"Undersized" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... sea-fire glimmered on the rising net, glittered in the boat, and then, with an almost painful suddenness, snuffed out. "They be so full as eggs," said John every minute or two, holding out fish to Tony, who felt them and answered, "Iss, they'm no scanters [spawned or undersized fish]. ...
— A Poor Man's House • Stephen Sydney Reynolds
... distant. Valentine Jeune, his old schoolmaster, said, as the lad was lost to view: "I am not afraid of Jacob; he '11 get through the world. He has a clear head and everything right behind the ears." He was then a stout, strong lad of nearly seventeen, exceedingly well made, though slightly undersized, and he had a clear, composed, intelligent look in the eyes, which seemed to ratify the prediction of the schoolmaster. He strode manfully out of town, with tears in his eyes and a sob in his throat,—for he loved his father, his ...
— Famous Americans of Recent Times • James Parton
... of dancers were revolving like a herd of milling cattle. Dusty, tobacco-smoked oriental rugs, banners and lanterns, suspended from walls and balcony railings, lent a semblance of "color" to the place; little Moorish alcoves were set into the walls, in and out of which undersized waiters dodged like rabbits in a warren. The attendants were irritable; they perspired freely, they bumped into people, squeezed past, or, failing in that, ...
— The Auction Block • Rex Beach
... who had kept his eyes on O'Day as he peered into the dark, an undersized, gaunt-looking man, sidled toward Felix and pulled at his coat sleeve. "I ain't too early, am I? You said ...
— Felix O'Day • F. Hopkinson Smith
... the General at the hour named. The man who alighted from the Congressional Limited and whom Manuela rushed to kiss was slender and undersized, with a swarthy, weather-beaten face, curly gray hair and a white moustache, twisted and re-twisted to the limit. He was in white flannels and was so altogether neat and immaculate that Catherine, perspiring under the sultriness of the August evening, thought him ...
— The Mermaid of Druid Lake and Other Stories • Charles Weathers Bump
... reckless trackers returned, most truthfully saying that the beast was mangy, undersized—a tigress worn with nursing, or a broken-toothed old male—and Bukta would curb ...
— The Day's Work, Volume 1 • Rudyard Kipling
... powerful undersized build and enjoys good health, injured by no excesses. He considers himself nervous. He worked hard at school and was always the first in his class; he adds, however, that this is due less to his own abilities than the laziness of his school-fellows. He is, ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 5 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... even of the same locality, is quite remarkable, and so, curiously enough, is the difference in the size of the teeth, in some cases even when the body of one wolf is as big as that of another. I have seen wolves from Texas and New Mexico which were undersized, slim animals with rather small tusks, in no way to be compared to the long-toothed giants of their race that dwell in the heavily timbered mountains of the Northwest and in the far North. As a rule, the teeth of the coyote ...
— Hunting the Grisly and Other Sketches • Theodore Roosevelt
... and muttering Roke scowling after him. Brice stepped out onto the sand to meet the newcomer. The roustabout apparently belonged to the conch tribe of which Milo had spoken. Thin. undersized. swarthy. with features that showed a trace of negro and perhaps of Indian blood as well, he had a furtive manner and seemed to cringe away from the Northerner as they set off across the clearing. toward the distant huts and ...
— Black Caesar's Clan • Albert Payson Terhune
... find a model amongst them. As our steamer had come up the coast I had looked in vain for even a decent-sized woman or child amongst them. They seem a race without a single beauty, possessing neither stature, nor colour, nor length of hair, nor even plump shapeliness. Undersized, leather-skinned, small-eyed, thin, and wizened, they never seem to be young. They seem to start middle-aged and go ...
— Five Nights • Victoria Cross
... pointed out however that the average height of the Yugo-Slavs exceeded that of the Welsh. The claims of small nations could not, of course, be overlooked, but he considered it as little short of a calamity when a Great Power had an undersized Prime Minister. Short men liked short cuts, but, as BACON said, the shortest way is commonly ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 158, April 28, 1920 • Various
... without puttees two and one-half inches at the bottom; the top if hitched well up had manifest advantages as a muffler. Issued on the same logical lines, Mahy received a tiny pair of nether garments for his loner legs and a little tunic that hung limply like an undersized Eton-jacket six inches short of where it should have reached. Some lads were lost in shirts with sleeves generally associated with Chinese or other Eastern gentlemen, others moodily surveyed themselves in small shrunken garments that with only superhuman ...
— Norman Ten Hundred - A Record of the 1st (Service) Bn. Royal Guernsey Light Infantry • A. Stanley Blicq
... our own weather-tanned forest men. Nevertheless, their pigmentation was peculiar, and what there was of it looked more like a pale orange tint than the ruddiness of the Caucasian. They were well formed, but rather undersized and soft-looking, small-muscled and smooth-skinned, like young girls. Their features were finely chiseled, eyes beady, and nose ...
— The Airlords of Han • Philip Francis Nowlan
... had put her down for "a foreigner," convenient term for defining something which you do not quite understand. She had none of his language, evidently; she was undersized, some three feet six inches by the look of her,[4] and yet perfectly proportioned. She was most curiously dressed in a frock cut to the knee, and actually in nothing else at all. It left her bare-legged and bare-armed, and was made, as he puts it himself, ...
