"Cumbersome" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... narrow and dark, the banner was large and cumbersome, while the lady that bore it was nervous and weak. It is not strange, then, that Maggie, who slept at no great distance, was awakened by a tremendous crash, as of someone falling the entire length of the tower stairs, while a voice, frightened ...
— Maggie Miller • Mary J. Holmes
... The latter would be rather too cumbersome to carry about," said the Count. "However, let us set forth, or we shall not have time to return before the evening." Fortunately they found a Trek-Schuit just starting for the far-famed ...
— Voyages and Travels of Count Funnibos and Baron Stilkin • William H. G. Kingston
... the walls had ears, the meal made its appearance with that silent celerity which the retired Anglo-Indian—who has sworn at native servants for thirty years—misses so keenly, when he is relegated to the cumbersome ministrations of ...
— The Great Amulet • Maud Diver
... the thorny nature of this issue, which he illustrated with the example of the cumbersome process involved in putting a copy of a scientific database on a LAN in LC's science reading room. He also acknowledged that LC needs help and could enlist the energies and talents of Workshop participants in thinking through a number of ...
— LOC WORKSHOP ON ELECTRONIC TEXTS • James Daly
... end," I cried; and he groped on into the narrower part, Bob and I looking into the slippery grotto-like place enjoying his slow cumbersome manner, and paying no heed to the fact that the tide had turned, and that already a little water had run into the little pool where we ...
— Devon Boys - A Tale of the North Shore • George Manville Fenn
... guns. We were furnished with the Austrian rifle musket. It was of medium length, with a light brown walnut stock,—and was a wicked shooter. At that time the most of the western troops were armed with foreign-made muskets, imported from Europe. Many regiments had old Belgian muskets, a heavy, cumbersome piece, and awkward and unsatisfactory every way. We were glad to get the Austrians, and were quite proud of them. We used these until June, 1863, when we turned them in and drew in lieu thereof the Springfield rifle musket of the model of 1863. It was not as heavy as ...
— The Story of a Common Soldier of Army Life in the Civil War, 1861-1865 • Leander Stillwell
... transactions. The minor coins of silver, were received and paid out without question at parity with gold coin, because the amount was limited and they were coined by the government only as demanded for the public convenience. The silver dollar was too weighty and cumbersome and when offered in considerable sums was objected to, though a legal tender for any sum, and coined only in limited amounts for government account. Every effort was made by the treasury department to give ...
— Recollections of Forty Years in the House, Senate and Cabinet - An Autobiography. • John Sherman
... cowered before the tiger, the point of interest for the tiger was at once shifted to the fat and rollicking cub. Here was a juicy feast. And to the great cat, inexperienced as he must have been in the ways of the creatures of the very far north into which he had wandered, the cumbersome mother seemed a rather insignificant barrier to keep him from his feast. One spring, a set of those vicious yellow teeth, a dash away, with the ponderous mother following at a snail's pace—that seemed easy. He carefully estimated the short ...
— Panther Eye • Roy J. Snell
... massive truck. It had developed express train speed now and it rocked from side to side like a ship in a gale as it tore down the rough country road! Bruce clutched the big steering wheel with deathlike grip and tried his mightiest to keep the cumbersome vehicle straight! He realized that a loose stone or a deep rut meant death to him and destruction to the motor car! His teeth were clenched and his face was white! The wind had whisked away his ...
— The Boy Scout Fire Fighters • Irving Crump
... Blahoslaw himself (1565). The work was of national interest. For the first time the Bohemian people possessed the Bible in a translation from the original tongue, with the chapters subdivided into verses, and the Apocrypha separated from the Canonical Books. The work appeared at first in cumbersome form. It was issued in six bulky volumes, with only eight or nine verses to a page, and a running commentary in the margin. The paper was strong, the binding dark brown, the page quarto, the type Latin, the style chaste and idiomatic, ...
— History of the Moravian Church • J. E. Hutton
... would have been simply ridiculous. But coming from him, the almost oracle of a large portion of our reformers, it becomes worthy of an answer from every earnest woman in our cause. I will not say one word in defense of our present mode of dress. Not I; but bad as it is, and cumbersome and annoying, I still feel that we can wear it, and yet be lovers of liberty, speaking out our deep feeling, portraying our accumulated wrongs, saving ourselves for a time yet from that antagonism which we must inevitably meet when we don the semi-male attire. We must own ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... I led, I was still undoubtedly young-looking, and in this I was true to the incoming type of successful man. Our fathers appeared staid at six and thirty. Clothes, of course, made some difference, and my class and generation did not wear the sombre and cumbersome kind, with skirts and tails; I patronized a tailor in New York. My chestnut hair, a little darker than my father's had been, showed no signs of turning grey, although it was thinning a little at the crown of the forehead, ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... erratic swinging from side to side, Ferd needed the whole road, and seeing this, the other lad stood by, ready to guard himself if the cumbersome machine ...
— Dick the Bank Boy - Or, A Missing Fortune • Frank V. Webster
... nightfall turtles in legion forsook their abode on the muddy river-bottom and sought the hot sand to lay their eggs. The shuffle of their feet and the scraping of their heavy shells was audible some distance away in a muffled conglomeration of sounds. They moved rather rapidly for such cumbersome creatures and made quickly for the highest points in the sandy wastes where with much effort a hole was scooped and the eggs deposited; then the excavation was neatly filled. The turtles hurried back to the water to remain in the depths ...
— The Black Phantom • Leo Edward Miller
... resentfully, as they chanced to feel about things. They drove past building after building, buildings in which hundreds of men toiled on preparations for a possible war. The throb of those engines, sight of the perspiring faces, might suggest that rather large, a trifle extravagant, a bit cumbersome, was the price for peace. But these girls did not seem to be thinking of the possible war, or of the men who earned their bread thwarting it by preparation. One would suppose them to be just two ...
