"Undersized" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... curiously enough, rapiere, are long and thin in the blade, and their weight is such that at every duel students are told off on whose shoulders the combatants can rest their outstretched sword-arm in the pauses of the combat caused by the duellists getting out of breath; consequently, an undersized student is usually chosen for this considerate office. The heads and faces of the duellists are swathed in bandages—no small incentive to perspiration, the vital parts of their bodies are well protected against a fatal prick or blow, and ...
— William of Germany • Stanley Shaw
... says Mrs Lean, "Captain Marryat's personal appearance was very prepossessing. In figure he was upright and broad-shouldered for his height, which measured 5ft. 10in. His hands, without being undersized, were remarkably perfect in form, and modelled by a sculptor at Rome on account of their symmetry. The character of his mind was borne out by his features, the most salient expression of which was the frankness ...
— Peter Simple and The Three Cutters, Vol. 1-2 • Frederick Marryat
... believe, about seventy passengers. We looked at my wife's little stateroom, with its three berths for herself and the two children; and then sat down in the saloon, and afterwards on deck, to spend the irksome and dreary hour or two before parting. Many of the passengers seemed to be Portuguese, undersized, dark, mustachioed people, smoking cigars. John Bull was fairly represented too. . . . . U—— was cheerful, and R——- seemed anxious to get off. Poor Fanny was altogether cast down, and shed tears, either from regret at leaving her ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... information that he had found fresh sign at a spot in the swamp about nine miles distant. Next morning we rose at two, and had started on our jaguar-hunt at three. Colonel Rondon, Kermit, and I, with the two trailers or jaguar- hunters, made up the party, each on a weedy, undersized marsh pony, accustomed to traversing the vast stretches of morass; and we were accompanied by a brown boy, with saddle-bags holding our lunch, who rode a long-horned trotting steer which he managed by a string through its nostril and lip. ...
— Through the Brazilian Wilderness • Theodore Roosevelt
... as Dinah's husband, held over his wife's adorers, and he made use of them without any disguise, obtaining a remission of taxes, and gaining two lawsuits. In every litigation he used the Public Prosecutor's name with such good effect that the matter was carried no further, and, like all undersized men, he was contentious and litigious in business, though in the ...
— The Muse of the Department • Honore de Balzac
... of our own weather-tanned forest men. Nevertheless, their pigmentation was peculiar, and what there was of it looked more like a pale orange tint than the ruddiness of the Caucasian. They were well formed, but rather undersized and soft-looking, small-muscled and smooth-skinned, like young girls. Their features were finely chiseled, eyes ...
— The Airlords of Han • Philip Francis Nowlan
... nutshell; become small &c (decrease) 36, (contract) 195. Adj. little; small &c (in quantity) 32; minute, diminutive, microscopic; microzoal; inconsiderable &c (unimportant) 643; exiguous, puny, tiny, wee, petty, minikin^, miniature, pygmy, pigmy^, elfin; undersized; dwarf, dwarfed, dwarfish; spare, stunted, limited; cramp, cramped; pollard, Liliputian, dapper, pocket; portative^, portable; duodecimo^; dumpy, squat; short &c 201. impalpable, intangible, evanescent, imperceptible, invisible, inappreciable, insignificant, inconsiderable, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... never forget the closing scenes of the wondrous test of courage and endurance. She was a pretty, fair-haired thing, a trifle undersized, but shapely and sinewy. The vast crowd that without much diminution, though with intermittent changes, had watched her from start to finish, began to grow tense with the approach to the end, and the last hour the enthusiasm was overwhelming. ...
— Marse Henry, Complete - An Autobiography • Henry Watterson
... himself is of powerful undersized build and enjoys good health, injured by no excesses. He considers himself nervous. He worked hard at school and was always the first in his class; he adds, however, that this is due less to his own abilities ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 5 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... committees which involved honour and edification, such as, for example, the committee to meet the Candidate at the depot and escort him to the Opera-house. But then it would never have occurred to Jimmie that he had any place on such a committee; for he was just an ignorant fellow, a machinist, undersized and undernourished, with bad teeth and roughened hands, and no gifts or graces of any sort to recommend him; while on the Reception Committee were a lawyer and a prosperous doctor and the secretary of the Carpet-weavers' Union, all people who wore good ...
— Jimmie Higgins • Upton Sinclair
... one unpopular man in the telegraph-car. An undersized, aggressively important individual, just out of college, and affecting a stylish khaki hunting-suit, natty leather leggings and a broad-brimmed hat, he bore himself generally as though second in importance only to the construction superintendent himself. And naturally he had ...
— The Young Railroaders - Tales of Adventure and Ingenuity • Francis Lovell Coombs
... we can fight our way out. There ain't much in them chaps, tailors and shoemakers, and the like; they are always great hands for jaw, them tailors and shoemakers, but I never seed one as I would put five pound on in a twelve-foot ring. Poor undersized creatures, for the most part, but beggars for jaw; but there are some rough uns with 'em, and yer might get badly marked ...
— Captain Bayley's Heir: - A Tale of the Gold Fields of California • G. A. Henty
... there, a stripling on a small and weedy beast, He was something like a racehorse undersized, With a touch of Timor pony — three parts thoroughbred at least — And such as are by mountain horsemen prized. He was hard and tough and wiry — just the sort that won't say die — There was courage in his quick impatient tread; And he bore the badge of gameness ...
— The Man from Snowy River • Andrew Barton 'Banjo' Paterson
... and I am not in love with her and never was.) Warburton has described to me her eyes, so I am positive that they were as heavenly blue as a rajah's sapphire. Her height is of no moment. What man ever troubled himself about the height of a woman, so long as he wasn't undersized himself? What pleased Warburton was the exquisite skin. He was always happy with his comparisons, and particularly when he likened her skin to the bloomy olive pallor of a young peach. The independent stride was distinguishingly ...