— Lore of Proserpine • Maurice Hewlett
... first speaker, a lad of fifteen, large for his age, fair-haired, though as brown as a berry and athletic in all his easy, deliberate yet energetic movements, turned to the one he had called Bill, a boy of about his own age, or a little older, but altogether opposite in appearance, for he was undersized, dark-haired, black-eyed, and though a life-long cripple with a twisted knee, as quick and nervous in action as the limitations of his physical strength ...
— Radio Boys Cronies • Wayne Whipple and S. F. Aaron
... any wonder that facile success and excessive laudation should turn the stripling's head? Professionally, if not artistically speaking, Dore passed straight from child to man; in one sense of the word he had no boyhood, the term tyro remained inapplicable. This undersized, fragile lad, looking years younger than he really was, soon found himself on what must have appeared a ...
— In the Heart of the Vosges - And Other Sketches by a "Devious Traveller" • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... theory of courtship, a subject I was well up in, having read considerably more fiction than he had. This with my keen intuitive perceptions, I felt fitted me to act again in an advisory capacity, for my critical faculties were massive, although, as I have hinted, my executive qualities as a lover were undersized. ...
— Cupid's Middleman • Edward B. Lent
... was pushing his way through the crowd, and his black figure in that writhing ring of undersized foreigners looked big and commanding. "What's this?" he was saying in a husky voice that rose clear above the clamour. The shouting and swearing subsided, all save the howling from the inside of the shop, and the tumult settled down in a moment ...
— The Christian - A Story • Hall Caine
... half-hour in bed for her; it made Sabina light the fire, turn out the kitchen and wash endless cups and saucers that had been left over from the evening before. Hans, the scullery boy, did not come until seven. He was the son of the butcher—a mean, undersized child very much like one of his father's sausages, Sabina thought. His red face was covered with pimples, and his nails indescribably filthy. When Herr Lehmann himself told Hans to get a hairpin and clean them he said they were stained from ...
— In a German Pension • Katherine Mansfield
... courtyard a man standing near the gates tried to pass the sentries when the King arrived. He was instantly collared. Undersized, poorly clad, and poverty stricken in appearance, he was hustled unmercifully by a stalwart Albanian policeman until Alec's attention was drawn ...
— A Son of the Immortals • Louis Tracy
... commanded an extensive view of the wasteful Double. It had a windblown, naked appearance, like many villages near the sea, although the ocean was still far from here. Moreover, there was a strange quietude—the stillness of a fever-stricken spot. The men and women looked undersized and prematurely old, and the children were pale and thin. Although the village was on a hill, the evil influence of the marshes reached it. I was told, however, that it had become much less unhealthy of late years. On the highest ...
— Two Summers in Guyenne • Edward Harrison Barker
... Englishmen and Scorpions," Pedro Roldos went on. "Up to then I had not known that it made a difference being born on the Rock or in England. I did not know what a Scorpion was—with all the vices of England and Spain in one undersized body. I haunted the Rock. I learnt English. All to no avail. Lorenza was gone. Nino never said anything—he merely stayed by my side—but I think that something—some fibre had broken within him while he held the sheet that ...
— Tomaso's Fortune and Other Stories • Henry Seton Merriman
... congenital dislocation of the hip, which made it impossible for him ever to walk. He was the last of Teta Elzbieta's children, and perhaps he had been intended by nature to let her know that she had had enough. At any rate he was wretchedly sick and undersized; he had the rickets, and though he was over three years old, he was no bigger than an ordinary child of one. All day long he would crawl around the floor in a filthy little dress, whining and fretting; because the floor was full of drafts he was always catching ...
— The Jungle • Upton Sinclair
... turned and haughtily surveyed the complainant. "Do you mean that little weedy, undersized ...
— More Toasts • Marion Dix Mosher
... most cunning and successful of adventurers is known by the name of W——, alias Jones, alias several other titles. This fellow is an undersized man, blind of one eye, but of very genteel and prepossessing address, and is generally accompanied by his wife. The two practice the bundle game, which is a very adroit performance. Their modus operandi is as follows: They travel with a large Saratoga trunk, which is really well stocked ...
— The Secrets Of The Great City • Edward Winslow Martin
... The undersized temperature-taker which the doctor puts under your tongue before telling you to keep warm and take plenty of milk puddings is properly despised by every true thermometer- lover. Any record which it makes is too personal for a breakfast- table topic, ...
— Not that it Matters • A. A. Milne
... attack. From early childhood, when he had been thrown on his own to scratch a living—a borderline existence of a living—on the Dumps of Tyr, he had had to use his wits to keep life in a scrawny and undersized body. However, since he had been eating regularly from Survey rations, he was not quite so scrawny ...
— Storm Over Warlock • Andre Norton
... and never was.) Warburton has described to me her eyes, so I am positive that they were as heavenly blue as a rajah's sapphire. Her height is of no moment. What man ever troubled himself about the height of a woman, so long as he wasn't undersized himself? What pleased Warburton was the exquisite skin. He was always happy with his comparisons, and particularly when he likened her skin to the bloomy olive pallor of a young peach. The independent ...
