"Dumpy" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... and left and up and down till the poor bishop himself (and in nine cases out of ten it is a bishop, so that he may be mitred and crosiered and pearl-bordered) becomes a mere peg to hang vestments on, and is made short and dumpy for ...
— Stained Glass Work - A text-book for students and workers in glass • C. W. Whall
... Oh! bride of mine—tall, dumpy, dark, or fair! Oh! widow—wife, maybe, or blushing maiden, I've told YOUR fortune; solved the gravest care With which your mind has hitherto been laden. I've prophesied correctly, never doubt it; Now tell me mine—and ...
— The Bab Ballads • W. S. Gilbert
... lovely atmosphere of art. My German was rather rusty since my Weimar days, but I took my accent, with my courage, in both hands and asked a coachman to drive me to the opera-house. Through green and luscious lanes of foliage this dumpy, red-faced scoundrel drove; by the beautiful Isar, across the magnificent Maximilian bridge over against the classic facade of the Maximilineum. Twisting tortuously about this superb edifice, we tore along another leafy road lined on one side by villas, on ...
— Old Fogy - His Musical Opinions and Grotesques • James Huneker
... from thirty to forty-five feet long, and are divided into three classes of from six to fifteen tons burden. They are very broad in comparison to their length, some of them having a beam of fifteen feet, and they carry their width almost to the stern, which is square. This gives the boats a dumpy appearance, as they look as if they had been cut short. They are half-decked, with a roomy fo'castle and a well, where the fish are kept alive. They carry ...
— A Chapter of Adventures • G. A. Henty
... vound 'twer best to have en boun', Vor if they hadden, 'twould a-tumbl'd down; An' after that I zeed en all but vallen, An' trigg'd en up wi' woone o'm's pitchen pick, To zee if I could meaeke en ride to rick; An' when they had the dumpy heap unboun', He vell to pieces flat ...
— Poems of Rural Life in the Dorset Dialect • William Barnes
... She's a wide, dumpy-built old girl, and dressed sort of freaky. Also her line of talk is a kind of purry, throaty gush that's almost too soothin' to be true. But anybody who makes only half a bluff at being interested in our garden wins us. And not until she's inspected our first string-beans through her ...
— The House of Torchy • Sewell Ford
... said husband, and be a sort of panorama for the poor man? "I don't want him to be in the panorama," she said, "nor of the panorama; I want you just to be the panorama by yourself." I was forced to decline this singular appeal, glad as I should have been to cheer her dumpy spouse. ...
— A Truthful Woman in Southern California • Kate Sanborn
... I should like to possess a really good piano—not one of those dumpy vertical instruments, but a big flat one with a long tail. For a long time I hesitated between a Rolls Royce, a Yost, a Veuve Cliquot, and a Thurston. At last I put the problem to a musical ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, May 27, 1914 • Various
... however, was not asleep. At that modest tap up sprang a curly head, two dark, bright eyes opened wide, two white feet sprang quickly but noiselessly on to the floor, and Polly had opened the bedroom door wide to admit the short, dumpy, but excited little ...
— Polly - A New-Fashioned Girl • L. T. Meade
... judgment might amount to, the pony was brought out. He was larger than Loupe, and had not Loupe's peculiar symmetry of mane and tail: he was a fat dumpy little fellow, sleek and short, dapple grey, with a good long tail and a mild eye. Preston declared he had no shape at all and was a poor concern of a pony; but to my eyes he was beautiful. He took one or two sugarplums from my hand with as much amenity ...
— Daisy • Elizabeth Wetherell
... were not stormy, I might order out the farm-chariot, or curriculum, which is, after all, but a low, dumpy kind of horse-cart, and take a drive over the lava pavement of the Via Tusculana, to learn what news is astir, and what the citizens talk of in the forum. Is all quiet upon the Rhine? How is it possibly with Germanicus? And what of that story of the arrest of Seneca? It could hardly have ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., April, 1863, No. LXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics. • Various
... big heavy fist tightened. Then he drew himself up to his full dumpy height. "Dr. Pietro," he said stiffly, "I am as responsible to my duties as any man here—and my duties involve protecting the life of every man and woman on board; if you wish to return, I shall be most happy to submit this to a ...
— Let'em Breathe Space • Lester del Rey
... his gun on his shoulder and his retriever at his heel, would walk through a Saulteux settlement. The girls here were still shyer than their Cree cousins, but they were not a whit less lovely. They were not dumpy like so many Indian girls, but were slight of build, and willowy of motion. Their hair was long and black, but it was as fine as silk, and shone like the plumage of a blackbird. There was not that oily swarthiness in the complexion, which makes so many ...
— The Story of Louis Riel: The Rebel Chief • Joseph Edmund Collins
... in the dress of the crowd, but I saw nothing positively ugly or grotesquely out of taste. The costumes were as good as the customs, and I have already celebrated the manners of this crowd. I believe I must except the costumes of the bicyclesses, who were unfailingly dumpy in effect when dismounted, and who were all the more lamentable for tottering about, in their short skirts, upon the tips of their narrow little, sharp-pointed, silly high-heeled shoes. How severe I am! But those high heels seemed to take all honesty from their ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... Brer Fox cum a callin', and w'en he gun fer ter laugh 'bout Brer Rabbit, Miss Meadows en de gals, dey ups en tells 'im 'bout w'at Brer Rabbit Say. Den Brer Fox grit his tushes sho' nuff, he did, en he look mighty dumpy, but w'en he riz fer ter go ...
— Uncle Remus • Joel Chandler Harris
... a rather short, dumpy woman and inclined to be stout and short of breath. She had iron-gray hair, near-sighted dark eyes and very pretty, very plump small hands. She exclaimed over her room when she saw it, said that everything was lovely and insisted on kissing the three ...
— Rosemary • Josephine Lawrence
... thin-bladed saw, and he rapidly cut out the old hard bough, close down to the place where it branched from the dumpy trunk, and then, handing me the tool, he knelt down on a pad of carpet he carried in ...
