"Lumbering" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... are also perfectly alive to the fact that, for purposes of war, speed is all important. An American officer of rank once remarked to me: 'Give me a fifteen-knot wooden vessel armed with four heavy guns of long range, and I'll laugh at your lumbering iron-clads.' Perhaps he had prize-money in view when he said so; or, what is still more important, he may have felt how easily such vessels as those he proposed would sweep the seas of foreign privateers. In these views I can but think ...
— Sketches From My Life - By The Late Admiral Hobart Pasha • Hobart Pasha
... With lumbering caution, its smooth knob head waving on a long reptilian neck, its heavy armored tail dragging behind its body's folds of flesh, a giant night-thing came stumping out of a copse of jungle growth—a buru. Its eyes were ...
— The Bluff of the Hawk • Anthony Gilmore
... thyself of to-morrow, for thou knowest not what an hour may bring forth." Early that very morning, just an hour before sunrise, I was seized with the symptoms of the fatal malady that had made so many homes desolate. I was too ill to commence my journey, and, with a heavy heart, heard the lumbering wheels rattle over the stones from the door of ...
— The Backwoods of Canada • Catharine Parr Traill
... And then—but unless a woman of Stella's sort is able to exercise a proper control over her countenance, she has absolutely no right to discuss her husband with his bachelor friends. It is unkind; for it causes them to feel like social outcasts and lumbering brutes and Peeping Toms. If they know the husband well, it positively awes them; for, after all, it is a bit overwhelming, this sudden glimpse of the simplicity, and the credulity, and the merciful blindness of ...
— The Cords of Vanity • James Branch Cabell et al
... of a drill sergeant's commands to a squad of well-trained, five-month recruits, and that monosyllables were much more in his mouth than even brief admonitions and explanations. If anybody ever did manage to approach Markledew, it was always with fear and trembling. A big, heavy, lumbering man, with a face that might have been carved out of granite, eyes that bored through an opposing brain, and a constant expression of absolute, yet watchful immobility, he was a trying person to tackle, and most men, when they did tackle him, felt as ...
— The Herapath Property • J. S. Fletcher
... for good service, for the past 15 years I have been engaged in insurance work of which I am at the head of one now, And have a large host of people at my command. I have had a deal of experience in the lumbering business, Hotel, Agency of most any kind. Any information as to employment and desirable locations especially for good School Conditions Church Etc., ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 4, 1919 • Various
... hit women!" the artist's piercing voice sounded from above. Something heavy and lumbering rolled down the stairs. It was the artist falling headlong. Evidently he had ...
— The Schoolmistress and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... the week. They were now betaking themselves with solemn satisfaction to the "Thornleigh Arms," where a certain portion of their weekly wage would presently transfer itself from their own pockets to that of its jovial landlord. Joe Lovelady was a great, soft, lumbering fellow, who was considered rather a nonentity in Thornleigh; but Ted Wharton was a very different person. He was the village Radical—an adventurous spirit who, not content with spelling out his ...
— North, South and Over the Sea • M.E. Francis (Mrs. Francis Blundell)
... woods and twisted through the meadows, sometimes lying cool and dark in the shade and again shining in the sunlight. Often Lane would have to duck his head to get under the alders and willows. Here in an overshadowed bend of the stream a heron rose lumbering from his weedy retreat and winged his slow flight away out of sight; a water wagtail, that cunning sentinel of the brooks, gave a startled tweet! tweet! and went flitting like a gray streak of ...
— The Day of the Beast • Zane Grey
... New Year's Eve, and the church clock was striking twelve. "Tan-ta-ra-ra, tan-ta-ra-ra!" sounded the horn, and the mail-coach came lumbering up. The clumsy vehicle stopped at the gate of the town; all the places had been taken, for there were ...
— Good Stories For Great Holidays - Arranged for Story-Telling and Reading Aloud and for the - Children's Own Reading • Frances Jenkins Olcott
... was yet a pale promise in the East when from Independence, out through the dripping woods and clearings, rose the tumult of breaking camps. The rattle of the yoke chains and the raucous cry of "Catch up! Catch up!" sounded under the trees and out and away over valley and upland as the lumbering wagons, freighted deep for the long trail, swung ...
— The Emigrant Trail • Geraldine Bonner
... fatigued my tormented spirits into a gloomy calm, and mechanically retraced my steps at the decline of day. I seated myself at the door of my solitary log-hut, lean ing my cheek upon my hand, and musing. Wearily I looked up, roused by a discord of clattering hoofs and lumbering wheels on the hollow-sounding grass-track. A crazy groaning vehicle, drawn by four horses, emerged from the copse of gum-trees,—fast, fast along the road, which no such pompous vehicle had traversed ...
— A Strange Story, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... Wilson, doubtless, saw the necessity, in 1588, of adopting some of those improvements of versification in which Marlowe had led the way; he therefore laid aside (excepting in a few comic scenes) his heavy, lumbering, and monotonous fourteen-syllable lines (sometimes carried to a greater length for the sake of variety) and not only usually employed ten-syllable lines, but introduced speeches of blank verse. His drama opens with this then uncommon form, and he avails himself of it afterwards, interspersing ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VI • Robert Dodsley
... wave-tossed limbs—great ocean bulls, and cows, and calves. He marks them all. The wary old male turns his broad moustached nostrils to the tainted gale of man and horse sweeping down upon them, and the whole herd are simultaneously lumbering a retreat. And now he goes, plying his little short whip, charging the whole herd to cut off their retreat for the pleasure and fun of galloping in and over and amongst fifty great bodies, rolling and tumbling ...
