"Ungainly" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... family for supper in her shabby working clothes and presented her mother with her unopened pay envelope every Saturday night. She began this life at the age of fourteen after her Polish mother had beaten her because she had "elbowed" the sleeves and "cut out" the neck of her ungainly calico gown in a vain attempt to make it look "American." Her mother, who had so conscientiously punished a daughter who was "too crazy for clothes," could never of course comprehend how dangerous a combination is the girl with an unsatisfied love for finery and the opportunities ...
— A New Conscience And An Ancient Evil • Jane Addams
... see that Julia carries a crimson face, and smiling look; although she stoops considerably, and her long arms and loping gait, make her appear to many, ungainly; she is ruddy as a rareripe peach, and smiles from her forehead and eyes, ...
— Summerfield - or, Life on a Farm • Day Kellogg Lee
... I have said, against the bulwarks, where he lay like some horrid, ungainly sort of puppet; life-size, indeed, but how different from life's color or life's comeliness! In that position, I could easily have my way with him, and as the habit of tragical adventures had worn off almost all my terror ...
— Treasure Island • Robert Louis Stevenson
... day!" cried Molly, "and here's my gift." She had in her arms a large and rather ungainly bundle, loosely wrapped in ...
— Marjorie's Vacation • Carolyn Wells
... were beardless, but one had the ghost of a moustache on his upper lip. He was dapper, clean and deferential. The other was short and somewhat ungainly in build, and his face showed evidence of the recent shaving off of a heavy beard. He had no graces, and evidently no thoughts but of service—service of any kind, so long as he recognized the authority demanding it. His clothes did not suit him; they ...
— Charred Wood • Myles Muredach
... on the skins. The sketch with this will explain better than any description. The guanaco pelt being of a woolly nature makes it unnecessary to run it all the same way and the entire skins are utilized in spite of their ungainly shape, the flaps and tabs trimmed off filling the indentations around the outer edge of the robe. They make an excellent camp blanket as light and warm as the malodorous, hairy rabbit skin robe ...
— Home Taxidermy for Pleasure and Profit • Albert B. Farnham
... older, was a gaunt, ungainly girl with red hair and irregular features. Her name was Nessy, and, having an instinctive sense of her dependent position, she was very humble and subservient and, as Tommy the Mate used to say, "as smooth as an old threepenny bit" to the ruling powers, which always meant my Aunt, ...
— The Woman Thou Gavest Me - Being the Story of Mary O'Neill • Hall Caine
... a sad, ungainly skeleton, is possessed by grass and weeds. On the raised centre many flower-pots were neatly arranged once: they stand in orderly lines, but each separate one is broken: none contain flowers any more, but only grass. And the glass of the greenhouse lies there in showers, all grey. ...
— Unhappy Far-Off Things • Lord Dunsany
... flounders in its rush. It is the ungainly roll of a rudderless ship. It stumbles. A second, and its mad rush ends. With a curious gasping sigh it ...
— The Heart of Unaga • Ridgwell Cullum
... possible to recognise the equine form, do their duty in highly creditable style, and go along at the rate of ten or twelve miles an hour, under no stronger incentive then the voice of the yamstchik. Indeed, the capabilities of these lean, slouching, ungainly quadrupeds are often astounding when they are under the guidance of a man who knows how to drive them. Though such a man commonly carries a little harmless whip, he rarely uses it except by waving ...
— Russia • Donald Mackenzie Wallace
... lie there, and many a sailor. It would seem unlikely that any living thing should seek rest in such a place, or find it. Nevertheless, frail and delicate flowers bloom there, flowers of both the land and the sea; heavy, ungainly seals disport in the swelling waves, and find grateful retreats back in the inmost bores of its storm-lashed caverns; while in many a chink and hollow of the highest crags, not visible from beneath, a great variety of waterfowl make homes and ...
— Steep Trails • John Muir
... An ungainly shape floundered out of the churned water, lumbered over the shale of the beach, its supple neck outstretched, its horned nose down for a gore-threatening charge. Ross had not realized that the salkars could operate out of what he thought was their natural ...
— Key Out of Time • Andre Alice Norton
... were a motley crew, armed with every conceivable sort of knife or war club, but sturdy fellows, ready and willing enough to give a good account of themselves. Watkins was forward, swallowed up in the smother of mist, but Schmitt held a place next me, a huge, ungainly figure in the dull light. So still it was I began to doubt having heard the voice at all—could it have been imagination? But no; that was impossible, for the sound had reached all of us alike. Somewhere out yonder, that boat was creeping along silently, ...
— Wolves of the Sea • Randall Parrish
... was ready to receive us, taking our two black friends, Aboh to act as interpreter, we carried with us the leopard skin, some venison, and three strings of beads of various colours. His majesty was a tall, ungainly looking man, with as hideous a countenance as can well be imagined. His appearance was not improved by the glare of the torchlight and the terror under which he was suffering. Having presented the leopard skin and venison, Charley, ...
— The Two Supercargoes - Adventures in Savage Africa • W.H.G. Kingston
... ripe Granada wine; and now behold me ambling over the Vega, accoutred in a gay Andalusian jacket, a sash woven by Mateo Ximenes, and one of those bandboxy sombreros, which I at first thought so ungainly, but now consider ...
— The Lands of the Saracen - Pictures of Palestine, Asia Minor, Sicily, and Spain • Bayard Taylor
... curtain was drawn from the long canvas Patricia's eyes were on the faces of those in whose impressions she was most interested, and they gave her great satisfaction. Mrs. Bingham's eyes were wide and startled as those of the small hen who discovers that her ungainly child ...
— Miss Pat at School • Pemberton Ginther
... wrinkled like a new-born child; it had the funniest feet, or hands, or flippers, with which it tried to walk, but only tumbled and flopped about. In the water it was graceful enough, but on dry land so ungainly and ridiculous that the vast concourse of Bears was thrown into fits ...
— Wigwam Evenings - Sioux Folk Tales Retold • Charles Alexander Eastman and Elaine Goodale Eastman
... portraits of the Scroopes for many generations past, some in armour, some in their robes of state, ladies with stiff bodices and high head-dresses, not beauties by Lely or warriors and statesmen by Kneller, but wooden, stiff, ungainly, hideous figures, by artists whose works had, unfortunately, been more enduring than their names. He was pacing up and down the room with a candle in his hand, trying to realize to himself what life at Scroope might be with a wife of his aunt's choosing, and his aunt to keep the house ...
— An Eye for an Eye • Anthony Trollope
... tall, hollow-chested man, with a dark, sallow face and an ungainly figure. There were suggestions of both ill-health and wretchedness in his appearance, and his manner was awkward and embarrassed. Two human beings more utterly unlike each other than himself and the man who held his hand could not possibly have been found. It was Baird who held his hand, not he ...
