"Humped" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the shoulders. He took a turn of the rope around the saddle horn. At last he had mastered the knack of the thing! Why, it was as easy as rolling pie-crust! He was about to wonder what he was going to do next, when the cow—which happened to be a large and active steer—humped itself ...
— Sundown Slim • Henry Hubert Knibbs
... establishment of John Burnit, and, leaving instructions for his chauffeur to call for him at twelve, made his way down the long aisles of white-piled counters and into the dusty little office where old Johnson, thin as a rail and with a face like whittled chalk, humped over his desk exactly as he had sat ...
— The Making of Bobby Burnit - Being a Record of the Adventures of a Live American Young Man • George Randolph Chester
... whipped down his head, And humped his back and gave a squeal, And bucked into the drinking shed, Revolving like a Cath'rine wheel! Men ran like rats! The atmosphere Was filled with oaths and pints ...
— Rio Grande's Last Race and Other Verses • Andrew Barton 'Banjo' Paterson
... ruled by her daughter, and the daughter because she would emulate the fair skin of Densuke and be fairer in his eyes. O'Mino had suffered both from fate and fortune. She had been born ugly; with broad, flat face like unto the moon at full, or a dish. Her back was a little humped, her arms disproportionately long, losing in plumpness what they gained in extension. She seemed to have no breasts at all, the chest forming a concavity in correspondence to the convexity of the back, with a smoothness much ...
— The Yotsuya Kwaidan or O'Iwa Inari - Tales of the Tokugawa, Volume 1 (of 2) • James S. De Benneville
... sundown an' the air got kinder chill, I didn't hear Jerry singin' no more. I'd seen him, off'n on, flittin' 'bout the yard all day. When I come in here to light the hangin'-lamp cal'latin' to make supper, I looked over there at the window. I'd shut it. There was Jerry on the window sill, humped all up like an old ...
— Cap'n Abe, Storekeeper • James A. Cooper
... before the fire-place in the long sitting-room. He still wore a heavy frieze travelling coat, the fronts of it hanging open. His shoulders were a trifle humped up and his head bent, as he looked down at the black and buff of the tiger skin at his feet. When Theresa approached with her jerky consequential little walk—pinkly self-conscious behind her gold-rimmed glasses—he glanced at her, ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... Lady Evelyn humped her eyebrows and gave me one look. "No," says she, "I shouldn't call it brutal, exactly," and then she swallows a polite, society snicker in a way that made me mad from the ground up. Jarvis didn't lose any of that, either. I got a glimpse of him turnin' automobile red, and ...
— Shorty McCabe • Sewell Ford
... rolled upon the deck a single object. It broke apart as it fell. The moonlight, released by his humped shadow, fell upon something sparkling, at which he leaped with a sudden thirst, ...
— Tales of the Chesapeake • George Alfred Townsend
... might use the passage between the trees. Towards the evening the partridges may run through to join their friends before roost-time on the ground. Or you may see a covey there now and then, creeping slowly with humped backs, and at a distance not unlike hedgehogs in their motions. The spot therefore should be approached with care; if it is only a thrush out it is a pleasure to see him at his ease and, as he deems, unobserved. If a bird or animal ...
— The Open Air • Richard Jefferies
... and wonderful ideas these remarkable amateur experts publish they won't "go down" with the man who has humped his pack and ...
— At Suvla Bay • John Hargrave
... most of the wild bovine animals the horns are both longer and thicker in the bull than in the cow, and in the cow-banteng (Bos sondaicus) the horns are remarkably small, and inclined much backwards. In the domestic races of cattle, both of the humped and humpless types, the horns are short and thick in the bull, longer and more slender in the cow and ox; and in the Indian buffalo, they are shorter and thicker in the bull, longer and more slender in the cow. In ...
— The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex • Charles Darwin
... mirror, tidying herself up, feeling as she did so a little thrill of anticipation. And then she stuck her head through the kitchen door and announced that she was leaving. "Don't burn the whole place up, Maida," she cautioned with a laugh as she caught sight of her sitting, humped forward in a kitchen chair, fat elbows resting on a table, placidly viewing a vast clutter of dishes that had ...
— Stubble • George Looms
... things I hastened to observe: the pupils of her eyes were vertical, revealing her genus Phyllomedusa (making apt our choice of the feminine); by a gentle urging I saw that the first and second toes were equal in length; and a glance at her little humped back showed a scattering of white calcareous spots, giving the clue to her specific personality—bicolor: thus were we introduced to Phyllomedusa bicolor, alias Guinevere, and thus was established beyond doubt her close ...
— Edge of the Jungle • William Beebe
... light, which lay upon the ground, casting all shadows upwards and making a grotesque shadow figure of himself and his bearers on the airship sides, fusing all three of them into a monstrous animal with attenuated legs and an immense fan-like humped body. The lights were on the ground because as far as possible all poles and standards had been dispensed with to prevent complications ...
— The War in the Air • Herbert George Wells
... something in his eyes that shimmered and glistened in the dull light. And then, as he sat silent, his eyes clearing, he saw that the little mouse had climbed back to the edge of the table. It did not eat the food he had placed there for it, but humped itself up in a tiny ball again, and its tiny shining eyes looked in ...
— Back to God's Country and Other Stories • James Oliver Curwood
... humped and fishy sea, Over the Caliban sea O cloud in the West, like a thought in the heart Of pardon, loose thy wing, and start, And do ...
— The Poems of Sidney Lanier • Sidney Lanier
... three o' the one they shot," was Washburn's laconic observation. He looked the animal over admiringly and slapped him so vigorously under the belly that the horse grunted and humped his back. ...
