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More "Clumsy" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... German School, amid the worst examples, and it was too late to undo what had gone before. Here, then, lies, I consider, the key to the seeming anomaly that so great a maker as Stainer should have adopted and clung to so clumsy a model. That he became acquainted with much of the best work of the Italians is evidenced by his improved style. The varnish he used furnishes even stronger evidence of his having possessed a knowledge of the subject equal ...
— The Violin - Its Famous Makers and Their Imitators • George Hart
... unfolding life?" can not be evaded. The stonecutter takes the marble and hews out the rough block; the sculptor finds its hidden soul. The artisan takes the canvas and the common sign appears; the artist makes it immortal. But God gives life to parents and teachers to fashion. Will hands clumsy and unskilled, miss the perfect beauty, or the touch of master workmanship bring forth a likeness ...
— The Unfolding Life • Antoinette Abernethy Lamoreaux
... struck half-past five, with a whirring, rickety voice, for all the world like a hoarse grasshopper. Ellen at first wondered where it came from, and was looking at the clumsy machine, that reached nearly from the floor of the kitchen to the ceiling, when a door at the other end of the room opened, and "Good day, Mrs. Forbes," in a rough but not unpleasant voice, brought her head quickly round in that direction. There stood a large, strong-built man, with an ...
— The Wide, Wide World • Elizabeth Wetherell
... far the more powerful, Keller the more agile and supple. He knew every trick of the wrestling game, whereas the other was clumsy and muscle-bound. By main strength the older man got to his feet again. Over went the table as they surged ...
— Mavericks • William MacLeod Raine
... inclined to think that he was related to Old King Bear. Certainly he looked more like King Bear than he did like little Mr. Weasel. But for his bushy tail he would have looked still more like a member of the Bear family. He was clumsy-looking. He was rather slow moving, but he was strong, very strong for his size. And he had a mean disposition. Yes, Sir, Mr. Wolverine had a mean disposition. He had such a mean disposition that he would snarl at his own reflection in a pool ...
— Mother West Wind "Where" Stories • Thornton W. Burgess
... away the tears that my utmost resolution had not been able to keep back, and I made a clumsy laugh of it, and we sat down ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens
... and of Froebel many resemblances may be traced. Both were sons of clergymen. Both were half-orphans from their earliest recollections. Both were unhappy in childhood, were misunderstood, companionless, awkward, clumsy, ridiculed. Both were as boys thrown into the almost exclusive society of women, and both retained to the last strongly feminine characteristics. Both were throughout life lacking in executive ability; both ...
— Autobiography of Friedrich Froebel • Friedrich Froebel
... and clumsy for her to handle. The captain had to raise and tip it so that she might drink, and as she drank, her eyes went ...
— Harrigan • Max Brand
... by the almost tropical sun of the valleys; shepherds in great sheepskins, be it ever so hot; and haughty Turks, hodjas, and veiled women, all in a crowded confusion, haggling and bartering. Quaint wooden carts drawn by patient oxen, their huge clumsy wheels creaking horribly; gypsies with thunderous voices acting as town criers; madmen shrieking horribly; blind troubadours droning out songs of heroes on their guslars. If the tourist has witnessed and understood all this, then he has seen something ...
— The Land of the Black Mountain - The Adventures of Two Englishmen in Montenegro • Reginald Wyon
... several families) ... a certain clan (gens) always reigned so that the women chose their husbands from other clans. The female part generally ruled the house; the provisions were held in common; but woe to the luckless husband or lover who was too indolent or too clumsy to contribute his share to the common stock. No matter how many children or how much private property he had in the house, he was liable at any moment to receive a hint to gather up his belongings and get out. And he could ...
— Women As Sex Vendors - or, Why Women Are Conservative (Being a View of the Economic - Status of Woman) • R. B. Tobias
... For every German spy or would-be spy in America, there was an agent of the Secret Service, equally resourceful, and more likely to succeed, because, no matter how clumsy his adversary seemed, he never made the mistake of underrating him. "Stupid Yankees," von Papen had called us, while he went about his plotting with child-like faith in his skill at hiding. "Stupid Germans," the ...
— Winning a Cause - World War Stories • John Gilbert Thompson and Inez Bigwood
... William; then she changed her mind about jack-in-the-pulpit and decided on wintergreen berries. This is just a sample of one teeny bit of what she demanded. And Andy was very awkward; so naturally he began complaining of his shuttles being too clumsy for such fine work and the cobwebby filling getting tangled up in his thumbs and after a bit of chewing his nails in despair he swore the thing never could be done ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1915 - And the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... put even more obstacles in the path of Socialism than the rich: "Much more likely to obstruct the way to Socialism," says Mr. Wells, "is the ignorance, the want of courage, the stupid want of imagination in the very poor, too shy and timid and clumsy to face any change they can evade! But even with them popular education is doing its work; and I do not fear but that in the next generation we will find Socialists even ...
— Socialism As It Is - A Survey of The World-Wide Revolutionary Movement • William English Walling
... do what you please. But one thing I want you to understand: if you are not going to act in the matter, I shall do so. I willingly confess that I am a selfish woman; but I am very fond of Lillie, and if you abandon her in this cruel and clumsy way, I shall have her to live with me here, and I shall do my best to console her for the loss of an ungrateful husband and a pack of ...
— The Dangerous Age • Karin Michaelis
... us that this state of things had to be entirely reversed. It is true that the peculiar talent of Sully-Prudhomme, being almost exclusively lyrical, scarcely survived his youth, and that he cumbered his moon of sands with two huge and clumsy wrecks, La Justice (1878) and Le Bonheur (1898), round which the feet of the fairies could hardly be expected to trip. One must be an academician and hopelessly famous before one dares to inflict two elephantine didactic epics ...
— Some Diversions of a Man of Letters • Edmund William Gosse
... suppressed laughter and the gurgling of the flowing enlivener. Jack blissfully fell into dreams, wherein home things and warlike doings mingled in grotesque medley. Relapses into consciousness followed at he knew not what intervals thereafter. He was conscious of cruel torment and a clumsy transfer into another vehicle, confused sounds of groans, curses, waving lights, and the hissing of escaping steam almost in his very ears. Then the anguish of thundering wheels, until his cracked brain reeled and he was mercifully unconscious. How long? His eyes opened ...
— The Iron Game - A Tale of the War • Henry Francis Keenan
... life but sleep and eat. As was his custom, he was at the feet of his mistress, a position which he seemed to prefer above all others. Then the blankets, deer and bison skins, and rude articles hanging about the room, the two columns in the center supporting the clumsy roof, the craggy logs and sticks at the side, the hanging skin which served as a door and was barely visible, the tumble down appearance of everything, and withal the solemn stillness which brooded within ...
— Camp-fire and Wigwam • Edward Sylvester Ellis
... difficult to dance the Kola. You join hands till a ring is formed, and then shuffle round and round. If you have aspirations to style you fling your legs about as much as space will allow, and we noticed how much better the men danced than the girls, who were almost all very clumsy. ...
— The Luck of Thirteen - Wanderings and Flight through Montenegro and Serbia • Jan Gordon
... years afterwards, the town of Sulaco—the luxuriant beauty of the orange gardens bears witness to its antiquity—had never been commercially anything more important than a coasting port with a fairly large local trade in ox-hides and indigo. The clumsy deep-sea galleons of the conquerors that, needing a brisk gale to move at all, would lie becalmed, where your modern ship built on clipper lines forges ahead by the mere flapping of her sails, had been barred out of Sulaco ...
— Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard • Joseph Conrad
... His clumsy hand closed upon the coin, and I have no doubt he was pleased by the donation; but he never took his eyes from Milly Darrell's face. That bright lovely face seemed to exercise a kind of ...
— Milly Darrell and Other Tales • M. E. Braddon
... arm," I put up first one and then the other of my own, and having got a satisfactory impetus during the rest of my sentence, I crossed the parlour as a catherine-wheel under my mother's nose. It was a new accomplishment, of which I was very proud, and poor Jem somewhat envious. He was clumsy and ...
— We and the World, Part I - A Book for Boys • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... da street, Da noise ees scare heem, too; He ees so clumsy een da feet He don't know w'at to do, Dere ees so many theeng he meet Dat ...
— The Little Book of Modern Verse • Jessie B. Rittenhouse
... down, in a state of intense excitement, with that queer step of his, which swayed him from right to left on each of his legs, like a wild beast, a heavy, clumsy bear. And, with a hoarse voice and distorted features, ...
— The Crystal Stopper • Maurice LeBlanc
... breast,—her sloping back and wings making a rain-proof roof over her jewels. Then the callow younglings rise a little higher into the wider circle. Next the fledglings brim the cup; at last it runs over; four large clumsy robins flutter to the ground, with much noise, much anxious calling from papa and mamma,—much good advice, no doubt. They are fairly turned out to shift for themselves; with the same wise, unfathomable eyes which have mirrored the round ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 32, June, 1860 • Various
... the first time I have been in this place," said the man, as they bumped over the crowded floor. He was big and clumsy, of course. To-night it seemed to Sally that the whole world was big and clumsy. "It's a swell place. I come from up-state myself. We got nothing like this where I come from." He cleared a space before him, using Sally as ...
— The Adventures of Sally • P. G. Wodehouse
... a large village, containing about seven hundred inhabitants, and surrounded by a mud wall. A plaza, or market- place, stood in the midst, one side of which is occupied by what is called a palace, a clumsy quadrangular building of two stories, belonging to some noble family, the lords of the neighbouring soil. It was deserted, however, being only occupied by a kind of steward, who stored up in its chambers the grain which he received as rent from the tenants ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... another clumsy attempt. The cab was swift and had almost covered the long distance between the Western Addition and Russian Hill. "Other things have worried me. You are so generous. Society here as elsewhere has its parasites, its dead beats, trying to limp along by borrowing, ...
— The Avalanche • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... Tight bands and long, heavy skirts should never be used, the dress and petticoat being just long enough to keep the feet covered and warm. If from the first a baby is "held out" always after being nursed, it learns to urinate at that time, and the clumsy diapers can be dispensed with in a few months. No ordinary pins should be used, and as few safety pins as possible. Tapes properly ...
— Papers on Health • John Kirk
... in its tone, legible in its chirography, and usually covered much of the surface of the slate, punctuation being attended to, the i's dotted, and the t's crossed. In the second, when the communication was in answer to a question addressed to a Spirit the writing was clumsy, rude, scarcely legible, abrupt in terms, and sometimes very vague in substance. In short, one bore the marks of deliberation and the other of haste. This difference we found to be due to the different ...
— Preliminary Report of the Commission Appointed by the University • The Seybert Commission
... clumsy! I don't believe she'll ever manage to keep afloat properly. She always flounders unless she has one foot at the bottom. Pauline Reynolds wouldn't venture into the water at all at first; Miss Young had to push her in. I shall never forget how she shrieked; and she was so frightened, she actually ...
— The New Girl at St. Chad's - A Story of School Life • Angela Brazil
... pocket, I fear," he added. "But Annie, bless her! she doesn't know what suffering means, any more than if she were a bird or a squirrel. I thought you'd take a fancy to her, Blanche; and perhaps you can think of some way to help them. Women know how to set about such things. I'm such a clumsy fellow that all I dared attempt was to deal out as much meal and bacon ...
— Nine Little Goslings • Susan Coolidge
... It was hard to wake him, for he scowled and snored and dropped heavily off again after each shaking, but at last he stood conscious before them and appeared to understand Roger's sharp questions well enough, though his only answer was a clumsy twist of his large head and a dismal negative ...
— Margarita's Soul - The Romantic Recollections of a Man of Fifty • Ingraham Lovell
... distributes a good deal of the lily. There you have the origin of the present crowd of historians, intent only upon the passing day, the selfish interest, the profit which they reckon to make out of their work; execration is their desert—in the present for their undisguised clumsy flattery, in the future for the stigma which their exaggerations bring upon history in general. If any one takes some admixture of the agreeable to be an absolute necessity, let him be content with the independent beauties of style; ...