— In Connection with the De Willoughby Claim • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... giants, however, was not at first very satisfactory, as although plenty of bone was obtained, many were most ungainly in appearance and ill-shaped animals that had very little about them to attract attention. Captain Graham, however, stuck to his work, and very soon the specimens that he brought forward began to show a fixity of type both in head and in general ...
— Dogs and All About Them • Robert Leighton
... attendance upon the court, he frequently took part in the masques performed before it. Like the King, 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 ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... much effort, forced, ungainly, To entice the rugged door To yield up its wondrous lore, With a sudden burst of thunder All its frame is dashed asunder; The gulfy silence, lightning-fleet, Shooteth hellward at thy feet. Take thou heed lest evil terror Snare thee in a downward error, ...
— A Hidden Life and Other Poems • George MacDonald
... other friend at Bishopsgate Street—the dog of the monastery. It was a half-bred bloodhound, and nobody seemed to know whence he came and why he was there. He was a huge, ungainly, and most forbidding creature, and partly for that reason, but chiefly because it was against rule to fix the affections on earthly things, the brothers rarely caressed him. Unnoticed and unheeded, he slept in the ...
— The Christian - A Story • Hall Caine
... of the river, rows of brilliant red flamingos were standing in the shallow water, fishing, and here and there a pelican with his ungainly beak. Our Chinese crew were having their meal of rice when we walked forward, and the national chopsticks were hard at work. We talked to several of them. They could all speak a little ...
— Anahuac • Edward Burnett Tylor
... portrait painter until eighteen centuries after Christ, our idea about the Saviour's personal appearance is all guess work. Still, tradition tells us that He was the most infinitely beautiful being that ever walked our small earth. If His features had been rugged, and His gait had been ungainly, that would not have hindered Him from being attractive. Many men you have known and loved have had few charms of physiognomy. Wilberforce was not attractive in face. Socrates was repulsive. Suwarrow, the great Russian hero, looked almost an imbecile. And some whom you have known, and ...
— New Tabernacle Sermons • Thomas De Witt Talmage
... apparition. The cattle which were lying in the yard started from under the horses' feet, and stood staring in round-eyed surprise. The barn was half full of hay, and in the dry pungent odour Mike and Lady Edith rested an hour. Sometimes a bullock filled the doorway with ungainly form and steaming nostrils; sometimes the lips of the lovers met. In about half an hour the groom returned with the news that the fog was lifting, and discovering a cart-track, they followed it over the hills for ...
— Mike Fletcher - A Novel • George (George Augustus) Moore
... the woodsman, in the clearing stood, Hemmed by the solemn forest stretching round; Stalwart, ungainly, honest-eyed and rude, The genius of that solitude profound. He clove the way that future millions trod, He passed, unmoved by worldly fear or pelf; In all his lusty toil he found not God, Though in the ...
— Our American Holidays: Lincoln's Birthday • Various
... taste, of environment and experience, not these alone make up the sum of their unlikeness. You had only to look from the fresh simplicity of white muslin blouse and olive-coloured cloth in the one case, to the ungainly expensiveness of the black silk gown of the married woman, in order to get from the first a sense of dainty morning freshness, and from Mrs. Fox-Moore not alone a lugubrious memento mori sort of impression, but that more disquieting reminder of the ugly and over-elaborate thing ...
— The Convert • Elizabeth Robins
... about was not calculated to prepossess one in favor of the country. Somehow, it seemed to the detective that Black Hollow was half a century behind the age. Mrs. Bragg was a shy, ungainly female, ...
— Dyke Darrel the Railroad Detective - Or, The Crime of the Midnight Express • Frank Pinkerton
... this ungainly fowl to hear discourse so plainly, Though its answer little meaning—little relevancy bore; For we cannot help agreeing that no living human being Ever yet was blessed with seeing bird above his chamber door— Bird or beast upon the sculptured ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 5 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... quiet as he led them through the wood, strange ungainly mechanisms which a whiff of a scent could set in motion. A pinafore, which Joan had worn at breakfast, was served to them for an indication of the work they had to do; they snuffed at it languidly for some seconds. ...
— Those Who Smiled - And Eleven Other Stories • Perceval Gibbon
... the church edifices were built without any thought of the possibility of such comfortable furniture, they had to be adapted as best they might to the ungainly and unsightly great stoves which were usually placed in the central aisle of the building. From these cast-iron monsters, there extended to the nearest windows and projected through them, hideous stove-pipes that too often spread, from every leaky and ill-fastened joint, ...
— Sabbath in Puritan New England • Alice Morse Earle
... inches in height and built in proportion, he was a fine figure of a man. Despite his weight and bulk, there was nothing ungainly or awkward about him. If he had not the grace of an Apollo, he had what was better—the mighty thews and sinews of a twentieth century Hercules. His massive chest and broad shoulders were capped by a leonine head, from which looked the imperious eyes of a born ...
— Bert Wilson on the Gridiron • J. W. Duffield
... his mind at his square ungainly house, full-fronting the afternoon sun. He tried to repress a shudder. 'I think, do you know, ...
— The Return • Walter de la Mare
... a boy's throat and in the same instant the lifting cry of a younger child. Clear in the door-space of the tent, behind them, two little figures clung together in the opening—and just at one side, close to the children, a dark, ungainly shape! Skag sprang three jumps toward the opposite side, dropped on one knee and fired. The shape bounced up, ...
— Son of Power • Will Levington Comfort and Zamin Ki Dost
... garment, or an ungainly manner, will sometimes outweigh the acquirements of the finest scholar; and the cause of religion has suffered more, from the absence of the softer graces, in its clerical representations, than from all the logic of its adversaries. A laugh is more effectual to subvert ...
— Western Characters - or Types of Border Life in the Western States • J. L. McConnel
... feeding moose and scan the lay of the land, calculating his chances of escape. The banks are high,—perhaps one hundred and fifty feet—and sheer, but there are two gullies which afford runway to the bench above. What an ungainly creature he looks as we draw in nearer, all legs and clumsy head,—a regular grasshopper on stilts! He reminds me of nothing so much as those animals we make for the baby by sticking four matches into a sweet biscuit. And now at last ...
— The New North • Agnes Deans Cameron
... How they must have puzzled my correspondent!—My letters are generally charged as double at the Post office, from their inveterate clumsiness of foldure. So you must not take it disrespectful to your self if I send you such ungainly scraps. I think I lose L100 a year at the India House, owing solely to my want of neatness in making up Accounts. How I puzzle 'em out at last is the wonder. I have to do ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb (Vol. 6) - Letters 1821-1842 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... down the stairs with boyish impetuosity, looking so fine that Uncle Ith hardly knew him. It was difficult to realize that the ungainly, ignorant boy of a few years back, had become this nice-looking, graceful young gentleman. Thus readily does the rough diamond of a good heart and brain, under the guiding hands of Ambition and Love, take its polish from contact with the world and ...