— The Visioning • Susan Glaspell
... essential function, the supreme function, of language? Isn't it merely to convey ideas and emotions? Certainly. Then if we can do it with words of fonetic brevity and compactness, why keep the present cumbersome forms? But can we? Yes. I hold in my hand the proof of it. Here is a letter written by a woman, right out of her heart of hearts. I think she never saw a spelling-book in her life. The spelling is her own. There isn't a waste letter in it anywhere. It ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... exasperated when a kingfish takes hold. My brother pulled in this kingfish, which was small, and we rebaited our hooks and went on again. I saw more turtles, and one we almost ran over, he was so lazy in getting down. These big, cumbersome sea animals, once they get headed down and started, can disappear with remarkable rapidity. I rather enjoy watching them, but my boatman, who is a native of these parts and therefore a turtle-hunter by instinct, always wore a rather disappointed ...
— Tales of Fishes • Zane Grey
... miles down stream we overtake a fleet of some twenty war-junks, presenting a most novel and interesting sight, crowded as each one is with the gayest of flags and streaming pennants galore. The junks are cumbersome enough, in all conscience, as utterly useless for purposes of modern warfare as the same number of floating hogsheads; yet withal they make a gallant sight, the like of which is to be seen nowhere these days but on the inland waters ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens
... few boats as would satisfy the laws. These, twenty-four in number, were securely covered and lashed down to their chocks on the upper deck, and if launched would hold five hundred people. She carried no useless, cumbersome life-rafts; but—because the law required it—each of the three thousand berths in the passengers', officers', and crew's quarters contained a cork jacket, while about twenty circular life-buoys were strewn along ...
— The Wreck of the Titan - or, Futility • Morgan Robertson
... heart. And what is the amount of the advantages I have gained? I tempted her with riches. But riches she considered with disdain; they had nothing analogous to the temper of her mind, and her uncultivated simplicity regarded them as superfluous and cumbersome. I taught her to listen to the voice of flattery; I clothed it in all that is plausible and insinuating; but to no purpose. She was still upon her guard; all her suspicions were awake; and her integrity ...
— Imogen - A Pastoral Romance • William Godwin
... as oppressive and tyrannical, and the legislative body as venal and corrupt." It was alleged in the indictment that he complained of the government of England as "costly," the monarchy as "useless, cumbersome, and expensive," that he advised persons to read Paine's Rights of Man, and circulated copies of a periodical called "the Patriot," which complained of the grievances of the people. On trial he was treated with great insolence and harshness, reprimanded, interrupted, and insulted ...
— The Trial of Theodore Parker • Theodore Parker
... piled high with camp equipment. At the end of the line was a cumbersome-looking affair that was covered with canvas and drawn by four horses. A grizzled man drove these horses, and seemed intent upon ...
— The Blue Birds' Winter Nest • Lillian Elizabeth Roy
... style of wedge-writing is a direct derivative of the Babylonian, introduced in the times of the Achaemenians, and it is nothing but a simplification in form and principle of the more cumbersome and complicated Babylonian. Instead of a combination of as many as ten and fifteen wedges to make one sign, we have in the Persian never more than five, and frequently only three; and instead of writing ...
— The Religion of Babylonia and Assyria • Morris Jastrow
... earliest beginning finding some other approach to the manipulation of the physical universe? A totally alien kind of science? Come to think of it, the use of material to affect other material was a cumbersome, indirect, awkward way of going about it, ...
— Eight Keys to Eden • Mark Irvin Clifton
... externall motions of dawbing or such like. Sometimes occasion shall be offered to lift and turne Hiues, as shall appeare hereafter. One light entire hiue of straw in that case is better, then one that is dawbed, weighty and cumbersome. I wish euery hiue, for a keeping swarme, to hold three pecks at least in measure. For too little Hiues procure Bees, in casting time, either to lye out, and loyter, or else to cast before they be ripe and strong, and so make weake swarmes and vntimely: Whereas if they haue roome ...
— A New Orchard And Garden • William Lawson
... space-suit and clambered through the air-lock. I ran, until the cumbersome suit slowed me down to a staggering walk through the ...
— Out Around Rigel • Robert H. Wilson
... when she appeared in the street and with her husband's political opponents ridiculing her costume in their campaign speeches. Both women, however, felt it their duty to bear this cross to free women from the bondage of cumbersome clothing, hoping always that the bloomer, because of its utility, would win converts and finally become the fashion. Susan admired their courage, but still could not be persuaded ...
— Susan B. Anthony - Rebel, Crusader, Humanitarian • Alma Lutz
... Lucretius, who has supplied us and others with an almost inexhaustible supply of metaphors on this topic, ever dwells on the life of his gods with a sad and melancholy feeling that no such life was possible on a crude and cumbersome earth. In general, the two opposing agencies are marriage and lack of money; either of these breaks the lot of literary and refined inaction at once and forever. The first of these, as we have seen, Cowper had escaped; his reserved and negligent reveries were still free, ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 3 • Various
... all lumber! Throw it overboard. It makes the boat so heavy to pull, you nearly faint at the oars. It makes it so cumbersome and dangerous to manage, you never know a moment's freedom from anxiety and care, never gain a moment's rest for dreamy laziness - no time to watch the windy shadows skimming lightly o'er the shallows, or the glittering sunbeams flitting in and out among the ripples, or the ...
— Three Men in a Boa • Jerome K. Jerome
... are out of those lakes. One hides a caske of meale, the other his campiron, & all that could be cumbersome. After many paines & labours wee arrived to the Sault of Columest, so called because of the Stones that are there very convenient to make tobacco pipes. We are now within 100 leagues of the french habitation, & hitherto no bad encounter. We still found tracks ...
— Voyages of Peter Esprit Radisson • Peter Esprit Radisson
... Kirby Hall, rather than at Haughton Park, the much larger seat which had so suddenly passed to his inheritance, and which he could not occupy without a vast establishment, that to a single man, so young, would be but a cumbersome and costly trouble. Mr. Vigors was pledged to his ward to obtain him possession of Kirby Hall, the precise day agreed upon, but Mrs. Ashleigh did not seem disposed to stir,—could not decide where else to go. Mr. Vigors was loth to press hard on his old friend's widow and ...
