"Clumsily" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... him more, but like a fool he had gone jabbering off through the bushes, cutting a ludicrous figure, too, I thought, for his body had not yet grown up to his feet and ears, and he carried them off a bit clumsily. Had he stayed I might have told him all, and there never was a bit of news quite so important as that the foolish puppy missed; never a story so romantic as that he might have heard; never in the valley's history an event of such interest. He had scorned it. Now he was with ...
— The Soldier of the Valley • Nelson Lloyd
... dropped into the water; but somehow or other I turned over very clumsily, and, like the Ranatra, I fell through into the colander, and was transferred to ...
— Brothers of Pity and Other Tales of Beasts and Men • Juliana Horatia Gatty Ewing
... Val got clumsily to his feet and then gave Charity a hand up, beating Rupert to it by about three seconds. "As we don't even know whether it is still in existence, there's no use in ...
— Ralestone Luck • Andre Norton
... ANIMALS [who up to this time have been going through all sorts of queer antics with each other, bring MEPHISTOPHELES a crown with a loud cry]. O do be so good,— With sweat and with blood, To take it and lime it; [They go about clumsily with the crown and break it into two pieces, with which they jump round.] 'Tis done now! We're free! We speak and we see, We ...
— Faust • Goethe
... now for 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. Omer's with fifty pounds promised him, to kill Dr. Tonge who had lately translated ...
— Oddsfish! • Robert Hugh Benson
... that year and the year following were given to hard and monotonous painting from nature while the weather permitted, and in the winter to working out clumsily the mysteries of picture-making, a work which, as I was without direction or any correct appreciation of what I had it in me to do, became a drudgery which I went through as an indispensable duty, but with no satisfaction. My larger studies from nature (25x30 inches) ...
— The Autobiography of a Journalist, Volume I • Stillman, William James
... sometimes take insects in the air; they do it clumsily, but they get the bug. On the other hand, flycatchers sometimes eat fruit. I have seen the kingbird carry off raspberries. All such facts are matters of observation. In the search for truth we employ both the deductive and the inductive methods; ...
— Ways of Nature • John Burroughs
... the young man finally permitted the railroad official to take the wheel. At first the colonel drove somewhat clumsily, but this only increased his determination, and within an hour he was sending the car along at a good clip. When finally they drove up to the colonel's country home, the young man scarcely needed to invite his passenger to accompany him to the city on the following ...
— Analyzing Character • Katherine M. H. Blackford and Arthur Newcomb
... and clumsily Ivan set about untying the knot, it had to come undone at last. Besides, the bystanders were beginning to grumble, and their muttering disturbed the reverie into which the young aide-de-camp had fallen. He raised his head, which had been ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - VANINKA • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... congratulated upon my bravery and skill. Not feeling 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 skinning ...
— Seven and Nine years Among the Camanches and Apaches - An Autobiography • Edwin Eastman
... discovered vodka—not much—enough to set them singing first, then dancing. The troopers danced together in the fire-glare—clumsily, in their boots, with interims of the pas seul savouring of the capers of those ancient Mongol horsemen in ...
— The Crimson Tide • Robert W. Chambers
... 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 ...
— The American Missionary - Volume 52, No. 2, June, 1898 • Various
... 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 ...
— The History of the United States from 1492 to 1910, Volume 1 • Julian Hawthorne
... 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 strong stroke of the ...
— The Law of the Land • Emerson Hough
... effect of Blackletter with the Roman form is likely to result clumsily. The celebrated Roman faces designed by William Morris (too familiar to require reproduction here) are, despite their real beauty, over-black on the page, and awkward when examined in detail. While the stimulus Morris's work gave to typography was much needed at that time, the present reaction ...
— Letters and Lettering - A Treatise With 200 Examples • Frank Chouteau Brown
... grunted, and made little casts round and about 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 ...
— The Second Jungle Book • Rudyard Kipling
... drawn a man thus far, does He stop? Not so. He does not leave His work half done. If the work is half done, it is that we stop, not that He stops. Whoever comes to Him, however confusedly, or clumsily, or even lazily they may come, He will in no wise cast out. He may afflict them still more to cure that confusion and laziness; but He is a physician who never sends a patient away, or keeps him ...
— Out of the Deep - Words for the Sorrowful • Charles Kingsley
... put my hands in different positions, and the like—movements that they could not ever have seen—and I was surprised that some of the children at once made them deftly, whereas ordinary children, first consider a long time, and then imitate clumsily. It is doubtless this exaltation of the imitative functions in deaf-mute children which makes it appear as if they themselves invented their gestures (see above, p. 23). Certainly they do not get their first signs ...
— The Mind of the Child, Part II • W. Preyer
... 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
... explain away coincidences to men who were the victims of them is likely to need more sympathy than he will get. The dictionary defines them clumsily as instances of coinciding, apparently accidental, but ...
