"Undersized" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... But the whole effect is spoiled when I look at them—at Tetralani, five feet ten in her stocking feet and weighing a hundred and ninety pounds, and at Barillo, a scant five feet four, greasy-featured, with the chest of a squat, undersized blacksmith, and at the pair of them, attitudinizing, clasping their breasts, flinging their arms in the air like demented creatures in an asylum; and when I am expected to accept all this as the faithful illusion of a love-scene between a slender and ...
— Martin Eden • Jack London
... finished, dressed and shaved, and on deck. We were still towing, but all sails were set to a light favouring breeze from the north. In the chart-room Captain West and the pilot were smoking cigars. At the wheel I noted what I decided at once was an efficient. He was not a large man; if anything he was undersized. But his countenance was broad-browed and intelligently formed. Tom, I later learned, was his name—Tom Spink, an Englishman. He was blue-eyed, fair-skinned, well- grizzled, and, to the eye, a hale fifty years of age. His reply of "Good morning, ...
— The Mutiny of the Elsinore • Jack London
... undersized little wretches," Boduoc said, as they started for the village; "no wonder that our forefathers swept them out of the land without any difficulty. But they are active and sturdy, and, knowing their swamps as they do, could ...
— Beric the Briton - A Story of the Roman Invasion • G. A. Henty
... men often passed Richmond without taking particular notice of him. He was rather undersized, and was bald, but his head was shapely. He was so sensitive that he often assumed a brusqueness in order not to appear effeminate. His judgment of men was as swift as the sweep of a hawk, and sometimes it was as sure. He had taken so ...
— The Colossus - A Novel • Opie Read
... the crowd increased: men and women, well dressed, sober-looking, crying, "Shame! shame!" and topping by a head the little squad of undersized soldiers (for the regular army was then recruited almost entirely from foreigners) who marched hurriedly forward, with eyes cast straight before and downward, and dressed in that shabby blue that ten years later was to pour southward ...
— Pirate Gold • Frederic Jesup Stimson
... hung round with clothes, of divers forms and patterns, in every stage of existence—from the first crude conception of the incipient surtout or pantaloons, down to the last glorious touch that immortalizes the artist. His figure is slim and undersized; his cheeks are sallow, with two furrows on each side his nose, filled not unfrequently with snuff; his eyes project like lobsters', and cast their shifting glances about with a vague sort of mysterious intelligence; and his voice—his ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 12, - Issue 323, July 19, 1828 • Various
... dead. I went out in the night. At the first barricade I stopped and offered myself; a man examined me by the light of a lantern. 'A child!' he exclaimed. I was not fifteen. I was very slight and undersized. I answered: 'A child, maybe, but my father was killed two hours ago. He gave me his musket. Teach me ...
— Parisian Points of View • Ludovic Halevy
... the primeval existence of an undersized race whose average height has been ascertained to be 4 feet 8.30562 inches. This precise figure has been calculated by a member of this society, from the measurement of an apparently human footprint discovered ...
— Boycotted - And Other Stories • Talbot Baines Reed
... just descended the splendid oak staircase, with its finely carved balustrade, black and worm-eaten, Cecil de la Borne stared at his brother with the angry disgust of one whose sense of all that is holiest stands outraged. Slim, of graceful though somewhat undersized figure, he was conscious of having attained perfection in matters which he reckoned of no small importance. His grey tweed suit fitted him like a glove, his tie was a perfect blend between the colour of his eyes and his clothes, his shoes were of immaculate shape and polish, his socks had been ...
— Jeanne of the Marshes • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... was alone in his down-town bachelor quarters; that is, alone save for an individual the club-man's friends termed his "Man Friday," an undersized and very black negro named Alexander Hamilton Brown, but answering to the contraction "Alec." Valet, man of all work, steward, Alec was as much a fixture about the place as the floor or the ceiling; and, like them, his presence, save ...
— Ben Blair - The Story of a Plainsman • Will Lillibridge
... large sofa, perceived there a crouching figure "with a most repulsive appearance." It was "the boy Jones." This enigmatical personage, whose escapades dominated the newspapers for several ensuing months, and whose motives and character remained to the end ambiguous, was an undersized lad of 17, the son of a tailor, who had apparently gained admittance to the Palace by climbing over the garden wall and walking in through an open window. Two years before he had paid a similar visit in the guise of a chimney-sweep. He now declared that he had spent three days ...
— Queen Victoria • Lytton Strachey
... and travelling guests we succeeded in gathering a company around us which allowed us, until far into the night, to lead it into the most inconceivable follies. To all this I was incited more particularly by the personality of a very timid and undersized business man from Frankfort on the Oder, who longed to seem of a daring disposition; and his presence stimulated me, if only owing to the remarkable chance it gave me of coming into contact with some one who was at ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner
... the nuts are growing in size, they are much more likely to be well filled at maturity. In fact, the writer has seen several instances in which, because of severe drought in the spring, pecans were undersized, yet the kernels developed and filled so well that the shells of the ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Incorporated 39th Annual Report - at Norris, Tenn. September 13-15 1948 • Various
... missing youth except that he had departed long long ago, leaving as his future address the name of a bird-stuffer, which name had unfortunately been mislaid—not lost. Oh no—only mislaid! On further inquiry, however, there was a certain undersized, plain-looking, and rather despised chamber-maid who retained a lively and grateful recollection of Mr Aspel, in consequence of his having given her an unexpectedly large tip at parting, coupled with a few slight but kindly made inquiries as to her welfare, which seemed to ...
— Post Haste • R.M. Ballantyne
... windblown, naked appearance, like many villages near the sea, although the ocean was still far from here. Moreover, there was a strange quietude—the stillness of a fever-stricken spot. The men and women looked undersized and prematurely old, and the children were pale and thin. Although the village was on a hill, the evil influence of the marshes reached it. I was told, however, that it had become much less unhealthy of late years. On the highest spot was a poor and plain little church, ...
