"Stump" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... restate a very common exaggeration. He is inconceivable without Wagner; nevertheless, he is individual. All his musical life he has been dodging Wagner and sometimes he succeeds in whipping his devil so far around the stump that he becomes himself, the glorious Richard Strauss of Don Quixote, of Till Eulenspiegel, of Hero's Life, and Elektra. But it may be confessed without much fear of contradiction that for him Wagner is his model—even in Salome, where the head of John the Baptist is ...
— Ivory Apes and Peacocks • James Huneker
... of the Tuileries, with all its outward signs of internal populousness, I have often thought what a rare sight it would be to see it suddenly unroofed, and all its nooks and corners laid open to the day. It would be like turning up the stump of an old tree, and dislodging the world of grubs, and ants, and beetles lodged beneath. Indeed there is a scandalous anecdote current that in the time of one of the petty plots, when petards were exploded under the ...
— The Crayon Papers • Washington Irving
... Poles, the French, the Dutch, the Letts, and the Mexicans—put to some purpose the love of the poor for the poor, so that it will count industrially, you can't stop the revolution." He was wagging his head, waving his stump of an arm and his face showed the temperamental excitement ...
— In the Heart of a Fool • William Allen White
... that I have," cried the veteran, taken unawares, and shaking the stump of his arm in proof; "I have served under Sir Duncan Yordas, who will come home some day and claim his own; and he won't want no ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... swarthy. In politics he had always been a Democrat. So diverse were his characteristics that one is tempted to ascribe two personalities to him. He was a tenacious man, possessed of a rude intellectual force, a rough-and-ready stump speaker, intensely loyal, industrious, sincere, self-reliant. His courage was put to the test again and again, and nobody ever said that it failed. His loyalty held him in the Union in 1861, although he was a senator from Tennessee and his state as well as his ...
— The United States Since The Civil War • Charles Ramsdell Lingley
... 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 female laborers who stand and ...
— Poor Miss Finch • Wilkie Collins
... through the principal passage, a man was borne along in a chair looking very pale, rather wild, and altogether as if he had just been through great tribulation, and hardly knew as yet whereabouts he was. I noticed that his left arm was but a stump, and seemed done up in red baize,—at all events it was of a scarlet line. The surgeon shook his right hand cheerily, and he was carried on. This was a patient who had just had his arm cut off. He had been a rough person apparently, but now there was a ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... your facts and ideas against an aquatic origin of the coal, though I do not know whether you object to freshwater. I am sure I have read somewhere of the cones of Lepidodendron being found round the stump of a tree, or am I confusing something else? How interesting all rooted—better, it seems from what you say, ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin Volume II - Volume II (of II) • Charles Darwin
... between seven and eight hundred men killed, and thirty taken prisoners; among the latter was baron Dieskau himself, whom they found at a little distance from the field of battle, dangerously wounded, and leaning on the stump of a tree for his support. The English lost about two hundred men, and those chiefly of the detachment under Colonel Williams; for they had very few either killed or wounded in the attack upon their camp, and ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... however, as instantly appeared. The calmness they had shown during all the days we had been looking at the nest was gone, and they began to scold at once. The head of the family berated me from the top of a grass-stem, and then flew to a tall old stump, and put me under the closest surveillance, constantly uttering a queer call like "Chack-que-dle-la," jerking wings and tail, and in every way showing that he considered me intrusive and altogether too much interested in his family affairs. I admitted the charge, I could not ...
— Little Brothers of the Air • Olive Thorne Miller
... mighty slick rascal, dat feller," muttered the darky, as he fished the bacon out of the frying-pan and placed it on to a clean chip. "Dere's your breakfast, sar. I'll eat mine out here by this stump." ...
— Elam Storm, The Wolfer - The Lost Nugget • Harry Castlemon
... of bread and cheese and dried grapes, and now they were waiting until the horses should have cropped their fill. There was no hurry, the moon not rising for an hour yet, and it was useless to arrive at the Kills before the time of slack water. Constans had his back against a pine-stump, and Esmay's head rested on her husband's shoulder. They sat in silence, gazing out upon the gray sea, content in their present happiness and looking forward to a yet greater one in the near future. ...
— The Doomsman • Van Tassel Sutphen
... shouldn't wonder if it would take us a couple of months at least," said Bruce Clifford as he sat down upon a stump and pushed his hat back ...
— The Boy Scout Fire Fighters • Irving Crump
... across the small stump-dotted "dead'ning"—Anse Dugmore was upon his errand. He dragged the rifle by the barrel, so that its butt made a crooked, broken furrow in the new snow like the trail of a crippled snake. He fell and got up, and fell and rose again. He coughed and up the ridge ...
— The Escape of Mr. Trimm - His Plight and other Plights • Irvin S. Cobb
... inlet where a stream rushed down between the hills, and on the green slope stood a chalet, the rich red of the roof contrasting with the green pasture. A little boat was moored to a stump near the land, and in it sat Sophia Kendal, her hat by her side, listening to and answering merrily the chatter of Maurice, who tumbled about in the boat, often causing it severe shocks, while he inspected the cut of the small sail which she was making for the ...
— The Young Step-Mother • Charlotte M. Yonge
... readiness, and the rest of us were directed to take our departure without delay. Two of us started together after dark. We made our way through the mud and intense darkness about twenty rods, to the edge of a wood. We resolved to go no further, come what might. Doubling myself up at the root of an old stump, I was soon oblivious to both rain and danger. Just as day was breaking, I awoke, and arousing my companion, ...
— In The Ranks - From the Wilderness to Appomattox Court House • R. E. McBride
... pulling out I explained to Zulime that Dolly's fury was all assumed, "She'll soon be stolid as a stump." ...
— A Daughter of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... a noise and being seen by the birds. Eventually I decorated my topi with bracken fronds, after the fashion of 'Arry at Burnham Beeches on the August bank holiday. Thus arrayed, I descended to the stream and hid myself in the hollow stump of a tree, near the place where I knew the nest must be. By crouching down and drawing some foliage about me, I was able to command a small stretch of the stream. My arrival was of course the signal for loud outcries on the part of the parent forktails. However, after I had been squatting ...
— Birds of the Indian Hills • Douglas Dewar
... or stump by the road-side may be, in the imagination of the horse, some great beast about to pounce upon him; but after you take him up to it and let him stand by it a little while, and touch it with his nose, and go through his process of examination, he ...
— The Arabian Art of Taming and Training Wild and Vicious Horses • P. R. Kincaid
... the lad who had peached upon him about the grocer's cart, but he bore little malice, not at least towards the young and small. "How dare you, sir, break the bottle?" says Cuff to the little urchin, swinging a yellow cricket-stump over him. ...
