"Clumsy" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... fellow-officers had from the start been very much against his taste. "They don't see the defender of the fatherland in him," thought he, "but merely the green man, unused to strict discipline and to the narrowly bound round of dull duties, the clumsy, ungainly recruit, or the smarter, but even more unsympathetic private of some experience whose drill is an unpleasant task for them, and who, they know, hates and abominates them in his heart." And he remembered scenes of such brutality, ...
— A Little Garrison - A Realistic Novel of German Army Life of To-day • Fritz von der Kyrburg
... McConnell sat down and wrote Peg a long letter, leaving the choice in her hands, but telling her how much he would like to have her back with him. He wrote the letter again and again and each time destroyed it. It seemed so clumsy. ...
— Peg O' My Heart • J. Hartley Manners
... the sea. We shall wander along the shore, and look at their fishing-vessels, which seem so small when they are on the water, but which loom up high above our heads when they are drawn up on the shore—some with their clumsy-looking rudders hauled up out of danger, and others with rudder and keel resting together on the rough beach. Anchors, buoys, bits of chains, and hawsers lie about the shore, while nets are hanging at the doors of the fishermen's cottages, some hung up to dry and some hung ...
— Round-about Rambles in Lands of Fact and Fancy • Frank Richard Stockton
... Drunkenness.—When a man has become addicted to strong drink, his muscles become partly paralyzed, so that he cannot walk as steadily or speak as readily or as clearly as before. His fingers are clumsy, and his movements uncertain. If he is an artist or a jeweller, he cannot do as fine work as when he is sober. When a man gets very drunk, he is for a time completely paralyzed, so that he cannot walk or move, and seems ...
— First Book in Physiology and Hygiene • J.H. Kellogg
... to pour out of the short funnel of the working engine on the boatyard scow. It was a clumsy-looking craft—-a mere floating platform, with engine, propeller, tiller and a derrick arrangement, but it had done a lot of good work ...
— The High School Boys' Canoe Club • H. Irving Hancock
... animals were transformed to men, who, as soon as they assumed this new form, began to hunt the animals, and make war against them. It is expected that these animals will resume their human shapes, in a future state, and hence their hunters feign some clumsy excuses for their present policy of killing them. They believe that all animals, and birds, and reptiles, and even insects, possess reasoning faculties, and have souls. It is in these opinions, that we detect the ancient, doctrine ...
— Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader - Being Selections from the Chief American Writers • Benj. N. Martin
... in which we come to no decision till the moment when our friends discern our dishonor. We accept compromises with ourself so long as we escape a censor who comes to play prosecutor. Monsieur de Clagny, as clumsy as a tortured ...
— Parisians in the Country - The Illustrious Gaudissart, and The Muse of the Department • Honore de Balzac
... was he within call; so as the danger struck me as imminent, and his condition appeared growing every moment more critical, I argued, without bleeding he would undoubtedly die, whereas by my attempt, however clumsy, he might rally. I plucked up my courage to the sticking-point, and stuck my patient. I drew several ounces of blood. My fair assistant displayed the most undeniable, I can hardly say irreproachable, coolness, for really, ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. V, May, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... we hurried out to see if the bird had resented our clumsy human help. But no; like the wise little creature she was, she had accepted the goods the gods had provided, and laid a second pearl beside the first. On our next visit, therefore—especially when we heard the ...
— Little Brothers of the Air • Olive Thorne Miller
... tearing his prey, his sharp-edged teeth for cutting through its flesh, his firm jaws for gripping, crushing, and devouring it, and his intestines for digesting raw flesh. But is he a graminivorous animal? Does he subsist on grass and herb? Behold, then, his clumsy limbs and his clawless hoofs, his blunt teeth and his herb-digesting stomach. So perfect is the correspondence between one part and another; so exactly adapted are all the parts to the same general objects; so wonderful is the harmony ...
— The Christian Foundation, April, 1880
... into the clumsy costume. But he saw again that Babs wore the shining-eyed look of rapturous adventure that he had seen her ...
— Operation: Outer Space • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... elegant taste: many of them were grotesque or obscene. In one of them an angel is represented crowning the Virgin Mary, and God the Father himself assisting at the ceremony. Sometimes St. Michael is overcoming Satan; and sometimes St. Anthony is attacked by various devils of most clumsy forms—not of the grotesque and limber family ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... June. The long days of summer came, with more and more work to be done in the fields, and work that was ever hotter and hotter. Wiseli felt this keenly when her cousin Gotti called her out to help with the haymaking, and the heavy rake was so hard for her to lift; or, worse still, to handle the clumsy wooden fork when the hay needed spreading in the ...
— Rico And Wiseli - Rico And Stineli, And How Wiseli Was Provided For • Johanna Spyri
... purport. The impression made on the Regent by the instruments, so far as I could gather from his brief remarks and the expression of his face, was one of contemptuous surprise rather than the interest excited by the motive machinery. Most of them were evidently, in his opinion, clumsy contrivances for obtaining results which the scientific knowledge and inventive genius of his countrymen had long ago secured more completely and more easily. But he was puzzled by the combination of such imperfect knowledge or semi-barbaric ignorance with the possession of a secret ...
— Across the Zodiac • Percy Greg
... in the sun, I hope would not disdain to claim some kindred with old Margaret. I could almost wish you to vary some circumstances in the conclusion. A gentleman seducer has so often been described in prose and verse: what if you had accomplished Joanna's ruin by the clumsy arts and rustic gifts of some country fellow? I am thinking, I ...
— The Best Letters of Charles Lamb • Charles Lamb
... women can do it easily, they are strong enough, but the delicate miss will jump herself to death." The old king consented to this also. So the two peasant women jumped, even jumped through the ring, but were so clumsy that they fell and broke their awkward arms and legs. Then the beautiful woman whom Simpleton had brought leaped through as easily as a roe, and all opposition had to cease. So he received the crown ...
— Hidden Symbolism of Alchemy and the Occult Arts • Herbert Silberer
... the universal peace and concord amongst nations, which these common enemies to mankind had held out with the same fraudulent ends and pretences with which they had uniformly conducted every part of their proceeding, was a coarse and clumsy deception, unworthy to be proposed as an example, by an informed and sagacious British senator, to any other country.—That, far from peace and good-will to men, they meditated war against all other governments, and proposed systematically to excite in them all the very worst kind of ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. IV. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... had begun that fearful descent, at once the despair and delight of engineers. The mountain fell away rapidly as the long, clumsy train raced down its flank at a breakneck pace. Pobloff shivered and clutched the arms of his seat. He saw nothing but deep blue sky and the tall top of an occasional tree. The racket was terrific, the heat ...