— Two Summers in Guyenne • Edward Harrison Barker
... looked at each other, a great giant of a man and an undersized bantam. Yet some electric spark of sympathy seemed to dart between ...
— Slaves of Mercury • Nat Schachner
... that a boy's head should be, showing plenty of brain room above his ears. While it was still actually—and naturally—large for his body, it looked much too large; not only because the body that did its bidding was undersized, but because his hair, bright and abundant, added to ...
— The Rich Little Poor Boy • Eleanor Gates
... locality visited a certain district in company with his master. He was tall, well favoured, a good rider, quite an athlete, an accomplished performer with the mouth-organ and concertina; ready and persuasive of tongue. These qualities provoked unaffected admiration; for the natives of the place are undersized, ill-looking, and deficient generally in the arts of pleasing. Before the master left, Caesar was persuaded by his envious fellow-countrymen to remain with them ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield
... his father, beginning to talk at once. "We receive the company and do the honours while mother's looking after the tea. We only keep one undersized girl," he explained more directly to Annie, "and Ellen has to be chief cook and bottlewasher herself. She'll be in directly. Just lay off ...
— Annie Kilburn - A Novel • W. D. Howells
... to Denver in the spring of 1880, at the age of eleven, as mildly inoffensive a small boy as ever left a farm—undersized and weakly, so that at the age of seventeen I commonly passed as twelve, and so unaccustomed to the sight of buildings that I thought the five-story Windsor Hotel a miracle of height and magnificence. I had been living with ...
— Stories of Achievement, Volume III (of 6) - Orators and Reformers • Various
... reduced to a little fragile being smaller than Butscha? That is a question which we ask ourselves in more than one salon in Paris when we hear the greatest names of France announced, and see the entrance of a thin, pinched, undersized young man, scarcely possessing the breath of life, or a premature old one, or some whimsical creature in whom an observer can with great difficulty trace the signs of a past grandeur. The dissipations of the reign of Louis XV., ...
— Modeste Mignon • Honore de Balzac
... to meet her. And even in the half light it could be seen that the boy was an undersized little cripple of perhaps nine or ten years old but looking much younger; as it could also be seen that even in his worn overcoat and old stained felt hat the man was ...
— The Reason Why • Elinor Glyn
... makes noise enough, but the expert perceives that Jimmy has adenoids, breathes through his mouth, is really undersized. ...
— The Forerunner, Volume 1 (1909-1910) • Charlotte Perkins Gilman
... Regiment of Picardy; active fellows enough, and accustomed to the frontier, although they gave small evidence of discipline, and their uniforms were in shocking condition. The sergeant was a heavily built, stocky man, but the others were rather undersized, and of little spirit. The same thought must have been in the minds of others, for the expression on Monsieur Cassion's face was not pleasant ...
— Beyond the Frontier • Randall Parrish
... dinner-party, and extremely unlikely to leave the private side of the house. John heard snatches of song, howls, and cheers. Ordinarily Lawrence (in whose passage the shindy was taking place) would have stopped this hullabaloo; but Lawrence was dining with his house-master, and Trieve, an undersized, weakly stripling, lacked the moral courage to interfere. John was getting a "con" from Trieve when an unusually piercing howl penetrated the ...
— The Hill - A Romance of Friendship • Horace Annesley Vachell
... or plaster; that these paths, bordered with impenetrable hedges; that these grudging plants; these inhospitable fields; these crippled beggars, eaten with vermin, plastered with filth; that even the flocks, undersized and wasted, the dumpy little cows, the black sheep whose blue eyes had the cold, pale gleam that is in the eyes of the Slav or of the tribade; had perpetuated their primordial state, preserving an identical landscape ...
— La-bas • J. K. Huysmans
... tobacco-smoked oriental rugs, banners and lanterns, suspended from walls and balcony railings, lent a semblance of "color" to the place; little Moorish alcoves were set into the walls, in and out of which undersized waiters dodged like rabbits in a warren. The attendants were irritable; they perspired freely, they bumped into people, squeezed past, or, failing in that, ...
— The Auction Block • Rex Beach
... Peter, and he instinctively started up from the bench on which he was sitting, and shrank backwards. As he did so, he showed himself a disfigured paralytic, one side of his face being partly drawn, and one leg crooked. He was an undersized man, with sandy hair, quick, intelligent, grey eyes, and a ...
— A Loose End and Other Stories • S. Elizabeth Hall
... brought back from the moon the lost wits of Orlando when he became furioso because Angelica would have nothing to say to him and married Medoro. And I saw Astolfo's father, Ottone d'Inghilterra, and Il Re Desiderio and Gandellino, who seemed undersized; but when I said ...
— Diversions in Sicily • H. Festing Jones
... saddle, with its lassoing horn in front, high peak behind, immense wooden stirrups, with great leathern guards, silver or brass bosses, and coloured saddle-cloths. The saddles were the only element of the picturesque that these Hawaiian steeds possessed. They were sorry, lean, undersized beasts, looking in general as if the emergencies of life left them little time for eating or sleeping. They stood calmly in the broiling sun, heavy-headed and heavy-hearted, with flabby ears and pendulous lower lips, limp and rawboned, a doleful ...
— The Hawaiian Archipelago • Isabella L. Bird
... Mulready, once said that Shelley was too beautiful for portraiture; and yet the descriptions of him hardly seem to bear this out. He was quite tall and slender, but he stooped so much as to make him appear undersized. His head was very small-quite disproportionately so; but this was counteracted to the eye by his long and tumbled hair which, when excited, he would rub and twist in a thousand different directions until it was actually bushy. His ...
— Famous Affinities of History, Vol 1-4, Complete - The Romance of Devotion • Lyndon Orr
... he may have looked like a commissioner of lunacy, but he did not look like a poet; he was rather undersized, with a compact head and a solemn face, and the quietest, most unobtrusive bearing imaginable. He was a well-made little man, and he lived to a great age, dying some time in the seventies, at the age of eighty-seven. He told my father that ...
