"Stump" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... emerged into the clearing, the Colonel sat down upon a stump and wiped his red face. The veins in his forehead and neck were swollen purple, and he breathed hard. "It's hotter ...
— Jerome, A Poor Man - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... flew at Tam wi' furious ettle; But little wist she Maggie's mettle! Ae spring brought off her master hale, But left behind her ain grey tail: The carlin claught her by the rump, And left poor Maggie scarce a stump. ...
— Poems And Songs Of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... feet he gets, Hobgoblin fumes, Hobgoblin frets; And as again he forward sets, And through the bushes scrambles, A stump doth trip him in his pace; Down comes poor Hob upon his face, And lamentably tore his case, Amongst the ...
— Playful Poems • Henry Morley
... horizontally half through, a foot from the ground, after which they cut out the upper part in a slope, till it meets the transverse cut, whence a liquor distils into a hollow made in the semicircular shelf, or stump, which, after being boiled, becomes good tar, and if boiled still more, becomes perfect pitch, both of these answering well for marine use. Such a tree produces two quarts of this juice daily for a month, after which it dries ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume X • Robert Kerr
... near, became excited and discharged theirs also. The tents were struck, Loomis' First Michigan Battery manned, and we awaited the attack, but none was made. It was a false alarm. Some sentinel probably halted a stump and fired, thus rousing a thousand men from their warm beds. This is the first night ...
— The Citizen-Soldier - or, Memoirs of a Volunteer • John Beatty
... couple of water wagons in the rear, came into view, the ground went suddenly stone bare, stripped naked and trampled smooth as a floor. Never before had Hardy seen the earth so laid waste and desolate, the very cactus trimmed down to its woody stump and every spear of root grass searched out from the shelter of the spiny chollas. He glanced once more at his companion, whose face was sullen and unresponsive; there was a well-defined bristle to his short mustache and ...
— Hidden Water • Dane Coolidge
... as any I ever see, but I had more trouble with a big feller up toward Crescent Lake. I got sleepy that afternoon, for I 'd been settin' up watchin' fer bear the night before. So I put my gun an' a snack I had on a stump and went to sleep. When I waked up there was a big brown bear nosin' my lunch and tryin' to open the bundle with his paw. I picked up some pine cones—Pinus pondyrosy it was I was sleepin' under" (he rolled this out with the slyest glance at a professor from an Eastern college who had joined ...
— Emerson's Wife and Other Western Stories • Florence Finch Kelly
... cigarette-stump. "One sees a lot of human nature in hospitals, my boy," she said, "and it doesn't leave one with many illusions. But from what I've seen, I should say nobody does ...
— Simon Called Peter • Robert Keable
... Conceive a very fat short earth-worm; not ringed, though, like the earth-worm, but smooth and glossy, dappled with darker spots, especially on one side, which may be the upper one. Put round its mouth twelve little arms, on each a hand with four ragged fingers, and on the back of the hand a stump of a thumb, and you have Synapta Digitata (Plates IV. and V., from my drawings of the live animal). These hands it puts down to its mouth, generally in alternate pairs, but how it obtains its food by them is yet a mystery, ...
— Glaucus; or The Wonders of the Shore • Charles Kingsley
... removed for the carpenter to examine the damage from the interior of the ship, Curtis employed the interval in having the broken mizzen-mast repaired. Dowlas the carpenter, with con- siderable skill, contrived to mortise it into its former stump. and made the junction thoroughly secure by strong iron- belts and bolts. The shrouds, the stays and backstays, were then carefully refitted, some of the sails were changed, and the whole of the ...
— The Survivors of the Chancellor • Jules Verne
... broken till long after the sun was glinting upon us through the trees. Our first work was given to building a lodge of underbrush and making preparations for two days' stay on the lonely island, completed by unfurling the signal of the New York Canoe Club from a high stump hard by the camp-fire. Barring the mosquitos, Sunday's rest was a pleasant and refreshing sequence to ten days of toil and struggle, and Monday found us in hearty readiness for a thorough exploration of Itasca ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 26, August, 1880 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various
... house surrounded by what would later be a garden; and a square-fronted store. The street between was soft and springy with sawdust and finely broken shingles. Various side streets started out bravely enough, but soon petered out into stump land. Along one ...
— The Rules of the Game • Stewart Edward White
... favour of the court, Who falls a month, or e'en a twelvemonth short." Thanks for the kind permission! I go on, And pull out years, like horse-hairs, one by one, While all forlorn the baffled critic stands, Fumbling a naked stump between his hands, Who looks for worth in registers, and knows No ...
— The Satires, Epistles, and Art of Poetry • Horace
... a little boy, and I take YOUNG PEOPLE, which I like very much. I enjoy reading the children's letters, and I want to tell you about my squirrel that I caught the 26th of March, while hunting with one of my playmates. His dog chased it into a hollow stump. He put his hat on top of the slump, and we built a little fire at the bottom, and the smoke drove the squirrel into the hat. I carried it home, and a few days ago I found in the cage five little baby squirrels. One of them died, but I hope the rest will live. I think they ...
— Harper's Young People, April 27, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... him the story, which Bob and I always 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 ...