— Boys and girls from Thackeray • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... strow'd Upon the ground, like log of wood, With fright of fall, supposed wound, 920 And loss of urine, in a swound, In haste he snatch'd the wooden limb, That hurt i' the ankle lay by him, And fitting it for sudden fight, Straight drew it up t' attack the Knight; 925 For getting up on stump and huckle, He with the foe began to buckle; Vowing to be reveng'd for breach Of crowd and skin upon the wretch, Sole author of all detriment 930 He and ...
— Hudibras • Samuel Butler
... the balance following him like starved sheep. He stopped before the captain and sank to a seat on a stump. The perspiration stood in great drops on his face and he was ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... from Hastings, drew, absently, on a dead cigar-stump. A certain rasping note in his voice was his only remaining symptom of shock. He had the stern calmness of expression that is often seen in the broad, irregularly-featured face ...
— No Clue - A Mystery Story • James Hay
... overhanging branch of a beech and listened intently in every direction. Reinhard sat a few paces off on a tree stump, and gazed over ...
— Immensee • Theodore W. Storm
... go there in numbers, and to such effect that by an order of the Town Council the place was stubbed up. You had to go alone to the withy-bed between sunset and sunrise of a moonless night, to lay your hand upon a certain stump and say, and in ...
— Lore of Proserpine • Maurice Hewlett
... like reasonable creatures; and the one that had lost its trunk tried by stooping its huge head and bending its hams to stroke him softly with the hideous extremity of its stump. ...
— Salammbo • Gustave Flaubert
... 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
... now! How do you think it looks? You pour the oil into this glass, and that stump of ribbon inside is the wick— hold that pare a little ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors • Various
... 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 ...
— Edison, His Life and Inventions • Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin
... free; and following the example of its master, it galloped clumsily across the open field. The ox fled with such a bellowing and such a jangling of chains that poor Joe, who was hidden behind a great stump on the farther side of the field, was nearly frightened out of his few remaining senses when he saw this terrible monster charging out the fire and directly upon him. He threw himself flat on the ground, screaming "g'way fum yere! g'way fum ...
— Wakulla - A Story of Adventure in Florida • Kirk Munroe
... vile creatures of descendants as you all, day after day indulging in obscene and incestuous practices, 'in scraping of the ashes' and in philandering with brothers-in-law. I know all about your doings; the best thing is to hide one's stump of an arm in one's sleeve!" (wash one's ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... that wagon!" yelled a man's voice, and Amos Darrison appeared from among the trees. He made a leap for the team, but they swerved to one side. Then came a crash, as one of the wheels caught in a stump. Over went the carryall, with the boys in it. Andy, quick to act, used his acrobatic abilities by leaping into the branches of a nearby tree. Then the farmer caught ...
— The Mystery at Putnam Hall - The School Chums' Strange Discovery • Arthur M. Winfield
... cut one of my fingers off, This little one here from my right hand doff. Is the taking my finger then all you've done? No, no, to the devil my hand is gone! 'Tis a stump—no more—and use has none. The eight thousand horse they wish to disband May be but a finger of our army's hand. But when they're once gone may we understand We are but one-fifth the less? Oh, no— By the Lord, the whole to the devil will go! All terror, respect, and awe will be ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... "dough-boy"). The simple rustic fare of Brockdish Excels the choicest made or mock dish; Nor is there any patois so Superb as that of Spooner Row. PETT-RIDGE'S lively Arthur Lidlington Might possibly be bored at Didlington; And I admit that it would stump SHAW To stir up a revolt at Strumpshaw. The spirits of unrest are wholly Out of their element at Sloley; But even the weariest straphanger Regains his courage at Shelfanger. No taint of Bolshevistic snarling Poisons the atmosphere of Larling, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, April 14, 1920 • Various
... and a half from Stargard, and the present dwelling-place of the editor.] and when the miserable father and his burghers arrived at the place, there indeed was the robber-band stretched upon the long grass, and Sidonia seated upon the stump of a tree—for she must play the lute, while Johann, his godless son, was plaiting the long black hair of the ...
— Sidonia The Sorceress V1 • William Mienhold
... They felt that already they had reached the luxuriously appointed home which, after all, they knew awaited them. McCurdie no longer railed, Professor Biggleswade forgot the dangers of bronchitis, and Lord Doyne twisted the stump of a black cigar between his lips without any desire to relight it. A tiny electric lamp inside the hood made the darkness of the world to right and left and in front of the talc windows still darker. McCurdie and Biggleswade fell into a doze. Lord ...
— A Christmas Mystery - The Story of Three Wise Men • William J. Locke
... had burned forward to the stump of the main-mast, and, fed by the large quantities of black pitchy ropes—the shrouds, stays, and ratlines—was sending up strong bursts of smoky flame. Red tongues were shooting out forward, as if to grasp the rigging ...
— Ran Away to Sea • Mayne Reid
... went to the faucet and the little dog wagged his stump of a tail and backed away a ...
— The Doers • William John Hopkins
... the bluebells they could see in the distance, or to the tall fir-trees where they could listen to the wood-pigeons cooing overhead, or "just a little further," on the chance of catching a glimpse of the cuckoo they had heard calling all the afternoon—until old Marie had sat down on the stump of a tree, fanning herself with a handkerchief, and declaring that she ...
— The Gap in the Fence • Frederica J. Turle
... grass, and their black forms protruded from the surrounding vivid green. One of them was entirely hollowed out, and inside of it the rotted wood had formed a deposit of brown earth. Out of this earth and out of the stump, as from a crater, a most beautiful flower was growing. Above a crown of soft, round leaves rose a long, slender stalk which bore large cups of an indescribably beautiful red. Deep down in the cups of the flower was a spot of soft, gleaming ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VII. • Various
... the second day he was crossing a small brook and was just stepping up on the other side when a wet stone rolled beneath his foot and threw him headlong. His head struck a jagged stump ...
— Army Boys on the Firing Line - or, Holding Back the German Drive • Homer Randall
... away the stump of his cigar and rose, turning as he reached the corner for a lingering glance at ...
— Dialstone Lane, Complete • W.W. Jacobs
... with white kid gloves. She had on a pearl necklace, which glinted lonely, high up the midst of that barren waste of neck and shoulders. Her hair was frizzled into a tangled chaparral, forward of her ears, aft it was drawn together, and compactly bound and plaited into a stump like a pony's tail, and furthermore was canted upward at a sharp angle, and ingeniously supported by a red velvet crupper, whose forward extremity was made fast with a half-hitch around a hairpin on the top ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... punishment of the unoffending or of giving immunity, and even strength, to offenders. The effort to make financial or political profit out of the destruction of character can only result in public calamity. Gross and reckless assaults on character, whether on the stump or in newspaper, magazine, or book, create a morbid and vicious public sentiment, and at the same time act as a profound deterrent to able men of normal sensitiveness and tend to prevent them from entering the public service at any price. As an instance in point, ...
