"Humped" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Fulkerson. "Well, we must see what can be done. I supposed you would be all settled by this time, or I should have humped myself to find you something. None of those places I ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... thick reinforce on the breech of an otherwise slender barrel would not fit the older twin-trail carriage. The single, solid "stock" or trail eliminated transoms, for to the sides of the stock itself were bolted short, high cheeks, humped like a camel to cradle the gun so high that great latitude in elevation was possible. The elevating screw was threaded through a nut in the stock, right under the big reinforce ...
— Artillery Through the Ages - A Short Illustrated History of Cannon, Emphasizing Types Used in America • Albert Manucy
... most of the wild bovine animals the horns are both longer and thicker in the bull than in the cow, and in the cow-banteng (Bos sondaicus) the horns are remarkably small, and inclined much backwards. In the domestic races of cattle, both of the humped and humpless types, the horns are short and thick in the bull, longer and more slender in the cow and ox; and in the Indian buffalo, they are shorter and thicker in the bull, longer and more slender in the cow. In the wild gaour (B. gaurus) the horns are mostly both longer and thicker in the bull ...
— The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex • Charles Darwin
... giant of six feet five, the centre of a group of eager auditors of the Egyptian marvels; Hallam, affable and unpretending, and a copious talker; Gifford, a small, shriveled, deformed man of sixty, with something of a humped back, eyes that diverge, and a large mouth, reclining on a sofa, propped up by cushions, with none of the petulance that you would expect from his Review, but a mild, simple, unassuming man,—he it is who prunes the contributions and takes the sting out of them (one would ...
— Washington Irving • Charles Dudley Warner
... really pitch. He just humped up a few times," replied Flo, and then when she saw how Carley was going to take it she burst into a merry peal of laughter. Charley, the sheep herder was grinning, and some of the other men turned ...
— The Call of the Canyon • Zane Grey
... wonderful an affinity with the old carols of Christendom, which yet is so unforgettable and so affecting. As the three stood side by side looking out of the window they saw the serpent of fire, that rope-coil of tapers that, stretching round the entire Place, humped over the flights of steps and the platforms set amongst the churches, writhes incessantly on itself. But, even as they watched, the serpent grew dim and patchy, and the lights began to go out, as group after group broke away homewards. ...
— Dawn of All • Robert Hugh Benson
... walk. She felt glad of that, too, because she was too tired to walk, anyway, and the baby was very sweet. Then, once more, a long shadow came between her and the moon and someone bent over her. Ah, 'twas Daddy Skinner, the same beloved, heavy humped-shoulders—the same precious face, and he was fondling the moon baby, and twice kissed her with tender, twitching lips. She smiled happily and moved a little in the snow. She tried to catch Daddy's hand, tried to call his dear name, but only a little sound came from her tightened, ...
— The Secret of the Storm Country • Grace Miller White
... could go around, and I did. On a dead spruce wedged in among the living ones I saw the object of her solicitude; a lovely sight it was! Two young bluejays huddled close together on a twig. They were "humped up," with heads drawn down into their shoulders, and breast feathers fluffed out like snowy-white floss silk, completely covering their feet and the perch. No wonder that poor little mother was anxious, for a more beautiful pair I never saw, ...
— Little Brothers of the Air • Olive Thorne Miller
... is irregular and disproportionate. The trunk, though small compared with the head, appears massive against the background of the diminutive extremities. The back is somewhat humped, arching at the waist-line, while the abdomen protrudes like a balloon, with a hernia, often, at the navel. The extremities are short, bowed, cold, and livid, covered with rolls of the infiltrated skin, rolls which cannot be smoothed out. Hands and feet are broad, pudgy, ...
— The Glands Regulating Personality • Louis Berman, M.D.
... flames of hell in his eye. And I'd trap around on the frozen ground, as a proper hunter ought, And beasts I'd find of every kind, but never the one I sought. Never a track in the white ice-pack that humped and heaved and flawed, Till I came to think: "Why, strike me pink! if the creature ain't a fraud." And then one night in the waning light, as I hurried home to sup, I hears a roar by the cabin door, and a great white hulk heaves up. ...
— Ballads of a Bohemian • Robert W. Service
... the same fashioned clothes as this woman, and doubtless Leah had become pink-eyed through the tears of vexation she had shed over the ancestral humped quadruped she had ridden; and most certainly Lot's wife, Ruth, Solomon's wives and appendages, Jezebel, and every other woman mentioned in the Bible once watched just such a dawn rise across just ...
— The Hawk of Egypt • Joan Conquest
... this sub-family may be divided, are oxen, the buffaloes, and the yaks. There are no true bison in our limits, the commonly so-called bison being properly a wild ox. The taurine or Ox group is divided into the Zebus, or humped domestic cattle; Taurus, humpless cattle with cylindrical horns; and Gavaeus, humpless cattle ...
