial swing and strut in Patrick Brennan's leadership of the line that it informed even the timid heart of Isidore Wishnewsky with a war-like glow and his feet with a spasmodic but well-meant tramp. Sadie Gonorowsky and Eva, her cousin, sat closely side by side, no longer "mad on ...
— Little Citizens • Myra Kelly
... thy side Lies softly panting like a bride; —This is to live, and to endear Those minutes Time has lent us here. Then, while fates suffer, live thou free, As is that air that circles thee; And crown thy temples too; and let Thy servant, not thy own self, sweat, To strut thy barns with sheaves of wheat. —Time steals away like to a stream, And we glide hence away with them: No sound recalls the hours once fled, Or roses, being withered; Nor us, my friend, when we are lost, Like to a dew, or melted frost. —Then live we mirthful while we should, And turn the iron ...
— A Selection From The Lyrical Poems Of Robert Herrick • Robert Herrick
... and whose arm lacked the strength, of a man's, but he was nevertheless the favourite of the Great Spirit. He was less in stature than a man, and crooked withal, his height being little more than that of the tall bird[A] which loves to strut along the sandy shore, picking up the fish as they flutter joyously along in the beams of the warm and cheering sun. But if he was diminutive in body he was great in his soul—what others lacked in wisdom he supplied. His ...
— Traditions of the North American Indians, Vol. 3 (of 3) • James Athearn Jones
... amusing to see the pompous strut of the men on a Sunday, as they walk to mass in their ill-made silk coats, with gold-headed sticks in hand. Both men and women are the worst-favoured race I ever saw: their flat, unmeaning countenances, small, lacklustre eyes, strong, upright, black hair, resembling ...
— Trade and Travel in the Far East - or Recollections of twenty-one years passed in Java, - Singapore, Australia and China. • G. F. Davidson
... other quality, forgive (if you can) the INSUFFERABLE vanity of my copying the last sentence in his note: "I regard your Monograph on Chile as, without exception, one of the finest specimens of Geological enquiry." I feel inclined to strut like ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume II • Francis Darwin
... country; peragrate^; circumambulate, perambulate; nomadize^, wander, ramble, stroll, saunter, hover, go one's rounds, straggle; gad, gad about; expatiate. walk, march, step, tread, pace, plod, wend, go by shank's mare; promenade; trudge, tramp; stalk, stride, straddle, strut, foot it, hoof it, stump, bundle, bowl along, toddle; paddle; tread a path. take horse, ride, drive, trot, amble, canter, prance, fisk^, frisk, caracoler^, caracole; gallop &c (move quickly) 274. [start riding] embark, board, set out, hit the road, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... hat down over his eyes, whirls around and offers his arm to DAISY. They strut into the store, DAVE gazing contemptuously at JIM as he passes. Crowd roars with laughter, much ...
— The Mule-Bone: - A Comedy of Negro Life in Three Acts • Zora Hurston and Langston Hughes
... the inspiration in modern sculpture of the eternal Greek truth of repose from which the art had so wildly wandered, He, more than any other, stayed it in the mad career on which Michelangelo, however remotely, had started it; and we owe it to him that the best marbles now no longer strut or swagger ...
— Roman Holidays and Others • W. D. Howells
... Luther to the lessons he learned in childhood from his experience of poverty at home, in his remarks in later life, on the sons of poor men, who by sheer hard work raise themselves from obscurity, and have much to endure, and no time to strut and swagger, but must be humble and learn to be silent and to trust in God, and to whom God also has given ...
— Life of Luther • Julius Koestlin
... ornamental work. The framing requires strength and simplicity. It is this portion of the instrument which sustains the tension of the strings, which in full to large-sized pianos is not less than from six to twelve tons, and it is a matter of prime necessity that the portions which serve as a strut or stretcher between the ends of the strings, and which are to resist this enormous pull, must be made correspondingly strong and rigid, since by any gradual yielding under the pull of the strings, their lengths and tensions, and hence their tone, must undergo proportionate ...
— Great Fortunes, and How They Were Made • James D. McCabe, Jr.
... have been made by the most popular artists to enliven the scenes of the pilgrimage; but no colour glows like the enchanting words of Bunyan. No figures are so true to nature, and so life-like. Those eminent engravers, Sturt and Strut, Stothard and Martin, with the prize efforts excited by the Art Union of England, and the curious outlines by Mrs. M'Kenzie, the daughter of a British admiral, have endeavoured to exhaust the scenes in this inexhaustible work of beautiful scenery. The most elegant and correct edition is the large-paper, ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... the worker can proceed to install the power equipment. This consists of a small battery motor driven with two dry cells. The design and installation of such things as stern-tubes and propeller-shafts have been taken up in detail in an earlier part of this book. The strut that holds the propeller-shaft is shown in Fig. 91. This consists merely of a brass bushing held in a bracket made of a strip of brass 1/2 inch wide. The brass strip is wound around the bushing and soldered. It is held to the bottom of the hull by means of two 8-32 brass ...
— Boys' Book of Model Boats • Raymond Francis Yates
... ultra crep, should tell These red-coats 'tis a paltry swell, Such careless customs backing; If they must strut in spurs and boots, For once I'd join the chalk recruits, And shout, "Use ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... in the utmost perplexity; and fallen from his high horse, alighted on a kind of dignity. 'Madam,' he said with a little bow and a strut, ''tis the first time an offer of marriage from one of my family has been called an insult! And I don't understand it. Hang me! If we have married fools, we have ...
— The Castle Inn • Stanley John Weyman
... as well up to it as ever ye will be," he said. "Not that such mumming would have passed in our time. Harry as the Saracen should strut a bit more, and John needn't holler his inside out. Beyond that perhaps you'll do. Have you got all your ...
— The Return of the Native • Thomas Hardy
... give me loud honors, That I may strut before you, sweetheart, And be worthy of— The ...
— War is Kind • Stephen Crane
... strut, he marched to the drawing-room door. She had not felt like smiling, but if there had been any such inclination it would have fled before the countenance that turned upon her at the threshold. It was the ...
— The Price She Paid • David Graham Phillips
... was sorry for them. "Every brood," she declared, "should have at least one swimmer in it." She began to strut up and down the edge of the duck-pond, clucking in a most overbearing fashion. Really, she had never felt quite so important before—not even when her first brood pecked their way out of ...
— The Tale of Henrietta Hen • Arthur Scott Bailey
... access to these mysteries. The formal attempt to impart a good style is like the melancholy task of the teacher of gesture and oratory; some palpable faults are soon corrected; and, for the rest, a few conspicuous mannerisms, a few theatrical postures, not truly expressive, and a high tragical strut, are all that can be imparted. The truth of the old Roman teachers of rhetoric is here witnessed afresh, to be a good orator it is first of all necessary to be a good man. Good style is the greatest of revealers,—it lays bare the soul. The soul of the cheat shuns nothing so much. "Always be ready ...
— Style • Walter Raleigh
... dress. "The men," said he, "wear capes reaching down to the ground, and their long hair falls down to their shoulders; and the women wear so many petticoats that they can hardly drag themselves along, and strut about like the Pope's courtezans, to the surprise and disgust of the whole world." What right had these selfish fops to call themselves Christians? They did more harm to the cause of Christ than all the Turks and heathens in ...
— History of the Moravian Church • J. E. Hutton
... Peacocks sweep the fairies' rooms; They use their folded tails for brooms; But fairy dust is brighter far Than any mortal colours are; And all about their tails it clings In strange designs of rounds and rings; And that is why they strut about And proudly spread ...
— When Winter Comes to Main Street • Grant Martin Overton
... was scrutinizing every automobile in sight. Near her was a short, stout woman whose personality seemed to be strangely familiar to Medenham. He never forgot anyone, and this lady was certainly not one of his acquaintances; nevertheless, her features, her robin-like strut, her very amplitude of girth and singular rotundity of form, came definitely within the net of his ...
— Cynthia's Chauffeur • Louis Tracy
... make you ruler of all India!" she said. "Another may wear the baubles, but thou shalt be the true king, even as thy name is! And behind thee, me, Yasmini, whispering wisdom and laughing to see the politicians strut!" ...
— Caves of Terror • Talbot Mundy
... feeling and love, with a deeper insight into her tenderness; he follows her more humbly, and has produced to us more of her simplicity; we feel his appeal to be more earnest: it is the crying out of the man, with none of the strut of the actor. ...
— The Germ - Thoughts towards Nature in Poetry, Literature and Art • Various
... usual strut or swim: it corresponds with the biblical walking or going softly. (I Kings xxi. 27; ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... little camp assumes quite a lively appearance again, three sheep and several fowls having been added to the farm-yard; these, together with three surviving ducks of the real original stock, and a wonderful white Thibetian cock, who owes his life entirely to his highly-cultivated vocal powers, strut about in front of the tent, and give an air of unwonted respectability to the scene. Two marches more take us to Islamabad, and it seems altogether about time that the present expedition should draw to a close. Supplies appear alarmingly low. Sugar out some days, brandy ditto, European ...
— Diary of a Pedestrian in Cashmere and Thibet • by William Henry Knight
... see this long train of camels coming up to the king's gate, and the ox-trains from Egypt, gold and silver and precious stones, and beasts of every hoof, and birds of every wing, and fish of every scale! See the peacocks strut under the cedars, and the horsemen run, and the chariots wheel! Hark to the orchestra! Gaze upon the dance! Not stopping to look into the wonders of the temple, step right on to the causeway, and ...
— New Tabernacle Sermons • Thomas De Witt Talmage
... STRUT—The upright braces between the upper and lower wings of a machine are called struts. They take the compression of the truss frame of the biplane or triplane. Each wing is divided into ...
— Opportunities in Aviation • Arthur Sweetser
... cries out against him for his house and yard and God knows what. For my part, I do hope, when all is done, that my following my business will keep me secure against all their envys. But to see how the old man do strut, and swear that he understands all his duty as easily as crack a nut, and easier, he told my Lord Chancellor, for his teeth are gone; and that he understands it as well as any man in England; and that he will never leave to record that he should be said to be unable to do his duty alone; though, ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... and court pageantry was not so far past that it did not appeal powerfully to the imaginations of the frequenters of the Globe, the Rose, and the Fortune. They had no such feeling as we have in regard to the pasteboard kings and queens who strut their brief hour before us in anachronic absurdity. But, besides that he wrote in the spirit of his age, Shakespeare wrote in the language and the literary methods of his time. This is not more evident in the contemporary ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... the Arabs, "Above all their qualities, personal conceit is remarkable; they show it in their strut, in their looks, and almost in every word. 'I am such a one, the son of such a one,' is a common expletive, especially in times of danger; and this spirit is not wholly to be condemned, as it certainly acts as an incentive to gallant ...
— The Life of Sir Richard Burton • Thomas Wright
... continued Blackbeard, "to strut about on the quarter-deck of that fine vessel, the Revenge; you have no right to hoist above you the Jolly Roger, and you have no right to lie right and left and tell people you are a pirate. A pirate, forsooth! you are no pirate. A pirate is a sailor, ...
— Kate Bonnet - The Romance of a Pirate's Daughter • Frank R. Stockton
... Chebe became a terrible trial. He could not work in the garden. On Sundays the fortifications were deserted; he could no longer strut about among the workingmen's families dining on the grass, and pass from group to group in a neighborly way, his feet encased in embroidered slippers, with the authoritative demeanor of a wealthy landowner of the vicinity. This he missed more than anything else, consumed ...
— Fromont and Risler, Complete • Alphonse Daudet
... seeing that Helen was gazing at him inquiringly once more he added, gravely, "One could be well content to let vain people strut their little hour and be as wonderful as they chose, if it were not for the painful fact that they are eating the bread of honest men, and that millions are toiling and starving in order that they may have ease and luxury. That is such a very dreadful thing to know that sometimes ...
— King Midas • Upton Sinclair
... banished to the garden and the Cheshire Cat smiles all over her face. Peace restored, Dimples and the Owlet remember a dead lizard they found in a corner of the verandah, and set off to recover it. These two walk exactly like mechanical toys; and as they strut along hand in hand, or one after the other, they look like something wound up and going, in a Christmas shop window. Presently they return with the lizard. Its tail is loose, and they sit down to pull it off. This is not a nice game, and something ...
— Lotus Buds • Amy Carmichael
... nearest to it; but the word cannot be given, even by equivalents, in English; nor can it be naturalised, because, in fact, we have not the feeling. An Englishman is too proud to boast—too bashful to strut; if ever he peacocks himself, it is in a moment of anger, not in display. The language of every country," continued he, raising his voice, in order to reach Lady Davenant, who just then returned to the room, ...
— Helen • Maria Edgeworth
... step of gosling, Strut thou with the feet of duckling, In the yard that's washed so cleanly, On the smooth and level grassplot, Where the father rules the household, And the mother holds dominion, To the workplace of the brother, And the sister's ...
— Kalevala, Volume I (of 2) - The Land of the Heroes • Anonymous
... sturdy little person thus arrayed in the unusual magnificence of purple and fine linen, and his scarlet roquelaure flaunting from his shoulders, he used to strut into the apartments of his patients swaying his three-cornered hat in one hand and his medical scepter, the cane, in the other, and assuming an air of gravity and importance suited to the solemnity ...
— Oliver Goldsmith • Washington Irving
... state," said the Comte de Vandenesse. "In these days every rogue who can hold his head straight in his collar, cover his manly bosom with half an ell of satin by way of a cuirass, display a brow where apocryphal genius gleams under curling locks, and strut in a pair of patent-leather pumps graced by silk socks which cost six francs, screws his eye-glass into one of his eye-sockets by puckering up his cheek, and whether he be an attorney's clerk, a contractor's son, or a banker's bastard, he stares ...
— Another Study of Woman • Honore de Balzac
... cafes with red, and every wee piou-piou under the great big epaulettes of a great big comic opera generalissimo. His huge military coat fitted him awkwardly, and the crimson pompon cocked on his little fighting kepi was more often awry, and he could not by any effort achieve a strut. He was only bon enfant, this unconquered soldier lad; so he gave over trying to be martial, and left to his officers the role of the Gallic rooster, taking it all as a droll joke on himself, while his ...
— The Missourian • Eugene P. (Eugene Percy) Lyle
... Strut, for so the witling throng Oft called him when at school, And hitch'd him up in many a song To ...
— The Dialect of the West of England Particularly Somersetshire • James Jennings
... and generals stood about the farmers—led by the farmer-in-chief, morning-coated, carefully groomed, plainly nervous but sustained by the dignity of it all. His voice was firm; his manner that of a very circumspect bridegroom. The old smug strut and case-hardened pomp of legislature inaugurals was lacking. An undercurrent of deep sincerity stayed many a tremorous hand. Drury was the least nervous of all. I imagine that in the morning he had sung to himself some good old fortifying hymn, ...
— The Masques of Ottawa • Domino
... fancy fair. The temple pigeons wheeled disconsolately in the air or perched upon the roofs, unable to find one square foot of the familiar flagstones, where they were used to strut and peck. Stalls lined the stone pathways and choked the spaces between the buildings. Merchants were peddling objects of piety, sacred images, charms and rosaries; and there were flowers for the women's hair, and toys for ...
— Kimono • John Paris
... subjected to the actual cautery. But was virtue the cause of all this interest? Was it devotion to a young and innocent girl that made me willing to undertake so difficult and so delicate a task? Doubtless these motives went for something, but I will not attempt to strut in borrowed plumes, and must freely confess that if she had been ugly and stupid I should probably have left her to her fate. In short, selfishness was at the bottom of it all, so let us say no more ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... a letter from the mother, To say her daughter's feelings are trepann'd; Perhaps you 'll have a visit from the brother, All strut, and stays, and whiskers, to demand What 'your intentions are?'—One way or other It seems the virgin's heart expects your hand: And between pity for her case and yours, You 'll add to Matrimony's ...
— Don Juan • Lord Byron
... said the Daughter of the House, who had been listening very eagerly, "what made you talk like that, and strut about, and pound the deck? That's not like you. I would not have supposed that you ever ...
— John Gayther's Garden and the Stories Told Therein • Frank R. Stockton
... village of Bolleau. It was situated on a pretty rise of ground to the very borders of the forest. Cecile, walking quickly, reached it before long; then she stood still, leaning over the paling and looking across the enchanted ground. This paling in itself was English, and the very strut of the barn-door fowl reminded her of Warren's Grove. How she wished that fair child to run out! How she hoped to hear even one word of the only language she understood! No matter her French origin, Cecile was all English at this moment. Toby stood ...
— The Children's Pilgrimage • L. T. Meade
... no other needed," Maxendorf urged. "For you the case is different. If you are one of those who love to strut about and boast of your nationality, if you are one of those in whom lingers the smallest particle of the falsest sentiment which the age of romance has ever handed down to us—what they call patriotism—then my words will be wasted. But here is the message which I have brought to you and ...
— A People's Man • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... manner; and that we must take the whole of society to find the whole man. Unfortunately the unit has been too minutely subdivided, and many faculties are practically lost for want of use. "The state of society is one in which the members have suffered amputation from the trunk, and strut about so many walking monsters,—a good finger, a neck, a stomach, an elbow, but never a man.... Man is thus metamorphosed into a thing, into many things.... The priest becomes a form; the attorney a statute book; the mechanic a machine; the sailor ...
— Ralph Waldo Emerson • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... anyway he has drunk deep of cruelty and terror and may go his way. By rare good grace he may have been a hero. In other words, he may have been a Belgian—which is a word like a decoration, a name to make one strut like a Greek of Thermopylae—and become thus a permanent part of the ...
— The New York Times Current History: the European War, February, 1915 • Various
... for its object the manufacture of weldless stayed chains, whereof each link, together with its cross strut or stay, is made of one piece of metal without any weld or joint; and the invention consists in producing a chain of stayed links from a bar of cruciform section by the consecutive series of punching, twisting and stamping operations hereinafter ...
— Scientific American Supplement No. 819 - Volume XXXII, Number 819. Issue Date September 12, 1891 • Various
... ought to be made responsible for the money. And lastly, she loathed and condemned him for the reason that he was so obviously unequal to the situation. He could not handle it. He was found out. He was disproved, He did not know what to do. He could only mouth, strut, bully, and make rude noises. He could not even keep decently around him the cloak of self-importance. He stood revealed to Mrs. Maldon and Rachel as he had sometimes stood revealed to his dead wife ...
— The Price of Love • Arnold Bennett
... said Tom; "I flatter myself I shall know how to strut about the quarter-deck and order the men here and there as well as the ...
— From Powder Monkey to Admiral - A Story of Naval Adventure • W.H.G. Kingston
... young fellow, and in capital health, but fast; one of that odious race of provincial fast men, and he appeared to me to be as suitable as anyone, and could be got rid of later by making him an allowance. He came to the house to pay his addresses and to strut about before the idiot girl, who, however, seemed to please him. He brought her flowers, kissed her hands, sat at her feet, and looked at her with affectionate eyes; but she took no notice of any of his attentions, and did not make any distinction ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... drove a hard bargain with your sex when we compelled you to beauty, made you carry the topknots and the tail- feathers? Men propose marriage, women adorn themselves to listen. Let women choose their mates, and they might go as plain as peahens; and men would strut about, displaying wattles, combs ...
— The Bacillus of Beauty - A Romance of To-day • Harriet Stark
... five cents he won't strut round so much to-morrow afternoon," said Tom, "after his interview with his new cousin. But hush, boys! Not a word more of this. There's Fitz coming up the hill. I wouldn't have him suspect what's going on, or he might defeat our plans by ...
— Risen from the Ranks - Harry Walton's Success • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... great variety of angles; every room had a particular inclination; the gable had tilted towards the garden, after the manner of a leaning tower, and one of the former proprietors had buttressed the building from that side with a great strut of wood, like the derrick of a crane. Altogether, it had many marks of ruin; it was a house for the rats to desert; and nothing but its excellent brightness—the window-glass polished and shining, the paint well scoured, the brasses radiant, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 6 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... mother's arms. Never a mistress in the world's history has asked more from man than she has asked or has had more to give. She asks your life, your thoughts, your passions—every breath of your body must be a breath of desire for her and her alone. You think that you can strut about the world, a talking doll, pay court to women, listen to the voices that praise you, smirk your way through the days, and all the time climb. My young friend, no! I tell you no! Don't interrupt me. I am going to speak my ...
— The Moving Finger • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... with the smaller tribes) which are continually hovering over it, either going to the ocean or returning home. At the same time a crowd of penguins are to be observed, some passing to and fro in the narrow alleys, and some marching with the military strut so peculiar to them, around the general promenade ground which encircles the rookery. In short, survey it as we will, nothing can be more astonishing than the spirit of reflection evinced by these feathered beings, and nothing surely can be better calculated to elicit reflection in ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 3 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... multitudes, has been so minutely subdivided and peddled out, that it is spilled into drops, and cannot be gathered. The state of society is one in which the members have suffered amputation from the trunk and strut about so many walking monsters,—a good finger, a neck, a stomach, an ...
— Essays • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... hard to attend a political feast, And strut like a peacock, and crow like a bantam, Yet feel at one's back, like a blast from the east, A be-robed and be-wigged and blood-curdling law phantom. Stentorian cheers, and uproarious hear-hears, Though welcome, won't banish the sense ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 103, December 24, 1892 • Various
... not shap'd for sporting tricks, Nor made to court an amorous looking-glass; I, that am rudely stamped, and want love's majesty, To strut before a wanton ambling nymph;— I, that am curtailed of this fair proportion, Cheated of feature by dissembling nature, Deform'd, unfinish'd, sent before my time Into this breathing world, scarce ...
— The Critics Versus Shakspere - A Brief for the Defendant • Francis A. Smith
... the pen, were it not for our dislike to strut in borrowed plumes; and that inclineth us to inform the gentle reader that no part of this simple story is of our invention, except the last disclosure of the senior Wag's relationship to his namesake, which we ventured ...
— Tales from Blackwood, Volume 7 • Various
... some mean, unworthy prey, And rests, deep-sorrowing, On the low rock beside the stream. Up to the oak he looks, Looks up to heaven, While in his noble eye there gleams a tear. Then, rustling through the myrtle boughs, behold, There comes a wanton pair of doves, Who settle down, and, nodding, strut O'er the gold sands beside the stream, And gradually approach; Their red-tinged eyes, so full of love, Soon see the inward-sorrowing one. The male, inquisitively social, leaps On the next bush, and looks Upon him ...
— The Poems of Goethe • Goethe
... energetic drumsticks. The big drum gave forth its clamor with window-shaking insistence; it seemed to be the summons of power that all else should stand aside. On they came, these spruce Guards, each man a marching machine, trained to strut and pose exactly as his fellows. There was a sense of omnipotence in their rhythmic movement. And they all had the grand manner—from the elegant captain in command down to the smallest drummer-boy. ...
— The Wheel O' Fortune • Louis Tracy
... fellow was Turkey Proudfoot. He loved to strut about the farmyard and spread his tail, which he claimed was the most ...
— The Tale of Miss Kitty Cat - Slumber-Town Tales • Arthur Scott Bailey
... who were staying at Chateau Desir were assembled in the drawing-room. The Marquess sallied forward to receive his guest with a most dignified countenance and a most aristocratic step; but, before he got half-way, his coronation pace degenerated into a strut, and then into a shamble, and with an awkward and confused countenance, half impudent and half flinching, he held forward his left hand to his newly-arrived visitor. Mr. Cleveland looked terrifically courteous and amiably arrogant. He greeted the Marquess with a smile at ...
— Vivian Grey • The Earl of Beaconsfield
... building, affords a singular instance of the meeting of the last remnant of that serene symbolism of Roman and Byzantine-Roman churches with the usual Lombard horrors. A fine passion-flower or vine encircles the porch, peacocks strut and drink from an altar, while, on the other hand, lions mangle a man and a sheep, and horrible composite monsters, resembling the prehistoric plesiosaurus, bite each other's necks. A Madonna and Christ are enthroned on Byzantine seats, the weight resting on human beings, ...
— Renaissance Fancies and Studies - Being a Sequel to Euphorion • Violet Paget (AKA Vernon Lee)
... the tallest individual in the kingdom, and indeed nothing could be more amusing than to witness the manner in which he held up his head while he walked, or sat, or stood. In fact his walk was a complete strut, to which the pride, arising from the consciousness of, or rather the belief in, his extraordinary height gave an extremely ludicrous appearance. Poor Tom was about five feet nine in height, but imagined himself to be at least a foot ...
— Willy Reilly - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... event which must be reckoned as the foundation stone of the British Empire in India. It sprang from the character of Sirajuddaula. That prince was a cruel despot, but weak-willed, vacillating, and totally unable to keep a friend. One day he would strut in some vainglorious semblance of dignity; the next he would engage in drunken revels with the meanest and most dissolute of his subjects. He insulted his commander-in-chief, Mir Jafar: he offended the Seths, wealthy bankers of Murshidabad who had helped him to his throne: ...
— In Clive's Command - A Story of the Fight for India • Herbert Strang
... to recite these lines at his assemblies: O you who, in sumptuous array, strut about like princes and scorn the hatred of the poor, know that the saddle-cloth changeth not the nature of the ass, neither do splendid trappings change the nature ...
— A Boswell of Baghdad - With Diversions • E. V. Lucas
... that time there was a great army of Danish men west there, whose chief was Heming, the son of Earl Strut-Harald, and brother to Earl Sigvaldi, and he held for King Knut that land that ...
— The Story Of Gunnlaug The Worm-Tongue And Raven The Skald - 1875 • Anonymous
... constituent is obedience: a soldier is, of all descriptions of men, the most completely a machine; yet his profession inevitably teaches him something of dogmatism, swaggering, and sell-consequence: he is like the puppet of a showman, who, at the very time he is made to strut and swell and display the most farcical airs, we perfectly know cannot assume the most insignificant gesture, advance either to the right or the left, but as he is moved by his ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... no unsteadiness in the doctor's walk, and no flush on his face. He certainly did strut when he entered the room; and he held up his head with dignity, when he discovered Mountjoy. But he seemed to preserve his self-control. Was the man ...
— Blind Love • Wilkie Collins
... or the piece to be played, he had not the slightest interest in either. The building was very pretty, no doubt; but it was only, in effect, a superior sort of booth; and as for the trivial amusement of watching a number of people strut across a stage and declaim—or perhaps make fools of themselves to raise a laugh—that was not at all to his liking. It would have been different had he been able to talk to the girl who had shown such a strange ...
— Macleod of Dare • William Black
... Reginald having ascertained that no one was near. As they left the gates of the house the rajah walked rapidly along, concealing his face in his robe, while Reginald swaggered on by his side with a martial strut assumed generally by the sowars. A large number of people were still abroad; and as they passed on they caught some of the expressions which were being uttered. It was very evident that a rebellion had taken place, and that the star of Mukund Bhim ...
— The Young Rajah • W.H.G. Kingston
... marquis is given gratis to any one who will accept of it; and whosoever arrives at Paris from the midst of the most remote provinces with money in his purse, and a name terminating in ac or ille, may strut about, and cry, "Such a man as I! A man of my rank and figure!" and may look down upon a trader with sovereign contempt; whilst the trader on the other side, by thus often hearing his profession treated so disdainfully, is fool enough to blush at it. However, I need not say which is most useful ...
— Letters on England • Voltaire
... heaviest weight upon the souls of both; Should either be an aedile, or, still worse, A praetor, let him feel a father's curse. What? would you wish to lavish my bequest In vetches, beech-nuts, lupines and the rest, You, that in public you may strut, or stand All bronze, when stripped of money, stripped of land; You, that Agrippa's plaudits you may win, A sneaking fox in a brave ...
— The Satires, Epistles, and Art of Poetry • Horace
... Highnesses appear who, though born to rule, are not deserving to be the lackeys to the least of those whom they treat with contempt; and yet who swell, strut, stride, and contemplate themselves as creatures essentially different by nature, and of a superior rank in the scale of beings, though, in reality, their minds are of the lowest, ...