— Westerfelt • Will N. Harben
... suddenly there rose up before her a figure so strange that for a moment she felt almost like a scared child. It sprang from the bushes and stood facing her like an animal at bay—a short creature neither man nor boy, misshapen, grotesquely humped, possessing long thin arms of almost baboon-like proportions. The head was sunken into the shoulders. It was flung back and the face upraised—and it was the face that made her pause, for it was the most pathetic sight she had ever looked upon. It was the face of a lad of two or three and twenty, ...
— The Obstacle Race • Ethel M. Dell
... saw but two kinds of palm, the fan-palm, and Phoenix: the latter is characteristic of the driest locality. Then, for the animal creation, men, women, and children abound, both on the banks, and plying up and down the Ganges. The humped cow (of which the ox is used for draught) is common. Camels I occasionally observed, and more rarely the elephant; poneys, goats, and dogs muster strong. Porpoises and alligators infest the river, even above Benares. Flies and mosquitos are ...
— Himalayan Journals (Complete) • J. D. Hooker
... much horrified by the wretched conditions among the farmers, which had resulted from a long period of drought, and one forlorn picture was fairly burned into my mind. A number of starved hogs—collateral for a promissory note—were huddled into an open pen. Their backs were humped in a curious, camel-like fashion, and they were devouring one of their own number, the latest victim of absolute starvation or possibly merely the one least able to defend himself against their voracious hunger. The farmer's wife looked on indifferently, ...
— Twenty Years At Hull House • Jane Addams
... this mornin' tellin' Sam to go an' look after you, or write a note, or somethin'! Why can't you come round oftener? I've no patience with you! You just sit at 'ome an' get humped, an' what's the good o' that, I should like to know? I thought you'd took offence with me, an' so I told Sam. Do you want to know how baby is? Why don't you ask, then, as you ought to do the first thing? He's a good deal better than he deserves to be, ...
— The Nether World • George Gissing
... verity, as we stayed but to glance, I perceived that there lay humped things about the fire, and some to be black-seeming, and some to have a seeming of whiteness, but with no sureness in the colour ...
— The Night Land • William Hope Hodgson
... very nice boy. He wore a light grey-green Palm Beach suit and carried a big brown leather briefcase that looked too heavy for his soda straw-thin legs and arms. He was queer-looking because his waist was so narrow and his back so humped. And when he took off his tan Panama hat, a white fuzz exploded from his scalp. His face was pale as the moon in daylight. His broad smile showed teeth that Jack knew ...
— They Twinkled Like Jewels • Philip Jose Farmer
... sacred cow. She chewed the lettuce as peacefully as could be, and swallowed the cayenne pepper, and then stopped to think. You could tell by the expression on her face that when the pepper began to heat her up inside she wanted to swear, although she was a sacred cow. She humped herself, and shivered, and then bellowed like a calf who has been left in the barn to be weaned, while its mother goes out to pasture, and the sacred bull, her husband, he came and put his nose up to her nose, as much as to say: "What ...
— Peck's Bad Boy at the Circus • George W. Peck
... green of the wooded hills. Picturesque junks are lying in ranks at anchor; there are two deep-sea vessels likewise, of modern build, ships from Osaka. And there is a most romantic little breakwater built of hewn stone, with a stone lantern perched at the end of it; and there is a pretty humped bridge connecting it with a tiny island on which I see a shrine of Benten, the Goddess ...
— Glimpses of an Unfamiliar Japan - First Series • Lafcadio Hearn
... deformed; because there is something wanting to complete the whole idea we form of a man; and this has the same effect in natural faults, as maiming and mutilation produce from accidents. So if the back be humped, the man is deformed; because his back has an unusual figure, and what carries with it the idea of some disease or misfortune; So if a man's neck be considerably longer or shorter than usual, we say he is deformed in that part, because men are not commonly made in that ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. I. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... but no girls. Once in a while a forlorn bunch of age would sit humped in a chair, now and then a victrola record sang forth its worn contents, twice the piano was heard. After some ten days my large fat friend from the help's pantry informed me that she and I weren't supposed to be there—the ...
— Working With the Working Woman • Cornelia Stratton Parker
... greeted her—a touch of the confidential, which added to her curiosity. He sat opposite to her in the cab, so that when he leaned forward to speak, with his hat pushed impatiently back, his big insistent face was thrust forward close to hers, and his great shoulders humped as though in effort. ...
— The Second Class Passenger • Perceval Gibbon
... kvicker, der more petter," said Vanderzee, and humped his shoulders up with a convulsive shrug. "Maype you prink it back und anchor ...
— Isle o' Dreams • Frederick F. Moore
... boy humped into the shelter of a shrub which leaned over the station fence. He was reading. Before him was a hand-cart lettered "Humphrey Monk, Grocer and General Dealer, Clayton." The boy wore spectacles which, when he looked at me, ...
— Old Junk • H. M. Tomlinson
... might be applied. Upon one point they were agreed. There was no doubt in any little head among them that Aunt Hannah had at some time sold herself to Satan, and that he had placed this deformity upon her as a mark of ownership. Then she had a humped back, poor woman, the result of the cruel weight of many weary years; and she leaned upon an old-fashioned staff with a curved and crutch-like handle; and her bleared eyes were bent forever on the ground; and her thin lips twitched convulsively, and she muttered ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I. February, 1862, No. II. - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... the King, was suddenly seen to grow hoary, his hairs to whiten, his forehead to wrinkle, his eyebrows to grow bristly, his eyes to sink in, his face to be furrowed, his mouth to become toothless, his beard to grow bushy, his back to be humped, his legs to tremble, and, above all, his glittering garments to turn to rags ...