— Natural History of the Mammalia of India and Ceylon • Robert A. Sterndale
... whose functions are particular and peculiar—since Confederation. To Ottawa, Sir Thomas is little short of a miracle. The frame of mind on both sides of politics regarding Sir Thomas is not unlike that of the farmer who saw a two-humped camel for the first time. "Hell," said Ottawa, "they ain't no such animal!" Now it calls Sir Thomas White 'great'—and even ...
— The Masques of Ottawa • Domino
... of us, while waiting at a water-tank for a freight, should have unhesitatingly classified him as a "gay-cat." Gay-cat is the synonym for tenderfoot in Hobo Land. This gay-cat was well along in years—somewhere around forty-five, I should judge. His shoulders were humped a trifle, and his face was seamed ...
— The Road • Jack London
... the eyes of the white man. They seemed to beg of him the answer to a terrible question. It was always the same question. It had been asked of Pharaoh. They asked it of Leopold. For hours, squatting on the iron deck-plates, humped on their naked haunches, crowding close together, they muttered apparently interminable criticisms of Everett. Their eyes never left him. He resented this unceasing scrutiny. It got upon his nerves. He ...
— Once Upon A Time • Richard Harding Davis
... as I took my seat at the open window, unfortunately without blinds to screen me, was most comical. A big pompous fellow turned his wicked-looking white eye upon me, drew himself into a queer humped-up position, with all his feathers on end, and apparently by a strong effort squeezed out a husky and squeaky, yet loud cry of two notes, ...
— A Bird-Lover in the West • Olive Thorne Miller
... from his snug bed he gathered the waste-basket into his arms and commenced to dig in it like a sportive terrier. After a messy minute or two he successfully excavated the crumpled little gray tissue circular and smoothed it out carefully on his humped-up knees. The expression in his eyes all the time was quite a curious mixture of ...
— Molly Make-Believe • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
... clattered down a gulley and galloped across a wooden bridge that spanned a dead watercourse. The ascent was steep and they took it at a rush, backs humped, necks stretched, hoofs clattering among ...
— Treasure and Trouble Therewith - A Tale of California • Geraldine Bonner
... are two deep-sea vessels likewise, of modern build, ships from Osaka. And there is a most romantic little breakwater built of hewn stone, with a stone lantern perched at the end of it; and there is a pretty humped bridge connecting it with a tiny island on which I see a shrine of Benten, ...
— Glimpses of an Unfamiliar Japan - First Series • Lafcadio Hearn
... in the grey dawn Joe had already risen, lit the fire, packed his swag, and brewed our last pinch of tea in the billy. We drank to each other's good fortune in silence. Then, after a hand-press, Joe humped his swag and strode away, leaving me with moistened eyes. I felt I had lost my only friend. I have foregathered with much ...
— Reminiscences of a South African Pioneer • W. C. Scully
... wall; saw some one lie Humped at his feet, half-hidden by a rug, And stooped to give the sleeper's arm a tug. "I'm looking for headquarters." No reply. "God blast your neck!" (For days he'd had no sleep,) "Get up and guide me through this stinking place." Savage, he kicked a soft, unanswering heap, And flashed his beam ...
— The War Poems of Siegfried Sassoon • Siegfried Sassoon
... of the unknown east. It was the multitudinous beat of their horses' hoofs which caused that low throbbing in his ears. Some were so close to him as he looked down upon them that he could see clearly their thin wiry horses, and the strange humped figures of the swarthy riders, sitting forward on the withers, shapeless bundles, their short legs hanging stirrupless, their bodies balanced as firmly as though they were part of the beast. In those nearest he could see the bow and the quiver, the long spear and the ...
— The Last Galley Impressions and Tales - Impressions and Tales • Arthur Conan Doyle
... He put his clothes on feverishly, but before he had half finished he heard her running up the stairs, and his heart sank. She came with the step that indicated something important on her mind. He knew as well how she looked as if he could see her coming. She was humped over slightly, her head was down, both hands grasping her skirts in front, and her feet fairly glimmering at the speed she ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume IX (of X) • Various
... ain't encouraging. So they give it up, but there wa'n't a male on the place, from old Dr. Blatt, mixer of Blatt's Burdock Bitters and Blatt's Balm for Beauty, down to the boy that emptied the ashes, who wouldn't have humped himself on all fours and crawled eight miles if she'd asked him to. And that includes me and Cap'n Jonadab, and we're about as tough a couple of women-proof old hulks as ...
— Cape Cod Stories - The Old Home House • Joseph C. Lincoln
... untrodden by any king of Assyria.* Having reached his destination, he captured two petty kings, Eparna and Shitirparna, and exiled them to Assyria, together with their people, their thoroughbred horses, and their two-humped camels,—in fine, all the possessions of their subjects. Shortly after this, three other Median chiefs, hitherto intractable—Uppis of Par-takka, Zanasana of Partukka,** Ramatea of Urakazabarna—came to Nineveh to present the king with horses and lapis-lazuli, ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 8 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... The procession was so huge that it seemed to have no head and no tail. It involved itself a hundred times over; it swirled in the square, it humped itself over the Rosary Church; it elongated itself half a mile away up beyond our Mother's garlanded statue; it eddied round the Grotto. It was one immense pool and river of lights and song. Each group sang ...