— Visionaries • James Huneker
... the Germans had succeeded in placing no more than two divisions of cavalry, together with a few detachments of infantry and artillery, on Belgian soil. They, in fact, regarded the German cavalry skirmishing as a rather clumsy offensive. ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume II (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various
... job he had come to do, and Polly explained to Mamsie. And presently everybody was obeying the stage-driver just as soon as he spoke a word. And his big hands were just as gentle and light, and his fingers, that always seemed so clumsy holding the old leather reins, were a great deal softer in their touch than Mother Pepper's own, as they wandered all over ...
— The Adventures of Joel Pepper • Margaret Sidney
... we never come in upon a post blindly; and I have lain outside a garrison a whole night, because they had changed their sentries and their mode of standing guard. Neither the Sarpent nor myself would be likely to be taken in by these clumsy contrivances, which were most probably intended for the Scotch, who are cunning enough in some particulars, though anything but witches when Indian ...
— The Pathfinder - The Inland Sea • James Fenimore Cooper
... going to observe," she would begin, as gravely as a drunken man addressing a lamp-post. The rest of the sentence (she acted her words in dumb-show, of course) was lost in a fit of the fidgets, when she behaved like a puppy chewing a string, a clumsy woman in a side-saddle, a hen with her head cut off, or a cow stung by a hornet, exactly as the whims of ...
— "Captains Courageous" • Rudyard Kipling
... afraid of them, they ceased to be insolent, and treated us with something like respect. There was a considerable degree of friendship between us and the late regiment of regulars, who were gentlemen, compared with these clumsy militia. ...
— A Journal of a Young Man of Massachusetts, 2nd ed. • Benjamin Waterhouse
... sudden determination of the sacristan recurred to Dennistoun, and he wondered in a shamefaced way whether he was being decoyed into some purlieu to be made away with as a supposed rich Englishman. He contrived, therefore, to begin talking with his guide, and to drag in, in a rather clumsy fashion, the fact that he expected two friends to join him early the next morning. To his surprise, the announcement seemed to relieve the sacristan at once of some of the anxiety that ...
— The Best Ghost Stories • Various
... I wish they were all like you!" she cried, with a stamp of her foot. "Sometimes I despise gallantry. I hate the smooth compliments of your macaronies. I thank Heaven you are big and honest and clumsy and—" ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... tufts on his low brow; like smouldering embers, his little set eyes glowed with dull fire. He moved painfully, at every step swinging his ungainly body forward. Some of his movements recalled the clumsy actions of an owl in a cage when it feels that it is being looked at, but itself can hardly see out of its great yellow eyes timorously and drowsily blinking. Pitiless, prolonged sorrow had laid its indelible stamp ...
— A House of Gentlefolk • Ivan Turgenev
... far as we knew, the first of their kind we had been up against, all previous comers on our front having been Bavarians and latterly of the army group of Prince Ruprecht of Bavaria—"Rupie," we called him. They wore the baggy grey clothes and clumsy looking leather top boots of the German infantryman. The spiked pickelhauben was conspicuous by its absence and was, we well knew, a thing only of billets and of "swank" parades. In its place was the soft pancake ...
— The Escape of a Princess Pat • George Pearson
... renewed from time to time, the clumsy and complacent Dave whiled away his days, and comforted himself that he had the persimmon-tree all to himself, as he expressed it. Meanwhile, the notes of Westcott were fast undoing all that Albert had done to separate him ...
— The Mystery of Metropolisville • Edward Eggleston
... our stores had been returned to the lockers, and they had broken open only one, and had got hold of a jar of brown sugar and another of flour, which, in their clumsy endeavours to eat, they had sprinkled about the cabin. We calculated from this that they had not been there long; for if they had, they would have routed out everything eatable they possibly could ...
— Peter the Whaler • W.H.G. Kingston
... a sort of clumsy trepidation, he began to pack the almost elusive portions of the gleaming mass of brilliants from ...
— The Flaw in the Sapphire • Charles M. Snyder
... on this point there need be no scruple about receiving Hallam's statement of the matter: "A Midsummer-Night's Dream is, I believe, altogether original in one of the most beautiful conceptions that ever visited the mind of a poet,—the fairy machinery. A few before him had dealt in a vulgar and clumsy manner with popular superstitions; but the sportive, beneficent, invisible population of the air and earth, long since established in the creed of childhood, and of those simple as children, had never for a moment been blended with 'human mortals' among the personages of the drama." ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson
... his clumsy figure over her as he spoke, and cautiously, as if he were afraid of doing her some injury, kissed her ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... cannot rest in his pleasure and toil His clumsy contraptions of coil upon coil Till the thing he invents, in its use and its range, Leads on to the marvellous CHANGE BEYOND CHANGE. Some day this old Broadway shall climb to the skies, As a ribbon of cloud on a soul-wind shall rise. And we shall be lifted, ...
— The Congo and Other Poems • Vachel Lindsay
... a fuss to pick with you, young man," he said with clumsy joviality. "You beat me upon the purchase of that Westmarsh property. Very shrewd, indeed, Mr. Burnit; very like your father. I suppose that now, if I wanted to buy it from you, I'd have to pay you a pretty advance." And he rubbed his hands as if to invite the ...
— The Making of Bobby Burnit - Being a Record of the Adventures of a Live American Young Man • George Randolph Chester
... of the very imperfect style in which he wrote, and the usually clumsy and often careless construction of his sentences, his works contain now and then noble thoughts expressed with simplicity and force. "Natura est instrumentum Divinae operationis," might be taken as the motto for his whole system of natural science. In speaking of the value of ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, No. 38, December, 1860 • Various
... them I played a clumsy detective in proving that the two avoided each other and that there had been some interwovenness of interests in the past. Several times when I asked Father Michel to join us at table he gave me flimsy excuses, and once the duke pleaded indisposition ...
