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Stump   /stəmp/   Listen
Stump

verb
(past & past part. stumped; pres. part. stumping)
1.
Cause to be perplexed or confounded.  Synonym: mix up.
2.
Walk heavily.  Synonyms: stamp, stomp.
3.
Travel through a district and make political speeches.
4.
Remove tree stumps from.



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"Stump" Quotes from Famous Books



... honest, of unflinching courage and energy. I had come into personal contact with him in the Presidential campaigns of 1860 and 1864, when he seemed to be pleased with my efforts. I had once heard him make a stump speech which was evidently inspired by intense hatred of slavery, and remarkable for argumentative pith and sarcastic wit. But the impression his personality made upon me was not sympathetic: his face, long ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol 31, No 2, June 1908 • Various

... body, and dragging from under the bed a girl of fourteen, quite naked, and with a skin as tough as that of an alligator, ordered her to the well with a large bucket. Having thus provided for my beast, I sat upon a stump that served for a chair, and once more ...
— Monsieur Violet • Frederick Marryat

... which he put in his pocket. On the instant, the King forgets his dignity, and cane in hand runs to this valet (who little suspected what was in store for him), strikes him; abuses him, and breaks the cane upon his body! The truth is, 'twas only a reed, and snapped easily. However, the stump in his hand, he walked away like a man quite beside himself, continuing to abuse this valet, and entered Madame de Maintenon's room, where he remained nearly an hour. Upon coming out he met Father ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre

... cried, as I seized the lovely orator in my arms and hugged her to my breast, thereby, to adopt her own words, squeezing out of her the little breath which she had left. "Bravo, Josephine! If you were to take the stump it would be I and not Mr. Spinney who ...
— The Opinions of a Philosopher • Robert Grant

... of account, because, though it may be good for us to read Pepys, it is better to have read him and be through with it. There, under the grace of God, go a many besides Pepys, and among them every boy who has ever befouled a wall with a stump of pencil. We are left then with one whom it is ill to name in the same fill of the inkpot, "Wordsworth's exquisite sister," as Keats, who saw her once, at once knew her ...
— In a Green Shade - A Country Commentary • Maurice Hewlett

... cutting are several: It benefits the bed. If we cut over a mushroom and leave its stump in the ground, in a few days decay sets in and a fluffy or spongy substance grows around the old butt, which destroys many of the little mushrooms around it, as well as every thread of mycelium that comes ...
— Mushrooms: how to grow them - a practical treatise on mushroom culture for profit and pleasure • William Falconer

... of the city, being almost as high as the steeples and the dome of the State House, and overlooking the whole mass of brick buildings and slated roofs, with glimpses of streets far below. It was really a pity to take it down. I noticed the stump of a very large elm, recently felled. No house in the city could have reared its roof so high as the roots of that tree, if indeed the church-spires ...
— Passages From The American Notebooks, Volume 1 • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... that if once more he was dragged into the deep water he must be lost. As the current haled him along he gripped at the bottom with his hands, and by the mercy of Heaven they closed on something. It may have been a tree-stump embedded there, or a rock—he never knew. At least, it was firm, and to it he hung despairingly. Would that rush never cease? His lungs were bursting; he must let go! Oh! the foam was thinning; his head was above it now; now it had departed, leaving him like a stranded fish upon the shingle. For ...
— Benita, An African Romance • H. Rider Haggard

... quarrel with his new master. So when he had finished the morning's ploughing he pulled the iron point of the ploughshare out of its socket and snapped it in two. Then he took the pieces to his master and explained that it had caught on the stump of a tree and got broken. The master took the broken share to the blacksmith and had it mended. The next day the Strong man went through the same performance and his master had again to go the blacksmith. The same ...
— Folklore of the Santal Parganas • Cecil Henry Bompas

... in the churches, was St. John Damascene, one of the great lights of the Oriental Church. According to the Greek legend, he was condemned to lose his right hand, which was accordingly cut off; but he, full of faith, prostrating himself before a picture of the Virgin, stretched out the bleeding stump, and with it touched her lips, and immediately a new hand sprung forth "like a branch from a tree." Hence, among the Greek effigies of the Virgin, there is one peculiarly commemorative of this miracle, styled "the Virgin with three hands." (Didron, Manuel, p. ...
— Legends of the Madonna • Mrs. Jameson

... communities; depositing their eggs on the ground, on rocks, or in hollow logs and stumps, usually in thick woods or in a sycamore grove, in the bend or fork of a stream. The nest is frequently built in a tree, or in the cavity of a sycamore stump, though a favorite place for depositing the eggs is a little depression under a small bush or overhanging ...
— Birds Illustrated by Color Photography [August, 1897] - A Monthly Serial designed to Promote Knowledge of Bird-Life • Various

... qualities, that to put her before it, would be certain foundering. The gale continued with unabated fury for about two hours, and stopped about as suddenly as it commenced. The work of destruction was complete, for from her water-line to the stump of the remaining spars, the ...
— Manuel Pereira • F. C. Adams