— Standard Selections • Various
... lashed shoulders and of a couple of hundred more, has turned out to greet us. His unshaved countenance wears a sleepy expression, but the stump of a lighted cigar is already in his mouth. At a given signal, a couple of small slaves appear, with cups of hot coffee and a tray of long home-made cigars. 'Candela!' Mine host invokes fire, and a little ...
— The Pearl of the Antilles, or An Artist in Cuba • Walter Goodman
... cornfield out there in the sun, Showin' so plain that there's work ter be done; There's the mean weeds with their tops all a-sprout, Seemin' ter stump me ter come clean 'em out; But, there's the river, so clear and so cool, There's the white lilies afloat on the pool, Scentin' the shade 'neath the old maple tree— "Hoe or the fishin'-pole—which'll ...
— Cape Cod Ballads, and Other Verse • Joseph C. Lincoln
... discouraged. She was grateful when Kennicott invited her to go rabbit-hunting in the woods. She waded down stilly cloisters between burnt stump and icy oak, through drifts marked with a million hieroglyphics of rabbit and mouse and bird. She squealed as he leaped on a pile of brush and fired at the rabbit which ran out. He belonged there, masculine in reefer and sweater and high-laced ...
— Main Street • Sinclair Lewis
... with infinite difficulty, able to wear, and give him as compleat a dose from the larboard as we had done from the starboard side; and, down came his mainmast. The action then continued, with great obstinacy. A man, in the heat of the fire, nailed the French ensign on the stump of the mainmast. By this time, our fore topmast was over the side, main topsail down, yard shot away, mizen top-gallant mast and main-sail—indeed, every sail—in tatters. The enemy's mizen-mast was gone; which enabled him to wear, and draw ahead of us. His men were on deck, ...
— The Life of the Right Honourable Horatio Lord Viscount Nelson, Vol. II (of 2) • James Harrison
... the deck, raised the visor of his helmet, and looked up at an Imperial flag drooping in the stagnant air from a stump of the mast. Whatever his thought or feeling, no one could discern on his countenance an unbecoming expression. The fact, of which he must have been aware, that this stand taken ended his empire forever, had ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 2 • Lew. Wallace
... devoted some attention to this, and written a little monograph on the ashes of 140 different varieties of pipe, cigar, and cigarette tobacco. Having found the ash, I then looked round and discovered the stump among the moss where he had tossed it. It was an Indian cigar, of the variety ...
— The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
... stump himself, visiting all parts of the country in special trains and addressing literally millions of people in the open air. Mr. McKinley chose the older and more formal plan. He received delegations ...
— History of the United States • Charles A. Beard and Mary R. Beard
... 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 a question ...
— The Visits of Elizabeth • Elinor Glyn
... the very minute, Joe, more than half by the side of himself, with the excitement he had been in for a week, and bein' urged onto it by Miss Pool, as he sez to this day, he jumped up onto the tall stump he had been a standin' by, and stood there in his long white robe, lookin' like a spook, if anybody had been calm enough to notice it, and he sung out in a clear voice—his voice always did have a good ...
— Samantha Among the Brethren, Complete • Josiah Allen's Wife (Marietta Holley)
... 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, The sheep-pen or the ...
— Men and Women • Robert Browning
... a world in itself. We can scarcely realize all this; but let us look and reflect, and even we may feel as must have felt the man of the Renaissance in the presence of that mutilated, stained, battered torso. He sees in that broken stump a grandeur of outline, a magnificence of osseous structure, a breadth of muscle and sinew, a smooth, firm covering of flesh, such as he would vainly seek in any of his living models; he sees a delicate and infinite variety of indentures, of projections, of creases following ...
— The Contemporary Review, Volume 36, September 1879 • Various
... tried principally by Burmey's two sons, Peter and John, and that night was kept in irons in Burmey's cellar. The next day Dan was led into the field in the presence of about three thousand of us. A staple was driven into the stump of a tree, with a chain attached to it, and one of his handcuffs was taken off and brought through the chain, and then fastened on his hand again. A pile of pine wood was built around him. At eight o'clock the wood was set on fire, and when the flames blazed round upon the wretched man, ...
— Narrative of the Life of J.D. Green, a Runaway Slave, from Kentucky • Jacob D. Green
... than St. Paul, so my cousin was lashed to a table while my father and Dr. Jewett took off the leg with a fine carpenter's saw and a razor. He was obliged to stay in bed all winter for fear the stump would freeze. ...
— Old Rail Fence Corners - The A. B. C's. of Minnesota History • Various
... on once. But I got a halter, and fastened it to his tail by the roots, and made a loop t'other end, and when he put up his heels I slipped one into the loop, and he nigh pulled his tail off at the stump." ...
— The Broom-Squire • S. (Sabine) Baring-Gould
... column. A tall mounted American officer rode forward and began a harangue to the Canadians in French. "Brave Canadians," said he, "give yourselves over; we do not wish to do you any harm!"[32] De Salaberry, seeing that his moment was come, sprang upon a stump,[33] discharged his musket as a signal to begin, and brought the American officer off his horse by the shot. The enemy at the time were exposed to being taken on both front and side. The bugles blared, the front companies immediately ...
— An Account Of The Battle Of Chateauguay - Being A Lecture Delivered At Ormstown, March 8th, 1889 • William D. Lighthall
... if he were bestowing a parting benediction on his countrymen. He had now reached the southern portion of the town, and was far within the range of cannon shot from the American batteries. Close beside him was the broad stump of a tree, which appeared to have been recently cut down. Being weary and heavy at heart, he was about to sit down ...
— True Stories from History and Biography • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... creature rallies—recovers! It gathers its forces, it flies! Pursuit then, but pursuit apparently useless, for the animal has found refuge deep in this hollow stump, beyond the reach of ...
— The Singing Mouse Stories • Emerson Hough
... pursing of the month and a puckering of the nose, beastly to see, as one little fellow reminded them on a day when Matey was in more than common favour, topping a pitch of rapture, for clean bowling, first ball, middle stump on the kick, the best bat of the other eleven in a match; and, says this youngster, drawling, soon after the cheers and claps had subsided to ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... personage, twitching the stump of the maimed arm, "I see you are out of the flock; are you all ...
— The Wing-and-Wing - Le Feu-Follet • J. Fenimore Cooper
... he produced a penknife, and placing it in my hands, resolutely bade me amputate his cue. I did so with tears in my eyes, and placed the severed ornament in the hands of my companion. With a piece of tape he affixed it to the horse's stump, and the gush of satisfaction he felt at seeing the first fly despatched by the ingenious but costly substitute for a tail, must have been, I think, an adequate recompense ...
— The Three Brides, Love in a Cottage, and Other Tales • Francis A. Durivage
... stranger the ship had again sunk into the trough of the sea. In vain David looked out for the ship. Still Harry asserted that he was not mistaken. After pumping for some time they were compelled to knock off from fatigue. For fear of being washed away they lashed themselves to the stump of the nearest mast, and thus secured they lay down on the wet deck to rest. Again they rose bravely to their work, but each tune they had to stop pumping they rested for a longer period, and continued pumping after ...