— Round the Block • John Bell Bouton
... flowers. We used to call him Trainer Thoreau, because the boys called the soldiers the "trainers," and he had a long, measured stride and an erect carriage which made him seem something like a soldier, although he was short and rather ungainly in figure. He had a curved nose which reminded one a little of ...
— Autobiography of Seventy Years, Vol. 1-2 • George Hoar
... said, and in silence led the way to a pleached alley out of sight of the windows. There they stood still. It was a strange meeting of two who had not seen each other for fourteen years, when the one was a tall, ungainly youth, the other well-nigh a child. And now Giles was a fine, soldierly man in the prime of life, with a short, curled beard, and powerful, alert bearing, and Aldonza, though the first flower of her youth had gone by, yet, having lived a sheltered and ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... of feathers is so comical as a crow baby, with its awkward bows and ungainly hops, its tottering steps on the fence and its mincing, tight-boot sort of gait on the ground, its eager fluttering when it has hopes of food, and its loud and ...
— Little Brothers of the Air • Olive Thorne Miller
... followed them; for it seemed as if the living images of night and day were walking side by side over the land. Fausch's clothes were dark and coarse, such as he always wore. They hung loose and heavy about his ungainly form, his hands were blackened, and his large head, which was set upon his broad shoulders as if thrust forward to meet some obstacle, matched them in color; his thick curly hair was deep black, and his face looked as if tanned by the hot sun of some foreign land. Beside him ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries - Masterpieces of German Literature Vol. 19 • Various
... comfort him. He changed not his mood for all that; but said: 'This is ill for thee also; for thou wilt be worser without me than with me in these lands.' Even so I deemed, and withal I was sorry for him, for though he were uncouth and ungainly, he was no ill man. So against my will I tumbled into the samelike mood as his, and we both fared along drearily. But about sunset, as we came round a corner of the cliffs of those mountains, or ever we were ware we ...
— The Well at the World's End • William Morris
... very hungry, and flock around a small colt, manifesting their delight by rubbing it with their noses, licking it with their tongues, kicking up their heels, and making a variety of other grotesque demonstrations of affection, while the poor little colt, perfectly unconscious of the cause of these ungainly caresses, stood trembling with fear, but unable to make his escape from the compact circle of his mulish admirers. Horses and asses are also used as bell animals, and the mules soon become accustomed ...
— The Prairie Traveler - A Hand-book for Overland Expeditions • Randolph Marcy
... loping up with elbows flapping loosely, as was his ungainly habit. His grin was wide and golden as of yore, his hat at the same angle over ...
— The Uphill Climb • B. M. Bower
... At length the tall, ungainly figure and ungracious visage of Ebenezer presented themselves. The upper part of his form, notwithstanding the season required no such defence, was shrouded in a large great-coat, belted over his under habiliments, and crested with ...
— Waverley • Sir Walter Scott
... then made a sudden movement. With two or three motions of hands and knees she drew herself a few steps back to one of the exclusive bunches of balsams, and began with her two hands to root it up. Actually she was grubbing, might and main, at the ungainly stalks of the balsams, pulling them up as fast as she could and flinging them aside, careless where. Daisy came to help with her trowel, and together they worked, amicably enough but without a word, till ...
— Melbourne House, Volume 2 • Susan Warner
... eyes whose oblique glance imparts an air of suspicion to the whole assembly, will suggest merely a notion of their grotesqueness. By and by we shall grow used to the deformities, and recognize the primitive truthfulness of attitude and expression, the spirit which animates these ungainly forms and faces, until at length we look at the painter with the eyes of his contemporaries, and judge him by the standards of his own time, on which his claims rest. Then we shall admire him. The Venetians ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 90, June, 1875 • Various
... early in 1834 was Charles Sumner, then a tall, slim, ungainly young man, twenty-three years of age, who was a student at law in Boston, but not admitted to practice. He was introduced by his friend, Mr. Justice Story, to Chief Justice Marshall and Justices Thompson, Duval, and McLean, and was ...
— Perley's Reminiscences, Vol. 1-2 - of Sixty Years in the National Metropolis • Benjamin Perley Poore
... are the largest of all the petrels, and measure about seven feet from tip to tip when on the wing. The colour ranges through various shades from almost pure white to a dark greyish-brown; some even appearing almost black. Very large and ungainly when on the ground, they become most graceful when in the air, and soar about without the slightest effort even on the stormiest days. I have seen them flying into a forty-mile wind with absolute ease, never moving a wing, but occasionally adjusting their balance. They ...
— The Home of the Blizzard • Douglas Mawson
... it was possible that she might develop into a pretty girl; at the present moment she despised appearances, and certainly failed to make the best of her good points. Now, as she sat by the piano-stool, with shoulders hunched up and head poked forward, she looked so awkward and ungainly that Ruth's tried nerves ...
— The Fortunes of the Farrells • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... to him all smiles, and Toby returned her welcome something sheepishly. He cut a quaint figure with his broad, ungainly shoulders supporting his rather pumpkin face. Then his arms were a little too long and terminated ...
— The Twins of Suffering Creek • Ridgwell Cullum
... all the Fians looked up and beheld upon the hillside a huge man, looking like some Fomorian marauder, black-visaged and ugly, with a sour countenance and ungainly limbs. On his back hung a dingy black shield, on his misshapen left thigh he wore a sharp broad-bladed sword; projecting over his shoulder were two long lances with broad rusty heads. He wore garments that looked as if they had been buried ...
— The High Deeds of Finn and other Bardic Romances of Ancient Ireland • T. W. Rolleston
... Bismarck-Bohlen—the nephew and aide-decamp to the Chancellor—and Doctor Busch were seated facing us. The conveyance was strong, serviceable, and comfortable, but not specially prepossessing, and hitched to it were four stout horses—logy, ungainly animals, whose clumsy harness indicated that the whole equipment was meant for heavy work. Two postilions in uniform, in high military saddles on the nigh horse of each span, completed ...
— The Memoirs of General P. H. Sheridan, Complete • General Philip Henry Sheridan
... the poor Welsh puddler once lived, but this figure of the mill-woman cut in korl. I have it here in a corner of my library. I keep it hid behind a curtain,—it is such a rough, ungainly thing. Yet there are about it touches, grand sweeps of outline, that show a master's hand. Sometimes,—to-night, for instance,—the curtain is accidentally drawn back, and I see a bare arm stretched out imploringly ...
— Life in the Iron-Mills • Rebecca Harding Davis
... chin. The Borneo Malay women are as plain as the men, although at Sincapore, Mauritius, and the Sooloos, they are well favoured; and they wind their serang, or robe, so tight round their bodies, that they walk in a very constrained and ungainly fashion. Many of these tribes are intermixed with the natives of the Celebes, such as the inhabitants ...
