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Bumble   Listen
verb
Bumble  v. t.  To bungle (a task).






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Bumble" Quotes from Famous Books



... and he wished himself a boy again. He was too much exhausted to take the trouble of cutting any fern or seeking for moss, but just threw himself down under a tree, when exactly above his head he heard a great buzzing as a bumble-bee alighted on a honeysuckle branch. 'What are you doing here?' asked the bee in a cross voice; 'at your age you ought to be ...
— The Brown Fairy Book • Andrew Lang

... enameled wings for the girls and stick pins with bumble bees in black and gold for the boys. On the back of each pin was the date and ...
— Phyllis - A Twin • Dorothy Whitehill

... lion who has been stung by a bumble-bee; she places herself once more, and of her own accord, upon the griddle of suspicion, and begins her struggle with the ...
— Petty Troubles of Married Life, Second Part • Honore de Balzac

... what I started to say. I wanted to tell you how the least thing distracts me nowadays from my duty to the Sadhana. In my last letter[1] I told you of the bumble-bees which hover round me in some fruitless quest, to the tune of a ...
— Glimpses of Bengal • Sir Rabindranath Tagore

... wondering did not help him, and he gave up the riddle, and began, in his pleasant holiday idleness, to look about at other things in the unfrequented wilderness through which the river ran. To trace the raven by following it home seemed too difficult, but it was easy to follow a great bumble-bee, which went blundering by, alighting upon a block of stone, took flight again, and landed upon a slope covered with moss, entering at last a hole which went sloping down ...
— The Black Tor - A Tale of the Reign of James the First • George Manville Fenn

... I have known people who "have gone where money was" and have fallen honestly and rapturously into love, but you have got to be very sure that money in such a case is not the motive. If it is the penalty never fails to follow. Mr. Bumble married Mrs. Corney for "six teaspoons, a pair of sugar tongs, and a milk-pot, with a small quantity of secondhand furniture and twenty pounds in money." And in two months he regretted his bargain and admitted that he had gone "dirt cheap." "Only two months ...
— Pebbles on the Shore • Alpha of the Plough (Alfred George Gardiner)

... birds sought of these plants, for goldfinches were darting around inviting all creation to "See me?" as they gathered the silken down for nest lining. Over the sweetly perfumed purple heads, the humming-birds held high carnival on Sunshine Hillside all the day. The honey and bumble bees fled at the birds' approach, but what were these others, numerous everywhere, that clung to the blooms, greedily thrusting their red noses between the petals, and giving place to ...
— Moths of the Limberlost • Gene Stratton-Porter

... by some strange motive, he took the path over the Ridge again. It had been a long day and a wearing one. He had tried Hannibal once more; but his pupils cared less for Hannibal than for the bumble-bees droning in the window-frame. For some reason the dull routine of lessons had been duller than usual. The scholars had never been so stupid. Again and again the face that he had seen rest on his arm the day before came between him and his page, ...
— Gordon Keith • Thomas Nelson Page

... ruffianism has an almost epic grandeur; and black-hearted Fagin, the Jew, receiver of stolen goods and trainer of youth in the way they should not go; and Master Dawkins, the Artful Dodger. Such, too, is Mr. Bumble, greatest and most ...
— Life of Charles Dickens • Frank Marzials

... which are already growing tired, I succeeded in finding the said organ in the Bembex-wasps, the Halicti (Cf. Chapters 12 to 14 of the present volume.—Translator's Note.), the Carpenter-bees, the Bumble-bees, the Andrenae (A species of Burrowing Bees.—Translator's Note.) and the Megachiles. (Or Leaf-cutting Bees. Cf. Chapter 8 of the present volume.—Translator's Note.) I failed in the case of the Osmiae, the Chalicodomae and the Anthophorae. ...
— Bramble-bees and Others • J. Henri Fabre

... lines in the press of business to tell you I am well, but very lonely, with a view out over the green, in this dull, rainy weather, while the bumble-bees hum and the sparrows twitter. Grand audience tomorrow. It's vexatious that I have to buy linen, towels, table-cloths, and sheets. * * * Farewell. Hearty love, and write! Your ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. X. • Kuno Francke

... bunched his thick lips together like the stem-end of a tomato and shot a bumble-bee dead that had lit on a weed seven feet away. One after another the several chewers expressed a charge of tobacco juice and delivered it at the deceased with steady, aim ...
— The Gilded Age, Part 1. • Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) and Charles Dudley Warner

... thinking of making use of its venomous sting, except when it is seized and handled. Many other Hymenoptera, honey-gatherers or hunters, are quite as spiritless; and I can assert to-day, after a long experience, that only the Social Hymenoptera, the Hive-bees, the Common Wasps and the Bumble-bees, know how to devise a common defence; and only they dare fall singly upon the aggressor, to ...
— The Glow-Worm and Other Beetles • Jean Henri Fabre

... entomology, or else one afflicted with a combination of myopy and bulimy. Even now there is room for plenty of improvement in our counterfeit presentment; but in those days the body was made with yellow mohair, ribbed with red silk and gold twist, and as thick as a fertile bumble-bee. John Pike perceived that to offer such a thing to Crocker's trout would probably consign him—even if his great stamina should over-get the horror—to an uneatable death, through just and natural indignation. On the other hand, while the May-fly lasted, a trout so ...
— Crocker's Hole - From "Slain By The Doones" By R. D. Blackmore • R. D. Blackmore

... forget that I wouldn't let you kiss me, won't you?" he answered as he drew back from the table and lit a cigarette after passing me the case. "Everybody calls me Buzz the Bumble Bee because of a historic encounter of mine with a whole nest of bumblebees right out here in the General's garden. It is a title of heroism and I'd like to have you use it as if we'd been kids together as we were ...
— The Daredevil • Maria Thompson Daviess

... watched awhile. A timid animal world had come to life for the season. Little tadpoles and efts began to bubble up through the water, and to race along beneath it; toads made noises like very young ducks, and advanced to the margin in twos and threes; overhead, bumble-bees flew hither and thither in the thickening light, their drone coming and going like the ...
— The Return of the Native • Thomas Hardy

... against the door-posts, and waiting to see if anything would happen! As a rule, nothing did happen, but there was no knowing what joyful day might bring a new sensation. Sometimes there was a dog-fight. Once—thrilling recollection!—Ozias Brisket's horse had run away ("Think 't 's likely a bumble-bee must ha' stung him; couldn't nothin' else ha' stirred him out of a walk, haw! haw!") and had scattered the joints of meat all about ...
— Hildegarde's Holiday - a story for girls • Laura E. Richards

... Man's Cave, 'cause a skellington was found there," observed the child as they passed a dark, yawning mouth in the cliff. "And that's Bumble Cave, 'cause the bumblebees make nests in the top of it. And here's Smuggler's Cave, 'cause the smugglers used to ...
— The Sea Fairies • L. Frank Baum