— Brownsmith's Boy - A Romance in a Garden • George Manville Fenn
... Carmo Church, still unrepaired since 1755; Blackhorse Square, still bare of trees; the Government offices, still propped to prevent a tumble-down, and the old Custom House, still a bilious yellow; the vast barrack-like pile of S. Vicente, the historic Se or cathedral with dumpy towers; the black Castle of Sao Jorge, so hardly wrung from the gallant Moors, and the huge Santa Engracia, apparently ever to ...
— To the Gold Coast for Gold - A Personal Narrative in Two Volumes.—Vol. I • Richard F. Burton
... when she was betrothed to the heir to the French throne, she was a dumpy, mean-looking little creature, with no distinction whatever, and with only her bright golden hair to make amends for her many blemishes. At fifteen she was married and joined the Dauphin in ...
— Famous Affinities of History, Vol 1-4, Complete - The Romance of Devotion • Lyndon Orr
... Aaron's continual disparagement of the clumsy animal which my uncle called "a great, awkward plow-horse;" and then he would fling out some of his proud nonsense about "poor white people who were obliged to groom their own old dumpy horses," &c. ...
— Twenty-Two Years a Slave, and Forty Years a Freeman • Austin Steward
... to learn; and even Sylvia took up fencing primarily because it promised to give her one more occupation, left her less time for loneliness. As it turned out, however, these lessons proved far more to her than a temporary anodyne: they brought her a positive pleasure. She delighted the dumpy little captain with her aptness, and he took the greatest pains in his instruction. Before the end of her Freshman year she twice succeeded in getting through his guard and landing a thrust on his well-rounded figure; and though ...
— The Bent Twig • Dorothy Canfield
... forest in Sumatra: "The stem of every tree blinked with a pale greenish-white light which undulated also across the surface of the ground like moonlight coming and going behind the clouds, from a minute thread-like fungus invisible in the day-time to the unassisted eye; and here and there thick dumpy mushrooms displayed a sharp, clear dome of light, whose intensity never varied or changed till the break of day; long phosphorescent caterpillars and centipedes crawled out of every corner, leaving a trail of light behind them, while fire-flies darted about above ...
— The Beauties of Nature - and the Wonders of the World We Live In • Sir John Lubbock
... remembering she had to make peace with her son, seized the tray and went upstairs. And the moment she was gone Kate seated herself wearily on the red, calico-covered sofa. Like an elongated armchair, it looked quaint, neat, and dumpy, pushed up against the wall between the black fireplace on the right and the little window shaded with the muslin blinds, under which a pot of greenstuff bloomed freshly. She lay back thinking vaguely, her cup of hot tea uppermost in her mind, hoping that Mrs. Ede would not keep her ...
— A Mummer's Wife • George Moore
... and discomfiture manfully. He formed a resolution then and there to become a good shot, and although he did not succeed exactly in becoming so that day, he nevertheless managed to put several fine specimens of gulls and an auk into his bag. The last bird amused him much, being a creature with a dumpy little body and a beak of preposterously large size and comical aspect. There were also a great number of eider-ducks flying about, but they ...
— The World of Ice • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... a widow, too, and has quite an interesting story. She is a dumpy little woman whose small nose seems to be smelling the stars, it is so tip-tilted. She has the merriest blue eyes and the quickest wit. It is really worth a severe bumping just to be welcomed by her. It was so warm and cozy in her low little cabin. She had her ...
— Letters of a Woman Homesteader • Elinore Pruitt Stewart
... Peel was not the least like her niece. She was short and rather dumpy. She had a sensible, downright sort of face, and she took life with a gravity which would have oppressed a ...
— A Sweet Girl Graduate • Mrs. L.T. Meade
... boy attempted to unfasten the collar, but the leather was stiff, the buckle rusty. Then he tried to press the spring in. Once, like a dumpy animal, he crawled away. But he came back with a brickbat and hammered like a blacksmith at the spring. Then he bent over, caught the fastening savagely in his teeth, and gritted down. A sobbing ...
— Frank of Freedom Hill • Samuel A. Derieux
... He knew every subtle incline of the seven or eight miles of ground between Hintock and Sherton Abbas—the market-town to which he journeyed—as accurately as any surveyor could have learned it by a Dumpy level. ...
— The Woodlanders • Thomas Hardy
... can scarcely realize the extreme simplicity of a poor man's kitchen. A Dutch oven, a kettle, a gridiron, a saucepan, two or three dumpy cooking-pots, and a frying-pan—that was all. All the crockery in the place, white and brown earthenware together, was not worth more than twelve francs. Dinner was served on the kitchen table, which, with a couple of chairs and a couple of stools, completed the furniture. The stock of fuel was ...
— Cousin Pons • Honore de Balzac
... spread. A rare nest was composed of fresh leaves of the Moreton Bay ash, with the petioles towards the centre, forming a complex green star. No doubt the arrangement of the leaves was accidental, but the white dumpy egg as a pearl-like focus completed a quaint device. Another egg reposed carelessly at the base of a vigorous plant of DENDOBRIUM UNDULATUM, the old-gold plumes of ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield
... caught a sight of my counterfeit presentment in a shop window, and veiled my haughty crest. That a notorious Infidel! Behold a dumpy, comfortable British paterfamilias in a light flannel suit and a faded sun hat. No; it will not do. Not a bit like Mephisto: much more like ...
— God and my Neighbour • Robert Blatchford
... the recruits but one, were very carefully selected material, out of which to form, as soon as practicable, skilled engineer soldiers. The one exception was a short, fat, dumpy, Long Island Dutchman—a good cook, specially enlisted by Captain Swift to cook for the men. He was given the pay and rank of artificer of engineers. The men looked upon him more as a servant of theirs than as a fellow soldier. He was well satisfied with his ...
— Company 'A', corps of engineers, U.S.A., 1846-'48, in the Mexican war • Gustavus Woodson Smith
... of course. She was sitting over the dining-room fire, writing a letter. A short, rather fat, rather dumpy woman, with plain features, an ominous flush on her sallow cheeks, iron-grey hair, and very large, very ...
