"Round-shouldered" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... a round-shouldered, thin-legged old gentleman with his hands tucked under his coat-tails; and as he came up, tiptoeing and peering slyly at Hamil out of two bright evil-looking eyes, the girl raised her arm and threw a kum-quat at him ...
— The Firing Line • Robert W. Chambers
... Hollow with a load of roots and branches for the night. Lucy emerged from the tent and sat down by her cup and plate, harrassed and silent. Glen said he wanted no supper. He had been sitting for an hour on the pole of David's wagon, mute and round-shouldered in his dusty homespuns. No one had offered to speak to him. It was he who had induced the patient woman to follow him on the long journey. They all knew this was now the matter of his thoughts. His ragged figure and down-drooped, miserable face were dignified with the tragedy ...
— The Emigrant Trail • Geraldine Bonner
... truth enough to say you were a pretty good fellow and a long ways from that kind of a fool, according to my reckoning. 'Umph!' says he. 'Is he rich?' I told him I guessed you wan't so rich that you got round-shouldered lugging your money. 'Why?' says I, getting curious. 'Have you met him, Mr. Colton? If you have you ought to have sized him up yourself. I always heard you were a pretty fair judge.' He looked at me kind of funny. 'I thought I was,' says he, 'but you seem ...
— The Rise of Roscoe Paine • Joseph C. Lincoln
... above the rest, not in tunic, however, but staggering about with his new acquirement, interested and ungraceful; and the old gardener entertained us with a Danish waltz with his fair-haired, plump, round-shouldered daughter. Now they cling together, then swing apart, holding each other by the fingers' ends; now they whirl and twirl in and out, and then come together and waltz around the hall, as all gaze and wonder at the old man's suppleness. Now the spirit ...
— Brook Farm • John Thomas Codman
... scholar's stoop and the scholar's near-sighted, peering gaze—the sort of man who has never been really young and will never be old, looking at forty-five much as he looked at twenty, a little grayer, perhaps, a little more round-shouldered and ineffectual, but no more mature. His most marked characteristic was a certain shy amiability, which endeared him to his classes and his friends, even while it failed to command their respect. Beneath this ...
— Kildares of Storm • Eleanor Mercein Kelly
... declared. "He makes ploughs anyway—makes them well—millions of them. He does not spend his time talking and running his ringers through his hair. He works and his work has lightened the labours of millions while the talkers sit thinking noisy thoughts and getting round-shouldered." ...
— Marching Men • Sherwood Anderson
... she was where all the others had come, and where countless others would come sooner or later. She was not unconscious and at Delia's cry she opened her eyes. The Probationer was off filling water bottles, and only the Dummy, stricken, round-shouldered, ...
— Love Stories • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... broad, round-shouldered, one-sided old fellow in mourning, dressed in a pea overcoat, and wearing thick leather gaiters, and gloves like a hedger's, came ambling towards the street corner where Silas Wegg sat at his stall. A few small lots of fruits and sweets, and a choice collection ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol III • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... minutes,' said the fly-man, pulling in his horse. A zig-zag fugitive thought passed: why did the fly-man speak of taking them to the station? How was it that he knew where they wanted to go? They stopped and wondered. The poor horse's bones stood out in strange projections, the round-shouldered little fly-man sat grinning on his box, showing three long yellow fangs. The vehicle, the horse, and the man, his arm raised in questioning gesture, appeared in strange silhouette upon the grey clouds, assuming portentous aspect ...
— Vain Fortune • George Moore
... had all the gov'ment jobs I want. Life-savin' service was bad enough, trampin' the condemned beach in a howlin' no'theaster, with the sand cuttin' furrers in your face, and the icicles on your mustache so heavy you got round-shouldered luggin' 'em. But when your tramp was over, you had somebody to talk to. Here, by godfreys! there ain't nothin' nor nobody. I'm goin' fishin' again, where I ...
— The Woman-Haters • Joseph C. Lincoln
... a short, round-shouldered man, made still shorter by the bend which he had acquired by the operation of boot-closing; his eyes were small, and sunken in his head; his nose wide and flat, as if in his early youth he had fallen on the edge of a pewter pot, and he too had the appearance of regarding water with as deep an aversion ...