— The Ivory Trail • Talbot Mundy
... that dictate our education, the distribution of our 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 immutable, ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... 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 sigh as if ...
— Brownsmith's Boy - A Romance in a Garden • George Manville Fenn
... hidden now. There was silence again in the old garden. I felt clumsily helpless and awkward; beyond a vague idea of kicking Harold, nothing remedial seemed ...
— The Golden Age • Kenneth Grahame
... any wise or modest bounds to his enterprise. He did not bear in mind how much had been said, as well as how little was known about Mr. Choate; what wonderfully loose and idle notions of him had got abroad; how the most essential and notable points of his character and genius had been so clumsily handled by flippant or careless critics, that the popular impression of him was, to a great degree, extravagant and absurd. Remembering all this, and properly respecting the subject in which he appears to have interested himself so ardently, Mr. Parker ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume V, Number 29, March, 1860 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... hunched up, slouching, his legs crossed, his elbows seeking support against his body; he held his clumsily folded paper close to his eyes. He had the appearance of being very myopic, but he did ...
— The Wonder • J. D. Beresford
... thought my leisure hours were passed in idle dreaming and luxurious ease; on the contrary, I had, with much ado, rethatched the broken roof of my cottage as well as I might, mended the chimney, fitted glass to the casements and a new door upon its hinges. This last was somewhat clumsily contrived, I grant you, and of a vasty strength quite unnecessary, yet a very, excellent door ...
— The Broad Highway • Jeffery Farnol
... supposed I should encounter dangers. I was mistaken. I am as safe here as I should be in my father's house. All the pitfalls and snares are to be seen by any one who wishes to see them. It is the sleeping spider that catches the fly, not your bold, brazen hunter, clumsily alert." ...
— The Touchstone of Fortune • Charles Major
... thus made her progress up the hymeneal chute, the bridegroom and his best man have emerged from the vestryroom and begun the short march to the prie-dieu. They walk haltingly, clumsily, uncertainly, stealing occasional glances at the advancing bridal party. The bridegroom feels of his lower right-hand waistcoat pocket; the ring is still there. The best man wriggles his cuffs. No one, however, pays any heed to them. They are not even seen, indeed, until the bride and her father ...
— A Book of Burlesques • H. L. Mencken
... would have gone in my grave-clothes sooner than not go at all, and belike he knew it. I began arraying myself sullenly and clumsily ...
— Helmet of Navarre • Bertha Runkle
... don't cry. You won't think so hardly of me again. Come, let us forget all our troubles." And the doctor took out his handkerchief, and began to dry Marjory's tears, clumsily, it must be owned, but with ...
— Hunter's Marjory - A Story for Girls • Margaret Bruce Clarke
... off and began to make our way out into the stream, Tom's eyes glancing around as he dipped in his paddle cautiously, expecting every moment that it would touch a crocodile; but using our paddles—clumsily enough, as may be supposed—we made some way, and then paused to consider whether we should go forward or backward, for we had at one and the same time arrived at the knowledge that the strong stream was our master, and ...
— The Golden Magnet • George Manville Fenn
... fell upon the boy like a thunderbolt when Neergard whispered to Ruthven, one night at the Stuyvesant Club, and Ruthven, exasperated, had gone straight home, to find his wife in tears, and the boy clumsily attempting to comfort her, both ...
— The Younger Set • Robert W. Chambers
... not only to think of the hidden penknife, and will me toward it, but also to look toward it himself. Now, to look toward any object, a man usually turns his whole body in that direction. So, groping about, clumsily, I managed to get sight of the toes of those well-remembered boots. Seeing which way they were pointed was all the information I needed just then. So, with all sorts of hesitating movements and ...
— Raspberry Jam • Carolyn Wells
... happy, 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 ...
— The Tale of Buster Bumblebee • Arthur Scott Bailey
... moral, and political life had undergone remarkable and invigorating changes in the direction of "reasonable democracy." Many wholesome reforms had been attempted, and some were partially realized, especially in elementary instruction, which was being spread clumsily, no doubt, as yet, but extensively and equally, ...
— The Inside Story Of The Peace Conference • Emile Joseph Dillon
... gravitated to the far end of the bar and proposed that they "have a little fun with the tall guy." One of them drew his gun and stepped quietly behind the tramp. About to fire into the floor he hesitated, bolstered his gun and tiptoed clumsily back to his companions. "Got ...
— Sundown Slim • Henry Hubert Knibbs
... the best intentions! Two-stepping clumsily round the room—for he was a poor, though enthusiastic, dancer—Dude Dawson collided with and upset a certain Reddy Davis and his partner. Reddy Davis was a member of the Three Points, and his temper was the temper of a red-headed man. He "slugged" Mr. Dawson. Mr. ...