— Lourdes • Robert Hugh Benson
... pulled by the ruins of San Mateo, Burlingame, and Milbrae, but just outside of San Bruno the long line of straining cars came to a sudden halt. We climbed out to find out the cause of the stop. Ahead we saw several hundred yards of track buckled and humped like much crumpled ribbon. We had gone as far as ...
— San Francisco During the Eventful Days of April, 1906 • James B. Stetson
... too!' 'Who's Timmy?' says Jake to the matron. 'Is he their dog?' says he. 'No,' says she, 'he's their brother,' says she. 'Lord 'a' mercy!' says I, 'don't tell me there's another one!' 'Yes, there he is,' says she, an' she points to him. He was settin' on the edge of a long seat, all humped up, an' queer, watchin' everything, without sayin' a word, but if I live to be a hundred I'll never get the look o' that child's face out o' my mind. It was so kind o' awful lonesome an' forsaken an' hungry-lookin', an' so fearful old, an' him ...
— Treasure Valley • Marian Keith
... a clear view of a vast body, great humped shoulders, and sharp, crooked horns. But now that the danger had come his pulses ceased to leap and hand and heart were steady. The arrow sang from the bow and buried itself deep in the great bull's ...
— The Great Sioux Trail - A Story of Mountain and Plain • Joseph Altsheler
... have become crystallized, as it were, in age and decrepitude, and advanced no further in either—was pottering around the garden, eying askant, like an old robin, the new plough furrows. Pauper women humped their calico backs over the green slopes of the fields, searching for dandelion greens, but not digging, because ...
— Jerome, A Poor Man - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... the familiar surrey, with Mordecai humped upon the front seat. "I don't see how the colonel ever knowed you," said he, as she shook hands with him. "I never seen the like ...
— The Cost • David Graham Phillips
... came scudding down out of the darkness of the upstairs to dress tumultuously at the kitchen stove. They humped and shivered, holding up their bare feet from the cold floor, like chickens in new fallen snow. They were irritable, and snarled and snapped and struck like cats and dogs. Mrs. Markham stood it for a while with mere commands to "hush up," but at last her patience ...
— Main-Travelled Roads • Hamlin Garland
... bacon are always tea and bacon, even in the gross darkness and mental tension which precede a Big Push. Presently various humped figures in greatcoats, having gathered in the open ditch which did duty for Officers' Mess, broke into spasmodic conversation—conversation rendered even more spasmodic by the almost ceaseless roar of guns. There were guns all round us—rank upon rank: to judge by the noise, you would have said ...
— The First Hundred Thousand • Ian Hay
... They humped it, making the other alley's mouth by a margin slim indeed, followed by human howls and a clattering volley of sticks ...
— A Night Out • Edward Peple
... no answer. It had humped itself up into a little ball, and was eyeing Jim with the keenest ...
— Back to God's Country and Other Stories • James Oliver Curwood
... down by the column. I watched him with a curious fascination, and as I grew sleepier and sleepier that part of my consciousness which was not counting steps, recognized him as a cripple who had come out to Mesopotamia in this special role 'to do his bit.' His humped back, protruding under his mackintosh as he labored forward, bent into a hoop, must have suggested the idea which was accepted as fact until I pulled myself together at the next halt and heard the mechanical and unimaginative half of me repeat 'Four thousand, seven hundred, ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume V (of 8) • Francis J. (Francis Joseph) Reynolds, Allen L. (Allen Leon)
... reached Mrs. Gelbraith's, Penrod sat patiently humped upon a gilt chair during the lengthy exchange of greetings between his mother. and Mrs. Gelbraith. That is one of the things a boy must learn to bear: when his mother meets a compeer there is always a long and dreary wait for him, while the two appear to be using strange symbols ...
— Penrod • Booth Tarkington
... than ever. He was flat on his side, with his spine humped up, moaning and straining at intervals. But now relief was in sight—so thought the men. With a tin dipper they tried to pour some relief into the open mouth of the sufferer, who had so little appreciation that he simply taxed his remaining strength ...
— Rolf In The Woods • Ernest Thompson Seton
... was a trick of Mormons. They're full of tricks. I've heard Oldring's men tell about Mormons. Maybe the Withersteen woman wasn't minding her halter! I saw the man who made the deal. He was a little, queer-shaped man, all humped up. He sat his horse well. I heard one of our men say afterward there was no better rider on the sage than this fellow. What ...
— Riders of the Purple Sage • Zane Grey
... wiry. He clambered up and down his mast, fetching things at his master's behest; leapt nonchalantly for our rail or his own spar, as the case might be, across the staggering abyss; clung so well with his toes that he might almost have been classified with the quadrumana; and between times squatted humped over on the rail, watching us with ...