— Captain Bayley's Heir: - A Tale of the Gold Fields of California • G. A. Henty
... known, was much dependent on moods, and spent long periods in mental inactivity. The labors of the other were fitful, and his views of life betray the influence of the same cerebral defect that led to so much domestic woe. The narrow-chested, round-shouldered person, whose lungs barely oxydize blood enough to maintain life, is not expected to walk a thousand miles in a thousand hours, or to excel as a performer on wind-instruments. We impute to him no fault for this ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 59, September, 1862 • Various
... vertebrae become so sensitive and distorted that they cannot easily support the weight of the body or sustain its equilibrium. It is generally believed that persons of sedentary habits are more liable to become round-shouldered than any other class of individuals. Observation shows, on the contrary, that the manual laborer, or even the idler, often acquires this stooping posture. It can be remedied, not by artificial braces, but by habitually throwing ...
— The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English • R. V. Pierce
... mother's hands. Her nose had lost its shape and her temples had fallen in. Constant stooping over the kitchen range had made her a little round-shouldered. Father and mother met only at meals and at night. They did not complain, ...
— Married • August Strindberg
... Cook after cook came, stayed a day, a week, and one or two held on for two weeks, but never longer. Their course was invariably the same—they would leave without notice; nor could any inducement be offered which would persuade them to remain. The Baron of Peddlington became, first round-shouldered, then deaf, and then insane in his search for a permanent cook, landing finally in an asylum, where he died, four years after the demise of his employer in London, of softening of the brain. His last words were, "Why did ...
— The Water Ghost and Others • John Kendrick Bangs
... hump, which constitutes a round-shouldered man. If the reader has ever seen Hogarth's Illustrations of Hudibras, and remembers the redoubtable hero as he sits on horseback, he will be at no loss in comprehending what a cruiht means. Cruiht is the Irish for harp, ...
— The Ned M'Keown Stories - Traits And Stories Of The Irish Peasantry, The Works of - William Carleton, Volume Three • William Carleton
... man in height rather less than the stock size six-feet so much in demand by the manufacturers of modern heroes of fiction; a man a bit round-shouldered, too, but otherwise sturdily built, ...
— The Black Bag • Louis Joseph Vance
... rounded, the chest is flattened, and the curve in the lower part of the back is straightened. The whole figure is out of balance, and therefore not harmonious. Not only is the beauty of the figure destroyed, but the internal organs are displaced. Many a mother who sees her daughter thus growing round-shouldered keeps telling her to throw her shoulders back; but to follow this command only increases the difficulty. The shoulders are not primarily at fault, but the trouble originates in non-use of the front waist muscles. These muscles, weakened ...
— What a Young Woman Ought to Know • Mary Wood-Allen
... not. If the wearer has not a very erect carriage, and if her shoulders are not well thrown back, the chances are that the effect of a square shawl will be anything but pleasing. If the lady stoops, or is at all round-shouldered, the shawl will have the effect of a window that has been cracked by a stone—it will look starred—it will not be smooth and even, but will present the appearance of lines radiating from the defective shoulders. For grace there is ...
— Routledge's Manual of Etiquette • George Routledge
... an unctuous substance. This hat he keeps for the purpose. A couple of milking pails—they are of large size—form a heavy load when filled. The milker, as he walks back to the farmhouse, bends his head under the yoke—whence so many men are round-shouldered—and steps slowly with a peculiar swaying motion of the body, which slight swing prevents ...
— Hodge and His Masters • Richard Jefferies
... the poor white "cracker" population that we saw, seemed indigenous products of the starved soil. They suited their poverty-stricken surroundings as well as the gnarled and scrubby vegetation suited the sterile sand. Thin-chested, round-shouldered, scraggy-bearded, dull-eyed and open-mouthed, they all looked alike—all looked as ignorant, as stupid, and as lazy as they were poor and weak. They were "low-downers" in every respect, and made our rough and simple. minded East Tennesseans ...
— Andersonville, complete • John McElroy
... the men by turns, till he had combined Disko's peculiar stoop at the wheel, Long Jack's swinging overhand when the lines were hauled, Manuel's round-shouldered but effective stroke in a dory, and Tom Platt's generous Ohio stride along ...
— "Captains Courageous" • Rudyard Kipling
... in chorus Byelovzorov and the gentleman described as a retired captain, a man of forty, pock-marked to a hideous degree, curly-headed as a negro, round-shouldered, bandy-legged, and dressed in a military ...
— The Torrents of Spring • Ivan Turgenev
... or personally handing them to the authorities, asking to have his term remitted and to be allowed to go, and he told me that he had spent over two hundred roubles on telegrams. He sold his land and mortgaged his house to the money-lenders. His hair went grey, he grew round-shouldered, and his face got yellow and consumptive-looking. He used to cough whenever he spoke and tears used to come to his eyes. He spent eight years on his applications, and at last he became happy again and lively: he had thought of a new dodge. His daughter, you ...