— The Prince and Betty - (American edition) • P. G. Wodehouse
... a girl I always had my mind set on," pursued Jeb, who was an expert love-maker. "I like a smooth skin and pouty lips that looks as if they wanted to be kissed." He took the reins in one hand, put his arm round her, clumsily found her lips with his. She shrank slightly, then submitted. But Jeb somehow felt no inclination to kiss her again. After a moment he let his arm drop away from her waist and took the reins in both hands with an elaborate pretense that ...
— Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise • David Graham Phillips
... led him. For once, his presence accomplished nothing. He went about without thinking where; he passed men without seeing who they were or what they were doing. When he walked through the belt gallery, he saw the foreman of the big gang of men at work there was handling them clumsily, so that they interfered with each other, but it did not occur to him to give the orders that would set things right. Then, as if his wire-drawn muscles had not done work enough, he climbed laboriously to the very ...
— Calumet 'K' • Samuel Merwin
... and kissed her very clumsily, and Mrs. Delarayne by blowing her nose was able deftly to wipe her mouth ...
— Too Old for Dolls - A Novel • Anthony Mario Ludovici
... and also plain round-headed doorways, with key stones after the Roman or Italian semi-classic style now beginning to prevail; square-headed windows with plain vertical mullions, and the heads of the lights either round or obtusely arched, and generally without foliations; pointed windows clumsily formed, with plain mullion bars simply intersecting each other in the head, or filled with tracery miserably designed, and an almost total absence of ornamental mouldings. Indications of this style may be found in many country churches which have been repaired or partly rebuilt ...
— The Principles of Gothic Ecclesiastical Architecture, Elucidated by Question and Answer, 4th ed. • Matthew Holbeche Bloxam
... Certain things are bad so far as they go, such as pain, and no one, not even a lunatic, calls a tooth-ache good in itself; but a knife which cuts clumsily and with difficulty is called a bad knife, which it certainly is not. It is only not so good as other knives to which men have grown accustomed. A knife is never bad except on such rare occasions as that in which it is neatly and scientifically planted in the middle ...
— The Defendant • G.K. Chesterton
... adequate expressions of intellectual grandeur. The whole rested on a misconception; the limitary idea of knowledge was confounded with the infinite idea of power. To have a quickness in copying or mimicking other men, and in learning to do dexterously what they did clumsily,—ostentatiously to keep glittering before men's eyes a thaumaturgic versatility such as that of a rope-dancer, or of an Indian juggler, in petty accomplishments,—was a mode of the very vulgarest ambition: one effort of productive power,—a little book, for instance, ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... was trying his luck in milking, and managing the matter very clumsily, the uneasy beast began to think him very troublesome; and at last gave him such a kick on the head as knocked him down; and there he lay a long while senseless. Luckily a butcher soon came by, driving a pig in a wheelbarrow. 'What is the matter ...
— Grimms' Fairy Tales • The Brothers Grimm
... so quite gallantly, if somewhat clumsily. "I am very pleased to see you, Nap; but, you know, it was your brother whom we expected. I didn't so much as know that you were ...
— The Knave of Diamonds • Ethel May Dell
... the ordinary nursery incidents of the first months of infancy, Charley—for so he was familiarly called—became a fine fat child. "Sweet boy," said his mother, as she rather clumsily patted his cheeks, and felt of his tender limbs, "you will be a comfort to your ...
— Charles Duran - Or, The Career of a Bad Boy • The Author of The Waldos
... 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 that word or smile to brace ...
— Happy Pollyooly - The Rich Little Poor Girl • Edgar Jepson
... apparently the first edition; washed all over with a slight brown tint, and again coarsely coloured in parts: This copy singularly enough, is intermixed with portions of the first edition (as I take it) of the Apocalypse: very clumsily coloured. A fourth copy, also, as I conceive, of the first edition; rather heavily coloured. The back grounds are uncoloured. This is larger than ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume Three • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... them!" she told him, her spirit shining like fire in her eyes. "The whole six of them. I knew they were not our cattle. I saw how the brands had been worked, clumsily worked. Oh, my God, Steve Packard, what ...
— Man to Man • Jackson Gregory
... Slowly and somewhat clumsily he went to work at the injured dog. The collie's brave patience nerved him to greater tenderness and care. A veterinary would have made neater work of the bonesetting, but hardly could have ...
— His Dog • Albert Payson Terhune
... sole medium of communication between you and the author has been the form of words. The fine idea has reached you. How? In the words, by the words. Hence the fineness must be in the words. You may say, superiorly: "He has expressed himself clumsily, but I can *see* what he means." By what light? By something in the words, in the style. That something is fine. Moreover, if the style is clumsy, are you sure that you can see what he means? You cannot be quite ...