— Short Stories Old and New • Selected and Edited by C. Alphonso Smith
... not a mite, A wooden stump will make all right; And when it is no longer good, Some spital ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 57, July, 1862 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... hands and clapped them. The Proctor in a loud voice demanded who had committed this indecorum. Silence ensued. The Proctor, in an elevated tone, said to a young man sitting near Coleridge, "Twas you, Sir!' The reply was as prompt as the accusation; for, immediately holding out the stump of his right arm, it appeared that he had lost his hand;—'I would, Sir,' said he, 'that I had the power!' That no innocent person should incur blame, Coleridge went directly afterwards to the Proctor, who told him that he saw him clap his hands, but fixed on ...
— Biographia Epistolaris, Volume 1. • Coleridge, ed. Turnbull
... Death, "that at the best, I seldom am a welcome guest; But do n't be captious, friend; at least, I little thought that you'd be able To stump about your farm and stable; Your years have run to a great length, Yet still you ...
— McGuffey's Sixth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... no use grousing. I suppose if one hits length balls on the middle stump over square leg's head one must run the risk of being bowled; and I didn't believe in sticking in and doing nothing. 'Get on or get out,' and, well, I've got out." He ...
— The Loom of Youth • Alec Waugh
... suddenly confronted him and asked him for a light. He promptly offered his cigar. Puffing fiercely the stranger created a glow, and in the shadow behind it he eagerly scanned the face of the soldier. He then returned the stump, saying, "Pass on, sir. You are not he I seek. Your cigar has saved your life." There was a click, as of a knife thrust into its sheath, and the ...
— Myths & Legends of our New Possessions & Protectorate • Charles M. Skinner
... not used to it. A regular nob like you, nabbed for the first time, and for such a long figure, sir, sure not to be diddled. Never knowed such a thing yet. Friends sure to stump down, sir.' ...
— Henrietta Temple - A Love Story • Benjamin Disraeli
... to the house of the murdered man and fastened for half an hour to its wall. After this foretaste of legal vengeance his left hand was struck off, like his victim's. A new-killed fowl was cut open and fastened round the bleeding stump; with what view I really don't know; but by the look of it, some mare's nest of the poor dear doctors; and the murderer, thus mutilated and bandaged, was hurried to the scaffold; and there a young friar was most earnest and affectionate in praying with him, and for him, and holding ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... of newspaper was already out of reach, speeded by a tiny eddy toward a miniature rapid in the middle of the beck. Lydia, clinging with one hand to a stump of willow, caught up a stick lying on the bank with the other, and, hanging over the stream, tried to head back the truant. All that happened was that her foot slipping on a pebble went flop into the shallow water, and part of ...
— The Mating of Lydia • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... interested in observing the proceedings of one of these snakes when followed up by two dogs of mine in the open. First of all, it made for a clump of two or three scrubby trees, and, apparently first fastening itself by the neck to a stump, lashed out with its tail. Then when the dogs came closer it again made off through the grass, but on being overtaken by the dogs must have either bitten one of them, or lashed it with its tail, as the dog gave a sharp cry and retreated. On a previous ...
— Gold, Sport, And Coffee Planting In Mysore • Robert H. Elliot
... understand, 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
... 'Ha! Matt, my old fellow cruizer, still afloat!' And, starting up, hugged me in his arms. His transport, however, boded me no good; for, in saluting me, he thrust the spring of his spectacles into my eye, and, at the same time, set his wooden stump upon my gouty toe; an attack that made me shed tears in sad earnest — After the hurry of our recognition was over, he pointed out two of our common friends in the room: the bust was what remained of colonel Cockril, who had lost the use of his limbs in making ...
— The Expedition of Humphry Clinker • Tobias Smollett
... not told about this arrangement at all. B. says A. was, only A. was so blind drunk at the time he did not understand. Well, up river C. goes in the canoe, and fetches up on a floating stump in the river, and staves a hole you could put your head in, in the bow of the said canoe. C. returns it to B. in this condition. B. returns it to A. in this condition. A. sues B. before native chief, saying he lent his canoe to B. on the understanding, always implied ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... swine, To ease her itch against the stump, And dismally was heard to whine, All as she scrubb'd ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift
... think that this is the most beautiful bird of North America. It is called Wood Duck because it usually makes its nest in the hollow of a tree that overhangs the water. If it can find a squirrel's or woodpecker's hole in some stump or tree, there it is sure ...
— Birds, Illustrated by Color Photography [July 1897] - A Monthly Serial designed to Promote Knowledge of Bird-Life • Various
... came to fitting the stump With a proxy limb—then flatly and plump She spoke, in the spirit olden; She couldn't—she shouldn't—she wouldn't have wood! Nor a leg of cork, if she never stood, And she swore an oath, or something as good, The proxy limb ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood
... tortured enemy. Unhampered by the exhausting efforts of industry, the Indian, trained by centuries of war upon adjoining tribes, felt himself foot-loose and free to shoot the unprotected forefather from behind the very stump fence his victim had worked ...
— Comic History of the United States • Bill Nye
... very little pains To count the modern Poets, who had brains. 'Twas a small difficulty;—'twasn't any; They were so few: But to cast up the scores of men Who wield a stump they call a pen, Lord! they had much to do,— They were ...
— Broad Grins • George Colman, the Younger
... highly deserving of notice, we determined to visit them; and setting off one evening for that purpose, we reached the spot which had been pointed out to us a little before dark. We fastened the boat to the stump of a tree, and were proceeding towards the caves, when a fine manly voice, singing one of the Irish melodies, attracted our attention. Being rather curious to discover who, in this extramundane place, had learnt to sing with so much taste, we followed the ...
