"Barefoot" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... workman's piano was a jews-harp and his Pullman car a spavined cayuse, his employer was not erecting palaces in which to stable his blood stock, nor purchasing dissolute princes for his daughters to play at marriage and divorce with. If the farmer's wife wore linsey-woolsey and went barefoot to save her shoes, her neighbor did not import $5,000 gowns from "Paree" and put jeweled collars on her pet cur. The difference in the condition of Dives and Lazarus is more sharply defined than ever before. ...
— Volume 12 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... were redoubtable butchers. There was a sire de Giac who poisoned his wife, put her astride of his horse and rode at breakneck speed for five leagues, until she died. There was another, whose name I have forgotten, who collared his father, dragged him barefoot through the snow, and calmly thrust him into a subterranean prison and left him there until he died. And how many others! I have tried, without success, to find whether in battles and forays the Marshal committed any serious misdeeds. I have discovered nothing, except that he had ...
— La-bas • J. K. Huysmans
... cattle-dealer, whose occupation consisted in driving cattle from the far north of Scotland to the rich pastures of Cheshire and Lancashire. The father was generally accompanied by his three sons, who marched barefoot, as was the custom of the north country lads in those days. Being shrewd fellows, they observed with interest the thriving looks and well-fed condition of the Lancashire folks. They were attracted by the print works and cotton mills which ...
— James Nasmyth's Autobiography • James Nasmyth
... seventy-years-old face was completely twisted into a sarcastic smile; while his eyes always remained large, and, though red, were always brilliant and intelligent. He lived in the old cloister of the barefoot friars, the seat of the gymnasium. Even as a child, I had often visited him in company with my parents, and had, with a kind of trembling delight, glided through the long, dark passages, the chapels transformed into ...
— Autobiography • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
... their slate-coloured robes." On the feast of one of their divinities whose title Williams translates as "High Emperor of the Sombre Heavens," they assemble before his temple, "and having made a great fire, about 15 or 20 feet in diameter, go over it barefoot, preceded by the priests and bearing the gods in their arms. They firmly assert that if they possess a sincere mind they will not be injured by the fire; but both priests and people get miserably burnt on these occasions." Escayrac de Lauture says that on those days they ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo Volume 1 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... city lawyer. Years after that, he was Judge West of the Superior Court. Now he was simply Joe West, a tall, lanky boy with a long rosy face and a high forehead. His arms came too far through his jacket sleeves, and showed his wrists, which looked unnaturally knobby and bony. He went barefoot all summer long, and was ...
— Young Lucretia and Other Stories • Mary E. Wilkins
... is a very good understanding between the parties [he is speaking of the Churchmen and Presbyterians who lived in the parish], for they not only intermarry with one another, but frequently do penance together in a white sheet, with a white wand, barefoot, and in the coldest season of the year. I have not finished the description for fear of bringing on a fit of the ague. Indeed, the ideas of sensation are sufficient to starve a man to death, without having recourse to ...
— The Life and Letters of Lewis Carroll • Stuart Dodgson Collingwood
... said that his sister had a dirty face,—which was quite true, but people do not need to say everything they know, do they? Who went swimming in the gravel pit long before the 24th of May, which marks the beginning of swimming and barefoot time in all proper families, and would have got away with it, too, only, in his haste to get a ride home, he and his friend changed shirts by mistake, and it all came to ...
— The Next of Kin - Those who Wait and Wonder • Nellie L. McClung
... Tennessee. His men were in a deplorable state—hungry, ragged, and tentless; but under this indefatigable leader, they shut up Burnside's force in the works at Knoxville. Meanwhile, Grant, in the moment of his splendid triumph at Chattanooga, ordered Sherman's torn, bleeding, barefoot troops over terrible roads one hundred miles to Burnside's relief. Longstreet, in order to anticipate the arrival of these reinforcements, made a desperate assault upon Burnside (November 29), but it was as heroically repulsed. As Sherman's advance ...
— A Brief History of the United States • Barnes & Co.
... any alliance with a lassie who had herded the laird's cows barefoot, and even now tended their own cow, as an all but inconceivable absurdity; and he resented, more than he could have thought possible, the entertainment of such a degrading idea in the mind of Mrs. Glasford. Indignation prevented him from replying; ...
— David Elginbrod • George MacDonald
... surrounded some garden, and in front of it were visible the wide leaves of the burdock, from among which rose blackthorn, and sunflowers lifting their heads high above all the rest. Here the Tatar flung off her slippers and went barefoot, gathering her clothes up carefully, for the spot was marshy and full of water. Forcing their way among the reeds, they stopped before a ruined outwork. Skirting this outwork, they found a sort of earthen arch—an opening ...
— Taras Bulba and Other Tales • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... book as the speaker, a Punjaubi Mohammedan in white undress, slipped off his loose native shoes and entered the room barefoot, as ...
— The Elephant God • Gordon Casserly
... the child," she said to herself, "to be walking about barefoot this time of night? She'll get her death of cold;" and she put down her work and went up stairs, intending to administer a sisterly lecture. To her surprise, Faithful was fast asleep in bed, and no other living creature was in the room. It could ...
— Not Pretty, But Precious • John Hay, et al.
... indeterminate movement! The crowd swayed forward. There was a sudden rush from the fo'castle to the waist. They had charged to gain possession of the powder cabin—Pierre Radisson raised his pistol. For an instant they held back. Then a barefoot fellow struck at him ...
— Heralds of Empire - Being the Story of One Ramsay Stanhope, Lieutenant to Pierre Radisson in the Northern Fur Trade • Agnes C. Laut
... London's People of the Abyss, which Mamie Magen had given her. All the way to Pittsfield, all the way out to the farm by stage, she sat still and looked politely at every large detached elm, every cow or barefoot boy. ...
— The Job - An American Novel • Sinclair Lewis
... 1866, when this one, like nearly all spotted animals, showed his weak parts by letting up in his fore-feet, which became contracted to such an extent that the surgeon had to cut them nearly off. We were compelled to let him go barefoot until they grew out. This is one of the spotted mules I have referred to before. You never can ...
— The Mule - A Treatise On The Breeding, Training, - And Uses To Which He May Be Put • Harvey Riley
... go barefoot, and mother dear will scrub The neighbors' dirty linen within a sudsy tub, And Jane will wear no Sunday hat, and Jim no Sunday tie, So Sam can go to Harvard to adorn ...
— Cap and Gown - A Treasury of College Verse • Selected by Frederic Knowles
... but if we were ever to get after it with one of our turreted monitors, they would have to move it out in the country if they wanted it where they could go and find it again when they needed it. The group on the pier was a rusty one—men and women, and boys and girls, all ragged and barefoot, uncombed and unclean, and by instinct, education, and profession beggars. They trooped after us, and never more while we tarried in Fayal did we get rid of them. We walked up the middle of the principal street, and these vermin surrounded us on all sides and glared ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... on its incidents and conditions. The mill-girls standing on the Ancoats pavements; the drunken lurryman tottering out from the public-house to his lurry under the biting sleet of February; the ragged barefoot boys and girls swarming and festering in the slums; the young men struggling all about him for subsistence and success—these for the first time became realities to him, entered into that pondering of 'whence and whither' to which ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... barefoot. He did not have to turn out at every mud-puddle, and he could plash into the mill-pond and give the frogs a crack over the head without stopping to take off stockings and shoes. Paul did not often ...