— The Life and Adventures of Baron Trenck - Vol. 2 (of 2) • Baron Trenck
... of the tragedy of Cato in London (Cato by Sheridan) Mr. Wignell was put forward in his old established part of Portius. In the first scene he stepped forward in his accustomed strut and began ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 4, April 1810 • Various
... three officers stationed there. The design of the car shows a radical departure from anything that had been previously attempted, and as a model an ordinary boat was taken. In shape it is as nearly streamline as is practicable, having a keel and ribs of wood with curved longitudinal members, the strut ends being housed in steel sockets. The whole frame is braced with piano wire set diagonally between the struts. The car is floored from end to end, and the sides are enclosed with 8-ply wood covered ...
— British Airships, Past, Present, and Future • George Whale
... for the exterior. This is of course an extreme example and does not represent the usual practice, but it brings sharply to consciousness the well known fact that for these buildings we have substantially one method of construction—that of the vertical strut, and the horizontal "fill"—while in style they appear as Grecian, Roman, Renaissance, Gothic, Modern French and what not, according to the whim ...
— Architecture and Democracy • Claude Fayette Bragdon
... by the great day came when old Mother Nature arrived to inspect the kingdom of old King Bear. All the little meadow people and all the little forest folk hastened to pay their respects to old Mother Nature and to strut about in their fine clothes—all but Mr. Toad. He was so busy that he didn't even know that old ...
— Mother West Wind's Children • Thornton W. Burgess
... incapable of carrying out the conquest of a woman to the end...." "Oh! my dear!... Do you really believe?..." "I am sure of it.... There are many of this latter class, many, many ... many more than people think. Oh! they look just like everybody else ... they strut like peacocks.... No, when I said peacocks ... I made a mistake, for they could not display themselves." "Oh! my dear...." "As to the timid, they are sometimes unspeakably stupid. They are the sort of men, who ought not to undress themselves, even when they ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Vol. 1 (of 8) - Boule de Suif and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... your eloquence—" "Yours, Cowper's manner"—and "yours, Talbot's sense." Thus we dispose of all poetic merit, Yours Milton's genius, and mine Homer's spirit. Call Tibbald Shakespeare, and he'll swear the nine, Dear Cibber! never matched one ode of thine. Lord! how we strut through Merlin's cave, to see No poets there, but Stephen, you, and me. Walk with respect behind, while we at ease Weave laurel crowns, and take what names we please. "My dear Tibullus!" if that will not do, "Let me be Horace, and be Ovid you: Or, I'm content, allow me Dryden's strains, ...
— Essay on Man - Moral Essays and Satires • Alexander Pope
... to hear Of deeds of martial fame, Or that our peasant mean Was born of rank or name, And soon will strut, As in romance, A knight and all ...
— Cottage Poems • Patrick Bronte
... vagrant than by the deliberate and self-conscious seeker. A cheerful doctrine this. Not only cheerful, but self-evidently true. How right it is, and how cheerful it is, to think that while philosophers and clergymen strut about this world looking out, and smelling out, for its prime experiences, more careless and less celebrated men are continually finding such things, without effort, without care, in irregular and ...
— A Chair on The Boulevard • Leonard Merrick
... magnifico in his demeanour. If people grow presuming and self-important over such matters as a dukedom or the Holy See, they will scarcely support the dizziest elevation in life without some suspicion of a strut; and the dizziest elevation is to love and be loved in return. Consequently, accepted lovers are a trifle condescending in their address to other men. An overweening sense of the passion and importance of life hardly conduces ...
— Virginibus Puerisque • Robert Louis Stevenson
... little French mop—we thought it the most comical, contemptible French boy, mop, boat, steamer, prince—Psha! it is of this wretched vapouring stuff that false patriotism is made. I write this as a sort of homily 'a propos of the day, and Cape Trafalgar, off which we lie. What business have I to strut the deck, and clap my wings, and cry "Cock-a-doodle-doo" over it? Some compatriots are at ...
— Notes on a Journey from Cornhill to Grand Cairo • William Makepeace Thackeray
... were a leonine magnanimity of courage, a vulpine subtlety of cunning, or a pavonine strut of vanity. The spirit, freed from its fallen cell, "Fills with fresh energy another form, And towers an elephant, or glides a worm, Swims as an eagle in the eye of noon, Or wails, a screech owl, to the deaf, cold moon, Or ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... ... only themselves! They are, in their own opinion, the Be-All and the End-All of everything! ... as if the Supreme Creative Force called God were incapable of designing any Higher Form of Thinking-Life than their pigmy bodies which strut on two legs and, with two eyes and a small, quickly staggered brain, profess to understand and weigh the whole foundation and ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... knee, foot scraped off frost. He jammed his jaw against the wet iron. His right hand never let go, but it crawled up the fin of the strut like a blind animal, while the load on his points of purchase mounted—watchmaker co-ordination where you'd normally think in boilermaker terms. The flame sank to a spark as he focused, but it never blinked ...
— A Matter of Proportion • Anne Walker
... and parade of guards, and domestics, and city functionaries. A beetling bastion of the fortress overlooked the palace and the public square in front of it; and on this bastion the old governor would occasionally strut backward and forward, with his toledo girded by his side, keeping a wary eye down upon his rival, like a hawk reconnoitering his quarry from his nest in ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 7 • Charles H. Sylvester
... common entertainment. I could not but fancy to myself, as the old man stood up in the middle of the pit, that he made a very proper center to a tragick audience. Upon the entering of Pyrrhus, the Knight told me that he did not believe the King of France himself had a better strut. I was indeed very attentive to my old friend's remarks, because I looked upon them as a piece of natural criticism, and was well pleased to hear him, at the conclusion of almost every scene, telling me that he could not imagine how the play would end. One while he appeared much concerned ...
— The Coverley Papers • Various
... unsteadiness of the broad, plump shoulders gave to Peter in his perplexity the not inaccurate notion that the fat little man had enjoyed his joke and was giggling to such an extent that it almost interfered with his dignified strut. ...
— Peter the Brazen - A Mystery Story of Modern China • George F. Worts
... of him. Too slow. I like efficiency, my boy, efficiency. . . . That's my motto." Sir John complacently performed three steps of his celebrated strut. "Did you know the Hearl?" Though fairly sound on the matter, in moments of excitement he was apt to counterbalance his wife with the ...
— Mufti • H. C. (Herman Cyril) McNeile
... a boggler ever:— But when we in our viciousness grow hard,— O misery on't!—the wise gods seal our eyes; In our own filth drop our clear judgments: make us Adore our errors; laugh at's while we strut ...
— Antony and Cleopatra • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]
... years ago, the expenditure has risen twofold. America is ruining our agriculture; and soon, I suppose, we have to send to China for labourers. Why, those who do not emigrate demand twice as much to-day for half the work they used to do five years ago; and those who return from America strut about like country gentlemen deploring the ...
— The Book of Khalid • Ameen Rihani
... determination. He was not trying out a business venture so much as he was trying out himself. Previously he had always figured success and failure as his performance reacted on his audience. He was learning that one could impress a stupendous crowd and really fail, or strut upon the boards of an empty playhouse and still succeed. He began to realize just what was meant by the term self-esteem—how hard and uncompromising and exacting it was. To disappoint another was a humiliation; to disappoint oneself was a ...
— Broken to the Plow • Charles Caldwell Dobie
... manners and customs as if it were written on tables of iron. The consequence is, that however enraged a person may be, he sees, and generally at the outset, that his best course is to give way; he may fume and strut, look big and villify, but he bows his head and is off with as embarrassed a face as yours, gentle reader, would certainly be, if a friend whom you knew to be ruined came and asked you to lend ...
— Le Morvan, [A District of France,] Its Wild Sports, Vineyards and Forests; with Legends, Antiquities, Rural and Local Sketches • Henri de Crignelle
... of bills of costs and deputy sheriffs, but I do know that Mr. Aristabulus Bragg is an amusing mixture of strut, humility, roguery and cleverness. He is waiting all this time in the drawing- room, and you had better see him, as he may, now, be almost considered part of the family. You know he has been living in the house at Templeton, ever since he was installed by Mr. John Effingham. ...
— Home as Found • James Fenimore Cooper
... shamelessly given to the practice of "wieldin' a pencil" until he discovered that he could make folk laugh. After that he was an abandoned soul, with a naughty strut on the roads. For folk laughed with flattering amazement, and they clapped Terry Lute on his broad little back, and much to his delight they called him a limb o' the devil, and they spread his fame and his sketches from Out-of-the-Way ...
— Harbor Tales Down North - With an Appreciation by Wilfred T. Grenfell, M.D. • Norman Duncan
... spider—look!—a tiny body and huge, hairy legs—pull her legs, the Colonies, off, and leave her little English body, all shriveled and shrunk alone, and I should like to know what size she would be then, and how she would manage to swell and to strut?" ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]
... aluminum alloy dragged loosely on the ground; the other end swung out and projected above the shaft, swayed for an instant—and then came the first direct knowledge of the enemy's presence. The end of a metal strut, though nothing visible was touching it, grew suddenly white hot, sagged, then broke into a shower of molten, dazzling drops that rained down ...
— Two Thousand Miles Below • Charles Willard Diffin
... recites the scenes of the French revolution, the Consulate, the Empire, and the rock of St. Helena, there runs one consistent observation that youth is noble and magnanimous. The thousands of characters who "strut their brief hour" upon the stage in the terrible drama which this historian depicts are young and generous, lofty and incorruptible. Then they ripen into manhood, glory waits upon their comings and their goings, and ...
— The Golden Censer - The duties of to-day, the hopes of the future • John McGovern
... mile to the north-west, on the way back to Horley. Outwood Common is delightful. Two great windmills, black and white, spread sails to the blowing air; below them, black and white like the mills, pigs nose quietly over the short grass, and geese strut cackling. To the north, beyond rich and tranquil fields, lie the grey-green wooded ...
— Highways and Byways in Surrey • Eric Parker
... Philip coming up the hill, he ran to meet him, smiling and wagging his tail, and reported all well. The other dog was only a small pup, a Skye terrier, like a bunch of tow, a present from Tommy Traddles. Pup's early days were made very miserable by Maggie, the magpie. That wicked bird used to strut around Philip while he was digging in the garden, and after filling her crop with worms and grubs, she flapped away on one wing and went round the hut looking for amusement. She jumped on Pup's back, scratched him with her claws, pecked at his skull, and pulled locks of wool out of it, the ...
— The Book of the Bush • George Dunderdale
... Triest "fascisti" (Nationalists) believed in it, for they issued a placard on which they called Borghese a traitor and threatened him with death. "He who after November 1918 returns to the martyred town," writes Signor Zanella, "is simply stupefied in beholding that those personages who now strut on the political scene, burning with the most ardent Italian patriotism, are the same who until the eve of Vittorio Veneto were the most unbending, the most eloquent and the most devoted partisans and servants of the reactionary Magyar regime." And around them a number of more ...
— The Birth of Yugoslavia, Volume 2 • Henry Baerlein
... skilful of all politicians: he has a perfect art in being unintelligible in discourse, and uncomeatable in business. But he having no understanding in this polite way, brought in upon us, to get in his money, ladder-dancers,[183] rope-dancers, jugglers, and mountebanks, to strut in the place of Shakespeare's heroes, and Jonson's humorists. When the seat of wit was thus mortgaged, without equity of redemption, an architect[184] arose, who has built the muse a new palace, but ...
— The Tatler, Volume 1, 1899 • George A. Aitken
... ridicule of the peacocks; in which, while every justice is done to the peacocks themselves, the splendour of their plumage, the gorgeousness of their dazzling necks, and the magnificence of their tails, exception will yet be taken to the absurdity of their rickety strut, and the foolish discord of their pert squeaking; in which lions in love will have their claws pared by sly virgins; in which rogues will sometimes triumph, and honest folks, let us hope, come by their own; in which there will be black crape and white favours; in which there will ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray
... he is. Hernani, not to be outdone in generosity, offers his life to his enemy and preserver, giving him his horn and promising to come to meet his death at its summons. There is the same fault here which is felt in Hugo's novels. Motives are exaggerated, the dramatis personae strut. They are rather over-dramatic in their poses—-melodramatic, in fact—and do unlikely things. But this fault is the fault of a great nature, grandeur exalted into grandiosity, till the heroes of these plays, "Hernani," "Marion Delorme," "Le Roi ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Nineteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... there was also a gypsy who, from time to time, would get up and walk across the tavern with a saucy strut. ...
— The Quest • Pio Baroja
... still, dark shade of the palace wall, Where the peacocks strut, Where the queen may have heard my ...
— Poems • Elizabeth Stoddard
... arrangement consists of a truck on which is fixed a post, round which the crane revolves; the jib is supported midway by an inclined strut, above which is placed the king-post; the strut is curved round at the bottom and forms one piece with the side frames, which are carried right back as a tail to support the boiler and ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 312, December 24, 1881 • Various
... hurried towards the geese. He didn't take time to strut, but ran across the yard with ...
— The Tale of Turkey Proudfoot - Slumber-Town Tales • Arthur Scott Bailey
... their own opinion, the Be-All and the End-All of everything! ... as if the Supreme Creative Force called God were incapable of designing any Higher Form of Thinking-Life than their pigmy bodies which strut on two legs and, with two eyes and a small, quickly staggered brain, profess to understand and weigh the whole foundation and plan of ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... mumming; they fancy themselves as somebody else, dead or living. Yet these seem happy in this nonsense. The indolent days appear to have deadened hatred, malice, and all uncharitableness. They shall strut and fret their hour upon this little stage. Let that sprightly girl forget the sudden death which made her an orphan; the nervous broker his faithless wife; the grey-haired soldier his silly and haunting sins; ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... which was a long and tedious process, Caesar showed no inclination to leave the homestead. He used to strut about the back yard, and frequent the kitchen door, very much after the fashion of a house-dog. He was, indeed, as valuable as a watch-dog, for the appearance of any stranger was the signal for a volley of shrieks and chatter, sufficient to alarm any household. However, Caesar's ...
— A Little Bush Maid • Mary Grant Bruce
... the shaft. One end of the assembled framework of aluminum alloy dragged loosely on the ground; the other end swung out and projected above the shaft, swayed for an instant—and then came the first direct knowledge of the enemy's presence. The end of a metal strut, though nothing visible was touching it, grew suddenly white hot, sagged, then broke into a shower of molten, dazzling drops that rained down ...
— Two Thousand Miles Below • Charles Willard Diffin
... air combats was when Holt, single-handed, and armed only with a rifle, lashed to a strut of his machine, attacked ten Germans near Dunkirk, causing them to drop their bombs in the field and make off to their ...
— Aviation in Peace and War • Sir Frederick Hugh Sykes
... cruel life, by the wise decrees of an all-seeing Providence, was suddenly cut short. He fought against his disease (small pox) with that rashness that had been his ruling spirit through life, and thus ingloriously terminated his days. The pride of this man was to strut through the Mexican towns and gloat over his many crimes. To the gazing crowd, he would point out the trophies of his murders, which he never failed to have about him. To his fringed leggins were attached the phalanges (or finger bones) of ...
— The Life and Adventures of Kit Carson, the Nestor of the Rocky Mountains, from Facts Narrated by Himself • De Witt C. Peters
... Belgian. "But philosophy is like courage—easy to assume. We strut and talk big; we call the politicians sharks, the soldiers fools; but does it do any good? The war will go on; the enemy will destroy our homes, separate our families, take away our bread and leave us to starve; ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces in the Red Cross • Edith Van Dyne
... says of the Arabs, "Above all their qualities, personal conceit is remarkable; they show it in their strut, in their looks, and almost in every word. 'I am such a one, the son of such a one,' is a common expletive, especially in times of danger; and this spirit is not wholly to be condemned, as it certainly acts as an incentive ...
— The Life of Sir Richard Burton • Thomas Wright
... nearly in front of the camping-place, at a spot where the sand lay loose and dry, above the reach of the ordinary tidal influx, all made a stop at the summons of one who, from the superior style of his plumage and the greater grandeur of his strut, appeared a very important individual of the tribe—in all likelihood the ...
— The Castaways • Captain Mayne Reid
... hasn't got any more use for plain folks, Polly. She's going to do herself proud shoppin', so she can go to Boston and strut about like a frilled peacock. You'll have to be satisfied with your mother, Polly; Pawliney doesn't ...
— A Princess in Calico • Edith Ferguson Black
... his wife the Princess. His merriest time was when the Grand Vizier visited him in the afternoon; and when the Caliph was in particularly high spirits he would condescend to mimic the Vizier's appearance when he was a stork. He would strut gravely, and with well-stiffened legs, up and down the room, chattering, and showing how he had vainly bowed to the east and cried 'Mu...Mu...' The Caliphess and her children were always much entertained by this performance; but when the Caliph went ...
— The Green Fairy Book • Various
... by very light but most effective bas-reliefs of jesting subject:—two cocks carrying on their shoulders a long staff to which a fox (?) is tied by the legs, hanging down between them: the strut of the foremost cock, lifting one leg at right angles to the other, is delicious. Then a stag hunt, with a centaur horseman drawing a bow; the arrow has gone clear through the stag's throat, and is sticking there. ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume I (of 3) • John Ruskin
... the inclination. I cannot fortune-hunt, nor afford to marry without a fortune. My parliamentary schemes are not much to my taste—I spoke twice last Session, [1] and was told it was well enough; but I hate the thing altogether, and have no intention to "strut another hour" on that stage. I am thus wasting the best part of life, ...
— The Works of Lord Byron: Letters and Journals, Volume 2. • Lord Byron
... is happening in the air, Charging the very texture of the gray With something luminous and rare? The night goes out like an ill-parcelled fire, And, as one lights a candle, it is day. The extinguisher that fain would strut for spire On the formal little church is not yet green Across the water: but the house-tops nigher, The corner-lines, the chimneys—look how clean, How new, how naked! See the batch of boats, Here at the stairs, washed in the fresh-sprung beam! And those are barges that were ...
— The Song of the Sword - and Other Verses • W. E. Henley
... please. I seem admitted ad eundem. I fetch up past opportunities. I can rise at the chapel-bell, and dream that it rings for me. In moods of humility I can be a Sizar, or a Servitor. When the peacock vein rises, I strut a Gentleman Commoner. In graver moments, I proceed Master of Arts. Indeed I do not think I am much unlike that respectable character. I have seen your dim-eyed vergers, and bed-makers in spectacles, drop a bow or curtsy, as I pass, wisely mistaking me for something of the sort. ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb
... baby for his mother's neglect. Almost without a notion how even to take him in his arms, he would now send for him the moment he had had his tea, and after a fashion, ludicrous in the eyes of the nurse, would dandle and caress him, and strut about with him before his wife, glancing up at her every now and then, to point the lesson that such was the manner in which a parent ought to behave to a child. In his presence she never made any active show of her dislike, but her look seemed all the time fixed on something ...
— Stephen Archer and Other Tales • George MacDonald
... his hands and let me slip from his knee; and then I began to strut the floor, my chest puffed out to ...
— Doctor Luke of the Labrador • Norman Duncan
... went, Sholto's step slowed, and lost its braggart strut and confidence. Behind him Laurence chuckled and laughed, smiting his ...
— The Black Douglas • S. R. Crockett
... M. Chebe became a terrible trial. He could not work in the garden. On Sundays the fortifications were deserted; he could no longer strut about among the workingmen's families dining on the grass, and pass from group to group in a neighborly way, his feet encased in embroidered slippers, with the authoritative demeanor of a wealthy landowner of the vicinity. This he missed more than anything else, consumed as he was by the desire ...
— Fromont and Risler, Complete • Alphonse Daudet
... Margaret Fenn, when he felt the pride of conquest of another soul and body strongly upon him, that Judge Thomas Van Dorn began to acquire—or perhaps to exhibit noticeably—the turkey gobbler gait, that ever afterward went with him, and became famous as the Van Dorn Strut. It was more than mere knee action—though knee action did characterize it prominently. The strut properly speaking began at the tip of his hat—his soft, black hat that sat so cockily upon his head. His head was thrown back as though he had been pulled by a check-rein. His shoulders ...
— In the Heart of a Fool • William Allen White
... you say?" cried Vallombreuse, contemptuously. "What! a man of birth and condition mingle voluntarily and on terms of equality with these low buffoons of actors, paint his nose red, and strut about the stage, receiving cuffs and kicks from everybody? Oh no, Vidalinc, ...
— Captain Fracasse • Theophile Gautier
... by the Thames; I've seen it oft through beechen stems In leafy Summer weather; We've moored the punt its lawns beside Where peacocks strut in flaunting pride, The Muse and ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, November 4, 1914 • Various
... is this magnificence? Oh! what a sentence dire will God the Judge pronounce Upon the day of doom, when from His throne so loudly It sounds, how shall they seem who strut and boast so proudly! ...
— Paul Gerhardt's Spiritual Songs - Translated by John Kelly • Paul Gerhardt
... figure ascending the flight of steps to the veranda. Could that be he? If so, he was bolder in his wooing than Grace had been prepared for. But surely that was a strange costume that he wore; nor did the unconscious harmony of the gait at all resemble the senor's self-conscious strut. And whither ...
— The Golden Fleece • Julian Hawthorne
... feasible," Mr. Dick said in a relieved voice, getting up and beginning to strut up and down the room. "It isn't as though I'm beyond call. You can come out here and consult me if you get stuck. And then there's Minnie; she knows a good ...
— Where There's A Will • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... quietly, stole her hand into his own, feeling the pulse as if merely caressing the slender wrist. Then he began to describe his bailiff's cottage, with woodbine round the porch, the farm-yard, the bee-hives, the pretty duck-pond with an osier island, and the great China gander who had a pompous strut, which made him the droll est creature possible. And Sophy should go there in a day or two, and be as happy as one of the bees, but not so busy. Sophy listened very earnestly, very gravely, and then sliding her hand from the Mayor, caught hold of her grandfather's arm firmly, ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... remembered. "Blessing her! And his hand did not tremble, when he signed this. To deprive her, to deprive them both, of everything, all on account of those hated people? But now—it should never be! On no account! Your down-at-the-heel pedagogue shall not strut about in peacock's feathers! Olga and I ...
— The Continental Classics, Volume XVIII., Mystery Tales • Various
... a shadow, yet somehow men persuade themselves that their own pursuits are greatly serious. Was our life any less than that, and were not our hopes and sorrows and tremulous joy as full of meaning to us as theirs to the creatures who strut upon the stage of the world? Again I say, I do not know: Only I am troubled that so fair an image as yours should prove after all a dream, a shadow's dream, ...
— The Jessica Letters: An Editor's Romance • Paul Elmer More
... Chateaubriand because of the many beauties, the veritable grandeurs of their styles, we cannot quite learn to love yours. For in you the disease was aggravated by the presence of another powerful incentive to strut and posture and externalize and inflate your art. For you were the virtuoso. You were the man whose entire being was pointed to achieve an effect. You were the man whose life is lived on the concert-platform, ...
— Musical Portraits - Interpretations of Twenty Modern Composers • Paul Rosenfeld
... bundles under their arms, each one making direct for his own front door. "Every woman in Riverfield will have to put down needle and fry-pan and butter-paddle to feed them so plum full of compliments that they'll strut for a week. Bless my heart, honeybunch, we have all got to turn around twice in each track to get ready, and as I'm pretty hefty I must begin right now." With this remark, Aunt Mary departed from the back ...
— The Golden Bird • Maria Thompson Daviess
... hopeless gesture with his hand, took two little steps as though he would run into the hedge amongst the soldiers and hide there, then suddenly walked past me, quickly, towards the wagons, with his own absurd little strut, with his head up, giving his cough, looking, after that, neither to the ...
— The Dark Forest • Hugh Walpole
... should set him in the pillory, that he may be punished in a way that would disgrace him.' I observed, that the pillory does not always disgrace. And I mentioned an instance of a gentleman who I thought was not dishonoured by it. JOHNSON. 'Ay, but he was, Sir. He could not mouth and strut as he used to do, after having been there. People are not willing to ask a man to their tables who ...
— Life of Johnson - Abridged and Edited, with an Introduction by Charles Grosvenor Osgood • James Boswell
... Dignitaries and judges, professors and generals stood about the farmers—led by the farmer-in-chief, morning-coated, carefully groomed, plainly nervous but sustained by the dignity of it all. His voice was firm; his manner that of a very circumspect bridegroom. The old smug strut and case-hardened pomp of legislature inaugurals was lacking. An undercurrent of deep sincerity stayed many a tremorous hand. Drury was the least nervous of all. I imagine that in the morning he had sung to himself some ...
— The Masques of Ottawa • Domino
... The first two books I ever read in private, and which gave me more pleasure than any two books I ever read since, were The Life of Hannibal, and The History of Sir William Wallace. Hannibal gave my young ideas such a turn, that I used to strut in raptures up and down after the recruiting drum and bag-pipe, and wish myself tall enough to be a soldier; while the story of Wallace poured a Scottish prejudice into my veins, which will boil along there till the flood-gates of life shut in ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... his Excellency's dancers![21] Adieu to Peter—whom no fault's in, But could not teach a colonel waltzing; Adieu, ye females fraught with graces! Adieu red coats, and redder faces! Adieu the supercilious air Of all that strut en militaire![22] 20 I go—but God knows when, or why, To smoky towns and cloudy sky, To things (the honest truth to say) As bad—but ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Vol. 3 (of 7) • Lord Byron
... Here are you and I, dashing blades, who have been doing penance by trying to be fine gentlemen at watering-places, when it wasn't at all in our line. I began to think we looked as much like fops as the rest of the scented and bearded dress-coats, who strut about, and imagine the world is looking at them. This would throw us into quite another rank of life, and give us new ideas. How shall we manage it though, my fine fellow?" "Nothing easier in the world. Let us rent a small house, somewhere near the Bowery—that's ...
— Holidays at the Grange or A Week's Delight - Games and Stories for Parlor and Fireside • Emily Mayer Higgins
... something too much of the magnifico in his demeanour. If people grow presuming and self-important over such matters as a dukedom or the Holy See, they will scarcely support the dizziest elevation in life without some suspicion of a strut; and the dizziest elevation is to love and be loved in return. Consequently, accepted lovers are a trifle condescending in their address to other men. An overweening sense of the passion and importance of life hardly conduces ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 2 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... fellow with a tuft on his head. They arrive at the water suddenly and unexpectedly from behind rocks and trees, and stand about considering; then one, more venturesome than the rest, runs quickly down to drink, and is followed by a string of others; then they run up again ever so fast, and strut about cooing and spreading their crests—one seldom sees them fly; when they do they rise straight up, and then dart away close to the ground and drop suddenly within a few yards. Of all birds the crow ...
— Spinifex and Sand - Five Years' Pioneering and Exploration in Western Australia • David W Carnegie
... no fashion plates in that day, nor were there any "living models" to strut back and forth before keen-eyed customers; but fully dressed dolls were imported from France and England, and sent from town to town as examples of properly attired ladies. Eliza Southgate Bowne, after seeing the dolls in her shopping ...
— Woman's Life in Colonial Days • Carl Holliday
... out. I recalled the exaggerated military styles for men that came in with the Spanish-American and the South African wars. Those enormously padded shoulders and tight-shaped waists and swelling trouser legs, and the strut and the stoop that went with the whole ugly ensemble, roused my anger. My feelings remained unchanged until some time after the Russo-Japanese War, and then one day it came to me that I must have a suit of military cut. It was like the sudden awakening of the unregenerate ...
— The Patient Observer - And His Friends • Simeon Strunsky
... forth in a spontaneous manner to see who I am and look at the bicycle, he pays me a ceremonious visit at the chapar-khana half an hour later. In this visit he is preceded by his farrash, and he walks with a magnificent peacock strut that causes the skirts of his faultless roundabout to flop up and down, up and down, in rhythmic accompaniment to his steps. Apart from his insufferable conceit, however, he tries to make himself as agreeable as ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens
... the parrot. Bewailing his misfortune, he was railing at the revolutions of the skies; and, wringing the hands of chagrin, was lamenting his condition, and saying: "What an unpropitious fate is this; what ill-luck, and untoward fortune! Could they any way suit the dignity of me, who would in my day strut with my fellow-crows along the wall of a garden:—It were durance sufficient for a good and holy man that he should be made the companion of the wicked:—What sin have I committed that my stars in retribution of it have linked me in the chain of companionship, and immured me in the dungeon ...