— Borneo and the Indian Archipelago - with drawings of costume and scenery • Frank S. Marryat
... from displaying a figure so beautiful, with no adornment except its native gracefulness; but how great must have been the chagrin of the Princesses, of many of the Court ladies, indeed, of all in any way ungainly or deformed, when called to exhibit themselves by the side of a bewitching person like hers, unaided by the whalebone and horse-hair paddings with which they had hitherto been made up, and which placed the best form on a level with the worst? The prudes ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... Borinage coal field exceeds twenty million tons a year. Its ungainly features of shafts, chimneys, and mounds of debris are relieved in places by woodlands, an appearance of a hilly country is presented where the pit mounds have been planted with fir trees. Apart from its mining aspect, Mons is a city of historic importance. It contains a Gothic cathedral and town ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume II (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various
... was many a one that the world would bow down to as a model, whose intrinsic worth was poor compared to unoffending Jan's. Lady Verner would tell Jan he was undutiful. Jan tried to be as dutiful to her as ever he could; but he could not change his ungainly person, his awkward manner. As well try to ...
— Verner's Pride • Mrs. Henry Wood
... however, was the great attraction of Nepaug to Flint, for in one of its coves lay an ungainly boat of which he was the happy owner. She was a bargain, and, like most bargains, had proved a dear purchase. True, the hull had cost only five dollars and the sails ten; but she yawed so badly that a new rudder had become a necessity, and that ...
— Flint - His Faults, His Friendships and His Fortunes • Maud Wilder Goodwin
... not consider a part of the joy of all the earth—the neighbors' dogs. On the next hill-top is an Airedale with a voice like a fog-horn. He is an ungainly creature and thoroughly disillusioned, because his family keep him locked up in a wire-screened tennis-court, where he barks all day and nearly all night. He can watch the motors on the coast road from one corner ...
— The Smiling Hill-Top - And Other California Sketches • Julia M. Sloane
... again and again looked round upon my fellow-prisoners, and felt my anger rise, and choked upon tears, to behold them thus parodied. The more part, as I have said, were peasants; somewhat bettered perhaps by the drill-sergeant, but for all that ungainly, loutish fellows, with no more than a mere barrack-room smartness of address: indeed, you could have seen our army nowhere more discreditably represented than in this Castle of Edinburgh. And I used to see myself in fancy, and blush. It seemed that my more elegant carriage ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 20 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... funereal moss adhering to them,—and the palmetto, shooting up its long, spongy stem thirty or forty feet, unrelieved by vines or branches, with a disproportionately small cap of leaves at the summit, the most ungainly of trees, albeit it gives a name and coat-of-arms to the State. Besides these, are the pine, the red and white oak, the cedar, the bay, the gum, the maple, and the ash. The soil is luxuriant with an undergrowth of impenetrable vines. These interlacing the trees, supported also by shrubs, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. September, 1863, No. LXXI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... Prioress there followed a nun, tall also, but ungainly. Her short-sighted eyes peered shiftily to right and left; her long nose went on before, scenting possible scandal and wrong-doing; her weak lips let loose a ready smile, insinuating, crafty, apologetic. She walked with ...
— The White Ladies of Worcester - A Romance of the Twelfth Century • Florence L. Barclay
... insipid, pedantic, useless, and directly opposite to the real knowledge and practice of the world.' Insomuch that 'a gentleman,' says another excellent writer, 'cannot easily bring himself to like so austere and ungainly a form: so greatly is it changed from what was once the delight of the finest gentlemen of antiquity, and their recreation after the hurry of public affairs! From this condition it cannot be recovered but by uniting ...
— Poetical Works of Akenside - [Edited by George Gilfillan] • Mark Akenside
... were standing about in crowds in the queerest and most ungainly attitudes in the world, croaking and barking, according to their usual wont, at the unexpected visitors who had so unceremoniously come to disturb the quietude of their island home. They looked excessively funny, waddling about awkwardly on their short legs and flapping their wings ...
— The Wreck of the Nancy Bell - Cast Away on Kerguelen Land • J. C. Hutcheson
... large farm with immense fields, the ponderous and ungainly steam, tackle gives one a sensation of intrusion. Such a field can be found on a farm between Evesham and Alcester; it contains 300 acres. The occupier, speaking of it, mentioned that it was all wheat that year except ...
— Grain and Chaff from an English Manor • Arthur H. Savory
... much-knotted piece of string, and he seemed to possess the power of moving any joint in his body independently of the rest. He cracked his fingers persistently when he talked after a fashion that would have been intolerable in anyone but Capper. His hands were always in some ungainly attitude, and yet they were wonderful hands, strong and sensitive, the colour of ivory. His eyes were small and green, sharp as the eyes of a lizard. They seemed to take in everything ...
— The Knave of Diamonds • Ethel May Dell
... same house of representatives were John A. McClernand, James Shields, William A. Richardson, and other men who rose to national distinction. Abraham Lincoln, a Whig representative from Sangamon County, was already well known for his ungainly length of body, for his habit of reasoning in parables which were now scriptural and now vulgar to the point of obscenity, and for a quaint and rare honesty. He was four years older than the new ...
— Stephen Arnold Douglas • William Garrott Brown
... strive to appear easy and natural. Nothing is more distressing to a sensitive person, or more ridiculous to one gifted with refinement, than to see a lady laboring under the consciousness of a fine gown; or a gentleman who is stiff, awkward and ungainly ...
— Searchlights on Health: Light on Dark Corners • B.G. Jefferis
... the grim picture, a mere cluster of rude, unpainted houses, poorly erected shacks, grimy tents flapping in the never ceasing wind swirling across the treeless waste, the ugly red station, the rough cow-pens filled with lowing cattle, the huge, ungainly stores, their false fronts decorated by amateur wielders of the paint brush, and the garish dens of vice tucked in everywhere. The pendulum of life never ceased swinging. Society was mixed; no man cared who his neighbor was, or dared ...
— Keith of the Border • Randall Parrish
... with those bad eyes; of too much girth, you might have said, to be nimble, yet somehow suggesting to the swift intuition of youth, as Rodriguez looked at him standing upon his door-step, the spirit and shape of a spider, who despite her ungainly build is agile ...
— Don Rodriguez - Chronicles of Shadow Valley • Edward John Moreton Drax Plunkett, Baron, Dunsany
... suffered cruelly in the heat; mopped her face without shame between her sentences; and, according to Frank Olliver, lived chiefly on lime-squash, and a limitless admiration for her missionary husband,—a large, ungainly man, with the manners of a shy schoolboy, and the wrapt gaze of a seer; a man who, in an age of fanaticism, would have walked smiling to the rack. As it was, he walked with no less equanimity through the pestilential ...
— The Great Amulet • Maud Diver
... consented to let his little shanty and come, with good Molly his wife, to look after the lad's comfort, for they had no child, and Archie was nearer to them than any living being. Good Molly was of rough and ungainly exterior, but within, the very impersonation of tenderness and love, and this happy and blessed temperament had gained for her so flattering an appellation wherever she was known. Little children would gather around her in the street and hold ...