— Acadia - or, A Month with the Blue Noses • Frederic S. Cozzens
... too," he remarked to Cis. As advice from him always amounted to a command, she disappeared at once. Presently Big Tom got up, stretched his gorilla arms, yawned with a descending scale of Oh's, and went lumbering to bed. ...
— The Rich Little Poor Boy • Eleanor Gates
... wants a great clumsy lumbering thing like that aboard a ship for. Bower-anchors is bad enough, banging against your craft; but you can lower them down to the bottom when your ship gets tired, and give her ...
— Fitz the Filibuster • George Manville Fenn
... of the space, facing the water, stood an old log shanty, a temporary structure erected in the lumbering days. It contained bunks filled with straw. Here was the very place to spend the night; it seemed waiting for him. He set to work to make camp with the skill of a lifelong practice. A splendid black bass that responded ...
— The Silver Maple • Marian Keith
... With much lumbering, stumbling, and swearing, the murderers slowly departed, groping their way to the mouth of the cave by the light of the ...
— The Tale of Timber Town • Alfred Grace
... them as a romance after sermons, was felt among them like a breeze among furnaces. It had required a little determination—far more than she had at first imagined—to take up a position here, for at her first entry the lumbering dialogues had ceased, nearly every face had been turned towards her, and those that were already turned ...
— Far from the Madding Crowd • Thomas Hardy
... some on the edge of the hatch-coaming, some dangling their legs over the windlass bitts, and others bringing themselves to an anchor on a coil of the bower hawser, that had not been stowed away properly below, but remained lumbering the deck—all began to yarn about the events of the day. Their talk gradually veered round to a superstitious turn on the second dog-watch drawing to a close; and, as the shades of night deepened over our heads, so that I could hardly now distinguish a face in the gloom, the voices of the men sank ...
— The Island Treasure • John Conroy Hutcheson
... was that had given me the first positive shock of an altered world. The trams had stopped. I had never seen the Nevski without its trams; I had always been forced to stand on the brink, waiting whilst the stream of Isvostchicks galloped past and the heavy, lumbering, coloured elephants tottered along, amiable and slow and good-natured like everything else in that country. Now the elephants were gone; the Isvostchicks were gone. So far as my eye could see, the black stream ...
— The Secret City • Hugh Walpole
... place reeking of many odours, those of sugar and coffee predominating, while whole tiers of bags containing these commodities were stacked against the side walls, a huge conglomeration of miscellaneous goods and articles lumbering the remainder of the floor. Picking my way through these, I reached the back part of the building, which I found partitioned off to form an office, wherein a number of men, some in gingham coats and some in their shirt sleeves, were busily at work writing letters ...
— A Middy in Command - A Tale of the Slave Squadron • Harry Collingwood
... and resigns himself to circumstances accordingly. One peculiarity in this peculiar country we found to be, that in putting our steed-to, the English custom is reversed. The cart is "put-to," not the horse; and the latter being left standing anywhere on the road, the lumbering "garee" is dragged up to his tail, and fastened up with a combination of straps and ropes, ...
— Diary of a Pedestrian in Cashmere and Thibet • by William Henry Knight
... 1589, and we believe the earliest date of any tract attributed to him relating to Martin Marprelate is also 1589.[6] He was the first, as has been frequently remarked, to attack this enemy of the Church with the keen missiles of wit and satire, throwing aside the lumbering and unserviceable weapons of scholastic controversy. Having set the example in this respect, he had many followers and imitators, and among them John Lily, the dramatic poet, the author of ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VIII (4th edition) • Various
... of the lumbering population consists of bachelors, and for their accommodation you see numerous shanties erected near the saw-mills and lumber piles. At Mendocino City there is quite a colony of such shanties, two long rows, upon a point or cape from ...
— Northern California, Oregon, and the Sandwich Islands • Charles Nordhoff
... than it was a few minutes before. Except for their own coup, the cable-cars, with their flaming foreheads, and the mechanical clangor of their gongs at the corners, seemed to have it altogether to themselves. A tall, lumbering United States mail van rolled by, and impressed my friend in the coup with a cheap and agreeable sense of mystery relative to the letters it was carrying to their varied destination at the Grand Central Station. He listened with half an ear to the child's ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... staggered from the room. He would have spoken, but the dreadful sorrow rose up and choked him. All the memories of the past were linked with youth and beauty. He could not speak to the blight before him, as to his love and his life, and so, with blind and lumbering footsteps, he toiled heavily ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I. February, 1862, No. II. - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... help adding—perhaps hardly deserving of a postscript. All the way from Paris to Strasbourg, I am persuaded that we did not meet six travelling equipages. The lumbering diligence and steady Poste Royale were almost the only vehicles in action besides our own. Nor were villas or chateaux visible; such as, in our own country, enliven the scene and put ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume Two • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... the art of running away and escaping capture, no matter by whom pursued, he has given himself more practice than probably any other general that ever lived. "Oh my God make him like a wheel!" We were a lumbering waggon chasing a light-winged wheel; ...
— With the Guards' Brigade from Bloemfontein to Koomati Poort and Back • Edward P. Lowry
... pence in "scratch-backs" and paper noses, feathers and decorations, as do their betters on the course at Epsom, under the feeble excuse of "waiting for the boats." The first arrived en retour at Stratford Church about ten o'clock; and certainly the appearance of the lumbering affair as it moved along, with its rigging brought out by means of coloured fires, lanterns, and lamps, was odd enough. As soon as it passed me at Stratford, I jumped outside one of the Bow and Stratford omnibuses, and ...
— Mystic London: - or, Phases of occult life in the metropolis • Charles Maurice Davies
... Went postboy at his heels, The postboy's horse right glad to miss The lumbering of ...
