"Humped" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... pacing up and down the room, with his hands clasped lightly behind his humped shoulders, busy in thought. For, indeed, he had much to think of, much to plan, much to execute, and but little time in which to do what he had to do. Fortune had greatly favored him so far. The friends he had summoned had come at his call. One more of his enemies had been swept ...
— The Duke's Motto - A Melodrama • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... forty beds in the room with mine, all of them occupied. All hands were snoring, and the fellow in the next cot was going it with the cut-out wide open, breaking all records. Most of the beds sagged like a hammock. Mine humped up in the middle like a pile ...
— A Yankee in the Trenches • R. Derby Holmes
... race—surpassing, it was said, the finest bull in the Yellowstone preserves or in the guarded Canadian herd of the North. Little short of twelve feet in length, a good five foot ten in height at the tip of his humped and huge fore-shoulders, he seemed to justify the most extravagant tales of pioneer and huntsman. His hind-quarters were trim and fine-lined, built apparently for speed, smooth-haired, and of a grayish lion-color. But his fore-shoulders, mounting ...
— Kings in Exile • Sir Charles George Douglas Roberts
... the eagle-eyed, remarked to her mistress: "Well, all's I can say is that I never see such a change in a body as there is in Mr. Bangs. He used to be so—so quiet, you know, all the time, and he is yet most of it. When I used to come along and find him all humped over thinkin', and I'd ask him what he was thinkin' about, he'd kind of jump and wake up and say, 'Eh? Oh, nothin', nothin,' Primmie, really. Er—quite so—yes.' And then he'd go to sleep again, as you might say. But he don't do so now; my savin' soul, no! This mornin' ...
— Galusha the Magnificent • Joseph C. Lincoln
... the horns are both longer and thicker in the bull than in the cow, and in the cow-banteng (Bos sondaicus) the horns are remarkably small, and inclined much backwards. In the domestic races of cattle, both of the humped and humpless types, the horns are short and thick in the bull, longer and more slender in the cow and ox; and in the Indian buffalo, they are shorter and thicker in the bull, longer and more slender in the cow. In the wild gaour (B. gaurus) the horns are mostly both longer and thicker ...
— The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex • Charles Darwin
... riding slowly and in silence, out of the unknown east. It was the multitudinous beat of their horses' hoofs which caused that low throbbing in his ears. Some were so close to him as he looked down upon them that he could see clearly their thin wiry horses, and the strange humped figures of the swarthy riders, sitting forward on the withers, shapeless bundles, their short legs hanging stirrupless, their bodies balanced as firmly as though they were part of the beast. In those nearest he could see the bow and the quiver, the long spear and the short sword, with the coiled ...
— The Last Galley Impressions and Tales - Impressions and Tales • Arthur Conan Doyle
... meant more to me than anything else. I was never so happy as when I was sitting humped up over a book, in some obscure corner of the house, where Uncle Landon, now grown the incarnate demon of my life, could ...
— Tramping on Life - An Autobiographical Narrative • Harry Kemp
... searched the eyes of the white man. They seemed to beg of him the answer to a terrible question. It was always the same question. It had been asked of Pharaoh. They asked it of Leopold. For hours, squatting on the iron deck-plates, humped on their naked haunches, crowding close together, they muttered apparently interminable criticisms of Everett. Their eyes never left him. He resented this unceasing scrutiny. It got upon his nerves. He was sure ...
— Once Upon A Time • Richard Harding Davis
... limb looks light, almost slender,—such is the perfection of that miraculous marble. I never felt as if I touched the life of the old Greeks until I looked on that statue.]—Here is something very odd, to be sure. An Eden of all the humped and crooked creatures! What could have been in her head when she worked out such a fantasy? She has contrived to give them all beauty or dignity or melancholy grace. A Bactrian camel lying under a palm. A dromedary flashing up the sands,—spray of the dry ocean sailed by the "ship of the desert." ...
— The Professor at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes (Sr.)
... the works in the morning, he found Mills humped on a box beside the fireplace in the old cabin, reading "The Man Who Couldn't Die." At noon he was gone somewhere. Over the noon meal in the split-cedar mess-house, the other bolt cutters spoke derisively of the man who laid off work for half a day to read a book. That was beyond ...
— The Hidden Places • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... Wild Fire stood quivering. The girl's hat swept through the air in front of its eyes. The horse woke to galvanized action. The back humped. It shot into the air with a writhing twist of the body. All four feet struck the ground together, straight and stiff as ...
— Tangled Trails - A Western Detective Story • William MacLeod Raine
... landscape; old oak woods, hale and hearty as ever; old temples buried in ivy; old shrines of old heroes, deep buried in broad groves of bay trees; old rivers laden down with heavy-freighted canoes; humped hills, like droves of camels, piled up with harvests; every sign and token of a glorious abundance, every sign and token of generations of renown. Rare sight! fine sight! none rarer, none ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. II (of 2) • Herman Melville
... no answer. It had humped itself up into a little ball, and was eyeing Jim with the ...
— Back to God's Country and Other Stories • James Oliver Curwood
... garden—perhaps less than two feet square—contrived within an ornamental shallow basin of porcelain or other material, and placed in the alcove of a guest-room by way of decoration. You may see there a tiny pond; a streamlet crossed by humped bridges of Chinese pattern; dwarf trees forming a grove, and shading the model of a Shinto temple; imitations in baked clay of stone lanterns,—perhaps even the appearance of a hamlet of thatched cottages. If the toko-niwa be not too small, you may see real fish swimming in the pond, or a ...
— The Romance of the Milky Way - And Other Studies & Stories • Lafcadio Hearn
... low tones while the professor sat to one side, humped over and buried in thought. He was a strange looking spectacle when buried in thought. His countenance then became all wrinkles, with a kind of turned-up nubbin in the middle that I knew to be a nose, only because I'd previously seen it—otherwise it might have been almost anything ...
— Wings of the Wind • Credo Harris
... contract, money or no money, men must eat. That fact loomed biggest on her daily schedule, left her no room to think overlong of other things. Her huff over, she felt rather sorry for Charlie, a feeling accentuated by sight of him humped on a log in the sun, too engrossed in his perplexities to be where he normally was at that hour, in the thick of the logging, working harder than any of ...
— Big Timber - A Story of the Northwest • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... mud-spattered; his face was haggard, his hair unkempt, his left shoulder humped up and held stiff. He stopped near the door, and stared from face to face, frowning because of the sudden invasion of his eyes by the bright candlelight. When his glance fell upon Margaret, it rested; and thereupon, just as if he were not returned ...