— The Man on the Box • Harold MacGrath
... aims beyond the "undersized scribe of the barefoot friars at Leipzig," at the "brave and great flag-bearers who remain in hiding, and would win a notable victory in another's name," namely Prierias, Cajetan, Eck, Emser and the Universities of Cologne and Louvaine. Luther ...
— Works of Martin Luther - With Introductions and Notes (Volume I) • Martin Luther
... whom she so closely scrutinized was slightly undersized, but of close and brawny build. His hands were not so refinedly white as those of certain office bred young men of her acquaintance, yet they were not coarsened by undue toil: it being somewhat an axiom with him to do nothing that an ...
— At Fault • Kate Chopin
... Frenchmen I dimly remembered about St. Regis. They were undersized fellows, very apt to weep when their emotions were stirred. I could ...
— Lazarre • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... relations— They're a ravenous horde—and they all came on board at Sloane Square and South Kensington Stations. And bound on that journey you find your attorney (who started that morning from Devon); He's a bit undersized, and you don't feel surprised when he tells you he's only eleven. Well, you're driving like mad with this singular lad (by the by, the ship's now a four-wheeler), And you're playing round games, and he calls you bad ...
— The Complete Plays of Gilbert and Sullivan - The 14 Gilbert And Sullivan Plays • William Schwenk Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan
... lean, undersized boy about fifteen years of age and about four feet nine inches in height. He had light brown hair and hazel grey eyes, and his clothes were of many colours, being thickly encrusted with paint, the result of the ...
— The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists • Robert Tressell
... An undersized man with a remarkably large head of hair spoke up from the righthand side of the table: "I want to suggest that it is high time we sent another ...
— The Devolutionist and The Emancipatrix • Homer Eon Flint
... throng of people who were, without exception, gaunt, listless, ragged. There was no afternoon parade of finery, no laughter, no noise; the benches were full, but their occupants were silent, too sick or too weak to move. Nor were there any romping children. There were, to be sure, vast numbers of undersized figures in the square, but one needed to look twice to realize that they were not pygmies or wizened little old folks. It was not strange that Jacket had compared them to gourds with legs, for all were naked, and most of them had bodies swollen into the likeness of pods or calabashes. ...
— Rainbow's End • Rex Beach
... other, without cement or plaster; that these paths, bordered with impenetrable hedges; that these grudging plants; these inhospitable fields; these crippled beggars, eaten with vermin, plastered with filth; that even the flocks, undersized and wasted, the dumpy little cows, the black sheep whose blue eyes had the cold, pale gleam that is in the eyes of the Slav or of the tribade; had perpetuated their primordial state, preserving an identical landscape ...
— La-bas • J. K. Huysmans
... to put on a gold-embroidered waistcoat, approached Garth with a disposition to be friendly—too friendly by half, Garth thought. He was an undersized man of not more than thirty, but already somewhat withered; a specimen of the unwholesome, weedy breed of ...
— Two on the Trail - A Story of the Far Northwest • Hulbert Footner
... necessary that a relation should pay me a visit sometimes, because I was in a way important. The huge, frowning feudal castle standing upon its battlemented rock was mine; I was a great heiress, and I was, so to speak, the chieftainess of the clan. But I was a plain, undersized little child, and had no attraction for any one but Jean Braidfute, a distant cousin, who took care of me, and Angus Macayre, who took care of the library, and who was a distant relative also. They were both like me ...
— The White People • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... gently lifted her upon the seat before him. (She was an undersized, stout woman.) She parted, combed, ...
— The Lincoln Story Book • Henry L. Williams
... suddenly demanded the judge, who knew and distrusted Delany, having repeatedly stated in open court that he wouldn't hang a yellow dog on his testimony. The underfed, undersized boy did ...
— By Advice of Counsel • Arthur Train
... men with the big man were noncommittal. The pale, undersized man was a mere onlooker whose sympathies were with the accused. Miss Bransford would have been quite willing to have this young man escape punishment, but she could not deny that the cattle ...
— Square Deal Sanderson • Charles Alden Seltzer
... French. The undersized Robert I got at a bargain. The man who hired it last week broke his leg before his fortnight was up, and so there was a reduction of ...
— Once a Week • Alan Alexander Milne
... near the door, cap in hand. He did not resemble a burglar, who surely ought to be big, muscular, and masterful. He resembled an undersized clerk who has been out of work for a long time, but who has nevertheless found the means to eat and drink rather plenteously. He was clothed in a very shabby navy-blue suit, frayed at the wrists and ankles, and greasy in front. His linen collar ...
— The Grim Smile of the Five Towns • Arnold Bennett
... little sympathy for Lyad. Lyad had lost out on a very big gamble. And, each in his own way, there were three very formidable males among whom she was sitting. None of them was friendly; two were oversized, and the undersized one had a fairly bloodchilling record for anyone on the wrong side of law and order. Trigger decided to forget about beady stares for ...
— Legacy • James H Schmitz
... observed the young artist, he had taken a deep interest in his appearance. Pale, thin, undersized, and slightly deformed, the sanctifying mind still shed over the humble frame a spell more powerful than beauty. Absent in manner, melancholy in air, and never conversing except upon subjects on which his imagination was excited, there was yet a ...