... driver was alone until he began to back the team to rush the hill once more. Then he heard angry exclamations coming from the rear of the wagon—exclamations which sounded not unlike the buzzing of an enraged bumble-bee. He stretched his neck and saw that which suggested an overgrown hoop-snake rolling down the hill. At the bottom a little mud-coated man stood up. The part of his face that was visible above his beard was pale with anger. His brown ...
— 'Me-Smith' • Caroline Lockhart

... the bumble-bee Drones his song in the perfect weather; And, just on purpose to sing to me, Thrush and blue-bird came North together. Just for me, in red and white, Bloom and blossom the fields of clover; And all for me and my delight The wild Wind ...
— Poems of Cheer • Ella Wheeler Wilcox

... strong desire to catch and kiss the pretty baby, she scandalized her neighbours by laughing outright the next minute. A particularly portly, pious-looking priest, who was marching with superb dignity, and chanting like a devout bumble-bee, suddenly mislaid his temper, and injured the effect by boxing a charity boy's ears with his gilded missal, and then capped the climax by taking a pinch of snuff with a sonorous satisfaction ...
— Shawl-Straps - A Second Series of Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag • Louisa M. Alcott

... here among the trees, With the singing birds and the bumble bees, A-knowing that I can do as I please, Than to live what folks call a life of ease— Up thar ...
— Ohio Arbor Day 1913: Arbor and Bird Day Manual - Issued for the Benefit of the Schools of our State • Various

... ever buzzed himself so fatally into the spider-webs of other people's love affairs? I asked myself sternly. As soon as Providence plucked me out of one web, back I would bumble into another, though I had no time for a love affair of ...
— It Happened in Egypt • C. N. Williamson & A. M. Williamson

... a mere code address, and I use it here symbolically. I have seen commerce pretty close. I know what it is worth, and I have no particular regard for commercial magnates, but one must protest against these Bumble-like proceedings. Is it indignation at the loss of so many lives which is at work here? Well, the American railroads kill very many people during one single year, I dare say. Then why don't these dignitaries come down on the presidents of their own railroads, of which one can't say whether they ...
— Notes on Life and Letters • Joseph Conrad

... mosquitoes. April 21st, Plover, two hawks, and a butterfly. April 22nd, Gulls, white waveys, robins. April 28th, White cranes. April 30th, Frogs, most of snow gone. May 2nd, Dark butterfly, four purple crocuses. May 4th, Frogs noisy, bumble bees. May 5th, Nearly clear of ice. May 8th, Water from Peace River flowing into lake. An Eagle. May 10th, Sand martins. Ice drifting in channel in front of fort. May 20th, Swans passing north. May 21st, Trees bursting into leaf. July 11th, Strawberries and raspberries. ...
— The New North • Agnes Deans Cameron

... before that, Seemed like I saw the march o' regiments o' children, Marching to the robin's fife and cricket's rat-ta-tat! Lily-banners overhead, with the dew upon 'em, On flashed the little army, as with sword and flame; Like the buzz o' bumble-wings, with the honey on 'em, Came an eerie, cheery chant, ...
— The Book of Joyous Children • James Whitcomb Riley

... they always fill me with despair!' cried Bess. 'I am never ready when ours begins to buzz through the house, like a gigantic, melancholy-mad bumble bee. Of course I must change, dear; firstly, because I am smothered with dust, and sixthly, as Dogberry says, because I have brought a pretty gown to do honour ...
— The Golden Calf • M. E. Braddon

... out of a barn. With a pair of bag-pipes under her arm: She could sing nothing but fiddle cum fee, The mouse has married the bumble-bee; Pipe, cat—dance, mouse, We'll have a ...
— The Little Mother Goose • Anonymous

... little children, flocked into the building in a very short time, thronged about the bier, the black table, and Panna, who was leaning against it, carrying on a low, eager hum of conversation till it seemed as though countless swarms of bumble-bees ...
— How Women Love - (Soul Analysis) • Max Simon Nordau

... dell I sought a nook Beneath a thick and widely-spreading tree, And there I sat to con my little book, My book of old black-letter grammarie. All stillness in that deep and lonely dell Save hum of bumble-bee on nimble wing, Or zephyr sporting round the wild blue bell, While fancy ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume XXIV. • Revised by Alexander Leighton

... "digests"! "Convenience of reference." Ah! that is one of their imperent sly jests. Removal of Noosances? Yah! If we started on that lay perniskers There is more than a few in the Westries 'ud feel suthin' singein' their wiskers, Or BUMBLE'S a Dutchman. Their Circ'lar—it's mighty obliging—defines 'em, The Noosances namely; I wonder if parties read Circ'lars as signs 'em, If so, Local Government Boarders must be most oncommonly knowin', And I'd like to 'eave bricks ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke, Vol. 2 • Stephen Gwynn

... trying to bring Lyveden into smooth water. She had already earmarked a congenial billet at The Shrubbery, Hawthorne. The difficulty was to make Anthony apply for the post. Since Mrs. Bumble could hardly be advised to ask a footman to quit the service of the Marquess of Banff, Valerie, who was determined to remain incognito, had recourse to the Press. Her advertisement ...
— Anthony Lyveden • Dornford Yates

... Roses, and lilies fair, Birds in the trees, and the big bumble-bees, Shall welcome our ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, V. 5, April 1878 - Scribner's Illustrated • Various

... The bumble-bee that tipped the lily-vases Along the road-side in the shadows dim, Went following the blossoms of their faces As though their sweets must needs be ...
— Riley Love-Lyrics • James Whitcomb Riley

... and comings of an ant or the capricious flight of a bumble-bee; then with his eyes lost in space, immersed in the ...
— The Grip of Desire • Hector France

... plants. on the effects of slight differences of colour. on fertilisation of scarlet runner. on fossil maize in Peru. on fresh-water mollusks. on the bumble bee. on ...
— The Naturalist in Nicaragua • Thomas Belt

... church arm in arm with the pretty cause of all this beneficent disturbance. And the spectacle is mighty taking and commendable; but you'll excuse me for holding that it is not Love. It bears about the same relation to Love that Bumble-puppy bears to good whist. Among the eccentricities that make up the Average Man I find none more diverting than his complacent belief that he is, or has been, or will certainly some day be, in love. As a matter of fact, the capacity to love belongs to one man or woman in ...
— The Idler, Volume III., Issue XIII., February 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly. Edited By Jerome K. Jerome & Robert Barr • Various

