"Clumsiness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... was pure magic, untouched by human clumsiness, rare and spellbound as a stilly afternoon in ...
— The Job - An American Novel • Sinclair Lewis
... know. Look at the man! That's the fourth time he's landed his line in a bush! He'll fall into that pool if he's not—mercy!—there he goes! Did you ever see such a genius for clumsiness?" ...
— The Danger Mark • Robert W. Chambers
... tarry long in this quarter of the world, lad," returned the other laughing. "The echoes repeat pretty much all that is said or done on the Glimmerglass, in this calm summer weather. If a paddle falls you hear of it sometimes, ag'in and ag'in, as if the hills were mocking your clumsiness, and a laugh, or a whistle, comes out of them pines, when they're in the humour to speak, in a way to make you believe they can ...
— The Deerslayer • James Fenimore Cooper
... look too good," Winfree panted. "Cover yourself—I might hurt you out of sheer clumsiness." His chin and throat were covered with blood, now; blood enough to satisfy the most indignant consumer. The moment the measure was set again, Winfree lunged, trying to slip his blade beneath MacHenery's guard to strike his arm. His foible met ...
— The Great Potlatch Riots • Allen Kim Lang
... was only a man; it was flesh and blood I had to contend with and not the intangible powers. Only a few hours before I had seen him cleaning his gun, smoking his pipe, knocking the billiard balls about with very human clumsiness, and the picture flashed across my mind with ...
— The Empty House And Other Ghost Stories • Algernon Blackwood
... sacredness; but the origin and the precise nature of the beliefs concerning it I have not been able to learn. Only this I know, that to touch it with the foot is considered very wrong; and that if it be kicked or moved thus even by accident, the clumsiness must be atoned for by lifting the pillow to the forehead with the hands, and replacing it in its original position respectfully, with the word 'go-men,' signifying, ...
— Glimpses of an Unfamiliar Japan • Lafcadio Hearn
... and like the fearless swimmer he had proved himself, he let go his hold on the boat and started in a close, loud-thrashing circle to round in the seamen who were trying with the clumsiness of fright to climb aboard. Barry, far less able swimmer, started around in the opposite direction; and between them they gave a hand here, darted off to drive away an alligator there, and got all aboard ...
— Gold Out of Celebes • Aylward Edward Dingle
... all is!" said Mrs. Malcolm. But she was wondering why men are so queer with their wives—resent so much the slightest social clumsiness on their part, while in other women—provided the offense is not too great—it merely amuses them. Even the guarded manners of Sir John had been disturbed. For a moment he had been very angry with the shadow ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... a costly victory. Except the Quotidienne, which stood by him consistently, not a paper was on his side. His clumsiness of style, his habit of occasionally coining words to express his meaning, and the coarseness of some of his writings, combined with the prejudice caused by his literary arrogance, had always, to a certain extent, blinded literary and critical France to his consummate merits as a ...
— Honore de Balzac, His Life and Writings • Mary F. Sandars
... and to companions more fit for thee. I am ashamed to stand in thy presence. I am dazzled by the brightness of thy countenance, crushed down by the thought of thy wisdom and power, uneasy lest I say or do something unfit for thee; lest I anger thee unawares in my ignorance, clumsiness; lest I betray to thee my own bad habits: and those bad habits I feel in thy presence as I never felt before. Thou art too condescending; thou honourest me too much; thou hast taken me for a better man ...
— Discipline and Other Sermons • Charles Kingsley
... bankrupt, and was maintaining himself as a clerk at a small station on the Newcastle and Carlisle line. In the course of his duties in this situation, he found it irksome to have to write on every railway ticket that he delivered. He saw the clumsiness of the method of tearing the bit of paper off the printed sheet as it was wanted, and filling it up with pen and ink. He perceived how much time, trouble, and error might be saved by the process being done in a mechanical way; and it was when he set his foot down ...
— Railway Adventures and Anecdotes - extending over more than fifty years • Various
... Uncle calls "the Flower Blooming" tea-house. It was more like a fairy palace. How the girls, who live there, laughed at my guitar. They had never seen one before. How they whispered over the color of my eyes. Said they matched my kimono, and they tittered over my clumsiness in sitting on the floor. But I forgot everything when the door slid open and I looked into the most wonderful dream-garden that ever was, and people everywhere. I finished singing, there was clapping and loud banzais. I ...
— The Lady and Sada San - A Sequel to The Lady of the Decoration • Frances Little
... your hopes. For Liberty stands nobly. Americans, always shy about their country, have learnt from the ridicule which Europeans, on mixed aesthetic and moral grounds, pour on this statue, to dismiss it with an apologetic laugh. Yet it is fine—until you get near enough to see its clumsiness. I admired the great gesture of it. A hand fell on my shoulder, and a voice said, "Look hard at that, young man! That's the first time you've seen Liberty—and it will be the last till you turn your back on this country again." It ...
— Letters from America • Rupert Brooke
... towards St. George with about as much grace as a dancing camel would possess. His excessive angularity was accentuated by his extraordinary clumsiness. St. George did not appear at all disconcerted by the flapping of the Griffin's wings, but managed to avoid his clumsy clutches with great skill. Had St. George not slipped upon a piece of orange-peel, inadvertently left upon the floor of the arena, it ...
— The Tale of Lal - A Fantasy • Raymond Paton
... Duck, that mountain of slowness and stolidity, was not perhaps a fool, notwithstanding his outward clumsiness. A little attention is appreciated even by a ...
— Amaryllis at the Fair • Richard Jefferies
... actions of the president and of the judices who sat with him were practically indistinguishable, and the sentence pronounced was in no sense a magisterial decision. The courts had also been instituted to avoid the clumsiness of popular jurisdiction; but this clumsiness would be restored, if their decision was to be shaken by a further appeal to the Comitia. Gracchus, in fact, when he proposed this law, was not thinking of the ordinary course of jurisdiction at all. He had before his ...