— Nancy Stair - A Novel • Elinor Macartney Lane
... being one of the Bunch, but if you ever needed me I'd chuck it and come out for you every time! Not of course but what you're—course I don't mean you'd ever do anything that would put—that would put a decent position on the fritz but—See how I mean? I'm kind of a clumsy old codger, and I need your fine Eyetalian hand. We—Oh, hell, I can't stand here gassing all day! On the job! S' long! Don't take any wooden money, Paulibus! See ...
— Babbitt • Sinclair Lewis
... the world in any point to taint my honour; and, as I have never taken the opinion of madmen touching your character or morals, I think it but fair to require that you will evince a like tenderness for me; and now, once for all, never again dare to repeat to me your insulting suspicions, or the clumsy and infamous calumnies of fools. I shall instantly let the worthy lady who contrived this somewhat original device, understand fully my opinion upon the matter—good morning"; and with these words he ...
— Two Ghostly Mysteries - A Chapter in the History of a Tyrone Family; and The Murdered Cousin • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... staginess and theatricality, and it was quite conceivable that Carlotta had relations with Yvette, and that, ridden by the old jealousy which had been aroused through the announcement of Rosa's return to the Opera Comique, she was setting herself in an indefinite, clumsy, stealthy, and melodramatic manner to prevent Rosa's appearance ...
— The Ghost - A Modern Fantasy • Arnold Bennett
... lay aside even in his friendliest moments, much away from home, and unable to meet the boy on his own level when he was there, deprived of the wife who might have been his interpreter, he had no way of becoming acquainted with his son. Anxious in some way to share in Jim's life, he took the clumsy and mistaken method of letting ...
— The Calico Cat • Charles Miner Thompson
... as in the case of the sturrupless saddle, when we reflect that men should, for nearly a thousand years, have gone on fastening plates of metal under horses' hoofs by the clumsy means of straps and strings, without its ever occurring to them to try so simple an improvement as nails, we have another remarkable demonstration of the slow steps by which horsemanship has ...
— The Arabian Art of Taming and Training Wild and Vicious Horses • P. R. Kincaid
... of snobbishness and from the fear of seeming too friendly, grown independent, in fact, has the ease, the grace of movement of a trained gymnast each of whose supple limbs will carry out precisely the movement that is required without any clumsy participation by the rest of his body. The simple and elementary gestures used by a man of the world when he courteously holds out his hand to the unknown youth who is being introduced to him, and when he bows discreetly before the Ambassador to whom he is being introduced, ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust
... the pillars; sunshine slanted through the simple stained glass and lay in colored patches on the floor; there were square pews of a bygone day; there was a pulpit with a winding stair; there were tablets on the walls to shipwrecked sailors, to governors and officers dead here in harness. The clumsy woodwork, the cheap carpets, the modest brasses, were in perfect order; there were marks everywhere of ...
— The Militants - Stories of Some Parsons, Soldiers, and Other Fighters in the World • Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews
... enter upon my 64th year. The paralysis that first affected me nearly ten years ago, has since remain'd, with varying course—seems to have settled quietly down, and will probably continue. I easily tire, am very clumsy, cannot walk far; but my spirits are first-rate. I go around in public almost every day—now and then take long trips, by railroad or boat, hundreds of miles—live largely in the open air—am sunburnt and stout, (weigh 190)—keep ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... a "manifestation." Soon loud knocks were heard, apparently from the middle of the table, and on sundry spirits being alleged to be present, Mr. Home proceeded to question them through the ordinary clumsy fashion, of the alphabet, and some unimportant answers were elicited, which I fail to remember and in common honesty must not invent. We were soon to see stranger things; and I suppose the seance was exceptionally successful, as I afterwards ...
— My Life as an Author • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... my writing was clumsy enough and my attempt to play the courtier clumsier still. Nevertheless, as a friend of my father and mother "Old Buck" might have been a little more considerate than he was with a lad trying to please and do him honor. I came away from the White House ...
— Marse Henry, Complete - An Autobiography • Henry Watterson
... Dauphin, for all is done in an hour. He scarce stays a minute; indeed, poor creature, he is a ghost, and cannot possibly last three months. The Dauphiness is in her bedchamber, but dressed and standing; looks cross, is not civil, and has the true Westphalian grace and accents. The four Mesdames, who are clumsy plump old wenches, with a bad likeness to their father, stand in a bedchamber in a row, with black cloaks and knotting-bags, looking good-humoured, not knowing what to say, and wriggling as if they wanted to make water. This ceremony too is very short; ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole - Volume II • Horace Walpole
... both of material and skill to build an arch with a span of one hundred and twenty-six feet. What could not be accomplished in width was attempted in height. The domes became narrow and tall, like towers. The rough stone, handled without art, rendered clumsy pillars and thick walls necessary, in which the windows, like embrasures, are cut narrow and deep. The brightest light falls through the windows in the thinner wall which supports the cupolas. Nearly all churches are higher than they are long and wide. The ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. X. • Kuno Francke
... of the mania, India-rubber stock began to decline, and Roxbury itself finally fell to two dollars and a half. Before the close of 1836, all the Companies had ceased to exist, their fall involving many hundreds of families in heavy loss. The clumsy, shapeless shoes from South America were the only ones which the people would buy. It was generally supposed that the secret of their resisting heat was that they were smoked with the leaves of a certain tree, peculiar to ...
— Famous Americans of Recent Times • James Parton
... see that face, sculptured with all the delicacy of a Florentine cameo; that yellow hair of hers, full of captive sunshine; those eyes, giving forth the velvet-bloom of heartsease; those slender brown hands which defied the lowliness of her birth, and those ankles the beauty of which not even the clumsy sabots could conceal! He knew a duchess whose line of blood was older than the Capets' or the Bourbons'. Was not nature the great Satirist? To give nobility to that duchess and beauty to that peasant! Margot ...
— The Grey Cloak • Harold MacGrath
... repulsive, uncouth, clumsy, ghastly, hideous, shocking, ungainly, deformed, grim, horrid, ugly, unlovely, disgusting, ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald
... command of his regiment, Colonel Pepe was as much struck by its martial aspect, as he was vexed at its clumsy manoeuvres, and low moral condition. Both men and officers lacked instruction. The former were most incorrigible thieves. Plundering was a pretty common practice with the French armies in Spain, even in Suchet's corps, which ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCLXXVI. February, 1847. Vol. LXI. • Various
... far from the centre of the town as possible; and a six-room school-house with a flagpole. One mile, two miles, five and six miles distant in the forest, saw-mills buzzed away, strangely noisy amid their silent clumsy lumbermen and ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1920 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... tests depend greatly on the use of language, they are not fair to the deaf child, nor to the child with a speech defect, nor to the foreign child. Also, some persons who are clumsy in managing the rather abstract ideas dealt with in the Binet tests show up better in managing concrete objects. For all such cases, performance tests are useful. Language plays little part in a performance test, and concrete ...