... sometimes. These gentry are much exercised in their minds by my letters about them, and some of them fly out at me very much as bumble-bees do at one who stirs up their nest. For instance, I received, not long ago, from my good friends, Messrs. Cauldwell & Whitney, an anonymous letter to them, dated at Washington, and suggesting that ...
— The Humbugs of the World • P. T. Barnum

... the carters lashed and swore at them, the animals would not budge an inch until she permitted them to go. Here are a few of the common superstitions current in Berkshire. If a corpse be kept over a Sunday another death will occur before the week is out; should a big bumble-bee enter the window, a guest may be expected; and when the woodpecker, commonly called the yaffle, laughs, they say the rain is coming. When the thick mist lies in the valley, the people say it is the White Lady, a belief closely akin to the Dame Blanche, who is said in Normandy to haunt ...
— English Villages • P. H. Ditchfield

... in the evening. And the man had taken a fancy to the song and remembered it after in London, and whenever it came to his mind it made him think of evenings—the kind you don't get in London—and he heard a soft wind going idly over the moor and the bumble-bees in a hurry, and forgot the noise of the traffic. And always, whenever he heard men speak of Time, he grudged to Time most this song. Once afterwards he went to that Northern moor again and found the ...
— Tales of Wonder • Lord Dunsany

... Where the Little People are; Where the clover-tops are trees, And the rain-pools are the seas, And the leaves like little ships Sail about on tiny trips; And above the daisy tree Through the grasses, High o'erhead the Bumble Bee Hums and passes. In that forest to and fro I can wander, I can go; See the spider and the fly, And the ants go marching by Carrying parcels with their feet Down the green and grassy street I can in ...
— Childhood's Favorites and Fairy Stories - The Young Folks Treasury, Volume 1 • Various

... variety of the game that comes her way. I see her accepting with equal readiness whatever chance may send her: Butterflies and Dragon-flies, Flies and Wasps, small Dung-beetles and Locusts. If I offer her a Mantis, a Bumble-bee, an Anoxia—the equivalent of the common Cockchafer—and other dishes probably unknown to her race, she accepts all and any, large and small, thin-skinned and horny-skinned, that which goes afoot and that which takes winged flight. She is omnivorous, ...
— The Wonders of Instinct • J. H. Fabre

... long feet, short feet, broad feet, splay feet, club feet, and bumble feet, to which may be added cloven feet in the case of certain animals, and an ...
— The Comic Latin Grammar - A new and facetious introduction to the Latin tongue • Percival Leigh

... "It was a Bumble Bee," he comforted her. "It came between us for a bit, its shadow fell upon you, nothing more! Such things will happen; we must be prepared for them. It was nothing in myself ...
— The Extra Day • Algernon Blackwood

... humble-bee [Transcriber's note: bumble-bee?] voice of the crowd below the windows watching Volney Sprague's bulletin suddenly lifted in a lion roar. Elation in that quarter was ominous, and Shelby drew a curtain. It appeared that a minor revolt against the Boss in New York ...
— The Henchman • Mark Lee Luther

... example to his order," and yet better than this stately panegyric is the happy accident, if it be one, that the poor flower girls of London have pitched their camp upon the steps, and have successfully defied all the efforts of Mr. Bumble to remove them. ...
— Great Testimony - against scientific cruelty • Stephen Coleridge

... Patty, "I certainly have most outspoken cousins! They don't seem to hesitate to tell me what to bring and what not to bring them. But I'm sure of one thing! Bumble Barlow won't be so fussy particular; she'll take whatever I bring ...
— Patty in Paris • Carolyn Wells

... oppressive afternoon that they would never be able to move again. Mr. Bob, Hinpoha's black cocker, shared in the prevailing laziness; he lay sprawled on his back with all four feet up in the air, breathing in panting gasps that shook his whole body. A bumble bee, blundering up on the porch, broke the spell. It lit on Mr. Bob's face, whereupon Mr. Bob sprang into the air, quivering with excitement, and knocked Hinpoha's glass out of her hand. Hinpoha picked up the pieces with one hand and patted Mr. Bob ...
— The Campfire Girls on Ellen's Isle - The Trail of the Seven Cedars • Hildegard G. Frey

... the outer ones. Corresponding to the outer, perianth-segments are the three stamens and the three, petal-like divisions of the style, each bearing a transverse stigma immediately above the anther. They are pollinated by bumble-bees, and in some instances by flies of the genus Rhingia, which search for the honey, brush the pollen out of the anthers and afterwards deposit it on the stigma. According to systematic views of the monocotyledons the original prototype of the genus Iris must have had a whorl of six equal, ...
— Species and Varieties, Their Origin by Mutation • Hugo DeVries

... to put Mrs. Wing down. Every one twittered and chirped, and made a great noise; but no one would give up, and all went to roost in a great state of uncertainty. But, the next day, it became evident that Mrs. Wing was right; for Major Bumble-bee came buzzing in to tell them that old Daddy Winter's hut was empty, and his white head had been seen in the sunny ...
— Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag VI - An Old-Fashioned Thanksgiving, Etc. • Louisa M. Alcott

... his family's honor—all held the audience with a new sensation. As he pushed his palsied arms into his coat and pulled himself fairly off his feeble feet in his effort to button it, turned up to his door humming like a preying bumble-bee, faced slowly about again, his piercing little pink eyes darting with anticipation, and off the trembling old lips droned the telling speech: 'I wonder how his pretty little wife will bear poverty. H'm! We shall see'—the ...
— Analyzing Character • Katherine M. H. Blackford and Arthur Newcomb

... the Lord y^e sicknes ceased. This disease allso swept away many of y^e Indeans from all y^e places near adjoyning; and y^e spring before, espetially all y^e month of May, ther was such a quantitie of a great sorte of flies, like (for bignes) to wasps, or bumble-bees, which came out of holes in y^e ground, and replenished all y^e woods, and eate y^e green-things, and made such a constante yelling noyes, as made all y^e woods ring of them, and ready to deafe y^e hearers. They have not by y^e English been heard or seen before or since. But y^e ...
— Bradford's History of 'Plimoth Plantation' • William Bradford

... rendered sober-minded by any such thing. In the midst of Gerald's instructive account of the holy abbot's endeavors to purify the monastic orders from the stain of simony, her hand clutched his, and doing a delicate cake-walk she compelled him along with her, announcing, "The Hornet and the Bumble-bee went walking hand in hand!" Fancying this prank not to have been without success, she next performed an improvised pas seul illustrative of the text, "The mountains shall skip ...
— Aurora the Magnificent • Gertrude Hall

... of awakening spring in the garden seemed to be an endless source of pleasure to the girl; she would sit for hours looking at the pale lilac-tinted wistaria clusters hanging over the naked wall and watching plundering bumble-bees scrambling from blossom ...
— Athalie • Robert W. Chambers

