"Shambling" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... himself again now that the hour for action had arrived. "I wish to Heaven I could see Tippy Tilly or any of his friends. Now is the time for them to help us." He watched the mad stream of fugitives as they flew past upon their shambling, squattering, loose-jointed beasts, but the black face of the Egyptian gunner was not ...
— The Tragedy of The Korosko • Arthur Conan Doyle
... this place, which, like all hotels in America, had its large dining-room for the public table. It was an odd, shambling, low-roofed out-house, half-cowshed and half- kitchen, with a coarse brown canvas table-cloth, and tin sconces stuck against the walls, to hold candles at supper-time. The horseman had gone forward to have coffee and some eatables prepared, ...
— American Notes for General Circulation • Charles Dickens
... led them. Behind in a bunch came the smugglers, Fat George shambling along in the midst with a fury of arm-work. As his swifter comrades passed him, he ...
— The Gentleman - A Romance of the Sea • Alfred Ollivant
... for her heart was breaking, but turned and went into her room. Burrell had an irresistible desire to tell Gale that he wanted his daughter for his wife; it would be an unwonted pleasure to startle this iron-gray old man and the shawled and shambling mummy of red, with the unwinking eyes that always reminded him of two ox-heart cherries; but he had given Necia his promise. So he descended to the exchange of ordinary topics, and inquired for news of ...
— The Barrier • Rex Beach
... William nipped the nearest burro into a shambling half trot, and then went out upon the lake, Casey heading across at the widest part so that he would strike his old trail to Starvation Mountain on the other side. From there to the summit he could make it by noon on the morrow, he planned. Which would be the end of his preliminary journey ...
— Casey Ryan • B. M. Bower
... Michael, roughly, as he passed near him, and threatening him with his fist. Susan's back was turned to the pair. The expression of Willie's face changed from vacancy to fear, and he came shambling up to Susan, who put her arm round him, and, as if protected by that shelter, he began making faces at Michael. Susan saw what was going on, and, as if now first struck by the strangeness of her brother's ...
— Half a Life-Time Ago • Elizabeth Gaskell
... between his tall fine form and the King's ungainly figure. Sir Gilbert had remained behind with the rest of the courtiers in the chapel; but, calling him, James seized his arm, and set forward at his usual shambling pace. As he went on, nodding his head in return to the profound salutations of the assemblage, his eye rolled round them until it alighted on Richard Assheton, and, nudging Sir Gilbert, ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... heat of the day or the cool of the evening, the giant Mexican strode on by the side of the two horsemen, sometimes trotting like a dog, more often walking with a shambling, wide-reaching step, tireless as any wild animal. His feet, seamed and parched into the semblance rather of horn than of flesh and bone, were quite bare, though now it was a time of year when the nights at least were very cool and when freezing weather might come at any time. He was clad ...
— The Girl at the Halfway House • Emerson Hough
... were cattle for sale later, and fish, but I cannot in even my present leniency claim that the markets were open at the hour which the genteeler commerce of the place found so indiscreet. They were irregular spaces of a form in keeping with the general shambling and shapeless character of the town, which, once for all, I must own ...
— Seven English Cities • W. D. Howells
... their canvas sides make themselves conspicuous, and so do the bakers' carts; while light and neat American wagonettes glide rapidly along among less attractive vehicles. Now and then a Chinaman passes, with his peculiar shambling gait, with a pole across his shoulders balancing his baskets of "truck"; women with oranges and bananas for a penny apiece meet one at every corner, and still the sidewalks are so broad, and the streets so wide, ...
— Foot-prints of Travel - or, Journeyings in Many Lands • Maturin M. Ballou
... appearance, who consumed hard-boiled eggs, shells and all, for his breakfast; ate his prawns with their heads and their tails on, drank scalding hot tea, and performed so many horrifying acts that one almost doubted that he was human; and by Christopher Nubbles, a shock-headed, shambling, awkward, devoted lad, the only element of cheerfulness that ever came into her life. In this book appear Richard Swiveller and his Marchioness, Sampson and Sarah Brass and Mrs. Jarley, who to be appreciated must be seen and known, as Dickens has ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various
... incline into the village, our miserable ponies commenced a shambling trot, the noise of which brought numerous idlers to the inn-door to inquire the news. This inn was a rambling, unpainted erection of wood, opposite to a "cash, credit, and barter store," kept by an enterprising Caledonian—an additional proof of the saying which ascribes ...
— The Englishwoman in America • Isabella Lucy Bird
... still a long time, and the first sound he heard was of slow and cautious footsteps. He listened to them attentively and he wondered. A warrior surely would not come walking in a manner that soon became shambling. Putting his ear to the earth he heard a soft and uncertain crush, crush, and then, raising his head a little, he traced a dark, ambiguous figure. But he knew it, nevertheless, by the two red eyes blinking in doubt ...