— Works, V2 • Lucian of Samosata
... forty feet long, and twenty feet round at the thickest part. Its head, which seemed to me a great, blunt, shapeless thing, like a clumsy old boat, was eight feet long from the tip to the blowholes or nostrils; and these holes were situated on the back of the head, which at that part was nearly four feet broad. The entire head measured about twenty-one feet round. Its ears were two small holes, ...
— Fighting the Whales • R. M. Ballantyne
... into the closet, whence she returned with a dusty coil of rope. "Here, Geoffrey; quickly! put it about your waist. Wind it so. But how clumsy you are!" ...
— The Dragon of Wantley - His Tale • Owen Wister
... bunch on their backs. They seem to be very ugly creatures, their heads being ill-formed and disproportioned (sic) to their bodies. They carry all the burdens; and the beasts destined to the plough, are buffaloes, an animal you are also unacquainted with. They are larger and more clumsy than an ox; they have short thick black horns close to their heads, Which grow turning backwards. They say this horn looks very beautiful when 'tis well polished. They are all black, with very short hair on their ...
— Letters of the Right Honourable Lady M—y W—y M—e • Lady Mary Wortley Montague
... groan of utter disillusionment came a sound from the street, formless and clumsy, but brought to a sharp climax with the crash ...
— The Sturdy Oak - A Composite Novel of American Politics by Fourteen American Authors • Samuel Merwin, et al.
... Beresnik and gone to meet them empty-handed. The Bolo had regained his boat after a little firing between him and the second platoon which was at the upper end of the village. We were trying to locate oars for the clumsy Russian barzhaks on the bank, intending to cross to the island where the gunboat was moored and do a little navy work, when the British monitor hove into sight around a bend about three miles down stream, and opened fire on the gunboat. The first shot was a little ...
— The History of the American Expedition Fighting the Bolsheviki - Campaigning in North Russia 1918-1919 • Joel R. Moore
... over his ear to the pose of his foot in its elastic-sided patent boot, there was nothing clumsy or weak about old Jolyon. He was as upright—very nearly—as in those old times when he came every night; his sight was as good—almost as good. But what a feeling of ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... of necromancy, some of these animals were transformed to men, who, as soon as they assumed this new form, began to hunt the animals, and make war against them. It is expected that these animals will resume their human shapes, in a future state, and hence their hunters feign some clumsy excuses for their present policy of killing them. They believe that all animals, and birds, and reptiles, and even insects, possess reasoning faculties, and have souls. It is in these opinions, that we detect the ancient, doctrine ...
— Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader - Being Selections from the Chief American Writers • Benj. N. Martin
... the weaver with intense expectation. A breathless silence ensued, and, far down the street, sounded the prophet's loud and sonorous voice. He pointed to the last of his pictures, which, in coarse, clumsy drawing, represented a town, from the houses of which flames arose in the ...
— The Merchant of Berlin - An Historical Novel • L. Muhlbach
... called Fletcher to him, and, linking his arm within the outlaw's, he drew him off in a stroll to a log bridge spanning a little gully. Here after gazing around, he took out a roll of bills, spread it out, split it equally, and without a word handed one half to Fletcher. With clumsy fingers Fletcher ...
— The Lone Star Ranger • Zane Grey
... upon them as they rose and flapped about in short and heavy flight. They seemed to be having great sport, for Kid was shouting and yelling at the birds, and Madge screaming with laughter at their clumsy efforts to escape. So absorbed were they in their play that they did not see us until we were almost beside them. At first Kid made as if he would start Dynamite off on the gallop, but Mrs. Williams called to him sternly, and he turned and trotted back to us, smiling ...
— Emerson's Wife and Other Western Stories • Florence Finch Kelly
... Great clumsy Time shall stumble and dance, who liked to kill little children and can hurt even the ...
— Selections from the Writings of Lord Dunsay • Lord Dunsany
... suppose that is enough to say about him. [Footnote: I may say that when afterwards, through the fortunes of war, this same chief was brought as a prisoner before a certain paunchy officer, the attempt of the latter to show his dignity was a clumsy failure. The proud and splendid chief, with arms folded across his breast, and head slightly bowed, looked singularly out of place arraigned before the stumpy ...
— Annette, The Metis Spy • Joseph Edmund Collins
... dresses we wore that day were very simply made and short. The reason we wore this kind of costume was that there was no carpet and the bare brick floor had ruined our beautiful red velvet gowns, also the clumsy eunuchs had kept stepping on our trains all the time. We had made up our minds that short dresses for general wear every day would be more practical. Her Majesty said: "Why must you change your clothes? I see you look much better without that tail dragging behind you on ...
— Two Years in the Forbidden City • The Princess Der Ling
... lady Whose conduct is shady Or smacking of doubtful propriety; When Virtue would quash her I take and whitewash her And launch her in first-rate society. I recommend acres Of clumsy dressmakers - Their fit and their finishing touches; A sum in addition They pay for permission To say that they ...
— Songs of a Savoyard • W. S. Gilbert
... Serge. "We with the chariots are horribly slow. It's all through having to depend upon these driver fellows and our horses having to drag a clumsy car at their heels. Now look here, I am beginning to think that the enemy's afoot coming down to surprise us, and, if so, we with the ...
— Marcus: the Young Centurion • George Manville Fenn
... atmosphere may be in some measure compensated, as we know, by regulating the quantity admitted to our houses—shutting up the windows. When we wish to regulate the admission of light to our rooms, we have recourse to various clumsy contrivances; paper blinds, perpetually tearing, sunblind rollers that will not roll, venetian blinds continually in need of mending, awnings blowing away with every storm, or shutters, which shut up and leave us in entire darkness. A self-acting window, which shall ...
— Fables of Infidelity and Facts of Faith - Being an Examination of the Evidences of Infidelity • Robert Patterson
... man. His whole life, if he be a dog of any pretension to gallantry, is spent in a vain show, and in the hot pursuit of admiration. Take out your puppy for a walk, and you will find the little ball of fur clumsy, stupid, bewildered, but natural. Let but a few months pass, and when you repeat the process you will find nature buried in convention. He will do nothing plainly; but the simplest processes of our material life will all be bent into the forms of an elaborate and mysterious ...
— Essays of Robert Louis Stevenson • Robert Louis Stevenson
... fever of anxiety for the safety of Gemma and his other friends. The studied politeness of the officers, the dull game of fencing and parrying, of insidious questions and evasive answers, worried and annoyed him, and the clumsy tramping backward and forward of the sentinel outside the door jarred detestably ...
— The Gadfly • E. L. Voynich
... Yet I never saw him less courageous or more humble than now. He was a rude, uncouth outlaw, he said, and knew none of the arts and speeches of a fine gentleman. She laughed at his clumsy ways and despised his ignorance. She would as soon think of trusting her safety to him as to ...
— Sir Ludar - A Story of the Days of the Great Queen Bess • Talbot Baines Reed
... beyond the ends of the fingers are vulgar, clawlike, and inconvenient; whilst if shorter, particularly much shorter than the fingers, they are unsightly and of little use, and cause the tips of the fingers to become thick and clumsy. Biting the nails should be avoided as a dirty and disagreeable habit, and one utterly destructive to their beauty, ...
— The Ladies Book of Useful Information - Compiled from many sources • Anonymous
... much gratified by his visit to Bath, and inspected its fine buildings with admiration. But he thought that Mr. Wood, who, he says, "created modern Bath," had left no worthy successor. In the buildings then in progress he saw clumsy designers at work, "blundering round about a meaning"—if, indeed, there was any meaning at all in their designs, which he confessed he failed to see. From Bath he went to London by coach, making the journey in safety, "although," he says, the collectors had been doing duty on Hounslow Heath." ...
— The Life of Thomas Telford by Smiles • Samuel Smiles
... shot be fired at a "loomery," the fowl fly away in thousands from their hatching places, without the number of those that are not frightened away being apparently diminished. The clumsy and short-winged birds, when they cast themselves out of their places, fall down at first a good way before they get "sufficient air" under their wings to be able to fly. Before this takes place, many plump down into the water, sometimes ...
— The Voyage of the Vega round Asia and Europe, Volume I and Volume II • A.E. Nordenskieold
... There is but one step from the sublime to the ridiculous, and this entrancing art, it seems, has taken it; sorely dislocating its graceful limbs, and injuring its goodly proportions in the unseemly escapade. We hate your crashing, clumsy chords, and utterly spit at and defy chromatic passages, from one end of the instrument to the other, and back again; flats, sharps, and most appropriate 'naturals,' spattered all over the page. The essential ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, February 1844 - Volume 23, Number 2 • Various
... herd of bisons had gone along that ledge road in clumsy safety, but right there now, at the curve of the projecting rock, stood one who could go no farther. A fragment of an arrow still sticking through one of his hind-legs told what had made him lame in the first place, and the marks of wolf-teeth explained ...
— Two Arrows - A Story of Red and White • William O. Stoddard
... roar of the water, the complaint of the spans coming down on their blocks as the cribs were whirled out from under their bellies. The stone-boats groaned and ground each other in the eddy that swung round the abutment, and their clumsy masts rose higher and ...
— Kipling Stories and Poems Every Child Should Know, Book II • Rudyard Kipling
... and you'll go on as good as you've begun, and end by liking and loving Cordelia because you pity her, I dare say. But though I'm going to behave myself, and bear with her, I shall never come up to that, for she is so queer and so clumsy, and she does dress so! I'm going to behave myself, though, I am,—I am; but I hope she won't expect too much, that she won't push forward too ...
— A Flock of Girls and Boys • Nora Perry
... having more than one meaning, and in writing these it is obvious that some means of distinction is desirable. The same thing occurs even more frequently in the Chinese language, which is monosyllabic. The Chinese adopt a more clumsy expedient, supplying a different symbol for each of the meanings of a syllable; so that while the actual word-sounds of their speech are only a few hundreds in number, the characters of their written language ...
— A History of Science, Volume 1(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... are like rough-hewn blocks of not very good quality, but imposing by reason of their size, and by the obstinate repetition of their rhythmic design, which is maintained as if it were an obsession. This heaping-up of music both crude and learned in style, with harmonies that are sometimes clumsy and sometimes delicate, is worth considering on account of its bulk. The orchestration is heavy and noisy; and the brass dominates and roughly gilds the rather sombre colouring of the great edifice. The underlying idea of the composition is neo-classic, and rather spongy and diffuse. Its harmonic ...
— Musicians of To-Day • Romain Rolland
... And on the big desk, amid a litter of papers and letters and books and ledgers, stood the little model in its clumsy box. ...
— Red-Robin • Jane Abbott
... them that truly trust you, 'tis a clumsy villany! Any knave may slay the child who climbs and slumbers ...
— Indian Poetry • Edwin Arnold
... hastily. "Even without the barrier of the parole, you could not. But I cannot talk. I am nervous, not myself today. You saw how clumsy I was when I brought the letter to show?—and after all did not get to show it. Well, I have been like that all day. I have grown fearful of everything—distrustful of every glance. Did you observe the watchfulness of Miss Loring on the lawn? Still, ...
— The Bondwoman • Marah Ellis Ryan
... the bare tossing branches, looking through the black trunks and across the paths glimmering white in the blue-grey distance for a seat where he might be safe from interruption, until at last he discovered a clumsy wooden bench, scored and slashed with the sand-ingrained initials of a quarter of a century's idleness, a seat of the old uncomfortable pattern gradually dying out from the walks. He could wait no longer, and was hurrying forward to secure it, when he was hailed by some one approaching ...