— Famous Stories Every Child Should Know • Various
... miss," said the man, "not to say but I've seen more fancy-looking fish down in southern waters, bright as any flower you ever see; but a mackerel," holding up one admiringly, "why, they're so clean-built and trig-looking! Put a cod alongside, and he looks as lumbering as an old-fashioned ...
— Deephaven and Selected Stories & Sketches • Sarah Orne Jewett
... The lumbering coach-and-six did its hundred miles a day, bad roads or good roads. But within a few miles of Paris a whiffletree broke, the ungainly vehicle stopped, and the men jumped off to hold the horses and repair the damage. Henriette and Louise soon left the hard ...
— Orphans of the Storm • Henry MacMahon
... this lawless, yet not unkindly population, Mr. Bronte brought his wife and six little children, in February, 1820. There are those yet alive who remember seven heavily-laden carts lumbering slowly up the long stone street, bearing the "new parson's" household goods to his ...
— The Life of Charlotte Bronte - Volume 1 • Elizabeth Gaskell
... driven off, and the two girls walked through Lafayette Square into Pennsylvania Avenue to get another. The wide streets were filled, as of old, with skurrying orderlies, groups of lounging officers, and lumbering army wagons. But even the untrained eyes of Olympia soon took account of the better discipline, the more businesslike celerity of the men on duty as well as the flying couriers. The White House was gay with hunting, and ...
— The Iron Game - A Tale of the War • Henry Francis Keenan
... least stony road—and, when he pointed with the wave of the maimed right hand, he described an arc of some 90. The Sulaymi lad caught the nearest camel, climbed its sides as you would a tree, and, when the animal set off at a lumbering gallop, pressed the soles of his feet to the ribs, with exactly the action of a Simiad; clinging the while, like grim Death, ...
— The Land of Midian, Vol. 2 • Richard Burton
... conscientious, and erroneous, and futile. Chapman makes Homer a fanciful, euphuistic, obscure, and garrulous Elizabethan, but Chapman has fire. Pope makes him a wit, spirited, occasionally noble, full of points, and epigrams, and queer rococo conventionalisms. Cowper makes him slow, lumbering, a Milton without the music. Maginn makes ...
— Essays in Little • Andrew Lang
... with his lumbering hand. "Mother o' saints," he said, "has it come to that, after all these years? Is she— tell me where she is, me frind, and you'll niver want an arm to fight for ye, an' the half av a ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... made such a delicious discovery to-day. I have found that Carlyle has given the most acute definition of humor I ever read. Isn't that rather surprising, when Carlyle's humor is rather lumbering?" ...
— From a Girl's Point of View • Lilian Bell
... up-stairs into a little parlour furnished in the usual style, with one or two articles a great deal too showy for the place and a general dearth as to the rest. A lumbering mahogany sofa, that shewed as much wood and as little promise as possible; a marble-topped centre-table; chairs in the minority and curtains minus; and the hearth-rug providently turned bottom upwards. On the centre-table lay a pile of Penny Magazines, ...
— Queechy • Susan Warner
... their fences fail to connect. Sleds and ploughs rust together beside the house, and chickens scratch up the front-door yard. In truth, the people have been somewhat demoralised by the conflicting claims of different occupations; hunting in the fall, lumbering in the winter and spring, and working for the American sportsmen in the brief angling season, are so much more attractive and offer so much larger returns of ready money, that the tedious toil of farming is ...
— Little Rivers - A Book Of Essays In Profitable Idleness • Henry van Dyke
... windows also commanding a view of the road. Impelled by a desire to see what was continuing to take place without, I stole silently across the soft carpet, and peered forth. The last of the wagon train was lumbering past, and back of these, just wheeling around the corner, approached another column of horsemen. It would be madness for me to emerge from concealment yet, for even if I remained unnoticed by those marching troops, still there would surely be some stragglers ...
— Love Under Fire • Randall Parrish
... the carriage door and gave Scipio the word to go on; and afterward stood at the gate looking after the great lumbering ark on wheels until it turned in at the Deer Trace driveway and was lost in the winding avenue of thick-set evergreens. Then he let himself in at the home gate, walking leaden-footed toward the ornate house at the top of the ...
— The Quickening • Francis Lynde
... for defence were not made without the degree of fracas incidental to such occasions. Women shrieked, cattle bellowed, dogs howled, men ran to and fro, cursing and swearing without intermission, the lumbering of the old guns backwards and forwards shook the battlements, the court resounded with the hasty gallop of messengers who went and returned upon errands of importance, and the din of warlike preparation was mingled with ...
— Old Mortality, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... in sight, but a traction engine was lumbering heavily upwards, with a man walking before it carrying a red flag. Tom was glad to see it disappear over the dip of the hill. The lane from Bingley woods entered the high road lower down the hill. There ...
— Miss Merivale's Mistake • Mrs. Henry Clarke
... himself busily and variedly occupied only in watching somebody. In this there is a very profound truth about the true excitement and inexhaustible poetry of life. The truth is not so much that eternity is full of souls as that one soul can fill eternity. In strict art there is something quite lame and lumbering about the way in which the benevolent old story-teller starts to tell many stories and then drops away altogether, while one of his stories takes his place. But in a larger art, his collision with Little Nell and ...
— Appreciations and Criticisms of the Works of Charles Dickens • G. K. Chesterton
... as much as so many 'needles in a hay-mow.' Then, this huge quantity of trash, created at this large expense, is to be franked for all parts of the country, by way of currying favor and getting votes next time, lumbering the mails, and creating another large expense. We have taken the trouble to weigh the copy of this document, which was forwarded to us, and find its ponderosity to be 2 lbs., 14 ozs., or, with the wrapper, about three ...