— Persian Literature, Volume 2, Comprising The Shah Nameh, The - Rubaiyat, The Divan, and The Gulistan • Anonymous
... of high ceremonial was relaxed, and elements taken directly from life were introduced. In his "Corpus Christi," Gentile Bellini paints not only the solemn and dazzling procession in the Piazza, but the elegant young men who strut about in all their finery, the foreign loungers, and even the unfailing beggar by the portal of St. Mark's. In his "Miracle of the True Cross," he introduces gondoliers, taking care to bring out all the beauty of their lithe, comely ...
— The Venetian Painters of the Renaissance - Third Edition • Bernhard Berenson
... Rabbit done make way wid ole Brer Lion, all de yuther creeturs say he sholy is a mighty man, en dey treat 'im good. Dis make 'im feel so proud dat he bleedz ter show it, en so he strut 'roun' like a boy when he git his fust ...
— The Book of Stories for the Storyteller • Fanny E. Coe
... I was awakened next morning by the sun shining brilliantly in at my bed-room window, my apprehensions had vanished, my enthusiasm was again at fever-heat, and I panted for the moment—not to be very long deferred—when I should don my uniform and strut forth to sport my glories before an ...
— The Congo Rovers - A Story of the Slave Squadron • Harry Collingwood
... the Daughter of the House, who had been listening very eagerly, "what made you talk like that, and strut about, and pound the deck? That's not like you. I would not have supposed that you ever could have ...
— John Gayther's Garden and the Stories Told Therein • Frank R. Stockton
... out the ring, he found in the sawdust an envelope unwritten upon, and tolerably clean. It was a prize: and that evening, when the public were shrieking with laughter over the capers of a clown arm-in-arm with a tame bear, followed by a couple of monkeys skilfully mimicking their very strut, Ned was behind one of the vans scribbling with pencil a few frantic, ill-spelt words that, when the crumpled envelope arrived at the Bunk, were wept over and laughed over in tumultuous joy. The penny thrown him went for a stamp; the letter was pushed, with ...
— The Captain's Bunk - A Story for Boys • M. B. Manwell
... they parted, her manner and behavior, her sweetness, and the prettiness which would have been beauty had it been on a larger scale, had begun to fill what little there was of Corney's imagination; and he left her with a feeling that he knew where a treasure lay. He walked with an enlargement of strut as he went home through the park, and swung his cane with the air of a man who had made a conquest of which he ...
— Weighed and Wanting • George MacDonald
... at the foot of the hill of the Alhambra, and here was always a bustle and parade of guards, and domestics, and city functionaries. A beetling bastion of the fortress overlooked the palace and the public square in front of it; and on this bastion the old governor would occasionally strut backward and forward, with his toledo girded by his side, keeping a wary eye down upon his rival, like a hawk reconnoitering his quarry from his ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 7 • Charles H. Sylvester
... beaver hat and gold headed cane and march out, while de baliffs holler: 'Make way! Make way for de honorable judge!' Everybody took up dat cry and keep it up long as de judge was on de streets. Oh, how dat judge twirl his cane, smile, and strut. ...
— Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves • Works Projects Administration
... divided into three (I think) probationary classes of "volunteers," instead of being at once advanced to a warrant. Nor will you fail to remark, when you see an English cutter officered by one of those volunteers, that the boy does not so strut and slap his dirk-hilt with a Bobadil air, and anticipatingly feel of the place where his warlike whiskers are going to be, and sputter out oaths so at the men, as is too often the case with the little boys wearing best-bower ...
— White Jacket - or, the World on a Man-of-War • Herman Melville
... must be reckoned as the foundation stone of the British Empire in India. It sprang from the character of Sirajuddaula. That prince was a cruel despot, but weak-willed, vacillating, and totally unable to keep a friend. One day he would strut in some vainglorious semblance of dignity; the next he would engage in drunken revels with the meanest and most dissolute of his subjects. He insulted his commander-in-chief, Mir Jafar: he offended the Seths, wealthy ...
— In Clive's Command - A Story of the Fight for India • Herbert Strang
... and friend of Baudelaire went about dressed in a shabby military frock-coat. He had no longer a nodding acquaintance with the fashionable lions of Napoleon the Little's reign, yet he abated not his haughty strut, his glacial politeness to all comers, nor his daily promenade in the Bois. A Barmecide feast this watching the pleasures of others more favoured, though Guys did not waste the fruits of his observation. At sixty-five ...
— Promenades of an Impressionist • James Huneker
... possession will vanish, and we shall feel more keenly the pressure of responsibility while we feel less keenly the grip of anxiety. We are for the time being entrusted with a tiny piece of the royal estates. Let us not strut about as if we were owners, nor be for ever afraid that we shall not have enough for our needs. One sometimes comes on a model village close to the gates of some ducal palace, and notes how the lordly owner's honour prompts its being kept up to a high ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... pageantry was not so far past that it did not appeal powerfully to the imaginations of the frequenters of the Globe, the Rose, and the Fortune. They had no such feeling as we have in regard to the pasteboard kings and queens who strut their brief hour before us in anachronic absurdity. But, besides that he wrote in the spirit of his age, Shakespeare wrote in the language and the literary methods of his time. This is not more evident in the contemporary poets than in the chroniclers of that day. They ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... tight-lipped determination. He was not trying out a business venture so much as he was trying out himself. Previously he had always figured success and failure as his performance reacted on his audience. He was learning that one could impress a stupendous crowd and really fail, or strut upon the boards of an empty playhouse and still succeed. He began to realize just what was meant by the term self-esteem—how hard and uncompromising and exacting it was. To disappoint another was a humiliation; to disappoint oneself ...
— Broken to the Plow • Charles Caldwell Dobie
... that the goldfinch and the kingfisher are not often seen except in picture-books; but our own little robin is a real beauty, is he not? And what can be gayer than the feathers of some of our cocks, which strut about so proudly? Then, the more you notice the songs of birds, the more you will admire them. The sweet notes begin before daylight in the spring-time, and the cock-bird seems never tired of singing to his mate as she sits on her eggs. By and by, when they are busy with family ...
— Twilight And Dawn • Caroline Pridham
... of frightful augury, so the author was conscious in the midst of the ball of a demon who would strike him on the shoulder with a familiar air and say to him: "Do you notice that enchanting smile? It is a grin of hatred." And then the demon would strut about like one of the captains in the old comedies of Hardy. He would twitch the folds of a lace mantle and endeavor to make new the fretted tinsel and spangles of its former glory. And then like Rabelais he would burst into loud and unrestrainable laughter, and would trace ...
— The Physiology of Marriage, Part I. • Honore de Balzac
... a group of wounded soldiers were just entering. With them was a woman in a man's uniform. Her hair was curly and short, and her chin pointed. Her feet looked ridiculously small in the heavy, high, soldier's boots, and in spite of a strut her knees knocked together in an unmistakably feminine manner. But the men treated her quite as one of themselves. One soldier, who had had his leg cut off up to the thigh, supported himself by her shoulder. I have seen several women soldiers in Kiev, ...
— Trapped in 'Black Russia' - Letters June-November 1915 • Ruth Pierce
... when we in our viciousness grow hard, O, misery on't! the wise gods seal our eyes: In our own filth drop our clear judgments, make us Adore our errors, laugh at us while we strut To ...
— Julian Home • Dean Frederic W. Farrar
... are opened, disclosing often the dull green mosquito net hung from corner to corner of the low-ceiled sleeping rooms. Children, in brilliant night robes, run to the verandas to see the early sun; cocks strut in pigmy gardens. Now, from along the streets rise the calls of flower peddlers, of venders of fish, bean-curd, vegetables, and milk. Thus the day comes to modern Tokyo, which the old folks ...
— The Dragon Painter • Mary McNeil Fenollosa
... the old.... In my day, it is true, we waited until a man was sixty before we called him an old man. They are going faster, nowadays.... Wireless telegraphy, aeroplanes.... A generation is more quickly exploded.... Poor devils! They won't last long! Let them despise us and strut about in the sun!" ...
— Jean-Christophe Journey's End • Romain Rolland
... (goat's beard) and Pfauentritt (peacock-strut), were nicknames given to the leaders of the guilds who rebelled against the patrician families in Nuremberg, from whom alone the aldermen or town-council could be elected. This patrician class originated in 1198 under the Emperor Henry IV., who ennobled 38 families of ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... Ripley Hall formed in twos in short order, and, escorted by their opponents, proceeded down the road to Percy's field. Ike Smith, who was in his element, led the procession, and his proud strut was something comical ...
— Golden Days for Boys and Girls - Volume XIII, No. 51: November 12, 1892 • Various
... be distinguished "the September murderers, whom" says an observer[33104] in a position to know them, "I can compare to nothing but lazy tigers licking their paws, growling and trying to find a few more drops of blood just spilled, awaiting a fresh supply." Far from hiding away they strut about and show themselves. One of them, Petit-Mamain, son of an innkeeper at Bordeaux and a former soldier, "with a pale, wrinkled face, sharp eyes and bold air, wearing a scimitar at his side and pistols at his belt," promenades the Palais-Royal[33105] "accompanied or followed ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 3 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 2 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... will walk upright, and strut with fine canes, Stalking in towns, 'stead of roaming in lanes, Misfortunes they'll meet with, no doubt, such as Jack's, Getting shots through their ears, and kicks on ...
— Surprising Stories about the Mouse and Her Sons, and the Funny Pigs. - With Laughable Colored Engravings • Unknown
... the great oaks, that throw Tangles of light and shade below, On roofs and doors and window-sills. Across the road the barns display Their lines of stalls, their mows of hay, Through the wide doors the breezes blow, The wattled cocks strut to and fro, And, half effaced by rain and shine, The Red Horse prances ...
— Tales of a Wayside Inn • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... no right," continued Blackbeard, "to strut about on the quarter-deck of that fine vessel, the Revenge; you have no right to hoist above you the Jolly Roger, and you have no right to lie right and left and tell people you are a pirate. A pirate, forsooth! you are no pirate. ...
— Kate Bonnet - The Romance of a Pirate's Daughter • Frank R. Stockton
... son of Strut-Harald, sometime King of Skaney, and at the time of his meeting with Olaf in Wendland he was lord over the great company of vikings who had their stronghold in Jomsburg. He was a very mighty man, and his wealth and personal prowess were such that Burislaf's daughter Astrid encouraged ...
— Olaf the Glorious - A Story of the Viking Age • Robert Leighton
... of Mrs. Siddons. She was a goddess of the age of fret and fume, of stalk and strut, of trilled R's and of nodding plumes. If we had Siddons now I fear we should hiss; I am quite sure we should yawn. She must have ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida
... give 'em leave to match him, if they can; It's fun to see him strut about, and try to be a man! The gamest, cheeriest little chap, you'd ever want to see! And then they laugh, because I think the child resembles me. The little rogue! he goes for me, like robbers for their ...
— Farm Ballads • Will Carleton
... to all men. They set their minds on worldly glory, and spent their money on extravagant dress. "The men," said he, "wear capes reaching down to the ground, and their long hair falls down to their shoulders; and the women wear so many petticoats that they can hardly drag themselves along, and strut about like the Pope's courtezans, to the surprise and disgust of the whole world." What right had these selfish fops to call themselves Christians? They did more harm to the cause of Christ than all the Turks and ...
— History of the Moravian Church • J. E. Hutton
... my little Nannie? Does she still keep a menagerie for sick dogs and lost cats? And how's the parson-gull with the broken wing, and does he still strut like Parson Kis-sack in his surplice? I was at Westminster Hall yesterday. It was the great trial of Mitchell, M. P., who forged his father's will. Stevens defended—bad, bad, bad, smirking all the while ...
— The Manxman - A Novel - 1895 • Hall Caine
... officer of the fourth century. The papyri of this period are full of the high-flown titles and affected phraseology which was so beloved of Byzantine scribes. "Glorious Dukes of the Thebaid," "most magnificent counts and lieutenants," "all-praiseworthy secretaries," and the like strut across the pages of the letters and documents which begin "In the name of Our Lord and Master, Jesus Christ, the God and Saviour of us all, in the year x of the reign of the most divine and praised, great, and beneficent Lord Flavius Heraclius (or other) the eternal Augustus ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, And Assyria In The Light Of Recent Discovery • L.W. King and H.R. Hall
... Oxford fop With Cravat large and Brutus Top And when young Stag his coat has slipt on He'll strut ...
— Life and Adventures of Mr. Pig and Miss Crane - A Nursery Tale • Unknown
... of a member of the opposite sex. A high liver, and a good fellow every inch of him, he could be natural, racy, charming, and without vanity, when in the midst of men; but let so much as the rustle of a petticoat sound on the pavement, and he would begin to strut and plume himself as instinctively as the cock ...
— The Romance of a Plain Man • Ellen Glasgow
... flooding. The superstructure strikes most travellers as having somewhat the look of a chalet, although Proyart compares it with a large basket turned upside down. Two strong uprights, firmly planted, support on their forked ends a long strut-beam, tightly secured; the eaves are broad to throw off the rain, and the neat thatch of grass, laid with points upwards in regular courses, and kept in site by bamboo strips, is renewed before the stormy season. ...
— Two Trips to Gorilla Land and the Cataracts of the Congo Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... lighthearted-and lightheadedness for which sober, literal, decorous English has no synonym. As we went, she danced and sang, and laughed out joyously at everything and at nothing, and talked the most fascinating nonsense—all in the role of "Cousin Burwell." She could imitate him to perfection; her strut and swagger and slang threw me into paroxysms of delight. We picked huckleberries, and dived into the woods to feast upon wild plums that had ten drops of syrupy juice between tough skins and flinty stones encased in the pulp of bitterness, and gathered handfuls ...
— When Grandmamma Was New - The Story of a Virginia Childhood • Marion Harland
... had boasted that he would stop and find out all about it if he happened to meet it, he didn't have the least intention of doing anything of the kind. He was just idly boasting and nothing more. You see, Reddy is one of the greatest boasters in the Green Forest or on the Green Meadows. He likes to strut around and talk big. But like most boasters, he is a coward ...
— The Adventures of Prickly Porky • Thornton W. Burgess
... dozen times in a day, the Judge and the baby may see some Italian society parading through the street. Fourteen proud sons of Italy, clad in magnificent new uniforms, bearing aloft huge silk banners, strut magnificently in the rear of a German band of twenty-four pieces, and a drum-corps of a dozen more. Then, too, come the religious processions, when the little girls are taken to their first communion. Six sturdy Italians struggle along under the weight of a mighty temple or pavilion, all made ...
— Jersey Street and Jersey Lane - Urban and Suburban Sketches • H. C. Bunner
... different ways to-day how she can beat that game. And anyway, no matter what happens, unless you're cruising deep, it's only a few feet to the top. Not like a crazy aeroplane a thousand feet up in the air! Something happens in an aeroplane, and where are you? With a busted stay or bamboo strut and you a mile in the air, where are you? Volplane? Maybe. But if you didn't—down you'd come atumbling like a hoop out of the clouds. That's 90 per cent—yes, maybe 99 per cent—of the submarine game: See that everything is right mechanically with your sub, then get a competent ...
— The U-boat hunters • James B. Connolly
... tail, and reported all well. The other dog was only a small pup, a Skye terrier, like a bunch of tow, a present from Tommy Traddles. Pup's early days were made very miserable by Maggie, the magpie. That wicked bird used to strut around Philip while he was digging in the garden, and after filling her crop with worms and grubs, she flapped away on one wing and went round the hut looking for amusement. She jumped on Pup's back, scratched him with her claws, pecked at his skull, and pulled locks of wool out of it, the poor ...
— The Book of the Bush • George Dunderdale
... against the clock, When Avon waters upward flow, When eggs are laid by barn-door cock, When dusty hens do strut and crow, When up is down, when left is right, Oh, then I'll break the troth I plight, With careless eye Away I'll fly And ...
— Georgian Poetry 1918-19 • Various
... very annoying to the King of the Cats. He used to strut up and down saying to himself over and over again, "I'm Cock-o'-the-Walk, I'm Cock-o'-the-Walk." Sometimes he would come into the Forge and say it to the horses. The King of the Cats wondered how the human beings could ...
— The King of Ireland's Son • Padraic Colum
... fine baby faces, That strut in a garter and star,— Have they, under their tambour and laces, The kind honest heart ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various
... trouser-leg he had left, gazing eagerly between at the advancing masterpiece. Occasionally the triumph of expectation would exceed his control, when he would spring from the floor, and caper and strut about like a pigeon—soft as a shadow, for he knew his father could not bear noise in the morning—or behind his back execute a pantomimic dumb show of delight, in which he seemed with difficulty to restrain himself from jumping ...
— Sir Gibbie • George MacDonald
... now what good-for-nothings you are! Why do you strut and turn up your noses as if you were the lords of creation? Well, I am going to give you orders. Go up and dress. Get some travelling money, ...
— Plays by August Strindberg, Second series • August Strindberg
... Turkey Proudfoot. He loved to strut about the farmyard and spread his tail, which he claimed was the most elegant one ...
— The Tale of Benny Badger • Arthur Scott Bailey
... stay Awhile. What grace, What finery! I do declare It pleases me. Now walk away A little space. 35 So: I trow shoes are now thy need With a pair from Valencia, fair to see, I thee endow. Now beautiful, as I decreed, Art thou indeed; Now fold thy arms presumptuously: Ev'n so; and now 36 Strut airily, show off thy power, This way and that and up and down Just as thou please; Fair now as fairest rose in flower Thy beauty's dower, And all becomes thee as thine own: Now take ...
— Four Plays of Gil Vicente • Gil Vicente
... Cock who had a whole farmyard of hens to look after and manage; and among them was a tiny little Crested Hen. She thought she was altogether too grand to be in company with the other hens, for they looked so old and shabby; she wanted to go out and strut about all by herself, so that people could see how fine she was, and admire her pretty ...
— Boys and Girls Bookshelf (Vol 2 of 17) - Folk-Lore, Fables, And Fairy Tales • Various
... the atmosphere, inhale the delicious air, and talk over their little domestic affairs. The various shaped leaves of the forest all around their village and near their nestlings are bespangled with myriads of dewdrops. The cocks crow vigorously, and strut and ogle; the kids gambol and leap on the backs of their dams quietly chewing the cud; other goats make believe fighting. Thrifty wives often bake their new clay pots in a fire, made by lighting a heap of grass roots: the next morning they extract salt from the ashes, and so two birds ...
— The Last Journals of David Livingstone, in Central Africa, from 1865 to His Death, Volume II (of 2), 1869-1873 • David Livingstone
... plump shoulders gave to Peter in his perplexity the not inaccurate notion that the fat little man had enjoyed his joke and was giggling to such an extent that it almost interfered with his dignified strut. ...
— Peter the Brazen - A Mystery Story of Modern China • George F. Worts
... her that love had brought. As Grizel came up the path on that bright afternoon, she could no more have helped strutting than the bud to open on the appointed day. She was obeying one of Nature's laws. I think I promised long ago to tell you of the day when Grizel would strut no more. Well, this is the day. Observe her strutting for the last time. It was very strange and touching to her to remember in the after years that she had once strutted, but it was still more strange and ...
— Tommy and Grizel • J.M. Barrie
... be as well up to it as ever ye will be," he said. "Not that such mumming would have passed in our time. Harry as the Saracen should strut a bit more, and John needn't holler his inside out. Beyond that perhaps you'll do. Have you got all ...
— The Return of the Native • Thomas Hardy
... speak sharply, the wound must be subjected to the actual cautery. But was virtue the cause of all this interest? Was it devotion to a young and innocent girl that made me willing to undertake so difficult and so delicate a task? Doubtless these motives went for something, but I will not attempt to strut in borrowed plumes, and must freely confess that if she had been ugly and stupid I should probably have left her to her fate. In short, selfishness was at the bottom of it all, so let us say ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... and to humanity. Very true, religion has operated mainly with precatory rites for the purpose of deflecting God's wrath, or, as Mr. James would say, with some sneaking design upon His bounty. And morality has been the starched buckram in which men walk and strut for distinguished consideration. But religion in its true and native meaning is that which binds man to God in loving unison, and morality covers all the relations which bind a man to his neighbor, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. July, 1863, No. LXIX. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... that mine is the most plotting heart in the world. Thou dost me honour; and I thank thee heartily. Thou art no bad judge. How like Boileau's parson I strut behind my double chin! Am I not obliged to deserve thy compliment? And wouldst thou have me repent of a murder before I have ...
— Clarissa, Volume 4 (of 9) - History Of A Young Lady • Samuel Richardson
... ease and independence which Chase had held out to her in the brief season of his adroit courtship. The meanest men sometimes turn out to be the nimblest cock-pheasants during that interesting period, and, like those vain birds of the jungles, they strut and dance and cut dazzling capers before the eyes of the ladies when they want to strike ...
— The Bondboy • George W. (George Washington) Ogden
... is, the man of this pair—can strut and parade with the utmost freedom from his responsibility for the result of his act that Nature has made to be pre-eminent among his desires. But the female—that is, the woman of this pair—must for nine months (just think of it!) carry and develop the germ of this child in the fertile ...
— Tyranny of God • Joseph Lewis
... the message Turkey Proudfoot's tail drooped and he forgot to strut. He even shook slightly, as if something had frightened him. And then, to the Muley Cow's astonishment, he began to gobble ...
— The Tale of the The Muley Cow - Slumber-Town Tales • Arthur Scott Bailey
... with the square, and from the ends of the mark run lines towards the end at an angle of 45 degrees. Cut along these lines, and lay one of the edges just cut up against C, and flush with the outer edge of L1 (Fig. 5). Tack the strut on temporarily to both legs, turn the trestle over, and draw your pencil (which should have a sharp point) along the angles which the strut makes with the legs. This gives you the limits of the overlaps. Detach ...
— Things To Make • Archibald Williams
... devil he is! trust him, and hang him. Why, he cannot speak a good word on him to my old master; and he does so ruffle before my mistress with his barbarian eloquence,[153] and strut before her in a pair of Polonian legs, as if he were a gentleman-usher to the great Turk or to the devil of Dowgate. And if my mistress would be ruled by him, Sophos might go snick-up: but he has such a butter-milk face, that ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. IX • Various
... How woman smites your souls? Whatever dress Of thought you take to royalize your nature,— Gorgeous shawls of kingship, a world's fear, Or ample weavings of imagination, Or the spun light of wisdom,—like a gust Of flame, that weather of impersonal thought You strut beneath, that hanging storm of Love, Strikes down a terrible swift dazzling finger, Sight of some woman, on your clothed hearts, And plucks the winding folly off, and leaves Bare nature there. And hear another likeness. Look, if the priests have ...
— Emblems Of Love • Lascelles Abercrombie
... paying tribute to his importance, and he again went suddenly out of my control. He began to strut and caper and pose with the air of knowing that he was ...
— The O'Ruddy - A Romance • Stephen Crane
... and bright eyes, as I remember, but it was also extremely given to quarrelling. It used frequently to "get mad." It made nothing of twitching away books and balls. It often pouted. Sometimes it would bite. If it wore a fine frock, it would strut. It told lies,—"whoppers" at that. It took the biggest half of the apple. It was not, as a general thing, magnanimous, but "aggravating." It may have been fun to you who looked on, but it was death to us who ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 63, January, 1863 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... luxury item to the galaxy. You know how every super-jet big shot on twenty-five planets wants to say he's hunted on Khatka. And if he can point out a graz head on his wall, or wear a tail bracelet, he's able to strut with the best. To holiday on Khatka is both fabulous and fashionable—and very, very profitable for the natives and for Combine who sells ...
— Voodoo Planet • Andrew North
... great boots, shall strut and shout, Keep my locks curled. The fame of my name shall go ringing about Over ...
— Country Sentiment • Robert Graves
... of the fact that a connecting rod functions as a strut, it is considered that this part should be only stiff enough to prevent any whipping action during the running of the engine. The greater the fatigue-resisting property that one can put into the rod after this stiffness is reached, the longer the life of the rod will be. This is the reason for ...
— The Working of Steel - Annealing, Heat Treating and Hardening of Carbon and Alloy Steel • Fred H. Colvin
... intelligibleness illumines the universe. The arbitrary and cruel Creator who inflicts pain and pleasure at will then disappears from the stage; and it is well, for he is indeed an unnecessary character, and, worse still, is a mere creature of straw, who cannot even strut upon the boards without being upheld on all sides by dogmatists. Man comes into this world, surely, on the same principle that he lives in one city of the earth or another; at all events, if it is too much to say that this is so, one may safely ...
— Light On The Path and Through the Gates of Gold • Mabel Collins
... debate peace who understand neither its nature nor the way in which we may attain it, with uplifted eyes and unbroken spirits. But I know that none of these speaks for the Nation. They do not touch the heart of anything. They may safely be left to strut about their uneasy hour and ...
— In Our First Year of the War - Messages and Addresses to the Congress and the People, - March 5, 1917 to January 6, 1918 • Woodrow Wilson
... in a partial manner; and that we must take the whole of society to find the whole man. Unfortunately the unit has been too minutely subdivided, and many faculties are practically lost for want of use. "The state of society is one in which the members have suffered amputation from the trunk, and strut about so many walking monsters,—a good finger, a neck, a stomach, an elbow, but never a man.... Man is thus metamorphosed into a thing, into many things.... The priest becomes a form; the attorney a statute book; the ...
— Ralph Waldo Emerson • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... he will put aside the welfare of a nation for the miserable sake of party popularity? Are we to stand here in the guise and manner of free men, knowing that we are driven together like a flock of sheep into the fold by the howling of the wolves outside? Are we to strut and plume ourselves upon our unhampered freedom, while we act like slaves? Worse than slaves we should be if we allowed one breath of party spirit, one thought of party aggrandizement, to enter into the choice we are about to make. Slaves are driven ...
— An American Politician • F. Marion Crawford
... Mr Hobhouse, "strut very much when they walk, projecting their chests, throwing back their heads, and moving very slowly from side to side. Elmas (as the officer was called) had this strut more than any man perhaps we saw afterwards; ...
— The Life of Lord Byron • John Galt
... such a polite element abroad on polling day. Men are so respectful and hurl such affectionate terms at one another. Even the dogs are upset, and strut about in quite a different manner than on ordinary days, so puffed out with vanity are they, on account of their decorations. The members' wives and their friends are all taking part in the scene too, bringing voters along in their carriages, ...
— Lazy Thoughts of a Lazy Girl - Sister of that "Idle Fellow." • Jenny Wren
... chirping, and scratching vigorously. A tuft of green leaves waved upon his crest, a larger tuft of brakes made an umbrageous tail, and a shawl of many colours formed his flapping wings. A truly noble bird, whose legs had the genuine strut, whose eyes shone watchfully, and whose voice had a ring that evidently struck terror into the catterpillar's soul, if it was a catterpillar. He squirmed, he wriggled, he humped as fast as he could, trying to escape; ...
— Eight Cousins • Louisa M. Alcott
... pride exalts Thyself in other's eyes, And hides thy folly's faults, Which reason will despise? Dost strut, and turn, and stride, Like a walking weathercock? The shadow by thy side Will be thy ape, ...
— Life and Remains of John Clare - "The Northamptonshire Peasant Poet" • J. L. Cherry
... behind their visitors, gazed with admiring eyes at every motion of his grandfather. To one who had from earliest infancy looked up to him with reverence, there was nothing ridiculous in the display, in the strut, in all that to other eyes too evidently revealed the vanity of the piper: Malcolm regarded it all only as making up the orthodox mode of playing the pipes. It was indeed well that he could not see the expression upon the faces of ...
— Malcolm • George MacDonald
... of his capture at Lurin and of his all night ride on mule back. The Dictator sent for the officer, who, thinking he was going to be rewarded for his cleverness, entered the reception room with a peacock strut that was admirable. By the time Don Nicholas finished a reprimand, he slunk away like a whipped cur and it is likely he was more careful to investigate thereafter when ...
— The Story of Paul Boyton - Voyages on All the Great Rivers of the World • Paul Boyton
... responsible for the money. And lastly, she loathed and condemned him for the reason that he was so obviously unequal to the situation. He could not handle it. He was found out. He was disproved, He did not know what to do. He could only mouth, strut, bully, and make rude noises. He could not even keep decently around him the cloak of self-importance. He stood revealed to Mrs. Maldon and Rachel as he had sometimes stood revealed to his dead wife and to his ...