— Our Young Folks, Vol 1, No. 1 - An Illustrated Magazine • Various
... Desiree rather unceremoniously, glad to get within doors. He was very lame, and of his blue knitted stockings only the legs remained; he was barefoot. ...
— Barlasch of the Guard • H. S. Merriman
... selling them so cheap that now almost every man, woman, and child in the working-classes buys one or two pairs of shoes per year, and wears shoes all the time, whereas formerly each workman bought perhaps one pair of shoes every five years, and went barefoot most of the time, wearing shoes only as a luxury or as a matter of the sternest necessity. In spite of the enormously increased output of shoes per workman, which has come with shoe machinery, the demand for shoes has so increased ...
— The Principles of Scientific Management • Frederick Winslow Taylor
... barefoot friar who preaches in the midst of the market-place," he said, "not to Filarete. The whole world, air, fire, earth, water, the entire universe is governed by daemons, and they inspire our noblest thoughts. Hast never heard of the familiar daemon of Socrates, whispering to him superhuman wisdom? Yes, ...
— Renaissance Fancies and Studies - Being a Sequel to Euphorion • Violet Paget (AKA Vernon Lee)
... Danes invaded Scotland, they stole a silent night march upon the Scottish camp by marching barefoot; but a Dane inadvertently stepped on a thistle, and his sudden, sharp cry, arousing the sleeping Scots, saved them and their country: ...
— Wild Flowers, An Aid to Knowledge of Our Wild Flowers and - Their Insect Visitors - - Title: Nature's Garden • Neltje Blanchan
... remained at camp today have been busily engaged in dressing skins for cloathing, notwithstanding that many of them have their feet so mangled and bruised with the stones and rough ground over which they passed barefoot, that they can scarcely walk or stand; at least it is with great pain they do either. for some days past they were unable to wear their mockersons; they have fallen off considerably, but notwithstanding the difficulties past, or those which ...
— The Journals of Lewis and Clark • Meriwether Lewis et al
... off from his feet by a cook. This was one of the greatest indignities that a knight could suffer. Then his coat of arms was torn off from him, and another coat, inside out, was put upon him. Then he was made to walk barefoot to the end of the town, and there was laid down upon his back on a sort of drag, and so drawn to the place of execution, where his head was cut off on ...
— Richard III - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... rich, no doubt of it," said the captain one morning to Ned, as the latter was preparing to resume work in the creek; "but I'll tell you what it is, I'm tired o' salt beef and pork, and my old hull is gettin' rheumatic with paddling about barefoot in the water, so I mean to go off for a day's ...
— The Golden Dream - Adventures in the Far West • R.M. Ballantyne
... his "ladders," and sells the privilege of netting them at a dollar the pound. As for the wild fish, we were informed by a sharp boy who volunteered to show us the chalybeate spring, and who guided us through the woods barefoot, making himself ill with "sarvice" berries as he went,—we were instructed by this naturalist that the trout were eaten away from the streams "by the alligators." This we regarded as a sun-myth, or some other form of aboriginal superstition, until we were informed by several of the gravest ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII. No. 31. October, 1873. • Various
... circumstances—he was a bare-footed farm-hand—excited comment. And it was not to be wondered. One old man, who was yet alive as late as 1901, had often employed Lincoln to do farm work for him, and was surprised to find him one day sitting barefoot on the summit of a woodpile and attentively reading ...
— Lincoln's Yarns and Stories • Alexander K. McClure
... to do for shoes, I wonder!" said Johnny, "mine are badly cracked and torn, and nearly worn out: we shall all have to go barefoot!" and he looked aghast ...
— The Island Home • Richard Archer
... that were about to befall Jerusalem; or, at another time, wore around his own neck a wooden yoke, to intimate their approaching bondage under the King of Babylon; or, as Isaiah "walked naked and barefoot three years for a sign and wonder upon Egypt and Ethiopia," so did our Lord now invest a tree in dumb nature with a prophet's warning voice, and make its stripped and blighted boughs ...
— Memories of Bethany • John Ross Macduff
... is stranger, he fanatically believed in this his pure invention, and, most extraordinary of all, persuaded other people to believe in it as fanatically. It was taken up as a religion, it inspired heroes, and enabled a barefoot rabble to beat the finest regular armies in the world. Even now, at a distance of a century and a ...
— The Invention of a New Religion • Basil Hall Chamberlain
... added, "that was nothing to his performance last Sunday, in getting here from beyond the boundary in the time he did it in—barefoot! It would have been good enough in shoes. But don't you forget his feet. I can see ...
— Stingaree • E. W. (Ernest William) Hornung
... people about this place. The villages and cottages we passed coming hither all struck me as poor and comfortless compared with England; but the less cleanly and tidy habits of the Scotch, and their almost universal practice of going barefoot—at least the women and children,—give an impression of greater poverty and discomfort ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble
... town. After besieging them in vain for some time, the attacking party left, intending to return by daylight, but the besieged took advantage of their absence to escape and managed to reach Cinacatlan barefoot, where their account of the state of things in the town greatly increased the anxiety of ...
— Bartholomew de Las Casas; his life, apostolate, and writings • Francis Augustus MacNutt
... of the window again. Professor Biggleswade suddenly remembered the popular story of the great scientist's antecedents, and reflected that as McCurdie had once run, a barefoot urchin, through the Glasgow mud, he was likely to have little kith or kin. He himself envied McCurdie. He was always praying to be delivered from his sisters and nephews and nieces, whose embarrassing demands no calculated ...
— A Christmas Mystery - The Story of Three Wise Men • William J. Locke
... with an expression which I have seen in the eyes of foothill mothers, whose children run barefoot, when they have found a rattlesnake. Then she drawled out: "Wal, I hoped ...
— Bunch Grass - A Chronicle of Life on a Cattle Ranch • Horace Annesley Vachell
... [Stamps his feet] Don't laugh at me! If my father and grandfather rose from their graves and looked at the whole affair, and saw how their Ermolai, their beaten and uneducated Ermolai, who used to run barefoot in the winter, how that very Ermolai has bought an estate, which is the most beautiful thing in the world! I've bought the estate where my grandfather and my father were slaves, where they weren't ...
— Plays by Chekhov, Second Series • Anton Chekhov
... satisfaction, making it fit to a hair. The Duke's butler himself patronized me, by sending me a coat which was all hair-powder and pomate, to get a new neck put to it. And James Batter, aye a staunch friend of the family, dispatched a barefoot cripple lassie down the close to me, with a brown paper parcel, tied with skinie, and having a memorandum letter sewed on the top of it, and wafered with a wafer. It ran as follows; "Maister Batter has sent down, per the bearer, ...
— The Life of Mansie Wauch - tailor in Dalkeith • D. M. Moir
... he took neither bed nor refreshment. An Indian, who was going along as cook, on considering that, said that that father was going in that way, because he must be some banaga in his own country—that is, low and base by birth. Another time, when the same religious was going barefoot, like the natives, because of the poor roads (for there is nothing good in these islands), their edification was to make a sound like castanets with the mouth, saying that he was a strong and brave man. Hence arose the saying that I heard from Father Bernabe de Villalobos, [33] a notable ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, Volume XXIII, 1629-30 • Various
... and I could see clearly what manner of fellow he was. For one thing he was huge of size, or so he seemed to me in the half-light. He wore nothing but a shirt and trousers, and I could hear by the flap of his feet on the sand that he was barefoot. ...