— The House with the Mezzanine and Other Stories • Anton Tchekoff
... years old, and above six feet high, dressed in a gray suit; the coat, from its size, appeared to have been made for him some ten years before. He was remarkably narrow-chested and round-shouldered, owing, perhaps as much to the tightness of his garment as to the hand of nature. His face was long, and his complexion swarthy, relieved, however, by certain freckles, with which the skin was plentifully studded. He had strange wandering ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... like straightening out a limb which has been twisted by a false attitude or correcting a habit of sitting round-shouldered. ...
— The Heart of the New Thought • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... guess I'm large and strong enough to carry my own burdens," said Ben. "I've managed to pack a good many of them' so far without getting round-shouldered." ...
— Ted Strong in Montana - With Lariat and Spur • Edward C. Taylor
... once or twice during these camp days. And he marvelled. The spectacles had gone. The lank, round-shouldered figure had filled and straightened. Suddenly a man had been born. A soldier, too. This fellow of the pen and ledger, this very type of the British clerk who had never handled a rifle in his life and didn't know the smell of ...
— One Young Man • Sir John Ernest Hodder-Williams
... nothing at all, but becomes exceedingly round-shouldered, and pretends to read his paper with rapt attention. Generally, Sharpeye directs our observation with a look, to the prints and pictures that are invariably numerous on the walls. Always, Trampfoot and Quickear are taking notice on the doorstep. In default ...
— The Uncommercial Traveller • Charles Dickens
... all that is hideous in nature, our Dragon fly is most conspicuous. Look at its enormous head, with its beetling brows, retreating face, and heavy under jaws,—all eyes and teeth,—and hung so loosely on its short, weak neck, sunk beneath its enormous hunchback,—for it is wofully round-shouldered,—while its long, thin legs, shrunken as if from disease, are drawn up beneath its breast, and what a ...
— Our Common Insects - A Popular Account of the Insects of Our Fields, Forests, - Gardens and Houses • Alpheus Spring Packard
... was nothing at all formidable or dignified about Mrs. Higgs, who was a round-shouldered, infirm old woman in a brown dress, a black-and-white check shawl, and a ...
— The Wharf by the Docks - A Novel • Florence Warden
... a few more household duties on herself. Dot pined and pinched as the cold weather came on, as he always did, and looked a shivering, shabby Dot sometimes. Jack's legs grew longer, and her frocks shorter, and we had to tie her hair to keep it out of her eyes, and she stooped more, and grew round-shouldered, which added to her list of beauties; but no ...
— Esther - A Book for Girls • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... round-shouldered farmer, who, in spite of his peaceable expression and faded gray eye, was known to have been one of the most daring followers of a rebel guerrilla chieftain, "what air yer gwine ter do about it? Ef you fellers air gwine ter ...
— The Wife of his Youth and Other Stories of the Color Line, and - Selected Essays • Charles Waddell Chesnutt
... loaves. This was not the reason why the little South London side-street was called Baker's Terrace, though it might well seem so; for Baker was the name of the builder, a worthy gentleman whose years and virtues may still be deciphered on a doddering, round-shouldered stone in a deceased cemetery not far from the scene of ...
— Merely Mary Ann • Israel Zangwill
... feverishly, concealing their distress and apprehensions from each other, and especially from their secretary, Father Beron, an army chaplain, at that time very much in the confidence of the Citizen-Saviour. That priest was a big round-shouldered man, with an unclean-looking, overgrown tonsure on the top of his flat head, of a dingy, yellow complexion, softly fat, with greasy stains all down the front of his lieutenant's uniform, and a small cross embroidered in white cotton on his left breast. ...
— Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard • Joseph Conrad
... we would have shown sense, but some cowboys from the Indian Territory told pa and the other managers that if we would take the show to the Indian Territory we couldn't get cars enough to haul the money away, as the Indians had got round-shouldered and bow-legged carrying the money they had made grazing cattle, and the territory was full of cowboys that had money to burn, and they hadn't seen a circus since ...
— Peck's Bad Boy at the Circus • George W. Peck
... the needful intellect to grasp the evident duty that lies just ahead? What else, then, do you need? No. Don't try to talk about it. Just go out and take a good, long walk in the fresh air, and forget your latter end in the more important concerns of deep breathing. You are getting disgustingly round-shouldered. Good bye. And, by the way, I'll tell Olive you will be back ...