— The Price of Love • Arnold Bennett
... John's pockets are an integral part of his personality. He feels after his pocket instinctively while yet in what corresponds in the genus homo with the polywog state in batrachia. The incipient man begins to strut as soon as mamma puts pockets into his kilted skirt—a stride as prophetic as the strangled crow of the cockerel upon the ...
— The Secret of a Happy Home (1896) • Marion Harland
... (Nationalists) believed in it, for they issued a placard on which they called Borghese a traitor and threatened him with death. "He who after November 1918 returns to the martyred town," writes Signor Zanella, "is simply stupefied in beholding that those personages who now strut on the political scene, burning with the most ardent Italian patriotism, are the same who until the eve of Vittorio Veneto were the most unbending, the most eloquent and the most devoted partisans and servants of the reactionary Magyar regime." ...
— The Birth of Yugoslavia, Volume 2 • Henry Baerlein
... National man, or an Anti-Slavery man and a Temperance man and a Woman's-Rights' man, and still be very little of a man. There is, indeed, no more ludicrous sight than to see Mediocrity, perched on one of these resounding adjectives, strut and bluster, and give itself braggadocio airs, and dictate to all quiet men its maxims of patriotism or morality, and all the while be but a living illustration through what grandeurs of opinion essential ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 7, May, 1858 • Various
... in; It's the cruellest team will win. So hold your nose against the stink And never stop too long to think. Wars don't change except in name; The next one must go just the same, And new foul tricks unguessed before Will win and justify this War. Kaisers and Czars will strut the stage Once more with pomp and greed and rage; Courtly ministers will stop At home and fight to the last drop; By the million men will die In some new horrible agony; And children here will thrust and poke, Shoot and die, and laugh at the joke, With bows and arrows and wooden ...
— Fairies and Fusiliers • Robert Graves
... of the spring." In anger Juno heard, And cried, "Shame on you, jealous bird! Grudge you the nightingale her voice, Who in the rainbow neck rejoice, Than costliest silks more richly tinted, In charms of grace and form unstinted— Who strut in kingly pride, Your glorious tail spread wide With brilliants which in sheen do Outshine the jeweller's bow window? Is there a bird beneath the blue That has more charms than you? No animal in everything can shine. By just partition of our gifts divine, Each has its full ...
— The Talking Beasts • Various
... ineffably superior and certain of himself; a well-graced actor. It was presently suggested that he should appear in his war costume; he gracefully consented; and returned in that strange, inappropriate and ill- omened array (which very well became his handsome person) to strut in a circle of admirers, and be thenceforth the centre of photography. Thus had Moipu effected his introduction, as by accident, to the white strangers, made it a favour to display his finery, and reduced his rival ...
— In the South Seas • Robert Louis Stevenson
... which is supported by bayonets is always repugnant, wherever it comes from, and under whatever name it may strut. It can have nothing in common with Socialism, which is not only a doctrine of economic necessity, but also a doctrine of ...
— Bolshevism - The Enemy of Political and Industrial Democracy • John Spargo
... their beauty was not increased by this beastly carousal, and thus be a means of blessing. It may be asked, Can the savage be possessed of pride and of self-esteem? I unhesitatingly answer yes, as I have had abundant opportunity of seeing. They will strut with peacock pride when wearing a specially gaudy-colored headdress, although that may be their ...
— Through Five Republics on Horseback • G. Whitfield Ray
... the great day came when old Mother Nature arrived to inspect the kingdom of old King Bear. All the little meadow people and all the little forest folk hastened to pay their respects to old Mother Nature and to strut about in their fine clothes—all but Mr. Toad. He was so busy that he didn't even know that old Mother ...
— Mother West Wind's Children • Thornton W. Burgess
... pleased the favored ones are, who have a soldier to show them the way. I see a distinct difference in their walk from that of the others, don't you, Natalie? They seem to be saying 'We were invited—and by this splendiferous creature at our side!' See how they strut! And look at the soldierless ones, how timidly they go—just as if they had found their tickets in the street, or had crept in through the basement windows. 'Please, kind Mr. Soldier-man, let us stay and see the ...
— The Lieutenant-Governor • Guy Wetmore Carryl
... the step of gosling, Strut thou with the feet of duckling, In the yard that's washed so cleanly, On the smooth and level grassplot, Where the father rules the household, And the mother holds dominion, To the workplace of the brother, And the sister's ...
— Kalevala, Volume I (of 2) - The Land of the Heroes • Anonymous
... Never offered you money? For God's sake! Did you want to be paid for Lura's body?' And he says, 'You know damn' well I didn't want to be paid for Lura's body, Pros Passmore,' he says. 'But do you reckon I'm a-goin' to let them mill men strut around with money they got that-a-way in their pockets? No, I'll not. I'll see 'em cold in hell fust,' he says—them Dawsons is a hard nation o' folks, Johnnie. I talked to 'em for a spell, and tried to make 'em see that the Hardwick folks hadn't never sold no dead body ...
— The Power and the Glory • Grace MacGowan Cooke
... Ole Miss? Huh! She des th'ow up her haid en low, 'Well, Marse Lightfoot, I'm glad you kep' Abel—en we'll use de ole coach agin',' sez she—en den she tu'n en strut right ...
— The Battle Ground • Ellen Glasgow
... proper station in life, he does not gape after things beyond it. Man, what do you wish to happen to you? I am satisfied if I desire and avoid conformably to nature, if I employ movements towards and from an object as I am by nature formed to do, and purpose and design and assent. Why then do you strut before us as if you had swallowed a spit? My wish has always been that those who meet me should admire me, and those who follow me should exclaim, O the great philosopher! Who are they by whom you wish to be ...
— A Selection from the Discourses of Epictetus With the Encheiridion • Epictetus
... first constituent is obedience: a soldier is, of all descriptions of men, the most completely a machine; yet his profession inevitably teaches him something of dogmatism, swaggering, and sell-consequence: he is like the puppet of a showman, who, at the very time he is made to strut and swell and display the most farcical airs, we perfectly know cannot assume the most insignificant gesture, advance either to the right or the left, but as he is moved by his ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... chain. Without saying a word, the bright and too willing mechanic who was assisting, mainly by looking on, took the new chain into his shop and cut off a link. A wanton act done because he "thought the chain a little too long," and not discovered until the machine had been cramped together, every strut and reach shortened to get the chain in place; meanwhile the factory was being vigorously blamed for sending out chains too short. During it all the mechanic was discreetly silent, but the new link on the vise in the shop betrayed him after the harm ...
— Two Thousand Miles On An Automobile • Arthur Jerome Eddy
... men. I grant that this has the air of a highwayman's attack, but, after all, the uniform covers a host of civil sins, and, really, I do not see a better way to have done with the youth. It will never do to have him strut about Paris boasting that he snatched the sword away from an officer and drubbed him with a ...
— The Son of Clemenceau • Alexandre (fils) Dumas
... for us to live for the present in just a shade "better style" than we do; but we have mean ambitions in other directions than style. Style is not for those who are placidly indifferent to display; and before whom on a comely, scornful Isle shall we strut and parade? "You and I cannot be confined within the weak list of a country's fashions," for do we not proclaim and justify our own? Are we not leaders who have no subservient, no flattering imitators, no sycophantic copyists? The etiquette ...
— My Tropic Isle • E J Banfield
... for men,) you'll cry, Presume too much upon your secrecy. There's not a fop in town, but will pretend To know the cheat himself, or by his friend; Then make no words on't, gallants, 'tis e'en true, We are condemn'd to look and strut, like you. Since we thus freely our hard fate confess, Accept us, these bad times, in any dress. You'll find the sweet on't: now old pantaloons Will go as far as, formerly, new gowns; And from your own cast wigs, expect no frowns. The ladies we shall not so easily please; They'll ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Vol. II • Edited by Walter Scott
... strong lungs with which to shout; hence a piece of delicate pathos or varied passions would probably receive scant justice at his hands. But even the town-crier is tolerable—he is nature's product— compared with the workmanship of nature's journeymen—those who strut and bellow. "They imitate humanity so abominably" that their delivery touches the extremest limit of all that is reprehensible ...
— The Young Priest's Keepsake • Michael Phelan
... old—and yet 'tis true, Though they be old, the thing is something new; Each new, quite new—(except some ancient tricks), New white-sticks, gold-sticks, broom-sticks, all new sticks! With vests or ribbons, deck'd alike in hue, New troopers strut, new turncoats blush in blue; So saith the muse! my ——, what say you? Such was the time when Waltz might best maintain Her new preferments in this novel reign; Such was the time, nor ever yet was such: Hoops are no more, and petticoats not ...
— English Satires • Various
... him—he is up to the sharps, down upon the flats, and not to be done. But in looking round you may perceive men booted and spurred, who perhaps never crossed a horse, and some with whips in their hands who deserve it on their backs—they hum lively airs, whistle and strut about with their quizzing-glasses in their hands, playing a tattoo upon their boots, and shewing themselves off with as many airs as if they were real actors engaged in the farce, that is to say, the buyers ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... but neither does Scott's dialogue bear criticism. His lords brave each other in smart epigramatic speeches, but the dialogue is in costume, and does not please on the second reading: it is not warm with life. In Shakspeare alone the speakers do not strut and bridle, the dialogue is easily great, and he adds to so many titles that of being the best-bred man in England and in Christendom. Once or twice in a lifetime we are permitted to enjoy the charm of noble manners, ...
— Essays, Second Series • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... medals, God give me loud honors, That I may strut before you, sweetheart, And be worthy of— The love ...
— War is Kind • Stephen Crane
... I let Froggy forget that L10 he owes me, and he begins to strut about like a peacock, his mother declares "He shall not go ...
— Symbolic Logic • Lewis Carroll
... left him alone, watching him, I fear, over the top of her novel, he disappointed himself. For five minutes or so everything would go well; he looked as dejected as possible; but as he fell he was succeeding he became so self-satisfied that he began to strut. A pleased expression crossed his face, and instead of allowing his head to hang dismally, he put it well back. Sometimes, when we wanted to please him, we said he looked as glum as a mute at a funeral. Even that, however, defeated his object, for it flattered ...
— My Lady Nicotine - A Study in Smoke • J. M. Barrie
... delivered a sermon, these personages made what the manuscripts technically call "their boast." They are the masters of the universe; they wield the thunder; everybody obeys them; they swear and curse unblushingly (by Mahomet); they are very noisy. They strut about, proud of their fine dresses and fine phrases, and of their French, French being there again a token of power and authority. The English Herod could not claim kinship with the Norman Dukes, but the subjects of Angevin ...
— A Literary History of the English People - From the Origins to the Renaissance • Jean Jules Jusserand
... in the heavy shadows of the trees at the far side of Undern Pool. The water looked cold and ghastly even on this golden day. She watched the wagtails strut magisterially, the moorhens with the worried air of overworked charwomen, all the mysterious evening life of a summer pool, but she had no smile for them to-day. The swallows slid and circled across the water; their silence was no longer intimate, but alien. ...
— Gone to Earth • Mary Webb
... be supposed to call forth. I therefore wrote a hurried note to Curzon, setting forth the great interest all their proceedings had for me, and assuring him that my stay in town should be as short as possible, for that I longed once more to "strut the monarch of the boards," and concluded with a sly paragraph, artfully intended to act as a "paratonnere" to the gibes and jests which I dreaded, by endeavouring to make light of my matrimonial speculations. The postscript ran somewhat thus—"Glorious fun have I had since we ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Vol. 2 • Charles James Lever
... and see this long train of camels coming up to the king's gate, and the ox-trains from Egypt, gold and silver and precious stones, and beasts of every hoof, and birds of every wing, and fish of every scale! See the peacocks strut under the cedars, and the horsemen run, and the chariots wheel! Hark to the orchestra! Gaze upon the dance! Not stopping to look into the wonders of the temple, step right on to the causeway, and pass ...
— New Tabernacle Sermons • Thomas De Witt Talmage
... Falstaff's lean, 10 There with her single person fills the scene. Another, with long use and age decay'd, Dived here old woman, and rose there a maid. Our trusty doorkeepers of former time There strut and swagger in heroic rhyme. Tack but a copper-lace to drugget suit, And there's a hero made without dispute: And that, which was a capon's tail before, Becomes a plume for Indian emperor. But all his subjects, to express the care 20 Of imitation, go, like Indians, bare: Laced linen there would be ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol II - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden
... Savoy Court doorway and was scrutinizing every automobile in sight. Near her was a short, stout woman whose personality seemed to be strangely familiar to Medenham. He never forgot anyone, and this lady was certainly not one of his acquaintances; nevertheless, her features, her robin-like strut, her very amplitude of girth and singular rotundity of form, came definitely within the net of his ...
— Cynthia's Chauffeur • Louis Tracy
... Burton says of the Arabs, "Above all their qualities, personal conceit is remarkable; they show it in their strut, in their looks, and almost in every word. 'I am such a one, the son of such a one,' is a common expletive, especially in times of danger; and this spirit is not wholly to be condemned, as it certainly acts as an incentive ...
— The Life of Sir Richard Burton • Thomas Wright
... get rid of him. Too slow. I like efficiency, my boy, efficiency. . . . That's my motto." Sir John complacently performed three steps of his celebrated strut. "Did you know the Hearl?" Though fairly sound on the matter, in moments of excitement he was apt to counterbalance his wife with the elusive letter. ...
— Mufti • H. C. (Herman Cyril) McNeile
... what you say?" cried Vallombreuse, contemptuously. "What! a man of birth and condition mingle voluntarily and on terms of equality with these low buffoons of actors, paint his nose red, and strut about the stage, receiving cuffs and kicks from everybody? Oh no, ...
— Captain Fracasse • Theophile Gautier
... of Theology are false, and her record of Time a fable; that the Deluge, for instance, is an old wives' story, and the economy of times and seasons a human fabrication:—when Astronomical and Mechanical Science strut up to the Throne whereon sits the Ancient of Days,—prate to Him, (the first Author of Law,) about the "supremacy of Law,"—and tell Him to His face that His miracles are things impossible:—when Physiology insinuates that Mankind cannot be descended from one primval pair; and that the ...
— Inspiration and Interpretation - Seven Sermons Preached Before the University of Oxford • John Burgon
... lastly, she loathed and condemned him for the reason that he was so obviously unequal to the situation. He could not handle it. He was found out. He was disproved, He did not know what to do. He could only mouth, strut, bully, and make rude noises. He could not even keep decently around him the cloak of self-importance. He stood revealed to Mrs. Maldon and Rachel as he had sometimes stood revealed to his dead wife and to his elder children and to some of his confidential, faithful employees. He was an offence ...
— The Price of Love • Arnold Bennett
... accomplish'd beaus, At once confounded into sober sense, He feels his pristine insignificance: And blinking, blund'ring, from the general quiz Retreats, "to ponder on the thing he is." By pride inflated, and by praise allured, Small Authors thus strut forth, and thus get cured; But, Critics, hear I an angel pleads for me, That tongueless, ...
— Poems (1828) • Thomas Gent
... port. And what was my incitement to laughter?—It was the different cut of a coat. It was a silk bag, in which the hair was tied, an old sword, and a dangling pair of ruffles; which none of them suited with the poverty of the dress, and meagre appearance, of a person who seemed to strut and value himself upon ...
— Anna St. Ives • Thomas Holcroft
... the unit has been too minutely subdivided, and many faculties are practically lost for want of use. "The state of society is one in which the members have suffered amputation from the trunk, and strut about so many walking monsters,—a good finger, a neck, a stomach, an elbow, but never a man.... Man is thus metamorphosed into a thing, into many things.... The priest becomes a form; the attorney ...
— Ralph Waldo Emerson • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... Mrs Willis can't help bein' good. I'm glad you took me to see her, doctor, for I've made up my mind to take that old 'ooman up, as the bobbies say w'en they're wexed with avin' nuffin' to do 'xcept strut about the streets like turkey-cocks. I'll take 'er up and do for ...
— My Doggie and I • R.M. Ballantyne
... friend of Baudelaire went about dressed in a shabby military frock-coat. He had no longer a nodding acquaintance with the fashionable lions of Napoleon the Little's reign, yet he abated not his haughty strut, his glacial politeness to all comers, nor his daily promenade in the Bois. A Barmecide feast this watching the pleasures of others more favoured, though Guys did not waste the fruits of his observation. At sixty-five he began to go down-hill. His habits had never ...
— Promenades of an Impressionist • James Huneker
... added two full inches to his strut. He seldom came out to the scene of actual operations, for there was none there except workmen to see his frock-coat and silk hat; but occasionally, from a sense of duty inextricably mingled with ...
— The Making of Bobby Burnit - Being a Record of the Adventures of a Live American Young Man • George Randolph Chester
... I, that am not shap'd for sporting tricks, Nor made to court an amorous looking-glass; I, that am rudely stamped, and want love's majesty, To strut before a wanton ambling nymph;— I, that am curtailed of this fair proportion, Cheated of feature by dissembling nature, Deform'd, unfinish'd, sent before my time Into this breathing world, scarce half made up And that so lamely and unfashionable That dogs bark at me as I ...
— The Critics Versus Shakspere - A Brief for the Defendant • Francis A. Smith
... genius, Will! that's the very thing to wake us up! Here are you and I, dashing blades, who have been doing penance by trying to be fine gentlemen at watering-places, when it wasn't at all in our line. I began to think we looked as much like fops as the rest of the scented and bearded dress-coats, who strut about, and imagine the world is looking at them. This would throw us into quite another rank of life, and give us new ideas. How shall we manage it though, my fine fellow?" "Nothing easier in the world. Let ...
— Holidays at the Grange or A Week's Delight - Games and Stories for Parlor and Fireside • Emily Mayer Higgins
... individual to meddle; but the new leaven was creeping through every level of society. The sons and daughters of the bourgeoisie tried to rise in the social scale by aping the pleasant vices of the aristocracy. They deserted the shop and the counting-house to play cards and strut upon the piazza. They mimicked the fine gentleman and the gentildonna, and made fashionable love and carried on intrigues. The spirit of the whole people had lost its elevation; there were no more proud patricians, full of noble ambitions and devoted zeal of public service; it was hardly ...
— The Venetian School of Painting • Evelyn March Phillipps
... new strut here. You didn't get one in that outfit. And by rights we need a new propeller. There ain't the same thrust when it's gravel-chewed like that. But maybe you can't stand the expense, so we'll try and make this do for awhile. Say," he added abruptly, turning his pale stare upon ...
— Skyrider • B. M. Bower
... say you: oh, I should remember him: do's he not hold vp his head (as it were?) and strut in his gate? Si. ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... of kings and queens and court pageantry was not so far past that it did not appeal powerfully to the imaginations of the frequenters of the Globe, the Rose, and the Fortune. They had no such feeling as we have in regard to the pasteboard kings and queens who strut their brief hour before us in anachronic absurdity. But, besides that he wrote in the spirit of his age, Shakespeare wrote in the language and the literary methods of his time. This is not more evident in the contemporary poets than in the chroniclers of that day. They all delighted ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... color—peacock blue, vermilion, turquoise, emerald green, burnt orange; no inch of exposed woodwork has escaped the carver's cunning chisel; everywhere gold has been laid on with a spendthrift hand. And in this marvelous setting strut or stroll figures that might have stepped straight from the stage of Sumurun—fantastically garbed functionaries of the Household, shaven-headed priests in yellow robes, pompous mandarins in sweeping silken garments, bejeweled ...
— Where the Strange Trails Go Down • E. Alexander Powell
... letter from the mother, To say her daughter's feelings are trepanned; Perhaps you'll have a visit from the brother, All strut, and stays, and whiskers, to demand What "your intentions are?"—One way or other It seems the virgin's heart expects your hand: And between pity for her case and yours, You'll add to ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... good taste, Mr. Gay," said Arbuthnot with a chuckle. "A trim built wench, upon my word. And she knows how to walk. She hasn't the mincing gait of the city madams of the Exchange nor the flaunting strut of the dames of the Mall or ...
— Madame Flirt - A Romance of 'The Beggar's Opera' • Charles E. Pearce
... as he went, Sholto's step slowed, and lost its braggart strut and confidence. Behind him Laurence chuckled and laughed, smiting his thigh ...
— The Black Douglas • S. R. Crockett
... that love had brought. As Grizel came up the path on that bright afternoon, she could no more have helped strutting than the bud to open on the appointed day. She was obeying one of Nature's laws. I think I promised long ago to tell you of the day when Grizel would strut no more. Well, this is the day. Observe her strutting for the last time. It was very strange and touching to her to remember in the after years that she had once strutted, but it was still more strange and touching ...
— Tommy and Grizel • J.M. Barrie
... her statements, and the indifference with which she neglected to improve any strong points in her own favor—the indifference, as every heart perceived, of despairing grief. Then came the manners on the hostile side—the haggard consciousness of guilt, the drooping tone, the bravado and fierce strut which sought to dissemble all this. Not one amongst all the witnesses, assembled on that side, had (by all agreement) the bold natural tone of conscious uprightness. Hence it could not be surprising that the storm of popular opinion made itself heard with a louder and a ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... moult, and the stumps are concealed behind their dress, which is like that of a man. They walk, when grown up, on clogs a foot high, which are like stilts, as they have but one support instead of two, like the sort which men wear. The tengus strut about easily ...
— Japanese Fairy World - Stories from the Wonder-Lore of Japan • William Elliot Griffis
... had called attention to some fine new clothing which he wore by coming in during prayer time and thus attracting the notice of the congregation. Mr. Moody, in an elevated tone of voice, at once exclaimed, "And O Lord! we pray Thee, cure Ned Ingraham of that ungodly strut," etc. Another time he prayed for a young lady in the congregation and ended his invocation thus, "She asked me not to pray for her in public, but I told her I would, and so ...
— Sabbath in Puritan New England • Alice Morse Earle
... to think they were not very well behaved and needed a good scolding; so he began to strut about and talk at the top of his voice; but the ducklings had their swim and came out as happy as ...
— Dear Santa Claus • Various
... ingenious casuistry, spread abroad the opinion that these mighty preparations were a colossal bluff which would redound to Germany's advantage. They said that President Wilson had bided his time so that his country might strut as a belligerent for only the last six months, and so obtain a voice in the peace negotiations. He did not intend that America should fight, and was only getting his armies ready that they might enforce peace when the Allies were exhausted and already ...
— Out To Win - The Story of America in France • Coningsby Dawson
... told what had become of the manhood of Ascalon, and asked it with contempt. What was the fame of the town based upon but a bluff when one man was able to shut it up as tight as a trunk, and strut around that way adding the insult of his tyrannical presence to the act of his oppressive hand. There were plenty of questions and suggestions, but ...
— Trail's End • George W. Ogden
... the elf-like girl—the living Peter Pan to millions of theater-goers—was to assume the feathers and strut of the barnyard Romeo, there was a widespread feeling that he was making a great mistake, and that he was putting Miss Adams into a role, admirable artist that she was, to which she was absolutely unsuited. A storm of criticism arose. But Frohman ...
— Charles Frohman: Manager and Man • Isaac Frederick Marcosson and Daniel Frohman
... among the chickens. One old cripple I remember to have seen in the little town of Guines, stiff with wounds received in combat, who had probably got a furlough for life, and who, while limping among his female companions, maintained a sort of strut in his gait, and now and then stopped to crow defiance to the world. The peasants breed game-cocks and bring them to market; amateurs in the town train them for their private amusement. Dealers in game-cocks are ...
— Letters of a Traveller - Notes of Things Seen in Europe and America • William Cullen Bryant
... with Bluff to be always expecting something serious to happen; and in case his suspicions were verified, as might occasionally occur, he would crow over the others, and strut around as though he thought himself a prophet gifted with second-sight, and able to ...
— The Outdoor Chums - The First Tour of the Rod, Gun and Camera Club • Captain Quincy Allen
... commenced a genuine attempt to make up to the baby for his mother's neglect. Almost without a notion how even to take him in his arms, he would now send for him the moment he had had his tea, and after a fashion, ludicrous in the eyes of the nurse, would dandle and caress him, and strut about with him before his wife, glancing up at her every now and then, to point the lesson that such was the manner in which a parent ought to behave to a child. In his presence she never made any active show of her dislike, but her look seemed all the time fixed on ...
— Stephen Archer and Other Tales • George MacDonald
... boy—I'll give 'em leave to match him, if they can; It's fun to see him strut about, and try to be a man! The gamest, cheeriest little chap, you'd ever want to see! And then they laugh, because I think the child resembles me. The little rogue! he goes for me, like robbers for their prey; He'll turn my pockets inside out, ...
— Farm Ballads • Will Carleton
... the assembled framework of aluminum alloy dragged loosely on the ground; the other end swung out and projected above the shaft, swayed for an instant—and then came the first direct knowledge of the enemy's presence. The end of a metal strut, though nothing visible was touching it, grew suddenly white hot, sagged, then broke into a shower of molten, dazzling drops that ...
— Two Thousand Miles Below • Charles Willard Diffin
... mania for great people wishing to strut and fret their four hours and a quarter upon the stage is on the increase—at least according to our friends the constituent members of the daily press. Despite the newspaper-death of the manager of the Surrey, by which his ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, September 25, 1841 • Various
... the fairies' rooms; They use their folded tails for brooms; But fairy dust is brighter far Than any mortal colours are; And all about their tails it clings In strange designs of rounds and rings; And that is why they strut about And ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, June 25, 1919 • Various
... Philip, he this day Has his long coats cast away, And (the childish season gone) Puts the manly breeches on. Officer on gay parade, Red-coat in his first cockade, Bridegroom in his wedding trim, Birthday beau surpassing him, Never did with conscious gait Strut about in half the state, Or the pride (yet free from sin) Of my little MANIKIN: Never was there pride, or bliss, Half so rational as his. Sashes, frocks, to those that need 'em— Philip's limbs have got their freedom— He can run, or he can ride, And do twenty things beside, ...
— Books for Children - The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 3 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... it is only the monstrous conceit of mankind which makes him think that all this stage was erected for him to strut upon." ...
— The Poison Belt • Arthur Conan Doyle
... in generosity, offers his life to his enemy and preserver, giving him his horn and promising to come to meet his death at its summons. There is the same fault here which is felt in Hugo's novels. Motives are exaggerated, the dramatis personae strut. They are rather over-dramatic in their poses—-melodramatic, in fact—and do unlikely things. But this fault is the fault of a great nature, grandeur exalted into grandiosity, till the heroes of these plays, "Hernani," "Marion Delorme," "Le Roi d'Amuse," loom and stalk across the scene like ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Nineteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... steamer, prince—Psha! it is of this wretched vapouring stuff that false patriotism is made. I write this as a sort of homily 'a propos of the day, and Cape Trafalgar, off which we lie. What business have I to strut the deck, and clap my wings, and cry "Cock-a-doodle-doo" over it? Some compatriots are at that work ...
— Notes on a Journey from Cornhill to Grand Cairo • William Makepeace Thackeray
... serve as a toehold. To the rear the fins flared out, supported by heavy struts. He made his way back, crouching close to the hull, and straddled one of the struts. He jammed his magnetic boots down against the hull, and wrapped his arms around the strut ...
— Gold in the Sky • Alan Edward Nourse
... think," said Susan Tall, "Gable Oak is coming it quite the dand. He now wears shining boots with hardly a hob in 'em, two or three times a-week, and a tall hat a-Sundays, and 'a hardly knows the name of smockfrock. When I see people strut enough to be cut up into bantam cocks, I stand dormant with wonder, ...
— Far from the Madding Crowd • Thomas Hardy
... nuisance within, and not much better without, and the ground immediately around the premises a dirty place. The common pigeon is a pugnacious cavalier, warring apparently upon mere punctilio, as we have often seen, in the distant strut-and-coo of a stranger bird to his mate, even if she be the very incarnation of "rejected addresses." On all these accounts, we would locate—unless a small and select family of fancy birds, perhaps—the pigeon stock at the principal farm-yard, and in the lofts of the cattle sheds, or the chambers ...