— Psychology - A Study Of Mental Life • Robert S. Woodworth
... mainly to monoplanes, while the Germans were beginning to come into prominence with both monoplanes and biplanes of the 'Taube' type. These had wings swept backward and also upturned at the wing-tips which, though it gave a certain measure of automatic stability, rendered the machine somewhat clumsy in the air, and their performances were not on the whole as high as those of either ...
— A History of Aeronautics • E. Charles Vivian
... hard work for all that. The rude sledge, which is little more than a couple of short wooden runners with boards nailed across them, and a short pole at each corner, plunges into the snow and then carries forward a mass of it until the obstruction becomes too great; the clumsy machine then mounts over it somehow, and again plunges down till the increasing traffic makes the road one series of hillocks and deep holes or cahots, which jolt and jerk the traveller enough to dislocate every joint in his body. They ...
— The King's Warrant - A Story of Old and New France • Alfred H. Engelbach
... Osberne, and came before the guest, and louted to him and said: "Noble sir, I pray thee pardon our man Stephen, for thou seest how clumsy a man he is, and he knoweth not where to bestow his long legs; he is ever in everyone's way." And as he spake the smiles were all over his face, and he louted low again. Stephen stared astonished ...
— The Sundering Flood • William Morris
... you read all the papers in town,—and you'll have to do it,—you'll see that they've got just about the same stuff. Why shouldn't they have? The big, clumsy news-mill grinds pretty impartially for all of them. There's one news source at Police Headquarters, another at the City Hall, another in the financial department, another at the political headquarters, another in the railroad offices, another at the theaters, another in society, and ...
— The Clarion • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... Dionysius. Victorinus, a Neoplatonic philosopher, was converted to Christianity in his old age, about 360 A.D. The story of his conversion, and the joy which it caused in the Christian community, is told by St. Augustine[188]. He was a deep thinker of the speculative mystical type, but a clumsy and obscure writer, in spite of his rhetorical training. His importance lies in his position as the first Christian ...
— Christian Mysticism • William Ralph Inge
... "There every one is so expert that I used to feel like a great bungler. Seeing others do so beautifully made me feel as though I were particularly awkward, and I really did keep in the background because I was so ashamed of my clumsy performances. Perhaps though, that was only an excuse for my not being able to do better, and one ought not to offer excuses, ought one? Is there any pond near here on which ...
— The Governess • Julie M. Lippmann
... rear ankles. When they were kicking they had braced themselves with their front legs, but now they all stood or sat upright on their hind legs and used their front ones as arms. Having no fingers or hands the beasts were rather clumsy, as you may guess; but Dorothy was surprised to observe how many things they could do ...
— The Road to Oz • L. Frank Baum
... were felt in the dense dark lonely forest that encompassed the open spaces of that mysterious city, with the conical thatched roofs of its winter houses and the sandy stretch of the "beloved square; "—and there was the line of bears, clumsy, heavy-footed, lumbering, ungainly, and beside each the feather-crested similitude of what he had been, alert, powerful, gifted with human ingenuity, the craft of weapons, mental endowment, and an immortal soul,—so they went ...
— The Frontiersmen • Charles Egbert Craddock
... was said. They thrust out with their crazy little craft into the thick of the ice-flood. Bill, amidships, dug with his sculls in among the huddled cakes. It was clumsy pulling. Now this oar and now that would be thrown out. He could ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 52, February, 1862 • Various
... naturally rather pleased by them. He was also vaguely aware that if she had been a more brilliant woman she would have been a more exacting one, and less easily impressed. If she had been a stupid woman or a clumsy one, he would have detested her and bitterly regretted his marriage. But she was only innocent and gratefully admiring, which qualities, combining themselves with good looks, good health, and good manners, made of a woman something he liked immensely. Really she had looked very nice and attractive ...
— Emily Fox-Seton - Being The Making of a Marchioness and The Methods of Lady Walderhurst • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... fact, not to the point. It's clumsy, besides," Pao-yue interposed. "The place here is full of dryandra and banana trees, and if one could possibly hit upon some name bearing upon the dryandra and banana, it would ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... James Otis in the forum, and with George Washington in the field, that there is no such thing as virtual representation. The guarantee of equal opportunity in modern society is the ballot. It may be a clumsy contrivance, but it is the best we have yet found. In our system a man without a vote is but half a man. So long as women are forbidden political equality, the laws and feelings of society will be unjust ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... Leaves of Grass is dated 1867, the third, if I am not mistaken, the first appearing in 1855. Inside is pasted a card upon which is written in large, clumsy letters: "Walt Whitman, Camden, New Jersey, July, 1877." I value this autograph, because Walt gave it to me; rather I paid him for it, the proceeds, two dollars (I think that was the amount), going to some asylum in ...
— Ivory Apes and Peacocks • James Huneker
... disappointment brought to his recollection how ineffectual had been some former attempts of his to impress them with an idea of the superior refinement of his followers. Bong-ree, his musician, had annoyed his auditors with his barbarous sounds, and the clumsy exhibition of his Scotch dancers unaccompanied with the aid of music, had been viewed by them without ...
— An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales, Vol. 2 • David Collins
... in. Something not human—death—was breaking in through that door, and had to be kept out. He seized the door, making a final effort to hold it back—to lock it was no longer possible—but his efforts were weak and clumsy and the door, pushed from behind by that terror, ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... Franklin that he wished to do things as pleasantly as possible, and was not disposed to insist upon the Stamp Act, if the Americans could suggest anything better. But when it appeared that no alternative was offered except to fall back upon the old clumsy system of requisitions, Grenville naturally replied that there ought to be some more efficient method of raising money for the defence of the frontier. Accordingly in March, 1765, the Stamp Act was passed, with so little debate that ...
— The War of Independence • John Fiske
... afternoon of a spring day in the year 1868, a young man of twenty-seven, carelessly and shabbily dressed, was toiling up the back staircase of a five-storied house on Officers Street in St. Petersburg. Noisily shuffling his down-trodden goloshes and slowly swinging his heavy, clumsy figure, the man at last reached the very top flight and stopped before a half-open door hanging off its hinges. He did not ring the bell, but gave a loud sigh and walked straight ...
