|
|
|
More "Awkward" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... race, or breed. His hands were hard with toil, his hair was rough, and his voice was harsh with the night air. The breath of the labouring poor is noisome in the nostrils of the rich. His garments smelt of industry, and his awkward gait told tales of his humble trade. You did not love him: such as you could not have loved a man like him. You have come here to bid me to forget my son, and you think it easy for me to do so, because you and his noble friends have forgotten him. You are ...
— La Vendee • Anthony Trollope
... her hand and placed her in a chair, and at first it seemed doubtful who would break an awkward and irritating silence. At ...
— A Mummer's Wife • George Moore
... as if they were well able to defend their native territory. Jerry could not resist the temptation of firing his rifle among them. It had a wonderful effect on the whole body; big and little sea-lions, and cows, and seals, all began floundering away in the greatest dismay into the water—their awkward-looking movements being very amusing; at the same time, thousands of birds, which had been perched on the rocks, or floating in the water, rose into the air, with loud screams, circling round our heads; while porpoises, or some other huge monsters of the deep, kept gambolling ...
— A Voyage round the World - A book for boys • W.H.G. Kingston
... their claim to be regarded as poetry on their unnecessary and awkward inversions. Yet this poem is not without beauty, and the character of Nardi, the little prince who is treated as the Court fool, shows a delicate grace of fancy, and is both tender and true. The most delightful thing in the whole volume is a little lyric called April, which is ...
— Reviews • Oscar Wilde
... call incunabula. Spanish art sprang out full-armed from the mature brain of Rome. Juan de Juanes carne back from Italy a great artist. The schools of Spain were budded on a full-bearing tree. Charles and Philip bought masterpieces, and cared Jittle for the crude efforts of the awkward pencils of the necessary men who came before Raphael. There is not a Perugino in Madrid. There is nothing Byzantine, no trace of Renaissance; nothing of the patient work of the early Flemings,—the art of Flanders comes blazing in with the full splendor of Rubens and Van Dyck. And ...
— Castilian Days • John Hay
... must glide earthward. But where the risk does lie, in engine failure, is that it may occur at a moment when the airman is in such a position, either above dangerous country or while over the sea, that he cannot during his glide reach a place of safety. A study of flying will show how awkward, and how perilous on many occasions, has been the stoppage of a motor while a machine is in the air. Two historic instances, though they did not, fortunately, end in a loss of the pilot's life, were the compulsory descents into the Channel ...
— Learning to Fly - A Practical Manual for Beginners • Claude Grahame-White
... 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 leading the ...
— The Woman in White • Wilkie Collins
... a sore trial to her mother. Addie was pretty as a child, tolerably presentable even at her most awkward age, glided gradually into girlhood and beauty, and finally "came out" completely to Mrs. Blake's satisfaction. But Lottie at fifteen or sixteen was her despair—"Exactly like a great unruly boy," ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, October, 1877, Vol. XX. No. 118 • Various
... house I see across a gulf. I cannot go to them nor they come to me. Nothing can exceed the frigidity and labor of my speech with such. You might turn a yoke of oxen between every pair of words; and the behavior is as awkward and proud." ...
— The Last Harvest • John Burroughs
... antipathy for me," mused Van Berg. "Stanton, no doubt, has told her of my uncomplimentary remarks, and possibly of the fact that I declined an introduction. That's awkward, for if I should now ask to be presented to her, she would very naturally decline, and so we might drift into something as closely resembling a quarrel as is possible in the case of two people who have never spoken to ...
— A Face Illumined • E. P. Roe
... pleaded. "DON'T make a fuss now. Justine was my darling belle-mere's guest to-day, don't you see? It'll be so awkward, scrapping right in the face of Owen's news. Couldn't you sort of shelve the Justine ...
— The Treasure • Kathleen Norris
... hot, and their crowding round to kiss me, saying that they loved me all the same; and then, and when the old sorrow came into my dear mother's mild and tender look, the truth broke upon me for the first time, and I knew, while watching my awkward and ungainly sports, how keenly she had felt for her poor ...
— Master Humphrey's Clock • Charles Dickens
... eyeglass in the right eye and in the left. Asked why he should thus quaintly occupy his leisure moments, he replied: "It is in view of the General Election. If on the platform any person in the crowd poses you with an awkward question, should you be able rapidly to transfer your eyeglass from your right eye to your left, and fix the obtruder with a stony stare, he is so much engaged in wondering whether you can keep the glass in position, that he forgets what he asked you, and you can pass on to ...
— Punch, or The London Charivari, Volume 101, October 31, 1891 • Various
... beast looked pleased, and replied, not without an awkward sort of politeness, "Pray do not let me detain you from supper, and be sure that you are well served. All you see is your own, and I should be deeply grieved if ...
— The Fairy Book - The Best Popular Stories Selected and Rendered Anew • Dinah Maria Mulock (AKA Miss Mulock)
... without mentioning Nerva, records the desire and hope, which his father-in-law expressed in his hearing, that he might live to see Trajan elevated to the imperial throne—language very proper and courtly, if Trajan were already Emperor, but a very awkward compliment to Nerva, if, as many critics suppose, he were still the ...
— Germania and Agricola • Caius Cornelius Tacitus
... it in various Courts of Europe, but always without success. Things were becoming awkward. The firm had borrowed heavily to pay for the stones, and anxiety seems to have driven Bohmer to the verge of desperation. Again he offered the necklace to the King, announcing himself ready to make terms, and to accept payment in instalments; but ...
— The Historical Nights' Entertainment • Rafael Sabatini
... "Two to one are awkward odds," said the squire to himself, "especially when they have the 'vantage ground. But I must face them, and make the best fight circumstances will allow. I shall never be able to explain that mad dance with Isole de Heton. No one but Dick will believe me, and the chances are he ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... over and over these things, her little slippered feet led the march. Eric was not awkward, and he fell easily ...
— Mistress Anne • Temple Bailey
... establish imperial and knightly power against theirs. It is fiercely, but frankly, covetous of Italian territory, seizes all it can of Lombardy and Calabria, and with any help procurable either from robber Christians or robber Saracens, strives, in an awkward manner, and by open force, to make itself master ...
— Val d'Arno • John Ruskin
... come over the poor things, very much as I suppose people at the court of the Borgias may have watched each other begin to look queer after having had the honour of taking wine with the heads of the family. My comparison's only a little awkward, for I don't in the least mean that Charlotte was consciously dropping poison into their cup. She was just herself their poison, in the sense of mortally disagreeing with them—but ...
— The Golden Bowl • Henry James
... again. This was indeed an awkward predicament. The thought of running away to England didn't seem nice, somehow, but if Elsie went and he stayed, how frightened he'd be all the time about her; and when they questioned him, how would he be able to keep her secret, especially if Robbie's mother had ...
— Little Folks (July 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... moment now. The concert is usually out by this time." There was an awkward pause and then she stammered: "Mr. Gillie has something ...
— Bought and Paid For - From the Play of George Broadhurst • Arthur Hornblow
... cool wave of wind flowed against me. Clouds had gathered; and over the peak of a hill to the left, the sky was very black. Old Constancy threw his head up, as if he wanted me to take the reins, and let him step out. I remembered that there used to be an awkward piece of road somewhere not far in front, where the path, with a bank on the left side, sloped to a deep descent on the right. If the road was as bad there as it used to be, it would be better to pass it before it grew quite dark. So I took the reins, and away went old Constancy. ...
— The Portent & Other Stories • George MacDonald
... remains with which it is universally associated; that it may have occasionally visited the shore, the resemblance of its extremities to those of the Turtles may lead us to conjecture: its movements, however, must have been very awkward on land; and its long neck must have impeded its progress through the water, presenting a strong contrast to the organisation which so admirably fits the Ichthyosaurus to cut through the waves." As its respiratory organs were such that it must ...
— The Ancient Life History of the Earth • Henry Alleyne Nicholson
... the manager. "I am going to have you all travel on them in one scene, and as they are rather awkward you had ...
— The Moving Picture Girls Snowbound - Or, The Proof on the Film • Laura Lee Hope
... fine manners, and with a certain right, since it once fell to me—a blundering innocent in the hands of fate—to put them to severest proof. A candidate for a scholarship at Clifton—awkward, and abominably conscious of it, and sensitive—I had been billeted on Brown's hospitality without his knowledge. The mistake (I cannot tell who was responsible) could not be covered out of sight; it was past ...
— From a Cornish Window - A New Edition • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... wants them now—but a time may come. They are in New-York—there is a peculiarly contemptible clique of them in Boston, and the Philadelphia Bulletin informs us that there is exactly such another precious party in the city of Brotherly Love, who are 'in a very awkward position just now, inasmuch as there is no market for them. They are in the position of Johnson and Don Juan in the slave-market at Constantinople, and ready ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2, No 3, September, 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... light of that laggard letter, they blaze with a new and an appealing tenderness. His fingers still puzzle wearily with that tangle of the fringe. The noon passes. The aunt advises a little broth. But no, his strength is feeding itself on other aliment. The Doctor comes in with a curiously awkward attempt at gentleness and noiselessness of tread, and, seeing his excited condition, repeats to him some texts which he believes must be consoling. Reuben utters no open dissent; but through and back of all he sees the tender ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 104, June, 1866 • Various
... please," wrote Hume from Paris, "but no nation was ever so proud of genius as this, and no person ever so much engaged their attention as Rousseau! Voltaire and everybody else are quite eclipsed by him." Even Theresa Le Vasseur, who was declared very homely and very awkward, was more talked of than the Princess of Morocco or the Countess of Egmont, on account of her fidelity towards him. His very dog had a name and reputation in the world.[352] Rousseau is always said to have liked the stir which his presence created, but whether this was so or not, ...
— Rousseau - Volumes I. and II. • John Morley
... intellectual, was true and deep, to that ghastly ring of prophetesses in the Hatchgoose drawing-room; strong-minded and emancipated women, who prided themselves on having cast off conventionalities, and on being rude, and awkward, and dogmatic, and irreverent, and sometimes slightly improper; women who had missions to mend everything in heaven and earth, except themselves; who had quarrelled with their husbands, and had therefore felt a mission ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume I • Charles Kingsley
... of it's skin they make houses, an' boats, an' pots to bile vittles, an' candles to burn, an' ornaments like what Mr. Robert has above.' A pause, as he watched the bark turned over the ribs, and wedge-shaped pieces cut out to prevent awkward foldings near the gunwale—all carried on in solemn silence. 'Well, there's no manner of doubt but savages are great intirely at houldin' their tongues; sure, may be it's no wondher, an' their langidge the quare sort it is, that they don't want to spake to each other ...
— Cedar Creek - From the Shanty to the Settlement • Elizabeth Hely Walshe
... one other were straining to shift the gate of another pen. It was awkward, since they must work from the top; for the adobe corral was as the jaws of a lion while the bear circled watchfully there, and the pen they were striving to open was no safer, with the big, black bull rolling bloodshot eyes at them from below. He had been teased with clods of dirt ...
— The Gringos • B. M. Bower
... you, had you been in my place, have made? I was in an awkward position—in the presence of one who had never attended any but a fashionable church and hence—who knew little or nothing of God and his Son, one who had never been taught anything which in the event of accidents or business failures would prove practical. She was indeed and in ...
— Fifteen Years With The Outcast • Mrs. Florence (Mother) Roberts
... about a hundred men to us, and women making the same awkward signals of friendship, and dancing, and showing themselves very well pleased, and anything they had they gave us. How the man in the wood came to be so butcherly and rude as to shoot at our men, without making any breach first, we could not imagine; for the people were simple, ...
— The Life, Adventures & Piracies of the Famous Captain Singleton • Daniel Defoe
... was a genuine "cracker," or poor white—lean, sallow, and awkward in his movements, but hospitable, as men of his class always are. In answer to ...
— Wakulla - A Story of Adventure in Florida • Kirk Munroe
... somewhat awkward silence, and Alton fancied that both men were relieved when Mrs. Forel's voice broke in, "Jack, you will look after the men, but don't keep them talking too long. We picked up Mr. Seaforth, and there are one or two more of our ...
— Alton of Somasco • Harold Bindloss
... his chair in an awkward, embarrassed fashion. He flushed and stammered as he grasped ...
— Ralph on the Engine - The Young Fireman of the Limited Mail • Allen Chapman
... The longer it lasted the more awkward the Senator felt. What upon earth was he to do or say? What business had he to go and quote poetry to widows? What an old fool he must be! But the Countess was very far from feeling awkward. Assuming an elegant attitude she looked up, her face ...
— The Dodge Club - or, Italy in 1859 • James De Mille
... therefore, to depart, but duty calls. Pray oblige me with your arm, for I am a little lame. A bullet, sir!" he volunteered as he limped beside me. "A shattered knee-cap to remind me of my vivid youth, an awkward limp to keep in my mind the lovely cause—aha, she was all clinging tenderness and plump as a partridge then. I was her Eugenio and she my Sacharissa—a withered crone to-day, sir, and, alas, most inelegantly ...
