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Lumbering   /lˈəmbərɪŋ/   Listen
Lumbering

noun
1.
The trade of cutting or preparing or selling timber.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Lumbering" Quotes from Famous Books



... drift apart, and both founder, or one is left crippled. I shall have something to say about the actual effects of a collision presently, but I may first go on to name some other kinds of disaster. A heavy sea is rolling, and occasionally breaking, and a vessel is lumbering along from crest to hollow of the rushing seas; a big wall of water looms over her for a second, and then comes crashing down; the deck gives way—there are no water-tight compartments—and the ship becomes suddenly as unmanageable ...
— The Ethics of Drink and Other Social Questions - Joints In Our Social Armour • James Runciman

... The aspect and the mood Of everything is changed, as wont on day Of toil the crowded city moves to lay The bands of slumber for a time away, But brings not out the bustle and the din Which is her weekday aspect; and within Her walls a stilly peace prevails; the roar And noise of lumbering waggon comes no more Along the well-worn street, nor busy tread Of envoy, hurrying on, by duty led, To bank, or warehouse, or to court of law. The myriad sounds have ceased, which nature saw Were fit to wait upon the day of toil; Nor mendicant nor ballad beggar foil The sacred ...
— A Leaf from the Old Forest • J. D. Cossar

... this peculiar country we found to be, that in putting our steed-to, the English custom is reversed. The cart is "put-to," not the horse; and the latter being left standing anywhere on the road, the lumbering "garee" is dragged up to his tail, and fastened up with a combination of straps and ropes, ...
— Diary of a Pedestrian in Cashmere and Thibet • by William Henry Knight

... embody her in the hieroglyphics of the new press, might be a study for Retsch; and who will care for the lumbering pages of Von Raumer, or the wishy-washy details of Kohl, when able, in an augenblick, to bring Berlin and Vienna before him; to study the Zollverein in the copy of the King of Prussia's cogitative countenance, and ascertain the views of Metternich concerning the elder branch of the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXIX. January, 1844. Vol. LV. • Various

... girl; the car semi-circled and gathered speed, shooting through the traffic which was lumbering towards ...
— The Kingdom Round the Corner - A Novel • Coningsby Dawson

... I had to do was to sit my saddle, and apply just that final touch of judgment denied even the wisest of the lower animals. Time and again the turn was so quick that the stirrup swept the ground. At last the cow, convinced of the uselessness of further effort to return, broke away on a long lumbering run to the open plain. She was stopped and held by the men detailed, and so formed the nucleus of the new cut-herd. Immediately Little G, his ears working in conscious virtue, jog-trotted back into the ...
— Arizona Nights • Stewart Edward White

... crossed each other, like dancing fires. In a sort of panic, the two strained at the solid wheel. A huger wave came roaring by, flung the enormous square prow high in air. As it fell off with a shock, Madden felt a little quiver pass over the lumbering pontoons. The dock ceased taking the upheaved water with her slow, ...
— The Cruise of the Dry Dock • T. S. Stribling

... and Castlereagh, and O'Connell, and fifty more have failed to steer that lumbering old vessel off the mudbank on which she stranded at some time in the dark ages; in fact, nobody except Oliver Cromwell ever did understand how to make Ireland prosperous and respectable, and he began by depopulating her. And here is a fresh-coloured ...
— Vixen, Volume II. • M. E. Braddon

... wrong, for he died when I was fifteen, worn out with clearin' woodland, and working all winter in the deep snow at lumbering, to keep us in bread and herrin'. He was a disappointed, worn-out old man at forty, and it was only when he told of the good old times of his youth that I ever seen him smile ...
— Adrift in the Ice-Fields • Charles W. Hall

... there, and in the small brick house at the end of the fuse building there were stored masses of explosive, enough to destroy a town. It was there, of course, that Herman was to place the bomb. She knew how he would do it, carefully, methodically, and with what a lumbering awkward gait he ...
— Dangerous Days • Mary Roberts Rinehart

... ocean flocks, resting their wave-tossed limbs—great ocean bulls, and cows, and calves. He marks them all. The wary old male turns his broad moustached nostrils to the tainted gale of man and horse sweeping down upon them, and the whole herd are simultaneously lumbering a retreat. And now he goes, plying his little short whip, charging the whole herd to cut off their retreat for the pleasure and fun of galloping in and over and amongst fifty great bodies, rolling and tumbling and tossing, ...
— Acadia - or, A Month with the Blue Noses • Frederic S. Cozzens

... the Sierra Ancha. One hour later, just as ten was striking on the spiral of the office clock, two sudden shots were heard on the flats to the north-west, and the little herd of horses and mules, not two dozen in all, grazing under cover of the rifles of Sentries 3 and 4, came limping, lumbering in, fast as hoppled feet would permit and without sign of a herdsman. Number Three, a veteran of the war days, let drive with his fifty calibre Springfield, the gun of the day, and sent up a yell ...
— Tonio, Son of the Sierras - A Story of the Apache War • Charles King

... filled space on the Bench opposite is of direful import. The MARKISS has no peer now GRANVILLE is gone; the two were in all characteristics and mental attitudes absolutely opposed, and yet, like oil and vinegar, the mixing perfected the salad of debate. The lumbering figure of the black-visaged Marquis at one side of the table talking at large to the House, but with his eye fixed on GRANVILLE; at the other, the dapper figure, with its indescribable air of old-fashioned gentlemanhood, the light of his smile ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 100, April 25, 1891 • Various

... of Page & Company; that dotted all over the vast wheat tracts of Minnesota and Montana were their little receiving elevators where they bought grain of the farmers; that miles of wheat-laden freight cars were already lumbering eastward along the railroad lines of the North. He had a touch of imagination, and something of the enormous momentum of that Northern wheat took possession of him. It would come to Chicago, and he must be ready for it. It would be absurd to be ...
— Calumet "K" • Samuel Merwin and Henry Kitchell Webster