— A Sheaf of Corn • Mary E. Mann
... nose, grinding of the teeth, a whitish paleness around the mouth, restless sleep; sometimes convulsions, or presence of worms in the stool. Bad health, cross, peevish, irritable and dumpy, when the ...
— Mother's Remedies - Over One Thousand Tried and Tested Remedies from Mothers - of the United States and Canada • T. J. Ritter
... have permitted, undauntedly into the very jaws of Death. Onward—still onward stalked the grim Legs, making the desolate solemnity echo and re-echo with yells like the terrific war-whoop of the Indian: and onward, still onward rolled the dumpy Tarpaulin, hanging on to the doublet of his more active companion, and far surpassing the latter's most strenuous exertions in the way of vocal music, by bull-roarings in basso, from the profundity ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 3 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... table solemnly. She was a fat, rather dumpy girl of twelve. She was noted principally for two things, her indolence and her appetite, and it was in deference to the latter that she sighed rapturously as she surveyed the table. She had never seen anything ...
— Judy • Temple Bailey
... hour was spitefully reviling the morn from a window grating. As I went by the gate of the Canonico's little garden, the flowers saluted me with a breath of perfume,—I think the white honey- suckle was first to offer me this politeness,—and the dumpy little statues looked far more ...
— Venetian Life • W. D. Howells
... of the steps, standing in the snow, was a slender slip of a girl, yellow and earnest, say ten years old, with a shawl pinned over her head. She held in her hand a rope, and this rope was tied to a hand-sled. On this sled sat a little boy, shivering, dumpy and depressed, his bare red hands clutching ...
— The Mintage • Elbert Hubbard
... danced with ladies in Gainsborough hats, their feathers tickling my eye, in pork pie hats, and Watteaus, and picture hats like sparrows' nests; and there were little dumpy ladies and tall, stately, Junos, i.e., compared with Eastern women. And it was so funny to see men in suits of blue serge, tweeds, or tussore silk, whirling round with ladies in muslins of every lovely colour. If the men had only ...
— From Edinburgh to India & Burmah • William G. Burn Murdoch
... placed one on top of the other, without cement or plaster; that these paths, bordered with impenetrable hedges; that these grudging plants; these inhospitable fields; these crippled beggars, eaten with vermin, plastered with filth; that even the flocks, undersized and wasted, the dumpy little cows, the black sheep whose blue eyes had the cold, pale gleam that is in the eyes of the Slav or of the tribade; had perpetuated their primordial state, preserving an identical landscape through all ...
— La-bas • J. K. Huysmans
... dishonest voice that often irritated me. She was ruddy-faced and bursting with health, taller than Mrs. Dienstog, yet too short for her great breadth of shoulder and the enormous bulk of her bust. I thought she looked absurdly dumpy. What I particularly hated in her was her laughter, which sounded for all the world like the gobble of ...
— The Rise of David Levinsky • Abraham Cahan
... side by side on a sofa, each with an elbow on its back and the elbows near together. Nor was Medora Phillips, though plump, at all the graceless, dumpy little body she sometimes taxed ...
— Bertram Cope's Year • Henry Blake Fuller
... him waiting a good while. He had found his lordship getting up, and had had to stay to help him dress. At length he came, excusing himself that his lordship's temper at such times—that was, in his dumpy fits—was not of the evenest, and required a gentle hand. But his lordship would see him—and could Mr. Grant find the way himself, for his old bones ached with running up and down those endless stone ...
— Donal Grant • George MacDonald
... the bell buzzes again, and Helma shows in a dumpy little woman with partly gray hair and Baldwin apple cheeks—evidently a friend of Auntie's by the way ...
— Wilt Thou Torchy • Sewell Ford
... of the other waitress was Tildy. Why do you suggest Matilda? Please listen this time—Tildy—Tildy. Tildy was dumpy, plain-faced, and too anxious to please to please. Repeat the last clause to yourself once or twice, and make the ...
— The Four Million • O. Henry
... portholes a saucy little English corvette beside, began playing sounding marches as a crowd of boats came paddling up to the steamer's side to convey us travellers to shore. There were Russian schooners and Greek brigs lying in this little bay; dumpy little windmills whirling round on the sunburnt heights round about it; an improvised town of quays and marine taverns has sprung up on the shore; a host of jingling barouches, more miserable than ...
— Notes on a Journey from Cornhill to Grand Cairo • William Makepeace Thackeray
... martyrdom may be said to have come to an end, for the good-natured Begum insisted upon leaving him at his door in Bury-street; so he took the back seat of the carriage, after a feeble bow or two, and speech of thanks, polite to the last, and resolute in doing his duty. The Begum waved her dumpy little hand by way of farewell to Arthur and Foker, and Blanche smiled languidly out upon the young men, thinking whether she looked very wan and green under her rose-colored hood, and whether it was the mirrors at Gaunt House, or the fatigue and fever of her own eyes, which made her fancy ...
— The History of Pendennis, Vol. 2 - His Fortunes and Misfortunes, His Friends and His Greatest Enemy • William Makepeace Thackeray
... aspect, resembling the autumn of the earth. The sun was sinking to rest, wrapped in a mantle of warm clouds. Forward, on the end of the spare spars, the boatswain and the carpenter sat together with crossed arms; two men friendly, powerful, and deep-chested. Beside them the short, dumpy sailmaker—who had been in the Navy—related, between the whiffs of his pipe, impossible stories about Admirals. Couples tramped backwards and forwards, keeping step and balance without effort, in a confined ...
— The Nigger Of The "Narcissus" - A Tale Of The Forecastle • Joseph Conrad
... maiden withdrew, a buggy rattled up to the door of the little shop. In the broad strip of light formed by the lamp opposite the door, the creaking vehicle stopped short. A dumpy female in a nondescript black garment took the reins, while her male companion descended heavily, putting both feet upon the step, and cautiously lowering himself to the ground close beside the spot where Flint and Brady stood. Once assured that he had reached the ground in ...