— Peregrine's Progress • Jeffery Farnol
... Letty and such as act like her are excusable or not in keeping attentions paid them a secret, this sorrow for the good ones of them certainly remains, that, next to a crime, a secret is the heaviest as well as the most awkward of burdens to carry. It has to be carried always, and all about. From morning to night it hurts in tenderest parts, and from night to morning hurts everywhere. At any expense, let there be openness. ...
— Mary Marston • George MacDonald
... from me to deny that my country people, male and female, do indeed possess an unusually strong sense of duty. This is combined with a desire for justice which is so often looked upon by outsiders as a lack of patriotic pride, and with an honesty which easily makes the German appear so clumsy and awkward. These three characteristics belong indissolubly together and one is not to be thought of without the other. The spirit from which the German sense of duty arises is what the foreigner so often misunderstands in us. He generally confuses sense of duty with blind obedience. But this sense of ...
— New York Times, Current History, Vol 1, Issue 1 - From the Beginning to March, 1915 With Index • Various
... the North; but in most places, though the Americans provide bountifully, the cooking is not good, and they make a strange jumble of things at table. They have the appearance of a people suddenly raised in the world, and able to afford themselves nice things, but very ignorant and awkward in the use of them. With so much hurry to begin, the time occupied in eating by our company was very short. We Britishers had scarcely begun, when one and another got up from table, finishing his dinner as he walked away. They cannot ...
— American Scenes, and Christian Slavery - A Recent Tour of Four Thousand Miles in the United States • Ebenezer Davies
... elsewhere. Douglas and two of the Tremenheere boys were schoolmates, and he was in continual request at their home. Unfortunately these visits were displeasing to Mrs. Shafto, as was also his intimacy with the young people at the vicarage; and poor Douglas had an awkward part to play. He could not avoid or drop his friends; yet, on the other hand, there were painful difficulties with his mother, who declared that he was a mean fellow to run after people who had insulted her, ...
— The Road to Mandalay - A Tale of Burma • B. M. Croker
... time to ask questions. It is an awkward station with a lot of different exits, and it looked a good deal as if our quarry had got away. However, I took a chance. I remembered that the Southampton express was due to start about this time, and I took ...
— The Mystery of 31 New Inn • R. Austin Freeman
... and awkward question; and, for a second, I was at a loss for words to express to my satisfaction what I was doing. Penny seemed disappointed at my declension into disgrace, and murmured reproachfully: "O Rupert, my little Rupert, st. ...
— Tell England - A Study in a Generation • Ernest Raymond
... bound to force the issue and was rather relieved than otherwise. With a mental promise to himself to keep his temper at all hazards he replied: "Well, Elizabeth, I'll admit the situation is a trifle awkward, but what cannot be cured must be endured. You see, I want to have a talk with Nan Brent and I cannot do so unless I call upon her at the Sawdust Pile. It is impossible for us to meet on neutral ground, I fear. However, if you will ...
— Kindred of the Dust • Peter B. Kyne
... narrow, and so small, The hat-stand seems to fill the tiny hall; That staircase, too, has such an awkward bend, The carpet rucks, and rises up on end! Then, all the rooms are cramped and close together; And there's a musty smell in rainy weather. Yes, and it makes the daily work go hard To have the only tap across a yard. These creaking ...
— The Verse-Book Of A Homely Woman • Elizabeth Rebecca Ward, AKA Fay Inchfawn
... 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 course he is capable of, and away goes Socialis in ...
— Wake-Robin • John Burroughs
... me, and we shook hands with all that empressement so characteristic of hand-shaking on the American Continent. Then there came a pause. My companion had laid his cue down. I still retained mine in my hands, and, more as a means of bridging the awkward gulf of silence which followed the introduction, I asked him to continue the game—another stroke or two, and the mocassined President began to move nervously about the window recess. To relieve his burthened feelings, I inquired if he ever indulged in billiards; ...
— The Great Lone Land - A Narrative of Travel and Adventure in the North-West of America • W. F. Butler
... that—just now. There might be some awkward explanations to make to your hypothetical owner. Or, failing him, to ...
— The Gates of Chance • Van Tassel Sutphen
... happy if, by any intervention of his, he could conduce to your comfort; but he seemed to think that for you to return on any express understanding that she should behave to you in any particular manner, would be to place her in a most awkward situation. He went somewhat at length into this point, and talked very reasonably about it; the result, however, was that he would not throw any obstacles in the way of your return, or of her treating you as a friend, &c., nor did it appear ...
— Liber Amoris, or, The New Pygmalion • William Hazlitt
... are elongated into sickles or horns; nor does the springing power seem to depend on the development of the bosses. They are far more developed in an eagle than a robin; but you know how unpardonably and preposterously awkward an eagle is when he hops. When they are most of all developed, the bird walks, runs, and ...
— Love's Meinie - Three Lectures on Greek and English Birds • John Ruskin
... later (on March 12th) the Centre was passed; and on the 17th, while going from Woodforde Creek through the bad country towards the Bonney, Thring met with an awkward accident, which his leader thus describes: "Being anxious to keep my old tracks through the scrub, as it does not wear the saddle-bags so much as breaking through a new line, I missed them about two miles after starting, in consequence of the earliness and ...
— Explorations in Australia, The Journals of John McDouall Stuart • John McDouall Stuart
... Nuns' House is Miss Rosa Bud, of course called Rosebud; wonderfully pretty, wonderfully childish, wonderfully whimsical. An awkward interest (awkward because romantic) attaches to Miss Bud in the minds of the young ladies, on account of its being known to them that a husband has been chosen for her by will and bequest, and that ...
— The Mystery of Edwin Drood • Charles Dickens
... hurried mounting—the horses being already saddled—and a quick advance made on the game from many directions, Lieutenant Townsend, of the escort, and five or six of the Indians going with me. Alarmed by the commotion, bruin and her cubs turned about, and with an awkward yet rapid gait headed for a deep ravine, in which there ...
— The Memoirs of General P. H. Sheridan, Complete • General Philip Henry Sheridan
... he felt his mother's seriousness awkward, and said to himself she was unkind; why couldn't she make some allowance for a fellow? ...
— Weighed and Wanting • George MacDonald
... awkward. Miss Evelina still stood in the middle of the room, her veiled face slightly averted. The impenetrable shelter of chiffon awed Miss Mehitable, but she was not a woman to give up easily when embarked upon ...
— A Spinner in the Sun • Myrtle Reed
... the most any of us can hope to do," answered Mrs. Goddard with a little smile. "We all have our awkward age, I suppose." ...
— A Tale of a Lonely Parish • F. Marion Crawford
... poisonous antiseptic tablets into the medicine, only to have his plan frustrated by the unexpected presence of Big Lena. He was not sure that the woman had seen his action. But he took no chances, and with an apparent awkward movement of his hat, destroyed the evidence, sought out LeFroy, who had already been warned of the impending attack, and ordered him to place three or four of his most dependable Indians in the cottage, with instructions not only to protect ...
— The Gun-Brand • James B. Hendryx
... that day disheartened and disconcerted Etheldred. To do mischief where she most wished to do good, to grieve where she longed to comfort, seemed to be her fate; it was vain to attempt anything for anyone's good, while all her warm feelings and high aspirations were thwarted by the awkward ungainly hands and heedless eyes that Nature had given her. Nor did the following day, Saturday, do much for her comfort, by giving her the company of her brothers. That it was Norman's sixteenth birthday seemed ...
— The Daisy Chain, or Aspirations • Charlotte Yonge
... were a sweet recognition of his greatness. It was a fawning desire for that recognition that caused his smirking approach to the grain merchant. So strong was the desire that, though he coloured and felt awkward at the contemptuous reference to his father, he sniggered and went on talking, as if nothing untoward had been said. He was one of the band impossible to snub, not because they are endowed with superior moral courage, but because their easy self-importance ...
— The House with the Green Shutters • George Douglas Brown
... covered with hoods, their mouths, eyes, and noses alone coming into contact with the air. If they had not been exposed the breath would have frozen their coverings, and they would have been obliged to take them off with the help of an axe—an awkward way of undressing. The interminable plain kept on with fatiguing monotony; icebergs of uniform aspect and hummocks whose irregularity ended by seeming always the same; blocks cast in the same mould, and icebergs between which tortuous valleys wound. The travellers spoke little, and ...
— The English at the North Pole - Part I of the Adventures of Captain Hatteras • Jules Verne
... like all of the rest of your breed, big and awkward, crowding in where you don't belong, messing up the face of the earth, spoiling things right and left. I wonder if the good Lord Himself knows what he ...
— Man to Man • Jackson Gregory
... had uttered the question, it seemed to her so impertinent, so awkward, that she was ashamed. She hastened to add, conscious she was saying something still more foolish, but, nevertheless, feeling impelled to say it. "Because my brother-in-law is a Catholic, and I am a Protestant, and I should like to ...
— The Saint • Antonio Fogazzaro
... your carriers be ready say the word, and let us be moving, for I begin to feel terribly stiff and awkward in the sinews, and shall be right glad to find myself in a steaming bath. Don't forget,' added he to his servant, 'the gout-stool and the moxa, and all necessary for a good shampooing, and remember to have the sago ready for me on coming out of the bath. Now ...
— Forgotten Tales of Long Ago • E. V. Lucas
... him. For instance, though at first he amused them by imitating dogs, and cats, and pigs, he next tried his powers at imitating any thing queer and odd in the boys themselves, and, for a time, this was most entertaining. When he mimicked the awkward walk of one boy, and the bad drawl of another, and the loutish carriage of a third, the school resounded with shouts of laughter, which seemed to our Hero a great triumph,—something like the cheers which had greeted ...
— The Fairy Godmothers and Other Tales • Mrs. Alfred Gatty
... barbarous, and insolent, whilst a third class has sprung up, with the silence and suddenness of an exhalation, higher than both, without participating in the original character of either, in which the principles of computation, and the vanity of wealth, are at awkward variance. ...
— The Stranger in France • John Carr
... engage her in the conversation presently. He found her quite able to discuss the airy topics which he started—the last new volume of poems, the picture of the year, and so on. There was nothing awkward or provincial in her manner; and if she did not say anything particularly brilliant, there was good sense in all her remarks, and she had a bright animated way of speaking ...
— Fenton's Quest • M. E. Braddon
... 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 dispositions, they naturally ...
— The Ladies' Vase - Polite Manual for Young Ladies • An American Lady
... When the waltz commenced, and the dancers whirled around each other in the giddy maze, there was some confusion, owing to the incapacity of some of the dancers. We judiciously remained still, allowing the others to weary themselves; and, when the awkward dancers had withdrawn, we joined in, and kept it up famously together with one other couple,—Andran and his partner. Never did I dance more lightly. I felt myself more than mortal, holding this loveliest ...
— The Sorrows of Young Werther • J.W. von Goethe
... lifted. Dieppe's topographical observations stood him in good stead now and saved him some moments' consideration. The fugitive had choice of two routes. But he would not return to the village: he might have to answer awkward questions about M. Guillaume, his late companion, there. He would make in another direction—presumably towards the nearest inhabited spot, where he could look to get more rapid means of escape than his own legs afforded. He would follow the road to the left then, ...
— Captain Dieppe • Anthony Hope
... and 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 old man when he found both Ministers firm as adamant against ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose
... convenient, and fashionable enough; and thus he was clothed, for the present, tolerably well, and was mighty well pleased to see himself almost as well clothed as his master. It is true he went awkwardly in these clothes at first: wearing the drawers was very awkward to him, and the sleeves of the waistcoat galled his shoulders and the inside of his arms; but a little easing them where he complained they hurt him, and using himself to them, he took to ...
— The Junior Classics, V5 • Edited by William Patten
... poke-bonnet, the two preceded by Uncle Ephraim's stentorian laugh, which had been heard before their feet had touched the porch outside. Mrs. Cromartin now bustled in, accompanied by her two daughters—slim, awkward girls, both dressed alike in high waists and short frocks; and after them the Bunsbys, father, mother, and son—all smiles, the last a painfully thin young lawyer, in a low collar and a shock of whitey-brown ...
— The Tides of Barnegat • F. Hopkinson Smith
... the whole party was entertained with brawn and beef, and stout home-brewed. The Squire himself mingled among the rustics, and was received with awkward demonstrations of deference and regard. It is true I perceived two or three of the younger peasants, as they were raising their tankards to their mouths when the Squire's back was turned, making something of a grimace, and giving each other the wink; but the moment they caught my eye ...