... inland to-day,—an awful, inarticulate roar. All else was solemn silence. The great salt marshes rolled away on one side of the road, lush and rank,—one solitary dead tree rising from them, with a fish-hawk's uncouth nest lumbering its black trunk; they were still as the grave; even the ill-boding bird was gone long ago, and kept no more its lonely vigil on the dead limb over wind and wave. She glanced uneasily from side to side: high up on the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 91, May, 1865 • Various

... than it could stand. With a very bad grace it hobbled off to the Durian tree, ascended it with a sort of lazy, lumbering facility, and hurled down some of the fruit without warning those ...
— Blown to Bits - or, The Lonely Man of Rakata • Robert Michael Ballantyne

... six miles, the coach rattled by. It had started more than an hour later. Herbert turned out for the lumbering vehicle, and waited for it to pass. There was a boy on top, but such was the cloud of dust that he could not at first recognize him. It happened, however, that one of the traces broke, so that the driver was compelled to make a stop just as he overtook our ...
— Herbert Carter's Legacy • Horatio Alger

... hardly imagine any spectacle more terrifying," said an eyewitness, "than these monsters must have presented to German eyes when, after a hurricane bombardment, through the smoke and dust of bursting shells, the great shapes came lumbering forward in the gray light of dawn. The enemy evidently had no hint of what they were. They emptied their rifles at them, and the things came rolling on. They turned on their machine guns, and the bullets only struck sparks ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume VI (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various

... with her, and after what he had said to Davie she had little hopes of obtaining a kind hearing from him just yet. She found Sandy Young's wagon nearly ready to start for Stirling, and she easily got a seat in it. It was a slow, lumbering conveyance, but she was in no hurry; and she enjoyed very much the leisurely drive through lanes, and inland hamlets, and queer old towns. It was a strange and wonderful experience to a girl who had seen little of nature but the sea and the rocks, and ...
— A Daughter of Fife • Amelia Edith Barr

... trucks near Todgers's than you would suppose whole city could ever need; not active trucks, but a vagabond race, for ever lounging in the narrow lanes before their masters' doors and stopping up the pass; so that when a stray hackney-coach or lumbering waggon came that way, they were the cause of such an uproar as enlivened the whole neighbourhood, and made the bells in the next churchtower vibrate again. In the throats and maws of dark no-thoroughfares near Todgers's, individual wine-merchants and wholesale dealers in grocery-ware had perfect ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens

... him, and whipped up her horse to a smart trot. The white steed being no trotter, Parker followed at a lumbering canter. Alice, possessed by a shamefaced fear that he was making her ridiculous, soon checked her speed; and the white horse subsided to a walk, marking its paces by deliberate bobs of its unfashionably long mane ...
— Cashel Byron's Profession • George Bernard Shaw

... that festoon its dusky beams, appears still to await the labour of the carpenter and mason. At one end of the room, in a recess, were a number of barrels piled one upon another, containing bundles of official documents. Large quantities of similar rubbish lay lumbering the floor. It was sorrowful to think how many days, and weeks, and months, and years of toil had been wasted on these musty papers, which were now only an encumbrance on earth, and were hidden away in this forgotten corner, ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... the lawless yet not unkindly population of Haworth, in the West Riding, the Rev. Patrick Bronte brought his wife and six little children in February, 1820, seven heavily-laden carts lumbering slowly up the long stone street bearing the ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol IX. • Edited by Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton

... they were overtaken and the running fight went on. Then, little by little, the pursuing columns began to creep past the crumbling rear-guard; cavalry pounced on the foragers searching the countryside for food and captured the lumbering provision-wagons and the railroad supply trains which had been ordered to meet the fleeting army, while hundreds upon hundreds of starving men dropped from the ranks as they neared the bypaths leading to ...
— On the Trail of Grant and Lee • Frederick Trevor Hill

... were doing an excellent business, their lumbering vehicles jolting noisily down into the water with scarcely a moment's intermission. The band, drawn up in front of the hideous statue to George the Fourth, which so greatly disfigures the town, was discoursing, fairly well, ...
— The Missing Merchantman • Harry Collingwood

... Impatient to lessen the distance that separated her from her destination, she quickly selected a fly. A porter helped the driver with her luggage; she settled herself with her baby and Jill, and very soon they were lumbering down the ill-paved street. Her mind was so intent on the fact of her increasing nearness to the loved one, that she gave but a passing remembrance to the occasion of her last visit to Dippenham, when she had met Perigal after letting him know that she was about to become ...
— Sparrows - The Story of an Unprotected Girl • Horace W. C. Newte

... summit of which one might not have laid one's hand. The town still sent up a melancholy smoke to heaven as we entered it late in the evening, and the last torch of war shone from a thatched roof at the uttermost limit of the place against the lowering darkness of the sky. The arabajee who drove the lumbering little vehicle in which our few belongings were stored fell upon his knees in the middle of the stony desert street, and delivered to mean impassioned address of which I could not make out one syllable. My dragoman translated for my benefit 'Man with ...
— The Making Of A Novelist - An Experiment In Autobiography • David Christie Murray

... in the morning and out on the terrace. She felt no further uneasiness on the score of the disguise now. Henson was certain to be inquisitive, it was part of his nature, but he was not going to learn anything. Chris smiled as she saw Henson lumbering towards her. He seemed all the better for his ...
— The Crimson Blind • Fred M. White

... one side and ran for the open meadow. Wakayoo did not stir as Baree sped past him—no more than if he had been a bird or a rabbit. Then came another breath of air, heavy with the scent of man. This, at last, put life into him. He turned and began lumbering after Baree into the meadow trap. Baree, looking back, saw him coming—and thought it was pursuit. Nepeese and Pierrot came over the slope, and at the same instant they saw both ...
— Baree, Son of Kazan • James Oliver Curwood