... and so he hurried on, trying to find a place where he would be left in peace. But nowhere that he could go was he free from those taunting voices. Not even when he had crawled into his house was he free from them, for buzzing around his doorway was Bumble Bee and Bumble ...
— The Adventures of Prickly Porky • Thornton W. Burgess

... institutions been portrayed! How have the poor-house, the jail, the police courts of justice, passed before his magic mirror, and displayed to us the petty tyranny of the low-minded official, from the magnificent Mr. Bumble, and the hard-hearted Mr. Roker, to the authoritative Justice Fang, the positive Judge Starleigh! And as we contemplate them, how strongly have we realized the time-worn evils of some of the systems they revealed to our ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol III, After-Dinner Speeches P-Z • Various

... lose your head." My most favourite form of literature, I may remark, is accounts of mountaineering exploits, though I have never seen a glacier or a permanent snow mountain in my life. I do not care a row of pins how badly they may be written, and what form of bumble-puppy grammar and composition is employed, as long as the writer will walk along the edge of a precipice with a sheer fall of thousands of feet on one side and a sheer wall on the other; or better still crawl up an arete with a precipice on either. Nothing on earth would persuade ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley

... small point and detail in his surroundings became suddenly magnified to his sight,—even the little rose in old Josey Letherbarrow's smock caught his eye with an almost obtrusive flare. The blithe soft carol of the birds outside sounded close and loud,— the buzzing of a bumble-bee that had found its way into the church and was now bouncing fussily against a sunlit window, in its efforts to pass through what seemed to itself clear space, made quite an abnormal noise. His heart beat heavily,—he fancied he could hear it thudding in his breast,—then, all at once, ...
— God's Good Man • Marie Corelli

... Another bumble-bee went over along the tips of the wheat—burr-rr—as he passed; then a scarlet fly, and next a bright yellow wasp who was telling a friend flying behind him that he knew where there was such a capital piece of wood to bite up into tiny pieces ...
— Short Stories and Selections for Use in the Secondary Schools • Emilie Kip Baker

... air. First like the drone of a huge bumble-bee, it gradually increased in intensity. The ranchers strained their eyes toward the east, where the copper tint had merged to a sickly green. A light breeze ...
— The Boy Ranchers on Roaring River - or Diamond X and the Chinese Smugglers • Willard F. Baker

... bother work, work don't bother me. I'se fo' times as happy as a bumble bee. Us eats when us kin git it, sleeps mos' ...
— Lady Luck • Hugh Wiley

... river, streaming down between the two rows of houses, and always in the same direction, down to the sea. Then a speck of white down came floating on the air, followed by whitish-gray thistle-seeds, and a whole swarm of gnats, and a big broad bumble-bee swung to and fro. All these eddied, gleaming, in the open doorway, and they went on circling as though there was something there which attracted them all—doubtless an accident, ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo

... Quinny!" said Gilbert. "I won't call you 'sloppy' again because I'm tired of telling you that, but really that's what you are. You've only got to see a beautiful woman for a couple of seconds and you start buzzing round her like a bumble bee. Of course, I'm sloppy myself. We're all sloppy. Damn it, here we are, two healthy young fellows who ought to be working hard, and we're wasting a fine ...
— Changing Winds - A Novel • St. John G. Ervine

... There are plenty of men now who would wear dog-harness if they thought they could work more in it. I know another man who walks away out into the country every Sunday: not that he likes the country—he wouldn't recognize a bumble bee if he saw it—but he claims that if he walks on Sunday his head is as clear as a bell ...
— Frenzied Fiction • Stephen Leacock

... bumble bee, yellow as gold Sat perched on a red-clover top, When a grasshopper, wiry and old, Came along with a skip and a hop. "Good morrow" cried he, "Mr. Bumble Bee, You seem to have ...
— Graded Memory Selections • Various

... bumble-bee, with a band of red gold across his back, flew up, and hovered near, wavering to and fro in the air as he stayed to look at ...
— Wood Magic - A Fable • Richard Jefferies

... This engagement we called the capture of fort "Hell." For some time thereafter we made regular raids into the surrounding country in quest of an enemy. We were eventually successful in our quest, as in quick order we ran across and captured a company of bumble bees. This we called the "Battle of the Wilderness." Victory over a nest of hornets we called the capture of "Fort Sumter." A large nest of wasps gave us perhaps the hardest fight of our campaigning. This we ran across in the fields not far from home. There was an unusually large number of them, ...
— The Life and Adventures of Nat Love - Better Known in the Cattle Country as "Deadwood Dick" • Nat Love

... (Of course women are all alike!) While Osborne, like a good-natured bumble-bee, was buzzing noisily about, as though all the world were his clover-blossom; and Allen, so far as I know, was doing nothing; M. Godin, alert and keen despite his gentleness and a modesty which kept him for the most part unobtrusively ...
— The Darrow Enigma • Melvin L. Severy

... recipe were given her by an Indian woman. To make the Sudden Remedy, grandma got roots, herbs, barks, twigs, leaves, mints, moss, and tree gum. These were scraped, grated, or pounded; sifted, weighed, measured, stewed, and stirred; and the juice simmered down with the oil of juniper, and bumble-bees' wax, and various smarty, peppery, slippery things whose names must be kept private for a particular reason. The Sudden Remedy cured her instantly; and as meal was wanted, and no other person could be spared from the place, she offered ...
— Harper's Young People, February 10, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various

... Hagerstown, which developed a hornets' nest of sharpshooters armed with telescopic rifles, who could pick a man's ear off half-a-mile away. The bullets from their guns had a peculiar sound, something like the buzz of a bumble-bee, and the troopers' horses would stop, prick up their ears and gaze in the direction whence the hum of those invisible messengers could be heard. Unable to reach them mounted, we finally deployed dismounted ...
— Personal Recollections of a Cavalryman - With Custer's Michigan Cavalry Brigade in the Civil War • J. H. (James Harvey) Kidd

... reckoned we had two saddle-horses—those were their names, Nell and Ned, a mare and a colt. Fine hacks they were, too! Anybody could ride them, they were so quiet. Dad reckoned Ned was the better of the two. He was well-bred, and had a pedigree and a gentle disposition, and a bald-face, and a bumble-foot, and a raw wither, and a sore back that gave him a habit of "flinching"—a habit that discounted his uselessness a great deal, because, when we were n't at home, the women could n't saddle him to run the cows in. Whenever he saw the saddle or heard ...
— On Our Selection • Steele Rudd

... who betrayed me into this folly was a bumble of the utmost beauty. The bars of his coat "burned" as "brightly" as those of the tiger in Wombwell's menagerie, and his fur was softer than my mother's black velvet mantle. I knew, for I had kissed him lightly ...
— We and the World, Part I - A Book for Boys • Juliana Horatia Ewing