— Rural Architecture - Being a Complete Description of Farm Houses, Cottages, and Out Buildings • Lewis Falley Allen
... messengers, smart cabmen, smart publicans, smart politicians, smart women, smart scoundrels! Greatness became commonplace here, and Mr. Douglas might drink at Willard's Bar, with none so poor to do him reverence, or General Winfield Scott strut like a colossus along "the Avenue," and the sleepy negroes upon their backs would give him the attention of only one eye. It was interesting, to notice how rapidly provincial eminence lost caste here. Slipkins, who was "Honorable" at home, and of whom ...
— Campaigns of a Non-Combatant, - and His Romaunt Abroad During the War • George Alfred Townsend
... calling do thy best. But now the senate (if things hit, And thou at Stockbridge[4] wert not bit) Must feel thy eloquence and fire, Approve thy schemes, thy wit admire, Thee with immortal honours crown, While, patriot-like, thou'lt strut and frown. What though by enemies 'tis said, The laurel, which adorns thy head, Must one day come in competition, By virtue of some sly petition: Yet mum for that; hope still the best, Nor let such cares disturb thy rest. ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift
... Sir Strut, for so the witling throng Oft called him when at school, And hitch'd him up in many a song ...
— The Dialect of the West of England Particularly Somersetshire • James Jennings
... professional aptitude, between the flat of his hand and what of trouser-leg he had left, gazing eagerly between at the advancing masterpiece. Occasionally the triumph of expectation would exceed his control, when he would spring from the floor, and caper and strut about like a pigeon—soft as a shadow, for he knew his father could not bear noise in the morning—or behind his back execute a pantomimic dumb show of delight, in which he seemed with difficulty to restrain ...
— Sir Gibbie • George MacDonald
... pecking, chirping, and scratching vigorously. A tuft of green leaves waved upon his crest, a larger tuft of brakes made an umbrageous tail, and a shawl of many colours formed his flapping wings. A truly noble bird, whose legs had the genuine strut, whose eyes shone watchfully, and whose voice had a ring that evidently struck terror into the catterpillar's soul, if it was a catterpillar. He squirmed, he wriggled, he humped as fast as he could, trying to escape; ...
— Eight Cousins • Louisa M. Alcott
... like many other Publishers, who make the Works of other People their own, without acknowledging the Piracy they are guilty of, or so much as paying the least Complement to the Authors of their Wisdom: No, Gentlemen and Ladies, I am not the Daw in the Fable, that would vaunt and strut in your Plumes. And besides, I know very well you might have me upon the Hank according to Law, and treat me as a Highwayman or Robber; for you might safely swear upon your Honours, that I had stole the whole Book from your recreative ...
— The Merry-Thought: or the Glass-Window and Bog-House Miscellany. Part 1 • Samuel Johnson [AKA Hurlo Thrumbo]
... gazed with admiring eyes at every motion of his grandfather. To one who had from earliest infancy looked up to him with reverence, there was nothing ridiculous in the display, in the strut, in all that to other eyes too evidently revealed the vanity of the piper: Malcolm regarded it all only as making up the orthodox mode of playing the pipes. It was indeed well that he could not see the expression ...
— Malcolm • George MacDonald
... of the dreadful place, put the slab in the opening, secured it with a strut against the opposite side of the recess, and closed the shutters and drew the curtains of the room; if the earl came up the stair in the wall, found the stone immovable, and saw no light through any chink about its edges, he would not suspect ...
— Donal Grant • George MacDonald
... said in a relieved voice, getting up and beginning to strut up and down the room. "It isn't as though I'm beyond call. You can come out here and consult me if you get stuck. And then there's Minnie; she knows a good bit about the ...
— Where There's A Will • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... festivals. Almost every day then, and sometimes half a dozen times in a day, the Judge and the baby may see some Italian society parading through the street. Fourteen proud sons of Italy, clad in magnificent new uniforms, bearing aloft huge silk banners, strut magnificently in the rear of a German band of twenty-four pieces, and a drum-corps of a dozen more. Then, too, come the religious processions, when the little girls are taken to their first communion. Six sturdy Italians struggle along under the ...
— Jersey Street and Jersey Lane - Urban and Suburban Sketches • H. C. Bunner
... half spread his wing, suh He try ter look young, but he wuz ol' suh— He try ter strut an' walk wid a swing, suh; He wuz dreamin' 'bout dat pot er gol', suh, An' what he wuz gwine fer ...
— Uncle Remus and Brer Rabbit • Joel Chandler Harris
... one Yankee in dis las' bunch dat wuz big an' bustin'. He strut bigoty wid his chist stuck out. He walk 'roun' stickin' his sword in de chair cushions, de pictures on de walls an' things like dat. He got powerful mad kaze he couldn' fin' nothin', den he look out de window an' ...
— Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States • Various
... each other's drawing-rooms, Ye idols of a petty clique: Strut your brief hour in borrowed plumes, And make ...
— Phantasmagoria and Other Poems • Lewis Carroll
... on this drama, so wrapped up in the actors, so anxious to declaim and strut, that they forget to what end the play exists: they have left the spectators out for whom alone the scenes are enacted, and who, though apparently so silent and motionless, are the raison d'etre of the whole performance. The play must and will continue through ...
— Memoirs of Arthur Hamilton, B. A. Of Trinity College, Cambridge • Arthur Christopher Benson
... displays his great desirability, he tries to make every woman think how wonderful it would be to have him for a lover. His very ignoring of the women is part of the game. He is never UNCONSCIOUS of them. He should have been a cockerel, so he could strut before fifty females, all his subjects. But really, his Don Juan does NOT interest me. I could play Dona Juanita a million times better than he plays Juan. He bores me, you know. His maleness bores me. Nothing ...
— Women in Love • D. H. Lawrence
... element abroad on polling day. Men are so respectful and hurl such affectionate terms at one another. Even the dogs are upset, and strut about in quite a different manner than on ordinary days, so puffed out with vanity are they, on account of their decorations. The members' wives and their friends are all taking part in the scene too, bringing voters along in their carriages, ...
— Lazy Thoughts of a Lazy Girl - Sister of that "Idle Fellow." • Jenny Wren
... [Error in book: streko] Strive penadi. Stroke streko. [Error in book: strio] Stroke (a blow) bato. Stroke (to touch) karesi, froti. Stroll promeni. Strong forta. Stronghold fortikajxo. Strophe strofo. Structure strukturo. Struggle barakti. Strut paradi. Strut (a stay) subtenajxo. Strychnine striknino. Stubborn obstinega. Stubbornness obstinegeco. Stucco stukajxo. Stud butono. Student studento. Studio studcxambro. Studious lernema. Study lerni, studi. Stuff ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... the slender wrist. Then he began to describe his bailiff's cottage, with woodbine round the porch, the farm-yard, the bee-hives, the pretty duck-pond with an osier island, and the great China gander who had a pompous strut, which made him the droll est creature possible. And Sophy should go there in a day or two, and be as happy as one of the bees, but not so busy. Sophy listened very earnestly, very gravely, and then sliding her hand from the Mayor, ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... art. A thing like thee, made big with braggart breath, Whose tongue shoots fire, whose promise poisons trust, Would cast a shieldless soldier forth to death And wreck three realms to sate his rancorous lust With ruin of them who have weighed and found him dust. Get thee to Wales: there strut in speech and swell: And thence betimes God speed thee safe ...
— Locrine - A Tragedy • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... white nightcap and nightshirt were discernible in almost pitchy darkness), they saw him strut back from the window to slip downstairs and surprise them. Mr Pinsent paused only to insert his feet into a pair of loose slippers, and again, as he unbolted the back door, to snatch a lantern off its hook. Yet by the time he ran out ...
— Corporal Sam and Other Stories • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... of a small battery motor driven with two dry cells. The design and installation of such things as stern-tubes and propeller-shafts have been taken up in detail in an earlier part of this book. The strut that holds the propeller-shaft is shown in Fig. 91. This consists merely of a brass bushing held in a bracket made of a strip of brass 1/2 inch wide. The brass strip is wound around the bushing and soldered. It is held to the bottom of the hull by means of two 8-32 brass machine screws. These ...
— Boys' Book of Model Boats • Raymond Francis Yates
... obliging, he was always ineffably superior and certain of himself; a well-graced actor. It was presently suggested that he should appear in his war costume; he gracefully consented; and returned in that strange, inappropriate and ill- omened array (which very well became his handsome person) to strut in a circle of admirers, and be thenceforth the centre of photography. Thus had Moipu effected his introduction, as by accident, to the white strangers, made it a favour to display his finery, and reduced his rival to a secondary role on the ...
— In the South Seas • Robert Louis Stevenson
... ground to the very borders of the forest. Cecile, walking quickly, reached it before long; then she stood still, leaning over the paling and looking across the enchanted ground. This paling in itself was English, and the very strut of the barn-door fowl reminded her of Warren's Grove. How she wished that fair child to run out! How she hoped to hear even one word of the only language she understood! No matter her French origin, Cecile was all English at this moment. Toby stood ...
— The Children's Pilgrimage • L. T. Meade
... strength, of a man's, but he was nevertheless the favourite of the Great Spirit. He was less in stature than a man, and crooked withal, his height being little more than that of the tall bird[A] which loves to strut along the sandy shore, picking up the fish as they flutter joyously along in the beams of the warm and cheering sun. But if he was diminutive in body he was great in his soul—what others lacked in wisdom he supplied. His name was Ohguesse, which signifies a Partridge. ...
— Traditions of the North American Indians, Vol. 3 (of 3) • James Athearn Jones
... unwilling "capping" of the under-graduates, to such a man are real luxuries, and the relish with which he enjoys them is deep and strong. And if he have but the luck to immortalize himself by holding some University office, to strut through his year of misrule as proctor, or even as his humble "pro," then does he at once emerge from the obscurity of the family annals a being of a higher sphere. And when there comes up to commemoration a waddling old lady, and two thin sticks of virginity, who horrify the college butler by ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 349, November, 1844 • Various
... cause of all this interest? Was it devotion to a young and innocent girl that made me willing to undertake so difficult and so delicate a task? Doubtless these motives went for something, but I will not attempt to strut in borrowed plumes, and must freely confess that if she had been ugly and stupid I should probably have left her to her fate. In short, selfishness was at the bottom of it all, so let us say ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... playing a farce. You do not take me in, my good fellow. I told you yesterday that you were cleverer than I; you did not see then that I was joking? Your mask is still too transparent. One sees the tears behind the grinning face. No tragic aim. Come down from this stage on which you strut in such a ridiculous manner, and let us talk ...
— The Grip of Desire • Hector France
... Assisi, a very early mediaeval building, affords a singular instance of the meeting of the last remnant of that serene symbolism of Roman and Byzantine-Roman churches with the usual Lombard horrors. A fine passion-flower or vine encircles the porch, peacocks strut and drink from an altar, while, on the other hand, lions mangle a man and a sheep, and horrible composite monsters, resembling the prehistoric plesiosaurus, bite each other's necks. A Madonna and Christ ...
— Renaissance Fancies and Studies - Being a Sequel to Euphorion • Violet Paget (AKA Vernon Lee)
... little more than a mile to the north-west, on the way back to Horley. Outwood Common is delightful. Two great windmills, black and white, spread sails to the blowing air; below them, black and white like the mills, pigs nose quietly over the short grass, and geese strut cackling. To the north, beyond rich and tranquil fields, lie the grey-green wooded ...
— Highways and Byways in Surrey • Eric Parker
... cheering, A long, wild, rallying murmur on the hearing, 'Port Fore!' and 'Starboard Fore!' 'Port Fore' 'Port Fore,' 'Up with her,' 'Starboard'; and at that each oar Lightened, though arms were bursting, and eyes shut, And the oak stretchers grunted in the strut, And the curse quickened from the cox, our bows Crashed, and drove talking water, we made vows, Chastity vows and temperance; in our pain We numbered things we'd never eat again If we could only win; then came the yell 'Starboard,' 'Port Fore,' and then a beaten bell Rung as for fire to cheer ...
— Georgian Poetry 1911-12 • Various
... Mrs. Siddons. She was a goddess of the age of fret and fume, of stalk and strut, of trilled R's and of nodding plumes. If we had Siddons now I fear we should hiss; I am quite sure we should yawn. She must have been Melpomene ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida
... experiment. Disregarding all extant works upon tactics, he drew up a simpler system for the use of his men. Throwing aside the old ideas of soldierly bearing, he taught them to use vigor, promptness, and ease. Discarding the stiff buckram strut of martial tradition, he educated them to move with the loafing insouciance of the Indian, or the graceful ease of the panther. He tore off their choking collars and binding coats, and invented a uniform which, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 45, July, 1861 • Various
... English Collection, one of my schoolbooks. The first two books I ever read in private, and which gave me more pleasure than any two books I ever read since, were "The Life of Hannibal" and "The History of Sir William Wallace." Hannibal gave my young ideas such a turn that I used to strut in raptures up and down after the recruiting drum and bagpipe and wish myself tall enough to be a soldier; while the story of Wallace poured a Scottish prejudice into my veins, which will boil along there till the floodgates of life shut in ...
— Stories of Achievement, Volume IV (of 6) - Authors and Journalists • Various
... images must be the writer's constant aim. Instead of a general term like "walk," for example, he should select a specific, picture-making word such as hurry, dash, run, race, amble, stroll, stride, shuffle, shamble, limp, strut, stalk. For the word "horse" he may substitute a definite term like sorrel, bay, percheron, nag, charger, steed, broncho, or pony. In narrative and descriptive writing particularly, it is necessary to use words that make pictures and that reproduce sounds ...
— How To Write Special Feature Articles • Willard Grosvenor Bleyer
... 31 is shown an "Oblique Halving Joint," where the oblique piece, or strut, does not run through (Fig. 28, 3). This type of joint is used for strengthening framings and shelf brackets; an example of the latter is shown at Fig. 48. A strut or rail of this type prevents movement or distortion ...
— Woodwork Joints - How they are Set Out, How Made and Where Used. • William Fairham
... and strut about like a full-plumaged young cockerel in the spring, and look at yourself in ...
— Marcus: the Young Centurion • George Manville Fenn
... also that appellation, but the mountaineers) have a fine cast of countenance; and the most beautiful women I ever beheld, in stature and in features, we saw levelling the road broken down by the torrents between Delvinachi and Libochabo. Their manner of walking is truly theatrical; but this strut is probably the effect of the capote, or cloak, depending from one shoulder. Their long hair reminds you of the Spartans, and their courage in desultory warfare is unquestionable. Though they have some cavalry amongst the Gegdes, I never saw a good ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 2 • George Gordon Byron
... passive worth of mankind. The independence which they boast of despises habit, and time-honoured forms of subordination; it consists in breaking old ties upon new temptations; in casting off the modest garb of private obligation to strut about in the glittering armour of public virtue; in sacrificing, with jacobinical infatuation, the near to the remote, and preferring, to what has been known and tried, that which has no distinct existence, even in imagination; in renouncing, with ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... fledgling from a Brussels or Axminster carpeted reception-room would stand on the hustings and publish a fear that he might be boring his audience. One familiar with the trade of electioneering, as it has always been conducted by men, would strut and shout and brag, never for a moment worrying whether or not he came anywhere near the truth or feeling the slightest qualm, though he deafened his hearers with his trumpeting or bored them to complete ...
— Some Everyday Folk and Dawn • Miles Franklin
... imprisonment—pay his fine, stride out of the court and kill another—pay his fine again and butcher another, and so long as he paid to the state, cash down, its own assessment of damages, without putting it to the trouble of prosecuting for it, he might strut 'a gentleman.'—See 2 Brevard's ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... inclined to believe it," she said slowly. "Perhaps that's why life is sometimes a huge joke and sometimes nothing but sadness and disillusionment. We play our little game of make-believe and strut around proudly, making ourselves, as well as others, think that we amount to something and then comes death, like a curtain; the footlights go out and where are we? Who ...
— Spring Street - A Story of Los Angeles • James H. Richardson
... his life. He walked about in front of the line and at every step pulled himself up, slightly arching his back. It was plain that the commander admired his regiment, rejoiced in it, and that his whole mind was engrossed by it, yet his strut seemed to indicate that, besides military matters, social interests and the fair sex occupied no small part ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... they laugh and look Down upon the crowded square Where unto a bag-pipe's drone He- and she-bear strut and dance. ...
— Atta Troll • Heinrich Heine
... my fate to be Acquainted with Irish Secretaries. I saw much of little Charles Abbot—afterwards Speaker—and at last Lord Colchester. He was a pompous dwarf; yet of an analytical head. Nothing could be more amusing than to see him strut up the House of Commons to take the chair; nor was the amusement less to listen to him, when he delivered his edicts, or the thanks of the House from the chair. His sonorous voice issuing from a diminutive person, and the epigrammatic points of empty sentences, formed with great artifice, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. XIX. No. 554, Saturday, June 30, 1832 • Various
... carrying, as observer, Lieutenant de Lavalette. His airplane was hit by a shell projectile in the right wing. On the 17th his machine returned with eight wounds, two in the right wing, four in the body, and in addition one strut and one longitudinal spar hit. On the 18th he returned from a reconnaissance with Lieutenant Colcomb during which his machine had been hit in the right wing, the rudder, and the body. But his notebook ...
— Georges Guynemer - Knight of the Air • Henry Bordeaux
... monotonous—what kind of music, I repeat, is this that can paint a "crystal sigh," the blackness of prehistoric night, the abysm of a morbid soul, the man in the moon, the faint sweet odours of an impossible fairy-land, and the strut of the dandy from Bergamo? (See the Guiraud poem.) There is no melodic or harmonic line, only a series of points, dots, dashes, or phrases that sob and ...
— Ivory Apes and Peacocks • James Huneker
... duty, because, as Norvin discovered, it brought him to the side of Lucrezia Ferara. Thus it happened that Martel had reason to regret the choice of his bodyguard, for on the very first visit Ippolito began to strut and swagger before the girl and allowed the secret to escape him, whereupon it was carried ...
— The Net • Rex Beach
... fearful adversaries, He capers nimbly in a lady's chamber To the lascivious pleasing of a lute. But I, that am not shaped for sportive tricks, Nor made to court an amorous looking-glass; I, that am rudely stamped, and want love's majesty To strut before a wanton ambling nymph; I, that am curtailed of this fair proportion, Cheated of feature by dissembling nature, Deformed, unfinished, sent before my time Into this breathing world, scarce half made up, And that so lamely ...
— Familiar Quotations • John Bartlett
... rob an altar thus? and sweep at once What Orpheus-like I forc'd from stocks and stones? 'Twill never swell thy bag, nor ring one peal In thy dark chest. Talk not of shreeves, or gaol; I fear them not. I have no land to glut Thy dirty appetite, and make thee strut Nimrod of acres; I'll no speech prepare To court the hopeful cormorant, thine heir. For there's a kingdom at thy beck if thou But kick this dross: Parnassus' flow'ry brow I'll give thee with my Tempe, and to boot That horse which struck ...
— Poems of Henry Vaughan, Silurist, Volume II • Henry Vaughan
... enmity as is allotted by nature to wolves and lambs, [so great a one] have I to you, you that are galled at your back with Spanish cords, and on your legs with the hard fetter. Though, purse-proud with your riches, you strut along, yet fortune does not alter your birth. Do you not observe while you are stalking along the sacred way with a robe twice three ells long, how the most open indignation of those that pass and repass turns their looks on thee? This ...
— The Works of Horace • Horace
... "I ac' gemmun moshuns," he would stick his hat on one side of his head, take a walking-cane in his hand, and strut back and forth, to ...
— Diddie, Dumps, and Tot • Louise-Clarke Pyrnelle
... those wretched Beaux Tibbs's of society, who sport a lace dickey, and nothing besides,—the poor silly jays, who trail a peacock's feather behind them, and think to simulate the gorgeous bird whose nature it is to strut on palace-terraces, and to flaunt his magnificent fan-tail in ...
— The Book of Snobs • William Makepeace Thackeray
... the bath, I detained him for the purpose of surveying myself, arranging my curls to twist up behind the ear, and pulling my moustaches up towards my eyes. I then paid him handsomely, and leaving my old clothes under his charge, I made my exit with the strut of ...
— The Adventures of Hajji Baba of Ispahan • James Morier
... true that the goldfinch and the kingfisher are not often seen except in picture-books; but our own little robin is a real beauty, is he not? And what can be gayer than the feathers of some of our cocks, which strut about so proudly? Then, the more you notice the songs of birds, the more you will admire them. The sweet notes begin before daylight in the spring-time, and the cock-bird seems never tired of singing to his mate as she sits on her eggs. By and by, when they are busy ...
— Twilight And Dawn • Caroline Pridham
... and croaking gut, See how the half-star'd Frenchmen strut, And call us English dogs: But soon we'll teach these bragging foes That beef and beer give heavier blows Than soup ...
— The Works of William Hogarth: In a Series of Engravings - With Descriptions, and a Comment on Their Moral Tendency • John Trusler
... Osiris, but whom other nations have known and know by different names, it is given to us once more to be mortal for an hour, and, though we be but shadows, to renew the loves and hates of our long-perished flesh. Here for an hour we strut in our forgotten pomp; the crowns that were ours still adorn our brows, and once more we seem to listen to our people's praise. Our hopes are the hopes of mortal life, our foes are the foes we feared, our gods grow real again, and our lovers whisper ...
— Smith and the Pharaohs, and Other Tales • Henry Rider Haggard
... that hat, you old thief?" asked the magistrate, without any politeness to him who ruled the land before white men broke into the country. Some in authority are polite to those they dispossess; the Prussians, for instance, to the miserable King Billys who strut about the empire. But the Anglo-Saxon only respects himself, and even that to a limited extent, ...
— Stories by English Authors: Orient • Various
... the next day, all the third day, if the river was wide, they would strut and cluck along the ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... station in life, he does not gape after things beyond it. Man, what do you wish to happen to you? I am satisfied if I desire and avoid conformably to nature, if I employ movements towards and from an object as I am by nature formed to do, and purpose and design and assent. Why then do you strut before us as if you had swallowed a spit? My wish has always been that those who meet me should admire me, and those who follow me should exclaim, O the great philosopher! Who are they by whom you wish to be admired? Are they not those of whom you are used to say that they are ...
— A Selection from the Discourses of Epictetus With the Encheiridion • Epictetus
... also extremely given to quarrelling. It used frequently to "get mad." It made nothing of twitching away books and balls. It often pouted. Sometimes it would bite. If it wore a fine frock, it would strut. It told lies,—"whoppers" at that. It took the larger half of the apple. It was not, as a general thing, magnanimous, but "aggravating." It may have been fun to you who looked on, but it was death to us who ...
— Gala-days • Gail Hamilton
... Master Kit Marlowe! I'll bring a loud pair of palms to cheer your soul the next time you strut in red paint with a wooden ...
— The Works of Christopher Marlowe, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Christopher Marlowe
... mimic, he imitated her strut before the looking-glass, and general coquettish behaviour in the dressing-room at the villa, while he sang ...
— Jack Harkaway and his son's Escape From the Brigand's of Greece • Bracebridge Hemyng
... against them, was filing off towards their right. No certain judgment could, however, yet be formed of the enemy's real design, and as they were in want of bread, it wras thought probable that they intended to repass the Un-strut; but it was soon perceived that their several motions were contradictory to each other. At the same time that some of their infantry were filing off towards their right, a large body of cavalry wheeled round towards their left, directing its march all along to the rising grounds with which ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... them neither poverty nor disease, nor any involuntary or painful defect. The disposition to derision and insult is awakened by the softness of foppery, the swell of insolence, the liveliness of levity, or the solemnity of grandeur; by the sprightly trip, the stately stalk, the formal strut, the lofty mien; by gestures intended to catch the eye, and by looks elaborately formed ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson - Volume IV [The Rambler and The Adventurer] • Samuel Johnson
... he has drunk deep of cruelty and terror and may go his way. By rare good grace he may have been a hero. In other words, he may have been a Belgian—which is a word like a decoration, a name to make one strut like a Greek of Thermopylae—and become thus a permanent part of the ...
— The New York Times Current History: the European War, February, 1915 • Various
... their religious convictions they were peaceable and unobtrusive, never arming themselves with Scriptural texts in order to carry on offensive operations. Never being perplexed by doubt, they desired no one to corroborate their faith, and no inducement could persuade them to strut about in the garb of piety in order to attract respect. The reverence for the Creator was in the heart, rather than upon the lips. In that land papists and protestants lived together in charity and brotherhood, earnest and devoted in their churches, and in contact with the world, ...
— An Historical Account of the Settlements of Scotch Highlanders in America • J. P. MacLean
... which would have been beauty had it been on a larger scale, had begun to fill what little there was of Corney's imagination; and he left her with a feeling that he knew where a treasure lay. He walked with an enlargement of strut as he went home through the park, and swung his cane with the air of a man who had made a conquest of which he ...
— Weighed and Wanting • George MacDonald
... went at once at their grinding, and by two o'clock all was in readiness. Every rod and strut and bolt and screw was in place, tight as a drum. The nickel and brass of the bearings flashed in the sun; the Skyrocket looked fit as a fiddle. There was still a little gasoline in the gallon can that they had been using for testing the motor, and Tod let ...
— The Boy Scouts of the Air on Lost Island • Gordon Stuart
... it, for they issued a placard on which they called Borghese a traitor and threatened him with death. "He who after November 1918 returns to the martyred town," writes Signor Zanella, "is simply stupefied in beholding that those personages who now strut on the political scene, burning with the most ardent Italian patriotism, are the same who until the eve of Vittorio Veneto were the most unbending, the most eloquent and the most devoted partisans and servants of ...
— The Birth of Yugoslavia, Volume 2 • Henry Baerlein
... point—whether the tailor O'Brallaghan, being bound over to keep the peace, could attack him without forfeiting his recognizances—that villain Jinks, I say, had the outrageous audacity to ask my opinion on this point, and then when I gave it, to rise and say that it was a fine morning, and so strut out, without another word. A villain, sir! the man who consults a lawyer without the preparatory retainer, is a wretch too ...
— The Last of the Foresters • John Esten Cooke
... where to stop. The starting-point was easy. Curiosity began by asking, Why the deuce, Albert Pride was so carefully hiding himself away in the city of Mexico? He must be a fellow-countryman; because an Englishman, no matter how branded at home, by fraud or dishonor, could boldly strut about New-Orleans or New-York, without submitting to voluntary self-imprisonment in the city of Mexico. Was he a fraudulent merchant, or a bank-defaulter? Good heavens! such gentlemen generally assume such a graceful nonchalance, or else laugh at their little transactions so good-naturedly ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. V, May, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... this class," replied the Virginian solemnly, "who has been treated unjustly by the others. Lots of you won't see it, and can't be made to reason. But that injustice has put the hoodoo on the Army's athletics, and the hoodoo will strut along beside the present first class all the way through this year. You'll find it out more and more as time goes on. Just wait until next spring, and see the Navy walk away with the ...
— Dick Prescotts's Fourth Year at West Point - Ready to Drop the Gray for Shoulder Straps • H. Irving Hancock
... Hobhouse, "strut very much when they walk, projecting their chests, throwing back their heads, and moving very slowly from side to side. Elmas (as the officer was called) had this strut more than any man perhaps we saw afterwards; ...
— The Life of Lord Byron • John Galt
... up to it as ever ye will be," he said. "Not that such mumming would have passed in our time. Harry as the Saracen should strut a bit more, and John needn't holler his inside out. Beyond that perhaps you'll do. Have you got ...
— The Return of the Native • Thomas Hardy
... difference, which in other cases of comparison of characters, is often a matter of undecided contest, being as clear in his case as the superiority of stature in some men above others. Johnson did not strut or stand on tip-toe: He only did not stoop. From his earliest years his superiority was perceived and acknowledged[152]. He was from the beginning [Greek: anax andron], a king of men. His schoolfellow, Mr. Hector, has obligingly furnished me with many particulars of his boyish days[153]: ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell
... It corresponded to his lordly strut, and was in keeping with the stentorian tones that shouted ...