— The Disowned, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... the Bible, does not always follow exactly the text which he is to illustrate. The people called Barnabas Jupiter, and Paul Mercury. This would seem to show that Barnabas was a great, imposing figure, and Paul, according to tradition, was a small, undersized man; but there is no such contrast ...
— Raphael - A Collection Of Fifteen Pictures And A Portrait Of The - Painter With Introduction And Interpretation • Estelle M. Hurll
... tractor are now doing much of the work formerly done by horses, the "horseless era" is still far off. A good horse will always be worth good money, will always be a desirable and profitable member of the farm family. But the undersized no-breed specimen will be even less valuable in the future than in ...
— Pratt's Practical Pointers on the Care of Livestock and Poultry • Pratt Food Co.
... has a right to outwit others if he can. What a turn- out he has!" One was once heard to add, "I never saw a more genteel-looking man in all my life except one, and that was a gentleman's walley, who was much like him. It is true he is rather undersized, but then madam, you know, ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow
... at least, an instinctive knowledge of its own requirements. Whatever proceedings are most suggestive of an ideal naked savage leading a "natural" life, are supposed to be not only more advantageous to the child but in some mystical way more moral. The spectacle of an undersized porter-fed mother, for example, nursing a spotted and distressful baby, is exalted at the expense of the clean and simple artificial feeding that is often advisable to-day. Yet the mortality of first-born children should indicate that a modern woman ...
— Mankind in the Making • H. G. Wells
... this is lost in a caged bird. He is handsome to look at and remarkably intelligent, but he distinguishes between magpies and men; he doesn't reveal himself; his accomplishments, vocal and mental, are for his own tribe. In this he differs from the daw; for the daw is less specialized; he is an undersized common crow, livelier, more impish than that bird, also more plastic, more adaptive, and takes more kindly to the domestic or parasitic life. Human beings to him are simply larger daws, and unlike the pie he can play his ...
— Birds in Town and Village • W. H. Hudson
... of a dark complexion, a true brunette and very sturdy; Angelica the brightest red and the most exactly like her mother; while Selwyn was the smallest cub, of a very prying, inquisitive and cunning temper, but delicate and undersized. ...
— Lady Into Fox • David Garnett
... passengers. From her corner in the vehicle she could see the queen of burlesque standing in the center of the depot platform, surrounded by her company. It was a tawdry, miserable, almost tragic group, the men undersized, be-diamonded, their skulls oddly shaped, their clothes a satire on the fashions for men, their chins unshaven, their loose lips curved contentedly over cigarettes; the women dreadfully unreal with the pitiless light of the ...
— Roast Beef, Medium • Edna Ferber
... second interview; Rosamond Vincy planned her house-furnishing during her second meeting with Lydgate; even Dorothea Brooke felt a "trembling hope" the very next day after her first sight of Mr. Casaubon. How, then, could one expect poor Clothilde to yield up her undersized, thin-moustached, and very unheroic-looking Henri, having ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, August, 1885 • Various
... edification, such as, for example, the committee to meet the Candidate at the depot and escort him to the Opera-house. But then it would never have occurred to Jimmie that he had any place on such a committee; for he was just an ignorant fellow, a machinist, undersized and undernourished, with bad teeth and roughened hands, and no gifts or graces of any sort to recommend him; while on the Reception Committee were a lawyer and a prosperous doctor and the secretary of the Carpet-weavers' ...
— Jimmie Higgins • Upton Sinclair
... word for all who were working steadily, and a semi-sarcastic remark for the careless and unmethodical; a keen eye for hops wasted and trodden into the ground, or for poles of undersized hops, unwelcome to the pickers and hidden beneath those from which the hops had been picked. He acted as buffer between capital and labour, smoothing troubles over, telling me of the pickers' difficulties, and explaining my side to the pickers when the quality ...
— Grain and Chaff from an English Manor • Arthur H. Savory
... squealed with mortal agony. Eddie opened his eyes cautiously and saw that the room was full of people. The pungent odor of burned powder assailed his nostrils. There was Cadorna and Carlos, David Shelton and Lina. An undersized, dapper youth stood over the body of the big German, his hands outstretched before his horror-stricken face. A moment he stood thus, like a statue. Then his knees gave way beneath him and he crumpled ...
— Astounding Stories, March, 1931 • Various
... the Deuce was an undersized, scrawny specimen of the genus which is popularly known as "tinhorn," a sort of free-lance gambler, usually to be found sitting in at a poker-game. The engineer was a ...
— When the West Was Young • Frederick R. Bechdolt
... bells were once more unstopped.[42] Several men accompanied each little caravan, and sometimes they drove with them steers and hogs to sell on the sea-coast. A bushel of alum salt was worth a good cow and calf, and as each of the poorly fed, undersized pack animals could carry but two bushels, the mountaineers prized it greatly, and instead of salting or pickling their venison, they jerked it, by drying it in the sun or smoking ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume One - From the Alleghanies to the Mississippi, 1769-1776 • Theodore Roosevelt
... the primeval existence of an undersized race whose average height has been ascertained to be 4 feet 8.30562 inches. This precise figure has been calculated by a member of this society, from the measurement of an apparently human footprint discovered in the chalk deposit thrown up in course of the erection ...
