"Clumsily" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... clumsily done," he said, "though maybe it would pass without close examination. He is a stranger, and comes of a race unknown to me but, as you said, it matters not to me who he is; suffice that he is a friend of yours. He is welcome to a share of my shelter, and my food; though the shelter ...
— On the Irrawaddy - A Story of the First Burmese War • G. A. Henty
... desk Eric found a torn bit of paper, on which was clumsily scrawled, "I'll teach you to grin when ...
— Eric, or Little by Little • Frederic W. Farrar
... hat off, reclined upon his back with his face lifted to the sky. Where his head rested, the wild thyme grew, and one great, black bumble-bee boomed at a deaf ear as it clumsily struggled in the purple blossoms. He lay almost naturally, but some distortion of his neck and a film upon his open eyes proclaimed that the man ...
— Children of the Mist • Eden Phillpotts
... friends nudged each other. "Back seats for us," they said. "But we've had our turn in front ones." Then, thinking they would be useful in encouraging her to walk, they clustered again, rendering Barker and McLean once more well-nigh helpless. Clumsily the escort made its slow way across the quadrangle, cautioning itself about stones and holes. Thus, presently, she was brought into the room. The escort set her down, crowding the little place as thick as it would hold; the rest gathered ...
— Lin McLean • Owen Wister
... look at the threatening sky, and joined their voices in the deafening chorus that shook the wide-spreading canopy of the tall ceiba tree and penetrated into the innermost recesses of the jungle a distance measured in miles. Then the troop clumsily made its way over the swaying branches and sought a friendly shelter in the ...
— The Black Phantom • Leo Edward Miller
... important. In short, one could scarcely know what Shaw's doings meant unless one knew what he meant by them. This difficulty in mere order and construction has puzzled me very much. I am going to overcome it, clumsily perhaps, but in the way which affects me as most sincere. Before I write even a slight suggestion of his relation to the stage, I am going to write of three soils or atmospheres out of which that relation grew. In other words, before I write of Shaw I will write ...
— George Bernard Shaw • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... Harry went forward, clumsily seeking the witness chair. A moment later he had been sworn, and in five minutes more, he was back beside Fairchild, staring in a relieved manner about him. He had been questioned regarding nothing more than the ...
— The Cross-Cut • Courtney Ryley Cooper
... wildly with strained attention. Meanwhile Razumihin sat down on the sofa beside him, as clumsily as a bear put his left arm round Raskolnikov's head, although he was able to sit up, and with his right hand gave him a spoonful of soup, blowing on it that it might not burn him. But the soup was only just warm. Raskolnikov swallowed one spoonful greedily, then a second, then a third. But after ...
— Crime and Punishment • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... confessed, he begged me to excuse him, he smiled appealingly. "Poker, bridge, chemin de fer, I like 'em all," he rattled on, "but they don't like me. So I stick to solitaire. It's dull, but cheap." He shuffled the cards clumsily. As though making conversation, he asked: "You care ...
— The Red Cross Girl • Richard Harding Davis
... workmen who were repairing the church, and that he constantly turned from his post of observation to try and imitate their labors, but his only building material was the furniture of the room, and chairs and tables clumsily resisted his efforts to pile them up into suitable form. He tells us that this strong desire for building and the bitter disappointment of his repeated failures were still keenly remembered when he was a grown man, and thus suggested to him that children ought to ...
— Froebel's Gifts • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... had uttered opinions, however clumsily, upon "government" and "reform" from the pulpit of San Nicolo, in the dignified and interested presence of a ducal secretary, the bancali, and the disconcerting throng of gondoliers who were intolerant of speeches and impatient for their vote; and he had retired shamefacedly, like an awkward boy, ...
— A Golden Book of Venice • Mrs. Lawrence Turnbull
... when a man, whose dress very much resembled his own, lounged into the wine-shop. He was a tall, clumsily built fellow, with an insolent expression upon his beardless face. His coat and cap were in an equally dilapidated condition; and in the squeaky voice of the rough, he ordered a plate of beef and half a bottle of wine, and, as he brushed past Andre, upset his glass of brandy. ...
— The Champdoce Mystery • Emile Gaboriau
... Nay, indeed, my Lord Megacles. We were trying, with a view to the pageant, how a number of young men of Cherson would look in the array of Bosphorus; but we gave it up, since we feared that they would bear them so clumsily that they would mar the ...
— Gycia - A Tragedy in Five Acts • Lewis Morris
... "antiquity," so defined, says about canonicity; thirdly, to prove that canonicity means infallibility. And when science, largely in the shape of the abhorred "criticism," has answered this appeal, and has shown that "antiquity" used her own methods, however clumsily and imperfectly, she naturally turns round upon the appellants, and demands that they should show cause why, in these days, science should not resume the work the ancients did so imperfectly, and ...
— Lectures and Essays • Thomas Henry Huxley
... as he went, he escorted Macfarlane and Duprez to what he called with a gentle humor his "Bee-Metropolis," while Errington and Lorimer returned to the shore of the Fjord, where they had left their boat moored to a small, clumsily constructed pier,—and entering it, they set themselves to the oars and pulled away together with the long, steady, sweeping stroke rendered famous by the exploits of the Oxford and Cambridge men. After some twenty minutes' rowing, Lorimer looked up and spoke as he drew his blade ...
