"Stump" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... he replied, holding up the stump of his left arm, from which the sleeve was dangling. "I lost thet more 'n a y'ar ago. I b'long ter the calvary,—Fust Alabama,—and bein' as I carn't manage a nag now, they 's ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 86, December, 1864 • Various
... church! What's here? Life buoy, sir. Mr. Starbuck's orders. Oh, look, sir! Beware the hatchway! Thank ye, man. Thy coffin lies handy to the vault. Sir? The hatchway? oh! So it does, sir, so it does. Art not thou the leg-maker? Look, did not this stump come from thy shop? I believe it did, sir; does the ferrule stand, sir? Well enough. But art thou not also the undertaker? Aye, sir; I patched up this thing here as a coffin for Queequeg; but they've set me now to turning it into something else. Then tell me; art thou not ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville
... they seen his wife and babies. But no one had seen them—no one had notified them of the impending explosion! Jimmie was sobbing, calling out distractedly; he ran out to the road, and after much searching found a charred tree-stump which gave him his precise bearings, so that he knew where the house should have been, and could assure himself that it was precisely where that frightful slope started down into the abyss. He slid around on this slope, calling aloud, as if he expected the spirits ...
— Jimmie Higgins • Upton Sinclair
... it. "You can see now that what I told you was true," said she; "you put your own eyes out." Silas would say nothing in reply; he would simply make an animal sound of defiance like a grunt in his throat, and frown. If Hannah kept on, he would stump heavily out of the room, and swing the ...
— Pembroke - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... deer, bear, and coon skins nailed up on the sides of houses to dry. Edison had read about bears, but couldn't remember whether they were day or night prowlers. The farther they went the more apprehensive they became, and every stump in the ravished forest looked like a bear. The other lad proposed seeking safety up a tree, but Edison demurred on the plea that bears could climb, and that the message must be delivered that night to enable the captain to catch the morning train. First one ...
— Edison, His Life and Inventions • Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin
... bery quiet to see what him after. He walk more dan a mile, den he get on to de oder side of dat big hill; den me see him stop, and Jake tink it time to interfere, so he ran up and catch him. He had put dis ting against a stump of a tree, and had him pistol in him hand, and was on de point of firing it close to dis ting, so as ...
— True to the Old Flag - A Tale of the American War of Independence • G. A. Henty
... I'd burn the last ham in the locker to overtake her!"—and he hurls the glowing stump after the "Senator," as the Spartan youth hurled their shields into the thick of the battle ...
— Four Years in Rebel Capitals - An Inside View of Life in the Southern Confederacy from Birth to Death • T. C. DeLeon
... in a boisterous round to the music of a barrel-organ; some bawling a popular song in a gay, ever-repeated chorus; some raffling for nuts and biscuits at smartly-decked fair-booths, or playing at Chinese billiards for painted mugs or huge cakes of gilt gingerbread; some listening to the stump orations of an extempore fortuneteller, who promised the baton of the field-marshal to any conscript who would give him a penny; and some buying by yards the patriotic, soul-stirring songs of Beranger, and reciting them in every tone, in every key and ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 90, June, 1875 • Various
... frequenter of the sick-room, by desire of the invalid. After laboriously toiling up the shallow stairs—a work entailing huge effort of limbs and chin—he would stump gravely into the room without any form of salutation. There are some great minds above such trifles. His examination of the patient was a matter of some minutes. Then he would say, "Bad case," with the peculiar mechanical diction that was his—the words that Meredith had ...
— With Edged Tools • Henry Seton Merriman
... the Senate and House of Representatives, in General Court assembled, and by the authority of the same, That a tract of Land at the south western extremity of the town of Groton, bounded by a line beginning at a large white oak stump, on the southeast side of Nashua River, being the northwest corner of the town of Harvard; thence running southeasterly on Harvard line, as the town bounds direct, till it comes to the stump of a pine tree lately fallen down, ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume II. No. 2, November, 1884 • Various
... imperial robe Blazing along his coasts. Then let him roll His galleons round the little Golden Hynde, Bring her to bay, if he can, on the high seas, Ring us about with thousands, we'll not yield, I and my Golden Hynde, we will go down, With flag still flying on the last stump left us And all my cannon spitting out the fires Of everlasting scorn into ...
— Collected Poems - Volume One (of 2) • Alfred Noyes
... was leaning against a stump, and while he was calmly lighting a pipe he regarded the three boys with ...
— The Guns of Shiloh • Joseph A. Altsheler
... you see here plain enough: Grant I'm a beast, why, beasts must lead beasts' lives! Suppose I own at once to tail and claws; 350 The tailless man exceeds me: but being tailed I'll lash out lion fashion, and leave apes To dock their stump and dress their haunches up. My business is not to remake myself, But make the absolute best of what God made. Or—our first simile—though you prove me doomed To a viler berth still, to the steerage-hole, ...