— A History of Rome, Vol 1 - During the late Republic and early Principate • A H.J. Greenidge
... precisely to that degree clownish. I am not battling for the luxuries of life, but I am for its decencies. I would not turn boys into Sybarites, but neither would I let them riot into Satyrs. The effeminacy of a false aristocracy is no nearer the heights of true manhood than the clumsiness of the clod, but I think it is just as near. I would have college rooms, college entrances, and all college domains cleanly and attractive. I would, in the first place, have every rough board planed, and painted in soft and cheerful tints. I would ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, August, 1863, No. 70 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... say, there has been a cleaning up of dirty old palettes, an inrush of fresh air and sunshine. In landscape we excel, easily leading the English painters. Of Germany I do not care to speak here: the sea of mud that passes for colour, the clumsiness of handling, and the general heavy self-satisfaction discourage the most ardent champion of the Teutonic art. In England, Burlington House still sets the fashion. At one Royal Academy I attended I found ...
— Ivory Apes and Peacocks • James Huneker
... Wainsby likewise attempt a rallying-cry; but Stephen's retort, "Ain't foxes flesh and blood?" convicted him of clumsiness, and, buoyed on the uproar of cheers, Stephen pursued, "They are; to kill 'em in cold blood's beast-murder, so it is. What do we do? We give 'em a fair field—a fair field and no favour! We let 'em trust to the ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... my ineffectual attempts to be brilliant? That's a joy," he went on, "if it's not drawn out by the mere clumsiness of my flattery." She had turned away from him, kindly enough, as if time for his talk in the air were always to be allowed him: she took in vaguely Vanderbank's books and prints. "Why didn't your mother come?" Mitchy ...
— The Awkward Age • Henry James
... appearance between a country bumpkin and a soldier! It is the drilling that makes the difference: "Oh, for a drill-sergeant to teach them to stand upright, and to turn out their toes, and to get rid of that slouching, hulking gait, which gives such a look of clumsiness and stupidity!" [Footnote: A. K, H. B., ...
— Advice to a Mother on the Management of her Children • Pye Henry Chavasse
... "You talk of clumsiness!" Dallisa's voice, even thinned by the nightmare ringing in my head, held concentrated scorn. "Perhaps I shall release him, to find Rakhal when you failed! The Terrans have a price on Rakhal's head, ...
— The Door Through Space • Marion Zimmer Bradley
... must explain another day. It is not a difficulty.—The seeming paradox of calling a pedigree inspired, is only seeming.—The text of Holy Scripture has nothing at all to do with the question. Is a dead poet responsible for the clumsiness of him who transcribes his copy, or for the carelessness of the apprentice in the printer's attic?—Least of all do we overlook the personality of the human writers, when we so speak. The styles of Daniel,—of St. John,—of St. Paul,—of St. James,—differ as much as the sounds ...
— Inspiration and Interpretation - Seven Sermons Preached Before the University of Oxford • John Burgon
... strength and activity, I think he must always have had a clumsiness of movement. He was naturally awkward with his hands, and was unable to draw at all well. (The figure representing the aggregated cell- contents in 'Insectivorous Plants' was drawn by him.) This he always regretted much, and he frequently ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume I • Francis Darwin
... quite conscious, Mistress Fiddy involuntarily sighed out "mother." Very motherly was the elder woman's assurance: "Yes, my dear, I'll serve as madam your mother in her absence, till madam herself comes; and she'll laugh at our confusion and clumsiness, I warrant." ...
— Girlhood and Womanhood - The Story of some Fortunes and Misfortunes • Sarah Tytler
... on Roland now, throwing all the responsibility of her sin on his ugliness, his stupidity, his clumsiness, the heaviness of his intellect, and the vulgarity of his person. It was to this that it was owing that she had betrayed him, had driven one son to desperation, and had been forced to utter to the other the most agonizing confession that can make a mother's heart bleed. ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume VIII. • Guy de Maupassant
... am writing) a very pretty boy, and (to my European views) startlingly self-possessed. My time of observation was so limited that you must pardon me if I can say no more: what else I marked, what restlessness of foot and hand, what graceful clumsiness, what experimental designs upon the furniture, was but the common inheritance of human youth. But you may perhaps like to know that the lean flushed man in bed, who interested you so little, was in a state of mind ...
— Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 2 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Owing to the clumsiness of her wooden fingers, the woman of the south was a poor needlewoman, but was a fine dancer. The woman of the north was very expert in needlework, but her wooden legs made her a poor dancer. Each of these women gave these traits to her daughters, so that to ...
— A Treasury of Eskimo Tales • Clara Kern Bayliss
... explained), almost all the important events of them being brought about by most providential coincidences; and this, as we have already remarked, is not merely faulty, inasmuch as it evinces a want of skill in the writer, and gives an air of clumsiness to the fiction, but is a very considerable drawback on its practical utility: the personages either of fiction or history being then only profitable examples, when their good or ill conduct meets its appropriate reward, not from a sort of independent ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... headstone differing materially from those of later times, and wherever we find the rude incised figure we nearly always have the stone of this shape. Such homely memorials are distinguished in nearly every instance by dwarfishness and clumsiness. They are seldom more than 2 feet in height, and are often found to measure from 5 inches to 7 inches in thickness. A prolific field for them is the great marshland forming the Hundred of Hoo, below Gravesend, the scene of many incidents in the tale by Charles Dickens of "Great Expectations." It ...
— In Search Of Gravestones Old And Curious • W.T. (William Thomas) Vincent
... Poems in the sense of a rustic bit or bridle. The term is still in use in the west of Scotland; and country horses, within the memory of many, were tormented with the clumsy contrivance across their noses. With all its clumsiness it was very powerful, as it pressed on the nostrils of the animal: its action was somewhat like that ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 232, April 8, 1854 • Various
... contracted the habit of frequently washing their bodies. From the front windows of the house one saw across Hampstead Heath towards London, and from the back windows one saw across the Heath towards Harrow. The house, in spite of its slight decrepitude and the clumsiness of its construction—the stairs were obviously an afterthought of the architect—had that air of comfortable kindliness which is only to be seen in houses which have been occupied by several generations of human beings. Mr. Haverstock was vaguely known as ...
— The Foolish Lovers • St. John G. Ervine
... specimens with the greatest care, and naturally had little patience with clumsiness; the following incident illustrates both his kindly spirit and his self-restraint. At one of the lectures he had handed down for inspection a very rare and costly fossil, from the coal-measures, I think; including the matrix, it had about the size and shape of the palm of the hand. ...