— The Man on the Box • Harold MacGrath
... want of any midday feeding, and at night and morning seldom get grain. But the dried lucerne and other artificial grasses with which they are supplied must afford them sufficient nourishment, as they are generally in very good working condition; they are undersized, but very sure-footed; it is indeed astonishing over what fearful ground they will carry their riders. The yabboo is a different style of animal, heavier built and slower; its pace is an amble, by means of which it will get over an immense ...
— A Peep into Toorkisthhan • Rollo Burslem
... gorgeous and interesting than the gilded ox-gharries of the ordinary zemindars are miniature chariots drawn by pairs of well-matched, undersized oxen covered with richly spangled trappings, and with horns curiously gilded and tipped with tiny bells. These are the vehicles of petted young nabobs in charge of attendants: tiny oxen with gorgeous trappings, ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens
... instinctive knowledge of its own requirements. Whatever proceedings are most suggestive of an ideal naked savage leading a "natural" life, are supposed to be not only more advantageous to the child but in some mystical way more moral. The spectacle of an undersized porter-fed mother, for example, nursing a spotted and distressful baby, is exalted at the expense of the clean and simple artificial feeding that is often advisable to-day. Yet the mortality of first-born children should indicate that a modern woman carries ...
— Mankind in the Making • H. G. Wells
... specimen of a Christmas-tree. Looked at with cold, unimaginative eyes, it might have been considered lopsided; undersized it undoubtedly was. Yet a pathetic familiarity in the desolate aspect of the little tree aroused our sympathy as no rare horticultural trophy ...
— A Versailles Christmas-Tide • Mary Stuart Boyd
... Mary had said, she played her fiddle with its body downward, and resting on her knees, as though it had been an undersized 'cello. I then vaguely remembered having dreamed of such a figure when a ...
— Peter Ibbetson • George du Marier et al
... foot of its way, that was not watched over by eyes that saw, and for the most part remained unseen. But this invisibility was not always the rule. Indians in twos and threes were frequently encountered. They were the undersized northern Indian of low type, who had none of the splendid manhood of the tribes further south. But each man was armed with a more or less modern rifle, and garments of crudely manufactured furs replaced the romantic buckskin ...
— The Triumph of John Kars - A Story of the Yukon • Ridgwell Cullum
... an undersized, foxy fellow, dressed as a gamekeeper and carrying a fowling-piece under one arm. His small eyes regarded her ...
— The Orchard of Tears • Sax Rohmer
... it any wonder that facile success and excessive laudation should turn the stripling's head? Professionally, if not artistically speaking, Dor passed straight from child to man; in one sense of the word he had no boyhood, the term tyro remained inapplicable. This undersized, fragile lad, looking years younger than he really was, soon found himself on what must have appeared a pinnacle ...
— In the Heart of the Vosges - And Other Sketches by a "Devious Traveller" • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... completely mastered them, and that their progress was really very great, and most satisfactory, as Mr. Nixon, Charles's guardian, who had examined him, had reported most favourably thereon. But he appears to be insignificant, and undersized, thin as a whipping post, pale, and somewhat sickly-looking, he appears much younger than he is, and seems hardly fitted for what you and I would delight in. ...
— The Romance of Lust - A classic Victorian erotic novel • Anonymous
... her. "That's all I want, Annabel. I was a little afraid you'd be sick of the place. But, my, we can go right ahead and set a crew of men to grubbing out the sage on both sections to once. Folks might have said, seeing you take up with a undersized, froze-up fellow like me, you was marrying me for my money; but they can't, no, ma'am, not when they see the valuable claim you are developing in your ...
— The Rim of the Desert • Ada Woodruff Anderson
... diminutive hotel, in which, properly, the head waiter should be a pigmy and the chambermaid a sprite, and beside it there is a Casino on the smallest possible scale. Everything about the Casino is so harmoniously undersized that it seems a matter of course that the newspapers in the reading-room should be printed in the very finest type. Of course there is a reading-room, and a dancing-room, and a cafe, and a billiard-room, ...
— The Galaxy - Vol. 23, No. 1 • Various
... An undersized man with a remarkably large head of hair spoke up from the righthand side of the table: "I want to suggest that it is high time we ...
— The Devolutionist and The Emancipatrix • Homer Eon Flint
... railway, I seem to remember, came and went; one or two clockwork boats, toy sailing ships that, being keeled, would do nothing but lie on their beam ends on the floor; a detestable lot of cavalrymen, undersized and gilt all over, given me by a maiden aunt, and very much what one might expect from an aunt, that I used as Nero used his Christians to ornament my public buildings; and I finally melted some into fratricidal bullets, and therewith blew the rest to flat splashes of lead by means ...
— The New Machiavelli • Herbert George Wells
... she concluded, "this is no oppressed people." And sauntering away from the rest she noted the smiles of an undersized smirking yellow man who hurried by with a handful of dollar bills. At a side entrance liquor was evidently on sale—men were drinking and women, too; some were staggering, others cursing, and yet others singing. Then ...
— The Quest of the Silver Fleece - A Novel • W. E. B. Du Bois
... fifteenth instant—whether forcibly or of her own free will is unknown—a young lady of sixteen years, by name Mollie Dane. Is undersized, very slight of figure, a profusion of light, curling hair, large blue eyes, handsome features, and remarkably self-possessed and straightforward of manner. Was dressed as a bride, in white silk and lace. Any information concerning her ...