— The Elm Tree Tales • F. Irene Burge Smith
... with the leech, a man of middle height, whose shrewd and well-formed head, bald but for a little hair at the sides, was set on a somewhat ungainly body. His sharp eyes looked hither and thither, and there was something jerky in his quick movements; still, their grave decisiveness made up for the lack of grace. He paid no heed to the bystanders, but ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... the beacon was so far advanced and secured that it was deemed capable of withstanding any gale that might blow. As yet it was a great ungainly pile of logs, iron stanchions, and bracing-chains, without anything that could afford shelter to man from winds or waves, but with a platform laid from its cross-beams at a considerable height above ...
— The Lighthouse • R.M. Ballantyne
... could do was to swing her round, so as to place her between his adversary and himself. As it proved, it was the very best thing that he could have done. The rough, half-blinded and maddened by the blows which he had received, struck out with all his ungainly strength, just as his partner's head swung round in front of him. There was a noise like that of a stone hitting a wall, a deep groan, her grasp relaxed, and she dropped a dead weight upon the pavement, while the Admiral sprang back and raised his stick once more, ...
— Beyond the City • Arthur Conan Doyle
... you, Bob, I say," came from Susan Lanham, and poor, ungainly Bob blushed to his hair to find himself the hero of ...
— The Hoosier School-boy • Edward Eggleston
... walls and the window. He turned again to the window, and threw it open. The cool night air came in refreshingly. In the distance, the dark shapes of the mountains stood out forbiddingly in the moonlight. Millions of stars winked and twinkled. Gaunt cacti reared their ungainly shapes—beautiful because of their ...
— Across the Mesa • Jarvis Hall
... indescribably filthy; yet the place was laid out with some pretension to regularity, being divided up into several wide streets, while in the centre of the town there was a wide, open space, or square, one side of which was occupied by a hideous and ungainly idol of gigantic proportions, with a long sacrificial altar at its feet, while on the other three sides stood dwellings of such pretentious character that they could only belong to the chief dignitaries of ...
— In Search of El Dorado • Harry Collingwood
... motley crowd that followed them, found no one on any road round about the court save Johan, the player's boy, riding in most ungainly fashion on Mistress Judith's nag in the direction of the Ogilvie woods. He had seen naught, he had heard naught, of any fugitive highwayman. He shivered and crossed himself when the Black Devil's name was mentioned. He even begged one of the guards to mount ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 6, July 1905 • Various
... approach of an acquaintance afar off, and the wise, slow smile gleamed about his mouth as he drew near. "How do you do?" was sometimes his greeting; but more often, "Good-bye!" or "Good-night!"—an original and more sensible greeting. Though ungainly in formation, he was not ungraceful in bearing and action; there was a fitness and harmony in his manifestations even on the physical plan. On the lecture platform he stood erect and unadorned, his hands hanging folded in front, save when he changed the leaf of his manuscript, or emphasized ...
— Hawthorne and His Circle • Julian Hawthorne
... instinctively reject as superstitious does not date from what they would regard as the ages of superstition. There really are bad pictures but they are not barbaric pictures; they are florid pictures in the last faded realism of the Renascence. There really is stiff and ungainly decoration, but it is not the harsh or ascetic decoration of a Spanish cloister; it is much more like the pompous yet frivolous decorations of a Parisian hotel. In short, in so far as the shrine has really been defaced it has not been defaced by the Dark Ages, but rather if anything ...
— The New Jerusalem • G. K. Chesterton
... not be able to tell his rock from any other. The heavy body, its ungainly movement and thin bones would explain everything. Besides, there was no motive for killing the Martian and what penalty could there be? It ...
— Martians Never Die • Lucius Daniel
... doesn't live who's heard me whimper," Gordon began loudly; but his angry protest trailed into silence. There was no comfort, no redress, to be obtained from that absorbed, ungainly figure. He slipped out of the baggy trousers, the worsted slippers, and, extending himself on ...
— Mountain Blood - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer
... cogency of logical reason. Those who insist on charm, on winningness in style, on subtle harmonies and fine exquisiteness of suggestion, are disappointed in Burke: they even find him stiff and over-coloured. And there are blemishes of this kind. His banter is nearly always ungainly, his wit blunt, as Johnson said, and often unseasonable. As is usual with a man who has not true humour, Burke is also without true pathos. The thought of wrong or misery moved him less to pity for ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... especially when he lay asleep, he had a majestic and graceful appearance; for he was tall, but not slender. His grey looks became him well, and he had a full neck. But his knees were feeble, and failed him in walking, so that his gait was ungainly, both when he assumed state, and when he was taking diversion. He was outrageous in his laughter, and still more so in his wrath, for then he foamed at the mouth, and discharged from his nostrils. He also stammered in his speech, and had a tremulous motion (323) of the ...
— The Lives Of The Twelve Caesars, Complete - To Which Are Added, His Lives Of The Grammarians, Rhetoricians, And Poets • C. Suetonius Tranquillus
... when Marshall was still a practicing attorney. An old farmer who was involved in a lawsuit came to Richmond to attend its trial. "Who is the best lawyer in Richmond?" he asked of his host, the innkeeper of the Eagle tavern. The latter pointed to a tall, ungainly, bareheaded man who had just passed, eating cherries from his hat and exchanging jests with other loiterers like himself. "That is he," said the innkeeper; "John Marshall is his name." But the old countryman, who had a hundred dollars in his pocket, proposed to spend it on something ...
— John Marshall and the Constitution - A Chronicle of the Supreme Court, Volume 16 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Edward S. Corwin
... carefully and calculatingly up at the sky and across the square in the direction she meant to take, moved back again and picked up her basket, set it firmly on her arm, stepped out and commenced to hobble at an ungainly cumbersome trot across the square. She was no more than half-way across when the shriek of another shell was heard approaching. She stopped and cast a terrified glance about her, dumped the basket down on the cobbles, ...
— Action Front • Boyd Cable (Ernest Andrew Ewart)
... head inside the fishbowl helmet of his spacesuit and saw, over his right shoulder, the figure of Hector—lank and ungainly even with the bulky suit. For a moment, Odal puzzled over the weapon to be used. Then Hector bent down, picked up a loose stone, straightened, and tossed it softly past Odal's head. The Kerak major watched it sail by and off into the darkness of ...
— The Dueling Machine • Benjamin William Bova
... descended like lightning, and the harpoon shot perpendicularly into the pool with the speed of an arrow. What river-fiend answered to the summons? In an instant an enormous pair of open jaws appeared, followed by the ungainly head and form of the furious hippopotamus, who, springing half out of the water, lashed the river into foam, and, disdaining the concealment of the deep pool, charged straight up the violent rapids. With extraordinary power he breasted the descending ...
