"Shambling" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... a shambling gait. The tall, thin, loose-jointed man, resting with one hand on the pulpit at his side, in every way belied the pompous tribute which had ...
— David Malcolm • Nelson Lloyd
... perceived our uncomfortable situation, and conducting us into another apartment, which had fire in the chimney, called for chocolate — Then, withdrawing, he returned with a compliment from his wife, and, in the mean time, presented his son Harry, a shambling, blear-eyed boy, in the habit of a hussar; very rude, forward, and impertinent. His father would have sent him to a boarding-school, but his mamma and aunt would not hear of his lying out of the house; so that there was a clergyman engaged as ...
— The Expedition of Humphry Clinker • Tobias Smollett
... rustling in her shiny satin, with Mr. Dale shambling along behind her, the sisters greeted her with that stately affection which was part ...
— John Ward, Preacher • Margaret Deland
... large, his ears sharply pointed and lively, while the white rings around his eyes hinted at a cross, somewhere in his pedigree, with Arabian blood. A huge, bony, homely-looking horse he was as he drew the deacon and Miranda into the village on market days and Sundays, with a loose, shambling gait, making altogether an appearance so homely and peculiar that the smart village chaps, riding along in their jaunty turn-outs, used to chaff the good deacon on the character of the steed, and satirically challenge him to a brush. The deacon always took the badinage ...
— How Deacon Tubman and Parson Whitney Kept New Year's - And Other Stories • W. H. H. Murray
... stumbled upon a tapir, just as the great animal had forded the river and was shambling into the bush opposite. He emptied his rifle magazine into the beast. It fell with a broken hip, and the men finished it with their machetes. Its hide was nearly a half inch in thickness, and covered with garrapatas—fierce, burrowing vermin, with hooked claws, which came upon the travelers ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... surly old man; his wife, Bridget, a timid and frightened woman, who found life with her harsh husband a difficult business, in spite of their wealth, which, for a place like Blea, was great; and their son Henry, a silly shambling man of forty, who was his father's butt. The three walked silently and heavily, as though they ...
— Paul the Minstrel and Other Stories - Reprinted from The Hill of Trouble and The Isles of Sunset • Arthur Christopher Benson
... country. He looked back a few moments later, to see his asistente emerge from the bodega perched between two queer-looking improvised saddlebags bulging with plunder. The pony was overloaded, but in obedience to the frantic urgings of its barelegged rider it managed to break into a shambling trot. Branch reappeared, too, looping the eight-foot string of straw hats to his saddle-horn, and balancing before him the remainder of the bedding, done up ...
— Rainbow's End • Rex Beach
... greater contrast could not have been found than between his tall fine form and the King's ungainly figure. Sir Gilbert had remained behind with the rest of the courtiers in the chapel; but, calling him, James seized his arm, and set forward at his usual shambling pace. As he went on, nodding his head in return to the profound salutations of the assemblage, his eye rolled round them until it alighted on Richard Assheton, and, nudging ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... Carlisle thought he had never seen such a face. One round portion of it had been washed, leaving the dark ring of dirt all circling it like a border, where the blessed touch of water had not come. The boy moved on, with a shambling kind of gait, and to Mr. Carlisle's horror, paused at the form of Eleanor's class. Yes,—he was going in there, he belonged there; for she looked up and spoke to him; Mr. Carlisle could hear her soft voice saying something about his being ...
— The Old Helmet, Volume II • Susan Warner
... forcibly, while he went along, how very queer it was that with so many plain people in the country, the population managed to keep up even as well as it did. To his wonderfully keen sense of defect, it seemed little short of marvellous. A shambling, shoddy crew, this crowd of shoppers and labor demonstrators! A conglomeration of hopelessly mediocre visages! What was to be done about it? Ah! what indeed!—since they were evidently not aware of their own dismal mediocrity. Hardly ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... he brought to the table and opened. A new knife lay in the tissue paper inside and I picked it up and handed it to Vance, along with the order and the plan of Hawberk's apartment. Then Mr. Wilde told Vance he could go; and he went, shambling like an outcast ...
— The King In Yellow • Robert W. Chambers
... view you in the light of ancient and modern learning, useful and ornamental knowledge, I am charmed with the prospect; but when I view you in another light, and represent you awkward, ungraceful, ill-bred, with vulgar air and manners, shambling toward me with inattention and DISTRACTIONS, I shall not pretend to describe to you what I feel; but will do as a skillful painter did formerly—draw a veil before the countenance of ...
— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield
... shops where all things were to be had; peppermints and cotton, china-faced dolls and lemons, had dwindled into the front windows of tiny private dwelling-houses; the black-wigged crones, the greasy shambling men, were uglier and greasier than she had ever conceived them. They seemed caricatures of humanity; scarecrows in battered hats or draggled skirts. But gradually, as the scene grew upon her, she perceived that in spite of the "model dwellings" builder, it was essentially ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... transferred to what some economists call the productive section of society. The experiment has failed, and the cause of the failure is not difficult to find. One has merely to look at these men of gaunt visage and shambling gait, with their loop-holed slippers, and black, threadbare coats reaching down to their ankles, to understand that they are not in their proper sphere. Their houses are in a most dilapidated condition, and their villages remind one of the ...