— Men and Women • Robert Browning
... then retired into a sort of ambuscade—at least he mingled with a small clump of three Scotch firs, and stood amongst them so rectilinear he might have passed for the fourth stump. Walter awaited the arrival of the foe, but in a spirit which has seldom conducted men to conquest and glory, for if the English infantry had deviated so far from their insular habits as to admire the Spaniards, you may be sure that Gibraltar rock at this day would ...
— A Perilous Secret • Charles Reade
... out; then, seating himself on a great stump that stood near the door, he gazed out upon the still and desolate landscape, which was just distinguishable in the first grey light of morning. He had become absorbed in a reverie on the events that had brought him into so strange a locality when he felt his arm lightly touched, ...
— The King's Warrant - A Story of Old and New France • Alfred H. Engelbach
... bent the sapling far over and released it. As it sprang erect the bark strip slapped the end of the gun. Also, the watchers saw something hitherto unnoticed—a thin, flexible vine attached to the top of the thin stump. Lourenco's ...
— The Pathless Trail • Arthur O. (Arthur Olney) Friel
... how we got away from the Iroquois, Chouart?" Radisson asks Groseillers, who sits in a chair rough-hewn from a stump on the other ...
— Heralds of Empire - Being the Story of One Ramsay Stanhope, Lieutenant to Pierre Radisson in the Northern Fur Trade • Agnes C. Laut
... reached the stump of the old tree which he had himself hewn down, he noticed a man sitting beside it, with a face as ...
— Childhood's Favorites and Fairy Stories - The Young Folks Treasury, Volume 1 • Various
... mud and water splashed up by the horse, and kept the trousers dry. Thus prepared, the rider proceeded to mount, which was by no means an easy matter, considering what was already upon the horse's back. The horse was placed as near as possible to a stump, from which, with a "pretty wide stride and fling of the leg," the rider would spring into his seat. It was so difficult to mount and dismount, that experienced travelers would seldom get off until the party halted for noon, and not again until it ...
— Captains of Industry - or, Men of Business Who Did Something Besides Making Money • James Parton
... up one ear on hearing his young master's voice, then, putting his head knowingly on one side, as if he understood every word that had been said, he trotted to the front and splashed through the pools of mud and water, his stump of a tail ...
— The Boy with the U. S. Weather Men • Francis William Rolt-Wheeler
... the lumberman shiver. But the fellow crowded his cigar stump in his mouth, with fire and all, and chewed it up as he ...
— The Furnace of Gold • Philip Verrill Mighels
... which he put in his pocket. On the instant, the King forgets his dignity, and cane in hand runs to this valet (who little suspected what was in store for him), strikes him; abuses him, and breaks the cane upon his body! The truth is, 'twas only a reed, and snapped easily. However, the stump in his hand, he walked away like a man quite beside himself, continuing to abuse this valet, and entered Madame de Maintenon's room, where he remained nearly an hour. Upon coming out he met Father ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... habit of dispersing flattering delusions and wilful pretences by bringing the dry light of truth to bear upon them—a gratuitous disagreeableness which was perhaps the reason why he was now perched on a tree-stump alone, casting shy, bird-like glances hither and thither—at two children quarrelling over a cracked tea-cup, at the rector halting about uncomfortably amongst the "secondary people," at his wife being instructed by Lady Latimer, at Lady Latimer ...
— The Vicissitudes of Bessie Fairfax • Harriet Parr
... carried their guide-books and opera-glasses, and fell into raptures at every footstep, there are dismal ruins now. The Vendome Column is a stump, wreathed with a gigantic immortelle, and capped with the tri-color. The Hall of the Marshals is a black hole. Those noble rooms in which the first magistrate of the city of Boulevards gave welcome to crowds of English guests, are destroyed. In the ...
— The Cockaynes in Paris - 'Gone abroad' • Blanchard Jerrold
... left and the bar was closed, Dick had nothing to do till evening, and he wandered outside and sat down on a stump, at first looking at the work going on in the valley, then so absorbed in his own thoughts that he noticed nothing, not even the driving mist which presently set in. He was calculating that he had, with ...
— Among Malay Pirates - And Other Tales Of Adventure And Peril • G. A. Henty
... jammed in the cleft of a rock, the stump of a hoof, or sticking up sharply, the jagged splinter of a leg; while far down the bluff lay the animal to which it belonged. One would see the poor dead brutes lying head and tail for an hundred yards ...
— The Trail of '98 - A Northland Romance • Robert W. Service
... of wonder flickered in his brooding eyes; and clipped between two fingers, his cigarette grew a long ash, let it fall, and burned down to a stump so short that the coal almost scorched his flesh. He dropped it and crushed out the fire with his heel, ...