... yellow as gold, Sat perched on a red-clover top, When a grasshopper, wiry and old, Came along with a skip and a hop. "Good-morrow!" cried he, "Mr. Bumble-Bee! You seem to have ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, July 1878, No. 9 • Various

... discomfiture of the constables. No sooner had they departed down the flagged path than back flitted the bevy of girls again into the study, until the small room was full to overflowing. It was like seeing a company of fat bumble-bees, their portly bodies resplendent in black and gold, buzz heavily out of a room, and a gay flight of pale-blue and lemon butterflies flit back in their places. All the daughters fell upon their father, Margaret, Bridget, Isabel, Sarah, Mary, and Susanna; there they ...
— A Book of Quaker Saints • Lucy Violet Hodgkin

... alone in puns and conundrums that the social life of Brook Farm was rich. It was rich in cheerful buzz. The bumble-bees had no more melodious hum than the Brook Farmers. They had thrown aside the forms that bind outside humanity. They were sailing on a voyage of discovery, seeking a modern El Dorado, but they did not carry with them the lust for gold. They were seeking something ...
— Brook Farm • John Thomas Codman

... lad dropped on hands and toes and ran along like a dog, thus far untouched by bullets, though they were thick as a nest of liberated bumble bees about his head. ...
— The Children of France • Ruth Royce

... Hurly-Burly,' so you may prepare yourself to see a family that lives up to that name. But there is plenty of amusement, if you are fond of boating and bathing, and we will all welcome you with open arms and glad hearts; and the sooner you come, the better we shall like it. Your cousins, Bob and Bumble are very anxious to see you, and are making wonderful plans for your entertainment. So come as soon as you can, and if you will let us know at what hour to expect you, Uncle Theodore will meet you at the Grand Central Station ...
— Patty Fairfield • Carolyn Wells

... is nothing doing, he is still happy; waiting cheerfully upon events until they arrange themselves for his amusement. He will sit for twenty minutes opposite the garden bank, watching for a bumble-bee to come out of its hole. "I saw him go in," he says to himself, "so he's bound to come out. Extraordinarily interesting world." But to his inferiors (such as the gardener) he pretends that it is not pleasure but duty which keeps him. "Don't talk to me, fool. ...
— The Holiday Round • A. A. Milne

... to the Crumpetty Tree Came the Stork, the Duck, and the Owl; The Snail and the Bumble-Bee, The Frog and the Fimble Fowl (The Fimble Fowl, with a Corkscrew leg); And all of them said, "We humbly beg We may build our homes on your lovely Hat,— Mr. Quangle Wangle, grant us that! ...
— Nonsense Books • Edward Lear

... pumpkin-pie?" echoed the maiden, giving me the terrible alternative in her most cutting tones; "Both!" I ejaculated, with equal distinctness, but, I believe, audacity unparalleled since the times of Twist. The female Bumble seemed to reel beneath the shock, and I noticed that after communicating her experience to her fellow waiting-woman, I was not thought of much account for the remainder ...
— The Great Lone Land - A Narrative of Travel and Adventure in the North-West of America • W. F. Butler

... the hole of the bumble-bee. Weary with culling sweets from the lime-trees, the heather-bloom, the apple-blossom and the ivy-flower be had sought his humble couch. Suddenly great claws tear away his roof-tree. Red Head is at work. Bees and honey ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, June 17, 1914 • Various

... crime of eating, proportioning, with the most delicate skill, the exact amount of the punishment to the enormity of the offence. By his profound wisdom he has discovered that the great increase of crime in these countries is entirely attributable to over-feeding the multitude. Like the worthy Mr. Bumble, in "Oliver Twist," he protests "it is meat and not madness" that ails the people. He can even trace the origin of every felony to the particular kind of food in which the felon has indulged. He detects incipient incendiarism in eggs and fried bacon—homicide in an Irish stew—robbery and ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various

... the example of those around them. Mrs. Howard led the traveller to speak of what he had seen in different countries—of natural history—of the beaver, and the moose-deer, and the humming-bird, that is scarcely larger than a bumble bee; and the mocking-bird, that can imitate the notes of all other birds. Charles niched himself into a corner of the sofa upon which the gentlemen were sitting, and grew very attentive. He was rather surprised to perceive that his tutor was as much ...
— Tales And Novels, Volume 1 • Maria Edgeworth

... straw and bright worsted, hangs from the middle of the low ceiling; and hung against the wall, between two glaring woodcuts representing "Lady Caroline" in red and "Highland Mary" in blue, is a deep frame filled with worsted flowers, to which a butterfly and a bumble-bee have been pinned. Paper lacework depends from their kitchen-shelves, and common eggshells, artificially colored, decorate the lilac-bushes in the side yard. They are always making new mats or piecing ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 26, July 1880. • Various

... BUMBLE will ope his eyes, egad, In hutter consternation. He'd think as soon of a park-prad For covies in my station. Our Board o' Works knows wot is wot, And has a feller-feeling. About the parish must I trot? No, hang it! I'll ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 103, August 6, 1892 • Various

... bowls he brims with honeycomb To feast the bumble bees, Saying, 'O bees, be this your home, For grief is on ...
— Songs of Childhood • Walter de la Mare

... it while there was enough to catch even a bumble-bee. The birds are back. They came directly I'd gone ...
— For the Sake of the School • Angela Brazil

... in the handwriting of a fussy officious "bumble" friend of the wealthy man, who dwelt in the town of Covelly. It ...
— Saved by the Lifeboat • R.M. Ballantyne

... off, reclined upon his back with his face lifted to the sky. Where his head rested, the wild thyme grew, and one great, black bumble-bee boomed at a deaf ear as it clumsily struggled in the purple blossoms. He lay almost naturally, but some distortion of his neck and a film upon his open eyes proclaimed that the man ...
— Children of the Mist • Eden Phillpotts

... of the Bumble-Bee was heard in every nook and corner of the wood, and from end to end of the deep valley, for Unktomee, the generous, was giving a feast, and the Bee was his herald, ...
— Wigwam Evenings - Sioux Folk Tales Retold • Charles Alexander Eastman and Elaine Goodale Eastman

... have one supreme and devastating study of the illiterate minor official in Bumble. That one figure lit up and still lights the whole problem of Poor Law administration for the English reading community. It was a translation of well-meant regulations and pseudo-scientific conceptions of social order into blundering, arrogant, ...
— An Englishman Looks at the World • H. G. Wells

... little, chatterin', sassy wren, No bigger'n my thumb, know more than men? Jest show me that! Ur prove't the bat Hez got more brains than's in my hat, An' I'll back down, an' not till then!" He argued further, "Nur I can't see What's the use o' wings to a bumble-bee, Fur to git a livin' with, more'n to me; Ain't my business Important's his'n is? That Icarus Made a perty muss: Him an' his daddy Daedalus They might 'a' knowed wings made o' wax Wouldn't stand sun-heat an' hard whacks. I'll make mine o' luther, ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume VIII (of X) • Various