— Cheap Postage • Joshua Leavitt
... is provoking to be overlooked so. I like a road all to myself. Look what a lumbering affair theirs is!" The wheels of the farmer's cart, just at that moment, jogged into a depression running across the road, giving the cart a twist, whereupon all three nodded to the left, and on coming out ...
— Under the Greenwood Tree • Thomas Hardy
... and ran for the open meadow. Wakayoo did not stir as Baree sped past him—no more than if he had been a bird or a rabbit. Then came another breath of air, heavy with the scent of man. This, at last, put life into him. He turned and began lumbering after Baree into the meadow trap. Baree, looking back, saw him coming—and thought it was pursuit. Nepeese and Pierrot came over the slope, and at the same instant they saw both Wakayoo ...
— Baree, Son of Kazan • James Oliver Curwood
... the needle was laid down, then the retreating steps of both men, out of the room. The door closed, the key turned mechanically. She could hear the doctor's heavy steps lumbering all the way down to the bottom floor, while she fancied Holliday remained on the stairs. Was this a providential respite, or only another tantalising ...
— Juggernaut • Alice Campbell
... Holley and the other riders, then back to Holley. What was the matter with this old rider? Bostil had never seen Holley seem so strange. The whole affair began to loom strangely, darkly. Some portent quickened Bostil's lumbering pulse. It seemed that Holley's mind must have found an obstacle to thought. Suddenly the old rider's face changed—the bronze was blotted out—a grayness came, ...
— Wildfire • Zane Grey
... figures collapsed in a heap upon the ground. The other made off at a lumbering gait along a second and even narrower passage branching at right angles from that in which the scuffle had ...
— Tales of Chinatown • Sax Rohmer
... trade of Canada is lumbering; and lumbering consists in cutting down pine-trees up in the far distant forests, in hewing or sawing them into shape for market, and getting them down the rivers to Quebec, from whence they are exported to ...
— Volume 1 • Anthony Trollope
... been better, but we waited and waited, not knowing for a long time what had happened. This upset all our vorspann arrangements, and to our great disgust the best part of the day was wasted in seeking another vehicle and horses to take us to Karansebes. At last we succeeded in obtaining a lumbering sort of covered conveyance, whose speed we doubted from the first; but the owner, who was to drive us, declared he would get us to our journey's end in an incredibly ...
— Round About the Carpathians • Andrew F. Crosse
... my companion answered, "but an old broken-down wagon. Why they leave such a piece of lumbering trash about their place, where people can see it as they pass, is more than I ...
— Over the Teacups • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... scolding herself she hurried them before her into the house and flew to find Debbie. She had not far to go, however, for Debbie was just lumbering, like a good-natured elephant, through the hall to greet her master and mistress. As soon as the greetings were over she lumbered back again ...
— Billie Bradley and Her Inheritance - The Queer Homestead at Cherry Corners • Janet D. Wheeler
... When at last he was ready to go lumbering into his peaceful couch, he heaved a profound sigh, so full of apprehension and grief that Mrs. Middlerib, who was awakened by it, said if it gave him so much pain to come to bed perhaps he had better sit up all night. Mr. Middlerib choked another sigh, ...
— Masterpieces Of American Wit And Humor • Thomas L. Masson (Editor)
... like ten thousand rockets, it rolled back along the sky to the east. The hands of the clocks, which marked half-past two, whirred back to two o'clock in a twinkling. And, sure enough, there was brave little Tilda standing alone in a great field waiting for the dragon to come and take her away. Lumbering heavily along like a monstrous turtle, and snorting blue smoke, the ...
— The Firelight Fairy Book • Henry Beston
... given by Sir Thomas Erpingham, the English shouted, but "the French army, to their great astonishment, remained motionless. Horses and knights appeared to be enchanted, or struck dead in their armor. The fact was, that their large battle-steeds, weighed down with their heavy riders and lumbering caparisons of iron, had all their feet completely sunk in the deep wet clay; they were fixed there, and could only struggle out to crawl on a few steps at a walk," Upon this mass of chivalry, all stuck in the mud, the cloth-yard shafts of the English yeomen fell like hailstones upon ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 55, May, 1862 • Various
... present at Utrecht, jangling and pleading among the rest; at Berlin too the despatch of business goes lumbering on; but what thing, in the shape of business, at Utrecht or at Berlin, is of much importance to the old man? Seems as if Europe itself were waxing dim, and sinking to stupid sleep,—as we, in our poor royal person, full surely are. A Crown has been achieved, and ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. III. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—The Hohenzollerns In Brandenburg—1412-1718 • Thomas Carlyle
... Graham the train seemed to crawl. He caught a steamer bound for Washington, and paced the deck, while in the moonlight the dark shores of the James looked stationary. From Washington the lightning express was in his view more dilatory than the most lumbering stage of the ...
— His Sombre Rivals • E. P. Roe
... reason to believe that, in days when the national currency consisted chiefly of lumbering silver ecus, the Bourbon government also appreciated to the full the value of a private gold reserve. At any rate it was at the time of the first Restoration that the golden guinea of England found in France ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle
... about in the papers. They had tied a long rope to the shaft of the wagon, and one or two hundred men had hold of it, and were hauling it through the streets, dancing and singing, shouting murder-threats against the "reds." Some ran ahead, to clear the traffic; and then came the wagon, lumbering and rocking, so that the prophet was thrown from side to side. Fortunately there was a hole in the canvas, and he could hold to one ...
— They Call Me Carpenter • Upton Sinclair
... that Rumple hove in sight again, clinging in a very undignified fashion to the neck of Rockefeller, while the old horse came on at a lumbering trot, warranted to stir up ...