— African Camp Fires • Stewart Edward White
... remember; and each time it was down a step lower, and each time I got a harder master. They have been cruel, every one; they have worked me night and day in degraded employments, and beaten me; they have fed me ill, and some days not at all. And so I am but bones, now, with a rough and frowsy skin humped and cornered upon my shrunken body—that skin which was once so glossy, that skin which she loved to stroke with her hand. I was the pride of the mountains and the Great Plains; now I am a scarecrow and despised. These piteous wrecks that are my comrades here say we have ...
— A Horse's Tale • Mark Twain
... fearless of heart, and passionately desirous of a military life. In figure he was deformed, one shoulder being higher and one leg longer than the other, while his chest was flat and his back slightly humped. His features were not unhandsome, though very pale, and he spoke with some difficulty. He was feeble and sickly as a boy, subject to intermittent fever, and wasted away so greatly that it seemed as if he would not ...
— Historical Tales - The Romance of Reality - Volume VII • Charles Morris
... agitated. "Perhaps I oughtn't to have said that," he said; "but when the brute has huge humped shoulders like a chimpanzee, and bristles sticking out of its ...
— The Wisdom of Father Brown • G. K. Chesterton
... lay a barren stretch of beach, humped with sand dunes. It was skirted beyond by a thick ...
— Tom Swift and the Electronic Hydrolung • Victor Appleton
... vigour and effect. It cheered Frank greatly to hear the more or less familiar words, for he realised almost at once that neither Priscilla nor Jimmy Kinsella understood them. He felt a warm affection for Miss Rutherford rise in his heart when she told Jimmy, who sat humped up over his oar, to keep his back flat. Jimmy merely smiled in reply. He had known since he was two years old that the flatness or roundness of the rower's back has nothing whatever to do with the progress of a boat in Rosnacree ...
— Priscilla's Spies 1912 • George A. Birmingham
... up here in Salem at a man's Named Sanders with a gang of four or five Doing the haying. No one liked the boss. He was one of the kind sports call a spider, All wiry arms and legs that spread out wavy From a humped body nigh as big's a biscuit. But work! that man could work, especially If by so doing he could get more work Out of his hired help. I'm not denying He was hard on himself. I couldn't find That he kept any hours—not for himself. Daylight and ...
— North of Boston • Robert Frost
... was pointing out to him that, on this occasion only, the visit being for the purposes of parley and not of attack, pistols might be looked on as non-essentials. Whatever his arguments, they were successful, for, finally, humped as to the back and muttering, Buck ...
— The Little Nugget • P.G. Wodehouse
... who was smoking a pipe in the chimney-corner, as humped and gloomy as a fowl on a wet day, and he was as surprised as me at getting a letter with a London postmark, and registered too; and he was that surprised that he kept turning it over and over, and wondering who it could have come from, till we thought it would be the best way to ...
— In Homespun • Edith Nesbit
... tail, and a shawl of many colours formed his flapping wings. A truly noble bird, whose legs had the genuine strut, whose eyes shone watchfully, and whose voice had a ring that evidently struck terror into the catterpillar's soul, if it was a catterpillar. He squirmed, he wriggled, he humped as fast as he could, trying to escape; but all in vain. The tufted bird espied him, gave one warbling sort of crow, pounced upon ...
— Eight Cousins • Louisa M. Alcott
... liked him. He had been conscious of the fact, but it had not disturbed him. He had no more thought of this middle-aged, harsh-featured New Jersey farmer's daughter than he had of one of the dining-chairs. Gordon sat humped upon himself, as he sat nowadays, a marked stoop of age was becoming visible in his broad shoulders, and he ate perfunctorily without a word. James, after a number of futile attempts to talk to Clemency, subsided himself into bewildered ...
— 'Doc.' Gordon • Mary E. Wilkins-Freeman
... Robinette. Besides, Ba'tiste already was in the buggy, striving to cover his feelings by a stream of badinage directed toward Golemar, the wolf-dog, and waiting for Houston to take his place beside him. A moment more and they were driving away, Ba'tiste humped over the reins as usual, Houston striving to put from him the agony of the new accusation. Finally, the trapper cocked his head and spoke, rather to the horse and Golemar than ...
— The White Desert • Courtney Ryley Cooper
... money, men must eat. That fact loomed biggest on her daily schedule, left her no room to think overlong of other things. Her huff over, she felt rather sorry for Charlie, a feeling accentuated by sight of him humped on a log in the sun, too engrossed in his perplexities to be where he normally was at that hour, in the thick of the logging, working harder than ...
— Big Timber - A Story of the Northwest • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... Ruminantia.—The Gaur Oxen Humped cattle Encounter of a cow and a leopard Draft oxen Their treatment A Tavalam Attempt to introduce the camel (note) Buffaloes Sporting buffaloes Peculiar structure of ...
— Sketches of the Natural History of Ceylon • J. Emerson Tennent
... derned fool!" growled his neighbor, "spose some chap happens to pass by thar, and sees the old man doin' a man's work at eighty, and slouches like you and me lying round drunk, and that chap, feelin' kinder humped, goes up some dark night and heaves a load of cut pine over his fence, who's got anything to say about it? Say?" Certainly not the speaker, who had done the act suggested, nor the penitent and remorseful hearer, ...