— In the Heart of Africa • Samuel White Baker
... Centre, and Tompkins Markets. With the exception of Tompkins Market, they are, as far as the houses are concerned, unmitigated nuisances to the city. They are in the last stages of dilapidation, and from without present the most ungainly spectacles to be witnessed in New York. The streets around them are always dirty and crowded, and in the hot days of the summer the air is loaded with foul ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe
... turned out to be the auctioneer's brother) noticed the wistful look in my eye, and observed that that was a very remarkable horse to be going at such a price; and added that the saddle alone was worth the money. It was a Spanish saddle, with ponderous 'tapidaros', and furnished with the ungainly sole-leather covering with the unspellable name. I said I had half a notion to bid. Then this keen-eyed person appeared to me to be "taking my measure"; but I dismissed the suspicion when he spoke, for his manner was full of guileless candor and ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... not only the head of the Roman religion, but one who might actually have claimed something like divine worship, had he cared to do so. Though the fantastic pretensions of Caligula had brought some contempt [215] on that claim, which had become almost a jest under the ungainly Claudius, yet, from Augustus downwards, a vague divinity had seemed to surround the Caesars even in this life; and the peculiar character of Aurelius, at once a ceremonious polytheist never forgetful of his pontifical calling, and a philosopher whose mystic speculation encircled him with a sort of ...
— Marius the Epicurean, Volume One • Walter Horatio Pater
... by his word, and James was forced to go. When he showed the photograph, Mrs. Pritchard-Wallace looked at it with a curious expression. It was the work of a country photographer, awkward and ungainly, with the head stiffly poised, and the eyes hard and fixed; the general impression was ungraceful and devoid of charm, Mrs. Wallace noticed the country ...
— The Hero • William Somerset Maugham
... of Capulet's house, and Romeo in his pilgrim's dress had entered with Mercutio and his other friends. The band, such as it was, struck up a few bars of music, and the dance began. Through the crowd of ungainly, shabbily-dressed actors, Sibyl Vane moved like a creature from a finer world. Her body swayed, while she danced, as a plant sways in the water. The curves of her throat were the curves of a white lily. Her hands seemed to be made of ...
— The Picture of Dorian Gray • Oscar Wilde
... with a face that told no tales, stepped into a hansom with a pretty air of being overruled by a will stronger than her own, and only insisted on keeping up her ungainly sized parasol because "the sun in one's ...
— Tales from Many Sources - Vol. V • Various
... look on her, 40 The very breath of life enjoy; And two lovers, love's curse under Kept asunder, Will I leave to grieve apart, And achieve by this my art 45 Things at which you'll gaze in wonder. For a lady most ungainly For a halfpenny at night Will I cause without a light To look nor ill nor well too plainly. 50 To another loveliest, As star in heaven Shall this destiny be given That of noblest men and best None against her love protest. 55 And the better to display ...
— Four Plays of Gil Vicente • Gil Vicente
... unskilled in the matter of driving; and so it came about that old Jack was so confused at the start that he made a most awkward and wretched appearance in his effort to get off, being all "mixed up," as the saying is,—so much so that the crowd roared at his ungainly efforts, and his flying rivals were twenty rods away before he even got started. But at last he got his huge body in a straight line, and, leaving his miserable shuffle, squared away to his work, and, with ...
— The Busted Ex-Texan and Other Stories • W. H. H. Murray
... came down slowly in her most ungainly manner, believing herself in too great disgrace to be noticed by anybody, and she was quite surprised and comforted to be greeted by her brothers and ...
— Scenes and Characters • Charlotte M. Yonge
... to this were the skin and horns of several buffaloes. In other places there were more horns, and heads, and hides of bears of various kinds, as well as of deer, and, conspicuous above the entrance, hung the ungainly skull and ...
— The Wild Man of the West - A Tale of the Rocky Mountains • R.M. Ballantyne
... nests, of which the last was half as large as the others, produced no less than a thousand eggs; eight hundred were deposited in the larger nests and two or three hundred in the smaller. Truly a fine family, but a thought ungainly, were it not that only a few of its members ...
— Social Life in the Insect World • J. H. Fabre
... black dress-coat, and a cheap brown wig, which made no pretense of being his own natural hair. Short black trousers clung like attached old servants round his wizen legs; and rusty black gaiters hid all they could of his knobbed, ungainly feet. Black crape added its mite to the decayed and dingy wretchedness of his old beaver hat; black mohair in the obsolete form of a stock drearily encircled his neck and rose as high as his haggard jaws. The one morsel of color ...
— Armadale • Wilkie Collins
... say the best-mathematicians in England of his day, and was likewise deeply skilled in other branches of science and philosophy. The Greek language was as familiar to him as the English; he was said to know every line of Homer by heart. In public life, on the contrary, he was shy, ungainly, and embarrassed. From his first onset in Parliament, he took part with vehemence against the administration of Sir Robert Walpole." Bishop Secker says, that Lord Stanhope "spoke a precomposed speech, which he held in his hand, with great tremblings and agitations, and hesitated frequently ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 1 • Horace Walpole
... passage along the Route Ronde formally interdicted for the moment. There is nothing for it but to draw up at the glaring cross-roads and get down to make fun with the notorious Cocardon, the most ungainly and ill-bred dog of all the ungainly and ill-bred dogs of Barbizon, or clamber about the sandy banks. And meanwhile the doctor, with sun umbrella, wide Panama, and patriarchal beard, is busy wheedling and (for aught the rest of us know) bribing the too facile ...
— Essays of Travel • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Markheim's eyes returned to the body of his victim, where it lay both humped and sprawling, incredibly small and strangely meaner than in life. In these poor, miserly clothes, in that ungainly attitude, the dealer lay like so much sawdust. Markheim had feared to see it, and, lo! it was nothing. And yet, as he gazed, this bundle of old clothes and pool of blood began to find eloquent voices. There it must lie; ...
— The Merry Men - and Other Tales and Fables • Robert Louis Stevenson
... every slope graze herds of winter-worn gun-horses and transport mules. The new grass has gone to the heads of the latter and they make continuous exhibitions of themselves, gambolling about like ungainly lambkins and roaring with unholy laughter. Summer has come, and my groom and countryman has started to whistle again, sure sign that Winter is over, for it is only during the Summer that he reconciles himself to the War. War, he admits, serves very well as a light ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, June 13, 1917 • Various
... time, two individuals of very ungainly aspect came there. Each had his arm upon the other's shoulder; both were ill-dressed. They said these words, 'Thou owest me nothing. I really owe thee. If we dispute in this way, here is the king who ruleth individuals. I say truly, thou owest me nothing! Thou speakest ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... a raw, ungainly, but powerful looking youth from Kintail was seen staring about, as the Mackenzies were starting to meet the enemy, in an apparently idiotic manner, as if looking for something. He ultimately came ...
