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More "Shambling" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... brain of a drowning man; that same crowded my brain during the few moments which swung in to us Daniel, scowling, masterful, his raw bulk and his long shambling stride ...
— Desert Dust • Edwin L. Sabin
... very first, the Mistress had been Bruce's champion at The Place. There was no competition for that office. She and she alone could see any promise in the shambling youngster. ...
— Bruce • Albert Payson Terhune
... spot behind a log Anse lifted his rifle and started over the ridge with the long, shambling gait of the born hill-climber that eats up the miles. For this emergency he had been schooled years back when he sat by a wood fire in a cabin of split boards and listened to his crippled-up father reciting the saga of the feud, with the tally of this ...
— The Escape of Mr. Trimm - His Plight and other Plights • Irvin S. Cobb
... thought out, should ever love to live alone. Solitude is surely for the young, who have time before them for the execution of schemes, and who can, therefore, take delight in thinking. In these days the poor old man would wander about the rooms, shambling from one chamber to another, and would feel ashamed when the servants met him ever on the move. He would make little apologies for his uneasiness, which they would accept graciously, understanding, after a fashion, why it was that he was uneasy. "He ain't ...
— The Last Chronicle of Barset • Anthony Trollope
... up his stick, he heard a footstep behind him, and turning, saw an ill-dressed, sullen-looking man. The light from one of the lamps near by shone full on him; and something about the stout, shambling figure, or the dirty evil-browed face, ...
— Adrien Leroy • Charles Garvice
... spoken through chattering teeth was not needed. The women of the tribe shivered more from the cold than from fear as they gathered together their belongings, their furs and hides and crude stone implements; and the shambling man-shape, called Gor, led them to the hole down which a strong man might climb, led ...
— Two Thousand Miles Below • Charles Willard Diffin
... Hyacinthe again, and the shambling lad felt dimly as if the scent of the sandalwood were sweeter, and the lamp-flame clearer. But the stranger's ...
— Christmas Stories And Legends • Various
... and of quiet deductions and deliberate conclusions. His coat was seedy, his trousers bagged at the knees, his shoes were old, and there were patches on them, but his collar and linen were white and very much starched, and his awkward, shambling gait was honest to the last footfall. A world of depth and soul was in his strong, fine face, lit up now with an honest, humble smile, but, at rest, full ...
— The Bishop of Cottontown - A Story of the Southern Cotton Mills • John Trotwood Moore
... wizards and witches, that made Detroit feared by the early settlers, none were more dreaded than the Nain Rouge (Red Dwarf), or Demon of the Strait, for it appeared only when there was to be trouble. In that it delighted. It was a shambling, red-faced creature, with a cold, glittering eye and teeth protruding from a grinning mouth. Cadillac, founder of Detroit, having struck at it, presently lost his seigniory and his fortunes. It was seen scampering along the shore on the night ...
— Myths And Legends Of Our Own Land, Complete • Charles M. Skinner
... raw, wet 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 shoes ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., April, 1863, No. LXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics. • Various
... valued the surprise as a means of ascertaining their attention to his interests. Ware was one of his most trusted lieutenants, however, and everything that he had ever seen or heard satisfied him of the man's faithfulness. So he made haste to relieve him from embarrassment, for the tall, awkward, shambling fellow was ...
— Bricks Without Straw • Albion W. Tourgee
... could not answer the question, and he longed for the sight of the shambling little station at Tabernacle, with Ba'tiste, in answer to the telegram he had sent from Chicago, awaiting him with the buggy from camp. And Ba'tiste was there, to boom at him, to call Golemar's attention to the fact ...
— The White Desert • Courtney Ryley Cooper
... letters on 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 ...
— Foot-prints of Travel - or, Journeyings in Many Lands • Maturin M. Ballou
... head drooped more and more under its tree of horns, and the shambling trot grew weak and weaker. He took to standing for long periods, with nose to the ground and dejected ears dropped limply; and Buck found more time in which to get water for himself and in which to rest. At such moments, panting with red lolling tongue and with eyes fixed upon ...
— The Call of the Wild • Jack London
... ecclesiastical dress, as when discovering a pacific next-door neighbor beneath the bear-skin of an American military officer. A fit suggestion; for next follows a detachment of Portuguese troops-of-the-line,—twenty shambling men in short jackets, with hair shaved close, looking most like children's wooden monkeys, by no means live enough for the real ones. They straggle along, scarcely less irregular in aspect than the main body of ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 37, November, 1860 • Various
... 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 man." Bok retraced his steps, and then ...
— The Americanization of Edward Bok - The Autobiography of a Dutch Boy Fifty Years After • Edward William Bok
... Bully 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
... fearful. He walked rapidly toward the brook. The trail he was following became distinct. The leaves had been kicked up here and there by Lew as he walked. The track grew plainer and plainer. It became more like a plow furrow. At first Charley did not grasp the meaning of the shambling trail. Then it ...
— The Young Wireless Operator—As a Fire Patrol - The Story of a Young Wireless Amateur Who Made Good as a Fire Patrol • Lewis E. Theiss
... then he weakly attempted to catch the other's eye, but as Mike studiously refused to be caught, Cassidy could only blink owlishly and fumble again with the tangled ends of the skein. Finally, abandoning it all as useless, he turned toward the door, yet arrested his dazed shambling to ask ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. 31, No. 1, May 1908 • Various
... discovered the absolute 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
... and grazing land into vineyards and orchards. Not even Riverside can compare with it in the rapid evolution of a great source of wealth which ten years ago was almost unknown. What has transformed Fresno from a shambling, dirty resort of cowboys and wheat ranchers into one of the prettiest cities in California is the raisin grape. Though nearly all fruits may be grown here, yet this is pre-eminently the home of the raisin industry, and it is the raisin which in a single decade ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 829, November 21, 1891 • Various
... has forgotten to prepare the reader for 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 ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume 9 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... not in any very high glee at having been previously roused 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 ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... declined if only they could have thought of the proper method of doing so. As it was, they only succeeded in shambling through the parsonage door, instinctively concealing their ...
— Prudence Says So • Ethel Hueston
... hunting; but greater contrast could not have been found than 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
... shop, while the gay, lightsome step passed among the dusty treasures. Now she seldom smiled or sang, and among the few bits of comedy in her sad days, were the visits of Kit Nubbles, her grandfather's errand boy, a shock-headed, shambling, comical lad, whose devotion to the beautiful child verged on worship. Appreciating Nell's loneliness, Kit visited the shop as often as possible, and the exquisite oddity and awkwardness of his ...
— Ten Girls from Dickens • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... 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
... old burro now," called Walter, as a shambling object, much the worse for wear, came ...
— The Pony Rider Boys in New Mexico • Frank Gee Patchin
... scholarly young rector and his father's critical self. Instead, Reed took a certain comfort in reflecting that he had foreseen it all along. However, he had felt an undeniable curiosity to see the shabby, under-nourished Scott Brenton, a thing of shambling feet and knobbly joints, transmogrified into the well-groomed, easy-mannered type of rector which had become traditional ...
— The Brentons • Anna Chapin Ray
... 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, ...
— An Encore • Margaret Deland
... and was snatched away, half laughing and half in tears, and hurried down to the side street, where a carriage was waiting. And here there was one more delay: Chester Cox, a thin shambling figure, came forward from a shadowy doorway, and rather timidly ...
— The Story Of Julia Page - Works of Kathleen Norris, Volume V. • Kathleen Norris
... 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
... 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 case, it was the smaller ...
— The Vultures • Henry Seton Merriman
... offered me his hand for parting. I took it, and we said, together, "Well, good-by," and moved in different directions. I knew very well that I should turn back, and I had not gone a hundred feet away when I faced about. He was shambling off into the dusk, a most hapless figure. "Tedham!" I called ...
— A Pair of Patient Lovers • William Dean Howells
... singular figure appeared at the doorway. It was that of a very old man, with long white hair, which escaped from beneath the eaves of an exceedingly high-peaked hat. He stooped considerably, and moved along with a shambling gait. I could not see much of his face, which, as the landlady stood behind him with the lamp, was consequently in deep shadow. I could observe, however, that his eyes sparkled like those of a ferret. He advanced to the foot of the bed, in which I was still lying, wondering ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... 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 ...
— The Dragon Painter • Mary McNeil Fenollosa
... saw a group of antelope standing only a few hundred yards from the train, tranquilly indifferent, their branching horns clear in a pallid ray of light; and once a prairie-wolf, solitary and motionless; and once, as the train moved off after a stoppage, an old badger leisurely shambling off the line itself. And once, too, amid a driving storm-shower, and what seemed to her unbroken formless solitudes, suddenly, a tent by the railway side, and the blaze of a fire; and as the train slowly passed, three men—lads rather—emerging ...
— Lady Merton, Colonist • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... of lost health and vitality he will tell you. Mark well the wasted hand, the putty-like skin, the black-ringed, lack-lustre eyes, the heavy lip, the labored breath—read the consequences of his sin and crime in his shame-faced way, his shambling gait, his nerveless hands, his fluttering heart, his weakened muscles, and his tottering ...
— Manhood Perfectly Restored • Unknown
... was a tall, thin, shambling young fellow whose face was pale with an emotion not at all complimentary to herself. He didn't like her! He thought her hideous! He despised her! So she read Peter's expressive eyes. She thought him a fool, to stand there staring at her like that, and she hated ...
— The Purple Heights • Marie Conway Oemler
... 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 ...
— The Young Miner - or Tom Nelson in California • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... admit 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 to translate, so ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 2 - "Chicago, University of" to "Chiton" • Various
... 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 drawn ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various
... it had caused him to 'eat all his economies,' and he resigned himself to the wages of a road-mender, which were small but sure. It was getting dusk when we parted. My next companion on the road was a poor bent-backed, shambling, idiotic youth, who was driving home two long-tailed sheep and a lamb, and who had just enough intelligence for this work. He kept at my side for a mile or two, flourishing a long stick over the backs of the sheep and uttering melancholy ...
— Wanderings by southern waters, eastern Aquitaine • Edward Harrison Barker
... think the contraband was conscious of the effect produced by his lordly presence; it was probably simple accident which brought him so often in my neighborhood; but, wherever I moved through the crowded cars, seeking for a seat, the loose shambling limbs and dull vacant eyes seemed impelled to follow. At last I lost my bete noire, and found a place close to the door with nothing but a low pile of logs in my front. I was tired, and soon began to doze; but I woke up with ...
— Border and Bastille • George A. Lawrence
... bottle, his quaint feet, like huge hands, flopping in the dust. Mahdi's make-up did Professor Thunder great credit—it was grotesquely inhuman. The shape of the costume demanded a stooping attitude and shambling gait. Only in a good light and at close quarters could the ...