— Solomon Crow's Christmas Pockets and Other Tales • Ruth McEnery Stuart
... with that sunshiny face that never stayed clouded long, and chuckled softly. "Judson's on the crest right now. Oh, let him ride. He's doomed, so let him have his little strut. He comes to me a few days backward into the gone on, and says, says he, important and commercial like, 'O'mie, I shall not need you any more. I've got a person to take your place.' 'All right,' I responds, respectful, 'just as you please. When shall I lave off?' 'To-morrow mornin',' he answers, ...
— The Price of the Prairie - A Story of Kansas • Margaret Hill McCarter
... his capture at Lurin and of his all night ride on mule back. The Dictator sent for the officer, who, thinking he was going to be rewarded for his cleverness, entered the reception room with a peacock strut that was admirable. By the time Don Nicholas finished a reprimand, he slunk away like a whipped cur and it is likely he was more careful to investigate ...
— The Story of Paul Boyton - Voyages on All the Great Rivers of the World • Paul Boyton
... dinner, without telling the reason, and paid them their full sums, principal and interest. They presented him with a piece of plate, with an inscription to commemorate this extraordinary instance of true worth; which should make some people in Scotland blush, while, though mean themselves, they strut about under the protection of great alliance, conscious of the wretchedness of numbers who have lost by them, to whom they never think of making reparation, but indulge themselves and their families in most unsuitable ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 5 • Boswell
... was Turkey Proudfoot. He loved to strut about the farmyard and spread his tail, which he claimed was the most elegant one ...
— The Tale of Miss Kitty Cat - Slumber-Town Tales • Arthur Scott Bailey
... figure;" and he walked up and down complacently, slapping his own shrunk shank. There had been a well-shaped leg inside of the ragged linen trousers once, and the conscious merit which infused every atom of his lean little body still culminated in his strut. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, September, 1878 • Various
... just as it is passing out. I recalled the exaggerated military styles for men that came in with the Spanish-American and the South African wars. Those enormously padded shoulders and tight-shaped waists and swelling trouser legs, and the strut and the stoop that went with the whole ugly ensemble, roused my anger. My feelings remained unchanged until some time after the Russo-Japanese War, and then one day it came to me that I must have a suit of ...
— The Patient Observer - And His Friends • Simeon Strunsky
... hour of the chaise's starting and the route so that you can plant your men. I grant that this has the air of a highwayman's attack, but, after all, the uniform covers a host of civil sins, and, really, I do not see a better way to have done with the youth. It will never do to have him strut about Paris boasting that he snatched the sword away from an officer and drubbed him with ...
— The Son of Clemenceau • Alexandre (fils) Dumas
... Author dreads the strut and meen Of new prais'd Poets, having often seen Some of his Fellows, who have writ before, When Nel has danc'd her Jig, steal to the Door, Hear the Pit clap, and with conceit of that Swell, and believe themselves the Lord ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. III • Aphra Behn
... form of miracles, when I lay bare the carefully-concealed thoughts of their hearts, then I am hard. And when I shatter their childish love of the world, their craving for vanities, then I am hard. And when they strut about with their condemnations and their hard-heartedness, trampling the weak underfoot out of greed and malice, haughty as the heathens who bring human sacrifices to their gods, I would fain chastise ...
— I.N.R.I. - A prisoner's Story of the Cross • Peter Rosegger
... but must be aloft; no place will serve them but pinnacles—pinnacles, that they may be speaking in and to the air, that they may be promoting their heady notions, instead of solid truth—not considering that now they are where the devil would have them be. They strut upon their points, their pinnacles; but let them look to it: there is difficult standing upon pinnacles; their neck, their soul, is in danger. We read, God is in his temple, not upon these pinnacles. Psalm ...
— The Riches of Bunyan • Jeremiah Rev. Chaplin
... the idea that he wanted to see you personally. Jay, you did a tremendous thing, man! Damn it, why don't you strut a little? Be—be normal for once! Why, I'd be damned near bursting with pride if one of the Hasturs insisted ...
— The Planet Savers • Marion Zimmer Bradley
... No one can rise from its perusal without perceiving that the modern author has made himself by apt illustration an accomplished actor in ancient history, while the ancient characters are made in their vera effigies to strut on modern stages. His pictures of great actions and great men, noble deeds and nobler princes, are drawn with such masterly perspective of truth, that they serve for all time ; while his portraiture of tyrants, villains, and dishonorable characters are no less ...
— Thomas Hariot • Henry Stevens
... the store an' loafed round a-talkin' about when I was out South, an' arguin' with folks that didn't know nothin', about what the generals done. There! I see me now just as he see me then; but after I had my boy-strut out, I took holt o' the old farm 'long o' father, an' I've made it bounce. Look at them old meadows an' see the herd's grass that come off of 'em last year! I ain't ashamed o' my place now, if I did ...
— A Country Doctor and Selected Stories and Sketches • Sarah Orne Jewett
... we keep our talents hid, or think we favor men because We use the gifts that God has given? The robins never ask applause, Nor count themselves remarkable, nor strut in a superior way, Because their music sweeter is than that God gave unto the jay. Only a man conceited grows as he makes use of talents fine, Forgetting that he merely does the working of ...
— The Path to Home • Edgar A. Guest
... cruel Creator who inflicts pain and pleasure at will then disappears from the stage; and it is well, for he is indeed an unnecessary character, and, worse still, is a mere creature of straw, who cannot even strut upon the boards without being upheld on all sides by dogmatists. Man comes into this world, surely, on the same principle that he lives in one city of the earth or another; at all events, if it is too much to say that this is so, one may safely ask, why is it not so? There is neither for ...
— Light On The Path and Through the Gates of Gold • Mabel Collins
... door and watched the men dispersing, their bundles under their arms, each one making direct for his own front door. "Every woman in Riverfield will have to put down needle and fry-pan and butter-paddle to feed them so plum full of compliments that they'll strut for a week. Bless my heart, honeybunch, we have all got to turn around twice in each track to get ready, and as I'm pretty hefty I must begin right now." With this remark, Aunt Mary departed from the back door to her ...
— The Golden Bird • Maria Thompson Daviess
... familiar to us, and in spite of their Polish titles and faces, and a certain tenderness of nature that is almost feminine, they seem to have good, stout, Saxon stuff in them. Especially where the illustrious knights recount their heroic deeds there is a Falstaffian strut in their performance, and there runs riot ...
— Without Dogma • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... forthcoming enabled Davis to display a great deal of bravado on approaching what was supposed to be his end. As the reader can readily imagine, from what I have heretofore said of him, Davis was the man to improve to the utmost every opportunity to strut his little hour, and he did it in this instance. He posed, attitudinized and vapored, so that the camp and the country were filled with stories of the wonderful coolness with which he contemplated ...
— Andersonville, complete • John McElroy
... think of the story-teller as a good fellow standing at a great window overlooking a busy street or a picturesque square, and reporting with gusto to the comrade in the rear of the room what of mirth or sadness he sees; he hints at the policeman's strut, the organ-grinder's shrug, the schoolgirl's gaiety, with a gesture or two which is born of an irresistible impulse to imitate; but he never leaves his fascinating post to carry the imitation ...
— How to Tell Stories to Children - And Some Stories to Tell • Sara Cone Bryant
... again. The stove went out into the airy kitchen, and a larger flock of geese squawked in the weeds and ditches. Again Andy and Jim drove the cows, Andy of a morning with a dreamy stroll, and Jim of an evening with a strut that was intended for a military gait. Who had told little Jim of West Point, the family did not know. But he had been told ...
— The Widow O'Callaghan's Boys • Gulielma Zollinger
... seria agit et praecepta pleno effundit penu, ad quae componere vitarn oporteat; in sententiis quanta gravitas, orationis quanta vis, quam probe et meditate cum hominum ingenia moresque novisse omnia testantur." We feel sure that our Umbrian fun-maker would strut in public and laugh in private, could he hear such an encomium of his lofty moral aims. For it is our ultimate purpose to prove that fun-maker Plautus was primarily and well-nigh exclusively ...
— The Dramatic Values in Plautus • Wilton Wallace Blancke
... and from the ends of the mark run lines towards the end at an angle of 45 degrees. Cut along these lines, and lay one of the edges just cut up against C, and flush with the outer edge of L1 (Fig. 5). Tack the strut on temporarily to both legs, turn the trestle over, and draw your pencil (which should have a sharp point) along the angles which the strut makes with the legs. This gives you the limits of the ...
— Things To Make • Archibald Williams
... of juniper juice warmed his vitals and his breath. Good drop of gin, that was. His frocktails winked in bright sunshine to his fat strut. ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... Plaza, with winter twilight hovering outside and faint drums down-stairs... they strut and fret in the lobby, taking another cocktail, scrupulously attired and waiting. Then the swinging doors revolve and three bundles of fur mince in. The theatre comes afterward; then a table at the Midnight Frolic—of ...
— This Side of Paradise • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... say the Female and the Duffer strut On sacred Greens where Morris used to putt; Himself a natural Hazard now, alas! That nice Hand quiet now, ...
— The Golfer's Rubaiyat • H. W. Boynton
... here, got but a poor scurvy wretched living there below. And, on the contrary, the philosophers and others, who in this world had been altogether indigent and wanting, were great lords there in their turn. I saw Diogenes there strut it out most pompously, and in great magnificence, with a rich purple gown on him, and a golden sceptre in his right hand. And, which is more, he would now and then make Alexander the Great mad, so enormously would he abuse him when he had not well patched his ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... at the emporium door and watched the men dispersing, their bundles under their arms, each one making direct for his own front door. "Every woman in Riverfield will have to put down needle and fry-pan and butter-paddle to feed them so plum full of compliments that they'll strut for a week. Bless my heart, honeybunch, we have all got to turn around twice in each track to get ready, and as I'm pretty hefty I must begin right now." With this remark, Aunt Mary departed from the back door to her house ...
— The Golden Bird • Maria Thompson Daviess
... shone as vividly and beautifully as on the preceding Sunday, to Titmouse's saddened eye there seemed a sort of gloom everywhere. Up and down the Park he and Huckaback walked, towards the close of the afternoon; but Titmouse had not so elastic a strut as before. He felt empty and sinking. Everybody seemed to know what a sad pretender he was: and the friends quitted the magic circle much earlier than had been usual with Titmouse. What with the fatigue of a long day's saunter, the vexation of having had but a hasty, inferior, and ...
— Ten Thousand a-Year. Volume 1. • Samuel Warren
... gets awry, or a Roman has trouble with his foolish garters. Few men or women can resist mumming; they fancy themselves as somebody else, dead or living. Yet these seem happy in this nonsense. The indolent days appear to have deadened hatred, malice, and all uncharitableness. They shall strut and fret their hour upon this little stage. Let that sprightly girl forget the sudden death which made her an orphan; the nervous broker his faithless wife; the grey-haired soldier his silly and haunting sins; the bankrupt ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... protruding eyes. Some settle on the Scotch moors, where they industriously waddle themselves thin. Others take short flights to neighboring bathing-places, where they splash in the water with their goslings, strut proudly on the sands, display a tendency to pair, and are often preyed upon by the foxes which also resort to those localities. Many more cross the Channel, and may be heard during two months cackling more or less loudly in every large ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 118, August, 1867 • Various
... for anything, the insolent wink at every modest girl, and the coarse joke running along apish mouths—even before dark crime begins, native antipathy is sown and thrives. And now for nearly four years this coast had never been free from the arrogant strut, the clanking spur, and the loud guffaw, which in every age and every clime have been considered the stamp of valour by plough-boys at the paps of Bellona. So weary was the neighbourhood of this race, new conscripts always keeping up the pest, that even the good M. Jalais ...
— Springhaven - A Tale of the Great War • R. D. Blackmore
... of the car shows a radical departure from anything that had been previously attempted, and as a model an ordinary boat was taken. In shape it is as nearly streamline as is practicable, having a keel and ribs of wood with curved longitudinal members, the strut ends being housed in steel sockets. The whole frame is braced with piano wire set diagonally between the struts. The car is floored from end to end, and the sides are enclosed with 8-ply wood covered ...
— British Airships, Past, Present, and Future • George Whale
... part, but the whole play—he has to undergo a severe physical training, part of which consists in standing for an hour every day with his mouth wide open, to inhale the morning air. He is taught to sing, to walk, to strut, and to perform a variety of gymnastic exercises, such as standing on his head, or turning somersaults. His first classification is as male or female actor, no women having been allowed to perform since the days of the Emperor Ch'ien Lung (A.D. 1736-1796), whose mother was an ...
— The Civilization Of China • Herbert A. Giles
... or brickwork designed to receive and resist the lateral pressure of an arch, vault or strut. When built outside a wall it is ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... differently occupied. Strolling down to the lake shore, he amused himself for a time by watching the waves as they dashed against the pebbly beach, and by fancying that each of them reflected the image of Leffie's bright, round face. Then buttoning up his coat he would strut back and forth, admiring his shadow, and thinking how much more the coat became him than it did his young master. It had been given to him by Dr. Lacey, with the order "not to wear it out in two days"; so Rondeau had not worn it before since the morning when he gave his master one ...
— Tempest and Sunshine • Mary J. Holmes
... it," she said slowly. "Perhaps that's why life is sometimes a huge joke and sometimes nothing but sadness and disillusionment. We play our little game of make-believe and strut around proudly, making ourselves, as well as others, think that we amount to something and then comes death, like a curtain; the footlights go out and where are we? Who ...
— Spring Street - A Story of Los Angeles • James H. Richardson
... hurdy-gurdies sound. Till sinks the sun—then stop—the poor man's fete Begins not early, and must end not late. Whilst Paris belle in costliest silk array'd, Runs up, and walks in stateliest parade; Each comely damsel insolently kens; (So silver pheasants strut 'midst modest hens!) And marvels much what men can find t' admire, In such coarse hoydens, ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 365, March, 1846 • Various
... ever uses a sword, nor does he strut about adorned with all his crosses and medals, nor does he wear the resplendent uniforms of other days. On the contrary, his uniform is ugly and dirt coloured, and innocent ...
— Youth and Egolatry • Pio Baroja
... every one around him—he is up to the sharps, down upon the flats, and not to be done. But in looking round you may perceive men booted and spurred, who perhaps never crossed a horse, and some with whips in their hands who deserve it on their backs—they hum lively airs, whistle and strut about with their quizzing-glasses in their hands, playing a tattoo upon their boots, and shewing themselves off with as many airs as if they were real actors engaged in the farce, that is to say, ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... presumptuous spirit at war with all the passive worth of mankind. The independence which they boast of despises habit, and time-honoured forms of subordination; it consists in breaking old ties upon new temptations; in casting off the modest garb of private obligation to strut about in the glittering armour of public virtue; in sacrificing, with jacobinical infatuation, the near to the remote, and preferring, to what has been known and tried, that which has no distinct existence, even in imagination; in renouncing, with voluble tongue and vain heart, every thing ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... this also has its characters privileged by birth, clothed in purple, dazzling with embroidery, "adorned with lofty plumes," who strut pretentiously; "its idle rich," covered with robes of gold of rustling splendour, who display their diamonds, their topazes and their sapphires; who gleam with fire and shine like mirrors, magnificent of mien; ...
— Fabre, Poet of Science • Dr. G.V. (C.V.) Legros
... wanted the fleetness, and whose arm lacked the strength, of a man's, but he was nevertheless the favourite of the Great Spirit. He was less in stature than a man, and crooked withal, his height being little more than that of the tall bird[A] which loves to strut along the sandy shore, picking up the fish as they flutter joyously along in the beams of the warm and cheering sun. But if he was diminutive in body he was great in his soul—what others lacked in wisdom he supplied. His name was Ohguesse, which ...
— Traditions of the North American Indians, Vol. 3 (of 3) • James Athearn Jones
... next day, all the third day, if the river was wide, they would strut and cluck along the shore, making up ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... do?" he went on scornfully. "She couldn't shoot or run or fight. All she did was to lie around or strut about with a veil around her head and a golden girdle (sensible costume!) and serve the hero with ambrosia and ruddy nectar. I've never eaten ambrosia, but I'm pretty sure it was some sweet, sticky stuff, like her." ...
— Paradise Garden - The Satirical Narrative of a Great Experiment • George Gibbs
... remained to bear the brunt of the late ambassador's malice, and to engage at a little later period in hottest controversy with him, personal and political. "Why should van der Myle strut about, with his arms akimbo like a peacock?" complained Aerssens one day in confused metaphor. A question not ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... three-pence hight. One nymph, to whom fat Sir John Falstaff's lean, 10 There with her single person fills the scene. Another, with long use and age decay'd, Dived here old woman, and rose there a maid. Our trusty doorkeepers of former time There strut and swagger in heroic rhyme. Tack but a copper-lace to drugget suit, And there's a hero made without dispute: And that, which was a capon's tail before, Becomes a plume for Indian emperor. But all his subjects, to express the care ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol II - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden
... old.... In my day, it is true, we waited until a man was sixty before we called him an old man. They are going faster, nowadays.... Wireless telegraphy, aeroplanes.... A generation is more quickly exploded.... Poor devils! They won't last long! Let them despise us and strut about ...
— Jean-Christophe Journey's End • Romain Rolland
... your law"—and "Sir, your eloquence—" "Yours, Cowper's manner"—and "yours, Talbot's sense." Thus we dispose of all poetic merit, Yours Milton's genius, and mine Homer's spirit. Call Tibbald Shakespeare, and he'll swear the nine, Dear Cibber! never matched one ode of thine. Lord! how we strut through Merlin's cave, to see No poets there, but Stephen, you, and me. Walk with respect behind, while we at ease Weave laurel crowns, and take what names we please. "My dear Tibullus!" if that will not do, "Let me be Horace, ...
— Essay on Man - Moral Essays and Satires • Alexander Pope
... shrapnel and yet escape serious injury. The mere puncture, even the repeated puncture, of the wings did no damage. Only lucky shots that might pierce the fuel tank, hit the engine, touch an aileron or an important stay or strut, could affect the machine, while in due course of time a light armour on the bottom of the fusillage or body of the machine in which the pilot sat, protected the operator to some degree. Other considerations, however, finally led to the ...
— Aircraft and Submarines - The Story of the Invention, Development, and Present-Day - Uses of War's Newest Weapons • Willis J. Abbot
... multiply the rows Of radiant beauties, and accomplish'd beaus, At once confounded into sober sense, He feels his pristine insignificance: And blinking, blund'ring, from the general quiz Retreats, "to ponder on the thing he is." By pride inflated, and by praise allured, Small Authors thus strut forth, and thus get cured; But, Critics, hear I an angel pleads for me, ...
— Poems (1828) • Thomas Gent
... my own act, and partly with the help of Destiny (the greater jester than I) I have stripped myself of all these garments of life which not only enabled me to strut peacock-fashion in the pleasant places of the world, but also ...
— Simon the Jester • William J. Locke
... is different with the "bogus diploma" trade. Business and not vanity is doubtless the ruling motive with the foreigners who strut in plumage bought of the Philadelphia "university." The diploma of M. D. is worth its price for display before the eyes of the patients waiting in the "doctor's" office, while to Squeers of Dotheboys Hall the degree of A. M. is good for at least three new pupils, and Ph. D. for a dozen. I presume ...
— The Galaxy - Vol. 23, No. 1 • Various
... strutting it finely," said the innkeeper, in a mocking tone. "And dost thou strut now? Nay, verily; but thou art as meek as any whipped cock. And since it was by thy strut that men did recognize thee, how shall they make thee out when thy fine strut is gone? Wherefore serve the strangers, and ...
— A Boy's Ride • Gulielma Zollinger
... phoenix," said Hope, dryly. "Praise is sweet, especially behind one's back. So pray go on, unless you have something better to say to each other;" and Hope retired briskly into his office. But when the lovers took him at his word, and began to strut up and down hand in hand, and murmur love's music into each other's ears, he could not take his eyes off them, and his thoughts were sad. She had only known that young fellow a few months, yet she loved him passionately, and ...
— A Perilous Secret • Charles Reade
... true; With our laborious hiving What men call treasure, and the gods call dross, Life seems a jest of Fate's contriving, 80 Only secure in every one's conniving, A long account of nothings paid with loss, Where we poor puppets, jerked by unseen wires, After our little hour of strut and rave, With all our pasteboard passions and desires, 85 Loves, hates, ambitions, and immortal fires, Are tossed pell-mell together in the grave. But stay! no age was e'er degenerate, Unless men held it at too ...
— The Vision of Sir Launfal - And Other Poems • James Russell Lowell
... overrun with "Smartness": Smart pages, smart messengers, smart cabmen, smart publicans, smart politicians, smart women, smart scoundrels! Greatness became commonplace here, and Mr. Douglas might drink at Willard's Bar, with none so poor to do him reverence, or General Winfield Scott strut like a colossus along "the Avenue," and the sleepy negroes upon their backs would give him the attention of only one eye. It was interesting, to notice how rapidly provincial eminence lost caste here. ...
— Campaigns of a Non-Combatant, - and His Romaunt Abroad During the War • George Alfred Townsend
... statements, and the indifference with which she neglected to improve any strong points in her own favor—the indifference, as every heart perceived, of despairing grief. Then came the manners on the hostile side—the haggard consciousness of guilt, the drooping tone, the bravado and fierce strut which sought to dissemble all this. Not one amongst all the witnesses, assembled on that side, had (by all agreement) the bold natural tone of conscious uprightness. Hence it could not be surprising that ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... popular at court, grew jealous of his rival's success, and alarmed lest it should lead to extraordinary advancement. When the Marquis of Rockingham was posed before Sir Joshua for the full-length picture, engraved by Fisher, the nobleman asked the painter if he had not given a strut to the left leg. 'My lord,' replied Sir Joshua with a smile, 'I wish to show a leg with ...
— Art in England - Notes and Studies • Dutton Cook
... with such fine baby faces, That strut in a garter and star,— Have they, under their tambour and laces, The kind honest heart of ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various
... twofold. America is ruining our agriculture; and soon, I suppose, we have to send to China for labourers. Why, those who do not emigrate demand twice as much to-day for half the work they used to do five years ago; and those who return from America strut about like country gentlemen deploring the ...
— The Book of Khalid • Ameen Rihani
... and happily with his wife the Princess. His merriest time was when the Grand Vizier visited him in the afternoon; and when the Caliph was in particularly high spirits he would condescend to mimic the Vizier's appearance when he was a stork. He would strut gravely, and with well-stiffened legs, up and down the room, chattering, and showing how he had vainly bowed to the east and cried 'Mu...Mu...' The Caliphess and her children were always much entertained by this performance; but when the Caliph went on nodding and bowing, and calling ...
— The Green Fairy Book • Various
... other birds, besides the yellow blossoms of the wattle-tree and many light-green ferns. In this ingeniously contrived sylvan retreat the feathered architect runs about and holds a sort of carnival, to which others of his tribe gather. Here the little party chirp vigorously, and strut about in a most ...
— Foot-prints of Travel - or, Journeyings in Many Lands • Maturin M. Ballou
... go through their genuflexions put me in a good mood for an introduction to the pigeons, which I longed to have for friends—strange little stately ruffling things, almost as mechanical in their strut as the figures of the clock; so metallic, too, in their lustre, that I could have believed them made of ...
— My Friend the Chauffeur • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... salved and puffed at the apothecary's to conceal his muddy complexion, he was reckoned, in the Mercato Nuovo, as little better than an ill-conditioned braggadoccio! His shortness of stature he sought to atone for by his accentuation of the Florentine pout and the Tuscan strut—he was well known, too, for his contemptuous jokes at the expense ...
— The Tragedies of the Medici • Edgcumbe Staley
... between the bewigged and powdered formalism of the eighteenth century, and the outburst of new ideals which was to follow. His Ossian is a cross between Pope's Homer and Byron's Childe Harold. His heroes and heroines are not on their native heath, and are uncertain whether to mince and strut with Pope or to follow nature with Rousseau's noble savages and Saint Pierre's Paul and Virginia. The time has gone when it was heresy to cast doubt upon the genuineness of MacPherson's epic, but ...
— The Religion of the Ancient Celts • J. A. MacCulloch
... teachers wanting in talent! We see and hear a great many virtuosos, old and young, with and without talent, renowned and obscure. They either play in an entirely mechanical manner and with faulty and miserable touch, or else, which is less bearable, they strut with unendurable affectation and produce musical monstrosities. In order to conceal their indistinct mode of execution, they throw themselves upon the two pedals, and ...
— Piano and Song - How to Teach, How to Learn, and How to Form a Judgment of - Musical Performances • Friedrich Wieck
... it swooped. With a hoarse croak it lit on the snow at a wary distance, and began to strut back and forth. Presently, its suspicions at rest, the raven advanced, and with eager beak began its dreadful meal. By this time another, which had seen the first one's swoop, was in view through the ether; then another; then another. ...
— The Blazed Trail • Stewart Edward White
... exterior. This is of course an extreme example and does not represent the usual practice, but it brings sharply to consciousness the well known fact that for these buildings we have substantially one method of construction—that of the vertical strut, and the horizontal "fill"—while in style they appear as Grecian, Roman, Renaissance, Gothic, Modern French and what not, according to the whim ...
— Architecture and Democracy • Claude Fayette Bragdon
... could not see the difference between it and one not worth ten shillings. The pouting pigeons, who have goitres, as Mrs. Marcet said, are frightful; they put in their heads behind these bags of wind, and strut about as if proud of deformity. We saw four Antwerp pigeons, one of which went, Sir John told us, from Tower Hill to Antwerp ...
— The Life and Letters of Maria Edgeworth, Vol. 2 • Maria Edgeworth
... seventy-five years ago. Then the Company and the Five Families got together and marketed a luxury item to the galaxy. You know how every super-jet big shot on twenty-five planets wants to say he's hunted on Khatka. And if he can point out a graz head on his wall, or wear a tail bracelet, he's able to strut with the best. To holiday on Khatka is both fabulous and fashionable—and very, very profitable for the natives and for Combine who sells transportation to ...
— Voodoo Planet • Andrew North
... wish I had feathers, a fine sweeping gown, And a delicate face, and could strut about Town!" - "My dear—a raw country girl, such as you be, Isn't equal to that. You ain't ...
— Poems of the Past and the Present • Thomas Hardy
... did ye toil, and fagg, and fume, and fret, And—what the bashful muse would blush to say. But, now, your painful tremors are all o'er, Cloath'd in the glories of a full-sleev'd gown, Ye strut majestically up and down, And now ye fagg, and now ye fear, no more! ...
— A Collection of College Words and Customs • Benjamin Homer Hall
... is timid, but the old gobbler rather likes to quarrel. He is a vain bird, and it is funny to see him strut up and down, with his tail spread out, and his wings drawn down, his feathers ruffled, and his neck drawn back, and to hear him puff, and cry, ...
— Friends in Feathers and Fur, and Other Neighbors - For Young Folks • James Johonnot
... catch some mean, unworthy prey, And rests, deep-sorrowing, On the low rock beside the stream. Up to the oak he looks, Looks up to heaven, While in his noble eye there gleams a tear. Then, rustling through the myrtle boughs, behold, There comes a wanton pair of doves, Who settle down, and, nodding, strut O'er the gold sands beside the stream, And gradually approach; Their red-tinged eyes, so full of love, Soon see the inward-sorrowing one. The male, inquisitively social, leaps On the next bush, and looks Upon him kindly and complacently. "Thou sorrowest," murmurs he: "Be of good cheer, my friend! ...
— The Poems of Goethe • Goethe
... and as he talked, in straight lines; but before he turned the corner he glanced up and down the empty sidewalk in a quick, furtive fashion, and after he had swung into the side street a trifle of the steam seemed gone from his stiff-spined, hard-heeled gait. It ceased to be a strut; it became ...
— The Escape of Mr. Trimm - His Plight and other Plights • Irvin S. Cobb
... works upon tactics, he drew up a simpler system for the use of his men. Throwing aside the old ideas of soldierly bearing, he taught them to use vigor, promptness, and ease. Discarding the stiff buckram strut of martial tradition, he educated them to move with the loafing insouciance of the Indian, or the graceful ease of the panther. He tore off their choking collars and binding coats, and invented a uniform which, though ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 45, July, 1861 • Various
... an old cock would separate from the pack, and running out to some distance, would leap upon a rock that was there; then, after dropping his wings, flirting with his spread tail, erecting the ruff upon his neck, and throwing back his head, he would swell and strut upon the rock, exhibiting himself like a diminutive turkey-cock. After manoeuvring in this way for a few moments, he would commence flapping his wings in short quick strokes, which grew more rapid as ...
