"Cumbersome" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... plague in modern editions is the abuse of the pedal. Mozart never indicated the pedal. As purity of taste is one of his great qualities, it is probable that he made no abuse of the pedal. Beethoven indicated it in a complicated and cumbersome manner. When he wanted the pedal he wrote "senza sordini," which means without dampers, and to take them off he wrote "con sordini," meaning with dampers. The soft pedal is indicated by "una corda." The indication to take it ...
— On the Execution of Music, and Principally of Ancient Music • Camille Saint-Saens
... hant" observed the man, by way of opening the conversation, when Paul had handed up his bags and taken his place on top. Henley lighted a cigar, and the cumbersome old ...
— The Ghost of Guir House • Charles Willing Beale
... all a warder showed us the fetters—heavy, cumbersome irons, which are riveted to one or both ankles, according to the sentence. But it is only in exceptional cases of aggravated crime that this severer sentence is meted out to the offender. Then we were conducted by the main and only entrance into the courtyard, two sides of which ...
— The Land of the Black Mountain - The Adventures of Two Englishmen in Montenegro • Reginald Wyon
... the inner door with some difficulty, for it was heavy and cumbersome, and found myself in the hall. Although nothing remarkable met my eye, I was delighted to find everything in keeping with the place. The old-fashioned furniture, the old oak, the grim portraits and quaint ...
— A Cotswold Village • J. Arthur Gibbs
... proved to be a cumbersome flat-boat of the type used by clam-fishers. In fact the smell that simply swirled up from its oozy bottom left no doubt that the boat had been used for that purpose. A pair of unbelievably heavy oars, cut from a sapling with a ...
— The Boy Scouts of the Air on Lost Island • Gordon Stuart
... down the whole length of the room, not half turning away as so many princesses do after the first few steps, so as to curtail that very inconvenient exit. However, a day dress is never so long and cumbersome as an ...
— My First Years As A Frenchwoman, 1876-1879 • Mary King Waddington
... and houses were generally vested as to title in trustees (often a numerous and cumbersome body),[215] the churchwardens themselves and sometimes other accountants,[216] who like the wardens were appointed from year to year, usually exercised the actual management. The feoffees existed chiefly for the purpose of making it difficult to alienate the parish properties, ...
— The Elizabethan Parish in its Ecclesiastical and Financial Aspects • Sedley Lynch Ware
... Charles XII. when he besieged Christiania; but the real history of the cannon is, that it did certainly belong to the Swedish army; but, Charles, as I have hinted before, being obliged to raise the siege of Christiania to march with his troops elsewhere, many field-pieces, as being too cumbersome to move with celerity, were abandoned, and, among the number, this cannon was left on the heights above Christiania. The Norwegians, when Charles and his army had disappeared, scaled the summit of the ...
— A Yacht Voyage to Norway, Denmark, and Sweden - 2nd edition • W. A. Ross
... with smaller trains than ours, and it is true that the rebel army on that account was more easily moved than our own. It was one of the disadvantages of too liberal a government that our movements for two years were weighed down with these cumbersome trains; and even after so long an experience of their evil it was with strong feelings of opposition that the reduction was ...
— Three Years in the Sixth Corps • George T. Stevens
... to the hempen strand sent the ferry many feet from the shore out into the river, where the current was much swifter than usual, owing to the heavy rainfalls. The horses on the great cumbersome ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham
... massive truck. It had developed express train speed now and it rocked from side to side like a ship in a gale as it tore down the rough country road! Bruce clutched the big steering wheel with deathlike grip and tried his mightiest to keep the cumbersome vehicle straight! He realized that a loose stone or a deep rut meant death to him and destruction to the motor car! His teeth were clenched and his face was white! The wind had whisked away his ...
— The Boy Scout Fire Fighters • Irving Crump
... Jannan told him. "The only State with that provision is Louisiana; there, by an act of Legislature, the thing can be legalized. I could arrange it through correspondence, a certain residence within the State. It would be cumbersome and expensive, but possible." He paused, frowning. "Devilish awkward," he muttered; "make a stench in a family such as ours. However," he added, "a contract practically to the same effect can be drawn. This, with her consent, would be entirely binding ...
— The Three Black Pennys - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer
... at one or two docks, where the customary groups of staring natives surrounded them, asking questions, examining the clever little craft beside which their own looked cumbersome, though sea-worthy, and giving such a sad mixture of information that in the end Jack was glad he had his reliable charts to fall back on, since one man's account seemed to be exactly contradictory in comparison ...
— Motor Boat Boys Down the Coast - or Through Storm and Stress to Florida • Louis Arundel
... course of next day (11th) I rode up to see James' battery on the kopje to our front defending the camp, and got my first glimpse of Colenso and the country around, some ten miles off. I found that James's guns had very mobile limbers which he had built at Maritzburg, very different to our cumbersome wagons with guns tied up astern. In the afternoon Melville and I had tea with General Hart who was very agreeable and kind, and said he knew my father, and my aunt, ...
— With the Naval Brigade in Natal (1899-1900) - Journal of Active Service • Charles Richard Newdigate Burne
... task was a hard one; the poet Martial, who had served thus, groans about it. He had to rise before day, put on his toga which was an inconvenient and cumbersome garment, and wait a long time ...
— History Of Ancient Civilization • Charles Seignobos
... citizens of Tucson. The judge's cold statements struck them as partisan, and they murmured and looked darkly at him. But the jury, with its Meakums, wore no expression at all during any of his remarks. Their eyes were upon him, but entirely fishlike. He dismissed the cumbersome futilities one by one. "Now three witnesses have between them recognized all the prisoners but one," he continued. "That one, a reputed pauper, paid several hundred dollars of debts in gold the morning ...
— Red Men and White • Owen Wister
... much lately to whispering in doorways; Which—considering, you know, dear, the size of the two— Makes a block that one's company cannot get thro'; And a house such as mine is, with door-ways so small, Has no room for such cumbersome love-work at all.— (Apropos, tho', of love-work—you've heard it, I hope, That Napoleon's old mother's to marry the Pope,— "What a comical pair!)—but, to stick to my Rout, 'Twill be hard if some novelty can't be struck out. Is there no Algerine, no Kamchatkan arrived? No Plenipo ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... to Stephen. He leaves florry brusquely and seizes Kitty. A screaming bittern's harsh high whistle shrieks. Groangrousegurgling Toft's cumbersome whirligig turns slowly the ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... likely that I shall feel encouraged to the commission of crimes when I find them sanctioned by such an example? Although unable to discover the value of so many mysteries which I cannot understand, or of so many fanciful and cumbersome ceremonies prescribed by the church, am I, on that account, to be denounced as a more dangerous citizen than those who persecute, torment, and destroy every one of their fellow-creatures who does not think ...
— Letters to Eugenia - or, a Preservative Against Religious Prejudices • Baron d'Holbach
... sun shone down with excessive and caloric fervour and the dust rose in thick clouds, coating our lineaments, which already were bedewed with perspiration. Momentarily the articles that filled my arms and hung on my shoulders and back grew more cumbersome and burdensome, and speedily I developed a blistered and feverish condition of the feet ...
— Fibble, D. D. • Irvin Shrewsbury Cobb
... sincere and faithful votary than Cavour, found no favour with Garibaldi at any period of his life. Its hampering restrictions, its slow processes, irritated his mind, intolerant of constraint, and he failed to see that this cumbersome mechanism still gives the best, if not the only, guarantee for the maintenance of freedom. The sudden transition of Southern Italy from a corrupt despotism to free institutions brought with it a train of evils, but there was no alternative. If Italy was to be one, all parts ...