— The Missing Link • Edward Dyson
... Collins; and the reply was followed by the shuffling sound of several pairs of feet, the owners of which came shambling into the room the next moment, with naked cutlasses in their hands, while one of them carried, in addition, a length of some three or four ...
— A Middy of the Slave Squadron - A West African Story • Harry Collingwood
... molested." As the fields in places were enclosed by rail fences, it was strictly against orders to disturb any of the fences. This order had been religiously obeyed all the while, until this night on the top of the Blue Ridge. A shambling, tumble-down rail fence was near the camp of the Third South Carolina, not around any field, however, but apparently to prevent stock from passing on the western side of the mountain. At night while the troops lay in the open air, without any protection whatever, only ...
— History of Kershaw's Brigade • D. Augustus Dickert
... bell and demanded that the old caretaker should be sent to him at once. The man came to him, shambling unsteadily along and breathing fast as if he had been running. His aged features were quivering with some strange excitement, as Fenwick did not fail to notice, despite his ...
— The Mystery of the Four Fingers • Fred M. White
... fellow, Bishop?" he asked of his host for the night, a few moments later, when he dismounted in front of the cabin. The Bishop shaded his eyes with his hand and peered up the road at the shambling figure once more moving ahead ...
— The Lions of the Lord - A Tale of the Old West • Harry Leon Wilson
... cart; "you jog 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 the ponies. ...
— Cricket at the Seashore • Elizabeth Westyn Timlow
... that she set eyes upon him, shambling awkwardly into the yard at her husband's heels, Jabe Smith's wife was inhospitable toward the ungainly youngling of the wild. She declared that he would take all the milk. And he did. For the next two months she was unable to make any butter, and her opinions on the subject ...
— The House in the Water - A Book of Animal Stories • Charles G. D. Roberts
... Jasper's "bye Jarge" went out to make a trial of life a second time, and as I watched him striding through the moonlight, his head erect, very different to the shambling creature he had been, it seemed to me that the felon was already ...
— My Lady Caprice • Jeffrey Farnol
... bent his bow against a bear shambling across a little sunny glade. The arrow did its errand, and where the creature fell, there we sat down and feasted beside a fire kindled by rubbing two sticks together. According to their wont the Indians ate ravenously, and when the meal was ended began to smoke, each warrior first ...
— To Have and To Hold • Mary Johnston
... go, side by side, Jude shambling as usual, Joyce stepping as if hastening to receive ...
— Joyce of the North Woods • Harriet T. Comstock
... answer, 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 ...
— The Barrier • Rex Beach
... first long street, 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
... to come 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 ...
— The Johnstown Horror • James Herbert Walker
... was the oldest horse on the farm, a shambling, half-blind creature whose days of work had long been over. In summer she reveled in clover pasture, and the warmest box stall and choicest oats were hers in winter. Sarah had ridden her around the pasture a number of times, but it had never occurred to anyone that she ...
— Rainbow Hill • Josephine Lawrence
... His aim in life is to gain possession of the helmet, the ring, and the treasure, and through them to obtain that Plutonic mastery of the world under the beginnings of which he himself writhed during Alberic's brief reign. Mimmy is a blinking, shambling, ancient creature, too weak and timid to dream of taking arms himself to despoil Fafnir, who still, transformed to a monstrous serpent, broods on the gold in a hole in the rocks. Mimmy needs the help of a hero for that; and he has craft enough to know that it is quite possible, and indeed much ...
— The Perfect Wagnerite - A Commentary on the Niblung's Ring • George Bernard Shaw
... 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 ...
— Legends That Every Child Should Know • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... at each other as they obeyed; and a heavy, shambling, graceless man, dressed in the most exaggerated fopperies of the day, but with a face which even sickliness, that refines most faces, could not divest of the most vacant dulness, and a mien and gait to which no attire could ...
— The Last Of The Barons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... his Sonnet LXVI. can doubt that he had carried in his mind while alive some profound and peculiar form of the idea of Toleration? In Bacon's brain, too, one may detect some smothered tenet of the kind; and even in the talk of the shambling King James himself there had been such occasional spurts about Liberty of Conscience that, though he had burnt two of his subjects for Arianism, Helwisse's poor people were fain, as we have just seen, ...
— The Life of John Milton Vol. 3 1643-1649 • David Masson
... back excited and laughing. Old Conboy, tall as Mark Hammar, wide-shouldered, shambling like a bear, but a fine figure of an old fellow for all that; Mark Hammar, heavy and splendid in his sinister fashion; and between them Deolda with her big, red mouth and her sallow skin and her eyes burning as they ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1921 and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... hastily, 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 she stood and stared at ...
— A harum-scarum schoolgirl • Angela Brazil
... 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 ...
— Under the Country Sky • Grace S. Richmond
... street end of the alley and gave a low whistle. Out under the lamp from behind the corner came a long, thin, shambling, hump-backed youth, with his hat down over his head like an extinguisher, dragging a small bony horse, which, in its turn, dragged a rickety cart of the tray variety, such as is used in the dead marine trade. Behind ...
— While the Billy Boils • Henry Lawson
... which had grown indifferent to the cries of human anger or distress, woke at the appeal of the dumb creature. He ran amongst the Larrikins, scattered them, rescued the dog, and stood at bay. They were six in number, shambling gallows-birds; but for once the proverb was right, cruelty was coupled with cowardice, and the wretches cursed him and made off. It chanced that this act of prowess had not passed unwitnessed. On a bench near by there was seated a shopkeeper's assistant out of employ, a diminutive, cheerful, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 13 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... and 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 ...
— Casey Ryan • B. M. Bower
... man stood looking at him. Good-for-nothing was written in every line of the shiftless, shambling figure, and pictured in every rag of the fluttering raiment, and yet—the fellow really was hungry,—and again came the thought of that fifteen cents. The young man was hungry himself; had been hungry many a time in the past, and downright, gnawing, helpless ...
— That Printer of Udell's • Harold Bell Wright
... worser part to view— Of wanton waste and reckless gambling, What darker paths shall he pursue With sacrilegious step and shambling? What coarse defiance, haply, hurl At lights beyond his comprehension— An attitudinising churl Who struts ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 102, Jan. 9, 1892 • Various
... they have a shambling sort of gait, half walk, half amble, but manage to get over the ground very quickly, and for such cumbersome animals are very nimble-footed. It is almost ludicrous to see the huge beasts picking their way along a narrow "bund" or crossing some ditch by a ...
— Burma - Peeps at Many Lands • R.Talbot Kelly
... 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 the attitude, lay almost the force of rebuke. It was as though he stood ...
— A Pagan of the Hills • Charles Neville Buck
... that for a signal—or perhaps he made another that we did not see—the six undoubted gipsies got up and left the room, shambling out in single file with the awkward gait they share ...
— The Eye of Zeitoon • Talbot Mundy
... tumult they made, so self-centered were his burning thoughts and feelings. A great occasion in Vincennes and he, Gaspard Roussillon, not recognized as one of the large factors in it! Ah, no, never! And he strode along the wall of the stockade, turning the corners and heavily shambling over the inequalities till he reached the postern. It was not fastened, some one having ...
— Alice of Old Vincennes • Maurice Thompson
... on that savage scene drew back from the shambling man beside them in the only impulse of respect they ever felt for him. It was the one act of his life to secure the admiration of his fellow-men; it was an action of which he himself always spoke ...
— Hillsboro People • Dorothy Canfield
... class. "A plain man but honest, sir," was what one expected him to utter at every turn. It was written in the coarse open lines of his face, half-hidden by a bushy gray beard; in his small sparkling eyes, now blue, now brown; in his looselimbed, shambling movements as he crossed the room. His very clothes spoke, to an acute observer, of a masculine sincerity naked and unashamed—as if his large coffee-spotted cravat would not alter the smallest fold to conceal the stains it bore. Hale, hairy, vehement, not without ...
— The Deliverance; A Romance of the Virginia Tobacco Fields • Ellen Glasgow
... intervals the sharply indented leaves of the plane trees and the shivering silver of the balsam-poplars into an arresting and artificial distinctness. Between were spaces of vacancy and gloom. And from out such a space, immediately opposite, slowly emerged a shambling and ungainly figure, in which Dominic Iglesias recognised the third of his fellow-lodgers, Mr. de Courcy Smyth. His acquaintance with the said lodger was of the slightest, since the latter had but recently entered ...
— The Far Horizon • Lucas Malet
... dragging slowly and heavily for the besieged boys in the tree, but the wolves, though hungry, were patient. Strong in union they were lords of the forest, and they felt no fear. A shambling black bear, lumbering through the woods, suddenly threw up his nose in the wind, and catching the strong pungent odor, wheeled abruptly, lumbering off on another course. The wild cat did not come back, but crouched lower in his tree top; the timid things ...
— The Young Trailers - A Story of Early Kentucky • Joseph A. Altsheler
... at eleven. It is reported, and is probably true, that the whole Boer force has surrendered. If so we have missed little or nothing. About twenty prisoners came in in the morning, quaint, rough people, shambling along on diminutive ponies. In the afternoon Williams went foraging for the officers, and I visited our Scotch friends, the donors of the cabbage, who were very kind, and asked me in. The married son had just come in from Basutoland, where he had been hiding, a great ...
— In the Ranks of the C.I.V. • Erskine Childers
... meagre, mean-visaged, muddy-complexioned, and altogether a man of no account—quite insignificant in the eyes of all who looked upon him. If there were one opinion, in which the few who had taken the trouble to think of the puny, somewhat shambling stranger from Burgundy at all, coincided, it was that he was inoffensive, but quite incapable of any important business. He seemed well educated, claimed to be of respectable parentage, and had considerable facility of speech when any person could be found who thought it worth while ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1-20 • Various
... was neither delicate nor poetic. For the beauty of the head was curiously and unexpectedly contradicted by the clumsiness of the frame below it. "Brother" Williams might have the head of a poet; he had the form and movements, the large feet and shambling gait, of the peasant. And Laura, scanning him with some closeness, noticed with distaste a good many signs of personal slovenliness and ill-breeding. His hands were not as clean as they might have been; his clerical ...
— Helbeck of Bannisdale, Vol. II • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... precisely as he appeared among his friends at Streatham. The painter has straightened the wig, which was usually worn awry, but otherwise it is the very Dr. Johnson of whom we read so much, with his shabby brown coat, his big shambling ...
— Sir Joshua Reynolds - A Collection of Fifteen Pictures and a Portrait of the - Painter with Introduction and Interpretation • Estelle M. Hurll
... the woman turn to the shambling old man who came forward again. And as he bent over the tiny scrap of paper, as though endeavoring to make out what the writing on it meant, every sound ceased until the silence of death seemed to hover over ...