— Stories from Pentamerone • Giambattista Basile
... on Sylvia by the logan-stone, it was less surprising to him than if he had not known she was there—having watched her go. She was sitting, all humped together, brooding over the water, her sunbonnet thrown back; and that hair, in which his star had caught, shining faint-gold under the sun. He came on her softly through the grass, and, when he was ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... bad again. Beauty is a snail and a saint beside this jumping, plunging, squealing creature that never by any chance was on his feet properly—except when he came down hard on all four of them at once with his back humped right up in the middle in a perfectly frightful fashion—and I suppose that wasn't 'properly.' Anyhow, I shouldn't have thought it was, if I had had to try to ...
— The Sunbridge Girls at Six Star Ranch • Eleanor H. (Eleanor Hodgman) Porter
... sped, and nothing followed him. "How fallen, how changed," from the youth who had climbed the hill as the sun went down! A mere contempt to himself, the self that contemned was a coward with the self it contemned! There lay the shapeless black of a buffalo, humped upon the grass: he made a wide circuit, and swept on like a shadow driven in the wind. For the wind had arisen, and added to his terror: it blew from behind him. He reached the brow of the valley, and shot down the steep descent like a falling star. Instantly the whole upper country ...
— Stephen Archer and Other Tales • George MacDonald
... skipped for the verandas of weather-board shanties out of which other souls popped to see the runaway. They saw a weird horseman, or rather, something like a camel (for Harry rode low, like Tod Sloan with his long back humped—for effect)—apparently fleeing for its life in a veil of dust, along the long white road, and some forty rods behind, an unaccountable tilted coach careered in its own separate cloud of dust. And from it ...
— The Rising of the Court • Henry Lawson
... people they had to git, For the blame old engine it had a fit! But when the train got onto the track, Them children they clum right onto its back, And they tickled it so that all to once It gave 'em a lot of shivers an' grunts, And it humped itself way up in the air, And p'raps it ...
— The Purple Cow! • Gelett Burgess
... there, on the launch turned over amidship, we beheld the ghost of the black tom cat, so large, so black, with the broad moonlight shining on it; and so thin, it was the skeleton of the cat, only it looked as black as ever; its back was humped up and its tail curved; and, as it stood out in the broad moonlight, it did look twice as big as the original cat, which was the biggest I ever saw. Well, the men actually screamed; they ran aft, upsetting the captain and ...
— Poor Jack • Frederick Marryat
... triumph on her face. Emma had never liked him. He had been conscious of the fact, but it had not disturbed him. He had no more thought of this middle-aged, harsh-featured New Jersey farmer's daughter than he had of one of the dining-chairs. Gordon sat humped upon himself, as he sat nowadays, a marked stoop of age was becoming visible in his broad shoulders, and he ate perfunctorily without a word. James, after a number of futile attempts to talk to Clemency, subsided himself into bewildered silence, and ate with very little appetite. ...
— 'Doc.' Gordon • Mary E. Wilkins-Freeman
... kitchen, two milk-cans a leaden patch by the wall, hams dangling from a beam, bats of light at the stove door, and in the center, illuminated by a small glass lamp held by a frightened stout woman, Dr. Kennicott bending over a body which was humped under a sheet—the surgeon, his bare arms daubed with blood, his hands, in pale-yellow rubber gloves, loosening the tourniquet, his face without emotion save when he threw up his head and clucked at the farmwife, "Hold that light ...
— Main Street • Sinclair Lewis
... awoke in the grey dawn Joe had already risen, lit the fire, packed his swag, and brewed our last pinch of tea in the billy. We drank to each other's good fortune in silence. Then, after a hand-press, Joe humped his swag and strode away, leaving me with moistened eyes. I felt I had lost my only friend. I have foregathered with much worse ...
— Reminiscences of a South African Pioneer • W. C. Scully
... forty beds in the room with mine, all of them occupied. All hands were snoring, and the fellow in the next cot was going it with the cut-out wide open, breaking all records. Most of the beds sagged like a hammock. Mine humped up in the middle like ...
— A Yankee in the Trenches • R. Derby Holmes
... over a gas-fixture, behind and through any openings he could find. Should some bird in the room disapprove of this behavior, and scold, as the finch was quite apt to do, the mocking-bird instantly alighted beside him, humped his back till he looked deformed, sidled two or three steps towards him, stopped, and stared at his critic; then two or three steps more, stopping again, and in every way acting more like a mischievous monster ...
— In Nesting Time • Olive Thorne Miller
... for generations. By nine all the fire and confusion had gone out of the sky, leaving wedges of apple-green and plates of pale yellow; and by ten the lanterns on the boat were making twisted colours upon the waves, elongated or squat, as the waves stretched or humped themselves. The beam from the lighthouse strode rapidly across the water. Infinite millions of miles away powdered stars twinkled; but the waves slapped the boat, and crashed, with regular and ...
— Jacob's Room • Virginia Woolf
... and with one eye, and the leprous with their sores, some emerging from little streets adjacent, some from the air-holes of cellars, howling, bellowing, yelping, all limping and halting, all flinging themselves towards the light, and humped up in the mire, like snails after ...
— Notre-Dame de Paris - The Hunchback of Notre Dame • Victor Hugo
... commonland to the east. From the rising ground between the two Frensham ponds there is a fine panorama of pine and heather. Crooksbury Hill juts up dark and commanding to the north; the level line of the ridge on the left, a few hundred yards away, is broken and humped with barrows; far away to the east lies Charterhouse, grey in the haze by Godalming; behind, to the south-east, the Devil's Jumps, three little squat, conical hills whose very oddity is one of their attractions. They edge the horizon like inverted pudding ...