— Hawthorne and His Circle • Julian Hawthorne
... a practical knowledge of timber himself, acquired at first hand. He had skirted his boundaries and traversed the fringes of his property, and he saw scrubby, undersized trees where the four-foot trunks of Douglas fir should have lifted in brown ranks. He had looked into the bisecting hollow from different angles and marked magnificent cedars,—but too few of them. Taken with ...
— The Hidden Places • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... life with a contempt that was only natural when we consider the utter lack of board schools and their frantic belief in a hereafter. I imagine the Norse Sea-kings who pushed out to Vine-land—aye, even down to Cape Cod—would have been puzzled to hear an undersized clerk who had saved a man from a watery grave described as a hero. Their method was to pull the drowning wretch out with a boat-hook, and curse him for being so clumsy as to fall in. Eric the Red never worried about a sailor who had the bad judgment ...
— An Ocean Tramp • William McFee
... after one or two severe bouts, she completely mastered them, and that their progress was really very great, and most satisfactory, as Mr. Nixon, Charles's guardian, who had examined him, had reported most favourably thereon. But he appears to be insignificant, and undersized, thin as a whipping post, pale, and somewhat sickly-looking, he appears much younger than he is, and seems hardly fitted for what you and I would delight in. ...
— The Romance of Lust - A classic Victorian erotic novel • Anonymous
... waited for him without budging. Coming up to him, Alyosha saw facing him a child of about nine years old. He was an undersized weakly boy with a thin pale face, with large dark eyes that gazed at him vindictively. He was dressed in a rather shabby old overcoat, which he had monstrously outgrown. His bare arms stuck out beyond his sleeves. There was a large patch on the right knee of his trousers, and in his right ...
— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... one was inside it, except one tourist; but its platforms were overflowing with Italians, who preferred to stand. Children tried to hang on behind, and the conductor, with no malice, spat in their faces to make them let go. Then soldiers appeared—good-looking, undersized men—wearing each a knapsack covered with mangy fur, and a great-coat which had been cut for some larger soldier. Beside them walked officers, looking foolish and fierce, and before them went little boys, turning somersaults in time with the band. The tramcar ...
— A Room With A View • E. M. Forster
... the red-headed young man for the first time, and met his lively brown eyes, full of a droll, confiding sort of humor. Mr. Landry was not prepossessing. He was undersized and clumsily made, with a red, shiny face and a sharp little nose that looked as if it had been whittled out of wood and was always in the air, on the scent of something. Yet it was this queer little beak, with his eyes, that ...
— Song of the Lark • Willa Cather
... him for a month, off and on. And his face still says nothing. His eyes are curiously emotionless. They appear suddenly in his face. He is undersized. His nose, despite the recent massage and powder, has a slight oleaginous gleam to it. The cheek bones are a bit high, the mouth a trifle wide and the chin slightly bulbous. As he blinks about him with his small, almost Mongolian eyes he ...
— A Thousand and One Afternoons in Chicago • Ben Hecht
... away all your trunks, you will have room left over to do a bit of entertaining—possibly an informal dance or something. When you go on board you find that the place has shrunk to the dimensions of an undersized cupboard in which it would be impossible to swing a cat. And then, about the second day out, it suddenly expands again. For one reason or another the necessity for swinging cats does not arise and you ...
— Three Men and a Maid • P. G. Wodehouse
... at her doubtfully. She was an undersized, wizened little Cockney, and Avice was a big, stoutly-built girl—who held, moreover, the advantage of a commanding position on the top step. In an encounter of strength there was little doubt as to who would win. She turned in silence, cowed, and went down to the kitchen, while ...
— Back To Billabong • Mary Grant Bruce
... man folds his arms and throws his head back in a peculiar way he has. How strangely full of dignity these undersized people ...
— Miss Caprice • St. George Rathborne
... contour of the huge bird. He could see the ragged black wings—a buzzard's wings are so often ragged and uneven—and the naked throat; the slim, naked head; the big feet folded up against the dingy belly. And he could see a bell too—an undersized cowbell—that dangled at the creature's breast and jangled incessantly. All his life nearly Squire Gathers had been hearing about the Belled Buzzard. Now with his own eye ...
— The Escape of Mr. Trimm - His Plight and other Plights • Irvin S. Cobb
... never was.) Warburton has described to me her eyes, so I am positive that they were as heavenly blue as a rajah's sapphire. Her height is of no moment. What man ever troubled himself about the height of a woman, so long as he wasn't undersized himself? What pleased Warburton was the exquisite skin. He was always happy with his comparisons, and particularly when he likened her skin to the bloomy olive pallor of a young peach. The independent ...
— The Man on the Box • Harold MacGrath
... a voice at his elbow. He looked around, and then he looked down. An undersized urchin with not much on but a pair of ragged breeches stared up at him boldly, hands behind his back. "Do you know what ails your ship over there?" He nodded sideways at the ...
— Days of the Discoverers • L. Lamprey
... after all these years, not a bearded brigand with a knife sticking from his boot, but a mild undersized man, hat in hand, smiling at me with pleasant cordiality. His red hair had faded to a harmless carrot. From an overtopping rascal he had dwindled to my shoulder. It was as strange and incomprehensible as if the broken middle-aged gentleman, my familiar neighbor across ...
— Chimney-Pot Papers • Charles S. Brooks
... interest. To the left a large space was devoted to three or four bulky casks, and here an aproned drawer sat astride of a rush-bottomed chair, grinning delightedly and exchanging nods and winks from time to time with an impish, undersized lad who lay on his stomach on a wine-butt with his head craning forward ...
— The Panchronicon • Harold Steele Mackaye
... an undersized, scrawny specimen of the genus which is popularly known as "tinhorn," a sort of free-lance gambler, usually to be found sitting in at a poker-game. The engineer was a big man ...
