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More "Awkward" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... stream shone like silver in the moonlight. Without warning this gap was suddenly filled by a huge black mass—a rhino making his way, very leisurely, out of the shallow water. On he came with a slow, ponderous tread, combining a certain stateliness with his awkward strides. Almost directly beneath us he halted and stood for an instant clearly exposed to our view. This was my opportunity; I took careful aim at his shoulder and fired. Instantly, and with extraordinary rapidity, the huge beast whirled round like a peg-top, ...
— The Man-eaters of Tsavo and Other East African Adventures • J. H. Patterson
... pleased to find him no more awkward, as I feared he would have been, and when, having swept the grate and placed my solitary wineglass and dessert-plate on the table, he retired, softly closing the door after him, I felt I should make something of J. Cole, and hoped his character ...
— J. Cole • Emma Gellibrand
... imperfect utterance, now further choked by tears and agitation, knew that there was a medley of broken rejoicings, blessings, and weepings, in the midst of which the soldier, glad perhaps to end a scene where he became increasingly awkward and embarrassed, started up, hastily kissed the old man on each of his withered cheeks, gave another kiss to his daughter, threw her two Venetian ducats, bidding her spend them for the old man, and he would bring a ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... discomfort a greater weight than his first ones. The gold he now brought was made up into six bundles, and then the captain rested from his labors. He felt that he could do a much better day's work than this, but this day had been very much broken up, and he was still somewhat awkward. ...
— The Adventures of Captain Horn • Frank Richard Stockton
... at the sound of the stranger's voice and stared at her with round, blinking eyes. She drew off her cotton gloves and whipped her knee with them in awkward embarrassment. She had small, regular features of the kind that remain the same from childhood to old age, and her liver-colored hair rolled in a billow almost ...
— The Wizard's Daughter and Other Stories • Margaret Collier Graham
... cross-fire of their host; plied by those in his rear if he attacked in front, and by those on one flank if he moved against those on the other. In short, wherever he went he would have the assailants behind him, and these light-armed assailants, the most awkward of all; arrows, darts, stones, and slings making them formidable at a distance, and there being no means of getting at them at close quarters, as they could conquer flying, and the moment their pursuer turned they were upon him. Such was the idea ...
— The History of the Peloponnesian War • Thucydides
... the table was loaded with awkward profusion; but it was as close an imitation as we could yet contrive of our opulent neighbour's display. No less than four footmen, discharged as splendid superfluities from the household of a duke, waited behind our four chairs, to make their remarks on our style of eating ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 12, - Issue 348, December 27, 1828 • Various
... room where I had been waiting for him, as I fancied he might have come on a wet, cold morning to meet an awkward-squad. He held the card I sent for his inspection in his hand, and referred to it, after he had looked me over ...
— The Uninhabited House • Mrs. J. H. Riddell
... one of them spoke: "Come, Bob, let's go over and see if we can't tuck away some of that grub." So both turned their backs upon the train, and upon me; and as they went over to see if they couldn't "tuck away some of that grub," I got a view of their heavy shoulders, and their shambling, awkward gait. A pair of old draft horses, going out in the morning to take their places in front of their truck, would not move more stiffly than ...
— Lessons in Life - A Series of Familiar Essays • Timothy Titcomb
... what otherwise would have been a nightmare of unspeakable horror. Attached to the R. A. P. was an outer building wherein the wounded men were laid after treatment. Thither in a pause of his work, Barry would run to administer drinks, ease the strain of an awkward position, speak a word of cheer, say a prayer, or sing snatches of a hymn or psalm. There was little leisure for reflection, nor if there had been would he have indulged in reflection, knowing well that only thus could he maintain his self-control ...
— The Sky Pilot in No Man's Land • Ralph Connor
... to him. One day, the child, of great energy, saw that god of gods, the lord of Uma, seated with the daughter of Himavat, amid a swarm of ghostly creatures. Those ghostly creatures, of emaciated bodies, were of wonderful features. They were ugly and of ugly features, and wore awkward ornaments and marks. Their faces were like those of tigers and lions and bears and cats and makaras. Others were of faces like those of scorpions; others of faces like those of elephants and camels and owls. And some had faces ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... the countryman absolutely dumbfounded with astonishment, proposed to the latter to put on the gloves. "Jersey" hardly seemed to know what gloves were, but with much trouble he was got into form and set to milling. But though he was as awkward as a blind cow, the swell pugilist could not for a very long time get in a blow. Jersey dodged every hit "somehow" in a manner which seemed to be miraculous. At last one told on his chest, and it appeared to be a stunner, for it knocked him ...
— Memoirs • Charles Godfrey Leland
... conduct of this lady throughout the voyage conduced to Carmen's happiness. Mrs. Reed showed plainly that the girl was an awkward embarrassment to her; that she was tolerated because of reasons which pertained solely to her husband's business; and she took pains to impress upon her fellow-travelers that, in view of the perplexing ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... merely because it wanders from the text, but because it inserts a phrase, "to use violent thefts," which is awkward and unlike Shakspeare. The reading I have adopted is that suggested by Mr. Amyot, who observes upon it: "Here, I think, with little more than transposition (us being, substituted for we, and would omitted), the meaning, as far as we can collect ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 54, November 9, 1850 • Various
... she tenderly wrapped it in the cloak with which it had been covered, and pressed it to her bosom. Then a paper which had been in the child's clothes fell to the ground. Manuel Antonio picked it up. On the paper was written in large awkward-looking characters, evidently with the left hand: "The unhappy mother of this baby girl commends her to the charity of the Senores de Quinones. It ...
— The Grandee • Armando Palacio Valds
... instituted such search as was possible without putting the matter in the hands of the authorities, which would have brought about awkward complications with the signory of Florence. In the meantime he had invited the Dovizios to remain at the villa as his guests, an invitation which was accepted with much content. The Chancellor gave himself up to the delay with such resignation that I presently ...
— Romance of Roman Villas - (The Renaissance) • Elizabeth W. (Elizbeth Williams) Champney
... his voice sounded hoarse and awkward, like a rusty lock. "I'm poor Ben Gunn, I am; and I haven't spoke with a Christian ...
— Treasure Island • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the Eddystone flag was hoisted as a signal of distress, yet the weather was so boisterous for some time, as to prevent any boat from getting near enough to speak to them. In this dilemma, the living man found himself in a very awkward situation, being apprehensive, that if he committed the dead body to the deep, (the only way in which he could dispose of it,) he might be charged with his murder. This induced him, for some time, to let ...
— Domestic pleasures - or, the happy fire-side • F. B. Vaux
... our relations with Spain in an awkward and embarrassing position. It is more than probable that the final adjustment of these claims will ...
— State of the Union Addresses of James Buchanan • James Buchanan
... and unstately disappearance. A kitten also emerges from somewhere, glares, arches, fuffs, becomes indescribable, and—is not! Two or three children turn up and gape, but do not recover in time to insult, or to increase the dangers of the awkward turn in the road which is now ...
— The Eagle Cliff • R.M. Ballantyne
... of the pupil,—a thing, by the bye, which marks the difference between public and private education. The fault was far less with Pierrette than with her cousins. It took her an infinite length of time to learn the rudiments. She was called stupid and dull, clumsy and awkward for mere nothings. Incessantly abused in words, the child suffered still more from the harsh looks of her cousins. She acquired the doltish ways of a sheep; she dared not do anything of her own impulse, for all she did was misinterpreted, ...
— Pierrette • Honore de Balzac
... Honour cannot love, nor Manhood fear? That I no longer skulk from street to street, Afraid lest duns assail, and bailiffs meet; 130 That I from place to place this carcase bear; Walk forth at large, and wander free as air; That I no longer dread the awkward friend. Whose very obligations must offend; Nor, all too froward, with impatience burn At suffering favours which I can't return; That, from dependence and from pride secure, I am not placed so high to scorn the poor, Nor ...
— Poetical Works • Charles Churchill
... seven straight miles to Guildford. Others would prefer to keep to a path under the hill, stopping at the churches and gossiping at the inns. You can trace the old road clearly through Seale to Puttenham, where it must have travelled south of the church door, instead of taking the awkward and unnecessary turn to the north which is taken by the modern road. Then at Puttenham the pilgrims would divide again. Some would journey straight on across Puttenham Heath, heading towards St. Catherine's Hill—you can see the rough track; others would turn aside to the south-east, ...
— Highways and Byways in Surrey • Eric Parker
... word has become compounded. This is illustrated in Wai-a-lu-a (geographical name), and wa-ha mouth. In the middle of a word, or after the first syllable, it almost always has the sound of v (vay), as in he-wa (wrong), and in E-wa (geographical name). In ha-wa-wa (awkward), the compound word ha-wai (water-pipe), and several others the w ...
— Unwritten Literature of Hawaii - The Sacred Songs of the Hula • Nathaniel Bright Emerson
... to be acquainted with my worthy friend, little Major British; and heaven, sure, it was that put the Major into my head, when I heard of this awkward scrape of poor Fog's. The Major is on half-pay, and occupies a modest apartment au quatrieme, in the very hotel which Pogson had patronized at my suggestion; indeed, I had chosen it from Major British's own ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... Kidd that it was quite time we sighted San Ambrosio, and that if we missed it, after all, it would be cursed awkward. And Kidd answered that 'if we fell in with Hux ...
— Mr. Fortescue • William Westall
... on us we had a good laugh, as we had frequently indulged in, when sitting there in that awkward, shirtless, ...
— Twenty Years of Hus'ling • J. P. Johnston
... contributions to these "devices" have been preserved—two of them composed in honour of the Queen, as "triumphs," offered by Lord Essex, one probably in 1592 and another in 1595; a third for a Gray's Inn revel in 1594. The "devices" themselves were of the common type of the time, extravagant, odd, full of awkward allegory and absurd flattery, and running to a prolixity which must make modern lovers of amusement wonder at the patience of those days; but the "discourses" furnished by Bacon are full of fine observation and brilliant thought and wit ...
— Bacon - English Men Of Letters, Edited By John Morley • Richard William Church
... answer like her own son. Do you wonder that all the old ladies loved him? And it was no special court to old ladies. He talked so to school-boys, and to shy people who had just poked their heads out of their shells, and to all the awkward people, and to all the gay and easy people. And so he compelled them, by his magnetism, to talk so to him. That was the way he made his first friends,—and that was the way, I think, ...
— How To Do It • Edward Everett Hale
... return they scarcely spoke. Miss Marston divined that her companion felt ashamed and awkward, and that his momentary enthusiasm had evaporated under the influence of a long railroad ride. While they were waiting for the steamer at the Mount Desert ferry, she said, as negligently as she ...
— Literary Love-Letters and Other Stories • Robert Herrick
... British statesman, then great, put on record a phrase which at once is polite and convincing. He wished to convey that a certain statement was a d—— lie, but as he himself had made the statement he was in somewhat of an awkward situation. He got out of the difficulty by calling it a ...
— Private Peat • Harold R. Peat
... the greatest precautions I made the journey down along the river on foot, carrying from my winter quarters all my household furniture and goods, wrapped up in the deerskin bag which I formed by tying the legs together in an awkward knot; and thus laden fording the small streams and wading through the swamps that lay across my path. After fifty odd miles of this I came to the country called Sifkova, where I found the cabin of a peasant named Tropoff, located closest to the forest that came to be my natural environment. ...
— Beasts, Men and Gods • Ferdinand Ossendowski
... studded with sharp little teeth. Thus their contest holds the stone firmly in place. The whole forms a pretty symbol of the human soul, battled for by the good and the evil principles. But the diamond seems, in its entirety, to be an awkward mouthful for either. The snakes are wrought with marvellous dexterity and finish; each separate scale is distinguishable upon their glistening bodies, the wrinkling of the skin in the coils, the sparkling points of eyes, and the minute nostrils. Such works of art are not made nowadays; the ...
— Idolatry - A Romance • Julian Hawthorne
... his face to her again. "Not at all difficult, my dear Miss Pond, but awkward. Lord! it wouldn't do at all!" His eyes behind his glasses became keen and lively. ...