— Drift from Two Shores • Bret Harte
... mother to study braces and to fear that he will develop consumption. Yet you can study the world's health records and never find a line to prove that any man with "occupation or profession—novel reading" is recorded as dying of consumption. The humped-over attitude promotes compression of the lungs, telescoping of the diaphragm, atrophy of the abdominal abracadabra and other things (see Physiological Slush, p. ...
— The Delicious Vice • Young E. Allison
... Brewer; "no wonder his shoulders air humped. But you never hears as much as a grunt from him. He knows he ain't never give her no bringin's ...
— Tess of the Storm Country • Grace Miller White
... down there at the foot of the tree I see a quail. He's humped over and seems to be trying to make himself smaller all ...
— Boy Scouts in Southern Waters • G. Harvey Ralphson
... crouched over, with his back humped up almost as if deformed, and his left hand had ...
— The Exploits of Elaine • Arthur B. Reeve
... more from its grey to its glittering extreme as the sun climbed to the zenith over Westminster, and two men crossed Westminster Bridge. One man was very tall and the other very short; they might even have been fantastically compared to the arrogant clock-tower of Parliament and the humbler humped shoulders of the Abbey, for the short man was in clerical dress. The official description of the tall man was M. Hercule Flambeau, private detective, and he was going to his new offices in a new pile of flats facing the Abbey entrance. The official ...
— The Innocence of Father Brown • G. K. Chesterton
... than of good taste, she wore a dress of doubtful shade, puffed up by means of an extravagant pannier, and buttoned obliquely across the chest, according to that ridiculous and ungraceful style invented by flat or humped women. ...
— Other People's Money • Emile Gaboriau
... you suppose happened? Why, the Farmer's dog came by, and away went the little rabbit, and up went Miss Pussy Cat's back, and her tail grew so big that had she tried to get back into the hollow stump I guess she would have had to leave her tail behind her! But she didn't. No sireemam. She just humped her back and meowed, and the Farmer's dog kept right on after Little Jack Rabbit, but of course he never ...
— Little Jack Rabbit and the Squirrel Brothers • David Cory
... warmer plains. 2. Humped oxen and fat-tailed sheep. 3. Scarani. 4. The Karaunahs ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo Volume 1 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... mares" we had read so much about and longed so much to see! Here were the "picturesque costumes!" This was the "gallant spectacle!" Tatterdemalion vagrants—cheap braggadocio—"Arabian mares" spined and necked like the ichthyosaurus in the museum, and humped and cornered like a dromedary! To glance at the genuine son of the desert is to take the romance out of him forever—to behold his steed is to long in charity to strip his harness off and let him ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... to giggle a little. She giggled and opened the automobile door. She giggled and lifted Posie out. She giggled and carried Posie to the Witch's chariot. She giggled and tied the Witch's hat under Posie's chin. She giggled and tied the humped-back cape around ...
— Fairy Prince and Other Stories • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
... fire, a small humped-up figure in a gorgeous dressing-gown. At last she said, "Why ...
— Mistress Anne • Temple Bailey
... the fortunate position that the further he marched the more food he got, the softer bed, more ammunition, and the moral comfort of his big naval guns that he fought to a standstill and then abandoned. Heavy artillery meant hundreds of native porters or dove-coloured humped oxen of the country to drag them; and heavy roads defied the most powerful machinery to ...
— Sketches of the East Africa Campaign • Robert Valentine Dolbey
... own large flocks of sheep and goats, and live on mutton, milk, butter, and cheese. Among their domestic animals are also the two-humped camel and a small, hardy, strongly built horse. Their life is a perpetual wandering. They move with their flocks from one steppe to another. If the herbage is dried up in a district, or all the pasture ...
— From Pole to Pole - A Book for Young People • Sven Anders Hedin
... a cold snake, and the sun will not thaw me." He struck himself fiercely on the breast and stared at her. "Look at me, humped and hideous. How could this rugged hull prove an ...
— The Proud Prince • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... We humped our saddles and swags ourselves; a stiffish load too, but the night was cool, and we did our best. It was no use growling. It had to be done, and the sooner the better. It seemed a long time—following father step by step—before we came to the place where I thought the cattle were going to ...
— Robbery Under Arms • Thomas Alexander Browne, AKA Rolf Boldrewood
... stopped. It was as if a hand had caught her back. For suddenly there rose up before her a figure so strange that for a moment she felt almost like a scared child. It sprang from the bushes and stood facing her like an animal at bay—a short creature neither man nor boy, misshapen, grotesquely humped, possessing long thin arms of almost baboon-like proportions. The head was sunken into the shoulders. It was flung back and the face upraised—and it was the face that made her pause, for it was the most pathetic sight she had ever looked upon. It was the face of a lad of two or three and twenty, ...