— Prester John • John Buchan
... wherefor Eppelein had so anxiously pointed to his feet; the letter entrusted to him had indeed been hid in his boot. Under the lining leather of the sole it lay, but only one from Akusch addressed to me. Howbeit, when we had threatened the now barefoot knave with cruel torture, he confessed that, having been an honest tailor till of late, he had soft feet by reason that he had ever sat over his needle. And when he pulled on the stolen shoes somewhat therein hard ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... nickname of Rasputin, which means "ne'er-do-well," on account of his habits. A drunkard, and a libertine always, he posed as a sort of saint and miracle worker, let his hair grow long, and tramped about the world barefoot. ...
— History of the World War - An Authentic Narrative of the World's Greatest War • Francis A. March and Richard J. Beamish
... went barefoot, like the rest, through the streets of Goa, rough with little flint stones scattered about, and sorely were his feet wounded during an hour's march up and down the principal streets. Weary, covered with shame and confusion, the long train of culprits entered the church of St. Francis, ...
— Life in the Grey Nunnery at Montreal • Sarah J Richardson
... trains began to run through Rayville, on the Shreveport road, he had occasion to visit the town of Ruston, in another parish some miles in the interior, and as he got off at the depot, a barefoot, poor white boy asked to carry his satchel. Smith was a fine looking mulatto, dressed well, and could have easily been taken for a white man, and the boy might not have known at the time he was a negro. When he arrived at his stopping place he gave the boy such a large coin that he asked ...
— The Negro Problem • Booker T. Washington, et al.
... has long lived in Pegu, and has lately returned thence, writes that the men and women of that kingdom, though they cover all their other parts, go always barefoot and ride so too; and Plato very earnestly advises for the health of the whole body, to give the head and the feet no other clothing than what nature has bestowed. He whom the Poles have elected for their king,—[Stephen ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... Linen Nurse's socks were black, and cotton at that, a combination incontestably sedate. And the White Linen Nurse had waded barefoot through too many posied country pastures to experience any ordinary city thrill over the sight of a single blade of grass pushing scarily through a crack in the pavement, or puny, concrete-strangled maple tree flushing wanly to the smoky sky. Indeed for three hustling, square-toed, ...
— The White Linen Nurse • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
... by his fellows, began to search about, and soon took up a barefoot trail and pointed to a drop of blood now and then where it ...
— First in the Field - A Story of New South Wales • George Manville Fenn
... we're in a canal). No sign of Pat or Kroger yet, but the sand here is hard-packed and damp, and there are normal-size footprints mingled with the alien ones, sharp and clear. The aliens seem to have six or seven toes. It varies from print to print. And they're barefoot, too, or else they have ...
— The Dope on Mars • John Michael Sharkey
... longing of the convalescent for the food of recovery. So I lay, questioning wearily what it was that I required. One morning I wakened with a strange, new joy in my soul. It came to me at that moment with indescribable poignancy, the thought of walking barefoot in cool, fresh plow furrows as I had once done when a boy. So vividly the memory came to me—the high airy world as it was at that moment, and the boy I was walking free in the furrows—that the weak tears filled my eyes, the first I had shed in many years. Then I thought of sitting in quiet ...
— Adventures In Contentment • David Grayson
... shall I offer you if it may please the king's good grace, and you my lord Sir Gawayn. And first I shall begin at Sandwich, and there I shall go in my shirt and barefoot, and at every ten miles' end I will found and cause to make a house of religion, of what order ye will assign me, with a whole convent, to sing and to read day and night, in especial for Sir Gareth's sake and Sir Gahers; and this shall I perform ...
— Studies from Court and Cloister • J.M. Stone
... I had time to parley long. The women with their children, barefoot and ragged, bareheaded and unkempt, started down the mountain, intent on reaching food, while I went up the road wondering how often this scene was to be repeated as I advanced ...
— Ox-Team Days on the Oregon Trail • Ezra Meeker
... had deeply shocked him. The vows of a monastic poverty that was kept carefully beyond the walls of the monastery offended his sense of propriety. That men who had vowed themselves to pauperism, who wore coarse garments and went barefoot, should batten upon rich food and store up wines that gold could not purchase, struck him as ...
— The Snare • Rafael Sabatini
... cooking oatmeal on iron girdles, but the fire burned smokily, and the cake I got was no better than dough. They were a disjaskit lot, with tousled hair and pinched faces, in which shone hungry eyes. Most were barefoot, and all but two—three were ancient beldames who should have been at home in the chimney corner. I noticed one decent-looking young woman, who had the air of a farm servant; and two were well-fed country wives who had probably left a brood of children ...
— Salute to Adventurers • John Buchan
... picture of him that hung on the walls of my fancy during my barefoot days when I was dodging his oft-threatened devoirs. To me he was a terrible old man, in gray clothes, with a long, ragged, gray beard, and reddish, fierce eyes. I looked to see him come stumping up the road in a cloud of dust, with a white oak staff in his hand and his shoes tied ...
— The Voice of the City • O. Henry
... painted frieze. But nothing could move her, nothing bend her stubborn will; and at last, furious at the girl he could not govern, Castiglione sent her to this convent, then one of the few houses of barefoot Carmelite nuns in Italy. He stipulated that she should take the name of Maddelena, that he should never hear of her again, and that she should be held an absolute ...
— Black Spirits and White - A Book of Ghost Stories • Ralph Adams Cram
... disappointed parents: a drake who had fathered a wild swan and seen it take wing and disappear. The wild swan in question was now an apothecary in Brazil. He had flown by way of Bordeaux, and first landed in America, bare-headed and barefoot, and with a single halfpenny in his pocket. And now he was an apothecary! Such a wonderful thing is an adventurous life! I thought he might as well have stayed at home; but you never can tell wherein a man's life consists, nor in what he sets his pleasure: one to drink, another ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 1 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... blown Spanish blockhouses to the four winds of heaven? Had it been he or his ghost who had stood behind the Nordenfeldt shields with the bullets pattering against the steel and stinging the air overhead? He or his ghost, barefoot in the sand that sopped the blood of fallen comrades, the ship shaking with the detonation of her guns, the hoarse cheering of her crew re-echoing in his half- deafened ears? A dream, yes; tragic and wonderful in the retrospect, filled with wild, bright ...
— Love, The Fiddler • Lloyd Osbourne
... He lived at Woodbury, and thither the early inhabitants of this town resorted to have their cloth fulled. People, to a very large extent, wore clothing made from the skins of animals. They also wore wooden shoes and moccasins, or went barefoot, although leather boots ...
— The Two Hundredth Anniversary of the Settlement of the Town of New Milford, Conn. June 17th, 1907 • Daniel Davenport
... by a barefoot white boy approaching Robbie. Johnny Doyle carried a dozen teal ducks, six in each hand. They were so heavy for his hands that their heads ...
— The Man in Gray • Thomas Dixon
... for pardon to his father's feet. In Fulk first appeared that low type of superstition which startled even superstitious ages in the early Plantagenets. Robber as he was of Church lands, and contemptuous of ecclesiastical censures, the fear of the end of the world drove Fulk to the Holy Sepulchre. Barefoot and with the strokes of the scourge falling heavily on his shoulders, the Count had himself dragged by a halter through the streets of Jerusalem, and courted the doom of martyrdom by his wild outcries of penitence. ...