— The Second Class Passenger • Perceval Gibbon
... hither?' These words adorned with grammatical refinements, issued out of her mouth that was as beautiful as the moon.[275] Subject to the influence of another, she uttered these words, but became rather ashamed for uttering them. Hearing her, Purandara became exceedingly cheerless. Observing that awkward result, the chief of the celestials, O monarch, adorned with a thousand eyes saw every thing with his spiritual eye. He then beheld the ascetic staying within the body of the lady. Indeed, the ascetic remained within the ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 4 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... brings one of them into prominence, either to show it off or to satisfy herself that the jewel becomes her: her head is square-shaped, the shoulders narrow, the chest puny, the pose of the arm stiff and awkward, but the eyes have such a joyful openness, and her smile such a self-satisfied expression, that one readily over looks the other defects of the statue. In this collection of miniature figures examples of men are not wanting, and there are instances ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 6 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... said Mr. Fotheringay, and then, realising the awkward nature of the explanation, caught nervously at his moustache. He saw Winch, one of ...
— The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... the ways of life, at great odds, when they come to the actual and practical battle. A man should be armed at all points, and not subject himself, like good George Fox, Jacob Behmen, and other holy men, to the taunts of the mob, on account of any awkward gait, mannerism, or ignorance of men and affairs. Paul had none of these absurdities about him; but was an accomplished person, as well as a divine speaker. His doctrine of being all things to ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 1, Issue 2, December, 1857 • Various
... humanize them. When the Indians will cultivate the cow, I shall think their civilization fairly begun. Recently, when the horses were sick with the epizootic, and the oxen came to the city and helped to do their work, what an Arcadian air again filled the streets! But the dear old oxen,—how awkward and distressed they looked! Juno wept in the face of every one of them. The horse is a true citizen, and is entirely at home in the paved streets; but the ox,—what a complete embodiment of all rustic and rural ...
— Birds and Poets • John Burroughs
... twenty-five regiments, classified into brigades and demi-brigades, the former commanded by Brigadier-General G. D. Wagner, Colonel C. G. Harker, and Colonel F. T. Sherman; the latter, by Colonels Laiboldt, Miller, Wood, Walworth, and Opdyke. The demi-brigade was an awkward invention of Granger's; but at this time it was necessitated—perhaps by the depleted condition of our regiments, which compelled the massing of a great number of regimental organizations into a division to give it weight ...
— The Memoirs of General Philip H. Sheridan, Vol. I., Part 3 • P. H. Sheridan
... to-day, of the past, Sarah, and I grow a very child again as I recall the dreary years which have gone over my head, since last I trod the shores of my fatherland. You, Sarah, know much of my history. You know that I was awkward, eccentric, uncouth, and many years older than my handsomer, more highly gifted brother; and yet with all this fearful odds against me, you know that I ventured to love the gentle, fair-haired Fanny, your adopted sister. You know this, I say, but you do not know how madly, ...
— Dora Deane • Mary J. Holmes
... to have been native with him, for we find it in his earliest utterances. Such a phrase appears in homely proverbial form in his first speech: "My politics are short and sweet, like the old woman's dance." Impaired in rhythm of thought and sound by an awkward, though logical, parenthetical expression, another phrase stands out in a "spread-eagle" passage from his first formal address, that on "The ...
— The Poets' Lincoln - Tributes in Verse to the Martyred President • Various
... These worthies found the material a little too solid for the tools of their workmen, which, in General, were employed on a substance no harder than the white pine of the adjacent mountains, a wood so proverbially soft that it is commonly chosen by the hunters for pillows. But for this awkward dilemma, it is probable that the ambitious tastes of our two architects would have left us much more to do in the way of description. Driven from the faces of the house by the obduracy of the material, they took refuge in the porch ...
— The Pioneers • James Fenimore Cooper
... against me just now; but I will use my left hand, according to my custom in such circumstances. Do not suppose on that account that I am sparing you; I fight decently with both hands, and a left-handed swordsman is an awkward antagonist when one is not prepared for him. I am sorry I did not tell you of it sooner, that you might have got your ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 57, No. 351, January 1845 • Various
... desire them to go home; that they dare not do, so they will remain. But let us first secure their muskets, which lie round their fire, before we dismiss them; or they will not, perhaps, surrender them, and we may be in an awkward position. I will slip away, and while I am away, do you keep them in talk until I return, which I shall not do until I have locked up all the guns ...
— The Mission; or Scenes in Africa • Captain Frederick Marryat
... Pao-yue, Hsi Jen and a whole posse of inmates then walked out. She felt inclined to go up to Pao-yue and ask him a question; but dreading that if she made any inquiries in the presence of such a company, Pao-yue would be put to the blush and placed in an awkward position, she slipped aside and allowed Pao-ch'ai to prosecute her way. And it was only after Pao-yue and the rest of the party had entered and closed the gate behind them that she at last issued from her ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... some words of soothing and encouragement to say to the child, such as she had heard Melissa Davis use; but she could not. They were not a part of her life's vocabulary. Several times she had essayed to speak, but the sentences that formed in her mind seemed so absurd and awkward that she felt them ...
— The Uncalled - A Novel • Paul Laurence Dunbar
... unhappiness of those first years of my married life. I was awkward and ill at ease in a world that valued social poise above knowledge. From my childhood I had loved honest, sincere people. After my marriage I met distinguished men and women, even a few who might be called great; but they, ...
— The Log-Cabin Lady, An Anonymous Autobiography • Unknown
... of the seven. He was not polite and sensible like Archie, nor gay and handsome like Prince Charlie, nor neat and obliging like Steve, nor amusing like the "Brats," nor confiding and affectionate like little Jamie. He was rough, absent-minded, careless, and awkward, rather priggish, and not at all agreeable to a dainty, ...
— Eight Cousins • Louisa M. Alcott
... that which conscientious diffidence imposes upon itself? To stand forth and endure, though every instinct implores retreat, is a true assertion of the higher self for the satisfaction of imperious duty. Such deliberate return towards suffering is no cowardice, but a triumph over weak flesh; and the awkward strife of diffidence may often prove a greater feat of arms than the ...
— Apologia Diffidentis • W. Compton Leith
... several letters, place each in its envelope, and address it as soon as it is written. Otherwise awkward mistakes may occur, your correspondents receiving letters not intended for them. If there be a town of the same name as that to which you are writing existing in another county, specify the county which you mean or, ...
— Enquire Within Upon Everything - The Great Victorian Domestic Standby • Anonymous
... stepmother Circumstance. No doubt there ought to be truth in the silly old picture, if there is none, and I would willingly make-believe to credit it, if I could. I am glad that they at least work in old-world, awkward, picturesque ways, and not in commonplace, handy, modern fashion. Neither the habits nor the implements of labor are changed since the progress of the Republic ceased, and her heart began to die within her. All sorts of mechanics' tools are clumsy and inconvenient: the turner's ...
— Venetian Life • W. D. Howells
... something wonderful, sure enough. For instance, the lesson in geography was about China. The doctor asked a boy, "Where is Shanghai situated?" and he replied, "On Long Island, about two miles from Astoria landing!—that is," and there he stopped, looking as awkward and silly as a ...
— Red, White, Blue Socks, Part First - Being the First Book • Sarah L Barrow
... but no wine, thankee, Mr. Verity," said he. "I kem along now' 'coss I want to be aboard afore it's dark. We're moored in an awkward place." ...
— The Stowaway Girl • Louis Tracy
... imaginable variety of circumstances in common life. There are in this case two considerations that make it the more wonderful; the one, that he is a person of very low genius, having, besides a stammering which makes his speech almost unintelligible to strangers, so wild and awkward a manner of behaviour, that he is frequently taken for an idiot, and seems in many things to be indeed so;—the other, that he grew up to manhood in a very licentious course of living, and an entire ignorance of divine ...
— The Life of Col. James Gardiner - Who Was Slain at the Battle of Prestonpans, September 21, 1745 • P. Doddridge
... for no pious Greek would enlist in such a cause. The war was ferocious. The allies put their prisoners to death. Philomelus followed their example. This was a losing game, and both sides gave it up. At length Philomelus and his army were caught in an awkward position, the army was dispersed, and he driven to the verge of a precipice, where he must choose between captivity or death. He chose the latter and leaped from ...
— Historic Tales, vol 10 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... throughout the city, a dry line for camels being left in mid-street to prevent the awkward beasts slipping. The watering of the Cairo streets of late years has been excessive; they are now lines of mud in summer as well as in winter and the effluvia from the droppings of animals have, combined with other causes, seriously deteriorated the once charming climate. The only place ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 4 • Richard F. Burton
... wife's feelings were hurt he cared not a jot, but it would be an awkward thing to have it repeated in the town. Then there was this threatening letter; what was he to do about that? Other men had had similar warnings. Some had defied Captain Lud, and fortified their mills and held them. Many had had their property burned to the ground; some had ...
— Through the Fray - A Tale of the Luddite Riots • G. A. Henty
... into her design, the easier and more flowing lines, the more graceful shape, the shallower hull, and the absence of those towering fore and after castles which rendered the ships of those days so awkward, crank, and uneasy in heavy weather; and he told himself grimly that with such a ship as that, and with a good strong sturdy crew of staunch Devonian hearts to back him up, it should not be his fault if he did not make the word "Englishman" a name of dread from one end ...
— The Cruise of the Nonsuch Buccaneer • Harry Collingwood
... supposed already to have been asserted; an exercise you are now contending for by ways and means which you confess, though they were obeyed, to be utterly insufficient for their purpose. You are therefore at this moment in the awkward situation of fighting for a phantom, a quiddity, a thing that wants not only a substance, but even a name; for a thing which is neither ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 7 • Various
... man would enter. The beauty of this, to Steve's mind, was that he himself would be "discovered," as the stage term is; the onus of entering and opening the conversation would be on Mr. Bannister. And, as everybody who has ever had an awkward interview knows, this makes all ...
— The Coming of Bill • P. G. Wodehouse
... agreed to behave as ignorant and awkward as possible, and what motions we learned one day we were to forget the next. We pursued this conduct nearly a fortnight, and were beaten every day by the drill-sergeant who exercised us, and when he found we were determined, in our ...
— American Prisoners of the Revolution • Danske Dandridge
... Mr. Talmadge in New York," she went on, wildly. "He said he would come to me from across the world, at a moment's notice, if I wired. Only it would be awkward if I announced our engagement to-night, and then found he'd changed his mind. Besides, he'd be a last resort: and Sayda ...
— It Happened in Egypt • C. N. Williamson & A. M. Williamson
... is open, if the color is careless, if the selection of a strong scent is not awkward, if the button holder is held by all the waving color and there is no color, not any color. If there is no dirt in a pin and there can be none scarcely, if there is not then the place is the same as ...
— Tender Buttons - Objects—Food—Rooms • Gertrude Stein
... her better. Beyond doubt she was beautiful, with a willowy, wild grace which could not but arrest attention, and all the other girls immediately owned to a sense of inferiority in her presence. But Irene was so endowed with nature's grace that she could not do an awkward thing; and then the child who accompanied her, the small unimportant child, was as beautiful in her way as Irene was in hers. So charming a pair did they make, those two, each of them dressed in the purest white, that Rosamund, who was considered quite the handsomest girl in the school, seemed to ...
— A Modern Tomboy - A Story for Girls • L. T. Meade
... shoulders and stepped to the door, which he opened, shouting, "The mayor of St. Dizier!" The corpulent form of the mayor, who greeted the emperor with awkward obeisances, appeared immediately. "Pray repeat your statements," said the emperor, "The enemy's troops were here ...
— NAPOLEON AND BLUCHER • L. Muhlbach
... those silly things of wood and clay," said Abraham, and at last they refused to answer his awkward questions. ...
— Jewish Fairy Tales and Legends • Gertrude Landa
... is less skilled. It is the Socialis, and he finds his subsistence properly in various seeds and the larvae of insects, though he occasionally has higher aspirations, and seeks to emulate the peewee, commencing and ending his career as a flycatcher by an awkward chase after a beetle or "miller." He is hunting around in the dull grass now, I suspect, with the desire to indulge this favorite whim. There!—the opportunity is afforded him. Away goes a little cream-colored meadow-moth in the most tortuous ...