— Boycotted - And Other Stories • Talbot Baines Reed
... broad-shouldered, with a handsome countenance, which bore the impress of an inflexible determination; a dimple indented his smoothly shaven chin. His companion, and his senior by several years, was a slender, undersized man. ...
— The Nameless Castle • Maurus Jokai
... bow and gesticulate awkwardly, shewing their tongue at the same time. Their principal dress is coarse woollen clothes, and in lieu of turbans they wear caps or hats. Their beasts of burden are principally asses, which are perhaps, from bad treatment, undersized: they likewise use goats, and largish animals between goats and sheep in appearance; of these we saw one male only, it had once spiral horns. Even a little black kid was not exempt from carrying its share, this was ornamented by woollen ...
— Journals of Travels in Assam, Burma, Bhootan, Afghanistan and The - Neighbouring Countries • William Griffith
... coast. Vivia, a slender little maiden of eleven summers, rocks in a boat a rod from shore, and by her side, his length along the warm wave, his arm along the boat, a boy floats in his linen clothes, an amphibious child, so undersized as to seem but little more than a baby, and yet a year her senior. He swims round and round the skiff in circling frolics, followed by the great dog who gambols with them, he dives under it and comes up far in advance, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 75, January, 1864 • Various
... Alma—poor undersized Alma, with her yellow skin and bloodless lips—and she sighed. But she kissed her also, and asked how she had spent her morning and whether she had come from school this morning or ...
— An Australian Lassie • Lilian Turner
... so insignificant and so undersized that it seemed impossible to imagine him a famous Englishman. His very voice, in its level, matter-of-fact tones, added ...
— The Grey Room • Eden Phillpotts
... showed a man's red flannel shirt belted at the waist over a blue skirt, with the collar knotted by a sailor's black handkerchief, and turned back over a pretty though sunburnt throat. She saw a rather undersized young fellow in a jaunty undress uniform, scant of gold braid, and bearing only the single gold shoulder-bars of his rank, but scrupulously neat and well fitting. Light-colored hair cropped close, the smallest of light moustaches, clear and ...
— The Heritage of Dedlow Marsh and Other Tales • Bret Harte
... and the tall, ludicrous, extraordinary, almost noble figure of a dancing bear. A third corner of the paillasse was rudely grasped by a six-foot combination of yellow hair, red hooligan face, and sky-blue trousers; assisted by the undersized tasseled mucker in Belgian uniform, with a pimply rogue's mug and unlimited impertinence of diction, who had awakened me by demanding if I wanted coffee. Albeit completely dazed by the uncouth vocal fracas, I realised ...
— The Enormous Room • Edward Estlin Cummings
... the sculptor had met with an accident to the nose, and had, in consequence, to lengthen the upper lip, I think it self- evident that there is some little derangement of natural proportions in those features; the nose, especially, being ill-formed and undersized for the rest of the face. If we had but Shakespeare's skull before us, most of these questions would be set at ...
— Shakespeare's Bones • C. M. Ingleby
... lie in a nutshell; become small &c (decrease) 36, (contract) 195. Adj. little; small &c (in quantity) 32; minute, diminutive, microscopic; microzoal; inconsiderable &c (unimportant) 643; exiguous, puny, tiny, wee, petty, minikin^, miniature, pygmy, pigmy^, elfin; undersized; dwarf, dwarfed, dwarfish; spare, stunted, limited; cramp, cramped; pollard, Liliputian, dapper, pocket; portative^, portable; duodecimo^; dumpy, squat; short &c 201. impalpable, intangible, evanescent, imperceptible, invisible, inappreciable, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... He was an undersized, foxy fellow, dressed as a gamekeeper and carrying a fowling-piece under one arm. His small eyes regarded her through ...
— The Orchard of Tears • Sax Rohmer
... her. "That's all I want, Annabel. I was a little afraid you'd be sick of the place. But, my, we can go right ahead and set a crew of men to grubbing out the sage on both sections to once. Folks might have said, seeing you take up with a undersized, froze-up fellow like me, you was marrying me for my money; but they can't, no, ma'am, not when they see the valuable claim you are ...
— The Rim of the Desert • Ada Woodruff Anderson
... sight very striking about Mr. John Wesley's appearance. He was, I thought, rather undersized, and I at that moment failed to see what there was about him to cause so much commotion. And yet as I looked again I could not help being impressed with the calm strength which shone from his eyes. He seemed to possess a power unknown to most men. ...
— The Birthright • Joseph Hocking
... piano without a movement of his body, his whole energies apparently directed towards drowning the tumult of oaths and hideous execrations which came from the two combatants. A drunken Irishman, rolling about on the floor, kicked at him savagely as he passed. An undersized little creature, with the face of an old man but the figure of a boy, marked him from a distant corner and crept stealthily towards his side. Fischer reached the counter at last and stood there for a moment, waiting. Two huge, rough-looking negroes, in soiled linen clothes, ...
— The Pawns Count • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... interest. To the left a large space was devoted to three or four bulky casks, and here an aproned drawer sat astride of a rush-bottomed chair, grinning delightedly and exchanging nods and winks from time to time with an impish, undersized lad who lay on his stomach on a wine-butt with his head ...