— History of the English People, Volume I (of 8) - Early England, 449-1071; Foreign Kings, 1071-1204; The Charter, 1204-1216 • John Richard Green
... of the entire circulation, undoubtedly accounts for the tonic effect of cold-water applications such as cold packs, ablutions, sprays, sitz baths, barefoot walking, etc., and for the wonderfully bracing influence of fresh, ...
— Nature Cure • Henry Lindlahr
... to Charles Frohman was the most remarkable demonstration of sorrow in the history of the theater. The one-time barefoot boy of Sandusky, Ohio, who had projected so many people into eminence and who had himself hidden behind the rampart of his ...
— Charles Frohman: Manager and Man • Isaac Frederick Marcosson and Daniel Frohman
... taken as representing the upper hierarchy of the angelic host. The other angels, not upon wheels, no doubt belong to the second hierarchy; while those that have but one pair of wings (not three) represent the lowest hierarchy. "All, like our Lord, are barefoot. All of them have their hands lifted in prayer.... For every lover of English heraldry this cope, so plentifully blazoned with armorial bearings, will have a special value, equal to that belonging to many an ancient roll of ...
— Needlework As Art • Marian Alford
... hear, A whole day could he whistle them, an' thin he'd up an' sing, The merry tunes an' twists o'them that suited all the year, An' you wouldn't ask but listen if yourself stood there a king. Early of a mornin' would he give "The Barefoot Boy" to us, An' later on "The Rocky Road" or maybe "Mountain Lark," "Trottin' to the Fair" was a liltin' heart of joy to us, An' whin we heard "The Coulin" sure the night ...
— Ballads of Peace in War • Michael Earls
... tribute of affection to the little, gay, chattering butterfly, at that moment an occupant of Uncle Ephraim's corn-colored wagon, and riding with that worthy toward home, throwing kisses to every barefoot boy and girl she met, and screaming with delight as the old familiar waymarks ...
— Family Pride - Or, Purified by Suffering • Mary J. Holmes
... worship of the Sun, and the rites of fire. I accordingly find, from Strabo and Pliny, that rites of this sort were practised here: and one custom, which remained even to the time of Augustus, consisted in a ceremony of the priests, who used to walk barefoot over burning coals: [569][Greek: Gumnois gar posi diexiasin anthrakian, kai spodian megalen.] The priests, with their feet naked, walked over a large quantity of live coals and cinders. The town stood at the bottom of Mount Soracte, sacred to Apollo; ...
— A New System; or, an Analysis of Antient Mythology. Volume I. • Jacob Bryant
... to the Parliament, also of attempting the life of Therese d'Aubray, her sister; in punishment whereof the court has condemned and does condemn the said d'Aubray de Brinvilliers to make the rightful atonement before the great gate of the church of Paris, whither she shall be conveyed in a tumbril, barefoot, a rope on her neck, holding in her hands a burning torch two pounds in weight; and there on her knees she shall say and declare that maliciously, with desire for revenge and seeking their goods, she did poison her father, cause to be poisoned ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - THE MARQUISE DE BRINVILLIERS • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... his life is April; he reclines amazed at the mysteries of a tuft of grass; he studies the ant-hills of tiny republicans; he learns to know the birds by their songs; he watches the children playing barefoot in the edge of ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol X • Various
... hardships our forefathers went through, while they were fighting the battles of liberty. But I doubt if you can form, in your own mind, any thing like a true picture of what those brave men suffered. Why, many of them had to go barefoot, for whole weeks at a time, right in the heart of winter. They could hardly get food to eat; and many and many a time, if it had not been for the thought that they were engaged in a good cause, and that God was on their side, they must have been discouraged, and given up ...
— Mike Marble - His Crotchets and Oddities. • Uncle Frank
... men call him crazy. If he is, the rest of us never had intellect enough to become crazy. Look at his dress; he wears a kind of frock, tied with a hay rope, and is barefoot, I presume. Some strange new or old idea has taken possession of him to get back to nature. If he keeps on he will become crazy. I must introduce you; he and ...
— Bart Ridgeley - A Story of Northern Ohio • A. G. Riddle
... some place of privacy, where he might collect his thoughts; and his freedman Phaon offering him his country-house, between the Salarian [626] and Nomentan [627] roads, about four miles from the city, he mounted a horse, barefoot as he was, and in his tunic, only slipping over it an old soiled cloak; with his head muffled up, and an handkerchief before his face, and four persons only to attend him, of whom Sporus was one. He ...
— The Lives Of The Twelve Caesars, Complete - To Which Are Added, His Lives Of The Grammarians, Rhetoricians, And Poets • C. Suetonius Tranquillus
... how an old wife should speak? 'Tis strange indeed that a father sits sheltered at home while his little one runs barefoot ...
— Ditte: Girl Alive! • Martin Andersen Nexo
... Barefoot, of his trepidation still grasping the carcass of what had been a black Orpington, there emerged from the cottage a filthy and evil-smelling tramp. A week's sandy stubble bristled upon his chin, the pendulous lips were twitching, the crafty ...
— Anthony Lyveden • Dornford Yates
... her hands, made her alight, accompanied by her goat, which had also been unbound, and which bleated with joy at finding itself free: and they made her walk barefoot on the hard pavement to the foot of the steps leading to the door. The rope about her neck trailed behind her. One would have said it was a ...
— Notre-Dame de Paris - The Hunchback of Notre Dame • Victor Hugo
... the learned—for he had learning—and with the simple, whose simplicity he shared. He had had the knack, in fact, of getting himself accepted on his own terms, exorbitant as they were; and of both rich and poor alike he had demanded entire equality. "Barefoot I stand," had been his proposition, "of level inches with your lordship, or with you, my hedgerow acquaintance. Take me for a man, decently furnished within, or take me not at all. Take me never, at least, for a clothes-horse." In all these things, ...
— Rest Harrow - A Comedy of Resolution • Maurice Hewlett
... carrying iron of a given weight a stipulated distance, an accused person might traverse barefoot a certain space in which nine hot ploughshares were laid lengthwise. To this species of judgment Queen Emma, mother of Edward the Confessor, is alleged to have submitted, when charged with adultery with Alwyn, Bishop of Winchester. ...
— The Customs of Old England • F. J. Snell
... the hypocritic Days, Muffled and dumb, like barefoot dervishes, And marching single in an endless file, Bring diadems and fagots in their hands. To each they offer gifts, after his will,— Bread, kingdoms, stars, or sky that holds them all. I, in my pleached garden, watched the pomp, Forgot ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various
... were guilty of the same offense.... He was grossly illiterate,—the only schooling he ever got was in the Monastery Abalaksky and what he acquired from the lips of monks while making his rounds as a barefoot pilgrim from place to place.... His claims of having visions I ascribed to his empty stomach, although others gave credence to the nonsense.... Alice at first abhorred him; finally she began to regard him as a rare specimen in self-hypnosis who was ...
— Rescuing the Czar - Two authentic Diaries arranged and translated • James P. Smythe
... dear," agreed Sally. "We won't talk any such silly stuff. We'll be four little country girls together, playing in the hay, and if we want to go barefoot we will—when there's nobody to see. But I hope, don't you, Jo? that 'Miss Carew' isn't as grand ...
— Strawberry Acres • Grace S. Richmond
... should be: but that is not my case. For, granted that thou givest me garments and shoes to my mind, thou knowest how otherwise ill bested I am, and how long it is since last thou didst lie with me; and far liefer had I go barefoot and in rags, and have thy benevolence abed, than have all that I have, and be treated as thou dost treat me. Understand me, Pietro, be reasonable; consider that I am a woman like other women, with the like craving; whereof if thou deny me the gratification, 'tis no blame ...