— The Giant's Robe • F. Anstey
... curious boat-bill heron is found,—its short thick neck and enormous beak giving it a clumsy, ungainly look alongside the elegant flamingo. The beak may be likened to two boats, laid one upon the other, gunwale to gunwale, the upper part of the mandible representing the keel. It feeds on the Crustacea which it picks ...
— The Western World - Picturesque Sketches of Nature and Natural History in North - and South America • W.H.G. Kingston
... down to a landing space on the floodlighted landing roof of the hotel and settled with a slight bump. "Don't move." The clumsy careful business of opening the door backward with his right hand and sliding out without taking his eyes from either of them ...
— The Man Who Staked the Stars • Charles Dye
... all stickem," the voice in the dark whispered, delightedly, and Barney could see a double row of glistening white ivory in the dim light that came through the window. He came nearer the clumsy wight, and saw that it was a pan of batter the cook had left on the table, probably the morning griddle-cakes. The negro was a mass of white, pasty glue, and knelt on the floor, licking his ...
— The Iron Game - A Tale of the War • Henry Francis Keenan
... Heinie. Which did Ann Boleyn use when she cooed into the suspicious ear of Henry VIII.? To which did Henrik Ibsen answer at the domestic hearth? It is difficult to imagine his wife calling him Henrik: the name is harsh, clumsy, razor-edged. But did she make it Hen or Rik, or neither? What was Bismarck to the Fuerstin, and to the mother he so vastly feared? Ottchen? Somehow it seems impossible. What was Grant to his wife? Surely not Ulysses! And Wolfgang ...
— Damn! - A Book of Calumny • Henry Louis Mencken
... neck. Also his leg was manifestly injured—how, she could not tell. It was evident that he must freeze if he lay here, and it seemed to her that perhaps he had pulled the dead brute over him to protect his torn skin from the extremity of cold. The lynx was already rigid, its clumsy paws asprawl,—and the torn skin and clot upon Trafford's face were stiff as she put her hands about his head to raise him. She turned him over on his back—how heavy he seemed?—and forced brandy between his ...
— The Literary World Seventh Reader • Various
... to move. He comforted her, absentmindedly, and dressed in the dark, swearing at the clumsy leggings. When he left, Hildigund put on her clothes and hurried ...
— The Valor of Cappen Varra • Poul William Anderson
... off, to gather a few coppers for 'em. But I soon found it was precious little I could get, no matter what I could do so long as my clothes warn't the right thing. So long as I didn't look my trade, they regarded my best as nothing but a clumsy imitation of my betters, an' laughed at what circus Joe said he couldn't do no better hisself. So I plucks up heart an' goes to Longstreet, as was the next market-town, an' into a draper's shop, an' tells 'em what I wanted, ...
— Weighed and Wanting • George MacDonald
... luxuriousness and yet the same courage. But the later decadents were far worse, especially the decadent critics, the decadent illustrators—there were even decadent publishers. And they utterly lost the light and reason of their existence: they were masters of the clumsy and the incongruous. I will take only one example. Aubrey Beardsley may be admired as an artist or no; he does not enter into the scope of this book. But it is true that there is a certain brief mood, a certain narrow aspect ...
— The Victorian Age in Literature • G. K. Chesterton
... sufferings, loudly called on the troopers, who had halted for a moment, to quicken their advance. *23 This delay had been caused by Carbajal's desire to bring his own guns to bear on the opposite columns. But the design was quickly abandoned; the clumsy ordnance was left on the field, and orders were given to the cavalry to charge; the trumpets sounded, and, crying their war-cries, the bold cavaliers struck their spurs into their steeds, and rode at ...
— The History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William H. Prescott
... Caressing him, Durtal said to himself, "Decidedly, she was right when she refused. It will be grotesque, atrocious. I was wrong to insist, but no, it's her fault, too. She must have wanted to do this or she wouldn't have come. What a fool to think she could aggravate passion by delay. She is fearfully clumsy. A moment ago when I was embracing her and really was aroused, it would perhaps have been delicious, but now! And what do I look like? A young bridegroom waiting—or a green country boy. Oh God, how stupid! Well," he said, straining his ...
— La-bas • J. K. Huysmans
... other by strips of thin cork at the corners, and they made a clumsy bundle. I had not looked at my client's card until now. Whilst he gave his directions to the landlady I took it up, and learned that his name was John Gregory; and that he lived in Westbourne Terrace. When my landlady had ...
— The Romance Of Giovanni Calvotti - From Coals Of Fire And Other Stories, Volume II. (of III.) • David Christie Murray
... him out on his back. Twice he rose and twice was struck down again. Blood covered his face, his breast, his hands, yet he persisted in getting up. Enraged by this ferocious tenacity of life, three, four, five clumsy peasants together stabbed him furiously in the belly, and the fanatic fell over, with the back of his neck against the silver bust. He turned like a flash and put his face against the metal, with his arms outspread and his legs drawn up. And San ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors: Italian • Various
... a rather short petticoat, with a fanciful bodice, in which red predominated. Quite a number of them were seen by the party during their stay in Stockholm, but all of them had coarse features and clumsy forms. ...
— Up The Baltic - Young America in Norway, Sweden, and Denmark • Oliver Optic
... made a specialty of this part of the business, knowing how very important it must always be to aviators. The rise was nothing compared to the descent, for many a gallant aircraft has been injured or even wrecked by clumsy manipulation, want of room or some other cause while landing ...
— The Aeroplane Boys on the Wing - Aeroplane Chums in the Tropics • John Luther Langworthy
... two boys were laughingly making a few cuts and guards with the clumsy old weapons; but directly after they started apart in confusion, as Sir ...
— Crown and Sceptre - A West Country Story • George Manville Fenn
... harsh he will soften with a sensible cultivation: those void of expression he will discard: he will exhibit the appearance of one at play; and will be [in his invention] on the rack, like [a dancer on the stage], who one while affects the motions of a satyr, at another of a clumsy cyclops. ...
— The Works of Horace • Horace
... human sympathy almost Shakspearian, who could step from the musings of Windsor and the beautiful heroine, all romance and ethereal splendour, to the lasses in their gay kirtles, and Hob and Raaf with their rustic "daffing," as true to the life as the Ayrshire clowns of Burns, and all the clumsy yet genial gambols of the village festival. It is one of the most curious and least to be expected transformations of poetic versatility—for it is even amazing how he could know the life into which he thus plunged joyous, as if he had been familiar with ...
— Royal Edinburgh - Her Saints, Kings, Prophets and Poets • Margaret Oliphant
... belting swings at Kid Wolf's head. The Texan dodged, elusive as a shadow. He leaped in, bored with his right and jolted Blacksnake from top to toe with a smashing left. The big outlaw staggered, then jumped back and tried to scoop up his gun. His right hand was helpless, however, and his left clumsy. His fingers missed it, and The Kid hit him again, bringing Blacksnake to his knees, groggy-headed and bleary-eyed. His hand closed over the whip. The stock was heavily loaded with lead, and it was a terrible weapon when held reversed. ...
— Kid Wolf of Texas - A Western Story • Ward M. Stevens
... the radiating nervures, the skeleton of the structure, is not at all the same; the network formed by the cross-nervures gives no idea whatever of the complex final arrangement. The rudimentary is succeeded by the infinitely complex; the clumsy by the infinitely perfect, and the same is true of the sheath of the wing and the final condition of its contents, the ...
— Social Life in the Insect World • J. H. Fabre
... said Beth, tipping up the board at her end. "What are you doing, butter-fingers?" she cried, as Sammy failed to catch hold. "I'm sorry I said you were a girl. You're much too clumsy." ...
— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand
... Through the political influence of that great king this poetry spread over Europe; in Italy, its home, it assumed a French color, and thence the heroes of French tragedy went with the Anjous to Spain; it passed with Henrietta Maria to England, and we Germans, as a matter of course, built our clumsy temples to the powdered Olympus of Versailles. The most famous high-priest of this religion was Gottsched, that wonderful long wig whom our dear Goethe has so admirably described ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VI. • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... The banks of the channel, with the trees and the rocks, were reflected in the tranquil waters, whose surface was unruffled save by the thousands of wild fowl that rose before us, and made a noise as of a multitude clapping hands, in their clumsy efforts to rise from the waters. Not one of them allowed us to ...
— Two Expeditions into the Interior of Southern Australia, Complete • Charles Sturt
... watchmaking it was a very common rule to say, let the height of the incline of the tooth be one-seventh of the outer diameter of the cylinder, and at the same time the trade was furnished with no tools except a clumsy douzieme gage; but with micrometer calipers which read to one-thousandths of an inch such rules can be definitely carried into effect and not left to guess work. Let us compare the old method with the new: Suppose we have a new cylinder to put in; we have the old escape wheel, but the former cylinder ...
— Watch and Clock Escapements • Anonymous
... passed she was approached by a Sanusian in a big, clumsy looking machine. Although built on the bee plan, it possessed an observation tower right on top of its "head." (The four afterward established that this was the sort of a machine that Smith's agent had operated.) The occupant approached to within ...
— The Devolutionist and The Emancipatrix • Homer Eon Flint
... much, and does little; Solomin lives a life of cheerful, reticent activity. As the revolution is not at hand, the best thing to do in the interim is to accomplish something useful. He has learned how to labour and to wait. "This calm, heavy, not to say clumsy man was not only incapable of lying or bragging; one might rely on him, like a stone wall." In every scene, whether among the affected aristocrats or among the futile revolutionists, Solomin appears to advantage. There is no worse indictment of human intelligence than the great compliment ...
— Essays on Russian Novelists • William Lyon Phelps
... storms. The oars were got out, and day after day the clumsy boat was pulled through the long rolling swell of the glassy sea. Still no sight of land. Their provisions were getting short again—their water was reduced to the lowest possible allowance, and the labor of the oar was rapidly exhausting their strength. The image of St. Francis was hourly ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1, April, 1851 • Various
... nature, and the common and obvious motives which influence large masses of their fellows; until at length the sublime contrivances of the universe sink, in their interpretation of them, into the clumsy expedients ...
— The Testimony of the Rocks - or, Geology in Its Bearings on the Two Theologies, Natural and Revealed • Hugh Miller
... month of her father's absence. She did not see her son's face when she spoke, being busy with her wood-carving. If she had, she would not have thought that the presence of Leam Dundas would bore or annoy him. The clumsy features gladdened into smiles, the dull eye brightened, the dim complexion flushed: if ever a face expressed supreme delight, Alick's did then; and it expressed what he felt, for, as we know, the one love of his boyish life was this girl-queen of ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 17, - No. 97, January, 1876 • Various
... Esculapius would have been hailed by me as an especial joy? However, no such angel came, neither was he within call; so as the danger struck me as imminent, and his condition appeared growing every moment more critical, I argued, without bleeding he would undoubtedly die, whereas by my attempt, however clumsy, he might rally. I plucked up my courage to the sticking-point, and stuck my patient. I drew several ounces of blood. My fair assistant displayed the most undeniable, I can hardly say irreproachable, coolness, for really, to my fancy, she was ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. V, May, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... can afford it, but as he says, it's war times and money is scarce as brunette chorus girls. He has put the matter before the District Attorney and is going to sail for Far Cathay until they round up the gang. These criminals are so clumsy nowadays, I imagine it will be an ...
— The Voice on the Wire • Eustace Hale Ball
... Time went to the window for a moment and beckoned into the darkened street. Then I heard footsteps, clumsy and hesitant they seemed, upon the stairs. And in a moment a figure stood framed in the doorway—the figure of Father Christmas. He stood shuffling his feet, a timid, apologetic look upon ...
— Frenzied Fiction • Stephen Leacock
... But the sentence is an example of ellipse, a figure which Chatterton affected a good deal, and fully expressed would run 'She—not willing to take much, ever doth heed not to take much', which would of course be intolerably clumsy but ...