— LITERARY TASTE • ARNOLD BENNETT
... wonderful picture; and that, in its original colouring, or in its original expression of any single face or feature, there it is not. Apart from the damage it has sustained from damp, decay, or neglect, it has been (as Barry shows) so retouched upon, and repainted, and that so clumsily, that many of the heads are, now, positive deformities, with patches of paint and plaster sticking upon them like wens, and utterly distorting the expression. Where the original artist set that impress of his genius on a face, which, almost in a line or touch, ...
— Pictures from Italy • Charles Dickens
... also for my copies, which will cost me fifteen hundred more. Thus four thousand five hundred francs and my discounts, diminish by six thousand the thirty-three thousand. She could not lose a great fortune more clumsily, for Werdet estimates at five hundred thousand francs the profits to be made out of the next edition of the Etudes de Moeurs. I find Werdet the active, intelligent, and devoted publisher that I want. I have still six months ...
— Women in the Life of Balzac • Juanita Helm Floyd
... later the two men were struggling wildly. The man was strongly but clumsily built, and lacked the agility and muscular force of the young athlete. But Bob's victory did not come easily. Again and again the fellow renewed his attack, while the woman stood by with a look ...
— All for a Scrap of Paper - A Romance of the Present War • Joseph Hocking
... clumsily tried to unfasten Shaver's hood, Mary pushed him aside and with shaking fingers removed the child's wraps. Shaver's cheeks were rosy from his drive through the cold; he was a plump, healthy little shaver and The Hopper viewed him with intense ...
— A Reversible Santa Claus • Meredith Nicholson
... Merdle, putting the spoon aside, and clumsily hiding each of his hands in the coat-cuff of the other hand. 'I believe the people in my interest down there will not make ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens
... went about clumsily on the other tack and heeled over so that her port side was deep in the water, which afforded us good protection from the island. We kept close watch on the edge of the jungle, but nothing menaced us, although ...
— The Devil's Admiral • Frederick Ferdinand Moore
... curious stumbling, shuffling sound. She put down the glass, went to the door that opened into the hall, and looked out and down. One light was still burning below, and she could see distinctly. A man was clumsily, heavily, ascending the staircase, holding on to the balustrade. He was singing to himself, breaking into the maudlin ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... in, the steam winch was clattering, and the landing-stage had begun to come aboard, when the two men whose duty it was to cast off ran out on the tilting stage and dropped from its shore end. One of them fell clumsily, tried to rise, and sank back into the shadow; but the other scrambled up the steep bank and loosened the half-hitches in the wet hawser. With the slackening of the line the steamer began to move out into the stream, and the man ...
— The Price • Francis Lynde
... room. He was gone five minutes and returned with a scrawny bull terrier scrambling at his heels. The little brute, overjoyed at his release, frisked across the floor, clumsily tumbling over his own feet, and sniffed as an overture of friendship at Donaldson's low shoes. Then wagging his feeble tail he lifted his head and patiently blinked moist eyes awaiting a verdict. The young man stooped and scratched behind its ears, the dog holding his head sideways ...
— The Seventh Noon • Frederick Orin Bartlett
... was 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 little Snjolfur into ...
— Seven Icelandic Short Stories • Various
... traces of desperate need. The rags they wore were filthy, and gave only scant protection from the weather, their emaciated faces and hollowed cheeks told eloquently of many days of fatigue and hunger; their feet, long since without shoes, were clumsily protected from the rocky veldt by pieces of coarse sacking. For weeks they had tramped across the great, merciless desert, guided only by the stars, often losing the trail, begging their way from farm to farm, glad to ...
— The Mask - A Story of Love and Adventure • Arthur Hornblow
... beginning to speak, feels the natural embarrassment resulting from his new position. The novelty of the situation destroys his self-possession, and, with the loss of that, he becomes awkward, his arms and hands hang clumsily, and now, for the first time, seem to him worse than superfluous members. This embarrassment will be overcome gradually, as the speaker becomes familiar with his position; and it is sometimes overcome at once, by a powerful exercise of the attention upon the matter of the speech. When that ...
— McGuffey's Sixth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... themselves intellectual artists appeal to us aesthetically; but, in addition, by making, or seeming to make, some statement about the nature of the artistic problem they set us thinking. We feel sure they have something to say about the very stuff of art which we, clumsily enough, can grasp intellectually. With purely aesthetic qualities the intellect can do nothing: but here, it seems, is something the brain can get hold of. Therefore we study them and they become our leaders; which does not make them our greatest artists. Matisse may yet be ...
— Since Cezanne • Clive Bell
... indescribably touched and interested me, stranger as I was, that the sudden cessation of her faint, sweet tones affected me almost with a sense of pain. In trying (clumsily enough) to help her with the pillows, I accidentally touched her hand. It felt so cold and so thin, that even the momentary contact with it startled me. I tried vainly to see her face, now that it was more within reach of my range of view. The merciless darkness kept it as complete a mystery ...