— The Panchronicon • Harold Steele Mackaye
... behind her chair you would have seen, emerging miraculously from the white surface under Fanny's pencil, a thin, undersized little figure in sleazy black and white, whose face, under the cheap hat, was upturned and rapturous. Her skirts were wind-blown, and the wind tugged, too, at the banner whose pole she hugged so tightly in her arms. Dimly ...
— Fanny Herself • Edna Ferber
... and loathsome; worse than crime or shame or death. We have left them from the work of their hands enough, scantly enough, to keep breath within their stunted bodies. "All the traffic can bear!"—a brazen rule. Of such sage policy the result can be seen in the wizened and undersized submerged of London; of nearer than London. Man, by not taking thought, has taken a cubit from ...
— Copper Streak Trail • Eugene Manlove Rhodes
... grain had been harvested, cattle were turned out indiscriminately on the stubble, on the supposition that the fields were common property. It was useless to attempt to breed fine cattle when all were herded together. The breed deteriorated, and both cattle and sheep were undersized and poor. A full-grown ox was hardly larger than a good-sized calf of the present time. Moreover, there were no potatoes or turnips, and few farmers grew clover or other grasses for winter fodder. ...
— A Political and Social History of Modern Europe V.1. • Carlton J. H. Hayes
... Since then he had developed into a well-behaved little beast with a pair of wistful eyes that looked unutterable love, and a tail that beat the ground, the floor, or the air in joyous welcome whenever Rathburn came in sight. He was part collie, sharp-nosed and prick-eared, and his undersized little body still bore the marks of the precarious existence that had been his before ...
— The Tangled Threads • Eleanor H. Porter
... declared himself willing to take up the bet. The handsome man turned his head in its silk hat, and when he saw the starved, undersized creature, murmured sleepily, "He! he'll bet ten ducats with me! My dear sir, you'd better go home to your mother and ask her to give ...
— I.N.R.I. - A prisoner's Story of the Cross • Peter Rosegger
... out. There ain't much in them chaps, tailors and shoemakers, and the like; they are always great hands for jaw, them tailors and shoemakers, but I never seed one as I would put five pound on in a twelve-foot ring. Poor undersized creatures, for the most part, but beggars for jaw; but there are some rough uns with 'em, and yer might get badly marked before ...
— Captain Bayley's Heir: - A Tale of the Gold Fields of California • G. A. Henty
... shot at her was a little undersized boy (5ft. 4in.), about 18, named Edward Oxford, a publican's barman, out of work, and as "Satan finds work for idle hands to do," this boy must needs buy two pistols, bullets, powder and caps, ...
— Gossip in the First Decade of Victoria's Reign • John Ashton
... almost undersized man of perhaps forty-five, stout and well dressed. His head was so bandaged, as he lay in the lower berth of the port stateroom, that not much of ...
— The Motor Boat Club and The Wireless - The Dot, Dash and Dare Cruise • H. Irving Hancock
... and falls to work upon a pair of slippers she was embroidering for her father's birthday present, sitting up, starched and prim as an old maid, her lips pursed, and her forehead gravely consequential. I could not close my eyes without seeing her still, like an undersized nightmare, her hair smooth to the least hair, her dress neat to the smallest fold, stitching, ...
— At Last • Marion Harland
... grated back and there stood Burke holding in a grip of steel the undersized Annenberg, while the chauffeur who had driven our car ...
— The War Terror • Arthur B. Reeve
... them both well in Canada. I was sorry to have to tell him that his brother, who was with my regiment, was missing, either dead, wounded or a prisoner. He told me he had been rejected in Canada for being undersized and that he had gone to England and joined a territorial regiment. Their battalion had only just arrived from England and they were getting their baptism of fire. Truly ...
— The Red Watch - With the First Canadian Division in Flanders • J. A. Currie
... corporal, an undersized, vicious-looking fellow, giving Ken a prick with his lance. 'And keep going, or, by Allah, it will be more than a prick you will ...
— On Land And Sea At The Dardanelles • Thomas Charles Bridges
... of the arms meeting with interlaced finger-tips before her, the thumbs just touching; shoulders back, chin up, eyes—big enough at any time, now dilated to look twice their size—velvet circles in a white face. Like a Buddha; I'd seen her sit so, years before, an undersized girl doing stunts for her father in a public hall; and even then she'd been in a way impressive. But now, in the fullness of young beauty, her fine head relieved against the empty blue of the sky, the free winds whipping loose flying ends of her dark hair, she held the ...
— The Million-Dollar Suitcase • Alice MacGowan
... two descriptions emerges a fairly clear picture of an energetic man, somewhat undersized, and sometimes inclined to assert his dignity in a fashion that did not quite comport with his physical characteristics. The conviction that he was a very important personage with greater importance awaiting him, and his total lack of a sense of humour, combined with his inability to feel ...
— Charles the Bold - Last Duke Of Burgundy, 1433-1477 • Ruth Putnam
... Undersized, agile, with weary-old faces that seemed covered with drawn parchment, they seemed less like men than automata; all save the leader, a gigantic, imperious-looking Mongolian with a thin cat-like moustache, a man of the true river pirate type with ...