... Lumbering develops such men as Pindar saw when he pictured Jason, his forest hero. Life is a hearty and vigorous movement to them, not a drooping slouch. Summer is their season of preparation; winter, of the campaign; spring, of victory. All over ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 58, August, 1862 • Various

... ridge, covered with brush in spots, and in spots bare. The three men climbed on, for a view ahead, but Charley and Billy branched off, to a place that looked lower. Then, suddenly, Charley caught sight of it—a great grayish-brown beast, lumbering along a slope just ahead, and making for the top not far before. Sometimes he was in the brush, sometimes in the open; but Charley knew ...
— Gold Seekers of '49 • Edwin L. Sabin

... reopened some old diggings across the range to the north of Calkins, and some small fragments of business drifted the way of the little cattle town. Terry found a long line of a dozen horses waiting to be shod before the blacksmith shop. One great wagon was lumbering out at the farther end of the street, with the shrill yells of the teamster calling back as he picked up his horses one by one with his voice. Another freight-wagon stood at one side, blocking half the street. ...
— Black Jack • Max Brand

... on to the seat, and with some little amount of crushing and squeezing got settled in their places, and at the captain's word, "Half-speed ahead!" the voyage commenced. They went lumbering and clattering through the outskirts of the town, and at length, after having roused the dormant wit of one shop-boy, who shouted "Knives to grind!" after them, they gained the highroad. For half a mile the voyage was prosperous enough; then the ...
— The Triple Alliance • Harold Avery

... his coolest, calmest moods he realized that there was small possibility of his ever sailing the Spanish main like Amyas Leigh, or exploring the interior of Africa like Livingstone, he felt quite settled in his own mind that, following in his father's footsteps, he would adopt lumbering as his business. 'Tis true, his father was only an agent or foreman, and might never be anything more; but even that was not to be despised, and then, with a little extra good fortune, he might in time become an owner of "limits" and mills himself. Why not? ...
— The Young Woodsman - Life in the Forests of Canada • J. McDonald Oxley

... two pigeons in one nest Folded in each other's wings, They lay down in their curtained bed: Like two blossoms on one stem, Like two flakes of new-fall'n snow, Like two wands of ivory 190 Tipped with gold for awful kings. Moon and stars gazed in at them, Wind sang to them lullaby, Lumbering owls forbore to fly, Not a bat flapped to and fro Round their rest: Cheek to cheek and breast to breast ...
— Goblin Market, The Prince's Progress, and Other Poems • Christina Rossetti

... as I can be, but I can't take money for amusing myself. You would be paying me for taking the most delightful excursion in the world, and there wouldn't be any other side to it. I couldn't make good to you in any way. I don't know anything about lumbering, ...
— Dick in the Everglades • A. W. Dimock

... well, how we watched from the Hartland Cliffs a great barque, which came drifting and rolling in before the western gale, while we followed her up the coast, parsons and sportsmen, farmers and Preventive men, with the Manby's mortar lumbering behind us in a cart, through stone gaps and track-ways, from headland to headland.—The maddening excitement of expectation as she ran wildly towards the cliffs at our feet, and then sheered off again inexplicably;—her foremast ...
— Prose Idylls • Charles Kingsley

... happened to break the even tenour of our journey. Our progress, however, with so much goods and chattels, and over such roads, was necessarily slow; yet we never envied the lumbering diligence that now and then ...
— Our Home in the Silver West - A Story of Struggle and Adventure • Gordon Stables

... days after Theodora North had arrived at St. Quentin, when, sitting at her post one morning, she heard the lumbering stage stop before the inn door. She rose and went to the window, half mechanically, half anxiously. She had been expecting Lady Throckmorton, for so long a time, that it seemed almost impossible that it could be ...
— Theo - A Sprightly Love Story • Mrs. Frances Hodgson Burnett

... after his friends. They scrambled up the ladder to the cab. The tractor picked up speed, lumbering into ...
— Fee of the Frontier • Horace Brown Fyfe

... garrison. After much scrupulous precaution the gate was opened and some person admitted. The house-door was next unbarred, unlocked, and unchained, a dog's feet pattered upstairs in great haste, and the animal was heard scratching and whining at the door of the room. Next a heavy step was heard lumbering up, and Mac-Guffog's voice in the character of pilot—'This way, this way; take care of the step; that's the room.' Bertram's door was then unbolted, and to his great surprise and joy his terrier, Wasp, rushed into the apartment and almost devoured him with caresses, ...
— Guy Mannering, or The Astrologer, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott

... In a lumbering attic room, Where, for want of light and air, Years had died within the gloom, Leaving dead dust everywhere, Everywhere, Hung the portrait of a lady, With a face ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 30, April, 1860 • Various

... foretell rain. As they drove through the larger and wider streets, from the station to the hotel, they had to stop constantly; great loaded lurries blocked up the not over-wide thoroughfares. Margaret had now and then been into the city in her drives with her aunt. But there the heavy lumbering vehicles seemed various in their purposes and intent; here every van, every waggon and truck, bore cotton, either in the raw shape in bags, or the woven shape in bales of calico. People thronged the footpaths, most of them well-dressed as regarded the material, but with a slovenly ...
— North and South • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell

... Stella's sort is able to exercise a proper control over her countenance, she has absolutely no right to discuss her husband with his bachelor friends. It is unkind; for it causes them to feel like social outcasts and lumbering brutes and Peeping Toms. If they know the husband well, it positively awes them; for, after all, it is a bit overwhelming, this sudden glimpse of the simplicity, and the credulity, and the merciful blindness of women in certain matters. Besides, a bachelor has no business to know such things; ...
— The Cords of Vanity • James Branch Cabell et al