— The Liberation of Italy • Countess Evelyn Martinengo-Cesaresco
... triumphant toot. Multitudes of donkeys are encountered on the road, the omnipresent carriers of the Persian peasantry, taking produce to the Teheran market; the only wheeled vehicle encountered between Kasveen and Teheran is a heavy-wheeled, cumbersome mail wagon, rattling briskly along behind four galloping horses driven abreast, and a newly imported carriage for some notable of the capital being dragged by hand, a distance of two hundred miles from Resht, by a company of soldiers. ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... as may be said, by leaving his cumbersome rifle behind, Kenton approached the edge of the river with the utmost circumspection. Suspecting, as he did, that the Shawanoes had left this point open for the very purpose of inviting such an attempt as he had in view, he was too wise to neglect every precaution to keep it secret. If by any ...
— The Phantom of the River • Edward S. Ellis
... where coaches and carts take liberty to pick and chuse for their best advantages; besides, such sprawling and straggling of coaches and carts utterly confound the road in all wide places, so that it is not only unpleasurable, but extreme perplexin and cumbersome both to themselves and all horse travellers." It would thus appear that the country on either side of the road was ...
— The Life of Thomas Telford by Smiles • Samuel Smiles
... nature of this issue, which he illustrated with the example of the cumbersome process involved in putting a copy of a scientific database on a LAN in LC's science reading room. He also acknowledged that LC needs help and could enlist the energies and talents of Workshop participants in thinking through a ...
— LOC WORKSHOP ON ELECTRONIC TEXTS • James Daly
... guns would bring about such an agitation of the air above as to imperil the delicate equilibrium of an airship. Nor must one overlook the circumstance that in such an engagement the Zeppelins would become the prey of hostile aeroplanes. The latter, being swifter and nimbler, would harry the cumbersome and slow-moving dirigible in the manner of a dog baiting a bear to such a degree that the dirigible would be compelled to sheer off to secure its own safety. Desperate bravery and grim determination may be magnificent physical attributes, ut they would have to be superhuman ...
— Aeroplanes and Dirigibles of War • Frederick A. Talbot
... pressure, vapored like steam, whirled around them in gusts, and the water oozed and rippled beside their feet as they went forward. The carpenter was putting in a new set of timbers, and his task was nearly finished, while beside him waited a drill man and a swamper with the cumbersome, spiderlike mechanism ready to set. The carpenter gave a few more blows to a key block, and methodically flung his hammer into his box and hurried back out through the tunnel toward the cage, intent on resuming his work ...
— The Plunderer • Roy Norton
... am at the break of the poop, leaning on the rail and watching Ditman Olansen swing into the top with his cumbersome burden. Mr. Pike, proceeding aft, has just passed Mr. Mellaire. Possum, who, on account of the Horn weather and the tarpaulin, has not seen the chickens for many weeks, is getting reacquainted, and is investigating them with that keen nose of his. And a hen's beak, equally though differently keen, ...
— The Mutiny of the Elsinore • Jack London
... off his leather coat, following the example of the hoplites, who swiftly divested themselves of such cumbersome equipment as could readily be removed. Then, while the shouts of the thwarted pursuers swelled like a demonic chorus, and while feathers of steam crept under the great door, Hero Giles spun about and, with his short yellow hair gleaming ...
— Astounding Stories, March, 1931 • Various
... one futile effort to rise, like some cumbersome fowl whose wings are clipped. "My land alive! you'll break a blood-vessel, an' then where'll ...
— Tiverton Tales • Alice Brown
... endeavored to make his rule as unlike that of General Fremont as could well be done. He quietly made his head-quarters at the Government Buildings, in the center of St. Louis, instead of occupying a "palatial mansion" on Chouteau Avenue. The body-guard, or other cumbersome escort, was abolished, and the new general moved unattended about the city. Where General Fremont had scattered the Government funds with a wasteful hand, General Halleck studied economy. Where Fremont had declared freedom to ...
— Camp-Fire and Cotton-Field • Thomas W. Knox
... unmistakably a dandy. His high beaver hat observed a jaunty, rakish tilt; his brass-buttoned coat was the colour of wine and of the latest fashion, while his snug fitting pantaloons were the shade of the mouse. He wore no cumbersome cape, but fashioned about his neck and shoulders was a broad, sloping collar of mink. There were silver spurs on his stout riding boots, and the wide cuffs of his ...
— Viola Gwyn • George Barr McCutcheon
... to the cumbersome vehicle which was to convey her to Lexington, the nearest town which at that time boasted of a railroad. They placed her comfortably, turning again and again to give her another kiss and to bid her ...
— The Way of the Wind • Zoe Anderson Norris
... eccentricities, and for this reason we excluded their records from the thousand records which furnished the basis for the frequency tables; we excluded also a few peculiar records obtained from subjects of whom nothing was known, on the ground that such records would serve only to make the tables more cumbersome, without adding anything to their practical value. The total number of records thus excluded ...
— A Study of Association in Insanity • Grace Helen Kent
... detail, in references, in allusions to dusty tomes and original sources, the more thorough is it frequently considered by the faculty. We have failed to realize that this excessive zeal in gathering and collating a large number of not commonly known facts may make the thesis more cumbersome, more complete, but not necessarily more thorough. However, the plea for a new standard in judging doctorate theses ...
— College Teaching - Studies in Methods of Teaching in the College • Paul Klapper
... such caves from below would have been cumbersome, but a light knotted rope is easily carried, and though it would have been hard to climb up this, our plan was to descend on each cave mouth from above, and then slip down to the foot of the cliffs, and start again ...
— The Lost Continent • C. J. Cutcliffe Hyne
... have spared no pains or expense to make this book attractive to children. The volume is not cumbersome or unwieldy in size. The length of line is that of the normal book with which they regularly will come into contact. The type is clean-cut and legible. Finally, enough white space has been left in the pages to give the book ...
— Story Hour Readings: Seventh Year • E.C. Hartwell
... nautical men term it, an evolution which, though not of difficult accomplishment, at a certain moment in its progress leaves the vessel completely helpless in the trough of the sea, a fact you all know far better than myself, I only touch upon it to hint what the result must be to such a cumbersome mass as our iron hull. As we broached to, it became a matter of holding on to everything, and by everything—eyebrows and all—especially between decks. Delightful times these for ditty boxes, crockery, bread barges, and slush tubs; 'tis their only chance for enjoyment and they make the ...
— In Eastern Seas - The Commission of H.M.S. 'Iron Duke,' flag-ship in China, 1878-83 • J. J. Smith
... described in almost all treatises on physics. We may merely recall the fact that it operated by reflection, that is to say, the two images were seen through the intermedium of two mirrors making an angle of 45 degrees. The instrument was very cumbersome and not very practical. Another English physicist, David Brewster, in 1844 devised the stereoscope that we all know; but, what is a curious thing, he could not succeed in having it constructed in England, where it was not at ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 795, March 28, 1891 • Various
... staves over their shoulders — They are even debarred the use of their striped stuff called Tartane, which was their own manufacture, prized by them above all the velvets, brocades, and tissues of Europe and Asia. They now lounge along in loose great coats, of coarse russet, equally mean and cumbersome, and betray manifest marks of dejection — Certain it is, the government could not have taken a more effectual method to ...
— The Expedition of Humphry Clinker • Tobias Smollett
... north-west, bears almost exactly in its midst a moored raft of bonded timber. On this as a floor stands a gorgeous pavilion of draped woodwork, having at each side, facing the respective banks of the stream, a round-headed doorway richly festooned. The cumbersome erection acquires from the current a rhythmical movement, as if it were breathing, and the breeze now and then produces a shiver on the face ...
— The Dynasts - An Epic-Drama Of The War With Napoleon, In Three Parts, - Nineteen Acts, And One Hundred And Thirty Scenes • Thomas Hardy
... Great Britain must work together and stand together to keep the predatory nations in order. A League to Enforce Peace and the President's idea of disentangling alliances are all in the right direction, but vague and general and cumbersome, a sort of bastard children of Neutrality. The thing, the only thing is—a perfect understanding between the English-speaking peoples. That's necessary, and that's all that's necessary. We must boldly take the lead in that. I frankly tell my friends here that the ...
— The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page, Volume II • Burton J. Hendrick
... home, and face to face with the fact that she had a white elephant on her hands. It is not likely that Mr. O'Rourke assumed precisely the shape of a white elephant to her mental vision; but he was as useless and cumbersome and ...