... I lost the bees but I got the gentians. How curiously this flower looks, with its deep blue petals folded together so tightly—a bud and yet a blossom. It is the nun among our wild flowers, a form closely veiled and cloaked. The buccaneer bumble-bee sometimes tries to rifle it of its sweets. I have seen the blossom with the bee entombed in it. He had forced his way into the virgin corolla as if determined to know its secret, but he had never returned with the ...
— Birds and Bees, Sharp Eyes and, Other Papers • John Burroughs

... you see, he started with a fly, as they say, and now it's grown to a bumble-bee. It was a fly then, and now—it's a bumble-bee.... And he still loves her. Look at him, he loves her! I expect he's walking now to the town to get a glimpse of her with one eye.... He'll get a glimpse of ...
— Plays by Chekhov, Second Series • Anton Chekhov

... last—for I never saw her again. But in proof that she loved me to the end, I was remembered in her will; and did I not believe that if living, her generous affection, that was the precious oil through which floated her eccentricities like "flies as big as bumble-bees," would smooth over all appearance of ridicule in these reminiscences, they should never amuse any one save myself. But really, I cannot better carry out her restless desire of pleasing others, than by reproducing the merriment which throughout a ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 1 July 1848 • Various

... clearing stood young firs and pines, as shiny as metal, and so motionless that the drops which still hung here and there on their needles seemed frozen. Everything was motionless under this yellow light, the grass-blades, the moss-blossoms, and the little blue butterflies, and a bumble-bee crawled into the bell of a bennet and hung there as if enchanted. In the thicket a fox drew near, his head lowered to sniff the ground, and suddenly he too stood still without stirring a muscle and stared into space, his eyes transparent as ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries - Masterpieces of German Literature Vol. 19 • Various

... tell what "phen-dubs" means? I can. Can you say all off by heart The "onery twoery ickery ann," Or tell "alleys" and "commons" apart? Can you fling a top, I would like to know, Till it hums like a bumble-bee? Can you make a kite yourself that will go 'Most as high as the eye can see, Till it sails and soars like a hawk on the wing, And the little birds come and ...
— Our Boys - Entertaining Stories by Popular Authors • Various

... before he could find out what they were doing, but at last he discovered that they had found a bumble-bees' nest. They had long paddles in their hands and were running around, yelling, and waving the paddles frantically. Occasionally one of the boys screamed, and then several of the others would run toward him, all beating the air ...
— Hazel Squirrel and Other Stories • Howard B. Famous

... There is one of the elders whose eyes I have never caught while speaking, save once, and that was when I was preaching from Psalm cxiii. 12, 'They compassed me about like bees,' and by a strange coincidence a bumble-bee got into church, and I had my attention divided between my text and the annoying insect, which flew about like an illustration I could not catch. A dull Pew is often responsible for a dull Pulpit. Do not put ...
— Around The Tea-Table • T. De Witt Talmage

... of Mice had eight Mouse babies in their nest. The babies were no larger than Bumble Bees at first and very pink. This was not because their fur was pink, but only because it was so very short that through it and their thin skin one saw the glow of the red blood in ...
— Among the Farmyard People • Clara Dillingham Pierson

... defiance of certain time- honoured conventions and principles. Ajax said with reason that Johnnie Kapus, the nephew of our neighbour, old man Kapus, played the game of life in such a sorry, blundering fashion that he marvelled why his uncle gave him house-room. Ajax christened Johnnie—Bumble-puppy. ...
— Bunch Grass - A Chronicle of Life on a Cattle Ranch • Horace Annesley Vachell

... grin she had seen on his face since Dakota Milt chuckled, "The Teal is a grand car for mountains. Aside from overheating, bum lights, thin upholstery, faulty ignition, tissue-paper brake-bands, and this-here special aviation engine, specially built for a bumble-bee, it's what the catalogues call a ...
— Free Air • Sinclair Lewis

... the orchis, the "long purpled" of Shakespeare. By the margin of the pond the yellow iris hangs out its golden banners over which the dragon fly skims. The hedgerows are gay with the full-blown dog-roses, the bells of the bilberries droop down along the wood-side, and the red-hipped bumble bees hum over them. Out of the woodland and up Snaperake Lane I rise to the moorland, and then the sea coast comes in sight, and the longing to know what lies ...
— The Book of the Bush • George Dunderdale

... supremely lovely and quiet and restful are the silent, scented, spreading fields! How soothing to a spirit tired of the city's din is this solitude, broken only by the singing of the birds and the drowsy droning of the bee, erroneously termed 'bumble'! The green fields, the shady trees, the sweet freshness of the summer air, untainted by city smoke, and over all the eternal serenity of the blue unclouded sky—how can human spite and human passion exist in ...
— In the Midst of Alarms • Robert Barr

... boys and girls who live in the country, and probably a large share of those who live in the city, know the bumble-bee. We had a little different name for him in our neighborhood. Bumble-bee was, however, the only name the family was known by, in Willow Lane, and I think it quite possible that such a corruption, (if it is a corruption, and ...
— Mike Marble - His Crotchets and Oddities. • Uncle Frank

... the squirrels brought a present of wild honey; it was so sweet and sticky that they licked their fingers as they put it down upon the stone. They had stolen it out of a bumble BEES' nest on the tippity top ...
— The Great Big Treasury of Beatrix Potter • Beatrix Potter

... a bumble-bee from a butternut," said Will. "City children don't know anything, and she'll be awfully in the way. Won't she tag after you ...
— Harper's Young People, August 3, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various

... said that worthy. "Only my game is bumble-puppy. You can hardly call it whist. Who's ...
— The Desire of the Moth; and The Come On • Eugene Manlove Rhodes

... where in times of special risk, when incendiary fires were too common, the principal inhabitants took their turn in keeping watch. To find the Parish Beadle in the full-blown dignity of his office we must therefore go to the towns, to Royston for instance, where we shall find Mr. Bumble in all the stately pomp of cocked hat, great coat with a red cape, and gold lace, breeches and hose, and a staff with the royal authority of Georgius {53} Rex emblazoned thereon! A full figure, and an interesting character, worthy in every way of the old Georgian era; in a corporation, as ...
— Fragments of Two Centuries - Glimpses of Country Life when George III. was King • Alfred Kingston

... by her indignation the absurd Fyne dog began to bark in the porch. It might have been at a trespassing bumble-bee however. That animal was capable of any eccentricity. Fyne got up quickly and went out to him. I think he was glad to leave us alone to discuss that matter of his journey to London. A sort of anti-sentimental journey. He, too, apparently, had confidence in ...
— Chance - A Tale in Two Parts • Joseph Conrad