— A Strange Story, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... old bookseller with some grumbling opened his shop, and by the twinkling taper (for he was setting bedwards) lighted out the relic from his dusty treasures—and when you lugged it home, wishing it were twice as cumbersome—'" ...
— The Hills of Hingham • Dallas Lore Sharp
... in Bristol are numbers, some Who so modish are grown, that they think plain sense cumbersome; And lest they should seem to be queer or ridiculous, They affect to believe ...
— Biographia Epistolaris, Volume 1. • Coleridge, ed. Turnbull
... not at all like the cumbersome vehicles which are known under that name in England. They were merely large, strongly-built carts on two wheels, drawn by three, four, or five horses, as the nature of the country might require; though, on a smooth road, one could drag them. ...
— The Young Berringtons - The Boy Explorers • W.H.G. Kingston
... troubadour, he dragged the cumbersome thing all over Russia and played it in recitals with amazing success. In 1903, when Mr. Koussevitzky was twenty-nine (he's sixty-eight now but looks a mettlesome fifty), the Czar decorated him—the only instance in history of a decoration bestowed ...
— The World's Great Men of Music - Story-Lives of Master Musicians • Harriette Brower
... and as soon as one is completed it is sold, in order that materials for a fresh one may be purchased. We also bought some of the carved wooden stirrups, made in the country, and used by all the natives. They are rather like a small coalscuttle in shape, and must be heavy and cumbersome. ...
— A Voyage in the 'Sunbeam' • Annie Allnut Brassey
... extremity are enabled to perform the ordinary functions of the missing member with but slight deterioration. Artificial arms, hands, and legs have been developed to such a degree of perfection that the modern mechanisms of this nature are very unlike the cumbersome and ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... that such richness and possibility of precision is of no importance; many a life's jeopardy has turned on less. Nor can it be said that this unlimited capacity of expression makes the mechanism of the language cumbersome, for the whole scheme of Esperanto can be thoroughly mastered in ...
— Esperanto: Hearings before the Committee on Education • Richard Bartholdt and A. Christen
... White Rose Inn was sighted; it was one of those modern hostelries, built on an old English model. The windows were muslined, the rooms were wainscoted in oak, the furniture was heavy and cumbersome. Anna was delighted with everything she saw. Sanderson had had their sitting-room filled with crimson roses, they were everywhere; banked on the mantelpiece, on the tables and window-sills. Their perfume was to Anna like the loving embrace of an old friend. Jacqueminots ...
— 'Way Down East - A Romance of New England Life • Joseph R. Grismer
... they had all snaphances,' he answered, sprinkling himself with scented water; 'the matchlocks are slow and cumbersome. ...
— Micah Clarke - His Statement as made to his three Grandchildren Joseph, - Gervas and Reuben During the Hard Winter of 1734 • Arthur Conan Doyle
... did not give them time to discover that; there was no chance to string his cumbersome weapon again; down he flung it upon the ground. "To arms!" he roared in a voice of thunder, and then clapped to the door of Melchior's tower and shot the great iron bolts with a clang ...
— Otto of the Silver Hand • Howard Pyle
... attended by the most disheartening nervousness, I tried to find my cap to remove it in the presence of royalty. Unfortunately I was obliged to release the somewhat cumbersome crowbar I had been carrying about with me, and it dropped with a sullen thwack upon my toes. In moments of gravity I am always doing something like that. The pain was terrific, but I clutched at the forlorn hope that she might at least ...
— A Fool and His Money • George Barr McCutcheon
... can pick off from a revolutionary, I take but I will not take him. The same is true of a standpatter or reactionary. I want to know all he knows. If I take his truth I can use it, if I take him I will find him cumbersome. Life is too short to spend ten hours on him when ten minutes would do as much with some one who could listen or converse or with whom one could exchange thoughts and actions instead of papal bulls, orders ...
— The Ghost in the White House • Gerald Stanley Lee
... Darwin's theory organs are formed by the slow accumulation of unintended variations, which happen to be favorable to the subject of them in the struggle for life. But in many cases these organs, instead of being favorable, are injurious or cumbersome until fully developed. Take the wing of a bird, for example. In its rudimental state, it is useful neither for swimming, walking, nor flying. Now, as Darwin says it took millions of years to bring the eye to perfection, ...
— What is Darwinism? • Charles Hodge
... modification in the present test of criminal responsibility is adopted, there must come an equally, if not even more important, reform in the procedure in insanity cases, which to-day is as cumbersome and out of date as the law itself. As things stand now in New York and most other jurisdictions there are no adequate means open to the State to find out the actual present or past mental condition of the defendant until the trial itself, and ofttimes ...
— Courts and Criminals • Arthur Train
... gorgeous opus conservetum, which has filled its useful though humble office down to the present day, is the heavy quilted and padded leather curtain used in many Italian churches in lieu of a door. Many of the church doors are too massive and cumbersome to be opened readily by the entering worshippers, so they are left constantly open. Leather hangings often several inches thick and quilted with rows of horizontal stitches rather widely spaced, are hung before the open doorways. Even these curtains are often quite stiff and unyielding, ...
— Quilts - Their Story and How to Make Them • Marie D. Webster
... cheaply the various articles of that commerce, than by direct communication with the country itself. This arose from the numerous interests of Great Britain, and the broader foundation of her commercial speculations. The Danish government felt the African possessions cumbersome and expensive, and agreed to cede them, with their guns, stores, property, territorial rights, &c, to her Britannic majesty for the sum of L10,000. A treaty to this effect was signed in London on the 17th of August, and ratified ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... in a plan of action, for the next night she came home from her work in a most mysterious and unusual mood. Gordon Lee heard her moving some heavy and cumbersome article across the kitchen floor, then he saw her surreptitiously put something into a tin can before she presented herself at the ...