— A Rivermouth Romance • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... such a conclave, sitting in a close circle, face to face, waving their long antennae; and as we watched, from the shadowy caves above another merrow appeared. How he ever got his cumbersome coat of mail, his stiff legs, and long spines safely down the face of the cliff is a mystery. But he scrambled down ledge by ledge, bravely, and in some haste. He knew what the meeting was about, though we did not, and soon took his place, arranged ...
— Brothers of Pity and Other Tales of Beasts and Men • Juliana Horatia Gatty Ewing
... to the exact circumstances under which the undertaking progressed. Income from the land as the result of agricultural operations was not absolutely necessary. This acknowledgment does not imply the possession of, or any disrespect for, "the cumbersome luggage of riches," nor any affectation; but rather an accommodating and frugal disposition—the capacity to turn to account the excellent moral that poor Mr Micawber lamented his inability to obey. Profit from the sale of ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield
... use of this element on Mars has been utilized in the solution of our transportation problem. Instead of cumbersome railroads consuming energy at a great loss, we use an almost perfect flying or floating ship. It is made buoyant by being screened from the ...
— The Planet Mars and its Inhabitants - A Psychic Revelation • Eros Urides and J. L. Kennon
... evolution, from its earliest beginning finding some other approach to the manipulation of the physical universe? A totally alien kind of science? Come to think of it, the use of material to affect other material was a cumbersome, indirect, awkward way of going about ...
— Eight Keys to Eden • Mark Irvin Clifton
... be possible to find any path, so ready to lead a man to virtue, as that which teacheth what virtue is? and teacheth it not only by delivering forth his very being, his causes, and effects: but also, by making known his enemy vice, which must be destroyed, and his cumbersome servant passion, which must be mastered, by showing the generalities that contain it, and the specialities that are derived from it: lastly, by plain setting down, how it extendeth itself out of the limits of a man's own little world, to the government of families and maintaining ...
— English literary criticism • Various
... other hand, he earnestly discountenanced a proposition of Colonel Bouquet, to make an irruption into the enemy's country with a strong party of regulars. Such a detachment, he observed, could not be sent without a cumbersome train of supplies, which would discover it to the enemy, who must at that time be collecting his whole force at Fort Duquesne; the enterprise, therefore, would be likely to terminate in a miscarriage, if not in the destruction of ...
— The Life of George Washington, Volume I • Washington Irving
... moral stability of this true boyard. He had quietly witnessed, at Algeciras, the Prince's adroit card "riffling" in the sun-parlors of The Reina Cristina, when the gouty ex-ambassador to Persia had parted company with many cumbersome dollars. Durkin's only course, in that time of adversity and humility, had been one of silence. But he had inwardly and adventurously resolved, if ever Fate should bring him and the Prince together under ...
— Phantom Wires - A Novel • Arthur Stringer
... administrative authority at one point has proved impracticable, first because of the great amount of red tape involved in the handling of the endless detail, and second because of the resulting destruction of initiative and enterprise. Such a centralization of social function would be just as cumbersome as a like centralization of all bodily functions in the higher brain centres. If men were compelled to reason about and to direct each step, each movement of eyes or hands, each breath, each heart-beat, the attention would never pass beyond the boundaries of such pressing and ...
— The Next Step - A Plan for Economic World Federation • Scott Nearing
... recovered from the first cold shock of his surprise. He drew himself up to his full height. His jaw, heavy and cumbersome always, thrust itself forward, and I could see the veins swell dangerously into a tangled, clotted mass on his temples. His fingers worked convulsively, as though clawing at some unseen object close beside him, and then his breath whistled through ...
— The Unspeakable Gentleman • John P. Marquand
... and the inhabitants of Brisbane overloaded me with kind contributions, much of which, however, to avoid any unnecessary increase to my luggage, I found myself compelled to decline or leave behind; so that I had to forego the advantage of many useful and desirable articles, from their being too cumbersome for my limited means of carriage, and therefore interfering with the ...
— Journal of an Overland Expedition in Australia • Ludwig Leichhardt
... whole of the day, Working and toiling without any pay, Only perchance a few mouthfuls of hay, From earliest dawn till late. Held by the horns 'neath this cumbersome yoke, Firmer fixed thus than a "pig in a poke," Feeling the "prong" and the lengthy stick's stroke, Ours, alas, is ...
— Twixt France and Spain • E. Ernest Bilbrough
... The wild horse, with huge head, was driven by him over the edge of the precipice, and when it fell with broken limbs or spine, was cut up with flint knives and greedily devoured. The reindeer was also hunted, and the cumbersome mammoth enabled a ...
— Castles and Cave Dwellings of Europe • Sabine Baring-Gould
... free-running reel, of course I am exasperated when a kingfish takes hold. My brother pulled in this kingfish, which was small, and we rebaited our hooks and went on again. I saw more turtles, and one we almost ran over, he was so lazy in getting down. These big, cumbersome sea animals, once they get headed down and started, can disappear with remarkable rapidity. I rather enjoy watching them, but my boatman, who is a native of these parts and therefore a turtle-hunter by instinct, always wore a rather disappointed look when we saw one. This was because I would not ...
— Tales of Fishes • Zane Grey
... and D. One light or flag shown from column one would represent A, two flags or lights B, and so on. Thus any word could be spelled out and any message sent. Without doubt the system was slow and cumbersome, but it was a step ...
— Masters of Space - Morse, Thompson, Bell, Marconi, Carty • Walter Kellogg Towers
... were as unused to the sight of a buffalo as their riders, and in consequence were badly frightened at the first sight of the ungainly animals. The men, of course, used their rifles, which in those days were altogether too cumbersome for hunting ...
— The Great Salt Lake Trail • Colonel Henry Inman
... all lumber! Throw it overboard. It makes the boat so heavy to pull, you nearly faint at the oars. It makes it so cumbersome and dangerous to manage, you never know a moment's freedom from anxiety and care, never gain a moment's rest for dreamy laziness - no time to watch the windy shadows skimming lightly o'er the shallows, or the glittering sunbeams flitting in and out among the ripples, or the great ...
— Three Men in a Boa • Jerome K. Jerome
... semi-barbarism, as it were, to the broader civilization of its neighbors. This transition is very obvious as regards the dress of the populace. Silk stove-pipe hats and Derbys are crowding hard upon the cumbersome sombrero; the dainty Parisian bonnet is replacing the black lace mantilla; broadcloth is found to be more acceptable clothing than leather jackets and pantaloons; close-fitting calico and merino goods are driving out the rebosas, while woolen garments render ...
— Aztec Land • Maturin M. Ballou
... freedom, her power for promptitude would be hindered in proportion to need for such consultation with and approval by councilors of many distant countries as is presupposed by advocates of imperial federation. Why establish control by cumbersome, superfluous machinery when the war has made it clear as the sun at high noon that the essential desideratum, British Union, exists now? All the notable communities of the King's realms have demonstrated that they are in the mind, ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 2, May, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... electric lamp always showing more steps ahead, until at last these terminated in a level, arched passage, curving sharply to the right. Two paces more brought us to a doorway, less, than four feet high, approached by two wide steps. A blackened door, having a most cumbersome and complicated lock, ...
— The Hand Of Fu-Manchu - Being a New Phase in the Activities of Fu-Manchu, the Devil Doctor • Sax Rohmer
... ground whatever for the belief which prevails somewhat that the members of such a court would always follow the contention of their own country. Even under the present cumbersome and illogical method of selecting arbitrators we have a recent illustration that men great enough to fill positions of this kind, realizing the dignity and responsibility of the position, will rise above the clamor of their own countrymen ...
— America First - Patriotic Readings • Various
... such richness and possibility of precision is of no importance; many a life's jeopardy has turned on less. Nor can it be said that this unlimited capacity of expression makes the mechanism of the language cumbersome, for the whole scheme of Esperanto can be thoroughly ...