... children could tell you the native names of all insects, such as caterpillars, crickets, cockroaches, grasshoppers, locusts, mantis, honey bees, bumble bees, wasps, hornets, yellow jackets, goliath beetles, stage beetles, ...
— The Upward Path - A Reader For Colored Children • Various

... writing-materials, headed notepaper, envelopes, cut quill-pens, wax, matches, sealing-wax, and all scrupulously neat and orderly. There are magnificent specimens of Newfoundland dogs on the grounds, such animals as Landseer would love to paint. One of these, named Bumble, seems to be ...
— Home Life of Great Authors • Hattie Tyng Griswold

... resort, to clear the doubt, They got old GOVERNOR HANCOCK out. The Governor came with his Light-horse Troop And his mounted trackmen, all cock-a-hoop; Halberds glittered and colors flew, French horns whinnied and trumpets blew, The yellow fifes whistled between their teeth And the bumble-bee bass-drums boomed beneath; So he rode with all his band, Till the President met him, cap in hand. —The Governor "hefted" the crowns, and said,— "A will is a will, and the Parson's dead." The Governor ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 12, October, 1858 • Various

... Bumble Bee Inn for tea. You needn't be a prig about it! Lots of really nice people go, and what's the harm?" She picked up her gloves and trailed to the door. "I suppose you'll ask who I was with next, and I sha'n't tell you, my dear. I'm bored to death doing the same old proper thing all the time! ...
— The Fifth Ace • Douglas Grant

... gave, in subsequent writings, so much more perfect form and fullness to everything it contained, that he did not care to credit himself with the marvel of having yet so early anticipated so much. But the first sprightly runnings of his genius are undoubtedly here. Mr. Bumble is in the parish sketches, and Mr. Dawkins the dodger in the Old Bailey scenes. There is laughter and fun to excess, never misapplied; there are the minute points and shades of character, with all the discrimination and nicety of detail, afterwards so famous; there is everywhere ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster

... fearful thing. Whatever had been in Faith's speech, her look, bright, wistful, and happy, had no fear, truly bumble though it was. "There is no danger of my loving this letter too much"—she said as she carefully restored it to its envelope; said with a secret utterance of ...
— Say and Seal, Volume II • Susan Warner

... Gummidge, Dickens draws types rather than characters. Pecksniff, Podsnap, Dolly Varden, Mr. Bumble, Mrs. Gamp, Mark Tapley, Turveydrop, Mrs. Jellyby—these are not characters; they are human ...
— Idle Ideas in 1905 • Jerome K. Jerome

... the establishment, and found every thing as they had left it the night before. Rollo felt quite confident of the success of his experiment. The only thing that gave him any uneasiness was the want of a queen bee. He and Henry were just speculating upon the expediency of sending in a bumble-bee instead, for a king, when their attention was arrested by hearing Jonas calling Rollo. They looked up, and saw him standing ...
— Rollo's Experiments • Jacob Abbott

... a bumble-bee was beating itself against the window-pane and buzzing. Sofya Petrovna looked at the threads on the socks, listened to the bee, and pictured how she would set off . . . . vis-a-vis Ilyin would sit, day and night, never taking his ...
— The Party and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov

... noticed running across the path a tiny Book, not much bigger than a postage-stamp. It had two slender legs, like those of a bumble-bee, and upon these it ran so fast that all the leaves fluttered wildly, the ...
— Twinkle and Chubbins - Their Astonishing Adventures in Nature-Fairyland • L. Frank (Lyman Frank) Baum

... yellow as gold Sat perched on a red-clover top, When a grasshopper, wiry and old, Came along with a skip and a hop. "Good morrow" cried he, "Mr. Bumble Bee, You seem to have ...
— Graded Memory Selections • Various

... England have Comic Histories, Comic Geographies, and Comic Grammars, but a Comic Bible would horrify us. At sight of such blasphemy Bumble would stand aghast, and Mrs. Grundy would scream with terror. But Bumble and Mrs. Grundy are less important personages in France, and so the country of Rabelais and Voltaire produces what we are unable ...
— Prisoner for Blasphemy • G. W. [George William] Foote

... instances of what was expected of him; and his thick voice drowsed in the still air like the obstinate droning of an enormous bumble-bee. Captain Whalley did not know what was the force or the weakness that prevented him from saying good-night and walking away. It was as though he had been too tired to make the effort. How queer. More queer ...
— End of the Tether • Joseph Conrad

... habits of all the common birds, and with field mice and the frogs, toads, lizards, and snakes. Also with the wild bees and wasps. One season I made a collection of bumblebee honey, studying the habits of five or six different kinds and rifling their nests. I kept my store of bumble-bee honey in the attic where I had a small box full of the comb and a large phial filled with the honey. How well I came to know the different dispositions of the various kinds—the small red-vested that made its nest in a hole in the ground; the small black-vested, ...
— My Boyhood • John Burroughs

... to as made by a human being, the thing I saw so dimly might possibly not have been a lethal weapon (and if it was a weapon, what in Heaven's name could it be? I wondered); it might conceivably have been a large bird some distance off, just as by a reverse illusion men are said to have fired at bumble bees when grouse driving. Also, it was within the bounds of possibility that the tinkling stones might not have been thrown down by some one above in order to draw me under that face. Everything had been so vague that ...
— The Man From the Clouds • J. Storer Clouston

... further inland were little patches of dwarf birch, scarcely a foot high, crouching close to the ground to escape being torn away by the furious winds that sweep over the land. There was none of the abundant life that we see around us in our fields and woods. A spider, a bumble-bee, and a poor little wanderer of a bird, were the only living ...
— Harper's Young People, March 30, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various

... "Troth, Nippi-Bumble, he's about right," added Briant coaxingly. "Come now, avic, wot's the raisin ye won't go? Sure we ain't blackguards enough to ax ye to come for to be sold; it's all fair and above board. Why ...
— The Red Eric • R.M. Ballantyne

... humble—of porterhouse steak and peas, and honey from bees that bumble, and maybe imported cheese—I think, with a bitter feeling, of insolent money kings, who, drunk with their wealth and reeling, condemn me to eat such things. The pirate and banknote monger still gloat o'er their golden stacks, while I must appease my hunger with oysters and canvasbacks. ...
— Rippling Rhymes • Walt Mason

... interest in it to me, but Baxter claimed the whole discovery as his own, saying he was out on his own hook when the mine was located, which was a falsehood. But though Baxter claimed the mine he could not locate it, nor could I do so. It was along a creek which a certain Jack Wumble had called Bumble Bee, but we could not locate this creek, and Jack Wumble had departed for fresh fields. But I have located the old miner, and he has told me that Bumble Bee Creek was in reality one of the south branches of the Gunnison River, ...
— The Rover Boys out West • Arthur M. Winfield