— The Eyes of the Woods - A story of the Ancient Wilderness • Joseph A. Altsheler
... through which the German prisoners were being led, I hurriedly fixed my camera and filmed them shambling in, holding their hands up, their nerves completely shattered by the intensity of our terrific bombardment. Some were covered with wounds, others were carrying our wounded Tommies in on stretchers. It was an extraordinary sight. Ten minutes before these ...
— How I Filmed the War - A Record of the Extraordinary Experiences of the Man Who - Filmed the Great Somme Battles, etc. • Lieut. Geoffrey H. Malins
... within the charmed circle of "literature," really constitutes a bridge spanning the gulf between the severer classical style and the colloquial; while an elegant terseness characterises the higher-class novel, there are others in which the style is loose and shambling. Still, it remains true that no book of any first-rate literary pretensions would be easily intelligible to any class of Chinamen, educated or otherwise, if read aloud exactly as printed. The public reader of stories is obliged ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 2 - "Chicago, University of" to "Chiton" • Various
... certain forms he did meet, But scarce might behold their faces; From matted elf-locks eyes stared like an ox, And shambling were their paces! ...
— More Bywords • Charlotte M. Yonge
... ten minutes in the rain; then a shambling footstep shambled down the path, and an old face peered out between the trellised iron work. "Who is it?" an ...
— A Terrible Secret • May Agnes Fleming
... Sir, your travellers Need fleeter steeds than we poor shambling folks Who stay at home. To my unskilful sense, Speed for the chase and vigour for the tilt, ...
— Count Alarcos - A Tragedy • Benjamin Disraeli
... a first impression of the boy at the time when he emerged from the drug store after his unprofitable effort to telephone Cecelia Brooke, an indefinite memory of a shambling figure with nose flattened against the druggist's window, apparently fascinated by the display of ...
— The False Faces • Vance, Louis Joseph
... sometimes they moved. This was not now a wolf country, but two-footed wolves were plenty, and as dangerous. The hangers-on of the army—beggars, feagues, and footpads—hovered, like the cowardly beasts of prey they were, about the outskirts of the city. Did a leaf rustle, we started; did a shambling shape in the gloom whine for alms, we made ready for onset. Gilles produced from some place of concealment—his jerkin, or his leggings, or somewhere—a brace of pistols, and we walked with finger on trigger, taking ...
— Helmet of Navarre • Bertha Runkle
... its enthusiasm in honor of Clive. From a flagstaff newly erected on the roof of the Four Alls on the Newport Road, a square of bunting flapped in the breeze. Inside the inn the innkeeper was drawing a pint of ale for his one solitary customer, a shambling countryman with a shock of very red hair, and eyes ...
— In Clive's Command - A Story of the Fight for India • Herbert Strang
... quay in silence, and had nearly reached the end of it, when the figure of a man turned the corner of the houses and advanced at a shambling trot ...
— Short Cruises • W.W. Jacobs
... his bunch of keys, and made his way to the shed, Riglett shambling behind at an interval of ...
— Mike • P. G. Wodehouse
... in a sort of terror, the tall figure as it was assisted from the kuruma and led, shambling, through the house. The three moved on to the wing containing Ume's chamber, and the painting room. Mata heard the fusuma close gently, the nurse's voice give admonition to "keep his spirit strong for this last stress," heard old Kano falter, "Farewell, my son, no one shall disturb you in ...
— The Dragon Painter • Mary McNeil Fenollosa
... bodies lay side-by-side in the front part of the shambling house, there sat in the kitchen, so the story goes, a slatternly old crone peeling potatoes for supper—should the few straggling boarders return with an appetite, now that all the shooting ...
— Blue Ridge Country • Jean Thomas
... at those about him, and shook his head. He appeared to hesitate about asking any more questions, and after shambling back and forth a dozen times, or more, he stopped at the pile of debris, and picked up a thick disk-like piece of metal, to one side of which was a short ...
— The Wonder Island Boys: Treasures of the Island • Roger Thompson Finlay
... like the first reformed platoon of an army after fleeing from disaster. The leader of the platoon was a small boy. His hat was pulled down over his eyes and he looked as if he were sorely afraid. After him came half a dozen men with shambling gait. One was an Irishman, two were English, one was a German and one a colored man. Two of them carried pickaxes in their hands, which they had been using to clear away the wreckage across ...
— The Johnstown Horror • James Herbert Walker
... awkward and vacant-looking; he was excessively fond of drink, and never could sit still long; in walking he shambled along, and rolled from side to side; and yet he got over fifty miles in the day with his rolling, shambling gait. He exposed himself to the most varied adventures: spent the night in the marshes, in trees, on roofs, or under bridges; more than once he had got shut up in lofts, cellars, or barns; he sometimes lost his gun, ...