— The Decameron, Vol. II. • Giovanni Boccaccio
... the receiving-offices were pulled down or pillaged. Everywhere the army of suffering (armee de souffrance), the name given by the revolters to themselves, made, appeal to violent passions; popular rhymes were circulated from hand to hand, in the name of General Nu-pieds (Barefoot), an imaginary personage whom nobody ever saw. Some of ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume V. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... have the old mission bell rung, a signal. I'll ever forget it to my dyin' day, I shan't. Her like a spirit all in white and a face was both the saddest and the upliftedest ever I see; and them rough men all crowdin' up to their places, so soft you'd thought they was barefoot 'stead of heavy shod; and Jessie with her arms round the two little ones, and her mother pitchin' the tune, same as usual, and—and—I declare I can't keep the tears back yet, rememberin'. Before she was done the ...
— Jessica, the Heiress • Evelyn Raymond
... And this unseemly manner of peregrination displayed just one of Elizabeth's trying peculiarities. For four years she had been faithfully taught that little girls should never go barefoot outside their own gardens, and that when they were on the public highway they must walk quietly and properly on the grass by the roadside. When she remembered, Elizabeth strove to conform to the laws of home and social usage, for she was very ...
— 'Lizbeth of the Dale • Marian Keith
... is firmly believed," says Brand, "that at this period the two saints appear in the well in the shape of two small fishes, of the trout kind; and if they do not so appear, that no cure will take place. The penitents attending on these occasions ascend the hill barefoot, kneel by the stream and repeat a number of paters and aves, then enter it, go through the stream three times, at a slow pace, reciting their prayers. They then go on the gravel walk, and traverse it round three times on their bare knees, often ...
— Three Thousand Years of Mental Healing • George Barton Cutten
... of its great windows, and a pair of lamps hanging before a large closed entrance. It was a theatre, honey-combed with gambling-dens. At this morning hour all was still, and the only sign of life was a knot of little barefoot girls gathered within its narrow shade, and each carrying an infant relative. Into this place the parson and M. St.-Ange entered, the little nurses jumping up from the sills to let them ...
— Short Stories for English Courses • Various (Rosa M. R. Mikels ed.)
... hundred miles out of their course. This, in its turn, was followed by light winds and fair weather, with a sun so hot that the pitch began to melt and bubble out of the deck seams, so that the mariners, who had hitherto been going about their duty barefoot, were fain to don shoes to save their feet from being blistered. Finally, after a voyage of twenty-four days, they came to the Azores, where they remained four days, filling up their fresh water, replenishing their stock of wood, and taking in a bounteous supply of ...
— Two Gallant Sons of Devon - A Tale of the Days of Queen Bess • Harry Collingwood
... as if she felt ashamed that the wealthy young women were looking at her naked shoulders and at her legs naked to the knee. But seeing that they too were barefoot and wore short skirts, she quickly ...
— The Created Legend • Feodor Sologub
... innocent, artless, and their love was very natural, tender, innocent. It's a pity that all loves can not remain in just that idyllic, milkmaid stage, where the girls and boys awaken in the early morning with the birds, and hasten forth barefoot across the dewy fields to find the cows. But love never tarries. Love is progressive; it can not stand still. I have heard of the "passiveness" of woman's love, but the passive woman is only one who does not love—she ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 5 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... the time Ruth Mary had fortified herself to meet the eyes of strangers she was uncomfortably flushed, and short of breath besides from the pressure of the new stays. She went slowly down the uneven stairs, wishing that she could walk as softly in her shoes as she could barefoot. ...
— In Exile and Other Stories • Mary Hallock Foote
... the midst a musical fountain with a jet of quick-silver in the Arabian fashion; leaves of orange-trees and pomegranates placed alternately; overhead the bluest of skies and the mellowest of suns; great long-nosed greyhounds should be sleeping here and there; from time to time barefoot negresses with golden ankle-rings, fair women servants white and slender, and clad in rich strange garments, should pass between the hollow arches, basket on arm, or urn poised on head.[19] Three things give me pleasure, gold, marble, and purple—brilliance, mass, ...
— Is Life Worth Living? • William Hurrell Mallock
... of Euboea, which he called the "Shackles of Greece." To its aid was sent a body of Athenians, under the command of Phocion, a friend of Plato, and one of the sternest of Stoics, of whom it was said that no one had ever seen him laugh, weep, or go to the public baths. He went about barefoot, and never wrapped himself up if he could help it, so that it was a saying, "Phocion has got his cloak on; it is a hard winter." He was a great soldier, and, for the time, drove back the Macedonians from Euboea. But very few Athenians had the spirit of Phocion or Demosthenes. They had grown ...
— Aunt Charlotte's Stories of Greek History • Charlotte M. Yonge
... celibacy, and the confessional, and purgatory: and in the darkness of an Italian cathedral, incense-laden and mysterious, I believe with all my heart in the miracle of the Mass. In Venice I have seen a fisherwoman come in, barefoot, throw down her basket of fish by her side, fall on her knees, and pray to the Madonna; and that I felt was the real faith, and I prayed and believed with her. But I believe also in Aphrodite and Apollo and the Great ...
— Of Human Bondage • W. Somerset Maugham
... in the life of this man who, from a barefoot country boy with no advantages, has become one of the most widely known of the preachers, lecturers and writers of the day, as well as the founder of a college and hospital holding an honored position among the institutions of ...
— Russell H. Conwell • Agnes Rush Burr
... floor of the hut could not be too much trodden, in the absence of planks and bricks, Charles and the boys gave it a first treading now, as soon as the six biggest stakes were driven in. Like all their peasant neighbours who were not barefoot, they wore wooden clogs; and with these all three stamped and tramped with ...
— The Peasant and the Prince • Harriet Martineau
... room gave the patient nothing to lay hold of, because, apart from the solid decorative object, they were simply furnished with mirrors, thick enough to withstand any onslaught of the victim, who was flung into the chamber empty-handed and barefoot. ...
— The Phantom of the Opera • Gaston Leroux
... sordidness and sorrow of earth, and never yet did I fail to ripple with my prow at least the outskirts of those magic waters. What spell has fame or wealth to enrich this midday blessedness with a joy the more? Yonder barefoot boy, as he drifts silently in his punt beneath the drooping branches of yonder vine-clad bank, has a bliss which no Astor can buy with money, no Seward conquer with votes,—which yet is no monopoly of his, and to which time and experience only add a more subtile ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 47, September, 1861 • Various
... speech had formerly given him pleasure, requested the player to repeat it; which he did in so lively a manner, setting forth the cruel murder of the feeble old king, with the destruction of his people and city by fire, and the mad grief of the old queen, running barefoot up and down the palace, with a poor clout upon that head where a crown had been, and with nothing but a blanket upon her loins, snatched up in haste, where she had worn a royal robe: that not only it drew tears from all that stood by, who thought ...
— Books for Children - The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 3 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... the sidewalk, and Pete forgot that he himself rose fully as high above the crowds as this stranger. In fact, nearly every one turned to take a look at the huge islander, who, in reality, stood six feet four, barefoot. ...
— The Harbor of Doubt • Frank Williams
... a 1500-pound 3-year-old colt with small brittle feet that has side bone coming on left front foot caused by driving him barefoot on the road two or three ...