— Thelma • Marie Corelli
... Polly's fingers gave, and he hit his chin against the stones and slipped clumsily to the ground again, scraping his cheek against the wall and hurting his shin against the log by which he had reached the top. Just for a moment he crouched ...
— The History of Mr. Polly • H. G. Wells
... rushed upon him. He trampled the grass clumsily and tore up the earth with his front hoofs. When he had ended, he looked for the Mouse, but he ...
— Wigwam Evenings - Sioux Folk Tales Retold • Charles Alexander Eastman and Elaine Goodale Eastman
... to change the "one" to "five" on the "one" side of the new combined note, but it was done so clumsily that the fraud would have been seen at a glance, and the only hope of passing the notes as fives would have been to pass them over with the $5 side up and trust to the man receiving it not to turn it over before putting it away. The doctored ...
— Disputed Handwriting • Jerome B. Lavay
... which human life has at its best moments—that, says Aristotle, the divine life has continually. The philosopher thus expressed with absolute clearness the principle which the poets had been clumsily trying to embody from the beginning. Burdened as traditional faiths might be with cosmological and fanciful matter, they still presented in a conspicuous and permanent image that which made all good ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... a sledgehammer by now. He hopped clumsily onto the escalator, clutched the moving guard rail to either side, then shut his eyes as the steps went over the edge and became what felt like vertical. An instant later he forced his eyes open, unclipped a hand from the rail and touched ...
— The Creature from Cleveland Depths • Fritz Reuter Leiber
... no sound broke the silence, except the occasional snapping of a twig under our feet, as we moved forward. Yet, in spite of the quietness, I had a horrible feeling that we were not alone; and I kept so close to Tonnison that twice I kicked his heels clumsily, though he said nothing. A minute, and then another, and we reached the confines of the wood coming out at last upon the bare rockiness of the countryside. Only then was I able to shake off the haunting dread that had followed me among ...
— The House on the Borderland • William Hope Hodgson
... and kissed his cheek clumsily. "Why, you old big dear! I'll bet it's for me. Isn't it, David? Isn't ...
— Citadel • Algirdas Jonas Budrys
... if they wished to save their own—and he took the stoutest and heaviest of all. He made a sorry enough figure as he climbed awkwardly upon the stage, but when he had gained it, he towered full half a head above the other, for all his awkwardness. Nathless, he held his stick so clumsily that the ...
— Robin Hood • J. Walker McSpadden
... confident in his criticisms and utterances, and dignified in his silence. It was obvious that he thought a great deal of himself. Asanov rarely laughed, and then with closed teeth, and he never danced. He was rather loosely and clumsily built. He had at one time served in the —th regiment, and was spoken of ...
— The Diary of a Superfluous Man and Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... am quite too ignorant to dispute) established by his work. Supposing his premises to be all correct, I think he does not make out his own case satisfactorily; and many of the conclusions in particular instances appear to me to be tacked or basted (to speak womanly) together loosely and clumsily, and yet with an effect of more mutual relation, coherence, and cohesion than ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble
... the long detour, he rounded the end of the cove and climbed up to the door of the bungalow. Under the edge of that door he tucked the note he had written. As soon as this was accomplished he became aware that he had expressed himself very clumsily. He had not written as he might. A dozen brilliant thoughts came to him. He must rewrite that ...
— The Woman-Haters • Joseph C. Lincoln
... Sometime in the night will come the jingle of silver bells, and the patter of tiny hoofs. Old Santa will halloo: "Whoa!" and come sliding down the chimney. The drowsing heads, fuddled with weariness, wrestle clumsily with the problem, "How is he to get through the stove without burning himself?" Reason falters and Faith triumphs. It would be done somehow, and then the reindeer would fly to the next house, and the next, and so on, and so on. The mystic hour draws near. Like a tidal wave it rolls around ...
— Back Home • Eugene Wood
... red lumps of mud in our laps at every step. But, despite these trifling drawbacks, it was delightful to be drawn without effort by a pair of fat horses in splendid harness. It was a great contrast to our poor skinny old horse at home, crawling along in much-broken harness, clumsily and much mended with ...
— My Brilliant Career • Miles Franklin
... property, our marriage laws, amusements, worship, prisons, and all other things, change imperceptibly from hour to hour; the moulds containing them, being inelastic, do not change, but hold on to the point of bursting, and then are hastily, often clumsily, enlarged. The ninety desiring peace and comfort for their spirit, the ninety of the well-warmed beds, will have it that the fashions need not change, that morality is fixed, that all is ordered and ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... climax. It was certainly a bold, almost impudent design; for the girl of the convent had few attractions to appeal to a monarch so surrounded by beauty as the King of France. What the courtiers saw, says the Duc de Richelieu, was "a long neck clumsily set on the shoulders, a masculine figure and carriage, features not unlike those of Madame de Mailly, but thinner and harder, which exhibited none of her flashes of kindness, ...