— A Sportsman's Sketches - Works of Ivan Turgenev, Vol. I • Ivan Turgenev
... along behind. Don't you want to?" And off started the little cavalcade, with Cricket driving, because she was the smallest, and could perch up on the others' knees, while old Billy, all beam, jogged after, making almost as good time, with his long legs and shambling gait, as ...
— Cricket at the Seashore • Elizabeth Westyn Timlow
... lamb was gamboling, Upon a pleasant day, And four grey wolves came shambling, And stopped to see it play In the sun. Said the lamb, "Perhaps I may Charm these creatures with my play, And they'll let me ...
— Pepper & Salt - or, Seasoning for Young Folk • Howard Pyle
... while the poor king ambled up and down the apartment in a piteous state of uncertainty, which was made more ridiculous by his shambling circular mode of managing his legs, and his ungainly fashion on such occasions of fiddling with the bunches of ribbons which fastened the lower part ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott
... take so much trouble to convey such bulky articles was not quite clear. Now that he was a miner he had no use for them, and at River Bend they were not saleable. This man, Abner Kent, came to Ferguson's tent, where he and Tom were resting after the labors of the day. He was a tall man, with a shambling gait and an ...
— The Young Miner - or Tom Nelson in California • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... down from the hill into Eysden, we were in the midst of these peasants, fleeing before the red wrath rolling up into the sky. They came shambling in with a few possessions on which they had hurriedly laid their hands, singly or in families, a ...
— In the Claws of the German Eagle • Albert Rhys Williams
... and a tall hat stealing cautiously around, not across the square of pavement, keeping close to the dark wall and avoiding the streak of light that fell on the flagstones from a window in the opposite house. Seen from that height he was of course fore-shortened and probably looked more shambling and decrepit than he was. He picked his way along with exaggerated care and looked like a silly old cat crossing a wet street. When he reached the gate that led into an alley way between two buildings, he felt about for the latch, opened ...
— A Collection of Stories, Reviews and Essays • Willa Cather
... abruptly, and stood quite still a moment, fronting the meeting, as though appealing to them, through the mere squalid physical weakness he could find no more words to express. Then, with a sort of shambling bow, he turned away, and the main body of the meeting clapped excitedly, while at the back some of the "sweaters" grinned, and chatted sarcastic things in Yiddish with their neighbours. Tressady saw Lady Maxwell rise eagerly as the old man passed her, take his hand, ...
— Sir George Tressady, Vol. II • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... and the dawn found him still moving, a mere automaton of a man, haggard and shambling, no longer willing his progress, but somehow incredibly advancing. He found water and drank it, fell, got up, and still, right foot, left foot, he went on. Some time during that advance he had found a trail, and he kept to it automatically. He felt no surprise and no relief when he saw ...
— The Breaking Point • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... the Pennington features. After all, there was nothing mean and cunning about them. The eyes were wild, and perhaps fierce, but they were honest and frank still. The clothes were much worn and torn, but the body they covered was strong and shapely. There was nothing weak or shambling in those six ...
— The Birthright • Joseph Hocking
... corncake, he pondered over the strange fate of this fascinating young girl, fashioned to slay the hearts of Southern chivalry—so young, so sweet, so soft of voice and manner, condemned to live life through alone in this shaggy solitude—fated, doubtless, to mate with some loose, lank, shambling, hawk-eyed rustic of the peaks—doomed to bear sickly children, and to fade and dry and wither in the full springtide of her ...
— Special Messenger • Robert W. Chambers
... personality, Miss Clairville, threw him altogether on the society of the village, but, apart from Poussette, who had become mysteriously friendly again, the two individuals most in need of his ministrations were Mme. Poussette and the shambling guide, Edmund Crabbe, in whom were the dregs of a being originally more than the preacher's equal. Old world distinctions would seem to be of small account in such a hamlet as St. Ignace and yet questions of caste were felt ...
— Ringfield - A Novel • Susie Frances Harrison
... to Hartford, shortly afterward, Bok was just turning into Forrest Street when a little old woman came shambling along toward him, unconscious, apparently, of people or surroundings. In her hand she carried a small tree-switch. Bok did not notice her until just as he had passed her he heard her calling to him: "Young man, young ...
— The Americanization of Edward Bok - The Autobiography of a Dutch Boy Fifty Years After • Edward William Bok (1863-1930)
... little interchange a procession of men streaming homeward in their hundreds came walking down the Embankment in twos and threes or singly, shambling past the loosely gathered ...
— The Convert • Elizabeth Robins
... Seven Dials. All the questionable pursuits, fancies, foibles of silly, childish man are discussed grimly and at length in the newspapers and magazines. Our poor hobby-horses are dragged out of the stable, and made to show their shambling paces before the mob of gentlemen who read with ease. There has been much prate lately of as innocent a foible as ever served to make men self-forgetful for a few seconds of time—the collecting of first editions. Somebody hard up for 'copy' denounced this pastime, and made merry ...