— Flint - His Faults, His Friendships and His Fortunes • Maud Wilder Goodwin
... Katje Voss, whose people had settled about thirty miles off—next door, as it were. Katje held views not entirely dissimilar, but she consented to marry him, and the big youth walked on air. Katje was a dumpy Boer girl, with a face all cream and roses, and a figure that gave promise of much fat hereafter. Christina had imagined other things, but the ideal is a rickety structure, and she yielded; while David had never considered ...
— The Second Class Passenger • Perceval Gibbon
... and La Forge, with the thin blue smoke of gorse fires floating down from every dumpy chimney and adding a flavour to the sweetest air in the world,—with a morning greeting from everyone they met—over the heights and down the zigzag path to the sloping ledges, and in they went, all three, into the clearest and crispest water in the world, water that ...
— Pearl of Pearl Island • John Oxenham
... himself up to his full height, placed himself threateningly in front of Gammer Gurton's elbow-chair. "You call me a cobweb? Now, I swear to you that you shall henceforth never more be the spider that dwells in that web! For you are a garden-spider, an abominable, dumpy, old garden-spider, for whom a web, such as Hodge is, is much too fine and much too elegant. Be quiet, therefore, old spider, and spin your net elsewhere! You shall not live in my net, but Tib—for, yes, I do know Tib. She is a lovely, charming child ...
— Henry VIII And His Court • Louise Muhlbach
... and dumpy, and stood very much in awe of her sister. She was really the better-natured person of the two, but she never disobeyed Miss Minchin. She went ...
— A Little Princess • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... I said, laughing; and the dumpy little Irishman gave me a sly grin as he retied his stock and stood smoothing down his ...
— The Reckoning • Robert W. Chambers
... side. Opposite the shops was the inn, the doctor's house, the market-house, and a public reading-room; and a bylane led from the green up towards the church—an old, low-walled, steep-roofed building, with a square, dumpy tower, in which hung a peal of bells, and where was placed a large, round, clumsy window. A clump of hardwood trees enclosed the upper end of the church-yard, and extended to the back of the rector's garden, quite concealing his many-gabled ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 455 - Volume 18, New Series, September 18, 1852 • Various
... books, one invariably begins by collecting the wrong things. In novels and essays you read of "priceless Elzevirs," and "Aldines worth their weight in gold." Fired with hope, you hang about all the stalls, where you find myriads of Elzevirs, dumpy, dirty little tomes, in small illegible type, and legions of Aldines, books quite as dirty, if not so dumpy, and equally illegible, for they are printed in italics. You think you are in luck, invest largely, and ...
— Punch, Or the London Charivari, Vol. 102, Feb. 13, 1892 • Various
... off he puts. Says he's goin' to walk the fog out'n his head. I told him, s' I, 'You'll walk a plaguey sight more in than you do out, THIS night,' but he went just the same. He was dreadful kind of dumpy and blue this evenin'. Seemed to be sort of soggy in his mind. And why he never went to meetin' with his dad and why his dad never asked him TO go is more'n I can tell. Land of livin', how I do gabble! My grandmarm used to say my tongue was loose at both ends and ...
— Keziah Coffin • Joseph C. Lincoln
... sheepishly. He was no more than seven years old, fat and dumpy, and dressed as coquettishly as a doll. As he saw that they were all looking at him with smiles, he stopped short, and surveyed Jeanne, his blue eyes wide open ...
— A Love Episode • Emile Zola
... understand this, but she had an uneasy misgiving that she had a cotton back herself. It would settle down, at times, and make her squat and dumpy, and then she had to roll herself in the road until her ...
— The Patchwork Girl of Oz • L. Frank Baum
... saw to his surprise, two islands that seemed to have sprung like magic upon the South-eastern horizon. The further one lay long and low and dark but distant beneath the fog-lined sky, the "nigh one" was more short and dumpy in appearance. ...
— Frontier Boys on the Coast - or in the Pirate's Power • Capt. Wyn Roosevelt
... during the morning bathing hour. It is small, shaped like a horseshoe, framed by high while cliffs, which are pierced by strange holes called the 'Portes,' one stretching out into the ocean like the leg of a giant, the other short and dumpy. The women gather on the narrow strip of sand in this frame of high rocks, which they make into a gorgeous garden of beautiful gowns. The sun beats down on the shores, on the multicolored parasols, on the blue-green sea; and all is gay, delightful, ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... the entrance, but it was obviously a very respectable somebody. A dumpy, motherly somebody in a seal-skin ...
— The Clue of the Twisted Candle • Edgar Wallace
... one had always served, but it cost him a lot of twisting of his body and some pain to his mistreated wrist bones to bring forth the contents of his trousers' pockets. The chain kinked time and again as he groped with the undermost hand for the openings; his dumpy, pudgy form writhed grotesquely. But finally he finished. The search produced four cigars somewhat crumpled and frayed; some matches in a gun-metal case, a silver cigar cutter, two five-dollar bills, a handful ...
— The Escape of Mr. Trimm - His Plight and other Plights • Irvin S. Cobb
... tiny, wee, petty, minikin[obs3], miniature, pygmy, pigmy[obs3], elfin; undersized; dwarf, dwarfed, dwarfish; spare, stunted, limited; cramp, cramped; pollard, Liliputian, dapper, pocket; portative[obs3], portable; duodecimo[obs3]; dumpy, squat; short &c. 201. impalpable, intangible, evanescent, imperceptible, invisible, inappreciable, insignificant, inconsiderable, trivial; infinitesimal, homoeopathic[obs3]; atomic, subatomic, corpuscular, molecular; rudimentary, rudimental; embryonic, vestigial. weazen|!, scant, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... was, in appearance at least, a striking contrast to her friend, being a dumpy little woman, in whose demeanour good-nature vied with dignity. She was dressed in black, and affected an upright feather in front of her bonnets. "To give me ...
— Flaming June • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... and the Albertus-Magnus were lying at hand; Pendleton ignored the dumpy, stained little Latin volume; its strong-smelling leather binding and faded text had no attractions for him. But he took up the Poe and began ...