— The Campaigns of the British Army at Washington and New Orleans 1814-1815 • G. R. Gleig
... apprehensions and to demand our wisest and most resolute action. This criminal was a professed anarchist, inflamed by the teachings of professed anarchists, and probably also by the reckless utterances of those who, on the stump and in the public press, appeal to the dark and evil spirits of malice and greed, envy and sullen hatred. The wind is sowed by the men who preach such doctrines, and they cannot escape their share of responsibility for the whirlwind ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... breath, this rude destroyer strikes down the trees like fragile reeds— prostrating at once the noblest and humblest forms. Not one is left standing on the soil: for the clearing of the hurricane is a complete work; and neither stalk, sapling, nor stump may be seen, where it has passed. Even the giants of the forest yield to its strength, as though smitten by the hand of a destroying angel! Uprooted, they lie along the earth side by side—the soil still clinging to the clavicles of their roots, and their leafy tops turned to the lee—in ...
— The Wild Huntress - Love in the Wilderness • Mayne Reid
... Hapgood?' and he gave a laugh, as I've said. 'I'm what they call a social outcast. A social outcast. Beyond the pale. Unspeakable. Ostracized. Blackballed. Excommunicated.' He got up and began to stump about the room, hands in his pockets, chin on his collar, wrestling with it,—and wrestling, mind you, just in ...
— If Winter Comes • A.S.M. Hutchinson
... yards from it, when on the opposite side he beheld Sydney herself. She was on the very verge of the stream, below the steep, slippery clay bank, clinging hard with one hand to the bared root of a willow stump, and with the other striving to uphold the head and shoulder of a child, the rest of whose person ...
— Magnum Bonum • Charlotte M. Yonge
... business, and gathered from the fact added cause for anxiety. Evidently something much more thorough is in store for Master Theodore. It was only half a pound of gunpowder, she told me. Doctor Smallboy's gardener had bought it for the purpose of raising the stump of an old elm-tree, and had left it for a moment on the grass while he had returned to the house for more brown paper. She seemed pleased with the gardener, who, as she said, might, if dishonestly inclined, have charged her for a pound. I wanted to pay ...
— They and I • Jerome K. Jerome
... The stump of a dead tree that he referred to stood up nearly straight out of a crack in the rock, and a few yards above water level. The crocodiles all lay nose toward it, some of them twelve or fourteen feet long, some smaller, and ...
— The Ivory Trail • Talbot Mundy
... changes on this are rung again and again. And this stands out as much in the preaching of the Captivity time, and of the Return, as before the Captivity. But in the midst of severest judgment there will be a remnant spared. The tree is cut down, but the stump is spared; and there is life in the stump. But above these there stand out these ...
— Quiet Talks on the Crowned Christ of Revelation • S. D. Gordon
... Here again there were exceptions. A still fiery son of the South could rail about niggers, rapes and lynchings and the need for disenfranchising the blacks. It was good fun to hear him. Moreover, a fellow who was a good speaker, and needed the money, might stump the state for either political party, and his accounts were often amusing. But to sit down and talk about the trusts, graft, trade unions, strikes, or the tariff or the navy, the Philippines, "the open door," or any other of the big questions ...
— The Harbor • Ernest Poole
... terrific storms of this region are like the storms of Guy Wetmore Carryl's clever rhyme that "come early and avoid the rush." They will sweep a man off his feet, as once threatened to our advance party, but will pass harmlessly over a cigarette stump and a cardboard box; our tent in the glacier basin, ramparted by a wall of ice-blocks as high as itself, we found overwhelmed and prostrate upon our return, but the willow shoots with which we had staked our trail upon the glacier were ...
— The Ascent of Denali (Mount McKinley) - A Narrative of the First Complete Ascent of the Highest - Peak in North America • Hudson Stuck
... laboriously cultivated his neglected taste. He sat in the window-seat with much gravity, and more than made up in application for the youthful quickness which he lacked. He resolutely refused to look up from his book when he heard the alternate thud and stump which announced the passage down to the harbour of his particular crony, Mark Standon, whose other leg had been buried at sea. He kept the dictionary beside him, and when the writer used a word of sonorous ring and obscure meaning he ...
— The Grey Lady • Henry Seton Merriman
... dismounted and lay on its side, one wheel in the air, helpless, like some monster sprawling with limbs stiffened in death. Behind it, crouched close, squatted some infantry soldiers, firing from the cover of the wreckage. Behind every tree, every stump, every inequality, lay infantry, dead, wounded, or alive and cautiously firing. Several took advantage of the fallen battery horses for shelter. Only one horse of that gun-team remained alive, and the gunners had ...
— Ailsa Paige • Robert W. Chambers
... From day and its delights! 90 But at night, brother owlet; over the woods, Toll the world to thy chantry; Sing to the bats' sleek sisterhoods Full complines with gallantry: Then, owls and bats, 95 Cowls and twats, Monks and nuns, in a cloister's moods, Adjourn to the oak-stump pantry! [After she has began to undress herself. Now, one thing I should like to really know: How near I ever might approach all these 100 I only fancied being, this long day— Approach, I mean, so as to touch them, so As to—in some way ... move them—if you please, Do good or evil to them some ...