— Chums in Dixie - or The Strange Cruise of a Motorboat • St. George Rathborne
... forward with his usual shambling gait, and an additional shade of sullenness apparent on his face, but it glowed a swarthy red ...
— Ester Ried Yet Speaking • Isabella Alden
... thrown over the old conventions, the felicitous coincidences, life arranged on ideal lines; and it has gone straight to life itself, strong, full-blooded, eager life, full of mistakes and blunders and failures and sharp disasters and fears. Life goes shambling along like a big dog, but it has got its nose on the scent of something. It is a much more mysterious and prodigious affair than life rearranged upon romantic lines. It means something very vast indeed, though it splashes through mud and scrambles ...
— Escape and Other Essays • Arthur Christopher Benson
... one evening stumbled upon a tapir, just as the great animal had forded the river and was shambling into the bush opposite. He emptied his rifle magazine into the beast. It fell with a broken hip, and the men finished it with their machetes. Its hide was nearly a half inch in thickness, and covered with garrapatas—fierce, burrowing vermin, with hooked claws, which came upon ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... and trunk, and lastly the legs of a slouching shambling man of forty-eight or fifty ...
— The Just and the Unjust • Vaughan Kester
... "Half-way House," which seemed to have wholly lost its way, and strayed into the open, where, dazed and bewildered, unprepared and unprotected, it was exposed to the taunting fury of the blast. A loose, shambling, disjointed, hastily built structure—representing the worst features of Pioneer renaissance—it rattled its loose window-sashes like chattering teeth, banged its ill-hung shutters, and admitted so much of ...
— Jeff Briggs's Love Story • Bret Harte
... had been bought dear, at the cost of heavy labour begun too early in life, so that before middle-age they were bent in the back, or gone wrong at the knees, and their walk (some of them walked miles every day to their work) was a long shambling stride, fast enough, but badly wanting in suggestiveness of personal pride. Seeing them casually in their heavy and uncleanly clothes, no one would have dreamed of the great qualities in them—the kindliness ...
— Change in the Village • (AKA George Bourne) George Sturt
... intervening rocks; but it fell short of us. I saw that it 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
... distance; and I've said to myself, "Well, now, if that was only to turn out to be that black-a-vised Ayrshire ploughman, it would be all over with me; it would be 'Whistle and I'll come to ye, my lad.'" And then some shambling fellow of a labourer has come along, straw-haired, bent-backed, twisted-kneed, and scarcely enough spirit in him to say, "Marnin t' ...
— The Beautiful Wretch; The Pupil of Aurelius; and The Four Macnicols • William Black
... for that? It would be all the same if he did forget us!" growled a young fellow shambling along ...
— What's Mine's Mine • George MacDonald
... found him playing his fiddle to keep himself company, but he stopped when he heard me, and, to tell the truth, I was glad of it, for his playing was uncanny. Sometimes I met him shambling along the brink of the Cliffs—a grotesque little figure, with his old shapeless hat, his huge coat flapping behind him, and the mighty blackthorn he carried—he knew the ground so well that he walked ...
— The Idler, Volume III., Issue XIII., February 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly. Edited By Jerome K. Jerome & Robert Barr • Various
... the gap, where the river-path joined the down-stream boundary of the wood, then, with awkward, shambling stride, climbed the steep pasture, and for a few moments paused to watch and listen in the deep shadows of the hedge on the brow of the slope. A rabbit, that had lain out all night in her "seat" beneath the briars, rushed ...
— Creatures of the Night - A Book of Wild Life in Western Britain • Alfred W. Rees
... 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
... make was Sloppy. Too much of him longwise, too little of him broadwise, and too many sharp angles of him angle-wise. One of those shambling male human creatures, born to be indiscreetly candid in the revelation of buttons; every button he had about him glaring at the public to a quite preternatural extent. A considerable capital of knee and elbow and ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... was Martin Cheeseman, was hoary with age, but far from being past his prime of work. He had a large and shambling strength of body and limb, like an old bear, and his sinews were, of their kind, as tough as those of the ancient woods which ...
— Jerome, A Poor Man - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... A shambling man, almost a hobbledehoy, of about twenty five, ran out to obey the command, and, when he returned from No. 6, informed Wilkinson civilly that the water was in his room. Something in his homely but pleasant face, in his shock head and in his voice, seemed familiar ...
— Two Knapsacks - A Novel of Canadian Summer Life • John Campbell
... After the publication in the Warchester paper scores who had sided with the Boone faction either called or wrote to confess their error. Even the Acredale Monitor, a weekly sheet notoriously in the interest of Boone, felt constrained to copy parts of the account and publish with it a shambling retraction of previous criticism, based on imperfect knowledge, that it had printed concerning Sergeant Sprague. "Death," it declared, "has obliterated all feeling that existed against our young ...
— The Iron Game - A Tale of the War • Henry Francis Keenan
... said the novice, who was an ill-looking, one-sided, shambling lad, with sunken eyes set close together in his head—'if the society would burn his house down—for he's not insured—or beat him as he comes home from his club at night, or help me to carry off his daughter, and marry her at the Fleet, whether she ...
— Barnaby Rudge • Charles Dickens
... an overhead 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
... thoughts were passing through her mind she happened to glance out of the window. Nutty was shambling through the garden with his pail, a bowed, shuffling pillar of gloom. As Elizabeth watched, he dropped the pail and lashed the air violently for a while. From her knowledge of bees ('It is needful to remember that bees resent outside interference and will resolutely defend themselves,' ...
— Uneasy Money • P.G. Wodehouse
... the hedge and saw the chickweed and the thistles in undisputed possession. For David has gone. "It will take a long time to turn him into a soldier," we said when we saw him leave his thatched roof last spring to join up, and watched him shambling down the lane to the valley and the distant station. "The war will be over before he gets into the trenches," I said cheerfully to his wife, his mother, and Aunt Jane as they sat later in the day mingling their tears in the "parlour"—that ...
— Pebbles on the Shore • Alpha of the Plough (Alfred George Gardiner)
... voices bellowed his name to lift him to the finish: "Alcatraz!" Then they were over the line and the riders were pulling up. It was not hard to stop Alcatraz. He went by Marianne at a reeling trot, his legs shambling weakly and his head drooping, a weary rag of horseflesh with his ears still gloomily flattened ...
— Alcatraz • Max Brand
... edition with a Life, written by a friend in the form of a Dialogue of the Dead in the Elysian Fields between Lord Lyttelton—who had been, in his Dialogues of the Dead, an imitator of the Dialogues so called in Lucian—and Lucian himself. "By that shambling gait and length of carcase," says Lucian, "it must be Lord Lyttelton coming this way." "And by that arch look and sarcastic smile," says Lyttelton, "you are my old friend Lucian, whom I have not seen this many a day. Fontenelle and I ...
— Trips to the Moon • Lucian
... gangling cattle-man with drooping grizzled mustache, came shambling up to the steps. His weather-beaten chaps were much too short for his lengthy limbs, the collar of his faded flannel shirt lacked an inch of meeting at the throat, its sleeves were shrunken until his hairy hands hung ...
— Going Some • Rex Beach
... came shambling up to pay their awkward respects to Lorraine and to Jack, while Tricasse pulled his bristling mustache and clattered his sabre in its sheath approvingly. When his men had acquitted themselves with all the awkward sincerity ...
— Lorraine - A romance • Robert W. Chambers
... He went off, shambling along with his face turned toward the sky and his feet taking care of themselves. Cora looked ...
— The Motor Girls On Cedar Lake - The Hermit of Fern Island • Margaret Penrose
... way until they were well out of sight of the station itself, guided their wagon from the trail into a little depression along the creek as if to make camp for the night. The driver, a tall, thin man, wearing a slouch hat, got down from the front of the wagon and walked with a shambling gait to the head of his horses and loosened their bridles. While the horses were drinking, a second man, carrying a rifle, climbed down from the rear of the wagon. He was of a shorter and stockier build, and on one side the brim of his soft hat had been torn away so ...
— The Mountain Divide • Frank H. Spearman
... badly-bred, vulgar, common brute!" 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 with ...
— An Onlooker in France 1917-1919 • William Orpen
... judges put their heads together and whispered and planned and discussed. Then they brought forth this sufficiently shambling conclusion—but it was the best they could do, in so close a place: they said the Pope was so far away; and it was not necessary to go to him anyway, because the present judges had sufficient power and authority to deal with ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... 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 from behind ...
— Bride of Lammermoor • Sir Walter Scott
... gentleman ached as he talked: for with men and with hosts of women to whom he was indifferent, never did he converse in this shambling, third-rate, sheepish manner, devoid of all highness of tone and the proper precision of an authority. He was unable to fathom the cause of it, but Clara imposed it on him, and only in anger could he throw it off. The temptation to an outburst that would flatter him ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... thin as I am fat, and his clothes hang on him in the most comical way. He is very tall and shambling, wears a ragged beard and a broad Stetson hat, and suffers amazingly from hay fever in the autumn. (In fact, his essay on "Hay Fever" is the best thing he ever wrote, I think.) As he came striding up the road I noticed how his trousers fluttered at the ankles ...
— Parnassus on Wheels • Christopher Morley
... to explain in a rather shambling fashion that he had been there some time and "intended to hunt him up, of course"; but he had "been so taken ...
— Gordon Keith • Thomas Nelson Page
... heads together and whispered and planned and discussed. Then they brought forth this sufficiently shambling conclusion—but it was the best they could do, in so close a place: they said the Pope was so far away; and it was not necessary to go to him anyway, because the present judges had sufficient power and authority to deal ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... did was to leap away from the midshipman's prostrate body. Despite the bear's lumbering body and shambling gait he can be spry enough ...
— Uncle Sam's Boys as Sergeants - or, Handling Their First Real Commands • H. Irving Hancock
... 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 ...
— The Barrier • Rex Beach
... poor shambling sort of house. Strangers wondered why Maurice Gorman, who owned Kilgorman as well, chose to live in this place instead of the fine mansion near the lough mouth. But to the country people this was ...
— Kilgorman - A Story of Ireland in 1798 • Talbot Baines Reed
... transferred to what some economists call the productive section of society. The experiment has failed, and the cause of the failure is not difficult to find. One has merely to look at these men of gaunt visage and shambling gait, with their loop-holed slippers, and black, threadbare coats reaching down to their ankles, to understand that they are not in their proper sphere. Their houses are in a most dilapidated condition, and their villages ...
— Russia • Donald Mackenzie Wallace
... the camp, quick eyes were watching the doings of his companion and himself. Then he caught a coughing grunt, and out of the tepee which the trapper had entered, emerged two forms, the first bent and shambling, the other that of Jean Benard. They picked their way, walking close together, between the moose-hide tents, and as they drew near the sledge, Stane saw that the shambling form was that of Chief George, and that he walked with the muzzle of the trapper's ...