— Adrift in a Boat • W.H.G. Kingston
... the Spanish ladder, it is a tall pine tree notched on the sides for steps, and the stump of a branch left or a peg inserted at considerable intervals, for hand supports to assist in raising the weight ...
— Cave Regions of the Ozarks and Black Hills • Luella Agnes Owen
... mischief-maker to be vigilant in avoiding him, even in the Park. I was cautiously crawling from tree to tree, when out across an open space I descried a cow Elk and her calf lying down. A little more crawling and I sighted a herd all lying down and chewing the cud. About twenty yards away was a stump whose shelter offered chances to use the camera, but my present position promised nothing, so I set out carefully to cross the intervening space in plain view of scores of Elk; and all would have been well but for a pair of mischievous little Chipmunks. They started a most ...
— Wild Animals at Home • Ernest Thompson Seton
... their fellow-men in a certain direction employ suggestion. They often develop great practical skill in the operation, although they do not understand the science of it. It is one of the arts of the demagogue and stump orator. A man who wanted to be nominated for an office went before the convention to make a speech. A great and difficult question agitated the party. He began by saying that he would state his position on that question frankly and fully. "But ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner
... others, since I had borne the brunt of the ordeal, sympathized with me, for they were silent. I stared at our visitors in some perplexity; and then in the most exasperating manner they turned away and ran across our ground to a huge hollow stump near the forest path and ...
— Aliens • William McFee
... animated face was full of talent and wilfulness. He liked Madame Variani, and thought the American girl handsome. But it mattered very little to him with whom he talked; he could have chattered to a tree-stump. He was over-flowing with the mere ...
— Eleanor • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... well over sixty, with side-whiskers, grey eyes, a long nose, and forehead and chin carved out of granite. On his head a flat "wide-awake" hat, on his bent back a white jacket. When he speaks, his mouth moves sideways first; there's always a spot of dried blood on his lip; when he smiles a tooth-stump appears like an ancient fossil. He talks slowly, stopping to spit now and then; every day of his life he gets up at half-past three. Now, mounted on the high iron seat (a crumpled sack for saddle), he rides like some old charioteer, a Hercules with great bowed back, head jutting out, chin ...
— The Best British Short Stories of 1922 • Edward J. O'Brien and John Cournos, editors
... with her?" she said. "I would have gone gladly." And she wept. But her own conscience told her that, in the very middle of her shame and desire to be good, she had returned no answer to the words of the wise woman; she had sat like a tree-stump, and done nothing. She tried to say there was nothing to be done; but she knew at once that she could have told the wise woman she had been very wicked, and asked her to take her with her. Now there was nothing ...
— A Double Story • George MacDonald
... careering about in all directions and bearing down upon every promising stump or dead pine tree they saw in the distance. Hugh and Mr. Olmney took turns in the labour of hewing out the fat pine knots and splitting down the old stumps to get at the pitchy heart of the wood; and the baskets began to grow heavy. The whole party were in excellent spirits, ...
— Queechy • Susan Warner
... representatives of the order; and it will be found that they stand considerably in advance of the Thoms, Bloomfields, and Tannahills, that represent the sedentary workmen. The silent, solitary, hard-toiled men, if nature has put no better stuff in them than that of which stump-orators and Chartist lecturers are made, remain silent, repressed by their circumstances; but if of a higher grade, and if they once do get their mouths fairly opened, they speak with power, and bear with them into ...
— My Schools and Schoolmasters - or The Story of my Education. • Hugh Miller
... branches hung here; its full glare was thrown downward. Following the fixed gaze of his friend, Pendleton saw two partly burned matches, the stump of a candle, and some traces of tallow which had fallen from the latter upon the step. To Pendleton's amazement, his friend dropped to his knees before these as a heathen would before an idol. With the utmost attention he examined ...
— Ashton-Kirk, Investigator • John T. McIntyre
... intelligent looking, whose life was ebbing tediously away. To my right was a handsome young Sergeant of an Illinois Infantry Regiment, captured at Kenesaw. His left arm had been amputated between the shoulder and elbow, and he was turned into the Stockade with the stump all undressed, save the ligating of the arteries. Of course, he had not been inside an hour until the maggot flies had laid eggs in the open wound, and before the day was gone the worms were hatched out, and rioting amid the inflamed and super-sensitive ...
— Andersonville, complete • John McElroy
... "The canvass for attorney-general was very spirited," he continues, "Joshua A. Spencer of Oneida and Samuel Stevens of Albany being the most prominent candidates;" but Willis Hall, "who was better known on the stump than at the bar, and whose zeal, energy, and tact had been conspicuous and effective in overthrowing the Democratic party," got the office. Van Buren could not have surpassed this for practical politics. "The nomination ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... her that this would not be OUR good act, but Father's, because he would have to pay for the tea, and he had already stood us the keepsakes for the soldiers, as well as having to stump up heavily over the coal barge. And it is in vain being noble and generous when someone else is paying for it all the time, even if it happens to be your father. Then three others had ideas at the same time and began ...
— The Wouldbegoods • E. Nesbit
... bordering a road along the Ralph Throp farm in Indiana, 40 miles from my home. About six years ago, with the permission of Mr. Throp, and being a very old tree, it was cut down as its branches interfered with overhanging wires. When I last saw the stump early in 1942, it had staged a come-back by throwing numerous suckers. However, the main point in mentioning this tree is to register the fact that it bears two kinds of nuts, single-lobed, or peanut type, and doubled-lobed, with the peanut type ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Thirty-Seventh Annual Report • Various
... after, in sneezing, "ker-choo," His nose into smithereens flew, And left but a stump, A ridiculous lump, That even ...
— Harper's Young People, January 27, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... and proceeded to bandage up the shattered member. The dog submitted to the operation with languid resignation. The foot of one hind leg had been entirely torn away by a revolver shot, and only the stump of the leg was left. The poor beast would go on three legs for the rest of ...
— The Hound From The North • Ridgwell Cullum
... pondering and remembrance:—'Vague injurious reports are no men's lies, but all men's carelessness.' And by the side of it we may place a pleasant sarcasm attributed to Ellesmere, and apparently intended as a reminder for stump-orators: 'How exactly proportioned to a man's ignorance of the subject is the noise he makes about it at a public meeting.' Not altogether out of connection here may be this brief sentence:—'Next to the folly ...
— Chambers' Edinburgh Journal - Volume XVII., No 423, New Series. February 7th, 1852 • Various
... Alciston and was undoubtedly the recognized hostel for pilgrims and mendicant friars. Another old inn, once a noted house of call for smugglers, is Market Cross House, opposite all that remains of the Cross, a mutilated and battered stump, and the only example, except that ...
