"Shambling" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... ascertained that the runners made about two hundred trips up and down the dark chutes every day, and wondered if they always found it comic to do so. She saw the office-boys, just growing into the age of interest in sex and acquiring husky male voices and shambling sense of shame, yearn at the shrines of pasty-faced stenographers. She saw the humanity of all this mass—none the less that they envied her position and spoke privily of "those snippy private secretaries that think they're so much sweller than ...
— The Job - An American Novel • Sinclair Lewis
... the sound a creature came shambling forward, carrying what looked like a huge melon in either hand. Jim recognized ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, May, 1930 • Various
... sidewalk strolled a lad, "Foolish Joe" people called him, and he was, as usual, accompanied by a little band of fun-loving, teasing boys. In a moment they were gone; but the shambling central figure with its vacant face stayed with her to accentuate her distress. She leaned her head upon her arm, but she could not ...
— Polly of Lady Gay Cottage • Emma C. Dowd
... so, and we advanced at a shambling gallop, the horsemen gaining on us every moment. Now I thought that all was over, especially when of a sudden from behind the White Rock emerged a ...
— Queen Sheba's Ring • H. Rider Haggard
... all, there was nothing mean and cunning about them. The eyes were wild, and perhaps fierce, but they were honest and frank still. The clothes were much worn and torn, but the body they covered was strong and shapely. There was nothing weak or shambling in those ...
— The Birthright • Joseph Hocking
... brain of a drowning man; that same crowded my brain during the few moments which swung in to us Daniel, scowling, masterful, his raw bulk and his long shambling stride ...
— Desert Dust • Edwin L. Sabin
... very first, the Mistress had been Bruce's champion at The Place. There was no competition for that office. She and she alone could see any promise in the shambling youngster. ...
— Bruce • Albert Payson Terhune
... spot behind a log Anse lifted his rifle and started over the ridge with the long, shambling gait of the born hill-climber that eats up the miles. For this emergency he had been schooled years back when he sat by a wood fire in a cabin of split boards and listened to his crippled-up father reciting the saga of the feud, with the tally of this ...
— The Escape of Mr. Trimm - His Plight and other Plights • Irvin S. Cobb
... thought out, should ever love to live alone. Solitude is surely for the young, who have time before them for the execution of schemes, and who can, therefore, take delight in thinking. In these days the poor old man would wander about the rooms, shambling from one chamber to another, and would feel ashamed when the servants met him ever on the move. He would make little apologies for his uneasiness, which they would accept graciously, understanding, after a fashion, why it was that he was uneasy. "He ain't ...
— The Last Chronicle of Barset • Anthony Trollope
... up his stick, he heard a footstep behind him, and turning, saw an ill-dressed, sullen-looking man. The light from one of the lamps near by shone full on him; and something about the stout, shambling figure, or the dirty evil-browed face, ...
— Adrien Leroy • Charles Garvice
... spoken through chattering teeth was not needed. The women of the tribe shivered more from the cold than from fear as they gathered together their belongings, their furs and hides and crude stone implements; and the shambling man-shape, called Gor, led them to the hole down which a strong man might climb, led ...
— Two Thousand Miles Below • Charles Willard Diffin
... Hyacinthe again, and the shambling lad felt dimly as if the scent of the sandalwood were sweeter, and the lamp-flame clearer. But the stranger's ...
— Christmas Stories And Legends • Various
... and of quiet deductions and deliberate conclusions. His coat was seedy, his trousers bagged at the knees, his shoes were old, and there were patches on them, but his collar and linen were white and very much starched, and his awkward, shambling gait was honest to the last footfall. A world of depth and soul was in his strong, fine face, lit up now with an honest, humble smile, but, at rest, full ...
— The Bishop of Cottontown - A Story of the Southern Cotton Mills • John Trotwood Moore
... wizards and witches, that made Detroit feared by the early settlers, none were more dreaded than the Nain Rouge (Red Dwarf), or Demon of the Strait, for it appeared only when there was to be trouble. In that it delighted. It was a shambling, red-faced creature, with a cold, glittering eye and teeth protruding from a grinning mouth. Cadillac, founder of Detroit, having struck at it, presently lost his seigniory and his fortunes. It was seen scampering along the shore on the night ...
— Myths And Legends Of Our Own Land, Complete • Charles M. Skinner
... raw, wet winter's day, a loafer applied for a pair of shoes. He had on an old, shambling pair, out at both toes. The old Wine-Prince was sitting with a pair of slippers on, and had his own shoes ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., April, 1863, No. LXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics. • Various
... valued the surprise as a means of ascertaining their attention to his interests. Ware was one of his most trusted lieutenants, however, and everything that he had ever seen or heard satisfied him of the man's faithfulness. So he made haste to relieve him from embarrassment, for the tall, awkward, shambling fellow was ...
— Bricks Without Straw • Albion W. Tourgee
... could not answer the question, and he longed for the sight of the shambling little station at Tabernacle, with Ba'tiste, in answer to the telegram he had sent from Chicago, awaiting him with the buggy from camp. And Ba'tiste was there, to boom at him, to call Golemar's attention to the fact ...