— Russia • Donald Mackenzie Wallace
... certain electioneering services, and in consideration of his being one of the best sportsmen in the county, and of Simon's having named a horse after him, procured for him a place of about fifty pounds a year in the revenue. Upon the profits of this place Simon contrived to live, in a shambling sort of way. ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. 2 • Maria Edgeworth
... when they swung up from the beach and trotted down the unkempt street of Sabaga. A chorus of howls, set up by bony, slinking curs of the type that infest all native villages, announced their presence but there was no sign of life in any of the shambling bamboo houses. The ...
— Terry - A Tale of the Hill People • Charles Goff Thomson
... officer visited a friend in the country. Several men were sitting round the smoking-room fire when he arrived, and a fox-terrier was with them. Presently the heavy, shambling footsteps of an old dog, and the metallic shaking sound of his collar, were heard coming ...
— The Book of Dreams and Ghosts • Andrew Lang
... coyote move out of a draw and halt directly in the path of the mad coyote. Cripp stood there grinning till he felt the other's teeth score his unprotected hide; then he whirled and snapped back at him. The mad coyote kept straight on and Cripp followed at his own queer shambling gait. He drew close and ran alongside, and for a hundred yards they exchanged slashes in a senseless sort of way. Breed could see the blood oozing from the fur of the mad coyote's neck, and the blobs of white foam sliding down Cripp's shiny hide. ...
— The Yellow Horde • Hal G. Evarts
... are we for that? It would be all the same if he did forget us!" growled a young fellow shambling along without shoes. ...
— What's Mine's Mine • George MacDonald
... and the shambling lad felt dimly as if the scent of the sandalwood were sweeter, and the lamp-flame clearer. But the stranger's eyes ...
— Christmas Stories And Legends • Various
... aim in life is to gain possession of the helmet, the ring, and the treasure, and through them to obtain that Plutonic mastery of the world under the beginnings of which he himself writhed during Alberic's brief reign. Mimmy is a blinking, shambling, ancient creature, too weak and timid to dream of taking arms himself to despoil Fafnir, who still, transformed to a monstrous serpent, broods on the gold in a hole in the rocks. Mimmy needs the help of a hero for that; ...
— The Perfect Wagnerite - A Commentary on the Niblung's Ring • George Bernard Shaw
... few to-day, and small. Brandenburg, with eight hundred souls, was the largest—a sleepy, ill-paved, shambling place, with apparently nobody engaged in any serious calling; its chief distinction is an architectural monstrosity, which we were told is the court-house. The little white hamlet of New Amsterdam, Ind. (650 miles), looked trim and bright in the midst of ...
— Afloat on the Ohio - An Historical Pilgrimage of a Thousand Miles in a Skiff, from Redstone to Cairo • Reuben Gold Thwaites
... figure of a man stretched upon the hill slope. The head, which is Petrarch's house, rests upon the summit. The carelessly tossed arms lie abroad from this in one direction, and the legs in the opposite quarter. It is a very lank and shambling figure, without elegance or much proportion, and the attitude is the last wantonness of loafing. We followed our lout up the right leg, which is a gentle and easy ascent in the general likeness of a street. World-old stone cottages ...
— Italian Journeys • William Dean Howells
... a poor shambling sort of house. Strangers wondered why Maurice Gorman, who owned Kilgorman as well, chose to live in this place instead of the fine mansion near the lough mouth. But to the country people this was no ...
— Kilgorman - A Story of Ireland in 1798 • Talbot Baines Reed
... a shambling sort of gait, half walk, half amble, but manage to get over the ground very quickly, and for such cumbersome animals are very nimble-footed. It is almost ludicrous to see the huge beasts picking their way along a narrow "bund" or crossing some ...
— Burma - Peeps at Many Lands • R.Talbot Kelly
... him late in the afternoon, shambling along, his eyes glaring, his lips moving wordlessly, and he took up the trail. But it led only to the office of the Silver Queen Development Company, where the scar-faced man doubled at his desk, and, stuffing a cigar into his mouth, chewed on it angrily. Instinctively Fairchild ...
— The Cross-Cut • Courtney Ryley Cooper
... death of him who in life fought against his freedom. I see him when the mound is heaped and the great drama of his life is closed, turn away and with downcast eyes and uncertain step start out into new and strange fields, faltering, struggling, but moving on, until his shambling figure is lost in the light of this better and brighter day. And out into this new world—strange to me as to him, dazzling, bewildering both—I follow! And may God forget my people ...
— Standard Selections • Various
... step, yet shambling, came along the lobby. There was a pause, as of one gathering heart for a venture; then a ...
— The House with the Green Shutters • George Douglas Brown
... a rough, shambling-looking young man down the great kitchen garden into which he had led me. This gentleman was in his coat, and he was apparently busy doing nothing with a hoe, upon which he rested himself, and took off a ...
— Burr Junior • G. Manville Fenn
... away, but each time they have been seized with panic, and have fled back, willing to die with starvation sooner than be riddled by the enemy's bullets. The native troops beyond our lines shoot at everything that moves. A few days ago an old rag-picker was seen outside the Tartar Wall shambling along half dazed towards the Water-Gate, which runs in under the Great Wall into the dry canal in our centre. The Chinese sharpshooters saw him and must have thought him a messenger. Soon their rifles crashed at him, and the old man fell hit, but remained alive. ...