— Old Christmas From the Sketch Book of Washington Irving • Washington Irving
... yet used enough to social customs to know how to extricate himself dextrously from his false position, which his generally is who accosts people he is little acquainted with, and mingles in a conversation which does not concern him. He was mentally casting about for the least awkward manner of retreat, when he noticed that Aramis had let his handkerchief fall and (doubtless by mistake) put his foot on it. This seemed a favorable chance to repair his mistake of intrusion: he stooped down, and with ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VII (of X)—Continental Europe I • Various
... organs like yours Is hardly safe to step out of doors! Just fancy a horse that comes full pelt, But as quiet as if he was shod with felt, Till he rushes against you with all his force, And then I needn't describe of course, While he kicks you about without remorse, How awkward it is to be groomed by a horse! Or a bullock comes, as mad as King Lear, And you never dream that the brute is near, Till he pokes his horn right into your ear, Whether you like the thing or lump it, - And all for want of ...
— Playful Poems • Henry Morley
... Controller of the Finances could not afford to wait. "You accuse me of too great haste," he said to a friend, "and you forget that in my family we die of the gout at fifty." But this haste, combined with his awkward and haughty manners, proved the cause of his ruin. The courtiers, whose perquisites were in danger, were disgusted at his simplicity and economy. Although he was the friend of absolute government, he was accused of republican austerity. And his measures were not more popular ...
— The Eve of the French Revolution • Edward J. Lowell
... who had consigned the buckboard and horses to a tall awkward country lad who had slouched forward from the shadows, hurried off to light the ...
— Diane of the Green Van • Leona Dalrymple
... itself. "Uncle Sherlock 'll be wanting to talk home matters with me this evening, and how am I going to get rid of him? for I've got to be at my cabin a minute or two about eight o'clock." This was an awkward matter, and cost him much thought. But he found a way to beat the difficulty. "We'll go for a walk, and I'll leave him in the road a minute, so that he won't see what it is I do: the best way to throw a detective off the track, anyway, is to have him along when ...
— A Double Barrelled Detective Story • Mark Twain
... too, and said that Edith was in a great state of excitement about them! Then she condoled with Eleanor about the heat, and told Maurice there were cinders on his hat. But not even her careful matter-of-courseness could make the moment anything but awkward. In the four-mile drive to Green Hill—during which Eleanor said she hoped old Lion wouldn't run away;—the young husband seemed to grow younger and younger; and his wife, in her effort to talk to Mr. Houghton, seemed to grow older ...
— The Vehement Flame • Margaret Wade Campbell Deland
... 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 ...
— Confidence • Henry James
... Byron, "in the debate or rather discussion in the House of Lords on that question (the second negotiation) immediately behind Moira, who, while Grey was speaking, turned round to me repeatedly, and asked me whether I agreed with him. It was an awkward question to me, who had not heard both sides. Moira kept repeating to me, 'It is 'not' so; it ...
— Byron's Poetical Works, Vol. 1 • Byron
... allowed herself to be drawn unawares into familiar conversation with a most attractive young artist, when all of a sudden a rapid jerk of the carriage succeeded in extricating her perforce, and against her will, from this awkward dilemma. Something sharp pulled up their train unexpectedly. She was aware of a loud noise and a crash in front, almost instantaneously followed by a thrilling jar—a low dull thud—a sound of broken glass—a quick blank ...
— What's Bred In the Bone • Grant Allen
... looked up, as one does when a strange presence comes into the room. He saw, standing near the door, a tall and comely young man, whose carriage betokened him not ill-born. The stranger advanced and bowed gravely. "Pardon me, sir," he said, "but I fear I am awkward in thus intruding. The man showed me up the stair and bade me enter. He said that I should find here Sir Arthur Pembroke, upon whom I bear letters from friends of his ...
— The Mississippi Bubble • Emerson Hough
... the mind of Colonel Gordon, R.E., the keenest regret that he had ever embarked his honour and expended his labours in the cause of such allies. The only other instance in which British influence was brought to bear towards rescuing the Chinese Government from an awkward dilemma was when the Japanese threatened reprisals for outrages committed against their subjects, and went the length of sending a considerable force to occupy the island of Formosa. Hostilities had commenced, and the war might have proved a protracted if not hazardous one for the ...
— The Contemporary Review, Volume 36, September 1879 • Various
... to herself with a start. "Wh-where?" she asked. She was anxious not to appear awkward, but she did not see any ...
— The Garden of the Plynck • Karle Wilson Baker
... shoe-buckles! What bright eyes, (Ah, those were Waller's Sacharissa's as she passed!) what killing looks and graceful motions! How the faces of the whole ring are dressed in smiles! how the repartee goes round! how wit and folly, elegance and awkward imitation of it, set one another off! Happy, thoughtless age, when kings and nobles led purely ornamental lives; when the utmost stretch of a morning's study went no farther than the choice of a sword-knot, or the adjustment of a side-curl; when the soul spoke ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... spoke cleverly, as usual, but fighting under difficulties, and dodging about, and shifting his ground with every mark of weakness. The result is that Londonderry cannot go, and must either resign or his nomination be cancelled. This is miserable weakness on the part of the Government, and an awkward position to be placed in. It is very questionable if the Duke of Wellington will not resign upon it, which would make another great embarrassment, for there is nobody to fill his place. It serves the Government ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. III • Charles C. F. Greville
... should incite her young people to stir up the villagers. Goodness knows where that mayn't lead! Tod's cottage and land, you see, are freehold, the only freehold thereabouts; and his being a brother of Stanley's makes it particularly awkward ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... terrible. I was divided between two impulses, both equally savage 1 think, either to stab or to fall upon your breast and weep. But you will bear me witness that my greeting in reality was conventionally awkward. In any case, your eyes would have saved me. They are wide and deep, and as you stood here by the window where I am writing now, with both my hands clasped in yours, I saw a bright beam leap up far within them like candles suddenly lighted in an open grave. You had not come merely to ...
— The Jessica Letters: An Editor's Romance • Paul Elmer More
... exclaimed George, heartily, "you are right. It would be folly to do otherwise. Well, returning to the awkward predicament I have placed you in, what is best to ...
— Under the Rebel's Reign • Charles Neufeld
... will try. Say nothing of this, Archdale. I shall wait a day or two for those ships. It would be awkward, wouldn't it, if the French ones came instead?" His words were light, but the ...
— The New England Magazine, Volume 1, No. 2, February, 1886. - The Bay State Monthly, Volume 4, No. 2, February, 1886. • Various
... girls except Mina and Lina had come in his way, and as Lina attended to his admonitions far more docilely than her sister, he determined to make her his helpmate. He was ignorant as to how such matters ought to be conducted, and felt a little shy and awkward. He had got no further in his wooing than pressing his lady-love's foot under the table, and whenever he had done so he was always much more confused than Lina, whose foot had received ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VIII • Various
... and looked anxiously at one another. Mr. Stubbs got up from his chair to reach the matches, Mr. Packhurst proceeded to wind up his watch, and Mr. Waterson took up the poker to attend to the fire. It was an awkward moment, for at the season of goodwill nobody wished to tell Mr. Wilson exactly what ...
— Amusements in Mathematics • Henry Ernest Dudeney
... men lolled on the fences, or sat smoking under the shade of some tree. The implements of labor used excited their surprise. The hoes were as ponderous, as clumsy, and as heavy as pickaxes; the ploughs were miserably awkward things—a straight pole with a straight wooden share, which was sometimes, though by no means always, pointed with iron. These ploughs were worked in various ways, being sometimes pulled by donkeys, sometimes by ...
— Among the Brigands • James de Mille
... friendship, seemed to smile more pleasantly and affectionately when it was over. At least Olive thought so. She did not see her beautiful idol again for some time; and feeling little interest in any other girl, and none at all in the awkward Oldchurch "beaux," she took consolation in her own harmless fashion. This was hiding herself under the thick curtains, and looking out of ...
— Olive - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik, (AKA Dinah Maria Mulock)
... and the silver fish were leaping from the stream. The gillie handled the big rod as if it had been a fairy's wand, but to me it was like a giant's spear. It was a very different affair from fishing with five ounces of split bamboo on a Long Island trout-pond. The monstrous fly, like an awkward bird, went fluttering everywhere but in the right direction. It was the mercy of Providence that preserved the gillie's life. But he was very patient and forbearing, leading me on from one pool to another, as I spoiled the water and snatched the hook out of the mouth of ...
— Little Rivers - A Book Of Essays In Profitable Idleness • Henry van Dyke
... time drew near for the Legislative elections of 1889, the Republicans in power began to perceive that their methods had not been crowned with absolute success. The awkward corner caused by the enforced resignation of President Grevy had indeed been turned, because the Constitution of the Third Republic provides for the election of the President by the Assembly. But it is one thing ...
— France and the Republic - A Record of Things Seen and Learned in the French Provinces - During the 'Centennial' Year 1889 • William Henry Hurlbert
... "That's awkward." He crossed to the door into the wainscoting and listened there, then at the other door into the corridor, and returned ...
— The Secret Witness • George Gibbs
... her hands to the middle of the room, they were merry and they laughed; and Lelechka again hid her head against her mother's knees, and went on lisping and lisping, without end, her sweet little words, so fascinating yet so awkward. ...
— Best Russian Short Stories • Various
... 1 in the Awkward Squad of the rank and file of life, and yet had his glimmering notions of standing true to his colors, and in instinctive refinement of feeling was much above others who outranked him in ...
— Ten Girls from Dickens • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... were the only ones in the corridor at the time and there could be no doubt he did not wish to speak to me. I did not dream of such impertinent treatment from a man, whom I had cordially received at my apartments; why should he insult me? He could have no other excuse than a desire to avoid an awkward interview, during which questions might be asked, which he did not care to answer. But why? This second mystery troubled me almost as much as the first. Although I tried to drive the thought from my head, that young man's action in avoiding ...
— The Confession of a Child of The Century • Alfred de Musset
... virtues and accomplishments, he might afterwards have enjoyed his title and estate with equal comfort and reputation. But as merit does not go by inheritance, like house and land, young Rustick's character was entirely the reverse of his father's. He was of an awkward clumsy make; and the heaviness of his disposition, and the coarseness of his manners perfectly corresponded with the shape of his body. Though he was sent to school very early, and put under the ...
— Vice in its Proper Shape • Anonymous
... world's materialistic thought, it is true—which he was learning to look upon as demonstrable truths. The Bible had slowly taken on a new meaning to him, a meaning far different from that set forth in the clumsy, awkward phrases and expressions into which the translators so frequently poured the wine of the spirit, and which, literally interpreted, have resulted in such violent controversies, such puerile ideas of God and His thought toward man, and such religious ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... as legends wove themselves about John A. Macdonald, and Laurier. I remember 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 ...
— The Masques of Ottawa • Domino
... roots reaching the water. We urged the canoe forward, and presently up rose the swan, no longer presenting the same graceful appearance it did in the water. Though its wings were powerful enough to lift it in the air, its body had a remarkably heavy, awkward appearance. ...
— Snow Shoes and Canoes - The Early Days of a Fur-Trader in the Hudson Bay Territory • William H. G. Kingston
... and sorry at the same time, and very much perplexed. Such a peremptory but open-hearted invitation could not be declined, yet there were dangers in the acceptance. If Erica's name should transpire, it might be very awkward, but she had not broached the suggested change of name to her, and every day her courage dwindled every day that resolute mouth frightened her more. She was quite aware that Erica's steady, courageous honesty would unsparingly condemn all her ...
— We Two • Edna Lyall
... two sharp whistles. Mahon, with a puzzled frown, looked from the front door. An awkward little broncho was trotting past the corner of the house toward ...
— The Return of Blue Pete • Luke Allan
... on account of the somewhat awkward constr. Lamb. read antiquos philosophos. Popularis: cf. 13. Res non bonas: MSS. om. non, which Or. added with two very early editions. Faber ingeniously supposed the true reading to be ...
— Academica • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... own, which had been worn but very little: in a word, he clothed me from head to foot. It was a very kind and agreeable present, as any one may imagine, to one in my circumstances, but never was anything in the world of that kind so unpleasant, awkward, and uneasy as it was to me to ...
— Robinson Crusoe • Daniel Defoe
... 'I'm very awkward and stupid, I don't know how to say what I want to. I think I loved you from that first day at Court Leys. I did not understand then what had happened; I suddenly felt that something new and strange had come into my life. And day by day I loved you more, and ...
— The Explorer • W. Somerset Maugham
... thought all along it was a bit awkward for them here, they not being so much used to looking after things, and I asked leave to come and help now and then. Of course, they said that I could not be allowed to serve for hire in Altruria; and one thing led to another, ...
— Through the Eye of the Needle - A Romance • W. D. Howells
... there was no awkward, conscious period of adjustment for the two. They took up their life simply and quite as if it were no new thing to them both—as if they had come together again after a long separation. And it was, ...