— Philip Winwood • Robert Neilson Stephens
... hues; the middle-aged people have soft colouring, grey greens and palish shades; and the children are very gay, in every imaginable colour and often all mixed together. The girls have all a broad sash called an obi, humped up in a funny way behind their bodies; in the children this becomes a great bow like the wings of a butterfly. The people are small, and were it not for the clogs they would look smaller still; their country is not little, for Japan is larger than ...
— Round the Wonderful World • G. E. Mitton
... awoke in the grey dawn Joe had already risen, lit the fire, packed his swag, and brewed our last pinch of tea in the billy. We drank to each other's good fortune in silence. Then, after a hand-press, Joe humped his swag and strode away, leaving me with moistened eyes. I felt I had lost my only friend. I have foregathered with much worse ...
— Reminiscences of a South African Pioneer • W. C. Scully
... one, in single file like a line of enormous marching insects, they crawled down the wall and humped along on their tentacles—around the ditch ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science September 1930 • Various
... where camels, with their heads out straight, and their feet bent under in front, are sitting in hundreds. They used to be here in thousands, but since the opening of the Transcaspian railway some years ago now, the number of these humped beasts of burden has sensibly diminished. Just compare one of these beasts with a goods ...
— The Adventures of a Special Correspondent • Jules Verne
... ever. He was flat on his side, with his spine humped up, moaning and straining at intervals. But now relief was in sight—so thought the men. With a tin dipper they tried to pour some relief into the open mouth of the sufferer, who had so little appreciation that he simply taxed his remaining ...
— Rolf In The Woods • Ernest Thompson Seton
... century, and the buffalo first appeared in Italy about A.D. 600, though it is unknown whence or by whom he was introduced. [Footnote: Erdkunde, viii., Asien, 1ste Abtheuung, pp. 660,758. Hehn, Kuttonpflanzen, p. 845.] The Arabian single-humped camel, or dromedary, has been carried to the Canary Islands, partially introduced into Australia, Greece, Spain, and even Tuscany, experimented upon to little purpose in Venezuela, and finally imported by the American Government ...
— The Earth as Modified by Human Action • George P. Marsh
... an arrow of sunlight breaks through the shields of clouds, and kisses the brown earth with a quivering spot of light. Across the sloping, unkept lawn, about midway between the house and the whitewashed gate leading from the yard, a rabbit hops, aimlessly, his back humped up, and his white tail showing plainly amid his sombre surroundings. I can see the muscles about his nostrils twitching, as he stops now and again to nibble at a withered tuft of grass. A lonely jay flits from one ...
— The Love Story of Abner Stone • Edwin Carlile Litsey
... to him that, on this occasion only, the visit being for the purposes of parley and not of attack, pistols might be looked on as non-essentials. Whatever his arguments, they were successful, for, finally, humped as to the back and muttering, Buck ...
— The Little Nugget • P.G. Wodehouse
... see it. Jonathan took ship for the States, but I went shepherding, and grew so lazy that if my stick dropped to the ground I wouldn't bend my back to pick it up. But when I heard of the diggings, I woke up, humped my swag, and ran away—I was always man enough for that— and I don't intend ...
— The Book of the Bush • George Dunderdale
... the two-humped Bactrian camel which the Syrians and Egyptians compare with an elephant. See p. 221 (the neo-Syrian) Book of Kalilah ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton
... legs seemed to have lost their desire to walk. She felt glad of that, too, because she was too tired to walk, anyway, and the baby was very sweet. Then, once more, a long shadow came between her and the moon and someone bent over her. Ah, 'twas Daddy Skinner, the same beloved, heavy humped-shoulders—the same precious face, and he was fondling the moon baby, and twice kissed her with tender, twitching lips. She smiled happily and moved a little in the snow. She tried to catch Daddy's hand, tried to call his dear name, but only a little sound ...
— The Secret of the Storm Country • Grace Miller White
... shoulders. He took a turn of the rope around the saddle horn. At last he had mastered the knack of the thing! Why, it was as easy as rolling pie-crust! He was about to wonder what he was going to do next, when the cow—which happened to be a large and active steer—humped itself and departed ...
— Sundown Slim • Henry Hubert Knibbs
... he was alone. About him the room, save for the yellow night-light above his head, was dark, humped with shadows, with grey pools of light near the windows, and a golden bar that some lamp beyond the house flung upon the wall. Ernest Henry lay and, now and again, cautiously felt the bump on his forehead; there was butter ...
— The Golden Scarecrow • Hugh Walpole
... assumed is far from what it should be in order to insure health. As a rule, we sit humped forward, with a decided bend in the spine, ultimately developing splendid examples of what we call round shoulders. The spine, while sitting, should be held as nearly straight as possible. The position of the head, to a very large extent, determines the general posture ...
— Vitality Supreme • Bernarr Macfadden
... Demavend, rich in lapis-lazuli, and as yet untrodden by any king of Assyria.* Having reached his destination, he captured two petty kings, Eparna and Shitirparna, and exiled them to Assyria, together with their people, their thoroughbred horses, and their two-humped camels,—in fine, all the possessions of their subjects. Shortly after this, three other Median chiefs, hitherto intractable—Uppis of Par-takka, Zanasana of Partukka,** Ramatea of Urakazabarna—came to Nineveh to present the king with horses and lapis-lazuli, the best of everything they possessed, ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 8 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... set to its limpid depths with the heavenly gems, glittered and darkled with its million diamond incrustations. The humped-up lump of Clinch's Dump crouched like some huge and feeding night-beast on the bank, ringed by ...
— The Flaming Jewel • Robert Chambers
... Brewer; "no wonder his shoulders air humped. But you never hears as much as a grunt from him. He knows he ain't never give her no ...
— Tess of the Storm Country • Grace Miller White
... Lady Evelyn humped her eyebrows and gave me one look. "No," says she, "I shouldn't call it brutal, exactly," and then she swallows a polite, society snicker in a way that made me mad from the ground up. Jarvis didn't lose any of that, either. I got ...
— Shorty McCabe • Sewell Ford
... colours formed his flapping wings. A truly noble bird, whose legs had the genuine strut, whose eyes shone watchfully, and whose voice had a ring that evidently struck terror into the catterpillar's soul, if it was a catterpillar. He squirmed, he wriggled, he humped as fast as he could, trying to escape; but all in vain. The tufted bird espied him, gave one warbling sort of crow, pounced upon him, and flapped ...