— Indiscreet Letters From Peking • B. L. Putman Weale
... The shambling mountaineer stretched himself to his lean length of six feet two, and wagged an incredulous head. Out of pale eyes he studied the man before him until the newcomer from "down-below" felt that, ...
— A Pagan of the Hills • Charles Neville Buck
... their direction paused a moment and looked vaguely round upon the wide country which the elevated position disclosed. While they looked a solitary human form came from under the clump of trees, and crossed ahead of them. The person was some labourer; his gait was shambling, his regard fixed in front of him as absolutely as if he wore blinkers; and in his hand he carried a few sticks. Having crossed the road he descended into a ravine, where a cottage revealed itself, ...
— The Mayor of Casterbridge • Thomas Hardy
... of antelope standing only a few hundred yards from the train, tranquilly indifferent, their branching horns clear in a pallid ray of light; and once a prairie-wolf, solitary and motionless; and once, as the train moved off after a stoppage, an old badger leisurely shambling off the line itself. And once, too, amid a driving storm-shower, and what seemed to her unbroken formless solitudes, suddenly, a tent by the railway side, and the blaze of a fire; and as the train slowly passed, three men—lads rather—emerging ...
— Lady Merton, Colonist • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... curse he turned unsteadily on his heel and left her. The shadows among the gravestones down hill laid hands on his broken, shambling figure, and he became a shadow. Once the shadow stumbled. And as if that distant, awkward act had aroused Mary from a kind of lethargy, she broke forward a step, reaching ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1920 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... his fate, did not fly, but sat gravely on the log in front of Uncle Jim's hotel, and waited for the creaking, stage, white with far-gathered dust, to climb the last pitch of the road up from the arroyo and come on with the shambling trot of a pair of tired mules for the final nourish at the end of ...
— Heart's Desire • Emerson Hough
... parson if you please." He spoke, and presently he feels His grazier's coat reach down his heels; The sleeves new border'd with a list, Widen'd and gather'd at his wrist, But, being old, continued just As threadbare, and as full of dust. A shambling awkward gait he took, With a demure dejected look, Talk't of his offerings, tythes, and dues, Could smoke and drink and read the news, Or sell a goose at the next town, Decently hid beneath his gown. Contriv'd to preach old sermons next, Chang'd in the preface ...
— The Poems of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Volume I (of 2) • Jonathan Swift
... hitherto hidden facts of structure which must be taken into account in considering the symptoms of maladies and the action of medicaments. But results which depend on human conscience and intelligence work slowly, and now at the end of 1829, most medical practice was still strutting or shambling along the old paths, and there was still scientific work to be done which might have seemed to be a direct sequence of Bichat's. This great seer did not go beyond the consideration of the tissues as ultimate facts ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... any one who would listen to him. I say that he sang—I mean, of course, that he spoke his verses; it was a minstrel's simple improvisation. But there are people in the villages of southern France who still recall that ungainly, shambling figure. He had grown a beard; it crinkled thickly, hiding his mouth and chin. He laughed a great deal. He was not altogether clean. And he slept wherever he could find a bed—in farmhouses, cheap hotels, haylofts, stables, open fields. Waram's ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1921 • Various
... the mere passing of that cavalcade, With plumes, and cloaks, and housings, and the stir Of jewelled bridle and of golden spur. And lo! among the menials, in mock state, Upon a piebald steed, with shambling gait, His cloak of fox-tails flapping in the wind, The solemn ape demurely perched behind, King Robert rode, making huge merriment In all the country towns through ...
— Selections From American Poetry • Various
... procession of men streaming homeward in their hundreds came walking down the Embankment in twos and threes or singly, shambling past the loosely gathered ...
— The Convert • Elizabeth Robins
... heart was breaking, but turned and went into her room. Burrell had an irresistible desire to tell Gale that he wanted his daughter for his wife; it would be an unwonted pleasure to startle this iron-gray old man and the shawled and shambling mummy of red, with the unwinking eyes that always reminded him of two ox-heart cherries; but he had given Necia his promise. So he descended to the exchange of ordinary topics, and inquired ...
— The Barrier • Rex Beach
... hour after Merston's departure there came the shambling trot of another horse, and Piet Vreiboom, slouched like a sack in the saddle rode up and ...
— The Top of the World • Ethel M. Dell
... said Sir Geoffrey, "on the bones of the old estate; and Dame Margaret and I will be content with the less, that you young folks may have your share of it. I am turned frugal already, Julian. You see what a north-country shambling bit of a Galloway nag I ride upon—a different beast, I wot, from my own old Black Hastings, who had but one fault, and that was his wish to ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott
... the reader for the presence of the "damsel"; he has forgotten to mention the spring and its relation to the ruin; and now, face to face with his omission, instead of trying back and starting fair, crams all this matter, tail foremost, into a single shambling sentence. It is not merely bad English, or bad style; it ...
— Essays of Robert Louis Stevenson • Robert Louis Stevenson
... morning," he continued, "two other moose cows came along up the lake shore, followed by their long-legged, shambling youngsters. They stopped to discuss the condition of lily roots with their tall sister; but at the sight of her nursing and petting and mothering a calf—a baby of the cattle tribe whom they despised and hated for its subservience ...