— Louis Agassiz as a Teacher • Lane Cooper
... a glass on the anvil, crack a nut without touching the kernel, or strike a blow of ten tons eighty times in a minute, we have a steady onward movement. Prejudice builds its solid breakwaters; ignorance, inability, clumsiness, and awkwardness raise such obstacles as they can; but the delay of a century is but a moment. Slowly and surely the waters rise till they sweep away all obstacles, overtop all barriers, and plunge forward again with ever accelerating force. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 79, May, 1864 • Various
... sore for his friend: the sorer because there was now no way left to help. The one door to help—reconcilement—was closed and bolted! closed through his own clumsiness. ...
— Hocken and Hunken • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... the wind has changed! Your Dulcinea flies with you o' Wednesday, and has ne'er a glance for you o' Saturday! I' faith! ye deserve no better. Art a clumsy gallant to have been overtaken, and the maid's in the right on't to resent your clumsiness." ...
— The Lion's Skin • Rafael Sabatini
... was picturesque. I have seen schoolboy desks at Harrow and Eton worn to the smoothness of these tables here and carved as deeply with names. There was not a vestige of a cloth or napkins. The plates and knives and forks were rude enough to bear out the surroundings. In fact, the clumsiness and apparent age of everything almost transported us, in imagination, to the stone age, ...
— Abroad with the Jimmies • Lilian Bell
... ponderous and clumsy like logs. This example illustrates the extremely materialistic view which these savages take of the nature of words; they suppose that the mere utterance of an expression signifying clumsiness will homoeopathically affect with clumsiness the limbs of their distant foemen. Another illustration of this curious misconception is furnished by a Caffre superstition that the character of a young thief can be reformed by shouting his name over a boiling kettle of medicated water, then ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... we merely bend the arm we are doing things with the muscles which extend it, and when we raise it sideways we are modifying the whole trunk in order to preserve the balance. We have only to watch the clumsiness of an infant or a small child to realize how much skill the nervous system has to acquire. This skill may be mainly expressed as co-ordination, the balanced use of many muscles for a purpose and, as a rule, their co-ordinated use with ...
— Woman and Womanhood - A Search for Principles • C. W. Saleeby
... in her ear. She smiled, whispered back, and was answered, and then, stripping off a pair of well-fitting fawn gloves, she took the cards in a pretty little white hand, and dealt out one to each of the competitors with charming clumsiness. ...
— Stories by English Authors: Africa • Various
... table, and semi-audibly rating Mr. Mix for his slothfulness, when he came in with an odd knitting of his forehead and an unsteady compression of his mouth. To add to the effect, he placed his feet with studied clumsiness, and as he gave the Herald into Mirabelle's hands, he uttered a ...
— Rope • Holworthy Hall
... received with loud applause when he entered, and justified the good opinion of the spectators by defeating his antagonist, who was armed as a Samnite, the spectators expressing their dissatisfaction at the clumsiness of the latter by giving the hostile signal, when the Gaul—for the vanquished belonged to that nationality—instead of waiting for the approach of Porus, at once stabbed himself with his ...
— Beric the Briton - A Story of the Roman Invasion • G. A. Henty
... hare," Watt wrote to his partner. "I have got a glimpse of a method of causing the piston-rod to move up and down perpendicularly, by only fixing it to a piece of iron upon the beam, without chains, or perpendicular guides, or untowardly frictions, arch-heads, or other pieces of clumsiness.... I have only tried it in a slight model yet, so cannot build upon it, though I think it a very probable thing to succeed, and one of the most ingenious simple pieces of ...
— Kinematics of Mechanisms from the Time of Watt • Eugene S. Ferguson
... herself on the lounge, leaving me to stand like a lout before her, ashamed of my youth and of the clumsiness of ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... almost heroic truthfulness, devoted fidelity, a dove-like tranquillity of mind, and that abiding, reposeful trust in God which is equal to all trials, and can never be taken by surprise. Her voice was soft and soothing, her motions singularly free from clumsiness or fretfulness, her manners so beautifully blended of unaffected humility, patience, and self-respect as to command, in cheerful reciprocity, the deference they tendered; in which respect she was a severe ordeal ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 105, July 1866 • Various
... Plates III. and IV., and those in Plates V. and VI. It is in the two 'cello bow heads that the greatest resemblance is seen. But even here one can easily note the unwonted massiveness, almost amounting to clumsiness, in that of Dodd; while the Tourte is full of lightness, strength and vigour. There is more or less of sluggishness observable in most of the preceding bows, but the ...
— The Bow, Its History, Manufacture and Use - 'The Strad' Library, No. III. • Henry Saint-George
... not brought him this accomplishment, and in his clumsiness of speech and manner he envied this sprightly youth who had become so much of a celebrity in his thoughts that he actually took a certain pleasure in walking past the Bent residence just because it was where Roscoe and ...
— Tom Slade with the Colors • Percy K. Fitzhugh
... concert hall or opera house is no more than a baroque parody upon the thing the composer imagined. In an orchestra of eighty men there is inevitably at least one man with a sore thumb, or bad kidneys, or a brutal wife, or katzenjammer—and one is enough. Some day the natural clumsiness and imperfection of fingers, lips and larynxes will be overcome by mechanical devices, and we shall have Beethoven and Mozart and Schubert in such wonderful and perfect beauty that it will be almost unbearable. If half as ...
— Damn! - A Book of Calumny • Henry Louis Mencken
... of times the atmosphere of the place disgusted me. Desks, windows, and floors, and even the grass in the quadrangle, were greasy with London soot, and there was nowhere any clean air to breathe or smell. I hated the gritty asphalt that gave no peace to my feet and cut my knees when my clumsiness made me fall. I hated the long stone corridors whose echoes seemed to me to mock my hesitating footsteps when I passed from one dull class to another. I hated the stuffy malodorous classrooms, with their whistling gas-jets and noise of ...
— The Ghost Ship • Richard Middleton
... arm, and Phillida was startled and amused, when Mr. Hilbrough, after pausing an instant to remember which of his stout arms he was to offer, presented his left elbow. Despite much internal levity and external clumsiness, Hilbrough played his role to the satisfaction of his anxious wife, and Phillida looked at him inquiringly after she was seated as though to discover what transformation had ...