— Love affairs of the Courts of Europe • Thornton Hall
... the Bosphorus. The trees towering among the houses, the high spires and gilded domes, have a most imposing effect; but what is the astonishment of the traveller when he commences his ascent up steep, narrow, clumsily-pitched streets. I could only compare them to the worst-constructed bridle-roads in England which the packhorses traversed centuries ago. The three days we were in the city I only saw one or two carriages,—the most curious vehicles; indeed, there is scarcely a street in which ...
— Memoir and Diary of John Yeardley, Minister of the Gospel • John Yeardley
... Community would have nothing to do with him. He was not quite an out-and-out pessimist, it was true; but he seemed to look on the Community as a most clumsily-articulated creature—a thing of shreds and patches, and the Cheap Jack of shams. He was always putting his finger on this spot or that; hinting that here there was a weakness, and there . . . something ...
— Drolls From Shadowland • J. H. Pearce
... Todd, who had noticed a shade of testiness in the queries of the officers as to the exact location of the gold and diamonds, expressed a desire to climb the rigging next afternoon, a feat he had often wished to perform, which he did clumsily, going through the lubber's hole, and seated in the maintop with Mr. Duncan's Bible, he remained in quiet meditation and apparent reading and prayer until the tropic day changed to sudden twilight and darkness, and the hysterical crew returned. Then ...
— "Where Angels Fear to Tread" and Other Stories of the Sea • Morgan Robertson
... that she went about it clumsily despite her supple gracefulness—she withdrew the heavy weapon from the window and laid it upon the counter. He was looking at her with a peculiar smile upon ...
— Truxton King - A Story of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... kindly meant, but rather clumsily timed, at least so thought Jack; for though he inclined his head in acknowledgment of the attention, and instinctively touched his hat, when spoken to by an officer, he made no reply, till out of the marine's hearing, when he laughed, or rather chuckled ...
— The Lieutenant and Commander - Being Autobigraphical Sketches of His Own Career, from - Fragments of Voyages and Travels • Basil Hall
... the darkness, as with a stroke of chalk across a blackboard, its first white correcting ray, when the window, with its curtains, would leave the frame of the doorway, in which I had erroneously placed it, while, to make room for it, the writing-table, which my memory had clumsily fixed where the window ought to be, would hurry off at full speed, thrusting before it the mantelpiece, and sweeping aside the wall of the passage; the well of the courtyard would be enthroned on the spot where, a moment ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust
... the quiet ship shouldered clumsily over the rollers, now gushing down till she dipped her martingale, now swooping up again, sending whole cataracts of water swirling along ...
— A Master of Fortune • Cutcliffe Hyne
... my friend climbed around on to the ladder and commenced to descend. I waited until his head disappeared below the level, and, clumsily ...
— The Insidious Dr. Fu-Manchu • Sax Rohmer
... however, five cottons and was hard to thread. It may be said here that the number of needles does not necessarily determine the difficulty of working on sewing-machines; two-needle machines are sometimes harder to run than five or even twelve-needle machines, because they are more cheaply and clumsily constructed and the material is held less firmly by the metal guide under the needle-point. It was not her eyes, Yeddie said, that were tired by the stitching, but her shoulders and her back, from the jar of the machines. Every month she suffered cruelly, but, because she needed every ...
— Making Both Ends Meet • Sue Ainslie Clark and Edith Wyatt
... clumsily this time to kiss the hem of her skirt, but she stepped aside quickly, fumbling meanwhile in her purse for ...
— The Ne'er-Do-Well • Rex Beach
... kneading and rolling so clumsily that the nodule was malformed, but the majority were singularly symmetrical, evidencing nice adjustment between the degree of adhesiveness of the "pug" and the applied force of the wave. Several weighed nearly a quarter of a pound, while the majority were not much bigger than marbles, and the oval ...
— My Tropic Isle • E J Banfield
... apparently been found too large, and the sections had accordingly been cut down to make them fit, the result being that the carving did not match at the junctions. The trunk of the tree had also been cut off rather clumsily at the base and fitted badly to the cabin floor, while the branches had been cut through in places where the beams crossed the ceiling, and had been nailed on again in such a way as to make them look as though they had grown ...
— The Pirate Island - A Story of the South Pacific • Harry Collingwood
... sat on the second thwart facing him. The rod rendered this necessary, and A. told me afterwards that Ben spent most of his time winking and contemptuously gesticulating over my shoulder. Probably this accounted for the number of times he pummelled the small of my back with the clumsily advanced handles of ...
— Lines in Pleasant Places - Being the Aftermath of an Old Angler • William Senior
... This sounds very clumsily put and so it did then, but I was obliged to explain my actions in some way and what is better than the truth? Lies, I have no doubt to some people, but I was compelled to be truthful to this man who carried a gentle and open countenance ...
— Crowded Out! and Other Sketches • Susie F. Harrison
... easy-going person like Buster Bumblebee wasn't looking for trouble of that sort. So he dodged clumsily out of sight behind a milkweed; and he made up his mind then that that was the last time he would ever have anything to do with one of those ...
— The Tale of Buster Bumblebee • Arthur Scott Bailey
... upset and he saw that he had set about it clumsily. He went over to the dogged youngster, patted his head and, with a nod to the cook, led ...
— Seven Icelandic Short Stories • Various
... into the Jungle to pick it up again, and, all the time he could have thrown a stone over those who were watching him. No one can be so silent as a wolf when he does not care to be heard; and Mowgli, though the wolves thought he moved very clumsily, could come and go like a shadow. They ringed the old man as a school of porpoises ring a steamer at full speed, and as they ringed him they talked unconcernedly, for their speech began below the lowest end of the scale that untrained human beings can hear. [The other end is ...
— The Second Jungle Book • Rudyard Kipling
... very clumsily. He ran into sticks and things. A twig that he thought a long way off, would the next instant hit him on the nose or rake along his ribs. There were inequalities of surface. Sometimes he overstepped ...
— White Fang • Jack London
... same logs arranged so that the angle of incidence strikes the back of the chimney and the smoke ascends in the full and orderly manner. But both Figs. 285 and 287 are clumsily arranged. The B logs in each case should be the backlog and the small logs A and C should be in front ...
— Shelters, Shacks and Shanties • D.C. Beard
... close to his beating heart! Though colorless and marble-like, there is beauty in every feature, and signs of suffering and pain in the dark circles about the eyes and in the lines at the corners of the exquisite mouth. Even as he clumsily but most assiduously mops with his one available hand and looks vaguely around for feminine assistance, Major Abbot is conscious of a feeling of proprietorship and confidence that is as unwarranted, probably, as it is new. 'Tis only a faint, he is certain. She ...
— A War-Time Wooing - A Story • Charles King
... with the front of the house; it interested me because it had the air of having been very long undisturbed. There were two rusty bolts, which did not evidently belong to its original securities, and had been, though very long ago, somewhat clumsily superadded. Dusty and rusty they were, but I had no difficulty in drawing them back. There was a rusty key, I remember it well, with a crooked handle in the lock; I tried to turn it, but could not. My curiosity was piqued. I was thinking ...
— Uncle Silas - A Tale of Bartram-Haugh • J.S. Le Fanu
... most repulsive and disheartening. There is no order, uniformity, or intelligent procedure. There is a clump of trees of the primeval forest here, the stumps and litter of a half-made clearing there, yonder a patch of soil newly and clumsily planted; wigwams and huts alternate with one another; men are digging, hewing, running to head back straying cattle, toiling in with fragments of game on their shoulders; yonder a grave is being dug in the root-encumbered ground, and hard by a knot of mourners are preparing ...
— The History of the United States from 1492 to 1910, Volume 1 • Julian Hawthorne
... he worked as hard as he possibly could for a definite period and then took holiday? I suspect very strongly, indeed I am convinced, that in certain occupations, teaching, for example, or surgery, a man begins by working clumsily and awkwardly, that his interest and skill rise rapidly, that if he is really well suited in his profession he may presently become intensely interested and capable of enormous quantities of his very best work, and that then his interest and vigour rapidly ...
— An Englishman Looks at the World • H. G. Wells
... impatient desire to see the large one which was kept locked away for great occasions. And so I had not been very long in the parlour before the door opened, and in came Miss Lizzie with two dolls tucked clumsily under her arm. She was followed by her brother John, a year or so younger than herself, not simply to play propriety at our interview, but to show his own two whips in emulation of his sister's dolls. I did my best to make myself agreeable to my visitors, showing much admiration ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XXII (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... he paused. The mother was between him and his dinner. He circled. The bear circled clumsily. The cub was always behind her. The tiger stood still. The bear moved slowly backward, still pushing her cub. Again the tiger sprang. This time he was but eight feet distant. He growled. The bear ...
— Panther Eye • Roy J. Snell
... his feet in an instant. He stepped forward, seized the lines on either side of the ladder, and climbed up very clumsily, but managed to reach the deck without accepting the assistance of the mate and one of the men, who stood in the gangway and made room for him to step for the first time in his life upon the ...
— Jack at Sea - All Work and no Play made him a Dull Boy • George Manville Fenn
... inhabitants: but this business is very ill performed: the gloves and shoes are generally rotten as they come from the hands of the maker. Carpenter's, joiner's, and blacksmith's work is very coarsely and clumsily done. There are no chairs to be had at Nice, but crazy things made of a few sticks, with rush bottoms, which are sold for twelve livres a dozen. Nothing can be more contemptible than the hard-ware made in ...
— Travels Through France and Italy • Tobias Smollett
... gave a bit of a snort and followed the man in a slow deliberate way, born of custom, right out into the yard to where the trestle-supported cart stood. Then as I held the lantern the great bony creature turned and backed itself clumsily in between the shafts, and under the great framework ladder piled up with baskets till its tail touched the front of the cart, when it heaved a long ...
— Brownsmith's Boy - A Romance in a Garden • George Manville Fenn
... mind to succeed him, but both King and Duke have so earnestly pressed him to remain secretary at war, that he could not refuse. The King would not hear of any of the newer court; and Legge, who of the old was next oars, has managed in the Prussian business so clumsily, that the King would not bear him in his closet: but he has got the navy-office, which Lyttelton would have had, but could not be rechosen at his borough, which he had stolen by surprise from his old friend and brother Tom Pitt. The ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 2 • Horace Walpole
... this comes to pass I have not space to tell, but while I do not believe that all men have their price, I suspect that some Custom House officials have not always been proof against temptation, and are not now. And perjury in the view of a non-christian Chinese is a venial offense except when so clumsily committed as to lead to detection. But, no matter how these new comers get here, once among us they are fish for our fishing, and when one of them becomes a Christian and tells me he has been in the country five or six or eight years, I do not feel bound to make him ...
— The American Missionary - Volume 52, No. 2, June, 1898 • Various
... do to keep his perch. The cat, her narrow eyes opening very wide, would start to creep up to him. The She imp would then alight on the rail behind her and nip her sharply by the tail, and go hopping clumsily off down the rail. The cat would wheel with an angry pfiff-ff, and start after this new quarry. Whereupon the He imp would again nip her tail. This would be repeated several times before the cat would realize that she was ...
— Children of the Wild • Charles G. D. Roberts
... to, and laughed to see how clumsily Hermas set to work to unbuckle the greaves; but the gay laugh died upon her lips when the gate flew open, the greyhound and the senator's watch-dogs barked loudly, and she recognized her husband's voice as he ordered the ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... power, actual or threatened. Or consider that brave experiment station, New Zealand! Her Compulsory Arbitration may fail; she may be forced to an industrial pace slower than we like; but the main purpose of her social policy is sound to the core; and we are now trying clumsily to imitate it. Yet we are still afraid—we "don't more'n half believe it." Her purpose is to use the power of city and state in New Zealand to prevent the private fleecing of the people through monopoly. Whether it is her land ...
— The Conflict between Private Monopoly and Good Citizenship • John Graham Brooks
... the understanding of methods is what the young student needs. The processes with which he may put on canvas the effect he sees in nature are secondary matters to him. Let him really see the thing and find his own way of expressing it, clumsily, rudely most probably, it is still the best thing for him. He may take such help as he can find, as he needs it; get such suggestions as the work of good painters can give to him, when he cannot see his own way. But the searching of nature should come ...
— The Painter in Oil - A complete treatise on the principles and technique - necessary to the painting of pictures in oil colors • Daniel Burleigh Parkhurst
... Clumsily I patted her bare shoulder. For an instant her wet cheek was pressed against my own, then she went gliding swiftly away, her face once again proud and empty of all human feeling. At the door she turned, swept her palm once over her face, removing the tears and as the hand passed upward ...
— Valley of the Croen • Lee Tarbell
... simplicity, and thorough homeliness of the girl's nature were as powerful a charm as any that she possessed. Beauty, it is true, and beauty almost perfect in its own style, was indispensable. Had Phoebe been coarse in feature, shaped clumsily, of a harsh voice, and uncouthly mannered, she might have been rich with all good gifts, beneath this unfortunate exterior, and still, so long as she wore the guise of woman, she would have shocked Clifford, and depressed him by her lack ...
— The House of the Seven Gables • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... set Strength in the seat of Counsel, your Majesty, and he hath clumsily spoiled your plans. How indeed could ...
— Hindu Literature • Epiphanius Wilson
... to a man's dignity than vituperation from the lips of a woman. She walked towards him, clumsily, menacingly and raised her hand as if ...
— From One Generation to Another • Henry Seton Merriman
... blunders in executing this made matters worse rather than better; and the commodore, at last losing patience, made signal thirty minutes later to attack (Plate XVII., A), following it with another for close action at pistol range. This being slowly and clumsily obeyed, he ordered a gun fired, as is customary at sea to emphasize a signal; unluckily this was understood by his own crew to be the opening of the action, and the flag-ship discharged all her battery. This example was followed by the other ...
— The Influence of Sea Power Upon History, 1660-1783 • A. T. Mahan
... they ceased to appear. Had he gone back home, defeated? Had he moved to another neighborhood? Had he invested in a fresh supply of haberdashery? On Tuesday of the seventh week E. G.'s white hose appeared once more. Martha picked them from among the heap. Instantly she knew. Clumsily, painstakingly, they had been darned by a hand all unaccustomed to such work. A masculine hand, as plucky ...
— Defenders of Democracy • Militia of Mercy
... the lines wrapped on his arm, stopped. De Spain lay a moment, then backed her up a step, pulled her head down by the bridle, clasped his wooden arms around her neck, spoke to her and, lifting her head, the mare dragged him to his feet. Clumsily and helplessly he loosened the tugs and the whiffletree, beat his hands together with idiotic effort, hooked the middle point of the whiffletree into the elbow of his left arm, brought the forearm and hand up flat against his shoulder, and with the hitching-strap lashed his forearm and upper ...
— Nan of Music Mountain • Frank H. Spearman
... was not ready to start when the rest of the fleet did, she sailed alone down the river through the quiet bay, and out into the ocean, and as she sailed, she bore little resemblance to our war vessels of to-day, so clumsily fashioned was she, being made of wood, with only one covered deck, and the open forecastle and quarter-deck above it, and had but two tiers of guns—the largest frigates carried sixty guns, besides a large pivot gun at the bow, ...
— Ten Boys from History • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... Lady's pale face there sat the look of one resigned with fatalism to whatever issue might appear. She made no further speech, but was the first to step into the boat. Madame Delchasse, still grumbling, followed clumsily. Eddring helped them in, took up the oars, and the two deck-hands, who had been holding the skiff, clambered back aboard the Queen. Eddring settled himself to the oars, and they cast off. The little skiff rocked, tossed, turned, and headed toward the shore under ...
— The Law of the Land • Emerson Hough
... would search everywhere until they had found either himself or the king, perhaps both. It would be far better, therefore, that he alone should be discovered. And, consequently, Malicorne hid himself so clumsily that he was the only one arrested. As soon as he was arrested, Malicorne was taken to the guard-house; when there, he declared who he was, and was immediately recognized. In the meantime, by concealing himself first behind one clump of trees and then behind another, the king reached the side-door ...
— The Vicomte de Bragelonne - Or Ten Years Later being the completion of "The Three - Musketeers" And "Twenty Years After" • Alexandre Dumas
... stands apart by reason of the great destiny and general use of its medium in the affairs of men, is yet an art like other arts. Of these we may distinguish two great classes: those arts, like sculpture, painting, acting, which are representative, or, as used to be said very clumsily, imitative; and those, like architecture, music, and the dance, which are self-sufficient, and merely presentative. Each class, in right of this distinction, obeys principles apart; yet both may claim a common ground of existence, and it may be said with sufficient justice ...
— The Art of Writing and Other Essays • Robert Louis Stevenson
... may be many men in Maasau who would rob me, but there is only one man who could do it so clumsily.' ...
— A Modern Mercenary • Kate Prichard and Hesketh Vernon Hesketh-Prichard
... animals, there wouldn't be any joy left in the world. What isn't the dog compelled to do and learn! The horse! They are foolish animals to show their intelligence, they must give way entirely to their vanity; we cats still continue to be the freest race because, with all our skill, we can act so clumsily that human beings quite give up ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IV • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... the first time that I understood how shrewdly, and yet how clumsily now and then, the man had weaved together his information. He spoke with an abundance of detail that astonished me; he spoke of names and places with the greatest precision; he related how himself had been sent from St. ...
— Oddsfish! • Robert Hugh Benson
... before he reached his rooms, his mind was groping clumsily after written phrases which should in some sort express that which was in him without saying too much too soon,—which should delicately hint his regrets at this sudden curtailment of their acquaintance, and leave it for her to say whether or no she regarded ...
— Pearl of Pearl Island • John Oxenham
... with her swollen eyes, the aftermath of her wild weeping causing convulsive catches in her throat which she stifled automatically. Turning the envelope over she saw that it was sealed clumsily with red wax. ...
— In Apple-Blossom Time - A Fairy-Tale to Date • Clara Louise Burnham
... that he durst not go back to Russia without having added all of Poland that he claimed to his dominions,—that it was as much as his life was worth to comply with the demands of Austria, France, and England with regard to the Poles. This was the real reason why the Polish question was so clumsily disposed of, and left to make trouble for the future. Alexander preferred quarrelling with his allies rather than with his nobles, exactly as he had done when Napoleon I. was his foreign antagonist. There have been persons enough to ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 93, July, 1865 • Various
... his elbow-chair, and watched how the flames and the smoke-wreaths Struggled together like foes in a burning city. Behind him, Nodding and mocking along the wall, with gestures fantastic, Darted his own huge shadow, and vanished away into darkness. Faces, clumsily carved in oak, on the back of his arm-chair Laughed in the flickering light, and the pewter plates on the dresser Caught and reflected the flame, as shields of armies the sunshine. Fragments of song the old man sang, and carols of Christmas, Such as at home, in the olden ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... a long pause during which some mental process took place clumsily behind this low, sunburnt forehead ... "but ...
— Joanna Godden • Sheila Kaye-Smith
... general schedule that she was to work out and adapt to the individual needs of the child herself, during the first phase of the experiment. She felt that she had managed the reception badly, that she had not done or said the right thing. Peter's attitude had shown that he felt the situation had been clumsily handled, and it was she who was responsible for it. Peter was too kind to criticize her, but she had vowed in the muffled depths of a feverish pillow that there should be no more flagrant flaws in the ...
— Turn About Eleanor • Ethel M. Kelley
... daintiest of reticules the fair lady now extracted a very greasy and very dirty bit of paper, and handed it to me with the brief request: "Read this, I pray you, my good M. Ratichon." I took the paper. It was a clumsily worded, ill-written, ill-spelt demand for five thousand francs, failing which sum the thing which Madame had lost ...
— Castles in the Air • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... argumentative, and, though it was at the time often delightful and stimulating, it was also often very crude and immature. Father Payne was good at helping a talker out, and would often do justice to a clumsily-expressed remark which he thought was interesting. But he was by far the most interesting member of the circle; he spoke easily and flowingly when he was moved, and there always seemed to me a sense of form about his talk which was absent from ours. But under no circumstance ...
— Father Payne • Arthur Christopher Benson
... said Wilson, clumsily, "I mean I was his attendant up to the Retreat. It was a real high-toned place, and they did not take any dangerous ones, only folks like him. His people ain't the kind that stand for price. They've got plenty, ...
— A Village Ophelia and Other Stories • Anne Reeve Aldrich
... one of the cows, right at the edge of the blackened clearing, rose clumsily, then moved slowly northward. Presently another ...