— A Mating in the Wilds • Ottwell Binns
... did not hear 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 of a devil-fish, ...
— The Texan Star - The Story of a Great Fight for Liberty • Joseph A. Altsheler
... 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 carry it twice as far ...
— Wealth of the World's Waste Places and Oceania • Jewett Castello Gilson
... gone were the shambling gait, the pathetic smile, the helplessness of resignation to overwhelming conditions. Gone, too, were the tears, the pleading look, and in their place stood Anton Von Barwig, erect and strong, his eyes glittering with fire, the fire of righteous indignation, ...
— The Music Master - Novelized from the Play • Charles Klein
... that? 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 ...
— Jack - 1877 • Alphonse Daudet
... big fire smoking his pipe, and the supreme happiness of Phil Briant, and the placid joy of Tim Rokens, and the exuberant delight of Glynn, and the semi-scientific enjoyment of Dr Hopley as he examined a collection of rare plants; and the quiet comfort of the trader, and the awkward, shambling, loose-jointed pleasure of long Jim Scroggles; and the beaming felicity of her own dear father; who sat not far from her, and turned occasionally in the midst of the conversation to give her a nod—she felt in her heart that then and there she had fairly ...
— The Red Eric • R.M. Ballantyne
... after a singular figure appeared at the doorway. It was that of a very old man, with long white hair, which escaped from beneath the eaves of an exceedingly high-peaked hat. He stooped considerably, and moved along with a shambling gait. I could not see much of his face, which, as the landlady stood behind him with the lamp, was consequently in deep shadow. I could observe, however, that his eyes sparkled like those of a ferret. ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... because he wishes to (no one ever "sent" a Grind to college). He has a sallow skin, a watery eye, a shambling gait, but he has the facts. His clothes are outgrown, his coat shiny, his linen a dull ecru, his hands clammy. He reads a book as he walks, and when he bumps into you, he always exculpates himself ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 5 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... 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 ...
— In the Name of the Bodleian and Other Essays • Augustine Birrell
... Spagna and the stairs of the 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 ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 90, June, 1875 • Various
... 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 and dismay. It ...
— The Eyes of the Woods - A story of the Ancient Wilderness • Joseph A. Altsheler
... other's eye, but as Mike studiously refused to be caught, Cassidy could only blink owlishly and fumble again with the tangled ends of the skein. Finally, abandoning it all as useless, he turned toward the door, yet arrested his dazed shambling to ask one ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. 31, No. 1, May 1908 • Various
... import strange rites from France or Belgium. The evolution of the English Rite is one of the wholesome signs of the times. About preaching, I am not so clear. The almost complete disuse of the written sermon is in many ways a loss. The discipline of the paper protects the flock alike against shambling inanities, and against a too boisterous rhetoric. No doubt a really fine extempore sermon is a great work of art; but for nine preachers out of ten the manuscript is the ...
— Fifteen Chapters of Autobiography • George William Erskine Russell
... with equanimity. He would be home even earlier! And gathering up the sheets of paper he had scribbled on, he put them in his pocket and got up. The would-be suicide was being taken out of the court—a shambling drab figure with shoulders hunched. What good were men like that in these days! What good! The prisoner looked up. Mr. Bosengate encountered in full the gaze of those large brown eyes, with the white showing underneath. What a suffering, wretched, pitiful face! A man had no business ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... did not fly, but sat gravely on the log in front of Uncle Jim's hotel, and waited for the creaking, stage, white with far-gathered dust, to climb the last pitch of the road up from the arroyo and come on with the shambling trot of a pair of tired mules for the final nourish at the end of the long, ...
— Heart's Desire • Emerson Hough
... overhead 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 ...
— Peter - A Novel of Which He is Not the Hero • F. Hopkinson Smith
... 'The murderer!' and he sprang forward to throw himself on the shaking, shambling wretch. Mosk eluded him, but uttered a squeaking cry like the shriek of a hunted hare in the jaws of the greyhound. The next instant the room seemed to swarm with men, and the bishop as in a dream heard the merciless formula of the law ...
— The Bishop's Secret • Fergus Hume
... chattering teeth was not needed. The women of the tribe shivered more from the cold than from fear as they gathered together their belongings, their furs and hides and crude stone implements; and the shambling man-shape, called Gor, led them to the hole down which a strong man might climb, led them ...
— Two Thousand Miles Below • Charles Willard Diffin
... shelf. This he 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
... values which follows the conversion of wheat fields and grazing land into vineyards and orchards. Not even Riverside can compare with it in the rapid evolution of a great source of wealth which ten years ago was almost unknown. What has transformed Fresno from a shambling, dirty resort of cowboys and wheat ranchers into one of the prettiest cities in California is the raisin grape. Though nearly all fruits may be grown here, yet this is pre-eminently the home of the raisin industry, and it is the raisin which ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 829, November 21, 1891 • Various
... dress, as when discovering a pacific next-door neighbor beneath the bear-skin of an American military officer. A fit suggestion; for next follows a detachment of Portuguese troops-of-the-line,—twenty shambling men in short jackets, with hair shaved close, looking most like children's wooden monkeys, by no means live enough for the real ones. They straggle along, scarcely less irregular in aspect than the main body of the procession; they march to the tap of the drum. I never saw a Fourth-of-July ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 37, November, 1860 • Various
... 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 ...
— An Encore • Margaret Deland
... sixteenth since a new mound had arisen on the bare lot adjoining that beneath which rested Landman Bud Smith, the twelfth since How Landor had arrived to haunt the tiny railway terminus. The one train from the East was due at 8:10 of the morning. It was now eight o'clock. Within the shambling, ill-kept hotel, with its weather-stained exterior and its wind-twisted sign, the best room, paid for in advance and freshly dusted for the occasion, awaited an occupant. In a stall of the single livery, ...
— Where the Trail Divides • Will Lillibridge
... some distance, he saw the ungainly, shambling gait of hyenas, in twos and fours and threes together, or alone. Once when four passed quite near, he felt Nels' ...
— Son of Power • Will Levington Comfort and Zamin Ki Dost
... 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 through which ...
— Selections From American Poetry • Various
... some among these men whose faces were not bad. Under favorable circumstances they might have been good and just men. But they were the victims of a pernicious system, as fully as were the poor, shambling, ragged wretches of the streets and slums, who had been ground down by their acts ...
— Caesar's Column • Ignatius Donnelly
... boy myself in that academy. I like our fellows to look well, upright, gentlemanlike. There is Master Fielding—he with the black eye. What a magnificent build of a boy! There is Master Scott, one of the heads of the school. Did you ever see the fellow more hearty and manly? Yonder lean, shambling, cadaverous lad, who is always borrowing money, telling lies, leering after the house-maids, is Master Laurence Sterne—a bishop's grandson, and himself intended for the Church; for shame, you little reprobate! But what a genius the fellow ...
— Roundabout Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... pot-hunter who would not be easily discouraged, 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 one of them, my friend Harry Bolles, ...
— The Opinions of a Philosopher • Robert Grant
... comfortable, and the lady picturesque," he answered affectedly, but his brows suddenly contracted and his eyes shot together, as they always did when angry. He had been jealous before now of that shambling, awkward, ill-favored and true-hearted Alick, that loyal knight and faithful watchdog whom he despised with such high-hearted contempt; and he was not pleased to see him paying homage to the young queen whom he ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XVII. No. 101. May, 1876. • Various
... Sloppy. Too much of him longwise, too little of him broadwise, and too many sharp angles of him angle-wise. One of those shambling male human creatures, born to be indiscreetly candid in the revelation of buttons; every button he had about him glaring at the public to a quite preternatural extent. A considerable capital of knee and elbow and wrist ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... head, 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 ...
— The Mummy and Miss Nitocris - A Phantasy of the Fourth Dimension • George Griffith
... controlling the restive horses, was drawn up beside the platform, and on its seat, reckless of danger, stood Camille waving the dust-cloth in utter forgetfulness of what she had in her hand. In close proximity stood Dorette, and by Dr. Browne's side, in his shambling old buggy, sat Madame Bonnivel, directing the demonstrations of Dodo, on her lap. Nate looked ...
— Joyce's Investments - A Story for Girls • Fannie E. Newberry
... Over the monstrous shambling sea, Over the Caliban sea, Bright Ariel-cloud, thou lingerest: Oh wait, oh wait, in the warm red West, ...
— The Poems of Sidney Lanier • Sidney Lanier
... a tall, thin, shambling young fellow whose face was pale with an emotion not at all complimentary to herself. He didn't like her! He thought her hideous! He despised her! So she read Peter's expressive eyes. She thought him a fool, to stand there ...
— The Purple Heights • Marie Conway Oemler
... most imposing ceremonial and seen across the vast Salle des Menus, Louis XVI. had appeared to the young American kingly enough. But this large, awkward, good-natured-looking man who now made his way quietly and with a shambling gait into the brilliant room, crowded with the most splendid courtiers of Europe, had no trace of majesty about him, unless it was a certain look of benignity and kindliness that shone in the light-blue eyes. His dress of unexpected ...
— Calvert of Strathore • Carter Goodloe
... progress of a bear over the surface of the ground, we readily perceive how lumbering is its gait and how poor the speed which it attains. Its slow and shambling movement is due to the fact that it has the tree-climbing foot, and is not well fitted for motion such as is required in running. To attain anything like speed in this exercise it is necessary to support the body on the tips ...
— Domesticated Animals - Their Relation to Man and to his Advancement in Civilization • Nathaniel Southgate Shaler
... clearing a tall, narrow-shouldered man of forty in a red shirt, in patched trousers that had been a gentleman's, and in high boots, was slouching along with a lazy, shambling step. He was sauntering along the road. On the right was the green of the clearing, on the left a golden sea of ripe rye stretched to the very horizon. He was red and perspiring, a white cap with a straight jockey peak, evidently a gift from some open-handed young gentleman, perched ...
— The Witch and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... the names of the owners of different lots, farms, and ranches, passing that of Delatour with the others. Then he drove leisurely in the direction of the woods, and, reaching them, tied his horse to a young sapling in the shade, and entered their domain with a shambling but ...
— A Sappho of Green Springs • Bret Harte
... He seemed dumb with despair. He had always looked ludicrously old and shriveled; his appearance now became tragic. He would start up from hours of trancelike motionlessness, would make a tour of house and grounds; scrambling and shambling from place to place; chattering at doors he could not open, then pausing to listen; racing to the front fence and leaping to its top to crane up and down the street; always back in the old room in a few minutes, to resume his watch ...