— The Faith Doctor - A Story of New York • Edward Eggleston
... of all power to frame a suitable reply. He bowed over the little white hand extended to him, and murmured something which was inaudible even to himself, while he despised what he considered his own foolishness, clumsiness and general ineptitude from the bottom of his heart. Maryllia saw his embarrassment, and hastened to ...
— God's Good Man • Marie Corelli
... am even willing to admit that one or more boys in a family may reach such a condition of rudeness and insubordination, in consequence of neglect or mismanagement on the part of their parents in their early years, and the present clumsiness and incapacity of the father in dealing with the susceptibilities and impulses of the human soul, that the question will lie between keeping them within some kind of subordination by bodily punishment or not controlling them at all. If a father has been so engrossed in his business ...
— Gentle Measures in the Management and Training of the Young • Jacob Abbott
... great surplusage of words and a seeming inability to get to the point. The Heptameron if not equal in narrative vigour and lightness to Boccaccio before and La Fontaine afterwards, is not in the least exposed to the charge of clumsiness of any kind, employs a simple, natural, and sufficiently picturesque vocabulary, avoids all verbiage and roundabout writing, and both in the narratives and in the connecting conversation displays a very considerable advance upon nearly all the writers of the time, except Rabelais, ...
— The Tales Of The Heptameron, Vol. I. (of V.) • Margaret, Queen Of Navarre
... little advantage in his present effort, the Writer does not intend to be very communicative, if their truth be not apparent, by the manner in which he has set forth the events in the tale itself, he must be content to lie under the imputation of having disfigured it, by his own clumsiness. All testimony must, in the nature of things, resolve itself into three great classes—the positive, the negative, and the circumstantial. The first and the last are universally admitted to be entitled to the most consideration, since the third can only be resorted ...
— The Red Rover • James Fenimore Cooper
... "Stay you back there in the doorway." And Warrigal, like the good spouse she was, retreated to the mouth of the den. Just then Lupus landed on the rock-ledge with a hectoring snarl which betrayed extravagance in a commodity he could ill afford to waste—breath. He plunged forward upon Finn with the clumsiness of a buffalo, and, for his instruction, received a slashing bite across one shoulder and a chest thrust which sent him rolling backwards off the ledge to the trail ...
— Finn The Wolfhound • A. J. Dawson
... as she was by excess of skirt, handicapped by the natural clumsiness of her age, catastrophe in any case would not sooner or later have overtaken her, I have my doubts. I have since learnt her own view to be that but for catching sight, in turning, of my face, staring at her through the bars of the easel, all would ...
— Paul Kelver • Jerome Klapka, AKA Jerome K. Jerome
... content with poisoning the water but must needs fix their devilish contraptions so that a man blew himself to pieces in the act of drawing his drink. Many of the wells were mined, but the Germans had slightly overreached themselves either through haste or clumsiness, and all the mines were removed ...
— With Our Army in Palestine • Antony Bluett
... whole expression of face and figure was of dogged endurance. A little trickle of blood had started afresh from the wound on his cheek. She wondered what had set it flowing again. Could it have been some clumsiness of her own in her ...
— Ambrotox and Limping Dick • Oliver Fleming
... thing happened—quite of itself, and not on account of any clumsiness on his part—in the "Ark" they laid particular stress upon that. It was simply his goodness of heart that was responsible. Had Ferdinand not been the lad he was, matters had not gone awry, for he was ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... shot was allowed to each; and this only to those who had entered a stake. The condition gave me an opportunity of experiencing my apprehensions in different degrees: since, according to the apparent adroitness or clumsiness of the marksman, my fears of being hit were greater or less. Strange to say, before a dozen shots had been fired, I no longer wished them to miss! The dread ordeal, so oft repeated, was too terrible to be borne. I was sustained by no hope of ultimate escape. ...
— The Wild Huntress - Love in the Wilderness • Mayne Reid
... table. His eyes were all but invisible. There was no ursine clumsiness in his movements, as he walked to and fro in the bar-room. As became a feline, he walked in silence and on his toes. He was thinking of many a shady incident in his past career, and he knew that with the greater number of his ...
— Blue Goose • Frank Lewis Nason
... glided off the boat. She jumped for it, but it was too late. Nearly capsizing, her heart beat as the boat rocked back into safety and she tried to scull after the runaway with the remaining oar. Her inexperience and the clumsiness of the boat baffled her. The floating oar rose and fell, gently increasing its distance, and splash as she might she could not ...
— The Opened Shutters • Clara Louise Burnham
... the mechanical arts—if we except railways and telegraphs, which have become a military and political necessity, growing out of the progress of neighboring powers—while many of their fabrics are still made by hand, and their mints, presses, and fire-engines are of almost primeval clumsiness, the Russians eagerly grasp at all novelties, and are wonderfully quick in the comprehension of their uses and advantages. A similar comparison might be made in reference to the freedom of internal trade, and the encouragement given to every industrial pursuit among the ...
— The Land of Thor • J. Ross Browne
... all clumsiness and fat legs and arms, did a good deal of hugging and squealing, and Miss Shake, Leonard's old governess, wept discreetly and worshipfully ...
— Four Days - The Story of a War Marriage • Hetty Hemenway
... deep impression. "You must know, then, that this ineptitude, inflicted on me by an eccentric editor for translation, drove me to madness, and not an hour ago I cast it from my window in disgust. It is a novel entirely devoid of taste and tact, and it had the clumsiness to alight on my landlord's head. Being a man of small nature, he retaliated by ...
— A Chair on The Boulevard • Leonard Merrick
... and wily tactician, grinned at his fallen laurels and let them lie. He had that day accomplished the most delicate task to which he had ever set his hand. Behind the mask of masculine clumsiness he had subtly worked his levers and achieved his end. And he was well ...
— The Keeper of the Door • Ethel M. Dell
... the Pitti, his exquisite "Madonna del Granduca" being just to the left of the door. Here we have the simplest colouring and perfect sweetness, and such serenity of mastery as must be the despair of the copyists, who, however, never cease attempting it. The only defect is a little clumsiness in the Madonna's hand. The picture was lost for two centuries and it then changed owners for twelve crowns, the seller being a poor woman and the buyer a bookseller. The bookseller found a ready purchaser in the director of the Grand ...