— Virgin Soil • Ivan S. Turgenev
... to his knees. It was a strange selection, but we have seen that this particular parson was capable of doing strange things. In the course of a supplication of some fifteen minutes' duration, Brother Hastings managed to vent his spleen upon the people and to pay the Lord a few clumsy compliments. During the usual special blessing which is asked upon the preacher of the hour, he prayed, "O Lord, let not the rarin' horses of his youth run away with Thy chariot of eternal truth. Lord, cool his head and ...
— The Uncalled - A Novel • Paul Laurence Dunbar
... and clumsy instrument for the defence of the right, and after a flash of Belgium's unexampled bravery we were compelled to witness many flashes of her terrible sufferings. Liege fell before overwhelming numbers, then Namur, Ter-monde, Brussels, Louvain, ...
— The Drama Of Three Hundred & Sixty-Five Days - Scenes In The Great War - 1915 • Hall Caine
... it dam clumsy from beginning to end;—dam clumsy. I took him to be a different man, and I feel more than half ashamed of myself because I trusted such a fellow. That chap Cohenlupe has got off with a lot of swag. Only think of Melmotte allowing Cohenlupe ...
— The Way We Live Now • Anthony Trollope
... blast, and we arrived at the Cathedral stiff and torpid with cold. From the colour of our faces, we might have been five little "Blue Noses" from Nova Scotia. The ceremony was very gorgeous and imposing, and I trust that the pages were not unduly clumsy. Every one was amazed at the beauty of the music, sung from the triforium by the combined choirs of St. Patrick's and Christ Church Cathedrals, and of the Chapel Royal, with that wonderful musician, Sir Robert Stewart, at the organ. I remember well Sir Robert Stewart's novel setting ...
— The Days Before Yesterday • Lord Frederick Hamilton
... people—here is this rude boyhood, if we may so say, of the one art, roofed in with the perfection of another, of architecture; a perfection which now we can only imitate at our best: below, the clumsy contrivance and the vulgar jest; above, the solemn heaven of uplifted arches, their mysterious glooms ringing with the delight of the multitude: the play of children enclosed in the heart of prayer aspiring in stone. But it was not by any means all laughter; and so ...
— A Dish Of Orts • George MacDonald
... raiment. I know ye! Ye werst a bargain and two pairs for two bits. But even as Adolph Zolzac and an agent for flivver accessories are ye become in my eyes, ye generation of vipers, ye clumsy, bag-footed, ...
— Free Air • Sinclair Lewis
... pity on that afternoon, for she was not in the least afraid of anything, except that the courtiers who were to carry her off at the end of her first scene might be clumsy, or that the sack in the last act would be dusty inside and make her sneeze. But as for that, she was willing that the ending should be a failure, as Madame Bonanni said it must be, for she did not mean to do it again if she could possibly ...
— Fair Margaret - A Portrait • Francis Marion Crawford
... one end of the mill, depended mainly on what sort of grain you had put in at the other; and I began to see that the problem was to get good grain, and then good flour would be turned out, even by a very clumsy old-fashioned sort of mill. And what do I mean by good grain? Good men, honest men, accurate men, righteous men, patient men, self-restraining men, fair men, modest men. Men who are aware of their own vast ignorance compared ...
— Town Geology • Charles Kingsley
... "El Dorado"—the golden realm!—the home of an everlasting summer! Rob pauses dramatically; he comes to a full stop. How mean is the parlour of the comfortable Wood Street tavern! How paltry its pewter pots and clumsy flagons! How dull its smoky beams ...
— Sea-Dogs All! - A Tale of Forest and Sea • Tom Bevan
... Razumihin answered quickly. "He is a nice fellow, you will see, brother. Rather clumsy, that is to say, he is a man of polished manners, but I mean clumsy in a different sense. He is an intelligent fellow, very much so indeed, but he has his own range of ideas.... He is incredulous, sceptical, cynical... he likes to impose on people, or rather to make fun of them. ...
— Crime and Punishment • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... double-bass the notes are always printed an octave higher than the tones are to sound: that is, when the bass-player sees the note he plays this being done to avoid leger lines. The tone of the bass is much heavier and the instrument itself is much more clumsy to handle than the other members of the group, hence it is almost never used as a solo instrument but it is invaluable for reinforcing the bass part in orchestral music. The mute is rarely used on the double-bass, but the pizzicato effect is very common and the bass pizzicato tone is much ...
— Music Notation and Terminology • Karl W. Gehrkens
... German spy or would-be spy in America, there was an agent of the Secret Service, equally resourceful, and more likely to succeed, because, no matter how clumsy his adversary seemed, he never made the mistake of underrating him. "Stupid Yankees," von Papen had called us, while he went about his plotting with child-like faith in his skill at hiding. "Stupid Germans," the Secret Service might have retorted, ...
— Winning a Cause - World War Stories • John Gilbert Thompson and Inez Bigwood
... of you do not, at least not yet," exclaimed Christine. "What will their clumsy hands do in work like this, but mar everything. I have great faith in Mr. Fleet's abilities," she continued, turning toward Dennis, with an enchanting smile, and resuming the tactics of the morning. Though the smile went to Dennis's heart like a fiery arrow, ...
— Barriers Burned Away • E. P. Roe
... a letter from the Prince of Orange to the Duke of Anjou, which, as it was pretended, had been intercepted. It was a clumsy forgery, but it answered the purpose of more skilful counterfeiting, at a period when political and religious enmity obscured men's judgment. "As to the point of religion," the Prince was made to observe, for example, to his illustrious correspondent, "that is all plain and ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... in explaining to Cowperwood just what his difficulty was. He went at it in a clumsy fashion, stumbling through the difficulties of the situation he was ...
— The Financier • Theodore Dreiser
... where he had set the first, and piled them one above the other. Then he collected with awkward care all the heaps of garments which lay about, and carried them off in the other direction to the stairs, where he laid them carefully with a clumsy tenderness. When he had swept away all these encumbrances, as by a sudden gust of wind, he came back to Nettie, and once more clasped the firm hands which held each other fast. She broke away from him ...