— Life at High Tide - Harper's Novelettes • Various
... I, "and I will try it on him. If he recognizes the sword and remembers its properties when I attempt to brandish it at him, he'll be forced to confess, though it would be awkward if he is the wrong man and the sword should work on him as it does on ...
— The Enchanted Typewriter • John Kendrick Bangs
... arrived at Fraunheim, 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 had reached ...
— Miss Cayley's Adventures • Grant Allen
... deserved; but I had no sooner felt his blade than I knew that he was no swordsman. Possibly he had taken half-a-dozen lessons in rapier art, and practised what he learned with an Englishman as heavy and awkward as himself. But that was all. He made a few wild clumsy rushes, parrying widely. When I had foiled these, the danger was over, and I ...
— Under the Red Robe • Stanley Weyman
... strolling in the woods she suddenly encountered Bill, who thought this was as favorable an opportunity as he would probably have. He was rather awkward and unaccustomed to love-making, but he resolved to do his best. Planting his foot upon a log, he with one hand drew from his head his old wool cap and thrust it under his arm, while with the other he twirled ...
— Tempest and Sunshine • Mary J. Holmes
... tempest, acting the decrees of Fate, had rent all the rigging from the vessel; no mast, no rudder left, not a rope or plank, but an awkward shapeless body of a ship tost up and ...
— The Satyricon • Petronius Arbiter
... with the awkward gestures and the angry look in her eyes that were always hers when she was ...
— The Captives • Hugh Walpole
... her flights with admiration as he helped the timid and awkward tyros of the company, swung into step ...
— Otherwise Phyllis • Meredith Nicholson
... I was relieved from this awkward position by the entry of old Madame Valakhin into the room. Rising, I bowed, and straightway recovered my faculty of speech. On the other hand, an extraordinary change now took place in Sonetchka. All her gaiety and bonhomie disappeared, her smile became quite a different one, ...
— Youth • Leo Tolstoy
... thrown away on Fontenoy. He stood beside her, awkward and irresponsive. Not being allowed to be womanish, she could only try once ...
— Sir George Tressady, Vol. I • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... it was small, and its motions were awkward and lumbering. He thought it was a dog, and was about to raise his revolver to fire at it when he thought better of it, as he did not want to arouse the household if he could conquer his ...
— Ted Strong's Motor Car • Edward C. Taylor
... Shaw was recently entertained at a house party. While the other guests were dancing, one of the onlookers called Mr. Shaw's attention to the awkward dancing of ...
— Toaster's Handbook - Jokes, Stories, and Quotations • Peggy Edmund & Harold W. Williams, compilers
... clinging to his rope with the strength of a giant. All was well. At the last knot but one, just as he was about to let himself drop, a prudent impulse led him to feel for the ground with his feet, and he found no footing. The predicament was awkward for a man bathed in sweat, tired, and perplexed, and in a position where his life was at stake on even chances. He was about to risk it, when a trivial incident stopped him; his hat fell off; happily, he listened ...
— Parisians in the Country - The Illustrious Gaudissart, and The Muse of the Department • Honore de Balzac
... you an easy poise of body and head. Always remember that it is upon balancing the body that you should depend for your seat; although, of course, the grip of the knees does a good deal. Also remember, always, to keep your feet straight; nothing is so awkward as turned-out toes. Besides, in that position, if the horse starts you are very likely to dig ...
— With Kitchener in the Soudan - A Story of Atbara and Omdurman • G. A. Henty
... hour went by, and the tide had begun to flood, when this came to pass. Leaving the pirates at their work, we stole back to the boats. One by one, and noiselessly, we shoved them off and made them fast in an awkward flotilla. Just as we were shoving off the last skiff, our own, one of the men came upon us. It was Barchi. His quick eye took in the situation at a glance, and he sprang for us; but we went clear ...
— Tales of the Fish Patrol • Jack London
... a little dazed at first, then anything but glad to see me. The thought of our old college days flashed for a moment into my mind. How far away they seemed just now. Through our first few awkward remarks he lapsed back into such a tired, worn indifference that I was soon on the point of leaving. But that bony gauntness in his face, and all it showed me he had been through, gave him some right to his rudeness, I thought. So I changed my mind and stuck to my purpose ...
— The Harbor • Ernest Poole
... in, and rescued the vizier from the awkward position in which he was placed by his own imprudence, in permitting the man to appear ...
— The Pacha of Many Tales • Frederick Marryat
... his awkward way, and, as the boys peeped forth, they fancied that his big brown eyes glanced mischievously at them; but they were mistaken. He did not see nor scent them, but went by, and, in a few minutes, disappeared from sight among ...
— The Hunters of the Ozark • Edward S. Ellis
... "this was a private letter which Mr. ... Mr. Dulkinghorn certainly did not expect you to see. That makes it awkward ..." ...
— The Yellow Streak • Williams, Valentine
... well that they did so, for the path almost immediately grew so steep and difficult that before they had advanced another hundred yards the party found it necessary to frequently drop on their hands and knees to pass some of the more awkward places without being precipitated into the stream which they heard brawling some hundreds of feet below them at the bottom of the ravine. And now, as they slowly and with difficulty made their way along the steep mountain-side, a low murmur, gradually growing in strength and volume of sound, ...
— The Cruise of the Thetis - A Tale of the Cuban Insurrection • Harry Collingwood
... alone, nor in an awkward situation of any kind, but always came cordially to the rescue. My gratitude toward ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... Arruns takes, And it inters with murmurs dolorous, And calls the place Bidental. On the altar He lays a ne'er-yok'd bull, and pours down wine, Then crams salt leaven on his crooked knife: The beast long struggled, as being like to prove 610 An awkward sacrifice; but by the horns The quick priest pulled him on his knees, and slew him. No vein sprung out, but from the yawning gash, Instead of red blood, wallow'd venomous gore. These direful signs made ...
— The Works of Christopher Marlowe, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Christopher Marlowe
... and his poems recalled in this manner after all the world thought they had got rid of the concern.' (1824) 'Mr. Shelley died, it seems, with a volume of Mr. Keats's poetry "grasped with one hand in his bosom"—rather an awkward posture, as you will be convinced if you try it. But what a rash man Shelley was to put to sea in a frail boat with Jack's poetry on board!... Down went the boat with a "swirl"! I lay a wager that it righted soon after ejecting Jack.'... (1826) 'Keats was a Cockney, ...
— Adonais • Shelley
... if things were going badly for Coke, they were going almost worse for Bacon, who now found himself in a very awkward position both with the King and with Buckingham. Nor was he succeeding as well as he could have wished in his attacks upon Coke. He had made an attack by proceeding against him for a certain action, when a judge; but Coke had parried this thrust by paying what was then a very ...
— The Curious Case of Lady Purbeck - A Scandal of the XVIIth Century • Thomas Longueville
... 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
... chair, twisting his hair in little ringlets. Then I used to say, "Bill is studying up some new devilment." His clothes were always several sizes too large, and his face was as smooth as a woman's and never had a particle of hair on it. Canada was a slick one. He had a squeaking, boyish voice, and awkward, gawky manners, and a way of asking fool questions and putting on a good natured sort of a grin, that led everybody to believe that he was the rankest kind of a sucker—the greenest sort of a country jake. Woe to the man who picked ...
— Forty Years a Gambler on the Mississippi • George H. Devol
... sallow and flat of cheek from anxiety. For with the setting of the sun it seemed that luck flooded upon Terry Hollis. He began to bet in chunks of five hundred, alternating between the red and the odd, and winning with startling regularity. His winnings were now shoved into an awkward canvas bag. Twenty thousand dollars! That ...
— Black Jack • Max Brand
... is a rather large, heavy-looking fellow, with round face, broad shoulders, and a very awkward gait. His hair is cropped close to his head, and on one side of the head, in jaunty fashion, he wears a small round cap,—too small by far to cover it, as caps generally do. It is of red or blue or green, and worked with fanciful figures of gold or ...
— ZigZag Journeys in Northern Lands; - The Rhine to the Arctic • Hezekiah Butterworth
... quietly, and with her usual air, and Mr. Amos never discovered the work his tidings wrought; he told his wife, sister Powle looked a little blank, he thought, at missing her expected despatches, and no wonder. It was an awkward thing. ...
— The Old Helmet, Volume II • Susan Warner
... further afield, we may glance at the Yana method of expression. Literally translated, the equivalent Yana sentence would read something like "kill-s he farmer[56] he to duck-ling," in which "he" and "to" are rather awkward English renderings of a general third personal pronoun (he, she, it, or they) and an objective particle which indicates that the following noun is connected with the verb otherwise than as subject. The suffixed element in "kill-s" ...
— Language - An Introduction to the Study of Speech • Edward Sapir
... families. The front was one long undivided verandah, where the unmarried men slept; the back part was partitioned into small cabins, each of which had a round hole with a door to fit it, and through this the female inmates crept backwards and forwards in the most awkward manner and ridiculous posture. This house was in length two hundred and thirty feet, and elevated from the ground. Those belonging to the chiefs were smaller, well constructed of timber and plank, and covered with shingles or thin plates of board ...
— The History of Sumatra - Containing An Account Of The Government, Laws, Customs And - Manners Of The Native Inhabitants • William Marsden
... to get the caldron for them in the Joetun country; Thor, after many adventures, clapping the Pot on his head, like a huge hat, and walking off with it,—quite lost in it, the ears of the Pot reaching down to his heels! A kind of vacant hugeness, large awkward gianthood, characterises that Norse System; enormous force, as yet altogether untutored, stalking helpless with large uncertain strides. Consider only their primary mythus of the Creation. The Gods, having got the ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle
... does" replied Gladys "it will be very awkward if James is at home, because if ever a man knew how to make himself disagreable James is ...
— Daisy Ashford: Her Book • Daisy Ashford
... West-End Private Inquiry Agent about these very three Stocks, he appears not to have heard me distinctly, and thought I was asking him about Goschens, the old Three-per-Cents., and Bank Stock, about which, of course, he could only report favourably. It is an awkward mistake, but, as I point out to all my clients, one must not regard the Dealer as infallible. These things will occur. However, I am going to be more careful in future; and I may as well announce now, that on Monday next I am about to open a new Syndicate Combination Pool, with a Stock about ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99., September 20, 1890 • Various
... forward, impudent baggage as she is, always thrusting herself in the way, and taking other people's apples to make her own little pie, had defrauded Lenny of his due; and now Susceptibility, who looks like a shy, blush-faced, awkward Virtue in her teens—but who, nevertheless, is always engaged in picking the pockets of her sisters—tried to filch from him his lawful recompense. The case was perplexing; for the parson held Susceptibility in great ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... more than the major had been expecting, and he suddenly found himself placed in a most awkward position. But his presence of mind never forsook him; and, accepting the rebel's proffered hand, he shook it with apparent cordiality, ...
— Frank on a Gun-Boat • Harry Castlemon
... to having the whole ceiling raised, because her room was over the back parlor, and she would have no floor while the alteration was going on, which would be very awkward. Besides, her room was not very high now, and, if the floor were raised, perhaps she could ...
— The Peterkin Papers • Lucretia P Hale
... of amenity expected from her, in relation to her brother, was not exhibited. She might perhaps be feeling herself awkward at introductions, and had ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... possessed the same virtues and accomplishments, he might afterwards have enjoyed his title and estate with equal comfort and reputation. But as merit does not go by inheritance, like house and land, young Rustick's character was entirely the reverse of his father's. He was of an awkward clumsy make; and the heaviness of his disposition, and the coarseness of his manners perfectly corresponded with the shape of his body. Though he was sent to school very early, and put under the care of the best instructors which the ...
— Vice in its Proper Shape • Anonymous
... French frontier, and M. Rouher, a thorough Imperialist, headed a deputation of senators to congratulate the emperor, in the name of the Senate, on having drawn the sword when the Prussian king rejected the demand for guarantees. M. Ollivier reasonably complains that this unauthorised demonstration was awkward and mischievous; for while the Senate was thus made to attribute the rupture to the king's refusal, the ministry was declaring war on account of the 'soufflet de Bismarck'—the insult embodied in the Prussian telegram. Yet M. Ollivier, looking ...
— Studies in Literature and History • Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall
... enough, until a great awkward giant, named Bob, came and looked very hard at us. At first we did not like him; but he was really very kind, and called us "Ducky, ducky, ducky!" and threw us handfuls of barley. He then seized two or three of my fattest brothers and sisters, ...
— The Nursery, February 1873, Vol. XIII. - A Monthly Magazine for Youngest People • Various
... Pothier?" said Philibert, observing his guide jolting with an audible grunt at every step of his awkward nag. ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... and wait ere he can awaken love in her who is to him the one woman in the world. Many a woman has to wait and wonder and face distress. Then, too, till the stage of mutual acknowledgment is reached love makes men and women awkward. They do uncouth, crude, and clumsy things. They get into muddles. They make mistakes. It would seem that some delicate process of mutual adjustment is often necessary before two souls can really find each other, and while the ...