— Selections from the Poems and Plays of Robert Browning • Robert Browning
... spoke kindly, "'Rab, ma man, puir Rabbie,'" "the stump of a tail rose up, the ears were cocked, the eyes filled, and were comforted"; Rab showed pride and ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 10 - The Guide • Charles Herbert Sylvester
... bundle of toys he had flung on his back, And he looked like a peddler just opening his pack. His eyes—how they twinkled! his dimples how merry! His cheeks were like roses, his nose like a cherry! His droll little mouth was drawn up like a bow, And the beard of his chin was as white as the snow; The stump of a pipe he held tight in his teeth, And the smoke it encircled his head like a wreath; He had a broad face and a little round belly, That shook when he laughed, like a bowlful of jelly. He was chubby and plump, a right jolly old elf, And I laughed when I saw him, in spite of myself; A wink of his ...
— Poems Every Child Should Know - The What-Every-Child-Should-Know-Library • Various
... at night, building no fire lest it draw unwelcome guests toward him, but wrapping his blanket about himself and sitting, not lying, on the ground, his rifle between his knees. Any one passing, even very near, would have supposed his dark figure to be that of an old stump, and he spent the night with a feeling of safety, not entirely comfortable in his position, but little disturbed by the snapping of twigs and the rustle of leaves which told that ...
— Far Past the Frontier • James A. Braden
... and in these I observed that our friends followed the fashion, no two of them being made alike. Some stood proudly forth in all the grandeur of four legs, others affected the classic grace of the ancient tripod, while a few shrank bashfully into corners on one stubbed stump. Some round, some square, and some triangular in form. Several were so high that, when enthroned upon them, the ends of my toes just touched the ground, and others were so low that, on rising, I carried away a ...
— The Shirley Letters from California Mines in 1851-52 • Louise Amelia Knapp Smith Clappe
... side. I remember how he went to the nets, before the first match of the season, with his pocket full of sovereigns, which he put on the stumps instead of bails. It was a sight to see the professionals bowling like demons for the hard cash, for whenever a stump was hit a pound was tossed to the bowler and another balanced in its stead, while one man took 3 with a ball that spreadeagled the wicket. Raffles's practice cost him either eight or nine sovereigns; but ...
— The Amateur Cracksman • E. W. Hornung
... better I can dae, if ye'll no' stump up for the cab to Maryhill,' she said ungraciously. 'A' the same, I wish I had never seen ye. Ye had nae business watchin' for me, ony o' ye. I'm my ain mistress, an' I'm no' ...
— The Guinea Stamp - A Tale of Modern Glasgow • Annie S. Swan
... and came up the hill to get another start. Partner took a turn on a stump, and all unmindful of it the Rat whirled and made a mighty spring. He reached the end of the rope and his hand-spring became a vaulting somersault. He lay, unable to rise, spatting the wind, breathing ...
— The Trail of the Goldseekers - A Record of Travel in Prose and Verse • Hamlin Garland
... for although it was improbable in the extreme that any watcher would be listening at that hour of the night, it was well to take every precaution. The grating was lifted out and laid down on one of the couches so that all noise should be avoided. The rope was then strongly fastened to the stump of one of ...
— Bonnie Prince Charlie - A Tale of Fontenoy and Culloden • G. A. Henty
... at it till the rod broke in the middle and only the stump was left in his hand. He flung that aside, and, without speaking, turned and walked toward the village. As soon as his face was turned the boys devoted their efforts to rubbing and scratching ...
— Deerfoot in The Mountains • Edward S. Ellis
... cultivation, the settlers felled the trees about a yard from the ground to prevent the stump from sprouting and to cause the stump to decay sooner. Some of the wood was burnt or carried off and the rest was left on the field to rot. The area between the stumps and logs was then broken up with the hoe. In their ...
— Tobacco in Colonial Virginia - "The Sovereign Remedy" • Melvin Herndon
... villainous oblique eye, and seems to say, "Shan't follow you just now—may have the pleasure of looking you up this evening." But the fox-terrier converts himself into a kind of hurricane in fur, and he gives tongue like a stump-orator in full cry. I may say that, when once the fox-terrier becomes a drawing-room pet, he loses all character—he might just as well be a pug at once. The Bedlington is perhaps the best of all terriers, but his disreputable aspect renders him rather out of place in a refined room. It ...
— The Ethics of Drink and Other Social Questions - Joints In Our Social Armour • James Runciman
... fields again, and sat down on the stump of a tree wondering what he should do next. Suddenly a big wolf ran up to him, and standing still said, 'I'm very glad to see you again, my kind benefactor. What are you thinking about all alone by yourself? If I can ...
— The Yellow Fairy Book • Leonora Blanche Alleyne Lang
... called the "Magpie and Stump," referred to in the twenty-first chapter of Pickwick,—where that hero spent an interesting evening on the invitation of Lowten (Mr. Perker's clerk), and heard "the old man's tale about the queer client,"—is supposed to ...
— A Week's Tramp in Dickens-Land • William R. Hughes
... for you," was his exclamation. And they all sat down on the stump of a booblow tree. He opened his sorry face and told the secrets of the five long-legged spider jack-rabbits to Young Leather and Red Slippers. They waved good-by and went on up the road leading ...
— Rootabaga Stories • Carl Sandburg
... him like a man, and, in return, gave him more than he could relish of the genuine dead knowledge. In short, I have plucked the old baronet as never baronet was plucked before; I have scarce left him the stump of a quill. I have got promissory notes in his hand to the amount of ——; if you like round numbers, say five-and-twenty thousand pounds, safely deposited in my portable strong box, alias, double-clasped pocket-book. I leave this ruinous old rat-hole early on to-morrow, for two reasons: first, ...