— Children of the Wild • Charles G. D. Roberts
... behind. Don't you want to?" And off started the little cavalcade, with Cricket driving, because she was the smallest, and could perch up on the others' knees, while old Billy, all beam, jogged after, making almost as good time, with his long legs and shambling ...
— Cricket at the Seashore • Elizabeth Westyn Timlow
... pleasant beginning. But if Georgiana, before her guest arrived, had thought the old house shabby, she felt it now to be positively shambling. She struggled mightily against this attitude of mind, knowing that it was unworthy of her, but, as she led this wonderful, winsome creature, whom she knew to be accustomed only to the softnesses of life, up over the worn stair ...
— Under the Country Sky • Grace S. Richmond
... Sloppy. Too much of him longwise, too little of him broadwise, and too many sharp angles of him angle-wise. One of those shambling male human creatures, born to be indiscreetly candid in the revelation of buttons; every button he had about him glaring at the public to a quite preternatural extent. A considerable capital of knee and elbow and wrist ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... the old man, but Apollo heard, and went fleeter on his path. Then marked he a bird long of wing, and anon he knew that the thief had been the son of Zeus Cronion. Swiftly sped the Prince, Apollo, son of Zeus, to goodly Pylos, seeking the shambling kine, while his broad shoulders were swathed in purple cloud. Then the Far-darter marked the ...
— The Homeric Hymns - A New Prose Translation; and Essays, Literary and Mythological • Andrew Lang
... beard, which, though not thick, added to his wild and untidy appearance; and his eyes were very large, grey and vacant. He sprang down from the bank as though he had lived there all his life, like a rabbit, and then moved on towards the village at a strange shambling pace, straying from side to side of the road and waving his arms meaninglessly. Suddenly he stopped, and pulling a squirrel out of his pocket began to play with it, cooing and whistling to it as it ran over his arms, and chirping when it stopped and threw ...
— The Drummer's Coat • J. W. Fortescue
... faint footfall was heard approaching from the church door, walking in the gloom. It proved to be that of an old man, bent and trembling. He came slowly down the sombre church, with unsteady, shambling gait, holding in one hand a burning taper,—a mere speck. In the other he carried a rude lantern, its wavering light hovering about his feet. As he passed in his long brown cloak, the swaying light encircled his white beard and hair with a fluffy halo. ...
— A Gentleman Vagabond and Some Others • F. Hopkinson Smith
... passing through her mind she happened to glance out of the window. Nutty was shambling through the garden with his pail, a bowed, shuffling pillar of gloom. As Elizabeth watched, he dropped the pail and lashed the air violently for a while. From her knowledge of bees ('It is needful to remember that ...
— Uneasy Money • P.G. Wodehouse
... was about fifty yards behind, and was consequently unable to overhear the conversation. He went shambling along, half whimpering and not unfrequently invoking the God of Israel; but every now and then a cunning light gleamed from his eyes, and his lips became compressed with ...
— Off on a Comet • Jules Verne
... to view— Of wanton waste and reckless gambling, What darker paths shall he pursue With sacrilegious step and shambling? What coarse defiance, haply, hurl At lights beyond his comprehension— An attitudinising churl Who struts with ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 102, Jan. 9, 1892 • Various
... This shambling, scrubby looking man, with the clear blue eyes, was now the idol of the people. Lincoln too saw his genius as a leader, and willingly yielding to the popular demand made him commander-in-chief of all ...
— This Country Of Ours • H. E. Marshall Author: Henrietta Elizabeth Marshall
... and began to explain in a rather shambling fashion that he had been there some time and "intended to hunt him up, of course"; but he had "been so taken ...
— Gordon Keith • Thomas Nelson Page
... lad, "Foolish Joe" people called him, and he was, as usual, accompanied by a little band of fun-loving, teasing boys. In a moment they were gone; but the shambling central figure with its vacant face stayed with her to accentuate her distress. She leaned her head upon her arm, but she could not ...
— Polly of Lady Gay Cottage • Emma C. Dowd
... blacksmith shop to a meeting house was torn down to give place to the new structure. When a boy I had often been in the old shop, and have heard the founder, Bishop Allen, preach in the wooden building. He was much reverenced. I remember his appearance, and his feeble, shambling gait as he approached the ...
— Shadow and Light - An Autobiography with Reminiscences of the Last and Present Century • Mifflin Wistar Gibbs
... ever saw his little legs astride a horse again. He found, back of the blacksmith shop, the wreck of an old cart which years ago had been used for breaking colts; he improvised shafts and seat; he discovered the encouraging fact that Old Bots, a shambling derelict who had lost an eye when Wayne Shandon was quite young, was gentle and trustworthy. After that, wherever he went abroad, and he travelled all over the countryside, he rode in the cart, steering Old Bots this way and that with much shouting, prodding and jerking ...
— The Short Cut • Jackson Gregory
... inquiry at Williamstown I find that none of the professors at Williams saw an encouraging gleam of aptitude for anything in the big-eyed, shambling youth whom Mr. Tufts had assiduously coached to meet the requirements of matriculation. There is a shadowy tradition that he did fairly well in his Latin themes when the subject suited his fancy, but his fancy more often led him to a sporting resort, kept by an ex-pugilist ...