... and fastened my horse to something, like a pointed stump of a tree, which appeared above the snow; for the sake of safety, I placed my pistols under my arm, and laid down on the snow, where I slept so soundly that I did not open my eyes till full daylight. It ...
— Stories to Read or Tell from Fairy Tales and Folklore • Laure Claire Foucher

... the third clause, Ephraim is joyfully conscious of the change that has passed on him, in accordance with the great promises just spoken, and with grateful astonishment that such verdure should have burst out from the dry and rotten stump of his own sinful nature, exclaims, 'I am like a green fir-tree.' That is another reason why he will have no more to do with idols. They could never have made his sapless nature break into leafage. But what of the fourth clause—'From ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Minor Prophets. St Matthew Chapters I to VIII • Alexander Maclaren

... come to Gabe Perkins' then I hopped off my mule and, borrowing his Winchester, I come back the cut-off footpath. There set that cold-blooded bush-whacker on the same log, looking down the road the way I had kited, with his gun kinder restin' on his knees. I rested on a stump and took him square in the middle of the back. He gave a yell and jumped erbout five feet, but it was too late to jump. 'Taint nothing to it, a plain case of self-defense and 'parent necessity. But if you stay up in this country, I like yer looks ...
— Chit-Chat; Nirvana; The Searchlight • Mathew Joseph Holt

... acquaintance with an invitation to play, with an abrupt movement lifting his paws from the ground and striking them down, stretched out well before, his body bent down from the rump in such a curve that almost his chest touched the sand, his stump of a tail waving signals of good nature while he uttered a sharp, inviting bark. And the man was uninterested, pulling stolidly away at his pipe, in the darkness following upon ...
— Michael, Brother of Jerry • Jack London

... ram, with thy blunt-muzzled kids and sleek wives at thy side, Where winds the brook by woodlands myriad-deep: There is her haunt. Go, Stump-horn, tell her how Proteus plied (A god) the shepherd's trade, with ...
— Theocritus • Theocritus

... a little while, his speeches, into which he had lugged many a choice ad captandum of undisputed effect on any other occasion, having been completely merged and mingled with those of the mass, he wisely forbore any further waste of matter, in the stump-oratory of the South usually so precious; and, drawing himself up proudly and profoundly in his high place, he remained dignifiedly sullen, until the special reference thus made by Colonel Blundell again opened the fountains of the oracle ...
— Guy Rivers: A Tale of Georgia • William Gilmore Simms

... at a twig above her head, whereon was perched the provoking bird, and as she ran heedlessly towards it, her foot became entangled in a net-work of withered branches that lay in the long grass, and with a cry of pain she fell foremost, on the ragged edge of an old tree stump that stood between her ...
— Honor Edgeworth • Vera

... there was to find small dry twigs! There was a smart breeze blowing, and most of the matches went out as soon as lighted, putting their owners out of the contest. Sahwah was wise and piled her twigs where a huge stump sheltered them from the wind; Hinpoha sat between hers and the wind. Even then it was difficult to get the twigs to burn. It seemed as if they were in league against the contestants and firmly refused ...
— The Camp Fire Girls in the Maine Woods - Or, The Winnebagos Go Camping • Hildegard G. Frey

... prudence in their eagerness to keep up with him, whipped their horses violently. The horses bounded off at full speed, and the wagon was whirled through the swamp at a furious rate. When nearly across, one of the wheels struck a large stump, and over went the wagon. "Fearing it would turn entirely over and catch them under," says Mr. Cartwright, "the two young men took a leap into the mud, and when they lighted they sunk up to the middle. ...
— Great Fortunes, and How They Were Made • James D. McCabe, Jr.

... among the hills, knowing well where I wanted to go, and where I should probably go; but circling round about as if to hide from myself my own intentions. I knew of people who had been there, but had never felt heart to go myself. I crossed a desolate plain, where a fire had passed. Every bush, stump, and tree was blackened. After this came green hills, with ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 108, October, 1866 • Various

... coolness. Paul's forehead grew damp, and his eyes ached from continual watching at the loophole. Curiosity now began to give way to anger. If they were going to do anything, why didn't they do it? He watched the forest so much and so intently that he began to create images there for himself. A tall stump was distorted into the figure of an Indian warrior, a clump of bushes took the shape of an entire group of Shawnees, and many savage, black eyes looked from the leaves. Paul's reason told him that he beheld ...
— The Forest Runners - A Story of the Great War Trail in Early Kentucky • Joseph A. Altsheler

... some people, Mawruss," he said, "what sometimes throws out perfectly clean water, and gets some dirty water in exchange, Mawruss." He threw away the stump of his cigar. ...
— Abe and Mawruss - Being Further Adventures of Potash and Perlmutter • Montague Glass