— Esperanto: Hearings before the Committee on Education • Richard Bartholdt and A. Christen
... seen to it that the two faithful souls who have served me here shall never know want. There will be money, and plenty of it, for you to carry out my wishes regarding this house, should—well—should anything happen to me! After these details are attended to, my fortune, rather a cumbersome one, goes to—Dr. McPherson, my old ...
— The Man Thou Gavest • Harriet T. Comstock
... and made a fire, upon which I ordered everything to be burnt that was really cumbersome. The bedsteads were broken up; a case of good French cognac was committed to the flames; Lieutenant Baker's naval uniform, with box, &e.; the cocked hat frizzled up on the top of ...
— Ismailia • Samuel W. Baker
... beads; and the two others, much younger, stood looking on—Reginald and Anne. Lady Margaret Cooper, having a fellow-feeling for an invalid, sat near the sick boy. Lord Hartledon sat apart at a table reading, and making occasional notes. The dowager, more cumbersome than ever, dozed on the other side of the hearth. She was falling into the habit of taking a nap after luncheon as well as after dinner. Lady Laura was in danger of convulsions every time she looked at the dowager. ...
— Elster's Folly • Mrs. Henry Wood
... more difficult to manage than electricity, for there is always the cumbersome tube and the necessity for adding mechanical accessories before a good clear light is secured. Gas lamps are hideous, for some obscure reason, whereas there are hundreds of simple and excellent wall fixtures, drop ...
— The House in Good Taste • Elsie de Wolfe
... gently; indeed, I heard the bony frame of Bastin bump into the bottom of one of them and reflected, not without venom, that it served him right as he was the fount and origin of our woes. Two stinking magicians, wearing on their heads undress editions of their court cages, since these were too cumbersome for active work of the sort, and painted all over with various pigments, were just about to swing me after him into the same, or another canoe, when something happened. I did not know what it was, but as a result, my captors left hold of me so ...
— When the World Shook - Being an Account of the Great Adventure of Bastin, Bickley and Arbuthnot • H. Rider Haggard
... Exposition, with two fine vistas of the two avenues. To our right stood the massive Palace of Machinery, one of the largest buildings in the world, so successfully treated by the architect that it did not give the faintest suggestion of being cumbersome or monotonous. "It's the Baths of Caracalla in Rome," said the architect, "adapted by a master. Those three gables above the main entrance are taken directly from the baths. See how simple the ornamentation is and yet how satisfying. The building ...
— The City of Domes • John D. Barry
... I am, a servant of the Sphinx, have erected the shrine of my household gods in the beautiful town, which lies in its shadow and is held in its paw. Even now is the Sphinx weaving on the web of my destiny. I hope I may be spared the cumbersome burden of the wealth of a Rockefeller, who is said to possess a billion dollars for every hair on his head. One thousandth part of his wealth would suffice to ...
— Tales of Aztlan • George Hartmann
... it is not his business to pull the load. But the admixture of these strains with the native blood has produced some very fine dogs. The Newfoundland and Saint Bernard strains have been perhaps the least successful admixtures. They are too heavy and cumbersome and always have tender feet; their bodies and the bodies of their mongrel progeny are too heavy for ...
— Ten Thousand Miles with a Dog Sled - A Narrative of Winter Travel in Interior Alaska • Hudson Stuck
... between the successive layers of the wires. This table has been compared with many examples and has been used in calculating windings in advance, and is found to be as close an approximation as is afforded by any of the formulas on the subject, and with the further advantage that it is not so cumbersome to apply. ...
— Cyclopedia of Telephony & Telegraphy Vol. 1 - A General Reference Work on Telephony, etc. etc. • Kempster Miller
... either believed that its chief object was to prevent the stage from ever being altogether empty, whereas in truth the stage was not at all the proper place for the Chorus; or else they have censured it as a superfluous and cumbersome appendage, expressing their astonishment at the alleged absurdity of carrying on secret transactions in the presence of assembled multitudes. They have also considered it as the principal reason with the Greek tragedians for the strict observance of the unity of place, as it could ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black
... was so clumsy out of the water. Craig's back was turned to the others, and when I realized the reason I stood aghast. He had brought up a skull and had handed the gruesome thing to me with a motion of secrecy. Meanwhile he hastened to get out of the cumbersome suit, and, to my delight, showed no evidence yet ...
— The Treasure-Train • Arthur B. Reeve
... the exterior, the interior of the building is quite as beautiful. Restoration of an unusually careful and discreet style has done much to revive the deteriorated splendours of the place. Sixty years ago the nave was filled with hideous and cumbersome pews, and such work as had been done towards keeping the place in repair was in the worst possible taste. But a change has been wrought of the happiest kind in recent years, so that no cathedral in the country can boast ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Exeter - A Description of Its Fabric and a Brief History of the Episcopal See • Percy Addleshaw
... of Indian warfare, and the little expedition proved an easy target for their enemies. The cumbersome and heavily laden baggage wagons were a great handicap to them. The English regulars, the frontiersmen, and the baggage train were caught in the deep ravine of Turtle Creek, a few miles away from ...
— Historic Boyhoods • Rupert Sargent Holland
... a brief existence of only sixteen months and was supplanted by the transcontinental telegraph. Yet it was of the greatest importance in binding the East and West together at a time when overland travel was slow and cumbersome, and when a great national crisis made the rapid communication of news between these ...
— The Story of the Pony Express • Glenn D. Bradley
... avenue that leads to the female heart. And what is the amount of the advantages I have gained? I tempted her with riches. But riches she considered with disdain; they had nothing analogous to the temper of her mind, and her uncultivated simplicity regarded them as superfluous and cumbersome. I taught her to listen to the voice of flattery; I clothed it in all that is plausible and insinuating; but to no purpose. She was still upon her guard; all her suspicions were awake; and her integrity and her innocence were as vigilant as ever. Incapable of effecting any thing under that form ...
— Imogen - A Pastoral Romance • William Godwin
... sentiment, and that it was possible that I should have never been anything but a republican without the trace of a "reason," and thought it honest to say so when I was charged with Republicanism as with some fearful crime. But to think and even to say that monarchy in Western Europe is a somewhat cumbersome fiction is not to declare oneself ready to fight against it on a barricade. It is only to protest against the silence of many being read into agreement with the fulsome nonsense that the majority talk about the personal loyalty of the country to the reigning House. My Republicanism ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke V1 • Stephen Gwynn
... ready for the journey. She mended garments; she gathered up their few cooking utensils and the furry hides that were their blankets. She tied some of her choice things in her apron. That she'd carry right on her arm. The boys helped their father make ready the great cumbersome cart that was to carry their possessions. When all was in readiness Daniel pulled on his coonskin cap and whistling up his dogs he started off ...
— Blue Ridge Country • Jean Thomas
... of Heaven. The adoption of fraud and sophistry in the defence of revelation too often reminds us of the injudicious conduct of those poets who load their invulnerable heroes with a useless weight of cumbersome and ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 • Edward Gibbon
... separated by the violence of the shock, they fell upon a crab-tree which was growing below them; they have, like the farina of plants, united, and produced a fish resembling both. I endeavoured to bring one with me, but it was too cumbersome, and my salt-water Pegasus seemed much displeased at every attempt to stop his career whilst I continued upon his back; besides, I was then, though galloping over a mountain of rocks that lay about midway the passage, ...
— The Surprising Adventures of Baron Munchausen • Rudolph Erich Raspe
... deep gorge upon a level with its floor. A mighty waterfall cascaded into the gorge just above the canyon, and here and there could be seen black outcrops which Stevens, after a close scrutiny, declared to be coal. He deftly guided their cumbersome wedge of steel into the retreat, allowed it to settle gently to the ground, and shut off ...
— Spacehounds of IPC • Edward Elmer Smith
... attack and defence arose that mad fever for armaments which was characteristic of pre-war times. The race to possess more soldiers and more guns than one's neighbour was carried to an absurd extreme. The armaments which the nations had to bear had become so cumbersome as to be unbearable, and for long it had been obvious to everyone that the course entered upon could no longer be pursued, and that two possibilities alone remained—either a voluntary and ...