— One Thousand Questions in California Agriculture Answered • E.J. Wickson
... went barefoot and trudged many a weary mile, winter and summer, to and from the district school. He worked his way through college. He married and reared a family. He educated my father. He watched over his flock in sickness and in health, and he ...
— The "Goldfish" • Arthur Train
... they came to a river of some width and depth. All three being on foot—the friars by reason of their poverty, and the other from avarice—it was necessary by the custom of company that one of the friars, being barefoot, should carry the merchant on his shoulders: so having given his wooden shoes into his keeping, he took up his man. But it so happened that when the friar had got to the middle of the river, he again remembered a rule of his ...
— The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci, Complete • Leonardo Da Vinci
... that, feeding on the grassy hills, Tread upon moonwort with their hollow heels, Though lately shod, at night go barefoot home, Their maister musing where their shoes become. O moonwort! tell me where thou bid'st the smith, Hammer and pinchers, thou unshodd'st ...
— The Folk-lore of Plants • T. F. Thiselton-Dyer
... had an engagement at two! He brightened at the memory and, jumping up, pressed an electric call-button on the wall. By the time he had paddled barefoot to the bath-room and turned on the cold-water tap, O'Hagan's knock summoned him to ...
— The Brass Bowl • Louis Joseph Vance
... as Lily faced her little group of barefoot children, she was thinking of Radbourn, of his almost fierce sympathy for these poor supine farmers, hopeless, and in some cases content in their narrow lives. The children almost worshipped the beautiful girl who came to them as a revelation of exquisite neatness ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 20, July, 1891 • Various
... dawn Charles the Fair took himself to bed. And to him, pattering barefoot along stone floors, came Clotilde, the child ...
— The Truce of God • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... Professor, "don't you fool yourself dere—she'll keep dat going for hours. And in the morning she puts on just one thin white dress and dances barefoot in the garden. I come by dere one time and looked over the vall—and, psst, listen, she don't vare no corsets! She ought ...
— Silver and Gold - A Story of Luck and Love in a Western Mining Camp • Dane Coolidge
... had been a beloved trysting-place betwixt him and the Bride, and that often when they were little would they come to gather chestnuts in the grove, and thereafter sit and prattle on the old dyke; or in spring when the season was warm would they go barefoot into the brook, seeking its treasures of troutlets and flowers and clean-washed agate pebbles. Yea, and time not long ago had they met here to talk as lovers, and sat on that very bank in all the kindness of good days without a blemish, and both ...
— The Roots of the Mountains • William Morris
... artillery, the guns stuck in the mud; and he adds,—"The field of battle was so saturated by the incessant rain, that a great portion of our infantry left their shoes sticking in the mud, and followed the enemy barefoot." Even a brook, called the Deichsel, was so swollen by the rain that the French could cross it at only one place, and there they lost wagons and guns. Old Bluecher issued a thundering proclamation for the encouragement of his troops. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 55, May, 1862 • Various
... the people were much better off. Then there was plenty of wine in the cellars, but now St. Bazile was a village of water-drinkers. He spoke of the neighbouring parish of Servieres, where, at the annual pilgrimage, women go barefoot from one rock to the other on ...
— Two Summers in Guyenne • Edward Harrison Barker
... fine hand, slightly developed hips, and sinewy legs. The detail of the knee-joint and the muscles of the calf are strongly marked beneath the skin; the long, thin, and low-arched feet are flattened out at the extremities owing to the custom of going barefoot. The head is rather short, the face oval, the forehead somewhat retreating. The eyes are wide and fully opened, the cheekbones not too marked, the nose fairly prominent, and either straight or aquiline. The mouth ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 1 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... white as milk. He was dressed always in a white kirtle beneath, and a brown sleeveless frock over it of the colour of his hair, that came to his ankles, and was girt with a leather band. He went barefoot, but carried a great hat on his shoulders when he walked. He moved slowly at such times, and bore himself upright. His hands were fine and slender, and were burned brown like ...
— The History of Richard Raynal, Solitary • Robert Hugh Benson
... But it holds in such as are intemperately hot, as [1514]Johannes a Meggen found in Cyprus, others in Malta, Aupulia, and the [1515]Holy Land, where at some seasons of the year is nothing but dust, their rivers dried up, the air scorching hot, and earth inflamed; insomuch that many pilgrims going barefoot for devotion sake, from Joppa to Jerusalem upon the hot sands, often run mad, or else quite overwhelmed with sand, profundis arenis, as in many parts of Africa, Arabia Deserta, Bactriana, now Charassan, when the west wind blows [1516]Involuti arenis transeuntes ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... upon his arm. He was a slender little fellow of six or seven years who whistled shrilly as he went and kicked up clouds of dust with his bare feet. As Van watched the sway of his shoulders and the unhampered tread of his unshod feet he could not but recall the days when he, too, had gloried in going barefoot. He smiled at the memory ...
— The Story of Sugar • Sara Ware Bassett
... On returning to Okoyong through the bush, small twigs and sticks penetrated the wool and pricked her feet. With an expression of disgust she took the slippers off and threw them into the bush. That was the only time I saw her other than barefoot." She never boiled or filtered the water she drank, two precautions which Europeans do not omit without suffering. She ate native food, and was not particular when meals were served. Breakfast might be at seven one morning and at ten the next; dinner might be an hour or two ...
— Mary Slessor of Calabar: Pioneer Missionary • W. P. Livingstone
... made no alteration in his manners. He never wore the orarium, a kind of stole then used by bishops, nor other clothes than his usual coarse garb, which was the same in winter and summer. He went sometimes barefoot: he never undressed to take rest, and always rose to prayer before the midnight office. His diet chiefly consisted of pulse and herbs, with which he contented himself, without consulting the palate's gratification by borrowed tastes: but in more advanced years, finding his sight impaired by such ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler
... trades with blood. He lives on treachery. He is more subtle than the subtlest Pathan. He would betray any one or all of us to death if it were to the interest of the Empire that we should be sacrified. That, you know, in reason, is all very well. But, personally, I would sooner tread barefoot on a scorpion than get entangled in Carlyon's web. He is more false and more cruel than a serpent. At least, that is his reputation among us. And those heathen ...
— Rosa Mundi and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... cotton, and lived in cabins little better than those occupied by the negroes. Their children were numerous, without educational advantages, and accustomed to the poor and meager cultural life of an outcast class. Their outlook was no better than that of their parents. Barefoot, half-clad, yet alert and agile, hating negroes and fearing the masters, these "Anglo-Saxons" offered the problem of the South. Unaccustomed to independent voting, they did not endanger the existing ...
— Expansion and Conflict • William E. Dodd
... store carrying low stools, which they placed outside the shop along the sidewalk. Their dress was navy blue baggy trousers, which reached a little below the knee; white shirts, the sleeves of which were rolled over their elbows; crimson girdles, and white skull-caps. A couple were barefoot, and the others had red shoes on. They moved about lightly as they ...
— Harper's Young People, July 6, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... had flung through the night across three lines of breastworks at the great fort they had so nearly stormed. Poor drenched, shivering Johnnies! there they stood, not a few of them in blue overcoats, but mostly in butternut, generally tattered; some barefoot, some with feet bound in ragged sections of blanket, many with toes and skin showing through crazy boots lashed on with strips of cotton or with cord; many stoutly on foot, streaming blood from ...