... the clock struck eight Signor Frog in state Thus opened the exhibition: "For my first attempt on the concert-stump I shall render a song that is called ...
— Boys and Girls Bookshelf; a Practical Plan of Character Building, Volume I (of 17) - Fun and Thought for Little Folk • Various

... Honeysuckles twine round every tree; the ground is covered with a low white-blossomed shrub more fragrant than lilies of the valley. The accacuas are swinging their silver censers under the green roof of these wood temples; every stump is like a classical altar to the sylvan gods, garlanded with flowers; every post, or stick, or slight stem, like a Bacchante's thyrsus, twined with wreaths of ivy and wild vine, waving in the tepid wind. Beautiful butterflies flicker like flying flowers among the bushes, ...
— Journal of a Residence on a Georgian Plantation - 1838-1839 • Frances Anne Kemble

... spoke, tossing the stump of his cigarette into the fire, and Brett followed him out of the house and down to the stables where, in an empty horse-box, the litter of puppies at present resided. Cradled in clean, sweet-smelling ...
— The Vision of Desire • Margaret Pedler

... Government Board had been rather suspected of tuft-hunting recently, and his appearance in the stump orator's role, and in the cause of disarmament, was wonderfully popular. In his long career as Labour agitator, Socialist, and Radical, he had learned to know the popular pulse remarkably well; and now he responded cleverly to ...
— The Message • Alec John Dawson

... was afraid to return to my master's. I walked on recklessly, not caring where I went, or what would become of me. When I had gone four or five miles, fatigue compelled me to stop. I sat down on the stump of an old tree. The stars were shining through the boughs above me. How they mocked me, with their bright, calm light! The hours passed by, and as I sat there alone a chilliness and deadly sickness came over ...
— Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl - Written by Herself • Harriet Jacobs (AKA Linda Brent)

... 1002, I had a good chance to study Pine trees in the mountains of Idaho. There was a small one that had to be cut down, so I made careful drawings of it. It was fourteen years old, and across the stump it showed one ring of wood for each year of growth, and a circle of branches on the trunk for each year. Notice that between the branches, the trunk did not taper; it was an even cylinder, but got suddenly smaller at each knot ...
— Woodland Tales • Ernest Seton-Thompson

... upon the hornblende sofa, took out the stump of his cigar, lighted it, and gazed at the graceful figures in "The Storm" on the ...
— The Voice of the City • O. Henry

... creatures of descendants as you all, day after day indulging in obscene and incestuous practices, 'in scraping of the ashes' and in philandering with brothers-in-law. I know all about your doings; the best thing is to hide one's stump of an arm in one's sleeve!" (wash one's dirty ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin

... shapes; the river veiled itself under a red glow. Above the roaring and crackling of the flames rose the inhuman yelling of the savages. Like demons of the inferno they ran to and fro, their naked painted bodies shining in the glare. One group of savages formed a circle and danced hands-around a stump as gayly as a band of school-girls at a May party. They wrestled with and hugged one another; they hopped, skipped and jumped, and in every possible way manifested ...
— Betty Zane • Zane Grey

... Lourdes at the present day keep within the bounds of what is explicable, but a Hindu who had seen a cripple recover some power of movement might be equally ready to believe that when a man's leg had been cut off the stump could grow into a ...
— Hinduism and Buddhism, Vol I. (of 3) - An Historical Sketch • Charles Eliot

... impulse they went outside and walked for a long way under the stars along the silent country roads. They came to a field where men were burning brush. Where there had been a forest there was now only a stump field and the figures of the men carrying armloads of the dry branches of trees and throwing them on the fire. The fire made a great splash of color in the gathering darkness and for some obscure reason both girls were deeply ...
— Poor White • Sherwood Anderson

... corpus callosum, the fibres of which are above our finger, we may feel below, the structure which may be called the bottom of the ventricle, and which is likewise the base or trunk of the superincumbent parts from which they spring, as a tree from its stump. ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, May 1887 - Volume 1, Number 4 • Various

... and girls of the party were then blindfolded, and hand in hand were conducted to the gate of the walled kitchen-garden, where they were told to find their way into the cabbage patch, where each was to pull up a cabbage stump. When they returned with their prizes to the house, great fun and much dirt were the result. Posy's eldest cousin had brought in a big crooked cabbage stalk, with plenty of mould hanging to its roots: he ...
— Harper's Young People, October 26, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various

... tree-trunk showed what a big shell can do. The trunk, a good eighteen inches in diameter, had not only been cut in two by one of the monsters of the new British artillery, but had been carried on for ten feet and left lying solidly in the bed of splinters of the top of the stump. All this had been in the field of that battle of a day, which was as fierce as the fiercest day at Gettysburg, and fought within about the same space. Every tree, every square rod of ground, had been paid for by shells, bullets, ...
— My Year of the War • Frederick Palmer