— The Unseen Bridgegroom - or, Wedded For a Week • May Agnes Fleming
... with clothes, of divers forms and patterns, in every stage of existence—from the first crude conception of the incipient surtout or pantaloons, down to the last glorious touch that immortalizes the artist. His figure is slim and undersized; his cheeks are sallow, with two furrows on each side his nose, filled not unfrequently with snuff; his eyes project like lobsters', and cast their shifting glances about with a vague sort of mysterious intelligence; and his voice—his startling, solemn, unearthly voice—seems hoarse with ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 12, - Issue 323, July 19, 1828 • Various
... perpetual fortifications of the Texan coast. Vivia, a slender little maiden of eleven summers, rocks in a boat a rod from shore, and by her side, his length along the warm wave, his arm along the boat, a boy floats in his linen clothes, an amphibious child, so undersized as to seem but little more than a baby, and yet a year her senior. He swims round and round the skiff in circling frolics, followed by the great dog who gambols with them, he dives under it and comes up far in advance, he ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 75, January, 1864 • Various
... disputants with evident interest. To the left a large space was devoted to three or four bulky casks, and here an aproned drawer sat astride of a rush-bottomed chair, grinning delightedly and exchanging nods and winks from time to time with an impish, undersized lad who lay on his stomach on a wine-butt with his head craning forward ...
— The Panchronicon • Harold Steele Mackaye
... unmanly of one boy to make fun of another because he is weak or clumsy or unskilful. After all, the thing that counts and the thing that is most creditable is to make the most of our opportunities whatever they may be. If an undersized or timid boy becomes stronger or more brave because he joins in games and sports, he deserves a hundred times more credit than the big, strong boy whom nature has given a sturdy frame and good lungs and who makes a place on the school ...
— Outdoor Sports and Games • Claude H. Miller
... dead. I went out in the night. At the first barricade I stopped and offered myself; a man examined me by the light of a lantern. 'A child!' he exclaimed. I was not fifteen. I was very slight and undersized. I answered: 'A child, maybe, but my father was killed two hours ago. He gave me his musket. Teach ...
— Parisian Points of View • Ludovic Halevy
... had, in consequence, to lengthen the upper lip, I think it self- evident that there is some little derangement of natural proportions in those features; the nose, especially, being ill-formed and undersized for the rest of the face. If we had but Shakespeare's skull before us, most of these questions would be ...
— Shakespeare's Bones • C. M. Ingleby
... moment there was an interruption. A chubby, undersized boy came swiftly through the gateway. He was advancing up the steps of the ...
— Ralph on the Overland Express - The Trials and Triumphs of a Young Engineer • Allen Chapman
... appropriate to the splendor of the surroundings. He did not monopolize the talk, and never failed to return an appreciative response to any remark or question. To the ladies he gave the most deferential attention. Arlington, a peer in the social realm, felt piqued to admit himself outrivalled by an undersized widower ...
— A Dream of Empire - Or, The House of Blennerhassett • William Henry Venable
... trouble," but the Pinkies seemed uneasy, and several of them picked up their slender, pointed sticks and held them in their hands. They were not cowardly, but it was evident they mistrusted the big man, who on Earth was not considered big at all, but rather undersized. ...
— Sky Island - Being the further exciting adventures of Trot and Cap'n - Bill after their visit to the sea fairies • L. Frank Baum
... a boiler wallowing in the grass, then found a path leading up the hill. It turned aside for the boulders, and also for an undersized railway-truck lying there on its back with its wheels in the air. One was off. The thing looked as dead as the carcass of some animal. I came upon more pieces of decaying machinery, a stack of rusty rails. To the left a clump of trees ...
— Heart of Darkness • Joseph Conrad
... Koritz, dark, undersized, with the eyes of an Oriental and the lean, sensitive fingers of one who creates, shivered a little, like a plant that is swept by an icy blast. Buck came over and laid one hand ...
— Emma McChesney & Co. • Edna Ferber
... a nigger!" exclaimed one prince. Another called him a Moor. And two others could not endure him at all. He was undersized and slender as well; and his legs were so very short that they hardly reached the ground. His nose was long and beaked and disfigured, with nostrils of different shape, and he was undershot like a bulldog, and unusually pitted with smallpox even for those ante-vaccination ...
— The Love Affairs of Great Musicians, Volume 1 • Rupert Hughes
... rightfully had the reputation of being tyrants when on the trail, using tact and discretion when in camp. A revolver settled all disputes. On approaching them they treated me as well as their rough natures would permit; but I did not take kindly to any of them. They all told me that I was undersized, and too young to stand the dangers and hardships of a trip. I returned to camp much ...
— Dangers of the Trail in 1865 - A Narrative of Actual Events • Charles E Young
... He was rather an undersized man with an uncontrollable temper. As he let himself go in his music, so did he let himself go in his daily life. To any but the most patient he must have proved an impossible personage; Madame Cosima Wagner must have possessed the temper of an angel and the understanding of ...
— Richard Wagner - Composer of Operas • John F. Runciman
... turnout, and it well deserved all the attention it attracted, which was considerable. The horses were capricious, highly polished grays, perhaps a trifle undersized, but with such an action as is not to be bought for less than twenty-five guineas a hoof; the harness was silver-mounted; the dog-cart itself a creation of beauty and nice poise; the groom a pink and priceless perfection. But the ...
— The Ghost - A Modern Fantasy • Arnold Bennett
... olive-branch in the morning, and consequently that business was not to be done that day. The angry-faced official communicated the intelligence to a large group of Anadolian, Caramanian, Bosniac, and Roumelian Turks,—sturdy, undersized, broad-shouldered, bare-legged, splay-footed, horny-fisted, dark-browed, honest-looking mountaineers, who were lounging about with long pistols and yataghans stuck in their broad sashes, head-gear composed of immense tarbooshes with proportionate turbans coiled round them, and two ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 7 • Various
... the result? I am undersized, and I haven't the stamina of my dad. It was starved out of me. In a couple of generations there'll be no more of me here in London. Yet there's my younger brother; he's bigger and better developed. You see, dad and we children held together, ...