— In the Name of the Bodleian and Other Essays • Augustine Birrell
... one more when we see him afterwards in the town, marching along with a flat-footed shambling tread, holding an umbrella in front of him in his clenched fist (as all french priests hold it),—a figure as ...
— Normandy Picturesque • Henry Blackburn
... off to church in her long jacket; goes shambling down the hill with her feet turning in and out any odd way. A sweet and ...
— Wanderers • Knut Hamsun
... a pleasant beginning. But if Georgiana, before her guest arrived, had thought the old house shabby, she felt it now to be positively shambling. She struggled mightily against this attitude of mind, knowing that it was unworthy of her, but, as she led this wonderful, winsome creature, whom she knew to be accustomed only to the softnesses of life, up over the worn stair carpeting to the room she had prepared for her, ...
— Under the Country Sky • Grace S. Richmond
... it; how I don't know. He alters the shape of his nose, his cheeks, and his chin. I suppose that he pads them out with little rubber insets. He alters his voice, and his figure, and even his height. He can be stiff and upright like a drilled soldier, or loose-jointed and shambling like a tramp. He is a finished artist, and employs the very simplest means. He could, I truly believe, deceive his wife or his mother, but he will never again deceive me. I am not a specially observant man; still one can make a shot at most things ...
— The Lost Naval Papers • Bennet Copplestone
... at the door leading out from one of the transepts, and Mr Harding passed them as they were speaking together. He was a little, withered, shambling old man, with bent shoulders, dressed in knee-breeches and long black gaiters, which hung rather loosely about his poor old legs,—rubbing his hands one over the other as he went. And yet he walked quickly; not tottering as he walked, but with an uncertain, doubtful ...
— The Small House at Allington • Anthony Trollope
... out a rough, shambling-looking young man down the great kitchen garden into which he had led me. This gentleman was in his coat, and he was apparently busy doing nothing with a hoe, upon which he rested himself, and took off a very ragged fur cap to wipe his brow as we came up, saluting ...
— Burr Junior • G. Manville Fenn
... has opened my eyes and scattered my foolish prejudices to the four winds. At every turn, some new surprise awaits me. My typical farmer, with his shock of untrimmed hair and beard, his stooping shoulders, his shambling, plow-following gait, his great cow-hide boots, his coarse, soiled, slouchy, ill-fitting blouse and overalls, his grimy hands, his ill-at-ease, uncultured manners, and his born-tired expression of countenance, I cannot find. In his place, ...
— Solaris Farm - A Story of the Twentieth Century • Milan C. Edson
... Releasing the hand of the general to shut a door which opened into another apartment, the President shoved an armchair towards him and sank somewhat wearily into another before the desk. But only for a moment; the long shambling limbs did not seem to adjust themselves easily to the chair; the high narrow shoulders drooped to find a more comfortable lounging attitude, shifted from side to side, and the long legs moved dispersedly. Yet the face that was turned towards Brant ...
— Clarence • Bret Harte
... there found a messenger to take the horses to their stable. All through the streets they had passed men in one uniform or another, who looked stout and well-fed, who strode in the middle of the pavement, while the Poles, whose clothes were poor and threadbare, shuffled aside in their patched and shambling boots to make way for the conqueror. Sometimes they would turn and look back at some sword-bearer who was more offensive than usual, with reflective eyes as if marking him in order to know him at a future time. As is always ...
— The Vultures • Henry Seton Merriman
... with them o'er the sea Into the lovely land of Italy, Whose loveliness was more resplendent made By the mere passing of that cavalcade, With plumes, and cloaks, and housings, and the stir Of jewelled bridle and of golden spur. And lo! among the menials, in mock state, Upon a piebald steed, with shambling gait, His cloak of fox-tails flapping in the wind, The solemn ape demurely perched behind, King Robert rode, making huge merriment In all the country towns ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... Later they would both come out of their bathing-boxes, and the "brute" would be a smartly dressed officer carrying himself with ease and distinction, and the "aristocrat" would be an untidy, uncouth "Tommy" shambling along. Truly on sight one should never judge a man ...
— An Onlooker in France 1917-1919 • William Orpen
... were indicated. This obscene drawing is matched by many equally odious. Abject domesticity, ignominies of married life, of middle-age, of money-making; the old common jape against the mother-in-law; abominable weddings: in one drawing a bridegroom with shambling side-long legs asks his bride if she is nervous; she is a widow, and she answers, "No, never was." In all these things there is very little humour. Where Keene achieved fun was in the figures of his schoolboys. The hint of tenderness ...
— Essays • Alice Meynell
... he could owe no great debt to his romantic predecessors in prose. Dumas, it is true, is a master of narrative, but he wrote in French, and a style will hardly bear expatriation. Scott's sentences are, many of them, shambling, knock-kneed giants. Stevenson harked further back for his models, and fed his style on the most vigorous of the prose writers of the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, the golden age of English prose. 'What English those fellows wrote!' says Fitzgerald in one of his letters; ...