— The Lone Wolf - A Melodrama • Louis Joseph Vance
... changed his tactics. Reversing the coil, he cast the loop over a friendly stump that chanced to be at hand; then, gripping the rope in his hand, he boldly cast himself into the midst of that whirl of froth and ...
— The Banner Boy Scouts on a Tour - The Mystery of Rattlesnake Mountain • George A. Warren
... every time—A man pays in money, or in jewels or in disgrace, or in regret and remorse—and he has to calculate beforehand to what extent that which he desires is worth the price which will become due—It is a brainless idiot who does not calculate, or who laments when he has to stump up. I admit women are of supreme interest to me, and their companionship and affection—bought or otherwise—are necessary to my existence—So I resignedly discharged my debt ...
— Man and Maid • Elinor Glyn
... hear me, O the length of the saving arm of God! As yet thou art within the reach thereof; do not thou go about to measure arms with God, as some good men are apt to do: I mean, do not thou conclude, that because thou canst not reach God by thy short stump, therefore he cannot reach thee with his long arm. Look again, "Hast thou an arm like God" (Job 40:9), an arm like his for length and strength? It becomes thee, when thou canst not perceive that God is within the reach of thy arm, ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... had we not been hanging between life and death. In such a strait desperate ventures are best, and God protects those whom man pursues. We were congratulating ourselves on being out of danger, when all at once the horse struck against a stump, and catching his hoof in a root on the ground, fell down. Before we were up he had made off into the darkness, and I could hear him galloping farther and farther away. As we fell I had caught Edmee in my arms. She was unhurt. My own ankle, however, was sprained so severely that it ...
— Mauprat • George Sand
... he planted his foot upon the first branch stump a foot below the edge of the yawning hole; but the moment he touched it a violent jerk was given to the tree-trunk, just as if it had been seized by some one below and ...
— The Kopje Garrison - A Story of the Boer War • George Manville Fenn
... that the X-plosive came fully up to expectations. The smallest charge they had prepared, fired by Crane at a great stump a full hundred yards away from the bare, flat-topped knoll that had afforded them a landing-place, tore it bodily from the ground and reduced it to splinters, while the force of the explosion made the ...
— The Skylark of Space • Edward Elmer Smith and Lee Hawkins Garby
... may be made a Man of a Stump of a Tree. Wait upon me to Church, and then run Home and make the Bed, and put every Thing in its Place; let the House be set to Rights from Top to Bottom, rub the Chamber-Pot, put these foul Things out of Sight, perhaps I may have some Gentry come to pay me a Visit; if I find any ...
— Colloquies of Erasmus, Volume I. • Erasmus
... Water wuz toted from de spring an' kept in piggins. Don't spec' you ebber did see a piggin. Dats a wooden bucket wid wire hoops 'roun' it to keep it from leakin'. De wash place wuz nex' to de spring. Pa fixed us up a big old stump whar us had to battle de clo'es wid a battlin' stick. It tuk a sight of battlin' to git de ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves - Georgia Narratives, Part 4 • Works Projects Administration
... I was when I found myself standing on the toppen part of a high stump with a lot of white folks walking around looking at the little scared boy that was me. Pretty soon the old master, (that's my first master) Saul Nudville, he say to me that I'm now belonging to Major Bee and for me to get ...
— Slave Narratives, Oklahoma - A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From - Interviews with Former Slaves • Various
... named Eli Hatton, having been gibbeted on Pingry Tump, a point on the Forest hills overlooking the town, the flies from the body being supposed to resort to the meat on the butchers' stalls. The body was cut down in the night time, but the stump of the gallows is yet remembered by old inhabitants as "Eli's Post," and as a spot to be ...
— The Forest of Dean - An Historical and Descriptive Account • H. G. Nicholls
... a tremendous political career during the election, having made two stump speeches of an hour and a half each,—after you went away,—one in Dedham town-hall and one in Jamaica Plain, with such eminent success that many invitations came to me from the surrounding villages, and if I had continued in active political life I might have ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... of the coast (Sequoia sempervirens) had the stronger hold upon existence, forming as it did large forests throughout a narrow belt about three hundred miles in length, and being so tenacious of life that every large stump sprouts into a copse. But it does not pass the bay of Monterey, nor cross the line of Oregon, although so grandly developed not far below it. The more remarkable Sequoia gigantea of the Sierra exists in numbers so limited ...
— Darwiniana - Essays and Reviews Pertaining to Darwinism • Asa Gray
... ground of considerable extent. Here, as he lay among the weeds, nothing was visible of him above their tops but his two ears, which might easily have been taken for two stakes, or the roots of an upturned stump. As he lay shivering in the damp grass, he felt anything but comfortable. The sun went down, the moon arose and shed a cold light over the face of nature, which made him feel ...