— The Doctor's Family • Mrs. (Margaret) Oliphant
... few steps farther," he rejoined; "as far as a cab. We are hardly safe here. Oh, you need not fear shots or knives. The man whose servants are watching us now scorns to employ such clumsy, tell-tale weapons." ...
— The Insidious Dr. Fu-Manchu • Sax Rohmer
... sat beside her at the banquet, and in the intervals of eating—which absorbed him mightily—he whispered compliments at which she shuddered and turned pale. The more strenuously did he strive to please, in his gross and clumsy fashion, the more did he succeed in repelling and disgusting her, until, in the end, with all his fatuousness, he came to deem her oddly cold. Of this, anon, he made complaint to that magnificent prince, her uncle. But Guidobaldo scoffed at ...
— Love-at-Arms • Raphael Sabatini
... such modes of finish, since the sight of the walls swaying and wriggling before his eyes could only be satisfactorily explained as the result of intoxication, or of temporary insanity. The same stranger would have stopped short in surprise, on entering the Everetts' clumsy log-house. In spite of its unattractive exterior, it was a cosy, luxurious dwelling, with furniture, draperies and pictures which would do credit to any Eastern city house; for Mrs. Everett had loved pretty things, and had gathered them ...
— In Blue Creek Canon • Anna Chapin Ray
... woman in distress.' Land-sharks and crimps beset the young sailor in every sea port; low music halls and dingy taverns and beer shops presented their attractions; and there the 'jolly tars' used to swallow their poisonous compounds, and roar out ribald songs, and dance their clumsy fandangoes with the vilest outcasts of society. 'It is a necessary evil,' said some; 'it is the very nature of sailors, poor fellows.' While the thoughtless multitude were immensely tickled with Jack's mad antics and drolleries. Generous to a ...
— The Hero of the Humber - or the History of the Late Mr. John Ellerthorpe • Henry Woodcock
... suppressed laughter and the gurgling of the flowing enlivener. Jack blissfully fell into dreams, wherein home things and warlike doings mingled in grotesque medley. Relapses into consciousness followed at he knew not what intervals thereafter. He was conscious of cruel torment and a clumsy transfer into another vehicle, confused sounds of groans, curses, waving lights, and the hissing of escaping steam almost in his very ears. Then the anguish of thundering wheels, until his cracked brain reeled and he was mercifully unconscious. How long? His eyes opened on a clean white wall, flowers ...
— The Iron Game - A Tale of the War • Henry Francis Keenan
... her hand for the clumsy old firearm and almost dropped it, finding it so much heavier than she expected. She wanted to touch with her own fingers the weapon that had such an interesting history, and about which a hero had spoken ...
— Georgina of the Rainbows • Annie Fellows Johnston
... to obviate any such sneering remarks as: "What could be, pray, the size of the mouth of a child in his mother's womb, and how could it grasp such a large and clumsy thing?" ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... girl playing gradually the music entered his consciousness. He was fond of music, and had heard the best of the world of course. This was meltingly lovely. The girl had fine appreciation and much expression, even when the medium of her melody was clumsy things like bells. She had seemed to make them glad as they pealed out their melodies. He had not known bells could sound like happy children, ...
— The City of Fire • Grace Livingston Hill
... this, both boys had progressed so far that they were able to work on a mat, made up of several layers of thick carpet, without the aid of the "mechanic." Of course their act lacked finish. Their movements were more or less clumsy, but they had mastered the principle of the somersault in remarkably ...
— The Circus Boys on the Flying Rings • Edgar B. P. Darlington
... his kite. There was a large hole in it. In trying to raise his kite, the little boy, being perhaps rather clumsy, had got it entangled in a tree. Its beauty was spoiled, and George had brought it home without having had the pleasure of seeing it ...
— The Nursery, Number 164 - A Monthly Magazine for Youngest Readers • Various
... learned to make light spears and javelins. The clumsy spear which served Strongarm so well was not what Scarface needed. But in the days of the early Cave-men the heavy spear was a good weapon. Strongarm cared as much for his spear as you do for your dog. It was like a friend in time of need. Few animals could withstand Strongarm's ...
— The Later Cave-Men • Katharine Elizabeth Dopp
... short time, he was cut down, before he was at all insensible; a bailiff, named Wm. Swallow, then dragged him to the sledge, and with a common blunt cleaver, hacked off the head: in a manner equally clumsy and cruel, he opened his body and tore ...
— Fox's Book of Martyrs - Or A History of the Lives, Sufferings, and Triumphant - Deaths of the Primitive Protestant Martyrs • John Fox
... an alliance of which he was not the head was delicate work. A clumsy speaker in debate might do infinite mischief. When a party is in opposition, all its members can talk, and are encouraged to talk, to the utmost; little harm can be done to one's own side by what is said in criticism of measures ...
— John Redmond's Last Years • Stephen Gwynn
... remaining in solution. But the method of determining this residual silver by adding successive small quantities of salt so long as they continue to give a precipitate is unsatisfactory, and, judged on its own merits apart from the rest of the process, could hardly escape condemnation. It is clumsy in practice, for the continued adding of small portions of salt solution is laborious and becomes impossible with more than a few milligrams of silver in solution. The proposed modification is simple; having precipitated the silver ...
— A Textbook of Assaying: For the Use of Those Connected with Mines. • Cornelius Beringer and John Jacob Beringer
... this fashion, good and evil days alternating. During this period Rodolphe was a score of times on the point of separating from Mademoiselle Mimi, who had for him all the clumsy cruelties of the woman who does not love. Properly speaking, this life had become a hell for both. But Rodolphe had grown accustomed to these daily struggles, and dreaded nothing so much as a cessation of this state of things; for he felt that ...
— Bohemians of the Latin Quarter • Henry Murger
... cook their food. The chief material was clay, to which Harding added a little lime and quartz. This paste made regular "pipe-clay," with which they manufactured bowls, cups molded on stones of a proper size, great jars and pots to hold water, etc. The shape of these objects was clumsy and defective, but after they had been baked in a high temperature, the kitchen of the Chimneys was provided with a number of utensils, as precious to the settlers as the most beautifully enameled china. We must mention here that Pencroft, desirous to know if the clay thus prepared was ...