— Eight Cousins • Louisa M. Alcott
... succeeded his mental exertion and passion of thought. Increased age marked him, as though Time, thrusting all at once upon him bitter experiences usually spread over many years of a man's life, had weighed him down, humped his back, thinned his hair, and furrowed his forehead under the load. Within his eyes, behind the reflected blue of the sky, as he raised them to it, sat mad misery; and an almost tetanic movement of limb, which ...
— Children of the Mist • Eden Phillpotts
... clear view of a vast body, great humped shoulders, and sharp, crooked horns. But now that the danger had come his pulses ceased to leap and hand and heart were steady. The arrow sang from the bow and buried itself deep in the great bull's ...
— The Great Sioux Trail - A Story of Mountain and Plain • Joseph Altsheler
... potent to stir Caracunan officialdom to undue speed. Hence the observer from the heights, supposing that he had a personal interest in the proceedings, might have assured himself of ample time to reach the coast before the formalities could be completed and the ship put forth to sea. Had he presently humped himself to his feet with a sluggish effort, abandoned his field-glasses in favor of a pair of large greenish-brown goggles, and set out on a trail straight down the mountains, staggering a bit at the start, a second supposititious observer of the first supposititious ...
— The Unspeakable Perk • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... green of the wooded hills. Picturesque junks are lying in ranks at anchor; there are two deep-sea vessels likewise, of modern build, ships from Osaka. And there is a most romantic little breakwater built of hewn stone, with a stone lantern perched at the end of it; and there is a pretty humped bridge connecting it with a tiny island on which I see a shrine of Benten, ...
— Glimpses of an Unfamiliar Japan - First Series • Lafcadio Hearn
... That in no way diminishes my esteem for you. A well-considered esteem. I have a profound respect for the bullies who honour me with their custom. There are deformed folks amongst you. They give me no offence. The lame and the humpbacked are works of nature. The camel is gibbous. The bison's back is humped. The badger's left legs are shorter than the right, That fact is decided by Aristotle, in his treatise on the walking of animals. There are those amongst you who have but two shirts—one on his back, and the other at the pawnbroker's. ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... a time he had this pleasant dream. He thought it was summer, and he was playing, all alone, in the fair meadow called Goodman's Fields, when a dwarf only a foot high, with long red whiskers and a humped back, appeared to him suddenly and said, "Dig by that stump." He did so, and found twelve bright new pennies—wonderful riches! Yet this was not the best of it; for ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... crawled a dwarf bowed of leg, mighty of shoulder, humped of back, and with arms very long and thick and hairy. In one great fist he grasped a ponderous club shod with iron spikes, and now, resting his hands on this and his chin on his hands, he scowled at the Knight, yet ...
— The Geste of Duke Jocelyn • Jeffery Farnol
... neck was massive, and an angry red, sprinkled with long, wiry hairs. It fastened his flat-backed head to a body that was like a gorilla's, thick and wide and humped. And his arms gave an added touch of the animal, for they were so long that his great palms reached to his knees; and so sprung out at the shoulder, and so curved in at the wrist, that when they met at the fingers they formed a pair of mammoth, muscled ...
— The Rich Little Poor Boy • Eleanor Gates
... about this business," said Hugh, "but never hoped to see it. What are these Australian buffaloes? I thought they were just humped cattle ...
— An Outback Marriage • Andrew Barton Paterson
... Mark came on Sylvia by the logan-stone, it was less surprising to him than if he had not known she was there—having watched her go. She was sitting, all humped together, brooding over the water, her sunbonnet thrown back; and that hair, in which his star had caught, shining faint-gold under the sun. He came on her softly through the grass, and, when he was a little way off, thought it best to halt. If he startled her she might run away, and ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... strange as it may seem, was the time of our greatest enjoyment. Winter, when "Old Gray," who used to scamper with me astride his bare back down the lane, stood munching his fodder in the stall; when the cattle, no longer lolling or browsing in the peaceful shade, moved around the barn-yard with humped backs, shaking their heads at the cold north wind; when the trees were stripped of their foliage, and the icicles hung in fantastic rows along the naked branches, glittering like jewels in the sunshine, or rattling in the northern ...
— Life in Canada Fifty Years Ago • Canniff Haight
... waiting at a water-tank for a freight, should have unhesitatingly classified him as a "gay-cat." Gay-cat is the synonym for tenderfoot in Hobo Land. This gay-cat was well along in years—somewhere around forty-five, I should judge. His shoulders were humped a trifle, and his face ...
— The Road • Jack London
... a very nice boy. He wore a light grey-green Palm Beach suit and carried a big brown leather briefcase that looked too heavy for his soda straw-thin legs and arms. He was queer-looking because his waist was so narrow and his back so humped. And when he took off his tan Panama hat, a white fuzz exploded from his scalp. His face was pale as the moon in daylight. His broad smile showed teeth that Jack ...
— They Twinkled Like Jewels • Philip Jose Farmer
... or partly filled, and this time with a native,—a specimen of what may be called the cornstalk breed of Virginia; a slender, furtive, long-geared heifer just verging on cowhood, that in spite of my best efforts would wear a pinched and hungry look. She evidently inherited a humped back. It was a family trait, and evidence of the purity of her blood. For the native blooded cow of Virginia, from shivering over half rations of cornstalks in the open air during those bleak and windy winters, ...
— Birds and Poets • John Burroughs
... him unwaveringly; it was almost bitter and righteous enough to be funny. Waters surveyed it for a space of moments with a faint interest in its mere grotesqueness; it did not change nor shift under his scrutiny, but continued to glare inhumanly like a baleful lamp. He humped a thin shoulder in resignation and turned away. When he was halfway to the gate, he heard behind him the foreman ordering the gatekeeper not to admit ...
— Those Who Smiled - And Eleven Other Stories • Perceval Gibbon
... ornamented ruth or family bullock-cart, with a broidered canopy of two domes, like a double-humped camel, which had just been drawn into the par. Eight men made its retinue, and two of the eight were armed with rusty sabres—sure signs that they followed a person of distinction, for the common folk do not bear arms. An increasing cackle of complaints, orders, and ...
— Kim • Rudyard Kipling
... was a quiet chap. He humped over a little more when I told him, and looked thinner, and I had to help him more when he got out at the farm than I did when he got aboard at the stable. He allowed he'd go to the farm just the same. Said he didn't have any money, or any other place ...
— The Rainy Day Railroad War • Holman Day
... things at his master's behest; leapt nonchalantly for our rail or his own spar, as the case might be, across the staggering abyss; clung so well with his toes that he might almost have been classified with the quadrumana; and between times squatted humped over on the rail, watching us with bright, elfish, ...