— The Two Destinies • Wilkie Collins
... dupe? Mr. Fox had a 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 treasury is to be filled up with ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 2 • Horace Walpole
... sockets. Try as she would, she could not get them out, and then she remembered that Hastings kept a whipsaw in a shed close by. She contrived to find it, and attacked the poles in breathless haste, working clumsily with mittened hands, until there was a crash and rattle as she sprang clear. Then she started the team, and the rest of the logs ...
— Hawtrey's Deputy • Harold Bindloss
... morocco seat in crimson silk, and furnished with shining steel stirrups. What he had was the framework of a Mexican saddle, covered with rawhide, and cushioned with a blanket; the stirrups were Mexican, too, and clumsily fashioned out of wood. The boys were always talking about getting their father to get them a pad, but they never did it, and they managed as they could with the saddle they had. For the most part they preferred to ride the pony barebacked, for then they ...
— Boy Life - Stories and Readings Selected From The Works of William Dean Howells • William Dean Howells
... to solicit any person to deal with them—a mode of behaviour which the butchers, fishmongers, fruiterers, and greengrocers, of Great Britain would do well to imitate. The generality were hard-featured; and their grotesque head-dresses, parti-coloured kerchiefs, and short clumsily-plaited petticoats, gave them a grotesque, antiquated air, altogether irreconcilable to an Englishman's taste. They were, however, wonderfully clean, and civil and honourable in their traffic, compared with ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 14, No. 395, Saturday, October 24, 1829. • Various
... it is noticed that they are slow in learning to walk; the child staggers in trying to stand or to walk; it uses its hands clumsily, and has difficulty in speaking. The movements of the hands are peculiar, the hands move like in chorea, the speech ...
— Mother's Remedies - Over One Thousand Tried and Tested Remedies from Mothers - of the United States and Canada • T. J. Ritter
... fingers? Not at all sensitive about them, really. Hunting a few years ago and clumsily fell on the camp-stove. Scar on my shoulder where I struck as I rolled off. Stupid. Tripped over a case of canned corn. I have fingers now as sensitive as a ...
— The Voice in the Fog • Harold MacGrath
... morning, and professed much interest in her dolls, and an 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 for the ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XXII (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... "You see," 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, and they don't care ...
— A Village Ophelia and Other Stories • Anne Reeve Aldrich
... cousin Damaris," he answered as he felt clumsily, being taken unaware in more respects than one, and, for all his ready adaptability, being unable to keep a note of surprise out of his ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... him gently and placed him in the chair, then went into his room and secured the gun. He brought a towel back with him and staunched the flow of blood from the leg with a clumsily ...
— Across the Mesa • Jarvis Hall
... London what the event was which was about to happen, as 'twill show those who read my 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 ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... whatever of an august and eternal law, and the less God is brought into connection with these pitiful blunders and often monstrous perversions of the moral sense, the better. What we see is just man's mind in possession of the idea that his conduct must be regulated by law, and clumsily working out the correct application of that idea as his intelligence grows and his social life becomes more complex. It is not a question of the mind of the savage imperfectly seeing the law. It is ...
— The Necessity of Atheism • Dr. D.M. Brooks
... Doola laid his gun against the wall, lighted a little oil lamp, and set it before a recess in the wall. Pulling aside a curtain of dirty cloth, he revealed a worn brass crucifix leaning against the helmet-badge of a long forgotten East India regiment. 'Thus did my father,' he said, crossing himself clumsily. The wife and children followed suit. Then all together they struck up the wailing chant that I heard on ...
— Life's Handicap • Rudyard Kipling
... crime. In other States, where rogues were less brutal in their methods, or prosecutors less acute, the evil ran, not unnoticed but unchecked. In the South the same phenomena were resented with greater vigor than in the North because the crimes were more openly and clumsily committed, and because they ...
— The New Nation • Frederic L. Paxson
... conjecture; but I conjecture on the charitable side. In the upper waters of the St. Johns I have seen them in their death-throes; huge animals, at least fifteen feet long; seen them in scores at a time, some swimming about, some tumbling in clumsily, some sprawled on shore, apparently asleep, and some raising their black claws as if to call down vengeance upon us, gnashing their teeth, and lashing the water in their death-agony; but the howlings ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, April 1844 - Volume 23, Number 4 • Various
... aboriginal race now in existence. It is true that the average size of the Eskimo is, judged by our own standards, small; but I could give the names of several of them who stand five feet ten inches and weigh 185 pounds. The popular idea that they are clumsily fashioned is not correct. That notion is merely another case of judging a man by the clothes he wears, and an Eskimo's garments are not precisely what we should ...