— Harper's Young People, May 11, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... therefore, had touched altogether the wrong chord when he spoke of displacing Grace. And when, that same afternoon, he sauntered down to the pier-head, wearied with his parish work, not only did Tardrew stump away in silence as soon as he appeared, but Captain Willis's face assumed a grave and severe look, which was not often to ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume I • Charles Kingsley
... cuffin, this small key opens the inner hole, where you will find two barrels; bring one of them. I'll warrant it of the best, for the brewer himself drank some of the same sort but two hours before I nimm'd them. Come, stump, my cull, make yourself wings. Ho, Dame Bingo, is not that pot of thine seething yet? Ah, my young gentleman, you commence betimes; so much the better; if love's a summer's day, we all know how early a summer morning begins," added the jovial Egyptian in a lower voice ...
— The Disowned, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... brother, or, by other accounts, his grandson, when his quadruped relative fell through the ice of a frozen lake, and was at once devoured by certain serpents lurking in the depths of the waters. Manabozho, intent on revenge, transformed himself into the stump of a tree, and by this artifice surprised and slew the king of the serpents, as he basked with his followers in the noontide sun. The serpents, who were all manitous, caused, in their rage, the waters of the lake to deluge the earth. Manabozho climbed a tree, which, in answer to his entreaties, ...
— The Jesuits in North America in the Seventeenth Century • Francis Parkman
... patch of gravel. The road ahead was a wet black smear, criss-crossed with ruts. The car shot into a morass of prairie gumbo—which is mud mixed with tar, fly-paper, fish glue, and well-chewed, chocolate-covered caramels. When cattle get into gumbo, the farmers send for the stump-dynamite ...
— Free Air • Sinclair Lewis
... crawl under a hollow stump, for he thought perhaps the noise might be made by a bad wolf, or a savage fox, sharpening his teeth on a hard log, when ...
— Bully and Bawly No-Tail • Howard R. Garis
... middle of a lava rock was a puzzle. We soon found many others and saw that, however, this shape came about, trees were not the foundation. Each consisted of a large number of concentric circles exactly like the rings in a tree stump, some ...
— The Incomparable 29th and the "River Clyde" • George Davidson
... in here with me!" exclaimed the mouse lady, as she pointed to a hole in a hollow stump, and into it she and Bully went, basket of chips and all, just in time to escape ...
— Bully and Bawly No-Tail • Howard R. Garis
... shapes; the river veiled itself under a red glow. Above the roaring and crackling of the flames rose the inhuman yelling of the savages. Like demons of the inferno they ran to and fro, their naked painted bodies shining in the glare. One group of savages formed a circle and danced hands-around a stump as gayly as a band of school-girls at a May party. They wrestled with and hugged one another; they hopped, skipped and jumped, and in every possible way ...
— Betty Zane • Zane Grey
... the eagerness of my fancy prevailed, and to work I went. I felled a cedar-tree, and I question much whether Solomon ever had such a one for the building of the Temple of Jerusalem; it was five feet ten inches diameter at the lower part next the stump, and four feet eleven inches diameter at the end of twenty-two feet; after which it lessened for a while, and then parted into branches. It was not without infinite labour that I felled this tree; I was twenty days hacking and hewing at it at the bottom; I was fourteen ...
— Robinson Crusoe • Daniel Defoe
... on towards the sea. It was a warm day, and a torpid peace began to settle down upon the carriage. Ukridge had thrown away the stump of his cigar, and was now leaning back with his mouth open and his eyes shut. Aunty, still clutching a much-bitten section of a beef sandwich, was breathing heavily and swaying from side to side. Albert and the ...
— Love Among the Chickens • P. G. Wodehouse
... clothes; for Bedney and me has got too much famly pride to let outsiders do for our own folks; but Miss Leo, you can do what nobody else in this wide world can. I ain't a gwine to walk the devil 'round the stump, and you mustn't take no 'fence when I jumps plum to the pint. Mars Lennox is huntin' down Miss Ellice's child like a hungry hound runs a rabbit, and I want you to call him off. If he thinks half as much of you as he oughter, you can stop ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... act for themselves; and such always is the character of the born leader: these true leaders are almost always forced into the opposition; and thus separating between themselves and the men fitted by nature to render them formidable, they fall under the direction of mere chatterers and stump orators, which is in reality no direction at all. The author of the "Working Man's Way in the World"—evidently a very superior man—had, he tells us, to quit at one time his employment, overborne by the senseless ...