— The Rowley Poems • Thomas Chatterton
... it is further true that at the actual points of fighting the disproportion was five to one, we need no further illustration of the ills which inadequate co-ordination imposes on an Alliance, and inadequate staff-work and intelligence on any fighting force. The Allied tactics were probably not so clumsy nor the German troops so feeble ...
— A Short History of the Great War • A.F. Pollard
... bombarded pas, and her crew burnt villages and destroyed canoes and cultivations. If the man-of-war without guns was a figure of fun, the man-of-war with guns excited disgust by these doings even as far away as England. The whole proceeding was clumsy, cruel, and needless. A trifling ransom would have saved it all. The Maori tribal law under which wrecks were confiscated and castaways plundered was, of course, intolerable. Whites again and again suffered severely by it. But blundering and undisciplined ...
— The Long White Cloud • William Pember Reeves
... round-shouldered; at any rate, he was able calmly to speculate upon the point. Those who have contrived to make us ridiculous in our own and other people's eyes are not always gainers by their efforts. So it happened that Mansana, having come to the conclusion that Amanda's figure was clumsy, her face and conversation insignificant, her voice monotonous, her hair extravagantly dressed, and her wheedling manner foolish and silly, began to ask himself if, after all, he would not be making ...
— Captain Mansana and Mother's Hands • Bjoernstjerne Bjoernson
... the curates was musical, and Mat had an angelic voice. One could imagine the danger to the precocious, clever boy, and how perhaps, on his return, he would gibe a little in his impertinent boyish fashion at thickheaded, clumsy Tom among his cornbins ...
— Lover or Friend • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... which should have the right of veto on certain of the decisions of the "synod." As the name "G. A. New Zealand" appears among the list of signatories, it may be presumed that he concurred in this rather clumsy scheme; but in the following year he acted in the opposite direction by inviting Mr. Godley and another layman to sit in conference with the clergy of the diocese ...
— A History of the English Church in New Zealand • Henry Thomas Purchas
... might escape her and reveal themselves in music. It was difficult to prevent this, so long had she been accustomed to pour out all her feelings in harmony. The necessity for restraint irked her and made of her bow a clumsy thing which no longer obeyed her wishes. More than ever at that instant did she long for speech—speech that would conceal and protect ...
— Kilmeny of the Orchard • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... would touch it. It made him laugh, and he scoffed at the people and called them cowards and old women. Then he turned and saw the tight-rope, and said foolish people were daily wasting their money to see a clumsy and ignorant varlet degrade that beautiful art; now they should see the work of a master. With that he made a spring into the air and lit firm on his feet on the rope. Then he hopped the whole length of it back and forth on one ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... and the score was tied, but the time was growing short. Helen Thornton had the ball and was plainly trying to elude the tantalizing sophomore who barred her way. She made a clumsy feint of throwing the ball. It slipped from her fingers and rolled along the floor. There was a mad scramble for it. Mignon and Ellen Seymour leaped ...
— Marjorie Dean High School Freshman • Pauline Lester
... a trampled wilderness. Barricades were built across what was known as Inspectorate Street while the I.G. stood by and refreshed the thirsty workers with beer from his cellar; the big gate was loopholed, the walls strengthened, and clumsy look-out platforms, reminiscent of the Siege of Troy, constructed. From these I can guess he must have watched—and with what feelings!—the progress of the dreadful fires starting over the city; must have seen, down the long straight street, native Christians burning like torches, ...
— Sir Robert Hart - The Romance of a Great Career, 2nd Edition • Juliet Bredon
... those amongst us who live to the age of Methuselah will probably see all the accessible works printed by this body. Some half century ago Messrs. Novello published an edition of the church music, stupidly edited by the stupidest editor who ever laid clumsy fingers on a masterpiece. A shameful edition of the "King Arthur" music was prepared for the Birmingham Festival of 1897 by Mr. J.A. Fuller-Maitland, musical critic of "The Times." A publisher far-sighted and generous enough to issue a trustworthy edition of ...
— Old Scores and New Readings • John F. Runciman
... raft was approved by all, and they set to work without delay. It had been after four o'clock when they got back to the cabin and it was dark by the time the raft was ready for use. It was a clumsy affair, made of rough logs, spliced together with grapevine shoots, and it was barely large enough to carry the four boys. They took off their coats and shoes and socks, and rolled their trousers up ...
— Young Hunters of the Lake • Ralph Bonehill
... away, the tense expression on his face assumed again—and presently he was talking to Mr. and Mrs. Holmes, and patting the boy's head in a clumsy, overwrought way. ...
— The Miracle Man • Frank L. Packard
... whiteness, of sea-shell pink, of infantine smiles, and waving, golden curls, he stood up with a shy desire to approach the wonderful creature, and yet with a sort of embarrassed feeling of being very awkward and clumsy. He felt, somehow, as if he were a great, coarse behemoth; his arms seemed to him awkward appendages; his hands suddenly appeared to him rough, and his fingers swelled and stumpy. When he thought of asking an introduction, he felt himself growing very hot, and blushing ...
— Pink and White Tyranny - A Society Novel • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... wish they were all like you!" she cried, with a stamp of her foot. "Sometimes I despise gallantry. I hate the smooth compliments of your macaronies. I thank Heaven you are big and honest and clumsy and—" ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... been given to obviate any such sneering remarks as: "What could be, pray, the size of the mouth of a child in his mother's womb, and how could it grasp such a large and clumsy thing?" ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... then to the five sonnets inspired by the War. Let us be sparing of clumsy comment. They are the living heart of young England; the throbbing soul of all that gracious manhood torn from its happy quest of Beauty and Certainty, flung unheated into the absurdities of War, and yet finding in this supreme sacrifice an ...
— Shandygaff • Christopher Morley
... the orders of his lord were carried out, and especially watching the operations of putting the ballistas and catapults together on the walls. Cannon, though now in use, had by no means superseded these machines, for they were cumbrous and clumsy, and could only be fired at considerable intervals, and their aim was by no means accurate or their range extensive, as the charge of powder that could be used in them was comparatively small, and the powder itself ill-made and defective ...
— At Agincourt • G. A. Henty
... lantern on deck, and held a long-spouted can in his fingers. His back remained toward me as I drew near the stern, and, consequently, I no longer had a glimpse of his face. The wooden wheel of the boat, a clumsy appearing apparatus, rested almost directly against the bank, where the water was evidently deep enough to float the vessel, and the single rope holding it in position was drawn taut from the pressure of the current. Waiting until the ...
— The Devil's Own - A Romance of the Black Hawk War • Randall Parrish
... had made a big shaving-ball at kindergarten, and this was sent to grandfather with a Christmas greeting. Bobby's contribution was a highly decorated three-layer blotter with grandfather's name and address in red ink on the top layer. It was not a thing of beauty, being the work of his own clumsy little hands, but he felt sure it would be appreciated, for he had heard grandfather wish so often that "somebody" wouldn't take away the blotters ...
— Grandfather's Love Pie • Miriam Gaines
... rather clumsy, I'm afraid. But it cannot be helped. I must go blundering on. I'm groping in the dark, you know, but it's a thousand pities I shall have to tread ...
— The Postmaster's Daughter • Louis Tracy
... Jimmy, returning on the stage, reined in with a sudden interest. Stover hastily executed a series of grotesque inclinations and, grasping the clumsy valise, disappeared behind the door, hearing; as he struggled up the stairs, the roar from without that ...
— The Varmint • Owen Johnson
... off nothink, but trying to tear the wrapper off it. It was so involved," he added, "with string and paper and that; and I'm a clumsy, unlucky sort of chap, sweet one; and I'm uncommon sorry about it, ...
— The Tinted Venus - A Farcical Romance • F. Anstey
... were not a part of his world, really. Their thoughts, their motions, their reactions, were slow and clumsy in comparison with his own. Once the Nipe had been conquered, what purpose would there be in the life of Bartholomew Stanton? He was surrounded by people, but he was not one of them. He was immersed in a society that was not his own because it was not, could not be, geared to his abilities ...
— Anything You Can Do ... • Gordon Randall Garrett
... represents three ships very different in style from the first, but still looking very queer and clumsy. They are the ships in which, in—who can tell the date?—"Columbus crossed the ocean blue," and made that discovery of America which history records as the first. These caravels, as they were called, were named the Santa Maria, Pinta, and Nina. The first-named ...
— Harper's Young People, February 3, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... a voice from one of the ladders, which a pair of clumsy feet descended briskly. 'It's all done now. Clear away, gals. Everything shall be ready for you in half a ...
— The Battle of Life • Charles Dickens
... break up the sods with their rakes. The mellow soil offered slight resistance; and the laborer., by long practice, acquired a dexterity which enabled him to turn up the ground to the requisite depth with astonishing facility. This substitute for the plough was but a clumsy contrivance; yet it is curious as the only specimen of the kind among the American aborigines, and was perhaps not much inferior to the wooden instrument introduced in its stead by the ...
— History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William Hickling Prescott
... and hand the lad never knew. It was checked by a sudden onslaught from behind. Out from the low bushes that hedged the woods sprang two figures in hoods and cloaks. The foremost was tall and burly, though agile enough. The second seemed but a clumsy follower. In an instant Lindley's sword was engaged with that of the leader. For only an instant Johan hesitated. Drawing a short sword from under his cloak, he sprang upon the second of the highwaymen. Their battle was short, for the fellow's clumsiness made him an easy victim for the ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 6, July 1905 • Various
... fatigued with solitude, yet I have not relished my solitary dinner. A husband is a convenient part of the furniture of a house, unless he be a clumsy fixture. I wish you, from my soul, to be riveted in my heart; but I do not desire to have you always at my elbow, although at this moment I should not care if you were. Yours truly ...
— Mary Wollstonecraft • Elizabeth Robins Pennell
... "You clumsy idiot," bellowed Dynamite, stepping to the top of the stairs and peering down into the darkness, out of which ...
— A Voyage with Captain Dynamite • Charles Edward Rich
... up with so high a veneration of his brother's talents, that he cherished the sanguine belief that Randal would some day appear, wealthy and potent, like the uncle in a comedy; lift rip the sunken family, and rear into graceful ladies and accomplished gentlemen the clumsy little boys and the vulgar little girls who now crowded round Oliver's dinner-table, with appetites altogether disproportioned to ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... a feeble glow, and there was the soft, muffled sound of questioning voices in the other compartments. She dressed, her fingers shaking and clumsy, wishing that Dale would come to reassure her; to tell her that nothing really serious had happened, that it had ...
— Space Prison • Tom Godwin
... father—brief, business-like epistles, in which the old gentleman, in his clumsy way, expressed his affection for his son. Edward used his spare time in reading law and ...
— Little Bobtail - or The Wreck of the Penobscot. • Oliver Optic
... crisis, and into it Mollie intruded with clumsy tread. "Florence," she urged, "Florence, don't listen to him any longer. He must be intoxicated. Come with me!" and she started to drag the ...
— Ben Blair - The Story of a Plainsman • Will Lillibridge
... the neighborhood, and had told him with some dignity that Dolly was a very pretty baby, and was kept as clean as could be expected. Dolly was a pretty baby. He tightened the arm that was about her a little, and began to talk clumsy baby-talk to her; her mother looked on with a pleased smile from her front door. The sun was setting, and a strange ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol 31, No 2, June 1908 • Various
... went in, and some of the sword-play being very skilful, remained. A specimen of our own national sport, The British Boaxe, was announced to be given at the close of the evening. In an evil hour, I determined to wait for this Boaxe, as became a Briton. It was a clumsy specimen (executed by two English grooms out of place), but one of the combatants, receiving a straight right- hander with the glove between his eyes, did exactly what the large dark creature in the Morgue had seemed going to do—and finished me ...