— The Adventurous Seven - Their Hazardous Undertaking • Bessie Marchant
... it could stand. With a very bad grace it hobbled off to the Durian tree, ascended it with a sort of lazy, lumbering facility, and hurled down some of the fruit without warning those below ...
— Blown to Bits - or, The Lonely Man of Rakata • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... a late hour in the evening that the coach entered the metropolis. Railroads were not then in vogue, and large baggage-waggons, lumbering teams and clumsy coaches, were drawn by two or more horses, over deep-rutted roads, and ...
— Town and Country, or, Life at Home and Abroad • John S. Adams
... clanged its way harshly across his path. As he looked up, he caught sight of the lake at the end of the street,—a narrow blue slab of water between two walls. The vista had a strangely foreign air. But the street itself, with its drays lumbering into the hidden depths of slimy pools, its dirty, foot-stained cement walks, had the ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... answered, and turning on his heel, he went to the poop. Thither Colin followed him and told him all the story of the whale. The captain, who was an old friend of Colin's father when they both lived in a lumbering town in northern Michigan, was greatly taken aback when he found how dangerous the boat-trip had been, but he did not want to spoil the boy's vivid memories ...
— The Boy With the U. S. Fisheries • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... racket they kicked up in trying to fly from us was terrific; but it was too late. The moment we saw that they had discovered us, our guns poured forth their contents, and two out of the flock fell with a lumbering smash upon the ground, while a third went off wounded, and, after wavering in its flight for a little, ...
— Hudson Bay • R.M. Ballantyne
... lumbering old fellow, with no tricks. We have tried. We took him out once, into a snow-drift, with a lantern round his neck, but he rescued nothing, and lost the lantern—and then he lost himself, for it ...
— Melchior's Dream and Other Tales • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... this purpose, he shook his head negatively, evidently having no confidence in his own umbrella, and doubting its obeying his wishes at the critical moment; indeed, it would require a considerable time, and much care and labour, to unfurl a lumbering instrument of that description. He had the best of the tale-contest with Renaud in the end, for he had himself been grazed by a bull which came up with him at the moment when he ...
— Ice-Caves of France and Switzerland • George Forrest Browne
... observer watching him sprint round and round the inn in front of the lumbering and reproachful pursuit of Uncle Jim might have formed an altogether erroneous estimate of the issue of the campaign. Certain compensating qualities of the very greatest military value were appearing ...
— The History of Mr. Polly • H. G. Wells
... jingling and lumbering came with the breeze down the road and proceeded from a pillar of dust which was approaching the house with reasonable rapidity. Presently the road changed from a trough of dust into a ribbon of greensward. The cloud dissipated itself, streaming ...
— Prisoners of Hope - A Tale of Colonial Virginia • Mary Johnston
... right up to the very trenches themselves you will find that British policeman all the way; directing the traffic at every country cross-road where there is likely to be a congestion of the great lumbering motor-lorries; standing outside the ruined village church which the long-range guns have knocked to pieces in trying to get at a supply dump or a headquarters; waiting at the fork-roads where you finally have to leave your motor-car and walk only in small parties if you wish to avoid sudden ...
— Letters from France • C. E. W. Bean
... letting himself down in a lumbering way from the wheel, and then rubbing his right hand up and down his trouser-leg to get it clean; "hah! now we'll ...
— Brownsmith's Boy - A Romance in a Garden • George Manville Fenn
... dark the teams started their lumbering way across the city and the bridge. Messengers, stationed on the way, were to report the safe progress of the ...
— Constance Dunlap • Arthur B. Reeve
... possession than his kingdom of Bosphorus. But he made light of it; he jeered at us; and gave his daughter to Adyrmachus the Machlyan, because he had ten golden cups, and eighty waggons of four seats, and a number of sheep and oxen. It seems that herds and lumbering waggons and superfluous beakers are to count for more than brave men. My friends, I am doubly wounded: I love Mazaea, and I cannot forget the humiliation which I have suffered before so many witnesses, and in which you are both equally involved. Ever since we were united in friendship, ...
— Works, V3 • Lucian of Samosata
... so much of it accomplished by tiresome, lumbering stage-coaches, these two travelling companions gladly alighted at the Melrose Tavern, and eagerly sought the refreshments its simple ...
— Leah Mordecai • Mrs. Belle Kendrick Abbott
... the front and the rear of the Inn, at the same instant it seemed, the sharp staccato of a fusilade of pistol shots, and the lumbering blows as of beams being thrust at ...
— The Inn at the Red Oak • Latta Griswold
... railway journeys, of motor cars, telegrams, telephones, and aeroplanes, we are apt to lose sight of the tales of more leisurely times, when lumbering stage-coaches and relays of willing horses were our only means of transit from ...
— Stories of the Border Marches • John Lang and Jean Lang
... four persons, with a chaise top to be thrown back in fine weather and a glass front to be let down by night or in case of rain. I chose my seat here, as affording the best possible view of the country. At 8 P. M. precisely, the driver cracked his whip, and four good horses started our lumbering vehicle at a lively pace on the road to Turin, some two hundred miles away ...
— Glances at Europe - In a Series of Letters from Great Britain, France, Italy, - Switzerland, &c. During the Summer of 1851. • Horace Greeley
... to all fours and was lumbering straight toward Stacy Brown, who stood fascinated, watching the approach of the hideous object, whose raised upper lip showed a row of ...