— The White Desert • Courtney Ryley Cooper
... letters on their canvas sides make themselves conspicuous, and so do the bakers' carts; while light and neat American wagonettes glide rapidly along among less attractive vehicles. Now and then a Chinaman passes, with his peculiar shambling gait, with a pole across his shoulders balancing his baskets of "truck"; women with oranges and bananas for a penny apiece meet one at every corner, and still the sidewalks are so broad, and the streets so ...
— Foot-prints of Travel - or, Journeyings in Many Lands • Maturin M. Ballou
... head drooped more and more under its tree of horns, and the shambling trot grew weak and weaker. He took to standing for long periods, with nose to the ground and dejected ears dropped limply; and Buck found more time in which to get water for himself and in which to rest. At such moments, panting with red lolling tongue and with eyes fixed upon ...
— The Call of the Wild • Jack London
... ecclesiastical dress, as when discovering a pacific next-door neighbor beneath the bear-skin of an American military officer. A fit suggestion; for next follows a detachment of Portuguese troops-of-the-line,—twenty shambling men in short jackets, with hair shaved close, looking most like children's wooden monkeys, by no means live enough for the real ones. They straggle along, scarcely less irregular in aspect than the main body of ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 37, November, 1860 • Various
... Hartford, shortly afterward, Bok was just turning into Forrest Street when a little old woman came shambling along toward him, unconscious, apparently, of people or surroundings. In her hand she carried a small tree-switch. Bok did not notice her until just as he had passed her he heard her calling to him: "Young man, young man." Bok retraced his steps, and then ...
— The Americanization of Edward Bok - The Autobiography of a Dutch Boy Fifty Years After • Edward William Bok
... Bully is that he shall hate the prowling great paws of the Plebs, whilst Plebs by inherent nature goes mad at the sight of Bully's jowl. "Drop it!" cries Plebs. "Hands off!" growls Bully. It is hands against head, the shambling, servile body in a rage of insurrection at last against ...
— Touch and Go • D. H. Lawrence
... fearful. He walked rapidly toward the brook. The trail he was following became distinct. The leaves had been kicked up here and there by Lew as he walked. The track grew plainer and plainer. It became more like a plow furrow. At first Charley did not grasp the meaning of the shambling trail. Then it ...
— The Young Wireless Operator—As a Fire Patrol - The Story of a Young Wireless Amateur Who Made Good as a Fire Patrol • Lewis E. Theiss
... then he weakly attempted to catch the other's eye, but as Mike studiously refused to be caught, Cassidy could only blink owlishly and fumble again with the tangled ends of the skein. Finally, abandoning it all as useless, he turned toward the door, yet arrested his dazed shambling to ask ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. 31, No. 1, May 1908 • Various
... discovered the absolute truth of the shocking rumour which had reached her about Edith's projected visit, the confirmation of which was the sole object of her colloquy, wagged her way out of the shop again successfully, and was duly assisted by the page-boy into her shambling little ...
— Philistia • Grant Allen
... and grazing land into vineyards and orchards. Not even Riverside can compare with it in the rapid evolution of a great source of wealth which ten years ago was almost unknown. What has transformed Fresno from a shambling, dirty resort of cowboys and wheat ranchers into one of the prettiest cities in California is the raisin grape. Though nearly all fruits may be grown here, yet this is pre-eminently the home of the raisin industry, and it is the raisin which in a single decade ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 829, November 21, 1891 • Various
... has forgotten to prepare the reader for the presence of the "damsel"; he has forgotten to mention the spring and its relation to the ruin; and now, face to face with his omission, instead of trying back and starting fair, crams all this matter, tail foremost, into a single shambling sentence. It is not merely bad English, or bad style; it is abominably ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume 9 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... not in any very high glee at having been previously roused from his warm hammock at a most unseasonable hour, came shambling along from his galley, for, like many old blacks, there was something the matter with his knee-pans, which he did not keep well scoured like his other pans; this old Fleece, as they called him, came shuffling and limping ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... declined if only they could have thought of the proper method of doing so. As it was, they only succeeded in shambling through the parsonage door, instinctively concealing their ...
— Prudence Says So • Ethel Hueston
... hunting; but greater contrast could not have been found than between his tall fine form and the King's ungainly figure. Sir Gilbert had remained behind with the rest of the courtiers in the chapel; but, calling him, James seized his arm, and set forward at his usual shambling pace. As he went on, nodding his head in return to the profound salutations of the assemblage, his eye rolled round them until it alighted on Richard Assheton, and, nudging Sir Gilbert, ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... shop, while the gay, lightsome step passed among the dusty treasures. Now she seldom smiled or sang, and among the few bits of comedy in her sad days, were the visits of Kit Nubbles, her grandfather's errand boy, a shock-headed, shambling, comical lad, whose devotion to the beautiful child verged on worship. Appreciating Nell's loneliness, Kit visited the shop as often as possible, and the exquisite oddity and awkwardness of his ...
— Ten Girls from Dickens • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... on the top of the sack, and the man bent his energies to starting his old horse once more on his shambling trot. ...