— Robert Louis Stevenson • Walter Raleigh
... departure there came the shambling trot of another horse, and Piet Vreiboom, slouched like a sack in the saddle rode up and rolled ...
— The Top of the World • Ethel M. Dell
... a hundred feet. Over the muffled heavy silence of the blood-red day the cripple's curse floated clear. He lowered his weapon; and, heedless that we also might be armed, he leaped nimbly past Mary's prostrate form and came shambling over ...
— Astounding Stories, July, 1931 • Various
... bolt fell. One day a big, angular, shambling girl, with Margret's suspicious eyes and cynical mouth, crossed by the ferry to the Island. She had a trunk, which Barney Ryder, general carrier to the Island, would have lifted to his ass-cart, but the new-comer scornfully waved him away. 'Come here, you ...
— An Isle in the Water • Katharine Tynan
... were heavy. The lean fellow—I have christened him Shanks, a long, shambling human bag of bones—moved about painfully in a listless sort of way, betokening severe rheumatics; his joints needed oil. Four or five huge basins of steaming rice and the customary amount of reboiled cabbage, however, ...
— Across China on Foot • Edwin Dingle
... (which he brought in in complete silence, and which was exceedingly unpalatable), he lurked behind trees and crept along hedges, shooting birds. Even Reddin felt awed and could not gather courage to expostulate with him. In and out of the stealthy afternoon shadows, black and solemn, went the shambling old figure with his relentless face and outraged heart. He shot thrushes as they fluted after a meal of wild raspberries; he shot tiny silky willow-wrens, robins, and swallows—their sacredness did not awe ...
— Gone to Earth • Mary Webb
... While shambling through the forest one day Mother Bruin made a wonderful discovery. She came to a tree which had recently fallen to the forest floor and from within came a curious humming. She stopped abruptly to listen, her great head cocked to one side and her eyes shining ...
— Followers of the Trail • Zoe Meyer
... Louisburg alive with torches where the French are sinking ships to obstruct the entrance and setting fire to fishing stages that might interfere with cannon aim. The next night, May 1, Vaughan's New Hampshire boys—raw farmers, shambling in their gait, singing as they march—swing through the woods along the marsh {217} behind the fort, and take up a position on a hill to the far side of Louisburg, creating an enormous bonfire with the French tar and ships' tackling stored here. The result of this harmless maneuver was simply ...
— Canada: the Empire of the North - Being the Romantic Story of the New Dominion's Growth from Colony to Kingdom • Agnes C. Laut
... kindest Destiny, like the most assiduous Potter without wheel, can bake and knead nothing other than a botch; let her spend on him what expensive colouring, what gilding and enamelling she will, he is but a botch. Not a dish; no, a bulging, kneaded, crooked, shambling, squint-cornered, amorphous botch,—a mere enamelled vessel of dishonour! Let the ...
— Past and Present - Thomas Carlyle's Collected Works, Vol. XIII. • Thomas Carlyle
... ancient and modern learning, useful and ornamental knowledge, I am charmed with the prospect; but when I view you in another light, and represent you awkward, ungraceful, ill-bred, with vulgar air and manners, shambling toward me with inattention and DISTRACTIONS, I shall not pretend to describe to you what I feel; but will do as a skillful painter did formerly—draw a veil before ...
— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield
... the presence of the "damsel"; he has forgotten to mention the spring and its relation to the ruin; and now, face to face with his omission, instead of trying back and starting fair, crams all this matter, tail foremost, into a single shambling sentence. It is not merely bad English, or bad style; it is abominably bad ...
— Essays of Robert Louis Stevenson • Robert Louis Stevenson
... who now found how the wind set, with an accent of exceeding contempt, at the doubt expressed—"have I heard, quo'she!!!" and as he spoke he changed his shambling, skulking, dodging pace into a manly and authoritative step, readjusted his cocked hat, and suffered his brow to emerge from under it in all the pride of aristocracy, like the sun ...
— Bride of Lammermoor • Sir Walter Scott
... you find a bear, be he a grizzly, black, or polar, basking in the tropical sun, or freezing upon the ice-floe, he will still be the same droll old chap, shuffling and shambling, sniffing and inquiring with his keen nose. If he be the smaller black or brown bear, he will often be found in the company of man, conducting himself with dignity, and generally showing much good behavior for ...
— Black Bruin - The Biography of a Bear • Clarence Hawkes
... He is lazy and indifferent; he knows not how to sit nor how to stand, and he falls asleep over his plate at dinner; and since this great, shambling fellow has appeared here, you have grown ten years older, my love. Besides, he drinks, I assure you that ...
— Jack - 1877 • Alphonse Daudet
... The shambling mountaineer stretched himself to his lean length of six feet two, and wagged an incredulous head. Out of pale eyes he studied the man before him until the newcomer from "down-below" felt that, in ...