— Miss Mink's Soldier and Other Stories • Alice Hegan Rice
... remove these blocks of wood before I start," said Bert, as he quickly tore off the clumsy and cumbersome things. ...
— Two Little Women • Carolyn Wells
... for many years, unheard-of, burden weighed heavily upon the comfortable citizens; and to none could it be more cumbersome than to my father, who was obliged to take foreign military inhabitants into his scarcely finished house, to open for them his well-furnished reception-rooms, which were generally closed, and to abandon to the caprices of strangers all that ...
— Autobiography • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
... the museums, the breathing masks of that period. They were very new and modern then, although they certainly appear cumbersome by comparison ...
— Vampires of Space • Sewell Peaslee Wright
... that the houses and mills were necessary to the object. Rather cumbersome and costly machinery, I should think, to bring to bear upon such a ...
— Faith Gartney's Girlhood • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... the popularity of George Eliot's novels lies in the slowness of their movement. The author's soliloquies, comments, and reflections, which are so much valued by her especial admirers, constantly interrupt the course of the narrative, and prove cumbersome to such readers as enjoy a rapid, flowing story. But without these interruptions, how much of George Eliot's best wisdom would be lost! How many significant phrases would be lost from familiar language! ...
— A History of English Prose Fiction • Bayard Tuckerman
... on the wall registered safety and they unfastened the protective clasps of the suits. Standing the cumbersome things against the wall as the inner door to the lock rolled back, they walked ...
— Plague Ship • Andre Norton
... was indeed an ingcrashee* glumm) why I should tell her I had no prospect of departing hence. "Have not you," says she, "the same prospect that I or any other person has of departing? Sir," added she, "you don't do well, and really I fear you are slit, or you would not wear this nasty cumbersome coat (taking hold of my jacket-sleeve), if you were not afraid of showing the signs of a bad life ...
— Life And Adventures Of Peter Wilkins, Vol. I. (of II.) • Robert Paltock
... postal scale, baby scale. [Science of gravity] statics. V. be heavy &c. adj.; gravitate, weigh, press, cumber, load. [Measure the weight of] weigh, poise. Adj. weighty; weighing &c. v.; heavy as lead; ponderous, ponderable; lumpish[obs3], lumpy, cumbersome, burdensome; cumbrous, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... had the advantage over the dirigible. She could maneuver with twice the speed and turn and twist like a snake, while the more cumbersome air-ship took a lot of handling to navigate in ...
— The Boy Aviators' Treasure Quest • Captain Wilbur Lawton
... life-long judges, or at least let them be elected by the people and for very brief terms. Let grand juries be voted a humbug, and trial by jury a nuisance. Let electoral colleges be abolished as meaningless and cumbersome anomalies. Let the President be the direct representative of a mighty people, and act without let or hindrance—only let him act with gigantic energy and swift execution. Let senatorial terms be dependent upon changing legislative ...
— The Continental Monthly, Volume V. Issue I • Various
... intervene between the annulment of the old Charter and the passing of the new, the heirs-at-law of James McGill might, even at that late date, claim that the College no longer existed in fact, and that they were entitled to the estate. They therefore preferred an amended Charter, even if more cumbersome. One of the amendments provided that the members of the Board of the Royal Institution should henceforth be the Governors of the College, the members still to be appointed by the Crown. The number of Governors was left indefinite, ...
— McGill and its Story, 1821-1921 • Cyrus Macmillan
... offer him less for fear of losing so good a bargain. When he had sold the last dish he had recourse to the tray, which weighed ten times as much as the dishes, and would have carried it to his old purchaser, but that it was too large and cumbersome; therefore he was obliged to bring him home with him to his mother's, where, after the Jew had examined the weight of the tray, he laid down ten pieces of gold, with which Aladdin was very ...
— The Junior Classics, V5 • Edited by William Patten
... fleeing into another trench some fifty yards up the slope, the colonel ordered them to charge again. The Australians' blood was up. They had seen red and had felt success. They wanted more. Throwing off their cumbersome ...
— The Kangaroo Marines • R. W. Campbell
... Fig. 46. The thimble shown in Fig. 47 is made by splicing the rope to the thimble at running part of halyard and passing back and forth through cleat and thimble. This gives a quick and strong purchase and does away with cumbersome blocks of the old-fashioned jig. The jib-sheet leads aft to the steering cockpit. The main-sheet ends in a jig of a single block and a single block with becket. Be sure that your sail covers are large enough—the sail maker always makes ...
— The Boy Mechanic: Volume 1 - 700 Things For Boys To Do • Popular Mechanics
... extra wheel on the rear of the roadster, but it was heavy and cumbersome, and the girl knew from experience what a dirty job changing a wheel is. She had just about decided to drive home on the rim, when a young man crossed the walk from Erie Street and joined her in her doleful appraisement of ...
— The Efficiency Expert • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... the morning; sellers of vegetables, men and women peasants, with bare legs and wooden shoes, driving shaggy Servian ponies attached to low, cumbersome carts, passed and repassed, to and from the markets. A gendarme, leaning the weight of his shoulder on the guard of a police saber, rested against the corner of a wine shop across the way. Students, wearing squat caps with vizors, sauntered indolently along, twirling canes and ...
— The Puppet Crown • Harold MacGrath
... interior of the cabin was completed, she came upon a six-shooter—heavy, cumbersome, like the weapon she had used the day Randerson had taught her to shoot. It reposed on a shelf near the door that led to the porch, and was almost concealed behind a box in which were a number of miscellaneous articles, broken pipes, pieces of hardware, buckles, a file, a wrench. She examined ...
— The Range Boss • Charles Alden Seltzer
... one futile effort to rise, like some cumbersome fowl whose wings are clipped. "My land alive! you'll break a blood-vessel, an' then where'll ...