... historical places along the road. He pointed out the spot where he had killed the last diamondback rattlesnake seen in that neighborhood; he directed Lyman's attention to a barn wherein five negroes had been hanged for rising against the whites in 1854; he pointed at a charred stump and told the story of a fanatic who had tied himself there and burned himself on account of his religion. They came at last to a large log house, the Pitt homestead, and had unharnessed the horses before Warren and Nancy came within sight. A tall ...
— Old Ebenezer • Opie Read

... was so much afraid of the sea that she never would cross the Firth except in a boat belonging to a certain skipper who had served in the Navy and lost a hand; he had a hook fastened on the stump to enable him to haul ropes. My brother and I were tired of the country, and one sunny day we persuaded my mother to embark. When we came to the shore, the skipper said, "I wonder that the leddy boats to-day, for ...
— Personal Recollections, from Early Life to Old Age, of Mary Somerville • Mary Somerville

... got up from below. Guys were fixed to one end and, with the help of the marines and a party of convicts, the spar was raised alongside the stump of the mizzen mast; and was there lashed securely, the guys being fastened as stays to the bulwarks. Blocks had been tied to the top, before it was raised; and ropes rove into them; and a try sail was brought on deck, and ...
— A Final Reckoning - A Tale of Bush Life in Australia • G. A. Henty

... crouched something like a blade of a sword or maybe a pike came high above me stabbing this way and that. Twigs and leaves pattered down, but I was safe behind the stump of a fallen tree. Presently the steel thing I had seen glinting struck the dead and sodden wood of the tree-trunk, and snapped with a sharp tang like a fiddle-string—a hayfork it may have been, or one of the long thin swords such as are ...
— The Dew of Their Youth • S. R. Crockett

... youth. His eyes swam. His hat went under the stump of his lost arm and he proffered the bit of writing. Idlers were staring. "Take that with you," he said. "They were all four ...
— Kincaid's Battery • George W. Cable

... pleasant, shady garden in Concord, Massachusetts, under a gnarled old apple-tree, sat a very studious looking little person, bending over a sheet of paper on which she was writing. She had made a seat out of a tree stump, and a table by laying a board across two carpenter's horses, whose owner was working in the house, and no scholar writing a treatise on some deep subject could have been more absorbed in his work than was the ...
— Ten American Girls From History • Kate Dickinson Sweetser

... areas which form natural units for the logging and transportation of the timber must be worked out and laid off, and careful estimates, or measurements, of the amount of standing timber and of its value on the stump must be made, as well as of the cost of moving it to the mill or to ...
— The Training of a Forester • Gifford Pinchot

... of the creek as a parting gift. Then, unnoticed by the boys, she scrambled out of the tree and climbed up the bank, getting her blue riding-skirt decidedly muddy—not that Norah's free and independent soul had ever learned to tremble at the sight of muddy garments. She hid her fishing tackle in a stump, and made her ...
— A Little Bush Maid • Mary Grant Bruce

... of Monte Nero, a stump-shaped mountain 7,370 feet high at the headwaters of the Isonzo, proved important to the Italians, for it gave them a fire-control station from which 12-inch shells were dropped into the forts of Tolmino and the ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume III (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various

... that the majority was on the wrong side. Henry, Mason, Randolph, Lee, and others among the most influential men of Virginia, were opposed to the Constitution. There must be somebody in the convention to meet strong men like these, and Madison was urged to take the stump and canvass for his own election. Even this he was willing to do at this crisis, if need be, though he said it would be at the sacrifice of every private inclination, and of the rule which hitherto from the beginning of ...
— James Madison • Sydney Howard Gay

... old form of china-ware I never remembered to have seen before, and beneath the dirt which was thickly coated over it I could see that both the modelling and colouring of it were very beautiful. It represented a figure lying upon the ground beside a big tree-stump, which, after the mud should be scraped out of it, was evidently intended to contain ink, and a milestone, when a similar operation had taken place, would doubtless contain one pen; a coloured three-cornered hat flung beside the figure upon ...
— The Tale of Lal - A Fantasy • Raymond Paton

... They caught fleeting glimpses of each other and chanced flying shots which were without result. On a grassy shelter behind a tree, Sheldon came upon where Tudor had rested and smoked a cigarette. The pressed grass showed where he had sat. To one side lay the cigarette stump and the charred match which had lighted it. In front lay a scattering of bright metallic fragments. Sheldon recognized their significance. Tudor was notching his steel-jacketed bullets, or cutting them blunt, so ...
— Adventure • Jack London

... him, he found over his head something which he did not understand. It was as big as the stump of a great tree. Apparently it belonged to the structure of the cottage, but he could not, in the imperfect light, and the dazzling of the sun-spot at which he had been staring, make out what it was, or how it came to be up there—unsupported as far as he could see. He rose to examine it, lifted ...
— Robert Falconer • George MacDonald

... end for end, between his fingers a minute, reflectively studying a knot-hole in the floor that yawned through a corresponding breach in the matting. Then he flung the stump of a cigar into ...
— Under Fire • Charles King