— The People of the Abyss • Jack London
... King. Young and lacking in wisdom, this amazed me. In age he compared favourably with her husband he was but thirteen years older than herself—but in nothing else. He was a weedy, unhealthy-looking man, weakly of frame, rachitic, undersized, with spindle-shanks, and a countenance that was almost grotesque, with its protruding jaw, gaping mouth, great, doglike eyes, and yellow tuft of beard. A great king, perhaps, this Philip, having so been born; but a ridiculous man ...
— The Historical Nights' Entertainment • Rafael Sabatini
... Bayliss was quick at figures and undersized for a farmer that his father sent him to town to learn the implement business. From the day he went to work, he managed to live on his small salary. He kept in his vest pocket a little day-book wherein he noted down ...
— One of Ours • Willa Cather
... in French. The undersized Robert I got at a bargain. The man who hired it last week broke his leg before his fortnight was up, and so there was a reduction of ...
— Once a Week • Alan Alexander Milne
... street he became aware of a commotion at the corner of George Street. He saw that a crowd had gathered, and quickened his pace, for a crowd in Cardigan Street generally meant a fight. Jonah elbowed his way through the ring, and found a young policeman, new to this beat, struggling with an undersized man with the face of a ferret. Jonah's first thought was to effect a rescue, as his practised eye took in the details of the scene. Let them get away from the light of the street lamp, and with a sudden rush the thing would be done. He looked round for the ...
— Jonah • Louis Stone
... slept with great soundness as was usual with him, unless there was something to watch out for. As it happened there was, though Jim did not know it. As a link in the chain of what was to occur, I must mention the negro porter of Jim's car. He was an undersized, grumpy person, and Jim had earned his ill will by giving him a call down for his impudence to a lady who had the section across ...
— Frontier Boys in Frisco • Wyn Roosevelt
... the corporal, an undersized, vicious-looking fellow, giving Ken a prick with his lance. 'And keep going, or, by Allah, it will be more than a prick you will get ...
— On Land And Sea At The Dardanelles • Thomas Charles Bridges
... horses, no bigger in reality than ponies. He had heard of the prowess of the Cossacks, of course. They had fought well in the past in a good many wars. But somehow it seemed rather absurd to match them, with their undersized horses, against magnificent specimens of men and horseflesh such as the German cavalry. He had passed a squadron of Uhlans, near Virballen, outlined against the sky. They had been grim and business-like in appearance. ...
— The Boy Scouts In Russia • John Blaine
... meat) to a party of friends and relations - They're a ravenous horde - and they all came on board at Sloane Square and South Kensington Stations. And bound on that journey you find your attorney (who started that morning from Devon); He's a bit undersized, and you don't feel surprised when he tells you he's only eleven. Well, you're driving like mad with this singular lad (by the bye the ship's now a four-wheeler), And you're playing round games, and he calls you bad names when you tell him that "ties pay ...
— Songs of a Savoyard • W. S. Gilbert
... passengers. From her corner in the vehicle she could see the queen of burlesque standing in the center of the depot platform, surrounded by her company. It was a tawdry, miserable, almost tragic group, the men undersized, be-diamonded, their skulls oddly shaped, their clothes a satire on the fashions for men, their chins unshaven, their loose lips curved contentedly over cigarettes; the women dreadfully unreal with the pitiless light of the early ...
— Roast Beef, Medium • Edna Ferber
... that shock of ruthless attack. From early childhood, when he had been thrown on his own to scratch a living—a borderline existence of a living—on the Dumps of Tyr, he had had to use his wits to keep life in a scrawny and undersized body. However, since he had been eating regularly from Survey rations, he was not quite so scrawny ...
— Storm Over Warlock • Andre Norton
... you'll have to run," called out Marshal Crow as he unlimbered his long legs and made for the mouth of the alley. He was not running, but Newt, being an undersized individual, had no other means of keeping up with him unless he obeyed the sardonic behest. For ten or fifteen rods, Mr. Spratt jogged faithfully at the heels of the leader, and then suddenly remembered that it was a long way to Hawkins's Undertaking Emporium in Sickle street,—at least ...
— Anderson Crow, Detective • George Barr McCutcheon
... kind of protecting tenderness for this self-restrained squaw that Honore had for his undersized parent, whom he always called by the baptismal name. Melinda had been the wife of a great medicine-man, who wore a trailing blanket, and white gulls' wings bound around and spread behind his head. During his lifetime he was often seen ...
— The Mothers Of Honore - From "Mackinac And Lake Stories", 1899 • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... that she felt just a little sympathy for Lyad. Lyad had lost out on a very big gamble. And, each in his own way, there were three very formidable males among whom she was sitting. None of them was friendly; two were oversized, and the undersized one had a fairly bloodchilling record for anyone on the wrong side of law and order. Trigger decided to forget about beady stares ...
— Legacy • James H Schmitz
... regarded him with a certain wistfulness which I did not at that moment understand. Just then Lord Porthoning made his way toward us. As I watched him approach I realized more than ever the justice of Mr. Bundercombe's description. He was undersized, bent nearly double, and on his wizened face and shining out of his narrow black eyes was an indescribable expression of malevolence. Even the smile with which he greeted me ...
— An Amiable Charlatan • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... of the Bible, does not always follow exactly the text which he is to illustrate. The people called Barnabas Jupiter, and Paul Mercury. This would seem to show that Barnabas was a great, imposing figure, and Paul, according to tradition, was a small, undersized man; but there is no such contrast to ...