— Ashton-Kirk, Investigator • John T. McIntyre
... willing to do his grand vizier a favor; so he sent the black slave to bring the pedler up stairs. The pedler came. He was a little, dumpy man, with a dark complexion, and dressed in ragged garments. He bore a chest in which were wares of all sorts: pearls and rings, richly mounted pistols, drinking cups, and combs. The caliph and his vizier rummaged ...
— What the Animals Do and Say • Eliza Lee Follen
... throne, 'tis strange to see What different and what odd perfections Men have required in Royalty. Some, liking monarchs large and plumpy, Have chosen their Sovereigns by the weight;— Some wisht them tall, some thought your Dumpy, Dutch-built, the true Legitimate.[1] The Easterns in a Prince, 'tis said, Prefer what's called a jolterhead:[2] The Egyptians weren't at all partic'lar, So that their Kings had not red hair— This fault not even the greatest ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... conquered a peace, and from that time forth he suffered no persecution at school. Master Herbert soon after went back to his city home, wondering how it was that a small, dumpy lad, four years younger than he, was able to vanquish him so completely when all the science was on the side of the ...
— Through Forest and Fire - Wild-Woods Series No. 1 • Edward Ellis
... short, dumpy specimen of humanity, with red hair, freckled face, nose of the pug order, and goggle eyes. His dress was picturesque, if not ragged: his coat and pants were so widely apart, at the waist, as to reveal a large track of very incorrect linen; and the said coat had been deprived of one of its ...
— City Crimes - or Life in New York and Boston • Greenhorn
... shreds, broken pieces. Flinging, kicking out in dancing; capering. Flingin-tree, a piece of timber hung by way of partition between two horses in a stable; a flail. Fliskit, fretted, capered. Flit, to shift. Flittering, fluttering. Flyte, scold. Fock, focks, folk. Fodgel, dumpy. Foor, fared (i. e., went). Foorsday, Thursday. Forbears, forebears, forefathers. Forby, forbye, besides. Forfairn, worn out; forlorn. Forfoughten, exhausted. Forgather, to meet with. Forgie, to forgive. Forjesket, jaded. Forrit, forward. Fother, fodder. Fou, fow, full (i. e., drunk). Foughten, ...
— Poems And Songs Of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... 'll go,' whispered Hollyhock. 'Look at Dumpy Dad; he's perfectly miserable. If she does not clear out soon, I 'll turn her ...
— Hollyhock - A Spirit of Mischief • L. T. Meade
... attention drawn off from the increasing storm without, and from the bitter cup which I knew the Irish sea was preparing for me. The harper presently struck up a livelier strain, when two Welsh girls, who were chatting before the grate, one of them as dumpy as a bag of meal and the other slender and tall, stepped into the middle of the floor and began to dance to the delicious music, a Welsh mechanic and myself drinking our ale and looking on approvingly. After a while the pleasant, modest-looking bar-maid, whom ...
— Winter Sunshine • John Burroughs
... the tip was broken off; on the left side lay a Bible. On glowing summer afternoons wagonettes came full of Americans and cultured suburbans to see the sepulchre; but even then they felt the vast forest land with its one dumpy dome of churchyard and church as a place oddly dumb and neglected. In this freezing darkness of mid-winter one would think he might be left alone with the stars. Nevertheless, in the stillness of those stiff woods a wooden gate creaked, ...
— The Innocence of Father Brown • G. K. Chesterton
... wife, a dumpy little woman with merry eyes, soon joined her husband, pushing before her two little girls; one, the smaller of the two, was two years younger than Amedee; the other was ten years old, and already had a wise little air. She was the ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... jars weighed a pound, and in each was found a little over a tea-spoonful of jam. Verily, we began to think our hopes and expectations had been raised to too high a pitch. Three bottles of curry were next produced—but who cares for curry? Another box was opened, and out tumbled a fat dumpy Dutch cheese, hard as a brick, but sound and good; though it is bad for the liver in Unyamwezi. Then another cheese was seen, but this was all eaten up—it was hollow and a fraud. The third box contained nothing ...
— How I Found Livingstone • Sir Henry M. Stanley
... what Crabbe, and Augusta, and Acton will say to your taking up with a dumpy leveller. We shall have another row. And you'll be ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... foot, which had a gouty appearance owing to its being contained in a dumpy little worsted sock, and I thought he proposed to repeat his first performance, but in this I did him an injustice, for, unlike Porthos, he was one who scorned to do the same feat twice; perhaps, like the conjurors, he knew that the audience were more on ...
— The Little White Bird - or Adventures In Kensington Gardens • J. M. Barrie
... were steaming up a branch of the great Me-kong river in Cochin China, a muddy stream, densely fringed by the nipah palm, whose dark green fronds, ten and twelve feet long, look as if they grew out of the ground, so dumpy is its stem. The country, as overlooked from our lofty deck, appeared a dead level of rice and scrubby jungle intermixed, a vast alluvial plain, from which the heavy, fever-breeding mists were rising in rosy folds. Every now and then we passed a Cochin Chinese village—a collection ...
— The Golden Chersonese and the Way Thither • Isabella L. Bird (Mrs. Bishop)
... his scarf-pin. He took it out and gave it to her. She stood on tip-toe, for she was dumpy, put her arms round his neck, and gave him ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson
... love for Ormersfield, and she was charmed by her visits to old haunts, well remembering everything. She gladly recognised the little low-browed church, the dumpy tower, and grave-yard rising so high that it seemed to intend to bury the church itself, and permitted many a view, through the lattices, of the seats, and ...
— Dynevor Terrace (Vol. I) - or, The Clue of Life • Charlotte M. Yonge
... own it. But fame, love, Is all that these eyes can adore; He's lame,—but Lord Byron was lame, love, And dumpy,—but so is Tom Moore. Then his voice,—such a voice! my sweet creature, It's like your Aunt Lucy's toucan: But oh! what's a tone or a feature, When once one's a ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 4 (of 4) • Various
... with sandy hair that came down straight and thin upon his shoulders, and being without his coat, with pants that reached only half way between his knees and ankles, he cut a ludicrous figure as he straddled on, followed by a short, dumpy man, who, waddle as ambitiously as he might, swiftly fell behind, without, however, seeming in ...