— When the West Was Young • Frederick R. Bechdolt
... godfather many a sharp nip as time went on. Esther was of a dark complexion, a true brunette and very sturdy; Angelica the brightest red and the most exactly like her mother; while Selwyn was the smallest cub, of a very prying, inquisitive and cunning temper, but delicate and undersized. ...
— Lady Into Fox • David Garnett
... than usually badgered. Just as Tom approached his door a little man opened it cautiously and slid out, with the air of one leaving within the apartment things not exhilarating on retrospect. He was an undersized country man, the cut of whose jeans wore a familiar air to Tom's eye even at a distance and before he lifted the countenance which revealed ...
— In Connection with the De Willoughby Claim • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... party had as yet observed upon the excellent bearing of the two men. They were dark, undersized, and well set up; stepped softly, waited deftly, brought on the wines and dishes at a look, and their eyes ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XIX (of 25) - The Ebb-Tide; Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... ludicrous, extraordinary, almost noble figure of a dancing bear. A third corner of the paillasse was rudely grasped by a six-foot combination of yellow hair, red hooligan face, and sky-blue trousers; assisted by the undersized tasseled mucker in Belgian uniform, with a pimply rogue's mug and unlimited impertinence of diction, who had awakened me by demanding if I wanted coffee. Albeit completely dazed by the uncouth vocal fracas, I realised in some manner that these hostile forces were contending, ...
— The Enormous Room • Edward Estlin Cummings
... His companion, an undersized, dapper individual, whose raiment—suit, socks, shirt, shoes, hat and tie—might comprehensively be described as a symphony in brown, paused also, turned and looked at the chairs, then at the table, and finally ...
— Cap'n Dan's Daughter • Joseph C. Lincoln
... wealth could bring no comfort, had secretly amassed large hoards at the plunder of Plataea, from which they had sold to the traders of Aegina gold at the price of brass. The appearance of the rioters was startling and melancholy. They were mostly stunted and undersized, as are generally the progeny of the sons of woe; lean and gaunt with early hardship, the spine of the back curved and bowed by habitual degradation; but with the hard-knit sinews and prominent muscles which are produced by labour and the mountain air; ...
— Pausanias, the Spartan - The Haunted and the Haunters, An Unfinished Historical Romance • Lord Lytton
... Swaney's saloon. Since then he had developed into a well-behaved little beast with a pair of wistful eyes that looked unutterable love, and a tail that beat the ground, the floor, or the air in joyous welcome whenever Rathburn came in sight. He was part collie, sharp-nosed and prick-eared, and his undersized little body still bore the marks of the precarious existence that had been his before Rathburn had ...
— The Tangled Threads • Eleanor H. Porter
... them. As our steamer had come up the coast I had looked in vain for even a decent-sized woman or child amongst them. They seem a race without a single beauty, possessing neither stature, nor colour, nor length of hair, nor even plump shapeliness. Undersized, leather-skinned, small-eyed, thin, and wizened, they never seem to be young. They seem to start middle-aged and go ...
— Five Nights • Victoria Cross
... right to outwit others if he can. What a turn-out he has!' One was once heard to add, 'I never saw a more genteel-looking man in all my life except one, and that was a gentleman's walley, who was much like him. It is true he is rather undersized, but then madam, you know, makes up ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow
... the Constable, 'that there are far too many rioters. One would have been quite sufficient. If there had been only one small undersized rioter, I should have quelled him with the ...
— The Magic Pudding • Norman Lindsay
... diplomatic and might "head off any trouble," but the Pinkies seemed uneasy, and several of them picked up their slender, pointed sticks and held them in their hands. They were not cowardly, but it was evident they mistrusted the big man, who on Earth was not considered big at all, but rather undersized. ...
— Sky Island - Being the further exciting adventures of Trot and Cap'n - Bill after their visit to the sea fairies • L. Frank Baum
... the Bible, does not always follow exactly the text which he is to illustrate. The people called Barnabas Jupiter, and Paul Mercury. This would seem to show that Barnabas was a great, imposing figure, and Paul, according to tradition, was a small, undersized man; but there is no such contrast to ...
— Raphael - A Collection Of Fifteen Pictures And A Portrait Of The - Painter With Introduction And Interpretation • Estelle M. Hurll
... herself and the two children; and then sat down in the saloon, and afterwards on deck, to spend the irksome and dreary hour or two before parting. Many of the passengers seemed to be Portuguese, undersized, dark, mustachioed people, smoking cigars. John Bull was fairly represented too. . . . . U—— was cheerful, and R——- seemed anxious to get off. Poor Fanny was altogether cast down, and shed tears, either from regret at leaving her native land, ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... respected him most highly, "Marsh" McNutt (and sundry other appellations by those who respected him not at all), became the recipient of a letter from New York announcing the intention of a certain John Merrick, the new owner of the Wegg Farm, to spend the summer on the place. McNutt was an undersized man of about forty, with a beardless face, scraggly buff-colored hair, and eyes that were big, light blue and remarkably protruding. The stare of those eyes was impenetrable, because observers found it embarrassing to look at them. "Mac's" friends had a trick of looking away when they ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces at Millville • Edith Van Dyne
... and cold meat) to a party of friends and relations— They're a ravenous horde—and they all came on board at Sloane Square and South Kensington Stations. And bound on that journey you find your attorney (who started that morning from Devon); He's a bit undersized, and you don't feel surprised when he tells you he's only eleven. Well, you're driving like mad with this singular lad (by the by, the ship's now a four-wheeler), And you're playing round games, and he calls you bad names when you tell him that "ties pay the dealer"; ...
— The Complete Plays of Gilbert and Sullivan - The 14 Gilbert And Sullivan Plays • William Schwenk Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan
... Before he could take the cup, however, the whole tray had slipped from the waiter's fingers, caught the corner of the table, and fallen with its contents on to the carpet. The waiter himself—a small, undersized person with black, startled eyes set at that moment in a fixed and unnatural stare—made one desperate effort to save himself and then fell backwards. Every one turned around, attracted by the noise of the falling cups ...