— Two Ghostly Mysteries - A Chapter in the History of a Tyrone Family; and The Murdered Cousin • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... tore 'way from the boy an' started to pullin' a long knife out o' his boot leg. Jack didn't give him time. They had it hammer an' tongs. Red Snout were a reg'lar fightin' man. He jest stuck that 'ere stump in the ground an' braced ag'in' it an' kep' a-slashin' an' jabbin' with his club cane an' yellin' an' cussin' like a fiend o' hell. He knocked the boy down an' I reckon he'd 'a' mellered his head proper if he'd 'a' been spryer on his pins. But Jack sprung up like he were made o' ...
— In the Days of Poor Richard • Irving Bacheller
... down into the darkness, and a stump of candle burning in a saucer threw a wavering beam on ...
— Mystery at Geneva - An Improbable Tale of Singular Happenings • Rose Macaulay
... it," cried Code, springing up and throwing away the stump of his cigar; "somebody has got to make the complaint! Well, now, from what I can see, somebody's made it. All this talk could not have gone on in the island unless it started from somewhere. And ...
— The Harbor of Doubt • Frank Williams
... dragon on a yellow ground of the Chinese pavilion. The Japanese garden has several large standard umbrellas for permanent shade, and little bamboo-fenced yards for the game chickens and the ducks. Two shrines are in the garden, and a fountain with a feeble jet issuing from a stump and falling into a little fanciful pond with small bays and promontories. On the miniature deep a walnut-shell ship might ride, and on the shoals near the bank aquatic plants are beginning to sprout, and their leaves will soon touch ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, August, 1878 • Various
... tournament having come to an end, then followed the battle of the swords. According to the rules, this began with Bayard, who, on the third stroke he gave, broke his sword into two pieces, but he made such good use of the stump that he went through the number of strokes commanded, and did his duty so well that no man could have done better. After this came the others according to their order, and for the rest of that day there was such a succession of vigorous fighting that the two judges ...
— Bayard: The Good Knight Without Fear And Without Reproach • Christopher Hare
... ball where it lay in the dust, close to his near fore-leg, with Macnamara's shortened stick tap-tapping it from time to time. Kittiwynk was edging her way out of the scrimmage, whisking her stump of ...
— The Day's Work, Volume 1 • Rudyard Kipling
... a dead, grave-like black outside its little circle of illumination; nevertheless its rays suffered me to guess at the picture of ruin the decks offered. The main mast was snapped three or four feet above the deck, and the stump of it showed as jagged and barbed as a wild beast's teeth. But I now noticed that the weight of the hamper being on the larboard side, balanced the list the vessel took from her shifted ballast, and that she floated on a level ...
— The Frozen Pirate • W. Clark Russell
... quite still till the scald was thoroughly covered with a tenacious white cake. Then a fresh and fiercer pang seized the wound. With a bleat he tore himself away, and rushed off, tail in air, across the stump-pasture and into the woods. ...
— The House in the Water - A Book of Animal Stories • Charles G. D. Roberts
... him, his eyes also upon the sunset and the village, was a man in a costume half-trapper, half-Indian, with bushy grey beard and massive frame, and a distant, sorrowful look, like that of one whose soul was tuned to past suffering. As he sat, his head sunk on his breast, his elbow resting on a stump of pine—the token of a progressive civilisation—his chin upon his hand, he looked like the figure of Moses made immortal by Michael Angelo. But his strength was not like that of the man beside ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... In a day or two all this was to be changed. People went about then counting the Russian millions; the steamroller fetish was to be evolved. The most peaceful stockbroker or shopkeeper, who had never even been to a review in his life, could make calculations of man power with a stump of pencil on the back of an old envelope, which would convince the greatest pessimist that Germany and Austria were outnumbered by at least three to one. But on this particular morning, people were too stunned for calculations. The incredible had happened. ...
— The Great Impersonation • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... boys fished, and on Saturdays go, up the river or down, or on either side, where one would, one was never out of sight of some thoughtful boy, sitting either on a stump or on a log stretching into the stream, or squatting on a muddy bank with his worm can beside him, throwing a line into the deep, green, quiet water. Always it was to the woods one went to find a lost boy, for the brush was alive with fierce pirates, and blood-bound brother-hoods, and gory ...
— In Our Town • William Allen White
... I forgot to tell you that after she had a little recovered of the first joy of seeing her child safe, nurse held up Helen with puss in her arms, and Robert climbed up on the stump of a tree, and held up the cradle ...
— Adventure of a Kite • Harriet Myrtle
... lumberman shiver. But the fellow crowded his cigar stump in his mouth, with fire and all, and chewed it ...
— The Furnace of Gold • Philip Verrill Mighels
... born gentleman among the inhabitants, and he was a sheep-dog. He alone did the honors of the place. He had a stump of a tail, which he wagged at me with extreme difficulty, and a good honest white and black face which he poked companionably into my hand. "Welcome, Madame Pratolungo, to Dimchurch; and excuse these male and ...
— Poor Miss Finch • Wilkie Collins
... gets into the "'bus," he carries in his hand or mouth the stump of a half-burned, extinct cigar, which fills the atmosphere with a rank and sickening odor. More frequently he is dressed in well-worn black, and his clothes reek with noisome exhalations of stale tobacco-smoke. ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 6, May 7, 1870 • Various
... for half an hour, Nejdanov sat down on the stump of a tree, surrounded by old greyish splinters, lying in heaps, exactly as they had fallen when cut down by the axe. Many a time had these splinters been covered by the winter's snow and been thawed by the spring sun, but ...