— The Uncommercial Traveller • Charles Dickens
... noting the easy grace of the crew. In the bow a tall, slender fellow stood with arms folded, balancing himself to the sway of the rather clumsy craft and watching the water ahead. In the stern, on a little platform whence he could look over the heads of the others and catch any signal from the lookout, a squat, dark-faced steersman lounged against his crude rudder. Between these two the paddlers ...
— The Pathless Trail • Arthur O. (Arthur Olney) Friel
... absurd," laughed Lady Jane. "I won't have you littering up the house with great, clumsy detectives. You must remember that you aren't in horrid New York now, where everybody you meet wants to rob you. Who is it that you suspect? Who is the—what is the word you're so fond of? Crook. That's ...
— The Gem Collector • P. G. Wodehouse
... had been of a depreciatory nature, not as concerned her own attire—that was as perfect in its way as Rosalind's own—but with reference to the home-made dresses of the vicar's daughters, which seemed to have suddenly become clumsy and shapeless when viewed in the mirrors of this elegant bedroom. She was in arms at once on her friends' behalf, and when Peggy's dignity was hurt she was a formidable person to tackle. In this instance she fixed her eyes first on the maid, and then on Rosalind herself with a steady, disapproving ...
— About Peggy Saville • Mrs. G. de Horne Vaizey
... he is; and a man in addition. Now, dear, don't take this too much to heart; this is not a rebuke, but a clumsy warning. I am simply trying to make clear to you why you should be careful. Treat poor Zora a little more lovingly, and Bles a little less warmly. They are ...
— The Quest of the Silver Fleece - A Novel • W. E. B. Du Bois
... Desiree, with Felipe, the arriero, had halted and were gazing upward at the wall of rock which barred the exit from the passage. Following their eyes, I saw lines carved on the rock, evidently a rude and clumsy attempt to reproduce the form ...
— Under the Andes • Rex Stout
... point in single file, came a long line of some thirty canoes, uncouth, shapeless things, each hewed out of a great cypress log. In the end of each an Indian stood erect plying a long pole which sent their clumsy looking crafts forward at surprising speed. Magnificent savages they were, not one less than six feet tall, framed like athletes, and lithe ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... sure we shall," Ruth replied, looking admiringly at Mysa's bright face. "I have never had anything to do with girls of my own age, and you will find me clumsy at first; but I will do my best to please you, for your father and brother have been very ...
— The Cat of Bubastes - A Tale of Ancient Egypt • G. A. Henty
... and rulers, and, assuming that all these statesmen sincerely desired a peaceful solution of the questions raised by the Austrian ultimatum, (which is by no means clear,) it was the result of ineffective diplomacy and clumsy diplomacy at that. ...
— The New York Times Current History of the European War, Vol. 1, January 9, 1915 - What Americans Say to Europe • Various
... day he set about a report that George was dead. It did not reach Susan so soon as he thought it would, for old Merton hesitated to tell her; but on the Sunday evening, with considerable reluctance and misgivings, he tried in a very clumsy way to prepare her for ...
— It Is Never Too Late to Mend • Charles Reade
... "I'll feel safer about 'em when they're on the pedestal out of his reach," and with that he took the globe from Sara's hands and fastened it deftly on the pedestal. Sara had never enjoyed herself more than she did as she sat by the amber waters in the fading light, watching the kind, clumsy Koopf (who was yet so skilful at his own work) place the pretty globe with so much pride and pleasure. She kept sniffing, meanwhile, at the tantalizing perfume that seemed to sift downward from the feathers of the Plynck, as she stirred, ever ...
— The Garden of the Plynck • Karle Wilson Baker
... rather adds to the ornament of the grain than takes from the strength of the tree. Opposite to the window, the high chimneypiece rose to the heavy cornice of the ceiling, with dark panels glistening against the moonlight. The broad and rather clumsy chintz sofas and settees of the reign of George III. contrasted at intervals with the tall-backed chairs of a far more distant generation, when ladies in fardingales and gentlemen in trunk-hose seem never to have indulged in horizontal positions. The walls, of shining ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... can't blame anyone if you did not happen to be a nice young girl, to wear poke bonnets and jerseys, and becoming little nothings—we know you poor unfortunate males are half dead with envy, when you contrast your clumsy suits, every one's the same to look at, with the endless variety of our costumes, but all the same you can't say it's anyone's particular fault that you have all been ...
— Honor Edgeworth • Vera
... That long clumsy sentence about "a marvellous mixture and jumble of images and sentiments," &c. &c. &c., is pure nonsense. In itself, the Fourth Book is most harmoniously constructed as a work of art, and it rises out of, and ascends from the Third, a completed ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 358, August 1845 • Various
... said Jim, when the farmer had gone to call the men, "don't you think it's rather a clumsy affair? We can hardly get it into the express wagon, and I don't see where they can put it if we ...
— The House that Jill Built - after Jack's had proved a failure • E. C. Gardner
... built up are like rough-hewn blocks of not very good quality, but imposing by reason of their size, and by the obstinate repetition of their rhythmic design, which is maintained as if it were an obsession. This heaping-up of music both crude and learned in style, with harmonies that are sometimes clumsy and sometimes delicate, is worth considering on account of its bulk. The orchestration is heavy and noisy; and the brass dominates and roughly gilds the rather sombre colouring of the great edifice. The underlying idea of the composition is neo-classic, and rather spongy and diffuse. Its harmonic ...
— Musicians of To-Day • Romain Rolland
... important movements, and which was frequently stifled by the whistling of the cord of the street lamp, or in the hatchet-stroke of the guillotine. Camille Desmoulins was the remorseless offspring of the Revolution,—Marat was its fury; he had the clumsy tumblings of the brute in his thought, and its gnashing of teeth in his style. His journal (L'Ami du Peuple), the People's Friend, smelt of blood in ...
— History of the Girondists, Volume I - Personal Memoirs of the Patriots of the French Revolution • Alphonse de Lamartine
... our three little figures drawn as clearly as a clumsy pen can follow such subtle elusive creatures of mood and fancy. We will suppose now that it is a summer evening, that Daddy is seated smoking in his chair, that the Lady is listening somewhere near, and that the three ...
— Danger! and Other Stories • Arthur Conan Doyle
... once been the Countess Lovel. It certainly was the case that the old Earl in latter years had so called her, though he had never once seen her during his last residence in Sicily. It might be that the clumsy fiction of the letters had been perpetrated with the view of bolstering up a true case with false evidence. But Mr. Flick thought that there should be a compromise, and expressed his opinion very plainly to Sir William Patterson. "You mean a marriage," said the Solicitor-General. ...
— Lady Anna • Anthony Trollope
... then she changed her mind about jack-in-the-pulpit and decided on wintergreen berries. This is just a sample of one teeny bit of what she demanded. And Andy was very awkward; so naturally he began complaining of his shuttles being too clumsy for such fine work and the cobwebby filling getting tangled up in his thumbs and after a bit of chewing his nails in despair he swore the thing never could be ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1915 - And the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... shown that the universal peace and concord amongst nations, which these common enemies to mankind had held out with the same fraudulent ends and pretences with which they had uniformly conducted every part of their proceeding, was a coarse and clumsy deception, unworthy to be proposed as an example, by an informed and sagacious British senator, to any other country.—That, far from peace and good-will to men, they meditated war against all other governments, and proposed systematically to excite ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. IV. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... can feel half the joy and real happiness which was felt and enjoyed on that day by this honest Hebridean: though this new dwelling, erected in the midst of the woods, was nothing more than a square inclosure, composed of twenty-four large clumsy logs, let in at the ends. When the work was finished, the company made the woods resound with the noise of their three cheers, and the honest wishes they formed for Andrew's prosperity. He could say ...
— Letters from an American Farmer • Hector St. John de Crevecoeur
... see through a glass darkly,' said St. Paul of old; and what is more, dazzle and weary our eyes, like clumsy microscopists, by looking too long and earnestly through the imperfect and by no means achromatic lens. Enough. I will think of something else. I will think of ...
— Prose Idylls • Charles Kingsley
... went. For every German spy or would-be spy in America, there was an agent of the Secret Service, equally resourceful, and more likely to succeed, because, no matter how clumsy his adversary seemed, he never made the mistake of underrating him. "Stupid Yankees," von Papen had called us, while he went about his plotting with child-like faith in his skill at hiding. "Stupid Germans," the Secret Service might have retorted, as it skillfully uncovered all his plotting and ...
— Winning a Cause - World War Stories • John Gilbert Thompson and Inez Bigwood
... bewildering, illusive vision. That was a sufficiently maddening process, but to relate that vision of radiant efficient strength and grace to the one he carried of the farmer's daughter with her dun-coloured straggling hair, her muddy complexion, her stupid face, her clumsy, grimy hands and heavy feet, her sloppy figure, was quite impossible. After long and strenuous attempts ...
— Corporal Cameron • Ralph Connor
... explaining to Cowperwood just what his difficulty was. He went at it in a clumsy fashion, stumbling through the difficulties of the situation he was ...
— The Financier • Theodore Dreiser
... which was to surpass all that had preceded it. He observed that those engines which had been constructed up to this time, however ingenious in their arrangements, had proved practical failures. Mr. Blackett's was as yet both clumsy and expensive. Chapman's had been removed from the Heaton tramway in 1812, and was regarded as a total failure. And the Blenkinsop engine at Coxlodge was found very unsteady and costly in its working; besides, ...
— Lives of the Engineers - The Locomotive. George and Robert Stephenson • Samuel Smiles
... regret at having lost beyond recall Mademoiselle de Tonnai-Charente. Such elegiac effusions seemed to me unspeakably ridiculous; they should have explained matters earlier, while the lists were still open. For persons of this sort I conceived aversion, who were actually so clumsy as to dare to tell me that they had forgotten to ask my ...
— The Memoirs of Madame de Montespan, Complete • Madame La Marquise De Montespan
... had fared the worst of the company; the clumsy animal he rode seeming to be of opinion when he got into a difficulty that he had nothing to do but to lie down and resign himself to his fate; while his rider, not being particularly light and agile, was generally undermost, and half imbedded in the ...
— Wau-bun - The Early Day in the Northwest • Juliette Augusta Magill Kinzie
... five feet long and upwards of a foot wide. The shoes were of this enormous size, in order that they might support the wearers on the surface of the snow, which was, on an average, four feet deep in the woods. They were clumsy to look at, but not so difficult to walk in as one ...
— Silver Lake • R.M. Ballantyne
... sunset, and every flag was lowered. Down came in most seaman-like style the proud flag of merry England—the then spotless banner of France—and the great cross, hanging ungracefully, over the stout, but clumsy, Russian man of war. All these flags were then in the harbour of Valletta, although it was not at that eventful time when—the Moslem humbled—they met with the cordiality of ...
— A Love Story • A Bushman
... the village lived an old shoemaker's wife; she sat down and made, as well as she could, a pair of little shoes out of some old pieces of red cloth. They were clumsy, but she meant well, for they were intended for the little girl, ...
— Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen
... It was a long thorn—first, a punch in the cloth and like as not a stab in the finger in the bargain, then a withdrawal of the crude needle and a careful threading of the hole with our coarse string, after the fashion of a clumsy shoemaker. Some sewing! ...
— The Escape of a Princess Pat • George Pearson
... hats and the most ludicrous of weapons in their hands. Some, it is true, shouldered fowling pieces, and here and there a sword was brandished; but more of them were armed with clubs, and most of them trailed the mammoth pikes fashioned out of scythes, as formidable to the eye as they were clumsy to the hand. There were weavers, brewers, carpenters, smiths, masons, bricklayers, cobblers, and representatives of every other of the trades of peace among these improvised men of war. Bridgewater, like Taunton, ...