— The Kingdom of the Blind • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... the stripling's head? Professionally, if not artistically speaking, Dor passed straight from child to man; in one sense of the word he had no boyhood, the term tyro remained inapplicable. This undersized, fragile lad, looking years younger than he really was, soon found himself on what must have appeared a pinnacle ...
— In the Heart of the Vosges - And Other Sketches by a "Devious Traveller" • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... kept his eyes on O'Day as he peered into the dark, an undersized, gaunt-looking man, sidled toward Felix and pulled at his coat sleeve. "I ain't too early, am ...
— Felix O'Day • F. Hopkinson Smith
... He was an undersized, foxy fellow, dressed as a gamekeeper and carrying a fowling-piece under one arm. His small eyes regarded ...
— The Orchard of Tears • Sax Rohmer
... girl sitting on his knees, cat-calls from the English sailors increased the din. The air was heavy with the dust beaten up by the heavy boots of the men, and gray with smoke. It was very hot. Behind the bar was seated a woman nursing her baby. The waiter, an undersized youth with a flat, spotty face, hurried to and fro carrying a tray ...
— The Moon and Sixpence • W. Somerset Maugham
... men ahead of us were mostly Brandenburgers, Bavarians and Prussians. At one place I had leapt with my pal into a small shell hole, and over to my right was a kiltie engaged in a hand-to-hand struggle with a Hun. The kiltie was an undersized chap and Fritz was about twice his size, and with a much longer bayonet, and Jock seemed to be getting a bit tired. I didn't think it wise to wait, even though I felt very certain that Jock could hold his own, and taking careful aim with my revolver I tumbled the Fritzie over. Looking ...
— S.O.S. Stand to! • Reginald Grant
... Jasus, and ain't she welcome intirely? Come along ye little undersized spalpeen with ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard
... sight very striking about Mr. John Wesley's appearance. He was, I thought, rather undersized, and I at that moment failed to see what there was about him to cause so much commotion. And yet as I looked again I could not help being impressed with the calm strength which shone from his eyes. He seemed to possess a power unknown to most ...
— The Birthright • Joseph Hocking
... Candidate at the depot and escort him to the Opera-house. But then it would never have occurred to Jimmie that he had any place on such a committee; for he was just an ignorant fellow, a machinist, undersized and undernourished, with bad teeth and roughened hands, and no gifts or graces of any sort to recommend him; while on the Reception Committee were a lawyer and a prosperous doctor and the secretary of the Carpet-weavers' ...
— Jimmie Higgins • Upton Sinclair
... it would have been a hard-enough lot to be pooh-poohed through life by every personable female one met. Here the coupled syllables carried an added sting of contemptuousness. In the language of the country they meant runty, mean-figured, undersized. A graceful girl, her naked limbs glistening with coconut oil, a necklet of flowers about her throat and a hibiscus bloom pasted to her cheek like a beauty spot, meeting him in the road would give him a derisive smile over ...
— From Place to Place • Irvin S. Cobb
... the beasts with some disfavor. They were evidently half-mustang, and I thought undersized for such a journey. But I was to learn before the night was out the virtues of strength and endurance that lie in the ...
— Blindfolded • Earle Ashley Walcott
... Anna blessed that dimple. It meant an extra half-hour in bed for her; it made Sabina light the fire, turn out the kitchen and wash endless cups and saucers that had been left over from the evening before. Hans, the scullery boy, did not come until seven. He was the son of the butcher—a mean, undersized child very much like one of his father's sausages, Sabina thought. His red face was covered with pimples, and his nails indescribably filthy. When Herr Lehmann himself told Hans to get a hairpin and clean ...
— In a German Pension • Katherine Mansfield
... is meant for a Pekinese—the pedigree says so. From the look of him it will be touch and go whether he pulls it off. To call him by the name of a late poodle may just be the deciding factor. Now I hate poodles; I hate pet dogs. A Pekinese is not a pet dog; he is an undersized lion. Our puppy may grow into a small lion, or a mastiff, or anything like that; but I will not have him a poodle. If we call him Bingo, will you promise never to mention in his presence that you once had a—a—you know ...
— The Sunny Side • A. A. Milne
... thus named because of his inveterate tendency to range over the neighbouring hills, was a quiet, undersized, said-to-be weak-minded boy of sixteen years, though he looked little more than fourteen. No excitement whatever ruffled his placid countenance as he gave his report—to the effect that a party of dragoons had been seen by him not half an hour ...
— Hunted and Harried • R.M. Ballantyne
... and several other dogs followed the wounded hound, and I went with them. The Marquesans had war-clubs and long knives like undersized machetes. Every Islander carries such a knife for cutting underbrush or cocoanut-stems, and usually it is his only tool for building native houses, so that he becomes very expert with it, as the Filipino with his bolo or ...
— White Shadows in the South Seas • Frederick O'Brien
... and never failed to return an appreciative response to any remark or question. To the ladies he gave the most deferential attention. Arlington, a peer in the social realm, felt piqued to admit himself outrivalled by an undersized ...
— A Dream of Empire - Or, The House of Blennerhassett • William Henry Venable
... but they must possess the necessary scientific qualifications and have taken a recognised course of study. These posts are non-pensionable. The Fishery Branch deals with questions relating to the natural history and diseases of fish, fish-hatcheries and laboratories, the protection of undersized fish, the effect of methods of capture, international investigations, and grants in aid of fishery research. The women are engaged upon the same work as men, except that they do not write technical reports and are not liable to be called ...
— Women Workers in Seven Professions • Edith J. Morley
... during my stay in Death Valley. He camped with us. A rather undersized man he was, yet muscular, with brown wrinkled face and narrow dim eyes. He seemed to be smiling to himself most of the time. He liked to talk to his burros. He was exceedingly interesting. Once he nearly died of thirst, having gone from noon one day till next morning without ...