— The Beach of Dreams • H. De Vere Stacpoole
... snow above dark pine ridges of the hills below. The five officers talked a little as they waited, but spasmodically, absent-mindedly. A shadow blocked the light of the entrance, and in the doorway stood a young man, undersized, slight, blond. He looked inquiringly at ...
— The Militants - Stories of Some Parsons, Soldiers, and Other Fighters in the World • Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews
... Christmas—of mechanical soldiers, I mean. The chief difference I noticed was that Billy's were smaller than the live ones, although French soldiers are small enough. That portion of the French army which I have seen—at Longchamps, Chalons-sur-Marne, Saumur, and at various other places—are, as a rule, undersized, badly dressed, and badly groomed. They do not look neat, nor even clean, if you want the truth. The uniform is very ugly, and was evidently designed for men thirteen feet high; so that on those comical little toy Frenchmen it is grotesque in ...
— As Seen By Me • Lilian Bell
... Koritz, dark, undersized, with the eyes of an Oriental and the lean, sensitive fingers of one who creates, shivered a little, like a plant that is swept by an icy blast. Buck came over and laid one hand on ...
— Emma McChesney & Co. • Edna Ferber
... the carriage came opposite us a sudden jolt displaced the spring catch of the curtain and up it flew with a snap. There were two persons in the cab, and the electric light from the corner shone full upon them. The one nearest us was an undersized, swarthy-faced person who wore a Turkish fez; his companion was a portly man attired in evening clothes and having his head entirely enveloped in a bag of some dark material gathered at the neck ...
— The Gates of Chance • Van Tassel Sutphen
... voice at his elbow. He looked around, and then he looked down. An undersized urchin with not much on but a pair of ragged breeches stared up at him boldly, hands behind his back. "Do you know what ails your ship over there?" He nodded sideways at the ...
— Days of the Discoverers • L. Lamprey
... company with his master. He was tall, well favoured, a good rider, quite an athlete, an accomplished performer with the mouth-organ and concertina; ready and persuasive of tongue. These qualities provoked unaffected admiration; for the natives of the place are undersized, ill-looking, and deficient generally in the arts of pleasing. Before the master left, Caesar was persuaded by his envious fellow-countrymen to remain with them to ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield
... it glowed white hot. With much hammering and cursing it was laboriously formed into a sturdy open-end wrench with an offset head to get at the countersunk nuts. Jason made sure that the opening was slightly undersized, then took the untempered wrench to the work site and filed the jaws to an exact fit. After being reheated and quenched in oil he had the tool that he hoped would do ...
— The Ethical Engineer • Henry Maxwell Dempsey
... berths for herself and the two children; and then sat down in the saloon, and afterwards on deck, to spend the irksome and dreary hour or two before parting. Many of the passengers seemed to be Portuguese, undersized, dark, mustachioed people, smoking cigars. John Bull was fairly represented too. . . . . U—— was cheerful, and R——- seemed anxious to get off. Poor Fanny was altogether cast down, and shed tears, either from regret at leaving her native land, or dread of sea-sickness, ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... every way the equals and match for any white man. The Tagalos have absorbed much of the Spanish civilization. Many of them are wealthy and the sons of such families generally hold degrees from Philippine colleges. Well-to-do Tagalos, despite their undersized stature and dark-brown skins, affect all the culture—and the vices—of well-to-do white people. They conduct banks, engage in commerce, mingle with white society, and consider themselves as bright lights of civilization. ...
— Uncle Sam's Boys in the Philippines - or, Following the Flag against the Moros • H. Irving Hancock
... the very first of them we see that some of the blossoms are a light pink, others a pink so deep as to seem dashed with vivid red. And while a flower here and there is decidedly larger and more vigorous than its fellows, a few of the blossoms are undersized and puny: the tide of life flows high and merrily in a fortunate rose or two, it seems to ebb and falter by the time it reaches one or two of their unhappy mates. As we search bush after bush we are at last repaid for sundry scratches from their thorns by securing a double rose, a "sport," ...
— Little Masterpieces of Science: - The Naturalist as Interpreter and Seer • Various
... gentle smile at Newton Bronson, his helper. Newton was seventeen, undersized, tobacco-stained, profane and proud of the fact that he had once beaten his way from Des Moines to Faribault on freight trains. A source of anxiety to his father, and the subject of many predictions that he would come to no good ...
— The Brown Mouse • Herbert Quick
... Silas Bingham was an undersized, timid, pulpy soul, with a horizontal forehead, watery blue eyes, and a receding chin. Out of "office hours" he looked like a meek solicitor for a Sunday School magazine. One bright morning just as he had finished sweeping out the saloon and was polishing the brass rod ...
— Hepsey Burke • Frank Noyes Westcott
... could help: these embraces were not to his taste. And yet the boy did love his mother. She was not at all a wise woman, or a clever one; rather silly, indeed, in many things; but she was fond of him. At this period he was young-looking for his age, slight, and rather undersized, with an exceedingly light complexion, a wishy-washy sort of face with no colour in it, unmeaning light eyes, white eyebrows, and ragged-looking light hair with a tawny ...