— Wake-Robin • John Burroughs
... that the sons of men will ever forsake you because of your clothes. When you find a man dictating to the ladies what they shall wear you're pretty apt to see his head housed in a stove- pipe hat—the most inartistic and awkward monstrosity ever designed by the devil to make the Almighty ashamed of his masterpiece. In all history there's no record of a great idea being born in a beegum. I never saw a statue of a hero or picture of a martyr with ...
— Volume 12 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... above one of the methods in vogue for holding a staff by means of wax. It is the common method employed by most watch repairers, the popular method so to speak. The method which I am now about to describe may seem awkward at first to those who have not practiced it, but once you have fairly tried it, you will never be contented to ...
— A Treatise on Staff Making and Pivoting • Eugene E. Hall
... dinner, is treating our friends with hospitality and attention, and this attention is what young people have to learn. Experience will teach them in time, but till they acquire it, they will appear ungraceful and awkward. ...
— The Cook's Oracle; and Housekeeper's Manual • William Kitchiner
... usually one of the most popular places around. Families come for cook-outs, and the kids swim in the creek. Clubs hold their outings almost every night, sometimes two or three groups at once. But since the ghost came people are staying away, except for the affairs that would be difficult or awkward to cancel ...
— The Blue Ghost Mystery • Harold Leland Goodwin
... continued. "Some of the statutes have been unaltered for a thousand years. I have been given to understand by a person who knows, that if this man should die, notwithstanding the circumstances of the case, you might find yourself in an exceedingly awkward position. If I might venture, therefore, to give you a word of disinterested advice, I would suggest that you return to England at once, if only ...
— Mr. Grex of Monte Carlo • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... not be too far off the carver, as it gives an awkward appearance, and makes the task more difficult. Attention is to be paid to help every one to a part of such articles as are ...
— The American Housewife • Anonymous
... fortunate that the crust of the snow removed the need of using the long snow-shoes, whose make suggests the bats used in playing tennis, for the men were the only ones who knew how to handle the awkward contrivances, which would have proved a sore ...
— Klondike Nuggets - and How Two Boys Secured Them • E. S. Ellis
... his friend hardly respectful to the head of the Wyndham family, but set it down as an awkward attempt ...
— The Atlantic Monthly , Volume 2, No. 14, December 1858 • Various
... field. You are inclined to rush your fences," said the Marchesa with a deprecatory gesture. "And just look at the people gathered here in this room. Wouldn't they—to continue the horsey metaphor—be rather an awkward team to drive?" ...
— The Cook's Decameron: A Study in Taste: - Containing Over Two Hundred Recipes For Italian Dishes • Mrs. W. G. Waters
... Nancy Lee is an attractive little craft when finished and it is capable of attaining considerable speed. It is really designed after the cruising type of motor-boats. This type of boat is particularly adaptable for simple model-making, owing to the elimination of awkward fittings. The power machinery is of very simple construction ...
— Boys' Book of Model Boats • Raymond Francis Yates
... getting tired, and was almost useless because it was losing whatever sense it had had, and was becoming awkward and unmanageable. ...
— Ted Strong in Montana - With Lariat and Spur • Edward C. Taylor
... and she almost leans down to your breast as you press to meet the blessed burden, and to prevent the steady old stager from leaping over the battlements. But now the chasm on each side of the narrow path is so tremendous, that she must dismount, after due disentanglement, from that awkward, old-fashioned crutch and pummel, and from a stirrup, into which a little foot, when it has once crept like a mouse, finds itself caught as in a trap of singular construction, and difficult to open for releasement. ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson
... and looked with curiosity and wonder at my smock, my pail of paste, the paper stretched on the floor; I was embarrassed, and she, too, felt awkward. ...
— The Chorus Girl and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... upon me so suddenly, and so close, that I could do nothing but follow mechanical instinct, and thrust my fist into his open mouth. For safety's sake I pushed on and on, till my arm was fairly in up to the shoulder. How should I disengage myself? I was not much pleased with my awkward situation—with a wolf face to face; our ogling was not of the most pleasant kind. If I withdrew my arm, then the animal would fly the more furiously upon me; that I saw in his flaming eyes. In short, I laid hold of his tail, turned him inside ...
— The Surprising Adventures of Baron Munchausen • Rudolph Erich Raspe
... on or about 24th September had a long interview with Pitt and Grenville, at the house of the latter. We gather from Burke's "Letters on the Conduct of our Domestic Parties," that it was the first time he had met Pitt in private; and the meeting must have been somewhat awkward. After dining, with Grenville as host, the three men conferred together till eleven o'clock, discussing the whole situation "very calmly" (says Burke); but we can fancy the tumult of feelings in the breast of the ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose
... He is a cool hand, and I can understand how he has given us the slip so long. There is none of the shifty look about his eyes that one generally sees in criminals, no glancing from side to side; he rode with the air of a man who had a right to be where he was, and feared no one. He will be an awkward customer to tackle if we do not take him ...
— Colonel Thorndyke's Secret • G. A. Henty
... promise, she very soon began to be glad. She found her fear gradually falling away before Mr. Carleton's quiet kind reassuring manner; he took such nice care of her; and she presently made up her mind that he would manage the matter so that it would not be awkward. They had so much pleasant talk too. Fleda had found before that she could talk to Mr. Carleton, nay she could not help talking to him; and she forgot to think about it. And besides, it was a pleasant day, and they drove fast, and ...
— Queechy • Susan Warner
... She stood, awkward and embarrassed, before him. No words would come to her lips to thank him. She had felt desolate and friendless for so long, and now when his kindness was so great, she felt as if she should cry if she spoke at all. ...
— That Girl Montana • Marah Ellis Ryan
... silver bell, the lady said: "Approach, Christian!" and she pointed to a low ottoman within a few paces of the sofa which she herself occupied. Alessandro now recovered his presence of mind; and no longer embarrassed and awkward, but with graceful ease and yet profound respect, he ...
— Wagner, the Wehr-Wolf • George W. M. Reynolds
... the time when decorations are seen at their best. The snowy egret trails his filmy cloud of plumes, putting to shame the stiff millinery bunches of similar feathers torn from his murdered brethren. Even the awkward and querulous night heron exhibits a long curling plume or two. And what a strange criterion of beauty a female white pelican must have! To be sure, the graceful crest which Sir Pelican erects is beautiful, but that huge, horny "keel" or "sight" ...
— The Log of the Sun - A Chronicle of Nature's Year • William Beebe
... M. Troplong is so unfortunate or awkward that he mutilates economy through failure to grasp its meaning "Just as property," he writes, "gave rise to the action for revendication, so possession—the jus possessionis—was the cause of possessory interdicts.... There were ...
— What is Property? - An Inquiry into the Principle of Right and of Government • P. J. Proudhon
... to her service. A banquet was immediately provided for him in a corner; and when he had eaten and drunk his fill, he went to the window where Florence was sitting, looking on, rose up on his hind legs, with his awkward fore paws on her shoulders, licked her face and hands, nestled his great head against her heart, and wagged his tail till he was tired. Finally, Diogenes coiled himself up at her feet ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... Monsignor (Cardinal Ascanio), "Well, Giovanni Sforza! What have you to say to me?" I answered, "Holy Father, every one in Rome believes that your Holiness has entered into an agreement with the King of Naples, who is an enemy of the State of Milan. If this is so, I am in an awkward position, as I am in the pay of your Holiness and also in that of the State I have named. If things continue as they are, I do not know how I can serve one party without falling out with the other, and at the same time I do not wish to offend. I ask that your Holiness ...
— Lucretia Borgia - According to Original Documents and Correspondence of Her Day • Ferdinand Gregorovius
... made the pair such fast friends? Jorian some six weeks ago fell ill of a bowel disease; it began with raging pain; and when this went off, leaving him weak, an awkward symptom succeeded; nothing, either liquid or solid, would stay in his stomach a minute. The doctor said: "He must die if this goes on many hours; therefore boil thou now a chicken with a golden angel in the water, and let him sup that!" Alas! Gilt chicken ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... and moreover had a hundred dollars deposited to his credit in a savings-bank, beside his stock in trade, probably amounting to at least fifty dollars, at the wholesale price. So there was no immediate reason for anxiety. It would have been rather awkward, however, to look up a shelter for the night at such short notice, and therefore Sam Norton's ...
— Slow and Sure - The Story of Paul Hoffman the Young Street-Merchant • Horatio Alger
... too fine to be shut up in-doors. Why aren't you driving, or—or playing golf, or—ah—or being out-doors somewhere? You need exercise, old man; you look a little pale. (Aside.) I must get him away from here somehow. Deuced awkward having another fellow about when you mean to propose ...
— The Bicyclers and Three Other Farces • John Kendrick Bangs
... buildings increased to four, two in the town, and two at a distance, the Priory, of stone, founded by contribution, at the head of which stood her lord; the Guild, of timber, now the Free School; and Deritend Chapel, of the same materials, resembling a barn, with something like an awkward dove-coat, at the west end, by way of steeple. All these will be noticed ...
— An History of Birmingham (1783) • William Hutton
... Opera of Almahide, in the Encouragement given to a young Singer, [2] whose more than ordinary Concern on her first Appearance, recommended her no less than her agreeable Voice, and just Performance. Meer Bashfulness without Merit is awkward; and Merit without Modesty, insolent. But modest Merit has a double Claim to Acceptance, and generally meets with as many Patrons as Beholders. ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... Gordon and Dorothy Gray, whose beauty had been so powerful an appeal to his fancy. There was nothing about this child to take hold upon any one except his helplessness and need. But Richard was as gentle with him, as patient with his awkward attempts at holding the light rod in the proper position for fishing, and as full of resources for entertaining him when the fish—if there were any—failed to bite, as he could have been with a small ...
— The Twenty-Fourth of June • Grace S. Richmond
... waltz," however. Again the keeper spoke, and immediately bruin threw himself upon the ground and turned somersaults, making us all laugh heartily. He then told him to shake hands (but all in Swiss), and it was too funny to see the great awkward animal waddle up on his hind legs and extend first one paw and then the other. But what interested us all most, both big and little, was to hear the man say, "Kisse me," and then to watch the bear throw out his long tongue and ...
— Prairie Farmer, Vol. 56: No. 3, January 19, 1884. - A Weekly Journal for the Farm, Orchard and Fireside • Various
... were gone from the district; they stuck up a coach in the West, And I rode by myself in the paddocks, taking a bit of a rest, Riding this colt as a youngster — awkward, half-broken and shy, He wheeled round one day on a sudden; I looked, but I couldn't see why, But I soon found out why, for before me, the hillside rose up like a wall, And there on the top with their rifles were Gilbert, O'Maley ...
— Rio Grande's Last Race and Other Verses • Andrew Barton 'Banjo' Paterson
... David again buttoned his coat; but he got on much better this day than the former. He was less awkward and less idle, though not less observant than before; and he succeeded ere evening in tracing, in workmanlike fashion, a few draughts along the future column. He was ...
— Good Stories For Great Holidays - Arranged for Story-Telling and Reading Aloud and for the - Children's Own Reading • Frances Jenkins Olcott
... been consulted before injury to the urethra has been produced by the improper use of instruments. Having specialists who devote their entire time and attention to the study of these diseases, we are able to relieve and cure a large number painlessly and speedily, in which the awkward manipulations of physicians or surgeons, whose hands, untrained by constant and skillful use, not only fail to effect any benefit, but set up ...
— The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English • R. V. Pierce
... should not see him again the whole day through. So she called out, "The great Calla is fully blown now. You were admiring the buds the other day; will you remain a moment; I should like to show it you?" Anton bowed and staid behind. A few more awkward moments, then her brother rose too; and, hurrying to Anton, she took him to the room where the ...