— The Obstacle Race • Ethel M. Dell
... neck was massive, and an angry red, sprinkled with long, wiry hairs. It fastened his flat-backed head to a body that was like a gorilla's, thick and wide and humped. And his arms gave an added touch of the animal, for they were so long that his great palms reached to his knees; and so sprung out at the shoulder, and so curved in at the wrist, that when they met at the fingers they formed a pair of mammoth, muscled tongs—tongs that gave Barber ...
— The Rich Little Poor Boy • Eleanor Gates
... low his head. Red apples rolled before him; Eve's apples; seek-no-furthers. He tasted one, I another; it tasted of the ground. Fairy land not yet, thought I, flinging my bridle to a humped old tree, that crooked out an arm to catch it. For the way now lay where path was none, and none might go but by himself, and only go by daring. Through blackberry brakes that tried to pluck me back, though I but strained ...
— The Piazza Tales • Herman Melville
... eyes returned to the body of his victim, where it lay both humped and sprawling, incredibly small and strangely meaner than in life. In these poor, miserly clothes, in that ungainly attitude, the dealer lay like so much sawdust. Markheim had feared to see it, and, lo! it was ...
— English Prose - A Series of Related Essays for the Discussion and Practice • Frederick William Roe (edit. and select.)
... "which they called double-humped," to three men, who shall return them on the first of the month, or pay six minas of silver. If they do not pay the money, interest shall accrue at the rate of five shekels per mina. Dated the fourteenth of Tishri, ...
— Babylonian and Assyrian Laws, Contracts and Letters • C. H. W. Johns
... of a man be found shorter than the other, the man is deformed; because there is something wanting to complete the whole idea we form of a man; and this has the same effect in natural faults, as maiming and mutilation produce from accidents. So if the back be humped, the man is deformed; because his back has an unusual figure, and what carries with it the idea of some disease or misfortune; So if a man's neck be considerably longer or shorter than usual, we say he is deformed in that part, because men are not commonly made in that ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. I. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... lazily, dragging his saddle by its horn. He saddled the trembling animal warily, then swung lightly to the seat. The broncho stood for an instant motionless, then humped itself from the earth, an incarnate demon of action. As a pitcher, a weaver, a sunfisher, this roan had no equal. Its ill-shaped nose and wicked red eyes were enough to give one bad dreams. But the lean-flanked young miner appeared clamped ...
— The Highgrader • William MacLeod Raine
... and disturb all these learned people. He was frightened again. But he stood up, faced the president, affectedly folded his arms, hastily unfolded them and put his hands in his pockets, one foot before the other, one shoulder humped a little higher than ...
— The Trail of the Hawk - A Comedy of the Seriousness of Life • Sinclair Lewis
... men in the moonlight That by their shadows stand; Three hobble humped on crutches, And two lack ...
— A Treasury of War Poetry - British and American Poems of the World War 1914-1917 • Edited, with Introduction and Notes, by George Herbert Clarke
... drew his cloak about his humped shoulders, and in the flickering dim light from overhead his face stood out in all its ghastly pallor, accentuated by the dead black hair and mustache. But his eyes were burning strangely, and when they saw it the men drew back, ...
— Nuala O'Malley • H. Bedford-Jones
... he wouldn't budge a foot!—not an inch—no amount of licking had any effect on him. He just humped his back, and tossed his head and grunted—he must have had a skin as thick as three donkeys! I got on to him myself and put the spurs in, and he went up on his hind legs and nearly came back with me—that was all the ...
— All on the Irish Shore - Irish Sketches • E. Somerville and Martin Ross
... not wishing to see any one just then. "Guess I'd better find the other door to this house and go home," he said to himself. But there wasn't any other door. Little White Fox wasn't afraid, but then,—he just humped himself all up in a corner and wished he didn't have to meet the stranger, that ...
— Little White Fox and his Arctic Friends • Roy J. Snell
... to come out into space. We were wondering how to hide!" That is a quick-talking one, as small as a child. He looks as if he might have descended from a bat—gray silken fur on his pointed face, big night-seeing eyes, and big sensitive ears, with a humped shape on the back of his air suit which might be folded wings. "We were trying to conceal where we had built, so that humans would not guess we were near and ...
— The Carnivore • G. A. Morris
... the tray in both hands and pushed open the swing-doors with her side, thus making her ingress to the dining-room in a sort of crab-fashion. Mrs. Paynter was gone. Mr. Queed sat alone in the dining-room. His book lay open on the table and he was humped over it, hand in ...
— Queed • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... looked upon with surprise,—marriages between tall and beautiful women and puny men, or between ugly little creatures and handsome men. Every man who is cursed with some bodily infirmity, no matter what it is,—club-feet, a halting-gait, a humped-back, excessive ugliness, claret stains upon the cheek, Roguin's species of deformity, and other monstrosities the result of causes beyond the control of the sufferer,—has but two courses open to him: either he must make himself feared, or he must practise the virtues of exquisite loving-kindness; ...