— Elster's Folly • Mrs. Henry Wood
... to look, expecting to find a saucy street boy; but the owner of the voice was a girl. She was dirty-faced, undersized, poorly dressed, and ill-nourished. But she was absolutely independent, and stood there in the crowded square with all the assurance of ...
— Nan Sherwood's Winter Holidays • Annie Roe Carr
... the beasts with some disfavor. They were evidently half-mustang, and I thought undersized for such a journey. But I was to learn before the night was out the virtues of strength and endurance that lie in the ...
— Blindfolded • Earle Ashley Walcott
... advantage he, as Dinah's husband, held over his wife's adorers, and he made use of them without any disguise, obtaining a remission of taxes, and gaining two lawsuits. In every litigation he used the Public Prosecutor's name with such good effect that the matter was carried no further, and, like all undersized men, he was contentious and litigious in business, though in ...
— Parisians in the Country - The Illustrious Gaudissart, and The Muse of the Department • Honore de Balzac
... answered the Proprietor. "They are as tame as kittens: undersized brutes which have been raised in captivity and which go through their act like domestic cats. That isn't what the public wants. A sensation—the realization that every animal in the cage is a wild animal and that he is liable to remember it ...
— Side Show Studies • Francis Metcalfe
... Young and lacking in wisdom, this amazed me. In age he compared favourably with her husband he was but thirteen years older than herself—but in nothing else. He was a weedy, unhealthy-looking man, weakly of frame, rachitic, undersized, with spindle-shanks, and a countenance that was almost grotesque, with its protruding jaw, gaping mouth, great, doglike eyes, and yellow tuft of beard. A great king, perhaps, this Philip, having so been born; but a ridiculous man and an unspeakable lover. And yet ...
— The Historical Nights' Entertainment • Rafael Sabatini
... complete turnout, and it well deserved all the attention it attracted, which was considerable. The horses were capricious, highly polished grays, perhaps a trifle undersized, but with such an action as is not to be bought for less than twenty-five guineas a hoof; the harness was silver-mounted; the dog-cart itself a creation of beauty and nice poise; the groom a pink and priceless perfection. But ...
— The Ghost - A Modern Fantasy • Arnold Bennett
... a big man, but neither was he undersized. He was five-ten and weighed perhaps a hundred and sixty-five pounds. His face was dark of skin and had a hard, determined expression on it. He looked as though he had spent the last thirty of his thirty-five ...
— Thin Edge • Gordon Randall Garrett
... asphalt, with bells tinkling from their trappings, went a row of camels and camel-riders. They threaded their unhurried way on cushioned hoofs through a traffic of purring roadsters and limousines. Drawn by undersized stallions, an official carriage clattered by. Its fez-crowned occupant gazed superciliously out as the gaudily uniformed members of his kavasse ran alongside yelling to the crowds to make way for the Pasha! Fakirs led ...
— The Tyranny of Weakness • Charles Neville Buck
... figures among the dark mass of unimposing Anchurians, as they penetrated to within a few yards of the steps of the Casa Morena. Looking easily above the heads of the crowd, they perceived another that towered above the undersized natives. It was the fiery poll of Dicky Maloney against the wall close by the lower step; and his broad, seductive grin showed ...
— Cabbages and Kings • O. Henry
... slightly built, and undersized; her neck and shoulders were closely muffled, though the day was mild; she wore a faded scarlet hood which heightened the pallor of what must at best have been a pallid face. It was a sickly face, shaded off with purple shadows, but with a certain wiry nervous strength about ...
— Men, Women, and Ghosts • Elizabeth Stuart Phelps
... as preliminaries to the robbery, they could plead no such imaginary social precedent. In dealing with a family that seemed almost helpless, if all went smoothly, they relied entirely upon their own bodily strength. They were stout young men, twenty-eight to thirty-two years old; somewhat undersized as to height; but squarely built, deep- chested, broad-shouldered, and so beautifully formed, as regarded the symmetry of their limbs and their articulations, that, after their execution, the bodies were privately exhibited by the surgeons of the Manchester Infirmary, ...
— The Notebook of an English Opium-Eater • Thomas de Quincey
... alone in his down-town bachelor quarters; that is, alone save for an individual the club-man's friends termed his "Man Friday," an undersized and very black negro named Alexander Hamilton Brown, but answering to the contraction "Alec." Valet, man of all work, steward, Alec was as much a fixture about the place as the floor or the ceiling; and, like them, his presence, save ...
— Ben Blair - The Story of a Plainsman • Will Lillibridge
... to seem a sarcasm, especially as the orator immediately proceeds to notice the shortness of Richard's stature,—a comment not likely to have been peculiarly acceptable in the Rous Roll, the portrait of Richard represents him as undersized, but compactly and strongly built, and without any sign of deformity, unless the inelegant defect of a short neck can be so called.] commended Richard's "princely countenance," the compliment was not one to be disputed, much less contemned. But now as he rose, obedient ...
— The Last Of The Barons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... a good woman, undersized. I see several charming women, but they are all undersized. They are more or less imbecile and idiotic, but always fascinating and undersized. They wear coquettish caps and aprons. I observe that feminine virtue is invariably below the medium height, and that it is always ...
— The Luck of Roaring Camp and Other Tales • Bret Harte |