— Little Folks - A Magazine for the Young (Date of issue unknown) • Various
... old burro now," called Walter, as a shambling object, much the worse for wear, came ...
— The Pony Rider Boys in New Mexico • Frank Gee Patchin
... scholarly young rector and his father's critical self. Instead, Reed took a certain comfort in reflecting that he had foreseen it all along. However, he had felt an undeniable curiosity to see the shabby, under-nourished Scott Brenton, a thing of shambling feet and knobbly joints, transmogrified into the well-groomed, easy-mannered type of rector which had become traditional ...
— The Brentons • Anna Chapin Ray
... she made haste to call Cyrus, who came shambling along the hall from the cabin. The parlor was dark, for though it was a day of sunshine and merry May wind, Gussie kept the shutters bowed—but Cyrus could see the pale intensity of his visitor's face. There was a moment's silence, ...
— An Encore • Margaret Deland
... and was snatched away, half laughing and half in tears, and hurried down to the side street, where a carriage was waiting. And here there was one more delay: Chester Cox, a thin shambling figure, came forward from a shadowy doorway, and rather timidly ...
— The Story Of Julia Page - Works of Kathleen Norris, Volume V. • Kathleen Norris
... Sir, your travellers Need fleeter steeds than we poor shambling folks Who stay at home. To my unskilful sense, Speed for the chase and vigour for the tilt, ...
— Count Alarcos - A Tragedy • Benjamin Disraeli
... take the horses to their stable. All through the streets they had passed men in one uniform or another, who looked stout and well-fed, who strode in the middle of the pavement, while the Poles, whose clothes were poor and threadbare, shuffled aside in their patched and shambling boots to make way for the conqueror. Sometimes they would turn and look back at some sword-bearer who was more offensive than usual, with reflective eyes as if marking him in order to know him at a future time. As is always the case, it was the smaller ...
— The Vultures • Henry Seton Merriman
... offered me his hand for parting. I took it, and we said, together, "Well, good-by," and moved in different directions. I knew very well that I should turn back, and I had not gone a hundred feet away when I faced about. He was shambling off into the dusk, a most hapless figure. "Tedham!" I called ...
— A Pair of Patient Lovers • William Dean Howells
... singular figure appeared at the doorway. It was that of a very old man, with long white hair, which escaped from beneath the eaves of an exceedingly high-peaked hat. He stooped considerably, and moved along with a shambling gait. I could not see much of his face, which, as the landlady stood behind him with the lamp, was consequently in deep shadow. I could observe, however, that his eyes sparkled like those of a ferret. He advanced to the foot of the bed, in which I was still lying, wondering ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... in a sort of terror, the tall figure as it was assisted from the kuruma and led, shambling, through the house. The three moved on to the wing containing Ume's chamber, and the painting room. Mata heard the fusuma close gently, the nurse's voice give admonition to "keep his spirit strong for this last stress," heard old Kano falter, "Farewell, my son, no one shall disturb ...
— The Dragon Painter • Mary McNeil Fenollosa
... saw a group of antelope standing only a few hundred yards from the train, tranquilly indifferent, their branching horns clear in a pallid ray of light; and once a prairie-wolf, solitary and motionless; and once, as the train moved off after a stoppage, an old badger leisurely shambling off the line itself. And once, too, amid a driving storm-shower, and what seemed to her unbroken formless solitudes, suddenly, a tent by the railway side, and the blaze of a fire; and as the train slowly passed, three men—lads rather—emerging ...
— Lady Merton, Colonist • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... of lost health and vitality he will tell you. Mark well the wasted hand, the putty-like skin, the black-ringed, lack-lustre eyes, the heavy lip, the labored breath—read the consequences of his sin and crime in his shame-faced way, his shambling gait, his nerveless hands, his fluttering heart, his weakened muscles, and his tottering ...
— Manhood Perfectly Restored • Unknown
... was a tall, thin, shambling young fellow whose face was pale with an emotion not at all complimentary to herself. He didn't like her! He thought her hideous! He despised her! So she read Peter's expressive eyes. She thought him a fool, to stand there staring at her like that, and she hated ...
— The Purple Heights • Marie Conway Oemler
... convey such bulky articles was not quite clear. Now that he was a miner he had no use for them, and at River Bend they were not saleable. This man, Abner Kent, came to Ferguson's tent, where he and Tom were resting after the labors of the day. He was a tall man, with a shambling gait and ...