— Raphael - A Collection Of Fifteen Pictures And A Portrait Of The - Painter With Introduction And Interpretation • Estelle M. Hurll
... of the 20th Century, every undersized Hamlet shown in the Atlas became seized with a Desire to throw ...
— Ade's Fables • George Ade
... at great length and describe the triumphal entry of Commodore Gibney and Captain Scraggs into the capitol of Kandavu; of how the king, an undersized, shrivelled old savage, stuck his bushy head out the window of his bungalow when he saw the procession coming; of how a minute later he advanced into the space in the centre of his wari, where in the olden days the populace was wont to gather for its cannibal orgies; how he greeted his distinguished ...
— Captain Scraggs - or, The Green-Pea Pirates • Peter B. Kyne
... keen blue eyes perceiving, presently, an object in the distance looking like a queer combination of boy and bicycle, she ran out from the dooryard as it approached. Tim Reardon, an undersized, sharp-eyed youngster, rather poorly dressed and barefoot, wheeling his machine laboriously along, was somewhat of a mournful-looking figure. The girl held up a warning ...
— The Rival Campers Ashore - The Mystery of the Mill • Ruel Perley Smith
... of a tiny hand on his arm, a clasp which was eloquent of a woman's sore need and complete trust. He stepped forward to meet the Count, a stoutly built, heavy man, who had reckoned on closing with an undersized Frenchman. There was no time to rectify mistakes. Curtis met his rival's onset with a beautiful half-arm jab on the nose. Scientifically, it was perfect, since the blow was delivered at the back of the Count's head with complete disregard of intervening tissues, and its recipient went down ...
— One Wonderful Night - A Romance of New York • Louis Tracy
... some big men in stature who have been big soldiers—such as Washington—but it is interesting to note that many of our great generals have been undersized. Such were Grant, Wellington, and Napoleon. Such was Lord Roberts who became Earl and Marshal, and was one of the best-loved leaders that England has produced. He was associated with two great campaigns to extend the British Empire—in India and ...
— Boys' Book of Famous Soldiers • J. Walker McSpadden
... undersized boy, who was two or three years younger than Ike, and not strong enough for work at the anvil, was a great tactician. It was his habit, in doing a favor, rigorously to exact a set-off, and that night when the blacksmith had left the shop, Jube ...
— The Young Mountaineers - Short Stories • Charles Egbert Craddock
... visited a certain district in company with his master. He was tall, well favoured, a good rider, quite an athlete, an accomplished performer with the mouth-organ and concertina; ready and persuasive of tongue. These qualities provoked unaffected admiration; for the natives of the place are undersized, ill-looking, and deficient generally in the arts of pleasing. Before the master left, Caesar was persuaded by his envious fellow-countrymen to remain with them to be ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield
... figure, and among the women no style such as relieves the commonplace rash of the New York streets. The Berliners are plain and ill dressed, both men and women, and even the little children are plain. Every one is ill dressed, but no one is ragged, and among the undersized homely folk of the lower classes there is no such poverty-stricken shabbiness as shocks and insults the sight in New York. That which distinctly recalls our metropolis is the lofty passage of the elevated ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... George, Hughes is a Welshman. These two remarkable men, who have done so much to rouse their people, have more than racial kinship in common. They are both undersized: both rose from the humble hearth: both made their way to eminence by way of the bar: both gripped popular imagination as real leaders of democracy. They are to-day the two principal ...
— The War After the War • Isaac Frederick Marcosson
... The undersized temperature-taker which the doctor puts under your tongue before telling you to keep warm and take plenty of milk puddings is properly despised by every true thermometer- lover. Any record which it makes is too personal for a breakfast- ...
— Not that it Matters • A. A. Milne
... gait." The same consequences for the eyes and the whole constitution are produced by the embroidery of lace. Medical witnesses are unanimously of the opinion that the health of all children employed in the production of lace suffers seriously, that they are pale, weak, delicate, undersized, and much less able than other children to resist disease. The affections from which they usually suffer are general debility, frequent fainting, pains in the head, sides, back, and hips, palpitation of the heart, nausea, vomiting and want of appetite, curvature of the spine, scrofula, ...
— The Condition of the Working-Class in England in 1844 - with a Preface written in 1892 • Frederick Engels
... I saw numbers of German wounded, most of them bearded; many there were who seemed weakly and undersized, and among them were many grey heads, a very motley company. These, the Colonel informed us, received precisely the same treatment as our own wounded, ...
— Great Britain at War • Jeffery Farnol
... long at my post when the crowds concentrating on the line of march, coming up the avenue from the Embankment, began to shove intolerably from the rear, and it was as much as I could do to keep my place, particularly in view of the fact that the undersized cockney who stood in front of me appeared to offer no resistance to the pressure of my waistcoat against his narrow little back. It seemed strange that it should be so, but I appeared, despite his presence, ...
— Ghosts I have Met and Some Others • John Kendrick Bangs
... feet), her strongly bolted iron kelson, her water-tight compartments, and her double skin, the outer one being of polished Honduras mahogany, and the inner of yellow pine, with canvas between them; also by her strong, firm deck, her undersized masts and sails, ...
— The Voyage Alone in the Yawl "Rob Roy" • John MacGregor
... Road—jocularly known among Mr Pitman's lodgers as 'Norfolk Island'—is neither a long, a handsome, nor a pleasing thoroughfare. Dirty, undersized maids-of-all-work issue from it in pursuit of beer, or linger on its sidewalk listening to the voice of love. The cat's-meat man passes twice a day. An occasional organ-grinder wanders in and wanders ...