— Seaward Sussex - The South Downs from End to End • Edric Holmes
... hear of any ghosts. Yes ma'am I have. I hear noises and I seed something once that I never could figger out. I was goin't thru the woods one day, and come up sudden in a clear patch of ground. There sat a little boy on a stump, all by his-self, there in the woods. I asks him who he wuz & wuz he lost, and he never answered me. Jest sat there, lookin at me. All of a sudden he ups and runs, and I took out after him. He run behind a big tree, and when I got up to where I last seed him, he wuz gone. And there sits ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States - From Interviews with Former Slaves: Indiana Narratives • Works Projects Administration
... Republicans were eager to obtain the two-thirds majority in both Houses necessary to carry measures over his veto, and to get it even the meticulous Sumner was ready to stoop to some pretty discreditable manoeuvres. The President had taken the field against Congress and made some rather violent stump speeches, which were generally thought unworthy of the dignity of the Chief Magistracy. Meanwhile alleged "Southern outrages" against Negroes were vigorously exploited by the Radicals, whose propaganda ...
— A History of the United States • Cecil Chesterton
... for a time when the king was not there, and then sent men to cut the tree down. When the king came, and saw what had been done, he swooned away with sorrow, and fell to the ground. His ministers sprinkled water on his face, and after a considerable time he revived. He then built all round (the stump) with bricks, and poured a hundred pitchers of cows' milk on the roots; and as he lay with his four limbs spread out on the ground, he took this oath, "If the tree do not live, I will never rise from this." When he had uttered this oath, the tree immediately began to grow ...
— Record of Buddhistic Kingdoms • Fa-Hien
... Lynn, is just over the line in that city. There is a popular tradition that the pirates buried their treasure at the foot of a certain hemlock tree in the glen, also the body of a beautiful female. The rotten stump of a tree may still be seen, and a hollow beside it, where people have dug in searching for human bones and treasure. This glen is highly romantic and is one of the places of interest to which all strangers visiting Saugus are conducted, ...
— The Bay State Monthly - Volume 2, Issue 3, December, 1884 • Various
... a stump! He looked reproachfully at me, chidingly at the breeches and sternly at the tapemeasure—which he wore draped round his neck like a pet snake—as though he felt convinced one of us was at fault, but could not be ...
— Europe Revised • Irvin S. Cobb
... line for a comedy, I think. Ha! ha!—gad, I'll make a note of it,' and diving into one of the pockets of his coat, he produced therefrom an old letter, on the back of which he inscribed the witticism with the stump of a pencil. ...
— Madame Midas • Fergus Hume
... ignorance. There, neighbors are miles apart. There are vast tracts of land where the solitude is unbroken by the sounds of labor. Schools and newspapers cannot flourish. Information is given by word of mouth. Men are influenced to political action by the arguments and stories of stump-speakers, and not by reading newspapers. They vote as they are told, or as they are influenced by the stories they hear. So, when the leading conspirators were ready to bring about the rebellion, being in possession ...
— My Days and Nights on the Battle-Field • Charles Carleton Coffin
... ready to open in fearful wailing if anybody sought to pluck them off. In an aggregate way, attention had been called to them during the gubernatorial campaign of the summer. Attacks from the rival stump had, of course, been successfully "answered" by the loyal leaders and party press. But the bare statement of the annual expenditures, as compared with the annual expenditures of ten years ago, necessarily stood, and in cold type it looked bad. Therefore the legislature met ...
— Queed • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... National Cemetery at Gettysburg. The war had brought the nation to its intellectual majority. In the stress of that terrible fight there was no room for buncombe and verbiage, such as the newspapers and stump-speakers used to dole out in ante bellum days. Lincoln's speech is short—a few grave words which he turned aside for a moment to speak in the midst of his task of saving the country. The speech is simple, naked of figures, every ...
— Initial Studies in American Letters • Henry A. Beers
... stump, watching. Over an area of many acres the ground was a litter of broken limbs, ragged tops, crushed and bent and broken younger growth, twisted awry by the big trees in their fall. Huge stumps upthrust like beacons in a ruffled harbor, grim, massive butts. From all the ravaged wood ...
— Big Timber - A Story of the Northwest • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... days hard at it, and sighting the Westmann islands, we ran plump into a fog, and lay to. In a few hours, however, it cleared up into a lovely sunny day, with a warm summer breeze just rippling up the water. Before us lay the long wished-for Cape, with the Meal-sack,—a queer stump of basalt, that flops up out of the sea, fifteen miles south-west of Cape Reikianess, its flat top white with guano, like the mouth of a bag of flour,—five miles on our port bow; and seldom have I remembered a pleasanter four-and-twenty hours than those spent stealing up along ...
— Letters From High Latitudes • The Marquess of Dufferin (Lord Dufferin)
... snows of mid-February had buried away every stump in the pasture lot and muffled from sight all the zigzag fences of the little lonely clearing. The Settlement road was simply smoothed out of existence. The log cabin, with its low roof and one chimney, seemed half sunken ...
— The Backwoodsmen • Charles G. D. Roberts
... of Nazareth was born, the sun, according to the Bosnian legend, "leaped in the heavens, and the stars around it danced. A peace came over mountain and forest. Even the rotten stump stood straight and healthy on the green hill-side. The grass was beflowered with open blossoms, incense sweet as myrrh pervaded upland and forest, birds sang on the mountain top, and all gave thanks ...
— Christmas - Its Origin, Celebration and Significance as Related in Prose and Verse • Various
... shone as a host. The breakfast was served on a smooth stump put on board for that purpose. The coffee was admirable, and the bacon and thin corn cakes were cooked beautifully. Good butter was spread over the corn cakes, and Harry and his father were surprised at the ...
— The Guns of Bull Run - A Story of the Civil War's Eve • Joseph A. Altsheler
... matter, we ought to dismiss from our minds, as far as possible, those feelings against the North, which have been engendered not merely by the Trent aggression, but by the previous anti-British effusions of newspaper writers and stump orators. It is hardly worth while to ask how far these explosions of ill-humor are anything more than might have been anticipated from ill-disciplined minds, disappointed of the sympathy which they justly thought they had a right to expect from the great anti-slavery people, ...
— The Contest in America • John Stuart Mill
... of slavery in the Territories. It is true that the Supreme Court has decided it in favor of the South. It is equally true that parties have repudiated that decision both in platforms and on the stump. ...
— A Report of the Debates and Proceedings in the Secret Sessions of the Conference Convention • Lucius Eugene Chittenden
... perturbed by the threat of assault, groped obediently; but the room appeared to be of the dimensions of a park, and he arrived at the candle stump only after a prolonged excursion. The flame revealed to him a man of about his own age, who leant against the wall regarding him with indignant eyes. Revealed also was the coil of rope that the comedian had brought for ...