— The Young Miner - or Tom Nelson in California • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... admit within the charmed circle of "literature," really constitutes a bridge spanning the gulf between the severer classical style and the colloquial; while an elegant terseness characterises the higher-class novel, there are others in which the style is loose and shambling. Still, it remains true that no book of any first-rate literary pretensions would be easily intelligible to any class of Chinamen, educated or otherwise, if read aloud exactly as printed. The public reader of stories is obliged to translate, so ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 2 - "Chicago, University of" to "Chiton" • Various
... consumed hard-boiled eggs, shells and all, for his breakfast; ate his prawns with their heads and their tails on, drank scalding hot tea, and performed so many horrifying acts that one almost doubted that he was human; and by Christopher Nubbles, a shock-headed, shambling, awkward, devoted lad, the only element of cheerfulness that ever came into her life. In this book appear Richard Swiveller and his Marchioness, Sampson and Sarah Brass and Mrs. Jarley, who to be appreciated must be seen and known, as Dickens has drawn ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various
... it had caused him to 'eat all his economies,' and he resigned himself to the wages of a road-mender, which were small but sure. It was getting dusk when we parted. My next companion on the road was a poor bent-backed, shambling, idiotic youth, who was driving home two long-tailed sheep and a lamb, and who had just enough intelligence for this work. He kept at my side for a mile or two, flourishing a long stick over the backs of the sheep and uttering melancholy ...
— Wanderings by southern waters, eastern Aquitaine • Edward Harrison Barker
... think the contraband was conscious of the effect produced by his lordly presence; it was probably simple accident which brought him so often in my neighborhood; but, wherever I moved through the crowded cars, seeking for a seat, the loose shambling limbs and dull vacant eyes seemed impelled to follow. At last I lost my bete noire, and found a place close to the door with nothing but a low pile of logs in my front. I was tired, and soon began to doze; but I woke up with ...
— Border and Bastille • George A. Lawrence
... bottle, his quaint feet, like huge hands, flopping in the dust. Mahdi's make-up did Professor Thunder great credit—it was grotesquely inhuman. The shape of the costume demanded a stooping attitude and shambling gait. Only in a good light and at close quarters could the ...
— The Missing Link • Edward Dyson
... Collins; and the reply was followed by the shuffling sound of several pairs of feet, the owners of which came shambling into the room the next moment, with naked cutlasses in their hands, while one of them carried, in addition, a length of some three or four ...
— A Middy of the Slave Squadron - A West African Story • Harry Collingwood
... molested." As the fields in places were enclosed by rail fences, it was strictly against orders to disturb any of the fences. This order had been religiously obeyed all the while, until this night on the top of the Blue Ridge. A shambling, tumble-down rail fence was near the camp of the Third South Carolina, not around any field, however, but apparently to prevent stock from passing on the western side of the mountain. At night while the troops lay in the open air, without any protection whatever, only ...
— History of Kershaw's Brigade • D. Augustus Dickert
... bell and demanded that the old caretaker should be sent to him at once. The man came to him, shambling unsteadily along and breathing fast as if he had been running. His aged features were quivering with some strange excitement, as Fenwick did not fail to notice, despite his ...
— The Mystery of the Four Fingers • Fred M. White
... fellow, Bishop?" he asked of his host for the night, a few moments later, when he dismounted in front of the cabin. The Bishop shaded his eyes with his hand and peered up the road at the shambling figure once more moving ahead ...
— The Lions of the Lord - A Tale of the Old West • Harry Leon Wilson
... cart; "you jog along behind. Don't you want to?" And off started the little cavalcade, with Cricket driving, because she was the smallest, and could perch up on the others' knees, while old Billy, all beam, jogged after, making almost as good time, with his long legs and shambling gait, as the ponies. ...
— Cricket at the Seashore • Elizabeth Westyn Timlow
... that she set eyes upon him, shambling awkwardly into the yard at her husband's heels, Jabe Smith's wife was inhospitable toward the ungainly youngling of the wild. She declared that he would take all the milk. And he did. For the next two months she was unable to make any butter, and her opinions on the subject ...
— The House in the Water - A Book of Animal Stories • Charles G. D. Roberts
... Jasper's "bye Jarge" went out to make a trial of life a second time, and as I watched him striding through the moonlight, his head erect, very different to the shambling creature he had been, it seemed to me that the felon was already ...
— My Lady Caprice • Jeffrey Farnol
... bent his bow against a bear shambling across a little sunny glade. The arrow did its errand, and where the creature fell, there we sat down and feasted beside a fire kindled by rubbing two sticks together. According to their wont the Indians ate ravenously, and when the meal was ended began to smoke, each warrior first ...
— To Have and To Hold • Mary Johnston
... go, side by side, Jude shambling as usual, Joyce stepping as if hastening to receive ...
— Joyce of the North Woods • Harriet T. Comstock
... answer, for her heart was breaking, but turned and went into her room. Burrell had an irresistible desire to tell Gale that he wanted his daughter for his wife; it would be an unwonted pleasure to startle this iron-gray old man and the shawled and shambling mummy of red, with the unwinking eyes that always reminded him of two ox-heart cherries; but he had given Necia his promise. So he descended to the exchange of ordinary topics, and inquired for news ...
— The Barrier • Rex Beach
... first long street, certain forms he did meet, But scarce might behold their faces; From matted elf-locks eyes stared like an ox, And shambling were their paces! ...
— More Bywords • Charlotte M. Yonge
... to come like the first reformed platoon of an army after fleeing from disaster. The leader of the platoon was a small boy. His hat was pulled down over his eyes and he looked as if he were sorely afraid. After him came half a dozen men with shambling gait. One was an Irishman, two were English, one was a German and one a colored man. Two of them carried pickaxes in their hands, which they had been using to clear away the wreckage ...