— Tales of lonely trails • Zane Grey
... turned on to a tray to dry in the sun. They are still sticky, but of a brown, mahogany colour. Among them are pieces of fibre and other "trash," as well as small, undersized beans, or "balloons," as the nearly empty shell of an unformed bean is called. While a man shovels the beans into a heap, a group of women, with skirts kilted high, tread round the sides of the heap, separating ...
— The Food of the Gods - A Popular Account of Cocoa • Brandon Head
... men with the big man were noncommittal. The pale, undersized man was a mere onlooker whose sympathies were with the accused. Miss Bransford would have been quite willing to have this young man escape punishment, but she could not deny that the cattle in question belonged ...
— Square Deal Sanderson • Charles Alden Seltzer
... him cruelly with his failure, and the man always took her lightest word to heart. He had conceived an affection for her which was a trifle inconvenient—a jealous, fierce affection made grotesque by his ugly, undersized person. ...
— A German Pompadour - Being the Extraordinary History of Wilhelmine van Graevenitz, - Landhofmeisterin of Wirtemberg • Marie Hay
... slightly built, and undersized; her neck and shoulders were closely muffled, though the day was mild; she wore a faded scarlet hood which heightened the pallor of what must at best have been a pallid face. It was a sickly face, shaded ...
— Men, Women, and Ghosts • Elizabeth Stuart Phelps
... summons, and from the rear circle of the audience shuffled forward the strangest man Pauline had ever seen. His undersized, stooping form was garbed in a miner's cast-off red shirt, a ranchman's ex-trousers, a pair of tattered moccasins and a much-dented derby hat, with a lone feather in the band of it. It was White ...
— The Perils of Pauline • Charles Goddard
... a nigger!" exclaimed one prince. Another called him a Moor. And two others could not endure him at all. He was undersized and slender as well; and his legs were so very short that they hardly reached the ground. His nose was long and beaked and disfigured, with nostrils of different shape, and he was undershot like a bulldog, and unusually pitted with smallpox even for those ante-vaccination days, ...
— The Love Affairs of Great Musicians, Volume 1 • Rupert Hughes
... there is nothing to distinguish them from the red race elsewhere, they have strong national traits. Physically they are rather undersized, averaging not over five feet four inches in height, but strong-limbed, agile, and symmetrical. Their foreheads are low, their noses more allied to the Aryan types than usual with their race, and their skulls of that form defined by ...
— The Arawack Language of Guiana in its Linguistic and Ethnological Relations • Daniel G. Brinton
... the Indian women are homely to the last degree. "Ugly," said an Oregonian to me, as we contemplated a company of squaws—"ugly is too mild a word to apply to such faces;" and he was right. Broad-faced, flat-nosed, small-eyed, unkempt, frowzy, undersized, thickset, clumsy, they have not a trace of beauty about them, either young or old. They are just useful, nothing more; and as you look at them and at the burdens they bear, you wonder whether, when the Woman's Rights movement has ...
— Northern California, Oregon, and the Sandwich Islands • Charles Nordhoff
... Octave de Mussidan in no way resembled the man sketched by Florestan. Since the time of Montaigne, a servant's portrait of his employer should always be distrusted. The Count looked fully sixty, though he was but fifty years of age; he was undersized, and he looked shrunk and shrivelled; he was nearly bald, and his long whiskers were perfectly white. The cares of life had imprinted deep furrows on his brow, and told too plainly the story of a man who, having drained the chalice ...
— Caught In The Net • Emile Gaboriau
... earnestly, pointing accidentally at the chairman, but meaning to indicate the unfortunate musician, "is this the culmination of a race of gods? this inebriate, undersized—" ...
— Soldiers of the Queen • Harold Avery
... one. And Trigger discovered suddenly that she felt just a little sympathy for Lyad. Lyad had lost out on a very big gamble. And, each in his own way, there were three very formidable males among whom she was sitting. None of them was friendly; two were oversized, and the undersized one had a fairly bloodchilling record for anyone on the wrong side of law and order. Trigger decided to forget about ...
— Legacy • James H Schmitz
... An undersized man with a remarkably large head of hair spoke up from the righthand side of the table: "I want to suggest that it is high time we sent ...
— The Devolutionist and The Emancipatrix • Homer Eon Flint
... never forget the closing scenes of the wondrous test of courage and endurance. She was a pretty, fair-haired thing, a trifle undersized, but shapely and sinewy. The vast crowd that without much diminution, though with intermittent changes, had watched her from start to finish, began to grow tense with the approach to the end, and the ...
— Marse Henry, Complete - An Autobiography • Henry Watterson
... Ephraim, undersized for his age, in his hitching, home-made clothes, twisted himself about when Barnabas entered, and stared at him with slow regard. He eyed the smooth, scented hair, the black satin vest with a pattern of blue flowers on it, the blue coat with brass buttons, ...
— Pembroke - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... was born in Japan an undersized, monkey-faced boy of good but poor parentage, who, at the age of thirteen, resolved to make himself the chief power in the distracted kingdom. For 200 years the militant barons had warred against each other, each trying to grab, annex, and hold ...
— Analyzing Character • Katherine M. H. Blackford and Arthur Newcomb
... lofty mountainous region in the E. of Afghanistan, S. of the Hindu-Kush, with the Panjshir, Kabul, and Chitral Rivers on the W., S., and E.; the people are undersized, pastoral, and devoted to their Aryan faith, which here has its last stronghold, not organised politically, but united in their love of independence ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... and in the person of a child who is paying the penalty for living in contact with a disease center. If a child sleeps in a dark, ill-ventilated, crowded room, the result will show in his eyes and complexion; if he has too little to eat or the wrong thing to eat, he will be underweight and undersized; if his nutrition is inadequate and his food improper, he is apt to have eye trouble, adenoids, and enlarged tonsils. He may have defective lung capacity, due to improper breathing, too little exercise in the fresh air, ...