— The Cabin on the Prairie • C. H. (Charles Henry) Pearson
... with more squalling than did the old Jesuit College. The girls swished around corners and tumbled over the vegetable beds. Angelique groped for Maria, not daring to call her name, and caught and ran with some one until they neared the light, when she found it was the dumpy little figure of her ...
— Old Kaskaskia • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... book under her arm, deposited her dumpy person in a seat by his side, and looked up at him with a smile of ...
— A Prince of Sinners • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... for the mean reason that he could no longer appear in dignity as laird of Glashruach and chairman of a grand company; while he felt as if something must have gone wrong with the laws of nature that it had become possible for Thomas Galbraith, of Glashruach, Esq., to live in a dumpy cottage. He had thought seriously of resuming his patronymic of Durrant, but reflected that he was too well known to don that cloak of transparent darkness without giving currency to the idea that he had soiled the other past longer wearing. It would be imagined, he said, ...
— Sir Gibbie • George MacDonald
... lengthen his skirt and lower his waist-line, as shown in No. 86. In the one he escapes appearing too long and lanky in body, and in the other he obscures a lack of becoming inches that tends to give him a dumpy appearance. ...
— What Dress Makes of Us • Dorothy Quigley
... his musket, had found himself minus his right hand, which, upon the musket going off as he rammed down, had gone off too. He was invalided and sent home during Jack's absence, and another had been appointed, whose name was Tallboys. Mr Tallboys was a stout dumpy man, with red face, and still redder hands; he had red hair and red whiskers, and he had read a great deal—for Mr Tallboys considered that the gunner was the most important personage in the ship. ...
— Mr. Midshipman Easy • Frederick Marryat
... style of motion. The elder sister, Lactimel, was of a different form, but yet hardly more fit to shine in the mazes of the dance than her sister. She had her charms, nevertheless, which consisted of a somewhat stumpy dumpy comeliness. She was altogether short in stature, and very short below the knee. She had fair hair and a fair skin, small bones and copious soft flesh. She had a trick of sighing gently in the evolutions of the waltz, ...
— The Three Clerks • Anthony Trollope
... of the smallest and most exclusive of Society's many sets—a handsome woman with well-arched eyebrows; and Mrs. Fredericks, of the same group; sallow, with great black eyes, talking with tremendous animation; and Mrs. Terry—of the newly rich; Mr. Bellmer's aunt; dumpy, diamonded ...
— The Bacillus of Beauty - A Romance of To-day • Harriet Stark
... had forgotten it all. The dumpy accommodation train was bumping itself along at a great rate, puffing stertorously up the long grade past "Sassafras Hill," and then swinging itself around the curves that followed the river so desperately that passengers and ...
— Stubble • George Looms
... Centuriators,—natural enemies, here bound over to their good behavior. These dark veterans are Jewish Rabbis,—Kimchi, Abarbanel, and, like a row of rag-collectors, a whole Monmouth Street of rubbish,—behold the entire Babylonian Talmud. These tall Socinians are the Polish brethren, and the dumpy vellums overhead are Dutch divines. The cupboard contains Greek and Latin manuscripts, and those spruce fashionables are Spencer, and Cowley, and Sir William Davenant. And the new books which crown the upper shelves, still uncut and fresh from the ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 5, No. 1, January, 1852 • Various
... sitting. On one sits a tiny boy with a quizzical intelligent little face. His top-knot sticks up like an out-of-curl feather. Beside him is a still smaller mite who cannot be more than two; he has little silver bangles on his fat wrists and ankles, and a strip of cotton rolled round his dumpy body, while papa and mamma and numerous aunts are seated on ...
— Round the Wonderful World • G. E. Mitton
... had been walking toward the village, and, in a few moments, they reached the dock behind the post-office, where the two new boats lay. One of them was a short, "dumpy," sloop-rigged boat, with no deck or center-board, and the ...
— Frank, the Young Naturalist • Harry Castlemon
... ship with two cops in it, and a dumpy salvage ship with fifteen more, did not make an impressive force to try to deal with a planetary population which bitterly hated humans. But the cops did not plan conquest. They were neither a fighting rescue expedition ...
— A Matter of Importance • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... you are here! I'm glad to have another girl! Girls understand. I wish I hadn't opened those horrid old parcels. It's just as I said—presents are disappointing. Now I feel thoroughly humped and dumpy! It's so stupid, too, for I know quite well that I've every sane reason to be pleased. How exasperating it is that one's head and one's ...
— The Independence of Claire • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... Tottenham-court-road. It was a wedding-party, and emerged from one of the inferior streets near Fitzroy-square. There were the bride, with a thin white dress, and a great red face; and the bridesmaid, a little, dumpy, good-humoured young woman, dressed, of course, in the same appropriate costume; and the bridegroom and his chosen friend, in blue coats, yellow waist-coats, white trousers, and Berlin gloves to match. They stopped at the corner of the street, and ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... command, Rosy tripped out of the kitchen, and in an instant returned with the desiderated commodity—a dumpy, bluff, opaque bottle, of about a gallon contents—which she placed on the table. Adair seized it by its long neck, and, filling up a brimming bumper, tossed it off to the health of his guest. This done, he filled up another topping glass, and presented it to the stranger, ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland Volume 17 • Alexander Leighton
... lady," from Archie] "being nearest, handed him his head, which had rolled to her idolatrous feet. The hysterical gnome immediately clapped it on—wrong side before. 'Never mind,' he said. 'Now I can go to school, or from school, just as I like, and nobody will ever know what I'm doing.' The dumpy party then went on their way exploring, leaving the squealing Archie and uncanny auntie calling after them, and weeping unmixed tears of terror, lest by some accident they should never come back. The noble gnome ...
— Cricket at the Seashore • Elizabeth Westyn Timlow
... was threatened—his mother came down the corridor like a rolling, ominous cloud. She was looking about her on all sides, in a fidget of annoyance, searching for him, and to his dismay she saw him. She immediately made a horrible face at his companion, beckoned to him imperiously with a dumpy arm, and shook her head reprovingly. The unfortunate young man tried to repulse her with an icy stare, but this effort having obtained little to encourage his feeble hope of driving her away, he shifted his chair so that his back was toward her discomfiting pantomime. He should have ...