— The Mysterious Island • Jules Verne
... principal riches of the Turkmans however still consist in cattle. Their horses are inferior to those of the Arabs of the desert, but are well adapted for the mountains. Their necks are shorter and thicker than those of the Arab horses, the head larger, the whole frame more clumsy: the price of a good Turkman horse at Aleppo is four or five hundred piastres, while twice that sum or more is paid for an Arab horse of a generous breed. Contrary to the practice of the Arabs, the Turkmans ride males exclusively. The family of my host possessed four horses, three mares, about ...
— Travels in Syria and the Holy Land • John Burckhardt
... caution. He was a rather small man, with a very red face; he wore an oddly cut frock coat, the collar of which stood up, and trousers, rough and wide, like those of a sailor, turned up at the ankles, and either short boots or clumsy shoes, covered with mud. This man listened beside the nurse's bed, which stood next the door, as if to satisfy himself that she was sleeping soundly; and having done so for some seconds, he began to move cautiously in ...
— J. S. Le Fanu's Ghostly Tales, Volume 2 • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... lay one's finger upon so many talented and remarkable young barristers. How pleased you were with the state of things as we found it, and how glad I was to observe your delight! We both said it was a matter to be proud of; but this clumsy defence that Evgenie mentions, this strange argument CAN, of course, only be an ...
— The Idiot • (AKA Feodor Dostoevsky) Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... us, who bore a grudge against him, had poisoned his dog. "That was a low thing for a man to do now, wasn't it? It wasn't like a man, that, nohow. But I got even with him: I pisoned his dog." His clumsy utterance, his rude embarrassed manner, set a fresh value on the stupidity of his remarks. I do not think I ever appreciated the meaning of two words until I knew Irvine—the verb, loaf, and the noun, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 2 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... my boy. I'm getting old and clumsy, and a little help from a young hand comes timely. Where are you going, ...
— Choice Readings for the Home Circle • Anonymous
... was finished, and a coat of paint put on the new streaks. I got under way at once in her, taking my tender in tow. Near the Institute lived a man who owned a large flat-boat, or scow, used for bringing wood down the lake. Tom Rush had hired this clumsy craft for a week. The three row-boats belonging to the Institute had been manned by the boys, and were towing this scow down to the pier, according to the plan I had suggested to the parson. When the flat was near the pier, a signal was given, and the boys on shore all rushed ...
— Breaking Away - or The Fortunes of a Student • Oliver Optic
... Jake, to his credit, went through his part without a mistake. But he did so in such an awkward, halting way, that it seemed like anything but a character to excite sympathy; in fact, his fall into the Slough of Despond was so clumsy that he injured one of his knees. All the while he was rolling about, supposed to be sinking, he was holding his knee in both hands and crying: "By ...
— Watch Yourself Go By • Al. G. Field
... representative government has proved too indirect and clumsy an instrument, and has broken down as a means of popular control. Others, looking a little deeper, have said that it was not representative government that had broken down, but the effort to get it. They have pointed ...
— The New Freedom - A Call For the Emancipation of the Generous Energies of a People • Woodrow Wilson
... her. Madam!-My eyes sparkle at such a girl as that! No indeed! She may be your favourite as a waiting-maid; but I see nothing but clumsy curtseys and awkward airs about her. A little rustic affectation of innocence, that to such as cannot see into ...
— Pamela (Vol. II.) • Samuel Richardson
... symmetrical, comfortable, and satisfactory shoe made in the world. The British shoe is said to be more comfortable. Possibly for a British foot it is so, but for a foot containing no breathing-apparatus or viscera it is somewhat roomy and clumsy. ...
— Comic History of the United States • Bill Nye
... hoped ye'd feel all right this mornin'. Let's see th' bandage—I guess it's slipped." He began to tinker at the wound in rather a clumsy way ...
— The Red Badge of Courage - An Episode of the American Civil War • Stephen Crane
... very rowing out from the shore had in it something sweet and incredible. It was as if we were but dreaming together and might at any moment awaken again, countless miles and a thousand things apart. I rowed slowly with those clumsy Swiss oars that one must thrust forward, breaking the smooth crystal of the lake, and she sat sideways looking forward, saying very little and with much the same sense I think of enchantment and unreality. And I saw now for the first time as I watched ...
— The Passionate Friends • Herbert George Wells
... two men began to back away. When they had receded some twenty yards, however, the huge beast leaped to its feet. The rapidity of its movements was extraordinary. There intervened none of the slow and clumsy upheaval one would naturally expect from an animal of so massive a body and such short, thick legs. One moment it slumbered, the next it was afoot, warned by some slight sound or jar of the earth or—as some maintain—by a telepathic sense of danger. ...
— The Leopard Woman • Stewart Edward White et al
... most abrupt and cone-like, by name now Pico, rises to this day, a magnificent sight, sheer seven thousand feet into the sky from the placid sheet that girds it round on every side. You creatures of to-day, approaching it in one of your clumsy new-fashioned fire-driven canoes that you call steamers, must admire immensely its conical peak, as it stands out silhouetted against the glowing horizon in the deep red glare of ...
— Science in Arcady • Grant Allen
... with a clumsy effort to hide his own emotion, "I am beginning to think that the ordinary daily newspapers are unsuitable reading for young ladies, who had better keep to the magazines and journals specially devoted to ...
— Witness to the Deed • George Manville Fenn
... inasmuch as the regulation writing of a foreigner, French, Italian, Spanish, is fine and pointed in character, while this is more round, more sprawling and clumsy. But"—he frowned thoughtfully, and Anstice thought he looked more like Sherlock Holmes than ever—"there is one point in connection with this last letter which has evidently not struck you. Suppose you read it through carefully ...
— Afterwards • Kathlyn Rhodes
... civilized man who has to live among a savage tribe. To keep alive, to have influence, he must pretend to accept the savage point of view, must pretend to disregard his own knowledge and intelligent methods, must play the game of life with the crude, clumsy counters of caste and custom and creed and thought which the savages regard as fit and proper. Intelligent men of action do see as clearly as the philosophers; but they have to pretend to adapt their mental vision to that of the mass of their fellow ...
— The Plum Tree • David Graham Phillips
... that time—I find it hard to place these things in the exact order of their dates because they were so disconnected with the regular progress of my work and life—in an intrigue, a clumsy, sensuous, pretentious, artificially stimulated intrigue, with a Mrs. Larrimer, a woman living separated from her husband. I will not go into particulars of that episode, nor how we quarrelled and chafed one another. She was at once unfaithful and jealous ...