— In the World War • Count Ottokar Czernin
... Plasden is a music city owned by one man and built most beautifully. Its size is comparatively small and it is equipped with motors of double power enabling it to proceed with considerable speed as compared with the cumbersome, heavier floats. This city is built for business as well as ...
— Life in a Thousand Worlds • William Shuler Harris
... away. Here new and wonderful sights greeted their eyes and Perk in particular stared with all his might, taking in the flowers that festooned many of the trees—palmetto, live-oaks, wild plum, gumbo limbo, and queer looking cypress, with their cumbersome butts rising several feet from the ooze in which they grew. Most of the trees were festooned with long trailing banners of gray Spanish moss that gave them a most ...
— Eagles of the Sky - With Jack Ralston Along the Air Lanes • Ambrose Newcomb
... Napier, and their development by Henry Briggs and others, the next author of moment was an Englishman, Thomas Harriot, whose algebra (Artis analyticae praxis) was published posthumously by Walter Warner in 1631. Its great merit consists in the complete notation and symbolism, which avoided the cumbersome expressions of the earlier algebraists, and reduced the art to a form closely resembling that of to-day. He follows Vieta in assigning the vowels to the unknown quantities and the consonants to the knowns, ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... cried, in his heavy cumbersome way. And the sound of his deep voice alone served to ward off the encroachment of that final weakness which, in spite of all her courage, the girl was at last compelled to ...
— The Forfeit • Ridgwell Cullum
... with your high and life-long judges, or at least let them be elected by the people and for very brief terms. Let grand juries be voted a humbug, and trial by jury a nuisance. Let electoral colleges be abolished as meaningless and cumbersome anomalies. Let the President be the direct representative of a mighty people, and act without let or hindrance—only let him act with gigantic energy and swift execution. Let senatorial terms be dependent upon changing legislative majorities. In fact, let the two legislative ...
— The Continental Monthly, Volume V. Issue I • Various
... had not been included in the list of arms, the hand-gisarm being substituted in its place. It was a fearful and murderous weapon, though cumbersome, Unhandy, and ill adapted for quick or dexterous stroke; nevertheless, the Earl of Alban had petitioned the King to have it included in the list, and in answer to the King's expressed desire the Court had adopted it ...
— Men of Iron • Ernie Howard Pyle
... the methane ammonia, push it back if you will, like a solid wall. What the impulses do, actually, is create a force greater and thicker in content than the atmosphere of Titan, creating a vacuum. We then introduce oxygen into the vacuum, making it possible for humans to live without the cumbersome use of space helmets." Dr. Dale leaned against Commander Walters' desk and considered the three Solar Guard officers. "If we don't find out what's happening out there," she resumed grimly, "and do something about it soon, we'll have ...
— Treachery in Outer Space • Carey Rockwell and Louis Glanzman
... as if enclosed in a pork-barrel. It was a long time before I could turn my collar up or down without assistance, and frequently after several efforts to seize an outside object I found myself grasping the ends of my sleeves. The warmth of the garment atones for its cumbersome character, and its gigantic size is fully intentional. The length protects the feet and legs, the high collar warms the head, and the great width of the dehar allows it to be well wrapped about the body. The ...
— Overland through Asia; Pictures of Siberian, Chinese, and Tartar - Life • Thomas Wallace Knox
... fell upon him, and larruped him square on the head. The soot flew in clouds all about him, and blotted with black all the place And the squire and the other four fathers were peppered with black in the face. The school, ever sharp for amusement, laid down all their cumbersome books And, spite of the teacher's endeavors, laughed loud at their visitors' looks. And the squire, as he stalked to the doorway, swore oaths of a violet hue; And the four district fathers, who followed, seemed to say: "Them's ...
— Poems Teachers Ask For, Book Two • Various
... discrimination, and throughout the mid-1960's the department sought to balance the conflicting demands for and against race labeling. Along with the integration of military units in the 1950's, the services had narrowed their multiple and cumbersome definition of races to a list of five groups. Even this list, a compromise drawn up by the Defense Department's Personnel Policy Board, was criticized. Reflecting the opinion of the civil rights forces, Evans declared that the definition ...
— Integration of the Armed Forces, 1940-1965 • Morris J. MacGregor Jr.
... again as their body, so that they cannot stir to the next room without a page or two to hold it up? I may safely say that all the ostentation of our grandees is just like a train, of no use in the world, but horribly cumbersome and incommodious. What is all this but spice of grandio? How tedious would this be if we were always bound to it? I do believe there is no king who would not rather be deposed than endure every day of his reign all the ceremonies of his coronation. The mightiest princes ...
— Cowley's Essays • Abraham Cowley
... second serving over the first. For the halyards hoisting use a jig shown in Fig. 46. The thimble shown in Fig. 47 is made by splicing the rope to the thimble at running part of halyard and passing back and forth through cleat and thimble. This gives a quick and strong purchase and does away with cumbersome blocks of the old-fashioned jig. The jib-sheet leads aft to the steering cockpit. The main-sheet ends in a jig of a single block and a single block with becket. Be sure that your sail covers are large enough—the sail maker always makes them too tight. The cockpit covers must fit ...
— The Boy Mechanic: Volume 1 - 700 Things For Boys To Do • Popular Mechanics
... Half-way across the wheat-field the first big drops splashed against our faces, blown by strong gusts of wind. I gazed around helplessly for shelter. A few yards to our right rose the cumbersome shape of a last year's straw-rick; it was better ...
— The Love Story of Abner Stone • Edwin Carlile Litsey
... introduced in the course of these five-and-forty years in the general manner of living; but cock-fighting, bull-baiting, and bear-baiting, were still the national amusements; and a coach was so rarely seen, and was such an ugly and cumbersome affair when it was seen, that even the Queen herself, on many high occasions, rode on horseback on a pillion behind the ...
— A Child's History of England • Charles Dickens
... then there are added marks indicating the subdivisions of time, then a water gauge causes a hand to move around a dial, then two hands for the hours and minutes; then comes a great moment—by the use of weights the clepsydra becomes a clock, at first massive and cumbersome, later lightened, becoming capable, with Tycho-Brahe, of marking seconds; and then another moment—Huyghens invents the spiral spring to replace the weights, and the clock, simplified and ...
— Essay on the Creative Imagination • Th. Ribot
... advocate of cold steel. We had with us four Winchester repeating rifles, besides half a dozen Martinis. I armed myself with one of the repeaters — my own; an excellent weapon for this kind of work, where great rapidity of fire is desirable, and fitted with ordinary flap-sights instead of the cumbersome sliding mechanism which they generally have. Mr Mackenzie took another, and the two remaining ones were given to two of his men who understood the use of them and were noted shots. The Martinis and some rifles of Mr Mackenzie's were served out, together with a plentiful supply ...
— Allan Quatermain • by H. Rider Haggard
... appointed guardian, and permit THE PEOPLE to elect their own State officers. Whether the conventions of the people are called by law of Congress or by proclamation of the President, would seem to be immaterial, though the latter seems the least cumbersome method. Thus the rebel States would pass from rebel forms to constitutional ones, in a legal and formal manner. Sooner or later this must be done, even if, for a time, provisional governments are instituted; for no Congressional government can be an elective government, ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 5, May, 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... grieve over it and long to comfort him with all the strength of her love for him. And so with thinking, puzzling and sad planning the afternoon wore away for her and sunset found her at the house putting the household in order and to bed with her usual cheery fostering of creaking joints and cumbersome ...
— Rose of Old Harpeth • Maria Thompson Daviess
... hurt comrade with them. Then, seeing them stealing off thus, a mighty rage filled me, ousting all other emotion, and (my bow in one hand and pike in the other) I started running in pursuit. But my great pike proving over-cumbersome, I cast it away that I might go the faster, trusting rather to my five arrows and the long-bladed knife in my girdle, and the thought of this knife and its deadly work at close quarters heartened me mightily as I ran; yet in a while, the passion of my anger subsiding, grief took ...