— Eugene Field, A Study In Heredity And Contradictions - Vol. I • Slason Thompson
... recall a first impression of the boy at the time when he emerged from the drug store after his unprofitable effort to telephone Cecelia Brooke, an indefinite memory of a shambling figure with nose flattened against the druggist's window, apparently fascinated by the display of a catch-penny ...
— The False Faces • Vance, Louis Joseph
... moment, and it was he who now offered me his hand for parting. I took it, and we said, together, "Well, good-by," and moved in different directions. I knew very well that I should turn back, and I had not gone a hundred feet away when I faced about. He was shambling off into the dusk, a most hapless figure. ...
— A Pair of Patient Lovers • William Dean Howells
... stopped and shambling steps came along the landing as someone slopped along, dragging his slippers into which he had merely thrust his toes. There was a scratching sort of tap at the door. Marcella opened ...
— Captivity • M. Leonora Eyles
... Pretender into the outer room, shambling awkwardly. The progress from failure to failure dazed him. He recalled afterwards, as many petty matters of this time stayed vivid in his memory, a preposterous blunder into a chair. The Pretender sat down and stretched at his ease. ...
— The Highwayman • H.C. Bailey
... always looked ludicrously old and shriveled; his appearance now became tragic. He would start up from hours of trancelike motionlessness, would make a tour of house and grounds; scrambling and shambling from place to place; chattering at doors he could not open, then pausing to listen; racing to the front fence and leaping to its top to crane up and down the street; always back in the old room in a few minutes, to resume his watch and wait. He would let no one but Adelaide touch him, and he merely ...
— The Second Generation • David Graham Phillips
... was a fairly solid peasant cart. The woman was sitting on a tightly stuffed sack and the man on the front of the cart with his legs hanging over towards Stepan Trofimovitch. A red cow was, in fact, shambling behind, tied by the horns to the cart. The man and the woman gazed open-eyed at Stepan Trofimovitch, and Stepan Trofimovitch gazed back at them with equal wonder, but after he had let them pass twenty paces, he got up hurriedly all of a sudden and walked after them. In the proximity of the cart it ...
— The Possessed - or, The Devils • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... she turned slightly, as if about to flee into the house. In another minute Curly was near, and a most wretched figure he presented. His clothes were torn and his face dirty and bleeding. He had apparently received severe treatment at the hands of his captors. He walked with a shambling and unsteady gait, with his eyes fixed upon the ground. But as he came to where Glen and Reynolds were standing, he suddenly lifted his head, and seeing the two, he stopped dead in his tracks. For an instant he stared as if he had not seen aright. ...
— Glen of the High North • H. A. Cody
... with a knowing look at Rust, and a shambling bow to the girl, he went out, and seated himself on a chair in the hall, having taken the precaution to send his companion to keep an eye on the windows, which were ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, May 1844 - Volume 23, Number 5 • Various
... first street-car line, which was a shambling affair, had been laid on Front Street, the streets of Philadelphia had been crowded with hundreds of springless omnibuses rattling over rough, hard, cobblestones. Now, thanks to the idea of John Stephenson, in New York, the double rail track idea had come, ...
— The Financier • Theodore Dreiser
... urged that all the subserviences that distinguish our kingdom and that become so amazingly conspicuous about a coronation, the kissing of hands, the shambling upon knees, the crawling of body and mind, the systematic encouragement of that undignified noisiness that nowadays distinguishes the popular rejoicings of our imperial people, are simply a proof of the earnest preoccupation of our judges, bishops, ...
— Mankind in the Making • H. G. Wells
... would the slab-sided "Sprawleybridge Babe" or the shambling "Baldnob the Titan" have been in front of the small but active and accomplished "Duodecimo Dumps"? Why, where the vaunted "Benicia Boy" would have been after fifty rounds with TOM SAYERS—with his "Auctioneer" in full play. In fact, ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100. March 7, 1891. • Various
... by so much history should at least be genuine—the history may be all right, but the tooth is a shambling hoax, at best a crude proxy for the molar of Gautama. Intelligent priests of Buddhism must know this, but the millions of common people finding solace in the faith have never heard the truth—and wouldn't believe it if they did. No more amazing display ...
— East of Suez - Ceylon, India, China and Japan • Frederic Courtland Penfield
... always mocked my swine-herd, who for a year and a half wore out the county court's chains. Ever since he walks with a shambling step, as if one leg was always trying to avoid knocking the other with the chain. Now we can both laugh at ...
— Debts of Honor • Maurus Jokai
... Martin Cheeseman, was hoary with age, but far from being past his prime of work. He had a large and shambling strength of body and limb, like an old bear, and his sinews were, of their kind, as tough as those of the ancient woods ...
— Jerome, A Poor Man - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... society,' said the novice, who was an ill-looking, one-sided, shambling lad, with sunken eyes set close together in his head—'if the society would burn his house down—for he's not insured—or beat him as he comes home from his club at night, or help me to carry off his daughter, and marry her at the Fleet, ...
— Barnaby Rudge • Charles Dickens
... can't go in just now," said a shambling pot-boy, with a red head, "'cos Mr. Lowten's singin' a comic song, and he'll put him out. He'll be done ...