— A Pagan of the Hills • Charles Neville Buck
... without guard, went off together, Robin driving his shambling horse and rickety cart beside the ...
— Robin Hood • Paul Creswick
... Shambling awkwardly forward, simulating all the uncouthness possible, I retained my wits sufficiently to note our surroundings—the long, narrow passage, scarcely exceeding a yard in width, with numerous doors opening on either side. Several of these stood ajar, and I perceived berths within, ...
— Prisoners of Chance - The Story of What Befell Geoffrey Benteen, Borderman, - through His Love for a Lady of France • Randall Parrish
... and apparently of the same height and shambling manner, whom she had seen in Nicko's garden, worried her quite as much—indeed, worried her even more than the sight of the mysterious creature the ...
— Ruth Fielding at the War Front - or, The Hunt for the Lost Soldier • Alice B. Emerson
... dark, sombre day, with a steady downpour of rain. Only a dim light pervaded the courtroom, and the spectators caught a very indistinct view of the prisoner when the guards brought him in. But his heavy, shambling walk, the manner in which he dropped into his seat, and his passive, stupid appearance were not at all prepossessing. Several times his advocate—one of Mon. Danval's assistants—spoke to him, but he simply shook ...
— The Extraordinary Adventures of Arsene Lupin, Gentleman-Burglar • Maurice Leblanc
... the stairs—a shambling step. Bet knew it. She stood up, and when her father entered the room, confronted him ...
— A Girl of the People • L. T. Meade
... this Mullins grumbled out something intended as a negative, and, shambling across the room, placed himself in a corner, as far as possible from Oaklands, where he sat rubbing his knees, the very image of sulkiness and terror. Cumberland, who appeared during the whole course of the affair absorbed in a book, ...
— Frank Fairlegh - Scenes From The Life Of A Private Pupil • Frank E. Smedley
... lay a wreath on murdered LINCOLN'S bier, You, who with mocking pencil wont to trace, Broad for self-complacent British sneer, His length of shambling ...
— The Poets' Lincoln - Tributes in Verse to the Martyred President • Various
... of the mouth; to say nothing about rusty hair protruding through the holes of a brown hat, not made for the wearer—long, sinewy arms, all of one thickness, terminating in huge, hairy, horny hands, chiefly knuckles and nails—a shambling gait, notwithstanding that his legs are finely proportioned, as if the night prowler were cautious not to be heard by the sleeping house, nor to awaken—so noiseless his stealthy advances—the unchained mastiff in ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson
... shambling bear was right in the mouth of the cave. He gave a roar that seemed to shake ...
— Crusoes of the Frozen North • Gordon Stables
... brought to the table and opened. A new knife lay in the tissue paper inside and I picked it up and handed it to Vance, along with the order and the plan of Hawberk's apartment. Then Mr. Wilde told Vance he could go; and he went, shambling like an outcast of ...
— The King In Yellow • Robert W. Chambers
... we design to return by the west road, that he will watch our motions, and endeavour to pay his respects to us at Dumfries. — Accordingly he took his leave of us at a place half way betwixt Morpeth and Alnwick, and pranced away in great state, mounted on a tall, meagre, raw-boned, shambling grey gelding, without e'er a tooth in his head, the very counter-part of the rider; and, indeed, the appearance of the two was so picturesque, that I would give twenty guineas to have them tolerably ...
— The Expedition of Humphry Clinker • Tobias Smollett
... interesting, and once more emerging, bent his steps in the direction of the harbour-road. Just before getting to the point where the pavement ceased and the houses isolated themselves, he overtook a shambling, stooping, unshaven man, who at first sight appeared like a professional tramp, his shoulders having a perceptible greasiness as they passed under the gaslight. Each pedestrian momentarily turned and regarded the other, and ...
— Wessex Tales • Thomas Hardy
... and went forward with shambling steps and shaking limbs. Oscarovitch closed the port with hands which all his force could not keep steady, and betook himself to bed, to lie awake for the rest of the short summer night wondering vainly what really ...
— The Mummy and Miss Nitocris - A Phantasy of the Fourth Dimension • George Griffith
... had space to quote a particularly fine passage—you will find it on pp. 72-74—in which Mrs. Woods describes the progress of these motley characters through Midland lanes on a fresh spring morning; the shambling white horses with their red collars, the painted vans, the cages "where bears paced uneasily and strange birds thrust uncouth heads out into the sunshine," the two elephants and the camel padding through the dust and brushing the dew off English ...
— Adventures in Criticism • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... yards ahead of him was a tall, gaunt Virginian, clad in butternut-colored jeans of queer cut and pattern, and a great bell-crowned hat of rough, gray beaver. Though his gait was shambling and his huge splay feet rose and fell in the most awkward way, he went over the ground with a swiftness that made it rather doubtful whether Jake was gaining on him at all. But the latter was encouraged by the sings ...