— Virgin Soil • Ivan S. Turgenev
... yunnah my Massa gi'e he colored peoples mos' eve't'ing dey hab en den he 'low eve'y family to hab uh acre uv land uv dey own to plant. Hadder work dat crop in de night. Make light wid fat light'ud stump wha' to see by. Dat crop wha' dey buy dey Sunday clothes wid. Ne'er hadder hunt no clothes but dey Sunday clothes cause dey hab seamstress right dere on de plantation to make aw us udder clothes. Miss Susan larnt Aun' Cynthia en Starrah en Tenna to cut en sew dere to de big house en a'ter dat ...
— Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves • Works Projects Administration
... introduced a limit to the width of the bat, viz., four and a quarter inches—the standard still in force—in order to prevent players, such as a hero from Reigate, bringing bats as wide as the wicket. In 1775 they wisely introduced a middle stump, as they found the best balls harmlessly flying between the wide wickets. It was feared lest this alteration would shorten the game too much, but it does not seem to have had that effect, as in an All England match against the Hambledon Club, two ...
— Old English Sports • Peter Hampson Ditchfield
... and it was more difficult than ever to keep her off the shoals. The long dark night was coming on, the masts were pounding away against the sides, having been cut adrift. An effort was made to rig a spar on the stump of the foremast, so as to keep steerage-way on the ship, the Captain having resolved to steer for the Scheldt, in which river he hoped to find safe anchorage. Owing to the way the ship was tumbling about, ...
— Roger Willoughby - A Story of the Times of Benbow • William H. G. Kingston
... be able then to stand up to what he knows ought to be done. The temptation of the average politician is to promise everything to the reformers and then to do everything for the organization. I think I can say that, whatever I have promised on the stump or off the stump, either expressly or impliedly, to either organization or reformers, I have kept my promise; and I should keep it just as much ...
— Public Speaking • Irvah Lester Winter
... casual surviving rag of a Parliament of 500, the members of which had been elected at various times, and irregularly, between 1640 and 1649. Nay, it was not even the surviving rag of that Parliament itself, but the rag of a stump to which that Parliament had been already reduced in 1649 by prior military hacking and carving. What pinch of representative virtue, for the England, Scotland, and Ireland of May 1659, or even for the non-Royalist portions ...
— The Life of John Milton, Volume 5 (of 7), 1654-1660 • David Masson
... way he dealt with his wife, a large proportion of whose meanings he knew he could neglect. He edited, for their general economy, the play of her mind, just as he edited, savingly, with the stump of a pencil, her redundant telegrams. The thing in the world that was least of a mystery to him was his Club, which he was accepted as perhaps too completely managing, and which he managed on lines of perfect penetration. His connection with it was really ...
— The Golden Bowl • Henry James
... did not treat the matter so lightly, for he improved the opportunity to light a fresh cigar, throwing the still smoking stump into Mrs. Legend's grate, through a lane of literati, as he afterwards boasted, as coolly as he could have thrown it overboard, under other circumstances. Luckily for his reputation for sentiment, he mistook "ecstatic," a word he had never ...
— Home as Found • James Fenimore Cooper
... danger, sir," observed Ready; "and therefore I have selected this thick part of the wood, as it is not very far from the house, and by cutting the path to it in a zigzag, it will be quite hidden from sight; and we must make the path just wide enough to allow the wheels to pass, and stump up the roots of the trees which we are obliged to cut down, otherwise the stumps ...
— Masterman Ready - The Wreck of the "Pacific" • Captain Frederick Marryat
... Bath, and would be absent for some time. Jenks sat down on a tree-stump. He held in his hand a small bit of ore worth perhaps twenty pounds sterling. Slowly the conjectures already pieced together in his mind during early days on the island came ...
— The Wings of the Morning • Louis Tracy
... mass of bruises. Her red, inflamed eyes seemed to weep incessantly and involuntarily; whatever might be the expression of her mouth, so inflamed and suffering were they, that they were pitiful to see; and to complete the picture, the stump of one of her arms, which had been severed at some former period, close to the shoulder, was but partially hidden by her ragged, low-necked dress. Her whole appearance struck me as the most pathetic I ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. V, May, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... while neither, in look, nor bearing, nor word could there be traced any of that haughty reserve usually ascribed to the "lords of the sea." There needed no other herald to proclaim him for one who had already seen honorable service, than the mutilated stump of what had once been an arm: yet in this there was no boastful display, as of one who deemed he had a right to tread more proudly because he had chanced to suffer, where all had been equally exposed, in the performance of a common duty. The empty sleeve, unostentatiously fastened by a loop ...
— The Canadian Brothers - or The Prophecy Fulfilled • John Richardson
... The last of these would be backed to talk incessantly on every possible subject for forty days. In the Recess, what a chance for Mr. GLADSTONE, or, indeed, for any Parliamentary orator, who, otherwise, would be on the stump! Instead of his going to the Country, the Country, and London, too, would come to him. Big business for Aquarium and for Talking Man. Then there would be The Sneezing Man, The Smoking Man, The Singing Man, The Drinking Man, and so forth. It's ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98, May 3, 1890. • Various
... passed since my father, returning from the scene of Cummins' murder, related the circumstances. With Mat Bailey, the stage-driver, with whom Cummins had traveled that fatal day, he had ridden over the same road, had passed the large stump which had concealed the robbers, and had become almost an eye-witness of the whole affair. My father's rehearsal of it fired my youthful imagination. So it was like a return to the scenes of boyhood when, thirty-six years after the event, I, too, ...