— The Law and Lawyers of Pickwick - A Lecture • Frank Lockwood
... did was to leap away from the midshipman's prostrate body. Despite the bear's lumbering body and shambling gait he can ...
— Uncle Sam's Boys as Sergeants - or, Handling Their First Real Commands • H. Irving Hancock
... evolution of the English Rite is one of the wholesome signs of the times. About preaching, I am not so clear. The almost complete disuse of the written sermon is in many ways a loss. The discipline of the paper protects the flock alike against shambling inanities, and against a too boisterous rhetoric. No doubt a really fine extempore sermon is a great work of art; but for nine preachers out of ten the manuscript ...
— Fifteen Chapters of Autobiography • George William Erskine Russell
... bay horse and the tall, shambling white were amiably straying up and down the narrow borders of the road, ...
— Betty Gordon at Boarding School - The Treasure of Indian Chasm • Alice Emerson
... every step, formed a whimsical contrast with the heavy loutish shuffle of the bulky Baronet, who had, by dint of practice, very nearly attained that most enviable of all carriages, the gait of a shambling Yorkshire ostler. His coarse spirit was now thoroughly kindled, and like iron, or any other baser metal, which is slow in receiving heat, it retained long the smouldering and angry spirit of resentment that had originally brought him to ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott
... at first called themselves—who owned all this, were a somewhat unusual family to find in such an old-fashioned part of the country. Parson Tringham had spoken truly when he said that our shambling John Durbeyfield was the only really lineal representative of the old d'Urberville family existing in the county, or near it; he might have added, what he knew very well, that the Stoke-d'Urbervilles were no more d'Urbervilles of ...
— Tess of the d'Urbervilles - A Pure Woman • Thomas Hardy
... The shambling barn man, summoned gruffly by McAlpin, hesitated as he appeared at the office door and seemed to regard the situation with suspicion. He looked at de Spain tentatively, as if ready either for the discharge with which he was daily threatened or for a renewal of his earlier, friendly ...
— Nan of Music Mountain • Frank H. Spearman
... Swanevelt," cried the Major, starting off at full speed, and followed by Alexander, and Omrah with the spare horse. In a minute or two the giraffe was seen to get clear of the mimosa, and then set off in an awkward, shambling kind of gallop; but, awkward as the gallop appeared, the animal soon left the Major behind. It sailed along with incredible velocity, its long swan-like neck keeping time with its legs, and its black tail ...
— The Mission; or Scenes in Africa • Captain Frederick Marryat
... was not the stupid, shambling Brute Hennessey of a few months past. He walked surely and proudly, and the light of intelligence shone ...
— Rebels of the Red Planet • Charles Louis Fontenay
... Spragg rose again and came forward with his slow shambling step. He laid his hand on ...
— The Custom of the Country • Edith Wharton
... abruptly, and stood quite still a moment, fronting the meeting, as though appealing to them, through the mere squalid physical weakness he could find no more words to express. Then, with a sort of shambling bow, he turned away, and the main body of the meeting clapped excitedly, while at the back some of the "sweaters" grinned, and chatted sarcastic things in Yiddish with their neighbours. Tressady saw Lady Maxwell rise eagerly as the old man passed her, take ...
— Sir George Tressady, Vol. II • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... he stood in such a shambling, bow-legged sort of an attitude that even the politest of the girls smiled; and those who were specially anxious that the Reds should win felt more ...
— Donald and Dorothy • Mary Mapes Dodge
... indeed good!' cried he. 'Now at last shall I have my fill of stabbing and fighting,' and, thereupon, he made a shambling, limping charge at the crowd, which wavered, broke, and fled in every direction, the majority rushing into the enclosure of Tungku Ngah's compound, the door of which ...
— In Court and Kampong - Being Tales and Sketches of Native Life in the Malay Peninsula • Hugh Clifford
... was a slight incline into the village, our miserable ponies commenced a shambling trot, the noise of which brought numerous idlers to the inn-door to inquire the news. This inn was a rambling, unpainted erection of wood, opposite to a "cash, credit, and barter store," kept by an enterprising Caledonian—an ...
— The Englishwoman in America • Isabella Lucy Bird
... cattle-man with drooping grizzled mustache, came shambling up to the steps. His weather-beaten chaps were much too short for his lengthy limbs, the collar of his faded flannel shirt lacked an inch of meeting at the throat, its sleeves were shrunken until his hairy hands hung down like tassels. He was loose and ...
— Going Some • Rex Beach
... a moment after a singular figure appeared at the doorway. It was that of a very old man, with long white hair, which escaped from beneath the eaves of an exceedingly high-peaked hat. He stooped considerably, and moved along with a shambling gait. I could not see much of his face, which, as the landlady stood behind him with the lamp, was consequently in deep shadow. I could observe, however, that his eyes sparkled like those of a ferret. He advanced to the foot of the bed, in which I was still lying, wondering ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... the gloom. He never forgot that lumpy shadow which was the herd, traveling fast in dust that obscured the nearest stars. The shadow humped here and there as the cattle crowded forward at a shuffling half trot, the click—awash of their shambling feet treading close on one another. The rapping tattoo of wide-spread horns clashing against wide-spread horns filled him with a formless terror, so that he let go the seat to clutch at mother's dress. He was not afraid of cattle-they were as much a part of his world as were ...