— A Wanderer in Florence • E. V. Lucas
... distinguish himself. He believed that, for her sake, he would face all the terrors of hell. The battle came and there were no terrors of hell—only sick headache, noise, men desperately wounded, and, once again, his own clumsiness. Then, in that final picture of Marie Ivanovna and Semyonov he saw his ...
— The Dark Forest • Hugh Walpole
... thoroughly acquainted with the machinery and operation of his business, and shall not necessarily lose his position on having attained such knowledge. But there are so many more important things to be thought of, in the qualifications of a foreign resident, that his technical dexterity or clumsiness ...
— Our Old Home - A Series of English Sketches • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... breeze, momentarily threatening to spring the topgallant yard, if, indeed, it did not whip the topgallant-mast out of the ship. Then something fouled aloft, rendering it impossible to take in the sail; and, the skipper being on deck and manifesting some impatience at what he conceived to be the clumsiness of the men who had gone up on the topsail yard, Mr Moore, the second mate, sprang into the main rigging and went aloft to lend a hand. Just precisely what happened nobody ever knew; one of the men aloft said that the broken boom, in its wild threshing, struck the mate and knocked ...
— Overdue - The Story of a Missing Ship • Harry Collingwood
... window, and paying no heed to what I saw; only I remember that my eye lighted on Captain Hoseason down on the pier among his seamen, and speaking with some authority. And presently he came marching back towards the house, with no mark of a sailor's clumsiness, but carrying his fine, tall figure with a manly bearing, and still with the same sober, grave expression on his face. I wondered if it was possible that Ransome's stories could be true, and half disbelieved them; they fitted so ...
— Kidnapped • Robert Louis Stevenson
... into her low plum-coloured stuff bodice, or how the linen butter-making apron, with its bib, seemed a thing to be imitated in silk by duchesses, since it fell in such charming lines, or how her brown stockings and thick-soled buckled shoes lost all that clumsiness which they must certainly have had when empty of her foot and ankle—of little use, unless you have seen a woman who affected you as Hetty affected her beholders, for otherwise, though you might conjure up the image of a lovely woman, she would not in ...
— Adam Bede • George Eliot
... difficult then?" said Asako, who had found it comparatively easy to pour out a cup of drawing-room tea without clumsiness. ...
— Kimono • John Paris
... power which a real artistic insight may exhibit under the most disadvantageous forms. To realise his characteristic power, we should take one of the great French novelists whom we admire for the exquisite proportions of his story, the unity of the interest and the skill—so unlike our common English clumsiness—with which all details are duly subordinated. He should have, too, the comparative weakness of French novelists, a defective perception of character, a certain unwillingness in art as in politics to allow individual peculiarities to interfere with the main flow ...
— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen
... which he found a seat beside her was unbecoming to a Yale senior. But, considering she was the girl he had been expecting to discover for years, his clumsiness bespoke the importance of the event. The merry laughter of the girls rang in his ears. Presently, a voice detached itself from the others, and came floating ...
— The Redheaded Outfield and Other Baseball Stories • Zane Grey
... halfway to the lake when a man emerged from the same window of the drawing-room, ran to the terrace steps, stumbled down them so awkwardly that he nearly fell, and swore at his own clumsiness in so doing. He negotiated the next flight more carefully, but quickened his pace again into a run when he reached the open. The girl's figure was hardly visible, but he knew she was there, and the distance between pursued and ...
— The Strange Case of Mortimer Fenley • Louis Tracy
... criticism, and clears the field for coming literary ideals. Especially telling is his demolition of Klopstock's violent "Northernism," to which he opposes a far wider philosophy of grammar and style. The universality of poetry, as contrasted with a narrow "German" clumsiness, is blandly defended, and a joyous abandon is urged as something better than the meticulous anxiety of chauvinistic partisanism. In all his many criticisms of literature there are charm, wit, and elegance, an individuality ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IV • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... realized that only his four-legged friend stood between him and destruction and that so unequal a contest could not endure long. Skilful as the little fellow was, he was pitted against an antagonist quite as quick and wary. The clumsiness of the bear was no more than seeming, and any one of the terrific blows he dealt at Scuffy with his huge paw would have stretched a man lifeless. Bucks, collecting his disordered faculties, raised ...
— The Mountain Divide • Frank H. Spearman
... wait for one, as they do for the wayfarer (do you remember?), in Bewick, who, desiring to rest by the roadside, finds the dingle all alive with ambushed fiends, horned and heavy-limbed, swollen with the oppressive clumsiness of nightmare. But you are not inexperienced or weak. You have enough philosophy to wait until the frozen mood thaws, and the old thrill comes back. That is one of the real compensations of middle age. When one is young, one imagines that any depression ...
— The Upton Letters • Arthur Christopher Benson
... detain you. But, unless you have other plans, I beg you will come to dinner to-day at the Villa Planat. My nephew, the Comte de Fontaine, is a man it is essential that you should know. Ah, ha! And I propose to make up to you for my clumsiness by introducing you to five of the prettiest women in Paris. So, so, young man, your brow is clearing! I am fond of young people, and I like to see them happy. Their happiness reminds me of the good times of my youth, when adventures were not lacking, any more than duels. We were gay dogs then! ...
— The Ball at Sceaux • Honore de Balzac
... in nowise disgusts me. I hope I shall always like to hear men, in reason, talk about themselves. What subject does a man know better? If I stamp on a friend's corn, his outcry is genuine—he confounds my clumsiness in the accents of truth. He is speaking about himself and expressing his emotion of grief or pain in a manner perfectly authentic and veracious. I have a story of my own, of a wrong done to me by somebody, ...
— Roundabout Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... shame at this rebuke of impertinence. In a minute Harry was sorry he had amused himself by giving it. There was something strangely affecting in the woman. Middle-aged, stout, faded, bound in manner and speech by a shy clumsiness, she refused to be insignificant, she made an appeal to him which he puzzled over in vain. Her simplicity was with power, as of a nature which had cared only for the greater things. He felt himself meeting one who had more than he of human quality, richer ...