— The Second Generation • David Graham Phillips
... tall, gangling cattle-man with drooping grizzled mustache, came shambling up to the steps. His weather-beaten chaps were much too short for his lengthy limbs, the collar of his faded flannel shirt lacked an inch of meeting at the throat, its sleeves were shrunken until his hairy hands hung down like tassels. He was loose and spineless, his movements tempered ...
— Going Some • Rex Beach
... sat on the bench under the old russet apple-tree by the back door one day, regretting her evil fate, she heard footsteps approaching, and, pushing back her old sun-bonnet, looked up to see a shabby, shambling, oldish man coming around the side of the house and gazing in at the windows, "What ye doin' there?" ...
— McClure's Magazine, March, 1896, Vol. VI., No. 4. • Various
... he had never seen such a face. One round portion of it had been washed, leaving the dark ring of dirt all circling it like a border, where the blessed touch of water had not come. The boy moved on, with a shambling kind of gait, and to Mr. Carlisle's horror, paused at the form of Eleanor's class. Yes,—he was going in there, he belonged there; for she looked up and spoke to him; Mr. Carlisle could hear her soft voice saying something about his being late. Then came a transformation such as Mr. Carlisle ...
— The Old Helmet, Volume II • Susan Warner
... legs astride a horse again. He found, back of the blacksmith shop, the wreck of an old cart which years ago had been used for breaking colts; he improvised shafts and seat; he discovered the encouraging fact that Old Bots, a shambling derelict who had lost an eye when Wayne Shandon was quite young, was gentle and trustworthy. After that, wherever he went abroad, and he travelled all over the countryside, he rode in the cart, steering Old Bots this way ...
— The Short Cut • Jackson Gregory
... interesting 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 ...
— Ringfield - A Novel • Susie Frances Harrison
... as he came up, grinning and shambling, she indicated to him her pleasure that he should row her upon the river. The idea of being alone in a small boat for perhaps fifteen minutes with the belle of Newville, and the object of his own secret and distant adoration, ...
— Dr. Heidenhoff's Process • Edward Bellamy
... the air. The city has disappeared. We walk down an incongruous stretch of pavement. It leads toward a forest or what looks like a forest. There are no houses. The sky asserts itself. I look up, but the shambling one whose clothes become active under water keeps her eyes to the pavement. This is disillusioning! "Here, slavey, is the sky," I think; "it becomes romantic for the moment because to you it is the symbol of lost dreams, or happy hours in fields. To me it is ...
— A Thousand and One Afternoons in Chicago • Ben Hecht
... the helmet, the ring, and the treasure, and through them to obtain that Plutonic mastery of the world under the beginnings of which he himself writhed during Alberic's brief reign. Mimmy is a blinking, shambling, ancient creature, too weak and timid to dream of taking arms himself to despoil Fafnir, who still, transformed to a monstrous serpent, broods on the gold in a hole in the rocks. Mimmy needs the help of a ...
— The Perfect Wagnerite - A Commentary on the Niblung's Ring • George Bernard Shaw
... its narrow, uneven sidewalk, for he swung without hesitation into the gloom and, with hands hooked behind his back, his stick held, as was his custom, close to his armpit, made his way past its shambling hovels and warehouses. Now and then he would pause, following with his eyes the curve of the great steel highway, carried on the stone shoulders of successive arches, the sweep of its lines marked by a procession ...
— Felix O'Day • F. Hopkinson Smith
... then put his tired beast to a shambling trot with Isabel silent again with weariness and disappointment behind him. They passed along outside the low wall, turned the corner of the house and drew up at the odd little doorway in the angle at the back of the house. The servants had drawn ...
— By What Authority? • Robert Hugh Benson
... secure 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, ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville
... they turned through, dragging their awkwardly shambling burden. As they gained the front porch the front door was flung wide, and Mrs. Adams stood there, peering out, to find what was the meaning of this scuffling and grunting. Charley was glad to see ...
— Gold Seekers of '49 • Edwin L. Sabin
... perhaps, I walked thoughtfully, and I do not believe I once thought of the bear shambling silently behind me. I had been dreaming a day-dream—not building a castle in the air, for I had seen before me a castle already built. I had simply been dreaming myself into it, into its life, into its possessions, into the possession of everything ...
— A Bicycle of Cathay • Frank R. Stockton
... farther on, and near a thick hammock, about a quarter of a mile a-head, a huge black bear stood snuffing the air; we again put spurs to our horses to try to intercept his retreat, but he was too quick for us, and made at his utmost speed (a sort of shambling trot) for the coppice or jungle, which he soon entered, and disappeared from our sight. At nightfall, a pack of ravenous wolves, headed by a large white one, serenaded us, and came near enough to our camp-fire ...
— An Englishman's Travels in America - His Observations Of Life And Manners In The Free And Slave States • John Benwell
... regime of pugilism; but we may profit by observing both these types of training in our efforts to develop some method of training that will render our young people physically fit. We need some type of training that will eliminate round and drooping shoulders, weak chests, shambling gait, sluggish circulation, and shallow breathing. The boys and girls need to be, first of all, healthy animals with large powers of endurance, elastic, buoyant, graceful, and in general well set ...
— The Vitalized School • Francis B. Pearson
... his thanks and made off, shambling across the yard and out into the sun-flooded fields. He had to cross them to get out of range behind a hill spur before he turned into the woods. As he walked, feeling their eyes boring into his back, conscious of himself as hugely conspicuous in ...
— Treasure and Trouble Therewith - A Tale of California • Geraldine Bonner
... 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 ...
— Kenilworth • Sir Walter Scott
... wade and plunge through the treacherous quick-sands or the stream, and gallop away toward the hills. One old veteran was struggling behind all the rest with one of his forelegs, which had been broken by some accident, dangling about uselessly at his side. His appearance, as he went shambling along on three legs, was so ludicrous that I could not help pausing for a moment to look at him. As I came near, he would try to rush upon me, nearly throwing himself down at every awkward attempt. Looking up, I saw ...
— The Oregon Trail • Francis Parkman, Jr.
... thought I, as the three great animals wheeled in their tracks, and went away like lightning. What was strange to us, they did not gallop, as most deer do, but went off in a sort of shambling trot, like a 'pacing' horse, and quite as fast as a horse ...
— The Desert Home - The Adventures of a Lost Family in the Wilderness • Mayne Reid
... original boot-tops yet towering in the region of his ears, and the upper half of the original beaver crowning his well-developed brain, there He was. Slowly and carefully he descended from the back of his shambling steed, settled himself well in his boots, pulled up the collar of his great-coat—and there was little but collar left of it—tipped the curtailed and weatherbeaten stovepipe to the proper angle, opened his paternal arms and feebly embraced his daughter. He announced himself ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII, No. 28. July, 1873. • Various
... usual shambling gait, and an additional shade of sullenness apparent on his face, but it glowed a swarthy red when he ...
— Ester Ried Yet Speaking • Isabella Alden
... 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 ...
— Blue Ridge Country • Jean Thomas
... short of us. I saw that it 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
... 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 limb, ...
— The Poets' Lincoln - Tributes in Verse to the Martyred President • Various
... when Market Drayton gave rein to 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, ...
— In Clive's Command - A Story of the Fight for India • Herbert Strang
... advanced at a shambling gallop, the horsemen gaining on us every moment. Now I thought that all was over, especially when of a sudden from behind the White Rock emerged a ...
— Queen Sheba's Ring • H. Rider Haggard
... descents, making for the more sheltered small canyons that opened out upon the flat. "Cattle drifting before the wind," read the script; and now Luck saw them coming, their snow-whitened backs humped to the driving storm, heads lowered and swaying weakly from side to side with the shambling motion of their feet. They were drifting before the wind, just as he had planned that they should do. That they shuffled wearily down that hill with poor cows and unweaned calves straggling miserably behind the main body in "the drag herd," proved how well the boys had done the work which he had ...
— The Phantom Herd • B. M. Bower
... despite physical weakness and natural fear; scholars and writers have become renowned, though slow to learn, or, haply, "with wisdom at one entrance quite shut out"; nor have stammering lips and shambling figure prevented the rise of orators and actors, determined to give utterance to the power within. But, in our approval of the energy that can so vanquish the injuries of fortune, we are apt to overrate its quality, and to forget how ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 103, May, 1866 • Various
... fond of talking, 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, his dog, his most indispensable garments; got long and severe thrashings; ...
— A Sportsman's Sketches - Works of Ivan Turgenev, Vol. I • Ivan Turgenev
... and heedlessness, in going to sea so ill provided with every thing calculated to make my situation at all comfortable, or even tolerable. In time, my wretched "long togs" began to drop off my back, and I looked like a Sam Patch, shambling round the deck in my rags and the wreck of my gaff-topsail-boots. I often thought what my friends at home would have said, if they could but get one peep at me. But I hugged myself in my miserable shooting-jacket, when I considered that that ...
— Redburn. His First Voyage • Herman Melville
... yet despise; Savage,—whose relentless tusks Are content with acorn husks; Robber,—whose exploits ne'er soared O'er the bee's or squirrel's hoard; Whiskered chin and feeble nose, Claws of steel on baby toes,— Here, in solitude and shade, Shambling, shuffling plantigrade, Be ...
— Complete Poetical Works of Bret Harte • Bret Harte
... all night, 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 ...
— The Breaking Point • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... 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 to translate, ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 2 - "Chicago, University of" to "Chiton" • Various
... bay, clad in broad-banded harness, soft with oil and glittering with brasses, was shambling indolently down the hill, resisting her own momentum by the diagonal motion the old man had likened to a dog's sidewise trot. The looped trace-chains were jingling a merry dithyramb, her head was nodding, her tail swaying, and Seffy, propped by his elbow on her broad ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume II. (of X.) • Various
... day, at ten o'clock, they buried Saunders on a certain little knoll among the sagebrush; buried him without much ceremony, it is true, but with more respect than he had received when he was alive and shambling sneakily among them. Good Indian was there, saying little and listening attentively to the comments made upon the subject, and when the last bit of yellow gravel had been spatted into place he rode down through the Indian camp on his way home, thankful that everyone seemed ...
— Good Indian • B. M. Bower
... And now one of the pot-bellied little horrors, shambling and bulbous-kneed, was scratching its warty, blue hide with its black claws as it trailed along through the forest. It looked up, grinning and jabbering; Stern saw the teeth that should have been molars. With repulsion he noted that they were ...
— Darkness and Dawn • George Allan England
... factory towns and look at the mill-hands coming home in droves after a day's work, young girls and old women, boys and men, all fluffed over with cotton, and so dead tired that they can hardly walk. They come shambling along with all the individuality of a ...