— My Schools and Schoolmasters - or The Story of my Education. • Hugh Miller
... the other. "As usual you're right, Rankin," he said slowly. "The Lord knows Mollie gets restless enough at times. People were like ants in a hill where she was raised, and that life was a part of her." He took a last puff at the cigarette, and with a toss sent the smoking stump spinning like a firefly into the darkness. "And Flossie can't grow up wild—I know that. I'll talk your suggestion over with Mollie first, but I think I'd be safe in saying right now that ...
— Ben Blair - The Story of a Plainsman • Will Lillibridge
... blazed from beneath their sockets like the eyes of a grey timber wolf, the centre of a howling pack. Next to him lank Wagner stood, waiting with closed lips; his lips as grey as those of the dead man on the floor. Rank Judge had not moved, but the harness on his wooden stump creaked softly as his weight shifted from leg to leg. Fat Buck Walker was perspiring almost grotesquely, like an earthenware pitcher. Great drops hung from his chin, from his uptilted nose, and his cotton shirt was dark. Slim Simpson, white before, was like a ...
— Where the Trail Divides • Will Lillibridge
... high fern & fallen timber, added to this the hills were So Steep that I was compelled to draw my Self up by the assistance of those bushes- The Timber on those hills are of the pine Species large and tall maney of them more than 200 feet high & from 8 to 10 feet through at the Stump those hills & as far back as I could See, I Saw Some Elk Sign, on the Spur of the mountain tho not fresh. I killed a Salmon trout on my return. The Hail which fell 2 nights past is yet to be Seen on the mountains; I Saw in my ramble to day a red berry resembling Solomons Seal berry ...
— The Journals of Lewis and Clark • Meriwether Lewis et al
... by the fireside on a stool, which was merely a tree stump, for their furniture was of the roughest kind. Her mother quickly plucked the feathers from the wild fowl that had just been brought in and prepared them for the kettle that hung on the crane ...
— Some Three Hundred Years Ago • Edith Gilman Brewster
... situated in a beautiful part of Devonshire, near the sea-shore, in the neighbourhood of Plymouth; and as Miss Walsingham was walking on the beach, she saw an old fisherman mooring his boat to the projecting stump of a tree. His figure was so picturesque, that she stopped to sketch it; and as she was drawing, a woman came from the cottage near the shore to ask the fisherman what luck he had had. "A fine turbot," says he, "and ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. V - Tales of a Fashionable Life • Maria Edgeworth
... the right bank of the river rose rocky and precipitous almost from the water's edge. There was, however, a narrow strip of shore, formed chiefly of earth and shingle; and here the party landed, making the boat fast to the stump of an ...
— Soldiers of the Queen • Harold Avery
... Beatrice felt like other human beings in this matter and all the principal affairs of life. He had made up his mind, and he never repeated the words he had spoken to himself. He was a simple man, and he puffed at his stump of a black cigar and strolled down to the boat to find out whether the Cripple and the Son of the Fool had spliced that old spare mooring-rope which had done duty last night and had been ...
— The Children of the King • F. Marion Crawford
... the stump in question. Perhaps he had caught the hidden meaning to Allan's words; and could give a pretty good guess as ...
— The Boy Scouts' First Camp Fire - or, Scouting with the Silver Fox Patrol • Herbert Carter
... gates of the park were still there; but the old trees were cut down in the avenue, a black stump jutting out here and there, and casting long shadows as I passed in the moonlight over the worn grass-grown old road. A few cows were at pasture there. The garden-gate was gone, and the place a tangled wilderness. ...
— Barry Lyndon • William Makepeace Thackeray
... pain he in his head-piece feels, "Against a stubbed tree he reels, "And up went poor Hobgoblin's heels: "Alas, his brain was dizzy. "At length upon his feet he gets, "Hobgoblin fumes, Hobgoblin frets; "And as again he forward sets, "And through the bushes scrambles, "A stump doth hit him in his pace, "Down comes poor Hob upon his face, "And lamentably tore his case "Among the ...
— Johnson's Notes to Shakespeare Vol. I Comedies • Samuel Johnson
... us was towing, while the other remained in the canoe to steer. Just as we got to a very narrow strip of the canal near the entrance to a lock, we met some barges coming down in tow of a tug, and, as luck would have it, our tow-line fouled a tree stump just at the moment when the tail barge began to swing ominously ...
— Through Canal-Land in a Canadian Canoe • Vincent Hughes
... made no attempt to board. Spanish chivalry was hardly more conspicuous on this occasion than Dutch valour, as illustrated by Admiral Haultain. Two whole days and nights Klaaszoon drifted about in his crippled ship, exchanging broadsides with his antagonists, and with his colours flying on the stump of his mast. The fact would seem incredible, were it not attested by perfectly trustworthy contemporary accounts. At last his hour seemed to have come. His ship was sinking; a final demand for surrender, with promise of quarter, ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... Fraser and Mulholland, who had left the camp at daylight, had not yet returned. I was sitting in the tent, when Macnamee came to inform me that one of the frying-pans was missing, which had been in use the evening previous, for that he himself had placed it on the stump of a tree, and he therefore supposed a native dog had run away with it. Soon after this, another loss was reported to me, and it was at last discovered that an extensive robbery had been committed upon us during the night, and that, in addition to the frying-pan, three cutlasses, and five tomahawks, ...