— Forty-one Thieves - A Tale of California • Angelo Hall
... went 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 ...
— The King's Warrant - A Story of Old and New France • Alfred H. Engelbach
... hour before dinner there was a sound in the air of Bumsteadville as of a powerful stump-speaker addressing a mass-meeting in the distance; rapidly intensifying to stentorian phrases, such as—"provide for your miserable surviving offspring"—"lower rates than any other company"—"full amount cheerfully paid upon hearing of your death"—until a hack appeared coming down the crossroad ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 13, June 25, 1870 • Various
... came to leave the comfortable club for the Grand Central Station, whence we sent telegrams to our families and took train for the rural regions north-eastward. The point had to be settled. Besides, I stumped Old Hundred to go, and he never could refuse a stump. ...
— Penguin Persons & Peppermints • Walter Prichard Eaton
... contact with a stump. I could feel the smooth surfaces left by an axe. The tree itself was lying there, but not entirely cut from its stump. I could feel the splintered middle of the tree, still holding. I at once knew that I was in the midst of felled timber,—on ...
— Who Goes There? • Blackwood Ketcham Benson
... the early days was plucky. He had to be so, for faint heart won no votes in those rough times. One of the Marshalls (Tom or Ned—I forget which), at the beginning of a stump speech one night in the mines, was interrupted by a storm of hisses and execrations from a turbulent crowd of fellows, many of whom were full of whisky. He paused a moment, drew himself up to his full height, coolly took a pistol from ...
— California Sketches, Second Series • O. P. Fitzgerald
... seven inches tall—greatly 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 ...
— Hawthorne and His Circle • Julian Hawthorne
... words express 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 organism and capable of development, ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume II • Francis Darwin
... step, and what to the social scout looked a dusty bypath may prove to be the highway of progress for the hoboing millions. Side issues are constantly cropping up to knock out the main issues of the stump orator; so let us be humble. For this reason I refuse to discuss possibilities in infinity. You and I cannot have become products of an environment which is not in existence. It is safe to suppose ...
— The Kempton-Wace Letters • Jack London
... by man, they live on indefinitely until burned, smashed by lightning, or cast down by storms, or by the giving way of the ground on which they stand. The age of one that was felled in the Calaveras Grove, for the sake of having its stump for a dancing-floor, was about 1300 years, and its diameter, measured across the stump, 24 feet inside the bark. Another that was cut down in the King's River forest was about the same size, but nearly a thousand years older (2200 years), though not a very old-looking tree. It was felled to procure ...
— The Mountains of California • John Muir
... the carpenter succeeded in saving my life, and the stump of my arm healed up very quickly, for I was always a strong and vigorous woman. When they came to search the cabin of the French brigantine they found that her captain—the man who had cut off my hand—was Louis Pellatier, the very same ...
— "Old Mary" - 1901 • Louis Becke
... alighted, and fastened my horse to something, like a pointed stump of a tree, which appeared above the snow; for the sake of safety, I placed my pistols under my arm, and laid down on the snow, where I slept so soundly that I did not open my eyes till full daylight. It is not easy to conceive my astonishment to find myself in the midst of a village, ...
— Stories to Read or Tell from Fairy Tales and Folklore • Laure Claire Foucher
... ago. It Ju see my Danel, whose sot up a is possible! Didyou see my son tarvern there? No. Hede gone afore Daniel, who has opened a public I got there. O, the pesky criter! house there? No. He had left Hele soon be up a stump. before I arrived there. O, the paltry fellow! He will soon come ...
— English Grammar in Familiar Lectures • Samuel Kirkham
... Procter 13 Sept., 1700, the two bounds testified to by Felton and by Marsh are mentioned as follows:—the line of the Downing Farm running from the northwest corner bound "southwestward unto a white oak tree standing on the Rocks, and from thence northwestward unto a swamp white oak stump standing about 20 poles on the northerly side of the way leading to Anthony Needhams" etc. In the deed by Thorndike Procter to his brother Benjamin, in 1701, of that portion of the Downing Farm now owned by Daniel Brown, the Morey ...
— House of John Procter, Witchcraft Martyr, 1692 • William P. Upham
... gold, for as the dusk of evening was closing round us on the second day of our march we were attacked by some men on horseback—bush-rangers, I suppose. We showed fight, and I was hit in the shoulder. At the same time I stumbled over a stump, and pitched on to my head, which stunned me. Just then, it seems, the sound of horses approaching frightened the scoundrels, and they made off. My mate, not knowing whether the new-comers were friends or foes, he says, got away as fast as he could. His story ...
— A Crooked Path - A Novel • Mrs. Alexander
... crushing for room, Like midge-flies they swarm on the heather, They gather like bees on the broom; They flutter like moths round a candle— Stale similes, granted, what then? I've got a stale subject to handle, A very stale stump of a pen. ...