— The Pony Rider Boys in the Rockies • Frank Gee Patchin
... street.' This was afterwards called Washington Street, and was really a part of the National Road. Oh but that was romantic to me, leading as it did straight out into the wide, wide world! At certain intervals, about once in two weeks, the weather and the state of the road allowing, a lumbering vehicle called a 'mud wagon' left for regions unknown to me with passengers and freight. I don't know where it came from, but on its return it brought letters to my father from his mother, ...
— The Life of Mrs. Robert Louis Stevenson • Nellie Van de Grift Sanchez
... with these thoughts, he heard talking on his stairs, accompanied by a strange lumbering tread. These came nearer; and at last stopped just outside his door, which opened in another moment, ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes
... dinners, for he never missed them; and above all other companies he loved the stationers', and its handsome barge, and its glorious monopoly of almanacks; he loved the Lord Mayor and the Mansion-house,—it was not quite so black then, as it is now,—and he loved the great lumbering state coach and the little gingerbread sheriffs' coaches, and loved the aldermen, and deputies and common-councilmen and liverymen. Out of London he knew nothing;—he believed that the Thames ran into the sea, because he had read at school, that all rivers run into the sea, but what the sea ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 17, - Issue 493, June 11, 1831 • Various
... its naked slaves straining at the oar of their taskmasters, its fierce, reckless, beturbaned crew clustered on the "rambades" at the bow and stern. It might be that they would capture some hapless "round-ship," a merchantman lumbering slowly along the coast; or again they might meet with a galley of the terrible Knights of St. John or of the ever-redoubtable Doria. In either case the Sea-wolves were equal to their fortune, to plunder or to fight in the name of Allah ...
— Sea-Wolves of the Mediterranean • E. Hamilton Currey
... axle is made to project a foot beyond the wheels, and the only trouble about it is that two wagons on a narrow road often find it difficult to pass. It is very curious to see these primitive-looking objects lumbering about through the streets of Moscow and St. Petersburg. The horses are most commonly placed three abreast. In the ordinary kibitka or traveling wagon the outside horses are merely fastened by ropes, and strike out ...
— The Land of Thor • J. Ross Browne
... and stalks seemed of a sudden to grow large; yet, till now, they had not realised it as "large"—but simply natural. A beetle, big and broad as a Newfoundland dog, went lumbering past them, brushing its polished back against their trembling necks; yet, till now, they had not thought of it as "big"—but simply normal. Its footsteps made a grating sound like the gardener's nailed boots upon the gravel paths. It was strange and startling. ...
— The Extra Day • Algernon Blackwood
... solid bulwarks. All the boats had disappeared; they might either have been carried away by the crew, or washed overboard by the sea. Both masts were gone about ten feet above the deck; which, with the whole of their spars and canvass, and the wreck of the bowsprit, were lumbering and rattling against the lee—side of the vessel, and splashing about in the broken water, being still attached to the hull by the standing rigging, no part of which had been cut away. The mainsail, foresail, fore—topsail, fore—staysail, and jib were all set, ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... waved his hand after the slowly moving herd that gradually pressed forward like an army in loose marching order. Outriders galloped ahead, like darting insects, and pointing the lumbering mass that trailed its half-mile length at a snail's-pace. The great column steadily advanced, checked, turned, led as easily as a child trails his little steam-cars after him on the nursery floor, and always by the little force of a handful of ...
— Judith Of The Plains • Marie Manning
... that having escorted Lady Mabel to the party, it was his privilege to see her safe home again. Bidding the footman keep the coach door open, he sprang into the house for his hat, and in a moment was again seated by her side. The lumbering vehicle rolled out of the praca and down the sloping street to the western gate of Elvas. As the guard there closed the gate behind them, and shut them out from the light of the lantern, they seemed to plunge into "outer darkness." ...
— The Actress in High Life - An Episode in Winter Quarters • Sue Petigru Bowen
... of Manhattan and were occupied by more than 200,000 people. The city was the centre of art and literature and science in America. The streets were lighted by gas; there were fine theatres; and the first street railroad in the world was in operation—the first step toward crowding out the lumbering stages. Newspapers were multiplying, and there were now fifty various sorts, daily, weekly, and monthly. The dailies cost six cents, and were delivered to regular subscribers. In the year 1833 the Sun, the first penny paper to be published in the city, was issued. It was a success. ...
— The Story of Manhattan • Charles Hemstreet
... good Ugo had made the road seem less weary, and the lumbering ox-wagons less jolty and painful, by telling his bright young charge of all the wonders and relics he had seen in his journeyings in the East; but especially did the girl love to hear him tell of the boy king of the Franks, Hlodo-wig, or Clovis, who lived in the priest's own boyhood ...
— Historic Girls • E. S. Brooks
... in and out of the canyon through a foothill country, we made steady progress until we reached the main road from Raymond to Wawona. The grade was uphill all the time. We left the lumbering camp known as Sugar Pine to our right. The lumber interests have made a sad spectacle of miles and miles of country, recently heavily forested. There seems to be no idea in the lumberman's mind of saving the young growth when ...
— Out of Doors—California and Oregon • J. A. Graves
... to such hardships that the stain [Footnote: This is very likely an incorrect translation of an incorrect reading. The various editors of Dio have a few substitutes to propose, but as all the interpretations seem to me extremely lumbering I have turned the MS. [Greek] chelidoysthai (taken as a passive) in a way that may be not quite beyond the bounds of possibility. The noun [Greek] chelhist like the English "stain," often passes from its original sense of "blemish" to that of the consequent "disgrace."] ...
— Dio's Rome, Vol VI. • Cassius Dio
... under the stars, rolls the dull bull-bellow of the 'gator, labouring, lumbering, clawing across the saw-grass seas; and all the little striped pigs run, bucking madly, to their dangerous and silent dam who listens, rigid, horny nose ...
— The Firing Line • Robert W. Chambers
... the morning and out on the terrace. She felt no further uneasiness on the score of the disguise now. Henson was certain to be inquisitive, it was part of his nature, but he was not going to learn anything. Chris smiled as she saw Henson lumbering towards her. He seemed all the better for his ...
— The Crimson Blind • Fred M. White
... movement shot a stinging stream of water from the ball of his hand into his antagonist's face. Then Piggy turned on his side and swam swiftly to shallow water, where he stood and splashed his victim, who was lumbering toward shore with his eyes shut, panting loudly. With every splash Piggy said, "How's that, Jim?" or "Take a bite o' this," or "Want a drink?" When Jimmy got where he could walk on the creek bottom, he made a feint ...
— The Court of Boyville • William Allen White
... other, as we walked or stood gazing on the scene and listening to the rustling breeze, we were happy. For two weeks our lives blended with each other and with nature, and it was with a sigh that we mounted the lumbering stage to take up our sojourn in the retired town on the hills. We came to the little hotel just at night, and were stared at and commented upon by those who had been there three days and assumed the air of having had possession for years. ...
— That Mother-in-Law of Mine • Anonymous
... I know you didn't mean to hurt me. I suppose you thought you couldn't affect my dark, old, saddle-flap-looking phiz. That is one of the disadvantages of being a big lumbering concern like I am. Jump ...
— My Brilliant Career • Miles Franklin
... itself being actively attacked on the eastern face, it could spare at least a battalion to assail their flank and threaten their rear. Covered by this flanking fire, by the long-range musketry, and by a tremendous bombardment, in which every gun, from the lumbering 5 in. siege guns to the little 9-pounder mountain battery, joined, the main attack was now launched. It proceeded simultaneously against Railway Hill, Inniskilling Hill, and the neck between them, but as the general line was placed obliquely across the Boer ...
— London to Ladysmith via Pretoria • Winston Spencer Churchill
... Jack could make out a black mass lumbering slowly down through the meadow toward them. The dogs ran around it in circles, merely growling and offering no attack. At a word from the Indian, however, they ran in snarling on the animal, which stopped, and with a loud "woof" reared ...
— The Boy Scouts on the Yukon • Ralph Victor
... monsters came lumbering forth upon dry land it became instantly apparent why the aero-subs had returned to the mother ships. For a few moments, out of the water, the amphibians were almost helpless, with practically no way of attack or defense—as helpless as huge ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science April 1930 • Various
... The shipping was as we had imagined it—large black and gray coasters in the Hong-Kong and inter-island trade, a host of dirty little vapors (steamers) of light tonnage, and the innumerable cascos and bancas. The bancas are dug-out canoes, each paddled by a single oarsman. The casco is a lumbering hull covered over in the centre with a mat of plaited bamboo, which makes a cave-like cabin and a living room for the owner's family. Children are born, grow up, become engaged, marry, give birth to more children—in short, ...
— A Woman's Impression of the Philippines • Mary Helen Fee
... plied between the river and Jacksonville. Too fatigued to walk the intervening distance, Douglass mounted the lumbering vehicle and ruefully paid his fare. From this point of vantage he took in the prairie landscape. Morgan County was then but sparsely populated. Timber fringed the creeks and the river bottoms, while the prairie grass grew rank over soil of unsuspected fertility. Most dwellings were ...
— Stephen A. Douglas - A Study in American Politics • Allen Johnson
... America where they settled in New Jersey, purchasing large tracts of land, founding New Rochelle and engaging in lumbering. On the breaking out of the Revolutionary War the family divided, the Loyalists changing their patronym to Secord by placing the prefix "d" at the end of their name. These brothers after, as King's men, losing, in common with all the Loyalists, their property and estates, emigrated ...
— Laura Secord, the heroine of 1812. - A Drama. And Other Poems. • Sarah Anne Curzon
... my last journey?" said Queen Mary, with a strange, sad smile, as she took her seat in the heavy lumbering coach which had been appointed for her conveyance from Chartley, her rheumatism having set in too severely to permit her ...
— Unknown to History - A Story of the Captivity of Mary of Scotland • Charlotte M. Yonge
... light on the wind, little soul, Like a thistle-down floating Over the butterflies And the lumbering bees... ...
— The Ghetto and Other Poems • Lola Ridge
... execution. He had no affectation, no trifling. He did not throw away the game to show off an attitude or try an experiment. He was a fine, sensible, manly player, who did what he could, but that was more than any one else could even affect to do. His blows were not undecided and ineffectual—lumbering like Mr. Wordsworth's epic poetry, nor wavering like Mr. Coleridge's lyric prose, nor short of the mark like Mr. Brougham's speeches, nor wide of it like Mr. Canning's wit, nor foul like the Quarterly, nor let balls like the Edinburgh Review. Cobbett ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... and now they could all discern it. Its great clumsy shape, its heavy lumbering action, were ...
— Prince Lazybones and Other Stories • Mrs. W. J. Hays
... our lumbering train many days to reach Laredo, a distance of about one hundred and sixty miles from Corpus Christi. Each march was but a repetition of the first day's journey, its monotony occasionally relieved, though, by the passage of immense flocks ...
— The Memoirs of General P. H. Sheridan, Complete • General Philip Henry Sheridan
... there was eating and cooking going on; the whole train of the wedding procession had gathered there in disorder; and the extra servants, hired from Paimpol, well-nigh lost their senses before the mighty lumbering up of the capacious hearth ...
— An Iceland Fisherman • Pierre Loti
... stern as steel with her husband or her servants. She cowed Brigida into lumbering downstairs with the message. Mrs. Budlong went to the window to triumph over her victim's retreat ...