— Two Expeditions into the Interior of Southern Australia, Complete • Charles Sturt
... when that gentleman directed a kick at him, the bull-dog flew at the visitor's shins, and, making but one bite of it, snapped the ankle-bone clean in two. The thief had the courage to tear him away, and returned, walking upon the bare bone of the mutilated stump till he reached the rest of the gang, when he fell fainting, and they carried him off. The Police News, of course, did not fail to report this delightful night incident, but ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... my sentiments exactly and fully: though perhaps I feel the relief extra strongly from having during many years vainly attempted to form some hypothesis. When you or Huxley say that a single cell of a plant, or the stump of an amputated limb, have the "potentiality" of reproducing the whole—or "diffuse an influence," these words give me no positive idea;—but when it is said that the cells of a plant, or stump, include atoms derived from every other cell of the whole ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume II • Francis Darwin
... I'm doing, sitting over here in the grass like a stump," said Hilary. "If he takes me for one, he must think I've got an ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... the domestic hearth as Bart, passes that limited portion of his time on which the office and its contingencies have no claim. He dwells in a little narrow street, always solitary, shady, and sad, closely bricked in on all sides like a tomb, but where there yet lingers the stump of an old forest tree whose flavour is about as fresh and natural as ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... farmer to grow. Notwithstanding the comparatively sure and easy incomes which result from the farm woodlands that are well managed, farmers as a class neglect their timber. Not infrequently they sell their timber on the stump at low rates through ignorance of the real market value of the wood. In other cases, they do not care for their woodlands properly. They cut without regard to future growth. They do not pile the slashings and hence expose the timber tracts to fire dangers. They convert ...
— The School Book of Forestry • Charles Lathrop Pack
... of my winter neighbors that actually rap at my door are the nuthatches and woodpeckers, and these do not know that it is my door. My retreat is covered with the bark of young chestnut-trees, and the birds, I suspect, mistake it for a huge stump that ought to hold fat grubs (there is not even a book-worm inside of it), and their loud rapping often makes me think I have a caller indeed. I place fragments of hickory-nuts in the interstices of the bark, and thus attract the nuthatches; ...
— A Year in the Fields • John Burroughs
... different course. Instead, the animal almost brushed him as it dashed past, his face set and hard, his eyes staring. "Get out of this, you fool, get out!" the Mole heard him mutter as he swung round a stump and disappeared ...
— The Wind in the Willows • Kenneth Grahame
... passage the sharp noise of a wooden leg on the boards. It was Hippolyte bringing back Emma's luggage. In order to put it down he described painfully a quarter of a circle with his stump. ...
— Madame Bovary • Gustave Flaubert
... took a good photo—and knew it! It was displayed in every conceivable pose in the newspapers and fought the weather on the side of many a livery barn long after the "Grand Rally" with its crop of cheer-strained throats was a thing of the past. His ability as a stump speaker and his hail-fellow-well-met-and-how's-the-baby way of mixing with the crowd had popularized him to the bamboozlement of his admirers. So that in election forecasts his seat in the Legislature always had headed the list at party headquarters, while in the opposition ...
— Every Man for Himself • Hopkins Moorhouse
... thought, and still think, Homer, or King David, or Sir Walter alone were worthy to rehearse. The severe little man was mitigated, and condescended to say, "Rab, my man, puir Rabbie,"—whereupon the stump of a tail rose up, the ears were cocked, the eyes filled, and were comforted; the two friends were reconciled. "Hupp!" and a stroke of the whip were given to Jess; and off went ...
— Short Stories Old and New • Selected and Edited by C. Alphonso Smith
... for he gave a low, despairing cry and the tears sprang to his eyes. He was but a boy. The other had a foot torn off. One of the orderlies gave him two round pieces of wood to hold in his hands while the young surgeon cut away the hanging flesh and bound up the stump. ...
— All Roads Lead to Calvary • Jerome K. Jerome
... crept into a stack because the wind was blowing, Hollered out a nest and closed the door-way with a clump, Laid and heard the whisper of the silence, growing, growing, Watched a thousand wheeling stars and wondered if they'd bump? What I say would stump Joshua! But I've done it, sir. Don't think I'm off ...
— Collected Poems - Volume Two (of 2) • Alfred Noyes
... he said to one perched high on an old stump, "wouldn't you like to have one sniff of a sea-breeze, and a look round for a sea-pyot or two? What do they give you here—dead fish, ...