— Tiverton Tales • Alice Brown
... advanced to meet them, knowing that, with their old-fashioned matchlocks, it takes them a considerable time to light the fuse and fire a shot. Moreover, it is almost an impossibility for them to fire on horseback, their weapons being heavy and cumbersome. ...
— In the Forbidden Land • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... But the ferry-boat was cumbersome and the current swift, so that we were swept down a long way before we could cross it. At length we reached still water near the further shore, and seeing a landing-place, managed to beach the punt and to drag our horses to the bank. Then ...
— Ayesha - The Further History of She-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed • H. Rider Haggard
... production of some few things, and the surplus that he does not use, he exchanges for other things made by other men. In rude stages of society this is done by a direct exchange of one commodity for another, e.g. so much wheat or corn for a gun or plow. This is a very imperfect and cumbersome method, which cannot be employed in our present complicated transactions of buying and selling. There thus early developed the use of money, or the practice of referring the value of all things to one standard, usually the precious metals: so that, instead of trading 20 bushels of corn ...
— Government and Administration of the United States • Westel W. Willoughby and William F. Willoughby
... his wrist by a cord a gun-rest, or gun-fork, which he placed upon the ground when he wished to fire his musket, and upon which that constitutional kicker rested when touched off. He also carried a sword and sometimes a pike, and thus heavily burdened with multitudinous arms and cumbersome armor, could never have run after or from an Indian with much agility or celerity; though he could stand at the church-door with his leather gun,—an awe-inspiring figure,—and he could shoot with his "harquebuss," or "carbin," ...
— Sabbath in Puritan New England • Alice Morse Earle
... besides half a dozen Martinis. I armed myself with one of the repeaters — my own; an excellent weapon for this kind of work, where great rapidity of fire is desirable, and fitted with ordinary flap-sights instead of the cumbersome sliding mechanism which they generally have. Mr Mackenzie took another, and the two remaining ones were given to two of his men who understood the use of them and were noted shots. The Martinis and some rifles ...
— Allan Quatermain • by H. Rider Haggard
... style, though he was permeated to the end with the style and the spirit of the Bible. Whenever the Biblical style can render modern thoughts only by torturing and twisting it, or by resorting to cumbersome circumlocutions, Ginzburg does not hesitate to levy contributions from Talmudic literature and even the modern languages. These linguistic additions made by him are always excellent, and in no way prejudicial to the elegance of Hebrew style. For it should be reiterated, in season ...
— The Renascence of Hebrew Literature (1743-1885) • Nahum Slouschz
... I am at the break of the poop, leaning on the rail and watching Ditman Olansen swing into the top with his cumbersome burden. Mr. Pike, proceeding aft, has just passed Mr. Mellaire. Possum, who, on account of the Horn weather and the tarpaulin, has not seen the chickens for many weeks, is getting reacquainted, and is investigating them with that keen nose of his. And ...
— The Mutiny of the Elsinore • Jack London
... score of questions in my mind, but there was no time for them then. I snatched my menore from its clip on my belt, and adjusted it quickly. It was a huge and cumbersome thing, the menore of that day, but it worked as well as the fragile, bejeweled things of today. Maybe better. The guard posted outside ...
— The God in the Box • Sewell Peaslee Wright
... into the openings just mentioned fall through a kind of tunnel into a reservoir adjacent to the heavy press, which is invariably of wood and of the old-fashioned cumbersome type. They are forthwith placed beneath the press and usually subjected to five separate squeezes, the must from the first three being reserved for sparkling wine, while that from the two latter, owing to its being more or less deeply tinted, only serves for table wine. The ...
— Facts About Champagne and Other Sparkling Wines • Henry Vizetelly
... gun in his teeth, the Pyrran clutched a barrel of napalm with his good hand and hurled it over on its side. Then, with the gun once more in his hand, he began to roll the drum along the ground with his feet. It was slow, cumbersome work, but he was still in ...
— Deathworld • Harry Harrison
... her box of ointment, a relic perhaps of past evil life, and once meant for her own adornment, and pours it on His head, lavishes offices of service which to the unloving heart seem bold in the giver and cumbersome to the receiver. It is little she can do, but she does it. Her full heart demands expression, and is relieved by utterance in deeds. The deeds are spontaneous, welling out at the bidding of an inward impulse, not drawn out by the force of an external command. ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... reason, except for high taxes and the hardships incident to conscription in the French armies, to complain of the foreign dominion. Their trade flourished, they were given better laws, and the machinery of justice was made much less cumbersome than it had been before. But especially the Jews hailed the French as deliverers; for now for the first time they were relieved of political disabilities and were placed upon a footing of equality with the gentile population. To Jew and gentile alike the military achievements of the French ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VI. • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... that the weight carried on the machine has very little to do with its endurance, but at the same time in future trips would recommend that a carbine be carried instead of the musket, which he considers too heavy and cumbersome to carry ...
— The Great Round World and What Is Going On In It, Vol. 1, No. 41, August 19, 1897 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various
... ours, and it is true that the rebel army on that account was more easily moved than our own. It was one of the disadvantages of too liberal a government that our movements for two years were weighed down with these cumbersome trains; and even after so long an experience of their evil it was with strong feelings of opposition that the ...
— Three Years in the Sixth Corps • George T. Stevens
... short and stout, with a harelip and cleft palate, which at once gave him the well-known slurring speech of persons so afflicted, and imparted also to the timbre of his voice a peculiarly hollow, resonant, trumpet-like note. He stumped about energetically on a wooden leg of home manufacture. It was a cumbersome instrument, heavy, with deep pine socket for the stump, and a projecting brace which passed under a leather belt around the man's waist. This instrument he used with the dexterity of a third hand. As Thorpe watched him, he drove ...
— The Blazed Trail • Stewart Edward White
... early telephones were heavy, cumbersome objects and not at all like the trim, compact instruments we have to-day. In fact, they were quite similar to the top of a sewing-machine box, only, perhaps, they were a trifle smaller. You can understand that one would not care to carry on a very long conversation if he must in ...