— Debit and Credit - Translated from the German of Gustav Freytag • Gustav Freytag
... for me to finish you?" Somehow the camel, like Johnny's mud man, always looks to me as if he got away before he was finished. He is either a preliminary rough sketch accidentally turned loose on the world, or else he got warped somehow in the drying process—great, quiet, shaggy, awkward, serene, goose-necked, ...
— Where Half The World Is Waking Up • Clarence Poe
... say, you can't take the place of a brother to her, Kirsty, else I should know how to answer you!—It's awkward when a lady takes you to task,' he added ...
— Heather and Snow • George MacDonald
... again to that unassuming bourgeoise house, so mysterious in its solitude, and its imperial occupant; and directing his eyes upon the high, yellow wall he was surprised to read, scrawled there in great, awkward letters, the legend: Vive Napoleon! among the meaningless obscenities traced by schoolboys. Winter's storms and summer's sun had half effaced the lettering; evidently the inscription was very ancient. How strange, to see upon that wall that old heroic battle-cry, which probably ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola
... all fine minds, there came to Emerson ways of expression deeply marked with character. On every page there is set the strong stamp of sincerity, and the attraction of a certain artlessness; the most awkward sentence rings true; and there is often a pure and simple note that touches us more than if it were the perfection of elaborated melody. The uncouth procession of the periods discloses the travail of the thought, ...
— Critical Miscellanies, Vol. 1, Essay 5, Emerson • John Morley
... doubt that Lord Melbourne will always do everything in his power to be useful to you. His position is become extremely happy; after having been, under the late King at least, in an awkward position, he is now sure of enjoying your confidence and sincere support. If the elections turn out favourably to the Ministry, it will, I hope, give them the means of trying to conciliate the great mass of the moderate Tories, who from their nature ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Volume 1 (of 3), 1837-1843) • Queen Victoria
... to her mother a letter that had come from Doctor Smythe that morning announcing his return at the end of the week. It was providential that Mary should have proposed going, as it would have been awkward otherwise to get her out of the house in time; and Elinor was anxious that she should be ...
— The Guests Of Hercules • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... life I had inserted an account in the Newgate Lives and Trials; it was bare and meagre, and written in the stiff, awkward style of the seventeenth century; it had, however, strongly captivated my imagination and I now thought that out of it something better could be made; that, if I added to the adventures, and purified the style, I might fashion ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... hate to ask direct questions especially in a situation like this where I wished particularly to be tactful, and of course she would be thrust into an awkward position in case she should dislike to reply. So I sat down and looked around and said, "How prettily ...
— Beatrice Leigh at College - A Story for Girls • Julia Augusta Schwartz
... his handkerchief across his perspiring forehead, and dazedly eyed the stained cloth. "I'm sorry, Beth, very sorry I was so awkward." ...
— Captain Pott's Minister • Francis L. Cooper
... during which neither moved. Then Maria Addolorata spoke again, further reassured, perhaps, by Dalrymple's quiet and professional tone. She had too lately left the world to have lost the habit of making conversation to break an awkward silence. Years of seclusion, too, instead of making her shy and silent, had given her something of the ease and coolness of a married woman. This was natural enough, considering that she was born of worldly people and had acquired the ...
— Casa Braccio, Volumes 1 and 2 (of 2) • F. Marion Crawford
... pressure; awkward gait of the hind legs; the horse is dull, and may have occasional very slight colicky pains, shown by looking back and striking at the belly with the hind feet. Oftener, however, these colicky symptoms are absent. Diarrhea ...
— Special Report on Diseases of the Horse • United States Department of Agriculture
... he moves the fore and hind legs on each side at the same time, it gives him a very displeasing and awkward gait. ...
— New National Fourth Reader • Charles J. Barnes and J. Marshall Hawkes
... to the matrimonial combination Hardie had at first relied on to patch his debt to Alfred and his broken fortunes. Then as to keeping the money and defying Dodd, that would be very difficult and dangerous. Mercantile bills are traceable things, and criminal prosecutions awkward ones. He found himself in a situation he could not see his way through by any mental effort; there were so many objections to every course, and so many to its opposite. "He walked among fires," as the Latins say. But ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... arm, and eating the other. Thus I went up Market Street as far as Fourth Street, passing by the door of Mr. Read, my future wife's father; when she, standing at the door, saw me, and thought I made, as I certainly did, a most awkward, ridiculous appearance. Then I turned and went down Chestnut Street and part of Walnut Street, eating my roll all the way, and, coming round, found myself again at Market Street wharf, near the boat I came in, ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... incident, however, was described by a witness which might indicate that Helene's solicitude was not altogether genuine. One morning, towards the end of Rosalie's life, the patient, in her agony, escaped from the hold of her mother, and fell into an awkward position against the wall. Rosalie's mother asked Helene to place a pillow for her. "Ma foi!'' Helene replied. "You're beginning to weary me. You're ...
— She Stands Accused • Victor MacClure
... in his four black steeds, and the whole cavalcade came to a pause in front of the contorted iron balustrade that fenced the province-house from the public street. It was an awkward coincidence that the bell of the Old South was just then tolling for a funeral; so that, instead of a gladsome peal with which it was customary to announce the arrival of distinguished strangers, Lady Eleanore Rochcliffe was ushered by ...
— Twice Told Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... two dozen eggs, and eggs twenty-two cents a dozen. But I'll take it out of his salary. He's dreadful awkward, that boy!" ...
— Chester Rand - or The New Path to Fortune • Horatio Alger, Jr
... as she read the letter; and when she saw Nat she felt at once that, whether he was a genius or not, here was a lonely, sick boy who needed just what she loved to give, a home and motherly care. Both she and Mr. Bhaer observed him quietly; and in spite of ragged clothes, awkward manners, and a dirty face, they saw much about Nat that pleased them. He was a thin, pale boy, of twelve, with blue eyes, and a good forehead under the rough, neglected hair; an anxious, scared face, at times, as if he expected ...
— Little Men - Life at Plumfield With Jo's Boys • Louisa May Alcott
... for boys and girls to realize, until they have grown too old, easily to adopt new ones, how important it is to guard against contracting careless and awkward habits of speech and manners. Some very unwisely think it is not necessary to be so very particular about these things except when company is present. But this is a grave mistake, for coarseness will betray itself in spite of the ...
— The King's Daughter and Other Stories for Girls • Various
... skill as a smart letter writer and his limitations as a statesman. The Municipal Law, the first product of the 'forget and forgive' proclamation—which proclamation, by-the-bye, had already begun to prove itself an awkward weapon placed in the hands of his enemies by President Kruger himself—had been exposed and denounced as farcical, and it now required but little to convince the once admiring world of the President's real character and intentions. That ...
— The Transvaal from Within - A Private Record of Public Affairs • J. P. Fitzpatrick
... here consulting his thesis. When your man brought in the cordial, I was awkward enough to catch up your glass and carry it in to. Mr. Spielhagen. He drank it and I—I am anxious to see if it ...
— The Golden Slipper • Anna Katharine Green
... than a Frenchman. Not only is the machinery which the Englishman employs much better, but he is what may be termed more handy in making use of it; in every thing which relates to husbandry or mechanism the Frenchman is generally awkward; a more powerful instance cannot be cited than that of their always employing two men to shoe a horse, one man being occupied to hold up the horse's leg, whilst the farrier performs his part of the work; is it not astonishing that after an uninterrupted communication ...
— How to Enjoy Paris in 1842 • F. Herve
... awkward thing to carry, being an old-fashioned big square box heavily and clumsily made; but I was so glad to get it that I was not for quarrelling with it, though it did for a little put me to a puzzle as to how I should pack it along. What I came to was to sling it ...
— In the Sargasso Sea - A Novel • Thomas A. Janvier
... Sweepstakes Dogs," mused George regretfully, "it 'ud be dead easy; but Father says it wouldn't be fair t' the fellers that hasn't a racin' stable t' pick from. We got t' use some o' the untried ones. I been thinkin' o' Spot for a leader. He seems sort o' awkward, 'cause he's raw-boned, an' ain't filled out yet; but all the other dogs like him, an' he'd ruther ...
— Baldy of Nome • Esther Birdsall Darling
... arrival affably as he stood towering over the telegraph operator. Then looking down at that person he added with awkward, back-country diffidence: "Stranger, be ye ther feller thet works thet ...
— A Pagan of the Hills • Charles Neville Buck
... few inches of the post, I lost all sense of proportion, forgot my awkward human size, and with a new perspective became an equal of the ants, looking on, watching every passer-by with interest, straining with the bearers of the heavy loads, and breathing more easily when the last obstacle was overcome ...
— Edge of the Jungle • William Beebe
... carpenter, by name Wilcox, was induced to ascend, which, it is said, he did successfully, remaining in the air for ten minutes, when, finding himself near a river, he sought to come to earth again by opening several of his balloons. This brought about an awkward descent, attended, however, by no more serious accident than a dislocated wrist. Mr. Wise, on the other hand, states that Blanchard had won the distinction of making the first ascent in the New World in 1793 in Philadelphia ...
— The Dominion of the Air • J. M. Bacon
... at home, when we were threatened with invasion, I would have died to prevent a Frenchman from landing on our coast. No one can imagine the intense excitement which pervaded all ranks at that time. Every one was armed, and, notwithstanding the alarm, we could not but laugh at the awkward, and often ridiculous, figures of our old acquaintances, when at drill in uniform. At that time I went to visit my relations at Jedburgh. Soon after my arrival, we were awakened in the middle of the night by the Yeomanry entering the town at full gallop. The beacons were ...
— Personal Recollections, from Early Life to Old Age, of Mary Somerville • Mary Somerville
... heap sorrier than you can think. If you only knew the hardships these poor men endure. They go two together and sometimes it is months before they see another soul, and rarely ever a woman. I wouldn't act so free in town, but these men see people so seldom that they are awkward and embarrassed. I like to put them at ease, and it is to be done only by being kind of hail-fellow-well-met with them. So far not one has ever misunderstood me and I have been treated with every ...
— Letters of a Woman Homesteader • Elinore Pruitt Stewart
... over twenty rupees. Moung San's mouth was at once filled with thanks instead of questions, and an awkward moment passed safely. ...
— Jack Haydon's Quest • John Finnemore
... do, Jack? If this fellow means mischief, we are in an awkward fix. I don't suppose he intends to attack us, because we with our dirks would be a match for him with that long knife of his. But if he means anything, he has probably got some other fellows ...
— Jack Archer • G. A. Henty
... tooting his horn vigorously as they rounded an awkward corner. When they were again on the level she reminded him: "You were saying that you were anxious ...
— The Kingdom Round the Corner - A Novel • Coningsby Dawson
... we heard they were gone from the district; they stuck up a coach in the West, And I rode by myself in the paddocks, taking a bit of a rest, Riding this colt as a youngster — awkward, half-broken and shy, He wheeled round one day on a sudden; I looked, but I couldn't see why, But I soon found out why, for before me, the hillside rose up like a wall, And there on the top with their rifles were ...
— Rio Grande's Last Race and Other Verses • Andrew Barton 'Banjo' Paterson
... had an awkward way of doing in his tell-tale face, but before he could stammer a reply, ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... too far off the carver, as it gives an awkward appearance, and makes the task more difficult. Attention is to be paid to help every one to a part of such ...
— The American Housewife • Anonymous
... the conditions of his life he found plenty of food for his pessimism, and merry hearts were very rare among his neighbors. Still a certain amount of gloom appears to have been inherent in the man. And as he distrusted the whole world, so Joseph distrusted himself, which made him shy and awkward in company. My mother tells how, at the wedding of his only son, my father, Joseph sat the whole night through in a corner, never as much as cracking a smile, while the wedding guests ...
— The Promised Land • Mary Antin
... only fifteen days back. Hurrah we can spend a week round the planet and still be back in time for Commemoration. We shall skip maybe a million awkward questions and I ...
— The Lost Kafoozalum • Pauline Ashwell
... Awkward pause. So he would not speak to her even of a thing that so nearly concerned herself. I hastened to break the ...