— Popular Adventure Tales • Mayne Reid
... divided into lateral and medial groups (Figs. 5, 6). The lateral division consisted of temporal and masseter masses. The temporal arose from the upper rim of the temporal opening, from the lateral wall of the skull behind the postorbital strut, and from the dorsal roof of the skull. The bones of origin included jugal, postorbital, postfrontal, parietal and squamosal. This division may also have arisen from the fascia covering the temporal opening (Romer ...
— The Adductor Muscles of the Jaw In Some Primitive Reptiles • Richard C. Fox
... of costs and deputy sheriffs, but I do know that Mr. Aristabulus Bragg is an amusing mixture of strut, humility, roguery and cleverness. He is waiting all this time in the drawing- room, and you had better see him, as he may, now, be almost considered part of the family. You know he has been living in the house at Templeton, ever since he was installed by ...
— Home as Found • James Fenimore Cooper
... a boy being praised by his elders, Baby started to strut to the Davis cabin, but quickly fell into a limping walk and whimpered ...
— A Virginia Scout • Hugh Pendexter
... seem admitted ad eundem. I fetch up past opportunities. I can rise at the chapel-bell, and dream that it rings for me. In moods of humility I can be a Sizar, or a Servitor. When the peacock vein rises, I strut a Gentleman Commoner. In graver moments, I proceed Master of Arts. Indeed I do not think I am much unlike that respectable character. I have seen your dim-eyed vergers, and bed-makers in spectacles drop a bow or curtsey as I pass, wisely mistaking me for something of the sort. ...
— Charles Lamb • Walter Jerrold
... Jerome. The doctor was moving with his stately strut to the door. Suddenly the boy, in a great outburst of boldness, flung himself before this great man of his childhood and arrested his progress. "Oh, sir, tell me," he begged—"tell me what you're ...
— Jerome, A Poor Man - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... in Mason's English Collection, one of my schoolbooks. The first two books I ever read in private, and which gave me more pleasure than any two books I ever read since, were "The Life of Hannibal" and "The History of Sir William Wallace." Hannibal gave my young ideas such a turn that I used to strut in raptures up and down after the recruiting drum and bagpipe and wish myself tall enough to be a soldier; while the story of Wallace poured a Scottish prejudice into my veins, which will boil along there till the floodgates of life shut ...
— Stories of Achievement, Volume IV (of 6) - Authors and Journalists • Various
... little hen goes "cut cut cut." The rooster he goes "cock a doodle doo! You want me and I want you, But I'm up here and you're down there." The little hen goes "cut cut cut," The rooster he steps with a funny little strut, He cocks his eye, gives a funny little sound, He looks at the hen, he looks all around, He flaps his wings, he beats the air, He stretches his neck, then flies to the ground. "Cock a doodle, cock a doodle, cock a doodle doo! Now you have ...
— Here and Now Story Book - Two- to seven-year-olds • Lucy Sprague Mitchell
... reference by Luther to the lessons he learned in childhood from his experience of poverty at home, in his remarks in later life, on the sons of poor men, who by sheer hard work raise themselves from obscurity, and have much to endure, and no time to strut and swagger, but must be humble and learn to be silent and to trust in God, and to whom God also has given good ...
— Life of Luther • Julius Koestlin
... senate (if things hit, And thou at Stockbridge[4] wert not bit) Must feel thy eloquence and fire, Approve thy schemes, thy wit admire, Thee with immortal honours crown, While, patriot-like, thou'lt strut and frown. What though by enemies 'tis said, The laurel, which adorns thy head, Must one day come in competition, By virtue of some sly petition: Yet mum for that; hope still the best, Nor let such cares disturb thy rest. Methinks I hear thee loud as trumpet, As bagpipe ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift
... the pulse as if merely caressing the slender wrist. Then he began to describe his bailiff's cottage, with woodbine round the porch, the farm-yard, the bee-hives, the pretty duck-pond with an osier island, and the great China gander who had a pompous strut, which made him the droll est creature possible. And Sophy should go there in a day or two, and be as happy as one of the bees, but not so busy. Sophy listened very earnestly, very gravely, and then sliding her hand from the Mayor, caught hold of her grandfather's arm firmly, and said, "And you, ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... becoming to him. It corresponded to his lordly strut, and was in keeping with the stentorian tones ...
— Solomon Crow's Christmas Pockets and Other Tales • Ruth McEnery Stuart
... then seeing that Helen was gazing at him inquiringly once more he added, gravely, "One could be well content to let vain people strut their little hour and be as wonderful as they chose, if it were not for the painful fact that they are eating the bread of honest men, and that millions are toiling and starving in order that they may have ease and luxury. That is such a very dreadful thing to know that sometimes one ...
— King Midas • Upton Sinclair
... his delight. He "was not sure"; "was not quite disposed to yield so great a favor to this far-away duke"; "the count is young; no need for haste," and so on. The duke had no intention whatever of sending such messages to Burgundy; he simply wished to strut before his little court. Charles most certainly would receive a pompous and affirmative answer. The poor duchess, torn by contending emotions of mother-love and family pride, was flattered by Burgundy's offer; ...
— Yolanda: Maid of Burgundy • Charles Major
... year, that of the feast of him whom we call Osiris, but whom other nations have known and know by different names, it is given to us once more to be mortal for an hour, and, though we be but shadows, to renew the loves and hates of our long-perished flesh. Here for an hour we strut in our forgotten pomp; the crowns that were ours still adorn our brows, and once more we seem to listen to our people's praise. Our hopes are the hopes of mortal life, our foes are the foes we feared, our gods grow real again, and our lovers whisper in our ears. Moreover, ...
— Smith and the Pharaohs, and Other Tales • Henry Rider Haggard
... he watched the little tyrant strut off to his class. How long would he be able to keep hands ...
— A Dog with a Bad Name • Talbot Baines Reed
... entirely an outcome of vanity and emulation, and not a manifestation of the esthetic sense, is made clear by the further observations of Livingstone. Men who could not afford so many of these copper rings would still, he found, strut along as if they had them. "That is the way," he was informed, "in which they show off their lordship in these parts." Among the Mojave Indians "nose-jewels designate a man of wealth and rank," and elaborate headdresses of feathers are the insignia of the chiefs[93]. Champlain says that ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck
... when both of them were members of the House of Representatives. In a controversy that took place between them on the floor of the House Mr. Blaine referred to Mr. Conkling as the member from New York with the "turkey gobbler strut." That remark made the two men enemies for life. That remark wounded Mr. Conkling's pride; and he could never be induced to forgive the one who had so ...
— The Facts of Reconstruction • John R. Lynch
... dancers![21] Adieu to Peter—whom no fault's in, But could not teach a colonel waltzing; Adieu, ye females fraught with graces! Adieu red coats, and redder faces! Adieu the supercilious air Of all that strut en militaire![22] 20 I go—but God knows when, or why, To smoky towns and cloudy sky, To things (the honest truth to say) As bad—but in ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Vol. 3 (of 7) • Lord Byron
... for accurate observation far higher than for any other quality, forgive (if you can) the INSUFFERABLE vanity of my copying the last sentence in his note: "I regard your Monograph on Chile as, without exception, one of the finest specimens of Geological enquiry." I feel inclined to strut like a Turkey-cock! ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume II • Francis Darwin
... moved almost to tears by the hard fate which through four long acts kept her from the hungering arms of the so beautiful Leandre, howled its delight over the ignominy of Pantaloon, the buffooneries of his sprightly lackey Harlequin, and the thrasonical strut and bellowing fierceness ...
— Scaramouche - A Romance of the French Revolution • Rafael Sabatini
... happening in the air, Charging the very texture of the gray With something luminous and rare? The night goes out like an ill-parcelled fire, And, as one lights a candle, it is day. The extinguisher that fain would strut for spire On the formal little church is not yet green Across the water: but the house-tops nigher, The corner-lines, the chimneys—look how clean, How new, how naked! See the batch of boats, Here at the stairs, washed in the fresh-sprung beam! And ...
— The Song of the Sword - and Other Verses • W. E. Henley
... great day came when old Mother Nature arrived to inspect the kingdom of old King Bear. All the little meadow people and all the little forest folk hastened to pay their respects to old Mother Nature and to strut about in their fine clothes—all but Mr. Toad. He was so busy that he didn't even know that old Mother ...
— Mother West Wind's Children • Thornton W. Burgess
... wide mothe, as he calls it, and gave me the letter; but with a strut, rather than a bow; and then sidled off like one of widow Sorlings's dunghill cocks, exulting after a great feat performed. And all the time that I was holding up the billet to the light, to try to get at its contents without breaking the seal, [for, ...
— Clarissa, Volume 5 (of 9) • Samuel Richardson
... shall hear later," said one, "for 'tis said Jack Oxon was there, being on a visit to his kinsman, Lord Eldershawe, who has been the young lady's playmate from her childhood. Jack will come back primed and will strut about for a week and boast of his fortunes whether he can ...
— His Grace of Osmonde • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... partial manner; and that we must take the whole of society to find the whole man. Unfortunately the unit has been too minutely subdivided, and many faculties are practically lost for want of use. "The state of society is one in which the members have suffered amputation from the trunk, and strut about so many walking monsters,—a good finger, a neck, a stomach, an elbow, but never a man.... Man is thus metamorphosed into a thing, into many things.... The priest becomes a form; the attorney a statute book; the mechanic a machine; the sailor ...
— Ralph Waldo Emerson • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... painting, and forgive that of a Berlioz and a Chateaubriand because of the many beauties, the veritable grandeurs of their styles, we cannot quite learn to love yours. For in you the disease was aggravated by the presence of another powerful incentive to strut and posture and externalize and inflate your art. For you were the virtuoso. You were the man whose entire being was pointed to achieve an effect. You were the man whose life is lived on the concert-platform, whose values are those of the concert-room, ...
— Musical Portraits - Interpretations of Twenty Modern Composers • Paul Rosenfeld
... devour mice. If they should swallow a shrew, which is very rare, they almost immediately reject it. They will sit hour after hour watching at the mouth of a hole, and after seizing their prey, bring it to their favourites in the house to show their prowess, and strut about with a great air of self-satisfaction. They generally have a great dislike to water; but they have been known to surmount this when they could catch a fish, for which species of food they have a great preference. The accusation that they play with you one minute, ...
— Anecdotes of the Habits and Instinct of Animals • R. Lee
... great Carthagenian general, and a Life of Wallace, the great Scottish hero; this last being lent him by the blacksmith. These books excited little Robert so much that if ever a recruiting sergeant came to his village, he would strut up and down in raptures after the drum and bagpipe, and long to be tall enough to be a soldier. The story of Wallace, too, awoke in his heart a love of Scotland and all things Scottish, which remained with him his whole life through. At times he would steal ...
— English Literature For Boys And Girls • H.E. Marshall
... Partridge and tried for a long time to learn to strut. At last the Partridge turned around and asked the Crow ...
— Types of Children's Literature • Edited by Walter Barnes
... keep our talents hid, or think we favor men because We use the gifts that God has given? The robins never ask applause, Nor count themselves remarkable, nor strut in a superior way, Because their music sweeter is than that God gave unto the jay. Only a man conceited grows as he makes use of talents fine, Forgetting that he merely does the working of ...
— The Path to Home • Edgar A. Guest
... manage—that is just it," he angrily retorted. "You two boys will strut about like roosters showing what good fighters you are, and get blown up through the insides! Have I not seen it often? Bah!" He ran his hands through his hair. "Why is it, when brains are as easily cultivated as ...
— Wings of the Wind • Credo Harris
... and thievishly resolved To escape the impending famine, often scared As oft return, a pert voracious kind. Clean riddance quickly made, one only care Remains to each, the search of sunny nook, Or shed impervious to the blast. Resigned To sad necessity, the cock foregoes His wonted strut; and, wading at their head, With well-considered steps, seems to resent His altered gait ...
— The Aldine, Vol. 5, No. 1., January, 1872 - A Typographic Art Journal • Various
... our dress. Make a man get into seedy, worn-out rags, and he will skulk along with his head hanging down, like a man going out to fetch his own supper beer. But deck out the same article in gorgeous raiment and fine linen, and he will strut down the main thoroughfare, swinging his cane and looking at the girls as ...
— Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow • Jerome K. Jerome
... it did not appeal powerfully to the imaginations of the frequenters of the Globe, the Rose, and the Fortune. They had no such feeling as we have in regard to the pasteboard kings and queens who strut their brief hour before us in anachronic absurdity. But, besides that he wrote in the spirit of his age, Shakespeare wrote in the language and the literary methods of his time. This is not more evident in the contemporary poets than in the chroniclers of that day. They all delighted ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... hawk's! Zounds, why does the creature strut about with its toes so far apart? Stop, bandit! He'll peck that little dove to death. As true as I live, the saucy rascal ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... this has the air of a highwayman's attack, but, after all, the uniform covers a host of civil sins, and, really, I do not see a better way to have done with the youth. It will never do to have him strut about Paris boasting that he snatched the sword away from an officer and drubbed him with ...
— The Son of Clemenceau • Alexandre (fils) Dumas
... outdone in generosity, offers his life to his enemy and preserver, giving him his horn and promising to come to meet his death at its summons. There is the same fault here which is felt in Hugo's novels. Motives are exaggerated, the dramatis personae strut. They are rather over-dramatic in their poses—-melodramatic, in fact—and do unlikely things. But this fault is the fault of a great nature, grandeur exalted into grandiosity, till the heroes of these plays, "Hernani," ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Nineteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... to be considered the tallest individual in the kingdom, and indeed nothing could be more amusing than to witness the manner in which he held up his head while he walked, or sat, or stood. In fact his walk was a complete strut, to which the pride, arising from the consciousness of, or rather the belief in, his extraordinary height gave an extremely ludicrous appearance. Poor Tom was about five feet nine in height, but imagined himself to be at least a foot higher. His whole family were certainly tall, and ...
— Willy Reilly - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... but lived in villages, and assembled as necessity demanded. As they were completely beyond the sphere of Polish influence, they knew nothing about "knightly honour" and similar conceptions of Western chivalry; they even adopted many Tartar customs, and loved in time of peace to strut about in gorgeous Tartar costumes. Besides this, they were nearly all emigrants from Great Russia, and mostly Old Ritualists or Sectarians, whilst the Zaporovians ...
— Russia • Donald Mackenzie Wallace
... shade of the palace wall, Where the peacocks strut, Where the queen may have heard ...
— Poems • Elizabeth Stoddard
... had to come to him from the OUTSIDE. And so, when he heard bravery extolled and cowardice derided, it woke him up. He was ashamed. Perhaps his sweetheart turned up her nose and said, "I am told that you are a coward!" It was not HE that turned over the new leaf—she did it for him. HE must not strut around in the merit ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... joys of La Valette, Adieu, sirocco, sun, and sweat; Adieu, ye females without graces, Adieu, red coats and redder faces; Adieu, the supercilious air Of those that strut ...
— Notes in North Africa - Being a Guide to the Sportsman and Tourist in Algeria and Tunisia • W. G. Windham
... the hills; A Tyrian light the village fills; A wider sunrise in the dawn; A deeper twilight on the lawn; A print of a vermilion foot; A purple finger on the slope; A flippant fly upon the pane; A spider at his trade again; An added strut in chanticleer; A flower expected everywhere; An axe shrill singing in the woods; Fern-odors on untravelled roads, — All this, and more I cannot tell, A furtive look you know as well, And Nicodemus' mystery Receives its ...
— Poems: Three Series, Complete • Emily Dickinson
... turned a fainter and more delicate hue as they receded, till, far away, they looked like mottled glass. Only yesterday he had laughed with me, talked and smoked with me, and now he was dead. A rage pervaded me. We are puny things, we, who strut the highways of the world, parading a so-called wisdom. There is only one philosophy; it is ...
— Arms and the Woman • Harold MacGrath
... God, having no warrant for more, canst thou believe it innocent to counterfeit kings and queens? Supposest thou that if the impression of their faces on a farthing be felonious and rope-worthy, the imitation of head and body, voice and bearing, plume and strut, crown and mantle, and everything else that maketh them royal and glorious, be aught less? Perpend, young man, perpend! Consider, who among inferior mortals shall imitate them becomingly? Dreamest thou they talk and act like checkmen at Banbury fair? How can ...
— Citation and Examination of William Shakspeare • Walter Savage Landor
... without the usual strut or swim: it corresponds with the biblical walking or going softly. (I Kings xxi. 27; Isaiah ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... while I continued to strut about and plan how to punish the bold woman for her offence. Yet not more than a few moments had passed when Natalia returned and, stealing to my side, began to ...
— Childhood • Leo Tolstoy
... tried to be a gentleman. I may strut up and down Market street in fine clothes, switch my rattan about, talk nonsense to silly ladies, swear, and drink wine; but if I don't pay my ...
— Off-Hand Sketches - a Little Dashed with Humor • T. S. Arthur
... fairies' rooms; They use their folded tails for brooms; But fairy dust is brighter far Than any mortal colours are; And all about their tails it clings In strange designs of rounds and rings; And that is why they strut about And proudly ...
— When Winter Comes to Main Street • Grant Martin Overton
... It is the largest diamond yet obtained from Brazil; and it is owned by the King of Portugal. It weighed originally two hundred and fifty-four carats, but was trimmed down to one hundred and twenty-five. The grandfather of the present king had a hole bored in it, and liked to strut about on gala-days with the gem suspended around his neck. This magnificent jewel was found by three banished miners, who were seeking for gold during their exile. A great drought had laid dry the bed of a river, and there they discovered this lustrous wonder. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 7, Issue 41, March, 1861 • Various
... certain of himself; a well-graced actor. It was presently suggested that he should appear in his war costume; he gracefully consented; and returned in that strange, inappropriate, and ill-omened array (which very well became his handsome person) to strut in a circle of admirers, and be thenceforth the centre of photography. Thus had Moipu effected his introduction, as by accident, to the white strangers, made it a favour to display his finery, and reduced his rival to a secondary ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 18 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... speech. We Spaniards sweetly phrase our ev'ry word E'en when we prick one sharply in the ribs. 1st Gentleman (excitedly) Well, who is this, with dignity enrobed Who like a fighting cock doth bravely strut? 2nd Gentleman (whispers) Whist, little friend, this is the mighty Quezox, Who doth within his hand hold destiny. Twere best for business purposes to yield Apparent homage, though we him disdain. 1st Gentleman (turns to Quezox) Ho! Ho! I did a mistake serious ...
— 'A Comedy of Errors' in Seven Acts • Spokeshave (AKA Old Fogy)
... were nearly in front of the camping-place, at a spot where the sand lay loose and dry, above the reach of the ordinary tidal influx, all made a stop at the summons of one who, from the superior style of his plumage and the greater grandeur of his strut, appeared a very important individual of the tribe—in all likelihood the "cock ...
— The Castaways • Captain Mayne Reid
... up in a straight collared coat, and pantaloons to match, was again put on the right road towards Canada. Two weeks after this found him in the town of St. Catharines, working on the farm of Colonel Strut, and ...
— Three Years in Europe - Places I Have Seen and People I Have Met • William Wells Brown
... lady's chamber To the lascivious pleasing of a lute. But I,—that am not shap'd for sportive tricks, Nor made to court an amorous looking-glass; I, that am rudely stamp'd, and want love's majesty To strut before a wanton ambling nymph; I, that am curtail'd of this fair proportion, Cheated of feature by dissembling nature, Deform'd, unfinish'd, sent before my time Into this breathing world scarce half ...
— The Life and Death of King Richard III • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]
... to gleam. A stout father with wife and children dozes. Painted women are practicing their dances. Grotesque mimes strut towards the theater. ...
— The Verse of Alfred Lichtenstein • Alfred Lichtenstein
... mamma than Madam Cluck when she led forth her family of eight downy little chicks. Chanticleer, Strut, Snowball, Speckle, Peep, Peck, Downy, and Blot were their names; and no sooner were they out of the shell than they began to chirp and scratch as gaily as if the big world in which they suddenly found themselves was made for their especial benefit. It was a fine brood; but poor Madam Cluck ...
— Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag • Louisa M. Alcott
... without the joy of hunting for it. Every day I must dress in fine clothes and wear that horrible crown till it makes my head ache. Rabbits come to me with all sorts of troubles, when my own troubles are the only ones I care about. When I walk out I can't hop and run; I must strut on my rear legs and wear an ermine robe! And the soldiers salute me and the band plays and the other rabbits laugh and clap their paws and cry out: 'Hail to the King!' Now let me ask you, as a friend and a young lady of good judgment: isn't all this pomp and foolishness ...
— The Emerald City of Oz • L. Frank Baum
... of precaution they added Ippolito to their party. He was delighted at the change of duty, because, as Norvin discovered, it brought him to the side of Lucrezia Ferara. Thus it happened that Martel had reason to regret the choice of his bodyguard, for on the very first visit Ippolito began to strut and swagger before the girl and allowed the secret to escape him, whereupon it was carried to ...
— The Net • Rex Beach
... Miss? Huh! She des th'ow up her haid en low, 'Well, Marse Lightfoot, I'm glad you kep' Abel—en we'll use de ole coach agin',' sez she—en den she tu'n en strut right in ter dinner." ...
— The Battle Ground • Ellen Glasgow
... behind him shrieked with delight at this impudent speech, and that made the mock policeman strut ...
— Policeman Bluejay • L. Frank Baum
... Comte de Vandenesse. "In these days every rogue who can hold his head straight in his collar, cover his manly bosom with half an ell of satin by way of a cuirass, display a brow where apocryphal genius gleams under curling locks, and strut in a pair of patent-leather pumps graced by silk socks which cost six francs, screws his eye-glass into one of his eye-sockets by puckering up his cheek, and whether he be an attorney's clerk, a contractor's son, or a banker's bastard, he stares impertinently ...
— Another Study of Woman • Honore de Balzac
... I hae muckle pride, But I mauna speak high when I 'm tellin' o't, How brawlie I strut on my shelty to ride, Wi' a sample to shew for the sellin' o't. In blue worset boots that my auld mither span, I 've aft been fu' vanty sin' I was a man, But now they 're flung by, and I 've bought cordivan, And my wifie ne'er grudged ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel , Volume I. - The Songs of Scotland of the past half century • Various
... neglected to improve any strong points in her own favour—the indifference, as every heart perceived, of despairing grief. Then came the manners on the hostile side—the haggard consciousness of guilt, the drooping tone, the bravado and fierce strut which sought to dissemble all this. Not one amongst all the witnesses, assembled on that side, had (by all agreement) the bold natural tone of conscious uprightness. Hence it could not be surprising that the storm of popular opinion made itself heard ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey, Vol. 2 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey
... tall and graceful and has chestnut hair," fawned Judith. "I've loved Ted from the moment I saw how he curls his cross letters like a riding crop. That's always a sign of originality and genius." There was a hint of strut in Judith's ordinarily graceful motion, and tiny drops of pool water flicked her eyelashes unnoticed. When Judith Stearns professed to "love a boy" she did so heroically, though he be myth or just an ordinary ...
— Jane Allen: Junior • Edith Bancroft
... in after years. You can never become a commonplace woman now and there are such a lot of 'em in the world. When I remember all you have done for us it makes me ill to think of some in our town—giggling, silly little flirts, with no higher ambition than to strut down the ...
— Miss Lou • E. P. Roe
... portion in the past, but it will rob them of any effect of reality. The whole of their history becomes more and more foreign, more and more like some queer barbaric drama played in a forgotten tongue. There they strut through their weird metamorphoses of caricature, those premiers and presidents, their height preposterously exaggerated by political buskins, their faces covered by great resonant inhuman masks, their voices couched in the foolish idiom of public utterance, disguised ...
— In the Days of the Comet • H. G. Wells
... glory, and spent their money on extravagant dress. "The men," said he, "wear capes reaching down to the ground, and their long hair falls down to their shoulders; and the women wear so many petticoats that they can hardly drag themselves along, and strut about like the Pope's courtezans, to the surprise and disgust of the whole world." What right had these selfish fops to call themselves Christians? They did more harm to the cause of Christ than all the Turks and ...
— History of the Moravian Church • J. E. Hutton
... had feathers, a fine sweeping gown, And a delicate face, and could strut about Town!" - "My dear—a raw country girl, such as you be, Isn't equal to that. ...
— Poems of the Past and the Present • Thomas Hardy
... faith higher and greater,—so the first represents nature with more true feeling and love, with a deeper insight into her tenderness; he follows her more humbly, and has produced to us more of her simplicity; we feel his appeal to be more earnest: it is the crying out of the man, with none of the strut of the actor. ...
— The Germ - Thoughts towards Nature in Poetry, Literature and Art • Various
... meddle; but the new leaven was creeping through every level of society. The sons and daughters of the bourgeoisie tried to rise in the social scale by aping the pleasant vices of the aristocracy. They deserted the shop and the counting-house to play cards and strut upon the piazza. They mimicked the fine gentleman and the gentildonna, and made fashionable love and carried on intrigues. The spirit of the whole people had lost its elevation; there were no more proud patricians, full of noble ambitions and devoted zeal of public ...
— The Venetian School of Painting • Evelyn March Phillipps
... happily with his wife the Princess. His merriest time was when the Grand Vizier visited him in the afternoon; and when the Caliph was in particularly high spirits he would condescend to mimic the Vizier's appearance when he was a stork. He would strut gravely, and with well-stiffened legs, up and down the room, chattering, and showing how he had vainly bowed to the east and cried 'Mu...Mu...' The Caliphess and her children were always much entertained by this performance; but when ...
— The Green Fairy Book • Various
... near to its cigarette factory and the guard-house, but at the scene of the great bull-fight, where Escamillo is to strut and show what a famous fellow he deserves to be! The old amphitheatre at the back with its awning stretched, the foreground with its orange-girls, fan-girls, wine-pedlars, ragged idlers and beggars, fine gentlemen, mules—all eager for the entertainment! ...
— Operas Every Child Should Know - Descriptions of the Text and Music of Some of the Most Famous Masterpieces • Mary Schell Hoke Bacon
... leave to match him, if they can; It's fun to see him strut about, and try to be a man! The gamest, cheeriest little chap, you'd ever want to see! And then they laugh, because I think the child resembles me. The little rogue! he goes for me, like robbers for their prey; He'll turn my pockets inside out, ...
— Farm Ballads • Will Carleton
... drawing-pad. The whilom dandy and friend of Baudelaire went about dressed in a shabby military frock-coat. He had no longer a nodding acquaintance with the fashionable lions of Napoleon the Little's reign, yet he abated not his haughty strut, his glacial politeness to all comers, nor his daily promenade in the Bois. A Barmecide feast this watching the pleasures of others more favoured, though Guys did not waste the fruits of his observation. At sixty-five he began to go down-hill. His habits had never been those of a prudent citizen, ...
— Promenades of an Impressionist • James Huneker
... which through four long acts kept her from the hungering arms of the so beautiful Leandre, howled its delight over the ignominy of Pantaloon, the buffooneries of his sprightly lackey Harlequin, and the thrasonical strut and bellowing fierceness of the ...
— Scaramouche - A Romance of the French Revolution • Rafael Sabatini
... Almost without a notion how even to take him in his arms, he would now send for him the moment he had had his tea, and after a fashion, ludicrous in the eyes of the nurse, would dandle and caress him, and strut about with him before his wife, glancing up at her every now and then, to point the lesson that such was the manner in which a parent ought to behave to a child. In his presence she never made any active show of her dislike, but her look seemed all the time fixed on something far ...
— Stephen Archer and Other Tales • George MacDonald
... health, Master Kit Marlowe! I'll bring a loud pair of palms to cheer your soul the next time you strut in red paint with a wooden weapon at ...
— The Works of Christopher Marlowe, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Christopher Marlowe
... that she was sorry for them. "Every brood," she declared, "should have at least one swimmer in it." She began to strut up and down the edge of the duck-pond, clucking in a most overbearing fashion. Really, she had never felt quite so important before—not even when her first brood pecked their way out ...