... striplings, who Made all your school-fellows feel humble, Are mulcted of your honours due By an officious Cambrian Bumble. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Aug. 22, 1917 • Various

... and, I may say, supernat'ral exertions on the part of this parish," said BUMBLE, "we have not been able ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100., Jan. 10, 1891 • Various

... hands of the mistress of the poorhouse, who was named Mrs. Bumble. It contained the dead mother's wedding-ring, and, as Mrs. Bumble was a dishonest woman, she hid both locket and ring, ...
— Tales from Dickens • Charles Dickens and Hallie Erminie Rives

... into winter-quarters by or before this time; the bumble-bee, hornet, and wasp. But here only royalty escapes; the queen-mother alone foresees the night of winter coming and the morning of spring beyond. The rest of the tribe try gypsying for a while, but perish in the first frosts. The present October I surprised the queen of ...
— Winter Sunshine • John Burroughs

... the hens cackling and calling to their chickens. I thought I heard our dog bark; but all was so warm, and still, and sleepy, that I felt as if I should go to sleep too if I kept my eyes shut much longer. I heard the birds though, and a great bumble-bee that flew by ...
— Woodside - or, Look, Listen, and Learn. • Caroline Hadley

... legal advisers; and in shaking hands, a file or a gimlet, and a bit of tobacco, are as likely to pass as not. That warder can see every thing, my dear young Sir; but he can no more hear what we say than he can understand what a couple of bumble-bees are murmuring about who are barred up in a double window. We can therefore converse with one another as much without reserve as we please, or rather"—and here the little man's eyes twinkled significantly—"as ...
— Bred in the Bone • James Payn

... Spring is coming, hear the humming Of the bumble bees; Life is waking, buds are breaking, ...
— The Last West and Paolo's Virginia • G. B. Warren

... went straight down to that dress-maker's house, and handed the square paper cousin had written on to a lady who was fluttering round among a lot of girls, all hard at work sewing, like bumble-bees in a rose-bush. ...
— Phemie Frost's Experiences • Ann S. Stephens

... knelt, her prayer book open upon the carved margin of the tomb, the slender crossed legs and paws of the alert little marble dog serving as so often before for bookrest. Canon Horniblow boomed and droned, like some unctuous giant bumble-bee, from the reading-desk. The choir intoned responses from the gallery with liberal diversity of pitch. And presently, alas! Damaris' thoughts began to wander, making flitting excursions right and left. For half-way through the litany some belated worshipper arrived, causing movement ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet

... the same case, I looked another way while the two girls joined us, Theodora having for the moment directed my attention to a tremendously large queen bumble-bee which came booming along the ground and began burrowing in a little ...
— When Life Was Young - At the Old Farm in Maine • C. A. Stephens

... says he looks so. The boys found a bumble bees' nest and Tubby didn't have any paddle to hit them with. So they all went for poor Tubby and they stung him so that his face is twice as big as ...
— Wyn's Camping Days - or, The Outing of the Go-Ahead Club • Amy Bell Marlowe

... inch to two inches deep! Every pack was black with them on the march, and the wagon carried its millions. When the shadow of a branch would cross that slowly lumbering vehicle, the swarm would rise and bumble around distractedly for a moment before settling down again. They fairly made a ...
— African Camp Fires • Stewart Edward White

... of hiding myself, so resolved to run up one of the houses, and get in at the first window I found open, and trust to the temper of some little boy or girl, rather than starve. The house I chanced to ascend belonged to Alderman Bumble. I happened to enter the window of Miss Henrietta Bumble's chamber; so I crept into her cap, which was lying in a chair, and lay till she wanted to put it on. I chanced to lay in such a manner, that she distinguished ...
— The Adventures of a Squirrel, Supposed to be Related by Himself • Anonymous

... seven years old. Yesterday (April 14) I saw a butterfly in our yard. It was a blue-black with light spots. I tried to catch it, but couldn't. The same day I saw a bumble-bee. I have a shepherd dog named Punch, and when I go anywhere, he always squeals to go too. He is my best playmate, as I have no brothers or sisters. I think the Post-office Box in ...
— Harper's Young People, May 11, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various

... never does come down no-more! An' it's all done as easy as a set-lock rifle! The wizard climbs the danglin' string of kyarpet-rags, hand over hand; then he drifts off an' up'ards ontil he don't look bigger than a bumble-bee; an' then he's lost in the gatherin' shadows of the ...
— Wolfville Nights • Alfred Lewis

... Last night, and night before, and night before that, Seemed like I saw the march o' regiments o' children, Marching to the robin's fife and cricket's rat-ta-tat! Lily-banners overhead, with the dew upon 'em, On flashed the little army, as with sword and flame; Like the buzz o' bumble-wings, with the honey on 'em, Came an eerie, cheery chant, chiming as ...
— The Book of Joyous Children • James Whitcomb Riley

... in the fulness of the time, there came A would-be monarch—Legion his fit name; A Plebs-appointed Autocrat, Stork-throated, Goggle-eyed, Paul-Pry-coated; A poking, peering, pompous, petty creature, A Bumble-King, with beak for its chief feature. This new King Stork, With a fierce, fussy appetite for work; Not satisfied with fixing like a vice Authority on Town and Country Mice, Tried to extend his sway to pools and bogs, And rule the Frogs! But modern Frogdom, which ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100, March 21, 1891 • Various

... there With yellow feathers instead of hair, And bumble bees crocheted in the trees— And bumble bees crocheted in the trees— And all the birds were ...
— The White Linen Nurse • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott

... which at this season are hungry vagrants with no fixed place of abode, would gorge themselves, then creep beneath the bits of empty comb or fragments of bark and pass the night, and renew the feast next day. The bumble-bee is an insect of which the bee-hunter sees much. There are all sorts and sizes of them. They are dull and clumsy compared with the honeybee. Attracted in the fields by the bee-hunter's box, they will come up the wind on the scent and blunder ...
— The Writings of John Burroughs • John Burroughs

... attend this gentleman," said the Queen. "Feed him with apricots and dewberries, purple grapes, green figs, and mulberries. Steal honey-bags for him from the bumble-bees, and with the wings of painted butterflies fan the moonbeams from his ...
— Beautiful Stories from Shakespeare • E. Nesbit



Words linked to "Bumble" :   fuck up, fumble, miscarry, bodge, talk, muck up, verbalize, mess up, spoil, foul up, bobble, utter, fail, bollocks up, bungle, stammer, speak, stutter, ball up, mishandle, mouth, walk, go wrong, botch, flub, louse up, stumble, bollix, screw up, botch up, bollix up



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