— Wanderers • Knut Hamsun
... frequently occupied by the Rev. Simon Plush. This reverend gentleman was a specimen of a class of clergy now happily extinct, and never it is to be hoped for the honour of the church, likely to be revived. He was a tall, muscular, awkward man, about fifty years of age; habited in a rusty grey coat, with waistcoat and breeches of greasy black, wearing a grizzled wig that had shrunk from his forehead, which in its broad expanse of shining whiteness, formed a contrast with a fiery hooked nose with ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 17, - Issue 493, June 11, 1831 • Various
... depression could not last, for there was too much here to fill brain and eyes. What would they find? Was there life? His question was answered by an awkward body that flapped from beneath them on clumsy wings. He glimpsed a sinuous neck, a head that was all mouth and flabby pouch, and the mouth opened ludicrously in what was doubtless ...
— Astounding Stories, May, 1931 • Various
... at this answer, turned back in silence. But all of them had deeply at heart the distinction of the salutation of the soldier, and the dispute was gradually renewed. Even the awkward decision of the warrior could not prevent each of them from arrogating to himself the pre-eminence of being noticed by him, to the exclusion of the others. The contention, therefore, now became, which of the ...
— The Book of Noodles - Stories Of Simpletons; Or, Fools And Their Follies • W. A. Clouston
... if she can't tell us," said Henri. And as soon as they had had their breakfast, they slipped around to the kitchen. Henri and Frank both laughed, for they surprised half a dozen blushing, awkward infantrymen, who were receiving hot coffee and rolls—fare of a different sort from that afforded by ...
— The Boy Scouts on the Trail • George Durston
... of Europe. Had James taken their advice and played a waiting game, by retiring behind the Shannon so as to allow time to have his own raw levies trained, and to hold William in Ireland when his presence on the Continent against Louis XIV. was so urgently required, the situation would have been awkward for his opponent; and even when James decided to advance had he gone forward boldly, as was suggested to him, and insisted upon giving battle north of Dundalk in the narrow pass between the mountains and the sea where William's cavalry would have been useless, ...
— History of the Catholic Church from the Renaissance • Rev. James MacCaffrey
... up," I said to young VICARY; "awkward, of course, to lose this property; some of it, probably, heirlooms; at least, there was no bloodshed. You ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 104, April 29, 1893 • Various
... sergeant-de-ville came in to inquire what was the matter, thinking, perhaps, that the regiment was in mutiny. I was right glad when I heard the trumpet sound the assembly a few minutes ago, and they had to rush off in a hurry, for I felt that it would be awkward for you were you to come in when they were ...
— Won by the Sword - A Story of the Thirty Years' War • G.A. Henty
... made their appearance, and showed us where water could be had by digging. This was a most disagreeable and awkward spot to get the camels to, but after a great deal of labour in making a tank, and rolling boulders of rock out of the way, we were enabled to give them a drink. There was ...
— Australia Twice Traversed, The Romance of Exploration • Ernest Giles
... how awkward you are!" said the little fellow. "It was your fault entirely," answered his sister. "Try ...
— McGuffey's Fourth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... over my letter, I find I am no sceptic, having affirmed no less than four times, that I am sure. Though this is extremely awkward, I am sure I will not write my letter over again; so pray excuse ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole
... constitution? He thought hard and vainly endeavored to recapture the mood in which he had interpreted the Ballade, and then he fell to laughing at his spleen. A great artist to be annoyed by the first adverse feather that happened to tickle him in an awkward way. What folly! What vanity! Mychowski laughed and ordered a big glass of ...
— Melomaniacs • James Huneker
... it out," he announced. And Travis, seeing the awkward climb to the entrance of the ship, had to agree that the first test should be carried out by someone more agile at ...
— The Defiant Agents • Andre Alice Norton
... Polish artlessness. Not wishing to be involved in the matter, she said a few words to Wenceslas, who in his joy hugged her then and there. She had no doubt pushed out a plank to enable the artist to cross this awkward place ...
— Cousin Betty • Honore de Balzac
... would be rather awkward, wouldn't it? We couldn't very well say it was an earthquake. It ...
— A Rogue by Compulsion • Victor Bridges
... not much room in the canoe, for bags of flour occupied the bottom and a grindstone and small forge were awkward things to stow. Jim, however, found a spot where he could lie down and the Indian huddled in the stern. He was a dark-skinned man, dressed like the white settlers, except that he wore no boots. As a rule, he did not talk much, but by and by he ...
— Partners of the Out-Trail • Harold Bindloss
... they were more popularly called, considered the Monchy hollow a particularly suitable place for their poison attacks. The result was that we spent all our rest periods carrying very heavy cylinders into the line or out again, terribly clumsy, awkward and dangerous things to carry, while our trenches, already ruined by the weather, were still further damaged, under-cut and generally turned upside down to make room for these cylinders. Then again, the actual gas projection caused a most appalling amount of trouble. The wind ...
— The Fifth Leicestershire - A Record Of The 1/5th Battalion The Leicestershire Regiment, - T.F., During The War, 1914-1919. • J.D. Hills
... never returned: that at first great anxiety was felt on his behalf, for the captain was a great favorite, and passed for the smartest soldier in the division: that after awhile anxiety gave place to some very awkward suspicions, and these suspicions it was his lot and his comrade's here to confirm. About a month later he and the said comrade and two more were sent, well mounted, to reconnoitre a Spanish village. At the door of a little ...
— White Lies • Charles Reade
... cashmere and silk gown—not an evening dress, but an approach to it, as became the wife of one of the leading professional men in Redcross, connected with the county to boot. Her lace cap was a costly trifle of its kind, but it had an awkward habit—the odder in a woman who was neat to formality in the other details of her dress—of slipping to one side, or tilting forwards or backwards on the brown hair, still abundant and just streaked with gray; so that one or other of her daughters was constantly ...
— A Houseful of Girls • Sarah Tytler
... I would rather take him when he was young, and then I could make a pet of him, so that he could come and eat out of my hand without taking the hand off at the same time. A large mastodon weighing a hundred tons or so is awkward, too. I suppose that nothing is more painful than to be stepped ...
— Remarks • Bill Nye
... for a moment that he had come at all when he beheld this stranger, who regarded him with a pair of dark eyes that seemed several times too large for her small, wrinkled face, and who merely nodded her head in response to his awkward salutation. ...
— Peter's Mother • Mrs. Henry De La Pasture
... my own fence, And that is well. If I step carefully, Such rain will soon wash out the tell-tale footprints. What! blood? He does not bleed much, I should think! Oh, I see! it is mine—he has wounded me. That's awkward now. ...
— The Poetical Works of George MacDonald in Two Volumes, Volume I • George MacDonald
... raise confusion. When a sentence or expression is begun with the impersonal one the word must be used throughout in all references to the subject. Thus, "One must mind one's own business if one wishes to succeed" may seem prolix and awkward, nevertheless it is the proper form. You must not say—"One must mind his business if he wishes to succeed," for the subject is impersonal and therefore cannot exclusively take the masculine pronoun. With any one it is different. You may say—"If ...
— How to Speak and Write Correctly • Joseph Devlin
... There was an awkward, an ominous silence. "That," Mr. Linton said, in a harsh and firm voice, "is something I can't discuss. It's a personal matter." "It ain't personal with me," Jerry announced, carelessly. "We was talkin' about Tom's married life and I ...
— The Winds of Chance • Rex Beach
... help it? But it was awkward to be separated like that. I began to be afraid that we should never get ...
— Hunting the Skipper - The Cruise of the "Seafowl" Sloop • George Manville Fenn
... every way by the German representatives. There was no law in America to prohibit such support, which could not, moreover, be regarded as a breach of American neutrality. It is true that in this way a few Germans got themselves into an awkward position because they were suspected of stirring up the German-Americans, who together with the Irish played a leading part in the agitation against the Government. In particular, Dr. Dernburg became unpopular ...
— My Three Years in America • Johann Heinrich Andreas Hermann Albrecht Graf von Bernstorff
... helplessly. After all, though she was tall for her years, she was only a child. Her dress was of an awkward length, her long straight fringe and plaited hair the coiffure of the schoolroom. The most surprising thing of all in connection with her was that she showed no signs of the tragedy which had so recently been played out around her. Her eyes had lost their ...
— The Master Mummer • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... not calculate the "vis inertiae," that a little body kicking against the greater is wont to come off second best—so he kicks himself out of bed, and here ends the comedy of the affair; the rest is tragic enough. Some how or other, in his fall, he broke his neck upon the spot. This was a very awkward affair. The bell is rung, up come the friends; the story is told, nor is it other than they had suspected. It does not end here, for, of course, there must be an inquest. It is an Irish jury. All said it served him right—and so what is the verdict?—Justifiable ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 337, November, 1843 • Various
... interviewed by the cub-reporters on the hotel-run, and received brief paragraphs of notice for twenty-four hours. He grinned to himself, and began to look around and get acquainted with the new order of beings and things. He was very awkward and very self-possessed. In addition to the stiffening afforded his backbone by the conscious ownership of eleven millions, he possessed ...
— Burning Daylight • Jack London
... on light feet, to where Mr. Cowan, the Secretary, was ploughing stubble. Mr. Cowan was expecting a call, and dreading it, for in spite of careful rehearsing, he had been unable to make out a good case. He was an awkward conspirator, without enthusiasm, and his plain country conscience reminded him that it was a mean way to treat a teacher whom he—himself—had selected. But why hadn't she accepted the offer to go to the city, and get away from a neighborhood where she could ...
— Purple Springs • Nellie L. McClung
... assembled, the guests sat down to supper. But here an awkward thing happened. "If you please, mum," the cook was heard to whisper in a loud voice, "the —— hasn't come. Shall I get a —— instead?" "Yes," said Miss Flitters, "that will do very well. Don't you think so, Miss Pitters?" "I think," ...
— What Shall We Do Now?: Five Hundred Games and Pastimes • Dorothy Canfield Fisher
... children; she was awkward with them; because such passion has shynesses, distances, and terrors unknown to the average comfortable women who become happy mothers. It has even its perversions, when love hardly knows itself from hate. Such love demands ...
— The Three Brontes • May Sinclair
... it and other matters as he rode back. Helen Dalton was finer than her picture. He had, no doubt, been awkward and had hurt her by his clumsiness, while she had got a painful shock, but had borne it with unflinching pluck. Her calm had not deceived him, since he knew what it cost, and her smile had roused his pity because it was ...
— The Girl From Keller's - Sadie's Conquest • Harold Bindloss
... I mustn't forget the tandem! The truth is, I know very little about bicycles. I have only ridden a "sociable," which is very different from the ordinary tandem. The "sociable" is safer, perhaps, than the tandem; but it is very heavy and awkward, and has a way of taking up the greater part of the road. Besides, I have been told that "sociables" cost more than other kinds of bicycles. My teacher and other friends think I could ride a Columbia tandem in the country with perfect safety. They also think your ...
— Story of My Life • Helen Keller
... had relished his discomfiture and were delighted with the thought of an old-time talk from Toombs. For half an hour he made one of his eloquent and electric speeches, and when he sat down the audience screamed for more. No one but Toombs could have emerged so brilliantly from this awkward dilemma. ...
— Robert Toombs - Statesman, Speaker, Soldier, Sage • Pleasant A. Stovall
... or mechanical cleaner, is perhaps the most ingenious of the many labor-saving devices used in the salmon fisheries. It is an awkward-looking, yet very effective contrivance of revolving knives and conveyors which seizes the fish whole and delivers it cleaned, clipped, cut, and ready to be washed. With superhuman dexterity it does the work of twenty lightning-like butchers. Without the aid of these Iron Chinks, Boyd knew ...
— The Silver Horde • Rex Beach
... said no, he feared that he was too old and awkward to learn even at the Point, but that Mrs. Davies was very fond of dancing, and by and by, perhaps, they would attend. Then the chat flowed merrily on, of the lovely time that they had all enjoyed,—that is, the garrison people had enjoyed all summer, and the pleasant associations they had formed ...
— Under Fire • Charles King
... I found my alert American punctually there before me. He raised his crush hat with awkward politeness. I could see he was little accustomed to ladies' society. Then he pointed to a close cab in which he ...