— African Camp Fires • Stewart Edward White
... giggle a little. She giggled and opened the automobile door. She giggled and lifted Posie out. She giggled and carried Posie to the Witch's chariot. She giggled and tied the Witch's hat under Posie's chin. She giggled and tied the humped-back cape around ...
— Fairy Prince and Other Stories • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
... fair skin of Densuke and be fairer in his eyes. O'Mino had suffered both from fate and fortune. She had been born ugly; with broad, flat face like unto the moon at full, or a dish. Her back was a little humped, her arms disproportionately long, losing in plumpness what they gained in extension. She seemed to have no breasts at all, the chest forming a concavity in correspondence to the convexity of the back, with a smoothness much like the ...
— The Yotsuya Kwaidan or O'Iwa Inari - Tales of the Tokugawa, Volume 1 (of 2) • James S. De Benneville
... a feedle, That's what Renzo had, tiddy hi! 'Twas humped up in the meedle, So haul the bowline, haul! He played a tune, and the old cow died, And the skipper and crew jumped over the side, And swum away on the slack of the tide, So ...
— The Wooing of Calvin Parks • Laura E. Richards
... heard, but it wasn't my fault. Vere and I were alone, and when we saw Jim coming she got into a state of excitement, and made me vow and declare that I would not leave her. I couldn't possibly refuse, for she isn't allowed to be excited, but I twisted my chair as far away as I dared, humped up my shoulders and buried myself in my book. Jim knew I would do my best for him, but it's disgusting how difficult it is to fix your attention on one thing, and close your ears to something still more interesting. I honestly did try, and the jargon that the book and the conversation ...
— The Heart of Una Sackville • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... lifted a woeful face, gave her one vague look, and reverted to his former posture. Mayme stopped laughing. She advanced and put a friendly hand on one of the humped shoulders. ...
— From a Bench in Our Square • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... serpent had darted straight down the throat of the other. For a moment there was a fearful lashing. The choking serpent, with protruding eyes, like small green coals, and jaws distended in agony, strove to dislodge his suffocating enemy, and the other humped his back and leapt backward in frantic efforts to reach the air again. But suddenly their struggles ceased; they flattened to the ground, only the tails moving automatically. What was left looked ...
— The Valiant Runaways • Gertrude Atherton
... but the head and shoulders were seemingly enormous, and stood sharply silhouetted against the skylight in the roof immediately above. The idea flashed into my brain in a moment that I was looking into the visage of something monstrous. The huge skull, the mane-like hair, the wide-humped shoulders, suggested, in a way I did not pause to analyze, that which was scarcely human; and for some seconds, fascinated by horror, I returned the gaze and stared into the dark, inscrutable countenance above ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery, Vol. 1 (of 4) - Ghost Stories • Various
... before the fire-place in the long sitting-room. He still wore a heavy frieze travelling coat, the fronts of it hanging open. His shoulders were a trifle humped up and his head bent, as he looked down at the black and buff of the tiger skin at his feet. When Theresa approached with her jerky consequential little walk—pinkly self-conscious behind her gold-rimmed ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... sat in the midst of his spider-web, as some old Giant used to sit in his fortress waiting to pounce upon innocent people to kill them and eat them. Stingy's shoulders were all humped up, and his eight claws looked very ugly. He had already tangled up one Noisy Fly, and now he sat waiting for another. Everybody hated him; even Toadie Todson went out of his way to give a ...
— The Cheerful Cricket and Others • Jeannette Marks
... said, and pointed to our single steed, humped up in the wind, one hip high, his head ...
— The Way of a Man • Emerson Hough
... Canidae have been tamed, and that their blood, in some cases mingled together, flows in the veins of our domestic breeds. In regard to sheep and goats I can form no decided opinion. From facts communicated to me by Mr. Blyth, on the habits, voice, constitution and structure of the humped Indian cattle, it is almost certain that they are descended from a different aboriginal stock from our European cattle; and some competent judges believe that these latter have had two or three wild progenitors, whether or not these deserve to be called species. This conclusion, ...
— On the Origin of Species - 6th Edition • Charles Darwin
... heads the invisible carriers of death jarred the air with shrill crescendoes, and near them a comrade sat hacking with his bayonet at a lump of hard bread. He sprawled contentedly in the hot sun, with humped shoulders and legs far apart, and with his cap tipped far over his eyes. Every now and again he would pause, with a piece of cheese balanced on the end of his knife-blade, and look at the twisted figures by him on the grass, ...
— Notes of a War Correspondent • Richard Harding Davis
... Ericson, a back-yard boy, was going to rise and disturb all these learned people. He was frightened again. But he stood up, faced the president, affectedly folded his arms, hastily unfolded them and put his hands in his pockets, one foot before the other, one shoulder humped a little higher than ...
— The Trail of the Hawk - A Comedy of the Seriousness of Life • Sinclair Lewis
... two effects resulted from a rear knowledge of St. John's; our front view was always worthy of picture and poem, having wide portals, over which was the date of their last repair in 1622, humped Tudor gables, and mullioned ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, November 1885 • Various
... north of China, Mongolian ponies, splendid mules, and donkeys are seen in large quantities; also the two-humped camel, which carries heavy loads across the plains of Mongolia. In the south, until the advent of the railway, travellers had to choose between the sedan-chair carried on the shoulders of stalwart coolies, or the slower but more comfortable house-boat. Before steamers began to ply on the coast, ...
— The Civilization Of China • Herbert A. Giles
... have become crystallized, as it were, in age and decrepitude, and advanced no further in either—was pottering around the garden, eying askant, like an old robin, the new plough furrows. Pauper women humped their calico backs over the green slopes of the fields, searching for dandelion greens, but not digging, because ...
— Jerome, A Poor Man - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... legs straightened. His powerless arms were braced. Astonished, he glanced round for an instant, and beheld Zonla, with a world of love burning in her large lambent eyes, wreathing her round white arms about his humped shoulders. Then the poet knew the great sustaining power of love. Solon ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various
... the Farmer's dog came by, and away went the little rabbit, and up went Miss Pussy Cat's back, and her tail grew so big that had she tried to get back into the hollow stump I guess she would have had to leave her tail behind her! But she didn't. No sireemam. She just humped her back and meowed, and the Farmer's dog kept right on after Little Jack Rabbit, but of course ...
— Little Jack Rabbit and the Squirrel Brothers • David Cory
... humped and foul, and shambles like an ape; And stealthily he barricades the door, Then lays his goblin head against my lonely bed, With a "Wolf, wolf, ...