... of. Save for his camp bed, an affair of stout canvas stretched between crossed legs, the room was beautifully bare. Not a chair, not a wash-stand, not a table cumbered it—unless a round, flat tree stump, which looked as if it might have grown up through the floor, was intended for both washstand and table. It had served the latter purpose at any rate as upon it rested the candle-stick containing the solitary candle by which he had ...
— The Window-Gazer • Isabel Ecclestone Mackay

... the firing began, General Lee joined Hill just below our tree, and he remained there nearly all the time, looking through his field-glass—sometimes talking to Hill and sometimes to Colonel Long of his Staff. But generally he sat quite alone on the stump of a tree. What I remarked especially was, that during the whole time the firing continued, he only sent one message, and only received one report. It is evidently his system to arrange the plan thoroughly with the three corps commanders, and then leave to them the duty of modifying ...
— Three Months in the Southern States, April-June 1863 • Arthur J. L. (Lieut.-Col.) Fremantle

... written on any spot; the half-burnt or overthrown trees lying about overgrown with wild vines and raspberries, the snake fence broken down, the log-house looking as if a touch would upset it, and nothing hopeful but a couple of patches of maize and potatoes, and a great pumpkin climbing up a stump. My horse and myself were done up, so I halted, and was amazed at the greeting I received from the youth, who was hard at work on his hay, single-handed, except for the two children tumbling in it. The lady in her rocking-chair was contrast enough ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge

... Talbot, who never remained long in the depths, soon began to show signs of returning cheerfulness. They stopped for a noon rest in a clearing, and after they ate their scanty dinner Talbot leaped upon a stump. ...
— Before the Dawn - A Story of the Fall of Richmond • Joseph Alexander Altsheler

... with his back to a tree stump all that night, holding the kitten in his arms. His mind was tired, and he talked or thought coherently no ...
— The War in the Air • Herbert George Wells

... equal rights to protection by the police. Confiscate for the use of the State all the existing revenues of the defunct Church and its belongings, giving such compensation for life- interests therein as may seem reasonable; but create no new Church, nor stump of a Church, round which new interests may gather. Do not even implicate the State so far in the future of Religion as to indicate to the subjects any form of Church as esteemed the best, or any ...
— The Life of John Milton Vol. 3 1643-1649 • David Masson

... the lumberman shiver. But the fellow crowded his cigar stump in his mouth, with fire and all, and chewed it up as ...
— The Furnace of Gold • Philip Verrill Mighels

... but a swearing good man —something like me —only there's a good deal more of him. Aye, aye, I know that he was never very jolly; and I know that on the passage home, he was a little out of his mind for a spell; but it was the sharp shooting pains in his bleeding stump that brought that about, as any one might see. I know, too, that ever since he lost his leg last voyage by that accursed whale, he's been a kind of moody —desperate moody, and savage sometimes; but that will all pass off. And once for all, let me tell thee and assure thee, young ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville

... chanced to see This old man doing all he could To unearth the root of an old tree, A stump of rotten wood. The mattock totter'd in his hand So vain was his endeavour That at the root of the old tree He might ...
— The Golden Treasury - Of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language • Various

... move, Jerry kept his eyes constantly upon the young sentry. Frequently he yawned. Once or twice he stopped uncertainly before a stump and seemed about to sit down, then started on again around his monotonous beat. But his step was wavering, his eyes were heavy, and Jerry knew it was only a question of time—a comparatively short time—when nature would conquer, and the ...
— The Brighton Boys in the Radio Service • James R. Driscoll

... to be a very old one over yonder, but it was struck by lightning ten years ago, and we cut down the stump.' ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 29, May 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various

... fluttering thoughts, like a man perfectly confused and out of myself, I came home to my fortification, not feeling, as we say, the ground I went on, but terrified to the last degree, looking behind me at every two or three steps, mistaking every bush and tree, and fancying every stump at a distance to be a man. Nor is it possible to describe how many various shapes my affrighted imagination represented things to me in, how many wild ideas were found every moment in my fancy, and what strange, unaccountable whimsies came into ...
— Robinson Crusoe • Daniel Defoe

... incorporate into the universal tongue. Of them is the large family of political phrases. These are coined in moments of intense excitement, struck out at white heat, or, to follow our leading metaphor, like the speakers who use them, come upon the stump in their shirt-sleeves. Every campaign gives us a new horde. Some die out at once; others felicitously tickle the public ear and ring far and wide. They "speak for Buncombe," are Barn-Burners, Old Hunkers, Hard Shells, Soft Shells, Log-Rollers, Pipe-Layers, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, No. 38, December, 1860 • Various

... detective. "I didn't tumble to it at first myself, being a Cockney; but a little talk with Jake and the other fisherman about the old smuggling days put me straight about that. But I admit the dried remains still stump us all. ...
— The Trees of Pride • G.K. Chesterton