— Ted and the Telephone • Sara Ware Bassett
... of the camp, two men with great axe-headed spear things performed curious evolutions with their cumbersome weapons, finally laying the business ends of them on the ground as the gentleman ...
— Snake and Sword - A Novel • Percival Christopher Wren
... pictures out of which they had been developed. A few examples will show you what I mean. In the beginning a star, when drawn with a nail into a brick looked as follows: {illust.} This sign however was too cumbersome and after a short while when the meaning of "heaven" was added to that of star the picture was simplified in this way {illust.} which made it even more of a puzzle. In the same way an ox changed from ...
— The Story of Mankind • Hendrik van Loon
... started with his quadrant carried by four men, but the task of getting his cumbersome instruments up the steep sides of Taranta was intense. However, they reached the top at last to find a huge plain, "perhaps one of the highest in the world," and herds of beautiful cattle feeding. ...
— A Book of Discovery - The History of the World's Exploration, From the Earliest - Times to the Finding of the South Pole • Margaret Bertha (M. B.) Synge
... came to the conclusion that now was the time to let another snibbet of information go. "The system of study consists of an electronic device, the exact nature of which I do not understand. The entire machine is large and cumbersome. In it, as a sort of 'heart,' is a special circuit. Without this special circuit the thing is no more than an expensive aggregation of delicate devices that could be used elsewhere in electronics. One such machine stands unused in the Holden Home because the central ...
— The Fourth R • George Oliver Smith
... company; I can bring them together, select them, detain them, dismiss them. Imbecile and vicious men cannot do any of these things. Their thoughts are scattered, vague, uncertain, cumbersome: and the worst stick to them the longest; many indeed by choice, the greater part by necessity, and accompanied, some by weak wishes, others ...
— Imaginary Conversations and Poems - A Selection • Walter Savage Landor
... well to note here that Morse evidently foresaw that the machinery constructed by Alfred Vail was too heavy and cumbersome; that more delicate workmanship would later be called for, and this proved to be the case. The iron works at Morristown were only adapted to the manufacture of heavy machinery for ships, etc., and Alfred Vail had had experience in that ...
— Samuel F. B. Morse, His Letters and Journals - In Two Volumes, Volume II • Samuel F. B. Morse
... an early start that morning with the team. Sylvia would have liked to go with him, but he explained that he had to bring back a cumbersome load and needed all the ...
— The Opened Shutters • Clara Louise Burnham
... RECALL. Many of the newer plans for government include a method by which an inefficient or dishonest official can be removed from office by the people, without the cumbersome process of an impeachment. It would not be wise to apply the recall to local representatives, who would then be still more at the mercy of local wishes; but with a short ballot and the concentration of responsibility upon executives or small commissions ...
— Problems of Conduct • Durant Drake
... Matches were at first cumbersome, dangerous, and expensive, but these gradually evolved into the safety matches of the present time. Although they were primarily intended for lighting fires and various kinds of lamps, billions of them are now used yearly as convenient light-sources. Smoldering hemp or other material treated ...
— Artificial Light - Its Influence upon Civilization • M. Luckiesh
... been more uniformity of effort and style in the first secular drama, doubtless owing to its great superiority as a piece of literary art. That sacred plays were seldom written by men of literary rank and ability we have already noted. That they were long drawn out, cumbersome, disjointed and quite without dramatic design has also been indicated. Their real significance as forerunners of opera lies in their insistent employment of certain materials, such as verse, music and spectacular action, which afterwards became essential parts of the machinery ...
— Some Forerunners of Italian Opera • William James Henderson
... the destiny of man after death, in all the immense diversity of its contents. An orderly arrangement and exposition of these cardinal theories also form an epitome holding a bewildering multitude of particulars in its lucid and separating grasp, changing the fruits of learned investigation from a cumbersome burden on the memory to a small number of connected formularies in the reason. These theories serve as a row of mirrors hung in a line of historic perspective, reflecting every relevant shape and hue of meditation and faith humanity has known, from the ideal visions of the Athenian ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... all, however, no beauty, no South, nothing of the delicate southern clearness of the sky, nothing of grace, no dance, hardly a will to logic; a certain clumsiness even, which is also emphasized, as though the artist wished to say to us: "It is part of my intention"; a cumbersome drapery, something arbitrarily barbaric and ceremonious, a flirring of learned and venerable conceits and witticisms; something German in the best and worst sense of the word, something in the German ...
— Beyond Good and Evil • Friedrich Nietzsche
... which was mounted a "Z" dynamo used as a motor, so that it had a capacity of about twelve horsepower. This machine was laid on its side, with the armature end coming out at the front of the locomotive, and the motive power was applied to the driving-axle by a cumbersome series of friction pulleys. Each wheel of the locomotive had a metal rim and a centre web of wood or papier-mache, and the current picked up by one set of wheels was carried through contact brushes and a brass hub ...
— Edison, His Life and Inventions • Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin
... of the means of maintaining and increasing the productivity of the soil is one thing, but the ability to use this knowledge is another. The very origin and persistence of the cumbersome common-field system in so many parts of the world is sufficient testimony as to the impossibility of improving the quality of the soil in the Middle Ages. The only way in which these men could divide the land into portions of equal value was to divide it first into ...