— The Red Acorn • John McElroy
... the lower regions—quick, shambling footsteps pattered on the stone corridor outside—the door opened suddenly—and a tall lean yellow old man, sharp as to his eyes, shrewd as to his lips, fussily restless as to all his movements, entered the room, with two huge Labrador dogs at his heels, and took ...
— No Name • Wilkie Collins
... Monte di Trinita, which may be taken to be the central points of English or American Rome. Yet you must have passed by the Bocca della Verita on your way to your drive on the Via Appia and the tomb of Caecilia Metella. Do you not remember a large, shambling, unkempt-looking open space, a sort of cross in appearance between the piazza of a city and a farmyard, a little after passing the remains of the Teatro di Marcello, the grand old arches of which are now, in the whirligig of Time's revenges, turned into blacksmiths' ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 90, June, 1875 • Various
... and boards an inch thick intervened between us and the noisy tramplings of the rain and heat of the sun. The only room accommodated some primitive furniture, a bed being the denominating as well as the essential feature. A little shambling structure of rough slabs and iron walls contrived a double debt to pay—kitchen ...
— My Tropic Isle • E J Banfield
... to find themselves confronted with an absolute endorsement of the truth of Lennie's statements. A stranger of about fourteen was walking towards them, or perhaps "shambling" would be a better description of her method of progress. She stooped badly, swung her arms in an awkward fashion, and shuffled her feet along the grass; her eyes were vacant, her chin was retreating, and her mouth was set in a foolish smile. For a full ghastly minute ...
— A harum-scarum schoolgirl • Angela Brazil
... too early to wait upon Mrs. Germain in Albemarle Street, so continued his way up the empty hill, entered the Park, and flung himself upon the turf under the elms. Other guests were harboured by that hospitable sward, shambling, downcast lice of the town. These, having shuffled thither, dropped, huddled and slept. His way was not theirs: to him the open space was his domain. He ranged the streets, one saw, as if they had been the South Downs, with the long stride and ...
— Rest Harrow - A Comedy of Resolution • Maurice Hewlett
... pedagogue, for such his dress bespoke him. A long, lean, shambling, stooping figure was surmounted by a head thatched with lank, black hair somewhat inclining to grey. His features had the cast of habitual authority, which I suppose Dionysius carried with him from the throne to the schoolmaster's ...
— Kenilworth • Sir Walter Scott
... sidewalk strolled a lad, "Foolish Joe" people called him, and he was, as usual, accompanied by a little band of fun-loving, teasing boys. In a moment they were gone; but the shambling central figure with its vacant face stayed with her to accentuate her distress. She leaned her head upon her arm, but she could ...
— Polly of Lady Gay Cottage • Emma C. Dowd
... winter's day, a loafer applied for a pair of shoes. He had on an old, shambling pair, out at both toes. The old Wine-Prince was sitting with a pair of slippers on, and had his own ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., April, 1863, No. LXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics. • Various
... is the institution upon which the commerce of the desert depends. A more awkward, ungainly beast can hardly be imagined—a shambling collection of humps, bumps, knobs, protruding joints, and sprawling legs seemingly attached to a head and neck in the near foreground. But that shambling gait will carry a load three times as heavy as the stoutest pack mule can bear, and it will ...
— Wealth of the World's Waste Places and Oceania • Jewett Castello Gilson
... to look after him, so uncouth was his shambling figure. Several officers followed him with their eyes, to see that he did not beg ...
— Sister Carrie • Theodore Dreiser
... light, and Jack caught a clearer view of the man. What he saw sent a shiver through him. A great change had come over his friend. His untidy dress,—always so neat and well kept; his haggard eyes and shambling, unsteady walk, so different from his springy, debonair manner, all showed that he had been and still was under some terrible mental strain. That he had not been drinking was evident from his utterance and gait. This last discovery when his condition was considered, disturbed ...
— Peter - A Novel of Which He is Not the Hero • F. Hopkinson Smith
... Be ye rich men or be ye poor men, that ye must needs come to the world's end at this time o' night?' exclaimed a voice at this instant; and, turning their heads, they saw a rickety individual shambling round from the back door with a horn lantern ...
— A Pair of Blue Eyes • Thomas Hardy
... the soldier's key turn in the lock, but soon he heard it and his heart pumped. He glanced at White, but the gray figure, flattened against the wall, never moved. The door swung open and the soldier, merely a shambling peon, bearing the tray, entered. Behind him according to custom came the second man who stood in the doorway, leaning upon his musket. But he stood there only an instant. A pair of long, powerful arms which must have seemed to him at that moment like the antennae ...
— The Texan Star - The Story of a Great Fight for Liberty • Joseph A. Altsheler
... in on the top of the sack, and the man bent his energies to starting his old horse once more on his shambling trot. ...