— A Chair on The Boulevard • Leonard Merrick
... come forth a rod out of the stem (or stump, i. e. the roots of a tree cut down) of Jesse, and a branch shall grow out of his roots, and the spirit of Jehovah shall rest upon him, the spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and might, the spirit of knowledge ...
— Five Pebbles from the Brook • George Bethune English
... cut clean off, pick the piece up and wash it and the stump clean and then place the cut off part against the stump and tie on, or stick on with adhesive plaster. It ...
— Mother's Remedies - Over One Thousand Tried and Tested Remedies from Mothers - of the United States and Canada • T. J. Ritter
... time we came to notice that the most dangerous part of the road lay between a willow tree-stump and the White Farm. Our men were shot here nightly in getting back to the trenches. A party was formed to make a tour of the field in which the tree-trunk stood. The first thing we noticed was that after we entered this enclosure the shots were ...
— A Soldier's Sketches Under Fire • Harold Harvey
... stump orator. He never made speeches that were quoted as models of eloquence or wisdom. But he knew what the farmer and the mechanic and the workman at his bench were thinking of, and addressed himself always to their best and highest thought. He was a great vote-making ...
— Autobiography of Seventy Years, Vol. 1-2 • George Hoar
... 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
... imaginary picture of the ancient days, we find that some of the birds of the present time have found a primitive way of nesting still the best. If we push over this rotten stump we shall find that the cavity near the top, where the wood is still sound, has been used the past summer by the downy woodpecker—a front door like an auger hole, ceiling of rough-hewn wood, a bed ...
— The Log of the Sun - A Chronicle of Nature's Year • William Beebe
... 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 heard before, for "erratic;" and ...
— Home as Found • James Fenimore Cooper
... time for more, for already the tents were being pulled down, and soon the women were hurried away to the rear. Four men surrounded Gregory, and led him to the edge of the camp, and there fastened him to the stump of a tree that had been cut off six feet from the ground, the upper portion being used in the construction of the zareba. Ten or twelve men were similarly fastened, in a line with him. These had been detected in trying to ...
— With Kitchener in the Soudan - A Story of Atbara and Omdurman • G. A. Henty
... debate upon that subject. Mr. Shellabarger was logical and effective but he was destitute of imagination utterly. At the bar since his retirement from politics he has enjoyed a large practice, but, unfortunately, as it appears to me, he has preserved the style of speaking which he acquired upon the stump and in Congress. A skillful speaker must adapt himself to the circumstance and to his audience. A stump speech, a speech in the House of Representatives, a speech in the Senate, an argument to a court, an argument to a jury, should each be framed on a model of its own. ...
— Reminiscences of Sixty Years in Public Affairs, Vol. 2 • George S. Boutwell
... meats in the Chico area. That would be a paradise for a black walnut man. And years ago I visited Teharna, a deserted village from the storybook, a former pony express station—wonderful black walnuts! Upon placing my camera upon a stump of a tree that grew in the street-parking, which had been logged, I braced the camera with a chip of this four-foot stump and discovered that the tree had been a curly walnut. The trees there are not J. hindsii, but Missouri blacks ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Thirty-Fourth Annual Report 1943 • Various
... Lost Wing, hunched on a stump, and Barry's heart sank. She debated a moment, at last to shake her head. "No—he'd want to dig them out with a knife. If you don't mind." She moved toward Houston and ...
— The White Desert • Courtney Ryley Cooper
... although I discovered they were not all deserted, as I found an old bird roosting in one of them. I was induced to be more particular in my remarks in consequence of my seeing Mr. Jennings's remarks in the "Magazine of Natural History;" and I searched, as I supposed, every bank, bush, and stump in the wood two or three times before I could find the breeding-nest, which I at last discovered in the twigs of a willow on the bank of the river, in the centre of a bunch of tangled grass, cotton waste, and straws which ...
— Essays in Natural History and Agriculture • Thomas Garnett
... Fighting Force of the United Nations was swirling upward. Like smoke from a campfire or winged ants from a tree-stump, they went up in a colossal, twisting spiral. Beyond the domes and above them. The domes existed no longer. Up and up, and up.... And then they swooped down upon the suddenly fleeing enemy. Vengefully, savagely, with all ...
— Invasion • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... was sent out yesterday to sound, was snagged by a stump which was high out of water; probably they were carried on to it by a current. The little boat whirled round and round, and the men were plainly frightened, for they dropped their oars and clutched the sides of ...
— Maria Mitchell: Life, Letters, and Journals • Maria Mitchell
... boatswain's mate named Ware had his left arm cut clean off by a furious slash of a French sabre, and fell back into the boat. With the help of a comrade's tarry fingers Ware bound up the bleeding stump with rough but energetic surgery, climbed with his solitary hand on board the Chevrette, and played a most gallant part in ...
— Deeds that Won the Empire - Historic Battle Scenes • W. H. Fitchett
... blind man came up the path from the village. I was sitting on a stump of pine listening to the merry peal of the bells of the little village church below. He carried a milk-can, and felt his way with a long staff, with which he tapped the stones in front of him. He hesitated for a moment as he passed ...
— Mountain Meditations - and some subjects of the day and the war • L. Lind-af-Hageby
... pensioned for this disability. He died May 15, 1883, from an overdose of morphia. It is claimed by the widow that her husband was in the habit of taking morphia to alleviate the pain he endured from his stump, and that he ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 3 (of 3) of Volume 8: Grover Cleveland, First Term. • Grover Cleveland
... 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
... was settled!' cried Elizabeth in distress. She sat down on a dry stump a little way off, and the Squire actually enjoyed the ...
— Elizabeth's Campaign • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... themselves, making rapid progress; at first the integument alone was affected, but later all the structures became implicated and the penis was completely destroyed, the sloughs detaching themselves in shreds, leaving a conical stump that healed but slowly. ...
— History of Circumcision from the Earliest Times to the Present - Moral and Physical Reasons for its Performance • Peter Charles Remondino
... the stump of an extinct cigarette. It smote the offender between the eyebrows, leaving a caste-mark of warm ash to attest the accuracy of ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver
... 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 ...
— Through the Brazilian Wilderness • Theodore Roosevelt
... the mound under the birch tree, and there were the flowers, shining red and blue, and there in the middle of the mound was the Stump of the reed which the ...
— Old Peter's Russian Tales • Arthur Ransome
... the Beta Phis. In his mind's eye the Phis passed before him, one by one, particularly a certain long, unprepossessing member who had stayed till after twelve one night and bored him with a dreary recital of the prominence of his house in College politics, of the stump speeches that a former brother, now a historical personage, had made in Mayfield for prohibition, to say nothing of the essay prizes in philology that another ancient Phi had won in the dim past, when the chapter must ...