— Behind the Arras - A Book of the Unseen • Bliss Carman
... not been observed, owing to the difficulty of finding many of the species in their stations of natural repose. Caterpillars are also similarly protected. Many exactly resemble in tint the leaves they feed upon; others are like little brown twigs, and many are so strangely marked or humped, that when motionless they can hardly be taken to be living creatures at all. Mr. Andrew Murray has remarked how closely the larva of the peacock moth (Saturnia pavonia-minor) harmonizes in its ground colour with that of the young ...
— Contributions to the Theory of Natural Selection - A Series of Essays • Alfred Russel Wallace
... They humped it, making the other alley's mouth by a margin slim indeed, followed by human howls and a clattering volley of sticks ...
— A Night Out • Edward Peple
... Egypt and Syria is not the two-humped animal described by that name in books of natural history, but is, in fact, of the same family as the camel, to which it stands in about the same relation as a racer to a cart-horse. The fleetness and endurance of this creature are extraordinary. It is not usual to force ...
— Eothen • A. W. Kinglake
... There is no better land, I swear, in all the wide world round — I smelt the bush a month before we touched King George's Sound! And now I've come to settle down, the top of my desire Is just to meet a mate o' mine called 'Dunn of Nevertire'. Was raised at Nevertire — The town of Nevertire; He humped his bluey by the name of 'Dunn ...
— In the Days When the World Was Wide and Other Verses • Henry Lawson
... upon a high hill, which rises from an extensive plain, but several of its circles extend for some distance beyond the base of the hill, which is of such a size that the diameter of the city is upwards of two miles, so that its circumference becomes about seven. On account of the humped shape of the mountain, however, the diameter of the city is really more than if it were built on ...
— Ideal Commonwealths • Various
... Flahaut, who has married M. de ——, now ambassador to Holland, it is believed. This lady lives sometimes at Falaise and sometimes in Paris, where she is at present. This individual is small, dark and slightly humped; he has great intellect, and possesses the talent for intrigue in a high degree. The other personages are rich. The declarant cannot state their number. Le Chevalier informed her that affairs were going well in Paris, that they were awaiting news of the Prince's ...
— The House of the Combrays • G. le Notre
... the ranch-house. He maintained a stubborn silence after the first outburst of rage. His hands tied behind his back, a rope run round his waist and down on each side through a cinch-ring, he sat idly humped forward, ...
— Judith of Blue Lake Ranch • Jackson Gregory
... the other, the man is deformed; because there is something wanting to complete the whole idea we form of a man; and this has the same effect in natural faults, as maiming and mutilation produce from accidents. So if the back be humped, the man is deformed; because his back has an unusual figure, and what carries with it the idea of some disease or misfortune; So if a man's neck be considerably longer or shorter than usual, we say he is deformed in that part, because men are not commonly made in that manner. But surely every hour's ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. I. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... him. He had been conscious of the fact, but it had not disturbed him. He had no more thought of this middle-aged, harsh-featured New Jersey farmer's daughter than he had of one of the dining-chairs. Gordon sat humped upon himself, as he sat nowadays, a marked stoop of age was becoming visible in his broad shoulders, and he ate perfunctorily without a word. James, after a number of futile attempts to talk to Clemency, subsided himself into ...
— 'Doc.' Gordon • Mary E. Wilkins-Freeman
... got up was like some strange old child. He wore a number of little capes to hide his humped back, and his body, one thought, under his clothes was strapped together. He got on his feet nimbly like a spider, and they heard the click of a pistol lock as he whipped the weapon out of an open drawer, as though it were a habit thus always to keep a weapon at his hand to make ...
— The Sleuth of St. James's Square • Melville Davisson Post
... strong was the pleasure of the actual physical contact as yielding soil and fine hard edge met—his hands sensitively aware of the texture of that meeting through the iron frame of the plough. Up and down the field, over its humped back, widening the strip of brown between him and the hedge, always with pleasure at sight of that long rich fold of earth turning over perpetually under the sideways impact of the blade, turning over till the green turf was hidden by the ...
— Secret Bread • F. Tennyson Jesse
... column. I watched him with a curious fascination, and as I grew sleepier and sleepier that part of my consciousness which was not counting steps, recognized him as a cripple who had come out to Mesopotamia in this special role 'to do his bit.' His humped back, protruding under his mackintosh as he labored forward, bent into a hoop, must have suggested the idea which was accepted as fact until I pulled myself together at the next halt and heard the mechanical and unimaginative half of me repeat 'Four thousand, seven hundred, and ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume V (of 8) • Francis J. (Francis Joseph) Reynolds, Allen L. (Allen Leon)
... farther distance lingered upon the burnt-brick buildings of an outlying village. Beyond the river, in the broad meadow beneath the turret-clad mound, half-naked, sunburnt boys drove home the small humped cows to the milking, scaring away, as they went, the troops of white horses that pastured in the same field, clapping their hands and crying out at the little black foals that ran and frisked by the side of their white dams. ...
— Marzio's Crucifix and Zoroaster • F. Marion Crawford
... too long. He's stronger'n Samson and the Philippines rolled together, and he's humped up his back so much on the way acrost that he's started most of the nails in them slats over top of him. I tell ye what you do: Give him a bone or a chunk of tough meat to chaw on. Then he'll rest easy for a spell. Goodbye. I wish ...
— The Woman-Haters • Joseph C. Lincoln
... effect of floating off from some busy mill of thought within him. Hitherto Mr. Direck had been inclined to think this silent observant youth, with his hands in his pockets and his shoulders a little humped, as probably shy and adolescently ineffective. But the ...
— Mr. Britling Sees It Through • H. G. Wells
... of no less a person than Marshal Jeff Calkins. His shoulders were humped and his short legs bowed from continual riding, and his head was slung far forward on a gaunt neck; so that when he turned his head from one to another in speaking it was with a peculiar pendulum ...
— The Night Horseman • Max Brand
... good taste, she wore a dress of doubtful shade, puffed up by means of an extravagant pannier, and buttoned obliquely across the chest, according to that ridiculous and ungraceful style invented by flat or humped women. ...
— Other People's Money • Emile Gaboriau
... the long ridge which divides Chin Coulee from Quitter Creek. Pink, riding point, opposite the Silent One, twisted round in his saddle and looked back at the slow-moving river of horns and backs veiled in a gray dust-cloud. Down the line at intervals rode the others, humped listlessly in their saddles, their hat brims pulled low over tired eyes that smarted with dust and ...