— Captain Blood • Rafael Sabatini
... they could be drained only by pumps, and it was often more difficult to keep the water out than it was to lift the coal out. The steam-engine was then in a very incomplete condition, and both pumping-and lifting-engines were crude and clumsy affairs. To be sure Watt, the mathematical instrument-maker, had invented the double-acting steam-engine, but few had been manufactured, and those in common use were "atmospheric" engines, known as "Newcomen's" engines. ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 6 of 8 • Various
... moralist is represented seated. One hand holds a scroll, the other rests upon a pedestal. The likeness is said to be well preserved. The sculptor was Bacon. There was the capacious forehead, the thick bushy eyebrows, the large mouth, the double chin, the clumsy person, and the thick, ungainly legs, which had been rendered familiar to me through the portraits which I had seen in the Johnsonia. As I gazed on that marble tribute to genius and worth, I could not but remember, Charley, how Johnson had frequently walked the streets ...
— Young Americans Abroad - Vacation in Europe: Travels in England, France, Holland, - Belgium, Prussia and Switzerland • Various
... sometimes murmuring the litanies she knew by heart; sometimes also reading from a prayer-book worn and greasy as a long-used pack of cards. It was particularly stained at one page, a page on which her tears had fallen many a lonely night—a page with a clumsy wood cut representing a celestial lamp, a symbolic radiance, shining through darkness, and on either side a kneeling angel with folded wings. And beneath this rudely wrought symbol of the Perpetual Calm appeared in big, coarse type the title of a prayer ...
— Chita: A Memory of Last Island • Lafcadio Hearn
... Parker knew he hadn't—or, if he had, it was only one of the things he had gone for. Because, if the War Office had been all that he had in his mind he would have told us, and Viola would have told us, and they would have gone openly together, instead of dodging about like two clumsy criminals, one at Midhurst and the other ...
— The Belfry • May Sinclair
... though, which I could not guard against, and this was the clumsy though well-meaning stupidity of a plantation negro. One afternoon the house became offensive with the odor of burning wool. I followed up the scent and, after opening several doors, I finally traced it to the dining-room. It ...
— Plantation Sketches • Margaret Devereux
... man, with clumsy boots that were queer about the heels, and a mangy fur collar, like the skin of an invalid French poodle, to his threadbare coat—how in the name of all that is audacious, dared such a low person as this lay his dirty fingers upon the sacred shoulder ...
— Henry Dunbar - A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... fingers. Nails extending beyond the ends of the fingers are vulgar, clawlike, and inconvenient; whilst if shorter, particularly much shorter than the fingers, they are unsightly and of little use, and cause the tips of the fingers to become thick and clumsy. Biting the nails should be avoided as a dirty and disagreeable habit, and one utterly destructive to ...
— The Ladies Book of Useful Information - Compiled from many sources • Anonymous
... Apparently the fellow was engaged in oiling the machinery, for he had placed the lantern on deck, and held a long-spouted can in his fingers. His back remained toward me as I drew near the stern, and, consequently, I no longer had a glimpse of his face. The wooden wheel of the boat, a clumsy appearing apparatus, rested almost directly against the bank, where the water was evidently deep enough to float the vessel, and the single rope holding it in position was drawn taut from the pressure of the current. Waiting until the man was compelled to bend lower over his work, utterly ...
— The Devil's Own - A Romance of the Black Hawk War • Randall Parrish
... pleasing form. Wood turning properly taught awakens the aesthetic sense and creates a desire for the beautiful. The boy or man who has learned to make graceful curves and clean-cut fillets and beads will never be satisfied with clumsy effects which are characteristic in cheap commercial work, ...
— A Course In Wood Turning • Archie S. Milton and Otto K. Wohlers
... bathe when we bathe, and row when we row, and not mix them. You couldn't do anything with even one of those clumsy oars in that tub ...
— Jewel's Story Book • Clara Louise Burnham
... which they have been associated with Europeans; but it is hard to realize the difficulties which they have encountered in trying to comprehend our civilization, and in grasping its improvements. Even the adoption of the antique Spanish plow, the clumsy two-wheeled cart, the heavy ax and the rude saw, which are still found among them, caused them to pass at one stride from the Stone to the Iron Age, which, but for the intervention of the Spaniards, they would not naturally have reached ...
— John L. Stoddard's Lectures, Vol. 10 (of 10) - Southern California; Grand Canon of the Colorado River; Yellowstone National Park • John L. Stoddard
... refers to the headline which the writing-master gives his pupils to copy, line by line. We all know how clumsy the pothooks and hangers are, how blurred the page with many a blot. And yet there, at the top of it, stands the Master's fair writing, and though even the last line on the page will be blotted and blurred, when we turn it over and begin on the ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. John Chapters I to XIV • Alexander Maclaren
... finally, with thrills of intense voluptuousness, to the thought of what might have become of him had he gone out into life on his own in the trail of a pair of green eyes whose golden lights he thought he could still see glittering in front of him between the lines of clumsy parliamentary prose, tempting him as they had ...
— The Torrent - Entre Naranjos • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... was hailed then as a masterly achievement of an arduous task, the difficulties of which are only the less appreciated because of the very excellence of the performance. It contrasts most strikingly with its clumsy predecessor in its approximation to Sterne's deftness of touch, his delicate turns of phrase, his seemingly obvious and facile, but really delicate and accurate choice of expression. Zckert was heavy, commonplace, uncompromisingly literal and bristling with inaccuracies. Bode's ...
— Laurence Sterne in Germany • Harvey Waterman Thayer
... for this purpose must have proved abortive, as everything points to him having been well informed. He appears to have had an instinctive knowledge that nullified the precautions of the Court of Vienna, and especially its culpable Chancellor, Metternich, whose clumsy and heartless treatment is so apparent to all students of history. Probably this is the policy that prevailed up to 1830 which Prince Napoleon complains of. Be that as it may, we are persuaded that the Duke ...
— The Tragedy of St. Helena • Walter Runciman
... pronunciation and voice, even to an unanalytical ear; the meaning is obscured by inaccurate inflection and uncertain or corrupt enunciation; but, worst of all, the personal atmosphere, the aroma, of the idea has been lost in transmission through a clumsy, ...
— Stories to Tell to Children • Sara Cone Bryant
... on. As none of those proceedings served any good purpose in the previous cases, it would be waste of time to resort to them in a seventh, similar case. An enemy who displays such skill and subtlety would not leave behind her any of those clumsy traces which are the first things that a ...
— The Eight Strokes of the Clock • Maurice Leblanc
... down at her own chubby hands. Her mittens were red this winter, with a red-and-green fringe around the wrists. Only that morning she had admired them. Now they looked fat and clumsy and altogether unattractive; but she wasn't going to admit that ...
— Boys and Girls Bookshelf; a Practical Plan of Character Building, Volume I (of 17) - Fun and Thought for Little Folk • Various
... it, the bully had certainly produced a beautiful model. It was of the Bleriot type, and finished perfectly down to the minutest detail. Every wire and brace on it was silvered with aluminum paint, and it even bore a small figure at its steering wheel. Beside it the other models looked almost clumsy. ...
— The Boy Scouts of the Eagle Patrol • Howard Payson
... taken from the Illustrirte Zeitung, shows a race of the above described ice boats on the Mueggelsee (Mueggel Lake), near Berlin. It will be seen from the clumsy construction of the boats that the Germans have not yet learned the art of ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 481, March 21, 1885 • Various
... peaceful mariner who wished merely to trade, to the individual whose business called him overseas, this epoch must have been one of terror unspeakable. The ordinary perils of the deep were quite enough to keep timid folk at home in those days of clumsy, ill-found sailing ships, which could by no means work to windward, and did not sail remarkably well even with the most favouring breezes; when to this we add that every ship which started on a voyage in the Mediterranean ...
— Sea-Wolves of the Mediterranean • E. Hamilton Currey
... again ready for sea, but waiting. With her at the anchorage were representatives of most of the maritime nations. English ships and barks with painted ports and spider-web braces, high-sided, square-sterned American half-clippers, clumsy, square-bowed "Dutchmen," coasting-brigs of any nation, lumber-schooners from "'Frisco," hide-carriers from Valparaiso, pearl-boats and fishermen, and even a couple of homesick Malay proas from the west crowded the roadstead; for the guano ...
— "Where Angels Fear to Tread" and Other Stories of the Sea • Morgan Robertson
... the public offices of the Church, and every one knew her to be indispensable. For who could tell the name of a defaulter at the station, but Mrs. Darcy? And who arranged the screaming baby in the clumsy arms of a young godmother, but Mrs. Darcy? And who could lay out a corpse like Mrs. Darcy? And who but Mrs. Darcy found the ring when the confused and blushing bridegroom fumbled in every pocket at the altar, and the priest looked angry, and the ...
— My New Curate • P.A. Sheehan
... nearer it came. But, as its outline grew each moment more distinct, gradually her fears departed. For this was not the clumsy Spanish galleon she remembered. The prow was not nearly so high, nor was the incoming vessel as large in any respect as had been that other. Yet, though fear died, wonder grew. What new variety of strangers, ...
— Their Mariposa Legend • Charlotte Herr
... the State in general. His pamphlet may be divided into two parts: one, historico-literary, containing valuable material for the history of the ideas of Stirner, Proudhon, and others; the second, ignorant and narrow-minded, containing a clumsy disquisition on the theme 'that an anarchist cannot be distinguished from a bandit,' an amusing combination of subjects and most characteristic of the entire activity of Plechanoff on the eve of revolution and during the revolutionary period in Russia. Indeed, in ...
— Anarchism and Socialism • George Plechanoff
... memorial of antiquity and religion, which even a foreign soldiery had spared. One inscription in the graveyard surrounding the church is as early as 1701, and even earlier dates are found on tombstones in the fields a mile distant. The Court-House, a clumsy old structure, in which was the law-office of Colonel Mallory, contained judicial records of a very early colonial period. Some, which I examined, bore date of 1634. Several old houses, with spacious rooms and high ornamented ceilings, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 49, November, 1861 • Various
... said Mr Rogers, as he looked at the clumsy young leopard, which had a peculiarly heavy kittenish aspect. "I should say it was undoubtedly the mother that dashed in after the dogs, her young one making her ...
— Off to the Wilds - Being the Adventures of Two Brothers • George Manville Fenn
... reputation of being the best swordsman in Prussia he values that title somewhat more than your military rank, which any clumsy fool ...
— International Short Stories: French • Various
... his greatness. A novice who is fervent at the age of twenty often becomes a skilful rogue at forty. In the great game of human life one begins by being a dupe, and one finishes by being a rogue. A statesman takes as almoner a monk steeped in the pettinesses of his monastery, devout, credulous, clumsy, quite new to the world: the monk learns, forms himself, ...
— Voltaire's Philosophical Dictionary • Voltaire
... laid a finger on her veiled mouth, as one who would say, "Hush!" and with the other hand quickly tossed him a little wreath of sweet-scented jessamine flowers. Tartarin of Tarascon stooped to pick it up; but as he was rather clumsy, and much overburdened with implements of war, the operation took rather long. When he did straighten up, with the jessamine garland upon his heart, ...
— Tartarin of Tarascon • Alphonse Daudet
... trapper, "and we've bin told by Paul that Stalker was the only man of his band who wouldn't fall in wi' the ways o' the country, but sticks to the clumsy Jack-boots and spurs of old England. Yes, the scoundrel has followed you up, Tolly, as Paul Bevan said he would, and, havin' come across Brixton's track, has gone after him, from all which I now come to the ...
— Twice Bought • R.M. Ballantyne
... before Tamatave offers a good anchorage, except when the wind is from the north or east. Several species of pandanus and some tall cocoa-nut trees gave a tropical character to the scenery. Soon after anchoring, a large but rather clumsy canoe came alongside, with an officer who spoke a little English, and said he was the harbour-master, and a number of attendants. They wore neatly plaited straw hats, white shirts bound round the loins with cloths, and large white scarfs thrown gracefully over the shoulders like the Scotch plaid. ...