— Alice Adams • Booth Tarkington
... was a great contrast to Mrs. Lewis. Mrs. Steward was a tall, thin, rather refined-looking woman. Mrs. Lewis was fat and dumpy, decidedly untidy in appearance, with a melancholy air and a habit of constantly indulging in low weeping. Mrs. Steward looked as if she had never wept in her life; she sat upright as a dart, her movements were quick, her manners independent; she had a ...
— Wild Kitty • L. T. Meade
... Sitting on the floor, Every thing around him Ready to explore, Plumpy, dumpy, roly-poly, Pretty Baby Brown-Eyes ...
— The Nursery, June 1877, Vol. XXI. No. 6 - A Monthly Magazine for Youngest Readers • Various
... A dumpy, fat little steamer rolled itself along like a sailor on shore from Gibraltar to Tangier, and Holcombe, leaning over the rail of its quarter-deck, smiled down at the chattering group of Arabs and Moors stretched on their ...
— The Exiles and Other Stories • Richard Harding Davis
... we entered Aix, I had said to myself that the mountains surrounding the town had descended to depths of dumpy ugliness unworthy the name and dignity of mountains. I had formulated the idea that there should be world landscape-gardeners appointed, to work on a grand scale, and alter hills or mountains which Nature had neglected or bungled. But to-day, ...
— The Princess Passes • Alice Muriel Williamson and Charles Norris Williamson
... of the place. At one end of the long mahogany table was set the one enormous garden chair, which was surmounted by the old torn tent or umbrella which Smith himself had suggested as a coronation canopy. Inside this erection could be perceived the dumpy form of Mrs. Duke, with cushions and a form of countenance that already threatened slumber. At the other end sat the accused Smith, in a kind of dock; for he was carefully fenced in with a quadrilateral of light bedroom chairs, any of which he could have tossed out the window with his big toe. He ...
— Manalive • G. K. Chesterton
... expected Alvina, but by the train, which came later. So she had to be knocked up, for she was lying down. She opened the door looking a little patched in her cheeks, because of her curious colouring, and a little forlorn, and a little dumpy, and a ...
— The Lost Girl • D. H. Lawrence
... slow time, and the step being fully thirty-six inches the fat little dumpy officers nearly upset themselves in their efforts to keep time, and at the same time prevent their slippers from deserting on the line of march; while, in bringing their swords to the salute, they did it with ...
— Diary of a Pedestrian in Cashmere and Thibet • by William Henry Knight
... Scandinavian mountain-scene, grey of shadow and glancing with sun-gleams that rent the thick veils of mist-cloud, assumed a manner of Ossianic grandeur. After three hours and a half we were abreast of Zib, around whose dumpy tower all the population had congregated. Thence the regular coralline bank, whose beach is the Bab, runs some distance down coast, allowing passage to our ugly old friend, Wady Salm. The next important ...
— The Land of Midian, Vol. 2 • Richard Burton
... indicating the calm strength acquired by long familiarity with the elements in their roughest moods. As we approached the ship, her appearance was not prepossessing. She is undoubtedly clumsy; the three masts are low, the funnel is short and dumpy, there is no bowsprit, and her sides are painted black, relieved only by one long streak of dark red. Her length between the perpendiculars—that is, the length of her keel—is 276 feet; breadth (exclusive of paddle-boxes), 45; thus keeping up the proportion, as old as Noah's ark, of ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 3, August, 1850. • Various
... and not a visitor, rather damped his expectations: but he persisted in believing her look towards the chapel must have a meaning in it, till she suddenly stood erect, and revealed herself as short in stature—almost dumpy—at the same time giving him a distinct view of her profile. She was not at all like the heroine of the chapel. He saw the dinted nose of the De Stancys outlined with Holbein shadowlessness against the blue-green of the distant wood. It was not the De Stancy face with all its original ...
— A Laodicean • Thomas Hardy
... friends the Eastons, and it was on one of these visits that I had my first long ride in an automobile. Incredible as it may seem now, there were very few motor cars in the county in 1901, and Easton's machine would excite laughter to-day. It was dumpy of form and noisy and uncertain of temper, but it made the trip to Winona and almost home again. It broke down helplessly in the last mile, a treachery which caused its owner the deepest chagrin, although it gave ...
— A Daughter of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... from my haste; and brushing the filth from my eyes, leaned both arms on the chimney-pot while I scanned the roofs around for a glimpse between them, down to the street and Mr. Trapp. I did so at ease, for a flue entered the main shaft immediately below the stack, which was a decidedly dumpy one—in fact, less than five feet tall; so that I supported myself not by the arms alone but by resting my toes on the ridge where flue ...
— The Adventures of Harry Revel • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... the few things economic conditions couldn't affect. There was Kurt Fawzi, the center of a group to whom he was declaiming earnestly; there was his mother, and Flora, and Flora's fiance, who was the uncomfortable lone man in an excited feminine flock. And there was Senta herself, short and dumpy, in one of her preposterous red and purple dresses, bubbling happily one moment and screaming invective at some laggard waiter ...
— The Cosmic Computer • Henry Beam Piper
... and let married people have fallen ever so wide asunder, the thought, "my child's mother," "my baby's father," must in some degree bridge the gulf between them. When Peter Ascott was seen stooping, awkwardly enough, over his son's cradle, poking his dumpy fingers into each tiny cheek in a half-alarmed, half-investigating manner, as if he wondered how it had all come about, but, on the whole, was rather pleased than otherwise—the good angel of the household might have stood by and smiled, ...
— Mistress and Maid • Dinah Craik (aka: Miss Mulock)
... already in the room with a silver jug. He had just been to the cellar, and was in full dress too; that is, he had taken his gaiters off, and showed his little dumpy legs in black worsted stockings. The sideboard was covered with glistening old plate—old cups, both gold and silver; old salvers and cruet-stands, like Rundell and Bridge's shop. Everything on ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... looked tawdry beside her richly flowing velvet draperies—every low bodice became indecent compared with the modesty of that small square opening at Thelma's white throat—an opening just sufficient to display her collar of diamonds—and every figure seemed either dumpy and awkward, too big or too fat, or too lean and too lanky—when brought into contrast with ...