— The Tale of Henrietta Hen • Arthur Scott Bailey
... hands and let me slip from his knee; and then I began to strut the floor, my chest puffed out to ...
— Doctor Luke of the Labrador • Norman Duncan
... a shrew, which is very rare, they almost immediately reject it. They will sit hour after hour watching at the mouth of a hole, and after seizing their prey, bring it to their favourites in the house to show their prowess, and strut about with a great air of self-satisfaction. They generally have a great dislike to water; but they have been known to surmount this when they could catch a fish, for which species of food they have a great preference. ...
— Anecdotes of the Habits and Instinct of Animals • R. Lee
... the car shows a radical departure from anything that had been previously attempted, and as a model an ordinary boat was taken. In shape it is as nearly streamline as is practicable, having a keel and ribs of wood with curved longitudinal members, the strut ends being housed in steel sockets. The whole frame is braced with piano wire set diagonally between the struts. The car is floored from end to end, and the sides are enclosed with 8-ply wood covered ...
— British Airships, Past, Present, and Future • George Whale
... Trees are heavy with blossom, peacocks strut in the glades and a general lethargy seizes the cowherds. One day Krishna and his friends are out with the cattle when Pralamba, a demon in human form, comes to join them. Krishna warns Balarama of the ...
— The Loves of Krishna in Indian Painting and Poetry • W. G. Archer
... you ruler of all India!" she said. "Another may wear the baubles, but thou shalt be the true king, even as thy name is! And behind thee, me, Yasmini, whispering wisdom and laughing to see the politicians strut!" ...
— Caves of Terror • Talbot Mundy
... the lawn at an angle. In all things about her—in her gait, despite its limp, in her pose, her figure—there was something masterful, something dominating, something tremendously proud. Considering her sparseness of bulk she had a most astoundingly big strong voice, and in the voice as in the strut was arrogant pride. ...
— From Place to Place • Irvin S. Cobb
... and accomplish'd beaus, At once confounded into sober sense, He feels his pristine insignificance; And blinking, blund'ring, from the general quiz Retreats, "to ponder on the thing he is." By pride inflated, and by praise allur'd, Small Authors thus strut forth, and thus get cur'd; But, Critics, hear! an angel pleads for me, That tongueless, ten-tongued ...
— Poetic Sketches • Thomas Gent
... have Martin make it than Mr. Raybold. Martin is a good deal more than a guide; he has a good education, and would not be here if it were not for his love of nature. He is going to make nature his object in life, and there is something noble in that; a great deal better than trying to strut about on ...
— The Associate Hermits • Frank R. Stockton
... beloved, that while I pray the Lord every day to keep me from judging my fellow men, I just couldn't for the life of me help passing judgment on a civilised custom which keeps alive all this war fuss and feathers and asking men made in God's image to strut around in all this gilt and lace toggery when immortal creatures are starving to death by the million for the bread of life. And I just couldn't keep still when day after day I heard on deck this naval fashion plate ...
— The High Calling • Charles M. Sheldon
... complacently, slapping his own shrunk shank. There had been a well-shaped leg inside of the ragged linen trousers once, and the conscious merit which infused every atom of his lean little body still culminated in his strut. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, September, 1878 • Various
... down the hotel corridor, with a strut to his resentment that was bantam and just ...
— The Vertical City • Fannie Hurst
... men; he asked them questions with patronising kindness, he gave them scraps of information upon all subjects of temporary interest, with a funny little air of pompous importance. When by mere force of habit they grew more familiar with him, he would strut up and engage them in long conversations, listen to all they said with consummate good nature, giving his opinion in return. He was wholly unconscious that he looked like a bantam crowing to a group of larger and more sleepy fowls, but ...
— A Dozen Ways Of Love • Lily Dougall
... his cleanly best, John's pockets are an integral part of his personality. He feels after his pocket instinctively while yet in what corresponds in the genus homo with the polywog state in batrachia. The incipient man begins to strut as soon as mamma puts pockets into his kilted skirt—a stride as prophetic as the strangled crow of the cockerel upon the ...
— The Secret of a Happy Home (1896) • Marion Harland
... beard) and Pfauentritt (peacock-strut), were nicknames given to the leaders of the guilds who rebelled against the patrician families in Nuremberg, from whom alone the aldermen or town-council could be elected. This patrician class originated ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... elder son was introduced—Rudolph, called Rudi, a youth of about Gard's age. There was an unseemly scar on his face and something oblique in his look. Engineering was given as his profession, but he affected the German military strut and was forward and crammed with ready-made conclusions on most subjects. But Herr Bucher reigned here as elsewhere about Villa Elsa as absolute master. He alone spoke with authority. Reverence was first of all due him. Gard soon saw how the wife and children, ...
— Villa Elsa - A Story of German Family Life • Stuart Henry
... swept and cleaned, but what will soon become an intolerable nuisance within, and not much better without, and the ground immediately around the premises a dirty place. The common pigeon is a pugnacious cavalier, warring apparently upon mere punctilio, as we have often seen, in the distant strut-and-coo of a stranger bird to his mate, even if she be the very incarnation of "rejected addresses." On all these accounts, we would locate—unless a small and select family of fancy birds, perhaps—the pigeon stock at the principal farm-yard, and in the ...
— Rural Architecture - Being a Complete Description of Farm Houses, Cottages, and Out Buildings • Lewis Falley Allen
... barber's and his face salved and puffed at the apothecary's to conceal his muddy complexion, he was reckoned, in the Mercato Nuovo, as little better than an ill-conditioned braggadoccio! His shortness of stature he sought to atone for by his accentuation of the Florentine pout and the Tuscan strut—he was well known, too, for his contemptuous jokes at the ...
— The Tragedies of the Medici • Edgcumbe Staley
... about him, who stepped jauntily out of a carriage and added himself to groups entering the Tuileries. The white court dress was armor which he put on to serve him in the dangerous attempt to look once more on a woman's face. He mounted with a strut toward the guardians of the imperial court, not knowing how he might be challenged; and fortune was ...
— Lazarre • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... he won't strut round so much to-morrow afternoon," said Tom, "after his interview with his new cousin. But hush, boys! Not a word more of this. There's Fitz coming up the hill. I wouldn't have him suspect what's going on, or he might defeat our plans ...
— Risen from the Ranks - Harry Walton's Success • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... into position above the shaft. One end of the assembled framework of aluminum alloy dragged loosely on the ground; the other end swung out and projected above the shaft, swayed for an instant—and then came the first direct knowledge of the enemy's presence. The end of a metal strut, though nothing visible was touching it, grew suddenly white hot, sagged, then broke into a shower of molten, dazzling drops that ...
— Two Thousand Miles Below • Charles Willard Diffin
... worshipped fetishes; and even as thus called already civilized, they sacrificed men to gods,—could our great pro-slavers know all this, they would be more decent in their ignorant assertions, and not, so self-satisfied, strut ...
— Diary from March 4, 1861, to November 12, 1862 • Adam Gurowski
... made the sacred ark of Israel so vulnerable that its defenders dare not challenge the great Goliath of the Philistines, who, year by year, comes forth to strut before the armies of the saints in ridicule of that they hold so dear; and thus it is to be held responsible for the loss of the young men who throw away their ancestral faith and go over to the ...
— The Right and Wrong Uses of the Bible • R. Heber Newton
... unworthy prey, And rests, deep-sorrowing, On the low rock beside the stream. Up to the oak he looks, Looks up to heaven, While in his noble eye there gleams a tear. Then, rustling through the myrtle boughs, behold, There comes a wanton pair of doves, Who settle down, and, nodding, strut O'er the gold sands beside the stream, And gradually approach; Their red-tinged eyes, so full of love, Soon see the inward-sorrowing one. The male, inquisitively social, leaps On the next bush, and looks Upon him kindly and complacently. "Thou sorrowest," murmurs he: ...
— The Poems of Goethe • Goethe
... so far recovered his equanimity as to strut jauntily towards his office, where he was to meet his fair client. He was surprised, however, to find her already there, and in company with a somewhat sheepish-looking young man—a stranger. If the Colonel had any disappointment in meeting a third party to the interview, his old-fashioned ...
— The Best American Humorous Short Stories • Various
... cane and march out, while de baliffs holler: 'Make way! Make way for de honorable judge!' Everybody took up dat cry and keep it up long as de judge was on de streets. Oh, how dat judge twirl his cane, smile, and strut. ...
— Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves • Works Projects Administration
... supposed to call forth. I therefore wrote a hurried note to Curzon, setting forth the great interest all their proceedings had for me, and assuring him that my stay in town should be as short as possible, for that I longed once more to "strut the monarch of the boards," and concluded with a sly paragraph, artfully intended to act as a "paratonnere" to the gibes and jests which I dreaded, by endeavouring to make light of my matrimonial speculations. The postscript ran somewhat thus—"Glorious fun have I ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Vol. 2 • Charles James Lever
... airy, fantastic idea of irregular grace and bewildered melancholy any one can play Hamlet, as we have seen it played, with strut, and stare, and antic right-angled sharp-pointed gestures, it is difficult to say, unless it be that Hamlet is not bound, by the prompter's cue, to study the part of Ophelia. The account of ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... I please. I seem admitted ad eundem. I fetch up past opportunities. I can rise at the chapel-bell, and dream that it rings for me. In moods of humility I can be a Sizar, or a Servitor. When the peacock vein rises, I strut a Gentleman Commoner. In graver moments, I proceed Master of Arts. Indeed I do not think I am much unlike that respectable character. I have seen your dim-eyed vergers, and bed-makers in spectacles drop a bow or curtsey as I pass, wisely mistaking me for something ...
— Charles Lamb • Walter Jerrold
... of the surrounding multitude. Oh! mercy on me! I am out of breath—pray let me descend from my stilts, or I shall send you as fustiin and tedious a history as that of Henry II. Well then, this great King is a very little one; not ugly, nor ill-made. He has the sublime strut of his grandfather, or of a cock-sparrow; and the divine white eyes of all his family by the mother's side. His curiosity seems to have consisted in the original plan of travelling for I cannot say he takes notice of any thing in particular. ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole Volume 3 • Horace Walpole
... careless and self-forgetful vagrant than by the deliberate and self-conscious seeker. A cheerful doctrine this. Not only cheerful, but self-evidently true. How right it is, and how cheerful it is, to think that while philosophers and clergymen strut about this world looking out, and smelling out, for its prime experiences, more careless and less celebrated men are continually finding such things, without effort, without care, in irregular ...
— A Chair on The Boulevard • Leonard Merrick
... exaggerated caricature until the least semblance of truth to nature is banished from the portrait. It is interesting to compare him with Ralph Roister Doister. Nevertheless if we project Sir Tophas upon the stage, and by our imagination dress him and make him strut and gesticulate after such a fashion as the text seems to indicate, we shall probably discover ourselves smiling over puns and remarks which, on casual perusal, we might pronounce flavourless imbecilities. Indeed, for sheer laughable absurdity on the stage, Sir Tophas would ...
— The Growth of English Drama • Arnold Wynne
... of the high-flown titles and affected phraseology which was so beloved of Byzantine scribes. "Glorious Dukes of the Thebaid," "most magnificent counts and lieutenants," "all-praiseworthy secretaries," and the like strut across the pages of the letters and documents which begin "In the name of Our Lord and Master, Jesus Christ, the God and Saviour of us all, in the year x of the reign of the most divine and praised, great, and beneficent Lord Flavius ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, And Assyria In The Light Of Recent Discovery • L.W. King and H.R. Hall
... with his head erect, he paced three or four times round the company, saying, in a loud voice :—"God preserve you, good people." Then taking the habit off indignantly, he threw it from him with contempt, and, turning to Elias, "That is the way," he said, "that the bastard brethren of our Order will strut." After this he resumed his usual demeanor and walked humbly with his old and tattered habit, saying:—"Such is the deportment of the true Friars Minor." Then, seating himself amongst them, he addressed ...
— The Life and Legends of Saint Francis of Assisi • Father Candide Chalippe
... woman—her name is Clowes—is notorious. She has eight children, and she has brought them all up to her trade. I have made inquiries. The elder daughters are actresses and married to play-actors, and even the youngest child is taught to strut on the boards. Her troupe is the largest ...
— The Matador of the Five Towns and Other Stories • Arnold Bennett
... success—effect. But now that I have been wisely and scrupulously and unscrupulously examined by the most exalted rulers of the Inner Temple, and they pronounce me all that man should be, why shouldn't I strut some? But, damn it, strutting brings that Devil's clutch—and a man cannot be anything more strutty than a dish-rag then. In William James you will find a questionnaire, "Why do I believe in immortality? 'Because I think I'm just ...
— The Letters of Franklin K. Lane • Franklin K. Lane
... 'Pollo Belvedere, an' my marster gi'e me dat intitlemint on account o' my shape," he would say, with a strut, as if he were bantered. As Apollo would have told you himself, the fact that he had never married was not because he couldn't get anybody to have him, but simply that he ...
— The Speaker, No. 5: Volume II, Issue 1 - December, 1906. • Various
... him; but he could not join in the extravagant delight of his fellow officers and their brave men. What did all this victory mean to him? Hamilton to be treated as an honorable prisoner of war, permitted to strut forth from the feat with his sword at his side, his head up—the scalp-buyer, the murderer of Alice! What was patriotism to the crushed heart of a lover? Even if his vision had been able to pierce the future ...
— Alice of Old Vincennes • Maurice Thompson
... imputed to the crooked post may be really produced by it. A true square changes its figure readily into a rhomboid or oblique figure, but when one or two of the uprights are bent or sloping, and placed so as to oppose each other, the effect of a strut is produced, though in a rude ...
— The Malay Archipelago - Volume I. (of II.) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... seem out of place, but city pigeons are as much at home as anybody else. There are few houses so small that there is not room somewhere for a pigeon-box, and there are no roofs or yards so humble that the handsomest and proudest "pouters" and "tumblers" and "fan-tails" will not willingly come and strut and coo about them as long as they receive good ...
— Round-about Rambles in Lands of Fact and Fancy • Frank Richard Stockton
... frequently to recite these lines at his assemblies: O you who, in sumptuous array, strut about like princes and scorn the hatred of the poor, know that the saddle-cloth changeth not the nature of the ass, neither do splendid trappings change the nature of the ...
— A Boswell of Baghdad - With Diversions • E. V. Lucas
... hold as miserable, envious fools, those wretched Beaux Tibbs's of society, who sport a lace dickey, and nothing besides,—the poor silly jays, who trail a peacock's feather behind them, and think to simulate the gorgeous bird whose nature it is to strut on palace-terraces, and to flaunt his magnificent fan-tail in ...
— The Book of Snobs • William Makepeace Thackeray
... a case he will put aside the welfare of a nation for the miserable sake of party popularity? Are we to stand here in the guise and manner of free men, knowing that we are driven together like a flock of sheep into the fold by the howling of the wolves outside? Are we to strut and plume ourselves upon our unhampered freedom, while we act like slaves? Worse than slaves we should be if we allowed one breath of party spirit, one thought of party aggrandizement, to enter into the choice we are about to make. Slaves are driven to their work; shall ...
— An American Politician • F. Marion Crawford
... before, as the dance in Duple time which preceded the Galliard which was in a triple rhythm. It was a stately dance, with a stately name, for the derivation is most probably from Pavo, a peacock, with a reference, no doubt, to the majestic strut and gay feathers of that bird. It was de rigueur for gentlemen to dance the Pavan in cap and sword; for lawyers to wear their gowns, princes their mantles; and ladies to take part in the fullest of full dress, the long trains of their gowns being supposed to correspond in appearance ...
— Shakespeare and Music - With Illustrations from the Music of the 16th and 17th centuries • Edward W. Naylor
... style of their ancestors. Ever since the first announcement, they had been drilled by the Captain, whose loud command of voice, proud bearing, bent back (bent in self-defence against the counterpoise of his stomach), and martial strut, filled them with great awe of his power, and great confidence in his abilities. Many hundred people, "on horse and foote," (we use the language of our old chronicle), "were gathered together, considerably armed with swordes, pistolles, firelocks, blunderbushes, ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland Volume 17 • Alexander Leighton
... habit with Bluff to be always expecting something serious to happen; and in case his suspicions were verified, as might occasionally occur, he would crow over the others, and strut around as though he thought himself a prophet gifted with second-sight, and able to forecast ...
— The Outdoor Chums - The First Tour of the Rod, Gun and Camera Club • Captain Quincy Allen
... us up! Here are you and I, dashing blades, who have been doing penance by trying to be fine gentlemen at watering-places, when it wasn't at all in our line. I began to think we looked as much like fops as the rest of the scented and bearded dress-coats, who strut about, and imagine the world is looking at them. This would throw us into quite another rank of life, and give us new ideas. How shall we manage it though, my fine fellow?" "Nothing easier in the world. Let us rent ...
— Holidays at the Grange or A Week's Delight - Games and Stories for Parlor and Fireside • Emily Mayer Higgins
... for birds is in the air or on the bushy tops of trees or on smooth-shaven lawns. Let them twitter and strut on the greens of golf courses and intimidate the tired business men. Let them peck cinders along the railroad track and keep the trains waiting. But really they have no right to take possession of a man's house as ...
— Mince Pie • Christopher Darlington Morley
... childhood from his experience of poverty at home, in his remarks in later life, on the sons of poor men, who by sheer hard work raise themselves from obscurity, and have much to endure, and no time to strut and swagger, but must be humble and learn to be silent and to trust in God, and to whom God also has given ...
— Life of Luther • Julius Koestlin
... but then seeing that Helen was gazing at him inquiringly once more he added, gravely, "One could be well content to let vain people strut their little hour and be as wonderful as they chose, if it were not for the painful fact that they are eating the bread of honest men, and that millions are toiling and starving in order that they may have ease and luxury. ...
— King Midas • Upton Sinclair
... Westerns on this drama, so wrapped up in the actors, so anxious to declaim and strut, that they forget to what end the play exists: they have left the spectators out for whom alone the scenes are enacted, and who, though apparently so silent and motionless, are the raison d'etre of the whole ...
— Memoirs of Arthur Hamilton, B. A. Of Trinity College, Cambridge • Arthur Christopher Benson
... whom fat Sir John Falstaff's lean, 10 There with her single person fills the scene. Another, with long use and age decay'd, Dived here old woman, and rose there a maid. Our trusty doorkeepers of former time There strut and swagger in heroic rhyme. Tack but a copper-lace to drugget suit, And there's a hero made without dispute: And that, which was a capon's tail before, Becomes a plume for Indian emperor. But all his subjects, to express the care 20 Of imitation, ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol II - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden
... is! trust him, and hang him. Why, he cannot speak a good word on him to my old master; and he does so ruffle before my mistress with his barbarian eloquence,[153] and strut before her in a pair of Polonian legs, as if he were a gentleman-usher to the great Turk or to the devil of Dowgate. And if my mistress would be ruled by him, Sophos might go snick-up: but he has such a butter-milk face, that she'll ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. IX • Various
... room had a particular inclination; the gable had tilted towards the garden, after the manner of a leaning tower, and one of the former proprietors had buttressed the building from that side with a great strut of wood, like the derrick of a crane. Altogether, it had many marks of ruin; it was a house for the rats to desert; and nothing but its excellent brightness—the window-glass polished and shining, the paint well scoured, the brasses radiant, the very prop all wreathed about ...
— The Merry Men - and Other Tales and Fables • Robert Louis Stevenson
... of all this interest? Was it devotion to a young and innocent girl that made me willing to undertake so difficult and so delicate a task? Doubtless these motives went for something, but I will not attempt to strut in borrowed plumes, and must freely confess that if she had been ugly and stupid I should probably have left her to her fate. In short, selfishness was at the bottom of it all, so let us say no more ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... delicate hue as they receded, till, far away, they looked like mottled glass. Only yesterday he had laughed with me, talked and smoked with me, and now he was dead. A rage pervaded me. We are puny things, we, who strut the highways of the world, parading a so-called wisdom. There is only one philosophy; it ...
— Arms and the Woman • Harold MacGrath
... 'tis true, Though they be old, the thing is something new; Each new, quite new—(except some ancient tricks), New white-sticks, gold-sticks, broom-sticks, all new sticks! With vests or ribbons, deck'd alike in hue, New troopers strut, new turncoats blush in blue; So saith the muse! my ——, what say you? Such was the time when Waltz might best maintain Her new preferments in this novel reign; Such was the time, nor ever yet was such: Hoops are ...
— English Satires • Various
... veery, the songsparrow, the red-start, the hermit-thrush, the red-eyed flycatcher and other feathered choristers, while the golden-winged woodpecker or rain fowl, heralds at dawn the coming rain of the morrow, and some crows, rendered saucy by protection, strut through the sprouting corn, in their sable cassocks, like worldly clergymen computing their tythes. On the aforesaid walk, once trodden over by the prince of American naturalists, the great Audubon, whilst on a visit to Mr. Atkinson at Spencer Wood, was conferred ...
— Picturesque Quebec • James MacPherson Le Moine
... git when one o' dem shindigs 'ud come off. I sho' would strut den. De mistis 'ud dress me up an' I'd carry de likker an' drinks' roun' 'mongst de peoples. 'Would you prefer dis here mint julip, Marster? Or maybe you'd relish dis here special wine o' de Judge's. ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves - Mississippi Narratives • Works Projects Administration
... The formal attempt to impart a good style is like the melancholy task of the teacher of gesture and oratory; some palpable faults are soon corrected; and, for the rest, a few conspicuous mannerisms, a few theatrical postures, not truly expressive, and a high tragical strut, are all that can be imparted. The truth of the old Roman teachers of rhetoric is here witnessed afresh, to be a good orator it is first of all necessary to be a good man. Good style is the greatest of revealers,—it lays bare the soul. The soul ...
— Style • Walter Raleigh
... didst thou come strutting it finely," said the innkeeper, in a mocking tone. "And dost thou strut now? Nay, verily; but thou art as meek as any whipped cock. And since it was by thy strut that men did recognize thee, how shall they make thee out when thy fine strut is gone? Wherefore serve the strangers, and be ...
— A Boy's Ride • Gulielma Zollinger
... famed Cassibelan, who was once at point (O giglot fortune!) to master Caesar's sword, Made Lud's town with rejoicing fires bright, And Britons strut with courage." ...
— Bulfinch's Mythology • Thomas Bulfinch
... cruellest team will win. So hold your nose against the stink And never stop too long to think. Wars don't change except in name; The next one must go just the same, And new foul tricks unguessed before Will win and justify this War. Kaisers and Czars will strut the stage Once more with pomp and greed and rage; Courtly ministers will stop At home and fight to the last drop; By the million men will die In some new horrible agony; And children here will thrust and poke, Shoot and die, and laugh at the joke, With ...
— Fairies and Fusiliers • Robert Graves
... Brer Buzzard half spread his wing, suh He try ter look young, but he wuz ol' suh— He try ter strut an' walk wid a swing, suh; He wuz dreamin' 'bout dat pot er gol', suh, An' what he wuz gwine ...
— Uncle Remus and Brer Rabbit • Joel Chandler Harris
... bolder in his wooing than Grace had been prepared for. But surely that was a strange costume that he wore; nor did the unconscious harmony of the gait at all resemble the senor's self-conscious strut. ...
— The Golden Fleece • Julian Hawthorne
... en den sot out in de peazzer wid de gals a smokin' er his seegyar wid mo' proudness dan w'at you mos' ever see. Dey talk, en dey sing, en dey play on de peanner, de gals did, twel bimeby hit come time fer Brer Rabbit fer to be gwine, en he tell um all good-by, en strut out to de hoss-rack same's ef he wuz de king er de patter- rollers,*1 en den he mount Brer Fox ...
— Uncle Remus • Joel Chandler Harris
... lining of his coat if she took three lessons a week from Miss Oram on the spinet. How happy and proud she was! Her glee was a constant source of wonder to McQueen. Perhaps she put on airs a little, her walk, said the critical, had become a strut; but how could she help that when the new joyousness of living was dancing and ...
— Sentimental Tommy - The Story of His Boyhood • J. M. Barrie
... man. Unfortunately the unit has been too minutely subdivided, and many faculties are practically lost for want of use. "The state of society is one in which the members have suffered amputation from the trunk, and strut about so many walking monsters,—a good finger, a neck, a stomach, an elbow, but never a man.... Man is thus metamorphosed into a thing, into many things.... The priest becomes a form; the attorney a statute book; the mechanic a machine; the sailor ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... demanded Bob, as he noticed this expression. "Are you huffed just because the independent little rascal wouldn't let us mother him? Say, look at his strut, will you? If he was heir to the throne of Alfonso he couldn't walk finer. Give me a whack between the shoulders, won't you, Frank? Perhaps I've been asleep, and dreamed ...
— The Saddle Boys of the Rockies - Lost on Thunder Mountain • James Carson
... pretensions, or he would have aspired higher. I suspect him of being merely one of those silly young countrymen of mine, of whom so many crowd stage-coaches and packets, to swagger over their less ambitious fellow-mortals with the strut and exactions of ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper
... Here serpents dash their stings into my face, All tipped with fire; and there a wild bird drives His red-hot talons in my burning scalp. Here bees and beetles buzz about my ears Like crackling coals, and frogs strut up and down Like hissing cinders; wasps and waterflies Scorch deep like ...
— Gipsy Life - being an account of our Gipsies and their children • George Smith
... winter twilight hovering outside and faint drums down-stairs... they strut and fret in the lobby, taking another cocktail, scrupulously attired and waiting. Then the swinging doors revolve and three bundles of fur mince in. The theatre comes afterward; then a table at the Midnight Frolic—of ...
— This Side of Paradise • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... portly little man with a red face and a bald brow. His very strut pronounced him a self-made man. He glared at his son, whose cool nonchalance he ...
— Cap'n Abe, Storekeeper • James A. Cooper
... many light-green ferns. In this ingeniously contrived sylvan retreat the feathered architect runs about and holds a sort of carnival, to which others of his tribe gather. Here the little party chirp vigorously, and strut about in a most ...
— Foot-prints of Travel - or, Journeyings in Many Lands • Maturin M. Ballou
... they called Borghese a traitor and threatened him with death. "He who after November 1918 returns to the martyred town," writes Signor Zanella, "is simply stupefied in beholding that those personages who now strut on the political scene, burning with the most ardent Italian patriotism, are the same who until the eve of Vittorio Veneto were the most unbending, the most eloquent and the most devoted partisans and servants of the reactionary Magyar regime." And around them a number of more or less ...
— The Birth of Yugoslavia, Volume 2 • Henry Baerlein
... that the nixies of Dreamland play on us while we sleep! Methinks "they are jesters at the Court of Heaven." They frequently take the shape of daily themes to mock me; they strut about on the stage of Sleep like foolish virgins, only they carry well-trimmed note-books in their hands instead of empty lamps. At other times they examine and cross-examine me in all the studies ...
— Story of My Life • Helen Keller
... involuntary or painful defect. The disposition to derision and insult is awakened by the softness of foppery, the swell of insolence, the liveliness of levity, or the solemnity of grandeur; by the sprightly trip, the stately stalk, the formal strut, the lofty mien; by gestures intended to catch the eye, and by looks elaborately formed as ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D, In Nine Volumes - Volume the Third: The Rambler, Vol. II • Samuel Johnson
... not but fancy to myself, as the old man stood up in the middle of the pit, that he made a very proper centre to a tragic audience. Upon the entering of Pyrrhus, the knight told me, that he did not believe the king of France himself had a better strut. I was indeed very attentive to my old friend's remarks, because I looked upon them as a piece of natural criticism, and was well pleased to hear him, at the conclusion of almost every scene, telling me that he could not imagine how the play would end. One while he appeared much concerned for ...
— The Palmy Days of Nance Oldfield • Edward Robins
... flexible opinions and liable to be swayed in any course. When he was at Flower De Hundred, living in the atmosphere of liberalists and republicans, he was one of the most outspoken of all. He would strut for hours before any one who would listen to his senseless twaddle and would harangue and discourse on ...
— The Real America in Romance, Volume 6; A Century Too Soon (A Story - of Bacon's Rebellion) • John R. Musick
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