... manoeuvre, for close at hand on the lee side of her the galleon came lumbering along. Her captain, too, had seen the peril, and had elected to meet it by tacking under his consort's stern. But he was too near, and the other ship fell off and was swept to leeward too rapidly. His own ship, cumbersome and unwieldy, ...
— Sir Henry Morgan, Buccaneer - A Romance of the Spanish Main • Cyrus Townsend Brady

... mission they came upon Don Mike and his father's enemy. In the first mile, the latter had ridden the gray out; spent, gasping, the gallant animal was proceeding at a leg-weary, lumbering gallop when Miguel Farrel, following on Panchito at half that gallant animal's speed, came up with Loustalot. Straight at the big gray he drove, "hazing" him off the road and stopping him abruptly. At the same time, he leaped from Panchito full on top of Loustalot, ...
— The Pride of Palomar • Peter B. Kyne

... He heard your lumbering noise, He gave a wonderful innocent smile; I believe what you did pleased Him well enough, for He showed no sign to the contrary. But I marvel in my heart, why He keeps such a dog; had I known that before,[55] I fear I should not have had heart enough to ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan

... extraction and refining; manganese, and gold mining; chemicals; ship repair; food and beverage; textile; lumbering ...
— The 2005 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency

... the coach,—the late light ebbing in golden tides over the grass at her feet, and touching her face now and then through the branches of trees, her head bent a little, with eager, parted lips, and the girlish color on her cheeks, her hand shading her eyes as they strained for a sight of the lumbering coach. She must have been a magnificent woman when she was young,—not unlike, I have heard it said, to that far-off ancestress whose name she bore, and whose sorrowful story has made her sorrowful beauty immortal. Somewhere abroad there is a reclining ...
— Men, Women, and Ghosts • Elizabeth Stuart Phelps

... bearing he might easily have been taken for a gentleman of station who had been pleased for once in a way to walk instead of drive. He had almost reached the arched gateway near his inn, when he met a heavy country carriage lumbering along the road. In it was seated a stoutish man, well dressed, and still fairly young. His hands were clasped across his stomach, his eyelids drooped, and he seemed about to doze off, when of a sudden he caught sight of Casanova, and a great change took place ...
— Casanova's Homecoming • Arthur Schnitzler

... and just as the sun was beginning to give us a specimen of his power, our lumbering escort of Mexican soldiers galloped up (orders having been given by the government that a fresh escort shall be stationed every six leagues) and announced the approach of the diligence. We were agreeably disappointed by the arrival of a handsome new coach, made in the United ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon De La Barca

... that they are strangers and pilgrims on the earth. "For they that say such things declare plainly that they seek a country." But all these convictions are useless for me to state since I have not had the courage of them. What a worm one is under the cart-wheels—big, clumsy, careless, lumbering cart-wheels—of public opinion. I might have been giving my mind to fight against Sloth and Stupidity: instead, I am giving my body (by a refinement of cowardice) to fight against the most enterprising ...
— Aspects of Literature • J. Middleton Murry

... at a distance heard the bear lumbering off slowly through the woods. They went forward a short distance, then came ...
— American Boy's Life of Theodore Roosevelt • Edward Stratemeyer

... boy heard all the clamor. He also sighted the lumbering bear, which, after taking one good look at the approaching canoes, turned to shuffle back again into the shelter of the protecting brush, as though he did not much fancy any closer acquaintance ...
— The Boy Scouts in the Maine Woods - The New Test for the Silver Fox Patrol • Herbert Carter

... building. Then back to the hillside, with new sacks of food and implements; flour and pork, a cooking-pot, a spade—out and back along the way he had come, carrying loads all the time. A born carrier of loads, a lumbering barge of a man in the forest—oh, as if he loved his calling, tramping long roads and carrying heavy burdens; as if life without a load upon one's shoulders were a miserable ...
— Growth of the Soil • Knut Hamsun

... had driven off, and the two girls walked through Lafayette Square into Pennsylvania Avenue to get another. The wide streets were filled, as of old, with skurrying orderlies, groups of lounging officers, and lumbering army wagons. But even the untrained eyes of Olympia soon took account of the better discipline, the more businesslike celerity of the men on duty as well as the flying couriers. The White House was gay ...
— The Iron Game - A Tale of the War • Henry Francis Keenan

... 1777. That is not yesterday, yet I remember the piece very well. So I remained at home, smoked a cigar, and worked leisurely upon the review of the Culloden Papers, which, by dint of vamping and turning, may make up the lacking copy for the "Works" better, I think, than that lumbering Essay ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott

... Gilpin, and away Went postboy at his heels, The postboy's horse right glad to miss The lumbering ...
— The Diverting History of John Gilpin • William Cowper

... ejaculated, letting himself down in a lumbering way from the wheel, and then rubbing his right hand up and down his trouser-leg to get it clean; "hah! now we'll have ...
— Brownsmith's Boy - A Romance in a Garden • George Manville Fenn

... front and the rear of the Inn, at the same instant it seemed, the sharp staccato of a fusilade of pistol shots, and the lumbering blows as of beams being ...
— The Inn at the Red Oak • Latta Griswold

... now for dear life. The slender Harvard quarterback was being pressed from front and back. He had been forced close to the side line in an effort to evade the tackler who was lumbering at him across water-soaked sod. But, it was now evident that Broadhurst must face this peril. The soggy condition underfoot had made it impossible for him to evade the Eli even by keeping close to the side line. There was no turning outward. To do so would carry the ball out of ...
— Interference and Other Football Stories • Harold M. Sherman

... Chinese servants offering delicate food, coming at the touch of a bell, opening doors, carrying trays. It was not really as imposing as Mark thought. There were people who sniffed at the Alstons' way of living, in that queer, old-fashioned house far down town with the antiquated, lumbering furniture their father had bought when he married. But Mark had not the advantage of a comparative standard. Her setting gained its splendor not only from his inexperience, but by comparison with his own. He saw their two homes in contrast, just as he ...
— Treasure and Trouble Therewith - A Tale of California • Geraldine Bonner