— Civics and Health • William H. Allen
... mechanical soldiers, I mean. The chief difference I noticed was that Billy's were smaller than the live ones, although French soldiers are small enough. That portion of the French army which I have seen—at Longchamps, Chalons-sur-Marne, Saumur, and at various other places—are, as a rule, undersized, badly dressed, and badly groomed. They do not look neat, nor even clean, if you want the truth. The uniform is very ugly, and was evidently designed for men thirteen feet high; so that on those comical little toy Frenchmen it ...
— As Seen By Me • Lilian Bell
... What would become of the Government if a division-bell rang and he was found out of the way? Now to-night, you would say, looking at the business, I might well be spared. We commence with KIMBER on disparities in the representation of constituencies. ROLLIT will follow in the interests of undersized flat-fish. What has the MINISTER for AGRICULTURE to do with flat-fish of whatever size? you might ask. To the casual observer, nothing. But, looking ahead, as the responsibilities of my position make it necessary ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 104, March 4, 1893 • Various
... her, the thumbs just touching; shoulders back, chin up, eyes—big enough at any time, now dilated to look twice their size—velvet circles in a white face. Like a Buddha; I'd seen her sit so, years before, an undersized girl doing stunts for her father in a public hall; and even then she'd been in a way impressive. But now, in the fullness of young beauty, her fine head relieved against the empty blue of the sky, the free winds whipping loose flying ends of her dark ...
— The Million-Dollar Suitcase • Alice MacGowan
... handsome," says Mrs Lean, "Captain Marryat's personal appearance was very prepossessing. In figure he was upright and broad-shouldered for his height, which measured 5ft. 10in. His hands, without being undersized, were remarkably perfect in form, and modelled by a sculptor at Rome on account of their symmetry. The character of his mind was borne out by his features, the most salient expression of which was the frankness of an open heart. The firm decisive ...
— Peter Simple and The Three Cutters, Vol. 1-2 • Frederick Marryat
... and proceeded to shed his fur-lined coat. Dunbar turned and surveyed him with the grudging admiration of the undersized ...
— Dangerous Days • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... place here to gravel and large pebbles, yellow, red, grey, white and green, all well rounded as if they had been rolled by water for many a mile. The underlying sand was cut into many channels by the action of water. We were some four miles off the mountainous mass. Tamarisk was scarce and undersized. ...
— Across Coveted Lands - or a Journey from Flushing (Holland) to Calcutta Overland • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... Rebel officer came in to superintend calling the roll. He was an undersized, fidgety man, with an insignificant face, and a mouth that protruded like a rabbit's. His bright little eyes, like those of a squirrel or a rat, assisted in giving his countenance a look of kinship to the family ...
— Andersonville, complete • John McElroy
... promiscuous variety of knick-knackery and wearing apparel. A country postilion—who, but for his dirt, would have looked more like a character in a comedy than a real live, serviceable post-boy—was standing in carpet slippers (having divested himself of his boots of office) harnessing three undersized gray Normandy mares to ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XXVI., December, 1880. • Various
... bearing swords, came the Queen and Alencon together; she in a superb purple toilet with brocaded underskirt and high-heeled twinkling shoes, and breathing out essences as she swept by smiling; and he, a pathetic little brown man, pockmarked, with an ill-shapen nose and a head too large for his undersized body, in a rich velvet suit sparkling all ...
— By What Authority? • Robert Hugh Benson
... sat indolently before typewriters, stared druggedly into space or flew paper airplanes out of open windows. The only sign of animation I saw as we walked what might well have been a quartermile was one reporter (I judged him such by the undersized hat on the back of his head) who enthusiastically munched a sandwich while perusing a magazine containing photographs of women with uncovered breasts. Even ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore
... make a radical change in the stock sizes of hats. But, where there has been no cranial distension, provision will be made to remedy the defect by the insertion of a cork sheath, by the aid of which a head of undersized circumference will be able to wear a No. 8 hat. Again, to meet the needs of customers in whom the temperature of the cranial region is habitually high, a hat has been devised with a vacuum lining for the insertion of cold water. The "Beverley" nickel-plated refrigerating ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, September 15, 1920 • Various
... traveled and in an instant he was looking down from his new height at the gray undersized cat. Then the screen door of the porch opened and a ...
— The Inhabited • Richard Wilson
... compass the death of William the Silent. Shag-eared, military, hirsute ruffians—ex-captains of free companies and such marauders—were daily offering their services; there was no lack of them, and they had done but little. How should Parma, seeing this obscures undersized, thin-bearded, runaway clerk before him, expect pith and energy from him? He thought him quite unfit for an enterprise of moment, and declared as much to his secret councillors and to ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... the rippling folds of Old Glory, the proud Citizen of the Great Republic declared that we could wallop Great Britain at any Game from Polo up to Prize-Fighting and if we cut down on the Food Supplies the whole blamed Runt of an undersized Island would starve to death in ...
— Knocking the Neighbors • George Ade
... between those former submerged workers in the democratic world and this labour breed of Berlin. Yet the enslaved and sweated workers of the old regime were always depicted as suffering from poverty, as undersized, ill-nourished and afflicted with disease. The reformers of that day were always talking of sanitary housing, scientific diet and physical efficiency. But here was a race of labourers whose physical welfare was as well taken care of as ...
— City of Endless Night • Milo Hastings
... greatest fecundity; and they are picked from a list out of which from 20 to 30 per cent. have been rejected for physical unfitness. It seems to be proved that the children born in France during the Napoleonic wars were poor and undersized—30 millimetres below the normal height. War combined with religious celibacy to ruin Spain. 'Castile makes men and wastes them,' said a Spanish writer. 'This sublime and terrible phrase sums up the whole of Spanish ...