— Rowdy of the Cross L • B.M. Sinclair, AKA B.M. Bower
... tidying herself up, feeling as she did so a little thrill of anticipation. And then she stuck her head through the kitchen door and announced that she was leaving. "Don't burn the whole place up, Maida," she cautioned with a laugh as she caught sight of her sitting, humped forward in a kitchen chair, fat elbows resting on a table, placidly viewing a vast clutter of dishes that had not yet been ...
— Stubble • George Looms
... red blanket the old Indian sat humped forward a little, smoking slowly his cigarette and studying the sketch Luck had drawn for him. With aching head and parched throat and hungry stomach, Luck sat cross-legged on the hot sand and waited, and would not let ...
— The Heritage of the Sioux • B.M. Bower
... He was anything but handsome. The truth is he was the homeliest, clumsiest-looking fellow in all the Green Forest. He was a little bigger than Bobby Coon and his body was thick and heavy-looking. His back humped up like an arch. His head was rather small for the size of his body, short and rather round. His neck was even shorter. His eyes were small and very dull. It was plain that he couldn't see far, or clearly unless what ...
— The Burgess Animal Book for Children • Thornton W. Burgess
... We humped our saddles and swags ourselves; a stiffish load too, but the night was cool, and we did our best. It was no use growling. It had to be done, and the sooner the better. It seemed a long time—following father step by step—before we came to the place where I thought ...
— Robbery Under Arms • Thomas Alexander Browne, AKA Rolf Boldrewood
... descended again into the Nile valley by the way he had come and wandered toward the mouth of the gorge. From a little distance he looked upon a scene of great activity. In the shadow of one of the dilapidated hovels, four humped oxen stood, their heavy harness still hanging upon them, though the sledges they drew, covered with stone dust and broken pieces, were some distance away from them. A company of half a score of children were ascending in single file, along a slanting plane of planks, into the hollow ...
— The Yoke - A Romance of the Days when the Lord Redeemed the Children - of Israel from the Bondage of Egypt • Elizabeth Miller
... through the copse by it in summer, just as you or I might use the passage between the trees. Towards the evening the partridges may run through to join their friends before roost-time on the ground. Or you may see a covey there now and then, creeping slowly with humped backs, and at a distance not unlike hedgehogs in their motions. The spot therefore should be approached with care; if it is only a thrush out it is a pleasure to see him at his ease and, as he deems, unobserved. If a bird or animal thinks itself noticed ...
— The Open Air • Richard Jefferies
... came scudding down out of the darkness of the upstairs to dress tumultuously at the kitchen stove. They humped and shivered, holding up their bare feet from the cold floor, like chickens in new fallen snow. They were irritable, and snarled and snapped and struck like cats and dogs. Mrs. Markham stood it for a while with mere commands to "hush up," but at last her patience gave out, and she charged down ...
— Main-Travelled Roads • Hamlin Garland
... asked Fulkerson. "Well, we must see what can be done. I supposed you would be all settled by this time, or I should have humped myself to find you something. None of those places I ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... words out of his mouth than something happened, something so sudden and surprising that Peter lost his balance and nearly fell over backward. The long bill which Peter had seen sticking forth from between those humped-up shoulders darted out and down into the water like a flash. Behind that bill was the longest neck Peter ever had seen! It was so long that Peter blinked to be perfectly sure that his eyes had not been playing him a trick. But they hadn't, for ...
— Mother West Wind "How" Stories • Thornton W. Burgess
... nature of the sport of Deer-stalking to the Chief and the Bulgarian Count. The former, who has been listening attentively, says that, from my description, stalking a stag must be very much the same as hunting the double-humped bison in Mwangumbloola, and that the only weapon he shall take with him will be a pickaxe. I have pointed out to him that I don't think this will be any use, as in deer-stalking I fancy you follow the stag at some distance, but he seems resolute about the pickaxe, and so, I suppose, I must let ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 99, Sept. 27, 1890 • Various
... Spence; Belzoni, a giant of six feet five, the centre of a group of eager auditors of the Egyptian marvels; Hallam, affable and unpretending, and a copious talker; Gifford, a small, shriveled, deformed man of sixty, with something of a humped back, eyes that diverge, and a large mouth, reclining on a sofa, propped up by cushions, with none of the petulance that you would expect from his Review, but a mild, simple, unassuming man,—he it is who prunes the contributions and takes ...
— Washington Irving • Charles Dudley Warner
... into an animal car and laid down in the straw with the sacred cow. She bellowed all night 'cause the sacred bull, her husband, had been attached for debt at Vicksburg, but when pa got in the car in his shirt sleeves and humped his shoulders up on account of the cold, the cow thought maybe she had been unnecessarily alarmed, and ...
— Peck's Bad Boy at the Circus • George W. Peck
... Krishna, upon Christ, upon Gotama the Buddha, upon Rama and Sita, upon Brahma, upon Zoroaster; strange carriages shaded by red domes that compressed a whole dream of the East in small, and drawn by humped oxen, alternating with palanquins, with stylish turnouts of the latest mode, with cavaliers upon Arabian horses; half-naked workmen, crouched in uncomfortable workshops and ornamenting sandal-wood boxes; dusky curb-stone shopkeepers, rushing at me with strenuous offerings ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 17, - No. 97, January, 1876 • Various
... outside that store. We were figuring how we were to break it in when two men came along. They went in and came out with a bag or two, and as they left the door open we figured they were coming back for more. We humped out a moderate load, and had just got it down to the boat when we saw those men, or two others, in the haze. I was for lying by, but Charly would ...
— Hawtrey's Deputy • Harold Bindloss
... mother to study braces and to fear that he will develop consumption. Yet you can study the world's health records and never find a line to prove that any man with "occupation or profession—novel reading" is recorded as dying of consumption. The humped-over attitude promotes compression of the lungs, telescoping of the diaphragm, atrophy of the abdominal abracadabra and other things (see Physiological Slush, p. 179, et seq.); ...
— The Delicious Vice • Young E. Allison
... Phillyloo Bird, his cadaverous structure humped over like a turkey on the roost, "our Hicks hath sallied forth on the trail of a full-back, a Hercules who will smash the other elevens to infinitesimal smithereens! He told the squad to just leave it ...
— T. Haviland Hicks Senior • J. Raymond Elderdice
... looked up to'n we be," said Caleb Rivers, who had been so tardy in bestirring himself that he formed a part of the women's corps. "I guess, if the truth was known, Tiverton covers more land'n Sudleigh does, on'y Sudleigh's all humped up together into a quart bowl. I guess there's countries that 'ain't heard o' Sudleigh, an' wouldn't stan' much in fear ...