— The North Pole - Its Discovery in 1909 under the auspices of the Peary Arctic Club • Robert E. Peary
... the chair before a writing-desk. Polly wielded her broom about the feet of the Sheriff, who danced clumsily about, trying to ...
— The Round-up - A Romance of Arizona novelized from Edmund Day's melodrama • John Murray and Marion Mills Miller
... soaken top full—the same quickening emanation that inspires the growing tree and upheaves the hill. And, if I err not, there is sound Scripture for the belief that these self same eminences have capacity to skip for joy. The peasant dances—a trifle clumsily—at harvest feast when the grain is garnered. The stars in heaven dance visibly, the firefly dances in emulation of the stars. The sunshine dances on the waters. The humming bird and the bee dance about the flowers which dance to the breeze. The innocent lamb, ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Volume 8 - Epigrams, On With the Dance, Negligible Tales • Ambrose Bierce
... Clumsily and hesitatingly Brother Phillips began stating the business of the Committee. He had not ...
— To Him That Hath - A Novel Of The West Of Today • Ralph Connor
... garments, and almost sullen in their efforts to appear impressed, they formed an amazing group as they clumsily ranged themselves in a compact fringe outside the more favoured guests of the evening, who occupied what may be described as the "orchestra." They ...
— Mr. Bingle • George Barr McCutcheon
... directions, but so clumsily as to excite their suspicions. We had been driving after them about three minutes, (returning along the road by which we had advanced,) when I looked out of the window to see how far they might be ahead of us. As I did this, I saw two hats popped out ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 6, April, 1858 • Various
... surgical science. If after engaging in the practice of his chosen profession, he is consulted by persons suffering from diseases of the eye, he tortures them with unnecessary and oftimes injurious applications, clumsily and carelessly made, and, as the result of such unskillful treatment, the inestimable blessing ...
— The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English • R. V. Pierce
... said Adam, clumsily trying to soothe the mother's anguish, but finding that a tongue long accustomed to expressions of haughty pride and bigotry, could but poorly lend itself to softer words of comfort. "There, there, don't cry, let her go. That scoundrel printer is at the bottom of it ...
— That Printer of Udell's • Harold Bell Wright
... apprehensions in the case of a foreign language is partially true even with the tongue we learned in childhood. Indeed, we all speak different dialects; one shall be copious and exact, another loose and meagre; but the speech of the ideal talker shall correspond and fit upon the truth of fact—not clumsily, obscuring lineaments, like a mantle, but cleanly adhering, like an athlete's skin. And what is the result? That the one can open himself more clearly to his friends, and can enjoy more of what makes life truly valuable—intimacy with those he ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 2 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... honest raptures, bore a part; Of city feasts, where Elegance Was proud her colours to advance, And Gluttony, uncommon case, Could only get the second place; 240 Of new-raised pillars in the state, Who must be good, as being great; Of shoulders, on which honours sit Almost as clumsily as wit; Of doughty knights, whom titles please, But not the payment of the fees; Of lectures, whither every fool, In second childhood, goes to school; Of graybeards, deaf to Reason's call, From Inn of ...
— Poetical Works • Charles Churchill
... two men apparently increased the ruffian's rage and embarrassment. Suddenly he leaped into the air with a whoop and clumsily executed a negro double shuffle on the floor, which jarred the glasses—yet was otherwise so singularly ineffective and void of purpose that he stopped in the midst of it and had to content himself ...
— Under the Redwoods • Bret Harte
... helmet upon his head, leaden soles under his feet and heavy weights of lead upon his breast and back, confined in his operations on the bottom of the ocean by a short length of air tube, and able only to move clumsily with difficulty. When after the day's work such a man is hauled to the surface, and divests himself of his heavy garments and he moves about with the facility we enjoy here, he must surely experience a feeling of great relief. Something like that is felt by the spirit when it has ...
— The Rosicrucian Mysteries • Max Heindel
... the 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 ...
— Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete • Washington Irving
... derisively, drained his glass, and held it out again. "But you have your secrets, rather clumsily ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1920 • Various
... forefoot," he said, "and swear by all thou holdest sacred never to divulge what thou hast learnt"—which oath the Professor, in the vilest of tempers, took, clumsily enough. ...
— The Brass Bottle • F. Anstey
... an immense gain in the bodily health and happiness of the upper classes would follow on their steadily endeavouring, however clumsily, to make the physical exertion they now necessarily exert in amusements, definitely serviceable. It would be far better, for instance, that a gentleman should mow his own fields, than ...
— Frondes Agrestes - Readings in 'Modern Painters' • John Ruskin
... said clumsily, avoiding his question, ignoring it. "Yet when I go there it is always more beautiful on the ...
