Literary notes about Lumber (AI summary)
In literature, “lumber” is employed in a variety of contexts that reveal its multifaceted character. It frequently appears as a literal substance—the raw material essential for constructing cities, ships, and homes, as seen in passages about planking streets and building dwellings [1, 2, 3]. Authors also use it to evoke images of rugged labor and the industrial era, with references to lumber wagons, lumber yards, and even lumber merchants [4, 5, 6]. Beyond its concrete meaning, the term serves metaphorically to suggest clumsy or weighted movement [7, 8] and, at times, an unwieldy, accumulated load of thoughts or information [9, 10]. This versatility underscores how “lumber” bridges the tangible and the symbolic in literary narratives.
- The city of San Francisco was then extending her streets, sewering them, and planking them, with three-inch lumber.
— from Memoirs of General William T. Sherman — Complete by William T. Sherman - At all events, Marshall and the family of Mr. Wimmer were living at Coloma, where the pine-trees afforded the best material for lumber.
— from Memoirs of General William T. Sherman — Complete by William T. Sherman - Their house was small, for the lumber to build it had to be carried by wagon many miles.
— from The Wonderful Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum - After it was over the county superintendent of schools, Mr. Bannister, took them to Ottawa in a lumber wagon.
— from The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 1 of 2) by Ida Husted Harper - My pirate brig, the Lively Mermaid, now lies at Meiggs's wharf in San Francisco, disguised as a Mendocino lumber vessel.
— from The Luck of Roaring Camp and Other Tales by Bret Harte - Her husband was a logger,—a profitable business in a county where the principal occupation was the manufacture of lumber.
— from The Luck of Roaring Camp and Other Tales by Bret Harte - But I couldn’t lumber across that big hall with all those boys howling on the stairs.
— from Anne of the Island by L. M. Montgomery - So then I crept into a lumber-pile to get some sleep; and next time I waked up the sun was away up over my head!
— from Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain - The bookful blockhead, ignorantly read, With loads of learned lumber in his head.
— from Familiar QuotationsA Collection of Passages, Phrases, and Proverbs Traced toTheir Sources in Ancient and Modern Literature - What a huge inaccessible lumber-room of thought and experience we amounted to, I thought; how much we are, how little we transmit.
— from The Passionate Friends by H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