— A Traveler from Altruria: Romance • W. D. Howells
... by Meffia's proximity, by her lackadaisical manner, by her shambling gait, by her sleep-walking attitude, most of all by the peculiar thin, sour odor which Meffia exhaled. At the sight of Meffia's elaborately disagreeable demeanor of isolation, all Brinnaria's natural self began to boil in her; at the whiff which assailed ...
— The Unwilling Vestal • Edward Lucas White
... twenty years earlier, when he was young and 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
... as he was commonly called, was not handsome in the estimation of anyone except his mother, and mothers are apt to be partial. He was a shock-headed, shambling, awkward lad, with an uncommonly wide mouth, very red cheeks, a turned-up nose, and certainly the most comical expression ...
— Ten Boys from Dickens • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... at Hyacinthe again, and the shambling lad felt dimly as if the scent of the sandalwood were sweeter, and the lamp-flame clearer. But the stranger's eyes were ...
— Christmas Stories And Legends • Various
... forward over the cobbled street. He was like some immense bronze come suddenly to life and shambling. Like the brazen servant Thomas Aquinas made under the influence of particular stars. His great brown shoulders, his barreled chest, his upper arms like a man's leg, his packed forearms, his neck like a bull's, his shaven head. ...
— The Wind Bloweth • Brian Oswald Donn-Byrne
... together at one end of the table, arose as Gully entered. Standing curiously still, as if carved in stone, their bitter eyes alone betraying their emotions, silently they gazed at the huge, gaunt, unkempt figure that came shambling towards them. ...
— The Luck of the Mounted - A Tale of the Royal Northwest Mounted Police • Ralph S. Kendall
... the hour by a clock in Piccadilly, he realised that it was 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 ...
— Rest Harrow - A Comedy of Resolution • Maurice Hewlett
... drove 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 pitiful ...
— In the Claws of the German Eagle • Albert Rhys Williams
... erect, at a shambling run. The first two, bulls close to six feet, went down under fire from Asaki's needler. A third somehow escaped, swerving to the left, and came bounding at an angle toward Dane. The Terran jerked free ...
— Voodoo Planet • Andrew North
... weedy young Alsatian across the room, a depressed and pimply creature in a waiter's jacket and apron, who was shambling from table to table and ...
— Red Masquerade • Louis Joseph Vance
... and David watched the hill road from nine o'clock until stage-time. From the green bench under the poplar, the tavern porch on Main Street could just be seen; and at a little before twelve Jonas's lean, shambling nags drew up before it. Mrs. Richie was very pale. David, fretting at the dullness of the morning, asked her some question, but She did not hear him, and he pulled at her skirt. ...
— The Awakening of Helena Richie • Margaret Deland
... last button, he felt his father's finger under his collar, and his own feet shambling blindly over the pebbles, up the path, into the bushes; he heard the boys in the water laugh with the new boy, and then—stories differ. The boys say that he howled lustily, "Oh, pa, I won't do it any more," over and over again. Mealy ...
— The Court of Boyville • William Allen White
... not hold as superb looking men as these appeared to me. Finely formed, stalwart, full-fed and well clothed, they formed the most delightful contrast with the scrawny, shambling, villain-visaged little clay-eaters and white trash who had looked down upon us from the sentry boxes ...
— Andersonville, complete • John McElroy
... place to do the farm work and the teaming—Tom and Jerry and the colt, you know; not Filly's colt: he died, poor thing, before he was a year old, of that disease with a long name that carried off so many horses all over the country: but a great shambling big-boned beast old master swapped a yoke of steers for, over to Skipton Mills. We called him Goliath, he was so tall: strong as an elephant, too: a powerful hand at a horse-rake and mowing-machine. Well, well, how time flies, to be ...
— Miss Elliot's Girls • Mrs Mary Spring Corning
... 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
... 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 feet ...
— The Birthright • Joseph Hocking
... himself to meet his fate that he thought it was a fancy when he heard a distant step. But it did not die away, it grew more and more distinct,—a shambling step, that curiously stopped at intervals and kicked the ...
— The Young Mountaineers - Short Stories • Charles Egbert Craddock
... no mistaking Philemon, changed though he was. He wore a fashionable wig, and his clothes fitted well a figure that, once shambling and loose-jointed, had now all the erectness of the soldier, but the face ...
— Janice Meredith • Paul Leicester Ford
... he began, "I would not disturb you like this unless—steady there, for Heaven's sake Professor, don't kick till you've heard me out!" For, the mule, in a clumsy, shambling way which betrayed the novice, was slowly revolving on his own axis so as to bring his hind-quarters into action, while still keeping his only serviceable eye upon his ...
— The Brass Bottle • F. Anstey
... bowed his head, 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
... knows, your aged guide! The screws are fixed, and the straps are tied, And he looks sharp out for the shambling stagger, The elbows ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari Volume 98, January 4, 1890 • Various
... out Dorothy. She was at her usual place on the edge of the precipice that looked down upon the deep, divided channels of the great river. She turned on hearing the deep breathing of Pepin and the shambling of Antoine as they passed over some loose gravel behind her. She rose to her feet with a little cry of welcome. There was something in the dwarfs face that spoke of a settled purpose and hope. Their late ...
— The Rising of the Red Man - A Romance of the Louis Riel Rebellion • John Mackie
... big factory towns and look at the mill-hands coming home in droves after a day's work, young girls and old women, boys and men, all fluffed over with cotton, and so dead tired that they can hardly walk. They come shambling along with all the individuality of a flock ...
— A Traveler from Altruria: Romance • W. D. Howells
... was about fifty yards behind, and was consequently unable to overhear the conversation. He went shambling along, half whimpering and not unfrequently invoking the God of Israel; but every now and then a cunning light gleamed from his eyes, and his lips became compressed ...
— Off on a Comet • Jules Verne
... 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 ...
— Burr Junior • G. Manville Fenn
... occupant. 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
... reached him; it was a fairly solid peasant cart. The woman was sitting on a tightly stuffed sack and the man on the front of the cart with his legs hanging over towards Stepan Trofimovitch. A red cow was, in fact, shambling behind, tied by the horns to the cart. The man and the woman gazed open-eyed at Stepan Trofimovitch, and Stepan Trofimovitch gazed back at them with equal wonder, but after he had let them pass twenty paces, he got up hurriedly all of a sudden ...
— The Possessed - or, The Devils • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... are we for that? It would be all the same if he did forget us!" growled a young fellow shambling along ...
— What's Mine's Mine • George MacDonald
... rang in 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 ...
— No Name • Wilkie Collins
... bodega perched between two queer-looking improvised saddlebags bulging with plunder. The pony was overloaded, but in obedience to the frantic urgings of its barelegged rider it managed to break into a shambling trot. Branch reappeared, too, looping the eight-foot string of straw hats to his saddle-horn, and balancing before him the remainder of the bedding, done up in ...
— Rainbow's End • Rex Beach
... rang the bell and demanded that the old caretaker should be sent to him at once. The man came to him, shambling unsteadily along and breathing fast as if he had been running. His aged features were quivering with some strange excitement, as Fenwick did not fail to notice, ...
— The Mystery of the Four Fingers • Fred M. White
... late in the afternoon, shambling along, his eyes glaring, his lips moving wordlessly, and he took up the trail. But it led only to the office of the Silver Queen Development Company, where the scar-faced man doubled at his desk, and, stuffing a cigar into his mouth, chewed on it angrily. Instinctively ...
— The Cross-Cut • Courtney Ryley Cooper
... broad-banded harness, soft with oil and glittering with brasses, was shambling indolently down the hill, resisting her own momentum by the diagonal motion the old man had likened to a dog's sidewise trot. The looped trace-chains were jingling a merry dithyramb, her head was nodding, her tail swaying, and ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume II. (of X.) • Various
... field surged a small but excited procession. A lean boy on horseback, without saddle or bridle and guiding the shambling colt he rode by a halter strap, led the van. Behind him, as lean as he, and about seven feet tall, a farmer, whiskered like a cartoon, kept pace easily with the horse. Behind came a roly-poly old lady, her apron strings ...
— Battling the Clouds - or, For a Comrade's Honor • Captain Frank Cobb
... 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 and dismay. ...
— The Eyes of the Woods - A story of the Ancient Wilderness • Joseph A. Altsheler
... her head; 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 ...
— An Encore • Margaret Deland
... over the cobbled street. He was like some immense bronze come suddenly to life and shambling. Like the brazen servant Thomas Aquinas made under the influence of particular stars. His great brown shoulders, his barreled chest, his upper arms like a man's leg, his packed forearms, his neck like a bull's, his shaven head. All seemed superhuman, and then came his shy embarrassed smile, his troubled ...
— The Wind Bloweth • Brian Oswald Donn-Byrne
... what was coming. I tried to be the old Egbert Craddock Cummins of shambling gait and stammering sincerity, whom she loved, but I felt even as I did so that I was a new thing, a thing of surging emotions and mysterious fixity—like no human being that ever lived, except upon the stage. "Egbert," she said, ...
— The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... furtively, 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 ...
— The Dragon Painter • Mary McNeil Fenollosa
... 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 assemblage about ...
— The Convert • Elizabeth Robins
... imprint of cloven hoofs. It looked as though it had been raked by a close-set harrow. To him there was much significance in what he saw. Only one creature could have left such a track. There was but one animal in that forest world that moved with shambling gait, and whose paws could rake the snow in such a manner. That animal was the grizzly, the monarch of the ...
— In the Brooding Wild • Ridgwell Cullum
... Time go by, An old lonely man, Crooked and furtive and slow. He laughs as he sees Time shambling by While he stands at his ease, Until Time smiles wanly ...
— Poems New and Old • John Freeman
... I'm afraid, a little—upon the— flightly order—a little touched or so;—but mum for that—the lady is now dead; and it is my maxim, de mortuis nil nisi bonum. The young squire was even then very handsome, and looked remarkably well in his weepers; but he had an awkward air and shambling gait, stooped mortally, and was so shy and silent that he would not look a stranger in the face, nor open his mouth before company. Whenever he spied a horse or carriage at the gate, he would make his escape into the garden, and from thence into the park; where many is the good time and often ...
— The Adventures of Sir Launcelot Greaves • Tobias Smollett
... nymphs swim about those rocks; and when we go for a drive among those hillsides we'll keep a sharp lookout for satyrs. Now I know why I like this country. It is heathen. Those mountains—how different from the shambling Irish hills from whence I have come! And you, Doris, you might have been dug up yesterday, though you are but two-and-twenty. You are a thing of yester age, not a bit like the little Memline head which I imagined you to be like when I was coming here in the train, nor ...