— Meadow Grass - Tales of New England Life • Alice Brown
... fires burned low in the grove, and at one of them near the grove gate I found our young commander. On a bench made of a fence-rail and two forked stakes he sat between Quinn and the first-lieutenant of the Louisianians. The doctor whom I had seen before sat humped on his horse, facing the three young men and making clumsy excuses to Ferry for leaving. The other physician would stay for some time yet, he said, and he, himself, was leaving his instruments, such as they were, and would return in the morning. "Fact is, my son's a surgeon, and he taken all ...
— The Cavalier • George Washington Cable
... reached Mrs. Gelbraith's, Penrod sat patiently humped upon a gilt chair during the lengthy exchange of greetings between his mother. and Mrs. Gelbraith. That is one of the things a boy must learn to bear: when his mother meets a compeer there is always a long and dreary wait for him, while the two appear to be using strange symbols of speech, talking ...
— Penrod • Booth Tarkington
... wild light in O'Reilly's eye and for once Mr. Slack took orders from an underling. He humped himself. ...
— Rainbow's End • Rex Beach
... valley is connected with a remarkable historical event it is also associated with one of the wildest tales of mythology. Here according to old tradition died one of the humped oxen of the team of Hu Gadarn. Distracted at having lost its comrade, which perished from the dreadful efforts which it made along with the others in drawing the afanc hen or old crocodile from the lake of lakes, it fled away from its master, and wandered ...
— Wild Wales - Its People, Language and Scenery • George Borrow
... there, on the launch turned over amidship, we beheld the ghost of the black tom cat, so large, so black, with the broad moonlight shining on it; and so thin, it was the skeleton of the cat, only it looked as black as ever; its back was humped up and its tail curved; and, as it stood out in the broad moonlight, it did look twice as big as the original cat, which was the biggest I ever saw. Well, the men actually screamed; they ran aft, upsetting ...
— Poor Jack • Frederick Marryat
... dim light, cursing volubly in patois and shaking his fist at Gard; but at last, to Gard's great relief, he humped his back and stumbled away up the cutting ...
— A Maid of the Silver Sea • John Oxenham
... as he sat humped over in the Morris Chair, holding on to the Head, lest it should fall off and roll across the floor, that he had been Snooted for Fair, Plastered, Ossified, Benzoated, Piped, Pickled, Spifficated, Corned, Raddled, ...
— Knocking the Neighbors • George Ade
... was so very ugly and ill-shapen that not one of the youths of the village would have aught to say to her by way of courtship or marriage. She squinted very much; her face was very long and thin; her nose excessively large and humped; her teeth crooked and projecting; her chin almost as sharp as the bill of a loon, and her ears as large as those of a deer and similarly shaped. Her arms, which were very long, were nothing but fleshless ...
— Traditions of the North American Indians, Vol. 3 (of 3) • James Athearn Jones
... almost certainly the descendants of more than one wild form, in the same manner as has been shown to be the case with our dogs and pigs. Naturalists have generally made two main divisions of cattle: the humped kinds inhabiting tropical countries, called in India Zebus, to which the specific name of Bos Indicus has been given; and the common non-humped cattle, generally included under the name of Bos taurus. The humped cattle were domesticated, as may be seen on the Egyptian monuments, at ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication, Vol. I. • Charles Darwin
... the handsome couple pass across the room, the cynosure of all eyes. Luderic Hetherington, the rising and gifted night-watchman at the Lone Star slaughter house, and Mabel Grubb, the daughter of the millionaire owner of the Humped-backed Camel saloon, are standing under the oleanders as they ...
— Rolling Stones • O. Henry
... o' the one they shot," was Washburn's laconic observation. He looked the animal over admiringly and slapped him so vigorously under the belly that the horse grunted and humped ...
— Westerfelt • Will N. Harben
... tropical fairyland, possesses neither architectural beauty nor salient character; wooden warehouses, Malay shanties, and white-washed streets being merely attractive from the ever-changing scheme of colour painted by varieties of race and costume. Tamils of ebon blackness drive picturesque teams of humped white oxen in red waggons laden with purple sugar-cane. Noble-looking Sikhs, in spotless linen, stride past with kingly gait. Brown Siamese, in many-coloured scarves and turbans gleaming with gold thread, chaffer and bargain at open stalls with blue-robed Chinamen, ...
— Through the Malay Archipelago • Emily Richings
... and upon it impacted the early music at the dawn of things. In the planetary slime he heard the screaming struggles of fishy beasts; in the tanglewood of hot, aspiring forests were muffled roarings of gigantic mastodons, of tapirs that humped at the sky, beetles big as camels, and crocodiles with wings. Wicked creatures snarled crepitantly, and their crackling noises were echoed by lizard and dragon, ululating snouted birds and hissing leagues of snaky lengths. Stannum fled from these disturbing dreams seeking safety ...
— Melomaniacs • James Huneker
... Ruminantia.—The Gaur Oxen Humped cattle Encounter of a cow and a leopard Draft oxen Their treatment A Tavalam Attempt to introduce the camel (note) Buffaloes Sporting buffaloes Peculiar structure of ...
— Sketches of the Natural History of Ceylon • J. Emerson Tennent
... one. We followed a big bull. When he came up to blow we saw a yellow moving space on the water, then a round, gray, glistening surface, then a rugged snout. Puff! His blow was a roar. He rolled on, downward a little; the water surged white and green. When he came up to sound he humped his huge back. It was shiny, leathery, wonderfully supple. It bent higher and higher in an arch. Then this great curve seemed to slide swiftly out of sight and his wonderful tail, flat as a floor and wide as a house, emerged to swing aloft. The ...
— Tales of Fishes • Zane Grey
... could have a good look at him getting out of the car and going into the theater. At these tidings Mrs. Makebelieve roused for a moment from her strange apathy. Since tea-time she had sat (not as usual upright and gesticulating, but humped up and flaccid) staring at a blob of condensed milk on the outside of the tin. She said she thought she would go out and see the great actor, although what all the women saw in him to go mad about she did not know, but in another moment she settled back ...
— Mary, Mary • James Stephens
... He sat opposite to her in the cab, so that when he leaned forward to speak, with his hat pushed impatiently back, his big insistent face was thrust forward close to hers, and his great shoulders humped as though ...
— The Second Class Passenger • Perceval Gibbon
... Master drew his cloak about his humped shoulders, and in the flickering dim light from overhead his face stood out in all its ghastly pallor, accentuated by the dead black hair and mustache. But his eyes were burning strangely, and when they saw it the men drew back, and more than one ...