— History Of The Mackenzies • Alexander Mackenzie
... pitched, as I have said, against the bulwarks, where he lay like some horrible, ungainly sort of puppet, life-size, indeed, but how different from life's colour or life's comeliness! In that position I could easily have my way with him, and as the habit of tragical adventures had worn off almost all my terror for the dead, I took him by the waist as if he had ...
— Treasure Island • Robert Louis Stevenson
... waiting to change horses one had time to wonder how the people living there managed to be such a stolid, dirty, thriftless-looking set. Mountaineers should be intelligent, active, and hardy; but these men were a most ungainly crew, and Lavinia's ...
— Shawl-Straps - A Second Series of Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag • Louisa M. Alcott
... all charmed with the splendid country, and looked with never-failing delight on its fertile plains, its numerous hills, and majestic mountains. In some of the passes we saw bramble-berries growing; and the many other flowers, though of great beauty, did not remind us of youth and of home like the ungainly thorny bramble-bushes. We were a week in crossing the highlands in a northerly direction; then we descended into the Upper Shire Valley, which is nearly 1200 feet above the level of the sea. This valley is wonderfully ...
— A Popular Account of Dr. Livingstone's Expedition to the Zambesi and Its Tributaries • David Livingstone
... him greeting and a word of condolence. For that time only he passed them by, as if they had been wooden images. His spirit had been strained to its uttermost, and would bear no more. He made his way home with an ungainly, swift gait,—home to the dear bedside,—down upon ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 89, March, 1865 • Various
... concierge, who, in all German houses, attends at the common door, and who, in this case, lived in a couple of musty little closets opening into the lower hall, and eked out his official salary by cobbling shoes. He was an odd, grotesque humorist, of most ungainly exterior, black haired and bearded, with a squint, a squab nose, and a short but very powerful figure. Dirty he was beyond belief, and he was abominably fragrant of vile tobacco. For my part, I could not endure this fellow; but Paton, who had much more of what he called human nature in him than ...
— David Poindexter's Disappearance and Other Tales • Julian Hawthorne
... bare, rocky promontory far up in the north country, where the turbulent waters of the Little Vermilion cut through lanes of pointed fir and dark spruce, a gigantic moose stood, his ungainly body and huge antlers silhouetted against the sky of sunset. Below him the noisy, hurrying waters were churned into foam over innumerable hidden rocks; to the rear lay the wilderness, ...
— Followers of the Trail • Zoe Meyer
... through the crouching form. He seemed to awake, his mind returning as it were from a far distance. He turned his head, and Stella saw that he was not blind. For his eyes took her in, for the moment appraised her. Then with ungainly, ...
— The Lamp in the Desert • Ethel M. Dell
... at a premium; scowls would be valued according to their blackness and depth; a ghastly grin would be desirable; while a general cadaverousness might be utilized as suggesting to drunkards the probable end of their career. The gods of Olympus laughed loudly when the swart, ungainly Vulcan for once replaced Hebe as their cup-bearer; but it would be no joke for the young idlers of Melbourne to find stern, grim men frowning over the counters where once they were received with "nods and becks ...
— Donahoe's Magazine, Volume 15, No. 1, January 1886 • Various
... toes. She turned her face, which was overshadowed by a hood, to look at Shere Ali as he rode by. He saw the heavy stud of silver and enamel in her nostril, the withered brown face. He turned and looked at her, as she walked flat-footed and ungainly, her pyjamas of pink cotton showing beneath her cloak. He had no part or lot with any of these people of the East. The face of Violet Oliver shone before his eyes. There was his mate. He recalled the exquisite daintiness of her appearance, her ruffles of lace, ...
— The Broken Road • A. E. W. Mason
... philosophy which I glean from the top of a London motor-bus. From my point of vantage I look down upon pedestrian humanity as a Superman might look down upon it. It seems to consist of a vast multitude of ignorant folk who are predestined to immediate annihilation. As the ungainly machine on which I am seated rushes down the street, it seems admirably adapted for its mission of destruction. The barricade in front of me, devoted to the praise of BOVRIL, is just high enough to prevent my seeing what actually happens, but it gives a bloodcurdling ...
— Humanly Speaking • Samuel McChord Crothers
... mistaken. If she had but broken up the ice, she would have found that the water below was not shallow. The duke, in fact, like many other Englishmen, though he did not like the trouble of showing forth, and had an ungainly manner, was a man who had read a good deal, possessed a sound head and an honourable mind, though he did not know what it was to love anybody, to care much for anything, and was at once perfectly sated and yet perfectly contented; for apathy ...
— Ernest Maltravers, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... presented no feminine charms to view; and her short coarse petticoat showed her red legs nearly to the knee; for, except on Sundays, she knew not the use of shoes and stockings. But though Kate was ungainly and ugly, she was useful, and grateful—very fond of the whole family, and particularly attached to the two young ladies, in whose behalf she doubtless performed many a service, acceptable enough to them, but of which, had she known of them, the widow would ...
— The Kellys and the O'Kellys • Anthony Trollope
... with the habits of the immense beasts they were now to kill. Their horses, too, were as unused to the sight of a buffalo as their riders, and in consequence were badly frightened at the first sight of the ungainly animals. The men, of course, used their rifles, which in those days were altogether too cumbersome ...
— The Great Salt Lake Trail • Colonel Henry Inman
... and charming plant, which sends up numbers of stems from the bottom in place of continually growing upward and thus becoming ungainly; it bears a profusion of elegantly curled, tasseled, and variegated foliage, very catching to the eye, and unlike any of its predecessors. The other, P. dumosum, is of similar habit, the foliage being crested and fringed ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 385, May 19, 1883 • Various
... were ever afterward firm friends. All of these people loved Andersen, not because of his fame, but because of the stories which had brought him fame, and because he was distinctly lovable in spite of his oddity; for Andersen was still odd. He was ugly and ungainly, and, owing to his fondness for decoration, often dressed in the most peculiar fashion. Then, too, he was so childishly vain of the fame which had come to him that he was at any time quite likely to stop in a crowded street and ...
— Journeys Through Bookland V2 • Charles H. Sylvester
... the river, with elms and maples and clumps of lilac bushes about it, was almost bare of the cheerful white paint that had once adorned it, and the green blinds were faded and broken; the barns never had been painted, and were huddled close to the house, hiding its fine Colonial lines, black, ungainly, and half fallen to pieces; all kinds of farm implements, rusty from age and neglect, were scattered about, and two dogs and several cats lay on the kitchen porch amidst the general litter of milk-pails, half-broken chairs, and rush mats. There was no one in sight as the two ...
— The Old Gray Homestead • Frances Parkinson Keyes
... and we were gliding towards the trenches. At 1200 feet we switched on, flattened out, and looked for movement below. There was no infantry advance at the moment, but below Courcelette what seemed to be two ungainly masses of black slime were slithering over the ground. I rubbed my eyes and looked again. One of them actually crawled among the scrap-heaps that fringed the ruins of the village. Only then did the thought that they might be Tanks ...