— The Johnstown Horror • James Herbert Walker
... was the oldest horse on the farm, a shambling, half-blind creature whose days of work had long been over. In summer she reveled in clover pasture, and the warmest box stall and choicest oats were hers in winter. Sarah had ridden her around the pasture a number of times, but it had never occurred to anyone that she ...
— Rainbow Hill • Josephine Lawrence
... His aim in life is to gain possession of the helmet, the ring, and the treasure, and through them to obtain that Plutonic mastery of the world under the beginnings of which he himself writhed during Alberic's brief reign. Mimmy is a blinking, shambling, ancient creature, too weak and timid to dream of taking arms himself to despoil Fafnir, who still, transformed to a monstrous serpent, broods on the gold in a hole in the rocks. Mimmy needs the help of a hero for that; and he has craft enough to know that it is quite possible, and indeed much ...
— The Perfect Wagnerite - A Commentary on the Niblung's Ring • George Bernard Shaw
... and cloaks, and housings, and the stir Of jewelled bridle and of golden spur. And lo! among the menials, in mock state, Upon a piebald steed, with shambling gait, His cloak of fox-tails flapping in the wind, The solemn ape demurely perched behind, King Robert rode, making huge merriment In all the country ...
— Legends That Every Child Should Know • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... at each other as they obeyed; and a heavy, shambling, graceless man, dressed in the most exaggerated fopperies of the day, but with a face which even sickliness, that refines most faces, could not divest of the most vacant dulness, and a mien and gait to which no attire could ...
— The Last Of The Barons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... his Sonnet LXVI. can doubt that he had carried in his mind while alive some profound and peculiar form of the idea of Toleration? In Bacon's brain, too, one may detect some smothered tenet of the kind; and even in the talk of the shambling King James himself there had been such occasional spurts about Liberty of Conscience that, though he had burnt two of his subjects for Arianism, Helwisse's poor people were fain, as we have just seen, ...
— The Life of John Milton Vol. 3 1643-1649 • David Masson
... back excited and laughing. Old Conboy, tall as Mark Hammar, wide-shouldered, shambling like a bear, but a fine figure of an old fellow for all that; Mark Hammar, heavy and splendid in his sinister fashion; and between them Deolda with her big, red mouth and her sallow skin and her eyes burning as they ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1921 and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... hastily, to find themselves confronted with an absolute endorsement of the truth of Lennie's statements. A stranger of about fourteen was walking towards them, or perhaps "shambling" would be a better description of her method of progress. She stooped badly, swung her arms in an awkward fashion, and shuffled her feet along the grass; her eyes were vacant, her chin was retreating, and her mouth was set in a foolish smile. For a full ghastly minute she stood and stared at ...
— A harum-scarum schoolgirl • Angela Brazil
... beginning. But if Georgiana, before her guest arrived, had thought the old house shabby, she felt it now to be positively shambling. She struggled mightily against this attitude of mind, knowing that it was unworthy of her, but, as she led this wonderful, winsome creature, whom she knew to be accustomed only to the softnesses of life, up over the worn stair carpeting ...
— Under the Country Sky • Grace S. Richmond
... street end of the alley and gave a low whistle. Out under the lamp from behind the corner came a long, thin, shambling, hump-backed youth, with his hat down over his head like an extinguisher, dragging a small bony horse, which, in its turn, dragged a rickety cart of the tray variety, such as is used in the dead marine trade. Behind ...
— While the Billy Boils • Henry Lawson
... which had grown indifferent to the cries of human anger or distress, woke at the appeal of the dumb creature. He ran amongst the Larrikins, scattered them, rescued the dog, and stood at bay. They were six in number, shambling gallows-birds; but for once the proverb was right, cruelty was coupled with cowardice, and the wretches cursed him and made off. It chanced that this act of prowess had not passed unwitnessed. On a bench near by there was seated a shopkeeper's assistant out of employ, a diminutive, cheerful, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 13 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... and William nipped the nearest burro into a shambling half trot, and then went out upon the lake, Casey heading across at the widest part so that he would strike his old trail to Starvation Mountain on the other side. From there to the summit he could make it ...
— Casey Ryan • B. M. Bower
... man stood looking at him. Good-for-nothing was written in every line of the shiftless, shambling figure, and pictured in every rag of the fluttering raiment, and yet—the fellow really was hungry,—and again came the thought of that fifteen cents. The young man was hungry himself; had been hungry many a time in the past, and downright, gnawing, helpless ...
— That Printer of Udell's • Harold Bell Wright
... worser part to view— Of wanton waste and reckless gambling, What darker paths shall he pursue With sacrilegious step and shambling? What coarse defiance, haply, hurl At lights beyond his comprehension— An attitudinising churl Who struts ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 102, Jan. 9, 1892 • Various
... they have a shambling sort of gait, half walk, half amble, but manage to get over the ground very quickly, and for such cumbersome animals are very nimble-footed. It is almost ludicrous to see the huge beasts picking their way along a narrow "bund" or crossing some ditch by a ...