— Poems • Adam Lindsay Gordon
... fairly set in. I therefore deferred, on my arrival at the ledge, all questions and rebukes till we had gained a place of safety. The heavy rope, fastened to the cord, was hauled up by the man on the top, and after it had been secured to a tree-stump we swarmed up without loss of time. We had still before us a somewhat perilous scramble in the darkness down the steep incline, but the exhaustion we had undergone made it necessary that we should first recruit our strength by means of the food and bottle of "Schnapps" with which we were ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, April 1875, Vol. XV., No. 88 • Various
... their way to and from Kendal without going through the gates and paying toll. This had been constructed by a landowner for the use of himself and his tenants. As a retort the toll people had erected a stump at each side of the entrance, apparently with the object of placing a chain across the road, and had also erected a wooden hut to shelter a special toll-keeper who only attended on Kendal market days. Some mischievous ...
— From John O'Groats to Land's End • Robert Naylor and John Naylor
... the tree, so that he could sell it all at once and get much money. So he went to the foot of the mountain one day, and cut the tree down. As soon as the trunk had crashed to the ground, a large snake came out from the stump. Now, this snake was an enchanter, and was the friend of the kings of the lions, eagles, and fishes, as we ...
— Filipino Popular Tales • Dean S. Fansler
... of the recommendations which were addressed to him, Tartlet, tripping against an occasional stump, had two or three falls which might have complicated matters. Godfrey was beginning to regret having brought such a clumsy assistant. Indeed, the poor man could not be much help to him. Doubtless ...
— Godfrey Morgan - A Californian Mystery • Jules Verne
... how he come ter us. Jest settin' on top his dory on the beach, when we found him. And what he said about his ship goin' down! Blast me ol' stump, but ...
— Wappin' Wharf - A Frightful Comedy of Pirates • Charles S. Brooks
... little more scrambling progress they pulled up beside a little square stump, or post, to which Uncle Dick ...
— The Young Alaskans in the Rockies • Emerson Hough
... she had come to the end of the path and turned to the right and into a long lane running between fields. She sat down on a stump; she had quite forgotten the party. Her brain was full of struggling ideas. But in a few moments she surrendered herself to the spell of the night. There were no trees quite near her, nothing but level fields ...
— The Californians • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... pump no longer, and then, after a short rest, we commenced in earnest. We first lashed a short spar, with a tackle secured to its head, to the stump of the foremast, and then, having fitted two shrouds on a side, with a forestay and backstays, and blocks for the halliards, to the spar we had chosen for a foremast, we swayed it up my means of the short spar and tackle. We could not possibly in any other way ...
— Peter Trawl - The Adventures of a Whaler • W. H. G. Kingston
... fine fun for Mitty, who sat on an old stump, with her chin resting in her hands, watching to see the stout old trunk stand like a rock against their heavy blows; then lean a little; then creak, as if it were groaning with pain that its green branches must so soon wither; ...
— Little Ferns For Fanny's Little Friends • Fanny Fern
... before we again heard the pack baying. With much difficulty, and by the incessant swinging of the machetes, we opened a trail through the network of vines and branches. This time there was only one peccary, the boar. He was at bay in a half-hollow stump. The dogs were about his head, raving with excitement, and it was not possible to use the rifle; so I borrowed the spear of Dom Joao the younger, and killed the fierce little ...
— Through the Brazilian Wilderness • Theodore Roosevelt
... with modification, the origin of rudimentary organs is simple. We have plenty of cases of rudimentary organs in our domestic productions,—as the stump of a tail in tailless breeds,—the vestige of an ear in earless breeds,—the reappearance of minute dangling horns in hornless breeds of cattle, more especially, according to Youatt, in young animals,—and ...
— On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection • Charles Darwin
... answer was to draw a hoecake wrapped in an old newspaper from his pocket and place it on a short pine stump. Then he reached for his jack-knife and carefully slit the hoecake down the centre, after which he laid the bacon ...
— The Battle Ground • Ellen Glasgow
... the side-lights as they went, while the two hunters remained to sleep in the cabin, it not being deemed advisable to open the slide to the steerage companion-way. Wolf Larsen and I, between us, cut off Kerfoot's crushed finger and sewed up the stump. Mugridge, who, during all the time he had been compelled to cook and serve coffee and keep the fire going, had complained of internal pains, now swore that he had a broken rib or two. On examination we found that he had three. But his case was deferred to next day, principally for the reason ...
— The Sea-Wolf • Jack London
... when he used a manuscript; he found on arriving at the church that he had left it behind him, and was allowed to remain in the vestry during the service, writing out notes on the inside of envelopes torn open, with the stump of a pencil which would only make marks at a certain angle. The service proceeded with a shocking rapidity, and when he got to the pulpit, spread out his envelopes, and addressed himself to the consideration of the blessings of the Harvest, he found on drawing to an end that he had ...
— Hugh - Memoirs of a Brother • Arthur Christopher Benson
... he turned, and to the left up the street that ultimately reached the Plaza Nacional. When within the toss of a cigar stump from the intersecting Street of the Holy Sepulchre, he ...
— Cabbages and Kings • O. Henry
... snake prose parch wild moil baste those starch mild coil haste froze larch tile foil taste force lark slide soil paste porch stark glide toil bunch broth prism spent boy hunch cloth sixth fence coy lunch froth stint hence hoy punch moth smith pence joy plump botch whist thence toy stump stock ...
— McGuffey's Eclectic Spelling Book • W. H. McGuffey
... in a log cabin full of chinks that the wind blows through, you like that better than spending your life on a good farm, near shops and houses. Just think of it; a nice bit of level land without a stump or a hollow, a good warm house all papered inside, fat cattle pasturing or in the stable; for people well stocked with implements and who keep their health, could there be anything better ...
— Maria Chapdelaine - A Tale of the Lake St. John Country • Louis Hemon |