... induced, upon the payment of an exorbitant sum, to take the boy as a passenger, and at dawn next morning they started upon their slow and tedious journey, followed by the good wishes of the Jewish community. It was an all-day trip to Kief. Over stone and stubble, through ditch and mire moved the lumbering, springless vehicle, and Mendel, who quitted Poltava with an incipient fever, arrived at his destination in a state of utter exhaustion. The carrier set him down at the outskirts of the town. It was as much as his position was worth to have harbored a Jew—a fugitive from the military ...
— Rabbi and Priest - A Story • Milton Goldsmith

... his mind no premonition of trouble on his receiving from the lumbering stage an envelope directed to him in Elizabeth's own hand. It was only that she was getting able to write to him herself. He took it unopened up to the bench by the May rose to read its contents at his leisure away from the stage-driver's ...
— Life at High Tide - Harper's Novelettes • Various

... weakest airs knead and mould it into ever-varying shapes. Now it has a lolling, impudent tongue—a truly unruly member, wagging disrespectfully at the decent night. Now a perky top-knot, and presently no head at all. Lumbering, low-lying, cowardly—a plaything, a toy, a mockery, a sport for the wilful zephyrs. Now it lifts a bully head as it creeps unimpeded across the sea and spreads, infinitely soft, all-encompassing. As if by magic the mainland is blotted ...
— My Tropic Isle • E J Banfield

... bay was a mountainous top, and along its waters were masses of rocks, gayly painted with lichens and stained with metallic tints of orange and scarlet. The unchanging growth of stunted pines was the only forest in sight, though Ha-Ha Bay is a famous lumbering port, and some schooners now lay there receiving cargoes of odorous pine plank. The steamboat-wharf was all astir with the liveliest toil and leisure. The boat was taking on wood, which was brought ...
— A Chance Acquaintance • W. D. Howells

... refining; manganese, gold; chemicals, ship repair, food and beverages, textiles, lumbering ...
— The 2007 CIA World Factbook • United States

... the hunched-up crouching figure on the opposite bank made a lumbering movement forward as though about to throw itself into the water at the ...
— The Outdoor Girls at Wild Rose Lodge - or, The Hermit of Moonlight Falls • Laura Lee Hope

... of the strangest battles that the Universe has seen. Lumbering with our suits and the extra gravity, we circled each other under the blazing sky. The blue-white of Rigel shimmered off our suits and the arcs of our blades as we cut and guarded—each wary now, realizing that a ...
— Out Around Rigel • Robert H. Wilson

... that having escorted Lady Mabel to the party, it was his privilege to see her safe home again. Bidding the footman keep the coach door open, he sprang into the house for his hat, and in a moment was again seated by her side. The lumbering vehicle rolled out of the praca and down the sloping street to the western gate of Elvas. As the guard there closed the gate behind them, and shut them out from the light of the lantern, they seemed to plunge into "outer darkness." ...
— The Actress in High Life - An Episode in Winter Quarters • Sue Petigru Bowen

... looked down at Ugolone, lumbering along behind the van. If they jumped it must be almost on top of him, and in the darkness he looked as big as a house and very alarming. Even Beppo lost his swagger, and as for Beppina, she was speechless with terror. The ...
— The Italian Twins • Lucy Fitch Perkins

... obstructions to the popular spread of the art among EDUCATED MINDS. Argues the scientist: The "fiery influence of Aries," if depending upon the stars of that constellation, ought now to be shedding forth their caloric from the sign Pisces, and Aries ought to be lumbering along with the earthy Taurine nature. So, also, the lords of these signs ought to be changed, but that they are not can be proved by the fact that our earliest records of that dim, historic past show, equally as well as your latest "text-book," that Mars is the lord ...
— The Light of Egypt, Volume II • Henry O. Wagner/Belle M. Wagner/Thomas H. Burgoyne

... heard the roar and din of the great city—that maelstrom which now seemed ready to engulf him. No sound of merry laughter reached him, only rumbling of countless wheels, the slow thud of never-ending, crowded stages lumbering over the cobbles, the cries of the hucksters selling hot corn, and the ceaseless scrapings of a ...
— The Fortunes of Oliver Horn • F. Hopkinson Smith

... screamed Amy, and she pointed to a huge, hairy creature lumbering down the middle ...
— The Outdoor Girls of Deepdale • Laura Lee Hope

... there presently came lumbering to our side an ancient and decrepit vehicle which would have excited my laughter but for the seriousness of the count's face. The top of the conveyance had evidently long since been torn off leaving, only the frame: the copper fastenings had been removed: the ...
— The Hohenzollerns in America - With the Bolsheviks in Berlin and other impossibilities • Stephen Leacock

... heart of the young hunter swelled with a wild desire to bring down the noble game, the mustang bounded away in pursuit of the very buffalo which had been indicated by the trapper. As the rider saw himself drawing rapidly near the huge body, lumbering awkwardly but rapidly along, he was seized with a fluttering which, perhaps was natural, but which, unless overcome, was fatal to any hopes of procuring any supper. The mustang drew steadily nearer, Ned's agitation increasing every ...
— Through Apache Lands • R. H. Jayne

... not throw away the game to show off an attitude or try an experiment. He was a fine, sensible, manly player, who did what he could, but that was more than any one else could even affect to do. His blows were not undecided and ineffectual—lumbering like Mr. Wordsworth's epic poetry, nor wavering like Mr. Coleridge's lyric prose, nor short of the mark like Mr. Brougham's speeches, nor wide of it like Mr. Canning's wit, nor foul like the Quarterly, nor let balls like the Edinburgh Review. ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt

... hit women!" the artist's piercing voice sounded from above. Something heavy and lumbering rolled down the stairs. It was the artist falling headlong. Evidently he ...
— The Schoolmistress and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov

... bull or calf from the stall; the title deed of a few acres of land; so many bushels of grain, or potatoes, or onions. Loads of hay, even, were sent in from ten or a dozen miles out, and sold at once in the hay market. On the roads entering the city were seen rickety and lumbering wagons, made of poles, loaded with a mixed freight,—a few cabbages, a bundle of socks, a coop of tame ducks, a few barrels of turnips, a pot of butter, and a bag of beans,—with the proud and humane ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol V. Issue III. March, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... the Seal family is the Sea-elephant; a big lumbering fellow, with a most peculiar nose. Of course this gives him his name, though it is not much like the trunk of the real elephant. It is just the baggy skin of his nose, a foot long, which hangs down past ...
— Within the Deep - Cassell's "Eyes And No Eyes" Series, Book VIII. • R. Cadwallader Smith

... prairie stream, they discovered that the animal was missing. The other men of the party thought they could now get rid of the little nuisance, and even the women were anxious, as the hour was late, to go on and find a place to camp for the night. To turn back with the clumsy ox-team and lumbering emigrant wagon was out of ...
— The Story of Young Abraham Lincoln • Wayne Whipple

... and then I was wakened from the painful doze into which I continually fell, by a sound of horses' feet over our head: sometimes lumbering heavily as if dragging a burden, sometimes rattling and galloping; and with the sharper cry of men's voices coming cutting through the roar of the waters. At length, day fell. We had to drop into ...
— Curious, if True - Strange Tales • Elizabeth Gaskell

... omnibus, and stood on the pavement looking wistfully at the lumbering vehicle as it dwindled in the distance. At last, with a sigh of deepest despondency, I turned my face homeward, and, walking like one in a dream, retraced the route over which I had journeyed so often of late and with such ...
— The Red Thumb Mark • R. Austin Freeman

... or two the cattle were packed in a dense mass, shoulder to shoulder, all lumbering forward in wild-eyed panic. The noise of their hoofs was like the continuous roll of thunder and the cloud of dust so thick that the throat of Prince was swollen with it. It was only after the stampeded cattle had covered several miles ...
— A Man Four-Square • William MacLeod Raine

... was in sight, but a traction engine was lumbering heavily upwards, with a man walking before it carrying a red flag. Tom was glad to see it disappear over the dip of the hill. The lane from Bingley woods entered the high road lower down the hill. There was no danger of Bob's nerves being ...
— Miss Merivale's Mistake • Mrs. Henry Clarke

... the good Ugo had made the road seem less weary, and the lumbering ox-wagons less jolty and painful, by telling his bright young charge of all the wonders and relics he had seen in his journeyings in the East; but especially did the girl love to hear him tell of the boy king of the Franks, Hlodo-wig, or Clovis, who lived in the priest's ...
— Historic Girls • E. S. Brooks

... the old mamma was the queerest of the set; for she spent most of her time lumbering up and down stairs, which amusement kept the orange hose constantly before the public. When not disporting herself in this way, she dozed in the salon, or consumed much food at table with a devotion that caused her to suck her fingers, on every one of which ...
— Shawl-Straps - A Second Series of Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag • Louisa M. Alcott

... consisted chiefly of agriculture, ship-building, and tanning. Dawes, who was in the chain-gang, was put to chain-gang labour; that is to say, bringing down logs from the forest, or "lumbering" timber on the wharf. This work was not light. An ingenious calculator had discovered that the pressure of the log upon the shoulder was wont to average 125 lbs. Members of the chain-gang were dressed in yellow, and—by way of encouraging the others—had the word "Felon" stamped ...
— For the Term of His Natural Life • Marcus Clarke

... lower river, and the rowing of the newspaper men to keep their boat up with him, was something beautifully scientific. At Delhi the two experienced oarsmen, who had been engaged to row a short distance, went ashore, leaving Creelman, Byron and two Cincinnati newspaper men to manage the lumbering boat. It was fortunate for their reputation as oarsmen, that spectators were directing most of their attention to Boyton, for such pulling was never seen before on the Ohio and will probably never be seen again. Paul felt like ...
— The Story of Paul Boyton - Voyages on All the Great Rivers of the World • Paul Boyton

... At the side of the front oxen walked the driver, whose whole attention was devoted to their direction. Several yards in advance rode two horsemen, and beside them three men plodded forward on foot. In the rear, scarcely a yard behind the lumbering wagon, walked "old Caleb Smith," and his two overgrown sons, as proud of them as was any monarch of his favorite generals. In addition to the men enumerated, there were three more—who may properly be called the scouts of the party. One of these was a couple of hundred ...
— The Riflemen of the Miami • Edward S. Ellis

... turned about, hunting back to the camp through the still water. It was a splendid moonlight night, and I, getting sleepy as it grew late,—for I had nothing to do,—found it difficult to realize where I was. This stream was much more unfrequented than the main one, lumbering operations being no longer carried on in this quarter. It was only three or four rods wide, but the firs and spruce through which it trickled seemed yet taller by contrast. Being in this dreamy state, which the moonlight enhanced, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Number 9, July, 1858 • Various

... offer thus unexpectedly accepted, Tchartkoff heartily repented his temerity in making it. The dougrivennoi he paid the dealer was his last in the world, and he was encumbered with a lumbering old portrait for which he had no earthly use. Cursing his own imprudence, he took up his purchase, and trudged away with it. Its weight and size caused it to slip perpetually from under his arm, and rendered it a most troublesome burthen. At last, tired to death and bathed in perspiration, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 62, No. 384, October 1847 • Various