— The New Machiavelli • Herbert George Wells
... play at your game,' said Riderhood, snapping his fingers at him half a dozen times, 'and I played it long ago; long afore you tried your clumsy hand at it; in days when you hadn't begun croaking your lecters or what not in your school. I know to a figure how you done it. Where you stole away, I could steal away arter you, and do it knowinger than you. I know how you come away from London in your own clothes, and where you changed your ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... softly. Coming slowly forward he caught her hand with clumsy haste and kissed it. Her heart stopped its mad beating, for she had won. Here was no Beau-papa. Here was the ...
— The Halo • Bettina von Hutten
... children to guard the senses from evil influences, to furnish them with pure and beautiful objects. Each separate sense should preserve its acuteness of faculty: the eye should not be injured by resting on a vulgar confusion of colours, or clumsy, ill-proportioned forms; the ear should not be falsified by discordant sounds, and harsh, unloving voices; the nose should not be a receptacle for impure odours: each sense should be preserved in its purity, and the objects supplied to them should be filled with moral suggestion ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 461 - Volume 18, New Series, October 30, 1852 • Various
... how different are the nests which the birds build in springtime, in tree or bush or sandy bank or hidden in the grass? Some are wonderfully wrought, pretty little homes for birdikins. But others are clumsy, and carelessly fastened to the bough, most unsafe cradles for the feathered baby on the treetop. Sometimes after a heavy wind you find on the ground under the nest poor little broken eggs which rolled out and lost their chance of turning into birds with safe, safe wings ...
— The Curious Book of Birds • Abbie Farwell Brown
... sight the student will probably perceive very little, if any, difference between the original and the suspect. It would be a very clumsy forgery if he could. Gradually the points of dissimilarity will become clear to him, and with each fresh examination they grow plainer, until he is surprised that they did not sooner strike him; they are so obvious that the eye cannot avoid them; they stand out as plainly ...
— The Detection of Forgery • Douglas Blackburn
... a clumsy fellow; he would do better to let sentiment and attention plead his cause and ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... do you know when a man has been possessed? Although the enemy was clumsy with Everset, would they continue to ...
— The Hour of Battle • Robert Sheckley
... presence and bearing of Mr. the present Sir Richard Birnie, and other police magistrates. Was ever the like of this performed before in England, or any other country? The reader will perceive that this was a trick, and a very clumsy one, to endeavour to get me taken into custody, and bound over to keep the peace. Yet the venal hireling press blazoned it forth to the world, that I had injured and behaved very unhandsomely to Mr. Cleary, by publishing his ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 3 • Henry Hunt
... clear enough that a somewhat clumsy fraud was being imposed upon Mr. Mompesson. A contemporary writer tells us he was told that it was done by "two Young Women in the House with a design to scare thence Mr. Mompesson's Mother."[29] From other sources it is quite certain ...
— A History of Witchcraft in England from 1558 to 1718 • Wallace Notestein
... boys soon launched the canoe, and each seizing a paddle, at once struck out in the direction of the ship. The native lad sat aft, Maurice for'ard, and clumsy as was the latter with the long and narrow canoe paddle, he yet managed to keep his seat and not ...
— Ridan The Devil And Other Stories - 1899 • Louis Becke
... of character, contradicting the full placidity of the badly shaved chin. Darius Clayhanger had a habit, when reflective or fierce, of biting with his upper teeth as far down as he could on the lower lip; this trick added emphasis to the moustache. He stood, his feet in their clumsy boots planted firmly about sixteen inches apart, his elbows sticking out, and his head bent sideways, listening to and answering his companion with mien now eager, now roguish, now ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett
... Umbiquas, Callapoos, Cayuses, Nez-perces, Bonnaxes, Flat-heads, and some of the Crows, who had not yet gained prudence from their last "brushing." The superiority of our arms, our tactics, discipline, and art of intrenchment, together with the good service of two clumsy old Spanish four-pounders, enabled us not only in a short time to destroy the league, but also to crush and annihilate for ever some of our treacherous neighbours. As it would be tedious to a stranger to follow the movements ...
— Travels and Adventures of Monsieur Violet • Captain Marryat
... its pair of wheels and its white awning rolling and jolting behind two good horses, passes long lines of bullock-carts. Indians, walking beside them with their inimitable gait, make exquisite gestures of abjection to the clumsy white Sahibs huddled uncomfortably on the back seat. Their robes of vivid colour, always harmoniously blent, leave bare the slender brown legs and often the breast and back. Children stark naked ride on their mothers' hips or their fathers' shoulder. Now and again ...
— Appearances - Being Notes of Travel • Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson
... kind of a thing Washington Irving's first composition was. There must have been a first one; and, without doubt, it was a clumsy affair enough. If I were going to write his history, I would find those who knew him when he was a mere child, and I would pump from them as many anecdotes about his little scribblings as I possibly could, and I would print them, lots ...
— The Diving Bell - Or, Pearls to be Sought for • Francis C. Woodworth
... rally quickly around the treasure. But it soon appears that the stranger is but a dark, small, hairy, ugly, harmless-seeming, amorous creature, uttering his wishes very simply. The watch over the gold is relinquished, and a little amusement sought in tantalizing and befooling the clumsy wooer. ...
— The Wagnerian Romances • Gertrude Hall
... ignorance, and more through stupidity. It is true that no less than five times the whole gang went on a strike until Michael should return to settle some dispute between the new scientific farming that he had taught them, and some old superstition, or clumsy practice of the farmer's. But on the whole they did tolerably ...
— Lo, Michael! • Grace Livingston Hill
... air beneath them, as if to show them what feats she could do on the wing that were beyond their powers. The crows often made a peculiar guttural cawing and cackling as if they enjoyed the sport, but they were clumsy and awkward enough on the wing compared to the hawk. Time after time she came down upon them from a point high in the air, like a thunderbolt, but never seemed to touch them. Twice I saw her swoop upon them ...
— The Wit of a Duck and Other Papers • John Burroughs
... expression. His grey hair hung in tufts over a low forehead. His very small and immobile eyes glowed dully, like coals in which the flame has just been extinguished by water. He walked heavily, jerking his clumsy frame at every step. Some of his movements called to mind the awkward shuffling of an owl in a cage, when it feels that it is being stared at, but can scarcely see anything itself out of its large yellow eyes, blinking between sleep and fear. An ancient and inexorable misery had fixed ...
— Liza - "A nest of nobles" • Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev |
