"Ungainly" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... table and held out her arms—the thin, fleshless arms—straight, no deviation to the ungainly shoulders. There was unconscious drama in it. Yet she was the last person ...
— Sally Bishop - A Romance • E. Temple Thurston
... the formation of the country in general, has the effect to diminish still more the outlines of any particular scene. Beautiful as it is, beyond all competition, the Hudson would seem still more so, were it not for these high and ungainly spars." ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper
... a froth oozing from between his thick lips, and for an instant the other man believed that in his paroxysm of rage he would hurl himself across the table. Then suddenly the ungainly brute went limp, his face ...
— Bob Hampton of Placer • Randall Parrish
... girth, you might have said, to be nimble, yet somehow suggesting to the swift intuition of youth, as Rodriguez looked at him standing upon his door-step, the spirit and shape of a spider, who despite her ungainly build is agile enough ...
— Don Rodriguez - Chronicles of Shadow Valley • Edward John Moreton Drax Plunkett, Baron, Dunsany
... and exclaiming, "Hi-yah! belly good walkee now," rushed off in that direction. He soon returned with the buffalo and his owner, and indicated that we could cross on the back of the former. The huge, ungainly beast threw up his head and snorted when he caught sight of the "fanquis," or foreign devils, but a pull at the ring through his nose soon brought him ...
— St. Nicholas, Vol. 5, No. 4, February 1878 • Various
... Spot's ungainly feet pawed the snow impatiently, as he strained in his collar stretching the tow-line so taut that George feared it might snap. Equally unavailing were Queen's sudden leaps and frantic plunges. The more they struggled, the more firmly Baldy ...
— Baldy of Nome • Esther Birdsall Darling
... place to look at, with but few visible signs of wealth. The earth, which had been burrowed out by these human rabbits in their search after tin, lay around in huge ungainly heaps; the overground buildings of the establishment consisted of a few ill-arranged sheds, already apparently in a state of decadence; dirt and slush, and pods of water confined by muddy dams, abounded on every side; ...
— The Three Clerks • Anthony Trollope
... flounders in its rush. It is the ungainly roll of a rudderless ship. It stumbles. A second, and its mad rush ends. With a curious gasping sigh it plunges to ...
— The Heart of Unaga • Ridgwell Cullum
... classical features, while they are on the other hand, characteristically Saxon. The nearest parallel to them is to be found in the imposts of the chancel arch at Worth in Sussex, a place far away from Roman sites. The Worth imposts, like the bases at Bosham, are huge and ungainly, testifying both to the general love of bigness in the Saxon builder and to his comparative ignorance of the normal features which in the eleventh century were everywhere else crystallising into Romanesque. Saxon England ...
— England of My Heart—Spring • Edward Hutton
... of taste, of environment and experience, not these alone make up the sum of their unlikeness. You had only to look from the fresh simplicity of white muslin blouse and olive-coloured cloth in the one case, to the ungainly expensiveness of the black silk gown of the married woman, in order to get from the first a sense of dainty morning freshness, and from Mrs. Fox-Moore not alone a lugubrious memento mori sort of impression, but that more disquieting reminder of the ugly and over-elaborate ...
— The Convert • Elizabeth Robins
... cherished his feeling of alienation to my brother as a duty, than strove to repress it. Yet not for the world would my father have grudged him anything that money could purchase. That was, as it were, in the bond when he had wedded my mother. Gregory was lumpish and loutish, awkward and ungainly, marring whatever he meddled in, and many a hard word and sharp scolding did he get from the people about the farm, who hardly waited till my father's back was turned before they rated the stepson. I am ashamed—my ...
— The Half-Brothers • Elizabeth Gaskell
... William E. Forster stood in a different class. Forster had nothing whatever to do with May Fair. Except in being a Yorkshireman he was quite the opposite of Milnes. He had at that time no social or political position; he never had a vestige of Milnes's wit or variety; he was a tall, rough, ungainly figure, affecting the singular form of self-defense which the Yorkshiremen and Lancashiremen seem to hold dear — the exterior roughness assumed to cover an internal, emotional, almost sentimental nature. Kindly he had to be, if only by his inheritance from a Quaker ancestry, but he ...
— The Education of Henry Adams • Henry Adams
... so easy to arrange. Have your carpenter make a double right-angle bench, with a high, straight back. The seat must be two and a half feet wide, and the top of the back five feet from the floor. This now looks like an ungainly three-sided square, or rather oblong, for it is better to have one side somewhat longer than the others. The wood should be stained cherry or oak, to match the other furniture in the room, and oiled and polished so as to be smooth and of rich appearance; or, use hard ...
— Social Life - or, The Manners and Customs of Polite Society • Maud C. Cooke
... of loose earth, and a squelching of saddle-leather, as the Klopstock youth lumbered up to the rails and delivered himself of loud, cheerful greetings. Joyeuse laid his ears well back as the ungainly bay cob and his appropriately matched rider drew up beside him; his verdict was reflected and endorsed by the cold stare of ...
— The Unbearable Bassington • Saki
... are as admirable an invention as any other, as they have many hours of leisure to engage in charitable and other occupations. There are plenty of these amiable "everlastings" at Mr. Bellemare's to-night, some of them apparently much appreciated, for while their homely, ungainly figures are whirled around the room on the arm of some calculating youth, fresh blooming girls must bite the ends of their feathery fans in a passion of disappointment, as they stand against the wall, or admire the ...
— Honor Edgeworth • Vera
... impossible that she might have derived some pleasure from displaying a figure so beautiful, with no adornment except its native gracefulness; but how great must have been the chagrin of the Princesses, of many of the Court ladies, indeed, of all in any way ungainly or deformed, when called to exhibit themselves by the side of a bewitching person like hers, unaided by the whalebone and horse-hair paddings with which they had hitherto been made up, and which placed the best form on a level with the worst? The prudes who practised illicitly, and felt the ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XV. and XVI., Volume 3 • Madame du Hausset, and of an Unknown English Girl and the Princess Lamballe
... garnished with turnpike tickets; and a carter's whip. Thus equipped, he was to saunter into the office, as some country fellow from Covent Garden market might be supposed to do for the gratification of his curiousity; and as he was as awkward, ungainly, and raw-boned a fellow as need be, Mr. Fagin had no fear but that he would look ...
— Oliver Twist • Charles Dickens
... certain arrangements. He was met by his friend (and partner in the venture) the lieutenant on three months' sick leave and between them the expedition was organised which was to make both their fortunes. From Europe, Halloran had shipped half a dozen camels, and these ungainly beasts, in charge of two Arab drivers, formed an important item in his scheme. A small tug was chartered for three months, and a week after sailing from Cape Town the party landed on a wild and desolate part of the coast a hundred and fifty miles south of Walfisch Bay. The reason for choosing ...
— A Rip Van Winkle Of The Kalahari - Seven Tales of South-West Africa • Frederick Cornell
... to the ungainly externals of Jack Tier. She now wore a cap, thus concealing the short, gray bristles of hair, and lending to her countenance a little of that softness which is a requisite of female character. Some attention had also been paid ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848 • Various
... Challis, was a man of some scholarship, whose ambition had been crushed by the weight of his possessions. He had a remarkably fine library at Challis Court, but he made little use of it, for he spent the greater part of his time in travel. In appearance he was rather an ungainly man; his great head and the bulk of his big shoulders were something too heavy ...
— The Wonder • J. D. Beresford
... a rock, beneath the moss, a hole Leads to his home, the den wherein he sleeps; Lulled by near noises of the cautious mole Tunnelling its mine—like some ungainly Troll— Or by the tireless cricket there that keeps Picking its drowsy and monotonous lute; Or slower sounds of grass that creeps and creeps, And trees unrolling mighty root ...
— Weeds by the Wall - Verses • Madison J. Cawein
... but after Silence spake A Vessel of a more ungainly Make: "They sneer at me for leaning all awry; What! did the Hand then of ...
— Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam and Salaman and Absal • Omar Khayyam and Ralph Waldo Emerson
... subsisting as that of want of ease, and freedom, in the gesture and gait. On the contrary, it is as great an enemy to stiffness, as it is to looseness of carriage, and air. It equally reprobates an ungainly rusticity, and a mincing, tripping, over-soft manner. Its chief aim is to bring forth the natural graces, and not to smother them with ...
— A Treatise on the Art of Dancing • Giovanni-Andrea Gallini
... wild creature happened to love me, a grave, ungainly pedagogue, I cannot divine," he added; "but if gratitude, tenderness, and the most implicit confidence in her truth and affection can make her happy, she shall never regret ...
— Ernest Linwood - or, The Inner Life of the Author • Caroline Lee Hentz
... uniform of a parcel of drunken marines sent ashore on a holiday from a man-of-war. But, in spite of the ornaments, the dress was not exactly the thing. From the tightness of the cloth across the shoulders, his elbows projected from his sides, like an ungainly rider's; and his ponderous legs were jammed so hard into his slim, nether garments that the threads of every seam showed; and, at every step, ...
— Omoo: Adventures in the South Seas • Herman Melville
... War—the Puritans had been the butt of the satirical, the jest of the wits—ridiculed and laughed at on all sides. Then came a time, "when," in the words of Macaulay, "the laughers began to look grave in their turn. The rigid ungainly zealots ... rose up in arms, conquered, ruled, and, grimly smiling, trod down under their feet the whole ...
— A Book of the Play - Studies and Illustrations of Histrionic Story, Life, and Character • Dutton Cook
... gray, and now as she quitted the door post and came toward them she reeled in her walk, stumbling over stones and groping blindly with her huge bony hands. But still she kept on singing, with twisted lips that strove to simper, and once she tried to sway her ungainly body into an uncouth dancing-step that brought her floundering to ...
— The Ward of King Canute • Ottilie A. Liljencrantz
... ungainly figure and ungracious visage of Ebenezer presented themselves. The upper part of his form, notwithstanding the season required no such defence, was shrouded in a large great-coat, belted over his under habiliments, and crested with a huge cowl of the same stuff, which, when drawn over ...
— Waverley • Sir Walter Scott
... wearied by several hours in the saddle, for it was his pleasure to hunt or horseback in Waltham forest and in other royal chases, had retired early to his bed chamber. He had eaten heartily, for despite his ungainly person the First of the Stuarts was a famous trenchman. Freed from his quilted clothes and mellow with strong wine, he admitted to his presence two ...
— The Fifth of November - A Romance of the Stuarts • Charles S. Bentley
... adopting the sobriquet "the Honest Port." My most salient memories are of hospitality, wool, hides, pumpkins, and sand. So far as I can recall, neither Main Street nor the Market Square was paved. That useful but ungainly ship of the southern deserts, the ox-wagon, was much in evidence. When the wind blew, as it did nearly all the time we were there, the dust arose in one continuous ...
— Reminiscences of a South African Pioneer • W. C. Scully
... tell what it means. To analyze it is to discover that it is extremely melodious; that it reflects a gloomy mood; that at the root of its sorrow is the mysterious "lost Lenore"; and that, as in most of Poe's works, a fantastic element is introduced, an "ungainly fowl" addressed with grotesque dignity as "Sir, or Madame," to divert attention from the fact that the poet's grief is not simple ...
— Outlines of English and American Literature • William J. Long
... 600 feet long were constructed. I can, however, find nothing on record indicating that the object glasses of these enormously attenuated instruments ever exceeded in diameter two and one-half inches. Yet, with unwieldy and ungainly telescopes, nearly always defining badly, wonders were accomplished by the painstaking and indomitable observers ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 832, December 12, 1891 • Various
... which Kunin drove was old and grey; the columns of the porch had once been painted white, but the colour had now completely peeled off, and they looked like two ungainly shafts. The ikon over the door looked like a dark smudged blur. But its poverty touched and softened Kunin. Modestly dropping his eyes, he went into the church and stood by the door. The service had only just begun. An old sacristan, bent into a bow, was reading the "Hours" in ...
— The Bishop and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... a dale, 4 m. S.W. from Hallatrow Station. The church is late 15th cent. Perp. of rather poor workmanship. The chancel is out of centre with the nave, necessitating a large hagioscope on N. An ungainly modern N. aisle needlessly emphasises this lop-sidedness. The chancel contains a good piscina. In the neighbourhood is a large reservoir in connection with the ...
— Somerset • G.W. Wade and J.H. Wade
... went on until the grey dawn of morning appeared. Then an extremely large cock, in the south-east corner of the hut, feeling that it had enjoyed a sufficiently good night's rest, flapped its ungainly wings, stretched out its neck, and gave vent to ...
— The Fugitives - The Tyrant Queen of Madagascar • R.M. Ballantyne
... other, Akuzit. The first-born of the sons of the king was an idiot, precipitate and heedless in all his actions. Adikam, the second son, was a cunning and clever man, and versed in all the wisdom of Egypt, but ungainly in appearance, fleshy and short of stature; his height was a cubit and a space, and his beard flowed down ...
— The Legends of the Jews Volume 1 • Louis Ginzberg
... breaths at every step, Inspector Weymouth ascended, ungainly, that frail and moving stair. Arrived beside me, he wiped the perspiration from his ...
— The Hand Of Fu-Manchu - Being a New Phase in the Activities of Fu-Manchu, the Devil Doctor • Sax Rohmer
... made a peculiar feature of this weird, uncanny life. Long of leg, wattled and web-footed, with ungainly bodies, sparsely feathered, and bare necks, they were, Stern thought, absolutely the most hideous and unreal-appearing creatures he had ever seen. In size they somewhat resembled an albatross. The folk called ...
— Darkness and Dawn • George Allan England
... the settlement. The ungainly tavern, every window sealed with solid shutters, sprawled at the cross-roads, a strange, indistinct silhouette; the night-mist hung low over the fields of half-charred stumps, and above the distant bed of the brook a band of ...
— The Reckoning • Robert W. Chambers
... approach. Landing in search of milk and water, I was taken by one of them in a lumbersome skiff a short distance up the creek, and presented to his family. They are genuine "crackers," of the coarsest type—tall, lean, sallow, fishy-eyed, with tow-colored hair, an ungainly gait, barefooted, and in nondescript clothing all patches and tatters. The tousle-headed woman, surrounded by her copies in miniature, keeps the milk neatly, in an outer dairy, perhaps because of market requirements; but in the crazy old log-house, pigs and chickens are ...
— Afloat on the Ohio - An Historical Pilgrimage of a Thousand Miles in a Skiff, from Redstone to Cairo • Reuben Gold Thwaites
... was of green velvet, quilted so full as to be dagger- proof—which gave him the appearance of clumsy and ungainly protuberance; while its being buttoned awry, communicated to his figure an air of distortion. Over his green doublet he wore a sad- coloured nightgown, out of the pocket of which peeped his hunting- horn. His high-crowned grey hat lay on the floor, covered with dust, but encircled by a carcanet of ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott
... trying to ruin his bicycle, he was diverted from Bessie and, shouting furiously, ran toward her with the idea of saving his wheel. So it was no trick at all for the two girls, light on their feet and graceful in their movements, to avoid the shambling, ungainly, overgrown boy, who, smarting from the pain of the scratches Dolly had ...
— The Camp Fire Girls on the Farm - Or, Bessie King's New Chum • Jane L. Stewart
... admired her surroundings here too, as she had often done before. The old lady, ungainly as her figure and uncomely as her face were, had yet a dignity in both; the dignity of a strong and true character, which with abundant self-respect, had not, and never had, any anxious concern about the opinion of any human being. Whoever feels himself responsible to the one Great Ruler ...
— Nobody • Susan Warner
... Evangelists, and Apostles in great array, all somewhat more than life-size. Only one adverse impression is cast: that of petrifaction. The figures, almost without exception, appear as integral parts of the architectural fabric, rather than as added ornament. They are most ungainly, tall, stiff, and column-like, much more so than similar works at Reims, or at Amiens, where the sculpture has something of the vigour ...
— The Cathedrals of Northern France • Francis Miltoun
... Ungainly, awkward, repulsive-looking as these creatures are, with their great projecting harelips and their hairy humps, they have the compensation of being most priceless treasures to all those who "dwell in tents" in the vast sandy plains of Egypt, ...
— Harper's Young People, August 3, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... and uproar of a thousand Yosemite waterfalls. The bones of many a noble ship lie there, and many a sailor. It would seem unlikely that any living thing should seek rest in such a place, or find it. Nevertheless, frail and delicate flowers bloom there, flowers of both the land and the sea; heavy, ungainly seals disport in the swelling waves, and find grateful retreats back in the inmost bores of its storm-lashed caverns; while in many a chink and hollow of the highest crags, not visible from beneath, a great variety of waterfowl make homes and ...
— Steep Trails • John Muir
... did not escape my notice—nor Master Wildrake, or the gay monarch, Charles, still under the disguise of Louis Kerneguy; and whose shuffling, awkward gait, and bushy red head, caused no small mirth in the assembly, as wondering to see one of so ungainly an appearance in such close attendance upon the ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII No. 6 June 1848 • Various
... through a business district, with many smashed windows. He passed through canyons formed by office buildings. He crossed a manufacturing area, in which there were many ungainly factories but no sign of any work going on. In any epidemic many men stay home from work to avoid contagion. On Tallien Three nobody would be willing to risk employment, for fear of losing much more ...
— The Hate Disease • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... mere hut, painted red, entirely dwarfed by an ungainly chimney of rough stone. The little hut was built against a huge boulder, which towered above the chimney itself, and looked as though it had stood there since the foundation of the earth. There was ...
— Peak and Prairie - From a Colorado Sketch-book • Anna Fuller
... more account than criticism. The memory of these things is so much to us in after life, and if the living forms of beautiful poems have been torn to pieces to show us the structure within, and the matter has been shaken out into ungainly paraphrase and pursued with relentless analysis until it has given up the last secret of its meaning, the remembrance of this destructive process will remain and the spirit will never be the same again. The best hope for beautiful memories is in perfect reading aloud, ...
— The Education of Catholic Girls • Janet Erskine Stuart
... having sacrificed twelve precious minutes of their leave. Of course, they would never have dreamed of travelling 'inside'—and yet . . . They ascended as gingerly as a pretty girl aware of ungainly ankles surmounts a stile. Arrived safely on the roof, they sat down and puffed each a long breath suggestive of grave peril overcome. They covered their knees as far as they could and as surreptitiously ...
— Wee Macgreegor Enlists • J. J. Bell
... on earth looks more absurd than a ridden camel galloping away in the moonlight, with his neck stretched out in front of him and his four ungainly legs in the air all together, it is three more camels doing the same thing. They looked like a giant's washing blown off the line flapping before a high wind, and made hardly more noise. The whack-whack-whack of sticks on the beasts' rumps was as distinct as pistol-shots, but you hardly ...
— The Lion of Petra • Talbot Mundy
... humorist in "Humphrey Clinker"; of a fretful temper, yet generous and kind, who has a sister, MISS TABITHA, an ungainly maiden at forty-five, and of anything but a ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... Though love's guerdon she defer, If her lover look on her, 40 The very breath of life enjoy; And two lovers, love's curse under Kept asunder, Will I leave to grieve apart, And achieve by this my art 45 Things at which you'll gaze in wonder. For a lady most ungainly For a halfpenny at night Will I cause without a light To look nor ill nor well too plainly. 50 To another loveliest, As star in heaven Shall this destiny be given That of noblest men and best None against her love protest. 55 And the better to display The perfection of my spell ...
— Four Plays of Gil Vicente • Gil Vicente
... circumvent the laws of nature by forcing two objects into the space that one will fill—which is the cardinal principle of the college girl's June packing—and Betty strolled slowly along under the elm-trees, in no haste to finish her errand. On Main Street, Emily Davis, carrying an ungainly bundle, ...
— Betty Wales Freshman • Edith K. Dunton
... Madame Frehlter's poodle. Madelon could afford to be civil to the poodle before company. The contrast between the two girls was sufficiently striking. Cydalise was fair and bright-looking—Mademoiselle Frehlter was square and ungainly of figure, swarthy ...
— Charlotte's Inheritance • M. E. Braddon
... explore all the sources of danger. Special ills should have special assailants, at whatever risk of exaggeration. As water-cures and vegetarian boarding-houses are the necessary defence of humanity against dirt and over-eating, so is the most ungainly Bloomer that ever drifted on bare poles across the continent a providential protest against the fashion-plates. It is probable, that, on the whole, there is a gradual amelioration in female costume. These hooded water-proof ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 56, June, 1862 • Various
... her slender body a little toward me and the red seemed to leap back into her lips as if propelled by magic. Resolutely I put my awkward, ungainly arms behind my back, and straightened my figure. I was curiously impressed by the discovery that I was very, very tall and she very much smaller than my memory recorded. Of course, I had no means of knowing that she was in bedroom slippers and ...
— A Fool and His Money • George Barr McCutcheon
... Yankee. All Yankees do not carry about with them an unmistakable certificate of their origin, but Ebenezer Onthank was a typical New Englander. His face was long and thin, his expression shrewd and good-natured, his limbs were long and ungainly. In later life, with the addition of forty or fifty pounds of flesh, he would be much improved ...
— The Young Miner - or Tom Nelson in California • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... stung, and was about to turn furiously upon the boy, under the impression that he was the nigger in question; but at the same moment he caught sight of a full-blooded, woolly-headed West Coast African leading a very large camel by a rope, the great ungainly beast mincing and blinking as it gently put down, one after the other, its soft, spongy feet, which seemed to spread out on the gravelled road, while their high-shouldered owner kept on turning its bird-like head from side to side, muttering and whining ...
— Glyn Severn's Schooldays • George Manville Fenn
... An ungainly, confused composition, as you see, but it set forth very clearly the state of Alison's unhappy mind. She was revolted, of course, by Geoffrey's scheme of spying and trapping, loathed him for propounding it to ...
— The Highwayman • H.C. Bailey
... hairless and wrinkled like a new-born child; it had the funniest feet, or hands, or flippers, with which it tried to walk, but only tumbled and flopped about. In the water it was graceful enough, but on dry land so ungainly and ridiculous that the vast concourse of Bears was thrown into ...
— Wigwam Evenings - Sioux Folk Tales Retold • Charles Alexander Eastman and Elaine Goodale Eastman
... practising in the Quadrilateral, it appears; passage along the Route Ronde formally interdicted for the moment. There is nothing for it but to draw up at the glaring cross-roads, and get down to make fun with the notorious Cocardon, the most ungainly and ill-bred dog of all the ungainly and ill-bred dogs of Barbizon, or clamber about the sandy banks. And meanwhile the Doctor, with sun umbrella, wide Panama, and patriarchal beard, is busy wheedling and (for aught the rest of us know) bribing the too ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XXII (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... nightingale, but it was a good-humoured roar, not very offensive to any man and apparently acceptable enough to some ladies. He was a big, burly man, near to fifty, as I suppose, somewhat awkward in his gait, and somewhat loud in his laugh. But though nigh to fifty, and thus ungainly, he liked to be smiled on by pretty women, and liked, as some said, to be flattered by them also. If so he should have been happy, for the ladies at Rome at that time made much of ...
— Stories By English Authors: Italy • Various
... Then, as one, both rushed the fighting beast, but for the first time from the same side, leaving it a clear path to retreat. It made a rush before which they fled easily, and then it whirled with a speed and grace, which did not fit its ungainly, ill-proportioned body, and jumped toward the cleft, the coyotes making no effort ...
— The Defiant Agents • Andre Alice Norton
... gracefulness, had established equilibrium on the ridge of a pigeon-cote, and folded its wings, and was peering about with strange motions of its extremely movable head. Presently it flew down to the leads, waddled to and fro with the ungainly gestures of a fat woman of sixty, and disappeared into the cote. At the same moment the boy who had been dismissed from the sub-editor's room ran forward and entered the ...
— The Matador of the Five Towns and Other Stories • Arnold Bennett
... could engender, and which ends in completely unsexing her. She becomes weatherbeaten, coarse and repulsive. Her hands are like knots of wood; she is covered with dirt; her bones have grown large; her step is ungainly; she speaks in husky tones; she swears, drinks and fights. Meanwhile the corn ripens. After gigantic efforts she succeeds in harvesting it. At best it would have repaid the seed but three times, but gathered and threshed with insufficient skill or barbarous tools, it scarcely ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Volume 15, No. 89, May, 1875 • Various
... ungainly make was Sloppy. Too much of him longwise, too little of him broadwise, and too many sharp angles of him angle-wise. One of those shambling male human creatures, born to be indiscreetly candid in the revelation of buttons; every button he had about him glaring at the public to a ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... time the two older people talked of sending him to the town school, but the woman objected. She had begun to feel so close to Hugh that he seemed a part of her own flesh and blood and the thought of him, so huge and ungainly, sitting in a school room with the children of the town, annoyed and irritated her. In imagination she saw him being laughed at by other boys and could not bear the thought. She did not like the people of the town and did not want Hugh to ...
— Poor White • Sherwood Anderson
... over night at Biha, a small but clean Dayak kampong. The Murungs, as seen here for the first time, are rather shy, dark-complexioned, somewhat short and strongly set people. They are not ugly, though their mouths always seem ungainly. The next day we arrived at a Malay kampong, Muara Topu, which is less attractive on account of its lack of cleanliness and its ...
— Through Central Borneo: - An Account of Two Years' Travel in the Land of Head-Hunters - Between the Years 1913 and 1917 • Carl Lumholtz
... I know not what, a large eccentric hat And diamonds, the gift of some dull boy— Then when you see her do not wrong Yvette, Because Yvette is not a clever toy, A tawdry doll in fairy limelight set ... And should her song sound cynical and base At first, herself ungainly, or her smile Monotonous—wait, listen, watch her face: The sufferings of those the world calls vile She sings, and as you watch Yvette Guilbert, You too will shiver, seeing ...
— Plays, Acting and Music - A Book Of Theory • Arthur Symons
... of a seventh-grade body-writher taking the least significant part in an ill-equipped Swatow one-cash Hall of Varied Melodies." Assuredly, if your striking and well-chosen metaphors were not more unbalanced than the ungainly attitude of a one-legged hunchback crossing a raging torrent by means of a slippery plank on a stormy night, they would cause the very acutest bitterness to the throat of a dutiful and always high-stepping son. There is an apt saying, however, "A quarrel ...
— The Mirror of Kong Ho • Ernest Bramah
... done? One could forgive their being dirty and stupid and noisy and rude; one could forgive their ugliness, the ineffable banality of their faces, their goggle-eyes, their protruding teeth, their ungainly motions; but the trait one can't forgive is their venality. They're so mercenary. They're always thinking how much they can get out of you—everlastingly touching their hats and expecting you to put your hand in your pocket. Oh, no, believe me, there's no health in the People. Ground ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume X (of X) • Various
... centuries after Christ, our idea about the Saviour's personal appearance is all guess work. Still, tradition tells us that He was the most infinitely beautiful being that ever walked our small earth. If His features had been rugged, and His gait had been ungainly, that would not have hindered Him from being attractive. Many men you have known and loved have had few charms of physiognomy. Wilberforce was not attractive in face. Socrates was repulsive. Suwarrow, ...
— New Tabernacle Sermons • Thomas De Witt Talmage
... mother on the subject of the girls' love affairs, and fall into deep talks with Richie—perhaps the happiest talks in her life, for Richie, whose mind and body had undergone for long years the exquisite discipline of pain, was delightfully unexpected in his views, and his whole lean, ungainly frame vibrated with the eager ...
— The Story Of Julia Page - Works of Kathleen Norris, Volume V. • Kathleen Norris
... by Faye and Harkness in 1881.[788] The methods employed in its investigation fall (as we have seen) into three separate classes—the trigonometrical, the gravitational, and the "phototachymetrical"—an ungainly adjective used to describe the method by the velocity of light. Each has its special difficulties and sources of error; each has counter-balancing advantages. The only trustworthy result from celestial surveys, was at ...
— A Popular History of Astronomy During the Nineteenth Century - Fourth Edition • Agnes M. (Agnes Mary) Clerke
... the vast parlor with the carved and gilded panels above the doors. Felicia's first appearance in that almost monastic institution caused considerable commotion; her costume, selected by the Austrian ballet-dancer, her curly hair falling to the waist, her ungainly, boyish bearing, gave rise to some ill-natured remarks; but she was a Parisian and readily adapted herself to all situations, to all localities. In a few days she wore more gracefully than any of the others the little black apron, to which the most coquettish ...
— The Nabob, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... the hook it was exaggerated and intensified until he was scarce human in his appearance. The neck was drawn out like a plucked chicken's, making the rest of him seem the more obese and unnatural by the contrast. He was clad only in his long night-dress, and his swollen ankles and ungainly feet protruded starkly from beneath it. Beside him stood a smart-looking police-inspector, who was taking ...
— Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
... and all the girls assembled in the chapel. Miss Drummond was greeted by many appreciative nods, and more than one pair of longing eyes gazed in the direction of her pockets, which stuck out in the most ungainly fashion. ...
— A World of Girls - The Story of a School • L. T. Meade
... and read of Megaleep as an awkward, ungainly animal, but almost my first glimpse of him scattered all that to the winds and set my nerves a-tingling in a way that they still remember. It was on a great chain of barrens in the New Brunswick wilderness. I was following the trail ...
— Wilderness Ways • William J Long
... of the Borinage coal field exceeds twenty million tons a year. Its ungainly features of shafts, chimneys, and mounds of debris are relieved in places by woodlands, an appearance of a hilly country is presented where the pit mounds have been planted with fir trees. Apart from its mining aspect, Mons is a city of historic importance. It contains a Gothic ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume III (of 12) - The War Begins, Invasion of Belgium, Battle of the Marne • Francis J. Reynolds, Allen L. Churchill, and Francis Trevelyan
... in the vicinity of Chudak.... Alice wrote to Princess G—— today at T——.... I am NOT much impressed nor FAVORABLY by the attitude of these natives in the hills.... They seem to be a mongrel mixture of Tartar and Mongolian who are always ready, like the huge ungainly bears we have encountered in our pilgrimage, to grapple and devour one for the mere pleasure of seeing blood!... Maria seems quite interested in these notes,—today she insisted on giving me her impressions of how a ...
— Rescuing the Czar - Two authentic Diaries arranged and translated • James P. Smythe
... every now and then stopping to admire the new suit which graced his person, in the same colours as formerly, but bedizened fine enough to have served Touchstone himself. He danced up with his usual ungainly frolics, first to the Baron and then to Rose, passing his hands over his clothes, crying, 'Bra', bra' Davie,' and scarce able to sing a bar to an end of his thousand-and-one songs for the breathless extravagance of his joy. The dogs also acknowledged their ...
— Waverley, Or 'Tis Sixty Years Hence, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... Bridge' and 'King William was King James's son,' too. I always loved to play, but was hardly ever chosen because I was so fat and ungainly. I remember once, though, when I went to a children's party in a pale blue silk dress that made me look like a young mountain. I thought myself superlatively beautiful, however, and the rest of the little girls were so impressed that I was a great social triumph, ...
— Grace Harlowe's Second Year at Overton College • Jessie Graham Flower
... He was the leanest, scraggiest long thing I have ever seen. Six foot four of stringy sinew and bone, with inordinately long legs, around which his khaki slacks flapped, as though they hid stilts instead of human limbs. His arms swung long and ungainly, the sleeves of his tunic far above the bony wrist, as though his tailor in cutting the garment had repudiated as fantastic the evidence of his measurements. Yet, when one might have expected to find hands of a talon-like knottiness, to correspond with the sparse rugosity ...
— The Mountebank • William J. Locke
... unusually long walk, and on their return to the city by a different route they came upon the fair. They stopped on a rising ground at some little distance to view the sports; then observing a group with a tall ungainly figure in the centre, a little to the right, they drew nearer to observe the proceedings. The great beast in the centre had his back to them, so they could not observe his features; but they saw that his clothes ...
— The Adventures of a Bear - And a Great Bear too • Alfred Elwes
... him a coat of cheerful effrontery which passed for hardihood; a coat patched with slang and gaping with inconsistencies, which he put on or off at will. Out on the starlit mesas he had metaphorically shed his coat. He was at home. Here there were no men to joke about his awkwardness and his ungainly height. A wanderer by nature, he looked upon space as his kingdom. Great distances were but the highways of his heritage, each promising new vistas, new adventuring. His wayside fires were his altars, their smoke the incense to his gods. A true adventurer, ...
— Sundown Slim • Henry Hubert Knibbs
... the Baron, a prey to gloomy considerations. What was the use? He had no chance to win her. That was for story-books and plays. She belonged to another world—far above his. And even beyond that, she was not likely to be attracted by such a rude, ungainly, sunburned lout as he, with such chaps about as Vos Engo, or that what's-his-name fellow, or a dozen others whom he had seen. Confound it all, she was meant for a prince, or an ...
— Truxton King - A Story of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... a prince her junior by about a score of years. Nor did the negotiations appear altogether hopeless. The suitor was, indeed, we have seen, as insignificant in body as he was contemptible in intellectual ability. Moreover, the deep traces left on his face by the small-pox rendered him sufficiently ungainly. The blemish was said to be increasing, instead of diminishing, with his years.[1331] But the French courtiers might perhaps have overcome this impediment had Elizabeth been able to see it to be ...
— History of the Rise of the Huguenots - Volume 2 • Henry Baird
... Clementina, and had once been, perhaps, as attractive as she is now. They had never waltzed, it is true, as Miss Golightly waltzes. It may be doubted, indeed, whether any lady ever did. In the pursuit of that amusement Ugolina was apt to be stiff and ungainly, and to turn herself, or allow herself to be turned, as though she were made of wood; she was somewhat flat in her figure, looking as though she had been uncomfortably pressed into an unbecoming thinness of substance, and a corresponding breadth of surface, ...
— The Three Clerks • Anthony Trollope
... along the garden, with extended hand, and blinking amiably. The Dictator, turning at his approach, surveyed him with some surprise. He was a large, loosely made man, with a large white face, and his somewhat ungainly body was clothed in loose light material that was almost white in hue. His large and slightly surprised eyes were of a kindly blue; his hair was a vague yellow; his large mouth was weak; his pointed chin was undecided. He dimly suggested some association to the Dictator; after a few seconds ...
— The Dictator • Justin McCarthy
... congratulations and good-natured jests. At the door she reached back, caught Mostyn's hand, and drew him out into the open. A few paces away stood a couple under a tree. And toward them Dolly hastened, now holding to the arm of her companion. Then he recognized Ann and saw that she was with a tall, ungainly young man of eighteen or twenty. The two stood quite ...
— The Desired Woman • Will N. Harben
... physique and sensual nature inclined him to self-indulgence, but he early learned to restrain both appetites and passions. His physiognomy was ugly and his person repulsive; he was awkward, obese, and ungainly; his nose was flat, his lips were thick, and his neck large; he rolled his eyes, went barefooted, and wore a dirty old cloak. He spent his time chiefly in the market-place, talking with everybody, old or young, rich or poor,—soldiers, ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume I • John Lord
... sort of knife or war club, but sturdy fellows, ready and willing enough to give a good account of themselves. Watkins was forward, swallowed up in the smother of mist, but Schmitt held a place next me, a huge, ungainly figure in the dull light. So still it was I began to doubt having heard the voice at all—could it have been imagination? But no; that was impossible, for the sound had reached all of us alike. Somewhere out yonder, that boat was creeping along silently, seeking ...
— Wolves of the Sea • Randall Parrish
... d'Erraha there stands a house—a rambling, ungainly Farm, as such are called in Majorca. It runs off at strange angles, presenting a broken face to all points of the compass. From a distance it rather resembles a village, for the belfry of the little chapel ...
— The Grey Lady • Henry Seton Merriman
... like had not been thought of before, and it compelled that interest which attractive novelties always command. It was to be a picnic on a gigantic scale. The participants in it, instead of freighting an ungainly steam ferry—boat with youth and beauty and pies and doughnuts, and paddling up some obscure creek to disembark upon a grassy lawn and wear themselves out with a long summer day's laborious frolicking under the impression that it was fun, were to sail away in a great steamship ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... ends. In stature he overtopped the people and was stout as he was tall. A popular saying of Mohammed's is, "All (very) long men are fools save Omar, and all (very) short men are knaves save Ali." The Persians, who abhor Omar, compare every lengthy, ungainly, longsome thing with him; they will say, "This road never ends, like the entrails of Omar." We know little about Ali's appearance except that he was very short and stout, broad and full-bellied with a tawny complexion and exceedingly ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... a good fellow. But there now—he doesn't satisfy the mistress, she says his appearance is ungainly. And now they've gone and told tales about him for letting some peasants into the kitchen yesterday. It is a bad look-out: they may dismiss him. And he is ...
— Redemption and Two Other Plays • Leo Tolstoy et al
... being unarmed, nearly everybody had dived below at the first fire and taken cover among the cotton bales. While issuing a multitude of needless commands from the front of the hurricane-deck I looked below, and there, stretched out at full length on his stomach, lay a long, ungainly person, clad in faded butternut, bare-headed, his long, lank hair falling down each side of his neck, his coat-tails similarly parted, and his enormous feet spreading their soles to the blue sky. He had an old-fashioned horse-pistol, some ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce • Ambrose Bierce
... shut behind his broad, ungainly figure in its gray clothes, when Boris Sobashnikov at once commenced speaking with a ...
— Yama (The Pit) • Alexandra Kuprin
... gentleman, and had a certain conquered languor about him in the midst of his spirits and briskness, that did not seem indicative of natural strength. He had not a handsome face, but it was better than handsome: being extremely amiable and cheerful. His figure was a little ungainly, as in the days when my knuckles had taken such liberties with it, but it looked as if it would always be light and young. Whether Mr. Trabb's local work would have sat more gracefully on him than on me, may be a question; but I am conscious that ...
— Great Expectations • Charles Dickens
... over this ground before, and she had always taken Mrs. Carlyle's part. "Think of a handsome, brilliant little creature like Jane Welsh," she would say indignantly, "thrown away on a learned, heavy peasant, as rugged and ungainly as that 'Hill of the Hawk,' that Craigen-puttoch, where he buried her alive. Oh, no wonder she became a neurotic invalid, shut up from week's end to week's end with a dyspeptic, irritable scholar in an old dressing-gown." Indeed, it must be owned, in spite of all Malcolm's ...
— Herb of Grace • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... sonnets to which he owes his immortality but as the clouds of a dream, and who built his hopes of fame upon that "Africa" which the world has been willing to forget, found the reader he would have welcomed and the student he would have cherished in the ungainly youth who pored over him in a garret. The boy Johnson, bent over the great folio, forgot that he was poor, forgot that he was ill-clad, under the spell of the stately lines that their poet believed to be not less than Virgilian. ...
— A History of the Four Georges and of William IV, Volume III (of 4) • Justin McCarthy and Justin Huntly McCarthy
... distressing to a sensitive person, or more ridiculous to one gifted with an esprit moquer [a disposition to "make fun"], than to see a lady laboring under the consciousness of a fine gown; or a gentleman who is stiff, awkward, and ungainly in a brand-new coat. ...
— How To Behave: A Pocket Manual Of Republican Etiquette, And Guide To Correct Personal Habits • Samuel R Wells
... western point of the island. Timely showers have laid the dust, and all the trees and bushes wear clean faces. In the yards there are peach trees in bloom, beautiful crimson japonicas, the jonquil and snowdrop; while everywhere by the roadside we see the ungainly form and coarse flower of the prickly pear. Passing the rifle pits and picket station, we soon turn off from the Shell road, and pass through what was formerly a handsome forest of pines, but which now has been cleared by the soldier's axe, and rejoices ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 2, August, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... with great good humor. Once, indeed, he was touched to the quick by a piece of schoolboy pertness. After playing on the flute, he spoke with enthusiasm of music, as delightful in itself, and as a valuable accomplishment for a gentleman, whereupon a youngster, with a glance at his ungainly person, wished to know if he considered himself a gentleman. Poor Goldsmith, feelingly alive to the awkwardness of his appearance and the humility of his situation, winced at this unthinking sneer, which ...
— Oliver Goldsmith • Washington Irving
... stronger and healthier and in a better condition to resist illness and fatigue. She should have at least ten hours' sleep out of twenty-four, and this must be healthy sleep in a well-ventilated bedroom, on a hard mattress, and with no high pillows to make her stoop-shouldered and of ungainly figure. A nap during the day is a good thing if one can afford the time. Absolute freedom from care and anxiety are necessary, but—alas—we cannot always regulate the antics of fate or circumstances that deny us these sweet privileges. The diet must be of the most nourishing, ...
— The Woman Beautiful - or, The Art of Beauty Culture • Helen Follett Stevans
... as is to be expected in the luxurious East. There are no fewer than thirty mosques in the town, whose minarets give it a beautiful and picturesque appearance, albeit that the buildings themselves are imperfect, and ungainly in architectural detail. The Mussulmans have a school in the town, where Turkish and Slavish are taught. Girls are, however, debarred this advantage, and indeed no institution of any kind exists throughout the province for their training or ...
— Herzegovina - Or, Omer Pacha and the Christian Rebels • George Arbuthnot
... sort of thing. Certainly skirts which are not made either for utility or comfort, and which fashion changes, add nothing to the wearer's beauty; especially does this remark apply to the "hobble skirt", with its impediment to free movement of the legs. The ungainly "hobble skirt" compels the wearer to walk carefully and with short steps, and when she dances she has to lift up her dress. Now the latest fashion seems to be the "slashed skirt" which, however, has the advantage of keeping the lower hem ...
— America Through the Spectacles of an Oriental Diplomat • Wu Tingfang
... Club. She felt very shy about this, but that was because she did not know her own power. To her astonishment, Priscilla found that she could act. If the part suited her she could throw herself into it so that she ceased to be awkward, ungainly Priscilla Peel. Out of herself she was no longer awkward, no longer ungainly. She could only personate certain characters; light and airy parts she could not attempt, but where much depended on passion and emotion Priscilla could do splendidly. Every day her friends found fresh points of interest ...
— A Sweet Girl Graduate • Mrs. L.T. Meade
... rears its head with a loose rein, as if defying method, law, order and construction! Why, merely to walk through some of the tropical houses at Kew gives one a sort of lawless feeling! If I stay long among the queer gnarled plants—all spiky and speckled and hairy; squatting, plump and ungainly on the ground, or spreading huge knotted arms far overhead, as if reaching out for things they never visibly attain—I always emerge into the ordinary English atmosphere outside, feeling altogether unconventional. As I walk across the well-kept lawns, I find ...
— The Upas Tree - A Christmas Story for all the Year • Florence L. Barclay
... heart warmed with the sweet promise of Christ's acceptance of the coming sinner, and that will make thee make more haste unto him. Discouraging thoughts they are like unto cold weather, they benumb the senses, and make us go ungainly about our business; but the sweet and warm gleads8 of promise are like the comfortable beams of the sun, which liven and refresh. 9 You see how little the bee and fly do play in the air in winter; why, the cold hinders them from doing it; ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... that of a cropped Shetland pony, runs from the base of the horns over the withers, and some way down the back. This adds to the stiff and ungainly ...
— The Hunters' Feast - Conversations Around the Camp Fire • Mayne Reid
... of the eleventh century there might have been seen, wandering through every part of France and Germany, a man of singular appearance. Small of stature, almost dwarfish in size, emaciated by rigid austerities, angular and ungainly in form, clad in a woollen tunic over which he wore a serge cloak that came down to his heels, his head and feet bare, and mounted on an ass that seemed to have practised the same austerities as its ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 6 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality. French. • Charles Morris
... a juggle of words, or you really are neglecting fact." Many—very many—similar retorts are possible; and the most hopeless variance of all must come when we arrive at Mr Arnold's championship of that ungainly and sterile mule the English hexameter, and when we review the specimens of the animal that he turns out from his ...
— Matthew Arnold • George Saintsbury
... With much effort, forced, ungainly, To entice the rugged door To yield up its wondrous lore, With a sudden burst of thunder All its frame is dashed asunder; The gulfy silence, lightning-fleet, Shooteth hellward at thy feet. Take thou heed lest evil terror Snare thee in a downward error, Drag thee through the narrow gate, Give thee ...
— A Hidden Life and Other Poems • George MacDonald
... then in his eighth year, has been described as a tall, ungainly, fast-growing, long-legged lad, clad in the garb of the frontier. This consisted of a shirt of linsey-woolsey, a coarse homespun material made of linen and wool, a pair of home-made moccasins, deerskin leggings or breeches, and a hunting shirt ...
— Eclectic School Readings: Stories from Life • Orison Swett Marden
... modern. That is, I really have a notion of why I have collected all the nonsensical things there are. I have not the patience nor perhaps the constructive intelligence to state the connecting link between all these chaotic papers. But it could be stated. This row of shapeless and ungainly monsters which I now set before the reader does not consist of separate idols cut out capriciously in lonely valleys or various islands. These monsters are meant for the gargoyles of a definite cathedral. I have to carve the gargoyles, because I can carve nothing ...
— Alarms and Discursions • G. K. Chesterton
... the sofa, a box of chocolates by her side, her work-basket frothing over, like a great dish of oeufs a la neige, with lawn or mull or what-not, and (I verily believe to complete her content) my ungainly figure and hatchet-face within her purview. She would eat and sew industriously. Sometimes she would press too hard on a sweetmeat and with a little cry would hold up a ...
— The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne • William J. Locke
... Perhaps the object of it may have considered him a mere school-boy, and treated him as such; or his own shyness may have been in his way, and his "rules for behavior and conversation" may as yet have sat awkwardly on him, and rendered him formal and ungainly when he most sought to please. Even in later years he was apt to be silent and embarrassed in female society. "He was a very bashful young man," said an old lady, whom he used to visit when they were both in their ...
— The Life of George Washington, Volume I • Washington Irving
... new soul, Like my own Psyche—fresh upon her lips Alit the visionary butterfly, 290 Waiting my word to enter and make bright, Or flutter off and leave all blank as first. This body had no soul before, but slept Or stirred, was beauteous or ungainly, free From taint or foul with stain, as outward things 295 Fastened their image on its passiveness; Now, it will wake, feel, live—or die again! Shall to produce form out of unshaped stuff Be Art—and further, to evoke a soul From form ...
— Selections from the Poems and Plays of Robert Browning • Robert Browning
... said, and in silence led the way to a pleached alley out of sight of the windows. There they stood still. It was a strange meeting of two who had not seen each other for fourteen years, when the one was a tall, ungainly youth, the other well-nigh a child. And now Giles was a fine, soldierly man in the prime of life, with a short, curled beard, and powerful, alert bearing, and Aldonza, though the first flower of her youth had gone by, yet, having lived a sheltered and far from toilsome life, was a really beautiful ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte M. Yonge
... the mood of the observer changes from happiness to unhappiness, and the comic becomes the pathetic. A fall on the ice which seemed to offer only a ludicrous contrast between the dignity and grace of the man erect and the ungainly attitude of the falling figure ceases utterly to be funny when it is seen to entail some physical injury; and wit which burns and sears is not amusing to its victim."[12] The ability to appreciate the humorous in life is a great gift and should be ...
— How to Teach • George Drayton Strayer and Naomi Norsworthy
... moment to the prospect of intellectual life and then hurled down by the caprice of circumstance to the unrelenting round of manual toil at the soap and candle factory. Dickens would have given a touch of the grotesque to Grail's gentle but ungainly character; but at the end he would infallibly have rewarded him as Tom Pinch and Dominie Sampson were rewarded. Not so George Gissing. His sympathy is fully as real as that of Dickens. But his fidelity to fact is greater. ...
— The House of Cobwebs and Other Stories • George Gissing
... mortal perished beauty and be old? Or is there power left upon my mouth Like colour, and lilting of ruin in my eyes? Am I still rare enough to be your mate? Then why must I shame at feasts and bear myself In shy ungainly ways, made flushed and conscious By squat numb gestures of my shapeless head— Ay, and its wagging shadow—clouted up, Twice tangled with a bundle of hot hair, Like a thick cot-quean's in the settling time? There are few women in the ...
— The Atlantic Book of Modern Plays • Various
... the king, in spite of the lateness of the hour, was ready to receive us, taking our two black friends, Aboh to act as interpreter, we carried with us the leopard skin, some venison, and three strings of beads of various colours. His majesty was a tall, ungainly looking man, with as hideous a countenance as can well be imagined. His appearance was not improved by the glare of the torchlight and the terror under which he was suffering. Having presented the leopard skin and venison, Charley, who acted ...
— The Two Supercargoes - Adventures in Savage Africa • W.H.G. Kingston
... of these canine giants, however, was not at first very satisfactory, as although plenty of bone was obtained, many were most ungainly in appearance and ill-shaped animals that had very little about them to attract attention. Captain Graham, however, stuck to his work, and very soon the specimens that he brought forward began to show a fixity of type both in head and in general outline. Brian was one of his best dogs, ...
— Dogs and All About Them • Robert Leighton
... thing in a moment without either staring or stealing glances, and nobody suspected him of making a scrutiny. In the young surgeon he saw an object in strong contrast with himself. He was lean and ungainly, shy and savage, dressed in a long greasy silk morning gown, blotched with wine and punch over the breast. He wore his own black hair gathered into a knot behind, and in a neglected dusty state, as if it had not been disturbed since he rolled out ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... and hollowed out of a single log, and propelled by two natives, who apparently regarded clothes as an entirely unnecessary superfluity, for they were absolutely naked. They were fine, powerful specimens of negro manhood, however, and smart fellows withal, for they propelled their ungainly little craft along at a truly wonderful pace with scarcely any apparent effort, sheering her alongside the brig in quite respectable style without obliging us to start tack or sheet in order to pick them up, and shinning up the side with the ...
— The Pirate Slaver - A Story of the West African Coast • Harry Collingwood
... that all men—even critics—have their redeeming points and failings, then was there no Charles and no Joseph Surface at this unique matinee. For the ungainly gentleman who essayed the part of Charles made, or rather meant to make, him spotless; and Mr. Henley's Joseph was twin-brother to Mr. Irving's Mephistopheles. Perhaps the idea of Mr. Labouchere and his friend, Mr. Henley, was ...
— My Lady Nicotine - A Study in Smoke • J. M. Barrie
... that he is a born fool,—and he is apt to complain bitterly of the accents of strangers, whereas, to all but his own countrymen, it is his accent which appears to be the real grievance. He is plain of face, fat, ugly, and ungainly of body, huge as to the hands and feet, not scrupulously clean in his person and habits, and, like most very fleshy people, he is blessed with an exceedingly even temper, and is excessively happy, good-natured, and stolid. He can break open a door by butting it ...
— In Court and Kampong - Being Tales and Sketches of Native Life in the Malay Peninsula • Hugh Clifford
... engage to take up the two strongest men on board, one after the other, with his teeth, and carry them along the deck. Nobody gave him the opportunity, but I dare say he could have done it; for he was a gallant, noble figure of a man, even in the Cappuccino dress, which is the ugliest and most ungainly ...
— Pictures from Italy • Charles Dickens
... For this pitiful, ungainly little figure only two in all the world had any feeling other than contempt. One of these, of course, was old Kate, the sorrel mare who mothered him. She gazed at him with sad old eyes blinded by ...
— Horses Nine - Stories of Harness and Saddle • Sewell Ford
... was a man named Reb (Rabbi) Sender, an insignificant, ungainly little figure of a man, with a sad, child-like little face flanked by a pair of thick, heavy, dark-brown side-locks that seemed to ...
— The Rise of David Levinsky • Abraham Cahan
... by the fairy godmothers of our childhood to stay the stature of those gawky youngsters who were shooting up into an ungainly development like ...
— Herbal Simples Approved for Modern Uses of Cure • William Thomas Fernie
... the river, rows of brilliant red flamingos were standing in the shallow water, fishing, and here and there a pelican with his ungainly beak. Our Chinese crew were having their meal of rice when we walked forward, and the national chopsticks were hard at work. We talked to several of them. They could all speak a little Spanish, and ...
— Anahuac • Edward Burnett Tylor
... watch the movements of the many brilliantly-coloured fish and other creatures that inhabit it. The extraordinary clearness of the water there is particularly favourable for the inspection of these fairy bowers. One day I determined to try for a Jew-fish, just to see how such a huge, ungainly monster would act. Anchoring, we threw the bait over, and in a short time I pulled in a rock cod of nearly 7 lbs. weight. My boatman coolly threw the still hooked fish overboard again, telling me it would be excellent ...
— Ranching, Sport and Travel • Thomas Carson
... melancholy, and soon imbibes their sombre spirit, assuming their slow solemn gait. The mother-camel never licks or shows any particular fondness for its young beyond opening her legs for the foal to suck. At best, the camel, as an animal, is a most ungainly and unlovely creature. What surprises me most are the bites of the male-camel. He bites his neighbour, without passion or any apparent provocation, and simply because he has nothing else to do en route, ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson
... seems to act as a sort of magnet on the small fry of the harbour, for they rush out to her from the land in all their sorts and sizes, in a desperate race for supremacy. Prominent among this fleet is a long, ungainly rowing-boat propelled by a tough Hibernian, and seated in the stern are his women folk, surrounded by baskets, who, in strong Milesian vernacular, urge the rower on in his endeavours to reach the ship first. Looked ...
— The Confessions of a Caricaturist, Vol 2 (of 2) • Harry Furniss
... managed, and very successful. As I looked at the class to whom a lesson was then being read, all the urchins from eight to eleven or twelve years old, I thought I had never seen a congregation of more unpromising and ungainly heads, and accordingly they are the worst and lowest specimens of humanity; starved, ill-used children of poor and vicious parents, generally arriving at the school weak and squalid, with a tendency to every vice, and without having received any ...
— The Greville Memoirs (Second Part) - A Journal of the Reign of Queen Victoria from 1837 to 1852 - (Volume 1 of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville
... offered a most hospitable welcome. It was the only one open or rather, if one would be exact, the only one still extant. To be sure there were no panes in the windows, and ungainly holes were visible in almost all the ceilings, but the curtains were spotlessly white and the bed linen smelled sweet from having been ...
— With Those Who Wait • Frances Wilson Huard
... writ a poor ungainly character, all awry, and not in a straight line." James certainly wrote a slovenly scrawl, strongly indicative of that personal negligence which he carried into all the little things of life; and Buchanan, who had made him an excellent scholar, ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... short time Doright's muscles had forced the ungainly looking craft to a point where it was necessary to use care in navigating the stretch of water if collision with shipping was to be avoided. His skill born of long practice was very evident. Arrived at the shipyard Jack tossed ...
— Boy Scouts in Southern Waters • G. Harvey Ralphson
... nothing so much as shoals of fish chased by sharks. Penguins were in thousands on the uprising cliffs, and from rookeries near and far came an incessant din. At intervals along the shore sea elephants disported their ungainly masses in the sunlight. Circling above us in anxious haste, sea-birds of many varieties gave warning of our near approach to their nests. It was the invasion by man of an exquisite scene of ...
— The Home of the Blizzard • Douglas Mawson
... haunts, its own cradle even, and its own life of adventure and of training. Here is proof of it. This little hut was the cradle of one of the great sons of men, a man of singular, delightful, vital genius who presently emerged upon the great stage of the nation's history, gaunt, shy, ungainly, but dominant and majestic, a natural ruler of men, himself inevitably the central figure of the great plot. No man can explain this, but every man can see how it demonstrates the vigor of democracy, where every door is open, ...
— President Wilson's Addresses • Woodrow Wilson
... fracture, attended by loss of substance, as should put it out of their power, for that night at least, to torture our fastidious ears. Being of a melancholy temperament, we are unfortunately, at times, subject to most ludicrous fancies; and as these ungainly instruments loom on our disgusted eye, we cannot, for the life of us, help imagining them moulds for a couple of enormous gooseberry puddings; and we verily pant at the idea of the sea of melted butter, or yellow cream, requisite to mollify their acidity—and then we laugh like a hyena at ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 364, February 1846 • Various
... by a park and overlooking undulating country stands the "Star." It is a former royal hunting-box, built several centuries before the battle and planned as a six-pointed star. It has no architectural beauty; it is in appearance a somewhat ungainly landmark and must have been pretty uncomfortable to live in, even for the less exacting royalties of the Middle Ages, but it stands on what, for the Bohemian, should be holy ground. The forces of the Holy Roman Empire, aided by Bavarians ...
— From a Terrace in Prague • Lieut.-Col. B. Granville Baker
... fascination he watched the ungainly, hill-like reptile shuffle ponderously forward and realized that, high on its back, was fixed a small fort, rather like those howdahs or boxes which are fastened to the backs of elephants. Chilled with the nearness of death, Nelson counted six mail-clad warriors ...
— Astounding Stories, February, 1931 • Various
... the two men, wrapped in blankets, lay on opposite sides of the fire, while the packers reclined in various ungainly attitudes about another. Now that they had a supply of provisions, haste was not a matter of importance, and there was no doubt that the rescue party needed a rest. Carroll was aching all over and ...
— Vane of the Timberlands • Harold Bindloss |