... an anthill; the withered grass showed its course very plainly, and next day (31st), on the banks of the Mabula, we saw a dry tree which had been struck; large splinters had been riven off and thrown a distance of sixty yards in one direction and thirty yards in another: only a stump was left, and patches of withered grass where it ...
— The Last Journals of David Livingstone, in Central Africa, from 1865 to His Death, Volume I (of 2), 1866-1868 • David Livingstone

... four or five miles from the place where we lay. Being assured that they were highly deserving of notice, we determined to visit them; and setting off one evening for that purpose, we reached the spot which had been pointed out to us a little before dark. We fastened the boat to the stump of a tree, and were proceeding towards the caves, when a fine manly voice, singing one of the Irish melodies, attracted our attention. Being rather curious to discover who, in this extramundane place, had learnt ...
— The Campaigns of the British Army at Washington and New Orleans 1814-1815 • G. R. Gleig

... how her well-shaped foot was planted firmly on a blue ball, when she was preparing to roquer the red one. The way in which he fixed his eyes upon her gave great offense to Fred, and did it not alarm and shock Giselle? No! Giselle looked on calmly at the fun and talk around her, as unmoved as the stump of a tree, spoiling the game sometimes by her ignorance or her awkwardness, well satisfied that M. de Talbrun should leave her alone. Talking with him ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet

... this matter, we ought to dismiss from our minds, as far as possible, those feelings against the North, which have been engendered not merely by the Trent aggression, but by the previous anti-British effusions of newspaper writers and stump orators. It is hardly worth while to ask how far these explosions of ill-humor are anything more than might have been anticipated from ill-disciplined minds, disappointed of the sympathy which they justly thought they had a right to expect ...
— The Contest in America • John Stuart Mill

... of one million dollars ($1,000,000). It is buried on what was known as Short Shrift Island; on the highest point of this Short Shrift Island is a large cabbage wood stump and twenty feet (20 ft.) south of that stump is the treasure, buried five feet (5 ft.) deep and can be found without difficulty. Short Shrift Island is a place where passing vessels stop to get ...
— Pieces of Eight • Richard le Gallienne

... this tree was either blown or cut down, and the name was transferred to another. A few of the old inhabitants of Cambridge remember the stump of the former Liberty Tree, but all traces of it seem to have been removed before the year 1800. The present Liberty Tree stands between Holden Chapel and Harvard Hall, to the west of Hollis. As early as the year 1815 there were gatherings under its branches on Class Day, and it is ...
— A Collection of College Words and Customs • Benjamin Homer Hall

... successful. In a short time Amos was up with the empty pantaloon fastened back and the stump of the leg encased in a thick leather protector. As he had used crutches for some time before the amputation he soon learned to accommodate himself to their new use. He could not now walk long distances, so the weekly prayer meetings were generally appointed at his house. He became what was ...
— Confessions of Boyhood • John Albee

... looking, so as to please him, went round it, and went back to her former position, and was at once aware of the scent again. Now when he was not hindering her, she knew what to do, and without looking at what was under her feet, and to her vexation stumbling over a high stump into the water, but righting herself with her strong, supple legs, she began making the circle which was to make all clear to her. The scent of them reached her, stronger and stronger, and more and more defined, and all at once it became perfectly clear to her that one of ...
— Anna Karenina • Leo Tolstoy

... his name in public. I have known old lawyers to blush when put upon the witness stand and obliged to tell their names to the court and jury, all of whom had known them for the last fifty years! If such is the effect on a dry old stump of a lawyer, what must the effect be on a green, ...
— The Evolution of Dodd • William Hawley Smith

... returned home, in the late afternoon, their spirits were not to be kept within seemly bounds. They laughed, sang, and rollicked about inside the wagonette, Miss Zielinski weakly protesting unheard—were so rowdy that the driver pushed his cigar-stump to the corner of his mouth, to be able to smile at ease, and flicked his old horse into a canter. For the public examination had proved as anticipated, child's play, compared with what the class had been through at Dr Pughson's hands; and ...
— The Getting of Wisdom • Henry Handel Richardson

... as he finished the old stump of a tree with one branch left on it, and a little bit of ground at the bottom, "did you ever try your hand ...
— The Wide, Wide World • Susan Warner

... walking a good pace now," Boduoc said, "and shall gain but little by going faster. One cannot run for six hours; and besides it is as much as we can do to walk fast in the dark. Did we try to run we should like enough fall over a stump or root, and maybe not arrive there even though the ...
— Beric the Briton - A Story of the Roman Invasion • G. A. Henty

... contributed much to the fun created by Dick Harness. He was an American black, who had served as cook in the Majestic, and had been wounded in the battle of the Nile; he had received a bullet in the knee, which had occasioned a stiff joint; and, as his leg was bent, he wore a short wooden stump. He also could play his fiddle and sing his songs, but in neither case so well as Dick Harness, although he thought otherwise himself. We used to call him Opposition Bill, but his name was Bill White, at least that was the purser's name that he ...
— Poor Jack • Frederick Marryat