... Arthur Orton is in prison undergoing what all thinking men must admit to be a very lenient sentence—a sentence which in no way meets the justice of the case; for the advent of this huge carcase lumbering the earth with lies was nothing less than a misfortune to the people of England. And the word misfortune, if used even in its highest and widest sense, will in no way imply that which has happened to a peaceful family, who ...
— Celebrated Claimants from Perkin Warbeck to Arthur Orton • Anonymous

... the last of the heavy lumbering feet crash past him, and heard the shouting die away before he stiffly dragged himself up again, and began to struggle painfully back up the slippery hill-side, down which he had rushed with a whole regiment of loose and hopping stones ten minutes before. He regained the wall ...
— The Danvers Jewels, and Sir Charles Danvers • Mary Cholmondeley

... Sidney, my father wanted to go to Bainbridge, Chenango, County, N.Y., and I went with him, leaving my wife and the children at Sidney, while we prospected. As usual my father started a blacksmith-shop; but I bought a hundred acres of timber land, went to lumbering, and made money. We had a house about four miles from the village, I living with my father, and as soon as found out that we were doing well in business, I sent to Sidney for my wife and children. They were to come ...
— Seven Wives and Seven Prisons • L.A. Abbott

... they heard at a distance the harsh and lumbering roll of the tumbril that bore the victims, and the tramp of the horses which guarded the procession of death. The boy's whole attention was absorbed in expectation of the spectacle, and his ear was perhaps less accustomed to French, though ...
— Lucretia, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... again, and pulled the trigger. Bellowing loud the big bull dashed off. The herd swung around toward the west, and soon were galloping off with a lumbering roar. The shaggy humps bobbed up and down like hot, angry waves ...
— The Spirit of the Border - A Romance of the Early Settlers in the Ohio Valley • Zane Grey

... mason's chisel chirped all over the kingdom, and the shipbuilders'* hammers rang all round the coast; corn was plenty, money became a drug, labor wealth, and poverty and discontent vanished from the face of the land. Adventure seemed all wings, and no lumbering carcass to clog it. New joint-stock companies were started in crowds as larks rise and darken the air in winter;** hundreds came to nothing, but hundreds stood, and of these nearly all reached a premium, small in ...
— Love Me Little, Love Me Long • Charles Reade

... of these desert conveyances, that creak and groan across the arid wastes with an apparently lumbering inconsequence, the stage that brought the travellers to the Dax ranch left at sunrise to pursue a seemingly erratic career along the North Platte, while Miss Carmichael and the fat lady were to continue their journey with one Lemuel Chugg, who drove a stage northward ...
— Judith Of The Plains • Marie Manning

... had dropped to all fours and was lumbering straight toward Stacy Brown, who stood fascinated, watching the approach of the hideous object, whose raised upper lip showed a row ...
— The Pony Rider Boys in the Rockies • Frank Gee Patchin

... thick and lumbering accent of his words, and burst forth in a despairing cry. "O father! what is the matter ...
— The End of a Coil • Susan Warner

... thinking. But even then her mind pondered on, a stream of consciousness over which she had no control. This dreary woods was deserted. No birds, no squirrels, no creatures such as fancy anticipated! In another direction, across the canyon, she saw cattle, gaunt, ragged, lumbering, and stolid. And on the moment the scent of sheep came on the breeze. Time seemed to stand still here, and what Carley wanted most was for the hours and days to fly, so that she would ...
— The Call of the Canyon • Zane Grey

... stood talking at the door, his tale was broken by the rumbling of wheels; and the coach coming lumbering up, we perceived ...
— Andrew Golding - A Tale of the Great Plague • Anne E. Keeling

... with these thoughts, he heard talking on his stairs, accompanied by a strange lumbering tread. These came nearer; and at last stopped just outside his door, which opened in another moment, ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes

... he answers to the name of Joe. And here he comes," as a boy about ten years old came lumbering up in big boots, with a heavy plaid shawl on one arm, and an immense green umbrella ...
— The Three Brides • Charlotte M. Yonge

... lane from the library window with a queer grudge at heart; Bolton stiffly lumbering forward at an angle of forty-five degrees, the child whirling and dancing at his side, and now before and ...
— Annie Kilburn - A Novel • W. D. Howells

... constant shifting of his great bulk around," "rotating while he was talking," "flipping his eyeglasses," "lumbering on to the stage, going through all his pockets, finally finding a piece of dirty yellow paper and talking from it as if most laboriously gathered and learned notes. But the paper was only for show. Father Burke saw him get out of the cab, he got ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward

... gray. Then he rode out upon the foothills. The trail led up and down slopes of sage. Grass grew thicker as he descended. Once he startled a great flock of prairie-chickens, or sage-hens, large gray birds, lumbering, swift fliers, that whirred up, and soon plumped down again into the sage. Twilight found him on a last long slope of the foothills, facing the pasture-land of the valley, with the ranch still five miles distant, now showing misty and dim in ...
— The Mysterious Rider • Zane Grey

... The lumbering train which brought us one October evening from Asciano crawled into this station after dark, at the very moment when a storm, which had been gathering from the south-west, burst in deluges of rain and lightning. There was, however, a covered carriage going to the town. Into this we packed ourselves, ...
— New Italian sketches • John Addington Symonds

... this life sometimes dazzles, the lack of conveniences appalls. The post left London once a week. A journey to the country must be made in your own lumbering carriage, or on the snail-slow stagecoach over miserable roads, beset with highwaymen. The narrow, ill-lighted streets, even of London, could not be traversed safely at night; and ladies, borne to routs and levees in their sedan chairs, were lighted by link-boys, and were ...
— Palamon and Arcite • John Dryden

... it wasn't long ago that we looked out on a different land: locked factory gates, long gasoline lines, intolerable prices, and interest rates turning the greatest country on Earth into a land of broken dreams. Government growing beyond our consent had become a lumbering giant, slamming shut the gates of opportunity, threatening to crush the very roots of our freedom. What brought America back? The American people brought us back with quiet courage and common sense, with undying faith that in this nation under God the ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various