— Cow-Country • B. M. Bower
... raw, wet winter's day, a loafer applied for a pair of shoes. He had on an old, shambling pair, out at both toes. The old Wine-Prince was sitting with a pair of slippers on, and had his own shoes warming at ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., April, 1863, No. LXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics. • Various
... was superseded by the unlooked-for entrance of a third party—the individual in question—who, bringing his one eye (for he had but one) to bear on Ralph Nickleby, made a great many shambling bows, and sat himself down in an armchair, with his hands on his knees, and his short black trousers drawn up so high in the legs by the exertion of seating himself, that they scarcely reached below the tops ...
— The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby • Charles Dickens
... graceless-graceful stride of the elephant was eyed, And the capers of the little horse that cantered at his side! How the shambling camels, tame to the plaudits of their fame, With listless eyes came silent, ...
— Riley Child-Rhymes • James Whitcomb Riley
... individuality, the real, simon-pure article, you ought to go down to one of our big factory towns and look at the mill-hands coming home in droves after a day's work, young girls and old women, boys and men, all fluffed over with cotton, and so dead tired that they can hardly walk. They come shambling along with all the individuality of a ...
— A Traveler from Altruria: Romance • W. D. Howells
... answered Collins; and the reply was followed by the shuffling sound of several pairs of feet, the owners of which came shambling into the room the next moment, with naked cutlasses in their hands, while one of them carried, in addition, a length of some three or four ...
— A Middy of the Slave Squadron - A West African Story • Harry Collingwood
... approaching group. It came from the direction of the blacksmith shop. The mules they had seen waiting to be shod ambled ahead at a pace warranted to bring them to the towpath in time. Behind, at the same gait, came a tall, shambling man, what appeared to be a girl some twelve years of age in tattered calico, and shoeless, and a ...
— The Corner House Girls Growing Up - What Happened First, What Came Next. And How It Ended • Grace Brooks Hill
... during the preceding day. I lay there half asleep, half awake, for, I suppose, a long time, hearing the window rattle sometimes when the cannon was noisy and feeling under the jerky reflections on the wall as though I were in an old shambling cab driving along a dark road, I thought a good deal about that talk with Semyonov that I had. What a strange man! But then I do not understand him at all. I don't think I understand any Russian, such a mixture of hardness ...
— The Dark Forest • Hugh Walpole
... there was no one in it except the woman and the servant who had been up to my room. The servant was a poor London drudge, who was left in charge by the owners of the house, and who had been forbidden to speak to me. After a while I heard her heavy, shambling footsteps coming slowly up the staircase, and passing my door on her way to the attics above; they sounded louder than usual, and I turned my head round involuntarily. A thin, fine streak of light, no thicker than a thread, shone for an instant ...
— The Doctor's Dilemma • Hesba Stretton
... range of about a hundred feet. Over the muffled heavy silence of the blood-red day the cripple's curse floated clear. He lowered his weapon; and, heedless that we also might be armed, he leaped nimbly past Mary's prostrate form and came shambling over the rocks directly ...
— Astounding Stories, July, 1931 • Various
... going it had been the last few days! Soft slush, in which the snow-shoes sink helplessly. The bear had come from the west right up to the Fram, had stopped and inspected the work that was going on, had then retreated a little, made a considerable detour, and set off eastward at its easy, shambling gait, without deigning to pay any further attention to such a trifle as a ship. It had rummaged about in every hole and corner where there seemed to be any chance of finding food, and had rooted in the snow after anything the dogs had left, or whatever else it might be. It had then gone to ...
— Farthest North - Being the Record of a Voyage of Exploration of the Ship 'Fram' 1893-1896 • Fridtjof Nansen
... Nib" in his greasy smock-frock, little Gamaliel in mended leather breeches, and he of the one arm who gave no end of trouble by stealing down to the "Red Lion" to beg of the passengers on the coaches—a limping, shambling, half-serious, half-comic, procession, worthy of a Frith! But what were the Cambs. officials to do? They had no promised land, no house in which to accommodate the immigrants! I think it is doubtful whether they accepted them, and whether that momentous event of "taking the sense of the parish" really ...
— Fragments of Two Centuries - Glimpses of Country Life when George III. was King • Alfred Kingston
... a curious, shambling gait, and soon she disappeared on her way to the village. Hamel watched her for a moment and then turned his head towards St. David's Hall. He felt somehow that her abrupt departure was due to something which she had seen in ...
— The Vanished Messenger • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... believed to be The McMurrough's agent in his more lawless business; a fierce, unscrupulous man, prospering on his lack of scruple. The Colonel could augur nothing but ill from the hands to which he had been entrusted; and worse from the manner in which these savage, half-naked creatures, shambling beside him, stole from time to time a glance at him, as if they fancied they saw the ...
— The Wild Geese • Stanley John Weyman
... up to one of the squatters that said something sharp to him one day in a way that showed us boys that he thought himself as good as he was. And he stood up straight and looked him in the face, till we hardly could think he was the same man that was so bent and shambling and broken-down-looking most times. He used to live in a little hut in the township all by himself. It was just big enough to hold him and us at our lessons. He had his dinner at the inn, along with Mr. and Mrs. Lammerby. She was always kind to him, and made him puddings and things when he ...