— The Wrong Box • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... splendid oak staircase, with its finely carved balustrade, black and worm-eaten, Cecil de la Borne stared at his brother with the angry disgust of one whose sense of all that is holiest stands outraged. Slim, of graceful though somewhat undersized figure, he was conscious of having attained perfection in matters which he reckoned of no small importance. His grey tweed suit fitted him like a glove, his tie was a perfect blend between the colour of his eyes and his clothes, his shoes were ...
— Jeanne of the Marshes • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... us were mostly Brandenburgers, Bavarians and Prussians. At one place I had leapt with my pal into a small shell hole, and over to my right was a kiltie engaged in a hand-to-hand struggle with a Hun. The kiltie was an undersized chap and Fritz was about twice his size, and with a much longer bayonet, and Jock seemed to be getting a bit tired. I didn't think it wise to wait, even though I felt very certain that Jock could hold his own, and taking careful ...
— S.O.S. Stand to! • Reginald Grant
... here he was, after all these years, not a bearded brigand with a knife sticking from his boot, but a mild undersized man, hat in hand, smiling at me with pleasant cordiality. His red hair had faded to a harmless carrot. From an overtopping rascal he had dwindled to my shoulder. It was as strange and incomprehensible as if ...
— Chimney-Pot Papers • Charles S. Brooks
... closely. An undersized boy in spectacles, with a large head and an air of gravity and old age on his young features, which the junior thought somewhat ill-placed ...
— Salthaven • W. W. Jacobs
... irritation. "But what can you expect from a person who's eternally beautiful? The other night we had been discussing a long time, and suddenly the light was turned on. Every one else looked a sight, as they ought. But there was Tilliard, sitting neatly on a little chair, like an undersized god, with not a curl crooked. I should say he will get into ...
— The Longest Journey • E. M. Forster
... his team had been reduced to one rather undersized dog he did arrange for his charge to walk. And within an hour, having cunningly awaited his opportunity, the demented creature had leaped upon him from behind, exactly as a wolf might, and fastened his teeth in Dick's neck. That, though Dick said little of ...
— Jan - A Dog and a Romance • A. J. Dawson
... two and one-half inches at the bottom; the top if hitched well up had manifest advantages as a muffler. Issued on the same logical lines, Mahy received a tiny pair of nether garments for his loner legs and a little tunic that hung limply like an undersized Eton-jacket six inches short of where it should have reached. Some lads were lost in shirts with sleeves generally associated with Chinese or other Eastern gentlemen, others moodily surveyed themselves in small shrunken garments that with only superhuman effort could ...
— Norman Ten Hundred - A Record of the 1st (Service) Bn. Royal Guernsey Light Infantry • A. Stanley Blicq
... every way the equals and match for any white man. The Tagalos have absorbed much of the Spanish civilization. Many of them are wealthy and the sons of such families generally hold degrees from Philippine colleges. Well-to-do Tagalos, despite their undersized stature and dark-brown skins, affect all the culture—and the vices—of well-to-do white people. They conduct banks, engage in commerce, mingle with white society, and consider themselves as bright lights of civilization. ...
— Uncle Sam's Boys in the Philippines - or, Following the Flag against the Moros • H. Irving Hancock
... grown, strong, formed—widow. Alas, my dear, the delicacy of age reckoned, as usual, without the derision and cruelty of youth. You told me that you didnt want to be an old man's nurse, and that you didnt want to have undersized children like Bentley. It served me right: I dont reproach you: I was an old fool. But how you can imagine, after that, that I can suspect you of the smallest feeling for me except the inevitable feeling of early youth for ...
— Misalliance • George Bernard Shaw
... but a faint air of insolence was apparent in his attitude. He was not accustomed to being treated with contempt, and the desire awoke within him to find some means of disconcerting this undersized whippersnapper who had almost succeeded in ...
— Greatheart • Ethel M. Dell
... faculties of man and woman are unlike, but not unequal. Any argument to the contrary, drawn from the somewhat less weight of the brain of woman, is met by the fact that the most able men are often undersized, with small heads. The subordinate place which woman occupies in most states, arises partly from the fact that the part she plays in reproduction prevents her from devoting her whole time and energies to the acquisition of power, and partly from ...
— The Physical Life of Woman: - Advice to the Maiden, Wife and Mother • Dr. George H Napheys
... the Constable, 'that there are far too many rioters. One would have been quite sufficient. If there had been only one small undersized rioter, I should have quelled ...
— The Magic Pudding • Norman Lindsay
... a good woman, undersized. I see several charming women, but they are all undersized. They are more or less imbecile and idiotic, but always fascinating and undersized. They wear coquettish caps and aprons. I observe that feminine virtue is invariably below the medium height, and that it is always simple ...
— The Luck of Roaring Camp and Other Tales • Bret Harte
... Class, as became mere infants ranging from six to ten years old, remained phlegmatically indifferent to the missive, yet avid for samples of the chocolates that had accompanied the declaration, made to eighty girls of all ages by one undersized, pasty, freckled young man employed as junior clerk and chain-assistant in a surveyor's office, and who signed at the end of a long row of symbolistic crosses the unheroic name ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... His companion, an undersized, dapper individual, whose raiment—suit, socks, shirt, shoes, hat and tie—might comprehensively be described as a symphony in brown, paused also, turned and looked at the chairs, then at the table, and ...
— Cap'n Dan's Daughter • Joseph C. Lincoln
... the Indian women are homely to the last degree. "Ugly," said an Oregonian to me, as we contemplated a company of squaws—"ugly is too mild a word to apply to such faces;" and he was right. Broad-faced, flat-nosed, small-eyed, unkempt, frowzy, undersized, thickset, clumsy, they have not a trace of beauty about them, either young or old. They are just useful, nothing more; and as you look at them and at the burdens they bear, you wonder whether, when the Woman's Rights movement has succeeded, and when women, dressed ...