— Miss Cayley's Adventures • Grant Allen
... accomplishes the wonderful feat (for it is the most wonderful thing about story writing), and it is much more difficult to tell how it is done. One word here, a clear descriptive phrase there, and Tom, or the Squire, or the old schoolmistress, or Mrs. Bedonebyasyoudid with her awkward name, has become so much of a personality that you cannot forget if you would. Certainly one of the fine things about Tom, the Water Baby is the living reality of its characters, which appeals universally to young ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 10 - The Guide • Charles Herbert Sylvester
... never to devour a man whom it found dead; and it was imagined to lick its cubs into proper shape: hence the expression "unlicked cub," applied to a raw, awkward, unpolished youth. The saliva of the Lama, which when angry it ejects, has been erroneously supposed to possess ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 19. Issue 539 - 24 Mar 1832 • Various
... test that hypothesis. For my part, I have no prejudice one way or the other. If there is evidence in favour of this view, I am burdened by no theoretical difficulties in the way of accepting it; but there must be evidence. Scientific men get an awkward habit—no, I won't call it that, for it is a valuable habit—of believing nothing unless there is evidence for it; and they have a way of looking upon belief which is not based upon evidence, not only as illogical, ...
— American Addresses, with a Lecture on the Study of Biology • Tomas Henry Huxley
... her favorite and though she did not mean to be ungenerous, she could not so cordially rejoice. If the girl had been awkward or underbred, she could have taken her in hand with a good grace. But she was not likely to ...
— The Girls at Mount Morris • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... delusion practiced upon the mind, by what passes under the eye, which it is not easy to resist. You may take two individuals of precisely the same degree of intellectual and moral worth, and let the manners of the one be bland and attractive, and those of the other distant or awkward, and you will find that the former will pass through life with far more ease and comfort than the latter; for, though good manners will never effectually conceal a bad heart, and are, in no case, any atonement for it, yet, taken in connection with amiable and virtuous ...
— The Ladies' Vase - Polite Manual for Young Ladies • An American Lady
... wild. 2. The boy is running wildly about. 3. They all arrived safe and sound. 4. The day opened bright. 5. He felt awkward in the presence of ladies. 6. He felt around awkwardly for his chair. 7. The sun shines bright. 8. The sun shines brightly on the tree-tops. 9. He appeared prompt and willing. 10. He appeared ...
— Higher Lessons in English • Alonzo Reed and Brainerd Kellogg
... are mine or not, still whenever one of them appears the same thing happens. I am pressed to own that such-and-such a character "is taken from So-and-so." I have not yet yielded to these exhortations to confession, partly, no doubt, because it would be very awkward for me afterwards if I owned that thirty different persons were the one and only original ...
— The Lowest Rung - Together with The Hand on the Latch, St. Luke's Summer and The Understudy • Mary Cholmondeley
... entered the cabin, he saw two men seated at a table, playing seven up. The one facing him was Tommie, the cook; the other was an awkward heavy-set fellow, whom he knew for the man he wanted, even before the scarred, villainous face was ...
— A Texas Ranger • William MacLeod Raine
... know. Do what you like. If you like to stay here you can. You may play or sing. You may read your French novels; you will not disturb me. But if you bring any of your friends here it will be awkward, because they will perceive that you are double. Now we will go to ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 25, January 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... said Lyon, answering for Sybil, whom he could not yet trust to act a part; though he saw, the instant he glanced at her, that he might have done so; for Sybil, as soon as she saw attention drawn to herself, began to turn her head down upon one shoulder and simper shyly like an awkward rustic. ...
— Cruel As The Grave • Mrs. Emma D. E. N. Southworth
... It got to be so weak it could scarcely stand up, and I have adopted it, and feed it out of this bottle. The first time I did it I nearly ruined the dress I had on, and so I went to the garret and got this old gown, which covers me up very well, though it looks dreadfully, and is awfully awkward." ...
— The Girl at Cobhurst • Frank Richard Stockton
... impelled him to search for the squirrel's hoard in the hollow of the tree. He ate the few hazel-nuts he found there, ravenously. The purely animal instinct satisfied, he seemed to have borrowed from it a certain strength and intuition. He limped through the thicket not unlike some awkward, shy quadrumane, stopping here and there to peer out through the openings over the marshes that lay beyond. His sight, hearing, and even the sense of smell had become preternaturally acute. It was the latter which suddenly arrested his steps with the odor of dried fish. It had a significance ...
— A Drift from Redwood Camp • Bret Harte
... part of Cecile Deshaix and to the bold, unwomanly advances that repelled him. To-day his patience with her was even shorter than its wont, haply because when his official had announced a woman he had for a moment permitted himself to think that it might be Suzanne. The silence grew awkward, and ...
— The Trampling of the Lilies • Rafael Sabatini
... him to see clearly, observe closely and think with such clean-cut directness, beside the intellectuality of those schooled in the thoughts of others, appeared as ignorance and illiteracy. The very fineness and gentleness of his nature were now the distinguishing marks of an uncouth and awkward rustic. ...
— When A Man's A Man • Harold Bell Wright
... wonder nervously whether Oswyn would fail him, when he heard a knock at the outer door, followed by an unfamiliar step, and the clerk announced that a gentleman wished to see him by appointment on private business. The barrister rose from his seat with a portentous display of polite, awkward cordiality, and motioned his guest into ...
— A Comedy of Masks - A Novel • Ernest Dowson and Arthur Moore
... tribe was awkward. "In the first place," wrote Captain Lewis, "we spoke in English to one of our men, who translated it into French to Chaboneau; he interpreted it to his wife in the Minnetaree language; she then put it into Shoshone, and a young Shoshone prisoner explained it to ...
— Lewis and Clark - Meriwether Lewis and William Clark • William R. Lighton
... picture of health, but otherwise he showed little resemblance to his mother. He lacked her energetic expression, and the blue eyes and blonde hair were not from her, but were an inheritance from his father. With his large, but very awkward limbs, he looked like a young giant, and formed a striking contrast to his more delicately formed, aristocratic looking uncle, Wallmoden, who sat next him, and who said now with a slight soupcon of irony in his tone: "You certainly ...
— The Northern Light • E. Werner
... front of her. Her face appeared to me lovelier than on the first occasion, though her uncovered head allowed me to see her magnificent hair plastered down so as to leave it no freedom whatever. She answered my smile with a blush; and, when I looked at her thick and awkward hands, she clasped and unclasped them with an ...
— The Choice of Life • Georgette Leblanc
... about him; on the contrary, there is something fantastic in his style and plumage. He has a way of drooping his wings as if they were armour-plates to shield him from a shot. The ornaments upon his head and beak are in the most awkward position. He was put together in a dream, of uneven and odd pieces that live and move, but do not fit. Ponderously gawky, he steps as if the world was his, like a "motley" crowned in sport. He is good eating, but he is not beautiful. After the eye has been accustomed to him ...
— The Open Air • Richard Jefferies
... all right; and you're almost certainly safe. But don't be tempted to talk. Well—we've been up here long enough for me to have put you through the third degree. Better look a bit uncomfortable as you go down, as if I'd got under your skin with some awkward questions. You, too, ben Hamza; don't grin; ...
— Jimgrim and Allah's Peace • Talbot Mundy
... distinguish the length of the vessel. They had seen the boat board, but had not seen her turned adrift without oars, as the fog came on just at that time. The yacht was left with only three seamen on board, and, should it come on bad weather, they were in an awkward predicament. Mr Hautaine had taken the command, and ordered the guns to be fired that the boat might be enabled to find them. The fourth gun was loading, when they perceived the smuggler's cutter close to them looming ...
— Peter Simple and The Three Cutters, Vol. 1-2 • Frederick Marryat
... as serious as her brother and Betty hated unnecessary seriousness, besides Dick needed some one to make him gay, not an awkward, uninteresting acquaintance like Esther. But there was no use in arguing with Dick, for he would always be kind to the people who were left out of things and seemed most to require kindness. Sorry to have seen ...
— The Camp Fire Girls at Sunrise Hill • Margaret Vandercook
... surprised, however, to find that in a very short while, comparatively, our friend Crook had lost L30 or L40; and as this was the greater part of his allowance for travelling expenses, it placed him in a rather awkward position. ...
— The Reminiscences Of Sir Henry Hawkins (Baron Brampton) • Henry Hawkins Brampton
... to tell you to put off your going. An acquaintance is visiting the landlady; so you'll understand that it's awkward for her to come to you. But when she goes away sister will come to you. She has something to ...
— Plays • Alexander Ostrovsky
... same awkward shape as you,' the Rose said, 'but she's redder—and her petals are shorter, ...
— Through the Looking-Glass • Charles Dodgson, AKA Lewis Carroll
... Her face was very thin, her lips pinched sourly together, her eyes furtive, hungry, malevolent. Her movements were awkward and impatient, and a morbid nervousness kept her constantly starting, with a ...
— The Nether World • George Gissing
... O all ye powers above, See the lewd dalliance of the queen of love! Me, awkward me, she scorns; and yields her charms To that fair lecher, the strong god of arms. If I am lame, that stain my natal hour By fate imposed; such me my parent bore. Why was I born? See how the wanton lies! Oh sight tormenting to a husband's eyes! But yet, I trust, this once e'en ...
— The Odyssey of Homer • Homer, translated by Alexander Pope
... the second part's rather trying," said a young man behind her. "There's an awkward jump of two full tones that was too much for our soprano when we tried it at the choral union. Miss Ismay's very true in intonation, but I don't suppose most of the rest would notice it if she shirked a little and left ...
— Hawtrey's Deputy • Harold Bindloss
... was about to say something awkward, so interrupted him. "Come, D'Artagnan," said he; "this is quite enough about other people, let us talk a ...
— Ten Years Later - Chapters 1-104 • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... is capable of attaining considerable speed. It is really designed after the cruising type of motor-boats. This type of boat is particularly adaptable for simple model-making, owing to the elimination of awkward fittings. The power machinery is of very simple construction and presents no ...
— Boys' Book of Model Boats • Raymond Francis Yates
... that the clothes Meighen wore the day I shook hands with him were dingy brown that made him look like a moulting bobolink; that he had not taken the trouble to shave because a sleeping car is such an awkward place for a razor, and it is much better for a Premier to wear bristles than court-plaster. Some one will be sure to remark that the Premier travels in a private car. Arthur Meighen never seems like that sort of Premier. One would almost ...
— The Masques of Ottawa • Domino
... caution restrained him; for he was aware of the danger, though he was also half-mad with impatience to be a man once more. Venturing only a few tentative steps at first, he steadily accustomed himself to movement with the aid of the awkward crutches, and in a few days was able to take up some of the work of their wretched habitation. Marion saw that this pleased him immensely, almost as if he had been a boy entrusted with a man's responsibility; and once, too, she saw him ...
— The Heart of Thunder Mountain • Edfrid A. Bingham
... answered Bickley, "that the work to your hand does not end in the cutting of all our throats. It is an awkward thing interfering with the religion of savages, and I believe that these untutored children of Nature ...
— When the World Shook - Being an Account of the Great Adventure of Bastin, Bickley and Arbuthnot • H. Rider Haggard
... her honest face, And tells her tale with awkward grace, Importunate to gain a place Amongst your friends, To ruthless critics leave her case, And ...
— Cottage Poems • Patrick Bronte
... place at Paris during the interval, and spoke to me of the King's want of energy, but always in terms expressive of her veneration for his virtues and her attachment to himself.—"The King," said she, "is not a coward; he possesses abundance of passive courage, but he is overwhelmed by an awkward shyness, a mistrust of himself, which proceeds from his education as much as from his disposition. He is afraid to command, and, above all things, dreads speaking to assembled numbers. He lived like a child, and always ill at ease under the eyes ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... to the common level of the useful citizen—no oracle at all, but a man of more than average moral instincts, who, if he knows anything, knows how little he knows. The ministers are good talkers, only the struggle between nature and grace makes some of 'em a little awkward occasionally. The women do their best to spoil 'em, as they do the poets. You find it pleasant to be spoiled, no doubt; so do they. Now and then one of 'em goes over the dam; no wonder—they're always ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. X (of X) - America - II, Index • Various
... "It is so awkward," said Mr Rebble. "We can't write and ask the party if either of them took a watch by mistake. ...