— The Happy Foreigner • Enid Bagnold
... the name of Wickingus, of the abbey of Prum, of the Benedictin order. It was executed, as appears on the reverse of the forty-eighth leaf, "under the abbotships of Gilderius and Stephanus." It is full of illuminations, heavily and clumsily done, in colours, which are now become very dull. I do not consider it as older than the twelfth century, from the shield with a boss, and the depressed helmet. There are interlineary annotations in a fine state of preservation. ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume Two • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... to the trader, to the progress in military apparatus during the last few decades. The house-appliances of to-day for example, are little better than they were fifty years ago. A house of to-day is still almost as ill-ventilated, badly heated by wasteful fires, clumsily arranged and furnished as the house of 1858. Houses a couple of hundred years old are still satisfactory places of residence, so little have our standards risen. But the rifle or battleship of fifty years ago was beyond all comparison inferior to those we possess; in power, ...
— Memories and Studies • William James
... their dens, they attempted clumsily to take wing, but a interlacing network of devastating disintegrating rays from the ray-guns shattered their bodies to dust, which was borne away by ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science April 1930 • Various
... chanted the office, gazing into the distance with fixed eyes. The flame of the lighted candle which he was carrying scarcely showed in the daylight. And behind him, almost touching him, came Albine's coffin, borne by four peasants on a sort of litter, painted black. The coffin was clumsily covered with too short a pall, and at the lower end of it the fresh deal of which it was made could be seen, with the heads of the nails sparkling with a steely glitter. Upon the pall lay flowers: handfuls of white roses, hyacinths, and tuberoses, taken ...
— Abbe Mouret's Transgression - La Faute De L'abbe Mouret • Emile Zola
... the little hunchback flushed crimson. He hesitated, took back the sword clumsily, hesitated again, then swiftly held out his hand to M. de la Pailletine, with a smile as beautiful as ...
— The Blue Pavilions • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... the personal will is still to live in the region where the imperfect self is the thing most emphasized. Where, on the contrary, the subconscious forces take the lead, it is more probably the better self in posse which directs the operation. Instead of being clumsily and vaguely aimed at from without, it is then itself the organizing centre. What then must the person do? "He must relax," says Dr. Starbuck—"that is, he must fall back on the larger Power that makes for righteousness, which has been ...
— The Varieties of Religious Experience • William James
... shawl, and a bonnet and veil, precisely like the ones I had on! Her veil was drawn closely over her face, she wore black woollen gloves, and held in one hand a black reticule—which I would have declared was nurse's—and in the other a clumsily folded umbrella. As I sat and stared at the advancing figure, I wondered if I were dreaming, and actually gave myself a pinch to assure myself I was awake. But who could she be,—this double of mine? I wouldn't like to tell ...
— We Ten - Or, The Story of the Roses • Lyda Farrington Kraus
... I got a glass jar half filled with bruised laurel leaves, and Ma got it in, and after a day or two I set it, clumsily, and meant to take it to London, but had no small box to put it in. I told Mr. Rothschild about it, and he said it sounded like a Castnia—curious South American moths very near to butterflies. So he got out the drawer with them, but mine was ...
— Alfred Russel Wallace: Letters and Reminiscences Vol 2 (of 2) • James Marchant
... work with splendid energy, and achieved in two years a certain amount of literary success. Averil had praised him for this; which reward of merit had so turned his head that he had at once clumsily proposed to her. Averil had not laughed at that. She had rejected him instantly, with so severe a scolding that Derrick had lost his temper, and gone away to sulk. Later, he had turned his attention again to journalistic work, ...
— Rosa Mundi and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... of the fleet hung clumsily in emptiness. And Calhoun worriedly went over in his mind the lessons he'd given in such a pathetically small number of days. If the four ships reached Dara, their pilots would be heroes. Calhoun had presented them with that estate ...
— This World Is Taboo • Murray Leinster
... loosely over the side of the rock, were as large as the wrists of a man. He was some six or eight rods from us, and Spalding gave him a shot with his rifle. The ball glanced harmlessly from his massive shell against the ledge behind him, and starting from his sleep, he clambered lazily and clumsily ...
— Wild Northern Scenes - Sporting Adventures with the Rifle and the Rod • S. H. Hammond
... no one had noticed; they were cutting and handing about the cake. He refused a piece and found his stiffened lips could smile, but he was afraid of his voice, and sipped slowly, forcing the wine down the contracted passage of his throat. Then he stole a look at Mark, clumsily steering a way between the chairs to Aunt Ellen who wanted some grapes. The fellow hadn't guessed—hadn't the faintest suspicion—it was incredible that he should have. It was all right but—he raised his hand to his cravat, felt of it, then slipped a finger inside his collar ...
— Treasure and Trouble Therewith - A Tale of California • Geraldine Bonner
... as 'twill show those who read my 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 signed with the Secretary's name, and offering five hundred ...