— Little Folks - A Magazine for the Young (Date of issue unknown) • Various
... sink helplessly. The bear had come from the west right up to the Fram, had stopped and inspected the work that was going on, had then retreated a little, made a considerable detour, and set off eastward at its easy, shambling gait, without deigning to pay any further attention to such a trifle as a ship. It had rummaged about in every hole and corner where there seemed to be any chance of finding food, and had rooted in the snow after anything the dogs had left, or whatever else it might be. It ...
— Farthest North - Being the Record of a Voyage of Exploration of the Ship 'Fram' 1893-1896 • Fridtjof Nansen
... is that he shall hate the prowling great paws of the Plebs, whilst Plebs by inherent nature goes mad at the sight of Bully's jowl. "Drop it!" cries Plebs. "Hands off!" growls Bully. It is hands against head, the shambling, servile body in a rage of insurrection at last against ...
— Touch and Go • D. H. Lawrence
... Oh, the shambling sea is a sexton old, And well his work is done; With an equal grave for lord and knave, He ...
— The Golden Treasury of American Songs and Lyrics • Various
... his friend Jack Bunsby,[141] with a head too ponderous to lay-to, and so falling victim to the inveterate MacStinger; good-hearted, modest, considerate Toots, whose brains rapidly go as his whiskers come, but who yet gets back from contact with the world, in his shambling way, some fragments of the sense pumped out of him by the forcing Blimbers; breathless Susan Nipper, beaming Polly Toodle, the plaintive Wickham, and the awful Pipchin, each with her duty in the starched Dombey household so ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... and that I could count upon his engrossing the attention of my offspring for a considerable period. Accordingly, I was surprised some five minutes later to observe the fisherman (who wore no skates) shambling across the pond toward the shore. Glancing from him to his late station I perceived a little group of skaters gathered around my son and heir, who was dabbling with a stick in the abandoned hole. They appeared to be diverted by something and ...
— The Opinions of a Philosopher • Robert Grant
... truth of the shocking rumour which had reached her about Edith's projected visit, the confirmation of which was the sole object of her colloquy, wagged her way out of the shop again successfully, and was duly assisted by the page-boy into her shambling little ...
— Philistia • Grant Allen
... tranquil, echoing courts into the Sabbath stillness of the Strand. An occasional halt at a shop-window was sufficient to assure him that the watcher of the Temple was still on his heels. The man, he was interested to see, played his part very unobtrusively, shambling along in nonchalant fashion, mostly hugging the sides of the houses, ready to dart out of sight into a doorway or down a side turning, should he by any mischance arrive too close on the heels of ...
— The Yellow Streak • Williams, Valentine
... but she made haste to call Cyrus, who came shambling along the hall from the cabin. The parlor was dark, for though it was a day of sunshine and merry May wind, Gussie kept the shutters bowed—but Cyrus could see the pale intensity of his visitor's face. There was a moment's silence, broken by a ...
— An Encore • Margaret Deland
... base for his supper; and, at the same time darting his fork into the dish, as if stabbing with his lance; cook, you cook! —sail this way, cook! the old black, not in any very high glee at having been previously routed from his warm hammock at a most unseasonable hour, came shambling along from his galley, for, like many old blacks, there was something the matter with his knee-pans, which he did not keep well scoured like his other pans; this old Fleece, as they called him, came shuffling and limping along, assisting his step with his tongs, which, after a clumsy fashion, ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville
... shrugged. "The difficulty is that he won't name his price," he answered. "Don't understand him! Queer, shambling sort of fellow, all hair and eyes, with the scar of an old cut, or something, across one side of his face. Keeps looking at you as if he hated you! Showed me the machine readily enough; consented to every test even offered to let me take my stuff ...
— Those Who Smiled - And Eleven Other Stories • Perceval Gibbon
... accordingly blessed his people in a shambling manner, not at all to his own satisfaction, and had walked back to his palace with his mind very doubtful as to what he would say to his chaplain on the subject. He did not remain long in doubt. He had hardly doffed his lawn when the partner of all his toils entered his study ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... to me of Ned Brooke's face as I had seen it the day before at the gate, coupled with the remembrance of seeing him walking down the lane at a quick pace, so unlike his usual shambling gait, while I ran through ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1896 to 1901 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... had a range of about a hundred feet. Over the muffled heavy silence of the blood-red day the cripple's curse floated clear. He lowered his weapon; and, heedless that we also might be armed, he leaped nimbly past Mary's prostrate form and came shambling over the ...
— Astounding Stories, July, 1931 • Various
... not strike him that poverty and crime are near neighbours; that the circumstances which make the honest man poor, make the lazy man a thief. Leonard was too young to be suspicious. He scarcely saw a shambling poorly-dressed rather wasted man whom he passed, and who afterwards stumbled along a very little way behind him. Nor did he specially notice two rather well-dressed but coarse-looking men who kept just ...
— Littlebourne Lock • F. Bayford Harrison |