— Mrs. Budlong's Chrismas Presents • Rupert Hughes
... simply full of men and horses, and within an hour, and perhaps less, you will see a pretty attack. Aren't we at their mercy?" Claverhouse pointed forward to the crest of a little hill over which the Dutch brigade were passing in marching formation, and backward to the lumbering ...
— Graham of Claverhouse • Ian Maclaren
... journey from Paris to Ville-Parisis, in that vehicle called a 'bus: distance, twenty miles: 'bus, lumbering: horse, lame. Nothing amuses me more than to draw from people, by the aid of that gimlet called the interrogation, and to obtain, by means of an attentive air, the sum of information, anecdotes and learning that everybody is anxious to part with: and all men have such a sum, the peasant ...
— Petty Troubles of Married Life, Second Part • Honore de Balzac
... trudge, for we were heavily laden, along the very edge of the bay to take advantage of the narrow strip of firm sand that gets washed by the "tideless Mediterranean". Our four Battalions were present, and after some delay over our baggage, all which was finally got on board, the great lumbering barge, which had 400 men and all the regimental baggage on board, refused to budge. She was fast on the rocks where the water was very shallow. At last she moved, going out a few yards then returning and taking all the Dublins ...
— The Incomparable 29th and the "River Clyde" • George Davidson
... after their company, but they were very shy of him. Sometimes they let Malcolm bring him into their boat, and condescended to row him up and down the loch, a mode of locomotion in which he greatly delighted, for, at best, the shaking of the great lumbering coach was not easy to him, and he always begged to be carried in Malcolm's arms till he found how pleasantly he could lie in the stern of the Manse boat, and float about on the smooth water, watching the mountains and ...
— A Noble Life • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
... intervale from half a mile to two miles in width. This valley was studded with huge trees at such a distance from each other that it might well be called a park, and when in a state of nature it must have been not only beautiful, but magnificent. The curse of civilization was upon it, however. For lumbering purposes a dam had then been built across the outlet of Indian Lake, and the intervale had been overflowed until all the trees were dead. The grass was rich and we were told that it was a favorite feeding ...
— Reminiscences of Sixty Years in Public Affairs, Vol. 1 • George Boutwell
... the way to the river house they looked like typical extremes of rough, sun-burned and weather-tanned manhood; Oncle Jazon a wizened, diminutive scrap, wrinkled and odd in every respect; Gaspard Roussillon towering six feet two, wide shouldered, massive, lumbering, muscular, a giant with long curling hair and a superb beard. They did not know that they were going down to help dedicate ...
— Alice of Old Vincennes • Maurice Thompson
... walking erect and carrying a stick in one hand, advanced at a slow, lumbering gait. It walked directly toward the gryfs who moved aside, as though afraid. Tarzan watched intently. The Tor-o-don was now quite close to one of the triceratops. It swung its head and snapped at him viciously. Instantly the Tor-o-don sprang in and ...
— Tarzan the Terrible • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... heard your lumbering noise, He gave a wonderful innocent smile; I believe what you did pleased Him well enough, for He showed no sign to the contrary. But I marvel in my heart, why He keeps such a dog; had I known that before,[55] ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... a rope, passed before the window; there was a crunching sound; a lumbering cow stopped, lifted a mouth half filled with grass, and bawled her loudest protest at being separated from her calf. Peaches had only half a glance, but her shriek was utter terror. She launched herself on Peter and climbed ...
— Michael O'Halloran • Gene Stratton-Porter
... to Sira. The whole mob was slowed by the lumbering pace of the ape-man, and she was able to keep in the lead without difficulty. Several times some of her pursuers ran ahead by other routes, intent on snatching her into some doorway. But each time she slashed at them with her sword, ...
— The Martian Cabal • Roman Frederick Starzl
... ammunition of the army been conveyed by the fort, and were safely and rapidly proceeding on their way down the valley. In the darkness of the night trusty men, with great caution and silence, strewed hay and straw upon the road. The wheels of the lumbering carriages were carefully bound with cloths and wisps of straw, and, with axles well oiled, were drawn by the hands of these picked men, beneath the very walls of the fortress, and within half pistol-shot of its guns. In two nights ...
— Napoleon Bonaparte • John S. C. Abbott
... unwilling way. One obstreperous steed becomes so unmanageable that it becomes necessary to hitch him to the back of the cart, at the imminent risk of overturning it, in his determination to thwart his companion's enforced progress. Mile after mile the wearisome struggle continues. Even a lumbering bullock waggon passes us again and again, in the numerous stoppages required for fresh conflict. The endless hours of the weary day drag on like a terrible nightmare, but a descent into a profound ravine of these mountain solitudes at length enables the driver to start the team at a rate which ...
— Through the Malay Archipelago • Emily Richings
... poured a pailful over him, which he seemed to enjoy very much, as the day was a warm one. One of the men said something in Swiss, at which the bear gave a roar-like grunt and commenced to dance. Around and around the great lumbering fellow went on his two hind legs, holding his fore paws in the air. It was not what one would call a very "airy waltz," however. Again the keeper spoke, and immediately bruin threw himself upon the ground and turned somersaults, ...
— Prairie Farmer, Vol. 56: No. 3, January 19, 1884. - A Weekly Journal for the Farm, Orchard and Fireside • Various
... the passing track. Stanley roused Bucks and, notifying the despatchers, ordered the engine cut off from the freight-train, swung up into the cab, and started for Medicine Bend. As they pulled out, light, Stanley asked for every notch of speed the lumbering engine could stand, and Oliver Sollers, the engineman, urged the big machine to ...
— The Mountain Divide • Frank H. Spearman |