— Northern California, Oregon, and the Sandwich Islands • Charles Nordhoff
... looked at Alma—poor undersized Alma, with her yellow skin and bloodless lips—and she sighed. But she kissed her also, and asked how she had spent her morning and whether she had come from school this morning or ...
— An Australian Lassie • Lilian Turner
... lean, undersized boy about fifteen years of age and about four feet nine inches in height. He had light brown hair and hazel grey eyes, and his clothes were of many colours, being thickly encrusted with paint, the result of the unskillful manner in which he did his work, for he had only been at the ...
— The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists • Robert Tressell
... lifted, though it was almost June, a white point of snow above dark pine ridges of the hills below. The five officers talked a little as they waited, but spasmodically, absent-mindedly. A shadow blocked the light of the entrance, and in the doorway stood a young man, undersized, slight, blond. He looked ...
— The Militants - Stories of Some Parsons, Soldiers, and Other Fighters in the World • Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews
... the primeval existence of an undersized race whose average height has been ascertained to be 4 feet 8.30562 inches. This precise figure has been calculated by a member of this society, from the measurement of an apparently human footprint discovered in the chalk deposit thrown up in ...
— Boycotted - And Other Stories • Talbot Baines Reed
... gathering a company around us which allowed us, until far into the night, to lead it into the most inconceivable follies. To all this I was incited more particularly by the personality of a very timid and undersized business man from Frankfort on the Oder, who longed to seem of a daring disposition; and his presence stimulated me, if only owing to the remarkable chance it gave me of coming into contact with some one who was at home in Frankfort 'on the Oder.' Any one who knows how things then stood in ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner
... proceeded to shed his fur-lined coat. Dunbar turned and surveyed him with the grudging admiration of the undersized ...
— Dangerous Days • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... to wake up and do something, and a wiry-looking, undersized, lean-ribbed old warrior, with an immense head, whose bow and arrows had been hanging near him, at once rushed forward and began to make a sort of pin-cushion of that cow. He twanged arrow after arrow into her, yelling ferociously, and was just ...
— Two Arrows - A Story of Red and White • William O. Stoddard
... undersized colored brother stepped briskly up and inquired, "What kind of a lookin' lady ...
— Best Short Stories • Various
... region in the E. of Afghanistan, S. of the Hindu-Kush, with the Panjshir, Kabul, and Chitral Rivers on the W., S., and E.; the people are undersized, pastoral, and devoted to their Aryan faith, which here has its last stronghold, not organised politically, but united in their love of independence ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... Thunder." He did not at all object to the name, which had filtered from regimental into common use. The crowd was always "Boys!" to him. He had a most amiable feeling towards it, were it ever so frowsy and undersized and sallow. But he loved a soldier-man, and could hardly bear to pass one in the street without stopping ...
— Mary Gray • Katharine Tynan
... the shoulders by an open pea-jacket that showed a man's red flannel shirt belted at the waist over a blue skirt, with the collar knotted by a sailor's black handkerchief, and turned back over a pretty though sunburnt throat. She saw a rather undersized young fellow in a jaunty undress uniform, scant of gold braid, and bearing only the single gold shoulder-bars of his rank, but scrupulously neat and well fitting. Light-colored hair cropped close, the smallest of light moustaches, clear and penetrating blue eyes, and a few freckles ...
— The Heritage of Dedlow Marsh and Other Tales • Bret Harte
... to be plenty of undersized timber, plenty of snow and plenty of river, and, as far as I ...
— The Magnetic North • Elizabeth Robins (C. E. Raimond)
... and the tractor are now doing much of the work formerly done by horses, the "horseless era" is still far off. A good horse will always be worth good money, will always be a desirable and profitable member of the farm family. But the undersized no-breed specimen will be even less valuable in the ...
— Pratt's Practical Pointers on the Care of Livestock and Poultry • Pratt Food Co.
... strict laws have been passed in many states. These laws prohibit fishermen from stretching their nets or weirs across the streams so as to block the passage of the fish when going to their spawning grounds. They also prohibit the taking of undersized fish and in some cases allow none at all of some kinds to be taken for a given time. Our government is now doing a great deal to save the food fishes of the country, but some varieties are ...
— Conservation Reader • Harold W. Fairbanks
... louder. The two girls stared, wonder-struck and afraid, at the door, Sophia with her dark head raised, and Constance with her arms round Sophia's waist. The door opened, letting in a much-magnified sound of groans, and there entered a youngish, undersized man, who was frantically clutching his head in his hands and contorting all the muscles of his face. On perceiving the sculptural group of two prone, interlocked girls, one enveloped in a crinoline, and the other with a wool-work bunch of ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett
... crowd, miserable and undersized, he meditated confidently on his power, keeping his hand in the left pocket of his trousers, grasping lightly the india-rubber ball, the supreme guarantee of his sinister freedom; but after a while he became disagreeably affected by the sight of the roadway thronged with vehicles ...
— The Secret Agent - A Simple Tale • Joseph Conrad
... closely at the red-headed young man for the first time, and met his lively brown eyes, full of a droll, confiding sort of humor. Mr. Landry was not prepossessing. He was undersized and clumsily made, with a red, shiny face and a sharp little nose that looked as if it had been whittled out of wood and was always in the air, on the scent of something. Yet it was this queer little beak, with his eyes, that made his countenance anything of a face at all. From a distance ...
— Song of the Lark • Willa Cather
... in Hillsborough condemned it; and now, if you are not running it with an undersized ...
— Put Yourself in His Place • Charles Reade
... on the Frenchmen I dimly remembered about St. Regis. They were undersized fellows, very apt to weep when their emotions were stirred. I ...