— Men, Women, and God • A. Herbert Gray
... A shrewd British officer who knew the Indian character, took that characteristic into account in laying his plans for the capture of Eugene Sue's famous Feringhea. He found out Feringhea's hiding-place, and sent a guard by night to seize him, but the squad was awkward and he got away. However, they got the rest of the family—the mother, wife, child, and brother—and brought them to the officer, at Jubbulpore; the officer did not fret, but bided his time: "I knew Feringhea would not go far ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... from modern inventions. The telegraph, the submarine cable, and the telephone, all have served to render communication prompt and certain. Steamships and railroads carry letters half round the globe for a price too trivial to be paid for delivering a message round the corner. The old, awkward methods of making payments have given way to a tolerably uniform system of coinage. Instead of each petty principality and each town having its own coins, as was common, especially in Germany and Italy, before the nineteenth century, all coins are now issued ...
— An Introduction to the History of Western Europe • James Harvey Robinson
... of feeling, Monmouth's eyes shone moist. Grey sheathed his sword with an awkward laugh, and a still more awkward word of apology to Wilding. The Duke, moved by a sudden impulse to make amends for his unworthy suspicions, for his perhaps unworthy reception of Wilding earlier that evening in the council-room, drew the ...
— Mistress Wilding • Rafael Sabatini
... and regard of none. His capacity was considerable; but fitter to discourse on general maxims, than to conduct any intricate business: his intentions were just; but more adapted to the conduct of private life than to the government of kingdoms. Awkward in his person, and ungainly in his manners, he was ill qualified to command respect; partial and undiscerning in his affections, he was little fitted to acquire general love. Of a feeble temper, more than of a frail judgment; exposed to ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part D. - From Elizabeth to James I. • David Hume
... a shy good-bye of Sanin; he felt as it were in awe of him; he greatly admired him. Klueber saw Sanin to his lodging, and took leave of him stiffly. The well-regulated German, for all his self-confidence, felt awkward. And ...
— The Torrents of Spring • Ivan Turgenev
... prattling to the one of his fancy about everything in creation until he is so tired that he can scarcely stand erect. The curtain drops and rises with the word "Den." In this, the second scene, he finally gets around to the point where he makes all manner of awkward protestations of love. The hearer of the Rhyme is left laughing, with a sort of satisfactory feeling that possibly he succeeded in his suit and possibly he didn't. Among the many examples of Rhymes where verse ...
— Negro Folk Rhymes - Wise and Otherwise: With a Study • Thomas W. Talley
... was like going to meet an enemy, dear and terrible. I was divided between two impulses, both equally savage 1 think, either to stab or to fall upon your breast and weep. But you will bear me witness that my greeting in reality was conventionally awkward. In any case, your eyes would have saved me. They are wide and deep, and as you stood here by the window where I am writing now, with both my hands clasped in yours, I saw a bright beam leap up far within them like candles suddenly lighted in an open grave. You had not come merely to ...
— The Jessica Letters: An Editor's Romance • Paul Elmer More
... themselves, with two exceptions—namely, Captain Avery and Captain Kidd. In May, 1699, Kidd suddenly appeared in a small vessel at New York, with rich booty. His chief patron, Lord Bellomont, was now Governor, and was placed in the most awkward position of having to carry out his orders and arrest Kidd for piracy and send him in chains to England in H.M.S. Advice, which ship had been sent specially to New York to carry back Kidd, Bradish, and other pirates ...
— The Pirates' Who's Who - Giving Particulars Of The Lives and Deaths Of The Pirates And Buccaneers • Philip Gosse
... he, who stood there singing in the midst of the downpour, took a few steps to the side, saw the red shawl, the face, the big brown eyes, the astonished little open mouth; instantly his position became awkward, in surprise he looked down himself; but in the same moment a small cry was heard, the projecting branch swayed violently, the red end of the shawl disappeared in a flash, the girl's face disappeared, and there was a rustling and rustling further and further away behind the hazelbushes. Then he ran. ...
— Mogens and Other Stories - Mogens; The Plague At Bergamo; There Should Have Been Roses; Mrs. Fonss • Jens Peter Jacobsen
... fit, against the coppery sky. No doubt from his height he could make out the monsters. Perhaps Hogan could see the great fish shooting along with sinister, exertionless ease toward these clumsy adventurers—a school of trout striking at three awkward beetles. ...
— The Cruise of the Dry Dock • T. S. Stribling
... put on some of my expensive new toilets and went with my step-mother in our handsome conveyance to make calls. I was presented to every one of any note, and drank tea in the best drawing-rooms the Capital could boast of. So far my step-mother looked happy. I had not been awkward at introductions, nor dull in conversations. I had even made some very pithy remarks where they could do me most service, and knew the name of a historic personage to whom Lady Pendleton alluded vaguely, forgetting his title. I was invaded in my turn on our reception day by ...
— The Doctor's Daughter • "Vera"
... very welcome," said Julius, laughing, "provided you can manage with the old women's cats. I should find such companions rather awkward ...
— The Three Brides • Charlotte M. Yonge
... the buckboard and horses to a tall awkward country lad who had slouched forward from the shadows, hurried off to light ...
— Diane of the Green Van • Leona Dalrymple
... sought and so highly prized in Oriental art, is the very thing which our art and our architecture most conspicuously lack. To the eye sensitive to rhythm, our essays in these fields appear awkward and unconvincing, lacking a certain inevitability. We must restore to art that first great canon of Chinese aesthetics, "Rhythmic vitality, or the life movement of the spirit through the rhythm of things." It cannot ...
— Architecture and Democracy • Claude Fayette Bragdon
... her). But what on earth am I to say? (Stopping as she disappears, and turning to Charteris grumbling) Now really you know, Charteris, this is devilish awkward, upon my life it is. That was a most indelicate thing of you to say plump out before us all—that about you ...
— The Philanderer • George Bernard Shaw
... limbs, laughter, sobs, reactions simply reflex or perceptive, in connection with immediate stimulation, with inhibition, without choice, without adaptation by reflection. The thoughts that fill these ruminations are childish and stupid, just as the acts are vulgar and awkward; there is a manifest return to childhood and barbarism. The behavior of the agitated individual is well below that which he should show normally. It is easy to explain these facts in the language we have adopted. The ...
— A Psychiatric Milestone - Bloomingdale Hospital Centenary, 1821-1921 • Various
... encounter no resistance, as it thrilled on its way through our brain, from established errors. What the genius and the prophet are there for is just that—to make us listen to unwelcome truths, to compel us to hear, to drive awkward facts straight home with sledge-hammer force to the unwilling hearts and brains of us. Not what you want to hear, or what I want to hear, is good and useful for us; but what we don't want to hear, what we can't bear to think, what we hate to believe, what we ...
— Post-Prandial Philosophy • Grant Allen
... to say that you must not take some thought for your gestures. If that were meant, why this chapter? When the sergeant despairingly besought the recruit in the awkward squad to step out and look at himself, he gave splendid advice—and worthy of personal application. Particularly while you are in the learning days of public speaking you must learn to criticise your own ...
— The Art of Public Speaking • Dale Carnagey (AKA Dale Carnegie) and J. Berg Esenwein
... in the corridor at the time and there could be no doubt he did not wish to speak to me. I did not dream of such impertinent treatment from a man, whom I had cordially received at my apartments; why should he insult me? He could have no other excuse than a desire to avoid an awkward interview, during which questions might be asked, which he did not care to answer. But why? This second mystery troubled me almost as much as the first. Although I tried to drive the thought from my head, that young man's action in avoiding me seemed to have ...
— The Confession of a Child of The Century • Alfred de Musset
... were lying, piled up, and everything in the room was neatly cleared away, but the old woman had vanished. The maiden thanked God, and sat still till evening came, when the step-mother came in and marvelled to see the work completed. "Just look, you awkward creature," said she, "what can be done when people are industrious; and why couldst thou not set about something else? There thou sittest with thy hands crossed." When she went out she said, "The creature is worth more than her salt. I must give her some ...
— Household Tales by Brothers Grimm • Grimm Brothers
... with the smallest possible bearing upon right conduct; a religion perfectly at its ease with much scamping of lessons and hard work in general; indulgent of occasional cribbing, and of skilful manipulation of awkward truth, of betting and small extravagances; and innocent of all sense of dishonesty in allowing a struggling parent to pay large sums for education while the school-time so purchased, often at the cost of home comforts and pleasant outings, is ...
— The Power of Womanhood, or Mothers and Sons - A Book For Parents, And Those In Loco Parentis • Ellice Hopkins
... brilliant reputation among the faculties, a man finds himself very much at a stand who is unprovided with one; for the Imagination, the Judgment, and the Reason walk off in search of the Memory—each in opposite directions; and the Mind, left at home by itself, is in a very awkward predicament—gets comatose—snores loudly, and expires. For our own part, we would much rather lose our Imagination and our Judgment—nay, our very Reason itself—than our Memory—provided we were suffered ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson
... twining stiff fibres of awkward speech—things young men blurted out—plaiting them round his own smooth garland, making the bright side show, the vivid greens, the sharp thorns, manliness. He loved it. Indeed to Sopwith a man could ...
— Jacob's Room • Virginia Woolf
... understanding yet a single word. At this awkward juncture the old man came hurrying along the passage, and Mrs. Macintyre turned to him with ...
— The Guinea Stamp - A Tale of Modern Glasgow • Annie S. Swan
... evacuation then was out of the question. They saw Percy making his dispositions, and could see nothing to modify on their own side. All they could do was to await the result. "There," says Greene, "we all stood in a very awkward situation." Had they remained much longer it would have been more than awkward. Putnam, Greene, and Mercer felt that Washington at least ought not to be exposed in a position which might become dangerous, and they all ...
— The Campaign of 1776 around New York and Brooklyn • Henry P. Johnston
... change of mien, as Jim suddenly ran down the steps to gaze into the taxicab, then nodding to Shirley. The house-holder as promptly returned through his front door, while Shirley swiftly unmanacled the prisoner enough to let him walk, stiff and awkward from the long ordeal in the car. The stern grip, of his ...
— The Voice on the Wire • Eustace Hale Ball
... attachment of which you have hesitated to tell me? Hesitate no longer, my dearest Salome. Tell me all about it. It is nothing to be ashamed of. Love is natural. Love is holy. Oh, it is your mother that should be telling you all this, my poor girl, not your awkward, blundering old father," suddenly said the banker, breaking off in his discourse as his daughter hid her crimson face ...
— The Lost Lady of Lone • E.D.E.N. Southworth
... justification, but it was a salve. Sarah was in the shopping period of her life—shopping for a husband, so to speak. She was entitled to the best she could get ... and Bob did not seem to be the best. Farley was sprightly, interesting, with the manners of a more effete world than Coldriver; Bob was awkward, ofttimes silent, lacking polish. Farley was solicitous in small matters that Bob failed utterly to perceive; Farley was always skilled in minute points of decorum, whose very existence was unknown to Bob. In short, ...
— Scattergood Baines • Clarence Budington Kelland
... you," replied the Bear, politely; and at once he began to pick berries and to put them into Twinkle's pail. His big paws looked very clumsy and awkward, but it was astonishing how many blueberries the bear could pick with them. Twinkle had hard work to keep up with him, and almost before she realized how fast they had worked, the little pail was full and overflowing with fine, ...
— Twinkle and Chubbins - Their Astonishing Adventures in Nature-Fairyland • L. Frank (Lyman Frank) Baum
... long silence, to me an awkward one; I didn't know what to do or say. Then I perceived the best thing was to let him ease his hurt by just talking on ... and he talked ... on and on ... in his slow, drawling monotone ... and ever so often came the refrain, "Christ, but she was a good woman, ...
— Tramping on Life - An Autobiographical Narrative • Harry Kemp
... Pole? That would be awkward for your friends and gratifying to your enemies, if one may believe science and history. But, perhaps, you are in earnest after all, poor fellow! for my father tells me you are going over the hills and far away to the moose-yards. How valiant ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... astonished at this rough mode of having a service done him, was not sorry to extricate himself thus from the affair, having had time to reflect how very awkward it might be for him to be recognized, after striking the head of the judicial authority, the agent of the very Cardinal who was to present him to the King. He observed also that around him was assembled a crowd of the lowest class of people, among whom he blushed to find himself. He therefore ...
— Cinq Mars, Complete • Alfred de Vigny
... being awkward," said the voice of Mr. Pogram in his ear. "I say, do you think—no hand himself, ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... and he waded across, steadying her, while the current rippled round his legs. Some of the stones were covered, but with his support she sprang across the gaps and the effort did not hurt her foot as much as she had thought. He was not awkward. She liked his firm grasp, and his care that she did not fall; particularly since she saw he was satisfied to give her the help she needed and knew when to stop. After she got across she thanked ...
— The Buccaneer Farmer - Published In England Under The Title "Askew's Victory" • Harold Bindloss
... standpoint of structure, too, "The Fortunate Foundlings" is an improvement over the haphazard plots of Mrs. Haywood's early romances, though the double-barreled story necessitated by twin hero and heroine could hardly be told without awkward interruptions in the sequence of one part of the narrative in order to forward the other. But the author doubtless felt that the reader's interest would be freshened by turning from the amorous adventures of Louisa to the daring deeds ...
— The Life and Romances of Mrs. Eliza Haywood • George Frisbie Whicher
... beside the sorry body they were taking away with them, they themselves felt like pariahs among the throng of the humble who had been consoled or healed; they seemed embarrassed by their very luxury, and recoiled, awkward and ill at ease, covered with shame at the thought that Our Lady of Lourdes had relieved beggars whilst never casting a glance upon that beautiful and powerful lady agonising unto death amidst all ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... that his pocket was empty. Happily some friends were near to rescue him from his difficulty, but the crucial moment of the incident was to be perpetuated in all its ludicrous humour by an artist of a later generation, who, in the painting entitled "An Awkward Position," depicted the poet at the moment when he discovered his pockets ...
— Inns and Taverns of Old London • Henry C. Shelley
... broken tooth, a fallen cheek ... it seems little enough, but one has a sort of standard. I had a microscopic eye, you know, and a little blemish was a serious thing to me. I was always in search of something that I could not find; then there were awkward strains in the characters of people—they were mean or greedy or selfish, and all my pleasure was suddenly dashed. I am speaking," he went on, "with a strange candour! I don't defend it or excuse it, but there it was. I did once, as a child, I believe, care for one person—an old nurse of ...
— The Child of the Dawn • Arthur Christopher Benson
... sure," said Hayles, with a blank countenance. "It appears to me, sir, as it's an awkward business for all parties. Here's the girl gone, and no one knows where. When a girl don't come back to her own 'ome all night, things look serious, sir; and it has been said as the last place she was seen was ...
— The Perpetual Curate • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant
... a very awkward thing. One of those happily awkward things which crown a man conqueror more surely than all the ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 21, August, 1891 • Various
... roof we went; now descending, now ascending a few steps; now walking along narrow gutters, between battlement and sloping roof; now crossing awkward junctions—trying doors many in tower and turret—all in vain! Every one was bolted on the inside. We had grown quite silent, for the ...
— Wilfrid Cumbermede • George MacDonald
... narrative,—such a style may be ungrammatical, it may be inelegant, it may be one tissue of mistakes, but it can never be devoid of merit. The first and the true function of the writer has been thoroughly performed throughout; and though the manner of his utterance may be childishly awkward, the matter has been transformed and assimilated by his unfeigned interest and delight. The gusto of the man speaks out fierily after all these years. For the difference between Pepys and Shelley, to return to that half-whimsical approximation, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 3 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Florida with awkward hesitation, and a half-defiant, half-imploring look at him. "You must have all sorts of people applying to you, as a consul; and you look after their affairs—and try ...
— A Foregone Conclusion • W. D. Howells
... a meeting!—in the midst of men and women, elbowing, crowding, embracing, exclaiming, rejoicing, chaffing, weeping! It was an awkward state of things, but as every one else was in the same predicament, and as all were more or less swallowed up in their own affairs, Miles and his mother were fain to make the best of it. They retired under the partial shelter of a bulkhead, where block-tackles and nautical ...
— Blue Lights - Hot Work in the Soudan • R.M. Ballantyne
... Somehow, the question sounded harsh, but the man seemed not to notice. There was an awkward silence during which the old man continued to stare out ...
— Prairie Flowers • James B. Hendryx
... attraction was so strong that he had serious thoughts of emigrating with "the beauteous Queen of the Dingle," but he dallied with the idea with characteristic waywardness until it was too late. He sought to postpone awkward decisions, to divert himself and amuse Isopel by making his charmer learn Armenian—the language which he happened at the time to be studying. Isopel bore with it for some time, but the imposition of the verb "to ...
— George Borrow - Times Literary Supplement, 10th July 1903 • Thomas Seccombe
... and running errands to the shops, there are none that go naked, probably few that suffer want, and all are decent looking enough. And here are big, tall, half-grown girls, the quaintest of all, with their awkward movements, and their laughter, and their earnest occupation with their own little affairs. Now and again they stop on the bridge to watch the lumbermen at work among the logs below, and join in the song of the men as they haul— "Hoi-aho!"—and then ...
— Wanderers • Knut Hamsun
... Fortunatus was far too long and pretentious a name for common use; so they peremptorily shortened it to "Tus"; then, adding it to the father's appellation, it became "Tailorkin-Fekli-Tus." The first word of this lengthy and awkward combination was soon dropped off, and the other two were combined into one word and became Feklitus. With this the critics were satisfied, and long usage fixed the name so completely on the boy that at last very few recalled the fine name Fortunatus, ...
— Gritli's Children • Johanna Spyri
... saluted stiffly. Themistocles stood before them, his hands closed over the packet. The first time he started to speak his lips closed desperately. The silence grew awkward. Then the admiral gave his head a toss, and drew his form together as a runner ...
— A Victor of Salamis • William Stearns Davis
... her book drop gently on the table, received Egremont with composure and native grace. It is civilization that makes us awkward, for it gives us an uncertain position. Perplexed, we take refuge in pretence; and embarrassed, we seek a resource in affectation. The Bedouin and the Red Indian never lose their presence of mind; and the wife of a peasant, when you enter her cottage, often greets ...
— Sybil - or the Two Nations • Benjamin Disraeli
... knelt for a moment in a sort of stunned fright. Then, with a mad, awkward movement, I snatched at the ring, intending to hurl it out of the Pentacle. Yet it eluded me, as though some invisible, living thing jerked it hither and thither. At last, I gripped it; yet, in ...
— Carnacki, The Ghost Finder • William Hope Hodgson
... details of it as accurately as any German maiden at her cookery school. Emily took very kindly to even the hardest housework; there she felt able and necessary; and, doubtless, upstairs, grimly listening to prim Miss Branwell's stories of bygone gaieties, this awkward growing girl was glad to remember that she too was of importance to the household, ...
— Emily Bront • A. Mary F. (Agnes Mary Frances) Robinson
... saw no sign of him for nearly a minute; after which he suddenly emerged, with a cry of joy, a good many yards out from the shore. My spirits were so much raised by seeing all this that I, too, hastily threw off my garments and endeavoured to imitate Jack's vigorous bound; but I was so awkward that my foot caught on a stump, and I fell to the ground; then I slipped on a stone while running over the sand, and nearly fell again, much to the amusement of Peterkin, who laughed heartily, and called me a "slow coach," ...
— The Coral Island - A Tale Of The Pacific Ocean • R. M. Ballantyne
... me that C——r 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 be one; but ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. II - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... it had an awkward way of doing in his tell-tale face, but before he could stammer a ...
— The Gilded Age, Complete • Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner
... were asked for volunteers. Every man offered himself, though all knew what it meant to cross that stretch of open country raked with rifle fire. They tossed for the honor, and the first man to start-off with the message was an awkward shock-headed chap who, the narrator says, didn't impress by his appearance. Into the blinding hail of bullets he dashed, and cleared the first hundred yards without mishap. In the second lap he fell ...
— Tommy Atkins at War - As Told in His Own Letters • James Alexander Kilpatrick
... of Christians I jined was the Hard-shells. I was young an' a raw recruit an' nachully fell into the awkward squad. I liked their solar plexus way of goin' at the Devil, an' I liked the way they'd allers deal out a good ration of whiskey, after the fight, to ev'ry true soldier of the Cross—especially if we got our feet too wet, which we mos' always ...
— The Bishop of Cottontown - A Story of the Southern Cotton Mills • John Trotwood Moore
... 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 old man when he found both Ministers firm as adamant against intervention in France. ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose
... trying to solve, namely, the reason Armida Santini and a man disguised as her husband died in Scotland at the hand of an assassin. But surely I need say no more. It is surely sufficient to convince you that if the truth were spoken, the revelations would be distinctly awkward." ...
— The Czar's Spy - The Mystery of a Silent Love • William Le Queux
... Sir Visto's ill-got wealth to waste? Some demon whispered, "Visto! have a taste." Heaven visits with a taste the wealthy fool, And needs no rod but Ripley with a rule. See! sportive Fate, to punish awkward pride, Bids Bubo build, and sends him such a guide. A standing sermon, at each year's expense, That never coxcomb reached magnificence! You show us, Rome was glorious, not profuse, And pompous buildings once were things of use. Yet shall, my ...
— Essay on Man - Moral Essays and Satires • Alexander Pope
... soul. Lazarus paid to stay away from the gate. John the Baptist, in raiment of broadcloth, a circlet of white linen about his neck, and his meat strawberries and ice-cream. The lower classes mentioned mincingly; awkward silences or visible wincings at allusions to death, and converse on eternal things banished as if it were the smell of cabbage. So looked the gay world, ...
— Dr. Sevier • George W. Cable
... pageant on the back of dromedaries! The camel is called the ship of the desert. Its swinging motion in the distance is suggestive of a vessel rising and falling with the billows. Though awkward, how imposing these creatures as they move along, whether in ancient or modern times, sometimes carrying four hundred or four thousand travelers from Bagdad to Aleppo, or from Bassora to Damascus! In my text comes a caravan. We notice the noiseless step of the broad foot, the velocity ...
— The Wedding Ring - A Series of Discourses for Husbands and Wives and Those - Contemplating Matrimony • T. De Witt Talmage
... doubts, also, as to the success of the recent expedition to Fantaisie began to revive. His rising reminiscences of his native land, which, with the joint assistance of popularity and philosophy, he had hitherto succeeded in stifling, were indeed awkward. He could not conceive his mistress with a page and a poodle. He feared much that the cargo was not well assorted. Popanilla determined to inquire after ...
— The Voyage of Captain Popanilla • Benjamin Disraeli
... characteristic of the Red races.) This sort of distinction, as a writer nobody is likely to have read, can hardly counteract an indistinctness in my articulation, which the best-intentioned loudness will not remedy. Then, in some quarters my awkward feet are against me, the length of my upper lip, and an inveterate way I have of walking with my head foremost and my chin projecting. One can become only too well aware of such things by looking in the glass, or in that other mirror held up to nature in the frank opinions ...
— Impressions of Theophrastus Such • George Eliot
... a crowd of children. Two boys had gone away. There remained two growing girls; a shy midget of eight; John, tall, awkward, and eighteen; Jim, younger, quicker, and better looking; and two babies of indefinite age. Then there was Josie herself. She seemed to be the center of the family: always busy at service, or at home, or berry-picking; a little nervous ...
— The Upward Path - A Reader For Colored Children • Various
... admiration. Tall and gaunt, and angular in person, with his long, spare limbs dangling helplessly about him, and rocked and swayed by the movement of the masses under him, the great warrior was never in all his life before in a position more awkward and undignified. The master of men and emergencies was unthroned for one ...
— The Battle of New Orleans • Zachary F. Smith
... But disappointments soon began to overshadow his seeming good luck. The first production of the "Flying Dutchman" can hardly be called a success. Wagner himself characterized the performance as being, in its main features, "a complete failure," and the stage setting "incredibly awkward and wooden" (very different from what it is in Dresden to-day). Mme. Schroeder-Devrient was an admirable "Senta," and received enthusiastic applause; but the opera itself puzzled the audience ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIV • John Lord
... than ten minutes the boat was enveloped in a dense fog. The position was decidedly awkward. Had there been any wind they could have steered by the sound of the surf breaking at the foot of the cliffs, but the sea was absolutely calm, and they could hear nothing. They rowed on for some ...
— By Conduct and Courage • G. A. Henty
... warningly. Then he smiled, a shy nervous smile. "It would be very awkward," he said slowly, "very awkward indeed, if you happened to come to the throne just now. I really don't know what Brasshay would do. But it's too late for me to begin that sort of ...
— King John of Jingalo - The Story of a Monarch in Difficulties • Laurence Housman
... communicate to her what had been decided about her, and to explain to her, as well, that though she could go and prostrate herself before Madame Wang, she could dispense with seeing dowager lady Chia. This news made Hsi Jen feel very awkward; to such an extent, that no sooner had she got through her visit to Madame Wang, than she returned in a hurry to ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... 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 indiscreet 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. Graham turned, ...
— The Sleeper Awakes - A Revised Edition of When the Sleeper Wakes • H.G. Wells
... to use properly the organs of will, and, not to fall into hardness and heaviness, it prefers to sacrifice something of the aim of movement, or else it seeks to reach it by cross ways and indirect means. An awkward and stiff dancer expends as much force as if he had to work a windmill; with his feet and arms he describes lines as angular as if he were tracing figures with geometrical precision; the affected dancer, on the other hand, ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... that children that have sex-love in this second stage of its development, as a rule, avoid all direct expressions of their feelings and that lovers are awkward, embarrassed, self-conscious and ill-at-ease in each other's presence. This is true when the conditions are such that their personalities meet in mutual recognition without a third thing as a shield. They are ...
— A Preliminary Study of the Emotion of Love between the Sexes • Sanford Bell
... on, Agasha?" I asked her, after a long silence, when it began to be awkward to remain mute ...
— The Witch and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... little listening in—and maybe we can rig another surprise if Grange does try to ask advice of someone off world. In the meantime I don't think they are going to meddle with the Salariki. They don't want to have to answer awkward questions if we turn up a Patrol ship to ask them. So—" he stretched and beckoned to Dane, "we shall go to work ...
— Plague Ship • Andre Norton
... 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 ...
— Beasts, Men and Gods • Ferdinand Ossendowski
... to the corner of Broadway and Twenty-third street, where Anway stopped, evidently to wait for an eastbound car. This was a little awkward, for the cars bound in that direction were but sparsely filled at this hour. Evan bought a newspaper. Anyway boarded a cross-town car and sat down inside. Evan swung himself on as the car got in motion, and remained out on the back platform, using ...
— The Deaves Affair • Hulbert Footner
... was a somewhat awkward silence, and Alton fancied that both men were relieved when Mrs. Forel's voice broke in, "Jack, you will look after the men, but don't keep them talking too long. We picked up Mr. Seaforth, and there are one or two more ...
— Alton of Somasco • Harold Bindloss
... to withdraw. The hunters now advanced, upon which the bears turned, rose again upon their haunches, and repeated their serio-comic examination. This was repeated several times, until the hunters, piqued at their unmannerly staring, rebuked it with a discharge of their rifles. The bears made an awkward bound or two, as if wounded, and then walked off with great gravity, seeming to commune together, and every now and then turning to take another look at the hunters. It was well for the latter that the bears were ...
— The Adventures of Captain Bonneville - Digested From His Journal • Washington Irving
... screamed, 'Pretty! Nay, aunt, you cannot call that baby-faced chit pretty. No air; no breeding; mere dairymaid's beauty. It makes me laugh to think how proud she was of her fine gown and cap, which only showed her awkward gait the more.' And Mistress Dorothy fingered her Flemish lace and the string of beads round her short, thick neck, with profound ...
— Penshurst Castle - In the Days of Sir Philip Sidney • Emma Marshall
... of Phyl had been delightful, then, little by little, her stiffness and seeming lifelessness had communicated themselves to him. It seemed to him that he had never met a duller or more awkward schoolgirl. His mind was of that quick order which requires to be caught in the uptake rapidly in order to shine. Slowness, coldness, dulness or hesitancy in others depressed him just as dull weather depressed him. He did not at all know with what a burning interest his arrival had been ...
— The Ghost Girl • H. De Vere Stacpoole
... he wound it up; then he looked at it again. 'The great question is,' says he, 'am I fast or am I slow? If I'm slow, we may as well go on with breakfast. If I'm fast, why, there is just the possibility of saving Prince Bulbo. It's a doosid awkward mistake, and upon my word, Hedzoff, I have the greatest mind to ...
— The Rose and the Ring • William Makepeace Thackeray
... in the name of charity, Monsieur," he said to Francois. "The Comedie-Francaise finds itself in the most awkward quandary. We have prepared a big gala performance at La Monnaie, to raise money for ...
— The Idol of Paris • Sarah Bernhardt
... in conclusion, to the excited Almayer, "it is deucedly awkward to have a half-caste girl in the house. There's such a lot of fools about. There was that young fellow from the bank who used to ride to the Vinck bungalow early and late. That old woman thought it was for that Emma of hers. When she found out ...
— Almayer's Folly - A Story of an Eastern River • Joseph Conrad
... some skin knocked off their knuckles through awkward handling of the knife and flint, a good fire was at last kindled, as there was no lack of dry wood on the shore. Catharine then triumphantly produced her tin pot, and the eggs were boiled, greatly to the satisfaction of all parties, who were by this time sufficiently hungry, ...
— Lost in the Backwoods • Catharine Parr Traill
... mere thread in most instances—requires that the thread shall at least be never allowed to drop. But she cuts or slackens it perpetually, long arguments and digressions intervening, and the dialogue, whose monotony is unrelieved by wit, nowhere compensates for the limited interest of the action. Awkward treatment is but half felt when subject and situations are dramatically strong; but plays with so airy and impalpable a basis as these need to be sustained by the utmost perfection of construction, concision ...
— Famous Women: George Sand • Bertha Thomas
... and Jack cocked his gun, believing he would have to fire. Otto, seeing the movement, turned, but at that moment the animal, if he had actually any purpose of opening hostilities, changed his mind, moving off to one side, and continued his awkward gait ...
— The Lost Trail - I • Edward S. Ellis
... both to you and Hermia. Unfortunately, she has left New York, and I don't know where to find her. She left town, I am informed, the day after the play was given. I wish she hadn't. It makes things awkward for me. I have the best intentions in the world, but if she ties my hands by silence what can ...
— Madcap • George Gibbs
... Coarseness of thought naturally brought on coarseness of action. Horace Walpole wrote in 1737, "'Tis no little inducement, to make me wish myself in France, that I hear gallantry is not left off there; that you may be polite, and not be thought awkward for it. You know the pretty men of the age in England use the women with no more deference than they do their coach horses, and have not half the regard for them that they ...
— A History of English Prose Fiction • Bayard Tuckerman
... said King, also in English. The Prince looked glum, but interposed no imperial objection. Instead he suddenly shoved the cigarette box under the nose of his dainty relative, who at that unpropitious instant stooped over to watch King's awkward attempt ...
— Truxton King - A Story of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... removal of dinner from a public room had subsided; the clatter of plates, and knives and forks—the bustling tread of awkward boobies of country servants, kicking each other's shins, and wrangling, as they endeavour to rush out of the door three abreast—the clash of glasses and tumblers, borne to earth in the tumult—the shrieks of the landlady—the ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott
... infinite, the value of conduct is paramount; but he who lacks intellectual culture, whatever else he may be, is narrow, awkward, unintelligent. The mirror of his soul is dim, the motions of his spirit are sluggish, and the divine image which is ...
— Education and the Higher Life • J. L. Spalding
... What now stands as the second title, The Mistakes of a Night, was originally the only one; but it was thought undignified for a comedy. The Old House a New Inn was suggested in place of it, but dismissed as awkward. Sir Joshua offered a much better name to Goldsmith, saying, "You ought to call it The Belle's Stratagem, and if you do not I will damn it." When Goldsmith, in whose ear perhaps a line of Dryden's lingered, hit upon She Stoops to Conquer.' ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell
... steep, but the ice in some of these intervals between the masses of rock assumed the form of a mere sharp edge, almost like a knife; these places, though not more than three or four short paces in length, looked uncommonly awkward; but, like the sword leading true believers to the gates of Paradise, they must needs be passed before we could attain to the summit of our ambition. These were in one or two places so narrow, that in stepping over them with toes well turned out for greater ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... lumbered with awkward grace to a great wooden pedestal. Cupping down over this was a glass bell, about eight feet high, suspended from ...
— The Raid on the Termites • Paul Ernst
... occasion consisted of a pig, a sheep, and an ox, the Latin names of which were sus, ovis, and taurus, these being run together in a single manufactured word. Words are not easily made to order, and this one shows how awkward they are when they do ...
— The Story of Rome From the Earliest Times to the End of the Republic • Arthur Gilman
... he answered; "but the most awkward part of it is that it's from a complete stranger. ...
— The New Tenant • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... somewhat mortified to find a good, large piece of work assigned him to do before he could get his breakfast, and at first he was exceedingly awkward, and did not know how to set about it; but Industry showed him the way, Order helped him a good deal, and Economy ...
— Young Folks Treasury, Volume 3 (of 12) - Classic Tales And Old-Fashioned Stories • Various
... and to supply this defect, we exert more strength and activity than is requisite. "It does not require strength; you need not use so much force; you need not take so much pains;" we frequently say to those who are making the first painful awkward attempts at some simple operation. Can any thing appear more easy than knitting, when we look at the dexterous, rapid motions of an experienced practitioner? But let a gentleman take up a lady's knitting needles, and knitting appears to him, and to all the spectators, one of ...
— Practical Education, Volume I • Maria Edgeworth
... too disgusting to have him and his poems recalled in this manner after all the world thought they had got rid of the concern.' (1824) 'Mr. Shelley died, it seems, with a volume of Mr. Keats's poetry "grasped with one hand in his bosom"—rather an awkward posture, as you will be convinced if you try it. But what a rash man Shelley was to put to sea in a frail boat with Jack's poetry on board!... Down went the boat with a "swirl"! I lay a wager that it righted soon after ejecting ...
— Adonais • Shelley
... frequently an affected way of holding the knife half-way down its length, as if it were too big for their little hands; but this is as awkward a way as it is weak; the knife should be grasped freely by the handle only, the forefinger being the only one to touch the blade, and that only along the back of the blade at its root, and no ...
— The Whitehouse Cookbook (1887) - The Whole Comprising A Comprehensive Cyclopedia Of Information For - The Home • Mrs. F.L. Gillette
... hear him, for, as they rushed down over the icy snow, he had his work cut out to check his awkward car, as it nearly mastered him, his heels gliding over the smooth surface and refusing to cut in. Forcing them down, though, the speed began to slacken, till they neared the ascending group of savage faces ...
— Fix Bay'nets - The Regiment in the Hills • George Manville Fenn
... comfort even with the coming of the tea-things. Tea at the gardener's cottage was a serious meal, with a big cake and little cakes, and preserves and fruit, a fine spread upon a table. You must imagine me, sullen, awkward, and preoccupied, perplexed by the something that was inexplicably unexpected in Nettie, saying little, and glowering across the cake at her, and all the eloquence I had been concentrating for the previous twenty-four ...
— In the Days of the Comet • H. G. Wells
... no other way and feeling the position a little awkward, appealed to Ruth, who got up and started with her. When they had clambered down the rather steep hill to the meadow's edge Miss Custer affectionately took her arm. "Don't you think picnics are stupid things?" ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 26, August, 1880 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various
... possible to advance further on the old lines; yet painters, sculptors, architects, and poets of the rising generation had before their eyes the masterpieces of their predecessors, in their minds the precepts of the learned. All alike were rendered awkward and self-conscious by the sense of laboring at a disadvantage, and by the dread of ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds
... that one man should be left on a solitary rock, with the corpse of his comrade, while the seething waters prevented any one from coming to his assistance. But even now the life is sufficiently trying. Human nature is apt to be awkward, and it is desirable that the light-keepers should be good tempered, friendly men, who will not soon tire of each other, nor quarrel over misunderstandings and differences of opinion. It must be a happy thing for a man who is a lighthouse watcher, to be God-fearing and ...
— Grace Darling - Heroine of the Farne Islands • Eva Hope
... my heart," he responded, evidently much relieved, and turned the somewhat awkward conversation to the first available topic, which chanced to be ...
— Agatha's Husband - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik (AKA: Dinah Maria Mulock)
... his 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 yesterday, ...
— NAPOLEON AND BLUCHER • L. Muhlbach
... he who asks too much, goes astray. No one can advise me in this matter, not even Marianne. And, after all, with my uncle, it's like this: 'I am doing you a good turn, and you must repay me.' If he's severe with me, and with Damie, because he's awkward, and we have to run away, where in this wide, strange world are we to go? Here everybody knows us, and every hedge, every tree has a familiar face. 'You know me, don't you?' she said, looking up at the tree. 'Oh, if you could but speak! God created you too—why cannot you speak? ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VIII • Various
... enjoyable. We have to learn how to work before we can get the full enjoyment from our occupation. You had to learn how to skate and how to dance before you enjoyed skating and dancing. Trying to skate and trying to dance and being awkward, and not knowing how, does not give one the full enjoyment of skating and dancing. But when we do know how and have become skilful, how delightful these recreations are! When we know how to work, work ...
— The Canadian Girl at Work - A Book of Vocational Guidance • Marjory MacMurchy
... in what you say, master;" both Ch'ien Ch'i and Li Kuei chimed in laughingly; "but pretend you're lazy and don't get down. In the event of our coming across Mr. Lai Ta and our number two Mr. Lin, they're sure, rather awkward though it be for them to say anything to their master, to tender you one or two words of advice, but throw the whole of the blame upon us. You can also tell them that we had not explained to you what was the right ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... this Joe, I am in an awkward fix. I have got myself into a scrape, and I want you to help me out of it. You were good at such things when we were at College, and I want you to try ...