— The Highwayman • H.C. Bailey
... away and Lisle took up his station behind the wall of turf pointed to. He had once upon a time been forcibly rebuked for his clumsiness at some unaccustomed task in the Canadian bush and had not resented it, but the faint movement of Gladwyne's shoulders had brought a warmth to his ...
— The Long Portage • Harold Bindloss
... Overland smashed into a freight somewhere near Pittsburgh this morning. There were hundreds of people killed. Oh, Lord, Ted! I didn't mean to break it to you like that." Dick was aghast at his own clumsiness as Ted leaned against the brick wall of the college building, his face white as chalk. "I wasn't thinking—guess I wasn't thinking about much of anything except ...
— Wild Wings - A Romance of Youth • Margaret Rebecca Piper
... beer flowed down Hauskuld's face and beard, while the rafters rang with a shout of laughter from the Sea-kings and court-men who sat in the immediate neighbourhood of the King's high seat. Of course Harald blamed himself for his clumsiness, but he too laughed so heartily that the masses of his fair hair shook all over his shoulders, while he ordered another tankard to be filled for his "brave berserk". That brave individual, however, protested that he had had quite enough, and immediately retired with a very bad ...
— Erling the Bold • R.M. Ballantyne
... requires the glow of a good audience—of a cheering party—of the certainty of success in the division lobby—to bring out his best powers. The splendid, rattling, self-confident debater of the coercion period now no longer exists, and Mr. Balfour has positively gone back to the clumsiness, stammering, and ineffectiveness of the pre-historic period of his life before he had taken up the Chief Secretaryship. That was bad enough; but what is worse is that the House is beginning to feel it. If you lose confidence in yourself, the world is certain to pretty soon follow ...
— Sketches In The House (1893) • T. P. O'Connor
... "Pardon my clumsiness," he said to the lady. "I am, unfortunately, quite blind. But," he added, with a smile, to turn off the mishap, "even a blind man must ...
— Four Max Carrados Detective Stories • Ernest Bramah
... down, with apparent goodwill, to salute her; but just as our lips were about to meet, I slightly jerked up my head, and she kissed my chin. Oh, happy thought! They were all quite satisfied, and attributed the accident, no doubt, to their own clumsiness—or to mine! ...
— Hudson Bay • R.M. Ballantyne
... said, annoyed not only at my own clumsiness but at the absence of anything of Anne's old heroic spirit. "For his sake, at least, you must keep your head. Why, my dear woman, one look at your face, grown as desperate as it sometimes appears now, would ruin Julian with the whole world. Even I, knowing the whole story, would find it hard to ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1920 • Various
... Jeffreys bowed solemnly, and did not fail to exhibit his clumsiness by dropping Raby's waterproof in a belated effort to raise his hat. Mrs Rimbolt would hardly have been appeased had he not done so; and it was probably in a final endeavour to show him off as he departed ...
— A Dog with a Bad Name • Talbot Baines Reed
... gift of silence seemed to him the most vivid commentary on the clumsiness of speech as a means of intercourse, and his eyes had turned to her in renewed appreciation of this finer faculty when Mrs. Armiger's voice abruptly brought home to him the underrated potentialities ...
— The Touchstone • Edith Wharton
... simple command to shoot the poet at once. He obeys; and the "frightfulness" is doubled by the fact that a rather clumsy device of his to spare the wife the sight of the husband's death is defeated by the still greater clumsiness of a subordinate. She goes mad; and, as expiation, he takes charge of her, shifts from navy to army, and carries her with him on all his campaigns, being actually engaged in escorting her on a little mule-cart when Vigny meets him. They part; and ten years afterwards ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury
... "my own weapon, an air-gun which I can fire sixteen times without reloading, and which will kill at a hundred yards' distance. With a weapon unknown to me I might not only fail altogether, but I might not improbably do serious injury, by my clumsiness and ...
— Across the Zodiac • Percy Greg
... respectable; and the doorstep which gave them a temporary resting-place belonged to no far-famed Stepney or Poplar. It stood in a little, old-fashioned, old-world court, back of Bloomsbury. They were a foreign-looking little pair—not in their dress, which was truly English in its clumsiness and want of picturesque coloring—but their faces were foreign. The contour was peculiar, the setting of the two pairs of eyes—un-Saxon. They sat very close together, a grave little couple. Presently the girl threw her arm round the boy's neck, ...
— The Children's Pilgrimage • L. T. Meade
... noble and eloquent attitudes, is determined to die standing. He ended with a final impressive gesture. However, as he came down from the tribune, the general coldness seemed to increase, not a single member applauded. With supreme clumsiness he had alluded to the secret scheming of Rome and the clergy, whose one object, in his opinion, was to recover the predominant position they had lost and restore monarchy in France at a more or ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... but to the ambient air, in the most unintelligible Devonshire jargon, rendered somewhat more barbarous than usual by intoxication. Frequently one of them would address one of the players in language more forcible than choice, as he applauded some piece of FINESSE, or condemned some clumsiness on the part of the two youths who were struggling about in the centre, under the impression they were wrestling. There were but two moderate wrestlers in the parish, and those two were George Hawker and James Stockbridge. And James and myself ...
— The Recollections of Geoffrey Hamlyn • Henry Kingsley
... Petulengro, who directed him to Mumber Lane (Mumper's Dingle), near Willenhall, in Staffordshire, "the little dingle by the side of the great north road." Here Borrow encamped and shod little Ambrol, who kicked him over as a reminder of his clumsiness. ...
— The Life of George Borrow • Herbert Jenkins
... been speaking, I had been in a torment of misery. As yet I had done little or nothing for His Majesty, after all my commissioning from Rome; and now that the first piece of work was on hand, it was doubtful whether I had not forfeited it by my clumsiness. For the moment I forgot what I had come for. I was all set on acquitting myself well. I was ...
— Oddsfish! • Robert Hugh Benson
... about Archer and tender about John; she was unreasonably irritated by Jacob's clumsiness in ...
— Jacob's Room • Virginia Woolf
... to my thinking, undiluted twaddle. The inherent desire to simulate grows, or it does not grow. You cannot make it grow. If a naturally awkward man can simulate the graces of a dancing master, if a naturally graceful man can simulate the limp of a cripple or the clumsiness of a hobbledehoy, if a comparative dwarf—like Kean—can assume the majesty of a monarch, then he is an actor. You may teach him to fence, and to dance, and to elocute till he is black in the face; you will never teach him to play "Othello" unless he is an actor. That fencing, dancing, ...