— Black Bartlemy's Treasure • Jeffrey Farnol
... girl in his bunk, removed the cumbersome spacesuit. Her eyes blinked faintly, then sprang open. But they did not see him; they were staring straight ahead. Her mouth opened and shut weakly as though she were speaking, but no sound issued from it. He brought her water, but when he returned she ...
— The Beast of Space • F.E. Hardart
... second edition of Damon and Pythias—Theseus and Pirithoiis at the least. You are mistaken, and have given the name of friendship to what, on my part, was mere good-nature and compassion for a raw and ignorant countryman, joined to the cumbersome charge which my father gave me respecting you. Your character, my lord, is of no one's drawing, but of your own making. I introduced you where, as in all such places, there was good and indifferent ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott
... transactions. The minor coins of silver, were received and paid out without question at parity with gold coin, because the amount was limited and they were coined by the government only as demanded for the public convenience. The silver dollar was too weighty and cumbersome and when offered in considerable sums was objected to, though a legal tender for any sum, and coined only in limited amounts for government account. Every effort was made by the treasury department to give it the largest circulation, but the highest amount that ...
— Recollections of Forty Years in the House, Senate and Cabinet - An Autobiography. • John Sherman
... terminated at the sea. It was a small, primitive structure, but it was now our only hope, as far as we knew, for obtaining lodgings, and we could scarcely restrain our delight when we were told we could be accommodated there until Monday morning. It was an intense relief to us to be separated from our cumbersome luggage, and we must say that Mr. and Mrs. Mackenzie did all in their power to make us comfortable and happy and to make us feel at home. We contented ourselves with some light refreshments which to some non-pedestrians might have ...
— From John O'Groats to Land's End • Robert Naylor and John Naylor
... The cumbersome ablutions of oriental nations are defended on the ground of cleanliness. The divine sanctity of kings is held to be an aid to social obedience. Slavery is alleged to have been at one time necessary to break in mankind to industry. Indissoluble marriage arose from a sentiment rather than from utility; ...
— Moral Science; A Compendium of Ethics • Alexander Bain
... fault. Then the two would repair together to the tennis courts and play a set, the pupil winning by six games to love; or go a bicycle ride, when Rhoda would practise fancy figures, while her good, but cumbersome, companion picked herself up from recumbent positions on the sidewalk, and shook the dust from her garments. At other times Rhoda would put on her riding habit and go a ride round the estate, taking care to emerge from the west gate at the moment when ...
— Tom and Some Other Girls - A Public School Story • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... with any great amount of luggage. A bag of roubles, which Pouchskin carried in a safe pocket, proved the most convenient article they could have taken along with them; since it enabled them to supply their wants from day to day, without troubling themselves with any cumbersome baggage. There are few parts of the world in which ready money will not command the necessaries of life; and as this was all our hunters cared for, they had no difficulty in obtaining supplies—even in the remote regions of uncivilised ...
— Bruin - The Grand Bear Hunt • Mayne Reid
... Heaven; and I long for the wings of a dove, that I may rise at once from this low, ignorant, groveling state, and bathe my whole soul in the sunlight of eternal felicity. What joy it will be to cast off this cumbersome clay; to leave this poor body behind, and spread a free wing upon the heavenly atmosphere. I shall hail with delight the happy moment which sets ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 1 July 1848 • Various
... down, stepped into the door, glanced carefully and calculatingly up at the sky and across the square in the direction she meant to take, moved back again and picked up her basket, set it firmly on her arm, stepped out and commenced to hobble at an ungainly cumbersome trot across the square. She was no more than half-way across when the shriek of another shell was heard approaching. She stopped and cast a terrified glance about her, dumped the basket down on the cobbles, and resumed the shambling trot at increased speed. A soldier in ...
— Action Front • Boyd Cable (Ernest Andrew Ewart)
... gor-bellied volume, bigger bulkt than a Dutch hoy, and more cumbersome than a payre ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli
... doubt, had much to do with their displacement. But now the Democracy, so long in power, with majorities in many of these States almost cumbersome, could well afford to allow and patronize these conservators for peace and efficient protectors in war, who are ever ready to say, as Jehu to Jonahab, "Is thy heart right, as my heart is with thine heart? If it be, ...
— Shadow and Light - An Autobiography with Reminiscences of the Last and Present Century • Mifflin Wistar Gibbs
... scaffold with his friend Cinq Mars. Over the chimney-place is a charming portrait by Mignard of the daughter, or daughter-in-law, of Anne de Thou, Marie Johanne de Saumery, Marquise de Montglat, Countess de Cheverny. The subject of this lovely portrait bears with distinction her long array of cumbersome titles, while the airy grace of the figure and the innocent sweetness of the rounded girlish face are irresistibly attractive. Above the chimney-place, in which this portrait is set in the white ...
— In Chteau Land • Anne Hollingsworth Wharton
... below the saw-mills that night. Bradley then took me aside and asked me whether this would not be a good opportunity to send our stock of gold dust down to Captain Sutter, who would, for a reasonable commission, consign it to a merchant at Monterey on our account. The weight of it was becoming cumbersome, and we were besides in constant apprehension of some unfortunate accident happening to it. Now was the time, Bradley urged, to place all we had as yet realised in security. He knew Colonel Mason—in fact, had served under him, and undertook, if the remainder of the party were agreeable, ...
— California • J. Tyrwhitt Brooks
... uniform, and when thousands of school children appear in a new costume, which is both becoming and convenient. But the Court and the mandarins cling to their antiquated attire. If the peacock wishes to soar with the eagle, he must first get rid of his cumbersome tail. ...
— The Awakening of China • W.A.P. Martin
... temperature was of an English July. As we travelled on, amid scenes of truly Alpine grandeur and loveliness, the thought arose to my mind, how little even the much-travelled English dream of the wealth of scenery in France! Our cumbersome old diligence carried only French passengers. Nowhere else in Europe does the English tourist find himself more isolated ...
— The Roof of France • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... proceed by land and water up the Kennebec, and down the Chaudiere to the St. Lawrence. The route, though used by trappers and Indians, was dimly traced, and the equipment of the expedition was too cumbersome for the rough work which lay before it.[105] Soon after leaving their transports at Fort Western, where, fifty-eight miles from its mouth, the Kennebec ceased to be navigable except by bateaux, the troops began to suffer great hardships. Their stores were conveyed in bateaux, which they ...
— The Political History of England - Vol. X. • William Hunt
... gasping, with tense muscles and heaving chests, they brought the cumbersome weight over the side, rolled it on top of the rail, and lowered it into the cockpit on the run. The cabin doors were thrown apart, and it was moved along, end for end, till it lay on the cabin floor, snug against the end of the centerboard-case. ...
— The Cruise of the Dazzler • Jack London
... be abreast or ahead of us in such matters as the latest applications of electricity, while retaining in its legal uses certain cumbersome devices that we have long since discarded. Americans still have "Courts of Oyer and Terminer" and still insist on the unanimity of the jury, though their judges wear no robes and their counsel apply to the cuspidor as often as to the code. So, too, the extension ...
— The Land of Contrasts - A Briton's View of His American Kin • James Fullarton Muirhead
... reaching Cheung-chou, where we were to spend the night, we crossed the Nan Ho by a fine stone bridge of fifteen arches. The Nan is one of the lesser waterways of West China connecting this corner of Szechuan with the Great River, and many cumbersome boats laden with produce were slipping down with the rapid current on ...
— A Wayfarer in China - Impressions of a trip across West China and Mongolia • Elizabeth Kendall
... remarkable as the verse and the translation; not that you have made the asonante as perceptible to the English ear as it is to the Spanish; our cumbersome consonants make that impossible. But the wonder is, that you have made it perceptible at all. I think I perceive your asonantes much as I do those of August Schlegel or Gries, and more than I do those of Friederich Schlegel. But he was the first who ...