— Memoirs of My Dead Life • George Moore
... refinement!" and of another, "What a badly-bred, vulgar, common brute!" 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
... in a manner not to be described. The heart of Norris, which had grown indifferent to the cries of human anger or distress, woke at the appeal of the dumb creature. He ran amongst the Larrikins, scattered them, rescued the dog, and stood at bay. They were six in number, shambling gallowsbirds; but for once the proverb was right, cruelty was coupled with cowardice, and the wretches cursed him and made off. It chanced that this act of prowess had not passed unwitnessed. On a bench near by there was seated a shopkeeper's ...
— The Wrecker • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... the banker was not of a build to hurry even to a fire. Before they had gone far they perceived another man coming across the Dunes towards The Hague. As he approached, Cornish recognized the man known as Uncle Ben. He was shambling along on unsteady legs, and carried his earthly belongings in a canvas sack of doubtful cleanliness. The recognition was apparently mutual; for Uncle Ben deviated from his path to come and ...
— Roden's Corner • Henry Seton Merriman
... the new structure. When a boy I had often been in the old shop, and have heard the founder, Bishop Allen, preach in the wooden building. He was much reverenced. I remember his appearance, and his feeble, shambling gait as he approached the ...
— Shadow and Light - An Autobiography with Reminiscences of the Last and Present Century • Mifflin Wistar Gibbs
... world, for who knows what might have grown up under a great Byzantine culture? The farms were solidly built houses with great well-filled yards, surrounded by high and defensible walls. We came into stations where long shambling youths, dressed in badly made European clothes, lounged and ogled the girls in "this style, ...
— The Luck of Thirteen - Wanderings and Flight through Montenegro and Serbia • Jan Gordon
... and their shawls thrown over their heads so they could barely see, they went on with slowly shambling steps. ...
— The Boy Allies in the Trenches - Midst Shot and Shell Along the Aisne • Clair Wallace Hayes
... members who made up the embassy walked at the usual slow and somewhat shambling pace which the Lancashire rustic assumes at times of leisure—pausing every now and then to emphasise the point of some remark, switching at the hedge with their sticks, playfully kicking up the dust, or sending ...
— North, South and Over the Sea • M.E. Francis (Mrs. Francis Blundell)
... conclusions. His coat was seedy, his trousers bagged at the knees, his shoes were old, and there were patches on them, but his collar and linen were white and very much starched, and his awkward, shambling gait was honest to the last footfall. A world of depth and soul was in his strong, fine face, lit up now with an honest, humble smile, but, at rest, ...
— The Bishop of Cottontown - A Story of the Southern Cotton Mills • John Trotwood Moore
... evolution of the English Rite is one of the wholesome signs of the times. About preaching, I am not so clear. The almost complete disuse of the written sermon is in many ways a loss. The discipline of the paper protects the flock alike against shambling inanities, and against a too boisterous rhetoric. No doubt a really fine extempore sermon is a great work of art; but for nine preachers out of ten the manuscript ...
— Fifteen Chapters of Autobiography • George William Erskine Russell
... great length of throat at his upper end, and too much ankle-bone and heel at his lower; with an awkward and hesitating manner; with a shambling walk; and with what is called a near sight—which perhaps prevented his observing how much white cotton stocking he displayed to the public eye, in contrast with his black suit—Mr. Grewgious still had some strange capacity in him of making on ...
— The Mystery of Edwin Drood • Charles Dickens
... strength had been bought dear, at the cost of heavy labour begun too early in life, so that before middle-age they were bent in the back, or gone wrong at the knees, and their walk (some of them walked miles every day to their work) was a long shambling stride, fast enough, but badly wanting in suggestiveness of personal pride. Seeing them casually in their heavy and uncleanly clothes, no one would have dreamed of the great qualities in them—the kindliness and courage and humour, the ...
— Change in the Village • (AKA George Bourne) George Sturt
... his poor booty, the light from a street-lamp fell on as miserable a looking wretch as ever hid himself from the eyes of day—dirty, ragged, bloated, forlorn, with scarcely a trace of manhood in his swollen and disfigured face. His steps, quick from excitement a few moments before, were now shambling and made with difficulty. He had not far to walk for what he was seeking. The ministers to his appetite were all about him, a dozen in every block of that terrible district that seemed as if forsaken by God and man. Into the first that came in his way he went ...
— Cast Adrift • T. S. Arthur
... she ascertained that the runners made about two hundred trips up and down the dark chutes every day, and wondered if they always found it comic to do so. She saw the office-boys, just growing into the age of interest in sex and acquiring husky male voices and shambling sense of shame, yearn at the shrines of pasty-faced stenographers. She saw the humanity of all this mass—none the less that they envied her position and spoke privily of "those snippy private secretaries that think they're so much sweller ...
— The Job - An American Novel • Sinclair Lewis
... their faces, and the sight of the revolver held threateningly in the officer's hand sent them past at a shambling trot. ...
— With Haig on the Somme • D. H. Parry
... 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 ...
— The Young Miner - or Tom Nelson in California • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... picked up his stick, he heard a footstep behind him, and turning, saw an ill-dressed, sullen-looking man. The light from one of the lamps near by shone full on him; and something about the stout, shambling figure, or the dirty evil-browed ...
— Adrien Leroy • Charles Garvice
... realized, and Paul found himself in a brief space of time standing hand in hand with Master Tonks, and looking him squarely in the eye. The fist Paul held in his own was like a mason's mallet, but its owner was of a clumsy and shambling build. Paul silently breathed the one word 'tactics,' and he and his opponent fell back from each other. He thought Master Tonk's attitude curiously awkward, but he had no guess as to what lay behind it. He sparred ...
— Despair's Last Journey • David Christie Murray
... into town, followed by a throng of young negroes who fought for the privilege of getting closest to them. They found the stores small and mostly unpainted, and the houses principally shambling and squatty, most of them having thatched roofs. The streets were narrow, crooked, and dirty, but there were areas about some of the more pretentious dwelling-places which were really entrancing in the wealth of their tropical plants and stately palms. On the whole, the stone garrison, ...
— Around the World in Ten Days • Chelsea Curtis Fraser
... "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 ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 2 - "Chicago, University of" to "Chiton" • Various
... unbelieving, and impious scorner was a man of shreds and patches, a pot-valiant tailor, whose ungartered hosen, loose knee-strings, and thin shambling legs, sufficiently betokened the sedentary nature of his avocations. "I wonder the parson hasn't gi'en her a lift wi' Pharaoh and his ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby
... and Webster on the story of Lady Jane Grey. In this tragedy, as in the two comedies due to the collaboration of the same poets, it appears to me more than probable that Dekker took decidedly the greater part. The shambling and slipshod metre, which seems now and then to hit by mere chance on some pure and tender note of simple and exquisite melody—the lazy vivacity and impulsive inconsequence of style—the fitful sort of slovenly inspiration, with interludes of absolute and headlong collapse—are ...
— The Age of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... 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 ...
— Memories and Portraits • Robert Louis Stevenson
... came towards us on that blowy March evening with dust and straws flying past and the level sun shining full on him. He was tall and slim, with a large round smooth face and big pale-blue innocent-looking eyes, and he walked rapidly but in a peculiar jerky yet shambling manner, swinging and tossing his legs and arms about. Moving along in this disjointed manner in his loose fluttering clothes he put one in mind of a big flimsy newspaper blown along the road by the wind. This unpromising-looking person at once told us ...
— Afoot in England • W.H. Hudson
... more and more under its tree of horns, and the shambling trot grew weak and weaker. He took to standing for long periods, with nose to the ground and dejected ears dropped limply; and Buck found more time in which to get water for himself and in which to rest. At such moments, panting with red lolling tongue and with eyes fixed upon the big bull, ...
— The Call of the Wild • Jack London
... greater. And here 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 ...
— Robert Louis Stevenson • Walter Raleigh
... bishop. 'The murderer!' and he sprang forward to throw himself on the shaking, shambling wretch. Mosk eluded him, but uttered a squeaking cry like the shriek of a hunted hare in the jaws of the greyhound. The next instant the room seemed to swarm with men, and the bishop as in a dream heard the merciless formula of ...
— The Bishop's Secret • Fergus Hume
... dark-haired, keen-eyed, well-dressed, middle-aged man, with commanding port and courtly address, he failed to recognise any resemblance to the flaxen-wigged, long-coated, be-spectacled, shambling sexagenarian whom he had known as Lebeau. Only now and then a tone of voice struck him as familiar, but he could not recollect where he had heard the voice it resembled. The thought of Lebeau did not occur to him; if it had occurred it would only have struck him as ...
— The Parisians, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... 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 ...
— Littlebourne Lock • F. Bayford Harrison
... small canyons that opened out upon the flat. "Cattle drifting before the wind," read the script; and now Luck saw them coming, their snow-whitened backs humped to the driving storm, heads lowered and swaying weakly from side to side with the shambling motion of their feet. They were drifting before the wind, just as he had planned that they should do. That they shuffled wearily down that hill with poor cows and unweaned calves straggling miserably behind the main body in "the ...
— The Phantom Herd • B. M. Bower
... noise, wilt'a?" said 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 manner, ...
— Half a Life-Time Ago • Elizabeth Gaskell
... 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
... came to proud Laomedon and served him through a year for promised recompense, and he laid on us his commands. I round their city built the Trojans a wall, wide and most fair, that the city might be unstormed, and thou Phoebus, didst herd shambling crook-horned kine among the spurs of woody many-folded Ida. But when the joyous seasons were accomplishing the term of hire, then redoubtable Laomedon robbed us of all hire, and sent us off with threats. He threatened that he would bind together our feet and hands and sell us into far-off isles, ...
— The Iliad of Homer • Homer (Lang, Leaf, Myers trans.)
... stride of the elephant was eyed, And the capers of the little horse that cantered at his side! How the shambling camels, tame to the plaudits of their fame, With listless eyes came silent, masticating ...
— Riley Child-Rhymes • James Whitcomb Riley
... he was fully equipped for hunting; but greater contrast could not have been found than 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 ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... band down in the yard, speak to them kindly, even of Cornelius's fault, bid them not blame the outcast resentfully, and assure them that never while love remained stronger in them than pride, need they shake the light dust of Rosemont from their poor shambling feet. ...
— John March, Southerner • George W. Cable
... Captain Miles yelled out for the watch below, and the men presently came out from the forecastle, Davis, the whilom second mate, along with them, the lot shambling unwillingly along the deck to the galley, where they clustered in ...
— The White Squall - A Story of the Sargasso Sea • John Conroy Hutcheson
... beyond the Light, heard the shambling steps behind her. She turned and saw Mark. He was tall and lank. He leaned forward from the shoulders loosely, and his face had the patient, dull expression of a faithful, but none too fine ...
— Janet of the Dunes • Harriet T. Comstock
... is clumsy on his feet. Being so much in the saddle his walking muscles become weakened, and his legs pressing against the body of his horse, in time, makes him bowlegged. In addition he wears high-heeled Mexican boots which throw him on his toes when he walks and makes his already shambling gait even ...