— Rise and Fall of Cesar Birotteau • Honore de Balzac
... adventurous yet tragic evening, when at first light our hero awoke and realised that the prince and his money had gone and would not return; when he saw himself alone in this little white tomb, betrayed, robbed and abandoned in the middle of savage Algeria with a one-humped camel and some loose change as his total resources, for the first time some misgivings entered his mind. He began to have doubts about Montenegro, about friendship, fame and even lions. Overcome by misery ...
— Tartarin de Tarascon • Alphonse Daudet
... flown. He doubled and redoubled the robe that had covered him, and humped it in the hollow between his right arm and his side. Resting the butt of the rifle on the fur, he fired again, and a bird fell. He clutched it greedily and found that he had shot most of the meat ...
— Smoke Bellew • Jack London
... He took a turn of the rope around the saddle horn. At last he had mastered the knack of the thing! Why, it was as easy as rolling pie-crust! He was about to wonder what he was going to do next, when the cow—which happened to be a large and active steer—humped itself ...
— Sundown Slim • Henry Hubert Knibbs
... enormous shoulders, fairly "humped" with layers of fat. His head was thrust forward as he wrote, and his shaven neck was pink, and bare, and overlapped his collar in a most ...
— A Little Miss Nobody - Or, With the Girls of Pinewood Hall • Amy Bell Marlowe
... lute of three thousand strings, and upon it impacted the early music at the dawn of things. In the planetary slime he heard the screaming struggles of fishy beasts; in the tanglewood of hot, aspiring forests were muffled roarings of gigantic mastodons, of tapirs that humped at the sky, beetles big as camels, and crocodiles with wings. Wicked creatures snarled crepitantly, and their crackling noises were echoed by lizard and dragon, ululating snouted birds and hissing leagues of snaky lengths. Stannum fled from these disturbing dreams seeking safety in the mountains. ...
— Melomaniacs • James Huneker
... squares in which flourished all sorts of vegetables, including sweet corn and potatoes and several other less familiar varieties. In pastures, fenced in with mathematical regularity by hedges of the African cactus thorn, herds of humped cattle were feeding contentedly in the mellow glow of the setting sun, occasionally lowing softly, which latter made Billy, as he expressed it, "long ...
— The Boy Aviators in Africa • Captain Wilbur Lawton
... ideas these remarkable amateur experts publish they won't "go down" with the man who has humped his pack and has ...
— At Suvla Bay • John Hargrave
... over the past and planning for the future, a knock came to the door, and almost immediately there came in a little man, short and squat, with humped shoulders, bushy, grizzled hair and beard, through which peered sharp little black eyes. His head and face and eyes made one think of a little ...
— The Prospector - A Tale of the Crow's Nest Pass • Ralph Connor
... (humped).—A small apple-like plant, not more than 4 in. high, with a depressed top, the lower part being narrowed. It has sixteen ribs or ridges, composed of rows of thick fleshy tubercles, upon every other of which are six or eight horny spines, ...
— Cactus Culture For Amateurs • W. Watson
... he saw the coming of the cattle, driven up from the south by wind-browned, saddle-weary cowboys who sang endless chanteys to pass the time as they rode with their herds up the long trail. He saw the cattle humped and drifting before the wind in the first blizzards of winter, while gray wolves slunk watchfully here and there, their shaggy coats ruffled by the biting wind. He saw them when came the chinook, ...
— The Phantom Herd • B. M. Bower
... was ever so much smooth, swelling water between us and Wecanicut, the Monster's head still seemed almost as far away as before. Somehow the water looked very deep, although you couldn't see down into it, and it humped itself ...
— Us and the Bottleman • Edith Ballinger Price
... kept is often oddly at variance with the time of the towns. I looked back several times, as long as I could see the building, which was for at least another twenty minutes; but school did not close. Still the man sat there, humped over, patiently waiting. It is this circumstance, I believe, which fixed in my memory the exact hour at which ...
— Over Prairie Trails • Frederick Philip Grove
... describe what followed those luckless words? Even as I spoke the magic carpet quivered responsively under my feet, and an undulation went all round the fringe as though a sudden wind were shaking it. It humped up in the middle so abruptly that I came down sitting with a shock that numbed me for the moment. It threw me on my back and billowed up round me as though I were in the trough of a stormy sea. ...
— Gulliver of Mars • Edwin L. Arnold
... the edge of the thicket, to a point where she could see the fire. A man sat humped over the glowing embers, whereon sizzled a piece of meat. His head was bent forward, as if he were listening. Suddenly he looked up, and she gasped—for the firelight showed the features of ...
— North of Fifty-Three • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... middle of the subject at once, I asked you seven Sans to this party tonight for a purpose. We eight girls are the founders of the Sans. I told all the other Sans that I wasn't going to ask them here tonight, and not to get their backs humped about it. I promised 'em a big party at the Ivy Saturday night. There is a private dining room there with a long table that will seat the whole eighteen of us. I don't know whether they liked it or not, and I don't care. It was ...