— Macleod of Dare • William Black
... of Pernambuco with the lights doused," he soliloquized. Then he remembered a little stump of candle he kept in his desk for use when heating sealing wax, so he lighted the candle and by its meager rays took inventory of his features in the little ...
— Cappy Ricks Retires • Peter B. Kyne
... seemed steeped in an intoxicating wine of expectation, while his eyes and ears and nose had never been keener to register the facts of the forest-land. He saw the black thing far ahead that resembled a burned stump, but he knew was a bear before it vanished; he saw gray flash of deer and wolf and coyote, and the red of fox, and the small, wary heads of old gobblers just sticking above the grass; and he saw deep tracks of game as well as the slow-rising blades of bluebells where some soft-footed ...
— The Man of the Forest • Zane Grey
... filled us with astonishment. Two of the tents were down, and the third in a collapsed condition, while confusion reigned supreme. And in the midst of it all stood Mr. Cooke, an animated central figure pedestalled on a stump, giving emphatic directions in a voice of authority. He spied us from his elevated position before we had crossed ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... days, but a family dedicated to hard work winter and summer in paying for and improving a large farm, in a country of wide open valleys and long, broad-backed hills and gentle flowing mountain lines; very old geologically, but only one generation from the stump in the history of the settlement. Indeed, the stumps lingered in many of the fields late into my boyhood, and one of my tasks in the dry mid- spring weather was to burn these stumps—an occupation I always enjoyed because the adventure ...
— My Boyhood • John Burroughs
... a great danger upon your head.' Our hero and Nancy emerged from the wood and there lay spread before them a lake of shining water, though dark as soot. Its area was probably about twenty acres; and although its depth seemed to be great, a black stump rose here and there from the surface. The two had not walked far when the shrill voice of the ...
— The Four Canadian Highwaymen • Joseph Edmund Collins
... diminutive of ceppo, stump or log: more commonly written cepperello (cf. p. 32) or ceppatello. The form ciapperello seems to be found ...
— The Decameron, Volume I • Giovanni Boccaccio
... greater as noon came on, till he began to be so hot and parched that his tongue clave to the roof of his mouth. "I can find a cure for this," thought he; "now will I milk my cow and quench my thirst;" so he tied her to the stump of a tree, and held his leather cap to milk into; but not a ...
— Types of Children's Literature • Edited by Walter Barnes
... smile rose to her thin lips as she dwelt on it, and she increased her pace. She opened a little gate, and moved rapidly on towards an ornamental poultry-house near the boundary of the estate. The extra shawl was soon spread upon the stump of a tree, the sketch-book opened, and with her eye intently fixed on the fantastic chimney of the hen-house, she listened for every sound. She moved the pencil as if busily engaged in sketching; but, strange to ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 57, No. 351, January 1845 • Various
... Oglugechana is usually a hollow stump, around which all of the nearest trees are felled by lightning. There is an open spot in the deep woods wherever he dwells. His weapons are the plumes of various birds. Great numbers of these variegated feathers are ...
— Old Indian Days • [AKA Ohiyesa], Charles A. Eastman
... the stump of Magellan's gallows stood black against a crimson dawn, they landed and the tragedy of estrangement and suspicion ended. Thomas Doughty was tried for mutiny and treason before a jury of his peers. Every man there held ...
— Days of the Discoverers • L. Lamprey
... himself for over a week, showing a novice how to "drive"; and at cricket on one occasion I remember seeing his middle stump go down like a ninepin just as he was explaining to the bowler how to get the balls in straight. After which he had a long argument with the umpire as to whether he was ...
— Sketches in Lavender, Blue and Green • Jerome K. Jerome
... of the ground immediately in front of me to the south showed, within reach, the stump of a sapling. I couldn't see whether it had been cut by shell fire or for camouflage. Wriggling forward a few feet, I extended my arm outside the bush. It was too clean a cut for shell fire, my fingers ...
— Winning a Cause - World War Stories • John Gilbert Thompson and Inez Bigwood
... which strikes off a weekly newspaper, in which are a serial story, poetry, and many profound and moral reflections. The men play cards and backgammon, read, write, smoke, and tell marvellous stories, commencing, "It wasn't fairly day, and we were hardly wide enough awake to tell a tree-stump from a gray coat,"—or, "When we saw them coming, we first formed in square, corner towards them you know, and waited till they were close on us, and then, Sir, we opened and gave them our cannon, grape-shot, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 77, March, 1864 • Various
... on which his wife had waxed wroth these many years. In his cogitations Phil was always an unaccountable and irresponsible being: it had not occurred to him that she might resent his veiled charges against her father and Amzi. Waterman, by reason of his long experience as a stump speaker, knew how to deal with interruptions. He caught up instantly the challenge Phil had flung ...