— The Two Lovers of Heaven: Chrysanthus and Daria - A Drama of Early Christian Rome • Pedro Calderon de la Barca
... But the ferry-boat was cumbersome and the current swift, so that we were swept down a long way before we could cross it. At length we reached still water near the further shore, and seeing a landing-place, managed to beach the punt and to drag ...
— Ayesha - The Further History of She-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed • H. Rider Haggard
... less, for fear of losing so good a bargain. When he had sold the last dish, he had recourse to the tray, which weighed ten times as much as the dishes, and would have carried it to his old purchaser, but that it was too large and cumbersome; therefore he was obliged to bring him home with him to his mother's, where, after the Jew had examined the weight of the tray, he laid down ten pieces of gold, with which Alla ad Deen was ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments vol. 3 • Anon.
... of his hand under the rubbish, seeing which, she stooped down, pushed aside his covering, and felt for his pulse to see whether he were still alive. As she bent down her quick eye saw a cannon near where the wounded man lay, a heavy, cumbersome gun which the Continentals had evidently left behind as being of a type too heavy to drag with them on their hasty march to Morristown. Beside the cannon Molly also saw a lighted fuse slowly burning ...
— Ten American Girls From History • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... thought to be "at variance with imperial enactments." By the ukase of 1836 all books of this kind, circulating in tens of thousands of copies, had to be transported to St. Petersburg under a police escort to await their final verdict. The procedure, however, proved too cumbersome, and, in 1837, the emperor, complying with the petitions of the governors, was graciously pleased to command that all these books be "delivered to the flames on the spot." This auto-da-fe was to be witnessed by a member of the gubernatorial administration and a special "dependable" official ...
— History of the Jews in Russia and Poland. Volume II • S.M. Dubnow
... gasps his breath came and went, while he paddled with hands and feet, glad of his reprieve; and when his lungs worked normally, he struck out for a white, circular life-buoy, not six feet away. "Bless her for this," he prayed, as he slipped it under his arms. His oilskin trousers were cumbersome, and with a ...
— "Where Angels Fear to Tread" and Other Stories of the Sea • Morgan Robertson
... pleurisy, which released me in the early spring, when I was ordered off to Florida to recuperate. Being advised not to occupy myself with painting while there, I bought a photographic apparatus, and learned photography as it was practiced in 1857,—a rude, inefficient, and cumbersome apparatus and process for field work, of which few amateurs nowadays ...
— The Autobiography of a Journalist, Volume I • Stillman, William James
... the education of a young man of his social position and mental capacity, were doubtless embraced in his course of study. His use of the Latin tongue was fluent, though his style has been criticised as cumbersome and wanting in elegance; certainly his writings abound in diffuse generalities, a multiplicity of repetitions, and a vast array of citations from Scripture and the classics which render his unexpurgated manuscripts ...
— Bartholomew de Las Casas; his life, apostolate, and writings • Francis Augustus MacNutt
... births which may be obtained by the questionable and cumbersome method of hypnotism is one of the wayside flowers which the Yogi may pluck, if he will, on his path towards perfection. There are definite rules for the attainment of this knowledge, and they conform so closely to Colonel de ...
— Four-Dimensional Vistas • Claude Fayette Bragdon
... cruder form of picture-writing which this alphabet would naturally supplant; but, in point of fact, they never did come to a realisation of this seemingly simple proposition. Generation after generation and century after century, they continued to use their same cumbersome, complex writing, and it remained for an outside nation to prove that an alphabet pure and simple was capable of fulfilling all the conditions ...
— History Of Egypt From 330 B.C. To The Present Time, Volume 12 (of 12) • S. Rappoport
... and five ambitious young climbers from Seattle. We were led by the veteran mountaineer and guide Van Trump, of Yelm, who many years before guided General Stevens in his memorable ascent, and later Mr. Bailey, of Oakland. With a cumbersome abundance of campstools and blankets we set out from Seattle, traveling by rail as far as Yelm Prairie, on the Tacoma and Oregon road. Here we made our first camp and arranged with Mr. Longmire, a farmer in the neighborhood, ...
— Steep Trails • John Muir
... not give them time to discover that; there was no chance to string his cumbersome weapon again; down he flung it upon the ground. "To arms!" he roared in a voice of thunder, and then clapped to the door of Melchior's tower and shot the great iron bolts ...
— Otto of the Silver Hand • Howard Pyle
... difference. The difference is that a plain resource is not entangled with thickness and it does not mean that thickness shows such cutting, it does mean that a meadow is useful and a cow absurd. It does not mean that there are tears, it does not mean that exudation is cumbersome, it means no more than a memory, a choice and a reestablishment, it means more than any escape from a surrounding extra. All the time that there is use there is use and any time there is a surface there is a ...
— Tender Buttons - Objects—Food—Rooms • Gertrude Stein
... for Kayans to kill any of their captives after the short excitement of the battle is over. The attacking party, even though it has gained a decisive victory, usually returns with all speed, but in good order, to its boats, carrying with it through the jungle all the loot that is not too cumbersome for rapid portage, especially old beads, gongs, and brass-ware; for they are always in danger of being cut off by a party of their enemies, rallied and reinforced by parties from neighbouring friendly villages. Still more are they liable to be pursued ...
— The Pagan Tribes of Borneo • Charles Hose and William McDougall
... preferred. It is found that it is not usually advantageous to build kilns of over 160 to 180 cubic meters in capacity. Larger furnaces have been used, and give as good a yield, but they are much more cumbersome to manage. The largest yield got from kilns is from 50 to 60 bushels for hard wood to 50 for soft wood. The average yield, however, is about 45 bushels. In meilers, two and a half to three cords of wood are required for 100 bushels, or 30 ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 415, December 15, 1883 • Various
... disgusted with the slow, cumbersome train. He disliked using this uncomfortable means of travel, but since he wanted to learn more about these strange creatures who were his ancestors, he had decided to try to become used to ...
— Field Trip • Gene Hunter
... small mallet made of hardwood faced with thick buff leather, a powerful loading-rod, a powder-flask, a pouch to contain greased linen or silk patches; another pouch for percussion caps; a third pouch for bullets. In addition to this cumbersome arrangement, a nipple-screw was carried, lest any stoppage might render necessary the extraction of ...
— Wild Beasts and their Ways • Sir Samuel W. Baker
... It was of medium length, with a light brown walnut stock,—and was a wicked shooter. At that time the most of the western troops were armed with foreign-made muskets, imported from Europe. Many regiments had old Belgian muskets, a heavy, cumbersome piece, and awkward and unsatisfactory every way. We were glad to get the Austrians, and were quite proud of them. We used these until June, 1863, when we turned them in and drew in lieu thereof the Springfield rifle musket of the model of 1863. It was not as heavy as the Austrian, was neater looking, ...
— The Story of a Common Soldier of Army Life in the Civil War, 1861-1865 • Leander Stillwell
... leather gaiters. His pantaloons and jacket were of brown velvet, and their innumerable pockets were stuffed with note-books, memorandum-books, account-books, pocket-books, and a thousand other things equally cumbersome and useless, not to mention a telescope in addition, which he carried in ...
— In Search of the Castaways • Jules Verne
... require a separate air supply under high pressure, or any extra material to render incandescent, and it may be turned on full immediately upon lighting. It throws a shadowless light, and lends itself to ventilating arrangements; and it is not by any means cumbersome, delicate in construction, or costly in manufacture. One of the greatest advantages to which it lays claim is, however, the power of yielding almost as good results in a small burner as in a large one. This is a consideration of great ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 362, December 9, 1882 • Various
... person at the moment of death. For ordinary purposes, there is no practical inconvenience in using the expression 'astral body' for the appearance so projected—indeed any more strictly accurate expression, as will be seen directly, would be cumbersome, and we must go on using the phrase in both meanings. No confusion need arise; but strictly speaking, the linga sharira, or third principle, is the astral body, and that cannot be sent about as the ...