— The Brentons • Anna Chapin Ray
... man who is following you," said Tower, as we stepped in the evening from his home on to the brightly lighted street and made our way along the edge of the canals. The tall, round-shouldered German shadowed us through the crowded streets to the Amstel Hotel. Then we shadowed him, while he telephoned for help which came in the form of a persistent Hollander, who insisted in sitting at the table next to us, although it had just ...
— The Land of Deepening Shadow - Germany-at-War • D. Thomas Curtin
... was being fixed. Gustave said it would be ready in a half-hour. He slipped the microscope over his eye and, bending in his heavy round-shouldered way above the small watch, began to pry with his thick fingers. A pair of tiny pincers, a fragile-looking screwdriver and a set of things that looked like ...
— A Thousand and One Afternoons in Chicago • Ben Hecht
... effect upon the physical bearing and development of the young. We are the creatures of imitation. I remember, at the school I attended in my seventh year, the strongest boy among my mates was quite round-shouldered. Fancying that he derived his strength from his stoop, I began to imitate him; and it was not till I learned that he was strong in spite of his round shoulders, and not because of them, that I gave up aping ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 09, No. 51, January, 1862 • Various
... crack of a rifle riveted me where I stood. One of the deer fell, and the others bounded away. I saw a tall man stride down the slope and into the glade. He was not like any of the loggers or lumbermen. They were mostly brawny and round-shouldered. This man was lithe, erect; he walked like athletes I had seen. Surely I should find a friend in him, and I lost no time in running down into the glade. He saw me as soon as I was clear of the trees, and stood leaning ...
— The Young Forester • Zane Grey
... lean over your book or your writing or any other work, the elastic cushions may get so pressed on the inner edge that they do not easily spring back into shape. In this way, you may grow round-shouldered or hump-backed. ...
— Child's Health Primer For Primary Classes • Jane Andrews
... Relish; saying, noe Sorte ever seemed unto him soe goode—he had received manie a Hamper of 'em about Christmasse. After a Time, alle but he and I went up, and out on the Leads, to see the Comet; and we two sitting quite still, and Father, doubtlesse, supposed to be alone, I saw a great round-shouldered mannish Shadowe glide acrosse the Passage, and hearde the Front-door Latch click. Darted forthe, but too late, and then into the Kitchen; with some Warmth chid Betty for soe soone agayn disobeying Orders, and threatened to tell my Mamma. She cryed pertlie, "Law, Miss ...
— Mary Powell & Deborah's Diary • Anne Manning
... think there is anything more. If there is, the coolies have thrown it down the khud, so thatt is all right. Now you go too.' He repacked the kilta with all he meant to lose, and hove it up on to the windowsill. A thousand feet below lay a long, lazy, round-shouldered bank of mist, as yet untouched by the morning sun. A thousand feet below that was a hundred-year-old pine-forest. He could see the green tops looking like a bed of moss when a wind-eddy thinned ...
— Kim • Rudyard Kipling
... of my lack of beauty, my miserable five-feet-one-inch stature, and I looked at the man beside me, small and round-shouldered, and we were both dependent children of indigence. The contrast we presented to the other pair struck me hard, and I ...
— My Brilliant Career • Miles Franklin
... boy. "Call me 'Scorch.' 'Patrick Sarsfield' makes me feel top-heavy. I'd soon get round-shouldered carrying ...
— A Little Miss Nobody - Or, With the Girls of Pinewood Hall • Amy Bell Marlowe
... Pichegru, the Marquis de Riviere and four other conspirators. A fisherman called Etienne Horne gave some valuable details of this arrival. He had noticed particularly the man who appeared to be the leader—"a fat man, with a full, rather hard face, round-shouldered, and with a ...
— The House of the Combrays • G. le Notre
... surly and selfish individual often seems to corrupt a whole group. Also it is not always the acts which I admire that are imitated. If I am frequently with a lame person, I am in danger of acquiring a limp; one who stutters is clearly injurious to my freedom of speech; round-shouldered friends may at first cause me to straighten up, but soon I am ...
— Increasing Efficiency In Business • Walter Dill Scott
... happened, as we irreverently say,—it happened as we crossed Park Square, so called from its being an irregular pentagon of which one of the sides has been taken away, that I recognized a tall man, plodding across in the snow, head down, round-shouldered, stooping forward in walking, with his right shoulder higher than his left; and by these tokens I knew Tom Coram, prince among Boston princes. Not Thomas Coram that built the Foundling Hospital, though he was of Boston too; but he was longer ago. You must look for him ...