— A Voyage round the World - A book for boys • W.H.G. Kingston
... of neatness in a rough uniform of brown homespun. A dark flannel shirt replaced the snowy cambric one, and there was neither cravat nor collar to mark the boundary line between his dark face and the still darker material. And the dear little boots! O ye gods and little fishes! they were clumsy, and mud-spattered! If my mouth twitched with laughter as I silently commented, the Doctor's did not! I, who always danced on my way, came in lying back on my pillows, and wheeled in by a servant. The Doctor's sympathy was really touching, and poor consolation he gave when he heard the ...
— A Confederate Girl's Diary • Sarah Morgan Dawson
... her beautiful. He was fond of analyzing types and breeds, and he said there were those who looked as if they had been poured into more or less fine or clumsy mould, and there were others who were sharply carved as with a knife. He loved a woman's face to look ciselee, he said. That is why he did not entirely admire his niece, for although the mould was of the finest in her case, her ...
— The Reason Why • Elinor Glyn
... was "first used in a poem called Alexander."—Worcester's Dict. Such metre has sometimes been written, with little diversity, through an entire English poem, as in Drayton's Polyolbion; but, couplets of this length being generally esteemed too clumsy for our language, the Alexandrine has been little used by English versifiers, except to complete certain stanzas beginning with shorter iambics, or, occasionally, to close a period in heroic rhyme. French heroics are similar to this; and if, as some assert, we have obtained it ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... the dogs consists of collar straps, leashes, and surcingles, (1) and the collar should be broad and soft so as not to rub the dog's coat; the leash should have a noose for the hand, (2) and nothing else. The plan of making collar and leash all in one is a clumsy contrivance for keeping a hound in check. (3) The surcingle should be broad in the thongs so as not to gall the hound's flanks, and with spurs stitched on to the leather, to preserve the purity ...
— The Sportsman - On Hunting, A Sportsman's Manual, Commonly Called Cynegeticus • Xenophon
... keep them in, so that they will not get lost or soiled. Give one sheet to each tree, and upon it paste a piece of the bark, a leaf, and a blossom. The bark should not be taken from the tree where it is too coarse and clumsy, but where it is nearly smooth and perfect, and gives the best idea of the tree; nor should too thin a piece be taken, as when it gets dry it may wrinkle up and crumble to pieces. It may be well to take off with the bark a thin layer of the wood to stiffen ...
— Harper's Young People, June 1, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... untouched, as they had been when she first fell into our hands, and two handsomer sticks I never saw; but, in place of the tall slim willowy topmasts which she then carried, they had sent up a couple of heavy, clumsy sticks which, with the yards on her foremast, were stout enough for a vessel of at least twice her tonnage. And, not content with this, they had further hampered the poor little craft with a regular maze of heavy shrouds, stays, and back-stays, all of which had been ...
— The Rover's Secret - A Tale of the Pirate Cays and Lagoons of Cuba • Harry Collingwood
... Boswell's Johnson, after listening to endless grumblings and watching the clumsy actions of the hero, often finds himself wondering why he should end his reading with a profound respect for this "old bear" who is the object of Boswell's groveling attention. Here is a man who was certainly not the greatest writer of his age, ...
— English Literature - Its History and Its Significance for the Life of the English Speaking World • William J. Long
... cotton merchants, but were now become the prisons of soldiers in gray. One of these places, restored after the war as a cotton factor's counting-room again, had, until a few years ago, a queer, clumsy patch in the plastering of one wall, near the base-board. Some one had made a rough inscription on it with a cotton sampler's marking-brush. It commemorates an incident. Mary by some means became aware beforehand that this incident was going to occur; ...
— Dr. Sevier • George W. Cable
... by it. The aesthetical appearance can never endanger the truth of morals: wherever it seems to do so the appearance is not aesthetical. Only a stranger to the fashionable world can take the polite assurances, which are only a form, for proofs of affection, and say he has been deceived; but only a clumsy fellow in good society calls in the aid of duplicity and flatters to become amiable. The former lacks the pure sense for independent appearance; therefore he can only give a value to appearance by truth. The second ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... the Cree, like birds of prey, to plunder the Blackfeet, or 'Horse Indians.' Between these high, steep banks came the voyageurs of the old fur companies—'ti-aing-ti-aing' in monotonous sing-song day and night, tracking the clumsy York boats up-stream all the way from tide water to within sight of the Rocky Mountains. Up these waters, with rapids so numerous that one loses count of them, came doughty traders of the Company with the swiftest paddlers the West has ever ...
— The "Adventurers of England" on Hudson Bay - A Chronicle of the Fur Trade in the North (Volume 18 of the Chronicles of Canada) • Agnes C. (Agnes Christina) Laut
... again for some time. The man lay back in his chair, gazing at his big, clumsy shoes as though he hoped for some inspiration from that quarter, while his wife ...
— Stories by English Authors: Orient • Various
... Darling, clumsy at all times, in this speech conveyed to Susannah the first faint suspicion that Smith might dream of detaining ...
— The Mormon Prophet • Lily Dougall
... have a drink or you won't know how sweet and cool the water is!" She cupped her hands and drank; but his own efforts to bring the water to his lips were clumsy and ineffectual. ...
— Blacksheep! Blacksheep! • Meredith Nicholson
... said, with a clumsy gaiety, "will you wash these plates and dishes? You will find the pump in the cure's garden. We have nurses and doctors, but we have no one to wash up. And it is I who do it. This is my hospital. I have borrowed the ...
— The Isle of Unrest • Henry Seton Merriman
... mightily; the others dug with their boughs. The clumsy raft moved slowly, and was carried down stream by the current. Would they never get away from shore! Would the Miamis swim after them, or shoot! They made ...
— Boys' Book of Frontier Fighters • Edwin L. Sabin
... by chance,—but the particular detail about him which at the time made most impression on my mind was that he was the reputed inventor of the "'fraid strap." The "'fraid strap" is—or was—a short thong, perhaps two feet in length, fastened to the front of the clumsy saddle, which, at signs of contumacy in one's pony, one could, with a couple of hitches, wrap round his hand, in such a way as to increase immensely the chance of a continuity of connection with his seat. The ...
— The Twentieth Century American - Being a Comparative Study of the Peoples of the Two Great - Anglo-Saxon Nations • H. Perry Robinson
... I know that they are lying? Because it is a clumsy fabrication which simply could not be true. Consider! According to the story given to us, the assassin had less than a minute after the murder had been committed to take that ring, which was under another ring, from the dead man's finger, to replace the other ring—a thing which he would surely ...
— The Valley of Fear • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
... struggling with clumsy forwards and slow guards, Lois, who really ought to have been there, was having a very important talk with Mrs. Baird ...
— Polly's Senior Year at Boarding School • Dorothy Whitehill
... of January, B.C. 31, Octavian, as Consul of the Republic, proceeded to carry on the war against the Egyptian queen. The hostile fleets and armies assembled on the western coasts of Greece. Antony's fleet was superior both in number and size of the ships, but they were clumsy and unmanageable. They were anchored in the Ambraciot Gulf, in the modern Bay of Prevesa. (See Plan, P.) The army was encamped on the promontory of Actium (Plan, 3), which has given its name to the battle. The fleet of Octavian consisted of light Liburnian ...
— A Smaller History of Rome • William Smith and Eugene Lawrence
... is evident that adaptation on the part of individuals and groups to the requirements of life may be in part accomplished by biological selection, that is, by eliminating the least adapted. But selection is, after all, a very clumsy and imperfect instrument for securing the highest type of adaptation. Again, it is evident that a certain degree of adaptation can be secured through the constraint of government and law; but only a relatively low type of adaptation can be secured in such an external ...
— Sociology and Modern Social Problems • Charles A. Ellwood
... might weigh the mountains in scales and the hills in a balance, yet it was a far subtiler power which must possess him of one small woman's heart. In fact, he felt to himself like a great, awkward, clumsy, mountainous earthite asking of a white-robed angel to help him up a ladder of cloud. He was perfectly sure for the moment, that he was going to be refused; and he looked humbly firm,—he would take it like a man. His large blue eyes, generally ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various
... Solomin lives a life of cheerful, reticent activity. As the revolution is not at hand, the best thing to do in the interim is to accomplish something useful. He has learned how to labour and to wait. "This calm, heavy, not to say clumsy man was not only incapable of lying or bragging; one might rely on him, like a stone wall." In every scene, whether among the affected aristocrats or among the futile revolutionists, Solomin appears to advantage. There is no worse ...
— Essays on Russian Novelists • William Lyon Phelps
... appreciate merit, he was no less so in detecting defects. The Russian soldiers came in for scathing criticism. The type at Egmont impressed him most unfavourably. The clumsy Russian foot-soldier was his special aversion. The accuracy of his criticism has been confirmed by military writers, but this book is not for the purpose of weighing the quality of Russian valour in Holland. Six thousand of these Russian allies, ...
— The Story of Isaac Brock - Hero, Defender and Saviour of Upper Canada, 1812 • Walter R. Nursey
... up again: "Well, I've stated your case, messieurs. It amounts to simple, clumsy blackmail. I'm to split my earnings with you, or you'll denounce me to the police. That's about it, ...
— The Lone Wolf - A Melodrama • Louis Joseph Vance
... obliged to apply to the next girl to her for his brandy and soda. He drank slowly, hoping her admirers would leave her, but one soldier was stationery, and this spot of red grew singularly offensive in Frank's eyes, from the clumsy, characterless boots, to the close-clipped hair set off with the monotonously jaunty cap. The man sprawled over the counter drinking a glass of porter. Frank tried to listen to what he was saying. Lizzie smiled, showing many ...
— Spring Days • George Moore
... safe. Old Brin sat down at the foot of the tree, and with head cocked sidewise thoughtfully eyed the man who had affronted him with a charge of small shot. Presently he arose and with his paws grasped the tree ten or twelve feet from the ground, and Foster laughed derisively at the notion of that clumsy beast trying to climb. But Brin had no notion of climbing. Holding his grip, he backed away, and as the tree bent toward him he took a fresh hold higher up, and so, hand over hand, pulled the top of it downward ...
— Bears I Have Met—and Others • Allen Kelly
... in no possible way can it do more. In practice, on account of friction, etc., we know it does less. This law, being invariable, of course limits us, as it did Archimedes and Pythagoras; we have simply utilized sources of power that their clumsy workmen allowed to escape. Of the four principal sources—food, fuel, wind, and tide—including harnessed waterfalls, the last two do by far the most work. Much of the electrical energy in every thunderstorm is also captured and condensed in our capacious storage batteries, as natural ...
— A Journey in Other Worlds • J. J. Astor
... awoke, it was full daylight. She felt a little chilly under her big green leaf, and stiff in her limbs, so that her first movements were slow and clumsy. Clinging to a vein of the leaf she let her wings quiver and vibrate, to limber them up and shake off the dust; then she smoothed her fair hair, wiped her large eyes clean, and crept, warily, down to the edge of the leaf, where she ...
— The Adventures of Maya the Bee • Waldemar Bonsels
... Bandy-legs from behind, "he's just gone and fell over some old cliff, that's what. You know how clumsy ...
— With Trapper Jim in the North Woods • Lawrence J. Leslie
... her dress untidy and flying, her movements heavy and free. She belonged to the lowest class of seaport inhabitants. As she came near, Sylvia saw that the tears were streaming down her cheeks, quite unconsciously to herself. She recognized Sylvia's face, full of interest as it was, and stopped her clumsy run to speak ...
— Sylvia's Lovers — Complete • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... all seeming, she moved toward the boat. With clumsy and assertive gallantry her father stepped before her, offering his hand,—his hand which she did not touch; for, in the act of descending, she remembered and swung ...