— The Enclosures in England - An Economic Reconstruction • Harriett Bradley
... parliament, or general convention, wherein it was unanimously resolved upon and condescended to by all the gods, that they should worthily and valiantly stand to their defence. And because they had often seen battles lost by the cumbersome lets and disturbing encumbrances of women confusedly huddled in amongst armies, it was at that time decreed and enacted that they should expel and drive out of heaven into Egypt and the confines of Nile that whole crew of goddesses, disguised in the shapes of weasels, polecats, bats, ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... about, and found sixe Indians, which resisted him with their arrowes, which are the weapons which they vse to fight withall: The horsemen killed two of them, and the other foure escaped; because the countrie is cumbersome with woods and bogs, where the horses stacke fast, and fell with their riders, because they were weake with trauelling vpon the sea. The same night following the Gouernour with an hundred men in the brigantines lighted vpon a towne, which he found without people, because, that ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques and Discoveries of - the English Nation. Vol. XIII. America. Part II. • Richard Hakluyt
... if I had broken into a run she would have seen at once what I had come for, and would have contrived to get this great thing for herself. The mere fact of my displaying any interest at all in such a useless cumbersome hulk as a Talayot must have filled her with suspicion. But then I had thought of this, and had corrected her when she guessed me for French, telling her my true nationality, knowing that the Continental reputation of the Englishman stands good ...
— The Recipe for Diamonds • Charles John Cutcliffe Wright Hyne
... oozed and rippled beside their feet as they went forward. The carpenter was putting in a new set of timbers, and his task was nearly finished, while beside him waited a drill man and a swamper with the cumbersome, spiderlike mechanism ready to set. The carpenter gave a few more blows to a key block, and methodically flung his hammer into his box and hurried back out through the tunnel toward the cage, intent on resuming his work at ...
— The Plunderer • Roy Norton
... blockhead Truchsess had hurt himself in removing the wheel that had been "destroyed," so that only four men were left. Vogt rolled up the spare wheel, but it was almost impossible to fix it; the heavy wheel was too cumbersome ...
— 'Jena' or 'Sedan'? • Franz Beyerlein
... example, it does not require a separate air supply under high pressure, or any extra material to render incandescent, and it may be turned on full immediately upon lighting. It throws a shadowless light, and lends itself to ventilating arrangements; and it is not by any means cumbersome, delicate in construction, or costly in manufacture. One of the greatest advantages to which it lays claim is, however, the power of yielding almost as good results in a small burner as in a large one. This is a consideration ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 362, December 9, 1882 • Various
... whence blackness comes to the Church—whence a certain rust cleaves to even the fairest souls? Doubtless it comes from the tents of Kedar, from the practice of laborious warfare, from the long continuance of a painful sojourn, from the straits of our grievous exile, from our feeble, cumbersome bodies; for the corruptible body presseth down the soul, and the earthly tabernacle weigheth down the mind that museth upon many things. Therefore the souls' desire to be loosed, that being freed from the body they may fly into the embraces of ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 4 • Charles Dudley Warner
... this, it has no look, no air, of a translation. It is as truly an original poem as the 'Faery Queene';—it will give you small idea of Homer, though a far truer one than Pope's epigrams, or Cowper's cumbersome most anti-Homeric Miltonism. For Chapman writes and feels as a poet,—as Homer might have written had he lived in England in the reign of Queen Elizabeth. In short, it is an exquisite poem, in spite of its frequent ...
— Literary Remains (1) • Coleridge
... perfect all the adjustments, but it is running finely now, and it will simplify the work of the next census amazingly, just as the machines you saw have made the old hand punching machines of former times seem very cumbersome. But this one," he added, "is ...
— The Boy With the U.S. Census • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... happen? Obviously they would be obliged to walk the rest of the distance—or to build another boat, or canoe, above the rapids; and it was difficult to say which was the more distasteful alternative of the two. Walking, probably, for although their belongings were few and by no means cumbersome to carry, the forest was so dense that, as they had already proved by experience, it was scarcely possible to travel a hundred feet without being faced by the ...
— Two Gallant Sons of Devon - A Tale of the Days of Queen Bess • Harry Collingwood
... with a magnificent, stately gait. There was something rather magnificent in her whole appearance. Her skirts of old, but rich, black fabric swept about her long, advancing limbs; she held her black-bonneted head high, as if crowned. She pushed the cumbersome baby-carriage with no apparent effort. An ancient India shawl was draped ...
— The Yates Pride • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... and, as Mrs. Guild tells us, Miss Freeman "naturally fell to consulting the heads of departments as the abler and more responsible members of the faculty," instead of laying her plans before the whole faculty at its more or less cumbersome weekly meetings. From this inner circle of heads of departments the Academic Council was gradually evolved. It now includes the president, the dean, professors, associate professors (unless exempted by a special tenure of office), ...
— The Story of Wellesley • Florence Converse
... on the ground by the campfire, Hi, Hippy and Grace having decided that the rifles would be cumbersome to carry, and that their revolvers would be much more serviceable. After Hi Lang had given final instructions as to how they were to operate, the three started out and soon were out of ...
— Grace Harlowe's Overland Riders on the Great American Desert • Jessie Graham Flower
... passion to his representation and lifts him often to a true if sober eloquence. But in at least two of his novels imagination takes him, as only imagination can take a novelist, beyond the reach of either intelligence or conscience. Together, a little cumbersome, a little sprawling, nevertheless glows with an intensity which gives off heat as well as light. It is more than an exhaustive document upon modern marriage; it is interpretation as well. Clark's Field, a sparer, clearer story, is even more than interpretation; it is ...
— Contemporary American Novelists (1900-1920) • Carl Van Doren
... year at Blois, Colonel and Mrs. Burton, who had at last succeeded in persuading themselves that they were really invalids, resolved to go in search of a more genial climate. Out came the cumbersome old yellow chariot again, and in this and a chaise drawn by an ugly beast called Dobbin, the family, with Colonel Burton's blowpipes, retorts and other "notions," as his son put it, proceeded by easy stages to Marseilles, whence chariot, ...
— The Life of Sir Richard Burton • Thomas Wright
... girl in his bunk, removed the cumbersome spacesuit. Her eyes blinked faintly, then sprang open. But they did not see him; they were staring straight ahead. Her mouth opened and shut weakly as though she were speaking, but no sound issued from it. He brought her water, but when he returned she had fallen asleep. He returned to ...