— Otherwise Phyllis • Meredith Nicholson
... the neck. They then wrung his neck, separated the head from the body by a slight draw of the sword, and let it drop into the water;—there was a dying shriek—a convulsive struggle—and all I could discern was the arms dangling over the side of the canoe, and the ragged stump pouring out the blood ...
— Narrative of the shipwreck of the brig Betsey, of Wiscasset, Maine, and murder of five of her crew, by pirates, • Daniel Collins
... the stump in Tennessee as a candidate for Governor, and thus I cut my eagle loose: "Fellow Citizens, we live in the grandest country in ...
— Gov. Bob. Taylor's Tales • Robert L. Taylor
... endeared it to me. Its feet were pressed close together on a small round stand; but one day somebody set it down on a hot stove, where it remained without flinching till the feet were melted off. After some years my mother had an ebony stump affixed to it, preserving the proportions of the figure and setting it once more erect. He was of greater endurance and of finer physical if not of moral development than the Tin Soldier of Hans Christian Andersen. The other ornament, less than half the Egyptian's size, and also made ...
— Hawthorne and His Circle • Julian Hawthorne
... my efforts and got alongside, clutching the rind of that old stump, and swimming and scrambling, at last was within reach of the princess. Thereon the log lifted her playfully to my arms, and when I had laid hold came down, a crushing weight, and forced us far into the clammy bosom of Martian sea. Again we came up, coughing and choking—I tugging ...
— Gulliver of Mars • Edwin L. Arnold
... sat there I figured a bit on what was going to happen. There was a light breeze, and presently I noticed something on the other side of the canyon, about fifty yards away. The wind swayed some bushes that grew around a charred stump, and from time to time the black end of the stump showed up and then disappeared very much like a bear's head peeping out ...
— Bears I Have Met—and Others • Allen Kelly
... the ground and leaves the root-stock, which soon dries up. These bramble-stumps, sheltered and protected by the thorny brushwood, are in great demand among a host of Hymenoptera who have families to settle. The stump, when dry, offers to any one that knows how to use it a hygienic dwelling, where there is no fear of damp from the sap; its soft and abundant pith lends itself to easy work; and the top offers a weak spot which makes it ...
— Bramble-bees and Others • J. Henri Fabre
... to whom this earthiness and wildness are repulsive, to whom old Martin Doul's love pleading to Molly Byrne is unendurable. A dirty "shabby stump of a man," a beggar, blind and middle-aged, is asking a fine white girl, young, and as teasing as an ox-eyed and ox-minded colleen may be, to go away with him. Not an exalting situation, exactly, as you read of it or see it on the stage, ...
— Irish Plays and Playwrights • Cornelius Weygandt
... done by tying a strong, waxed cord around the protruding mass close to the vulva, winding the cord around pieces of wood, so as to draw it as tightly as possible, cutting off the organ below this ligature, tying a thread on any artery that may still bleed, and returning the stump well ...
— Special Report on Diseases of Cattle • U.S. Department of Agriculture
... tall—heavy and had a full face. Always had unlighted cigar in his mouth. He was the first man I saw who smoked ten cent cigars. Niggers used to run to get "the stumps" and the lucky nigger who got the "stump" could even sell it for a dime to the other niggers for after all—wasn't it General Toombs' cigar? The General never wore expensive clothes and always carried a crooked-handled walking stick. I'se never heard him ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves: Volume IV, Georgia Narratives, Part 1 • Works Projects Administration
... I had done nothing, and that Heloise had told me to do it, and the reason why. That made the Baronne think a little. I am sure she wished for the advice of Hippolyte; but the end of it was, that she asked me how much dot you were going to allow me! I said I did not know, and that seemed to stump her. At last she said she supposed, as we were people of consideration, and that I was the only child, it would be something considerable. I do believe, Mamma, she was thinking that I might do for the Marquis! It was only ...
— The Visits of Elizabeth • Elinor Glyn
... vigour, and about as thick as a bearing-post. I built my room round this with strong walls of stone and a roof to cover them, and I made the doors strong and well-fitting. Then I cut off the top boughs of the olive tree and left the stump standing. This I dressed roughly from the root upwards and then worked with carpenter's tools well and skilfully, straightening my work by drawing a line on the wood, and making it into a bed-prop. I then bored a hole down the ...
— The Odyssey • Homer
... room. That, a loose pile of manuscript alternately hastily scribbled and painfully exact, told of the varying moods under which it had been produced;—that and a tiny pile of cigarette stumps in the nearby ash-tray, some scarcely lit and others burned to a tiny stump, which had become the ...
— The Dominant Dollar • Will Lillibridge |