— The Idler Magazine, Volume III, June 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... relief to his more sombre portraiture; but it is in the tragic elements that his true power comes out. The motives of his stories may be trivial, but never the sentiment. The deep manly emotion makes us forget not only the frequent clumsiness of his style but the pettiness of the incident, and what is more difficult, the rather bread-and-butter tone of morality. If he is a little too fond of bringing his villains to the gallows, he is preoccupied less by the external consequences than by the natural working of evil ...
— Hours in a Library - New Edition, with Additions. Vol. II (of 3) • Leslie Stephen
... instant to instant. He is not bound to one setting, he has no technical difficulty in altering the whole scene with every smile and every frown. To be sure, the theater can give us changing sunshine and thunderclouds too. But it must go on at the slow pace and with the clumsiness with which the events in nature pass. The photoplay can flit from one to the other. Not more than one sixteenth of a second is needed to carry us from one corner of the globe to the other, from a jubilant setting to a mourning ...
— The Photoplay - A Psychological Study • Hugo Muensterberg
... the least graceful designs of the series; though the clumsiness in the contours of the leading figures is indeed a fault which often occurs in the painter's best works, but it is here unredeemed by the rest of the composition. The group of the suitors, however, represented as waiting at the outside of the ...
— Giotto and his works in Padua • John Ruskin
... he stood now disarmed, his lip in his teeth, his face white, his chest heaving, before his opponent, who had at once recovered. With the blood-tinged tip of his sword resting on the ground, Andre-Louis surveyed him grimly, as we survey the prey that through our own clumsiness has escaped us at the ...
— Scaramouche - A Romance of the French Revolution • Rafael Sabatini
... political journalism so bad? It is worse even than it intends to be. It praises its preposterous party leaders through thick and thin; but it somehow succeeds in making them look greater fools than they are. This clumsiness clings even to the photographs of public men, as they are snapshotted at public meetings. A sensitive politician (if there is such a thing) would, I should think, want to murder the man who snapshots him at those moments. For our general impression of a man's gesture or play of feature is made ...
— Utopia of Usurers and other Essays • G. K. Chesterton
... ordered all hands to take their stations for getting under way, and Commodore Kendall went aft, though he still carefully observed the conduct of the seamen. The clumsiness, and the intentional blunders of certain of the crew seemed to indicate that there was a conspiracy to defeat the purposes of the commander. First, Howe tumbled down while the hands were walking round the capstan; ...
— Down the Rhine - Young America in Germany • Oliver Optic
... Painfully did the ideal light fade away, and the well-remembered scene stand revealed in disenchanting day. With incredulous surprise, with a constant struggle between past images and present revelations, were we forced to acknowledge the improbability of the story, the clumsiness of the style, the awkwardness of the dialogue, the want of Nature in many of the characters, the absurdity of many of the incidents, and the painfulness of some of the scenes. But with all this, a candid, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 09, No. 51, January, 1862 • Various
... work in the dark, or at best, in the cold twilight. He is not only more depressed but he is clumsier in his heavier clothing. If the enervating influence of these factors is combined with a greater clumsiness due to cold and perhaps to colds, it is not difficult to account for this type of seasonal distribution of accidents. A study of the accidents of 1917 indicated that 13 per cent. occurred between 5 and 6 P. M. when artificial lighting is generally ...
— Artificial Light - Its Influence upon Civilization • M. Luckiesh
... of these book-products to the book-buyer of cultivated taste lies, of course, not in a conscious, naive recognition of their costliness and superior clumsiness. Here, as in the parallel case of the superiority of hand-wrought articles over machine products, the conscious ground of preference is an intrinsic excellence imputed to the costlier and more awkward article. ...
— The Theory of the Leisure Class • Thorstein Veblen
... Midianites found them serviceable in war; and the latter people employed them also as beasts of burden in their caravan trade. The Syrians of Upper Mesopotamia rode upon them in their journeys. It appears that they were also sometimes yoked to chariots, though from their size and clumsiness they would be but ill ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 4. (of 7): Babylon • George Rawlinson
... think that she had come so near holding this inimitable creature in her hand, and by overhaste, or clumsiness of statement should lose it! Madame de Vallorbes was wild with irritation, racked her brain for means to recover her—as she feared—forfeited position. It would be maddening did her mighty hunting prove but a barren ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... narrowed lids, Annixter scrutinised her from time to time, more and more won over by her adorable freshness, her clean, fine youth. The clumsiness that he usually experienced in the presence of women was wearing off. Hilma Tree's direct simplicity put him at his ease. He began to wonder if he dared to kiss Hilma, and if he did dare, how she would take it. A spark of ...
— The Octopus • Frank Norris
... squeal of pain before the harbour was cleared. Morgan's cheek flushed at the first cry, and he almost lost grip of his oar. The slip was noted instantly, and a warning, "Steady at number three," recalled him to his task. Jeffreys gave him a look, and the Spaniard cursed volubly at his companion's clumsiness. ...
— Sea-Dogs All! - A Tale of Forest and Sea • Tom Bevan
... angry at his own clumsiness, "I missed. But there are more days than one in a week, and my turn will come yet! Did you get a good ...
— For The Admiral • W.J. Marx
... Plummer's foot—reaching down through the gloom— alighted full on my upturned face. I let go from the rigging with my right hand, and struck furiously at his leg, cursing him for his clumsiness. He lifted his foot, and in the same instant a sentence from Stubbins floated down to me, with ...
— The Ghost Pirates • William Hope Hodgson
... clumsiness breaks something of value, or that we treasure on account of its associations; we are charged with a message of importance, and our forgetfulness makes us appear uncourteous, perhaps ungrateful; some one we live with is constantly finding fault, nothing pleases them. If, when night ...
— Gold Dust - A Collection of Golden Counsels for the Sanctification of Daily Life • E. L. E. B.
... at him, too, in the depths of her big, beautiful eyes? No, that was too much; he would never believe that. But she was insincere, like the rest of them. It was acting a lie for her to make-believe clumsiness just to keep the others from laughing at him. She must ...