— Stanford Stories - Tales of a Young University • Charles K. Field
... some!" shouted Amos, as he leaped down the bank; "just a little bit, in the stump of an old oak tree up here. Now wait till I get the thole-pins, and you'll see," and he ran toward the dory and returned with a pair of smooth, round thole-pins, and sat down on the sand in front of the brush heap. The precious piece of punk was carefully wrapped in a piece ...
— A Little Maid of Province Town • Alice Turner Curtis
... lodge me for as long as I liked to stop, in return for my services in his forge. The offer was the more magnanimous in that he was not in any particular need of assistance, but was willing to stretch a point (a proceeding that would stump Professor Euclid, by the way,) considering that I was in particular need of a job. No doubt, like all Yankees, he had an eye on the dollars' question, and argued, with most praiseworthy perception, that being an engineer and ...
— Canada for Gentlemen • James Seton Cockburn
... built East Anglian, born within sight of Boston Stump five-and-forty years ago, his face seamed and pitted by smallpox almost to the extinction of expression and altogether to that of eyebrows, eyelashes and continuity of beard—spat deliberately and voluminously into the oily, refuse-stained water, ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... operation of what is termed an 'amputational neuroma.' This is a tumour-like growth occurring on the end of the divided nerve. It is composed of connective-tissue elements permeated by nerve fibres which have grown out from the axis-cylinders of the nerve stump. It may vary in size from a pea to a hazel-nut, and is frequently the cause of much pain. This must be cut down upon and cleanly removed, taking away at the same time as much of the nerve as ...
— Diseases of the Horse's Foot • Harry Caulton Reeks
... She was looking keenly around, her eyes falling on every rock, stump, tree, and flower, in search of the tiny, trodden path by which they had left the summit of the mountain. But there was no path. Only the bramble, and the grass, and the ...
— Gypsy's Cousin Joy • Elizabeth Stuart Phelps
... 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
... talking about the Irish language and the corporation meeting and all to that and the shoneens that can't speak their own language and Joe chipping in because he stuck someone for a quid and Bloom putting in his old goo with his twopenny stump that he cadged off of Joe and talking about the Gaelic league and the antitreating league and drink, the curse of Ireland. Antitreating is about the size of it. Gob, he'd let you pour all manner of drink down his throat till the ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... Bildad, but a swearing good man—something like me—only there's a good deal more of him. Aye, aye, I know that he was never very jolly; and I know that on the passage home, he was a little out of his mind for a spell; but it was the sharp shooting pains in his bleeding stump that brought that about, as any one might see. I know, too, that ever since he lost his leg last voyage by that accursed whale, he's been a kind of moody—desperate moody, and savage sometimes; but that will all pass off. And once for all, let me tell ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... the river bank one of the deck hands would jump off with the bow line and make fast to a stump or tree, then the stern line was thrown to him and similarly connected. Then the negro deck hands would proceed to carry on the wood on their bare shoulders to the tune of a Southern plantation melody. When ready ...
— Dangers of the Trail in 1865 - A Narrative of Actual Events • Charles E Young
... musingly; "I have a book about wonderful boys, and one of them cut out a lion in butter, and another drew a picture upon a stump of a tree; but I don't think we should be able to dig so very far down—we should have ...
— The Story of the White-Rock Cove • Anonymous
... firing began, General Lee joined Hill just below our tree, and he remained there nearly all the time, looking through his field-glass—sometimes talking to Hill and sometimes to Colonel Long of his Staff. But generally he sat quite alone on the stump of a tree. What I remarked especially was, that during the whole time the firing continued, he only sent one message, and only received one report. It is evidently his system to arrange the plan thoroughly with the three corps ...
— Three Months in the Southern States, April-June 1863 • Arthur J. L. (Lieut.-Col.) Fremantle
... very good meat), and a sort of guanos, of the same shape and size with other guanos described, but differing from them in three remarkable particulars; for these had a larger and uglier head, and had no tail, and at the rump, instead of the tail there, they had a stump of a tail, which appeared like another head, but not really such, being without mouth or eyes; yet this creature seemed by this means to have a head at each end, and, which may be reckoned a fourth difference, the legs also seemed all four of them to be forelegs, being all alike in shape and length, ...
— Early Australian Voyages • John Pinkerton
... robbery, rape, arson, theft, if only plaited with the soldier's garb, go unwhipped of justice."[1] It has never been the habit of the military to retort these charges upon the other professions. We prefer to leave them unanswered. If demagogues on the "stump," or in the legislative halls, or in their Fourth of-July addresses, can find no fitter subjects "to point a moral or adorn a tale," we must be content to bear ...
— Elements of Military Art and Science • Henry Wager Halleck
... smoked in groups under the fine oaks which grew in the middle of the street, waiting for the call to supper. Up at the end of the row of houses, and separated a little from them by a wild-plum thicket, stood a house like a black stump just seen above the green around it. It had what none of the others possessed, a porch in front, but the rotten frame-work had dropped off piece by piece, until it was a mystery how the heavy scuppernong ...
— Shapes that Haunt the Dusk • Various
... bridge, but he could see no singer anywhere. The only object visible was a water-lily, swaying on the water amid its broad leaves. But a swaying flower could not sing, and there must be something mysterious about it. He tied his horse to a stump on the bank, and sat down on the bridge to listen, hoping that his eyes or ears would give him some solution of the riddle. All was still for a while, but presently the invisible ...
— The Hero of Esthonia and Other Studies in the Romantic Literature of That Country • William Forsell Kirby
... her attention was painfully held by a short, dark, misshapen man with no hands nor arms, but only the stump of an arm, with a stick tied to it. Before him on a rough stand was a board, with half a dozen thick metal wires stretched across it. Rapidly moving his one poor stump, he struck on the wires with his stick and so ...
— Fan • Henry Harford
... 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
... solitude. Here comes a whole bevy reviling us, six or seven of them, running up and down the branches of a great bush, all scolding at the top of their voices,—a family of house wrens lately emancipated from their wooden castle in that old stump across the brook,—pert and saucy little parents, and droll babies imitating ...
— Upon The Tree-Tops • Olive Thorne Miller
... don't know," said his father; "perhaps they would not. At any rate, if I cut them off pretty close to the living part of the tree, the bark will then gradually extend out over the little stump that I leave, and finally cover it over, and take it all in, as ...
— Rollo's Experiments • Jacob Abbott
... food, but corn in the ear, which has to be prepared for baking after working hours, by grinding it with a hand-mill. This they take to the fields with them, and prepare it for eating, by holding it on their hoes, over a fire made by a stump. Among the gangs, are often young women, who bring their children to the fields, and lay them in a fence corner, while they are at work, only being permitted to nurse them at the option of the overseer. When a child is three weeks old, a woman is considered ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... can speak," sez he, staggerin' up blind as a stump. I was loath to do ut, but I wint round an' swung into the jaw side-on an' shifted ut a half pace to ...