— Burma - Peeps at Many Lands • R.Talbot Kelly
... The shambling mountaineer stretched himself to his lean length of six feet two, and wagged an incredulous head. Out of pale eyes he studied the man before him until the newcomer from "down-below" felt that, in the attitude, lay almost the force of rebuke. It was as though he stood ...
— A Pagan of the Hills • Charles Neville Buck
... that for a signal—or perhaps he made another that we did not see—the six undoubted gipsies got up and left the room, shambling out in single file with the awkward gait they share ...
— The Eye of Zeitoon • Talbot Mundy
... tumult they made, so self-centered were his burning thoughts and feelings. A great occasion in Vincennes and he, Gaspard Roussillon, not recognized as one of the large factors in it! Ah, no, never! And he strode along the wall of the stockade, turning the corners and heavily shambling over the inequalities till he reached the postern. It was not fastened, some one having ...
— Alice of Old Vincennes • Maurice Thompson
... on that savage scene drew back from the shambling man beside them in the only impulse of respect they ever felt for him. It was the one act of his life to secure the admiration of his fellow-men; it was an action of which he himself always spoke ...
— Hillsboro People • Dorothy Canfield
... class. "A plain man but honest, sir," was what one expected him to utter at every turn. It was written in the coarse open lines of his face, half-hidden by a bushy gray beard; in his small sparkling eyes, now blue, now brown; in his looselimbed, shambling movements as he crossed the room. His very clothes spoke, to an acute observer, of a masculine sincerity naked and unashamed—as if his large coffee-spotted cravat would not alter the smallest fold to conceal the stains it bore. Hale, hairy, vehement, not without ...
— The Deliverance; A Romance of the Virginia Tobacco Fields • Ellen Glasgow
... intervals the sharply indented leaves of the plane trees and the shivering silver of the balsam-poplars into an arresting and artificial distinctness. Between were spaces of vacancy and gloom. And from out such a space, immediately opposite, slowly emerged a shambling and ungainly figure, in which Dominic Iglesias recognised the third of his fellow-lodgers, Mr. de Courcy Smyth. His acquaintance with the said lodger was of the slightest, since the latter had but recently entered ...
— The Far Horizon • Lucas Malet
... dragging slowly and heavily for the besieged boys in the tree, but the wolves, though hungry, were patient. Strong in union they were lords of the forest, and they felt no fear. A shambling black bear, lumbering through the woods, suddenly threw up his nose in the wind, and catching the strong pungent odor, wheeled abruptly, lumbering off on another course. The wild cat did not come back, but crouched lower in his tree top; the timid things ...
— The Young Trailers - A Story of Early Kentucky • Joseph A. Altsheler
... at eleven. It is reported, and is probably true, that the whole Boer force has surrendered. If so we have missed little or nothing. About twenty prisoners came in in the morning, quaint, rough people, shambling along on diminutive ponies. In the afternoon Williams went foraging for the officers, and I visited our Scotch friends, the donors of the cabbage, who were very kind, and asked me in. The married son had just come in from Basutoland, where he had been hiding, a great ...
— In the Ranks of the C.I.V. • Erskine Childers
... meagre, mean-visaged, muddy-complexioned, and altogether a man of no account—quite insignificant in the eyes of all who looked upon him. If there were one opinion, in which the few who had taken the trouble to think of the puny, somewhat shambling stranger from Burgundy at all, coincided, it was that he was inoffensive, but quite incapable of any important business. He seemed well educated, claimed to be of respectable parentage, and had considerable facility of speech when any person could be found who thought it worth while ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1-20 • Various
... was neither delicate nor poetic. For the beauty of the head was curiously and unexpectedly contradicted by the clumsiness of the frame below it. "Brother" Williams might have the head of a poet; he had the form and movements, the large feet and shambling gait, of the peasant. And Laura, scanning him with some closeness, noticed with distaste a good many signs of personal slovenliness and ill-breeding. His hands were not as clean as they might have been; his clerical ...
— Helbeck of Bannisdale, Vol. II • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... precisely as he appeared among his friends at Streatham. The painter has straightened the wig, which was usually worn awry, but otherwise it is the very Dr. Johnson of whom we read so much, with his shabby brown coat, his big shambling ...
— Sir Joshua Reynolds - A Collection of Fifteen Pictures and a Portrait of the - Painter with Introduction and Interpretation • Estelle M. Hurll
... the woman turn to the shambling old man who came forward again. And as he bent over the tiny scrap of paper, as though endeavoring to make out what the writing on it meant, every sound ceased until the silence of death seemed to hover over ...
— Chums in Dixie - or The Strange Cruise of a Motorboat • St. George Rathborne
... forward with his usual shambling gait, and an additional shade of sullenness apparent on his face, but it glowed a swarthy red ...
— Ester Ried Yet Speaking • Isabella Alden
... thrown over the old conventions, the felicitous coincidences, life arranged on ideal lines; and it has gone straight to life itself, strong, full-blooded, eager life, full of mistakes and blunders and failures and sharp disasters and fears. Life goes shambling along like a big dog, but it has got its nose on the scent of something. It is a much more mysterious and prodigious affair than life rearranged upon romantic lines. It means something very vast indeed, though it splashes through mud and scrambles ...