— Highways and Byways in Surrey • Eric Parker
... crawled a dwarf bowed of leg, mighty of shoulder, humped of back, and with arms very long and thick and hairy. In one great fist he grasped a ponderous club shod with iron spikes, and now, resting his hands on this and his chin on his hands, he scowled at the Knight, ...
— The Geste of Duke Jocelyn • Jeffery Farnol
... to achieve a reputation for profound and ponderous wisdom, so long as one looks very solemn and says nothing. This is the stork's recipe. Go up to Billy here, or one of the marabous, as he stands with his shoulders humped up about his head, and make a joke. He won't see it. He will lift his eyebrows with a certain look of contempt, and continue to cogitate—about nothing. If the joke is a very bad pun—such a frightful pun that even a stork ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 27, March 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... bought for the general and myself many long drinks and things to eat that were not bananas. The general man trotted along at my side, leavin' all the arrangements to me. I led him up to Lafayette Square and set him on a bench in the little park. Cigarettes I had bought for him, and he humped himself down on the seat like a little, fat, contented hobo. I look him over as he sets there, and what I see pleases me. Brown by nature and instinct, he is now brindled with dirt and dust. Praise to the mule, his ...
— Cabbages and Kings • O. Henry
... one, in single file like a line of enormous marching insects, they crawled down the wall and humped along on their tentacles—around the ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science September 1930 • Various
... of the avengers of blood humped the black boulder. On the border of its shadow lay a dead sheep; and standing beside the body, his coat all ruffled by the hand of the storm—Owd ...
— Bob, Son of Battle • Alfred Ollivant
... They humped it, making the other alley's mouth by a margin slim indeed, followed by human howls and a clattering ...
— A Night Out • Edward Peple
... Jase, humped over a heap of sprouting potatoes, blinked up apathetically into the sudden flood of sweet, spring air and sunshine. "Why, hello, Billy Louise," he mumbled, ...
— The Ranch at the Wolverine • B. M. Bower
... seemed to have become crystallized, as it were, in age and decrepitude, and advanced no further in either—was pottering around the garden, eying askant, like an old robin, the new plough furrows. Pauper women humped their calico backs over the green slopes of the fields, searching for dandelion greens, but not digging, because it ...
— Jerome, A Poor Man - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... then, and blistered the tongue, and humped the back, and broken the legs, and eviscerated the stomach, of every person who dares to think, or even dream of harming it! May the heaviest curses of time fall upon his scoundrelly soul! May his juleps curdle in his mouth. May he smoke none but New Orleans ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... lot about this business," said Hugh, "but never hoped to see it. What are these Australian buffaloes? I thought they were just humped cattle like ...
— An Outback Marriage • Andrew Barton Paterson
... was scrambling up the opposite bank. A few seconds later he was leaping into the depths of the forest, his back humped, looking in the half light like a great ...
— The Meadow-Brook Girls Under Canvas • Janet Aldridge
... untrodden by any king of Assyria.* Having reached his destination, he captured two petty kings, Eparna and Shitirparna, and exiled them to Assyria, together with their people, their thoroughbred horses, and their two-humped camels,—in fine, all the possessions of their subjects. Shortly after this, three other Median chiefs, hitherto intractable—Uppis of Par-takka, Zanasana of Partukka,** Ramatea of Urakazabarna—came to Nineveh to present the king with ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 8 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... be funny. Waters surveyed it for a space of moments with a faint interest in its mere grotesqueness; it did not change nor shift under his scrutiny, but continued to glare inhumanly like a baleful lamp. He humped a thin shoulder in resignation and turned away. When he was halfway to the gate, he heard behind him the foreman ordering the gatekeeper not to admit ...
— Those Who Smiled - And Eleven Other Stories • Perceval Gibbon
... cortical lute of three thousand strings, and upon it impacted the early music at the dawn of things. In the planetary slime he heard the screaming struggles of fishy beasts; in the tanglewood of hot, aspiring forests were muffled roarings of gigantic mastodons, of tapirs that humped at the sky, beetles big as camels, and crocodiles with wings. Wicked creatures snarled crepitantly, and their crackling noises were echoed by lizard and dragon, ululating snouted birds and hissing leagues of snaky lengths. Stannum fled from these disturbing dreams seeking safety ...
— Melomaniacs • James Huneker
... stood sharply silhouetted against the skylight in the roof immediately above. The idea flashed into my brain in a moment that I was looking into the visage of something monstrous. The huge skull, the mane-like hair, the wide-humped shoulders, suggested, in a way I did not pause to analyze, that which was scarcely human; and for some seconds, fascinated by horror, I returned the gaze and stared into the dark, inscrutable countenance above me, without knowing exactly where I was or what I was doing. Then I realized ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery, Vol. 1 (of 4) - Ghost Stories • Various
... place. I heard a bang, a clatter, a rattling of hoofs. I peered around the bay and saw the blue pony performing some of the most finished, vigorous, and varied bucking it has ever been given me to witness. He all but threw somersaults. He stood on his upper lip. He humped up his back till he looked like a lean cat on a graveyard fence. He stood on his toe calks and spun like a weather-vane on a livery stable, and when the pack exploded and the saddle slipped under his belly, he kicked it to pieces ...
— The Trail of the Goldseekers - A Record of Travel in Prose and Verse • Hamlin Garland
... horse near the office, and, putting his head among the morning-glories curtaining an open window, stated his errand to Hilliard, whose vast bulk was humped ludicrously upon a high stool. The big fellow stopped thumbing his ledger, greeted him with a jovial shout, and directed him toward a stratum of rock which ...