— Nuala O'Malley • H. Bedford-Jones
... closer together. With dawn, which came at about eight o'clock, Kazan and his blind mate sallied forth into the day. It was fifty degrees below zero. About them the trees cracked with reports like pistol-shots. In the thickest spruce the partridges were humped into round balls of feathers. The snow-shoe rabbits had burrowed deep under the snow or to the heart of the heaviest windfalls. Kazan and Gray Wolf found few fresh trails, and after an hour of fruitless hunting they returned ...
— Kazan • James Oliver Curwood
... Ahead lay a barren stretch of beach, humped with sand dunes. It was skirted beyond by ...
— Tom Swift and the Electronic Hydrolung • Victor Appleton
... driving the spring-cart, toward sundown, after a variety of unforeseen delays. Of a sudden out of the pink haze came a galloping figure, slightly humped, in the inspector's coat and wideawake, with a bare foot through one stirrup and only a ...
— Stingaree • E. W. (Ernest William) Hornung
... and blistered the tongue, and humped the back, and broken the legs, and eviscerated the stomach, of every person who dares to think, or even dream of harming it! May the heaviest curses of time fall upon his scoundrelly soul! May his juleps curdle in his mouth. ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... said Fritz, quite perplexed for the moment; but he was soon reassured, for the animal, which had hitherto presented itself end on towards them, so that its head and body were humped up together, now turning sideways, its change of position enabled him better to judge of its proportions. "Pshaw!" he cried out, "it's only a ...
— Fritz and Eric - The Brother Crusoes • John Conroy Hutcheson
... the general and myself many long drinks and things to eat that were not bananas. The general man trotted along at my side, leavin' all the arrangements to me. I led him up to Lafayette Square and set him on a bench in the little park. Cigarettes I had bought for him, and he humped himself down on the seat like a little, fat, contented hobo. I look him over as he sets there, and what I see pleases me. Brown by nature and instinct, he is now brindled with dirt and dust. Praise to the mule, ...
— Cabbages and Kings • O. Henry
... erect, with his hamstrings in tension, and his arms folded on his gun barrel; on the other, the lion, a gigantic specimen, humped up in the straw, with blinking orbs and brutish mien, resting his huge muzzle and tawny full-bottomed wig on his forepaws. Both calm in ...
— Tartarin of Tarascon • Alphonse Daudet
... creature winked and blinked, and balanced for a moment on sleepy legs; then at the uncontrollable shout that burst from Bertram's throat, he faced the man, humped his tiny back, bristled his diminutive tail to almost unbelievable fluffiness, ...
— Miss Billy • Eleanor H. Porter
... five men in the moonlight That by their shadows stand; Three hobble humped on crutches, And two lack each ...
— A Treasury of War Poetry - British and American Poems of the World War 1914-1917 • Edited, with Introduction and Notes, by George Herbert Clarke
... Ministers, whose functions are particular and peculiar—since Confederation. To Ottawa, Sir Thomas is little short of a miracle. The frame of mind on both sides of politics regarding Sir Thomas is not unlike that of the farmer who saw a two-humped camel for the first time. "Hell," said Ottawa, "they ain't no such animal!" Now it calls Sir Thomas White 'great'—and even ...
— The Masques of Ottawa • Domino
... who exhibited many deformities. Shoulders were slanting, humped, pulled this way and pulled that way. And notable among these latter men was the little fat man who had refused to allow his head to be glorified. His pudgy form, builded like a pear, bustled to and fro, while he swore in fishwife fashion. It appeared that some article ...
— Men, Women, and Boats • Stephen Crane
... buffalo (Bos bubalus) exists as a wild animal in North Australia; it is very liable to revert to a wild state, being little altered from its still-existing wild ancestor. A more curious case is that of the one-humped camel (Camelus dromedarius), a beast only known in domestication, and that in arid countties; yet a number of these have become feral in the Spanish marshes, where they wade ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... fallen, how changed," from the youth who had climbed the hill as the sun went down! A mere contempt to himself, the self that contemned was a coward with the self it contemned! There lay the shapeless black of a buffalo, humped upon the grass: he made a wide circuit, and swept on like a shadow driven in the wind. For the wind had arisen, and added to his terror: it blew from behind him. He reached the brow of the valley, and shot down the steep descent like ...
— Stephen Archer and Other Tales • George MacDonald
... this trim, nervous mare better than any other thing in the world. When he rode, perched like a monkey, with his thin legs held close to her sides, and his short, humped back doubled over, and his head with its long hair bobbing about as though his neck were loose-coupled somehow, he was eternally caressing her mighty withers, or feeling for the play of each iron tendon under her satin skin. And ...
— Dwellers in the Hills • Melville Davisson Post
... Jase, humped over a heap of sprouting potatoes, blinked up apathetically into the sudden flood of sweet, spring air and sunshine. "Why, hello, Billy Louise," he mumbled, his ...
— The Ranch at the Wolverine • B. M. Bower
... last she was moved to action. The mare became troublesome. The girl could no longer keep her still. The distracted animal humped her back and began to show signs of "bucking." Then came a rush of animals along the trail; they came racing for dear life, and their numbers were augmented from the wooded depths which lined ...
— The Hound From The North • Ridgwell Cullum
... erect, with a frame of iron and sinews of steel, as became a master stone-mason, stood gazing at the poor little atom of misshapen humanity who tottered over the polished wooden floor. The spinal column was sadly bent, and from between the humped shoulders the pale face peered with an old, uncanny look. Yet the boy was not otherwise ugly. His forehead was broad and smooth, and his dark blue eyes were well and deeply set. The artisan watched him for a minute in painful silence, then turned to his ...
— In the Yule-Log Glow, Book II - Christmas Tales from 'Round the World • Various
... pitch. He just humped up a few times," replied Flo, and then when she saw how Carley was going to take it she burst into a merry peal of laughter. Charley, the sheep herder was grinning, and some of the other men turned ...
— The Call of the Canyon • Zane Grey
... become a frog almost within an hour. Three things I hastened to observe: the pupils of her eyes were vertical, revealing her genus Phyllomedusa (making apt our choice of the feminine); by a gentle urging I saw that the first and second toes were equal in length; and a glance at her little humped back showed a scattering of white calcareous spots, giving the clue to her specific personality—bicolor: thus were we introduced to Phyllomedusa bicolor, alias Guinevere, and thus was established beyond doubt her close ...
— Edge of the Jungle • William Beebe |