— Old Man Savarin and Other Stories • Edward William Thomson
... up the hill, to make a loop for the return. Below, from among the trees, the farm-bell clanged. He saw the labourers, mowing barefoot at the thick grass, leave off their work and go downhill, their scythes hanging over their shoulders, like long, bright claws curving down behind them. They seemed like dream-people, as if they had no relation ...
— The Prussian Officer • D. H. Lawrence
... not allow the National Bank to fail," protested Salomon. "Somehow," turning to his guest, "I have grown like the old philosopher of my people who was so unfortunate that he once declared that if he took to making shoes everyone would go barefoot, if he became a shroud maker, no one would die." He laughed softly, then grew suddenly grave. "The merchants to whom I have extended credit have failed. There have been losses at sea—" he shrugged, and became silent, his eyes ...
— The New Land - Stories of Jews Who Had a Part in the Making of Our Country • Elma Ehrlich Levinger
... experience, of which Le Caron's was the counterpart. Sagard reckons from eighty to a hundred waterfalls and rapids in the course of the journey, and the task of avoiding them by pushing through the woods was the harder for him because he saw fit to go barefoot, "in imitation of our seraphic father, Saint Francis." "We often came upon rocks, mudholes, and fallen trees, which we had to scramble over, and sometimes we must force our way with head and hands through ...
— Pioneers Of France In The New World • Francis Parkman, Jr.
... after me and Tom Sawyer set our old nigger Jim free, the time he was chained up for a runaway slave down there on Tom's uncle Silas's farm in Arkansaw. The frost was working out of the ground, and out of the air, too, and it was getting closer and closer onto barefoot time every day; and next it would be marble time, and next mumbletypeg, and next tops and hoops, and next kites, and then right away it would be summer and going in a-swimming. It just makes a boy homesick to look ahead like that and see how far off summer is. Yes, and it sets ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... close to the opening, and suddenly ceased to perceive the odour. The sight he saw deadened his sense of smell. In a large room, about ten yards long and six yards wide, there walked unceasingly from one end to the other, six men in long grey coats, some in felt boots, some barefoot. There were over twenty men in all in the room, but in that first moment the young Tsar only saw those who were walking with quick, even, silent steps. It was a horrid sight to watch the continual, quick, aimless movements of the men who passed and overtook each other, turning sharply ...
— The Forged Coupon and Other Stories • Leo Tolstoy
... untoward generation with hooting, pelting, coachwhipping and horsewhipping. But, though he applauded the zeal of the sufferers, he did not go quite to their lengths. He sometimes, indeed, was impelled to strip himself partially. Thus he pulled off his shoes and walked barefoot through Lichfield, crying, "Woe to the bloody city." [36] But it does not appear that he ever thought it his duty to appear before the public without that decent garment from which his popular ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 4 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... at his pipe. Just then a soft movement stirred the brakes on the hillside. A little barefoot girl stood there, looking about. She had heard voices, but at first did not see the uniforms that blended with the yellow and brown of the wood. Then she saw the sun shining on two heads; one square, and amber in colour,—the other ...
— One of Ours • Willa Cather
... aside. From now on it will be stuffy. Those military boots were killing me. I borrowed the rig from one of the pirates, but I'll have to go barefoot." ...
— The Pagan Madonna • Harold MacGrath
... or saddle; they have escaped the cruel curb-bits, the check reins and blinders of our civilization. Fortunate in that respect. And they never have had a shoe on their feet. Their feet are perfect, firm and sound, strong and healthy and elastic; natural, like those of the Indians, who run barefoot, who go over the rough places of the wilds as easily as these horses can run up the stairs or over the cobble stones of the pavement if they were ...
— Our Boys - Entertaining Stories by Popular Authors • Various
... bath we shall not repent it: At my peril be it; I'll lead the way, for this room is grown as hot as an oven." "Say you so," quoth Habinas, "nor am I afraid to make two days of one"; and therewith got up barefoot and follow'd Trimalchio. ...
— The Satyricon • Petronius Arbiter
... policy;' for the attachment to solitude is the surest preservative from the ills of life: and I know not if the Romans ever instilled, under allegory, a sublimer truth than when they inculcated the belief that those inspired by Feronia, the goddess of woods and forests, could walk barefoot ...
— Devereux, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... certainly pinch you if you were wearing them," said Calvert, grimly. "But you are not. Suppose you were? Better wear even Marlitt's shoes than hop about the world barefoot. You are a singularly sensitive young man. I come up-town to offer you Warrington's place, and your reply is a ...
— A Young Man in a Hurry - and Other Short Stories • Robert W. Chambers
... times'? They think of sons and daughters dead and gone, perhaps, just as other old women in better circumstances do. But they must not indulge such depressing thoughts; they must reserve all the energy, the stamina they have, to drag round the city—barefoot, it may be, and in the cold—to beg for food, and scratch up what they can find among the cinder heaps. They groan over past comforts and past times, perhaps, and think of the days when their limbs were ...
— The World of Ice • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... barefoot, probably because it is an ordinary evidence of poverty. Von den Steinen has well suggested that some day it may be said that shoes were invented on account of "innate" shame at exposing the feet.[1411] In recent years fashion has allowed young people to leave off ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner
... and she knew, or nobody did. And was not her aspect a benign proof of the observation? But thy these wamblings in thy cursed gizzard, and thy awkward grimaces, I see thou'rt but a novice in it yet!—Ah, Belford, Belford, thou hast a confounded parcel of briers and thorns to trample over barefoot, before religion will illuminate these ...
— Clarissa Harlowe, Volume 9 (of 9) - The History Of A Young Lady • Samuel Richardson
... spray that now and again came spattering over the derelict, the heat had been conducted throughout the craft. Not having thought of the possibility of a heated metal deck, Eric was barefoot. Of what use was it for him to be on board unless he could find out whether any one were there! The decks were empty. The steamer had sunk too deep for any one to be below, and live. There was only one place in which a survivor might still be—the ...
— The Boy With the U. S. Life-Savers • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... Going to find a barefoot brother out, One of our order, to associate me, Here in this city visiting the sick, And finding him, the searchers of the town, Suspecting that we both were in a house Where the infectious pestilence did reign, Seal'd up the ...
— Romeo and Juliet • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]
... with silvery gem. Then every butterfly that crossed our view With joyful shout was greeted as it flew, And moth and lady-bird and beetle bright In sheeny gold were each a wondrous sight. Then as we paddled barefoot, side by side, Among the sunny shallows of the Clyde, Minnows or spotted par with twinkling fin, Swimming in mazy rings the pool within, A thrill of gladness through our bosoms sent Seen in ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 3 • Various
... suffered them to visit her Cromarty relations unshod; but neither Cousin Walter nor myself had the magnanimity to say, that our mothers had also taken care to see us shod; but that, deeming it lighter and cooler to walk barefoot, the good women had no sooner turned their backs than we both agreed to fling our shoes into a corner, and set out on our journey without them. The walk to the salmon-leap was a thoroughly delightful one. We passed through the woods of Achanie, famous for their nuts; startled, as we went, ...
— My Schools and Schoolmasters - or The Story of my Education. • Hugh Miller
... The barefoot girl, clad only in a short, sleeveless calico gown, stood before him like a portrait from an old master. Her skin was almost white, with but a tinge of olive. Her dark brown hair hung in curls to her shoulders and framed a face of rarest beauty. Innocence, purity, and love radiated from her fair ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... sink his brow Unto the dust, here where he wore his crown. Thou knowest him. Have I not cause to mourn Uncomforted, that he, the first of fathers, Self-murdered—nay, child-murdered—Oh, Tommaso, I would fare barefoot to the ends of the earth To look again upon his living face, See in his eyes the light of love restored— Not blasting me with lightnings as before— To kneel to him, to solace him, to win For mine own head, yoked in my sister's curse ...