— Lazarre • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... Shabby, undersized, distinctly drunk, Mormon Joe made an unheroic figure as he stood swaying on his feet looking mockingly into the frowning faces of the Boosters Club, and yet, somehow, his words cast a momentary ...
— The Fighting Shepherdess • Caroline Lockhart
... practical knowledge of timber himself, acquired at first hand. He had skirted his boundaries and traversed the fringes of his property, and he saw scrubby, undersized trees where the four-foot trunks of Douglas fir should have lifted in brown ranks. He had looked into the bisecting hollow from different angles and marked magnificent cedars,—but too few of them. Taken with the fact that Lewis had ...
— The Hidden Places • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... but just as the carriage came opposite us a sudden jolt displaced the spring catch of the curtain and up it flew with a snap. There were two persons in the cab, and the electric light from the corner shone full upon them. The one nearest us was an undersized, swarthy-faced person who wore a Turkish fez; his companion was a portly man attired in evening clothes and having his head entirely enveloped in a bag of some dark material gathered at ...
— The Gates of Chance • Van Tassel Sutphen
... her upon the seat before him. (She was an undersized, stout woman.) She parted, combed, ...
— The Lincoln Story Book • Henry L. Williams
... to suffocation with the mingled aromas of stale drink and cheap perfume. As we entered a wrangle was going on among a group of young Frenchmen picturesquely attired as art students—almost a sure sign that they were not art students. An undersized girl dressed in a shabby black-and-yellow frock was doing a Spanish dance on a cleared space in the middle of the floor. We knew her instantly for a Spanish dancer, because she had a fan in one hand and a pair of castanets in the other. ...
— Europe Revised • Irvin S. Cobb
... Kantor, his free hand raised in threat of descent and cowering his small son to still more undersized proportions. "Hush it, or, ...
— O Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1919 • Various
... short jacket with silver buttons, and grey breeches with a black leather seat. He was driving a tiny little haycart with a tiny little horse, and up in the cart was a little red-flanked cow—on its way to the butcher's, I suppose. All three—man, horse, and cow—were undersized; palaeolithic figures; dwarf creatures from the underworld on a visit to the haunts of men. I almost looked to see them vanish before my eyes. All of a sudden the cow in its Lilliputian cart utters a throaty roar—and even that unromantic ...
— Wanderers • Knut Hamsun
... Someone squealed with mortal agony. Eddie opened his eyes cautiously and saw that the room was full of people. The pungent odor of burned powder assailed his nostrils. There was Cadorna and Carlos, David Shelton and Lina. An undersized, dapper youth stood over the body of the big German, his hands outstretched before his horror-stricken face. A moment he stood thus, like a statue. Then his knees gave way beneath him and he crumpled into a grotesque heap beside the man who had been called Gus. ...
— Astounding Stories, March, 1931 • Various
... recognised course of study. These posts are non-pensionable. The Fishery Branch deals with questions relating to the natural history and diseases of fish, fish-hatcheries and laboratories, the protection of undersized fish, the effect of methods of capture, international investigations, and grants in aid of fishery research. The women are engaged upon the same work as men, except that they do not write technical reports and are not liable to be called ...
— Women Workers in Seven Professions • Edith J. Morley
... embraces were not to his taste. And yet the boy did love his mother. She was not at all a wise woman, or a clever one; rather silly, indeed, in many things; but she was fond of him. At this period he was young-looking for his age, slight, and rather undersized, with an exceedingly light complexion, a wishy-washy sort of face with no colour in it, unmeaning light eyes, white eyebrows, and ragged-looking light hair with a tawny ...
— Elster's Folly • Mrs. Henry Wood
... not wholly checked by an incident that occurred within the school precincts early in the first term. There was another boy in the same class named Bauer, who seemed the living counterpart of Keith—just as undersized and lonely and nervous. From the first there was a hostile tension between those two, and soon it came to open war. It broke out in a pause between two lessons when practically all the boys were gathered in the schoolyard. Before Keith quite knew what had happened, he found himself fighting Bauer. ...
— The Soul of a Child • Edwin Bjorkman
... you to talk," she retorted. "If my eggs were undersized I shouldn't mind losing them as fast as I laid them. But I lay the biggest and finest eggs to be had. So it's only natural that I should like to have at least one around to look at—and to ...
— The Tale of Henrietta Hen • Arthur Scott Bailey
... ill-favoured, undersized, gruff sailor of fifty, coarsely hairy, short-legged, long-armed, resembling an elderly ape. His strength was immense; and in his great lumpy paws, bulging like brown boxing-gloves on the end of furry forearms, the heaviest objects were ...
— Typhoon • Joseph Conrad
... pushing his way through the crowd, and his black figure in that writhing ring of undersized foreigners looked big and commanding. "What's this?" he was saying in a husky voice that rose clear above the clamour. The shouting and swearing subsided, all save the howling from the inside of the shop, and ...
— The Christian - A Story • Hall Caine
... one prospector during my stay in Death Valley. He camped with us. A rather undersized man he was, yet muscular, with brown wrinkled face and narrow dim eyes. He seemed to be smiling to himself most of the time. He liked to talk to his burros. He was exceedingly interesting. Once he nearly died of thirst, having ...
— Tales of lonely trails • Zane Grey
... men often passed Richmond without taking particular notice of him. He was rather undersized, and was bald, but his head was shapely. He was so sensitive that he often assumed a brusqueness in order not to appear effeminate. His judgment of men was as swift as the sweep of a hawk, and sometimes it was as sure. He had taken so many chances, ...
— The Colossus - A Novel • Opie Read
... pays now-a-days is pickin the bones o' the people. Why don't ye turn lawyer or depity sheriff, an take to that, Abner?" said Paul Hubbard, an undersized man with a dark face, and ...
— The Duke of Stockbridge • Edward Bellamy |