— Burr Junior • G. Manville Fenn
... with what he had done for his portfolio. Siena was eminently sketchable, but he had not been industrious. On the last morning of his visit, as he stood staring about him in the crowded piazza, and feeling that, in spite of its picturesqueness, this was an awkward place for setting up an easel, he bethought himself, by contrast, of a quiet corner in another part of the town, which he had chanced upon in one of his first walks—an angle of a lonely terrace that abutted upon the city-wall, where three or four superannuated objects seemed to slumber in ...
— Confidence • Henry James
... her. Madam!-My eyes sparkle at such a girl as that! No indeed! She may be your favourite as a waiting-maid; but I see nothing but clumsy curtseys and awkward airs about her. A little rustic affectation of innocence, that to such as cannot see into her, ...
— Pamela (Vol. II.) • Samuel Richardson
... that reconciles one to the site chosen for building the town of Victoria, is its beautiful harbour: in every other respect, the choice was decidedly bad. A more awkward place on which to erect a town, could not have been fixed upon; and its northern aspect adds, I suspect, to the unhealthiness of the place, as it exposes the town to the cold winds of winter, and completely shuts out the southerly breezes ...
— Trade and Travel in the Far East - or Recollections of twenty-one years passed in Java, - Singapore, Australia and China. • G. F. Davidson
... me that Croker asked him why the thing was called the Bride of Abydos? It is a cursed awkward question, being unanswerable. She is not a bride, only about to become one. I don't wonder at his finding out the Bull; but the detection ... is too late to do any good. I was a great fool to make it, and am ashamed of not being an Irishman."—Journal, December 6, 1813; ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Vol. 3 (of 7) • Lord Byron
... sparrow, as you will observe, is less skilled. It is the Socialis, and he finds his subsistence properly in various seeds and the larvae of insects, though he occasionally has higher aspirations, and seeks to emulate the peewee, commencing and ending his career as a flycatcher by an awkward chase after a beetle or "miller." He is hunting around in the dull grass now, I suspect, with the desire to indulge this favorite whim. There!—the opportunity is afforded him. Away goes a little cream-colored ...
— Wake-Robin • John Burroughs
... and eloquence of the marble. Trivial and vulgar forms, such as modern sculpture abounds in, reflect an undisciplined race of men, one in which neither soul nor body has done anything well, because the two have done nothing together. The frame has remained gross or awkward, while the face has taken on a tense expression, betraying loose and undignified habits of mind. To carve such a creature is to perpetuate a caricature. The modern sculptor is stopped short at the first conception of a figure; if he gives it ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... discovered that Jenny had a wooer. On Sunday afternoon, young Daniel McCall made his appearance, with that peculiar, happy, awkward look that young lads have when they are 'keeping company,' as it is called. At that time, when a young man wanted a wife, he looked out for some young girl whom he thought would be a good help-mate, and, watching his opportunity, with an awkward bow and blush he would ask her to give ...
— The Loyalists of America and Their Times, Vol. 2 of 2 - From 1620-1816 • Edgerton Ryerson
... New York," she went on, wildly. "He said he would come to me from across the world, at a moment's notice, if I wired. Only it would be awkward if I announced our engagement to-night, and then found he'd changed his mind. Besides, he'd be a last resort: and ...
— It Happened in Egypt • C. N. Williamson & A. M. Williamson
... and stand in front of your mirror, and let your head drop forward toward either shoulder, causing your whole torso to become limp. Now hold the head erect, and try to reproduce the feeling. The effect is awkward, and not to be practised in public, but the exercise enables you to perceive for yourself when you are stiff about the shoulders and waist. Now drop your head backward, and swing the body, not trying to control the head, and persist until you can thoroughly relax the muscles of ...
— In the Riding-School; Chats With Esmeralda • Theo. Stephenson Browne
... very awkward and sudden, Adam felt, for he thought Dinah must understand all he meant. But the frankness of the words caused her immediately to interpret them into a renewal of his brotherly regrets that she was going away, and she ...
— Adam Bede • George Eliot
... himself, Jonathan bowed with such ease as his stiff and awkward joints might command, and thereupon withdrew from the presence of the charmer, who, with cheeks suffused with blushes and with eyes averted, made no endeavor to ...
— Howard Pyle's Book of Pirates • Howard I. Pyle
... in which laboratory work is particularly difficult to women—one would hardly believe it—is that they are often very awkward and clumsy with their hands. The assistants in the laboratories are unanimous in their complaint; they are pursued with questions about the most trifling things, and one woman gives them more trouble than three men. ...
— Sex and Society • William I. Thomas
... that he could have seen things in any other light. In that final emergency he debated, thrust debate resolutely aside, determined at all costs to go through with the thing he had undertaken. And he could find no word to begin. Even as he stood, awkward, hesitating, with an indiscrete apology for his inability trembling on his lips, came the noise of many people crying out, the running to and fro of feet. "Wait," cried someone, and a door opened. "She is coming," said ...
— When the Sleeper Wakes • Herbert George Wells
... already felt partly acquainted with them, and each one had excited an individual interest in her mind. But they had not even seen her, at all; she was a perfectly strange child to them. And then she said to herself with real distress, that she was so ignorant and awkward, and they knew so much, and were so clever, that they would certainly despise her, and would want to have nothing to do with her. She kept running it all over and over in her mind during dinner, and could scarcely eat a mouthful, in ...
— Uncle Titus and His Visit to the Country • Johanna Spyri
... to this, knowing the world a great deal better than ever I could pretend to do; and being ready to take a thing, upon which he had set his mind, whether it came with a good grace, or whether it came with a bad one. And seeing that it would be awkward to provoke my anger, he left the room, before more words, ...
— Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor • R. D. Blackmore
... oppression would proceed to the last extremity, or not. It was only a few harmless, heroic lives to lose; but so much must needs be done. It was not an easy thing to do; there was no one to teach them how to do it scenically and splendidly. They must simply stand there, in their own awkward way, shoulder to shoulder, motionless, gazing at the gallant major and the heavy masses of uniformed men beyond, waiting for what might come. The Lord of Hosts was on their side; but, as with our Saviour in the Garden of ...
— The History of the United States from 1492 to 1910, Volume 1 • Julian Hawthorne
... are firing from the other side as they are. But when they do look down it will be rather awkward for ...
— The Kopje Garrison - A Story of the Boer War • George Manville Fenn
... exposition at the Bagatelle Museum. If your Majesty went to the Bois de Boulogne you would run the risk of meeting him. You would then be obliged to stop and talk a few moments, but as this interview has not been foreseen and arranged for it would be very awkward." ...
— A Royal Prisoner • Pierre Souvestre
... her, and she was now transformed into Miss Barribel Ballantree. "What a good thing I wouldn't let her be called Barbara after me," said Mrs. Bal. "We should have had to change her whole name, and that would have been really awkward!" ...
— The Heather-Moon • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... is hardly one gentleman in twenty who knows how to carve; and as to ladies, though they did know once on a time, they do not now. What can be more pitiable than the right-hand man of the lady of the house, awkward enough in himself, with the dish twisted round to him in the most awkward possible position, digging in unutterable mortification for a joint which he cannot find, and wishing the unanatomisable volaille behind a Russian ...
— Gryll Grange • Thomas Love Peacock
... a bustle on her approach; a good deal of moving and talking. She heard Miss Bates's voice, something was to be done in a hurry; the maid looked frightened and awkward; hoped she would be pleased to wait a moment, and then ushered her in too soon. The aunt and niece seemed both escaping into the adjoining room. Jane she had a distinct glimpse of, looking extremely ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... an awkward pause ensued between Davilof and Magda, backwash of the obvious clash of antagonism between ...
— The Lamp of Fate • Margaret Pedler
... which he is a confessed votary, are absurdly contrasted with the sententious solemnity of the despairing hero, crossed in the prosecution of his love-suit. His clumsy interference with the intrigues of his friend, only serves to augment his difficulties, and occasions many an awkward dilemma. On the other hand, the shrewdness of the heroine's confidantes never seem to fail them under the most trying circumstances; while their sly jokes and innuendos, their love of fun, their girlish sympathy with the progress ...
— Tales from the Hindu Dramatists • R. N. Dutta
... the necessity for love was too strong for me, I must dwell among mine own people. There, at least, was the bond of custom, there was the affection which grows out of habit; but in the world what hope had I to win love from strangers, with my repellent looks, awkward movements, and want of ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 76, February, 1864 • Various
... a good long step beyond and does not yield much profit, but I select the most novel specimen, which is a combination of ordinary emblems, with little attempt at symmetry, or even arrangement, other than the awkward juxtaposition of the cherubins' ...
— In Search Of Gravestones Old And Curious • W.T. (William Thomas) Vincent
... bringing the leather upholstered seat, shook the rain from it, and dried it with the help of the fire and his handkerchief—then set it down inside the hut. His face was turned from her; and as he spoke, breaking an awkward silence, ...
— The Miracle Man • Frank L. Packard
... trousers, blue coat, and yellow waistcoat—and more especially that cock of the hat—indicate, as surely as inanimate objects can, that Chalk Farm and not the parish church, is their destination. The girl colours up, and puts out her hand with a very awkward affectation of indifference. He gives it a gallant squeeze, and away they walk, arm in arm, the girl just looking back towards her 'place' with an air of conscious self-importance, and nodding to her fellow-servant who has gone up ...
— Sunday Under Three Heads • Charles Dickens
... still further & still confused Accounts from the Northward. Schuylers Letters are rueful indeed! even to a great Degree, and with such an awkward Mixture as would excite one to laugh in the Midst of Calamity. He seems to contemplate his own Happiness in not having had much or indeed any Hand in the unhappy Disaster. He throws Blame on St Clare in his Letter of July 9th. "What adds ...
— The Writings of Samuel Adams, vol. III. • Samuel Adams
... had joined the ship as a landsman. Being so excessively timid and awkward, it was thought useless to try and make a sailor of him; so he was translated into the cabin as steward; the man previously filling that post, a good seaman, going among the crew and taking his place. But poor ...
— Omoo: Adventures in the South Seas • Herman Melville
... came at an awkward moment for President Roosevelt, who was entering a heated campaign for an unprecedented third term and whose New Deal coalition included the urban black vote. His opponent, the articulate Wendell L. Willkie, was an unabashed champion ...
— Integration of the Armed Forces, 1940-1965 • Morris J. MacGregor Jr.
... dangerous storm, and he was on the bridge and I was a mere passenger, and could take no responsibility. Who knew through what difficult channels we might not have to steer, and from what lee-shores we might not have to beat away? I saw that he perceived this. When I offered him some awkward compliment about his good English, he seized the chance of a narrative, and told me about his parentage: how his mother was Scotch, and his father Danish, and how, after his father's death, his mother had married Emilio Diaz, a Spanish teacher of music in Edinburgh, and how ...
— Sacred And Profane Love • E. Arnold Bennett
... no wine, thankee, Mr. Verity," said he. "I kem along now' 'coss I want to be aboard afore it's dark. We're moored in an awkward place." ...
— The Stowaway Girl • Louis Tracy
... and handsome persons could hardly worship together in safety for a great while. But they seemed to mind nothing but their prayer-book. By-and-by the silken bag was handed round.—I don't believe she will; so awkward, you know;—besides, she only came by invitation. There she is, with her hand in her pocket, though,—and sure enough, her little bit of silver tinkled as it struck the coin beneath. God bless her! she has ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... rung several times—no result at present. Curious impression that I shall be hauled up before a Dean or somebody for this to-morrow and fined or gated. Wish they'd let me in—chilly out here. Is there a night-porter? If not—awkward. Carillon again from Cathedral tower. Ghost has managed to recollect a whole tune at last, picking it out with one finger. Seem to have heard it before—what the Dickens is it? Recognise it as the "Mandolinata in E." Remember the VOKES Family dancing to ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 102, June 11, 1892 • Various
... at all possible. A thousand and one misgivings haunted her concerning the safety of its arrival,—Stephen might have been transferred to some distant point, the letter itself might possibly fall into awkward hands, it might lay for months in the post bag, or fall into a dark corner of some obscure tavern, the roads were infested with robbers,—horrible ...