— The Beast of Space • F.E. Hardart
... Men, whose Burthens were the least cumbersome, had orders to march before, with their Tomahawks, and clear the way, in order to make an Opening for the Surveyors. By their Assistance we made a Shift to push the Line half a Mile in 3 Hours, and then reacht a small piece of firm Land, ...
— Southern Literature From 1579-1895 • Louise Manly
... to botanical terminology is the subject of botanical nomenclature. The old method of using a number of Latin words to describe each different plant is obviously too cumbersome, and several attempts had been made prior to the time of Linnaeus to substitute simpler methods. Linnaeus himself made several unsatisfactory attempts before he finally hit upon his system of "trivial names," which was developed ...
— A History of Science, Volume 2(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... time, then a water gauge causes a hand to move around a dial, then two hands for the hours and minutes; then comes a great moment—by the use of weights the clepsydra becomes a clock, at first massive and cumbersome, later lightened, becoming capable, with Tycho-Brahe, of marking seconds; and then another moment—Huyghens invents the spiral spring to replace the weights, and the clock, simplified and lightened, becomes ...
— Essay on the Creative Imagination • Th. Ribot
... called Tartane, which was their own manufacture, prized by them above all the velvets, brocades, and tissues of Europe and Asia. They now lounge along in loose great coats, of coarse russet, equally mean and cumbersome, and betray manifest marks of dejection — Certain it is, the government could not have taken a more effectual method to ...
— The Expedition of Humphry Clinker • Tobias Smollett
... speed, however, we proceeded south on meridian 179 degrees E., latitude 68, when (just as we were sighting the Admiralty Mountains, our first glimpse of the regions of the Pole) we encountered a south-westerly gale, which, with our cumbersome deck cargo, made the ...
— The Woman Thou Gavest Me - Being the Story of Mary O'Neill • Hall Caine
... both knew, bureau drawers full of Aunt Anne's things, doubtless in the perfect order that was a part of her exquisite mastery of life. She disliked traveling with a cumbersome outfit, even from the city to this ancestral foothold. Everything possible was left behind her ...
— Old Crow • Alice Brown
... ambitions, Boss with his busy step and fishing-tackle, and baby Ethel, the wee darling, who ran after Ruth the first time she saw her and begged her to come and play with her; ever since, she formed a part of the drapery of Ruth's skirt or a rather cumbersome necklace about her neck. Every girl who has been debarred the blessing of babies in the house loves them promiscuously and passionately. Ruth was no exception; it amused the ladies to watch her cuddle the child and wonder aloud at ...
— Other Things Being Equal • Emma Wolf
... to shift the packs of the others. Nakpa, or Long Ears, her kittenlike gray mule, which had heretofore been honored with the precious burden of the twin babies, was to be given a heavier and more cumbersome load. Weeko's two-year-old spotted pony was selected to ...
— Old Indian Days • [AKA Ohiyesa], Charles A. Eastman
... military skill was so strikingly displayed. Japan made use of the lessons which it had well learned in its forty years of intercourse with Europe. China fought in the obsolete fashion of a past age. As a result, the cumbersome mediaeval giant went down before the alert modern dwarf, and the people of Eastern Asia were taught a new and astounding lesson ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 12 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... was worth seeing—the balancing and chasseeing and waltzing of the cumbersome old boat to make a landing. It seemed to be always attended with the difficulty and the improbability of a new enterprise; and the relief when it did sidle up anywhere within rope's-throw of the spot aimed at! And the roustabout throwing the rope from the ...
— Balcony Stories • Grace E. King
... that he was at present delivered out of his mouth, he adds, And the Lord shall deliver me from every evil work, and will preserve me unto his heavenly kingdom. He shall and will. Here is a man at liberty, here are no cumbersome fears. But how came the apostle by this confidence of his well-being and of his share in another world? Why, "he had committed the keeping of his soul to God," compare 2 Timothy 1:12 with 4:18. For to commit ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... one foot a second. You know that less than ten or eleven pictures a second affect the retina as separate, broken pictures. The use of this compact little motion camera was suggested to me by an ingenious but cumbersome invention recently offered to the police in Paris—the installation on the clock-towers in various streets of cinematograph apparatus directed by wireless. The motion camera as a detective has now proved its value. I have here three films taken at Trimble's, ...
— The Dream Doctor • Arthur B. Reeve
... excluded their records from the thousand records which furnished the basis for the frequency tables; we excluded also a few peculiar records obtained from subjects of whom nothing was known, on the ground that such records would serve only to make the tables more cumbersome, without adding anything to their practical value. The total number of records ...
— A Study of Association in Insanity • Grace Helen Kent
... still, small voices too low for human ears; and because we are poor listeners we fail to catch much that is fairly within reach. Our best rains are heard mostly on roofs, and winds in chimneys; and when by choice or compulsion we are pushed into the heart of a storm, the confusion made by cumbersome equipments and nervous haste and mean fear, prevent our hearing any other than the loudest expressions. Yet we may draw enjoyment from storm sounds that are beyond hearing, and storm movements we cannot see. The sublime whirl of planets around their suns is as silent as raindrops oozing ...
— The Mountains of California • John Muir
... disagreement arising from the inevitable errors of tables, or the uncertainty of observation, are avoided, and Easter determined without the [v.04 p.0998] possibility of mistake. But this advantage is only procured by the sacrifice of some accuracy; for notwithstanding the cumbersome apparatus employed, the conditions of the problem are not always exactly satisfied, nor is it possible that they can be always satisfied by any similar method of proceeding. The equinox is fixed on ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... throne! My time, I told thee (and that time for thee Were better farthest off), is not yet come. When that comes, think not thou to find me slack On my part aught endeavouring, or to need Thy politic maxims, or that cumbersome 400 Luggage of war there shewn me—argument Of human weakness rather than of strength. My brethren, as thou call'st them, those Ten Tribes, I must deliver, if I mean to reign David's true heir, and his full sceptre sway To just extent over ...
— Paradise Regained • John Milton |