— Arizona Sketches • Joseph A. Munk
... called. James Dicksey, a shambling lad of eighteen, took his place, his eyes rolling in abject terror, and under the evident impression that he was being tried for his life. Every answer was wrung from this frightened youth, as with red-hot pincers, and it was with the utmost difficulty anything ...
— A Terrible Secret • May Agnes Fleming
... lifetime crowds the brain of a drowning man; that same crowded my brain during the few moments which swung in to us Daniel, scowling, masterful, his raw bulk and his long shambling stride never before ...
— Desert Dust • Edwin L. Sabin
... 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, ...
— Prisoners of Chance - The Story of What Befell Geoffrey Benteen, Borderman, - through His Love for a Lady of France • Randall Parrish
... stretch of flat and ragged country that reminded her a little of parts of Surrey. The station was just a shed on a foundation of planks which lay flush with the rails. From this shed, as the train clanked in, there emerged a tall, shambling man in a weather-beaten overcoat. He had a clean-shaven, wrinkled face, and he looked doubtfully at Jill with small eyes. Something in his expression reminded Jill of her father, as a bad caricature of a public man will recall the original, she ...
— The Little Warrior - (U.K. Title: Jill the Reckless) • P. G. Wodehouse
... young and 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
... open the door. A tall, shambling, loose-jointed figure; a pinched, shrewd face, sun-browned and wind-dried; small, quick-winking black eyes. There he stands, the water dripping from his ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... served my father through the year for the hire which he had promised. Poseidon built a wall, high and fair, around the city; and Apollo tended the shambling kine, and lost not one. But when they claimed their hire, Laomedon drove them away with threats, telling them that he would bind their feet and hands together, and sell them as slaves into some distant land, having first sheared off their ears with his ...
— Hero Tales • James Baldwin
... a bar had once been was blue with cheap cigar smoke; the air reeked with the stench of beer and spirits. A score or more shambling forest louts in their dingy Saturday finery were gathered here playing cards, shooting craps, lolling around tables and tilting sloping ...
— The Flaming Jewel • Robert Chambers
... heedlessness, in going to sea so ill provided with every thing calculated to make my situation at all comfortable, or even tolerable. In time, my wretched "long togs" began to drop off my back, and I looked like a Sam Patch, shambling round the deck in my rags and the wreck of my gaff-topsail-boots. I often thought what my friends at home would have said, if they could but get one peep at me. But I hugged myself in my miserable shooting-jacket, when I considered that that degradation ...
— Redburn. His First Voyage • Herman Melville
... poked a black head, followed slowly by a shambling horse whose dragging hoofs proclaimed his weariness and utter lack of ambition. The rider, Billy decided after one sharp glance, he had never seen before in his life—and nothing lost by it, either, he finished mentally when he ...
— The Long Shadow • B. M. Bower
... some fifteen hundred feet since leaving Kalgan. Before me stretched the great Mongolian plateau. The wind that cooled my face had blown over thousands of miles of prairie and desert. The long lines of stately, shambling camels, the great droves of sheep herded by wild-looking men on sturdy little ponies told of an open country. Each mile led deeper and deeper into the rolling grassland and the barren waste of Gobi, and between ...
— A Wayfarer in China - Impressions of a trip across West China and Mongolia • Elizabeth Kendall
... fate, did not fly, but sat gravely on the log in front of Uncle Jim's hotel, and waited for the creaking, stage, white with far-gathered dust, to climb the last pitch of the road up from the arroyo and come on with the shambling trot of a pair of tired mules for the final nourish at the end of ...
— Heart's Desire • Emerson Hough
... 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, and exclaimed ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... the little Ford car out of its shed, ran it up to the horse-tank, and began to throw water on the mud-crusted wheels and windshield. While he was at work the two hired men, Dan and Jerry, came shambling down the hill to feed the stock. Jerry was grumbling and swearing about something, but Claude wrung out his wet rags and, beyond a nod, paid no attention to them. Somehow his father always managed to have the ...
— One of Ours • Willa Cather
... not in the best condition, and Roanoke has but a shambling gait this morning; besides, there is another reason I could mention, if it were not that Miss Wharton ...
— The Spy • James Fenimore Cooper
... banish him from his mind, always rose before him: in the dead of night; before his fire in his own room at home, his wife out at some social function or asleep on the floor below him; in his walks through the woods when he would stop and listen, hoping he might again see the same, worn, shambling figure he had watched from across the brook the day he shot the buck. Why, he could not tell. Perhaps it was because of their mutual loneliness. Perhaps it was because of a woman. Whatever the cause there was something which seemed ...
— The Lady of Big Shanty • Frank Berkeley Smith
... man at a bare table. Another seated at the window, his chair tipped back, his feet on the sill, a pipe between his teeth. Buzz, shambling, suddenly awkward, stood ...
— Cheerful—By Request • Edna Ferber
... admiration and envy, the games and pranks of the bolder lads: and "Dummy"—poor "Dummy"—the shining mark for every schoolboy trick and joke; with his shock of yellow hair, his weak cross eyes, his sharp nose, thin lips, and shambling, ...
— Their Yesterdays • Harold Bell Wright
... large boned, but thin; and a suit of brown cloth, with huge silver buttons, hung loosely about his body; a wide shirt-frill stuck out in front, and his shirt collars reached up to his ears. His gait was shuffling and shambling; he wore knee-breeches and grey homespun stockings, and his shoes, which were ornamented with silver buckles, were far too large for him, and of course, even had he not had the propensity to do so, would have made him shuffle his feet over the ground, his eyes were unusually ...
— Ronald Morton, or the Fire Ships - A Story of the Last Naval War • W.H.G. Kingston
... most of the English have landed, and spies report the harbor of 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' ...
— Canada: the Empire of the North - Being the Romantic Story of the New Dominion's Growth from Colony to Kingdom • Agnes C. Laut
... 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
... tall, thin, shambling young fellow whose face was pale with an emotion not at all complimentary to herself. He didn't like her! He thought her hideous! He despised her! So she read Peter's expressive eyes. She thought him a fool, to stand there staring at her like that, ...
— The Purple Heights • Marie Conway Oemler
... inquiry at Williamstown I find that none of the professors at Williams saw an encouraging gleam of aptitude for anything in the big-eyed, shambling youth whom Mr. Tufts had assiduously coached to meet the requirements of matriculation. There is a shadowy tradition that he did fairly well in his Latin themes when the subject suited his fancy, but his fancy more often led him to a sporting resort, kept by an ex-pugilist named Pettit, ...
— Eugene Field, A Study In Heredity And Contradictions - Vol. I • Slason Thompson
... a gentle movement of my hand directed my people to follow me, and I made a sudden rush forward at full speed. Off went the herd; shambling along at a tremendous pace, whisking their long tails above their hind quarters, and taking exactly the direction I had anticipated, they offered me a shoulder shot at a little within two hundred yards' distance. Unfortunately, I fell into a deep hole concealed by the high ...
— The Nile Tributaries of Abyssinia • Samuel W. Baker
... by friends. One of these rovers interested me because I was sure he wanted to catch Rothenstein's eye. He had twice passed our table, with a hesitating look; but Rothenstein, in the thick of a disquisition on Puvis de Chavannes, had not seen him. He was a stooping, shambling person, rather tall, very pale, with longish and brownish hair. He had a thin vague beard—or rather, he had a chin on which a large number of hairs weakly curled and clustered to cover its retreat. He was an odd-looking person; but in the 'nineties odd ...
— Seven Men • Max Beerbohm
... though Antonio Perez entreated him to be cautious. At this date, 1576, Perez was really the friend of Escovedo. But Escovedo would not be advised; he wrote an impatient memorial to the King, denouncing his stitchless policy (descosido), his dilatory, shambling, idealess proceedings. So, at least, Sir William Stirling-Maxwell asserts in his Don John of Austria: 'the word used by Escovedo was descosido, "unstitched."' But Mr. Froude says that Philip used the expression, later, in reference to another letter of Escovedo's which he also called ...
— Historical Mysteries • Andrew Lang
... united by strong ties of common interest, nevertheless their diverse characteristics and traits produced trouble at times. Pedro was dull, honorable, and frank; Juan was hawk-eyed and double-faced. Pedro had so large a body and so awkward and shambling a gait, that Juan could not help laughing at him and saying sarcastic things to him. ...
— Filipino Popular Tales • Dean S. Fansler
... is nothing wonderful, of course, though I know some white schools which could not be trusted to this degree to the control of monitors. But it is only a sign of the influences that here lead to self-reliance and self-control. Every year a new set of uncouth and undeveloped young people come shambling in, looking around with bewildered eyes. But they soon begin to straighten up and fall into step. Their vague ideas get settled, and their minds, slow at first, wake up. In a few years they will be made over new, not perfect, ...
— American Missionary, Vol. XLII., May, 1888., No. 5 • Various
... as I am fat, and his clothes hang on him in the most comical way. He is very tall and shambling, wears a ragged beard and a broad Stetson hat, and suffers amazingly from hay fever in the autumn. (In fact, his essay on "Hay Fever" is the best thing he ever wrote, I think.) As he came striding up the road I noticed how his trousers fluttered at the ankles as the wind plucked at ...
— Parnassus on Wheels • Christopher Morley
... on, lurching over the inequalities of the narrow road. Al shook his horse into a shambling trot, picking his way carelessly ...
— Sawtooth Ranch • B. M. Bower
... 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 ...
— The Girl at the Halfway House • Emerson Hough
... bear, and curiosity was stayed by fear. He stood still and as it came slowly on gained courage every moment, for he saw that at least it had not the long, menacing ears of the rabbit. Possibly his impressionable mind was half conscious of something familiar in its shambling, awkward gait. Before it had approached near enough to resolve his doubts he saw that it was followed by another and another. To right and to left were many more; the whole open space about him was alive with them—all moving toward ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Vol. II: In the Midst of Life: Tales of Soldiers and Civilians • Ambrose Bierce
... over the hedge and saw the chickweed and the thistles in undisputed possession. For David has gone. "It will take a long time to turn him into a soldier," we said when we saw him leave his thatched roof last spring to join up, and watched him shambling down the lane to the valley and the distant station. "The war will be over before he gets into the trenches," I said cheerfully to his wife, his mother, and Aunt Jane as they sat later in the day mingling ...
— Pebbles on the Shore • Alpha of the Plough (Alfred George Gardiner)
... escape from Glen Oaks. That was what he had wanted to do ever since he had come here five years ago to teach. He had a good excuse now to get away from the shambling peasants whom he hated and who returned the attitude wholeheartedly—the typical provincial's ...
— Strange Alliance • Bryce Walton
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