— Soldiers Three • Rudyard Kipling
... heard voices and came out on the verandah. The moment he greeted the scouts familiarly, Jake wagged his stump of a tail and ran up to show his ...
— Girl Scouts in the Adirondacks • Lillian Elizabeth Roy
... lopping off every lateral, natural outgrowth. Assuredly, many a volatile superstition had lodged in its branches, and many a gross abuse couched under its shadow. But these might have been scared away without mutilating the tree till it was reduced to a stump. He desired, doubtless, to bring back the Church to the condition in which he supposed it had been when born. But one cannot reduce an adult to the simplicity and innocence of childhood by stripping off all his clothes, and denying him the ...
— Castles and Cave Dwellings of Europe • Sabine Baring-Gould
... just before I lay down for a little nap, as things were quiet and I needed a rest pretty badly. When I woke up the foot was gone. He had cut it off with our chain saw out of the spare parts' box, and bad plastered the stump over with mud. ...
— Over The Top • Arthur Guy Empey
... of our history most abounding in all the elements of interest will be that one which will relate the rise and first national triumph of the Democratic party. Young Clay came to the Kentucky stump just when the country was at the crisis of the struggle between the Old and the New. But in Kentucky it was not a struggle; for the people there, mostly of Virginian birth, had been personally benefited by Jefferson's equalizing measures, ...
— Famous Americans of Recent Times • James Parton
... industrial progress. Ignorant and inexperienced, it is not strange that in the first years of our new life we began at the top instead of at the bottom; that a seat in Congress or the State Legislature was more sought than real estate or industrial skill; that the political convention or stump-speaking had more attractions than ...
— Masterpieces of Negro Eloquence - The Best Speeches Delivered by the Negro from the days of - Slavery to the Present Time • Various
... a fair reckoning," continued Mr Briggs; "suppose you were in my case, and had never a farthing but of your own getting; where would you be then? What would become of your fine coach and horses? you might stump your feet off before you'd ever get into one. Where would be all this fine crockery work for your breakfast? you might pop your head under a pump, or drink out of your own paw; what would you do for that fine jemmy tye? Where would you get a gold head to your stick?— You might ...
— Cecilia vol. 2 - Memoirs of an Heiress • Frances (Fanny) Burney (Madame d'Arblay)
... not come off quite so well, for when the story had been told, though his mother had trembled and shed tears of thankfulness as she kissed him, and his sisters sprang at him and devoured him, while all the time he bemoaned his piece of the stump of an aralia, and a bit of cone of a pinus, and other treasures to which imaginative regret lent such an aid, that no doubt he would believe the lost contents of his bag to have been the most precious articles that he had ever collected; ...
— The Long Vacation • Charlotte M. Yonge
... stump!' laughed the clerk. 'My name's 'Uish if you want to know. Everybody has a false nyme in the Pacific. Lay you five to ...
— The Ebb-Tide - A Trio And Quartette • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... discriminated against on account of sect, sex, race or color, but that all should have an equal chance in the race which the Divine Ruler has set before all; and I never missed an opportunity to give utterance to this conviction in conversation, on the stump, on the platform and in legislative bodies. My views were set out concisely in my remarks in congress, on January 30, 1869, and I cite the commencement and conclusion, as I find them in ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... unnoticed by the boys, she scrambled out of the tree and climbed up the bank, getting her blue riding-skirt decidedly muddy—not that Norah's free and independent soul had ever learned to tremble at the sight of muddy garments. She hid her fishing tackle in a stump, and made her ...
— A Little Bush Maid • Mary Grant Bruce
... a very narrow escape. If he hadn't happened to bring up against an old stump he would certainly have tumbled into ...
— The Tale of Solomon Owl • Arthur Scott Bailey
... were borrowed from the Peep o' Day; the rope was run round the schoolhouse, and the building was promptly hauled back into shape and fastened down with long timbers running from its sides to a convenient red-gum stump at the back. Thus it remained for many years, bulging at the sides, pitching forward, and straining at its tethers like an eager ...
— The Gold-Stealers - A Story of Waddy • Edward Dyson
... patient unless, like Little Joe Otter, he is just as much at home in the water as the fish themselves, and can swim fast enough to catch them by chasing them. So he didn't move so much as an eye lash. He was so still that he looked almost like the stump of an old tree. Perhaps that is what the fish thought he was, for pretty soon, two or three swam right in close to where he was sitting. Now Buster Bear may be big and clumsy looking, but there isn't anything ...
— The Adventures of Buster Bear • Thornton W. Burgess
... kept his eyes constantly upon the young sentry. Frequently he yawned. Once or twice he stopped uncertainly before a stump and seemed about to sit down, then started on again around his monotonous beat. But his step was wavering, his eyes were heavy, and Jerry knew it was only a question of time—a comparatively short time—when nature would conquer, and the sentinel, ...
— The Brighton Boys in the Radio Service • James R. Driscoll
... here? Could one not be so, so good?" she kept on murmuring. Then she remembered that she had been asking herself vague questions like this ever since her arrival; and with a sudden determination to face what was in her mind and think it out honestly, she sat down on a tree stump, buttoned her coat up tight, for the wind was blowing full on her, and fell to considering ...
— The Benefactress • Elizabeth Beauchamp
... wouldn't call Christ my redeemer in prayer meeting so much. 'Nother had just fixed his home. 'Nother had just put in a new stock of goods; and so with 'em all. They all had some excuse handy, and I don't know what to do. I'm up a stump this time fer sure. We've got the material to work up; we've got the people to buy the goods; we've got the lot; and there we're stuck, fer we can't get the house. I can't anyway. We're jes' like the feller that went fishin'; had a big basket to carry ...
— That Printer of Udell's • Harold Bell Wright
... tall raw-boned Yankee from the Western States, mounting on a stump after the body had been removed, and speaking with tremendous vehemence, "I guess things have come to such a deadlock here that it's time for honest men to carry things with a high hand, so I opine we had better set ...
— Digging for Gold - Adventures in California • R.M. Ballantyne
... eagerly told 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 ...
— Short Stories Old and New • Selected and Edited by C. Alphonso Smith
... among the underwood in such a position that I could get a clear view of the amphitheatre without running much risk of being myself seen, I found a gnarled stump of a creeper that afforded a very convenient rest for my heavy double-barrelled elephant gun, and, roughly levelling the weapon, awaited a favourable opportunity to fire. A few minutes later it came, the two huge beasts drawing apart, as by common ...
— Through Veld and Forest - An African Story • Harry Collingwood
... 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
... looked at the light; and the tears ran and ran out of her staring eyes and fell, like a shower, on the table. But when the Chevalier de Grieux, who had lain two days near the corpse of his dear Manon, finally began to dig a grave with the stump of his sword—Liubka burst into sobbing so that Soloviev became scared and dashed after water. But even having calmed down a little, she still sobbed for a long time with her ...
— Yama (The Pit) • Alexandra Kuprin |