— The High School Boys in Summer Camp • H. Irving Hancock
... improperly refused admission to the Party, although he was quite prepared to sign the pledge to sit, act, and vote with it. There was scarcely a thing wrong they could do which these blind leaders of the blind did not clumsily attempt at this juncture. They might have shown us, whose only crime was loyalty to principle and to a policy which had been signally ratified by the repeated mandates of the people, a reasonable measure of generosity and a frank fellowship and all ...
— Ireland Since Parnell • Daniel Desmond Sheehan
... mother could not sleep, her attention was attracted by a dull noise down-stairs, as if some one were shutting a trap-door clumsily. She lay awake all night uneasily, listening, but in vain. Next morning we found the room down-stairs in its usual condition; but my mother would not admit that she had been dreaming, and the same day spoke to Mme. de Combray, who joked her about it, and sent her to the gardener. The latter said ...
— The House of the Combrays • G. le Notre
... memoirs a hundred years hence, what was that errand on which Colonel Esmond of late had been busy. Silently and swiftly to do that about which others were conspiring, and thousands of Jacobites all over the country clumsily caballing; alone to effect that which the leaders here were only talking about; to bring the Prince of Wales into the country openly in the face of all, under Bolingbroke's very eyes, the walls placarded with the proclamation ...
— The History of Henry Esmond, Esq. • W. M. Thackeray
... was no whit the worse for his battle with the storm; but he was full of fears lest Valmai's more delicate frame should suffer. He rose with the dawn and made his way over the dewy grass across the valley, and into the field where Essec Powell's cows were just awaking and clumsily rising from their night's sleep under the quiet stars. The storm had disappeared as suddenly as it had arisen, and all nature was rejoicing in the birth of a new day. Gwen was already approaching with ...
— By Berwen Banks • Allen Raine
... conjectures above mentioned, with a multitude of others equally satisfactory, I shall take for granted the vulgar opinion that America was discovered on the 12th of October, 1492, by Christopher Colon, a Genoese, who has been clumsily nicknamed Columbus, but for what reason I cannot discern. Of the voyages and adventures of this Colon I shall say nothing, seeing that they are already sufficiently known. Nor shall I undertake to prove that this country should have been called Colonia, after his name, ...
— Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete • Washington Irving
... standing up in the centre of the room, clearing his throat and looking around portentously. The ceremony was about to commence, and all conversation was instantly hushed. Mothers quieted their babies, and the men came clumsily tiptoeing indoors. Whenever possible the more ceremonious precincts of the house were left to the more adaptable sex, the masculine portion of such assemblies always retiring to the greater freedom of the barn and outbuildings. Now they came crowding in, however, ...
— The Silver Maple • Marian Keith
... whole background of streets and tall buildings passes like breath from a mirror—for the instant without breath or clamor, they exist together, one being, and the being has neither flesh to use the senses too clumsily, nor human thoughts to rust at the will, but lives with the strength of a thunder and the heedlessness of a wave in a wide and ...
— Young People's Pride • Stephen Vincent Benet
... broadcloth, and whose breath is rather strong of gin. "An' whereabutes did ye pick the woman up,—an, an, wha's teu stond the bill?" he inquires, in a deep Scotch brogue, then ordering the little window opened, feels clumsily the almost pulseless hand. Encouraged on the matter of his bill, he turns first to the host, then to Tom, and says, "the wuman's nae much, for she's amast dede wi' exhaustion." And while he is ordering a nostrum he knows can do no good, the woman makes ...
— Justice in the By-Ways - A Tale of Life • F. Colburn Adams
... home. Among such as these, empires did introduce order, law, common speech, common interest, the notion of nationality and humanity. They, as it were, hammered together the fragments of the human race till they had moulded them into one. They did it cruelly, clumsily, ill: but was there ever work done on earth, however noble, which ...
— Historical Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley
... determined while the volume was in the press to transfer 'Troilus and Cressida' to the head of the tragedies from a place near the end, but the numbers on the opening pages which indicated its first position were clumsily retained, and to avoid the extensive typographical corrections that were required by the play's change of position, its remaining pages were allowed ...
— A Life of William Shakespeare - with portraits and facsimiles • Sidney Lee
... could hardly restrain their impatience, and Smith introduced the topic, rather clumsily, as soon as the fish appeared. Brown stared at them and said nothing. Jones, plucking up courage, presently asked him a question about the dominant fifth of the scale used by the natives of Quang-Tung. He answered evasively. They could hardly conceal ...
— The Book-Hunter at Home • P. B. M. Allan
... the fountains of the deep, which produce it in Q, and it would stand much better after viii. 21, 22 than after ix. 1-7. In the Priestly Code, moreover, the meaning of the rainbow is half obliterated. On the one hand, the story is clumsily turned into history, and we receive the impression either that the rainbow only appeared in the heavens at this one time after the flood, or that it had been there ever since; on the other hand, it is made the token of the covenant between Elohim and Noah, and ...
— Prolegomena to the History of Israel • Julius Wellhausen
... Corinth, while the North first exulted because he was compelled to do so, and then grumbled because he was allowed to do so. It was soon said that Grant had been surprised, that he was entitled to no credit for winning clumsily a battle which he had not expected to fight, and that he was blameworthy for not following up the retreating foe more sharply. The discussion survives among those quarrels of the war in which the disputants have fought over again the contested field, with ...