— Escape and Other Essays • Arthur Christopher Benson
... one evening stumbled upon a tapir, just as the great animal had forded the river and was shambling into the bush opposite. He emptied his rifle magazine into the beast. It fell with a broken hip, and the men finished it with their machetes. Its hide was nearly a half inch in thickness, and covered with garrapatas—fierce, burrowing vermin, with hooked claws, which came upon ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... and trunk, and lastly the legs of a slouching shambling man of forty-eight or fifty ...
— The Just and the Unjust • Vaughan Kester
... "Half-way House," which seemed to have wholly lost its way, and strayed into the open, where, dazed and bewildered, unprepared and unprotected, it was exposed to the taunting fury of the blast. A loose, shambling, disjointed, hastily built structure—representing the worst features of Pioneer renaissance—it rattled its loose window-sashes like chattering teeth, banged its ill-hung shutters, and admitted so much of ...
— Jeff Briggs's Love Story • Bret Harte
... had been bought dear, at the cost of heavy labour begun too early in life, so that before middle-age they were bent in the back, or gone wrong at the knees, and their walk (some of them walked miles every day to their work) was a long shambling stride, fast enough, but badly wanting in suggestiveness of personal pride. Seeing them casually in their heavy and uncleanly clothes, no one would have dreamed of the great qualities in them—the kindliness ...
— Change in the Village • (AKA George Bourne) George Sturt
... intervening rocks; but it fell short of us. I saw that it had a range of about a hundred feet. Over the muffled heavy silence of the blood-red day the cripple's curse floated clear. He lowered his weapon; and, heedless that we also might be armed, he leaped nimbly past Mary's prostrate form and came shambling over the ...
— Astounding Stories, July, 1931 • Various
... distance; and I've said to myself, "Well, now, if that was only to turn out to be that black-a-vised Ayrshire ploughman, it would be all over with me; it would be 'Whistle and I'll come to ye, my lad.'" And then some shambling fellow of a labourer has come along, straw-haired, bent-backed, twisted-kneed, and scarcely enough spirit in him to say, "Marnin t' ...
— The Beautiful Wretch; The Pupil of Aurelius; and The Four Macnicols • William Black
... for that? It would be all the same if he did forget us!" growled a young fellow shambling along ...
— What's Mine's Mine • George MacDonald
... found him playing his fiddle to keep himself company, but he stopped when he heard me, and, to tell the truth, I was glad of it, for his playing was uncanny. Sometimes I met him shambling along the brink of the Cliffs—a grotesque little figure, with his old shapeless hat, his huge coat flapping behind him, and the mighty blackthorn he carried—he knew the ground so well that he walked ...
— The Idler, Volume III., Issue XIII., February 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly. Edited By Jerome K. Jerome & Robert Barr • Various
... the gap, where the river-path joined the down-stream boundary of the wood, then, with awkward, shambling stride, climbed the steep pasture, and for a few moments paused to watch and listen in the deep shadows of the hedge on the brow of the slope. A rabbit, that had lain out all night in her "seat" beneath the briars, rushed ...
— Creatures of the Night - A Book of Wild Life in Western Britain • Alfred W. Rees
... king ambled up and down the apartment in a piteous state of uncertainty, which was made more ridiculous by his shambling circular mode of managing his legs, and his ungainly fashion on such occasions of fiddling with the bunches of ribbons which fastened the lower part ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott
... make was Sloppy. Too much of him longwise, too little of him broadwise, and too many sharp angles of him angle-wise. One of those shambling male human creatures, born to be indiscreetly candid in the revelation of buttons; every button he had about him glaring at the public to a quite preternatural extent. A considerable capital of knee and elbow and ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... was Martin Cheeseman, was hoary with age, but far from being past his prime of work. He had a large and shambling strength of body and limb, like an old bear, and his sinews were, of their kind, as tough as those of the ancient woods which ...
— Jerome, A Poor Man - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... A shambling man, almost a hobbledehoy, of about twenty five, ran out to obey the command, and, when he returned from No. 6, informed Wilkinson civilly that the water was in his room. Something in his homely but pleasant face, in his shock head and in his voice, seemed familiar ...
— Two Knapsacks - A Novel of Canadian Summer Life • John Campbell
... After the publication in the Warchester paper scores who had sided with the Boone faction either called or wrote to confess their error. Even the Acredale Monitor, a weekly sheet notoriously in the interest of Boone, felt constrained to copy parts of the account and publish with it a shambling retraction of previous criticism, based on imperfect knowledge, that it had printed concerning Sergeant Sprague. "Death," it declared, "has obliterated all feeling that existed against our young ...
— The Iron Game - A Tale of the War • Henry Francis Keenan
... said the novice, who was an ill-looking, one-sided, shambling lad, with sunken eyes set close together in his head—'if the society would burn his house down—for he's not insured—or beat him as he comes home from his club at night, or help me to carry off his daughter, and marry her at the Fleet, whether she ...