— The Loyalist - A Story of the American Revolution • James Francis Barrett
... David, feeling strangely awkward at hearing his rabbi pray, save in the pulpit, looked longingly at the house, hoping that his grandmother would come out and end the discussion which was becoming a little difficult for him. But he knew how long it always took her to don her Sabbath silk and long gold chain and earrings, and resigned ...
— The New Land - Stories of Jews Who Had a Part in the Making of Our Country • Elma Ehrlich Levinger
... admitting strangers, she proposed to Mr Donne (for it was he) that he should come in and await Mr Benson's return in the study. He was glad enough to avail himself of her offer; for he was feeble and nervous, and come on a piece of business which he exceedingly disliked, and about which he felt very awkward. The fire was nearly, if not quite, out; nor did Sally's vigorous blows do much good, although she left the room with an assurance that it would soon burn up. He leant against the chimney-piece, thinking over events, ...
— Ruth • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... be with memorizing. A large portion of such work is usually awkward, consisting of repetitions that consume much time and energy. But it is possible so to improve the method that memory tasks ...
— How To Study and Teaching How To Study • F. M. McMurry
... they had resumed their seats, came an awkward pause. The Duke, still erect beside the chair he had vacated, looked very grave and pale. Marraby had taken an outrageous liberty. But "a member of the Junta can do no wrong," and the liberty could not be resented. ...
— Zuleika Dobson - or, An Oxford Love Story • Max Beerbohm
... of the plains people. Yet Iktomi sat silent. He hummed an old dance-song and beat gently on the edge of the pot with his buffalo-horn spoon. The muskrat began to feel awkward before such lack of hospitality and ...
— Old Indian Legends • Zitkala-Sa
... men, whose misfortune is commemorated in this pathetic ditty, were more startled at the appearance of the bold thief than the songster was at mine; for, tired of waiting for some one to announce me, and finding my situation as a listener rather awkward, I presented myself to the company just as my friend Mr. Morris, for such, it seems, was his name, was uplifting the fifth stave of his doleful ballad. The high tone with which the tune started died ...
— Rob Roy, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... we could have adopted to get into favour, for the admiral was a powerful, gigantic fellow, that could have given us some very awkward squeezes. The peace was very honourably kept, and the next ...
— Frank Mildmay • Captain Frederick Marryat
... strange procession which went down the slope of old Whiteface Mountain on that winter night,—an awkward looking group that made progress slowly because of the burden ...
— The Mark of the Knife • Clayton H. Ernst
... funny story to tell you fellows," he drawled, just before the silence became awkward. "Glad you're all here—it's too good to keep, too good to waste on part of the outfit. I want you all to get the kick. You'll enjoy it—being cattlemen. It's a joke that was pulled on an outfit ...
— Rim o' the World • B. M. Bower
... looting fell off considerably. Nevertheless, a certain number of looters, averaging about a dozen a day, were caught and put into the Guard Room. We were glad of their assistance, as there was much filthy cleaning up to be done, so, fools that came to loot, remained to scavenge. Once we had an awkward predicament, for the sergeant of the guard, having confined in the same lock-up some looters, whose detention should be for twenty-four hours, and some prisoners, whose detention should be for the duration of the war, could not subsequently ...
— With the British Army in The Holy Land • Henry Osmond Lock
... the secret of our enemies. But Mr. Edison had no doubt that if we could not resist their effects we might at least be able to avoid them by the rapidity of our motions. As he pointed out, the war machines which the Martians had employed in their invasion of the earth, were really very awkward and unmanageable affairs. Mr. Edison's electrical ships, on the other hand, were marvels of speed and of manageability. They could dart about, turn, reverse their course, rise, fall, with the quickness and ease of a fish in the water. Mr. Edison calculated ...
— Edison's Conquest of Mars • Garrett Putman Serviss
... fellow citizens, he was never known openly to rebel against his lot. The nearest he ever came to doing this was once when he met upon the street a woman of his acquaintance who had suffered a recent bereavement in the death of her only daughter. He approached her, offering awkward condolences, and at once was moved to a further expression of his sympathy for her in her great loss by trying to shake her hand. At the touch of his fingers to hers the woman, already in a mood of grief bordering on ...
— From Place to Place • Irvin S. Cobb
... unforeseen incident, and the mind of the young Roman viewed it rapidly in all its lights. On the one side, he would be relieved of an awkward following that might at any moment begin to suspect him; on the other hand to leave these in the lurch would be to invite prompt suspicion. Still, they were fifty yards or more in advance, their horses were good, and more space would be gained before the ...
— The Lion's Brood • Duffield Osborne
... it was always night. So (as I say) I reached for the lanthorn, then paused as above all other sounds rose a cheery hail, and under the door was the flicker of a light. Hereupon I opened the door (though with strangely awkward fingers) and thus espied Godby ...
— Black Bartlemy's Treasure • Jeffrey Farnol
... his method of trying to open the stubborn bivalves was awkward, as they could not be handled like oysters, Max took a second knife. Placing the mussel in an upright position he would drive the blade down between the two shells by giving it several sharp taps with a piece of wood. When the stubborn mussel ...
— In Camp on the Big Sunflower • Lawrence J. Leslie
... humanity clothed in a dark jacket of home-spun cloth, with vest and trousers of blue cotton; his pumpkin-like head covered by a broad-leafed straw hat, a Dutch pipe on his lip, and before him a hard-mouthed awkward little horse pulled about by both hands, now right, now left, but rarely going out of a walk. Above a high shirt-collar his full-blown cheeks might be seen, as he sucked in the hot air and rejected it again like a blowing porpoise: cravat he had none, because he had ...
— Impressions of America - During the years 1833, 1834 and 1835. In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Tyrone Power
... fortune had not come out of lumber. Alexander Hitchcock, with all his thrift, had not put by over a million. Banking, too, would seem to be a tame enterprise for Brome Porter. Mines, railroads, land speculations—he had put his hand into them all masterfully. Large of limb and awkward, with a pallid, rather stolid face, he looked as if Chicago had laid a heavy hand upon his liver, as if the Carlsbad pilgrimage were a yearly necessity. 'Heavy eating and drinking, strong excitements—too many of them,' ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... Had shapely hands and feet, but awkward limbs. His hair was brown and fine, his forehead high, And ran back at an angle, temples full. His nose was long and fleshy at the point, Was tilted to one side. His eyes were gray, The iris flecked. They looked as if a light As of a sun-set shone behind them. Ears Were very large, projected ...
— Toward the Gulf • Edgar Lee Masters
... flames, its ocean with seven bitter waves: ice, fire, blood ... a rudimentary rendering of legends interpreted in their turn by Dante in his poem, and Giotto in his fresco.[326] The thought of Giotto especially, when reading those sermons, recurs to the memory, of Giotto with his awkward and audacious attempts, Giotto so remote and yet so modern, childish and noble at the same time, who represents devils roasting the damned on spits, and on the same wall tries to paint the Unseen and disclose to view the Unknown, Giotto with his search after the impossible, an almost painful ...
— A Literary History of the English People - From the Origins to the Renaissance • Jean Jules Jusserand
... the strange scenes shown to you by these two instruments?" he asked, after bowing gently in acknowledgment of my awkward compliments. ...
— Tales of Fantasy and Fact • Brander Matthews
... and Bryson, the surgeon of the "Fisguard," i.e. nominally my immediate superior, and who, as he frequently acts as Sir William Burnett's deputy, WILL VERY LIKELY EXAMINE ME WHEN I PASS FOR SURGEON R.N.!! That is awkward and must be annoying to him, but it is not my fault. I did not ask for a single name that appeared upon my certificate. Owen's name and Carpenter's, which were to have been appended, were not added. Forbes, my recommender, told me beforehand not to expect to get in this year, and did not use ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 1 • Leonard Huxley
... stepped to the door, which he opened, shouting, "The mayor of St. Dizier!" The corpulent form of the mayor, who greeted the emperor with awkward obeisances, appeared immediately. "Pray repeat your statements," said the emperor, "The enemy's troops were here yesterday, were ...
— NAPOLEON AND BLUCHER • L. Muhlbach
... "It's an awkward situation, and, as if it were not bad enough, there's a big thunderstorm brewing," Edgar said at length. "I'll go along and look at the mark ...
— Ranching for Sylvia • Harold Bindloss
... and their work ceased, we should all starve, and the financiers would have nothing behind the pieces of paper that they handle. If finance and the financiers were suddenly to cease, there would be a very awkward jar and jolt in our commercial machinery, but as long as the stuff and the means of carrying it were available, we should very soon patch up some other method for exchanging it between one nation and another and one citizen ...
— International Finance • Hartley Withers
... sympathy. And sympathy does not mean so much feeling with all who feel, but rather suffering with all who suffer. And it was inevitable, under such an inspiration, that more attention should be given to the awkward corners of life than to its even flow. The very promising domestic channel dug by the Victorian women, in books like Cranford, by Mrs. Gaskell, would have got to the sea, if they had been left alone to dig it. They might have made domesticity a fairyland. Unfortunately another idea, the idea ...
— The Victorian Age in Literature • G. K. Chesterton
... Revolutionary Tribunal kept silence, however; noting the slightest change that flickered over her features, listening through the noisy talk to every sound in the house. Several times they put awkward questions, which the Countess answered with wonderful presence of mind. So brave ...
— Library of the World's Best Mystery and Detective Stories • Edited by Julian Hawthorne
... mother, and at last died on it) that the blue ware had been the property of George the Third, had been sold and was on board the ship with the tea which was rifled in Boston Harbor. They had insisted in pasting these royal claims upon the china in the blackest and neatest lettering. The awkward fact that earthenware does not usually grace a royal board, or that the saintly old grandmother mixed up dates and persons in a wonderful way during her latter days, made no difference to her loyal descendants. Each ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume VI. (of X.) • Various
... he stood silent, looking more awkward than I ever saw him before or have seen him since. Then he put out his hand and said, 'I'll bid you good-bye, Miss Bronson: I'm going early in the morning. I shall not see you then, so I'll say good-bye now. I am going abroad in a ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. July, 1878. • Various
... different tribes of Apsaras and crowds of ghostly beings. There the great god sat, filled with joy, and surrounded by hundreds of ghostly beings who presented diverse aspects to the eye of the beholder. Some of them were ugly and awkward, some were of very handsome features, and some presented the most wonderful appearances. Some had faces like the lion's, some like the tiger's and some like the elephant's. In fact, the faces of those ghostly creatures presented every variety of animal faces. Some had faces ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 4 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... anyone would ever be brave enough to lead a band of beavers into its inky recesses, or he would have built it high enough to stand upright in. As it was, we were bent almost at a right angle, and this is very awkward if for long. ...
— The Wouldbegoods • E. Nesbit
... short, awkward silence. It was Ottinger's deal, but he did not pick up the scattered cards. Gordon gathered himself alertly, measuring the distance to the door. "I've got enough," he remarked; ...
— Mountain Blood - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer
... to have chosen an awkward moment for our visit," said Miss Halcombe, pushing open the door at the end of the schoolmaster's address, and ...
— The Woman in White • Wilkie Collins
... about her like the delicate bell of a hollyhock; she followed the way falteringly. Joe, his young eyes radiant, inclined his curly head towards her, but she did not heed him. The little procession was as an awkward garment which hampered and abashed her; but just as they reached the church the sun crept above the tree-tops, and from the bleakness of dawn the whole scene warmed into the glorious beauty of a June day. The guests lost their aspect of chilled waiting; ...
— Different Girls • Various
... Hay-Herrick?' asked the voice of Attwater. 'Your back view from my present position is remarkably fine, and I would continue to present it. We can get on very nicely as we are, and if you were to turn round, do you know? I think it would be awkward.' ...
— The Ebb-Tide - A Trio And Quartette • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
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