— Minnie's Sacrifice • Frances Ellen Watkins Harper
... counted: that he did not know where he should look to find characters to fill up the offices; that mere talents did not suffice for the department of State, but it required a person conversant in foreign affairs, perhaps acquainted with foreign courts; that without this, the best talents would be awkward and at a loss. He told me that Colonel Hamilton had three or four weeks ago written to him, informing him that private as well as public reasons had brought him to the determination to retire, and that he should do it ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... evening-school students usually explained that they felt "funny" and were shy and awkward in the school. They went to the same school which their children attended, sat on the same benches, had the same teacher, and read the same books which their children did. Finally, they stopped, deciding that their children could do the learning of English for both themselves ...
— A Stake in the Land • Peter Alexander Speek
... times, her nerves seemed to be shaken by the spectacle of my sufferings. Her kind hands trembled and made mistakes, when they had any nursing duties to perform near me. The servants, noticing her, used to say, "That pretty girl seems to be the most awkward person in the house." On the day that followed the ceremony in the chapel, this want of self-control brought about an accident which led to ...
— Little Novels • Wilkie Collins
... which I am this moment honoured with, is a deep reproach to me for ungrateful neglect. I will tell you the real truth, for I am miserably awkward at a fib—I wished to have written to Dr. Moore before I wrote to you; but, though every day since I received yours of December 30th, the idea, the wish to write to him has constantly pressed on my thoughts, ...
— The Letters of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... a smoke 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
... and welcome which always accompanies honest minds: his table is the image of plenty and generosity, supported by justice and frugality. After we had dined here, our affair was to visit Avaro: out comes an awkward fellow with a careful countenance; "Sir, would you speak with my master? May I crave your name?" After the first preambles, he leads us into a noble solitude, a great house that seemed uninhabited; but from ...
— The Tatler, Volume 1, 1899 • George A. Aitken
... soul of lawyers reared upon Teutonic custom. They recognised that they were dealing with a new form of community; but they were not prepared to define it or to generalise about it. They preferred to treat each town as sui generis, an awkward anomaly, ...
— Medieval Europe • H. W. C. Davis
... afternoon. Here he is, at last. The white 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 to the two-pair-of- stairs window, to take ...
— Sunday Under Three Heads • Charles Dickens
... 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
... the significance of which I knew full well, a colored scrap-picture arrived, representing a rosy woman's hand with elegantly curved finger tips offering a bouquet of blue forget-me-nots. The source from whence it came was evident enough to me, and I, awkward churl, was rude enough to send her a rapturous letter of thanks for it, which of course met with a very ...
— The Bride of Dreams • Frederik van Eeden
... in which he had taken shelter, had observed Burnett's approach; and overhearing the conversation which had ensued, he knew that the tables were turned, and that his sister was at length in safety. Captain Hawkesford, who feared that very awkward consequences might ensue from his conduct, apologised to Reginald, and made all the excuses he could ...
— The Young Rajah • W.H.G. Kingston
... he is good-looking," thought Frank, "and that makes him a bit conceited; but it will soon wear off. I shall joke him out of it. And he knows so much. He is so manly. He makes me feel like an awkward schoolboy beside him." ...
— In Honour's Cause - A Tale of the Days of George the First • George Manville Fenn
... "Awkward," he said, "yet it's the only way it could have been done. Now, here's a bedpost, exactly like the one in room 168, occupied by Mr. Greene at the Denton. Kirby, you're a powerful man. Can you break that knob off ...
— Average Jones • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... so strained, so stupendous a moment that it would quickly have become awkward and anti-climacteric but for the tact ...
— Children of the Whirlwind • Leroy Scott
... one saw Her features, for her soul covered her face As with a veil of ever-moving life. When she came near, and her bright eyes met his, He seemed to start; his gallantry was gone, And like an awkward boy he sat and gazed; And her laugh too was hushed, and she passed on, Passed out of sight but never out of mind, The king and all his counselors saw this. "Good king, our deer is struck," Asita said, "If this love cure ...
— The Dawn and the Day • Henry Thayer Niles
... sang with Homer, and carved with Phidias, and philosophized with Aristotle,—as none have ever sung, or carved, or philosophized since. Times and fashions have altered, truly; but these three men are still our Masters in Philosophy, in Sculpture, and in Song. Awkward fact, that the colossal Infant should have lisped in a tongue which for copiousness of diction, and subtlety of expression, absolutely remains to this hour without a rival in ...
— Inspiration and Interpretation - Seven Sermons Preached Before the University of Oxford • John Burgon
... interest in him they had wanted to get him away from Ellen. In her innermost self-confidences she did not permit herself the notion that Ellen had any right to him; but still it was a relief to have them off the ship, and to have him left. Of all the witnesses of the fact, she alone did not find it awkward. Breckon himself found it very awkward. He did not wish to be with the Rasmiths, but he found it uncomfortable not being with them, under the circumstances, and he followed them ashore in tingling reveries of explanation and ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... "He says it's awkward. They have got hold somewhere of one of our old circulars of 1914 in which the property is described as worth about ten million dollars—that was during the boom, you remember—and they claim we are selling it to ourselves for less than one million and that on its face it's a fraud on the ...
— Tutt and Mr. Tutt • Arthur Train
... eyes left his face and became fixed upon an object at the far end of the corridor. Bob turned in time to see Janet Duncan swing on her heel and follow her mother up the stairs. He struggled to find words to tide over what he felt was an awkward moment. ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... look at it sensibly it's about the best illness anybody could have in hot weather like this. You've got to keep them warm. The weather does it for you. If it was typhoid now, and you'd got to keep them cool—that would be awkward. Not but it passes me how anybody can catch ...
— The Great Adventure • Arnold Bennett
... should be permitted. The graceful kingdom of Art is developed from it, as also the poetry of conversation in jest and wit. Although this sometimes becomes stereotyped into very prosaic conventional forms of speech, it is more tolerable than the awkward honesty which takes everything in its simple literal sense. And it is easy to discover whether children in such play, in the activity of free joyousness, incline to the side of mischief by their showing a desire of satisfying their selfish interest. Then they must be checked, ...
— Pedagogics as a System • Karl Rosenkranz
... in everything else, but he wrote with his left hand—an angular, upright chirography which, Louise thought, showed unmistakably that he was unfamiliar with the use of the pen. "Writing up the log" he called this clerkly task, and his awkward looking characters in the ledger were in great contrast to Cap'n Abe's ...
— Cap'n Abe, Storekeeper • James A. Cooper
... meaning of this word, there is a slang Australian use denoting an awkward adventure, an unpleasant experience, a troublesome job. In America the slang use is "an easy or agreeable thing." ('Standard.') The Australasian use is an ironical ...
— A Dictionary of Austral English • Edward Morris
... jumping on the firm ice and shouting to me "Il n'y a plus de danger, Monsieur." Here we took off the ropes, and drank some more brandy, and then went as hard as we could, jumping across crevasses, which two days before I should have thought awkward, as if they were cart ruts. We reached Chamouni at 8.30 P.M., having been sixteen and a quarter hours without resting. I was not at all tired; the guides thanked me for having given so little trouble, ...
— Life of John Coleridge Patteson • Charlotte M. Yonge
... to us, ye who do not know where ye are—ye who live among strangers in the houses of dismay and self-righteousness. Poor, awkward ones! How bewildered and be-devilled ye go!... In what prisons are ye flung? To what lowliness are ye bowed? How are ye ground between the laws and the customs? Come away! For the dance has begun lightly, the wind is sounding over ...
— Greenwich Village • Anna Alice Chapin
... of upper rooms. On the sward, a little in advance of the tree, but beneath its shadow, stood the musician, and in that musician Kenelm recognized the wanderer from whose talk he had conceived the idea of the pedestrian excursion which had already brought him into a very awkward position. The instrument on which the singer accompanied himself was a guitar, and his song was evidently a love-song, though, as it was now drawing near to its close, Kenelm could but imperfectly guess at its general meaning. He heard enough to perceive ...
— Kenelm Chillingly, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... just left school, was going through the awkward phase of discovering her individuality. At the College, with a full program of lessons and games, she had followed the general lead of the form. Now, cast upon her own resources, she was quite vague as to any special bent or taste. The war-time occupations which ...
— A Popular Schoolgirl • Angela Brazil
... jeweller. He approached the door and rang the bell; The door was opened by the same young lady, whose manner exhibited not a little embarrassment, when she beheld a total stranger; and he began to feel himself in an awkward position. He was at a loss how to address her till, recollecting that he must explain his visit in some way, he said: "Pardon the intrusion of a stranger; but, by your permission, I would like to enter the house, and have a word of conversation with you." The young girl regarded ...
— Stories and Sketches • Harriet S. Caswell
... right. We received tracings of several possible lines of defence, on the plain itself and on the near side of the mountain crest, described as the "Blue Line," the "Green Line," etc., which we were required to reconnoitre with a view to finding Battery positions and O.P.'s. They were all very awkward lines to defend, as the enemy would have splendid observation and we ...
— With British Guns in Italy - A Tribute to Italian Achievement • Hugh Dalton
... His awkward big-dog attempts at friendliness had been repulsed. She played the Maudie to his Billy Bluff, and all would have been well but that he refused to get back upon her by bounding. Instead, he apparently had come to the conclusion that she ...
— Boy Woodburn - A Story of the Sussex Downs • Alfred Ollivant
... see her every night For thirteen days, and had a sneaking notion To pop the question, thinking all was right, And once or twice had make an awkward motion To take her hand, and stammer'd, cough'd, and stutter'd, But, somehow, nothing to the point ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various
... were I sure of the rudest health, I would not carry my birth, my manners, my habits into that young lord's house. How long would it be, Mrs. Roden, before he saw some little trick that would displease him? Some word would be wrongly spoken, some garment would be ill-folded, some awkward movement would tell the tale,—and then he would feel that he had done wrong to marry the Quaker's daughter. All the virtues under the sun cannot bolster up love so as to stand the battery of one touch of disgust. Tell my father that, and tell him that I have done well. Then ...
— Marion Fay • Anthony Trollope
... men were leaving the Peary. Awkward, swaying objects, they rose up directly in front of ...
— Under Arctic Ice • H.G. Winter
... held to this doctrine and applied it rigorously. On a certain occasion he was playing Caleb Plummer. In the scene between the old toy-maker and his blind daughter, when the father discovers the dreadful result of his dissimulation—an awkward hitch; and, the climax quite thwarted, the curtain came down. I was ...
— Marse Henry, Complete - An Autobiography • Henry Watterson
... actin' dretful liberal, but I knew they had strange ways in Washington anyway. And I didn't know but it wuz their way to make some present to every woman that comes there, and I didn't want to act awkward and out of style, so ...
— Samantha on the Woman Question • Marietta Holley
... the fate that would attend any such application. The directors were already decidedly uneasy about their first loan; shareholders had asked awkward questions, and the chairman had found no small difficulty in showing that the investment was likely to prove either safe or remunerative. Again, only a fortnight before, the Government had made ...
— A Man of Mark • Anthony Hope
... March day, and he had been loitering on the west-side docks, looking at faces. He was becoming an expert in physiognomies: his eagerness no longer made rash darts and awkward recoils. He knew now the face he needed, as clearly as if it had come to him in a vision; and not till he found it would he speak. As he walked eastward through the shabby reeking streets he had a premonition that he ...
— Tales Of Men And Ghosts • Edith Wharton
... much elated at being permitted to dance with "the swan-neck," a little faded now, but once a noted beauty. The swan-neck is a famous lady. Ill-natured persons might have added an awkward syllable to famous. She had been very dear to a great Russian magnate who lived in a villa lined with malachite, and loaded her with gifts. But as the marquis, her husband, was always with her and invariably spoke of his wife as an angel, where was the harm? Now the ...
— The Italians • Frances Elliot
... effectually cured of "la maladie imaginaire" by the acuteness of a little real pain. The flambeau of a spruce livery servant setting fire to the greasy tail of a Bath chairman's surtout produced a most awkward rencontre, by which a husband and wife, who had not been associated together for some years, but were proceeding to the ball in separate chairs, were, by the accidental concussion of their sedans in a moment of alarm, actually thrown into each other's arms; and such was the gallantry ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... that our countries were at war; and third—No, I will speak," said I; "you can answer when I have done,—and third, that I had dishonourably killed—or was said to have done so—the man Goguelat. Now, my dear fellow, these are very awkward grounds to be taking. From any one else's lips I need scarce tell you how I should resent them; but my hands are tied. I have so much gratitude to you, without talking of the love I bear your sister, that you insult me, when you do so, under the cover of a complete impunity. I must feel the ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 20 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... I fear that I am a little late, but the trains were awkward. You wrote to me about a bust that is in ...
— The Return of Sherlock Holmes • Arthur Conan Doyle
Copyright © 2025 e-Free Translation.com
|
|
|