— Abraham Lincoln, Vol. I. • John T. Morse
... lets the unrolled crubeen and trotter slide. The mastiff mauls the bundle clumsily and gluts himself with growling greed, crunching the bones. Two raincaped watch approach, silent, vigilant. They ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... appeared all comfortable and well to do, well clad, cleanly, and fat. Most of them had moved for a while into their summer lodges, which consist of little else than a seal-skin tent, clumsily supported with sticks. They were more than sufficiently warm; and the number of souls inhabiting one of these lodges appeared only to be limited by the circle of friends and connections forming a family. The winter abode—formed almost underground—appeared ...
— Stray Leaves from an Arctic Journal; • Sherard Osborn
... first moment when he might have been stern with her. Clumsily he tried to loosen her embrace. But for the first time in his life he was in the grip of an elemental natural force, a thing foreign to his experience of women in marriage or ...
— Kimono • John Paris
... he did not comprehend that this inclination of the head explained that she knew the reason of the absence. She could in fancy see the strong brown fingers clumsily striving to thread the needle. (As a matter of fact, her imagination was at fault. James had done the greater part of ...
— Parrot & Co. • Harold MacGrath
... the silver light that intervened between moonset and sunrise, we saw a junk with high poop and swinging batten sails bearing across our course. She took the seas clumsily, her sails banging as she pitched, and we gathered at the ...
— The Mutineers • Charles Boardman Hawes
... something of the people of God, they began to seek in their own annals for traces of their sojourn in Egypt and of their departure from the country. A new version of the Exodus was the result, in which Hebrew tradition was clumsily blended with the materials of a semi-historical romance, of which Amenothes III. was the hero. His minister and namesake, Amenothes, son of Hapu, left ineffaceable impressions on the minds of the inhabitants of Thebes: he not only erected ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 5 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... fact about him was the improvement in his spirits: he was losing his air of gloomy savagery; often he smiled—at a dish which took his fancy, and on setting out for the sands to join Pollyooly. At times, when he had performed some small feat, clumsily indeed, but not with a quite incredible clumsiness, he would turn to her a triumphant, but appealing, eye which begged for a word, or a smile of approval. The humane Pollyooly rarely failed to give him ...
— Happy Pollyooly - The Rich Little Poor Girl • Edgar Jepson
... particularly proud of the achievement, I was about to remount my horse, when Hissodecha reminded me that I had neglected to scalp the fallen foe; so I was compelled to perform that operation, which I did rather clumsily. A thorough search through the thicket and over the prairie having satisfied my savage companions that no more of the Coyoteros had been present, we returned to the dead buffaloes and began ...
— Seven and Nine years Among the Camanches and Apaches - An Autobiography • Edwin Eastman
... Aura," he repeated. He tried clumsily to soothe her. He wanted to thank her for what she had done in risking her life to find him. He wanted to tell her a thousand tender things that sprang into his heart as he sat there beside her. But when she raised her tear-stained ...
— The Girl in the Golden Atom • Raymond King Cummings
... was caused by the frog making a lazy leap to one side, tumbling heavily over on its back, and rolling clumsily on to its legs again, as if it wished to escape from its tormentor, but had scarcely vigour enough to make the effort. Peterkin quietly lifted it up and placed it deliberately before him again in the same attitude ...
— The Gorilla Hunters • R.M. Ballantyne
... heavy toil without the whip. There was no loud singing, as in southern ports, where ships are loading or unloading—no loud cursing or{269} swearing—but everything went on as smoothly as the works of a well adjusted machine. How different was all this from the nosily fierce and clumsily absurd manner of labor-life in Baltimore and St. Michael's! One of the first incidents which illustrated the superior mental character of northern labor over that of the south, was the manner of unloading a ship's ...
— My Bondage and My Freedom • Frederick Douglass
... themselves longingly: they did hope to live to see the day, they said, when that boy would get his come-upance! (They used that honest word, so much better than "deserts," and not until many years later to be more clumsily rendered as "what is coming to him.") Something was bound to take him down, some day, and they only wanted to be there! But Georgie heard nothing of this, and the yearners for his taking down went unsatisfied, while their yearning grew the greater as the ...
— The Magnificent Ambersons • Booth Tarkington
... bagnio—or banyard, as my Lord Henry calls it—whilst the camels had continued up the hill. Under the great gateway of the Kasbah they padded into the vast courtyard to be ranged along two sides of it by their Saharowi drivers, and there brought clumsily to their knees. After them followed but some two score corsairs as a guard of honour to their leader. They took their stand upon either side of the gateway after profoundly salaaming to Asad-ed-Din. The Basha sat in the shade of an awning enthroned upon a divan, attended by his wazeer Tsamanni ...
— The Sea-Hawk • Raphael Sabatini
... train stopped at Willesden and I took advantage of the halt to change my carriage, explaining clumsily that I should prefer a carriage where I could sit with my face to the engine, whereat every one smiled except myself and the man in ...
— Boycotted - And Other Stories • Talbot Baines Reed |