— Fashionable Philosophy - and Other Sketches • Laurence Oliphant
... for a kitchen should not be cumbersome, and should be so made and dressed as to be easily cleaned. There should be plenty of cupboards, and each for the sake of order, should be devoted to a special purpose. Cupboards with sliding doors are much superior to closets. They should be placed upon casters ...
— Science in the Kitchen. • Mrs. E. E. Kellogg
... tons burthen—although, in fact, they rarely carry more than fifteen tons for fear of spoiling the fish. The dried-cod fishery is carried on in vessels of all sizes; but it is essential that they be of a certain depth, because the fish is more cumbersome than weighty. The vessels however usually set sail about the month of March or April, in order that they may have the advantage of the summer season, to dry the fish. There are vessels which go to Newfoundland laden with brandy, flour, beans, treacle, linen and woollen cloths, which they dispose ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume One • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... nightfall turtles in legion forsook their abode on the muddy river-bottom and sought the hot sand to lay their eggs. The shuffle of their feet and the scraping of their heavy shells was audible some distance away in a muffled conglomeration of sounds. They moved rather rapidly for such cumbersome creatures and made quickly for the highest points in the sandy wastes where with much effort a hole was scooped and the eggs deposited; then the excavation was neatly filled. The turtles hurried back to the water to remain in the ...
— The Black Phantom • Leo Edward Miller
... that though he pushed and squeezed like one who had really a mind to get in, yet he could not possibly do so. Then I heard a voice crying, "Woe to him that loadeth himself with thick clay." The poor man felt something was wrong, and even went so far as to change some of his more cumbersome vanities into others which seemed less bulky; but still he and his pack were much ...
— Stories for the Young - Or, Cheap Repository Tracts: Entertaining, Moral, and Religious. Vol. VI. • Hannah More
... large, cumbersome pasteboard box in the corner, which Diggs passed up to him the last ...
— Mr. Bingle • George Barr McCutcheon
... general convention, wherein it was unanimously resolved upon and condescended to by all the gods, that they should worthily and valiantly stand to their defence. And because they had often seen battles lost by the cumbersome lets and disturbing encumbrances of women confusedly huddled in amongst armies, it was at that time decreed and enacted that they should expel and drive out of heaven into Egypt and the confines of Nile that whole crew of goddesses, disguised in the shapes of weasels, polecats, bats, shrew-mice, ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... so far from being cumbersome to the army, was infinitely serviceable, carrying burdens, bringing in forage, provisions, and tribute; working the machines in the sieges; and, above all, spreading consternation among the Turks, who feared death from the lances of the ...
— The Talisman • Sir Walter Scott
... two extremes would obviously serve only in sudden movements. In reality, the rider's skill would consist in moving the propeller only very slightly, in order to maintain a horizontal flight. As for the machine itself, Jimmy had rejected the cumbersome system of cells, which he compared ...
— The Bill-Toppers • Andre Castaigne
... of wedge-writing is a direct derivative of the Babylonian, introduced in the times of the Achaemenians, and it is nothing but a simplification in form and principle of the more cumbersome and complicated Babylonian. Instead of a combination of as many as ten and fifteen wedges to make one sign, we have in the Persian never more than five, and frequently only three; and instead of writing words by syllables, sounds alone were employed, and the syllabary of several ...
— The Religion of Babylonia and Assyria • Morris Jastrow
... fattening them to such an extent that they have been injured in constitution, and in many cases converted into cripples behind. The prizewinning rough-coated St. Bernard, as he is seen to-day is a purely manufactured animal, handsome in appearance certainly, but so cumbersome that he is scarcely able to raise a trot, let alone do any tracking in the snow. Usefulness, however, is not a consideration with breeders, who have reared the dog to meet the exigencies of the show ...
— Dogs and All About Them • Robert Leighton
... Eustace, will regret as he descends, that instead of heaping this useless and cumbersome quarry upon the dome, the trustees of the edifice did not employ the money expended upon it in erecting a front, (for that essential part is still wanting,) corresponding with the style and stateliness of this superb temple. A front has indeed been begun, but in a taste so dissimilar ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 14, No. 379, Saturday, July 4, 1829. • Various
... foot attendants are numerous—eight grooms, forty Roman lictors in crimson garb, twenty servants to clear the way, and twenty "savages" or green men throwing squibs and fireworks to keep off the crowd, and a crowd of workmen ready to repair any part of the cumbersome chariot which might, as was not unlikely, get out of order during its progress ...
— Memorials of Old London - Volume I • Various
... somewhat higher in price than ordinary mechanical valves. They have been in use on the apparatus for a year now and have invariably proved to be absolutely tight. They are easy to obtain and are much easier to manipulate and much less cumbersome than the mercury ...
— Respiration Calorimeters for Studying the Respiratory Exchange and Energy Transformations of Man • Francis Gano Benedict
... which will only embrace native Egyptians, nor in that of any endeavour to convert Egypt into a British possession on the model of India or Ceylon, but rather in that of an enlarged cosmopolitanism, which, whilst discarding all the obstructive fetters of the cumbersome old international system, will tend to amalgamate all the inhabitants of the Nile Valley and enable them all alike to share in the government of ...
— Political and Literary essays, 1908-1913 • Evelyn Baring
... wooden railing that surrounds it is a great blot on the appearance of the chapel; no doubt it is necessary that the pedestal should be protected by some kind of barrier, but a light and elegant railing of brass would answer every purpose without marring the general effect, as the present cumbersome erection shown in all the accompanying illustrations of objects in this chapel does. It is to be hoped that either out of the general fabric fund, or by the generosity of some individual donor, this one blot on this fine chapel ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Saint Albans - With an Account of the Fabric & a Short History of the Abbey • Thomas Perkins
... hour and half: we had not only refreshed ourselves, but our company and Cimaroons had gotten some good pillage, which our Captain allowed and gave them (being not the thing he looked for) so that it were not too cumbersome or heavy in respect of our travel, or ...
— Sir Francis Drake Revived • Philip Nichols
... erratic swinging from side to side, Ferd needed the whole road, and seeing this, the other lad stood by, ready to guard himself if the cumbersome machine headed his way. ...
— Dick the Bank Boy - Or, A Missing Fortune • Frank V. Webster
... the name of God, boy, have you escaped?" demanded Stanley, as he clenched Bucks's shoulder in his hand. Dancing seized the cumbersome chest and dragged it out of danger. The Indians, jeering, as they retreated, at the railroad men, made no attempt to continue the attack, but rode away content with the destruction of ...
— The Mountain Divide • Frank H. Spearman
... narrow and dark, the banner was large and cumbersome, while the lady that bore it was nervous and weak. It is not strange, then, that Maggie, who slept at no great distance, was awakened by a tremendous crash, as of someone falling the entire length of the tower stairs, ...
— Maggie Miller • Mary J. Holmes
... aright, and out of that knowledge to love him, and to imitate him, to be like him, as we may the nearest by possessing our souls of true virtue, which being united to the heavenly grace of faith makes up the highest perfection."[108] This rather cumbersome definition shows how fully Milton was possessed of the Puritan spirit, which then controlled England, and which ...
— History of Education • Levi Seeley
... early telegraphic line an electric discharge was passed through the particular wire representing the letter of the alphabet to be sent; this discharge, reaching the other end, caused a pithball to be repelled and thus laboriously, letter by letter, the message was transmitted. How ludicrously cumbersome was such an instrument when contrasted with the Morse electro-magnetic telegraph of to-day, which requires but a single wire; or with the harmonic telegraph of Gray, which permits the simultaneous transmission of eight or more ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIV • John Lord
... altar, nearly twenty years after the completion of the ceiling frescoes. There is a great difference between the two works. The figures on the ceiling are strong and powerful, their attitudes spirited and graceful. Those in the Last Judgment are huge and cumbersome, their attitudes strained and violent. The entire effect of the vast company of colossal figures is awe-inspiring, but ...
— Michelangelo - A Collection Of Fifteen Pictures And A Portrait Of The - Master, With Introduction And Interpretation • Estelle M. Hurll |