— The Henchman • Mark Lee Luther
... Voices strove together in advising this "facer of facts" to get into khaki and to go to where he could obtain precisely the same kind of little local knowledge—perhaps, a few wounds as well. His presence was dishonourable—contaminating. We filed out and left him sitting humped in a chair, looking puzzled and pathetic, murmuring, "But I ...
— Out To Win - The Story of America in France • Coningsby Dawson
... our rail or his own spar, as the case might be, across the staggering abyss; clung so well with his toes that he might almost have been classified with the quadrumana; and between times squatted humped over on the rail, watching us ...
— African Camp Fires • Stewart Edward White
... worse than ever. He was flat on his side, with his spine humped up, moaning and straining at intervals. But now relief was in sight—so thought the men. With a tin dipper they tried to pour some relief into the open mouth of the sufferer, who had so little appreciation that he simply taxed his remaining strength to ...
— Rolf In The Woods • Ernest Thompson Seton
... full remembrance came to Grace. Now she knew why that face was strangely familiar. The man she had seen was none other than "Larry, the Locksmith." In her mind's eye Grace saw him sitting in the court room with humped shoulders, his eyes bent fiercely upon her, as she related what she had seen with her face pressed close to the window pane of the haunted house. It had all happened during her senior year at high school. To Grace it ...
— Grace Harlowe's Fourth Year at Overton College • Jessie Graham Flower
... was like some strange old child. He wore a number of little capes to hide his humped back, and his body, one thought, under his clothes was strapped together. He got on his feet nimbly like a spider, and they heard the click of a pistol lock as he whipped the weapon out of an open drawer, as though it were a habit thus always to keep ...
— The Sleuth of St. James's Square • Melville Davisson Post
... back-yard boy, was going to rise and disturb all these learned people. He was frightened again. But he stood up, faced the president, affectedly folded his arms, hastily unfolded them and put his hands in his pockets, one foot before the other, one shoulder humped a little ...
— The Trail of the Hawk - A Comedy of the Seriousness of Life • Sinclair Lewis
... Sam's dejected appearance—blue nose and humped back—and realizing doubtless that it was futile to reason with him further, Jim yielded and emptied the sacks of dirt just dug upon the ground. They now started out for the nearest shelter, the hotel in Angel's Camp, kept by Coon Drayton, formerly a Mississippi River pilot. Imagine the ...
— Mark Twain • Archibald Henderson
... umbrageous tail, and a shawl of many colours formed his flapping wings. A truly noble bird, whose legs had the genuine strut, whose eyes shone watchfully, and whose voice had a ring that evidently struck terror into the catterpillar's soul, if it was a catterpillar. He squirmed, he wriggled, he humped as fast as he could, trying to escape; but all in vain. The tufted bird espied him, gave one warbling sort of crow, pounced upon him, ...
— Eight Cousins • Louisa M. Alcott
... many of the species in their stations of natural repose. Caterpillars are also similarly protected. Many exactly resemble in tint the leaves they feed upon; others are like little brown twigs, and many are so strangely marked or humped, that when motionless they can hardly be taken to be living creatures at all. Mr. Andrew Murray has remarked how closely the larva of the peacock moth (Saturnia pavonia-minor) harmonizes in its ground colour with that of the young buds of heather on ...
— Contributions to the Theory of Natural Selection - A Series of Essays • Alfred Russel Wallace
... weren't hinting. Tell you a story of what happened once: I was up here in Salem at a man's Named Sanders with a gang of four or five Doing the haying. No one liked the boss. He was one of the kind sports call a spider, All wiry arms and legs that spread out wavy From a humped body nigh as big's a biscuit. But work! that man could work, especially If by so doing he could get more work Out of his hired help. I'm not denying He was hard on himself. I couldn't find That he kept any hours—not for himself. Daylight and lantern-light ...
— North of Boston • Robert Frost
... who should bounce out at him but a big black cat. And, oh, dear me. Her claws were sticking out of her feet like pins and her eyes were yellow as fire and her teeth glittered and her whiskers stood out like bayonets, and her tail was as big as a rolling pin and her back was humped up worse ...
— Billy Bunny and Uncle Bull Frog • David Magie Cory
... who was smoking a pipe in the chimney-corner, as humped and gloomy as a fowl on a wet day, and he was as surprised as me at getting a letter with a London postmark, and registered too; and he was that surprised that he kept turning it over and over, and wondering who it could have come from, till we thought it would be the best way to open and ...
— In Homespun • Edith Nesbit
... was that the Judas boat had just bumped Univ., exactly opposite the Judas barge. The oarsmen in either boat sat humped, panting, some of them rocking and writhing, after their wholesome exercise. But there was not one of them whose eyes were not upcast at Zuleika. And the vocalisation and instrumentation of the dancers and stampers on the towing-path had by this time ...
— Zuleika Dobson - or, An Oxford Love Story • Max Beerbohm
... mother to study braces and to fear that he will develop consumption. Yet you can study the world's health records and never find a line to prove that any man with "occupation or profession—novel reading" is recorded as dying of consumption. The humped-over attitude promotes compression of the lungs, telescoping of the diaphragm, atrophy of the abdominal abracadabra and other things (see Physiological Slush, p. 179, et ...
— The Delicious Vice • Young E. Allison
... gorge or valley is connected with a remarkable historical event it is also associated with one of the wildest tales of mythology. Here according to old tradition died one of the humped oxen of the team of Hu Gadarn. Distracted at having lost its comrade, which perished from the dreadful efforts which it made along with the others in drawing the afanc hen or old crocodile from the lake of lakes, it fled away from its master, and wandered about, till coming ...