— Cavalry of the Clouds • Alan Bott
... ultimately turn up. The fact was, I meant to follow the policy of the Aberdeen government when starving to death one of the bravest armies that ever faced a foe. Instead of expanding plains and undulating hills, such as Smooth had pictures to his mind in his boyhood, I found the seat of war an ungainly mud-puddle, with ramparts of savage-looking citizens menacing each other from its opposite banks. Between these banks the amusement of war was every now and then kept up with doubtful results. That something more than ordinary was to pay I felt assumed by the ...
— The Adventures of My Cousin Smooth • Timothy Templeton
... cat, to extract from him some hint as to what he should do. This absorption seemed to ignore completely the other occupants of the room, of whom he was the central, commanding figure. The head nurse held the lamp carelessly, resting her hand over one hip thrown out, her figure drooping into an ungainly pose. She gazed at the surgeon steadily, as if puzzled at his intense preoccupation over the common case of a man "shot in a row." Her eyes travelled over the surgeon's neat-fitting evening dress, ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... halls Costigan stalked to a certain storage room, where with all due precaution he donned his own suit of Triplanetary armor. Making an ungainly bundle of the other Solarian equipment stored there, he dragged it along behind him as he clanked back toward his prison, until he neared the dock at which was moored the Nevian space-speedster which he was determined to take. Here, he knew, was the ...
— Triplanetary • Edward Elmer Smith
... had intimated, James, wearied by several hours in the saddle, for it was his pleasure to hunt or horseback in Waltham forest and in other royal chases, had retired early to his bed chamber. He had eaten heartily, for despite his ungainly person the First of the Stuarts was a famous trenchman. Freed from his quilted clothes and mellow with strong wine, he admitted to his presence two gentlemen ...
— The Fifth of November - A Romance of the Stuarts • Charles S. Bentley
... very great man; but Squire Mountmeadow, scarcely deigning to avail himself of their proffered assistance, and pausing on each step, looking around him with his long, lean, solemn visage, finally reached terra firma in safety, and slowly stretched his tall, ungainly figure. It was at this moment that Dr. Masham's servant approached him, and informed his worship that his master was at the inn, and would be happy to see him. The countenance of the great Mountmeadow relaxed at the mention of the name of ...
— Venetia • Benjamin Disraeli
... inhabit it. The extraordinary clearness of the water there is particularly favourable for the inspection of these fairy bowers. One day I determined to try for a Jew-fish, just to see how such a huge, ungainly monster would act. Anchoring, we threw the bait over, and in a short time I pulled in a rock cod of nearly 7 lbs. weight. My boatman coolly threw the still hooked fish overboard again, telling me it would be excellent bait ...
— Ranching, Sport and Travel • Thomas Carson
... penetrating. The vulgar satirist is such a one as Hazlitt somewhere mentioned who called Wordsworth a dunce. Hazlitt was quite incapable of such a solecism. He knew, nobody better, that a telling caricature must be a good likeness. If he darkens the shades, and here and there exaggerates an ungainly feature, we still know that the shade exists and that the feature is not symmetrical. De Quincey reports the saying of some admiring friend of Hazlitt, who confessed to a shudder whenever Hazlitt ...
— Hours in a Library - New Edition, with Additions. Vol. II (of 3) • Leslie Stephen
... no less a person than the Son of Mr. Pompey Taylor. But the T. Tallman Taylor, whose whole appearance was pronounced unexceptionable by the New York belles, from the points of his boots to the cut of his moustaches, was a very different individual from the good-looking, but awkward, ungainly youth, introduced to the reader two or three years since, at Wyllys-Roof. He had, in the mean time, learned how to stand, how to sit, how to walk, how to talk in a drawing-room. He had learned what to do with his cane and his hat, how to manage his pocket-handkerchief ...
— Elinor Wyllys - Vol. I • Susan Fenimore Cooper
... and interest them. The constant plash of falling fruit showed that birds were feeding overhead. Sometimes a flock of parrots or bright blue chatterers swept from tree to tree, or atrogon swooped at a falling bunch of fruit and caught it ere it reached the water; while ungainly toucans plumped clumsily down upon the branches, and sat, in striking contrast, beside the lovely pompadours, with their claret-coloured plumage and ...
— Martin Rattler • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... Those years were not altogether happy ones, for Johnson's huge ungainly figure, and shabby, patched clothes were matters for laughter among his fellow- students. He became a sloven in his dress. His gown was tattered and his linen dirty, and his toes showed through his boots. Yet when some one, meaning no doubt to be kind, placed a new pair at his ...
— English Literature For Boys And Girls • H.E. Marshall
... he continues the Legislature, and gives this picture of Minister Harris: "He is six feet high, bony and rather slender; long, ungainly arms; stands so straight he leans back a little; has small side whiskers; his head long, up and down; he has no command of language or ideas; oratory all show and pretence; a big washing and a small hang-out; weak, insipid, and ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... mixed breed, and was supposed to have a strain of Dandy Dinmont blood which gave him his name. A big ungainly animal with a rough shaggy coat of blue-grey hair and white on his neck and clumsy paws. He looked like a Sussex sheep-dog with legs reduced to half their proper length. He was, when I first knew him, getting old and increasingly deaf and dim of sight, otherwise in the best of health ...
— A Traveller in Little Things • W. H. Hudson
... There was great applause at the finish, which excited the envy of the Camel and made him desire to win the favour of the assembly by the same means. So he got up from his place and began dancing, but he cut such a ridiculous figure as he plunged about, and made such a grotesque exhibition of his ungainly person, that the beasts all fell upon him with ...
— Aesop's Fables • Aesop
... heterogenous character and pursuits of its inhabitants. Nature was certainly in no passive mood when last it flung its constituents together; for, with the exception of a few circling acres forming a rim around the harbor, high, broken, and frowning battlements of rock, ungainly and sterile, look down upon you as far as the eye can reach. No sprig, or tree, or blade of grass takes root in its parched soil or stony bed, or survives the blasting heat. Scattered and dotted on crag, hilltop or ...
— Shadow and Light - An Autobiography with Reminiscences of the Last and Present Century • Mifflin Wistar Gibbs
... earth-tiller, or the misplaced buffoonery of a seventh-grade body-writher taking the least significant part in an ill-equipped Swatow one-cash Hall of Varied Melodies." Assuredly, if your striking and well-chosen metaphors were not more unbalanced than the ungainly attitude of a one-legged hunchback crossing a raging torrent by means of a slippery plank on a stormy night, they would cause the very acutest bitterness to the throat of a dutiful and always high-stepping son. There is an apt saying, however, "A quarrel ...
— The Mirror of Kong Ho • Ernest Bramah |