— The History of Henry Esmond, Esq. • W. M. Thackeray
... 'I should like to pay him off.' A great deal of what is popularly called 'a proper spirit' becomes extremely improper if tested by this precept. There is an eloquent word in German which we can only clumsily reproduce, which christens the ugly pleasure at seeing misfortune and calls it 'joy in others' disasters.' We have not the word; would that we ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: Romans Corinthians (To II Corinthians, Chap. V) • Alexander Maclaren
... was one with a visage more frightfully mutilated than those of his comrades; the nose having been slit, and subsequently sewed together again, but so clumsily that the severed parts had only imperfectly united, communicating a strange, distorted, and forbidding look to the physiognomy. Clement Lanyere, the owner of this gashed and ghastly face, who was also reft of his ears, and branded on the cheek, had ...
— The Star-Chamber, Volume 1 - An Historical Romance • W. Harrison Ainsworth
... few steps, and Bill followed slowly. Then I saw that Jem Dadd was leaning forward clumsily on the wheel, with his hands clenched ...
— Captains All and Others • W.W. Jacobs
... his keys clumsily. The first key on the ring should have been the last, and the last first. It is ever thus when one is in a hurry. Finally he threw back the lids, feeling that in another moment he must have spouted Italian or French ...
— The Lure of the Mask • Harold MacGrath
... and skillfully formed, becomes truly a second nature, as the common saying is; but unskillfully and unmethodically directed, it will be as it were the ape of nature, which imitates nothing to the life, but only clumsily and awkwardly.—Bacon. ...
— Pearls of Thought • Maturin M. Ballou
... betrayed in his very earliest attempts at philosophy; nor are his subsequent efforts directed to anything else than the endeavour to correct and allow for its refractions and distortions, to transcend its narrow limitations, to force it to express, meanly and clumsily, truths which otherwise it would entirely obscure and deny. There might well be facts, nay, there are undoubtedly facts, which to the untutored mind necessarily and always seem altogether supernormal, but which science rightly explains to be, however ...
— The Faith of the Millions (2nd series) • George Tyrrell
... the hall, and reaching the front door fumbled clumsily with the catch. The captain watching his efforts in grim silence began to experience the twin ...
— At Sunwich Port, Complete • W.W. Jacobs
... technics by reason of the greatly increased frequency with which it has come to be thought justifiable to practise them; what we do again and again we are apt in the end to do well, whereas that which we turn to only in despair and as rarely as possible, we do clumsily and imperfectly. Listerism has been unjustly alleged by a few to be unworthy of the appreciation in which it is held by the great majority of medical men of all countries; simple cleanliness, it has been urged, ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIV • John Lord
... wheels well fitted to the whole machine. Freedom would then not only be useless, but even contrary to the purpose of existence; and good-will would be quite superfluous. The world, in that case, would be very clumsily contrived—would proceed to its goal with waste of power and by circuitous paths. Rather, mighty World-Spirit, hadst thou taken from us this freedom, which, only with difficulty and by a different arrangement, ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries: - Masterpieces of German Literature Translated into English, Volume 5. • Various
... gazing at it, there was a sound of small hoofs, clumsily galloping on the Campagna; and soon his frisky acquaintance, the buffalo-calf, came and peeped over the edge of the excavation. Almost at the same moment he heard voices, which approached nearer and nearer; a man's voice, and a feminine one, talking the musical tongue of Italy. Besides the ...
— The Marble Faun, Volume II. - The Romance of Monte Beni • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... 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 carry ...
— Lectures and Essays • Thomas Henry Huxley
... superior quickness at the draw. With a whoop of resignation they rushed back to the dance-hall where the voice of the caller was exhorting the gents—whose partners were mostly big, husky, hairy-faced men clumsily enacting parts generally assigned to members of the gentler ...
— The Girl of the Golden West • David Belasco
... "Rama, nama, satya hai"—"the name of Rama is true"—are heard. The corpse, fastened upon a simple bier of bamboo sticks and carried on the shoulders of four relatives, is swathed in white if a male, or in red if a female. The bearers hasten almost frantically down the decline and clumsily drop their burden in the water, feet foremost, and make certain that the current will have undisturbed play upon the corpse without sweeping it away. The mourners repair to the place where dry wood is sold and enter upon spirited bargaining for fuel sufficient to consume their relative, whose ...
— East of Suez - Ceylon, India, China and Japan • Frederic Courtland Penfield
... James Averell, Jr., who worked his tannery by slave labor. One of his slaves, known as Tom Bronk, was for many years well known in Cooperstown as the servant of the former owner's son, William Holt Averell, and lived to a great age. The clumsily written bill of sale by which Tom Bronk became the property of James Averell, Jr., is still ...
— The Story of Cooperstown • Ralph Birdsall |