— Wild Wales - Its People, Language and Scenery • George Borrow
... at the wooden figure a long time: a little hunchbacked man, not so very much taller than himself, on a low wooden box, holding out in one hand a packet of black wooden cigars. His back was terribly humped up between his shoulders, his face was square and bony, if wood can be said to be bony, he was bareheaded and bald-headed, he had a wide mouth, and his high nose curved down over it and his pointed chin curved up under it; and his breast stuck out in front almost as much as his shoulders ...
— The Old Tobacco Shop - A True Account of What Befell a Little Boy in Search of Adventure • William Bowen
... when he slowly retraced his steps towards his attic home, his feet were very tired and he shuffled more than he had in the morning. His back humped and his head drooped more, and the tears nearly blinded him. He had to stop and rest at each flight of stairs and he fell to his knees just as ...
— Friendly Fairies • Johnny Gruelle
... describe what followed those luckless words? Even as I spoke the magic carpet quivered responsively under my feet, and an undulation went all round the fringe as though a sudden wind were shaking it. It humped up in the middle so abruptly that I came down sitting with a shock that numbed me for the moment. It threw me on my back and billowed up round me as though I were in the trough of a stormy sea. Quicker than I can write it lapped a corner over and rolled me in ...
— Gulliver of Mars • Edwin L. Arnold
... coming of the cattle, driven up from the south by wind-browned, saddle-weary cowboys who sang endless chanteys to pass the time as they rode with their herds up the long trail. He saw the cattle humped and drifting before the wind in the first blizzards of winter, while gray wolves slunk watchfully here and there, their shaggy coats ruffled by the biting wind. He saw them when came the chinook, a howling, warm wind from out the southwest, cutting the snowbanks as with a knife that ...
— The Phantom Herd • B. M. Bower
... of the child assumed the appearance of deformity and distortion, as, with his back humped up, and his master's stick in his hand, he hobbled about the room, his childish face drawn into a doleful pucker, and spitting from right to left, in imitation ...
— Uncle Tom's Cabin • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... has the power of storing up water, and bringing it back into its mouth for several days after it has drunk it. This enables it to make long journeys, without needing a brook by the way. Its feet, too, are just fitted for the sandy wastes which it has to tread. The one-humped camel is found in Africa, and the two-humped, or Bactrian camel, in Asia. The Llama of South America is like the camel in some respects, but, as you know, is very much smaller; I knew one which had a disagreeable habit of spitting at those ...
— Twilight And Dawn • Caroline Pridham
... creature winked and blinked, and balanced for a moment on sleepy legs; then at the uncontrollable shout that burst from Bertram's throat, he faced the man, humped his tiny back, bristled his diminutive tail to almost unbelievable ...
— Miss Billy • Eleanor H. Porter
... a frozen look, Sary examined her hands for a moment, then humped her shoulders and stamped back to the kitchen-range where she had been boiling soap-fat and straining out the scum before the arrival of ...
— Polly of Pebbly Pit • Lillian Elizabeth Roy
... eyes returned to the body of his victim, where it lay both humped and sprawling, incredibly small and strangely meaner than in life. In these poor, miserly clothes, in that ungainly attitude, the dealer lay like so much sawdust. Markheim had feared to see it, and, lo! it was nothing. And yet, as he gazed, this bundle of old clothes and pool of blood began ...
— The Merry Men - and Other Tales and Fables • Robert Louis Stevenson
... tea and bacon, even in the gross darkness and mental tension which precede a Big Push. Presently various humped figures in greatcoats, having gathered in the open ditch which did duty for Officers' Mess, broke into spasmodic conversation—conversation rendered even more spasmodic by the almost ceaseless roar of guns. There were guns ...
— The First Hundred Thousand • Ian Hay
... growin', Sonny never asked nobody no odds. He thess stayed stock-still ez long ez he found pleasure in bein' a little runt, an' then he humped hisself an' shot up same ez a sparrer-grass stalk. It gives me pleasure to look up to him the way I ...
— Sonny, A Christmas Guest • Ruth McEnery Stuart
... for the sunflower seed Jay came along and leaned over the fence. "Jack," he drawled, "you look like a kangaroo all humped over making that furrow. Why don't you ...
— The Library of Work and Play: Gardening and Farming. • Ellen Eddy Shaw
... are almost certainly the descendants of more than one wild form, in the same manner as has been shown to be the case with our dogs and pigs. Naturalists have generally made two main divisions of cattle: the humped kinds inhabiting tropical countries, called in India Zebus, to which the specific name of Bos Indicus has been given; and the common non-humped cattle, generally included under the name of Bos taurus. The humped cattle were domesticated, ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication, Vol. I. • Charles Darwin
... the welt-raising cut of a vicious, unreasoning whip. It was not a pleasurable prospect; and at the first shake-up, Lauzanne pictured it coming. All thoughts of overtaking the horses in front fled from his mind; it was the dreaded punishment that interested him most; figuratively, he humped his ...
— Thoroughbreds • W. A. Fraser
... she would sit doing nothing. Then she was so ugly and ill-shaped that not one of the youths of the village would have aught to say to her by way of courtship or marriage. She squinted very much; her face was long and thin, her nose excessively large and humped, her teeth crooked and projecting, her chin almost as sharp as the bill of a loon, and her ears as large as those of a deer. Altogether she was a very odd and strangely formed woman, and wherever she went she never failed to excite ...
— Childhood's Favorites and Fairy Stories - The Young Folks Treasury, Volume 1 • Various
... agreed Brewer; "no wonder his shoulders air humped. But you never hears as much as a grunt from him. He knows he ain't never give her ...