— Barnaby Rudge • Charles Dickens
... an overhead light, and Jack caught a clearer view of the man. What he saw sent a shiver through him. A great change had come over his friend. His untidy dress,—always so neat and well kept; his haggard eyes and shambling, unsteady walk, so different from his springy, debonair manner, all showed that he had been and still was under some terrible mental strain. That he had not been drinking was evident from his utterance and gait. This last discovery when his condition was considered, disturbed ...
— Peter - A Novel of Which He is Not the Hero • F. Hopkinson Smith
... thoughts were passing through her mind she happened to glance out of the window. Nutty was shambling through the garden with his pail, a bowed, shuffling pillar of gloom. As Elizabeth watched, he dropped the pail and lashed the air violently for a while. From her knowledge of bees ('It is needful to remember that bees resent outside interference and will resolutely defend themselves,' ...
— Uneasy Money • P.G. Wodehouse
... the hedge and saw the chickweed and the thistles in undisputed possession. For David has gone. "It will take a long time to turn him into a soldier," we said when we saw him leave his thatched roof last spring to join up, and watched him shambling down the lane to the valley and the distant station. "The war will be over before he gets into the trenches," I said cheerfully to his wife, his mother, and Aunt Jane as they sat later in the day mingling their tears in the "parlour"—that ...
— Pebbles on the Shore • Alpha of the Plough (Alfred George Gardiner)
... voices bellowed his name to lift him to the finish: "Alcatraz!" Then they were over the line and the riders were pulling up. It was not hard to stop Alcatraz. He went by Marianne at a reeling trot, his legs shambling weakly and his head drooping, a weary rag of horseflesh with his ears still gloomily flattened ...
— Alcatraz • Max Brand
... edition with a Life, written by a friend in the form of a Dialogue of the Dead in the Elysian Fields between Lord Lyttelton—who had been, in his Dialogues of the Dead, an imitator of the Dialogues so called in Lucian—and Lucian himself. "By that shambling gait and length of carcase," says Lucian, "it must be Lord Lyttelton coming this way." "And by that arch look and sarcastic smile," says Lyttelton, "you are my old friend Lucian, whom I have not seen this many a day. Fontenelle and I ...
— Trips to the Moon • Lucian
... gangling cattle-man with drooping grizzled mustache, came shambling up to the steps. His weather-beaten chaps were much too short for his lengthy limbs, the collar of his faded flannel shirt lacked an inch of meeting at the throat, its sleeves were shrunken until his hairy hands hung ...
— Going Some • Rex Beach
... came shambling up to pay their awkward respects to Lorraine and to Jack, while Tricasse pulled his bristling mustache and clattered his sabre in its sheath approvingly. When his men had acquitted themselves with all the awkward sincerity ...
— Lorraine - A romance • Robert W. Chambers
... He went off, shambling along with his face turned toward the sky and his feet taking care of themselves. Cora looked ...
— The Motor Girls On Cedar Lake - The Hermit of Fern Island • Margaret Penrose
... way until they were well out of sight of the station itself, guided their wagon from the trail into a little depression along the creek as if to make camp for the night. The driver, a tall, thin man, wearing a slouch hat, got down from the front of the wagon and walked with a shambling gait to the head of his horses and loosened their bridles. While the horses were drinking, a second man, carrying a rifle, climbed down from the rear of the wagon. He was of a shorter and stockier build, and on one side the brim of his soft hat had been torn away so ...
— The Mountain Divide • Frank H. Spearman
... badly-bred, vulgar, common brute!" Later they would both come out of their bathing-boxes, and the "brute" would be a smartly dressed officer carrying himself with ease and distinction, and the "aristocrat" would be an untidy, uncouth "Tommy" shambling along. Truly on sight one should never judge a man with ...
— An Onlooker in France 1917-1919 • William Orpen
... judges put their heads together and whispered and planned and discussed. Then they brought forth this sufficiently shambling conclusion—but it was the best they could do, in so close a place: they said the Pope was so far away; and it was not necessary to go to him anyway, because the present judges had sufficient power and authority to deal with ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... who now found how the wind set, with an accent of exceeding contempt, at the doubt expressed—"have I heard, quo'she!!!" and as he spoke he changed his shambling, skulking, dodging pace into a manly and authoritative step, readjusted his cocked hat, and suffered his brow to emerge from under it in all the pride of aristocracy, like the sun from behind ...
— Bride of Lammermoor • Sir Walter Scott
... gentleman ached as he talked: for with men and with hosts of women to whom he was indifferent, never did he converse in this shambling, third-rate, sheepish manner, devoid of all highness of tone and the proper precision of an authority. He was unable to fathom the cause of it, but Clara imposed it on him, and only in anger could he throw it off. The temptation to an outburst that would flatter him ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... thin as I am fat, and his clothes hang on him in the most comical way. He is very tall and shambling, wears a ragged beard and a broad Stetson hat, and suffers amazingly from hay fever in the autumn. (In fact, his essay on "Hay Fever" is the best thing he ever wrote, I think.) As he came striding up the road I noticed how his trousers fluttered at the ankles ...
— Parnassus on Wheels • Christopher Morley |