— If, Yes and Perhaps - Four Possibilities and Six Exaggerations with Some Bits of Fact • Edward Everett Hale
... so closely that no one could doubt they were brothers-twin brothers, probably. Both were above middle height; both had olive-brown complexions, black eyes, hooked noses, pointed chins, a slightly projecting lower lip; both were round-shouldered, though this defect did not amount to disfigurement: the whole personality suggested strength, and was not destitute of masculine beauty. So strong a likeness is hardly ever seen; even their ages appeared to agree, for one would ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... they came up, sure enough, away went two boys along the footpath, keeping up with the horses—the first a light, clean-made fellow going on springs; the other stout and round-shouldered, labouring in his pace, but going ...
— Tom Brown's Schooldays • Thomas Hughes
... said, but the movement of her lips and the play of her features were full of charm, full of interest, expressing both audacity and gentleness. She spoke with fire without raising her voice. The man listened round-shouldered, but seeming much too stupid to understand. I could see now and then that he was speaking, but he was inaudible. At one moment Dona Rita turned her head to the room and called out to the maid, "Give me my hand-bag ...
— The Arrow of Gold - a story between two notes • Joseph Conrad
... intermediate port called San Pedro; and, as we were to lie there a week or two, and the California was to sail in a few days, we lost the opportunity. Just before sailing, the captain took on board a short, red-haired, round-shouldered, vulgar-looking fellow, who had lost one eye and squinted with the other, and, introducing him as Mr. Russell, told us that he was an officer on board. This was too bad. We had lost overboard, on the passage, one of the best of our number, another had been taken from ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana
... out a dry expression of his own satisfaction. His was a strange and striking personality. Dark as a mulatto, and round-shouldered to the extent of some distinct deformity, he carried his eyes high under the lids, and shot his piercing glance from under the penthouse of a beetling brow; a lipless mouth was pursed in such a fashion as to shorten the upper lip and exaggerate an ...
— Stingaree • E. W. (Ernest William) Hornung
... here—a stable-boy to camels— For in the circus-ring there's more delight Of seemly bodies, goodly in sheer health, Bodies trained and tuned to the perfect pitch, Eager, blithe, debonair, from head to heel Aglow and alive in every pulse, than elsewhere In this machine-ridden land of grimy, glum Round-shouldered, coughing mechanics. Once I lived In London, in a slum called Paradise, Sickened to see the greasy pavements crawling With puny flabby babies, thick as maggots. Poor brats! I'ld soon go mad if I'd to live ...
— Georgian Poetry 1913-15 • Edited by E. M. (Sir Edward Howard Marsh)
... And the little pale, round-shouldered dealer stood almost on tip-toe, looking over the top of his gold spectacles, and nodding his head with every mark of disbelief. Markheim returned his gaze with one of infinite pity, and a touch ...
— English Prose - A Series of Related Essays for the Discussion and Practice • Frederick William Roe (edit. and select.)
... stranded for life. He had another name, no doubt, but nobody knew or cared what it might be, and he seemed to have forgotten it himself. "Pike" fitted him, served all the purposes for which names were invented, was easy to pronounce, and therefore was all the name he needed. Pike was tall, round-shouldered, lop-sided, slouchy, good-natured, illiterate, garrulous, frankly vain of the little scraps of botanical nomenclature he had picked up and as lazy and unacquainted with soap ...
— Bears I Have Met—and Others • Allen Kelly
... they could see the gunners who had seized it straining to roll it quickly back to its former position. A huge, broad-shouldered gunner, Number One, holding a mop, his legs far apart, sprang to the wheel; while Number Two with a trembling hand placed a charge in the cannon's mouth. The short, round-shouldered Captain Tushin, stumbling over the tail of the gun carriage, moved forward and, not noticing the general, looked out shading his eyes ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... of imitation manifests itself in all their actions: hence it is by no means an uncommon occurrence to see a tall, round-shouldered, woolly-headed, buck-shinned, and inky-complexioned "Free Nigger," sauntering out on Sunday, shading his huge weather-proof face from the rays of the encroaching sun under a carefully-carried silk umbrella! And again, as in many of the places of worship the whole ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... pondered over this wretched existence, I watched the strange couple walking before me. He, slender, tall and round-shouldered. ...
— Artists' Wives • Alphonse Daudet
... half a minute; then turning his round-shouldered big back suddenly he adjusted his cuffs, muttering PROSTITUTES and WHORES and DIRTY FILTH OF WOMEN, crammed his big fists into his trousers, pulled in his chin till his fattish jowl rippled along the square jaws, panted, grunted, very completely satisfied, very ...
— The Enormous Room • Edward Estlin Cummings |