— The Poems of Emma Lazarus - Vol. I (of II.), Narrative, Lyric, and Dramatic • Emma Lazarus
... was being urged to stand for the Senatorship, but that for his part he had no desire to do so; and he asked me what I thought about it. I replied that if I had felt it was right for him to take the office and he desired it, I would walk barefoot across the continent to aid him. But I reminded him of the pledges which he and I had made repeatedly—on our own behalf, in the name of his associates in leadership, and on the honor of the Mormon people—to ...
— Under the Prophet in Utah - The National Menace of a Political Priestcraft • Frank J. Cannon and Harvey J. O'Higgins
... barefoot to the beach, threw her night-dress on the sand and plunged, her white, young body trembling with ...
— The Foolish Virgin • Thomas Dixon
... when she heard inside the palace excited words and hurrying feet. Some one ran, barefoot, past her door, calling under his breath upon the gods. At that moment an incisive shriek cut the increasing murmur in the palace and died away in a long shuddering ...
— The Yoke - A Romance of the Days when the Lord Redeemed the Children - of Israel from the Bondage of Egypt • Elizabeth Miller
... pleasing prospect, when you're screwing out a laugh, That your very next year's income is diminished by a half, And a little boy trips barefoot that Pegasus may go, And the baby's milk is watered that your ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... heather-drowsy hills The barefoot children wandered, hand in hand, And paddled through the laughing silver rills In quest of fairyland; And in each little sunburnt hand a spray, A purple fox-glove bell-branch lightly swung, And Anwyl told Etain how, far away, One day he wandered through the ...
— Collected Poems - Volume One (of 2) • Alfred Noyes
... that when he was young, having studied at Wittemberg, he returned home to his parents in Hamburg in the winter of the year 1547, and that on the following Sunday, in church, he observed a tall man, with his hair hanging over his shoulders, standing barefoot, during the sermon, over against the pulpit, listening with deepest attention to the discourse, and, whenever the name of Jesus was mentioned, bowing himself profoundly and humbly, with sighs and ...
— Legends That Every Child Should Know • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... indeed he was also in his youthful heart, for the smallest of all the Mortimers—a lovely little child about three years old—took entire possession of it; and when he was not up a tree with the boys in a daring hunt after bergamy pears, or wading barefoot in a shallow stream at the bottom of the garden catching water-beetles, caddis-worms, and other small cattle for a freshwater aquarium, he was generally carrying this child about the garden pickaback, or otherwise obeying her little ...
— Fated to Be Free • Jean Ingelow
... with an air of utter desolation, and began to cry. "I wanted to give them something," said she. "I'd rather go barefoot on the snow all day than not send ...
— The May Flower, and Miscellaneous Writings • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... very frightened, for he heard her jump out of her bed and speak to herself, as if she were in a dream. Then she went to her dressing room, opened and closed the door, and went quickly up and down her room barefoot two or three times, shaking the furniture till the vases and glasses sounded. Then at last ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... her hat is carried loosely in one hand; with the other she is guiding the old horse. Bev walks at her side, with one hand on the bridle. He is a very handsome boy of about fourteen, with a gay, happy manner. He is barefoot, dressed in a soft white cotton shirt and blue homespun trousers. He is without hat or coat, and seems in the best of spirits. They stop at ...
— The Southern Cross - A Play in Four Acts • Foxhall Daingerfield, Jr.
... dignity and reputation. Terah, like all others of his exalted rank, had attained to the honor of being a Pince by serving a hard apprenticeship to suffering and privation in his early youth. He had passed through the ordeal triumphantly—and he who had run barefoot through sharp and tearing thorns—who had endured to have his shins beaten with a hard and heavy mallet, and his flesh burned with red hot spears—and had not even betrayed a sense of pain— in order to attain the rank of a great counselor, and the privilege ...
— The Pilgrims of New England - A Tale Of The Early American Settlers • Mrs. J. B. Webb
... can Jake come for me with an umbrella, and can I take off my shoes and stockings and come home barefoot?" ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, October 1878, No. 12 • Various
... brown and nameless hill By sparkling Asolo, in mist and chill, Morning just up, higher and higher runs A child barefoot and rosy. See! the sun's On the square castle's inner-court's low wall Like the chine of some extinct animal Half-turned to earth and flowers; and through the haze, (Save where some slender patches of grey maize Are to be over-leaped) that boy has crossed The whole hill-side of dew and ...
— The Poetry Of Robert Browning • Stopford A. Brooke
... "bee" and the work was soon done. Perhaps, while the men were thus working together in the field, the women had gathered within doors, and were busily plying their fingers over the mottled patch-work of a quilt. In the lengthening summer twilight the men, coatless and barefoot, sat in groups on the front steps or under the low Dutch stoops and talked of the incoming crops, the weather or ...
— A Sketch of the History of Oneonta • Dudley M. Campbell
... out with high boots and sheepskin coat for the winter. But, although she allowed them to dress her up without resisting, she usually went away, preferably to the cathedral porch, and taking off all that had been given her—kerchief, sheepskin, skirt or boots—she left them there and walked away barefoot in her smock as before. It happened on one occasion that a new governor of the province, making a tour of inspection in our town, saw Lizaveta, and was wounded in his tenderest susceptibilities. And though he was told she was an idiot, he pronounced that for a young woman ...
— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... You remember on your birthday How I drove 'round kind o' late, And we went to Donkey Collins' To a dance, to celebrate? When you got up in my wagon, Bless my heart, you sure was sweet! You was bound that you'd go barefoot, 'Cause your new shoes hurt your feet. Well, I tell you, pretty Nancy, Every minute of that ride Seemed like floating through the heavens, 'Cause you set there by ...
— Nancy MacIntyre • Lester Shepard Parker
... at the Oaks were awakened by plaster from the ceilings falling on their bed and had barely time to flee for their lives. One singer was seen standing in the street, barefoot, and clad only in his underwear, but clutching a favorite violin which he carried with him in his flight. Rossi, though almost in tears, was heard trying his voice at a corner ...
— Complete Story of the San Francisco Horror • Richard Linthicum
... be bending over me again, but I am in the light and the warmth once more; and—then it all passes away; and if I try to carry my thoughts back to the first circumstance which I can distinctly remember, I see myself again with other boys, paddling about barefoot on the ...
— The Pirate Island - A Story of the South Pacific • Harry Collingwood
... settled conviction of Miss Betty's subtlety. 'She's like one of the wild foxes they have in Crim Tartary; and when you think they are dead, they're up and at you before you can look round.' He affirmed no more than the truth when he said that 'he'd rather walk barefoot to Kilbeggan than go up that stair ...
— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever
... our mental vision we regard the fruitful results, which, with the aid of God, religious persons—especially the Friars Minor of Observance [56] known as "Discalced" ["barefoot"], of the custodia of St. Gregory in the Philippine Islands of the Western Indias—are zealously gathering by their own toil, as so many workmen in the field of the Lord, busy for the glory of God and the spiritual health of peoples dwelling in those very remote regions so far away from us, we think ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 - Volume VI, 1583-1588 • Emma Helen Blair |