— Thelma • Marie Corelli
... Malvina Reed, widow of that great statesman, the Hon. Alonzo Confucius Reed, who will be remembered as the author of the notable bill to prohibit barbers breathing on the backs of their customers' necks, was duenna of the party. She was a dumpy, small woman, gray, with lines in her steamed face, in which all attempts ...
— Claim Number One • George W. (George Washington) Ogden
... she answered "Present" at roll-call to the prettier name of Florence; but uncle Tim—he's such a jolly fellow!—said, when he first held her in her delicately-embroidered blankets, that she was such a bouncer, so red and so dumpy, that she would never be anything but a bunch; and so dubbed, she carries the name to this day. But did not she disappoint him, though! for, in some unaccountable way, she daily stretched long, and flattened ...
— Happy Days for Boys and Girls • Various
... something different from anything we had experienced before. Gallegher was short and broad in build, with a solid, muscular broadness, and not a fat and dumpy shortness. He wore perpetually on his face a happy and knowing smile, as if you and the world in general were not impressing him as seriously as you thought you were, and his eyes, which were very black and very bright, snapped ...
— Short Stories for English Courses • Various (Rosa M. R. Mikels ed.)
... quicker To circulate the vital liquor,— And then, from head to heel— How short the Methodists must choose Their dumpy envoys not to lose Their toes in spite ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood
... a short, dumpy female with a face which had been described by Zach Bloomer as resembling a "pan of dough with a couple of cranberries dropped into it." She wore a blue hat with a red bow and a profusion of small objects—red cherries and purple grapes—bobbing on wires above it. The general effect, ...
— Galusha the Magnificent • Joseph C. Lincoln
... to perform the same act of spoliation. True, the eggs were not speckled and small, but of a very pretty white, and quite a handful for the juvenile fingers. But the bereaved "parient" was not slender and active,—in fact, was rather a tame, confiding, dumpy and dull, pepper-and-salt-colored dame. Her complaints were not touching, but rather ludicrous,—so much so, indeed, as to suggest to the human hen-bird that "Biddy was laughing to think what a nice breakfast little Carrie would have off ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume V, Number 29, March, 1860 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... short, dumpy, and inclined to be stout. As she went about her work, I noticed particularly the fat firm flesh of her neck, just below the jaw. I felt an uncontrollable desire to sink my teeth deep into that flesh, and enjoy the taste of the ...
— The Bell Tone • Edmund H. Leftwich
... E. mamillosus (nipple-bearing).—A short, dumpy plant, with numerous tubercled ridges, bearing bunches of dark brown hair-like spines, which form a close network about the stem. The flowers are developed on the top of the stem, and are about 4 in. in diameter, with a thick tube; the petals are spreading, bright yellow in colour, ...
— Cactus Culture For Amateurs • W. Watson
... came to the Cathedral. I had to confess that I'd never been in, but I didn't mention Grandma's prejudice against cathedrals. I'd never pined to see the inside as I should if the outside were tall and graceful and gray, instead of dumpy and red—an ochre-red colour which is interesting only when the sun shines on it, or when wet and sparkling with rain, in the midst of its lovely old trees. I almost gasped with joy and surprise, however, when we entered, for the interior is wonderful. It is as ...
— The Heather-Moon • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... introductory events became manifest. Search high, search low, there was no sign of my dear, dumpy Virgil, in yellowing parchment with red edges. I found Kate's cookery-book, and would have flung it through the window, but my eye caught the quaint inscription on the fly-leaf, in her big, ...
— The Yeoman Adventurer • George W. Gough
... an odd spectacle to see such a vehicle trudging along at such an hour, where no carriage had ever passed before. The two young men were odd characters; the horses were oddly matched, one being a little dumpy black pony, and the other a noble white steed; and it was an odd whim which induced Glenn to abandon his comfortable home in Philadelphia, and traverse such inclement wilds. But love can play the "wild" with any young ...
— Wild Western Scenes • John Beauchamp Jones
... over all, and the steward comes up to say, "Lunch, ladies and gentlemen! Will any lady or gentleman please to take anythink?" About a dozen do: boiled beef and pickles, and great red raw Cheshire cheese, tempt the epicure: little dumpy bottles of stout are produced, and fizz and bang about with a spirit one would never have looked for in individuals of ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... always heard that American girls were allowed a good deal of liberty—but I'd really no idea they went as far as this! I should be sorry indeed to see any girl of mine (here the glances instructively at three dumpy and dough-faced Daughters) acting in that forward and most unfeminine manner. (Reassuringly.) But I'm very sure there's no fear ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 103, July 9, 1892 • Various
... little figure that showed them into the cool, clean room; short and broad and dumpy. Her shoes were coarse, her dress of faded black, with a white kerchief at the neck, so like an old woman. Her face too, was short and broad; her nose was very short and her eyes very narrow. So you see she was not pretty, but her face was all love and sunshine. She sat ...
— Our Young Folks at Home and Abroad • Various
... see three or four people movin' about on the veranda; for we wa'n't more'n half a block away. First off I spots Aunty. She's paradin' up and down, stiff and stately, and along with her waddles a wide, dumpy female in pink. And next, all in white, and lookin' as slim and graceful as an Easter lily, I makes out Vee; also a young gent in white flannels and a striped tennis blazer. He's smokin' a cigarette and swingin' a racket jaunty. I could ...
— On With Torchy • Sewell Ford
... at least. But in this one there is nothing to see but a flat plain and some ditches, and some trees, and mounds of uninteresting green. And then I remember how there was a boy at school, a little dumpy fellow of no personal appearance whatever, who couldn't be overcome except by a much bigger champion, and the immensest quantity of thrashing. A perfect citadel of a boy, with a General Chasse sitting in that bomb-proof casemate, his heart, letting blow after blow come thumping about his head, ...
— Roundabout Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray |
