"Lithe" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... waiting train, glanced at him, then at each other, and, apparently without the slightest reason, burst into unrestrained merriment. Percival continued to survey them calmly and haughtily through his monocle. His first glance had revealed the fact that the girl was strikingly pretty. Her lithe young body showed round and comely in its khaki suit and brown leggings. Her black mane was braided in two short, thick plaits with a dash of scarlet ribbons at the ends. Blue eyes, full of daring, danced under the blackest of brows, and the smile she flashed at her ...
— The Honorable Percival • Alice Hegan Rice
... her figure magnificently developed, though slender-waisted and lithe as a serpent. She walked as if she had been bred in a basquina, and her foot and ankle were hardly to be matched on this side of the Pyrenees; the nose slightly aquiline, with thin, transparent nostrils; and the forehead rather low—it looked more ...
— Guy Livingstone; - or, 'Thorough' • George A. Lawrence
... Stratton, to rest for an instant on Flint Kreeger, who sat just beyond McCabe. What he saw there Buck did not know, but it must have been something of warning or information. When his eyes returned to Stratton their expression was veiled under drooping lids; his lithe figure relaxed into an easier position against the door-casing, both hands ...
— Shoe-Bar Stratton • Joseph Bushnell Ames
... first supposed case would ever be true of him. Further, I felt sure that no one would ever be hardy enough to give the supposed occasion. I can hardly tell how I knew; it was by some of those indescribable natural signs. We were slowly mounting the hill; and in every powerful, lithe movement, in the very set of his shoulders and head, and as well in the sparkle of the bright eye which looked round at me, I read the tokens of a spirit which I thought neither had known nor ever would know the sort of indignity ...
— Daisy • Elizabeth Wetherell
... descended into the dory. The other passengers—what there were of them—gathered to see the little group depart. Dr. Frank offered Dr. Dare a hand, which she accepted, like a lady, not needing it in the least. She was a climber, with firm, lithe ankles. No one spoke, as these people got in with the negro, and prepared to drift down with the scorching tide. The woman looked from the steamer to the shore, once, and back again, northwards. The men did not look at all. There was an oppression in the scene ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 8 • Various
... storm. The leafless trees Lash their lithe limbs, and, with majestic voice, Call to each other through the deepening gloom; And slender trunks that lean on burly boughs Shriek with the sharp abrasion; and the oak, Mellowed in fiber by unnumbered ...
— Bitter-Sweet • J. G. Holland
... should be the guide for the young girl's costume. The dewy bloom of the cheek, the clear young eyes, the soft rosebud lips, the sweet curves of the lithe form that come but once in a lifetime, are what we want ...
— Social Life - or, The Manners and Customs of Polite Society • Maud C. Cooke
... No more, thou lithe and long-winged hawk, of desert-life for thee; No more across the sultry sands shalt thou go swooping free: Blunt idle talons, idle beak, with spurning of thy chain, Shatter against thy cage the wing thou ...
— Ballads • William Makepeace Thackeray
... of steam upon those waters, which, in giving up their Indian patronymies, gave up the bold hunter and his lithe canoe to the progress of "manifest destiny," few are those who pass the venerable site of the first colony in Virginia, Jamestown, without paying a tribute of a sigh, and perchance a tear, to that solitary ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 5, No. 1, January, 1852 • Various
... not see, or, more correctly, did not appear to see—for I do not know what he saw and what he pretended not to see, really—the lean, lithe, long, low weasel that passed, climbing and sniffing, beneath him—within six inches—possibly scenting out a rat. He did not hear, or show that he heard, the blackbird—she was rusty, dark brown, as a matter ...
— The Way of the Wild • F. St. Mars
... minutes later, as Doctor Mayberry was unsaddling his horse in the barn a lithe figure enveloped as to head and shoulders in one of Cindy's kitchen aprons darted under the dripping eaves and stood breathless and ...
— The Road to Providence • Maria Thompson Daviess
... village, in a wilderness of shrubbery, trees, and giant ferns, we came upon a cross-trail, a thin line of travel hardly breaking the dense growth, and saw a woman appear from among the leaves. She was large, perhaps five feet, ten inches, tall; a Juno figure, handsome and lithe. Such a woman of her age, about twenty-two years, does the work of a man, makes copra, fells trees, lifts heavy stones, and is a match for the average man in strength. She was dark, as are all Marquesans who live a hardy and vigorous life unsheltered from sun ...
— White Shadows in the South Seas • Frederick O'Brien
... Lithe and listen, gentlemen, To sing a song I will beginne: It is of a lord of faire Scotland, Which was the ...
— Book of Old Ballads • Selected by Beverly Nichols
... defined, looking larger than usual. Clear space and air soft with colour were about him. Across this space, on a little sloping plateau near him, there crept an animal. It seemed to Lawless that he could see the lithe stealthiness of its muscles and the ripple of its skin. But that was imagination, because he was too far away. He cried out, and swung his gun shoulderwards in desperation. But, at the moment, Pourcette turned sharply round, saw his danger, caught his ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... Suffrage Association. The Woman's Journal said: "Those of us who have for years admired Mrs. Stetson's remarkably bright poems were delighted to meet her, and to find her even more interesting than her writings. She is still a young woman, tall, lithe and graceful, with fine dark eyes, and spirit and originality flashing from her at every turn like light from a diamond. She read several poems to the convention, made an address one evening and preached twice on Sunday; ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume IV • Various
... title of Miss Mary Shepard Greene's graceful canvas. The lithe and youthful figure of a girl is extended upon a straight-backed settle in somewhat of a Recamier pose. She is intently occupied in the perusal of a book. The turn of the head, the careless attitude, and the flesh tints of throat and face are all admirably rendered. ...
— Women in the fine arts, from the Seventh Century B.C. to the Twentieth Century A.D. • Clara Erskine Clement
... through Regent's Park; he recalled how, behind him, long after the heavier feminine aristocracy had given up the chase, one youthful, fleet, supple, and fearsome girl had hung to his trail—a tall, lithe, incarnation of her ...
— The Gay Rebellion • Robert W. Chambers
... cadence as, prone on his face, the young fellow kicks, struggles and puffs up the dust. Meanwhile a tall, dour man in a straw hat is rolling up a shirt-sleeve, and alternately bending and stretching a long arm, whilst a lithe, white-headed young stripling is hopping, sparrow-like, from one onlooker to another, and ...
— Through Russia • Maxim Gorky
... have said enough; a nose more delicate than symmetrical; a mouth rather thin-lipped, but well curved; a chin rather small, I confess;—but did any one ever from the most elaborated description acquire even an approximate idea of the face intended? Her person was lithe and graceful; she had good hands and feet; and the fairness of her skin gave her brown hair a duskier look ...
— Wilfrid Cumbermede • George MacDonald
... my smooth-faced Coney," she said, "that I was as lithe and limber as you are, and was called Jaunty Peg. And now poor old Moll cooks collops for those that are born to dance jigs in chains for the north-east wind to play the fiddle to. Time was when a whole army followed me, when I beat the drum ...
— The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, Vol. 1 of 3 • George Augustus Sala
... had hit his man, and that Rawdon was wounded in the body or in the upper part of a leg. Hurriedly he pursued, entering the strip of woodland towards the brook, when something fell upon him, and two keen qualms of pain shot through his breast. Then he lay insensible. Meanwhile, a lithe active form, leaving a horse tethered at the gate, had sprung to meet a second intruder, issuing from the front door of Bridesdale. The opposing forces met, and Mr. Bangs had his hands upon the younger gaol breaker. A loud shout ...
— Two Knapsacks - A Novel of Canadian Summer Life • John Campbell
... Tad was lithe and supple. As the champion wrestler of the high school, back in his home town in Missouri, he was possessed of many tricks that had proved useful to him on more than one occasion since the Pony Riders set out on their ...
— The Pony Rider Boys in Montana • Frank Gee Patchin
... perpetual sadness that was visible there when she was not momentarily interested or amused. Had he suspected her paleness and air of secret suffering to be the result of any physical infirmity, she would not have interested him so much. But Mrs. Goddard's lithe figure and easy grace of activity belied all idea of weakness. It was undoubtedly some hidden suffering of mind which lent that sadness to her voice and features, and which so deeply roused the sympathies of the squire. At the end ...
— A Tale of a Lonely Parish • F. Marion Crawford
... together, return to the fray. One against the other rides, and so fiercely they smite each other that both lances break and the horses fall beneath them. But they, being seated on their steeds, sustain no harm; so they quickly rise, for they were strong and lithe. They stand on foot in the middle of the garden, and straightway attack each other with their green swords of German steel, and deal great wicked blows upon their bright and gleaming helmets, so that they hew them into bits, and their eyes shoot out flame. No greater efforts can be made ...
— Four Arthurian Romances - "Erec et Enide", "Cliges", "Yvain", and "Lancelot" • Chretien de Troyes
... and thread with her. Whipping up the skirt of her dress on her knee, she bent forward over it, and set herself industriously to the repair of the torn trimming. In this position her lithe figure showed charmingly its firm yet easy line. The needle, in her dexterous brown fingers, flew through its work. The locker was a broad one; Launce was able to seat himself partially behind her. In this position who could have resisted the temptation to lift up her great ...
— Miss or Mrs.? • Wilkie Collins
... knew the use of the dreaded instrument itself. But there was only one among them who comprehended its immediate purpose. The glance of cruel meaning which the tyranness, after having examined the lithe, twisted rod critically for an instant, cast upon the object of her malice, probably banished the last lingering hesitation from the breast of the latter,—who turned away ostensibly to the performance of her accustomed duties, but in reality to ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 48, October, 1861 • Various
... sight to see Ben Brace, at the approach of a sudden squall, "swarming" up the shrouds to reef a topsail, his fine bushy curls blowing out behind, while upon his face sat that calm but daring expression, as if he defied the storm and could master it. He was a large man, but well proportioned—rather lithe and sinewy than robust, with a shock of dark-brown hair in their thick curls somewhat matted, covering the whole of his head; for he was still but a young man, and there were no signs of baldness. His face was good, rather darkish in complexion, and he wore neither beard nor ...
— Ran Away to Sea • Mayne Reid
... corrupted Virginie's fidelity; the cruel disappointment and suffering of her lover; all these things pressed themselves upon her reeling brain, and gave birth to the suggestions of madness. Stooping down, she put her lithe hand upon the belt of the dead man. There was, as she expected, a second pistol in it, the fellow of that with which he had shot himself. It was loaded. Julia drew it out, wrapped her mantle round it, and climbed noiselessly into her chamber through the still open ...
— Dreams and Dream Stories • Anna (Bonus) Kingsford
... her moods. She wore the usual every-day attire of the women of the region,—mistresses as well as "hired girls,"—a dark-print gown, but, like Ophelia's rue, "it was worn with a difference," fitting her lithe, graceful figure to perfection, and set off by a dainty band of white and knot of ribbon ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, November 1885 • Various
... tattered robes that hoard a glittering trace Of bygone colours, broidered to the knee, Behold her, daughter of a wandering race, Tameless, with the bold falcon's agile grace, And the lithe ...
— The Golden Threshold • Sarojini Naidu
... the poet hath hymned The writhing maid, lithe-limbed, Quivering on amaranthine asphodel, How can he paint her woes, Knowing, as well he knows, That all can be ...
— Songs of a Savoyard • W. S. Gilbert
... more, she sped away all lithe and vigorous grace; when she was out of sight, I lay upon my and, staring up at the rustling canopy above, became lost in thought, wondering, among other things, if I could ever possibly attain unto that ...
— Peregrine's Progress • Jeffery Farnol
... sleep I lay, Right as I was wont for to do'n, And fell asleepe wonder soon, As he that *weary was for go* *was weary from going* On pilgrimage miles two To the corsaint* Leonard, *relics of To make lithe that erst was hard. But, as I slept, me mette I was Within a temple made of glass; In which there were more images Of gold, standing in sundry stages, And more riche tabernacles, And with pierrie* more ...
— The Canterbury Tales and Other Poems • Geoffrey Chaucer
... on his knees, looking up at his fellow-prisoner with a lively look for a prison. A sunburnt, quick, lithe, little man, though rather thickset. Earrings in his brown ears, white teeth lighting up his grotesque brown face, intensely black hair clustering about his brown throat, a ragged red shirt open at his brown breast. Loose, seaman-like trousers, decent ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens
... curving stem, leaves drooping. When I would fain view the world as a whole, it rushes into vision—man, beast, bird, reptile, fly, sky, ocean, mountains, plain, rock, pebble. The warmth of life, the reality of creation is over all—the throb of human hands, glossiness of fur, lithe windings of long bodies, poignant buzzing of insects, the ruggedness of the steeps as I climb them, the liquid mobility and boom of waves upon the rocks. Strange to say, try as I may, I cannot force my touch to pervade ...
— The World I Live In • Helen Keller
... why were we apprehensive? In disobedience to the scriptural injunction, we had observed the clouds and the birds. Twice a flock of lesser frigate-birds, those dark, fish-tailed high-fliers which are for ever cutting animated "W's" in the air with long lithe wings—had appeared. Seldom do they come unless as harbingers of boisterous weather. On each recent occasion they had been absolutely trustworthy messengers. Watching them soaring and swooping, we said one to another: "Behold the cyclone cometh!" But it did not. With ...
— My Tropic Isle • E J Banfield
... dark figure, lithe as a leopard in his tight fitting trousers and jacket with his robe now discarded, went swiftly down the spider incline ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science April 1930 • Various
... are, you must remember, here as steep as house-roofs, the last spurs of true mountains) is covered with a grass like tall rye-grass, but growing in tufts. That is the famous Guinea-grass {78e} which, introduced from Africa, has spread over the whole West Indies. Dark lithe coolie prisoners, one a gentle young fellow, with soft beseeching eyes, and 'Felon' printed on the back of his shirt, are cutting it for the horses, under the guard of a mulatto turnkey, a tall, steadfast, dignified man; and between us and them ...
— At Last • Charles Kingsley
... may be interpreted into human speech. In the language of the apes it means Killer. Now the Killer rose upon the branch of the great tree where he had been sleeping with his back braced against the stem. He stretched his lithe young muscles, the moonlight filtering through the foliage from above dappling his brown skin ...
— The Son of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... had discoursed. Now, in spite of his weather-beaten face and hardened hands, he appeared what he was, a man of education and some refinement, and his resolute expression, erect carriage, and muscular frame, rendered lithe and almost statuesque by much swinging of the ax, gave him an indefinite air of distinction. Again she decided that Geoffrey Thurston was a well-favored man, but remembering Musker's stories, she set herself to watch for some trace of inherent barbarity. This was unfortunate for ...
— Thurston of Orchard Valley • Harold Bindloss
... vitality of the man seemed to live in every line of his lithe body as he looked in, but it subsided again as he entered, and ...
— The Pointing Man - A Burmese Mystery • Marjorie Douie
... Strong, athletic, lithe in her movements, Mehetabel was a match for the small muscular Jonas. If he succeeded for a moment in twisting the gun out of her hands it was but for an instant. She had caught the barrel again ...
— The Broom-Squire • S. (Sabine) Baring-Gould
... cane out of her desk which stood by the wall. I heard the desk opened with an impatient clash and then closed with an angry bang. I was as sure as if I had had eyes in the back of my head, that the schoolmistress was holding the cane in both hands and bending it to see if it was lithe and limber. ...
— The Woman Thou Gavest Me - Being the Story of Mary O'Neill • Hall Caine
... his bunk with the lithe, delicate grace of a cat. The monotony of sleep and labor was ended. Something had broken. Life was once again ...
— A World is Born • Leigh Douglass Brackett
... young captain whose personal affairs had been a subject of comment between Cap'n Ira Ball and his wife. He was a heavy-set, upstanding, blue-jerseyed figure, lithe and as spry on his feet as a cat. Tunis Latham was thirty, handsome in the bold way of longshore men, and ruddy-faced. He had crisp, short, sandy hair; his cheeks, chin, and lip were scraped as clean as ...
— Sheila of Big Wreck Cove - A Story of Cape Cod • James A. Cooper
... pretty brown feet went catlike over the sharp stones, as she led the way down a rocky path to the shore. Her garments were scanty and torn, and her hair blew tangled in the wind. She seemed about five-and-twenty, lithe and small. Her long fingers kept clutching and pulling nervously at her skirts as she went. Her face was very gray in complexion, and very worn, but delicately formed, and smooth-skinned. Her thin nostrils were tremulous as eyelids, and her lips, whose curves were faultless, had no colour ...
— Robert Falconer • George MacDonald
... choir approaching, the dusky flash of brown bodies swaying, palpitating to the intoxicating rhythm of the song. Slowly and with great dignity they entered the clearing and stood, a score of slender creatures, in the full blaze of the moon, their lithe-limbed bodies clad only in ...
— The Cruise of the Kawa • Walter E. Traprock
... suffices. Blue eyes and light colourless hair, high cheek-bones and lithe limbs, mark the Scandinavian. Strong, wiry fingers and an indescribable something proclaim the sailor, and though Von Shmit can hardly say 'yes' in English, he looks the most ...
— The Brassbounder - A Tale of the Sea • David W. Bone
... and, the blankets falling off him, showed me that he was nothing but a living skeleton. Oh! how changed from that lithe and handsome chief whom I used to know. Moreover, his lips quivered and his eyes were ...
— Child of Storm • H. Rider Haggard
... affairs on May 29th, 1842, when there arrived in Auckland the Right Reverend George Augustus Selwyn to take up the position of bishop of the divided flock. This remarkable man was then in the prime of early manhood, and he brought with him not only a lithe athletic frame well fitted to endure hardship; not only the culture of Cambridge and of Eton, where he had learned and taught, and the courtly atmosphere of Windsor, where he had exercised his ministry; but above all he brought with him ideals. These took the ...
— A History of the English Church in New Zealand • Henry Thomas Purchas
... particularly of Miss Caruthers. He could not have been a moment over twelve or thirteen, yet he was by far the cleverest of the gang. He was the favorite of his crowd, and its leader. Though there were a number older than he, they acknowledged his chieftaincy. He was a beautiful boy, a lithe young god in breathing bronze, eyes wide apart, intelligent and daring, a bubble, a mote, a beautiful flash and sparkle of life. You have seen wonderful glorious creatures—animals, anything, a leopard, a horse-restless, eager, ...
— The Night-Born • Jack London
... near the middle of the car. They would have drawn more than a passing glance wherever seen. Tall, well set up, muscular, they served as splendid types of young American manhood. None of them were over twenty, and their lean, bronzed faces, as well as the lithe alertness of their movements, spoke of a life spent largely in the open. They were brimming with life and high spirits. Exuberant vitality shone through their eyes and betrayed itself in every gesture. ...
— Bert Wilson in the Rockies • J. W. Duffield
... barricade was broken through, and the rout pressed on the second line. Tom Breeks, the orator, and Jim, transformed from a lurching yokel to a lithe dog of battle, kept the retreat of Ipley, challenging any two of Hillford to settle the dispute. Captain Gambier attempted an authoritative parley, in the midst of which a Hillford man made a long arm and struck Emilia's harp, till the strings jarred loose and ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... of the sagacious, affable man of the world, gossiping over the nuts and wine; the marvels of 'Zanoni' and 'A Strange Story' must be portrayed with a resonance and exaltation of diction fitted to their transcendental claims. But between the stark mechanism of the Englishman and the lithe, inspired felicity of the ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various
... vehicles of the latest design to drive home their trade-weary fathers or brothers, relatives or friends. The air was gay with a social hope, a promise of youth and affection, and that fine flush of material life that recreates itself in delight. Lithe, handsome, well-bred animals, singly and in jingling pairs, paced each other down the long, wide, grass-lined street, its fine homes agleam ...
— The Titan • Theodore Dreiser
... had done well by him. Like the spruce themselves he had grown straight and tall, but his form was sturdy too. There was a lithe strength about him that suggested the larger felines; the hard trails of the forest had left not a spare ounce of flesh on his powerful frame. His mold, except for a vague and indistinct refinement in his long-fingered and strong hands, was simply that of a woodsman,—sturdy, muscular, untiring. ...
— The Snowshoe Trail • Edison Marshall
... weird sweet shock passed through him, and all his veins tingled as if thrilled by new life. Opening his eyes in wonder, he saw verily bending over him the charming being of whom he had dreamed, and he knew that her lithe hand really caressed his throbbing forehead. But the flame of the fever was gone, a delicious coolness now penetrated every fibre of his body, and the thrill of which he had dreamed still tingled in his blood like a great joy. Even at the same moment the eyes of the gentle visitor met ...
— Some Chinese Ghosts • Lafcadio Hearn
... days no more remembered, Ages nearer the beginning, When the heavens were closer to us, And the Gods were more familiar, In the North-land lived a hunter, With ten young and comely daughters, Tall and lithe as wands of willow; Only Oweenee, the youngest, She the wilful and the wayward, She the silent, dreamy maiden, Was the fairest of ...
— The Song Of Hiawatha • Henry W. Longfellow
... him for a moment as he tried to mount; his big young thoroughbred resented the idea of anyone on his back, and Jim had to hop beside him, with one foot in the stirrup, while he danced round in a circle, trying to get away. Jim seized an opportunity, and was in the saddle with a lithe swing; whereupon the horse tried to get his head down to buck, and, being checked in that ambition, progressed down the paddock in a ...
— Back To Billabong • Mary Grant Bruce
... the steps which led to the lawn, and Bias saw that she stumbled on the last one and would have fallen had not her lithe body ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... seconds, the lynx-like creature made a sudden lightning-like dash at the motionless antelope, which I fully expected to see go down instantly, with the formidable fangs of its enemy buried deep in its throat. Not so, however, for as the lithe, spotted form darted through the grass the antelope rose from the ground, as though shot into the air by a powerful spring, descending fair and square upon its enemy's back, its four sharp-pointed hoofs digging viciously through the spotted hide and extorting a scream ...
— Through Veld and Forest - An African Story • Harry Collingwood
... lovely now, than when we saw her last, asleep. She moves through the garden with a light quick step, her white morning robe with its wide sleeves falling in graceful drapery over her lithe limbs, the thick brown hair straying from beneath the purple kerchief over her head, and a merry, roguish smile lurking round her rosy mouth and in the dimples of her cheeks ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... sir," said Will eagerly; and Mr Temple watched him closely as they stood once more out in the bright sunshine, and, lithe and strong, he began to climb up the rocks, Dick following him almost as quickly, but without his cleverness in making his ...
— Menhardoc • George Manville Fenn
... a distinct command, and after a very decided pause he responded to it. He rose with a quick, lithe movement, and handed her the letter with a ...
— The Knave of Diamonds • Ethel May Dell
... holes, and cut at the horses as they passed, to hamstring or maim them; and good-bye to the poor fellow whose horse fell! We ought to have had lances, and it would have been a very different tale. But the troopers' swords could not reach the beggars, who are as lithe as monkeys. If they had run it would have been easy to get a cut at them; so it would if they had stood up. But they were as cool as cucumbers, and dodged just at the right moment. Of course some were not ...
— For Fortune and Glory - A Story of the Soudan War • Lewis Hough
... started. It was hard work, for the way was very rough, and poor Hannah weak. But Ann had a good deal of strength in her lithe young frame, and she half-carried Hannah over the worst places. Still both of the girls were pretty well spent when they came to the last of the bits of wool on the border of Bear Swamp. However, they kept on a little farther; then they ...
— The Pot of Gold - And Other Stories • Mary E. Wilkins
... the fence, and halfway down the lane now, paused and looked about him, straining his eyes through the blackness—then with a lithe spring he caught the top of the fence, swung himself over, and dropped to the ground on the other side. The rear of a row of low buildings now loomed up before him across a narrow yard. Window lights showed here and there from the houses on ...
— The Further Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard
... almost universally liked by both men and women, and, while unspoilt by popularity, thoroughly deserved it. He was about twenty-six years of age, above medium height, with a lithe and graceful figure which the riding costume that he was wearing well set off. Fair-haired and blue-eyed, with good though irregular features, he was pleasant-faced and attractive rather than handsome. The cheerful, ...
— The Jungle Girl • Gordon Casserly
... rays Round her soft Theban tissues! All will be as She says, When that dead past reissues. Matters not what nor where, Hark, to the moon's dim cluster! How was her heavy hair Lithe as a feather duster! Matters not when nor whence; Flittertigibbet! Sounds make the song, ...
— A Nonsense Anthology • Collected by Carolyn Wells
... about eighteen. There was a suggestion of effeminacy about the lad's small, well-shaped hands and feet. He was a slender, smooth-faced youth with mild blue eyes. It occurred to Webb, too, that the stranger might have imagined the Apaches. But in his motions was something of the lithe grace of the puma. It was part of the business of the cattleman to judge men and he was not convinced that this young fellow was ...
— A Man Four-Square • William MacLeod Raine
... full moment, then slowly raised his arms above his head in a gesture of supple grace and ease. The afternoon sun struck across his wind-ruffled brown hair and smiling face, as he gave a brief nod to the catcher and dropped his arm with a lithe, swift movement and turn of his whole body. The white ball shot across, swerving almost at the plate, and crashed into ...
— From the Car Behind • Eleanor M. Ingram
... people have been fooling me? I don't believe it," said I. "There's one that can't talk English, and I'll make a bet on it." I indicated a passing brave with an eagle-feather head-dress which reached far down his naked legs. He was a magnificent animal; he was young and lithe, and as tall and straight as a sapling. "I've tried him twice, and he simply ...
— Laughing Bill Hyde and Other Stories • Rex Beach
... the way out." But when at last the picador, having spurred his flinching horse close up to the bull's side, jabbed at his glossy neck with his lance and the pain convinced the great monarch they were hostile, he threw up his head with a snort and in a lithe, agile bound he passed by them and trotted ...
— Five Nights • Victoria Cross
... "Patsy" Raymond and against the wall near the door. He was obviously unconscious of himself, of the possibility that he might be observed. His eyes were pouncing from blaze of jewels to white neck, to laughing, sensuous face, to jewels again or to lithe, young form, scantily clad and swaying in masculine arm in rhythm with the waltz. It gave Arkwright a qualm of something very like terror to note the contrast between his passive figure and his roving eyes with their wolfish gleam—like Blucher, when he looked out over London and said: "God! What ...
— The Fashionable Adventures of Joshua Craig • David Graham Phillips
... her whole lithe body into a setting for the prettiest yawn that Kirby had ever seen. "So the Jat is missing! Yes, he came here, sahib. He was never invited, but he came. He sat here saying nothing until it suited him to sit where another man ...
— Winds of the World • Talbot Mundy
... novelists have introduced as the leading character; the women who come in contact with him seem to be fascinated by his disdainful mien, his giant strength, and his brutal manner. He is broad across the shoulders, heavily moulded, yet as lithe as a cat; has an ugly scar across his right cheek; has been in the four quarters of the globe; knows seventeen languages; had a harem in Turkey and a Fayaway in the Marquesas; can be as polished as Bayard in the drawing-room, but is as gloomy as Conrad ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... jasmine and sweet brier-rose. Death, a giant form, veiled in grey draperies, is passing in with inevitable and mysterious power, breaking through all the flowers. One foot is already on the threshold, and one relentless hand is extended, while Love, a beautiful boy with lithe brown limbs and rainbow-coloured wings, all shrinking like a crumpled leaf, is trying, with vain hands, to bar the entrance. A little dove, undisturbed by the agony of the terrible conflict, waits patiently at the foot of the ...
— Miscellanies • Oscar Wilde
... a horse, nor a cow—nothing upon four legs. This creature had only two; but they were long, straight and strong. And it had a lithe active body, and a curly head of black hair. It was a boy about the Prince's own age—but, oh! so different. His face was almost as red as his hands, and his shaggy hair was matted like the backs of the sheep he was tending. But he was a rather nice-looking ...
— The Little Lame Prince - Rewritten for Young Readers by Margaret Waters • Dinah Maria Mulock
... prepared to start, the overseer having selected a trusty llanero as our guide. It was difficult to say to what race he belonged. He called himself a white, but his complexion and features betokened Indian and African progenitors. He was a fine, athletic-looking fellow, lithe yet muscular, and evidently capable of enduring continued and violent exercise without fatigue. A broad-brimmed hat, a shirt and trousers, and a coloured poncho over his shoulders, completed his attire; his weapons ...
— The Young Llanero - A Story of War and Wild Life in Venezuela • W.H.G. Kingston
... lady's arms, the lithe, active youth was in the house in an instant, following the Voice of Fernley. There it came again, rising, rising,—the cry of a lost soul, the wail ...
— Margaret Montfort • Laura E. Richards
... Lisle reported himself to their commander. He was at once put in charge of a company, and began his duties. When, two days later, they marched up the country, he felt well pleased with his command; for the men were for the most part lithe, active fellows; very obedient to orders and ready for any work, and evidently very proud of their position as British soldiers. They had for the most part had very little practice in shooting; but this was of comparatively little consequence, as what ...
— Through Three Campaigns - A Story of Chitral, Tirah and Ashanti • G. A. Henty
... delayed, and I stood for a quarter of an hour at the bottom of a flight of steps, watching the continuous stream of descending passengers, mostly women, and generally young. Some among the less young were swollen, heavy, and awkward; most were slack, drooping, limp, bony, or bent; a few were lithe and lissom; one or two had the emotional vivacity and muscular tone of abounding vitality. Not one plainly indicated that, stripped of her clothing, she would have transformed those Underground steps into the Golden Stairway ...
— Impressions And Comments • Havelock Ellis
... fervid black gleam of her hair; her lips are pursed in a half-smile as if she were stifling a secret. She walks round the stage slowly, one hand at her waist, the shawl tight over her elbow, her thighs lithe and restless, a panther in a cage. At the back of the stage she turns suddenly, advances; the snapping of her fingers gets loud, insistent; a thrill whirrs through the guitar like a covey of partridges scared in a field. Red ...
— Rosinante to the Road Again • John Dos Passos
... fair: to be quite fair is best. Why, two nights hence I dreamed that I could see In through your bosom under the left flower, And there was a round hollow, and at heart A little red snake sitting, without spot, That bit—like this, and sucked up sweet—like this, And curled its lithe light body right and left, And quivered like a woman in act to love. Then there was some low fluttered talk i' the lips, Faint sound of soft fierce words caressing them— Like a fair woman's when her love gets way. Ah, your old kiss—I know ...
— Chastelard, a Tragedy • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... last, the stag, a noble animal with wondrous horns, lithe body and beautifully shaped limbs was at bay. Straight and true, at its throat, flew the leader of the pack, and sank its teeth deep into it, while above the King blew loud and long the death note of the chase. No need for other hounds nor for ...
— In the Court of King Arthur • Samuel Lowe
... of Irish descent, and middle size, but compact, lithe, and muscular, with a not unkindly face, which, however, showed but too plainly the marks of habitual dissipation. A rigger by occupation, a sailor and pilot at need, a skilful fisherman, and ready shot, with a roving experience, which had given him a smattering of half a score of ...
— Adrift in the Ice-Fields • Charles W. Hall
... to wheel and gallop away; so she remained with her hand fumbling at the butt of the revolver, and her eyes fixed on the flicker of the fire. Not a voice accosted her. As far as she could peer among the lithe trunks of the saplings, not a sign of ...
— Riders of the Silences • Max Brand
... so many excellent qualities. His was the wisdom of the serpent combined with the gentleness—I will not say of the dove, but rather of the cat, our little tiger on the hearthrug, the most beautiful of four-footed things, so lithe, so soft, of so affectionate a disposition, yet capable when suddenly roused to anger of striking with lightning rapidity and rending the offender's flesh with its ...
— Dead Man's Plack and an Old Thorn • William Henry Hudson
... round her; they propelled her towards the house. They were lithe, supple creatures of twenty and twenty-one. Between them walked Neville, with her small, pointed, elfish face, that was sensitive to every breath of thought and emotion like smooth water wind-stirred. With her great violet eyes brooding in it under thin black brows, and her wet hair hanging in loose ...
— Dangerous Ages • Rose Macaulay
... eyes curtained slightly by the drooping lids, the cheeks oval and rosy rich, the lips full and deep with dimpling in the corners, and all the grace of the tall lithe figure. ...
— Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ • Lew Wallace
... Col...." His eye-glasses slip downwards on his nose. The girls are not listening. Gretchen is entirely absorbed in the fascinating appearance of an Italian who has just passed, and who by unmistakable signs conveyed to her that she is adorable. His flashing eyes, his jet-black hair, his lithe figure, his pointed toes, the nimble way in which he managed to press her hand behind the very back of her father, have stirred her imagination. Hedvig is shocked. The elder daughter is permeated with respect for her father's professorial dignity. Every gesture betrays the capable ...
— Mountain Meditations - and some subjects of the day and the war • L. Lind-af-Hageby
... lithe figure of a pretty girl is often likened by Eastern poets to the waving cypress, a tree which we associate with the grave-yard.—"Who is walking there?" asks a Persian poet. "Thou, or a ...
— Flowers from a Persian Garden and Other Papers • W. A. Clouston
... the moving shadow was the half-caste Oola, shrouded in the dark blue blanket she had given her, and that the gin had halted at the casement window of Maule's bedroom. Now, Oola, with her hands on the sill, curved her lithe body, drew her bare feet to the window ...
— Lady Bridget in the Never-Never Land • Rosa Praed
... bicycle and her staggering instructor, the pig, the perambulator, and the infant school (where it disembogued yelping on cross-roads), with the grace of Nellie Farren (upon whom be the Peace) and the lithe abandon of all the Vokes family. But at heart she was ever Judic as I remember that Judic long ago—Judic clad in bourgeois black from wrist to ankle, ...
— Traffics and Discoveries • Rudyard Kipling
... his type. To keep physically fit for the hardest campaigning and mentally fit for the highest problems of modern strategy and to boast about neither the one qualification nor the other—these were the articles of his creed. In appearance he was a little younger than his years, lithe, long in the leg, with a thin brown face and grey eyes which twinkled with humour. Harold Hazlewood was intensely proud of him, though he professed to detest his profession. And no doubt he found at times that the mere ...
— Witness For The Defense • A.E.W. Mason
... art bronzed, thy limbs are lithe; How I laugh as through the crosse-game, Slipst thou like red elder withe. Thou art none of these pale-faces! When with thee I'll happy feel, For thou art the Mohawk warrior From thy ...
— Thoughts, Moods and Ideals: Crimes of Leisure • W.D. Lighthall
... the evening of the same day, a Mexican sailor dodged in the front gate and slipped down to the side of the house. He stopped by the window and tapped on it with his finger. In a moment a woman opened the door. She was tall, lithe, and splendidly proportioned, with a dark Spanish face and straight hair. The man stepped inside. The woman bolted ...
— Stories by Modern American Authors • Julian Hawthorne
... favorably with the Kickapoos of the Vermilion river. The Kickapoo warriors were generally tall and sinewy, while the Potawatomi were shorter and more thickly set, very dark and squalid. Numbers of the women of the Kickapoos were described as being lithe, "and many of them by no means lacking in beauty." The Potawatomi women were inclined to greasiness and obesity. The Potawatomi had little regard for their women. Polygamy was common among them when visited by the early missionaries. The warriors were always gamblers, ...
— The Land of the Miamis • Elmore Barce
... the poet's language and gestures told. Only half comprehending, the majority stamped and huzzahed. Pinchas swelled visibly. His slim, lithe form, five and a quarter feet high, towered over the assembly. His complexion was as burnished copper, his ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... equipped for her call, and Phillip Stanley's glance rested appreciatively on the lithe, graceful figure in its dainty robe of pale yellow chambrey, with its soft garnishings of lace and black velvet. The nut-brown head was crowned with a pretty shade hat of yellow straw, also trimmed with black velvet ribbon, and a white parasol, surmounted by a great, gleaming ...
— Katherine's Sheaves • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... to whistle before you are out of the wood, and Brady's triumph was short-lived. Swift as a shadow, a lithe figure darted out from among the trees and planted ...
— The Hermit of Far End • Margaret Pedler
... yelled Fred Hatfield, and as he shouted, the lithe cat sprang over the brush heap and landed in the road, right beside ...
— Ruth Fielding at Snow Camp • Alice Emerson
... this time there was another in their ranks. A man in his shirt sleeves with his hands bound behind his back marched with head erect between the two middle ranks. He was a tall, muscular man, broad of shoulder and lithe of limb. His face was pale, but the expression was calm and determined. His step was firm and the soldiers at his back found no need to urge him on. They marched straight to the wall of the yard that faced the jail, and at a command from the officer, the soldiers parted, leaving ...
— A Voyage with Captain Dynamite • Charles Edward Rich
... tall and slender and graceful, and once you knew her the lithe form could never be mistaken. She walked with the easy spring that comes from a perfectly arched foot. To-day she swept swiftly down Marais Street, casting a quick glance here and there from under her heavy veil as if she feared she was being followed. If you had peered under the ...
— The Goodness of St. Rocque and Other Stories • Alice Dunbar
... business college, and had been engaged as his private stenographer and secretary. This girl had blossomed forth into something exceptional, as American children of foreign parents are wont to do. You would have scarcely believed that she, with her fine, lithe body, her good taste in dress, her skill in stenography, bookkeeping, and business details, could be the daughter of a struggling Pole, who had first worked in the Southwest Chicago Steel Mills, and who ...
— The Titan • Theodore Dreiser
... "barb-wire" was the brand of "hooch" to which he most inclined. They knew him far; his igloos are on Kittiegazuit strand. They knew him well, the tribes who dwell within the Barren Land. From Koyokuk to Kuskoquim his fame was everywhere; And he did love, all life above, that little Julie Claire, The lithe, white slave-girl he had bought for seven hundred skins, And taken to his wickiup to ...
— Rhymes of a Rolling Stone • Robert W. Service
... outlaw known as Jazz. The horse was a sorrel, and it knew all the tricks of its kind. It went sunfishing, tried weaving and fence-rowing, at last toppled over backward after a frantic leap upward. The rider, long-bodied and lithe, rode like a centaur. Except for the moment when he stepped out of the saddle as the outlaw fell on its back, he stuck to his seat as though he ...
— Tangled Trails - A Western Detective Story • William MacLeod Raine
... familiar streets which led to his former home. He found Mrs. Johnson, but she had aged very fast since the war. She was no longer the lithe, active woman, with her proud manner and resolute bearing. Her eye had lost its brightness, her step its elasticity, and her whole appearance indicated that she was slowly sinking beneath a weight of sorrow which was heavier far than her weight of years. When ...
— Iola Leroy - Shadows Uplifted • Frances E.W. Harper
... as sweet as the flowers that grow, By the side of the brooklet that runs near her cot; Her brow is as fair as the fresh fallen snow, And the gleam of her smile can be never forgot. Her figure is lithe and as graceful I ween As was Venus when Paris awarded the prize, She's the wiles of a fairy,—the step of a queen, And the light of true love's ...
— Yorkshire Lyrics • John Hartley
... thereafter he had this additional incentive, the future meeting with a tall, lithe girl with dark-brown hair and gray eyes—brave, deep eyes, and slightly swarthy cheeks, which were crimson as she ...
— Dan Merrithew • Lawrence Perry
... like lightning, and seized him by both wrists at the very instant that his pistol exploded; the bullet grazing the left side of my head, and neatly clipping off a lock of my hair. The fellow was as lithe as an eel in my hands, and made the most desperate efforts to stab me with his long, murderous-looking knife; but I had him fast in so powerful a grip that, after a furious struggle of a few seconds, he dropped both his weapons with a gasp ...
— The Log of a Privateersman • Harry Collingwood
... along so fast that it was as much as Dick and Steell could do to keep up with him. The night was dark and foggy, and at times they could not see him for the mist. But as he came within the glare of each lamp post, they could make out his lithe figure, scurrying along as if the devil himself were at ...
— The Mask - A Story of Love and Adventure • Arthur Hornblow
... lithe, young body in perfect condition, ran lightly and easily as a fawn. She made a pretty picture as she ran, with her long, black hair streaming out behind her, and the short silk tunic flapping about her ...
— The Girl in the Golden Atom • Raymond King Cummings
... part of it. "Back and forth across the garden the little yellow birds were flitting, dodging through currant and gooseberry bushes, hiding in the lilacs, swaying for an instant on swinging sprays of grape vines, and then flashing out across the garden beds like yellow sunbeams. They were lithe, slender, dainty little creatures, and were so quick in their movements that I could not recognize them at first, but when one of them hopped down before me, lifted a fallen leaf and dragged a cutworm from beneath it, and, turning his head, gave me a sidewise glance with his victim still struggling ...
— Birds, Illustrated by Color Photography, Vol. II, No 3, September 1897 • Various
... out before her, lithe-limbed and big-chested, the atmosphere of that firelit place seemed filled with a sense of safety. His deliberate manner of speech, quite different from the slowness of a drawl, was the natural voice of that ...
— The Wrong Woman • Charles D. Stewart
... intensified in the tightened muscles of the temples. As many feet again; but a few more minutes—then liberty and life. The better to guard his movements, his gaze fell. Out and down went his right hand, then his left, as his lithe body slid forward. Again he glanced up, paused—and on the instant every muscle of his tense body went suddenly lax. Instead of the closed eyes and sleeping face he had expected, two steady eyes were giving him ...
— Ben Blair - The Story of a Plainsman • Will Lillibridge
... true-love convoyed o'er the main To Mitylene—though the southern blast Chase the lithe waves, while westward slant the Kids, Or low above the verge Orion stand— If from Love's furnace she will rescue me, For Lycidas is parched with hot desire. Let halcyons lay the sea-waves and the winds, Northwind and ...
— Theocritus • Theocritus
... Fair forms, smooth with the ruddy glow of health, And ripening time, whose every motion seemed The wak'ning of ethereal gracefulness To life, and on whose lineaments the light Of a seraphic imagery play'd; Forms lithe and rounded by the art of youth To be the shrines of spirit excellence, And hold the fusion of immortal grace Unblemish'd by corporeal defect. What found he then? Flower-wreathed chalices Tinted with rosy ...
— Eidolon - The Course of a Soul and Other Poems • Walter R. Cassels
... decisively, and passing up the stone steps of the entrance strode into the hall. There was a large sitting-room upon the ground floor, through the open door of which the visitor saw a sight which arrested him for a moment. A young girl was sitting in a recess near the window, with her lithe, supple figure bent forward, and her hands clasped at the back of her head, while her elbows rested upon a small table in front of her. Her superb brown hair fell in a thick wave on either side over her white round arms, and the graceful curve of her beautiful ...
— The Firm of Girdlestone • Arthur Conan Doyle
... often bandied about when the black coffee is being served. The marriageable young men of Morovenia had learned of the calamity in Count Malagaski's family. They knew that Kalora weighed less than one hundred and twenty pounds. She was tall, lithe, slender, sinuous, willowy, hideous. The fact that poor old Count Malagaski had made many unsuccessful attempts to fatten her was a stock subject for jokes of an unrefined and ...
— The Slim Princess • George Ade
... of white water springing through or leaping over its rocks. Your boat for voyaging here must be stout enough to buffet the rapid, light enough to skim the shallow, agile enough to vault over, or lithe enough to slip through, the barricade. Besides, sometimes the barricade becomes a compact wall,—a baffler, unless boat and boatmen can circumvent it,—unless the nautical carriage can itself be carried about the obstacle,—can ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 59, September, 1862 • Various
... into a firm triumvirate, mates in the work and play of an Australian cattle-run; watched over by the silent grey man whose existence centred in his motherless son and daughter—with a warm corner in his affections for the lithe, merry Queensland boy, whose loyalty to Billabong and its people had never wavered since ...
— Captain Jim • Mary Grant Bruce
... him. Hyvert was the son of a rich merchant of Lyons, who had offered the sub-officer charged with his deportation sixty thousand francs to permit his escape. He was at once the Achilles and the Paris of the band. He was of medium height but well formed, lithe, and of graceful and pleasing address. His eyes were never without animation nor his lips without a smile. His was one of those countenances which are never forgotten, and which present an inexpressible blending of sweetness and strength, tenderness ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas
... regards love and marriage, we seem to be entering, with all our sails spread, upon what Mr. Hepworth Dixon, its apostle and evangelist, calls a Gothic Revival, but what one of the many newspapers that so greatly admire Mr. Hepworth Dixon's lithe and sinewy style and form their own style upon it, calls, by a yet bolder and more striking figure, "a great sexual insurrection of our Anglo-Teutonic race." For this end we have to avert our eyes from everything ...
— Culture and Anarchy • Matthew Arnold
... garments of soft-toned linens, reaching from neck half-way to the knees and unbelted, are ideal for garden work, and to the young and slender, add a distinct charm, for one catches the movement of the lithe form beneath. ...
— Woman as Decoration • Emily Burbank
... chords of a harp rang through the hall, and the throng burst into loud acclamations. All eyes were fixed on Salome, who paused in her rhythmic dance, placed her feet wide apart, and without bending the knees, suddenly swayed her lithe body downward, so that her chin touched the floor; and her whole audience,—the nomads, accustomed to a life of privation and abstinence, the Roman soldiers, expert in debaucheries, the avaricious publicans, and even the crabbed, elderly priests—gazed ...
— Herodias • Gustave Flaubert
... my lord, certainly; and besides, they are very highly decorative too. Nothing looks better to my mind at a banquet than bright gay faces and lithe young figures set in a shining framework of mail. By the way, my Lord Lysimachus, it was kind of you to provide our procession with a strong detachment of fine young soldiers from Bosphorus. I have secured a prominent place for them, and ...
— Gycia - A Tragedy in Five Acts • Lewis Morris
... and gazed at her. She was a lithe, supple-looking woman, at once graceful and fully developed; a dark beauty of the style peculiar to the South, with wonderful animation in her face, and dark flashing eyes. At the same time the play ...
— The Pilot and his Wife • Jonas Lie
... leggings, he stood lithe and erect at the bedside, and with his fist at her face, delivered a short charge, the point of which was, that unless she lay like a mouse till morning he'd have her life, though he hanged for it. And with that he drew the curtain, and was hidden ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... send them to St. Ives; Strong men have cried like babes, bydam, To hear what happened at Babraham. But Grantchester! ah, Grantchester! There's peace and holy quiet there, Great clouds along pacific skies, And men and women with straight eyes, Lithe children lovelier than a dream, A bosky wood, a slumbrous stream, And little kindly winds that creep Round twilight corners, half asleep. In Grantchester their skins are white, They bathe by day, they bathe ...
— Poems of To-Day: an Anthology • Various
... life. But sometimes he would find silence on one bank for a goodly stretch where there was neither marsh-chorus nor cadences of insects. The hush would be profound and an affrighted air of suspense was apparent. And there at the river-brink the author of this breathless dismay, some lithe flesh-eater, would stride, shadow-like, through the high reeds to drink. Now and then the woman-like scream of the wildcat, or the harsh staccato laugh of the hyena would startle the marshes into silence. Sometimes retiring shapes would halt ...
— The Yoke - A Romance of the Days when the Lord Redeemed the Children - of Israel from the Bondage of Egypt • Elizabeth Miller
... back on the cushions and looked at them—lean lithe little men with rapid eyes and supple bodies and great repose. They gave him the same sense of strangeness that he had felt in the presence of the prince and of the woman in the Bitley Reformatory—as if, it whimsically flashed to him, they some way rhymed with ...
— Romance Island • Zona Gale
... with you.'" The girl put the brush under her arm, still further spread her feet, put her hands behind some pretended coat-tails, let the brush slip from under her arms, so that it fell to the floor with a racket, stooped with an affectation of clumsiness which seemed impossible to the lithe figure, while mumbling something inarticulate in an apparent paroxysm of embarrassment,—which quickly became a genuine ...
— Janice Meredith • Paul Leicester Ford
... moment the man came sweeping into the dining-room. He was carrying a heavy hunting-crop and his flabby face was livid. Behind him came Alma. She was in riding costume and was bending a lithe whip in ...
— The Woman Thou Gavest Me - Being the Story of Mary O'Neill • Hall Caine
... or that his mother, guessing the truth, was in pain with terror, or to feel that a rescuing party coming at the wrong time would bring on a fight in which the girls would be killed. Only the picture of Jane Mason, fine and lithe and strong, with the pink cheeks of twenty, and the soft curves of childhood still playing about her chin and throat as he saw it from the ground at her feet,—that picture was etched into his heart, ...
— A Certain Rich Man • William Allen White
... grape dissolved melancholy. When the last of it had flowed the dance was resumed. The women began a spirited danse du ventre. Their eyes now sparkled, their bodies were lithe and graceful. McHenry rushed on to the lawn and taking his place among them copied their motions in antics that set them roaring with the hearty roars of the conquered at the asininity of the conquerors. ...
— White Shadows in the South Seas • Frederick O'Brien
... But, thanks to cleanliness, to wholesome and sufficient food, to a calm and well-regulated life, to the pure, healthy air they breathe, the natural hues and the joyousness of youth soon reanimate the little faces; and with lithe, invigorated limbs, and happy hearts, these young creatures join merrily in the games of their new companions. They have entered the institution old; they will leave ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 7, Issue 41, March, 1861 • Various
... arm-chair. The soft lamp-light fell on his clean, bald, Michael-Angelo head, across which a few pure hairs glittered. His chin was sunk on his breast, so that his sparse but strong-haired white beard, in which every strand stood distinct, like spun glass lithe and elastic, curved now upwards and inwards, in a curious curve returning upon him. He seemed to be sunk in stern, prophet-like meditation. As a matter of fact, he was asleep ...
— Aaron's Rod • D. H. Lawrence
... She remembered it plainly now—that treasured, highly colored lithograph of a brigand holding up a coach in a mountain pass! There was in this face the same mocking deviltry; his figure had the same lithe grace; he needed only the big hoop earrings ...
— The Lady Doc • Caroline Lockhart
... us—was the mistress of an officer at the front, a prostitute of the Berlin sidewalks, who enrolled for hospital work when her lover went to the front. She Was a tall, dark, handsome girl, who looked to be more Spaniard than German, and she was graceful and lithe even in the exceedingly shapeless costume of blue print that she wore. She was less deft than either of her associates but very willing and eager. As between the three—the noblewoman, the working woman and the woman of the street—the medical officials ...
— Paths of Glory - Impressions of War Written At and Near the Front • Irvin S. Cobb
... morning conventions on the beach. As a general thing, he only watched the people in groups, and entertained himself with making shrewd guesses as to the probable relationships existing in those groups. Only two individuals made distinct impressions upon him. One of these was the tall, lithe girl in the black suit, who walked as well as she swam; the other was also a girl, but younger and less good-looking, and Gifford Barrett found himself wondering how she could possibly be in so many places at once. He appeared to be always falling over her, always coming ...
— Phebe, Her Profession - A Sequel to Teddy: Her Book • Anna Chapin Ray
... a nurse's charge) was to watch acrobats and riders at the circus. This was not so much for the skillful feats as on account of the beauty of their persons. Even then I cared chiefly for the more lithe and graceful fellows. People told me that circus actors were wicked, and would steal little boys, and so I came to look upon my favorites as half-devil and half-angel. When I was older and could go about alone, I would often hang around the tents of travelling shows in hope of catching a glimpse ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 2 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... figures and faces disappear from that diurnal stage! It seems but yesterday since we met there Dr. Francis's cheering salutation, or listened to Dr. Bethune's and Fenno Hoffman's genial and John Stephens's truthful talk,—watched General Scott's stalwart form, Dr. Kane's lithe frame, Cooper's self-reliant step, Peter Parley's juvenile cheerfulness,—and grasped Henry Inman's cordial hand, or listened to Irving's humorous reminiscence, and met the benign smile of dear old Clement Moore. As to fairer faces and more delicate shapes,—to encounter which was ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 110, December, 1866 - A Magazine of Literature, Science, Art, and Politics • Various
... out, but it would sink back into the ground and return. John again gave thanks for the splendid pair of high boots that he wore, and also he often searched the air for Lannes. But he saw no sign of the lithe and swift Arrow and his anxiety for Julie increased steadily. She must now be at Chastel, but he had not yet found any excuse that would release him from the trenches and let him ...
— The Hosts of the Air • Joseph A. Altsheler
... she had the eye of a person of aristocratic tastes for what was in good form, and she saw that Mr. Harrison's turnout was all of that, with another attraction for her, that it was daring; for the horses were lithe, restless creatures, thoroughbreds, both of them; and it looked as if they had not been out of the stable in a week. They were giving the groom who held them all ...
— King Midas • Upton Sinclair
... banks of flowers,—waters so sweet that who drank would drink again, and with every draught would throw off years and pain until at last he was a youth once more,—a youth with hot blood, sparkling eyes, lithe muscles; a youth who saw the world full of beauty and adventure. Ah, to be once more as he was when the princess beamed on him; to throw away his cares, his ails, his conscience, his regrets; to sing and dance, to ruffle it with other cavaliers, ...
— Myths & Legends of our New Possessions & Protectorate • Charles M. Skinner
... rare gem of thy own; take care no one gets it who is not likely to pay a worthy price. That pretty Greek has a lithe sleekness about him, that seems marvellously fitted for slipping easily into any nest he fixes his ...
— Romola • George Eliot
... commenced to build a raft. There were logs enough of every size and length in the forest, and we selected those only which we could drag with ease to the water's edge. Lithe vines, of which there were plenty hanging to the trees, served instead of ropes, and with these we bound our logs together. As the pine-wood was heavy, we formed a platform on the top of the logs with smaller poles and lighter branches, interwoven, and bound together as tightly as we considered ...
— In the Rocky Mountains - A Tale of Adventure • W. H. G. Kingston
... have loved your mother! She was most beautiful, and of the type so dear to you. Her skin was almost as white as Leah's, her eyes almost as black, her hair even blacker; like Leah, she was tall and slim and lithe and graceful. She might have been Leah's mother, too, for the likeness between them. How often you remind me of her when you laugh or sing, and when you're funny in French; those droll, quick gestures and quaint intonations, that ease and freedom and deftness as you move! ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier
... hailed him in chorus he was bewildered for a moment, and stood in the gateway leaning on his rifle, his coonskin cap thrust back on his brown hair, his bright, steady gray eyes concentrated as he listened. His tall, lithe figure in his buckskin hunting shirt and leggings, the habitual garb of the frontiersmen, grew tense and gave an intimation of gathering all its forces for the defensive as he noted how the aspect of the station differed from its wonted guise. Every house of the ...
— The Frontiersmen • Charles Egbert Craddock
... upon the group, would have found it a curious and interesting study. Mr. Balfour was a tall, lithe man, with not a redundant ounce of flesh on him. He was as straight as an arrow, bore on his shoulders a fine head that gave evidence in its contour of equal benevolence and force, and was a practical, fearless, straightforward, ...
— Sevenoaks • J. G. Holland |