— The Quickening • Francis Lynde
... [She makes repeated efforts to drag him with her. At one of these efforts he embraces her with the clumsiness of a gorilla and makes several indecent gestures. HELEN utters suppressed cries for help.] Let go! This minute! Let go-o!! Oh, please, papa, Oh-o!! [She weeps, then suddenly cries out in an extremity of fear, ...
— The Dramatic Works of Gerhart Hauptmann - Volume I • Gerhart Hauptmann
... single word, till Dr. May had unclosed his lips—a sign would not suffice—he must have a sentence to assure him; and then it was such joy to have her restored, and his fondness and solicitude were so tender and eager in their clumsiness, that his father-in-law was ...
— The Daisy Chain, or Aspirations • Charlotte Yonge
... determination, again and again thwarted by feet that recked not of rhythm or even of bare mechanical accuracy. Those feet, so apparently aimless, so little under control, were perhaps the most mirthful feet the scored failure in the dance. But the face, conscious of their clumsiness, was ...
— Merton of the Movies • Harry Leon Wilson
... forward and subscribe for the purchase of the house where Keats died at Rome, in order to make it a sort of Museum, sacred to him and Shelley. I was amused, because of the strange ineptitude and clumsiness of the proposal. In the first place, to make a shrine of pilgrimage for two of our great English poets in Rome, of all places—that is fantastic enough; but to select the house which Keats entered a dying man, and where he spent about four months in horrible ...
— The Silent Isle • Arthur Christopher Benson
... reproach, and for any observer the mystery about her was the more interesting on this account. The first impulse of surprise over, Vandenesse cast about for the best way of approaching Mme. d'Aiglemont. He would try a commonplace piece of diplomacy, he thought; he would disconcert her by a piece of clumsiness and see how she ...
— A Woman of Thirty • Honore de Balzac
... familiar as may be; "foam that passed away," strictly literal; and the whole line descriptive of the reality with a degree of accuracy which I know not any other verse, in the range of poetry, that altogether equals. For most people have not a distinct idea of the clumsiness and massiveness of a large wave. The word "wave" is used too generally of ripples and breakers, and bendings in light drapery or grass: it does not by itself convey a perfect image. But the word "mound" ...
— Selections From the Works of John Ruskin • John Ruskin
... finger in it, which points out a mode by which the federal government can create ports wherever nature has forgotten to perform this beneficent office. It is a little extraordinary that the fingers of so many of the great "expounders" turn out to be "thumbs," however, exhibiting clumsiness, rather than that adroit lightness which usually characterizes the dexterity of men who are in the habit of rummaging other people's pockets, for their own especial purposes. It must be somewhat up-hill work to persuade any disinterested ...
— Oak Openings • James Fenimore Cooper
... him when he stood up to sing at our concerts—his tight little figure stepping to and fro, and his feet shuffling to the air, his eyes seeking and bestowing encouragement—and to have enjoyed the bow, so nicely calculated between jest and earnest, between grace and clumsiness, with which he brought each song to a conclusion. He was not only a great favourite among ourselves, but his songs attracted the lords of the saloon, who often leaned to hear him over the rails of the hurricane-deck. He was somewhat pleased, but not at ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 2 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... undeveloped in the larger and more fundamental parts and functions. The full unfoldment of each is, in fact, an inexorable condition precedent for the normal development to full and abiding maturity of the higher and more refined muscularity, just as conversely the awkwardness and clumsiness of adolescence mark a temporary loss of balance in the opposite direction. If this general conception be correct, then nature does not finish the basis of her pyramid in the way Ross, Mercier, and others have assumed, but lays a part of the foundation and, after carrying it ...
— Youth: Its Education, Regimen, and Hygiene • G. Stanley Hall
... stipulated that the pocketbook should first be felt for, and, if not there, the matter should go no farther. So Edward made a stumble and fell against Mr. Hardie and felt his left breast: the pocket-book was there:—"Yes," he whispered: and Mr. Hardie, in the act of remonstrating at his clumsiness, was pinned behind, and his arms strapped with wonderful rapidity and dexterity. Then first he seemed to awake to his hunger, and uttered a stentorian cry of terror, that rang through the night and made two of ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... Curtiss machines for the most part. In the pre-war years, once the Wright Brothers had accomplished their task, America's chief accomplishment consisted in the development of the 'Flying Boat,' alternatively named with characteristic American clumsiness, 'The Hydro-Aeroplane.' In February of 1911, Glenn Curtiss attached a float to a machine similar to that with which he won the first Gordon-Bennett Air Contest and made his first flying boat experiment. From this beginning he developed the boat form of body which obviated the use and troubles of ...
— A History of Aeronautics • E. Charles Vivian
... others, is greatly decreased by the increased use of steel as a structural material and the great improvement in the model of the lake craft. Even ten years ago the lake boats were ridiculous in their clumsiness, their sluggishness, and their lack of any of the charm and comfort that attend ocean-going vessels, but progress toward higher types has been rapid, and there are ships on the lakes to-day that equal any of ...
— American Merchant Ships and Sailors • Willis J. Abbot
... against the stream, together with the clumsiness of the barge, they could not make headway with any degree of speed. It was not long before Bruce could see them. He raised his rifle and let go; and in the boat Umballa felt his turban stir mysteriously. ...
— The Adventures of Kathlyn • Harold MacGrath
... imagined that Maud had told Mrs. Graves that he had been advising her, and that she had perhaps since told her of his chilly reception of her later confidences. That was the situation he had created; and he felt with what utter clumsiness he had handled it. His aunt, no doubt, thought that he had been disturbed at finding how much more emotional a girl's dependence upon an older man was than he had expected. But he felt that when he could tell her the whole story, she would see that he could not have acted otherwise. He ...
— Watersprings • Arthur Christopher Benson
... practice of exercises calculated to insure independence. The pupil was instructed to go through these exercises first staccato, effected by a free movement of the wrist, an admirable means of counteracting heaviness and clumsiness, then legato-staccato, then accented legato, then pure legato, modifying the power from pp to ff, and the movement ...
— For Every Music Lover - A Series of Practical Essays on Music • Aubertine Woodward Moore |