... Anse agreed, "that's right! But lookit that bay down there." He pointed to one of the saddled horses that had a dragging rein caught in a dead juniper stump and was trying to pull loose. "Got th' RR brand! Some of these must be from th' ...
— Rebel Spurs • Andre Norton

... wears out his time for provender, and can show a stump rod, togam tritam et laceram saith [2006]Haedus, an old torn gown, an ensign of his infelicity, he hath his labour for his pain, a modicum to keep him till he be decrepit, and that is all. Grammaticus non est felix, &c. If he be a trencher chaplain in a gentleman's ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior

... condition for the bales of cotton to be removed for the carpenter to examine the damage from the interior of the ship, Curtis employed the interval in having the broken mizzen-mast repaired. Dowlas the carpenter, with con- siderable skill, contrived to mortise it into its former stump. and made the junction thoroughly secure by strong iron- belts and bolts. The shrouds, the stays and backstays, were then carefully refitted, some of the sails were changed, and the whole of the running rigging ...
— The Survivors of the Chancellor • Jules Verne

... tomtoms beyond the Bureau Arabe in the quarter of the freed negroes. They were having a fantasia. I began to think that I must have been mistaken, and that Marnier had really turned in. So much the better. The ash dropped from the stump of my second cigar, and the deserted camel market was flooded with silver from the moon-rays. I knew there was only one door to the inn. Slowly I lit ...
— Desert Air - 1905 • Robert Hichens

... whites. The existing races of Indians had not even a tradition by whom it was done; and the excavations were unknown to them, until pointed out by the white man. Messrs. Foster and Whitney, in their survey of the copper-lands, found a pine-stump ten feet in circumference, which must have grown, flourished, and died since the mound of earth upon which it stood was thrown out. Mr. Knapp discovered, in 1848, a deserted mine or excavation, in which, under eighteen feet of rubbish, he found a mass of native ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 40, February, 1861 • Various

... there was a coffee-planter in India who wished to clear some forest land for coffee-planting. When he had cut down all the trees and burned the under-wood the stumps still remained. Dynamite is expensive and slow-fire slow. The happy medium for stump-clearing is the lord of all beats, who is the elephant. He will either push the stump out of the ground with his tusks, if he has any, or drag it out with ropes. The planter, therefore, hired elephants by ones and twos and threes, and fell to work. The very best of all the ...
— Life's Handicap • Rudyard Kipling

... refinement. It has neither now. In the old parlor downstairs a knot of hard-faced men and women sit on benches about a deal table, playing cards. They have a jug between them, from which they drink by turns. On the stump of a mantel-shelf a lamp burns before a rude print of the Mother of God. No one pays any heed to the hand-organ man and his wife as they climb to their attic. There is a colony of them up ...
— Children of the Tenements • Jacob A. Riis

... head as you have, old man, or any other male specimen I've struck. I myself meet her on almost equal terms. O, hang that; I don't either. This is no subject for profane jesting. Talk about the inferiority of women! If the moralists and stump-speakers had one like her at home, they'd change their tune. But there are no ...
— A Pessimist - In Theory and Practice • Robert Timsol

... came from, and thought he had located the German sniper. Dropping into a pile of leaves, as though shot, Jerry watched from under his cap. He saw a Hun cautiously raise his head from behind a distant stump, and that was the last act on the part of that ...
— Ned, Bob and Jerry on the Firing Line - The Motor Boys Fighting for Uncle Sam • Clarence Young

... seems, has been rambling about all night, having, the night before, had dreams about her lover, which 'made her moan and leap.' While kneeling, in the course of her rambles, at an old oak, she hears a noise on the other side of the stump, and going round, finds, to her great surprize, another fair damsel in white silk, but with her dress and hair in some disorder; at the mention of whom, the poet takes fright, not, as might be imagined, because of her ...
— Early Reviews of English Poets • John Louis Haney

... rambling in pursuit of natural curiosities may have observed that pine-woods are remarkable for certain collections of mosses which have cushioned a projecting rock or the decayed stump of a tree. When weary with heat and exercise, it is delightful to sit down upon one of these green velveted couches and take note of the objects immediately around us. We are then prepared to hear the least sound that invades our retreat. Some of the sweetest notes ever uttered ...
— The Atlantic Monthly , Volume 2, No. 14, December 1858 • Various

... was getting brighter and the wreck lay about a hundred yards off. The stump of her broken funnel, a bare iron mast, a smashed deckhouse, and a strip of slanted side rose from the languid swell. The rows of plates were red with rust and encrusted by shells. When the smooth undulations sank, long weed swung about in the sandy water. Lister thought the ...
— Lister's Great Adventure • Harold Bindloss