— Outspoken Essays • William Ralph Inge
... strongly bolted iron kelson, her water-tight compartments, and her double skin, the outer one being of polished Honduras mahogany, and the inner of yellow pine, with canvas between them; also by her strong, firm deck, her undersized masts and sails, and her ...
— The Voyage Alone in the Yawl "Rob Roy" • John MacGregor
... the governor assigned by Philip the Handsome to Flanders, was a greedy oppressor of it; the municipal authorities whom the victories or the gold of Philip had demoralized became the objects of popular hatred; and there was an outburst of violent sedition. A simple weaver, obscure, poor, undersized, and one-eyed, but valiant, and eloquent in his Flemish tongue, one Peter Deconing, became the leader of revolt in Bruges; accomplices flocked to him from nearly all the towns of Flanders; and he found allies amongst their neighbors. In 1302 war again broke out; but it ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume II. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... Mary had said, she played her fiddle with its body downward, and resting on her knees, as though it had been an undersized 'cello. I then vaguely remembered having dreamed of such a ...
— Peter Ibbetson • George du Marier et al
... French. The undersized Robert I got at a bargain. The man who hired it last week broke his leg before his fortnight was up, and so there was a reduction of ...
— Once a Week • Alan Alexander Milne
... King's Road—jocularly known among Mr. Pitman's lodgers as "Norfolk Island"—is neither a long, a handsome, nor a pleasing thoroughfare. Dirty, undersized maids-of-all-work issue from it in pursuit of beer, or linger on its sidewalk listening to the voice of love. The cat's-meat man passes twice a day. An occasional organ-grinder wanders in and wanders out again, disgusted. ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 7 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... time Clarence had observed the young artist, he had taken a deep interest in his appearance. Pale, thin, undersized, and slightly deformed, the sanctifying mind still shed over the humble frame a spell more powerful than beauty. Absent in manner, melancholy in air, and never conversing except upon subjects on which his imagination ...
— The Disowned, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... stayed me. She seemed to love the King. Young and lacking in wisdom, this amazed me. In age he compared favourably with her husband he was but thirteen years older than herself—but in nothing else. He was a weedy, unhealthy-looking man, weakly of frame, rachitic, undersized, with spindle-shanks, and a countenance that was almost grotesque, with its protruding jaw, gaping mouth, great, doglike eyes, and yellow tuft of beard. A great king, perhaps, this Philip, having so been born; but a ...
— The Historical Nights' Entertainment • Rafael Sabatini
... and his mouth that stood ajar with excitement, and even in moments of quiescence failed to hide the tips of two rather prominent white teeth pressed down on the lower lip. I don't say there was anything unmanly about Jevons's figure (he wasn't noticeably undersized), or about his mouth and jaw. I knew a great General with a mouth and jaw like that, and he was one of the handsomest figures in the Service. I'm not hinting at anything like effeminacy in Jevons, only at a certain oddity that really saved him. If he'd ...
— The Belfry • May Sinclair
... Heddon's Mouth, gathering wisdom from the earth and from the sea tranquillity. De Wichehalse was naturally vexed a little when all this accumulated wisdom culminated in nothing grander than a somewhat undersized, and unhappily female child—one, moreover, whose presence cost him that of his faithful and loving wife. So that the heiress of Ley Manor was greeted, after all, with a very brief and sorry welcome. "Jennyfried," ...
— Frida, or, The Lover's Leap, A Legend Of The West Country - From "Slain By The Doones" By R. D. Blackmore • R. D. Blackmore
... perceived that in her absence of mind she was running straight into a trio of undergraduates who were hurriedly stepping off the path to avoid her. They looked at her, and she at them. They seemed to her all undersized, plain and sallow. They carried books, and two wore glasses. "Those are what he used to call 'smugs'!" she thought contemptuously, her imagination still full of the laughing Italian youths on their glistening horses. ...
— Lady Connie • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... a moment, not a foot of its way, that was not watched over by eyes that saw, and for the most part remained unseen. But this invisibility was not always the rule. Indians in twos and threes were frequently encountered. They were the undersized northern Indian of low type, who had none of the splendid manhood of the tribes further south. But each man was armed with a more or less modern rifle, and garments of crudely manufactured furs replaced the romantic buckskin ...
— The Triumph of John Kars - A Story of the Yukon • Ridgwell Cullum
... habitual slow, gentle smile at Newton Bronson, his helper. Newton was seventeen, undersized, tobacco-stained, profane and proud of the fact that he had once beaten his way from Des Moines to Faribault on freight trains. A source of anxiety to his father, and the subject of many predictions that he would come to no good end, Newton was out on the road work because he ...
— The Brown Mouse • Herbert Quick
... reaches the knuckle-rapping age at least, an instinctive knowledge of its own requirements. Whatever proceedings are most suggestive of an ideal naked savage leading a "natural" life, are supposed to be not only more advantageous to the child but in some mystical way more moral. The spectacle of an undersized porter-fed mother, for example, nursing a spotted and distressful baby, is exalted at the expense of the clean and simple artificial feeding that is often advisable to-day. Yet the mortality of first-born children ...
— Mankind in the Making • H. G. Wells
... The undersized temperature-taker which the doctor puts under your tongue before telling you to keep warm and take plenty of milk puddings is properly despised by every true thermometer- lover. Any record which it makes is too personal for a breakfast- table topic, and moreover it is a thermometer ...
— Not that it Matters • A. A. Milne
... Poor C is an undersized, frail man, with a plaintive face. Constant walking, digging, and pumping has broken his health and ruined his nervous system. His joyless life has driven him to drink and smoke more than is good for him, and his hand often shakes as he digs ditches. He has ...
— Literary Lapses • Stephen Leacock
... there seems to be plenty of undersized timber, plenty of snow and plenty of river, and, as far as I can see, just ...
— The Magnetic North • Elizabeth Robins (C. E. Raimond) |