— Tess of the Storm Country • Grace Miller White
... with rain and sleet; toward the sea was the same mist, flying with the wind over such a huddle of tossing green and white as Ralph had never seen. The surf poured in in rollers that leaped over each other's humped backs in their savage energy to get at the shore, which trembled as they beat upon it. The ripples from one wave had not time to flow back before those of the next came threshing in. Great blobs of foam shot down the ...
— Cap'n Eri • Joseph Crosby Lincoln
... two-wheeled cart drawn by a humped bullock were a couple of Hindu ladies, under a canopy supported by four poles. Then came a camel bearing two bearded men on his back. Two or three palanquins were seen; but they were an old story, and they turned ...
— Across India - Or, Live Boys in the Far East • Oliver Optic
... struggles, the graves of past hopes. A dead apathy of mind and muscle succeeded his mental exertion and passion of thought. Increased age marked him, as though Time, thrusting all at once upon him bitter experiences usually spread over many years of a man's life, had weighed him down, humped his back, thinned his hair, and furrowed his forehead under the load. Within his eyes, behind the reflected blue of the sky, as he raised them to it, sat mad misery; and an almost tetanic movement of limb, which ...
— Children of the Mist • Eden Phillpotts
... the stocking stretched, and Penrod manipulated the cat; but she left her hearty mark on both of them before, in a moment of unfortunate inspiration, she humped her back while she was upside down, and Penrod took advantage of the concavity to increase it even more than she desired. The next instant she was assisted downward into the gloomy interior, with excelsior already beginning to block the means ...
— Penrod and Sam • Booth Tarkington
... cautiously, however, to the edge of the thicket, to a point where she could see the fire. A man sat humped over the glowing embers, whereon sizzled a piece of meat. His head was bent forward, as if he were listening. Suddenly he looked up, and she gasped—for the firelight showed the features of ...
— North of Fifty-Three • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... away, with his two-horse wagon, to get a load of manure. Lewis is the farmer (colored). He is of mighty frame and muscle, stocky, stooping, ungainly, has a good manly face and a clear eye. Age about 45—and the most picturesque of men, when he sits in his fluttering work-day rags, humped forward into a bunch, with his aged slouch hat mashed down over his ears and neck. It is a spectacle to make the broken-hearted smile. Lewis has worked mighty hard and remained mighty poor. At the end of each whole year's toil he can't show a gain of fifty dollars. He had borrowed money of the ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... in came another ugly old hag. She had a back so humped and broad, she had hard work to get through the door. Up jumped the bride in a trice, and greeted her with ...
— Popular Tales from the Norse • Sir George Webbe Dasent
... narrow shoulders humped, and his whole figure testifying to his annoyance, and Hartley sat alone, watching the moonlight and thinking his own thoughts. He was interrupted by a woman's voice, and Mrs. Wilder sat down in the chair left ...
— The Pointing Man - A Burmese Mystery • Marjorie Douie
... rarely met; still more rarely civilised man; and rarer yet his dwelling-place. If at times a human being appeared among the prairie groves, he was not there as a sojourner—only a traveller, passing from place to place. The herds of cattle, with shaggy frontlets and humped shoulders—the droves of horses, long-tailed and with full flowing manes—the proud antlered stags, and prong-horned antelopes, were not his. He had no control over them. The turf he trod was free to them for pasture, as to him for passage; and, as he made way through ...
— The Death Shot - A Story Retold • Mayne Reid
... have worn exactly the same fashioned clothes as this woman, and doubtless Leah had become pink-eyed through the tears of vexation she had shed over the ancestral humped quadruped she had ridden; and most certainly Lot's wife, Ruth, Solomon's wives and appendages, Jezebel, and every other woman mentioned in the Bible once watched just such a dawn rise across just ...
— The Hawk of Egypt • Joan Conquest
... each weary back is humped, And bowed each jetty pate; For Fishy, though he looks so ...
— Fishy-Winkle • Jean C. Archer
... off. Scarcely had he put out the sculls than a new passenger arrived. It was Koko. He would often accompany them to the reef, though, strangely enough, he would never go there alone of his own accord. He made a circle or two over them, and then lit on the gunwale in the bow, and perched there, humped up, and with his long dove-coloured tail feathers presented to ...
— The Blue Lagoon - A Romance • H. de Vere Stacpoole
... one of his followers he carefully fired the stores of kindling wood which filled part of the ground-floor of the ancient Wark of the Cassillis folk. In ten minutes, before even the cavalcade was entirely mounted, the flames were bursting through the humped roof in a fiery fountain of gold sparks and ruddy jags of flame, while the pillar of smoke rose many hundreds of feet into ...
— Patsy • S. R. Crockett
... Products of the warmer plains. 2. Humped oxen and fat-tailed sheep. 3. Scarani. 4. The Karaunahs and Nigudarian Bands. ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo Volume 1 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... great creature stood humped in the level light; the twin horns back-curving and silhouetted against the sky told him ...
— The Pools of Silence • H. de Vere Stacpoole
... We humped our saddles and swags ourselves; a stiffish load too, but the night was cool, and we did our best. It was no use growling. It had to be done, and the sooner the better. It seemed a long time—following father step by step—before we came to the place ...
— Robbery Under Arms • Thomas Alexander Browne, AKA Rolf Boldrewood
... flies, also known as black flies, are about one-eighth of an inch long and have a characteristic "humped" back (fig. 3). They breed in running water and appear in swarms during spring and summer, often in enormous numbers, causing great annoyance to stock and human beings, on account of their bites and their entrance into the eyes, ...