... now to the scenes outside of the vases, we observe that, of the first pair of satyrs, the bearded figure at the left (III), leans upon a tree-stump, over which is thrown his panther-skin, as he contemplates the contest between his fellows and the pirates, while against his right side rests a thyrsus. The corresponding satyr on the right (III), also bearded, but with his head now nearly effaced, wears his mantle ...
— The American Journal of Archaeology, 1893-1 • Various

... staggered in front, the balance following him like starved sheep. He stopped before the captain and sank to a seat on a stump. The perspiration stood in great drops on his face and he was ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely

... along a passage that was like a tunnel. Narrow, iron-barred openings, like the slits for archers in medieval castles, dimly lighted the way. Another door gave access to a long, low room, beam-ceilinged, with a fireplace in which an ox could have been roasted. A huge stump, resting on a bed of coals, blazed brightly. Two billiard tables, several card tables, lounging corners, and a miniature bar constituted the major furnishing. Two young men chalked their cues and returned ...
— The Little Lady of the Big House • Jack London

... fluttered from the tree with a squawk and straddled awkwardly to the stump, scaring the robin into flight, and beating an inky ...
— Judy • Temple Bailey

... of your red republican humbugs, Augustine! Why didn't you ever take to the stump;—you'd make a famous stump orator! Well, I hope I shall be dead before this millennium of your greasy masses ...
— Uncle Tom's Cabin • Harriet Beecher Stowe

... as they rested on the ledge overlooking the mill and the waters of the cove, he felt the moment of its revelation had arrived. He was propped against the stump of a storm-thrown tamarack. Standing was stretched prone upon the fallen trunk itself. Neither had spoken for some minutes. But the trend of thought was apparent in each. Bat's deep-set, troubled eyes were regarding the life and movement going on down ...
— The Man in the Twilight • Ridgwell Cullum

... trail. After going a short distance I came to the track of a lion alongside my own. I went back several miles and read the lion's movements. He had watched me closely. At every place where I rested he had crept up close, and at the place where I had sat down against a stump he had crept up to the opposite side of the stump,—and I ...
— Wild Life on the Rockies • Enos A. Mills

... rushed forward to express her sympathy, as he struggled to extricate himself: "What do you know about war?" If the general in hand was a political brigadier or major-general, who had been in the habit before the war of saving his country on the stump, he would proceed to discuss the origin and cure of the Rebellion, greatly to the satisfaction of the Committee, and they would ascertain at once that so far as his principles were concerned, the ought to have commanded the Army of the Potomac. If the general called and questioned happened ...
— Perley's Reminiscences, Vol. 1-2 - of Sixty Years in the National Metropolis • Benjamin Perley Poore

... little Jed Smith set off. We finished establishing camp. Two holes were dug for camp refuse; that was my business. Places for the beds were cleared of sticks and things; that was Kit Carson's business. General Ashley chopped a cedar stump for wood (cedar burns without soot, you know); and Fitzpatrick cooked. The burros had been unpacked and the flags planted before Fitzpatrick and I came in. We had to picket the burros out, to graze, at first, or they might have gone back to town. Of course, as we were short-handed, we had ...
— Pluck on the Long Trail - Boy Scouts in the Rockies • Edwin L. Sabin

... aggressive, close-questioning women, utterly devoid of sensitiveness and delicacy who are not satisfied until they have forced open all the secret drawers of the mind and stuck the contents on a bill file,—one of those hard-bosomed women who stump into church as they stump into a department store with an air of "Now then, what can you show me that's new," who go about with a metaphorical set of burglar's tools in a large bag with which to break open confidences and who have no ...
— Who Cares? • Cosmo Hamilton

... Cat had gone a bit farther, she met a she-bear, who was tearing away at a stump till the splinters flew, so angry was she at having lost ...
— Boys and Girls Bookshelf (Vol 2 of 17) - Folk-Lore, Fables, And Fairy Tales • Various

... blackened stumps that sprang from the underbrush. And there was Something, 'way over in the woods, beyond the trees horribly gashed to whiteness by lightning. Perhaps the Something hadn't moved; perhaps it was a stump—— ...
— The Trail of the Hawk - A Comedy of the Seriousness of Life • Sinclair Lewis

... board. Spanish chivalry was hardly more conspicuous on this occasion than Dutch valour, as illustrated by Admiral Haultain. Two whole days and nights Klaaszoon drifted about in his crippled ship, exchanging broadsides with his antagonists, and with his colours flying on the stump of his mast. The fact would seem incredible, were it not attested by perfectly trustworthy contemporary accounts. At last his hour seemed to have come. His ship was sinking; a final demand for surrender, with promise of ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley



Words linked to "Stump" :   get, walk, amaze, baffle, post, bewilder, beat, perplex, stick, lattice, mystify, pose, plant part, tree, dumbfound, clear, platform, nonplus, gravel, cricket, puzzle, tooth, vex, limb, body part, stool, campaign, flummox, stupefy, wicket, plant structure, grille, run



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