— Robbery Under Arms • Thomas Alexander Browne, AKA Rolf Boldrewood
... shambling youth, all hands, feet, and shyness, who had spent most of his spare time twisting his fingers and staring adoringly at her from afar. The opinion of those in the social whirl of Dunsterville had been that it was his hopeless passion for her that had made him fly to New York. ...
— The Man Upstairs and Other Stories • P. G. Wodehouse
... the quay in silence, and had nearly reached the end of it, when the figure of a man turned the corner of the houses and advanced at a shambling trot towards them. ...
— Short Cruises • W.W. Jacobs
... the bishop. 'The murderer!' and he sprang forward to throw himself on the shaking, shambling wretch. Mosk eluded him, but uttered a squeaking cry like the shriek of a hunted hare in the jaws of the greyhound. The next instant the room seemed to swarm with men, and the bishop as in a dream heard the merciless formula of the ...
— The Bishop's Secret • Fergus Hume
... tranquil, echoing courts into the Sabbath stillness of the Strand. An occasional halt at a shop-window was sufficient to assure him that the watcher of the Temple was still on his heels. The man, he was interested to see, played his part very unobtrusively, shambling along in nonchalant fashion, mostly hugging the sides of the houses, ready to dart out of sight into a doorway or down a side turning, should he by any mischance arrive too close on the ...
— The Yellow Streak • Williams, Valentine
... so nerved himself to meet his fate that he thought it was a fancy when he heard a distant step. But it did not die away, it grew more and more distinct,—a shambling step, that curiously stopped at intervals and ...
— The Young Mountaineers - Short Stories • Charles Egbert Craddock
... wood-path beyond the Light, heard the shambling steps behind her. She turned and saw Mark. He was tall and lank. He leaned forward from the shoulders loosely, and his face had the patient, dull expression of a faithful, but none too fine ...
— Janet of the Dunes • Harriet T. Comstock
... at a bare table. Another seated at the window, his chair tipped back, his feet on the sill, a pipe between his teeth. Buzz, shambling, suddenly awkward, ...
— Cheerful—By Request • Edna Ferber
... of the chapel, Father Gaspara leading the way, the Irish couple shambling along shamefacedly apart from each other, Alessandro, still holding Ramona's hand in his, said, "Will you ride, dear? It ...
— Ramona • Helen Hunt Jackson
... neither delicate nor poetic. For the beauty of the head was curiously and unexpectedly contradicted by the clumsiness of the frame below it. "Brother" Williams might have the head of a poet; he had the form and movements, the large feet and shambling gait, of the peasant. And Laura, scanning him with some closeness, noticed with distaste a good many signs of personal slovenliness and ill-breeding. His hands were not as clean as they might have been; his clerical coat ...
— Helbeck of Bannisdale, Vol. II • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... name to lift him to the finish: "Alcatraz!" Then they were over the line and the riders were pulling up. It was not hard to stop Alcatraz. He went by Marianne at a reeling trot, his legs shambling weakly and his head drooping, a weary rag of horseflesh with his ears still gloomily flattened to ...
— Alcatraz • Max Brand
... your travellers Need fleeter steeds than we poor shambling folks Who stay at home. To my unskilful sense, Speed for the chase and vigour ...
— Count Alarcos - A Tragedy • Benjamin Disraeli
... his shambling, easy-going way, old Jim had drifted into nearly every heart in the camp. His townsmen knew he had once had a good education, for outcroppings thereof jutted from his personality even as his cheek-bones jutted out ...
— Bruvver Jim's Baby • Philip Verrill Mighels
... to this Mullins grumbled out something intended as a negative, and, shambling across the room, placed himself in a corner, as far as possible from Oaklands, where he sat rubbing his knees, the very image of sulkiness and terror. Cumberland, who appeared during the whole course of ...
— Frank Fairlegh - Scenes From The Life Of A Private Pupil • Frank E. Smedley
... instant the madman swayed slowly back and forth, like a blood-stained marionette on a wire. Then he moved forward with a terrible, shambling gait, his head lowered, a dark, misshapen shadow seeming to lengthen before him on the sand like a ...
— The Man the Martians Made • Frank Belknap Long
... Eric met a shambling, old gray horse drawing an express wagon which had seen better days. The driver was a woman: she appeared to be one of those drab-tinted individuals who can never have felt a rosy emotion in all their lives. She stopped her horse, and beckoned Eric over to her with the knobby ...
— Kilmeny of the Orchard • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... horsemen could not perceive that they were gaining on the camelopards trotting before them in long shambling strides. They were not losing ground, however, and this inspired ...
— The Giraffe Hunters • Mayne Reid
... open the door. A tall, shambling, loose-jointed figure; a pinched, shrewd face, sun-browned and wind-dried; small, quick-winking black eyes. There he stands, the water dripping from his pulpy hat and ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... that? He is lazy and indifferent; he knows not how to sit nor how to stand, and he falls asleep over his plate at dinner; and since this great, shambling fellow has appeared here, you have grown ten years older, my love. Besides, he drinks, I assure you ...
— Jack - 1877 • Alphonse Daudet
... certain forms he did meet, But scarce might behold their faces; From matted elf-locks eyes stared like an ox, And shambling ...
— More Bywords • Charlotte M. Yonge |