— The Black Bag • Louis Joseph Vance
... walked with a loose, swinging gait. His figure was spare and angular: he wore a battered, black felt hat and clumsy, iron-bound boots: his clothes were dingy from long exposure to the weather. He had close-set, insignificant eyes, much wrinkled, and stubbly eyebrows streaked with grey. His mouth was close-shaven, and drawn by his abstraction ...
— Victorian Short Stories • Various
... "You ugly, clumsy clown. You ape!" Tears began to spoil the flawless mask of her face. Blinded with anger, he grabbed roughly for her arm, but she broke away ...
— The Happy Unfortunate • Robert Silverberg
... when he came to the rail again. There was a tense feeling abroad, a gathering excitement that grew through the morning. All manner of water-craft fussed and fumed and dodged around the transports,—tugs, rowboats, launches and clumsy river steamers strung with flags and black with civilians. One tug that hung close by shone with more color than the others by reason of the women crowding it; Tom could discern the face of his mother looking, ...
— Stanford Stories - Tales of a Young University • Charles K. Field
... be doubted whether even the most dispassionate scholar can write the history of contemporary events. We may be thankful for the great mass of facts he has collated, but his work is tinctured with his high Tory principles; his material is not well digested, and his style is clumsy. ...
— English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History - Designed as a Manual of Instruction • Henry Coppee
... a Comedy of Manners might be imaged in the person of a blowsy country girl—say Hoyden, the daughter of Sir Tunbelly Clumsy, who, when at home, 'never disobeyed her father except in the eating of green gooseberries'—transforming to a varnished City madam; with a loud laugh and a mincing step; the crazy ancestress of an accountably fallen descendant. She ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... an honest game of diplomacy. What others did with Machiavellian intrigue or a cynical indifference to ways and means, he accomplished with the cards on the table in plain view, and with motives and objects frankly disclosed. No one ever thought his straightforward methods clumsy, or unbusinesslike, or deficient in cleverness. In like manner he studied the business needs of the customs service, indicating to the Secretary of the Treasury the flagrant use of backstair wiles, and pointing out to him ways of reform.[1626] He sought in good faith to secure efficiency ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... for some time. The forest was growing dark, and the many noises of the night began. First came the yelping of the toucan, which sounded like the carefree yap-yap of some clumsy little pup. Then came the chattering of the night monkeys and the croaking of the thousands of frogs that hide in the swamps. And still no traces of the jaguar. Again we separated. The dog had run home utterly scared. Now and then we would whistle so as not to lose track of each other. ...
— In The Amazon Jungle - Adventures In Remote Parts Of The Upper Amazon River, Including A - Sojourn Among Cannibal Indians • Algot Lange
... party, was a Swede, and a Swede in a very bad humour. The iron ring in his torn nose, and the stout stick in the hand of one of his Italian masters, showed very plainly that he needed stern discipline. Now he dragged at the strong rope attached to the iron ring, and held back, moving his clumsy legs as if his machinery were out of order, or at least as if goodwill were lacking to ...
— The Golden House • Mrs. Woods Baker
... to find you!" exclaimed Peter cordially. "I began to think it must be a trick of dryads to wait themselves ashore without waiting for the clumsy old ...
— Winnie Childs - The Shop Girl • C. N. Williamson
... to himself, 'is it treason to carry the King's letters to a wench? Helping the King is no treason. I should be advanced, not threatened with a halter. Letters between the King and Kat Howard!' He even attempted to himself a clumsy joke, polishing it and repolishing it till it came out: 'A King may write to a Kat. A Kat may write to a King. ...
— Privy Seal - His Last Venture • Ford Madox Ford
... mysticism. Even as it is, mathematicians share with musicians a certain partiality in their characters and mental development. Masters in one abstract subject, they may remain children in the world; exquisite manipulators of the ideal, they may be erratic and clumsy in their earthly ways. Immense as are the uses and wide the applications of mathematics, its texture is too thin and inhuman to employ the whole mind or render it harmonious. It is a science which Socrates rejected for its supposed want of utility; ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... ambiguity of the language is laid bare shockingly by the process. Perhaps not really worse than in prose translation, but every metre (or almost every) deprives you at once of a sensible fraction of the already scanty vocabulary. One learns also how essentially clumsy and prosaic the language is in its vocabulary, though so ...
— Memoir and Letters of Francis W. Newman • Giberne Sieveking
... "You're a clumsy bunch," he announced at last. "It's a simple thing to do, isn't it?" The knife-throwers redoubled, their efforts, but they did not find it a simple ...
— Merton of the Movies • Harry Leon Wilson
... Plague take her for a blind old Baggage! That such a patch as Barnard should have had The Honour to have sav'd our General's life. That Barnard! that mock-man! that clumsy forgery Of Heaven's Image. Any other heart But mine own would have turn'd splenetic to ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... Montgomery has written, besides many other poems, not a few meditative and devotional pieces among the best in the language. Pollok's "Course of Time" is the immature work of a man of genius who possessed very imperfect cultivation. It is clumsy in plan and tediously dissertative, but it has passages of genuine poetry. The pleasing verses of Bishop Heber and the more recent effusions of Keble ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta
... the elaborate transactions progress and prosperity demand. Nature is the great teacher, and we know that her ways are at times complicated and clumsy. Likewise, under the "natural" laws of economics, new enterprises are not born without travail, without the aid of legal physicians well versed in financial obstetrics. One hundred and fifty to two ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... as he works on land. In use of arms and hands he reminds one of a monkey, while his clumsy and usually slow-moving body will often suggest the hippopotamus. By using head, hands, teeth, tail, and webbed feet the beaver accomplishes much. The tail of a beaver is a useful and much-used appendage; ...
— Wild Life on the Rockies • Enos A. Mills
... century which he did not bless with his beneficence. Oh, this was not a barren almond tree that blossomed. His charity was not like the bursting of the bud of a famous tree in the South that fills the whole forest with its racket; nor was it a clumsy thing like the fruit, in some tropical clime, that crashes down, almost knocking the life out of those who gather it; for in his case the right hand knew not what the left hand did. The churches of God in whose service he ...
— Forty Years in South China - The Life of Rev. John Van Nest Talmage, D.D. • Rev. John Gerardus Fagg
... boy. I'm getting old and clumsy, and a little help from a young hand comes timely. Where are you going, if I ...
— Choice Readings for the Home Circle • Anonymous
... somewhere in the house were growing restless. The dog felt his self-control slipping in a mad desire to plunge at the chain. He started to rise, but the boy caught him angrily by the ear and jerked his head back into place. Chairs were pushed back in the living room. Down the back steps came a rapid, clumsy, heavy tread. Then the loud, coarse voice ...
— Frank of Freedom Hill • Samuel A. Derieux
... looked upon him as their conqueror, and they came like lambs when he ordered it. They think they're slaves you know, and don't understand their pay, but they get it every week and same as all the other labourers—and oh, Aunt Ernie, you should see the King work with a pickaxe! He is fat and so clumsy and so furiously angry, but he's too scared of Trent to do anything but obey orders, and there he works hour after hour, groaning, and the perspiration rolls off him as though he were in a Turkish bath. I could ...
— A Millionaire of Yesterday • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... sneered and kicked at the boxful of hand-forged and clumsy tools. The work was of the crudest, the product of a sort of neolithic machine age. The distilling retort had been laboriously formed from sheet copper and clumsily riveted together. It leaked mightily as did the soldered ...
— The Ethical Engineer • Henry Maxwell Dempsey
... throwing their bolas with the greatest dexterity, never failing to entangle the legs of the game, which they speedily killed with their clubs or knives. Sometimes the Indians use the bola on horseback; and I must remark that it requires great dexterity to do so with effect, as a clumsy person is very likely to twist the cords round his own neck or that of his steed, instead of the animal he is hunting. As soon as the vicunas were killed, they were carried off to the camp to be skinned and cut ...
— Manco, the Peruvian Chief - An Englishman's Adventures in the Country of the Incas • W.H.G. Kingston
... ever-present shield. Every tree trunk was a breastwork ready prepared for battle; every bush, every moss-covered boulder, was a defence against assault, from behind which, themselves unseen, they watched with fierce derision the movements of their clumsy white enemy. Lurking, skulking, travelling with noiseless rapidity, they left a trail that only a master in woodcraft could follow, while, on the other hand, they could dog a white man's footsteps as a hound runs a fox. Their ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume One - From the Alleghanies to the Mississippi, 1769-1776 • Theodore Roosevelt
... appeared. He squeezed through the opening, but, for all his bulk, came quickly. Once clear, he dropped upon his haunches, and knit his fists before him. The position showed him at his best. Crouched or in motion, the clumsy angles of his body were forced into relief. As he sat back, the curves softened, and, as far as brown rat could be, he was imposing. For some moments he sat immovable, facing the darkness, then he turned, and, with one eye always fixed ...
— "Wee Tim'rous Beasties" - Studies of Animal life and Character • Douglas English
... ready to cry. "It's all my fault," she lamented. "I was clumsy. I was tactless. And now Cora will be punished for it, and—I make nothing but ...
— Martha By-the-Day • Julie M. Lippmann
... in the Standard, thinking that the title Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals is clumsy on account of its length, proposes that it be changed to Animalthropic Society. It is not likely that Mr. BERGH, who has some reputation for scholarship, will adopt a suggestion in which a bit of Greek is brought in "wrong end foremost," unless, indeed, his ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 15, July 9, 1870 • Various
... extremely anxious to secure this prize. He took as the subject of his epigram the sudden death of a man on rising from prayer. This was in such lamentably bad taste that he did not win the prize, but otherwise it would have certainly been his. His four lines could not have been surpassed for clumsy and laboured imbecility. The ...
— Marge Askinforit • Barry Pain
... against all those bad influences that are often so fatal at the inception of life, even to the healthiest babes, preserved from an excess or insufficiency of food, sheltered from cold and dampness, protected against clumsy handling and against pernicious microbes, sickly or prematurely born babies soon acquire enough strength in the apparatus to be able, finally, like others, to face the various perils that ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 643, April 28, 1888 • Various
... the great difference between this two-seater and their own active little Nieuports. How clumsy this machine was, and how slow to answer to the call of the pilot! Yet it would be far better for their purpose than two of the small aircraft, since it allowed ...
— Air Service Boys Over The Enemy's Lines - The German Spy's Secret • Charles Amory Beach
... set off, hand-in-hand. He, through comparison of himself against his little companion, with a clumsy feeling on him as if he had just developed into a foolish giant. She, clearly elevated in her own tiny opinion by having got him so neatly out of ...
— Mugby Junction • Charles Dickens
... gates for admission; and a dragon with a singularly mild and harmless expression appeared inside, and asked him gently what he wanted. The King looked at him in surprise; for, although he was decidedly small for a dragon, he was certainly much too large and too clumsy to live in a house made ...
— All the Way to Fairyland - Fairy Stories • Evelyn Sharp
... his place. The First Consul only stayed a short time, and when he came back he showed great discontent at this affectation of pride and of vanity. Wishing to get rid of a man whom he looked on as a blundering flatterer and a clumsy critic, he sent him away as charge d'affaires to the young extemporized King of Etruria, where Clarke expiated his folly in a sort of exile. This is all the "great disfavour" which has been so much spoken about, ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne
... as the squirrels could run about they forsook the clumsy-footed kittens under the stove and scampered up back of the hot-water tank, where they built a nest. Whenever Calico entered the kitchen purring, out would pop their heads, and down they would come, understanding the mother language as ...
— Roof and Meadow • Dallas Lore Sharp
... drew from the right hand, or rather right leg pocket of his smalls, a clumsy large-sized key, which he inserted cautiously in the lock his master had secured, and softly opened the door. That done, he replaced his piece of secret workmanship in his pocket; and leaving the lamp burning, and closing the door carefully ...
— Barnaby Rudge • Charles Dickens
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