— Marjorie Dean, College Sophomore • Pauline Lester
... his horse near the office, and, putting his head among the morning-glories curtaining an open window, stated his errand to Hilliard, whose vast bulk was humped ludicrously upon a high stool. The big fellow stopped thumbing his ledger, greeted him with a jovial shout, and directed him toward a stratum of rock which the ...
— The Henchman • Mark Lee Luther
... noticed the two-humped Bactrian camel which the Syrians and Egyptians compare with an elephant. See p. 221 (the neo-Syrian) Book ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton
... we crawled back, and lay by listening outside that store. We were figuring how we were to break it in when two men came along. They went in and came out with a bag or two, and as they left the door open we figured they were coming back for more. We humped out a moderate load, and had just got it down to the boat when we saw those men, or two others, in the haze. I was for lying by, but ...
— Hawtrey's Deputy • Harold Bindloss
... sunken, and the limp leaves Waited for rain, while the black clouds Gathered far distant, over Himavant. The jungle crouched, humped in silence. Then spoke the thunder 400 DA Datta: what have we given? My friend, blood shaking my heart The awful daring of a moment's surrender Which an age of prudence can never retract By this, and this only, we have existed Which ...
— The Waste Land • T. S. Eliot
... set to its limpid depths with the heavenly gems, glittered and darkled with its million diamond incrustations. The humped-up lump of Clinch's Dump crouched like some huge and feeding night-beast on the bank, ringed by ...
— The Flaming Jewel • Robert Chambers
... another marble basin, in which on occasion gleams of red hinted at gold-fish in among the spreading water-lilies. The scene lay silent and slumbrous in the brooding noonday sun: the drowsing peacock squatted humped on the lawn, no fish leapt in the pools, nor bird declared himself from the environing hedges. Self-confessed it was here, then, at last the ...
— The Golden Age • Kenneth Grahame
... small bottles. At his waist he carried a bundle of twine. He held the bottles between his knees so that he might work with both hands. Thus, in a sitting position and bending over his own knees, his narrow shoulders grew humped and his chest was contracted for ten hours each day. This was not good for the lungs, but he tied three ...
— When God Laughs and Other Stories • Jack London
... the figure humped up under the light silk cover. He had long patience. He might have been a stick or stone under his master's abuse. But he was not a stick or a stone. It seemed too that suddenly his soul expanded. No man had ever ...
— The Trumpeter Swan • Temple Bailey
... hopeless search, but finally, down in the middle of the block, I spots an old lady in a wheel chair, and I has a hunch it might be Mrs. Mears. Sure enough, it is. Not much to look at, she ain't; sort of humped over, with a shawl 'round her shoulders. But say, when you got a glimpse of the way her old eyes was lighted up, and saw the smile flickerin' around her lips, you knew that nobody in that whole crowd was any happier than she ...
— Torchy and Vee • Sewell Ford
... a great creature stood humped in the level light; the twin horns back-curving and silhouetted against the sky told him at ...
— The Pools of Silence • H. de Vere Stacpoole
... furrows for the sunflower seed Jay came along and leaned over the fence. "Jack," he drawled, "you look like a kangaroo all humped over making that furrow. Why don't you use your ...
— The Library of Work and Play: Gardening and Farming. • Ellen Eddy Shaw
... possesses neither architectural beauty nor salient character; wooden warehouses, Malay shanties, and white-washed streets being merely attractive from the ever-changing scheme of colour painted by varieties of race and costume. Tamils of ebon blackness drive picturesque teams of humped white oxen in red waggons laden with purple sugar-cane. Noble-looking Sikhs, in spotless linen, stride past with kingly gait. Brown Siamese, in many-coloured scarves and turbans gleaming with gold thread, chaffer and bargain at open ...
— Through the Malay Archipelago • Emily Richings
... looked a comfortable big creature, and belonged to the house doubtless, for he stared at her with an interested, questioning look. Presently he moved. She repeated her invitation, whereon the cat slowly rose to his feet, humped his back and yawned, then deliberately turned quite round, facing the other way, and resumed his watchful attitude, his tail tucked in and his ears folded back close, as if to give the cold wind as little purchase ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XXVI., December, 1880. • Various
... took the pins out of the knot, and the rush of hair, of uniform dark brown, slid over the humped back. ...
— Sons and Lovers • David Herbert Lawrence
... his red blanket the old Indian sat humped forward a little, smoking slowly his cigarette and studying the sketch Luck had drawn for him. With aching head and parched throat and hungry stomach, Luck sat cross-legged on the hot sand and waited, and would not let his face betray any emotion at all. Up on the Tim-rock ...
— The Heritage of the Sioux • B.M. Bower
... may be called the cornstalk breed of Virginia: a slender, furtive, long-geared heifer just verging on cowhood, that in spite of my best efforts would wear a pinched and hungry look. She evidently inherited a humped back. It was a family trait, and evidence of the purity of her blood. For the native blooded cow of Virginia, from shivering over half rations of corn stalks, in the open air, during those bleak and windy winters, ...
— The Galaxy - Vol. 23, No. 1 • Various |