... stairs and roused Joe, lumbering down again straightway and stringing the milk-pails on his arms without waiting to see the result ...
— The Bondboy • George W. (George Washington) Ogden

... ribbon with gold fringe ends round the neck of the Vicomte, while he knelt and kissed her hand on the damp grass, and when he got up there was quite a wet stain on his knees. The second man—a great lumbering cuirassier—got a blue ribbon, and as he was heavier the stain showed worse on his red trousers. After that, we all began to eat cakes and drink drinks (I don't know what they were made of, that is why I say "drinks," anyway they were sweet and nice), and as the rain had stopped ...
— The Visits of Elizabeth • Elinor Glyn

... Falstaff swaggering along its pavements. Bread Street would resound to us with the tread of young Milton, and Southwark with the echoes of Shakespeare's voice and the jolly laughter of the Pilgrims at the Tabard. Hogarth would accompany us about Covent Garden, and out of Bolt Court we should see the lumbering figure of Johnson emerging into his beloved Fleet Street. We would sit by the fountain in the Temple with Tom Pinch, and take a wherry to Westminster with Mr. Pepys. We should see London then as a great spiritual companionship, in which it is ...
— Pebbles on the Shore • Alpha of the Plough (Alfred George Gardiner)

... and staggered from the room. He would have spoken, but the dreadful sorrow rose up and choked him. All the memories of the past were linked with youth and beauty. He could not speak to the blight before him, as to his love and his life, and so, with blind and lumbering footsteps, he toiled ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I. February, 1862, No. II. - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various

... yonder bridge, That with its wearisome but needful length Bestrides the wintry flood, in which the moon Sees her unwrinkled face reflected bright;— He comes, the herald of a noisy world, With spattered boots, strapped waist, and frozen locks; News from all nations lumbering at his back. True to his charge, the close packed load behind, Yet careless what he brings, his one concern Is to conduct it to the destined inn; And having dropped the expected bag, pass on. He whistles as he goes, light-hearted wretch! ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 17, No. - 480, Saturday, March 12, 1831 • Various

... little scream of delight she was away, speeding over the gravel in the wake of a lumbering great form wending its way in and out of ...
— Leonie of the Jungle • Joan Conquest

... horse—Eliphaz, late Fairfax. When the barrier rose Jockey Merritt booted the spurs home and tried to hurl the big black into the lead. He might as well have tried to get early speed out of a porpoise. Eliphaz grunted loudly and in exactly five lumbering jumps was in last place; the other horses went on and left the favourite snorting in the dust. Jockey Merritt raked the black sides with his spurs and slashed cruelly with his whip—the favourite would not, could not get out of ...
— Old Man Curry - Race Track Stories • Charles E. (Charles Emmett) Van Loan

... tell how many lives were lost, as many of those who were in the woods among the lumbering parties, had no friends nor connections in the country to remark on their non-appearance. Five hundred have been computed as the least number that ...
— Twenty-Seven Years in Canada West - The Experience of an Early Settler (Volume I) • Samuel Strickland

... tree. Old-fellow Badger was coming through the glade. When he saw the King of the Cats crouching there he stopped and bared his terrible teeth. The King of the Cats bent himself to spring. Then Old-fellow Badger turned round and went lumbering back. ...
— The King of Ireland's Son • Padraic Colum

... right up to the very trenches themselves you will find that British policeman all the way; directing the traffic at every country cross-road where there is likely to be a congestion of the great lumbering motor-lorries; standing outside the ruined village church which the long-range guns have knocked to pieces in trying to get at a supply dump or a headquarters; waiting at the fork-roads where you finally have to leave your motor-car and walk only ...
— Letters from France • C. E. W. Bean

... George, and how we had to get the boat up to Shepperton by five o'clock to meet him, and then he went for George. Why was George to fool about all day, and leave us to lug this lumbering old top-heavy barge up and down the river by ourselves to meet him? Why couldn't George come and do some work? Why couldn't he have got the day off, and come down with us? Bank be blowed! What good was ...
— Three Men in a Boa • Jerome K. Jerome

... Steam-boilers, Cement works, Spindles and Reeds, Fourdrinier wire and Rubber-goods are among the city's greatly diversified industries. There are extensive brickyards and stone quarries near at hand and the lumbering business is ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 5 • Various

... and thought on the ingratitude of princes. But the silence of the Palace was only a pose, mean and despicable. Maximilian himself was peeping through the shutters down upon the gallant, moving sea of color. It was a stream of gleaming bayonets, of champing horses, of lumbering artillery. His eyes would single out and cling to this or that figure till it was lost in the street beyond, and then he would try to realize that it was lost to him forever. For the street beyond lay toward the coast, where many ...
— The Missourian • Eugene P. (Eugene Percy) Lyle

... and, curiously enough, the Baron seemed not disinclined to let his friend extricate himself as best he could. No one, however, could resist Mr Bunker, and before very long he and the Baron were driving up Bishopsgate Street together, with the old gentleman's four-wheeler lumbering in front ...
— The Lunatic at Large • J. Storer Clouston

... confusion Olva Dune plunged. He shook off from him, as a dog shakes water from his back, the memory of that white mist-haunted road. Once he deliberately faced the moment when he had been sick—faced it, heard once again the dull, lumbering sound that the body had made as it bundled along the road, and then put it from him altogether. Now for battle . . . his dark eyes challenged this shifting ...
— The Prelude to Adventure • Hugh Walpole

... said Queen Mary, with a strange, sad smile, as she took her seat in the heavy lumbering coach which had been appointed for her conveyance from Chartley, her rheumatism having set in too severely to permit ...
— Unknown to History - A Story of the Captivity of Mary of Scotland • Charlotte M. Yonge



Words linked to "Lumbering" :   heavy-footed, trade, craft



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