— Special Report on Diseases of Cattle • U.S. Department of Agriculture
... her mind all would be well. He put his clothes on feverishly, but before he had half finished he heard her running up the stairs, and his heart sank. She came with the step that indicated something important on her mind. He knew as well how she looked as if he could see her coming. She was humped over slightly, her head was down, both hands grasping her skirts in front, and her feet fairly glimmering at ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume IX (of X) • Various
... Robb humped his big shoulders and slouched up to his desk, there to bury his head in a gigantic ledger for the balance ...
— A Canadian Bankclerk • J. P. Buschlen
... of that, too, because she was too tired to walk, anyway, and the baby was very sweet. Then, once more, a long shadow came between her and the moon and someone bent over her. Ah, 'twas Daddy Skinner, the same beloved, heavy humped-shoulders—the same precious face, and he was fondling the moon baby, and twice kissed her with tender, twitching lips. She smiled happily and moved a little in the snow. She tried to catch Daddy's ...
— The Secret of the Storm Country • Grace Miller White
... crept into that infernal court, that infernal torture chamber, they were just finishing the case of the child. This solicitor chap—chap with a humped back and a head as big as a house—was just finishing fawning round a doctor man in the box, putting it up to him that there was nothing to suggest deliberate suffocation of the baby. Oxalic acid poisoning—was it not the case that the girl would have died in great agony? Writhed on ...
— If Winter Comes • A.S.M. Hutchinson
... says she, 'he's their brother,' says she. 'Lord 'a' mercy!' says I, 'don't tell me there's another one!' 'Yes, there he is,' says she, an' she points to him. He was settin' on the edge of a long seat, all humped up, an' queer, watchin' everything, without sayin' a word, but if I live to be a hundred I'll never get the look o' that child's face out o' my mind. It was so kind o' awful lonesome an' forsaken an' hungry-lookin', an' so fearful old, ...
— Treasure Valley • Marian Keith
... had the effect of floating off from some busy mill of thought within him. Hitherto Mr. Direck had been inclined to think this silent observant youth, with his hands in his pockets and his shoulders a little humped, as probably shy and adolescently ineffective. But the head was manifestly ...
— Mr. Britling Sees It Through • H. G. Wells
... Gregorio," was his constantly recurring formula. "Keeps me from sleeping and's very troublesome when I want to turn over, as I often do on account of the pains in my poor humped shoulders. Now, why need you put it on? Surely you're not afraid of me trying to get away? Ha, ha! that would be turning one's back upon best friends. Cascaras! I fare too well here to think of changing quarters. Above all, going into ...
— The Free Lances - A Romance of the Mexican Valley • Mayne Reid
... asked Fulkerson. "Well, we must see what can be done. I supposed you would be all settled by this time, or I should have humped myself to find you something. None of those places I gave you ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... slipped happily away, until war swept the continent. Professor Morris refused to believe in its nearness until it was too late to escape, and they were forced to remain until the day when Warsaw fell. Now Warsaw, beautiful and proud, Warsaw the brilliant lay in ruins. Professor Morris, sitting humped over on the rude bench, thought of the wonderful chance that had brought him were history, tragic and important, was being made. He did not worry greatly over the disappearance of Elinor. He remembered several ...
— The Boy Scouts in Front of Warsaw • Colonel George Durston
... valley neatly divided into patches—each hedged off in squares in which flourished all sorts of vegetables, including sweet corn and potatoes and several other less familiar varieties. In pastures, fenced in with mathematical regularity by hedges of the African cactus thorn, herds of humped cattle were feeding contentedly in the mellow glow of the setting sun, occasionally lowing softly, which latter made Billy, as he expressed it, "long ...
— The Boy Aviators in Africa • Captain Wilbur Lawton
... was slow and sullen. The smaller cattle sheltered in the lee of the larger, moving compactly, as if the density of the herd radiated a heat of its own. The saddle horses, southern bred and unacclimated, humped their backs and curled their heads to the knee, indicating, with the closing day, a falling temperature. Suddenly, and as clear as the crack of a rifle, the voice of Dell Wells was ...
— Wells Brothers • Andy Adams
... gesture Dud lifted a frying-pan from the red-hot stove and clapped it against the rump of the jester. The redskin's head hit the roof. His shriek of agony could have been heard half a mile. He clapped hands to the afflicted part and did a humped-up dance of woe. The carving-knife lay forgotten on the floor. It was quite certain that he would take no pleasure in sitting down for ...
— The Fighting Edge • William MacLeod Raine
... stood quivering. The girl's hat swept through the air in front of its eyes. The horse woke to galvanized action. The back humped. It shot into the air with a writhing twist of the body. All four feet struck the ground together, straight and stiff ...
— Tangled Trails - A Western Detective Story • William MacLeod Raine
... of fur in the crotch of a slim forest elm. Presently it uncurled, cautiously; a fluffy ringed tail unfolded; the rounded furry back humped up, and the animal, moving slowly into the tangent foliage of an enormous oak, ...
— The Fighting Chance • Robert W. Chambers
... spectacular plans—in mind. He put them into execution at once. The moment he felt his burden slipping over his back that active end grew busy again. Jumbo humped himself, letting out a volley of kicks so lightning-like in their swiftness that ...
— The Circus Boys on the Flying Rings • Edgar B. P. Darlington
... neck was massive, and an angry red, sprinkled with long, wiry hairs. It fastened his flat-backed head to a body that was like a gorilla's, thick and wide and humped. And his arms gave an added touch of the animal, for they were so long that his great palms reached to his knees; and so sprung out at the shoulder, and so curved in at the wrist, that when they met at the fingers ...
— The Rich Little Poor Boy • Eleanor Gates
... cold snake, and the sun will not thaw me." He struck himself fiercely on the breast and stared at her. "Look at me, humped and hideous. How could this rugged hull prove an ...
— The Proud Prince • Justin Huntly McCarthy |
